Laurentian Bank of Canada said it missed all of its financial goals for 2023 and will take a restructuring charge to reduce costs, underscoring the huge turnaround job ahead for new chief executive officer Eric Provost.

The bank’s profits were hit by the costs of a major technical outage in September, which made a number of services unavailable to customers, and the expenses associated with a strategic review. The Montreal-based bank looked for a buyer for some or all of its businesses, but couldn’t find attractive bids and decided to stay independent.

In the midst of the outage, the board pushed out former chief executive officer Rania Llewellyn and replaced her with Provost, and the chairman resigned.

Laurentian set out a strategic plan two years ago under Llewellyn that set ambitious targets for earnings growth, expenses, operating leverage and return on equity. It missed on all four in 2023, and the bank said it will re-examine those goals next year as its revamps its strategy. 

The lender reported adjusted profit of $1 a share for the quarter ended Oct. 31, well short of the $1.16 average estimate of analysts in a Bloomberg survey. But provisions for credit losses were slightly less than expected, at $16.7 million.

The cost of the outage was nine Canadian cents a share on a pretax basis, Laurentian said in a statement. In total, non-interest expenses jumped about 13 per cent in the fourth quarter, largely due to costs for restructuring and conducting the strategic review.

The streamlining of the bank will result in an additional $6.5 million pretax charge in the current quarter, the bank said, and should result in $8 million in annual savings before income taxes.

“We will focus our efforts on renewing the trust of loyal customers while driving greater operational efficiency and refocusing the bank’s core activities to create maximum value for our customers,” Provost said in a statement.