Amerant Bancorp Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Emirates First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Laura Rossi, Investor Relations Officer at Ameren Bank. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Raquel. Good morning to everyone on the call, and thank you for joining us to review Ameren Bank Corp's first quarter 2021 results. With me this morning are Jerry Plosh, Chief Executive Officer, and Carlos Yafiliola, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, note that the company's press release, comments made on today's call, and responses to your questions contain forward-looking statements. The company's business and operations are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond its control, and consequently, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. please refer to the cautionary notices regarding forward-looking statements in the company's earnings release and presentation. For more complete description of these and other possible risks, please refer to the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2020, and in other filings with the SEC. You can access these filings on the SEC's website. Please note that Amarant has no obligation and makes no commitment to update or publicly release any revisions to forward-looking statements in order to reflect new information or subsequent events, circumstances, or changes in expectations, except as required by law. You should also note that the company's press release, earnings presentation, and today's call include references to certain adjusted financial measures, also known as non-GAAP financial measures, This refers to Appendix 1 of the company's earnings presentation for a reconciliation of each non-GAAP financial measure to its most comparable GAAP financial measure. I will now turn the call over to Jerry.

Thank you, Laura, and good morning, and thank you for joining Ameren's first quarter 2021 earnings call. I'm pleased to join you today as Ameren's new CEO. Before I begin, I'd like to take a moment to recognize my predecessor, Millard Wilson. Over the course of his more than 40-year tenure, Millar oversaw Amerit's growth from $6 billion in assets to $8 billion, and the expansion from 15 branches to 25. He spearheaded the spinoff and subsequent listing, and among other things, most recently navigated Amerit through the COVID pandemic. A well-deserved thank you to Millar for his time and service to the company. On another note, I'd like to announce that starting next quarter, we're planning to release earnings on the third Thursday of the following month. So the dates would be July 22nd, October 21st, and January 20th for the balance of this year. We want to do this for several reasons, primarily to have more time each quarter, to be focused on completing initiatives and generating growth, and to also have the window open for insiders an additional week each quarter. So today I'll be providing details about a number of new strategic initiatives and objectives that were referenced in our press release. We will share more detail about each one, as these are essential for improving Emirates' performance and growth and achieving the growth objectives that we have. But first, I'd like to briefly talk about our performance in the first quarter, and then Carlos will provide some more details. So if you turn to slide three, you'll see our first quarter highlights. We're pleased to report improved results in the first quarter compared to the prior quarter. Our net income was up 70.7% quarter over quarter, primarily driven by higher non-interest income and lower expenses. In addition, there was no provision expense in the quarter, and the NIM improved slightly to 2.66%, driven primarily from lower average deposit costs. We also show our progress on Class B share repurchases since we announced the buyback program on March 10th. Our total loans were $5.8 billion and total deposits were $5.7 billion. They were both down slightly in the quarter. The decrease in loans was driven by higher prepayments, including $111 million in PPP loans, while the decrease in deposits was due to lower CDs and broker deposits as we continued to pursue lower-cost, relationship-focused funding. So, moving on to the next slide, you'll see several key performance metrics, which show improvement on all fronts this quarter, reflective of higher operating profitability, all while maintaining a robust capital position and solid credit coverage. These are just the first steps in the right direction, So while we know we have much more to do, it's good to be showing progress this quarter. And as I will get into later on the call, we'll outline a number of initiatives underway that are focused on driving continued improvement in operating results. So with that said, I'll turn the call over to Carlos to walk through our results for the quarter in more detail.