OceanFirst Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:OCFC) Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call October 20, 2023 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Alfred Goon - SVP, Corporate Development & IR

Christopher Maher - Chairman & CEO

Joe Lebel - President

Patrick Barrett - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Daniel Tamayo - Raymond James

Justin Crowley - Piper Sandler

Michael Perito - KWB

David Bishop - Hovde Group

Christopher Marinac - Janney Montgomery Scott

Manuel Navas - D.A. Davidson

Operator

Hello, all and welcome to OceanFirst Financial Corp's Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. My name is Lidya and I'll be your operator today. [Operator Instructions]

I'll now hand you over to your host, Alfred Goon, SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations to begin.

Alfred Goon

Thank you, Lydia. Good morning, and welcome to the OceanFirst third quarter 2023 earnings call. I'm Alfred Goon, SVP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations.

Before we kick off the call, we'd like to remind everyone that our quarterly earnings release and related earnings supplement can be found on the company website, oceanfirst.com. Our remarks today may contain forward-looking statements and may refer to non-GAAP financial measures. All participants should refer to our SEC filings, including those found on forms 8-K, 10-Q and 10-K for a complete discussion of forward-looking statements and any factors that could cause actual results to differ from those statements. Thank you.

And now, I will turn the call over to Christopher Maher, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Christopher Maher

Thank you, Alfred. Good morning, and thank you to all, who've been able to join our third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. This morning, I'm joined by our President, Joe Lebel; and our Chief Financial Officer, Pat Barrett. We appreciate your interest in our performance in this opportunity to discuss our results with you. This morning, we'll provide brief remarks about the financial and operating performance for the quarter and some color regarding the outlook for our business. We may refer to the slides filed in connection with the earnings release throughout the call. After our discussion, we look forward to taking your questions.

Our financial results for the third quarter included GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.33. Our earnings reflect net interest income of $91 million, representing a modest decline compared to the prior linked quarter of $92 million. Our third quarter results were impacted by modest margin pressure linked to our efforts to improve the bank's liquidity position and the quality of our deposit funding. These efforts resulted in meaningful deposit growth, a substantial decrease in brokered CDs, and a measurable reduction in the loan-to-deposit ratio.