Synovus Financial Corp.

Good morning and welcome to the Synovus fourth quarter 2022 earnings call. All participants will be on listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star zero. After today's presentation, there'll be an opportunity to ask a question. To ask a question, you may press star followed by one on your touch tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, This event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to our host, Cal Evans, Head of Investor Relations.

Thank you and good morning. During today's call, we will reference the slides and press release that are available within the Investor Relations section of our website, synovus.com. Kevin Blair, President and Chief Executive Officer, will begin the call. He will be followed by Jamie Gregory, Chief Financial Officer, and they will be available to answer your questions at the end of the call. Our comments include forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and the actual results could vary materially. We list these factors that might cause results to differ materially in our press release and in our SEC filings, which are available on our website. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements because of new information early developments, or otherwise, except as may be required by law. During the call, we will reference non-GAAP financial measures related to the company's performance. You may see the reconciliation of these measures in the appendix to our presentation. And now, Kevin Blair will provide an overview of the quarter.

Thank you, Cal. In many regards, 2022 was a banner year for Synovus. We began last year with an investor day which affirmed to the market who we are and detailed our path forward to become a more innovative, resilient, and high-performing bank. As the year progressed, we faced an increasingly volatile operating environment. However, our team rose to the challenge, continuing to execute the plan laid out in February. Given our strong footprint, the ability to monetize rising rates, and the performance of our business units, We've demonstrated throughout 2022 our ability to execute and deliver profitable growth, resulting in top quartile return on average asset and efficiency ratio levels as compared to our peers. We achieved the success while also investing in the future and pivoting where needed to address the changing economic liquidity and credit landscape. I want to thank our team for delivering on our purpose again in 2022, enabling people to reach their full potential. Feedback through sources like J.D. Power showing record client satisfaction scores and 15 awards from Greenwich Associates for excellence in service to middle market and small business clients prove we remain trusted partners to a growing and loyal legacy client base across our geography. Credit for this kind of recognition goes to this exceptional team and our ongoing investments in strong, scalable capabilities and solutions that add value. Today's report is shaped by continued growth and stability in our core banking franchise, given our ability to deepen the wallet share of existing clients and consistently attracting new relationships. We are also benefiting from investments in technology, process improvement, and innovation, as well as a common-sense approach to expense, credit, and capital management. For these reasons, we exit 2022 a stronger company with a tremendous amount of momentum as we continue to execute on our roadmap which will allow us to deliver sustainable top quartile financial performance. Now let's review 2022 and fourth quarter highlights on slides three and four. We realized robust revenue growth in 2022 as net interest income expansion was fueled by double digit loan growth and our overall asset sensitivity given rising rates. A challenging mortgage environment pressured fee income, however, excluding mortgage, client fee income collectively increased high single digits on a full year basis, signaling the depth and breadth of our core client relationships. Our efforts to double down on the commercial client segment is producing outsized growth as our commercial lines of business generated $4 billion in loan growth, all at higher spreads, while adhering to our conservative credit standards. To that point, credit metrics improved over the year and currently stand at or near historically low NPA, NPL, and NCO levels. We applied the same discipline approach to capital management, growing capital in the quarter and ending the year with a CET1 ratio of 9.63%. Our two-year Synovus Forward initiative surpassed its $175 million run rate goal in the fourth quarter. And although the initiative is complete, the emphasis on expense control and efficient revenue growth is more deeply ingrained in our culture, and we identify and act regularly on new opportunities to generate incremental value to our financial performance. Despite increasing pricing pressures on the deposit side, we manage deposit costs well throughout the year, benefiting from prudent strategy and an extended lag on deposit repricing. Overall deposit production rose 30% for the year and was sourced from multiple lines of business. I was especially pleased with our sales efforts in the fourth quarter as our teams increased sales activity, resulting in overall growth of $900 million in new production quarter over quarter. The operating environment for deposits remain competitive, with the retention of client balances and growth in new production remaining primary focuses in 2023. While delivering great financial performance during the year, we also continue to make progress with the development and rollout of the key initiatives that will allow us to deliver new sources of revenue in 2023 and well into the future. CIB continues to prudently grow and execute, reaching 20 team members in the fourth quarter and booking their first capital market fees and depository relationships. MAST also reached a key milestone as they are live with their first client and have booked revenue during the month of January. On the treasury and payment side, we fully completed our client migrations into the new gateway portal and went live with our new foreign exchange platform. We continue to see traction with the investments we're making in treasury and payment solutions as the growth in production and the associated revenue continues to outpace the underlying markets and our peer benchmarks. In order to continue to increase the capacity of our commercial relationship managers, while improving the client experience, we are also investing in new technology and reengineering our processes to streamline the client underwriting and onboarding experience. On the consumer side, we further streamlined our branch network by closing 36 locations during the year, while investing in analytics and digital capabilities to ensure we continue to efficiently and effectively serve our targeted client base. Simply, 2022 was a year of progress across our entire organization. I'm extremely proud of our team and their accomplishments and encouraged by our positioning as we enter 2023. Jamie will now share greater detail on the key activities and financial results for the fourth quarter. Jamie?