Business First Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:BFST) Q1 2023 Results Conference Call April 27, 2023 5:30 PM ET

Company Participants

Matt Sealy - SVP and Director, Corporate Strategy

Jude Melville - President and CEO

Greg Robertson - CFO

Philip Jordan - Chief Banking Officer

Jerry Vascocu - Chief Administrative Officer

Conference Call Participants

Thomas Wendler - Stephens

Kevin Fitzsimmons - D.A. Davidson

Feddie Strickland - Janney Montgomery Scott

Michael Rose - Raymond James

Brett Rabatin - Hovde Group

Graham Dick - Piper Sandler

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Christy and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Business First Bancshares' Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

Matt Sealy, you may begin your conference.

Matt Sealy

Thank you, Christy. Good afternoon and thank you all for joining. Earlier today, we issued our first quarter 2023 earnings press release, a copy of which is available on our website, along with the slide presentation that we will refer to during today's call.

Please refer to Slide 3 of our presentation, which includes our safe harbor statements regarding forward-looking statements and the use of non-GAAP financial measures. For those of you joining by phone, please note the slide presentation is available on our website at www.b1bank.com.

Please also note our safe harbor statements are available on Page 7 of our earnings press release that we filed earlier today with the SEC. All comments made during today's call are subject to the safe harbor statements in our slide presentation and earnings release.

I'm joined this afternoon by Business First Bancshares President and CEO, Jude Melville, Chief Financial Officer, Greg Robertson; Chief Banking Officer, Philip Jordan; and Chief Administrative Officer, Jerry Vascocu. After the presentation, we'll be happy to address any questions you may have.

And with that, I'll turn the call over to you, Jude.

Jude Melville

Okay. Thanks, Matt, and thanks, everybody, for joining us. We recognize it takes energy and effort and commitment, particularly as we near the end of a busy earnings season. And we appreciate the opportunity to provide color to our story.

Before we get into the details of the quarter and thoughts about future projections, I'd like to take just a second to zoom out to a big picture perspective.

Ultimately, we're not working to put up a number for a quarter or 2. We're working to build a sustainable franchise that produces value for our multiple constituents over time. We've made a number of investments over the past few years with ascend in mind. And I want to give you an update on where we are relative to our longer term goals. Particularly on the significant progress we've made over the past year.