Amerant Bancorp Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Amarant Third Quarter 2022 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 one one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Laura Rossi, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Tanya. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to review Amer and Bancorp's third quarter 2022 results. On today's call are Jerry Plosh, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Carlos Gafiliola, our Chief Financial Officer. As we begin, please note that discussions on today's call contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Exchange Act. In addition, reference will also be made to non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the company's earnings release for a statement regarding forward-looking statements, as well as for information on reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP measures. I will now turn it over to our Chairman and CEO, Jerry Plush.

Thank you, Laura. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Ameren's third quarter 2022 earnings call. I'm pleased to be here today to report on our results for the quarter. But before we do that, I'd like to acknowledge the impact Hurricane Ian had on Southwest Florida. Our thoughts and prayers go out to those most affected by the storm. At Amarant, we've been actively involved in several efforts to support impacted communities recover from this unfortunate event, and we look forward to seeing everyone affected back on their feet. From a business perspective, we are fortunate to report there have been no significant impacts identified in our Florida loan portfolio. Moving on to the remarks of the quarter, on October 19th, 2022, our board of directors approved a $0.09 per share dividend payable on November 30th of this year. As I've shared in previous calls, paying dividends are an essential component of our plan to provide greater value to our shareholders. I'll now provide a brief overview of our performance in the third quarter and outline the steps we took to best position ourselves for the balance of the year and beyond. And then I'll hand it over to Carlos to get into the details. So if you turn to slide three, here you can see a summary of our third quarter highlights. Our net income attributable to the company was $20.9 million, up significantly quarter over quarter. This increase was primarily driven by higher net interest income in the third quarter, as we recorded higher average yields and balances on loans, as well as on our investments. These were partially offset by the increase in higher average costs and balances on deposits and FHLB advances. But as a result, the net interest margin expanded to 3.61%, an increase of 33 basis points quarter over quarter. Our balance sheet also grew significantly during the third quarter, with total assets reaching a historic high point at $8.7 billion compared to $8.2 billion as of the close of 2Q22. Total gross loans were $6.5 billion compared to $5.85 billion in 2Q22, an increase of $656 million. And total deposits were $6.6 billion, up $385 million compared to $6.2 billion in 2Q22. The company's capital levels continue to be strong and well in excess in the minimum regulatory requirements to be considered well capitalized as of September 30th of this year. During the quarter, we also paid out the previously announced cash dividend of $0.09 per share on August 31st. We'll turn now to slide four. And you can see that our core PPNR was $30.3 million, up nearly 56% compared to the $19.4 million reported in the previous quarter. As we've consistently stated, we believe this slide is essential to show the net revenue growth of the company, excluding provisions and non-routine items. so you can clearly see Ameren's core earnings power. And as I noted in my remarks last quarter, there were significantly fewer non-recurring items recorded this quarter compared to Q22. We can turn now to the key items on slide five, and we can cover what happened during the third quarter. So we continue to work on reducing non-performing loans as part of our commitment to increase our percentage of earning assets to total assets. As of Q3, NPLs declined to 18.7 million compared to 25.2 million as of 2Q22. We intend to continue to focus on driving down NPLs in future periods. We're also pleased to report that the sale of the New York City-based real estate-owned property closed this month, so in the month of October. So coupled with the drop in NPLs, this significantly reduces our level of non-performing assets. As I've stated when discussing our retail network, we continue to look for expansion into new key markets while continuously looking for opportunities to consolidate in others. So during the third quarter, we opened our new Hylia, Florida location. We received OCC approval for a new location in Key Biscayne, Florida, a market we're very excited to do business in and look to be open in by the end of the first quarter of next year. We closed our Pembroke Pines, Florida location as announced last quarter. Additionally, our new University Place location in Houston will open October 31st, while the location it replaces, South Shepherd, will close the same day with our current customers moving over to the new location. And the opening of our downtown Miami location is now expected sometime in early 2023. Regarding our Tampa loan production office, We continue to add key business development personnel in Tampa, specifically in CNI, and now have 14 team members with four more openings to fill. And we also added to our business development team here in South Florida, and we plan to continue to look to expand in both Broward County and Palm Beach County. We'll turn now to slide six. You can see here we've outlined key performance metrics and their change compared to last quarter. It's clear our operating profitability improved from higher outstandings and improved net interest margin, as I just mentioned, was 3.61%. Our efficiency ratio improved to 65.4% compared to the 86.6% last quarter. Both ROA and ROE significantly improved, as you can see here, from higher net income this quarter. For consistency and transparency, we again show the three core metrics of ROA, ROE, and operating efficiency. excluding any one-time non-routine items in the footnotes, so you can more easily see the underlying performance for the quarter. We'll turn now to slide seven, which focuses on Amerit Mortgage. On a standalone basis, Amerit Mortgage had net income of $800,000, an increase of $400,000, or 88%, compared to Q2, primarily as a result of mortgage banking income from transactions with the bank. However, on a consolidated basis, we recorded a net loss of $1.4 million for the third quarter in connection with the operations of Amerit Mortgage. Year to date, 2022, the company has purchased approximately $298 million in loans through Amerit Mortgage, which includes loans originated and purchased from different channels. The current pipeline shows $51 million in process, or 79 in applications as of October 12th, in line with the headwinds currently in place for the mortgage business in general. So with that said, I'll now turn things over to Carlos, who will walk through our results for the quarter in more detail.