First Western Financial, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the first Western Financial Q3 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll 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 today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today. Tony Rossi, please go ahead.

Thank you, Kevin. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for First Western Financial's third quarter 2024 earnings call. Joining us from First Western's management team are Scott Wiley, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Julie Korkamp, Chief Operating Officer, and David Weber, Chief Financial Officer. We will use a slide presentation as part of our discussion this morning. If you have not done so already, please visit the events and presentations page of First Western's investor relations website to download a copy of the presentation. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that this conference call contains forward-looking statements with respect to the future performance and financial condition of First Western Financial that involve risks and uncertainties. Various factors could cause actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These factors are discussed in the company's SEC filings, which are available on the company's website. I would also direct you to read the disclaimers in our earnings release and investor presentations. The company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during the call. Additionally, management may refer to non-GAAP measures, which are intended to supplement but not substitute for the most directly comparable GAAP measures. The press release, available on the website, contains the financial and other quantitative information to be discussed today, as well as the reconciliation of the GAAP to non-GAAP measures. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Scott.

Thanks, Tony, and good morning, everybody. During the third quarter, we generated a higher level of profitability while continuing to prioritize prudent risk management and a conservative approach to new loan production. Overall, we continue to execute well on our strategic priorities, including maintaining disciplined expense control while also making investments into the business that will support our future profitable growth. We also continue to have success with our deposit gathering efforts, adding new clients and expanding relationships with existing clients that resulted in deposit inflows. During the third quarter, we saw the strongest growth in non-interest-bearing deposits, which increased 19% from the end of the prior quarter. We've also mentioned a number of times over the past several quarters that our goal was to reduce the loan-to-deposit ratio to the mid-90% range And as a result of our success in this area, we've achieved our goal with the loan to deposit ratio being 95% at the end of the third quarter. We've also continued to make progress on resolving the large non-performing relationship where we had several properties as collateral. We now no longer have any remaining loan balance on that relationship, and we've taken possession of the remaining properties, which are now included in OREO. One of these properties has been sold and we have three remaining properties that are currently being marketed. Aside from this relationship during the third quarter, we saw generally positive trends in asset quality with declines in both non-performing and classified loans. As a result of our stronger financial performance and balance sheet management strategies, we had increases in all of our tier one capital ratios and further increase in our tangible book value per share. Moving to slide four, we generated net income of 2.1 million, or 22 cents per diluted share in the third quarter, which was double the level of EPS we had in the prior quarter. With our prudent balance sheet management, our tangible book value per share also increased by about 1% this quarter. Now I'll turn the call over to Julie for some additional discussion of our balance sheet and trust and investment management trends. Julie?