We mentioned on our last couple of calls some anticipated headwinds that we would face related to net interest margin. Our NIM did decline to 3.30 for the fourth quarter compared to 399 for the same period in ‘22 and 3.43 for the Q3 of ‘23. The margin contraction primarily resulted from continuing changes in deposit and other funding mixes, increasing interest rates on all deposit stock during the fourth quarter, and impact from net settlements related to our interest rate swaps. Rex will provide a little bit more color on this in his comments. As I mentioned, our capital and liquidity positioning continues to be strong. Total stockholder’s equity increased by 40.1 million from the end of the third quarter ‘23, and increased 38.7 million from the end of ‘22.

As a result of decreased AOCI losses on investment and interest rate swaps and continued growth in our retained earnings. The retained earnings component of our stockholders' equity increased 26 million during the 12-month end of December 31, ‘23. Our capital remains substantially above regulatory well capitalized threshold, and our TCE ratio was 9.7% at 12.31 ‘23 up from 9.2% at the end of ‘22. In the fourth quarter of ‘23, the company declared a $0.40 per common share dividend, and for all of 2023 our dividends declared worth a $1.60 per common share. We also continued to repurchase our shares during or continued to repurchase our shares during 2023. We repurchased approximately 450,000 shares at an average price of $51.38 per share in 2023.

As for liquidity, our borrowing capacity at home loan bank was approximately 919 million at the end of ‘23. At the end of ‘23, we had available secured funding line through the home loan bank and Federal Reserve Bank, and on balance sheet liquidity totaling in approximately $2.1 billion. As we've noted for the last few quarters, our company's deposit base is diverse by customer type and geography and has a very low level of uninsured deposits about 15% of total deposits excluding internal sub subsidiary accounts. Overall, our loan portfolio is strong, diverse, and performing well. During the fourth quarter, new loan production and general activity was down compared to ‘22 as expected. Total outstanding loan balances grew by nearly 83 million since the end of ‘22.

Growth primarily came from the multifamily loan segment much of this movement from unfunded construction line availability to construction projects and commercial business loans partially offset by a reduction in construction loans and one to four family residential loans. Our pipeline of loan commitments and the unfunded portion of construction loans remain strong, totaling 1.2 billion in the fourth quarter, but that has to decreased significantly compared to the end of ‘22. As construction projects were completed, the related loans were either paid off or moved from the construction category to the appropriate permanent loan category. The unfunded portion of construction loans was 719 million at 12.31 ‘23, down from 1.4 billion at the end of ‘22.

I would remind you that we have a lot of information that we filed yesterday in our loan portfolio. You can find that at the FDC side. Overall, our credit quality metrics remain extremely strong during the quarter. Non-performing assets to total assets were 0.2% at the end of the year increasing by one basis point from September 30, ‘23, as delinquencies in our loan portfolio continue to be at historically low levels. More information about our number forming and potential problem loans is included in the earnings release. This concludes my prepared remarks. At this time, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Rex Copeland.

Rex Copeland : Thank you Joe, and thank you all for being on the call today. I'll start off with net interest income and margin. I mentioned this last quarter and I'll just mention it again that just a general comment about net interest income comparisons for the third and fourth quarters this year versus same periods last year. With the fed funds and market increase in rates in ‘22, we were again able to increase rates on assets more quickly than liabilities last in ‘22. So we achieved for us peak net interest income and margin in the second half of 2022. We're comparing the latter part of ‘23 to those numbers. Net interest income for the fourth quarter of 2023 decreased $9.5 million to 45.1 million compared to 54.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2022 driven by some negative changes in funding, mix of deposits and borrowings, increasing interest rates on pretty much all deposit types during the fourth quarter of ‘23.

And also due to negative impacts of the interest rate swaps, which we've mentioned before. Net interest income was $46.7 million in the third quarter of 2023. We did have a decrease least quarter on net interest income of about $1.6 million when you compare Q4 versus Q3 of 2023. We look at it and say if the SOFR and prime interest rates remain pretty much at their current levels, the company's interest rate swaps will continue to have a negative impact on our net interest income. And based on the interest rates that we had on the swaps that December 31st of ‘23, the negative impact of all those interest rates swaps combined in the first quarter of 2024 is expected to be approximately $2.7 million. The negative impact of all these swaps combined in the fourth quarter of ‘23 was about 3.6 million.

