Bper Banca Spa Unsp/Adr

Good afternoon. This is the Coral School Conference Operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the BEPER First Quarter 2020 Consolidated 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 M0 on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Alessandro Vandelli, CEO of the Deeper Group. Please go ahead, sir.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you all for joining this conference call today about our first quarter 2020 results. This is Alessandro Vandelli, CEO, and I'm here with Roberto Ferrari, CFO, Alessandro Simonazzi, Head of Planning and Control and Gilberto Borgo, Investor Relations Manager. First of all, let me say that I hope you and your families have been keeping safe and healthy. I never thought that calls like these could open introducing something that with financial has nothing to do. Last time we did one of these calls was only a couple of months ago, but since then worked now seems to be very different. Obviously, an event like the health emergency we all are currently experiencing changes priorities and inevitably makes individuals and companies focus on what is really important. We have forced the responsibility to run the bank safely, taking care of our colleagues helping our customers through their difficulties, supporting the domestic economy and the communities where we live and work. We have been able to do that because of the strength of our business model and the deep knowledge of our customer needs, as we are a national regional bank where the proximity to the customer is our daily job. And I have to say that I've been especially proud of the way all my colleagues across the group have faced the challenges of this extraordinary time. So I'd like to start this presentation today by taking a few minutes to set out how we have been responding to the crisis. We know that some customers are dealing with very hard times and financial challenges. We have moved quickly to give them the reassurance and the support they need. I'm going to give a brief summary and examples in the first page of the executive summary. Please go on page five of the presentation, which is already available on our website. As I said, we immediately reached to face this unprecedented event, the health, economic and social emergency caused by the spread of COVID-19 virus, with an incredible commitment to offer numerous initiatives in the areas where the group operates. Key priorities are to protect the health of our employees and customers, and implement support measures for households, small businesses and companies, while ensuring operational continuity of corporate processes also by introducing innovative working methodologies. Our operations have been highly resilient with around most of the branches open for business and basically all ATMs remained accessible. More than 50% of our staff working from home and a high degree of business continuity. We have increased our IT capacity to allow an increasing number of daily access to online channels and we have also strengthened our content center to manage a large number of incoming calls. This helped us to reach quickly and effectively in support of our customers. We have introduced a broad range of customer support measures and have followed very closely the evolution of all measures the government and regulators have put in place. In summary, at group level, we have worked on different measures. About moratorium on loans repayment for SMEs, we have had more than 75,000 requests to process. We have made available two new lines of credit at group level, the first for €1 billion to provide liquidity to corporates and the second for €100 million to support private individuals and retail businesses. Relatively to loans to SMEs and professional retailers up to €25,000, 100% guaranteed by Medio Credito Centrale, we are processing more than 17,000 requests for more than €300 million. New lending granted by SACE. We have already signed the agreement for the provision of guarantees on loans exceeding €25,000. thousand euro and already set credit and IT infrastructures to provide financing. We are also active on the social side as a natural extension of what we are already doing. We have approved donations of over 3 million euro at group level to purchase intensive care equipment for health care facilities, to provide social welfare and to support healthcare and scientific research to set up educational and teaching emergency remotely and other intervention in favor of our communities. Now after this brief overview about the health and medicine issues, we can turn to our fourth quarter 2020 performances. Please move on the next page six. We can say we had a good start of the year, with a satisfactory January and February, and even the first part of March. This was a confirmation of the strategic value of the extraordinary operations completed during 2019. In fact, even in a context characterized first by the slowdown of the economy, then by the effects of the health emergency, our group has shown a good ability to generate revenues. Operating profitability, even in the presence of a limited contribution from Pfizer, has touched €600 million. Then a tight cost control and excellent levels of liquidity and capital solidity. The net profit for the period, however positive for €6.1 million, is strongly affected by the accounting of additional loan loss provisions for approximately €50 million, as the fourth significant intervention following the worsening of the macroeconomic context caused by the health emergency. It is also worth mentioning that in the quarter there is the accounting the ordinary contribution to the Single European Resolution