National Bank of Canada (NA) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning and welcome to National Bank of Canada's Second Quarter Results Conference Call. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Marianne Rossi. Please go ahead, Marianne. Thank you and welcome everyone. We will begin the call with remarks from Laurent Ferreira, President and CEO, Marie-Chantal Gingras, CFO, and Jean-Sebastien Griset, Chief Risk Officer. Our business heads are also present for the Q&A session, including Julie Lévesque, Personal Banking, Judith Ménard, Commercial and Private Banking, Nancy Paquette, Wealth Management, Etienne Dubuc, Capital Markets, and Bill Bonner, International. Before we begin, please refer to slide 2 of our presentation for forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures. Management will refer to adjusted results unless otherwise noted. I will now pass the call to Laurent. Merci, Marianne, and thank you, everyone, for joining us. In the second quarter, we delivered EPS of $3.23, up 13% year over year. We generated a return on equity of 16.8%, while maintaining a strong CET1 ratio of 13.54%. Despite macroeconomic uncertainty, clients remained active throughout the quarter, and market conditions were favourable. This was reflected in strong growth in both our balance sheet and our fee-based businesses. We also benefited from credit performance, the realization of cost and funding synergies, and momentum in revenue synergies from CWB, as well as share buybacks. On the capital deployment front, we remain active on our NCIP. To date, we have repurchased 8.8 million shares under our program, which was upsized during Q2 2020. to enable the purchase of up to 14.5 million shares. Our strong earnings power and capital position also support an increase in our dividend, with today's announcement of an $0.08 or 6% increase. This bri...