Hana Financial Group Inc. (A086790) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining our conference call of Hana Financial Group. I am Guenhoon Park, Head of IR at Hana Financial Group. I would like to thank everyone, including our shareholders, analysts and other market participants for joining us via the call line and the Internet. With that said, let's now begin with the third quarter 2023 earnings presentation. We have here today, CFO, Jongmoo Park of the Hana Financial Group, together with other key executives of the group and its subsidiaries. We will start with the presentation on business results, followed by a Q&A conducted over the call line. I will now give the floor to CFO, Jongmoo Park, who will take you through the third quarter earnings of Hana Financial Group.

Good afternoon. I'm Jongmoo Park, CFO of Hana Financial Group. Allow me to walk you through third quarter 2023 business performance of Hana Financial Group. I will first begin with financial highlights. Please refer to Page 3 of the deck. On the back of core earnings growth and improvement in disposition and valuation gains Q3 2023, cumulative net income of Hana Financial Group was up 4.2% year-over-year, reporting KRW 2,977.9 billion, yet again attesting to our solid income-generating capacity, notwithstanding heightened financial market volatility, driven by macro uncertainties and sluggish performance from nonbank subsidiaries. Net income for Q3 alone was KRW 957 billion, up 4.2% Q-on-Q. Although there was preemptive provisioning for the purpose of expanding loss-absorbing capacity as well as one-off factors, including FX valuation loss following strong dollar, notwithstanding a decline in NIM underpinned by steady and resilient interest income and efficient cost control, we were able to marginally outperform market expectations. Looking at Q3 cumulative results at a more granular level. First, core earnings, including interest and fee income continued to display a solid uptrend, in particular, disposition and valuation gains drove improvement in group's general operating income supported by solid earnings generation and the bank's active trading, taking advantage of market volatilities in interest rate and the FX rate. Moving on. Q3 cumulative SG&A expense reported KRW 3,199.4 billion. And at the backdrop of cost pressures with rising inflation and digital-related investments, we kept SG&A close to the normalized level, leveraging the group's strength and controlling costs. As such, group's CI ratio reported 37.8%, sustaining the 37% level for 3 consecutive quarters as we maintained resilient cost efficiency. Q3 group's cumulative provisioning was a total of KRW 1,218.3 billion, up by twofold year-over-year. As was the case in the first half of the year, during Q3, we were conservative and made preemptive provisioning, which was the main reason behind the increase. I will delve into more detail on the following pages. As you can see on the bottom left corner of the page, group's ROE and ROA were 10.49% and 0.68%, respectively. Lastly, Hana Financial Group's BOD today decided on quarterly cash dividend of KRW 600 per share. We have institutionalized dividend payout program to enhance payout visibility and the year-end dividend will be decided based on the group's annual net income and total shareholder return. As we revert back to weaker 1, group's capital ratios are being affected. In Q4, rather than driving aggressive asset growth through profitability-focused growth strategy, we plan to actively manage RWA, upon which we will strive to deliver above average shareholder return. Please now turn to Page 4. Q3 2023 group NIM was down 5 basis points Q-over-Q, reporting 1.79%, with Hana Bank's NIM down around 4 basis points Q-over-Q. In line with the outlook for major global central banks longer tightening cycle, market rates have increased pushing up the funding cost for time deposits and debentures, which negatively impacted interest spread and pricing. We expect this trend to continue until the end of the year and we don't expect meaningful NIM improvement in the foreseeable future. We will, therefore, focus on managing our loan deposit portfolio, expand the share of fixed rated loans, optimize funding structure so that we may continue to maintain group's profitability. Despite the bank's NIM decline, driven by solid asset growth, the group's quarterly interest income was up 5.6% year-over-year and on a cumulative basis, was up 1.9% year-on-year. More details are shown on the right. Hana Bank's loan in won was up 2.5% Q-over-Q and 5.1% year-to-date. On the back of demand for corporate loans for working capital needs and demand-driven household loans, we implemented an asset growth strategy focusing on quality -- high-quality assets, which drove solid results. We are in line with our annual loan growth target at levels on par with nominal GDP growth and in Q4, we'll