So as we noted in the earnings released, one of these swaps will terminate on March one of ‘24. That swap had a negative impact interest income of 2.9 million in the fourth quarter of ‘23. It's expected to have a negative impact of 1.9 million approximately in the first quarter of ‘24, and then after the first quarter, there'll be no impact in subsequent periods. The companies that interest income was also negatively impacted in the fourth quarter by the high level of competition for deposits across the industry and in our local markets. The company also had a portion of time deposits maturing at somewhat lower than current rates in the late third and fourth quarters of ‘23. And so those time deposit renewals were either at rates that were higher, probably at somewhat higher or they left the company in turn, requiring us to replace those funds with other funding sources that would be at current market rates.

And lastly and importantly, sporadically throughout 2023, the company experienced a higher-than-normal reduction in balances of non-interest-bearing deposits. Customer balances in both non-interest-bearing checking and interest-bearing checking accounts have fluctuated throughout 2023. As market interest rates for certain checking account types and time deposit accounts have increased. Some customers have chosen to reallocate funds into higher rate accounts. So during the full year of 2023, the company's interest bearing checking balances increased about $28 million or about 1.3%, but noninterest bearing checking balances decreased about $168 million or about 15.8%. Those are point in time balances and not average balances. However, if you do look at the Q4 average balances of noninterest bearing demand deposits, it was $1.07 billion in the fourth quarter of '22 and it was $900 million in the fourth quarter of 2023.

So, looking ahead subsequent to the end of the year into 2024, our time deposit maturities over the next 12 months as they stood at December 31 of '23 were within three months, we have $394 million of maturities with a weighted average rate of 3.82%. Within three to six months, we have $324 million of maturities with a weighted average rate of 4.32% and then within 6 to 12 months, we have $371 million of maturities with a weighted average rate of 4.08% currently. So, based on the time deposit market rates that we have in place or that we're seeing now in January of this year, replacement rates we think on those are going to be somewhere in the range of 4% to 4.5% generally. As Joe mentioned earlier, our net interest margin was 3.30% in the fourth quarter.

That compared to 3.99% in the fourth quarter of 2022 and then also compared to 3.43% in the third quarter of 2023. I'll shift over a little bit here to liquidity and deposits. Joe mentioned liquidity earlier, but I'll just talk a little bit more about that. So, we continue to have substantial liquidity and readily available funding sources totaling about $2.1 billion at the end of December. About over $900 million of that is availability at the home loan bank. We also have substantial amount of unpledged securities and $450 million or so available line with the Federal Reserve Bank, should we need to look at that. So, we do have, we think ample sources of liquidity. At December 31, 2023, I will talk a little more about deposits here. The total deposits were over $4.7 billion.

During the three months ended December 31, '23, the total deposits decreased about $130 million. Interest bearing checking balances decreased about $27 million or 1.2% and noninterest bearing checking balances decreased $46.7 million or about 5% in the fourth quarter. Time deposits generated through the company's banking center network and our corporate services networks decreased about $43 million and time deposits generated through Internet channels decreased another $3 million. Total brokered deposits decreased by about $8 million in the fourth quarter. So, talk for a minute here about noninterest income. Our total noninterest income in the fourth quarter of '23 compared to the fourth quarter of '22 decreased by about $1.1 million to $6.6 million.

Primary reasons for that decline included point of sale and ATM fees that decreased about $621,000 compared to that prior year fourth quarter period. Some of the reasons for the decrease is, we do have now some of the transactions are now being routed through different channels than they were a year ago and those channels have lower fees to us, which we expect that's going to continue in future periods. We also had some increases in certain related processing costs during the transition from our old debit card processor to the new debit card processor, and that included a couple hundred thousand dollars as we kind of made that transition and finalized some things, a couple hundred thousand dollars that we anticipate would be a non-recurring item.

