Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Pinnacle Financial Partners' first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Hosting the call today for Pinnacle Financial Partners is Mr. Terry Turner, Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Harold Carpenter, Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. Tim Huestis, Chief Credit Officer. Please note Pinnacle's earnings release and this morning's presentation are available on the investor relation page of their website at www.pnfp.com. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay on Pinnacle's website for the next 90 days. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. If you would like to ask a question at the time, please press star one on your touch-tone telephone. Analysts will be given preference during the Q&A. We ask that you please pick up your handset to allow optimal sound quality. During the presentation, we may make comments which may constitute forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other facts that may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements of Pinnacle Financial to differ materially from any results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Many of such factors are beyond Pinnacle Financial's ability to control or predict, and listeners are cautioned not to put undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. A more detailed description of these and other risks is contained in Pinnacle Financial Annual Report Form 10-K for the year ending December 31st, 2020, and in subsequently filed quarterly reports. Pinnacle Financial disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements contained in this presentation, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. In addition, these remarks may include non-GAAP financial measures as defined by the SEC Regulation G. A presentation of the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures and reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP measures will be available on Pinnacle Financial's website at www.pnfp.com. With that, I am now going to turn the presentation over to Mr. Terry Turner, Pinnacle's President and CEO. Thank you, operator, and thank you for joining us this morning. Q1 was an outstanding quarter in my view. Most of you who've been following us know that during the pandemic, we transitioned quickly to defense beginning last January, if you can believe that. Not only to shore up asset quality, but we launched a number of initiatives that would continue to drive PPNR through 2020 and put us in a position to accelerate as the impact of the pandemic wanes. In Q1, we were able to get off to a really fast start and recognize some of that PPNR growth. We begin every quarterly call with this dashboard reflecting our key performance metrics on a GAAP basis. As we most always do, because there are so many adjustments required in order to focus on the variables that we're truly managing here at Pinnacle, I want to move quickly to the chart reflecting the adjusted non-GAAP measures. As part of our first quarter 2020 earnings call last April, I told you that my expectation was, in the final analysis, 2020 wouldn't be about 2020's earnings, but more about how well we position our firm to return to our previous earnings trajectory following the pandemic. As you can see here on the top row, the trajectories are all sloping up and to the right, with total revenues, fully diluted EPS, and adjusted PPNR all up meaningfully on a linked quarter annualized basis. 2021 revenues were up roughly 14.7% annualized during the first quarter. Adjusted EPS was up 7.6% annualized during the first quarter, and adjusted PPNR during the first quarter is up 8.4% annualized. Along the second row, you can see that loans are up 11.8% annualized during the first quarter, inclusive of PPP. Harold will review in greater detail shortly and talk about expectations going forward, but generally, excluding PPP, we continue to believe we'll produce loan growth primarily based on our ability to take market share due to our prolific hiring. We've hired 200 revenue producers in 2019, 2020, and the first quarter of 2021, and that's more than 20% of our total revenue producers. That represents enormous market share movement potential, which I expect differentiates our growth opportunity from many, if not most, of our peers. Core deposits continued to accelerate at a rapid pace during the first quarter. In spite of the COVID challenges, we continue to have a track record for consistently growing tangible book value per share, with 14.1% growth in tangible book value per share year-over-year. Across the bottom row, you can see that asset quality held up really well in the first quarter, with NPAs at just 36 basis points. That's the lowest level in the last decade. Classified assets also down this quarter to the lowest level in the last decade. Annualized net charge-offs of just 20 basis points in the quarter. I'm going to turn it over to Harold and Tim to review the results in much greater detail. As we go through the detail, I find there's a lot to be encouraged about as it relates to revenue growth. First of all, regarding our net interest margin fundamentals, particularly the trajectory of our cost of deposits. Secondly, fee income. Mortgage originations and sales continue to run at a record pace. BHG has continued to accelerate during this pandemic, and again, in the first quarter, continues to outperform expectations. We talked about our transition to defense earlier in 2020, allocating a meaningful part of our human capital to reviewing our loan book borrower by borrower. Tim's going to update you on the work that he and his team accomplished here in Q1, as well as give insight into what we're seeing and learning from our clients, particularly in these stressed segments. At least for me, our asset quality performance continues to inspire optimism. Harold, let me turn it over to you. Thanks, Terry. Good morning, everybody. Many of my slides I've shown for quite some time, so I'm going to hit the high points. We were pleased with our first quarter loan growth, excluding PPP, average loans were up 7.2% annualized between the first quarter and fourth quarter. Excluding PPP, end-of-period loans at March 31 compared to December 31 are up 4.6% annualized. Call it a mid-single digit growth quarter. As to loan yields, in spite of the steepening yield curve, as we mentioned last time, loan yields will be a fight in 2021. We will lean into our relationships even harder to maintain our yields. There's a lot of liquidity out there. It sure feels like it's a borrower's market right now. Our prime-based credits only saw a slight decrease in yields, while LIBOR was down four basis points and fixed rates down seven basis points. Overall loan rates were down nine basis points, with PPP loans being down 13, and the biggest contributor to overall loan yield decline, and likely to be the most difficult to model over the next few quarters. More on that in a second. Where to from here? Our market leaders continue to believe that our end-of-period loan growth forecast, excluding PPP, in the high single digits for 2021 is a reasonable number for our firm. We built that estimate from the ground up based on continual dialogue with our frontline lenders. As always, we will lean on our new hires to give us an advantage on loan growth. Coupled with our markets, which we believe to be the best banking markets with the best bankers in the Southeast, we're optimistic about our loan growth goals for 2021. As to yields, we still have about 60% of our floating variable rate loan book on an in the money floor, so that'll help shield some of the pain should loan rates continue to be under pressure. Hopefully, we can get some traction from a steepening yield curve over time. Speaking of PPP and the tons of work that's been accomplished here, we've funded around $3.4 billion between the two 2020 programs and the 2021 program. We're just over $900 million in 2021 funding, so about where we thought we'd end up. New application volume is slowing, so we don't anticipate a great deal more. Here's what we're