Prepared remarks
Well, good afternoon and thank you for joining our virtual earnings webcast. My name is Jeff Dick, I'm the chairman and CEO of MainStreet Bancshares, Inc. and Main Street Bank. I'm joined here today with our Chief Lending Officer, Tom Floyd; our Chief Accountant, Alex Vari, and of course our CFO, Tom Chmelik. If you'd like, you can submit written questions throughout the presentation using the viewing portal. We will address your questions at the end of this presentation. If we miss your questions during the discussion, please reach out after the webcast. Chris Marinac will not be joining us on the call today. He did submit questions in advance, and we will address them after the session. Also, Matt Breese of Stephens, Inc., no longer provides coverage for our company. We'd be remiss if we didn't point you to our Safe Harbor page that describes the content of the forward-looking statements.
We use certain non-GAAP measures which are identified as such within the presentation materials. The DC market is still a great place to do business. We always talk about the strength of our market, because we are in a region that hosts the federal government or we do also have world-class universities, hospital systems, airports, tourism, data centers, and at least 14 Fortune 500 companies. As such, we also have low unemployment and high median household income for our workforce. Slide four reminds you of our growth story over the past 20 years. I think there's an interesting correlation to be made from our early years to the present time. We started with a technology strategy of putting our bank in our customer's office. You may recall back in 2004 that the Check 21 Act became law shortly after we opened, which allowed for the remote deposit of a digital image of a check. Acquiring customers with the concept of scanning and remotely depositing checks using our online banking solution wasn't easy.
It was new. When we first met with a possible customer, we would give them the presentation and they would typically reply with, 'That's interesting. Let me know when you have a branch nearby.' We persevered. It took a while to get customers comfortable with our solution. Once they had it, they couldn't do without it. Growth was slow in the beginning, but it quickly picked up. All these years later, we are still the largest provider of remote deposit of any bank serviced by our core processor, Jack Henry. Today, we're in a similar situation. We have a great solution. We need to get it in front of the right customers in order to grow. We're working harder than ever to make that happen. We are a Virginia Community Bank serving the Washington DC Metropolitan area, and we have a great organic growth story using a branch-light strategy. We've always been a tech-forward bank with strong online and mobile banking technology.
We are traded on the NASDAQ Capital Market Exchange. As of year-end 2024, we had a market cap of $138 million with slightly more than 7.6 million shares outstanding. Our tangible book value was $23.77. Slide seven provides an overview of the intangible impairment determination that the Board and management recently positioned. We determined that the implementation delays affected our expectations for the Venue software-as-a-service solution. After the accounting team put together its impairment analysis, the board and management agreed with their conclusions to fully impair the capitalized intangible assets. Alex will talk you through this process in just a few minutes. Before I turn things over to Alex, you'll see that the three key issues we'll be addressing in today's presentation are focused on the impact of our intangible capitalized asset, the good progress that we've made in working through our small number of workouts, and the outlook for Venue. At this point, I will turn the presentation over to Alex Vari. Alex is our Chief Accountant, he works closely with Thomas Chmelik to ensure the accuracy of all of our books and records. Alex?
Thank you, Jeff. On slide eight, we summarize our financial performance over the past four quarters, as well as for the fiscal year 2024. For the year, we are reporting a loss of $1.60, our return on average assets was negative 0.47%, a return on average equity of negative 4.44%, and a net interest margin of 3.13%. Our performance ratios were impacted by an impairment of our intangible assets recognized during the fourth quarter. As you will see later in the slide deck, we provide core performance ratios after the non-recurring adjustment. As we discussed in our quarterly calls earlier this year, our ratios were also directly impacted by taking action on a handful of problem loans. We have made significant progress finding solutions to non-performing loans, and we remain strongly capitalized and look forward to the opportunities we have in 2025. During 2024, we reversed $1.9 million of interest income, and we had net charge-offs of $4.5 million.
An additional $2.9 million of provision expense was added to ensure the allowance for credit losses remains directionally consistent with portfolio growth and our recent history. As you can see, the non-recurring credit issuances impacted our earnings per common share by $0.67, our return on average assets by 24 basis points, our return on average equity by 224 basis points, and our net interest margin by 8 basis points. As we will discuss later in the presentation, our credit metrics will drive improvement in our key performance ratios and will be reflected in our overall allowance for credit losses as it returns to our historical average. During the fourth quarter, as the Board and Management balanced Venue's 2025 gross demand and expense run rate, we made tough decisions about carrying back development personnel and focusing on revenue generation. Those conversations triggered a discussion about whether our changes constituted the need for an impairment analysis to be performed in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles or GAAP.
