Hello everyone and welcome to the Dime Community Bancshares Incorporated first 1/4 earnings call. My name is Juan and I will be coordinating your call today. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. If you would like to ask a question, you may do so by pressing star followed by 1 on your telephone keypads. Before we begin, the company would like to remind you that discussions during this call contain Forward-Looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any such statements included, as set forth in the company filings in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, to which we refer you. During this call, references will be made to Non-GAAP financial measures as supplemental measures to review and assess operating performance. These Non-GAAP financial measures are not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with US GAAP. For information about these Non-GAAP measures and for the reconciliation to GAAP, please refer to the earnings release. I would now like to turn the call over to Kevin O'Connor, CEO of Dime. Please, Kevin, go ahead. Thank you, Juan, and thank you all for joining us this morning. With me again are Stu Lubow, our President and Chief Operating Officer, and Avi Reddy, our CFO. We had a good start to 2022 with net income of $32.7 million or $0.82 per share. I'm also pleased to report we executed well on all our strategic priorities. Growing Non-Interest bearing deposits, managing our cost of funds, and prioritizing NIM expansion, all while prudently managing expenses and maintaining solid asset quality. Our Non-Interest bearing balances grew to 38% of deposits at 1/4 end, positioning us well for upcoming Federal Reserve rate hikes. This consistent Long-Term level of Non-Interest bearing deposits on our balance sheet is a clear differentiator versus other community banks in our footprint. We continue to believe the value of our Low-Cost deposit franchise will shine through over this rising rate cycle. Avi will comment more about our interest rate risk position and NIM guides in his remarks. On the loan origination front, we had a slow January which is typical for us. In addition, payoff levels remained high in the early months of the 1/4, and loan balances hit a trough of $9.1 billion at the end of February. March was a strong month for us with approximately $200 million of new originations. In fact, loan balances were up approximately $100 million for the month of March and closed the 1/4 at approximately $9.2 billion. We continue to see nice loan growth in April with spot balances increasing another $130 million to over approximately $9.3 billion as of today. Given our strong pipeline, slowing payoff rates, and the new hires we've made, we remain comfortable with the full-Year loan growth guidance we've previously provided. With respect to new hires, we have been mentioning for several quarters we believe there is an opportunity to capitalize on several large merger transactions in the marketplace. With these transactions finally closing, we are excited to onboard several individuals, including Bob Maichin, who will be our new head of middle market lending. Most recently, Bob was the market president and responsible for all middle market banking activities in the Northeast, Bank Leumi. We are extremely excited to have Bob join us. Our asset quality remains very strong with NPAs and 90 days past due, declining 14% on linked-1/4 basis and represents only 31 basis points of total assets. Similar to the rest of the industry, we did see the decrease in the fair value of our AFS portfolio. This contributed to a $43 million decline in our AOCI, and as a result, our tangible book value dipped by approximately 3% or $0.70. More importantly, our strong returns allowed regulatory capital ratios to increase quarter-over-quarter, even adjusting for share repurchase activity. As we said before, our low risk balance sheets provide us with the opportunity to be active on the capital return front. During the first 1/4, we bought back 17 million of common stock at a weighted average price of $34.44. We have approximately 500,000 shares left in our current authorization and expect to continue managing capital levels efficiently over time. Just a week ago, we were pleased to receive a deposit rating of A3 from Moody's. In fact, in their report, Moody's cited our excellent credit quality track record, strong operating efficiency, low cost locally sourced deposit base, and good liquidity and clear strategy. To conclude my prepared remarks, we had a good clean 1/4. Loan originations picked up as the 1/4 progressed, and our Non-Interest deposit base and deposit costs continue to differentiate us from local peers. As we look forward to the remainder of 2022, I continue to believe we have a tremendous opportunity in front of us. Remain a pure play community commercial bank in an attractive banking market with significant organic growth opportunities. At this point, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Avi to provide some additional color on our quarterly results as well as our expectations for the rest of 2022. Thank you, Kevin. Our reported net income to common