Banco Davivienda S.A. (PFDAVVNDA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to Davivienda First Quarter of 2023 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Karen, and I'll be your operator for today's call. Today's presentation is for investors and analysts only. Therefore, questions from the media will not be taken. Today, Mr. Javier Suarez, Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. Ricardo Leon Otero, Chief Risk Officer, are joining us from Bogota, Colombia. During the call, they will be discussing in depth the quarterly results released. If you have not yet received a copy of the earnings report and presentation, please visit our Investor Kit on the Financial Information section at ir.davivienda.com. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. Afterwards, the management team will be available for a Q&A session. Before proceeding with today's call, please note that any forward-looking statements are being made under the safe harbor provided by the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual performance could differ materially from that anticipated in any forward-looking statements due to macroeconomic conditions, market risks and other factors beyond our control. I am now pleased to turn the call over to Mr. Javier Suarez, Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Suarez, the floor is yours.

Good morning, and welcome to the Davivienda's first quarter of 2023 earnings conference call. Thank you very much for joining us today. Before we start, I want to highlight that we are not satisfied with the results we have provided in the last 2 quarters. [Audio Gap] changes in the macro environment and the fast deterioration of some segments we have targeted are the main reasons behind these numbers. Since the second half of last year, we have been implementing actions to manage these conditions, and we are already seeing some improving trends. Challenging times are always a great opportunity to learn and evolve. And we have been working diligently in that sense, aiming to deliver better results to our investors and stakeholders. In the following slides, I will elaborate on the situations that have led us to this point and will highlight different initiatives we are putting in place to improve our performance towards the end of the year. On Slide 3, we can observe how Colombia's economy has shown deceleration trends since the recovery from the pandemic, when GDP reached 11% growth for the year, followed by a 7.5% in 2022. The activity during the first quarter of this year continued to slow down in line with the contractionary monetary policy and market expectations. The main sectors driving the GDP for the quarter were financial, insurance and public administration, among others. As a result, and in line with this trend, we are forecasting a 0.7% GDP growth for this year. The lower confidence levels and activity will affect business climate and our loan growth. Looking at exchange rate behavior, Colombia is among the Lat Am countries with higher currency depreciation during the last couple of years, especially during 2022. This situation has naturally impacted our financials, mainly expenses, FX and derivatives. The exchange rate depreciated by 24% over the year and appreciated by 3% during the quarter. In general, changes in market expectations regarding possible rate increases by the Fed and its regional bank headwinds in the U.S. influenced the recent appreciation of emerging market currencies. In terms of inflation, price levels have been constantly increasing since 2021. By the end of March, inflation reached 13.34%, the highest figure since 1999. This behavior has impacted households' real income and purchasing power, affecting past due loans. The Central Bank has increased the monetary policy rate by 11.5 percentage points since September 2021, taking it to 13.25%, aiming to increase the cost of funding in the economy. In the last 12 months, the rate has increased by 900 basis points, the most accelerated hike in the country's history. This contractionary cycle coincided with the implementation of the net stable funding ratio in Colombia, which intensified the effect of interest rate increases. As the whole system was required to increase the duration of liabilities, additional pressure was generated on funding costs, especially in longer-term instruments. The average rate for 1-year term deposits in the market raised from 3% in September 2021 to 18% in January this year. Consequently, the overall system has been experiencing pressure on financial expenses. However, funding rates started to stabilize in March as the phase-in period for the NSFR end and financial institutions are now compliant with the [ rate ]. More recently, inflation has shown some signs of improvement with the April figure standing at 12.82% helped by moderation in food basket prices. In this sense, we expect inflation to continue to decrease to levels around 10.3% by the end of 2023. In our views, there is a slight probability of a final increase in the intervention rate. After that, the interest rate could remain stable at 13.5% until the third quarter and might start to decrease by around October to close the year between 10.5% to 11%. In this scenario, financial expenses could begin to be relieved going forward. Moving on to Slide 4, where you can see how average loan rates have behaved in line with monetary policy and funding rates considerably increasing since December 2021. High rates and lower acquisition power had put pressure on payment capacity. The latter combined with persistent demand for financial obligations amidst challenging economic conditions last year has led to a generalized deterioration in asset quality for the system, specifically in the consumer portfolio. In recent months, the systems PDLs for the mortgage and commercial portfolios have also started to show some increase in trends, and we are now observing a more conservative appetite for credit demand. Moving on to Central America on Slide 5. The region's economy decelerated during 2022, mainly impacted by global interruptions in the international commerce, lower growth of Central America's trading partners and higher prices. However, most recent activity indicators show Costa Rica and Honduras accelerating during the first part of the year. Regarding inflation, prices continue to decrease gradually in different countries. In the case of Costa Rica, inflation fell more rapidly from 7.9% in December to 2.4% in April. Given these trends, Costa Rica's Central Bank decreased its intervention rate from 9% to 7.5%, while the rate remains stable at 3% in Honduras. The Costa Rican colon appreciated 9.4% during the quarter and 18.4% during the year, supported by the tourism recovery, higher foreign investment flows and a better perception of [Technical Difficulty] risk. The appreciation of the Costa Rican colon has negatively impacted our P&L due to the structural position we have because of our presence in Central America. As we have explained previously, we have implemented diverse hedging strategies to protect our capital ratios from the impact of currency movements. In that sense, there is a temporary affectation on our FX and derivatives income due to currency fluctuations. We expect the region's GDP to grow between 3% and 4% and inflation to stabilize this year. Moving on to the main results of our business on Slide 6. Our loan portfolio continues to show a deceleration trend since September 2022, in line with measures we have taken to control growth. The loan book closed at COP 145 trillion, growing by 19% over the year and remaining relatively flat during the quarter. Total PDLs closed at 3.67%, increasing 74 basis points over the year, reflecting the impact of macroeconomic conditions on our customers' payment capacity. In line with the post-pandemic economic recovery, we were confident of growing our consumer book according to our risk appetite and the environment at the time. However, with the rapid worsening of economic conditions in the second half of 2022, we adjusted our origination policies to contain potential impacts. Nonetheless, PDLs increased due to the deterioration of some of the segments and profiles in which we decided to grow, thereby increasing provisioning levels. However, despite this complex credit cycle, foreign PDLs are still close to last 5-year average. In terms of margins, our NIM has responded favorably by showing stability during the last 2 years despite the steep increases in interest rates and the impact of NSFR implementation. When considering the FX and derivatives result, we see a temporary effect in NIM resulting from currency volatility. However, we are comfortable with the position we've taken to protect our capital ratios, even if that generates some volatility in our P&L in the short term. We believe our margins already absorbed the NSFR implementation effect, and we expect our NIM to improve going forward. Cost of risk for the last 12 months closed at 2.61% in line with our assessment of the current and future situation of the portfolio, where we have been seeing the need to continue building provisions to protect the loan book while optimizing coverage levels. Please move on to Slide 7. In terms of efficiency, our cost-to-income ratio has been [ increased ], especially in the last 3 quarters, mainly due to inflation, FX movements and pressure on margins. It is important to mention that operating expenses relative to our asset size remain relatively stable. However, we have opportunities to continue improving the efficiency of our operations, and we'll be working on this front going forward. Despite the challenges we've been mentioning, profits for the quarter reached COP 237 billion, recovering by around 390% on a quarterly