Good day, and welcome to the Texas Capital Bancshares Q4 2020 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode during the presentation. Please note this event is being recorded. If you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. I would now like to turn the call over to Shannon Wherry, Director of Communications. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us for TCBI's Q4 2020 earnings conference call. I'm Shannon Wherry, Director of Communications. Before we begin, please be aware this call will include forward-looking statements that are based on our current expectations of future results or events. Forward-looking statements are subject to those known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. Our forward-looking statements are as of the date of this call, and we do not assume any obligation to update or revise them. Statements made on this call should be considered together with the cautionary statements and other information contained in today's earnings release, our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, and subsequent filings with the SEC. We will refer to slides during today's presentation, which can be found along with the press release in the investor relations section of our website at texascapitalbank.com. Our speakers for the call today are Larry Helm, Executive Chair, President, and CEO, and Julie Anderson, CFO. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, our operator will facilitate a Q&A session. Now, I will turn the call over to Larry for opening remarks. Thanks, Shannon, and welcome everybody, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. On May 26, 2020, the board asked me to step in as interim CEO as we were terminating a merger and in a leadership transition period. In my first earnings call with you in July, I said we were putting into place a 6 to 18-month plan to restore our earnings to a higher and more sustainable trajectory. I said we would do this through getting our arms around credit, increasing profitability by moving some excess liquidity into a higher-yielding investment portfolio, expense rationalization, investment in C&I bankers and product sets, and completing the succession planning process by hiring our next CEO. Our results this quarter are in line with our plan. We made significant progress with the credit portfolio, including a provision similar to the Q3. As JT and Julie will describe in a few minutes, we saw meaningful improvement in non-performing and criticized levels, and importantly, the migration to classified has slowed. We had charge-offs resulting from issues previously identified, as two-thirds of that was already fully reserved. This included the resolution of three problem energy credits, which were restructured into one smaller pass credit, and the resolution of two COVID-impacted credits. During the quarter, payoffs of classified loans at par were approximately $100 million. I have been very proud of our team as they have fully embraced this short-term strategy, successfully navigating the pandemic by taking good care of our clients and improving our credit performance and our outlook. I announced the hiring of our new CEO, Rob Holmes, in November after a nationwide search. Although he has officially been on garden leave these last 90 days, he has been studying our company, our employees, our markets, our clients, and opportunities to improve our outlook for the long term. Next week, he will begin formal reviews of our lines of business and carefully assess overall strategy. I could not be more pleased with the choice our board made in hiring Rob. He will hit the ground running on Monday, January 25th. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Julie to walk us through the quarterly results. Thanks, Larry. We're pleased to have finished the year strong, executing on the mid-year plan Larry mentioned. Total revenue for the Q4 was $266 million, which is consistent with the Q3 level. Part of our plan was to capitalize on market conditions favorable to our mortgage finance business to drive meaningful revenue using our lowest risk loan category while we continue to de-risk in certain categories and while demand for other risk-appropriate growth has been slow. During that time, we've continued recruiting and hiring C&I bankers. 10 new bankers have been hired since June 30th. The recruiting of bankers continues. As expected, the Q4 provision was in line with the Q3 level and is primarily reflective of changes to impairment amounts and the subsequent charge-offs in the resolution of two COVID-impacted credits. Additionally, deferrals totaled $90 million at the end of December, down from $166 million at the end of September. Since late Q3, we've taken a more comprehensive restructuring approach in addressing deferral requests that don't simply involve extending payments or suspending payments for a period of time. Generally, these negotiations include providing the borrower some level of payment relief while requiring continued interest payments and a range of covenant and support requirements from the borrower. As a reminder, we started with $1.2 billion of deferrals at June the 30th. The current number is representative of the work that's been done as we've actively engaged with our clients in understanding the COVID impact on their businesses. It's premature to give guidance on provision at this point because certainly there are plenty of unknowns with the continued pandemic. What we will say is assuming no meaningful deterioration in the economy, we would expect 2021 provision levels to be directionally much lower than full year 2020. Now I'll move on to a few of the details for the quarter. Average loans held for investment, excluding mortgage finance, was down on a linked quarter basis as we've continued to experience accelerated CRE payoffs and utilization rates have remained low. Obviously, loan growth is only one output of new relationships, and we're seeing positive traction in attracting new relationships, as evidenced by loan deposit and treasury pipelines. The push for