OceanFirst Financial Corp.

Good morning and thank you all for attending the Ocean First Financial Corp third quarter 24 earnings release conference call. My name is Brika 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. I would now like to pass the conference over to your host Alfred Goon, Investor Relations at Ocean First. Thank you, you may proceed Alfred.

Thank you very much. Good morning and welcome to the Ocean First third quarter 2024 earnings call. I am Alfred Goon, SEP 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 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 Marr, Chairman and CEO.

Christopher Marr Thank you, Alfred. Good morning and thank you to all who have been able to join our third 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. Our financial results for the third quarter included GAAP diluted earnings per share of 42 cents. Our earnings reflected stabilization of net interest income, which remained essentially flat at $82 million compared to the prior length quarter. Operating expenses increased by $5 million to $64 million and include $1.7 million of non-recurring operating expenses related to the acquisitions of Garden State Home Loans and Spring Garden Capital, which we'll discuss later. These investments will support expansion in our fee revenue and specialty finance offerings, respectively, and both will be modestly accretive to earnings. Asset quality metrics continue to remain strong as non-performing loans and loans 30 to 89 days past due as a percentage of total loans receivable were 28 basis points and 15 basis points respectively. Loan recoveries of $88,000 for the quarter. Capital levels continued to build with our estimated common equity tier one capital ratio increasing to 11.3% and continued growth in tangible book value which increased by 35 cents to $19.28. Tangible book value per share has grown 8 percent as compared to the same period last year. Capital growth was sustained this quarter, while the company repurchased an incremental 87,000 shares under the company's repurchase program. Through September 30th, 2024, we repurchased nearly 1.4 million shares at a weighted average cost of $15.38. Further on capital management, the Board approved the quarterly cash dividend of 20 cents per common share. This is the company's 111th consecutive quarterly cash dividend and represents 50 percent of GAAP earnings. With solid credit metrics and our bolstered capital position, we are now increasingly focused on driving organic growth in Q4 and into 2025. At this point, I'll turn the call over to Joe to provide some more details regarding our performance during the third quarter and our efforts to increase organic growth rates.