Veritex Holdings, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Virtex Holdings third quarter 22 earnings conference call and webcast. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Please note this event will be recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Susan Caudill, Investor Relations Officer and Secretary to the Board of Virtex 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 are 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 Riebe, our Chief Credit Officer. I will now turn the call over to Malcolm.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our third quarter earnings call. Veritex continues to operate at a very high and efficient level, producing record dollar earnings continued growth, and improved credit metrics. Slide five gives you a summary of our third quarter results, which are candidly the best in our company's history. Starting with earnings, we reported $43.6 million in net income, or $0.80 per share, up from $0.55 per share in Q2. Our pre-tax, pre-provision income continues to climb, up to $63 million, or 2.2% on average assets. This metric continues to show the earnings power of Veritex. Terry will give you additional color on the components of our income, much of which is solid, sustainable profit. Our growth profile remains strong, but is down from the previous quarters. For 3Q, loans grew $595 million, or 30%, and for the first nine months of the year, 31% annualized. We see growth continuing to slide down as we expect the fourth quarter to be in the low 20s, and forecast 2023 loan growth to be in the low double digits. Our pipelines are currently down one-third from the previous quarter, and we have had over $150 million in payoffs during the first three weeks of October. Keep in mind, much of our growth we have had has come from new hires since we have made since the start of the pandemic. For the third quarter, 42% of our growth was from our new hires. We consider this growth more of a market share grab versus the region's economic growth, which we see beginning to slow a bit in our DFW and Houston markets. While we have slowed our hiring for new bankers in many areas of the bank, we will always be opportunistic in adding quality people to our team when they become available. Deposit growth has continued during this quarter, showing growth of $231 million, or 10.7%. As we think about deposit growth going forward, it is my team's greatest focus. We have proven that loan growth is a strong core competency of our company. While we have shown that we can grow deposits, and it is our intention and focus to bring our deposit growth numbers very much in line with our loan generation numbers. As I look over the last 12 months, our non-interest-bearing growth is up 300 million, or 16%. And our interest-bearing money market accounts are up 750 37 million or 36%. These are numbers that we're very proud of and shows our ability to grow both sides of the balance sheet. Despite some of the noise in the markets, our credit metrics continue to trend in a positive direction. For the eighth consecutive quarter, NPAs declined, falling this quarter 14 bps to 0.26%. Past dues greater than 30 days also remain in very good shape, producing numbers lower than two Q levels. Despite improvements in credit metrics, we find it prudent to continue to perform deep dive analysis on our portfolio and our concentrations and stress our credits at levels we don't think we will see. With this stress testing, we do not see any significant weakness in our portfolio at this time. I'll now turn it over to Terry.