Good morning, and welcome to the West Bancorporation quarterly earnings call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal the conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Doug Gulling, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. On the call today, we have Dave Nelson, our Chief Executive Officer, Jane Funk, Chief Accounting Officer, Brad Winterbottom, West Bank President, Harlee Olafson, Chief Risk Officer, and Brad Peters, our Minnesota Group President. We'll begin with our fair disclosure statement. Comments made during this conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any forward-looking statement made by us during this call is based only on information currently available to us and speaks only as of today's date. The company undertakes no obligation to revise or update such statements to reflect current events or circumstances after this call or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. Dave Nelson will start us off. Good morning. Thank you, Doug. Thank you, everyone, for your interest in our company and joining us today. West Bank is and has been operating under non-pandemic protocols, and we had a great quarter. Year-to-date, our ROE is almost 21%. We've had year-to-date loan growth of about 10% with deposit growth at almost 20%. We have deployed our excess liquidity. We also hired three new commercial bankers for our Des Moines market, and we have already exceeded last year's record earnings in just nine months of operations. Actually, we did it in eight months. Perhaps even most impressive, as of quarter-end, September 30th, 2021, we didn't have a single past due loan past 30 days. Based upon that performance, our Board of Directors declared a $0.24 dividend per share payable November 24th, 2021 to shareholders of record on November 10th, 2021. With that, I'll turn the call over to Harlee Olafson, our Chief Risk Officer. Okay, thank you, Dave. I will make some brief comments on credit quality and our watch list. First of all, we have a very small number of watch list credits. All credits on the watch list either have an exit plan or we believe they have improving financial performance that will allow them to exit the watch list and return to an acceptable classification. All credits are properly structured, and none are past due or have any history of past due payments. As Dave said, in fact, our entire credit portfolio did not have one past due loan over 30 days at the end of September. We have one credit with a specific reserve of $2.5 million that is on nonaccrual. They have executed a plan that sells fixed assets that should virtually eliminate our nonaccrual by year-end. We have tracked carefully the credits that have been impacted by the pandemic, namely hotels and movie theaters. I'm very pleased with the progress they have made and their return to positive cash flows. Payment protection loans are now down to less than $40 million, and we continue to receive payments almost daily from the SBA. I expect that the total dollars outstanding will be minimal by year-end. As we reported last quarter, we have no credits that have COVID modifications still in place. All that were are back on standard amortizing terms. We had a recent regulatory exam and did not have any risk rating changes or discussions on credits within the bank. In summary, our watch list is small. We have no past dues, and our customers have more liquidity than at any time I can recall. I do not expect any surprises to come in our credit portfolio. Other risks, including business continuation plans and IT enhancements to protect the integrity of our systems, are continually being implemented. With that, I will turn it over to Brad Winterbottom to discuss our markets and growth. Thank you. My comments will be brief. Dave mentioned our loan growth for the year is at 10%, and during the third quarter, it was approximately 4%. Primarily real estate secured transactions, some C&I, but mostly real estate. In the fourth quarter, we do have projected payoffs of roughly $75 million, based upon asset sales or refinance elsewhere. Our pipeline is good. We'll have a little bit of headwind to replace that, but I think we can do that in the fourth quarter. Our loan growth and deposit growth is coming from all markets with a heavier emphasis in our Minnesota markets. Dave mentioned also, we hired three commercial bankers, two of which have started employment here. The third one will land on the ground next week. These are very experienced bankers that have had tremendous relationships at their previous employer, and that too will help our growth plans. With that, I'll end and turn it over to Brad Peters. Thanks, Brad. Good morning, everyone. I'm gonna provide a brief update on our progress in Minnesota. Our team continues to make good progress in building our presence in each of our Minnesota regional centers. Each of our markets continues to see solid growth, and our bankers are focused on C&I, and the activities around C&I have created ongoing new business opportunities. Loan outstandings in our four Minnesota markets have grown to nearly $600 million, and our C&I focus has driven strong core deposit growth and Treasury Management business. Our new building in the St. Cloud market is scheduled to be completed late this year, and we plan to move into the new facility in mid-January. The Mankato market has purchased a building site with construction scheduled to begin late in the first quarter of 2022, and our Owatonna market is exploring potential sites for a new building. That is the end of my comments. I will now turn it over to Jane. Yeah. Good morning. I'm just gonna give a little bit more information on the PPP loans. Like Harlee said, at quarter-end, we had $47 million of PPP balances remaining. Those are still paying down nicely. We're down to around $35 million-$36 million today. At quarter- end, we had $1.6 million of fees, unamortized origination fees, yet to be recognized. As those pay down and that acceleration occurs, that's what we've got remaining to recognize there. Just to compare from an income statement standpoint, quarter- to- date, for third quarter, we recognized about $1.6 million of income from the PPP loans, compared to $1.4 million last year. Year- to- date, for the nine months, we've recognized $5.8 million versus $2.4 million last year. That gives you a little idea of the impact on loan interest income. Now I'll turn it over to Doug. Okay. I just have a couple of comments. One, I'll comment on the provision. Of course, everybody always wonders what, you know, our provision will be in the fourth quarter. Of course, we don't make that decision until right at the end of the fourth quarter. Sitting here today, you know, Harlee mentioned that there are plans in place for the nonaccruals to decline. We'll look at our watch list and then look at loan growth, the net loan growth for the fourth quarter. Sitting here today, our best guess would be that the provision would be in a narrow range between a modest negative provision and a modest positive provision. That would be our thought at the present time on that. As far as the margin's concerned, you know, going forward in the fourth quarter, you know, Brendan from Piper Sandler wrote in his first look that, you know, he pointed out that our end of period versus average quarterly liquidity suggests more remixing benefit to the margin next quarter. I would agree with that statement in that we did add quite a bit to the investment portfolio right at the end of the third quarter. We will have the benefit of that, you know, during the entire fourth quarter. Then, you know, offsetting that or working against that will be, you know, any loan pay downs and refinancings that, you know, take place generally are at a lower rate than the existing rate. But all in all, I would expect the margin to be fairly constant to maybe a slight improvement in the fourth quarter. With that concludes our prepared remarks, and we'd be happy to answer any questions. