Mediobanca - Banca di Credito Finanziario SpA

Good morning to everybody for attending the call of our full year results. This is, as you know, our first year of the plan. And the plan was branded the one brand, one culture. And this year led to a strong and capital efficient growth across the board. We had growth in revenue up 9% to 3.6 billion, all division growing with the two positive elements. The growth is where we want to grow, so in TFA, which were up 13% to 100 billion, and RWA overall, so the attention on capital allocation was higher, and we managed to reduce RWA by 7% to 48 billion. So both NII and fees grew to this number, and we had even a stronger growth in insurance. GOP went up 12%, flat cost income and reduced score made a 24% increase in net profit and even steeper increase in EPS, thanks also to the buyback, which was up 27% to 1.43 euro per share. Tangible book value flat, wrote at 14%, an important increase in RORVA, up 30 basis points to 2.7%. CHAT1 was very robust. We managed to have a 90 bps increase queue on queue to 16.1, and then we announced a buyback, which is part of our attractive remuneration strategy. So this year, full year, we have had a total distribution of 1.1 billion, 10% of market cap and roughly 50% increase year on year, out of which The vast majority, so roughly 900 is cash dividend, plus the $200 million of buyback we made last year. So given the strong capital ratio and coherently with our remuneration policy, we have approved yesterday a new share buyback of $300 million. and 385 million Euro to be executed in after the approval of AGM, but is already, according to rules, already upfronted in CHET-1, which is likely 90, 95 bits of capital consumption. We are on track to deliver our non-financial target in the ESG sector. The main, I would say, feature of this year were basically the push on wealth management. The push on wealth management was evident in the effectiveness of our private investment banking activity. Basically, this year we managed to collect 4.5 billion of net new money And we have to say that our PIB model is becoming stronger and stronger. This is given by the results of a stronger integration between teams and our ability to be on events, both on CIB and on private banking. Another evidence of this strength was the billion that we raised in commitment for the Equity Club. which is, I think, a very strong number compared to the situation of private equity, net new money, difficulties across the board. And also we have enlarged our, I would say, strategic partnership with a number of key operators like KKR, Partners Group, and Apollo. The second very important news in wealth management was the start of Mediabanca Premier. It has been a strong start. And we will comment on this after, but I mean, after the rebranding and relaunching, the perspective of Mediabanca Premier are much better, much stronger, and I would say even stronger than expected. We have been working also in offering upscale. In CIB, the most important element were basically consolidation of ARMA, which continued to produce outstanding results and outperforming the market in terms of number of deals and fees. The strong start of energy transition, the fact that the new initiative of the plan, part of the new initiative are already in play. We got the BTP specialist status, and we are now trading CO2 certificate also outside Italy, and we have just launched our presence in media international in Germany. Here again, we will say something more on this, but the main take is the, on one end, increase of revenue and profitability. The second is steep decrease in FWA. In consumer, we have had another fantastic year in terms of new loans. ability to absorb higher cost, higher core, and higher cost because of a very important project of digitalization. So, Compass was able to improve numbers in a contest of inflation of cost or kind of cost and has recorded the highest ever net profit in the region of 380 million euro. What we have to stress is that the last quarter was particularly strong with 980 million and roughly 330 million of net profit. This is after some non-operative items we wanted to take on in the last quarters also to prepare better the new year. Basically, we took charges on, we anticipated 25 million DGS charges we have done some right of goodwill. So basically the profitability would have been even higher without this non-operative item. But if you look at all the single division, we have had quite an impressive trend in record net new money with strong deposit inflow and strong new recruitment, 30 professional hired in the last three months. We reached 100 billion of AUM. And we have had also quite a significant uplift in terms of revenue. CIB, big rebound in IB activity, in particularly up 49% quarter-on-quarter. This is led by strong advisory, good lending, and, you know, ongoing strengthening of the mid-cap platform, notably in Germany. Again, corporate finance, new loan and revenue at an all-time high. Robust new loans at 2.2 billion and with a bigger component of buy now, pay later. And the revenue confirmed higher than 300 million euro. So these numbers, they compare very well with the trajectory of a plan. You see this on page nine and 10. So we need to go at 3.8 billion and we are already at 3.6. And this is led by two components and two different, I would say, driving forces. It's NII, which is at majority driven by corporate consumer finance book. And again, as we are entering in the lower interest environment, we see this as a very positive element because as you know, the book, the long book of Compass of Consumer Finance is mainly by done by fixed rate. So basically in a declining interest