Amerant Bancorp Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Ameren third quarter 2025 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 requires operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Laura Rossi, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you, Kate. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to review Ameran Bancorp's third quarter 2025 results. On today's call are Jerry Plosh, our Chairman and CEO, and Sharimar Calderon, our Senior Executive Vice President and CFO. 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, references 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 us today to discuss AMRIT's third quarter 2025 results. First, I want to thank everyone for adjusting their schedules to accommodate the rescheduling of our earnings call this quarter. We intend to establish this new timeframe as when AMRIT will report going forward, so our team has the appropriate time to prepare each quarter end. We greatly appreciate your understanding. So, similar to the approach we implemented last quarter, during today's call, I'll start with some overall comments, and then Sherry will provide commentary on results and asset quality. Then I'll provide several prepared remarks on some strategic updates in order to allow time for Q&A. You will note today that there are several new slides in the deck this quarter that we think show capital levels and asset quality quarter-to-quarter comparisons in an easier-to-follow format. So, while we continue to make progress in key areas of our strategy, our primary focus this quarter was on asset quality over loan growth. I'll provide more details on this in a minute, but the increase in non-performing asset levels must be immediately addressed, and I will cover the plan here in the fourth quarter to approach achieving reduced levels in the coming quarters. Clearly, the higher provision from a detailed loan by loan review kept us from achieving consensus or better overall results this quarter. We will also provide some color on progress so far here in the fourth quarter on this call. Otherwise, you will see solid performance as shown by an outstanding net interest margin and higher net interest income. Sherry will cover the other P&L items in detail shortly, but I do want to note in advance that while core expenses rose $2 million over the prior quarter, This increase was from legal expenses related to trust services and to asset quality resolution efforts, as well as higher consulting expenses in connection with our AI governance build-out and ERM enhancements. And we do not expect a continuation of expense at these levels in the fourth quarter. Regarding expenses, please note that in my closing remarks, I'll also provide more color on our planned expense reduction initiatives already underway. which will begin to be seen in the fourth quarter and throughout 2026. On the funding side, our core deposits increased, while total deposits remained stable given the planned reduction in broker deposits we previously indicated on last quarter's call. We continue to focus on the quality of mix of deposits as a priority. International banking continues to strengthen its presence across LATAM. It is worth noting that approximately 50% of the new accounts opened during the third quarter of 2025 originated from other countries, most notably Argentina, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Bolivia, and Peru. This expansion reflects the success of our business development initiatives, client relationship management, and targeted marketing efforts throughout the LATAM region. Loans declined by 3.4% quarter over quarter, as again our focus was on AQ over growth. But our pipeline build is underway here in the fourth quarter. Approximately $288 million of the loan decline in 3Q was related to payoffs and asset quality-related sales. So as I promised earlier, we'll turn back to asset quality. And addressing asset quality head-on was and will continue to be our top priority. 3Q was the quarter with the highest volume of annual and limited reviews, along with covenant testing, with over $3.5 billion in loans reviewed. We did see continued deterioration, both classified and criticized, and while we exited $35 million in non-performing loans through third-party refinancing, payoffs, charge-offs, transfers to REO and upgrades, as I previously noted, additional downgrades to NPLs were primarily driven by the receipt of borrowers' updated financials and certain covenant failures in the quarter. We are all in on driving progress post-quarter end, and we believe we have a line of sight on several significant opportunities to do so already. So, for example, we just, as in this past Friday, received an $11.8 million full payoff which results in an $8.7 million recovery of previous charge-offs, $341,000 of interest income to be recorded in the fourth quarter, as well as a recovery of $188,000 in legal expenses, and again, all of which will be recorded in 4Q. Our coverage of reserves over NPLs is at 0.77 times due to the increased level of NPLs. However, please note that all NPLs with balances over $1 million were individually evaluated for exposure to charge-offs and or reserves, which explains the increase in provisioning for credit losses in 3Q. and the specifics on the provision for credit losses. Let's turn to capital, and if you look at capital, all levels remain very strong. Our board declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.09 per share, reinforcing confidence in Ameren's long-term outlook and capital strength. We also intend to resume share buybacks post-earnings when the blackout period ends under the existing remaining authorization and 10b-5-1 plan as we continue to execute on our strategy going forward. So with that, let me turn it over to Sherry now to cover three key results in detail.