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touch-tone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. We will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Brendan Nosal from Piper Sandler. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, folks. How are you doing? Oh, good. Morning, Brendan. Good. Hey, guys. Thank you for the detailed prepared remarks. You hit a lot of the questions I was gonna ask, but definitely have a few more for you. Maybe to start off, I heard that you added three commercial bankers this quarter. Just kind of curious, you know, your appetite to add further bankers and perhaps kind of where in your market you would like to most see additions. Well, there's nothing specifically planned. To add, we did have conversation and talked about the three that we added. You know, that was probably a good quarter or two discussions before we pulled the trigger. We don't have anything specifically now. However, if an experienced one showed up and we like them in any market, we would add to them. Chances are we would add to them. We don't have anything planned though. Yeah. The only add to that, we didn't really touch on our Eastern Iowa market. The Eastern Iowa market continues to grow and become very strong. We do believe that there is an opportunity to possibly add one over. That would be the next likely place where we have a possible candidate place to add to that marketplace. Got it. Okay, good. Maybe just to have kind of a question on the higher inflation numbers we're seeing. Just kind of curious how concerned your commercial borrowers are about inflation they're seeing in their own wage bases and input costs. Also just to what extent you're seeing the effects of inflation in your own expense base. Well, certainly we're having conversations, and there is, there's some caution there. Construction costs have certainly increased. We've had a couple of developers back off on some planned activity. Our home building business right now though is, I think we've got 350 probably ± 25 homes under construction, with a couple handful of builders, primarily in central Iowa. Their costs are up. However, the demand is there. Typically, if they start a spec within six months, it's sold with a closing three months down. There's certainly some issues as it relates to caution as it relates to inflation, but, nothing out of the ordinary really, though. Do you agree with that, Harlee? I do. I think we look at it, even though we can't predict the future in regard to all that kind of stuff, but it does have some interesting things that are going on. Some of our C&I customers have trouble getting inventory, and when they get it's sold immediately. The strength that I see on the commercial side of the business right now is the levels of liquidity that the commercial borrowers are holding. Yeah, there could be. I think there's been a slowdown in some levels of construction. I think overall, the strength of the customer base is very good when they have been making good net incomes and holding a lot of liquidity. Okay. That's helpful. Maybe turning to loan growth, obviously an incredibly strong couple of quarters here for you folks. It certainly sounds like next quarter will be a good bit softer just given the elevated payoff activity. I'm just kind of curious how you think about growth outside of that temporary or transitory slowdown into next year. Well, adding some additional bankers should help. Maybe Brad Peters might wanna comment a little bit more on the things that are happening up in Minnesota. I, you know, I would say we hire people to go find new business and maintain existing relationships, and they're doing a pretty good job of it. We're growing in Minnesota. We should continue to grow in Minnesota. Brad, do you have any? Yeah, Brad, I would agree. I would expect that we're gonna continue to see solid growth in each of our markets. I don't really see anything that's going to curtail that. As we go into next year, just looking at what's in the pipeline and the opportunities that exist, I think the growth will continue. Okay. Fantastic. All right. right. Good. Maybe turning to expenses, as we look ahead, added a few bankers this quarter. It sounds like some of which kind of came on later in the quarter, maybe a little bit of an inflation pressure as well. Just kind of curious how you think about near-term expense-based outlook. We don't really see that running away from us. I mean, yes, we added three bankers in the third quarter, and they kind of came on. Well, one was at the beginning, one was in the middle, and the other one, although he's kind of gonna hit the ground next week, I mean, we've been paying for him since August. You know, I don't think we really expect expenses to significantly change. Okay, wonderful. Let me turn to credit. I just wanna confirm that I heard correctly that the one remaining nonaccrual loan has $2.5 million specifically there. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. All right. There's. You have two. Yeah, we have two nonaccrual loans. One is very small. One is the only one that's fairly significant. The one that is significant had, I think, $8 million reduction in the quarter of our total commitment there. They have a plan. They have another property that sold that's supposed to close in early November. That would take the number down to a less significant place than it is right now. They have plans in place that appear that are working, that are going to, as I said, expect that to eliminate mainly by the end of the year. Okay, wonderful. Maybe one more from me. Just kind of thinking about the margin and the potential for higher interest rates. You know, I think your disclosure in the Q shows that you might be slightly asset sensitive, but thinking back to the last time that rates rose, I think deposit repricing ended up resulting in some overall margin pressure. Just can you update us on your thoughts of how you expect the NIM to respond to rising short-term rates, if and when that happens? Yeah. Well, there's no question that we do have some deposits tied to short-term interest rates. Overall, we believe, you know, based on our models, that there'd be a slight increase in net interest income. All right. Wonderful. Well, thank you all for taking my questions. Yep. Thanks, Brendan. Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. There are no more questions in the queue. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Doug Gulling for any closing remarks. Well, that's all we have for today. We thank you for joining us and thank you for your interest in our company, and we'll talk about the fourth quarter in late January. Thank you. Conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.