Good morning. And welcome to the First Quarter 2017 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Chief Operating Officer, Dennis Zember. Please go ahead.

All right. Thank you, Phil. And thank you for everybody who has joined the call today. My apology if you had to hear that twice. During the call today, we'll be referencing the press release and the financial highlights that are available within our Investor Relations -- the Investor Relations section of our website at amerisbank.com. I'm joined today by Ed Hortman, President and CEO; and Nicole Stokes, CFO of Ameris Bank. Ed will make some opening comments about the quarter and some of the items we are focused on, and then I will spend some time going over some of the details. Before we begin, I'll remind you that our comments may include forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. The actual results could vary materially. We list some of the factors that might cause results to differ materially in our press release and in our SEC filings, which are available on our website. We do not assume any obligation to update forward-looking statements as a result of new information, early developments or otherwise, except as maybe required by law. Also during the call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures in reference to the company’s performance. We provided a reconciliation of these measures and our GAAP financial measures in the appendix to our presentation. And with that, I will turn it over to Ed Hortman.

Thank you, Dennis. Good morning, everyone. And thank you for taking the time to join our first quarter earnings call. I am excited about the results that we reported this quarter and even more excited about the momentum we have going into the second quarter and the remainder of the year. We reported operating earnings of $0.60 per share, which is up 20% from the $0.50 per share we reported in the same quarter last year. Total operating earnings for the quarter were up 32% to $21.6 million, which reflects the additional shares we’ve issued in acquisitions, as well as in the recent capital raise. Our results for this quarter reflect the additional earnings from the Jacksonville Bancorp acquisition that was not reflected in the first quarter results for 2016. Additionally, earnings contribution from our joint venture with U.S. Premium Finance was part of our great story in the first quarter. Those collectively represent about half of our growth. The rest of the growth in earnings is from organic growth in the balance sheet, coupled with really impressive management of operating expenses. Our organic growth with lower efficiency ratios going to continue to be an impressive earnings driver that should hold our operating rations in the favorable place they are today. Speaking of operating ratios, operating return on assets for the first quarter came in at 1.27%, compared to 1.18% in the same quarter of last year. Our return on tangible capital was up slightly at 15.8%, compared to 15.4% in the first quarter of 2016. Our margin, excluding the effect of accretion was up about 6 basis points against the linked-quarter, which resulted primarily from the acquisition of the loan portfolio U.S. premium finance. Against the year ago period, we’re down about 1 basis point, which I consider success,…

All right. Thank you, Ed. Like I said earlier, I’ll be referencing the financial highlights in the slides that we published, as I’ll give you some more detail on the quarter. Let’s start on the -- our net interest income and the margin. For the quarter, we’re reporting $62.1 million tax equivalent net interest income, which is up about $3.2 million against the linked-quarter and up almost $11 million against the year ago period. Like Ed said that, against the linked-quarter, we really benefited from the boost that we got on the portfolio of United State premium finance, which is -- which more than offset the impact of a shorter quarter. Our margin excluding accretion income moved higher by 6 basis points, which was a combination of several events. Ed mentioned the impact that US premium finance gave us was about 7 basis points. We believe that impact is, yeah, that’s we believe -- that’s the impact that we’ll see going forward. The capital rate raise and debt offering happened in the last months of the quarter. So the negative margin impact of this came in at only about 2 basis points. We’ve been saying that the capital raise and debt offering would be about 5 basis points to 6 basis points dilutive to the margin. But I’ve been using an investment rate of about 3%, which is probably low, given the growth forecast we have. We think we may be able to neutralize that impact of that by the third quarter or fourth quarter. Lastly, the -- we had a slightly better earning asset mix with a little more concentrated in loans, which gave us about 1 basis point in the margin. We’re not really seeing a tremendous amount of deposit pricing pressure yet, which I believe is driven…

Okay. Thank you very much. [Operator Instructions] Okay. The first question comes from Brady Gailey from KBW. Please go ahead.

Hey. Good morning, guys.

Good morning.

Good morning.

So, one question just on the BSA issue. It seems like everything is kind of been done, you're looking at completing the look back, what -- when you think the look back will be done, it seems like that's kind of the going to last step?

Brady, I know that the last thing I’d want to do is be critical. But we had a slight delay getting FDIC to approve to act on, to give us their non-objection. So, that’s too much. But our timeline is still intact. We are on other parts of the project, we’re 30 days ahead. So, all-in-all, the look back is the final piece, but you don’t know what you’re going to find on the look back. We’d certainly don’t expect anything, but that’s the only unknown at this point and we’ve heard comments from others that other banks are not getting up from under their order as quickly as we would have finished ours. But I would tell you we’ve been working on it for almost a year since August. We had our action plan in place in August of last year. So we’ve been working seamlessly on it and we still expect to be totally finished with our part by June 30th. I can’t speak to what the FDIC timing will be. But they’ve indicated that they will be in on visitation in June. So my expectation is that it will be slowly drawn out, but that’s it in the nutshell.