for the 4th 1/4 was $32.7 million. With our merger integration well behind us, we had no unusual items in this 1/4's results. We lowered our average cost of deposits in the first 1/4 by another basis point. The spot rate on deposits at 1/4 end was even lower at approximately 9 basis points. It should come as no surprise that we expect deposit costs to bottom out at these levels. Importantly, we believe we have removed a significant amount of rate sensitivity from our deposit base. These actions, coupled with a higher percentage of Non-Interest bearing deposits than our peers, should result in our deposit betas lagging other banks in our footprint. The reported NIM and the adjusted NIM for the 1/4 was 3.19%. As we have done previously, we have provided details in the press release on the impact of purchase accounting and PPP. On an adjusted basis, the NIM was up 2 basis points versus the linked 1/4. The net accretion balance from purchase accounting currently stands at approximately $1.8 million. As mentioned previously, there will be some lingering impact from purchase accounting on the income statement in 2022, depending on payoff activity on premium and discount loans. Given the current interest rate environment, we continue to proactively manage our loan pricing. The rate on our current loan pipeline of approximately 4% is higher than our existing portfolio rate. We expect new additions to the pipeline to be in the 4.25%-4.5% area once new loans work their way through underwriting and closing. Core operating expenses, excluding intangible amortization for the first 1/4, came in at $49.3 million. This is in line with our expense guidance for the full year. Non-Interest income for the first 1/4 was approximately $7.2 million. As we mentioned in the earnings release, we expect a pickup in fees from our SBA division and from our back-to-back loan swap program in the second 1/4 of approximately $1.75 million on a combined basis. Moving on to credit quality, we had a negative provision in the 1/4 of $1.7 million. The negative provision was driven by reduction in reserves on individually analyzed credits. Our existing allowance for credit losses of approximately 86 basis points is still above the historical combined levels of the legacy institutions. We feel comfortable with our current reserve levels based on current economic conditions. During the 1/4, we bought back approximately 500,000 shares at $34.44. We believe share repurchases continue to be attractive given our trading levels, our organic prospects and strong balance sheet that performs favorably under stress testing. We will continue to manage our balance sheet efficiently and our tangible equity ratio of 8.32 is within our comfort zone of 8%-8.5%. Now let's turn over to guidance and targets. We are reiterating our loan growth guidance for calendar year 2022 of approximately 4%-6%, excluding PPP. As Kevin mentioned, we hit a trough on loans at the end of February, and since then we have seen nice growth over the past 2 months. As you well know by now, we don't provide quarterly quantitative NIM guidance. That said, we do want to provide you some directional perspective. We see NIM gradually improving over the next couple of years and reaching a level of approximately 335 basis points by the middle of 2024. As Kevin mentioned, NIM prioritization is a firm-wide focus for us. Given the day count convention, we expect the NIM to be impacted by a few basis points in the second 1/4. As the impact of rate increases work their way through the loan portfolio and we reprice into a higher rate for originations, we expect expansion to be more pronounced in 2023 and 2024. We are reiterating our full year guidance for core cash Non-Interest expenses, excluding intangible amortization, to be between $197 million and $199 million, and Non-Interest income to be within a range of $33 million-$34 million. Finally, with respect to the tax rate for the remainder of 2022, we expect it to be approximately 28.5%. With respect to our medium-term goals, it is our intention to drive our return on assets to the 1.20%-1.25% area by the back 1/2 of 2024 and operate with a DDA ratio in excess of 40%. With that, I'll turn the call back to Juan for questions. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question at this point, please press star followed by number 1 on your telephone keypads. If you change your mind or your question has been already answered, please press star followed by number 2. When preparing to ask a question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. The first question comes from the line of Mark Fitzgibbon from Piper Sandler. Please, Mark, your line is now open. Hey, guys. Good morning. Thank you. First question I had. Avi, the service charges and fee line was down about 12% sequentially. I guess I was curious why was that? Yeah, Mark, typically, you know, in Q3 and Q4, you know, we have various fees, you know, on the loan side, you know, that we charge and some of that, you know, goes into the other fee line. So it's a bit seasonal over there. You know, some of that will correct over the course of the year. You know, the bigger item was really, you