Barclays PLC (BARC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Great. That's straight on the hour. Thanks, everyone, for coming to this session with Barclays. I'm delighted to welcome Anna Cross, CFO of Barclays. Thanks for joining one more year. Before we kick off, we've got a polling question that I'll read out. What do you think is needed to close the gap between the 0.8x trading multiple and tangible book value? #1, Barclays Group demonstrates it can reach over 12% RoTE in '26; #2, management deliver on the over GBP 10 billion '24 to '26 total distribution; #3, U.K. income continues to beat expectations; #4, Investment Bank demonstrates resilience and profitability in line with group targets; and #5, U.S. Consumer Bank delivers growth to offset post American Airlines. [ Voting] It's a bit of 12% and Investment Bank is showing resilience, which I'm sure we'll touch on.

So with that, maybe we can start with a broader question. It's the first year of the strategic plan. You've met all the targets. Your stock price has nicely rewarded that. I'm sure you've noticed. What would be your take on the progress so far? And what are you focused most on the next 2 years of the plan?

Yes, sure. And thank you for having us here. I'm surprised you didn't have #6, which was all of the above. That would have been a good answer. But no, we're really encouraged by what we've done in 2024. As you said, we met our targets. But actually, when you put 2024 in the context of a 3-year plan, we feel like we've made some meaningful steps. So we've deployed GBP 13 billion of GBP 30 billion that we want to deploy in the U.K. We've delivered 1/3 of the group income growth. We've delivered a 1/3 of the investment banking growth that we want to achieve. And really important underpinning it all, we've delivered GBP 1 billion of gross efficiency saves. So it feels like not only the financial outputs, but the component parts really are there. And I think the other thing is this is a continuation of progress that's been happening from before we did the strategic plan. So it's actually the fifth consecutive year of TNAV growth for Barclays, and 30% EPS growth in the year. And that's really a sense of momentum that's come from even before the strategy. So where are we from here? Well, this is just quarter in, quarter out execution prioritization on our part. And we've given some interim targets for 2025. So we do expect to see progression in '25, both in terms of our cost/income ratio to 61%, our RoTE to around 11%. So see that as a stepping stone to the greater than 12% that we want to do in '26. And really importantly, obviously, U.K. NII around 7.4% for the BUK business and around 12.2% for the group as a whole. So we've given some interim targets, which hopefully give you a sense of the progress we think we're making.

You've just touched on the U.K. income trajectory, which continues to progress quite nicely and there is more to go on the structural hedges as you've laid out many times. But how do you see the assets and deposit trends evolving the volumes? We hear quite cautious views and we had Lloyds and NatWest before, but especially at the beginning of the year, we heard quite cautious views on the economy that you continue quite optimistic on volume growth. Can you elaborate on that maybe?

Yes, sure. I mean, our desire to grow in the U.K. sort of precedes 2024 and indeed the change of government, but I'll pick that up in a minute. And really, we are constructive about the U.K., not least because the areas that we are leaning into are ones where actually we've either ceded market share or we have a sort of lower than a natural market share. So we're not reliant on the market to pick up in order to achieve our plans. And indeed, in 2024, I expected the businesses to go backwards before they went forward. And actually, what we saw was good momentum in both deposits and assets by the time we sort of exited Q4. And as we look at the current environment, you've got a mortgage market, which is pretty constructive. That's underpinned by real wage growth in the U.K. It's underpinned by positive HPI. It's underpinned by real demand for housing. So we're seeing that coming through in the data. Very importantly, I think for the wider real economy, the majority of what we see happening in terms of mortgage growth is actually house purchase. And that's important because you bring first-time buyers into the market and then you get secondary sort of economic growth that goes from that house purchase market. And it's also good for us because one of the strategic plans that we have is to really sort of broaden out our range within the mortgage market. So we did 15% of our flow in higher loan-to-value last year versus 9% the year before. So sort of leaning into that house purchase market is a key part of what we're doing. And then when I get to consumer spending, there's clearly a degree of conservatism out there still. We see that in sort of higher-than-normal repayments in cards. But in Q -- well, sort of January, February, we see discretionary spending growth outstripping essential spending growth. That's very positive for the economy. We saw U.K. card spending growth exceeding debit cards, so credit exceeding debit card growth in Q4 for the first time in quite a while. So as we look at the sort of high-frequency data, that would tell you that actually the economy is performing pretty well. So we're pretty constructive actually. We see opportunities for growth. The environment is very stable, politically very stable. We've got a strong and sort of certain regulatory outcome. And all of that helps in terms of economic activity.

