ABG Sundal Collier Holding ASA (ABG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning all, and a warm welcome to ABG Sundal Collier's Q2 Results presentation. Before we kick off the presentation, I would like to mention as usually that we will have a Q&A session after the presentation. And should you want to raise a question, please use the function in Teams, and we will answer all your questions in turn. I have met several investors during the spring who have made me realize that there is room for improvement in terms of our communication about who we are. and what we do further to improve our business and firm to become the Nordic Investment Bank of choice, the investment bank of choice for clients, talent and investors. What ABG is today is quite different from a few years ago. We are way less dependent on any single product such as IPOs, for instance, compared to, let's say, 10 years ago. We have strengthened our positions in all relevant product areas within investment banking, debt equities, M&A and advisory, and we have just launched our biggest initiative for decades, private banking as well as an alternative investment fund. While it will take some time before these new business initiatives will make a meaningful contribution to our revenues, they will further diversify our revenue base and contribute to improved profitability. We will continue to work relentlessly to gain market shares in our core areas by working smarter, and not least by implementing new technology and leveraging our nimble and agile organization and by making better use of our internal resources. But we will also add resources in terms of number of FTEs, not least business-generating senior partners within our firm. That is by using our key assets, people and technology, and by communicating more clearly what we do and building our brand awareness, we have a clear path for gaining ground and increase revenues further. By doing this, we are committed to our long-term targets of increasing our revenue per head by 20% versus 2024, and deliver a mid-cycle operating margin of at least 25%. So in the second quarter that just ended, this resulted in us if we flip to the slide looking at the numbers, please. Delivering revenue growth of 12% to NOK 570 million. We achieved this in a quarter that was, let's say, to some extent, a bit of a roller coaster with a trade war escalating early April and then a market recovery making June, a very strong month, indeed. We stayed our course on focusing on providing the best advice and execution for our clients, solving the task at hand and providing solid advice is even more important in volatile markets. I firmly believe that the value of our independent advice without potential conflict of interest from other business activities with clients, such as balance sheet lending has increased as of late. Continuing looking at our operating margin in the first half of the year, that ended up at 20%, a decent level, however, below our long-term ambition and long-term target of at least 25% in a mid-cycle environment. But bear in mind that excluding our new business ventures, I alluded to earlier, our operating margin would have been some 3 percentage points higher. Our ambition is, of course, that our new ventures will contribute to improving our operating profitability over time. We delivered earnings per share at NOK 0.18 up from NOK 0.16 in the quarter. Should we exclude the above-mentioned investments in new business initiatives, earnings per share would have been some NOK 0.4 and NOK 0.2 higher year-to-date and first half 2024, respectively. So continuing to the next slide, please, and look at what the market type of conditions market gave us and look at the market backdrop. As I mentioned, market recovered quickly in mid-April after the initial trade war shock upon realizing that the U.S. President and his administration actually listened to market, not least the bond markets. That in turn led to credit spreads tightening again after an initial widening in mid-April, back to pre Liberation Day levels in the second quarter as did equity markets ending up higher than pre Liberation Day. This recovery was supported by the volatility index coming back below 20%, again, after peaking north of 50 in mid-April and volatility in the below 20 is all else equal, a good foundation for continued recovery in activity in capital markets. Continuing with the next slide, please, looking at how our main markets in the Nordics within investment banking have performed during the quarter and the last couple of years. Starting off with the equity Nordic equity capital markets, it's clear that volumes have continued to be -- well, let's say rather muted to say the least in the quarter. Having said that, as eluded earlier, we witnessed a recovery in activity towards the end of the quarter, not least in Sweden, specifically. All in all, volumes were still down in equity capital markets by some 50% in the quarter year-on-year. And on a rolling 12-month basis, volumes were as at, as you can see, relatively muted level down by 14% even though we saw some encouraging sign for future activity, not least by, as you can see, the dark blue shaded part of the gross, the staples there, where you have a bit of an uptick in IPO activity. It's still very muted levels. It's too early to say that this has really changed significantly and state that the IPO window is open again, way too early, but some encouraging signs at least. Continuing with the debt capital markets, the recovery from the Liberation Day shock was even more evident earlier in the quarter. compared to equity capital markets. That recovery from early May was, however, not enough to make up for what was a very strong second quarter volume-wise last year resulting in volumes down by some 20% year-on-year in the quarter. That said, we are still at very high activity levels in the DCM space, illustrating the structural growth of the very vibrant Nordic debt capital market. And finally, looking at M&A, the M&A market, that continues to be stable. But in the absence of, I would say, the widely expected