Medallion Financial Corp.

Greetings, and welcome to the Medallion Financial Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Ken Cooper of Investor Relations. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Medallion Financial's third quarter earnings call. Joining me today are Andrew Merstein, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Larry Hall, Chief Financial Officer. Certain statements made during the call today constitute forward-looking statements made pursuant to and within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 as amended. Such forward-looking statements are subject to both known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. Those risks and uncertainties are described in our earnings press release issued earlier and in our filings with the SEC. The forward-looking statements made today are at the date of this call, and we do not undertake any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. With that, let me turn the call over to Andrew. Andrew?

Thank you, Ken. Good morning, everyone. We had a strong quarter across the board. I'll start with the highlights. Net income was $15.9 million, which was our fourth quarter in a row of sequential growth. What is most pleasing is that our performance is being driven by fundamentals and strength within both our consumer and commercial lending segments. In addition, we believe our non-core businesses continue to stabilize and their impact on our core business will further diminish. Net interest income grew 17% to $34.1 million, resulting in a net interest margin of 9.48%, reflecting the 6% increase in our consumer loans during the quarter. Our strong net interest margin continues to be a significant differentiator for us, placing us among the top of our peers. Our net loan portfolio grew 15% year over year to $1.4 billion. 94% of our total net loans are in our fast-growing consumer lending segments. We experienced 26% year-over-year growth in our home improvement segment, which continues to be our fastest-growing business. One last highlight driving our performance this quarter is that we had a loan loss benefit instead of a provision, which reflects the strong borrower performance on of this performance is driven by our focus on consumer lending. We continue to see strength in both consumer lending segments, recreation, which is predominantly towable RVs and boats, and home improvement, which includes loans for home projects like replacement roofs, swimming pools, and windows. Loan origination volume stayed strong and helped deliver growth rates consistent with the first half of the year. During the quarter, our net recreational loan portfolio grew 5% and our net home improvement portfolio grew over 8%. As mentioned earlier, the consumer portfolio represents 94% of our net consolidated total loans and 72% of our total assets. We expect growth in our loan portfolio to continue. We have a strong process of working with qualified contractors and dealers and quickly assessing the credit profile of their customers to determine borrower credit worthiness. Furthermore, we believe there will be continued demand growth in both the recreational and home improvement markets. One last point in our consumer lending business is that the ROE for our consumer lending segments remains strong. Year-to-date, the ROE is 26%. We are also expecting to grow our commercial lending business. This continues to be a solid business for us. We had another good quarter of loan originations for commercial with 5.7 million of originations. The segment generated 1.5 million of net income in the quarter. We announced last quarter that we are working with an investment bank on strategic alternatives for our non-core assets. We moved this initiative forward during the quarter, but due to the sensitive nature of these potential transactions, We do not have a specific update for you at this time. I'd just like to note that this is important to us, and we are working hard to evaluate our options. As we complete transactions, we will keep you updated. With that, I will now turn the call over to Larry, who will provide additional financial highlights on the quarter.