Ameris Bancorp

Hello everyone and welcome to the Ameris Bancorp first quarter earnings conference call. My name is Bruno and I'll be the operator of today. During this presentation you can register to ask a question by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand over to your host, Nicole Stokes, Chief Financial Officer. Nicole, please go ahead.

Thank you, Bruno, 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, John Edwards, our Chief Credit Officer, and Mike Spengler, our Treasurer. 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. 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 statements 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. Good morning, everyone. I appreciate you taking the time to join our call today. On our last earnings call, I reminded everyone how our discipline had really positioned us well for 2023. I also mentioned the importance of teamwork and our ability to stay focused on core fundamentals. and that message couldn't have been more timely as just five weeks later we faced the banking disruption where the value of balance sheets and stable deposit bases are really proven the importance of core banking relationships here at Ameris. We actually saw deposits grow from March 10th through the end of the quarter. For the first quarter we reported net income of 60.4 million or 87 cents per diluted share. Included in this is a 50 million dollar provision for credit losses which we were proud to have the ability to use strong underlying earnings to build the reserve due to our economic forecast which specifically reflects declines in the CRE and home price indices over the next few quarters which are primary loss drivers for our CECL model. But I think it's important to note that this provision was driven by our forecast model and not related to any credit deterioration in our loan portfolio. In fact, our credit metrics actually improved this quarter, which was evidenced by a stable MPA ratio and lower watch list loans. After the provision this quarter, our reserve for credit losses, excluding unfunded commitments, represented a healthy 121 coverage ratio and 285% of net MPAs. Our pre-tax pre-provision ROA was 2.07 for the quarter, once again above our target of 2%. and improvement from the 2.01% PPNR ROA the first quarter of last year. Nicole is going to talk to you in a minute about the margin details, but I did want to mention that we still remain above Pier 376 and our discipline around expenses allowed us to operate at a top Pier adjusted efficiency ratio of less than 52%. Our capital position remains strong. We grew tangible book value again this quarter by over 11% annualized to end at $30.79 per share. We're constantly reminding ourselves of the importance of discipline and the ability to remain focused on things we can control. And because of this, we feel prepared for the future with some of the main drivers being when you take a look at our franchise value, the diversification we have among business lines and geography with 70% of our net income coming from the core bank, and also the solid core deposit base that we have with a low level of uninsured, uncollateralized funding, which is at 29.5%. And then we've clearly got a proven culture of expense control and solid capital and liquidity positions. And most importantly, when you look at where we're positioned with our seasoned bankers in the top southeastern markets, that in and of itself allows us to have a lot of confidence as we move through the But I'll stop there now and turn it over to Nicole to discuss our financial results in more detail.