Good morning. I'm Christopher Becker, President and Chief Executive Officer of The First of Long Island Corporation. I will act as the Chairman of our 2023 annual meeting of stockholders. I will now open the meeting. Welcome to those in attendance. After the formal part of the meeting concludes, I will give a presentation. I will now take us through the formal part of the meeting, beginning with the following announcements. Proof of due notice of meeting was mailed on 17 March 2023 to shareholders of record at the close of business on 3 March 2023. An affidavit of mailing has been filed. The proxy votes have been counted. The certification was filed by the proxies. The Inspector of Election has taken his oath of office, and his oath has been filed. To date, we have received proxies representing 78% of the total shares outstanding, which constitutes a quorum. Our proxy committee is the members of the board of directors who are not standing for re-election. Our Inspector of Election is the Chief Auditor of the company, Robert Filosa. Before I take you through the proposals, please be aware that a registered participant can ask questions by typing them into the Submit a Question box of this online meeting, located by scrolling down on the meeting portal. Any questions on the proposals should be submitted now; I will address them after reading the proposals. Voting on the proposals may also take place during the meeting. The proposals for voting at today's meeting are Proposal one, to elect seven directors to hold office for two-year terms and until their successors are duly elected and qualified. Those directors are Christopher Becker, J. Abbott R. Cooper, John J. Desmond, Edward J. Haye, Louisa M. Ives, Milbrey Rennie Taylor, Walter C. Teagle III. Proposal two, to conduct a non-binding advisory vote to approve the compensation paid to the corporation's named executive officers. Proposal three, to conduct a non-binding advisory vote regarding the frequency of voting on the compensation paid to the corporation's named executive officers. Proposal four, to ratify the appointment of Crowe LLP as the corporation's independent registered public accounting firm for 2023. Since no other matters are properly before the meeting, that concludes the presentation of the proposals. Voting should now be completed. Since there are no questions, will the Inspector of Election kindly proceed to count the votes cast upon these proposals and report accordingly. The Inspector of Election has delivered his report, and proposals one, two, and four have passed, and stockholders chose a frequency of every year to hold a non-binding advisory vote to approve the compensation paid to the corporation's named executive officers. Having concluded all the business to be brought before the stockholders, I will now declare the annual meeting adjourned. As I stated in my opening remarks, we have a presentation at today's meeting. Please submit your questions during the presentation. I will address questions related to today's meeting after the presentation. On slide two, please note our safe harbor statement on forward-looking remarks. On slide three, you see our board of directors. In addition to the directors elected at today's meeting, also with us today are Paul T. Canarick, Alexander L. Kober, Steven B. Murphy, Peter Quick, Denise Strain, and Eric J. I appreciate the service and dedication of our directors. I can assure you they are committed to meeting evolving corporate governance expectations in oversight of your investment in our company. On slide four, our executives with us today are Tanweer Ansari, Internal Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, Chris Hilton, Chief Lending Officer, Jay McConie, Chief Financial Officer, Richard Perro, Chief Retail Officer, Suzanne Pfeffer, Chief Information Officer, Mike Spolarich, Chief Credit Officer, and Janet Verneuille, Chief Risk Officer. On slide fivee. On 1 October 2022, our banking subsidiary, The First National Bank of Long Island, branded as First National Bank LI, celebrated its 95th anniversary and is currently Long Island's longest standing independent bank. We thanked our local markets with a Community First volunteerism program. Our employees donated over 1,000 hours of their time to aid local charities in fighting food insecurity, helping seniors, caring for animals, and building housing. On slide six, each branch held an event on the anniversary of its opening date to recognize our 95th anniversary and thank thousands of loyal customers. On slide seven, in our 95th year, we cut the ribbon on two new East End of Long Island locations in East Hampton and Southampton. We have been warmly received as the new local bank in town. Continuing our branch optimization plan, our Port Jefferson branch relocated to a new Main Street Village location. Bohemia and Hauppauge will move into new space in the first half of 2023. Our optimization plan is all about getting the right number of branches in the right locations with the right bankers. On slide eight, year 95 also had a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a new and more centrally located corporate headquarters at 275 Broad Hollow Road in Melville, New York. Held in October, we combined the Melville grand opening with a 95th anniversary party. A couple of hundred valued customers and friends stopped by to wish us well. Not only did we pick a fantastic location on Long Island to consolidate our operation, our occupancy expense is projected lower in 2023 as a number of inefficient locations in Glen Head were sold. On slide nine, our roots in Glen Head are an important part of our culture. Our main office branch still stands at its original location