focus on asset quality and profitability management upon which we will drive selective asset growth. Next, I would like to elaborate on noninterest income. Group's Q3 cumulative noninterest income posted KRW 1,696.4 billion and increased greatly Q-o-Q. It increased greatly Y-o-Y. First, in the case of group's cumulative fee income, it went up 3.4% Y-o-Y. This was mostly due to the increase of loan-related fee income following the growth of loan assets and improvement of a cumulative fee income including trust, pension and operating lease. However, on a quarterly basis, it decreased slightly Q-o-Q due to factors, including decrease of acquisition financing fee income. Next, a cumulative disposition valuation gains posted KRW 787.6 billion, a robust improvement Y-o-Y. The main factors were disposition gains related to securities and FX derivatives utilizing market volatility and increase of branch FX disposition gains following travel demand recovery. Regarding quarterly disposition and valuation gains due to KRW 42.8 billion of FX translation losses following the $1 exchange rate increase and recognition of KRW 55.1 billion of our securities subsidiaries IB valuation losses, it decreased Q-o-Q, but the normalized performance, excluding these factors, is maintaining a sound level. Next is Page 5. Q3 and group NPL ratio posted 0.46%, a 1 bp increase Q-o-Q. Group NPL posted 0.46% and it increased 3 bps due driven by rising overdue loans in bank's corporate segment and nonbanking subsidiaries. Accordingly, although it did not rapidly change as much as in the beginning of the year, we are seeing a slight deterioration of the asset quality indicators following the previous quarter. Although an overall economic downturn and high interest environment is continuing, we believe that our major subsidiary, Hana Bank's asset quality will not be very problematic. On the other hand, since our nonbanking side is exposed to relatively high risk according to the characteristics of its assets, we plan to focus on response -- responding through preemptive NPL asset management. However, since our group's normalized profit fundamentals and provisioning has been continuously growing during the past few years, we believe that we will sufficiently withstand the situation without a significant impact on our profit. On the other hand, we had preemptive provisioning also in this quarter with the goal of expanding loss absorption capacity, preparing for economic contraction possibilities in and out of Korea. We provisioned against a total of KRW 52.2 billion through conservative adjustment of credit LGD recovery rate and KRW 20.6 billion of loans that had deferred repayment during the COVID-19 period. According to the group's credit cost ratio [ posted ] 0.42% and it's being maintained at the previous quarter's level. The normalized credit cost ratio taking into consideration various non-normalized or nonrecurring factors posted around 30 bps. Lastly, the group's Q3 and CET1 was due to the rapid increase of $1 exchange rate posted 12.74%, a 8 bp drop compared to the end of the previous quarter. Next, let's go to Page 9, subsidiaries business results. Q3 cumulative net income of the group's major subsidiary, Hana Bank, thanks to robust growth of core earnings and improvement of disposition and valuation gains posted KRW 2,766.4 billion, and led the group's earnings improvement trend. On the other hand, Hana Securities Q3 cumulative net income posted KRW 14.3 billion and continued weak flow. It was caused by increase of credit cost and active reflection of impairment losses related to domestic real estate PF and overseas commercial real estate. Concerns of our hard landing of the global economy has been alleviated, but we expect that if the U.S. and Europe austerity stance is maintained, the real estate market downturn will continue even in Q4. Accordingly, we are conducting a full fledged investigation regarding the status of our investment assets and evaluation possibilities for losses and its additional provisioning or evaluation loss recognition is needed, we plan to do it in the most conservative fashion. Hana Capital and Hana Card Q3 cumulative net income posted KRW 191 billion and KRW 127.4 billion, respectively. Hana Capital's operating lease fee income rate fees increased, but the amount of provisioning also increased and performance decrease Y-o-Y. In the case of Hana Card, although the value increased due to the increase in acquisition costs and burden of provisioning, performance also decreased Y-o-Y. Please refer to the remaining slides for further information. With this, I will conclude Hana Financial Group 2023 Q3 business results presentation. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Next, we will conduct a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] We will take the first question. First question is from NH Investment Securities, Jun-Sup Jung.