In agreement with that accounting analysis, we wrote the intangible assets down to zero, effective as of the end of the fiscal year. And this negatively impacted several performance ratios. You see the total amount of non-recurring impairment adjustments for the fiscal year after accounting for taxes negatively impacted our earnings per share by $2.14, our return on average assets by 76 basis points, and our return on average equity by 724 basis points. As these adjustments are non-recurring, we expect to see improved and normalized performance metrics through 2025. Turning to slide 10, you will see how the impact of the impairment actually had a positive tangible book value of $0.48 per common share. As tangible book value already excluded the full value of any tangible assets, recognizing the decrease in intangible assets together with the tax and equity actually improves this metric. Moving to slide 11, the interest rate environment has been challenging in 2024.
It is impacting bank accounts across the spectrum. Anecdotally, I saw an article recently that surveyed community bank CEOs, and 54% of their stated deposit costs as their number one challenge in 2025. Here you will see we end the year with a healthy net interest margin of 3.13%. Our deposit market remains very competitive as we often compete with super regional and multinational banks requiring deep relationship building in our communities. In the fourth quarter, we continued to build new deposit relationships that would fortify and grow our franchise through the year. We used excess liquidity to exercise call options on $60 million in high CDs. We did incur some deposit carrying costs while we executed these options. That added 9 basis points of additional compression on our net interest margin for this quarter only. We are positioning the balance sheet for strong 2025. Without the additional carrying costs, our net interest margin would have remained the same as the prior quarter.
We will continue exercising our callable CDs throughout the first quarter as we are laser-focused on reducing our funding expense. We are continuing to fund new loans that are underwritten and stress-tested in the current rate environment. Net new loan funding is worth $36 million over the last quarter and $108 million over the fiscal year, which points to continued interest income growth, further enhancing our future interest margin expectations. For the fiscal year 2025, we expect low-single-digit loan growth. On slide 12, you will see our non-interest bearing deposits represent 23% of our core deposit base and 17% of all deposits. We have an additional $122 million in callable CDs that will be accretive to our net interest margin as they are called. We continue to grow core deposits in a meaningful way, adding $187 million during 2024. Our non-core deposit balances increase strategically to capitalize on market conditions that will reduce funding costs and shorten the duration of our term deposits.
As the FOMC reacts to market conditions, they have begun to lower expectations about continued rate cuts in 2025, making it even more important that banks and competitive markets find niche markets to accumulate low-cost deposits. Now turning to 2025, our projected run rate is what we are expecting going into the year. Adjusting for the non-recurring transactions, non-interest expenses increased a nominal 6 basis points quarter-over-quarter. Management has taken action to reduce expenses and increase expense control and efficiency. At this point in 2025, we are projecting a run rate of 83 basis points per month through the first quarter. Of course, we will continue to update you as the year progresses. At this point, I'll turn the presentation over to Tom Floyd, our Chief Lending Officer, to discuss our loan portfolio and loan performance.
Thank you, Alex. 2024 was a challenging year, but a year that I'm very proud of and looking forward to reviewing with you. Over the next few minutes, I'm excited to share details about our loan portfolio composition, trends in credit quality, our annual growth, and a measure of our stability going forward. You will see that over the fourth quarter, we achieved positive movement in terms of total non-performing asset levels and positive trends in total past-due levels. Coupled with our commitment to serving our vibrant client base, we remain optimistic about the future. Our loan portfolio is well positioned for stable or falling rates, with 61% of our portfolio having rate resets beyond six months, and the remaining 39% with rate resets within six months. Of those, 55% have a weighted average floor rate of 6.34%. As we move forward into 2025, we anticipate this will help our net interest margin as rates are expected to remain stable or decrease.
Our legal lending limit remained at $47 million and our average new loan size was $1.9 million. As we mentioned last quarter, this highlights that as we've grown in our capacity, we continue to serve the smaller-sized capital formation needs in our market. We're very comfortable in our niche. Slide 16 highlights that our loan portfolio is diversified with healthy metrics. The non-owner occupied loans comprise 30% of the portfolio and include hospitality, industrial, mixed use, retail, and a small amount of office. The weighted average yield is 6.47% and the weighted average loan-to-value is 60%. Construction loans comprise 21% of the total book and are comprised of mixed use, multifamily, residential, retail, and self-storage. Our weighted average yield is 7.8% and the weighted average loan-to-value is 61%. Owner-occupied loans account for 19% of the portfolio and are comprised of end-users across roughly a dozen industries.
