Welcome to the Seacoast’s Fourth Quarter and Year-End Earnings Conference Call. My name is Christine , and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Denny Hudson, CEO. You may begin.

Thank you very much for joining us today for Seacoast’s fourth quarter earnings conference call. Our press release released yesterday after the market close and slides with supplementary information are posted on our website at seacoastbanking.com. Before we begin, I’ll direct your attention as we always do to the statement contained at the end of the press release regarding Forward-Looking Statements that we will be making during our call. We’ll be discussing issues that constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities and Exchange Act, and as a result our comments are intended to be covered within the meaning of the Act. With me today is Steve Fowle, our Chief Financial Officer, who will be discussing our financial and operating results. Also joining us in the room are Chuck Cross, who leads our Commercial Banking Team; Chuck Shaffer, who heads Community Banking, David Houdeshell, our Chief Credit Officer and Jeff Lee, our Chief Marketing Officer. We’ll all be available to answer questions following the conclusion of our prepared remarks. We are very pleased with Seacoast’s fourth quarter results, which cap the year of strategic development and operational progress in which we grew core earnings per share on a diluted basis by 46%. Our balanced growth strategy comprising digital and other investments that expand our franchise combined with selective strategic transaction that deepened our market presence and enable us to market to our acquired banks customers continue to produce results for shareholders in the fourth quarter and for the year as a whole. Fourth quarter revenue rose to $36.9 million an increase of 16% year-on-year. We pull this growth to the bottom line as well with adjusted fourth quarter net income rising 56% to $6.5 million compared with the year ago period. Note that the increase and adjusted income excludes…

Thank you, Denny and thanks to all of you for taking the time to join us this morning. Our fourth quarter improve both year-on-year and sequentially showing the operating leverage inherit in Seacoast commercial loan origination and other branch consumer transaction convenience. Fourth quarter diluted EPS rose to $0.18 per share compared with the $0.5 loss in the year ago period and net income was $6 million compared to a fourth quarter loss of $1.5 million last year. Adjusted earnings factoring out merger related and other non-core items was $6.5 million or $0.19 per diluted share up 46% from $0.13 in the fourth quarter last year and nearly flat link quarter. For the year as a whole, earnings per share more than tripled to $0.66 per share in 2015 as strong prudent loan growth combined with successful acquisitions to grow margin and operating leverage. As of past quarters, we continue to drive growth by leveraging our investment in digital analytics as well as our commercial banking service offering. As Denny mentioned, customer acquisition remain strong household grew at a 5% annualized quarterly rate matching organic household growth rate of 5% for all of 2015. Loans increased $57 million or 3% sequentially and 18% over the last year 12% after adjusting for the Grand acquisition. Much of this quarter's growth came late in the quarter and again this growth was attained while maintaining a diverse granular self originated loan portfolio with an average Q4 loan size of 139,000. Deposit growth accelerated with seasonal public fund inflows. Deposits increased to $102 million or 4% non-annualized from third quarter levels. Year-over-year deposits grew $428 million or 18%, 10% when adjusted for acquisitions. Off note non-interest demand deposits represent a strong 30% of deposits, including interest checking demand deposits represent 56% of total deposits…

Thank you very much, Steve. We are happy to take a few questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen [Operator Instructions] and our first question is from Bob Ramsey of FBR. Please go ahead.

Good morning.

Sorry about that I had my mute button on, good morning. I guess I was hoping maybe you could a little bit about the efficiency assumption that sort of underlies your 2016 guidance and I'm curious not only sort of where you see things overall, but maybe where you end the year once you have got both of these acquisitions folded in?

Steve, do you want to take that?

Yes. So we anticipate with organic growth that we will have nice operating leverage probably about 4% to 5% operating leverage as we go through the year on some really strong organic loan growth. That operating leverage will start to drive our efficiency ratio down, but as we pick up the acquisitions and integrate them and realize the efficiencies through those acquisitions, we think we can get our efficiency ratio down in the low [65] (Ph) at the end of the year.

And I think the key thought behind the acquisitions, we have a franchise in Orlando going into those negotiation and adding these two franchises on top of our existing investment there creates tremendous improvement in our operating leverage in that markets. So lots of consolidation work will occur as a result of the combination and putting all three together and so we have some pretty nice upside coming out of that as Steve described earlier in the past to $1 a share. And I think it's just a continued good execution of our strategic plan really gets us there and I'm pretty confident about it.

Okay. You may have given this detail and I might have missed it, but the BMO branch deal, I think the release you said late 2Q is when you anticipate that close in, is it fair to model it at the June 30 or do you have the better sense of what the timing might look like?

Yes. I think by June 30 we will have the transaction closed. Again we are expecting a late Q2 probably June-ish types of integration.

Okay. And can you remind me is there much seasonality in the expense number in the first quarter for I don’t know annual increases or FICO or 401-K match or anything else?

Yes. There is definitely is. So first quarter fee income is hurt, because there is a shorter number of days, expenses are hurt, because we now have people in the company that haven’t capped on social security. We have payroll taxes as a result that are higher, we have bonus payments in 401-K matches accelerated at that time of the year. So typically Q1 for us and for most company's is a tough quarter, but as I was concluding my remarks you know it was like gave some insight in the fact that Q1 is probably pretty flattish to where we are.

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

And I think Bob the other thing to keep in mind is. As Steve said earlier as we see steady improvement as we go through the year, but we have the added boost of the additional size as we get into the second half of the year. And so again, we kind of start out flattish, have some nice growth, and then it really begins to accelerate as we hit the backend of the year and feel the impact positive impacts of the M&A that we do. So continued organic growth, the M&A impacts and also the cost opportunity that we laid out in our remarks really affect fully the back half of the year.

Great. Thank you very much.

Thank you [Operator Instructions]. And I’m showing no further questions. So I’ll turn the call back over to Danny Hudson.

Okay, well thank you very much for attending today and we look forward to updating everybody following the conclusion of Q1. Thank you.

Thank you. And thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today’s conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.