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spk01: Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Q4 2023 Valley National Bank Corp Earnings Conference call. At this time, all participants are on listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentations, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question at that time, please press star 11 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. I would now turn the call over to your host, Mr. Travis Land. Please begin.
spk03: Good morning, and welcome to Valley's fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Presenting on behalf of Valley today are CEO Ira Robbins, President Tom Iadanza, and Chief Financial Officer Mike Hagedorn. Before we begin, I would like to make everyone aware that our quarterly earnings release and supporting documents can be found on our company website at valley.com. When discussing our results, we refer to non-GAAP measures, which exclude certain items from reported results. Please refer to today's earnings release for reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures. Additionally, I would like to highlight slide two of our earnings presentation and remind you that comments made during this call may contain forward-looking statements relating to Valley National Bancorp and the banking industry. Valley encourages all participants to refer to our SEC filings, including those found on Forms 8-K, 10-Q, and 10-K, for a complete discussion of forward-looking statements and the factors that could cause actual results to differ from those statements. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ira Robbins.
spk02: Thank you, Travis. In the fourth quarter of 2023, VALLEY REPORTED NET INCOME OF $72 MILLION AND EARNINGS PER SHARE OF 13 CENTS. EXCLUSIVE OF NON-CORE ITEMS, INCLUDING THE ONE-TIME SPECIAL FDIC ASSESSMENT TIED TO THE YEAR'S BANK FAILURES, ADJUSTED NET INCOME IN EPS WERE $116 MILLION AND 22 CENTS RESPECTIVELY. WHILE I'M PLEASED WITH THE CORES BALANCE SHEET TRENDS, I'M DISAPPOINTED WITH THE EARNINGS AND PROFITABILITY METRICS, WHICH I WILL DISCUSS SHORTLY. ON THE POSITIVE SIDE, we made progress enhancing CNI growth while curtailing commercial real estate originations. This enabled us to both accrete organic capital and reduce funding needs. On the deposit side, we added a remarkable 14,000 net new consumer households and 8,000 net new commercial deposit relationships during the year. This represents 4.5% growth in consumer households and 10.5% growth in commercial relationships from the same period a year ago. The ongoing addition of new deposit clients is critical as it directly relates to Valley's franchise value and our future earnings potential. Our new customer growth was broad-based across all of our geographies, and I might add, was undertaken against the backdrop of a difficult external environment. When mid-sized banks like Valley were too often front page news, During the quarter, our new relationships helped to generate strong customer deposit inflows, which enabled us to significantly reduce our reliance on broker deposits. While customer deposit inflows were exceptional, the organization-wide focus on ensuring a successful core conversion in October likely led us to take our eyes off the ball relative to deposit pricing. There is no doubt that this negatively impacted net interest income during the quarter, And in a few minutes, Mike will illustrate some of the subsequent efforts that we have undertaken to manage these deposit costs going forward. From a strategic perspective, we are refocusing on holistic customer profitability and will return to pricing deposits in consideration of balance and return as opposed to just balance. The quarter was also impacted by a few additional factors worth calling out. First, wave service charges and proactive efforts taken to supplement customer support both associated with our core conversion weighed on quarterly earnings by an estimated amount equaling approximately one cent per share. These efforts were enacted out of an abundance of costs to ensure that our customer experience smoothly transitioned to our new system. I'm pleased with the customer response to our core conversion, but acknowledge that some of the amounts of the excess support costs will persist in the first quarter as well. Secondly, Our provision was partially elevated as a result of a loan charge off in our commercial premium finance business. The after-tax impact of the associated provision was approximately one cent per share as well. This business line has approximately 275 million in outstanding balances, and we have an agreement in place to sell this business and a portion of the outstanding loans at what is expected to be a modest premium during the first quarter of 2024. While this quarter's earnings are not satisfactory, I continue to believe that our strategic progress over the last few years positions us well in the evolving banking landscape. The financial consistency that we have achieved in support of