expanding existing relationships is showing success. There was positive movement in core loan yields in the Q4, which included a higher level of fees, part of which was related to PPP. Loan spread improved as well, with funding costs continuing to come down. We experienced another quarter of meaningful average deposit growth. We expect continued reduction in funding costs as higher cost CDs run off and as term FHLB borrowings mature, and those balances going forward move to lower overnight rates. Again, longer term, the real driver of improved funding costs will be the optimization of the funding stack to lower beta relationship deposits consistent with our core C&I strategy. Net interest income was up compared to the last two quarters, with NIM improving in the Q4. As we continue to say, we're always focused on maximizing net interest income despite some fluctuations in NIM. It is important to note the drop in NIM, net of the liquidity build since the Q4 of 2019 has been only two basis points. NIM can continue to fluctuate with shifts in earning assets. Since mid-year, we've been able to deploy approximately $3 billion in securities at an average yield of 1.4%. We will continue to assess this strategy, but pace of build could slow as we evaluate overall macro environment conditions and our new CEO's broader strategic objectives. Warehouse yields continued to decline slightly linked quarter, but have been extremely resilient throughout 2020. We do expect some continued compression in those yields in 2021. Core LHI yields improved during the quarter and included the higher level of fees, only part of which was PPP. At the end of the year, over 30% of our core LHI loans had floors in place, which continues to improve despite the competitive environment. Again, we still believe there's some room for deposit pricing to come down as higher priced CDs continue to roll off and FHLB term borrowings mature and move to overnight borrowings. The provision for the quarter was $32 million, and approximately two-thirds of that was related to additional impairment on two previously identified COVID-impacted credits that were resolved this quarter. Additionally, there was continued negative migration during the quarter, primarily in CRE and specifically the hotel book, but that was partially offset by meaningful payoffs of problem credits and some upgrades. Total criticized decreased as a result of the payoffs as well as charge-offs. As we expected, charge-offs were higher in the Q4 and will continue to be more elevated as we move through the cycle. Q4 included resolution of three fully reserved energy deals and the two previously identified COVID-impacted deals. The pace of migration to criticized slowed during the quarter. While again, it's too early to declare victory because we have a meaningful number of deals still to be resolved, we feel comfortable that the remaining criticized book is comprised of loans that have secondary sources of repayment, very different in profile than what we experienced with some of the energy and leverage credits we resolved earlier this year. Non-interest income levels were consistent with expectations as gain on sale was lower with competition and lower volume. We are, of course, influenced by the market and contraction of the healthy primary, secondary spreads enjoyed earlier in the year. There are certainly a variety of factors that influence the gains we realize. While we expect gain on sale margins to remain strong through the H1 of 2021, we do expect some continued compression. Core non-interest expenses for the quarter included the benefits from the actions taken earlier in the year. The Q4 total non-interest expense was slightly higher than expected, primarily related to servicing expenses, and more specifically, the continued increase in amortization expense related to early payoff. We're working on strategic alternatives to lessen that exposure in 2021. Our initial plan for 2021 non-interest expense calls for levels to be flat to down slightly, but we'll be reevaluating that as we work with Rob on strategic priorities. We do know that investing in C&I bankers will continue. Our recruiting efforts have been very successful in the last six months, and we expect that success to gain even more traction when Rob joins us. Larry? Thank you, Julie. Appreciate those comments. Questions, Q&A? Yes. Why don't we move to Q&A? Operator? Thank you. To ask a question, please press star then one on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble the roster. Our first question today will come from Brett Rabatin with Hovde Group. Please go ahead. Hey, good afternoon, everyone. Hi, Brett. Wanted to first just talk about the loan growth outlook and obviously you've been working through some credits, and it's good to see the NPAs down and. Dealing with those energy and leverage credits, can you talk about maybe the pipeline, where it is today, maybe versus at the end of last year and at some point, during the summer months when it was obviously impacted by COVID? Look, we're still in the middle of a pandemic, we're not really giving guidance on what loans are going to do over the next 12 months. Our clients have done well through this period of time. We're beginning to see opportunities that we haven't seen in the past. We believe that there will be opportunities for good loan demand. I think it will be soft, certainly in the H1 of the year. We'll see what the H2 looks like as we get further into any economic consequences of this pandemic. Okay. That's helpful. Secondly, I think PPP loans were $715 million at the end of 3Q. What were they at the end of 4Q? Can you talk maybe about the matriculation of the fees in the H1 of this year as those loans are forgiven? Just maybe any thoughts on the second round of PPP. I'll take the fee part, and then JT can talk about the balances. The fees, we would expect there still to be some impact from the fees for the next two quarters at least, as those pay off. Yeah, as far as the PPP loans, we had a peak of $717 million in Q2. That's down to $617 million