Equity Bancshares, Inc. (NYSE:EQBK) Q2 2022 Earnings Conference Call July 20, 2022 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Chris Navratil - Investor Relations

Brad Elliott - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Eric Newell - Chief Financial Officer

Greg Kossover - Chief Operating Officer

John Creech - Chief Credit Officer

Craig Anderson - President

Conference Call Participants

Terry McEvoy - Stephens

Jeff Rulis - D.A. Davidson

Andrew Liesch - Piper Chandler

Damon DelMonte - KBW

Operator

Thank you for standing by and good day. Welcome to the Second Quarter 2022 Equity Bancshares Inc. Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Chris Navratil. Please go ahead.

Chris Navratil

Good morning and thank you for joining Equity Bancshares conference call, which will include a discussion and presentation of our second quarter 2022 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 reference Slide 1 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 Elliott.

Brad Elliott

Thank you, Chris. Good morning and welcome to our second quarter earnings call, and thank you for your interest in Equity Bancshares. I'm pleased to report the bank had a very successful second quarter, continuing to build our momentum from our strong start to the year.

We successfully completed the sale of three branches in the second quarter, which included $53 million of deposits and $26 million of loans and resulted in a gain of $540,000 in non-interest income. Our EPS was $0.94 versus consensus of $0.75. Net interest income and net interest margin both increased moderately quarter-over-quarter, but expanded significantly on an adjusted basis, which Eric will walk you through.

We continue to see the benefit of the hard work performed by our special assets and credit teams. With non-accrual loans down quarter-over-quarter, the improvement of existing and introduction of new products and services continue to positively impact our earnings composition. We were active during the quarter with our buyback. We'll continue to keep our eye on tangible equity as it relates to our buyback activities.