basis. As for our capital adequacy ratios, you can see at the bottom of the slide that they peaked by the second quarter of '21 and have been naturally decreasing since then, supporting a 44% risk-weighted asset growth during the last 2 years and dividend distributions, while being somewhat impacted by Basel III in operational risk parameters. Part of the increase is also explained by the lower weight of old style Tier 2 instruments that are phasing out of our capital, which we anticipated in 2019. Nonetheless, our CET1 ratio closed at 10.5%, well above the regulatory minimum of 7%. We consider this level to be adequate in line with our business needs and risk appetite framework. By the end of April, Moody's affirmed our recent credit rating at Baa3 with a stable outlook and downgraded our AT1 notes to B2. Although we recognize we have the opportunity to deliver better results in terms of profitability compared to the last 2 quarters, we continue to be one of the best capitalized banks in Colombia from the regulatory perspective. Please move on to Slide 8, where we will comment on the initiatives we're pursuing to continue improving the bank's performance. Regarding our margins, we're actively managing our assets and liabilities and quickly adapting to the environment by taking advantage of market opportunities to adjust our financial expenses. In this sense, we're transitioning out of short-term higher rate liabilities towards lower-cost stable fund. By increasing our presence in physical and digital monetary transactions, we expect to acquire transactional deposits with lower cost and higher stability, which could also be useful for liquidity requirements. Generally, the financial system has already adjusted to the NSFR, so average rates should stabilize going forward. Additionally, our liability-sensitive structure will allow us to expand our NIM in the decreasing phase of the monetary policy rate. As a result, we should be expecting improving trends in margins with NIM closing 2023 between 6.2% and 6.4%. Regarding credit risk management, we have implemented several strategies and are already observing improving trends. From a risk appetite perspective, we aim to gradually recompose our consumer portfolio towards more secure segments, like payrolls or by requesting collaterals for higher tickets. In terms of origination, we're using analytics and our digital capabilities to improve authentication, customer profiling and underwriting decisions. As for provisions, since the fourth quarter of last year, we have been optimizing our coverage levels by better recognizing risk profiles and collaterals of some portfolio segments. Finally, in terms of collections, we're using analytics-based recovery strategies to anticipate potential affectations of high-risk customers while being very close to them to find alternative solutions. We continue to expect challenging credit conditions during the coming quarters, and we will still see pressure in our ratios, especially in PDL's, cost of risk and write-offs. However, the measures we are implementing will allow us to improve our cost of risk for the consumer portfolio by 50 basis points this year and to transition towards our target levels of 2.1% to 2.3% cost of risk for the total portfolio in 2024. In terms of income generation, we're working to diversify and increase our sources of nonfinancial income through different initiatives. One of them is related to boosting our insurance business by strengthening our portfolio offering in synergy with our sister company in Colombia and our subsidiaries in Central America. Additionally, we aim to become a bigger player in the transactional landscape through our physical network and by developing digital solutions to reach and deepen our relationships with different populations and business segments. Another strategy is related to generating new income sources based on our digital capabilities. We aim to use our current development technology and platforms to create diverse initiatives in which we provide new digital experiences between financial products and services. DaviPlata is an important tool in this specific strategy, which will continue to gradually contribute to income generation in the medium term. As a result of these actions, we expect our nonfinancial income to surpass business growth this year with a 14% to 16% annual growth for 2023. Finally, as part of our efficiency efforts, we will continue to simplify, optimize and redesign processes to become a more agile organization with a linear and flatter structure to better adapt to constantly changing environment. We're also applying a cost-saving plan to optimize expenses across our different operations and initiatives. Our view of efficiency is using resources as best as possible to increase business generation with the existing capacity. In this sense, we're focusing on improving productivity using end-to-end digitalization so our sales force can focus on more strategic, profitable tasks, potentializing business dynamics. This discipline will allow us to reach cost to income levels of 46% to 47% this year. Before entering into more specifics of the financial results, I would like to share some highlights regarding our sustainable management and digital evolution. Please move on to Slide 9. Our sustainable loan portfolio continued positively evolving increasing at a higher pace than the total loan portfolio, growing 25% over the year. Our sustainable funding, on the other hand, has increased at a faster pace due to the diversification of sources during the year on top of the FX depreciation. Regarding our climate strategy, we're implementing concrete measures in [indiscernible] mitigation and adaptation across our value chain. In terms of direct emissions of our operations, Scopes 1 and 2, we have been verified with the carbon neutral status. Implementing energy efficiency projects, generating clean energy, compensation actions and promoting a sustainability culture across the organization allowed us to reach this goal. As for Scope 3, we're currently measuring financed emissions of most of the commercial portfolio in Colombia, where we're working on completing the measurement of our carbon footprint for the emissions we financed or investing to continue advancing in our path to set interim science-based targets. Accordingly, we have established a target of becoming net zero by 2050 by promoting an orderly and equitable transition to a low carbon zero emissions economy in line with the Paris agreement and national policies and targets. In line with our higher purpose of enriching life with integrity, climate change is at the core of our sustainable management approach. In Slide 10, we present the evolution of the bank's digital transformation. Digital adoption continues increasing with digital customers [Technical Difficulty] around 92% in Colombia and close to 67% in Central America. Transactionality through digital channels, ATMs and POS continues to gain share, accounting for 90% of monetary transactions in Colombia and 88% in Central America. The digital loan portfolio and the number of products sold through digital channels in Colombia have decreased during the previous quarters, in line with the adjustments to control growth since [ halves ] of last year. During that period, we worked hard to enhance our digital capabilities and credit risk engines. We have recently [ reached ] some disbursements in the consumer portfolio, thanks to the strength in analytics tools that are allowing us to improve the quality of [indiscernible]. In this sense, digital allocations in consumer loans have increased to 62% in the first quarter. To end my presentation, please turn to Slide 11 for an overview of DaviPlata. DaviPlata's customers increased by 12% annually, reaching 16 million, adding 1.7 million during the last 12 months. Figure for low amount deposits, transactions, purchases and nanocredits show positive trends. In any case, it is important to consider that some figures show seasonality effects as the last quarter of the year usually has a higher activity levels. DaviPlata's total income, including transactional, subsidies and FTP funding totaled COP 43.5 billion for the quarter, increasing by 57% annually. FTP funding income recognizing the value of the deposits DaviPlata provides to Davivienda at zero costs, in this context of high funded interest rates, these deposits become very valuable for the bank. In general, we observed positive trends in DaviPlata's monetization with income sources increasing and diversified. Davivienda and DaviPlata will continue to work jointly to reach the informal popular economy, promoting access to financial services, while offering different tools to help them improve their income. This strategy will be supported by our transactional 100% digital solutions, Mi Comercio and Mi Negocio, aimed at entrepreneurs, small businesses and street margins, among others, addressing our country's financial institution challenges. We believe that Davivienda has the potential to achieve better results and are aware of what is expected from us. Going forward, we foresee a persisting challenging credit cycle and macro environment. Davivienda has been resilient through time, and we're optimistic about our ability to make the best out of this situation, leveraging on the experience and knowledge of our team, analytics and technology. We're invested in reviving the recent trends and are confident that our actions will place us on an improving path to deliver better results for our shareholders and investors. We continue to see exciting opportunities in our sustainable management and the digital front. Let me turn the call over to Mr. Ricardo Leon, our Risk Executive Vice President, to continue with the presentation.

