Stuart Lubow: The real opportunity for us is and what we’re really focused on, as I said, is the C&I and the owner occupied CRE, because those are relationship businesses. And we’ve really been able — you saw significant growth in C&I. I mean, today, the weighted average rate on that part of the portfolio, the pipeline is (ph). So the fact is, we’re able to — with our new teams bring on business at these rates, and we’re still conservative underwriters. So on the CRE and the Investor CRE. We’re maintaining our debt service coverage ratios even at these interest rates, which are basically our rack rates on Investor CRE is about today. So again, we’re very comfortable with where we are. We’re able to develop new relationships and new business even within this higher rate environment.
I think the fact that we are a local community commercial bank building relationships is the key. And the banks that we’re taking in the business from are larger and provides us an opportunity to provide the personal service and the attention that these customers desire. And we can do it competitively with all the products and services that a larger commercial bank has. So, I mean, that’s our opportunity. And to date, we’ve been able to accomplish that. I mean just in the fourth quarter alone, we — while we had $450 million in net growth, we had $680 million in total originations at the high 5s in terms of yield. So the fact is, we’ve been able to really improve our yields and grow the business even during these higher rate times.
Matthew Breese: Got it. Appreciate the color. Thanks for taking my questions.
Avi Reddy: Thanks, Chris.
Operator: We have a follow-up from Steve Moss of Raymond James. Steve, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Steve Moss: Yes. Just two follow-ups for me. Maybe just going back to funding costs here. Just curious kind of what the maturity schedule is on the CD portfolio and kind of think about how we can grow up that rate pricing up here going forward?
Avi Reddy: Yes. I mean, we used to provide some disclosure in our press release on the CD portfolio. Maybe we’ll put that back. But there’s around $600 million that we have. I’d say the biggest piece in the month of May, where we have around $100 million of CDs, the rate on that is around 3%. So I’d say $600 million of that is this year, and the rate on that is around $150 million to $155 million. So the item with that is generally on our CD portfolio, we see retention rates of around 65% to 70% based on current rack rates. And then the remaining 35% of it, you’re going to have to go out in the market and fund at a higher rate. So in the near term, you’re going to see some deposit cost increase because CDs are pricing up as stuff rolls off.
But what we’ve done, and I’ve mentioned this in the script was, we’re trying to keep everything fairly short so that when the Fed does drop rates, we’re not stuck with 24, 36 month maturities over there. So everything is generally fairly short on the CD portfolio.
Steve Moss: Okay. That’s helpful. And then maybe just on M&A here. Just kind of curious, any updated thoughts you guys may have in terms of level of discussions and your appetite for a transaction?
Kevin O’Connor: I think we’ve been talking about this for the last several quarters. We are focused on the organic opportunities in front of us. This is certainly a challenging environment to think about that. But we have demonstrated that putting these two companies together, we’re in a position to do something if it was available. But really, the focus for us is continuing to grow in this marketplace, taking advantage of our position here. And as Stu has shown you on the pipeline and that there’s plenty of opportunity for us to continue grow our franchise organically.
