First Western Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:MYFW) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

First Western Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:MYFW) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript April 24, 2026

Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the First Western Financial, Inc. First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question, press star-1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear a message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star-1-1 again. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. Now it is my pleasure to hand the conference to Tony Rossi. Please proceed.

Tony Rossi: Thank you, Carmen. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for First Western Financial, Inc.’s First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. Joining us from First Western Financial, Inc.’s management team are Scott C. Wylie, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Julie A. Courkamp, Chief Operating Officer; and David R. Weber, Chief Financial Officer. We will use a slide presentation as part of our discussion this morning. If you have not done so already, please visit the events and presentations page of First Western Financial, Inc.’s Investor Relations website to download a copy of the presentation. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this conference call contains forward-looking statements with respect to the future performance and financial condition of First Western Financial, Inc.

that involve risks and uncertainties. Various factors could cause actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These factors are discussed in the company’s SEC filings, which are available on the company’s website. I would also direct you to read the disclaimers in our earnings release and investor presentation. The company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements made during the call. Additionally, management may refer to non-GAAP measures, which are intended to supplement but not substitute for the most directly comparable GAAP measures. The press release available on the website contains the financial and other quantitative information to be discussed today as well as a reconciliation of the GAAP to non-GAAP measures.

With that, I would like to turn the call over to Scott.

Scott C. Wylie: Thanks, Tony, and good morning, everybody. We executed well in the first quarter and saw positive trends in many areas, including loan and deposit growth, net interest margin expansion, well-managed expenses, higher mortgage banking revenues, and improved asset quality. This resulted in another increase in our level of profitability, with EPS up 85% quarter over quarter. We continued to maintain a conservative approach to our new loan production with our disciplined underwriting and pricing criteria. As a result of the additions we have made to our banking team over the past few years, as well as the generally healthy economic conditions in our markets, we had a solid level of loan production which was diversified across our markets, industries, and loan types.

As a result of our financial performance and the balance sheet management strategies, we had a further increase in both book value and tangible book value per share. Moving to slide four, we generated net income of $6.2 million, or 63¢ per diluted share, in the first quarter, which was higher than the prior quarter. This represented our third consecutive quarter in which we generated an increase in net income and earnings per share. With our prudent balance sheet management, our tangible book value per share increased 3.3% quarter over quarter. Now I will turn the call over to Julie for additional discussion of our balance sheet and trust and investment management trends. Julie?

Julie A. Courkamp: Thank you, Scott. Turning to slide five, we will look at the trends in our loan portfolio. Our loans held for investment increased $41 million from the end of the prior quarter. We continue to be conservative and highly selective in our new loan production, but with the higher level of productivity we are seeing from the additions to our banking team that we have made over the last several quarters, we are seeing a solid level of new loan production. New loan production was $116 million in the first quarter. That production was diversified across our portfolios, and we are also getting deposit relationships with most of these new clients. We continue to be disciplined and are maintaining our pricing criteria.

This resulted in the average rate on new production of 6.31% in the quarter. Moving to slide six, we will take a closer look at our deposit trends. Our total deposits increased $95 million from the prior quarter, or 10%, or $35 million in the quarter. The deposit growth in the quarter brought our loan-to-deposit ratio down from 96.5% in the prior quarter and 96.4% from a year ago to below 95%. Now turning to trust and investment management, slide seven. We had a $43 million increase in our assets under management in the first quarter, primarily attributed to lower market values, which were partially offset by the addition of new accounts. Net new accounts and contributions contributed a net increase of $42 million in the quarter. On a year-over-year basis, our assets under management increased by approximately 1%.

As David will cover shortly, our trust and investment management fees have increased 5.3% from 2025, and we have restructured that team for growth. Now I will turn the call over to David for further discussion of our financial results. David?

