OceanFirst Financial Corp.

Good morning. My name is John, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Ocean First Financial Corp First Quarter 2026 earnings call. All lines have been placed in mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during the Q&A session, simply press star, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. And if you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star again. I will now turn the call over to Alfred Yun. Please go ahead.

Thanks, John. Good morning and welcome to the Ocean First first quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm 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 for a complete discussion of forward-looking statements and associated risk factors. Thank you, and now I will turn the call over to Christopher Mark, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Alfred. Good morning, and thank you to all who have been able to join our first quarter of 2026 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. We've reported solid first quarter results, which included earnings per share of $0.36 on a fully diluted GAAP basis and $0.43 on a core basis. GAAP earnings per share increased a penny and core earnings per share increased $0.08, or 23%, as compared to the prior year's quarter. In terms of performance indicators, we delivered our fifth consecutive quarter of net interest income growth, which increased by $1 million, or 1%, as compared to the linked quarter, and was up $10 million, or 11%, as compared to the prior year's quarter. This performance is driven by an increase in average net loans of $268 million and net interest margin expansion to 2.93%, supported by lower costs of funds and earning asset growth. Total loans for the quarter increased by $92 million, representing a 3% annualized growth rate, driven by $429 million in originations. Joe will have more to add regarding our growth strategy in a few minutes, but we are encouraged by the continued organic growth momentum from the second half of last year. Asset quality remained exceptional, as total loans classified as special mention and substandard were 1.5% of total loans, below our 10-year average of 1.8%, and within the top decile of our peer group. The quarterly provision was primarily driven by loan growth and an increase in criticized and classified loans, partly offset by lower unfunded commitments. Cap operating expenses for the quarter were $73 million, which includes $4 million of merger-related expenses. On a core basis, operating expenses of $69 million declined by $2.1 million, or 3%, from the length quarter. primarily driven by the impact of our strategic initiative to outsource the residential lending platform and disciplined expense management across the company. Looking forward, we've worked diligently to restructure our core IT infrastructure and position the bank to benefit from the deployment of artificial intelligence across all departments. We've invested in AI through existing vendor relationships and have started to see the efficiency benefits in legacy bank processes while looking to further enhance our capabilities. We see significant opportunities to date, and these efforts will enable our ability to improve operating leverage, building further scalability as the bank grows. Pat will provide additional commentary on our financial outlook in a moment. Capital levels remain strong, with an estimated common equity Tier 1 capital ratio of 10.7%, and tangible book value per share increasing to $19.86. During the quarter, we also repurchased a modest number of shares solely related to the vesting of employee equity awards we did not repurchase any shares under the board approved authorization as previously announced a quarterly cash dividend of 20 cents per common share was declared marking the company's 117th consecutive quarterly cash dividend finally on december 29th 2025 we announced our merger agreement with flushing financial corporation and an investment agreement with warburg pinkus to date both companies have received shareholder approval. In addition, we have received regulatory approvals from the State of New York Department of Financial Services and from the OCC. Approval from the Federal Reserve remains the final outstanding regulatory requirement to complete the merger. We continue to work towards an expected closing in the second quarter of 2026 and a full systems integration and rebranding in the third quarter of 2026. Importantly, We've made arrangements to accommodate branch transactions for all customers in all branches, effective in our first day of operation. We've undertaken that work as we believe that the additional flushing branches will provide an immediate and meaningful competitive advantage. We plan to provide a detailed financial update on the flushing merger in connection with our second quarter earnings, which will include a discussion on the pro forma balance sheet and other projections from our latest deal with the merger model. In the meantime, we remain focused on executing our organic growth strategy, which is clearly reflected in our results of this quarter. At this point, I'll turn the call over to Joe for additional color on these businesses. Thanks, Chris.