Amerant Bancorp Inc. (NYSE:AMTB) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call April 25, 2024 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Laura Rossi - Head of Investor Relations
Jerry Plush - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Sharymar Calderon - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Tim Mitchell - Raymond James
Feddie Strickland - Janney Montgomery Scott
Russell Gunther – Stephens

Operator

Greetings. Welcome to the Amerant Bancorp First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] Please note this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host Laura Rossi, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Laura Rossi

Thank you. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us to review Amerant Bancorp's first quarter 2024 results. On today's call are Jerry Plush, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Sharymar Calderon, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

As we begin, please note that discussions on today's call contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Exchange Act. In addition, references will also be made to non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the company's earnings release for a statement regarding forward-looking statements as well as for information and reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP measures.

I will now turn it over to our Chairman and CEO, Jerry Plush.

Jerry Plush

Thank you, Laura. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining Amerant’s first quarter 2024 earnings call. We are happy to be here today to update everyone on the continued progress we have made during this first quarter of the year.

So before we get to the slides, I would like to make a brief comment. So as previously noted, you can clearly see the shift this quarter from transformation to execution, highlighted by our decision to exit the Houston market with the recently announced sale of our franchise there and to instead focus all of our efforts on growing our Florida franchise.

You will also note this quarter the lack of “noise” as many refer to it in previous periods having numerous non-routine income and operating expense items in comparison to this first quarter of 2024. Results this quarter also clearly show organic growth from our team member efforts in growing both loans and deposits to focus on relationship banking. The quality shift in the composition of our deposit portfolio reached another milestone with the runoff of all remaining institutional funds. And please know in advance that we will address credit in detail this morning on the call, specifically what happened in 1Q with special mention that continued to perform and the elevated net charge offs from the discontinued indirect consumer portfolio.