Banco Santander - Q1 2024

Transcript

Héctor Grisi Checa (CEO)

A global approach to technology has allowed us to capture EUR 50 million in additional savings in Q1, for a total of EUR 237 million since 2022. This has been mainly driven by the deployment of Gravity, by new global agreements with vendors, and process optimization in operations and implementation of the new IT and Ops shared services. A business group-wide review shows that our common operating model supports value creation based on profitable growth, from the creation of a best-in-class customer experience and operational leverage from our global platforms and common tech. This is helping us to accelerate the achievement of our Investor Day targets. This operational leverage is already very evident in our retail and consumer businesses, where the efficiency ratios improved close to 400 basis points and 200 basis points year-on-year, respectively.

In CIB, we are building a world-class business, leveraging our areas of expertise to grow our U.S. franchise without changing the risk profile, proof of which is the revenue which grew 5% and reached another quarterly record supported by the good performance in the U.S. and strong client flows. Wealth continued to grow strongly, improving both efficiency and profitability. And finally, in payments, where we are managing more than 100 million cards group-wide, we are seeing good activity trends. In Q1 2023, we had a one-time revenue from a commercial agreement with one of our partners in Brazil. Excluding this impact, revenue grew 7% and efficiency remained flat year-on-year despite our investments in deploying our global platforms. Now, let's look at each business in greater detail. First, our goal in retail is to become the number one bank for our customers, which is key to our strategy.

At the same time, our retail business is a great example that demonstrates the benefits we are generating from One Transformation, as operational leverage has significantly improved the efficiency ratio. First, we continue to innovate to offer the best customer experience. For example, in Spain, our new digital onboarding is contributing to a 630,000 increase in net new customers year-on-year, while Santander Key already enables more than 4 million customers to approve transactions securely with a single click using biometrics. Second, we continue to implement a common operating model across our banks, increasing automation to free up time for our people to focus on commercial activities. As a result, the dedication of resources to non-commercial activities has dropped by 4% in the last nine months.

Third, the deployment of our own global platform continued in Q1, and Gravity is already operational in Spain, the U.K., Chile, and the U.S. From a financial perspective, this is also a great moment for retail. We are managing margins very carefully to make the most of the tailwinds from higher for longer interest rates in Europe, and at the same time benefit from our negative sensitivity to interest rates in South America, on top of the strong operational leverage that we are obtaining from One Transformation. As a result, our profit grew 22% year-on-year, with the following three things to highlight. First, double-digit revenue increase driven by good performance both in NII and fees, with all the regions growing year-on-year, especially Europe and South America.

Second, cost under control, flat in real terms, as the benefits from our transformation in some units are offsetting the impact of inflation on salaries and investments. Third, provisions dropping slightly, with cost of risk fairly stable at the comfortable levels across all the group. The execution of the strategy is driving profitability improvements, with ROTE increasing 3 points to 17.6%. In consumer, we are working to become the partner of choice for our customers. We offer best-in-class global solutions which are integrated to our partners' processes. Last year, we launched a new digital onboarding to pure direct auto players, which has been received well because it allows our customers to complete their vehicle acquisition and financing fully online. We're also progressing well on simplification and automation, supporting a 15 basis points decline on our cost-to-total volumes ratio.

Deploying global platforms is key to scaling our business, reducing cost to serve and improving profitability. We recently announced the launch of Openbank in North America this year, which will result in having a national deposit gathering platform for the U.S. Consumer is also delivering operational leverage, with net operating income growing by 7% year-on-year driven by the following three elements. First, an increase in revenue due to positive commercial dynamics with volume growth, mainly in Europe and Brazil, good NII performance, and 22% fee growth, mainly from insurance. Second, costs dropped 4% in real terms as a result of the execution of our strategy and the efficiency plans we implemented last year in a more complex interest rate environment.

Third, provisions increased year-on-year, mainly due to the expected cost of risk normalization in the business both in Europe and the U.S., though still below the historical averages, as well as some impact from volumes and regulation. Last year, we started to prioritize profitability over volumes, so we are originating at high RORWAs. The increase of volumes and good profitability levels of the new business makes us confident that profit will be growing close to double-digit year-on-year by the end of 2024, even after the normalization we expect on provisions. As you can see, we are building a world-class CIB business to help our clients that leverages our strengths to grow profit, while maintaining at the same time the same risk profile and is well under control.

We are deepening our client relationships and increasing our capabilities in the U.S., building on areas of expertise to accelerate growth across all regions. We had a good start of the year, and we have a very strong pipeline, with markets also performing strongly across the asset classes. As a result, revenue in CIB in the U.S. grew 35% year-on-year. Also, we continued expanding and strengthening our centers of expertise, including key industry groups such as energy transition, healthcare, among others, and product teams such as M&A and ECM. At the same time, active capital management continued to support greater origination and high profitability levels. Our business through CIB is capitalized, very much linked to customers, and with fees growing at a good pace year-on-year.

CIB had a good result in Q1, with revenue up 5% year-on-year, even after the record in Q1 in 2023, making Q1 2024 the best quarter ever for the business. Almost all of our growth came from customer flows and was mainly supported by strong performances in global markets and global banking, both in global debt finance and corporate finance. Additionally, we're investing to expand our business to drive additional efficiency gains and further improve our profitability. As for wealth management and insurance, we continue our journey to build the best private banking and insurance manager in both Europe and the Americas. First, in Q1, Euromoney once again named us the best private bank in LATAM and the best international private bank in eight countries. Second, a major driver for growth is wealth, is collaboration with other businesses, especially retail and CIB, by capturing network benefits.

Third, we are developing global platforms across the three businesses while we digitalize our distribution and advisory capabilities to improve customer experience and promote growth. One example is the development of a global investment platform which we began in Q1 and will enable our clients to manage any kind of investment across all countries. In summary, customer experience, efficiency, and time-to-market improvements are accelerating growth, helping us to maintain our high profitability levels. Attributable profit grew double-digit on the back of strong private banking activity in a favorable interest rate environment, with a total fee contribution from Santander Asset Management and insurance growing at or close to double-digit, while cost remained fairly stable in real terms. As a result, efficiency improved 4 points year-on-year and ROTA rose 9 points to 80%. Finally, payments.

