Good morning. Thank you for joining OFG Bancorp's conference call. My name is Ashley, and I will be your operator today. Our speakers today are José Rafael Fernández, Chief Executive Officer and Vice Chair of the Board of Directors, and Maritza Arizmendi Diaz, Chief Financial Officer. A presentation accompanies today's remarks, which can be found on our investor relations website on the homepage in the webcasting box or on the quarterly results page. This call may consist of forward-looking statements about management's goals, plans, and expectations. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties outlined in the risk factor section of OFG's SEC filings. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated. We disclaim any obligation to update information disclosed in this call as a result of developments that occur afterwards. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Fernández. Good morning and thank you for joining us. Please turn to page three for our conference call presentation. We had another outstanding performance in the third quarter, earning $0.81 a share. This reflects several factors. Our consistently growing recurring net income, our larger scale, our focus on increasing digital utilization and customer service differentiation, and Puerto Rico's nascent economic and post-pandemic recovery. All this continues to validate our optimism on Puerto Rico's economy and OFG's future. Our third quarter results confirm this across all businesses. Total core revenues were $135 million, a 4% annualized increase compared to the second quarter. Net interest income increased to $103 million. In part, that benefited from a 17% decline in cost of funds. Banking and financial services revenues rose 3%. Provision for credit losses was a $5 million net benefit as our asset quality continued to trend to levels closer to U.S. peer banks. Non-interest expenses fell 5%, reflecting in part reduced credit-related expenses. Pre-provision net revenues increased to $56 million from $52 million in the second quarter. Looking at the September 30th balance sheet, customer deposits increased $154 million to $9.2 billion, reflecting even greater liquidity on the part of both commercial and customer customers. As a result, both cash and assets grew. Loans held for investment declined $87 million. Excluding PPP loans forgiven, they increased $5 million. New loan origination remains strong at $566 million. Ex-PPP originations now total more than $1.6 billion as of the nine months. That is up 69% compared to the same period last year and 79% compared to the same period in 2019, pre-COVID. During the third quarter, we also successfully executed on our capital actions. We acquired $40.2 million of shares as part of our current $50 million buyback program. We increased our common stock dividend to $0.12 per share from $0.08 in the first and second quarters and $0.07 in the year-ago quarter. We completed our $92 million redemption of all preferred stock. Please turn to page four. At OFG, we believe better banking is built upon fulfilling our purpose, namely helping our customers, our people, and our communities achieve their financial well-being. During the third quarter, for our customers, we continued to demonstrate our agility by launching the first digital residential mortgage process in Puerto Rico. With one click and in just minutes, a customer can get a pre-qualification letter, access valuable information about the mortgage process, and apply online all in one place. We also quickly processed forgiveness for our PPP customers. We have now processed forgiveness for 91% of first and 25% of second-round PPP loans using our proprietary all-digital system. We believe faster, better solutions like these show our retail and commercial customers the value of doing business with Oriental. Online and mobile banking 30- and 90-day utilization levels continue well above post-pandemic levels. This continues to validate our long-standing digital strategy and its growing acceptance by our customers and the market in general. For our people, we have decided on a mandatory COVID vaccination policy to keep our customers and people safe. We have also implemented a hybrid work model to increase flexibility for our people. As we mentioned on the previous slide, we have increased the hourly base pay rate for non-salaried staff. For our communities, PASH Global and Oriental closed on a $15 million financing for a joint venture between PASH and Puma Energy. This is enabling 200 Puma gas stations in Puerto Rico to install solar panels to produce and consume solar energy. This project is the first of its kind and scale on the island. We have also been working on several new corporate social responsibility programs. One program launched in the third quarter is a farming developing program with the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico to help several communities achieve economic sustainability. We are extremely proud of these achievements. At the end of the day, there is nothing more rewarding than being part of a team that delivers on its purpose. This quarter's overall performance energizes us at OFG to work harder and to aspire for more. Here's Maritza to go over the financials in more detail. Thank you, José. Please turn to page five to review our financial highlights. As for revenues, were $135 million. That is an increase of about $1.4 million, or about 4% annualized from the second quarter. This is as a result of a consistent impact of $8.18 million decline in cost of funds, a $1 million increase in core non-interest income, an $800,000 increase from cash and investment securities, and $730,000 as a result of one additional day. This more than offset a $1 million decline from CD loans and