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Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Operator]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the audio conference call of B3's earnings results for the fourth quarter of 2020. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded and broadcast live via webcast. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Daniel Sonder, Chief Financial Officer of B3. Please, Daniel, you may proceed.

[Marcela Bretas, executive]

I don't think Daniel is in the same room. He's saying that -- we are trying to connect him, just 1 second, please.

[Operator]

Please wait a second. We'll be back in a moment.

[Daniel Sonder, executive]

Hello?

[Marcela Bretas, executive]

Daniel, you can go ahead.

[Daniel Sonder, executive]

Okay. Good morning, everyone. I'm sorry for [indiscernible], and I just [indiscernible] well during these times. We're happy to have you here for the conference call of [indiscernible] 2020 and some discussion about the year as well. So I have Marcela Bretas on the line and also the rest of the Investor Relations teams alongside. And I just want to take this opportunity to thank everyone and the team as well as the [indiscernible] and communication teams for putting together all these materials that we have in front of us.

Just a brief discussion about highlights of 2020. I think needless to say, we had a very challenging year. We saw a lot of pain in the economy. We had -- we saw lot of pain in personal lives. And we obviously were ready to work hard and try to fulfill our institutional mandate here at B3 of being the platform that everybody can rely on in terms of capital markets infrastructure. And it -- we also saw a big development in the capital markets in Brazil at the same time. So it's kind of a paradoxical scenario where there was a lot of distressed economic troubles around us, but in the capital and financial markets there was significant growth.

We believe that low interest rates, low inflation and the possibility of having fiscal consolidation in Brazil in the medium to long term are the main reasons for that reaction by investors. We have the lowest interest rates ever in Brazil, around 2%, nominal rates for the short term. We have stable inflation around 4.5% for the year. And this really led to significant growth in terms of both the supply and demand for riskier assets, which we are managing through our platforms here at B3.

Decent numbers. Total equity offerings in Brazil last year raised BRL 118 billion. So that's one indicator of the strength of the supply side of new stocks coming into the market. On the cash, I think the numbers look at or [indiscernible] number of retail individual investors that have accounts in the depository for stocks, and that reached BRL 3.2 million (sic) [ 3.2 million ]. I think some of you who have followed us for a long time remember when this number was 62,000, 1/5 to what we have now. The growth year-on-year was very, very significant. I mean, from 1.7 million to 3.2 million. And also in fixed income, we can go on in more details at the further pages, but [indiscernible] bank funding for the year reached BRL 13 trillion.

That all translated into B3's operational performance. When we look at average daily traded volume for cash equities reached BRL 29 billion [indiscernible] average, 4.3 million contracts in listed derivatives. And all of this represents significant growth versus the year before. And we also look at the fixed income and the derivative transactions in OTC segment reaching BRL 25 trillion. So the result of all that was significant growth in our operating results as you will see in a minute, but I'll just share a few more developments that we saw in the company.

We were able to execute on our road map for some relevant items that we delivered, including BDRs for all types of investors now in Brazil, the development of our insurance platform. So we are now serving the insurance industry with technological infrastructure for registration. We moved forward in our energy initiative. Those are still very, very small compared to the total numbers of B3, but they are, in our view, the seeds for new businesses that may become relevant one day. We also delivered more standard products or things more in the nature of the business, the options on Copom, which is interest rate product, securities lending screen, and we secured financial bills for funding of banks.

We also are happy to report on the operational excellence of our platform. We saw unprecedented [indiscernible] volumes, as I mentioned before. And this really put a lot of stress and demand on our systems with 2x the average number of trades coming through in 2020 versus 2019, with [indiscernible] that are even higher than this 2x multiple. And we were able to do a very good job, thanks to the hard work of my colleagues in operations and IT, not only last year but over the years building the resilient [indiscernible] right now. And our numbers were very good, and we didn't have any problems.

We also did move on our pricing schedule. We have a commitment, which [indiscernible] have heard, as referred to, of sharing gradually over time the benefit of scale and operating leverage with our clients. And in February, we implemented one important step in that direction for the cash equities market, and we will continue to do other initiatives in that area.

And finally, with respect to distributions and cash generation, we had a very, very strong year for cash generation. And we also were able to distribute that out to our shareholders considering revenues of the company, and we reached BRL 6.2 billion of distributions, including interest on capital, dividends and the buyback program. So [indiscernible] and this was in line with the high end of our guidance for distributions of 150% of accounting net income.

I'll now turn to Marcela [indiscernible] comments about some of the segments and businesses, and we can go back to Q&A.

