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

Good morning. My name is Nick, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the second quarter 2024 earnings call for the Bank of N.T. Butterfield and Sun Limited. 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 second quarter 2024 financial results. On the call, I am 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 second quarter 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.futterfieldgroup.com. Before I turn the call over to Michael Collins, I'd 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 U.S. GAAP, please refer to the earnings press release and slide presentations. 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. I am pleased with Butterfield's performance in the second quarter. as we achieved strong profitability supported by client-focused products and services, a stable balance sheet, diverse fee income, and disciplined expense management. In Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, we benefited from our market-leading bank and trust businesses while we continued to develop our mass affluent product offerings in the Channel Islands. We also benefited from our specialized financial services offerings in the Bahamas, Switzerland, Singapore, and the United Kingdom, where we provide mortgage lending in high-end central London. I will now turn to the second quarter highlights on page four. Butterfield reported strong financial results in the second quarter with net income of $50.6 million and core net income of $51.4 million. We reported core earnings per share of $1.11 with a core return on average tangible common equity of 23.3% for the second quarter of 2024. The net interest margin was 2.64% in the second quarter, a decrease of four basis points from the prior quarter, with the cost of deposits rising to 189 basis points from 178 basis points in the prior quarter. Net interest margin compression has slowed this quarter as deposit cost increases modestly outpaced asset repricing. The Board has again approved a quarterly cash dividend of 44 cents per share. We also continued to repurchase shares during the quarter, purchasing a total of 1.1 million shares at an average price of $33.48 per share. The Board also approved a new share repurchase program for up to 2.1 million shares through to the end of 2024, which demonstrates our continued confidence in the bank's performance and supports our capital management strategy of producing consistent and attractive shareholder returns and efficient use of capital. Yesterday, we also announced that Stephen E. Cummings, a highly qualified and experienced financial services industry professional, has joined Butterfield's board as an independent director. He is a great addition to our board and will further strengthen our governance and financial expertise, and I look forward to working with him. I will now turn the call over to Craig for details on the second quarter.