Itaú Unibanco - Q1 2024

Transcript

Milton Maluhy Filho (CEO)

Hello.

Renato Lulia Jacob (Head of Investor Relations)

[Foreign language]

Milton Maluhy Filho (CEO)

Good morning, everyone.

Renato Lulia Jacob (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you for joining this video conference to talk about our earnings for the first quarter of 2024. We're broadcasting directly from our office in Avenida Faria Lima, in São Paulo. As usual, today's event will be divided into two parts. First, Milton will take you through our performance and earnings for the first quarter of 2024, and then we will have a Q&A session during which investors and analysts can ask us questions and get into the details with us. Before we get started, I'd like to give you a few pointers to help you make the most of today's meeting. For those of you who access this via our website, there are three audio options on screen: the entire content in Portuguese, the entire content in English, or just the original audio. For the first two options, you'll have simultaneous translation.

To choose your preferred option, just click on the flag on the top of your screen. Questions can be submitted via WhatsApp. Just click on the button on the screen on the website, or simply send a message to +55 11 93959 1877. The presentation we'll be making today is available for download on the website screen, and as usual on our investor relations website. I'll hand over the floor to Milton, who will begin the earnings presentation, and then I'll be back to moderate the Q&A session. Milton, the floor is yours.

Milton Maluhy Filho (CEO)

[Foreign language]

Hello, everyone. Good morning, or good afternoon, to those who are in a different time zone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to our earnings call for the first quarter of 2024. I'll begin with a high-level presentation outlining the bank's earnings and providing more detail for certain items. At the end, I'll also be making a special invitation for our Itaú Day, which is just around the corner. So let's get straight into the figures. Our earnings for the first quarter of 2024 totaled BRL 9.8 billion, representing growth of 3.9% compared to the previous quarter. Our consolidated recurring return on equity was 21.9%, meaning 70 basis points of growth quarter-over-quarter. It reached 22.7% in Brazil, growing 50 basis points quarter-over-quarter. This ROE takes into account 13% of common equity tier one, which exceeds our capital appetite.

This means that we would be posting even higher profitability if we calculated it with our capital target. The cost of credit dropped nominally in the third consecutive quarter, reaching BRL 8.8 billion, a 3.9% decrease quarter-over-quarter. Our delinquency indicators remained stable, with consolidated NPL over 90 days dropping 10 basis points quarter-over-quarter, and the 90-day NPL for individuals falling 20 basis points in the same period. I'll bring you more details about the cost of credit a bit later. OpEx fell by 6.2% in the quarter to BRL 14.4 billion in the first quarter of 2024, meaning another record quarter for the consolidated efficiency ratio, which reached 38.3%, a decrease of 200 basis points in the quarter for the consolidated figures, and 36.8% in Brazil, a decrease of 130 basis points during the same period.

This is a very sound set of results, with a good overall portfolio quality, strong profitability, and above all, high predictability. The individual loans portfolio grew by 2.6% year-over-year but decreased by 0.6% in the first quarter due to the normal seasonality of the credit card portfolio. We posted significant growth of personal loans portfolio and 11.3% for the year, while the payroll loan portfolio was flat, growing 0.1% in the quarter. In vehicle loans, we grew 1.7% during the quarter and 5.4% during the year. We also saw flat growth in the mortgage portfolio in the quarter and 3.1% growth in the year. I'll go into more detail about the individual's loan portfolio later in the presentation. We saw a 1.9% growth in the SMEs portfolio in the quarter and 10.2% growth year-over-year.

The large corporates portfolio grew by 9.3% during the year, posting sound growth of 3.6% in the quarter. This was a strong and very active quarter for the capital markets. As we have a significant market share, we've ranked very high in the capital market rankings. Our credit portfolio, excluding FX variations, grew by 5.6% year-over-year, and taking into account FX variations, the portfolio grew by 2.8% in the same period. I'll share further details in the next slide. I'd now like to draw your attention to the growth of the loans to individuals. I'm sure this is a topic of general interest that we'll talk about in depth in our Q&A. If we look at the December 2022 to March 2024 series, our portfolio grew by roughly 4%.

Adjusting the loan book to reflect the de-risking of the portfolio, which we've carried out proactively, the portfolio has grown by 7%. This 7% growth is slightly below the market growth for the period. It's worth noting that the credit card portfolio accounts for a significant share of our total portfolio. Thus, any appetite adjustment efforts have a major impact due to the credit card portfolio share in terms of the overall portfolio mix. We'd like to provide some additional clarification about this de-risking strategy, which we proactively implemented for clients who are less resilient to credit cycles. We believe that at this point we have roughly reached the valley of the curve for this portfolio's downsizing.

Since December 2022, we've reduced this portfolio by 83%, so there is little left to do to achieve a full reduction, which is expected to happen by the end of the third quarter of 2024. This de-risking strategy may have an additional negative impact of only 0.5% on our portfolio. This is already taken into consideration in the 2024 loan portfolio guidance that we've disclosed. Looking back, we see that the de-risking actions helped us reduce our delinquency ratio, measured based on the 90 days NPL, by 103 basis points. Given the prudential adjustments that were made to the bank's balance sheet to enable us to face this credit cycle, we were able to avoid delinquencies accounting for between 170 and 200 basis points of NPL 90, depending on the period analyzed. We were also able to make savings of BRL 3 billion per year in provisions for loan losses.

I'd also like to point out that while growing the portfolio indiscriminately generates earnings via NII and operating revenue in the short term, in the long run these earnings could be entirely canceled out through the cost of credit. We track our NIM and profitability very closely. These are two very important metrics in terms of our management and that have proven effective during the current period. This de-risking strategy has had a positive impact on 300 basis points on the profitability of the individual's business, measured based on the risk-adjusted return on capital. These results for profitability and earnings clearly indicate that our decision to reduce our exposure to clients who are less resilient to the credit cycle was the right one.

Now, looking to the future growth of the credit portfolio, there remains very little left to do to complete this de-risking process, and as such, we will start to experience a positive inertial effect from the growth of portfolios made up of clients who are more resilient to the credit cycle, which have never stopped growing. This includes all individuals, in all segments, all channels, and for all products. So we're going to start to see growth within the range indicated in the 2024 guidance. Now, as regards the client NIM, we have great news. First, I'd like to explain the adjustment made to exclude the results of our operation in Argentina from our earnings for the first quarter of 2023.

Given that the operation in Argentina was sold and was excluded from the balance sheet for the last five months of 2023, the first quarter still included the operation's figures. If we compare the margin for the first quarter of 2024 with the margin for the first quarter of 2023, excluding the results for Argentina, you will see that we posted steep growth of 9.4%, equivalent to an additional margin of BRL 2.2 billion. This is very positive news in terms of the client's NIM momentum, with top-line growth and a lower cost of credit indicating good credit quality and disciplined capital allocation. The drop in core clients' NII was 1.7% quarter-over-quarter. If you take a look at the bank's historic series, you'll notice that this trend often occurs in the first quarter.

On the other hand, we saw a minor effect of the change in product mix, where the average volume is positive, and we also saw wider spreads and higher margins on liabilities. In terms of negative effects, we would note that around half of the drop can be explained by the lower number of calendar days in the quarter, and the other half by the results for Latin America and from structured wholesale operations. Aside from these effects, we're managing to deliver high-quality clients' NII, especially if we look at our performance relative to comparable quarters. NIM remained virtually flat, with a slight decrease due to the effects I mentioned earlier.

