Welcome to the annual meeting of the shareholders of Macatawa Bank Corporation. My name is Rich Postma. I'm the Director and Chairman of the Board. We are pleased you can join us in this virtual format. This is the second year that we've engaged in this format. Hopefully, next year we'll be back in person. This is the format that pretty much all publicly traded companies are using today. We're going to follow that format. The agenda for today's meeting is to begin by conducting our formal business. Once that business is complete, a brief formal presentation will be provided, followed by a question and answer period. Shareholders who have logged into today's meeting using the control number from their proxy card will be permitted to ask questions by using the question box provided in the bottom left corner portal. You may submit your questions at any time during this meeting. At this time, I would like to introduce our directors who are also participating in the meeting virtually. Those directors are Nichole Dandridge, Charles Geenen, Ron Haan, Bob Herr, Birgit Klohs, Michael Le Roy, Doug Padnos, and Tom Rosenbach. Jon Swets, our Corporate Secretary, will act as secretary for this meeting. He has in his possession a list of our shareholders as of March 9 of this year, which is the record date of this meeting. As of March 9, there were a total of 34,197,519 shares of common stock entitled to vote. Notice of the meeting, a proxy statement, and a proxy were mailed to all shareholders of record as of the record date of approximately March 19. Mr. Swets, is there a quorum present? A quorum is present. The preliminary tabulation shows that at least 29,211,068 shares are represented virtually or by proxy. These shares represent over 85% of the total number of shares entitled to vote at the meeting. Thank you. The meeting is now open for the transaction of business. We have three items of business to consider at this meeting. The first is the election of three directors, the second is the annual advisory approval of executive compensation, and the third is our ratification of the appointment of BDO USA, LLP as the company's independent auditors for the year ending December 31, 2021. The first item of business being the election of directors. The governance committee and the board of directors have nominated Ronald L. Haan, Douglas B. Padnos, and Richard L. Postma to be elected as directors with terms expiring at the 2024 annual meeting of the shareholders. No other nominations have been made according to the procedures provided by our bylaws. No further nominations are therefore in order, and the nominations are now closed. The governance committee and the board of directors recommend to the shareholders that they vote for all of the director nominees. The second item for approval is the advisory approval of executive compensation. The compensation committee and the board of directors recommend that the shareholders vote for the advisory approval of the company's executive compensation. This item also was described in the proxy statement. The third item is the ratification of the appointment of the independent auditors. This final business item to be considered at the meeting is the ratification of BDO USA, LLP as the company's independent auditors. The audit committee has appointed BDO as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the year ending December 31, 2021. The audit committee and the board of directors recommend that the shareholders vote to ratify the appointment of BDO. Written ballots voting all shares of common stock for which we hold proxies have been submitted. If you have returned a proxy or already voted electronically, your shares will be voted according to your instructions. It is obviously not necessary to vote through this virtual meeting portal at this time unless you wish to change your vote. If you have logged into today's meeting using the control number from your proxy card, you may vote your shares or change your vote now. We will pause to allow shareholders to vote, and this pause will be approximately 20 seconds. It appears that there are no additional changes, and therefore I declare that the polls are now closed. There will be a brief adjournment while the inspectors of the election complete their tabulation of the votes. During this adjournment, I would like to introduce our senior management team. In no particular order, but we'll start with Ron Haan, who is the President and CEO. Jason Birchmeier is our Chief Credit Officer. Craig Hankinson is our Chief Operating Officer. Leslie Leegwater is our Human Resources Manager. Jodi Sevigny is our Chief Marketing Officer. Jon Swets is our Chief Financial Officer. Jeff Tatreau is our Chief Technology Officer. Jill Walcott is our Chief Retail Banking Officer. Justin Van Beek is our Chief Risk Officer. Erich VanRavenswaay is our Chief Wealth Management Officer. I would like to also introduce Charlie Goode, a partner with Warner Norcross & Judd, our corporate counsel. Charlie has been on this account for a number of years, and we value his advice. Rick Babb is a partner with BDO, our independent auditors. Rick has been on this rotation for a number of years also, and we have also appreciated his sound advice on all accounting matters. Both of these gentlemen are attending by phone and will be available to address any questions during the question and answer period at the end of this meeting. At this time, our tabulation is complete. Mr. Swets, how many shares were voted for the election of nominees for director? At least 21,103,419 shares, which are more than 89% of the total shares voted in the election, were voted for election of each nominee for director. Thank you. I declare that each nominee has been elected a director of the company. Mr. Swets, how many shares were voted for the advisory approval of the company's executive compensation? 