hearing, and I'm definitely not on the front line, but it seems to ring true. The 2021 program hit the mark and was primarily used to help smaller businesses, at least from our perspective. The process has improved since last year and this has made life somewhat easier for us and our clients. The SBA continues to move around, change the rules, but all in all, it's in a better spot. No one is casting stones as we can't imagine what the SBA has had to deal with over the last year to get these programs up and running. As to forgiveness, smaller clients are getting it done, say loans less than $150,000, while loans, say, greater than $2 million appear to be on the SBA's back burner and have been for quite some time. During the quarter, it slowed for some technical issues that the SBA was dealing with, and then we ran into tax season with a lot of clients working with their CPA. Our thoughts are that eventually, substantially all of our clients who have not repaid their loans will seek forgiveness. Not sure whether another round of PPP will come around, but if it does, we will dive in and believe the appetite will be there, but it will be limited. As for our PPP results for the same quarter, we're modeling a decrease in total revenues, somewhat consistent to the decrease between the fourth and first quarters. It all depends on the pace of forgiveness. Eventually, the SBA will get at the greater than two million dollar loans, so that is coming to us, we just don't know when. We have about $360 million in loans awaiting forgiveness with the SBA currently, and approximately $200 million where we are working with clients to gather the necessary data to submit to the SBA for approval. Now on to deposits. We had another big deposit. Core deposits were up almost $1.5 billion in the first quarter. We've experienced significant growth in non-interest bearing deposits, ending up at $8.1 billion at quarter end, up 63% since last year. Obviously, we believe a significant part of that is government stimulus. Our average loan to average deposit ratio was down only 11 basis points to 82.7%. We consider that a small victory. Our average deposit rates were 26 basis points while EOP deposit rates were at 22 basis points, so we continue to see downward momentum for 2021 and look to be around 15 basis points by the fourth quarter of 2021, assuming our short-term rate forecasts remain consistent for the remainder of this year. Liquidity builds for nearly all banks is gaining more attention. The steepening of the yield curve has gotten our attention, but we remain neutral on any sort of big bond deployment strategy at present. Our securities to assets ratio has been 13%-14% for a long time. Our estimates are that our peers are running slightly more than that in the 15%-20% range. We may deploy a modest amount of liquidity into bonds over the next few quarters, but it will be modest. We also allocated about $450 million late in the first quarter into a repo instrument, which is secured by the counterparty's investment securities portfolio. This is a floating rate instrument that yields around 40 basis points currently, so it'll be more impactful in the second quarter. We're looking at a somewhat similar product currently, but it won't be as large. I mention all of this to you to let you know we are actively looking at prudent investments where we can minimize or eliminate credit risk while creating some earnings momentum. As the top chart indicates, we will again have an opportunity to reduce our wholesale funding book in the second quarter, which we fully anticipate. This almost $1 billion reduction is in our broker deposit books, which we acquired as part of our intentional liquidity build last year at the onset of the pandemic. This reduction should help reduce deposit costs and help our NIM slightly on the go forward. Additionally, we have about $900 million in Federal Home Loan Bank borrowings, but the prepayment penalty remains such that the payback period on those is still four to five years. We'll hold tight for now but monitor those borrowings continually. We believe our NIM after PPP and liquidity was approximately 3.29% in the same quarter, which compares to a similar calculation last quarter of 3.27%. Thus, our adjusted NIM is now up four quarters in a row. Also, our GAAP NIM is now up three quarters in a row. We anticipate flat to up slightly for the rest of the year. PPP forgiveness will have a lot to do with that. Now to fee income. I'll be brief. Fees were $92.7 million for the quarter. For the quarter, fee revenues were more than 44% over the first quarter number of last year. Wealth Management had a great quarter in comparison to last year. We continue to be very active on the hiring front across our franchise, particularly as we continue to build Wealth Management in the Carolinas and Atlanta. Mortgage beat our expectations by a mile, posting revenues of $13.7 million for the quarter, up $1.3 million from last quarter. Second quarter is looking strong as well. As we sit here today, we are much more optimistic about mortgage origination in 2021 than we were three months ago, as the rate market does not appear to be moving away from us as quickly as we anticipated it might. Our markets remain strong, and we have hired several key originators in several of our markets over the last few quarters. I'll talk more about BHG in a minute, but BHG continues to issue great report cards quarter after quarter. As to expenses, specifically incentives, I think everyone is familiar with the impact of incentive costs to our expense base. If our earnings are hitting our targets, incentive costs go up. If not, they go down. 2020 was very much a downer, at least in terms of incentives for our associates. We fully anticipate, based on the current operating environment, that 2021 will come back strong and hopefully our associates will recoup some of that lost incentive from 2020. We have provided an opportunity this year to our associates to earn an outsized incentive. That said, there's no free lunch. Increased incentives only occur if our earnings growth supports the incentive. Last year, provision expense and CECL required an outsized reserve build, which directly impacted our incentive plans, probably more so than most. It only stands to reason that if we're able to recoup some of that prior year reserve build this year, then some of that should find its way to our associates. This year, our annual cash incentive is tied to the usual [SALVIS] and earnings growth numbers. We also maintain the PPNR component, which we added during the middle of 2020. Additionally, our board has also changed the way equity compensation works for the leadership of the firm. Rather than achieving absolute goals for our performance-based equity awards, our ultimate award vesting will be based on how we rank within a peer group, specifically targeting ROTCE and tangible book value growth over a three-year period, along with a modifier based on total shareholder return. That change, we believe, is more shareholder-friendly over the long term. I probably have spent too much time on incentives, but those of you that have been around for a while, you know our unique incentive structure is cultural, and it is definitely part of what drives the heartbeat of our firm. For both the annual cash and equity incentive plans, the first quarter would indicate we are trending in the right direction. As to expense run rate, we're anticipating personnel expense with all of our new hires coming on board, and inclusive of our increased incentives, personnel expense should increase between 2%-3% each quarter for the remainder of the year. Conversely, all of our other non-personnel costs, which amounted to slightly more than $242 million last year, should see a high single-digit percentage decrease. That's right, a decrease in 2021. As I've stated before, the leadership of our firm is determined to not let a trend develop with a less than target payout to our associates. That's a trend we will work hard to avoid in 2021, but to accomplish that, we all are looking forward to meeting and exceeding our financial objectives this