David R. Weber: Thank you, Julie. Turning to slide eight, we will look at our gross revenue. Our gross revenue increased 3.4% from the prior quarter due to increases in both net interest income and noninterest income. Turning to slide nine, we will look at our trends in net interest income and margin. Our net interest income increased 1.5% from the prior quarter due to an increase in our net interest margin. Our NIM increased 10 basis points from the prior quarter to 2.81%. This was due to a reduction in our cost of funds which was primarily due to lower rates on money market deposit accounts as a result of the company reducing deposit rates commensurate with the short-term decreases in 2025, and runoff of higher-cost deposit accounts.

Our net interest income increased 19.7% from 2025 due to an increase in net interest margin and an increase in average interest-earning assets. Now turning to slide 10. Our noninterest income increased by approximately $600 thousand from the prior quarter. This was primarily due to increases in gain on sale of mortgage loans, risk management and insurance fees, and trust and investment management fees, which increased for the third consecutive quarter. Now turning to slide 11 and our expenses. Our noninterest expense decreased by $1.1 million from the prior quarter. The decrease was due to an OREO write-down in the fourth quarter 2025 and a decrease in professional services, partially offset by an increase in salaries and employee benefits due to payroll tax seasonality and an increase in bonus accruals as a result of the improved earnings in the quarter.

Our efficiency ratio improved for the sixth consecutive quarter as we continue to tightly manage expenses while also making investments in the business that we believe will positively impact our long-term performance. Now turning to slide 12. We will look at our asset quality. As Scott indicated earlier, we saw improved trends in the loan portfolio in the first quarter, with decreases in nonaccrual loans and NPAs. This was partially driven by the sale of the last OREO property we had on the balance sheet. Additionally, we had no loan charge-offs in the quarter. Our allowance coverage was 77 basis points of total loans as improved trends during the quarter drove a release of provision. Now I will turn it back to Scott. Scott?

Scott C. Wylie: Thanks, David. Turning to slide 13, I will wrap up with some comments about our outlook. Based on our first quarter performance, what we are seeing in our markets, our expectations for the year are unchanged from what we provided at the start of the year. Overall, we continue to see relatively healthy economic conditions in our markets, seeing good opportunities to add both new clients and banking talent due to the ongoing disruption from M&A activity, particularly in the Colorado banking market. We also recently added a new market president for Scottsdale, Arizona, where we see good opportunities for growth. Our loan and deposit pipelines remain strong and should continue to result in solid balance sheet growth in 2026, with loan and deposit growth at similar levels to what we had in 2025.

In addition to the balance sheet growth, we expect to see more positive trends in our net interest margin, our fee income, and more operating leverage resulting from our disciplined expense control. We had net interest margin expansion of 26 basis points in 2025, and while we expect further expansion in 2026, it may not be at the same level as last year. While we will remain disciplined in our expense control, we believe that investing in the business will drive future shareholder value. The ongoing disruption from the M&A activity in our markets creates unique opportunities for us to add banking talent. We will take advantage of those opportunities if and when they materialize, as well as opportunities to add new clients. Based on the trends we are seeing in the portfolio and the feedback we are getting from clients, we do not see anything to indicate that we will experience any meaningful deterioration in asset quality.

The positive trends we are seeing in a number of key areas are expected to continue, which we believe should result in steady improvement in our financial performance and further value being created for shareholders in 2026. We will now open the call for questions.

Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you so much. And as a reminder, if you do have a question, press star-1-1 and wait for your name to be announced. To remove yourself, press star-1-1 again. One moment for our first question. It comes from the line of Brett Rabatin with Stonex Group. Please proceed.

Analyst: Hey. Good morning, everyone. Good afternoon. Wanted to start off. Obviously, great to see the trends this quarter in a number of categories. How many MLOs have you added, and then, obviously, a stronger start than usual on mortgage. How much production did you have this quarter? I know it was better than usual for 1Q.

Scott C. Wylie: I think we added one new MLO in the quarter, and we added another seven folks in front-office banker-type jobs. The MLO additions are especially nice if they are a good fit for us and producers because they have very low fixed costs, and their compensation largely comes from variable cost from production. Do either of you have the data for last year, Andy? For last year MLO adds? And then this mortgage—

Tony Rossi: Yeah. Give me a second.

