Welcome to the Mercantile Bank Corporation third quarter earnings conference call. There will be a question and answer session at the end of the presentation. (Operator instructions) Before we begin today’s call, I would like to remind everyone that this call may involve certain forward looking statements such as projections of revenue, earnings and capital structure, as well as statements on the plans of objectives of the company or its management, statements on economic performance and statements regarding underlying assumptions of the company’s business. The company’s actual results could differ materially from any forward looking statements made today due to important factors described in the company’s latest Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The company assumes no obligations to update forward looking statements made during this call. If anyone does not already have a press release issued by Mercantile today, you can access it by the Company’s website, www.mercbank.com On the conference, today from Mercantile Bank Corporation we have Mike Price, Chairman and President and Chief Executive Officer, Bob Kaminski, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Chuck Christmas, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We will begin today's call with management's prepared remarks and open up the call for questions. At this point, I will turn the call over to Mr. Price to begin. Please begin.

Thank you, and good morning everyone and welcome. And while our income statement continued to show distress of elevated provisioning and bad debt expense, our third quarter results had some very positive important trends. The improvement in past due in non-performing loans that initially surfaced in the second quarter picked up tremendous momentum. Non-performing loans and ORE were down significantly for the quarter and since we have painfully learned that the level of nonperformers is a good indicator of future credit costs, this reduction is a very positive sign for the quarters ahead. Bob Kaminski will detail the dynamics of our loan portfolio and the provision for loan-loss during his comments but at this time I'm going to turn it over to our CFO, Chuck Christmas.

Thanks Mike. Good morning everybody. This morning we announced that we recorded a net loss of $5.7 million during the third quarter of 2010 compared to a net loss of $5.6 million during the third quarter of 2009 and a net loss of $9.3 million during the first nine months of 2010 compared to a net loss of $16.5 million during the first nine months in 2009. On a pre-tax basis which we believe provides a more accurate comparison of our operating results given the change in our tax position over the last couple of years, our net loss from the third quarter of 2001 was $6.1 million compared to a net loss of $9 million during the third quarter of 2009 and our net loss from the first nine months of 2010 was $10.4 million compared to a net loss of $25.9 million during the same time period in 2009. While we are of course disappointed any time we have to report a net loss, we are encouraged with the significant improvement in our operating results as well as the continued improvement in many key areas of our financial condition and performance. Our financial performance during 2010 like that throughout 2009 and 2008 has been impacted by a significant provision expense. Unfortunately, continued state, regional, and national economic struggles have negatively impacted some of our borrowers' cash flows and underlying collateral values, leading to increased non-performing assets, higher loan charge-offs, and increased overall credit risk within our loan portfolio when compared to historical norms. From the time we sensed economic weakness over two years ago, we have been working with our borrowers to develop constructive dialog, which has strengthened our relationships and enhanced our ability to resolve complex issues. With the environment for the banking industry likely to remain…

Thank you Bob and thank you Chuck for your presentations and at this time we would like to open up the phone lines for any questions.

(Operator instructions) We have a question from Steve Geyen of Stifel Nicolaus. Your line is open. Stephen Geyen – Stifel Nicolaus: Good morning, guys. Certainly the decline in non-accruals and NPAs was nice to see. Could you talk a bit about the changes made to the reserve allocation factors in the quarter?

Well as you can take this is Bob. As we continue to do every quarter we look at our reserve, analyze the various components of it look at the various quantitative and qualitative environmental factors that we see based on the wide landscape of things that wonder the reserve calculation and so we felt it prudent to move it some additional funds in their to bolster their reserve based on some of the things we are seeing and as you can see to add $3.8 million as I mentioned into the general reserves for the quarter. That certainly boards well for future quarter's as we have loans that may develop into problems there are already a happy reserve that LK and against them and will cause us to have lot specific reserves in the future as well may tend up to fall down into rating categories already have a large block of reserve something against them. Stephen Geyen – Stifel Nicolaus: I guess could you just give a little bit more color on the commercial real estate? Any thoughts on stability of the commercial real estate values over the last couple quarters or so?

Based on our valuations that we have seen in terms of ORE that we have sold and also with appraisals that have come in our caraways have been hold up very, very well. We are taking an aggressive approach as we always have on valuations of Mercantile loans or from real estate standpoint and also just looking at evaluations as we do general clatter analysis on performing loans and while the values are very, very low, we have seen some stabilization there and that's something that we haven't seen in 2009. So at that standpoint it is an encouraging sign. Stephen Geyen – Stifel Nicolaus: Okay, maybe a question for Chuck. End of period loans, certainly it's difficult growing from almost any bank out there today. Where do you think that might go over the next quarter or two?