When we analyzed the risk-adjusted NIM, which is the most important metric, it was flat compared to the previous quarter, reaching 5.8% on a consolidated basis, and saw a slight drop of 10 basis points in the operations in Brazil, which is where the structured wholesale operations effect I've mentioned is accounted for. Thus, our clients' NIM is extremely promising, and we still believe we'll be able to maintain a good development pace for the coming quarters. Our numbers for market NII in the quarter are sound, without any major highlights. We've been able to take and exit positions when this makes sense, quarter-on-quarter, and we always make such moves based on predictability, risk management, and proper positioning. Our market NII has remained very consistent. As a result, we posted yet another sound quarter in Brazil, reaching BRL 1.1 billion.

In Latin America, we also had a good quarter, posting an increase of BRL 100 million quarter-over-quarter and a flat cost of hedging capital ratio. Capital index hedging has had a diminishing impact on earnings due to our management strategy and due to the decrease in the interest rate differential. Core market NII was BRL 1.3 billion, but the total market NII was slightly lower due to the allocation of the cost of capital index hedging, as shown in this chart. We've presented the figures in this way for full transparency. In terms of commission, fees, and results from insurance operations, we posted growth in the credit card portfolio of 4.6% year-over-year.

It's worth noting that the first quarter of the year tends to be weaker in both the issuance and acquiring businesses due to seasonality factors and the way we allocate these results for recording purposes. In current accounts, we noted a more stable result for the quarter with a 5.8% drop year-over-year, but this is not a significant proportion of the bottom line. We had a very strong quarter for advisory services and brokerage, which grew 7.1% quarter-over-quarter and 70.6% year-over-year. The first quarter of 2023 was affected by the poor performance of the capital market as a whole due to the fraud event that occurred during that quarter, which ended up cooling down capital market activities in Brazil. In 2024, we managed to grow investment banking results and to maintain our leading position in a good number of the investment banking rankings.

We are number one for debt capital markets with a market share of 32%. In M&A, we are in second place with a 39% market share, as this is a market concentrated on a few players. Capital markets with a market share of 13%. Another item worth drawing attention to is the results of insurance, pension plans, and premium bonds products, in which we continued to post growth. Every year we've managed to expand the results in this line. Structurally, we continued to grow 10%, so we practically more than doubled the results of our insurance operations over a relatively short period. Commission, fees, and insurance thus grew by 6.7% during the year compared to the result excluding Argentina. Disregarding Argentina adjustment in the first quarter of 2023, growth was 5.8% for the period. In terms of the cost of credit, we had a very stable quarter.

As you may recall, in the first quarter of the year, it's common to see higher levels of delinquency, as a reflection of the expenses at the end of the last year and the beginning of the next. Historically, we've seen some seasonality in the first quarter, where shorter delinquencies, in particular, are more common. If you analyzed the numbers from a consolidated perspective on Itaú Unibanco as a whole, the increase was only 10 basis points. I'd also remind you that this series saw some aberrations in the post-pandemic period, and thus some normalization can be seen in subsequent quarters. Analyzing a longer period, it can be seen that we are at the lowest delinquency levels.

Remember that there is also some negative inertia because the loan portfolio did not grow significantly due to all the adjustments we've made to the portfolio, and yet we have still delivered very healthy indicators. In Brazil, we saw an increase of 10 basis points. Over longer timeframes, we've previously seen increases of between 30 and 40 basis points, so this slight increase in the first quarter of 2024, when the credit portfolio has already been normalizing for a reasonable period of time, is good news. The same analysis holds true for SMEs. When we analyze our historical series of NPLs, it's possible to see the last year the indicators were stable, in line with what we've already been saying in 2022, and now we've seen a decrease for the second consecutive quarter in NPL 90 for individuals and NPL for SMEs of 2.6%, and not increasing during the period.

This shows once again our ability to manage these portfolios through adverse scenarios and how well we've been able to control the risk management process and delinquency levels. As a result, this is the third consecutive quarter posting a nominal decline in the cost of credit and in the cost of credit as a percentage of the overall credit portfolio, which reached 3%. The renegotiation of the portfolio has also pulled the portfolio down. It's worth remembering that the individual loan's portfolio includes the renegotiated portfolio, and since our strategy has been to ensure disciplined risk management, the portfolio was renegotiated to the right level and not excessively. We can, therefore, see that this portfolio has also been dropping nominally year-over-year. The ratio of the renegotiated portfolio to the total credit portfolio was 3.2%, following a nominal decrease.

There were no surprises in terms of the coverage ratios, with a small increase overall, but some variations by line of business reflecting everything we've been doing to protect our balance sheet with good credit quality. Going forward, we expect healthy indicators with good coverage by provisions and a healthy level of 90 days NPL. Non-interest expenses, excluding the effects of the deconsolidation of Argentina, increased by 6.4% year-over-year. There was a 6.2% drop compared to the last quarter of 2023, as non-interest expenses for the first quarter of 2024 totaled BRL 14.4 billion. It's worth noting the improvement in our efficiency ratio, which reached 36.8% in Brazil and 38.3% in the consolidated in this first quarter of the year. This meant that we had yet another record quarter in terms of our efficiency ratio, both for Brazil and on a consolidated basis.

In the 2024 guidance, we reported that we expected to grow our core costs at less than inflation. The 12-month headline inflation rate was 3.9%, while our core costs grew by 2%, which is half of the inflation rate for the period. This result was delivered without stopping investing in the growth of our business and in our technology platform. Therefore, the growth in our total non-interest expenses is due to investments in our business. It's also important to demonstrate that we have maintained strict cost discipline. For banks, inflationary pressures go beyond just interest rates. We are parties to collective agreements that put a lot of pressure on costs, but we have made major investments in the business and in the future of the bank, and we don't abdicate our responsibility for actively managing our costs every day. We also have very positive news regarding capital.

We announced the payment of extraordinary dividends, and that reduced our capital base during the last quarter. Since then, we've generated both more earnings and more capital. This quarter, we reported capital consumption by risk-weighted assets and due to regulatory changes that increased the risk weighting on some operations. Therefore, we had some non-recurring impacts that caused the CET1 ratio to reach 13%. It's worth noting that our dividend policy establishes a CET1 level close to 12%. So how will this excess capital affect the dividend policy in the coming periods? We're still grappling with some uncertainties, whether related to regulatory changes or future implementations of regulatory updates, including the new operational risk regulation and credit weightings that have been impacting the RWA, the impacts of the IFRS 9, and how it'll affect tax credits and consequently capital.

For this reason, we're always careful to maintain a capital buffer to anticipate future events in order to ensure proper capital management and avoid any issues. Any excess capital beyond that will be distributed, and the closer we get to the end of the year, the greater our visibility on this. Our goal is not to retain capital beyond what is required to run the bank and grow our operations, considering a horizon of 12-24 months, which gives us considerable security regarding our current and future capital generation in the coming quarters. We do not release the guidance on a quarterly basis, and this is already known to the market. The idea of bringing the guidance framework is to share with you our view of the year of 2024 and the bank.

The first relevant piece of information is that the 2024 guidance estimates a growth of the credit portfolio between 6.5%-9.5%. The year-over-year growth of the credit portfolio was 2.8%, but adjusting for FX, that impacts the Latin American credit portfolio, growth is 5.6%, which is still below the 2024 guidance. As we are currently in the valley of the de-risking portfolio adjustment curve, we remain very comfortable with the 2024 credit portfolio growth guidance that was released at the beginning of the year. We believe that we'll recover to a position in the range of the loan portfolio growth throughout the year and are reaffirming our 2024 loan portfolio growth guidance. Our clients' NII grew by 7.4% year-over-year, but when we exclude Argentina from 2023 results, we grew by 9.4% in the period. This growth of 9.4% is above the guidance range.

