OceanFirst Financial Corp.

and thank you for joining the Ocean First Financial Corp Q125 earnings call. My name is Marie and I will be coordinating your call today. During the presentation, you can register a question by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. And if you change your mind, please press star followed by two. I will now hand over to your host, Alfred Goon, SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations to begin. Please go ahead. Thank you, Marie.

Good morning and welcome to the Ocean First first quarter 2025 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 I now will turn the call over to Christopher Moore, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Thank you, Alfred.

Good morning, and thank you to all who have been able to join our first quarter 2025 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 this call. After our discussion, we look forward to taking your questions. We reported our financial results for the first quarter, which included earnings per share of 35 cents on a fully diluted gap and core basis. We are pleased to report a second consecutive quarter of growth on both net interest income which grew by more than $3 million for the quarter, and net interest margin, which expanded by 21 basis points. These improvements were largely driven by deposit repricing efforts. Results also included commercial and industrial loan growth of 6%, or 24% annualized, while the total commercial loan pipeline increased to $376 million as of period end. Operating expenses for the quarter were $64 million, modestly lower than the prior quarter. Note that our first quarter operating expenses did not reflect any of the material investments from our recent hiring efforts, which Joe will touch on in a moment. Asset quality remained strong, as annualized net charge-offs were just three basis points, while total loans classified as special mention and substandard decreased five percent to $149 million or 1.5% of total loans. Classified loan levels remain well below our long-term average and are substantially lower than our peer group. The reserve bill for the quarter was primarily driven by an elevated level of uncertainty around macroeconomic conditions. Capital levels remain robust with an estimated common equity tier one capital ratio of 11.2% and tangible book value per share of $19.16. This week, our board approved a quarterly cash dividend of 20 cents for the common shares. This is the company's 113th consecutive quarterly cash dividend and represents 57% of GAAP earnings. Finally, we're very pleased with our progress in launching the Premier Bank Initiative, which is growing quickly and should drive organic deposit growth and additional margin improvement in the second half of the year. For more color on that initiative and our other businesses, I'll turn the call over to Joe for his comments.