Amerant Bancorp Inc.

Greetings, and welcome to the Emirate First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. You may be placed into question queue at any time by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star 0. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Laura Rossi, and Executive Vice President, Head of Investor Relations. Laura, please go ahead.

Thank you, Operators. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to review Ameran Bancorp's first quarter 2026 results. On today's call are Carlos Yafiliola, our Interim CEO, and Sharimar Calderon, our CFO. Additionally, we're pleased to welcome as a guest speaker this quarter, Liam Craig, Chief Credit Officer, who will share further insight into our credit risk management initiatives. 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 relief for a statement regarding forward-looking statements, as well as for information and reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP measures. I will now turn it over to our interim CEO, Carlos Villafiliola.

Thank you, Laura. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss Ameren First Quarter 2026 results. As we begin, I want to acknowledge where we are in the execution of our strategic plan. I'm proud of the continued progress we have made on the three priorities we outlined last quarter, stabilizing the business, optimizing our credit portfolio, and growing sustainably. I also want to thank the Ameren team for the hard work and dedication throughout the quarter. Our people are the key enabler of this plan and that continues to guide our execution. So let's begin with our primary focus, which has been credit quality and improving our loan portfolio. As a reminder, in Q4 last year, we completed a comprehensive reassessment of our portfolio in terms of risk identification and classification. and subsequently exited a segment of loans from classified categories. This process continued into the first quarter where we demonstrated proactive credit management and further refined declassifications of certain loans based on current macroeconomic data and new information received. We identified both necessary downgrades as well as meritable upgrades. Additionally, we exited and transferred to Health for Sale another group of loans that we no longer consider core to our business. The new process and people we have put in place have significantly improved our credit evaluation capabilities, and the team is executing well. The composition of our loan portfolio now reflects a healthier mix with a risk profile that is more consistent with our long-term goals. Leigh Ann will share additional details shortly. Going forward, as we prioritize business development, we will pursue growth within credit parameters that allow for sustainable financial results. To this end, we have enhanced risk-based limits to adjust concentration risk and prevent single borrower overexposure. We have also refined our market approach by moving away from out-of-market collateral projects except selectively for existing clients in core markets where we have deeper borrower insight. We have also fundamentally shifted on the right, prioritizing borrowers with proven stable operating history over projection-based lending and tightening our policy exception framework by lowering allowable exception thresholds to better align with our risk appetite. Lastly, we have continued to invest in experienced talent and we're taking a more intentional approach to growth, focusing on what we believe are the right fundamentals to drive stability, consistency, and sustainable top line performance. Our top priority is continuing to improve our efficiency which the team executed well against this quarter. Our net income for Q1 was in line with our guidance, and we have significantly reduced non-interest expenses quarter over quarter, supported by better than expected cost savings. To put this in perspective, our expense management efforts represents approximately 30 million in cost savings for 2026. Additionally, We saw strong growth in favorable low-cost international deposits as a result of the reactivation of the Venezuelan economy and our deep knowledge and experience in the market, as well as the extensive work that for many years we have done to preserve and expand our relationships in the country. In line with this, I would like to take a moment to provide some additional context on our international deposit growth. Last quarter, we highlighted Venezuela as an area of opportunity. And this quarter, we delivered, recording $198 million of total deposit growth in Q1, from which $95 million came from Venezuela, and $66 million of this growth was in March alone. These deposits are quite attractive due to their stability, overall cost of funds, and beta in rates up cycle. such as the one we recently experienced, allowing for improved profitability as we continue to grow our international presence. Furthermore, these customers are well aligned with our relationship first approach as they can be cross-sold via our wealth management offering. Moving forward, Venezuela represents a key opportunity to continue generating net interest income from a source of funds and to capture increased market share. We believe Ameren is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this opportunity and support both individual entities as the country reopens. In summary, we believe we executed well against our strategic plan. We took a focused, deliberate action to further optimize our credit portfolio while reinforcing risk management. We implemented cost savings initiatives that have reduced our expenses and improved our efficiency. We generated loan growth that is aligned with our risk appetite despite exits of certain criticized loans and significant loan repayments, which provides a clear line of sight to sustain credit performance. And we executed well on our international strategy, particularly in Venezuela, which we view as a meaningful opportunity to further scale our international deposit franchise and drive incremental earnings. With that, I will turn it over to Shari to review our quarterly financial results in more detail.