Banco BTG Pactual S.A. (BPAC11) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Third Quarter of 2022 Results Conference Call of Banco BTG Pactual. With us today, we have Roberto Sallouti, Renato Cohn, Julia Rocha. We would like to inform you that this event is being recorded [Operator Instructions] Today, we have a simultaneous webcast that may be accessed through the website, www.btgpactual.com/ir and the platform. There will be a replay facility for this call from November 8. Before proceeding, let me mention that this call may contain forward-looking statements relating to the prospects of the business, estimates for operating and results and those related to the growth prospects of Banco BTG Pactual. These are merely projections and, as such, are based exclusively on the expectations of Banco BTG Pactual's management concerning the future of the business. Such forward-looking statements depend substantially on changes in market conditions, government regulations, competitive pressures, the performance of the Brazilian economy and the industry, among other factors and risks disclosed in BTG Pactual and Banco BTG Pactual filed disclosure documents and are therefore subject to change without prior notice. I will now turn the floor to Mr. Roberto Sallouti, who will begin the presentation. Mr. Sallouti, you may go ahead.

Thank you very much. Thank you all for joining the call. If you could please turn to Page 3 of the presentation. We are actually very satisfied with the results of this quarter. We had a very profitable quarter that was supported by record revenues and operational leverage of our platform. The investments that we've done in technology over the last 6 years has allowed us to enter new market segments, launch new products, and we've been able to move along the J-curve of these investments, and that's exactly what you're seeing play out in our results as we're able to increase revenues faster than costs. And actually, we expect that over the next few quarters, we will be able to continue to increase the level of profitability as we continue to explore the synergies or the maturation of the investments that we've done over the last few years. So starting with the highlights of the quarter. Our revenues grew 24% year-over-year, reaching BRL 4.8 billion. Our net income grew a bit faster than revenues at 28% year-over-year to BRL 2.3 billion. And in the quarter, we had a return on equity of 22%. That's a bit above what we reported in the first and second quarter as we see this operational leverage payout. Turning to the next page. Our assets under management reached BRL 1.2 trillion in the quarter, and we had another quarter of strong net inflows, achieving once again a record revenue in our Wealth Management business. So in the quarter, we had BRL 63 billion of net new money. And in the last 12 months, we had BRL 250 billion of net new money. Our assets in our Wealth Management business grew 27% year-over-year, reaching BRL 509 million, and our assets in the asset management and in assets under administration business reached BRL 665 million in the quarter. If you turn to the next page, we continue to grow our credit portfolio with very high quality and at the same time, keeping very solid capital ratios and liquidity ratios, even though we did not grow so much our unsecured funding because we were having actually inefficiency and having so much cash, so reduced a bit the rates that we were paying. But still, we are the most liquid bank in the S1 segment. So our corporate portfolio grew 33%, reaching BRL 130 billion, BRL 21 billion of which in the SME segment. We continued with a Basel capital ratio of 15.2% with a total net equity a bit above BRL 42 billion and our unsecured funding base grew 17% to BRL 170 billion. On Page 6, we see a little more details of the results of the third quarter. I mentioned the highlights, but if we go into a bit more detail, we had total revenues of BRL 4.75 billion, net income of BRL 2.3 billion, return on equity of 22% and a net income per unit of $0.60. Our cost-to-income ratio continues a bit below our historical average at 38.1% with our comp ratio of 21.3%. And we finalized the quarter with total assets of BRL 440 billion. As mentioned previously, a capital ratio of 15.2%, equity of 42.3%, even after we distributed $1.2 billion of JCP or basically dividends, interest on capital in the quarter. And our average daily VaR was still a bit below our historical average at 38 bps. Turning to Page 7. We talk about the results for the first 9 months of the year, we had total revenues of BRL 13.6 billion and net income of 6.54 billion, ROE for these 9 months at 21.9%. Net income per unit at BRL 1 was $0.71. Once again, cost-to-income ratio is a bit below historical average at 38.6% and comp ratio of 21.8% and our shareholders' equity increased year-over-year 16.6%. And throughout these 9 months, we had an average VaR of 35 bps. On Page 8, you can see the breakdown of the last 12 months compared to the previous 12 months of the different business units. You see a faster growth of our more stable, predictable businesses, more specifically, credit and asset and wealth management. And we see a very healthy distribution between what we can say are the corporate and investment banking businesses, the markets business and the investment management business, which gives us a very good combination of more stable, predictable businesses, businesses that use capital and businesses that don't use capital, which is why we're very confident that we can continue to present the same kind of growth and profitability over the next few quarters and years. Finally, on Page 9, we talk a bit about our ESG and impact investing achievements in the quarter. So we're very proud to have helped a client of SBRK issued the first blue bond in Brazil, a 1.9 billion bonds linked to sanitation. We increased our sustainable deposits by BRL 1.2 billion in the quarter, and we structured and distributed 2 green bonds totaling $495 million during the quarter, leading to a $2.5 billion issuance in 2020. So with that, I'll pass the floor to Renato Cohn, who will talk a bit in detail about the performance of each of the business units, and then we can open up for questions.

