Good morning. Welcome to the Cambridge Bancorp second quarter earnings conference call. We'll be making forward-looking statements during this call and actual results may differ materially. We encourage you to review the disclaimer in our earnings release dealing with forward-looking information, which applies to statements made in this call. In addition, some of our discussion may include references to non-GAAP financial measures. Information about those measures, including reconciliation to GAAP measures, may be found in our SEC filings and in our earnings release. All participants will be in 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 your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press Star, then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Denis Sheahan, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, and thank you for joining our earnings conference call today. My comments will focus on key items within the quarter and what we're seeing within our local markets. I'm joined today by our Chief Banking Officer, Tom Fontaine, and our Chief Financial Officer, Mike Carotenuto. Mike will provide commentary regarding estimates for the remainder of this year and in particular, the impact of rising rates as well as an outlook for loan and deposit growth and wealth revenue. I'm pleased to report another solid period of robust loan growth, continued strength in asset quality, and an expanding net interest margin due to our asset-sensitive position. This is balanced against a challenging period for wealth revenue led by market volatility and asset flows. We also announced during the second quarter the proposed merger of Northmark Bank into Cambridge Trust, which brings together two high-quality banks in terrific markets. As expected, loan growth continued during the second quarter in both commercial and residential lending, with 3% linked quarter growth. Looking ahead, we feel good about continued prospects for growth in commercial lending. Asset quality remains superb, with non-performing assets at just 12 basis points of total assets. Core deposits decreased by 4% from the first quarter as a result of tax payments and clients using funds for investment opportunities. We still see the opportunity for core deposit growth for the year, and Mike will provide further commentary in a few minutes. The adjusted net interest margin expanded by 14 basis points to 2.81% during the second quarter, reflective of our asset-sensitive position and strong core deposit base. Wealth management assets and revenue declined due to market performance and negative net flows by 14% and 5% respectively. While wealth revenue negatively affected total fee revenue during the quarter, expenses remained controlled and core profitability remained good, with Return on Average Assets of 1.07% and a Return on Tangible Common Equity at 14.07% on an operating basis. Importantly, we feel very good about progress on the Northmark merger approval process and integration effort. All appears on track to close early in the fourth quarter of this year, and we remain excited about the long-term potential of this combination. Moving to our local markets and outlook. We remain optimistic regarding near-term loan growth, opportunity, particularly in commercial lending. We see continued solid commercial loan demand in the next 90 days. As always, it's tough to see longer than that. We also expect residential lending to slow in the back half of this year due to the higher level of interest rates. From an economic perspective in our markets, unemployment remains strong, with Massachusetts around 4% unemployment and New Hampshire less than 3%. Upstream real estate activity, that is activity above our lending size and focus, but affecting general market conditions is mixed. In the life sciences category, absorption of leasable vacant space was significantly positive, driven by large pharma. However, there is a clear tightening occurring within small private companies in the innovation space. Overall, vacancy in this category remains low at just over 1%. The downtown office market activity has picked up, particularly in Class A buildings, and data regarding both building occupancy and subway ridership are trending significantly positive. With that, I will ask Mike to make a few comments regarding the details of the quarter and outlook for the remainder of this year. Thank you, Denis. Good morning, everyone. I will start with our lending pipelines. At quarter end, the commercial and residential pipelines were approximately $110 million and $70 million, respectively. Overall, slightly better than the pipeline at March 31. These levels, combined with the market activity Denis mentioned, allow us to update our growth range from the 6%-8% range announced earlier this year to a revised range of 8%-10% for the full year. We will update you as the year progresses. We continue to see solid deposit opportunities for the remainder of 2022. However, our deposit profile allows us to be flexible in this environment. We are first focused on client retention, retaining our high valued households and the cost of deposits, while secondly, adding new households. As such, we have recasted