We have a unique position as we are on both sides of the value chain: issuing, where we manage more than 100 million cards group-wide, and merchant acquiring. We are gaining market share as we strengthen Getnet's value proposition for customers through continued product development and a greater offering of value-added services. Growth of active merchants has been particularly strong in countries where Getnet has been mostly rolled out, such as Chile, Spain, or Portugal. We continue to migrate significant volumes of payments to the PagoNxt global platform to leverage on the group's scale. Around 1 billion annualized transactions are already running through the new global platform, and we expect to double this volume by the end of the year. Also, we have started to deploy Plard, our global cards platform.

We have more than 45,000 debit cards managed already in Plard, and we're starting the migration of the debit portfolio with 1.5 million cards in dual-run in Brazil, and we have launched a friends-and-family pilot in Chile. From a financial performance perspective, payments delivered a strong quarter, with good underlying revenue trends in both businesses, which combined with a positive performance of provisioning cards drove 22% year-on-year profit growth. Finally, PagoNxt EBITDA margin reached 17%, showing good progress towards reaching our 30% target by 2025, which we set at our last Investor Day. Cost efficiency and CapEx optimization will continue to drive profitability in the coming quarters. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, the result of our strategy and our strong first quarter is aligned with our new phase of our shareholder value creation.

Q1 has led to outstanding profitability growth and double-digit shareholder value creation for the fourth consecutive quarter. As I mentioned earlier, ROTA was 16.2% if we analyze the Spanish bank levy, up 93 basis points year-on-year, reflecting the high levels of new business profitability. Earnings per share rose to $0.17, up 14% year-on-year, supported by strong profit generation and a lower number of shares following the buyback programs we have and are still executing. Finally, in the quarter, we delivered 14% growth in shareholder value creation, reflecting our disciplined capital allocation and the impact of the share buybacks. Buybacks continue to be one of the most effective ways to generate value for our shareholders.

If we include in full the share buyback that is currently underway, we will have bought back around 11% of our outstanding shares in the last three years, providing a return of investment of approximately 19% to our shareholders. I'll leave you now with José, our CFO, to go through more detail on our quarterly financial performance. Please, José.

José García-Cantera (Senior EVP)

Thank you, Héctor, and good morning, everyone. I'll go into more detail on the group's P&L and capital performance, but let me first remember that we are presenting growth rates both in current and constant euros, and also that the full impact of the Argentine peso devaluation last December for the whole year was accounted for in the fourth quarter, which introduces some distortions quarter-on-quarter. Let me also, as Héctor has mentioned, highlight that we are presenting constant—what we present here as constant is constant.

That means local currency for all countries, but Argentina. Argentina is in current. By doing that, we try to avoid the impact of hyperinflation. But also, by doing this, we are lowering the growth rates that show as constant. For instance, net profit, instead of growing 9% with Argentina in constant, is growing 13%. NII is growing 20% instead of 16%. Fees would be up 8% instead of 5%, or total revenue would be increasing 12% instead of 9%. So, you know, we are trying to be transparent and trying to show the underlying performance of our business without taking into account the impacts of hyperinflation in Argentina. But let me go through the main components of the P&L, as Héctor said, we are reporting exceptional results for the first quarter.

We are starting to see the benefits of our transformation programs in terms of operating leverage in retail and consumer, and obviously the very positive momentum we are experiencing in both Europe and Latin America at the same time. Revenue grew 10%, actually 12% if we only look at customer revenue, supported by a strong NII, highest quarterly fee income in our history, while costs were fairly stable for the third quarter in a row. Net operating income grew 11% year-on-year. Cost of risk remained fairly stable, supported by strong labor markets and risk management. Provisions increased slightly due to the expected normalization in some countries, but we see no asset quality pressures anywhere.

Additionally, we had a higher impact from taxes year-on-year, driven mainly by a stronger performance in Brazil, where we have a higher effective tax rate than the group average, and also the fact that the temporary levy in Spain is not tax deductible from the corporate tax level. The full impact of this tax levy in Spain is accounted for in the first quarter and is 50% higher than last year. As you can see on the right-hand side, excluding this impact, profit would have increased 14% year-on-year, or 9% quarter-on-quarter, and Q1 would have been another record high. Let me break down the P&L. Starting with revenue, there was a strong growth driven by customer revenue again this quarter, which made up more than 95% of our total revenue and explained almost all of the growth in the quarter.

Year-on-year, revenue increased 9%, with all businesses and regions contributing. This growth was primarily supported by our retail business, which is growing at double-digit rates, with good performance in net interest income and fees across regions, and consumer driven by our good profitability levels in new businesses and strong volume growth in Europe and Latin America. CIB also had a great performance, as revenue reached an all-time high in the quarter, backed by outstanding performance in the U.S. We also delivered double-digit revenue growth in wealth, driven by solid commercial activity in private banking and in asset management. Payments is also showing very good underlying trends year-on-year, as both PagoNxt and cards are growing if we exclude the one-time positive impact recorded in Brazil in the first quarter of last year, as Héctor has explained.

Finally, at the corporate center, high liquidity buffer remuneration was compensated by the negative impact of FX hedging. Most of our revenue growth came from NII, which continued growing in the quarter, particularly in retail and consumer, representing 8%-2% of Group's NII. It went up 16% year-on-year on the back of active price management in retail in Europe, especially deposits, and also in Mexico, and the benefits from the negative sensitivity to rates in South America, both in retail and consumer, and the fact that now forward rate curves in Europe are a bit higher. In terms of profitability, we have improved net interest margin year-on-year, even if we exclude Argentina. This was mainly explained by higher yields on assets, as we actively manage credit spreads to take the most out of the interest rate environment.

These gains from credit yields more than outweighed higher funding costs, which we were able to contain thanks to our disciplined deposit remuneration in Europe and deposit repricing downwards in Brazil, leading to a notable margin expansion. The only country where we saw a slight increase in betas in the quarter was the U.K.. Going forward, we expect the positive momentum in Europe to continue. We expect to benefit from the interest rate cuts in South America, and we expect an improvement in our consumer business throughout the year, boosted by high profitability levels of the new origination. As a result, very good NII outlook for the year.