this strategic evolution is evident in our tangible book value growth results. Our stated tangible book value has increased 52% since 2018, which is more than double our proxy peers at 25%. Our value creation as measured by tangible book value plus the dividends we have paid out totaled 90% since 2018, or more than 1.7 times our proxy peer median of 53%. From a balance sheet perspective, we have successfully transformed and diversified our funding base. At the end of 2017, approximately 92% of our deposits were held in our branch network. By utilizing technology to expand our delivery channels and establishing new growth-oriented deposit verticals, we have reduced our reliance on branch deposits to just 65% today. From a geographic perspective, 78% of our total deposits were in the Northeast branches in 2017. Today, that number is down to just 45% of total deposits. Our focus on geographic diversity and holistic relationship banking has benefited the asset side of our business as well. In 2017, 78% of our total loan portfolio was in New Jersey and New York. That composition has declined to just 55% today. In 2014, we entered Florida with the acquisition of First United Bank, which had just over $1 billion in loans. Through additional strategic acquisitions and targeted organic efforts in this dynamic growth-oriented market, our Florida loan portfolio has expanded beyond $12 billion. There continues to be significant and diverse commercial growth opportunities available to us in Florida and across our entire footprint. The proactive evolution of our technology infrastructure is a less tangible but equally significant achievement for our organization. We have recruited and developed a strong pool of technology talent, which has helped us to modernize our infrastructure and positions us to be on the leading edge of further advancements in the banking space. Our technology adoption has allowed us to scale the franchise with limited net headcount growth. Since 2018, we have nearly doubled our asset base from $32 billion to $61 billion, with a mere 17% increase in headcount. Our recent core conversion aligned technology across our company and provides additional capabilities which we look forward to leveraging for our clients. As we move past the conversion, we anticipate that further efficiencies will also emerge. We have also focused on enhancing a more uniform data infrastructure, which allows us to react quickly and purposefully to changing market dynamics. An internal AI working group has been established to help us determine appropriate potential use cases and to begin to execute on related opportunities. I now want to pivot to our strategic imperatives for the coming year. While none of these are new initiatives for Valley, we continue to believe that they will drive shareholder value over the long time. First, we need to continue to drive core deposits to the bank. We have an incredible service-oriented branch network across our dynamic geographic footprint. We will generate more consumer and commercial activity out of these locations in 2024. As the curve increasingly normalizes, we will further leverage the existing specialty niches that we have established and will build on our momentum for the second half of 2023. Secondly, we will continue to de-emphasize investor commercial real estate lending in favor of CNI and owner-occupied CRE. We have restructured our commercial banking organization to better align expertise and experience with opportunities in our markets and business lines. Our enhanced treasury management capabilities and product offerings will support expanded wallet share among our customer base and help us to acquire new customers on the commercial side. We have also adjusted our incentive programs in support of our deposit gathering and lending goals, which will drive further strategic alignment across the entire organization. Finally, we will continue to grow our differentiated non-interest income businesses to diversify our revenue base. Through organic and acquisitive efforts, we have developed a robust suite of fee income products and service offerings for our growing customer base. The recent enhancements of our treasury management offering will help to offset certain capital market headwinds associated with lower swap-related revenues in 2024. The industry challenges of the past year confirmed to me that we have undertaken the right long-term strategy, and I'm pleased with our ability to navigate this difficult year. 2024 will be about accelerating our progress towards achieving our strategic initiatives and improving our performance as we continue to mature. As we execute on these initiatives, I want to reiterate that we continue to prioritize tangible book value growth. We believe that consistent growth in tangible book value would drive shareholder value over time, and we continue to expect to outperform our peers on this metric. With that, I will turn the call over to Tom and Mike to discuss the quarter's growth and financial results.
