Good afternoon. Welcome to the Triumph Bancorp, Inc. Annual Meeting of Stockholders. I would now like to turn the conference over to Carlos Sepoveda, Chairman of the Board of Directors. Please go ahead.
Okay. Good afternoon. Welcome to the shareholders meeting of Triumph Bancorp. My name is Carlos Sepulveda, and I serve as Chairman of the Board. I'd like to welcome everyone here in attendance and also welcome those that are joining us via the webcast.
I'd like to start off by introducing my fellow Board members that are here today, Robert Dobreant, Chuck Anderson, Justin Trail, Aaron Graft, Doug Kraatz, Marifest Miller, Michael Rafferty and I think that's all we have in attendance. Also present are various executive officers of the company, and I'd like to introduce them as well. We have Bryce Fowler. Bryce is Executive VP and CFO and President of TBK Bank as well as a Director of TBK Bank. Gail Lehman, Gail's EVP and Secretary and President of Retail Banking and Chief Operating Officer of TBK.
Todd Ritterbush. Todd is our Chief Lending Officer of the bank. Jeff Brenner. Hello, Jeff. Jeff is our CEO of Triumph Business Capital.
Adam Nelson. Adam Nelson is EVP and General Counsel. Jordan Graf. Jordan is EVP of TriumphPay. Also present is Ms.
Gina Green of Co, our independent registered public accounting firm, who will be available to answer questions that you might have. Gail Lehman, our EVP and Secretary, will act as secretary of today's meeting and Adam Elson, our EVP and General Counsel, will act as the Inspector of Elections. At this point, I'll turn the meeting over to Aaron Grab.
Is this it's on now. Okay. Good afternoon. And there's going to be 2 parts to this meeting. We're going to go through the formal part of the process.
And then at the end, we're going to have a Q and A session that I hope everyone finds valuable, although I do recognize most of you. So hopefully, it won't all be news to you. So I'm Aaron Graf, President and Chief Executive Officer of the company and I will serve as Chairman of this meeting. I now officially call the meeting to order. The business items on the agenda today were outlined in the company's notice and proxy provided to all stockholders.
The matters to be voted on at this meeting consist of the reelection of 4 Class II directors of our Board of Directors for a term to expire at the next Annual Meeting of Stockholders, approval of a nonbinding advisory resolution regarding the compensation of the company's named executive officers as disclosed in the proxy statement approval of a non binding advisory resolution regarding the frequency of future say on pay votes, approval of the First Amendment to the company's 2014 Omnibus Incentive Plan, approval of the company's employee stock purchase plan and ratification of the appointment of Crowe LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for our current year. At this time, could those stockholders who hold proxies please deliver them to the Inspector of Elections and those stockholders who desire to vote in person, please give their names to the Inspector of Elections. The Inspector of Elections will give you a ballot for matters to be voted today. While we are waiting for the Inspector of Elections to determine if a quorum is present, let me ask the secretary whether proper notice was given for this meeting.
I have available a certified list of the holders of the common stock of the company, the close of business on March 18, 2019, the date fixed by the Board of Directors for determining the stockholders entitled to notice and to vote at this meeting. I also have available the notice of meeting proxy statement and proxy and affidavits of the company's representatives as to the dual mailing thereof.
Thank you. I would ask that those documents be filed with the records of the company. This now brings us to the determination of a of a majority of the votes entitled to be cast on a matter constitutes a quorum. May I now have the report on whether a quorum is present?
There are present in person or represented by proxy the holders of 23,842,944 shares of common stock or 89.27 percent of all shares authorized to vote at this meeting. Consequently, a quorum is duly present and authorized to transact business on the matters that were submitted to the stockholders for approval.
Will the secretary please introduce each order of business for the meeting?
The first order of business is the reelection of the 4 Class II directors of the company for a term to last until the next annual meeting of stockholders. A summary of the proposal begins on Page 5 of the proxy statement.
I move to approve the reelection of such directors. Our bylaws require stockholders to provide advanced notice of their intent to nominate candidates for directors. No stockholder has provided notice. I therefore declare the nominations for director closed.
