Northwest Bancshares, Inc.

Thank you for standing by. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Northwest Bank Shares, Inc. First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to turn the conference over to Michael Perry, Northwest Managing Director of Corporate Development of Strategy and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you, operator. Welcome to Northwest Bankshear's first quarter 2025 earnings call. Joining me today are Lou Torshio, president and CEO of Northwest Bankshears, Doug Shosser, our chief financial officer, Sean Morrow, our treasurer, and TK Creel, our chief credit officer. During this call, we will refer to information included in the supplemental first quarter earnings presentation, which is available on our investor relations website. If you'd like to read our forward looking and other related disclosures, you can find them on slide two. Thank you. And now I'll hand it over to Lou. Good morning, everyone.

Thanks for joining us today to discuss our first quarter results. I'm pleased with our performance in the first quarter of 2025 as we continue to execute our strategy and deliver on our commitment to sustainable, responsible, and profitable growth. Doug will discuss the details of our core financial performance shortly, but I will address some of the highlights on slide four. Overall, we had a strong start to the year, delivering $156 million of revenue while controlling our overall expenses to deliver net income of $43 million, an increase of $14 million, or 48%, compared to the same quarter last year, and earnings per diluted share of 34 cents, compared to 23 cents per diluted share in the first quarter of 2024. This represents record earnings in a first quarter and one of the best quarters in Northwest's history. We continued our strategic shift towards commercial lending with a 20% increase in average commercial C&I loans in the last year. In addition, our successful focus on deposit gathering while maintaining near best in class cost of funds provides a quality and stable funding base for the organization. Additionally, we delivered a significant improvement in our net interest margin, as well as in our efficiency ratio, and we reduced our exposure to classified loans, further minimizing our balance sheet risk. And as we have for the previous 121 quarters, on behalf of the Board of Directors, I'm pleased to declare a quarterly dividend of 20 cents per share to shareholders of record, as of May 8, 2025. Our strong performance this quarter is a result of our continued rigorous focus on execution, cost control, and risk management discipline. We continue to enhance our capabilities, expand our footprint, and provide personalized services and expertise to our customers, companies, and the communities we serve. Our renewed focus on enhancing our retail banking franchise continues. Additionally, we are making good progress with de novo branch opportunities throughout our existing footprint, particularly in Columbus and Indianapolis. I look forward to sharing more details in the upcoming months. Regarding acquisitions, in December of last year, we announced a merger with Penn's Woods Bancorp, the parent company of Jersey Shore State Bank and Luzerne Bank, headquartered in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. I'm pleased to report that we have now received all required regulatory approvals, and at a special meeting last week, Penn's Wood shareholders voted to approve the merger. Integration activities are well underway, and we are working closely together to ensure a seamless transition. The strong cultural fit between our two organizations is evident, as forward thinking, employee and customer centric banks, and a rich history focused on community banking. I am pleased to share that we expected to close the merger and convert the bank systems by late July of this year. Upon closing the largest merger in our bank's history, Northwest will be in the top 100 banks in the United States by asset size, further enhancing our scale for driving sustainable forward momentum and revenue. This quarter's strong results can be attributed to the talent, hard work, and thought put forth each day by our Northwest team. I want to thank them for their continued dedication to our company's success. The current operating environment with significant market volatility and uncertainty over the economic outlook may be somewhat challenging. However, we continue to focus on managing the factors within our control, such as serving our core customers and communities, building on strong financial foundations, maintaining prudent cost control and risk management discipline, and being prepared to capitalize on opportunities aligned with our strategy. Now it's my pleasure to introduce Doug Shosser, our Chief Financial Officer, who will take us through our financial results. Doug?