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Such statements are subject -- thank you. Such statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any such statements, including as set forth in today’s press release and the company’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to which we refer you. During this call, references will be made to non-GAAP financial measures as supplemental measures to review and assess operating performance. These non-GAAP financial measures are not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with the U.S. GAAP. For information about these non-GAAP measures and for reconciliation to GAAP, please refer to today’s earnings release. I will now hand over to your host, Kevin O'Connor, CEO, to begin. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you, Carla, and thank you all for joining us this morning. As usual, with me are Stu Lubow and Avi Reddy. I will first comment on Dime’s second quarter earnings and then touch upon the succession announcement we outlined in our press release. I’ll begin by saying Dime has done an admirable job weathering unique macro challenges posed by the failures of three regional banks, along with an unprecedented movement in rates and an inverted yield curve. In the second quarter, we grew average deposits by $150 million and supported our customers by growing loans 6% on an annualized basis. We grew our capital ratios and our balance sheet continues to remain solid with non-performing loans declining by 12%. As we have mentioned previously, we do not have any of the loan or deposit concentrations that got the failed banks and others in trouble. These facts, coupled with our rock-solid bulletproof multifamily portfolio, representing nearly 40% of loans provides us with confidence we will outperform in any potential recessionary environment. For the record, we have no multifamily loans greater than 60 days past due and the LTV in this portfolio is in the mid-50% area. As Stu will comment on in his prepared remarks, in the second quarter, we successfully onboarded seven talented deposit-focused groups, while at the same time, managing our overall expense base prudently. We had a strong quarter for fee income marked by robust activity in our back-to-back loan swap program for commercial customers, which also has the impact of adding floating rate loans to our balance sheet. Finally, our NIM contracted less in the second quarter than the prior quarter and was in line with the consensus estimates. Putting all these items together, we reported core EPS of approximately $0.68 per share. In…

Thanks, Kevin. At the outset, I would like to thank Kevin for his leadership and support. As many of you know, we have a history dating back almost a decade when Community National Bank, a bank I founded merged with Bridge. I am looking forward to working with Kevin over the remainder of this year and we will lean -- we’ll be leaning on him for his counsel and support in managing the bank. Together, we have built a strong team of client-facing personnel and operators. The Board, Kevin and I are highly confident that we have a significant runway for organic growth, especially after the failure of two banks in our footprint. From a strategic perspective, I would like to mention that I intend to keep Dime’s focused on providing exemplary relationship-based services that only a locally managed community bank can provide. Managing expenses prudently and being a conservative underwriter of credit have always been hallmarks of Dime and we will not stray from these two core guidelines and principles. My focus will be on providing our customers outstanding service, growing our franchise value and delivering our shareholders strong returns. I am very excited to work with and rely on every one of our outstanding employees to accomplish this goal. Recently, we had the opportunity to capitalize on the disruption in the marketplace caused by the failure of Signature Bank and First Republic Bank by adding seven deposit focus groups. Of note, none of our local community bank competitors, both bigger and smaller, have been able to add the level and depth of deposit-focused talent that we’re able to add. Onboarding these hires provides validation of Dime’s business model from a number of fronts, including our customer-centric relationship-based model, our best-in-class technology platform and our commitment to providing a…

Thank you, Stu. Core EPS for the second quarter was $0.68 per share. Our results were driven by prudent non-interest expense management and another good quarter for non-interest income. Our asset quality continues to be stable. In fact, our NPAs and 90 days past due declined only 20 basis points. Our cumulative total deposit beta for cycle-to-date tightening has been approximately 38%. Our performance on this front compares favorably to our Metro New York competitors. Our relatively lower betas have been driven by the level of non-interest-bearing deposits on our balance sheet. At 29% of average deposits, our non-interest-bearing deposit percentage remains a clear differentiator for Dime versus other community banks in our footprint. The NIM was 2.50% for the second quarter, compared to $2.74 for the prior quarter. We believe the pace of NIM compression will continue to slow and we see a number of green shoots on the horizon. While we did see business non-interest-bearing deposits declined by approximately $200 million collectively in March and April, primarily driven by our desire to retain customers in an uncertain environment where customer retention was paramount, we started to see a stabilization in business DDA in the month of May and actually grew business DDA in the months of June and July. In addition, we saw a significant increase in the number of checking accounts opened in the second quarter of 2023 compared to both the linked-quarter and prior year. As you know, we don’t provide quarterly quantitative NIM guidance, given my comments above on the stabilization in business DDA and given that the loan pipeline weighted average rate of 7.50% [ph] is approximately 250 basis points above our existing portfolio rate, we see positive trends emerging for the NIM. We expect the NIM to have an even smaller decline in…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Mark Fitzgibbon from Piper Sandler. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Good morning. And Kevin, congratulations on your retirement and your many tremendous accomplishments of the company.

