OceanFirst Financial Corp.

Good morning. Thank you for attending the Ocean First Financial First Quarter 2024 Earnings Relief. My name is Victoria and I'll be your moderator 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 followed by one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to pass the conference over to your host, Alfred Goon with Ocean First Financial. Thank you. You may proceed, Alfred.

Thank you very much. Good morning and welcome to the Ocean First first quarter 2024 earnings call. I am Alfred Goon, SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Before we kick up 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 on our forms 8K, 10Q, and 10K, for a complete discussion of forward-looking statements and any factors that could cause actual results to differ from those statements. Thank you, and now I will 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 first quarter of 2024 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 first quarter include a GAAP diluted earnings per share of 47 cents. Our earnings reflect net interest income of $86 million. representing a modest decrease compared to the prior linked quarter of $88 million. Operating expenses decreased to $59 million. First quarter results demonstrated a stable quarter for margins, as our core net interest margin was flat at 2.77%, the same level as the prior quarter. Margins were impacted by our continuing efforts to improve the quality of deposit funding. These efforts resulted in another quarter of decline in brokered CDs, a loan-to-deposit ratio below 100%, and a negligible increase in deposit betas to 40%. We continue to see a gradual shift in deposit mix towards higher-yielding products, but that velocity is slowing and is now largely offset by the ongoing repricing of our loan and securities portfolios. Capital levels continue to build, with our common equity Tier 1 capital ratio increasing to 11%, and continued growth in tangible book value which increased by 28 cents, or 1.5%, to $18.63. These results include nearly 1 million shares repurchased under the company's repurchase program at a weighted average cost of $15.64. Further on capital management, the Board has approved the quarterly cash dividend of 20 cents per common share. This is the company's 109th consecutive quarterly cash dividend and represents a 43% of GAAP earnings. We continue to remain focused on positioning the company for a variety of economic and industry outlooks through responsible growth, expense discipline, and prudent balance sheet management. At this point, I'll turn the call over to Joe to provide some more detail regarding our performance during the first quarter.