Brian Violino: And then, in the past, you talked about the NOI margin in the Safety and Community segment turning back towards pre-pandemic levels of around 25% over time. I think it was around 21% this quarter. I guess, could you just walk through sort of the time line, trending back towards that level? What kind of occupancy expense trends would need to happen to get there?
David Garfinkle: Yes. I’d say, pre-pandemic occupancy was around 80%. So to get back to 25%, pre-pandemic margins, we’d have to get toward that occupancy level. We’re not projecting that. I mean, we haven’t or obviously, don’t have 2024 guidance out yet. We’ll issue that in February when we release our fourth quarter results, but I wouldn’t expect us to be getting to 80% occupancy throughout 2024 either. But certainly, incremental steps, as you know, sequential, if we see sequential growth, we could see an increase in that margin percentage, perhaps not as high as the 25% by the end of ’24. I wouldn’t rule it out, but probably not likely we’ll get to 25% margins by the end of ’24. But again, we can speak more to that when we release our 2024 guidance in February.
So in the short-term, I’d say modest increases perhaps in that margin is assuming we continue to see increases in occupancy like I just mentioned. And we do continue to see, again, sequential quarters beginning probably with the second quarter of 2022, and improvement in the hiring market. And then a last point I’d probably say is, our La Palma facility, we continue to have a lot of temporary staff there. Every day that goes by, we’re hiring more and more permanent staff, but we are experiencing elevated operating expense levels at the La Palma facility while we have the temporary staff there. So that will continue to normalize over time and also contribute to an increase in our margins.
Brian Violino: And one more quick one if I could. When Title 42 was first talked about going away back in May, there was some talk about Title 8 coming back into play and that repeat offenders could be referred to the DOJ and be detained under the U.S. Marshals. It sounds like Marshals population has been pretty stable, but have you seen any sort of uptick in these cases now that Title 42 has been gone for a few months?
Damon Hininger: We have not. And I know that was discussed and reported, quite a bit during the summer. But at the moment, to your point, yes, Marshal populations, both in our system and kind of the national numbers, have been pretty stable.
Operator: Our next question comes from Jordan Hymowitz with Philadelphia Financial Management of San Francisco.
Jordan Hymowitz: Our first question is, what was your occupancy in the month of October?
David Garfinkle: I don’t have that, at my fingertips, I would guess it was slightly higher than the 72% we reported for the third quarter.
Jordan Hymowitz: Second question is, is it fair to assume that since there’s been no proposal, if there’s nothing in your numbers or in any way going forward that you’re projecting for the potential large expansion of the electronic monitoring business, but you’re really not in there?
David Garfinkle: Yes. So since that, yes, exactly right. So it hasn’t, been finalized from a funding perspective. And obviously, I think that’ll all be tied into potentially in the supplemental or the larger funding bill for the rest of fiscal year. So my guess is that probably ICE is doing two things. One, again, they’re probably surveying the market on capabilities based on what their needs were would be with the mission. But second, what kind of direction they get from a funding, from Congress. So it’s a little, I think at the moment, it’s probably a little bit we can see on our side while they get again, their plan together and also see what funding to get, support wise from Congress.
Jordan Hymowitz: And my last question is, you’ve expanded your debt facilities quite a bit. And if you don’t want to give names, that’s fine, but not that many years ago, like you couldn’t find anybody at any rate to lend you money. Can you talk about the number of banks or facilities, without mentioning, that are now interested in your debt facility or interested in doing business with you?
Damon Hininger: Dave, I’ll take that one. Well, that was one of the reasons we actually expanded the size of the credit facility, which we just obtain last year before expanding it in October. We have 11 banks in our bank credit facility, and we did have some additional banks come to us between the last time, we did the facility, which was April or May of last year, through now, that wanted to get into our facility. Again, they’re not the big bulge bracket banks, but more regional banks. And so, it’s nice to see, banks actually approaching us, interested in getting into our bank Syndicate. They look at the credit. The credit’s rock solid and we can provide certain element of businesses and deposits for them. So it’s good business for them as well.
So, we just felt like it was, we reached out to the banks, asked them if they’d be interested in amending and extending the facility. So getting a 5-year deal was longer than the 4-year deal we got last year, and they were very receptive. They’re very good banking partners. I speak with them pretty regularly. And so when they said, yes, they would be supportive of an extension, we just opened it up and expanded it by 50 million and pushed the maturity out 5 years. So, yes, different environment, I’d say, today than it was several years ago.
Jordan Hymowitz: And in terms of that increased flexibility, is there any covenants in that that should you want give you more flexibility on buybacks than before as well?
David Garfinkle: There are no restrictions under the credit facility other than our obvious covenants when we’re way inside of our total leverage covenants on how much stock we could buy back. The only restrictions we have on buying back shares is under our 8.25% unsecured notes. There’s a restricted payment basket, but it is plenty and it would not be a restriction on the amount we could buy back. Our internal leverage profile of 2.25, 2.75 will be the governor on share buybacks.
Operator: Our final question comes from Greg Gibas with Northland Securities.
Greg Gibas: First, I have a follow-up on the assumptions related to the ICE population in guidance. I know you said definitely higher than where we were at the end of Q3, but, I believe it was like 11,800 of the ICE population as of yesterday that you had. Is that kind of the assumption that it holds through year-end? Or would we that increases. Just curious what you kind of implied in guidance there?
