Rich Bradshaw: It’s probably worth noting…
Jefferson Harralson: Hang on one second Brandon.
Rich Bradshaw: It’s probably worth noting, we had deposit pricing committee this past Monday, and we had all the state presidents on and surveying them each individually, their exception pricing requests are certainly down. So it is — we do see a little coming of the water here.
Brandon King: Good. And then when you think about a cumulative deposit beta, I know before, I think you talked about 38%. But what are your thoughts are now just given that rates would essentially be higher for longer?
Jefferson Harralson: Yes. That’s a great question. Let’s — we are doing our budget right now, and I want to talk — we don’t have a 24 forecast for our margin out there right now or our cost of funds. So let’s stay in touch on this one. And I do think what you’re going to see, I’ll give you a shorter-term outlook. I do think that our loan yields will be up a similar amount as last quarter, so call that 18 basis points. And then with the margin guidance that I gave you of being down maybe half as much as last quarter, you can back into a cost of deposit increase that we’re thinking about this quarter. So I think it is going — it is continuing to grow faster than loans. And then we’ll get into budget season and talk about what our ’24 forecast is next quarter.
Brandon King: Okay. Makes sense. And just not to be beating dead horse, but following up on Novitas and expectations for losses to kind of ease next year. Just wanted to get more of a sense of what gives you confidence that losses will ease and maybe is it just more of a function of that trucking segment just kind of running off?
Rob Edwards: Yes, I think that’s exactly the way I would describe it, Brandon, is that the trucking segment is I think if you add all the different trucking aspects of it together, I think it’s 10% of the total portfolio. And then this specific piece where we’re experiencing the highest stress level is much smaller than that. so probably 3%. So it’s just such a small portion of the overall book, and we’re continuing to see consistent performance of the remainder of the book, evidenced by the 88 basis points of performance in the third quarter.
Operator: Our next question will come from David Bishop with Hovde Group. Please go ahead.
David Bishop: Jefferson, I think I heard you mention that you guys were operating with a little bit higher elevated liquidity from last quarter, maybe where you think you see some of that cash being deployed here in the near term. Obviously, you paid off a lot of — some of the short-term borrowings. Just curious where you see the opportunity to employ that is.
Jefferson Harralson: Yes, with the inverted yield curve, I’m not seeing a ton of opportunity there. We are most likely to hold in cash or roll short treasuries with that cash.
David Bishop: Got it. And then final question. There’s lots of unpack on the — obviously, given the merger on the operating expense and fee income side, just curious maybe from a dollar perspective where you might see those normalizing here in the fourth quarter?
Jefferson Harralson: All right. So I did not completely hear a piece of that question. So can you — I know it’s an expense-related question, but I didn’t totally hear what you said there. Apologies, David.