In the context of low fee income growth in general, because of subdued loan demand and weaker consumer activity, we generated record net fee income of $3.2 billion in the quarter, even if we exclude Argentina, growing strongly quarter-on-quarter despite the strong seasonality in payments in the fourth quarter. We also delivered solid growth year-on-year, supported by most of our businesses, with retail growing 9%, driven mostly by higher activity in Brazil, outstanding performance in consumer, fueled by insurance, CIB also growing from very high levels in the first quarter of last year, especially in the U.S., on the back of our strong dynamics in DCM and customer-related markets activity. Wealth also had a great performance, particularly in private banking, higher volumes in asset management, and protection businesses' business performance in insurance.

Payments were impacted by the usual seasonality from Christmas and Black Friday in the fourth quarter, and the aforementioned one-time positive fee recorded in the first quarter of 2023 in Brazil. In terms of efficiency, significant improvement in our ratio to 42.6%, which remains among the best in the sector. As we have already mentioned, structural savings from our transformation are already becoming evident in terms of operational leverage, especially in retail and consumer, as costs remain stable at around $6.5 billion for the last three, four quarters. Average inflation continued its gradual decline across our footprint, dropping from 12% a year ago to 4% in the fourth quarter, and we were able to maintain costs fairly flat in the year in terms of real terms, despite the lagged effects of higher inflation on salaries and other costs on our investments in transformation.

By business, costs remain well under control in retail, consumer, and wealth, which represent 75% of our total cost base. However, total costs rose 5%, reflecting our strategy to reinforce our CIB franchise and develop global payments platforms. We expect structural operational leverage from our new operating model to become even more evident in the coming quarters and years. Credit quality, as I have mentioned, no signs of any pressure in terms of high quality credit quality, which remained robust, with cost of risk fairly flat in the quarter across our footprint, in line with our expectations. By global business, credit quality remained stable at low levels in the quarter in retail, which represents 50% of the group's loan loss provisions, with some underlying trends across the different countries.

Cost of risk improved in Spain, remained at very low levels in the U.K., while Mexico continued to normalize in line with expectations. In consumer, which represents around 36% of group's loan loss provisions, cost of risk normalized to 2.12%, also in line with our expectations, but still below the historical average, both in DCB Europe and in the U.S., which is still five percentage points below 2016 levels. Going forward, we are confident that our cost of risk will remain around 1.2% in 2024, as trends in consumer and Mexico towards more normalized levels are expected to be offset by better performance in retail, especially in Brazil, improving mostly in the second half of the year. Spain will be stable, and in the U.K., that will also remain at very low levels.

Closing with capital, our fully loaded capital ratio remained at a very comfortable level of 12.3%, backed by strong capital generation and significant risk-weighted asset mobilization. This quarter, we generated 32 basis points organically, after having absorbed 5 basis points due to the temporary levy in Spain and an increase in risk-weighted asset density related to a change in mix. We recorded 22 basis points charged for shareholders' remuneration, in line with our 50% payout. There are also 24 basis points from regulatory charges, related to the maturity measure of CIB models, which is expected to be temporary and revert next year with the implementation of Basel III. Finally, there was a 14 basis point positive impact, mainly related to intangibles and the valuation of available-for-sale portfolios. We continue to deploy capital to the most profitable growth opportunities and expand our asset mobilization capabilities to maximize capital productivity.

Our disciplined capital allocation is resulting in a new book, Return on Risk-Weighted Assets, of 2.8% in the quarter, well above that of our backbook, and higher than last year's. We created a centralized asset management desk with the aim of optimizing capital deployment. Last year, we disposed of an amount of capital risk equivalent to $30 billion in risk-weighted assets, at a cost of capital of around half of that of the new origination. Our target this year is to do even more. That's all from my side, Héctor. Over to you.

Héctor Grisi Checa (CEO)

Thank you, José. First of all, a quick reminder. We continue to make good progress towards the targets we set for 2025. Thanks to our unique business model and the execution of the strategy, with first, a strong and increasing organic capital generation and execution of our capital allocation plans. Second, we continued improving our profitability.

Investor Day target, just to remember you, was 15%-17% ROTE. By growing both profit and profitability sustainably, we have been able to deliver 14% value creation. A summary to finish off. Q1 2024 was another strong quarter, supported by a recurrent customer revenue growing high single-digit, backed by strong performance in all our businesses and regions. Our structural change to a simpler and more integrated model is driving efficient improvement and profitable growth, which is essentially evident in retail and consumer. Our rock-solid balance sheet and robust credit quality are contributing to growth and double-digit shareholder value creation. This is very strong Q1 2024. We are confident that we will achieve our 2024 targets, as well as those we gave on our Investor Day in 2025.

Supported by, first of all, it's important to acknowledge that it's supported by our global businesses that we continue executing on One Transformation. From a revenue perspective, we expect good NII performance in the year. This is based on, first, the positive momentum in Europe, which will continue at least another quarter. Second, enjoying the benefits from the interest rate cuts in South America. And third, the significant improvements in consumer boosted by the high new business profitability. The benefits of the operational leverage from One Transformation program are expected to become even more evident during the rest of the year and well into 2025. Cost of risk is expected to be contained and in line with our expectations in a context of strong labor markets.

As we deploy capital to the most profitable growth opportunities, the group's ROTE improved from 16.2% in Q1 2024, and we expect it to remain at 16% in line with our targets for 2024. All in all, our TNAV plus cash dividend is growing double digit, well on track to meet our target through the cycle. And now we would be happy to take your questions. Thank you.

Begoña Morenés (Global Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Héctor, and thank you, José. We can start the Q&A session now.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star five on your telephone. We already have the first question from the line of Francisco Riquel from Alantra. Please go ahead.

Francisco Riquel (Head of Equity Research)

Yes, thank you for taking my questions. First is on NII in Spain, which has surprised positively, and we have seen local peers raising guidance.

