First BanCorp. New

Hello and welcome everyone to the first Bancorp 4Q 2025 and full year 2025 financial results. My name is Becky and I will be your operator today. All lines will be muted throughout the presentation portion of the call with a chance for Q&A at the end. If you wish to ask a question in this time, please press start followed by one on your telephone keypads. I will now hand over to your host Ramon Rodriguez, Investor Relations Officer to begin. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Becky. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining First Bank Corp's conference call and webcast to discuss the company's financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2025. Joining you today from First Bank Corp are Aurelio Alemán, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Orlando Vérez, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin today's call, it is my responsibility to inform you that this call may involve certain forward-looking statements, such as projections of revenue, earnings, and capital structure, as well as statements on the plans and objectives of the company's business. The company's actual results could differ materially from the forward-looking statements made due to the important factors described in the company's latest SEC file. The company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during the call. If anyone does not already have a copy of the webcast presentation or press release, you can access them at our website at fbbinvestor.com. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO, Aurelio Aleman.

Thanks, Ramon, and good morning to everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. Our results for this quarter represent a strong capstone to a year of outstanding performance and disciplined execution highlighted by record revenues, positive operating leverage, and stable credit performance. We did deliver top-performing bank across multiple metrics. We produced $87 million in net income for $0.855 per share, generated a top quarter return on answer of 1.8%, and prudently managed our expense base, resulting in a 49% efficiency ratio for the quarter. Turning to the balance sheet, we continued to first and foremost deploy our capital to support our client by facilitating a $1.4 billion in loan reanimation during the quarter. Total loans grew by $80 million. mainly reflecting growth across the commercial segments. Growth, you know, was slightly impacted by elevated commercial loan payoffs and slightly lower consumer loan production. A core customer deposit increased by $267 million, and more importantly, we achieved this while practically continuing to reduce total deposit costs. In addition, government deposit decreased during the quarter as we continued to look for efficiencies in higher-cost deposits in this part of the cycle. That said, we also see a peak of 3.2 percent peak of non-interest-bearing deposits during the quarter. On the asset quality side, the ratio of non-performing assets to total assets continues to decrease, reaching an all-time low level of 60 basis points during the quarter. Consumer credit continues to stabilize, and HR jobs to average loans at 63 basis points, essentially flat to the private quarter. And finally, this quarter, we repurchased 50 million in shares of common stock and declared 28 million in dividends. I think to put in perspective, since we began the buyback program in 2021, we have repurchased over 28% of shares of funding. Still, given our excess capital position and meaningful capital generation, we're well positioned to further increase our return of capital to shareholders in 2026. As such, we were very pleased that our board approved an 11% increase to the quarterly common stock dividend to 20 cents per share starting in the first quarter of 2026. Please let's move to slide five to provide some highlights of the full year. Definitely 2025 was a year of changes, geopolitical and the macro. But again, significant progress as we demonstrate that investment we're making are driving strong operating performance. We crossed $1 billion in total revenues, generated a record net income of $345 million, grew earnings per share by 90%, and posted a strong 1.9% return on assets for the year, all while improving our capital and liquidity levels. Our strong profitability allows us to continue returning approximately 95% of earnings to shareholders, while increasing Tangi World Book value per share by 24%. Our consistent investments to advance our omnichannel strategy and improve our interaction with customers across multiple channels, meaning digital branch, continue to show incredible results in both Channels, digital, and personalized branch contact results were improved. Active retail users were all 5% when compared to last year. 95% of deposit transactions were captured through self-service channels. And our branch sales and service delivery efforts continue to pay off. In terms of the macro, I think the second half of the year show slightly lower economy in our main market. In spite of this, we do remain constructive on the underlying trends to the economy for 2026. On one side, we do expect consumer confidence to moderate somewhat. You know, impact of study-related pricing inflationary pressures and geopolitical tensions will continue to develop through the year. On the other hand, we see multiple developments that will serve as important drivers of stability for the, you know, the future for the growth of the economy, both in Puerto Rico and actually our second market, Florida. Resilient level market here. Unemployment rate hovering above 5.7%. Another year with strong tourism activity. Pasadena traffic at the airport up 3%. Reaching a record height of 13.6 million passengers. Already over 2.2 billion in announced investment to expand manufacturing capacity in the island. driven by the assuring efforts and the consistent flow of federal disaster relief funds that will support critical infrastructure development for the year to come. There's still $40 billion in the year. We don't have final numbers yet on the last quarter, but it seems it was basically flat to prior year in terms of disbursements of the federal fund programs. Looking ahead to 2026, again, we have ample experience navigating dynamic environments. And we are definitely well-positioned to continue growing with our markets and deliver consistent return to shareholders. Our guidance remains largely unchanged. We're focused on delivering 3% to 5% organic loan growth, sustaining a 52% or better efficiency ratio, maintaining a strong profitability matrix, and returning close to 100% of final earnings back to shareholders. As equality is expected to remain stable, with consumer credit quality gradually returning to the pandemic levels that we have seen, driven by basically inflationary pressure to the consumer, even though compensation is better and there is a stable unemployment. We are in great capital position, continue to make the right investments to modernize and enhance our franchise to drive both growth and efficiencies. and deliver strong performance in 2026. With that, I thank you for your continued trust. I thank our clients, and we are very grateful to our dedicated employees for their commitment and support, and we're looking forward to another exceptional year for our institution. With that, I will now turn the call over to Orlando.