Matthew Clark: Great. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. One moment please. Our next question comes from the line of Bill Dezellem of Tieton. Your line is open.
Bill Dezellem: It’s Tieton Capital Management. I have a group of questions. First of all, would you please expand further on the comment that you just made relative to some competitors are shutting off their lending machine and what opportunities that may create for you all with market share?
Scott Wylie: Well, I don’t know really what else to add. I mean I think we’re seeing some banks are approaching this part of the cycle by saying we’re not going to lend. And I think that does create opportunities for us with prospects that aren’t here yet, or clients that have things that are a way that we can bring here. I would tell you; we are in very desirable markets. And so we continue to see new entrants to the markets, and Julie talked in her comments a little bit about people doing, I won’t say stupid pricing, but pricing, certainly, we wouldn’t do on resis, for example, on residential mortgages. We’re just seeing things that are head scratches to us. But the beauty of our business model is, we don’t have to do those things.
We can focus on a different area. When one area looks like a competitive position, we don’t want to be in. And of course, with mortgages, we’re able to use the secondary market capabilities that we have to still support clients without having to put low-priced stuff on our books that we don’t want.
Bill Dezellem: Maybe, Scott, the one thing that would be helpful is how prevalent are you finding — just pulling back dramatically on lending by competitors?
Scott Wylie: I don’t know how to answer that, either Bill. We’re in some very different markets from each other. What we see in Denver is different than what we see in the other front range markets. Obviously, the resort markets are different. Western Wyoming, continues to be a really interesting dynamic market. I would say we’ve had more success early in Montana than we expected. And then if you look at the Arizona, we’ve been able to take advantage there of attracting new lenders in. And a lot of the reason that the really high-quality people that you want to attract to First Western, the reason they want to join us is, as they see us as a growth-oriented company and not somebody that’s turning it on, turning it off, turning it on.
So it does spell opportunity for us. I just think that — and I want to be clear, I’ve said it 2 or 3 times already, this is not the time to be pedal to the metal on growing loans. I mean this is a great time to be bringing in great relationships, fine, but we have been tightening credit standards. We’ve been tightening our underwriting stance and the terms. We’ve been expanding our NIM, expanding our credit spreads that we’re charging clients, and we’ve been disciplined about that. And I think that’s going to pay off for us in 2023 and beyond.
Bill Dezellem: Okay. Thank you. And two additional questions, if I may. Acquisition pipeline, would you please provide an update in terms of what you’re seeing given all of the macro factors that you’re talking about and whether that’s causing some decide now would be a good time to sell? And then secondarily, the trust and investment management and systems enhancements, I know there was a one-time cost in the quarter, but more importantly, trying to understand what is it that you would anticipate those enhancements to do for that business, please?
