Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Central Pacific Financial Corp. third quarter 2022 conference call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen only mode. Following the presentation, the conference will be open for questions. This call is being recorded and will be available for replay shortly after its completion on the company's website at www.cpb.bank. I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. David Morimoto, Senior Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Dante, and thank you all for joining us as we review the financial results for the third quarter of 2022 for Central Pacific Financial Corp. With me this morning are Paul Yonamine, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Catherine Ngo, Executive Vice Chair, Arnold Martines, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Anna Hu, Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer. We have prepared a supplemental slide presentation that provides additional details on our release and is available in the investor relations section of our website at cpb.bank. During the course of today's call, management may make forward-looking statements. While we believe these statements are based on reasonable assumptions, they involve risks that may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. For a complete discussion of the risks related to our forward-looking statements, please refer to slide two of our presentation. Now I'll turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Paul Yonamine. Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. As always, we appreciate your interest in Central Pacific Financial Corp. I'll start this morning with an update on the Hawaii market, then turn it over to the team to share our strong third quarter financial results, as well as other key updates. The Hawaii tourism sector continues to perform well. Even with the summer travel season completed, we are still seeing visitor arrivals at 90% or greater compared to pre-pandemic levels from 2019. The majority of those visitors are from the U.S. mainland. International travel to Hawaii is starting to gradually pick up now that Japan has dropped travel restrictions and is fully open. The weak yen does present some headwinds. Despite that, we expect a recovery of Japanese visitors going into 2023 due to significant pent-up demand. This timely recovery will support Hawaiʻi's overall economy, which could experience a moderate slowdown in other sectors in 2023. Visitor spending is strong, reaching $1.7 billion in August, an increase of 13.8% compared to the same month in 2019. Hotel performance continues to improve with total statewide hotel occupancy at 77% and an average daily rate of $380 in August. Hawaiʻi's employment and housing sectors are solid as well. Our statewide seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was at 4.1% in August 2022 and is forecasted by the University of Hawaiʻi Economic Research Organization to remain fairly stable in 2023. Housing prices in Hawaiʻi remains very strong with the Oahu median single-family home price at $1.1 million in September 2022, which is up 5% from the previous year. Like the rest of the nation, we have seen some moderation in home sales activity due to the significant rise in interest rates, resulting in less home buying power. With that said, the Hawaii housing market remains healthy, with strong demand and low inventory making it less likely to experience a material downturn compared to most other U.S. markets. In the great financial recession, the Hawaii market fared better than most states, and with our continued strength, we believe this will once again be the case. Now I'll turn it over to Arnold Martines, our President and Chief Operating Officer to discuss our third quarter results. Arnold. Thank you, Paul. In the third quarter, we continued to focus on strong quality and diversified asset growth. Our total loan portfolio increased by $121 million, or 2.3% sequential quarter, and 9% on an annualized basis. The growth was broad-based across most loan types, except for the C&I portfolio, which included decreases in PPP loans as that portfolio has almost completely run off. We were successful in continuing to grow our residential mortgage portfolio by $32 million during the quarter, given our strength in the purchase market and our strong relationships with real estate developers and builders. During the third quarter, we continued to execute on our mainland diversification strategy by selectively participating in mainland commercial real estate and C&I loan transactions and with the purchase of select consumer unsecured portfolios from our established lending partners. In the mainland commercial market, we typically partner with larger mainland banks with whom we have relationships with. We participate in transactions primarily on the West Coast, ensuring that we are lending in markets that we understand and are comfortable with while maintaining our credit underwriting and concentration standards and limits. The consumer purchases during the quarter had a weighted average FICO score of 740. Our net growth in mainland consumer purchase loans was $44 million in the third quarter. At September 30, our total mainland consumer purchase loan balances were approximately 8% of total loans, representing a mix of auto and unsecured consumer