Tony Labozzetta: Yes. I think the other thing we have to point out and maybe Tom can give some more color on that is that not all of our growth is going to be funded by loan growth — by deposit growth.
Tom Lyons: The securities portfolio.
Tony Labozzetta: Exactly.
Tom Lyons: As mentioned, the regular cash flows as well as not reinvesting there.
Tony Labozzetta: That’s correct.
Michael Perito: What — do you know what the estimated kind of cash full — cash flows are from the securities book for the whole year for 2023, Tom, by chance?
Tom Lyons: It fluctuates, obviously, with the performance of the mortgage-backed portfolio. The large part of that is just government agency mortgage-backed securities. So we’ve seen as high as $25 million to $30 million a month and sometimes. And I think like I said, we’re down around $15 million — $12 million to $15 million currently.
Tony Labozzetta: The portfolio is .
Michael Perito: Yes, yes. Makes sense. And then for loan growth for 2023, Tony, I mean, I think you said in your prepared remarks, the pipeline is about $1.3 billion, I think you said and you expect to kind of pull through rates to normalize. I mean, are we right to think roughly kind of a mid-single-digit rate is a good starting point for next year? Or do you think there’s some room with payoffs probably being lower, I imagine, to do a little better?
Tony Labozzetta: I think it’s a combination of what…
Michael Perito: Obviously, yes.
Tony Labozzetta: Yes. I would expect production to be down a little bit given the market cycle. But prepayments are going to be down substantially as well. So a good guidance for us is correct — you’re correct in that 6% range is something that I would say we would die to. And given conditions, we could outperform that. But I would not like to guide beyond 6%.
Michael Perito: Yes, that makes sense. And then just lastly for me, you mentioned kind of the Lakeland merger moving as expected. And I think next steps are regulatory approvals 2Q close. It seems like the teams are working well together. Any — obviously, I imagine that’s taking up a lot of your management Board’s kind of human capital at this point. But any other investments or strategic initiatives that we should be mindful of for this year? Or is the focus kind of largely on closing that and getting it converted and then kind of moving from there?
Tony Labozzetta: I think our primary focus is getting the Lakeland merger and combination together and getting the 2 cultures clearly aligned. That’s job one. Job two with our new CDIO in place, getting him to evaluate the technology stack for a $25 billion organization and I think that’s a priority in the evaluation phase. Decommission some things, commission new items that are aimed to digitize our customer experience and improve our data analytic ability for a bank that side. So those are our priorities. I don’t think those are going to require massive amounts of capital spends to get there. I think it’s — but those are our focuses as we roll through the year, in addition to building all of our business lines.
Operator: There are no additional questions waiting at this time. So I’ll pass the conference over to Tony Labozzetta for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Tony Labozzetta: Again, I just want to thank everyone for being on the call and we look forward to a really good year in 2023. And be safe and we look forward to talking to you on the next call.
Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.
