8/3/2020

speaker
Jaime
Moderator, Head of Investor Relations

Good morning and welcome to Unicaja Banco second quarter 2020 results. Let me start confirming that we have published the quarterly financial report and this presentation this morning before market opens in the CNNV website. Pablo González, our chief financial officer, will present you the quarterly results and afterwards, as usually, we will answer your questions. Pablo, whenever you want.

speaker
Pablo González
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Jaime. Good morning to everyone. These are the second quarterly results that we published after the COVID-19 pandemic started. We have now left behind the lockdown, which is a very positive news. This quarter, we have booked additional provisions for the future potential impact from the COVID-19. However, We haven't seen any asset quality deterioration so far, as I will explain later. As you will see, since the pandemic started, we have been able to increase significantly our solvency and our coverage. We have further reduced our NPAs and still reporting positive net income. So, before entering into the details, I would like to highlight, as you will see later, that UNICAJA Bank of Financial Position has been reinforced year-to-date. Moving now to the presentation, as you can see in slide 2, we have three sections. The first one includes the summary of the quarter, the second one the results, and the third one details on asset quality, liquidity and solvency. If we move directly to slide 4, I will start with the regular summary. Regarding the business, performing loans grew 2.7% in the first six months of the year. However, if we exclude the regular second quarter seasonal consumer loans, the growth was 1.1%. While new loans to individuals fell 38% compared with last year, new loans to corporates were quite stable. Customer funds showed a positive trend, growing 4.1% quarter on quarter, supported by a 6.5% growth in site deposits and almost 3% growth in balance sheet funds. From a P&L point of view, second quarter results reflect a negative impact in NII and fees related to COVID-19 lockdown. with net interest income falling 2.4% quarter on quarter, while fees decreased by 14.4% in that same period. This quarter, we have booked the 47 million of gains from CASER, something that together with the strong trading gains mitigated, the provision effort done in the quarter. It is probably worth noting that the gains from CASER, in our case, are not explained by the renegotiation of our distribution agreement or the disposal of part of our stake. In our case, we didn't sold nor renewed the agreement. In our case, it was a bit different because the distribution agreement included a clause saying that there was a change in control in the company we had, if there was a change in control in the company, we had the right to finish the agreement. And the change in control happened, so we reached an agreement with the insurance company and in exchange of this agreement, there was a payment to resign for this, our right to finish the distribution agreement. Regarding expenses, total cost fell almost 6% quarter on quarter or 4.3% when compared with first half of 2019. It is also worth noting that we have booked this quarter an additional 78 million of COVID-19 related provisions. leaving the total provision in the first half of this year for COVID-19 at 103 million. Excluding such provision, the cost of RICs remained very stable and close to 2019 levels. On asset quality, liquidity and solvency, NPAs fell by 26.2% year-on-year, while coverage levels improved from 57% to 62% in the same period. Regarding liquidity, our position remains very comfortable with the loan-to-deposit ratio slightly below 70% and the liquidity coverage ratio at 346%. From a solvency point of view, our seed 1, fully loaded, continued to grow, reaching in June 14.4%, which is 32 basis points above the previous quarter and almost 130 basis points higher than one year ago. A significant capital generation that maintains our solvency position among the highest of the sector. I will move now to slide 6, where you can see the P&L details. Starting with the quarterly trends, Both NAI and fees reflected the negative impact from the lockdown this quarter. However, this quarter will be the bottom as we expect second half 2020 trends in core income to improve significantly. The rest of the revenues in the quarter were supported by a strong trading income and the 47 million of gains from CASR including in the other income. Such gains more than compensated the contribution to the resolution fund of $16 million accounted in that same line, leaving gross margin 8% above the previous quarter and 16% above the second quarter of 2019. In terms of costs, this quarter we have reported a very positive trend with total costs falling 5.6% quarter-on-quarter and 7.5% year-on-year. As we will explain later, such positive trend was focused in general expenses. The strong revenues reported in the quarter and the mentioned cost-cutting effort left the pre-provision profit at 134 million, 59% higher than in the second quarter of 2019 and almost 28% above the previous quarter, something that has enabled us to book 110 million of impairments while reporting 50 million of net income in the quarter. It is worth noting that the big bulk of impairments, 94 million were long-loss charges of which 78 million are COVID-19 provisions and the remaining 16 are regular long-loss provisions. Let me highlight now the main trends of the half-year results. Net interest income was 5.3% below the previous year, but we reiterate our expectation to finish 2020 at the same level as 2019, something that implies a significant improvement in the second half of this year. Despite the low level of activity, mainly in the second quarter, and helped by some one-off fees reported in the first quarter, fee income was flat in the first half of 2020 compared with the first half of 2019. Here, the idea would