OceanFirst Financial Corp.

And welcome to the Ocean First Financial Corp Q4 23 earnings release. And thank you for standing by. My name is Daisy and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you would like to register a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. And I would now like to hand over to your host, Alfred Goon from First Ocean to begin. Alfred, please go ahead.

Thank you, Daisy. Good morning and welcome to the Ocean First fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. I am Alfred Goon, SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Before we kick off the call, we'd like to remind everyone that our quarterly earnings release and related earnings supplement can be found on the company website, oceanfirst.com. Our remarks today may contain forward-looking statements and may refer to non-GAAP financial measures. All participants should refer to our SEC filings, including those found in our forms 8-K, 10-Q, and 10-K, for a complete discussion of forward-looking statements and any factors that could cause actual results to differ from those statements. Thank you, and I will now turn the call over to Christopher Moore, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Christopher Moore Thank you, Alfred. Good morning and thank you to all who have been able to join our fourth quarter 2023 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. We may refer to the slides filed in connection with the earnings release throughout the call. After our discussion, we look forward to taking your questions. Our financial results for the fourth quarter include a gap diluted earnings per share of 46 cents. Our earnings reflect net interest income of $87.8 million, representing a modest decrease compared to the prior linked quarter of $91 million. Operating expenses decreased to $60.2 million, Excluding the FDIC special assessment of $1.7 million, operating expenses decreased to $58.5 million. We're pleased to have executed many strategic initiatives that resulted in a meaningful improvement to the bank's efficiency. This work will continue in 2024 as we make every effort to hold expenses flat for the year. Fourth quarter results were impacted by modest margin pressure linked to our continued efforts to improve the quality of deposit funding. These efforts resulted in another quarter of substantial decline in brokered CDs, stable deposit balances, and a loan-to-deposit ratio below 100%. The resulting mixed shift in deposits placed some pressure on net interest margins, but margin pressure continues to abate, allowing net interest income to stabilize, and it is possible that margins may expand modestly throughout 2024. Deposit bait has increased to 38% from 35% in the prior linked quarter, indicating a slowdown in the pace of deposit cost increases. Our competitive pricing strategy through various channels has continued to protect the deposit base, which increased $265 million, or 3%, excluding broker time deposits, resulting in our decision to reduce broker time deposits by $364 million, all while keeping our loan-to-deposit ratio below 98%. Capital levels continue to build. their common equity Tier 1 capital ratio increasing to 10.88% and continued growth in tangible book value per share to $18.35. Turning to capital management, the Board approved a quarterly cash dividend of 20 cents per common share. This is the company's 108th consecutive quarterly cash dividend and represents 44% of GAAP earnings. The company did not repurchase any shares in the fourth quarter. the company may reactivate the share repurchase program this quarter. Despite a tumultuous time for the industry in 2023, the company executed on our strategic goals to improve operating expenses, diversify and strengthen our deposit base, and bolster our capital position. Looking ahead to 2024, the company is well positioned to continue to create shareholder value by remaining focused on responsible growth, expense discipline, and prudent balance sheet management. At this point, I'll turn the call over to Joe to provide some more details regarding our performance during the fourth quarter.