United Community Banks, Inc.

United's presentation today includes references to operating earnings, pre-tax, pre-credit earnings, and other non-GAAP financial information. For these non-GAAP financial measures, United has provided a reconciliation to the corresponding GAAP financial measure in the financial highlights section of the earnings release, as well as at the end of the investor presentation. Both are included on the website at ucbi.com. Copies of the quarter's earnings release and investor presentation were filed last night on Form 8K with the SEC, and a replay of this call will be available in the investor relations section of the company's website at ucbi.com. Please be aware that during this call, forward-looking statements may be made by representatives of United. Any forward-looking statements should be considered in light of risks and uncertainties described on pages 5 and 6 of the company's 2020 Form 10-K, as well as other information provided by the company in its filings with the SEC and included on its website. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Lynn Harten.

Well, good morning, and thank you all for joining our call today. This has been another great quarter for United. and I want to start by congratulating our teams throughout the company for their performance. On an operating basis, our earnings per share for the quarter was 83 cents, equating to a 148 basis point return on assets and an 18.2% return on tangible common equity. Loan growth, XPPP, was 4.5% annualized, and we continue to have strong overall average balance sheet growth driven by strong deposit growth, Our cost of deposits dropped by two basis points, and now stands at only seven basis points. Credit results are also excellent, with net charge-offs of only two basis points, and a reserve release of $11 million. Our operating efficiency ratio improved to 52.3%, which is among the best we have reported, and so once again, thanks and congratulations to the United teams that make these kind of results possible. Our strategic initiatives also continue to perform well, Following the completion of our acquisition of Fintrust Capital Partners in July, we continue to see solid performance in this line of business, as well as opportunities to deepen and expand our customer relationships with a stronger wealth management offering. Earlier this month, we completed the acquisition of Equesta. We expect conversion and rebranding in November and continue to be very excited about the organic growth potential of the Charlotte and Wilmington markets that Equesta brought to us. Our partnership with Reliant Bank also continues to be on track with an anticipated closing of that transaction in early January. I'm impressed with the quality of the leadership and the teams at Reliant, and I look forward to them joining United. You may have seen, in fact I hope you did see, Reliant's earnings release last night where they reported record results for the quarter, demonstrated by a return on assets of 1.74%, a return on tangible common equity of 18.4%, and annualized loan growth, XPPP, of 14%. As I mentioned in our earnings press release, we're also very glad to welcome Jennifer Bisante, Chief Marketing Officer of Humana, to our board. Her expertise in branding, marketing, and digital transformation will add tremendously to our board and will be a great complement to our new Chief Marketing Officer as we continue to invest in these areas. And now I'd like to turn it over to Jefferson for more details on the quarter.

Thank you, Lynn. I am going to start my comments on page 9. The chart highlights our relatively consistent and strong loan growth, excluding PPP loans over the last year. It also shows our strong deposit growth over the same timeframe. And in combination, we have become a lot more liquid, and our loan-to-deposit ratio has moved to 66% from 81% a year ago. making us more liquid, but also providing us an opportunity to invest this over time. On page 10, we take a closer look at our loan book and our mix of our loans. We had $122 million of loan growth, similar to last quarter, in dollars. It rounds out to 4.5% annualized loan growth, which is net of the sale of a number of SBA and Navitas loans that totaled just over $33 million in the quarter. Moving to page 11, which details our deposit growth, while we had $122 million of loan growth, we also had $537 million of deposit growth, which annualizes at a 13% growth rate. Deposit costs are near the bottom, but we were able to move the cost down another two basis points this quarter to seven basis points. On page 12, I will touch briefly on capital. Our capital ratios were relatively flat in the quarter and are above peer levels. partly because of a $100 million preferred raise we did last year. With the Equesta and Reliant transactions, we are putting that raise to work, and we expect that our capital ratios will be at peer levels on a pro forma basis. In addition to our dividend this quarter, we did use capital in two ways. One, we purchased Fintrust for cash on July 6th, and we brought back $10 million of shares in Q3. On page 13, we talk about spread income and the margin. Excluding PPP fees and loan accretion, our spread income grew at a 3% annualized pace in Q3. Our core margin was down 10 basis points, mainly due to continued increased liquidity driven by the strong deposit growth in combination with the significant cash flow coming with PPP forgiveness. On page 14, it details our fee income, which had a good growth in Q3 of $4.3 million. That said, $2 million of the $4.3 million increase came from the FinTrust acquisition that closed on July 6th. Besides FinTrust, fee income growth was quite strong and was driven by good mortgage results. The mortgage quarter was highlighted by increased rate lock volume and a $1.3 million MSR write down compared to a $3 million write down last quarter. Like last quarter, we had some Navitas loan sales and had $861,000 of gains on $19.3 million of loans sold. We would expect to continue Navitas loan sales in Q4 in addition to our normal SBA loan sales. Page 15 shows our expenses up $800,000 from last quarter. That said, excluding $1.9 million in new operating FinTrust expenses, comparable quarter expenses were down 1% from last quarter. I expect relatively flat to slightly higher expenses in Q4, excluding the impact of a cluster that closed on October 1st. Page 16, we talk about PPP loans. We recognize $12.9 million in PPP fees in Q3 and have $5.8 million left to recognize and $150 million of loans still in the book, of which we expect a significant amount to be forgiven in Q4. Moving to page 17, I will talk briefly on credit here, and Rob Edwards is here for Q&A on the subject. Net charge-offs were very low at just two basis points annualized, And with improving special mention and substandard accruing loans, we had our third reserve release in three quarters, this quarter releasing $11 million. Page 18 gives you a closer look, and we saw improvements in the businesses that we lend to, special mention decreased by $92 million, and we saw improvements in substandard and NPAs as well. Looking to page 19, it shows the walk forward of the reserve excluding PPP loans, our allowance for credit losses moved to 1% in Q3 from 1.12% in Q2. With that, I'll pass it back to Lynn for closing comments.