Thank you, Roberto, and good afternoon, everyone. So moving to our specific business lines. We start with our investment banking, where we had record revenues for both DCM and M&A and as we've been calling the market attention specifically in DCM, what we are seeing is a structural change as we see a large number of companies that can now fund themselves accessing the domestic capital markets at a cheaper cost than international markets and having similar terms and maturities. So we see companies funding themselves for 5, 10 or even 15 years in the domestic market. And we are obviously helping them to structure and also distribute those instruments, which is something that impacts not only in our investment banking business, but also in our wealth management and our sales and trading. So during the quarter, we recorded revenues of BRL 525 million, which represents an 8% growth when we compare to previous quarters. It was also our best quarter for M&A revenues as we maintain a leading position in a number of transactions with 18 transactions and also a leading position in the volume of transactions at and we continue to see also a good pipeline to be executed in the next couple of quarters. In ECM, despite low market activity with only a few follow-on transactions coming to market, we also kept our leadership position in both Brazil and in LATAM. And we believe that if equity markets continue to improve a bit, we can expect some IPO transactions in the first quarter 2023. So in summary, very strong results for our investment banking with record revenues in ECM and in M&A, and good pipelines as we maintain our leading position in the industry. Moving to Page 12, on corporate and SME lending. We had another quarter with record revenues as our portfolio continues to grow with the same quality. We recorded revenues of BRL 937 million, and our total portfolio grew to almost BRL 130 billion. Revenues grew by 46% year-over-year and 7% when we compare the previous quarter. Actually, that's where we are reaching the fourth consecutive quarter of record revenues in this slide. So total portfolio grew by 33% when we compare to last year and 10% during the quarter, with most of the disbursements occurring during the last month of the quarter. So revenues were only fully kick in during the fourth quarter of 2022. Our SME initiatives continue to grow consistently with portfolio increasing by 8% during the quarter and 48% when we compare to previous years. And we are very proud to be named "The Best Global SME Bank" by Global Finance, which is a recognition of what we build, the quality of our service and the exceptional work of all teams involved in the creation of our SME business. Moving now to sales and trading on Page 13. We are also showing consistently strong results with higher contribution from our clients' activities. Our revenues reached BRL 1.384 billion, which is higher than the previous quarter and also supported by the contribution from flow and commission-based revenues as we continue to add more products and services and innovative solutions to our expanded client base. And similar to previous quarters, as Roberto mentioned, we achieved these results while we maintained our average far below historical levels with 0.38% during the quarter. Turning to our asset management on Page 14. We had again strong revenue generation with consistent high inflows. So revenues reached BRL 407 million, which is a similar amount to the previous quarter when we usually record performance fees. This represents a 40% increase when we compare to the third quarter last year and was impacted by higher management fees and administration fees as well as revenues from our investments in third-party asset managers. Assets under management and administration grew by 10% during the quarter, reaching a total of BRL 665 billion, supported by strong net inflows of BRL 36 billion during the quarter and a total of BRL 124 billion in the last 12 months as well as some positive market performance. And we continue to see strong inflows for our managed funds especially for our fixed income strategies and also some for our private pension strategies. And this is a consequence of the high interest rates currently. Moving to Wealth Management and Consumer Bank on Page 15. We had another quarter of all-time high revenues and well under management, which actually is the 15th quarter of record revenues and also of wealth under management. So revenues reached BRL 655 million, which is an increase of 60% year-over-year and almost 6% when compared to previous quarter. We recorded net new money of BRL 27 million, which is pretty