You have to recognize that comes with a lot of growth. So, if you go back 20 years ago, the first year I was CEO, we had $2.7 billion in loans, with 20 basis points of charge-off. Today, we have $23 billion in loans with 2 basis points of charge-off. So, in the context of much greater opportunity for loss, we’ve maintained a very, very low charge-off rate and that’s because of consistency and continuity of approach. And we make this easy for you guys because you can look at the history. Most of the banks you look at have different teams and turnover and change and strategy change and acquisitions or whatever it is. You’re staring at the same company with the same team with the same results. And what I would say about 28, when you think about this year, wherever we end up, we will outperform.
And what I would, if you look at the charge-offs history over the last 20 years us against the peer, we have a chart the second the page before that shows. It’s in a different, it’s in a — we have a chart that shows us against the peer group. And if you, the point is, if you look at our recessionary period, our line, our Dallas line stays very close to the bottom axis of the chart, while there’s a sharp fin that takes place with the industry. So, that’s what happened in the last crisis. We expect that to happen. If you look at it through the fourth quarter, you can see it already taking place. Our numbers don’t move and the peer groups and the industry starting to move up. We expect that to be the case again. Whatever the absolute numbers are, I can’t tell you.
But the relationship to the peer group and the industry, we expect to remain the same.
Nathan Race: And just one last one. It seems like a lot of the growth in the quarter came on the commercial real estate side of things. So, just curious, in terms of the composition of the pipeline entering 2024 and kind of where you guys are seeing pretty pronounced opportunities to grow loans today?
Mariner Kemper : Loan growth, we’ve been saying this for a really long time. We call it we have a long runway for growth, both geographically, vertically, across our footprint and our national footprint related to our ABL business, largely because of market share gains. We expect that to remain the same. The caveat to that would be, if we do have a softening economy, the rate at which we would grow on an absolute basis may come down from what our expectations are of ourselves, but on a relative basis, we would expect ourselves to continue to outperform on loan growth for the same reasons we always have for 20 years we’ve done that. And we expect that to continue again for the very same reasons, which would be more market share driven than they are economic conditions driven.
So, nothing new there. The absolute number could come down a bit from what we did last year based on what the economic conditions are. But again, year by and on a relative basis and we would expect ourselves to outperform on a relative basis, again.
Ram Shankar: Market specific, it’s still coming from the major metros. Utah has been a nice growth market for us, and where we have loan production office and that seems to continue to build. But we are seeing a strong traditional operating company C&I and as Mariner stated, it’s market share driven.
Mariner Kemper: And first quarter, as I said, looks stronger than fourth quarter if that’s any indication, right? We have a harder time ourselves looking beyond the first quarter, but first quarter is an indication of the rest of the year, it’s stronger for fourth quarter pipeline wise.
Nathan Race: And if I could just ask one last one. You guys see any change in credit ratings across I think around 4% of loans that are tied to office CRE?
Mariner Kemper: I’m not sure I understand the credit rating question. What do you help me understand that?
Nathan Race: Risk rating, excuse me, Mariner. We’ve seen this with the migration exercise classified risk rating, excuse me.
Mariner Kemper: We’ve had very little if any deterioration in our office portfolio, it’s remained strong. It’s 4.5% of the portfolio as you said. A couple of statistics, 45% of our office portfolio is single tenant, which adds a layer of strength there in terms of rollover, strong sponsors which we’ve talked about in the past. We have seen basically no deterioration in that portfolio and don’t really see anything coming on the horizon. They’re performing a lot of the leases, the underlying leases on these office projects go out to 27 and beyond roughly 70% of those leases are 27 and beyond. So in terms of rollover in the short-term are very manageable.
Mariner Kemper: Thanks everybody. It looks like that’s the last question. Just want to reiterate something. We’re really proud of the year we had in the quarter and I think at the end of the day, we do what we say and we say what we do and we’ve been doing it for a long time. And we’ve demonstrated strong outsized loan growth, deposit growth, fees, expense control, year-in and year-out. And I think the good news for the investor population as they think about us, is you should know what to expect from us. And we did it again in the fourth quarter and we’re more thrilled than ever about the fourth quarter, because we were able to sort of put to bed a lot of the nonsense, and the narrative. And as I like to say, don’t let facts get in the way of a real exciting narrative that the pundits like to deliver last year.
And so on behalf of everybody on the call, we’re happy to have delivered, what we did in the fourth quarter to kind of put some of that nonsense to bed. And so we’ll just keep doing it for you. And we’re really proud and excited about what we delivered and we’re just going to keep doing it for you. So thanks.
Kay Gregory: Thanks, Mariner. If anyone has follow-up, you can always reach us at 816-860-7106. And we appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us today.
Operator: This concludes today’s call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.
