Home Bancorp, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Home Bank Corp's third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. All participants will be enlisted in the room. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the start key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to HomeBank Corp's Chairman, President and CEO, John Bordelon, and Chief Financial Officer, David Kirkley. Mr. Kirkley, please go ahead.

Thank you, Eric. Good morning and welcome to HomeBank's third quarter 2024 earnings call. Our earnings release and investor presentation are available on our website. I'd ask that everyone please refer to the disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements in the investor presentation and our SEC filings. Now I'll hand it over to John to make a few comments about the third quarter. John? Thank you, David.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our earnings call today. We appreciate your interest in HomeBank as we discuss our results, expectations for the future, and our approach to creating long-term shareholder value. We reported third quarter net income of $9.4 million, or $1.18 per share, which was a nice improvement from last quarter's strong results. Net interest margin continued to expand, increasing five basis points to 3.71%. We're optimistic that the trend will continue as the Fed rate cuts reduce pressure on our cost of funds. Return on assets also increased and was 1.1%. in the third quarter, up 13 basis points from the second quarter. Loan growth slowed in the third quarter and was impacted by the paydown of a $19 million medical C&I loan. As we said last quarter, two-plus years of sustained higher rates has had a material impact on loan demand in our markets. We're optimistic that rate cuts and some clarity in November could lead to a pickup in loan demand and originations. Based on the soft demand we saw in the third quarter and are seeing in the fourth, we're expecting 2024 loan growth to finish at the lower end of our 4% to 6% guidance. Even in the current low-demand environment, which we don't expect to last, we think we have an opportunity to drive asset yields higher as our fixed-rate book naturally reprices. Deposits increased 55 million or 8% annualized, with most of the growth coming from money markets and interest-bearing checking accounts. In money market CD rates, we're quick to adjust lower after the rate cut in September, and we're optimistic that future rate cuts will have a similar impact. David will provide some more details on our asset and liability repricings to give everyone a sense of the potential to drive our asset yields higher and reduce our funding costs over the next few quarters. It has been frustrating over the last three years that HomeBank continues to perform well in the markets hasn't responded accordingly. This frustration exists because we continue to feel very good about HomeBank's outlook and have demonstrated strong performance in a variety of economic cycles. But we can't control the market, so we'll focus on the things that we can control, such as providing exceptional customer service, expanding relationships with new and existing customers, and maintaining our conservative credit culture. In the long term, we are confident that our approach will continue to build shareholder value at home bank. With that, I'll turn it back over to David, our Chief Financial Officer.