Yes. Good afternoon. I am Jung Jun-Sup from NH Investment Securities. I would like to ask 2 questions. Now first question, I see that we see a steep growth of SME loans and the FX rate environment is not that positive, but I see that we were able to bring good performance. But I think that you have not yet achieved a CET1 ratio of 13%, which is your threshold. At the end of this year, the FX market is not going to be favorable to the company. So I would like to understand as to the -- how much of a higher expectation we could have on dividend payout? Now, I think last time, you said that you may increase your dividend payout on par with other peers. So I would like to understand what your position is at this point? Second has to do with an M&A for your nonbanking business. You have recently decided to scrap your plan to acquire KDB Life. Are you then looking for other life insurance companies? Or have you put on hold or have changed the direction of your M&A strategies?

Thank you very much for your question. Just bear with us 1 moment as we prepare for the answer.

Yes. This is the CFO, Park Jongmoo. You asked us 2 questions. The first 1 was on our dividend payout policy, which I will respond. I will then turn it over to our CSO, Jae Hyeok Yang, who will respond to the question on M&A. Now the CET1 ratio is at this point better than expected. But I have to say that our target is to achieve 13% by the end of the year. So at this point, the bank is putting in -- the group is putting in a lot of efforts on various different aspects for us to achieve that level. We've mentioned that even if the CET1 ratio underperforms at 13%, we've mentioned that we will bring up our dividend payout to be on par with that of our peers. And that [ stand ] is still intact. Based upon the solid growth of our asset base, we are at this point, also driving profit growth and income growth as well. So temporarily, even though our CET1 ratio is slightly below 13%, our target is always towards achieving above that 13%. And our shareholder return rate, our objective, once again, is to be at least on par with our peers. And that basically is the position of the entire management team.

Hello. This is Jae Hyeok Yang. I'm the CSO. Thank you very much for your question. As you've mentioned, for our attempt to acquire KDB Life Insurance, we've been selected as a short listed. And so we have gone through 2 months of due diligence and we reviewed the acquisition of the possible control of KDB Life Insurance. And based upon our conclusion that the acquisition will not be in line with our eventual objective. Because of some of the confidentiality closes, please understand that I won't be able to share with you all the specific details. But with regards to our nonbank business portfolio, as you know, compared to our competitors in terms of asset management, the retirement and also in the asset management market, we still need to catch up. So for us to actually grow, we are looking into other inorganic opportunities, growth opportunities. As I've mentioned previously, we will not just see top line or volume growth. We will look at capital efficiency as well as growth potential and profitability. So those will be the key assets -- levers that we will look into.

We will take the next question. The next question is from KB Securities, Kang Seung-Gun. Director Kang Seung-Gun, you are on the line, sir.

Thank you very much for the opportunity. I have 2 questions. My first question is regarding your security subsidiary. Regarding the 2 consecutive quarters, regarding provisioning and impairment recognition. I know that your performance was sluggish. And I'm curious about what is your remaining risk? And what is the future additional loss possibilities that might be recognized if you can elaborate on those possibilities, and regarding securities regarding PF and beneficiaries certificate? Or can you tell us about your exposure for these types of PF? Because it could lead to losses. And I know that you have many simulations that are going on -- and can you tell us about what are the possibilities of future losses until the end of the year and going forward? And secondly, regarding shareholder return early this year regarding the share buyback I know there have been some changes in the timing. So in early next year, I think the market might be expecting share buyback and cancellation going forward. So do you believe you will have the implementation?

Thank you very much for your questions. Please hold until we prepare our answers for you. Thank you.

Regarding your first question, we will invite Hana Securities CRO to answer. And for shareholder return, I myself, the CFO, will answer that question.

Thank you very much for your question. I am the CRO, [indiscernible] of Hana Securities. Related to UPS and bridge loans for PF and bridge loans it's about KRW 1.6 trillion and KRW 1.1 trillion of our PF has relatively no risk and for bridge loan, about KRW 500 billion and we believe for those that have risks, we have already provisioned and overseas exposure might be most problematic and for alternative investments overseas for commercial real estate, KRW 1.3 trillion for office is the exposure we have. However, in the first half and the second half, we're going to have the on-site investigation so that we will have valuations and we had already finished it in September, and we are already going to go to U.S. and Europe for reinvestigation on the site. And we believe that for any further valuation losses that we believe might incur or any risk, we are going to provision against them this year as well.

I am the CFO, and I would like to elaborate on our answer regarding shareholder return. And as I mentioned in my presentation, regarding our recurring fundamentals, it has been increasing for a normalized earnings. And related to the valuation of losses or provisions, we believe that we can have loss absorption without much shocks. So please take that into consideration. And regarding the additional share buyback and cancellation possibilities. We do know that for other companies, they have disclosed news of further share buyback. And we are aware of it, and we are also thinking of many different possibilities. We understand that there is a Korean discount in the financial market, and we are trying to absolve that, and we do know that we will need to have further share buyback. However, we need to think about the capital situation and how we're going to have share -- a total shareholder return. So I believe that there will be some differences in the timing or methods. And I believe that for cash dividend ratio -- in the cash dividend ratio, we are going to continuously maintain or increase our cash dividend ratio. And for total shareholder return, we believe that for that year's net income and capital ratio needs to be considered, so that regarding PSR, we are going to look at the volume of share buyback and cancellations. So in Q4, we will need to see the settlements, and we are going to have a discussion with our management and directors and let you know of our decision. Thank you very much.

