First Financial Bancorp.

Good morning. Welcome to the first financial first quarter 2020 earnings conference call and webcast. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there'll be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Scott Crawley, Controller. Go ahead.

Scott Crawley Thank you, Kate. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss First Financial Bancorp's first quarter 2020 financial results. Participating on today's call will be Archie Brown, President and Chief Executive Officer, Jamie Anderson, Chief Financial Officer, and Bill Harrod, Chief Credit Officer. Both the press release we issued yesterday and the accompanying slide presentation are available on our website at www.bankatfirst.com under the investor relations section. We will make reference to the slides contained in the accompanying presentation during today's call. Additionally, please refer to the forward-looking statement disclosure contained in the first quarter 2020 earnings release as well as our SEC filings for a full discussion of the company's risk factors. The information we provide today is accurate as of March 31, 2020 and and we will not be updating any forward-looking statements to reflect facts or circumstances after this call.

I'll now turn the call over to Archie Brown. Thank you, Scott. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call. Yesterday afternoon, we announced our financial results for the first quarter. To say the events of the last few months are unprecedented seems like an understatement. While the first half of the quarter was marked by strong financial performance, March was characterized by economic and logistical upheaval and uncertainty. There are very few areas of our client base, our associate base, or our operations not impacted by the COVID-19 crisis in some way. In a rapidly changing operational and economic landscape, we successfully mobilized our teams with thoughtful changes to maintain the performance and service of our customers and shareholders that they've come to expect, and we were pleased that pre-provisioned financial results exceeded our expectations despite 150 basis point drop in interest rates. We began monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic early on, preparing in the event it affected our markets. As can be seen on slides 19 and 20, we immediately activated our pandemic response plan and our executive committee shifted to crisis management, working to develop plans and products to assist our clients, communities, and associates in a meaningful way. Our guiding principles in managing this crisis have been prioritizing associate and client safety, preserving the continuity of our business, assisting our communities, and ensuring the safety and soundness of our company. Across our client-facing teams, including our banking centers, we have updated protocols to protect both our associates and clients, enabling us to provide virtually all banking services to our communities. Over 96% of our banking centers have remained open by utilizing drive-through capabilities. Our sales associates, support teams, and management have transitioned to working remotely with approximately 60% now working from home. I've been exceptionally pleased with our ability to rapidly adapt and function at a high level despite the challenges. Additionally, we've also rolled out various associate relief programs for those associates experiencing financial hardship. For our customers, our planning efforts developed into our COVID-19 relief program, which provides comprehensive assistance to clients across all segments through payment deferrals, fee waivers for our loan and deposit clients, and suspension of vehicle repossessions and residential property foreclosures, to name a few. It's been a busy quarter, and we've accomplished a great deal to support the evolving needs of our retail, business, and governmental clients. We continue to actively monitor the actions of federal and state governments and are proactively assisting our clients to ensure that they're aware of every program of financial assistance available to them. Lastly, we've also been working to enhance our remote, mobile, and online processes to seamlessly support a bank anytime, anywhere environment. Since the passage of the CARES Act, the entire bank has mobilized to launch the historic client relief programs that are part of this legislation. We conducted a significant level of cross-training and redeployment of associates to rapidly meet the influx of client requests. Our implementation of the U.S. government's Paycheck Protection Program has gone well overall. To date, we've received over 5,700 loan requests representing more than $1 billion and secured SBA funding for approximately 3,600 loans representing in excess $750 million. Feedback from our clients has been overwhelmingly positive, and I'm proud with the way our associates have responded as the embodiment of our corporate strategic intent to support the communities in which we work and live. Additionally, we contributed $1 million to help fund COVID-19 relief efforts in the communities throughout our footprint, which will put funds directly into the hands of agencies supporting relief efforts. The results for the first quarter were substantially influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic across net income, net interest income, fee income, and most significantly credit costs. Overall, we recorded adjusted earnings of 31 cents per share, a 0.85% return on average assets, a 10.41% return on average tangible common equity, and a 58% efficiency ratio when adjusted to remove non-recurring items. I'll now turn the call over to Jamie to discuss the details of our first quarter results. And after Jamie's discussion, I will wrap up with some comments on specific areas of focus within our credit exposures and forward-looking commentary.