Western Alliance Bancorporation Common Stock (DE)

I would now like to turn the call over to Miles Pondelik, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome to Western Alliance Bank's third quarter 2026 conference call. Our speakers today are Ken Vecchione, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Vishal Idnani, Chief Financial Officer. Before I hand the call over to Ken, please note that today's presentation contains forward-looking statements which are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Except as required by law, the company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements. For a more complete discussion of risks and certainties that could cause tax results that differ materially from any forward-looking statements, please refer to the company's SEC filings, including the Form 8-K filed yesterday, which are available on the company's website. Now for opening remarks, I'd like to turn the call over to Ken Vecchione.

Good afternoon, everyone. I'll make some brief comments about our third quarter 2026 performance. before handing the call over to Vishal to discuss our financial results and drivers in more detail. After reviewing our revised 2026 outlook, Dale, Tim, and Lynn will join us for Q&A as usual. Western Alliance entered the quarter with three strategic objectives front and center. Improve asset quality, lower deposit costs, and accelerate share repurchases. We exited the quarter having made significant strides against each of these goals, which I'm pleased to update you on today. As the quality improved meaningfully in the third quarter, non-accrual loans declined 14% or $77 million from the prior quarter to $485 million, exceeding the expectations outlined in our guidance update last month. We successfully resolved two additional credits from the six identified at May's Investor Day, and the remaining two are on a glide path towards resolution before year-end. Net charge-offs also improved, declining $9 million from the prior quarter to $46 million. Net charge-offs decreased seven basis points to 30 basis points. Combined with a four basis point increase in the allowance to funded HFI loans to 93 basis points, the reduction in non-accruals drove ACL coverage of non-accrual loans sharply higher increasing 22 percentage points to 118%. Our second strategic objective was the intentional transition of higher cost deposits off the balance sheet to lower our overall funding costs and improve balance sheet profitability. Here, too, we made substantial progress. During the quarter, we transitioned $3 billion of higher cost ECR-related deposits while keeping total deposits essentially flat Thank you for joining us today. when funding costs have typically peaked. We remain well positioned for additional deposit cost reductions in Q4 as we realize the full quarter benefit of these lower balances. We exceeded our original deposit optimization goal by $1.5 billion with $4.5 billion of deposits remixed over the prior two quarters, one quarter earlier than expected. With another $500 million expected to transition in Q4, this initiative is nearly complete. Finally, our more balanced growth profile has enhanced our flexibility to prioritize share repurchases while maintaining robust capital levels. In Q3, we repurchased shares of $92 million against our $150 million target for the second half of 2026. representing approximately 1.15 million shares or roughly 1% of shares outstanding. We have continued to repurchase shares at attractive valuations into Q4 and remain on track to achieve our second half repurchase objectives. Taken together, these accomplishments support sustainable risk-adjusted PPNR growth and increasing profitability, keeping us on track to achieve the medium-term goals outlined at Investor Day. I'll hand the call over to Vishal to review our Q3 financial results.