Inter & Co - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Transcript

Speaker 0

Good morning, everyone. I'm Rafaela de Oliveira Vitória, Inter & Co's IR Officer, and I would like to welcome all to Inter & Co's second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. First of all, some instructions. This call is also available in Portuguese. To access it, press the globe icon on the lower right side of your Zoom screen, then select the Portuguese room. Please be advised that all participants will be in listen-only mode and that the conference is being recorded. You may submit online questions at any time today using the Q&A box on the webcast. A replay will be available at the company's IR website. With me on today's call are João Vitor N. Menin T. de Souza, Inter & Co's Global CEO, Alexandre Riccio, Brazil CEO, and Santiago Horacio Stel, Senior Vice President and CFO. Throughout this conference call, we'll be presenting non-IFRS financial information.

These are important financial measures for the company but are not financial measures as defined by the IFRS. Reconciliations to the company's non-IFRS to the IFRS financial information are available in our earnings release and earnings presentation appendix. I would also like to remind everyone that today's discussion might include forward-looking statements, which are not guarantees of future performance. Please refer to the forward-looking statements disclosure in the company's earnings release and earnings presentation. Today, João will discuss Inter & Co's strategy and business overview. After that, Alexandre and Santiago will take you through our financial and operating results in more detail. We'll then open the call for questions. I'll now turn the call over to João. João, please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Rafa. Good morning, everyone. Today, I'm happy to share that we had another quarter of solid results. I'm also excited about our progress, as we keep innovating and making the client experience better every day. Inter & Co was designed with a clear focus. From the beginning, we chose to offer sustainable credit options for us and for our clients. We also worked hard to diversify our source of fees and to build a strong funding franchise. Because of this choice, our profitability has compounded quarter after quarter. For the last 10 quarters, we have grown our profits in a consistent way. This compounding effect gives us a solid foundation for the future, and we plan to keep building on it. What gets me really excited is, in addition to delivering increasing profits, we are building long-term value for our stakeholders.

This quarter, we delivered two features that exemplify this value creation: one on the asset side and another one on the funding side. Let's start with MyCredit. This is a new journey inside our app to help clients build a healthy credit relationship with Inter & Co. Our goal is to expand credit access in a safe and responsible way. With MyCredit, clients can now track their scores with us directly in the app. This is much more transparent than what you usually see in Brazilian banks, where your score is often hidden. Through MyCredit, clients can take steps to improve their scores and unlock higher limits, all in clear states. This feature is not just for those who are behind on payments and want to rebuild their credit. It is also for clients who want to improve their scores and plan their finance better.

We believe MyCredit is a strong tool for financial education, and it will help us grow in credit penetration in a sustainable and healthy way. Now, moving on the funding side, we have launched MyBigBank MySavings Goals. With this new feature, clients can organize their savings for a specific purpose, like buying a new car, planning a vacation, or getting a new smartphone. It is a simple way for people to take control of their future. The response has been excellent. In less than one month, over 425,000 clients have used this feature, creating more than 520,000 savings goals. This shows how engaged our users are and the strength of our platform. For example, if a client is saving for a new smartphone, we can offer a special promotion from Intershop and send tailored communications. If someone is saving for a new home, we can present our mortgage solutions.

By understanding our clients' goals, we can offer the right products at the right time. This is a powerful tool for monetization, as it drives cross-sell across our verticals. Features like MyBigBank MySavings Goals and MyCredit show how we listen to our clients and bring useful solutions for their everyday lives. By doing that, we were able to continuously grow our client base. Just a few days ago, we reached 40 million clients. This is a clear sign of the trust people place in our platform. We know this trust will keep growing as we deliver real value to our clients. That's why user experience is always at the center of what we do. Every interaction must be simple, intuitive, and enjoyable. This approach has helped us build a strong brand.

We're proud that Inter & Co was named the seventh most powerful brand in Brazil and the number one banking brand for Gen Z. These achievements tell us that we are on the right path. We want to create lasting and meaningful relationships with our clients. We're very grateful for their trust. Now, Xande and Santi, we'll walk you through the quarterly results. Xande, please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, João. It's incredibly exciting to see 40 million clients embracing our platform and joining us on this journey. The strength of our brand is rooted in the close relationship we've built with our customers. Our Net Promoter Score remains firmly in the excellent zone at 85 points. We also continue to receive outstanding feedback, with ratings of 4.9 in the Apple Store and 4.8 in the Play Store. These numbers aren't just statistics. They reflect the trust and engagement of real users who interact with our platform every day. In June, we saw nearly 19 million daily logins, and we now process over 780 million financial transactions each month. All these achievements highlight the high level of engagement our clients have with our ecosystem, as well as the value and synergy we create across our seven verticals.

Moving to the next slide, let me start by highlighting our ongoing robust client growth. We've consistently added 1 to 1.1 million active clients each quarter, showing how attractive and relevant our platform is to millions of people. Our activation rate has reached 57.7%, with a clear upward trend towards 60%, driven by continuous improvements in marketing, onboarding, and personalized experiences. Our private payroll loan is helping us reactivate former clients and attract new active users from day one. On the business side, our client base grew 19% year over year to 2.4 million accounts, with strong engagement and rising RPAC levels. These achievements demonstrate the power of our platform and our commitment to delivering innovation and value. Moving to the next page, when we look at banking performance, we see strong momentum. Total payment value grew by 33% year over year and reached R$374 billion, a new record high.

