XP - Q1 2023

Transcript

André Martins (Head of Investor Relations)

Good afternoon, welcome to XP Inc.'s Q1 2023 earnings call. I'm André Martins, Head of Investor Relations, and with me are our CEO, Thiago Maffra, and our CFO, Bruno Constantino, who will be available for the Q&A section. I kindly ask you to refer to the legal disclaimer section on the beginning of our presentation about forward-looking statements. Additional information on forward-looking statements can be found on the SEC filing section of our website. It's important to remind that this call has a translation option to Portuguese, and the participants who want to ask questions may raise their hands on the Zoom tool. Now, I'll pass over to Thiago Maffra, who will deliver the opening remarks.

Thiago Maffra (CEO)

Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us today. I want to begin today's call with a few comments about the Q1, our outlook for 2023, and our longer-term positioning. I will turn it over to our CFO, Bruno, who will present Q1 results in more detail. Let's start with our quarterly performance. As you all know, the macroeconomy outlook remains challenging. In Brazil, we continue to face a high interest rate environment similar to other economies around the world. In addition, a large Brazilian corporate filed for bankruptcy in the quarter, causing important loss for its investors, creditors, and bondholders. As a result, capital markets and corporate credit remain under pressure, which has impacted the financial advisor activity since many investors are keeping their savings in liquid, low-risk products while they wait for the scenario to improve.

While these headwinds have still impacted our core business in the Q1, we keep advancing in our long-term journey and getting closer to the BRL 1 trillion client assets milestone. Having ended Q1 with BRL 954 billion. Additionally, our ecosystem continued to grow with the net addition of 89,000 clients and 688 financial advisors. On the financials, excluding the one-time loss, our gross revenue expanded 7% year-over-year, while EBT and net income grew 14% and 8% year-over-year. While these adjusted numbers look better, these are still not the growth rates that we are used to and which we believe we will see again when the macroenvironment improves. However, when we look at our Q1 performance, I see positive signs of strength and resilience in our business model, as well as efficiencies from our cost structure improvements.

For example, in Q1, our new verticals revenues, which are less cyclical, were strong. Revenue from retirement plans, cards, credit, and insurance together grew 64% year-over-year, reaching BRL 405 million. Because of our focus on execution, our EBT margin increased nearly 300 basis points quarter-over-quarter to 26%. This was in line with the near-term expectations included in our guidance range of 26%-32% through 2025. I was pleased with our execution on the bottom line. XP remained the top of mind brand investment and was ranked as the 12th most valuable overall brand in Brazil in the annual Interbrand survey. We also remain committed to returning excess cash to our shareholders. Over 2022, we have returned roughly BRL 1.8 billion through share buybacks, which was about 50% of our net income.

I believe we will have a similar payout ratio in 2023, and reinforce that we have repurchased BRL 916 million worth of shares year to date. As a result, we should be able to maintain a conservative balance sheet with a strong liquid position and carry excess capital of around BRL 5 billion, positioning XP to navigate through any cycle. As I look ahead to the rest of 2023, our guidance outlook remains unchanging. Despite the macroenvironment, XP remains a leading investing platform in Brazil, and we are getting stronger relative to our competitors. We are working closely with our advisory channels to improve core revenues and net inflow opportunities, gaining share of wallet in more investment products and reinforcing our high-quality value proposition to clients. As I look beyond 2023, I see our competitive position getting stronger.

We will continue to leverage the advantages of our platform and ecosystem to expand our leadership investments. This is our core focus and where we excel the most. We have gained almost 400 basis points of market share since the beginning of 2020, including 80 basis points in 2022, despite a very challenging market environment. We currently have 11% market share of individual investments and 8% if we include companies. With our top of mind brand, best-in-class product platform and technology advances, I believe 20%-25% is achievable. On the product side, we have the most complete and advanced platform in the market, we continue to build upon this competitive advantage. I could go through many examples, just a few to remind us.

We are not only the leaders in the traditional products with 42% market share in the distribution of bonds and 50% on equities trading, but keep constantly innovating, being the first player to offer private hedge funds for retail investors. Having also quickly built an offshore platform where clients can easily invest in the U.S. On the distribution side, we have the largest and most well-prepared financial advisor network in Brazil. We were elected the best advisor platform in Brazil for 2022 according to Folha de S.Paulo. This is the fifth consecutive year in a row that we have been voted number one. I think our place as the leading player in the market is well-established. This helps us attract the very best partners and clients. Another relevant pillar of our strategy is to cross-sell additional products into our current base.

We have a massive potential opportunity here to unlock value, and it's already starting to work. As I already mentioned, our new verticals are advancing at a fast pace. While this is still in the early stages of our plan, we can already see that cross-selling new products such as our cards, digital accounts, and insurance, have helped us gain more share of wallet from our clients in investments and also improve our NPS. We will continue to focus on serving an increasing portion of our clients' financial lives and meet all of their financial needs. Finally, our third pillar is to continue to differentiate ourselves in the market with premium quality and service levels in everything we do. We are the main platform in the market, and we want to make sure that we are always providing our clients with superior experience when they engage with XP.