[Marcela Bretas, executive]

Good morning, everyone. This is Marcela here. Nice talking to you all and hope everyone is healthy and safe at this challenging time. I'll briefly go through the main highlights of each segment for the last quarter of 2020, and then I'll talk about the financial results.

So starting with the equity segment. ADTV in the quarter was BRL 31.6 billion, up 67% from last year, driven, as Daniel mentioned, by low interest rates, which propelled investors to look for portfolio diversification and increased demand for equity and also by some level of volatility that has permeated through 2020 results. On the derivatives market, ADV was slightly below the fourth quarter of 2019, was 6% below, reaching 4.3 million contracts, but our RPC raised 54.3% year-on-year, driven mostly by the real depreciation since part of our contracts are priced in U.S. dollars. In the OTC segment, new fixed income issues totaled BRL 3.7 trillion, up 40% year-on-year. And that was mostly driven by credit recovery, especially in the last few months of 2020. OTC derivative issuance was in line with what we observed last year. But outstanding volume in custody increased by 61.6% since most of these contracts are -- have notional amounts in dollars. Those are swaps and forward contracts. With the real depreciation, volumes in custody tends to increase.

In our infrastructure for financing business, we saw some recovery in vehicle financing activity. Compared to the third quarter, volumes were up 16%, and compared to last year, they were up 3%. So that was a positive quarter compared to a very difficult year for this segment. In fact, that was the most affected business negatively in terms of volumes by the pandemic.

Finally, in our technology, data and services segment, the new OTC pricing policy positively impacted revenues for these line of services as was the case for the previous quarters as well. And we observed an increase of 6.4% in the number of clients, mostly funds in the OTC segment. For data and analytics, we had a positive impact in revenues driven by more product demand and also the real depreciation against dollars in some of our products here are also priced in dollars.

With that, we reached gross revenues of BRL 2.5 billion. Adjusted expenses that account for personnel expenses, data and processing expenses as well as some other operating revenues -- operating expenses, sorry, accounted for BRL 342 million, leading to an EBITDA of BRL 1.7 billion, which represented a margin of 78.7%. Recurring net income totaled BRL 1.2 billion for the quarter.

We ended 2020 with a gross debt of BRL 7 billion, which represented 1.1x our recurring EBITDA. And finally, as Daniel mentioned, we had a significant return of capital to our shareholders. For the year, it amounted to BRL 6.2 billion, which is equivalent to the cash flow that we generated throughout the year. And that BRL 6.2 billion had BRL 900 million in share repurchases and BRL 5.3 billion through dividends and IOC.

With that, I think we could open for questions from investors.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Thomas Peredo with BTG Pactual.

[Thomas Peredo, analyst]

So I have 2 questions. My first question is related to the central registration of credit card receivables. B3 isn't among the entities authorized by the Central Bank in this initiative, but it could be an interesting market for B3 to enter. So given what happened recently with CIP having problems with -- with being ready to roll out to the full model and end up causing the regulator to postpone the whole initiative to June.

This -- did this affect in anyhow your interest to enter into this market? How are you seeing this initiative? And if you could also update us on how has been the evolution of the registration of insurance policies, credit bills, the clearing services for PIX and also the energy markets? And then I will make my second question.

[Daniel Sonder, executive]

Sure. Thomas, let me take that and then Marcela can help me out here. We do plan to be in the business of registration of credit card receivables. So we have an initiative in that front. In the -- we think, again, it's an opportunity for us as well, and we hope that we can support our clients in the market in that need as well as the regulators.

And in terms of the other segments, we have a large [indiscernible] registration platform. This is, again, something that is relatively small at this point. But we're gaining ground. And I think we have been able to capture some relevant clients in this activity. It's not a market where we expect to be alone. There are other players in it. But I think B3 has all the credentials to capture a relevant market share and follow the development of this business.

As you know, the regulators started with a few segments within the insurance universe for registration and is gradually going to move, let's say, further down in terms of other segments, which has bigger scale. So they started this with, let's say, a relatively small universe, but we believe it's going to go in the right direction.

The energy platform is still, I think, a little bit behind, although we also believe that it has a good potential in the long term. This requires, let's say, a bigger transformation of the market in power contracts in Brazil. This market was deregulated about 20 years ago, and there are a number of consumers and producers and brokers companies in the process. So we're trying to be a platform where things can have transparency and standardization of contracts so that one knows that if a contract is registered with B3, it meets certain characteristics. And out of that, we can begin to have price data. And out of that, we begin to have curves, and then it develops into maybe an OTC market and further along more sophisticated market like we see elsewhere.

