Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A. (NYSE:BLX) Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call July 21, 2023 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Carlos Raad - Investor Relations Officer

Jorge Salas - Chief Executive Officer

Ana de Mendez - Chief Financial Officer

Samuel Canineu - Chief Commercial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Gilberto Garcia - Barclays

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Bladex's Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. A slide presentation is accompanying today's webcast and is also available on the Investors section of the company's website www.bladex.com. There'll be an opportunity for you to ask questions at the end of today's presentation. Please note today's conference call is being recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in listen-only mode.

I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Carlos Raad, Investor Relations Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Carlos Raad

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our second quarter 2023 earnings call. Before we begin our presentation, allow me to remind you that certain statements made during the course of this discussion may constitute forward-looking statements which are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to materially differ, including factors that may be beyond the company's control. For a description of this risk, please refer to our filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and our earnings release.

Speaking on today's call is our CEO, Jorge Salas, and our CFO, Ana de Mendez. Also joining us today are some of my colleagues from the executive team that will be available for the Q&A.

With this, let me turn the call to Jorge. Please go ahead.

Jorge Salas

Thank you, Carlos, and good morning everyone joining us today. I'm excited to share our second quarter results. I'll start by presenting the highlights of our performance for the quarter and then, Annie, our CFO, will discuss the results in detail. After that, I will comment on our views on the economic dynamics of the region for the second half of the year. And then, as always, we will open the call for questions.

Moving to the next slide, Slide 2. Bladex had another outstanding quarter. All relevant financial metrics keep showing a positive trend as we continue to execute our strategic plan. Both our treasury unit and our renewed commercial unit had a very strong performance. The results speak for themselves. Once again, we are showing record net interest income for the quarter, $54 million in NII for the quarter, slightly higher than last quarter and 67% higher than the same period a year ago. Similarly, net interest margin stood at 2.42%, 88 basis points higher year-on-year. All this has been possible largely because we have been gradually and strategically reconfiguring our assets and our liability mix.