environment, this should give us an edge in terms of maintaining and increasing NII. The second big driver are the fees. The fees growth is led by two basically important producer. One is wealth management is the biggest. And you see that basically TFA went up 13%, AUM, AUA went up 20%. So this is another, I would say, strong element to push for further growth in the quarters to come. But this growth, as we always repeat, has to come with optimization of RWA and assets. You see that we managed to decrease by 7% our RWA And we are well on track for the target of our plan. Cost income, asset quality as well. Strong EPS and profitability growth on page 10. You see that we have a plus 27% at 1.53, where we need to go to 180. So basically, the trajectory is the right one, as it is, and even better in capital generation. So we have now, you know, a target of 14.5 and we are above 15% after the buyback. This is driven by the fact that we are putting a greater focus on capital lighter activity and hence our capital generation is even stronger than the plan. So you see that we had an average capital generation in the previous plan on the previous year which was in the regional 150 basis points. We set a target of 220 and this year we had 290. So basically a bank that is growing but is generating a lot of capital. This of course allows shareholders to have a better and stronger capital distribution and answer value creation. You see that basically we are growing in terms of DPS two digits last year and this year, while tangible book value for technical reason related to some acquisition this year was flattish, but will continue to grow next year. We are quite advanced also in our ES journey. In particular, we are doing a good job, a very good job in reducing finance emission intensity. We're already close to the target, which was reducing by 18. Now we are at 20% emission. We are setting inter-sector targets for NZBA in particular oil, gas, chemical, steel and shipping. We have, of course, we are already carbon neutral and we are using only renewable energy. We have advanced, even if, of course, the journey is still long in terms of DNI, in terms of fee-made members as Mediobank, a key functional order, and fee-made executive, and also total hires. And I think also in terms of divisional level, we are quite advanced. We only had, I would say, a slowdown in green mortgage production because, as you know, Mortgage market in Italy has been weak in the last 12 months, but we see this reverting in the second part of the plan. Now looking at, you know, balance sheet, most important metrics on page 15, we see in particular the growth in TFA, which was more than 11 billion. And this is part is net new money, is part of its market effect. I think it's important to say that we have had only marginal deposit increase, but we have had a very important AUA, AUM increase. The last quarter was particularly strong with 3.3. In this quarter, as we will say after, we have started to We have had our, I would say, campaign in terms of deposit promotion, which were supposed to be in the previous part of the year, but we pushed them back thanks to the capital market activity we made. And so we see, we start to see the effect in this quarter, but also in the next quarter of net inflows in terms of deposits. Selective loan growth, this is part of our choice, part of the general market condition, but we see some sign of recovery this quarter with plus 1% Q and Q. While we continue to manage the RWA reduction and optimization, we have had the minus 7% and a third 2% out of which 2% in the last quarter. Looking at the revenues, we have had positive news coming from all sources of revenues. Of course, wealth management was the most robust, as well as insurance, 13%, so two-digit growth, but we have had quite a sound increase in CIB and in consumer finance. And again, we have put an emphasis on capital-led revenue, which now are 17% higher compared to the previous year. NII has been driven by ALM management. Basically, we've been working at the loan book repricing and remix, where the vast majority of the growth came out from consumer finance, which was very much able to reprice the loan in the last 18 months, and we are now reaping the benefits. Corporate loan was slightly down 0.6 billion. And hence, basically, we have seen a widening of the loan yield on the back of the consumer push. Banking book was higher, so a billion up year on year, so to 11.3 billion, with not a longer maturity, so we have a maturity of less than four years and yield up. Funding position has been comfortable. Why? Because we managed to have a number of issuance in the previous part of this solar year in 2024. So we have raised a lot because of favorable market condition. And more recently, we are putting more emphasis, as I said, on campaign to attract new deposits in private and in Premier. We have a very low sensitivity, so plus or minus 20 million every plus or minus 50 basis points of parallel rate shift. The fee gained more traction in the last few quarters on the back of the strengthening of wealth management in terms of net new money, in terms of recruitment, and in terms of also strengthening of CIB. This is organic and extra organic, organic because we have had a more positive environment for CAB and advisory notably, but also we have had an important component of new revenues like ARMA. Corporate finance as well managed a 6% increase in fee due to higher business activity and increased by now pay later contribution. Cost. Cost inflation is in part, I would say in good part, I would say correlated to our business growth. This year we have had 260 full-time equivalent and basically this is also thanks to Net