I believe this is the glue that we use to bring everything together to deliver the best value proposition in the market. This doesn't just mean delivering a good app or web experience. It means that we are always focusing on improving every aspect of our service levels. As an example, we are continuously improving the training we provide our advisors and innovating the tools we give them so they can perform and serve clients better. Our unique customer service level ensures that our advisors and clients always get fast and efficient support that makes them feel great about XP. As most of you know, XP is already ahead of the traditional banks in terms of the investment experience we offer. This is well-known in the market, and we can see it in our NPS, including a recent third-party study that reinforces XP's edge.

We remain focused on maintaining this competitive advantage and distancing ourselves from the banks. As I look at the near term and the long term, I saw progress in Q1 on our execution performance and cost management, which has enabled us to improve our profitability despite the difficult macro environment. We remain on plan for 2023. I see us getting better and stronger as a company, enabling us to fortify our position and continue returning cash to our shareholders. Our long-term strategy is working. We are making progress in all of our areas of focus, and I think we are going to come out of this cycle even better positioned to keep winning market share. Now I will hand it over to Bruno, who will discuss the numbers of the quarter, and we will be available for Q&A. Thank you. Bruno, over to you.

Bruno Constantino (CFO)

Thank you, Maffra, and good evening, everyone. I will walk through our financials in more detail and provide some additional commentary and perspectives on our revenue, expenses, and earnings. Before I continue, I want to remind everyone that we are showing some adjusted metrics this quarter, which excludes the one-time impact of a non-recurring loss related to the bonds of a large corporate issuer that filed for bankruptcy in January. We held some of these bonds in our inventory for our clients to be able to trade, and some of these bonds in our own investment portfolio. The value of these bonds dropped significantly when the corporate issuer filed for bankruptcy. As a result, we incurred a one-time loss of BRL 164 million impacting our total gross revenue, with BRL 95 million allocated in retail fixed income and BRL 69 million in other revenue.

This event also had a negative impact to overall capital market activity in Brazil. This is not excluded in our numbers, obviously, but important to note that the event hurt overall DCM volumes and revenues in retail fixed income and issuer services. Let's move to slide 12. As you can see, we have created a column highlighting the one-time loss I just mentioned. Our gross revenue. Our total gross revenue in the quarter was BRL 3.3 billion, flat quarter-over-quarter and +2% year-over-year. If we exclude the one-time loss, our total gross revenue was closer to BRL 3.5 billion, 5% growth quarter-over-quarter and 7% year-over-year. As Maffra mentioned, our total revenue growth is not where we would like it to be.

Considering the weak macro and capital markets environment, we believe our top-line numbers show the resilience of our business model and the benefits of the diversification that we have been building over the last few years. In terms of revenue mix, there was no major change at the beginning of this year compared to last quarter. Retail revenue represented 76% of total revenue, the same as fourth quarter 2022. Institutional revenue, 10%. Corporate and issuer services, 8%. Our other revenue line was 6% of total revenue. Let's double-click on our retail revenue for a little more detail on slide 13. Our core retail investments, meaning equities, fixed income, and funds platform, total revenue grew 6% quarter-over-quarter and 1% year-over-year, despite the weaker trading environment and capital markets activities.

In equities, revenues grew 7% quarter-over-quarter and declined 3% year-over-year as overall trading in the market decreased more than 10% versus the Q4. One bright spot to mention in equities was our financial structure products, which link derivatives with stocks. Sales of these products are driven by human interaction, which suffered in the Q4 due to the elections and the World Cup, but began to rebound in Q1 this year. In fixed income, adjusted revenue grew 9% quarter-over-quarter and was flat year-over-year. As I mentioned earlier, we believe this revenue line was also impacted by an overall decline in capital markets activity in Q1, and would have been stronger in a more normalized environment. In our funds platform, revenues grew 1% quarter-over-quarter and 17% year-over-year.

Comparing apples to apples, excluding performance fees, our quarter-over-quarter growth was 12%. Moving down to our new verticals. Our revenues continue to grow at a strong pace with an overall increase of 60% year-over-year. As Thiago Maffra noted, our performance here remains strong, and I believe we remain on track to deliver annual growth of 50%-60% in 2023, as stated in our last earnings call. When we look at this on a quarter-over-quarter basis, I would note that the comparison is a little more difficult because of seasonal and one-time benefits in Q4 2022. For example, in addition to Black Friday and the holidays, we had a change in the revenue recognition method of our cards business, which created a one-time benefit of BRL 53 million in the Q4 revenue.

Despite this, our cards business remains strong with a 400 million increase in TPV quarter-over-quarter to reach BRL 8.6 billion in Q1 2023. Finally, our other retail revenues grew 10% quarter-over-quarter and 70% year-over-year. These revenues were driven by several positive trends, such as the float in our broker-dealer business, which benefits from high interest rates, and good growth in our international investment platform and FX. Moving to slide 14. On slide 14, we show our retail revenues in 2020, 2021, and for the last 12 months as of Q1 2023. I think this helps illustrate the negative impact of the macro environment in our revenues, but also the benefit we are getting from our diversification into new verticals.

As you can see, our core retail investments revenue grew significantly in 2021, with an increase of nearly BRL 3 billion. Have decreased nearly BRL 1 billion since then due to the macro environment, not our competitive positioning. Despite this, our total retail revenue has increased 64% over the same time period, given our more diversified revenue stream and XP's ability to scale new products really fast in its ecosystem. As you can see, revenue from our new verticals increased over 2x in 15 months, up BRL 750 million since 2021. This has helped our business to become more resilient and helped absorb some of the negative macro impact from the more cyclical parts of our business. When the macro cycle turns, which will at some point in time, this diversification could provide an incremental tailwind for us.