loans. We have a healthy loan pipeline and are working closely with our lending teams to ensure we manage future loan growth, given the current operating environment and economic outlook. In particular, we intend to reduce future mainland unsecured consumer loan purchases. On the deposit front, during the third quarter, we started to see some moderation in our deposit balances, which grew significantly during the pandemic. Total deposits declined by $65 million or 1% from the prior quarter. Hawaii has traditionally had a strong and stable core deposit base, which is less likely to be impacted by interest rate swings as compared to the broader nation. CPB, in particular, has a long, loyal customer base, strong community ties, and the opportunity to increase our market share. We have an experienced team that is focused on deposit gathering in the current environment. Finally, we continue to develop our banking-as-a-service fintech strategy while adjusting with the market environment to manage the evolving risks. The Swell fintech, which we invested in and are serving as the bank sponsor, launched an alpha pilot earlier this month. We are excited to have the Swell app off the ground and will continue to grow slowly and steadily while we learn and iterate. I'll now turn the call over to David Morimoto, our Chief Financial Officer. David? Thank you, Arnold. Turning to our earnings results, net income for the third quarter was $16.7 million or $0.61 per diluted share. Return on average assets in the third quarter was 0.91%, and return on average equity was 14.49%. The efficiency ratio was 64.6% in the third quarter. Net interest income for the third quarter was $55.4 million, which increased by $2.4 million from the prior quarter, as our increase in loan balances and yields outpaced the increase in our funding costs. The net interest margin increased by 12 basis points to 3.17% in the third quarter. Our total cost of deposits was 14 basis points, increasing from the historic low of six basis points. We continue to manage deposit pricing through product segmentation, and thus far, our interest-bearing deposit repricing beta has been less than 10%. Third quarter, other operating income and other operating expense normalized from the previous quarter, which included a one-time gain on sale of our Visa Class B shares of $8.5 million, and a one-time $4.9 million settlement charge on our defined benefit pension plan termination. We continue to focus on managing our expenses to drive positive operating leverage. During the third quarter, we consolidated another branch as planned, which brought our total branch count down to 27 branches. There were one-time branch closing costs of $0.4 million this quarter. In 2022, we consolidated 3 branches with total estimated future annual expense savings of $0.9 million. At September thirtieth, our allowance for credit losses was $64.4 million or 1.19% of outstanding loans. In the third quarter, we recorded a $0.4 million provision for credit losses due to loan portfolio growth and net charge-offs. Our asset quality continues to be strong with non-performing assets to total assets at 6 basis points as of September thirtieth. Additionally, total criticized loans were just 1.4% of total loans. Our net charge-offs were $1.6 million for the third quarter. Our loan portfolio is well-diversified, with total construction at 3% of total loans and minimal exposure to sectors that could be impacted in a downturn. Our effective tax rate was 26% in the third quarter and continues to be on the higher end of our range as a result of less tax-exempt only income. Going forward, we expect the effective tax rate to be in the 25%-26% range. Our capital position remains strong, and during the third quarter, we repurchased 218,000 shares at a total cost of $4.9 million, or an average cost per share of $22.33. Additionally, our board of directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.26 per share, which will be payable on December fifteenth to shareholders of record on November thirtieth. I'll now return the call to Paul. Thank you, David. Central Pacific had another solid quarter and continues to be well-positioned to continue to deliver strong performance. We have prudent and disciplined risk management and the right leadership to drive us forward and continue to excel despite external market challenges that may come. On behalf of our management team and employees, I'd like to personally thank you for your continued support and confidence in our organization. I'd like to end with a personal note. After four great years at Central Pacific Bank, I have made the decision to retire at the end of the year. Effective January 1, 2023, I will become Chairman Emeritus of the bank and the holding company. Arnold Martines, currently President and Chief Operating Officer of CPF and CPB, will become Chief Executive Officer of both entities, as well as being named to both boards. Catherine Ngo, another valued member of the executive committee, is also retiring as Executive Vice Chair and will become Chair of both boards. In fact, I'd like to ask Catherine to say a few words now. Thank you, Paul. The past 12 years with this company have been both exciting and gratifying, from our recapitalization to our recovery that followed, and with our recent transformation through RISE 2020. It has been an honor to