Good morning, everyone. This is Sal DiMartino. Thank you for joining the management team of New York Community for today's conference call. Today's discussion of the company's second quarter 2022 results will be led by Chairman, President, and CEO, Thomas Cangemi, joined by Chief Operating Officer, Robert Wann, and the company's Chief Financial Officer, John Pinto. They are joined on the line by Alessandro DiNello, President and CEO of Flagstar Bancorp, and Lee Smith, President of Flagstar Mortgage. Before we begin the discussion, I'd like to remind you that certain comments made today by the management team of New York Community may include forward-looking statements within the meanings of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements we may make are subject to the safe harbor rules. Please review the forward-looking disclaimer and safe harbor language in today's press release and investor presentation for more information about risks and uncertainties which may affect us. With that, now I would like to turn it over to Mr. Cangemi to begin today's conference call. Thank you, Sal. Good morning to everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss our second quarter 2022 performance. First, however, I'd like to comment on our merger with Flagstar. Both sides are fully committed to completing the transaction as soon as possible, and we feel very good about where we stand currently. Over the past 15 months, both companies have diligently worked together to get us to a strong position to close the deal quickly once all regulatory approvals are received. We're excited about the benefits of the deal today as we were when it was first announced. In addition to the both earnings per share and tangible accretion, our merger with Flagstar significantly improves our overall funding profile and interest rate sensitivity. It shifts us away from relying on wholesale borrowings to being more significantly deposit-funded and becoming asset sensitive as well. In addition, it provides for both geographic and product diversification and accelerates our plan to transform our business model to a more dynamic commercial bank model, driving strong financial performance and capital generation. As for our second quarter results, we are extremely pleased with the company's strong operating performance during the second quarter. By almost any measure, results exceeded expectations despite higher interest rates and market volatility. We recorded record net income, another quarter of record deposit growth, near-record loan growth, record originations, and a higher net interest margin and stable operating expenses while asset quality remained stellar. These trends resulted in a solid year-over-year EPS growth. For the second quarter of 2022, we reported operating diluted EPS of $0.35 per share, up 6% compared to $0.33 per share for the second quarter of 2022, and well ahead of the $0.32 analyst consensus. Turning now to the details of our quarterly performance. One of the primary highlights of this quarter's operating performance was our deposit growth. For the second consecutive quarter, deposits grew by approximately $3 billion. The growth continues to be driven by the banking-as-a-service initiative and loan-related deposits. As I have discussed previously, one of my top strategies, if not the top, is to increase the bank's focus on deposit gathering and de-emphasize our need for wholesale borrowings and other less traditional funding sources. Longer term, our success executing on this strategy will result in higher net interest margin. The other results are quite positive. Since launching these initiatives early last year, total deposits have increased to $41 billion, up $8.8 billion or 27%, while core deposits increased to $33 billion, up $11 billion or 50%. At the same time, wholesale borrowings, primarily Federal Home Loan Bank advances, declined almost $2 billion or 11% to $13.7 billion. During the current quarter, total deposits increased $3.3 billion and $6.2 billion through the first six months of the year. Our Banking-as-a-service business was the biggest contributor to this growth. Banking-as-a-service deposits rose $2.3 billion or 43% on a linked-quarter basis, and $5.8 billion year-to-date. Banking-as-a-service deposits totaled $7.8 billion at June 30, 2022, which is significant progress considering we started this business from scratch in the first quarter of last year with virtually zero deposits. Our banking-as-a-service-related deposits fall largely into three categories. Traditional BaaS primarily encompasses fintech-related deposits totaling $5.5 billion. Government banking-as-a-service serves municipalities and eventually the U.S. Treasury's prepaid debit card program, totaling $652 million. Mortgage-as-a-service caters to mortgage banking and servicing companies and consists of escrow accounts for P&I payments, totaling $1.6 billion. We also are having great success in garnering deposits from our loan customers. Total loan-related deposits rose just under $500 million during the second quarter to $4.9 billion, up 44% annualized on a linked-quarter basis. For the first six months of 2022, these deposits increased $921 million, far surpassing the $475 million we generated for all of last year. All told, since refocusing on this deposit source in the first quarter of last year, loan-related deposits have grown $1.4 billion, up about 40%. Moving now to lending. We also had a very strong quarter in lending. Loan growth during the quarter was $1.8 billion, second only to the record $2.2 billion of loan growth we generated in the fourth quarter of last year. This quarter's loan growth was driven by our multifamily portfolio, where we continue to make