John Allison
Analyst · Sandler O'Neill
Thank you Chad, and welcome to the first quarter of 2015 Home BancShares earnings release and conference call. With me today is Randy and Randy and Brian; Kevin; Tracy and Donna. Tracy is a little out of the weather with us today. I don't know what he is going to say. He’s got little cold but he is with us today. This was an extremely busy quarter for the Group. I think this was busy quarters we’ve had in years. We are working on three different merger and acquisition deals, straight Home Banc deals, the Doral deal with our last bids that we did with both Banco Popular and Oriental and in addition to that, the JC Flowers deal that we did. So, some time I’d go more in depth about the Puerto Rican deal, that was pretty interesting. Four Arkansas guys loading in an airplane and flying to Puerto Rico. That was a lot of fun. Meeting people we didn't know and signing alliance agreements, but we got it done and got something out of it. In addition to that, hiring our New York team to run new operation there. In spite of that, the company had record earnings of $32.1 million or $0.47 a share, strong efficiency ratio, outstanding cost control by our group, improved asset quality, margins remaining strong, $200 million in new deposits out of the Doral deal, $40 million in loans that we brought at a substantial discount and made a little gain of $1.6 million, little busy in our income statement this month with the plusses and minuses. And we just picked up $290 million new loans in this quarter. The creation of Centennial Commercial Finance Group, we grew stockholders equity by $24.3 million, we had a record revenue, 140% coverage to non performing, and to show you how well we have operated on the expense side, non interest expense, ex-merger expenses were $100,000 lower this year than they were last year, even after adding Florida Traditions and Broward plus Doral in the fourth quarter. So, I’d just say, congrats to everybody. What a great quarter it was. We're extremely busy on the M&A side. I think you will see us get some M&A deals this year. We have completed our branch study. You've asked about that several times and Donna Townsell will report on that today. So overall, I'm a pretty happy camper. I'm looking forward to the next quarter. I've been watching the income stream come in, also these new loans and that's pretty sweet. When you're booking $300 million worth of loans at a 50% loan-to-value with 6% coupon that adds to income, which is pretty nice. So, I think I'll turn it over to Randy Sims and Randy will go into the more of the specifics and let everybody report. Randy?