year. Quickly, some comments on capital. I'll be brief. We raised our dividend to $0.18 a share last quarter. With the share price where it is, we've not acquired any shares, and we don't anticipate acquiring any in the near term. We've been working to redeem a couple of sub debt issuances this year, and as I mentioned previously, we've intensified our focus on tangible book value growth by adding a component for it in our leadership's equity compensation plans. As to our outlook, I'm not going through this slide in depth, as we have covered most of this previously, so this is really a summary for the model builders out there of what we think. Obviously, we realize that we appear more optimistic than most. That said, we have great confidence in our people, our markets, and our clients, and renewed optimism about where Pinnacle is headed. Now, BHG. A few slides that we have shown for several quarters. The blue bars on the chart are originations, and we have ramped up with more loans being funded with records being set nearly every quarter for the past three quarters. First quarter was a record for both originations and placements. The green bar represents loans on which gain on sale has been recorded, as these loans are sold to downstream banks. This is the traditional BHG model with gain on sale revenues being generated. Coupons have fluctuated somewhat over the last three years, ending at 13.6% for the first quarter. As to bank buy rates, they fell to 4% in the first quarter. Net spreads remain in the mid-nines, which over time is up from previous years. The bottom right chart now, over 1,200 banks in BHG's network and almost 700 individual banks acquired BHG loans last year. This has to be one of the strongest funding platforms for a gain-on-sale model in the country. This slide is probably the best slide that demonstrates the growth potential of BHG's model. Data analytics have improved significantly over the last few years. It is resulting in better hit rates and more loans meeting their credit standards. As to credit, we've updated BHG's charge-offs and reserve build chart. These are for loans that BHG has sold in their network of community banks. The green bar shows that currently they have just under $3.9 billion in credit with banks who have acquired BHG loans. The orange line details the annual loss rate, while the blue line on the chart details the recourse accrual as a percentage of outstanding loans with these other banks. Trailing 12 first quarter 2021 losses landed at 4.5%, basically consistent with the last few years, and during the year where who knew how COVID would impact loss rates. The recourse obligation reserve is used to reserve for future losses for the loans sold to other banks. With COVID, they increased the reserve by approximately $15 million in the first quarter, but as a percentage of loans, it was down slightly. The top left chart we've shown on several occasions. The quality of BHG's borrowers has improved steadily in the past, and over the last few years, BHG continues to refine their scorecards and increase the quality of its borrowing base. Again, the right chart, and as I said before, maybe the most powerful chart I have to offer related to BHG's steadily improving credit quality. Looking at losses by vintage, losses continued to level out in earlier months since originations, thus pointing toward a lower loss percentage over the life of the underlying loans. Pandemic related events may cause these lines to move upward, but the quality of the borrowing base, in our opinion, is very impressive and is much better than just from a few years ago. Lastly, we said it last quarter, and we'll say it again, 2020 was a big year for BHG, and we anticipate big things in 2021. Last year, BHG executed on their first $160 million securitization. This allows BHG to continue to diversify its revenues and its funding sources. We're expecting another similar securitization at BHG in the near future here in the second quarter of 2021. BHG's earnings continue to ramp up. BHG had a great operating quarter in the first quarter, very much exceeding everyone's expectations, even theirs. We've upped our expectations for 2021. Quarterly now expecting 2021 to produce outsized growth in relation to 2020 of 20%-25% or more before we had anticipated high single digit growth. Wrapping up, loan growth and loan pricing for Pinnacle in 2021 will take work, but we are optimistic. Deposit growth has been remarkable. Deposit pricing is headed down. NIM should be flat to up. BHG had another great quarter, and we continue to believe in them. Personnel costs will go up, but correlated to increased earnings. Credit for both Pinnacle and BHG, we believe, is in very much great shape. With that, I'll turn it over to Tim to talk more about credit. Thank you, Harold. Good morning, everyone. Using the traditional credit metrics of net charge-offs, NPAs, classified assets, and past-due accruing loans, Pinnacle's loan portfolio continues to perform very well. In the first quarter, as in prior quarters during COVID, our bankers and credit teams continued their thorough client credit reviews. Particular emphasis was placed on non-pass credits, our hotel portfolio, and credits in our COVID-specific low pass risk grade. Our first quarter credit metrics are very encouraging. Our classified assets decreased again this quarter, dropping by $17 million, and our classified asset ratio declined to a very modest 7.3%. NPAs also decreased this quarter down to just 36 basis points. Finally, criticized loans decreased during the quarter by $85 million. Similar to prior quarters in 2020, we conducted a four-question survey during March of 405 C&I clients with loan balances totaling $931 million. The survey was specifically targeted to our low pass risk grade clients in a wide variety of segments such as entertainment, restaurants, consumer services, and healthcare. The questions inquired about revenue projections for the current quarter compared to the same period last year and months of liquidity. The survey results reported more optimism than our fourth quarter 2020 survey responses that we previously shared with you. Of particular note, 87%, versus 60% in December, said first quarter 2021 revenue should be between 75% and 100% of first quarter 2020. 62%, versus 53% in December, had seven months of liquidity or greater. This slide is to provide an update on Pinnacle's loans that were modified under Section 4013 of the CARES Act. Our 4013 modifications were negotiated with borrowers from the perspective of providing the client a longer-term solution to help them bridge to the other side of COVID. Our approach was to improve Pinnacle's position and simultaneously help the client. With each modification, we collected very current borrower information as we sought to accurately re-risk grade the loan and to contemplate the terms of our modification. A key distinction between deferrals offered first and second quarter of 2020, and these modifications executed in third and fourth quarter, is the vast majority of our clients with 4013 modifications are at a minimum, paying interest monthly. With each 4013 modification for our hotel loans was negotiated to fit the borrower's specific circumstance. Our modifications generally consisted of changing the loan repayment terms to interest only for three to 12 months, in consideration for borrower concessions such as, pay the accrued interest that accumulated during the earlier deferral period, establish an interest reserve on deposit with Pinnacle, and shorten the loan maturity. As illustrated in our supplemental deck, Pinnacle's hotel book has held up. Of particular note, our hotel portfolio occupancy has been stronger than the national average as reported by STR for eight of the last nine months. As an example, our average occupancy for the month of February was 50%, versus the national average at that time of 45%. On a very positive note, STR reported for the week ended April 10th, national hotel occupancy was 59.7%. This is the highest level in the past 12 months. Given that 74% of our hotel loans are in the economy, limited service or extended stay