market share gains as competition abates along with heightened refinancing activity as market interest rates moved higher during the quarter, forcing many borrowers to come to the table to refinance their properties sooner rather than later. At June 30, 2022 the multifamily portfolio was $36.8 billion, up $1 billion or 11% on an annualized basis compared to the previous quarter, while the specialty finance portfolio totaled $4.1 billion, up $806 million on a linked-quarter basis, or 24%. It is important to note that we have approximately $6.8 billion of multifamily and CRE loans that come up on their contractual maturity date and/or repricing between now and June of 2024, with an average weighted coupon of 3.74%. Multifamily loans with an average weighted coupon of 3.70% represent $5.3 billion of this amount, while CRE loans with an average weighted coupon of 3.89% represent the remaining $1.5 billion. The other driver was a significant growth in the specialty finance portfolio, due primarily to higher utilization rates. At June 30th, 2022 the specialty finance segment had total commitments of $6.6 billion, up 16% compared to $5.7 billion at March 31st, 2022. Of the June amount, 75% or $5 billion of these commitments are structured as floating rate obligations, which have and will continue to benefit us in a rising rate environment. Despite higher interest rates, we've had a record quarter for originations, and our current pipeline looks very good as we head into the third quarter. Loan originations set a new record as we originated $5.3 billion during the second quarter, up 49% compared to the previous quarter and up 72% compared to the second quarter of last year. Second quarter originations far exceeded the prior quarter's pipeline by $2.8 billion, more than double last quarter's $2.5 billion pipeline. Of the current quarter's originations, 37% were refinancing from our own portfolio, 39% were refinancing from other banks' portfolio, and 24% were related to property transactions. As for the pipeline, the current pipeline heading into the third quarter of the year is a robust $2.5 billion on par with last quarter. Of this amount, $1.8 billion or 72% of the pipeline was new money to the bank. Moving now to asset quality. Our credit trends and asset quality remain stellar and continue to rank NYCB as among the best in the industry. Non-performing assets totaled $56 million compared to $70 million last quarter and were 9 basis points of total assets compared to 11 basis points last quarter. Early-stage delinquencies also declined, and principal-only loan defaults are at a very manageable level, decreasing 51% from the prior quarter to $139 million. In addition, we had $7 million of net recoveries this quarter compared to net charge-offs of $2 million from last quarter. Before moving on to the next topic, I'd like to provide an update on the New York City real estate environment. New York City residential real estate remains healthy, and commercial real estate is improving gradually. Retail prices across the three boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan have reached new highs. This has been due to low inventory and higher mortgage rates, which have pushed home buyers to becoming renters. Median residential rents in Manhattan are above $4,000 for the second straight month, with rents continuing to make new highs over the past five months. In Brooklyn, the median rent is $3,300, marking a new high for the borough for the second straight month. While in Queens, especially in Northwest Queens, which is closer to the proximity of Manhattan, rents are also at record highs. On the rent-stabilized side, the Rent Guidelines Board approved rate hikes of 3.5% for one-year leases and 5% for two-year leases beginning in the fourth quarter. These increases mark the largest increases in almost a decade and will go a long way to offset some of the increases in operating costs. Office leasing activity is showing signs of life, up 3.5% year-over-year, with demand for Class A space up 32% on a year-over-year basis. Moving now to the income statement. Second quarter net interest income totaled $359 million, up $28 million or 8% on a year-over-year basis. Excluding the impact from prepayment income, net interest income on a non-GAAP basis increased $35 million or 12% to $339 million on a year-over-year basis. Our pre-provision net revenue was also very strong. Second quarter PPNR increased $31 million or 15% to $239 million on a year-over-year basis. Excluding the impact from merger-related expenses, PPNR grew $25 million or 11% to $243 million year-over-year. Moving next to the NIM. The NIM improved during the second quarter despite the Fed aggressively raising interest rates several times to combat inflation. At 2.52%, the NIM was up 9 basis points sequentially. Excluding the impact from prepayment income, the NIM was 2.38% up 3 basis points on a linked quarter basis and slightly better than expectations. Given that Flagstar is significantly asset sensitive and we are liability sensitive, we are very comfortable with the NIM on a pro forma basis. On the expense front, our non-interest expenses remain in check despite the company's continuing to invest in various businesses and hiring more people. Non-interest expenses were $138 million for the second quarter, which include $4 million of merger-related expenses. Excluding this, operating expenses totaled $134 million, unchanged from the previous quarter and up only modestly on a year-over-year basis. Additionally, our efficiency ratio came in at 35.57% down compared to both the prior and year-ago quarter. At this level is well below the peer average of approximately 55%. As you can see, we had a broad-based strength throughout the organization during the current quarter. This was all made possible by the hard work, dedication, and patience on the part of all our employees. I would like to congratulate them for helping the company to achieve the strong performance this quarter. At yesterday's meeting, the board of directors declared a $0.17 dividend on our common shares. The dividend will be paid on August 18th,2022 to common shareholders of record as of August 8th, 2022. Based on yesterday's closing stock price, this translates into an annualized dividend yield of 7.2%. With that, we will be happy to answer any questions you may have. We will do our very best to get to all of you within the time remaining, but if we don't, please feel free to call us later today or during the week. Operator, please open the lines for questions. Certainly. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to be placed in the question queue, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing star one. One moment please while we poll for questions. Our first question today is coming from Ebrahim Poonawala from Bank of America. Your line is now live. Good morning, Ebrahim. Good morning, Tom. I guess strong quarter from a loan growth PPNR standpoint. I think you mentioned comfort with performance on net interest margins. Maybe if we can just start there. Give us a sense of where you see the margin going based on the rate hikes we've had, the one we'll probably get this afternoon. If you think about NYCB standalone, and beyond that, just how do we think about funding costs and deposit betas over the next few quarters, given all the actions you've taken to improve the deposit mix? Sure. Abraham, let me start off by saying we're super excited about the fact that we're getting close to our engagement coming to a marriage with Flagstar. Hopefully, as we get closer to our expectation of closing that transaction, we look at an asset-sensitive institution merging with a liability-sensitive institution, and we're very positive about the outlook of the margin. With that being said, I'll have Mr. Pinto go through some of the details on where we think, given the most recent changes in interest rates and how that would impact the pro forma company. John? Yeah. When we look at the margin, you know, we were very happy with the second quarter as it continued the expansion of our margin that really has begun since the fourth quarter of 2019. As Tom mentioned in his opening remarks, you know, the Flagstar deal does provide many benefits, and one of them is combining an asset-sensitive institution into our liability-sensitive balance sheet. In order to illustrate this, we looked at the third quarter, and if we assumed that the Flagstar deal closed on July 1st, 2022, we estimated what the net interest margin would look like excluding prepayment fees, and it would come out to be approximately 2.68%. That'd be a 30 basis point increase to what we reported as margin ex-prepay in the second quarter. Yet when we look at the overall benefit would be about 45 basis points. What that entails is the 15 basis point reduction that we would on a standalone basis expect to see in the third quarter. This assumes the 75 basis point increase later today, and a 50 basis point increase in September, which is what currently is consensus. It also doesn't include any of the impacts from the, from purchase accounting, as we believe that will be beneficial but won't be as material given the Flagstar balance sheet, which is primarily floating rate on the loan side. Got it. Just a few follow-up, John. One, I think I caught in there 15 basis points standalone NIM compression, 2.68%, if the deal was closed as of July 1st, 2022. Just want to make sure that's right. Why does Flagstar not assume any margin expansion standalone? I think if I saw the slides right, the NIM was 3.88% in June, and the guidance is in 3.80%-3.90% range. Is there something one-off going on there, or do we expect the margin to kind of level off? I think that what John is saying is that the pro forma margin is anticipated to go up on a combined basis. That includes the assets of Flagstar merging into NYCB. Yeah. If you look at, too, the investor presentation that Flagstar put out. Right. You know, they put out that range of 3.80%-3.90%. We're using the medium range. Right. To come up with these numbers, we're using the midpoint of that range. You also got to remember, if you look at their presentation, that they did put on a swap. That has impacts to the quarters as well. Oh, okay. When we put the two companies together, you know, that swap will get marked to market and removed so that the asset-sensitive balance sheet that Flagstar had back in December will be what we would have going forward. Got it. That's really, I think, the difference. Got it. Just one separate question, Tom, around the deal. Obviously sounds like both sides still very much on board with the deal. Just give us an update in terms of where we are and to the extent you can in terms of the OCC application process and how realistic is an October 31st, 2022 deal close timeline? Both teams are very confident. We filed our application right after we made the announcement. We made the announcement in April that we were moving to the OCC. I believe in mid-May, we filed our application and waiting to hear back from both the OCC and the Fed, and we feel pretty good about where we are. We're very focused on our closing date, hopefully within that period. We have an October deadline in contract. You know, when we're pushing forward to get the closing done. As far as the teams are concerned, everyone's working on a daily basis. It's been a very long engagement. We're looking forward to the marriage, and