Hello, and welcome to the Brookline Bancorp, Inc. Q1 2022 earnings call. My name is Katie, and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you would like to ask a question during the presentation, you may do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. I'll now hand over to your host, Marissa Martin, to begin. Marissa, please go ahead. Thank you, Katie, and good afternoon, everyone. Yesterday, we issued our earnings release and presentation, which are available on the investor relations page of our website, brooklinebancorp.com, and have been filed with the SEC. This afternoon's call will be hosted by Paul A. Perrault and Carl M. Carlson. This call may contain forward-looking statements with respect to the financial condition, results of operations and business of Brookline Bancorp. Please refer to page two of our earnings presentation for our forward-looking statement disclaimer. Also, please refer to our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which contain risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Any references made during this presentation to non-GAAP measures are only made to assist you in understanding Brookline Bancorp's results and performance trends and should not be relied on as financial measures of actual results or future predictions. For a comparison and reconciliation to GAAP earnings, please see our earnings release. I'm pleased to introduce Brookline Bancorp's Chairman and CEO, Paul Perrault. Thanks, Marissa, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's call. I'm pleased to report we had another quarter of solid earnings of $24.7 million or $0.32 per share. As well, we did an increase in our quarterly dividend of 4%, to bring it to $0.13 per share. On an annualized basis, our core loan portfolio grew 6.9% and deposits grew by 5.5%, excluding the $50 million pay down in broker deposits. Our core margin, excluding PPP, continued to improve and increased seven basis points from Q4. Our bankers continue to be very active in our select markets, and I am very optimistic for the balance of the year. I will now turn you over to Carl, who will review the company's first quarter. Carl. Thank you, Paul. As Marissa mentioned, we have provided an earnings presentation on our website and has been filed with the SEC. I will not be doing a slide-by-slide for this quarter. Net income this quarter was $24.7 million, which was $3.8 million lower than last quarter. The decline is primarily due to lower PPP revenues of $2.7 million and lower derivative and participation income of $5.2 million after coming off an unusually strong fourth quarter. This is partially offset by stronger core margin as well as lower operating and provisioning expenses. Overall, our net interest margin declined 3 basis points to 3.49%. Again, this was due to lower PPP revenues. Excluding the favorable impact of PPP on our margin, NIM increased 7 basis points from Q4 to 3.44%. The loan portfolio overall increased $69 million from the prior quarter, driven by a growth in our core portfolio of $122 million, offset by PPP loan satisfactions. At the end of March, we had 56 PPP loans with $14 million outstanding and approximately $400,000 of undrawn fees. In the first quarter, we originated $550 million in loans at a weighted average coupon of 399 basis points. The weighted average coupon on the total loan portfolio rose 1 basis point during the quarter to 396 basis points at March 31st. Prepayment fees were $1.5 million in Q1, which was down $210,000 from Q4, and deferred fees were $1.4 million or $342,000 less than Q4, resulting in net positive impact on net interest income of $132,000 in the quarter. Our credit quality and the economic environment continue to improve, resulting in net slight negative provision for loan losses. At quarter end, there were 69 credits totaling $15 million remaining with a loan modification under the CARES Act. Our reserve coverage is at 132 basis points, and our capital position is strong. First quarter saw significant increases in interest rates, particularly in the mid to long-term rates. The Federal Reserve increased short-term rates 25 basis points in March. The sharp increase in market rates impacted the value of our securities portfolio, which is classified as available for sale. The $29 million after-tax accounting impact of mark-to-market the securities portfolio had a negative impact of $0.38 per share on tangible book value for the quarter. After accounting for earnings and dividends, shareholders' equity declined $13 million and tangible book value declined a net $0.17 in the quarter. Currently, the market is pricing in further increases in short-term rates, which have the potential to benefit us due to our moderately asset-sensitive position. Assuming a flat balance sheet in the forward curve as of 3/31, our simulations reflect a 6.8% increase in net interest income over the next 12 months. Our simulations reflect a blended beta of 46% on interest-bearing deposits. As Paul mentioned, the board approved an increase to our quarterly dividend to $0.13 per share, which will be paid on May 27 to stockholders of record on May 13. On an annualized basis, our dividend payout currently approximates a 3.6% yield. This concludes our formal comments, and we will now open it up for questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you would like to remove your question, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. We take our first question from Mark Fitzgibbon from Piper Sandler. Please go ahead, Mark. Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Hi, Mark. Hi, Mark. First question, Carl. I wonder if you could help us think about the outlook for fees. You know, you guys have a little bit of volatility there recently, and I'm just wondering if you could help us think about particularly loan level derivative income and the gain on sale line. Those are volatile. I think that's about my best estimation on that. It really depends on the types of loans that we're doing in the pipeline, whether we're gonna be participating in that or not, or, you know, doing swaps. We didn't do a lot of swaps this quarter, but that's something that is volatile. It's hard for me to give you a really good estimation from a quarter to quarter. It is growing within our loan departments and our clients. It is something that, from a quarter to quarter basis, I really won't- I would add, though, Mark, just to make sure you understand that gain on sale is entirely in commercial banking participations. We do not any longer sell residential loans into the market, into the secondary market. It's all stuff that we originate here that are with friends and family. Okay. Second question, Paul. I guess I'm curious, as I was looking at sort of the breakdown that you had of between the two banks. Have you given any more thought to potentially consolidating the charters of those two companies