Home Bancorp, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Home Bank Corps' fourth quarter 2024 earnings. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the store key, followed by a zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Home Bank Course Chairman, President, and CEO, John Bardelon, and Chief Financial Officer, David Kirkley. Mr. Kirkley, please go ahead.

Thank you, Jennifer. Good morning and welcome to HomeBank's fourth 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 year and the fourth quarter. John?

Thanks, David. Good morning and thank you for joining the earnings call today from snowy Louisiana. We appreciate your interest in HomeBank as we discuss our results, expectations for the future, and our approach to creating long-term shareholder value. Yesterday afternoon, we reported fourth quarter net income of $9.7 million, or $1.21 per share, with net interest margin expanding for the third consecutive quarter to 3.82%. Fourth quarter's NIM expansion was driven by a 15 basis point decline in in the cost of interest-bearing liabilities, an increase in the average non-interest-bearing deposits, stable yields on interest-earning assets, and a slight increase in our loans-to-deposit ratio. After a slow October, loan growth picked up in November and December, resulting in fourth-quarter annualized loan growth of 7.5%, which helped push our 2024 loan growth to 5.3%. CRE, construction, and multifamily drove most of the $50 million of loan growth in the fourth quarter. Originations have remained strong in the first few weeks of January, but it's too early in the year to change our guidance. Therefore, we will continue to expect loans to grow between 4% and 6% in 2025. Deposits were flat from last year but grew by 4.1% in 2024, with most of the growth coming from customers moving into money market accounts and CDs. Noninterest-bearing deposits were down slightly in 2004, but make up a strong 26 percent of total deposits that year end. We continue to look at opportunities for strategic expansion, but as you probably know by now, we're not going to do a deal unless it checks all the boxes. We do plan to open a new branch in northwest Houston, which should help develop the valuable franchise we're building there. As a reminder, at the beginning of 2024, We hired a commercial team in northwest Houston, and they are making great progress developing relationships. As I said last quarter, we feel very good about HomeBank's outlook and our ability to perform. We think our success in 2024 demonstrates that. Our focus on customer service, expanding relationships with new and existing customers, and maintaining our solid credit culture continues to build shareholder value and demonstrates the strength of our bank. We remain confident in our outlook and think that NIM and earnings will continue to expand in 2025. With that, I'll turn it back over to David, our Chief Financial Officer.