segments, we believe this improving occupancy trend bodes well for our portfolio. Many of our hotel clients in these particular segments can cover operating expenses and interest when occupancy is in the mid 40% range. As a testament to our conservative hotel underwriting prior to COVID, we only have four loans totaling $6.6 million that are rated classified. With the American Rescue Plan, the deadline for banks to complete 4013 modifications was extended from December 31st, 2020 to January 1, 2022. As this table illustrates, we've had very little change in our 4013 loan modifications after the original deadline. This next slide is to provide a brief overview of our different credit delivery channels. While the structure of our different channels may not appear unique, we believe it is our model of hiring experienced bankers in combination with the design of Pinnacle's loan underwriting channels, that drives our results. Several of our key tenets that help us play offense during the good times and also execute defense very effectively include, for C&I and CRE loan requests greater than $1 million, we have credit teams in market, working directly with our financial advisor. The credit teams have historically joined the banker on prospect or client calls. For loans greater than $1 million, we do not use remote centralized credit factories or hubs, as many of our regional competitors do. At Pinnacle, our FAs partner and collaborate with credit very early in the loan request. We believe this practice of quickly involving credit on loan requests is different than our competitors. Average years of experience for our senior credit officers is 29 years, and the average years of experience for our credit analyst is 21 years. We believe our credit team's experience level has served us well in converting prospects to customers and serving our clients. Our special assets team is led by a 40-year industry veteran. His team of special asset advisors average 16 years of workout experience. Pinnacle's financial advisors are encouraged to raise their hand early with any loan exhibiting early signs of distress. Our culture of involving our special assets experts early has been a key driver in the positive trend in our classified assets and NPAs. Pinnacle's credit metrics have held up well. Although we have shifted back to an offensive stance, we will continue our thorough defensive work on clients in the impacted segments, and in particular, our hospitality book. Now, Terry, I'll hand it back over to you. Okay, thanks, Tim. On the one hand, I think it's too early to spike the football as it relates to COVID, but it seems apparent to me that as a result of the progress on the vaccines, along with all the stimulus that's been poured into the economy, we're setting up for a strong second half of 2021. As we've said any number of times, it's been our intent since last January to get in a position to seize those opportunities that would inevitably exist in the Southeast as the economy begins to reignite. As I mentioned in my introductory comments, in my view, first quarter was an outstanding quarter with NPAs at 36 basis points, classified assets down to 7.3%, past dues down to just nine basis points. Asset quality actually appears excellent, and many of the threats we once feared seem to have subsided. Adjusted EPS was up 313% over the same quarter last year. Importantly, adjusted PPNR was up 25.2% over the same quarter last year, and revenues were up roughly 20% over the same quarter last year. Now at a time when both fintech and asset generators are garnering enormous multiples, we believe that BHG has validated the power of their differentiated model as they continue to originate and sell record volumes of loans through their proprietary auction platform. As Harold mentioned, we expect that they'll do another securitization in Q2, and as Harold also has already mentioned, even with the securitization, they're now forecasting income growth of 20%-25% this year. We believe all this sets up for a great 2021. Building on that foundation and momentum as we move through the remainder of 2021, we're extremely bullish on our organic growth opportunities coming out of the pandemic. Greenwich Associates has estimated based on their market research among business owners, that roughly 20% of the revenues to banks is in motion due to the high level of dissatisfaction with large banks' responsiveness during COVID. Contributing factors including handling the payment deferrals early on, then PPP, and then subsequent loan requests. Also based on business owner feedback, Greenwich has developed the Crisis Response Index, which ranks banks based on their response to the crisis by aggregating how clients rate among the most important criteria during the pandemic. Not surprisingly, in their fourth quarter 2020 data, Pinnacle is one of the highest-rated banks in the nation, meaning that we're one of the best-positioned banks in the country to capitalize on this money in motion. This 20% of revenue is available to the industry based on client dissatisfaction. Beyond that, we're one of the most attractive banks to work for in the country. We were just listed again in Fortune Magazine as one of the top 100 places to work in the country, one of a limited number of banks on the list. That reputation has enabled us to hire a record number of revenue producers in 2019, another record in 2020, and if the first quarter is predictive, we should attract another record number of revenue producers in 2021, which would suggest outsized organic growth. Perhaps most importantly, we're located in markets with some of the best size and growth dynamics in the country. Nashville continues to create jobs, which will further accelerate its growth, most recently with its announcement of Oracle's expansion into Nashville, 8,500 jobs and a $1.2 billion capital investment. Also, a recent announcement by the partnership of GM and LG on a $2.3 billion investment to build a battery plant here in Middle Tennessee with 1,200 jobs. Similarly, Raleigh recently announced that North America's largest end-to-end biopharmaceutical manufacturing facility will be located in Wake County and will create more than 725 jobs, and that Google is bringing an engineering hub with probably as many as 1,000 jobs with that, adding to all the other successes in the Triangle. Of course, Atlanta continues to be the land of milk and honey. Georgia was recently named the top state to do business for the seventh consecutive year. I'm not exaggerating, the Metro Atlanta Chamber's list of meaningful relocations and expansions for 2020 is a seven-page document. It's unbelievable. Finally, I've already alluded to the importance we place on being in the largest and fastest-growing markets in the Southeast. In the past, we've published maps of the Southeast, ex-Florida, to demonstrate our target markets, and we filled out the majority of those markets with the acquisition of BNC in 2017 and the de novo start in Atlanta. At this point, I can't name a franchise with a more attractive footprint or that's better situated. Going forward, I think the best illustration of our target markets is simply a list of the largest and fastest-growing MSAs in the Southeast, now including Florida. As we've already pointed out, we believe there's great vulnerability at the large banks to dominate these markets. I would say we're seeing unprecedented opportunities to enter those markets, in a few cases with potential strategic combinations, but in many cases on a de novo basis, which we like a lot. Our firm has almost always been a high-growth financial services firm. Going forward, we see extraordinary vulnerability at the large banks that dominate many of our markets. We expect to attract the best bankers in both our existing and potentially attractive markets around the Southeast. We love the size and growth profile of the markets that are in our existing footprint. We expect to have opportunities to expand into other attractive Southeastern markets. Again, I think we are excited about the potential growth, both short and long term. Operator, I want to stop there, and we'll be glad to