be, in our base scenario, to finish 2020 very close to 2019 final year figure. Dividend income and equity method has been also affected by the pandemic as you can see in the right side of the slide. Trading games and other income have been strong so far mitigating higher impairments. Gross margin grew 7% compared with the first half of 2019. Regarding costs, the trend is very positive, decreasing more than 4% year-on-year, leaving pre-provision profit at 239,024% above 2019. Finally, the previously mentioned provision F4 left income at 61 million for the first half of 2020. If we move to customer funds in slide seven, you can see that total customer funds grew 2.5% year-to-date and 4.1% quarter-on-quarter. It is worth noting that after a few months decreasing, off-balance sheet funds showed a quarterly improvement of almost 3%. Trends of unbalance sheet funds were also positive, supported by a 7.1% year-to-date increase in side deposits. In slide 8, we show the regular credit and loss info. Gross loans grew 2.4% in the first six months of 2020, with public sector growing 9.6%, non-performing loans decreasing by 2.3%, and private sector growing 2.2%. On the right of the slide, you have the details on performing loans. As you can see, they grew 2.7% year-to-date. However, let me remind you that this trend includes around 400 million of seasonal advances that we usually have every second quarter and that are included in the segment called consumer and others. In terms of segments, in June 2020, corporate performing loans grew 8.4% year-on-year, helped by the eco-loans, while mortgages decreased a bit less than 3% in that same period. In slide 9, we show the new loan production by segment. Overall new production has been directly impacted by the COVID-19 lockdown, mainly in individual loans. While corporate new loans were stable compared with the first half of 2019, individuals' new loans fell by 38%. Total new loan production in the first half of 2020 was 25% below the previous year. However, it fell only 2% compared with the second half of 2019. In slide 10, we start the P&L review with net interest income. As you can see in the top right, the quarterly decrease was explained by lower income from some products that are related to COVID-19 situation as delinquencies and set up fees that were not charged throughout the lockdown, negatively reflected in the second quarter of 2020 interest income. Such measures explain almost 5 million of lower interest income in the quarter, On top of it, the rest of interest income added other negative 1 million, mainly explained from the lower income from loans, which was partially compensated by higher contribution from our debt portfolio. On the other hand, interest expenses decreased a little bit, partially compensating the previously mentioned lower interest income in the quarter. As a result, the net interest interest income fell 3 million quarter on quarter and bottomed at 137 million, a level from which we expect a significant improvement in the second half of this year, supported by the savings in interest expenses from the maturity of high yield deposits and an improvement from the impacts in NII related to COVID-19 lockdown. In slide 11, you have an update on our debt portfolio, where you can see that our overall balances grew during the quarter following the increase in the liquidity position of the bank, explained by both the commercial gap and the higher ECB funding from TLTRO3. as usually just to highlight that the big bulk of the exposure remains sovereign debt classified in amortized cost portfolio. The yield of the portfolio was 123 basis points in the second quarter of 2020 compared with 127 basis points on the previous quarter and 125 in the second quarter of 2019. So quite stable. If we move to slide 12, you have the fee income trends. Total fees fell 14% in the quarter owing to the impact from the lockdown, but also partially explained by some one-offs included in the first quarter of 2020, as we explained last quarter. However, if we compare net fee for the first half of 2020 with the first half of 2019, the trend was stable. As you can see in the right hand side of the slide, for the second half of 2020, we expect fees to improve to a level somewhere between the first quarter and the second quarter of this year. Moving now to costs. As you can see in slide 13, operating expenses fell almost 7% compared with first half 2018 and more than 4% compared with the first half of 2019. As you probably know, cost cutting is part of Unicaja bank strategy. We have a plan to continue to reduce our cost base This quarter, improvement has to do with some measures driven by the COVID-19 situation that have enabled us to report lower general expenses in the quarter. In slide 14, we show impairment trends As we have explained, we book in the second quarter of 2020 other 78 million of provisions for COVID-19 potential future impacts, which added to the 25 million booked in the first quarter of this year, explain the 103 million of COVID-19 impairments that we show in the left-hand side of the slide. In the right of the slide, you can see that excluding this impairment, cost of risk represented only 17 basis points. However, when we include the COVID provisions, the cost of risk increases to 89 basis points, which is the high range of our guidance. If we move to asset quality in slide 16, we have the details on the evolution of our non-performing loans that continue to fail one more quarter. In the second quarter 2020, non-performing loans balances fell 1% quarter on quarter, leaving the NPL ratio at 4.5%. So, as you can see in the slide, NPL trends remain similar to the previous quarter, with a small improvement, something that is positive. Gross entries remained very similar as the previous quarter at 58 million something that together with the 62 million of recoveries mainly cash recoveries and 10 million of write-offs left total NPL balances decreasing 10 million quarter on quarter. It is worth