serve the bank with Paul, Arnold, David, and the rest of our exceptional team of leaders and employees. The bank has been transformed during this time to better support our employees, customers, and the community. I look forward to my new role as Board Chair and to continuing to work with Arnold in supporting the bank, particularly on our women-owned business initiative, as well as President of the Central Pacific Bank Foundation. Paul? Great. Thank you, Catherine. I've thoroughly enjoyed my time at CPB and will continue to serve on the board and as an advisor to Arnold, particularly in the areas of technology and market development. The bank has been through a transformative stage. Our RISE 2020 program that included the $40 million renovation of our headquarters building, our online mobile banking and ATM upgrades, and the total corporate rebrand set us on a solid path to becoming a digital-first bank to help us excel in the rapidly changing banking paradigm. My thanks to the leadership team and board for their support. In particular, my appreciation and gratitude to Arnold, David, and Catherine for their partnership and support the past four years. In closing, let me say that I can think of no better banker than Arnold Martines to lead this great institution into the future. At this time, we'll be happy to address any questions you may have. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Our first question comes from the line of one Andrew Liesch with Piper Sandler. If any other individuals on the call would like to ask a question, it is star one on your telephone keypad. Mr. Liesch, your line is now open. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Paul, congratulations on your retirement, and Arnold and Catherine, on your new role. Certainly well deserved for all of you. Great to see. Thank you. Question on the mainland commercial real estate that was added in the quarter. It sounds like all of that was participations. Is that correct? And then I'm just curious on the underwriting. You guys go through your own underwriting after being sourced the deal? And then what sort of LTVs and maybe geographies of this as well. Just kind of more detail on how these loans are sourced. Hey Andrew Liesch, this is Arnold Martines. Thanks for the question. You know, it's a combination of participations with banks on the mainland, but it's also Hawaii-based customers that we've had longtime relationships with that have diversified real estate investments, you know, in Hawaii as well as on the mainland. Then, as far as the underwriting for participations, clearly we do our own independent underwriting. We ensure that the transactions are, you know, aligned with what we expect and what our standards are. In any event, I hope that answers your question. And by the way, we apologize for the noise behind us. Seems like there's some things going on outside. Hopefully that's passed. Well, I'm not hearing anything, so hopefully it's not coming through for anybody else. I guess that then my other question is on the Hawaii growth. Well, obviously it was stronger on the mainland, and you had some good residential growth in the state. On the commercial side with CRE and C&I, was there anything that's causing you to pull back, or is this just maybe just normal trends from your customers? You know, we're seeing normal trends. There's no reason at this point for us to pull back on, you know, specifically, when we talk about commercial real estate transactions or C&I, and as well as residential. Those are areas that, you know, we look at and we expect to be stable, especially in Hawaii, given the, you know, the lack of inventory in resi and then as well as the on the real estate side, you know, just the stability here. There's only so much inventory that's available in Hawaii. Got it. All right, thanks for taking those questions. I will step back. Thanks, Andrew. Thank you for your question, sir. Our next question comes from the line of David Feaster with Raymond James. Your line is now open. Hey. Good morning, everybody. Congratulations, Paul and Catherine, on the retirement. Arnold, congratulations on the promotion. Excited for you all. I'm just curious if we could start on the deposit side. Just curious some of the deposit trends you're seeing. Then if you could touch on especially the non-interest-bearing flows. You know, how much of that was from migration within the book towards interest-bearing or cash burn at clients? Is there any seasonality to those flows? Then just curious whether you've seen any deceleration in the outflow of non-interest-bearing. Thanks, David. I'll have David here answer that question. Yeah. Hey, David. You know, during the third quarter we did see a drop in non-interest bearing deposits, and that was primarily related to some large corporate depositors, you know, that had built up a decent amount of excess liquidity. The money was in just in DDA as market rates were really low for a protracted period of time. Then with the Fed, you know, increasing rates as rapidly as they did with money market rates, you know, approaching 2%, we did see some of that money leave the balance sheet. Some of it went into other interest-bearing accounts, but some of it did leave the balance sheet. The good news there is that we have seen the pace of that, those types of large corporate outflows, it has