open the floor for questions. Thank you, Mr. Turner. The floor is now open for your questions. If you would like to ask a question at this time, please press star one on your touchtone telephone. Analysts will be given preference during the Q&A. Again, we do ask that while you pose your question, that you pick up your handset to provide optimal sound quality. Our first question comes from Jared Shaw from Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Hey, good morning, everybody. Maybe if we start with BHG, that's great trends that you're seeing there. With the securitization, are they doing that just really to keep that avenue open, or should we expect as we go through the year that the securitizations will be a bigger part of that? I guess how big could the balance sheet at BHG get, or how big would they be comfortable with that getting versus selling them? Yeah, I think they're pretty confident with growing their balance sheet. They will have a securitization accomplished here in the second quarter, and we would not be surprised to see them accomplish another one before the end of this year. They've not gone away from that diversification strategy, Jared. We fully anticipate them to grow it. They think they can get their balance sheet up meaningfully here over the next couple or three years. Okay. With that revenue coming in, you know, then Terry's comments about the opportunities in these other markets, including Florida, is there an opportunity for you all to be dramatically increasing the hiring pace of revenue producers in some of these new markets? Can you take this as an opportunity to really expand that Atlanta model into other markets? If so, is that included in your expense outlook, or would that be additional as those opportunities come up? Well, I'll talk about the expense outlook and what's in it and what's not in it, and let Terry go into the hiring plan for the rest of this year in other markets. We do include a kind of a, call it a placeholder for new revenue hires for the rest of the year. Traditionally, I think we've called that de minimis, so that every market leader has at least some room in their plan for new hires, but it's in no way, shape, or form, kind of the target that we're looking for out of these market leaders and what we expect from them in these markets. Does that make sense, Jared? Yeah. If there's a bigger opportunity, then that would not be reflected in the budget at this point. That's right. If they get outsized hiring going on, we'll fully support that. Yeah, Jared, I guess I would add to Harold's comments. I do believe that we are likely to have incremental opportunities in markets that we're not currently in. I think we enjoy a great reputation, and as you know, there's a fair amount of turmoil around the Southeast at some of the bigger companies. We find that we have people contacting us from various markets that are interested in coming or moving a team and so forth. We continue to evaluate those opportunities and vet those opportunities and so forth. I do believe that we're very likely to have incremental hiring opportunities in markets that we're not currently in. Okay, great. Then just finally from me, I guess, can you give an update on how the new hires that have been brought on over the last 18 months or so, how are they doing in terms of actual production versus the goal? Obviously, COVID threw everyone for a loop, but are they getting traction? Are they able to start chopping some wood on that 20% of bank revenue that's in motion right now? We think so, Jared. What we do is we track kind of our revenue producers based on how long they've been with us. Obviously, the ones that have been here the longest are the ones that are producing most of the continual revenues for us. We track them based on tenures of one year, three years, five years, and then more than five years. The newer, I guess I'll call them hirees, are coming up the ranks. We're pleased with that. We fully anticipate that they will be the ones that give us the momentum we need here and over the next couple of years. As Terry mentioned, I think it's something like 20%-25% of our revenue producers have been hired here in the last couple of years. We think that's an incredible opportunity for us here in the near term. Jared, again, I'll add to Harold's comments. I think your question is on the right track. COVID does impact, and I would say it this way, it lengthens the sales cycle, both in terms of our ability to recruit people, as well as their ability to recruit their clients to the firm. It does lengthen in COVID, where, you know, it's just more difficult to get in front of clients and those kinds of things. That said, as Harold mentioned, we are tracking it. We are seeing the progress grow, and we do believe that, you know, based on the way the pipelines are building, that they'll be able to deliver and, as you say, get traction on this 20% of the share that's in motion. I guess, just when you look at your loan optimism overall, though, is it a combination of, you know, being driven by new clients or better utilization or sort of equally both? Well, I think it is some of both. We see increased line of credit draws. That's helpful, but we also see an extraordinarily high level of pay downs in commercial real estate, so they sort of balance each other. When you work your way down to the net growth, I think the biggest factor in our ability to produce that will be their ability, these new hires' ability to move that market share. Great. Thanks. Thank you. Our next question comes from Stephen Scouten from Piper Sandler. Your line is now open. Hey, good morning, everyone. How you doing? Good. How are you doing, Stephen? Doing well, thank you. I apologize if I missed the first couple questions there, I guess one of my questions for you, Terry, is just longer term as you think about BHG, obviously I know there's a lot of unknowns, if that ever creates a liquidation event, but how do you guys think about capital priorities, if and when that were to occur? Maybe specifically around M&A, given you probably do have that advantage currency you have, you know, kind of sought in terms of M&A over time. I think you're at about two forward tangible versus your peers at two times tangible today. Kind of just wondering how you think about that capital deployment and opportunity set there. Yeah, I think, as I sort of alluded to in the prepared remarks there, it is obvious our stock is advantaged. I do think there's M&A opportunity that seems to be picking up. Again, not such a wild stream of announcements, but it seems to me there's lots of dialogue going on. We continue to evaluate M&A opportunities really across the front. Anyway, I think you know this, Stephen, that I think going back to last year, somebody asked about M&A, and my response was, "What? I mean, I wouldn't spend my currency to trade slightly above tangible book value," but at 2.4, that is a different equation. We'll look to optimize both the opportunity and the advantage of the stock. Anyway, I guess I would just characterize it that way. I don't want to overplay it or overbill it or oversell it. As you know, there are thousands of circumstances that have to come together to make it work, but certainly we're in a different position than we would have been even six months ago as it relates to M&A. I think as it relates to BHG, you know, it is just so hard to -- we get asked questions a lot about, well, what would you do with this? What would you do with that? There's so many circumstances that are unknown. What would the valuation be? How much might be sold? There are just a thousand variables that would influence what choice we make when we get there. I would say this, it's a really luxurious problem to have him in a position with so much money interested in what they do. At any rate, we'll just have to cross that bridge when we get there. Yeah. No, definitely a high-class problem, I suppose. It's been a great investment. Does it make you want to think about other non-bank acquisitions, I guess, moving forward? Is that something you're exploring more than just the traditional bank deals whether