Powszechna Kasa Oszczednosci Bank Polski SA

WSE:PKO

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q3

[Dariusz Chorylo, executive]

[Interpreted] Good morning. It's a pleasure to have you at this presentation of the results of PKO BP after the 3 quarters of 2022. My name is Dariusz Chorylo, it is my pleasure to head the bank's Investor Relations.

This presentation features Pawel Gruza, Vice President responsible for hedging the management book; Bartosz Drabikowski, Vice President and CFO; and Piotr Mazur, Vice President and CRO.

[Pawel Gruza, executive]

[Interpreted] Good morning. It is the second time I have the pleasure to present the bank's results. Just like the last time, the bank's results have been dependent on 2 key factors: the strong economy, strong sales; and externalities, which are exceptional and beyond the bank's control. The bank remains a strong player that ensures the financial stability for our customers. We continue to finance the growth of the Polish economy.

Over the past 3 quarters, the bank generated a strong net profit of PLN 1.6 billion, which implies return on equity at 7.9%. The scale of our business has increased, our assets grew to a record high for PLN 439 billion. The number of customers increased and crossed the mark of 11.6 million.

Importantly, the increase in net profit was strongly driven by growing core revenue, up 9.2% year-on-year with growing net interest income and net fees and commissions income both. The growth rate reflects the impact of credit holidays, which reduced our net interest income by PLN 3 billion. The cost efficiency that we can control has generated a cost income ratio of 48.7%, which was strong. The CI net of the regulatory was below 40%, which I believe is very efficient.

NPL, the ratio reflecting the quality of our loan portfolio, stood at 3.9% at the end of September. The cost of risk in the 3 quarters stood at 58 bps. The bank remained liquid. Our total capital ratio stood at 17.15%, which was well above the regulatory requirements. This way, we can continue to grow by providing funding to Polish households and companies, and we can continue to implement our dividend payment policy.

Moving on to the next slide. In those difficult circumstances prevailing in Q3, the bank continued to grow. We reported a strong 18% increase in corporate lending. We hit a new record in funding to customers. The confidence of our customers and the strength of our brand were reflected by a strong 14% increase in deposits to PLN 340 billion.

An important asset of the bank is our digital advancements, which continues to improve as our remote channels gain ground, and we implement first in customer relations. We are #1 in mobile payments. Our IKO application allows us to expand our added value services. The number of active IKO applications reached a record high level of more than 7 million, up by [ 5% ]. In Q3, the number of transactions in the application increased by 41% year-on-year.

We also focus on improving refinancing of green products. We supported the development of wind farms and photovoltaics as well as recycling. We also continued our support to Ukraine refugees. We offered them a package of facilitations. We simplified the process for opening of a bank account. Up to the 30th of September, we opened 323,000 accounts under this special offer.

PKO BP is the only bank in Poland to have enabled the exchange of the [indiscernible] into the zloty at the exchange rate set by the National [indiscernible] Bank. We also donated several million PLN to humanitarian support through our foundation.

In Q3, we had very good sales performance subject to externalities, regulatory factors, which will now be outlined by Mr. Drabikowski.

[Bartosz Drabikowski, executive]

[Interpreted] Thank you very much, and good morning. The presentation of PKO BP's results is a real pleasure. And I will repeat what I said last time. Well, if not for the strict approach of the regulators, our pleasure will be much better as with the -- our results.

Starting with business results. Higher retail banking, the foundation of our operations in PKO BP performed really well. The segment headed by Maks Kraczkowski reported a very high growth of the loan portfolio hit, however, by the credit holidays.

Looking at consumer loans, they grew quite well as did deposits, which increased to almost PLN 220 billion, up 5.6% year-on-year. This great performance includes not only the volumes, but as we heard initially, the presentation is reflected in a number of current accounts, which grew dynamically by 0.5 million, approaching 9 million accounts, which is record high. So we will still move into the territory of 9 million accounts.