In the U.K. as well, you've now consolidated Tesco Bank. What does it bring to the table from a strategic point of view? There's a bank that is expected to generate GBP 400 million in NII this year. You've already been clear on that. Are there funding benefits that you bring to the table? How can you scale the business?

I mean there are probably 3 big ones. The first I would say is when you think of Barclays over the last 10, 20 years, you think of a single brand. Actually, what Tesco brings for us is it's another piece of a broader multi-brand strategy that allows us to approach the markets with a degree of sophistication and diversification that we've not really had. And you see that in mortgages with Kensington. Cards is exactly the same. So now we're operating not only Barclaycard, but Amazon, Avios and now Tesco. So see it within that sort of framework. Then the second thing is it gives us the opportunity to really scale. So you've got 20 million Tesco Clubcard customers to whom we can now speak directly, which is great, but also the opportunity to take the capability of Tesco back into the Barclays organization. So the best example I can think of is that we've not done open market unsecured lending in Barclays for a long time, not since just after the GSC. We do open market cards. We do open market mortgages, but we've only offered unsecured personal lending to our own current account customers. Tesco has a very, very good sophisticated capability around that. So you're bringing that back into the Barclays environment, a little bit like we did with the capability on Kensington. So that's really exciting for us to actually scale both sides of the businesses by blending the capability. And then the last thing is obviously synergies. So there are definitely funding synergies in terms of the way we can use our deposit base not only to grow what Tesco is doing in its own deposit franchise, but actually harness the lower cost of deposit funding that we have across the U.K. as a whole. But equally, obviously, there's the cost journey to go on. Now our primary objective is to integrate Tesco and integrate it very well. It's a complex business. You've got daily digital interactions. It's a live book with employees also. So integrate it well as our objective. So we expect that to be our main focus in '25 and into '26. But if you think about Tesco just from the outside in, it's got a 90% cost/income ratio. So very, very high costs. We would expect that any unsecured business would run at a relatively low cost/income ratio. And I mean not just lower than Barclays, but lower than Barclays U.K. And if you think about what we're trying to achieve with our U.S. cards business, which has got cost/income ratio of 49% now, we are getting that to the mid-40s as part of our plan. Tesco should be similar. So there's some big cost opportunities here, too.

One of the other sources of growth is the Investment Bank, of course. Where have you taken share as part of the strategic plan? And where do you think there's more space for you to grow?

Yes, sure. I mean the Investment Bank plan is obviously very different to the U.K. plan, but it's similar in its sort of thought process, which is about being more balanced. So that's what we're trying to do here. We're trying to -- within the waterfront that we have, which we judged as part of our strategy to be complete and the one that we want to go with, rebalancing or balancing the areas of growth within the plan. So in market that meant leaning into parts of equities like equity derivatives, we see that as important because it sits alongside what is an already very successful prime book, doing securitized products trading against the financing that we already do. And within European rates, that is quite similar to our story in cards. We've actually lost market share, and we think we've got the right and the capability and the talent and the technology to get that back. So they are areas that we're leaning into. As I look at '24, I would say we did well in securitized products. We did very well in equity derivatives. We talked about European rates through the year as lagging our expectations. I think quite a lot of that was around the market generally last year. That picked up in the third and fourth quarters and our performance also improved. The other thing within markets is financing. And again, getting that to be more balanced because in financing, the 2 parts, you've got fixed income financing, which was always like #1 and #2 for Barclays, a real Lehman heritage, adding to that prime. So we've gone from #12 to #5 in prime and growing those 2 together. So our financing business in U.S. dollars in the fourth quarter was 34% up year-on-year. So we've got some real balanced momentum in that business. And then in Investment Banking, similar sort of story, a real DCM heritage trying to broaden out the business into more ECM and M&A. Actually, M&A year-on-year, our share was flat. In the context of a rising market, we were quite happy with that because we brought on much of the talent or a lot more talent in '23. So it was early for that kind of growth. ECM was very good. So we grew our market share by 100 basis points over the year. And across fees as a whole, we grew our market share by 30 basis points. So we're now at 3.3. We need to get to 4. So there's more to do. They have to keep grinding that out quarter-by-quarter. And it won't go up every quarter. It's a lumpy business. But over time, they should be headed in the right direction. But important for them also is the International Corporate Bank. It's a bit like -- it's a more stable, it's the ballast to their business. And what we really feel is that our business is leading with fees and not really deepening that relationship into the ICB. So we've seen a lot more of that happening within the U.S. and particularly on U.S. deposits, which are strategically really important for our business. We saw U.S. dollar deposits grow by 90% last year, and that's off the back of strong growth the year before. I hope we'll continue to see that momentum and see that continue to grow into cash, trade, FX for those clients as we try and broaden that relationship.

