Eagle Bancorp, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Eagle Bancorp third quarter 2023 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'll 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'd now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Charles Levingston, Chief Financial Officer of Eagle Bank. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Liz. Good morning. This is Charles Levingston, Chief Financial Officer of Eagle Bank. Before we begin the presentation, I would like to remind everyone that some of the comments made during this call may be considered forward-looking statements. We cannot make any promises about future performance and it is our policy not to establish with the markets any formal guidance with respect to earnings. None of the forward-looking statements made during this call should be interpreted as our providing formal guidance. Our Form 10-K for the 2022 fiscal year and 10-Q for the June 30, 2023, and current reports on Form 8-K identify certain risk factors that could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statements made this morning. Eagle Bank Corp. does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information or future events or developments unless required by law. This morning's commentary will include non-GAAP financial information. The earnings release, which is posted in the investor relations section of our website and filed with the SEC, contains reconciliations of this information to the most directly comparable GAAP information. Our periodic reports are available from the company online at our website or on the SEC's website. I would now like to turn it over to our president and CEO, Susan Reel.

Thank you, Charles. Good morning, everyone. Before we start, I would like to welcome Eric Newell as a new member of our senior management team and as CFO of Eagle Bancorp. Adding Eric to our finance team gives us more talent and a deeper bench and enables us to accomplish our long-term goals to continue to serve and support our customers and build value for our shareholders. As Eric joined us late in the quarter, we will follow our normal format today with Jan discussing her thoughts on the local economy, loans, reserves, and credit quality matters. And then Charles returns to discuss our financials in more detail. At the end, the three of us and Eric will be available to take questions. I am pleased that our third quarter performance continued to build on the progress we are making in an uncertain operating environment. During the third quarter, we saw a stabilization of both earnings and margins and an improvement in the funding mix with deposit inflows and pay downs of short-term debt. On the deposit front, we are working diligently to build capabilities to drive growth in our core deposit base. We have a multi-pronged approach to build out a scalable and sustainable deposit growth strategy. I will highlight three areas of focus for the Eagle Bank team. First, enhancing our treasury management program and product suite will assist us in building and maintaining CNI relationships. Next, we are working to enhance our digital banking platform, allowing us to leverage our in-footprint brand and increase our market share of deposits in the DMV region, as well as develop opportunities to augment deposit growth outside of our footprint. Finally, we are looking at ways to better leverage our existing branch network to drive customer acquisition and exploring how to increase Eagle Bank's physical presence in lower-cost geographies, continuous to the Washington, D.C. metro market. With these initiatives, I am excited about the future of Eagle Bank's ability to grow and improve the deposit mix. This will contribute to the progress we have made in repositioning our balance sheet to meet the challenges of today's high-rate environment. In addition to the larger initiatives that I have highlighted, there are many other smaller initiatives we are working on as a team. On the other side of the balance sheet, we are also keeping our focus on asset quality. We have a proven history of superior asset quality and conservative underwriting that has worked well for us in times of market stress. We have pulled together special expert teams to assess our office and multifamily exposures. We are confident that the approach our teams are taking will put Eagle Bank and our borrowers in the best position in light of a difficult operating and interest rate environment. Before turning it over to Jan, I want to add that I am excited about the hiring of Karen Buck, our new Chief Administrative Officer who will be instrumental in providing leadership and guidance through the execution of these strategies. With that, I'll hand it over to Jan.