Andrea Filtri (Co-Head of Equity Research and Senior Equity Analyst)

So I wonder if you can update your guidance for 2024 and detail the main assumptions behind it, and then how big a cliff shall we expect in 2025 with the current yield curve. Also connected to this, the NII in the corporate center, because the Spanish liquidity, I understand, is remunerated here, so you can provide any comment to better assess the combined NII performance of Spain and the corporate center. And my second question is on capital after the 20 basis points from loaded in first quarter for Basel IV. You mentioned in the past 30 basis points left for January 1, 2025, so meaning that you are already in line with the 12% pro forma post Basel IV.

I wonder if you can update on this Basel IV regulatory impacts and other headwinds that we should expect, and where do you see your CET1 target in the context also of potential countercyclical buffers? Thank you.

Héctor Grisi Checa (CEO)

Thank you, Francisco. Let me explain exactly how do we see NII basically going in Spain. First of all, I mean, we see really good trends, as you can see in retail, due to the fact that we have really good growth in clients. I basically talk about 630,000 net new clients in just one year. The trend continues basically very positive during the first quarter as well, which we can basically have been able to add 130,000 new clients. It's important to say, and as I commented, that we see this continued trend also on the interest rates towards the second quarter to continue to go.

All the different businesses basically are doing quite well, as you can see. I mean, CIB is also performing quite well, and the commercial business too. That will basically give you the idea that we expect to have a very strong 2024 all along in NII in Spain. In terms of the corporate center of what we see there and capital, I will ask basically José to give you the details.

José García-Cantera (Senior EVP)

Thank you, Héctor. Let me complement Héctor's comments. With the current forward rates, as Héctor said, we see NII still up in the second quarter, basically flat in the third, and a bit down in the fourth. This would lead to NII in Spain, year-on-year, up low single digits. Remember that we expected NII in Spain to drop a bit year-on-year in 2024 relative to 2023.

With the current level of interest rates and forward rates, we see actually NII up in Spain year-on-year. In the corporate center, the first quarter is a bit abnormal because we increase the hedging. We always try to hedge at the beginning of the year based on our expectations for the different currencies. So I would expect the NII in the corporate center to gradually perform better as future FX charges might be lower. Capital, Basel III. Let me make a general comment before I go into Basel III. There are a few elements, well, several elements of uncertainty to European banks' capital and capital requirements in the coming quarters. The first is the U.S. has stated that they will not implement FRTB for the time being, and that they will analyze the proposed Basel III rules to avoid having any unexpected impacts.

It is therefore very likely that both the FRTB and the Basel III rules in the U.S. will be quite different from the initial proposals. Europe needs to react to this because this will put European banks at a profound competitive disadvantage. It is not unlikely, though, that the Commission will make use of its delegated act to postpone the implementation of FRTB beyond January 1, 2025. However, we don't think CRR is going to change. In addition, the EBA needs to publish 140 technical papers to interpret the new directive, capital directive. The EBA mandate is that in aggregate, the impact of all these papers must be neutral, but that doesn't guarantee that everyone and all these papers will be neutral themselves. This is the case, for instance, in the paper presented for consultation on advanced operational risk model calculation.

So all in all, with the information we have today, we maintain our estimates for a very low day one impact of Basel III. So on January 1, the impact will be very low, 0-20 basis points, and the fully loaded impact of between 30-50 basis points, as we had commented before. So all in all, we would expect to be above 12% fully loaded and facing once Basel III comes into effect. Countercyclical buffers. If in Spain, countercyclical in Spain, we have approximately 25% of our risk-weighted assets for the group. So any countercyclical buffer will have a quarter of that amount impact on capital for the group. So if it's 50, it will be 12 basis points. If it's 100 basis points, it will be 25 basis points.

Remember, however, that from the time countercyclical buffers are announced to the time they're implemented, there is a one-year lag. So any announcement will not impact capital requirements for a year. It most likely will not impact 2025 capital requirements, or they might impact year-end capital requirements in 2025, but not 2024.

Begoña Morenés (Global Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Can we have the next question, please?

Operator (participant)

Question from Ignacio Ulargui from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Ignacio Ulargui (Research Analyst)

Hi, good morning. Good morning, everyone. And thanks for taking my questions. I have two, if I may. The first one is on fee. Fee generation in the quarter was quite good. We're looking to the coming quarters. What should we expect? Should we expect an acceleration of growth driven by the good performance of CIB and wealth management and insurance?

Linked to this, I just wanted to see if there was any kind of one-off in the fees reported in the U.S., which it jumped a lot, quarter-on-quarter. The second question is a bit linked to the capital debate. And I just wanted to better understand what is the organic generation that you expect. I mean, as profitability improves, I feel that the 10-15 bps starts to be a bit low, and you could probably generate a bit more, or you would devote that to additional growth of RWAs. Thank you.

Héctor Grisi Checa (CEO)

Thank you, Ignacio. Okay, in terms of fee generation, okay, we have, as you can see, I mean, a strong Q1, 14% quarter-on-quarter. That's an 18% quarter-on-quarter growth in retail.

Retail represents basically half of the quarterly growth, and it's basically solid commercial activity in all the regions, and it's continued to do so, okay? You talk about the outstanding performance in CIB. That's 39% quarter-on-quarter. That's record revenue. This is basically what we've been doing in global transactional banking, and there is no one-offs whatsoever in all the banks and in the U.S. It's basically business as usual and client flow from our clients, okay? In wealth, we have also very strong recurring activity. In private banking, also, we have higher volumes in asset management. And as well in the insurance business, we see a very good trend. And probably we see a very good trend coming from Brazil towards the end of the year that could help us out, okay? Consumer growth came mainly from Europe, okay?

Volumes grew, and also the insurance fees recovered in Europe, and that shall help us as well. For 2024, we expect the trend to continue. As I told you, the fees are growing to reach mid- to high single-digit. This is not an official target, but I can tell you that this is the trend that we see. This is mostly driven by the increase in CIB with the connectivity we have with wealth and payments and the growth in customer transactionality. And most of the global businesses will experience double-digit fee growth in 2024 as we change the business model and we concentrate on the principal activity of the account. It's very important that you understand what the model change is about. The model change is exactly about that.

When I was talking about to become the number one bank to our clients, this goes more to transactionality and fees than RWA consumption, as we used to do in the past, okay? So this is the basic change that we're executing today. So you're going to see a much better trend towards that and a more disciplined part on the allocation of RWAs. With that, then I'll leave the capital question to José.