Thank you.

Stu, a quick question for you. When I go back a long way, and obviously, you’ve had a very successful career running a number of community banking institutions and have gone in and fixed and cleaned up and grown, and ultimately, sold a number of those institutions. Should we think of the Dime strategy as changing under your leadership? Do you -- should we assume that Dime will be eventually marching in that same kind of a direction?

I think, at this point, and as I mentioned in my remarks, from our perspective, from my perspective, it’s stayed the course, Kevin and I work collaboratively on putting our strategic plan together. We’ve built a great team. We think there’s a tremendous opportunity for organic growth and a chance to really improve franchise value by bringing Dime to the next level in terms of becoming a preeminent community commercial bank within Greater Long Island. So we’re going to stay in the course. We think the opportunity to bring on additional teams and potentially additional lenders out of the disruption of the two recent failures and some of the significant amount of cost cutting that other banks are going through will provide us some opportunities as well. So for now, it’s stayed the course. But the fact is that, I’ve always viewed myself as someone who is significantly interested in providing strong returns to our shareholders and that will never change.

Okay. Thank you. And then, I guess, I was curious if you could share with us how much in the way deposits have the seven new teams brought in so far. I know it’s early days.

Yeah. Yeah. So, Mark, we -- the teams really started May 1st some of them. The others really started June 7th. But really quickly, they brought on around 600 customers. There’s around 1,000 accounts opened. That’s actually as of July 15th, I believe. The month of July to-date, they’ve actually funded around $75 million in the month of July already. We’ve mentioned when we did bring in the teams at that peak, they manage around $2 billion plus of deposits. So we view this as a significant, significant opportunity in the quarters and years ahead. Just in terms of the timing of when they started, there was not a lot at June 30th. But what we’re seeing in the month of July is why we feel very positive in terms of the net interest margin going forward.

Yeah. And just to expand on that, about -- of that $75 million, approximately 75% of that is DDA. The weighted average cost or rate on those deposits is less than 1%.

Okay. And then, I guess, I know you had mentioned you were talking to some other teams. How many groups do you think you could sort of handle and would sort of want to take on maybe over the next year or so?

Yeah. So, Mark, it’s really about fitting our business mix. We’ve been very focused on adding groups in industries that name already banks, for example, lawyers, real estate companies, things like that. So really the fit needs to be there. We have a corporate staff over here that’s able to handle more volume at this point. We’re growing our treasury management team. So I think it really depends on the groups and whether it fits what we need. Obviously, we’re getting to the second half of this year at this point in time. But I think given the experience that the current groups are having and our experience with them, too, I think, we’d be very open-minded and there’s really no limit in terms of what we can add on.

Okay. And then last question, Avi, is -- and I apologize if I missed this. If you could help us think about the trajectory of expenses. I know you’ve certainly done a good job of offsetting the incremental costs from the teams, but how are you thinking about things going forward?

Yeah. So, I mean, really, the way we look at the company, Mark, is really OpEx to assets, right? So first quarter, we were around 140 plus or minus OpEx to assets. We’re around 150 right now. I mean we need to operate the company at that level, right? So this quarter, there’s a bit of a tick up because in the month of April, obviously, you’re going to have the annual merit increases going to impact. We have some of the group hires come in over there. But I would say managing that at around the 150 level is kind of what we’re focused on and really figuring out a way and looking across the organization, which we do continuously. We never really had a cost savings plan out there, because it’s just built into our DNA in terms of how we manage the expense base.

Great. Thank you.

Thanks, Mark. Our next question comes from Steve Moss from Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning. Kevin, congratulations on your retirement, and Stu, congratulations on your promotion here. My first question, just on -- following up on the margin here in terms of maybe just thinking about funding costs and the trajectory there. You did see a slowdown in the pace of interest-bearing deposit costs, and Avi, I do hear you in terms of Federal Home Bank advances maturing over the next 12 months. Just kind of curious just how you’re thinking about where your interest-bearing deposit costs could peak out?

Yeah. I think, so our cycle-to-date beta, Steve, on a cumulative basis is around 38%. I think our current models probably say, mid-40s is kind of where we peak out at this point in time. We’re obviously going to have a little bit more pressure here in Q3. But the tailwind that we have, obviously, is these new deposits, as Stu said, right, you add $75 million of deposits at a 1% cost. Our marginal cost of deposits coming in is a lower -- is a lot lower than a lot of our peers. So I would say at this point, mid-40s is kind of what we’re thinking in terms of deposit betas.

