So, those guys would have grown a lot more, could have grown a lot more in 2023, have we not constrained their growth. So we knew we were going to have a higher level of RESG driven growth in 2023, because payoffs were slowing as the year unfolded. You could see that. So we limited the ability of the other business units to grow. And that’s why we are pretty confident that, as we do begin to see that RESG payoff weight materializing, we would hope those other business units would still have the opportunities to grow that they have. I think they will. Time will prove that out. But that’s why we think we are going to have a very smooth handoff of growth in 2025 from RESG that’s going to have a lot of pay-downs and the balances there probably more or less stagnate per year to ABLG structured finance – fund finance, capital solutions, equipment finance groups, that will exercise the ability that they have already demonstrated they have to achieve a higher growth rate.
Matt Olney: Yes, okay. That makes sense. Thanks guys.
George Gleason: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Ben Gerlinger of Citi.
Ben Gerlinger: Hey, good morning guys.
George Gleason: Good morning.
Ben Gerlinger: I think last week or 2 weeks ago, I went to my local OZK branch here in Georgia and spent some time in knowing the bankers and tellers. So anyway, so it seems like you guys are emphasizing a CE rate that’s a bit shorter than previous, like the ones – the people that I spoke with – one specific brand were kind of focusing on the 8 months, which kind of coincides with your expectations for a July cut. I was just kind of curious on just deposit gathering efforts in general. How do you guys feel about gathering deposits even in the kind of difficult rate environment? I get that you probably want to be a bit more nimble, but if you have growth, you kind of need to pay up. So I am just curious on how you feel able to on the deposit or any other deposit gathering effort that you could probably – leverage you could pull over the next 7, 8 months before we get to the first rate cut?
George Gleason: Yes. We are – you are correct in your observations that we have – starting in the last week or two of November and incrementally shifting, we have kind of twisted our focus on maturities to get a little shorter maturity distribution in that deposit book, hoping that we can get that book lined up more tightly with the Fed’s rate cutting scenarios. So you are correct in that 8, 7 months is the focus there on wholesale deposits. We are moving those in even shorter. We are continuing to pay up, as you noted, because we are growing so much. We grew deposits last year, Cindy, was over $5.5 billion, almost $6 billion. And to do that in an environment where the Fed is taking liquidity out of the system and most banks are experiencing shrinking balance sheets was a heck of an accomplishment for our deposit guys.
And they are fully ready to do that again this year if we need to do that. We feel really, really confident in our ability to do it. And we are now – the biggest focus is achieving the growth we need to achieve, while shifting the mix of the deposit book to align more closely with the expectation that rates are going to head down at some point in the year and also minimize our cost of deposits. So we are making adjustments weekly, sometimes daily in that regard. And I think our deposit team is doing a great job. But I appreciate the fact that you are paying attention to what’s going on at the local level in the branches, because our 228 or 229, 230 branches, however many it is, are where all those good stuff on the deposit side is occurring.
Ben Gerlinger: Yes. I guess I would have to actually open a checking account, I was going to get to a specialist I am constantly visiting. I was just curious if we could just kind of switch gears here. On Figure 14 in the prepared remarks, you had the appraisals obtained and it seems like there is obviously some oscillation, with every appraisal, the valuation is going to be a little bit different. But there is three that kind of stuck out a little bit to office and multifamily and the worst office change seemed to be a little less than a 50% haircut in the overall valuation. I think everyone knows at this point office stated is probably a little higher, but it’s such an illiquid market in general. There is just not a lot of transactions.
Were these valuations kind of what you were expecting or is there anything idiosyncratic in that nature? I don’t really have an issue with your credit overall, but with those kind of marks down, I am just kind of curious what your thoughts are on just those couple of loans?
George Gleason: Brannon, do you want to comment on that?
Brannon Hamblen: Yes, absolutely, absolutely. I mean great question. And yes, I think the short answer is we are generally seeing what we would expect. There – in terms of idiosyncratic moves, I think there are certain markets that are probably hit harder with respect to the cap rate moves and – but you hit the nail on the head. There is just a real dearth of transactions out there upon which these valuations can draw for cap rate data. And the fact of the matter is appraisers are human and you got to make an estimate and sometimes that estimate can, in hindsight, be a bit severe. But we are extremely pleased with what we feel like over the course of these quarters that we’ve given you guys this data, the majority of these loans are falling in that sort of up, down 10% range, which based – given our really low basis, is not at all a bad place to be.