a $700,000 loan prepayment that benefited fee income in the second quarter. The GDP decline was due to a combination of lower volume, mainly from mortgage paydowns and lower rates. Non-interest expenses totaled $79 million. That is a decrease of $3.8 million from the second quarter. The third quarter included a $2.2 million benefit in pay-related expenses. This was mainly driven by gains from sales of real estate loans. The second quarter included a $2.2 million technology project write-down. The third quarter also included a combination of increased compensation from lower lease costs and our previously announced cost savings. Overall, we continue to see recurring operating expenses in line with our previously announced plans for the year. The higher revenues and lower non-interest expenses resulted in increased operating leverage. Efficiency ratio improved to 58.6%. This compares to 62% in the second quarter. Our goal is to continue to improve our efficiency ratio to the mid-to-lower 60% range. Return on average assets was 1.6%, return on average tangible common equity was 17.7%. We continue to build capital. Tangible book value per share was $18.69. This is an increase of 3% from the second quarter. Please turn to page six to review our operational highlights. Average loan balances totaled $6.5 billion. That is a decline of $133 million from the second quarter. This was due primarily to residential mortgage paydowns and TCD loan reductions. In turn, this was partially offset by new commercial and auto loans. The change in mix resulted in a seven-basis point decline in loan yields. Higher levels of residential mortgage paydowns reflected increased liquidity on the part of consumers. Our residential mortgage portfolio consists of Legacy Oriental Mortgage loans and mortgage loans from the BBVA and Scotiabank acquisitions. Our new origination was $556 million, that is down $85 million from the second quarter, but it is up $109 million year-over-year. We believe we are continuing to see generally strong trends in mortgage, commercial, and auto. We continue to see increasing demand from commercial loan spreads and business operations, building new stores and warehouses, buying inventory, or making acquisitions. Commercial portfolio annual period balance activity has increased two consecutive quarters. Average core deposits was $9.1 billion. That is an increase of 1.6%, or $140 million from the second quarter. Increases in non-interest-bearing accounts, savings accounts, and now accounts were partially offset by the return to customer CD. Core deposit costs continue to fall. They were 10 basis points in the third quarter. That is a reduction of eight basis points from the second quarter. This reflects general rate reductions and the continuing maturity of older, higher-priced CDs. As a result of the increase in deposits, average cash balances totaled $2.7 billion. That is an increase of 7%, or $180 million from the second quarter. The average investment portfolio was $715 million. That increased $160 million, or 70% from the second quarter. That includes the partial impact of $250 million of MBS purchases at the end of the quarter, taking advantage of market conditions. Net interest margin was 4.12%, a decline of 10 basis points from the second quarter. The increased amount of tax reduced NIM by 6 basis points. Our current strategy is to continue to look for opportunities to deploy excess liquidity through lending, capital actions, and investments. Please turn to page seven to review our credit quality and capital strength. Asset quality metrics continue to trend positively. Our net charge-offs were 37 basis points. Third quarter net charge-offs of $6 million included $6.5 million for a previously reserved amount on a commercial loan. The early and total delinquency rates were 2.6% and 15.82%, respectively, some of the lowest levels in the last five quarters. The nonperforming loan rate on the non-GCD loan portfolio was 1.93%, lowest in level in the last five quarters. As a result of all of this, provision for credit losses was a net benefit of $5 million. That reflects $4.3 million of [inaudible]. Our allowance coverage was 2.82% on a reported basis and 2.88% excluding GCD loans. The CET1 ratio remains high compared to our U.S. peers at 13.52%. Stockholder's equity was $1.05 billion, a decline of $22 million from the second quarter. This reflected the redemption of preferred stock Series B and the common stock dividend. A good portion of this was offset by the increase in retained earnings. Tangible common equity ratio was 6.86%. Now we ask José. Thank you, Maritza. Please turn to page eight for our conclusion. As I mentioned earlier, we had a strong performance this quarter at all levels. Our performance and credit metrics continue to be equal to or better than mainland peers. We executed most of our stock buyback program, in addition to increasing our common share dividend and redeeming our preferred stock. Looking at the big picture, Puerto Rico continues to benefit from federal reconstruction and COVID stimulus. The relative economic impact here is more meaningful than in other U.S. jurisdictions, given the size of our economy and average incomes. As a result, we are continuing to see incremental business sector optimism, confirming Puerto Rico's economic revival. Our plan is to continue to take advantage of our momentum in this improved economic environment. We intend to deploy excess liquidity for loan growth and/or capital return initiatives. We also intend to accelerate the speed of our transformation, further simplify operations, and improve efficiency, all part of our effort to serve customers faster and better while helping them achieve their financial well-being. We at OFG are