Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A. (NYSE:BLX) Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call July 24, 2024 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Jorge Salas - Chief Executive Officer
Ana Graciela de Mendez - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Samuel Canineu - Executive Vice President, Commercial Banking

Conference Call Participants

Inigo Vega - Jefferies

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Bladex Second Quarter 2024 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 will 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 a listen only mode.

I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Jorge Salas, Chief Executive Officer. Sir, please go ahead.

Jorge Salas

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our second quarter 2024 earnings call. I'll start by summarizing our performance for the quarter. Then, as usual, Annie, our CFO, will provide a detailed analysis of our financial statements. After that, I will update you on a key initiative from our strategic plan before we open the call for questions.

So, moving on to slide two. Here you can find a high-level summary of our quarterly results. I'm pleased to report that they are very much aligned and even slightly better than the guidance that we provided at the beginning of the year. Our commercial portfolio achieved a solid 6% growth quarter-on-quarter, primarily driven by our unfunded business, that includes loan commitments and also letters of credit.

Deposits kept growing steadily and have reached a record level of $5.3 billion, an increase from the last quarter and an impressive 29% year-on-year growth. This $500 million surge marks our largest quarterly deposit increase since the implementation of our strategic plan a couple of years ago. This growth was largely fueled by deposits from corporate clients and financial institution clients as well as our Yankee CD program.

Deposits provided by Central Bank's Class A shareholders also increased by 18% during last quarter. Back in 2021, deposit growth was identified as a key goal of our strategic plan, not only from the point of view of further enhancing the diversification of our funding sources, but also from the cost efficiency perspectives. With this purpose in mind, the Bank focus on reengineering and automating key processes to support higher transactional levels, while also implementing a targeted commercial plan with clear KPI for deposits and the balanced workers of our front line teams.