Within the fee business specifically, maybe a bit of color where we are in the cycle. In 2024, obviously, we saw a recovery in both ECM and M&A after 2 difficult years. How much room do you see for growth when you compare to historically? And how is your pipeline looking at the moment?

Well, I would contrast how the market might play out in the way we plan. So the way we plan, whether it's in the Investment Bank or in Barclays U.K., we're trying to use really realistic assumptions for our businesses. So we had a lot of discussions on the day of results because our assumption for the current year is an $80 billion banking wallet. Actually, as we look at Dealogic in Q1, that's broadly what it would say in terms of the full year. But that's clearly down from where it was around 6 weeks ago. And that's -- there's quite a lot of market discussion around the uncertainty in the U.S. environment. And clearly, that's weighing on the market as a whole. We can all see that in Dealogic data. But from our part, we are planning to these levels. That's what we do to put tension into the system. I want the Investment Bank to meet its targets because it's structurally changing its productivity and its profitability, not because the banking wallet is outsized because that won't always be the case. But then if you look at what that means elsewhere in the investment complex, you'd expect that degree of volatility to bring some opportunities to markets because typically, these 2 businesses somewhat offset one another. Volatility is great for markets, not for banking and vice versa. I just think we're seeing perhaps a slightly different environment from what people expected.

Okay. Can you talk to us how you're managing RWAs in the division as well, which was -- whether you're still confident about the 50% target you laid out for 2026? And is that the ultimate objective for the proportion of the IB within the group?

Yes. So the IB RWAs have been flat for 3 years now. So they've been flat for 2 years before we announced our strategy. And it goes back to that point around we're happy with the waterfront that we have. We think the business has enough capital to grow and continue to grow. So really, that 50% is through keeping the IB flat and by growing the U.K. And no, 50% is not the final destination. It's what we realistically think we can get to in 2026, and that reflects both our expectations about the IB business and indeed U.K. growth. But when I think about the IB, we're focused on improving productivity, specifically within banking, and that comes from a few things. It comes from that sort of treasury coverage model that I talked about before. So really deepening the relationship into areas of banking, which are less capital heavy, so cash, trade, FX, et cetera. In doing so, we've really changed the focus of the bankers internally. So with our 800 top clients last year, they now all have a lead treasury banker. That's really important. And that's what's leading to that growth in deposits that we see. The second is just disciplined capital stewardship, really, really focused client returns, really focused sector returns analysis. And when those facilities come up for renewal, we are asking ourselves very, very difficult questions as to whether or not those client returns are at or above our expectations. And if they're not, what needs to be true to get them there. And if we don't believe we can, then ultimately having a difficult conversation with that client. Now those conversations have been happening. You can see that because the amount of capital deployed in investment banking has gone down through the year. So you can really see that happening and their revenue over RWAs is growing. And then the third one is that increased share in advisory and ECM. It's similar in markets. So in markets, the financing business is capital-light, it's leverage heavy, but it's capital-light. So growing that disproportionately is clearly part of our plan. But also when we set out the 3 focused businesses that we have, we've already deployed the capital and the technology that we need within those businesses in order to get them to grow. So it's not that they need additional capital. And then I think when you step back from markets as a whole and think about the technology journey that we and others are on or the regulatory journey that we face, really, it's less about static capital, more about the velocity of capital. And that's what the technology lends itself to. That is what the development of regulation would speak to also. You don't want illiquid risk. You want to be able to move that capital on. So that's a real focus within markets.

Maybe turning to U.S. cards. There are a few moving parts, but maybe we can start with how you see the business post the sale of the American Airlines portfolio. How do you see the inorganic sort of growth like GM and the organic pipeline to achieve the end net receivable balances target in 2026? It feels like a lot of growth coming.