Thank you, Javier. Good morning, everyone. Please move on to Slide 12, where we will analyze the evolution of assets. Our assets grew at a pace of around 2% over the quarter and close to 19% over the year, reaching a total asset balance of COP 187 trillion, showing strong signs of slowing down when compared to previous growth dynamics. As mentioned before, the volatility of Colombian peso in the last year have a considerable impact on our results, accounting for an important component of asset growth on a quarterly and an annual basis, as you can see in the bottom left chart. Overall, the main drivers for asset growth were: loan book dynamics, where we saw a significant slowdown due to changes in our origination policies; the increase in our investment portfolio in line with our liquidity management policies and according to our balance sheet evolution; and accounts receivables and property, plants and equipment. In addition, our loan loss reserve increased slightly, thanks to our effort to manage provision expenses and write-off during the quarter. When looking at each of our operations, Colombia's assets grew 11.9%, while Central America grew 14.6% in dollars. Please move on to Slide 13. Our gross loan portfolio grew by 0.2% quarterly and 19% over the year, continued to slow down after reaching a growth peak during the third quarter of '22. Portfolio growth dynamics were affected by macroeconomic conditions, which have had a significant impact on customer payment capacity and indebtness levels. This situation led us to adjust our origination policies since the second quarter of last year to contain disbursements and improve the quality of new loans. The consumer portfolio decreased by 1.9% during the quarter, may expect decrease in unsecured personal loans in line with the previously mentioned origination policies. Additionally, our net growth for this portfolio moderated to 16.6%. Regarding the commercial portfolio, growth in demand over the year came mainly from the construction business and corporate segments. Finally, mortgages grew at a similar rate as the other portfolio, mainly because of new conditions implemented by the Colombian government to apply for low-income housing strategies and high interest rates, which have caused some customers to desist from moving forward with the mortgage loans. On the other hand, our international loan portfolio continued its upward trend throughout the previous year, increasing by 16.5% annually, mainly explained by the commercial and consumer segments in Panama and Honduras. When analyzing the evolution of our loan mix, we see a decrease in the consumer share to 30%, while commercial and mortgage show some increases. We will continue actively managing our loan portfolio by targeting strategic business segments, which, in addition to asserting our margins will help us moderate credit risk in line with our risk appetite and strategy. Moving on to Slide 14. We present an update of our PDLs and coverage ratios. As you can see on the top graph, total PDLs over 90 days had increased over the quarter in line with our expectations and the current situation in the financial sector in Colombia, rising inflation and increased interest rates, depressing our customers' payment capacity for previously acquired obligations. This impact has affected our overall portfolio but has been especially challenging for customers in the consumer segment. In addition to macroeconomic conditions, it's important to mention that there is a base effect in PDL ratio across our different portfolio due to the moderated growth seen in commercial and mortgage loans and the decrease in the consumer book. PDL for the commercial portfolio increased during the quarter, mainly related to the impact of macroeconomic conditions that affected some customers in the construction, transportation and commerce sectors. As Javier mentioned, we are implementing new strategies and digital tools to adjust our portfolio's risk profile, focusing on consumer loans to improve the quality of new originations. In terms of coverage, the total ratio closed around 121% decreasing over the quarter and in line with the higher past due loans and some provisioning optimizations. Coverage for consumer loans contracted over the quarter mainly as a result of the increase in past due loans over 90 days. In the case of the commercial portfolio, the lower coverage levels seen during the quarter were primarily due to the release of some provision with specific clients that improved their risk profiles. Lastly, coverage for the mortgage portfolio was resulted mainly as a result of provision optimization for some of our mortgage loan with higher collaterals. We feel comfortable with current coverage levels, and we will continue monitoring our customers' situation to anticipate credit provisioning needs. Please move on to Slide 15, where we can see the evolution of cost of risk, provision expenses and loans by stages. The annualized quarter cost of risk closed at 2.88% and the 12 months cost of risk reached 2.61%. The increase in 12 months ratio is mainly due to a base effect because of the rise in 12 months accumulated provision expenses when compared to the [indiscernible] change in the previous quarter. Regarding our provision expenses, we experienced a decrease compared to the previous quarter. However, our levels have remained higher over the year due to the challenges we have already discussed. Looking at our loans by stages, we observed a Stage 2 and 3 increase the risk share in the overall portfolio. As I previously mentioned, the credit quality dynamics seen in the consumer and commercial portfolio during the quarter explains this behavior. Now please move on to Slide 16. Liabilities increased by around 19% over the year, supporting asset growth and contributing to maintain an adequate balance sheet structure. During the quarter, we saw some changes in our funding mix with term deposits increasing their share, aligned with the higher interest rate levels and a net stable funding ratio implementation in Colombia. On the other hand, demand deposits saw a drop in its share over the year. This is mainly due to customer preference for more profitable financial products and therefore made on our part to return higher cost deposits to customers in order to reduce the impact on our margins. Bonds decreased 9.5% over the year, mainly due to the maturity of 2 of our international businesses and some other at the local level. Lastly, credit to entities grew around 43% annually, mainly explained by the FX impact and resources applied throughout the previous year with multilaterals and corresponding banks. As we have mentioned, the increase in higher cost funding sources has impacted our margins. However, as the banking system in Colombia has completed the transition period to comply with the net stable funding ratio