Hancock Whitney Corporation

Manager, you may begin.

Thank you, and good afternoon. During today's call, we may make forward-looking statements. We would like to remind everyone to carefully review the Safe Harbor language that was published with the earnings release and presentation and in the company's most recent 10-K and 10-Q, including the risks and uncertainties identified therein. You should keep in mind that any forward-looking statements made by Hancock Whitney speak only as of the date on which they were made. As everyone understands, the current economic environment is rapidly evolving and changing. Hancock-Whitney's ability to accurately project results or predict the effects of future plans or strategies or predict market or economic developments is inherently limited. We believe that the expectations reflected or implied by any forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions but are not guarantees of performance or results. and our actual results and performance could differ materially from those set forth in our forward-looking statements. Hancock-Whitney undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. Some of the remarks contain non-GAAP financial measures. You can find reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures in our earnings release and financial tables. The presentation slides included in our 8K are also posted with the conference call webcast link on the Investor Relations website. We will reference some of these slides in today's call. Participating in today's call are John Harriston, President and CEO, Mike Ackery, CFO, and Chris Saluca, Chief Credit Officer. I will now turn the call over to John Harriston.

Thank you, Kathryn, and Happy New Year, everyone. We thank you all for joining us today for the call. We are pleased with our fourth quarter results, which reflect another quarter of improving profitability. We achieved an ROA of a notable 1.40 percent. We enjoyed continued NIM expansion and wrapped the quarter with total risk-based capital of nearly 16 percent. The quarter was a strong finish to a strong year of improving profitability, building capital, and celebrating our 125th anniversary. Last quarter on this call, we shared our expectations for a pivot to growth and smartly deploying capital to create opportunity and value. On that note, we announced this morning our acquisition of Sable Trust Company based in St. Petersburg, Florida. We are very proud to welcome Sable's outstanding leadership team and clients to Hancock Whitney. Following the close, Florida will become our largest wealth management fee state and the Tampa St. Pete MSA will become our largest individual wealth management fee market. The transaction matches perfectly our stated strategy to develop greater market share in the higher growth areas around our geographic footprint. Further details may be found on slide seven of the investor deck. We are also pleased to announce a multi-year organic growth plan, which will include both hiring additional revenue generating associates throughout 2025 and expanding our footprint in Florida and Texas through opening this year five additional financial center locations in North Dallas. We expect to announce additional locations in Florida as we near the completion of a stable transaction. We added seven new bankers in the fourth quarter, which aligns with our anticipated run rate for 2025 and likely the foreseeable future. As I said earlier, this is a multi-year plan and we will share more over the next several quarters. We updated our guidance to give our latest expectations for 2025. This guidance reflects the organic growth plan, but does not include any impacts from the acquisition of Sable Trust Company. Just a few more notes from Q4 before turning the call over to Mike. Net interest income and NEM increased as we were able to control funding costs and more than offset the impact of lower rates and changes in new loan production mix. Fee income was modestly off due to lower secondary mortgage volume due entirely to higher rates and a little less specialty income after record numbers in Q3. And finally, we were happy to post a modest reduction in operating expense for the quarter. Loans were down $156 million due to higher payoffs on commercial real estate loans, offsetting otherwise strong production. With our organic growth plan, we expect total loans will grow mid-single digits in 2025, tilting toward the second half of the year. We remain focused on more granular, full-relationship loans with the goal of achieving more favorable yields and relationship revenue. Deposits were up $510 million despite the maturity of $183 million in broker deposits. This quarter, we had a very welcome increase in DDA balances, and our DDA mix is consistent at 36%. We experienced normal seasonal increases in interest-bearing transaction and public funds deposit accounts, and retail CDs declined due to the reduction of our promotional CD rates. We expect deposits to grow in low single digits in 2025. During the quarter, we continued to return capital to investors by repurchasing 150,000 shares of common stock. Even after returning capital, we had strong growth in all of our regulatory capital metrics due to excellent profitability, ending the quarter with a common equity Tier 1 ratio of 14.14%. TCE declined slightly due to the impact of Treasury yields on AOCI, but ended the quarter at a strong 9.47%. We're enthusiastic for the opportunities in the coming year and believe we are very well positioned for a successful 2025. With that, I'll invite Mike to add additional comments.