MainStreet Bancshares, Inc.

Well, good afternoon and thank you for joining our virtual earnings webcast. My name is Jeff Dick. I'm the Chairman and CEO of Main Street Bank Shares Inc. and Main Street Bank. I'm joined here today with our Chief Lending Officer, Tom Floyd, our Chief Accountant, Alex Berry, and of course our CFO, Tom Halleck. If you'd like, you can submit written questions throughout the presentation using the viewing portal. We will address your questions at the end of this presentation. If we miss your question during the discussion, please reach out after the webcast. Chris Marinak will not be joining us on the call today. He did submit questions in advance, and we will address them after the session. Also, Matt Brees of Stevens Inc. no longer provides coverage for our company. We'd be remiss if we didn't point you to our Safe Harbor page that describes the content of the booking statements. We use certain non-GAAP measures which are identified as such within the presentation materials. The D.C. market is still a great place to do business. We always talk about the strength of our market because we are in a region that hosts the federal government. but we do also have world-class universities, hospital systems, airports, tourism, data centers, and at least 16 Fortune 500 companies. As such, we also have low unemployment and high median household income for our workforce. Slide four reminds you of our growth story over the past 20 years. I think there's an interesting correlation to be made from our early years to the present time. We started with a technology strategy of putting our bank in our customer's office. You may recall back in 2004 that the Check 21 Act became law shortly after we opened, which allowed for the remote deposit of a digital image of a check. Acquiring customers with the concept of scanning and remotely depositing checks using our online banking solution wasn't easy. It was new. When we first met with a possible customer, we would give them the presentation and they would typically reply with, well, that's interesting. Let me know when you have a branch nearby. We persevered. It took a while to get customers comfortable with our solution. Once they had it, they couldn't do without it. Growth was slow in the beginning, but it quickly picked up. All these years later, we are still the largest provider of remote deposit of any bank serviced by our core processor, Jack Henry. Today, we're in a similar situation. We have a great solution. We need to get it in front of the right customers in order to grow. We're working harder than ever to make that happen. We are a Virginia community bank serving the Washington DC metropolitan area. And we have a great organic growth story using a branch like strategy. We've always been a tech forward bank with strong online and mobile banking technology. We are traded on the NASDAQ capital market exchange. As of year end 2024, we had a market cap of 138 million with slightly more than 7.6 million shares outstanding. a tangible book value of $23.77. Slide seven provides an overview of the intangible impairment determination that the board and management recently decision. We determined that the implementation delays affected our expectations for the Avenue Software as a Service solution. After the accounting team put together its impairment analysis, The board and management agreed with their conclusions to fully impair the capitalized intangible assets. Alex will talk you through this process in just a few minutes. Before I turn things over to Alex, you'll see that the three key issues we'll be addressing in today's presentation are focused on the intangible capitalized asset, the good progress that we've made in working through our small number and the outlook for the venue. At this point, I will turn the presentation over to Alex Barry. Alex is our Chief Accountant. He works closely with Thomas Mellick to ensure the accuracy of all of our books and records. Alex is going to talk you through the impairment process as well as financial performance, Alex. Thank you, Jeff.