This is a highly competitive asset class, and the weighted average yield is 5.95%, with the weighted average loan-to-value of 68%. Multi-family loans account for 13% of the portfolio and have a weighted average yield of 6.45% and a weighted average loan-to-value of 73%. Slide 17 highlights that our CRE concentration is managed well. At the end of the fourth quarter, pre-impairment, our CRE concentration was 375% of capital, which is at the limit set by our board. As you can see, we consistently managed the levels set by our board. And through proactive management, we'll have that number back within the policy limit over the next few months. Through normal business activities, we can accomplish this with a negligible impact on our existing clients. It's worth highlighting that in our portfolio, we only have $13 million in exposure to pure office space, where the primary source of repayment is dependent on market rate office rent.
Slide 18 shows the trend in stress tests over the past eight quarters and the resulting impact on capital. The Q4 stress test for all working assets reflects the worst-case stress loss estimated at $45.1 million. In all quarters and even after year-end impairment, we remain strongly capitalized. The stress test includes loan-level testing for all construction and investor commercial real estate. For other loan categories, we use the balance in each call report category multiplied by our worst-ever loss for that call report category. For investments, we use the market price. And finally, for bank-owned life insurance, we determine the liquidation value. Slide 19 highlights the vigorous management of our non-performing loans over the course of 2024. Overall, we were able to reduce non-performing assets by 62% over the course of the year for an ending balance of $21.7 million. Our aggressive action resulted in the overall decrease, with the total principal loss coming to just 10% in terms of the loans that we resolved in 2024.
Slide 20 shows a decrease in our classified loan levels. Over the quarter, we decreased classified loans from 4.31% of total gross loans to 2.94% of total gross loans. We continue to rigorously and aggressively work on our non-performing loans and expect positive outcomes, which we'll highlight later in the presentation. The next slide shows a positive trend in terms of past-due loans. As you can see, over the last three quarters, we are trending downward. The total loans in 30-days past due is virtually zero. Slide 22 highlights our prudent balance sheet management, and our allowance for credit losses is directionally consistent with recent performance. As discussed in the stress testing slide, we remain strongly capitalized. Based on positive trends in our past dues and our rigorous management of our non-performing assets, we anticipate this trend will normalize in 2025. Slide 23 is a brief snapshot of our remaining classified and non-accrual loans.
As you can see, the common thread is that there is a high probability of a successful outcome. The next slide highlights a recent change being made in DC to help strengthen our local community. This creative approach to modernizing obsolete offices, along with recent developments on federal workers returning to the office, provides welcome changes to our local landscape. Rising tides raise all ships, and the recent changes are positive and reasons to be optimistic. Slide 25 highlights our consistent loan growth. Even through the various economic conditions and economic backdrops, our team has demonstrated a consistent ability to grow. In summary, we've grown the loan portfolio by 6% in 2024. At the same time, our portfolio has broadly seen a decrease in problem loans, just as we told you that we expected last quarter. Our lending team has done an excellent job serving our clients in our market, which has resulted in a superior yield and earning assets and, more often than not, demonstrated the ability to exit relationships with minimal losses to principal values.
We remain well capitalized and are working vigorously with our borrowers where there remain positive potential outcomes. We're passionate about serving our community. We love seeing it thrive, and we're optimistic about the future. That wraps it up for our loan presentation. Back to you, Jeff.
Thank you, Tom. Our banking as a service balance sheet for 2024 now reflects $62,000 in other assets and $41 million in low or no cost deposits. The income statement reflects the net loss of $3.6 million for normal operations. Looking at the pipeline, there are five FinTech client contracts. The first is fully live but proceeding slowly at this point. Then you will go into beta as soon as the due diligence is finished for the first client and should go live quickly from that point. We’re thinking beta will be about two weeks, maybe three weeks at the most. As an aside from that, the API integration team is actually accommodating a timeline for a faster progression through the process in 60 to 90 days. The three clients that are in the queue behind Venue are currently moving at a slower pace at their choices. Venue is moving fast and has a lot of potential. In my mind, the client with the next most potential is one waiting for their California money transmitter license.