consistent with the inflows recorded in the previous 2 quarters of 2022 and it's a proof of our capacity to continue growing at the same base despite a more challenging macroeconomic scenario. Wealth under management reached BRL 509 billion, a 27% increase when compared to last year and a 10% increase when compared to previous quarter. And over the past 12 months, we attracted a total of BRL 126 billion as well as our channels continue to perform and provide quality products and services to our clients. Going to principal investments and participations. We move to Page 16, and we can see that we had good performance in both lines. In principle investments, we had stable performances, which was partly offset by higher internal cost of funding as a consequence of higher interest rates. And in participation, we recorded profits of BRL 60 million for Banco Pa and that is already net of a goodwill amortization of BRL 37.5 million. Also Too Seguros contributed with BRL 36 million profit, while our participation in EFG added an additional BRL 4.5 million profit. Going to our expenses and May ratios on Page 18. We are showing improved efficiency as our top line grew at a faster pace than our cost base. As Roberto mentioned, we can see that our top line grew by 5.5%, while our expense rate grew by 4% comparing to the previous quarter. So total operating expenses reached BRL 2 billion, as I mentioned, a 4% increase. And when we see that, we see that the largest impact came through higher bonus provisions, which is a consequence of higher revenues from our business lines. When you look at salaries and benefits, we see a stable number. And when we look at administrative and other expenses, we see that they increased by 2.5%, while we continue to invest in our technology platform, launching new products, launching new features and improving the quality of service to our clients. Cost income ratio decreased to 38%, which is 1 percentage point below the previous quarters as we continue to gain efficiency here. And our effective income tax rate was 20.1%, impacted by the distribution of JCP, which is the interest on capital and a favorable revenue mix. Moving to our balance sheet on Page 20. Our total assets reached BRL 440 billion, which is a slight decrease from previous quarters and represents almost 10x our equity. Our liquidity cover ratio reached 373% which seems to us an effective number as we continue to expand our unsecured funding base and also its average term. We kept our comfortable coverage ratio at 174% as we continue to grow our unsecured funding base to support the expansion of our credit portfolio. And our corporate and SME credit portfolio now represents 3.1x our equity, so still very conservative, especially when we compare to years with 5, 6, 7 and sometimes 8x direct. Going to our unsecured funding base on Page 21. We would like to highlight that we continue to expand the share of our retail funding base, which now corresponds to 26% for BTG Pactual stand-alone and to almost 30% when we consider Banco Pan funding base. As we all know, the retail funding is cheaper, it's more stable and more diversified and will allow us to continue to expand our credit portfolio. Also, demand deposits continued to increase despite higher interest rates as retail becomes a larger part of our total funding base. And demand deposits grew by more than 60% during the last 12 months. And during this quarter, we issued BRL 1.4 billion in subordinated notes increasing our Tier 2 capital to 2.2 percentage points. And as we've been mentioning, we wanted to keep our Basel ratios close to the level of 15% with a little more of Tier 2 capital, and that is what we achieved during this quarter. So speaking of our Basel ratios, if we move to Page 22, we can see that we cap at 15.2% despite the strong growth in our credit portfolio during this quarter and the payment of interest on capital. Our VaR, as mentioned before, slightly increased to 38 basis points, which is still below historical levels and despite some increased market volatility. So once again, as we have been highlighting before, we can ensure that we can keep our growth momentum while we still maintain a strong balance sheet as most of our business lines do not consume capital, and we improved our profitability, and we continue to add to our capital base. So in summary, once again, we are very happy with this set of results with all our business lines growing, we are still maintaining a strong and conservative balance sheet with improved profitability and operational leverage. Roberto if you have any additional remarks or we can go to questions.

