Columbia Banking System, Inc.

Hello and welcome to Columbia Banking System's third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jackie Bolin, Investor Relations Director, to begin the call. You may begin.

Thank you, DeeDee. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us as we review our third quarter results. The earnings released and corresponding presentation are available on our website at ColumbiaBankingSystem.com. During today's call, we will make forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties and are intended to be covered by the safe harbor provisions of federal securities law. First, for a list of factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from expectations, please refer to the disclosures contained within our SEC filings. We will also reference non-GAAP financial measures, and I encourage you to review the non-GAAP reconciliations provided in our earnings materials. I will now hand the call over to Columbia's President and CEO, Clint Stein.

Thank you, Jackie. Good afternoon, everyone. Our eventful third quarter is characterized by meaningful progress and growing momentum. First, we were excited to successfully close our strategic acquisition of Pacific Premier on August 31st. This milestone completes our eight-state Western footprint and bolsters our position as a preeminent regional bank in the Northwest with approximately $68 billion in assets. We hold nearly 10% deposit market share in the Northwest, and an improved competitive position in other key Western markets. PAC Premier significantly enhances our scale and positions us to capitalize on our low-cost core deposit base across an expanded and highly attractive footprint, most notably in Southern California, one of the nation's most dynamic and densely populated markets. Over the last few years, we have created a cohesive regional powerhouse Our Western franchise now spans the entire West Coast from Washington throughout California. We are uniquely positioned in our region for organic growth opportunities in dynamic markets such as Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah. We are integrating new capabilities and deepening relationships with both new and existing customers while maintaining our commitment to consistent top quartile performance and sustainable relationship-driven growth focused on generating positive economic impact. We remain focused on optimization, generating new business, supporting the growing needs of existing customers, and delivering superior results for all of our shareholders, even as we look to complete the integration of PAC Premier. We have strengthened our company by gaining scale, broadening our product offerings, and adding to our best-in-class core deposit franchise, driven by our business bank of choice strategy, all while delivering robust profitability and maintaining a conservative balance sheet. The scale and breadth of the franchise we've built allows us to concentrate our focus on organic growth in our footprint, and our robust profitability will support our plans to deliver meaningful capital returns to all our shareholders. We believe this strategy will drive long-term shareholder value. Within our first week as a combined organization, Nearly every former PAC Premier branch made a referral to a product or service that was not offered before the acquisition. Our new team members hit the ground sprinting, and we were thrilled by their continued enthusiasm. We see tremendous opportunities with our newly enhanced presence in Southern California and throughout our broader footprint. We have quickly begun to benefit from the capabilities PAC Premier brings to our organization, like custodial trust services, expertise in HOA banking, and proprietary technology that enhances the banker and customer experience. Turning to the third quarter, Columbia's operating results were once again consistent and repeatable, underscoring our focus on operational enhancement and top quartile, and in some cases, top decile performance. Third quarter operating PPNR is up 12% from the second quarter and 22% from the year bill quarter. the improvement reflects our focus on profitability and balance sheet optimization, as well as one month with PAC Premier. Our teams continue to cultivate new and existing relationships, driving strong customer deposit growth and meaningfully higher loan origination volume during the third quarter, which Tori will detail in a few minutes. The success of our bankers and the exceptional teams that support them enables us to organically remix both the left and right sides of our balance sheet, enhancing the quality of our earnings and driving strong internal capital generation. We continue to allow transactional portfolios to run down, and we transfer to small portfolio residential mortgages to help for sale. These activities offset our relationship-driven growth in support of our portfolio remix efforts. We intend to organically manage down roughly $8 billion of inherited transactional loans. As I've stated many times before, absent a significant decline in rates, we will hold the majority of these loans until they mature or pay off. However, we will strategically prune the portfolio with sale opportunities where payback periods are short and align with value preservation and creation. As I've said before, we prioritize profitability over growth for the sake of growth. In keeping with that approach, we utilized excess cash from customer deposit growth and balance sheet optimization actions to repay higher cost wholesale funding sources during the quarter. The result was a meaningful increase in our net interest margin. Our disciplined approach to lending supports our strong credit profile as well as our profitability. Our adherence to prudent credit underwriting and proactive portfolio monitoring is reflected in our stable third quarter portfolio metrics and a lower level of net charge-offs. It remains a busy and exciting year for Columbia, and I want to thank all of our associates for their hard work and contribution to another period of solid performance with our third quarter results. With the addition of PAC Premier, we are sharpening our focus on organic growth initiatives amplified by the disciplined, cost-conscious culture that defines our operating model. This is the franchise we set out to build, one that is scalable, resilient, and positioned for continued long-term value creation that rewards shareholders with the return of capital. Now that we've outlined our third quarter results, I want to take a moment to acknowledge our CFO, Ron Farnsworth. This will be Ron's last earnings call with Columbia. as he is stepping down following a very successful tenure as our CFO, marked by many notable accomplishments. Ron has been a valuable member of our team and a partner to me over the last several years as we integrated our teams, optimized performance to drive profitability, completed our Western franchise with the acquisition of PAC Premier, and meaningfully expanded our opportunities to drive long-term shareholder value. The board, management team, and I want to thank Ron for his many contributions to Columbia and wish him the best in his future endeavors. Ivan Cheta, who has served as our deputy CFO since last August, has been appointed Columbia's next CFO. Ivan is a proven financial leader with extensive financial services experience, having previously served as CFO of Union Bank and other executive roles. Ivan hit the ground running over the last several months, and we know he will be a great asset to Columbia as CFO. You'll be spending a lot of time with him in the quarters ahead. I'll now turn the call over to Ron.