KB Financial Group Inc. (NYSE:KB) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call April 25, 2024 3:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Peter Kwon – Head of Investor Relations
Jae Kwan Kim – Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President

Conference Call Participants

Peter Kwon

Greetings. I am Peter Kwon, the Head of IR at KB Financial Group. We will now begin the 2024 Q1 Business Results Presentation. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to everyone for participating today. We have here with us our Group CFO and SVP, Jae Kwan Kim; and other members from our group management. We will first hear the 2024 Q1 major financial highlights from our CFO and SVP, Jae Kwan Kim, and then engage in a Q&A session.

I would like to invite our SVP to deliver 2024 Q1 earnings results.

Jae Kwan Kim

Good afternoon. My name is Jae Kwan Kim, CFO of KB Financial Group. I would like to extend my sincere appreciation to all of you for joining us in our Q1 2024 earnings presentation. Before presenting our first quarter results, I would like to share with you, once again, KB Financial Group shareholder return policy and capital management policy, including the change in the dividend policy starting from this quarter. As you are well aware, KB Financial Group has been implementing an industry-leading shareholder return policy for over a decade based on solid profitability and strong capital base. We were the first company in the industry to buy back and retire its own shares, introduced a quarterly dividend policy and to announce a mid- to long-term capital policy. And in this way, we have continuously enhanced and developed our shareholder return policy and building on these efforts, while maintaining the existing mid- to long-term capital policy to enhance the visibility and predictability of cash dividend.

Today, our Board of Directors passed a resolution on a new shareholder return policy, which is evenly paid quarterly dividends based on total dividend policy. To explain our new shareholder return policy in more detail, first, we plan to introduce starting from this year, an evenly paid quarterly dividend to enhance the predictability of our cash dividends.

Second, we plan to calculate cash dividends per share based on total dividends. This year, our Board of Director plans to approve a cash dividend per share for each quarter based on total dividends at a level of around KRW300 billion per quarter and around KRW1.2 trillion per year. At the same time, we will continue to actively buy back and retire shares so that the effect of share buybacks and share cancellation can translate into a higher dividend per share. As shown in the graph at the bottom right of the chart, if the company pays out KRW300 billion in cash dividends every quarter, while also buying back and retiring shares, this will automatically lead to increased EPS.