Fixed was a major driver, accounting for R$346 billion and achieving an 8.2% market share. On the chart on the right, we can see that TPV levels keep rising across all cohorts, with the darker lines representing our newest clients. These cohorts are transacting even more intensely and at a faster pace, showing higher engagement levels from the beginning. These results highlight the growing engagement of our users and the power of our platform to drive sustainable, high-quality transactional growth. Moving to the next page, we see that we had a strong quarter in credit across both secured and unsecured products. Credit penetration among active clients continues to climb, now reaching 33.8%. This healthy and sustainable growth is underpinned by initiatives such as the MyCredit journey that João presented, as well as our monthly credit reassessments to make sure we're supporting our clients.

A standout highlight this quarter is our private payroll loan portfolio, which soared to R$728 million and now serves 153,000 clients. This success demonstrates the strength of our digital distribution and how seamlessly this product fits into our strategy, truly Inter by design. Real estate lending also continues to perform exceptionally well. Despite a high interest rate environment, our portfolio grew 37% year over year, reaching R$13.3 billion, including mortgages and home equity loans. In the last quarter, I shared our focus on reshaping our credit card portfolio. We're continuing to increase the share of installment products that help clients organize their financial lives. Santi will provide more details on our strong and balanced loan book performance in the next session. Altogether, these results reinforce the effectiveness of our credit strategy and our commitment to delivering sustainable, high-quality growth across all of our lending products.

Moving to the next page, let's now look at the strong performance of our other verticals. Investments continue to deliver impressive results, reaching 7.9 million active clients, a growth of 38% year over year. This was fueled by the success of MyBigBank with its new savings goals feature, driving high engagement. As a result, assets under custody grew by 47% year over year. Insurance adoption continues to rise, reaching 10 million active contracts, up 172% year over year. This reflects the success of our fully integrated offering across other verticals, including e-commerce and banking. In shopping, our in-app e-commerce platform, we saw our Net Take Rate increase to 7.6%, while GMV grew 9%. Additionally, 9.3% of our total GMV was converted into Buy Now, Pay Later, highlighting our ecosystem's strong cross-selling power. Finally, in loyalty, our client base grew 64% year over year to 13.6 million.

Members of our loyalty program are highly engaged, transacting three times more than non-members and using more products across our platform. These results show how each vertical not only grows individually but also drives greater engagement and value through integration within our ecosystem. Our global front, in the next page, continues to accelerate with a remarkable result this quarter. The number of global account clients grew 34% year over year, reaching 4.4 million. We also had a record performance in deposits, which surpassed $294 million this quarter, up 90% year over year, marking our best-ever quarterly growth. This vertical is becoming increasingly relevant for our clients, whether they're traveling, diversifying their investments internationally, or doing business abroad. This significant deposit growth is a clear sign of the scale and importance we have achieved with our global account offering.

These results confirm that our global platform is not only gaining traction but also building real materiality for Inter & Co and our clients around the world. To wrap up, on the next slide, I want to highlight our continued and impressive market share gains across some of the key markets we participate in. Quarter after quarter, we see tangible progress in both our credit and fee-based businesses. This momentum is a result of giving our clients real access to our complete range of solutions, which increases our share of wallets and compounds the positive impact on engagement. Our strong performance in market share demonstrates not only our capacity to attract new clients but also to deepen relationships with existing ones, showing the strength and relevance of our platform. I'm confident that we'll continue strengthening our position and capturing even more opportunities ahead.

With that, I'll hand it over to Santi, who will share more about our financial performance. Thank you, Xande. Starting with loans, we had another great quarter. The total portfolio grew 8% quarter on quarter. We have run a run rate basis that is slightly over 30%, marking a slight acceleration versus the growth we experienced in the prior quarters. The quality of our portfolio mix continues to be very strong, with close to 70% of it being collateralized and therefore resilient to asset quality cycles, while maintaining strong profitability as our mix continues evolving towards the high ROE products. As shown on this slide, we outpaced the market growth rate in most of our portfolios. FGTS and home equity grew at around 40% on a year-on-year basis, continuing to gain market share and prominence in our loan mix.

Mortgages, as Xande mentioned, performed very well, growing 27% year on year, benefiting from an operating environment where incumbents are struggling to grow through earmarked loans. On payroll and personal loans, we accelerated to 27%, led mainly by digital private payroll, where we have been aggressively seizing the opportunity, giving a strong fit in the Inter by design model. Credit cards also grew nearly one and a half times the market, reaching a 24% year-on-year growth level. This was achieved while working on the reshaping of the portfolio, as alluded by Xande, and therefore improving the profitability profile of the product. Lastly, on SMEs, we have strongly prioritized profitability over loan growth, focusing on secured working capital lines such as FORNAP and FGI-PAC, or in Portuguese, FGI-PAC.

Moving on to the asset quality metrics, the 15 to 90-day MPL improved 20 basis points, while the 90-day past due demonstrated a stable trend. The credit card MPLs, when analyzed across cohorts, continue to show strong performance, validating the improvement made in our underwriting and collection models. Finally, MPL formation and stage three formation stood at 1.6% and 1.5% respectively, in line with the historical trends. As we observe the evolution of our cost of risk, we reached 5.0% this quarter. It is worth reminding, what I've mentioned in prior calls, that we're not solving to minimizing this metric but to continuously expand our risk-adjusted NIM on a healthy and sustainable basis, both for us and, even more importantly, for our clients.