Yes, absolutely. This is quite a unique business. It's a very specialized consumer credit business. And in thinking about it, we sort of face 2 directions. The first is we look at the clients. We've got 20 very large clients. And the way I think about this is we're essentially providing consumer finance to our IB clients. And so in making the decision around American and we chose not to bid, it was really around the fact that it was taking on the totality of those balances would have put such single client concentration risk into our cards portfolio in the U.S., we didn't believe that was the right business decision to make. So that's why we didn't pursue it. Then when I think about the opportunities around organic growth, so look at the consumers. I mean, most of the growth that we've achieved since we bought this portfolio has been organic and over 80% of it was deemed to be organic in the balance of the plan. And the nature of these partnerships is that they're sort of locked up for a number of years. So again, sort of over 80% of our partnerships are locked up out to 2029. So it feels like organically, we've got a really good basis for growth. But equally, about GBP 40 billion of balances come to market every year. So we've got the opportunity to win partnerships as we did with GM and really focus on that growth. There's clearly a challenge in the plan from having lost volume, somewhat mitigated by both the acquisition of GM and the fact that American is -- because it's such a super prime book, it's a relatively low risk-adjusted return. But we do think that we can drive additional volume into this business just because of its specialized nature and it's good at what it does.

You achieved in the division, 9.1% RoTE in 2024 versus 4% RoTE the previous year in '23. You continue to target -- the target is above 12% RoTE for 2026. But I thought it was curious that you're not only reiterating the guidance post AA, but you're even calling for mid-teens RoTE longer term in this business. Maybe you can elaborate on some of the moving parts and how you're planning to get there?

Yes. So when we did our strategy update last year on our investor update, prior to that, as you can imagine, we did a lot of peer benchmarking for all of our businesses. And what really struck me with our U.S. cards business was that the opportunities lay in many lines across the P&L. So as we compared it to our peers, the NIM is lower. Why is that? It's in part our own risk appetite, but it was also the skew of our business towards that super prime travel type portfolio. The second is our funding costs were higher. Now I would expect our funding costs to be higher than someone running a domestic bank in the U.S., but I wouldn't expect it to be higher than specialized card companies in the U.S. And the third thing was the cost per account, the efficiency. So the plan speaks to all of those. So if I look at the U.S. cards partner market, 60% of it is retail, 40% is travel. We have a very low market share in retail, low single digits. We've got an 11% share in capital. We have to rebalance that. That is, again, about being more balanced as a bank. And the good thing about that is you get a better risk-adjusted margin. So that's what GM is about. Expect us to see us not completely changing our risk appetite because it's important to us, but pivoting away to having more retail in the book to improve the margin. We're very focused on funding costs. So we've revamped our deposit structures within the U.S.. And we launched a tier deposit product in Q3. And in Q4, that alone brought in an additional $2 billion of deposits. So it's somewhat surprised or exceeded our expectations. We expect to continue to do that. And that will lower the cost of funding for this business. We also repriced the entirety of the book last year in the third and fourth quarters. That takes a while to work its way through to NIM because customers have to start purchasing on the new Ts and Cs to do that. So in NIM, there's a lot going on, but most of those actions have already taken place. Cost is a longer-term exercise. We made some meaningful progress last year. So the amount of inbound calls that we've got has gone down by 6%. We've increased the proportion of digital interactions we have by 13%. All of this is really important. And again, it speaks to that changing mix because if I've got an airline file, you've got a high balance, I'm really happy to speak to you, lower balances. The client doesn't want to speak to you, and it's not really efficient for us to handle them manually either. But when I look at that business, it still got 93% of what it does, it does digitally. That's actually really low for a retail business. When I compare that to the U.K., that's more like 99%. And our German cards business, before we sold, it was around 98%, 99%. So there's a long way to go in terms of driving that. And then finally, just capital. This is a capital-heavy business, will be even more so after we go to advanced status in the U.S. So the kind of transaction that we did with Blackstone in the first quarter of last year, we're still very focused on, that was a bit of a test and learn, both in terms of our capability to construct that type of SRT, but also to test the investor appetite. And we've had a lot of incoming since then. So we feel like the investor appetite is there for us to really optimize the capital within that business. So hopefully, you get a sense from that, Alvaro, that it's a plan of many parts. It's not overly reliant on any one of them. So we do believe that we can get to 12% in 2026. '26 has 2 offsetting impacts within it there. We'll have a gain on sale and we'll have the loss of American. But beyond that, just by rebuilding the volume and executing the plan, this business should get back to where it was pre-COVID, which is mid-teens.

A couple of more questions from me, and then we can open them. One of them on costs. One thing that was appreciated, I think, in the plan and you delivered in 2024 was the renewed sense of cost discipline. Can you walk us through what remains on that front? And I would note it in the context that, for example, what caught my attention, of course, costs in the IB increased 2% last year and performance comp was up 6.6%. So there's definitely something happening within the weeds of the cost. But can you talk us through it and what remains to be delivered?

