Christopher Del Moral-Niles: Yeah. So, we fully expect to fund all of our loan growth with core deposit funding. We expect to pay down BTFP over the course of the year. It rolls over in March. We’ll pay down some. We’ll roll over some. And we will be exiting the program in all likelihood by year-end. And with regard to sort of the rate sensitivity, it’s somewhere in the $1.5 million to $2 million per cut per month is one way to think about it. And I think we’re sort of working our way through that, but that’s in the zip code.
Dave Rochester: Great. And then, the pay down of the BTFP, is that — are you expecting to do that with deposits or could you fund that with some wholesale funding as well?
Christopher Del Moral-Niles: Well, at the March date, we’ll pay down some, we’ll roll over some, we’ll have some securities coming due, we’ll have a variety of other things. If we have better than expected deposit growth, we’ll certainly avail ourselves of that better deposit flow, but whatever is left over, we’ll just refinance at the end.
Dave Rochester: Great. And then maybe one last one on the loan pipeline. It sounded like that was looking pretty good. Obviously, you’re expecting to grow loans really faster than other larger banks. How are you thinking about the composition of that growth this year? If you can just go through some of the puts and takes on that, that’d be great.
Christopher Del Moral-Niles: Yeah, the pipeline strength that we’re seeing today is primarily on the residential mortgage side, which has been a strong contributor to our growth over the past year, and we expect will be the strongest contributor here certainly over the near term.
Dave Rochester: Okay. Great. Thanks, guys.
Operator: The next question comes from Gary Tenner with D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.
Gary Tenner: Thanks. Good afternoon.
Dominic Ng: Good afternoon, Gary.
Gary Tenner: Just a quick follow-up question on the loan growth guide. Given the strength of growth in the back half of the year, near 10% annualized, I would have thought it would be maybe a little higher than that. Just wondering about kind of the C&I activity in the fourth quarter. Was there any sort of pull-forward or drawdowns that were more seasonal in nature that were kind of normalized here early in the first quarter that would impact the point to point loan growth outlook?
Christopher Del Moral-Niles: We did see an uptick in utilization in December. And so that utilization rate, as you may not be surprised, came back a little bit in January. But nonetheless, we would expect C&I to be additionally a contributor to our 2024 growth. But as I just mentioned to Mr. Rochester, I think residential growth will lead the way. And from what we’re hearing and seeing from our activity levels on the CRE side, CRE will be muted level of growth net for the year.
Irene Oh: And I’ll just add, the C&I utilization at year-end, the trends are not that different, let’s say, from the prior year as well. We’ll pick up at year-end. It’s pretty normal for us.
Gary Tenner: Yeah, got you. And then just as a follow-up, in terms of your guidance, in the past — and I didn’t had a chance to look back and I apologize, have you not guided to also a fee income growth rate? Correct me if I’m wrong, if that’s not the case. But if it was, curious as to why you did not [just go around] (ph).
Christopher Del Moral-Niles: I’ve only been here one quarter, but it wasn’t in last quarter’s numbers.
Gary Tenner: Okay. Fair enough. I apologize. I didn’t have a chance to take a look back prior to asking the question. So, all right, thank you.
Operator: The next question comes from Casey Haire with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Casey Haire: Yeah, thanks. Good afternoon, everyone. Maybe first one, just apologies if I missed this. The expense guide, is that ex amortization or is — or does that include that? And if so, what is the tax amortization expense going forward?
Christopher Del Moral-Niles: It is excluding the one-time items and excluding the tax amortization. So, it’s what we reported adjusted expense, which is net of those things. So, it’s a clean operating expense level and we think the clean level comes up a bit.
Casey Haire: Okay. But there will be a tax amortization hitting the P&L, correct?
Christopher Del Moral-Niles: There will be, yeah. And so, the tax amortization expense, as you can see from this quarter’s numbers, can sometimes bounce around from quarter to quarter. We haven’t given you a specific guide for that, but we’re also looking at adopting, [PAM] (ph), which is the new accounting standard for that, which may move the numbers around geographically. So, there’ll probably be a reduction year-over-year in amortization expense, and a slight uptick in the tax rate as a result. But those two will net out to the bottom-line.
Casey Haire: Got you. Okay. Thanks for clearing that up. And then, just switching to capital, just thoughts on buyback appetite going forward with a still strong 13.3% CET1?
Irene Oh: Well, that’s correct. We do have strong capital and that’s something we’re very proud of. We do have the remaining authorization. Certainly, that’s something that we’ll evaluate over the course of the coming months.
Operator: Okay. The next question comes from Manan Gosalia with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