Mike in the (Inaudible) because of the loan portfolio IM, but certainly we would very likely see a continued decline for some of the same reason that we have seen over last nearly year, year and a half or two years. We still don't have much new request coming from existing customers to buy equipment, I think our C&I segment of the portfolio is doing very well, but we don't really see a lot of growth coming from that segment. But certainly a solidification in their financial performance, but then again they are not coming and asking for equipment loans. We don't really see a huge increase in our line usage, usages as well. Stephen Geyen – Stifel Nicolaus: Okay, thank you. I guess, Mike, if you have any comments?

No. I think Chuck answered the last question very well as far as the overall again situation, Stephen, the thing we are very happy to see is a 16% reduction in non-performers. This is really our first time in two years we have able to see a real tangible shift in what's going on and as you know little optimistic last quarter when we saw the crash. We are much more optimistic now we are seeing drop in the as I said in my opening comments, that we have learned the hard way that the level of non-performers kind of predict where your credit costs are going to be for the next two quarters. So it's really nice to see it come down. Stephen Geyen – Stifel Nicolaus: Okay, thank you.

Thank you and again (Operator instructions). You have a question from Terry McEvoy of Oppenheimer. Your line is open. Terry McEvoy – Oppenheimer & Co: Good morning.

Good morning Terry. Terry McEvoy – Oppenheimer & Co: It was nice to see the additions to NPAs down again to $11 million. Could you just comment on those inflows? Is there any theme among your borrowing base? Is it just customers who have held on this long and are just unfortunately rolling into or moving into NPA status?

I will let Bob add any color to the comments, Terry. This is Mike. But you kind of hit the nail on the head. A lot of the stuff that we saw roll into non-performers this quarter if not all of it might then all of it, the stuff that we really already were aware of. It was on the watch list. A lot of people had guarantors who had been just going to the hip pocket so to speak, making the payments, struggling along and they just kind of gave out because of a prolonged assault on their liquidity if you will. And so we felt that it prudent to non-performers.

There are, our lending staff continues to do a very good job of identification of loans that are experiencing some distress taking what we feel is a very conservative approach to loss – to loan – problem loan identification. And as we see as Mike said some customers who are continuing to see distress and cash flow becomes very tight, loans gets pulled up to the nonperforming status. Terry McEvoy – Oppenheimer & Co: Returns to performing status, the $8 million, and then I go up to the table above there, nonperforming assets. The biggest drop was in that land development – excuse me – construction bucket. Was that where you saw the biggest return to performing status or was it somewhere else in the portfolio?

Loans returned to existing performing status were commercial real estate loans and what you have sometimes is you have loans shifting between buckets, you have a construction loan, it tends to move towards other normal performing real estate status categories as they flip out of construction stages into occupancy stages, I think that’s where that loan, those loans continue to be having the biggest impact is loans that were in a development and construction bucket and non-performing state simultaneously move to occupied real estate performing status during the quarter. Terry McEvoy – Oppenheimer & Co: Last night I did pull up the deposit market share in Kent County, where you guys are number four. And as I look at the three ahead of you and the one behind you, all four of those banks making money or expected to make money this quarter. Two out of those four have repaid TARP. How – I just a question on the competitive landscape, still losing money unfortunately and still having TARP. Does that have any significant impact on how you conduct your business and how your customers or potential customers view you as a bank or potentially a new bank to do business with?

No I don't think that, it's been a significant issue because most of our customers and most of the people out there in our market understand that it's a very difficult environment especially for community banks like us who try to build their communities by financing a lot of real estate, that was a big part of what community banks did and still have on their books. We are very happy that we have TARP. We are very happy that our capital ratios have remained in a well capitalized status because, that is a very, very important part as far as the safety aspect of it and I think there was a little political, I guess smoke when TARP first came out but now the people understand better what TARP is, they are very glad we have very, very strong well capitalized ratios.

And with respect to what Mike said. We spend a lot of time talking with our depositors, not only bulk, the deposit offerings that we offer and we offer lot of robust deposit offerings but also about our financial conditions. Three of us are more than happy to sit down and talk with these depositors. Big, medium or small sized and unless they know and understand the condition of the bank and what we are trying to accomplish but we have also spent a lot of time especially in the last couple of years of adding a lot to our menu of deposit products and whether it is an Internet banking product or new products that we are offering. We spend a lot of time on that and I think our customers really appreciate the delivery that we are able to provide them.

