Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce Q1 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Gabriel Dechaine - National Bank Financial, Inc., Research Division - Analyst : I had a question on the mortgage business. It's been on fire for everybody and I see $17 billion of origination. I think that's the highest ever for your bank. A lot of that's from the pent-up demand phenomenon, buying second homes and stuff like that. I'm just wondering, is there -- because we're missing the demand from Canada's immigration trends over the past few years. So is there maybe a big drop-off in the mortgage business that you could see next year if immigration levels don't return to their pre-COVID levels? And this isn't just CIBC specific, obviously. Laura L. Dottori-Attanasio - Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce - Senior EVP, Group Head of Personal and Business Banking-Canada & Head of Risk Management I'll take that question. So yes, the market remains hot. I like to believe the good performance you're seeing from CIBC also has a lot to do with a lot of the hard work that our team members have been putting into turning our performance around. I'd tell you, from our side, from an outlook REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. FEBRUARY 25, 2021 / 1:00PM, CM.TO - Q1 2021 Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce Earnings Call perspective, we're continuing to expect high single-digit mortgage growth. So we'd expect that for the remainder of 2021. We do expect immigration at some point is going to open back up, too, which will help. We're mostly focused on 2021. And I'd say that the rest of the year is looking good. Does that answer your question?

Question: Sohrab Movahedi - BMO Capital Markets Equity Research - Analyst : Victor, maybe a bit of a higher level management question. It looks like -- I mean you obviously have an investment schedule. You've got some plans to make the investments this year, probably next year. It looks like it's hard -- obviously, hard to make the call, but it feels like it's going to be an abnormally low -- for the industry, abnormally low provisioning here, if you will. Is there an opportunity? Is there any discretion at the -- that you can -- around the timing of future period expenses that could actually be loaded into this year to allow for a better growth trajectory into 2022?