Let's shift to the expense side of our P&L, where we had some strong performance in Q1. On slide 15, you can begin to see some of the benefits of our cost structure adjustments starting to catalyze. In Q1 2023, SG&A, excluding incentives, decreased 24% quarter-over-quarter and 17% year-over-year to just over BRL 1 billion. Our headcount management plan resulted in a net reduction of 782 employees in the quarter to 6,143. This impacted share-based compensation to reach BRL 53 million in this quarter. We expect to return to normalized levels in the following quarters, similar to what we had in Q4 2022 share-based compensation expenses. Our efficiency ratios improved in this quarter, breaking the pattern of past years and bringing the company structure where we want it to be.

For example, on the left side of the page under the bar charts, you can see that our last 12-month efficiency ratio, which is SG&A, excluding incentives divided by net revenues, decreased 161 basis points quarter-over-quarter to reach 40.4%, our lowest level since Q1 2022. On the right side of the slide, you can see that our last 12-month comp ratio, which is people, SG&A, salaries, bonuses and share-based compensation expenses divided by net revenues, decreased 107 basis points quarter-over-quarter to reach 28.5%, our lowest level since Q4 2021. We expect to keep improving our efficiency ratios going forward.

I believe we remain on plan to meet our annual 2023 guidance for SG&A, excluding incentives of BRL 5 billion to BRL 5.5 billion, we will remain very focused here. Moving to slide 16, EBT and net income. As a result of our strong cost management, our earnings before tax and net income margins were positively impacted, as you can see in this slide. During the quarter, we generated BRL 870 million of EBT with a 26% margin, or BRL 977 million, excluding the one-time loss with a 29.6% EBT margin. I think the quality of EBT in the Q1 2023 compared to the Q4 2022 has also improved significantly and is sustainable.

Recall that in the Q4 of 2022, seasonal incentives benefited our SG&A by BRL 242 million. Excluding this, our Q4 EBT would have been closer to BRL 500 million. In the Q1, we had only BRL 3 million of this benefit. I believe the operating leverage that we are realizing in the business is an important achievement and gives us a stronger position to face any macro headwinds going forward. As a result, we remain on plan to meet our EBT margin guidance range of 26% in the near term to 32% by 2025.

Finally, on the right side of the page, you can see that our net income in Q1 2023 was BRL 796 million, or BRL 927 million, excluding the one-time non-recurring loss of BRL 131 million net of taxes. As Maffra already mentioned, our annual guidance for net income between BRL 3.8 billion-BRL 4.4 billion stands. Now we will move to the Q&A session in which both Maffra and I will be available to answer your questions. Thank you very much.

André Martins (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Bruno. Now we will move to the Q&A session. We have a lot of, I ask you to be patient. We have a lot of hands raised and we will, as usual, do on a first-served basis. The first question is from Tito Labarta from Goldman Sachs. Hi, Tito.

Tito Labarta (Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, André Martins. Hey, Bruno Constantino. Hey, Thiago Maffra. Thank you for the call, taking my questions. You know, congratulations on the good results. A couple questions, if I can. I guess, just first on the inflows, you know, which, you know, we had already known before they came out today. Just help us think about the sort of the rest of the year, do you think those inflows can recover? And just in along those lines, right, like, 'cause, you know, your revenues were, you know, fairly stable considering all the impact, the relatively weak inflows. Just to think about what can drive revenues up from here, and how dependent would that be on inflows increasing? And then just a second question on the guidance.

I know you took the guidance, and, you know, you also had some of the impacts here. You know, could potentially be on track, at least for that bottom end of the guidance. Do you think is it fair to think that this is like a seasonally weak quarter? Can earnings improve from here? I mean, you know, definitely delivered on the expenses, you know, it goes back a little bit to can revenues grow. You know, to sum it all up, kinda revenue growth outlook given the inflows that you have right now, and if there's upside from here. Thank you.

Thiago Maffra (CEO)

Hello, Tito. How are you? Thank you very much for being here and for your question. I will take the first part, and Bruno can take the second one. About the inflows, being very honest and direct with you, it's hard to imagine that in an environment like we have today, that our investors, they are afraid, they have a high level of uncertainty. With these high interest rates at 13.75%, they prefer to keep their money in very liquid and very low-risk investments. It's hard to imagine that we will have, like, the same levels of net inflows that we had in the past. Especially the level of uncertainty, okay? Not much the interest rates. Of course, it helps if it goes down.

When you get the two things together, that's the difficult part, okay? To give you some numbers, okay? When we look, of course, we track all the inflows and outflows to all the financial institutions, and all of them went down, I would say at the same level, okay? We don't see any player getting more efficiency against us than other, okay? That, in our opinion, reflects that it's more important the liquid products like LCAs and CRIs, tax-free at 13.75% than anything else. The second point is, if you look, the inflows, not the net-new money, we are close to the all-time highs. What happened? We see higher outflows. When we look, the outflows, they are more concentrated on companies, okay?

It's not on the individuals, it's more companies because they need the cash, okay. They have lower credits at the banks right now. They have a tough environment, so we see a lot of outflows of companies right now. In our opinion, it's something that's cyclical, that's part of the investment business, okay. We have cycles, and we are in a bad cycle for investments. On the other hand, we have all the new verticals, all the new business lines that are growing and more than compensating the decreasing investments.

