Equity Bancshares, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Equity Bank Shares' fourth quarter 2020 earnings conference call. At this time, all participant lines are in listening mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Chris Navratil. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Equity Bank Shares Conference Call, which will include discussion and presentation of our fourth quarter 2020 results. Presentation slides to accompany our call are available via PDF for download at investor.equitybank.com by clicking the presentation tab. You may also click the event icon for today's call posted at investor.equitybank.com to view the webcast player. If you are viewing this call on our webcast player, please note that slides will not automatically advance. Please reference slide one, including important information regarding forward-looking statements. From time to time, we may make forward-looking statements within today's call, and actual results may vary. Following the presentation, we will allow time for questions and further discussion. Thank you all for joining us. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Brad Elliott.

Thank you, Chris, and good morning. Thank you for joining our call and your interest in equity bank shares. Joining me is Eric Newell, our CFO, Greg Kosover, our Chief Operating Officer, and our President, Craig Anderson. The entire equity team entered 2020 optimistic that we would build on our momentum from 2019. I can look back on 2020 and say that we exceeded our expectations just a little differently than we planned. While we had a branch-like model for three weeks when the pandemic hit, we were quickly fully open in our branches to serve our customers in a safe manner. and have never looked back. This has proved to be a differentiator in our markets. We still have major competitors that have dark branches and put their needs ahead of their customers and duty to be an essential business. This is not lost on our customers or theirs. Many of these customers are business owners and struggle to understand how to safely get their employees back to work. to serve their own customers and communities. We approached it the same way. Those customers now know that they can depend on Equity Bank to be there when they need us most. By way of example, Galen McGregor and Glen Malan in our Trust and Wealth Management Group continue to safely meet with their clients and prospects. to give advice for decisions that can't wait for the pandemic to end. Many of our competitors cannot or will not do the same. Our commercial lenders, treasury sales, and bank managers are out making calls to prospects which they have a relationship with but happen to bank elsewhere. Why? Because their current banker will not meet with them. We've had more customers than I can count call us because their current banker was unable or unwilling to help them get a PPP loan, process a simple request, or talk about their current needs. Julie Huber has masterfully led a team of over 150 individuals at Equity through the PPP 2020 program, Main Street Lending, and the current PPP program. Our credit administration, loan servicing, commercial lenders, and customer care departments have worked day and night to meet our customers' needs and to get the government programs delivered to help them be able to run their businesses. I'm honored to be a part of this team that over and over again have shown entrepreneurship, through a challenging and uncertain time. I wanted to spend time on this because our team and our customers are what make up the value proposition of Equity Bank, and in turn, supports and builds franchise value. We will talk about the financial aspects of our business, and they are very important. But without our employees and our customers, we would not be able to achieve our financial results. Highlighting how our team has performed in one of the most uncertain environments many of us have ever experienced was something I wanted to share with you. We started the year with $20.75 per share of tangible book value and grew it $3.93 to $24.68 per share. nearly a 20% annual return on tangible book value. This is the highest level we have reported as a company. Our asset quality metrics have remained stable and improved, which Greg will discuss in a moment. We raised $75 million of offensive capital in the summer and have also prudently managed capital in this moment of uncertainty. We returned a portion of our capital to shareholders through a stock repurchase program we completed in the summer and are now executing a second repurchase program implemented by the board in the fall. We added $24 million of reserves to our allowance for loan losses, as Eric will speak more about. We are ready for the adoption of CECL. We successfully closed on a deal to acquire all the assets and deposits of Almena State Bank from the FDIC. We completed the core conversion over the recent three-day holiday weekend. We are thrilled to have welcomed the members of the former Almena team to equity and have high hopes for growth in Norton and Almena Kansas markets. Under the leadership of our Western Kansas Regional President, Levi Goetz, We anticipate this will be a good financial transaction for our shareholders. I feel great about our prospects in 2021. The operating environment is not easy, but this is where our team can win new business and showcase our value proposition to our new and current customers. Eric, let's take everyone through our quarter.