Fulton Financial Corporation

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Fulton Financial's second quarter 2021 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in enlisted LA mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. If anyone should require assistance during the conference, please press star then zero on your touchtone telephone. As a reminder, this conference call may be recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Mark Joswak, Director of Investor Relations.

Good morning, and thanks for joining us for Fulton Financial's conference call and webcast to discuss our earnings for the second quarter of 2021. Your host for today's conference call is Phil Wenger, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Joining Phil are Kurt Myers, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Mark McCollum, Chief Financial Officer. Our comments today will refer to the financial information and related slide presentation included with our earnings announcements, which we released yesterday afternoon. These documents can be found on our website at fult.com by clicking on Investor Relations and then on News. The slides can also be found on the Presentations page under our Investor Relations website. On this call, representatives of Fulton may make forward-looking statements. with respect to Fulton's financial condition, results of operations, and business. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors if actual results could differ materially. Please refer to the safe harbor statement on forward-looking statements in our earnings release and on slide two of today's presentation for additional information regarding these risks, uncertainties, and other factors. Fulton undertakes no obligation other than as required by law to update or revise any forward-looking statements. In discussing Fulton's performance, representatives of Fulton may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to supplemental financial information included with Fulton's earnings announcement released yesterday and slides 10 and 11 of today's presentation for reconciliation of those non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures. Now I would like to turn the call over to your host, Phil Hager.

Well, thanks, Matt. Good morning, everyone. I'll begin today's call by making a few high-level remarks about our performance for the quarter and factors affecting the markets we serve. And then Kurt will discuss our business performance, and Mark will share the details of our financial performance. And after that, we'll answer any questions you may have. Fulton's performance continued to be solid in the second quarter of 2021. Following our record-setting earnings per share of 43 cents in the first quarter, our second quarter earnings per share of 38 cents tied our previous record high. We saw growth in certain segments of our business, as Kurt and Mark will discuss, and asset quality remains stable. Economy and the markets we serve are showing improvement. Unemployment is in decline and the communities are reopening. In fact, as of July 4th, the governments in the five states in which we operate have lifted mask requirements for everyone. As the economy continues to open and business activity moves closer to normal, we are increasingly optimistic about the future. In recent months, we have seen several mergers and acquisitions in and around our market. Fulton has taken a look at a few of these opportunities, and we remain interested in supporting our growth through M&A. We will continue to evaluate future opportunities to identify those which would be a good fit for our strategy and our community-oriented style of bank. As always, we remain focused on our shareholders and will remain disciplined on pricing. To the end of the second quarter, we have not repurchased any shares under the $75 million share repurchase authorization approved by the Board in February, but we continue to assess share repurchase opportunities. Throughout the past year, I've referenced the challenges brought about by COVID-19, I'm extremely proud of how our entire team adapted to these challenges. Through their efforts, we were able to support our customers through the most challenging of times. Now, more than a year after the pandemic began, we are pleased to see more people becoming fully vaccinated, our communities reopening, and life starting to return to some sense of normalcy. Given this improvement, we are now looking forward to bringing more of our own team back to on-site work in early September. While some employees will be permanently remote, most will return to some level of on-site or hybrid work. The ability to connect in person strengthens relationships and our culture, which quite frankly sustained us. During the pandemic, it allowed us to continue to focus on our customers. Now I'll turn things over to Kurt to discuss our financial performance.