Bank of Montreal (NYSE:BMO) Q3 2024 Earnings Conference Call August 27, 2024 7:15 AM ET

Company Participants

Christine Viau - Head of Investor Relations
Darryl White - Chief Executive Officer
Tayfun Tuzun - Chief Financial Officer
Piyush Agrawal - Chief Risk Officer
Nadim Hirji - Group Head, BMO Commercial Bank, North America
Ernie Johannson - Group Head, North American Personal & Business Banking, BMO Financial Group

Conference Call Participants

Doug Young - Desjardins Capital Markets
Meny Grauman - Scotiabank
Ebrahim Poonawala - Bank of America
Mario Mendonca - TD Securities
Matthew Lee - Canaccord Genuity
Gabriel Dechaine - National Bank Financial
John Aiken - Jefferies
Lemar Persaud - Cormark Securities

Operator

Good morning and welcome to BMO Financial Group's Q3 2024 Earnings Release and Conference Call for August 27, 2024.

Your host for today is Christine Viau. Please go ahead.

Christine Viau

Thank you and good morning. We will begin the call with remarks from Darryl White, BMO's CEO; followed by Tayfun Tuzun, our Chief Financial Officer; and Piyush Agrawal, our Chief Risk Officer.

Also present to take questions are Ernie Johannson, Head of BMO North American Personal Business Banking; Nadim Hirji, Head of BMO Commercial Banking; Alan Tannenbaum, Head of BMO Capital Markets; Deland Kamanga, Head of BMO Wealth Management; and Darrel Hackett, BMO US CEO.

As our call will end at 8:15 this morning, please limit yourselves to one question during the Q&A and requeue to give everyone a chance to participate. As noted on Slide 2, forward-looking statements may be made during this call which involve assumptions that have inherent risks and uncertainties.

Actual results could differ materially from these statements. I would also remind listeners that the bank uses non-GAAP financial measures to arrive at adjusted results, management measures performance on a reported and adjusted basis and considers both to be useful in assessing underlying business performance.

Darryl and Tayfun will be referring to adjusted results in their remarks, unless otherwise noted.

I will now turn the call over to Darryl.

Darryl White

Thank you, Christine, and good morning, everyone. This quarter we delivered record pre-provision pre-tax earnings of $3.5 billion, up 8% over last year, driven by continued revenue growth in Canadian Personal and Commercial Banking, stronger client activity in our market-sensitive businesses and the full realization of our cost synergy and efficiency programs.

We met our commitment to positive operating leverage this quarter at 5.2% and year-to-date at 1.3% and we remain on track to deliver positive operating leverage for the full year. Operating momentum across our diversified businesses has been steadily improving since the start of the year. And at the same time, the cyclical increase in credit costs has resulted in loan loss provisions above our historical range, which has not met our expectations.