Banca Generali Spa

Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call Conference Operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Banca Generali Preliminary 2023 Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Gianmaria Mossa, CEO and General Manager.

Please go ahead, sir.

Our full year results conference goal. 2023 results were very, very strong with a new record high in terms of client assets, net profits, net recurring profits, and DPS proposal. We are also positive and confident on the results of this year thanks to a normalization of the interest rate context and more important for the deployment of very important strategic initiatives to enhance the productivity of our financial advisors. Before starting with numbers, at page 4, I want to spend a few words on a new classification of assets, net inflows and recurring fees that you will see during the presentation. In particular, we decided to introduce the category of assets under investment in line with the evolution of the industry. in which we gather together asset under management and asset under advisory. The complement to one will be named other assets and it will include pure asset under custody and banking assets. The same is done for the fees. So the recurring fees are split into clusters. the investment fees, so the sum of management fees and advisory fees, and other recurring fees. So we will, of course, maintain the traditional representation plus this new class. Well, now let's go through numbers. So page five, net profit and recurring net profit, best result ever, most of which driven by recurring fees, and these results are were supported by very strong net interest income, but also very solid gross fees. The fourth quarter was pretty strong, above $70 million, of which the major part comes from the recurring revenues. Starting from net financial income, so slide six, they said that the full year results was, of course, very strong. with the fourth quarter in line with the third one. If you carve out also the impact of the inflation-linked bond, the last three quarters were pretty stable, and in a context in which the margins are still slightly increasing. For this year, we do expect a slight reduction of the overall result of net interest income. Let's say that we do expect a slight reduction of client deposits, I would say in the range of half a billion euros, and an increase in the cost of deposits for clients, but we will deep dive later. So overall, for net interest income, we confirm the target given during the previous conference call to stay at or above 280 million euro. Next page, total gross fees. As you can see, the total gross fees achieved in the fourth quarter, 250 million, which is thanks to a slight increase in the gross recurring fees, and a positive contribution of variable fees. If we analyze variable fees, I can say that the first five weeks of the year have already exceeded the overall contribution of variable fees for the full year of last year. January was around 16, and in February we are close to 5. So let's go through the gross recurring fees. Page 8, you see the new representation. So the investment fees trend. You see that year on year, the overall result is stable. And you see that on one end, you have a slight reduction quarter on quarter on management fees and a slight increase in advanced advisory fees. The margins are worked out on the average investment assets, and these margins are slightly down due to the mix with an increasing contribution of advanced advisory fees. Page 9, there is our traditional representation of management fees. The fourth quarter, as I mentioned, slightly lower, $200 million. But let's say that the numbers in December and in January are pretty good. So we are going at the path of almost $70 million per month, both in December and in January. And we are pretty confident at this market condition to stay at this level or higher. And as you can see, the margins so far are in line, are stable at 1.43%. even if I remember that our target for the three-year business plan is to stay above 1.41. Next page, there is also a deep dive of advisory fees. You see that here the increase is pretty strong, double-digit growth, and the contribution for the fourth quarter was at $11 million. This is all driven by volumes, and while the margins for advanced advisory fees is pretty stable at 0.49. And in this case, we do expect double-digit growth also for this year. Last, page 11, other fees. Here the acceleration is pretty strong. overall result year-on-year, $112 million. This is the sum of entry fees, brokerage commission, and other banking fees. And this acceleration is driven both by the volumes and the margins with brokerage and entry fees that are working very, very well. Page 12. We are moving on the cost side, and we start with the payout ratio. Here, everything is in line with our guidance. In particular, the ordinary payout ratio is below the threshold of 36, and it closed at 35.5. And the incentive, the part linked to incentives, closed at 11.6, below our threshold of 12. And we confirm these two targets also for 2024. And for the payout to third parties, you see that we are going again in line with the average of the year, so 6.1. And we do expect for this year a target of around 6%. Next page, operating costs. Starting from the bottom, core operating costs closed in line with our projection, so an increase of 6%. And this is despite the inflationary environment, 7.4 million of costs for the setup of BG Swiss, plus higher staff costs following the new national labor contract. If we focus on the total operating cost, here you see an increase in the non-core items. So it's the blue bar, 4.6 million. This is all driven by significant effort to explore new opportunities, to enlarge the targets of our clients, to analyze the potential opportunities. internalization of margins, and also to explore potential M&A, even