more than ready. Thanks to all our resilient team members for their continued dedication and commitment. This ends our formal presentation. Thank you for listening. Operator, please begin the question and answer session. We'll take our first question from Alexander Twerdahl with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead. Good morning. Good morning, Alex. Good morning. First off, José, I was hoping you could give us a little bit more color on what you're seeing in terms of loan growth. What happened, and I guess really I'm most interested in commercial, but also would be interested in some of the other categories. What happened during this quarter in terms of things like line utilizations? Is there any construction component in there? What do the pipelines look like heading into the last three months of the year? First off, Alex, I think when you look at the commercial side, particularly, you need to think about loan growth, looking at several components. You alluded to some of them. Number one is certainly production, and our production levels continue to remain strong. We feel optimistic with what we have accomplished so far, certainly in terms of our commercial portfolio and how we've grown that vis-à-vis last year and vis-à-vis 2019. Clearly our scale and the acquisition that we did at the end of 2019 is adding additional capabilities for us to have higher production. In terms of paydowns, we certainly are seeing excess liquidity in the market, and we are still seeing higher levels of paydowns than we've seen in years past. We expect that to maybe remain at this level for the rest of the year, and hopefully we will see some changes and progress on that next year. In terms of line utilization, it remains very low, again, due to the high liquidity levels that are right now in the market. Right now, we probably close to 25% of the normal utilization on the lines. That's what we're seeing. Lastly, the pipelines. I think when you look at our pipeline on the commercial side, we see strong pipelines. We see businesses getting ready for continued economic growth. When you look at it all, I went through four components, right? Production, paydowns, utilization, and pipeline. Right now, what I see today, positive on production, positive on pipeline, line utilization and paydowns are putting pressure on loan growth. I expect sometime in 2022 to continue to see positive production and positive trends on paydowns and utilization, that with a strong pipeline, we can see loan growth. I'm optimistic. I think what we're building today, it's going to pay off in the next several years as the economy becomes more sustainable in its growth. Great. Has anything changed in terms of your thought process around the mortgage portfolio? You had some pretty strong GNMA sale on mortgage this quarter, but is there any change in the appetite to keep things on the balance sheet? What we saw this quarter was a slower level of refis. Our production came in lower than prior quarters in this year, particularly because of a slower refinancing activity. That also plays positively on the books, right? Instead of having $100 million or so in repayments from the mortgage portfolio, we only had around $62. Give and take. Then on the fee side, on the mortgage banking activities, we're also seeing that our servicing portfolio remains steady and we're getting good valuation on the servicing asset as well as the sales of our originations, where we're generating good deals there. I don't see a change going forward on that side. Got it. Switching gears a little bit to talk about capital. You guys announced the $50 million share repurchase since the last conference call, which is great, and maybe a little bit lower than some investors would have expected. When you combine it with the $92 million payoff of preferred earlier this year and this dividend, gets your total capital return for this year above what, or potentially above 100% of earnings. Can you talk a little bit about sort of what the target capital levels are in terms of common equity tier one? You're still pretty elevated at 13.5% and sort of what the appetite is for buybacks from here. And then considering that you've made pretty good headway through the $50 million, when we should expect, or when we can expect that to be readdressed by the board. Yep. First off, you are correct. We returned capital across the board this year above 100% of our earnings. We're executing pretty aggressively on that side in 2021. When we look at 2022, we'll take a look at our capital activity and capital actions, potential capital actions in the January board. That's kind of the beginning of the year, and we finish through the budget process, which we're in the middle of it right now, and have a clear picture on what the size of what we should be executing during 2022. Longer term, again, we feel that we should not be doing above 100% of our earnings given the levels of CET1 that we have right now in the high 13%. Longer term, as strength in credit continues to inch closer to the peers in the state or peers in the space, then our capital levels should not have much different from the operating capital levels that our peers in the U.S. are operating on. A CET1 level closer to 11% or so, that's kind of a good target to have going forward. I think we have good momentum on our capital actions and the optimism that we're seeing in the island, we want it to continue to be confirmed. We want to feel more and more incrementally comfortable with that economic revival that we are each quarter seeing improve. Based on that, we'll execute on the capital actions. We're clear that, like we did this quarter, we're buying our stock back at between 8x and 9x earnings. That's a significant discount