noting that this drop took place in a quarter where four closes were historically low owing to the lockdown, something that makes the NPL quarterly trend even more positive. So, as you can see, the potential deterioration from COVID-19 was not reflected in Q2 2020 NPL trends that continue to improve. In slide 17, we have included information related to the different mitigating measures introduced as the moratoria and the guarantees of the government for corporate loans. Starting with corporate loans guarantees, what is called the ECO lines, as at the end of July, we have approved 10.5 thousand loans representing a limit of €750 million. This balance represents around 10% of total performing loans to corporates. However, this is not really comparable, because the 750 is the limit, while, for example, as at the end of June, the lines used were only 426 million, so only 57% of the limit. So bear in mind that the 750 million is the balance of the limit of loans formalized under the guarantee scheme. The government guarantees for that limit represent close to 600 million or 330 million if we only consider the amount used. which is far less below the 1.2 billion guarantees assigned to Unicaja Banco. In the case of the moratorias, as you all know, we have the legal and the sector moratorias. In the first one, we have approved 8,000 moratorias. and 600 million in mortgages and other 3,500 and 30 million in consumer loans moratoria. Regarding the sector moratoria, the amount reached 540 million in mortgages and 25 million in consumer loans. It is worth noting that 340 million of the mortgages and 15 million of the consumer loans have requested both moratorias. So after the three months in the so-called legal scheme, clients will benefit from other nine months in the sector scheme. In relative terms, this means that 800 million or 5.6% of our mortgage income mortgages and other 40 million or 1.3% of consumer loans are under moratoria schemes. In summary, total moratoria represented less than 5% of individuals performing loans, of which 95% are mortgages and only 5% unsecured loans. something explained among others owing to our mix of loans where the weight of mortgages is high while pure consumer loans is very small. In slide 18, we have updated our credit risk exposure and NPL coverage details. Overall NPL coverage continues to grow quarter after quarter. In the second quarter of 2020, NPL coverage was 61%, which compares with 52% one year ago and 54% at the end of last year. So, an extremely prudent coverage when considering that 87% of the non-performing loan balance are secured. As a reminder, it is also very important to take into account that the big bulk of our loans are mortgages. As you can see in the bottom left of the slide, 71% of our loan exposures has mortgage collateral and less than 20% of our total loans are corporate and secure loans. In slide 19, you have an update on the foreclosed assets, of which balances have been more stable during the last two quarters owing to the lockdown. However, we can say that the situation has improved by the end of the second quarter. Coverage ratio remains among the highest of the sector and disposals, despite representing fewer balances, continue to be formalized at very good prices, well above our net book value. Actually, if you look the trend of released provision over book value on the top right hand of the slide, you can see that they reached 66.8% in June. So, despite the lower volumes, prices are even better than the previous ones. In slide 20, you can see how overall NPAs have decreased significantly during the last year, representing in net terms only 1.5% of total assets with a coverage at 62% well above the 57% at the end of last year, being one of the highest of the sector. Finally, I would only highlight that the lower NPAs balances higher provisions and the tangible book value increase continues to push down quarter after quarter our Texas ratio reaching a level close to 45% in June 2020. In slide 21, we have the regular information of our liquidity position that as you can see remains very comfortable. Our loan to deposit ratio has moved below 70% in June and the liquidity ratios with the LCR at 346% and the NSFR at 141% continue to be among the highest of the sector. And finally, we show in slide 22 the solvency position of the bank. Our regulatory seed won reached 15.8% in June and our total capital was at 17.3%, one of the highest of the sector and representing a 1.2 billion buffer over our SREP requirement. In fully diluted terms, this is not considering the transitional benefits from IFRS 9 and from Basel 3. Remember that we applied the long calendar for the DTA's deduction. The ratio improved 32 basis points in the quarter to 14.4%, of which around one-third is explained by the SME factor, and other third by the new rules for intangible, specifically software. The remaining slightly more than 10 basis points reflect the rest of the moving parts of the quarter, which are, among others, quarterly retained earnings, a small risk-weighted asset decrease. Bear in mind that the second quarter results always include a seasonal increase in risk-weighted assets from the seasonal advances that usually decrease in the following quarter. Also, let me remind you that our relative higher solvency is calculated in full under the standard approach, so this means that it's considering very conservative assumptions, as you can see in our credit risk density in the chart at the bottom left. Finally, let me finish highlighting that in the first half of 2020 and mainly since the pandemic started, we have been able to further reduce the MPS balances, increase significantly our coverage. We have improved by 40 basis point our solvency from the already relative higher ratios. We have also reinforced our liquidity So, in summary, the financial position of the bank is extremely strong and, under our view, leaves us in a very positive position to deal with the COVID-19 future expected recovery.