Once that FinTech onboards with us, we should see some very good momentum. Venue, again, is our cannabis payments solution. We control the app, the network, the virtual terminal for checkout, and the merchant services solution. Each aspect of the solution is very simple and very elegant. The cannabis retail industry is large-scale driven, and we see a tremendous opportunity. Slide 30 shows data from a March 2024 forecast, estimating the U.S. legal cannabis retail market at $35.2 billion for 2025. Slide 31 tells us that there are 12,452 cannabis licenses in the United States. The slide also shows us the retail volume of sales in 21 of the 38 states where cannabis retail sales are illegal. The weighted average sales per store in 2024 for those 21 states was $3.5 million per year. Slide 32 shows the Venue opportunity. Again, the total addressable market is the 12,452 stores, collectively doing over $1 billion in monthly sales.
70% of that is in cash. We've taken a conservative approach to our projections. We assume we could convert one-third of those weighted average sales per store into digital payments. We then assume we'd add about 500 stores to the network this year. Candidly, once our sales channels are in place, we think we should be able to do much better than that. The power of the Venue solution is at the point we start to see some saturation. With just 20% of the total retail stores and less than one-third of the sales from each of those stores, we could end up earning transaction fees of $90 million or more. This is a captive network at this point. In order to get there quickly, we are actively negotiating a few different sales channels to advance Venue forward. We're working with a small number of credible independent sales organizations (ISO) that have large sales teams. They're excited about the opportunity.
The competition is virtually non-existent regarding what we offer. We’ll also be working with our banking associations, as well as the cannabis association, in our efforts to gain market share. For 2025, we've estimated the average outstanding deposits for Venue for the year to be $135 million on average. Properly executing this strategy alongside the fee income and expense reductions that we've taken will guide Venue to a profitable point in 2025. The board and management know that strategic execution is pivotal to the company's success and future. The core bank is strong and well-positioned. The Avenue and Venue teams are relentless in their endeavor to execute and show the market what they can deliver. At this point, we're going to start questions that we received from Chris Marinac, who is the Director of Research at Janney Montgomery Scott. After that, we'll address questions submitted earlier in the day and through the portal.
So I'm going to start by reading a few of Chris’s questions. First one is an Alex question or Tom Chmelik question. The asset impairment makes sense. Will the other measures that you also put in place meaningful as taking Avenue forward?
Yes, that's a great question, and they are. You know, we took action to decrease our expenses and focus on revenue. You mentioned those actions were reducing some personnel costs. We renegotiated contracts with a strong focus on reducing expenses, improving efficiency, and trying to be as lean as possible while really concentrating on revenue. I think that's going to have a meaningful impact on the bottom line.
Tom, anything to add?
Yes, as you said, we're very thoughtful with the expenses that we went through to decrease for this year and we'll continue to look for other expenses to work through as time goes on.
Good, thank you. And the next question is still on Avenue. Does the Avenue solution that we have in place today fully support our cannabis opportunity? What does that look like, and how long will that take to see meaningful saturation?
The version one of Avenue that went into place on October 1, 2024, has everything the Avenue solution needs in order to be successful. The small remaining team focused on Avenue will continue to enhance the software solution to make it more efficient, faster, and more scalable. It is working and all of the alpha testing for Venue has been very successful. We are working to put ISO reseller relationships in place as quickly as we can and get everything moving so we can start to really focus on onboarding the cannabis retailers. This is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. We onboard the cannabis retailers, we do in-store marketing, we conduct other types of marketing to get to consumers. They download the app from the app stores, and we're sort of off to the races. But it really is about getting as many cannabis retailers on board as quickly as we can that will drive, I think, the ultimate adaptation. So we're excited and we're working hard on that.
The next question is about the pre-ROA of 53 basis points achievable in 2025 and is there room to improve upon it? Alex or Tom?
Yes, the short answer is yes, absolutely. We have a number of factors impacting that. So when we're looking at our 2024 performance, we had some credit issues and some non-recurring transactions. Those are behind us, and we won't be facing those going into 2025. A couple of other things I'm thinking about: certainly a trend from the last quarter shows our net interest income by dollars is increasing. We had an increase in net interest income by about 4.5% over 4%, which is a nice trend to see. And as I mentioned earlier, we exercised $60 million worth of callable CDs that were accretive to our net interest margin. We have another $120 million sort of in the chamber, if you will, that will be accretive to our funding as we continue to call those. We are seeing continued deposit opportunities in our market, as well as new loan origination prospects, so we have a lot of opportunities to be excited about in 2025.
Yes, the other thing is the decrease in the non-performing assets will also affect the margin, and hopefully with some of the things we will be working through on former non-performing assets, we believe we will see improvements here.