if I confirm that any potential M&A for this year will be auto-financed and will be about, let's say, small targets and won't change our capital allocation. And for the sales personnel cost, let's say, the traditional seasonality, so only in line. Page 14, our operating leverage, everything goes in the right direction. Operating cost on total assets, 0.3. Cost income, let's say the adjusted one, down below 35%. Page 15, this is a focus on the net provision. I think that is a important to give you the perspective of the impact of the stabilization of interest rate last year. So focusing at the bottom of the page, you see the net provision like for like. It means once we carved out the discount rate effect. So you see that the provisions are flat year on year, while of course the discount rate effect was very strong in 2020 too. and the positive impact for 2023 was limited at 5 million euros. So the overall provisions are flat, while the positive effect of the increasing interest rate is vanishing. Page 16, just to recap, total banking income very strong. And we are positive for this year for the recovery of the market, for the normalization of the interest yields, and for the expectation of the commercial activity. And then I will deep dive on the commercial activity for this year. Costs under control. So we confirm the target of 6% incorporating costs. And lastly, if we focus on tax rate, You see 26.5 is slightly higher. This is due to the mix of the revenues. And we expect the same level also for this year. Page 18. So let's start with the balance sheet with the interest-bearing assets. You see that the overall result for the full year is in line with the first nine months. So pretty stable interest bearing asset from 14 billion to 14.1 with an increase in the yield from 2.8 to 2.92. This is basically given by all the components. If we focus next page, page 19 on the liability side, also here you see stabilization in the last quarter. with client deposits at 11.2 compared to the 11.1 of the third quarter. The cost of client deposits increased from 0.38 to 0.46. And as I mentioned before, as a conservative assumption for this year, we expect a potential reduction of client deposits at around 1%. 10.511 billion, and we expect an increased cost of client deposits from the current level to 0.8, 0.9. Such a kind of scenario with the forward curve, we expect, as I mentioned before, an overall contribution of net interest income of around 280 million euros. Page 20, you see the capital liquidity ratios, very strong total capital ratio, achieving 19%, leverage ratio above 5%, liquidity coverage ratio and net stable funding ratio stable, and well above the SREP requirement. Page 21, dividend proposal, First of all, I will just remind you that in February next week, we're going to pay €0.65 for the dividend of two years ago, so the second tranche, while for this year, we will propose to the annual general meeting a DPS of €2.15, or 77% of payout, two trashes, the first one, the second quarter of this year of 1.55 and the second of 0.6. And as I confirm in all the conference call, we are pretty confident to deliver the target of overall remuneration for the period of the strategic plan. Moving on, page 2.3, so the commercial activity. On the left, you see the traditional view, so an increase of total assets from 83 to 93, almost. And you see the raising contribution of the advanced advisory services, so the overall assets stood at 9.6 billion. with an acceleration of about 30%. On the right, you see the new classification, so the assets under investment rose by almost €4 billion at €62.9 billion, while other assets, so pure assets under custody and banking, close to 30 billion. In the next page, so page 2.4, we focus on asset under management. Overall asset under management closed at 57.4. You see the traditional life policy down from 15 to 14.3, while the management solution increased by 3 billion euros. Y thanks to a positive contribution of wrappers at the top on the right you see wrappers exceeded 21 billion with an increasing contribution of the financial wrappers up by 1 billion and then in the distribution of retail funds we achieved 22 billion of which more than $10 billion in in-house funds. And also here, the increase of in-house funds is almost of $1 billion. The same representation will be provided for the net inflows. So now, if you see page 2.5, you see the overall net inflows with the traditional representation on the left. And here you can see that we closed last year with a higher overall total net inflows, 5.9 compared to 5.7, with a significant acceleration of the net inflows in advanced advisory services, 1.7 billion. On the right, you see the representation of assets under investment. They accounted for 1.4 billion euro. Next page, you see page 26, the detail of assets under management, so positive contribution of managed solutions, 800 million, negative contribution of traditional life policies, minus 1.1 billion. Focusing on managed solutions, you see the strength of the financial wrappers, 0.7, and the behavior in the retail distribution of funds. The overall result is 0.1, so it's negligible, but the contribution of the in-house funds was up by 0.4, so 400 million euro, while the third-party funds were down by 300 million euro. more interest in our in-house platform. Page 27, a focus of acquisition channels, pretty impressive the productivity of our existing sales force from 4.5 to 5 billion euro, while the overall contribution of recruitment was at 0.9, so below expectation, driven by less numbers of new colleagues you can see it at page 27 on the right and you see that we had a deceleration of recruitment from the traditional banks this is pretty normal when performance of the portfolios are negative for the traditional bankers is more difficult to convince clients to transfer assets but in this case we are pretty confident for this year