First Citizens BancShares, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the First Citizens BancShares third quarter earnings conference call. At this time, our 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 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 host of this conference call, Ms. Deanna Hart, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you, Julie. Good morning and thank you for joining us today. It is my pleasure to introduce our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Frank Holding, as well as our Chief Financial Officer, Craig Nix, who will provide an overview of our third quarter results and will be referencing our investor presentation, which you can find on our Investor Relations website. We are pleased to have several other members of our leadership team here with us today who will be available for questions if needed. After the presentation, we'll be happy to take any questions you may have. As we have not yet closed the transaction with CIT Group, we will be speaking today on First Citizens BancShares standalone performance only and will provide an update of our planned merger with CIT. Our comments 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 will also reference non-GAAP financial measures in the presentation. Reconciliations of these measures against the most directly comparable GAAP measures are available in the appendix. With that, I'll turn it over to Frank.

Thank you, Deanna, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. This morning, we reported third quarter net income of $124.1 million, or $12.17 per share, delivering another quarter of strong financial results to our shareholders. We continue to see positive trends in net interest income despite continued pressure on margins from our growing level of Thank you for joining us. We achieved another consecutive quarter of loan and deposit growth, both of which continue to be bright spots for our company as we remain focused on building long-term relationships with our customers. Total loans adjusted for SBA PPP runoff grew $437 million during the third quarter or by 5.6% on an annualized basis. We saw strong growth in both our consumer and commercial lines of business. Deposits were up $1.7 billion during the third quarter, representing an annualized growth rate of 13.6%. I'm sure many of you are looking for an update on our planned merger with CIT Group. On September 30th, we announced that First Citizens and CIT agreed to amend our merger agreement to extend the original outside date in the merger agreement from October 15th, 2021 to March 1, 2022, as we wait for the remaining regulatory approval from the Federal Reserve Board. Not much has changed since that time, and our understanding is that the application remains at the governor level. As we noted in the last announcement, we stay in regular touch with the Federal Reserve Board and we have responded to all their questions. We have not been provided a timeframe for their decision. We understand and share the frustration regarding the length of time that has been required to obtain the necessary approvals for this merger, but this process can require patience. As we noted last quarter, we have not been made aware of any regulatory problems with our application and we're confident in our ability to close this deal as soon as practical following approval. Our goal has always been to build value for our shareholders and we remain committed to this goal and our merger with CIT. When we announced this merger, we stated that it was financially compelling and that it would create a premier nationwide commercial and consumer bank with enhanced scale to drive growth, improve profitability, and enhance shareholder value. We believe this remains the case, and our collective teams are excited about the opportunities that lie ahead for the combined company. As we've said before, we continue to work on integration planning with our CIT counterparts and leaders from both organizations remained actively engaged in and committed to a successful combination of our companies. In addition to merger and integration planning, we continue to leverage our digital investments to drive revenue and accelerate our digital transformation. We're now in the final phase of transitioning business and treasury commercial clients to our new commercial platform, which has been well received by these clients, these important clients. We've also been working to implement process improvements to support our back office and recently completed an upgrade to our branch platforms. This change to a state of the art digital system allows for more efficient transaction processing and positions us to adapt quickly to changing customer needs. As you can see by the growth in our wealth management income, we're focusing on deepening client relationships to grow this line of business. We continue to grow our wealth business by both expanding into new markets and by enhancing the products and services available to help our wealth clients meet their financial goals. Our people are a top priority. We continue to focus on talent development and retention of our associates. Our objective here is to ensure we attract, retain, and develop associates to create a high-performing, sustainable company That will meet the strategic, financial, and operational goals of the organization. As with many of our peers, our ability to attract and retain talent has been tested this year as the number of people leaving the workforce and the competition for top talent is putting pressure on teams to retain their talent. While the current environment for attracting talent is challenging, we believe that First Citizens is a desirable place to work, and we have a lot to offer recruits as well as existing associates. I'll now turn it over to Craig for a closer look at our financial results, and then we'll open the line for questions.