José García-Cantera (Senior EVP)

Thank you. Hello, Nacho. Our organic capital generation post-dividends is around 15 basis points per quarter. We think we can keep risk-weighted assets fairly flat throughout the year, very, very low risk-weighted asset consumption because of the asset rotation initiatives that I mentioned. So we should be able to have available for capital growth or regulatory headwinds 15 per quarter the next three quarters.

We still expect 20-30 basis points of additional regulatory requirements and some positive contributions for intangibles and intangible management. So net-net, with all of that, I, you know, we still see 1 capital ratio by year-end.

Begoña Morenés (Global Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Can we have the next question, please?

Operator (participant)

Next question from Álvaro Serrano from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Álvaro Serrano (Stock Analyst)

Hi, good morning. I've got kind of a couple of follow-up questions. Héctor, you gave details on the fee performance. I just want to circle back to it to U.S. again and Brazil. In the U.S., so is this? I noticed you said there's no one-offs, but is this the run rate we should expect going forward? How's the pipeline looking? I realize there's no one-offs, but there may be seasonality. And can you repeat? You mentioned in Brazil, there was a renegotiation in PagoNxt.

I suspect that's why the fees are a bit lower, but if you could repeat that. And then the second question on NII. Thanks for your comments on Spain. Could I invite you to comment on Brazil and U.K.? Brazil, obviously, very, very strong. Sounds like above the guidance you gave. What do you expect for the four years? Can it continue as strong? And on U.K., just when you think it can bottom? Thank you.

Héctor Grisi Checa (CEO)

Thank you, Álvaro. Yes, I explained to you the performance in the U.S. is quite good. And look, we have a very strong pipeline. And if the markets are there and we're able to execute everything that we have, I think we will have a very good trend. But as you know, that will all depend, I mean, how the market basically goes.

But what I can tell you is that the market is basically helping us out in that sense, and we will continue the trend if the markets helps us. I'm sorry to repeat myself. In what we're looking at in Brazil is exactly as you were saying. I mean, we had a one-off in payments that we had on the first quarter last year, which is not going to repeat itself. It was a big one, EUR 95 million. So that basically slowed us a little bit. But I see the trend quite well in the sense that I see payments growing nice. And I also see that retail is helping us out also in the growth.

And what I saw towards the end of the year, we see that if we continue that trend, that should help as well in insurance, in retail, so that will help us as well. Okay? So I see pretty good trends in that sense, and the trends that will continue to be strong. In terms of NII in Spain, Brazil, and the U.K., I could tell you that the indications we gave at the beginning is that with if the rates continue the way they are, this is going to give us a—I mean, first of all, see the volume growth that we're having in Brazil. So it's important to understand. And the volume growth is coming from payments and from retail, mainly.

NII in Spain, already José gave you a very good explanation, but I will allow José to go deep into that detail on that one. In terms of the U.K., let me go real fast to tell you what the trend is. I mean, as you have been seeing, the U.K., basically, will behave the same as our competitors are behaving, okay? The business, as you know, is very focused on retail. It's our core business. And we continue to try to improve their offering and the user experience. And we also are gradually continuing to grow and invest in the corporate segment and wealth to try to diversify away from retail, okay? NII down 4.4% in the quarter, similar as just as I said to the other U.K. banks. And all the big ones have the similar trends across, but we're taking actions to improve the NII.

We're doing pricing changes. We announced both deposits and lendings in the first quarter. We're all trying to adjust the betas and to manage them in a much better way. Asset mortgage spreads also are improving in the U.K. market, so that shall help us towards the next quarter. It wouldn't be as negative as we expected in the beginning of the year. Then we are also executing cost control efforts to help us on that. That is basically the main part that you're going to see in the U.K.. The cost of risk is basically very well, I mean, under control, and we expect it to be very much there. With that, I'll ask José to basically give you more details in terms of Spain and Brazil NII.

José García-Cantera (Senior EVP)

Yeah, so in Brazil, NII should gradually accelerate towards the second half of the year.

That means that year-on-year, we should see mid to high double digits, tens, not double digits, tens growth in NII. And in the U.K., the performance for the rest of the year should be similar than the one we saw in the first quarter. We've As Héctor said, we've seen a pickup in volumes. Margins, customer margins were flat quarter-on-quarter. So year-on-year, for the full year, you know NII down a little bit, mid single digits, something like that. With all of these estimates, we believe NII for the group should grow quarter-on-quarter this year. So sequentially, we should see higher NII every quarter this year. And year-on-year, customer revenue, we've talked about fees and the strong performance in fees. So year-on-year, customer revenue should be very close to double digit in 2024 relative to 2023. Thanks.

Begoña Morenés (Global Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you both. Can we have the next question, please?

Operator (participant)

Next question from Ignacio Cerezo from UBS. Please go ahead.

Ignacio Cerezo (Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions there too, both on the U.S. I don't think I have seen the slide you used to have in last quarter around the kind of aspirational 15% ROTE target in the U.S. So if you can kind of update us basically on how quickly you think you can get to that number and what the main drivers and the main initiatives I've seen Open Banking launch in the U.S. recently. So just a little bit of color basically on how quickly you can get to that. And the second one is on the asset quality in the U.S. I mean, you used to give some information around PDs, charge-offs in the past as well.

I don't think I've seen those actually, so forgive me if I've missed them. But if you can give us a little bit of underlying color of how the U.S. asset quality, delinquencies on the auto businesses are developing from here. Thank you.

Héctor Grisi Checa (CEO)

Thank you, Ignacio. Okay, in terms of the U.S., a particular thing is, first of all, I mean, as you know, we've been investing quite heavily on that market basically to concentrate ourselves in the most important businesses, which is consumer on one side, okay? Which is the business that we have at scale. We have also expended a little money on the CIB side to beef up our presence there.

