Jimmy Tallent Balanced Quotations

During the fourth quarter, we resolved several non-performing assets, which slightly increased net charge-offs while lowering non-performing assets. Asset quality continues to compare favorably with peer banks and remains well within our tolerance levels. Strong credit quality, rooted with our guiding principle of securing loans with hard assets, is essential to our balanced growth strategy and overall success.

This is a significant milestone and our first public equity offering. We're very pleased with the investor community's positive response. This additional capital will allow us to continue to pursue and execute our successful balanced growth strategy.

We are committed to excellent customer service, superior operating performance and solid credit quality as we continue our efforts to build shareholder value through our balanced growth strategy of strong internal growth, complemented by selective de novo and merger expansion.