J.J. Fletcher: That’s a good point. There’s still cash out there. I think some of our guys might be diluting themselves a little bit on ownership, but they’re finding the equity to do it.
George Noonan: Yes.
Brett Rabatin: Okay, that’s helpful. And maybe one last one for me. Expense, I think it sounded like the expense run rate will be slightly higher in 4Q if I heard that right. But you’ve done a pretty good job holding the expenses flattish since beginning of the year. Was just curious if there was anything out there that you were thinking about investing in given the environment for the longer term in 2024 that might raise the expense run rate? Or if you think you’ll kind of run the same kind of strategy in 2024 of keeping expenses as slight as you can?
Dee Dee Lowery: Yes. I think the same strategy in regards to that just because of the compressed margin and hopefully we’ll see, as we talked about, a little bit of expansion in that next year. But overall I think our focus is going to be on expenses, something that we can hopefully – we can try to control on our side. We are and we have talked about the last couple of quarters kind of our 10B initiative and so we have hired some new folks, actually this last quarter, the third quarter a Chief Compliance Officer, a Fair Lending Officer, which mentioned before the last quarter, I believe our Chief Legal Counsel. So we have – and we hired crow to come in and do our 10B GAAP analysis. So we do have expenses kind of associated with that as we build up a little bit and to get processes and procedures in place for 10B.
But that’s probably the only real initiative. We’re kind of in the middle of that right now, but otherwise I’m okay you’re trying to keep the hammer down on them.
Brett Rabatin: All right. Thanks. Thanks for all the color.
Hoppy Cole: Thanks Brett.
Operator: All right. Thank you so much for your question. [Operator Instructions] All right. Our next question comes from the line of Matt Olney with Stephens. Your line is now open.
Matt Olney: Hey, thanks. Good morning, everybody.
Hoppy Cole: Good morning.
Matt Olney: I want to go back to the deposit gathering campaign that was mentioned earlier. Any more color you can provide on that campaign, what products you’re leading with and what are some of the cost on some of those promotional products?
Dee Dee Lowery: Yes. Sure. What we came out with and what we’re doing is two things. One is just a CD special. We have a lot of CD specials in our market. We are doing a six-month at five-and-a-quarter. And then we also on the deposit gathering side, kind of for a money market as well, it’s a 5% money market guaranteed for six months, but with that is a non-interest bearing deposit. So we’ve opened up a separate product for that. So hopefully we can gather some non-interest bearing while we’re doing this money market special.
Matt Olney: Okay, that’s helpful. And any more color on when those specials were introduced to the market? And have there been any changes to those rates more recently?
Dee Dee Lowery: No. We started that right at the beginning of September, kind of just internally. We just recently started with a little bit of advertising on social media, so we kind of had it in place to raise some funds through the end of the year. So kind of right now we’re looking at keeping it through the end of the year, but…
Hoppy Cole: Yes. It’s really just to replace some of those seasonality and the public fund monies and to support some of the loan growth, Matt.
Matt Olney: Yes. And it fared well [ph], I guess, in the campaign, but how would you characterize the volume you’re receiving versus your initial expectations?
Dee Dee Lowery: We’re a little under half so far for these two months, so I think that’s good.
Hoppy Cole: Yes, I think it’s been good.
Dee Dee Lowery: Yes.
Matt Olney: Okay. Appreciate the color there. And then, I guess, changing gears on the credit front, I think there was a report in the deck you put out there that criticized classifieds had a nice decline in the quarter, if I read that right. Any more color on that decline?
Hoppy Cole: About 60% of it, I guess, was a result of actual payoffs. The rest of it was attributable to some upward migration, maybe in reclassifying some grades. Frankly, I don’t expect to see the level of payoffs continue at the pace that we’ve seen in the last couple of quarters. But in going through our quarterly rounds of criticizing classified reporting with our loan officers and regional credit officers, we do see some potential opportunities to maybe particularly now that we’re receiving financials with the tax filing deadline passing us, now we’re getting updated financials that may give us some opportunities to do some additional upgraded risk grades. So I think more of it will come from that direction, maybe as a proportion of what we see.
Matt Olney: Okay. Appreciate that, George. And then maybe just one more Dee Dee. I think that the fees were strong this quarter. Any color on the fees and the outlook from here?
Dee Dee Lowery: I think – in terms of loan fees, are you talking about the non interest income fees – non-interest income?
Matt Olney: Right, the non-interest income.
Dee Dee Lowery: Okay, non-interest income. Yes, I think, this was – we had a little bit of increase there in our interchange fee income that, I think, will be not recurring in the next quarter. So that could be down just a little bit in the next quarter. It’s like our one time annual kind of payment we receive. So it’s probably a little higher this quarter, but I don’t think it’ll be that going.