This level of cost of risk allowed us to build a coverage ratio of 143% since the prior quarter, which is approximately 10 percentage points higher than the one we operated in the prior quarters. We had another strong quarter of funding growth, increasing 30% in one year and surpassing the R$62 billion mark. This growth was driven primarily by time deposit, which is mainly explained by the SELIC increase and the success of MyBigBank, our product through which clients can invest in fixed income. It is also important to mention that our active clients had, on average, nearly R$2,000 in deposits, our second highest level on record, or the highest outside of a fourth quarter, which is typically the moment of the year where the liquidity is at the highest.

Once again, the healthy growth and mixed funding shown in the prior page enabled us to have an industry-leading cost for funding, which stood at 64.8% of CDI. It is interesting to note that even though our funding mix may be affected at times of high interest rates, as clients naturally gravitate towards higher-yielding deposits, on the other hand, this funding cost becomes more advantageous to our performance, the higher the nominal interest rate level is. Jumping into revenues, we achieved R$3.6 billion in total gross revenues and R$2.0 billion in net revenue, a year-over-year growth of 48% and 35% respectively. Quarterly growth levels were also strong, at 13% and 9% respectively. This quarter, the fees performed even stronger than NII, as explained by our growth in interchange, investments, and shopping. As we are experiencing higher engagement, as presented by Xande, we observed acceleration in client monetization across cohorts.

On a mature basis, we reached R$128 and R$89 on gross and net basis respectively, while the average across active clients reached R$54 and R$32 respectively. These strong levels, combined with a cost to serve of R$13, allowed us to print our second-best quarter of gross margin per active client, which reached R$19. We are excited with the performance we're seeing in the monetization of our customers across cohorts and believe the success in products such as private payroll will enable us to continue seeing performance in the coming quarters. Now, let's deep dive in our net interest margins. Both our NIM 1.0 and NIM 2.0, which exclude the non-interest receivables of credit cards, are consistently showing growth quarter after quarter and achieving new record levels.

This performance is a result of having a thick, healthy mix across products with an ROE-driven credit origination model, which is resulting in an increasingly optimized capital allocation of our balance sheet. When we consider the risk-adjusted NIM, which deducts the cost of risk from the NIM, the performance is strong too, demonstrating the compounding result of our strategy. It is interesting to see that despite the big movements, macro variables such as inflation and CDI, the trend in our NIMs has remained stable, moving in the right direction. We think this is a good example of how our ALM strategy is proving successful. On the expense side, we grew this quarter 5%, reaching R$873 million. A few important remarks. We continue to make strategic investments in marketing to strengthen our brand awareness. This has resulted in a record net adds of 1.1 million new active clients this quarter.

On the personal side, we continue to invest in the seniorization of our team. An example of this is the addition of Marcos Araújo that joined us as the CRO of the company after having a highly successful career of more than 20 years at Bradesco. We are also actively investing in technology, focusing on process automation and providing a senior experience to our clients. As our business continues to expand at a strong pace, we are focused on converging the contracts with major vendors to further reduce our cost per transaction and improve the overall efficiency as we continue to scale up. We continue focusing on operational leverage, which is one of our core pillars of our digital banking model. As a result, we're able to see improvement in our efficiency ratio, where we delivered 100 basis points improvement, moving from 48.8% to 47.8%.

We added this quarter another version of the efficiency ratio, which excludes the tax expense that comes from paying interest on capital, or JCP in Portuguese, which isn't an operational expense but instead a tax one. We think that this metric is more accurate to observe and assess our operational leverage evolution, and in that basis, we reached 47.1%, a record low level. Same as with all of our other KPIs, we added the detail of this metric in our historical Excel series, which is available in our investor relations website. Last but certainly not least, I'd like to highlight our journey towards higher profitability. We reached a record ROE of 13.9%, delivering a record net income of R$315 million. On a quarterly basis, we think that the page speaks for itself, showing a remarkable consistency that makes us very proud.

It does so because we achieved it while keeping a fortress balance sheet, while continuing to invest in our long-term franchise. With that said, I'll pass it back to João for his final remarks. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Xande and Santi. After sharing the quarter highlights, I want to share why I'm so excited about Inter & Co's future. Back in 2015, when we started this journey, our focus was on building the platform. Over the last two years, we have added consistent profitability to our story. Today, growth and profitability work in true symbiosis. Each one is strengthening the other, and this is the engine behind our network effect. As our client base grows, we gain scale and efficiency. This greater efficiency feeds our profitability. With higher profitability, we're able to invest more in our platform, improve our products, and bring even more clients. This restarts the cycle, stronger and larger each time. Thank you to our clients, partners, and the Inter & Co team for making all of this possible. Let's keep building the future together.

Speaker 0

Before we move to the Q&A, I'd like to remind our investors about the current subsidy period for converting BDRs to Class A shares. We've been highly successful in our journey to migrate our share liquidity to the U.S. market since 2022, and it's now surpassed 50% of combined volume on most trading days. I want to emphasize that the subsidy period ends at the close of this month on August 30. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. On our IR website, we've made available all the conversion rules and comprehensive guides to help you through the operational process. We want to reinforce that this movement benefits everyone, both shareholders and the company, as having shares traded in a single market creates value for all parties involved. Now, let's open for questions. Our first question comes from Eduardo Hoffman. Hoffman, please go ahead.

Hi. Can you hear me now?

Speaker 3

Yes.

Hi. Congrats on the numbers and on the execution. My question, I think it's on the private payroll product. It would be great to hear an update from you on your expectations for the product and how can, I think, Inter's great UX and hyper-personalization offering can help boost the product's success with clients. Thanks.