know, the SBA and the swap fee income, which is more transactional in nature. The other item just to mention is, you know, we now have, you know, a full suite of treasury management products that we instituted in the first 1/4. You know, all those fees went into effect, you know, in the middle of February, really. We got, you know, a month's worth of income coming out of that. That should, you know, nicely pick up as we enter the second 1/4 and move into the latter 1/2 of the year. Okay. Secondly, I didn't hear, did you give the size of the pipeline? I know you said the average- No rate was around 4%, but Hi, Mark, it's Stu. The pipeline size is about $2.4 billion at this point. We have about $480 million in underwriting and about $300 million waiting to close. As Kevin mentioned, the last 2 months have been very strong. We're up, as of today, over $130 million in loan balances, compared to March 31. And, you know, what we're seeing is prepayments are down as well. So we're very comfortable there. In looking at the last 45 days, we've gotten over $500 million in new loan applications into the pipeline. The average yield on that grouping is about 4.5%. We're seeing the impact of rate increases starting to move through the pipeline. We obviously raised our rates in terms of multifamily and everything across the board. You know, from our perspective, pipeline is very strong, you know, and the process is working well. Now with the new hires, as we mentioned, you know, we're excited for the opportunity to even grow it further and really focusing on the middle market and C&I. Okay. Stu, last 1/4, you guys had a pipeline of, like, $2.1 billion, but your originations were only $480 million. I guess I'm curious, was there a lot of fallout on the pipeline, or is it typical for you to sort of only close maybe 23%, 24%, 25% of your stated pipeline? You know, I think for the most part, you know, the pipeline is just that. There's some percentage that does fall out. January and February tend to be very slow months for us, just historically, and I think that's gonna pick up nicely throughout the rest of the year. I think it was somewhat more timing. I mean, certainly toward the end of the year in January, you know, we or the industry, the market was affected by the pandemic again, with Omicron, things slowed down a little bit, but things have certainly picked up at this point. Great. The last question I had is, I guess I was curious how many lenders you've hired and how many you think it's likely you'll hire, say, over the remainder of this year. Thank you. Well, we've hired basically 2 team leaders and we have several more in the offing. I could see us hiring, you know, 5-10 additional lenders throughout the rest of the year. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of William Wallace from Raymond James. Please, William, your line is now open. Yeah. Hi. Thanks. Good morning, guys. My first question is on the SBA and swap guidance for the second 1/4. Avi, did you say it was $1.5 million, or did I mishear you? $1.75 million combined, William, for both those line items for Q2. We just had, you know, a bunch of stuff close, you know, in the month of April on the swap side, and you know, the SBA pipeline, you know, for May and June. You know, basically that, you know, those 2 items combined in Q1 was close to zero. You know, over the course of the year, you know, we've got certain expectations. You know, in the second 1/4, you know, we're gonna make up for the first 1/4 basically on both those items. Is it safe to assume or fair to assume that 1.75%, a lot of that is whatever timing and that you're catching up for one 1/4, but we wouldn't expect that would be a good kinda run rate? You know, I mean, in general, you know, our SBA run rate, you know, internally is, you know, probably $3.5 million-$4 million is a good number for a full year for the SBA side. Yeah. On the swap side, when we ran our budgets for this year, you know, in the $33 million-$34 million that we came up with, we only put, you know, $2.5 million of swap fee income in there, just given where we were at the start of the year. I think we're seeing a lot more traction on the swap side going forward. I mean, you know, obviously, banks are not, you know, don't wanna, you know, extend longer. If customers do wanna lock in those rates, you know, I mean, they are willing at this point to engage with us on the swap side. In the $33 million-$34 million, we only had $2.5 million of swap income in there. We may end up beating that for the full year given on what's coming in. Just for the second 1/4 itself, you know, we're probably, you know, at least $1 million on the swap side. We feel pretty good about that business heading into the second 1/2 of the year. Okay. Great. Thanks, Avi. Then your commentary around the net interest margin. I know you're not guiding, and I'm not asking for a guide, but you said that you would anticipate that the expansion in net interest margin to that Mid-2024 target would be more weigted to 2023 and 2024. Can you tell me what kinda keeps a floor on the NIM or a kind of a, you know, pushing down on NIM in 2022 as the Fed starts