Brookline Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:BRKL) Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call July 25, 2024 1:30 PM ET

Company Participants

Laura Vaughn - Attorney
Paul Perrault - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Carl Carlson - Co-President & Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Mark Fitzgibbon - Piper Sandler
Laurie Hunsicker - Seaport Research
Chris O'Connell - KBW

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to Brookline Bancorp Inc's Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note, this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Brookline Bancorp's Attorney, Laura Vaughn. Please go ahead.

Laura Vaughn

Thank you, Allisa, and good afternoon, everyone. Yesterday, we issued our earnings release and presentation, which is available on the Investor Relations page of our website, brooklinebancorp.com and has been filed with the SEC. This afternoon's call will be hosted by Paul Perrault and Carl Carlson.

This call may contain forward-looking statements with respect to the financial condition, results of operations and business of Brookline Bancorp. Please refer to Page 2 of our earnings presentation for our forward-looking statement disclaimer. Also, please refer to our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which contain risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements.

Any references made during this presentation to non-GAAP measures are only made to assist you in understanding Brookline Bancorp's results and performance trends and should not be relied on as financial measures of actual results or future predictions. For a comparison and reconciliation to GAAP earnings, please see our earnings release.

I'm pleased to introduce Brookline Bancorp's Chairman and CEO, Paul Perrault.

Paul Perrault

Thanks, Laura, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for today's earnings call. We had a solid quarter of loan and deposit growth across all three of our banks. While our net interest margin declined slightly, it appears to be hitting the bottom as the month of June was higher than May. This quarter, we decided to exit our specialty vehicle finance business, which is primarily tow trucks.

The spreads for this business line have been coming under pressure for some time now as more competitions enter the market. Unfortunately, costs also continued to rise, particularly collection costs, which drove this decision. We closed our office in Melville, Long Island and had a reduction of staff of 21. The portfolio of $350 million in specialty vehicle loans will run off over time and will be a slight headwind to the overall growth in the equipment finance portfolio. We estimate runoff over the next 12 months to be $115 million.