And ’23 was well below optimal. But you got to put those together and do your average productivity off of that. I think we should be above that. And I think, again, we haven’t had what I’d call a normal year in three years. So, I don’t know exactly what what normal will be in a productivity. But I would again, those three years kind of put together divide by three might be a good way to think about it.
Operator: Thanks for your question. Our next question is from the line of Ryan Kinney with Morgan Stanley. Your line is life.
Charles Smith: Hi, good afternoon. This is actually a Charles Smith filling in for Ryan Kenny. First question on the comp leverage. Just another detail. There would be one level of MD hiring and overall headcount. Are you assuming in that four to five percent comp leverage per one hundred million incremental revenues?
Ken Moelis: Yes, I mean, it’s kind of reverting back to a more normal pace than what we’ve seen in the last two years on the on the hiring front.
Charles Smith: Got it. And then as it relates to be like this quarter in particular, any comments on how that affected the income statement as it relates to revs and non-comp and then just go forward on non-comp?
Ken Moelis: Now, are you asking about Silicon Valley Bank? Is that what?
Charles Smith: Yes.
Ken Moelis: Yes, we don’t break any of that.
Joe Simon: Yes, I’m not going to break it out. I just say that, though, it’s been a — we think it’s been very successful. And the group has gotten off the ground. And the fact that it was a group, the fact that there wasn’t a lot of downtime, they weren’t on the beach for a long time. Again, it was not a great year and the fourth quarter wasn’t the you don’t want to hold people to the fourth quarter. But we felt very good about the group and their and their ability to produce.
Charles Smith: I guess said another way, should we expect an incremental drop off in non-comp as the transaction sharing agreement rolls off?
Joe Simon: Well, again, what I described is pre transaction was like the 45 area. And, that that would exclude anything on the SBB fee arrangement, that ends this quarter. So it shouldn’t be it shouldn’t be material beyond this quarter. If it’s even material this quarter, actually.
Operator: Thanks for your question. We have a final question for today. Follow call from the line of Brennan Hawking with UBS. Brennan, your line is live.
Brennan Hawking: Thanks for taking my follow up. I just wanted to try to drill down a little bit on the MD count because there’s a few numbers around and it’s a little confusing. You touched on it to some degree before in prior question. But so the investor presentation says year-end MD is 157. For the press release, you’ve added 10 MD seven promotions and then the press release also shows 160. So as of now, so does the 160 include the two that have committed to join in the coming weeks? And was there in addition to there being some folks departing right around year end, where there are also some folks departing early in the year? Or was that something else?
Ken Moelis: And so it’s 160 today. That excludes the two that haven’t arrived yet. And 157 refers to as of year-end. And as far as like, if you need like a whole reconciliation, let’s do that offline.
Operator: Thank you. We actually do have one final question that just came in. This is coming from the line of Mike Brown from KBW. Your line is live.
Mike Brown: Great. Thanks for taking my question here. Most have been asked, but I guess just wanted to maybe get a little bit more color on the kind of shadow bank backlog or your pipeline, the visibility that you guys have. So can understand that sounds like it will take a little time for the broad based recovery in M&A to take form. But can you just maybe give us a quick update on what you are seeing behind the scenes? I think you sounded quite bullish two months ago or so when you characterized that pipeline. So just interesting to hear how that has evolved since. Thank you.
Ken Moelis: Yeah, I said early on in the call that our actual pipeline is right near all time highs. And what’s really again, I the end of the year last year between when the Fed was late November kind of put out this idea that you could take rate hikes off the table and just start guessing when rate cuts will begin. I think that was why I was bullish. I just felt like that’s a statement that is very valuable to anybody in the deal business that you can eliminate the tail risk of a raise. But, you do go into Christmas season. I feel like when we’ve gotten back to work in January, our new business review, which is where we actually determine whether we’re going to take on business almost pre pipe has been extremely active. So pipe is high.