Given better growth, and this was a reflection of great confidence that customers and a strong preference to use digital remote channels international, this also reflects PKO's response, our digital chart, the IKO application. The increase year-on-year was 19%, which is quite unusual in big well-developed markets, growing by 1.1 million new active applications. This is the foundation of our operation, the key of the channel for communication with our customers, well received by our customers growing really fast. And I think we will continue this good work by adding new services that are offering.

Another segment, which is key also in our banking, the next business area is corporate and investment banking headed by Marcin Eckert. And his team has performed really well last quarter to our satisfaction, very high growth rate in corporate financing. We reported an 18.3% increase year-on-year and more than 5% quarter-on-quarter, crossing PLN 83 billion in financing provided to our corporate customers. The structure of this growth relies not only on working capital loans, which are driven by inflation but also investments.

Let me share a handful of selected transactions from all those delivered by corporate and investment banking with our customers. We have highlighted these 4 deals because they not only generate business volumes for us and for our customers, but they also have a very strong ESG plan. This is very important to be PKO BP, something we focus on and will continue in the coming quarters and years.

So 4 selected deals, loan or the financing of the container terminal funding for renewable energy, financing of photovoltaics among others. There's another interesting project in the recycling sector. So there's a broad offering, a broad portfolio of financing that is well diversified with a strong ESG-related engagement. This is the direction we want to keep up.

Equally satisfying and well performing with our client savings growing by 56% year-on-year and nearly 8%, 7.8% to be exact quarter-on-quarter crossing PLN 72 billion, which shows that corporate customers enjoy a strong financial standing given that savings growth at such rate. So this is a good omen for future areas of economic growth in Poland. Given the scale of our business, PKO BP does reflect the general trends in the Polish economy.

And the next slide to which we want to take your attention and communicate it very clearly that is the materialization of the new type of risk, namely the regulatory risk. New in a sense that the banks now are very professional in managing their financial operating risks and other risks. But this risk seems to be having most impact on us over the last 2 quarters. In the third quarter, the shareholders of PKO BP have lost PLN 3.1 billion on just one instrument, the credit holidays, with the assumed participation of customers eligible for this instrument at the level to 63% if it were 100% to would even reach PLN 4.8 billion.

In addition, in the third quarter, we had to cover very strong costs related to borrower support fund, about PLN 300 million, which is also an additional contribution to the system of protection of commercial banks, PLN 84 million and bridging margin provision, a relatively small regulatory idea of PLN 48 million. Thus, we have to report a loss, which is a very, very negative phenomenon in banking sector, particularly danger for weaker banks. The above factors have negative impact on our results. I think this is obvious for all of you.

On a positive note, it's their one-off character. They should not really have the nature of a repetitive phenomenon, at least that's what we assume, so what the sector is to be dealt with, dealt as regards the regulatory risk. But we believe this is all, and we hope we will be able to go back to the normal way of running our business.

So let's now go to more positive trends in our results. Good volumes is, first of all, the foundation for generating a good net profit. As it has been mentioned by the President on the basis of 3 quarters, it's on the positive side. And the fourth quarter is on the negative side. And here, we have the cumulative effect of credit holidays. So there was a loss. We've managed to -- it was a great effort. We've managed to really reduce this loss because the initial estimates had been about PLN 400 million. We managed to reduce it to PLN 237 million, but it's still a loss. I still find it difficult to say that word, to pronounce that word, but we will have to. And I hope we won't have to use it again.

If we look at the next slide and look slightly deeper in our results, increase in our core income. First of all, we look at the fees and commissions and interest incomes, basic and repetitive components. So apart from its repetitive character, we also see very strong growth in the fees and commission income and also very, very strong results, strong income and balance in the interest income area because we, as a big bank, we respond in a gradual manner to the increase of interest rates. So the growth in the core income, 9.2% year-on-year. Quarter-to-quarter adjusted for credit holidays, it's minus 57.1%. We just need to know that and forget.

