Hello, everyone, and welcome to Bladex’s Fourth Quarter 2021 Conference Call on this 22nd day of February 2022. This call is being recorded and is for investors and analysts only. If you are a member of the media you are invited to listen only. Bladex has prepared a PowerPoint presentation to accompany their discussion. It is available through the webcast and on the Banc’s corporate website at www.bladex.com. Joining us today are Mr. Jorge Salas, Chief Executive Officer; and Mrs. Ana Graciela de Méndez, Chief Financial Officer. Their comments will be based on the earnings release, which was issued earlier today and is available on the corporate website. The following statement is made pursuant to the Safe Harbor for forward-looking statements described in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. In these communications, we will make certain statements that are forward-looking, such as statements regarding Bladex’s future results, plans and anticipated trends in the markets affecting its results and financial condition. These forward-looking statements are Bladex’s expectations on the day of the initial broadcast of this conference call, and Bladex does not undertake to update these expectations based on subsequent events or knowledge. Various risks, uncertainties and assumptions are detailed in the Banc’s press releases and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize or should any of our underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may differ significantly from results expressed or implied in these communications. And with that, I’m pleased to turn the call over to Mr. Salas for his presentation.

Thank you, Chelsea and good morning everyone. I’m here today with our CFO; Ana Méndez, our Chief Commercial Officer Sam Canineu and a few other members of the executive team. Today, we will discuss fourth quarter and year end results for 2021. Please, let’s go straight to slide 3. So simply put, last quarter was the best quarter for Banc since 2019. Profits were up 20% quarter-on-quarter, 27% year-on-year. Credit portfolio continues to grow now for six consecutive quarters. In Q4, the commercial portfolio grew 6% from previous quarter, and that’s 24% year-on-year. Lending spreads also increased by 8 basis points while funding costs remain stable. Our fee income was 30% higher than the previous quarters, basically driven by our loan indications and letters of credit. All this while operating expenses in credit quality remains under control. Annie will later comment on dividends and no surprises there and on the stock repurchase program that was completed last year. But the real question is, of course, what exactly is behind this positive trend and whether it is sustainable going forward in the current environment. We’ll be addressing that too, later in this presentation. Moving on to slide 4. In this slide, we show the usual waterfall graph that illustrates the fast turnover of our portfolio during the quarter. In this quarter, Q4, we had more than $4.3 billion in credits maturing and we were able to disperse $4.7 billion that’s more than 70% of our book in one single quarter. Last quarter was the biggest quarterly disbursement since the second quarter of 2018. There are a couple of important insights that are not captured in this graph. First, almost $1 million of those $4.7 billion is very short-term financing basically generated to our vendor finance in the commodity sector, so Bladex’s…

Thank you Annie. Very clear, good job. Let me just share a couple of thoughts on the current macroeconomic and scenario and the effects on our Banc. As you all know, in an effort to fight inflation, the Fed has already signaled that interest rates could raise as soon as March. The truth is that aggressive tightening from the Fed has destabilized emerging economies in the back. The last trend term has significant effects in Latin America. Back in mid 2013, we saw foreign currency devaluations that prompted a cycle of tighter monetary policy across the region. This time around Latin America is ahead of the game. Central bank’s most of them shareholders of Bladex have acted swiftly and decisively to manage inflation to contain capital outflows and to avoid sharp devaluations of their currency. Brazil led the way in 2021 by raising rates in March and others have consistently followed. What we see today across the region are very stable, well supervised financial systems for the most part, active and strong support from the IMF, and economies that have traction despite the recent increases in local rates. Not surprisingly, higher rates in local currencies have generated an increase in demand for hard currency financing, especially short-term financing, which is exactly what Bladex provides to banks in sub corporate in the region that are involved in trade. The IMF forecasts for 2022 is 2.4% down from 6.8% in 2021. This slowdown is inevitable as the economy returned to pre-pandemic levels. Latin America trade flows, however, are expected to grow 8% in 2022 and at least 5% in 2023. This is also good news for Bladex. So all in all, we remain cautiously optimistic that the region will be able to navigate this new sort of challenge. In this context, Bladex is willing and able to support its clients as we have done for the last four decades. We’ll leave it there. Thank you, everybody. And we will now open it up for questions.

Thank you. Our first question comes from Jim Marrone with Singular Research. Jim, your line is open. Please un-mute if you’re muted. Alright, Jim, I believe that your line may be muted. Are you muted on your phone?

Yes. Can you hear me?

Yes, sir. Ana Graciela de Méndez: Yes, Jim. Hello. Good morning.

Yes. Thank you. So my first question is in regards to the net interest margin. You said it stabilized at 1.15%? Can you give us an idea what you anticipate with higher rates in 2022 and how that will impact the business?

Sure Of course. Annie? Ana Graciela de Méndez: Yes. Actually the net interest margin is 132. The net interest spread was 115. There’s a slight difference between the two. And that’s the effect of the capital in the net interest margin. Well, we would anticipate the reverse of what happened in 2020 and 2021 if interest rates start to come up. As I mentioned both, our assets and liabilities re-priced in a very short tenor. They’re both mostly based on market rate. And we estimate that about an over 70% re-price is fairly quickly within the next, I would say, six months. And the overall impact at the end will depend on the magnitude of the interest rate increases and the frequency of the increases because we do run a very short tenor that may be I mean, let’s say in the first month, it may be more liability sensitive, or neutral depending on our liquidity level, but at the end, in general terms, they tend to re-price fairly at the same time. So when this re-pricing is finalized over time the net effect is it’s positive to our net interest margins when the interest rates go up because of the effect of equity financing a portion of assets and as assets are increasing yield and that should benefit the bottom line. I don’t know if that is clear enough and if that answers your question.

I am showing that Jim just disconnected right as you were finishing up your answer. So while we wait for him to reconnect, I will re-prompt for any further questions. All right speakers at this time I’m showing no further questions in queue. All right. One moment. All right, we do have a question from the webcast. Is the Banc open to further stock repurchases given the current IOWPB values? Ana Graciela de Méndez: Yes, I can take that. The Banc through the board of directors is consistently and very actively managing its capital position and considering capital initiatives like we did last year with the stock repurchase program. Having said this, the Banc also keeps a solid capitalization given the region in which we operate and at the end of the day, the board decides on this type of capital management initiatives depending on future prospects and in terms of growth for a bank. So it’s really not in our place to speculate on that. It’s up to the board. What I can say is its capital management initiatives are constantly revised at the board level and Jorge if you want to.

I mean yes, and with the recent growth and expected growth capital ratios have been tightening and we’re still very well capitalized. But we’re closer to the average of local market here in Panama under the bank superintendency ratio calculations but again, the decision is up to the board.

Alright, thank you. Alright, speakers at this time, there are no further questions in queue.

Okay. Then thank you very much for your attention and stay safe. Ana Graciela de Méndez: Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today’s teleconference. And you may now disconnect your phone line. Thank you for your participation and please enjoy the rest of your day.