speaker
Jaime
Moderator, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Pablo. Let's move to the questions. We've got lots of them, so let's go straight forward. The first one, Pablo, let's start with the NII trends with the P&L, as usually. The first one is if we can update the dates of the high-yield deposits, the exact dates of the high-yield deposits maturity in the second part of 2020 and 2021.

speaker
Pablo González
Chief Financial Officer

Yes. We used to have 1.2 billion of retail deposits at a very high cost of 4.3% that have started to mature at the end of this quarter. In June, 80 million mature. In the next quarter, in this quarter, in the third quarter of 2020, there will be around 500 million. and in the fourth quarter of this year, another 250 million. The remaining balance, that are around 400 million, will mature in the first half of 2021. So considering the current cost of deposits, These maturities will enable the bank to reduce its annual interest expenses significantly, mainly from the third quarter of this year, and this is one of the main tailwinds of the expected improvement that I mentioned of our net interest income in the second half of this year.

speaker
Jaime
Moderator, Head of Investor Relations

Pablo, the next one related to the ALM portfolio. What is the expected contribution from the debt portfolio going forward?

speaker
Pablo González
Chief Financial Officer

The contribution from the debt portfolio in the second half of 2020 will be in line with the contribution in the first half. We have bought in advance the bonds that were expected to be purchased next year. to replace the redemptions that we have. The purpose of these advanced purchases was to invest the liquidity coming from the TLTR3 that we have bring the maturity of the TLTR2 to this year rather than waiting for next year that was the original deadline and also from the increase in the customer deposits that I mentioned in the presentation so all in all the 2020 debt portfolio contribution will be above the 2019 and for the coming years the contribution should decrease especially compared with the 2020 mainly due to the redemptions that I mentioned before and because those redemptions and the new purchases have a lower yield than the bonds that we had, either the bonds that mature or those that we sold to obtain capital gains. And to offset this negative impact in the future, we will have other tailwinds in the NII, like the better funding conditions of the TLTRO3, or the redemption of the 1.4 billion of the high yield deposits that I mentioned.