expectations for the full year, and the growth range is now expected to be 5%-7% of total deposits from 8%-10% previously. With this level of deposit growth, we would anticipate that the investment portfolio cash flow would be used to fund any excess lending growth. Moving to the adjusted net interest margin. We expect to continue to benefit in this rising rate environment. If Fed funds were to increase to 3.60% by year-end, we would expect our net interest margin to be in the range of 2.80%-2.95% for the full year of 2022, better than the prior quarter net interest margin guidance of 2.7%-2.85%. This would put our fourth quarter 2022 adjusted net interest margin above 3%. Moving to non-interest income. Non-interest income growth is going to be less than previously contemplated due to declines within the equity markets, corresponding wealth revenue, and lower sales of conforming mortgages. If the equity markets stay at current levels, our forecast estimates of non-interest income are -3% to -6% for the full year of 2022 as compared to 2021. While we are not immune to rising rates on our available for sale securities portfolio, it makes up only 14% of total investments and 3% of total assets. It is expected that there will be a small continued negative impact to tangible common equity as rates rise, but it is manageable given our use of the held to maturity portfolio and our outlook for the remainder of the year. As you can see within this quarter's release, despite continued increases within interest rates, both tangible common equity and tangible book value per share grew nicely during the quarter. We also expect to be on the lower end of the 26%-27% range for the operating effective tax rate previously provided. As shown within the non-operating reconciliation during this quarter, we surrendered a bank-owned life insurance policy, which created an increase of approximately 2.3% in the income tax expense rate for the quarter, which was completely offset by increased bank-owned life insurance income. The rest of our estimates from last quarter remain intact, and we will now open the line for questions. Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press Star, then One on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press Star then Two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question today comes from Mark Fitzgibbon of Piper Sandler. Please go ahead. Hey, guys. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, Mark. A couple of questions around deposits. It's you guys have had sort of pretty impressive deposit costs at 8 basis points on those business deposits. I guess I'm curious, are you starting to feel any deposit pricing pressure there from commercial customers? Sure. Mark, it's Mike. You know, in the last cycle, we saw a 26% deposit beta, and certainly this cycle is gonna be different than that. You know, we're modeling a higher beta in our expectations that you'll see within the asset liability slide that we have within the interest rate risk. We're expecting higher than that and we're hoping to do better. I would add to it, Mark, Dennis. It's no great surprise with the Fed increasing rates this quickly. We're certainly getting some questions from clients. It's to be expected. It's not overly aggressive, but certainly clients are, you know, questioning deposit rates. It's It's to be expected. Okay. It sounds like from your guidance on deposits, you're not expecting more deposit runoff in 3Q. Is that fair? Yeah, that's fair, Mark. There's a big seasonal component associated with tax payments. It was certainly exacerbated somewhat this quarter by some clients taking advantage of investment opportunities, some of our larger clients. Those are the two key factors this quarter. Okay. I heard your comments about, you know, the employment picture and economy, et cetera, being pretty good. Are you seeing any sort of hints of distress in any of the portfolios related to either consumers or businesses out there, things that you're sort of watching or a little concerned about? No, none. We feel very good about asset quality, delinquency. I mean, certainly if we do go to recession, there'll be some weakness, one would imagine. We always think about, you know, when we're making loans about bad times and the conditioning of this organization. We feel very, very good about asset quality. Okay. The last question I had, Denis, was sort of around the wealth management business. Obviously difficult market so far this year. You know, I guess I was curious sort of about customer behavior in that space. Are people sort of shifting asset classes? Are they holding PAT or, you know, what are you all seeing in terms of, you know, client behavior? There's certainly stress that we're conditioned to work with our clients through that stress. You get a lot of questions about what's going on in the markets. There are the rare occasions where a client wants to go totally to cash, and we try and coach them not to do that. Most of the time, the vast majority of the time, we are successful. On occasion, we are not. That's the nature of the relationship that we have with our clients, is that we're there to coach them through these stressful periods. You can expect with this kind of volatility, you're going to have more conversations with clients, and we certainly are doing that. Okay. Just one final one to clarify. Mike, did you say the loan pipeline was $110 million? The commercial loan pipeline, yes, Mark, $110 million. Great. Thank you. Your next question comes from Chris O'Connell of KBW. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning, gentlemen. Morning. Hey, Chris. Hey. I was hoping to follow up on the deposit question. I know you guys said you're assuming beta's above the 26% from last cycle. Within the guidance, given that, you know, you have not moved deposit rates as of yet for that core NIM 2.80%-2.95% guidance, are you assuming, you know, that there is a significant move at some point, you know, during the third quarter here? Because, you know, we're getting too close to a third of the way through the quarter. I'm just wondering, you know, when those betas are kind of, you know, starting to become effective, and if that's included in your guidance as being above the 26%, or if it's, you know, if those betas kind of start a little later in the third quarter, that there could be some upside to that NIM guide. Yeah. Certainly, Chris. To the extent that we're able to do better from a deposit cost standpoint, there's the potential for that NIM guide to be at the higher end of that range, for sure. We are expecting, you know, some increased funding costs as we move forward here, and that's included within that forecast. Also, Mike, you might clarify for Chris that the 2.80%-2.95% is full year. It's for the full year. You expect to be over 3%. In the fourth quarter. Yeah, in the fourth quarter. Yep. Thank you. Okay, great. As far as you know, you guys are thinking about the cash balances here, you know, dropped pretty low during the quarter. Does that stay there until at least, you know, the deal gets closed? Yeah, we think it'll be around these levels, you know, for at least, to your point, at least till the deal closes. I think that's a fair assessment. Okay, great. As you're thinking about, you know, the deposit flows, and I know this quarter seemed to be, you know, seasonally impacted, you know, fairly substantially. You know, how are you thinking about the sources of growth on the deposit side going forward? I mean, is it, you know, primarily, you know, the core commercial customers that you continue to get growth from and kind of have the rest of the factors that were present in this quarter normalize? Are you getting good traction in any particular pockets that are kind of giving confidence to the growth guidance? Yeah. Chris, so when we think about growing deposits, I mean, certainly we first think about growing operating accounts from a commercial standpoint, which would be our desired, you know, a desired way to continue to grow deposits, and from consumer households, which are important to us. When we look at consumer households, we're looking to grow consumers both from a checking standpoint, whether they may need money market or savings options. We'll use all of our available tools to grow that deposit base. When you look back at what we did last year, we had over $1 billion worth of deposit growth. We intend to continue to grow in that, in the ways that we were able to grow in prior year. Okay, got it. On the loan growth side, I mean, I understand, you know, the positive with the, you know, revised core growth guidance at 8%-10% up, you know, up from prior. Given the strong pipeline, particularly on the commercial side, and, you know, quite frankly, a fairly solid pipeline relative to where you guys were at last quarter on the resi side, it seems like that could even, you know, still end up being a bit light on a core basis. You know, given that, you know, if the pull-through rates kind of stay the same going to the third quarter, unless, you know, even if commercial ends up being flat in the fourth quarter and resi ends up being, you know, down, you know, it still seems like a fairly easy bogey to get to that 8%-10% range. Am I thinking about that right? Or are you guys just kind of want to be conservative given it's hard to see out, you know, much more than the third quarter right now? I think, Chris, it's hard to see out more than 90 days in the commercial standpoint. We'll update you next quarter. To the extent that we're able to overachieve there. Certainly it's going to be a positive both from an earnings and NIM standpoint. Great. And then last one for me, and I apologize if you guys mentioned I missed it, but you mind walking us through the origination yields and where those are coming on for both the commercial and the resi side? Sure. On the commercial side of the house, it's in the mid-fours. You know, depending on the product, it could go up and down from there. On the residential side of the house, I would say it's the high fours. Okay, great. That's all I had. Thank you. Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Denis Sheahan for any closing remarks. Thanks, everybody. We look forward to speaking to you at the end of our next quarter. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
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