Yes. So efficiency is a really key part of the plan, and it is efficiency. Cost is an output. So that's how we think about it. And I would see that sort of twofold. Every single one of the businesses has got a cost/income ratio target, which is lower than where they are now and gets progressively lower as the plan continues. So that efficiency drive is everywhere in the plan. And just to go back to that $80 billion assumption, we are deliberately creating tension in the plan across all of the businesses by having a very realistic income assumptions. So I want the businesses to get to the CIR targets by changing the structural cost base of those businesses, not by overly relying on income because that will not always be true. There will be pockets where clearly, we'll step back just because of the market. So our objective here is to deliver a gross efficiency saves every single year, GBP 2 billion over the plan. We delivered GBP 1 billion last year. We're expecting GBP 500 million this year, GBP 500 million next year. And what happens to that is it then gives us air cover or room, if you like, to invest in the businesses and drive that efficiency further. So it becomes positive and reinforcing. Good example of that is what we did in our credit cards business in the U.K. So that uplift in acquisition year-on-year has got nothing to do with risk or pricing and everything to do with the investment and digitization behind the customer journey. So it's a real efficiency focus. So in 2024, a lot of the cost reductions came from people and property. In 2025 and '26, it gets a bit harder because we're really focused on those end-to-end client and customer journeys all the way to the bank. And that's true of everybody, but it's probably disproportionately so within BUK and the Investment Bank, who are the 2 divisions, which even by the end of 2026, we don't think will be top quartile in their efficiency, and so they will have more to go. But in the IB, which you specifically asked about, we've invested in the IB a lot coming up to that investor update. So in markets over the previous 2 years, we've invested a lot in technology. We invested a lot in the IB talent pool. Now is the time to monetize that. So those are the conversations that we're having internally. The resources are there. They need to leverage those into higher income. So that's really what we're focused on. And what was notable to me last year and the conversations we have with them every quarter is quarterly jaws. So 3 out of 4 quarters last year, we got positive jaws in the IB. I cannot remember last time we had positive jaws in the IB. Now it won't happen every quarter. As you know, the business can be lumpy. So you won't always achieve that. But more often than not, they need to achieve it.

One last one, as I said, for me, and we've touched on deregulation in previous sessions as well. A lot of talk in the U.S. definitely on the issue. But how does that affect you? Any changes in the U.S.? And what would you like to see in Europe and the U.K.?

It's fair to say that we've got quite used to operating in different regulatory environments. I mean we are uniquely blessed, I think, by having a U.K. ring-fence, a U.S. ring-fence and a European post-Brexit bank. So that whole kind of European, U.K., U.S. regulation is something that we navigate expertly. I think what's been good in the U.K. is we've got a recognition, I think, that, that delay in timing reflects the PRA being thoughtful about how the international environment might develop. We've got a date. We've got a framework. We don't have yet clarity on the Pillar 2 offsets, but we've got the Pillar 1 position. And for Barclays, that's between GBP 3 billion and GBP 10 billion. I mean it's not an enormous number in the context of our overall RWA stack. And that's across the bank. That's everything from the IB to BUK. We will have to wait and see what happens in the U.S. We've clearly seen some speeches, some rumors, but we need to see the regulation played out in words and then we can react to it. And hopefully, the U.K. regulator will be thoughtful. But we see a very constructive dialogue from the regulators here about trying to be joined up as an international matter. We think that's important not only for banks, but also for investors and also for clients. I mean, if you're a client and you're booking in the U.S. and in the U.K. and in Europe, and you've got a different capital treatment or pricing in each jurisdiction, that's not great either. So for the banking system as a whole, we think it's really important. And we see other regulatory change in the U.K. as well, the discussions that they're having around mortgage affordability, all of these things we see as sort of positive signs. The U.S., we will just have to let play out and do what we need to do in terms of the profitability of our own businesses that are U.S.-based, the U.S. cards and the IB. That makes everything that we're doing in the plan even more important.

With that, why don't we open it up for questions? Who wants to ask the first question? Omar here in the front.

Can I ask you about just the last topic that you were talking about, which is sort of regulation. And I guess there's this kind of push now to make sure the pendulum swings back to where it's sort of supposed to be. I think it's kind of broad acknowledgment that it's perhaps gone too far. There was a paper yesterday that was out from U.K. finance that looks a bit like a bank's sort of wish list of things. I guess one of them was taking away the bank levy and the corporate surcharge, which feels like a 10-year ambition rather than something that will happen in the next year. But there are other interesting proposals like removing gilts from leverage ratio calculation, similar discussion in the U.S. around the SLR. And I think different people have different views around how meaningful that is? Do you think that's meaningful of what actual regulation changes do you think we can probably expect to see in the next 1 to 2 years?