M&A, so the one that the company we bought and the net of the company we sold, like Revalia. But as it Our story is a growth story. It's a story of gaining more market share or entering a new market, a new product. There is an inflation linked to this business growth. As there is an inflation linked to IT projects, digitalization, cybersecurity are becoming more and more important, and there is a general inflation which is related to labor contract renewal and also software. So that led to an additional 21 million. So cost income across the different business remain under control. Basically, we see an increase in CIB, which is linked to the fact we are becoming more and more capitalized. So we know that M&A activity is having a cost income which is higher than the rest of the sector in IB, but is something that we want because we want to produce revenue which are not asking for capital in CIB or less capital. Core reduced to 48 basis points. Basically, we don't have great news here in the sense of new news in the sense that this is lower than what we have expected. We have used a very low level of overlay 47 million We still have like one time no loss provision of overlay. Without overlay, our cost of risk would be flat at 57 basis points. Here I would say that CIB and wealth management were basically producing negative or very low core while we expected an increase in core of consumer finance, mainly driven by the new mix, which is more geared into personal loan. The MPL ratio, gross ratio, didn't change much, notwithstanding the fact that we didn't grow in terms of outstanding loan. When we go to capital on page 24, it's very important to note what is happening year after year. We were a bank where capital location was mainly driven by CIB. We are not anymore a bank of this kind, and this is coherent with our target. So only a year ago, we had 38% of capital allocated to CIB. Now we are at 31%. This matched with the increase of the rest and the increase increase of profitability in SHIB led to an overall increase of all return on risk-weighted assets. At group level, it went up to 2.7, so 30 basis points, so important increase. The only marginal decrease for technical reason is consumer finance because this year we have adopted the first-time application of the model. But we think that this kind of impact can be reversed in the year to come. Capital generation has been strong, page 25, basically 250 earnings generation plus business growth optimization for another, for a total 290, as we said. Then this was absorbed by 175 bps in terms of payout. 50 basis points of M&A to be partly reversed when we will pay ARMA with the own shares, with MediBanca shares. And then, as I said, we landed at 16.1 and then minus 90 basis points of the new share buyback, we landed to 15.2. As if we go to divisional results, I have said already most, but I would say that basically we were very pleased with all the business trajectory. If we start from the priority, which is wealth management, I think more and more we are convinced that the choice of last year, so using our brand as a catalyst and making closer, having all the wealth management closer to IB is producing excellent results. In terms of net new money, if you see on page 30, we are now among the top three producer of net new money after Mediolanum and Fideco. And we continue to hire and to have net new money that in terms of percentage of existing AUM is quite high. We think that the paradigm is shifting in the sense that after the repositioning of Mediabanca Premier, instead of mainly calling new professional to join us, we are now asked to be joined. And I think this gives us a different edge in terms of hiring and will be, I think, a very positive catalyst in the quarters to come. The numbers are, I think, explanatory on page 31. If you see our trajectory in only eight years, where we started to be, I mean, you remember that we bought Bank Experience, we created Mediobanca Private in 16, 17. Again, at that point, we had an incidence of revenue of wealth management of 19%. Today, we are 30. We produced 50 million of GOP risk-adjusted. Today, we produced 300, so six times what it was only eight years ago. And you see also the fee level now is the biggest component of the group at 52%. Why I'm saying this? Because wealth management growth can really impact Mediobanca in terms of numbers, in terms of profitability, in terms of RWA absorption, and in terms of valuation. And we have really a territory ahead of us in terms of possible growth. So it's going to be something of this kind for the next 10, 15 years of growth. Of course, That can be here where we are more effective, here where we are underperforming, but the opportunity is there, and I think we have all the tools to, and we are even more convinced today than a year ago. You see, basically Mediobanca Private and CNB, today they reached 45 billion of total AUM. We have had the ability to raise liquidity events and raise the net new money, which is 30% above the last five years. And this is also linked to the fact that we have invested in private market initiative. Some of them are branded Mediobanca, for instance, the Equity Club, which raised a billion. is an evidence that when we do something which is basically tailor-made by Mediobanca, captures some specific and credible teams like investing in MidCap, we have very, very strong feedback from clients. We have basically also had a very important number of new clients with this program, which is very important for the future business. Mediobanca Premier has had a very strong start. I mean, bankers financial advisors, they want to come and work for this brand. They want to come and work for a group that