Northwest Bancshares, Inc.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Pruella and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Northwest Bancshares, Inc. Q2 2026 earnings 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 would like to ask a question during this time, simply press the star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. And if you would like to avoid your question, please press the star again. Thank you. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Michael Perry, Northwest Managing Director of Corporate Development and Strategy and Investor Relations. You may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you, operator. Welcome to Northwest Bancshares' second quarter 2026 earnings call. Joining me today are Lou Torchio, President and CEO of Northwest Bancshares, Doug Schosser, our Chief Financial Officer, and TK Creel, our Chief Credit Officer. During this call, We will refer to information included in the supplemental second quarter 2026 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. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our second quarter 2026 results. I'll let Doug take you through the details of our second quarter performance in a moment. But first, I want to reflect on several important milestones, including record net income and how they have contributed to our achievements and momentum in the second quarter, positioning us well for continued growth in 2026. We recently passed the one-year anniversary of the closing of the Penns Woods acquisition, which has been a very successful creative transaction for us. and on a static basis, we have achieved the full tangible book value earn back within one year and expect to achieve the full earn back on a crossover basis by the end of 2026, significantly ahead of our expectations when we announced the transaction. This quarter, we achieved our fourth consecutive quarter of improvement in both our net interest margin and adjusted efficiency ratio, evidence of the growing momentum and continuing transformation at Northwest. Also, tomorrow, we have the official grand opening of our first De Novo Financial Center in Columbus. This is the first of our four new financial centers that we plan to open in Columbus this year, with more to follow in 2027. We are excited about the growth opportunities that our expansion will bring to our headquarters market. On a personal note, with more than three decades in the banking industry, I can say with confidence that our new financial center takes the customer experience to a completely different level. It is aesthetically striking and brings to life the hospitality-led approach Urich and his team have embedded across our consumer bank. Now, turning to slide four, you can see some of the financial highlights of the second quarter of 2026. We delivered $54 million in net income for the second quarter, a record in the company's history. resulting in more than 59% year-over-year growth in net income. Also, other than the second quarter of 2021, when we divested our insurance business for a large gain, we delivered diluted earnings per share of 36 cents in the second quarter, which is also a record for the bank. Momentum in our C&I business continued with 148 million of average C&I loan growth in the second quarter, representing 32% year-over-year growth. We continue to grow our nationwide business verticals in a very disciplined manner and collectively they now represent approximately 27% of our commercial lending portfolio. We are pleased with the performance of these verticals which are led by experienced and highly networked industry leaders.