First Commonwealth Financial Corporation

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the first Commonwealth Financial Corporation Q2 2026 earnings release conference call. After today's prepared remarks, we will be hosting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand and to withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Ryan Thomas, Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Jonah, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss First Commonwealth Financial Corporation's second quarter financial results. Participating on today's call will be Mike Price, President and CEO, Jim Reske, Chief Financial Officer, Mike McCuen, Chief Banking Officer, and Brian Sohocke, Chief Credit Officer. As a reminder, a copy of yesterday's earnings release can be accessed by logging on to FCBanking.com and selecting the investor relations link at the top of the page. We have also included a slide presentation on our investor relations website with supplemental information that will be referenced during today's call. Before we begin, I need to caution listeners that this call will contain forward-looking statements. Please refer to our forward-looking statements disclaimer on page three of the slide presentation for description of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to defer maturely from those reflected in the forward-looking statements. Today's call will also include non-GAAP financial measures. Non-GAAP financial measures should be viewed in addition to and not as an alternative for our reported results prepared in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliation of these measures can be found in the appendix of today's slide presentation. With that, I will turn the call over to Mike.

Thank you, Ryan. Second quarter financial performance at First Commonwealth and highlights include core earnings per share of 44 cents, up 7 cents over the first quarter, a core ROA of 1.46%, and core pre-tax pre-provision ROA of 2.14%, a core efficiency ratio of 52.24% and a net interest margin of 4.01%, which expanded nine basis points as a function of lower deposit and funding costs, higher loan yields and securities purchases. All key income statement categories moved positively quarter over quarter to include net interest income, provision expense, non-interest or fee income, and non-interest expense. Second quarter loan growth of 1.97 annualized percent was matched by average deposit growth of 2.03%. Loan growth for the quarter was led by equipment finance, commercial construction, branch-based home equity loan lending, and our indirect lending business, all of which offset contraction in Commercial Real Estate, and CNI Lending. The quarter was notable due to a record quarter of commercial loan payoffs of roughly $740 million following a record first quarter of commercial loan payoffs of roughly $630 million. Commercial loan originations increased to approximately $693 million in the second quarter. Although charge-offs remain elevated as we continue to resolve identified problem credits, credit quality improved modestly in the second quarter with lower non-performing loan balances alongside stable delinquency and allowance levels. Other items that may be of interest to investors include, for the year, Community PA and Cincinnati, two of our five regions, have led the way with both deposit and loan growth. Fee Income grew in part year over year. They've been nice traction in mortgage and wealth management businesses. And the team continues to find uses for AI. And we've felt like we're on our front foot with IT and technology for years, particularly with our FinTech partnerships. But let me just give you one AI example. In our call center, our vendor turned on a feature where AI listens to the call and pops the policy and procedure to the employee to help navigate a solution for our clients. And oftentimes they're navigating up to six different systems at one time. Just one small example of probably a dozen or more. With that, I will turn it over to Jim Reske, our CFO.