Michael Collins
Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead
Thank you, Mark, and thanks to everyone joining the call today. I’ll give you a brief overview of Butterfield strategy and highlights of our solid Q1 result. Michael Schrum and Dan Frumkin will then go into a further detail on our quarterly financial results. And then, we will summarize and take your questions. As many of you know, Butterfield is a leading full-service bank and trust company, focused on shareholder value and growth with compelling offerings in attractive core markets. We were found in Bermuda in 1858, and today we are a premier provider of banking services, composed of retail and corporate banking and wealth management, which consist of trust, private banking and asset management to high net worth and also high net worth individuals, family offices and institutional corporate clients. We have leading market share in six attractive global markets. In the Bahamas, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Guernsey and Switzerland, we have a wealth management platform offering. In Bermuda and Cayman, we also offer a full range of retail and corporate services to individuals, local businesses, captive insurers, reinsurance companies, trust companies, and hedge funds. And in the United Kingdom, our recently launched Butterfield Mortgages Limited, we offer high net worth residential mortgages. Our capital generation and returns are strong and driven by a number of factors including significant fee income with historically low capital requirements, low-cost deposits, a high-yielding loan portfolio, a conservative capital-efficient securities portfolio and operations in corporate income tax neutral jurisdiction. And finally, we continue to maintain a conservative, efficient and liquid balance sheet with visible earnings. All of these attributes combined to help produce strong results, a solid first quarter of 2017 and excellent momentum. Turning to slide four. The first quarter saw two milestone events. First, we officially launched our residential property lending business in the UK, under a new brand name, Butterfield Mortgages Limited. You may remember, this is the planned result of the orderly wind-down of our London-based private banking business in 2016. Butterfield Mortgages is comprised of well network specialist experienced in assisting high net worth families obtain residential mortgages for unique UK properties, primarily highly desirable Central London. The business serves as a vehicle for lending against Sterling deposits received by our Guernsey bank. During the quarter, we successfully launched and completed a follow-on offering of our common shares. The offer is well-received by the market and the completion resulted in the Carlyle Group, which has been a shareholders since 2010, exiting their ownership position in the bank. Their support has been valuable and we’re pleased that two of our Board members originally nominated by Carlyle, James Burr and David Zwiener have agreed to stand for reelection at our upcoming annual general meeting. Looking to our first quarter 2017 financial highlights. Today, we reported another good quarter with increases in both net income and core net income of 1.4% and 3.7% respectively over Q4 2016. Compared to Q1 2016, net income increased 34% and core net income increased 6.5%. As you’ll see in the upper right hand quadrant, core net income has seen a steady and healthy increase over the last four quarters. Our core return on average tangible common equity or core ROE increased over 400 basis points from the fourth quarter of 2016 to 23.4%. As you can see from the graph on the lower left side, this is in line with our typically quarterly pattern. And in continuance of our dividend and shareholder return objectives, we declared a quarterly common dividend of $0.32 per share and so, on increase in core earnings per share to $0.70, up $0.03 over Q1 2016 and $0.08 over the prior year. I’ll now turn the call over to Chief Financial Officer, Michael Schrum for a more in-depth discussion of our financial results.