Royal Bank of Canada (NYSE:RY) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call February 28, 2024 8:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Asim Imran - Head, Investor Relations

Dave McKay - President & Chief Executive Officer

Nadine Ahn - Chief Financial Officer

Graeme Hepworth - Chief Risk Officer

Neil McLaughlin - Group Head, Personal & Commercial Banking

Doug Guzman - Group Head, Wealth Management & Insurance

Conference Call Participants

Meny Grauman - Scotiabank

Ebrahim Poonawala - Bank of America

Doug Young - Desjardins Capital Markets

Gabriel Dechaine - National Bank Financial

Mario Mendonca - TD Securities

Paul Holden - CIBC

Sohrab Movahedi - BMO Capital Markets

Lemar Persaud - Cormark Securities

Nigel D'Souza - Veritas Investments Research

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to RBC's Conference Call for the First Quarter 2024 Financial Results. Please be advised that this call is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the meeting over to Asim Imran, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Imran.

Asim Imran

Thank you, and good morning, everyone.

Speaking today will be Dave McKay, President & Chief Executive Officer; Nadine Ahn, Chief Financial Officer; and Graeme Hepworth, Chief Risk Officer. Also joining us today for your questions, Neil McLaughlin, Group Head, Personal & Commercial Banking; Doug Guzman, Group Head, Wealth Management & Insurance; and Derek Neldner, Group Head, Capital Markets.

As noted on Slide 1, our comments may contain forward-looking statements, which involve assumptions, and have inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially.

I would also 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.

To give everyone a chance to ask questions, we ask that you limit your questions, and then re-queue.

With that, I'll turn it over to Dave.

Dave McKay

Thanks, Asim. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today.

Today, we reported first quarter earnings of $3.6 billion, or adjusted earnings of $4.1 billion. Our results benefited from higher fee-based revenue in Wealth Management, including strong flows in our advisory businesses and solid performance in asset management. Broad-based client-driven volume growth in Canadian Banking more than offset escalating competitive growth -- in Canadian Banking more than offset escalating competitive pricing pressures.

Capital Markets reported strong pre-provision pre-tax earnings of $1.3 billion as we continued to gain market share. Importantly, core expense growth continued to decelerate, demonstrating our ongoing discipline, which Nadine will speak to shortly. The strength of our diversified earnings stream more than mitigated the increase in provisions from credit loss in our commercial real estate and Canadian unsecured retail portfolios.