that be fintech-type investments, which I know you've done some of already, or other line of business type acquisitions? Yeah, I would say that we have, and we continue to look at, you know, sort of alternative kinds of investments, like BHG. I think you're aware of Advocate Capital, which, you know, is a smaller scale deal, but it's a meaningful deal. We've got a small investment in a leasing company. Our approach on these things is generally using Collins' theme, and you fire bullets, not cannonballs. We do like the idea of finding both fintech asset generators that seem differentiated. You ought to expect us to continue to look in that vein. It's not exactly like looking for a unicorn, but they're not just everywhere. There may be a little more serendipity in that, I think. Certainly, we're interested in those kinds of things. I think on the lines of business, I'm not saying there aren't any, but I see less of those, just to be candid. We've got a pretty well full built-out product capability, and when you look at some of these things that we would have an interest in, like take P&C insurance or something like that, when you get down to the brass tacks of it, you got all this roll-up going on, people paying extraordinary multiples. It creates too much goodwill for us. When you get into some of those sort of wealth management lines, they're really hard to acquire and feel like you're going to either make a good deal or you're going to be able to retain the revenues. Many of those things are personality dependent and so forth. I'd be less excited about lines of business than I am about bank M&A or other sort of fintech asset generators. Got it. That's helpful. Maybe just last thing for me, I might need you to stop talking about Atlanta so much because there's people everywhere here and the traffic's bad again, can't highlight it too much, but I'm wondering kind of where you are on the progress front there in terms of how many lenders you have on the team now, maybe the base of loans. I know you mentioned specifically wealth management for Atlanta and North Carolina, is that just building out the teams, or is there a specific opportunity around wealth management in those environments that you're really seeing that's leading you to push into that space in particular? Yeah, I think, again Stephen, honestly, I would characterize our opportunities in some of these North Carolina markets, specifically Charlotte and Raleigh, as really similar to Atlanta. Of course, Atlanta is the biggest and most vibrant, those other two markets are really handsome markets. We have such small share positions that we sort of look at those much like we would the de novo start in Atlanta. I think the hiring's generally been pretty even. I can't recite the numbers in each of those markets, but we're hiring revenue producers in each of those markets, both what you might call traditional Financial Advisors or relationship managers, as well as the rest of the revenue-producing categories like mortgage originators, brokers, and trust administrators. I think you asked about the opportunity. I do think that the large banks that we've been working on to hire relationship managers from have really high vulnerability in some of these wealth management businesses, trust administrators, portfolio managers, brokers, and so forth. That's really the opportunity that we're trying to seize for the other revenue producers. Got it. Makes sense. Thanks for the time, and congrats on a great quarter. Thanks, Stephen. Thank you. Our next question comes from Brock Vandervliet from UBS. Your line is now open. On BHG, just to confirm, that's a 20%-25% net income growth guide for this year. Is that right, Harold? Yes, or more. Okay. Where's that growth coming from? A couple of quarters ago, you had a lot of disclosure about new verticals. Is that been kind of sidestepped, and this is all the more traditional growth areas, or is it new verticals, too? Yeah, I think there's a list of things that because we asked them the same question. I think the gain on sale model is operating at pretty much peak efficiency. They've got better data. They're able to go out and send out more opportunities to do business with people, so on and so forth. I think their resolution of substituted loans is better than they anticipated post-COVID, so they got some break there. I think with the improved credit outlook, you're likely to see some reduction in reserves for losses. I don't think it'll be like a big kind of cliff thing, but I think it'll be steady for the rest of the year. I think when you put all that into the blender, they're coming out thinking this year is going to be a great year for them. That's how we got to the 20%, 25% or more. Got it. Shifting over to the funding side, I believe relative to our model, part of this was just the reduction in some of your wholesale deposits, but it did kind of stand out to me as you're showing a decline in the rate of deposit growth, it seems. Could you speak to that? Are you seeing any peaking there? Well, we hope we're seeing some peaking there, but I can't really give you any kind of comfort that we're going to see core deposit growth lessen. We're active in several different initiatives to kind of grow lower cost, smaller account balance deposits, but we will see more runoff in the wholesale book. Like we mentioned, we've got $1 billion coming out this quarter. Hopefully, that'll be enough so that we don't grow the funding book like we did here in the first quarter. Great. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Steven Alexopoulos from JP Morgan. Your line is now open. Hi. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. I want to start on the loan outlook. I appreciate the improved optimism on loan growth, but given the industry is up to its eyeballs on liquidity, particularly your larger competitors, can you talk about the competitive environment today for lending, and could that impact your ability to get that high single-digit growth? Yeah. That's a great question. I think, you know, Harold alluded to, in his comments, the fact that it sort of feels like a borrower's market. There's a handful of reasons for that, but clearly one of them is limited loan demand, which drives pricing lower and those kinds of things. What you're on is a correct theme and a right theme, I believe. We believe that we have taken that into account in our forecast. Nobody knows the future, I guess. What we believe is that if you just sort of look at the loan demand in our footprint, if you will, economic loan demand is still very low. We expect it will pick up in the latter half of the year, but it'll be muted by all the liquidity in the system. Where we believe we get the growth is from really incremental hires moving market share from where they were to us. That's the principal assumption about where the growth comes from. It's less dependent upon economic loan demand than it is market share movement. Okay. That's helpful. Then, if we look at the COVID-19 impacted segments, hotel, restaurant, et cetera, how are you looking at those exposures from a long-term view? Do you have any plans to reduce those exposures over time? Certainly, in hospitality, where we have no appetite. We haven't generated a new hotel loan since first quarter of last year. I would tell you that our underwriting for CRE retail certainly has changed. We've really shifted that to single tenant, credit tenant exposures and grocery anchored. I think part of the answer is just shifting the appetite within CRE. Restaurants, certainly more conservative. We have some in franchise concepts that we're still tracking well, but I would tell you with restaurants, it's guardedly optimistic and strict underwriting. Hopefully that might have helped answer your question. Okay. Thanks. My last question, Terry, given the earlier commentary about the improved valuation, and maybe you're looking at M&A opportunities a bit differently, is the flip side of that that you're not looking as active on the buyback side? I know you have the $125 million plan out there, how are you thinking about that given the valuation of the stocks? Thanks. Yeah. Steven, I'll