21,383,745 shares, which are more than 91% of the total shares voted on the proposal, were voted for the advisory approval of the company's executive compensation. Thank you. I declare that the shareholders have approved, on an advisory basis, the company's executive compensation. Mr. Swets, how many shares were voted to ratify the appointment of the company's independent auditors? 27,697,735 shares, which are more than 94% of the total shares voted on the proposal, were voted to ratify the appointment of BDO USA as the company's independent auditors for the year ending December 31, 2021. Thank you. I declare that the appointment of BDO as the company's independent auditors for the year ending December 31, 2021 has been ratified. A formal report of the inspectors of the election will contain a tabulation of the shares voted at this meeting, and will be filed with the minutes of this meeting. No other business has been proposed for action in the manner provided by our bylaws. Accordingly, no other business at this meeting is in order, and I now declare the business portion of the meeting is adjourned. What I'd like to do now is turn the meeting over to Mr. Swets, who will give the shareholders a brief review of what has been filed previously in our annual report, and a short update on matters that are pertinent to shareholders today. Mr. Swets. Thank you, Rich. Obviously, 2020, highly unusual year in many ways, of course, caused by the pandemic. The pandemic, of course, translated into an economic slowdown, shutdown, and then in response, we of course had the Federal Reserve lower short-term interest rates to near zero, dropping them by 150 basis points in March of last year. We had the Fed response to the pandemic, and then also the congressional response, beginning with the CARES Act that was adopted roughly a year ago. That included the Paycheck Protection Program, which was a loan to help sustain small business in the wake of the economic slowdown. All of those very unusual conditions created anomalies, significant anomalies really, in financial performance of the banking industry in general, and your company, Macatawa Bank Corporation, was no exception. Things like we saw our liquidity levels on balance sheet grow to record levels. We saw also our risk-based capital ratios grow to record levels. Deposits on balance sheet, our deposits from our customers, both retail and business, grew by 40% from March of last year to March of this year. We also, while we participated in that Paycheck Protection Program, we saw our loan portfolio otherwise shrink. The two are directly correlated, we believe, on the business side of our lending practice in that our business customers took a lot of PPP loans, and they did not draw down then on their commercial operating lines. Direct correlation there. Really kind of just significant impacts. Obviously, the annual report that you all received with this annual shareholder meeting packet describes these anomalies in great detail. I wasn't going to spend a lot of time really kind of going back through them per se, but what I did want to do is to try to put some of them in perspective in terms of how much Macatawa Bank Corporation experienced, realized these anomalies relative to the banking industry in general. Starting with the Paycheck Protection Program, again, adopted by Congress through the CARES Act, thought that this would be a very good opportunity for us to step into the community and really help the community, the market, our customers and prospects weather the storm, and we dove in heavily. We ended up originating under this program about $440 million worth of PPP loans. A significant amount of PPP loan originations. Considering the fact that our loan portfolio is about $1.4 billion, to originate $440 million of loans in less than a year's time is a significant amount of activity. Worked really hard at it, and certainly I think had a very positive impact in the community. As of March 31, 2021, we still had $260 million in principal outstanding on those PPP loans. To put that in perspective, that's about 19% of our total loan portfolio. Our peers, the banking industry in general, have about 7% of their total loans in PPP loans. We're at about 19%, the banking industry at about 7%. If we were at seven, our PPP loans would be $95 million, not the $260 million we have at the end of March. That just puts in perspective how much we really leaned into this program to help the community, significantly more than the banking industry in general. That's kind of a key focal point for why we experienced anomalies in other areas of our financial performance. Moving on from PPP loans, I mentioned our total deposits grew by 40% from March of last year to March of this year. That's almost $700 million in deposit growth. Our total deposits went from $1.7 billion to almost $2.4 billion. Banking industry in general saw significant deposit growth. The rest of the industry certainly saw a lot of this, but the industry grew at a 20% clip, whereas we grew at 40%. We roughly doubled the growth rate of the rest of the banking industry in deposit growth. A lot of that has to do with how much PPP lending we did, because out of that roughly 680 some odd million in deposit portfolio growth, $430 million of it came from business customers. 