Scott C. Wylie: We will look up that number, Brett.

Julie A. Courkamp: Mortgage had a good, strong first quarter. We saw gains on mortgage loans go from $800,000 in quarter four to $1.5 million in quarter one. So really strong production and economic conditions, I think, spurred that, but also the MLO adds we have been doing over the last several quarters have just given us a level of ability to produce mortgages.

David R. Weber: And lock volume increased a little under $40 million quarter over quarter. We were just under $180 million in secondary lock volume for Q1. And then in 2025, we added eight MLOs.

Scott C. Wylie: Okay. That is helpful color. And just on that point, I would love to tell you that we were expecting a strong first quarter, but actually, our experience is first quarter tends to be pretty quiet. We had been thinking that with the pent-up demand from slow mortgage markets in our geographic region that eventually we would see some pent-up demand come out and drive some volume. And I think that is what happened in Q1. It is a combination of pent-up demand, of course that we had unseasonably warm weather in our markets in Q1, and then definitely the impact of the new MLOs we have added. So those were really nice results to see. I will add one more data point.

David R. Weber: We did not see a material decrease in lock volume in March, when rates materially increased. So that is what gives us comfort as far as what was driving mortgage origination volume, that it really was not solely dependent on improved rates because in March, that obviously did not happen from a rates perspective, and our volume still looked good in March.

Operator: Okay.

Analyst: That is helpful. And then you mentioned Scottsdale, new market president. Any other markets that you are keen on trying to grow stronger organically? And then I saw PNC made quite a few layoffs. I am sure mostly back office, but just wanted to hear if you are able to capitalize on any disruption in Colorado and maybe an update on what you are seeing from that perspective.

Scott C. Wylie: So let us start with Arizona. In Arizona, we felt like we needed a leadership team that others would follow and that could really help us build our teams out there. We have two offices, one in Scottsdale, one in Phoenix, that have been open for years, and they have had good growth and they are profitable. But we have tiny market share in Arizona. We think we have a platform that would be attractive and unique and differentiated in that market, but we did not really have the leaders to put the teams together to make that happen. So we recruited one of the top folks out of First Republic/JPMorgan and added him nine months ago, something like that—October maybe. And then we hired one of the top folks out of FirstBank/PNC that started maybe a month or two ago.

Those two executives have a very complementary set of skills, and they work really well together so far, and we are excited about what they can accomplish. We are feeling really positive about these hires we have made for Arizona and where that team is going to go. In terms of your second part of your question about market opportunities in other markets, it is everywhere. It is amazing to see the quality of talent that we are seeing when we open up a position. I think it is a generational opportunity for us. We have hired several people already. We have several more in the works that are going to be real value drivers for us going forward. And we have done it all in a fairly well-contained cost environment. We have been spending between $19 million and $20 million a quarter for something like twelve quarters now.

It looked higher in the fourth quarter last year, but remember, we wrote down $1.3 million of an OREO because we had that last OREO under contract, and we knew the price was going to be down $1.3 million from our book value. So that shows up as an operating expense even though it is nonrecurring, obviously. Those expenses appeared more inflated in Q4 of last year than they really were on an operating basis. And then your last question on PNC: there is a really unique kind of emotional connection between Colorado and FirstBank that had long, deep roots here. I think it is a real challenge for any acquirer from the outside to come in and navigate that. The news this week that they were laying off 800 people or whatever it was was big news. I had phone calls this week from people calling to say that they were sad, that this was a real tragedy for our economy here.

I think that is just going to continue to create opportunities for us, and I see it pretty much every day. PNC is making a big effort to handle a smooth transition, and no knock on PNC. I think the test they have is a real challenge.

Analyst: Scott, you have started the year at a stronger pace than last year on loans in particular. Would it be too aggressive to say you could be a double-digit grower this year?

