Good morning and welcome to United Community Bank fourth quarter conference call. Hosting the call today our President and Chief Executive officer, Jimmy Tallent; Chief Financial Officer, Rex Schuette and Chief Risk Officer David Shearrow. United's presentation today includes references to operating earnings and other non-GAAP financial information. United has provided a reconciliation of these measures to GAAP in the financial highlight section of the news release at the end of the investor presentation both have included on their website at www.ucbi.com. Copies of today's earnings release and investor presentation for the fourth quarter were filed on Form 8-K with the SEC and a replay of this call will be available on the company's Investor Relations page at www.ucbi.com. Please be aware that during this call forward-looking statements may be made about United Community Banks. Any forward-looking statements should be considered in light of risks and uncertainties described on page four of the company's Form 10-K and other information provided by the company in its filings with SEC and included on its website. At this time, we will begin the conference call with Jimmy Tallent.

Good morning everyone, thank you for joining us as we discuss United Community Bank's key events and results for the fourth quarter of 2009. First our financial highlights. The net operating loss for the fourth quarter was $39.8 million or $0.45 per share. This was driven principally by the $90 million provision for loan losses. Charge-offs for the quarter were $84.6 million. At year end our allowance for loan losses was 3.02% of loans. During the fourth quarter we sold and disposed of $81 million in foreclosed properties and non-performing assets and the level of nonperforming assets decreased from $415 million to $385 million during this time. Our net interest margin for the quarter was 3.4%, up 70 basis points from a year ago. Our residential construction book continued to decline, down $429 million for the year. At year end our Atlanta book where most of the problems have been was down to a balance of $255 million. Core earnings continue to improve throughout the year. We did see a decline of $1.4 million in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter, the largest factor being a 900,000 increase in FDIC insurance premiums. Rex will discuss this if more detail. Core customer deposits were up slightly for the fourth quarter and increased for the year by 10% or $205 million. Now I'm going to ask David to provide more detail on credit, then Rex will follow with details on our financials.

Thank you Jimmy and good morning. This quarter we provided $90 million for loan losses and charged off $84.6 million in loans. Non-performing assets declined $30 million to $385 million compared to $415 million last quarter. Non-performing assets included $264 million in non-performing loans and $121 million in foreclosed properties. We had no accruing loans that were past due 90 days. The ratio of non-performing assets to total assets was 4.81% compared to 4.91% last quarter. Our 30 to 89 day past due loans were 1.44%, down from 2.02% last quarter. The decline in past dues was across all categories except home equity, which increased to 1.27% from 0.66% last quarter. The market sale foreclosed properties to investors and retail buyers continue to improve in the fourth quarter. In the fourth quarter we sold $61 million of foreclosed property versus $47 million in the third quarter. In addition, we sold non-performing notes totaling 20 million in the fourth quarter compared to $8 million last quarter. Overall, the loss content on foreclosed property sales was flat compared to last quarter. Net charge-offs were $84.6 million for the quarter compared to $90.5 million on a linked quarter basis. Foreclosed property write downs and losses on sales totaled $9.6 million compared to $4.1 million last quarter. The foreclosed property write downs were composed of $7.4 million related to losses on sales and $2.2 million of write downs on remaining foreclosed property inventory. Overall, we continued the trend of aggressively recognizing losses. Foreclosed properties have been written down to 66% of book balance at the time of non-accrual at quarter end while non-performing loans were written down to 70% of book balance at the time of non-accrual will help expedite asset sales in the future. Let me now provide some detail on our portfolio…

Thank you David. As Jimmy stated earlier, we have made significant progress in 2009 to improve core earnings. Core earnings or our pretax pre-credit earnings exclude special and non-recurring items that assist us in analyzing our core run rate. Foreclose property costs, securities, gains and losses, and other one time revenue expenses are examples of items that we exclude from our core earnings run rate. However, these items are included in our net operating loss that totaled $39.8 million for the fourth quarter. We have provided a five quarter summary of core earnings on page 26 and net operating earnings on page 27 of our investor presentation package that was filed on form 8-K and is available on our website. We believe these summaries provide a better view of our overall performance trends and quarterly run rates. We have also provided a schedule at the end of the investor presentation package that reconciles core earnings and other key ratios to our net operating loss and the reported GAAP net loss. I'll be commenting on the drivers of core earnings from these pages as well as other areas of the investor presentation package. Core earnings for the fourth quarter of 2009, was $30.4 million, up $13.1 million from the fourth quarter of 2008. The primary drivers of core earnings growth has been our margin expansion in 2009, supported by expense controls and reductions. For the fourth quarter, our margin was 340, up one basis point on a linked quarter and up 70 basis points compared to our margin of 270 for the fourth quarter of 2008. On page 8 of the investor presentation package we show our margin trend for the past five quarters and the impact of credit costs. Historically, credit costs have lowered our margin by 8 to 12…

