Bankwell Financial Group, Inc.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Tina, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the BankWell Financial Group Incorporated's first quarter 2026 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, simply press star 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Courtney Sacchetti, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. You may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to BankWell's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. To access the call over the internet and review the presentation materials that we will reference on the call, please visit our website at investor.mybankwell.com and go to the events and presentations tab for supporting materials. Our first quarter earnings release is also available on our website. Our remarks today may contain forward-looking statements and may refer to non-GAAP financial measures. All participants should refer to our SEC filings, including those found on Forms 8K, 10Q, and 10K, for a complete discussion of forward-looking statements and any factors that could cause actual results to differ from those statements. And now, I will turn the call over to Chris Grisecki, BankWealth's Chief Executive Officer.

Thanks, Courtney. Welcome and thank you to everyone for joining Banquo's quarterly earnings call. This morning, I'm joined by Courtney Sicchetti, our Chief Financial Officer, and Matt McNeil, our President and Chief Banking Officer. We appreciate your interest in our performance, and I'm excited by this opportunity to discuss our results with you. We've delivered a solid start to 2026 with strong earnings, continued balance sheet improvement, and continued progress on our strategic priorities. For the first quarter, we reported gap net income of $11.3 million, or $1.41 per share. These results were supported by solid loan production, strong fee income from our SBA platform, lower funding costs, meaningful core deposit growth, and ongoing balance sheet optimization, including reduced reliance on wholesale funding and continued progress on building a more interest rate neutral balance sheet. Loan growth remained positive during the quarter with $190 million of originations, including $34 million of SBA production, resulting in net loan growth of $27 million. On an annualized basis, this level of growth is consistent with our previously communicated guidance of 4% to 5% for the full year, and our pipeline remains strong. Importantly, this growth is supported by strong core deposit inflows. Core deposits increased by $113 million sequentially, with $39 million coming from low-cost deposits. Included in that $39 million is $24 million of growth in analyzed checking balances for an 8% increase on the quarter. In addition to funding our loan growth, we've also reduced broker deposit balances and federal home loan bank borrowings by a combined $95 million, further improving our funding mix. Since our peak at the end of 2022, we've successfully reduced our broker deposits by $513 million for a 50% decline. The net interest margin was 328 basis points, reflecting modest pressure from asset repricing as floating rate loans reset lower and an unfavorable day count impact relative to the prior quarter. These factors were partially offset by continued improvement in deposit costs. which declined five basis points sequentially to 310 basis points. Non-interest income remained a meaningful contributor to results, totaling $3.3 million, which includes $2.4 million of SBA gain on sale income. Our SBA division continues to be an important part of our diversified revenue strategy and a meaningful source of recurring fee income. Credit quality remains healthy with expectations of further improvements. While non-performing assets increased modestly to 56 basis points of total assets, we had visibility into the resolution of several credits over the coming quarters. Overall asset quality metrics remain well within our internal expectations, and reserve coverage levels remain appropriate. Finally, we are excited to have opened our first full-service branch in New York during the quarter, located in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. The branch is home to an experienced private client banking team that joined BankWell in 2025. And the addition of this location enables the team to deliver BankWell's full suite of commercial and private client banking services on the ground in New York. I'll now turn the call back to Courtney to walk through the financial results in more detail.