Equity Bancshares, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the third quarter 2022 Equity Bank Shares earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Chris Navratil with Equity Bank Shares. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Equity Bank Shares conference call, which will include a discussion and presentation of our third quarter 2022 results. Presentation slides to accompany our call are available 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 webcast 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 our Chairman and CEO, Brad Elliott.

Thank you, Chris. Good morning. Welcome to our third quarter earnings call. And thank you for your interest in equity bank shares. With me on the call today is our CFO, Eric Newell, COO, Greg Kosover, and Chief Credit Officer, John Creech. Let me start by thanking the equity team for their continued dedication to providing excellent customer service. The effort of our bankers can be seen as we delivered outstanding core earnings for the third time in 2022. As we completed the integration of our M&A transactions over recent years, we have worked to improve the operating team effectiveness and banker sales process. As we continue to improve on these, we will see further pull-through into our operating results. Our diluted EPS was 93 cents versus consensus of 80 cents. Net interest income and net interest margin both increased as we continue to realize benefit from upward rate movement. We are active during the quarter with our buyback, completing our 2021 authorized plan and receiving regulatory non-objection for an additional million shares to be used over the next period. With further emphasis on shareholder return, we increased our third quarter dividend 25% to $0.10 per share. I'll let Eric talk with you about our financial results.