DCOM

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 a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, we'll open up for questions. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You'll then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. Before we begin, the company would like to remind you that discussions during this call contain forward-looking statements made under the Safe Harbor Provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Such statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any such statements, including as set forth in today's press release and the company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, to which we refer you. During this call, references will be made to non-GAAP financial measures as supplemental measures to review and assess operating performance. These non-GAAP financial measures are not intended to be considered in isolation or a substitute for the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with U.S. GAAP. For more information about these non-GAAP financial measures and for reconciliation to GAAP, please refer to today's earnings release. I would now like to hand it over to our first speaker, Stuart Lubow, President and CEO. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you, Victor, and thank you all for joining us this morning for our quarterly earnings call. With me today, as usual, are Avi Reddy, our Chief Operating Officer and CFO, and also Tom Geisel, our Chief Commercial Officer. In my prepared remarks, I will touch upon the progress we are making as we continue to execute on all aspects of our strategic plan. Avi will then provide financial details for the first quarter. EPS for the first quarter was up 67% versus the prior year. The growth in EPS was driven by record total core revenues of $124 million. All of our revenue growth has been organic, built by our existing bankers and new hires. The NIM was up 10 basis points quarter-over-quarter as we were able to lower our cost of deposits. Year-over-year, our core deposit growth was $1 billion.

On the loan front, we continued to execute on our stated plan of growing business loans and managing the CRE ratio lower. Year-over-year, growth in business loans were approximately $575 million, which represents a 21% increase. Our loan pipeline continues to be strong and is in excess of $1.5 billion, with a weighted average rate of between 6.25% and 6.5%. As you know, disruption in our local marketplace remains very high, and the environment for our organic growth strategy continues to be very attractive. As outlined in the press release, we had a very strong start to the year from a recruiting standpoint.

In addition to fully building out our Lakewood branch with a strong group of bankers, we added management depth to our branch network, and we also hired two very strong deposit teams who had strong track records at the former Signature Bank. We are confident that these hires will be accretive to earnings in 2027. The teams we hired to date, as you know, have grown deposits to nearly $3 billion, with $1.2 billion of DDA and a cost of funds of 1.6%. The new deposit teams have hit the ground running and will benefit from the path and platform that has been created over the past few years. We are excited for their growth in the months and years ahead. Finally, we will be adding a new equipment and franchise finance vertical starting May 1st.

This new vertical strengthens our core commercial bank offerings and enhances our competitive position. When the opportunity arose to hire this high-quality team of bankers, we capitalized on it. Keith Smith, who will lead this vertical for us, previously worked with Tom Geisel at Sterling and successfully built and scaled that vertical at Sterling to more than $1 billion. In conclusion, Dime is the bank of choice for talented bankers in our footprint, and we continue to be the primary beneficiary of the disruption in our marketplace. Earlier this year, we announced plans to rebrand Dime as Dime Commercial Bank. This marks the culmination of and a logical next step in Dime's evolution. Over 70% of our deposit base is from commercial and municipal customers, and approximately 60% of our loan portfolio is from the business of commercial real estate.

It has been a remarkable transformation over the past 10 years away from the legacy thrift and multifamily heritage, and we believe the Dime Commercial Bank brand truly represents the bank that we have grown into. In conclusion, Dime has differentiated our franchise from our local competitors as it relates to our organic growth trajectory. We continue to focus on diversifying our balance sheet, driving our efficiency ratio lower and attracting talented bankers. We are positioned very favorably with significant loan repricing over the next two years, and our organic growth prospects are strong. I want to end by thanking all our dedicated employees for their efforts in positioning Dime as the best commercial bank in the New York metro area. With that, I will turn over the call to Avi to provide some color on the first quarter.

Thank you, Stuart. EPS for the first quarter was $0.75 per share, representing 10% linked-quarter growth and 67% year-over-year growth.

Core pre-tax, pre-provision net revenue of $60.5 million represented 162 basis points of average assets. By maintaining a strong focus on cost of funds management, our NIM has now increased for eight consecutive quarters. The NIM expansion versus the prior quarter was driven by a reduction in deposit costs to 170. We continue to have catalysts for growing our NIM over the medium to long term, including a significant back book loan repricing opportunity that I will talk about later. The reported first quarter NIM increased to 321. Given the day count convention in the first quarter, with February only having 28 days, the first quarter NIM is always seasonally elevated. Excluding the impact of the day count and the benefits from purchase accounting, the run rate NIM for the first quarter would have been closer to 314.

As we mentioned on the fourth quarter earnings call, the fourth quarter balance sheet cash position and deposits were all elevated by approximately $400 million due to seasonality and municipal deposits. As expected, we saw some normalization in the balance sheet size over the first two months of the quarter. Average earning assets for the first quarter was approximately $14.2 billion, and average earning assets for the month of March was approximately $14 billion, which should serve as a good base for modeling purposes going forward. Core cash operating expenses, excluding intangible amortization, was $63 million, which was generally in line with our expectations. The loan loss provision was approximately $12 million, and the allowance to loans increased to 95 basis points, which is at the midpoint of our 90 basis points to 1% operating range.

