Veritex Holdings, Inc.

Good day, and welcome to Veritex Holdings' first quarter 2021 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 Cottle, Investor Relations Officer and Secretary to 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 Reedy, our chief credit officer. I will now turn the call over to Malcolm.

Good morning, everyone. We continue to manage our company and shepherd our clients through what we hope is the backside of this pandemic. Our state is 100% open Businesses are back operating, and many are being vaccinated, and it feels normal again. The bank is fully open, and we are currently operating at 92% of our team back working in the office. My team and I are excited to bring you our first quarter earnings. After several challenging quarters during 2020, the first quarter performance was our best to date on many fronts. Our net income for the quarter was $31.8 million, or 64 cents a share, 18 cents better than the previous period. Our pre-tax, pre-provision operating earnings also performed well, exceeding $40 million, or 1.82 return on average assets, while ROTCE continues to trend up, ending the quarter at 17.4%. As our economy continues to recover, our growth continues at expected levels. For the quarter, we had annualized loan growth of 8% less PPP and mortgage warehouse, both of which achieved small growth gains on their own. We did have several payoffs scheduled for Q1 that pushed into the second quarter, but we still like a mid-single-digit loan growth number for the year. Growth was equally divided between all loan categories. We told you about our new builder group, which started January 1st. They're having incredible success building their portfolio. It appears our timing is very good. Our lending team stayed focused and intentional during the pandemic, and some of the fruits of their labor is paying off. Our pipelines remain strong and building. We're seeing competition heat up, especially related to pricing. Deposits continue to grow at a very large rate despite our disciplined efforts to reduce deposit costs to 0.31 basis points from 0.38 last quarter. Our deposit teams continue to find ways to reduce our costs and still think we have some room to lower going forward. Credit continues to move in a positive direction in so many ways. For the second quarter in a row, we did not provide a loan loss provision. Total charge-offs for the quarter were not material at $150,000, and our NPA to total assets reduced from .99 to .92. Our forward look at our credit picture continues to be improving and encouraging. I'll now turn the call over to Terry to discuss our financial highlights.