from some of the peers in the space. I think we've very good returns for our shareholders too, to be buying that stock. Totally agree. Switching gears to the ACL. How should we think about it from here? You guys are still above your CECL Day One high calculation, yet net charge-offs are now running well below where they were prior to that CECL implementation. What's holding the reserve up at this point, and what are the milestones to expect that ACL to drop lower? Let me give the big picture, and if I miss anything, Maritza will correct me and get into the details. The big picture is how we look at ACL is based on a methodology. Our methodology has several components, charges, defaults, and the macroeconomic scenarios and projections. Those macros still have risk embedded in it, and for Puerto Rico, specifically. It's got COVID and it's got all the issues coming out of the bankruptcy and all that. From our side, the macroeconomic scenarios still have some embedded risk in it that are preventing us from releasing some of that coverage that we have, that reserve that we have. I think we do also have a higher proportion of COVID loans. When I mention charges, we're having, right now, net recoveries. We don't think that we should be looking at our ACL from the current state where we're seeing a net recovery and that will project going forward. That's not sustainable longer term. We will have certainly a level of charges at some point in time on our consumer portfolios. Will they be back to what they were prior to COVID? We don't expect that. We expect the trends to be completely, consistently more positive or better than what we saw in 2019 before COVID. We also think that those portfolios will stabilize and start showing some levels of charges at some point in 2022. That's our big picture. Did I miss anything, Maritza? I think it's the essence of what we're doing right now. It sounds like from what you said on the macro side, that if we do get the bankruptcy resolution by the end of this year, and it seems like we're getting pretty close to that, correct me if I'm wrong, then we could see that at least piece of the equation change favorably in the next quarter. Yeah. That's one of the components. It's pretty noisy. If you're here on the ground, there's a lot of noise regarding that, and the political processes are also uncertain. That's how we see it, Alex. At the end of the day, I think it's a good problem to have. Agreed. Talking about the NIM a little bit, also even Maritza, I'm not sure if you said in your prepared remarks if you had the impact of PPP fees in the third quarter, and then also what remains of PPP fees that is yet to be recognized. Well, yes. For this quarter, I will talk about the net impact of PPP because at the end, we did have higher fees for the quarter. It was about $1.2 million. That was offset because of volume factor. We have lower balances there and as we delayed. The net impact of PPP within the NII will be about $200,000. Volume factor mitigates a little bit the increase in the fees. I don't have the denominator portion here with me. As José mentioned, a big portion of [inaudible] program was 95% has already been paid off. It should not be a significant amount that is remaining on the books because mostly it's the second round and was lower than the first one. Okay. I missed what you said about the mortgage-backed security purchases you just went into. The quarter, you said it was $250 million of mortgage-backed securities that you did during the quarter. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Yes. It was mostly during September that we did the acquisition. We take advantage of higher rates in the market, and we acquired $250 MBS. Okay. In terms of when I look at the balance sheet, I still see over 20% cash. What's your appetite for MBS? How much of that are you willing to ladder out in the next probably 6-12 months? Yeah. It's all being opportunistic about how interest rates fluctuate from here and throughout the next several quarters. We recognize that we have excess cash. At the same time, we don't want to go long on mortgage-backed securities with low rates. When we see an inching up of rates, we go into the market and buy some. As we see interest rates trending upwards, we'll be more consistent in our purchases of MBSs going forward. We also want to make sure we think deposits will stabilize. We had a good increase in deposits again this quarter, which is good for us. We need to feel more comfortable also on how is that going to play out next year as COVID stimulus starts to flow out and what is the need on businesses to use that cash. We just want to be careful there too. I agree with you. We have a significant portion of our balance sheet in cash, and we need to put it to work sooner rather than later. Yeah. Then on the same lines of deposits, time deposits, you saw some, I guess, some flow out. Can you just remind us of what's maturing in the fourth quarter and into next year in terms of time deposits and security prices lower? Yeah. For this quarter, it's about $100 million that will mature. Next year it's about $400 million. That's the runoff of the portfolio. So the biggest- Do you have the rates that those are- [inaudible] Sorry, Alex. I was speaking when you started to speak, so I need you to repeat the question. I was just going to ask what the rates were on that $100 million in the fourth quarter and the $400 million next year. For the fourth quarter, it's about 80 basis points maturity. Next year it's lower. It's about 75 basis points in average for the year. We see those CDs being replaced at 30-35 basis points. That is the average flow that we have right now. Okay. Just a couple more questions that I had just in terms of modeling. Fees