At the end of the first quarter, we transferred four loans totaling $38 million into held for sale status. This shows up on the March 31st balance sheet in the loans held for sale category with a non-accrual designation. We successfully sold these loans earlier this week, generating $36 million in total proceeds. As a result, in the second quarter, we expect to have a modest $2 million negative impact in the gain on sale line item on the income statement. Criticized loans remained relatively flat on a linked quarter basis, and capital levels continue to grow. Our tangible equity ratio crossed 9%, our Common Equity Tier 1 ratio grew to 11.87%, and our total capital ratio is in excess of 16%. Having best-in-class capital ratios versus our local peer group is a competitive advantage.

Maintaining strong capital ratios provides us the flexibility to execute on our business plan and provides us a cushion to continue growing client relationships regardless of the overall economic environment and any external shocks. Next, I'll provide some thoughts on the remainder of 2026. As I mentioned previously, excluding the day count convention for the first quarter and purchase accounting, the run rate NIM for the first quarter would have been closer to 314. We would use this as a starting point for modeling purposes going forward. In addition, and as I mentioned earlier, average earning assets for the month of March was approximately $14 billion. We expect modest NIM expansion in the second quarter and more pronounced NIM expansion in the back half of the year and in 2027 as the pace of the back book loan repricing picks up.

To give you a sense of the significant back book repricing opportunity in our adjustable and fixed-rate loan portfolios, for the remainder of 2026, we have approximately $1.3 billion of adjustable and fixed-rate loans across the loan portfolio at a weighted average rate of 4.10 that either reprice or mature in that time frame. As we look into the back book for 2027, we have another $1.7 billion of loans at a weighted average rate of 4.30. Assuming a 225-250 basis point spread to treasuries on these repricing and maturing loans over the next seven quarters, we could see another 40-45 basis point increase in the quarterly NIM by the end of 2027 when starting from the base NIM of 3.14.

While it's hard to predict the NIM in individual quarters and the path may not be in a straight line on equal increments, we are focused on the ultimate destination by the fourth quarter of 2027, which we expect to be over 350, assuming the consensus forward curve plays out and competition remains rational. Given our current cash position, any future 25 basis point reduction or increase in short-term interest rates will likely not have more than a 1-2 basis point impact on our NIM. Our NIM expansion in future quarters will be entirely driven by the back book loan repricing as well as core deposit growth and business loan growth.

We believe our large cash position is a competitive advantage that will allow us to take advantage of lending opportunities as they arise and will help us create a sustainable NIM that is not subject to cyclical moves based on the trajectory of short-term rates. We expect to continue to reduce our CRE concentration ratio lower to 350% sometime between the second and third quarter of this year, primarily driven by reduction in transactional multifamily and transactional investor CRE. At that point, we expect to reach an inflection point on investor CRE balances, with multifamily continuing a downward trend till we get to around 25% of total loans for multifamily. We believe operating with a CRE ratio that is 350% or lower will set us apart from all of the other local banks which are operating between 375%-450%.

We will be rewarded in the medium to longer term with a higher valuation as well as more optionality to take advantage of opportunities regardless of the economic or regulatory environment. Next, I'll turn to expenses. On our prior call, we had provided annual guidance for core cash operating expenses, excluding intangible amortization for 2026 of between $255 million and $257 million. This was based on the employee base we had in January. Given the significant hires we announced since that time, including the acquisition of two strong deposit teams from Signature and the build-out of a full equipment and franchise finance vertical, we are increasing the expense guidance for core cash operating expenses, excluding intangible amortization for the full year to approximately $260 million. Like Stuart said in his prepared remarks, we expect the hires to be accretive to EPS starting in 2027.

Finally, we expect the tax rate for the remaining quarters of 2026 to be 28.5%. With that, I'll turn the call back to Victor, and we'll be happy to take your questions.

Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for a name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. One moment for our first question. Our first question will come from the line of David Konrad from KBW. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning. Quick question on the $38 million loan that was sold in April. It looks like it was maybe a $2 million loss for next quarter. Was that in the non-performing non-accrual bucket at year-end? In other words, I'm trying to get a feel for the flow. Non-accruals went from $52 million-$57 million. Was the $38 million in the $52 million and the bucket was refilled? Or just kind of talk about the flows in the non-performing bucket.

No, David, it wasn't. We made a decision- to sell the loans towards the end of the first quarter here. That was new at March 31st. In the prepared remarks, like I said, it's off the books right now, and we got the cash in the bank last week. Look, I think we said this a couple of quarters back. We have the pre-provision earnings power at the bank, the capital to offload relationships and credits where we don't think it meets our long-term objectives here at the bank. We made the decision, and we moved on from the credit, and we're happy to be behind it at this point.

