Laurentian Bank of Canada

Welcome to the Laurentian Bank quarterly financial results call. Please note that this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Raphael Arbeau, head investor relations. Please go ahead, Raphael.

Bonjour à tous. Good morning, and thank you for joining us. Today's opening remarks will be delivered by Eric Prevost, president and CEO, and the review of the fourth quarter, as well as the full year financial results, will be presented by Yvan Deschamps, executive vice president and CFO. after which we'll invite questions from the phone. Also joining us for the question period is Christian Debroux, Executive Vice President and CRO. All documents pertaining to the quarter can be found on our website in the Investor Relations section. I'd like to remind you that during this conference call, forward-looking statements may be made, and it is possible that actual results may differ materially from those projected in such statements. For the complete cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements, please refer to our press release or to slide 2 of the presentation. I would also like to remind listeners that the Bank assesses its performance on a reported and adjusted basis and considers both to be useful in assessing underlying business performance. Éric and Yvan will be referring to adjusted results in their remarks, unless otherwise noted as reported. I will now turn the call over to Éric.

Good morning and thank you for being with us today. While this year has certainly presented its sets of challenges, we overcame them with resilience. We started the year resolving an outage, navigated an uncertain economic environment marked by global slowdown, and made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce. Despite these headwinds, the team at Laurentian Bank has demonstrated incredible dedication and I'm proud of what we've accomplished and the progress we've made through our collective efforts. First, we introduced a strategic plan with a clear focus. In other words, we stopped being everything to everyone. We zeroed in on the areas where we add scale and where we believe we can succeed as a team. This strategic shift drove our decisions in capital markets, including the successful sale of our Laurentian Bank Securities retail activities. This process was completed in two phases. The divestiture of our full brokerage activities in August and the divestiture of our discount brokerage activities last week. Second, we went back to our roots. we are enhancing our processes to maximize efficiency, and most importantly, to ensure what we are delivering sustained value to our customers. While growth will come from this foundation, our first priority is to be efficient. Lastly, over the past year, we implemented key changes to strengthen our organization, which included building a renewed leadership team, and streamlining our organizational structure. These changes were designed to transform our company culture, fostering a greater focus on customer-centric values, efficiency, and accountability at every level. We're now six months into the strategic plan we outlined in May, and I'd like to take a moment to recap our key objectives. we are focused on expanding our presence in commercial banking specializations. At the same time, we remain committed to meeting the needs of our retail customers. In the midterm, we aim to offer a competitive suite of personal banking services that cater specifically to the middle working class. To support these efforts, we're ramping up our investments in technology while always keeping a customer focus at the core of everything we do. The growth we're building is supported by a strong balance sheet with solid liquidity and capital levels that position us well for future asset growth. Our loan portfolio's performance highlights our credit strength with deep specialization and rigorous underwriting practices that sets us apart. Our PCLs remain materially lower than the industry average, underscoring our careful risk management. Loan growth has slowed primarily due to uncertain economic environment. As previously mentioned, this decline has been driven by delays in commercial real estate projects, largely influenced by the current rate environment, as well as more cautious approach to using credit lines in our inventory financing business. However, we are pleased to report that inventory financing has onboarded over 350 new dealers, equivalent to a 6% increase year over year, expanding our reach across North America to now over 6,300 dealers and positioning us for future growth. This quarter, we announced the merger of our equipment finance and inventory finance businesses under a single brand, NordPoint Commercial Finance. NordPoint has been consistently recognized for its strong customer service and its world-class NPS core is a clear proof point. This merger positions NordPoint as a leading specialty financing platform in North America with a solid brand recognition. We believe that by combining our equipment and inventory financing businesses, we can accelerate growth as we simplify our go-to-market strategy and enhance value proposition to address the needs of the full ecosystem from the manufacturer through the dealers and to the end users. We are confident in our ability to execute on our strategic plan. Our proven track record in commercial banking is being extended across the organization. The executive team, along with our employees, is fully committed to delivering on these objectives and we're confident that we will achieve our medium-term financial targets. Looking ahead to 2025, our focus is on executing on our key priorities. We will continue investing to ensure we build a solid foundation for long-term success. This includes modernizing our systems to streamline operations, reduce manual processes, and drive efficiency gains, all while strengthening our resilience and enhancing the customer experience. These efforts with investments in the short term will not only deliver cost savings, but will position us for long-term profitability. We have a solid liquidity and capital positions. However, we are not satisfied with our current financial results. We are making the right decisions to create a stronger and more profitable organization. In 2025, we expect our four growth drivers to trend as follows. The commercial loan mix is expected to increase following loan growth in the latter part of 2025. leading to a positive impact on net interest margin. As for deposits, they will remain managed in line with loans. I would now like to turn the call over to Yvan to review our financial performance.