Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

Please stand by, your meeting is about to begin. Good morning and welcome to the CIBC Quarterly Financial Results Call. Please be advised that this call is being recorded. I would like to turn the meeting over to Jeff Weiss, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Jeff.

Thank you and good morning. We will begin this morning's presentation with opening remarks from Victor Dodig, our President and Chief Executive Officer, followed by Hirat Panosian, our Chief Financial Officer, and Sean Bieber, our Chief Risk Officer. Also on the call today are a number of our group heads, including Mike Capitides, U.S. Region, Harry Cullum, Capital Markets, Laura Dettori, Athanasio, Personal and Business Banking, Canada, and John Huntalas, Commercial Banking and Wealth Management, Canada. They will all be available to take questions following the prepared remarks. During the Q&A, to ensure we allow enough time for everyone to participate, we ask that you please limit your questions and re-queue. As noted on slide two of our investor presentation, our comments may contain forward-looking statements which involve assumptions that have inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. With that, I will now turn the meeting over to Victor.

Thank you, Jeff, and good morning, everyone. This quarter, we reported record revenue of just over $5 billion, which is up 7% over our prior year, driven by strong growth in all of our business units. Pre-provision, pre-tax earnings of $2.2 billion were also up 7%, and earnings per share of $3.93 were up 45% from last year. Our return on equity was 17.9%, and our capital position remained strong with a CET1 ratio of 12.3%. Over the course of the quarter, we saw the operating environment improve, driven by the easing of COVID-related restrictions as vaccination programs across North America continued to roll out. As a result, a rebound in consumer activity and increased optimism from our commercial and corporate clients contributed to both volume growth and higher client activity from new clients and our existing clients. Our strong results underscore the strength of our client-focused strategy and the successful execution of our three strategic priorities. Those priorities are, number one, to further strengthen our Canadian consumer franchise, number two, to maintain and grow our resilient North American commercial banking, wealth management and capital markets businesses, and the third being to accelerate our ongoing investments and growth initiatives into the future. On the first priority, we're delivering. We continue to strengthen our Canadian consumer franchise with market share gains driven by strong client acquisition and improved retention. We also continue to see solid growth in our mortgage portfolio and momentum in franchising our new clients. On a year-to-date basis, CIBC ranked number one in market share growth in personal loans. As economic activity rebounds, consumer spending accelerated and overall purchase volumes have returned to pre-pandemic levels. And as the economy continues to normalize, our goal is to ensure we have both a strong travel and non-travel card presence to capture market share as consumer spending increases. Now turning to advice. Our proprietary financial planning platform, CIBC Goal Planner, continues to resonate with our clients. In the first year, our advisors have helped our clients create more than 100,000 personalized plans, driving record mutual fund net flows along with significantly improved client experience scores. Now, moving on to our second strategic priority. Again, we're delivering on that one as well. In commercial banking, we saw robust lending growth on both sides of the border. driven by an improved economic outlook among our clients as well as new client activity. Wealth management activity remains strong with nine consecutive months of record net flows as investors continue to look for alternatives to low deposit interest rates. And our capital markets franchise demonstrated the benefits of our well-diversified business model. While fixed income trading this quarter was below the record highs of last year, growth in foreign exchange, and growth in equities trading as well as strong origination and advisory activity helped offset that decline. In project financing of North American Renewable Energy, CIBC is ranked third for the first half of 2021 in the league tables. This is a vast improvement from 26 just three years ago and reflects our strong and our growing expertise in the sector and our commitment to support our renewable energy clients. To further strengthen our presence and capabilities in the United States, we announced a strategic investment in Loop Capital, a Chicago-based financial services firm with deep relationships in key sectors across the U.S. market. CIBC and Loop have worked closely in recent years on specific transactions for our U.S. clients, and our investment in their firm will enable greater collaboration on future client activity as we grow our business in the U.S. We're also executing on our third strategic priority, and that's to accelerate our investments and initiatives that will drive sustainable and profitable growth into the future. A cornerstone of these efforts has been our technology investments. One example of this is our recent agreement with Microsoft as we embrace a cloud-first approach to modernize our platforms and build on our resiliency and agility. It's going to enable us to support faster, real-time data-driven decisions, and it's going to enable us to quickly launch and scale new innovations for an enhanced client banking experience. In our consumer business, we recognize the increasingly popular buy now, pay later dynamic in the marketplace. And remember, we were first to market with our post-purchase installment plan, known in the marketplace as CIBC Payset. To further enhance our offering, we recently announced a new Visa feature that will allow eligible clients to select installment options for qualifying online purchases during checkouts. So we have after checkout and during checkout. Our award-winning mobile banking app continues to be a market leader, as evidenced by the highest consumer satisfaction rating in Canada from J.D. Power, marking our second consecutive year with this honor. We also continue to invest to advance our leadership position with the recent launch of our new digital identity verification option, which is going to offer fast, easy, secure onboarding for new CIBC clients using our banking app or website. Again, further supporting our client acquisition efforts. Another important strategic focus for our bank is to achieve our shared ambition for a more sustainable world, working alongside our clients. This morning, we announced CIBC's ambition to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions from our operational and financing activities by 2050. To achieve this, we are establishing four areas of focus, which include refining our own operations, leading our clients through the transition to a lower carbon economy, encouraging consumer behaviors that reduce climate impacts, and sharing our progress with all stakeholders. Recognizing the importance of making near-term progress towards net zero, we're committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2024, including sourcing 100% of CIBC's electricity from renewable energy sources. We'll also be setting interim targets to reduce financed emissions with reporting on their progress beginning next fiscal year. We remain committed to working with our clients, to help them achieve their climate-related goals through financing and advisory services, and importantly, through investments and innovation and technology, which are going to be important drivers of a reduction in GHG emissions. We're also going to encourage consumer behaviors through education, resources, and advice on our Client Ambition Hub, which is coming soon to our website, as well as sustainable investment solutions. where a portion of CIBC's revenues from managing these solutions will be donated to organizations supporting climate transition activities. And in support of companies worldwide using carbon offsets as a tool to achieve net zero targets, CIBC, as you know, along with three other global banks, recently announced Project Carbon, which is a voluntary carbon offset platform to bring efficiency, liquidity, and global standards to the carbon offset ecosystem. The transition to a low-carbon global economy will take meaningful commitment and it's going to take action from everyone. We will continue to play our part in addressing this critical global issue through collaboration and cooperation with all stakeholders to build an inclusive and sustainable future. So in summary, we're very encouraged by quarterly results and the progress that we're making against our priorities as the economy recovers and organic growth accelerates. While many challenges and uncertainties related to the virus remain, we're living that each and every day as you see in the news, we're going to continue to execute on our multi-year journey to advance our strategy and strengthen CIBC. With that, let me turn it over to Haraj for review of our financials, followed by Sean for risk review, and we'll then take questions from all of you. So, Haraj, over to you.