Flagstar Bank, N.A.

Hello, and thank you for standing by. My name is Regina, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Black Star Bank first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. 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'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I would now like to turn the conference over to Sal DiMartino, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Regina, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Flagstar Bank's first quarter 2026 earnings call. This morning, our Chairman, President, and CEO, Joseph Otting, along with the company's Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Lee Smith, will discuss our results for the quarter. During the call, we will be referring to a presentation which provides additional detail on our quarterly results and operating performance. Both the earnings presentation and the press release can be found on the investor relations section of our company website, ir.flagstar.com. Also, before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that certain comments made today by the management team of Flagstar Bank, N.A., may include forward-looking statements within the meanings of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements we make are subject to the safe harbor rules. Please review the forward-looking disclaimer and safe harbor language in today's press release and presentation for more information about risks and uncertainties which may affect us. Additionally, when discussing our results, we will reference certain non-GAAP measures which exclude certain items from reported results. Please refer to today's earnings release for reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures. And with that, I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Otting. Joseph?

Thank you, Sal. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. We are pleased to report another quarter of solid progress and continued momentum across our core banking franchise. Our first quarter performance reflects continued improving fundamentals, strong C&I growth, a high level in growth of core deposits, further progress in reducing the level of non-accrual and criticized classified loans, continued margin expansion, and industry-leading capital levels. Just as importantly, our first quarter results demonstrate we are exceeding and executing on the strategy we laid out two years ago in delivering against our priorities. We are doing exactly what we set out to do, strengthening our earnings profile, improving the quality of our balance sheet, and building a top-performing regional bank. The progress we are making is intentional and driven by a clear focus on disciplined execution. Now turning to the slides, slide number three of the investor presentation, I'd like to highlight some of the key performance factors and drivers during the quarter. First, disciplined expense management has been a hallmark of our return to profitability over the past two years. And in the first quarter, operating expenses continued to decrease, and we expect them to decrease in 2026 and 2027. We also had another quarter of net interest margin expansion driven primarily by lower funding costs. Second, one of our key growth strategies is to diversify our loan portfolio by increasing our CNI lending platform. This quarter marked the third consecutive quarter of CNI loan growth after us reducing our exposure to certain industries, lowering our single transactions exposures, and exiting certain relationships that did not meet our return hurdles, and we've done this throughout 2024 and part of 2025. Third, we experienced a further reduction in our overall CRE exposure, mostly through PAR payoffs resolving in the multifamily and CRE portfolios, declining by $1.6 billion for 4% relative to the fourth quarter and further improvement in our CRE concentration. Fourth, we continue to see positive credit migration as non-accrual loans declined by 11% and criticized and classified loans decreased by 3%. Additionally, we ended the quarter with a robust CET1 capital ratio of 13.2%. In terms of future capital distributions, Our focus first is on demonstrating several quarters of sustainable profitability and continued improvement in our non-accrual loans and flexibility to support our anticipated loan growth. We expect the board taking actual and capital distributions in the second half of the year. Finally, I would like to highlight two other milestones during the first quarter. We were very pleased with Fitch and Moody upgraded the bank's long-term and short-term deposit ratings to investment grade with a positive outlook. And when we filed our 10-K in late February, we disclosed that the previously material weakness and internal controls have been remediated. Both of these milestones reflect the tremendous effort, dedication, and hard work of our entire team. On the next couple of slides, we spotlight the significant progress we continue to make in our C&I lending businesses. During the quarter, CNI loans grew by $1.4 billion, or 9% on a linked quarter basis, significantly higher than in prior quarters. On slide four, we go into detail on the trends in our CNI portfolio. While the first quarter is typically a seasonally slow quarter for originations, you can see on the left side of the slide that our originations were essentially flat compared to the fourth quarter. We also will note that the pipeline remains strong, and we expect second quarter funding for CNI to be similar to Q1. On the right side is the five-quarter trend in the CNI portfolio. After bottoming in the second quarter of last year, we've had steady growth. In the first quarter, CNI loans grew by the 1.4 billion, up 9% compared to the fourth quarter, and year-over-year, 12%. The next slide provides quarter over quarter growth by loan category. While the majority of the growth was driven by our two main strategic focus areas, specialized industries lending and corporate and regional commercial banking. This quarter grows with broad base with growth also occurring in the mortgage finance and asset based lending verticals. Now turning to slide six, you can see the trend in our adjusted diluted EPS. whereby we have now reported two consecutive quarters of VPS growth by executing on all our strategic initiatives. On an adjusted basis, we went from three cents in the fourth quarter to four cents during Q1. One other positive note I'd like to make is that during the first quarter, we completed the consolidation of our six legacy data centers into two co-location centers with no disruptions neither to the organization or any of our customers. And this positions us well in 2027 to have the baseline and platform for our core conversion with ultimately the goal in 2027 is to get onto one core. So with that, I'll now turn it over to Lee to review our financials and credit quality.