Fund for the full 2020 for €32 million. In details, Q1 2020 net profit of €6.1 million has been characterized mainly by resilient core revenues, down only by 0.5% quarter-on-quarter, showing an increase of NII by 1.8%, offset by a decrease of net commission by 3% quarter-on-quarter, mainly due to the usual positive seasonality of the Q4, but broadly flat versus the third Q2019 that is a more comparable quarter. A lower contribution from trading due to the high volatility on financial markets in the period, a reduction of operating costs by 4.4% quarter-on-quarter net of relevant non-recurring items in Q4 2019. And finally, as we said before, additional loan law provisions for about €50 million and therefore a cost of credit at 110 basis points annualized and 2020 ordinary contribution to the European Single Resolution Fund for €32 million. Also, this quarter view confirms our very solid capital and liquidity position. We have been able, once more, to manage capital in a very effective way, and we continue to be very solid with a 2x1 ratio fully loaded at 12.07% at the end of Q1 2020. Centuan phased in is at 13.6%, maintaining an appropriate buffer of €1.8 billion over the minimum regulatory requirement set by ECB for 2020. In addition, our liquidity position is very strong, as shown by LCR index at about 168%, and the liquidity buffer comes over €11 billion. Move on to the next page, page 7. Again, good news from asset quality standpoint. We had a reduction of the stock of gross and net non-performing loans of 1.1% and 2.8% respectively since the end of 2018. A gross NP ratio stable at 11.1% due to the decrease of loans and the NPE coverage increased by 85 basis points to 51.9%, improving on all administrative status. We recorded a further decrease of default rate at 1.5% annualized from 1.7% in 2019. Talking about business, net customer decreased by 1.9% since the beginning of the year, mainly attributable to the corporate segment and financial companies, while the retail sector has recorded substantial stability. Total funding, which includes the bank-run sectors, stood at €165.6 billion, down by 5.6% from the end of 2019, mainly due to the market effect relating to indirect deposit, both in asset under management and asset under custody. The origination of residential mortgages and consumer credit was positive, even not comparable with the same period of 2098 due to the change of the scope of consolidation. Lastly, a final comment about the strategic operation we have in place. In this context, of high uncertainty, we confirmed the strategic value of the project for the acquisition of a Gongon CERN from Intesa Group, San Paolo Group. Obviously, if the voluntary public exchange offer launched on the entire share capital of UBI will be a success. Activities for the execution of the agreement, both from the point of view of the authorization procedures and the operational ones are going on in line with the timeline we had in mind. Just to remind you that on April 22nd, the EGM of BIPER approved with a 97.11% of votes cast the proposal to grant the board of directors the power to carry out a capital increase up to a maximum of $1 billion in order to support the acquisition. As you know, this right issue for which Unipol Group expressed the willingness to subscribe its pro-quota stake is assisted by a pre-underwriting agreement with Mediobanker. Now let's go very quickly into the analysis of the Q1 results, starting from the balance sheet. We can move on to page 9. So total funding, the value stock is 165.6 billion euro in Q1 2020, including a contribution of asset management from ARCA holding of 15.5 billion euro. TOC shows a decline by 5.6% versus December 2019, mainly due to indirect deposit decrease, strongly affected by market effects related to financial markets turmoil following the health emergency crisis. Reduction in total deposit of 9.9 billion euros is for over a third attributable to the Unipol Group, 3.6 billion euros, while the rest is mainly concentrated on indirect deposit, €5.5 billion, while direct funding is only marginally down by 1.6% since the end of 2019. Let's turn to page 10 just to see a few details about the breakdown of the direct funding. Direct customer deposits were down by €0.8 billion, or 1.4% since December 2019. The breakdown shows an increase in current account and side deposit by 0.5% in the presence of a decrease of time deposit, CDs and bonds. The overall reduction is mainly concentrated in the corporate segment while the retail one shows a small increase. Institutional funding at 3.3 billion euro down by 4% since December 2019, mainly due to repo's zeroing. Looking at institutional bonds' maturities, both in 2020 and 2021, we have only €0.9 billion expiring, of which €750 million of a cover bond in 2020, giving a high degree of flexibility in our funding strategy going forward. On page 11, we can see the decline of indirect deposit stocks down by 7.6% versus December 2019 at €108.5 billion, both in asset under management and asset under custody, mainly due to significant impact of the market effect due to the financial market volatility following the health emergency. On the other hand, we have also underlined the positive performance of the bank assurance sector, with an increase by 1% on December 19, despite the difficult business environment. This is an encouraging signal that the sector is active and supportive for business. Net inflows in asset under management and bank assurance are positive. plus €0.2 billion in the quarter, despite the turmoil in financial markets. In details, we have noted an overall positive trend in asset management for the first two months of the quarter, then