OceanFirst Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:OCFC) Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call January 20, 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

Michael Perito - KBW

David Bishop - Hovde Group

Christopher Marinac - Janney Montgomery Scott

Manuel Navas - DA Davidson

Matthew Breese - Stephens Inc.

Operator

Hello everyone, and welcome to the OceanFirst Financial Corp. Earnings Conference Call. My name is Daisy, and I will be coordinating your call today. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to hand over to your host, Jill Hewitt, Investor Relations Officer to begin. So Joe please come ahead.

Jill Hewitt

Thank you, Daisy. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us today. I'm Jill Hewitt, Senior Vice President and Investor Relations Officer at OceanFirst Financial Corp. 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. We 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 this morning, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Christopher Maher.

Christopher Maher

Thank you, Jill. Good morning and happy New Year to all been able to join our fourth quarter 2022 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.

This morning, we will provide brief remarks about the financial and operating performance for the quarter and some color regarding the outlook for our business. As a reminder, in addition to the earnings release issued last night, an investor presentation is also available on our company's Website. We may refer to these slides during the call. After our discussion, we look forward to taking your questions.

Our financial results for the fourth quarter included GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.89. Our record earnings reflect expanding margins, disciplined expense management and strong loan growth with benign credit conditions. Core earnings were $0.67 per share and reflect noncore items primarily related to a $17.5 million unrealized mark-to-market valuation gain on our equity investment position and Auxiliary Capital Partners. The details related to the auxiliary investment were shared in an 8-K filed on November 30, 2022.