Washington Trust Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:WASH) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript April 22, 2024 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Elizabeth B. Eckel - EVP, Chief Marketing and Corporate Communications Officer
Ned Handy - Chairman and CEO
Ron Ohsberg - Senior EVP, CFO and Treasurer
Bill Wray - Senior EVP and CRO

Conference Call Participants

Mark Fitzgibbon - Piper Sandler
Damon DelMonte - KBW
Laurie Hunsicker - Seaport Research

Operator

Good morning and welcome to Washington Trust Bancorp, Inc.'s Conference Call. My name is [Priyanka] (ph) and I will be your operator today. [Operator Instructions] Today's call is being recorded. And now, I would like to turn the call over to Elizabeth B. Eckel, Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing and Corporate Communications Officer. Ms. Eckel?

Elizabeth B. Eckel

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to Washington Trust Bancorp, Inc.'s conference call for the 2024 first quarter. Joining us this morning are members of Washington Trust's executive team, Ned Handy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Mary Noons, President and Chief Operating Officer; Ron Ohsberg, Senior Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer; and Bill Wray, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Risk Officer.

Please note that today's presentation may contain forward-looking statements and actual results could differ materially from what is discussed on today's call. Our complete safe harbor Statement is contained in our earnings release, which was issued earlier this morning, as well as other documents that are filed with the SEC. All of these materials and other public filings are available on our investor relations website at ir.washtrust.com. Washington Trust trades on NASDAQ under the symbol WASH.

I'm now pleased to introduce today's host, Washington Trust’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ned Handy.

Ned Handy

Thank you, Beth, and good morning, and thank you all for joining our first quarter conference call. We appreciate your time and interest in Washington Trust. I'll provide brief comments and then Ron Ohsberg will offer more detail regarding our first quarter performance. After our prepared remarks, Mary Noons and Bill Wray will join us for the Q&A session.

Our primary focus continues to be on ensuring the strength of our balance sheet while we work towards regaining historic levels of profit generation. We continue our concentration on capital, credit, deposit growth, and expense management, controlling what we can as the administration of Washington works to balance interest rates and inflation risk. We are positioning to take advantage of prudent growth opportunities as they present themselves going forward. We will soon roll out some deposit-related enhancements to power our deposit growth strategies, including the addition of an omni-channel automated deposit account opening tool.