On slide eight, we summarize our financial performance over the past four quarters, as well as for the fiscal year 2024. For the year, we are reporting a loss of $1.60, a return on average assets of negative 0.47%, a return on average equity of negative 4.44%, and a net interest margin of 3.13%. Our performance ratios were impacted by an impairment of our intangible assets, recognized during the fourth quarter. As you will see later in the slide deck, we provide four performance ratios after the non-recurring adjustment. As we discussed in our quarterly calls earlier this year, our ratios were also directly impacted by taking action on a handful of problem loans. We have made significant progress in finding solutions to non-performing loans, and we remain strongly capitalized and look forward to the opportunities we have During 2024, we reversed $1.9 million of interest income, and we had net charge-offs of $4.5 million. An additional $2.9 million in provision expense was added to ensure the allowance for credit loss remains directionally consistent for portfolio growth and recent history. As you can see, the non-recurring credit issues impact our earnings per common share by 67 cents. Our return on average assets by 24 basis points our return on average equity by 224 basis points and our net interest margin by eight basis points. As we will discuss later in the presentation, our credit metrics will drive improvement in our key performance ratios and will be reflected in our overall allowance for credit losses as it returns to our historical average. During the fourth quarter, As the board and management balanced Avenue's 2025 growth plan and expense run rate, we made tough decisions about carrying back development, personnel, and focusing on revenue generation. Those conversations triggered a discussion about whether our changes constituted the need for an impairment analysis to be performed in accordance with generally accepted principles, or GAAP. In agreement with that accounting analysis, we wrote the intangible assets to zero, effective as the end of the fiscal year, and this negatively impacted several performance ratios. You see the total amount of non-recurring impairment adjustments for the fiscal year after accounting for taxes negatively impacted our earnings per share by $2.14, our return on average assets by 76 basis points, and our return on average equity of As these adjustments are non-recurring, we expect to see improved and normalized performance metrics through 2025. Turning to slide 10, you will see how the impact of the impairment actually had a positive effect on the tangible book value of $0.48 per common share. As tangible book value already excluded the full value of any tangible assets, recognizing the decrease in intangible assets because of the tax impact actually improves this metric. Moving to slide 11, the interest rate environment and cost of funding have been challenging in 2021. It is impacting banks across the spectrum. Anecdotally, I saw an article this week that surveyed community bank CEOs and 54% of them stated deposit costs as their number one challenge in 2025. Here you will see we ended the year with a healthy net interest margin of 3.13%. Our deposit market remains very competitive as we often compete with super-regional and multinational banks, requiring deep relationship building in our communities. In the fourth quarter, we continue to build new deposit relationships that will fortify and grow our franchise every year. We used excess liquidity to exercise call options on $60 million in high-end CDs. We did incur some deposit carrying costs while we executed these options. That added nine additional compression on our net interest margin for this quarter only. We are positioning for a strong 2025. Without the additional carrying costs, our net interest margin would remain the same as the prior quarter. We will continue exercising our callable CDs throughout the first quarter as we are laser focused on our funding expense. We are continuing to fund new quality loans that are underwritten, stress tested in the current rate environment. Net new loan funding scored $36 million over the last quarter and $108 million for the fiscal year, which points to continued interest income growth, further enhancing our future and interest margin expectations. For the fiscal year 2025, we expect low single-digit loan growth. On slide 12, you will see our non-interest-bearing deposits represent 23% of our core deposit base and 17% of all deposits. We have an additional $102 million in callable CDs.

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On slide 12, you will see our non-interest bearing deposits represent 23% of our core deposit base and 17% of all deposits. We have an additional $122 million in callable CDs that will be accretive to our net interest margin as they are called. We continue to grow core deposits in a meaningful way, adding $187 million during 2024. Our non-core deposit balances increase strategically capitalized market conditions that will reduce funding costs and shorten the duration of our term deposits. As the FOMC reacts to market conditions, they've begun to lower expectations about continued rate cuts in 2025, making it even more important that banks and competitive markets find niche markets to accumulate low-cost deposits. Now turning to 2025, our projected run rate took what we are expecting going into the year. Adjusting for the non-recurring transactions, non-interest expenses increased a nominal six basis points quarter over quarter. Management has taken action to reduce expenses and increase expense control and efficiency. At this point in 2025, we are projecting a run rate of 83 basis points per month through the first quarter. Of course, we will continue to update you as the year progresses. At this point, I'll turn the presentation over to Tom Floyd, our Chief Lending Officer, to discuss our loan portfolio and loan performance.