However, this is not an indication of where we'll be at the end of the year. We are simply sharing with you as evidence that we have been able to grow close to the ceiling set out in our 2024 guidance. As such, we remain comfortable with our clients' NII guidance. The market NII is a simplification because we take the result of the first quarter and multiply it by four, since this is only nominal guidance. We know that the unpredictability level of the margin is high, but we also know that we must work hard throughout the year and deliver results within the established guidance. The cost of credit follows the same rationale. With the first quarter of 2024 amount being multiplied by four, the guidance supports this credit cost momentum. Commission and fees, excluding Argentina, grew by 6.7% during the year, which is also within the guidance.

We disclosed the guidance figures, both including and excluding Argentina, from 2023 results to better understand the performance in the period. Non-interest expenses increased by 4.3% during the year, while inflation was 3.9% for the period. If we exclude the figures for Argentina, growth is 6.4% for the year, also within the range of the guidance. The tax rate is also within the guidance range. We believe that the predictability is as important as good guidance for the market to calculate earnings expectations. So it's important to share how we are managing the bank. Let me say once again that we are reaffirming our 2024 guidance, and we are very comfortable with the numbers we're achieving. Going forward, we believe we'll deliver the expected earnings and that the guidance range accommodates potential changes.

We're very confident that the growth of the credit portfolio will be within the guidance range by the end of the year. This is the general message. We will not track the guidance during every quarterly presentation, but we think it's important to share our views at this time. Finally, I'd like to take the opportunity to extend an invitation. This has been a very high-level executive presentation only, with some updates on our credit portfolio, NII, capital, costs, and guidance details. But on June 19, from 9:00 A.M. to 11:30 A.M. São Paulo time, we will host Itaú Day.

The event will have the same format as previous years, with the participation of the executive committee, Pedro and Roberto, at the beginning, and also myself, although I promise not to take up much of your time and to give the executive committee the opportunity to explain our strategy and what's behind the headline numbers. Of course, the numbers are important, but behind them there is a lot going. As appropriate, we will organize with great care and dedication, and it will also be the time for you to understand how we've conducted our business and the vision we have for the future. This concludes my presentation. I'd like to thank you for today. I'll now join Renato to start our traditional Q&A session.

Renato Lulia Jacob (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you very much, Milton. Thank you for the presentation. So let's start the second part of our meeting, which is a Q&A.

This is a bilingual session, so we're going to answer your questions. If you need anything, either English or Portuguese, or you can submit as well your questions via WhatsApp. The number is 11-93959-1877. Milton, we have a list of questions to address for both of you, but before I would like to give a message for everyone here. Thank you very much, Renato, Broedel. Well, guys, once again, thank you for your participation. I'd like to break the protocol of our call and that the bank is going through, but we wanted to also seize the moment to bring our solidarity to the state of Rio Grande do Sul. A difficult moment, a crisis, a trap.

To the press, a lot of initiatives that we've done to help the population of Rio Grande do Sul, but the government is in a trench warfare that it is the city, the capitals, the cities, and the population. It's a moment of solidarity, and we have to work with citizens as a company. And Itaú, well, we want to do the best that we can. We've subdivided with our actions with the collaborators. We have 170 branches in the agency. 52 are closed and impacted, 16 at the levels. And of our collaborators and associated companies is in good conditions. Family members are impacted. So this is a moment of the strength of the agency because in the end, we have to be together in a moment of difficulties and also joy so that our employees can also serve the community and our clients.

So we have a series of actions that we are undertaking. We've been very proactive in the offering of insurance for our clients. We know that there is a policy that protects them. We've proactively called. We are looking at the granularity, at the individuals, to see what are the processes that we need to help them in this great moment of pain. We did initially a donation to União BR, an NGO, but it's not only resources but mainly the war plan at this very difficult moment. So yesterday, at the invitation of Azul, John, the CEO of Azul, talked to me. In the morning, we closed, at that moment, our partnership so we can capture our friends, colleagues, citizens of Rio Grande do Sul, submitting planes to the region where we can land, taking to the first responders as well to help them.

We have an internal resource allocation in the bank so we can donate. There is the pairing of donations. This is a problem that hopefully will be ending soon, even though it's long-term. There is a rebuilding work, but I have to start by expressing my deep sense of the best, the most solidarity to the population that we can show. On Itaú Unibanco, we are going to take two steps ahead to do whatever we can. Renato, message very important. So first of all, I think that we have a toolkit of risk management that is very much developed all throughout many years. This is a core system in our culture. Risk management is very strong at capital allocation in our institution. So when we do projections of the guidance and projects, we can, with a predictability degree that is very accurate, project our numbers.

We can see that we are developing all throughout the years, both in finance and also risk. This toolbox allows us to do great decisions with a prospective vision and not a short-term vision. Of course, we have teams that are high quality. I cannot delegate this to the models because the models were built by high-quality teams, people that are dedicated to understand the journey of the client. We've recently been planning in a very structured way with the retail, the management of the portfolio. We have to prioritize and make decisions, and you have to make choices. So as important as it is growing, you have to choose your battles from the capital allocation standpoint with a long-term view. We saw that there is an offering of credit over the years.

We cut it in the materials that are presented, but there is a series of December from 2022 to March of 2024. If you see that series, we didn't grow BRL 17 billion in the portfolio. Maybe this is a good number so you can keep in mind. Why? Because these are clients with a compromise of their income very high, their indebtedness, they're not resilient on the long term. And we have to remember the numbers. So we have, yes, periods of high volatility. So I cannot look at a short cycle and make a decision looking at the next three or six months or aiming for the results of the next quarter if the VPL of the client is negative. And not in the credit overview. We look at the overview client, not the credit overview.

So in an institution such as ours that we want to bring and build a strong franchise of great engagement of the clients, having a management of the client and looking at that client on a longer cycle is fundamental so we can make the decisions. So we realized a certain increase of delinquency with everything that we lived after the pandemic, the increase of the inflation, increase of the interest rates, and we knew at that time to make the adjustments that are necessary for the portfolio. I believe that looking from now, looking to the numbers that I've just commented, we made decisions that are very accurate. Why? Because management through equity and growing portfolio and growing revenue is not difficult. On the short term, the revenue will come. I mean, for growing the portfolio, you just have to open the credit filters.

You're going to grow the portfolio, but thereafter, the problem is that you're going to spend many years paying for that bill, and that's not how we want to manage the bank. We want a branch not just looking at the naturally, there is an issue of value proposition where we've done adjustments that are very relevant. It wasn't a credit card portfolio. There was an over-offering of the portfolio of the product on the market. The client had 1.4 credit cards per CPF number. Now we see four credit cards per CPF. We have an over-offering, over-product without annual fees, a product that you can hire digitally and no client. When they hire a credit card, they ask the interest rate of the installments and the payments. They just think that this is a payment method.

Speaker 10

[inaudible] given some of the de-risking of the portfolio.

But when you think about growth from here and some of the competitive dynamics that are happening, right? I mean, you have some people competing on the lower-income segment, but others talking about growing more with higher-income clients. So I mean, how comfortable are you in your ability to maybe accelerate loan growth from here to be able to deliver on the guidance for the full year? And just digging in a little bit on the loan growth in particular, right? I mean, credit cards are weak, but we did see a pickup in personal loans. Just to understand a little bit the dynamics there if you go through the loan growth by the individual client segments, where you see the opportunities and where there still may be some competitive pressures. Thanks.

Milton Maluhy Filho (CEO)

Okay, Tito. Thank you very much for your question.

I start saying that we see a lot of opportunities looking forward. So we are very positive about the size of the opportunities that we have in terms of growing the portfolio. Of course, we had to deal with this de-risking process for the past, I would say, two years, and we are very happy we've been through that delivering a very good level of profitability. But we are, yes, working in all segments, and we see opportunities throughout all the publics that we have inside the bank, from Itaú BBA to the individuals. On the wholesale side, we've been able to deliver two-digit growth, but you have to remember and take in mind in consideration that the debt capital market's very strong, especially in this first quarter. So you have to add.