Speaker 1

Hi, Rodman. This is Xande speaking. Thank you for your question. First, I'd like to say that we're very constructive with the product. We've said before that it was almost a product that's made for Inter & Co by design that we've been talking about. We were very happy with the launch. The early days were great, and the first quarter was even better. We should pass the BRL 1 billion portfolio soon, here in the next days. We've been increasing in-app sales, so it's getting close to 40% already. The other part comes from the government app. It is a digital-only product for us, which also fits all the digital strategy that Inter & Co has. The potential pain point with the product, that is delinquency, is coming better than our expectations.

As we have discussed before, we started the product pricing it on the conservative side with the expectation that delinquency could be in the range of 15%. The early signs that we see as the collection progresses is that it's going to be in the single-digit side, much better than what we forecasted in the beginning. Again, this is a story to be written. We've been saying that the first 12 months is going to be at least what we need to stabilize and have a good view. The first readings are very good. The base scenario, given what we see in terms of delinquency, is that the product will run with an ROE beyond 30%.

Finally, as we go to the UX and hyper-personalization, the first goal that we have is to keep bringing underwriting volume to the app. Having Inter & Co's app as the primary channel for underwriting is an important goal for us. We're working on it. You touched the hyper-personalization, and it's a good point there. It's about feeding the product not only for people that push the credit button, that are looking for credit, but also finding situations where we can solve the customer's problem with the credit. It's where we're going. Finding the right journeys to offer the product and solve the client's problems, we'll see a lot of that in the upcoming months. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Great. Xande, just a follow-up here. Given that the product is digital-first and everyone is kind of starting from the same kind of lane, let's say, the starting point, it's fair to say that you expect to have a substantially higher market share in this product than you have, for instance, on the public sector payroll?

Speaker 1

Yeah, we expect to get like in the older growth products, as you mentioned. Like in Pix, we started with a high market share. Even FGTS, since it was a new product, it started at 4% market share. That's what we're seeing in the private payroll. We do expect to have a market share that's going to go, say, beyond 5%, given that we're starting together and we do have appetite for the product and it's a digital product. João will complement me here.

Speaker 2

Hoffman, João speaking. Thank you for your question, for your comments. One thing to highlight, we have on the numbers that were released, we have the portability threads in place. The incumbent banks migrating their former contracts to the new one. If you exclude that, we are already running at between 15% and 20% market share. This is very good. We believe that we'll have all the tools to get a big market share of this product. Last but not least, we're very excited with that. I'd like to say that the private payroll, which has been a common topic on all the conference, all the earnings calls, I mean, it's a perfect product for Inter & Co. I'd like to say that it's a combination of yes. Yes, it's 100% digital. Yes, it does have a good capital allocation, as Xande mentioned, 30% plus ROE.

Yes, it does have a significant pent-up amount of residue. We're talking about maybe hundreds of billions of reais of portfolio on all three. I don't know. Yes, it does have a very good win-win situation with the client, which is very important for us. That's our mindset. It's good for the client, good for that service, good for our companies, good for our balance sheets, good for a long-lasting relationship with the client. That said, we're very happy with that product. Not only that, we believe that some other private payroll-like products will emerge, such as Duplicat Structural, which we also want to get there at first, do this digital approach, and get a significant market share on the market. We're very happy, and thank you for the question.

Speaker 1

Great. Thanks a lot, guys.

Speaker 0

Our next question comes from Tito Labarta. Tito, please go ahead.

Hello. Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Okay. Great. I couldn't get the mute button there. Okay. Thanks. Good morning. Thank you for the call and taking my questions. Congratulations on the strong results. I guess my question, you know, asset quality seems to be holding up fairly well. Your provisions kind of did go up a bit, cost of risk a bit higher. As you're growing, I guess, the risk of your products, particularly maybe with the growth in the private payroll as well. Just how do you think about those two lines in terms of the outlook for credit quality for the rest of the year, given you kind of have to factor in a higher SELIC and maybe the economy is slowing a little bit, and then your outlook for provisioning levels as well, as you continue to grow at a very healthy pace and you're growing in somewhat higher risk segments?

Just help us how you're thinking about those two lines. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Remind Tito, this is Santiago. I'll take that one. Starting with the Inter at exception, or the Inter by design, that's how we prepare to navigate the asset quality cycles for a diversified loan portfolio, which is skewed towards securitized products, and with sustainable borrowing costs for the clients, which we think is the way to have a healthy long-term relationship. As we mentioned, we're solving to increase risk-adjusted NIM. We're not solving to increase NIM alone or to minimize cost of risk. We see that as the variable that we're aiming to optimize. We did report the lowest 90-day NPL since 2022. We think that this is the result of all of the great work done by our credit underwriting, collections, and risk teams. That is paying off as we continue to improve quarter over quarter. We are taking, as you mentioned, more margin at risk on certain lines.

Private payroll is an example. We're super happy with the performance that we have in the risk-adjusted NIM, and the ROEs, as Xande mentioned, are significantly above the 30% level. We are reshaping the credit card portfolio, and My Now, Pay Later is another product that we're trying to lever on the success of the Intershop platform. All this together is resulting in an increase in the credit penetration of our active clients, which is something that we're increasingly more focused on. We want to monetize our clients increasingly more, and the RPAC has a high sensitivity to this credit penetration. All of this to say, to answer your question, Tito, the 5% to 5.25% number that we have been mentioning in the prior quarters, we continue to think that's the case. We have been surprised on having many quarters better than that.