Thank you, Alex. 2024 was a challenging year, but a year that I'm very proud of and looking forward to reviewing with you. Over the next few minutes, I'm excited to share details about our loan portfolio composition, trends in credit quality, our annual growth, and a measure of our stability going forward. You will see that over the fourth quarter, we achieved positive movement in terms of total non-performing asset levels and positive trends in total past due levels. Coupled with our commitment to serving our vibrant client base, we remain optimistic about the future. Our loan portfolio is well positioned for stable or falling rates. 61% of our portfolio has rate resets beyond six months, with the remaining 39% with rate resets within six months. Of those, 55% have weighted average floor rate 6.34%. As we move forward into 2025, we anticipate this will help our net interest margin as rates are expected to remain stable or decrease. Our legal lending limit remained at 47 million, and our average new loan size was 1.9 million. As we mentioned last quarter, This highlights that as we've grown in our capacity, we continue to serve the smaller-sized capital formation needs in our market. We're very comfortable in our niche. Slide 16 highlights that our loan portfolio is diversified with healthy metrics. The non-owner-occupied loans comprise 30 percent of the portfolio and include hospitality, industrial, mixed-use, retail, and a small amount of office. The weighted average yield is 6.47 percent and the weighted average loan-to-value is 60%. Construction loans comprise 21% of the total book and are comprised of mixed-use, multifamily, residential, retail, and self-storage. Our weighted average yield is 7.8%, and the weighted average loan-to-value is 61%. Owner-occupied accounts for 19% of the portfolio. and is comprised of end users across roughly a dozen industries. This is a highly competitive asset class, and the weighted average yield is 5.95%, with a weighted average loan-to-value of 68%. Multifamily loans account for 13% of the portfolio and have a weighted average yield of 6.45% and a weighted average loan-to-value of 73%. Slide 17 highlights that our CRE concentration is managed well. At the end of the fourth quarter, pre-impairment, our CRE concentration was 375% of capital, which is at the limit set by our board. As you can see, we consistently managed the levels set by our board. And through proactive management, we'll have that number back within the policy limit over the next few months. Through normal business activities, we can accomplish this with a negligible impact to our existing clients. It's worth highlighting that in our CRE portfolio, we only have $13 million in exposure to pure office space, where the primary source of repayment is dependent on market rate office rent. Slide 18 shows the trend in stress test over the past eight quarters and the resulting impact to capital. The Q4 stress test for all assets reflects the worst case stress loss estimated at $45.1 million. In all quarters, and even after year-end impairment, we remain strongly capitalized. The stress test includes loan level testing for all construction and investor commercial real estate. For other loan categories, we use the balance in each call report category multiplied by our worst-ever loss for that call report category. For investments, we use the market price. And finally, for bank-owned life insurance, we determine the liquidation value. Slide 19 highlights the vigorous management of our non-performing loans over the course Overall, we were able to reduce non-performing assets by 62% over the course of the year for an ending balance of $21.27 million. Our aggressive action resulted in the overall decrease, with the total principal loss coming to just 10% in terms of the loans that we resolved in 2024. Slide 20 shows a decrease in our classified loan levels. Over the quarter, we decreased classified loans from 4.31% of total gross loans to 2.94% of total gross loans. We continue to rigorously and aggressively work our non-performing loans and expect positive outcomes, which we'll highlight later in the presentation. The next slide shows a positive trend in terms of past-due loans. As you can see, over the last three quarters, we are trending downward, with total loans 30 days past due and a quarter at virtually zero. Slide 22 highlights our prudent balance sheet management and their allowance for credit losses directionally consistent with recent performance. As discussed in the stress testing slide, we remain strongly capitalized. Based on positive trends in our past dues and our rigorous management of our non-performing assets, we anticipate this trend will normalize in 2025. Slide 23 is a brief snapshot of our remaining classified and non-accrual loans. As you can see, the common thread is that there is a high probability of a successful outcome. The next slide highlights a recent change being made in DC to help strengthen our local community. This creative approach to modernizing obsolete offices, along with recent developments on federal workers returning to the office, are welcome changes to our local landscape. Rising tides raise all shifts, and all in all, the recent changes are positive and reasons to be optimistic. Slide 25 highlights our consistent loan growth. Even through the various economic conditions and economic backdrops, our team has demonstrated a consistent ability to grow. In summary, we've grown the loan portfolio by 6% in 2024. At the same time, our portfolio has broadly seen a decrease in problem just as we told you that we expected last quarter. Our lending team has done an excellent job serving our clients in our market that has resulted in a superior yield in earning assets, and in more times than not, it demonstrated ability to exit relationships with minimal losses to principal values. We remain well capitalized and are working vigorously with our borrowers where there remain positive potential outcomes. We're passionate about serving our community. We love seeing it thrive, and we're optimistic about the future. That wraps it up for our loan presentation. Back to you, Jeff.