requirement, we have seen market conditions stabilizing in the last month, reducing the cost for new fund resources. As for liquidity risk metrics, we closed the quarter with sufficient and adequate liquidity levels, as shown by our net stable funding ratio and our year-to-date liquidity coverage ratio. Please continue to Slide 17, where you will see our capital structure. Our CET1 ratio closed at 10.49% decreasing by 60 basis points over the quarter and 70 basis points over the year. This behavior is mainly explained by dividend distribution and [Audio Gap] mainly due to dividend distribution, the volatility of the exchange rate and lower weight of subordinated debt. As you can see, despite the decrease, we have adequate and sufficient capital levels over the regulatory minimums to support further growth, dividend distribution and the risk we assume in developing our business. It's important to highlight that we anticipated of this behavior back in 2019, which is why we put in place a capital management strategy to proactively maintain our capital structure by [indiscernible] between 2019 and 2021 and the AT1 notes in 2021. Please move to Slide 18, where we present our margins. In line with our liability-sensitivity structure, we have seen an accelerated increase in our impressive funding rate compared to the loan book, explained by the rise in the interest rates, as Javier mentioned before. The higher proportion of longer-term deposits also explain this increase due to the NSFR implementation, partially offset by the lower balance in high-cost demand deposits. To actually manage this effect, we have been working to recompose our loan portfolio mix, aiming to have a faster interest rate adjustment, as you can see on the loan books implicit rates. However, during the quarter, the implicit funding rate was higher compared to the lending rate. The positive investment portfolio results compensated for this effect for the period. In this sense, our 12-months NIM closed at 6.15%, showing some improvement over the past year in which we were able to have some stability in margins despite increasing interest rates. On the other hand, our NIM, including FX and derivatives remains impacted by the appreciation of the Colombian peso and the Costa Rica colon over the quarter against the U.S. dollar, mainly explained by our capital hedging strategy in Central America, with [indiscernible] being compensated in the OCI. Another portion of the effect is explained by the valuation of some FX and derivatives that show a temporary loss due to common valuation parameters. In the future, upon maturity, we expect those contracts to reflect the result of the reprice in the P&L according to our strategy. Please continue to Slide #19. Nonfinancial income increased by around 16% on an annual basis. This behavior is mainly due to credit and debit card commissions, transaction fees and bancassurance commission in line with our defining strategies for income generation, as mentioned earlier in the call. On the other hand, OpEx increased by around 25% over the year as it remains affected by inflation, which in turn led to a higher minimum wage in Colombia. Additionally, the volatility of the Colombian peso accounted for around 540 basis points of OpEx yearly growth. This results in our 12-months cost-to-income ratio ending the quarter at 49.6% as our OpEx is growing faster than our total income due to the previously mentioned conditions. However, our cost-to-asset ratio is similar to pre-pandemic levels, which means our cost structure has remained relatively stable over the past 3 years. As Javier mentioned, we are working to increase productivity and business generation by implementing new strategies and optimizing our cost structure to improve our efficiency ratios. Please move on to Slide 20 to analyze the bank's profit. Net profit reached COP 237 billion, showing signs of recovery compared to the previous quarter. This behavior is explained by increased loan and investment income, lower provision expenses and higher nonfinancial income. On a yearly basis, net profit decreased by around 54% compared to the last year, mainly due to the challenging macroeconomic conditions we have mentioned, which increased our financial and provision expenses over the year. These results translate into a 12-months return on average equity of 8.69%. Please bear in mind that the result is also impacted by a base effect since the third quarter of '22 is no longer considered when calculating accumulated profits for the past 12 months. To finish the presentation, please move on to Slide 21 to comment on our updated guidance for 2023. Taking into account the challenging economic outlook for Colombia with GDP growth for 2023 forecasted to be around 0.7%, interest rate expected to remain at high levels and our loan origination policies, we revised the guidance for the annual growth of our loan portfolio in the following way: gross loans are expected to grow around 6% to 8% with the commercial and consumer portfolios growing around 5% to 7% and the mortgages between 7% to 9%. Regarding asset quality, we expect some normalization in PDLs growth, considering the expected improvement in the portfolio's risk profile due to our new origination policies along with write-off efforts. In this sense, we expect total PDLs to close between 2.9% to 3.3%, our NIM to close between 6.2% to 6.4%, taking into account our expectation of loans repricing to higher interest rates, while financial expenses decrease in line with the forecasted resumption of the monetary policy rate and the normalization of funding costs as the financial system finish the implementation of NSFR requirements; our cost of risk to close around 2.4% to 2.8%, in line with the expected lower portfolio growth and a continuing challenging credit cycle during the second quarter, offset by some moderated improvement during the second half of the year. It's important to note that our cost of risk guidance for the year has some uncertainty, depending on loan growth, which might change depending on the evolution of the economy. Nonfinancial income to grow between 14% to 16%, in line with the different income generation and business development strategy mentioned by Javier early in the call. We expect OpEx growth between 11% to 14%, aligned with expected inflation levels, the Colombian peso depreciation, business growth and efficiency strategies. As a result, our return on average equity to close between 10% to 13%. This is mainly due to the challenging macroeconomic conditions forecasted for the rest of the year and some positive expectations related to our new strategies. We will continue monitoring the evolution of macro and business dynamics for any potential against our guidance during the year. Thank you for your attention. At this time, we can move on to the question-and-answer session.

