KB Financial Group Inc. (NYSE:KB) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Scott YH Seo: Regarding the dividend policy, I will answer that question. And regarding the additional provisioning for Q4, maybe I can talk about it from a bigger perspective. And then our risk — CRO from the holdings company will answer your question. Regarding the dividend policy, as you are well aware — well, it seems to be a repeated answer. But regarding our current dividend policy, our business plan at the end of this year, we had made this public. And we are actually implementing this as is written. We have been communicating with our investors to our shareholders that our benchmark are the shareholder return policies by many large U.S. banks. And we think that is still the best policy. So we will try to evolve to mimic those policies.

What we have been doing so far is in the early part of this year regarding the treasury share buyback and cancellation we had made this public. And we also made it public in the previous quarter as well. And we have been having quarterly dividend payout and cash for each quarter. So we will not go back on our commitments, and that is not what we have in mind going forward. So what we have in mind is a more evolved and shareholder-friendly dividend policy that we have in mind currently, we have been trying to have a more shareholder-friendly dividend policy. And as we have previously mentioned in Q4 as well regarding the additional provisioning, we have been having this in our plans as well. So maybe our group CRO can answer that as well.

Unidentified Company Representative: I think you asked the question regarding Q4. The — based on the future economic forecast, the LGD, collateral LGD you asked about for the forward-looking economic forecast regarding the methodology for LGD, I believe the details have not been set. So we can’t really give you any number of figures. However, it seems that in Q4, regarding our provisioning guidance that we had set forth previously, we did not take it out from the bank. And regarding some numbers, I think that it has already been reflected to a certain extent. So related to the collateral LGD, we believe that even if that happens, we will not have a great difference from the guidance that we had given in the past.

Peter Kweon: Thank you. We do not have any further questions in the queue, but just give us one moment. Yes, I think we were able to entertain an ample number of questions. So with no further questions, we would like to close today’s earnings presentation. Thank you very much.