Thanks Rex. Now I'd like to discuss our view on certain key areas as we move into and through 2010. First, our credit; over the past eight quarters we have reduced our residential construction book by $800 million. I mentioned earlier that the Atlanta portfolio totaled $255 million at year end. This compares to $538 million at the beginning of the year. While we expect additional losses, we believe, we are largely through the major challenges in the Atlanta portfolio. At year end we had the fewest slots and houses in inventory that we have seen in quite some time in the Atlanta market and our projected foreclosures are the lowest we have seen in both numbers and dollars since the beginning of the downturn. Now let me address residential construction outside of Atlanta. Sales on foreclosed houses have been strong and we believe this trend will continue. In regards to foreclosed land and lots we expect to face more challenges. The fact is we just don't have the large group of buyers in these markets we have seen in metro Atlanta. The loans are generally much smaller, but because of slower sales our foreclosed property balance could be more elevated than we would prefer in the near term. In regards to our commercial portfolio, we reviewed every performing credit of 500,000 or more last month. We do this review quarterly as we have for the past six quarters and see some issues, but generally speaking feel very good about our commercial portfolio. The average loan size is relatively small, the book is well diversified, and 54% of our commercial real estate loans are owner occupied. In respect to loan growth, we added $273 million in new loans last year. We believe loan growth will be slow until the general…

Thank you. (Operator Instructions). We will take our first question from Kevin Fitzsimmons with Sandler O'Neill.

I was wondering if you could give us a little bit of an outlook or expectation on disposition activity going into the first quarter and then looking at the second quarter specifically how we should. Rex you mentioned how that OREO cost really jumped up this quarter and that reflected the aggressive approach, but do you think that will continue, should we look at that kind of OREO cost as that’s going forward. Thanks.

Kevin this is David. On the OREO cost as it relates to the write downs, about $9.5 million, the jump in the fourth quarter was largely due to the fact that we moved as much as we did in the quarter. And so that ramped it up. My sense is that I would expect probably those write downs to be if you think about where we had been running say in the $3 million to $4 million range, $5 million. Closer down to that end of the range as opposed to where we were at this quarter. But I would hedge that with the thought that depending on transactions that could come in it could pop up a little bit towards the higher closer to what we experienced in the fourth quarter if we could move more. Now having said that, when I look at kind of disposition activity in the first quarter, I think what we're trying to say is that as more of our foreclosed properties are located outside of Atlanta now, it's more difficult to move some of this property. And so I am expecting between the normal seasonality of the winter, coupled with where these properties are located that the pace of sales, it's going to be difficult to achieve the same level of sales in the first quarter that we did in the fourth. So, I know that's a little bit gray, but that's about as good of guidance I think I can give you.

Okay, I appreciate that. David, can you also touch on just restructured loans or TDR's and where they are, if you're doing them number one and number two, where they're trending? Thanks.

Sure. Yes, we are doing those. We ended the year with $60 million in TDR's. That was up from the third quarter where we were just under 34 million. Out of that $60 million TDR's, about $7 million of that was non-performing, the balance was performing. We expect to see more TDR's, as you'd see that number come up again probably over the next couple of quarters. Most of that activity is going to be in commercial real estate. Typically what goes in here are credits that have cash flow that there is a workable solution where you are probably having to adjust the interest rate down to accommodate the borrower or perhaps reduce the level of principal payment occurring to give them time. Say if it's a office or a retail center that needs to release up and we might back off on the principal amortization to allow them time to try and release back up. So that's the kind of thing that's going in here for the most part. On the residential construction side, generally there is not a really good solution in most cases to throw it into a TDR, so that's why you don't see a lot of that in there. Hopefully that's helpful.

And, we'll take our next question from Jennifer Demba of SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.

David, you mentioned that it's tougher to sell problem assets that are located outside Atlanta. Can you give us a sense of what kind of severities you are seeing in those non-metro markets versus what you've experienced in Atlanta to date?

Well, the severity on loss is really not all that different when you look at it to date. We have of course, the buildup has really occurred over the last couple of quarters outside, but generally overall, we haven't seen a big difference in what we have liquidated. So to date I would say they are very similar. It's just that the number of buyers and the type of buyers are different when you get outside of Atlanta.

So it's more of an individual buyer?

Yeah, there is a less margin, we have a lot of investment funds that are interested in the larger metro markets. We have found very little of that outside of Atlanta. So you are generally looking at, just wealthy investors outside that have an interest outside the area or perhaps they are looking at a land tract, that type of thing. Now, on one thing let me caveat too is on housing, just selling vertical construction, we continue to have excellent success outside of Atlanta. That's really not the issue. When I'm talking about the slowness it really pertains more to the land and lots. And so that's where more of the challenge is.

Our next question comes from Christopher Marinac with FIG Partners.