Scott C. Wylie: If you look at our loans year over year, I think we grew 11%, and our deposits grew 11–13% year over year. Our guidance we have been giving is kind of high single digits. Although, if you take out the quarter-over-quarter puts and takes, I feel like we seem to be around 10%, which would be double digits to your question. On fee income, we had really seen that flat for years. We have made many changes now in that area in particular—we talked about the mortgage one already, but also in the wealth side. We have some changes that we feel very positive about. We are seeing some green shoots there that are pretty exciting. I do think that we will see continued revenue growth this year with really nice operating leverage. If you look back—again, take out some of the bumps—we did 54¢ in EPS in 2023, 87¢ in 2024, $1.34 in 2025, and now our run rate seems pretty clearly over $2. I think that bodes well for 2026–2027 earnings.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. It comes from the line of Wood Neblett Lay with KBW. Please proceed.

Analyst: Thanks for taking my questions. Wanted to start on the net interest margin. It has been two consecutive quarters of pretty meaningful expansion. I believe you noted you expect the expansion to moderate, but it still feels like the NIM is biased higher. Any thoughts on how we should think about the trajectory there?

Scott C. Wylie: I have been saying for six or eight quarters that I believe we will ultimately get back to a 3.15–3.20 kind of a NIM because that is historically what we have seen in normal markets with normal yield curves and normal economics and a normal competitive environment over my forty years of running banks. I think we will still get there. The pace is just hard to predict. The finance team, in particular, is reluctant to say, not knowing anything about what is going to happen in the future with the Fed and the war and whatever, that we are going to see 10 basis points improvement a quarter. I think David would feel comfortable saying we are not going to see that in 2026. But we have seen, as you said in your question, really good NIM improvements.

What is driving that—our people are doing a really good job of having pricing discipline. That shows up on the loan side. We saw loan yields in Q1 down slightly when actual rates were down 50 basis points. We are seeing acquirers wanting to prove that they make a difference; they are out doing really aggressive loan pricing. We hear about this, and we are not going to compete with that. Yet our people are still producing nice growth with high-quality credits that produce zero loan losses like we have had now, again. And on the deposit side, we saw a 50 basis point decline in Q4, and we put all that into our deposit pricing, which a lot of banks here did not, and we did not see any runoff. We actually saw nice deposit growth. David, did I miss anything big there?

No? You covered it. We are not guiding to 10 basis points a quarter.

Analyst: As a follow-up to that normalized 3.15–3.20 margin, it is not going to happen this year. What is a realistic timeline to getting the net interest margin back to those levels?

Scott C. Wylie: It is hard to predict. There are so many variables that go into it. I am hopeful that we are back with a 1% ROA in 2027. Whether we get there for the full year, in January, or in December, I do not know yet. We have come a long way since the rapid run-up in short-term rates, the inverted yield curve, the failure of big regional banks—all that. We said we were going to play defense; we did. We said we were going to go back on offense; we have. We have some really historic opportunities in the markets right now. I think we are doing a great job of taking advantage of them, and you are seeing that play out. That is going to drive more operating leverage, more profitability, and some nice outcomes for our shareholders.

Julie A. Courkamp: Our ability to materially improve NIM—there is a very large opportunity for us in DDAs, and our organization is extremely focused on that. There are a lot of different things that we are working on, and hires that we are looking to make or have made in that area. We cannot really predict it, but there is a lot of effort going into focusing on noninterest-bearing deposits and then keeping our discipline on loan pricing, which has been something we are also quite focused on.

Analyst: Maybe last for me. On the trust business, it is great to hear the commentary on new accounts opened and fees were up quarter over quarter. You have made some changes to emphasize more of a growth business model. Where do we stand in the trajectory of that business?

Scott C. Wylie: We brought in a new head of wealth a year ago now—he started on April 1—from Goldman. He was in a senior wealth role there. Through him—he is leading it—we have done a complete overhaul of our planning function, our trust function, and our investment management, which also include our insurance area and our retirement services. We have replaced the leadership in all those areas and built stronger teams. We built out some new products and services which we have been test marketing, and that has all gone better than we had expected. In addition, this new hire—his name is Brandon Summers—had particular expertise in selling B2B wealth services, and that is not something we had done before. That was a big part of why we recruited him.