The next order of business is the approval of the non binding advisory resolution regarding the compensation of the company's named executive officers as disclosed in the proxy statement. A summary of the proposal begins on Page 41 of the proxy statement.
I move to approve such non binding advisory resolution.
The next order of business is the approval of the non binding advisory resolution regarding the frequency of future say on pay votes. A summary of the proposal begins on page 42 of the proxy statement.
I move to approve the 1 year alternative for the frequency of future say on pay votes.
The next order of business is the approval of the first amendment to the company's 2014 omnibus incentive plan. A summary of the proposal begins on page 43
of the proxy statement. I move to approve the 1st amendment to the company's 2014 omnibus incentive plan.
The next order of business is the approval of the company's employee stock purchase plan. A summary of the proposal begins on Page 49 of the proxy statement.
I move to approve the company's employee stock purchase plan.
The next order of business is the ratification of the appointment of Crowe LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for our current fiscal year. A summary of the proposal begins on Page 52 of the proxy statement.
I now move to ratify such appointment. At this time, we ask each stockholder voting in person to mark your ballot and to deliver your completed ballot to the Inspector of Elections. Seeing none no one voting in person, all stockholders present in person or by proxy have had an opportunity to vote. I will now declare the polls closed at 1:14 p. M.
On May 16, 2019. The Inspector of Elections will examine the proxies in the ballot submitted to Mr. Nelson. Would you please provide the results of the vote?
With respect to the election of the Class II directors, 19,000,924 1,827 shares were voted in favor of Mr. Kratz, with 375,885 shares voting against, 3,794 shares withheld or abstaining and 3,538,438 brokered non votes. 19,588,152 shares were voted in favor of Mr. Davis with 712,680 shares voted against, 3,673 shares withheld or abstaining and 3,538,438 broker non votes. 19,951,753 shares were voted in favor of Mr.
Rafferty with 349,080 shares voted against, 3,673 shares withheld or abstaining and 3,538,438 broker non votes, and 19,951,031,031 shares were voted in favor of Mr. Sparks with 349,802 shares voting against 3,673 shares withheld or abstaining and 3,538,438 brokered non votes. Consequently, each of the Class II directors nominated to stand for reelection as set forth in our proxy statement have hereby been reelected for term to last until our next annual meeting of stockholders. With respect to the proposal to approve the non binding advisory resolution regarding the compensation of the company's named executive officers as disclosed in the proxy statement, 19,900 and 68,594 shares were voted in favor of such proposal, with 288,784 shares opposed, 47,128 abstentions and 3,538,438 brokered non votes. Consequently, such proposal is hereby adopted.
With respect to the proposal to approve the frequency of future say on pay votes, 18,690,000 alternative and 1,359,465
shares were voted in favor
of the 3 year alternative with 3,007 152,335 brokered non votes. Consequently, the 1 year alternative is hereby adopted.
With respect
to the proposal to approve the 1st amendment to the company's 20 14 omnibus incentive plan, 19,000,894,701
shares were
3,538,438
brokered non votes. Consequently, such proposal is hereby adopted. With respect to the proposal to approve the company's employee stock purchase plan, 20,236,220 shares were voted in favor of such proposal with 49,345 opposed, 18,941 abstentions and 3,538,004 and 38 broker non votes. Consequently, such proposal is hereby adopted. With respect to the proposal to ratify the appointment of Crowe LLP as our independent registered accounting firm for our current fiscal year, 23,738,545 shares were voted in favor of such proposal with 104,132 opposed and 267 abstentions.
Consequently, such proposal is hereby adopted.
Thank you, Adam. With no further business, I hereby make a motion that this meeting be adjourned. As previously noted in Carlos' remarks to start the meeting, we would now like to take a few minutes to update our stockholders on Triumph's previous fiscal year and its activities to date this year. Before I begin, let me remind you that we may make comments that might be characterized as forward looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Generally speaking, comments regarding the company's or management's beliefs, expectations, intentions, goals, plans, outlooks or predictions of the future are forward looking statements.
These statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to vary materially from the anticipated results implied by these forward looking statements. These risks and uncertainties are detailed in the company's filings with the SEC, which are publicly available on the SEC's website. And with that, I would like to invite to the stage my co participants this year. We're going to do this a little differently than we have in years past because I think you all are tired of hearing from me or that's what people tell me. And as they're coming up, our things
this year,
things in Brazil. So on your way out, there will be ice cream at hand. There are instructions until
the
So how we plan what's that? Hello? Good. Can you hear me? Great.
So we're going to do this
in a short presentation style
and then open it up for questions.
Obviously, it's a good thing in a shareholder meeting to see people you know and for things to go matter of course that's a good thing for us. But just so you know who I have on the stage, I've got Todd Ritterbusch, our Chief Lending Officer who's been with us 2 weeks. 2 weeks. Congratulations. Jeff Brenner, our CEO of Triumph Business Capital, who's been with us 56 days.
Not the new guy anymore. Congratulations. Jordan Graf, who's been with us A little over a year. Wow. All right.
We're getting some tenure now. Jordan is the leader of TriumphPay. And then Gail Lehman, who's been with me in this from the very beginning. So with that, see if this works. So our theme this year is Refaint Vanilla.
And some of you have already seen this, heard this, kind of the thinking behind our thesis for 2019. And to talk about that, it's most helpful to talk about 2018. Well, first of all, we got to talk about this. But you've all heard me talk about that before. So 2018, for those of you, team members and directors who were here, 2018 was a transformative year for TVK.
We've used 2 analogies as we've gone on the road and talked to our team, 1 of the race car being on fire, just the incredibly rapid growth. And then our colleagues at Triumph Business Capital used this other graphic of what they felt like they were going through as they completed an acquisition and serviced trucking in probably what is 2018 will go down as a record year in transportation. So many of you in the room know what 2018 was like. Just for the numbers, our total assets increased in 1 year by 30%, which is very transformative. I would say even more transformative is 1 in 3 of 1 out of every 3 of our team members is new in 2018.
You just met a few of them. But across the enterprise, we have grown dramatically and now have over 1200 team members, which is exciting, but also presents a challenge of how we indoctrinate them into our culture. And you can't continue to grow people, team members at that pace and maintain the culture that we have worked so hard to build. And so I don't anticipate that growth this year. But just so you have some perspective, that's a pretty radical growth year.
Last year, not only did we have organic growth, but we completed 3 main deals and the acquisition of a factoring company. And many of our team members worked on that. It took us into new states, new systems, new team members, new processes. And while we were doing that, we launched 72 strategic initiatives, which are all aimed at taking triumph from this what has become has gone from a specialty purpose bank to a community bank to what I think now we're on the cusp of approaching a regional bank. And that's a whole different mindset of the way you run your business, the processes that are required, the talent that is required.
And so it has been an exhausting process for our team to do acquisitions, deliver an extremely profitable 2018, our most profitable year ever, and to do that while we're in flight with all these changes. So for 2019, as a relief to some of our team members in the room, I don't think it's going to quite as heck as 2018. There are still many things to do. We have a lot of upgrades that we're in the process of rolling out. And what's interesting, we sit here today.
For those of you who were in the room last year, our stock was trading 25% higher a year ago than it does today. But I can tell you as I sit here, the company is at least 25% better today than it was a year ago. When I think about the talent that we have attracted, the processes we've built, the systems that we green lighted, the growth, the new markets, I mean, this is a far superior company to where it was a year ago. And so while it's frustrating as a public company to deal with what the market perceives your value is on any given day. I can tell you from management's perspective and you're going to hear from a few of our team members about some of these changes that there is some really exciting stuff that is going on and gives us a lot of optimism for the future.
So my goals for 2019 that touch a bunch of broad areas, which I'll just cover briefly and then have folks talk about their independent initiatives.