At the end of the day, we are serving our client not only with the balance sheet but also with the debt capital market. For the client, financing solutions are very important, and we open room to support the clients that don't have access to the debt capital market. When we look to the SMEs, we've been able to post a very decent growth many years in a row. So if you go back, we've been growing for many years now, and we've been growing two digits this year as well, and we still see opportunity to keep growing this portfolio. Where we made the most relevant adjustment was on the individual side. I just mentioned a few reasons why, but we see that we are at the end of the tunnel, so we won't see that pressure coming from this de-risking from the next two quarters.

We just have a little bit more negative pressure. But on the other hand, we've been growing two digits in the target clients that we define, so mid-income, high-income. We are growing two digits in all those segments, and we believe that with this platform, this app fully integrated with a full bank experience, we will be able to grow not only in the mid and high-income clients but also in the low-income clients. You have to define very clearly what type of public you can access, what type of product, in which channel, and what is your expectation in expected loss you can have with this client. So you can define the lifetime value, the VPL of this relation, but taking in consideration, of course, the risk models that we run inside the bank.

So we do believe we have more than our Uniclass outside the bank, more than our Personnalité outside the bank, and we do have in the low-income a lot of opportunities having the correct value proposition. And this is our main goal for this year, to find out the value proposition with the app completely integrated, and we will be able to grow the relationship with low-income, mid-, and high-income clients with this strategy. And also, we have, of course, all the retail operation running very well, growing the business. The client base of all those segments is growing almost two digits a year. So just to give you an idea, we've been able to grow Personnalité Uniclass, not only growing the size and the number of clients but also growing the share of wallet of those clients.

So we still have a lot of room to increase the relationship with clients that are already very good clients of the bank. So we don't see any limitation, of course, in terms of growing. We do see, of course, that we have to keep in mind the scenario and how we will manage the scenario depending on the variables that we see looking forward. So we have to look to the unemployment rate. We have to look to the GDP. We have to look to the demographic of our clients. We have to understand the level of leverage the clients have. So despite all these tools that we use for risk management, we are very confident that we can grow the portfolio. You will see us growing in the coming quarters, and we are very confident with the guidance that we made, so there is no need to change.

If you look at Brazil, only Brazil, we are growing 6.6% year-on-year. Then you have LATAM, which is having a major impact, a negative 12%. And why is that? Because the portfolio, without this effects variation, the valuation, we would be having a 2.6 portfolio year-on-year. This is what we see nowadays, 2.6, 2.8 depending on the way you cut it. So at the end of the day, my most relevant information here, yes, we'll be able to deliver the guidance, and you have to look to us with two other optics. One of that is that if you take out Argentina of our numbers, we are growing at 9.4 top line. So the financial margins with clients are growing 9.4%, which is very, very relevant. But then you look to our cost of credit is diminishing on a nominal basis.

So our financial margin net is very positive. So we are growing the portfolio, growing the financial margin with clients, and reducing the cost of credit on a nominal basis. And also, we've been able to deliver a very good efficiency ratio. So this is the way we've been managing the balance sheet, and we believe that we can keep delivering the level of profitability that we've been delivering looking to a longer period. So we are very confident and very positive about the opportunities, of course, always having a huge discipline in capital allocation, huge discipline in risk assessment. So it's our mantra, and we'll keep that very strongly.

Speaker 10

Great. Thanks, Tito.

Renato Lulia Jacob (Head of Investor Relations)

And thanks, Tito. The next question is here from New York, coming from Jorge Kuri from Morgan Stanley. Hey, Jorge. Good to see you. Thanks so much for joining the call.

Jorge Kuri (Research Analyst)

Hi, everyone.

Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on the numbers. I wanted to maybe shift to expenses where you've done a really good job, certainly well ahead of what your incumbent peers have done. As you think about the banking system moving more and more to the digital front and some of your better digital competitors now moving into bigger products like payroll loans, for example, how can you compete effectively with players that have cost-income ratios, efficiency ratios of 20%, 25%, and are using that to translate into much lower prices for consumers? And I'm asking this in the context of your guidance for expenses. Growing expenses with inflation, it's just not going to get you there because your revenues are going to grow a little bit above inflation. They're not going to grow 5x inflation. Your NII, for example, is growing 2x inflation.

The efficiency seems to be lagging where I think financial institutions are going to have to be in order to compete with the pure digital players. When can you do that? When can you start to provide us guidance of expenses are going to be down 5% next year, down 10% next year, and within the next X number of years, we should be at sub-30% efficiency ratio? Or maybe I'm wrong, and you disagree, and you don't think that you need to run the bank at 20%+, 20%-30% efficiency ratio to be competitive. So just wanted to get your overall take on this. Thank you.

Milton Maluhy Filho (CEO)

Let me start talking about that and give you a few messages. Thank you. Good to see you, Jorge, again, and thank you for the compliments.

Let me start saying that, of course, efficiency for us, it's key, and that's why we've been delivering quarter-on-quarter a reduction in our efficiency ratio. We've been delivering this quarter the best ratio that we had so far, and we keep very positive about all the actions we are taking inside the bank. Our business model is a little different. We are not a full digital bank, and we have to understand that in this index, we are looking at the whole bank, okay? So this is a full bank index. We come from wholesale, global markets, LATAM. You have Brazil. You have everything. So you have the two index right there, the consolidated index, and also you have the Brazilian ratio. My message to you is, first of all, we've been investing a lot in the digital transformation.

That was the first best decision we had to make to be able to deliver a digital experience to our clients with a completely different user experience, completely different efficiency ratio. At this point, we believe that the app, the way we're going to be integrating that, will be a huge achievement in terms of providing a much cheaper cost to our clients to be able to deliver a much better price at the end of the day and to be more competitive and have a more operational scale coming from technology. So this is something that we're going to be very, very, very focused.

The second thing, you have to look to our model, physical model, but the same way, you don't have the same level of costs, but you don't have, when you look to the digital banks, the same level of revenues when we look at the capability that we have to have a full bank relationship with those clients and creating engagement not only for the day-by-day products, which is always the case, but also to more sophisticated products. You really need this remote approach to access your clients, to offer, to be consulted to your clients. We are not, I would say, happy because we believe that we still have a lot of work to do in that front. So I'm not saying that we got there, and we are happy that we don't have anything else to do.

Yes, we have to keep pushing that, and we have to find a way to serve our clients the way he wants but with a much lower efficiency ratio. Of course, we do have asymmetries in this discussion. So we talk a lot about asymmetries. We have regulatory asymmetries that are always being discussed, but we have some tax asymmetries as well. So if you look to us, we are paying 45% tax on the income, corporate tax, and social contribution. The payment institutions are paying 34%. So there are some tax asymmetries, and I'm pretty sure that this, in the mid to long term, needs to be solved. It doesn't make any sense. All the time you lose a client here, you lose, at the end of the day, collection for the government as well because you reduce the tax income.

So there are a lot of asymmetries that will be solved in time being, but at this moment, we have to be focused in our agenda to deliver a much better experience to our clients, to be much more efficient. Of course, if you look to the numbers we're delivering, there is restructuring cost being packed there. So that's why we separate what is the core. Cost is being much less. So if we had inflation of 4% in this period, we are running at 2% in the core cost. But we still are investing in the enablers to have a much more digital bank. So on the other hand, we have to finance this investment period. So at a certain time, we're going to be much more efficient.