Thank you, Tom. Our banking as a service balance sheet for 2024 now reflects the $62,000 in other assets and $41 million in low or no-cost deposits. The income statement reflects the net loss of $3.6 million from normal operations. Looking at the pipeline, there's five fintech client contracts. The first is fully live, but proceeding slowly at this point. Then you will go into beta as soon as the due diligence is finished for the client number one and should go live quickly from that point. We're thinking beta will be about two weeks, maybe three weeks at the most. As an aside from that, the API integration team is actually able to accommodate timeline for a FinTech to move through the process in 60 to 90 days. The three clients that are in the queue behind Venue are currently moving at a slower pace at their choices. Venue is moving fast and has a lot of potential. In my mind, the client with the next most potential is one waiting for their California money transmitter license. Once that FinTech on boards with us, we should see some very good momentum. Venu, again, is our cannabis payments solution. We control the app, the network, the virtual terminal for checkout, and the merchant services solution. Each aspect of the solution is very simple and very elegant. The cannabis retail itself, the industry, I'm sorry, is large and driven, and we see a tremendous opportunity. Slide 30 shows data from a March 2024 forecast estimating the U.S. legal cannabis retail market at $35.2 billion for 2025. Slide 31 tells us that there are 12,452 cannabis licenses in the United States. The slide also shows us the retail volume of sales in 21 of the 38 states where cannabis retail sales are illegal. The weighted average sales per store in 2024 for those 21 states was 3.5 million per year. Slide 32 shows the venue opportunity. Again, the total addressable market is 12,452 stores collectively doing over 1 billion in monthly sales. 70% of that is in cash. We've taken a conservative approach we assume we could convert one third of those weighted average sales per store into digital payments. We then assume we'd add about 400 stores to the network this year. Candidly, once our sales channels are in place, we think we should be able to do much better than that. The power of the venue solution is at the point we start to see some saturation. With just 20% of the total retail stores and less than one-third of the sales from each of those stores, we could end up earning transaction fees of $90 million or more. This is a captive network at this point. In order to get there quickly, we are actively negotiating a few different sales channels to take Venue forward. We're working with a very few credible independent sales organizations, ISO, that have big sales teams. They're excited at the opportunity, since the competition is virtually non-existent for what we offer. We'll also be working with our banking associations, as well as cannabis associations, in our efforts to gain market share. For 2025, we've estimated the average outstanding deposits for Avenue for the year to be 135 million, in emphasis on average. Properly executing this strategy alongside the fee income and expense reductions that we've taken will get Avenue to a profitable point in 2025. The board and management know that strategic execution is pivotal to the company's success and future. The core bank is strong and well positioned. The Avenue and venue teams are relentless in their endeavor to execute and show the market what they can deliver. At this point, we're going to start questions that we received from Chris Marinak, who is the Director of Research at Janney Montgomery Scott. After that, we'll address questions that were submitted earlier in the day and through the portal. So, I'm going to start by reading a few of Chris' questions. The first one is an Alex question, or Tom Schmelleck question. The asset impairment makes sense. Will the other measures that you also put in place be meaningful as you take Avenue forward?

Yeah, that's a great question, and they are. You know, we took action to decrease our expenses and focus on revenue. You know, I mentioned those actions were reducing some personnel costs. We renegotiated contracts, very focused on reducing the expense, the efficiency, and trying to be as lean as possible and really focused on revenue. And I think that's going to be meaningful for the product line.

Tom, anything to add?

Yeah, as I said, we'll recall the expenses that we went through to decrease for this year, and we'll constantly continue to look for other expenses to continue to work through as time goes on.

Good, thank you. His next question is still on Avenue. Does the Avenue solution that we have in place today fully support our cannabis opportunity? What does that look like, and how long will that take to see meaningful saturation? and uh yes the version one of avenue that went into place in october 1st of 2024 has everything that the menu solution needs in order to be successful uh the the small remaining team focused on avenue will continue to harden the software solution to make it so it's more efficient works faster and and more scalable but it's it's working and uh all of the the alpha testing for avenue venue, I'm sorry, has been very successful. We are working to get ISO reseller relationships in place as quickly as we can and get everything moving so that we can start to really focus on onboarding the cannabis retailers. It's a bit of a chicken and egg kind of a situation. We onboard the cannabis retailer. We do in-store marketing. We do other types of marketing to get to the consumers. They download the app from the app stores. And we're sort of off to the races, but it really is getting as many cannabis retailers onboard as quickly as we can that will drive, I think, the ultimate adaption. We're excited and we're working hard on that. The next question is, is the pre-pre-ROA of 53 basis points achievable in 2025 and is there room to improve upon it? Alex or Tom? Yeah, happy to address that.

