Great Western Bancorp, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the third quarter fiscal year 2021 earnings announcement and conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on a touchtone phone. 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. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Joining us for today's call, we have Mark Barreco, President and Chief Executive Officer, Pete Chapman, Chief Financial Officer, Steve Yost, Chief Credit Officer, and Karlyn Canaria, 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 that today's presentation may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainty that may cause actual future results to materially differ from those discussed. Additionally, any non-GAAP financial measures 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 this quarter's earnings materials and other periodic disclosures, such as the 10Q and 10K, all filed with the SEC, which contain our forward-looking statement disclosures and reconciliations for non-GAAP measures, along with an outline of risk factor disclosures. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Mark Barreco.

Mark Barreco Thank you, Seth, and thank you, everyone, for joining this morning. This quarter continued our trend of progress, highlighted by net income of $58.7 million, an acceleration in the reduction of non-performing assets, advancement of key growth initiatives, along with a dividend increase. Pete and Steve will elaborate further, but I am excited about our continued improvement and want to thank our employees for their dedication and focused performance. As we look at page two, credit risk management remains a priority for us. We made significant improvement in our asset quality, highlighted by a $74 million reduction in non-accrual loans. Additionally, we made progress in other asset quality metrics, as evidenced by our $199 million reduction in criticized loans, and we have just one loan left on payment deferral for $200,000. That's down from a peak of $1.7 billion. We strengthened our capital position by 90 basis points, and our total capital ratio has now reached 16 percent. We increased our dividend to 5 cents per share. Our allowance for credit losses ratio is at 3.33 percent of total loans, excluding PPP, following a provision release of $20 million this quarter. The rollout of our small business center is progressing well, and I'm encouraged about the multifaceted opportunities that this platform creates for our bank. This initiative will improve the efficiency and quality of how we manage our smaller commercial credits. We will significantly improve the client experience, which will allow us to better support the many, many small businesses in our footprint. This platform will be fully implemented by September 1st, and this will also create capacity for us, allowing our commercial banking team to focus on driving larger loan growth. At the heart of our progress is our mission of making life great, by empowering our employees, strengthening our customers, and enriching our communities. We appointed Michaela Carter as the bank's first Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and I know that her leadership and support will help us drive our mission. While we remain focused on de-risking our balance sheet and taking measured capital action, I'm encouraged about our loan growth and the activity in our markets. We had a notable increase in total loan production this quarter, which was 50% higher than the prior quarter. I am also pleased with the quarter-over-quarter performance in several of our key growth markets, specifically Colorado Springs and Tucson, along with strong performance in more mature markets like South Dakota and Central Iowa. Now for a review of our financial results, I will turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Pete Chapman. Pete.