Great Southern Bancorp, Inc.

to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require assistance during the conference, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to Kelly Polonis, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon and welcome. The purpose of this call is to discuss the company's results for the quarter ending September 30th, 2021. Before we begin, I need to remind you that during this call, we may make forward-looking statements about future events and financial performance. Please do not place under reliance on any forward-looking statements which speak only as of the date they are made. Please see our forward-looking statements disclosure in our third quarter 2021 earnings release for more information. President and CEO Joe Turner and Chief Financial Officer Rex Copeland are on the call with me today. I'll now turn the call over to Joe Turner.

All right. Thanks, Kelly. Well, good afternoon, and we certainly appreciate you joining us today. We are very pleased with our third quarter earnings and continued strong financial position, I think both of which reflect our associates' ongoing commitment to take care of our customers in a very difficult operating environment. As is typical, I'll provide some brief remarks about the company's performance and then turn the call over to Rex Copeland, our CFO, who will get into more detail on our financial results. Then we'll open it up for questions. For the third quarter of 2021, we earned $20.4 million, or $1.49 for diluted common share, compared to $13.5 million, or $0.96 per share, for the same period in 2020. Our increased earnings were primarily driven by negative credit loss provision, which is indicative of continued strong credit quality, an improving economic situation, and a lower loan portfolio balance. We had higher net interest income, primarily driven by reduced deposit costs as well as PPP, deferred fee income recognition. And we had increased non-interest income, mainly related to debit card and ATM fees. Importantly, our pre-provision revenue continues to be strong with 2021 levels exceeding those achieved in 2020. Our earnings performance ratios were solid with an annualized return on average assets of 147, a return on equity of 1,282, and an efficiency ratio of 57.2. Thus far in 2021, loan production activity in our markets has been quite vigorous. But loan repayments, including customer refinancing, project sales, have been very, very high as well, historically high. In fact, I looked at a report yesterday where we compared 2021 origination through 930 to 2019 and 2020 loan origination, both of which were very good years from a loan origination standpoint. And we're on track to exceed those two years or equal or exceed those two years in 2021. Our outstanding loans have decreased $271 million compared to the end of 2020. About $90 million of that is a decrease in the PPP loans. Our pipeline of loan commitments and unfunded loans remains strong. That pipeline increased about $100 million from the end of the second quarter. Certainly, this type of lending environment can be dangerous for banks. Like credit cycles in the past, we recognize the current short-term growth challenges, and our commitment to our shareholders is that we will not stretch our credit culture discipline for the sake of loan growth. We manage for the long term and understand that we will have periodic ebbs and flows in our loan portfolio. As far as paycheck protection programs, About 100% of the round one paycheck protection loans, about $121 million have been forgiven, maybe just a very small portion have not. We don't expect to have problems with those. Second round, which began in January, we did about $58 million in loans, and I think we've had 26 million of those forgiven. We have total deferred fees in the second round of 3.7 million. We recognize $1.6 million of that in the first quarter, and we have $2.1 million left to recognize. Probably most of that will be in the fourth quarter. CARES Act modifications, we're down to $38 million of loans that are still under modification, and we would expect most of those to – I guess $38 million of commercial and then $2 million of consumer. We would expect most of those over the next probably three to nine months to – beyond regular payment terms. From an asset quality standpoint, I don't know what else we can say. It's as good as it's ever been, continues to be. Net charge-offs for the year were $9,000. Our non-performing assets, excluding FDIC-acquired assets, $5.2 million or 10 basis points of assets. Our allowance for credit losses, despite our reverse provision remains pretty steady at 1.56% of loans. From a capital standpoint, our capital remains extremely strong, $624 million. That's down about $5 million from the end of the year and down about $5 or $6 million, I think, from the end of the second quarter as well. Basically, we made $20 million a little over in the third quarter. We paid a dividend of between $4 and $5 million. We probably spent about $15 million buying back stock. And so that equaled about our earnings. So the reduction in our capital is from a reduction in the market value of our securities portfolio and our interest rate swap. I'll also remind you that during the quarter, we redeemed $75 million of subordinated notes, and that occurred in August. So we had about a half a quarter of the benefit from that redemption. That concludes my prepared remarks. I'll turn the call over to Rex Copeland at this time.