Amalgamated Financial Corp.

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Amalgamated Financial Corporation Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, the conference will be open 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 second 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 on 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 information or statements. Investors should refer to slides 2 and 3 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. A 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 the success that we are achieving, highlighted by a quarter where we posted record earnings as we execute our growth for good strategy. Our strategy is designed to accelerate loan growth and improve our profitability while managing our risk exposure prudently and growing our positive impact on society. I will then ask Jason to provide a more in-depth review of our financial results. The key highlights that I'd like you to take away from today's call are that we had record earnings of 63 cents per share of a full 18 cents from the first quarter of 2022. And our third consecutive quarter of nearly 5% net loan growth as our bankers generate new opportunities and we expand into new market segments. We had strong deposit growth of 4.6% to $7.3 billion and an enviable total cost of funds at eight basis points. which is one basis point lower than the previous quarter. We had 27 basis points of net interest margin expansion to 3.03% and a strong increase in our return on average assets to 1.01% from 0.78% in Q1. As I reflect on my first year as CEO at Amalgamated Bank, we have done what we said we would do. We have implemented our lending strategy, and finance those investments through our earnings. We lean deeper into our mission by lending to customer segments focused on sustainability, economic justice, community financing, and other social causes. We built a reliable lending platform staffed with experienced bankers, enabling us to sustain profitable growth, and we continue to develop our industry-leading deposit franchise. All of these accomplishments have resulted in financial performance that proves socially responsible banking and profitability can coexist to create our uniquely valuable franchise. One of our goals for this year is to become the most improved bank in the country as relates to financial performance metrics. I want to emphasize that we are taking a disciplined approach to our growth with a keen eye on expense control and how investment decisions affect our financial targets. As Jason will discuss further, we have worked hard to drive operational efficiencies and balance costs across the bank while adding new bankers and support infrastructure over the last four quarters. Living up to and building our brand nationally is another goal for our team, as this provides a significant competitive advantage in attracting talent to amalgamate it. And you can see this in the success we had recruiting experienced executives, bankers, and underwriters over the last year as Amalgamated moves closer to $10 billion in assets. Now, while we normally spend most of our time speaking about our financial performance during these calls, the world around us continues to evolve, and important social issues that we care about are taking center stage. I have said since I joined Amalgamated that profitable growth grows hand in hand with having a positive impact on issues that matter. Therefore, I'd be remiss if I didn't spend just a few minutes on this call sharing some thoughts on some of the more important topics on which this bank has been active since we last met with you. The Supreme Court's decision to strike down Roe v. Wade had a ripple effect throughout the country. We appeared in the media to talk about our view of the impact of Court's decision. We want to hire and retain qualified women. We want to give them opportunities to advance in their careers, and we want to deliver on our DEI commitment. The court's ruling impacts not just Amalgamate's ability to do so, but many other employers. So as a financial institution, we choose to lead on this issue from the perspective that our employees and their dependents have access to reproductive healthcare services. Accordingly, We've decided to provide financial assistance to our employees who seek related health care and are supporting organizations which want to do the same. Gun violence prevention is another issue that has sadly remained at the forefront. At Amalgamated, we are strong advocates for gun safety and better enforcement of laws. To make our case, I again had a chance to speak with both CBS News and CNBC to discuss our proposal for a merchant category code for gun stores. We have this for other retailers across every other industry. It allows us to identify suspicious activity made through the credit card network, and we can alert authorities when we see it. Doing so has helped us to mitigate mortgage fraud, human trafficking, and other crimes and we recognize our obligation to mitigate gun-related crimes as well. The last issue I'd like to comment on is climate change. We are again taking a leadership role in this critical area because of the outsized influence the finance industry has in curbing the world's carbon consumption. By way of example, we provided affirmative commentary on the SEC's proposed climate disclosure rules as we believe strongly in the intention of the rules And we've been managing our business in this way for quite a while. We will continue to speak loudly and passionately regarding climate change. And during the quarter, we released our 2021 Annual Corporate and Social Responsibility Report. This is our sixth edition where we showcase our environmental, social, and governance efforts to customers, employees, and to you as shareholders. And we announced our climate-related lending data with 31% in 2021 going to climate solutions. Given our support of these issues, I'm increasingly asked if the pursuit of advancing our mission and values could adversely impact our business. This is a natural question from the investment community in the current environment, given the experience of other public companies. I must highlight that our customers deeply and passionately share our mission and our values. They care greatly about doing business with a bank that invests their deposits in line with these values. This strong customer intimacy is a true competitive advantage for Amalgamated and one that is sustainable through a number of business cycles. While the issues I briefly touched on are complex and some rather somber, there are also some social moments to celebrate during the quarter. In May, we celebrated the contributions and influence of Asian Americans and Pacific Islander Americans to our history, culture, and achievements in the United States. Juneteenth, we celebrated another national holiday and afforded our employees a day of restoration, reflection, and strength. Pride Month also occurred during the quarter and was a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the LGBTQ plus community and advocate for continued improvement and protection of their rights. Taken as a whole, our social advocacy makes our record financial results feel all the more meaningful. Continuing to build our brand nationally is another goal for our team. Our mission and values also provide a significant competitive advantage in attracting talent to Amalgamated. You can see this in the success that we had in recruiting experienced executives bankers, and underwriters over the last year has amalgamated and moved closer to the $10 billion mark in assets. As I mentioned in previous calls, our four-pillar growth for good strategy is the fulcrum for our strategic decisions. Centered on building our business through our mission, focusing on segments that share our values and where we can take market share, developing and expanding our product offerings to grow our lending platform, and and improving the management of our data and technology to drive better efficiencies and effectiveness, we believe we are creating a differentiated bank. We are now increasing our focus on that fourth pillar. And in the second quarter, we recruited a highly talented individual from a major bank to lead our digital strategy. And we took steps to upgrade our information technology capabilities and talents. This sets the stage for the next phase of our strategic execution, and I'll have more to share on our planned investments during our third quarter call. While there is economic uncertainty ahead, we remain cautiously optimistic as our bankers continue to open amalgamated to large new markets with significant loan growth potential that we believe are less subject to economic or cyclical factors. Our loan growth and credit quality trend over the past three quarters has been exciting. Our bankers are quickly ramping their pipelines and deploying the liquidity that our deposit franchise generates to maximize risk-adjusted returns. This market opportunity, combined with our financial performance year-to-date, provides confidence in our ability to achieve the higher end of our revised earnings guidance We will also likely exceed our high single-digit loan growth guidance for the full year 2022. As we execute our growth for good strategy successfully, we believe that the market has begun and will continue to recognize the value in our bank. The best part is it feels like we're just getting started. Now let me turn the call over to Jason for greater depth on our financial performance. Jason?