Number 1 is ROA. You all have
heard us talk about return on average asset targets. Our goal has been to run at a 1 point 8 percent ROA or better, which would put us in about the top 1% of all banks. Right now, we're in about the top 20% of all banks, which most people would find to be satisfactory. That's never been our MO here. So we're pursuing excellence.
Out of 6,500 banks, there's less than 50 that can consistently deliver a 1.8% ROA. And we think that on an annualized basis in 2021, we can be there. We think we'll actually hit it a few quarters along the way. It depends on market trade wars, China, I mean, all sorts of things that are out of our control. But what you need to understand is the play we have called for ourselves very, very few other banks in this country are running or will ever run.
So that would be number 1. And to get that, we need to improve our efficiency ratio, which that for us means efficient growth that we grow assets, we grow earnings faster than expenses. And I think a lot of that groundwork has already been laid. There will be expenses, expense growth for a growth company. The fact that our annual expense for 2019 that we told The Street is $202,000,000 For those of you who were around in 2010, the entire bank was $240,000,000 in assets that year.
So as I tell our team members, it costs us about $700,000 a day to operate and 65% of that cost is on people. So that is our biggest investment. That is our biggest asset. There's a talent upgrade to senior positions. I've fulfilled most of that goal this year.
These aren't the only folks that we've added, but we've added some really talented team members as we've grown where to fill the gaps for us that make me really excited about where we're going. Our credit process, we want to continue to get better. I can tell you at year end and at last quarter end, our credit has never been better. And that's partially the economy, but that's partially really good execution by our team. And so we want to continue to improve that.
And then the last 2, we want to launch our Dallas retail operation. We are in flight in the construction of our branch in Preston Center, which we hope will be done towards the end of this year. And we believe that branch is well positioned with our relationships to be by far the largest branch out of the 64 branches we currently operate, which we're excited about that. And then lastly, if we're going to be a regional bank, we have to deliver a retail experience, equivalent of a regional bank. And before I go on that, I just there are people that deserve some mention for last year, what the equipment finance team did, what the national CRE team did, what the Midwestern division did in 2018, outperformed their targets by a long ways and were really critical in helping us get to where we are.
And so those are some people. And then Triumph Business Capital, of course, had a record year. So there are a lot of people who deserve credit for 2018 that I want to make sure get notice the notice they deserve, and we're so appreciative for that. So with that, we're just going to have each of these teams talk for about a minute or so on what their focus is
and then we're going to open
it up for questions. And then there's ice cream. I mean what's not to love in the next 10 minutes. So Todd, why don't you talk about your lending focus for 2019? Thanks, Aaron.
So at
the top of the screen, you see the reference to relationship banking and that really is our top priority for the foreseeable future. So when we talk about relationship banking, what does that really mean? In any presentation, you'll see relationship banking go right alongside the term cross selling. To be honest, I don't really think cross selling is a great term. It talks about what selling additional products and services does for us.
It doesn't really talk to what it does for our clients. So the
vanilla version of
cross selling, I think, is cross serving. So we're going to think about our clients' needs. We're going to think about them holistically. And we're going to leverage the deep relationships that we have in each of our commercial finance specialty businesses and each of our communities across the country to look for ways to serve our clients more wholly. And a lot of that has already happened.
I was just in a meeting with Doug Copper who runs our equipment finance business earlier today. He's taking me through the relationships that are largest within his business. Most of them already have other aspects or facets of the relationship today. But that's not to say we can't do more, particularly given the new capabilities that we have. So with the new treasury services platform, we have the ability to go out there and leverage the deep relationships we have to provide more services to our clients.
That makes their relationship with financial services providers simpler. And then when we bundle our products and services, we provide added simplicity in the way they operate their business, the potential for savings by bundling the pricing as well. And all in all, much higher customer satisfaction and net retention scores. So that's been for us. We've got a lot of work to do there.
We all know that. But it's exciting to know that even without any other acquisitions, we have tremendous growth potential residing right within this business today that we can go out and attack. Loan growth, brief run loan growth, we've bumped our heads a couple of times with respect to specific credits and specific areas of the bank. ABL was one of those. But I've learned in the last couple of weeks after diving pretty deep with the team that this business has really demonstrated its commitment to tight controls, processes and managing the business where it needs to be managed to be effective in asset based lending.
