E.SUN Financial Holding Company, Ltd. (2884) Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hi, dear investors, it's 5:30, so we'll begin the earnings call today. So welcome to 2025 E.SUN Financial Holdings Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. And my name is Martin. I'm IR of E.SUN Bank and I will be the moderator today. And together with me in the meeting, we have our Deputy CFO, Sarah; and also my colleagues, Bernard and Ruby. So first of all, we would like to invite Sarah to give us the opening speech.

Hi, dear investors, E.SUN delivered a strong performance in 2025, marking a record high in net profit for the same period. Solid growth across all core businesses, coupled with high single-digit growth in overseas profit. Net fee income set a new record high, growing at a rate of 12.1% Y-o-Y. Wealth management fee income also achieved a record high in which bancassurance grew by 23.2%. Recently, we announced the financial results for January. Growth rate of net profit for the first month was 32.9%. Net fee income continued to grow. We are optimistic about our performance this year and expecting to achieve good results. With effective cost management, the CI ratio increased to 47.7% for the full year. E.SUN will continue to strictly control the growth rate of expenses to a single-digit level this year. For overseas expansion, overseas branches and subsidiaries continue to post solid profit growth. In 2026, E.SUN plans to open the Mumbai branch in India and Osaka representative office in Japan, further enhancing its Asia Pacific service network. At an AGM held on January 23 this year, our shareholders approved the proposed merger with Mercuries Life Insurance, which is still subject to regulatory approval. Upon commission, our total assets are expected to increase from TWD 4.5 trillion to approximately TWD 6.1 trillion, positioning E.SUN among the top 5 listed financial holding companies in Taiwan. Following the addition of assets 2025, our life insurance business is also expected to join the group this year. This will complete our diversified earnings engine to close pending insurance securities, venture capital and asset management further strengthening our market engine platform to support long-term growth in Asia and beyond. Lastly, E.SUN's outstanding performance has been recognized by international institutions. In 2025, we are named for Taiwan's Best Bank for the sixth consecutive year, participating in the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which is called for the fourth consecutive year. And we are invited to serve as the Asian Chair of the Nature Investment Coalition, named NIC. Looking ahead, we will continue to deliver long-term value to our shareholders. Thank you for your attention.

Okay. Thank you, Sarah. And right now, we'll have my colleague, Bernard, to walk you through the financial review of fourth quarter 2025 of E.SUN Financial Holding Company. Bernard?