answer your question directly on the buyback, but just to be clear, I think I used the phrase and talked about that, I don't want to oversell it and overbill it. I'm not saying we're going to make an acquisition. I'm just saying we're in a different position, and there are lots of discussions going on and opportunities to consider and those kinds of things. I don't know. I'm just trying to get that shaped up where somebody can understand, hey, we do have a high valuation. It does create some opportunity, but I don't want to overplay the likelihood that we're going to run out here and make a bunch of acquisitions, because I don't think we're going to make a bunch of acquisitions. At any rate, hopefully, that'll better frame that comment. As it relates to the buyback, yes, I think you're right. I don't think you ought to have an expectation right now, that we would wade back in and buy shares, primarily, as you say, as a function of the valuation. We look at that differently. We like having the authorization. We'll watch it over time, but I don't think we have an intent to buy shares at this price. Okay. Great. Thanks for the clarification and thanks for taking my questions. All right. Thank you, Steven. Thank you. Our next question comes from Brett Rabatin from Hovde Group. Your line is now open. Hey, guys. Good morning. How are you, Brett? Good morning. I'm good, thanks. First, Harold, was curious maybe what your crystal ball might be telling you on liquidity. I know you thought that might start to drain at some point, and it's obviously extended out for yourselves as well as the industry. Can you maybe give us some color on how you see that liquidity being deployed over time, how much of that might happen, and how much of it just kind of drains naturally with people using cash? Yeah, that is a crystal ballish kind of question, Brett. A modest amount of bonds will likely go into the market here over the next two or three quarters. We might build our percentage up from a 13.5% up to a 14.5% or something like that. It won't be a big number. We've got, in all likelihood, I don't know, a $1.5 billion or so of PPP loans that we anticipate coming to us here over the next four quarters. That'll provide additional liquidity to offset redeeming some of these wholesale funds. It's going to be a fight. It'll be a war to try to drain some of this liquidity. We remain optimistic about loan growth targets. We remain optimistic about reducing deposit rates, and we've particularly got some larger depositors that are more rate sensitive. They fully appreciate how the value equation works, and if they can find a better number at another financial institution, they'll move that money. Right now, we're okay with it, and we don't think it damages our relationship with that client at all. There's a lot of things that are in play to try to get some of this liquidity off our balance sheet. Okay. Appreciate the color there. The other thing I was curious about was, in the guidance for expenses, you talk about requiring increased infrastructure support, but you're obviously giving guidance for non-personnel expenses to be lower this year. Can you talk maybe about the increased infrastructure support, what that all entails? Are you guys doing anything on investing infrastructurally that might change the dynamic outside of the personnel line? Yeah, not really. I don't think we're doing anything as far as bricks and mortar. We've got a couple of branches, I guess, in play here this year. There's nothing big as far as buildings or technology that would cause you to be called a blip on the radar. Most of our infrastructure build comes around personnel, and it'll be, call it for one revenue producer, we end up hiring two to three other people in support of that revenue producer. That's the infrastructure that we refer to in those comments. Okay. If I could sneak in one last one around the change to the equity compensation, just the tangible book value per share growth being added to that. Does that change how you might view M&A in terms of thinking about payback periods or tangible dilution? Well, it certainly is impactful. It would be something we would need to consider. Traditionally, our board has been willing to work with us on significant events and how that might impact longer term incentive plans. Okay. Fair enough. Thanks for all the color. Thank you. Our next question comes from Matt Olney from Stephens. Your line is now open. Hey, great, thanks. Good morning. I want to ask about the bank's sensitivity to interest rates. On slide 52, you give us some good disclosures. It looks like the bank continues to move to a liability-sensitive position, but when I read some of the comments on that slide, it sounds like you've got some levers to pull to offset this over the next year or two. Should we be assuming by the time rates do increase on the short end, whether it's next year or 2023 or whenever, that Pinnacle will at least be in a rate neutral position if not asset sensitive? Just trying to appreciate kind of what the strategy is. Thanks. Yeah, that's a great question, Matt. You're right, we've got some levers. I've got $1.5 billion in loan floors that are at a gain right now that we can unwind today, and that'll free up $1.5 billion in floating rate assets to move us to more of an asset sensitive position. We've got some levers like that that we can pull to help alleviate whatever that slide is indicating currently. Yes, we're not panicked about our balance sheet or anything like that. We think we've got a great opportunity when rates begin to move. Most of my liability sensitivity is tied around loan floors. It's all about that. Once we can get a better view on where rates move, we can always start moving around on loan floors, and cure the problem. Got it. Okay. Circling back on the loan growth and the outlook, definitely appreciate the guidance as kind of a bottom-up review with all the lenders in the bank. Curious, how do C&I utilizations rates look today compared to levels a few years ago? Just trying to appreciate if that does rebound, how much incremental benefit we could see from loan balances at the bank. Thanks. Yeah. Utilization, I think, is at 43% now from 46%, something like that. Those would be loans that are currently on our books. Not anticipating a big growth in utilization. All of our growth we think is going to have to come from loans that are currently, not all of it, but most of our growth is going to have to come from loans that are currently on somebody else's balance sheet moving to ours. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Catherine Mealor from KBW. Your line is now open. Thanks. Good morning. Hi, Catherine. Good morning. Wanted to just a follow-up on the GAAP NII guide. How much PPP do you expect to come through in 2021 within that guide? Yeah, that's a great question, and we see each other up and probably anticipate how much PPP I've got. You can calculate the interest income, with where that might pay down to, but it's all about the forgiveness. We've got about $63 million in additional accretion to come to us. We think a lot of that's going to come this year. It's probably more than 50% of it we likely will realize this year, maybe upwards to 70% of it. Okay, great and then as we think about... Catherine, I think the big news we got out of a -- when we talked to our relationship managers is they're not hearing anybody say they're not going to go for forgiveness. I think most, if not all, of that $2.2 billion that's hanging out there on our balance sheet will likely find its way to forgiveness. I would imagine it's going to be more sooner than later because I do believe sometime in the near future, the loans last year, they're going to get into principal paydown mode here soon. Got it. Okay. That's helpful. Then, as you think about big picture PPNR growth, I know there's a slide a couple quarters ago where we looked at PPNR per share, kind of ex BHG, ex the excess liquidity, and ex the PPP. Do you think this is a year where that, where PPNR ex those three variables can grow, or is it more BHG is kind of helping you fund this expense