430 million is a number that resembles pretty closely about the $440 million in PPP lending we did, and that is not a coincidence. What really happened there is our business customers received the PPP loan proceeds, and then they gave them right back to us in their deposit accounts on the funding side of our balance sheet. What's even more amazing is that all of those balances are really still with us today. Our deposits are that $430 million higher than they were a year ago at this time. Because we did a lot of PPP lending, and because our customers had the ability to retain that cash, because the general strength of our business customers is good, we've got a very high level of deposit balances. Those business deposits drove most of that growth, but we also saw great growth in retail deposits. They were up by about $220 million over a year ago at this time. It's a combination of the business and retail deposit growth that produced almost that $700 million in total deposit growth. That deposit growth led to another anomaly on balance sheet, our liquidity, which I mentioned at the outset. We hold all of our excess kind of on balance sheet liquidity with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. In the 12 months from March of last year to March of this year, we saw those balances, kind of that excess liquidity, grow from roughly $180 million to $880 million. $700 million growth in our excess liquidity. That's all tied really to that deposit growth. On the funding side of our balance sheet, we saw all that deposit growth. On the lending side, on the asset side, our primary asset, the loan portfolio, saw very little growth. In fact, a slight shrinkage. We did a lot of PPP lending, but the other categories of lending actually shrunk during the year. Our primary asset was flat while our deposits grew by $700 million. That translated into a significant increase in on balance sheet liquidity. That level of liquidity relative to our total assets puts us in the top 2% of all banks in the U.S. in terms of liquidity strength. Top 2%. We also, as I mentioned, saw capital strengthen throughout the year. Our risk-based capital ratio at March 31 was just under 19%. That puts us in the top 10% of all banks in the U.S. in terms of risk-based capital ratio strength. Also asset quality. Certainly with the economic slowdown and shutdown of business, very important to keep our eye on asset quality. We saw our asset quality remain strong. Our level of non-performing loans at the end of March, roughly $500,000 on a $1.4 billion loan portfolio. It's negligible. It's 0.04% of total loans. That puts us in the top 5% of all banks in the U.S. in terms of level of non-performing loans to total loans. We've also set aside significant reserves against those non-performing loans. The level of our reserving is also in the top 5% of all banks in the U.S. Just trying to put some of these things in perspective for you as shareholders, what is the strength of financial condition of your company? The last three things I talked through, liquidity, capital, asset quality, are the three primary legs of the stool for financial condition strength. In all three of those, we're in top deciles in terms of our strength because of what we experienced throughout the year and the course we've decided to take in managing the unusual nature of the environment we're operating in. Very good financial condition. That's really the message I wanted to leave you with. At this point, I'm concluding my remarks on our financial performance, and I will turn things back over to Rich Postma. Thank you, Mr. Swets. We appreciate that summary of the performance of the bank during the past year, and we're very pleased with how we have operated during this period of time. We do have a question which will be directed to Mr. Haan, President of the Bank. Ron? Yeah. The question that's been asked in terms of what's going on in the bank with a transition to more digital transactions versus what we've seen historically with face-to-face transactions in our branches. Clearly, like all banks, we're seeing quite an acceleration in our customers really migrating to more digital channels. We're seeing fewer and fewer face-to-face, what I would say, transactions that occur in the branches. That's true of not only Macatawa Bank, but really all banks in the country today. That trend was really accelerated or increased during the pandemic as the lobby activity declined. Today, we feel very good about the position of our branch locations. We have no plans currently to close any of those offices. Seeing fewer, again, face-to-face transactions in the branches, there's still a pretty significant demand from our customers for face-to-face interactions with us, really more related to advice, financial advice, and answering questions. We'll continue to monitor that. The digital transformation or transition continues, we have no plans today to close any offices. We have another question which Mr. Haan will also answer. Yeah. The question is: Do we expect to see further consolidation of smaller community banks? There has been, as I think everybody is aware, a pretty consistent consolidation that's been occurring. Over the last couple of years, M&A activity, particularly in smaller banks, seemed to have slowed a little bit. I would say generally, yes, we expect consolidation will continue. Whether that's going to impact the larger banks or the smaller banks, I think time will tell. Many of the larger transactions that we've seen this year to date at least, would be some of the much more larger banks. Yeah, our view would be consolidation would continue. Where that consolidation will occur probably remains to be seen at this point. Thank you, Mr. Haan. There are no other questions that have been raised in the annual meeting. We thank you for your time today and for your attention, and we hope to see you in person next year, and this concludes our annual meeting.
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