We have also launched a B2B offering which is similar to what you see at the big Fortune 500 companies, where the company will hire a specialist firm to provide wealth consulting services to their executives as a benefit. We do not have a lot of Fortune 500 companies in our market, and we do not really want to compete against that business, but for our target clients—lots of entrepreneurial and some good-sized businesses—they do not have a product offering like that. We have created a trademark offering called WorkWell, and we are out selling that, and we have a person dedicated to marketing it. We think that is going to be really impactful in the future. There are really nice synergies between that and selling our banking services—back to Julie’s treasury management and the DDAs. This all has really nice synergies to what we are doing anyway.

That is a summary of what we are doing on the wealth management side that is really exciting. It is starting to show results, as you said—really just green shoots at this point. We are going to see a lot more impact in the next couple of years.

Analyst: It is great to hear the momentum there. I appreciate you all taking my question.

Scott C. Wylie: Yep. Thank you, Woody.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Matthew Timothy Clark with Piper Sandler. Please proceed.

Analyst: Hey. Good morning. Thanks for the questions. I wanted to touch on interest-bearing deposit costs and maybe the spot rate at March if we could have it. And then how you are thinking about additional relief from here with the Fed on hold?

Scott C. Wylie: That sounds like a question for David to me.

David R. Weber: Thank you. Matt, the spot rate on deposits was 2.79% for the end of the quarter. With the Fed on pause, I go back to Julie’s comments. We have a lot of opportunity from a funding cost perspective with growing our DDA balances. Even with the Fed on pause, we feel with the company’s focus there and the things we have laid out and are working on accomplishing that we have opportunity to grow that portfolio, which will then help bring down our average cost of deposits and average cost of funds.

Analyst: Along those lines, your noninterest-bearing deposits tend to decline in the second quarter. Should we still expect that to be the case, or is it different this time?

David R. Weber: I would not say anything different at the moment. We typically see deposit outflows, as you mentioned, related to tax payments in the second quarter. I do not know that there is anything that we know today that would make that different. So I think that is what we are thinking about as far as Q2.

Analyst: And then the FHLB borrowings that you have, can you just remind us if those are overnight or if there is some term to them? And is there a plan to use excess cash to pay those off?

David R. Weber: The FHLB borrowing was an overnight that was swapped, and that swap matured in early April. Depending on how our liquidity evolves going forward, we will see if it makes sense to pay that off and keep it at zero, or if we need to replace that. We will just have to see how things evolve.

Analyst: So it is zero as of in April here. Is that what you are saying?

David R. Weber: It is a zero balance in April as of now.

Analyst: Okay.

David R. Weber: Correct.

Analyst: Sounds good. And then in terms of the near-term NIM, I know there is a little bit of relief on the deposit side, but assuming you lose some noninterest bearing seasonally, you get the benefit of the FHLB going away. It does seem like maybe the margin is flattish in the near term to flat to down slightly. I have to retest the numbers, but that is kind of where I am.

Julie A. Courkamp: I think we still have opportunities to continue to see NIM expansion in the remaining quarters in 2026. To Scott’s point earlier, I do not think it is going to be 10 basis points a quarter, but I do feel that we will continue to have opportunities to expand NIM.

Analyst: Great. And then just last minor one, you bought back a little bit of stock. It is not a big amount, but just curious what price you paid?

David R. Weber: It was $23.85 on an average basis.

Analyst: Perfect. Thank you.

David R. Weber: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of William Joseph Dezellem with Tieton Capital Management. Thank you.

Analyst: A couple of questions. First of all, the deposits grew at roughly two times the rate of loan growth in the first quarter. Would you step back and just walk us through the general dynamic behind that? Is that a normal seasonal phenomenon, or was there something specific to your activities that led to that ratio?

