Origin Bancorp, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Origin Bank Corp Inc. second quarter earnings conference call. My name is Tom and I'll be your evercall coordinator. The format of the call includes prepared remarks from the company followed by a question and answer session. All attendees will be on a listen-only mode until the Q&A portion of the call. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Chris Reglumit, Director of Investor Relations. Please 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 the 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 .origin.bank. Please also note that our Safe Harbor statements are available on page seven of our earnings press 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 Crockwell, our Chief Accounting Officer, Steve Brawley, and our Chief Credit and Banking Officer, Preston Moore. After this presentation, we will be happy to address any questions you may have. Drake, the call is yours.

Thanks, Chris, and thanks for being with us this morning. At the beginning of this year, we introduced Optimize Origin, our plan to deliver sustainable elite-level financial performance. We laid out a near-term goal of achieving a 1% ROA run rate by the fourth quarter of 2025 and an ultimate target for our ROA to be in the top quartile of our peers. As we cross the halfway point of the year, we believe the actions we have taken have put us in a position to achieve this near-term goal ahead of schedule. In just a short time, we have created efficiencies within our branch network, improved the overall profitability of our commercial banking team, restructured our mortgage business, and taken multiple actions to optimize our balance sheet. These actions are the primary drivers of approximately $34 million in annual earnings improvement on a pre-tax, pre-provision basis. I am proud of the results and how they position us moving forward. Our focus remains on being a top quartile performer and driving value for our employees, customers, communities, and shareholders. On July 1, we took an additional step towards our goal of high-level profitability by increasing our ownership of Argent Financial to 20%, which triggers the equity method of accounting. Next year, we anticipate this will drive additional income of approximately $6 million. We have also identified several opportunities that we believe will drive additional earnings improvement towards our ultimate profitability goal. Some of these are projects that are currently underway, others are in the early stages of implementation, and a number are in the planning phase. Areas of focus include product delivery, streamlined organizational structure, enhanced data management, and improved expense management. Lance will provide more detail later in the presentation. As you can see, we are laser-focused on our plan and delivering results that drive value. While we acknowledge the economic uncertainty exists, we know the actions we have taken position origin for near-term and long-term success. Now I'll turn it over to Lance and the team.