hopefully, that'll happen within that timeframe. Nothing more I can say as far as specificity around the process other than it's in the hands of the regulators. Got it. Thanks for taking my questions. Sure. Thank you. Next question is coming from Steven Alexopoulos from JP Morgan Chase & Co. Your line is now live. Hi, good morning, everyone. Morning, Steven. How are you? Good. I wanted to start off with a theoretical question, maybe for John. If we assume the deal closed and these two banks came together, a color you just gave to Ebrahim's question was helpful. But once these two banks are together, for every 25 basis point increase in the Fed funds rate, what do you expect your NIM to do? On a consolidated basis, what we would expect is that we will no longer be, of course, as liability sensitive as we are today. We'll be neutral to slightly asset sensitive. We would expect an increase going forward to the margin. You know, that depends on market conditions and of course, the rate increases at the time. Yeah, Steven, I would just add to that point, that you know, we're going to be in a very unique position. Given the Fed pivot on interest rates and our ability to look at this combined company and positioning it best going forward on the balance sheet perspective. If you think about liabilities, for example, we, when we started this process of merging with Flagstar, our liabilities were substantially out of the money. In this environment, we are probably par to slightly in the money. We have tremendous flexibility of exiting what we'll call wholesale liabilities and use that opportunity to better position the bank for the long term on the proper funding mechanism for on a combined basis. As you know, I've been very public about this, we're focusing on gathering better liabilities to fund ourselves more commercial bank-like. The marketplace right now will give us a great opportunity if we have balance sheet repositioning opportunities. We feel highly confident that when we come together, we will look at the balance sheet very carefully and focus in on how we can position ourselves best to generate shareholder returns going forward. It's basically what you're saying, Tom, is when the banks come together, we should think of you as being maybe neutral to very slightly asset sensitive. Over time, you plan to remix the balance sheet, make yourself a bit more asset sensitive, but that's not going to be the case day one. That's basically the message, right? I think day one, we're focusing on, you know, neutral to asset sensitive, and I think we'll get there with just the flexibility of repositioning. I want to make this statement very clear. The liability base is now significantly closer to par and/or in the money. That means a year ago, that substantial, we'll call it, out of the money liability position has changed in value because of the market condition. That gives us a lot of flexibility to figure out how we're going to fund this institution without taking consequences to capital to restructure. This gives us more options to think about where the balance sheet is going forward. As far as the lines of businesses, I think Mr. Pinto was very clear. They have mostly floating rates, so there's not really a lot of negative marks that would be involved in their positioning because it's mostly floating rate type of investments and loans. We have some good flexibility there on the funding side. At the same time, we're going to look at our asset classes and focus on the verticals and put the bank in a position to benefit from the current market, which is, you know, obviously in a rising rate environment. Now, obviously, in the long run, we want to be more commercial bank-like. That'll take time, but the focus is to focus on funding for the bank based on loan-related deposits. The company has done a tremendous job. The passion here is that when we make a loan, we get the deposit balances. If we don't get the deposit balances, we're not making the loan. That's a cultural change at NYCB, and we've done some great progress there. That is going to be the focus going forward on a combined basis. That's helpful. Final question. If we look at the banking- as- a- service deposits, can you talk about. I'm trying to understand how these are changing your liability sensitive profile, standalone or not. Can you talk about the cost of those deposits, right? You saw strong growth, particularly the fintech bucket in the quarter. What do you pay for those deposits in the quarter? Are these changing your liability sensitive profile, or you're just replacing expensive wholesale funds with basically market rate banking- as- a- service deposits in the fintech bucket? Thanks. Well, Steven, it's a combination of a lot of unique attributes here. There's really three functions here. If you think about Flagstar, they're one of the top originators in the country, number six in origination, number five in servicing. We're building out banking- as- a- service on the mortgage side. We feel highly confident that when we merge together, that could be a substantial business on a combined basis. They have lack of a need for certain liabilities given their structure. We have a desire to bring in lots of liabilities. The banking- as- a- service tied to mortgage clearly is market. It is what it is, and it's market. If you have the custodial relationship, it's close to zero. If you don't, you work with the customer, you have lending relationships. You could work out relationships in respect to reasonable funding, and it's going to be cheaper than Federal Home Loan Bank advances. Yes, it does have a cost, but we believe it's more attractive than Federal Home Loan Bank advances and other wholesale type liabilities. When you focus on the government side, which again, hasn't really kicked in yet, but we have tremendous contracts in the works. We won the State of New Jersey. That's one of the few contracts that are currently in the pipeline that we're getting benefit from currently. Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training, Rhode Island Department of Health, U.S. Department of the Treasury, which is a substantial potential benefit for this company. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Commonwealth of Virginia. These are all wins for the bank. These roll out over time, and the cost of those deposits are zero. When that starts to kick in going forward, that's going to be a significant catalyst to our funding position at zero cost funding. Now, this takes time to onboard. I don't want to get ahead of myself as far as giving you guidance on when these kick in, but we believe over the next 12-24 months, this will be a very sizable piece of our business. In addition, we also share in fees. It's in addition to having a zero cost deposit liability, and a tremendous opportunity to get our My Banking Direct brand out there within the marketplace. We also get a sharing of fees and a tremendous benefit on float. The area on the digital side, we'll call it the neobank, fintech relationships. We're being very proactive not only to just bank the client and be a BaaS provider for their services, but also focus on corporate-type accounts that we can now bank their relationships. We're working some fabulous tailwinds into that particular area. Most importantly, we're seeing results. This is tied to short-term interest rates. Mr. Pinto is going to get through the specific details, but each deal has its own structure, and we're very proactive on building this out over time. We believe there's a need for a bank of our size to compete against some of the smaller players that are taking the banking-as-a-service business model. We feel this has been a very good ramp-up for the company as an alternative funding solution to the traditional Federal Home Loan Bank advance market and non-traditional wholesale funding to focus on a diversified deposit base. John, if you want to maybe talk about the funding side as far as cost of those types of liabilities. Yeah. Excluding the government piece that Tom talked about, when you're looking at the mortgage- as- a- service or certain of the banking- as- a- service transactions, they're primarily tied to effective Fed funds plus or minus a spread. You know, a small spread usually either way. You know, they are tied to short-term interest rates, but as Tom mentioned, they're still a more effective funding source than the Federal Home Loan Bank, given the inefficiencies potentially in that market. They are specifically tied normally to effective Fed funds. Yeah. Plus or minus. I think, Steve, one other attribute of this that's very interesting is that as we work with these clients and look at opportunities on the banking side, we also work with excess liquidity coming off of their actual product that they're selling in the marketplace. So, money comes in and out. Those are all operating accounts, which is starting to build up very nicely for the bank. So we're looking at it not only as just a BaaS relationship, but as a commercial bank relationship as well. That's been very, very positive the past six months. Okay. Thanks for taking all my questions. Sure. Thank you. Next question is coming from Christopher Marinac from Janney Montgomery Scott. Your line is now live. Thanks. Good morning. John and Tom, can you talk about liquidity and access to liquidity going forward? Then also maybe mention Flagstar. They mentioned their drop in liquidity ratio from March to June. From a liquidity perspective, what we've been doing, we're in a better spot now than we've been historically, especially when you look at on-balance sheet liquidity and even some of the cash balances and unencumbered securities that we've been holding on the books. A s we continue to pay down home loan bank borrowings, our liquidity by bringing in deposits just continues to increase. W e're very comfortable with the liquidity levels that we have. You can see we're keeping a little extra cash on the balance sheet to be conservative, as we bring in these banking-as-a-service customers just to ensure that we fully understand the duration related to them, and we don't have any surprises. That's why you're seeing some heightened cash and unencumbered securities on our balance sheet, which we'll continue as we continue to bring in deposits and pay down wholesale borrowing. From the liquidity side, we feel very confident where we stand now, and the potential to bring in more deposits as we go forward only enhances that. Chris, I would add to John's commentary that we've been very conservative on putting the cash to work. We've been waiting on the sidelines, given this environment. Short-term liquidity could be invested in a spread right now, which is advantageous to the bank. We've been very cautious there. We're looking forward as if we have excess liquidity, even with short-term Treasuries, we can make a spread on that excess. Okay, great. That's helpful. On Flagstar, should we think a bit less about where their ratios are at 6.30 and more about kind of what you will do with it together because you have a lot of optionality as they come on? Absolutely. I agree. Absolutely. Yes. We're getting closer. Hopefully soon. Hopefully, we'll get to the finish line. Clearly, this is going to be very opportunistic when we look at the choices of the balance sheet on a combined basis. Great. One quick one on prepayments. Any visibility to them staying high for Q3? I hear some commentary