Good morning. I'm Christopher Becker, President and Chief Executive Officer of The First of Long Island Corporation. I will act as Chairman of our 2024 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 March 15, 2024, to shareholders of record at the close of business on March 4, 2024. An affidavit of mailing has been filed. The proxy votes have been counted, and a 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 77% 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 reelection. Our inspector of election is the Chief Auditor of the company, Robert Colosa. 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 on this online meeting located by scrolling down on the meeting portal. Any questions on the proposals should be submitted now, and 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 1, to elect four directors to hold office for two-year terms and until their successors are duly elected and qualified. Those directors are Paul T. Canarick, Peter Quick, Denise Strain, Eric J. Tveter. Proposal 2, to conduct a non-binding advisory vote to approve the compensation paid to the corporation's named executive officers. Proposal 3, to ratify the appointment of Crowe LLP as the corporation's independent registered public accounting firm for 2024. Since no other matters are properly before the meeting, that concludes the presentation of the proposals. Voting should now be complete. 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 all proposals have passed. Having concluded all of the business to report 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, and I will address the questions related to today's meeting at the end of the presentation. On slide 2, please note our safe harbor statement on forward-looking remarks. On slide 3, throughout the presentation, we compare our company to a proxy peer group listed here. This group of peers was selected by our compensation committee and reflects companies' similar in size, business models, and geography. Our compensation committee also uses this peer group when considering changes to executive compensation. On slide 4, you see our board of directors. In addition to the directors elected at today's meeting, also with us today are J. Abbott R. Cooper, John J. Desmond, Edward J. Haye, Louisa M. Ives, Milbrey Rennie Taylor, and Walter C. Teagle III. I appreciate the service and dedication of our directors. I can assure you they are committed to appropriate oversight of your investment in our company. On slide 5, Alex Cover and Steve Murphy retired this year. I was fortunate to collaborate closely with both gentlemen over the past 13 years. Their oversight of the company has been done with care and understanding of what they believed to be in the best interests of the shareholders. Their contributions will be missed. We wish them well. On slide 6, our executives with us today are Chris Hilton, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Lending Officer, Janet Verneuille, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Tanweer Ansari, Executive Vice President, Chief Risk Officer, and General Counsel, Rick Perro, Executive Vice President and Chief Retail Officer, Susanne Pheffer, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer, and Mike Spolarich, Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer. On slide 7, just a few reminders. You can find current information on the company at the Securities and Exchange Commission's website, sec.gov, under the ticker symbol FLIC. We are opening our fourth branch on the East End of Long Island in Southold this June, as noted by the accompanying dot on the map. Our target markets include small and middle-market businesses, professional service firms, not-for-profits, municipalities, and consumers. Our tagline is "Go First, Go Far," signaling the financial success we help our customers achieve. On slide 8, let's review key strengths of our company over the next several slides. On slide 9, we continue to build capital in this environment as strength and stability are a plus. As our company has very little goodwill on our balance sheet, the main difference between our leverage and tangible capital ratios is the unrealized losses on our securities portfolio. If the company were to sell all or a portion of its securities portfolio as part of balance sheet restructuring and potentially recognize some or all of these losses, our capital position would remain strong. Based on the strength of our capital position and market price of FLIC stock, we repurchased approximately $2 million of stock during the first quarter of 2024. On slide 10, the market and a few large regional banks were caught off guard a little over a year ago as today's technology facilitated deposits being quickly transferred out of their banks, and they were not necessarily prepared with contingent lines of liquidity As we ended 2023, our uninsured deposit balances were lower than year-end 2022, as you can see by the gold bars on the left. The bank has liquidity in place in excess of those balances, with over $1.5 billion of available liquidity in the form of cash and securities of $425 million and available borrowings of $1.1 billion. On slide 11, it was a tough year for deposits. A combination of large regional bank concerns and competitive yields on non-deposit products moved deposits out of the banking industry. Total domestic deposits of FDIC-insured institutions