Dime Community Bancshares, Inc.

Good morning and thank you for joining the Dime Community Bank Shares second quarter earnings call. Before we begin, the company would like to remind you that discussions during this call contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbour provisions of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any such statements, including as set forth in today's press release and the company's filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. to which we refer you. During this call, references will be made to non-GAAP financial measures as supplemental measures to review and assess operating performance. These non-GAAP financial measures are not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with the US GAAP. For information about these non-GAAP measures and for reconciliation to GAAP, please refer to today's earnings release. I will now hand over to your host, Kevin O'Connor, CEO, to begin.

Good morning. Thank you, caller, and thank you all for joining us this morning. As usual with me are Stu LeBeau, and I'll be ready. I will first comment on DIME's second quarter earnings and then touch upon the succession announcement we outlined in our press release. I begin by saying thank Dime has done an admirable job weathering unique macro challenges posed by the failures of three regional banks, along with an unprecedented movement in rates and an inverted yield curve. In the second quarter, we grew average deposits by $150 million and supported our customers by growing loans 6% on an annualized basis. We grew our capital ratios, and our balance sheet continues to remain solid, with non-performing loans declining by 12%. As we have mentioned previously, we do not have any of the loan or deposit concentrations that got the failed banks and others in trouble. These facts, coupled with our rock-solid, bulletproof multifamily portfolio, representing nearly 40% of loans, provides us with confidence we will outperform in any potential recessionary environment. For the record, we have no multifamily loans greater than 60 days past due, and the LTV in this portfolio is in the mid-50% area. As Stu will comment on in his prepared remarks, in the second quarter, we successfully onboarded seven talented deposit-focused groups, while at the same time managing our overall expense base prudently. We had a strong quarter for fee income, marked by robust activity in our back-to-back loan swap program for commercial customers, which also has the impact of adding floating rate loans to our balance sheet. Finally, our NIM contracted less in the second quarter than the prior quarter and was in line with the consensus estimates. Putting all these items together, we reported core EPS of approximately 68 cents per share. In the second quarter, we increased our quarterly cash dividend to 25 cents. This increase is reflected in our strong current financial position and the culmination of our financial results over the last few years. These results reflect the power of our pure play plain vanilla community bank model and the dominant market share we have on Greater Long Island. Part of our press release this morning, we announced the culmination of a thoughtful and well-planned CEO succession process the Board and I began discussing in earnest earlier this year. Taking a step back, it's been over three years since we announced our highly successful merger transaction. We've delivered on all the goals established at the time of the merger, and created the premier business bank on Greater Long Island. The board and I are very proud of these accomplishments. I've been CEO for over 16 years and take great pride in helping build, along with our team, a $13 billion local champion. And with stability returning to the banking sector, with Don's strong financial performance these past few months, and our tremendous success in hiring new groups of productive bankers, The board and I both felt now was the right time to pass the torch to Stu. I'm extremely proud of the franchise we've built. Our employees have worked tirelessly to create a real difference in our communities. Being the leading community bank for PPP on Long Island, receiving an outstanding CR rating last year, above all, we've been a beacon of strength and stability from the 2008 financial crisis through to the recent regional banking failures and resultant panic. plan to work with Stu and the board on ensuring a seamless transaction. Given our collaborative approach in shaping Dyn's culture and strategy, I have no doubt he will continue our mission and culture of service to our staff and customers. With that, I will turn the call over to Stu.

Thanks, Kevin. At the outset, I would like to thank Kevin for his leadership and support. As many of you know, we have a history dating back almost a decade when Community National Bank, a bank I founded, merged with Bridge. I am looking forward to working with Kevin over the remainder of this year and will be leaning on him for his counsel and support in managing the bank. Together, we have built a strong team of client-facing personnel and operators. The Board, Kevin, and I are highly confident that we have a significant runway for organic growth, especially after the failure of two banks in our footprint. From a strategic perspective, I would like to mention that I intend to keep DIME's focus on providing exemplary relationship-based services that only a locally managed community bank can provide. Managing expenses prudently and being a conservative underwriter of credit have always been hallmarks of DIME, and we will not stray from these two core guidelines and principles. My focus will be on providing our customers outstanding service growing our franchise value, and delivering our shareholders strong returns. I am very excited to work with and rely on every one of our outstanding employees to accomplish this goal. Recently, we had the opportunity to capitalize on the disruption in the marketplace caused by the failure of Signature Bank and First Republic Bank by adding seven deposit focus groups. Of note, none of our local community bank competitors, both bigger and smaller, have been able to add the level and depth of deposit-focused talent that we are able to add. Onboarding these hires provides validation of Dynamo's business model from a number of fronts, including our customer-centric relationship-based model, our best-in-class technology platform, and our commitment to providing a flat organizational structure. Early results from these groups have been extremely positive, with over 600 customers onboarded, over 1,000 accounts opened in a very short period of time. We expect these groups to contribute meaningfully in deposit growth over the next several years. We continue to be approached by groups of bankers looking to move the dime, and we are in active discussion with a number of groups. We do believe there will be more fallout from both group hiring perspective as well as the opportunity to bring over individual clients who seek locally managed relationship-based bank with access to key decision makers coupled with a strong technology stack. On the technology front, we rolled out a number of new enhancements in the second quarter, including a brand new escrow management system and a consumer online account opening platform. We are well on track to complete our new business focused online account opening platform that takes our already strong digital capabilities to the next level. With respect to our positioning on the lending side, our strategy is to ensure we continue to support our key clients through any operating environment. We will continue to prudently grow loans and add franchise enhancing full service business relationships. Our current expectation is to grow loans by approximately $200 million in the second half of this year. We are keeping a watch out on our loan deposit ratio and intend to manage the balance sheet at a loan-to-deposit ratio of less than 105 percent. Should rates decline in future years, 24 and beyond, we do expect prepayments in the multifamily portfolio to pick up, which will lead to a natural normalization of the loan-to-deposit ratio over time. A quick update on our loan pipeline as of July 15. It stood at $1 billion with a weighted average rate of 7.5%. The mix of the pipeline is now heavily weighted toward business loans, which accounts for approximately 60% of the total. Of the billion dollars, about 70% is in floating rate loans. Dines credit losses have been well below bank index over multiple cycles, and we are extremely proud of our track record. We are cognizant of the fact there has been a lot of scrutiny on CRE concentration. In this regard, I want to mention that Dines Investor CRE concentration, excluding multifamilies, which are really residential loans for five or more tenants, is only 265 percent of total capital. Thus far, we have not seen any meaningful early warning indication of credit deterioration. While we continue to be diligent and vigilant around monitoring our loan portfolio, Overall asset quality remains strong with NPAs and 90-day past due down 20 basis points. As you would expect, we continue to closely monitor our office portfolio. At the current time, no past dues in our portfolio and only have four office loans totaling approximately $30 million that are rated substandard. Notably, we do not have significant amount of repricing or maturity in our office loans for the remainder of 23 or 24. Repricing maturing office loans for the remainder of 23 are only $30 million, and for 24, only $37 million. As we have mentioned before, our Manhattan investor portfolio, our investor office portfolio, is only $200 million, less than 1.5% of total assets. The LTV on the Manhattan office portfolio is 50%, We are comfortable with our exposure, and the operators of our office portfolio are very strong individuals. With that, I will turn it over to Avi to provide some detail on the results of this quarter.