Provident Financial Services, Inc

noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed with the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to address your question, press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Adriano Duarte, Investor Relations Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Kate. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our first quarter earnings call. Today's presenters are President and CEO Tony Lavazzetta and Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Tom Lyons. Before beginning the review of our financial results, we ask that you please take note of our standard caution as to any forward-looking statements that may be made during the course of today's call. Our full disclaimers contain the last evening's earnings release, which has been posted to the Investor Relations page on our website. provident.bank. Now it's my pleasure to introduce Tony Labazzetta, who will offer his perspective on our first quarter. Tony.

Thank you, Adriano, and welcome to the Provident Financial Services earnings call. We are proud of the excellent performance the Provident team delivered this quarter. We saw expanded margins, increased top line revenue, solid earnings, and tangible book value growth as we've begun to fully realize the benefits of last year's merger. During the quarter, we reported net earnings of $64 million for $0.49 per share. Our annualized adjusted return on average assets was 1.11%, and our adjusted return on average tangible equity was 16.15%. Our adjusted pre-tax pre-provision return on average assets was 1.61% for the first quarter. These core financial results improved from the trailing quarter and the same quarter last year, and we are confident in our ability to continue our strong performance throughout 2025. Our capital position improved and continues to comfortably exceed levels deemed to be well capitalized. Our tangible book value per share grew 69 cents to $14.15 and our tangible common equity ratio expanded from the trailing quarter to 7.9%. As such, our Board of Directors approved a quarterly cash dividend of 24 cents per share, payable on May 30th. During the quarter, our deposits declined $175 million, or 0.94%, in large part due to seasonal outflow of municipal deposits. We did, however, continue to have an improvement in our average cost of total deposits, which decreased 14 basis points to an impressive 2.11 percent. And the average cost of interest-bearing deposits decreased 17 basis points. Our total cost of funds decreased nine basis points to a very solid 2.39 percent. As a result, our reported net interest margin increased six basis points to 3.34 percent. And more notably, our core net interest margin grew nine basis points. During the first quarter, our commercial lending team closed approximately $600 million in new loans, and our commercial loan portfolio increased 3.8%. This quarter's production consisted of a 30% commercial real estate and 70% commercial and industrial loans. In addition to the production mix, our strong capital formation has driven our CRE ratio down to 450%. Additionally, we have seen a substantial increase in our total loan pipeline to approximately $2.8 billion this quarter. The weighted average interest rate is 6.31% compared to 6.91% in the trailing quarter. The pull-through adjusted pipeline, including loans pending closing, is approximately $1.8 billion compared to the $1 billion in the previous quarter. We congratulate the lending team for these results, and we are optimistic about the strength of our pipeline. Our credit quality remains strong relative to our peer group, despite an increase in our non-performing loan ratio to 0.54%, primarily attributable to two well-secured loans with no prior charge-off history. Our net charge-offs decreased to 2 million from 5.5 million in the trailing quarter, which is also impressive relative to the peer group. These numbers demonstrate the high standards we apply to our risk underwriting and portfolio management practices, as well as the quality of our portfolio. Overall, Providence fee-based businesses performed well this quarter. Provident Protection Plus continues its strong performance with a 19% organic growth in new business for the first quarter as compared to the same period last year, and its income was up 23% compared to the same period in 2024. However, due largely to market conditions, Beacon Trust assets under management and fee income decreased by approximately 4%. This quarter was the first which featured no transaction costs related to our merger with Lakeland, and we are proud of our performance. We have used our solid foundation to excel in our core businesses and create value for stockholders and customers, despite the uncertainties in the market and the economy. We believe that we can carry this momentum forward throughout the rest of 2025. Now, I'll turn the call over to Tom for his comments on our financial performance.