OceanFirst Financial Corp.

Good morning and welcome to the Ocean First Third Quarter 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 I will turn the call over to Christopher Maher, Chief Executive Officer of OceanFirst.

Thank you, Alfred. Good morning and thank you to all who have been able to join our third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. This morning I'm joined by our President, Joe Lebel, 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 reported third quarter results that reflect our first full quarter as a combined company following the acquisition of Flushing Financial Corporation. On a GAAP basis, we reported earnings per share of 17 cents, which included 30 cents per share, or $29.4 million of non-recurring merger related expenses, net of taxes. On a core basis, which excludes non-recurring items, earnings per share were $0.48, or $46.9 million, up 54% from the prior quarter and up 131% from the prior year. Compared to the third quarter of 2025, net interest margin has expanded 27 basis points. Core return on average assets has improved 20 basis points to 80 basis points. and our core efficiency ratio has improved more than eight percentage points to 62%. This reflects both the early benefits of the flushing combination and the multi-year return on our revenue generating investments. This week, our board also approved the quarterly cash dividend of 20 cents per common and common equivalent shares, marking the company's 119th consecutive quarterly cash dividend. Regarding capital, our priorities are, first, supporting organic growth in our core businesses, second, maintaining our dividend, and third, returning excess capital through share repurchases when the returns are compelling. We did not repurchase shares under the share repurchase program during the third quarter as we prioritized capital flexibility through the flushing integration, leaving 3.2 million shares available under our existing repurchase authorization. With integration risks behind us, and Earnings Growing, we expect to be more active with share repurchases. Share repurchases of the current valuation are accretive to both tangible book value and earnings per share. If that remains the case, we expect to be opportunistic with repurchases going forward. Pat will discuss our capital outlook and current capital ratios in his remarks. We complete our acquisition of Flushing Financial Corporation on June 1st. and on September 21st completed the operational integration and rebranding of Flushing's 30 branches across New York City and Long Island. We're pleased that the acquisition closing on June 1st, balance sheet restructure on June 26th and operational integration on September 21st have all been completed on schedule and executed in a manner consistent with the original merger announcement. We remain on track to achieve the cost savings and returns outlined at the transaction announcement and note that third quarter core operating expenses came in below the range we guided to in July. We expect the majority of the remaining cost saves to be reflected in our fourth quarter run rate. Even more importantly, we continue to see competitive wins in both talent acquisition and customer acquisition across the Flushing footprint. With the integration complete, our focus remains fully to executing our organic growth strategy, which is reflected in this quarter's loan and deposit growth. I'm proud of the pace at which our team has moved on both fronts. At this point, I'll turn the call over to Joe for additional color on these businesses. Thanks, Chris.

I'll start with loans. Total loans grew $216 million during the quarter to $16.5 billion, approximately 5% annualized growth, which included $202 million of commercial real estate growth and another $123 million of CNI growth, partly offset by the expected residential runoff. Commercial loan originations increased 15% to $735 million from $642 million in the prior quarter. This is our first full quarter of growth as a combined company and reflects our focus on core relationships. Our mission to grow the C&I business across our markets to diversify our commercial loan portfolio continues as C&I grew approximately 13% on an annualized basis. We've recruited 11 C&I bankers so far in 2026. and continue to be opportunistic with hiring. Moving to deposits, total deposits grew 319 million or 1.8% during the quarter to 18.1 billion. Excluding broker CDs, deposits grew 156 million led by interest-bearing checking and money market balances. Non-interest-bearing checking averaged 2.9 billion or 16% of total average deposits and our loan-to-deposit ratio ended the quarter at 91%. The premier bank teams had their strongest quarter to date, growing deposits by 181 million during the quarter to 674 million, while the cost of deposits was 2.49%. The group now manages 490 client relationships and 2,209 accounts and contributed 42 million in loan originations for the quarter. The two Premier Bank teams we headed in Manhattan, Long Island during the summer are ramping up in line with our expectations. I also wanted to take the opportunity to announce the hiring of Eric Howell as the President of the Premier Bank. As you know, Eric was instrumental in the growth and success of the deposit-focused model at Signature Bank and has been a consultant for us for the past 24 months. We look forward to Eric's leadership and our continued success and the Premier Bank. In terms of calling activity across the flushing footprint, including the Asian American community, we continue to service meaningful CNI and CRE loan and deposit opportunities and client retention through the conversion has been in line or better than our expectations. Lastly, non-interest income was $13 million during the quarter, up from $10.6 million in the prior quarter. reflecting a full quarter of Flushing's fee and BOLI income, partly offset by lower gains on other real estate and lower commercial loan swap income. This was well within the range of 12 to 16 million we got into in July. With that, I'll turn over the call to Pat to review the remaining areas of the quarter.