now, so about $100 million down. The prospects of a second round going forward, at this point, we opened up our application process at the beginning of this week. Based on early returns, we would estimate somewhere between 30%-50% of the volume that we saw in the first round program. Okay. If I could sneak in one last one. I was just curious on if you had maybe the loss factor, what you realized on those net charge-offs in the energy and leveraged loans, what kind of loss you took on those. That's not something that we usually give. I can tell you that the energy deals were energy deals that had been problems for a while, so that wouldn't really be representative of anything that would be left in the book. The COVID impacted credits, those credits were fine prior to the COVID. Yeah, we don't really talk about that. I guess what I would point you to, Brett, is that what's left, when you look at the breakdown of what's left in non-performing, I think that the secondary sources of repayment, we feel good about. I think that's probably- Okay what you're focused on is loss exposure going forward. Right. All right. I appreciate all the color. Thanks. Our next question will come from Brady Gailey with KBW. Please go ahead. Hey, thanks. Good afternoon. Hey, Brady. I just wanted to ask about the growth in the bond book. I know you guys signaled that you'd be adding, and you did the back half of last year. What about from here? What about into 2021? Will growth in the bond book continue at this pace, or will it slow, or will it be flat? How are you thinking about putting excess liquidity to work in the bond book? Yeah, I think that we've been pretty aggressive since the middle of the year at moving that up because we needed to pick up the yield. I think we'll be cautious of what's going on with rates. We're going to be cautious. We're going to spend time with Rob and figure out what strategic objectives we're going to be focused on. I would say, in a couple of months, we'll tell you more about what we're planning for the bond portfolio. I think for now, we would probably expect to pause a little bit on some of that growth. Sure. Then within the fee income, you have the line that's the gain on the sale of loans held for sale from MCA. That line could just be all over the place and very lumpy. Yeah. Any color on I think for full year 2020, you did about $58 million. How should we think about that going forward? I think that it hit its peak in the Q2. Like I said in my commentary, that's when we were all taking advantage of the premium pricing. It hit the peak in the Q2. Was a little bit less in the third, and then a little bit less in the fourth. I think that the Q4 is probably a decent run rate. There could be a little bit more compression, but I think the Q4 is probably a decent run rate for what you'd see going forward. Okay. All right, great. Thanks, guys. Thanks. Our next question will come from Brad Milsaps with PSC. Please go ahead. Hey, good evening. Hello, Brad. How are you? Hey, Julie. How you doing? Just to kind of follow up on Brady's question around the bond portfolio. It looks like the yield stayed pretty stable linked quarter at around 144. I was thinking you're maybe buying stuff in the low ones, but just kind of curious how that's changed and do you expect that to hold fairly stable, assuming you kind of slow down some of the purchases in 2021? Yeah, I think we will slow down a little bit. We're cautiously evaluating that now. I don't think you'll see much change in the rate if we do a little bit more. Again, I think we're going to pause on that as we kind of evaluate Rob's strategic objectives. Okay, great. Just in terms of the warehouse, just curious what the participation number was this quarter. I know you're probably not going to give a lot of guidance for 2021, just kind of wanted to think about what maybe you could call back in to maybe offset some of the natural maybe slowdown we see this year. We have a little over $1 billion. I think it's probably $1.2 billion, $1.3 billion at the end of the year. Yes, that would all be available to. The commitment level's a little bit higher than that, but outstanding at the end of the year was about $1.2 billion. That's absolutely available to bring back on during the year if we choose to do so. Okay, great. Just one kind of final housekeeping. I apologize if I missed this in the release, the tax rate was maybe a little higher in the Q4. Was there something specific going on there or just making more money and kind of that rerated higher? There's just something else going on in the tax rate? Yeah. Well, that has to do with losing money for the first six months of the year and so the rate on the permanent items. Yeah, that was a little bit higher. I would expect 2021 goes back to a more normalized rate. Okay. All right, great. Thank you guys. Thanks. Our next question will come from Jennifer Demba with Truist. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good afternoon. Just wanting some more color on your expense guidance. I think you said it'd be flattish this year and year-over-year. You do want to continue doing hiring. Can you just talk about what your hiring objectives are and kind of what the puts and takes are on the expenses for this year, Julie? Thanks. Yeah. What I said was our preliminary plan, and that's preliminary pre-rob plan. It's kind of flat to down a little bit, but we'll certainly be evaluating that as Rob joins us next week. The hiring, and that included the flat to down included some expected hiring of bankers. I think that's probably been what we've hired so far was what we planned or maybe a little bit ahead of plan. Again, I think it's premature for us to give any guidance on that. After Rob gets here and we start to reevaluate all that, we'll try to give you a little more guidance on that. I guess I would tell you in the support areas, what we've said is in the support areas. The support areas are going to be focused on giving the front line what they need and the hires are going to be focused in the front line primarily as of right