Bill Young: Okay. Got it. And then switching gears, C&I growth was nice and pretty strong this quarter. Can you just speak to kind of what were some of the drivers there that you saw? And how are you feeling about the opportunities going to 2024 here?
Anthony Labozzetta: Well, the drivers were tactical. That was our focus internally, how we drove not only parts of our incentive plan, but our focus, even reducing the levels of — in the CRE side, in terms of how much we would own on an individual loan and some of the qualitative nature. More importantly, one of the drivers was how we attach the total relationship to it, meaning the deposit side. So naturally, you would see a lot of transactional CRE not happening at Provident over the last couple of quarters, and you’ll see more of a focus on the deposit relational side, which comes largely on the C&I. But even on the CRE side, the stuff that we’ve been putting on has been coming on with deposit relationships. So again, I think that’s a focus internally and our team rose to the challenge. And we see that happening again, market conditions are considered. We see that focus moving into 2024 even more acutely.
Tom Lyons: The other factor that helped loan growth in Q4, Bill, was a reduction in prepayments. I think we’re going to see a little bit of pickup. I know for the first couple of weeks of this quarter, some of the things that we expected to pay off in Q4 didn’t pay off until Q1. So I think looking forward in terms of the loan growth rate, something in the 4% to 5% range makes sense for us for 2024.
Bill Young: Great. Appreciate it, guys. That’s all I’ve got.
Tom Lyons: Thank you.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Michael Perito with KBW. Please go ahead.
Michael Perito: Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question.
Tom Lyons: Good morning, Mike.
Michael Perito: Just one quick follow-up on the last line of questioning, just around loan growth. 4% to 5% for the year seems very reasonable. But any areas of upside to that? I mean, like, for example, maybe on the construction side, where there still seems to be a lot of supply issues, particularly on the residential construction side in your markets. Just any areas where you think there maybe could be a pickup if we kind of continue to kind of glide to the soft landing on the macro side?
Anthony Labozzetta: Yeah. I will answer that in a little bit of unusual way because I think there’s an upside in all of our lending categories that we choose to be in. I think this year, we were very contained in our lending. We tightened down a lot of our underwriting standards in anticipation of what might happen in the marketplace. We deemphasized certain concentrations we had, and we spent a good amount of time altering some of those, including the construction portfolio. So from our perspective, had it been business as usual, we could have had a substantial growth in 2023. Our folks are out there. I think if market conditions are prevalent that allow for loan growth, I think we’ll get our fair share, and we can certainly meet or exceed the expectations that Tom just mentioned. But all within the credit underwriting standards that we have in place.
Michael Perito: Got it. Helpful, Tony. Thanks. And a little bit of a conceptual question here. But obviously, in ’23, it kind of was a bit of a challenging year, right? You had the macro and rate uncertainty. You had the pending deal. Just as we think about kind of at the onset of ’24 here, assuming that the Lakeland deal closes at the end of the quarter here. What — how do you kind of attack the strategic priority list? What are some of the top — on the other side of that, where do you guys focus? What should we be mindful of, as you guys move past the rate hikes and the pending deal?
Anthony Labozzetta: I mean I can give you some color on that. I mean, first, arching back to ’23 and see that our Provident team, despite all the delays with the merger and so much work that we put into it, still managed to do a fair job producing some good results. I think when we look into ’24, we’re optimistic that we’ll get the deal closed as soon as possible, and then our focus will be on a number of things. One, primarily, is looking at our business lines and figuring out how we deepen and share across both the organizations since we have complementary services, and building our businesses would be a big focus, principally, on the funding side. I think, individually, I think both Lakeland and us are focused on growing our funding base.
And together, I think we’re going to look to deepen that. Lastly, I think we’ve spent a good amount of calories preparing this bank for it to be $25 billion already. And I think the remaining — putting together these two banks, achieving our efficiencies, getting it ready technologically as we move into our future. I think those are the things that we’re going to be paying a lot of attention to pricing disciplines and things of that nature. But a big focus on building our businesses, operational efficiency. And again, I think we’re going to have the combined team that’s going to be more than capable of rising to that challenge. So I’m excited and optimistic once we get this deal closed.
Michael Perito: That was perfect. Thanks, Tony. Good update. Appreciate you guys taking my question. Have a good weekend.
Tom Lyons: Thank you. You too.
Anthony Labozzetta: Thank you.
Operator: I would now like to turn the call over to Tony Labozzetta for closing remarks.
Anthony Labozzetta: Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for joining the call. As we all know, ’23 — 2023 was a very difficult year. I think as we enter ’24, as I mentioned earlier, I think we’re all optimistic that we’re going to get the merger closed and focus on building our businesses and the efficiencies I mentioned. The team is ready to meet those challenges, and I look forward to talking to you in the quarter and speaking again in the future. Thank you very much and have a great day.
Operator: This concludes today’s call. You may now disconnect.