And we're also investing to become domestic our private banking and wealth management capabilities to do it in a domestic way due to the fact that today we are just basically for non-U.S. clients, okay? So those are the things that we're investing in the U.S. to take it to a 15% ROTE. And we I believe it's going to be more towards the end of 2025 that we're going to be able to get there. But still, we're working really hard in order to be able to complete that. In terms of the asset quality on the U.S., let me explain just exactly how the trend is. First of all, we still see a strong labor market in the U.S., okay? And the behavior of the portfolio continues to do very well.

What has been happening is that we continue to see the trends in delinquencies above 90 days behave much better than pre-COVID. That, remember, pre-COVID was about 90%. We went all the way down to 59%. Today is more around close to in between mid-60s, okay? And it continues to be like that. So as you can see, our cost of risk in the U.S. has been pretty stable around the same levels. And we expect it to continue to be like that towards the end of the year. We don't see any surprises in the way that the portfolio has behaved, okay? So circa around 2%. That's where I see it. And now, what we have done also is very much focused on profitability. We're being very strong on capital allocation. And we see that the origination that is coming through is quite good.

Also, we are focusing on credit quality. The mix of the portfolio continues to sustain itself in around 40% prime and near prime, okay? So you see the portfolio very stable and in that level. Thank you.

Begoña Morenés (Global Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Héctor. Can we have the next question, please?

Operator (participant)

Next question from Carlos Peixoto from CaixaBank BPI. Please go ahead.

Carlos Peixoto (Senior Equity Analyst)

Yes, hi, good morning. So the first question would actually be on the U.S., on the outlook for NII. How do you see it evolving throughout the years? Should we expect pressure to continue or could we also see a recovery trend in there? And then the second question, and sorry if you answered it before because I'm not sure you did, on the cost of risk in the U.K., it remains at quite low levels.

Do you see this picking up throughout the year or should we see the first few levels as something recurring throughout the year? Thank you very much.

Héctor Grisi Checa (CEO)

Sorry, thank you, Carlos. First of all, on the outlook of NII in the U.S., I see it flattish, okay? Let's see how volumes basically turn out. And as I explained before, since we are very much focused on profitability and also in the capital allocation, I see that it's going to be flattish around there, okay? And in terms of cost of risk in the U.K., sorry, the cost of risk in the U.K., as I told you before when I was explaining Álvaro, I see it very flattish. I mean, the guidance is going to be at around 11-14 basis points at the most, so below 2%.

José García-Cantera (Senior EVP)

Sorry, below 20 basis points. Sorry, if I may add, we, as I've said, we see no asset quality pressures anywhere. Labor markets are very strong, and new employment, new job creation is also very strong everywhere. So we see really no pressure. There's no signs of asset quality deterioration. So we could extrapolate what we've seen in recent quarters in the U.K. We could extrapolate for the rest of the year.

Begoña Morenés (Global Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Can we have the next question, please?

Operator (participant)

From Marta Sánchez Romero from Citi, please go ahead.

Marta Sánchez Romero (Senior Equity Analyst)

Thank you very much. Good morning. My first question is on capital.

So the Bank of Spain were to introduce the CCyB of 100 basis points, that is 25 basis points for you, but that would leave your 12% fully loaded CET1 ratio leaving or implying an MDA buffer of just about 177 basis points, which is pretty low for European standards. So do you think that 12% fully loaded CET1 ratio target is still the right one in that event? The second question is on the U.K.. So the bottom line is now 25% smaller than last year. Is the shrinking going to continue, or do you think you can stabilize earnings at current levels? And just quickly a clarification on a previous question, the revenue growth that you are foreseeing, is that just reported revenues, and is that in constant or current euros? Thank you.

José García-Cantera (Senior EVP)

Let me answer your final question.

We are estimating almost or around double-digit revenue growth in constant euros with Argentina in current euros. Obviously, in current euros or in euros with Argentina in constant, might be higher than that. But as I explained, we believe this is the best reflection of our underlying performance eliminating the distortions of hyperinflation in Argentina. Thank you.

Héctor Grisi Checa (CEO)

In terms of capital, what I can tell you is basically that, exactly as I said, no I reiterate that we're going to end up the year at around 1,240-1,250, okay? And I really do believe I actually reiterate that we're going to be above 12% after Basel III. I would say that would be the main points to say, no? Yeah, and again, the countercyclical buffer will be implemented in a year's time.

So again, the capital target is being decided by the board. The board might review that capital target once. You know, the variables that led to that capital target might change. But we are going to be comfortably above 200 basis points MDA with our actual capital buffer.

Begoña Morenés (Global Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Can we have the next question, please?

Operator (participant)

Next question from Brittta Schmidt from Autonomous. Please go ahead.

Britta Schmidt (Senior Analyst)

Yeah, hi there. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got two questions. You sound more optimistic on that interest income in Spain, U.K., and Brazil, but yet there's not been no change to the official group targets for 2024. What is the data here, and what do you think is the biggest delta to consensus? And then secondly, you guarded to double-digit customer revenue growth, and the group revenue target is mid-single-digit. What's the delta here for 2024?

Thanks.

Héctor Grisi Checa (CEO)

Question. As we saw in the first quarter, just the monetary adjustment in Argentina in the first quarter was EUR 600 million. We have EUR 1.2 billion monetary position in Argentina, and inflation was 51% in the first quarter. So just that in the first quarter was EUR 600 million. That's what we are trying to avoid by looking at constant. So there are charges to the P&L that obviously we don't control. So that's the reason why we haven't changed the revenue target for, I mean, the total revenue target for the group, mid-single digits. But we believe that the customer revenue growth can approach, can be close to double digits. Britta, in terms of the revenue overall, as you were saying, and NII, yes, I sound optimistic because I'm very optimistic of the trends that we have in front of us.

I reiterate that we're going to meet the 16% ROTE that we basically have announced. Onwards, I believe that is it looks good and it looks promising, but I reiterate the guidance that we have gave you.

Begoña Morenés (Global Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Can we have the next question, please?

Operator (participant)

Next question from the line of Sofie Peterzens from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Sofie Peterzens (Equity Analyst)

Yeah, hi. Here is Sofie from JPMorgan. Thanks very much for taking my question. So I was just wondering about the flat cost guidance for 2024. Does it still hold? Your costs were up 5% in constant euros, 7% in current euros? So how should we think about that flat cost guidance that you previously gave? And then my second question would be on rate sensitivity to a 100 basis point change in rates.

