Brookline Bancorp, Inc.

please refer to pages 2 and 3 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. I'm pleased to introduce Brooklyn Bancorp's Chairman and CEO, Paul Pearl.

Thanks, Dario, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for today's earnings call. Our results continue to improve in the second quarter with earnings of approximately $22 million, or $0.25 per share. As we have discussed over the last couple of quarters, we have been managing the balance sheet in advance of the merger of equals with Berkshire. The overall contraction of $61 million in our loan portfolio is intentional as we reduce exposures in commercial real estate and specialty vehicles and at the same time grow our commercial and consumer loan portfolios. We continued to see improvement in our funding as our customer deposits increased $59 million and our margin increased 10 basis points during the quarter. We sold two commercial real estate loans during the quarter and recognized the charge of $3.5 million. Additionally, our Boston office portfolio continues to be under stress, and we downgraded several credits during the quarter and added to the reserves for these credits. The office portfolio outside of Boston is continuing to perform very well. In May, the stockholders of both Berkshire Hills and Brookline approved the merger, and I continue to be pleased with the progress the teams are making. We have been working together over the last few months to ensure a smooth merger, and no significant issues have been identified to date. We are looking forward to being one bank in the coming months with a combination of our systems in early February, enhancing the products and services for our combined customers. I will now turn you over to Carl, who will review the company's second quarter.

Thank you, Paul. As Paul mentioned, loans declined by $61 million with commercial real estate and equipment finance declining $95 million and $46 million, respectively, while commercial loans grew $53 million and consumer loans grew $27 million. Owner-occupied commercial real estate increased by $15 million and investment commercial real estate decreased by $110 million. bringing the percentage of investment commercial real estate to total risk-based capital to 363% at quarter's end. The decline in equipment finance loans was driven by the continued runoff of the specialty vehicle portfolio, which decreased by 27 million during the quarter to 240 million. Our net interest margin improved 10 basis points to 332 basis points on higher asset yields, as well as lower funding costs. Net interest income increased $2.9 million for the quarter to $88.7 million. Fee income was slightly higher at $6 million, bringing total revenues for the quarter to $94.7 million, which is 3% higher than Q1 and 10% higher than 2024. Non-interest expense, excluding merger charges, was $57.7 million, a decrease of $1.3 million from Q1 due to lower expenses in nearly every category except marketing, which increased $503,000. Merger expenses for the quarter were $439,000 and were largely non-tax deductible, contributing to a higher effective tax rate. The provision for credit losses was $7 million, $1 million higher than Q1. We had total net charges of $5.1 million and provided additional credit reserves for selected properties in the Boston office market. The reserve coverage increased to 132 basis points of total loans. Yesterday, the Board approved maintaining our quarterly dividend at 13.5 cents per share to be paid on August 22nd to stockholders of record on August 8th. Looking forward, we continue to anticipate modest improvements to the net interest margin as liabilities continue to reprice lower. We are currently estimating an increase in the margin of four to eight basis points in Q3. This is dependent upon market conditions, deposit flows, and the direction, timing, and magnitude of future actions by the Federal Reserve. We anticipate growth in the loan portfolio to be in the low single digits for the balance of 2025, as growth in commercial and consumer loans will be tempered by the runoff of specialty vehicle and gradual pickup in commercial real estate activity. On the deposit side, we anticipate growth of 4 to 5% with growth generally favoring interest-bearing accounts. Non-interest income is projected to be in the range of $5.5 to $6.5 million per quarter. We are managing expenses, particularly staffing, in preparation for the merger with Berkshire Hills later this year. Our effective tax rate is expected to be in the range of 24.25%, excluding the impact of non-deductible merger charges. This concludes my formal comments. I will turn back to Paul.