ConnectOne Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:CNOB) Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call April 28, 2022 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Frank Sorrentino - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Bill Burns - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Siya Vansia - Vice President of Marketing

Conference Call Participants

Matthew Breese - Stephens Inc.

Michael Perito - KBW

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to ConnectOne Bancorp, Inc. First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Ms. Siya Vansia, Vice President of Marketing. Thank you, and over to you.

Siya Vansia

Good morning, and welcome to today's conference call to review ConnectOne's results for the first quarter of 2022 and to update you on recent developments. On today's conference call will be Frank Sorrentino, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Bill Burns, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. These results as well as notice of this conference call on a listen-only basis over the Internet were distributed this morning in a press release that has been covered by the financial media.

At this time, let me remind you that certain statements and assumptions in this conference call contain or based upon forward-looking information that are being made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are subject to numerous assumptions, uncertainties and known or unknown risks, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These risk factors are more fully discussed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements included in this conference call are only made as of the date of this call, and the company is not obligated to publicly update or revise them.

In addition, certain terms used in this call are non-GAAP financial measures, reconciliations of which are provided in the company's earnings release and accompanying tables or schedules, which have been filed today on Form 8-K with the SEC and may also be accessed through the company's website at ir.connectonebank.com. Each listener is encouraged to review those reconciliations provided in the earnings release together with all other information.

I will now turn the call over to Frank Sorrentino. Frank, please go ahead.

Frank Sorrentino

Thank you, Siya, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. We are very pleased to report another strong quarter, delivering solid financial performance, significant organic balance sheet growth and strong performance metrics here at ConnectOne. While Bill will discuss our financial highlights in some more detail, I would like to highlight that our PPNR as a percentage of assets, again, exceeded 2% for the seventh consecutive quarter. Return on assets was again above 1.5%, and our return on tangible equity was greater than 15%, all while our efficiency ratio remained below 40%.