Equity Bancshares, Inc. (NYSE:EQBK) Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call April 20, 2022 10:00 AM ET

Corporate Participants

Chris Navratil - Investor Relations

Brad Elliott - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Eric Newell - Chief Financial Officer

Greg Kossover - Chief Operating Officer

Craig Anderson - President

Conference Call Participants

Terry McEvoy - Stephens

Jeff Rulis - DA Davidson

Andrew Liesch - Piper Chandler

Damon DelMonte - KBW

Operator

Good day and thank you for attending by. And welcome to First Quarter 2022 Equity Bancshares 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].

I’d now like to hand the conference over to your host 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 first 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 one 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, and good morning. Thank you for joining our call and your interest in Equity Bancshares. Joining me is Eric Newell, our CFO; Greg Kossover, our Chief Operating Officer; and our President, Craig Anderson.

I'm pleased with the operating trends we showed in the quarter. Our earnings were both very strong and surpassed expectations. With excellent loan growth and reported strong net interest income, our EPS was $0.93 per share versus consensus of $0.63 and Eric will discuss in a few minutes.

Our hard work has yielded significant credit quality improvement with a decrease in our classified and non-performing assets. Our credits purchased in both the Almena and American State Bank mergers and our previously disclosed aerospace related credit, all saw improvement. And in some cases, elimination through payoff or disposition of assets. This resulted in a meaningful reduction of our criticized asset ratio. We continued execution by our special assets and credit teams is a reflection of the addition a year ago of counsel [indiscernible] personnel's expanded role in this area.