We're going to be much more scale in terms of technology, much more product-driven in terms of offering the best digital experience to our clients. This will help us to be much more efficient in the way we have a value proposition for our clients. This is the way we look. We are in this space. We have a lot of work to do, but the job will be done. Renato, I don't know if you want to add something on that. I think it's quite clear.

Renato Lulia Jacob (Head of Investor Relations)

Jorge, I quite agree with the direction that you mentioned, but I wouldn't focus so much, as you said, on 5% reduction in costs because, as Milton mentioned, maybe 5% reduction in costs nominally means that you will not achieve a lower efficiency ratio because the easiest way to reduce costs is to reduce investments, and we are clearly not on the business. So we are fully committed to reducing the efficiency level but not necessarily to have nominal cost reductions because we consider investments on this whole matter. So we fully agree in the direction, but I think that distinction between core costs and investments that Milton mentioned, for us, is quite crucial.

Jorge Kuri (Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you very much.

Milton Maluhy Filho (CEO)

So this is the way to go, Jorge. It's good to hear from you, but we're going to pursue this agenda very strongly.

Thank you.

Jorge Kuri (Research Analyst)

Thanks, Milton.

Renato Lulia Jacob (Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Jorge.

Good to see you again. E voltando para o português agora, já que a próxima pergunta. Now going back to Portuguese. The next question is from Gustavo Schroeder, Bradesco BBI. Bom dia. Bom dia. Tudo bem, Renato? Bom dia, Milton.

Gustavo Schroeder (Research Analyst)

Good morning, everyone. Renato, Milton, Bradesco. Thank you for the time, and congratulations on the results. I would like to speak dividends. Did you anticipate some well, you anticipated some questions, some words, Milton, but can you give us some color? First, the items that you were analyzing that you're waiting, regulatory, IFRS 9, you commented as well over the last calls about the tax reform. We've had the indication recently in my reading maybe it's more easygoing from the standpoint of adjustments given the time, but maybe in my reading, it would give more space for us to think in these extraordinary dividends that you've commented.

But I wanted you to comment first. What are the items, regulatory items that you have in mind, operational risk, IFRS 9? I think that an issue of the tax reform, but maybe can you qualify? And can you give us some expectation on what would be the impact of these items that you have approximately? So you, well, doing the math, what would be the dividend, extraordinary dividend in potential? Could you give us a number for the second semester?

Milton Maluhy Filho (CEO)

Thank you. It's a pleasure to see you, Gustavo. Thank you for the words. Well, let me give you an overview, in-depth overview on this issue. Well, from the end to the beginning, our expectation is that we should get to the end of the year with everything that we have in projections with the capacity of paying the extraordinary dividends.

That's our best expectation, to announce an extraordinary dividend, and we've been discussing this on the second semester, the moment of doing it, and the dimension. But for that, we need a few premises. Now, we are facing some relevant uncertainties, well-estimated, but these are uncertainties nonetheless. I think that on the positive side, the capital generation capacity is very solid, very strong with the profitability level that we have. We've been generating a capital that is organically generated, provisioning the dividends in a very robust way. This quarter wasn't different, and it's been this way through the quarters. Now, when we look ahead in this quarter, we've had the first event of the risk ponderator for the credit for the structured operations of the wholesale that had a big increase impact. The 34 basis points that we set, 19 basis points approximately, came from the ponderator impact.

The rest is just risk-weighted assets, the increase. So we've managed not only to finance the organic growth of the bank but also facing these adjustments and these ponderators. Second aspect is that looking ahead, what do we see in terms of uncertainties? We had expectations of the reform, the tax reform of the income. What is the tax reform point? You have a discussion. You had a discussion if you have interest over owned capital and how that compensates on the corporate tax aliquot. If you have a lower aliquot at the corporate level, you have to do, you know very well this process, you have to do an update, a reevaluation of your tax credit. So we had an expectation that, depending on the magnitude of the reevaluation, maybe it would cost us 60 basis for the bank. This is the number that we had with our projections.

The fact is that the reform of the income, it's probably the tax reform is not going to happen this year. This is a base scenario because we're focused on government, Congress, in doing the norms and defining the IVA reform and all the impact in the segments that, in and of itself, is a very complex reform to do. We don't foresee this discussion for this year. Now, for the next year, what are the impacts that we see? We see a discussion of the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book. This is Basel III. This is coming for the market as a whole, correct? I think that it's in the right direction.

I think that it's ever more clear that the most risk for the results in the institution is in the banking book, and we've seen this happening in several banks and in the United States as well. This is a regulation that is necessary. We are very comfortable with what we've seen thus far. We've done a risk management and adequate management, very adequate, of these books, so I don't foresee big impacts. We have a discussion of solo basis, which is to work at the capital at the individual level and not consolidate it in any defined economic groups in a conglomerate, higher potential. Therefore, this is a debate that is ongoing, and we need to define what is the type of impact. There is an impact of Basel risk, operational risk. So looking ahead, our estimate is 100 basis points for Itaú Unibanco for years.

Phase N starts next year, so 25 basis per year, four years. So we are very comfortable that, with our projections, we can absorb these 25 basis at the beginning of next year without any difficulties. There is a discussion of IFRS 9, all the norm, the law that was created, and I think that you know this is something that you should measure the impacts in the several institutions because, as you necessarily have to deduct all of your loss of credit in this FY, and then, for stock, you have three years to do the deductibility, the risk of a process such as this is that some institution is going to lock in liability of tax, and then you have a double effect.

First, you lose a denominator of the PDD, and then it becomes CTPF, the loss of tax reform, and then you reduce the base of the capital. There is a transition that is being broadly discussed in the Central Bank and government, but we do not know exactly what is going to be the outcome of this debate. So I think that we have to, by policy, be very cautious facing the uncertainties because events take place. There are several regulatory changes, so these are the main ones, the main changes that I see, but our capacity to generate capital has been very strong, which means that we continue to be comfortable, and we are capable of financing these impacts and finishing the year with a CET1 with the level of, and so we can make a decision for the extraordinary dividend that has been paid.

And I'd rather do some extraordinary dividends all throughout the year than rather do one-off, just once, and just do this with the tight capital. And we have a buffer in our risk appetite for the board. We're always going to discuss the convenience if it's 12, 11.5, and what is the size of capital that we've seen up ahead given our projections. The most important is if we can continue to allocate the capital for growing the bank organically and inorganically. We can bring a great return for the shareholders. This is our central objective, but we don't want to retain the capital above a certain level, so therefore, distributions are going to be done in that sense. I hope that I gave you a general overview of the issue. Thank you.

Gustavo Schroeder (Research Analyst)

Thank you for the answer, Milton.

Renato Lulia Jacob (Head of Investor Relations)

The next question, we have Mario Pierry from Bank of America. Hi, Mario. Welcome to the call.

Mario Pierry (Equity Research Analyst)

Good morning, everyone. Congratulations on the result. Thank you for the opportunity to ask the question. Milton, I wanted to explore more on the issues, the opportunities on the SMEs. We've discussed a lot of natural persons, but I wanted to see how you see the opportunities, the growth. You talked about the other projects. What is the process of implementation of the timing of the Atlas project, and how is this project helping you differentiate your service to the companies in a digital way?

Milton Maluhy Filho (CEO)

Thank you. Thank you, Mario. Thank you for the report and for your kind words. Now, this segment is super strategic for us, very relevant for us for many years. This is a segment that the bank has focused a lot.

We've had a lot of learnings in this segment, and we managed in a relevant way to deliver values for the clients of this segment and creating value based on our value proposition and based on the business model that is developed in the retail. We've grown two digits in this segment for many years. If you see the indicators, the credit indicators, absolutely controlled, behaving well without prospective concerns. Of course, there are more difficult cycles, better cycles for the credit, but the fact is that we can grow with a lot of engagement, with a lot of increase of relationship with the clients and growing the base and increasing the penetration in these clients. And important with the credit and the risk, well managed in our hands. We went through this process very well in the long term, and we are growing with a lot of quality.

