Tim Myers: Well, we continue to believe we’d love to do that based on the valuation. We think it’s a great deal, obviously. Similar to my I answered, I think, David, on security sales and having ongoing conversations with different stakeholders, including the regulators about their appetite, given fears around potential credit losses. What that might mean, but it’s something we remain keenly interested in. It’s probably a matter of timing.
Andrew Terrell: Okay. Thank you for taking all the questions.
Tim Myers: Thank you, Andrew.
Operator: The next question comes from the line of Matthew Clark from Piper Sandler. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Matthew Clark: Thanks and good morning.
Tim Myers: Good morning, Matthew.
Matthew Clark: Just a few more all around the margin, just trying to fine-tune the forecast here. Loan yields were basically flat this quarter. Was there anything unusual there? And we see the repricing slide and we know about, new loan production coming on a lot higher. But maybe just any commentary around this latest quarter and then kind of the lift you might expect going forward?
Tim Myers: I think some of the yields of loans paying off are a little bit higher, depending on the loan category. So the average yield of loans paying off of $6.2 million, that’s a little bit high. And so there wasn’t a huge rate differential. You had overall loan compression, albeit marginal. And I think that all affected an average yield. But that average yield of loans coming on at $769. If we can continue that trend, again that $620 million as high for loans coming off, that should expand or more differentiated.
Tani Girton: Yes. And if you look at the yield on the quarter before loan fees, we had lift of 5 basis points there. And I think what happened in the loan fees and cost amortization is that if memory is serving correctly, we had some payoffs last quarter. So we had some fees that were associated with those that lifted the yield a bit.
Matthew Clark: Got it. Okay. And then the trend in interest-bearing deposits you show on Slide 16, call it, 10, 11 basis points per month in terms of the rate of increase. And it sounds like you expect things to moderate. Do you happen to have, I guess you – yes, do you happen to have the spot rate at the end of September. I’m just trying to get a sense for – does that 10 basis point increase get cut in half going forward or not?
Tani Girton: Yes. So we don’t have the spot rate for September 30, but what we gave you was the month for the rate for the month of September, which was 100 basis points on the total cost versus 82% in the month of June. So a 28 basis point lift over the three months.
Matthew Clark: Okay. Great. And then just any additional commentary around expenses for next year? How should we be thinking about growth? Is it – are we shooting for expenses to be flat on an operating basis? Or do you think there might be some modest growth?
Tim Myers: Well, we have some investments we want to continue to make around efficiencies and digitalization. That being said, that investment has been slower this year. The branch closures we announced the savings this year because of accelerating TI costs was more minimal. But next year, that’s a $1.4 million annualized savings. So we’re doing our best to cover investments or any further increases in expenses with offsetting that with savings like that and we’ll continue to do that. So we don’t have any large expense things planned that would deviate too far from that. But we also caveat that, we want to be opportunistic with hiring and other things. And I say that with nothing in mind, but I think that’s the general picture.
Tani Girton: And we normally will plan for merit increases. And so that’s going to give you an upward trend just in general.
Matthew Clark: Yes, okay. Got it. Thank you.
Tim Myers: Thank you.
