WesBanco, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to the West Banco Third Quarter 2023 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, please press star, then two. 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 afternoon and welcome to WestBanco Inc's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Leading the call today are Jeff Jackson, 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 October 26, 2023, and West Bank will undertake no obligation to update them. I would now like to turn the call over to Jeff. Jeff?

Thanks, John, and good afternoon. On today's call, we will review our results for the third quarter of 2023 and provide an update of our operations and current 2023 outlook. Key takeaways from the call today are Solid financial performance with deposit and loan growth and stable fee income trends. Maintain strong capital levels and key credit quality measures, which have remained at low levels and favorable to peer bank averages. We remain focused on disciplined expense management and generating positive operating leverage while continuing to invest in attractive long-term growth prospects. For the third quarter of 2023, we returned deposit balances to year-end 2022 levels and delivered another quarter of year-over-year loan growth at 10%, while maintaining strong credit quality metrics. Our solid financial results for the quarter reflect the strength of our franchise and the competitiveness of our growth strategies and teams in the current environment. For the quarter ending September 30, 2023, we reported net income of $35 million, $4.59 per share, and pre-tax, pre-provision income of $51 million, when excluding after-tax merger and restructuring charges. Our capital position continues to provide financial and operational flexibility, as demonstrated by our CTET-1 ratio of 11%. The key story for the third quarter was the continuation of solid deposit and loan growth while maintaining our strong credit standards. Our key credit quality measures continue to remain at relatively low levels and favorable to all banks with assets between 10 and 25 billion. Further, total loans past due, criticized and classified loans, non-performing loans, and non-performing assets as percentages of the loan portfolio and total assets have remained low from a historical perspective and within consistent range over the last several quarters. As we mentioned last quarter, both our commercial and retail teams have and continue to make concerted efforts to help us grow deposit levels. These strong efforts are demonstrated by September 30th deposit levels increasing 1.8 percent quarter over quarter to $13.1 billion. In fact, our deposits are now back to our year-end 2022 level, a remarkable achievement considering the turmoil across the banking industry earlier this year. Furthermore, our commercial bankers continue to work diligently on deepening our commercial relationships with focus on loan swaps and deposits. Due to their efforts, we saw a slight uptick in the percentage of commercial deposits as a percentage of our total deposits during the quarter. As an example, a customer in one of our legacy West Virginia markets recently grew its banking relationship with us significantly, thanks to our focus on building long-term relationships versus simply executing transactions. This customer began with us in 2016 as a small business entity and over the next few years grew substantially. Our trusted partnership with this customer has grown to an eight-figure deposit relationship. I am proud of the hard work of all our teams as they help our customers meet their financial goals. We reported total loan growth during the third quarter of 10% year over year and 7% quarter over quarter annualized, driven by our commercial and residential lending teams. Despite the industry headwinds, our right-sized residential teams continue to find new home purchase and construction loan opportunities. Total commercial loan growth increased 8% year-over-year and 6% sequentially annualized, which continues to be driven by our strong lending teams and loan production offices. I am really excited about our newest LPO in Chattanooga as they have hit the ground running and are bringing in a number of new C&I relationships. Our commercial loan pipeline as of October 16th was approximately $860 million, a 4% increase from the level of September 30th, as our teams continue to find business opportunities to replenish the pipeline that has been driving our strong loan growth. As I mentioned, our four loan production offices are performing very well and are now contributing approximately 25% to the commercial pipeline. In just three months, our Chattanooga LPO is already 8% of the pipeline. Further, the growth opportunities of our loan production office and lender hiring initiatives, we expect to continue to improve as they gain additional traction. And with a loan to deposit ratio of 87%, we have ample lending capacity to continue to support our customers. We continue to make important growth oriented strategic investments to build upon our successful commercial hiring and LPO initiatives. and which supplement our focus on managing costs. During the summer, we introduced our new West Bank 01 account, which has a set of comprehensive features and tools designed to help our customers through their financial journey with features and digital banking tools to help them reach their financial goals. I'm pleased to say that we have seen great adoption by both existing and new customers. In addition to our Renewed focus on commercial loan swaps, we have been transforming our treasury management business to more of a sales oriented organization while equipping it with new products that will enhance our customer relationships. In the next couple of months, we will be rolling out our integrated receivables and payables and purchase card products for our commercial customers. While we provide more details on the 2024 revenue expectations during our January call, We expect these new fee revenue streams to quickly become meaningful from both a more comprehensive customer relationship and bottom line profitability perspectives. These are examples of our commitment to innovation and investments that serve customers better and drive sustainable growth. I firmly believe in the long-term growth prospects we are building for our customers, communities, employees, and shareholders. I would now like to turn the call over to Dan Weiss our CFO, for an update on our third quarter financial results and current outlook for the fourth quarter of 2023. Dan.