So this is a value proposition that fitted very well with us, with a lot of training, human capital that is differentiated at the end, and always with an overview of the client, not product, with an overview of the relationship with the client in the long-term view. So we can always have and not just look at one quarter but looking at the long-term view. We integrated the network and Rede, and we were very well successful. Rede is not a business that we observe standalone. It starts to be a part of the value proposition of the segment, and once again, no overview of the product but with the client. And we are very happy with the integration and with all the benefits that that has brought with the operation. Atlas, which will be rebaptized, is the internal project. We have a name.

We are going to announce the new name of Atlas Project. It is a soft launch project, friends and family. We have a lot of projects, friends and family, but this is a family that's been growing. The feedbacks have been very positive thus far. We've learned a lot. We've evolved with the platform. We've applied technology, everything that is available in terms of technology, and we've grown with our clients and learned with them. Our overview is that for the second quarter, we will get the long-hanging fruits, and then we can share the concrete data with you. We are very happy with the advances, and we continue to believe in the success of Atlas and offering that is completely different, full digital, focusing really in the pains and needs of the clients, of what they really need to work with their business.

We are going to work with clients and publics that are different but companies that I see that have a value proposition and a solution that services their needs. We're very happy with the evolution. I would say second quarter, I'm going to give you more details. I hope to give you more details. In Itaú, we're going to discuss the evolution of Atlas and our expectations, but our business companies are growing very well, very healthy, and with a profitability much higher than the profitability of the bank. So it's a high-performance segment, very well managed all throughout the years.

Renato Lulia Jacob (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Mario. And now to the next question. We have Bernardo Guttmann from XP. Floor is yours.

Bernardo Guttmann (Research Analyst)

Thank you, Milton. Thank you, Alexsandro for the space to ask the question, and congratulations for the result. I have a question about profitability per segment.

Well, it seems that retail is going on a recovery trajectory that is very important, left an ROI of 17% for the first quarter of last year to 23% now. What can we think about the elements that brought in this recovery? How can you project these returns on investment looking up ahead? The bank seems to be adjusting very well to the cost of service, and it's a very assertive movement of the risk offering that the portfolio that Milton explored very well. And on the opposite side, when we look at wholesale, the ROI is still very high, 28%. When we look at the competition per operation, given the reduction in inventories and spread and capital markets, the scenario seems a bit more challenging. How can we think about this dynamic of the wholesale as well?

Milton Maluhy Filho (CEO)

Thank you, Bernardo. Thank you for the initial words.

Great to see you. Thank you for taking part in our call. Well, I remember a few quarters ago, it was a question about retail. I said that I wasn't happy with the profitability of the retail, not even the management, not even the CEO. At that moment in the past, we were doing a strong work of renewal of the value proposition, review of the business model. So we can get a profitability level that is more sustainable. We didn't want to go back to what we saw in the past. There are regulatory changes down the line.

It's a segment that grew more credit than the income of services, revenue of service, what brings the profitability, let's just say, to a lower threshold because the credit, in general, it brings a profitability level that is closer to the cost of capital but without foregoing the exploration and getting closer to the clients in relationship. Here, the retail, there are the individuals and the companies. I mean, the companies are growing. This is a business that is improving year-on-year, but where we had a big turnaround and it's still not done completely, but we've done a great part is in the individuals, the natural persons. I said that I wasn't happy with that business, but now our bottom was 16.5 that we delivered in the results of profitability of the individuals, and we got to 23 now.

There's still space for increasing this profitability, and there isn't a silver bullet. There are a series of initiatives. We changed the business model. We did all the review of Uniclass. We did the review of Personnalité, but we also did an in-depth review of our mono liners. We had, in fact, the important risking to do in this portfolio, specifically credit cards, vehicles, even with the loans that we had to do, and we've done very well. We did sanitization very well of the credit and the portfolio for this segment so we can work with better profitability levels. So there is value proposition, business model here, generation of top line, reduction of cost of credit, and with an operation that is more efficient. So this evolution is the one that we've observed, and we are very positive in regards to this evolution.

We tend to continue to advance in profitability. As I told you, we are not going back to the threshold, but we didn't get to the peak of profitability, and I think that we can wait for this in this business. We are very satisfied with the evolution, and we continue to have the retail working with a profitability that is close to the profitability of the bank. It was diluted for the royalties some short time ago, but now it's aligned with the ROI of the bank that is very positive, creating value in a consistent way and sustainable way. Wholesale, we had a small expansion in this quarter on the profitability, so we managed to operate with a strong profitability. This is a business, of course, credit is important. It has a very strong weight, but it goes beyond the credit and the balance sheet standalone.

Our capacity to work with the clients in the several businesses and several needs in the way that we say with Itaú BBA, it's from the D-day until the most important day, the day-to-day to the D-day of our clients. So we leave from a cash management that we have a share of cash that is very relevant of our bases of clients going through the cross-sale with several products, with investments and derivatives. There is a penetration of credits that is supporting the clients but with enormous capacity of working both in fixed income and variable income with the M&A market. We have a strong participation there. But remember that when we talk about profitability of the wholesale, I'm not talking about Itaú BBA.

I'm talking about Itaú BBA, all of our agenda of asset management, the individuals, all the business of investment that we have in the bank, the brokerage, the custody management. We are working with a profitability level that is very high with inefficiency. There are services. There is less leverage. Inefficiency is a bit higher, but we can deliver relevant returns when we compare to other players, the magnitude of our asset, the investment business, the relevance of our business, the private banking. With 30% of market share is contained in this profitability, and we've managed to gain markets month after month, day after day. We're very satisfied with the evolution of this business, and now we have a bank that is outside of Brazil. All of our operation, LATAM, also in this quarter had an ROI that is close to 14.9, close to 15.

It was 14.9, to be precise, showing that our LATAM operation also has managed to grow and increase the profitability. So it's true that we've seen a higher pressure in the market, the capital markets is very active in this first quarter. The positive side is that we are the main player, and we have the origination market share for the fixed income, the primary one. So this is relationship with the companies, this cross-sale, being closer to the client, delivering to the client the best solution and the best structure for financing at that time. We've worked with relevant projects as well, and I would say we are satisfied. The issue of more pressure and price gouging, let's just say, we have a mantra in the bank, and we use it very well. When we see an irrationality and it exists, we have two paths.

Either we lose market or we just try value. Our decision is to lose market in situations such as these, but we also understand that these are unsustainable in the long term. So when we see an anomaly in the pricing and the capital allocation vision and the return vision in certain segments, we take a step back in the sense that saying, "This is not sustainable. This is a poor capital allocation. It's diluted for the ROI." And when we look at our models of capital allocation, we always look with our cost of funding that is lower, our model for capital allocation with our efficiencies, tax efficiencies, and still these are operations.

When we realize that these are operations that destroy value and are much below the return on the cost of capital, then we decide to stay away and try to find more sophisticated and intelligent solutions for our client. But we don't get into that dispute. That's why I'm not worried about profitability. I think that the biggest driver for profitability on the medium-long term, and it has been a lever that is very positive for us, is the cost of credit. In this segment, we've been running much below to what was the pre-pandemic, and we've, for some years, had a cost of credit that is behaving well. There will be a normalization, and this normalization has been slow.