Okay. All right. That’s helpful. And then, hopefully, sometime soon, this BSA thing will be behind you all. As you look forward to additional M&A, you have done some creative stuff here recently with some kind of non-bank related path. Did you think going forward your M&A strategy will be bank focused or would you also be open to doing some non-bank stuff?

We’d be open to do both, obviously, I mean we’ve had significant conversations with conditional banks like we’ve done in the past and I think that’s just a real opportunity. We’re working, as Dennis mentioned, on as we approach the $10 billion and go beyond that, what gaps do we have, what resources do we need, we’ve been working on that and invested in that, and we will continue to do that. And there, as well as, there’s opportunity to leverage our premium finance business and our equipment finance business. So, we will look at those opportunities as well. I would just reiterate, what we said, our number one focus is BSA, number two is organic, and making sure we can execute the way we have this quarter, last quarter, last several quarters, but we absolutely intend to augment that with M&A.

Okay. Great. Thanks for the color.

Okay. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Tyler Stafford of Stephens Incorporated. Please go ahead.

Hey. Good morning, guys.

Good morning.

Good morning.

I missed your prepared remarks, I just stopped on, so I apologize if you hit any of this thing. But maybe first just on the new equipment finance team, it looks like they do have a strong pipeline. But can you just talk about any of the early successes you're seeing there and how that book is tracking relative to kind of your original expectations?

Yeah, Tyler. I’ll tell you. Right out of the gate. And one, the pipeline, the growth in the pipeline is encouraging. I mean, we really didn’t forecast having a lot of outstandings at the end of the first quarter. So, I’d tell you first, that we’re plus $5 million. We feel like we’re on track there. The quality -- real that the -- if there has been a surprise it’s the quality of the customer, really, the size of the customer. I mean we’re seeing in C&I business. We’re seeing C&I type business come through the year, that’s a much larger. With companies that are much larger than what we would normally look at. And so, we’re really, I mean, we were comfortable with the quality, having looked at historical loss rates. But we’re even more comfortable with the quality given the kind of customers that we’re seeing. Second thing, I would tell you on that is, the inbound calls that we’re getting from sales staff around the country, that like what we’re talking about and know some of the folks that we’ve hired is pretty encouraging. And Ed just mentioned, the opportunity to do a little more than what we had forecasted has. So to start and to present itself and we’re moving slowly there. But I think that’s going to be an opportunity. Yield wise, everything, yield wise and cost wise, everything is right on track with what we had expected.

Okay. Great. Thanks, Dennis. Maybe just last one, I guess kind of the loan growth. So you guys consolidated the covered book into the purchase book this quarter. And so just to be clear, I guess, a clarification questions. The 20% growth that you guys are talking about that is now the legacy plus the purchase loan categories, is that correct?

Correct.

Okay.

The -- we re-classed about $19 million or $20 million is really where the covered book ended up. So, depending, I mean, that might run-off and has been -- historically, Tyler, we’ve been removing any run-off in covered, when we were talking about loan growth. Going forward, it will be in there, but given that we’re only at about $20 million of covered loans, we -- it’s just not going to be material.

Right. Right. Okay. On the margin, the security yields were up 23 bps or so quarter, was that just a reflection of higher rates or was there any kind of one-time item that pushed those yields higher?

I’ll say, top of my head, I’m not sure, I’ll get back and let you know. I do know that, generally we only purchase government and we’re very plan in that. We have been babbling in the -- in some of the subordinated debt that some larger banks have been putting out there. So the pick up that we’ve been getting from that, I know we did two or three of those in the first quarter -- fourth quarter and first quarter. So some of it is probably related to that, I’ll get that number for sure and I’ll fine tune and send it out.

Yeah. No. That’s fine. Thanks. And maybe just last one for me on expenses. Do you plan to make any more kind of BSA-related adds or is that -- the bulk of that investment already assumed in 1Q and what the payroll tax and the new hire that you are making from an expense standpoint, are we had a decent run rate in 1Q?

Yeah. We -- a couple of things are impacting that. I think we are probably, if we’re not at full capacity or full staff level on BSA, we’re only one or two positions away. I think we’re probably at 44, 45 people in that division. So we’re very close if we’re not fully staffed to be in there. I don’t think there is anymore -- I think the run rate on that is probably we maybe 200,000 or 300,000 in the first quarter since we staffed up during the quarter, maybe 200,000 or 300,000 from vacancy in the second quarter. We generally have higher incentive accruals in the second quarter and third quarter when we -- when mortgage is stronger, when the lines of business are stronger and the commercial side is stronger. So, there is probably a pickup of maybe a $1 billion a quarter you’d see in both of those quarters, and then sort of back to where we were now in the fourth quarter. So, all-in-all, I think, you’re probably maybe a $1.2 million to $1.3 million on the solid line.

Okay. Got it. Very clear. Thanks guys. Congrats on a nice quarter.

All right. Thanks.

Okay. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Chief Operating Officer, Dennis Zember for closing remarks.