FirstSun Capital Bancorp

Good morning and welcome to the First Sun Capital Bangkok conference call to discuss the company's announced merger with the First Foundation and its third quarter 2025 financial results. At this time all participants are in listen only mode. Later we will conduct a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question press star followed by the number two. Also, as a reminder, this call may be recorded. I'd now like to turn the call over to Ed Jacks, Director of Investor Relations and Business Development. You may begin.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Following the market close yesterday, we issued a joint press release to announce a merger between First Sun and First Foundation. On the call today, we will discuss the merger announcement, and then we will take some Q&A. Simultaneously, we released our third quarter earnings and are happy to answer any questions on those results as well. First Foundation has also provided a summary of its third quarter earnings and expects to file a full earnings release and presentation on its scheduled release date of October 30th. Today's presentation slides have been posted on each company's investor relations website. Before we begin our remarks, I want to remind you that the comments made by the management teams of both First Sun and First Foundation may include forward-looking statements within the meanings of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are subject to the Safe Harbor rules. Please review the disclaimers and Safe Harbor language in the press release and presentation for more information about risks and uncertainties which may affect us. I will now introduce First Sons President and CEO, Neil Arnold.

Thank you, Ed, and thank you all for joining this call. I'd like to hit a couple of highlights from our merger announcement and introduce you to Tom Schaffer and then turn the call over to Rob Kuffer, our CFO. Let me start by saying we realize this is not a straightforward stock for stock Monday merger announcement. But when you spend a moment to understand the underlying franchise and the work we are doing together to unlock this, we believe it'll make more sense. We've known First Foundation for over three years. We tried to get a deal done back then and could not work it out. Since their recapitalization, we revisited this idea in April of this year. So we have lots of history and have spent considerable amount of time on both sides, making sure the diligence and the structuring makes sense for all parties. This was not a quick shotgun marriage. From my perspective, there are three compelling reasons why this deal makes sense. Number one, most of you all know we like to tackle unloved companies in this industry. Why? Because we believe there's less investment risk when you do the full due diligence. They tend to be priced at lower prices and have lower projections, which means for all of us, there's a higher probability to have upside And I'm sure that doesn't surprise any of you who've known us over the years. We believe Southern Cal Branch Franchise Network gives our team that's already on the ground here a significant opportunity and will be our largest metropolitan region team and branch network in the system. We also think that First Foundation significantly changes the profile of our fee income given their wealth management platform. Also, we like their multifamily portfolio. And as you know, not all commercial real estate is created the same and not all multifamily is the same. We like the workforce housing nature and rent security and these kinds of properties. Tom and his team have made considerable progress since his arrival to fix a number of their issues. We just believe that we get to accelerate that together pretty dramatically. So number two, we believe First Foundation is one of the companies in this industry who have an attractive underlying franchise that's been hidden by some poor balance sheet management decisions. What is unique here is that the fix to these issues is rather straightforward and the ability to solve them can happen quite rapidly. One of the lessons I believe we learned in tackling these kinds of banks and we've taken to heart are three things. One, we need to move quickly to transform them. Number two, we need to make those changes quickly and significantly by and around closing. And we want to be clear with everyone what we intend to do. That includes investors, our partners, regulators, and each of our teams. As you all know, we've had a team here in Southern Cal for the past 15 months. And our initial success in this region has really heartened our thoughts about what might be possible. I can tell you in my 40-year career, I've never seen an LPO self-fund through the first 15 months. of this kind of opportunity. So with that, let me introduce Tom and have him share some of his perspective, and then I'll take it back. Thank you.