Bank of Montreal (BMO) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning and welcome to the BMO Financial Group's Q1 2026 earnings release and conference call for February 25th, 2026. Your host for today is Christine Viau. Please go ahead. Christine Viau. Thank you and good morning, everyone. We will begin today with remarks from Darrell White, BMO CEO, followed by Rahul Malgakar, our Chief Financial Officer, and Piyush Agrawal, our Chief Risk Officer. Also present today to answer questions are our group heads, Matt Marotra, Canadian Personal Business Banking, Sharon Hayward-Laird, Canadian Commercial Banking, Aaron Levine, U.S. Banking, Alan Tunnenbaum, BMO Capital Markets, Dallin Kamenga, Wealth Management, and Daryl Hackett, BMO U.S. CEO. As noted on slide two, forward-looking statements may be made during this call, which involve assumptions that have inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from these statements. I would also remind listeners that the bank uses non-GAAP financial measures to arrive at adjusted results. Management measures performance on a reported and adjusted basis and considers both to be useful in assessing underlying business performance. Darrell and Raul will be referring to adjusted results in their remarks unless otherwise noted as reported. And I will now turn the call over to Darrell. Thank you, Christine, and good morning, everyone. First quarter results were very strong, building on our momentum from last year. We're executing on our commitment to deliver higher returns and profitable earnings growth. Adjusted EPS were $3.48, up 15% from last year, and included a previously announced severance charge of $202 million that reduced EPS by 21 cents. And we saw continued momentum in our ROE improvement. The bank achieved record pre-provision pre-tax earnings of $4.1 ...