Page 28, the first numbers for January. They say that to me January is a very strong seasonality, so I'm pretty confident to see better numbers in the next month. But we start seeing an indication of decomposition, €320 million, positive contribution of asset underinvestments. thanks to advanced advisory services and financial wrappers, stabilization of client deposits, and traditional life insurance policies. And if you look at on the right, you see the recruitment, and you see the acceleration of the recruitment from retail and private banks. And again, there is great interest in the bank, and I'm pretty confident that the recruitment would contribute significantly to the results of this year. Next chapter is about the business update. Page three zero, we discussed the last conference call about our Swiss project. Here the focus is on all the initiatives close to be rolled out this year to enhance the FA productivity. We have two different blocks. The first one is about the reorganization of the network, new roles, and new figures. The second block is about technology, digitalization, and data as enablers. Starting from the new network roles and organizations, so page 3.1, we will deep dive together on the new organization in the next page. We have introduced New managerial roles, so very senior managers dedicated, fully dedicated to the new initiatives, focus on the inflows of new initiatives. An example is Switzerland, is the corporate, is the sustainability, but also generational turnover and new managers model. We launched a very interesting project for the sustainability in the long term of our The Sustainable Advisors is a banker mostly dedicated to sustainable approach. We took an exam. They normally use the sustainable platform, the proprietary platform with the SDGs approach and the percentage of products with a bias for sustainability, ESG, is above 50%. This is, I'm pretty sure, a different way to attract also new talent in the next years. Page 3-2, just a few minutes on the new organization, because it's something unique in the Italian market. First of all, we create the Senior Partners Network, It means financial advisors with more than 150 million. This represents the excellence of our financial advisor network and is a way also to attract the best talents in the market thanks to dedicated services, dedicated structure, and a great focus on growth and on value. The second segment is about wealth managers Private banking and financial planners is the greatest part of our network. Here, we decided to create one leadership on the field with dedicated structure as a function of the assets of the financial advisor, of the banker, and this will enhance more synergies in the field. Think of, for example, team building, things of moving financial advisor from one cluster to another one. The third one is about the FBA network, so the financial planning agent. This is about financial planners with, let me say, sorry, it's about generally sales force with also the mandate as a financial planner from the bank. We start seeing greater interest from the agent of Generali, and we increased by 10 financial advisors in one year. And this is basically all about cross-selling, so how we enhance banking and investment products to clients of the agent. The fourth network is about the employees, the relationship manager, and here we confirm the existing structure. The second block, page 3.1, is about technology and data and digitalization as enabler. Three major blocks. The first one is advanced data analytics, and we, in this case, I strongly believe to have a very strong competitive advantage, and we will deep dive in the next slide. RPA and digitalization, which is a must-have, is about keep simple, automatize, and simplify and digitalize all the processes. The third one is about generative artificial intelligence. We have already launched two POCs. in increasing the support and the quality and efficiency of the service for the financial advisors. Page 34, there is the deep dive on the data platform. This is a proprietary platform. We have been working for two years on this project, and it was an important part of our three-year business plan. We're gathering all the information of our clients from know your customer, anti-money laundering, current accounts, payments, and so forth. We can identify some clusters and the potential wealth of the clients for each of these clusters, and then we define an indicator of the potential wealth of the client. So there is a matrix with the existing money in the bank, the potentiality of the clients, and then we're going to develop commercial support and commercial initiatives to enhance cross-selling and up-selling. And as you can understand, in some cases, the gap is significant. Page 35, to sum up. So I'm very confident for inflows this year. especially in the second part of this year, thanks to Switzerland, thanks to this data-driven approach, and thanks to a normalization of recruitment. So I do expect a floor of $6 billion, of which 40-60% invested in asset underinvestment. Profits, profitable growth, we confirm the target 15-20%. I think that here we will have great support in the normalization of the interest rate and of the normalization of the asset under custody, especially in the second part of the year. And last but not least, we are very confident to achieve also the targets of the dividend. As you have already seen, we have a very strong capital ratio. We have already paid or we will propose for this year a sum of 6.35. The capital optimization, capital allocation won't change this year. And probably this year will be the year in which we will try to remunerate, let's say, all our shareholders very well at the end of an important three-year business plan. So also in this case, I'm very confident to achieve this target. So the presentation is finished, and now we are ready to take any questions. Thank you.

