Christopher Maher: I’d start with our best investment is in ourselves, especially as we’re currently trading below tangible book. So that would be our priority. We’re going to continue the organic growth and build out the franchise. There are kind of two, I think, precursors to M&A returning to the industry, a little better understanding of rates and rate marks and financial conditions. And then a little more transparency from the regulators regarding what they’re looking for in responsible M&A transactions. So that said, I don’t think it’s a short-term, but in the long-term, I think there’s obviously going to be more industry consolidation. I think we’ve done that well in the past, and we’d like to play a role going forward. But right now, most of our focus is on organically performing and improving our franchise.
Manuel Navas: I appreciate that. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question is from Christopher Marinac from Janney Montgomery Scott. Christopher, please go ahead.
Christopher Marinac: Thanks very much and thanks for hosting us all today. Chris, I wanted to ask you or Joe, about the pace of new customers. And I know you talked a couple of times this morning about bringing in new deposits and having that success last year. Should that pace accelerate under the right circumstances? And can you just kind of walk us through kind of what would kind of drive that? Is it more external economic factors that would drive the pace of new customers to you?
Christopher Maher: Yes. We’d certainly like to see more growth going forward. And I think the way I would sum things up is that for a decent chunk of the year, if you think about events in March, April and even into May, there was such unrest that customers were not willing to move from any bank to any other bank, right? If they were happy where they were, they were just kind of staying put the same one for staff. We’ve been pleased to be able to add a few new bankers that Joe referenced. Historically, we have grown organically over a long period of time at like a 10% per year rate. We’d love to get ourselves back to that. It’s not going to happen, I don’t think, in 2024, but that’s a really good number for our franchise. Our markets support it.
We can find a talent to do that. So this is the year where we — growth rates pick up, but our long-term outlook would be to position the franchise to grow at about 10% a year. And I think we have the markets and the people to do that. It’s just take a little while to return back to that level. So we’re bullish but it’s going to take a little time to work through that.
Christopher Marinac: Got it. That’s helpful. And just a follow-up for Pat or whoever the loan marks some fair value that we’ve seen in past quarters, did those improve this quarter? And is there opportunity for that to change further with rates this year?
Patrick Barrett: I really want to thank you for closing the call down with that question. It’s something we wouldn’t get that. Yes. You’re going to see loan marks improve this quarter. You’re going to see that across the industry with the change in curves and rate expectations. We spent a fair amount of time looking at that and taking a look at how our mix is the same or differs from others. Because we’ve noticed that we tend to have very conservative loan marks that are out there from a fair value exposure perspective. We feel good about those fair value marks. We think we’ve probably got a little bit of room for improvement to be a little more in line with some of the assumptions in our discount rates. But we’ve got probably a bit heavier concentration of longer-term residential than many others do, and that will tend to drive bigger fair value marks.
But I think you’ll see the gap between kind of average and high and low narrow pretty meaningfully as people report this quarter.
Christopher Marinac: That’s great, Pat. Thank you for that and sorry to bring up a sore topic, but we appreciate the background a lot.
Patrick Barrett: It’s not sore. It’s just — it’s a pretty deep topic. I’d love to take [indiscernible] off line on that sometime.
Christopher Maher: Chris, it’s Chris. I’ll add to Pat’s comments. These are — they’re like notoriously sensitive calculations and we’re kind of looking at them and they’re very circular in some cases where as your prepayment speed assumptions changed and your rates change and kind of one thing feeds into another. The good news is that getting better, and we’re going to continue to put a finer point on that.
Christopher Marinac: No, understood, and I appreciate it. Thanks again for taking all of our questions.
Christopher Maher: Thanks, Chris.
Operator: Thank you. This is our final question today. So I’d like to hand back to management for any closing remarks.
Christopher Maher: All right. Thank you. We appreciate your time today and your continued support of OceanFirst Financial Corp. We look forward to speaking with you after our first quarter results are published in April. Thanks very much and have a safe weekend.
Operator: Thank you, everyone, for joining today’s call. You may now disconnect your lines and have a lovely day.