about the mortgage market in our backyard. We've had elevated levels, and the second quarter was better than the first quarter. We see the continuation of that. We're very bullish about activity. There's pent-up refi opportunity. There really is a lot of customers that need to come to the table here, given they're coming off of low threes. Market's close to 5% now. I believe that'll accelerate prepayment activity. We see good visibility right now. We're seeing, we're going through July. We have some good loan levels in already. I'd say it still continues at a positive trend, but we feel they can go much higher from here if rates continue to trade higher here. Now obviously if it goes the other way, they may wait on the sidelines. We have a decent amount of loans coming due in the next two years that need to make a decision, and all of those coupons are out of the money, so they would have to pay up to get either just a modification and/or a refi. We're being very selective on what we want to do going forward. We feel that in this environment, you know, our conservative underwriting standards is key, and the fact that turning the coupon for us is more viable than focusing on explosive growth. The growth that we had this year for the first half was significantly front-loaded. I believe, if you think about the rest of the year, our goal here is to turn the coupon. We'll have some moderate growth for the rest of the second half of the year, and we'll still be well above what we'll say at least meet our expectations of high single-digit net loan growth. Last year, that growth was back-loaded. This year it seems like it was front-loaded. We're confident that we'll meet our goals and objectives of that high single-digit net loan growth number. We also are focusing very carefully on turning the coupon. If we can turn that low 3s or mid-3 coupon to upper 4s, low 5s, that's very meaningful for the margin going forward. Great. Thank you, Tom, and thank you, John. Sure. Thank you. Next question is coming from Steve Moss from B. Riley Securities. Your line is now live. Morning. Good morning. Maybe going back to the banking-as-a-service deposits here, looked like that was back-end weighted for the quarter. I'm curious if that's primarily due to your Circle relationship that you announced late in the quarter. I believe that's part of it. It's about that particular relationship with a global stablecoin exchange company, without naming names, is about just under $3 billion. The rest is other technology companies on the tech side. I did break it out on my prepared remarks. On the tech side of that amount, I think it was $5.5 billion, $2.8 billion is where we're focusing on stablecoin exchange. That's for they have liquidity requirements on their cash equivalents. We're one of six banks that service that relationship. Okay. That's helpful. Then in terms of, you know, on the liability side here, curious, you know, on a standalone basis, you guys have about, I think, $7.5 billion or so putables that come due or that could come due in the next six months. Curious, you know, what are your thoughts on how you're going to fund them if they near term? If so, look, I think this goes into the commentary that I discussed about the pro forma balance sheet. Optionality is on the table here to look at the liability base and the asset base upon consolidation of these two businesses coming together, and the flexibility of something that's either in the money or split apart without any consequence of exit gives us lots of flexibility. What we've been doing in the short term, we've been either refinancing it or paying it off. If you know from our prepared remarks, we're down $2 billion for the first six months and reducing our wholesale dependency at the Federal Home Loan Bank System, that is a focus of the bank. Clearly having that putable position right now at a position that we could be flexible and look at the balance sheet on a go-forward basis, we look at that as an opportunity. Clearly, if we continue to see deposit growth, which we believe we will, we have a significant amount of other initiatives working into Q3 and beyond. We're not going to give guidance on deposit growth, but we're still doing a lot of hard work on bringing in new depository relationships, both on the BaaS side as well as loan related. That'll also be a catalyst to deal with advances as they get put back to us. Okay. One more question on the liability side with CDs. Curious, what is in the bucket to reprice this quarter, at what rate? Maybe just trying to figure out what is the dynamic portfolio in terms of, like, the average duration? Right. If you look at our maturing CDs in the third quarter, it's $3.6 billion, and that's about a 50 basis point rate. We've had a really good quarter in the second quarter with retention of our CDs. When you look at our current CD rates, you know, nine months is about 1%, 12 months 1.75%, two years is around 2%, give or take. We brought in money under 1% in the second quarter. It'll be up a little, of course, in the third, but we don't think it'll be dramatically higher than that given what we've seen so far this quarter and that, you know, the September raise happens so late in September. When you look on the borrowing side, you mentioned the putables and, you know, what our thoughts are there. It's only about $575 million of wholesale borrowings that are actually maturing in the quarter, and that's at a 1.81%. All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate all the color. Sure. You got it. Thank you. Next question is coming from Brock Vandervliet from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now live. Morning. Hi. Hey, good morning. So my first question