Bruno Constantino (CFO)

Yeah. And to answer your other part of the question, Tito Labarta, about the revenue part of net inflows being lower, it's less relevant today than it was in the bull market for sure. What Thiago Maffra mentioned about net inflow, it's a component of two numbers, gross inflow and outflow. If the net inflow is lower because the outflow is higher, for example, in the wholesale, especially for corporate and companies, as Thiago Maffra mentioned, it doesn't mean that the revenue it's gonna be, you know, severely impacted by that number. On the contrary, if we keep the level of inflows and outflows being higher, we can, depending on the case, even making more revenue in the short term, okay.

Your second part of the question about the guidance and if there is a seasonality, I believe yes. I believe that, you know, Q1 was really weak in terms of capital market activity, especially after what happened in January. The corporate credit market was dysfunctional in the Q1. We see it resuming right now, but it's still very weak so far this year. When we look at a longer term period for DCM, for example, the last five years on average, there was a seasonality that favors the second semester compared to the first semester. Around 40% of the revenue in the first semester compared to 60% in the second semester.

We do not know if it's gonna be the case this year. The beginning of the year was really weak regarding capital market.

Tito Labarta (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks, Bruno. Thank you, Maffra. That's very helpful. Maybe if I can. Just one follow-up, Maffra, on the gross inflows. Any color you can give on how, I guess, how those gross inflows with individuals have evolved over the last year? I mean, have those decelerated as well? Any acceleration there? Just to help us, since you put that out there, just if you can put that into context, just also given the market.

Thiago Maffra (CEO)

Pass it over to Bruno.

Bruno Constantino (CFO)

Thank you, Maffra. Tito, just to give you a few numbers. We do not disclose the gross inflow, just for you to have the big picture, when we look at the Q1 this year and compare to the average quarters of last year, inflow was down by around 5%, okay? That's the number. Considering the macro environment is not much in our view. When we look at outflows, it was up 20%.

That's what, you know, has been hurting the most the net, the net inflow. When we break down between our, I would call our core engine of retail investors and segregate the wholesale part, mostly, companies. The core engine of our business, all the outflow, related to the total client assets, it's been stable. It has not increased. We don't see a problem there. Of course, the level is not where we'd like to be, but as Mario Pierry mentioned, considering that investors are not investing, they are keeping their savings in daily-liquid, low-risk products. We understand, it's a headwind for the investment business. Even with this environment, the core engine, in terms of a percentage, of outflow compared to total client assets, it's not increasing.

Tito Labarta (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. No, that's very helpful, Bruno. Yeah. I do see the retail AUC went up and corporate AUC going down. No, it's good context. Thanks very much.

André Martins (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Tito. Have a good one. Next question is from Mario Pierry from Bank of America. Hi, Mario.

Mario Pierry (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Let me ask two questions as well. First one on your cost reductions, if you're expecting to make any more changes to your employee base. Also, if you could be a little bit more specific in which areas were these reductions concentrated in? You mentioned that you expect the stock-based compensation to go up in the Q2, back to the Q4 levels. I was just trying to understand why. That's on expenses. My second question is related to your NPS score. Again, it still is a high NPS, but I think it's down to 70 and it used to be a peak of 77. Can you give us some color on why NPS is going down?

What are you doing to improve that? Thank you.

Thiago Maffra (CEO)

Hello, Mario. Thank you for your question. It's Thiago here. About your first question about employees and areas. What happened is since I became the CEO of the company, we have been implementing what we call a digital transformation of the company. Last year, I would say we finished the reorganization of the business units, the whole structure of the multidisciplinary teams in the company. Of course, you know, that, but when you do a transformation, when you reorganize the company, you have some efficient gains. You have some because when. Imagine that you have 10 pieces of Lego, and when you put all together, you only need eight. Okay. Part of the reduction is because of this transformation we did on the company on the past two, three years, okay?

Part is because we committed some excess during the pandemic. Okay? We over-hired, we hired people, not necessarily with our culture. Part, it's because of efficiency and part is because of the excess. Okay? All the reductions, they are done. Okay? As Bruno mentioned, when you have a company with owners, with partners, we are very fast to correct the mistakes we did. We already did the corrections. You guys can see on the numbers. We don't have any specific areas. Of course, we have intelligence like to say where to cut more, where to cut less, but we did cut all over the company. Of course, we preserve the business lines that are in early stage.

We preserve like the risk areas of the company, credit and so on, compliance and so on. The reductions, they are done. On your first question, I believe you asked about the SG&A. As Bruno mentioned, the guidance it still holds. Right now we are, I would say, more to the bottom of the guidance. Okay? The reductions, they are done. Your second question about the NPS. What happened, as we mentioned on the presentation, we have our own NPS. That's the number that you see on the presentation, the 70 that you mentioned. We have third-party consultant companies that do like an independent NPS survey.

When you look at what happened with the NPS for affluent clients, in investments for the five big banks, all of them, they went up in the last eight months, 35 points. Okay? When you go, why, when they ask the customers in the survey why, it's because of the level of returns. 13.75 with no risk, okay? That's the point we are right now. Of course, we don't consider buying CRIs investing because you are not buying a portfolio, you are not diversifying. Of course, when you have a more well-balanced portfolio in this scenario, it's hard to believe that you are beating the Selic rate right now. We believe that's an important factor right now, that it's benefiting the five big banks, okay?

