East West Bancorp, Inc.

Hello and welcome to the EastWest Bancorp's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Adrienne Atkins, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and thank you, everyone, for joining us to review EastWest Bank Corp's first quarter 2025 financial results. With me are Dominic Ng, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Christo Morrell-Niles, Chief Financial Officer, and Irene Oh, Chief Risk Officer. This call is being recorded and will be available for replay on our Investor Relations website. The slide deck referenced during this call is available on our investor relations site. Management may make projections or other forward-looking statements, which may differ materially from the actual results due to a number of risks and uncertainties. Management may discuss non-GAAP financial measures. For a more detailed description of the risk factors and the reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures, please refer to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Form 8K filed today. I will now turn the call over to Dominic.

Thank you, Adrienne. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for our first quarter earnings call. I'm pleased to report strong first quarter results. We continue to grow the bank and reported another quarter of record revenue. Loan growth was solid. We grew end of period loans 1% quarter over quarter to a new record level of $54 billion. Our relationship-driven business model helped support continued residential mortgage and commercial real estate lending. On the deposit side, we executed another successful Lunar New Year CD campaign and further optimized our pricing this quarter while continuing to add customers. We also delivered another record quarter of fee income Fees were up 8%, driven by strong customer activity across the board. We continue to see opportunity to grow and diversify our fee revenues. Asset quality has remained solid, and credit is performing as expected. First quarter analyzed net charge-offs total 12 basis point, or 15 million. The non-performing assets ratio decreased two basis points from the end of Q4 to 24 basis points at quarter end. Given the recent increase in economic uncertainty, we bolstered our allowance levels, bringing our total allowance for loan losses to 1.35%. The strength of our diversified balance sheet continue to show this quarter. allowing EastWest to continue to deliver top-tier returns. We deliver a near 16% return on tangible common equity and a 1.6% return on average assets, while growing tangible book value per share 3% quarter-over-quarter and 15% year-over-year. Now, before I hand the call over to Chris, I'd like to take a moment to talk about the current economic environment. Tariffs are not new for EastWest or our customers. We have been taking tariffs into consideration since 2017. Many of our clients decided to diversify their supply chains way back then and accelerated those efforts during COVID-19 pandemic. Since that time, we have seen our customers increase their investments in the US and other markets. All the while, EastWest engaged with our customers and continued to grow. Over the past six months, we have seen our customers reposition themselves for a range of potential outcomes. In the past several weeks, our teams have spent a lot of time with our customers talking about their business plans. They are proving to be forward-thinking, nimble, and are mostly staying ahead of the curve. Our experience has taught us to confront challenges From a position of strength, we enter the second quarter with a diversified balance sheet, a granular and strong consumer and commercial banking network, top tier profitability, best in class operating efficiency, and amounts to highest levels of capital in the banking industry. We have the capital and balance sheet flexibility to take care of our customers in any environment and are well positioned to capitalize on any opportunities ahead. I will now turn the call over to Chris to provide more details on our first quarter financial performance. Chris?