is on loan growth. Y ou had solid loan growth during the quarter. You know, in your prepared remarks, you noted the multifamily portfolio, you continue to gain market share as competition abates. You know, I was wondering first if you could talk to the competitive environment and what you're seeing there. Then just any color in the rebound in specialty finance, and then just on CRE. Notice it hasn't been growing there for some time. Just anything might be keeping you cautious there. Thank you. Sure. I'd say big picture, we're a conservative underwriting shop. We're very focused on continuing holding to our standards of conservatism. Going forward, it's part of our culture, is that we underwrite on a cash flow basis, and it's if deals are tight and/or they don't make sense, they'll leave the portfolio. We're very comfortable with that. That's our philosophy. We feel very good about the loan book, our LTVs, the business in hand in the New York City marketplace. We're also working with some of our Flagstar customers that are moving outside of New York and building out their businesses away from New York City, and that's been very successful. At the same time, as we move with them, we're also working very hard to bring in the full depository relationship. That's been a success for the bank. Historically, the bank has always had a focus on strong underwriting criteria. When you think about the marketplace today, we are focusing on obviously moving the coupon higher, being very selective on CRE, pure CRE, we'll call it, you know, retail and office. You don't really see a whole lot of activity there for years now. We've been not focused on that. From time to time, we have good customer relationships that have a diversified portfolio, and we'll consider financing it. The focus has been, you know, in a niche business being the multifamily non-luxury marketplace. We've done a very strong job over the past 18 months on getting back to a growth story. With that being said, I would say go. My prepared remarks, we had interesting backloaded growth last year. It was slow in the beginning of 2021. At the end of 2021, we had a surge of activity given the shift of interest rates. That continued into the first half of 2022, and we think that was a front-loaded story. With that being said, I feel very confident that we'll meet our target of high single digit net loan growth for the company on both multifamily as well as specialty finance. On specialty finance, we had a couple of years of uncertainty on utilization given the general economy, COVID and the supply chain issues. That seems like that has changed quite a bit for us. A lot of that has been drawdowns. The good news there is that, you know, these are well underwritten credits that we're very comfortable with. More importantly, they're committed for and they draw down, and we get nice returns on that because it's 75% of that book is floating rate. That's been an explosive six months. I don't envision that same type of activity for the second half of this year. I think specialty finance, even on a flat scenario, had a phenomenal year. It'll probably grow a little bit this year, but on a managed perspective. I think the target for the company is high single-digit net loan growth with the focus on really moving the coupons within the portfolio. We're focusing very actively on that bucket of loans that are coming due to reprice and/or their option comes due. We're being creative there to get them to the table sooner so we can move that low 3% coupon into a high 4%, low 5% coupon, and that will add value to the margin. Okay, great. If I could, just one more question. This is for Flagstar. I know the gain on loan sale was $27 million in 2Q, and I believe in the deck you're guiding flat in 3Q. I know a few quarters ago there was guidance on the expected EBO gain on sales. Just want to get an update on how much you had in the first half of this year. Any expectations for the second half. Just wondering if these kind of finish and they'll be done by this year or if any of that spills into 2023. Yeah. Tom, yeah, we'll let Lee take that one. Yeah, sure. In the second quarter, we had just under $1 million of EBO gain. What I would tell you is, as we move forward, the EBO gains are going to be relatively neutral. You might get a little bit similar to Q2, but it isn't gonna make a meaningful difference to the quarter's gain on sale. With the rising rate environment, you know, that's because you can't securitize them all at a gain. Those that were securitizing at a gain in some instances are being offset by those that are underwater. We've made the decision in certain instances to just keep them on the balance sheet in portfolio. Net-net, you're not gonna see a big impact from EBO as it relates to the gain on sale going forward. Okay, great. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Next question today is coming from Matthew Breese from Stephens. Your line is now live. Good morning. Curious, what is the standalone New York Community NIM outlook for the third quarter? I think John gave that already. Do you want me to? Yeah. NIM ex prepaid down 15 basis points. Down 15 basis points. Okay. Could you provide within that what the period end spot rate was for New York Community deposits as a whole? What was the cost of deposits at the end of the period? At the end of June 30th? Yep. I'll get that for you. Total interest-bearing deposits, 53 basis points. Okay. Outside of the partnership with Circle, do you have any other stablecoin relationships that we should be aware of? Just, you know, given some of the disruption in that market, could you just talk about, you know, the quality of those relationships if you do have others and some