Origin Bancorp, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the Origin Bank Corp fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings call. My name is Britt and I'll be your upper call coordinator. The format of the call includes prepared remarks from the company, followed by a question and answer session. Please note that all participants will be on a listen only mode until the Q&A portion of the call. At this time, it's my pleasure to turn the call over to Chris Riegelman of Origin Bank Corp. You may now begin.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. We issued our earnings press release yesterday afternoon, a copy of which is available on our website, along with a slide presentation that we will refer to during this call. Please refer to page two of our slide presentation, which includes our safe harbor statements regarding forward-looking statements and the use of non-GAAP financial measures. For those joining by phone, please note the slide presentation is available on our website at www.origin.bank. Please also note that our safe harbor statements are available on page seven of our earnings release filed with the SEC yesterday. All comments made during today's call are subject to the safe harbor statements in our slide presentation and earnings release. I'm joined this morning by Origin Bancorp's Chairman, President, and CEO, Drake Mills, President and CEO of Origin Bank, Lance Hall, our Chief Financial Officer, Wally Wallace, Chief Risk Officer, Jim Crotwell, our Chief Accounting Officer, Steve Brawley, and our Chief Credit and Banking Officer, Preston Moore. After the presentation, we'll be happy to address any questions you may have. The call is yours, Drake.

Thanks, Chris. Good morning. As I review 2022, our successful year was a year of major accomplishments that significantly strengthened our company. We finished a strong fourth quarter with an enhanced management team that is laser-focused on strategic decisions that will impact long-term performance and value. The overall condition of our company as we begin 2023, positions us very well to take advantage of our markets in a meaningful way. Our strength starts with our executive team and filters throughout our organization across all of our markets in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. This is reinforced this year with Origin being recognized as the second best bank to work for in the country by American Bankers. We take great pride in our culture and the competitive differences it creates. One of the major highlights for us in 2022, as I've discussed, was the partnership with BTH Bank. I've often said how BTH is a unicorn, and this has remained the case two months post conversion. Culture will always be the foundation with any partnership we develop. Our shared culture of putting people first and delivering for our employees, customers, communities, and shareholders is what has made this partnership so successful. I'm pleased that we have successfully kept intact the BTH organization. I'm very excited about the growth opportunity that East Texas presents. In 2022, we saw strategic growth throughout our footprint. Excluding mortgage warehouse, loans grew over 24% organically and nearly 50%, including BTH. As liquidity moved out of the system during 2022, we experienced a highly competitive deposit environment. Our teams took advantage of the market to reduce our exposure to high-cost non-core deposits, thus strengthening our core deposit base. We reduced non-relationship deposit by $300-plus million, while mortgage warehouse experienced a reduction of $100-plus million. On an average basis, we grew deposits 5.5% without including BTH. Our bank has remained laser-focused on deposit growth in 2023, and we are proud of our balance sheet position with a loan deposit ratio of 88%, excluding mortgage warehouse. We finished the year with $9.7 billion in total assets, and as we planned, We strategically manage a balance sheet below $10 billion. The asset sensitivity of our balance sheet was highlighted by net interest margin expansion in each of the past three quarters. Wally will provide more color around them. As I've mentioned in the past, the Texas growth story for Origin has been impressive, and the addition of BTH has created an incredible opportunity to drive value in a meaningful way. As you can see in our presentation, our Texas franchise represents approximately 70% of loans held for investment, excluding mortgage warehouse, and 54% of deposits. Lance will talk more in detail about the success we're having, but I think it's important to point out that our investments in infrastructure and people in these dynamic Texas growth markets have and will continue to pay off for our company. As proud as I am about our production, I'm even more proud of our current credit metrics. Jim Crockwell, our chief risk officer, Preston Moore, our chief credit officer, along with their teams, have done an amazing job of managing credit risk. Jim will talk about the details later, but it's more than just the credit metrics. It's about the camaraderie, the trust that our producers and credit teams have with each other that helped us perform so well in 2020. And even more importantly, puts us in a position of strength as we head into uncertain economic environment in 2023. Now I'll turn it over to Lance.