As regards the main result, we don't have the final results of the interest rates. As I have said, PKO has been responding gradually and commonly to the hikes of interest rates. And I think our response will be equally calm and balanced when this tendency flat comes down and the results in our interest income will also grow steadily. We do not see such turbulences in the future.

So let's look at the trend. The trend that has been with us here since last year, and I want to draw your attention to the second quarter of last year when we've managed to overcome the tendency of decline in our interest income. So first of all, we had very good volumes, very good sales of loans, both retail loans but also corporate loans. That was the moment when that segment began to generate a good growth. So in the first quarter, it was 3.7% increase then we had 7% in fourth quarter. And here at that moment, the effect of interest rates was not very high. So we had the top growth, 19.9% in the first quarter of this year. And then this growth -- the positive dynamic started to slightly slow down. It was 13.7% in Q2. And in this quarter, in nominal terms, we have 57% down -- 77% down. But if we disregard the credit holidays impact, it would still be positive, but at a slightly lower level.

So I think that the fourth quarter will also follow a similar trend in quarter 4. A very strong component of fees and commissions income, traditionally, very strong line and very strong result here. If we look at it, 16% year-on-year growth that is steady and has been steady for quite a while. And also quarter 3 impacted by seasonability, very strong card result, slightly lower result on funds and brokerage activities. So the funds -- the investment funds are under huge pressure right now. The decline in the assets managed by the funds, this is something that has a very strong negative impact on them, but it's still a very strong component for us and also a very clear confirmation of the sales strength and the quality of the offering of PKO BP.

And the last slide that I want to draw your attention to is the cost, that is the flip side of our results. And here, it may be a surprise for you that it was not the inflation that was a great challenge for us, cost-wise in the third quarter. So what was it? Well, it was regulatory risk, and you wouldn't be surprised to hear that here in the form of PLN 420 million for borrower support fund, the institutional protection system and the bridge margin.

As I said, we assume these are one-off phenomenon. And therefore, it is were sort of clearing the picture of those elements. And then we will get the results that show that how we manage the operations of the bank. We are lower than inflation. Regarding costs and inflation for banks is not the CPI inflation for banks, it's probably about 30% to 40% right now. It's not -- that's the inflation ratio for energy services remuneration, IT and some other components. So it seems that our cost discipline has been maintained and that's the style we're going to continue because this is really the basis for maintaining cost efficiency of our bank.

Let me now stop here and hand over to Piotr Mazur, Head of the Risk Management.

[Piotr Mazur, executive]

[Interpreted] Thank you very much. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Risk is still under control, as you can see. In spite of the growth of the interest rates, the inflation hike and some turbulences on the commodities market as well as the worsening macroeconomic situation, the costs are still stable in the bank. And if we look closer at that, we could even say that we have a slightly declining trend as far as the risk is concerned. And I think that is the result of the years of work we thought in preparing the bank to address our crisis situation. And it seems that we are now really passing this test, it was a very good mark. We will see the confirmation of that.

On the next slide, where we can see that the cost of risk is under control, on one hand and on the other hand, the overdues on the loan portfolio is not growing. So we have the nonperforming loans still below 4 percentage points. We can still see a very good provisions, coverage level. We have a slight increase in receivables, which are at stage 2, but that's because we anticipate the future in a way. And we can see that the economic situation in the coming year may be more difficult, and therefore, we reclassify some of the -- or re-categorized some of the industries that are facing more difficult clients, and we create additional provisions in that regard. So this level of provisions, if you only took into account the current situation, would probably be lower.

Now we also confirm of a strong capital position. As you can see, we have a significant surplus for the dividend payment criteria as regards to Tier 1 capital and TCR ratio. These are still -- we are still noting surplus here because we had a slight decline in the valuation of the bonds because of the inflation issues, but still the situation is relatively positive.

