Cullen/Frost Bankers, Inc.

Greetings. Welcome to Colin Forrest Bankers, Inc. Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to A.B. Mendez, Senior Vice President and Director of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may go ahead.

Thanks, Jerry. This afternoon's conference call will be led by Phil Green, Chairman and CEO, and Jerry Salinas, Group Executive Vice President and CFO. Before I turn the call over to Phil and Jerry, I need to take a moment to address the Safe Harbor provisions. Some of the remarks made today will constitute forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 as amended. We intend such statements to be covered by the Safe Harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in and the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 as amended. Please see the last page of text in this morning's earnings release for additional information about the risk factors associated with these forward-looking statements. If needed, a copy of the release is available on our website or by calling the Investor Relations Department at 210-220-5234. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Phil. Thanks, A.B.,

Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us. Today I'll review second quarter results for Colin Frost, and I'm accompanied on the call by our CFO, Jerry Salinas, and Dan Geddes, who will offer additional comments. Before I discuss the quarter, I'm sure you all saw our recent announcement of Jerry's retirement as of the end of the year after a brilliant career of almost 40 years at Frost. Throughout that time, Jerry's been a part of virtually every major initiative that we've undertaken, and I've been blessed to work with him during that entire time, and he will be missed. And rest assured, we plan on squeezing as much work out of him as possible before his well-deserved retirement. Jerry will be succeeded as CFO by Dan Geddes, who joins us on the call today. Dan has broad experience over his 25 years at Frost, having served in the credit function, headed our commercial real estate division in Houston, successfully executing our initial organic expansion strategy in Houston 1.0, and in leading the San Antonio headquarters market as regional president overseeing all our commercial activities there. In the second quarter, Cullen Frost earned $143.8 million, or $2.21 a share, compared with earnings of $160.4 million, or $2.47 per share, reported in the same quarter last year. Our return on average assets and average common equity in the second quarter were 1.18% and 17.08%, respectively. and that compares with 1.3% and 19.36% for the same period last year. These results are due to our Frost bankers and are continuing to execute on our organic growth strategy. Average deposits in the second quarter were $40.5 billion, down 1.2% from $41 billion in the second quarter last year. As was the case in previous quarters, Cullen-Frost didn't utilize any federal home loan bank advances, broker deposits, or reciprocal deposit arrangements to build insured deposit percentages. Average loans grew by more than 11% to $19.7 billion in the second quarter, and that compared with $17.7 billion in the second quarter of last year. I'll now call on Dan Geddes to review the results from our expansion programs.