Live Oak Bancshares, Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the first quarter 2021 Live Oak Bank Shares Incorporated Earnings Conference Call. At this time, our participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. If anyone should require assistance during the conference, please press star then zero on your touchtone telephone. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Greg Seward, General Counselor of Live Oak Bank Shares. You may begin.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Live Oak's first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. We are webcasting live over the Internet, and this call is being recorded. To access the call over the Internet and review the presentation materials and commentary that we will reference on the call, please visit our website at investor.liveoakbank.com and go to today's call on our event calendar for supporting materials. Our first quarter earnings release is also available on our website. Before we get started, I would like to caution you that we may make forward-looking statements during today's call that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations are detailed in the materials accompanying this call and in our SEC filing. We do not undertake to update the forward-looking statements to reflect the impact of circumstances or events that may arise after the date of today's call. Information about any non-GAAP financial measures referenced, including reconciliation of those measures to GAAP measures, can also be found in our SEC filings and in the presentation materials and commentary. And I'll turn the call over to Chip Mahan, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Thanks, Greg, and good morning, and welcome to our Q1 earnings call. As you can see from the agenda before you, we are kicking off today's call with a tribute to our co-founder, Kel Landis. who passed away on January the 2nd. Your board proudly created the Kel Landis Student Excellence Fund at his beloved University of North Carolina, Kenan-Flagler Business School. We love you, Kel. Some things never change. Once again, Huntley and I will attempt to unpack a healthy and, yes, noisy quarter. As I try to put myself in your position as to what really matters as the pandemic and government assistance to small businesses winds down. Steve Smith and I are going to discuss the COVID effect on our customer base and a brief look ahead. We shall then turn our attention to Q1 loan originations and what loan growth looks like for the rest of the year, as most other banks report a decline in loans outstanding and net interest margins. Trust me, that is not our challenge. Neil Underwood will provide a brief update on Live Oak Venture investments, as well as what he sees through his canopy lens. Lastly, back to the noise, before I turn it over to Huntley for greater detail, I'm going to focus on the metric that means the most to me, the core earnings of this business, which is a brief examination of our pre-tax, pre-provision income. So Steve, just about a year ago, the world was pretty bleak. And as I recall, you and your colleagues were predicting potential dire circumstances and maybe even losses of over 100 million bucks. You quickly moved to isolate six of our verticals and disclosed the current state of play in each quarter. Two questions for you. Number one, what losses have we taken from the COVID-6? And secondly, what have been the COVID losses And the rest of the back.