And then for a period of time we were buying them at $0.92 or $0.93. And if you look back at the big purchases over the last year, the $1 billion was roughly at $0.87. And what we purchased in this quarter, which is the second largest quarter, was at $0.895.
Alex Twerdahl: Okay, right. Switching gears to the originate portfolio, just – I think you mentioned that the pipelines have picked up a little bit heading into the first quarter. Is that – do you think that portfolio will stabilize? I mean, I know you’re coming off of a couple of huge origination years, 2022 and you’ve seen a little bit more amortization maybe as a result of that. But how do you think about sort of the overall size of that portfolio and whether not production will be able to fully…
Rick Wayne: I think it will grow.
Alex Twerdahl: It will grow?
Rick Wayne: I think it will grow. Over the last bunch of quarters, there was much less activity, there was less clarity on value, less deals being done. We’re seeing that activity pick up. And during that time period, we saw a lot of things but we said no a lot, and we’re seeing more now the kind of deals that we like to do and with a lot of volume coming in. And I expect that will grow our – and you may remember that before we had the big purchase a year ago, we were mostly an origination shop. So going back, I may say June 30, 2022 if I’m off by either dollars or when the year was, I apologize. But I think generally, we did like 550 [ph] of originations and $175 million of purchases, something like that, so that was 75% originations and 25% purchases, now kind of flipped. But I expect that – we’re hopeful that the purchase numbers will continue to be meaningful and significant, but the origination numbers will pick up.
Alex Twerdahl: Okay. That’s helpful.
Rick Wayne: And again really good – I was just saying, we get really good pricing on our originations. It’s kind of the same pricing we’re getting on our purchase book.
Alex Twerdahl: Yes. I mean maybe just kind of sticking on the pricing on the origination portfolio. I know a lot of it is Prime-based and you have floors in place. But maybe just given that the outlook for rates now is maybe Prime coming down at least several times this year, is there any other considerations that we have in the back of our mind with respect to the trajectory of the yield of that portfolio?
Rick Wayne: No, I think you said it in your preamble to that, which is they’re either Prime – they’re all floating, either Prime or SOFR. Most of the loans have floors and are usually set at the rate when the loan closes. But in some cases, the floor is less than that. So we have not 100% protection on our current rates, but a lot of protection on our current rates on that.
Alex Twerdahl: Great. And then the final thing I wanted to ask about is that it looks like there was a pickup in the gain on sale of SBA loans, and I know that there are some initiatives kind of with SBA product. Is that higher level of gain on sales? Is that indicative of maybe a little bit more success in that product? Or maybe talk through what you’re seeing and kind of expectations we should have from here?
Rick Wayne: It has picked up the volume for the quarter was about $14 million, which is a lot more than it was a year ago, and it’s got the potential to continue to grow. And so that – and so therefore, there were – we’re selling off always the guaranteed portion. And so therefore, the revenue has been going up. How much more, with this product even from the beginning, I was – and I am now very reluctant to make a prediction on volume or contribution to earnings from this product other than just reporting as it happens. So you saw the numbers on what the gain was. And then part of the sale of what we sold in the gain some was originated last quarter a bunch of it this quarter. And then at the end of December, we were holding on balance sheet, some of the guaranteed portion that we hadn’t sold in the quarter but would have sold in January.
Alex Twerdahl: Okay.
Rick Wayne: Sorry. That’s not a great answer for you. I know, Alex, but I don’t want to – I’m not trying to blink and say things are bad or good. I’m just saying it’s a little bit hard to predict, and I don’t want to go too far on a limp saying what that will be.
Alex Twerdahl: Yes. We’ll be happy to see the uptick in the quarters in which we see it. Thanks for taking my questions, JP best of luck in your future endeavors and that’s it for me.
Rick Wayne: Thank you, Alex.
JP Lapointe: Thank you, Alex.
Operator: Thank you. We have no further questions at this time. Now I will turn the call back over to Rick Wayne for closing remarks.
Rick Wayne: Thank you. All of you that are listening and all of you that will listen when you go online to listen to this; I appreciate your support and look forward to talking again in April. Thank you. We’re all set, operator. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
