Bankwell Financial Group, Inc.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the Bankwell Financial Group second quarter 2026 earnings call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Courtney Sacchetti, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Courtney, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to BankWell's second 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 second 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 8-K, 10-Q, and 10-K, 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 Grusecki, Bankroll's Chief Executive Officer.

Thanks, Courtney. Welcome and thank you to everyone for joining BankWell's quarterly earnings call. This morning I'm joined by Courtney Sacchetti, our CFO, and Matt McNeill, our President and Chief Banking Officer. Thank you for your continued interest in BankWell and for the chance to share our second quarter results with you. Second quarter marked another period of strong execution with meaningful margin expansion, robust core deposit and loan growth, and continued progress on our strategic priorities, including the continued success of our SBA division. For the second quarter, we reported gap net income of $12.4 million, or $1.52 per share, compared to $11.3 million, or $1.41 per share, for Q1. Loan growth accelerated this quarter, with balances growing by $93 million, or by 3.2% sequentially. Gross loans stood at $3 billion a quarter end as new originations continued to outpace portfolio runoff. Core deposits increased by $128 million during the quarter. Importantly, this includes $72 million of growth in noninterest-bearing and now accounts. Growth in noninterest-bearing deposits included approximately $44 million in increased analyzed checking balances. On a year-to-date basis, analyzed checking has grown by approximately $68 million, or roughly 17%. In addition to funding loan growth, our strong performance in growing core deposits has enabled us to reduce wholesale funding by $44 million this quarter. Since its peak at the end of 2022, we've now reduced broker balances by $520 million, or by roughly 51%. This continued progress is a result of strong execution across the entire franchise as we continue to strengthen our funding base and deepen client relationships. Compared to the same quarter in the prior year, core deposits have grown by $356 million or by 19%. The net interest margin was 358 basis points, an expansion of 30 basis points from the prior quarter, driven by favorable repricing dynamics on both sides of the balance sheet. Courtney will walk through those details in a couple of minutes. Noninterest income remained a meaningful contributor to our results, totaling $3.3 million for the quarter. This was led by our SBA division, which contributed $2.4 million of gain on sale income. For the first half of this year, SBA loan sale gains were $4.8 million compared to $1.5 million in the first half of 2025. This business remains an important and growing part of diversifying our revenue stream. Credit quality continues to improve. Total nonperforming loans decreased by $3.2 million to $15.9 million, and nonperforming assets as a percentage of total assets declined by 10 basis points to 46 basis points. Reserve coverage of nonperforming loans strengthened to approximately 193%. As stewards of our shareholders' capital, Our primary focus has always been to maximize tangible book value per share while balancing the risks of running our business. We've added $2.41 to tangible book value per share in the first half of 2026 to reach $40.25 per share. I'll now turn the call back to Courtney to walk through the financial results in more detail.