Veritex Holdings, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Veritex Holdings fourth quarter and year-end 2020 earnings conference call and webcast. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Please note this event is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Ms. Susan Caudill, Investor Relations Officer and Secretary of the Board of Veritex Holdings.

Thank you. Before we get started, I would like to remind you that this presentation may include forward-looking statements, and those statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual and anticipated results to differ. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly revise any forward-looking statements. At this time, if you're logged into our webcast, please refer to our slide presentation, including our safe harbor statement beginning on slide two. For those of you joining us by phone, please note that the safe harbor statement and presentation are available on our website, veritexbank.com. All comments made during today's call are subject to that safe harbor statement. Some of the financial metrics discussed will be on a non-GAAP basis, which our management believes better reflects the underlying core operating performance of the business. please see the reconciliation of all discussed non-GAAP measures in our filed 8K earnings release. Joining me today are Malcolm Holland, our Chairman and CEO, Terry Early, our Chief Financial Officer, and Clay Reby, our Chief Credit Officer. I'll now turn the call over to Malcolm.

Good morning, everyone. Hope you all remain safe and healthy as we continue to endure these crazy times. We have certainly seen our fair share of cases over the last year, and even though several of our staff members have been sick, fortunately, we've only had a small handful hospitalized. Despite COVID numbers still rising, the leadership of the state of Texas has allowed our business to remain open with some restrictions, and we continue to operate at manageable levels with approximately 48% of our staff currently working from home. The fourth quarter was an outstanding quarter for Veritex. We recorded operating earnings of $29.7 million, or $0.60 per share, a 31 percent length quarter increase. Pre-tax, pre-provision continues to be a strong metric for us, producing $38.4 million, or $0.77 per share, producing a return on average assets of 1.75 percent for the quarter. Loan growth ex-PPP mortgage warehouse continued its positive trend, growing 4.3 percent annualized for the quarter and 2 percent for the year ended 2020. Mortgage warehouse continued its strong growth with 24 percent annualized increase for the quarter or 215 percent growth year over year. Yet it still remains only 8.5 percent of our outstanding loans at year-end 2020 and even lower from an average balance basis. We are proud of our lending staff and support personnel. Even with the challenges of 2020, we're still able to show positive loan growth. Pipelines remain strong. We feel like we have a great deal of momentum going into 2021. In the fourth quarter, our C&I team onboarded more new relationships than any other quarter during the year. We continue to see fallout from the M&A disruption in the Texas banking markets, as well as clients relocating out of the national and super regional institutions. These two scenarios boost our numerous growth opportunities. Growth has always been a core principle at Veritex. Another positive long growth year. Deposit growth continues to be incredibly strong. with total deposits growing 18.7 percent linked quarter, but more impressive is the annual growth in non-interest-bearing deposit growth of 35 percent year-over-year. Our credit picture is becoming clearer and is trending in a positive direction. For the quarter, we did not provide a loan loss provision. NPA decreased 12 basis points, and our ACL was reduced from 2.1 of loans to 1.8 percent of loans. We did have charge-offs of $16.5 million during the quarter, almost all of which came from acquired loans. Clay will give you some more color on that, but I'll now turn the call over to Terry to discuss the financial results.