RBB Bancorp

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the RBB Bancorp First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are placed on a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for questions and comments following the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Catherine Way, Investor Relations Officer. Mom, you may begin.

Thank you. Good day, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss RBB Bancorp's results for the first quarter of 2024. With me today are Chief Executive Officer David Morris, President Johnny Lee, Chief Financial Officer Lynn Hopkins, Chief Credit Officer Jeffrey Yeh, Chief Administrative Officer Gary Phan, and Chief Risk Officer Vincent Luke. David and Lynn will briefly summarize the results, which can be found in the earnings press release and investor presentation that are available on our investor relations website, and then we'll open up the call to your questions. I would ask that everyone please refer to this disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements in the investor presentation and the company's SEC filings. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to RBB's Chief Executive Officer, David Morris. David?

Thank you, Catherine. Good day, everyone. And thank you for joining us today. First, I'm happy to share that Lynn Hopkins has been formally appointed as our chief financial officer. We appreciated her expertise since joining RBB in late 2023 as interim CFO and look forward to her ongoing contributions as an official member of our leadership team. Turning to our first quarter performance, earnings and margins showed signs of stabilizing and loan balances remaining flat. Net interest margin declining four basis points and earnings declining two cents per share from last quarter's results when we exclude the income from the CDFI award. While changing expectations about the timing and size of our of rate cuts makes forecasting challenging. We are cautiously optimistic that margins should start to creep back up as deposit costs stabilize and loan yields continue to increase. Loans held for investment remain stable this quarter at $3 billion after a few quarters of intentional declines. We had expected some loan growth in the first quarter, but were surprised by the pricing in the market and held back originations rather than adding loans at levels that would put further pressure on our profitability. That said, we did originate approximately 69 million of commercial loans in the first quarter at a yield of 8.3%. which coupled with renewal and other repricing activities contributed to an 11 base point increase in our overall loan portfolio yield of 6.07%. With that, I hand it over to Lynn, who can go into some more detail about the quarter. Lynn?