Fulton Financial Corporation

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Fulton Financial first quarter 2024 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Matt Jozak, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thanks for joining us for Fulton Financial's conference call and webcast to discuss our earnings for the first quarter ended March 31st, 2024. Your host for today's conference call is Kurt Myers, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Joining Kurt today is Betsy Chavinsky, Interim Chief Financial Officer. Our comments today will refer to the financial information and related slide presentation included with our earnings announcement, 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 investor relations on our 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, and 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 required by law to update or revise any forward listed statements. In discussing Fulton's performance, representatives of Fulton may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the supplemental financial information included with Fulton's earnings announcement released yesterday and slides 17 through 20 of today's presentation for a reconciliation of those non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures. Now I'd like to turn the call over to your host, Kurt Myers.

Well, thanks, Matt, and good morning, everyone. For today's call, I'll be providing high-level thoughts on our performance for the quarter and provide a few comments on the company. Then I'll turn the call over to Betsy Chabinsky, Interim Chief Financial Officer, to review our financial results in more detail and step through our guidance for 2024. After our prepared remarks, we will be happy to take any questions you may have. We were pleased with our first quarter results. Operating earnings of 40 cents per share were a solid start to the year. We saw both deposit and loan growth. The net interest margin was in line with our expectations. We continue to have stable asset quality metrics and our capital position remains strong. During the quarter, we also increased our committed liquidity by one billion. We repurchased 1.9 million shares of Fulton stock I'd like to note that with this repurchase, we've now repurchased all 6.2 million shares of common stock issued in connection with the Prudential Bank Corp Inc. acquisition in 2022. As of March 31, 95 million remains from our 125 million 2024 repurchase authorization. Turning to growth for the quarter, first quarter deposits outpaced loan growth at $204 million or 4% annualized. Pricing, growth, and mix remain our focus as we continue to position our product offering to support and grow our customer base. Loan growth, as anticipated, moderated to $93 million or 2% on an annualized basis. Profitable growth and prudent credit decisions remain our focus. Our loan-to-deposit ratio ended the quarter at 98.6%, a linked quarter decline, and well within our long-term operating target of 95 to 105%. Despite ongoing market pricing pressures, net interest margin remained in line with our expectations, drifting lower by four basis points to 3.32%. Our non-interest expense income was solid at $57.1 million, We delivered record results in wealth management that helped offset a decline in customer interest rate swap income this quarter. Overall, we are pleased with our fee income performance and continue to benefit from the diversification of this revenue stream. Now let me provide some comments on credit. The provision for credit losses was $10.9 million, up slightly from $9.8 million last quarter, and in line with our expectations. While overall credit metrics remain historically strong, we saw some migration in certain credit metrics during the quarter. Criticized and classified loans drifted modestly higher. This migration is not specific to any particular industry, portfolio, or region, and we continue to focus on how higher interest rates and higher costs are impacting our customers. We remain cautious in our outlook for 2024. Now looking forward, as I mentioned last quarter, our Fulton First initiative is an internal process to evaluate and improve how we operate. Three key tenets of this initiative to drive our strategic transformation are simplicity, focus, and productivity. During the quarter, we made good progress on this initiative with more work ahead of us. We anticipate sharing more details, as appropriate, in coming quarters. Overall, a solid start to the new year. Now I'll turn the call over to Betsy to discuss our financial performance and 2024 guidance in more detail.