David I was curious the increase in payments that you saw in the quarter was that at all one time related or could that be a new trend for this year.

The increase in payments, I'm not sure, could you clarify that Chris.

This is on the NPA activity just showing us the walk through of NPA is beginning to end, that the payments increased during the quarter from (inaudible) almost 27 million?

Just the higher level of payments you're saying.

Right.

Yeah, I mean it's like everything else, all these, there are lot of credit indicators this quarter that showed improvement. And, you know, we are very cautious to say in any sense that's a trend, because it's very early. But again that's just one more example of classifieds being down, the payments on non-performers did increase, with payoffs, etcetera, the past dues down. Total watch list down. You know, so yeah, I think it's another component of what we saw kind of across the whole portfolio. And hopefully all of these are early indicators of moving through this.

Okay. And then just a follow up I guess for either you or Rex or even Jimmy is about the expense levels. Are there other room for you to cut expenses beyond just the credit piece, of the OREO that you mentioned earlier?

Chris, everything's on the table. We will continue to look at the entire operating expense. Certainly as our company has contracted we constantly are looking at other methods of savings. I think we've demonstrated in 2009 our commitment to do whatever is necessary relative to our people cost. But, we are constantly reviewing that expense base and will continue throughout 2010.

And now we'll take the next question from Jefferson Harralson with KBW.

Rex I want to ask you about the DTA from a regulatory standpoint, I guess is there any DTA accounting towards regulatory capital ratios right now.

It's 69.5 million at quarter end and that's up from about 39 million last quarter. Jefferson

Okay. On the GAAP DTA I assume your main defense of it is the past to relatively near the medium term profitability or is there some other new answers that we need to know about, regarding the valuation of the GAAP DTA.

We went through extensive review at year end with our auditors on this also Jefferson, and I think its generally you are not going to see probably many banks out there by taking DTA evaluation allowances. But I think as we look at it we feel it's more likely than that we are going to realize the DTA assets and that the positive factors outweigh any negative factors that relate to our current losses we are incurring as well as the carry forward that we have right now. And I think that all boils into just Jefferson I think just simply our strong earning history that we have had before the credit, our core earnings improvement that we continue to have, core deposit growth, strong service levels, and I think as well as, a successful stock offering, so I think it isn't a matter of survival, we are on the other side, and I think there is all kind of go into the picture. But overall the positive factors outweigh any negative factors.

Okay and do you think that you have to reach profitability by any certain time or do you think that it's kind of all in the soup of what you just talked about?

It's somewhat all little bit all in the soup but I mean part of what you are looking at is the outlook out there with respect to when you return to earnings and are you on track to hitting that within a reasonable time period. So that is part of it, but again keep in mind all the banks have, 80 quarters to realize this or 75 quarters. And it really is longer term, do you think you will realize the tax benefit. But that part does come into the equation if things turn and extend out a long time.

We will take the next question from Al Savastano of Macquarie.

Just couple of questions on the reserve bill this quarter can you give us an idea of what was driving that with classified assets down?

Well, it really has been just a function of the ongoing, if you look at the loss, the loss content overall on defaulted loans as we have gone through '09, there has been a gradual creep up. And the way we build that reserve is based on kind of a rolling average on those losses. So as those losses have climbed we had to set aside a little bit more reserve. So although yes, classifieds were down it's really a function of the actual losses, the climbing average.

Does that mean reserves are going to continue to build out from here as you work through the lower losses, lower quarter losses, overall from the higher quarter losses roll on?

My expectation right now Al is that you would not see any significant reserve build going into '10. You know, unless obviously if something changes, we are not seeing today. However, I don't see any near term relief on the reserve meaning over the next two to three quarters. Mainly because I think we are going to be fairly cautious in that approach. And there is some judgment involved in terms of, when we, there is the mathematics and there is also the judgment. The judgment as we come out of this at some point we may choose to start releasing, but I just don't see that near term.

Great. And then just in terms of charge offs going lower in 2010, if you can maybe just provide a little color, I mean do you think, do you expect them to go incrementally lower in each quarter during the year or are they going to be lumpy, any color there would be helpful.

You know, it's very hard to forecast. My sense is that we'll see a gradual steady decline as we go through the year. My only caveat to that really would relate more to our ability to dispose of more assets on a given quarter that might involve additional charge that were to occur. So, I just hold that back. But generally as I look out through the year my expectation is a gradual steady decline.

And at this time we have no further questions in cue.

Thank you operator. Let me say in closing how much I appreciate the hard work of our employees continuing day-after-day to set this company above most others, particularly relative to the service, given the challenges of 2009 that we faced and we faced head on. In looking at our customer satisfaction scores at year-end were the highest in the history of the company, so I want to thank our employees for their continued hard work in support of this company. Also I'd like to say thank you to our investors, our research analysts for being on the call today. We look forward to talking with you at the end of the first quarter and hope all of you have a great day.