ConnectOne Bancorp, Inc.

Greetings, and welcome to Connect One Bank Corp, Inc.' 's third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Sia Vansia, Chief Brand and Innovation Officer.

Good morning and welcome to today's conference call to review Connect One's results for the third quarter of 2021 and to update you on recent developments. On today's conference call will be Frank Sorrentino, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Bill Burns, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. The results as well as notice of this conference call on a listen-only basis over the internet were distributed this morning in a press release that has been covered by the financial media. At this time, let me remind you that certain statements and assumptions in this conference call contain or are based upon forward-looking information and are being made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are subject to numerous assumptions, uncertainties, and known or unknown risks which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These risk factors are more fully discussed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements included in this conference call are only made as of the date of this call, and the company is not obligated to publicly update or revise them. In addition, certain terms used in this call are non-GAAP financial measures, reconciliations of which are provided in the company's earnings release and accompanying tables or schedules, which have been filed today on Form 8K with the SEC and may also be accessed through the company's website at ir.connectonebank.com. Each listener is encouraged to review those reconciliations provided in the earnings release together with all other information provided in the release. I will now turn the call over to Frank Sorrentino. Frank, please go ahead.

Thank you, Sia, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate everyone joining us today. I am very pleased to report a strong quarter and extremely proud of the year-to-date performance of our team. We leveraged the momentum in the first half of the year, demonstrating our ability to continue to execute and driving the strongest financial performance metrics in the company's history. Some highlights for the quarter include a return on assets of 1.62 and a return on tangible common equity of 16.9%. Our pre-provision net revenue increased once again to 2.23 percent of average assets, and our quarterly sequential annualized loan growth net of PPP was 21 percent. You know, none of this is surprising for Connect One. We saw early on an opportunity in the rebounding New York metro economy for banks like ours to take a proactive approach to the recovery. Our teams were prepared, and we leveraged our technological investments to drive growth. We also moved quickly, realizing market opportunities to add additional revenue-generating talent, and those efforts will support our outlook heading into the year. Loan growth accelerated for a second quarter in a row, a result of our strategic focus on our areas of expertise, coupled with our prudent adherence to strong credit standards and spread disciplines. All of this led to our margin expanding for the eighth consecutive quarter. Meanwhile, in August, we raised in excess of $100 million in non-cumulative preferred stock, increasing our flexibility in the deployment of our capital. And with that, today we announced the number of capital actions. First, based on our board's continued confidence in ConnectOne's performance, we raised our quarterly cash dividend for the second time this year to 13 cents, That's up 18% from the last quarter and up 44% from a year ago. Second, the board authorized an increase to our repurchase program by 2 million shares, or 5% of the outstanding shares. We're also pleased to see positive momentum in our non-interest revenue sources, and these include our SBA platform, where we expanded our talent, allowing us to further grow this business line. The origination or originating portfolios of commercial real estate loans held for sale has continued to accelerate, reflecting our disciplined lending philosophy while generating additional non-interest income. And lastly, BowFly, our fintech subsidiary, continues to build momentum as it realizes the benefits of the investments we made. We're generating more traffic through its proprietary product, BeVerify, and the patented BeQual, We also continue to scale and extend their competitive position amongst franchisors while continuing to support the banks who benefit from the loan market. We look forward to further growth both horizontally and vertically from both lines. The disruption in the M&A market and our markets continues to present numerous opportunities which we're taking advantage of. We're attracting high-performing talents who are seeking us out for the opportunity to join a growth-oriented, client-focused culture with a proven ability to execute. For that end, we've enhanced our competitive position within New York with the recent addition of a seasoned lending team in eastern Long Island. This allows us to further extend our reach and capability while strengthening our position as a New York metro bank. We're also excited to provide some details regarding the addition of a banking team in South Florida. This is a natural progression for Connect One's relationship-focused model, allowing us to further support our New York Metro-based clients who already have a presence in this market. Additionally, the commercial and small business community in South Florida is very dynamic, and we're seeing meaningful opportunities to couple our team's local expertise with the Connect One model to this growing marketplace. We plan to open our permanent office there in the early part of 2022 and look forward to sharing that update along with the progress of our team in the coming months. By the way, anyone interested in joining the Connect One team, we're still hiring in all of our markets. So come join us. So as expected, expenses were up sequentially, reflecting our recognition and our best in class team, the addition of new talent and the continued investments in our infrastructure and technology. And I'd like to reinforce that our industry-leading efficiency ratio is a direct indicator of our ability to enhance revenue growth while continuously building our operational capabilities. In other words, bringing in more revenue supports more in the areas such as operations, credit, BSA, and compliance. I just wanted to reiterate this is an exciting time for Connect One, and I'm pleased with the groundwork that we're laying for our long-term success. I'll now turn it over to Bill to provide a little more detail on this quarter's financial performance. Bill? Okay.