West Bancorporation

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the West Bank Corporation third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one. I would now like to hand today's call over to James Funk, CFO. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Yes, this is James Funk, the CFO with West Bank Corporation, and I'd like to welcome the participants on the call today and thank you for joining us. With me today are Dave Nelson, CEO, Carly Oleson, Chief Risk Officer, Brad Winterbottom, Bank President, and Brad Peters, Minnesota Group President. I will begin the call with reading the fair disclosure statement. During today's conference call, We may make projections or other forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 regarding future events or the future financial performance of the company. We caution that such statements are predictions and that actual results may differ materially. Please see the forward-looking statement disclosure in our 2024 third quarter earnings release for more information about risks and uncertainties, which may affect us. The information we will provide today is accurate as of September 30, 2024, and we undertake no duty to update the information. And with that, I will turn it over to Dave Nelson.

Thank you, Jane. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us and for your interest in our company. I have some general comments, and you will hear more details from others. I'm pleased to say our quarter went as expected. Loan demand is not strong, but we have had some modest growth. Our deposit gathering activities are showing results in our balance sheet, and we have a very strong deposit pipeline. Credit quality remains very strong with no problems. We believe our margin has stabilized. It is improving, and we will benefit from further Fed rate cuts. Our Board of Directors has declared a 25-cent per share quarterly dividend to shareholders of record as of November 6th and payable November 20th. With that, I'd like to now turn the call over to our Chief Risk Officer, Mr. Harley Oleson.