Amalgamated Financial Corp.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Algamated Financial Corporation First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference 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 conference 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 2023 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 slide two of our earnings deck, as well as our 2022 10-K filed on March 9th, 2023, 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. 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. Good morning, everyone. We appreciate your time and your interest today. Well, certainly a lot has happened since our last earnings release and conversation. The market turmoil that has ensued following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in early March has been all consuming for markets the last 30 to 45 days. We are engaging employees, customers, and investors to help them understand the financial stability of their bank of choice. This time investment was actually invaluable as a means for reinforcing the already strong connection with each of our stakeholders. I've been so impressed by our entire bank's ability to rise to this occasion. As I've mentioned before, I truly believe we have the right team in place to manage through difficult situations and position us for continued success. Amalgamated Bank is unique in that at just under $8 billion of total assets, we rank high among the 200 top publicly traded U.S. banks in total asset size, yet are also able to have our executive management team engage directly with our customers and our partners to reaffirm trust and confidence. Our customers were able to see executive management as an extension of their relationship banker and also witness the value they themselves directly bring to the bank, which only served to strengthen the longstanding ties we have with them. We are quite fond of reminding our stakeholders that we are the same bank that we were before the closures, a conservatively run financial institution that's a good steward of our customers' money. It's also not lost on us or our stakeholders that we turned 100 years old on March 16, 2023. In a strange bit of irony, our centennial birthday comes at a time when history and stability are at the forefront of the banking discussion. Happy 100-year-old birthday to us, our employees, to all of our friends and partners. There are very few banks that are in that 100 club. We just celebrated our centennial anniversary this past week by ringing the bell at NASDAQ with our employees who have been here for over 25 years. During the celebration, I was reminded that Amalgamated Bank has seen many turbulent periods over the last century, and we've come out stronger every time. We were founded in New York City in 1923 by immigrant textile workers in order to provide basic banking services to their families while in search of a better life for themselves. For 100 years, we have demonstrated that successful banking means doing what's right for our customers and doing what's right for the communities we serve. We have been committed to using our voice to advocate for responsible public policy, increase access to the financial system, and to create the kind of community change that positively impacts our customers and our employees. Ultimately, it's our belief that our mission and values resonate with our existing customers while continuing to attract new customers who share the vision. Our first quarter results again validate that mission. In fact, our results demonstrate the resiliency of our growth for good strategy, as well as the strength of our customer relationships. We were able to deliver gap earnings of 69 cents per diluted share and core earnings of 74 cents per diluted share. We selectively grew loans by $92.2 million or 2.2%. And also our PACE portfolio grew by $84.5 million or 9.3%. Additionally, we delivered net interest income of $67.3 million, which exceeded our expectations of 63 to 65 million, and a 21 basis point expansion in our loan yields that led to a five basis point increase in our net interest margin to 3.59%. While we expect earnings headwinds in the upcoming quarter that Jason will discuss in a bit, our mission-based banking model continues to prove that we can do well by doing good. Simply put, our first quarter results clearly demonstrate that the financial strength of this bank is still there and the competitive advantage that we hold in the market is still strong. Recently, there's been much talk about deposit granularity and susceptibility to runs on the bank. The conversation is understandable in the industry because it was a primary driver for the bank failures that occurred in early March. While we believe those failures can be attributed to other factors or business strategy decisions, nevertheless, I'd like to address our deposit granularity and share some key insights to help you better understand our primary funding composition. Our deposit franchise is a true differentiator for us, and it has experienced strong organic growth since segmenting our customer base in 2015 and recruiting constituent-focused bankers to gather deposits. We have grown our mission-aligned core deposit base from $2.7 billion then to $6.6 billion today, a compound annual growth rate of 12.8%. Our customers are changemakers. They are the individuals, organizations, and businesses in our six key segments of labor, sustainability, philanthropy, social advocacy, not-for-profit, and political. What they all have in common is that they care about what their money does in the world. Our deposit franchise is comprised of customers that have banked with us for decades, given our shared values and our union heritage. In fact, Three billion of our core deposits are from labor union-related customers. To further illustrate our deposit granularity, we are introducing a designation of super core deposits. Those are deposits that are in our core segments with account duration in excess of five years. Our super core deposits total $3.5 billion, or 53.6% of our total core deposits. Most significantly, the weighted average life of these deposits is 17.2 years. I'll say again, 17.2 years. This is the type of stickiness that defines our deposit base and contributes to our top 20 ranking in terms of deposit quality. When thinking about susceptibility to runs on deposits, we believe Amalgamated is as insulated as any bank in the country. This is something a 100-year-old bank can say with confidence and pride, having been tested repeatedly throughout history. Stating the obvious, our customers' money is safeguarded by our liquidity and our capital. We have long been carefully managing our balance sheet, having maintained our asset sensitivity while rates were low, resisting the urge to chase yield and sacrifice liquidity. Our discipline with our securities portfolio proved to be a real tailwind when rates rose quickly, and I was delighted to return much of that benefit to shareholders in the form of substantially improved performance metrics. Over the past few quarters, we have significantly reduced our asset sensitivity, and we've also been selectively reducing our securities portfolio as we have grown our loan portfolio. Importantly, our available for sale securities portfolio had an effective duration of only 1.8 years at quarter end. We ended the first quarter with cash and immediate borrowing capacity of $2.6 billion and another $868 million of two-day capacity from unpledged securities resulting in $3.4 billion of two-day total liquidity. Our two-day total liquidity covers 79% of our total uninsured deposits. Perhaps more importantly, our immediate liquidity covers 137% of those deposits that don't fit into the super core category that I spoke about earlier. Amalgamated has a differentiated position in the market as a values-based bank that has been run conservatively with long-tenured client relationships. We've never wavered from our mission of being America's socially responsible bank and are seeing the benefits of this as individuals and organizations increasingly care how their money is invested. This societal change is still in the early innings and amalgamated its position to benefit as we pursue the next leg of our growth for good strategy. We recognize the headwinds presently facing the industry and our strategy is able to pivot and to adapt as needed. We will continue to explore a digital transformation given the opportunity we see to tie our commercial business into a re-imagined consumer business and also accommodate the needs of our customers to maintain pace with ease of transaction technology. We are carefully managing our expense space and are closely watching the economy. Investments still need to be made But as was the case with our lending strategy, we will make disciplined choices funded through profitability with a requirement for timely returns. I will now turn the call over to Jason to provide a review of our first quarter financial results.