KB Financial Group Inc. (NYSE:KB) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

And come end of the year, I believe that our outlook and projection will more or less materialize. And so, in terms of loan policy and managing the overall portfolio, we believe that we will have ample capability to be able to manage the issues. Thank you.

Operator: We will take the last question from DB Securities, . You are on the line.

Unidentified Analyst: Yes. Thank you for this opportunity. I just have one question. Well, based on your NIM and your outlook, can you tell us about the situation? What is the NIM outlook?

Scott YH Seo: Well, can you repeat your question? I think the line was a little bit unstable.

Unidentified Analyst: 2023 outlook for NIM outlook and your rationale behind that?

Scott YH Seo: Thank you for the question. Continuing from the previous year to this year, we have seen core deposits that are going down and the interest rate hike cycle, well, there are expectations that this will end. So, it has been already implemented into the market preemptively, and we are seeing the spread going down. So, it seems that we will have a difficulty in having a great NIM hike. However, with the key rate increase, we have some loan repricing that we can have. So, on a Y-o-Y basis, we can have a slight increase that we can expect for the NIM in 2023.

Operator: Thank you. We do not have any further questions that’s waiting in line, but just bear with us one moment before we close.

Peter Kweon: While preparing for the earnings presentation, we believe there will be a lot of interest regarding the mid- to long-term capital management plan, additional provisioning, and we had this opportunity to discuss quite a bit about these items. As I would think that in terms of the financial performance itself, there won’t be too many questions as they are quite clear in and of themselves. But we will still wait just a couple more seconds.

Operator: With no further questions being submitted, we would like to now close the earnings presentation of KBFG. Thank you very much.