MidWestOne Financial Group, Inc.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We appreciate your participation in our earnings conference call this morning. With me here on the call are Chip Reeves, our Chief Executive Officer, Lynn DeVacher, our President and Chief Operating Officer, and Gary Sims, our Chief Credit Officer. Following the conclusion of today's conference, a replay of this call will be available on our website. Additionally, a slide deck to complement today's presentation is also available on the investor relations section of our website. Before we begin, let me remind everyone on the call that this presentation contains forward-looking statements relating to the financial condition, results of operations, and business of Midwest One Financial Group Inc. Forward-looking statements generally include words such as believes, expects, anticipates, and other similar expressions. Actual results could differ materially from those indicated. Among the important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are interest rates, changes in the mix of the company's business, competitive pressures, general economic conditions, and the risk factors detailed in the company's periodic reports and registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Midwest One Financial Group, Inc. undertakes no obligation to publicly revise or update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this presentation. I would now like to turn the call over to Chip.

Thank you, Barry. Good morning, and we truly appreciate everyone joining us for this quarter's call. Today, I'll provide a high-level overview of our second quarter results, as well as an update on the continued execution of our strategic plan initiatives. Len will provide an update on our lines of business, and Barry will conclude with a more detailed review of our second quarter financial results. Our first strategic pillar relates to employee and customer engagement. I'm so proud of our team members for their expertise and flat-out hard work these first six months of 2024. We continue to transform this institution, and even amidst some significant change, Midwest One was once again honored to be named a 2024 top workplace in Iowa and the USA. The quarter was highlighted by the completion of our geographic realignment announced last September with a successful divestiture of our Florida operations for an attractive net deposit premium. Turning to our balance sheet trends, excluding Florida divested balances, we delivered 3% annualized loan growth. This was accomplished even with significant paydowns, including many of which were classified or criticized loans. We continue to benefit from the expansion of our major market banking teams and our unique customer value proposition. Additionally, deposits were stable and deposit costs were well controlled. We remain cautiously optimistic that we will grow our core deposit franchise in the latter half of 2024. Importantly, due to well-priced loan growth, repricing opportunities and controlled deposit costs. Our net interest margin expanded an additional eight basis points in the quarter, leading to a 5 percent quarterly increase in our net interest income. Len will discuss progress and results in our commercial banking and web lines of business, so I'll just simply notate that I'm very pleased with the trajectory of both businesses. Regarding credit, asset quality metrics trended positively for the quarter, with limited charge-offs, lower MPAs, and significantly reduced classified assets. The first half of 2024 has seen significant talent acquisition across our bank as we continue to mature and expand our operations consistent with our strategic plan. This quarter, senior hires include our new chief information officer, our new chief marketing officer, and our new Cedar Rapids commercial banking leader. All of these critical hires joined from leading regional financial institutions. Even with significant talent and platform investments, we remain pleased with our expense discipline as we funded the majority of these investments by reallocating expense reductions into more productive and profitable people, markets, and departments. To conclude, we've made substantial progress in the transformation of Midwest One, positioning the bank for improved earnings power and returns, and I remain very optimistic on what the future holds for our employees and shareholders. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Len.

Thanks, Chip. First, I'll provide an update on our deposit business. It's most helpful to look at the core deposits, excluding the Florida divestiture. On that basis, we were pleased to see balance increases in both May and June. Unfortunately, those increases were not enough to offset April's deposit outflows. So the net result is an essentially flat quarter. Encouragingly, We saw growth in commercial deposits across the quarter, and our year-to-date net new account metrics are positive across our consumer and commercial customer segments. Perhaps most importantly, that positive net new account trend holds for checking accounts as well as all account types. Our commercial banking franchise continues to drive the earning asset growth. While the headline loan growth number was a modest 3%, it is important to note that our past grade commercial loan balances grew at a rate of 6% on a linked quarter annualized basis. The reductions in criticized and classified assets in the second quarter improved the risk profile of our balance sheet, while the growth engine for our commercial business remains firmly engaged. That growth engine remains disciplined by a strong risk management approach, and that is showing up in our mix. CNI growth rates are more than double CRE growth rates. Notably, this CNI growth is despite a small decline in line usage. This reflects our concentrated efforts at growing our CNI segment with an emphasis on full relationships. Those efforts are showing up in other places too, including treasury management analysis fees growing 6.3% year over year and a strong partnership between commercial and our wealth management business. Speaking of wealth management, we're very pleased to see the 15.8% increase in revenues for the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in the prior year. As assets under administration continue to climb, In the second quarter, we added another private wealth relationship manager in Cedar Rapids who joined us from a large regional competitor. We continue to see strong pipeline activity across this business line, and we remain focused on adding talent under the wealth leader we recruited in January of this year. Finally, my thanks to the IT and operations team's who delivered a seamless divestiture of our Florida branches, generating a handsome deposit premium to bolster our capital. With that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Barry.