Steven Young: What maybe I will just, NIM strategy is maybe, Will or John can address capital and bond restructure. As we think about the NIM moving forward, we had an investor recently asked us, if Fed funds went down to 3%, what was your — what was your NIM back when fed funds was 3%, and we did some, we barely remember, but we looked back at it and it was in the 3.75% to 4% range. So, it’s just we’re waiting for the re-pricing strategy of all these fixed-rate type loans if, if our deposit paying in and so as we think about — we’ll do things around the margin around hedging and those kinds of things, that won’t be a huge strategy for us, but I think the opportunity will be, as rates, if rates do fall. If we have four rate cuts next year, money markets and those types of things on the incremental margin would fall a little bit and then our fixed-rate re-pricings of our loans would continue to continue to reprice up and so as we think about the modeling and as we think about NIM, that’s why we are sort of guiding in that range, but why don’t I turn it over to Will and just maybe talk about bond restructuring capital.
William Matthews: Yes, yes, Stephen, good morning. I’d say we, we have flexibility, which we like. We’ve got a strong capital position, we got a strong reserve, we’ve got a good capital formation rate and so it gives us a lot of things to think about with respect to, to capital deployment. I mean at current prices, our stock is pretty attractive. So certainly repurchases of some, some degree is on the table. Additionally, with bond portfolio restructure while we’re not likely to engage in a wholesale kitchen sink type thing there is certainly the ability to nibble around the edges. So, we continue to think about all of those options as well as some of the growth opportunities afforded us by terminal markets and the good, good economy, in which we operate. So, we, we like that flexibility.
Stephen Scouten: Fantastic. Thanks for all the color. I appreciate the time.
Steven Young: Thanks, Steve.
Operator: We’ll take our next question from Catherine Mealor at KBW.
Catherine Mealor: Thanks, good morning.
William Matthews: Good morning.
Catherine Mealor: With a few couple of smaller M&A transactions in the Southeast over the past few months, just curious your updated thoughts on, on M&A and how you’re thinking about how you’re positioned there into next year?
John Corbett: Catherine, it’s John, good morning.
Catherine Mealor: Hi, good morning.
John Corbett: I’m really — no change from our prior guidance. We’ve seen a couple of these deals happen, but it’s still really-really challenging to get the math to work with the AOCI and the regulatory delay risks. So, our assumption is that, that things are going to pick-up probably the back-half of 2024 as we get closer to the election and there is more certainty in the economy. Clearly the, the logic is there for M&A given the revenue pressures in the industry and we’re just going to stay out on the street visiting peer banks that possibly could be partners in the future, but it’s challenging in the short-run.
Catherine Mealor: And then just the big picture, earnings question, as we think about next year, as you look at, we’ve got a little bit, it was called stabilization in the margin after we kind of come off fourth quarter, it seems like you still expect for there to be a little bit of balance sheet growth, but as you look at revenue growth as compared to expense growth, how do you think those two marry each other in 2024? Do you think this is a year where you can still create positive operating leverage or do you see this as a year where we’ll really kind of fee revenue and expense growth kind of be at the same pace or maybe even a little bit more expense growth relative to revenue, just curious how you’re thinking about that into next year?
Steven Young: Catherine, this is Steve, if you can tell us what the yield curve would look like, that helps. I’m not sure that we got that, but I do think in the, in the immediate environment, our — as we think about, we talked about NIM, if we talk about fee income that’s going to be a bit more challenging I think in the, in the next quarter or so, just with the 10-year treasury rising up one of the businesses that were added, the correspondent division and we see with the ten-year rising, some of the swap opportunities probably aren’t there, at least in this quarter and it bounces around from time-to-time and, and so on, so I, I’d imagine that won’t eventually come up, but our range of, of non-interest income to assets I think this, if you look-back at this quarter, we guided to 55 basis points to 65 basis points.
This quarter we were at 64 basis points, so I would call it at the high-end. If I look forward into the next quarter, I would think we’d be closer to the lower-end of that and then as we think about kind of a full-year picture of noninterest income, I would expect, I think we’ve been guiding that 55 basis points to 65 basis points range. We’ll probably end-up in the low 60s as a basis points to average assets and as we think about 2024, I would expect we would probably start a little lower and then end higher as the — if the Moody’s consensus is right and the 10-year treasury goes back towards 4%, we’ll start seeing more capital market activity. So, kind of the way I think about it probably won’t be a lot of growth in the, in the noninterest income year-over-year assuming this Moody’s rate forecast and I would expect that based on the NIM forecast, we just kind of went through, dollar growth is probably not going to be less, plus the revenue picture, as I just talked to the expense picture.
John Corbett: Yes, and so obviously with that revenue picture, our, our goal for next year is to be very controlled in our expense growth, and we’re still deep in the planning and budgeting processes, as most people are at this point. At this stage, they don’t have any, any precise guidance to give, but we would hope and expect to be in the low-to-mid single-digit range on expense growth and try to control as tightly as we can.
Catherine Mealor: All right. Thank you. Appreciate it.
John Corbett: All right. Thanks, Catherine.
Operator: We’ll go next to Michael Rose at Raymond James.
Michael Rose: Hi, good morning guys, thanks for taking my questions. Just wanted to follow up on that last point on expenses, you guys are in a pretty enviable, enviable position from a fundamental standpoint. You guys have been very conservative, built reserves. I think that’s really well taken from my vantage point, you got capital growing, I mean, why not be more aggressive on the expense side now, while revenues are under pressure. So you better position yourself, you just talked about john at the outset for what will be brighter days at some point, I know there’s a lot of dislocations in the market, I assume there’s a lot of good lenders out there that you guys can go after. Why not actually be more aggressive here on the hiring and organic growth front while you have many competitors that are capital and liquidity constraint? Thanks.
John Corbett: Yes, okay. I heard you say to be aggressive on the expense, but I wasn’t sure whether you were cutting expenses or adding expenses, Michael, but I think you’re saying be opportunistic, is what you’re saying.
Michael Rose: Correct, yes, yes, yes.
John Corbett: Yes, and, and we would agree with that and I would tell you that really we’re, we’re opportunistic all the time. We, we never stop recruiting and building the bench strength. I think about our management associate program we’ve had going for years where we bring in 35 college interns every summer, we convert 15 to 20 into management associates every year to build that bench strength on the credit team and on the lending team. We’re always out recruiting. Last night, my wife and I had dinner with a prospect — a veteran prospect banker and so, we’re out talking to folks all the time and so we’re not going to put a number out there on the expense growth side that would keep us from being opportunistic, if that helps.
Michael Rose: All right guys, now makes, makes complete sense. Just, just a few smaller ones. I noticed that the FHLB was essentially paid down, looks like brokered deposits came down a little bit, what other, I assume brokered deposits will come down as you grow core deposits. What’s kind of a right level to think about that and is there any other tools or actions you can take on the liability side to kind of contain the creep in interest-bearing liability costs? Thanks.
