Origin Bancorp, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and welcome to the Origin Bancorp Inc. First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. My name is David, and I will be your EverCall coordinator. The format of today's call includes prepared remarks from the company, followed by a question and answer session. Please note that this event is being recorded and that all participants will be on a listen-only mode until the Q&A portion of today's call. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Chris Freigelman, Director of Investor Relations. Please, Chris, go ahead.

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 use of non-GAAP financial measures. For those of you 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 five of our earnings release file with the SEC yesterday. All comments during today's call are subject to 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 Crockwell, 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. Drake, the call is yours.

Thanks, Chris. This past quarter we showed good progress as our teams continued to improve efficiency and performance with a sharp focus on maximizing shareholder value. I'm very pleased with the production our teams experienced across our footprint as each demonstrated resilience amidst challenging market conditions with good loan and deposit growth. Our continued organic growth reflects our strategy and progress in building long-term relationships with our customers. We finished the quarter with pre-tax, pre-provision earnings of $31.9 million and diluted EPS of 73 cents. Tangible book value grew 2% to $29.24, and our TCE ratio was 9.3% at the end of the quarter. Lance will get into more specifics, but I'm optimistic about our deposit growth. Excluding broker deposits, we saw an increase of $102 million for the quarter. This is a testament to our bankers' understanding our strategy and delivering. While loan growth exceeded core deposit growth this quarter, deposit growth remains a top priority and will be the governor to the loan growth for the year. As we discussed in previous calls, we continue to make investments in strategic decisions in preparation for crossing the $10 billion asset threshold. At the end of the year, we made the decision to write down the value of our MSR asset and explore its potential sale. During the first quarter, we were successful in selling the MSR asset. This removed volatility from our earning stream and will reduce regulatory risk as we prepare to cross $10 billion in assets. While we are pleased with the results of this quarter, we are strategically focused on improving our profitability. We continue to identify opportunities to drive revenue and better leverage our expense base. Whether it's investments in new markets like our recent entry into South Alabama and the Florida Panhandle or the steps we've recently taken to revamp our mortgage business, Origin is committed to building a more efficient and more profitable company. Now I'll turn it over to Lance.