Central Pacific Financial Corp New

I would now like to turn the call over to Ms. Dana Matsumoto, Group SVP, Director, Finance and Accounting. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Dustin, and thank you all for joining us as we review the financial results of the fourth quarter and full year of 2024 for Central Pacific Financial Corp. With me this morning are Arnold Martinez, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, David Morimoto, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Ralph Misik, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Risk Officer, and Anna Hu, Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer. We have prepared a supplemental slide presentation that provides additional details on our earnings 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 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 Chairman, President, and CEO, Arnold Martinez.

Thank you, Dana, and thank you everyone for joining us today. We appreciate your interest in Central Pacific Financial Corp. We are pleased to share our latest updates and results with you. In the fourth quarter, through our team's strong execution and diligent oversight, we once again achieved meaningful NIM expansion and core deposit growth. At the same time, we continued to maintain strong liquidity, asset quality, and capital positions. In the fourth quarter, we began to see loan opportunities pick up, and we are on track for growth in 2025. We completed an investment portfolio repositioning in the fourth quarter, which impacted our current quarter results, but will lead to significant income accretion in 2025 and beyond. David will cover this transaction in more detail shortly. Overall, we had a strong year in 2024, and I'm proud of our team's accomplishments. We are entering 2025 with confidence and optimism for another strong year. Let me next provide an update on the Hawaiian market. Overall, the economy continues to expand at a modest pace and remains resilient. We continue to see significant strength in construction and military spending, while the tourism sector is expected to slightly improve in 2025. The Hawaii construction industry continues to grow and is being led by residential and government construction. The total value of construction in 2024, based on the first half of the year annualized, will exceed $13 billion, a meaningful increase from the prior year's high of $11.8 billion. Construction payroll jobs reached 43,000 in October 2024, a new record for Hawaii. In the area of tourism, in the month of November 2024, total statewide visitor arrivals were up 5.3% and visitor spending was up 2% from the prior year. This was the fourth consecutive month with year-over-year growth in both visitor arrivals and spending. The recovery of visitors from Japan continues to be slow but, fortunately, was offset by stronger US visitor arrivals. At this point, we are uncertain what the impact on visitor arrivals will be from the LA wildfires, but we continue to pray for the people of Southern California impacted by this tragedy. Maui's recovery and rebuilding continues, but will be a long process. The good news is that Maui has regained more than half of the jobs lost to the 2023 wildfires. However, visitor arrivals and housing needs continue to be challenges. Rebuilding efforts will provide a boost to the economy over time, and the state remains committed to supporting Maui in building a stronger island for the future. Hawaii's statewide seasonally adjusted unemployment rate remained very low at 3% in December and continued to outperform the national unemployment rate of 4.1%. Hawaii real estate values remained strong and ended in 2004 very high. The Oahu median single-family home price was $1.05 million in the month of December, reflecting a year-over-year increase of 5.8%. Home sales for the month were up 25.3% for single-family homes and up 18.8% for condos compared to the prior year. Home inventories generally are increasing, and we anticipate that the positive momentum will continue into 2025. Overall, while some economic uncertainty exists, Hawaii's economy has proven to be resilient and is positioned to continue to modestly grow in 2025. which would translate to increased growth opportunities for Central Pacific as well. I'll now turn the call over to David.