The -- essentially, all of the, let's say, technical work has been put in place, but we still are in the early stages of [indiscernible] and people to join our platform. In terms of the credit card, just one more detail that I also have mentioned in the credit card receivables. We expect to be ready with the platform in the third quarter. We are testing and working with the regulator to make sure that it meets all its standards. So I think I covered most of what you mentioned in your question. But I'll turn it over to Marcela, maybe there are some additional details.

[Marcela Bretas, executive]

No, Daniel. I think you covered most of the relevant points. And if you guys have follow-up questions, let us know.

[Thomas Peredo, analyst]

Okay. No. Great. It is clear. And for my second question, if you could also give us an update on the retail liquidity provider. So let's [indiscernible], the regulator gave the go ahead to expand from mini contracts to other products like equities, and gave more 12 months to test this initiative, so how is the time line for this rollout to other products? And overall, how have you been seeing the benefits versus risk of this product? Obviously, it helped a lot volumes for mini contracts, increase in the liquidity for clients, but also it has kind of an incentive for clients that have a higher trader in short-term profile that are usually not necessarily profitable. So is there any concern on this regard that could require an increase or change in regulation? If you could share anything with us would be great.

[Daniel Sonder, executive]

Sure, Thomas. I'll start with the second part of your question. We find that the products that we offer, in general, right, are beneficial for market development and for meeting the needs of different clients. And having said that, there is a concern that needs to be always in there. And that has to do not only with RLP, but with stocks, with new IPOs, with any type of futures products and so on that clients must be aware of the risks, and they must be duly informed either by their own efforts or by the efforts of the brokerage community, which surrounds us that certain products are more suitable or not.

There are regulations for that. There are, I think, companies -- most companies in our ecosystem that it is extremely seriously because they want the benefit of their -- the success of their clients in the long run. So we -- obviously, there are people who, let's say, don't manage properly the opportunity that they have best in our markets. But in general, we think that the role of the infrastructure is to provide a set of products that are under regulatory umbrella, under the supervisory umbrella and under the, let's say, network of the brokerage system which itself has the instruments and incentives to do proper client suitability and education of the clients. So that's the general point that I wanted to mention to you.

We think that RLP fits within this context. It is an innovation that B3 is proud to have brought to the market. It's provided a solution for something that was happening in the market, and that happens in all markets as we you know, which is an increase in retail demand for certain products, which is brought to the retail brokers. And there is an opportunity to meet that demand with the other side of those trades coming from institutional investors, particularly high-frequency traders.

And if the broker plays a role in matching that, it's, in our view, only reasonable that we should capture part of the economics of those transactions. And that is exactly what happens in the U.S. market, for example, through what's called retail internalization. And in Brazil, the solution that B3 innovated with which is called RLP. So the principle is exactly the same. It just happens in a different location. In our case, we view this positively because, again, it is under the supervisory and regulatory umbrella of B3, and with full transparency to the clients and to the regulators.

The CVM has been working with us to further develop this market. As you mentioned, it authorized the expansion of RLP to other products or to other types of assets and instruments. However, it did put some additional demand in this next phase. And we are now working with them to see whether we -- whether and how we can best implement and address those demand. They are not all very clear to implement.

But I think in -- we will be successful and try to find, again, as we did in the original RLP innovation, try to find a compromise between the needs of the market or the wishes of the market and the wishes and concerns of the regulator and try to find a middle ground to make the market move forward. I think that's how B3 sees itself as this reliable partner, which can hear the regulators' view and the market's view and come up with solutions that are robust, creative and that allow for market development at the same time that we do this with safety.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the webcast, and it's from Victor Schabbel with Bradesco BBI.

He asks, could you guys provide some color about the new pricing policy that was expected to be implemented early this year? Any views that you guys can disclose about the potential revenue impact given the current volumes?

[Daniel Sonder, executive]

Thank you. Maybe I'll turn it over to Marcela, and you can give some more details.

[Marcela Bretas, executive]

Sure, Daniel. So we started the implementation of the new intermediate pricing model now in February. This intermediate model was announced back in December. And it's an adaptation of the full model that we announced at the beginning of the year, but we're facing some challenges in order to implement them at a timing that we felt was ideal. So we were expecting to implement the full model by August last year. Since there were some systems adaptation challenges and we could not fulfill that time line, we went back, and we draw a new intermediate model that delivers about 2/3 of the economies expected from the full model.