in Glen Head since 1927. The Glen Head community remains a gracious host for the bank. On slide 10, we are proud of our growth over the past decade. Record net income in 2022 of $46.9 million culminated our 10th consecutive year of earnings per share growth, giving our company a spot on the KBW Bank Honor Roll. We prioritize rewarding loyal shareholders, so we have increased our dividend per share for the past 10 years also. On slide 11, we believe shareholders value our consistent financial performance. Over a long history, we have produced a steady return on average assets hovering around the 1% mark and return on average equity at the 10% plus mark. For 2022, our ROA and ROE were the best they've been in over a decade. On slide 12, when measured against peer averages, our metrics are generally as good or better than peers. We always focus on remaining efficient and true to the conservative underwriting standards that maintain strong quality in our loan portfolio. On slide 13, the total return of FLIC stock has followed the trend of the group of peer bank holding companies listed in our proxy statement. Even with stock prices down due to numerous world events, the 10-year returns of our stock with dividends reinvested remain attractive as we generated a 7% compound annual growth rate, which nearly doubled a shareholder's investment over the decades. On slide 14, our leverage capital ratio remains near 10%. We believe our capital position benefits us in the current environment. On slide 15, a key initiative since the beginning of 2020 has been to remix the structure of our balance sheet. Here, we highlight several of the changes that have helped improve our net interest margin and reflect the commercial relationship-based organization we strategize to be. We have shifted the loan portfolio makeup to commercial from consumer. Consumer consists mostly of residential mortgages. We replaced high-cost, more volatile promotional CDs and borrowings with non-interest-bearing checking deposits. On slide 16, you can see the benefits of the remix in the balance sheet. After a long decline in the margin, we have been able to show a three-year positive trend. This bank has not seen an increase in margin in a decade. On slide 17, remixing the balance sheet did present some headwinds to growth in 2020 and 2021 as we allowed approximately $600 million of residential mortgages to amortize down or prepay. 2022 turned a corner as total loans grew nearly 7% and average loans outstanding grew 10%. Long-term growth rates remain well above 10% for total loans. Commercial loans continued their uninterrupted climb for the past 10 years, which includes a nearly 14% compound annual growth rate. On slide 18, we also reached our target mix in the loan portfolio of at least 60% commercial, nearly opposite the mix of just three years ago. On slide 19, risk and commercial real estate exposure are currently in the headlines as office vacancies and rate resets are stressing cash flows. In the left chart, you see our property type exposure in the commercial real estate portfolio with the largest concentration in multifamily properties. Please note over 60% of the multifamily portfolio include a percentage of rent-stabilized apartments generally considered to have lower vacancy rates. Office exposure is limited to 13% of the commercial real estate portfolio. In the right-hand chart, we broke out our non-owner occupied office exposure of just under $213 million of the $1.9 billion outstanding. A majority of our office exposure is in Suffolk and Nassau Counties. We only have $1 million of non-owner occupied office exposure in New York County, better known as Manhattan. On slide 20, credit quality continues to produce industry-leading numbers. Non-accruals were zero at 31 December 2022, and were still zero at 31 March 2023. Net charge-offs have been just two- basis points of total loans for the past two years, and our reserve coverage ratio has remained consistent. On slide 21, as of year-end, we saw healthy long-term growth rates in deposits, nearly 8% over a 10-year period for total deposits, and more importantly, nearly 10% over the same 10-year period for non-interest-bearing checking deposits. On slide 22, deposits reflect the same story as loans when compared to three years ago, moving the balance sheet to a more desired mix. For 2022, total deposits are up about $150 million over 2021. Most importantly, our non-interest-bearing checking balances ended the year at 38% of total deposits and averaged over 40% of total deposits throughout the year. On slide 23, our overall funding mix has shifted toward non-interest-bearing checking accounts, consistent with our focus on growing relationship business. On slide 24, while 2022 was a year of celebration and success, 2023 is proving to be most challenging. Following supply chains disruptions, record US government stimulus, and the Fed delaying rate increases, insisting that inflation was transitory, among other events, resulted in inflation that approached 10% at its peak in 2022. The Fed responded with rate increases not seen in over 40 years. The banking industry is now dealing with a one-year shock up rate scenario of 475- basis points and an inverted yield curve from the three-month to the 10-year of approximately 150- basis points. The rate increases resulted in significant unrealized losses in bank investment securities portfolios. In the case of Silicon Valley Bank, a run on deposits caused them to sell their entire investment portfolio at a $1.8 billion after-tax loss, resulting in the need to recapitalize their bank. Before that could happen, regulatory agencies shut them down. If our company sold its entire investment