spk04: Thank you, Ira. On slide six, you can see the quarter's deposit trends. Direct customer deposits increased approximately $1.6 billion to largely offset the significant $2.3 billion reduction in indirect deposits. The meaningful reduction in our reliance on wholesale deposits was a key highlight of the quarter. We generated strong growth in our interest-bearing transaction accounts and were pleased by the slowdown in non-interest deposit runoff. That said, we acknowledge that a competitive interest rate is one of the tools used to support our generation efforts during the quarter. Still, the pace of deposit cost increases slowed, and in a moment, Michael outlined efforts which we have undertaken to control interest expense on a go-forward basis. The next slide provides more detail on the composition of our deposit portfolio by delivery channel and business line. Traditional branch deposits increased approximately $600 million during the quarter. This growth was spread across our geographic footprint. Our specialty niches increased approximately $1 billion, as well with key contributions from our online delivery channel and technology deposit team. Turning to the next slide, you can see the continued diversity and granularity of our deposit base. No single commercial industry accounts for more than 7 percent of our deposits. Our government portfolio remains diversified across our footprint and is fully collateralized relative to state collateral requirements. Slide nine provides an overview of our loan growth and portfolio composition. At the top left, you can see the proactive growth slowdown which occurred throughout 2023. Ultimately, we achieved a low end of the seven to nine percent growth target that we had laid out at the start of the year. Annualized loan growth slowed consistently as the year progressed, illustrating our ability to be responsive to changing market dynamics. The following slide breaks down a commercial real estate portfolio by collateral type and geography. As a reminder, We have an extremely granular loan portfolio, which is well diversified by collateral type and geography. Our debt service coverage and loan-to-value metrics remain very attractive. We continue to closely monitor pools of maturing and resetting loans and believe that our borrowers are well positioned to absorb the pass-through of higher rates. This reflects consistent underwriting discipline at conservative cap rates and significant stress testing efforts at origination. The next two slides provide additional details around our multifamily and office portfolios. From a multifamily perspective, our $8.8 billion portfolio includes $2 billion of co-op loans with an extremely low loan-to-value. Exclusive of our co-op portfolio, Our Manhattan multifamily exposure is a near $600 million, which you can see in the last column of the table. The remainder of the portfolio is well diversified across our footprint with low average loan sizes and attractive loan-to-value and debt service coverage ratio metrics. With that, I will turn the call over to Mike Hagedorn to provide additional insight into the quarter's financials.
spk06: Thank you, Tom. Slide 13 illustrates Valley's recent quarterly net interest income and margin trends. While end-of-period noninterest-bearing deposits stabilized, the decline in noninterest deposits on an average basis weighed on quarterly net interest income by approximately $4 million. Throughout the quarter, we replaced maturing direct and indirect CDs with relatively high-yielding interest-bearing transaction accounts and promotional retail CDs which was the cost of our significant customer deposit growth during the quarter. The right side of this page outlines efforts that have been undertaken to more precisely manage our funding costs on a go-forward basis. We have cut back the high-yield savings rate in our online channel, but remain competitive. We have also significantly reduced our one-year CD rate, which will help to mitigate the repricing issue that we faced during the recent quarter. Finally, we are working with our relationship bankers to ensure that deposit rates are reasonable in the context of holistic customer profitability. In the few quarters following the industry's challenges of March, we priced deposit products to ensure that direct customer balance is rebounded. As we continue to move past these challenges, we will price products with a more even consideration of balances and profitability. Turning to the next slide, you can see that non-interest income on an adjusted basis was generally stable from the third quarter of 2023. Deposit service charges declined sequentially as we waived certain transactional fees around the time of our core conversion. Other than this, growth trends were relatively strong for the quarter despite the headwind of swap revenues. On the following slide, you can see that our non-interest expenses were approximately $340 million for the quarter. Adjusting for our $50 million FDIC special assessment and certain other non-recurring litigation and merger charges, non-interest expenses were approximately $273 million on an adjusted basis. Compensation costs continue to be very well controlled. The sequential expense increase was primarily due to higher traditional FDIC assessment costs, consulting costs, occupancy and advertising expenses, and a seasonal uptick in other business development expenses. A portion of the quarter's expense increase was associated with certain consulting and customer support initiatives associated with our core system conversion in October. While the customer experience associated with our conversion has been extremely positive, some of these costs will have a tail into the first quarter. As you know, the first quarter also has traditional seasonal headwinds associated with payroll taxes. We are very pleased with our ability to proactively control headcount and associated compensation expenses throughout 2023. We expect that 2024 will be a more normal year in terms of expense trajectory And as you will see shortly, we anticipate mid-single digit expense growth in the coming year. Slide 16 illustrates our asset quality trends for the last five quarters. While non-accrual loans ticked up somewhat during the quarter, they remain relatively flat on a year-over-year basis. Net charge-offs were $17 million during the quarter and included approximately $5 million associated with our commercial premium finance business, which is under an agreement to sell during the first quarter of the year. As a result of our higher provision, our allowance for credit losses for loans increased one basis point during the quarter to 0.93% of total loans. The next slide illustrates the sequential increase in our tangible book value and capital ratios. Tangible book value increased nearly 2% from the third quarter of 2023 and benefited from a reduction in the OCI impact associated with our available for sale securities portfolio. We are pleased that during the year we were able to support our strong loan growth and organically accrete regulatory capital. Based on our expected loan growth in 2024, we would anticipate this trend to continue. We lay out our expectations for the coming year on slide 18. We anticipate generating mid-single-digit loan growth with a focus on C&I and non-investor commercial real estate in 2024. Based on consensus interest rate expectations for 2024, we would anticipate net interest income growth between 3% and 5%. Non-interest income should grow between 5% and 7% on an annual basis, as headwinds in our SWOT business are more than offset by continued scale in our wealth, insurance, and tax advisory businesses, as well as our recently enhanced treasury management capabilities. Non-interest expenses should grow approximately in line with revenue. Higher FDIC costs and inflationary pressures are offset by savings from our core conversion and the continued benefits of our previously announced expense initiatives. Factoring this guidance together, we expect 2024 EPS to come in just slightly lower than the existing 2024 consensus estimate of $1.08. With that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator to begin Q&A. Thank you.
