Third Coast Bancshares, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Third Coast Bank Share's second quarter earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Natalie Hairston. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for Third Coast BankShares conference call and webcast to review our second quarter 2025 results. With me today is Bart Carraway, Founder, Chairman, Present, and Chief Executive Officer, John McWhorter, Chief Financial Officer, and Audrey Spaulding, Chief Credit Officer. First, a few housekeeping items. There will be a replay of today's call, and it will be available by webcast on the Investors section of our website at ir.thirdcoast.bank. There will also be a telephonic replay available until July 31st, and more information on how to access these replay features was included in yesterday's earnings release. Please note that the information reported on this call speaks only as of today, July 24th, 2025, and therefore you are advised that any time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate as of the time of any replay listening or transcript reading. In addition, the comments made by management during this conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meeting of the United States Federal Securities Law. These forward-looking statements reflect the current views of management. However, various risks and certainties and contingencies could cause actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from those expressed in the statements made by management. The listener or reader is encouraged to read the annual report on Form 10-K that was filed on March 5, 2025, to better understand those risks, uncertainties, and contingencies. The comments made today will also include certain non-GAAP financial measures. Additional details in the reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures were included in yesterday's earnings release, which can be found on the Third Coast website. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Third Coast founder, chairman, president, and CEO, Mr. Bart Caraway. Bart?

Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Natalie. I'll start by sharing the company's profitability and growth highlights. Following my remarks, John will discuss the financials, and Audrey will give a review of the credit quality. Finally, I'll provide management's outlook for the remainder of 2025. To begin, I'm pleased to announce that we closed the second of our two securitization deals in this quarter. This not only proves up the viability of our securitization strategy in real market conditions, but also demonstrates our ability to replicate these transactions. This capability has become a competitive advantage, allowing us to meet the needs of select customers who choose our services over much larger organizations. Specifically, these transactions will reduce the bank's risk-weighted assets, lower construction concentrations, and mitigate credit risk in the loan portfolio. Due to the uniqueness of the transaction, the bank has been nominated for North American Transaction of the Year and North American Issuer of the Year at the 2025 SCI Risk Sharing Award Ceremony to be held in London this fall. We continue to execute on our original business model and have made remarkable progress since our IPO in 2021. By hiring top talent, we have been able to leverage our balance sheet by consistently growing revenue at a faster pace than expenses. For example, we have grown net interest income at a compound annual rate of 21.7%, while non-interest expenses increased at a more modest annualized rate of 10.7%. This has resulted in strong shareholder value with tangible book value per share increasing by $8.75 over the past three and a half years, reaching $29.69 as of June 30th. Over the same periods, our return on average assets has steadily improved from just 55 basis points in 2021 to a top quartile of 1.38% in the second quarter of 2025. This performance demonstrates our ability to drive greater efficiency and profitability, though we still believe there's room for further improvement. Further, we continue to have top-tier loan growth and robust pipelines. Second quarter loans grew by 91.7 million, and since our public debut, our compound annual growth has been 21.1%, expanding from 2.07 billion in December 2021 to $4.08 billion in June 2025. All combined, this outsized progress is especially impressive given that we have maintained high credit standards and proven our ability to scale with quality. Our discipline management approach is further evidenced by the prudent governance of our investment portfolio, which compares favorably to peers. our strategic use of hedging to predict our net interest margin, and our continued success in attracting best-in-class talent. Overall, Third Coast's performance in the second quarter not only exceeded expectations, but also surpassed previous company records, firmly placing us among top performing banks. Time and time again, our team has consistently delivered exceptional results, which we believe positions us for long-term success and enables our company to create sustained value for our shareholders. With that, I'll turn it over to John for the company's financial update. John?