They've earned the right to grow again and candidly we need that business. It's important to our clients and it's important to our overall enterprise. Diversification into industries with radicality, we do have some cyclical exposure in this business due to the very nature of the products that we provide. We have the opportunity to leverage our new capabilities though to expand into areas that are less cyclical and provide take away some of the economic cycle risk that we face. Going along with that, we have the ability to maintain a high ROA, the 1.8% level that Aaron refers to all the time, by looking at our clients from a holistic perspective rather than just an individual product perspective.
It may be difficult for us to achieve 1.8 on any individual product, but if we think about the relationship as a whole, 1.8 becomes much more achievable. Finally, on credit quality, Erin already addressed this. We have terrific stable credit quality measures. I've had the opportunity to sit in meetings with our regulators. The relationship there is strong and collaborative.
And so is nothing to worry about from the standpoint of looking at our credit quality based on recent history. But we all know that things can change. And we have to also look forward into where there may be sources of stress that could make things difficult for us down the road. That's for our shareholders, but it's also for our clients. If we're sure we're in a strong position, when things are good, we'll know that we can stand by our clients when things are bad.
And that's the most important reason why we focus on credit quality. So those are the high level priorities and look forward to sharing a lot more with you over the coming months.
Great. Thank you, Todd. So Jeff, who is like is 50 days into his role at Triumph Business Capital, taking over for Steve, who's retired and getting to work alongside George, who is the subject matter expert, who's here today has been a very valuable team member for us for a lot of years. Jeff, tell oh, it went the wrong way. Tell us about what TBC is going to do this year in face of this market's a little different than it was in 2018, but what are your swing keys for creating value?
Sure. We have to optimize everything that can be optimizable within the production environment. If I showed you a schematic of all the steps required to factor an invoice, you would look at it. You would say this looks a lot like manufacturing production line, the handoffs, the step is very linear process. And just like the manufacturing industry, this process will be aided considerably by investments in artificial intelligence, machine learning, things to automate the process.
And that's a key area for us this year. What comes out on the other side of that is you have world class speed, which is what the clients want to getting their working capital, but don't have to sacrifice industry leading rigor and risk management. So that's a big focus for us. We invoice I'm sorry, we process 20,000 invoices a day. Think about that, that's a lot.
We capture a tremendous amount of information about our clients. Make sure there will be a focus to get better about understanding our client segment even differently, being smarter about the unique needs. Sorry. Being smarter about the unique needs that they demand and require and moving into a position to cross serve from within the enterprise. So a small trucker that's just starting off has a different need than a 50 truck fleet and that has a different need than an invoice client who's in the oil and gas.
We can be smarter, better and faster about how we customize our offerings, leverage the enterprise and cross serve those organizations. And then lastly, when you go as quickly as we have in such a short amount of time, it's really hard to maintain accountability and alignment within the organization. A lot of new people through an acquisition who have never met each other. So we're in the process of implementing an organization wide operating philosophy that will ensure every employee from the receptionist to the CEO has visibility and understands the strategy, 3 year, 1 year, quarterly, what the metrics we're going to use to measure success and most importantly, what each of us are accountable to do to ensure that we get there.
And in that business, we have what, 400 team members today in
the business? Yes. Just shy of 400. So about
a third of all our team members work in PBC. Awesome. Thank you, Jeff.
So Jordan, people have heard a lot about TriumphPay.
Tell us what TriumphPay is going to do in 2019.
So in 2019, we have 3 areas that we're focused on. The first is driving platform volume. The second is leveraging our partnerships and integrations in the industry. And the third is completing the payment cycle
for carriers.
So in the driving platform volume, TriumphPay has benefits from a network effect. So as much the volume as we can bring onto the platform, the more valuable this platform becomes. So our goal this year is to onboard 40 freight brokers including 4 of the top 23PLs in the industry. The way we're going to
do that is we've added 4
full time salespeople to TriumphPay over the last year, several of which with decades of industry experience. One specifically started working for J. B. Hunt in 1985 covering loads. So he reminds me that he's been covering loads since before I was born very often.