Excuse me, this is the course call conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from Gianluca Ferrari of Mediobanca. Please go ahead.

Yes, hi, good afternoon. Ciao, Gianmaria. First of all, thank you for the new representation of your flows, which makes you more comparable with some of your competitors. Three questions for me, please. One is on M&A. You mentioned it. You showed also some costs to evaluate some deals. Of course, I will not ask you what they're looking at. But my question is, we saw a breakup of Generte Life over the past few months. So there is now a very well-identified portfolio related to Banca Generali's clients. So I was wondering if you might be at some point interested in acquiring your technical reserves. If this is something you believe it could make sense from a strategic standpoint. Second question is on recruitment. In general, it seems that things are getting better in the market. You are not giving a precise target, but I was wondering if you can say that 150 new advisors are possible in a year like this. And the final one is on 2025 NII. You have a cost of funding. You can play a bit with that part. but I was wondering if you can share with us what are your thoughts on 2025 in terms of NII. Thank you.

Thank you, Gianluca. So let's say that, as I mentioned, it's off today. I don't plan any acquisition with capital absorption, so it's more about services. So, of course, general life is very important for us. I do believe that protection and insurance will be a great part of our success for the next year, but I think that at least now the best place for general life is Generali. As I said, we spend also money in considering how to enlarge our targets of clients in the affluent segment, in the ultra-net-ro targets and so forth. Also, because we are starting thinking of the next plan, and since numbers for this year are well in place, and I'm very confident we can invest and dedicate time to think of the next wave of growth. For recruitment, 150 is our basic scenario, so we do expect it to stay around these numbers. of next year. I will hand over to Tomas.

Thank you, Gianmaria. Well, on the NII, we expect to – we can maintain the guidance that we gave in the last quarter. We expect the next year to be in the range of $280 million. We have still a benefit in terms of the asset side profitability because we have a part of the portfolio which will be – and we'll be reinvested in a higher rate. On the liability side, we are also projecting a small reduction of the balance sheet. We have an increase in terms of the cost of clients. We expect to reach the level between 70 and 80 basis points. And overall, we expect to maintain the guidance that we gave in the last quarter. Going forward, it depends, of course, on the evolution of the interest rate environment. Of course, we monitor during the year what will be the evolution of interest rate. We will be more precise in the future giving guidance also for the 2025. Okay.

Thank you.

The next question is from Elena Perini of Intesa San Paolo.