speaker
Jaime
Moderator, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Pablo. Very related with this one. If we can please update our strategy regarding the TLTRO3 funding and its contribution to LII.

speaker
Pablo González
Chief Financial Officer

I already mentioned regarding the TLTR3, we went in full for the whole amount that we were assigned in June, which is slightly above $5 billion. And we did it because the financial conditions between June 20 and June 21 are really attractive with a 50 basis point extra lower cost, but also because we feel confident in complying with the credit growth requirements between March 20 and March 21 to obtain the full benefit of the cost of this funding. Proceeds were used to replace the pre-existing TLTRO, the TLTRO2, there were 3.3 billion, as well as to fund any potential future commercial gap that may arise. However, as we expected, evolution of the business volumes are not clear as of today, we are investing the excess liquidity, as I mentioned, in fixed income, mainly in European sovereign bonds. All in all, the larger funding and better conditions compared to TLTRO2 will be a positive for net interest income in the coming quarters. If we comply with the credit growth requirements, as we expect to do so, The benefit versus the TLTRO 2 should be around 25 million for the next 12 months, plus the margin that we may obtain with the investment of the 1.7 billion of extra funding that we got from this new TLTRO. So this will be very positive for the future net interest income.

speaker
Jaime
Moderator, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Pablo. The following one is if we can update our funding plans and insurance of employment liabilities.

speaker
Pablo González
Chief Financial Officer

Following this new TLTRO and considering our very strong liquidity position, Our funding plan for the next few years should not have any significant changes. We will continue to analyze long-term funding sources in the future to replace the TL-303, but it's still too early to quantify amounts of costs. So, the short-term, no new funding issuance. And regarding the MREL, considering our current risk-weighted assets, the requirement of eligible liabilities for MREL remains below 1 billion. So this shortfall was expected to be covered initially before January 2022. but with the new EMDREL policy that lengthens the deadline up to January 24, give us additional time and flexibility to comply with the requirement. We still haven't decided the proportion to be covered between senior preferred and senior non-preferred, but considering the last liability strengths, we could finally issue senior preferred in a larger amount of what we were expecting. These are good news in terms of cost, as expected volume requirements remain similar, but we might issue a higher amount in the cheaper instrument and the senior preferred rather than the senior non-preferred.

speaker
Jaime
Moderator, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Pablo. All in all, if we can, regarding NII, if we can update our guidance, the net interest income guidance.

speaker
Pablo González
Chief Financial Officer

As I said in the presentation, we reiterate, we maintain our previous guidance of reaching the same level of NII for 2020. than the one that we have in 2019. So, despite the small decrease in this quarter, we continue to expect a significant improvement in the second half of this year that will enable us to reach the 2019 level, at least in our base scenario. In order to do so, NII for the second half needs to be significantly above the first half, something that will be possible among others owing to the maturity of the expensive deposit that I mentioned. There are other positives and negatives. On the negative side, new loans to individuals have decreased significantly. with the lockdowns mainly consumer loans that have a relatively higher yield however this was partially compensated by the guarantees of the eco lines for corporates and smes but still having a net negative impact from the loan mix on the positive on top of the expensive deposits we also expect a relative higher contribution from the debt portfolio and following the TLTRO strategy that I mentioned. All in all, with current information at this moment, our base scenario remains to maintain a stable NAI for 2020 compared to 2019.

speaker
Jaime
Moderator, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Pablo. Can we provide an update regarding loan growth, please?

