Kevin Riley: Well, Jared, as you know, you’ve been around us for a long time. We have a number of arrows in our quiver that we use. We look at how to effectively use our capital. That’s one of them. And we always are analyzing our capital levels and what we might do going forward. So that’s all I can pretty much say on that.
Operator: And the next question — the next question goes to Chris McGratty of KBW. Chris, please go ahead. Your line is open. Q – Chris McGratty Oh, great. Thanks for the question. I guess Kevin or Marcy, the math you gave us on the growth in the margin, maps very similarly to the earnings that you gave when the merger was announced, $3.65 or so, plus or minus. But we’ve had much higher rates and so it feels like there’s been a notable change. Obviously the margin’s getting harder for everyone, but I guess what am I missing is that changed so much in the earnings power
Marcy Mutch: Deposit outflows in 2022?
Kevin Riley: And then, we had, as you recall, we reduce our NSF and od, fees. Q – Chris McGratty And then the FDIC insurance is an additional up expense that we didn’t anticipate. So
Kevin Riley: Okay. Yeah, it feels like the, I got the NNSF and FDIC. It feels like it’s more the NII in the deposits that are absolutely deposit, mainly deposits ground? Q – Chris McGratty Yep. I get it. Kevin, in terms of next step for maybe following on Jared’s question, what are the thoughts on doing another deal? Obviously the balance sheet’s in great shape. You got a ton of capital. Deals are — good deals get struck when really no one wants to do them, but what are the thoughts on doing a deal?
Kevin Riley: I get the next question as well, Tom. Maybe cause I do deals. The thing is, Chris, I’ll be honest with you. Right now, I think when you — when you look at banks, people are worried about the AOCI where that’s going to go. People are worried about credit, where that might go. So, what we’re focused mainly on right now is preparing this institution to be scalable. We’re making all the operations and everything and get prepared if one comes about. But we’re not going to rush in anything. We’re, more focused on driving positive operating leverage within the institution. But if something comes up that’s, that we believe, as you always know, we have a, a priority list of banks that we believe will increase the franchise value of this company.
And we’re kind of sticking to that list, and if something comes along, we’ll look at it. But, as you probably know, there’s a lot of banks out there for sale, but we’re not interested in all the ones that are out there for sale. So we’re just, we’re going to stick to our knitting and, and make sure this bank is, is, is performing at the ultimate level of performance. And then if something comes up that’s, that we believe will increase the franchise value, we’ll go to it. But nothing is right currently on the horizon.
Operator: And the next question goes to Adam Butler of Piper Sandler.
Adam Butler: This is Adam on for Matthew Clark. Just to go back to Jared’s question on the deposit balances. Overall, they came down this linked quarter do you expect a similar decrease in the first quarter or maybe slower? Curious about your comments on that.