The reality has shown us a bit better performance than what our models were predicting. We would like to continue to be positively surprised going forward, but our base case continues to be in the 5% to 5.25% quarter cost of risk basis.

Great. No, thanks. That's helpful, Santiago. I guess high level, maybe because of the growth that you're having, growing in higher risk segments, the cost of risk could be a little bit higher, or just maybe getting close to that 5.25%. I'm not sure of the exact number, but compensated with better margins overall. In general, maybe cost of risk can still trend up a little bit more from here, given the risk and the growth that you have.

The 5% to 5.25% quarter already contemplates the mix at which we are originating today. We are continuing to do a lot of FGTS as well. Mortgages, we're accelerating. Xande mentioned that in his file where seizing the attractive opportunity. Home equity continues to be a product with a lot of success. We're also growing on the other lines, right? When we put all of it together and we add the improvements that we're doing in the credit and collections fronts as well, we see the 5% to 5.25% quarter continuing to be the base case with some potential to be surprised as we have been in the prior quarters.

Okay. On the asset quality front, it sounds like you feel fairly comfortable with asset quality, given the MPLs that you've delivered.

We are where we have been, as I mentioned, seeing that improvement. It's the lowest level we had since 2022. As we continue to navigate these new products, private payroll, as I mentioned, we see that trending towards the single digit. We need more time to see where it actually ends up. The goal is to continue to improve the risk-adjusted NIM. That's what we're trying to aim for. We see that on page 27, moving consistently in the right direction.

Okay. No, very clear. Thanks, Santiago.

Thanks, Tito?

Speaker 0

Our next question comes from Yuri Rocha Fernandes. Yuri, please go ahead.

Thank you to Rafaela and congrats to João, Santiago, Alexandre for a good quarter. I would like to ask you about my reach on your NIM expansion, especially on my product when we try to look after the hedges. We see a pretty good improvement on personal loans and real estate. I think like the personal loan yields, they moved to 23% from 19.5% in the first two. If you can explain a little bit what drove this improvement, if this is seasonal, if this is sustainable, if it is driven by, I don't know, your Pix finance product, is neat. Just trying to understand. In addition to the yield, if you can comment a little bit on the margins. It has been a pretty good run. Margins continue to go up, even with a small increase in the funding costs. That is still very low, right?

If you can also comment a little bit on your NIM trajectory, I think that's interesting. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Good morning, Yuri. Here's me again. Yes, we're very happy with the way the interest rates on the product level evolve. When we look at the all-in loans rate, we grew from 20.3% to 22.5%. A pretty nice growth, twice more than what we had in the prior quarters. The driver at the product level, the main one was personal on the personal lines, which is a digital private payroll. That loan balance now surpasses R$130 million. It pushes the interest rate of that product up. On mortgages or real estate, we have been accelerating that loan growth. As we mentioned, the competitive dynamic is favorable for us to attack that segment. The newer loans are timing the interest rates. The front book is significantly more accretive to NIM than the back book. The repricing is accelerating there and performing very well.

On the SMEs, as we mentioned also in the intro, we are prioritizing performance over size. The size is an output, and we want to continue to foster these lines like PRONAPE and FGIP-AP, which are lines that have very strong profitability profiles. When we put all that together, we see this improvement. Other lines that were not mentioned because we were already performing well with things from before, like FGTS, which has a 1.8% rate, or home equity, which has inflation plus 10%, plus 15%, inflation plus 15%, are also pushing the NIM up. We're seeing the model working. This ROE-driven underwriting framework is working across the firm in a very positive way, and the results compound. We seize the opportunities that come to us.

João mentioned that private payroll was something we did not have factored in our budget for 2025, and we did it at the end of the prior year. We're able to start offering that product since the very first day that it was available.

No, super clear. Basically, repricing and mix, right? Those two things combined. If I may, just a follow-up, Santiago, you mentioned in the intro about the change in the nature of the credit card offering. If you can exemplify a little bit more, what are those changes? If this is loyalty, new product, finance, whatever, just trying to understand what you mean by that. Congrats on cards TPV. I think the growth on volumes was strong. I just want to understand what is different on the credit card product here for you. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Hi, Yuri. This is Xande speaking. On the credit card product, there is a lot going on. We are working to grow that portfolio, and there are a few things that we're doing there. One, which is one of our key goals, is to do the reshaping. The reshaping, to clarify, means increasing the interest earning portfolio. This increase comes in mainly two ways. One is increasing Pix finance, and we keep on working to increase this volume. The second one is helping customers solve their problems when they have delinquency, which means offering them more products of installments. In the second quarter, we saw an improvement in this reshaping initiative. As you see, we went from 78.5% in transactors to 78%. We did see this improvement. We launched a new product in about May, which is a full balance installment renegotiation.

With that launch, we held a little bit on the Pix financing for the 45 days in the tail of the quarter. Overall, we did see a growth in the installment portion, as you can also see on page 14 with the R$1.2 billion portfolio. We'll keep doing that. We'll keep stimulating growth in the installment portion in the interest earning portfolio. One last piece that I'd like to mention in terms of the growth of the portfolio is the product we talked about in the last quarter call, which is Inter Card, which is a credit card limit that works exclusively to Pix financing or a boleto or for just to pay. It's a credit card that's always interest earning. That's the new one. We have a few clients with already this feature enabled, and we'll see how it evolves here in the next few months. Thank you.

Thank you, Xande. Thank you.