has investment banking facility and can build and develop an intimate dialogue with families which are entrepreneurs. So we this is the sweet spot we are on. And I think is a sweet spot that will continue because basically this is the backbone of the Italian economy. Numbers are pretty self explanatory. So 13% total income increase and 29% net profit. Here again, we always discuss internally how fast should be our growth and how much should be basically the cost we have to spend for this growth. For instance, cost here will have been a bit higher than expected. Why? Because basically the more you grow, the more you spend in terms of cost of recruitment. But I think in this moment, it's very important to keep our growth and not to basically look at mainly cost income, rather to look at the increase of our network, the increase of our AUM base. If we go and see CIB, again, there are reasons to be happy even in this field. Why? Because there is an important shift in the focus. We have said something before, you know that. But if you see the number, you see that today Mediobanca is at majority producing revenue outside Italy, thanks to this diversification of source of revenues and geography. It's basically getting an important improvement number of transaction announced, up 43%. It's targeting the target clients we had in mind. So basically private equity, which are now involved in 50% of our transactions. And it's mainly, the most important effort that's been done in digital economy with ARMA and the energy transition with the new team that was set up already some years ago, and produce very interesting transaction in Italy, Spain and Portugal. We think that mid market on the back of the success of Italy can be another driver of growing revenue and diversification of revenue. For this reason, we have hired the team in Germany. But Of course, CIB is not only advisory, is also lending and is also market activity. In lending, you may know that we have set targets for ROAC of each transaction. This led to a more selective production and led also to be there when Mediobank is playing a major role in M&A. So M&A-led financing. While in markets, again, we are pursuing activity like BTP specialist status that are basically not asking for big capital allocation. Here again, you see page 37 is a very important slide. You see the evolution of our capital allocation. In 2016, where we didn't have yet IRB adoption, we had a totally different RWA intensity with 27 billion of RWA. We are down 45% this year compared to 16, and we are down 23 compared to last year, no? This is driver number one focus on capital light, which is, I shouldn't say easier for us compared to others, but this is only matter of relative size. The capital heavy activity within MediBanca CIB were not, are not so big that if you can, if you are in the process to trim them, you suffer a lot in terms of revenue and profit. So we could manage this with increased profitability, thanks to more M&A and less capital allocation. Here you see league table and general general market position which is broadly stable slash increasing i would say that this year mna and dcm were the strong producer while as we know ecm still weak and for the time being we don't see a big a big jump coming in the next few quarters while we see lending recovering, slight recovering during the course of the next few quarters. Consumer finance, strategic path was mainly on reinforcing on one end its strength in own distribution. Compass has always had a huge strength having a very effective proprietary distribution network. Over time, you can see this slide on page 46. It's very well done. And thanks, Jessica, to produce this. In 2020, we were producing 6.4 billion of new loans, out of which 1.7 were done by basically the network of Compass itself. Four years later down the road, we are producing 8.4, but 3 billion are produced by the network of Compass. This gives you the amount of work, gives you the sense of the amount of work we have been doing to strengthen the distribution in, I would say, in an innovative way. So it's not only branches, it's franchise, it's new kind of light and variable cost like Compass Link. and more recently more recently the digital distribution thinks that now a third of the total directly distributed personal loan are done through digital and this also brings us to the fact that no no distribution channel like a digital platform which we have heavily improved and reinforced plus by now pay later are another very important element to keep to keep Compass growing in terms of new client acquisition and in terms of opportunity to do repeat business. Now, I think we are the largest player in by now pay later at physical level with 26,000 merchants now under our convention, and we are heavily investing in the e-commerce one. So I think that this kind of trajectory of Compass is driven by this kind of investment and strategy. So you see on page 47 the increase in terms of net new loan and the ability to price the loan at the right condition in terms of also passing through the higher cost of funding and also absorbing the higher cost of risk, which is related to the different mix, because we are As we produce more and more personal loan directly distributed by Compass, we have higher, I would say, price and condition and slightly higher cost. The net of this is highly positive to the balance sheet of Compass and is a win-win situation. By now, pay later, you see the incidents on page 46. Basically, we are now at roughly 140, 150 million euro of new loan production per quarter, and the stock is going up. And this is having an impact in fees, because according to the existing accounting rules, part of the