Earnings Labs

Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A. (BLX)

Q3 2014 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 16, 2014

$53.49

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Bladex’s Third Quarter 2014 Conference Call on today, October 16, 2014. This call is being recorded and is for investors and analysts only. If you are a member of the media, you are invited to listen-only. Bladex has prepared a PowerPoint presentation to accompany their discussion. It is available through the webcast and on the bank’s corporate website at www.bladex.com. Joining us today are Mr. Rubens Amaral, Chief Executive Officer of Bladex; and Mr. Christopher Schech, Chief Financial Officer. Their comments will be based on the earnings release, which was issued yesterday. A copy of the long version is available on the corporate website. Any comments made by the executive officers today may include forward-looking statements. These are defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. They are based on information and data that is currently available. However, the actual performance may differ due to various factors which are cited in the Safe Harbor statements in the press release. And with that, I am pleased to turn the call over to Mr. Rubens Amaral for his presentation. Sir please begin.

Rubens Amaral

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Katie. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. Yesterday, we reported strong results confirming the positive trends of our business as we had informed you in our previous calls. I am especially pleased with improvement in the quality of our earnings as our traditional trade finance business posted solid growth, our fee income is steadily increasing as a result of our syndication business, and nevertheless importantly, we continue to increase efficiency throughout the organization. As already highlighted in our press release, I would like to use this opportunity to comment briefly on the business environment and our view for 2015. Christopher as always, will provide you with the details of our business performance. So let’s start. The economic growth in Latin America this year will be a modest 1.4%, due to weaker exports, low commodity prices and poor internal demand in different countries. As we know, the story is not the same in every country, but all the projections have been revised down for the reasons mentioned before. The foreign trade will grow only marginally when the value of exports increasing timid 0.8% and the value of imports decreasing by 0.6% for the year. Nevertheless, as we have appreciated in our press release, our portfolio presented 9% growth for the first nine months of the year, which is in line with our expectation for 2014, is well between 10% and 13%. We have been able to achieve this growth by increasing our client base with 48 new clients and catering to markets such as Colombia, Mexico, Peru and some countries in Central America, where more dynamic economic activity opened up new business opportunities. Let me now give you a quick overview about some of the countries in our region. Let’s start with Argentina. Our exposure is…

Christopher Schech

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you very much, Rubens. Hello, and good morning, everyone, and thank you again for joining us on the call today. In discussing our third quarter results, I will focus as usual on the main and key aspects that have impacted our results, and I will base myself on the earnings call presentation that we have uploaded to our website together with the earnings release, which is being webcast as we speak. But before we go into a little bit more detail, let’s just start with a rundown of our financial performance this quarter on Pages 4 and Page 5. And those are the key financial highlights and drivers that shape this quarter. So the third quarter of 2014 closed with net income to Bladex shareholders of $26.6 million, compared to $20.7 million in the previous quarter and $22.8 million in the third quarter of 2013. In order to more accurately present performance in our returning business activities, we’d like to focus on business net income, which is recurring net income derived from our principal business activities of financial intermediation, which generate net interest, commission and fee income, also refer to it as core income or income from core activities. And this business net income reached $26 million, up 14% from $22.9 million in the second quarter 2014, mainly due to net interest income growth brought about by the group’s overall commercial portfolio and higher margins. Business net income was down actually 3% compared 2013 but that quarter with the release of credit reserves [ph] were posted increased provisions that were in line with portfolio balances growth as Rubens already mentioned. Net interest margin continues to increase rising 9 basis points during the quarter versus the previous quarter, and that is 3 basis points below the levels during the third…

Rubens Amaral

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Christopher. Now ladies and gentlemen, we are ready for your questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you sir. At this time, we will open the floor for questions. (Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Chris Delgado from JP Morgan. Chris Delgado – JP Morgan: Good morning, and congrats on a good quarter. I guess I have two quick questions. First, loan growth has been quite good in the past two quarters and I wanted to get a sense of you see that continuing into the fourth quarter and then what your thoughts are on loan growth for 2015? My second question relates to your overall portfolio mix. When you look at the industries you’re exposed to, about 25%, 26% is to oil and gas. And given the recent decline in oil prices, I wanted to get a sense if you had any concerns about that exposure? Thanks.

Rubens Amaral

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Chris. This is Rubens. Nice talking to you. In terms of the overall growth of the portfolio, I can tell you that we remain within the confines of our target for this year, between 10% and 13%. We are seeing a strong demand still, but and the different countries can vary. Mexico for instance is gaining momentum as I alluded to in my initial remarks, and we might see possibilities there to continue our growth. Brazil, because of elections and the slowing down of economy much [indiscernible] drew the loan BR continues to be very [Technical Difficulty]. So we expect to have at least a moderate growth for the fourth quarter. And for 2015, so far our guidance is going to be around 10% for the whole year. In terms of the oil and gas industry, honestly, we are not that concerned with the reduction in prices, because majority of our clients are importers of oil. So they will benefit from reduction in oil prices. We are not so much involved with the production of oil, the downstream – the upstream I mean, but much more with the importers of oils. So at the end of the day, our clients will benefit, and we will need to do more work to get to the same levels of exposure that we have to the sector. Chris Delgado – JP Morgan: Okay, great. Thank you.

Rubens Amaral

Chief Executive Officer

Welcome.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Sir at this time, we have no further questions. Do you have any closing remarks before we wrap up?

Rubens Amaral

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Kate. Thank you everyone for attending our call today. We are very pleased again to present solid results, and I think at the end of day, the results speak for themselves. We are looking forward to a strong fourth quarter. We are well aware of the challenges ahead of us. We have seen what’s happening to the markets as we speak yesterday and today, and we understand the downside risks that can come from Europe and what’s going on with the region updations across the globe, but again [Technical Difficulty] America toward the prospect in 2015. I am looking forward to talking to you in our next call in February 2015 and I’d like to wish all of you a holiday season. Thank you very much.