Excellent. This question is for you, Tom Floyd. Do you think the loan growth opportunities exist in our market to support our planned loan growth?
I absolutely do. And as I mentioned, we love our market. It's a large market. We have less than 1% market share in our market. So for us to get low-single-digit loan growth, there's an abundance of opportunities for the type of lending we are trying to do, which is owner-occupied, owner-operated businesses. Those opportunities give us the potential for full banking relationships. They're primarily in the community, SBA lending, and other segments that fit the owner-occupied criteria. So we absolutely think they're within our market.
This is a follow-on question. You've answered some of this, but the types of specific lending that we're looking to focus on for 2025, and maybe as you think about that, a natural follow-up would be what types of loans if there are any that you intend to stay away from?
Absolutely owner-occupied is something we’re going to focus heavily on this year. In terms of loans that we will approach cautiously, we will be very careful with financing in the government contracting space, where payments are on billed receivables. We have a solid customer base of government contractors and are going to continue to support their asset-based needs, but we will be cautious with acquisition financing going forward.
Tom Chmelik, you are a veteran of DC native. Does the new administration and Congress present any barriers with what we're trying to achieve?
One thing that we've always done is whatever the restriction is, whether it's Republican or Democrat, it moves slowly as they come in. There will be some changes, but ultimately it will all be slow to roll out. We still have the federal government here; it's not leaving anytime soon. But I think it's going to be interesting to see what happens. It's not just here; it’s all across the country. As I said, we still have a vibrant economy. Without the federal government, there are many other activities that go on here, as Jeff alluded to at the beginning of the slide presentation.
Yes, and it's interesting, the mandate for federal workers returning to work, I think, is going to be significant. When COVID hit in Washington, DC, like I'm sure in many major cities, all of the smaller shops like shoe repair, coffee shops, and others dried up because there was no foot traffic in the city for years, and it's still not what it was. There are even opportunities as those spots are still empty for businesses to re-establish themselves once the federal workers return and need those services again. So those are wonderful SBA opportunities because of the right size for that.
That's a great point, and we've added to the talent of our team with some very experienced SBA staff, so we are excited with that as we go forward.
Good, again, an accounting question for the first quarter of 2025. You indicated a 3 basis point monthly increase in the run rate. Where does that number start from? Is that from the end of the just the Q4, that from 2024?
That is starting with the year-to-date 2024 normalized net interest expenses. So when you take out the non-recurring non-interest expenses it gets you to about $51.9 million. So we're using that as our baseline to say 83 basis points per month from there. And I'd like to just point out that, with due to the cost-cutting actions, that's actually about a 40% reduction in run rate from where we were in 2024. So we're really excited about the things that we've done and what we're looking forward to in 2025.
Yes, that is a significant 40%. And that is one of the aspects that we’re really focusing on to try to improve the performance metrics for the coming year. We'll sort of bounce back and forth. Again, a loan question, regarding credit losses. Have I added about 10 basis points for the losses projected for 2025? Would that be about right? I'll let you start, Tom.
Yes, I think if you want to be conservative, that would be a reasonable estimate. We've seen a lot of improvements in our credit quality metrics over the last quarter, and so we're optimistic about our direction. We believe that what we have should cover what we think we need to clean up. So, yes.
Yes, there's always the absolute unknown, but having said that, I know the lenders, credit administration, and loan review team have really scoured the portfolio, and it's in very good shape at this point. Those were Chris's questions. There's a couple more here. Can you spend a little bit more time discussing just the net, the core results of the bank? And I think if you went back to the slide that shows, or thinking about that, let's focus it just a bit on those core results, sort of ex credit, ex impairment. How does that look going into 2025? We've talked about it a little bit, but I think it's more relevant.
Yes, happy to touch on that. If we really laid out what the key performance ratios would have been for the core, had you taken out the capital impairment. Frankly, 2024 was a challenging year, especially with deposit costs. The bank is continuing to combat those challenges, but I think the is that we have a lot of levers to pull to reduce funding costs while managing that. The bank had a very good interest margin at 3.13% for the year. We're proud of that. We believe that we are primed to continue expanding that. As mentioned earlier, we're adding new loans and see our net interest income growing. We still have, as I mentioned previously, liquid reserves to continue lowering that funding cost as we manage our balance sheet effectively.