Okay. That’s helpful. And then in terms of just on the asset side with securities, just if you can remind us what’s the average life or duration of the portfolio?

Sure. So it’s around three years, the effective duration on the securities portfolio on the AFS side.

Okay. And then in terms of the -- in terms of loan pricing, I hear you guys in terms of, I think, it was mid-7s. Just curious here, as the mix has definitely improved and you look at the margin cost of funds, do you think we had towards like an 8% handle or is the competitive environment closer to the 70s range?

Yeah. No. It’s a mix, Steve, right? So on the C&I side, we’re in the is at this point in time. If you do a swap at SOFR plus 250, we’re already getting over 8% at this point in time. So, yeah, I mean, it’s -- I mean, right now it’s around 7.50%, as Stu said, it’s a mix. But Obviously, with the recent Fed hike, it’s going to go up a little bit more. Again, we’re really pricing our products to really grow business loans and we’re not really seeing any slowdown in that. We’re obviously a little bit above the market on the multifamily side and being selective on the investor preside.

Yeah. So just a little more color on that. So of the $600 million of business related loans in the pipeline, about $350 million of that is C&I at a weighted average rate of 8.5% and then our owner-occupied CRE makes up the remainder about $250 million. And then we only have about $50 million in the pipeline on the multifamily side, which is basically existing customers refinancing and/or swaps that are -- we’re working with customers. So on the multifamily side, we’re really not competitive in terms of the traditional fixed rate product, but we are still doing swaps in that business for selected customers.

Okay. Great. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Steve. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Manuel Navas from D.A. Davidson. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey. Good morning.

Good morning.

As we think about the margin, can you kind of add to comments of when it could possibly trough? Is it just kind of -- I know there’s a lot of moving pieces there, but could that be first quarter next year? What’s kind of the initial thoughts there?

Manuel, in my prepared remarks, I did mention that we do expect a little bit of pressure in Q3, but that’s going to be less than what we saw in Q2 and then after that stability and growth. So we don’t want to get into the exact quarters over there. But I would say very positive in terms of two items, which is our business DDA is growing again right now. We’re seeing a lot of traction from these new groups that we’ve hired and the 250-basis-point differential between loans that the new are coming on versus the pipeline rate give us a lot of confidence going forward.

The expectation that loan-to-deposit ratio kind of stays -- will exceed 105%. And this -- and you have had very little CD growth. Is that kind of all tied together in the comments about staying short-term funded?

No. I think it’s in the context of -- we feel pretty confident about deposit growth. So, as Stu said, we probably expect around $200 million of loan growth in the second half of this year. But we do expect deposits to pick up and they have picked up. So we’re actually up around $75 million to $100 million for the month of July at this point in time and as the new groups bring on deposits, we feel pretty comfortable there. We’ve not really migrated our base to as much CDs as a lot of our competitors have at this point. We’re retaining existing CDs out there. But really, our focus is on growing business DDA, business money markets and that’s the kind of bank we want to be.

Okay. What type of activity, like, just kind of lending demand are you seeing in the marketplace? You’re making some adjustments to pricing to bring in the type of lending you want. If you had more or easier funding would -- could you bring in a lot more? Is it -- what’s kind of the demand out in the marketplace right now?

I mean demand has certainly moderated over the last six months. Certainly, with the current rate environment, it becomes fairly expensive and it makes -- it really takes away the opportunity to do cash outs on commercial real estate, debt service coverage ratios get a little tighter. So I think demand is certainly down. We are seeing opportunity on the C&I side and those rates are fairly attractive to us. And that’s really generated by a lot of our new hires in terms of our middle market lenders and C&I lenders that we brought in over the last year and they’ve been able to cultivate relationships that they had and are beginning to bring them over to us as well. So, but certainly, the rate environment has certainly moderated demand in terms of commercial real estate, small business lending, SBA lending, et cetera.

All right. Thank you. Thank you, Stu. I will step back into the queue.

We have no further questions registered at this time. So, with that, I will hand back to Kevin O'Connor for final remarks.

Thank you. I’d just like to conclude by taking a moment to thank our shareholders and the Board who supported me in this past 17 years. I look forward to as a Board member and a shareholder to continue watching the success of Dime under this new leadership team. If you indulge me also, I can’t thank enough the current Dime team and our legacy team of BNB Banks both current and former for their support, energy and dedication to the mission of community banking. You help to create from these humble beginnings in 1910 on the East and a Long Island to the powerhouse it is today, all while staying true to our core mission and values. I want to thank you again for the opportunity to be part of this story and thank you again for participating this morning.

This concludes today’s call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you for joining.