Equity Bancshares, Inc. (NYSE:EQBK) Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call April 19, 2023 10:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Chris Navratil - Investor Relations
Brad Elliott - Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Eric Newell - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
John Creech - Chief Credit Officer
Craig Anderson - Executive Vice President and President-Equity Bank
Conference Call Participants
Jeff Rulis - D.A. Davidson
Andrew Liesch - Piper Sandler
Damon DelMonte - KBW
Terry McEvoy - Stephens
Operator
Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q1 2023 Equity Bancshares Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.
I'd now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Chris Navratil. You may begin.
Chris Navratil
Good morning and thank you for joining Equity Bancshares conference call, which will include discussion and presentation of our first quarter 2023 results. Presentation slides to accompany our call are available via PDF for download at investor.equitybank.com by clicking the presentation tab. You may also click the event icon for today's call posted at investor.equitybank.com to view the webcast player. If you are viewing this call on our webcast player, please note that slides will not automatically advance.
Please refer Slide 2, including important information regarding forward-looking statements. From time to time, we may make forward-looking statements within today's call and actual results may vary. Following the presentation, we will allow time for questions and further discussion. Thank you all for joining us.
With that, I'd like to turn it over to our Chairman and CEO, Brad Elliot.
Brad Elliott
Thanks, Chris. I'll start today's call by addressing the events that took place in the banking system during the first quarter. First and foremost, Equity Bancshares has never been stronger. The issues that caused the failure of two banks and the voluntary liquidation of a third are not present in the equity story.
The communities we serve, provide us with a granular deposit base, diversified across industry and geography.
We have not taken outsized risk through leveraging or chasing yield along the curve. We do not have meaningful HTM portfolio and we believe we will not see further extension in our AFS portfolio. In fact, we are reinvesting cash flows off the portfolio into the loan book. This probably delivers an increase in net interest margin.