The short answer is yes, absolutely. a number of things that are impacting that. So when we're looking at our 2024 performance, we had some credit issues and some non-recurring transactions. Those are behind us. And so we won't be having those going into 2025. A couple other things I'm thinking about, certainly a trend in the last quarter, our net interest income by dollars is increasing. We had an increase in net interest income by about 4.5% over the quarter, which is a nice trend to see. And as I mentioned earlier, in the fourth quarter, we exercised $60 million worth of callable CDs that were accretive to our net interest margin. We have another 120 sort of in the chamber, if you will, that will be accretive to our funding as we continue to call those. And just we are seeing continued deposit opportunities in our market as well as new land growth. So we have a lot of opportunities to be excited about in 2025.

And the other thing is the decrease in the non-performing assets will halt the margin also, and hopefully with some of the things that we're working through on former NPAs or non-performing assets, recovery of interest that we believe we will see in the coming year.

Excellent. This is a Tom Floyd question. Do you think the loan growth opportunities exist in our market to support planned loan growth?

I absolutely do. And as I mentioned, we love our market. It's such a large market. We have less than 1% market share in our market. So for us to get low single-digit loan growth, there's an abundance of opportunities for the type of lending we are trying to do, which is owner-occupied, end-user businesses. Those opportunities give us the opportunity to get full banking relationships. They're very much in the community. SBA lending, and other types of owner-occupied C&I. So we absolutely think they're within our market.

There's a follow-on question, and you've answered some of this, but the types of specific lending that we're looking at trying to focus on for 2025, and maybe as you think about that, I think a natural follow-up would be what types of loans, if there's any, that you intend to stay away from.

So absolutely, the owner-occupied is something that we're going to look to do a lot of this year. In terms of loans that we'll be approaching with caution would be solution financing in the government contracting space. you know, where your payments are on billed receivables, things of that nature we're going to be very conscious with. We certainly have a good customer base of government contractors, and we're going to continue to support their asset-based needs. We will be more cautious with acquisition financing going forward. Good.

Tom Schmelleck, you are a veteran D.C. native. Does the new administration in Congress present any barriers with what we're trying to achieve?

I mean, one thing that we've always noted, whatever the restriction is, whether it's Republican or Democrat, you know, as they come in, it moves slowly. So there will be some changes, but albeit it will all be slow. We still have the federal government here. He's not leaving anytime tomorrow. He's not taking it out of town. But I think it's going to be interesting to see what does happen. I think, you know, it's just not here. It's all across the country. As I said, we still have a vibrant economy. Without the federal government, there's a lot of things that go on here, as Jeff alluded to at the beginning of the slide presentation.

Yeah, and it's interesting. The mandate for federal workers returning back to work, I think, is going to be significant. When COVID hit in Washington, DC, unlike I'm sure many of the major cities, all of the very small we would call mom shops the you know the shoe repair the breakfast uh coffee you know not starbucks coffee shops so just all of those little businesses dried up because there was no traffic no foot traffic you know in the city for years and it's still not what it was You know, so there is even opportunities as, you know, those spots are still empty. I think for businesses to come back once the federal workers come back and, you know, need those services again. So those are wonderful SBA opportunities because of the right size for that.

That's a great point. And we've added to the talent of our team with some very experienced SBA staff. So we are excited with that going forward.

Good. Again, accounting question, for the first quarter of 2025, you indicated three basis points, monthly increase in the run rates. Where does that number start from? Is that from the end of the, just the Q4, or is that from 2024? Right, yeah.

And so that's starting with the year to date, year 2024, normalizing that increase. So when you take out the non-recurring, non-interest expenses, it gets you to about 51.9 million. So we're using that as our, as our way to say 83 basis points per month from there. And I'd like to just, you know, point out that, you know, with, due to the cost cutting things and the focus on reducing expenses, that's actually about a 40% reduction in run rate from where we were in 2024. So we're, we're really excited. things that we've done, what we're looking for in 2025.

Yeah. I mean, that is a significant 40%. And that's one of the things that we're really focused on, to try to improve the performance metrics for the coming year. We'll sort of bounce back and forth. Again, a loan question, a loans for credit losses question more specifically. And the question is, have I added about 10 basis points for the losses projected for 2025? Would that be about right? I'll let you start, Tunnel.

Yeah, I think if you want it to be conservative, that can solve it. Candidly, we've seen a lot of improvements in our credit quality metrics over the last quarter, and so we're optimistic about our direction, and we believe that what we have you know, indoor ETL should cover everything we need to clean up. So, yeah.