We are suffering a little bit on that scenario. Of course, the investment, the cycle at some point will change, and we believe we can go to more normalized levels, okay, of NPS, of net inflows and so on.

Bruno Constantino (CFO)

Excuse me. Hi, Mario. I can take the question about the share-based compensation. Yeah, we had a consolidations of restricted stock units and performance stock units in this quarter, and that resulted in a lower level than we expect to see in the next quarters to come. That's why I mentioned that we should, you know, come back without this impact that is only, you know, one-time. We should come back to a normal level as of the Q4, something between BRL 160 million-BRL 170 million, and not the BRL 53 million that we saw in the Q1.

Mario Pierry (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Perfect.

Bruno Constantino (CFO)

Also, just to comment that we also had recently the new partners that we more than welcome in our partnership, and the matching that is gonna happen in the Q2. All of that together, we should have an increase in that expense line going forward.

Mario Pierry (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Now that's clear. Let me just follow up then. Or just to be clear, there were no one-off charges related to this headcount reduction. There were no severance charges taken this quarter?

Bruno Constantino (CFO)

It's in there.

Mario Pierry (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Sorry?

Bruno Constantino (CFO)

Everything is in there. I don't know if you heard me. Sorry.

Mario Pierry (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Oh. So everything is in, can you quantify how much were the severance charges?

Bruno Constantino (CFO)

We are. Look, I would stick to the guide, annual guidance that we have. It's BRL 5 billion-BRL 5.5 billion SG&A ex incentives. That's the annual guidance. As Maffra mentioned, considering what happened in the Q1, we are leaning toward the low end of the guidance.

Mario Pierry (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you very much.

André Martins (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Mario. Next question, Geoff Elliott from Autonomous Research. Good evening, Jeff.

Geoff Elliott (Head of Global Emerging Markets Research)

Hi. Can you hear me okay?

André Martins (Head of Investor Relations)

Yes, we can.

Geoff Elliott (Head of Global Emerging Markets Research)

Hello. Great. Thanks very much for taking the question. On capital, first of all, the buyback program has been completed. You talk about that 50% payout ratio in the slides. Why not announce another buyback now, and what are you thinking in terms of options for deploying capital? Second, related to that, Modal. It's been a while since we heard much there, but we did see that Form F-4 cancellation. Why was that issued, and when should we expect Modal to close? Thank you.

Bruno Constantino (CFO)

Hi, Geoff. I will start with the second one. It's fast. We expect to close soon. Now the only pending part is central bank approval. As you mentioned, we have withdrawn the Form F-4 because we went in a different route to conclude that transaction. Everything happened as planned. The general meeting of Banco Modal was approved, everything is on track. Now it's only central bank approval. Hopefully, we're gonna get it still in the first semester, we cannot guarantee. In terms of the capital allocation share buyback, we have completed the program of the BRL 2 billion.

If you look at all the blocks that we have bought, including Itaú and Itaú's block last year, in less than 12 months, we have bought back around BRL 2.7 billion. BRL 1.8 billion in 2022, BRL 960 million already this year. As Thiago Maffra mentioned, we are gonna probably keep a similar payout ratio, which is around 50%. We don't know what the net income for 2023 will be. We are still in the first semester. We have our guidance, BRL 3.8 billion-BRL 4.4 billion of net income. We are gonna complete in the second semester, either through dividends or share buyback. We haven't decided yet.

Geoff Elliott (Head of Global Emerging Markets Research)

Understood. Thank you.

André Martins (Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Jeff. next in line, Olavo Arthuzo from UBS.

Olavo Arthuzo (Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, guys.

Thiago Maffra (CEO)

Hi, Olavo.

Olavo Arthuzo (Equity Research Analyst)

Can you hear me well, guys?

André Martins (Head of Investor Relations)

Yes.

Olavo Arthuzo (Equity Research Analyst)

Sorry for that. Thank you, everybody, for taking my question. Actually, I have two questions, basically related to the credit card business. The overall trend of credit cards continue to expand well, and I believe this is evolving according to the expectations of the company. My first question on this regard is that we noted the increased penetration of cards on active clients that stood at more than 20% this quarter. My question is, how much more could this figure increase? Like, is there a target that you guys can share with us for this penetration, like 40%, maybe 50%, or even above that? My other question on credit cards is basically related to the monthly average spending.

As we can see here, it's dropped to BRL 4,200 this quarter, which is below the average of the last year or even well below when compared to the Q1 of 2021. Could you just, like, clarify if this is solely related to a stricter credit policy with lower limits or something like that? That were my two questions. Thank you very much.

Thiago Maffra (CEO)

Hello, Olavo. Thank you very much for your question. About the first question about penetration in credit cards, remember that we started only at XP, okay, with clients above 50K. Okay? That was the segment that we started, and there we stuck for, like, almost an year. We went to XP clients below 50K. Okay? I would say December, someone recall me here, but December or November last year, we started, like, to escalate the card on Rico brand. Okay? When we look the penetration that we can achieve, if you look the five big banks, and if you look like the affluent brands for these banks, they have 90% penetration.

