First Financial Bancorp.

star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Scott Crawley, Corporate Controller. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Brianna. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss First Financial Bank Corp's third quarter and year-to-date 2023 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'll 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 third quarter 2023 earnings release as well as our SEC filings for a full discussion of the company's risk factors. The information we will provide today is accurate as of September 30th, 2023. 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 third quarter. I'll first provide some high-level thoughts on our recent performance and then turn the call over to Jamie to discuss further details. Overall, I'm pleased with our third quarter performance. Strong net interest income and robust fee income led to a 13% increase in net income from the third quarter of 2022. In our most recent quarter, we achieved adjusted earnings per share of $0.67, a 1.49% return on average assets, a 23.8% return on average tangible common equity. As expected, higher deposit costs led to a slight reduction in earnings on a linked quarter basis. Even so, our net interest margin was 4.33% for the quarter, which was at the high end of our expectations. Loan growth was in line with expectations for the period led by growth in the leasing and mortgage portfolios. We expect moderate loan growth over the remainder of the year. I am pleased by the continued stability of our deposit balances during the quarter. While the change in mix from non-interest bearing to CDs and money market accounts continued, we experienced slight growth in total balances and our loan-to-deposit ratio remained flat at 82%. Our fee income continued to exceed expectations for the quarter with strong performance from wealth management, equipment leasing, Bannock Burn, and mortgage banking. Credit trends were mixed during the period, and we experienced elevated net charge-offs. During the third quarter, we elected to sell approximately $32 million in commercial real estate loans and incurred a $6.1 million loss on the sale. also recorded a 6.9 main dar loss on a large cni loan that was negatively impacted during covid and has been unable to rebound in the period since additionally non-accrual loan balances increased during the period due to the downgrade of one office loan whose major tenant vacated the space during the quarter last but assets remain low and we expect a provision expense to remain fairly stable in the fourth quarter we continue to be pleased with our high net interest margin, favorable fee income trends, and robust earnings. During the quarter, our regulatory capital levels strengthened and our strong earnings helped to maintain the tangible common equity ratio despite the negative impact to AOCI from the increase in market rates. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Jamie to discuss these results in greater detail. And after Jamie's discussion, I will wrap up with some additional forward-looking commentary and closing remarks. Jamie.