Amalgamated Financial Corp.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. And welcome to the Amalgamated Financial Corporation first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, the conference will be opened for questions with instructions to follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Jason Darby, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your participation in our first quarter 2022 earnings call. With me today is Priscilla Sims-Brown, President and Chief Executive Officer. As a reminder, a telephonic replay of this call will be available in the investor section of our website for an extended period of time. Additionally, a slide deck to complement today's discussion is also available on the investor section of our website. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that this call may contain certain statements that constitute forward-looking statements. within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We caution investors that actual results may differ from the expectations indicated or implied by any such forward-looking statements or information. Investors should refer to slide two and three of our earnings slide deck, as well as our 2021 10-K filed on March 11, 2022, for a list of risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated or implied by such statements. Additionally, during today's call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP measures which we believe are useful in evaluating our performance. The presentation of this additional information should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measure can be found in our earnings release as well as on our website. Let me now turn the call over to Priscilla.

Thank you, Jason, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your time and interest today. This morning, I will provide an update on our strategic plan to generate sustained and profitable organic loan growth. Jason will then provide a more in-depth review of our first quarter financial results. Our results are a clear indication of the fundamental earnings power of Amalgamated Bank as we execute on the four pillars of our growth for good strategy. Along these lines, there are four key performance measures that I'd like you to take away from this morning's call. The first is net loan growth. Excluding PACE assessments, we were up 4.8% compared to the linked quarter, reflecting a second consecutive quarter of growth due to the solid momentum of our core loan growth strategy established in the second half of 2021. Including PACE assessments, we grew the lending activity by 6.5%. Over the course of 2022, we anticipate loans will meaningfully drive net interest income, and earnings. Second, on the heels of successfully recruiting six new bankers in the fourth quarter of 21, we've continued our talent acquisition efforts in the first quarter of 22, also recruiting six new established bankers with relationships across our various focus regions, enabling our ability to tap more broadly into our existing footprint for opportunistic loan origination and to gain market share. We also completed the restructure of the organization to align to our strategic imperatives. Third, our deposit growth was considerable, exceeding our expectations and increasing 9.7% to $7 billion from the linked quarter as our political deposit franchise rose to $1.1 billion, while we held the cost of deposits steady at nine basis points. Fourth, our net interest income rose by 2.8%, demonstrating the inherent earnings power of our asset-sensitive balance sheet paired with our industry-leading low-cost deposit franchise. As we achieve meaningful consecutive loan growth, we are confident that our team, our product platform, and our overall operations are well-suited to achieve the high single-digit loan growth target we set in the fourth quarter call. The high-quality banking talent we acquired during the quarter, which includes subject matter experts in CDFI and climate finance, are incremental to our growth outlook. And as I've previously discussed, we believe our existing footprint of New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. is ripe for both broadening and deepening, both in taking lending expertise from one market to the others, as well as to expand beyond our traditional deposit gathering model. We saw this during the first quarter when our reconstructed CRE team successfully originated a sizable multifamily residential loan in Boston with a runway for additional loan volume to build upon this achievement. The four pillars of our growth for good strategy have been and will continue to be the fulcrum for our strategic decisions. So far, I've spoken mostly about our third pillar, which we call our offer. It is largely driven by growing our lending platform in order to grow franchise value and fund future expansion goals. We've also been hard at work at our other three pillars of mission, customer insights, and efficiency. Our mission is evident by both the key customer segments we work in and also the mission-aligned products we engage in. Our customers, they're changemakers, largely individuals, small businesses, or in six other key commercial segments. But what they all have in common is that they care about what their money does in the world. We are committed to environmental and social responsibility, and all of our customers care about our actions as much as they care about their own. During the quarter, we were the first bank in the United States to receive approval from Science-Based Targets Initiative of our Net Zero program. carbon target and recently we announced that 31 percent of our 2021 lending related activity went toward climate solutions in the coming quarters i will have more to share on our customer insights pillar and related digital platform development as that experience is core to our ability to grow with the demands of our mission-based customer segments before turning the call over to jason I'd like to just make one more comment tethered to our fourth pillar of key effectiveness and efficiency. With the increased profitability we anticipate in 2021 and beyond due to the rising interest rates, our efforts to improve our valuation and performance measures are a top priority. So you can expect continued focus on improving efficiency. I'll now turn the call over to Jason.