Cadence Bank

Good morning and welcome to the Cadence Bank third quarter 2024 webcast and 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 telephone keypad, and to withdraw from the question queue, you may press star, then two. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call to Will Fitzsackerly, Director of Corporate Finance. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining the KS Bank third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. We have members from our executive management team here with us this morning, Dan Rollins, Chris Bagley, Valerie Tolson, and Billy Braddock. Our speakers will be referring to prepared slides during the discussion. You can find the slides by going to our investor relations page at ir.cadencebank.com, where you'll find them on the link to our webcast, or you can view them at the exhibit at 8K that we filed yesterday afternoon. These slides are also in the presentation section of our investor relations website. I would remind you that the presentation, along with our earnings release, contain our customary disclosures around forward-looking statements and any non-GAAP metrics that may be discussed. The disclosures regarding forward-looking statements contained in those documents apply to our presentation today. And now I'll turn to Dan for his opening comments.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us to discuss our third quarter 2024 financial results. After I've covered a few highlights and Valerie provides additional detail on our financials, our executive management team will be available for questions. We are proud to report third quarter results that reflect continued positive momentum for our company. Gap net income was $134.1 million, or $0.72 per diluted common share, with adjusted net income from continuing operations for the third quarter of $135.6 million, or $0.73 per diluted common share, an increase of $0.04, or 6%, compared to the second quarter of 2024. From a balance sheet perspective, our deposit performance was a real highlight for the quarter. Our teams across the footprint have done a great job of retaining and expanding our deposits, resulting in significant growth in core customer deposits, over 11% on an annualized basis, while holding deposit costs essentially flat up just two basis points in the quarter. We also generated meaningful new loan commitments, although loans were flat for the quarter as payoff pressures offset the growth due to active capital markets activities creating paydowns as companies sell or refinance in permanent markets. Looking to the rest of the year, we are optimistic that our new loan originations will outpace the payoff pressures as our loan pipeline remains robust and diverse and the economies in our footprint are performing very well. Stabilized deposit costs and continued upward repricing of loans also drove our fourth consecutive quarter of improvement in our net interest margin to 3.31%, up four basis points from last year. Importantly, credit quality continued to remain stable and in line with our expectations. Our net charge-offs were consistent with the prior quarter, and we maintained a solid allowance for credit losses at 1.38% of loans. While we did see an increase in non-accrual loans, primarily as a result of migration of a handful of previously criticized credits, our criticized and classifieds level have remained relatively consistent as a percent of loans during the year, and we are not seeing signs of concern or weakness. We're also pleased with our continued performance and operating efficiency, as reflected in our adjusted efficiency ratio of 57.7% for the quarter. As expected, our total expenses did increase as a result of merit increases, as well as a few items that benefited our second quarter expenses. Valerie will dive into these details, as well as our expectations for in just a moment. Finally, we again took advantage of market swings and repurchased just over 323,000 shares of our stock. Our capital metrics remain strong, including CET1 of 12.3% and total capital of 14.5% as of September 30th. And finally, our tangible book value per share increased by $1.60, while our tangible equity to tangible assets ratio ended the quarter at 8.28%. I'll now turn the call over to Valerie for her comments.