Stellar Bancorp, Inc.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Karen, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to this stellar quarter one, 2025 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, you may press star followed by the number one again. I will now turn the call over to Courtney Theriault, Chief Accounting Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you to all who have joined our call today. Good morning. Our team would like to welcome you to our earnings call for the first quarter of 2025. This morning's earnings call will be led by our CEO, Bob Franklin, and CFO, Paul Egge. Also in attendance today are Steve Rosloff, Executive Chairman of the company, Ray Vitulli, President of the company and CEO of the bank, and Joe West, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer of the bank. Before we begin, I need to remind everyone that some of our remarks made today constitute forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 as amended. We intend all such statements to be covered by the safe harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in the Act. Also note that if we give guidance about future results, that guidance is only a reflection of management's belief at the time the statement is made, and such beliefs are subject to change. We disclaim any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, except as may be required by law. Please see the last page of the text in this morning's earnings release, which is available on our website at ir.stellerbankworkinc.com. for additional information about the risk factors associated with forward-looking statements. At the conclusion of our remarks, we will open the line and allow time for questions. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Bob Franklin.

Thank you, Courtney. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Stellar Bank Corp first quarter earnings call. I begin by thanking our outstanding team at Stellar whose solid work continues to build a strong financial institution for our communities. As we entered 2025, we spoke of our focus on the customer, internal, existing, and prospective. Our focus is unchanged. We must acknowledge, however, that the administration has introduced a fair amount of uncertainty into the economy, though it is too early to see signs of impact on our communities. Our team will remain disciplined around credit as we monitor the impact of the new tariff policies on our customers and our communities. We continue to see opportunities for new customer acquisition, and our pipelines are growing, while we are also seeing significant commercial real estate pay downs as interest rates begin to stabilize. Given these conditions and the economic climate, we will proceed cautiously. Challenges also provide opportunity, and we took advantage of our strong capital position to return capital to our shareholders through meaningful share repurchases during the first quarter. The repurchases are in line with our goal to manage our capital to the benefit of our shareholders. We remain focused on building the great foundation our team has put in place. Given the economic uncertainty of the first quarter, we believe that growth will be pushed to the third and fourth quarters of the year. Although conditions make us cautious, our dynamic markets and our team keep us optimistic. I will now turn the call over to Paul Legge, our CFO, for more details on the quarter.