Great Western Bancorp, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Great Western second quarter fiscal year 2021 earnings announcement and conference call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Seth Arts Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Emily, and good morning, everyone. Joining us for today's presentation and discussion, we have Mark Barreco, President and Chief Executive Officer, Pete Chapman, Chief Financial Officer, Steve Yost, Chief Credit Officer, and Carlin Canarium, Chief Risk Officer. The presentation for today's earnings review is available for webcast and download through our Investor Relations website, at ir.greatwesternbank.com. We'd like to remind you today that today's presentation may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainty, which may cause actual future results to materially differ from those disclosed. Additionally, any non-GAAP financial measures presented are provided to further assist you in understanding results and performance trends and should not be relied upon as a financial measure of actual results. Please refer to the earnings materials along with periodic SEC filings which contain our forward-looking statement disclosures as well as reconciliations for non-GAAP measures. I will now turn the call over to Mark Barreco. Mark.

Thank you, Seth, and good morning, everyone. I would like to start by thanking our employees for their continued efforts in supporting the Great Western Bank mission to make life great by strengthening our customers and enriching our communities. Their efforts enabled us to have another strong quarter, posting net income of $51.3 million. Pete and Steve will walk through the specifics, but I am very pleased with our continued progress. Turning to slide two, credit risk management remains a top priority for us. We made progress with our asset quality with a further reduction in both non-accrual and classified loans. We made significant progress on our loans on deferral, which are now just $19.7 million as of April 16th, down from a peak of $1.69 billion. The outlook for the ag industry continues to improve, with grain prices receiving support from higher demand and livestock prices holding above average. I am encouraged with the number of upgrades this past quarter in the ag sector and expect additional upgrades in the June quarter. We made progress managing our net interest margin, particularly through a five basis point decrease in our deposit costs. We made progress in strengthening our capital position by 80 basis points through improved earnings. And our allowance for credit loss ratio remains at 3.50 of total loans, excluding PPP, following a provision recapture of 5 million this quarter. I'm excited that we launched the pilot of our small business center, which will transform how we originate and manage small commercial credits. This new program will reduce origination time from 22 days to three and will significantly improve the client experience which will allow us to better support the many small businesses in our footprint. These enhancements will also create capacity for our commercial bankers to pursue larger relationships in our underweight segments and markets. The initial pilot results are encouraging. I caught up with Andy Severson, one of our pilot bankers in Omaha, and his feedback was, it's so easy to complete the process and our customers love the simplicity. He also mentioned that he will be able to help a much larger customer base than before because of this new program. We expect to have the Small Business Center rolled out to all markets by the end of September. As I mentioned at the beginning of the call, at the heart of our progress is our mission of making life great by strengthening our customers and enriching our communities. I am proud of our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and our employees' support for our current BU campaign and to support and empower a diverse workforce and to create and sustain a conscious culture of inclusion at Great Western Bank. Looking forward, I am encouraged by the increased economic activity in our markets. Our team is back in the office at 50% capacity with a full return to work date of August 2nd. And as the weather in the Midwest improves, I expect our growth opportunities to improve as well. Now for a review of the financial results, I will turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Pete Chapman. Pete?