First Interstate BancSystem, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the first Interstate Bank System, Inc. Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. This call has been recorded on Wednesday, January 31st. I would now like to turn the conference over to Andrea Walton. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you for joining us for our Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. As we begin, please note that the information provided during this call will contain forward-looking statements. Actual results or outcomes may differ materially from those expressed by those statements. I'd like to direct all listeners to read the cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements contained in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC and in our earnings release, as well as the risk factors identified in the annual report and our more recent periodic reports filed with the SEC. Relevant factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statement are included in the earnings release and in our SEC filings. The company does not undertake to update any of the forward-looking statements made today. A copy of our earnings release, which contains non-GAAP financial measures, is available on our website at FIBK.com. Information regarding our use of the non-GAAP financial measures may be found in the body of the earnings and a reconciliation to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures is included at the end of the earnings release for your reference. Joining us for management this morning are Kevin Riley, our Chief Executive Officer, and Marcie Mutch, our Chief Financial Officer, along with other members of our management team. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Kevin Riley. Kevin?

Thanks, Andrea. Good morning, and thanks again to all of you for joining us on our call today. Again, this quarter, along with our earnings release, we have published an updated investor presentation that has some additional disclosures, which we believe will be helpful. The presentation can be accessed on our investor relations website. If you have not downloaded a copy yet, I would encourage you to do so. I'm going to start today by providing an overview of the major highlights of the quarter. And then I'll turn the call over to Marcy to provide more details on our financials. Our fourth quarter performance reflected our ability to generate strong financial results in this challenging economic environment. In the fourth quarter, we generated $61.5 million in net income, or 59 cents per share. There were some moving parts on both the balance sheet and the income statement that Marcy will go over in her remarks. For the quarter, we remain disciplined in our new loan underwriting and pricing criteria. The new production rate, excluding draws on construction lines, approximated about 7.8% during the quarter. This reflects our efforts to generate strong risk-adjusted returns on new production. Additionally, as with the prior quarter, We continue to see construction projects being completed and moving into the commercial real estate portfolio while undrawn construction lines also decline. We also saw the expected seasonal declines in deposits in December and utilized our strong liquidity profile to selectively allow some high-cost time deposits to leave the balance sheet while remaining focused on retaining our relationships. And lastly, you probably saw the 8K we filed in December, where we were able to repurchase 1 million shares during the quarter. Even with this, capital ratios continue to increase modestly, providing us with the ability to pay a healthy dividend while maintaining flexibility going forward. The challenging banking and rate environment is resulting in near-term earnings pressure But we're confident these pressures will lessen in the back half of 2024, setting us up for a strong 2025. Over the course of last year, we invested in areas to drive future efficiencies and profitability. As we noted previously, we standardized and streamlined our mortgage process. We also realigned operational support and line of business functions. These improvements have allowed us to provide an enhanced suite of products and services to our clients, such as our consumer credit card, which we discussed last quarter. At the same time, we delivered on our promise to evaluate the existing cost structure of the company, resulting in a reduction of workforce in December. In short, we continue to make strategic decisions to strengthen the long-term value and profitability of our franchise. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Marcie so she can provide some additional details around our fourth quarter results. Go ahead, Marcie.