Dime Community Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:DCOM) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call April 23, 2024 9:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Stuart Lubow - President and CEO
Avinash Reddy - SVP and CFO
Conference Call Participants
Steve Moss - Raymond James
Gregory Zingone - Piper Sandler
Manuel Navas - D.A. Davidson & Co.
Christopher O'Connell - KBW
Operator
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Dime Community Bancshares First Quarter Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.
I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Stuart Lubow, President and CEO. Please go ahead.
Stuart Lubow
Thank you, Marvin. And thank you all for joining us this morning, for our first quarter earnings call.
With me today is Avi Reddy, our CFO. Dime has begun 2024, on solid footing and on a positive growth trajectory. In the first quarter, we grew core deposits by 19% on an annual basis, paid down our Federal Home Loan Bank borrowings by 41%, maintaining solid asset quality, increase our risk-based capital ratios, prudently managed expenses.
And importantly saw our net interest margin expand in the month of March versus year-end and January levels. We have been active on the hiring front. And since the middle of March, we've added over 30 extremely talented revenue-producing bankers. I would like to provide some color on why these bankers joined Dime.
As you know, the first group of bankers we hired in 2023, have been very strong advocates of Dime and have gotten the word out that Dime's a premier platform for talented bankers. They have seen firsthand how nimble we are as a bank, how our staff is aligned to make the customer experience outstanding, and how flat our organizational structure is.
The bankers hired in 2023, have grown their deposit portfolios to approximately $600 million. Suffice to say, we have proved that our business model provides conducive environment, for talented bankers to succeed. Secondly, our technology and treasury management systems are state-of-the-art and superior to all other local banks.
We know this, because all the groups that we recruited in 2024 - did detailed demos of our systems and to a person that were all significantly impressed, and our feedback from new customers has been outstanding. Finally, Dime's brand name and reputation in our local market is second to none. We have 60 branches from Montauk to Manhattan, and our reputation has always been that of a strong community bank.