Speaker 0

Our next question comes from Gustavo Schroden. Gustavo, please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Hi. Good morning. Can you hear me?

Speaker 3

Yes, we can.

Speaker 1

Okay. Good morning, everybody. Congrats on the results. Strong evolution, indeed. My question is regarding the 6/30/30 plan, right? We are doing some math here, taking into consideration the current run rate you have presented. In a simple math here, we estimate an ROE by the end of this year around 16% to 17%, efficiency ratio around 45%, and the number of customers around 40, 42 million customers by the end of this year. For the next year, assuming the same run rate, ROE would be around 22% to 23%, and efficiency ratio around 40%, and the 50 million clients by the end of 2026. I know that you don't give official guidance, but my point here is that would you be able to elaborate on these numbers that I just mentioned, if those numbers make sense?

How do you see the evolution of these KPIs, let's say, to achieve this 6/30/30 plan by the end of 2027? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Schroden, thank you for your question. João speaking here. First of all, I mean, we're very proud of the 6/30/30 plan, which was unveiled two and a half years ago. As we just mentioned, it's not a guidance, but we're really focused on delivering the three KPIs of it: number of clients, efficiency, and also ROE. In a five-year period, a lot of things change. We have some headwinds, some tailwinds. For instance, we didn't expect that the macro would be like that today. We didn't expect that we would have the private payroll kicking in. We didn't expect that, for instance, we might have the Duplicat Structural starting next year, as the central bank is advocating for. It's a lot of uncertainty, of course, for a five-year plan.

The good news is, as I told in my closing remarks, we see that the network effect of our platform is starting to kick in. We have more profitability to invest more, grow more, more clients, more dilution of expenses. I'm really not only committed, but I'm really excited, and I really think that we can achieve that. You might go a few months, a few quarters ahead. It doesn't matter. At the end of the day, we're not running the company only to get to these metrics. We're running the company to have the best capital allocation ever, the best customer-centric approach ever. The good news is we have the tools, we have the clients, we have the portfolio, we have the data, we have all the regulation behind us to get there. Excited. I believe it's feasible that you get there.

I think that your numbers are pretty much in line with what we have in-house. Thank you for the question.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Thank you, João.

Speaker 0

Our next question comes from Pedro Leduc. Pedro, please go ahead.

Hello, everybody. Thank you very much for the call. Thank you for the question. Also, congratulations on the journey here. First question, just a quick follow-up on Pix financing. Now, you mentioned it as a driver for the non-transactor portfolio to be gaining share. Can you elaborate a little bit more for us to get a sense of, for example, how many clients of yours already have it, maybe how representative it's already being in the non-transactor card portfolio? Tied to that, the second question on general credit appetite. On one side, we have macro indicators turning a bit worse. On the other, you have very good credit harvest coming through that you're showing. How are you weighing these factors when thinking about growth plans for the second half, as we try to also get a glimpse for next year, especially compared to when the year started?

How are you feeling on credit appetite looking ahead? Thank you.

Speaker 1

Hi, Leduc. Thanks for your question. This is Xande speaking. I'll take the first part. The way we're approaching the Pix finance is not to get the clients and expect them to have full usage of their credit card limit on Pix finance. It's a product that adds up in the NIIPs that they use. They'll do normal purchases as a transactor, and then they use part of their limits to Pix financing. This is the way this behavior is happening, say, two to three uses a month currently. Delinquency levels are also following almost a normal path, marginally higher than the normal client that doesn't use Pix credit, but nothing that's so, good behavior overall, good trends that are aligned with what we presented in MPLs overall. That's kind of the way we approach it.

Obviously, we stimulate the usage of Pix credit, and we'll keep stimulating the usage of it. It's a product to help clients in situations where they don't have cash to pay with a debit card, and they'll use this product. I think this is it.

Speaker 2

Thank you. Good morning. On credit appetite, it's as high as it's ever been for us. We saw the loan growth this quarter was one of the highest we've had in a quarter, and we want to put our balance sheets to work. We have a blessed funding franchise, which is something that we want to increasingly deploy towards our clients. Through an increase in the credit penetration, we're seeing very positive signs of that credit penetration on the active clients. It is also a moving target as we continue to add a million, or in this case, a million one new active clients per quarter. We are strong there. The fact that we have a diversified portfolio which is skewed to products that have collateral makes us less, we change less our perspective into the macro, right?

Because the home equity, FGTS, the private payroll, etc., they don't change if the economy will grow a bit more or a bit less. The dynamic is the same. We are aggressors in the market. We want to take, as we mentioned in many calls before, our market shares towards the Pix market share, which is 8%. We already did that in home equity, went foreign change, in FGTS, growing quarter by quarter, and we expect to have the same dynamic in many of the other products. Risk appetite is, as I mentioned, as high as ever. We think that this is an opportunity for us to accelerate our business plan in the credit size, and it's one we're intentionally attacking with the tools that we have.

Amazing. Thank you, Santiago, Xande.

Speaker 0

Our next question comes from Daniel Vaz. Daniel, please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Congrats on the results and good morning. I want to touch base on your renegotiated portfolio just to understand how do you classify in the stages, right? Do you classify it as normally as a stage two or as a stage three? We have been seeing a rising trend on the renegotiated portfolios. When we listen to incumbents, and I don't want to treat you as an incumbent here, they are being more restrictive in terms of renegotiating clients, and now they're accelerating some write-ups. I want to hear you about your renegotiation strategy and how do you classify between the stages here just to understand how it can evolve for the next 12 months. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Santiago here, taking that one again. It depends on the case of the renegotiation. We have some that are in stage one, in stage one, stage three. The ones that grew this quarter were within stage one, which were real estate contracts that were recommended this quarter, which means that the client was performing, but the contract was amended for certain conditions. That was the delta of this particular quarter. In those cases, those were still within stage one. The others depend on the case of the loan. Some are in stage two or stage three, and others in stage one.