But he knows everyone. So he's a very good asset for our team. The second area of leveraging partnerships and integrations. As we've gotten deeper, into the industry, we've learned for the larger brokers, publicly traded companies, some of them product roll ups, require a very complex integration pattern that we have to meet. And our ability to solve that for these large brokers, helps accelerate the time in which we can bring them onto the platform.
So that's an area that we are going to continue to build out this year, but have already made significant improvement thus far. And this area also includes integrations with transportation management systems, TMS, our accounting systems for these freight brokers. This has been an incredibly painful long process to it's a multi year process to get involved and integrated with these systems. And now that we have it, we're able to start pushing harder to get these brokers onto the platform. It's definitely a mode for people that would try come behind us and do what we've done.
And it's a credit to this organization to be willing to invest into that into building those integrations. And the last part is completing the payment cycle. So for a carrier, there's the carriers we've surveyed, the 20,000 carriers that are registered on TriumphPay, what they want from TriumphPay and the 2 most requested features, the ability to capture images on a mobile app and the ability to see all the TriumphPay brokers and their load. So that will be rolling out in Q3 in the mobile app. And it's very exciting, especially for the brokers who see carriers preferring to be paid by TriumphPay.
And in fact, 4 out of 5 carriers prefer to be paid by TriumphPay instead of via broker direct. That's something that we're very proud of of the payment experience we create for our carriers. So we're going to continue to invest in that, so they'll help us pull more volume onto the platform.
Great. And so let me just several of you've heard me use this analogy, but I think it bears repeating. So if you've got 4 of the top 20 freight brokers, and as Jordan would tell you, there's probably 1,000 freight brokers that really out of the 8,000 that move most freight. If you think about your digital shopping experience for any one of you, I'm assuming all of you, when you don't buy things on Amazon, when you actually go to other sites, if you're anything like me, I now use PayPal to pay on every site. Why?
Because I don't want to enter in my credit card information and my billing address and all this information onto 5, 6 different sites. So when they give me the option to pay the merchant via PayPal, there's a network effect. The more I use PayPal, the more merchants want PayPal and it's sort of a virtuous cycle. I believe and it's not just me, but our team and since this was dreamed up 3 4 years ago and is being invested in, eventually, we believe we're building the PayPal for the brokered freight market that could have also extend into the shipping market, which the brokered freight market is $160,000,000,000 of annual spend. So, it's exciting to see how the strength of Triumph Business Capital, the strength of our equipment finance group who blazed the trail for us in transportation is now having come alongside it, this technology opportunity that could truly be transformative to our organization and to the industry as a whole.
So, thank you, Jordan. For all this loan growth that we just talked about, we actually do need a few deposits to support that. And so we've with this growth, we've taken a bunch of small community banks and kind of jammed them together and put our flag over the door. And we've learned when you do that, you don't get a consistent brand experience. If you think about going to McDonald's here or McDonald's in Kentucky, you should have the same brand experience.
And in retail, I think we have a long way to go and had a long way to go. We've made some ground in creating a user experience for our brand, which is now from a branch perspective, we're in 5 states and I suspect that will grow. So, Gale has agreed to serve as President of Retail Operations and has a lot of things in flight, and we'd love for you to tell people about a couple of them.
Sure. As Aaron said, since 2013, we have merged 8 banks into 1. And with that came 62 branches that all operated on different platforms and all operated in different ways. And so my goal in 2019 is to design, develop and deploy the TBK way. So having said that, we operate in 6 states, Texas,
right? You said you
And so let's talk about operational excellence or let me actually run through all three of those. I have three goals this year. One is to design, develop and deploy operational excellence. The second is retail deposit growth. And the third and probably the most important is to build customer care.
Operational excellence. One of the things that I think is most important is to be removing the silos. So we're taking what have traditionally been back office operations, support operations and moving them into the frontline, moving them into retail to provide our customers with appropriate services, appropriate customer information, fraud prevention, card services, deposit operation services, in compliance inside of our retail operation. We are introducing a certified banker training program. We want our employees to be the best of the best.