Out of 10 clients at one of these affluent brands in any of these banks, nine out of 10 have credit cards. That's our target. Of course, it's gonna take a while, but we believe we can increase the penetration a lot. We don't have any specific target. Of course, 90, it's very high. We are improving, we are delivering. We have a lot of, like, new features, new benefits in the cards for the next months or quarters. We are working on penetration. More than penetration, we have been working a lot on high level of service to increase the share of wallet we have. Of course, when you have the primary card of someone, you have 80% of the TPV. That's our main focus right now.

Again, we are going to deliver new features, new products, new benefits, so we can increase the penetration. About the spending that you mentioned, as we start to move down the pyramid of our segmentation, for example, with clients below BRL 50K at XP and Rico clients. Of course, we have lower spending per client at these segments, because if you get the top clients, they have, like BRL 10K spending. If you go to the bottom, we have, I would say BRL 2,000, BRL 2,500 spending per customer. That's why you're seeing the spending going down because we are increasing the number of clients at the low of our segmentation. Okay.

Bruno Constantino (CFO)

Maffra, can I just add one comment that I think it's pertinent to the question. You have to think about our strategy here, and our strategy is pretty clear. It's a long-term journey, okay? On a quarterly basis, it's hard to analyze. If you extend the view to the long term, cards, we started with cards. We didn't have a digital bank account, which is essential for cards, but we didn't have it because we are moving brick by brick, looking after our profitability as we go down this road and this long-term journey. Now we have the digital bank account. Those things, and of course, we need to evolve all of those new products and service, and we are gonna do it listening to our clients.

Our strategy is totally connected with the evolution of penetration and cross-selling in our ecosystem. The slide that I talked about in my part of the presentation.

It makes clear how fast XP and our ecosystem can scale anything we put to sail. The BRL 750 million that we added on revenues in only 15 months of new verticals, not related to investment directly, where we come from, it's something that tells about the potential of, you know, cross-sell and scaling those new business. It takes time. I wouldn't just focus on a quarter. I would extend the view. That's what we are going after, is to be able to convince our clients to do everything in their financial life with XP. If we are able to do that, they're gonna be also able to cut completely the link with the banks. It takes time, but we're going after it.

Olavo Arthuzo (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, thank you very much. Just a quick follow-up on this. Can you just share with us how much of that BRL 4,200 monthly average spending, like, represents of the average credit limits that you guys give to your clients, just for us to understand the potential here?

Bruno Constantino (CFO)

Now it's hard to make that math. For many of our clients, we have a dynamic limit, for example. You Because it's related to the investments, okay? We would have to segregate the portion that is clean credit. We do not give that type of disclosure. I'm sorry, I cannot-.

Olavo Arthuzo (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay.

Bruno Constantino (CFO)

I cannot help you to make that math. I know where you're.

Olavo Arthuzo (Equity Research Analyst)

I see.

Bruno Constantino (CFO)

Trying to see the potential. Yeah, we expect all those new verticals, as I mentioned, when you add them together, this year, we expect the revenue to grow between 50%-60%.

Thiago Maffra (CEO)

Yeah. Just to complement Bruno here. You can assume that, of course, we have some opportunity, some room like to better manage the credit limits of the bottom segmentation of our customers. I would say that the increase of TPV, the growth for the business, the biggest opportunity is not there, okay? Different from other players, the limit constraint is not a big issue for our customers, okay? Of course, we have an opportunity. We can better manage for some clients, but it's not a huge opportunity. Okay?

Olavo Arthuzo (Equity Research Analyst)

Yes. Thank you very much, guys.

André Martins (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Olavo Arthuzo. Next question, Neha Agarwala from HSBC.

Neha Agarwala (SVP and Equity Research Analyst)

Hi. Congratulations.

André Martins (Head of Investor Relations)

Good evening, Neha.

Neha Agarwala (SVP and Equity Research Analyst)

Good evening. Congratulations on the results, and thank you for taking my question. Two quick questions. First on the IFA business. Could you shed some light about what is the sentiment with the IFAs right now? Inflows or net inflows are a bit weak. There's more investment in fixed income securities, the plain vanilla. Are you seeing some mortality in terms of the number of new IFAs opening up? Your gross strong, but any color would be very helpful if there has been a change in the economics for the IFA network, and also any change in the competitive dynamics regarding IFAs. My second question is regarding your market AUC market share.

You mentioned that, if I didn't hear you incorrectly, you mentioned that about 20%-25% market share could be achievable in the longer term. Is there a time horizon that you have in mind? What are the main drivers for you almost doubling your market share? Thank you so much.

Bruno Constantino (CFO)

Okay. Hi, Neha. Thank you. This Bruno. I'll take the first one, and Maffra can take the second one. Regarding the IFA, first thing to have in mind, the IFA business model is a very asset-light business model with not too big investment portfolio of clients. You can break even when you compare to the bank manager salary, for example. One of the reasons is not only because it is asset light, but because it has tax benefits compared to the bank manager as well. Of course, this tough environment for the investment business makes it harder to, you know, grow at an accelerate pace. Everybody is getting this headwind in terms of investments, but it doesn't mean people are, you know, below the water. That's not the case.