Scott C. Wylie: Over the last many quarters, we have put a much more significant focus on deposit growth. Our feeling is to get to be the bank that we want to be at $5 billion or $10 billion, we need to have as strong of a deposit story as we do on the loan and the P10 side. So it has definitely been a focus for us now for several quarters. We do not really do loans here that do not come with a primary banking relationship. We literally write that into our loan documents. It is part of the expectation that we have with any conversation we have with any prospective client. It is a part of the conversation we have with existing clients. We report on it internally—what loans we have that do not have deposits associated or have smaller ones.

It is a very routine part of the conversation here, just being good bankers and driving relationship-oriented clients. The fact that in one quarter we saw a little bit more deposit growth than loan growth—I would not read too much into that. We saw something like that in the third quarter last year. Some of the feedback we got was that we should try and manage that so it is more consistent, and there is no way of doing that. It just happens when it happens. The more relevant number for me is that we grew deposits 22% more than we grew loans over the last twelve months. That is probably a really relevant and helpful data point. If we see some decline in deposits in Q2, which is likely, I would not read anything into it either. That is just part of who our clients are and the fact that they pay taxes in Q2 that pull down the money market accounts and whatnot here.

Analyst: That is helpful, Scott. Let me take it one step further, though. Over time, where would you anticipate the loan-to-deposit ratio would end up? You said sub-95% now, and if you keep up the trend that has been in place for several quarters, it will be at sub-85% and then sub-75%. Next thing you know, we are sub-50%, and I suspect that is not where you are headed. I am being a bit facetious, of course. What is your long-term thought?

Scott C. Wylie: That is true—that is not where we are headed. I have been doing this a long time, Bill. I never really know where the next $1 billion of deposits are going to come from, but our clients do have a lot of liquidity, and we find that we are always able to produce deposits when we want them. It does not mean you do not have to focus on it. It does not mean you do not have to do the things that Julie was just talking about in terms of focusing on deposit strategies and strengthening our treasury management team, improving our technology, stuff like that. But at the end of the day, we have historically operated First Western Financial, Inc., and my prior banks, with loan-to-deposit ratios in the 90s. When it gets into the high 90s, we get more uncomfortable.

When it is in the low 90s, we think that is fine, but we are not going to pay up for higher-cost deposits. I think that has fueled nice growth for us over the years and will continue to do that and provide the operating leverage we need to drive earnings that can support the growth that we want to do.

Analyst: Lastly, with the geopolitical events, specifically the Iran war, what, if any, impact have you seen from your customers’ behavior on either the loan or deposit side or the pipeline of activity?

Scott C. Wylie: I was thinking about that before this call, Bill. Over time, I have found when our clients get nervous, they kind of stop doing things and say, “I can wait.” We have not seen that yet in this case, and I am not sure why that is. Maybe the Middle East seems like a long way away from the Rocky Mountain region. I am not sure why we are not seeing it, and, knock on wood, it has not had any negative impact on us so far. We really have not seen any impact, and I am not hearing about it in my conversations with clients or prospects or with our folks in the field at this point. That could change, but right now, our days are much more consumed by all this disruption that we are seeing from the M&A activity than global economic or political stuff.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Ross Haberman with RLH Investments.

Analyst: Morning.

Scott C. Wylie: Morning. I am sorry, Ross. I got on a bit late, so if you addressed these questions, I apologize.

Analyst: Could you talk about loan growth and what your expectation is in 2026 in terms of net loan growth and what offices you think it is going to originate from? What are you seeing better demand from? Is it Arizona, Colorado, or elsewhere? Thank you.

Scott C. Wylie: Great question. We did not really talk specifically about that. I did mention that we are seeing loan growth across the platform in terms of geography and industry type, and we are not seeing weakness in one place or another. We are also not stretching anywhere. I would tell you that our owner-occupied CRE number was getting a little higher than we felt comfortable, and we have pulled that down. I do not have that number handy. Is it from 360 to down to, like, 325 now?

Julie A. Courkamp: In that range. Yep.