Thank you, Cohn. Let's open up for questions, please.

[Operator Instructions] Today's first question comes from Gustavo Schroden with Bradesco BBI.

Congrats on your results. I have 2 questions. And the first question is a follow-up about the ROE that we discussed in the Portuguese call. In my opinion, it's clear that a high interest rate environment is positive for the bank. The bank is well diversified and then it is positive for the ROE. And you should assume that interest rates should continue high in '23, maybe this current level of ROE should be sustainable. My question is that when we see the interest rates going down, what could you do to keep their way at the same level in a lower interest rate environment? My question is, what levers you can use to keep the ROE at the same level in a lower interest rate environment? And my second question is about the common equity Tier 1. You mentioned that 12% to 13% is a good level to run the bank. My question is what would be the loan growth that we should expect for the next year in order to see the common equity run around this level of 12% to 13%. My question is because we know that the loan growth is important to impact the common equity Tier 1. So I'm trying to understand here what would be the loan growth level for the next year to keep the common equity 1 around this level?

Thank you, Gustavo. So on your first question on return on equity, I think you remember that the first quarter of this year, we explained our theory that BTG was on all-weather stock even though interest rates would increase, that would probably have some effect on the speed of net new money, some effect on investment banking, maybe some effect on Sales & Trading. But we always said that, that will be compensated by the growth that was already, let's say, expected and plus the higher interest rates. To keep ROEs at this level were to continue showing an increase in ROE as we benefit from operational leverage, as you said, knowing what the level of risk-free interest rates are is very important. So assuming interest rates so far, we probably have to gain operational leverage at a faster speed or compensate this from a pickup in the ROAs of wealth management and asset management or compensated with a more increased activity in sales and trading. So we're quite confident that we need to see at the speed at which you have the falling interest rates. But assuming that we have stable interest rates over the next 12 months, we would probably expect that we continue to benefit from operational leverage in our business and this can creep up the ROE, assuming that interest rates are stable. On the second question of core equity 1, we think we can continue growing anywhere between 20% and 30% of the credit portfolio next year. And we don't anticipate with that and need for additional capital, but that will allow us to continue with the 12% to 13% core equity Tier 1, 2% to 3%, Tier 2, keeping a total capital ratio a bit above 15%.

And our next question comes from Tito Labarta with Goldman Sachs.

A couple of questions also. Maybe first on the sales and trading. You're looking 5 out of the last 6 quarters, you've been around like 1.3%, even $1.3 billion, $1.4 billion per quarter. Is this a new normalized level? I mean as you continue to grow, I guess, particularly in Wealth Management and does that continue to boost sort of the sales and trading revenues that you get from client flows. How should we think about sort of sales and trading going forward? And then my second question, a bit of a follow-up to Gustavo on the loan portfolio. I think in the past, you mentioned that you can grow about 3x net equity. You're right around those levels. You did mention some of the incumbent banks close to 5 to 7x. Will you increase your loan portfolio more than a 3x equity? How should we think of it from that perspective?

Tito, thank you for your questions. So on Sales & Trading, we actually think that the average over the last 4 quarters with some volatility around that number is actually a good estimate of what the recurrent business is. We continue to benefit from new products, for example, like commodities really agricultural products that we're launching, the increase in, for example, local corporate bonds as we penetrate new segments. So we have more SME clients. We have more high-income retail clients. Given the brand perception even in large corps, we're having more multinationals. So the truth is the business is benefiting from all of this. And that's why we think that a good estimate is the average of the last 4 quarters with some volatility is a good level of what the normalized business is. On the credit, yes, you're right. We used to have this 3x equity as a guidance. But clearly, given that we've reached now 30% in retail funding. We're very confident with the level of the liquidity coverage ratios we have. Some of the growth actually in credit does not require funding. So we think we can explore new levels, maybe going up slowly to closer to the 4x equity, but we don't have any guidance on this. We will continue growing as long as we see healthy opportunities for growth. We're not seeing any limitations to growth, neither on how much we're willing to have on the size, neither on opportunities in the market, given the diversification we have between corporate, large corporate, SMEs, special situations between Brazil and the rest of Latin America. This has given me this very comfortable to continue growing and to maybe grow slowly towards this 4x equity credit, but that is not a guidance. But let's say, you are right. We used to have the ceiling, but we feel comfortable that we can now increase the ceiling a bit.

Thanks Roberto. That's very clear. A couple of follow-ups, if I may. Just on the Sales & Trading, we have seen the VaR, the risk has gone up the last few quarters. Should this continue to trend higher? How should we think about the right level of that? And just a follow-up also on the loan portfolio. Just following elections, the economy expected to slow a bit. Any either concerns, any opportunities that you see that can either hurt or boost the growth on the loan portfolio following the elections? I know it's early for just initial thoughts.

