David Zalman
Analyst · FBR. Please go ahead
Thank you, Charlotte. And I would like to welcome and thank everyone joining us for our third quarter 2015 earnings announcement. I am excited to announce that Prosperity's Board of Directors has decided to increase the dividend to $0.30 per share for the fourth of 2015, representing a 10% increase. The Board and Management appreciate our shareholders and are glad that we are able to show our appreciation with this increase. For the three months ended September 30, 2015 our net income was $70.598 million compared with $76.570 million for the same period in 2014. Our net income per diluted common share was $1.01 for the three months ending September 30, 2015, compared with a $1.10 for the same period in 2014. Net income was impacted by lower loan accretion income that reduces as loans that were purchased in recent acquisitions payoff. However core earnings, which we consider to be earnings not including purchase accounting adjustments continue to grow. Our net income per diluted common share excluding the purchased accounting adjustments was $0.92 for the three months ended September 30, 2015, compared with $0.84 for the three months ended September 30, 2014, this represents a 9.5% increase. Prosperity’s return on average tangible common equity for the three months ended September 30, 2015 was 19.3%. Our asset quality continues to be one of the best in the industry with a non-performing asset ratio of only 26 basis points and non-performing assets of $48.628 million at September 30, 2015. The increase in non-performing assets for the third quarter of 2015 was primarily due to one participation acquired in a recent acquisition. We can discuss this more in the question-and-answer portion of the call. But our management believes that we should be out of this loan by the first quarter of next year. Our allowance from credit losses was $81.003 million as of September 30, 2015 representing a healthy coverage ratio. Our loans at September 30, 2015 were $9.205 billion a decrease of $163 million or 1.7% compared with $9.369 billion at September 30, 2014. Although our loans decreased overall during the first nine months of 2015 primarily due to planned reductions at some of our acquired banks. Our third quarter results showed loan growth of 1%, 4% annualized, for the compared to the previous quarter ended June 30, 2015. Our deposits at September 30, 2015 were $16.940 billion, a decrease of $74 million or 0.4 basis points, compared with $17 billion at September 30, 2014. Deposits have been flat for the first nine months of 2015, but when comparing the third quarter of 2015 to the third quarter of 2014, Prosperity has been successful replacing over $500 million in higher cost time deposits at the acquired banks with more traditional transaction accounts. As we have previously stated deposits are historically low in the second and third quarters, and increase in the fourth and first quarters. Primarily due to the large number of public funds we service in their funding source. With regard to the acquisitions, we are excited to announce that we have received all the regulatory approvals necessary to complete the Tradition Bancshares acquisition, while the transaction is subject to Tradition’s shareholder approval and customary closing conditions we expect closing to occur on December 31, 2015. Our conversion and integration planning is underway and we appreciate and thank the team at Tradition for all of their help and support. We continue to pursue acquisitions, we have had and continue to have dialogues with the number of banks. There are over 50 banks in Texas alone that are over $1 billion in size. We look for banks with similar culture to ours, banks that have been in business for a longer period of time and banks that have a strong core deposit base. As we believe, these factors represent the real value in a bank. With regard to the economy, despite the employment declines in oil and gas extraction and the manufacturing sector the Texas unemployment rate fell to 4.1% in August and continues to be lower than the U.S. unemployment rate, which was 5.1%. Oklahoma’s unemployment rate inched down slightly in September to 4.4% compared with 4.6% in August, according to data recently released by the U.S. Labor Department, again lower than the U.S. unemployment rate to 5.1%. Housing starts continue to increase and re-sales continue to support strong pricing. However, we do see a reduction in loan applications primarily due to a slowdown in refinances. We owe all of our success to our team of associates, past associates and Board members who have helped grow the company beyond our own expectations. We would also like to thank all of our customers for their business and loyalty to the bank. Thanks again for your support of our company. Let me turn over our discussion to David Hollaway, our Chief Financial Officer.