Scott C. Wylie: That is a change that we are driving. We are actually seeing probably more owner-occupied CRE demand than ever, but we are being very selective there. The guidance we have given for balance sheet growth is high single digits, but I did say earlier in the call that we are up 11% year over year in loans and up 13% year over year in deposits. I do not think we are ready to jump out and say we are going to see mid-teens growth this year, but it does seem like 10% would be a reasonable guesstimate from where we are today.

Analyst: Is a good amount of the growth of the loans coming from Arizona and/or Montana?

Scott C. Wylie: In the backward-looking data, no—neither one. But I would also tell you that we are seeing some nice opportunities in both markets, and I think that you are going to see nice growth out of both those markets in the next twelve to twenty-four months. We have really good people there, and they are working hard. We live the market disruption in Colorado more than elsewhere, but it is everywhere. We are seeing it in Wyoming. We are seeing it in Arizona. We think there are lots of opportunities for us in Montana too. The numbers are just bigger in Colorado and more immediate for us because we are in Denver, but we are seeing opportunities everywhere. You know very well our theory about market share. We have tiny market share, and I think by just showing up and doing a good job of what we do differently than everybody else—which is we are local, we are trusted, and we are expert—those three things play really well in the market today.

Analyst: Are you seeing pressure to raise rates on the deposit side, and is it coming from the bigger banks in your markets today?

Scott C. Wylie: I would take a stab at that question, David, and then I would be interested in your answer too because it seems like less to me. The conversations I am having—people are calling, or I am calling them, and they are saying, “I do not want to be with a national bank. I want to be with a local bank.” They do not even say the word “rate.” They say, “When can I move?” We have actually created here a conversion concierge—the internal people call it the Switch SWAT team. We tell people we have a Switch SWAT team that will come out and help them transfer their accounts here and simplify the whole conversion process. They love it. I literally do not hear the question, “What rate are you going to give me?” I think we have a really extraordinary window of opportunity here, and we are doing everything we can to jump through it. David, what are you seeing in terms of the day-to-day stuff?

David R. Weber: My simple answer would be: Is the pricing market for deposits still highly competitive? Yes. Am I fielding a bunch of calls from our bankers saying we need to raise deposit rates? No. Those are the dynamics that we are seeing in our markets at the moment.

Analyst: One final question, if I may. Have you announced any new plans for new branches in any of your markets, or if you found something small to buy as a fit-in, would you consider buying that today? Or is any growth you really want to be organic?

Scott C. Wylie: We are very focused on organic growth, without a doubt. We have not talked about it because we do not have anything to talk about yet, but as part of the whole market disruption thing, we are seeing really good people that are available that we are trying to bring here. Most of them so far—all of them—have been in our existing footprint, but there are some that are in adjacent footprints that would be very attractive to us. Hopefully, we will have something to talk about later this year there. That would be a big plus as far as I am concerned. If we could bring a couple of well-established teams that want our toolbox to be able to go out and sell with, that would be fantastic. And to buy.

Analyst: Thanks again for all your help. The best of luck. Have a good weekend, guys.

Scott C. Wylie: Yep. Thanks, Ross.

Operator: Thank you. And as I see no further questions in the queue, I will conclude the session and turn it back to management for closing remarks.

Scott C. Wylie: Thank you, and we appreciate everybody dialing in on the call today. We talked about some of the noise in Q1 that was built off of the noise in Q4, but clearly we are seeing really nice trends in operating leverage that are translating into great EPS results. If you back up and look at that year over year, we have seen a nice multiyear trend. Our NIM is continuing to improve. Organic growth is continuing across the platform. Our asset quality continues to be very strong, and we do not see anything today that would change that. I think that is a very encouraging referendum on the credit quality that we pursue here. Our efficiency ratio has really trended down nicely from 79% a year ago to 70–73%, and that is not going to stop, I do not think.

Our goal here is to get our ROA back over 1%; with our capital efficiency, it is going to drive a nice ROE in the low teens, and really, I think, get First Western Financial, Inc. back towards a financial performance where we should be. So with that, thanks everybody for dialing in. We really appreciate the support and your interest in First Western Financial, Inc. Have a great weekend.

Operator: This concludes our conference. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.