Pathward Financial, Inc.

Thank you for standing by and welcome to Pathward Financial's third quarter 2026 investor conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Following the prepared remarks, we will conduct a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I will now like to turn the conference call over to Darby Schoenfeld, Senior Vice President, Chief of Staff, and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and welcome. With me today are PathWord Financial's CEO, Brett Pharr, and CFO, Greg Sigrist, who will discuss our operating and financial results for the third quarter of fiscal 26, 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 PasswordFinancial.com. As a reminder, our comments may include forward-looking statements. 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 filing, for additional information covering factors that could cause actual and anticipated results to differ materially from the forward-looking statement. Additionally, today we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures on this 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. In order to make our adjusted net interest margin as comparable as possible, we have excluded the impact of the growth accounting methodology on our consumer finance loans and included contractual rate-related processing expenses associated with deposits on the company's balance sheet. 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 noted otherwise. Now, let me turn the call over to Brett Pharr, our CEO.

Thanks, Darby, and welcome everyone to our third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. This evening, before I go through the quarter's highlights, I want to address the outlier of the quarter, credit. We had an increase in provision during the quarter, largely driven by specific reserves on two loans and a CECL reserve bill. One loan we mentioned during the June quarter earnings call last year, which at that time was shifting to non-performing with a path to work out, and another loan we believe is associated with a sophisticated fraud. You may have also noticed that our non-performing loan ratio increased. This was primarily related to certain renewable energy construction projects tied to a common developer. We continue to work with the other parties involved in these projects to bring them to completion. However, while this work is ongoing, we have moved the loans to non-accrual status. We are currently not aware of any other loans in our portfolio that have a similar unique fact pattern. While this is certainly a disappointing outcome, credit events can and do occur in the world of lending. It's unfortunate that we had these items happen within an otherwise solid performing quarter and year thus far. We remain committed to providing transparency in connection with these credit items and continue our monitoring and oversight of the portfolio. At this time, we believe these events are not indicative of a broader systemic issue within the portfolio. With that context, we're pleased with the rest of the results achieved in the quarter. Across the organization, our team continues to deliver meaningful progress on our strategy, and over the past nine months, I am proud of what we have accomplished. During the quarter, we generated $29 million of net income and diluted earnings per share of $1.37. At a very high level, we achieved growth in interest income from commercial finance loans, as well as non-interest income, and continue to manage expenses well. Year-to-date return metrics remain strong, with return on average assets of 2.37% and return on average tangible equity of 34.29%. While our business model remains straightforward, we take deposits, lend money, and move money, we can currently provide a breadth of product offerings across all three verticals that are aimed at meeting our partners' needs. We also continue to expand our product suite and capabilities in order to provide multi-threaded solutions that enable our partners to thrive and continue to innovate new and exciting products for the end consumers. It is through this lens that our long-term strategy was curated. Our strategy encompasses five focal areas. Maintain an optimized balance sheet, leverage technology to facilitate evolution and scalability, People and culture are important assets, consultative risk and compliance infrastructure, and client experience. We continue to make progress on all of these areas, but one I'd like to highlight is people and culture. We recently received a number of recognitions that reflect our diligent focus, which I'd like to acknowledge this evening. First, we were once again named as one of the best companies to work for by U.S. News and World Report for 2026-2027 rated among the top companies on the finance and insurance list as well as the Midwest list. Second, PathWord has been named to Time's inaugural list of America's Best Companies 2026. These accolades serve as a testament to our employees' hard work and the culture that they live and build every day. Congratulations to all our employees on representing PathWord's values across the country. Second area I'd like to highlight is the client experience. As we continue to grow our business and expand our product set, this remains an area that calls for intentionality, discipline, and firm execution. In our commercial finance business line, this means we strive to set clear expectations and maintain consistent, high quality communication throughout each engagement. From initial contact to receiving funds, our goal is to make the client experience as seamless as possible. We believe this level of execution will strengthen a reputation, support high quality referrals, and allow us to continue helping businesses reach their goals. In partner solutions, we aim to empower multi-threaded opportunities that help fintechs, famous companies and brands to launch, scale and grow with confidence. With a robust pipeline of opportunities to execute on, we view this as an imperative and we are working diligently to make sure that we deliver what our partners expect. Our pipeline consists of both new partners and expansion opportunities and we are excited to announce that after the quarter ended, we signed a contract extension with Claire. As part of enhancing the client experience, we continue to invest in people, processes and technology. This includes building technology and risk and compliance capabilities to ensure we have scalable platform well into the future. This has never been more important as partners are searching for banks that can not only deliver across multiple products at scale, but also help them navigate an evolving regulatory environment. Before I turn it over to Greg, I want to reiterate that while the credit events of the quarter are certainly unfortunate and we were working hard to resolve these loans, the growth of the business was solid. Greg?