in an effort to reduce costs? Is that? Does that make sense? Maybe asked a different way, why wouldn't you do that? Well, it looks to me like it's working pretty well. Is why I wouldn't do it. The reporting structures are terrific. The CEO in Rhode Island handles that whole market. I would fear that we would be leaking functionality, and we would lose the presence in each of the markets being totally controlled by their CEOs. I look at our efficiency ratio, and it looks pretty good on a relative basis. I think it's beneficial. It is a pattern that perhaps can be expanded. Okay. I wonder if you could also maybe update us. I know it's early days, but update us on how things are going at Clarendon Private. Exactly that. Very early days, but we've had, you know, very strong response, you know, from both of our banks, as far as referrals and things of that nature. I think we're doing quite well with the reception by customers. Okay. Lastly, Carl, the margin. I heard what you said about the NII impact. How are you thinking about the second quarter margin with, you know, the remaining PPP burning off and, you know, with the rate impacts, rate hikes we've seen thus far? Yeah. You know, like I said, PPP only, there's another $400,000 left on that. I'm not sure if that's, you know, when that's gonna come in, quite frankly. It's, you know, just the timing of when people are gonna be satisfied on that. Right now, when we model, you know, forward curves and, you know, right now I think there's this almost consensus that the Fed's gonna raise 50 basis points in May. If that happens, I would not be surprised to see our margin expand by 10 basis points in that range. You know, we're talking about 3.44 as a core margin. Expect that to improve by about 10 basis points in the second quarter. Great. Thank you. The next question comes from Laurie Hunsicker from Compass Point. Please go ahead, Laurie. Yeah. Hi. Thanks. Good afternoon. Hi, Laurie. Just wanted to make sure I heard. Prepaid fees that were in that interest income this quarter was $1.5 million. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay, great. Okay. noninterest income. Can you help us think about NSF and overdraft fees and how you're thinking about a more sort of consumer-friendly option when that hits the income and just maybe quantify for us how much is actually in this quarter? Sure. On a quarterly basis, on a combined basis for both banks, NSFs are about $402,000, about $400,000 a quarter. You break that down, it's about $280,000 in consumer, and the rest is about $120,000 in commercial, to get a sense of the overall size of that. Yeah, we continue to look at that and to work on what we wanna do on that in the future. Okay. That's helpful. In occupancy expense, it looks like there was a pretty sharp uptick linked quarter. Did I miss something? Did you guys open another branch or do you have a redo or- Nothing that. Is business just running more importantly? It was a combination of maintenance. It was really maintenance entirely. It wasn't like rent or anything like that. It was a lot of maintenance. Some of it's, you know, snow removal and other things that may have happened at the branches that needed some maintenance. A lot of bad weather this winter. Yeah. Okay. Fair. Okay. That should be running closer to 3.5 or so per quarter. Is that the right way to think about that? I think so. I think so. Okay, great. Paul, last question for you. Can you give us a refresh on any acquisition chatter and just how you're approaching acquisitions, what you're seeing out there? Any thoughts from the standpoint that, you know, with rates up, obviously your interest rate marks are much more expensive, and so just anything you're hearing in terms of how that might be impacting M&A. Well, I'm not hearing any more or less than I usually do. You know, we certainly were in the conversations with the flurry of activity that's gone on here in the past couple of years. Obviously not on the acquiring end of those conversations. Other than the potential pool continuously reducing, I wouldn't say that there's anything much new in the whole arena. Okay. Thanks for taking my questions. Happy to. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. We take our next question from Chris O'Connell from KBW. Please go ahead, Chris. Hey, good morning or afternoon, guys. Hi, Chris. Just wanted to follow up on the expense discussion. I know that there was, you know, some higher accruals in salaries, et cetera, in the fourth quarter, which came off this quarter. I think the guide for the year was around, you know, 5%-6% for 2022 for the full year. Is that still how you guys are feeling about it after, you know, pretty good first quarter? We're still feeling it. That's likely the right trend that we're gonna be seeing. Okay, great. I mean, you guys still have pretty robust capital levels here. Obviously, you know, the dividend increase, you know, you're comfortable with them and, you know, not a very big impact on AOCI relative to others. Can you just remind us how you're thinking about, you know, the buyback utilization going forward? We have the $20 million approved. We didn't buy anything back during the first three months of the year. But there's been a lot of market volatility, so we may see more activity as we go forward. Okay. We've got the capability to do a buyback right now. You know, we just Gotta be at the right price. Be at the right price. Yep, absolutely. Appreciate the color on the originations and the yields during the first quarter. You know, just given the uptick in rates, even post, you know, the first quarter moves, where are you seeing, you know, the new loan yields come on the balance sheet at? Sorry, what is the question? where origination yields where they're coming on at. Origination yields for the first quarter? No, currently, I think. No. Currently. I don't have the actual yields that we're booking loans at currently. We've seen a really nice increase in, you know, the 2-year and 5-year. That's basically where we live for most of our, you know, originations. We've seen that increase substantially from December. We're in that category right now. A lot of the real estate loans are priced off the five-year Federal Home Loan Bank deal. Virtually all of the swaps are something over LIBOR. Obviously LIBOR has gone up from 12 basis points to 50 or whatever it has. Without having the data right in front of us. Yeah. We can feel that there's been improved origination yields. All right. Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Okay, Chris. We have no further questions on the line, so I'll hand it back to Paul Perrault for any closing remarks. Well, thank you, Katie, and thank you all for joining us, and we look forward to talking with you again next quarter. Good day. Thank you all. Thank you all for joining. This now concludes the call. Please disconnect your lines.