These clients are not defaulting on credit card lines. You're pretty much focusing on adjusting some conditions on the mortgage portfolio. Is that correct?

Yes, it's correct. It's commercials, commercial renegotiations. Most of them are on the real estate fund, by the way. The ones that we have collateral, and it's a longer-term agreement, and they are within stage one.

All right. Thank you. Thanks again.

Thanks.

Speaker 0

Our next question comes from Maru Pieji. Maru, please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Hi, guys. Good morning. Congratulations on the results. Thank you for taking my question. I want to go back on the private payroll loan product, Xande. You talked about running this product and having a 30% ROE, and you're very excited about it, which we agree, right? We see this as a tremendous opportunity. However, talking to the other banks, they have been quite reluctant so far to really grow into this product, citing that they don't feel like the guarantees are good enough, or they're still seeing a lot of operational risks. We even heard some news outlets in Brazil talking about the MPL of the product being around 10%. Can you discuss why you are more positive right now at the beginning than the other players?

You show that you already have 10% market share, but at a time when the other players are quite cautious, as they come back to the market, do you think you are going to be able to retain this 10% market share, or do you think this could put some pressure on the prices that you're offering right now? Basically, I'm just trying to get a little bit more on why you are so comfortable with the product and the other players are not at the beginning. I have another question on efficiency. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Maru, João here. Thank you for your question. I'm going to start, and then Xande can complement. I have been in the industry for a while, since 2002, since 2004, working at Inter. I see the same pattern when the payroll started back in 2002. Back then, everyone said, "Oh, this is not a good product. There's a lot of risks." What we realized later on was the guys that had the consumer finance portfolio, they were reluctant to jump in because there was a normal cannibalization on that product. Of course, there were some issues back then, and throughout the time, the government and all the institutions were able to fix it. Long story short, it's an excellent product today in the market. We're talking about BRL 700 million plus credit portfolio, good service for the population in Brazil, and very good business also for the banks.

I see the same pattern here today. Of course, the product has some issues that we have been seeing already that they are fixing. We're constructive. It's a big portfolio, and we also see the same pattern. Big banks, incumbent banks, banks that have a lot of consumer finance portfolio are reluctant to jump into the product because they might cannibalize their revenues, their fees. We disagree with that. We are very constructive, as you say, and we're not alone, to be honest. We have a lot of other players jumping into the product. That's how I see the trend. The same thing that happened to the private payroll back then, and what we saw in 2005 and between 2010, big banks buying out the banks that were doing very well on the payroll portfolio. I think that we're going to see the same picture ahead.

Xande, you'll comment on the details of that.

Speaker 1

Maru, just a few points to finish this answer. One, João talked about it, which is why are we so engaged and excited, and why are others sometimes not? Cannibalization risks. We don't have a portfolio to be cannibalized, whether it's personal loans or private payroll loans. We don't have a portfolio to be cannibalized, and that is the situation with many players of the industry. That's the first point. The second one is about delinquency and operational risks. They exist. We're aware of them, but we price for them. Taking a little bit of what Santiago mentioned in the, I think, the last question, we're very disciplined in pricing and being detailed about all the risks that we assess. In this particular product, being conservative, we're comfortable that our pricing is right, and we will deliver the ROEs that we are modeling given this pricing.

Finally, to your point on price reduction, we do believe that this will happen because delinquency levels are going to be better than originally forecasted. This is good news, right? We're talking about a portfolio that can be much bigger than originally planned. We've been talking about $200 billion to $250 billion. Where can this go if there's a product that's going to be priced at, say, 2.5% on average, rather than what we're seeing today, which is close to 3.7%? Exciting times to come, and we will be vigilant and work hard here to have the lowest delinquency levels possible and the highest origination volumes possible also. Thank you.

That's very clear. Xande, on these originations that you're making, are these new originations, or do you think these are people replacing their existing private payroll loan with your private payroll loan?

The absolute majority, new originations.

New originations. Okay. Thank you. Then my follow-up question also on efficiency. João, right, you made a lot of progress since the day that you announced your 6/30/30 plan. Efficiency ratio has improved quite a bit, but it has stagnated over the last year. It's primarily not because of revenues, but primarily because expenses went up. You did have an acquisition, and that impacted. However, we would have expected there to have been more operating leverage in the business. How do you think we should see this efficiency ratio evolving, right? I think Schroden asked that question. He gave you some numbers, but do you think efficiency gains now are driven by revenue generation or an increased focus on nominal expense growth? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Hi, Mario. I'll take this one. It's a great point. We want to see compounding results, and that's what we have been seeing. We do not control all of the variables at the exact same time. Life is not linear, like we like to say, but we do see a trend of improvements across the metrics, efficiency ratio being one of them. We, in fact, mentioned or added this quarter a new methodology for the efficiency ratio in addition to the prior one, which is cleaner, given that it takes out the IOF or JCP tax from that. You can see the evolution there very clearly with a record low level of 47.1%. What we are doing structurally is to continue to switch our contracts with our largest vendors from a variable dynamic to a fixed dynamic.