spk01: Thank you. Again, ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone. Again, to ask a question, please press star 11. One moment for our first question.
spk00: Our first question comes from the line of Frank Shirali of Piper Sandler. Your line is open. Pardon me, Frank, your line is open. One moment. Sorry.
spk07: Just on the NII guide, I recognize you guys follow the market or the forward curve here, and most of those assumed rate cuts are backloaded in the year. What sort of annualized basis or annualized pickup do you get in terms of either NII or NIM from a given 25 basis point cut? What's the assumption?
spk06: So, I want to make sure I understand the question. You want to know what just the NIM impact would be of a single 25 basis point increase or cut? I'm sorry.
spk07: Yeah. Basically, as you get, you know, if we get three or four cuts, I mean, I'm just trying to assume or get a sense of what 25 basis points does for, on average, for the NIM or NII in your modeling.
spk06: So, I'm going to direct you back to our guidance around 3 to 5 percent. What we're expecting right now in 2024 is roughly 175 basis points that will affect most short end of the curve as you get less inversion in the curve. And that first increase does start in the end of March. You don't get much in the first quarter. But you are correct. They are more back loaded on the cuts into the fourth quarter of 2024. So I'm not prepared to answer a question on what is exactly a 25 basis point cut because it's going to depend upon the mix of the funding sources at that time. For the full year, we're expecting 3% to 5% increase in NII. And that should drive a slightly higher NAM year over year.
spk03: Conceptually, we're relatively neutrally positioned to the short end of the curve, so there's not a significant move. you know, based on if those cuts don't materialize, we're much more exposed to the longer end as it impacts the benefit that we'll get as our fixed rate loans mature and reprice.
spk07: Okay. So I guess over the full curve, you're still liability sensitive but more neutral to the front end. Yes. Okay. Okay. And just You know, kind of a, I don't know, more theoretical question in terms of the business mix has changed a bit here over the years with the specialized deposit opportunity, the opportunity on the CNI side, which you guys continue to see in 2024. In a more normally sloped yield curve, you know, what do you think sort of a normal sort of margin is, a normalized sort of NIM is for Valley and the way you've built the balance sheet here?
spk02: Yeah, this is Ira. I think it's a lot higher. I mean, obviously, being an inverted curve for three years, running the balance sheet, in which we do, where we try to take as much of a neutral stance as we can, it's a real challenging environment for us. That said, as the curve does get to a more normalized focus, we do anticipate significant margin expansion as we get back to an appropriate environment. We've done a really good job shifting the commercial growth within the organization. We've been running a 10% CAGR on CNI growth for an extended period of time. And as you mentioned, the diversification of the funding base really will help us as that curve gets a little bit more normal and we can get back to an appropriate deposit pricing approach across the organization.
spk07: Okay, great. And then if I could just sneak in one last one on that kind of front. In terms of the specialized deposits coming on board in the quarter, the growth there, and, you know, just thinking through the betas on your deposit book, the specialized versus the deposits in the branch, does, you know, are the betas expanding here given, you know, the national businesses? And would that help you, obviously help you maybe to a great degree in a down rate environment?