a sharp drop in March. In the bank insurance sector, we underline growing net inflows in the quarter, in particular for life insurance. Moving on to page 12. We recorded the decrease of loans, both at gross and net level, currently respectively at 54.3 billion euro and 51 billion euro. In particular, gross customer loans were down by 1 billion euro since December 19, mainly due to corporate segment and financial companies. While retail sector recorded substantially stability. In Q1 2020, residential mortgage origination has shown positive trend on a monthly basis and consumer credit production was up by 21.7% versus Q1 2019, even though the comparable zone is not on a like-for-like basis. The good quality of the performing loans book is confirmed with a very low bucket of high-risk exposure, only 3.5% of the performing book. We can underline that gross MP stock declined by 1.1% since December 19, thanks to internal work-out and high recovery rate, in particular on bad loans. Let's turn to page 13. Once again, we can confirm our answer quality improvement. Gross NP stock decreased by 1.1 since December 19 in all its components, in particular past due with a decline by 18.2%, mainly thanks to internal workout and recovery from bad loans. Gross NP ratio came broadly stable at 11.1% in Q1-20 versus December 19, due to the decrease of loans and the net NPE ratio went slightly down at 5.7% versus 5.8% in December 2019. We have also underlined the net NPE coverage improved at 51.9% from 51% in December 2019, and we can appreciate the remarkable increase of UTP and past due coverage respectively at 34 and 18.4%. We reiterate our commitment to focus on further asset quality improvement going forward. Moving on to page 14, we can add another couple of positive marks. of the asset quality, in particular the full trade rate improved further at 1.5% annualized compared to 1.7% in 2019, one of the lowest levels in the history of our group, signaling that a good job was done in the credit area in the past year. Consider that in 2016 the default rate was at 4.2%. We can also focus on the strong improvement of the band loans recovery rate which comes at 7.2% analyzed compared to the 6.3% in 2019. This is once more a confirmation that our servicing platform, BIPRO Credit Management, is a very efficient platform. It is doing an excellent job and playing an important role within our overall MP strategy. Page 15, the securities portfolio reported an increase of €0.9 billion. The strategy here has been to try to take advantage of widening spreads both in the sovereign and the corporate bonds area. Italian government bond stock is still relatively low at $6.6 billion, weighing 33.2% of the financial asset portfolio and 10.8% of the total asset. We continue to follow our strategy to diversify the financial portfolio and not to be too concentrated on the Italian sovereign risk. Total bond and Italian Govis portfolio duration are broadly stable since December 2019, respectively at 3 years and 4.3 years. Now we can move on to the profit and loss figures on page 17. A few comments here. Our group showed a good ability to generate revenues, operating profitability, even the presence of a limited contribution from finance almost reached 600 million euro, despite a contest characterized by the slowdown of the economy and the first effects of the health emergency. Commenting the Q1-20 results, it's worth highlighting that the positive net profit for €6.1 million was strongly affected by the accounting of additional loan loss provisions for approximately €50 million, as the first significant intervention following the worsening of the microeconomical context caused by the health emergency. and the accounting of the ordinary contribution for the European Single Resolution Fund for 32 million euro. It is clear that our ambition is to be more profitable, but the development of the macro in light of the pandemic suggests us to be very conservative while approaching the future worsening scenario. For this reason, we decided to record additional loan loss provision for €15 million. We can move on very quickly to page 18. I'd like to advise you that while going into details of profit and loss figures, We must remember that the comparable between the first Q20 and the first Q19 data is not on a like-for-like basis, so my comments will be focused when necessary on the quarter-on-quarter trends because only the Q1, Q4, Q19 and the third Q19 results can be comparable. We are very satisfied of net interest income. In fact, stated NII grew by 1.8% quarter-on-quarter at $308 million despite the difficult economic and financial environment. Ordinary NII net of IFRS 9 and IFRS 16 effects remained broadly stable in Q1. compared with Q4 2019. Some positive signals come mainly from the increase in penetration of consumer credit market, positive monitoring of business conditions, and cost of funding improvements. NII resiliency is mainly explained by improvement of the spread, plus eight basis points quarter-on-quarter, many thanks to the decrease of cost of funding and broadly stable asset yield. Given the current difficult microeconomic scenario and the low negative interest rate environment, this can be considered a very positive result overall. On page 19, at commissions, I can say that overall we are in the presence of a positive performance in commissions, In Q1, net commission amounted to €267.6 million, down 3% quarter-and-quarter, mainly due to credit-cast payments hit by the prolonged lockdown. But brought this table versus Q3 2019, which can be considered a better comparable quarter. It's worth highlighting that we recorded a good performance in the net commission of