OceanFirst Financial Corp.

Thank you for attending the Ocean First Financial Corp Q2 24 Earnings Release Conference Call. My name is Brica 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. Please press star followed by one to ask a question and if you wish to remove that request at all please press star then two. For operator assistance please press star zero Thank you. I would now like to pass the conference over to your host, Alfred Goon, Investor Relations at Ocean First Financial Corp to begin. Thank you. You may proceed, Alfred.

Thank you, Brika. Good morning and welcome to the Ocean First second quarter 2024 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 on 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 now I will turn the call over to Christopher Marr, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Alfred. Good morning, and thank you to all who have been able to join our second quarter 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 will 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. Anticipating that there may be some questions regarding the impact to bank operations as the result of the global CrowdStrike IT issue, I'm pleased to report that the bank is operating with minimal disruption. We've had no issues with customer access to our online banking, mobile banking, customer care center, OFB Connect, which is our mobile platform for business clients, ATM machines, card, and wire systems. Our branches are open and serving customers as well. We appreciate the hard work of our IT team this morning. Our financial results for the second quarter included gap diluted earnings per share of 40 cents. Our earnings reflect net interest income of $82 million, representing a decrease compared to the prior one quarter of $86 million. As the yield curve remains inverted and we experienced elevated pay downs in higher yielding loans. Operating expenses remain stable at $59 million. Asset quality metrics continue to remain strong. Criticized and classified assets, which were already lower than our peers and below our long-term averages, decreased 15% or $25 million to $143 million. The quarter included a net ACL bill of $1.6 million and net charge-offs of $1.5 million, which includes a $1.6 million charge-off on a single commercial real estate relationship. that was moved to non-accrual in the third quarter of 2023. The remaining exposure for this credit is $7.2 million, and the sale of the collateral is contracted to settle during the third quarter. Capital levels continued to build, with our estimated common equity Tier 1 capital ratio increasing to 11.2 percent, and continued growth in tangible book value, which increased by 30 cents to $18.93. Tangible book value for shares grown 7% over the past year. Capital growth was sustained this quarter, while the company repurchased an incremental 338,000 shares under the company's repurchase program. Through June 30, 2024, we have purchased nearly 1.3 million shares at a weighted average cost of $15.35. The company is 1,638,524 shares available for repurchase under the authorized repurchase program. Further on capital management, the board approved a quarterly cash dividend of 20 cents per common share. This is the company's 110th consecutive quarterly cash dividend and represents 50% of GAAP earnings. The solid credit metrics in our bolstered capital position, we are now increasingly focused on driving organic growth in the back half of the year into 2025. At this point, I'll turn the call over to Joe to provide some more details regarding our performance during the second quarter and our efforts to increase organic growth rates.