The Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending October 31, 2022

November 29, 2022 8:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

John McCartney

Good morning, and welcome to Scotiabank's 2022 Fourth Quarter Results Presentation. My name is John McCartney. I'm Head of Investor Relations here at the bank. Presenting to you this morning are Brian Porter, Scotiabank's President and Chief Executive Officer; Raj Viswanathan, our Chief Financial Officer; and Phil Thomas, our Chief Risk Officer. Following our comments, we'll be glad to take your questions.

Also present to take questions are the following Scotiabank executives: Dan Rees from Canadian Banking; Glen Gowland from Global Wealth Management; Nacho Deschamps from International Banking; and Jake Lawrence from Global Banking and Markets.

Before we start, on behalf of those speaking today, I refer you to Slide 2 of our presentation, which contains Scotiabank's caution regarding forward-looking statements.

With that, I will now turn the call over to Brian.

Brian Porter

Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. I will begin with a review of the bank's performance and progress over the course of fiscal 2022, after which Raj will review the financial year in more detail. Phil Thomas, our Chief Risk Officer, will review risk performance. We will be pleased to then take your questions. .

Given that this will be my last quarterly call as CEO, I will close off with a few final remarks. The 2022 fiscal year was indeed a year in which the diversification of our businesses by both product and geography allowed us to continue to deliver strong all-bank results. Despite heightened market volatility and rapid monetary response to deal with elevated inflation across our operating geographies, each of our businesses performed well.

The bank delivered adjusted earnings of $10.8 billion in fiscal 2022 or $8.50 per share, a healthy 8% increase over 2021 and a strong 15.6% all-bank return on equity, both exceeding our medium-term financial targets. Our common equity Tier 1 capital position at 11.5% has us well positioned to continue to support organic growth initiatives while continuing to return capital to our shareholders. Loan growth was robust, up 15% with deposit growth of a commensurate 15%, which is a result of concentrated efforts and strategies to strengthen our core deposit franchise.

As Phil will detail, we continue to observe very strong credit metrics across our portfolios despite the inflationary pressures that have been a reality for businesses and households alike over the course of the past year.