On the Sales & Trading bar, the truth is we were probably at too low in the end of last year, first quarter of this year. Activity has picked up. VaR had picked up. Maybe we continue around these levels, maybe it increases a bit, decreases a bit. But clearly, we don't anticipate growing going to the levels that we had, let's say, 2 or 3 years ago over. So we think hovering around current levels, plus/minus, let's say, 10, 12 bps is a good estimate of VaR. On elections, it's still very clear. It's still unclear, as you said. We still have to understand what will be the fiscal policy of the elected government and what are the implications for public debt and for, let's say, tax levels and how that affects corporates. We still need to understand what is the reform agenda of the next government. And we need to understand what will be the plan for the public sector banks for Petrobras and for concessions. As of now, we think good economic management will continue. Of course, a little shift here and there given just the inclinations of the elected government, as we continue to anticipate responsible economic policy. So in that sense, we don't anticipate at this moment changing our strategic guidance.

And our next question comes from Thiago Batista with Banco UBS.

Yes. I have one question about potential for inorganic expansion. Is there any area that would make sense for the digital trial to try and to expand through acquisitions, for instance, a digital bank or a client company, do you believe that those types of segments should complement the digital trial of current business?

Thank you Thiago. Yes, we are always analyzing potential acquisitions. As you know, we have a history of being quite active in that we basically see 2 types of acquisitions, those that help us add or speed up new product offerings to our client base or those acquisitions that help us bring scale faster to our current businesses. So we continue to analyze these 2 opportunities. Of course, the recent market volatility the more restrictive private equity and venture capital markets makes these opportunities become, let's say, happen more often. So yes, we're analyzing all this, nothing transformational. But if there are acquisitions that we think complement our product offering or help us speed up time to market or help us bring scale to the current businesses at what we consider fair prices, we will definitely be looking into those.

Our next question today comes from Pedro Leduc with Itaú BBA.

One on the Wealth Management division. And here, of course, more market challenges, net new money pace dipped below BRL 30 billion, still remarkable under these market conditions, again, but you also have probably the strongest or largest internal, external team that you've had in this past year. So I want to pick your brain a little bit on how you're feeling the size of this footprint given these market conditions that you believe that the investment cycle, at least the bulk of it now being slightly behind? And then a second question also on Wealth Management, remarkably resilient wealth I know you take risk, revenues you make on your wealth under management. Very good. I also wanted to get an idea from you from what is helping drive this stable take rates. You mentioned growing deposits. If it's maybe floating, if it's already penetration of other products than investments? Any color there would be much appreciated.

Thank you, Pedro. So on the net new money, we will continue to have investments, of course, and new bankers and new IFAs. But when you look at the percentage of investments to parts of the business, just because of the share size of the business, of course, it will reduce percentage-wise and maybe even nominally, but we expect to continue to invest across the board. But the good thing is, and as you mentioned, the ROAs, the ROAs reflect a bit of the J-curve. This J-curve the ROAs reflect a bit more of the client mix. So high-income retail has a bit higher ROAs than the ultra-high wealth management segment, which was where we started our business of Wealth Management, as you bring in transactional banking to these clients that also allows you to have a new revenue pool, sometimes when you bring in assets into your platform, these assets don't produce ROAs for a while because, let's say, it's a client that brings in a bond, so you have to expect the bond or the time deposits to mature for them to start generating ROAs. So it's a combination of all of these things, revenue mix, product mix, maturation of the resources that came into our platform in the past years that producing this ROA yes, we continue investing, maybe not at the same pace percentage wise, at a similar pace nominal-wise, but we're very satisfied with the whole externalities of having this whole complementary business of both allows us to have retail funding, also allows us to have retail distribution, and we think this reinforces the whole franchise of the bank.

Any color on the floating or deposit contribution on that take rate?

Of course, it increases as interest rate increases and deposits increase as we gather net new money. So yes, there is a contribution. This contribution increases let's say, in the gross ROA percentage wise with the level of interest rates naturally. But what we've seen is that it's more or less stable volume compared to total assets as we see the business grow.

Thank you. That brings us to the end of the question-and-answer session. I will now turn the floor to Mr. Roberto Sallouti for his closing remarks.

Well, thank you all once again for joining our call, and thank you for your partnership and trust. We really look forward to having all of you once again in the next quarter. Thank you very much. Have a great day.

Thank you. This concludes today's presentation. You may disconnect your line at this time, and have a nice day.