OceanFirst Financial Corp.

Good morning, and thank you for attending today's Ocean First Financial Earnings Conference Call. My name is Tamia, and I will be your moderator for today. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. It is now my pleasure to pass the conference over to your host, Jill Hewitt. Please proceed.

Good morning and thank you all for joining us today. I'm Jill Hewitt, Senior Vice President and Investor Relations Officer at Ocean First Financial Corp. We will begin this morning's call with our forward-looking statement disclosure. Please remember that many of our remarks today contain forward-looking statements based on current expectations. Refer to our press release and other public filings, including the risk factors in our 10-K, where you will find factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Thank you, and now I will turn the call over to our host today, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Christopher Marr.

Thank you, Jill, and good morning to all who've been able to join our third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. This morning, I'm joined by our President, Joe LaBelle, and our Chief Financial Officer, Pat Barrett. As always, we appreciate your interest in our performance and are pleased to discuss our results with you. This morning, we will provide brief remarks about the financial and operating performance for the quarter, and provide some color regarding the outlook for our business. As a reminder, in addition to the earnings release issued last night, an investor presentation is also available on our company's website. We may refer to those slides during the call. After our discussion, we look forward to taking your questions. Our financial results for the third quarter included gap-diluted earnings per share of $0.64. Earnings reflected strong loan growth, expanding margins, and benign credit conditions. Core earnings were 60 cents per share and reflect non-core items primarily related to unrealized mark-to-market valuation adjustments on equity investment positions, and to a lesser extent, charges related to branch closures and mergers. I would also note that this quarter was the first quarter in which the company was subject to the Durbin Amendment cap on interchange income, which reduced our interchange fees by $1.7 million for the quarter. This is the final material headwind we faced from crossing the $10 billion regulatory threshold. Turning to capital management, the Board approved the quarterly cash dividend of 20 cents per common share. This is the company's 103rd consecutive quarterly cash dividend and represents 34 percent of core earnings. Tangible common equity per share increased to $16.30, reflecting earnings momentum outpacing AOCI marks related to our investment portfolio. The company did not repurchase any shares in the third quarter while we continue to await the regulatory review for the Partners Bancorp acquisition. Moving to the merger agreement with Partners Bancorp, November 4th, 2022 will be the one-year anniversary of the announcement of the agreement to acquire Partners. We continue to collaborate with Partners and are working with our regulators as they review the application. As noted in the agreement, after one year, either party may, but is not obligated to, terminate the agreement without penalty. Of course, until all approvals and customary closing conditions are met, we cannot schedule the merger closing. We will publish appropriate filings when definitive information is available. Beyond our financial performance, I'm also pleased to note that earlier this month, we held a bank-wide afternoon of volunteering. That entailed closing our branches to over 750 Ocean First employees who we call our wave makers, could spend a collective 3,000 plus hours at over 100 project sites to help our neighbors in five states. While the afternoon of October 6th is not the only volunteering that takes place at Ocean First, it certainly was a significant opportunity for us to help the nonprofit organizations in our communities who do so much to help our neighbors every day. This commitment is a core part of how we serve our communities and build our business. At this point, I'll turn the call over to Joe to provide some color regarding our progress during the quarter.