We announced this intermediate model in December, and we started to implement now in February. This intermediate model, it provides discounts. It adjusts sell prices to the new levels of liquidity. So it reflects the new reality of volumes in our market. And it also provides deeper discounts to day traders, and it also makes the adaptation that we are looking for in order to attract more retail investors. So the changes for retail investors and day traders are mostly in place with this intermediate model.

We ran a back test based on volumes that we observed during the second quarter of 2020. We annualized those volumes and revenues. And what we obtain is that with a full model, we would be providing around BRL 400 million in discounts over close to BRL 4 billion revenue. And with this intermediate model, these discounts would be around BRL 250 million. So we would be delivering BRL 250 million out of the BRL 400 million expected if we were able to implement the full model.

So we don't have these numbers updated for the volumes that we've been observing in the first few months of 2021, but that can give you a sense in terms of potential impact on percentage basis. But having said that, it may vary depending on client mix and other factors. We continue to work for the implementation of the full model. We are just not certain of the timing that we'll be able to conclude it.

And if you guys have any follow-up questions on that, let us know. And Daniel, if I'm missing anything, please feel free to add.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Carlos Gomez with HSBC.

[Carlos Gomez-Lopez, analyst]

Congratulations on a great year. Two very brief questions. The first one, what is your expectations for velocity for 2021 and beyond? Obviously, you have experienced very, very high levels in 2020. How sustainable is that? Another difficult question. And second, what are your expectations regarding the ForEx derivatives? And do you expect the level of activity and pricing that you saw in 2021 to remain in '22?

[Daniel Sonder, executive]

Okay. Carlos, thank you for the question. So with respect to velocity, as everyone saw during last year, we reached very, very high levels, over 170% of turnover velocity. We believe that this was somewhat attributed to the continued uncertainty that was spread in all of our markets. And this lack of visibility of what was next really led people to trade more frequently and to move in and out of their positions due to, let's say, recalibrating their views about health concerns, economic recovery, interest rate trajectory and so forth. And different sectors had very different performances, and some companies suffered a lot, some companies thrived. So all of that led to this huge spike in velocity.

But also I think a component to be considered is the large number of new transactions. So the influx of new investors and of the IPOs really leads to a higher turnover for these stocks in the beginning. And as original investors change hands and so forth, and there was also a component. It's -- again, and thank you for acknowledging this in your question. It's really hard to predict where this is going to go.

I think that we definitely reached a new level if we compare to the 70% to 80% that we saw just a few years ago in Brazil. I think it's hard to see a scenario where we would just simply go back to that. But again it's not say for us to say that we think that 170 plus is the sustainable new normal. We'll have to see a period of normality in capital markets, and 2020 is definitely not a year that we can call normal. So we think that we're going to have to see a little bit how 2021 plays out so that I can maybe give you a better answer of where we feel comfortable projecting this level of turnover.

With respect to FX derivatives. It's an important part of our derivatives business. We continue to see a lot of activity there. As was mentioned, we have 2 drivers there for our success. One is the actual volume of transactions. And the other one is the level of the FX rate, the real to dollars exchange rate. Because we collect fees -- we charge fees in dollars so that our numbers reported in real go up when the real weakens. And this is happening right now.

And it so happened historically that when there is more volatility in FX and particularly devaluation, there is a greater rush to hedge and to use the FX derivative market. So we have this on the listed side. We have this on the OTC side. And both -- in both cases, we charge dollars, and we -- obviously, it will depend on how the currency behaves during the year. But the last few months are any indication. It seems like we're going to have a successful year in FX derivatives as well.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the webcast, and it's from Eduardo Nishio with Genial Investimentos.

He's asking regarding RLP implementation, any time expectation?

[Daniel Sonder, executive]

So I think I addressed this earlier on. If the question is regarding RLP, we have the product in place, and we have a new opportunity to develop more features, but we're still discussing the timing with the regulator considering some of the observation and inputs that they gave us for this new phase. I don't have a clear date.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] With no further questions, this concludes today's question-and-answer session. I would like to invite Mr. Daniel Sonder to proceed with his closing statements.

[Daniel Sonder, executive]

Thank you, everyone, for joining the call again. We are available for further questions through the IR channels. And again, I hope everyone is in good shape and that you continue to manage through these difficult times. And thank you for your support during 2020. It's been a successful year for B3, and we couldn't have done it without all of you and your continued interest in Brazil and in our markets. Thank you.

[Operator]

That does concludes B3's audio conference for today. Thank you very much for your participation. Have a good day, and thank you for using Chorus Call.