Raiffeisen Bk Intl Ag Ord

Stand by, your conference is about to begin. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the third quarter 2023 results conference call of Raff Eisen Bank International. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Johann Strobl, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much for your kind introduction. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today in our last update call of 2023. We are happy to report a very stable set of results driven by further revenue growth, still very few risk costs, and more importantly, further strengthening of our capital position. I am also happy to report that we have called for an extraordinary shareholder meeting on the 21st of November at which we will propose the distribution of last year's dividend. You will recall that with the 2022 preliminary results we announced a dividend of 80 cents per share and we are now in the position to make the distribution. I believe it is important that our shareholders participate in the excellent results achieved last year. Despite the strategic decisions that we are facing and the further provisions in Poland, RBI is in a very strong position and entirely capable of remunerating its shareholders. On the subject of our strategic decisions, and while there is little I can share with you today, I am confident that we are making good progress. As you know, we are focused on achieving the deconsolidation of the Russian business by selling or by spinning off the business. On both of these options we have made good progress. In previous calls we shared with you a potential spin-off date at 31st of December, which today appears very unlikely. This is because we still see a clear, perhaps easier path to deconsolidation through a sale. Please understand that I will not go into any more detail. Unrelated to the Russia strategic consideration, but equally important to you, is our dialogue with the US Treasury and the request for information relating to our sanction compliance program. OFAC has confirmed to us that they have received all the requested information, that they are working their way through it, and that they are satisfied with our cooperation. And while I cannot comment on any potential timeline, I am as confident as ever that we are fully compliant across the board. Let us now move to the third quarter results, which are in line with trends observed in Q1 and Q2. Excluding Russia and Belarus, we can now report the consolidated profit A little bit more than a billion after nine months and the return on equity of near to 11%. Now, please bear in mind that this reported 11% RE includes over 600 million of provisions in Poland, which brings our coverage of the portfolio above 70%. The CD1 ratio for the group assuming a worst case in Russia improves to 14.4% or in fact 14.8% if you also assume relief on the Russian driven operations RWAs. Moving to my next slide, again confirmation of the trends observed earlier this year. Core revenues continue to develop very nicely. Loan volumes are very muted and costs broadly reflect the inflationary environment. Moving to the next slide, let's take a closer look at our core revenues. First of all, NII, which continues to develop very nicely despite the very little loan growth we have seen year to date. Eurorate hikes continue to feed through in Slovakia and Croatia, of course, where we have seen little pressure on deposit pricing, but also in other CE markets where we have a very sticky euro savings. In the Czech Republic and Romania, the pressure on the liability side appears to have stabilized. Heading into next year, we expect NIA, excluding Russia and Belarus, to be broadly stable. Perhaps down at Dutch.

Key CE markets such as Czech Republic, Romania and Serbia should be totally stable and in Slovakia we could continue to see further improvement. We do expect some pressure in head offices however and in Hungary as well the size of it. Late cuts are expected.