Yes, good afternoon and thank you for taking my questions. I've got two questions actually. The first one is if you can give us some color on your performance fees and how much are they in January because we see some small pickup in the fourth quarter. So I was wondering about the trend in this first part of 2024. And then about your guidance for net inflows for more than 6 billion for this year. I was wondering if you can give us some indications about a composition. We see that the outflows from the traditional life policies seem to have stopped, and you also have some recovery, so a bit more color on this. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Elena. Just let me say just one word on the previous question, just to be fully clear. Any excess of capital will be used to pay dividend this year. So I want to be sure that the message is fully understood because the representation of the total cost for transparency, we wanted to explicitly say that we were studying different optionality. But my commitment to pay dividends is even higher than last year because I think that we have to grow and we have to remunerate our shareholders. On the performance fee, January closed at €16 million. February started well. We are at €4 million. So overall, we are above €20 million of performance fee so far. We have almost 4 billion euro very close or at the high water mark, and other 3 billion with, let's say, a gap below 5%. So, depending on markets, of course, it could be very impactful for our results. In terms of net inflows, I'm very confident on, let's say, on the normalization of the mix. especially in the second part of the year, thanks to the Swiss project and thanks to recruitment. The existing sales force depends also on the interest rate scenario that you have in mind. The traditional life insurance are recovering pretty well. January was slightly positive. February is slightly positive. I do not expect to see hundreds of millions, but I do expect to see, again, a normalization in the overall business of insurance with an overall positive contribution for the full year.

Okay.

Thank you very much. The next question is from Alberto Villa, Winter Monte Sim.

Good afternoon. Three quick questions from my side. The first one is on the guidance on cost for 2024, eventually between core costs and non-core items, and if you expect to incur still set-up costs for the BG Swiss startup. The second one is on the new organization, which looks interesting. I was wondering if this could also be functional for the recruitment activity or if there is any impact in the way you, let's say, remunerate the network, any impact on the cost side because of a different way of looking at it. layers in the structure of the distribution and the final one is on how is evolving the BG Swiss and if you confirm the target to reach between 3.6 and 4.1 billion of assets by 2026 or you see an acceleration whatever color you can give us on that. Thank you.

Thank you, Alberto. On cost, I confirm 6% in core and 6.7% in non-core. I do not expect to see, let's say, new one-off because, let's say, the greatest part of our analysis has been closed last year. new organization you are right I do expect to be more effective in recruiting especially in top profile we have just closed a recruitment very important recruitment of a banker with more than 200 million euro from a competitor and this was part of the sale of the proposition on the remuneration I do not see As you know, we are very committed to stay in the range of 35, 36 for the ordinary payout and in the range of 10, 12 on the incentive scheme, so no news on that front. I confirm the targets, at least half a billion euros for this year, mainly with the proposition of attract investment services and the relationship in Italy, maintaining the custody and the deposit in Switzerland. And you will start seeing numbers in the second part of the second quarter of this year. Thank you. Thanks.

The next question is from Marco Nicolai of Jefferies.

Hi, everyone. So you mentioned before that lower rates would be helpful for normalization of the mix. So where do you see really the tipping points in terms of short-term rates for this process to start, namely for AUC going more towards AUM? And also, second question, you mentioned before that you are a couple of business points above plan expectation in terms of management commission margins, AUM margins. Does it mean that you expect over the next years to lose these couple of business points, or do you still expect margins stable on this front?

Let's say that the tipping point sources, the level, I don't have an explicit level. I do believe that it's about the expectation of the central banks. So if we start listening from the central banks of a reduction of yields, it would be the event accelerating a normalization. And In terms of profitability, you should break up our portfolio in two parts. We have the insurance portfolio and the asset management portfolio. In the insurance, we are attracting new inflows with a sort of promotion for the first two years. This is a sort of J curve on the profitability of the insurance part. So depending on the volumes of the insurance product, you could see a slight reduction in margin and then a slight recovery. So we prefer to say 1.41 or above just because, first of all, it was the commitment during our three-year business plan. Second, because depending on volumes of insurance, you could see a slight reduction and then a slight recovery in the future. Thank you. Thank you.

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The next question is from Luigi Debellis of Equitasim.