The loan yields; we are still getting loan yields that we've always achieved. I mean, we provide excellent service, and that’s how we get compensated for what we do. And with improving credit metrics, we are going to continue to see increased profitability metrics on the bank. I've had a couple of questions come in. What does 'we've significantly pared down future work' mean? I'll own that, as it was poorly written. It's in reference to the changes that we've made with the future software development. When we look at Avenue, version one is in production. As I said previously, we need a small core team that will continue to work hard to enhance the efficiency of the solution and adapt to the updates from other systems. There are actually two services that were well underway in development. One is the ability to add debit card functions to the solution, so that a FinTech could offer a white label to their clients.
That should help a lot in bringing in larger balances. The other is developing what we need to do for an RDFI, allowing our FinTech customer to direct deposit some or all of their paycheck into that account. Both of those efforts focus on acquiring clients that could benefit from those features, which would translate into higher balances for those accounts. Beyond that, we have put development on hold, and the reductions to the team and staffing have been streamlined with immediate effect. We're very serious about what we're trying to accomplish, and we must act to achieve the strategy we've outlined today. The good news is as we're able to showcase Avenue and Venue as successful, we will evaluate additional features and functions as needed to maintain our competitive edge in the market. So we talked about the run rate expense level being decreased by 40%. Let's see. How do current expectations compare to what was presented in the third-quarter revenue projection presentation from the consultant?
So again, I shared that average number of $135 million, which aligns with the deposit-gathering side of things. It is a more realistic average balance outstanding. From an expense standpoint, we’ve pared down those expenses considerably since then, and those actions should lead to a better outcome.
Yes, I can take that. The accounting guidance gives you a guide and tells you the criteria for evaluation. In our case, we used the income approach, and with the new product yet to really generate cash flow, it's a challenge to tie down to a specific number. If you’re using projections and looking at it from that perspective, it’s difficult to assess in terms of absolutes. So we interpreted that in the best possible way and finished our analysis.
Tom, anything to add?
No, that's spot on.
Someone asked whether the delays in Avenue were primarily driven by insufficient market demand, technological development challenges, or heightened competitive pressures? Well, I think we've been quite clear on them. You know, we saw the 21 consent orders that the regulators put in place in 2023, 2024. We looked at those and we drafted the contents. It was a matter of not wanting to have to do many things at once, but ensuring that all technology was integrated correctly. There were some technological issues that we could have worked around, but we decided to just fix. Those were third parties. It was all part of the process to comply with regulations and do it right. We felt that was very important. So we didn’t introduce that solution to the market until October 1. Since then, we've aggressively worked with various sectors to get into the space and explored many opportunities for growth. Are there any questions from anyone else?
Questions and answers
Yes, questions about Avenue. How many customers does Avenue have currently?
The only fully operational place is in DC. We talked about that earlier, and that’s been a slow uptake. They went live on December 31, and it's progressing at their pace. All necessary clients have downloaded the application and begun usage.
Can you provide additional details on the status of the goals expected in 2024 and 2025?
For 2025, we think some of that will come from the Venue opportunity. We haven't focused much on the cannabis retailers operating within that venue yet, and that's an opportunity we are exploring. There's been some very good potential leads out there, and we are working hard to bring them into our fold. Apologies for not being able to share names, but we are making strides that will significantly impact growth. One of the key things to recognize is what happens if that materializes. We’re determining action strategies based on their feasibility.
What are the expected expenses for 2025?
Expenses have been pared down. There will be opportunities based on variable costs, but I’m not going to detail those at this time.
I think it's critical to focus on reducing expenses and being as lean as possible. We have the right team in place to operate with the features we currently maintain. But we are keeping those operating expenses as lean as possible by renegotiating certain contracts during this period.
As I stated before, if we achieve the income that we have in the slide deck, that will positively impact our revenue stream and cover all expenses with a cushion.
For Avenue, can you elaborate on what the operational changes versus the revaluation?
I'm going to reach out to the author of that question and address it offline. We have discussed operational changes already; we've gained significant efficiencies through cost-cutting measures, renegotiating contracts already in place, and setting reasonable expectations. The board and upper management have engaged in extensive strategic planning to address market evaluations this past week. Underlying strategies for overall company efficiency have been evaluated, and we’re committed to operating as lean as possible moving forward. We know that there are challenges ahead, but we’re positioned to demonstrate positive market performance. We appreciate your continued interest in MainStreet Bank. If you have further questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We will be attending an investor conference starting Wednesday morning through Thursday. We will try to get back to you if we can connect for a deeper conversation regarding your inquiries thereafter. Thank you again for taking the time to be present with us today. We truly appreciate it. I hope you have a great rest of your day.