The settlement program, it's an important element as well because it reduces the potential risk related to this portfolio. And as we can see, this tendency that even a few months ago seemed to go down, starts to grow again. So our customers wants to settle with the bank. The proposal that we have for them seems to be attractive, and therefore, the level of settlements concluded seems to be so satisfactory. We're doing a lot in order to increase the level of settlements from June. We've also added the possibility to use the settlement program for other products, the products that hadn't been included in the program before.

So just to sum up, in spite of the worsening macroeconomic situation, we still maintain the good level of risk. And therefore, we should be able to enter the next year with a very good result.

[Pawel Gruza, executive]

[Interpreted] Thank you very much. Thank you, colleagues, for presenting the details of our financial results. And thank you for the results, the performance itself.

Before we move on to the Q&A. May I first conclude and sum up the 3 quarters. So once again, we reported a good net profit of PLN 1.6 billion with ROE of 7.9%. We reported core business income up by 9.2% year-on-year, thanks to both net interest income and fee and commission income, something we take pride. We remain cost effective. Our increase in costs was 6.6% year-on-year. We manage risks prudently as we heard. The cost of risk is 58 basis points. Our capital base is stable. Our Tier 1 is safe at 16%. As I have said, PKO BP remains the pillar of financial stability of millions of [ pearls ] and one of the driving forces of the country's economy.

Thank you very much. And now the floor is open for questions.

[Dariusz Chorylo, executive]

[Interpreted] We have received a number of questions online. Let's start with a series of questions from Morgan Stanley. First question or questions are about our net interest margin and net interest income.

[Unknown Analyst]

On the outlook for your NIMs in the coming quarters, have NIM peaked as of Q3? Or do you expect further NIM expansion? What are the funding cost pressure that you are facing?

[Unknown Executive]

[Interpreted] Thank you for your question. This is a key parameter, which we track closely. It stands a chance to improve as it did in Q3. So it did not peak, we think, this year yet. We also expect the double-digit growth to continue, which is driven by gradual repricing of our assets, specifically the loan portfolio as well as securities, the mix, the hedging strategies. It's a complicated picture. But as a principle, we haven't yet felt the full effect of the interest rates and volumes and the full effect of the new deposit offering, which reflects in the growth rate of net interest income.

Our new offering does impact the growth rate of NII. However, we expect that the pace of improvement in NII and NIM will continue in Q4 before it stabilizes after upcoming decisions of the Monetary Policy Council, I think. And we will have reached a plan to work. Increase in interest rates will not impact our results that much.

I would also like to draw your attention to hedging strategies, which should stabilize the NII in the long term, but at a lower -- at a higher level, including a higher margin than that we reported in Q3. Thank you.

[Unknown Analyst]

[indiscernible], can you please comment on the outlook for loan growth into next year? How do you expect mortgage demand and corporate demand to fare?

[Unknown Executive]

[Interpreted] Thank you for your question. We expect that the regulatory restrictions relating to mortgage loans will be relaxed. We expect that. The situation as regards pricing in the property market will help our mortgage volumes to grow next year, hence the unsatisfactory performance and volumes over the past few periods, we believe are transitory and will improve.

[Unknown Executive]

[Interpreted] If I may follow up on that commenting on our expectations for the coming quarters. Next year, we will probably see a slowdown. We are not expecting a recession. But even if there are some quarters with negative GDP growth quarter-on-quarter, we will see some positive increase next year. But we are also expecting -- well, yes, we are expecting GDP growth to be in the low numbers, but still positive. And since the growth rate of lending is closely correlated to the growth rate in the economy, we expect a lower growth. But within the mix of the loan portfolio, we may see some reshuffling.

I think, however, overall, the growth rate in lending will be close to the growth in Polish GDP between 0.5% and 1%. We are not expecting a high number. But we think we are likely to continue with good growth in consumer finance and positive growth in corporate lending. As a whole, we may see a slowdown next year, but we think we will maintain -- we will remain in the positive territory at a low rate of growth, which will be a good starting point for 2024, where the growth rate in the economy and our loan portfolio impacting the performance of the banking sector should be better with higher positive numbers in percentage points.

