OceanFirst Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:OCFC) Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call April 21, 2023 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Jill Hewitt - SVP and Investor Relations

Christopher Maher - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Joe Lebel - President and Chief Operating Officer

Pat Barrett - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Frank Schiraldi - Piper Sandler

Daniel Tamayo - Raymond James

David Bishop - Hovde Group

Michael Perito - KBW

Christopher Marinac - Janney Montgomery Scott

Matthew Breese - Stephens Inc.

Manuel Navas - DA Davidson

Operator

Hello everyone, and welcome to the OceanFirst Financial Corp Earnings Conference Call. My name is, Bruno, and I'll be the operator of today. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand over to your host, Jill Hewitt. Please go-ahead.

Jill Hewitt

Thank you, Bruno. Good morning and thank you all for joining us today. I'm Jill Hewitt, Senior Vice President at OceanFirst. We will begin this morning's call with our forward-looking statement disclosure.

Please remember that many of our remarks today contain forward-looking statements based on current expectations. Refer to our press release and other public filings, including the risk factors in our 10-K, where you will find factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Thank you.

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

Christopher Maher

Thank you, Jill, good morning and thank you to all been able to join our first 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 and this opportunity to discuss our results with you.

Based on recent industry events, we will be adjusting our regular agenda to focus on the questions that are most relevant to the current environment. My comments will cover those areas and refer to slides filed in connection with the earnings release. The supplemental materials are also available on our company's website. After that, Joe, Pat, and I will jump straight into the Q&A portion of the call and take your questions.

Turning to Slide 3, our financial results for the first quarter included GAAP-diluted earnings per share of $0.46. Our earnings reflect net interest income of $98.8 million, which -- while down from the prior linked quarter net interest income has increased $14.6 million or 17% as compared to the prior year period. Core earnings were $0.55 per share, increasing 12% as compared to the same period in 2022. Non-core items primarily relate to the sale of investments that were adversely impacted by recent industry events, resulting in a pretax securities loss of $5.3 million.