Royal Bank of Canada (NYSE:RY) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Mario Mendonca: Okay. And then I’ll stop here. The guidance you offered for mid — I think you said mid-teens growth in NII in Canadian Banking in 2023. The math is pretty simple. It would imply that the domestic or the Canadian banking margin will be essentially flat or maybe marginal, maybe up slightly going forward. That’s what the math tells me just by plugging in your mid-teens. Is that right? Is that essentially what you’re telling us that margins could be kind of flat from here in Canadian Banking?

Nadine Ahn: I think what you could expect in the next quarter is continue to see a bit of that pressure as it relates to the deposit mix movement, but we do expect to see the margin expansion still continuing through the latter half of 2023, Mario.

Operator: Next question from Scott Chan, Canaccord Genuity.

Scott Chan: Nadine, just a follow-up to that line of questioning. You talked about the Canadian P&C, but I think you offered comments on the U.S. side as well on to the National Bank being better in 2023. And just wondering the factors in context that relative to kind of the deposit base declining and likely decline through a few years as well? .

Nadine Ahn: Sure. So for City National, we had commented, I believe, in Q4 towards the end of the quarter, we had increased our liquidity position related to some changes around parameters. That was funded through FHLB. So the impact of that fully in the Q1 is what you’re seeing in terms of a lot of the decrease from the 5 basis points. As we look forward for City National, we did comment that we are expecting to continue to see benefit from our loan growth through the funding of both our deposit sweeps and our low-cost deposits. However, we will potentially need to supplement that for FHLB, which would put some further pressure on margins, I would think, into next quarter, similarly to what you saw this quarter. However, we do expect to see the expansion of that as we start to stabilize that deposit level through the latter half of 2023. We haven’t sensitivity on the asset side, so that can still benefit significantly.

Scott Chan: Okay. So the comment was that you expect NII in 2023 on the U.S. side to slightly outpace Canada this year from what you see right now?

Nadine Ahn: Correct.

Operator: Next question is from Sohrab Movahedi, BMO Capital Markets.

Sohrab Movahedi: I just wanted to maybe ask a question, Neil. I appreciate the additional detail you provided around customer behavior when it comes to savings accounts, deposits, GICs and the like. Can you also talk a little bit about what’s happening on the loan side when it comes to mortgages, variable mortgages, what sort of behaviors you’re seeing? And maybe comment a little bit about how those mortgage holders, variable mortgage holders, I guess, how many of them would have credit cards with you? And what sort of insights, I guess, are you seeing from a credit quality perspective that might be here?

Neil McLaughlin: Sure. So thanks for the question. So on the variable rate mortgages, I guess there’s a couple of themes. Not surprising, we’re seeing percentage of originations really drop, really getting down to kind of 15% of originations Keep in mind that the entire portfolio, about 1/3 of the portfolio is variable rate. So we’re seeing a very dramatic shift there. We’re also seeing a shift overall to basically fewer first-time homebuyers. You can imagine not a product that first-time homebuyers are going to take on. And then we’ve already commented on this, but just in terms of trigger rates we have seen a good portion of that variable rate portfolio go through that process around trigger rates. The earlier cohorts that went through it saw bigger increases.

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