spk02: Those definitely have a bit of a higher beta in some of those national businesses, and I think that refers back to what Travis said, that it's going to be a bit more neutral when we have some of that curve impacted right off the bat. I think the mix shift from out of non-interest bearing really impacted us during the course of the year. So that's changed a little bit of the liability. So we do have more sensitivity on the downside on the deposit cost than we did when we were running 28% to 29% non-interest-bearing deposits. Those are now sitting in interest-bearing deposits. So that is going to be a benefit to us. But I think as you really mentioned, it's the diversity and the granularity that sits within that deposit book that we're really excited about and what the opportunity is. As we mentioned earlier on the call, I think deposit pricing definitely got a little bit away from us as we were focused more on the core conversion. That said, I do believe it's an easy fix. We will focus on it and make sure that 2024 gets back to the results that you would expect from us.
spk07: Okay. Great. I appreciate the call.
spk00: Thanks. Thanks.
spk01: Thank you.
spk00: One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Steve Moss of Raymond James.
spk01: Your line is open.
spk05: Good morning. Just following up here on, you know, the asset liability side of the business, just curious with regard to, you know, how much of your fixed rate loans and securities reprice in 2024?
spk03: Yeah, Steve, so we've talked in the past. We have $20 billion of fixed-rate loans. It's not necessarily linear. So we have more of our fixed-rate loans repriced in the second half of the year than do in the first half. But in total, it's between $3 and $4 billion that would reprice this year. But again, that's relatively back-loaded.
spk05: Okay. And then on the securities side, I'm assuming there's probably just minimal cash flows for the upcoming year?
spk03: Yeah, the duration of securities portfolio is extended to, you know, seven years, give or take. We get, yeah, it's really at the minimum, it's a $5 billion portfolio to a couple hundred million dollars in the year.
spk05: Okay. And then on credit here, just curious to get a little more color on the uptick in CNI and CRE NKs. It sounds like some of it is from the premium finance that you charged off this quarter, but just, you know, kind of curious as to what the loan types are and you know, any criminal color you can give.
spk04: Yeah, hey, Steve, it's Tom. There, there, There was an uptick in that non-accrual, primarily in the CRE business, $20 million. $10 million has since been repaid. When you look at our performing past dues, you will see a decline on the commercial side and very little, if any, in that 90-day bucket. The increase in the accruing past dues is on that residential side, and the color on that, it's our jumbo on-balance sheet portfolio, average loan-to-value of 58%. We don't expect any loss Historically, looking over a 15-year period, our real estate portfolio ran at about 35% of charge-offs against our peer banks. We expect that trend to continue. We are seeing, you know, really improvement across the board. Our metrics remain solid, especially on the commercial side.
spk05: Okay. And just curious, I noticed in the text that you guys did refer to an uptick in classified assets. Just kind of curious, where did criticizing classified assets end the quarter here?
spk04: Yeah, Travis, you'll have the number. But the uptick, we do that forward review of all of our loans, our total portfolio, especially looking early on in the year at the ones that are repricing or resetting. There was a migration of those loans in the third quarter, primarily into that special mention category, where they might have fallen below or right out of one-time debt service coverage. I just want to remind everyone, the loans that we repriced during 2023 and our review of 2024 reprice resulted in no modifications of any of the contractual terms to the repayment. But, Travis, there is a different number that I'm not referring to.
spk03: Yeah, I don't have the number in front of me, but I would say in the third quarter, that stress test process that Tom referenced resulted in a more significant increase Increase in classified loans, again, not an impression that we would see additional losses, but just the way that debt service coverages shake out. In the fourth quarter, it was a much more normal increase, so it was not .
spk06: And this is Mike. That increase would have been mostly in special mention credits, not the more extreme ratings.
spk05: Okay, Guy, and maybe just following up to that point, you know, as you're seeing some borrowers get close on debt service coverage ratios, Just curious to, you know, what call you can give around, you know, whether it's a workout process, you know, borrowers' ability to maybe pay down a loan, just kind of what you're seeing and, you know, what potential, you know, NPA formations you could see here in 2024.
spk04: And again, we haven't had to modify any terms to those borrowers where we were repricing the past, you know, year, year and a half. Typically, our underwriting standards would start, we use a higher cap level than probably our peers use. We underwrite to current cash flow. We don't underwrite to future cash flow. Our leverage tends to be lower going in. Our average loan-to-value in our real estate portfolio is about 60%. You know, of course, all of our asset classes. So there is flexibility. We do a lot of business with existing customers. They have the wherewithal. If it's tight, we'll either get additional collateral, a pay down, or reserve to support any funding below an appropriate level. Yeah, and the other piece I want to add, the refinance activity, especially multifamily, picked up in the fourth quarter, so it did allow us to exit those non-relationship, non-core loans.
