Drake Mills: And I apologise. What’s the second part of your question?
Unidentified Analyst: No, that was perfect. And then just kind of wanted to get your general update on credit, if any areas of concern have emerged over the quarter and just kind of what you are seeing across your portfolio?
Drake Mills: Let me — I’m going to turn that over to Jim Crotwell, he is doing an awesome job with, I guess, positioning us. We’ve had a very aggressive approach to credit. And I’m very pleased with where the credit metrics ended 2023 and the outlook for 2024. So Jim? .
Jim Crotwell: Tim, good morning. I feel really good about where we are, continue from a credit perspective. We’re seeing stability through our credit metrics. One of the things we did have a slight increase in our level of classifieds, but when you look a little bit deeper, I was pleased that our actual nonaccrual levels decreased. And that drove when we went through our reserve analysis, basically held that flat as percentage to total loans. So again, going back to the overall levels of we’re just seeing some good stabilization within our entire portfolio, not seeing any particular level of concentration or areas of concern within the portfolio. So…
Drake Mills: And Tim, I won’t throw in here. [indiscernible] there are now some areas of concerns. But as I’ve always been concerned, we’re not seeing it, but I’m being concerned about office and retail, but still those areas are holding up extremely well for us.
Unidentified Analyst: Yes, that make sense. And then just one last one for me. You guys have talked in the past about kind of taking a more meaningful stake in [indiscernible] try to get that [Technical Difficulty] any updated thoughts on that front?
Lance Hall: Yes. Hi, good morning. This is Lance. Yes, still our strategy at Origin had a large acquisition in the last half of last year, we continue to grow profitability, grow EBITDA. We’re very bullish on that business, the partnership that we have, beginning to connect that more to our markets. It’s still our intention to increase our investment, and we hope the timing of that works out this year.
Unidentified Analyst: Perfect. Thanks for taking my questions guys.
Drake Mills: Thank you. Tim.
Operator: Thank you, Tim. It appears there are currently no further questions, handing it back to the Origin team for any additional remarks.
Drake Mills: Thank each one of you for spending time with us this morning. I was recently asked why I seem to be as optimistic as I am. And my response took me back to think about and consider that during my career, we have experienced our strongest periods of growth coming out of downturns or industry stress. We positioned ourselves during each one of those to have strong credit metrics, good liquidity and the team is ready to go. We are in that exact position today. And it’s odd to sit here and say we’re on the offensive. We realize and recognize we have to be concerned about expenses. We’ve got to build revenues and do things to get through this interest rate environment. But we are only offensive. We have opportunities that include our geography, the teams that we have deployed ready to go that have significant experience, the C&I focus.
Our credit profile coming into this period of time is as good as we can consider it be as excellent. Our deposit base continues to show that we have opportunities for growth and then when you look at current opportunities in our footprint, it just puts together a very optimistic opportunity for us to stay focused, do the things that we know how to do. We have made several decisions this year that has impacted net earnings, our earnings as a whole. And each one of those was to put us in a better position to be able to deploy capital, put these teams to work and really take advantage of these opportunities. So as you can tell, I’m passionate, I’m optimistic, and it’s really nice to be sitting here today on the offensive. I appreciate your time.
I appreciate your interest in Origin Bank and Origin Bancorp, and I thank you for your investment. I hope to see each one of you soon.
Operator: This concludes today’s call. Thank you, and have a great day.