Many of these contracts are associated with the number of clients or volumes, and that gives us less room for operational leverage. To the extent that we can change those contracts to something that is less variable and more fixed, then the revenues will outpace the growth of the expenses. With no doubt, expenses will grow. We expect to have revenues growing significantly higher than expenses. This is a good project,

Speaker 0

We see that playing out: 5% expense growth and 8% revenue growth. That is the dynamic that we expect playing out. In terms of the shape or the angle of the slope of the curve of the efficiency ratio going forward, it's very hard for us to predict, but we do want to see quarter over quarter improvements. We haven't seen that. The Interpack transaction of last year made that analysis a bit more blurred because it was a company that we acquired with a 100% efficiency ratio. Therefore, it increased the number, up. Now, as we're delivering the efficiencies that we have planned there, many of which are on the expense side, are in other plans as well, that number is continuing to improve versus the prior level that we had prior to the Interpack transaction.

All of this to say, it's a variable that we do expect continues improving in the coming quarters. We will continue to see how that plays out as we solve the more structural contracts that we have with our clients, which, as you know, represent more than the ones that we have a more short-term control. Where we have a bigger short-term control on a number of employees, which we were able to decrease from the levels that we had at the end of last year, and other fixed expenses like rent and a few other things. On the big vendor contracts is where we are doing the majority of the work. That's what we change in the coming quarters versus what we had in the past few years.

Speaker 3

Santi, that's clear. What percentage of your costs today are fixed versus variable? In some of these contracts that you're trying to renegotiate, are these like technology that you could develop yourself rather than relying on third parties?

Speaker 0

In the expense breakdown, we have around one-third, which is personal, and two-thirds, which is administrative. In those two-thirds that is administrative, we have around 75% that are with these technology providers. It's a big part on the administrative. Within those, we are working to make them less variable and more sticky, and therefore to have more operational leverage. These contracts are multi-year contracts, so it doesn't happen overnight. We have been seeing an increasing level of success. It's not only on the top three or four names that you may imagine, but also in the longer list. We're working on the 100 top providers. We're using the power of control McKinsey approach to revise them thoroughly every single week. We see that we continue to play out. The revenues will grow. This is a high-growth company.

By doing that, the difference of the revenue growth versus the expense growth is the one that will result in the operational leverage continuing to play out.

Speaker 3

Thank you very much.

Speaker 1

Our last question comes from Neha. Neha, please go ahead.

Hi. Congratulations on the results. Just two quick questions. On the private payroll side, I think one of the questions that the industry has is how effective will the collateral be? Do we have any more color on collateral in case of delinquencies, which will arise in the future? It's crucial to say. My second question is on expected loan growth for the year. You mentioned that the private payroll, which has been doing so well, was not budgeted initially. What kind of loan growth should we expect for this year and for next year in view of this new product and also in view of the macro, which is ever-evolving? Thank you so much.

Speaker 2

Hi, Neha. This is Sean speaking. Thank you for the question. I'll start with the collateral for the private payroll. We expect it's going to be a very good collateral to be exercised. It's already, as I mentioned, pointing towards somewhere in the single digits as a long-term delinquency. Why is that? Because companies are learning and engaging more and more with the paying process. This third round of payments is much better than the first round. It should keep improving as we move forward. On top of that, we have a piece of a part of the FGTS balance of these customers that will be used to pay for some of the debts. That's not yet happening. It's going to be a piece for another improvement round on this whole private payroll process. Also, you have the client itself, right?

If the company didn't collect, didn't pay as they should, the client is still liable. What we're seeing in the early days is a good behavior on these clients as we approach them to do the collection process. Good collateral, but also other means of payment with a final one that I almost forgot to say, which is as customers switch jobs, the liability or the collateral follows them, almost like lifetime. With automatic recollection, this is being fine-tuned by the government now. Everything points towards an automatic reestablishment of the collateral as clients change jobs. It should be exciting. We're going to have to learn. We'll keep working on it. It seems to be good. Moving to loan growth, we had a strong quarter, 8% growth quarter on quarter. The core portfolio grew 31% year over year.

What we're seeing also, given that we have new products such as the private payroll, is to be on the high end of the range we've been talking about. We've been talking about a range of 25% to 30% growth for the loan portfolio. We believe we're going to be on the high range. What is the main drive? Why this confidence? Why can we grow 30% in a year despite macro 15% civic? We have good products as drivers of this growth that are aligned to this type of environment. Private payroll loans is the new kid on the block that we can keep on growing. Mortgages are behaving very well. We've been able to price them properly. Home equity, also FGTS.

Given the size of the client base and the opportunity, we'll keep pushing to grow also the unsecured lending, fixed financing, and these other lines to get us there to the 30% overall growth. Thank you. Thank you, Neha.

Super helpful. Thank you so much, Alexandre.

Speaker 1

This concludes our Q&A session. I'll pass the word to João for his final thoughts.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Rafa. Thank you, everyone, for being with us today. It's been a long journey so far. As I told you in my final remarks, I believe we are in our early days for the business, for the network effect that is taking in. We have an amazing team committed to deliver the best we can for our clients, for our shareholders, for the regulators, for the country, for the industry. I'm really happy with this earnings call, with these earnings results, not only because of the number, but what we have been able to accomplish in a short period of time. As I told you, I see a bright future for this company, a bright future for this project. I'm really proud to be a part of it. Again, thank you, shareholders, employees, for helping us to make this dream come true. Thank you very much.

See you on our next earnings call. Have a good day.