Greetings, welcome to the ServisFirst Bancshares' fourth quarter earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Davis Mange, Director of Investor Relations. Thank you, David. You may begin. Good afternoon, and welcome to our fourth quarter earnings call. We'll have Tom Broughton, our CEO, Bud Foshee, our CFO, and Henry Abbott, our Chief Credit Officer, covering some highlights from the quarter. We'll take your questions. I'll now cover our forward-looking statements disclosure. Some of the discussion in today's earnings call may include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ from any projections shared today due to factors described in our most recent 10-K and 10-Q filings. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made. ServisFirst assumes no duty to update them. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tom. Thank you, David. Good afternoon, welcome to our fourth quarter conference call. I do wanna make a few comments on the year I think are in order before we move on to the 2023 outlook. We certainly are pleased with the results of the year. It's the second straight year that our earnings per share growth exceeded 20%. Our return on equity exceeded 21% and our efficiency ratio was 29%. I must say this trifecta of twenties was due to the hard work of the best bankers in the industry. They actually do a pretty good job of making an average bank CEO look better than average. I appreciate what they do to make us successful and thank them for everything they've done for our company and for our shareholders. However, though, there's little time to celebrate success as our shareholders do wanna know what we plan to do in 2023. We'll move on in talking about, a little bit about the year and going forward. In talking about liquidity, our bankers have focused on building deposits since the middle of 2022. We have seen a steady increase in the deposit pipeline over the last four months. We're certainly pleased with the process, and we're consistently seeing the deposit pipeline at 150% of the loan pipeline. As Bud will cover, we did grow liquidity in the fourth quarter, and we're very pleased with our progress there. Fortunately, we built our bank with core deposits, which are primarily commercial, not any brokered CDs and Federal Home Loan Bank advances. Our, you know, our clean balance sheet is a tremendous asset in the current environment. On the loan side, we did see good loan growth in the fourth quarter. We always see robust loan demand in the fourth quarter as there's some year-end draws for company balance sheet purposes that we see. That's always strong. We do see some slowdown in our loan pipeline. It's mostly due to our being more selective on rate terms and structure and focusing on our core customers. Banks are in a much better position than in many years on the loan front. We are certainly in a stronger position. It will take time to see the improvement in loan yields, but it will come in the next couple of years. From a team standpoint, we brought in eight outstanding new bankers in the fourth quarter, and we now have 154 producers. While we are focused on cost containment in 2023, the door is always open for outstanding bankers. I'm gonna turn it over to Bud Foshee now. Thanks, Tom. Good afternoon. Liquidity. Our liquid assets increased by $470 million from September 30th to December 31st. We expect this positive trend to continue in 2023 as we anticipate low double-digit deposit growth versus high single-digit loan growth. Our net interest margin, PPP fees and interest income for $102 thousand in the fourth quarter of 2022 compared to $5.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. Year to date, PPP fees and interest income were $7.7 million in 2022. No triple fee income is anticipated for 2023. Deposits increased by $500 million in the fourth quarter. Our net interest margin by quarter, starting with the fourth quarter of 2021, it was 2.71%. First quarter of 2022, 2.89%. Second quarter, 3.26%. Third quarter, 3.64%. The fourth quarter of 2022, it was 3.52%. Our loan loss provision, our allowance for credit losses to total loans was 1.25% at December 31, 2022, that is unchanged from September 30, 2022. Our net charge offs average loans were 0.06% for the fourth quarter of 2022. Non-interest income, credit card income was $2.3 million in the fourth quarter versus $2.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. Our net interest cap income was $162,000 for the fourth quarter and $7 million year to date. We anticipate the net income to be zero in 2023 as the cap matures in May 2023. Non-interest expenses, salaries, and benefits, as a result of our market expansions, total salaries increased by $572,000 in the fourth quarter and by $6 million year-over-year. Fourth quarter 2022 incentive expense was $3.2 million versus $4.3 million for the third quarter of 2022. We had net new adds to staff of 13 employees during the fourth quarter and 71 for 2022 year to date. Capital. The bank's Tier 1 capital leverage ratio has improved by 192 basis points since December 31, 2021. The ratio was 7.79 at 12/31/2021, and it improved to 9.71 at 12/31/2022. Tax credits, we have taken steps to extend the benefit period of some of our proprietary tax credits. I'll turn the program over now to Henry. Thank you, Bud. I'm pleased with the bank's performance in 2022 and more specifically in the fourth quarter. During the past year, our borrowers have had to stand on their own in this post-COVID environment without major government stimulus that has occurred in prior years. Our customers have responded well, even in the face of rising inflation. The bank's balance sheet is well positioned for any uncertainty in 2023 and beyond, with a record low amount of OREO with less than $250,000 and NPAs total assets of roughly 12 basis points. Through loans, we continue to be selective with new clients. We want to grow our bank with clients who can fund both the asset side and liability side of our balance sheet. I'm pleased to say the majority of our credit metrics were in line with the prior