[Dariusz Chorylo, executive]

[Interpreted] We had a number of questions on the quality of assets.

[Unknown Analyst]

How do we expect asset quality trends to evolve into 2023? What are the key pockets of risk in your view? And what's your core expectation for 2023?

[Unknown Executive]

[Interpreted] Well, clearly, we think that the macroeconomic situation will drive the cost of risk up in 2023. We are not concerned about our retail portfolios as long as unemployment remains under control. And we believe that in 2023, we will not see a big impact with rising unemployment. In the first place, it will be rather SMEs that will be hit. But fortunately, PKO BP is well prepared in this segment to defend its position during a slowdown. What we see happening now is that our SME loan portfolio is performing unexpectedly well.

Naturally, the score may decline. But in our bank, we are not expecting a significant decline. We are not really reporting our projections for next year. We are not publishing any forecast. So I am not committing myself to present a forecast for the cost of risk. Clearly, it will rise, but as we said before, we have done a lot of good work this year to ensure that the portfolio is safe. We have a high provisioning ratio. Hence, one expectation we made sure is that we will outperform our peers. I think that would be the best conclusion.

[Dariusz Chorylo, executive]

[Interpreted] We have a number of questions about the dividend.

[Unknown Analyst]

And there is a dividend for full year 2022, given macro risk and uncertainty for 2023.

[Dariusz Chorylo, executive]

[Interpreted] And a technical question about the requirements. Do you think at the end of the year, you will be relieved of the additional K1, K2 criteria, which reduced the maximum dividend payment, especially the share of FX loans in your portfolio is close to 5%?

[Unknown Executive]

[Interpreted] I think we will refrain from speculating about the criteria imposed by external bodies. We have not changed our dividend policy, however, at this point in time. We are focusing on building the best possible results this year and next.

[Dariusz Chorylo, executive]

[Interpreted] We have a number of questions on MREL.

[Unknown Analyst]

[Interpreted] Starting with a technical question. The increase in the buffer for other systemically important institutions, how strong will it apply? We have not yet received a decision increasing the buffer.

The next question. Assuming no securitization issues this year and with the exploration of the COVID quick fix and an increase in the other systemic institution buffer, will you meet the MREL requirements in 2023?

[Unknown Executive]

[Interpreted] We will certainly meet all the criteria, all the requirements in Polish on the bank, and we are working to contain the impact of the MREL program to ensure that we can maximize our results. And we will take these steps as soon as possible.

[Unknown Analyst]

[Interpreted] Another question, what would be the cost today of rechanging the currency of swiss franc loans for PKO BP without a special remuneration for the bank?

[Unknown Executive]

[Interpreted] We haven't published that. Every bank calculates it separately. The analysts are trying to find the consequences for the entire sector, and I would rather like to avoid talking about specific amounts. Hypothetically, it would be probably high amount. But I think that -- well, for me, this is really still a hypothetical issue. We can argue about the assumptions, about the time limit of implementing such instruments, the juries -- the judicial decisions concerning our results or resolutions of such cases. But I'm not sure, we are not able to give you a proper amount.

We need to look at this process as an evolutionary process, something that started many years ago. And right now, the main instrument to manage this challenge is the settlement program where PKO BP is very effective. We have over 30% of population of our customers who can potentially be interested in changing the nature of the relationship -- loan relationship with the bank in the -- or under the settlement program.

And what is really good over the last few months, the interest of our customers in joining such a program has been growing. So we believe this will be the main instrument we will use. And this, of course, impacts other scenarios as well. So every month, we have thousands of new settlements concluded, and thus, also other consequences and forecasts are also affected by thought and the negative impact seems to be declining.

