The Bancorp, Inc.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the Bancorp, Inc. Third Quarter 2026 earnings conference call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Dominic Canuso, Chief Financial Officer. Dominic, please go ahead.

Thank you, Holly. Good morning and thank you for joining us today for the Bancorp's third quarter 2026 financial results conference call. On the call with me today is Damian Kozlowski, our chief executive officer. This morning's call is being webcast on our website at www.thebancorp.com. There will be a replay of the call available via webcast on our website beginning at approximately 12 p.m. Eastern time today. Before I turn the call over to Damian, I would like to remind everyone that comments made during today's call, including responses to any questions, reflect management's view as of today, October 30th, 2026. Yesterday, we issued our third quarter earnings release and updated investor presentation. Both are available on our investor relations website. We may make certain forward-looking statements on this call. These statements are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations and assumptions we discussed today. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding our future financial and operational performance, business strategies, growth initiatives, expectations, projections, and guidance. These factors and uncertainties are discussed in more detail in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, including the sections entitled Forward-Looking Statements and Risk Factors, as well as our subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These documents are available through the Commission's website and our Investor Relations website. In addition, we may be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures during this call. Additional details and reconciliations of GAAP to adjusted non-GAAP financial measures can be found in our earnings release. Please note that the Bancorp undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances occurring after today, except as required by applicable law. Now I would like to turn the call over to Bancorp's Chief Executive Officer, Damian Kozlowski.

Damian? Thank you, Dominic. Good morning, everyone. The Bancorp earned $1.47 core earnings per share in the third quarter. Core EPS growth year-over-year was 25%. GDV growth continues above trend at 23%, with fintech fee growth of 19% year-over-year. Fintech fee growth, including interest income, was 27% year-over-year. The Bancorp had an extremely busy and eventful third quarter. Our three major FinTech initiatives continue to show positive results and substantial momentum. First, in our banking as a service ecosystem, we continue to ramp up Cash App and we expect volumes will start contributing more to our financials as we approach the end of the year with a meaningful impact in the beginning of the first quarter of 27. However, our partner Chime announced the proposed acquisition of Stride Bank. We will be redeploying our balance sheet and employing cost management and other strategies that we believe will help mitigate the profitability impact. We have updated our 27 EPS guidance for the likely impact and added EPS guidance for 28. Second, we signed a new major FinTech lending relationship. Our partner will announce this initiative soon, in line with its marketing product rollout timelines. Third, we have launched our embedded finance platform, Branded Finetics. We believe we can provide a comprehensive bank-led solution and look forward to announcing significant partnerships in the future. We also initiated a restructuring in the third quarter. In order to provide room for our fintech loan growth and more profitable traditional niche credits, we have decided to discontinue origination of our SBL loans by the end of the year. The SBL loan portfolio is long-tenured with an average life of more than seven years. The portfolio will slowly run off to provide balance sheet room and if needed, we can sell guaranteed portions of the portfolio, which should result in gains. In connection with these changes to the SPL business and broader business needs across other departments, the bank also implemented staffing reductions. Anticipated restructuring costs are approximately 5 million. The restructuring decision, together with additional positions we have decided not to backfill, will reduce employee positions by 80, which we expect will result in annual run rate savings of 14 million. As we grow our FinTech business, we plan to reallocate this headcount to support our main FinTech initiatives. Our target is to manage to approximately 700 employees over the next three years by both reallocating resources and through efficiency gate using AI and other tools. In addition, we are implementing a tax credit strategy that will lower our tax burden, but also provide benefits in the development of alternative energy sources for the U.S. economy. Dominic will talk more about this in a moment. Lastly, we are maintaining our guidance to 595 to 604 core EPS for 26. We're providing a core EPS baseline for 27 of $7 to $7.20 a share due to update our expectations on chimes, our current expectations on our pipeline, and the interest rate environment. In addition, we are initiating preliminary core EPS guidance for 28 of $8 to $8.20 a share. Our guidance in 26, 27, and 28 includes stock buybacks. Twenty-six buybacks are forecast to be $200 million total or $50 million a quarter. Our capital return philosophy is to continue to return nearly 100% of adjusted net income. We expect our three major FinTech initiatives, along with platform efficiency and productivity gains from platform restructuring and AI tools, plus a high-level capital return through continued buybacks, will be the driving forces behind EPS accretion. EPS gains are subject to development and implementation timelines and FinTech and our stock price for buyback. I now turn the call over to our CFO, Dominic Canuso. Dominic?