Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Son Limited (The)

Good morning. My name is Dhawan and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the first quarter 2024 earnings call for the Bank of NT Butterfield and Sun Limited. All participants will be in the listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Noah Fields, Butterfield's Head of Investor Relations.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Today, we will be reviewing Butterfield's first quarter of 2024 financial results. On the call, I'm joined by Michael Collins, Butterfield's chairman and chief executive officer, Craig Bridgewater, group chief financial officer, and Michael Scrum, president and group chief risk officer. Following their prepared remarks, we will open the call up for a question and answer session. Yesterday afternoon, we issued a press release announcing our first quarter of 2024 results. The press release and financial statements along with a slide presentation that we will refer to during our remarks on this call are available on the investor relations section of our website at www.butterfieldgroup.com. Before I turn the call over to Michael Collins, I would like to remind everyone that today's discussions will refer to certain non-GAAP measures which we believe are important in evaluating the company's performance. For reconciliation of these measures to US GAAP, please refer to the earnings press release and slide presentation. Today's call and associated materials may also contain certain forward-looking statements which are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by these statements. Additional information regarding these risks can be found in our SEC filings. I will now turn the call over to Michael Collins.

Thank you, Noah, and thanks to everyone joining the call today. Butterfield's first quarter of 2024 results continue to benefit from our leading market positions in highly regarded international financial centers. As a reminder, we operate well-established banking wealth management franchises in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, and the Channel Islands. We also offer specialized financial services in the Bahamas, Switzerland, Singapore, and the UK, where we provide mortgages to high net worth clients with properties in prime central London. I will now turn to the first quarter highlights on page four. Butterfield reported strong financial results in the first quarter with net income of $53.4 million and core net income of $55 million. We reported core earnings per share of $1.17 with a core return on average tangible common equity of 24.5% for the first quarter of 2024. The net interest margin was 2.68% in the first quarter, a decrease of five basis points from the prior quarter, with the cost of deposits rising to 178 basis points from 172 basis points in the prior quarter. The increase in deposit costs was primarily the result of continued mix shift from demand deposits to term products, as well as term deposit rollovers. The Board has again approved a quarterly cash dividend of 44 cents per share. We also continued to repurchase shares during the quarter, totaling 1.2 million shares at an average price of $30.40 per share. Before I turn the call over to Craig, I would like to welcome Barfield's new general counsel and group chief legal officer, Simon Desotage. Simon joined us following the planned retirement of Sean Morris. Simon has over 30 years of legal experience in London, New York, and Bermuda, with the majority of that time spent in the banking sector. I am confident Butterfield will benefit from its extensive experience advising banks on legal and regulatory matters. I will now turn the call over to Craig for details on the first quarter.