Berkshire Hills Bancorp, Inc.

This call is being recorded on April 24, 2025. I would now like to turn the conference over to Kevin Kahn, Investor Relations Officer. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Berkshire Bank's first quarter earnings call. My name is Kevin Kahn, Investor Relations and Corporate Development Officer. Here with me today are Nitin Mahatre, Chief Executive Officer, Sean Gray, Chief Operating Officer, Brett Berbovic, Chief Financial Officer, and Greg Lindenmuth, Chief Risk Officer. Our remarks will include forward-looking statements and refer to non-GAAP financial measures. Actual results could differ materially from those statements. Please see our legal disclosures on page two and three of the earnings presentation referencing forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures is included in our newsrooms. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Nitin. Nitin?

Thank you, Kevin. Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining us today. I'll begin my comments on slide four, where you can see the highlights for the first quarter. We had a very strong quarter with operating net income of 27.6 million, up 6% linked quarter, and up 32% year-over-year. Earnings per share of 60 cents was flat to the fourth quarter, including the full quarter impact of higher share count from our December equity raise and up 22% year over year. Our rigorous expense optimization initiatives continued to drive expenses lower with quarterly operating expense of about 68 million, down 4% length quarter and down 6% year over year. Ongoing momentum of improving revenues and declining expenses led to a positive operating leverage of 5% length quarter and 11% year-over-year. Operating Roth C of 9.66% was down 27 basis points linked quarter and up 93 basis points year-over-year. Overall strong financial performance was primarily driven by improved net interest income, lower expenses, and disciplined credit management. Brett will provide more details in a few moments. Asset quality and balance sheet matrix remains strong. Net charge-offs for 15 basis points of loans and our reserve to loans was up two basis points to 1.24%. Total loss reserves of 1.24% are now at about 500% of our total non-performing loans. Total delinquencies and non-performing loans were 42 basis points of loans, the lowest level in about 20 years. a solid testament to the strength of our collaborative risk culture across frontline bankers and risk teams. Liquidity remains solid with our loan to deposit ratio at 95% that is down 1% linked quarter. On strategy front, we made steady progress on our strategic initiatives in the first quarter. Our focus on the deposit relationships across business lines continued and a relatively new digital deposit initiative has gained momentum and delivered approximately $75 million of new deposits. We sold the remaining $7 million upstart book and further de-risked our balance sheet with total non-strategic runoff portfolios down by 76% year-over-year to just $34 million. Brett will share more details on the portfolio sale in a moment. As you know, in December, we announced a merger of equals with Brookline Bancorp to create a preeminent Northeast franchise. This transaction improves scale and meaningfully improves profitability as reflected in the estimated 40% and 23% accretion to Berkshire's 2026 consensus estimate on GAAP and cash basis, respectively. Our team continues to work proactively on requisite integration planning for a seamless transition. With that, I'll turn over the call to Brett to cover our financials in more detail. Brett? Thank you, Nitin.