asset management and asset and custody sector, plus 5.6% quarter-on-quarter, while the bankers' run sector decreased mainly due to the positive seasonality of the last quarter of the year. The component referring to loans and guarantees showed a marginal decrease, minus 0.9%. Asset under management upfront fees amount to €7 million in March 2020, with a weight on total net commission of 2.6%, which is still in the low range compared to the average of the market. On page 1020, in Q1, trading income was lower compared to the previous two quarters, strongly influenced by the turmoil on the financial market following the health emergency crisis. Moving forward, on page 21, operating costs amounted to €411 million, down by 4.4% compared to the Q4 2019, calculated net of relevant non-recurring items as reported in details on the slide in the call-out in the right box of the slide. In detail, in the fourth quarter of the year, staff expenses amounted to €255.6 million, substantially stable compared to the fourth quarter of 2019, calculated net of non-recurring charges relating to the redundancy plan of €136 million. Other administrative expenses amounted to €114.5 million, down €11.4 million, compared to the fourth quarter calculated net of certain costs related to the strategic operation for €17.2 million. DNN amounted to €41 million, down by 8% compared to the fourth quarter of 2018 calculated net of non-recurring charges relating to impairments on properties for €31.8 million. From Q2 onwards, we expect the first visible benefits from the redundancy plan. as a large number of employees left the bank on the end of March and another sizeable number will leave the coming quarters. On page 22, we recorded loan loss provisions of about 140 million Q1, including additional provision of 50 million euro, as we said before. Consequently, the analyzed cost of credit rose to 110 basis points versus 86 basis points in 2018. This quarter, we have also accounted the ordinary contribution for the full year 2020 to the Single Resolution Fund for €32 million. About liquidity, on page 24, we consider our liquidity position as very solid our total eligible assets increased at €21.2 billion, along with a bucket of an encumbered eligible asset of €9 billion and rest of liquidity of €2.4 billion made by deposits with the ECB. LCR index is at about 168%, so well above the 100% threshold, as well as the NSF-AR ratio stands well above the regulatory floor. On page 25, we report the evolution and the breakdown of our capital ratios. Our capital position is confirmed to be very solid, with the CHET-1 fully loaded at 12.07%. slide increase compared to 12.01 in December 2019. The main positive effect on Chet 1 ratio in the quote have been the 2019 dividend accrual, non-distributed for 21 basis points, and the reduction of the RWA worth 35 basis points, which includes the net impact of the extension of the IRB model to the large corporate segment. the decline of loans and the trim exercise. The main two negative effects come from the reserves for 31 basis points due to the turmoil on financial markets following the health emergency crisis to be at last partially recovered if markets will improve over the year, and the DTA and holdings deduction from capital for 15 basis points. We believe this is a good starting point to improve our capital position over the year as we have some extra buffers to exploit, as you know, like the IB model extension to the ex-Unipol perimeter and Sierra Saluso. Now, in conclusion, let me highlight briefly key messages on page 27. So, in summary... a good performance overall with a very prudent approach for the worsening of the macroeconomic scenario. Our business since now has proved fairly resilient. We have been able to react quickly to the emergency, granting operational stability, and our digital platform was supportive to provide the availability of a full range of customer services. In addition, we can say that also our profit and loss figures have shown some degree of residency as we highlighted in the operating income and operating cost side, for example. And moreover, we have already done a part of the job in terms of the cost of credit anticipating €50 million of loans loss provisions as the first significant intervention following the worsening of the macroeconomic context caused by the health emergency. Our track record in improving asset quality continues to be very clear and we are committed to improve further despite the difficult economic environment. We continue to monitor the impact of the pandemic crisis and practically taking action to support the business. and to do our best to meet the needs of our customers in the present and in the future. We are ready to face this challenging time thanks to our solid capital and liquidity position and our resilient ability to generate revenues. On capital, in particular, our objective is to maintain a strong chateau ratio fully loaded over the year, as we have some take-wins to exploit, like the example, for example, the ERB model extension to Ex-Union Bank and CR Saluzzo. We also think that it's crucial to have already addressed many actions of our business plan approved at the beginning of 2019. It will support our performances in this environment. Thank you all for your time and attention. Now we are ready to start the Q&A session and take your questions. Thank you, thank you very much.

Excuse me, this is the Coruscall 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 touch-tone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. Please pick up the receiver by asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from Christian Carese with InterMonte. Please go ahead.