Third Coast Bancshares, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Third Coast Bank fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in 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. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Natalie Hairston, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for Third Coast BankShares conference call and webcast to review our fourth quarter and full year 2023 results. With me today is Bart Caraway, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, John McWhorter, Chief Financial Officer, and Audrey Duncan, Chief Credit Officer. First, a few housekeeping items. There will be a replay of today's call, and it will be available by webcast on the investor section of our website at ir.tcbssb.com. There will also be a telephonic replay available until February 2, 2024. More information on how to access these replay features was included in yesterday's earnings release. Please note that information recorded on this call speaks only as of today, January 26, 2024, and therefore you are advised that time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of the time of any replay listening or transcript reading. In addition, the comments made by management during this conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements reflect the current views of management. However, various risks, uncertainties, and contingencies could cause actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from those expressed in the statements made by management. The listener or reader is encouraged to read the annual report on Form 10-K that was filed on March 15, 2023, to better understand those risks, uncertainties, and contingencies. The comments made today will also include certain non-GAAP financial measures. Additional details and reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures were included in yesterday's earnings release, which can be found on the Third Coast website. Now I would like to turn the call over to Thirst Coast Chairman, President, and CEO, Mr. Bart Caraway. Bart?

Thanks, Natalie, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. As we wrap up the fourth quarter, we reflected on our journey since going public two years ago. In November 2021, we launched our IPO as a $2 billion bank, aware that we still had to grow into our overhead with a return on assets of just 0.55%. However, today we're proud to report that we have over $4.4 billion in assets, an impressive growth rate of over 100%, and we almost doubled our return on assets at 0.90%. Our success over the past two years can be attributed to our focus on strategic priorities, including reinforcing shareholder value by improving efficiencies and maintaining our strong credit culture. In 2023, we introduced several new technologies to streamline our daily work and lay the foundation for flexible and scalable future growth. These include a credit delivery platform to efficiently process loans for corporate and community banking, an integrated risk and issue management software package, and an account origination solution for quick and efficient account opening for personal and business accounts, both digitally and in branch. We also took proactive, decisive actions to reduce our operating expenses and other overhead costs, resulting in a 5% reduction in workforce and the winding down of our auto finance division. This allowed us to streamline our operations and improve our bottom line so that we now have approximately $12 million in assets per employee. Our loan growth in 2023 continued to outperform our peers with a well-balanced loan mix of CNI and CRE. We achieved this by focusing on diversification and adding credit talent to our team. Looking back over the past year, we're immensely proud of our team and their hard work. We wholeheartedly believe that we have the best bankers working with the best customers in the best markets, driving long-term shareholder value and achieving success. With that, I'll turn the call over to John for a more detailed financial review. John?