The most important thing is that in relevant cases of credit that we've seen in the market, we usually, with disciplined management of risk and concentration and allocation of capital, we've managed to do very well. I'm going to hit wood three times, but we're going to be we've found it very well through these moments. So the segment of medium and small companies, we start to realize there is a pressure here and there but absolutely something within what was expected, normalization, very slight one, and we haven't seen big events that we somehow are exposed. So I believe that wholesale, we see a good capacity to deliver value and good results up ahead. Competition is part of the game, and we are here on the long term and not just the next quarter.

Renato Lulia Jacob (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Milton. Next, Thiago Batista, UBS.

Milton Maluhy Filho (CEO)

Hello, Thiago.

Thiago Batista (Head of Br Research)

Hello, Renato, Milton, Broedel.

I have a question about how transformational can it be the One Itaú thing, and is this transformation what is the focus? Is efficiency having a better credit control? Is having access to a client that you didn't have before? What can transform the bank in One Itaú?

Milton Maluhy Filho (CEO)

Okay. Thank you, Thiago. Also, very nice to see you. Thank you for the words. I have a question for a question that wasn't asked before answering. That event that we launched in the non-recurring in the balance sheet of the selling of the participation of a company is the selling of Pismo, which is a company that we had 5.4% in participation, and that company was sold to Visa. We had a stake in that company. It generated a result for the bank of BRL 180 million in the last line.

But to keep our consistency in the recurrent non-recurrent, regardless of it being a positive result, we have the discipline of being positive or negative. We launch in the recurrent when it's non-recurrent. This is a classical case of a positive that we launch in the non-recurrent in the balance sheet of the bank and not the result that I would say recurrent. Otherwise, we mess the information, and you lose the capacity to understand what is operation and what is events. So just to give you that information for you and the market of that transaction that we're talking about. What I wanted to discuss with you about the Super App platform, I think that it's transformational. At least with this, we believe that this is the way that we're going to run the project.

I believe that first, there is a maximum mobilization of the entirety of the organization, the most priority, most important project of retail, sorry, that is, I mean, everybody is involved, CEOs, superintendents, coordinators, analysts. Everybody is involved and dedicated. This is a project that has to be done together. The coordination level is deep, but we are very happy with everything that we've done thus far. Our best expectation is that this is an evolution of the platform of which we had top quality, the best technology with indicators and KPIs of clients that are very solid, with digital experience that is incredible, and we can use a great deal of these components to leverage a platform that before depended on several products and systems.

So we couldn't break the monoliths and create the solutions into the product and in between the businesses because, really, the tech platform wouldn't allow for. So here, there are the confluences of two events, the digital transformation of the bank and the evolution and investments of everything that we've done with the which platform. Joining these two initiatives, we can get to the solution, which is the Super App, the Turbo App, which is a full bank offering for the clients. Well, I don't want to do any type of projection because, as any project, there is a risk for the execution. I mean, there are many challenges looking up ahead, but my expectation is that this will be transformational. Transformational for the experience of the client. It's not just this.

We have an accelerated program for digital transformation in the retail, improving the value offering, the offering of credit being improved in the context of journey. So there are several fronts, all the safety because safety is the experience of the client. We are certain that offering a safe offer for the client is generating value at the end. So we are working with a lot of focus in this. Our overview is that if we are making this work and we are very trusting that it will work, we will unlock, in fact, a very big value in individuals, in natural persons. And that means working with a generation that is strong of business, with clients that we have a relationship, but it's a very limited relationship. And we can do that at a cost of service that is better with UX and a value proposition that is better.

We're going to have to learn to generate cross-sale. We've made an effort all throughout the years to learn how to do businesses with platforms that are uniquely only digital, and we can service them for a public that is below the threshold of the waterline when you place in the cost of service in the equation. We're going to be more efficient, more digital first in this business, and the expectation is very high. We are working in the bank, and this can be transformational for the retail, and it can be a relevant growth lever for the future. You talk about the cost of credit. A great deal of these clients, we have a relationship. We know the behavior. We have appetite for credit, and it's not clients of low income.

When we talk about, "Oh, it's a platform which had an approach that was focused in the lower income and the younger product." This is a solution that goes through all the segments. Yes, it goes on the low income, and it can be a value proposition for us to service exclusively the clients in that way, but it goes on all segments. And the big advantage of this solution is that you can customize for the need of each client. So you don't have the one-size-fits-all. You're going to have a customization depending on the need. And we will be able to attack the medium and high income with the known behavior with clients that we know, and I can deliver the concessions that are very important in this share. So I believe that there is a lot of talk. It's not our style.

What we prefer is overdelivery, underpromise. I'm not overpromising, but we are very confident with the future, and I will give you more details when our time goes by.

Renato Lulia Jacob (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Milton. Next question, Brian Flores, Citi. Thank you for your presence.

Brian Flores (VP of Equity Research)

Hi, brother Milton, Renato. I wanted to talk about Latin America. On the one side, we are seeing a contribution with a size that is less, but on the other hand, the profitability is improving. So I wanted to ask you, what are the trends that should talk amongst themselves from now on? And what is the level of profitability that you are foreseeing for this operation in LATAM? Thank you.

Milton Maluhy Filho (CEO)

Thank you for the questions. And your accent shows the importance of looking outside of Brazil, not just talking about Brazil, right?

This is a very important agenda for us, the agenda of regional Latin America on the long term, and we've managed to perform in a very strong level in all the countries that we are present in. What happened is that on the year-on-year, there is a negative impact, which is the exit from Argentina, which impacts the numbers. This shows a smaller result in regards to the result. The result of Brazil is growing importantly. And I would say that Latin America now represents, ballpark, about 7% of the result of the conglomerate, but with 20% of the assets. Why? Because these are countries where the ROI is the results are lower, the profitability is lower. So you have a larger portfolio, but a representativeness in the last line smaller. What can I tell you? Well, first of all, Argentina.

It's misleading when we just look at the line of the top line, indeed, DRE of the balance sheet of the bank because it was positive in the generation of results. It reduced my cost of hedge for the capital index, so it brought a series of effects with the margin of the market, and it had a positive result. The problem of Argentina is that we had the CTA famous that was in the patrimony that all throughout the time, it accumulates the difference between the interest rates between Brazil and Argentina, and it had a negative number, and it reduced the patrimony of the bank. So Argentina had a positive effect in profitability and a better result when you looked at the ROI because it decreased the PL by the wrong reason. So when we looked at the shareholding, Argentina was a detractor of value of the bank.

So our vision of selling the operation, I think that the timing was very adequate. We saw other foreign banks leaving the operation thereafter. I think that the decision was correct and a consolidation for the local banks. What we kept in Argentina is an operation servicing the corporate clients for a very senior group of the bank, and even the CEO Juan that has been the leader of the operation of Argentina. He is leading all of that front, and we keep the relationship with the big economic groups in the region, bulking the offshore vehicle operation. The other countries, Uruguay and Paraguay, we've seen important growth with profitability that is very solid, growth of the business in the several countries.

Now, these are businesses that even though we have a great profitability and they grow, in the whole, they're less relevant given the continental dimension, geographic dimension of these countries, population of size, etc. In Chile, last year, we had very good years, and this is a year that we go back to operating to what Gabriel and myself, many years, we said that it was the profitability of expectation of profitability for Chile on the long term, which was an ROT of 16%. That's where Chile has been running on the local level when we did the adjustments here, taking into consideration the tax issue and the capital issue and the hedge of the index of capital. The profitability goes to a lower threshold.

But even so, Latin America is accretive and very close to the cost of capital, which generates value in the bottom line result, but it's a bit diluted in the ROI given our ROI. So we think that these countries are going to grow. The countries are reacting economically. There are opportunities, and Colombia has been the big challenge, whether it fits by micro factors. Micro factors. Our bank there is small-sized, so you cannot work with a subscale bank on the retail. We have an allocated team trying to do the best, doing the structure adjustment, working strongly in efficiency so we can have, within what is possible, the best possible operation given the contour local operation. So we're very positive in regards to the region. We've delivered the result. It's a very strong position.