Yeah, there's always the absolute unknown, but having said that, I know the lenders, the credit administration teams, the loan review, everything else has really scoured the portfolio, and it's in very good shape at this point. So, those were Chris's questions. There's a couple more here, and I've got some on my mobile phone that I will try to read. There's one here that says, can you spend a little bit more time discussing just the net, the core results of the bank? And I think if you went back to the slide that shows, thinking about that. So let's focus just a bit on those core results, sort of X credit, X impairment. How does that, you know, how will that go into 2025?

We've talked about it a little bit, but I think it's . Yeah, happy to touch on that. So if we really laid out what the key performance ratios kind of would have been, you know, for the core, had you taken out the capital impairment. you know, frankly, 2024 was a challenging year. You know, we had deposit costs are challenging. And so those are things that the bank is contending with. But, you know, I think the things that we're focused on are the things that I kind of mentioned before, that we have a lot of levers that we can pull as far as reducing funding costs, the things that we're doing with our deposits. You know, we have, I know we're talking less about Avenue, but, you know, Avenue one version one is behind us. Those expenses are, you know, being pared back and we're being very, you know, the bank had a very interesting interest market at 3.13 for the year. We're proud of that. We believe that we are primed to continue expanding that. And, you know, as I mentioned, we're adding new loans, net interest income is growing and we still have, as I put it earlier, sort of powder in the keg to continue lowering that funding cost, being some of the things that we did with the balance sheet, you know, in managing that.

Tom, and that was the loan yields. We are still getting loan yields that we've always gotten. I mean, we provide service, and that's what we've always said to everybody. That's what we do, and we get paid for what we do here. So that will continue to be an issue going forward with the type of loans that we're doing.

And with improving credit metrics, we're going to continue to see increased profitability metrics on the back of that, certainly just looking at the bank.

Now, I've had a couple of questions that have come in. It says, what does we've significantly pared down future work at this point mean? I'll own that. It was poorly written. It's in reference to the changes that we've made with the future software development. When we look at Avenue, version one is in production, as I said previously. We need a core small team that will continue to work too hard and make the solution more efficient to take care of any of the small things that go from day to day when other solutions update their systems and that type of a thing. There are actually two services that were well underway, two developments. One is the ability to add debit card functions to the solution so that a fintech could offer white-labeled to their clients. That actually helps a lot in bringing in larger balances, and so that's the reason that that one was put in. The other one that's underway is developing what we need to do for an RDFI, which is, sorry, ACH terminology, but it allows the FinTech, it allows the customer of the FinTech to direct deposit some or all of their paycheck right into that account. And so again, both of those are really focused on, you know, going after clients or fintechs that could use that feature of functionality, which would then translate into higher balances being maintained for those accounts. Pretty much anything beyond that has been put on hold and uh you know the reductions that enforce that those have been taken that was questioned by somebody when would that happen that's that has been taken um everything has been streamlined with immediate effect and um very serious about what we're trying to do because you know achieve you know, what we've stated here today, you know, we've had to act on that. The good news is, you know, as we are able to present Avenue as successful and venue as successful, we will look to, you know, look at whatever, what other features and functionality down the road when we can support and justify it might be necessary in order to continue to you know, gain purchase in the space. So we talked about the run rate expense level being decreased by 40%. Let's see. How do current expectations compare to what was presented in the third quarter revenue projection presentation from the consultant? So again, I shared that average number of $135 million. That's probably in line with the deposit gathering side of things. It's just an average number as opposed to the primary number to get to at some point in the future. It's just more realistic, I think, to look at the average balance outstanding. From an expense standpoint, we've actually pared down those expenses fairly significantly. That was shown in that. Those were our numbers that we had to them, but those actions, as I said, have been taken. So it is, it should produce a better outcome. Let's see. So this one, with the impairment, how should we make sense of the intangible asset being written down to zero versus some other percentage?

Yeah, I can take that. It's interesting, the accounting guidance there, it gives you a guide and tells you, here are the criteria and here's how do you look at it. I think in our case, we used the income approach and with the new product that has yet to really generate cash flow, it's a little bit more difficult to tie down to a specific number. And so you're using projections and looking at it from that perspective. So it is difficult to assess in terms of absolutes as the accounting guidance gives it. So we took the facts that we had and applied them in the best possible way and finished out our analysis. Tom, anything to add?

No, that's spot on.

All right.