of the dynamics of how they keep the stablecoin stable? We have none other than the one that you've mentioned. We're very confident in their positioning as a global exchange for fiat currency. We, as indicated, are a cash provider for, you know, obviously one of six banks that holds cash for their liquidity requirements. It's not focused on a combined basis where we're commingled. It's clearly just a cash positioning. We're one of those six banks that provide banking services to them to have a percentage of their allocation to cash. I believe if you recall, their liquidity requirement is 30% of every dollar that they need to invest needs to be invested in cash. I believe the other 70% is in short-term treasury. USDC happens to be obviously one of the more stable coins. We're very comfortable with that relationship, and we're working on a number of initiatives in respect to potential partners in the future. Clearly, when it comes to our positioning, it's really just the corporate cash account that we have with our partnership there. Got it. Great. Okay. You know, the last one for me is just to get a temperature check on obtaining regulatory approval for the deal. From a corporate structure standpoint, the Flagstar deal has a few moving pieces, one of which is Flagstar seeking a national bank charter within the OCC versus an FSA. I'm curious if any critical milestones at this point have been reached and approved, and if you can speak to any of them, including that national bank charter switch. I'm going to defer to Alessandro and Lee. Obviously, just let me just start off by saying we feel very confident where we are. As indicated, we filed our application in mid-May. We're coming to the end of July and things are progressing, but I'll push that over to Alessandro. Alessandro? Yeah. Thank you, Tom. I don't have anything to add relative to the regulatory status. We're working through the process and as Tom said, we remain confident that we'll get the approvals we need. As it relates to the national bank piece of it, Flagstar, we've been considering moving to a national charter since that option became available to us a couple of years ago when Congress passed a bill that included that provision. It's just sensible to do it in parallel with this application. So, don't read anything into the national bank piece of it. It's just an easy way to get there. We would've gone there if we were independent, we would've gone there, because, you know, we're not as thrift-like as we used to be. As you think about that going forward, the national bank charter just makes a lot more sense for our organization and for the combined organization as well. Again, just don't read anything into that. There's no complication associated with the application because of the national bank piece of it. Understood. Okay. That's all I had. Appreciate you taking my questions. Thank you. Thank you. Next question is coming from Christopher McGratty from KBW. Your line is now live. Oh, great. Hey, good morning. Maybe John, a couple clarifying questions to make sure I heard you right. The spot deposit cost was 53 basis points for the entire quarter. Is that also. You said it was also the June 30th cost? No, that was the average, right? Not the spot. Sorry about that. Correct. No worry. Do you have the spot while I have it? No, I don't have that with me. We'll follow up. You can get John to follow up with that. That's great. Yep. Did you provide, like you typically do, the expectation for expenses for the quarter? Sorry, I may have missed that. Yeah. No, 1.35%, very consistent, you know, where we were in the second quarter and the first quarter. We're comfortable with our original guidance in that $540 million range. We beat it by a little bit in the first two quarters. We think we'll be there. Okay. Last one. Given, you know, the market's expectations that we're in some sort of a slowdown in the economy, can you just speak to what you think is normalized losses for that spec fin book, given some of the cyclicality there? Thanks. Just in general, I mean, we haven't had a 30-day delinquency in nine years, so we're pretty confident in our underwriting. Remember we're a credit buy-up shop there. We do a great job on sourcing through what makes sense for the bank going forward. It is a unique business model for us. It doesn't come with funding, but we are focused on the credit side. We have not had a 30-day delinquency in nine years. We don't envision any real losses there, but maybe John can specifically talk about on a CECL perspective, how that would kick in. Yeah. Even from a CECL perspective of, you know, where the modeling comes out, very low losses historically, and currently, given what we've seen. I mean, it's just so the collateral on it is just so strong. The performance has been so strong as well. You know, the risk ratings on that portfolio are extremely low. It's just a very high credit portfolio that we've built over the last almost 10 years. Yeah. Super senior secure. Looking forward to the repricing of it. Obviously, we managed it for the past decade in a low interest rate environment. In this elevated interest rate environment on the short end of the curve, we should see some good benefits on the yield side there. Great. Thank you. Thank you. We've reached the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to management for any further closing comments. Thank you again for taking the time to join us this morning and for your interest in NYCB. We look forward to chatting with you again at the end of October when we will discuss our performance for the third quarter of 2022. Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day. 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