Other income decreased 399,000 compared to the fourth quarter of ‘22. During 2022, we did receive some payments that were from a third-party servicer related to some old acquired loans which was not repeated in the 2023 period. And then finally, overdraft and insufficient fund fees, those decreased by about 327,000 compared to the fourth quarter of 2022. We continue to see a little bit of shifting going on there. It appears that we've got where people are using their debit cards for point-of-sale transactions and overdrawing their accounts in some cases with that, it seems that the usage has shifted more to credit cards resulting in fewer overdrafts and fees that we have generated on those. Non-interest expense, we'll talk about that for a moment here.

In the fourth quarter of ‘23 versus ‘22 non-interest expense increased $1.9 million to $36.3 million. And so, when you kind of look at the reasons for that, we've broken it into a few different places. Salary and employee benefits are part of it. That was up about 1.2 million from the fourth quarter of ‘22. Portion of this is just normal merit increases in some of our various operational and lending areas. And we also had a little bit less of a negative expense in the fourth quarter of ‘23 versus ‘22 related to compensation costs that you defer and take over time for originated loan volumes. Our volumes were lower in ‘23 versus ‘22, and then also, and one of the major items in the higher expense and the non-recurring type item was we mentioned it in the fourth quarter of ‘23.

We did have some discretionary bonuses that were awarded to various associates that have been involved significantly in the software and systems transition that we've been going through. And that was about $441,000 of expense in Q4 of ‘23. Additional expense related to insurance, that increased 550,000 from the prior year fourth quarter. That increase was really due to previously announced increases in the FDIC deposit insurance fund rates. We noted that previously. And then we did have some as a result of some of that, we did record some additional expenses in the fourth quarter of this year, which we don't believe will be recurring in as we go into 2024. Net occupancy expense increased about 389,000 fourth quarter this year, or fourth quarter ‘23 versus fourth quarter ‘22.

A lot of that's related to some computer license and support expenses that we had -- that we did not have in the prior year that we've had to add here in 2023. And then lastly, legal audit other professional fees decreased about $481,000 from the prior year quarter. In the 2022 period, we expensed about $1.4 million related to training and implementation costs for the core system conversion and professional fees to consultants that were engaged to support that transition. In 2023, that expense was $918,000 still a little bit lower than it was in the fourth quarter a year ago. So efficiency ratio for the fourth quarter of 2023 was 70.17% that compared to 55.13% for the same quarter in 2022. And the increase in that ratio is mainly due to the decrease in that interest income and non-interest income.

And then also a little bit related to increases in expenses as well, provision for credit losses. We did record a provision expense of $750,000 in the fourth quarter of ‘23 on the outstanding loan portfolio, the funded loan portfolio that compared to a $1 million provision in the fourth quarter of 2022. For the three months into December 31, ‘23, we also recorded a negative provision for losses on the unfunded commitments of $1.7 million. So a reduction of expense for that compared to a negative provision of $159,000 for the three months into December 31st, 2022. Our net charge offs in the fourth quarter of 23 were $833,000. That compared to $281,000 in the fourth quarter of 2022. And those current period charge offs primarily related to two relationships that are kind of long-term relationships that we've had for quite some time.

At the end of the fourth quarter, the allowance for credit losses at the percentage of total loans was 1.39%. And lastly, I'll talk a little bit about income taxes. So our effective tax rate for the fourth quarter of ‘23 was 19.7%, and for the fourth quarter of ‘22 it was 16.6%. For the full year, which is probably more indicative of really kind of going forward. The company's effective tax rate for ‘23 was 20.6% and for 2022 was 19.4%. We do continue to have some tax credit items and some tax-exempt investments and loans which reduce our effective tax rate. We think that the effective tax rate going forward is probably going to be something in the 20.5% to 21.5% range in 2024. That can vary a little bit just depending on the level and utilization of tax credits.

And also, state income tax expense estimates evolve. We're constantly reviewing those and so that can affect the overall effective tax rate from time to time. So those are the items I wanted to discuss and that concludes our remarks that we prepared so far today. At this time, we'll entertain questions and I'll ask our operator to once again remind the attendees on the call how to queue in for questions.

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