[Operator Instructions] It seems like we have no questions in our phone line. So we will move on to the webcast participants. The first question comes from John Wright -- the first question -- I'm sorry, the first question comes from Olavo Arthuzo from UBS. Thank you for my question, and good morning, everybody. I just wanted to understand a little bit more about the asset quality trend because the 90-day NPL ratio of the bank stood at 3.7% in the first quarter of 2023, while the guidance points to a drop of 3.1% midpoint. So what should be the main drivers for this path to materialize, especially thinking about the ongoing political and macro uncertainties at the same time? At the same time, the slowdown of loan growth should impact the mathematical effect on the ratio.

Good morning. Olavo, thank you for the question. Our expectation for this year is to close with a total PDL of 2.9% to 3.3%, which represents an improvement compared with the current levels, supported by a better behavior in [indiscernible] and data-driven collection strategies and higher [ value ]. Our forecast for 2023, by segment in commercial, we think we will be around 2.8%, consumer around 3%, mortgage around 4%. We are still experiencing high rates, and we may reach the -- the next quarter will be very challenging. So we are expecting in the second half of the year, a very behavior in terms of our business and obviously, the total risk of our portfolio. In terms of cost of risk -- regarding our cost of risk, we could be having level between 2.4% to 2.8% for the whole year. The increase in our expectation is due to the increase in risk levels combined with a decrease in the outstanding levels. We expect a still challenging second quarter and somewhat improved behavior going forward. So the cost of risk for each segment to behave as follows: commercial portfolio will be lower than 1%; consumer portfolio around 10%; and mortgage around 0.1%.

Our next questions comes from John Wright from Gramercy. The first question by Mr. John Wright. Can you speak about the resilience of NIM to the demand in terms of deposit theme? And can you clarify what other measures you can take to protect the CET1 ratio as we go through a more challenging year?

Thank you for your question. Related to your question related to NIM, NIM increased during the quarter closing at 6.15%. Financial income increased almost 17% in the quarter due to increase in interest rate plus a positive result from our investments. However, the result was offset by the 23% increase in financial expenses due to higher than expected increase in interest rate and inflation and the effect of the implementation of the net stable funding ratio had in the market. We saw customers having a preference for term deposit considering higher interest rates, and we also needed to extend the duration of our liabilities to comply with the new regulation. However, we compensated that by looking for local deposits, which represent almost 70% of our demand deposit base. It's important to mention that part of our investment strategy is developed through derivatives, which means that the mean including FX and derivatives usually grow at a higher pace for this quarter due to the colon appreciation, our NIM, including FX and derivatives closed at 6.07%. By the end of the year, our NIM should start to show recovery towers as long as the monetary policy rate begins downward trend. So we are expecting the NIM at the end of the year is about -- around 6.2% to 6.4%.

And John, this is Javier. On your second question on the CET1 ratio, of course, we're seeing a deceleration on the loan growth portfolio. The growth is expected to be around 6% to 8% as opposed to higher numbers that we had the year before. This is, of course, in line with the measures that we've taken to control credit risk in our portfolio. So there's not going to be a significant pressure on our capital ratio because of the slowdown in the growth of the portfolio. Regarding the depreciation risk, we have a hedging strategy that immunizes the CET1 ratio. So we expect our ratios to close between 10.5% and 11% and total capital between 15% and 15.5%. So we don't see a specific need to do any additional activities regarding protection of CET1, just the plan that we have and the forecast that we have is sufficient to maintain very good levels of CET1 ratios. There was also a question on dividends, and on dividends, I guess the answer is the same one I just gave for the CET1 ratio. We expect the level of dividends to be the same for next year. Of course, it's still too early to tell how the results will play out during the year. But our expectations are based on what Ricardo just mentioned, our guidance is a return on equity more than 10%. So we should be able to maintain our 30% to 40% dividend payout ratio that has been what we've had historically.

With that, we'll move on to [ Mariel Abreu ] from [ T Rowe ]. Her question is, in view of the weak results and still challenging environment, what are the plans for dividend payments?

This question I just answered. Basically, we're maintaining the dividend payments for the year, although as I mentioned before, it's still too early to tell what's going to be the dividend for next year. For this year, of course, we've already declared our dividends and the shareholders assembly margin, of course, that's being paid out.

The second question by Ms. [ Abreu ] from [ T Rowe ] is, can you provide color on asset quality? What are the segments showing more pressures? Are there any specific areas of the book that you are concerned about?

Our credit portfolio, as we mentioned in our general remarks, we've seen a specific concern on their consumer portfolio in Colombia. That's a segment that has more pressure, especially on the unsecured personal loans, we've seen a trend of deterioration in that portfolio based on the sudden increase in interest rates as well as inflation going up that has put some pressure on our customers. So we've already implemented many actions, during the last 6 months, we've been adjusting our underwriting policies and our credit policies for that segment. And that's why we're seeing a slowdown on the portfolio, which we believe is healthy at the time. And we're working on making sure that we have the ability to have a very good collection process, helping the customers that are in difficult situation, but at the same time, looking after the funds that should be brought in by those customers in this portfolio. So in general, we believe that the consumer portfolio in Colombia is the one that we are more concerned, and that's the one we are focusing our efforts in terms of control in both underwriting and collections. We've seen a first quarter that has been difficult, we expect the second quarter also to be acquiring in which some of the vintages that were disbursed during last year, we'll still have some write-offs. And then we are expecting a better behavior of this book by the second half of this year.

And last question by Ms. [ Abreu ]. Can you comment on your financing needs for this year? Any plans to come to the market? Would you consider tendering perpetual bonds?

This is Jaime Castaneda, Treasury, Vice President. We always look for opportunities in the local and the international markets for funding. In that way, of course, we do have plans to issue something abroad, for us, international market is necessary for our funding needs, as we have mentioned in previous conferences. Today, we are expecting the end of the cycle of the increase of the interest rate just to be probably in the market. And probably that would be the time to be there. Actually, right now, we are working only in a senior transaction that probably comes to the market in the second half of the year.