growth this year, and maybe that's more of a next year thing? There's no question BHG is helpful. Also reserve release and provision expense is also helpful to help fund some of that incentive growth. That dynamic is very much present. The PPNR growth for all banks is relatively benign this year, and in most cases, it's negative. We've challenged our folks, we think with a fair target. It'll be positive. Hopefully, we can work our way through it to see at least some incremental growth in the top quartile in the period. Then if I could do one more just for Tim. Tim, what's the path to moving loans off criticized? Yeah, Catherine, good question. As you know, the vast majority of that is our hospitality book. We go through every hotel loan. When I say we, that's myself, our special assets manager, and our CRE credit officers every quarter, every single loan, $5 million and greater. I've been thinking about that in particular with the hospitality book. We may have some moving off the criticized this quarter, second quarter. We'll have some, I think, more third quarter and more fourth quarter. There's still, Catherine, maybe a part of that book that will take until early 2022. I think you'll start to see it accelerate in terms of positive migration out of criticized back to pass. You'll see that start this quarter and accelerate third and fourth quarter. Okay. That sounds great. Thanks, great quarter. Thanks, Catherine. Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Rose from Raymond James. Your line is now open. Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Just wanted to touch on the fact that BHG is significantly adding to their staff this year. There's reports that they may look into point-of-sale lending at the home improvement stores. Can you guys just clarify what the plans are there and where that stands? Thanks. Yeah, Michael, I think what they think their hiring plans will be similar to last year for 2021, and then they've got similar hiring plans for the next few years. I think they added 100 or 110 people in 2020, so they anticipate a similar number this year. The point of sale, they are looking at all kinds of new product verticals, and that's one of them. Yes, they are definitely looking at it, and they are building plans to go after that market. Okay. I thought they had employed kind of about 800, and they were going to add about 650 this year. What you're saying sounds a little bit different. I guess, was the article that I read wrong or just where does that stand? Yeah, I think as we talked before, that article was written off of an Internet-based thing that talked to the marketing guy. I think they'll get to the 650 over the next few years, but as it stands right now, I think the number for this year is somewhere around 100 to 125 employee adds. Okay, helpful. Maybe just back to the NII guide. This year, it does seem like the PPP fees will be higher and then kind of the core will be lower. Can you reconcile that to us versus 90 days ago? Are we at a point where ex PPP, the NII will grow from here? Is that the expectation? Well, we're very hopeful that core net interest income, ex PPP, will grow with core loan growth, for sure. Right now, we're going to stick with our forecast that NII growth will be high single digits for this year. Okay. Thanks for taking my questions. Thank you. Our next question comes from Jennifer Demba from Truist Securities. Your line is now open. Thank you. Can we circle back to the M&A topic, Terry? Just curious, you said that the higher currency now makes M&A a little bit more attractive. Can you talk about what kind of properties would be of interest to you right now from a size, geographic standpoint? We know you're kind of biased towards more commercially oriented properties. Yeah. I appreciate that. I always hate talking about the topic because invariably I never get it said in the way I think people understand what I'm trying to say to them. Anyway, I appreciate the question. I think on M&A, it's just obvious that if you have a stock that's trading at tangible book value, that's not much of an option, but it's trading at 2.4, which is advantage versus fear. That creates opportunity to consider. To your question about what kinds of things would be considered, I think, you got your whole range of options that I think everybody in the industry is considering, on M&A, which would include strategic combinations, MOEs, acquisitions, fill-ins. You got the whole realm of things that could be looked at there. I think when you get down into making acquisitions, my own sense, Jennifer, is that, I'm not interested in doing a lot of acquisitions that wouldn't produce something close to double-digit accretion and earnings accretion. You can make your own assumptions on, so what does that mean? Just sort of back of the envelope math, I think it means you got to buy at least a $7.5 billion organization to create that kind of impact. You know the list as well as I do. It's not like there are 40 of them out there that are going to clear that threshold of, as you say, being in a major urban market, having commercial orientation, and producing that level of accretion. Hopefully, that would shape what our considerations are. Thanks, Terry. Thank you. Our next question comes from Brian Martin from Janney Montgomery Scott. Hey guys, thanks for taking the question. Most of my stuff's been answered. Just one or two things. Harold, just going back to the expense guide for a minute. If you look at last quarter, just kind of how you were thinking about it versus how you laid it out this quarter. In the bottom line impact, is there much change? I think last quarter was high single-digit growth off of last year's base of around 5.70%, 5.80%, and now this quarter, you tweaked it to be the 2%-3% on the comp and then a decrease elsewhere. Just can you get the net number of what you're thinking about? Is it still a similar spot to that 6.25% type of range? Is that how it still shapes out with the new guide? Yeah, I think so, Brian. I don't think it's moved much between the end of last year and currently. Okay. Similar guide. Okay. Just one other question, just on the forgiveness, Harold. As the loan forgiveness of the PPP occurs, is most of that coming back into cash until you can redeploy it? Or how is that changing the size of the balance sheet, I guess, as that occurs? Is it different now than it was previously? Yeah, I don't think so, Brian. I think as those loans pay down, we'll try to deploy that cash into new loans some way, somehow. Is that what your question was about? Yeah, just kind of the average earning assets. I guess as the loans get forgiven and it comes back to cash, they're coming back to cash right now until you can redeploy it. That's what's continuing to occur. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. There's no doubt that we'll have additional liquidity from the PPP credits. Hopefully, we can get the loan engine moving and be able to get that money redeployed quickly. Got you. Okay. All right. Just one last one for Terry, just on that last question on the M&A, Terry, and I understand what you're saying. Just geographically, is there more focus or more interest in, I know it's a limited number of targets, but would there be more interest in adding to your existing footprint? Or I guess is it more likely that you would likely go to a different market than you're currently in, given how you've talked about how much opportunity there is within your existing footprint? Yeah. I would say, again, Brian, to go back and think about the size of the acquisitions that we'd have to make, who those things are and so forth, I think you would have to draw a conclusion that you'd most likely go to different markets than existing markets. Again, I'm not ruling that out. I'm just saying. Yeah It seems like you find more opportunities in additional markets than you do in existing markets that would meet that criteria. Yep, got you. Okay. I appreciate it. Thanks, and great quarter, guys. Thanks, Brian. Thank you. I am showing no further questions. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You all may now disconnect.