decreased 4.8% for the 12 months ended June 30, 2023, according to the FDIC Summary of Deposits report completed by all such institutions as of June 30 each year. We experienced slightly less outmigration over the same period of 4.2%. We remain pleased that 35% of our deposits are in non-interest-bearing checking balances, representing 30% of our total funding mix, which speaks to the strength of the most important relationship part of our business. As companies use these deposits to operate their businesses, the more in checking deposits, the more relationships the bank has. Our overall funding mix has improved with an additional 5% in non-interest-bearing accounts than five years ago. On slide 12, investors can see the improvement made in our mix of loans. Ending 2019, we were heavily concentrated in residential mortgages, as shown in purple. Ending 2023, we have balanced the larger portfolio concentrations of residential, multifamily, and other commercial real estate and continue to grow our commercial and industrial loans in owner-occupied commercial mortgages. The C&I loan category is the most difficult to build, but are the most profitable relationships. Our banking teams, old and new, are to be commended for these improvements. On slide 13, we continue a long history of industry-leading credit quality numbers, and credit quality remains strong. Non-performing loans and net charge-offs remain at very low levels. Many banks in our market provided more granular data on their commercial real estate portfolios over the past few months, especially related to their multifamily portfolios. Like many of you, we compared how we stacked up and were pleased that our weighted average LTV and debt service coverage ratios generally were stronger than other banks in our market. These statistics speak to the benefits of maintaining consistently high-quality underwriting standards through all economies. We are comfortable with our reserve coverage ratio of 0.89% at year-end. On slide 14, in March, we also furnished additional information on our commercial real estate portfolio on a Form 8-K. In that filing, we disclosed the amount of multifamily loans repricing in 2024 and 2025, as you can see on the upper right blue box of this slide. On slide 15, we provide some additional information showing projected weighted average debt service coverage ratios after rate resets. The top section shows our total multifamily portfolio at year-end 2023 of $857 million, with a weighted average debt service coverage ratio of 1.91 times. Assuming multifamily loans repricing in 2024 and 2025, all repriced at market rates as of March 31, 2024, the weighted average debt service coverage ratio would have been 1.82 times. The middle section and lower section show the impact on multifamily loans repricing in 2024 and 2025, respectively, again assuming all repriced at market rates as of March 31, 2024. You can see that the weighted average debt service coverage ratios remain healthy for both years at greater than 1.4 times. On slide 16, our company is known for running an efficient model. Our efficiency did increase in 2023, but it was related to the lower net interest margin. Our expenses remain well-controlled, trending down for the second year in a row. On slide 17, to date, our board of directors has continued our regular dividend declarations, continuing a long history of returning capital to our shareholders. Our current dividend yield of 6.3% is driven by the drop in share price, similar to many peers. Historical dividend yields at FLIC generally have been around 3%. On slide 18, key metrics to peers in the categories of efficiency and asset quality stack up well. We slightly outperformed peers in the efficiency ratio. Our credit quality numbers have been considerably and consistently better than peers. Bank stock valuations generally reflect asset quality during economic downturns. That is why we have often been referred to as a credit safe haven during difficult economic times. On slide 19, creating shareholder value over time is our focus, and we have been able to do just that. We have more than doubled shareholders' investment value over the past 15 years. Long-term total shareholder returns have generally outpaced our peers, although recent stock performance has muted our long-term value creation. Let's review the key challenges of FLIC in the current environment over the next several slides. On slide 21, as I stated when looking at our 15-year total shareholder return on slide 19, recent stock performance has lowered our long-term value creation. While we followed the trend of our peers, our recent numbers have been lower. On slide 22, FLIC stock price was down 26% for the 12 months ending December 31, 2023. The median decrease of our peers was down 14%. This performance has hurt our total shareholder returns, both in the short and long term. Let's look at why. On slide 23, as the Fed increased short-term interest rates from March of 2022 through July of 2023 by 525 basis points, as shown in the bar chart on the left, you can see the effect on our quarterly net interest margins by looking at the yellow line on the right, down 90 basis points. Our yield on interest-earning assets, basically loans and investments, increased 82 basis points during this period, as shown by the purple line. However, our cost of interest-bearing liabilities increased 261 basis points, as