now. Okay. You would think that you would hire at least the number of people that you hired in 2020 this year? Well, what I've said was we've hired 10 C&I bankers in the last six months. Again, there's a pipeline for more talent, but I think it's premature for Larry or I to tell you how many bankers we think we'll hire. We'll wait and let Rob talk to you about that. Okay. Thank you. Our next question will come from Bill Dezellem with Tieton Capital Management. Please go ahead. Thank you. Would you please discuss the $5.7 million of energy loan recovery in the Q4? Yeah, Bill. That was just related to a previous charge-off that we took, where there were some recoveries. Yeah, that's kind of all there is to say. It was a deal where there was a previous charge-off, and we knew there might be some recoveries, and they've come through. JT, anything else to add? Yeah, I wouldn't expect that to be reoccurring. I think that pretty much wraps that up. It was related to one deal. If we were to want to take it one step further and have the presumption or the hope that higher crude oil and natural gas prices would actually help with future recoveries and/or take some of your current non-performers in the energy arena and move them out of those buckets. Is that something that you're thinking is possible, or are most of them too far gone at this point? I think I would say that I don't think there's going to be recoveries. I don't think that the current commodity pricing would affect future recoveries. Yeah. Certainly, the overall book is more stable with prices at this level. It certainly factors into our reasonable and supportable forecast and how we think of just the economic impact on our reserve needs. Recoveries in the prospective natural gas and oil prices doesn't factor into our calculations at this point. Nice surprises, not anything that we're counting on or that we have specific line of sight into. No worries. Last question. You'd mentioned the provision going forward will be down in 2021, will be down from 2020. That's a little bit of an easy hurdle. Let me ask it in a slightly different way. How do you view the provision going forward relative to the H2 of 2020? Yeah. This is J.T here. The way that I would describe it is the next two quarters are going to be extremely telling. Depending on the asset class, the recovery is quicker or elongated, commercial real estate being the prime example, where if you look at peak to trough on commercial real estate based on what you read in the macroeconomic forecast, we're out there still another two and a half years before CRE has a final reckoning. We're cautiously optimistic. The information that we continue to get on the economy and just how sustainable the vaccination gets rolled out and how quickly that can get administered and how that decreases the volatility in the economic forecast will have a huge impact. We do like the mix of our criticized assets better now than we did, given that that pool now is representative of the lower loss given default asset pool. We'll see how it goes. What I would suggest is we won't revisit 2020. H2 of 2020 feels more directionally correct than the H1. Thank you both. You're welcome. Again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star then one. Our next question will come from Matt Olney with Stephens. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thanks for taking the question. I want to circle back on the discussion around liquidity. I believe the average overnight liquidity position was down a little bit, but still around 30% of earning assets. You've talked about over time kind of moderating this. How much realistic opportunity is there to bring this down in 2021 and 2022? We're focused on optimizing the funding stack, certainly there are some actions that we will take to reduce exposures to some of the index deposits. That's going to happen over time, Matt. That doesn't happen quickly. Definitely there are already actions in motion to reduce some of those higher beta deposits over the course of 2021. Obviously, the overall liquidity, that's dependent on how core deposits grow. More to come as we see how the year evolves. Certainly we are focused on repositioning the funding mix. Okay. Got it. Thank you. On the loan yield side, the LHI loan yields, it was impressive in the quarter. I think you said it includes some higher fees even outside of PPP. Yes. Can you quantify what the quarter-to-quarter change was in the Q4? Yeah. I don't like to get into specifics about that. I guess what I would tell you is I would expect Q1 LHI yield, there could be some compression there. We'll still have some impact from fees. Then just the pipeline for some new deals and related fees is good. I do think that Q1 will have some of that. It would not be surprising if Q1 LHI yield is compressed a little bit from the Q4. Got it. Okay. Just lastly, you mentioned the expectations for expenses kind of flattish from here, if not down a little bit. What's the starting base that we need to start from for that assumption? Normalized for this year. The normalized for this year, yeah. In 2020, let's see. Yeah. $600. Yeah. A normalized of about $600. Okay. $600 million is the starting point. Yeah for the flat to down commentary. Okay. Yeah, that's pretty much a normalized for 2020. Okay, great. Thank you. Sure. This will conclude our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to President and CEO, Larry Helm, for any closing remarks. Look, thank you for joining us today. I really appreciate your patience with us as we go through this transition in leadership. I promise you it will pay off, and we will be able to answer a lot more of your questions as we get further into the next administration. Again, thank you very much for your patience with us and your attention to our company. I hope you guys have a great and a safe weekend. Thanks. Thank you for your participation in TCBI's Q4 2020 earnings conference call. Please direct requests for follow-up questions to Julie Anderson at julie.anderson@texascapitalbank.com. You may now disconnect.