Great. Okay. Thank you. I guess just on loan growth overall, really good commercial loan growth, which is kind of offset by the intentional kind of wind down of some of the real estate assets. In your guidance, do you expect total growth to start occur in the back half of the year? When do we see the inflection that we'll see the loan portfolio start to increase?

Yeah, I think, for example this quarter we had $170 million of multifamily payoff and $90 million of investor CRE payoff. As we get to that 3.5% total CRE ratio, you'll start to see us maintain our overall CRE balances, not necessarily multifamily, but CRE overall and continued growth on the other business loan vertical. Yeah, our view is toward the back six months of this year, you'll start to see nice growth on the loan portfolio.

Yeah, David, I would just add the way we're thinking about the loan portfolio is probably in three different segments. On the business loan front, we're seeing nice around call it $150 million-ish of net loan growth including payoffs on that. A lot of the teams that Tom has hired, they've not been at the bank a full year yet. A lot of them have been here six to nine months. They're just starting to hit that stride and it typically takes 12 months-15 months to get into a good cadence, right? That's going to help. The equipment finance and franchise vertical that we're bringing on board, they're starting in May, so they'll probably be online by the third quarter. You add that up, we're probably trending towards $200 million-ish to a little bit more than that in terms of business loan growth.

The next part of the balance sheet is the investor CRE side, and we're back in the market right now for investor CRE. We're doing relationship deals on the investor CRE side. We're back in the market for relationship construction. I think once we get to that 350% and we've got a $2.7 billion-$2.8 billion investor CRE portfolio, that probably grows at $200 million on an annual basis, just using a 5%-6% growth rate, right? You got $800 million of business loan growth run rate. You got $200 million of investor CRE relationship run rate, including any payoffs and refinancings that we have in that. Then I said in my prepared remarks that multifamily is probably intentionally we're trying to take that ratio down to around 25% of total loans. Again, we're doing relationship multifamily but not transactional multifamily.

There's $1 billion in and $500 million out, and the residential portfolio is probably going to grow $50 million-$100 million. You put that all together, it should be mid-single-digit growth starting in the third quarter of this year.

Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Steve Moss from Raymond James. Your line is open.

Good morning.

Hey, Steve.

Hey, Stuart.

Right.

Maybe just starting on the Signature deposit teams that you hired. Just curious if you could give us any color around the size of the teams and what their historical book was.

Yeah. I'll first start off by saying these were significant teams that we've been talking to for three years. It's been a long road. These are teams that we We said there weren't too many teams we were interested going forward on previous calls, but these were two teams that we somewhat coveted as we move forward. Avi can give you some of the details in terms of what we expect out of discussions.

Yes. Steve, collectively, all the hires that we had, including the Lakewood build-out, they manage well north of $1 billion of deposits currently. This is after all the outflows in 2023 and 2024. I think, our expectation is, in the medium to longer term, this is a billion-dollar opportunity for us. I think we have proof of concept. The teams that we did hire early on, they're over $3 billion at this point. The thing that we like the most about the teams that we've hired is that cost of funds is actually lower than the bank's overall cost of funds. It's actually at 160 right now, given the high proportion of DDA that they have. These teams that we hired, it's kind of the same profile. They have a very high percentage of DDA tied to what they have. It'll take time.

I think 2023 and 2024 were unique environments just given what was going on at the competition. It's probably going to be slow and steady relationship by relationship at this point. As Stu said, these were two teams that we wanted back in 2023, and it finally came to fruition now. We're very happy with that.

Okay. Interesting. Appreciate that color there. Just on the equipment finance side, just curious the type of equipment finance loans you guys are seeking to make here with the new setup?

Yeah, sure. This group's really going to focus on middle market to large-ticket equipment finance deals. I would say we're looking for companies with middle market credit quality of single B through investment grade. The focus is really on critical machinery and equipment for manufacturing and warehouses, and we'll continue to, just like we do with all our businesses, we'll look for relationship-driven companies to help support their. This is a credit-focused business. Yes, you have to take a look at the machinery and the equipment that you're financing, but it's credit-focused. I think what that's going to do is it's going to enable us to lend into most industries. We'll be looking at material handling, commercial, specialty vehicles, medical, waste management, things of that nature.

Okay. I appreciate that color there, Tom. Just one more for me here. Just going back to the held for sale here bucket. Just curious, is this a one-off, or do you guys think you'll maybe utilize the sale of select loans, it sounds like it was multifamily credits, over the next 12 months-24 months just to accelerate maybe certain dispositions?

