Welcome to the 2021 annual meeting of shareholders of Cambridge Bancorp. The meeting will begin at 8:30 A.M. Eastern Standard Time. Meeting documents, including today's agenda, can be found within the information link of the presentation tool. Questions may be submitted by clicking the Ask a Question link within the meeting presentation tool. We encourage you to submit questions throughout the presentation, and we will do our best to answer all questions asked. Thank you for joining us today, and enjoy the meeting. Good morning, and welcome to the 2021 annual meeting of shareholders. My name is Denis Sheahan, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Cambridge Bancorp. It is my pleasure, on behalf of the Board of Directors and officers of Cambridge Bancorp, to extend to you a warm welcome and to express our appreciation for your support of Cambridge Bancorp. Included within the materials is the agenda for today's meeting, which I will now cover. With that, the 2021 annual meeting of shareholders of Cambridge Bancorp is called to order. The principal business of this meeting is to consider and vote upon the three matters set forth in the notice of annual meeting of shareholders. I hereby appoint Michael Carotenuto, our Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer, and Corporate Secretary, to act as Secretary of the meeting to record the proceedings. Mr. Carotenuto has provided me with a few statements regarding the matters before us today. Pursuant to the company's bylaws and Massachusetts law, notice of the meeting and the proxy statement were duly and properly mailed on or about March 19, 2021, to all shareholders of record as of the close of business on the record date March 15, 2021. An affidavit, together with copies of the notice of meeting, proxy statement, and proxy card, will be filed with the records of this meeting. We have available an alphabetical list of shareholders entitled to vote at this meeting with the address and number of shares held by each shareholder. The polls for voting at this meeting have been open since approximately March 19, 2021, which is when the proxy statement was first mailed to shareholders. Richard Schaberg of Hogan Lovells US LLP has been appointed as the Inspector of Elections for this meeting. Mr. Schaberg has been duly sworn in, and his oath will be filed with the records of the meeting. The Inspector of Elections has indicated that represented at this meeting by proxy are a sufficient number of shares to constitute a quorum, and therefore, the meeting is duly constituted. The appointed proxies for this meeting are Hambleton Lord, Denis Sheahan, and R. Gregg Stone. If you wish to vote today and you are a registered shareholder, you will vote electronically. If you have submitted a proxy and do not intend to change your vote, it is not necessary to vote today because we will count your proxy. If you did not turn in a proxy or if you wish to change your vote, please do so by clicking on the link to vote within the information bar and follow the instructions provided. After the formal meeting has been adjourned, we will provide time for questions. Questions may be submitted by clicking the Ask a Question link within the information bar. We will attempt to answer as many questions as time allows and will try to group similar questions to be respectful of all shareholder questions. Only questions that are germane to either the business of this meeting or the proposals considered at this annual meeting will be addressed. Please also note that this meeting is being recorded. However, no one attending via the webcast is permitted to use any audio recording device. Now let's turn to the voting. The proxy solicited by the Board can be tallied at one time, even though they contain three matters for consideration. Similarly, the ballots cast today can be handled the same way. Accordingly, I intend to first discuss each matter to be acted on at this meeting. At the conclusion of the discussion of all matters, we will take the official vote. There are three items of business to be voted on by the shareholders. These are item one, the election of six Class II Directors, Jeanette G. Clough, Hambleton Lord, R. Gregg Stone, Simon R. Gerlin, Kathryn M. Hinderhofer, and Thomas J. Fontaine, to serve until the 2024 annual meeting of shareholders and until their successors are duly elected and qualified. Information concerning their principal occupations, their service with us, and their qualifications are contained in the proxy statement. No nominations may be made at this meeting so therefore, I declare nominations to be closed. Item two, the approval of a non-binding advisory resolution on the compensation of our named executive officers. Item three, the ratification of the appointment of Wolf & Company, P.C. as our independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2021. The polls are now open for voting. If you are voting or plan to change your vote, please electronically cast your vote at this time. The polls are now closed, and the records of this meeting will reflect the time at which the polls were closed. I would like to announce the preliminary results of the vote as provided to me by Mr. Schaberg. Since the results are preliminary, they are subject to final tabulation and to verification by the Inspector of Election. I'll read the results in the order in which the proposals were presented. Ms. Clough, Mr. Lord, Mr. Stone, Mr. Gerlin, Ms. Hinderhofer, and Mr. Fontaine have been elected as Directors of the company to hold office until the 2024 annual meeting of shareholders and until their successors are duly elected and qualified. A majority of the shares have been voted in favor of approving the compensation of the company's named executive officers. Accordingly, you have approved the compensation of the company's named executive officers. A majority of the shares have been voted in favor of the ratification of the appointment of Wolf & Company, P.C. as the company's registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2021. Accordingly, you have ratified the appointment of Wolf & Company, P.C. for fiscal year 2021. The certificate and report of the Inspector of Election, which contains the final vote totals, will be filed with the records of this meeting. I would now like to take a few moments to discuss the company's performance in 2020. 2020 was a historically unsettled year. It was a year of challenge brought on by the pandemic, yet also a year of immense resilience, strength, and determination by the team at Cambridge Trust Company. We emerged from 2020 financially stronger with a healthy balance sheet, solid capital and liquidity levels, and successfully closed and integrated our merger with Wellesley Bank. Financial performance in 2020 was strong. Reported net income for the year was $32 million, an increase of 27% compared to the year ended December 31, 2019. Net income, as reported, includes the impact of the effects of merger accounting and other one-time non-operating expenses. When excluding these items to provide a more comparable view of operations, net income on an operating basis was $43.