RBB Bancorp

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the RBB Bancorp's fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the floor over to your host, Brian Stevens. Sir, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Matt. Good day, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss RBB Bancorp's results for the fourth quarter of 2023. With me today are Chief Executive Officer David Morris, President Johnny Lee, Interim Chief Financial Officer Lynn Hopkins, Chief Credit Officer Jeffrey Yeh, Chief Administrative Officer Gary Phan, and Chief Risk Officer, Vincent Liu. David and Lynn will briefly summarize the results, which can be found in the earnings press release and investor presentation that are available on our investor relations website. And then we'll open the call up to your questions. I would ask that everyone please refer to the disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements in the investor presentation and the bank's SEC filings. Now I'd like to turn the call over to RBB's Chief Executive Officer, David Morris. David?

Thank you, Brian. Good day, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We undertook several initiatives last year to position RBB for the future. We strengthened our management team by adding respected senior executives including Johnny Lee as president and Lynn Hopkins as interim chief financial officer. We restructured our operations and established a more formal reporting structure to better manage our national franchise business. We increased liquidity and mitigated balance sheet risk by reducing our loan-to-deposit ratio and strategically exiting certain higher risk loan relationships. We also address regulatory concerns by adopting enhanced corporate governance policies and reconstituting our board of directors. With respect to the consent order we disclosed in October, we believe we have addressed all the deficiencies identified, but there can be no guarantee that additional measures will not be required. We are also pleased to share that we were notified by the SEC that they have concluded its investigation and that it did not intend to recommend any enforcement action against the bank. Some of the actions we took last year, namely corporate governance and AML-related expenses, increased liquidity Entainment of our target 95% loan to deposit ratio and a reduction in higher risk, higher yielding loans did impact results. But with the majority of the work behind us, we are better positioned to create long-term shareholder value and expect profitability to improve over the coming quarters as we resume deposit-funded loan growth and take steps to optimize our cost of financing. In the fourth quarter, we were able to recognize the $5 million CDFI ERP award that I mentioned last quarter as we distributed the funds to related recipients. Before I hand it over to Lynn, who we are thrilled to have as part of our team, I did want to mention that we were active buyers of our shares in the fourth quarter and invested approximately $6.7 million to repurchase almost 400,000 shares. We have exhausted our current buyback authorization but recognize the benefits of having a buyback in place and expect to discuss a reauthorization at the next board meeting. Lynn? Welcome and take it away.