Customers Bancorp, Inc

Good morning. My name is Brianna, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Customer's Bancorp, Inc. Q2 2024 earnings webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star one again. I'll now turn the call over to David Paddy with Customers Bank Corp. You may begin your conference.

Thank you, Brianna, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the Customers Bank Corp. Earnings Webcast for Q2 of 2024. The presentation deck you will see during today's webcast has been posted on the Investors Web page of the bank's website at customersbank.com. You can scroll to Q2 24 results and click Download Presentation. You can also download a PDF of the full press release at this spot. Our investor presentation includes important details that we will walk through on this morning's webcast. I encourage you to download and use the document. Before we begin, we would like to remind you that some of the statements we make today may be considered forward-looking. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause actual performance results to differ materially from what is currently anticipated. Please note that these forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this presentation, and we undertake no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events, except to the extent required by applicable securities laws. Please refer to our SEC filings, including our Form 10-K and 10-Q, for a more detailed description of the risk factors that may affect our results. Copies may be obtained from the SEC or by visiting the Investor Relations section of our website. At this time, it is my pleasure to introduce Customers Bank Corp Chair, Jay Sidhu. Jay?

Thank you, Dave, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Customers Bank Corp's 2024 Second Quarter Earnings Call. Joining me this morning are President and Chief Executive Officer of Customers Bank, Sam Sidhu, and Customers Bank Corp CFO, Phil Watkins. I'll provide some introductory comments, and then my colleagues will provide the details of the quarter. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, we look forward to answering your questions. Let's move to slide three. I'll briefly touch on the highlights from this quarter, especially noting where our results are positively differentiated from industry trends. First, please note that we again delivered strong earnings per share in the quarter. exceeding consensus estimates on both GAAP as well as core basis. Again, the trends that many banks are experiencing right now against those trends, we generated strong high quality loan growth in the quarter, 11% annualized pay. We continue to execute on the company's deposit transformation in the quarter. We used $600 million-plus of core commercial deposit growth to repay higher-cost consumer deposits and further reduced wholesale CDs. We also reduced our average cost of deposits during the quarter. In contrast to most in the industry, our net interest margin expanded by a healthy 19 basis points, and we expect continued expansion by the end of the year. Tangible book value per share exceeded $50 after generating 13% annualized growth in the first half of 2024. We achieved our previously stated 7.5% tangible common equity to tangible asset target in just two quarters of 2024. We remain very optimistic about the year with strong loan and deposit pipelines. we believe we are in an enviable position to continue to take market share our new business and commercial banking teams are off to a great start and will serve to further accelerate and enhance those prospects now turning to slide four we again reiterate our priorities to you which broadly remain unchanged Having achieved both our CET1 and our TCE to TA capital target, we are well positioned to execute the disciplined loan growth we have previously shared with you, as well as continue to generate strong growth deposit growth and remain focused on holistic client relationships, strengthening our balance sheet, continuing to improve our liquidity, and maintaining or expanding, as I said earlier, our margins. I will now turn the call over to Sam to talk about what makes Customers Bank a unique franchise. Sam?