For those, biggest IFA offices that have during the, you know, especially during the bull market, have invested a lot, have, maybe hired, IFAs, paying, a lump sum that was too much considering the environment we are now, they need to adjust exactly like XP did. They have done, and we are together with them, helping them. Those, biggest IFA offices are also the most capitalized one. We, we do not see any problem in terms of financial health in our, IFA network. To your point about attracting IFAs, I mean, I think the numbers speak for themselves. In the Q1, we added more, on a net basis, more than 600 new IFAs. XP still is the main destination of new IFAs.

This market keeps growing even in a tough macro environment. I believe, especially with the new regulation of CVM, that it's really good for the IFA business. This will continue going forward. XP is gonna be there for all the new IFAs that want to join our platform.

Thiago Maffra (CEO)

Hello, Neha. I can take the 2nd question, okay. The way I like to see when we say that we have 11% market share, we are only talking about individuals, okay. If you look and if you include companies, we have only 8% market share, okay. When you break down, going back to individuals, when you break down the segmentation, we have, I would say 2% at the bottom, clients with zero to BRL 300K AUC. We have, let's say, about 20% on the middle, okay. BRL 300,000-BRL 10 million. We have 5% at the top of the pyramid, okay. 2% at the bottom, 20% in the middle, 5% at the top. We have been investing a lot, like, to go down. Basically, it's technology.

A few years ago, it was very hard for us to go below BRL 300,000. Today, we have internal advisors or IFAs focus on customers above BRL 25,000. Why that's possible? Because we have much more technology. We have CRM. We have all the information, ways of having higher account loads and to serve these clients, okay? In the middle, it's more of the same, how we keep increasing. At the top, okay, it's how we create even better services for high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth customers, okay? We have been investing a lot on the extremes and we have been investing in the middle to continue to grow. One way you mention, okay, in how many years, in what time horizon we could reach 20% or 25%.

If you go back, since 2020, we increased 400 basis points our market share, okay? In good years, we increased 160 basis points. And last year, that was a very tough environment for investments, we increased 80 basis points. That's the plan. How we keep increasing 150, 200 basis points per year. Of course, in tough years, we will grow less. In better years, we'll grow more. That's how we see and how we do that, we like to say that we are the only house in Brazil that are 100% focused on investments, okay? We don't sell products, we sell service. We sell allocation. We have higher level of service when you compare to the incumbents, to the other players, and that's how we differentiate ourselves.

In a very tough environment like now, that people are worried about the political environment, about the macro environment, and you have 13.75% interest rate, people get very comfortable with low-risk, very liquid products. It's harder to convince them, like, to really invest, to buy portfolios, to leave the banks and come here. We know this macro environment is temporary. It's going to change at some point, we believe we can go back to a faster pace of growth, okay?

Neha Agarwala (SVP and Equity Research Analyst)

Bruno Constantino, if I can just follow up quickly on the market share question. You mentioned that you're investing a lot in technology to be able to expand your share in the bottom of the pyramid. What strategies do you have for the top of the pyramid? You only have 5% share at the top of the pyramid. Where do you see you can go in top of the pyramid? Thank you so much.

Thiago Maffra (CEO)

Yeah. When you go to the top of the pyramid is much more personalized service, okay? Because each client is different when you're talking about high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients. One point that was very important for us to be competitive was the, oh, I'm just trying to remember the word.

Bruno Constantino (CFO)

Secured services.

Thiago Maffra (CEO)

Secured service. Okay, we have been investing a lot because we have to do the custody of the funds. We have to do the administration of the funds. It's something that we have been building for the past two years, but it takes time, okay? I would say that we are close to having the same level of service of other house at the top. We believe we can start to gain a lot of market share.

Neha Agarwala (SVP and Equity Research Analyst)

Perfect. I can just, one last thing on the IFAs. What is your current market share in terms of number of IFAs and in terms of the AUC which is coming from the IFAs? Thank you so much.

Bruno Constantino (CFO)

Yeah. We have 70% market share in the IFA business. The AUC we do not disclose. We just keep saying it's less than half of total, but we do not give a number. To your question, Neha, when we think about channels, distribution channels, of course, IFA is an important one, and one that we expect to keep growing. As I mentioned, XP is gonna be there with all the tools that we have to help them succeed. We also have many more channels. We are agnostic about channels. We wanna be an entrepreneurship hub, where any entrepreneur in the investment business can connect in our platform.

For example, wealth service business that, if I'm not mistaken, we announced this new channel in the pandemic back in 2020, it's growing a lot. Consultants and other channels in our ecosystem. It's not only IFA. IFA is important, we're gonna keep growing, but we have many more channels.

Neha Agarwala (SVP and Equity Research Analyst)

Excellent. Thank you so much.

André Martins (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Neha. Bye-bye. Next question, Marcelo Telles from Credit Suisse. Hi, Telles. Thank you for joining us.

Marcelo Telles (Head of Latin America Securities Research)

Hi, can you hear me now?

Bruno Constantino (CFO)

Yes, we can.

Marcelo Telles (Head of Latin America Securities Research)

Hi, Maffra. Hi, Bruno. Hi André. Thanks for the time. I have two questions. You know, regarding the net inflow, which you already alluded to, you know, the BRL 16 billion a quarter. You know, the yield curve is implying, you know, a decline in interest rates. How do you think that impact, you know, your business, especially, you know, the willingness of, you know, your client to maybe, you know, start taking more risk again? I mean, do you need to see just like, you know, a inverted yield curve already, you know, would be enough to see perhaps a rebound on net inflows?