And for the second question, [ Mariel ], this is David Pedraza, Head of Investor Relations. We are not allowed to tender the perpetual bonds before the call date that is established in the prospectus. There could be 2 options in which that will happen. The first one is the tax treatment changes. And in that case, we could be able to call them back. Obviously, previous authorization of the superintendence of finance. The second element is in the case of the instruments not being considered for capital any longer. In that case, we also could be able to call it before the call date. Other than that, we have to wait until 2031. That is when we have the 10 years after [indiscernible]. And by regulation, we cannot create any kind of expectation as to whether we are going to call back those instruments or not.

Our next question comes from Sebastian Gallego from Ashmore. I have several questions. First, could you elaborate on the optimization of the bank's coverage? 90-day coverage stands at the lowest level since the first quarter 2019. Second question, when do you expect to pick of cost of risk on PDLs? Third question, can you provide more color on specific sectors and asset quality issues, magnitude of exposure, need for additional provisions, et cetera.

This is Javier. In terms of your first question on the bank's coverage, we've looked at the practice that we'll be following in terms of coverage. And we found that in some segments of our loan portfolio, we have not been taking into account some of the guarantees that are part of those loans. For example, the consumer loans that have mortgages that will back them, we're recognizing those mortgages on the commercial loan portfolio, we're also recognizing guarantees that we've not been recognizing before. So some of those adjustments have been made in that sense and making sure that we are in line with the standard practice of recognizing the quality of the guarantees that we have on some of those portfolios. That with respect to the first question. With respect to the peak of cost of risk and PDLs, as I mentioned before, our expectations is that this second quarter that we're entering into is also going to be a quarter in which the cost of risk is going to be high because as I mentioned before, some of the vintages that were originated during last year are still going through the process of deterioration. We expect that to come to a slowdown by the end of this quarter. And therefore, we're expecting a better quality of the portfolio and better performance of the portfolio for the second half of the year. And in terms of color on the specific sectors and asset quality issues, I probably mentioned this before also with the consumer loan, the unsecured consumer loan portfolio being the segment of the portfolio that concerns us the most. We're seeing reasonably well behavior of the commercial and mortgage portfolios so far, and we're, of course, monitoring those segments in terms of deterioration based on the performance of our customers. So far, we are seeing a very good performance of those portfolios. We're seeing a slight impact in small and medium companies in the commercial portfolios in some sectors such as commerce, construction and transportation. We're seeing some deterioration, but still the exposure that we have to those segments is low. So we believe that so far, the recognition that we're having at the provisioning levels for those segments of our portfolio are sufficient. So that will be our take on the bulk of loans.

Let us move on to the next question by Mr. Olavo Arthuzo from UBS. What could you share with us in terms of tax rate for this year? This driver presented some volatility in the last year, given several factors, but what could you guide us for this year?

This is Juan Carlos Hernandez, Accounting and Tax Vice President. In terms of effective tax rate at the end of 2023, we are expecting an effective tax rate of [ 32% ].

Let us move to the next question by Ms. Andrea Atuesta from Bancolombia. She's got 2 questions. Number one, I would like to have a little more color in the provision part, why if the portfolio quality continued to deteriorate, did the [ expensing ] provisions contract this quarter? Number 2, could you tell us what is the expected growth for each portfolio segment, consumer and commercial? And detail how do you expect the total loan portfolio will behave in Colombia and Central America?

As per your second question, today, we gave our forward-looking expectation and increased the level of risk. So in the last quarter of 2022, we gave our forward-looking expectation and increased the level of risk of our most affected customers, moving than Stage 2 and making last time provision, anticipation of the provision need for this quarter. Also, we made some of the provision optimization mentioned during this term. Related to this question, where our expectation related to our portfolio is to grow, around 6% to 8% in terms of portfolio and in commercial portfolio, we are waiting to grow between 5% to 7%, and the same figure for commercial portfolio of 5% to 7%. And in mortgage, we feel it's possible to grow around 7% to 9%.

Let us move on to the next question by Mr. Daniel Mora Ardila from CrediCorp Capital. He says, good morning, and thank you for the presentation. Your guidance of the cost of risk is considering what level of NPLs? When do you expect we can reach the peak of asset quality deterioration? And do you believe that this cycle will extend to 2024, making the bank to maintain higher provision expenses and a cost of risk is still above the long-term target?

In terms of PDLs, our expectation for this year is to close with PDLs to 9% to 3.3%, which represent an improvement compared with the covenant levels and of the previous quarter, supported by better behavior in [indiscernible] enhances the [indiscernible] collection strategies and higher write-off. The forecast for 2023, in terms of segments are in commercial, around 2.8%, [indiscernible] 3% and mortgage around 4%. Related to the cost of risk, we could be having leveled between 2.4% to 2.8% for the whole year. The increase in our expectation is due to the increase of risk levels, combined with a decrease in the outstanding balance. For 2024, we are expecting to reach a level of 2.1% to 2.3% in cost of risk and asset quality between 2.5% to 3%.

Continuing on with Mr. Daniel Mora, he continues to ask, what is the derivatives and FX strategy? The goal is to maintain stable the NIM at some specific level. In the recent quarters, this has the impact that the overall NIM. What would be the effect of the decrease in interest rates of the NIM going forward? And what do you consider to be the long-term target of the NIM?