and fee revenues, it looks like the banking service revenues have stabilized at a little bit over $18 million since we don't really have a clean quarter post Scotia. Is that $18 million, is that the right level to use? Yeah, we certainly see businesses and consumers having more activity and after COVID and Puerto Rico's COVID situation has turned extremely positive after the vaccination. What we're seeing is opening up of the economy, we're seeing more activity and therefore banking fees are kind of leveling at the $18 million a quarter. We do have some seasonality in some of the quarters throughout the year in terms of activity. We feel that $18 million is a good number. Okay. Finally on expenses, [inaudible] you talked about sort of the recurring expense being in line with previous expected expense levels. Can you talk to what that guidance exactly what it says? Can you repeat the question again? Sorry. I think in your prepared remarks you said that expense levels were consistent with previous expected expense levels or something along those lines. I was hoping you could just remind us, in terms of the run rate for expenses, how you guys are thinking about a run rate from here. Yes. Well, yeah, the recurring operating expenses, we see them between $79 million, $80 million per quarter. Keep in mind that we will continue to invest in technology and developing the digital transformation. We still think that we will be able to absorb those incrementals. The run rate right now is almost $80 million, so it should be in the baseline. Okay? Perfect. I think that's all my questions. Thanks for taking time. Thank you, Alex. Have a good day. Once again, as a reminder, that is star and one for questions. We will take our next question from Steven Martin with Susquehanna. Please go ahead. Thanks a lot. Most of my questions have been answered. Let me give you three and they're somewhat related. You talked a little about your transformation and accelerating the speed. Can you talk about that and the customer-facing technology, which I know is very important to you, and some of the changes? What is working well and what isn't? Related to that is you've mentioned acquisitions before. How would you play in given that you have excess capital and plenty of check? Well, thank you for your question. Regarding our transformation that I mentioned on my remarks, in terms of what we're trying to achieve is basically trying to make sure that we focus on the customer experience, trying to be more agile and faster on how we serve our customers and certainly bring them added value to help them achieve their goals, right? That's very general. At the end of the day, everything that we're doing in terms of our people, in terms of our digital strategy, and in terms of how do we analyze the data that we have to actually make a difference and be able to serve our customers better and differentiate ourselves against the local competitors, that's kind of the transformation. That transformation requires that not only the front end of the equation is agile, fast, and skinny. It requires also that the back end too. As you probably can understand, it's harder to push the back to the speed of the front. To me, that's the biggest challenge we have, and we're pushing hard. Again, we see that also in terms of our business model and how do we continue to transform our business model to be different and add value to our customers on the customer experience on the commercial side, as well as on the individual side. That's what I'm referring to. In the process, we will also be kind of changing and transforming our distribution. The approach is not a traditional branch model, so it's got several other components that include technology as a integral part of that distribution model. That's kind of how we are pursuing that. That's what I'm referring to, and that's why Maritza mentioned about the investments that we're making. What we're trying to achieve here in terms of efficiency too is how do we kind of make the right investment in the transformation that we're trying to achieve, as well as keeping expenses under control and trending lower. That's the answer for the first question. The second question, I don't recall exactly what you asking, so if you can repeat, I'll appreciate it. The third question, you asked something about acquisitions and looking into future acquisitions. Well, the market here in Puerto Rico is already being consolidated. As you know, we were an important part of that. We finished the acquisition of Scotia and the integration of Scotia already. The scale that we have now is showing on the production side of the loan book and as well as on the deposit side. We do understand that our growth coming in Puerto Rico is going to be coming from our larger scale and the positive economic momentum and our ability to differentiate from our competitors. I forgot. Forgive me for the second question because I don't recall. No, I think you got the first and second together because it was transformation and technology, and I think you answered them both at the same time. Okay, perfect. I appreciate you answering. Yeah. Great. Thank you very much. Once again, as a reminder, that's star one for questions. We will pause another moment to allow any further questions to queue. It does appear that there are no further questions at this time. I will turn the call back over to [inaudible] to just for any closing remarks. Thank you, operator. Thanks again to all our team members who have helped our customers through the pandemic and have worked so hard. Thanks to all our stakeholders who have listened in. Looking forward to our next call. Have a great day. This does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at this time.