Bladex, Inc. Class E

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Bladix's second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. A slide presentation is accompanying today's webcast and is also available on the investor section of the company's website, www.bladix.com. There'll be an opportunity for you to ask questions at the end of today's presentation. Please note, today's conference call is being recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in listen-only mode. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Karol Srad, the investor relations officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our second quarter 2023 earnings call. Before we begin our presentation, allow me to remind you that certain statements made during the course of this discussion may constitute forward-looking statements which are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to materially differ including factors that may be beyond the company's control. For a description of this risk, please refer to our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and our earnings release. Speaking on today's call is our CEO, Jorge Salas, and our CFO, Ana Mendez. Also joining us today are some of my colleagues from the executive team that will be available for the Q&A. With this, let me turn the call to Jorge. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Carlos, and good morning, everyone joining us today. I'm excited to share our second quarter results. I'll start by presenting the highlights of our performance for the quarter, and then Annie, our CFO, will discuss the results in detail. After that, I will comment on our views on the economic dynamics of the region for the second half of the year, and then, as always, we will open the call for questions. Moving to the next slide, slide two. VLADIX had another outstanding quarter. All relevant financial metrics keep showing a positive trend as we continue to execute our strategic plan. Both our treasury unit and our renewed commercial unit had a very strong performance. The results speak for themselves. Once again, we're showing record net interest income for the quarter, $54 million in NII for the quarter. slightly higher than last quarter and 67% higher than the same period a year ago. Similarly, net interest margins stood at 2.42%, 88 basis points higher year on year. All this has been possible largely because we have been gradually and strategically reconfiguring our assets and our liability mix. On the asset side, The client-country mix has been optimized, as well as new client onboarding remains strong across every geography we operate. This is very much aligned with our commercial team now having a higher weight on their railroad goals, on their scorecards, under the new variable compensation scheme. Similarly, on the liability side, deposits, our most cost-efficient funding source, have been steadily gaining share of the funding mix. Deposits as of quarter end were over $4 billion for the first time in Blythe's history. This represents almost $900 million or 30% growth year to date. But perhaps more importantly is the fact that they now represent 49% of total funding as opposed to 42% a year ago. And we expect this trend to continue going forward. Also, on the funding side, our treasury unit successfully issued medium-term debt in Panama for the first time ever, and most recently in the Mexican market. Both issuances were supported by a very robust demand and added to the diversification of our funding sources. Annie will comment on this in her section. Also, I want to highlight another record-breaking result, fee income. Fee income was up 35% quarter on quarter, and 38% year to date. This is mainly driven by our letters of credit fees, which as a trade bank is, of course, at the core of our business model. We have reached over $1 billion in letters of credit for the first time ever. Again, process redesign and increased operational capacity have enabled us to keep growing this business steadily. Bottom line for the quarter was $37.1 million for a return on equity of 13.4%, similar to the previous quarter and in line with our 2023 guidance and our long-term guidance of attending a sustainable meeting returns by 2026. These results are a clear reflection that Blacks has reached an inflection point as we keep gaining traction in the execution of our strategic plan. a comprehensive plan designed to capitalize on the very clear upside potential of our unique business model that is being carefully executed by our Renewal Management Team. I'm going to leave it there and turn the call to Annie.