WesBanco, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to WestBanco, Inc.' 's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. All participants will be in the listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero on your telephone keypad. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please limit questions to one and a follow-up, and then you can return to the queue. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to John Iannone, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Public Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to West Banco, Inc.' 's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Leading the call today are Todd Claussen, 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 this information 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 April 27, 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're going to review our results for the first quarter of 2022 and provide an update on our operations and current 2022 outlook. Key takeaways from the call today are West Banco remains a well-capitalized financial institution, which was enhanced by our Tier 2 capital raise and continue to return capital to our shareholders. We continue to make appropriate investments, including strategic hires, and our new loan production offices to enhance our ability to leverage growth opportunities while remaining focused on expense management. The successful execution of our strategies has positioned us well for continued success, and we are excited about our growth opportunities. We're pleased with our performance during the first quarter of 2022, as we reported net income available to common shareholders of $42.9 million and diluted earnings per share of 70 cents when excluding after-tax mergers and restructuring charges. We exhibited strong expense management as our operating expenses were roughly consistent with the year-ago period. Furthermore, we enhanced our capital position to provide further financial flexibility while also enhancing shareholder value through effective capital management, which includes the appropriate balancing of share repurchases, dividends, and M&A. While M&A is still not a major focus for us, we remain opportunistic, and if we found the right opportunity that fit our well-defined strategy, we would act upon it. During the first quarter, we successfully completed a Tier 2 capital raise through our public offering of $150 million of 10-year fixed-to-floating rate subordinated debt priced at 3.75%. In addition, our Board of Directors approved the adoption of a new stock repurchase plan for the purchase of up to an additional 3.2 million shares of WestBanco common stock, as well as a 3% increase in our quarterly dividend, which was our 15th increase since 2010. We also repurchased approximately 1.7 million shares of our common stock on the open market during the quarter. The combination of these efforts reflected our commitment to returning capital to our shareholders. As I have said previously, Our focus remains firmly on the organic growth potential within our markets, but we will carefully balance the risk-reward proposition between growth and credit quality. As you have clearly demonstrated, our credit strategy continues to generate strong metrics and loan portfolios and enables us to make prudent, long-term decisions for our shareholders. Driven by our residential mortgage and commercial loan portfolios, which generated annualized loan growth of 10.6% and 2.9% respectively, we reported total loan growth of 3.6% annualized when excluding SBA PPP loans. The growth in our residential loan portfolio reflects both our efforts to retain more loans on our balance sheet and continued relative strength in originations. Total commercial loan growth was driven by both our commercial real estate portfolio despite continued high payoffs and our CNI portfolio, despite line utilization still roughly 10 percentage points below our historical range. Regarding our residential lending group, we continue to see good growth from our team of mortgage loan originators as their books of business have shifted significantly to home purchases and construction, which accounted for approximately 75% of the originations during the first quarter. As of March 31st, our residential mortgage pipeline, while down slightly from a year ago, has grown to approximately $215 million, an increase of 33% from the fourth quarter. Further, we'll continue to prudently add additional originators, in particular, within our newest markets of Northern Virginia, Nashville, and Indianapolis, which I will comment upon in a few minutes. In fact, our office in Northern Virginia has accounted for approximately 15% of mortgage origination volumes the last few quarters. The combination of our solid pipeline and new long production offices, which will ramp up over the coming months, bode well for our residential lending program this year. We also continue to see good production from our commercial lending teams. Based on our strong commercial pipeline as we entered the first quarter, these experienced teams generated gross loan production of roughly $640 million during the first quarter, nearly double the year ago period. In addition, they have continued to seek new business opportunities, which has helped our commercial pipeline reach a record $990 million as of March 31st, a nearly 70% increase from the pipeline year end, with our mid-Atlantic region accounting for approximately 28% of our current pipeline. We continue to make appropriate long-term investments including strategic hires in our new loan production offices to enhance our ability to leverage growth opportunities while remaining focused on expense management. Regarding costs associated with these investments, we continue to review our financial center network to find opportunities for both improvements and optimization. Reflecting the adoption of our digital services by our customers, as well as the proximity of another location of ours, we have recently identified 11 more locations across our markets that could be consolidated, allowing us to fund these strategic investments. As I mentioned last quarter, we made more than 45 revenue-producing hires during 2021 and implemented a plan to hire an additional 20 commercial lenders over the next 12 to 18 months in both our existing and adjacent metro markets. To date, we've accomplished 50 percent of this goal including a lender in our Akron-Canton market that will be focused on the Cleveland area. We also hired a new director of commercial and industrial lending. In this new role this season later, we'll develop our CNI infrastructure plan, lead strategic initiatives around developing products, and identifying necessary resources and internal changes required to enhance this business segment. We also recently announced the opening of two new lawn production offices. one each in the Nashville and Indianapolis areas. On March 1st, we announced the opening of our Nashville office, which will initially focus on residential lending, as we hired a very experienced individual who has a lot of success in building mortgage teams throughout his career. Then on April 18th, we announced the opening of our Indianapolis office, which will focus on both commercial and residential lending, as we have hired two commercial lenders and a residential sales manager. In fact, this new commercial team has already started to get loan opportunities within the first week. We are excited about the long-term growth opportunities of these two new offices. These investments continue to enhance our evolution into a strong regional financial services institution that is built upon distinct growth strategies, unique long-term advantages, and a strong credit and risk culture. Furthermore, none of this would be possible if not for the hard work dedication and passion of our employees. I'm extremely proud of our entire organization as our employees have adhered to our community banking roots by focusing on providing top tier service to our customers. Their efforts have allowed us to receive numerous national accolades so far this year. We were recognized by Forbes as one of the best banks in America based upon financial performance and an independent survey of our employees voted us one of America's best midsize employers, reflecting our efforts to create an environment where they are supported and positioned to succeed. In fact, we were the only midsize bank in the country to receive top 10 honors for both employee satisfaction and financial success. Lastly, for the fourth consecutive year, West Banco was named one of the best banks in the world in a ranking based on customer satisfaction and consumer feedback. The culmination of all these accolades And our employees living our Better Banking Pledge daily allowed us to be recognized as one of America's most trustworthy companies by Newsweek through an independent survey of U.S. residents. This has truly been a great start to the year. I would now like to turn the call over to Dan Weiss, our CFO, for an update on our first quarter financial results and current outlook for 2022. Dan?