slowed. Hopefully we've put a lot of that behind us in the third quarter. Okay. Maybe just touching on, you know, deposits, touching on two aspects of it. I'm curious how the Shaka digital deposits are trending and how flows are trending in that and how rates and betas are within the digital deposits. Paul, I know you've spent a lot of time working on this Japanese deposit initiative. Curious if there's any updates on that and whether you're starting to see some fruits from all those efforts. Hey, hey, David, it's David again. On the Shaka, you know, we continue to do well with the Shaka. We continue to add new accounts. You know, I think we're probably at about 4,000 Shaka accounts. You know, we continue to run initiatives to drive more activity there. The rate sensitivity of that account has been. We have not changed anything on the rate profile of that account. It's still where you have, you know, we pay a modest amount of interest. I think it's three basis points of interest, but if you do the qualifying activities, 15 debit card transactions a month with the direct deposit, then the bonus interest rate is 1%. It's a decent interest-bearing checking account if you do it through the qualifying activity. We haven't made any changes to that, the bonus rate in the current rate environment thus far. I'll turn it to Paul for the Japan deposit question. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. No, go ahead. Hi, David. You know, the yen rate today is 151 yen, and that you know, presents considerable headwinds you know, for people to transfer money into the United States at this moment. You know, I would have to say that we've had great run-up on Japan deposits even during the pandemic. Those individuals who deposited monies with us last year, they love us, right? You know, the scenario today is that there's tremendous pent-up demand for a lot of the Japanese to visit Hawaii. You know, I think they have to go through this emotional roller coaster, right? Because there's been such a significant strengthening of the dollar. We think as we go into next year that that'll kind of ease off. When it does, I think, you know, the one key takeaway for a lot of Japanese is that they shouldn't have all their assets in yen, and we're hoping that they will look to dollar deposits. At that time, with products like Shaka, you know, digital products or people who don't live here in Hawaii, I think it's gonna be a very attractive platform. Again, in the short term, some headwinds, but we know that the Japanese will be back here, that there's tremendous interest in shifting assets to the U.S., and we hope we can really capitalize on that. That's good color. How much is in the Shaka digital deposits now? Well, David, it's about $4,000. You know, it's about $1,000 average balance. The good news there is what we're seeing is engagement by the Shaka customers increase over time. You know, it's actually as normal, right? When people open an account, it takes them a little bit of time to move their direct deposit. Then start making it their primary checking account. We're now starting to see that engagement with the Shaka customers, which is good. Yeah. David, this is Paul. More importantly, we're, you know, basically really penetrating the younger set of customers. That was a critical, you know, piece of strategy for our Shaka offering. You know, this is something that we did to invest into the future. That's a perfect dovetail. I wanted to touch on Swell. You know, I know we're planning on a fourth quarter soft launch. Just curious where we are in that process, how it's going, and any updates on the evolution of that business. Yeah, David. It's David again. In October, we moved from the Swell friends and family pilot to the Swell alpha pilot. So that's where we're inviting the people from the Swell wait list to open their Swell account. So we're just at the beginning of the alpha pilot, and we'll probably stay in the alpha pilot through mid- to late November, and then we're gonna start a more broad public launch. So what we plan to do, you know, the public launch probably late November, early December timeframe. That's where it'll be a much larger set of customers coming in. How's it gone so far? I mean, is there any update on how it's gone? How, you know, whether there's been any issues or just curious how it's going in your early feedback. Yeah. No, it's as expected. You know, you do pilots to you know, learn, figure things out, make sure everything is working as expected before you do the larger public launch. We went through that process with the friends and family, learned and iterated through that process, and then now we're doing the same thing through the alpha pilot. It's going as exactly as expected. Hey, David, this is Paul. I might just add that, you know, with the changing economic climate, especially in the, you know, continental U.S., that we have become a little more rigid on our credit policies. You know, we are focused more on customers, you know, invited customers with FICO scores north of 720 in the initial mail drops that we're planning right now. Okay. That's helpful. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your question, sir. Again, if you would like to ask the team a question, it is star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Laurie Hunsicker with Compass Point. Your line is now open. Great. Hi. Thanks. Good morning. Paul, Arnold, and Catherine, I just wanna echo my congratulations too. Just going back to your Japanese strategy, Paul, I'm hoping you can help us think about it, and I'm sorry if I missed this piece. Number one, can you just remind us what Japanese deposits are at the moment? Then Paul, as you transition into a different role, can you take us through how the Japanese strategy might change as we look to 2023? I know you've been active in traveling there. Can you just help us think about that? Thanks. Sure. You know, Laurie, 16 quarters ago, when I first stepped in as chief executive officer, I think we were hovering around $650 million in terms of Japanese deposits. Today, we're just a little south of about $1 billion. We've made very good progress over the last four years, but there's still tremendous potential. You know, COVID was a setback. The strong dollar has been headwinds as well. Now in my new role from January, where Arnold has to do all the earnings calls, and I'm gonna have time to spend more time in Japan and still, you know, as a board member to CPB, as an advisor to Arnold. Arnold's request of me, you know, to really do some rainmaking in Japan, I'm gonna have a lot more time to focus on that market. I know what my marching orders are, to go out and get low-cost deposits. That's where I'm gonna spend a lot of time on. I hope I'm successful at it. Okay. Okay, great. I hope you are too. Okay, great. I guess shifting over. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. No. Okay. Nope. Keep going, Lori. Shifting over to consumer, you mentioned that you are going to reduce unsecured consumer mainland. I'm showing that number is about $310 million. Can you help us think a little bit about, you know, where that reduction is gonna occur, what that book looks like maybe by the back end of next year, just how you're thinking about that? So, uh- Maybe. Laurie, I'll Sure No, go ahead. Finish your question. Oh, I was just gonna say, you know, with respect to Swell, Elevate, because obviously that's also mainland, so that is starting to grow. Can you help us think about the targets there over the course of the next year, how you're thinking about that? You know, initially I think there was a Swell, Elevate target of 8 million by the end of this year, and you backed off on that, which was great. You know, maybe help us think about that a little bit more. What does your target look like four quarters from now? You know, probably just one more question sort of folded in. I mean, your credit is spectacular. The only place you've really had charge-offs has been in consumer. Maybe help us think about that a little bit, especially with the backdrop of, you know, continued chatter out there from chief executive officer and CFOs across the board saying very, very concerned about unsecured consumer lending. Maybe just help us think about those three pieces. In other words, what that unsecured consumer book will look like over the course of the next year, what Swell, Elevate will look like, and then, you know, how you're thinking about charge-offs. Thanks. Thanks, Laurie. We'll try our best to respond to your questions. I'll just start by saying that, you know, obviously we recognize, you know, the headwinds. Overall, our portfolios are performing very well, including our consumer portfolios. We think the probability of a recession is higher at this point. As a result, you know, we're taking a look at what we plan to do in the future and to start to modify or moderate, you know, certain loan categories. I'm gonna ask Anna maybe to start off with talking about consumer and to respond specifically to your questions about, you know, where we see that category going in the future. We'll pass it on to David to talk a little bit about Swell and kind of the numbers that we're looking at in the future. Anna? Hi, Laurie. This is Anna. So with regards to your question on our $310 million consumer unsecured, you know, we do expect to moderate that portfolio. As Arnold mentioned, we are expecting headwinds to come our way. That would just be through natural runoff on a monthly, quarterly basis. You know, where we may look to add is really on the auto side. We have historically performed very well in auto, and our overall expectation is to maintain somewhere in the 8% range as to where we currently are with regards to our mainland consumer book. Then shifting over to the charge-offs, you know, we're expecting charge-offs to increase of course, given market conditions, but we are expecting it to be at an acceptable level. That's primarily due to, you know, our higher credit underwriting standards. You know, as mentioned again in this last quarter, our weighted average FICO score was 740, and we expect to maintain high credit underwriting standards going forward as well. I'll now turn it over to David to talk about our Swell Elevate side. Yeah. Hey, Laurie. Yeah, you're correct. The original goals for Swell was $8 million in cash, the deposit accounts, and $8 million in lines of credit. By the end of this year, we took that back to $4 million each. You know, we're. That's still the target for year-end. You know, we'll see if we get there or not. You know, the timing of the public launch has been pushed back by a few weeks. You know, as we've always said, we're gonna start slowly, we're