OceanFirst Financial Corp. (NASDAQ:OCFC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Daniel Tamayo: Okay. Thanks, guys. I appreciate all the color.

Christopher Maher: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Michael Perito from KBW. Michael, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Michael Perito: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions.

Christopher Maher: Good morning, Mike.

Michael Perito: Good morning. Two — a couple of things I want to hit. Number one, on the kind of one of the opening slides here, you guys talk about the balance of efficiencies and technology investments you guys are making. So Pat, maybe asking the expense question a little differently. I mean you guys kind of hit the efficiency targets ahead of schedule. But I mean, as we think about some of the pressures both ways next year and kind of the bare minimum level of investment you guys still want to kind of maintain, I mean is it fair to be thinking about an efficiency ratio in kind of the low 50% range, give or take? Or do you think that there’s still room for leverage in this environment?

Pat Barrett: Yes and yes, I guess to that. So I think is not a bad thing to ballpark as a proxy for right now. I think — we think that we can do better for what we do. And certainly, we can do better in preparing for further scale in growth across the business lines that we are in over time. So we’ve made a lot of technology investments over the years. We’ve still got a lot of disparate processes and people. And so in this environment — in any environment, we would be focused on that, but particularly in this environment, we know that our revenues over time are likely to fall, and we want to try to protect the efficiency or the operating leverage that we’ve achieved even in the face of the falling revenue environment as rates come down over time. So I guess more to come on that. But again, it’s an important focus for us this year.

Michael Perito: Got it. That’s helpful. And then just secondly, Chris, you mentioned the I forgot how you clarified it, but I think it was the central business district office. Can you just recall — remind us what the total kind of office exposure is in the loan book? And — and as you think about growth opportunities for next year on the commercial side, Joe, as a follow-up to that, I mean, — can you maybe just give a little bit more color both kind of by product and geographically, where maybe the pipeline could rebound faster? Just curious how you guys are — what kind of activity you’re seeing?

Christopher Maher: Sure. So the figure I was referring to is we would define that as office exposure in central urban markets. So for us, that would be New York, Philadelphia and Boston. So — but to get a little broader, I don’t know, Joe, what would you add to that?

Joe Lebel: Yes. So as I mentioned earlier, we have about $1.1 billion in office in the portfolio. Central business office is only about $125 million, which as Chris mentioned, 2% of the CRE book, 1% of the total loan book. And if you strip out, as Chris mentioned, if you strip out life sciences or credit tenants, that’s — it’s down to $50 million in central business district. So there’s not much exposure there. We haven’t really ever played in that space too much. We look, but we have a fairly narrow credit band, which I think has served us pretty well. In terms of growth in CRE and growth in the book, I’d say this, we — I think I mentioned last quarter, end of period pipeline is just a day and time things rotate back and forth at a fairly rapid pace.

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