This is David Pedraza. Well, the derivatives and FX strategy has different components that affect the measurement when we make the NIM plus FX and derivatives. There are some strategies that are related to the portfolio in pesos in Colombia that has some kind of hedges and we basically try to aim for a fixed margin strategy in terms of the results that we expect in the long term. Obviously, in the meantime, when you look at the results as of today, you see some impact in the valuation of those derivatives, and that's why you see a part of the negative result that you see this quarter. But also on the FX strategy and derivatives, we have some strategies regarding capital and some other strategies regarding, for example, the structural positions that we are taking in order to take advantage of market opportunities. That's talking about derivatives and FX strategy. But on the other hand, when we talk about margins, when we talk about the NIM itself, our idea is to have NIMs for this year around 6.2% to 6.4%. That's where we aim to get from an assets and liabilities management perspective, overall, we have tried to have a very close or a small difference between assets repricing and liabilities repricing. However, in the past, we have explained to the market that we are mainly liability sensitive. And in that sense, when interest rates increase, we see a pressure in our margins. But also, as you mentioned, we have seen some stability in NIM throughout the year, and that's mainly explained because we have been doing an active management of the rates in that sense, trying to have a faster repricing in assets for as much as we can also recomposing the mix of the portfolio. But on the other hand, we have been pressured because of the NSFR implementation in Colombia that exacerbated the increase of interest rates from the Central Bank. So in that sense, final answer to your question as to what would the effect of a decrease in interest rates on margin going forward? We closed the quarter with a 6.15% of margins for the rest of the year, we're expecting to close between 6.2% to 6.4%. So that basically means some expansion that we're expecting from the repricing of assets. And for as long as the Central Bank has started to decrease interest rates perhaps by the last quarter of the year, we could start to see less pressure on the liabilities side. So that's kind of the idea. In terms of the longer-term target, the idea for us is to get back to levels of 6.5%, where that's where we used to be before the pandemic and that level has been affected first by the accelerated decrease of interest rates at the beginning of the pandemic and then for the accelerated increase in terms of the rates in the last 12 or 15 months, actually.

The last question by Mr. Daniel Mora is what is the long-term target of ROAE for Davivienda?

As Ricardo mentioned, we have a target for this year, that is close to 10% to 13%. We're expecting, of course, higher ROEs for the long term, this 10% to 13% has to be analyzing in the context of all the challenging situations that we are facing, the challenging environment that we are facing. So we're thinking more in the range of 15% to 16% ROE under the medium term. So that's our expectations for 2024, although it's still early to forecast those numbers. We believe that those numbers, the ROEs on the long term should be north of 15%.

Our next question comes from [ Camila Rismante ] from Bancolombia. Her question is, could you please give us some color about the deterioration of the commercial portfolio? Are there some large corporate clients that are deteriorating?

PDL for the commercial portfolio increased during the quarter, mainly due to the impact of macroeconomic condition that affected some sector construction sector, transportation and commerce. In [indiscernible], we have been observing some impact in the construction sector due to higher costs, higher interest rates and changes to requirement to access the government utilities impacting the construction cash flow. In this sense, we have been closely monitoring the evolution percentage of sales, the percentage of work progress and financial [indiscernible] to find alternative solution which affect customers.

Next question comes from [ Jitendra Sin ] from HSBC. My question is on investment portfolio, which is 11% of the total assets. Could you please remind us the duration of the investment portfolio and how they are matched with your liabilities? What is the composition of securities in terms of tradable securities, HTM and AFS? Secondly, considering the new guidance on loan growth, margins and cost of risks, how should we expect the earnings growth for this year? Lastly, can you talk about your monetization expectations for DaviPlata?

This is Jaime Castaneda, Treasury Vice President. Let me tell you that the average duration of the portfolio today is less than 2 years. That is something that we keep on mind always. And in terms of the classification of the investment portfolio, we have 23% of our total portfolio in held-for-trading, 46% available for sale and 29% in held to maturity. It's very well to clarify that in the held to maturity we do have those compulsion investment that is necessary for reserve and some other obligatory or mandatory fulfillment requirement from the Central Bank. That is the composition of the portfolio and the duration of that one. With regards to monetization strategies of DaviPlata, we're very excited, as we mentioned before, in terms of new digital platforms that we are offering for our customers, especially for small merchants, street merchants in what we call MiComercio and Mi Negocio, which are platforms that we're deploying to small merchants where DaviPlata is explained the role of the acquiring bank for those small merchants, capturing a significant volume of transactions of commercial transactions with small merchants that will be a source of income, of course, that will also increase the amount of deposits held in DaviPlata, which at this current interest rate environment is very valuable deposit base that DaviPlata is providing the bank. So we have, on the transactional side, on the merchant side, we have opportunities for monetization that are being deployed during this quarter and the following quarters. And then also on the funding side for DaviPlata, there's also monetization opportunity that is a very significant one. And of course, we're also working on bringing opportunities for the users of DaviPlata to buy different types of goods within the platform as being this banking as a platform where we will have solutions for our customers also that will be sold to them. One of them is insurance and other services that we'll be providing to our customers. So those are the basic avenues of monetization that we're looking for within the DaviPlata platform.

Our next question comes from Andres Soto from Santander. Regarding asset quality, I assume the guidance is the level you see by year end. Is that correct? If so, when are you expecting to see the peak of deterioration and at which level?

As we mentioned in previous questions, yes, this is the guidance by year-end. And the peak of deterioration, we expect it to be by the end of this quarter. Of course, that is depending on how the economy performs during the following months. But based on the view that we have now in terms of Central Bank rates in terms of inflation and also growth, we're expecting this to be the peak, not only because of those external factors, but also because as I mentioned before, some of the vintages that are having poor performance are vintages that should be going through a deterioration process by the end of this quarter. So we would expect a better impact on new vintages by the second half of this year.

The second question by Mr. Soto from Santander is, regarding your NIM guidance, what is your assumption for Central Bank rate cuts this year? What would be your NIM, if not cuts are implemented?

Our liability sensitivity structure that will allow us to expand our margin once the intervention rate start to decrease in the second half of the year. And then to remember [indiscernible] stable to start decreasing by October and November. And of course, if the Central Bank doesn't reduce the interest rate, we have a sensibility around it's possible to reduce 8 basis points depend on the level of that reduction of the Central Bank but it's around 8 to 9 basis points, no more than that. So every 100 basis points, that is the sensibility, 8 basis points.

Andres, to complement your question, we are expecting the Central Bank rate to increase the level of 13.5% in the following meeting. That's an additional increase of 25 basis points. And by year-end, we're expecting a 10.5% to 11% rate.

Our next question comes from Jose Cuenca from Citigroup. Could you please provide more color on why investment income was so high? And how should we think about it going forward?