If you could just remind us what that means for Spain, Brazil, the U.K., U.S., all the core markets. And also, if you have any hedging in place to reduce that rate sensitivity. And then my final question would be, on slide five, you say that you only got 5 million new customers year-on-year, but at the investor day a year ago, you targeted, I think, 75 million new customers. Just like a strategic question, maybe it doesn't make a difference if you only have 5 million new customers, or does it make a difference? And how do you plan to get to the 75 million new customers that you guided for at the investor day a year ago? Thank you.

Héctor Grisi Checa (CEO)

Thank you, Sofie. Let me answer you the last question first.

I mean, what we've been doing here is basically we are cleaning up a lot of our customer bases. Even though we are growing quite hard, we've been cleaning up that. Basically, that's at the end what's going to be telling, I mean, moving up towards the number of customers that we are able to include. We're going to be working on that. But I mean, the growth of customers basically is very strong in all different areas and in all different businesses. In terms of the cost, I was basically, as I explained to you, I mean, this remained fairly stable for the third quarter in a row, okay? As you have seen, that's +1% quarter-on-quarter. If you exclude Argentina, that's -3% because Argentina is moving the numbers up and down. That's +2% year-on-year in real terms.

That's a cost to income at around 42.6%. And this is on track to our 2024 target of below 43% cost to income. And I believe that we're going to be able to get to that. Cost efficiencies are just coming from operating leverage through simplification of products. If you see the amount of products that we have simplified, we had 10,000 different products. Today, we're down to 7,500. And automation, which is a very important part. And I was explaining to you in the change of model, how are we changing the non-commercial FTEs to commercial FTEs? And this is something that in time will help us to control cost much better than we've been doing, okay? That's basically the efficiency gain. If you look at that, product simplification gives us 17 basis points year-on-year of savings. Automation is helping us out.

58% of product services are now digitally available, okay? That's 2 percentage points up versus December 2023. And if I can tell you as an example, the U.S. have captured $10 million in efficiencies just in Q1 alone. And that's $210 million since we started the process in 2022. And that's just in consumer and retail. So it's it's very important that we also remember that One Transformation is not a merely cost-cutting exercise, but the creation of the single model and with several other benefits. And this will this trend will continue on and on helping us out as we change completely the the model of the way we operate the bank, okay? So the rate is basically to tell you that we're going to be in our target below the 43% cost to income for the rest of the year.

Now, in terms of rate sensitivity, there hasn't been any change in all countries, in most countries, but Europe. Let me, in euros. Let me explain. So in the U.S., it's ±EUR 150 million. In Brazil, ±EUR 150 million. In the U.K., it's ±EUR 200 million. But we have reduced the sensitivity in euros, in Spain in particular, significantly. Let me make first one particular comment about the U.K.. Our structural hedge in the U.K. is GBP 113 billion with an average duration of 2.4 years. It was GBP 106 billion in December. So 113, 2.4 years average duration. And in Spain, we have been hedging our balance sheet through a combination of different actions, basically originating at adjusting the origination, buying ALCO portfolio.

We now have GBP 30 billion ALCO in Spain at an average duration of between six to seven years at 3.25% yield. We have been also writing some hedges. The result of that is that of the GBP 240 billion risk-weighted assets, GBP 50 billion, GBP 250 billion average earning assets we have in Spain, 60% is floating, 40% is fixed. That's significantly higher fixed portion than before. Now we have now lower sensitivity to rates in Europe.

José García-Cantera (Senior EVP)

Sorry, Sophie, just to be more precise, what I was saying is the cost to income is going to be below 43%, okay? That's the efficiency that we have set for a year, and we reiterate that. The efficiency this quarter was 42.6%, okay?

Héctor Grisi Checa (CEO)

But let me let me just finish.

The NII sensitivity, compared to the average of the major competitors we have in Spain, has been reduced to 7.5% compared to their sensitivity at 5%. And we expect to continue hedging the balance sheet as we as you know in the future. Obviously, the decision to do this gradually has proven to be you know good in the sense that rates, curve rates, interest rates curves have picked up a bit. So that has allowed us to earn higher NII and also more time to hedge the positions. But again, we are gradually hedging our interest rate sensitivity in euros, reducing duration through the combination of all these actions that we've taken.

Begoña Morenés (Global Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Can we have the next question, please?

Operator (participant)

Next question from Andrea Filtri from Mediobanca. Please go ahead.

Andrea Filtri (Co-Head of Equity Research and Senior Equity Analyst)

Thank you for taking my question. The first is on your profitability targets.

Your above 16% ROT guidance for 2024 implies more than GBP 12.4 billion net profit this year, with Q1 on track to hit that, and with tailwinds in H2 that you indicated in Brazil, in the U.K. replicating portfolio, and in consumer with lower rates. Can you be more specific about your profit targets for this year and give us an insight on the 2025 ROT outlook? Second question, if you could give us a target for 2024 group costs in absolute million euros and where do you see them going in 2025? Finally, a quick one on the insurance business. The new package, banking package, improved the treatment of insurance activities inside banks. Could you consider internalizing this business? Thank you.

Héctor Grisi Checa (CEO)

Thank you, Andrea. Are you right?

I mean, we are confident that we are going to reach the 16% target that we set in terms of ROTE for the year. And as we said correctly in our investor day, we said 15%-17% towards 2025. And we are working towards that, and we are working very hard in order to be able to do it. But today, I reiterate to you that we're going to be at the 16% ROTE that we have set, okay? In terms of cost, what we have set is basically around less than 43% in the terms of cost to income. If you see the numbers that we have been, we've been very disciplined in terms of and what we have set. I mean, if you said it, as you saw, as quarter-on-quarter is around 1% top, and we're going to be very disciplined about it.

If you see the operational leverage that we have and on the what I presented on retail, you see that the operational leverage is working like that, okay? So our target is basically to maintain cost the way it is. And I believe that the trend would continue like this. So I feel very confident on the way we're managing things. And I believe that we could be able to reach and to be more or less flattish in terms of cost. The question of insurance is quite a good one. We love that business. We believe that we have huge upside, mainly in markets such as Spain and in Brazil, I could tell you, Mexico, where insurance penetration is quite low. So we see huge opportunities on that, and we continue to better up our systems.

