Big Six earnings season: what RY, TD and BNS just told us
Bank earnings week in Canada is the closest thing this market has to a holiday, and this quarter the Big Six gave us plenty to talk about. Royal Bank — that's $RY for those following along at home — set the tone early with a beat on net interest income, and the stock barely blinked. When the country's largest bank shrugs, everyone else takes notes.
The more interesting story was at $TD, which is still working through its remediation program south of the border. Management spent most of the call talking about expense discipline, and the analysts spent most of the call asking when buybacks come back. Neither side gave much ground. If you only read one transcript this quarter, make it this one.
Scotiabank, trading as $BNS, remains the international wildcard of the group. The Latin American book is shrinking by design, and the domestic mortgage franchise is quietly picking up share while everyone watches the headlines. It is not a flashy thesis, but it is a thesis.
The quiet one in Quebec
And then there's National Bank. $NA keeps doing what it has done for a decade: posting the best return on equity in the group while getting a fraction of the coverage. The Canadian Western Bank integration is tracking ahead of plan, which gives the bank a real national footprint for the first time. At some point the market will stop calling it a regional story.
The takeaway from the week: credit is normalizing, not cracking. Provisions ticked up across the group but stayed inside guidance, and every CEO used some version of the phrase "resilient consumer." Hover any of the tickers above if you want the current tape and the latest filings — that's what this blog is for.