gonna learn, and we're gonna iterate. You know, I think what's been good about the process we've gone through this last year is obviously there's been a lot of turmoil with the existing neobanks out there, and it's given us an opportunity to observe and learn, you know. What we're doing now is we're targeting accounts and customers that we believe will be profitable customers. Our business plan, the Swell business plan now is to target fewer accounts but try to make them profitable. You know, maybe 100,000 accounts, but have the majority of them be profitable rather than having 1 million accounts that are unprofitable. That's kind of what we're focused on. As far as the targets for next year, it's very difficult to say. You know, I think what we've always said, Laurie, is, you know, we're not gonna accelerate growth unless we find a sweet spot, you know, a strategy that leads to profitable Swell customers. Swell, CPB, and Elevate are all aligned in that objective. The growth will be stronger if we find that sweet spot of profitable customers. Otherwise it'll be rather slow, and we'll be learning and iterating. Thanks for that, David. But so just to quantify, I mean, are we looking at, you know, $10 million by the end of next year? Are we looking at $50 million or $100 million? Just rough numbers so that we can think about credit risk, how we think about that. Thanks. Yeah. Again, I don't think it's gonna be $100 million. I think it would be south of that. I think most of next year is gonna be the team running cohort tests, you know, where we target different cohorts of the Striver target market. Again, you know, like we're trying to find the sweet spot. I think that's the process we'll be going through much of 2023. I think the final thing to mention, Laurie, is you know, and I know we've talked about this at length, but again, we do have the credit guarantee from Elevate that is cash secured on our balance sheet. Okay. Laurie, you know, this is Arnold. I'll just add. That's hard too, right? I'll just. Elevate is sitting at $1 a share. I mean. Right? The better. I don't know. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I didn't mean to cut you off. Yeah. No problem, Laurie. I know that there's a slight delay. You know, I wanted to add that Swell is one product initiative that we're doing. Obviously, we have a very strong discipline overall for the bank's balance sheet. At the end of the day, we are going to, you know, manage consumer concentration globally, right? Holistically for the bank. To the extent that we grow Swell, you know, other sources of consumer will reduce other sources of consumer to maintain a strong risk management discipline and stay true to our concentration standards and limits. I just wanted to put that out there that, you know, we are still gonna manage our balance sheet effectively. I should say, we're not gonna have the consumer category grow to a point where it's a huge concentration on our balance sheet. Okay. Okay, great. Just one more question, if I could. Different subject altogether. Your funding is fabulous. Your core deposits are fabulous. Can you help us think about maybe just if you could quantify, you know, over the next several quarters how you think about margin in terms of basis points? You know, deposit pricing, obviously at some point it catches up when the Fed slows, right? Maybe help us think a little bit about when margin might peak and how you're thinking about that. Thanks so much. Yeah, Laurie. You know, the third quarter, we were very pleased with the core deposit, you know, betas. The interest-bearing deposit beta in third quarter was 9%, total deposit beta was 6%, and our average earning asset beta was 21%. That's what led to the 12 basis points of sequential NIM expansion. We are targeting to continue to see NIM expansion for the next couple quarters. We're currently in the budget process. We're currently thinking that NIM may peak in mid-2023, is what we're looking at. Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Yeah. Laurie, this is Paul. Before I end the call, you know, I just wanted to respond again to, you know, your comment about Elevate share price being $1 right now. There is enough cash at Elevate. Again, the arrangement is that, you know, they place deposits with us where we have a security interest in them, and we are in the driver's seat on volume of direct mail, which is the key driver for a lot of the loan origination. You know, we're gonna be taking a very close look at that. You know, I think I also mentioned in past calls that, you know, through our terms and conditions with Elevate, we do have rights to their lending management platform. Even in the event that there were any issues, you know, with the viability of the company, I think CPB is in a very secure position. Just wanted to point that out. Okay? With that, I think there might be one more question. Oh, is there? Okay. Dante? Yes, sir. The question we had actually dropped back out, if you would like to continue. Okay. We'll turn it back to you, Paul. Okay. Well, with that, thank you very much everyone for participating in our earnings call for the third quarter of 2022. We look forward to future opportunities to update you on our progress. Thank you. With that, we will end today's Central Pacific Financial Corp. conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.