Central Pacific Financial Corp New

This call is being recorded and will be available for replay shortly after its completion on the company's website at www.cpb.bank. I'd like to turn the call over to Ms. Dana Matsumoto, Group Senior Vice President and Director of Finance and Accounting. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Ellie, and thank you all for joining us as we review the financial results of the first quarter of 2024 for Central Pacific Financial Corp. With me this morning are Arnold Martinez, President and Chief Executive Officer, David Morimoto, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Anna Hu, Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer. We have prepared a supplemental slide presentation that provides additional details on our release and is available in the investor relations section of our website at cpb.bank. During the course of today's call, management may make forward-looking statements. While we believe these statements are based on reasonable assumptions, they involve risks that may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. For a complete discussion of the risks related to our forward-looking statements, please refer to slide two of our presentation. And now, I'll turn the call over to our President and CEO, Arnold Martinez.

Thank you, Dana. And aloha, everyone. We appreciate your interest in Central Pacific Financial Corp, and we are pleased to share our latest updates and results with you. We had a special start to 2024, first with the celebration of our 70th anniversary in mid-February, where we took time to honor our founding. As many of you know, our bank was started by World War II Nisei veterans to help the underserved in Hawaii. we celebrated this special occasion with our many longstanding loyal customers and employees. Consistent with our founder's mission, in March, we were recognized for the 15th time as SBA Lender of the Year Hawaii District. We are all very proud to continue the legacy. Our financial results in the first quarter reflect our positioning to optimize performance in the coming quarters. We believe we are well positioned with strong liquidity, asset quality, and capital, and a healthy pipeline. The team will provide additional detail and insights on our first quarter financial performance, but as usual, let me start with an update on the Hawaii market. The Hawaii economy continues to prove to be resilient, despite headwinds that have impacted recovery. In the month of February, total statewide visitor arrivals measured by the average daily census due to the leap day, was about 3% down from the prior year and about 95% of pre-pandemic 2019. Visitors from Japan continues to increase, up 77% from a year ago, yet remained about 48% of the same month in 2019. As it relates to Maui, total visitors in February were about 78% the prior year, as recovery following the wildfires wildfires continues. Total statewide hotel occupancy in March was 75%, down 1.9% from a year ago, with an average daily rate of $384, down 0.9% from a year ago. Hawaii's statewide seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 3.1% in March and continues to outperform the national unemployment rate of 3.9%. The University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization forecast the state unemployment rate to remain very low at 2.7% in 2024. In the area of Hawaii real estate values, the Oahu median single-family home price increased back up to $1.1 million, and the median condo sales price was $500,000 in March. Home sales volumes in the first quarter were up 6.1%, single-family homes, but down 7.1% for condos compared to the prior year. With the demand for housing remaining strong, it is welcoming to see inventory levels increasing with a 7.4% increase in active inventory for single-family homes in March. Overall, we remain optimistic about Hawaii's economic outlook. Although the impacts from the Maui wildfires have slowed our recovery in the near term, we are getting closer to full recovery. In addition, government and military contracts in Hawaii are at all-time highs, with $5 billion in total contracts awarded in 2023. With all of that said, the latest forecast is for the total state economy to continue to grow modestly in 2024. I'll now turn the call over to David Morimoto, our Chief Financial Officer. David.