Ameris Bancorp

Hello everyone and welcome to today's Ameris Bank fourth quarter earnings conference call. My name is Emma and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you'd like to ask a question during the presentation, you may do so by pressing star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, please press star followed by the number two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure that your line is unmuted locally. I will now pass over to your host to begin. Nicole Stokes, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead. Great.

Thank you, Emma. And thank you to all who have joined our call today. During the call, we will be referencing the press release and the financial highlights that are available on the investor relations section of our website at amerisbank.com. I'm joined today by Palmer Proctor, our CEO, and John Edwards, our Chief Credit Officer. Palmer will begin with some opening general comments, and then I will discuss the details of our financial results before we open up for Q&A. But before we begin, I'll remind you that our comments may include forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. The actual results could vary materially. We list some of the factors that might cause results to differ in our press release and in our SEC filings, which are available on our website. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, early developments or otherwise, except as required by law. also during the call we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures in reference to the company's performance you can see our reconciliation of these measures and GAAP financial measures in the appendix to our presentation and with that I'll turn it over to Palmer for opening comments thank you Nicole and good morning everyone I appreciate you taking the time to join our call this morning I'm really pleased with the financial results we reported yesterday and excited to share some of the highlights from the quarter as we have a tremendous year for 2022

For 2021, we earned a record $368.7 million or $5.29 per diluted share on an adjusted basis, which is up 22% over 2020 results. This represents an ROA of 169 and a return on average tangible equity of 20.19%. We had a fantastic fourth quarter as we earned $81.5 million or $1.17 per diluted share on an adjusted basis. and this represents a 140 return on average assets and a 16.88% return on tangible equity. On the balance sheet side of things, we were extremely pleased with our organic growth. Exclusive of PPP runoff and our Balboa acquisition, loans grew over $383 million for the fourth quarter or over 10% annualized and that brings our full year 2021 loan growth to $1.4 billion. are 10.5% excluding the PPP runoff. The Balboa acquisition brought another $665 million of loans on our balance sheet. We continue to anticipate 2022 loan growth in the upper single digits. We certainly have the liquidity to fund it as our deposits have continued to grow. Our total deposits now are approaching $20 billion with non-interest-bearing deposits accounting for over 39% of total deposits. Nicole is going to provide more details shortly, but know that we remain focused on ways to safely deploy our excess liquidity. As capital position, it remains strong. We've consistently said we're focused on tangible book value growth, and while we did have some dilution in the fourth quarter from the Balboa acquisition, we still grew tangible book value by over 10% in 2021. And with anticipated earnings, we forecast to be back at last quarter's tangible book value within the next quarter. As reported last quarter, we have a share repurchase program outstanding until the 31st of October this year. We repurchased $1.3 million during the fourth quarter, which leaves approximately $78 million left on that program. And while we don't anticipate executing on this during the first quarter of 2022, we do like having the optionality if the right opportunity presents itself. As for the dividend, we still remain very comfortable with where the dividend stands today. Moving on to credit, John Edwards, our Chief Credit Officer, is with us today and is certainly available to take any credit questions after our prepared remarks. But overall, we are very pleased with our credit metrics. We had net recoveries of $556,000 this quarter, which is the second consecutive quarter of net recoveries. NPAs were 43 basis points at year end. Loans that remain on deferral at the end of the quarter were minimal. and those that remain are primarily mortgage related. Our allowance coverage ratio excluding unfunded commitments was 1.06 at the end of the year. In the fourth quarter, we were proud to announce our purchase of the Balboa Capital Corporation, which is a fintech provider of business lending solutions to small and mid-sized businesses nationwide. We've already begun to integrate and leverage their technology into the rest of the bank. So when you combine their technology with our strong southeastern markets, it only reinforces the overall potential for us for 2022. And in terms of momentum, I wanted to share some of the core fundamentals driving our positive outlook for this year. You know, we have an asset-sensitive balance sheet with over 40% variable rate loans, and then there's actually another 10% on top of that, which is a short-duration fixed rate loans that behave more like variable rate loans. So we're well-positioned in terms of margin expansion and NII expansion. We have a strong loan pipeline, and even after we had our best production quarter in the history of the company, it still remains robust. We continue to meet our growth expectations, and a lot of that, we're very fortunate to be in some of the best markets within the Southeast, and more importantly, have the experienced bankers to help us execute in those markets. We've also got $70 million of revenue anticipated for the growth and forecasted from Balboa. which will be very meaningful, which allows us to target an ROA in the 130 to 140 range and a return on tangible common equity well above 15%. So you combine all that with a culture of expense control, that way we should be able to still maintain a sub-55% efficiency ratio. I'll stop there now and turn it over to Nicole to discuss our financial results in more detail.