Yeah, I think case-by-case basis, Steve. I think we've been very good at resolving stuff in an expeditious manner. It depends on the market for these credits as well. This particular instance, fairly low-yielding relationship. The yield on the loans was probably 325-330 ±. So at the end of the day, it's going to be accretive to NIM going forward. Obviously, it wasn't in the NIM numbers for Q1, right? But if you remove $40 million at a yield of 3.5, you're earning money already on a NIM side. I would say just given our pre-provision earnings power of 160 basis points, it just helps us resolve stuff more expeditiously going forward. But it's really done on a granular basis. We've never done bulk sales at this bank. You want to maximize the value relationship by relationship.

It's probably going to be one-offs and working through stuff as they may come up.

Okay. Appreciate that color there, Avi, and thank you very much. Nice quarter here.

Thanks, Steve.

Thanks.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Manuel Navas from Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Manuel.

Hey, good morning. I really appreciate the NIM trajectory, a lot of it based on the back book repricing. With these teams that should bring a lot of deposits, what's the opportunity for continued deposit declines or just improvement in the funding base from core deposit generation?

I think, look, if the Fed's going to stay steady in terms of rates and not drop rates, it's going to be challenging for any bank to continue to drop deposit costs, right? There'll be a little bit of creep, a basis point or two every quarter. Some customers come to us and ask for higher rates. That said, the reason why I pointed out that the existing $3 billion that we have, the cost of funds on that is 150. It's actually lower than our overall cost of funds, right? I think with these new teams, it's going to be slow and steady over time. It gives us another avenue to grow deposits over time, and the existing teams are still opening accounts.

I would say, look, we're viewing this as a medium to longer-term play, and it's going to help with making the deposit franchise even more valuable. Like I also said, it's going to come with a lot of DDA, basically. Very DDA-heavy groups, which should aid in the cost of funds overall. I think if on the flip side, if the Fed does cut rates later this year by even 25 basis points, that'll be a driver for reducing deposit costs, Manuel.

Yeah. These teams basically had 50% of their deposits in DDA. We're very We're very excited about the opportunity that over time to have these deposits move to us and be part of our core deposit franchise.

I think the other thing too, not to forget, is that the commercial business is relationship-focused, right? That business will continue to also bring in deposits. We've got this great non-commercial private bank franchise that brings in these terrific core deposits. The commercial team will also continue to support that.

That's great commentary. Can you speak to the continued kind of M&A opportunity for talent and further loan and deposit growth? Speak to maybe pipelines for talent from here. You have a lot that came in this quarter, so I understand that you have to digest these teams, which are fantastic adds. Just what is the kind of pipeline for talent, and how have you taken advantage of M&A disruption in your footprint?

Yeah, Manuel, I'll start off and, Tom, you may chip in. Look, I think the goal at the bank for the next 90 days here is to work really well with the teams that we have. I mean, we have a handful with the number of people that we've onboarded. But like Stuart said, some of these teams, we spent three years speaking to them, right? The time was right for them to move eventually, and we capitalized on it. There are conversations like that with other teams on the deposit side, on the lending side as well, and sometimes one not in control of the eventual timing of when people are ready to move. I would say, on the commercial banking side, with the build-out of equipment and franchise finance, we're pretty much in every industry that we want to be in.

There's not going to be a build-out in terms of adding support staff and adding people behind that. It's probably going to be adding more depth to the existing verticals that we do have. When we brought Tom on a year back, we went through a business plan of these are the five or six areas that we want to be in. I think right now we are in all of those, right? You're not going to see significant expansion in the number of verticals going forward. It's going to be more depth to the existing staff that we have.

Yeah. I do think, and I'll let Tom comment on this, there's going to be, when you talk about the M&A disruption, there's going to be opportunity for us to take advantage of client opportunities that might be displaced or have relationships with some of our competition that might change. I think that's going to be an opportunity. The other thing I think is really important to understand that the verticals we brought on are really fledgling. They've been with us less than a year, and they're just beginning to grow their pipeline and get loans closed. There's a real opportunity as we move into the latter part of this year and certainly into 2027, where you'll see much more strength, I think, in terms of origination on the business banking front.

I think the only thing that I'll add to that is that Dime has put itself in a pretty good position, right? Out in the market, people understand the growth mindset, the deposit franchise, the strength of the back office, and a reputation of being a place that people want to work. We've kind of shifted over the last couple of years, trying to be proactive, which is good. We've been very successful being proactive, and the M&A dislocation is helping us. Now we're really in a great position where we can be reactive. We've got a lot of inbound calls, and we can be very selective in who we bring on and make sure it's matching the skill sets that we need to enhance the teams we currently have in place. We feel really good about where we are right now.

We will be doing some kind of additive hiring over the next year.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm not showing any further questions in the queue at this time. I will now turn it back over to Stuart for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Victor. Thank you all. Thank you to all our dedicated employees and our shareholders for their continued support, and we look forward to speaking to you after the second quarter.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.