For example, we are simplifying products in that sense in a very important way. Today, average by market, we have 222 different products per market. The idea is basically to go down to 25 basic products that I believe that would help us in order to be much more concentrated for our teams to be able to sell to the client exactly what they expect and to continue a really good trend. So that's a huge opportunity, as you say. The other side of the coin is that we have JVs that in place on the long-term basis, mainly in Latin America and in Spain and Portugal. We will continue to have them over the years because they are long-term. I would love to internalize that business, but unfortunately, it is what it is.

We have the JVs, and we need to respect what we have there. But as you say, this is a huge opportunity in that sense, not just because of the change and sweetening regulation, but also because of the of the advantages and that we have given the amount of customers that we have and the low penetration in the different markets.

Andrea Filtri (Co-Head of Equity Research and Senior Equity Analyst)

Thank you.

Begoña Morenés (Global Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Thank you. Can we have the next question, please?

Operator (participant)

Benjamin Toms from RBC, please go ahead.

Benjamin Toms (European Bank Analyst)

Thank you for taking my questions. At their full year results, you noted that you did not expect any material impact from the FCA's review of motor finance in the U.K.. Since then, one of the large banks in the U.K. has made a significant provision in respect of that issue.

Do you still expect no material impact here, and are there any numbers you can provide us with to help frame the issue? And then secondly, we've seen consolidation in the space in the U.K. from banks looking to improve their return profiles. Your ROT in the U.K. is slightly below that of your major peers despite a favorable asset mix. Do you believe you can improve returns in this geography using only organic methods? Thank you.

Héctor Grisi Checa (CEO)

Thank you. I mean, first of all, on the U.K. motor finance issue, I mean, the resolution of such matters, as you know, is not possible to predict. There are some significant uncertainties that remain with regards to the existence, scope, and the timing of any possible outcome there. So as a result, we're not yet in a position to disclose the extent of any potential impact.

I don't believe, until basically this, I understand there is an expert basically running through that. So I don't believe that we can give you an idea. What I can tell you is that so far, we're doing well in the sense of the settlements that we have. And so far, we've been doing better than we expected. In terms of consolidation in the U.K., I don't see that we should play in a consolidation at this point. I don't believe that that's a market that we should invest more at this point. That would be my view in that sense.

Begoña Morenés (Global Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Can we have the next question, please?

Operator (participant)

Next question from Chris Hallam from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Chris Hallam (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah, good morning, everybody. So two from me. So first on Basel IV and then on Argentina. So, José, thanks for the color earlier on Basel IV.

I mean, I suppose it sounds very possible that FRTB gets pushed to align with a revised U.S. timeframe, you know, let's say towards July 1, 2026. And you mentioned the delegated act provision for FRTB here in Europe. So just within your day one and fully loaded guidance, how much is FRTB and how much is all the rest of it? I.e., if we only get parts of Basel IV on January 1, 2025, and then FRTB follows on July 1, 2026, how much would that change the phasing of the capital headwinds you talked about earlier? And then second, on Argentina, so clearly it has quite a distorted effect on the group figures. And then, you know, there's the associated cost of hedging, and it's below 5% of group earnings.

So I just wondered whether you've reassessed your footprint plans in Argentina, I guess, especially in light of the announcement that one of your peers is exiting that market. Or are there any sort of interconnectivity with other parts of the group that would make such an exit uneconomic?

Héctor Grisi Checa (CEO)

So the answer to your first question, yeah, when we've always mentioned Basel III, but when we gave the impacts, we were including FRTB. You're right. So when we said the day one impact of Basel III was Basel III plus FRTB. FRTB isolated is 10 basis points. So if FRTB gets postponed, we will not have this 10 basis point impact on day one that we were accounting for in our estimates. I hope this clarifies the matter. Thank you. In terms of Argentina, I think that we need to leave our options open given what's going on.

If Argentina basically can sustain what's going on and we're trying to be positive about what could happen, I don't believe that we have no downside but upside given the situation. So there are no plans to do anything at this point, and we'll just wait and we'll continue operating our business. Our business is doing well. It's very well structured. It's one of the best banks that we have in terms of client penetration, in terms of the transactionality that we have from our clients, fee generation. So we will continue to be there and see what our options are later on.

Begoña Morenés (Global Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Can we have the next question, please?

Operator (participant)

The last question comes from the line of Andrea Filtri from Mediobanca. Please go ahead.

Andrea Filtri (Co-Head of Equity Research and Senior Equity Analyst)

Yes, thank you. Just having a second go.

Asking for absolute numbers on your net profit guidance for 2024, the 16% ROTE implies over EUR 12.3 billion. Can you be more specific about what number you're actually targeting? And on your own cost, the same story. I'm asking for a nominal euro-denominated group cost target for 2024. Thank you.

Héctor Grisi Checa (CEO)

Think you're sufficient numbers and growth rates in the P&L to really estimate what we believe is our most likely figure for net income and cost. But so again, for net income, 13%, sorry, 16% return on tangible equity gives you a figure in line with what you are saying, around 12 north of EUR 12 billion. It's what it's the conclusion of this 16%. We agree with that. And in terms of cost, we are looking at a cost growth, which is going to be around 2% this year, 2%-2.5% this year.

Going forward, as we've discussed, we are targeting flat costs in absolute terms going forward. That is going to be difficult. Obviously, we are still in a relatively high inflationary environment. We believe that it is a very ambitious target, but that's the internal target we have. We haven't given any guidance for 2025. But what I'm saying is that long, medium term, our target is to keep costs flat or down in absolute terms. We are not there yet in 2024, close. We think we could be closer or there in 2025, but it's too early. We are still, you know, in early 2023, sorry, 2024. So we'll give you this guidance in due course. But again, our medium-long-term objective is to keep costs flat or down in absolute terms.

Begoña Morenés (Global Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you very much. Thank you, Héctor. And thank you, José.

I believe there are no more questions. Thank you, all analysts and investors, for your attendance. Our investor relations team is, as always, at your disposal for any further questions you may have. Goodbye.