First Western Financial, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the First Western Financial First Quarter 2025 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 ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1-1 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, Tony Rossi. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Daniel. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for First Western Financial's first quarter 2025 earnings call. Joining us from First Western's management team are Scott Wiley, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Julie Corkamp, Chief Operating Officer, and David Weber, Chief Financial Officer. We'll use a slide presentation as part of our discussion this morning. If you've 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 to non-GAAP measures. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Scott. Scott?

Thanks, Tony, and good morning, everybody. As expected, during the first quarter, we generated a significant improvement in our level of profitability. This was driven by positive trends in many areas, including expansion in our net interest margin, A higher level of non-interest income, partially due to a higher level of mortgage banking income resulting from lower rates. And the positive impact of the MLOs that we've added in the past few quarters. An increase in non-interest bearing deposits. Solid loan production and well managed expenses. We continued 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 had a solid level of loan production, which was well diversified across our markets, industries, and property types. We also continued to have success in our deposit gathering efforts, adding new clients and seeing inflows from existing clients that resulted in an increase in our noninterest-bearing deposits in the quarter. In addition, we were able to successfully lower our deposit costs which contributed to the expansion we saw in our net interest margin. We saw generally positive trends in asset quality during the first quarter, resulting in a decline in our MPAs to total assets. We also had a successful resolution of our two largest OREO properties, which we sold for a net gain. 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. Moving to slide four, we generated net income of $4.2 million, or $0.43 per diluted share, in the quarter, both substantial increases from the prior quarter and continuing the recent positive trend. 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 the balance sheet and trust and investment management trends. Julie?