OceanFirst Financial Corp.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Ocean First Financial Corp Earnings Conference call. My name is Daisy and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you would like to register a question ready for the Q&A session, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand over to your host, Jill Hewitt, Investor Relations Officer, to begin. So Jill, please go ahead.

Thank you, Daisy. 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 this morning, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Christopher Marr.

Thank you, Jill. Good morning and Happy New Year to all been able to join our fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. This morning I'm joined by our President Joe LaBelle and our Chief Financial Officer Pat Barrett. We appreciate your interest in our performance and this opportunity to discuss our results with you. This morning we'll provide brief remarks about the financial and operating performance for the quarter. and 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 these slides during the call. After our discussion, we look forward to taking your questions. Our financial results for the fourth quarter included GAAP diluted earnings per share of 89 cents. Our record earnings reflect expanding margins, disciplined expense management, and strong loan growth with benign credit conditions. Core earnings were 67 cents per share and reflect non-core items primarily related to a $17.5 million unrealized mark-to-market valuation gain on our equity investment position in Auxiliar Capital Partners. The details related to the Auxiliar investment were shared in an 8 filed on November 30, 2022. While provision expense was $3.6 million for the quarter, an increase of $2.6 million from the prior length quarter, we couldn't be more pleased with the credit experience in our loan portfolio. Non-performing loans represent just 19 basis points of total loans and remain at pristine levels. With the potential for a recession ahead, the increase in provision for the quarter represents general macroeconomic factors and risks external to our portfolio's asset quality and loss experience. Turning to capital management, the Board approved the quarterly cash dividend of 20 cents per common share. This is the company's 104th consecutive quarterly cash dividend and represents 30 percent of core earnings. Tangible common equity per share increased to $17.08, reflecting earnings momentum and stable AOCI marks related to our investment portfolio. Over the past eight quarters, Tangible common equity per share has increased 14%. The company did not repurchase any shares in the fourth quarter. At this point, I'll turn the call over to Joe to provide some more details regarding our progress during the quarter.