This is Jaime Castaneda, Vice President, Treasury. One of the most important points this year has been the reduction of the interest rate of the test the local securities that have been decreasing by 300 basis points. What we are expecting is that probably at the pace of the reduction of the Central Bank in the second semester, we will be experienced a reduction of the interest rate of the market. Again, so probably as today, we have the local core between 10.5% to 11.5% in interest rate, probably that rate will be decreasing between 100 to 150 basis points by the end of the year. Again, it will depend on the reduction of the inflation rate and the reduction of the interest rate of the Central Bank.

Now moving on to Ms. Maria-Jose Quinones from Seminario SAB. She is asking us. I wanted to understand a little bit more the drivers to achieve the 11% to 14% ROE ratio or ROE ratio since the first quarter of 2023, it was only 5.8%.

As we've been covering this presentation, this first quarter is a quarter has been impacted by a squeeze on our margins due to funding regulations and the interest rate increases that we've been experiencing over the last few months. as well as the deterioration of the consumer portfolio that has had an impact on our result. So this quarter has been specifically difficult in terms of results, but we expect that trend to change over the next few months, especially during the second half of the year. So that's why we believe that the ROE should increase because at this time, there are several factors that have come together to bring down the results for this quarter, but we don't expect those to keep being there for the following quarters. So basically, it's a change in trend that we're expecting for the following quarters.

Our next question is from Mr. Olavo Arthuzo from UBS. What could you guide us in terms of effective tax rate for 2023?

In terms of the effective tax rate for the end 2023, we are expecting the tax effective around 32%.

Now there is another question by Mr. [ John Wright ] from [indiscernible]. Could you provide more detail on trends in the corporate commercial book in terms of asset quality relative to consumer deterioration?

This is Pedro Uribe, Corporate Business VP. We are seeing a slight deterioration in the small and medium companies, not important yet, but we expect to be a little odd to have a little increase in the second half of the year. We haven't seen yet an important corporate deterioration, except for some airlines in Colombia, where we have a little exposure. It's not really important. We expect to increase a little bit even in the corporate book on the second half [indiscernible] an all-time low deterioration for this first quarter.

Now we will move on to our phone line questions. There is a question by Mr. Alonso Aramburu from BTG Pactual U.S.

I mean you made some comments already on margins. But I wanted to ask about the sensitivity that you mentioned. I mean your funding structure has changed over the last few quarters. Your term deposits are almost half of your deposits now. So I'm wondering just how fast can you get an improvement when rates come down, right, given the change in your fund in the last few quarters?

You have to consider that looking for compliance of the net stable funding ratio during the last half of the previous year and as well as the first quarter of this year, we had to go to the market and actually raise funds on term deposits and an interest rate that were quite high, because there was a squeeze in the market as many of the banks were competing for the same funds. And so these funds are funds that we've been attracting to our bank and are actually funding our balance with durations of anywhere from 6 months to 18 months, some of them are already maturing. Some of them are actually during the following quarter, there will be a significant repricing of those CDs that were brought in at very high interest rates. As interest rates have come down since we are already compliant with the new regulations and the loan portfolio growth has been decelerating, the pressure on the market to go for funds has gone down significantly. So on our view, what we're doing is just repricing those funds with lower interest rate funds. The asset reprice will be anywhere from 1.2 to 1.3 years, although during the next 6 months, there will be a significant repricing of some of those funds that we've been raising over the end of last year. So that's why we are expecting during the following 6 months an improvement on our NIM. That will continue all the way until the first half of next year. So that's the reason behind the NIM expectations that Ricardo gave as part of the guidance.

Okay. Great. That's great color. So that means that you basically, in the short term, you don't need rates to come down, your NIM should improve a little bit just as you issue new term deposits with lower rates, I guess?

Yes. Yes. Yes. You're right. There's no funding pressure at this time for us because of the reasons I mentioned. So we're just actually just repricing, just letting go some very expensive sources of funds that we had to take in during the last 6 months and replacing them by market rates and market rates are significantly lower.

I just want to complement the answer, saying as well that, as you know, before, fulfilling on the requirement of [indiscernible] in terms of liquidity on March, we used to have big deposits from institutional investors. And those institutional accounts, as you know, in Colombia, were priced at the rate of 15%, 16% in some cases until 17%, from April until now, those deposits have been reduced in terms of interest rate from those rates to rates that are between 10% to 11%. So at the same time, it will contribute to decrease the cost of funding of the bank in general and probably keeping the net interest margin in our held level.

At this point, there seems to be no further questions. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Mr. Suarez for any closing remarks. Mr. Suarez, back to you.

Thank you, everyone, for participating in this call. We know that this has been a challenging period with challenging macroeconomic conditions that have had an impact in several aspects of our business. On interest margins, as I mentioned just in the previous answer, credit quality has been impacted for the reasons that we've already covered. And at the same time, on the FX front, we've had some impact because of very specific movements in the market that we don't believe are structural in terms of structural, the composition of our balance sheet will be able to be healthy in terms of FX results going to the future. So actually, this has been a quarter, a challenging quarter because many factors have come together to put pressure on our results. yet we're able to deliver results that are not what we expect to deliver in the future, but reasonable enough for these challenging conditions. Looking forward on interest margins, as I just mentioned before, there's lower funding pressure that will help us improve our margins. On the credit quality, as mentioned before, also, there's an active management of our portfolio that we're seeing some early signals that help us believe that there's an improvement in the performance of the portfolio for the second half of the year. And on the FX, we believe those to be a temporary issue. So looking forward, we expect the results to improve gradually over the coming months. as we manage these short-term challenges. But it's important also to emphasize on our long-term strategy. We keep being very, very invested in our strategy to become every day a better digital bank with better solutions for our customers, where we are advancing according to our plans in terms of improving our platforms. There will be new solutions, new products that we'll be launching in the coming months that will improve the experience of our customers, will help us reach many more customers through different distribution channels that we are working on. These investments that we're undergoing on these digital platforms will also help us on the efficiency side. Efficiency is something that definitely will be improving over the next quarters as we become much more detail on our operations. And this will also have an impact on service. Our NPS is actually increasing, and we are very invested also on having a much better experience for our customers in the near future. So those will be engines of growth and profitability. We're very, very bullish on the medium to long term on the capacities that the bank will have in terms of serving many more millions of customers and at the same time on a very profitable way. Thank you all for attending the call today, and we expect to see you in the results by the next quarter. Thank you very much to all of you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.