Amerant Bancorp Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Amerint Fourth Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during this session, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. Please be advised, today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Laura Rossi, Head of Investor Relations at Amerint. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Michelle. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to review Ameren Bancorp's fourth quarter and full year 2022 results. On today's call are Jerry Plush, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Carlos Yafiliola, our Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. As we begin, please note that discussions on today's call contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Exchange Act. In addition, reference References will also be made to non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the company's earnings release for a statement regarding forward-looking statements, as well as for information and reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP measures. I will now turn it over to our Chairman and CEO, Jerry Plush.

Thank you, Laura. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining today. I am pleased to be here to report on our performance for the quarter and full year. But before we get into that, I would like to first acknowledge and thank all of my colleagues here at Emory for their dedication and effort again this quarter. We have a great team and we're excited about the strong additions to the family this quarter and throughout the year. They will play an essential role in our growth in 2023 and beyond. So moving on to the remarks for the quarter, I'm pleased to share that on January 18th of 2023, our Board of Directors approved a dividend of $0.09 per share payable on February 28th of 2023. The ability to pay dividends, along with the ability to repurchase stock, are essential parts of effective capital management and value creation for our shareholders. More on this in a few minutes. So I'll now provide a brief overview of our performance for the fourth quarter and year, and then Carlos will go over the details. He will then turn it back to me for some observations regarding 2023 as part of my concluding remarks. So let's turn to slide three for a summary of our fourth quarter highlights. Net income attributable to the company was $18.8 million, down 10.3% quarter over quarter, driven by the recording of a provision of credit losses of $20.9 million, which includes a one-time $11.1 million provision expense in connection with the adoption of CECL. as well as some other items which Carlos will cover in further detail in the coming slides. Please know we will provide disaggregated CECL impacts for each quarter of 2022 in our upcoming 10K report. Our net interest margin expanded to 3.96% and increased to 35 basis points quarter over quarter. Our balance sheet continued to grow, reaching a record high of $9.1 billion in total assets compared to $8.7 billion as of the close of 3Q22. Total gross loans were $6.9 billion, up $416 million from the $6.5 billion last quarter. The total deposits were $7 billion, up $456 million from the $6.6 billion last quarter. Core deposits also increased by $114 million this quarter compared to 3-2-22. The company's capital continued to be strong in excess of the minimum regulatory requirements to be considered well-capitalized as of December 31st, 2022. And during the quarter, we paid out the previously announced cash dividend of $0.09 per share on November 30th, 2022. So regarding effective capital management, as I referenced earlier, on December 19th, we announced that our board authorized a new $25 million share repurchase program, which became effective on 1-1-2023, and this will remain active for the calendar year of 2023. At the time of this announcement, we stated we did not intend to use this new authorization before reporting the results today, and we did not use it. We do now intend to be opportunistic throughout the year to utilize this authorization where appropriate. So let's look at core PPNR on slide four. Core PPNR increased to 37.8 million, up 24.8% compared to the 30.3 million reported in the previous quarter. As we've consistently stated, we believe it's essential to show the net revenue growth of the company, excluding provisions and non-routine items, to show Amerit's core earnings power. Turning now to slide five, here is a list of several key actions taken during the fourth quarter. We continue to focus on actions that will drive profitability and improve our efficiency ratio. We also intend to continue investing in future growth, as you will see. We referenced last quarter a commercial property that moved into REO This was disposed of in October at no additional loss. Regarding an update related to our banking centers, as we previously announced, we did close the Pembroke Pines, Florida location on 10-17-22, and we consolidated the existing customers into our newer Davie Branch location. We opened in University Place in Houston at the end of October and closed the South Shepherd Banking Center This is a far superior location for us, as the Texas Medical Center, Rice University, Rice Village, and the NRG Center complex are all within a one-mile radius. The downtown Miami location is now expected for 3-2 of 23. This will be a flagship location for us in the heart of the city, with private banking, wealth management, and commercial banking all having business development officers located there. We received OCC approval to open new full-service banking center in Key Biscayne, Florida. Permits are expected sometime this quarter, and opening is expected for the second quarter. We're excited to be opening there, and we've already attracted a well-respected team to drive growth. And we also received OCC approval for a new location on Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. This office is expected to open in 3Q23 and will bolster our consumer bank growth, especially in private banking there. We continue to add key business development personnel in domestic retail, private and commercial banking, as well as wealth management. Our board appointed Ms. Erin Dolan Knight as a member of the board of directors effective on December 15 of 2022. Erin is well known and respected here in the Miami marketplace, and her knowledge and banking experience make her an excellent addition to our board. And as previously referenced, the board authorized a new share repurchase program for up to 25 million of Ameren shares of Class A common stock. On the partnership front, we announced an expanded multi-year partnership with the Florida Panthers, making Ameren the official bank of the Florida Panthers and FLA Live Arena. We're excited to not only be able to say we're the official bank of the Panthers, but to also have them as one of our newest customers. And the same goes for our partnership with the Miami Heat. Banking with us is an essential part of these partnerships. We'll talk more about this in our concluding remarks. And then finishing up this slide, we became a large accelerated filer and adopted the current expected credit loss accounting standard, which Carlos will go into detail shortly. So now we'll turn to slide six. Here are select key performance metrics and their change compared to last quarter. Our net interest margin improved to 3.96% compared to the 3.61% in the previous quarter, and our efficiency ratio improved to 58.4% compared to 65.4% last quarter. Please note that the core efficiency ratio for 4-2-22 was 61.3%. So for consistency and transparency, we included the three core metrics of ROA, ROE, and efficiency excluding any one-time or non-routine items in the footnotes in this slide, so you can easily see the underlying performance for the quarter. We'll turn now to slide seven, which focuses on Amerit Mortgage. On a standalone basis, Amerit Mortgage had net income of $0.9 million, an increase of $100,000, or 13.9%, compared to Q3, primarily the result of mortgage banking income from transactions with the bank. On a consolidated basis, we recorded a net loss of $1.5 million for the fourth quarter in connection with the operations of Amerit Mortgage. Year-to-date 2022, the company has purchased approximately $413 million in loans through Amerit Mortgage, which includes loans originated and purchased from different channels. The current pipeline shows $64 million in process or 88 applications as of January 12th of 2023. So with that said, I'll now turn things over to Carlos, who will walk through our results for the quarter in more detail.