revenue of buy now, pay later are fees, and you see that in fees, This is becoming more material with 20 million Euro of incidents while insurance fees for regulatory reason are going down. So, by now, later, also MedioBanca and Compass in particular to keep on, to keep high the level of fees. Core of Compass is expected, going as expected in the sense that with the different mix, And back to pre-COVID level, we have forecasted something like between 15, 16 basis points of higher cost of risk compared to original guidance. This is happening so quarter by quarter, so we don't have this quarter any different numbers given the fact that the mix of loans is slightly different because it's made by more personal loan more pricey of distributed by Compass. Insurance had, in particular, generally had quite a positive contribution. This is on the back of basically positive operating performance of the company plus some non-recurring items, including asset disposal. What has to be noted this year is that, as we know, In April, Brussels approved the new Basel framework and hence the CRR was approved and the transitionary prudential treatment of our minority stake has become therefore permanent. So this kind of risk weighting is there to stay. And of course, as we know, is quite favorable. I would say that We wanted, as a closing remark, we wanted, when we started the plan last year on page 57, we wanted to have a stronger industrial footprint of the group, which could drive above average growth and sustainable growth. This would have led to superior capital generation with higher distribution and lower execution risk. As you can see, summarizing on page 56, we have more than what we wanted. So basically, in terms of numbers, but in terms of velocity, rapidity, at which we are changing the profile of the group. The bank is more and more centered on wealth management with a capital-lighter CIB, which is more international, so less dependent from single market or single transaction like it used to be in the past, less capital heavy and more synergy with wealth management. Now, 55% of the revenue are non-domestic and this is coupled with two engines that continue to produce growth and cash flow at a very high level, consumer finance on one end and insurance on the other end. All this is leading to a best-in-class organic capital generation and hence give us the possibility keeping quite healthy capital ratio to have a very, I would say, demanding and good shareholder remuneration for this year, but also for the year to come. So in terms of guideline, we have to set to Mediobanca ambitious target because as we believe Mediobanca is going to be known in the future and already today as a wealth management, dominant operator. We want to have a net new money, which is at the top level in the industry. So we set a target between nine and 10 billion of net new money. We will have flat revenue, flat RWA. This is on the back of some long growth, which we expect for this year, but this is going to be offset by optimization and regulation. Growth in revenue, it will be lower than this year, but it still will be appreciable Growth in revenue with two components, NII growing low single digit driven by consumer finance. Consumer finance as we know, as we said as a fixed rate loan book which should benefit particularly when interest rates is going to go down further. Fees are going to be up low double digit and the main driver continue to be will be wealth management and CID. Cost income flat or in the region of 44. with important investment in distribution platform, digital, and, you know, take into consideration also higher regulation cost. Cost ratio, cost of risk ratio under control at 55 basis points using partly as expected overlays. EPS growth between 6 and 8%, and, you know, again, reiteration of shareholder remuneration, which is done part in cash, 70%, and also implementing the share buyback we have approved yesterday. So thank you very much for your patience and attention, and now I give you the floor for questions.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Once again, please press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Thank you. We are now going to proceed with our first question. The questions come from the line of Azura Guelfi from CT. Please ask your question.

Hi, good morning. I hear you during the conference call. You are very upbeat on the growth and the success of your strategy. You have managed to give us a very impressive buyback results. But then when I look at the outlook, I'm a little bit puzzled. And if you can help me to reconcile it, you give EPS growth for next year between 6% to 8%. First result of the buyback, this growth in terms of net profit would be between 3% to 6%, depending on share price and how much share you cancel. And this is very low compared to what you have delivered in the past, where your engine for growth was not yet fully up to speed, like the web management, the integration and plan. The rate is coming down expected for next year, which should have been consumer credit. So what is the conservatism? Is it all linked to higher cost? Because if I look, you expect actually cost to increase because your cost income is going up year on year. Is there any area of conservatism or any area on cost that you could optimize more? And the second one is on capital. It's very strong. And you have managed to do a significant risk-free asset decrease this year, but you're actually just giving us an impression of flattish for next year. Can you give us a bit of color if you have anticipated anything this year, or if there is more action that could be considered, but you're not yet sure to be able to deliver in 2025? Thank you.