Great Southern Bancorp, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Great Southern Bancorp, Inc. Second Quarter 2019 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will be given at that time. If anyone should require assistance during the program, please press star, then zero on your touchtone telephone. As a reminder, today's program may be recorded. And now I'd like to introduce your host for today's program, Kelly Polonos, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon and welcome. This is Kelly Polonis, Investor Relations for Great Southern Bancorp, Inc. The purpose of this call is to discuss the company's results for the quarter ending June 30th, 2019. Before we begin, I need to remind you that during the course of this call, we could make forward-looking statements about future events and financial performance. You should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements which speak only as of the date they are made. These statements are subject to a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results anticipated or projected. For a list of some of these factors, please see our disclosure in our second quarter 2019 earnings release. President and CEO Joe Turner and Chief Financial Officer Rex Copeland are here with me. I'll now turn the call over to Joe Turner.

Okay. Thanks, Kelly. Good afternoon, everybody. And I also want to I also want to thank you for joining our second quarter earnings call. As is typical, I'll provide some preliminary remarks about the company's performance and then turn the call over to Rex Copeland, who will go into more detail about the income statement. We're excited about the way the quarter wound up. If you've had a chance to review the earnings release, you've seen that we did earn $1.28 per share and $18.4 million. We saw good loan growth during the quarter. We further improved on our operational efficiency. We did experience a little bit of net interest margin during the quarter, which Rex will provide color around. Some operating metrics that I want to highlight, our return on common equity was 13.24. Our return on assets was 152. Our margin was 397. And our efficiency ratio was 54.5%. As for loans, we feel very positive about our loan portfolio. We've had good growth in 2019 so far. I think our loans are up, funded balances are up 124 million from the end of last year, up 62 million, I guess, in each quarter, I think. So, you know, nice loan growth so far. Our gross loan balances are up 42 million from the end of 2018. Our committed pipeline continues to be at about the same levels, so we continue to have a strong pipeline. I will say just anecdotally, it seems like to me things on the loan side are starting to tighten maybe just a bit. As I said, our pipeline is still strong, but there seems to be maybe slightly less deal flow. then there was slightly fewer deals out there and so the competition is probably becoming even more significant. Asset quality continues to be strong. We're coming off historically low levels. We've told you before that asset quality can be kind of lumpy and we did add a $6.7 million relationship to our non-performings during the Second quarter, and in fact, that relationship has, you know, during the first week of July has transitioned into other real estate. But, you know, this is a credit that we've had on our books since 07, and we've been, you know, watching it for some time. But even after adding this relationship to our nonperformings, our nonperforming assets, the total assets was still, you know, relatively low at 0.33%. Our capital position continues to be strong. Our total capital or total common stockholders' equity is $572 million, or 11.7% of total assets. Our book value increased from $38.36 to $40.30 from the end of last quarter. The ratio of tangible common equity to tangible assets is very strong at 11.6%. We do want to point out that $32 million of our equity, it is GAAP equity, but it's derived from unrealized gains on our available for sale securities portfolio plus the mark-to-market gain on our cash flow hedge. So as you think about our capital, you may or may not want to net that part out. We were pleased during the second quarter to declare a regular quarterly dividend of 32 cents per share. That concludes my prepared remarks. I'll turn it over to Rex Copeland, and then we'll open it up for questions after Rex completes his presentation.