to hike? Yeah, sure. Sure, Wally. You know, I think it's just, you know, the aggregate amount of the loan portfolio that's gonna be repricing over time. You know, I mean, as we put on, you know, more and more loans at a rate that's above the portfolio rate, it's obviously gonna, you know, help the NIM over time, right? We're still closing items right now in the portfolio that, you know, when they initially came to us 3 months back, you know, when rates were in a different picture, right? It's a little bit of that. We also have some floors on loans in the portfolio. You know, as we have, you know, rate hikes, you know, that are 75-100 basis points, they're gonna, you know, come off, you know, being in the money at that point in time. I mean, we're also, you know, a little conservative, you know, in the guidance over there. You know, we just wanna wait and see what happens. You know, I think when we started, you know, the modeling of this and that, you know, rates going up over time last year, I think everybody thought there was gonna be, you know, 4 or 5 25 basis point hikes this year, and then we were gonna have, you know, maybe 200 basis points overall. I mean, thinking's obviously changed to having multiple 50 basis point rate hikes up front, and, you know, getting to, you know, 2.75-3.00 on Fed funds. It's a little bit of, you know, working its way through the loan portfolio, you know, being cautious on the deposit side. Over time, you know, what I'd say, Wally, if you go back to our comments on our last earnings call, which was, you know, 3 months back, we had said, you know, by the middle of 2024, we were guiding to a margin of around 330 basis points. We've taken that up now to 335, so clearly, you know, the additional rate hikes are gonna help us. It's just gonna take a little bit of time to work through the portfolio over here. Okay. Thank you very much, Avi. I appreciate that color. I'll step out for someone else. Thanks. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Chase Haines from D.A. Davidson. Please, Chase, your line is now open. Hey, guys. How's it going? I'm on here for Manuel Navas at D.A. Davidson. How are you guys doing today? Hi. Good morning. How are you? Great. I just wanted to get some more color on your loan growth. Looks like you guys saw a nice uptick in your multi-family and your ADC line. I'm just curious, are you guys having any concern about credit and growth as we go forward, especially in the second 1/2 of the year? No. I mean, at this point, you know, the pipeline is strong. We're still seeing a lot of activity. From a credit perspective, the portfolio's very strong. You notice, you know, all our delinquency numbers have improved. So we're very comfortable. We've also updated our underwriting guidelines and are stressing all our underwriting at the higher rates, you know, and anticipating higher rates. So we're actually underwriting at the forecasted interest rates so that we're making sure that in the rising rate environment that these loans perform well and have the debt service coverage to meet our guidelines. We've taken the rise in rate environment into account in our underwriting, but what we're seeing is a very strong environment still for lending. We're very, again, still very comfortable with our growth and our credit. Historically, you know, Dime and Bridge, both companies, at some point we'll stop saying both companies, had extraordinary good credit metrics, and we expect that to continue. Great. Thank you. I really appreciate the color. Just 1 more from me. Nice job on the share buybacks this 1/4. I'm just curious, what does that look like going forward? I wasn't sure of your share purchase plan you have at the moment. I'm not sure if you exhausted it or continue to keep it going through the rest of the year. Yep. We have around 500,000 shares left in our authorization at this point. You know, once that's complete, you know, we'll look at our capital again, you know, at the board level. You know, we're very comfortable with where we're at. Our Tier 1 ratio is 10.75 at this point. Our tangible equity ratio is, you know, well over 8%. You know, I think, you know, we were pretty active in the last year or so, you know, especially as, you know, we had a lot of payoffs in the loan portfolio. You know, as Stu said, you know, loans are growing nicely. Our pipeline is big. You know, our number 1 use of capital is always organic growth on the loan portfolio side, but it's something we evaluate constantly. You know, we have the capital to do it if we wanted to. As Kevin said, our portfolio stress tests really well. You know, we'll take all that into account, you know, once we're done with the current authorization. Appreciate it. Thank you guys for taking my questions. Look forward to next 1/4. Thanks, Chase. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Breese from Stephens. Please, Matthew, your line is now open. Good morning. Good morning. Hey, Avi, you know, good morning. I appreciate the 4%-6% loan growth guidance. You know, I was curious, maybe we could slice it a different way, you know, with securities, with the securities portfolio down a little bit this year, and there's really no longer any sort of PPP related headwinds. I was curious, your thoughts on the overall size of the balance sheet, and when do you think, you know, as part of your guidance, we can break through some of the key milestones like $12.5 billion in assets and $13 billion in assets? Are those 2023 and 2024 events in your view? Yeah, Matthew, we're not, we really never provide, you know, guidance on breaking through asset sizes. It's all about profitability here. We wanna maintain a certain, you know, margin. We wanna make sure we don't have a lot of, you know, wholesale leverage on the balance sheet. You know, the way I think about it, and, you know, I've gotten this on the last 1/4's earnings call, really the securities portfolio, you really shouldn't view there to be any growth in that particular portfolio going forward. You know, as we get cash flows from that portfolio, we're gonna put it into the loan book. And that's, you know, what, you know, banks should be doing, right, over time. I would take our loans with, you know, $9.1 billion plus or minus. You assume, you know, 5% growth on that. Then I would keep, you know, pretty much everything else steady on the balance sheet. I mean, that would result in, you know, slightly lower average earning asset growth overall. But then, you know, that obviously results in a little bit more capital, right? We can use that on buyback. I don't think we'd really view it on an asset side. It's really about growing the loan portfolio here. We feel, you know, very good about our loan to deposit ratio where it is right now. And really, you know, we're really happy that, you know, payoffs have subsided on the portfolio, and we've really turned the corner. Like I said in my prepared remarks, you know, loans hit a trough in February. You know, the last 12 months, you know, we've done a lot with the portfolio in terms of, you know, maximizing rate, and we're really looking forward to, you know, net interest income growth, both from balances and margin expansion going forward. I know multifamily hasn't been as high as a focus as it was for Legacy Dime. You know, this 1/4 was interesting though, because balances are actually up a little bit. What's the outlook for that segment? You know, have things become more attractive there? Can we actually start to see some multifamily growth or should we expect balances there to be flat? I mean, maybe just some insight on multifamily loans. Yeah. You know, I think you know, we have a good multifamily team. We've been really quite aggressive on the rate side, even through the last year. That was 1 of the reasons that you saw some of the significant payoffs over the last year. You know, we weren't chasing loans in the sub 3% range as other institutions were. We really you know, held our discipline on that. You know, as rates have moderated up, we've also moved our rates and we do see a fairly good pipeline. At this point, I would say you know, flat to up through the period and through the rest of the year at pretty attractive rates. We also have a significant amount of loans that are repricing over the next 8-9 months. All of those with the current rate environment would be repricing at 30-40 basis points higher than what they are at today. You know, potentially, if they, you know, hold and do not refinance, we're gonna see a bump there. If they do refinance, we're gonna be, you know, refinancing those at even higher rates. You know, I think the opportunity is there to maintain that book, grow it somewhat, and grow it at rates that are certainly more attractive to us. Matt, just the other thing I'd point out on the multifamily side, just back to the payoffs. The month of February, the payoffs on multifamily were 41%. That's obviously been a headwind in that portfolio over time. In the month of March, it was down to around 25%. You know, as rates go up, you're gonna see significantly less payoffs over there, and we're gonna, you know, keep a little bit more, you know, on the balance sheet, which we're comfortable with, you know, given how, you know, well these loans perform over time. Yeah. You know, Avi and I are looking at payoff requests on an ongoing basis in April and, you know, at this point, you know, has moderated even further. You know, we're gonna see some opportunity there at rates that, you know, the multifamily market hasn't seen in many years. You know, we'll be active to an extent. Got it. Okay. The last question was just around, you know, credit. You know, NPAs and charge-offs, very solid this 1/4. If you look at like the 10-K, there was a pickup in substandard special mentions in the criticized classified categories. I was hoping for 1, maybe an updated balances on criticized classified loans. And then 2, maybe just some insight as to whether or not the movement in those buckets were tied to more, you know, deferrals and some lingering pandemic-related issues or any sort of underlying credit concerns. Yeah, Matthew, our disclosure will be in our Q, which is a couple of weeks out. You know, substandard, which is down around 7% on a linked 1/4 basis. I mean, the primary reason was the approach that we