speaker
Pablo González
Chief Financial Officer

As you saw in the presentation, the trends are quite different depending on the segment. While in corporates and SMEs, following the higher demand, devolution is better, on the other hand, individual loans trends, mainly consumer, are weaker. In our case, as I mentioned in the presentation, the unsecured lending to corporates, which is the segment that is currently growing in the sector, supported by the ecolons, represents only 20% of our loan book. In mortgages, new production has decreased, but not as much as in consumer lending. net net going forward we expect weaker volumes than before the COVID crisis and we will probably don't grow as much as the sector because of our conservative mix with less weight in unsecured corporate loans however these are also there are also some potential good news our loan book is highly impacted by early amortization. Current situation, with the current situation and the moratorias, will probably reduce the previous speed of redemption and early amortization, partially compensating the lower new production in loans to individuals. So it is too soon to have a clear view on the final volume trends, but it makes sense to expect prudent and conservative volumes ahead at least in the next couple of quarters. So that said, we expect to finish the year with performing loans quite stable compared to last year.

speaker
Jaime
Moderator, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Pablo. Also related to this one, if we can clarify or provide under a view, what are the reasons to have relative lower balances also in moratoria, but mainly in the ICO-guaranteed loans?

speaker
Pablo González
Chief Financial Officer

I cannot answer or provide details on what our peers are doing. What I can tell you is that the measures taken on the bank are positive for some clients and also for the bank. And I think it's also for the sector as a whole. We continue to be very prudent with our credit risk approach. and the final balances of loans with moratoria and ecolines are a consequence of the interest of our clients and the needs for such schemes. However, it looks like our clients do not need as much eco lines as the sector, at least for the information that we have so far. So, if we look at the information that we have from our risk and from outside our bank, For each client, I can confirm you that with the latest available data, 95% of Unicaja self-employed customers with loans have not requested Ecolines, neither with us or with another bank. In the case of SMEs, the percentage is 82%, and for large corporates it's 70%. So as you can see, because of whatever reason, Unicaja customers have not requested eco loans neither at Unicaja nor at other bank. So we're confident on the financial situation of our customers. Other reason of our relative lower Ecolines is the mix of our loans, with more than 70% being mortgage-related, and only 20% are unsecured loans to corporates. Probably another reason is the mix in terms of sector, as we mentioned in the last quarter presentation, we have probably higher exposures to the sectors that were less affected by the COVID-19. So they ask not so much eco loans. Those sectors like construction and agriculture sector, these two sectors in our case represents, as we mentioned in the last quarter, less around 30% of our total exposure. That said, I can confirm that we have offered such loans to every single corporate customer in the bank. and that could potentially benefit from it because as you can imagine commercial activity has been very intensive but we only have formalized around 50% of the guarantees assigned to us. I think in the case of moratorias we are more in line with the sector We have used the moratorias as an interesting tool for those clients that we believe could benefit from the terms because we thought it was a positive for them and also for the bank. As a result of this strategy, we have had At the end of July, 800 million or around 5.6% of our mortgages and only 40 million or 1.3% of our consumer loans under moratoria scheme. In other words, only 3% of our total performing loans have requested moratoria.

speaker
Jaime
Moderator, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Pablo. Moving to fees, if we can please provide an update on our guidance.

speaker
Pablo González
Chief Financial Officer

I think as we explained during the presentation, fee income has been negatively affected in this quarter by the lower activity. as a result of the lockdown but also owing to the decision taken by the bank of not charging some fees to our customer in the special situation and in order to help them until the lockdown finished. Such a negative impact was concentrated in the second quarter of 2020 but at the end of the quarter the trend already started to improve. with activity levels growing and charging regular fees again. It is also worth noting that as we explained last quarter, there were some one-offs in the first quarter 2020 fees that also explain one part of the quarterly drop. All in all, we expect to increase fees in the second half of 2020 to levels somewhere between the first quarter and the something that if is finally confirmed would enable us to finish the 2020 final number in fees very close to the 2019 number. That is at least our base case scenario. This guidance is considering obviously an upward review of our fees from the third quarter onward, something that together with the recovery in the transactional business would probably help to change the second quarter trend.

speaker
Jaime
Moderator, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Pablo. Moving now to one of the topics of the quarter, because we've got plenty of questions regarding the costs evolution, the expenses evolution. If we can update the cost-cutting plans, expenses update, additional cost-cutting measures, and the expected trends. Okay.