I think the proof is in the pudding and the reason we can talk about these issues and try to observe lots of different attitudes out there. But at the end of the day I think Chuck mentioned earlier in his comments that our local deposits are up substantially over the last year so and I think that is really probably the best way to gauge what our potential customers think about the bank. Terry McEvoy – Oppenheimer & Co: Okay, I appreciate the insight. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question is from John Barber of KBW. The line is open sir. John Barber – Keefe, Bruyette & Woods: I had to hop on the call a little bit late, so I apologize if you already covered this, but can you talk about what drove the increase in non-owner occupied CRE net charge-offs this quarter?

As we mentioned in the comments John, we had a total of 75% on the charge-offs for the quarter were previously reserved as the course of the loan workout allow those specific reserves against the commercial real estate became time to be charged off based on the developments of the overall direction of the workout. We saw the end result. So the timing it was such that it was proven to take both losses now but from an income statement standpoint. They had been previously reserved and recognized from an income statement standpoint in prior quarters. John Barber – Keefe, Bruyette & Woods: Okay, thanks. And on the margin, I'm just curious what happened to loan and security yields this quarter.

What was that said. I couldn't hear the whole question. John Barber – Keefe, Bruyette & Woods: Oh, sorry. Just wondering on the linked quarter basis what happened to loan and security yields this quarter?

The non-yields continue to be extremely stable and the security yields, it's a good question, because we're starting to get a little bit of compression in the securities with the call that we have been getting and will likely continue to get with rates coming down like they have throughout the summer and the early fall here. We are getting quite a bit of volume of calls. We put a line-up of over 50% of our portfolio are callable government agencies primarily a Federal Homeland Bank and Federal Farm Credit Bank and they are certainly taking the opportunity to lower rate environment to go ahead and call and reinvest in much lower rates so we do have our collateral requirements so most of the items that we get calls, we do have to put the money back to work to continue to divide the collateral and certainly how the yield is being impacted by that. But again obviously the skittish portfolio is relatively small part of our total assets too. John Barber – Keefe, Bruyette & Woods: Thanks for the color. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question is from Greg Dodgson of Royal securities. Your line is open. Greg Dodgson – Royal Securities: Good morning. I was looking at the margin relative to Fed Funds sold. It appears that the question before, you know, are you guys doing very much banking? It seems like a poor allocation of money to me.

Yes Greg. This is Chuck. You know one thing that happened is, we have been keeping and will likely continue to keep our Fed funds around $50 million to $60 million. We think that is prudent to do given the state of the economy and the banking industry is well, obviously where we are at almost $150 million at the end of the quarter is well above that. The reason for that and actually kind of goes back for a question earlier, is we have just been gaining a tremendous amount of local deposit growth and with those moneys coming in and also getting some pay-downs on some loans. You saw our loans came down quite a bit during the third quarter. It takes a little bit of time to put that money back to work. So when we get the cash in, we invest that on overnight basis to Fed funds and assuming what we try to do primarily is get rid of our wholesale funding. Our wholesale funding is primarily fixed-rate instruments. So we have to wait for the maturities to come up. They do come up and then we go ahead and we release to one of the broker deposits of Federal Home Loan Bank advances. In fact already this quarter earlier this month, we did prepay about, we did prepay $40 million of FHLB advances to start reducing that Fed funds balance and certainly we expect that, that balance to be much closer to the $50 million or $60 million later here in the quarter and by the quarter end. Greg Dodgson – Royal Securities: Are you pursuing this new SBA thing at all? Huntington has done – is doing a marvelous job in that area.

Well, we are continuing to look at that program as well as other SBA programs as we have done a very good job over the years of utilizing the SBA tool to place various borrowers that make sense to the equation of SBA loans. So we will certainly look at that and use that as a potential mechanism to place borrowers that want that in that program. Greg Dodgson – Royal Securities: It was signed into law last month and it's quite a deal. The government is really helping small community banks with this SBA loan program.

Yes Greg I'll point out and again I agree with you. I think Huntington has done a good job with SBA lending but I will refer you back to I believe it was last week's business journal that points out that Mercantile was the number one SBA lender in this marketplace during the last year. So, we agree with the SBA, as a good program and we use it a lot and we will continue to use it when it is the right situation. Greg Dodgson – Royal Securities: Thank you

Thank you. Our next question is from Eric Reboulet of Individual Investor. Your line is opened sir.

