First Western Financial, Inc.

financial fourth quarter 2024 earnings 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 participate, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear a message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, simply press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. Now it's my pleasure to turn the call over to Tony Rossi. Please proceed.

Thank you, Carmen. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for First Western Financial's fourth 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 the 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 presentation. 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 and non-GAAP measures. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Scott.

Thanks, Tony, and good morning, everybody. As expected, during the fourth quarter, we generated a higher level of profitability as a result of the positive trends in many areas of the business, including generating growth in loans and deposits, while keeping our loan to deposit ratio in the mid 90% range and maintaining disciplined expense control. We continue to maintain a conservative approach to new loan production with our disciplined underwriting and pricing criteria. However, as a result of the additions we've made to our banking team over the past several quarters, we saw a higher level of loan production in the fourth quarter, which was our highest level of loan production of any quarter in 2024. We also continue to have success in our deposit gathering efforts, adding new clients and expanding relationships with existing clients that resulted in deposit inflows that more than offset the seasonal outflows we typically see in the fourth quarter. We were also able to successfully lower our deposit costs, which contributed to the expansion we saw in the net interest margin. We saw generally positive trends in asset quality during the fourth quarter, resulting in a decline in our NPAs to total assets, and we had another quarter of immaterial charge-offs. We've also continued to make progress on resolving the large non-performing relationship where we had several properties as collateral. The largest of those properties is now under contract for sale, and we expect the transaction to close in the first quarter. We're also seeing a good level of interest in other properties that are currently being marketed. As a result of our stronger financial performance and balance sheet management strategies, we had a further increase in our tangible book value per share in the quarter. Moving to slide four, we generated net income of $2.7 million, or $0.28 per diluted share in the fourth quarter. Both increased from the prior quarter. We had a $1.1 million write-down in Oreo from new appraisals that negatively impacted EPS by $0.08 in the fourth quarter. With our prudent balance sheet management, our tangible book value per share increased by 1.6% 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?