We need to see, perhaps interest rates going to single-digit levels, to really, you know, start, you know, bring, you know, bring people back? If you can comment on that, considering we are, you know, in a, in a potentially, you know, monetary easing cycle. That's my first question. The second question is, with regards to your revenue performance in the quarter, you know, it was quite resilient, despite, you know, the very, difficult macro environment. In, looking, you know, at your accounting, disclosure, you know, we see, I think the, the revenue from services, they were down quite meaningfully, about 14% quarter-over-quarter.

We saw the net income from financial instruments, I think going from BRL 14 million-BRL 500 million. I just wanna know, is there any, you know, any known recurrence or some extra revenues that, you know, maybe in structured operations that might have helped you in the quarter? Or you think this is just more, you know, back to normality given that the fourth quarter was already, you know, let's say a very, very weak quarter from that standpoint? Just to understand how sustainable this level of revenues in the Q1 can be in the quarters to come. Thank you.

Bruno Constantino (CFO)

Okay, Telles. I will start from the second question.

André Martins (Head of Investor Relations)

I can take the first one.

Bruno Constantino (CFO)

Yeah, go back to the first one. About the net income from financial instrument that you mentioned, quarter-over-quarter, it was a growth around 10% if I'm not mistaken. I mean, if you look on a longer term view, net income from financial instruments have been growing in relevance in the accounting income statement compared to the net revenue from services rendered. That has to do with two main things. Number one is the floating revenue that is a financial instrument, so it's embedded in that number. Number two, the brokerage commission part of the accounting income statement has been suffering because of the equity market.

If you look at that number, for example, last year, brokerage commissions, we had a higher number of BRL 560 million, for example, in the Q1 of 2022. That went down to BRL 494 million in the Q1 of this year. This number has been decreasing because of the macro environment and net income. A lot of components in there, but I would highlight the floating part of it.

Thiago Maffra (CEO)

Well, about your first question, Telles, is, of course, if we have lower interest-rate level, of course it's good for our business, okay? We have been through other cycles in the past. Once we start to see the interest rates going down and the shape of the curve being upward slope, it's the best for the business, okay? We see longer durations, we see more investments in equities. We see people moving back from fixed income funds that have much lower ROA to multi-market funds, to FIA funds, equity funds. We expect once we start to see interest rates going down, we expect people reallocating from low ROA fixed income products to more high yield products, okay? Of course, we benefit from that.

Another aspect of that, once we start to see interest rates going down, it means that probably the level of confidence of our investors, of the Brazilian investors, they are higher, so people are more willing to move from the banks, like to XP to invest in a more diversified portfolios. It's, I would say, a win-win scenario. It's good for the business. The third point is about capital markets. As we already mentioned many times here today, the capital markets for revenues for XP in the Q4, they were really low. Q1, they are even lower, okay? It was the lowest level for the past many quarters, okay? You guys, of course, have the public information that you can see.

We start to see capital markets going back again after the Lojas Americanas event, Light event. We start to see things going back to normal, but it's still far from the peaks that we saw in the past, okay? Again, once we start to see interest rates going down, we expect net-new money should go up. We expect revenues from higher yield products going up. We start to see capital markets getting better. It's good for the business.

Marcelo Telles (Head of Latin America Securities Research)

Thank you. Just a follow-up on your last point. If you think like, even if rates, let's say they stabilize at, let's say, low double-digit levels, let's say 10%, you know, 10% or so, you think that, you know, we could still see a positive impact on your business? They don't need to go to single digit levels for you to see a more meaningful impact.

Thiago Maffra (CEO)

It's the level of the uncertainty.

Marcelo Telles (Head of Latin America Securities Research)

Yeah. The level matters.

Thiago Maffra (CEO)

I would say that more than the level, okay, if it's 10 or nine or 11. The problem is when you have a high level of uncertainty, okay? You see all the price around the globe going down, inflation very high, the price of everything, bonds going down, and so on, the investors, they get afraid, okay? They buy low-risk products. In Brazil, you know very well, we have tax-free products with daily liquidity with 13.75%. It's hard to convince someone to move from that to any other product, okay? If the macro environment, the level of confidence gets better, for me, it doesn't matter if it's nine or 10, okay? It's not that the point that will change how much money we'll make or so on.

There is a mix of very high interest rates with high uncertainty. That's the biggest problem right now, okay. Again, for us, it's not when we had 2%, it's also not the best scenario for the business. Something like, high single digits, I would say that's the best scenario for the business, okay.

Bruno Constantino (CFO)

Just to add here, probably we have many portfolio managers, here in the call, investors that have funds. It, it works pretty much the same. Right now, I bet a lot of portfolio managers look at many opportunities in the stock market, but still they are getting outflows and not inflows. Risk aversion. It's not only the level of interest rates, as Maffra mentioned, it's about risk aversion. Whenever people, you know, that can change quickly. We don't know when, or how, but, it does happen because it's a cycle. When that happens, people will jump in, and, we're gonna start seeing inflows back in, riskier funds. You start a different type, of cycle. Level of interest rates is important, but it's not key.

Risk aversion, it's, more important.

André Martins (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you for your question. Telles, it was the last one, so we would like to thank you all for participating in the call. We will be available, the IR team, to discuss the results with you. Have a good night, everyone.

Thiago Maffra (CEO)

Thank you, everyone, for joining as well. Thank you very much. See you guys next time.