shown in green. Losing 90 basis points of margin on $4 billion of interest-earning assets translates to $36 million less of net interest income annually. Cumulative interest-bearing deposit betas have increased throughout the current rate cycle and were 47% through year-end 2023, higher than historical betas of approximately 35%. On slide 24, we show you the impact from the previous slide on 2023's net interest margin and net interest income. The effect on net interest margin phases in over time, so net interest income was down just under $30 million in 2023 compared to 2022. When rates begin to move in our favor, improvement in net interest income will also phase in over time. On slide 25, on the left, you see the chart in last year's annual meeting presentation. We were pleased to display earnings per share of over $2 and a compound average growth rate of over 7% for 10 years. On the right, you see earnings per share for 2023 of $1.16, down 43% from 2022. As just discussed on the previous two slides, our net interest income was nearly $30 million lower year-over-year, and that is why earnings per share decreased from $2.04 to $1.16. Like many community banks, our balance sheet did not react well to a 525 basis point increase in rates in 18 months, especially due to its liability sensitivity. While 2023 was a challenging year after record earnings in 2022, we still earned over $26 million in net income in 2023, as shown in the green box. On slide 26, our history of return on assets and return on equity has been strong, averaging returns of nearly 1% on assets and over 10% on equity. While down in 2023, we produced a 0.62% return on assets and a slightly better than 7% return on equity. On slide 27, our ROA and ROE compared to peers were somewhat lower, largely because of the high concentration in fixed-rate assets, principally residential mortgages. Although we made progress changing the loan mix in recent years and swapping fixed rates to floating, the Fed rate increases and inverted yield curve over the past two years has caused our funding costs to far outpace our ability to book high-quality variable-rate assets, such as commercial and industrial loans. We have just a handful of slides remaining, so if you wish to submit a question, please do so now. On slide 28, looking forward, we remain optimistic. We believe our strengths and opportunities far outweigh the short-term challenges of the current rate environment. On slide 29, we believe our team is focused on the right strategies for the long term. We have been successful recruiting relationship bankers, remixing our balance sheet, improving our branch network, upgrading our technology, refreshing our brand, and maintaining a talented team. On slide 30, as the current Fed speak largely focuses on when to lower rates, our liability-sensitive balance sheet should benefit. On the left, we show you the numbers in our 2022 Form 10-K of what could happen to net interest income in a rising rate environment, and that came true. On the right, we show you the numbers in our 2023 Form 10-K of what could happen to net interest income in a falling rate environment. When the yield curve becomes more favorable from the Fed lowering short-term rates, our net interest income is projected to return to historical levels, as will our other key financial metrics. Both past and projected results reflect our liability-sensitive balance sheet. On slide 31, we talked about remixing the balance sheet with a focus on commercial relationship business. Even with the challenges of 2023, we continue to make progress growing our commercial and industrial and owner-occupied commercial mortgages, as shown in yellow. While we see our overall loan portfolio in blue has remained fairly stable over the past five years, our residential loans in green have trended down by design, and our commercial portfolio in purple and yellow shows strong increases. On slide 32, let me mention our technology upgrades that went live on February 5, 2024. This 18-month project included a new core banking system, new business online banking platform, new business mobile app, real-time account alerts, new paperless branch teller and platform systems, and various operational efficiencies in the back office. Our staff worked tirelessly on this transformation to pull it off. Yes, there is a learning curve for staff and customers when systems are upgraded. We are improving in that regard every day, and we thank our customers for their patience. Overall, I classify our technology upgrades as tremendous success, and we are set up with a new open architecture system that will serve our evolving customer base for years to come. On slide 33, I would like to recognize our staff for their continued commitment to the communities we serve. Even during challenging times and going through major tech upgrades, our team volunteered over 1,400 hours to help others in our communities. Our mission is to continually do the right things to help our customers, employees, and shareholders succeed while being socially accountable to the communities we serve. Thanks to our FN team for staying true to our mission, and thank you to our customers and shareholders for your loyalty and being part of this great organization. That concludes today's presentation. Please bear with me briefly while I check for questions.
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