spk05: Okay, great.
spk00: Thank you very much for all the call. Thank you. Thank you. One moment, please.
spk01: Our next question comes from the line of Michael Paridio of KBW. Your line is open.
spk08: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I understand this isn't necessarily something you guys guide to, but I'm trying to understand some of the cadence of profitability around NIM and some of the expense targets and the rationalization, I think, which will start to have a bigger benefit in the middle part of the year. Are you guys willing or able to just qualitatively talk about how you're thinking in the current budget about what the kind of return ROE profile will look like as you exit 24. I mean, it feels like the first half of the year might continue to be a little bit depressed, but just wondering if you can kind of give any indications around that cadence relative to the guide that you provided.
spk03: Yeah, I think your perspective, Mike, is pretty accurate. So I think in the first quarter of the year, I mean, whether it's on the expense side, the headwind of payroll tax, or on the NII side, you know, day count and other things, and the lack of kind of change that's projected in the industry environment, you know, we anticipate a generally stable margin, I'd say, in the first quarter, improving somewhat in the second quarter, and then getting more expansion in third and fourth quarter. That's kind of the way the budget is built now based on the implied forward curve. In terms of expenses, I mean, we have, if you look back to last year, there was a $7 million pickup in the first quarter related to payroll taxes. So you're looking at something similar there. As we stand here in December, we've, on an annualized basis, got $20 million of expense saves out related to the headcount reduction that was enacted in June. We think there is another $8 million or so, give or take, from an annualized perspective, from further actions here in the first quarter. on the personnel side. And then as we get into the second quarter and beyond, there should be some saves related to the core conversion, some of these elevated costs we've talked about with customer support efforts and other things. So I think the first quarter, you know, there will be some seasonal expense headwinds, but then you're looking at general stability over the three quarters following. So I do think the profitability improves throughout the year. When you blend it all together, you know, again, in the midpoint of our range, you get to $1.04, $1.05. That puts you at an ROA level that I'd say is similar to what we've achieved this year, but it does improve as the year goes on.
spk08: Yeah, I mean, it should kind of put you maybe in the 90s on the ROA on the exit. I guess the question is, you know, if revenues and expense grow dollar for dollar, right, that's not going to really improve much, and that's kind of what the outlook is for 24. But I guess what gives you confidence that in 25 and beyond – you guys can get back into more positive operating leverage territory and continue to see those improvements kind of carry forward in 25? I mean, is it just margin? Is there other kind of unit economics in some of the specialty businesses that you're growing that will benefit from scale? I would love some additional color there.
spk02: I think there's a lot of opportunity for us. I think if you look at the net interest income side, sitting in an inverted curve hopefully isn't one that we sit in for that much longer, but it definitely has an impact on us. I think the core conversion is really understated as we think about what the ability to scale looks like for us. We changed every single one of our clients into a new core platform across the entire organization. That said, we put in 261 different APIs sitting on top of that core conversion to think about what that client experience looks like. You go into Valley, you open up a checking account in one of our branches. It's the exact same platform that you do when you're opening up a digital account sitting at Valley. So we were very smart, I think, in the approach that we took as to how we were going to leverage the infrastructure and technology base. So from a scalability perspective for us, we're not paying per individual unit. When we open up an individual account to a core provider somewhere, we really have a technology infrastructure that's scalable here, that's focused on what that client experience is going to look like, and will definitely drive outsized growth. When I talked about some of the commercial growth numbers and the consumer growth numbers, Those are household growth numbers, not even individual accounts. That was done during a core conversion when everyone hated mid-sized banks. So I think there's a lot of positive tailwind that we have when we think about what we're doing from a franchise value perspective. So I'm really excited about what I think the opportunity is on the expense side of the book, but the revenue side is definitely going to begin to accelerate as well.
spk08: Helpful. And then just lastly, kind of on the same line of questioning, you guys have the 5% to 7% loan growth target for 24, you know, obviously still trying to... Yeah, you know, Michael, look at our fourth quarter originations.
spk00: They were $2.2 billion. One moment, please. Sorry. Can you guys still hear me?
spk01: I lost... Yes, one moment, please.
spk00: Ladies and gentlemen, please stand by for one moment. Ladies and gentlemen please stand by. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by.
spk01: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience. The speaker should be rejoining momentarily.
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