speaker
Pablo González
Chief Financial Officer

As you all probably know, during the last couple of years, we have booked a significant amount of restructuring cost in provisions that will enable us to crystallize additional cost cuttings until 2022. On top of such plan and following the COVID-19 impacts, we have taken some additional measures to save as much cost as possible, explaining the quarterly decrease in general expenses. Following the pandemic, the situation has changed significantly and we have taken these measures to compensate the lower income with lower cost. All in all, cost cutting remains part of our strategy And the idea is to keep crystallizing additional savings going forward and become a much more efficient bank than we are so far.

speaker
Jaime
Moderator, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Pablo. Moving to loan law charges and the cost of risk, if we can update our guidance, please.

speaker
Pablo González
Chief Financial Officer

As we have discussed in the past, our conservative long mix and higher coverage leaves us in a relative good position to absorb any potential deterioration on asset quality. That said, as you can see in the trends reported today, we haven't seen such deterioration so far and the NPL balances continue to decrease. but for the second quarter in a row, we have booked more provisions, a bit more than 100 million in the first half of this year. These provisions have been booked mainly for a potential future deterioration of our credit risk exposure following the worse than initial expected microeconomic trends. In order to do so, we have taken advantage of some of the trading and the cashier gains, confirming our strong result generation capacity one more time. We have increased our NPLs coverage by almost 10 percentage points in the last 12 months, from 52 in the first half of 2019 to 44 at the end of last year to the current 61%. These coverage levels together with our long mix and the level of collateralization of our book leaves us in a relative good position. It remains difficult to quantify the final cost of risk, as you can imagine and as we guided last quarter to a level of cost of risk between 50 and 90 basis point for this year we were in in in the low part of the first quarter and we have moved now to the higher range of this quarter at this point We still cannot be much more specific on how much provisions will be needed to absorb COVID-19 crisis. We expect to keep recurrent cost of risk at the current level, so very low levels. And on top of this, we will continue to analyze the situation if additional provisions are required. So all in all, we expect to finish the year with a cost of risk in the previous range guided between 50 and 90 and obviously will depend on the evolution.

speaker
Jaime
Moderator, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Pablo. The next one is on NPL trends. The NPL balance has decreased in the quarter, but we do expect NPL balances to start to increase going forward.

speaker
Pablo González
Chief Financial Officer

Overall, NPLs continue, as you could see, to fall this quarter. So the expected deterioration has not taken place yet. There are a lot of measures in place, as you all know, like the ICO, the moratorias, the so-called ERTEs, which is the temporary leave from the companies supported by the government. That will probably explain part of the lag effect, but that will also enable some clients and customers to avoid future problems paying their loans. So, some businesses will be affected more than others, obviously, even within the same sector, but in all cases, the potential deterioration has not been reflected in our exposure so far. The provisions that we have already booked, as you can imagine, are mainly stage one provision, and year to date, we haven't seen an increase in stage two or stage three exposure. Actually, stage 2 is stable and stage 3 has decreased, as you know, from 1.4 billion to 1.3 billion. So the big bulk of the provisions booked so far for COVID-19 are provisions made after considering higher expected loss from worse macroeconomic trends, but not owing to a specific sector, loans or customers. On top of this, we have the watch list loans balances, which is one early warning indicator that we use in the bank. were in June below the level of December 2019. So we expect to have more color and more visibility in the second half of 2020. So until then, we are already working to identify potential future NPLs. For example, we have included in every single commercial agenda and contacted every single customer that has been affected by unemployment benefits or salaries under these temporary leave schemes, the ERTEs. just to make sure that the situation and to analyze with the customer if they need any solution to put in place so with the target analysis identifying and managing these cases in details. We are also closely monitoring all the legal moratorias that have not requested the sector moratoria just to identify if some cases this would be a positive solution. But so far, most of the people that finished the legal moratoria that didn't engage in the sector moratoria are maintaining the payments. So all in all, so far we haven't seen delays. or a clear deterioration in those legal moratorias that have already finished because the first ones, as you can imagine, because we start in March, the first one is finished in June and we are not seeing signs of a specific deterioration in those portfolios. So, as you can see, we're doing our job, we are reinforcing the provision levels in order to generate extra buffer and monitoring very closely the situation on a client-by-client basis. In this sense, Unicaja Banco, under my view, is in a relative good position with one of the highest coverage of the sector and a very prudent loan mix.

