It’s a really interesting time right now because when everybody is doing well and you’re not paying much in fees compared to the 20% or 30% gains you’re making whatever. It’s hard to get people to move. It’s hard to get people that meant that they need help because everything they bought into their account or whatever went up. But in markets like this, they’re not being so confident when says them, hey, how come you lost all this money, it’s nice to have a professional adviser that’s helping them. And so we think it’s an interesting time. We’re actually very focused as a company right now on how we can strengthen our planning, trust and investment management, which are really kind of three different businesses. They’re all very much integrated and overlapping, but the three different things.
And we’re doing some pretty significant things internally to upgrade that because we think it’s a really good time right now to be out telling our story, which is a very powerful, differentiated unique story that fits nicely into the banking story we talk about all the time of delivering this team-based integrated private bank and trust service locally. It’s hard to imagine they’re going to go down much from where we are, and I think there’s opportunity on the upside. Whether we realize that in 2023 or not, I don’t know. But you go back to where we’ve come from, and we’ve come a long way in those businesses and our revenues have shown nice growth. And I think that this is an interesting time for us to be able to capitalize on the market environment.
Brett Rabatin: Okay. That’s great color, Scott. Appreciate it.
Operator: Thank you. I’m showing no further questions at this time. Let’s turn the call back over to management for any closing remarks.
Scott Wylie: Yes, I did have a couple of closing points I wanted to make, if I could. I mentioned in our prepared comments that if you step back a little look at the broader context, 5 years ago, pre-IPO, First Western was a $970 million bank with about $50 million in tangible book value. Today, we’re approaching $3 billion. We have over $200 million in tangible book value. And we’ve done that without dilutive capital raises. In the meantime, we built out an infrastructure that can produce and support billions more in organic expansion, acquisition growth, and we’re producing strong operating leverage and growth into the future, just as we have in proven in these interim years here since the IPO. I also want to recognize the hard work of our 365 First Westerners.
I feel like in a pretty challenging year. We’ve managed to produce another great year of solid organic growth in revenues and core earnings in spite of some significant headwinds, we’re well positioned for the challenges that 2023 may bring and especially if some of those 2022 headwinds turn to tailwinds, and these challenges that we’ve seen become opportunities for us. I think we have a really terrific future here. So thank you so much for dialing in and for your interest and support for First Western. We really appreciate it.
Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s conference. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.
