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 Ambeau, 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 Provost, President and CEO, and the review of the first quarter 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. Eric and Yvan will be referring to adjusted results in their remarks unless otherwise noted as reported. I will now turn the call over to Eric.

Good morning and thank you for being with us today. For the first quarter of 2025, we are happy with the progress we've made on executing against our priorities. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all our team members for their commitment and hard work. I'd like to begin by discussing the current economic landscape and the environment we are navigating. As you are all aware, there have been several developments over the past month that could potentially impact the economy and our businesses. We take these into consideration and are ready to adjust as needed. We remain confident in our ability to manage under these circumstances. Impacts will certainly be felt across several industries and we are still facing many unknowns, but I would like to reiterate that our bank has strong financial position and that our business strategies are to our advantage, including the highest insured residential mortgage portfolio rate among Canadian banks and our business model that focuses on specializations in commercial banking. I want to emphasize that the bank is fully committed to supporting our customers households, and businesses, and we are well positioned to face the macroeconomic challenges that lie ahead. That being said, we are starting 2025 with a positive momentum in our loan growth. We are pleased to report a 3.6% loan growth in commercial loans quarter over quarter. This was mostly driven by our inventory and equipment financing specialties. This fueled our commercial assets concentration to now 48% favorable to our NIM, which grew by 8 BIPs to 1.85%. Coming back to inventory and equipment financing, we completed our merger of our activities under one brand, North Point Commercial Finance. As mentioned previously, we believe that by combining our equipment and inventory financing specialties, 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 also happy to announce that Northpointe Commercial Finance has partnered with Yanmar America to provide exclusive floor plan dealer financing. This news is aligned with our diversification strategy within inventory financing as these dealers are in the agriculture and small construction industry. This new partnership, as well as other opportunities, will continue to fuel our organic growth both in terms of dealerships as well as open line of credits that are now above $10 billion Canadian. Our utilization rate in inventory financing in the first quarter was at 45% and remains below historical level. We continue to forecast a gradual normalization in utilization rate towards the end of 2025. Regarding our commercial real estate portfolio, the sustained decrease in interest rates in Canada, combined with the trust we have earned from developers and our industry expertise, has enabled us to expand our unfunded pipeline over the past 12 months. This positive momentum is reinforcing our confidence in continued growth moving forward. Laurentian Bank remains a partner of choice for large-scale progress projects in this industry. In summary, we are delivering on our commitment of a commercial banking business focused on its specialties by expanding our footprint across these growth engines. As we continue to invest in our strategic priorities, our level of expenses remains elevated with an efficiency ratio exceeding 74%. As mentioned in previous quarters, we anticipate a continued elevated expense level for the remainder of the year. The investments we are making are crucial to supporting the successful execution of our strategic plan and advancing our technological roadmap, which will position us for long-term growth and success. We are making steady progress on the critical foundational investment outline in our strategic plan. A key milestone was the successful completion of a comprehensive mainframe upgrade, which has greatly enhanced our operational resiliency. These enhancements are laying the groundwork for our simplification, efficiency gains over medium terms, and paving the way to our future success. We are experiencing positive outcomes following the creation and implementation of the chief commercial experience role. This has led to an increase in retail customer satisfaction driven by improved service quality. Additionally, our commercial specialties continue to uphold their excellent customer satisfaction levels. Finally, we are in a strong liquidity and capital position, which provides us with the financial stability needed to effectively navigate the current macroeconomic uncertainty. I would now like to turn the call over to Yvan to review our financial performance.