George Gleason: Yes, Brannon, let me comment on that. I would tell you, I thought we had good progress on each of the specific assets that we’ve been discussing in our management comments documents over the last year. The Chicago land deal, they continue to work hard. They went way down the road with one potential capital source and concluded that was not the right solution. So they stepped up to the plate and put up $8 million to reengage some previous interested parties in that. We view that positively, certainly not conclusive that they’re going to be successful. But we viewed it positive that they came to the table with $8 million more capital to buy more time to continue to work on a recap of that project. It’s — we have no way of handicapping the success or payer of that effort, but $8 million we viewed as a positive step.
I described it to the team as first in 10, $8 million. There’s a new set of downs, gets 10 yards farther down the field, but they’re still a long way from the end zone. Likewise, the $11 million sale of the amenities, which should hopefully close this quarter on the development near Lake Tahoe is a really significant step forward if we get that closed to the final wind down of what’s been a long-term workout credit number of years on our books and been discussed for a number of years. So we view that as an important step. And the fact that our LA land project didn’t close was disappointing to us. We’d certainly preferred to close. But the flip side is they’re spending a lot of money and a lot of energy and effort putting that project together and the fact that they put $1 million fee to us, paid $1 million fee that went to income and put $1 million of nonrefundable earnest money up for a 90-day extension, shows they’re serious about it.
And as we mentioned, they’ve got three more 90-day extensions, each with a $1 million fee and an additional $1 million of nonrefundable earnest money they can exercise. So that we viewed as a positive commitment both for income and the earnings money going hard on that. And then we sold the Minneapolis hotel loans on $18.8 million asset went off the books. We added the Seattle office, but that’s an $11.4 million book. So I view it as another first down when you get rid of an $18.8 million asset and replace it with an $11.4 million assets. So we viewed all those as main positive trends related to those credits.
Timur Braziler: Great, thanks for the color, George.
Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Ben Gerlinger with Citi. Please proceed with your question.
Benjamin Gerlinger: Hey, good morning everyone.
George Gleason: Good morning, Ben.
Benjamin Gerlinger: Most of the questions I was thinking has kind of been addressed to some extent. So I’ll just follow-up with Jay in terms of specificities. But I’m just kind of curious, when you think about the overall pace of growth this year and maybe give guidance that it was going to be a little bit softer than last year. But I mean, last year also a really strong year following ’22, which was also a strong year. Is the really strong deposit growth this quarter, a leading indicator that 2Q could also be a really strong quarter and then we kind of tapered down to the back half of the year? Or did 1Q potentially kind of pull forward some of the loan growth? Just I know the cadence of quarter-to-quarter is always difficult, but I’m just kind of curious on what you’re seeing over the next kind of three quarters here and how the lumpiness might transform?
George Gleason: I don’t think we have color on the lumpiness of quarter-to-quarter. We made the comment in our management comments document, for years that results of different parts of our performance could vary quite a bit from quarter-to-quarter, and that’s certainly true of origination, certainly true of pay down. Probably the deposit side of our business is less lumpy and much more granular and thus prone to less sort of wild swings quarter-to-quarter. But I would — I think that’s about all I can say is payoffs, originations and total balance sheet growth could be fairly lumpy quarter-on-quarter. I would expect more stability and more of a sort of linear straight line basis on the deposit growth. I mean, $1.2 billion or $1.5 billion and $2 billion or $1.8 billion, you can kind of have that sort of range, but we would expect steady growth with some variation quarter-to-quarter in the deposits.
Benjamin Gerlinger: Got you. Yes, that’s helpful color. And then kind of just thinking when you think about just the ratios on your balance sheet, I know that you said your RESG just do what it does because it’s kind of the best-in-class. But do you have any sort of targets in terms of just loan-to-deposit ratio just from a 10,000 foot view? Or is it really just kind of what the loans grow and then match what deposits where needed?
George Gleason: Tim, do you want to take that?
Tim Hicks: Yes, Ben, I mean, historically, we’ve been in the low to mid-90% loan-to-deposit ratio. And so I don’t anticipate that changing much at all. So we do project out our funding needs on a monthly basis for 36 months in advance. And we adjust our deposit-gathering initiatives based on those projections. And so we really look at it as how much earning asset growth do we need to fund and keep the loan-to-deposit ratio in the low to mid-90% long term.
Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Brian Martin with Janney Montgomery Scott. Please proceed with your question.
Brian Martin: Hey, good morning guys. I’ll keep it short, given timing constraints here. But just, George, any commentary on the headcount that you’ve added? I mean anything specific you can provide, I guess? And more broadly, just is it at least the ones hired already, kind of are these new teams? Are these adds to existing businesses? Just trying to understand given the talent that’s out there, just kind of directionally how you’re thinking about that?
