Berkshire Hills Bancorp, Inc.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Berkshire Hills Bank Corp third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. My name is Nadia and I'll be coordinating the call today. If you would like to ask a question at the end of the presentation, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand over to your host, Kevin Kahn, investor relations officer to begin. Kevin, please go ahead.

Good morning and thank you for joining Berkshire Bank's third quarter earnings call. My name is Kevin Kahn, investor corporate development officer. Our news release is available in the investor relations section of our website, berkshirebank.com, and will be furnished to the SEC. Supplemental information is provided in an information presentation at our website at ir.berkshirebank.com, and we will refer to this in our remarks. Our remarks will include forward-looking statements, and actual results could differ materially from those statements. Details, please see our earnings release and most recent SEC reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q. In addition, certain non-GAAP financial measures will be discussed in this conference call. References to non-GAAP measures are only provided to assist you in understanding our results and performance trends and should not be relied on as financial measures of actual results or future projections. A comparison and reconciliation to GAAP measures is included in our news release. On the call today, we have Nitin Mahatre, President and Chief Officer of Berkshire Hills Bank, Sean Gray, our Chief Operating Officer, Brett Berbovic, our Chief Accountant and Interim CFO, Greg Lindenmuth, our Chief Risk Officer, and Steve Finocchio, our Treasurer. At this time, I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Nitin Mahatre.

Thank you, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. I'll begin my remarks with the financial performance highlights for the quarter. followed by an update on the CFO departure before coming back to the highlights for the balance sheet and the progress on the best strategy in the quarter. I'll begin my comments on slide three where you can see the highlights of the quarter. Overall, this was a strong quarter with continued improvement across all key financial metrics. Adjusted revenues were up 10 percent quarter over quarter and 17 percent year over year. driven by strong net interest income growth. Revenue growth was driven by growth in loan balances and improved margins, which more than offset the headwind in the non-interest income. Adjusted expenses were up modestly, quarter over quarter and year over year, and were around the high end of the range we provided as guidance in July. Resultant was up 28% quarter over quarter and up 53% year over year. Adjusted earnings per share of 62 cents was up 21% quarter over quarter and up 18% year over year. This quarter was our highest quarterly adjusted earnings per share since 2019. Adjusted return on tangible common equity improved to 9.92%, and adjusted return on assets was 99 basis points. Matrix nearing the end for our 2024 best targets. Before I comment on the balance sheet and the best progress, a quick update on the people front. As you may have seen from our press release last week, CFO Shubhadeep Basu has resigned earlier this month for personal reasons, and to pursue other opportunities. Shubhadeep has been a key member of my team since he joined us 18 months ago, and I'm appreciative of his efforts and important contributions. As this was a strictly personal decision, out of respect for Shubhadeep's privacy, I won't make any further comments about his departure itself, but will add that he has agreed to help us in a consulting capacity through the year end. the Board of Directors, and I thank you for your service and wish them success and happiness for the future. I also want to reiterate that there are no accounting improprieties or disagreements regarding financial reporting related to Shubhadeep's departure, and we remain confident about our 2022 guidance that was provided at our previous earnings call. As stated previously, we will provide 2023 guidance during the fourth quarter earnings call in January 2023. We have retained a leading executive search for a steward to do a nationwide search for the CFO position. Our Chief Accounting Officer and Interim CFO, Brett Berbowick, will cover the financial details of today's presentation. Brett joined us 10 years ago from KPMG and was promoted to the Chief Accounting Officer position in 2015. Both Brett and Steven Finakia, our head of treasury and planning, will be available to respond to the questions following our remarks. We are blessed to have a deep bench strength in our finance team. And collectively, the totality of the Berkshire team is enthusiastically marching forward on our journey ahead. Coming back to the highlights of the quarter on slide three. On capital front, our balance sheet remains strong. We ended the quarter with a common equity tier one ratio of 12.7% and a tangible common equity ratio of 8.1%. We have ample capital to both fund growth and continue stock repurchases. This past quarter, we returned about $26 million of capital via dividends and stock repurchases. And over time, we expect to resume the growth of our dividends. Our credit matrix remains strong in the third quarter, thanks to the tremendous work by Berkshire team members across frontline to the workout group. Brett will review our credit matrix in detail in a moment. And Greg Lindenwood, our chief risk officer, is on the call to assist on any credit-related questions. On the best strategy front, we continue our optimization, including real estate optimization and consolidation of five branches in the quarter. We continue to make steady progress against our ESG priorities. You may recall that we issued $100 million sustainability bond this summer, and we've been actively deploying those proceeds within our sustainable financing framework into projects in renewable electricity, green buildings, and affordable housing. As I always do, I would like to thank all of our Berkshire Bank colleagues for their continued hard work and passionate commitment to our vision of becoming a high-performing, leading, socially responsible community bank. Their commitment to our strategy and dedication to our customers is what is driving our ongoing and accelerating performance improvement and progress. With that, I'll turn the call over to Brett to discuss our financials in more detail. Brett?