East West Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:EWBC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

So, we do see that at this stage, the business opportunity is much better. Now, then reflected on East West Bank, we have always traditionally been mainly focusing on our cross-border business. And so, I think that with this additional opening up and the more business-friendly, kind of policies, clearly, it would encourage cross-border business. Please keep in mind that despite the €“ from the U.S. side that we can see that maybe that attitude towards China has not improved. But on the other hand, we ought to keep in mind is that the business that has been restricted are usually related to national security issues, the highly sensitive or maybe some very, very high-level technology or biotech type of business that, quite frankly, the East West really do not have anything to do with.

And our focus is on this very, very common, like electronics, , and business items that import export or investment to that to the consumer market and et cetera, that are not related to national security issue. So, we do feel that there are plenty of room to grow even during the pandemic when China literally was shut down against €“ by the borders. We still find a way to grow our loans. We still bring in additional new customers. So, we expect that to continue to grow, but I don’t think that East West will be an organization that just because of this new opening that we would just rapidly trying to push a lot of capital in there, and we’re going to continue to stay steady and will continue to be observing the market and make sure we make the wise choice.

But I expect that in terms of a sustainable growth opportunity in the Greater China region and also particularly, as you mentioned, throughout Asia, we feel pretty confident that, that will be something that we expect a good opportunity going forward because the Chinese business also have expanded into Southeast Asia, whether it’s Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, et cetera. So, we expected that many of our customers who continue to migrate their business into those regions, which will be beneficial to us. And that’s also the reason why we opened a in Singapore. So, we will continue to evolve and expand into Asia and to make sure that we can effectively grow this business model as the bridge between the East and the West.

Ebrahim Poonawala: Very helpful. Thank you so much.

Dominic Ng: Thank you.

Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Dominic Ng for any closing remarks.

Dominic Ng: Well I just want to thank you all for joining us for the call today, and we feel really good about where we are today in 2023, and we’ll continue to march forward and looking forward to the call with you all in April. Thank you.

Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may all now disconnect.