So, I don’t know that there’s a big drop in people from here. I think when you’re looking at the efficiency, we do believe we can continue to drive efficiency down.
Valerie Toalson: And part of that’s through revenue.
Jon Arfstrom: Right. Okay. And Valerie, is the adjusted expense number from the fourth quarter, is that a good jumping off point for the first quarter?
Valerie Toalson: Yeah, I think that’s right. Remember, the first quarter has all the FICA expense and the 401(k) matching and all those other things, but you can kind of see that trend in our past between the first and second quarter.
Dan Rollins: Yeah, that’s on Page 4.
Jon Arfstrom: Yeah.
Valerie Toalson: Yeah.
Jon Arfstrom: Okay. I want to ask about Page 4 as well, but a quick one on Page 3. I’m not trying to be a smart aleck here, but what do you think that looks like in a year, Slide 3? Are there any big initiatives that you have out there that you feel like things will be relatively clean from here going forward?
Dan Rollins: I hope we’re a lot cleaner in 2024 than we were. As Valerie said, we worked really hard to muddy the water up for you guys. We promised you noise, and we outperformed on the noisiness of the quarter.
Valerie Toalson: But there were a number of things, I mean — and I said it, Jon, we converted just over a year ago, and we knew that there were a number of things that we could do that we really needed to get past that step. And so this past year was really active on all that front. But to what Dan said, we’re going to continue working on improving the performance, on driving the revenue, on making sure we’re efficient. And so, there are going to be things incrementally, I’d say, always. But from the size of what we did this past year…
Dan Rollins: We won’t have it.
Valerie Toalson: …doubt that we’ll have a comparable year this year.
Dan Rollins: Yeah. I think as the team looks out and what we’re working on, from a strategic look forward, we’ve got a laundry list of items that we can continue to execute on, but none of them anywhere come close to what we’ve done in the past year.
Jon Arfstrom: Yeah. Okay. And then last question from me on Slide 4. Are six cuts good or bad for your outlook compared to zero cuts? And I think I said in my note, okay quarter, but the outlook is a little bit better. And I guess my big picture question is, when you think about this outlook, how confident are you in it? How much did you scrub this? And where are some of the bigger variables in some of the guidance items that you’ve laid out?
Dan Rollins: Yeah, I think when we’re looking at Page 4 — you’ve asked several questions in there. I think just the overall look of Page 4, we’re pretty confident in where the Street has us with consensus earnings for 2024. We feel good about where we are on that front. I think from a rate cut perspective, no rate cut would be my preference in the process right now for 2024. That would be a big benefit for us. Higher for longer continues to be a benefit for us, continues to allow us to reprice loans at the top. That’s a win for us. Valerie?
Valerie Toalson: Yeah, no, I think you said it well. I mean, there’s obviously moving parts and all the different pieces. The higher for longer is definitely better on the net interest income side. There’s the questions, what does that do? Could that be detrimental to some of the expense costs, et cetera? I’d say that’s incremental if anything. Overall, the ability to continue to reprice the loans at a higher rate is net-net beneficial.
Dan Rollins: Stability. Stability, what you’ve been talking about. We moved through a lot of process changes, project changes, overhauls, and this, that and something else. We did a lot in 2023, I think stability in rates, stability in our operations, stability in what we’re doing out there. Hank talked about the team. We’ve got a fantastic team of bankers across our footprint who are winning business every day and just being stable in what we’re doing every day, we think can turn into some real growth for us as a company.
Jon Arfstrom: Okay. All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
Dan Rollins: Thanks, Jon. Appreciate it.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I’d like to turn the conference back over to the management team for closing remarks.
Dan Rollins: All right, thank you again, everyone, for taking time to join us today. Once again, I am very proud of the progress that we made in ’23. It’s obvious the work our team put in during 2023 has laid the foundation for improved performance. We had a very nice year from organic growth, loan growth perspective, while also holding deposits very stable in a very competitive deposit environment. And finally, the insurance transaction and the subsequent securities portfolio restructure will further enhance our efforts to improve operating performance. While we are excited about the positive impact of these accomplishments, we are committed to continuing on our path to improve performance in 2024 and beyond. Thank you all again for joining us today. We look forward to visiting with you soon.
Operator: Thank you. This concludes today’s conference call. We thank you all for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.