Hi good morning. How are you?

Good Morning.

I just had a couple of questions. One, would you be able to provide a little bit of color about migration and special mention in substandard categories of the loan portfolio? And then the second question I had was, given that you had a little bit more elevated level of charge-offs in the commercial real estate category, is that going to portend next quarter that the ORE bucket is going to be up? Or in fact are you breaking any loans up into like an A/B type status where you still have a nonperforming piece but as you mentioned before, there was some element that had returned to performing in the TDR status?

This is Bob. To answer the question of migration, Mercantile Bank has performed migration analysis for some time and becomes one of the tools that we continue to utilize in the determination of the adequacy of our reserve. While moving parts to migration analysis and the one that tends to change from quarter to quarter certainly and we make adjustments to that as appropriate. It's not a simple calculation. It’s certainly one that has many facets and the one that we used to gauge the moving of loans between various loan rating categories as you alluded to. With respect to ORE as you can see by the numbers we have actually have reductions in the overall or a level over the last couple of quarters? But with that, there have been lot of loans have came into or in lot of sold the piece of assets that have gone out there. I think our staff have done a good job of working with borrowers on properties that were even in foreclosure to try to effect sales of those properties so that they may be never make into the ORE bucket. Loans that do make into foreclosure due to foreclosure process many times have buyers that are waiting at the end of the redemption period to complete those sale. So it’s really page by page basis. You have some properties that are little bit hard to sell, may be spending little bit of longer time in the ORE buckets and others that are more attractive for purchasing standpoint this environment have tending to spend a lot less time in those categories but each of all these properties take by page by page basis.

(Inaudible) I appreciate the granularity of the question and I don't know that we will be prepared with the number of line-up finger tips to talk to you about the sub- standard and special mentioned granularity but I will go back to some of the more general questions we gave – comments we gave you at the beginning of this and that is what we are very happy to report that nonperformers has been (Inaudible) down watchless totals are down and past dues are down and that's been the trend now that we have seen for two quarters and overall and I almost ready to say two quarters does make the trend but if we see it again this quarter which no reason to believe we won't see continuation of improvement then we are going to be even more optimistic that we are winning on the right side of this crisis.

Then what’s also good to see is that not only that we have loans that have been taken off from that nonperforming list because of performance. We had loans that are just on the watch and have never made to nonperforming so that is also being upgraded to show that I think we are taking the right approach in our grading of loans and being some for monitoring purposes and that the loans have been improving as they get upgraded.

No, I think you answered the question with just your last comments on the watch list trends. I think that probably speaks well enough. One last thing for Chuck. Just in terms of the wholesale deposit costs versus sort of your local retail area, what are you looking at differential wise there?

On a CD basis were probably 75 to 100 basis points above the brokered market and I think that generally speaking the brokered markets and the local CD market historically has been about the same maybe a little bit of a premium to local deposits and I think the reasons why the parity is on both sides, is that one is the regulators do not like broker deposits. Certainly this Bank hears about it from regulators and talking about other banks and I am sure as some of the same brokers you do, regulators do not like broker deposits and so banks are shying away from this, many banks are strengthening the balance sheet as we are and certainly letting broker deposits run off. And then you got on the investor’s side which most of these deposits are coming from the retail brokerage lot of investors are certainly skittish to getting back in the stock market. So what you have is the tremendous amount of supply of potential investible funds but not very many banks out there that want that which obviously is impacting the prize. Going back to the comment as the regulators don't like broker deposits well if they don't like broker deposits, you can certainly shrink to get rid of some of them. But you can also replace some of the local deposits so you got the same banks that are trying to reduce their broker deposit reliance are out there also trying to increase their local deposit gathering activities, which certainly therefore increase in the rates. So I think that wide gap we are seeing now is for those two primary reasons and who knows what the future is going to be and how the regulators deal with broker deposit going forward.

Okay, but you are seeing a little bit of pressure then from sort of the core retail side of the deposit base given that competition?

Yes, I think pressure meaning higher prices or Eric. Yes, definitely.

Okay, alright thanks a lot.

You welcome.

Thank you sir. I'm sorry, no further questions or comments at this time. I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Price for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much, and if you have any additional questions please feel free to any one on the three of us a call and we appreciate your interest in our company.

Ladies and gentlemen thank you for your participation in today's conference this concludes the program. You may now disconnect, have a wonderful day.