Dear investors, I will now take you through an overview of E.SUN Financial Holding Company. On Slide 4, at the fourth quarter, the total assets of financial holding company amounted to TWD 4.5 trillion, while the bank's total assets were TWD 4.4 trillion. And for the key financial indicators, the book value of financial holding company is TWD 60.85 per share. The double leverage ratio is 115.04% and the FHC CAR ratio is 126.66%. And for the physical channel, domestically, now E.SUN Bank runs 140 branches around Taiwan. And for the overseas channels, we run 35 overseas sites in 11 countries and regions. And the security branches remain the same at 17. On Slide 5 is the business and financial review of the fourth quarter of 2025. For the financial performance, net revenue of FHC was TWD 91.8 billion, which grew by 20.5% year-on-year. Net profit was TWD 34.3 billion, which grew by 31.2% year-on-year. The financial holding EPS was TWD 2.12, ROE 13.04%, ROA was 0.8%. For the subsidiaries, E.SUN Bank net profit was TWD 32.7 billion, which grew by 33%. Move on the business development. The loan balance reached TWD 2.63 billion, which grew by 12.6% and in which corporate loan grew by 8.1%. SME loan grew by 11.8% and retail loan grew by 7.6%. And the deposit balance grew by 12.9% year-on-year. Net fee income was TWD 31.6 billion, which grew by 12.1% and reached a record high. And for the wealth management fee was TWD 50.4 billion, grew by 40.3%, also set a record high. And in terms of asset quality, E.SUN remains sound. NPL ratio at 15 basis points and coverage ratio at 826%. As a business highlight, the EGM approved the proposed acquisition of Mercuries Life Insurance, pending regulatory approval. After completion, E.SUN's total assets are expected to reach TWD 6.1 trillion, ranking among the top 5 listed FHC in Taiwan. On Slide 6, we use chart to illustrate our financial performance. As you can see in the upper part of the slide, the net profit and the EPS both set a record high for full year 2025 and ROE and ROA are all the best performance in the past 5 years. Moving to Slide 7. We present the net income of the FHC and its subsidiaries. As you can see on the left-hand side, the pie chart shows that E.SUN Bank remains the main contributor of the FHC, which contributes to nearly 92% of the total profit and the growth momentum for the E.SUN Bank is very strong. As you can see on the right-hand side, the growth rate of the E.SUN Bank is nearly 33% year-on-year. On the next slide is the net income breakdown. Again, E.SUN follows the golden row of the growth. The net profit growth is larger than the net revenue growth, in which is larger than the operating expense growth, driven by effective cost control. The operating expense only grew by 11.9% year-on-year. On Slide 9 shows the revenue breakdown of the FHC. As you can see on the left-hand side, the pie chart shows our net revenue. The net interest income accounts for 44.6% of the total net revenue and the net fee income accounts for 34% and the other income accounts for nearly 21%. On the right-hand side, you can see that all revenue sectors delivered a very decent growth. On Slide 10 shows the net fee income breakdown of the financial holding company. The pie chart shows wealth management accounts for nearly 49% of the net fee income. On the right-hand side, you can see the growth rate of wealth management was 40.3%, which was after a third consecutive year of double-digit growth. We still delivered a very decent growth in the wealth management business. On Slide 11, present the capital adequacy ratio of both FHC and bank. Both mentioned its capital ratio at a very adequate level. The CAR ratio of FHC is 126.6% and Tier 1 ratio of the bank is 30.03%. Moving on to subsidiaries. First, we take a look at the E.SUN Bank. On Slide 13, present the deposit and loan structure of E.SUN Bank. The total deposits grew by 12.9% year-on-year, in which the foreign currency deposit grew by 12.6% and the total loan grew by 12.5% year-on-year, in which the foreign currency loans grew by 19%. And if we denominated the foreign currency deposits and loans in U.S. dollar, the foreign currency deposit and loan grew by 16. 9% and 23.9%, respectively. On Slide 14, shows the loan portfolio breakdown of E.SUN Bank. E.SUN has very diverse loan structure with our loan corporate -- large corporate loan, SME loan, mortgage loan and security personal loans are all accounts for around 20% to 25%. On the right-hand side, you can see across all the loan categories, we had very decent growth in 2025. On Slide 15, we would like to highlight the SME loan and the foreign currency loan of E.SUN Bank. E.SUN Bank maintained the largest SME loan balance among Taiwan's private banks, driven by stable growth. And for the foreign currency loan, as just mentioned, if we dominate in the U.S. dollars, the foreign currency loan is still very strong. On Slide 16 is the overseas development of E.SUN Bank. The overseas branches and the subsidiaries net profit grew by 9.5% and contributed 26.4% of total net profit and the loan balance grew by nearly 20.5%. For the overseas network, E.SUN will establish the Mumbai branch in India and Osaka representative office in Japan. On Slide 18, the NIM and spread. E.SUN NIM has remained at a very flat level in the past quarters around 1.28% to 1.32%. On the right-hand side, you can see that the spread has been improved over the past few quarters. It all thanks to the wealth management of cost funding control. As the green line shows, we have lowered our deposit rate over the past years. On Slide 19 is the wealth management fee income breakdown. The bancassurance accounts for 40.1% of the total wealth management fee income and mutual funds account for 33.2%. On the right-hand side, you can see the bancassurance growth rate was 23.2% for the full year, making the third consecutive year of double-digit growth and reflecting a strong performance. On Slide 20 is the credit card business breakdown. We have 5,341,000 active cards and the market share was around 30% and card consumption hit a record high of TWD 665 billion. The gross fee growth income growth grew by nearly 8% year-on-year. On Slide 21 is the asset quality of E.SUN Bank. E.SUN maintained sound asset quality with the NPL ratio at 15 basis points in 2025 and the coverage ratio is 826.4%. The credit cost is 23 basis points. On Page 22 is the asset quality compared to the market. E.SUN maintained sound asset quality with the NPL ratio in line with the market average. On Page 23 is cost-income ratio. Thanks to the very well management of the cost control. Now E.SUN Bank cost-income ratio is 47.7%, which has been improved since 2022 from nearly 30% -- 13%. And next is about E.SUN Financial Holding Company of other subsidiaries. First, on Slide 25 is E.SUN Securities. In Q4, the TAIEX trends upwards, driving positive Y-o-Y earnings growth. ROE is 25%, which ranked top 1 among securities under FHC. Both net revenue and net profit delivered a positive growth. And on Slide 26, you can see the performance of E.SUN Asset Management. Domestic fund AUM reached TWD 92.3 billion and discretionary maintenance AUM reached TWD 106.9 billion, representing a combined growth of 24% compared with year-end last year. Next, we will introduce E.SUN Financial Holding Company's development strategy. On Slide 28, E.SUN aims to become the best performing and most respected company. In the era of FHC 2.0, E.SUN has established a complete subsidiary platform with total assets reaching approximately TWD 6 trillion. On Slide 29, we illustrate the horizontal integration of the FHC across 3 major business. As shown on the left-hand side, this includes credit and corporate banking business, investment business and wealth management service. Credit and investment business are asset intensive, making risk management critical. While asset management has a light asset business model, but still plays a strategic role within the group. On Slide 30, E.SUN is building an FHC level customer-oriented service model to create a closed-loop ecosystem. In terms of the second line of defense and foundational infrastructure, we are establishing group-wide risk management and human resource planning under an FHC mindset. Next, on Slide 21, we provide example of cross subsidiaries collaboration. This includes cooperation between the bank and asset management to offer diversified products to high net worth clients under the Asia Asset Management Center, collaboration between the bank and insurance to distribute insurance products through bancassurance channels and cooperation between insurance and asset management to launch investment-led insurance products. These strategy initiatives are all built on a strong foundation of sustainability, which I will highlight on the next slide. On Slide 32, you can see E.SUN's sustainability efforts. E.SUN FHC was recognized as the #1 large enterprise for 3 consecutive years at the Commonwealth Corporate Sustainability Awards. In addition, E.SUN received the Jade Award, the highest distinction. We will continue our efforts to lead in ESG. So that concludes the fourth quarter presentation. We will now move on the Q&A session. Thank you.