We want them to be armed with knowledge and skill to serve our customers. And staffing and efficiency, we are doing quite a bit of analysis of what our customer behavior is, what is our competitor behavior, what is appropriate staffing to provide the best experience, what are the appropriate hours in our operations to provide the best customer experience. Retail deposit growth. I think it's a little more than retail deposit growth. It's being the best corporate citizen we can be in the markets we serve.
So when I say retail deposit growth, we are forging forward with a sales team. Sales, as Todd said, often gets a sort of a bad rap. But when I say sales, it's not just about selling our products or gathering deposits, but it's also deploying our philosophy, our philanthropy and entering activities that support CRA in our communities. So our sales team is providing outreach into our communities to develop those services. We launched this spring a new treasury management suite in support of our commercial customers.
That brings a host of products that hopefully will allow us to compete, as Aaron said, with those regionals. And finally, customer care. This
is probably
the one I'm most excited about is that's where the TBK way is going to show. And so early in the Q3, July, if not sooner, we'll be launching a call center. As I said, we acquired 8 banks. 8 banks means 800 phone numbers, right? And 62 branches where customers don't get dedicated support.
So we're going to be launching a call center that will have team members dedicated to product lines, the online banking specialists, treasury management specialists, new accounts specialists that will be able to serve our customers in their inquiries. And one other thing we are building a support team around, and Aaron, you might want to talk about this just a little bit, is the concept of the introduction of concierge banking.
Yes. Well, our goal in the Dallas market, if you think about, is the opportunity the number of investors who are connected with us in Dallas, who invested with us in the early days, who our Board has relationships with.
Our goal is to deliver
a product that's equivalent to a JPMorgan Private Banking experience or a U. S. Trust experience, but to do it in a more entrepreneurial way. So we between the branch and the team that we've built, I think we're doing that and have some very well regarded customers who are in the process of transitioning to us. And I think it's very exciting.
So with that, the last thing I would say is that, again, I don't know where the market's going to go. I mean, it's been really interesting. Bryce Fowler, who all of you know and should know, Bryce and I are out on the road, and he's been with me on the road for 5 years and is we've seen all the investors and we've watched them go from exuberant to scared and unknowing. And what I would say to the primary audience of team members here is our stock price today matters, but it's not the most important thing. I mean, this we're building something and we are staying on mission with that.
We have a plan. I think you've heard just facets of the plan. Our plan is not to just exist as a community bank. And if you look around, most organizations are comfortable to satisfactorily underperform, just like
as long as the team, the leadership team
and the Board we have, as long as the team, the leadership team and the Board we have are in place. And so I don't know where we'll be a year from now. But if a year from now I can sit and ask you and say we're 25% better as a company than we were last year, I know the stock price follows. And so stock price is just one piece of our business. We have to deliver value to our stockholders because we want them to vote yes, which you noticed most people did because I think we have credibility with investors.
But we have to deliver value to customers and to our team members and to our regulators. And so we have to balance all that. And I think that for 2018, we did that well, and I think we're well set up for 2019. So at this point, are there any
questions?
I think it'd be the 2 or 3 metrics that are primary drivers of compensation for the NEOs. So that would be return on assets, how profitable are we, asset quality and that's predictive. In other words, what is our non performing asset ratio and our charge offs. Those are the three things I think for any bank you look at first. What I would be being an insider, what I would be most interested to know is how are we doing in retail?
I think we've demonstrated to the market that we are as good of asset generating company as exists in banking. I mean, the yields we get, the growth we get. The question mark that we intend to answer, both organically and through M and A, would be how do we keep the right hand side of the balance sheet staying up with the left hand side without just paying top of market rates. That would be the 4th piece that I would really focus on. Great question.
Any more? Going once? Going twice? Let's have ice. It's right outside.
Thank you all for being here. We appreciate it. We'll see you, some of you very soon.
But the rest of you,
I'll see you next year.