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2020, an increase of 51% as compared to operating net income in the prior year. Operating diluted earnings per share were $6.90 for 2020, representing an 11% increase over the prior year period. The company's performance was driven by the strength of our business model in Greater Boston and Southern New Hampshire and the positive impact of increased scale associated with the Wellesley merger. Total loans and core deposits, inclusive of the impact of the merger with Wellesley, grew by 42% and 45%, respectively. wealth assets increased by 21% from 2019 to $4.2 billion, which was primarily the result of strong equity market performance in 2020 and balances acquired from our merger with Wellesley. The company's profitability ratios were robust in 2020. The operating return on average assets and average tangible common equity in 2020 were 1.25% and 14.4%, respectively, as compared to 1.12% and 14.8%, respectively, in 2019. Asset quality remained exceptional, with non-performing assets to total assets of just 27 basis points and only one basis point of net loan charge-offs during the year. I would be remiss not to recognize the impact that COVID-19 had and continues to have on your company, my colleagues, the community, and our clients. I'm immensely proud of how the Cambridge Trust team reacted to all I asked of them throughout this period. Our first priority was the safety of our team and clients while providing uninterrupted service for their banking and wealth management needs. Whether in person at our banking offices, by video, or remotely, clients could trust that we were there for them through difficult times. We worked with affected borrowers to provide loan payment forbearance where needed, and we supported the local business economy by providing over 1,400 SBA Paycheck Protection Program loans. This amounted to approximately $200 million, which benefited the retention of almost 24,000 local jobs. Further, our charitable contributions supported approximately 280 organizations as we increased charitable giving by 91% in 2020. In particular, we targeted $250,000 to organizations providing relief to those directly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and $175,000 to organizations addressing racial inequity and social injustice. Business line performance was satisfactory in 2020. Wealth management revenue increased by 12.3%, and plans are well underway to upgrade wealth systems that enhance the client experience, productivity, and efficiency. Cambridge Trust was also named the 19th largest independent investment advisor in Massachusetts. In commercial banking, loan origination was robust in 2020, as was loan payoff activity due to the low level of interest rates. As a result, excluding PPP lending and acquired balances, the commercial loan portfolio was essentially flat. Importantly, business deposit balances continued to grow during 2020, and as of year-end, represented $1.5 billion, or 47% of core deposit balances. 2020 was a year of significant origination volume from the residential mortgage team. We originated approximately $461 million in new loans, our largest production year yet on record. Although production volume was solid, the active refinance market created significant loan payoff activity that reduced the organic growth of the portfolio during the year. The strength of the local economy and a continuing housing shortage have contributed to strong demand for housing stock, supporting prices regardless of the recession. Core deposits increased by 45% to $3.1 billion in 2020. Excluding the impact of the Wellesley merger, organic growth in core deposits was 19% last year. In fact, core deposits represented 93% of total deposits in 2020. Performance in the first quarter of 2021 was also strong. operating earnings per share was $1.92 for the quarter. return on average assets was 1.35%, and asset quality remained stellar with non-performing assets to total assets of 22 basis points. During the quarter, we originated another 600 second-round Paycheck Protection Program loans, benefiting an estimated 8,000 local jobs. Cambridge Trust also declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.61 per share, an increase of 11% compared to the dividend paid in the first quarter of 2021. 2020 and the beginning of 2021 were remarkable periods we will not soon forget. Your company has weathered the storm well, and I remain optimistic about the future ahead. Whatever the future holds, we enter it stronger than ever, and our team has the energy, enthusiasm, and skill to make the most of it. That concludes our report on the business of the company, and I am adjourning the annual meeting. I'd now like to answer any questions that shareholders might have, and we will begin to aggregate them. Our team will remind you of the process to submit questions. As a reminder, if you have a question on either the topics of the meeting today or the financial presentation, please click the Ask a Question link within the information bar to type out your question. We will attempt to answer as many questions as time allows, but please be aware the meeting is scheduled to end at 9:30 A.M. Eastern Standard Time. We may group similar questions by topic to be respectful of all shareholder questions that are asked. The Ask a Question link is located in the top left-hand side of the information bar. We're going to give participants a few more seconds to submit their questions. Denis, at this time, we would like to turn it back to you to address our first question. All right. We have one question so far. Are you planning to increase the dividend again? The Board of Directors and the management team understand the importance of dividend to our shareholders. Cambridge Bancorp has a record of over 20 years of increased dividends, so we understand the importance of that to both our retail and institutional shareholders. We've increased the dividend twice this year, first quarter and again in the second quarter, a total of a 15% dividend increase, which is really reflective of our confidence in the company's performance in 2021. We'll continue to evaluate increasing the dividend in future periods, but we're very proud that we were able to increase the dividends by that rate so far this year. Any further questions? Why don't we wait a little bit. We'll wait, recognizing the new technology here, so we'll just wait a little bit if anyone else wants to ask a question. As there are no further questions, this concludes our meeting today. Thank you very much for attending and for your continued support of Cambridge Bancorp.
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