First Citizens BancShares, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the First Citizens BancShares first quarter earnings conference call. At this time, all the 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 need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any operator assistance during the program, please press star then zero. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to introduce the host for today's conference call, Miss Deanna Hart, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you, Whitney. Good morning and thank you for joining us today. It is my pleasure to introduce our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Frank Holding, and our Chief Financial Officer, Craig Nix. Frank and Craig will provide an overview of our first quarter 2021 results and will be referencing our investor presentation which you can find on our investor relations website. We are also pleased to have several other members of our leadership team here with us today who will be available for questions after the presentation. As a reminder, our comments today will include forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause our results to differ materially from expectations. These risks are outlined for your review on page two of the presentation. We also reference non-GAAP financial measures within the presentation. Reconciliations of these measures against comparable GAAP results are available in the appendix. With that, I will hand it over to Frank.

Thank you, Deanna. And good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for our first quarter earnings call. We are pleased to report $147.3 million in earnings BancShares, Inc. We've been hard at work on the second round of PPP funding and originated $1.1 billion in new PPP loans to support approximately 9,600 customers. We made additional improvements to our forgiveness process, allowing for streamlined application and processing with our customers and the SBA. Also, with respect to the most recent round of stimulus payments, We provided even better customer experience thanks to the proactive efforts of our bankers and support teams. These continue to be exciting times for First Citizens, and we remain pleased with our progress towards completion of our transformational merger with CIT, the largest and most significant in our history. When our merger with CIT is completed, together we'll be a stronger and better bank, Better For Our Associates, Our Customers, and Our Communities. Our complementary strengths will position us to help customers do more with their money and make more of their futures. The bottom line is we're taking our company and our future to the next level. I'll now highlight page three of our investor deck to provide an update on our activities surrounding the merger. In February, we received approval from the North Carolina Commissioner of Banks, as well as from the stockholders of both companies. We continue to prepare for an anticipated closing in mid-2021, subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions, including receipt of our remaining regulatory approvals. As we netted last quarter, we have established a core merger and integration management team to promote and oversee a coordinated approach to closing and conversion. This team is committed to ensuring we remain focused and has completed a number of tasks, which include initial plans for organizational structure and business unit integrations. Early in the first quarter, we announced the senior leadership team and defined who will lead various business units upon closing. This team includes skilled and proven leaders from both organizations, which we believe embody the capabilities necessary to ensure a smooth merger integration and provide us the best opportunity to achieve our strategic objectives. With that, I'll turn it over to Craig for a closer look at our financial results and then we'll open the line for questions. Craig?