Here's another Avenue question. Were the delays in avenues primarily driven by insufficient market demand technological development challenges, or heightened competitive pressures. I think we've been actually very clear on this. We saw the 21 consent orders that were put in place in 2023 and 2024. We looked at those and we really addressed the contents, and it was a matter of not wanting to have , but to have all that technology properly integrated. Now, there were some technological issues, again, that we could have work around, but that we decided to just fix. Those were third parties. And so it's 100% one thing and not the other. But ultimately, it was impacted by more desire from a compliance regulatory and otherwise perspective in order to do it right, get it right the first time. We thought that was very important. So, you know, we wouldn't have that solution but bring to market until October 1st. And when we brought it to market, we've been aggressive since then, working with clients to get into the space. We're dealing with them at their speed. We are, again, also out at the market looking at a lot of different opportunities to continue to grow with other FinTech providers that have more potential. Are there any questions from?

Yes, a question is about Avenue. And I'll paraphrase some of these.

How many paying customers does Avenue Post cover? And so the only, generally, the only fully live is AC. We talked about that earlier. And that's been slow to take up. They went live on December 31st. And they're going at their pace. all downloaded from their customer, they have a customer that's been, and that's one of the things that sort of influenced the impairment decision as well.

Male Speaker 2 Can you provide additional details on the status of the causes expected in 2024 and 2025?

Yeah, so that's really a function of the opportunities that we have, and we think that some of that's going to come from the venue opportunity. We didn't really focus much on the cannabis retailers operating accounts with us. That's an opportunity that we're exploring. There's also, again, they're not under contract. yet, but there's some very good modules that are out there and we're trying to bring in very quickly. So I apologize, I can't share names, I can't share options, but they're working very hard to bring these in and it's going to change. I think one of the key things to recognize is what happens if that materialize and that's really what drives the future of Avenue look at it from the positive snap but materializes we we do everything that is meant to move on and grow we have to be realistic about the alternative and you know the board and management discuss that too and we'll we'll take action when action . What is the expected expenses for 2025? So they've been pared down. There's an opportunity for fixed and variable costs. I'm not going to put the variable as a function of how successful the solution is, but I think it's .

you know, focus on reducing expenses and being as lean as possible. You know, we had the team that's able to operate the functionality that we have now, but we're very much keeping those operating expenses as lean as possible.

We are revisiting certain contracts that are in place to try to lower the cost on those contracts in this time.

But as I stated before, you know, if we achieve the outcome that we've have in the slide deck that will be a positive result that will cover all the expenses with the cushion.

And then again, for Avenue, 40% reduction for expenses. What was that 40% comprised of? Yeah, I'll just clarify that. So that's not Avenue specific. We were talking about a reduction in the run rate for the company. And it wasn't, I apologize if I was, it's not a 40% reduction in expenses. When you're looking at the run rate that we had in 2024 compared to the run rate that we're projecting in 2025, it's a 40% reduction in the run rates. We're anticipating 83 basis points per month, which is a reduction of the rate that we had in 2024. And that was done through the cost-cutting reductions and the expense things that we that we discussed previously here.

Sounds like that's the last question. Okay. So, I'm sorry, there's one more here. I need to find it so I can read it properly. Again, with regard to Avenue, please elaborate on what are the operational changes versus the revaluation. I'm not 100% sure what that means, so I'm going to reach out to the author of that and address it offline. We have talked about the operational change. I think I just went through that, so perhaps I answered the question already about the efficiencies that we've gained, but that is definitely more significant. of the two there was more savings built into paring things down like i said renegotiating the agreements i've already been able to renegotiate and and reset expectations um the board i think I guess I didn't say this, but the board just met for two and a half days here at our headquarters. We went through some very good strategic planning, very comprehensive budget evaluations. The accounting team and all of the leadership of the bank really participated in what can we do from an efficiency standpoint to get things operate as lean as we can for this coming year. None of us were happy with 2024's overall performance. Having said that, I think we, as a group, worked as hard as we ever have in order to get it there. But when I look at 2024, it really a lot of work to get things into the right place, get things very focused so that now we're in a position take off and get some extremely strong, positive momentum. So we're excited for that. There's challenges before us that we'll be able to prove to the market. And we thank you for your continued investment in Main Street Bank. And if you do have questions, by all means, please reach out. We will be at an investor conference starting Wednesday morning through through Thursday, but we will try to get back to you if we can get together to talk through any questions that you have after this. Thank you again for taking the time to be with us today. We very much appreciate it. I hope you have a good rest of the day. Thank you.