Stellar Bancorp, Inc.

Good morning, my name is Krista and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Stellar Bank fourth quarter earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. And if you would like to withdraw your question, again, press star one. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Courtney Cario, Chief Accounting Officer. Courtney, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you to all who have joined our call today. Good morning. Our team would like to welcome you to our earnings call for the fourth quarter of 2023. This morning's earnings call will be led by our CEO, Bob Franklin, and CFO, Paul Ege. Also in attendance today are Steve Wetzeloff, Executive Chairman of the company, Ray Vitulli, president of the company and CEO of the bank, and Joe West, senior executive vice president and chief credit officer of the bank. Before we begin, I need to remind everyone that some of the remarks made today constitute forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 as amended. We intend all such statements to be covered by the state's harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in the act. Also note that if we give guidance about future results, that guidance is only a reflection of management's belief at the time that the statement is made, and such beliefs are subject to change. We disclaim any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, except as may be required by law. Please see the last page of the text in this morning's earnings release, which is available on our website at ir.steller.bank. for additional information about the risk factors associated with forward-looking statements. At the conclusion of our remarks, we will open the line and allow time for questions. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Bob Franklin.

Thank you, Courtney, and good morning, and welcome to the Stellar Bank Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. As we conclude 2023, I will begin by thanking the outstanding team at Stellar Bank Their hard work and dedication allowed us to bring two banks together while dealing with the external pressures of current economic circumstances. Every day we make strides in developing the Stellar way. Our team is working hard to ingrain our values across our organization and our culture becomes more clear each day. We are pleased with our results for 2023 given all of the industry stresses while we focused on capital, liquidity, and credit. Our discipline around these tenants allowed us to build capital, stabilize our valuable deposit franchise, maintain strong net interest margin while maintaining good credit metrics, and finish the year with a nice return on shareholders' equity for our shareholders. Our mantra for 2024 is optimize. The heavy lifting is behind us. We must seek to optimize process, expense, people, and future. We will keep our focus on capital, liquidity, and credit as we expect a less robust economy in 24 as the Federal Reserve continues to tame inflation. However, we operate in some of the best markets in the country, and we are well positioned to take advantage of the opportunities we expect to be presented to us over the year. We believe that these efforts and market dynamics will provide for a rewarding value creation for our shareholders. I will now turn the call over to Paul Legge, our CFO, for more details on the quarter and the year.