Brian Martin: Hey, good morning guys.
Larry Helling: Good morning, Brian.
Brian Martin: One of mine was just answered or answered on the LIHTC and on the deposit. Other one, just on, Todd on the portfolio, just kind of the pipelines or Larry, just kind of the pipelines today that are €“ it sounds like they’re pretty healthy if you’re kind of thinking about your guidance along with maintaining the credit quality, but just where are the pipeline is today? Is it specifically in the, kind of the traditional commercial and the specialty finance or is that kind of what’s driving it, or just geographically, just maybe give a little color on where the pipelines are at?
Larry Helling: Yes. I’ll start, Brian, and let Todd fill in if he’s got some other thoughts. Certainly, I would say, I looked at our pipeline trends this morning, again, they are very consistent over the last couple of quarters for new business and new transactions that we’re working on. What’s changed, as you know, we and others had really frothy growth earlier in the year in that 14%, 15% range really because of the liquidity coming out of the system and clients starting to use their lines of credit and those kind of things. Our line of credit usage for clients is back close to pre-pandemic levels now. So that big push on liquidity and loan increases is, kind of done, we could get a little bit more uses there, but it’s pretty much €“ the excess liquidity seems to be, kind of pushed out.
And so both the Specialty Finance Group and the core business pipelines look solid. So, we’d expect consistent growth from both of those and get us more back in what we’ve done over the long run, which is kind of numbers in that 8%, 9%, 10% range is what we’ve done over years. And so, it won’t be easy. We’ll have to work hard to achieve at those levels, but that’s something we’ve done over a long period of time.
Brian Martin: Got you. Okay. No, that’s helpful. Thanks Larry. And just the LIHTC portfolio today are just kind of the specialty finance pipeline, if you think about the securitization, how big is that portfolio today when you think about taking something off the table there with securitization?
Larry Helling: So yes, I mean, the stabilized LIHTC portfolio is around $750 million, which we believe to be probably the highest quality asset we have on our lending balance sheet. The first tranche, we could theoretically securitize all of that. That’s not likely because we like it on our books, but we’re going to pull the first $150 million off in the securitization as we discussed just to have that tool available because we’ve got consistent growth in that market. And so, if we want to take the top off the growth there and create a little extra additional liquidity, we want to make sure we’ve got that lever completely figured out, so that it’s there when we need it in the future.
Brian Martin: Got you. Okay. So, that’s the LIHTC piece, the whole piece of Specialty Finance loans, how big is that the portfolio today?
Larry Helling: There’s another $700 million roughly in between municipal lending that we’ve done and some like that construction. So, it’s a big piece of our business. But again, we think some of the very highest quality stuff that we have.
Brian Martin: Yes. No, understood. So, I just want to get a frame of how big it is. So, okay, that’s helpful. And maybe just on the capital front, given kind of the build here and just the look on AOCI. Have you €“ how does your look on the buyback? I mean, I know there’s still uncertainty out there with rates economically, but just trying to balance that or just understand how you guys are thinking about it.
