David Zalman
Analyst · FBR
Thank you, Charlotte. I would like to welcome and thank everyone for listening to our fourth quarter 2016 conference call. For the fourth quarter, we had impressive annualized returns on average tangible common equity of 16.3%, and on average assets of 1.26%. Our earnings were $68.71 million for the fourth quarter of 2016, compared with $70.4 million for the same period in 2015. The net income, excluding purchased accounting adjustments was $64.1 million for the three months ending December 31, 2016 compared with $66.1 million for the three months ended December 31, 2015. Our diluted earnings per share were $0.98 for the fourth quarter of 2016, compared to $1.01 for the same period in 2015. Loans at December 31, 2016 were $9.6 billion, an increase of $183.4 million or 1.9%, compared with $9.4 billion at December 31, 2015. Our linked quarter loans increased $73.7 million, 80 basis points or 3.1% annualized from $9.5 billion at September 30, 2016. At December 31, 2016 oil and gas loans totaled $284.5 million or 3% of total loans compared with oil and gas loans of $399 million or 4.2% of total loans at December 31, 2015. The $114.5 million decrease represents a 28.7% decrease in oil and gas loans when compared to the level at December 31, 2015. On a linked quarter basis, oil and gas loans decreased $24.4 million from $308.9 million or 3.2% of total loans at September 30, 2016. Our nonperforming assets at December 31, 2016 were $48.3 million or 25 basis points of quarterly average earning assets, compared with $60.1 million or 32 basis points of quarterly average earning assets at September 30, 2016. This represents a 19.7% decrease in nonperforming assets when comparing this quarter to last quarter. Tim will discuss this in more detail later in the call. Our nonperforming assets ratio was one of the lowest in the industry and a sign of solid asset quality. Deposits at December 31, 2016 were $17.3 billion, a decrease of $373 million or 2.1%, when compared with $17.6 billion at December 31, 2015. This decrease was primarily due to one public fund deposit that we did not accept in 2016, but had accepted in prior years. Historically this fund would make a large deposit at year end and would draw it shortly after year end. The decrease in deposit was also due to the bank reducing broker deposits that we assumed in recent acquisitions. Our linked quarter deposits increased $385 million, 2.3% or 9.1% annualized from the $16.9 billion at September 30, 2016. We typically experienced a large increase in deposits in the fourth quarter. For 2016, we have not seen the organic growth in deposits that we historically have experienced and that was primarily due to a number of our customers using our cash to operate given lower oil and agricultural prices. With regard to acquisitions, as we’ve indicated in prior quarters, we continue to have active conversations with other bankers regarding potential acquisition opportunities, we remain ready to enter into a deal, reduce rate for all parties and is appropriately accretive to our existing shareholders. A little on the economy, we are excited going into the 2017 year that Texas and Oklahoma economies are improving with rising oil and gas prices. Further, expected increases in interest rates will help our net interest margin over the longer term. We see optimism in our customer base, with businesses now willing to expand purchasing. With a better economy and the absence of the loan contraction we had the last several years, we believe that we will have more normalized organic growth in loans and deposits for 2017. Again, we are very excited for the coming year. I would like to thank our whole team once again for a job well done. Thanks again for your support of our company. Let me turn over our discussion to David Hollaway, our Chief Financial Officer to discuss some of the specific financial results we achieved. David?