Omar, it's a good question. So I'd contrast here regulatory certainty and pockets of regulation that might actually stimulate growth more generally in the U.K., which is clearly where most of these sort of thought processes have come from. So I think the most important thing is that we have certainty of regulation, whether that be Basel or whether that be consumer duty. Both of those are really important to not only the way we operate, but the way the broader market operates within the U.K. There are lots of specific ideas, whether that's mortgages, whether it's gilts, whether it's tax, some of those are the purview of the chancellor as opposed to the regulator. So I won't comment on any of them specifically, but I would say they all speak to U.K. growth and the ability of banks to underpin that U.K. growth. And I think that's really important because there is a connectivity here between what the government is trying to do in terms of grow the economy, whether that be housing, whether that be infrastructure or whether that be the transition economy. I think banks generally have a role to play in all of those. And so to the extent that the regulatory environment can facilitate that, I think we would all welcome it. But it feels like there's quite a few things sort of in the ether at the moment. They haven't quite come to fruition. So I won't comment on anything specifically, but I think the general trend and that supportive nature to U.K. growth, I think, is very welcome.

Here in the front.

So the quality of your disclosure has improved dramatically over the last couple of years, both at a group level and by division, which allows us to benchmark your performance as it evolves along the plan. The one area where perhaps I could do with more insight, please, is how much balance sheet risk do you run within the Investment Bank in order to generate those returns? Any commentary around market risk or outsized credit risk, which perhaps you did in the past and don't do now or which you're happy to do now would be quite helpful because inevitably, in investment banking, there will be a quarter eventually when something goes wrong, and it would be really helpful to understand how you think about the balance sheet that you're putting at risk to generate those returns, please?

Yes. Ian, those are great source of future disclosures, so watch this space. So generally speaking, the things that I would point you to would be look at the VAR disclosures. So we already do that. You can see that last year in '24, the VAR was below 23%. So we're driving additional revenue through the markets business, not by taking additional risk. And you can -- and it speaks to what I was talking to Alvaro about before, which is velocity, the velocity of capital. So using that capital intraday as opposed to having a large inventory. We don't have that kind of balance sheet within Barclays, and it's not our trading strategy. So VAR was down year-on-year. It was a bit more elevated in the fourth quarter just because of the amount of volatility we saw around the U.S. election. But generally speaking, you should look to that. And indeed, the market risk RWAs. And they will move around with FX, but we will always tell you what that impact is. Sometimes we talk about loss days. We had 3 trading loss days last year. We had 7 the year before. You can see from our disclosures that that's coming down over time. And when we measure and report loss days to you, that's on a VAR basis. That doesn't include any of the seats. So we're quite -- well, quire pure, if you like, by the way, we reflect that. But our general approach within the IB generally is to manage our risk very carefully. And you can imagine we're doing that in the current environment also. And we don't, as I say, carry big inventory. So we're very focused on that risk management.

Quick follow-up. Can I take that one stage further and assume that in a market where there is a clear trend of tighter credit spreads or rising equity prices or whatever, that would be a market that you would typically underperform peers because you're not carrying the big inventory risk, which would give incremental gearing, but then you should outperform when those trends are not there. Is that how we should think about it? Or is that potentially proving the point?

Potentially. Yes. I'll look at it.

Any last questions? Yes. Sorry, I didn't see that at the back.

One question on your U.S. consumer credit card business. Are you seeing any shift in sentiment given the common political uncertainty?

So the cards business actually has been very resilient. So we're not seeing any significant changes to it right now. And I wouldn't expect to because if you look at our credit profile, only 12% of the book FICO 660 or below. So we are relatively prime in the U.S. space. We don't have auto lending. We don't have student loans. If I were looking for signs, I would say that repayment levels remain very high, a bit like the U.K. So there's a degree of consumer confidence in there. So that's how it's manifesting itself with us. So purchases still at good levels, but customers are repaying relatively quickly. So I think that speaks to a degree of uncertainty, but we're not seeing it in credit.

Is there any last questions? We're running towards the end of the slots. Great. I think we'll finish here. Thanks very much Anna Cross. Very interesting conversation.

Thank you. Thank you Alvaro.

Thank you, thank you.