The Toronto-Dominion Bank

All participants, please stand by. Your conference is now ready to begin. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the TD Bank Group Q4 2024 Earnings Conference Call. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Ms. Brooke Hales, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Ms. Hales.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning and welcome to TD Bank Group's fourth quarter 2024 investor presentation. Many of us are joining today's meeting from lands across North America. North America is known as Turtle Island by many Indigenous communities. I am currently situated in Toronto. As such, I would like to begin today's meeting by acknowledging that I am on the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples, and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples. We also acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13, signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaty signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands. We will begin today's presentation with remarks from Barrett Mizrani, the bank's CEO, followed by Ray Chun, the bank's COO, after which Kelvin Tran, the bank's CFO, will present our fourth quarter operating results. Andre Bambuale, Chief Risk Officer, will then offer comments on credit quality, after which we will invite questions from pre-qualified analysts and investors on the phone. Also present today to answer your questions are Sona Mita, Group Head, Canadian Personal Banking, Barbara Hooper, Group Head, Canadian Business Banking, Leo Salam, President and CEO, TD Bank, America's Most Convenient Bank, Tim Wiggin, Group Head, Wholesale Banking, and President and CEO, TD Securities, and Paul Clark, Senior Executive Vice President, Wealth Management. Please turn to slide two. As noted on slide two, our comments during this call may contain forward-looking statements, which involve assumptions and have inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially. I would also remind listeners that the bank uses non-GAAP financial measures to arrive at adjusted results. The bank believes that adjusted results provide readers with a better understanding of how management views the bank's performance. Barrett, Ray, and Calvin will be referring to adjusted results in their remarks. Additional information about non-GAAP measures and material factors and assumptions is available in our 2024 annual report. With that, let me turn the presentation over to Barrett.

Thank you, Brooke, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I'd like to welcome Sona Mehta, Group Head, Canadian Personal Banking, and Paul Clark, Senior Executive Vice President, Wealth Management, who are joining this call for the first time. I will begin with the USAML remediation update. We have continued to onboard talent and deploy new data-driven technology solutions. This quarter, we implemented further improvements in transaction monitoring and refinements in our customer risk rating methodology. We also rolled out additional training for risk, governance, and control colleagues. We expect to have the majority of the management remediation actions implemented by the end of calendar 2025, with additional management actions planned for calendar 2026. Remediation actions will then be subject to internal challenge and validation, including sustainability and testing activities, which are planned for calendar 26 and 27, followed by review and acceptance by the monitorship. We will then work with our regulators to demonstrate the sustainability of our remediation actions. Our AML remediation will be a multi-year endeavor, and we will continue to provide updates on our progress. The U.S. AML remediation is our main focus. However, as we have discussed previously, through this work and other ongoing review, we've had an opportunity to examine the effectiveness and capabilities of our enterprise AML program. We have learned from the U.S. experience and are applying those learnings globally. Though we have not identified issues to the same extent or experienced the same severe AML-related events in markets outside the U.S., we do need to improve and strengthen our enterprise-wide program. It is critical that we do so, and we will. We are tackling this work with the same determination and urgency. When we are done with this effort, we will have the AML risk and control environment that befits a G-SIB in the U.S. and in every market in which we operate. Turning to results, we have seen momentum in our markets-related businesses, and we believe we are well-positioned to benefit from any improvement in the environment in the coming months. On the retail side, slowing inflation and easing interest rates should take some pressure off customers at the lower end of the income scale. This quarter, revenues were up 12% year-over-year, of which 5% reflected reinsurance recoveries for catastrophic claims. This strong revenue growth was driven by higher free income in market-related businesses and higher volumes in Canada. Expenses this quarter increased reflected investments in our risk and control infrastructure, and several notable items totaling approximately $150 million, including costs associated with our Nordstrom program agreement extension and legal and regulatory costs. We also saw record catastrophic claims in our insurance business and increased impaired PCLs in our non-retail lending portfolios. This quarter, earnings were $3.2 billion dollars, and EPS was $1.72, down 8% and 5% year-over-year, respectively. As of quarter end, the bank's CET1 ratio was 13.1%, reflecting the sale of Schwab shares in August, partially offset by the operational risk RWA impact of last quarter's AML provision. We remain confident in the earnings power of our franchise and have today declared a $0.03 dividend increase, bringing our dividends to $1.05 for share. Let me now turn it over to Ray in his new role as Chief Operating Officer.