Operator: Thank you. Your next question is coming from Brian Martin from Janney Montgomery. Your line is live.
Brian Martin: Hey. Good morning, guys.
Harold Carpenter: Hey, Brian.
Terry Turner: Hey, Brian.
Brian Martin: Hey just a couple easy things. Terry, Just the hiring outlook. I think last quarter, you talked about it maybe being a little bit better in ’24 than ’23. Is that still your expectation or just kind of, especially with Jacksonville, how are you thinking about hiring in ’24?
Terry Turner: I think, you know, we had a little bit of a reduction in the hiring pace in 2023 from 2022. I think we’re likely to migrate back somewhere closer to the 2022 level of hiring. And to your point, Jacksonville will be a big contributor to that hiring.
Brian Martin: Got you. Okay. And I think you guys talked in the slides about some deposit initiatives. Just to your last point, Harold, about getting the deposit growth you need for the loan growth. Are there any new initiatives you have in place, or is just the ones you’ve talked about in the past?
Harold Carpenter: Yeah, it’s the ones we talked about in the past. Terry, why don’t you take the rest of it?
Terry Turner: I would say that we’ve enumerated or talked about four in the past. We introduced three more towards the tail of 2023. And my expectation is we’ll probably introduce two or three more over the course of 2024. I think the three additional specialties, probably the one that holds the most opportunity for us is focused on all manner of escrow accounts, whether it be 1031 exchanges, mortgage escrows, attorney firms, all those kinds of things. But we believe that we have an advantaged software capability for people that are running as agent on escrow money. We think we’ve got some advantaged software that’s helpful there. And look for that to be the biggest of these most recent three product specialties that we’ve introduced.
And so, I think what’s important about it, Brian, is two things. One, the size of the market is huge. We have an advantaged product, which ought to let us penetrate it well. But the second thing that’s really important is most of that money is either no cost or low cost money. And so, that’s a powerful specialty that we have.
Brian Martin: Got you. Okay, that’s helpful. And just the last one for me, guys, was just, Harold, back on the margin, it sounds like first quarter is flattish or stable and then up from there. The biggest drivers of that cadence have increased throughout the year. Is it outside of the fixed rate repricing? Is there something else in there? I guess it’s the key driver. Is that it? I know you had liquidity drop a little bit this quarter, so just trying to understand the benefits there going forward.
Harold Carpenter: Yeah. We do have some liquidity shrinkage over the course of the year. That will be a contributor to the margin primarily, not necessarily net interest income, but we do intend to be very aggressive on reducing our deposit cost. I think we determined that based on what happened during the liquidity crisis last year that — and our — and the fact that we raised rates so aggressively that we’ve got the ability to lower. And I believe a lot of the large caps are talking about that they’re still trying to catch up on deposit rates. Well, we think we’re pretty much already there. So, anyway, we fully intend to take advantage of rate cuts on our deposit growth.
Brian Martin: Okay, perfect. That’s all for me guys. Thank you.
Harold Carpenter: Thanks, Brian.
Terry Turner: Thanks, Brian.
Operator: Thank you. That completes our Q&A session. Everyone, this concludes today’s event. You may disconnect at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.