quarter. That is near historical lows. I won't go into a ton of detail, but I'll be happy to cover specifics in the Q&A section of the call. Because of loan growth, the bank increased our allowance for credit losses for the quarter by $5.3 million, which amounts to an ALL to total loans of 1.25%. The past due loans at year-end were under $10 million on a loan portfolio of roughly $11.7 billion. We've not started to see weakening in the portfolio. Past dues were roughly $1 million less than they were in the third quarter. OREO portfolio decreased by $1 million for the quarter, so it's now only $248,000. Charge-offs for the quarter were 6 basis points when annualized. That's a decrease from 11 basis points for the prior quarter. We are proactive as possible on handling problem loans. We don't carry a known issue into the following year. Our overall credit metrics continued to be outstanding, continued to improve for the quarter. 2022 was a strong year for our bank. We head into 2023 well-positioned to maintain our status as one of the top performing banks in the country. That'll hand it back over to Tom. Thank you, Henry. One point I want to make is when we talk about the discussion on higher interest rates, and deposit betas and margin compression, is that while we may have some quarter-to-quarter issues, higher interest rates help not hurt banks. It seems like, you know, today banks are more attractive as an investment alternative than they have been in a decade. It's certainly interesting to me that some investors, they were selling bank stocks when rates were low, now they're selling bank stocks when rates are high. It's kind of hard to make some of them happy, it seems. You know, my first partner in the banking business years ago, after several years in business, he observed that we always do better when we need deposits. You know, we do. We do better when we need deposits. It's, you know, certainly you have more discipline on the loan side. You can, you know, be more selective. Also it helps you focus on what you need to do. Certainly, needing deposits is a good thing, and higher rates is a good thing for banks. You know, we're working on our 2023 budgets and finalizing those in the next couple of weeks as we plan the year. We have certainly made significant investments in new bankers in 2022 that we think we'll see the benefit of this year. As you can see, we've had a, you know, last couple of years certainly been robust from a hiring standpoint. We are very optimistic about the outlook for our footprint and particularly what our bank, we think, can produce, as we go forward, and we continue to see robust economic activity in the southeast. With that, we'll be happy to take any questions you might have. Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. One moment please, while we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question is from Bradley Milsaps with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question. Hey, good afternoon. Good afternoon, Brad. Hey, Brad. Tom or Bud, I was curious, you know, you did grow deposits by about a half a billion dollars, as you mentioned. I'm just curious, you know, what type of cost did those deposits have on average that you brought in? You know, I was looking at, you know, some of the supplemental data and noticed, you know, the spot rate on, you know, interest-bearing deposits, you know, much higher than kind of where you were on average for the quarter. Just kinda wanted to get a sense of, you know, kind of the pricing on some of that deposit pipeline that you guys talked about. Yeah. Let me at quarter end, the cost of our total deposits was 1.66%. Cost of interest-bearing DDAs was 2.39%, total cost of interest-bearing deposits was 2.32%. Yeah. Yeah, you know, Brad, there's probably not a lot of uniformity there. No. You know. Okay. You know, we're not in the buying deposits business, and we're in the business of developing relationships with customers. You know, most of the time when we go on a, you know, a call, most of the time, I'd say that the price of deposits never comes up. You know, that's not the sort of business we're in. You know, we're not the buying money standpoint business. It's kind of hard to give you a good answer, Brad, any better than that. Got it. Got it. Maybe asked differently. You know, Bud, in the past, you've been, you know, kind enough to give us sort of the most recent month, you know, net interest margin. I might be curious if you'd be willing to provide sort of, you know, most recent months net interest income. It would just seem that, you know, you've got quite a bit of a headwind as we kinda enter the first quarter, you know, given, you know, not only day count, but, you know, kind of where some of those deposit spot rates are. Just kinda wanna get a sense of, you know, kinda your momentum as you enter, you know, the first quarter, as it relates to NII. Yeah, in front of me, I don't have just the month of December. I think you can really look at what, you know, we've got a quarterly analysis of our margin and our rates, like where it was 352 in the margins for the quarter. I think 350 to 360 would be a good gauge for that. We just, you know, there's how much the Fed's slowing down its rate increases. I mean, it's still a guessing game as to where we're gonna be from a deposit cost standpoint. Kinda like Tom said, I mean, that's not the major thing we do when we call deposits, or we don't manage margin either. We continue to grow the bottom line and don't really look at just the margin each quarter. Okay. Then maybe just, you know, final question from me. I guess in total your, you know, expenses were up, you know, high teens in 2022. You know, I know there's a lot of incentive comp in there for the, for the year that you had. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, kinda where you would like to see that, you know, number maybe managed to in 2023, kinda maybe some, you know, different, you know, puts and takes you might have, maybe given the more challenging, you know, net interest income line? We don't anticipate that much really from a net staff additions in 2023. That, you know, salary increases should be in the 3%-4% range as review dates come up. We do anticipate with the conversion that we'll save money from an IT standpoint. I'm trying to think of anything else. You know, we had some unusual. We had, like in the third quarter, we had our lawsuit settlement. There were some other, you know, some other expenses like that that won't reoccur in 2023. All right, Tom. It also looked like this quarter you might have benefited or no, maybe that's year-over-year. No. kind of a reversal of the provision for unfunded commitments. Am I reading that correctly? We did. Yeah, that one, you just, you never really know what that number's gonna be each quarter. We did have a reversal in the fourth quarter. Okay. Did your unfundeds come down? Our funded beat the three-year average, which then caused it to decrease the need for the accrual. Okay. All right. Thank you, guys. I'll hop back in queue. Thanks, Brad. Thank you. Our next question is from David Bishop with the Hovde Group. Please proceed with your question. Yeah, good evening, good evening, gentlemen. Hey, Dave. Hey, hey, Bud, I think you said in the preamble, I'm not sure I heard you right, but, you felt pretty good about just maybe the outlook for at least the, direction of loan yields, over the next year or so. Did I hear you right? It looks like the loan rate was 5.41% at the end of the quarter, but just curious, maybe as you look out at a quarter or two, and assuming the Fed stops maybe in this quarter or next I'm just curious, what's the impact on loan yields in terms of the lag and catch up in terms of what you're booking, right now at market? You're talking about new loans or just what will reprice when the Fed makes a change? Yeah, new loans and how that may roll into the overall average loan yield over the next few quarters. Yeah. Well, a new loan should go on at least at prime, at 7.5% from that standpoint. When Fed raises rates over a 1-month period, we have about $4.2 billion that reprices. That will reprice. You have about $2.1 million that immediately reprices and then $6.1 billion that reprices during the next 30-day period. Over the next 30 days, okay, got it. Hard to give you a completed yield just based on the, you know, new loan volume. I don't have that, I don't have that projection. Got it. Just curious, and I think I heard you right, you're expecting, maybe low double-digit deposit growth. As part of that, maybe just drilling down this quarter, what were some of the trends in the correspondent banking division, those balances and, maybe number of new relationships you were able to add this quarter? Yeah. This is Rodney Rushing. We grew the correspondent relationships throughout the year. In the fourth quarter, I think our total number of new banks we added was seven for the quarter. Our total number of existing correspondent relationships is right at 340. I'll be off 1 or 2, but it's that close. For the fourth quarter, total fundings for correspondent grew by, I think it was $140 million for the quarter. For the year, correspondent balances were down, mostly in the DDA balances because banks didn't have to keep near as much in their analysis account with rates going up as fast as they did in 2022. We moved some of that into Fed funds and then some moved out, and as my correspondent banks, their liquidity was put to work and has declined just like ours did in 2022. The correspondent division has continued to grow our relationships, and we're looking at a couple of new markets in 2023 that we haven't finalized, which one we're going to go to yet. We're still growing it, and we anticipate it continuing to grow. Do you have the dollar balance at year-end? Just shy of $2.5 billion. I think it was $2.468 billion. Got it. On the credit front, just curious within the outlook for high single-digit loan growth. Any areas where you're being more conservative, more cautious, pulling the reins back from an underwriting and credit perspective? You know, I think kind of across the board, more specifically in commercial real estate, you know, sticking with, you know, core customers who can have deposits and have loans with us and seeing how business is where we're focused this year. Yeah, Dave, this is Tom. You know, just to jump in, it's we can be more selective today than ever. It's, it's really an outstanding time. I mean, that's why my old partner said things are better when we need deposits because you make better decisions, and we certainly can be very selective on the loan side, and we can, you know, be much more proactive in pricing rate structure today than... You know, we try not to ever give on structure, we can certainly be more proactive than we've ever been in a long time. How about that? Got it. Appreciate the color. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. Well, if there are no more questions. Thank you. Sorry. Yep. There are no further questions at this time. I'd just like to turn the floor back to Tom Broughton for any closing comments. Thank you. Sorry for interrupting. Brad, earlier, we're working on 2023 budgets and, you know, we give you a little bit better idea on expense management after we finish them. We just started. You know, we got our first run, you know, about Saturday, a week ago, so that's the first time we saw a, you know, anything to a beginning point. We're not even close to the finish line yet. We are much, very proactive in expense management for the year as we go forward. That's certainly something we're gonna work on. I think, you know, we always say we're a disciplined growth company that sets high standards for performance, and this was a great year for us to outperform the industry and show that we are what we say we are. I think, probably a lot of banks are gonna probably set very low goals based on what I see you analysts throwing out there. In any event, it was a great year for Dot, and we appreciate everybody joining us on the call. Hope everybody has a good evening. Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.