Bridgewater Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ:BWB) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Jerry Baack: No, I wouldn’t say that our overall strategy has changed at all. I mean, we continue to take market share. I mean, as you’re well aware, I mean, US Bank and Wells control a big part of the Twin Cities market here. And we continue to get in front of great long term clients of theirs decades long clients. And so I mean, we continue to be in front of people take market share. And I’d say, yes, we certainly pausing on the loan side compared to the super strong growth we’ve had in the past. But we’re certainly still out in the community, continuing to network, continuing to be in front of clientele and trying to grow the business. I’ll let Joe follow-up on anything with that.

Joe Chybowski: And I’d speak more, Ben, to just the internal initiatives, if there’s part of your question there, too. I think, we’ve done a lot of scaling the business over the last couple of years, a lot of technology investment. And I think we’re just starting to really harness and really see the value. And so a lot of it’s really just optimizing that technology investment that we’ve really has been internally focused to help us better serve our clients. As Jerry said, if hiring is muted from an FTE standpoint, we feel comfortable, a lot of the technology investment internally will allow us to use the same amount of staff from an FTE standpoint and still get more productivity. So I think a lot of those internal initiatives over the last couple of years are really starting to bear fruit.

And we feel good about a lot of the efficiency technology based investments that we should continue to stay and optimize even while we might, on an asset basis, see more muted growth.

Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the call back over to Jerry Baack for any closing remarks.

Jerry Baack: I just want to thank everybody for taking the time today. We appreciate it and we’ll be in touch soon.

Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you very much for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.