pickup in activity levels. M&A in the Nordics stayed rather muted with volumes actually down 20% in the quarter, 16% in the quarter year-on-year and by 2% on a rolling 12 months basis. Continuing with the next slide, looking at how we performed in these markets and starting off with corporate financing, we were, of course, affected by the drop in volumes in both ECM and DCM in the second quarter, with revenues down by 23% in the quarter and 16% in the first half of the year with revenues ending up at NOK 311 million for the first half of the year. This specific quarter, the Swedish capital market was somewhat stronger or less muted perhaps than the Norwegian one, which also was reflected in our numbers. As you can see on the right-hand side of this slide, there is good contribution from the entire range of products, even though it's far from the normal market, it's still encouraging to see that we actually have been involved in a couple of IPOs during the quarter. We were active with private placements and not least with high-yield bonds, which is a significant revenue contributor to our capital markets operation during the second quarter. Let's continue with the next slide, looking at how we did within our M&A operations. And I can say that clearly state that we delivered a rock-solid performance with several large deals being closed during the quarter. As you might recall, M&A tends to be heavily tilted towards the last quarter, towards Q4 with historically around 40% of our yearly M&A revenues being booked in any given Q4 over the last years. Our Q2 performance was more in line with what we've seen over the last couple of Q4 numbers and as such, a super solid set of numbers with NOK 227 million being booked in the quarter versus NOK 128 million last year, resulting in an increase of our M&A revenues of some 33% year-to-date versus first half year 2024. On the right-hand side of the slide, we have some selected transactions listed, as you can see, and it's a wide range or different sectors represented as well as different type of deals, including a high-profile public to private transaction Crayon, a NOK 15.5 billion buyout. And let's continue with the last of our operating business areas, brokerage and research. We continue to see good momentum and increased momentum in revenue growth during the quarter with revenues up by 15% in Q2 to NOK 155 million and resulting in a 13% increase in the first half of the year. That means we are now above our 2021 numbers on brokerage and research on a rolling fourth quarter basis, with NOK 605 million in revenues the last 12 months. Our performance is more based on strong execution in our team rather than volatility saving the day in early April. So I would categorize this as a strong team effort in other words. So let's continue with the next slide. And looking at headcount. That has been pretty stable, even though we have, as you can see, over the last couple of years, grown our headcount in line with the strategy I alluded to earlier. And I would expect this number to increase cautiously and selectively during the next 12, 24 months. Continuing with the next slide, please. Looking at costs, specifically during the first half of the year, we stayed at the same compensation to revenue ratio around 56%, 57%. That has been the number for the last few years, in line with our historical average, resulting obviously, in a slight increase in compensation costs on the back of higher revenues. Some of the increase in cost is also by design, as alluded to earlier, investing in our new ventures, private banking and alternative investments. Whereas other drivers continue to be, unfortunately, cost inflation, that is difficult to mitigate short term. Looking specifically at non-compensation costs that are -- that is up by NOK 32 million to NOK 236 million in the quarter. Some 50% of that increase is due to inflation and FX, where inflation is by far the most important factor. And the remaining circa 50% can be best described as a function of higher activity levels in our front operations, such as increased cost of sales on our brokerage operations that is partly driven by volumes and more client activities generally. So let's flip slide and do some concluding remarks. I think after the initial shock in April with markets being in a very, very negative trend, obviously, on the back of the world economy potentially being thrown back a couple of decades or even more. We had a swift recovery. We capitalized on that recovery and especially, we stated our course within the M&A operations, as alluded earlier, resulting in a very strong June performance and M&A performance in the quarter overall resulting in us closing more than 15 deals during the quarter, and contributing to our strong revenue growth. We are also pleased with the commercial progress of our 2 newest ventures, ABG alternatives investments successfully raised NOK 1.5 billion, NOK 1.45 billion and launched its first fund, Samfond, focused on investments in social infrastructure across Norway. And our Private Banking platform has gone live during the quarter, welcoming its first clients and generating a very strong early interest indeed. So with that, I thought I'd leave the floor open for any questions.

We have received one question here. Based on the few IPOs you've seen in Q2, what can you tell about the investor appetite?

Yes. That's a good one. Obviously, we have seen investors becoming or stayed more picky after becoming very picky a couple of years ago, increasing their requirements on what type of assets for companies that can be IPO-ed. Having said that, high-quality assets or companies can be IPO-ed at decent valuation levels and with good investor demand. Proven track record, good management, strong cash flow or a very clear path to credible path to cash flows, tick those boxes. And our message is that investor demand is high. Picky but high for the right type of assets.

Thank you. I believe that's it from the audience.

Okay. Do not hesitate to contact me or my CFO, Geir Olsen should you have any follow-up questions, and thank you for tuning in.