Now we start to answer the questions that were given. First, we have a question, it's about the growth guidance for this year. Can you give us the growth guidance across different product lines, including loan deposits, fee and OpEx growth?

Well, we think for the loan and deposit balance is expected to grow by 10% under the currency rate levels. But for foreign currency loans and foreign currency deposit, the growth rate will be larger than the domestic loans and deposits. For wealth management fee, income is expected to grow by 15% which is still double-digit growth. For the OpEx, the growth rate will be only single digit. So the performance of this year will still be very good.

Now we have the second question. Can the management give us the trend of NIM and spread for the year 2026?

Well, for the NIM of this year, we expect it to increase by 4 to 5 bps. This is under the assumption that Central Bank in Taiwan will hit interest rate flat, and U.S. Fed will cut interest rate 2 to 3x in the second half of this year. We will continue to lower our funding cost and enhance our asset yield to achieve the NIM.

Now we have the third question. It's about the progress of the merger of Mercuries. What we guided earlier after we announced the acquisition deal, we expect the acquisition will complete in the third quarter. So that's the time line that we have for this acquisition to complete in the third quarter. So the -- and its implication on the capital and financial. In the second half of 2025, Mercuries has already raised more than TWD 17.5 billion through capital raising and the issuance of sub debt. So now the capital ratio is already very close to RBC 200%. And going forward, with the support of E.SUN, we think we can fully support the capital needs of Mercuries. Given that the profit of last year is TWD 34 billion, subtract the legal reserve 10%, adding the -- and also add the retained earnings from the previous year is TWD 8.3 billion. The total amount is TWD 39 billion. Assuming that we distribute a better dividend payout than the previous year, ranging from TWD 1.3 to TWD 1.4 per share and the total amount will bring to around TWD 20 billion or TWD 21 billion and which leaves E.SUN about TWD 18 billion. That is the capacity E.SUN has to fulfill the capital raising for Mercuries. However, for Mercuries, the capital replenishment, the replenishment plan will be taken on the -- in a progressive manner. So the TWD 18 billion is totally sufficient for the capital need for Mercuries. And we are very confident that the ICS capital ratio for Mercuries will come back to a healthy level, which is above 100% ICS ratio in -- by year 2026. And by year 2027, we further want to improve the ICS ratio to 125% above. Thank you. Thank you, investors. It seems like we have answered all the questions in queue. So if you still have any questions, please don't hesitate to e-mail or contact the Investor Relations of E.SUN. And thank you for participating in the earnings call today with us. Thank you. Bye-bye.