WesBanco, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the West Banco fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question from the queue, please press star then two. We ask that you limit yourself to two or three questions. If you have additional questions, you may re-enter the question queue. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to John Iannone, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to West Banko, Inc.' 's fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Leading the call today are Todd Clausen, President and Chief Executive Officer and Dan Weiss, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Today's call, an archive of which will be available on our website for one year, contains forward-looking information. Cautionary statements about disinformation and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures are included in our earnings-related materials issued yesterday afternoon, as well as our other SEC filings and investor materials. These materials are available on the investor relations section of our website, westbanco.com. All statements speak only as of January 26, 2022, and West Banco undertakes no obligation to update them. I would now like to turn the call over to Todd. Todd?

Thank you, John. Good morning, everyone. On today's call, we'll review our results for the fourth quarter of 2021 and provide an update on our operations and 2022 outlook. Key takeaways from the call today are West Banco remains a well-capitalized financial institution with solid liquidity, strong balance sheet, and solid credit quality. We're committed to expense management while continuing to make appropriate investments, including strategic hires across our organization and markets to enhance our ability to leverage growth opportunities. And we remain well-positioned for continued success and are excited about our growth opportunities for the upcoming year. WestBanco had another successful year during 2021 as we remained focused on ensuring a strong organization for our shareholders and continued to appropriately return capital to them through both long-term, sustainable earnings growth, and effective capital management. Through the successful execution of our well-defined strategies, we generated solid annual net income as well as pre-tax, pre-provision earnings while remaining a well-capitalized financial institution with a strong balance sheet and solid credit quality. For the quarter ending December 30th, 2021, we reported net income available to common shareholders of $51.8 million and diluted earnings per share of 82 cents when excluding after-tax merger and restructuring charges. On the same basis, for the full year, we reported net income available to common shareholders of $237.4 million and diluted earnings per share of $3.62 and strong returns on average assets and average tangible equity of 1.4% and 15.22% respectively. Further, reflecting our strong legacy of credit and risk management, our key credit quality ratios remained at low levels and our regulatory capital ratios remained well above the applicable well-capitalized standards, as well as remaining comparable or favorable to pure bank averages. Throughout 2021, We accomplished several milestones and continued to receive numerous national accolades that resulted from our strong performance, operational strengths, and community focus. I'd be remiss if I did not congratulate our employees for these recognitions as they are a testament to their hard work and dedication. Just to highlight a few, West Banco remains a leader and an advocate for its communities. We continually look for ways to expand our outreach and involvement. In addition to our existing Women's Symposium events, we launched a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council that is focused on three key initiatives, leadership development, employee education, and community development. Through the extraordinary efforts of hundreds of employees, we completed the conversion of our core banking software system to FIS's IBS platform, which positions us well from a technology perspective. West Bank of Bank once again was named to Forbes Magazine's 2021 list of the best banks in America, coming in as the country's 12th best bank. Our Community Development Corporation was nationally recognized by the American Bankers Association Foundation for its commitment to our communities through our New Markets Loan and other programs. For the third year in a row, we were named one of the world's best banks, which was based upon customer satisfaction and consumer feedback. as we received very high scores for satisfaction, customer service, financial advice, and digital services. We were again named to Newsweek Magazine's second annual ranking of America's Best Banks, which recognizes those banks that best serve their customers' needs. Our focus firmly remains on organic growth and the potential within our markets. However, total loan growth continues to be heavily influenced by commercial real estate payoffs, commercial line of credit utilization, and SBA PPP loan forgiveness. Despite these headwinds, we'll continue to adhere to our credit strategy and make prudent long-term decisions for our shareholders and will not buy loan portfolios or syndications in order to show loan growth, as the long-term credit and strategic risks from such a strategy are significant. Reflecting the still significant amount of excess liquidity across our local economies, combined with supply chain and labor constraints, commercial line of credit utilization of approximately 35% remains below the historical mid to upper 40% range. Despite continuing to experience high commercial real estate project payoffs via an aggressive secondary market, we have begun to see a decline in the amount of projects leaving. While a significant decline from the record $265 million recorded during the third quarter payoffs for the fourth quarter totaled 160 million, which was still about 75 million above our historical quarterly range. In fact, when adjusting for the outsized fourth quarter payoffs, total sequential loan growth would have been flat. Furthermore, we still anticipate commercial real estate payoffs to decline through the next quarter or two towards our historical $85 million quarterly range. Reflecting the strong performance of our residential lending group, we generated a record $1.4 billion worth of mortgage originations during 2021. Further, as we executed on our plans to keep more of these loans on our balance sheet, we realized nice sequential growth in residential loans of 4% non-annualized during the fourth quarter. While down from the record level in 2021, we currently anticipate residential lending to remain relatively strong in 2022 and will continue to retain more of the originations on our balance sheet. During 2021, we also generated $1.8 billion in new commercial lung production, with roughly 30% of that occurring during the fourth quarter. Our year-end commercial pipelines stood at approximately $580 million, with our Mid-Atlantic and Kentucky markets representing about 35% of that figure. Further, through the first half of January, the commercial pipeline has remained strong and increased to about $700 million. While not relaxing our strong credit underwriting standards, we are currently refining initiatives to help retain certain commercial real estate loans instead of letting them head to the still aggressive secondary market. For our strongest customers, we are looking to provide bridge financing options that would allow us to keep these high-quality projects on our balance sheet for an additional few years as opposed to them being refinanced in the secondary market. While we are not immune from the general staffing and inflationary pressures affecting our industry and overall economy, we remain committed to expense management. Reflecting the adoption of our digital services by our customers, we consolidated 28 of our financial centers into others nearby during the last 12 months, and we continue to regularly review our footprint for additional opportunities for optimization. Moreover, we are focused on controlling discretionary costs while actively encouraging our revenue producers to pursue new business. As I mentioned last quarter, a key investment we are making is the investment in our employees as they are critical to our long-term growth and success. The raise in the hourly wage that we implemented has already helped to improve retention as well as provide a boost in morale. Furthermore, we continue to push forward on our plans for strategic hires to enhance our ability to leverage growth opportunities once they fully return. During 2021, we made more than 45 revenue producing hires within our key markets in commercial lending, residential lending, wealth management, including trust, insurance, securities, and brokerage. We're making steady progress in our plan to hire an additional 20 commercial lenders, whether individuals or teams, over the next 12 to 18 months. As a reminder, This plan is focused on both our existing metro markets and potential new metro markets adjacent to our existing franchise footprint. We have engaged recruiting firms in each of our metro areas as well as Cleveland, Indianapolis, and Nashville and are encouraged by their efforts to date. We have solidified our evolution into a strong regional financial services institution and believe that our distinct growth strategies and unique long-term advantages combined with our experienced teams, hiring plans make us well-positioned to take advantage of future growth opportunities while we remain well-positioned for continued success. We'll continue to make appropriate investments to further enhance our position, and we're excited about our growth opportunities for the upcoming year. I would now like to turn the call over to Dan Weiss, our CFO, for an update on our fourth quarter financial results and current outlook for 2022. Dan?