Scott Chan: Good morning everyone. Hratch, on your mid-single digit expense target for 2023, in some of the conversations about the first half and second half and parts of your business like with margins, do you have a sense for us on €“ because I know you talked about kind of keeping the flat line on $3.3 billion in fiscal Q4. Like is it a straight line, or is there stuff to think about in certain quarters in the seasonality or a strategic basis in terms of the €“ how those expenses will flow through in the year?
Hratch Panossian: Thank you. Thank you for the quest Scott. It’s never a complete straight line in our business, right. There is variability time-to-time. But maybe I will go back to reminding everybody, right, where we are in terms of our expenses, and the guidance we had all year is consistent. Our core expense growth can be in the low-single digit range in terms of BAU, and that’s where it was. That was about another so much because of inflation. We do expect inflation to go away. And so with the inflation, we were around that 5%. And then we had the other roughly so much of it is our strategic investments which year-over-year was a higher spend, but those are stabilizing. And so we continue to execute on our strategy, we continue to invest.
But there is no increase in the level of investment anymore. So, that level of investment stabilizes. Inflation starts to backtrack. And the actions that we have taken essentially can offset the rest of the low-single digit structural increase that you would have seen in a normal course. And so that gives us the confidence to say we can generally go stable from here, but there is going to be some pluses and minuses in any quarter. And you can do the math, right. If you take that 3.31 and you take something in that magnitude, plus or minus any quarter, into 2023 and you look at what that is, just because of the growth through €˜22 in our expenses, that will give you a result that’s in mid-single digits, and we are confident we can deliver that.
Scott Chan: Okay. Thanks a lot.
Operator: Thank you. That’s all the time we have for questions. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Victor.
Victor Dodig: Thank you, operator. So, I just want to apologize to those of you who are still in the queue, because I know there are other calls happening, and you are all backlogged. I want to let you know that we are all available for any questions you may have, including myself over the next day, two days, next week to answer anything that you would like to ask us, and to give you confidence that we have a plan that we will deliver on in 2023. So, before we end the call and on behalf of the Board and the Executive Committee, I wanted to thank all of our CIBC team members globally for your continued support of our clients. Your purpose-driven client-first focus is a critical component of the success of our bank, and that’s what you are seeing in terms of client experience, client retention, client acquisition.
And while there may be headwinds as we enter the New Year, I have confidence in our strategy. I have confidence in our leadership team and I have confidence in our team members globally who helped to establish clear growth momentum for Canada for CIBC across all business lines. That was a little Freudian slip because I hope Canada does win at 10 o’clock today when they face Morocco. And for those of you who care, I hope Croatia beats Belgium. Anyway, together, we built a relationship-oriented bank for a modern world. We are building that bank. We are confident in the strategy that we have. We are going to compete. We are going to win for business each and every day to grow our franchise. We are also mindful of the economic environment that we are in, and we are adjusting our expense €“ rate of expense and investment growth to that mid-single digit level over the course of 2023.
I want to wish all of you and yours a very festive holiday season and look forward to engaging with you in the New Year. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. The conference has now ended. Please disconnect your lines at this time. And we thank you for your participation.
