Beacon Financial Corporation Common stock

To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. I will now hand the conference over to Dario Hernandez, Corporate Counsel. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Samantha, and good afternoon, everyone. Yesterday, we issued our earnings release and presentation, which is available on the investor relations page of our website, beaconfinancialcorporation.com, and has been filed with the SEC. This afternoon's call will be hosted by Sean A. Gray, our Chief Executive Officer, Carl M. Carlson, our Chief Financial Strategy Officer. During the question and answer session, they will also be joined by our Chief Credit Officer, Mark Meiklejohn, and our Chief Banking Officer, Michael McCurdy. This call may contain forward-looking statements with respect to the financial condition, results of operations, and business of Beacon Financial Corporation. Please refer to page two of our earnings presentation for our forward-looking statement disclaimer. Also, please refer to our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which contain risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Any references made during this presentation to non-GAAP measures are only made to assist you in understanding Beacon Financial's results and performance trends and should not be relied on as financial measures of actual results or future predictions. For a comparison and reconciliation to GABS earnings, please see our earnings release. At this time, I'm pleased to introduce Beacon Financial's Chief Executive Officer, Sean Gray.

Thank you, Dario. And good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Beacon Financial Corporation's third quarter earnings call. I'm Sean Gray, Chief Executive Officer of Beacon Financial Corp and Beacon Bank. I stepped into the role in September after previously serving as Chief Operating Officer. I'm pleased to join you today for my first earnings call as CEO. Before turning to a quarterly result and the direction I see for Beacon, I'd like to share some more on my background and experience. I spent the past 19 years with Berkshire Bank following our merger with Beacon Bank as well. At Berkshire, I served as interim CEO from 2020 into early 2021 and as president of Berkshire Bank for seven years. I led commercial banking for six years and retail banking for 19 years and managed support functions including IT, marketing, HR, risk and compliance. I'm fortunate to have managed and recruited many of our commercial banking teams, private banking, and our digital banking channel. Following the completion of our merger of equals last September, I also led the team through our systems integration in the first quarter of this year. Over the past month, I've appreciated the opportunity to speak with investors, clients, employees, and our market teams. My experience working directly in our markets with our leadership team, employee, and clients has allowed me to reengage quickly and build immediately on existing momentum. This is not a reset. It is a transition built with urgency and for disciplined execution. Over my first 90 days, I have been and will continue to Listen to our key stakeholders, align our senior leaders around the highest impact opportunities, and translate our priorities into a thoughtful 2027 plan with measurable financial and operating goals. While the operating environment remains challenging, Beacon has meaningful scale, an attractive footprint, and distinct strengths we can build upon. Before I discuss our financial results, I'd also like to recognize Paul Perrault for his many years of service and leadership. Paul played an instrumental role in building both Brookline and Beacon and his contributions to the banking industry span a remarkable 50-year career. Paul, thank you for your leadership and your many contributions. Our third quarter results demonstrate the strength of our diversified business model and our ability to generate consistent profitability. We delivered earnings of 73 cents per share on a GAAP basis with operating earnings of 77 cents per share reflecting disciplined execution across our franchise. The quarter had several positive developments. Net interest income increased 3.9 million sequentially, driven by improved net interest margin. Our net interest margin expanded to 3.85%, driven by loan yields up 14 basis points and stable funding costs. Operating PPNR was up 4% linked quarter. Our capital position strengthened further during the quarter. with tangible common equity of 9.35% of tangible assets, well above regulatory minimums. This capital strength provides us with flexibility to invest in growth while returning capital to shareholders through our dividend and stock buybacks. I'll now turn the call over to Carl to review our third quarter results in more detail.