speaker
Jaime
Moderator, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Pablo. This is one specific on the DTAs. Do we expect the COVID-19 to reduce or to limit somehow the future realization of deferred tax assets, Pablo?

speaker
Pablo González
Chief Financial Officer

No, we don't expect it. As of June, 56% of our total DTAs were guaranteed by the government and the remaining 44% are deducted from our solvency ratios. So bear in mind that in exchange of this government guarantee, we pay a bit more than 50 million every year. That said, under our expectation and considering the potential impact from COVID-19, we continue to expect to generate enough results in the future to realize our DTAs.

speaker
Jaime
Moderator, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Pablo. We are running out of time, so moving to solvency. We have several questions. The first one is if we can clarify the regulatory impacts considered in the core equity tier 1 fully loaded. What will be the impacts from IFRS 9 transitional arrangements and the sovereign prudential filter and the DDoS, Pablo?

speaker
Pablo González
Chief Financial Officer

Okay, this quarter there are a lot of regulatory changes in solvency, so let me summarize the main ones. From a regulatory point of view, as I explained before, our seed one fully loaded reported today includes around 10 basis points of the quick fix, the SME factor, and other 10 basis points from the new rules for intangibles, specifically for software investment. In our case, the sovereign prudential filter is not material, so we didn't take that into account. And finally, the IFRS 9 transitional arrangement is something that only applies for the regulatory ratio, not to the fully loaded In our case, this IFRS 9 represents around 10 basis points, so it's not really a big impact.

speaker
Jaime
Moderator, Head of Investor Relations

Very related with this one, Pablo, we got lots of questions asking us to clarify it. If it's the curriculum fully loaded considering the IFRS 9 transitional benefits is already answered. I think that's already covered. So moving to IRB models, if we can update the situation, Pablo.

speaker
Pablo González
Chief Financial Officer

Despite we have been working internally with the internal models for some time now, we still haven't received the formal approval to apply them in terms of solvency, so we continue to use the standardized approach in full as you all know. meaning that we consider very conservative risk weighted assets densities. We have continued working with the supervisor in the process throughout the lockdown, but as you all know, we prefer not to consider the benefit in our solvency plans, at least until we have more clarity or more visibility from the supervisor.

speaker
Jaime
Moderator, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Pablo. An update on dividends and the accrual of dividends in 2020.

speaker
Pablo González
Chief Financial Officer

As you all know, the ECB confirmed last week the extension of its recommendation of not paying dividends and buying back stocks. until January 2021. In the announcement, the ECB said that they will review the recommendation in the fourth quarter of 2020 and that once the uncertainty requiring this temporary and exceptional recommendation subsides, banks with sustainable capital position may consider resuming these payments. You all know that our aim is to pay cash dividends as soon as possible and we understand that considering our results, solvency and financial position, Unicaja Banco will be among those banks receiving dividends and buybacks as soon as possible. In the meantime, let me confirm that we are considering in our solvency ratios only part of the 2020 results out of the 61 million of net income reported in the first half of this year in solvency terms, we are only considering 27, so the rest have been accrued dividends.

speaker
Jaime
Moderator, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Pablo. One final question regarding our views on the sector consolidation, please.

speaker
Pablo González
Chief Financial Officer

As we have said in the past several times, we remain open to analyze all the options that could be positive and interesting to our shareholders.

speaker
Jaime
Moderator, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Pablo. We will now finish. Thank you all. Thank you for listening to our webcast. If you need further info, do not hesitate to the IR department. We'll be delighted in attending as many requests as we receive. Finally, for those taking a brief summer break during next days, have fun, disconnect, and keep safe. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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