Pathward Financial, Inc.

Sorry for the delay. Thanks, ladies and gentlemen, for standing by. And welcome to PathWord Financial's second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in listen-only mode. Following the prepared remarks, we will conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Darby Schoenfeld, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and welcome. With me today are Pathword Financial's CEO, Brett Farr, and CFO, Greg Sigrist, who will be discussing our operating and financial results for the second quarter of fiscal year 2025, after which we will take your questions. Additional information, including the earnings release, the investor presentation that accompanies our prepared remarks, and supplemental slides may be found on our website at pathwordfinancial.com. As a reminder, our comments may include forward-looking statements, including with respect to anticipated results for future periods. Those statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual and anticipated results to differ. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Please refer to the cautionary language in the earnings release investor presentation and in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including our most recent filings for additional information covering factors that could cause actual and anticipated results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Additionally, today we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures on this conference call. References to non-GAAP measures are only provided to assist you in understanding the company's results and performance trends, particularly in competitive analysis. Reconciliations for such non-GAAP measures are included in the earnings release and the appendix of the investor presentation. Finally, all time periods referenced are fiscal quarters and fiscal years, and all comparisons are to the prior year period, unless otherwise noted. Now, let me turn the call over to Brett Farr, our CEO.

Thanks, Darby, and welcome everyone to our earnings call. At the halfway point of the fiscal year, we have just completed a fantastic quarter. Our businesses are healthy, and we are optimistic about the future. We've made some significant progress on our goals, especially on our successful execution on our balance sheet strategy. This is allowing us to generate revenue above our asset size and means we do not need to grow our balance sheet to grow revenues. This is clear in our financial performance during this quarter. We are also having a great tax season, which led the way to non-interest income growth during the quarter. We reported earnings of $3.11 per share for the March quarter, which represents year-over-year growth of 21% and net income of $74.3 million. Our results were driven in part by an increase in non-interest income of 7% and net interest income of 5% when compared to the same quarter last year. We also expanded our quarterly net interest margin and adjusted net interest margin. Year-to-date non-interest income now represents 45% of our total revenue, and it is our goal to continue to grow this over time. Performance metrics were strong for the first six months of the year with return on average assets of 2.69% and return on average tangible equity of 43.79%. Remember that due to tax season, these metrics generally reached our high water point during this quarter. We are also pleased to revise our fiscal 2025 guidance to $7.40 to $7.80 earnings per diluted share. Greg will discuss this in more detail. Tax season has been really strong, with the team doing a fantastic job of expanding our reach. We operated with over 42,000 independent tax offices, which is a new record for us. As a reminder, our results include not only the independent tax offices, but also tax partnerships. For the six months ended March 31st, 2025, we increased non-interest income related to refund transfer products and refund advance products by 13% each. Refund advance origination increased over $100 million this year, representing 7% growth. This brought total tax services revenues to $85 million, growth of 17% when compared to the prior year period. Loss rates are also favorable when compared to last year due to our continued work on our underwriting models and data usage to originate refund advances, so the slight dollar increase in provision you see in our results is volume driven. Pre-tax income for tax services grew 29% to $47.6 million And we are very pleased that this team has been able to produce stable growth and solid results. We continue to make significant progress on our strategy of optimizing the balance sheet. Last quarter, we entered into a strategic partnership to support renewable energy loan growth, and that is going very well. This can be seen in our results with strong originations and structured finance during the quarter and a pipeline that continues to be robust. Our partner, Bridge Peak, brings strong industry experience to the table, and we expect that co-innovation in this partnership will accelerate efficient, scalable, and predictable growth within Pathwork's renewable energy initiative. During the quarter, we also took advantage of a premium in the marketplace and sold a portion of our working capital loan portfolio. Greg will go into more detail in a moment on how this further accelerates our optimization strategy. Opportunities in the partner solutions pipeline remain strong. These deals can have protracted timelines, and we are tracking each of them with precision and care. Our team is working hard to further the opportunities in front of us by tirelessly working with both new and existing clients to ensure we are providing them with the best solutions and capabilities to fit their needs. Our credit solutions team continues to explore growth and new opportunities. After the quarter ended, we signed a contract with a new partner to originate loans through their lending marketplace. Recently, we've talked about our strategy to be the trusted platform that enables our partners to thrive and how we intend to accomplish it. I've mentioned in a few places today how we are delivering on this, and in order to continue delivering shareholder value, we stay laser focused on accomplishing these goals. Now I'd like to turn it over to Greg, who will take you through the financials and guidance in more detail.