took, where multifamily loans that had a deferral, you know, we basically put them into substandard back in the pandemic. Obviously, as we're getting updated rent rolls, you know, all these loans are performing really well. You know, we off the portfolio, majority of it was multifamily. But if you look at our 60 days past due, we have 0 multifamily loans that are past due at this point. All these loans are paying, all these loans are off the bench as we're getting rent rolls from, you know, our borrowers, you know, upgrading them over time. You should see, you know, a significant decline in those over time. You know, in addition, you know, we had, you know, some PCD loans that we, you know, put into substandard as part of the acquisition. We're fully reserved for that. I mean, we always think about credit, but, you know, we have a rock solid portfolio and, you know, we were looking back, you know, over the last 15, 20 years, and our loss history on multifamily on an annual basis is less than 4 basis points. We're really not concerned about what's in there. Our NPA is obviously down and, you know, charge-offs are down and, you know, we're pretty comfortable. Got it. All right. I appreciate you taking my questions. Thank you. Yep. Thank you. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask any further questions, please press star followed by number 1 on your telephone keypads now. The next question comes from the line of Chris O'Connell from KBW. Please, Chris, your line is now open. Morning. I was hoping to just touch on, you mentioned the multifamily, you know, origination rates, a couple of times, but I may have missed it. What are those, origination yields coming on at, now? You know, we raised our floor rate to 4.25% on our multifamily at this point on 5-Year deals. We're really not interested in doing 7- to 10-Year deals, so we're really in the 4.25%-4.5% range on the 5 and 5s. Okay, great. It looks like you still have a decent chunk of, you know, higher cost kind of CDs coming off, this next 1/4 here and a bit more in the back 1/2 of the year. How are you guys thinking about kind of CD retention going forward? Are you still gonna let it, you know, a big chunk of those kind of roll off the balance sheet? Yeah, of course. We're seeing around, you know, 70%-80% retention on the CDs at this point in time. I mean, our rates on the CDs, you know, we only have a rate of around 5 basis points on the CDs right now. So I think you will see some attrition on that. We've still not, you know, changed rates on that. You know, obviously Legacy Dime had a much bigger CD book. You know, we think, you know, having a, you know, more w8ing towards, you know, Non-Time deposits just gives us more flexibility on the balance sheet, you know, going forward. You know, I think, you know, over the last year, we'd have seen even larger deposit growth, you know, if we didn't have, you know, attrition in this book. At some point it's gonna stop, but, you know, it's all about just managing the balance sheet with the, you know, lowest absolute cost, on the balance sheet. Right now we think the best way to do that is let some CDs run off. But, you know, we're still seeing, you know, reasonable retention on it. Okay, great. I appreciate, you know, the updates and the NIM and, you know, the ROA guides and the kind of longer term goals here. Was hoping to just get, you know, your opinion on, you know, what's the ideal, you know, operating environment or rate environment for you guys, you know, for the, you know, ROA goal or the NIM goal in 2024 to kind of accelerate and be achieved earlier? Yeah, I think. I mean, the current guide is based on the current forward curve. You know, we're assuming a pretty flat curve, you know, the 6-month SOFR versus the 5-Year. We're basically assuming it's flat. To the extent that it widens out and we get more spread, we're obviously gonna make more. I mean, essentially at the end of the day, we lend off the 5-Year and our borrowing costs and deposit costs are on the short end. I think a little more steepness in the curve will help us. You know, obviously with rates going up, you know, if we have multiple 50 basis point rate hikes, we'll have to adjust deposit pricing a little bit, but in the long run, it's gonna help loan pricing even more. You know, I think, look, an upwardly sloping rate environment, you know, does help us. We try not to take a lot of positions on interest rates. As you know, we've done really well when rates were low. You know, we're gonna do well when rates go up, but at the end of the day, it comes back to growing DDA. I mean, we grew DDA from 37%-38%. We wanna get that number up to 40% and, you know, really, you know, if we get to that level and maintain that, we're gonna do well in any rate environment. Great. Thanks for taking my question. Thank you. Thank you. We currently have no further questions, so I will hand over back to Kevin O'Connor for any final remarks. Well, I just wanna thank everybody who participated, and we look forward to chatting with you next 1/4. Thank you. This concludes today's call. Thank you so much for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.