Brookline Bancorp, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to Brookline Bancorp Inc's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brookline Bancorp's attorney, Laura Vaughn. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Forum, and good afternoon, everyone. Yesterday, we issued our earnings release and presentation, which is available on the investor relations page of our website, brooklynbankcorp.com, and has been filed with the SEC. This afternoon's call will be hosted by Paul A. Perrault and Carl M. Carlson. This call may contain forward-looking statements with respect to the financial condition, results of operations, and business of Brookline Bancorp. Please refer to page two of our earnings presentation for our forward-looking statement disclaimer. Also, please refer to our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which contain risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Any references made during this presentation to non-GAAP measures are only made to assist you in understanding Brookline Bancorp's results and performance trends. and should not be relied on as financial measures of actual results or future predictions. For a comparison and reconciliation to GAAP earnings, please see our earnings release. If you can join us on page three of the earnings presentation, I'm pleased to introduce Brooklyn Bank Works Chairman and CEO, Paul Perrault.

Thank you, Laura, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for today's earnings call. Our first quarter results include transaction costs associated with the acquisition of PCSB Financial, which closed on January 1, and I am pleased to report our core system conversion was completed very smoothly in mid-February. Special thanks for the commitment and hard work of both Brookline and PCSB teams, as well as the folks at technology provider Jack Henry, who helped make it happen. Including one-time acquisition-related items, we reported net income for the quarter of $7.6 million, or $0.09 per share. If we exclude those items, we had operating earnings of $23.3 million and operating earnings per share of $0.27. During the quarter, our assets grew by $2.3 billion to $11.5 billion, loans grew to $9.2 billion, and deposits grew to $8.5 billion, and equity grew to $1.2 billion. The quarter was also one of disruption, as we all know, particularly here in Boston. From the start, our excellent staff was ready to answer questions, address concerns, and offer solutions to existing as well as potential clients. We also increased our on-balance sheet liquidity, adding to our cash and securities position by $513 million while affirming our access to multiple sources of liquidity if the need should arise. Our non-performing loans continue to be at historic lows with net charge-offs of $451,000 in the quarter or just two basis points annualized. Our reserve for loan losses is solid at 131 basis points and we continue to be very well capitalized. I will now turn you over to Carl, who will review the company's first quarter.