Yes, good afternoon. Just a quick question. The first one on the liquidity, there is still the headwind for this year. due to the government placement of BTPs to retail competition from still high interest rates. How is your view on this? Do you see or do you expect the same appetite from your clients on BTP during this year? And what is your assumption embedded in the guidance in terms of potential headwinds during the three placements of the government during 2024? And the second question on the asset management products, so can you elaborate on the expected new solution or strategic initiatives to speed up the influence during the year? Thank you.

Thank you, Luigi. For the liquidity, our conservative assumption is a level of Client deposits at 10.5 billion, so slightly lower than 11.2 over the last year. Let's say that looking at these first weeks, I see less pressure than last year and mostly depends on also the maturity of some bonds because this is a very important year for different bonds. maturing that should offset new interest in the BTP valore, the new issues of BTP valore. So you will see some volatility, in my opinion, on the liquidity side. We prefer to maintain a conservative view on the stocks instead of paying a little bit more on the deposits, but we have great flexibility. So I don't see issues for the bank on these topics. As you know, it impacts definitely less than others. Probably we are the least impacted in the Italian market on these topics, especially compared to the traditional banks, and we have great flexibility. So the normalization is there. We already see in the last weeks that we can manage liquidity easily, and the focus must be on asset management products. What kind of asset management products? First of all, the financial wrappers. So The more the personalization, the more the interest for clients. In the selling proposition, of course, the coupon is really important, as well as diversification. So I continue to see great opportunities for financial wrappers. The same can be said for advanced advisory services and for all the initiatives in the more traditional funds with diversification and it's a risk control solution. I always like to remember our top flagship fund. It is a flexible fund. It's more than 1.5 billion euros. It's performing pretty well. And the active management is the reason why most of our financial advisors first and our clients invest in this kind of solution. So just the long story, The funds that are long only start being out of fashion, excluding the accumulation plan. The accumulation of, say, pure equity funds continue to work, especially the global one and the ones investing in the more, let's say, attractive sectors like technology or stability and so forth. But let's say that personalization is the king. The coupon probably... they must have in the new offering. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

The next question is from Filippo Prini of Kepler.

Good afternoon. A couple of questions. Firstly, do you expect still in 2024 to have a fee payout of an AI to the network so we still keep these features rebate of your gain on NII also for this year. And second, I've noticed that you managed to reduce the risk-weighted asset in 2023 compared to 2022, and it was, I guess, second year in a row. Clearly, I guess it depends upon the shrinkage of your balance sheet, but should you expect still to go on with this reduction of risk-weighted asset also in 2024? Thank you.

Thank you, Filippo. For the payout on net interest income, I do not expect higher impact compared to last year. So we project 10 million or less. In terms of RUA, it's due to basically the reduction of the balance sheet, a very significant a conservative approach to the lending. I remember that all our lending activity is over-collateralized, but let's say that reducing the lending exposure to corporate, of course, has a positive impact on the overall risk-weighted assets. Overall, we continue to maintain a conservative approach to the balance sheet and to the risk of the balance sheet.

Thank you.

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The next question is a follow-up from Marco Nicolai of Jefferies.

Hi, sorry, a quick follow-up. On the cost of deposit, in your guidance, you embed quite a steep increase in the cost of deposit. despite rates probably coming down next year. Can you give us a little bit of color around your thoughts on this point? How do you expect it to evolve and do you expect maybe to launch some marketing promotions on this front? Thank you.

Thank you, Marco. No, let's say there is some conservative assumption In terms of marketing promotion, nothing special. It will be all in line with last year. It mostly depends on the competitive landscape. So the assumption is that we will see increasing initiative from competitors. There are already in place some very aggressive initiatives from other asset getters. I don't like to pay for the inflows. But, of course, in defensive mode, sometimes it's necessary. So some say it's a sort of question to be sure to achieve the targets we announced.

Thank you. Thank you. Very clear.

Mr. Mossad, there are no more questions registered at this time.

Okay. Thank you very much for joining our conference call, and see you next.