Veritex Holdings, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Veritex Holdings Fourth Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Please note, this event will be 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 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 Reby, our Chief Credit Officer. I will now turn the call over to Malcolm.

Thank you, Susan. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter earnings call. Today, we want to focus on our fourth quarter results as well as our 2022 year-end results. For the quarter reported operating earnings of $0.74 per share, or $40 million, And for the year, $2.74 per share or $147.9 million. Pre-tax, pre-provision returns were 2.15% for 4Q and 1.97% for the year. Year-over-year metrics continue to perform at levels with ROAA at 1.35%, TBV increase over the year of 6.6%, ROTCE of 16%, and efficiency ratio at 48%. The quarter did have a few items of note, which Jerry will give you additional detail on momentarily. Loan growth, less mortgage warehouse, continues to temper, trending down since 2Q to 25% for the quarter end and 34% for the year. It is clear that loan growth in 2023 will be much lower than in 2022 with our current pipelines down over 76%. We continue to think 2023 loan growth will be in the low double digits, primarily consisting of a to-be-funded construction book. The market is certainly slowing down as the borrowers are uncertain of a looming recession in the interest rate forecast. They have done a good job of self-policing their credit requirements. Payoffs for the quarter remain fairly consistent with previous quarters at $400 million, but we do feel this level of payoffs will continue to decline in the coming quarters. Overall credit trends are moving negatively as we are seeing signs of a slower economy with the rising rates creating some level of stress. We did record a $5 million C&I charge-off of an acquired credit that we've been monitoring for several months. This loan is now fully extinguished. Our total provision of $11.8 million for the quarter accounts for the charge-off, growth and keeps our ACL at 1.01% of loans. NPAs to assets did increase 10 bps but still remain at an acceptable level of 0.36%. Deposit growth continues to be our greatest focus and with most banks our greatest challenge. Our deposits did grow during the fourth quarter 17% annualized and shows our commitment and dedicated strategy to growing deposits at the same rate as our loans grow. We are investing process, people, and technology while making Core Deposit Gathering our top strategic initiative. I'll now turn the call over to Terry.