Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior, S. A. (NYSE:BLX) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jorge Salas: Yes. Thank you. Again, as I mentioned, capital management including dividends, potential buybacks, are ongoing discussions at the Board level. Obviously, always focusing on maximizing total shareholder return. The Board is well aware that on the one hand, our payout ratio has been decreasing as we have extraordinary results. On the other hand, the commercial team does have a very strong pipeline for profitable growth, which is at the end, the end goal of our plan. In any case, we have provided guidance for 2026. That includes managing capital ratios, as I said, between 15% and 16% on a target portfolio over $10 billion. And we will remain strongly capitalized and not risk our investment grade by any means. So whatever decision the Board decides to make regarding capital management should, in principle, be aligned with our 2026 guidance and again focusing on maximizing shareholder return.

Today, dividend is a quarterly decision at the Board level. So it’s up to the Board. And I can tell you, the ongoing discussions are having on a continued basis.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Next question is from Andrea Patricia. Hello, thank you for the presentation. Congratulations for the results. Could you give us some color about the guidance expectations of the result for 2024?

Jorge Salas: Yes. We’re working — thank you, Andrea. We’re working on our 2024 budget now. And I believe in the next call, we will give some color on 2024 guidance.

Operator: Okay. Thank you very much. That’s all the questions we have for today. I’ll pass the line back to the Bladex team for their concluding remarks.

Jorge Salas: No, I just want to thank everybody for your questions and your interest, and we’ll continue focusing on profitable growth going forward as indicated in our guidance for 2026. Thank you very much.

Operator: This conference is now closed. Thank you very much for attending. Have a good one.