Nonetheless, it will not represent more than 7%-8% of the results of the bank. And if we continue to expand in that speed, it will be that ballpark that we should observe, but this is a very solid result and quality result.

Renato Lulia Jacob (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Next question, Renato Meloni, Autonomous Research.

Milton Maluhy Filho (CEO)

Hi, Renato. Welcome.

Renato Meloni (Senior Analyst)

Thank you for the questions. Congratulations on the consistency of the results. Let's go back to the issue of growth in the individuals, natural persons' portfolio. I mean, you see the inflection point at the growth of the portfolio. With the industry, even with the quality of credit that is better, I wanted to. At this point, you're more likely than not to call the Tier 1s. Second question. Yet on the 29s.

And then third, on the senior bonds, other than potentially refinancing the 25s in the offshore market, I would assume that at this point, you don't have any relevant needs to issue senior bonds in dollars. But just to check your thinking regarding Tier 1s, Tier 2s, and senior bonds in dollars. Thanks.

Milton Maluhy Filho (CEO)

Perfect, Nicolas. Good to see you again. It's always good to have some fixed-income questions. Just to go through the three of them. For the first one, the answer is yes. We have the same approach for the Tier1s. I know it's callable with six months, and we're going to take the same approach that we did in the past one. We look a few metrics before making the decision. With the information we have today, the reset or to call this bond and to access the market would be much more expensive than simply don't exercise.

So we have an economic approach for the Tier 1. For the Teir 2, for the Tier 2, we don't have the 82, but the Tier 2, we see by the year-end, we didn't make the decision yet, either or not we're going to call that. But as you said, it's important to know that we have this five-year term that we go year by year losing the benefit of capital. So we do a lot of calculation here to make sure that we are optimizing in the best way our capital base, considering the price, and that you lose 20% per year in terms of capital benefit. On the senior bond, yes, you're right. We don't have any need to do or to tap the market with a senior bond.

Of course, we are always going to do that if we find out it's a good opportunity to access funding, but we have a lot of funding as well in the local market. Despite all of that, we always want to maintain some yield curve market in the offshore market. So whenever we have the opportunity, we try to keep some bonds outstanding. But the main decision that we make all the time is look to the bonds and see if the price, the yield, and what are the alternatives. We have a very strong level 3 Basel III indicator of liquidity. Our LCR, it's very, very strong at this moment. NSFR, it's very strong at this moment. So we don't have any liability issue, any big discussion. We'll be much more price-oriented than a liquidity need to put this way. So thank you again for the question.

Renato Lulia Jacob (Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Nicolas.

[Foreign language], Milton. [Foreign language]. Now, let's go to the last question of the call.

Yuri Fernandes (Equity Research Analyst)

Last but not least, Yuri Fernandes, JP Morgan. Thank you for the question.

Renato Lulia Jacob (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you for taking part.

Yuri Fernandes (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you, everyone. Congratulations on the consistency. I wanted to ask about deposits. It's very difficult to compare the dynamic. We end up calling these different numbers. So one thing might mean something for me and something for the other banks, but it's very good even adjusting for the exchange rate. Chile, it's a very good quarter, and you have great initiatives. I mean, high income. So I wanted to get from the conglomerate, where is the growth and funding coming from? Is it more corporate? I mean, there is a great DCM quarter. Is it more high income?

I wanted to understand in your franchise, what is helping in this performance versus the peers? And congratulations.

Milton Maluhy Filho (CEO)

Thank you, Yuri. It's great to see you. Well, the issue of deposits is there are several explanations. The deposit, in this quarter, we see a variation that is slightly positive year-over-year. We lose the basis, but it's important to qualify this deposit. The local deposit in REIs, we've grown and we've increased the penetration and engagement with our clients. Where we've seen higher volatility was relevant tickets of deposits in foreign currency because of the increase in the interest rates in the US. So these are clients that typically kept the deposit without remuneration or with a remuneration of the day-to-day, and they started to do their cash management, realizing that the interest rate naturally increased and that the cost of opportunity changed.

So here, we felt a volatility of great tickets, big corporate clients with concentrated volumes that ended up doing the deposit. So it migrates from the one lump sum, and it goes to the long term, and there is demigration. Another phenomenon that we realized with the deposits, specifically for treasury products, which is the risk-off that we observed in the market over the last few times. You remember the event of the retailer that impacted the credit industry and the funds, and we saw the movement given the interest rate for the titles that are exempted for letters and so on. So the advantage of being a full bank and working with all the products is that at a moment such as this of migration, we end up absorbing a great deal of these resources when they migrate from one strategy to the other.

This is the client overview that we have had evermore. So you have a consultant of investment that is looking at the client and is taking care of the relationship, and it doesn't matter if the product being offered is CDB or a fund. It's important that the client is being serviced given the context of the market and the profitability expectation of that portfolio. So there is a migration, yes, for treasury products that has an impact. We have worked with a high discipline of prices because we have cash and we have a liquidity level that is very high. I wouldn't say that these are big tickets of the you have to look at the prices that we've practiced.

We are pricing the prices that are fair given the liquidity moment of the bank, but where we managed to grow and penetrate more is in the capture of wholesale of retail, sorry, that they have the big private bank, the big fortunes, natural persons until the high income, medium income, which is where we have more relevant pockets for investment. So we've grown relevantly in the last quarter of last year. It was a very strong growth of capture, and we continue to see this dynamic. So this shows, first, is a correct product, correct price, experience naturally of investment, and the value proposition with a consultancy of investments and the managers are working strongly in this capture.

So I believe that this coordination has worked very well, and we have over 100% of our portfolio of retail financed with deposits of retail itself, which shows that we've managed to naturally have a ratio in the deposit and assets very strongly, and this brings longevity, brings engagement, has a long-term relationship, and we are very happy with the advancement and still lots to do. Nobody is comfortable here with what was done thus far.

Renato Lulia Jacob (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Thank you, Milton. Thank you, Yuri. Last question, and then we can close our session of Q&A, and also we close, Milton and Broedel, thank you for the participation, our video conference of the results of the first quarter of 2024. Before giving the floor to Milton, I would like to reinforce once again the invitation to Itaú Day on June 19th.

You can enroll, and you can submit the questions for Itaú Day. Enrollment is open. You can take part in this day. As Milton said, we're going to bring more details of what is behind the bank. With that, Milton, I will give the floor to you so you can close our call.

Milton Maluhy Filho (CEO)

Thank you. Well, once again, I would like to finish thanking once again all of you. Thank you for the participation. Reinforce the invitation, Renato. Thank you for Renato, Broedel, and another quarter. We're very happy with the results.

We are growing 20% year-on-year, bottom line growing 15%, profitability very solid, but more than that is that behind these numbers, there is an enormous volume of business, of relationships being developed and improved, and 100,000 YouTubers that are in love for what they do, and they make us deliver this value for you, for our shareholders, for our clients, for our community. This is our long-term overview. We are celebrating the 100-year anniversary, but we're thinking about the next 100 years. I would like to thank you for the support. The feedback is always well-seen. The past performance is not a guarantee of the future performance. We are going to do the by the tournament in the bank to deliver the best bank possible, to deliver the best bank for the society and the community.

I leave you with my respect and my words of solidarity to the entirety of Rio Grande do Sul, and thank you to all the collaborators for everything that we built together all through all these years. With that, I close. We will see you soon, the New York conference next week. We will certainly meet several of you personally, so we will see you in the next conference or in next week's conference. Thank you very much.