Banco de Chile (NYSE:BCH) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 2, 2024 10:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Rodrigo Aravena - Chief Economist & Institutional Relations Officer
Pablo Mejia - Head of IR
Daniel Galarce - Head of Financial Control and Capital

Conference Call Participants

Tito Labarta - Goldman Sachs
Ernesto Gabilondo - Bank of America
Yuri Fernandes - JPMorgan
Neha Agarwala - HSBC
Andres Soto - Santander

Operator

Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to Banco de Chile’s Fourth Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call. If you need a copy of the management financial review, it is available on the company’s website.

With us today, we have Mr. Rodrigo Aravena, Chief Economist and Institutional Relations Officer; Mr. Pablo Mejia, Head of Investor Relations; Daniel Galarce, Head of Financial Control and Capital; and Natalia Villela, Investor Relations.

Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this call is being recorded, and that information discussed today may include forward-looking statements regarding the company's financial and operating performance. All projections are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. Please refer to the detailed note in the Company’s press release regarding forward-looking statements.

I will now turn the call over to Mr. Rodrigo Aravena. Please go ahead, sir.

Rodrigo Aravena

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for attending this conference call today, where we will present financial results and the main achievements for the fourth quarter and, consequently, the full year 2023. Similar to previous presentations, we will share our analysis of the competitive landscape of the period, followed by the progress in our main strategic initiatives, and we will finally present financial results. But before moving to these slides, I’d like to highlight the most important achievements of our bank during the year.

Please go to Slide number 2. We are very proud of our successful year. We led the industry in results and several aspects of the business, confirming our proven capacity to continuously add economic value to our shareholders. On this slide, we present a summary of some of the main achievements of the bank during the year. On the financial front, we led the industry once again with a net income of CLP1.2 trillion, equivalent to an ROE of 25.1%, allowing us to increase the gap with our main peers. In fact, in 2023, we represented 27.2% of the total net income posted by the industry. It is worth mentioning that these impressive results were achieved despite the existence of headwinds faced in 2023, such as the recession for most of the year, the downward trend in inflation, higher unemployment, and increased delinquency, among others.