portfolio as of 31 March 2023, capital would remain strong and our leverage capital ratio would still be approximately 8.7%. Recent bank failures were caused in part by rapid growth of large uninsured deposit exposures from venture capital, fintech, and cryptocurrency firms. First National Bank LI purposely does not solicit or have exposure to these types of businesses. We have just a handful of slides remaining. If you wish to submit a question, please do so now. On slide 25, the bank's deposit base remained stable throughout the turmoil of the first quarter of 2023. Total deposits generally ranged from $3.4 to 3.5 billion during the quarter and averaged $3.47 billion. As of yesterday, our deposits were $3.45 billion. All numbers are in line with total deposits at year-end 2022. Our customers have been loyal and appreciate their relationship with our First National Bank LI bankers. On slide 26, the bank's uninsured and uncollateralized deposits were 38% of total deposits at 31 March 2023. As a reference point, at year-end 2022, Signature Bank had uninsured and uncollateralized, collateralized deposits totaling 88% of total deposits. You can see our uninsured and uncollateralized deposit levels have been consistent but trending lower over the past couple of years. Many peers that operate in our market have very similar ratios of uninsured and uncollateralized deposits, mainly from working with businesses that need amounts greater than $250,000 in their accounts to operate and meet payroll. The bank's liquidity position includes availability of $1.5 billion under collateralized borrowing lines at the Federal Reserve Bank and Federal Home Loan Bank of New York. We also had $143 million in cash on hand and excess securities collateral available for pledging and an uncollateralized and uncommitted line of $20 million with a correspondent bank. Our borrowing lines are well in excess of our uninsured, uncollateralized deposits. On slide 27, recent events have pushed bank stock prices down significantly. The average stock price of our proxy peer group, KBW Regional Bank Index and KBW Bank Index declined 23%, 24%, and 34% respectively from 31 March 2022 through 31 March 2023. Our stock price is down 31% during the same period. We certainly do not like to see our stock down 30%, but it is consistent with the market decline in bank stocks. On slide 28, the bank has taken the following steps in the first quarter of 2023 to lessen our liability sensitivity and minimize margin contraction from future rate increases. First, we completed an interest rate swap to convert $300 million of fixed rate residential mortgages to floating rate for three years. The bank receives the overnight SOFR floating rate and pays a fixed rate. As of 31 March 2023, the swap was in the money by approximately 100- basis points and providing annual interest income of $2.9 million. Second, the bank sold $145 million of municipal bonds with a tax equivalent yield of 3.32% and a duration of 1.5 years, and reinvested $135 million of the proceeds into US government-guaranteed SBA floating rate securities with an average yield of approximately 5.38% and a duration of 0.3 years. The remaining proceeds were left in cash for liquidity purposes. The bank recorded a pre-tax loss of $3.4 million. The earn back on the loss at the time of the transaction was just 1.25 years based on an increase in net interest income of $2.8 million. While 2023 performance metrics will not measure up to our historical averages, our deposit base has remained loyal. Our asset quality, always a hallmark of this company, remains strong. Our leverage ratio at 31 March 2023 was 9.94%, nearly double the definition of well capitalized of 5%. Stockholders' equity consists of common stock, surplus, retained earnings, and nothing else. On slide 29, rates and the shape of the yield curve will eventually change. A historically normal shaped yield curve is expected to benefit the bank and allow our performance metrics to normalize. Let me remind you of our primary strategic initiatives, which are focused on long-term performance. Recruit banking professionals that build relationships. Structure the balance sheet to optimize financial performance. Optimize the current and prospective branch network. Improve the quality and utilization of technology. Grow fee income. Improve the company's name recognition and community standing. Attract and retain employees that support our objectives. That concludes today's presentation. Please bear with me briefly while I check for questions. We do have a question from a shareholder that there are many CEOs in their Vistage group that would love to move to FNBLI if the technology platform of the bank was improved. The bank is actually in the process in 2023 of upgrading its technology both in its core system, its platform and teller system, and its commercial online banking system. That's it's been a major project that's been going on since summer of 2022, and it's currently projected to be completed in October of 2023. It's a bank-wide effort and we're very excited about it. We think this is going to certainly enhance our abilities. Our customers have been very, very satisfied, and we've heard very good feedback from our current systems. We think it's very important to continue to upgrade and include the newest and latest technology that customers and certainly our business clients come to expect. That concludes the questions that we have today. Shareholders are always welcome to contact me at the bank. I'm happy to have those discussions and talk through any questions and concerns. Thank you all for attending our virtual meeting today.
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