But still for me, these are theoretical models. And we are now focusing on things that the bank has under control, which is the relationship with its customers, offering the best possible solutions for the customers, including the settlement program. And we also are very positive about the fact that some customers that decided to use litigation at some point and go to court, takes the bank to court now, decides to go back to the settlement program also because of the time factor and want to -- and wishing to get rid of the currency value. Sometimes very often. In fact, this is also a very specific financial value for them that is adjusting or aligning the value of the swiss franc loan to the Polish zloty loan. That's what we're trying to offer -- what we were offering our customers. So -- it's -- this is a lot of theoretical speculation here. So what we'd prefer to do is to look at what we actually do with this issue.

[Dariusz Chorylo, executive]

[Interpreted] One more question concerning foreign currency loans.

[Unknown Analyst]

Being required in Q4 and in 2023.

[Unknown Executive]

[Interpreted] We are still facing the answer to that question. We still have to think about this answer. We are looking at the current predictions concerning the development of the European court's decisions in that respect, and we will be responding adequately to that. After we obtain the appropriate expert opinions as well.

[Dariusz Chorylo, executive]

[Interpreted] We've got additional questions concerning dividend.

[Unknown Analyst]

[Interpreted] Does PKO BP consider paying dividend at a level higher than 50% of annual profit?

[Unknown Executive]

[Interpreted] No, we won't be commenting on this now. I refuse to comment.

[Dariusz Chorylo, executive]

[Interpreted] The next question is the impact of the credit holidays spread proportionally between PKO BP and PKO Mortgage Bank.

[Unknown Executive]

[Interpreted] Well, I don't know what do you mean by proportionately. The mortgage bank is very strictly related. Its operations are strictly related to mortgage loans. So it's much more affected because it only has this type of loans under management, whereas PKO BP has a lot of different types of operations. PLN 100 billion is mortgage loans in our portfolio, but we've got a lot of corporate loans as well, so on and so forth.

So no, it wouldn't be spread proportionately because PKO Mortgage Bank has deep losses. And even at the level of the year, it won't be able to go above the red line, whereas we, after just one quarter of technical loss in spite of a very huge impact and burden of credit holidays over PLN 3 billion annually, we -- in the following quarter, we managed to achieve a positive result. So in this sense, it's not the proportional spread because the mortgage bank is a specialized bank. But of course, it's part of the group fully supported and guaranteed by the group. So this is a very difficult adventure this come across. It will have a year of a loss this year as a result of a regulatory decision.

[Unknown Analyst]

[Interpreted] And your competitors started to offer detailed treasury bonds to -- how much can your commission income come decline, if you were to spread that income or divide -- share that income with the other bank?

[Unknown Executive]

[Interpreted] We believe that this loss will not be significant. We are happy that the Ministry of Finance is extending the availability of its instruments. And we do not see it as a threat or a significant competition for us. The operations of PKO, we always in this respect will not reduce our income.

[Unknown Analyst]

[Interpreted] Do you add provisions only in the corporate sector or maybe there are other categories that are also covered with this operation? And how do you see this in 2023?

[Unknown Executive]

[Interpreted] Creating additional provisions does not take place only in the corporate portfolio, but we adjust our models also in the SME sector, in the mortgage loan sector as well as regards LGD parameters.

As regards the industries, well, it would probably be easier to list the industries that have not been affected by additional provisioning operations. We focus mainly on the industry that might be most affected by the consequences of the economic slowdown, automotive construction, some of our property business, some of our chemical businesses as well, where the cost of raw materials and commodities have exerted a lot of impact.

[Unknown Analyst]

[Interpreted] And the last question, how the borrowers support fund has been used at the end of the third quarter?

[Unknown Executive]

[Interpreted] Well, the use of that fund is at a significantly lower level than our contribution.

[Dariusz Chorylo, executive]

[Interpreted] Thank you very much. That was the last question that we received. So thank you very much for participating in this conference, and we invite you to our next meeting in the next quarter. Thank you.

[Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]