Earnings Labs

Grupo Cibest S.A. (CIB)

Q3 2007 Earnings Call· Fri, Nov 9, 2007

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and welcome everyone to the Bancolombia's Conference Call. Today call is being recorded. With us today we have the President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Jorge Londoño and the Executive Vice President Mr. Sergio Restrepo and the Financial Vice President, Jaime Velásquez. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Londoño. Please go ahead, sir. Jorge Londoño Saldarriaga - Chief Executive Officer: Thank you. I wish to thank each and every one of you for your interest and attendance to this conference call, which we have prepared to share with you Bancolombia results. I would like to mention that a slide presentation is being made available in our Investor Relations website, which we will recommend you to follow during this call. At this time, I would like to introduce Sergio Restrepo, Executive Vice President who is going to explain basically the latest parts of the Colombian and Salvadorian economy and financial markets. Please go ahead, sir.

Sergio Restrepo Isaza - Executive VP Corporate Development

Management

Thank you. Good morning. Colombian economy continues its dynamic pace of growth having 6.9% increase in the GDP figures for second half of the year while investment and consumption play a key role on such performance. Retail sales for others increased 9.9% over the year more or like in the pace show last year when same [ph] had an increase of 14.6%. Industrial production figures increased 7.5% year-over-year on August coming from 12.8% last year on the same model. Additionally, inflation figures have remained under control. Other region, an increase of 6.3% on April on a year-over-year basis, variation on consumer prices have come down to 5.2% increase in October. Buy back by those developments Colombia Central Bank has on these last quarters paused the increasing of its overnight rate for the first time in 15 months after having raised 325 basis points. Right now the number is 9.25%. Despite that pause, it can be said that interest rates continue rising responding to the new conditions established by the written changes on monetary policy. Therefore, we expect the long growth dynamic to moderate in coming quarters as a direct consequence of higher interest rates. On the other hand, Colombia's financial market was not sanctioned in terms of high volatility presented all over the world. At the end of the third quarter, Colombian in pesos [ph] suffered a depreciation of 2.3%; the market benchmark, government bond was 25 basis points above in terms of yields and Colombian Stock Exchange index was 1.9% lower from their levels registered at the end of the second quarter. However, the bank's strategic logs exposure to Colombian bonds market prevented the financial results against representative loses caused by the mark-to-market evaluation. Going to El Salvador, our economy has had a dynamic year as well. It is…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. The first question comes from the line of Juan Rebello. Go ahead Juan, your line is open.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. Hello? Jorge Londoño Saldarriaga - Chief Executive Officer: Yes, go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Are you listening or not? Jorge Londoño Saldarriaga - Chief Executive Officer: We can.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. My question is in reference to the new modification interviews to date for interception cost. What do you think about the client satisfaction results of these changes and their revenues... the importance of these changes in the revenues for the bank for the next year and the short term? Jorge Londoño Saldarriaga - Chief Executive Officer: No, I'll tell you what is pertained to the market recently is a new structure of the segmentation of some of our savings accounts, which are taking care of different profiles of customers. In other words, we are reducing the number of free transaction for some of the clients. We believe that that is not going to impair the growth of our number of clients that as you know are already about 5.5 million clients and the biggest growth of that is coming from the increasing number of payroll accounts that the bank is having.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. Thank you very much. Jorge Londoño Saldarriaga - Chief Executive Officer: You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Alonso Aramburo.

Alonso Aramburo - Santander Central Hispano Investment Securities

Analyst

Yes, thank you. Good morning. I was wondering if you could... just going back to the provisions, if you could tell us what level of operations came from Banagrícola from the consolidation of Banagrícola this quarter. And what should we expect going forward as the level of provisions on a more normalized basis for the next quarters? Jorge Londoño Saldarriaga - Chief Executive Officer: Okay. Thank you very much, Alonso. Yes. Obliviously, this is a calculation that is very broad and we have to keep into consideration that there is not a precise number, but anyway we have measured the total impact of the provision and that means that the past comments [ph] amounts to almost 20% of what we did in the last quarter for the part of the bank allowance for about 40% of the total provisions.

Alonso Aramburo - Santander Central Hispano Investment Securities

Analyst

And going forward should we expect... I guess we are not going to see the same level of provisions given that you have one-offs this quarter. What is roughly the level that we should expect for the next few quarters or the next quarter? Jorge Londoño Saldarriaga - Chief Executive Officer: Okay. Banagrícola also required some provision but the most part of it are already done. In other words, Banagrícola is already almost in compliance with these provisions we made this quarter, I think compliance with Columbian regulation. There is still a small portion of it to come in the next quarter. Obliviously, the growth of the loan portfolio is very high and as the new regulation is implied that we have to make provisions immediately when we make the displacement of the loans, the level of provisions is going to increase in accordance with the growth of our loan portfolio for the future.

