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

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining E.SUN Financial Holding Company's Earnings Conference call. I'm Bernard from the Investor Relations. We appreciate your participation today. Joining us today are Deputy CFO, Sarah; and my colleague, Ruby. Next, I would like to invite Sarah to begin with her opening remarks.

Dear investors, E.SUN delivered a strong performance in the second quarter of 2026, marking a record high in net profit for the same period, solid growth across core banking business, coupled with strong growth in securities. Net fee income set a new record high, growing at a rate of 39.9% Y-o-Y. Today, we also announced the financial results for July. For the first 7 months, net profit increased 20.9% Y-o-Y, supported by solid growth in both net interest income and net fee income. We are optimistic about our performance this year and expecting to achieve good results. With effective cost management, E.SUN's bank CI ratio improved to 46.4% for the second quarter this year. E.SUN will continue to strictly control the growth rate of expenses to a single-digit level this year. For overseas expansion, E.SUN plans to open the Osaka rep office in Japan on September 4 this year and Mumbai branch in India in 2027. The Toronto branch in Canada is also in the pipeline, which will further strengthen E.SUN's North American presence by connecting Los Angeles, Toronto and Dallas into an integrated financial service platform. Regarding to the progress of Mercuries Life acquisition, both companies have been working closely on integration preparation since shareholders approved the transaction on January 23 this year. Following the FSC's approval on July 7, the transaction is scheduled to close on September 1 this year. And Mercuries Life will be renamed E.SUN Life on December 1 this year. After this acquisition, E.SUN Financial Holding Company will become the fifth largest listed financial holding company in Taiwan by total assets, further strengthening our diversified earnings, engines across banking, insurance and securities. Lastly, E.SUN's outstanding performance has been also recognized by leading international institutions. This year, E.SUN Bank received the Bank -- Taiwan Bank of the Year, Outstanding Award from Bloomberg Business Week, further affirming our leadership in Taiwan banking industry. E.SUN is committed to its ESG goals. For 12 years in a row, we have been selected into the DJBIC Index and have been ranked among the top 5% in the Taiwan Stock Exchange's Corporate Governance Evaluation 11 times, marking the best performance among Taiwan peers. Looking ahead, we will continue to deliver long-term value to our shareholders. Thanks for your attention.

