Bank of Montreal (NYSE:BMO) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Yes, that’s better.

Joo Ho Kim: On expenses, there are a lot of moving pieces. I’m just trying to get a sense of how you see your efficiency ratio evolving in 2024? And I’m trying to get a better idea of if there’s a pathway to get back to the mid-50s in efficiency ratio that year or if that’s more of a story beyond 2024?

Tayfun Tuzun: Yes. Look, I mean, I think we are — just as we signaled earlier in this year, we significantly curtailed expense growth at the beginning of this year and predicted that our year-over-year expense growth would start coming down and our quarter-to-quarter expense growth would start reflecting that. And that happened this quarter that has happened over the past couple of quarters. As we look forward now, we are truly still committing to positive operating leverage both with the contribution that’s coming from Bank of the West as well as from our own operations. So, we will update our expectations for ’24 when we get to the end of Q4. But the primary driver of our actions clearly is that firm commitment to positive operating leverage. The efficiency ratio is going to be an outcome. Of that, we would expect improvement in our efficiency ratio. And we hope that we will be able to update you with that when we get to the end of next quarter.

Darryl White: Operator, I’ve got my eye on the clock here, and I’m cognizant that our guests have another call to get to. So I’ll bring us to a close with that as I understand is the last question in the queue. So I want to thank everybody for their questions and leave you with the following thought, guided by the purpose-driven strategy that I’ve talked about and the winning culture that I’ve talked about. I think you can take away that we are proactively addressing the period of volatility that we’re in to deliver consistent and sustained performance. We’re doing that by dynamically managing our business to continue strengthening the already robust foundation and invest in our businesses for growth. And with the full integration of the Bank of the West ahead of us, the strength and the size and the stability of our balance sheet and our superior risk and liquidity capital management are built really to outperform in any environment.

And with that, I want to thank everybody for participating, and we look forward, of course, to speaking to all of you through the fall and again formally in December. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. The conference has now ended. Please disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.