Alonso Aramburo - Santander Central Hispano Investment Securities

Analyst

Okay. And on your taxes, given that you have lower taxes this quarter because of the customer [ph], should we expect that going forward as well? Jorge Londoño Saldarriaga - Chief Executive Officer: No, unfortunately not because the benefits was derived from the application of general provisions to a specific provisions, so we are expecting that from now the level of taxation is going to be close to 30%, which is being the normal level of the bank.

Alonso Aramburo - Santander Central Hispano Investment Securities

Analyst

Okay, great. I guess one last question, can you give us... what was the breakdown of loan growth between Columbia and El Salvador? Jorge Londoño Saldarriaga - Chief Executive Officer: I think... I don't have that figure precise in my mind, but I will be very happy to send it to you over e-mail.

Alonso Aramburo - Santander Central Hispano Investment Securities

Analyst

Great. Thank you very much. Jorge Londoño Saldarriaga - Chief Executive Officer: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Your next question comes from the line of Marcelia Rodaldo [ph].

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning. I have two questions. The first one is about a couple of figures, expected figures which is the expected return on average equity you expect to have for next year once the interest rate of development by the central bank perform? And the other one is related about the medium term objective of operating expenses to net operating income, which is the figure you expect to reach in this sense? Jorge Londoño Saldarriaga - Chief Executive Officer: Okay, thank you. As you know, we don't present projections, but we are happy with the figures that we have presented in the year and this certainly allows you to make your own guesses and your own projections and operate your own model. We believe that these figures that we have presented in return on equity of 24 plus percent is sustainable and we are happy with the outcome obtaining profitability of the bank. In the order hand also in the efficiency, we are coming down in the figure and as we mentioned in the presentation, we are not satisfied with that. We know that we still have a lot of work to do in that respect and we are assuming tasks of enforcing discipline in expenses inside the bank, and also improving our operation framework, our technology and going forward in our Six Sigma program and from those activities we hope to achieve a better performance going forward in the future.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. My other question is about Corresponsales No Bancariosis. How is this business going in Colombia and if you have started to implement the same figure, the same business in El Salvador? Jorge Londoño Saldarriaga - Chief Executive Officer: We are very happy with the performance of this new figure of our branch or transaction operation that allows us to reach more towns and areas of big cities, and we are very happy to realize that we are in a very high level of transactions for this non banking correspondence that they are calling Colombia. That was the main effect as we are driving from that is that we are delivering very low cost transactions, which allow us to increase our bankarization, in other words that allows us to get to the bank, groups, sub-customers that otherwise won't be profitable and won't be sustainable. We will have to get into the analysis of the convenience of this type of distribution in El Salvador. It is an entirely different scenario. It's a different country and Banagrícola is going to have an extraordinary growth retail distribution framework, so we will have to see where this type of system is applicable there or not.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thank you very much. Jorge Londoño Saldarriaga - Chief Executive Officer: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Peter Labrado [ph].

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hi, good morning. Just a quick questions. I noticed that the FX gains increased significantly in the quarter from previous quarters. Just wanted to get a sense of what drove that you have a sense of potential impact going forward? Thank you. Jorge Londoño Saldarriaga - Chief Executive Officer: Sorry, Peter, could you repeat that because we didn't even get that. Sorry, Peter.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yeah, sure. Just the FX gains were significantly higher this quarter and then previous quarters. I wanted to get a sense of what drove that and if you have any anticipation of how it will continue going forward? Thank you. Jorge Londoño Saldarriaga - Chief Executive Officer: Okay, yes. We have very good FX gains in this period but that is very volatile, as you have seen the volatility on this line is mainly a result of the volatility of the market. We do better when there is some movement as the progression of this quarter, but everybody wished to have higher ability and that probably reduces our margins in that market.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thank you. Jorge Londoño Saldarriaga - Chief Executive Officer: You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

And I am showing no further question as this time. Jorge Londoño Saldarriaga - Chief Executive Officer: Okay. We want to thank you very much for your attendance to this conference call and as usual, we like to tell that we will be more than happy to present to you more explanations or any further questions that you might have on the name of the persons that are ready to talk to you are in the bottom of the press release that you received yesterday; Sergio Restrepo, Jaime Velásquez and Juan Esteban Toro. Again, thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

And this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.