Thank you, Sarah. Now let me walk you through E.SUN financial performance and business highlights. Please turn to Slide 4. At the second quarter, the total assets of HFC (sic) [ FHC ] amounted to TWD 4.8 trillion, while the bank's total assets were TWD 4.7 trillion. And for the key financial indicators, the book value of HFC is TWD 7.4 per share. The double leverage ratio is 114.62% and the financial holding company's CAR ratio is 118.09%. 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 securities branches remain the same as 17. On Slide 5 is the business and financial review of the second quarter of 2026. For the financial performance, net revenue of FHC was TWD 53.8 billion, which grew by 24.8% year-on-year. Net profit was TWD 21.4 billion, which grew by 27.8% year-on-year. The financial Holdings EPS was TWD 1.32. ROE was 50.46%. ROA was 0.91%. For the subsidiaries, E.SUN Bank's net profit was TWD 18.8 billion, which grew by 11.3%. Move on to the business development. The loan balance reached TWD 2.84 trillion, which grew by 60.1% and in which corporate loan grew by 20%. SME loan grew by 40% and retail loan grew by nearly 11%. And on the deposit balance grew by 15% year-on-year. Net fee income was TWD 90.8 billion, which grew by 39.9% and reached a record high. And for the wealth management fee income was TWD 9.3 billion, 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 770.8%. As a business highlight, the FSC has approved the acquisition of Mercuries Life. The effective date was set up as September 1. And the transactions dealed E.SUN to Taiwan's fifth largest listed financial holdings by total assets, complete our 3 core profit engines, banking, insurance and securities. On Slide 6, as you can see in the upper part of the slide, the net profit and the EPS both set a record high 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 financial holdings 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 82% of the total profit. As you can see on the right-hand side, the subsidiaries delivered strong earnings growth. Notably, E.SUN Securities posted an outstanding 205% year-on-year increase in net profit. On the next slide is the net income breakdown. Again, E.SUN follows the golden rule of the growth. Net profit growth is larger than the net revenue growth, in which is larger than the operating expense growth. 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 45.4% of the total net revenue and the net fee income accounts for 36.9% and the other income accounts for nearly 18%. 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 FHC. Looking at the pie chart, wealth management accounts for 46.7% of the net fee income. On the right-hand side, you can see the growth rate of wealth management was 30.7%, which was after 4 consecutive years of double-digit growth. We still delivered a very decent growth in the wealth management business. On Slide 11 presents the capital adequacy ratio of both FHC and banks. Both maintained its capital ratio at a very adequate level. The CAR ratio of FHC is 118.09% and the Tier 1 ratio of the bank is 12.03%. Moving on the -- moving to the 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 deposit grew by 50% year-on-year, in which the foreign currency deposit grew by 9.36% and the total loan grew by 60.12% year-on-year, in which the foreign currency loan grew by 40%. On Slide 14 shows the loan portfolio breakdown of E.SUN Bank. E.SUN has very diverse loan structure with our large corporate loan, SME loan, mortgage loan and secured personal loan loans are all accounts for around 20% to 25%. And on the right-hand side, you can see across all the loan categories, we had very decent growth in the second quarter. On Slide 16 is overseas development of E.SUN Bank. The overseas branches and the subsidiaries net profit contributed 25.3% of total net profit and the loan balance grew by nearly 20%. For the overseas network, as part of our overseas expansion strategy, the Osaka subbranch will open on September 4, while the Mumbai branch is expected to commence operations in 2027. On Slide 17 shows the deposit structure of E.SUN Bank. The overall LDR is 69.6% and the LDR for the foreign currency is 39.9%, which has been increased in the past few years. On Slide 18, the NIM and spread. E.SUN NIM has remained at a very flat level. On right-hand side, you can see that the spread has been improving over the past few quarters. It's all thanks to the wealth management of cost control, cost funding control and loan pricing strategy. On Slide 19 is the wealth management fee breakdown. The bancassurance accounts for 32.6% of the total wealth management fee income and the mutual fund accounts for 36.3%. On Slide 20 is the credit card business breakdown. We have 4,881,000 active cards and per card share spending hit a record high in the past few years. On Slide 21 is the asset quality of E.SUN Bank. E.SUN maintained sound asset quality with the NPL ratio at 50 basis points in the first half and the credit cost is 90 basis points. 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 46.4%, which has been improving since 2023 from nearly 90%. The next is about E.SUN FHC's other subsidiaries. First, on Slide 25 is E.SUN Securities. In Q2, benefiting from the AI-led market rally and active trading activities, E.SUN Securities posted strong growth with stock brokerage fee income up 112% year-on-year and annualized ROE reached 44.9%, both representing the strongest performance in recent years. And on Slide 26, you can see the performance of E.SUN Asset Management. Domestic fund AUM reached TWD 132 billion and the discretionary mandate AUM reached TWD 168 billion, representing a combined growth of 51% compared with year-end last year. And this slide shows the milestone towards the acquisition of Mercuries Life. The FSC approved the acquisition on July 7. The effective date for the share swap was set for September 1. After the acquisition, E.SUN FHC is expected to rank fifth in the asset side among listed FHCs. And that concludes my presentation. We will now move on to the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions]. We have received our first question from an investor. The question is, what is the outlook for NIM? And regarding these questions, let me provide some color. With higher loan yields, improving U.S. long-term rates and lower funding cost, we expect NIM to continue to improve. Therefore, we remain comfortable with our 1.33% year-end NIM target.

The second question is if we will change our guidance of each business. Indeed, we have changed some guidance of our business such as loan and deposits. For the guidance of loan, we expect it to grow by 13% to 14% this year. And for deposit, the growth rate will be changed to 12% to 14% Y-o-Y this year because we have to match the demand of loans and the growth of loans. For the wealth management fees, now we remain our target at double-digit growth, and we believe for the second half of this year, the performance of wealth management will still be very strong and will still be very good. And the third question is regarding to our loan drivers. I think the domestic loan growth were primarily driven by the strong demand of AI. So the sector recording the most significant growth, especially from the ICT and electronic products. And for the overseas branch, the growth momentum comes from the financial centers such as Hong Kong branch, Australia branch, L.A. branch and Singapore branch. And this mainly from the infrastructure finance, such as data center and renewable energies and other asset-backed leasing financing such as the aircraft and vessel financing. The lending opportunities have benefited from the very robust global investment demand, which contributes to the solid loan growth, both domestic and overseas. For the loan growth outlook for the second half of the year, we believe the strong demand of AI server and semiconductor supply will continue to very robust for the second half of this year. In addition, we can see a number of large corporations have recently announced plans for syndication loans and major capital expenditure projects, which we think is expected to serve as the main growth driver for the loan expansion for the half of the year. We have investor ask a question regarding to our dividend policy. I think E.SUN will continue to maintain the progressive dividend policy, which means higher EPS will support it with higher dividend distribution. We will also try to maintain the dividend yield about 4%.

As there are no further questions, we will conclude today's Q&A session. Should you have any further questions, please feel free to contact the Investor Relations team. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Thank you, and have a wonderful day.