I believe that answers your question. We will take the next question in the queue from [indiscernible].

Yes, I am [indiscernible] Securities. I just have 1 question. I see that your non-OP has gone up. And I think it has to do with the equity method treatment for BIDV. So can you just provide us with a little more color on that?

Thank you very much. Please bear with us 1 moment as we prepare for the answer.

Yes, my name is [indiscernible]. I'm the CGSO. Regarding the BIDV, just to update you, we've seen continuous asset growth. And as of September of 2020, on a consolidated net income, KRW 872 billion and this is actually a 15.5% growth on a year-over-year basis. And on an annual basis, this actually is 72.2% of the annual target of BIDV business plan. But we've also seen NPL go up for BIDV. And based upon the conservative IFRS provisioning basis the equity method gain on a year-over-year basis have been slightly down and KRW 78.9 billion. Now we are continuously doing risk management to manage the delinquencies and also to reduce the loans. And also, we will slow the NPL increase ratio and also cut down on the provisioning. We believe that the net income target of KRW 1.2 trillion is possible at the -- by the end of the year on a consolidated basis. As the non-OP did go up and basically in Q2, we had a private equity related expenses. Now -- so there was a base effect. So this has to do with the base effect that we've seen from the private equity losses that was plugged in Q2.

We will take the next question from Korea Securities Investment Securities, we have Mr. Baek Doosan.

I am Baek Doosan from Korea Investment Securities. I have a question about your disposition and valuation gains. And for next year, I know that you might be thinking of some macro numbers for FX or interest rate and for Q4 of this year or next year's first half disposition and valuation gains, what is the level that you are thinking of? And regarding the background behind the disposition and valuation gains, can you tell us about the trading situation or management strategy of the bank and securities that you have in mind?

Thank you very much for your question. We will hold Until we can answer your question. Please wait.

I am the CFO, Park Jongmoo, and maybe I can provide overall color. And then our bank's trading strategy will be elaborated by our bank CSO. And regarding the disposition and valuation gains and losses, you're probably well aware that there is FX and interest rate that will lead to great fluctuations. And compared to the previous quarter, looking at the one-off or nonrecurring items for normalized trading for the securities-related gains, we have our branch disposition gains that has not really changed much. However, for FX valuation losses, we had about KRW 42.8 billion of losses. And for this quarter for our securities subsidiaries, we have had some security-related real estate funds that led to a great recognition of valuation losses that led to the reflection of our valuation losses. And for 2023 for our forecast, we believe that at the end of the year, if we have the scenario that the FX is flat, as we have said, we will set our business plans based on that. And for the future related derivatives or bonds, we believe that regarding the disposition and valuation gains, they will be in line with the economic forecast. Thank you very much.

I am the CFO of the bank, [ Kim Yong Il ]. Regarding the bank's disposition and valuation gains for 2023. We believe that we can get gains from 3 areas for securities, for derivatives and for branch FX transactions. In Q1 of this year, we had the BOK rate that greatly committed. So we had a lot of gains from securities, but we also saw many volatilities, which led to great gains in our derivative products. And we are seeing a pickup in the FX demand because travel has picked up and we believe that we will have KRW 50 billion or so increase. And for nonmonetary losses, if we exclude that, we believe that KRW 980 billion of disposition and valuation gains for this year and next year. Regarding the exchange rate, we believe that it will be about KRW 1,280. And we believe that the interest rate, if it goes down at the end of this year, then we believe that there will be maintain demand for money exchange. And we believe that this disposition and valuation gains will be similar or a little bit over the current level.

We will take the next question from HSBC Securities, Mr. Won Jaewoong Won.

I just have a very simple question for you. I see that there's been a significant increase in precautionary loans. Is there any special reason behind this? And also in terms of asset quality, what are your plans control or manage asset quality or soundness?

Thank you very much for the question. Just bear with us 1 moment.

Yes. For the precautionary reason why that had been up is mostly because when we evaluate PF sites, although they don't go below substandard, whenever there are any business-related issues that we would categorize them under precautionary. So I think that had an impact. In terms of managing for soundness and asset quality, as you know, all of the holding companies this year have expected for the worst and had taken a very conservative plan. Now the domestic market backdrop was actually more difficult than what was expected. So this year, it was very difficult to manage that prudence or soundness. So we've seen that soundness is actually aggravate up until Q3. If you look at Hana Financial Group, in terms of asset quality management, we have delinquency management task force group, and we have also developed a very conservative business to really focus on the soundness management. So we think that in Q4, we will make sure that it doesn't aggravate from where we are now. We expect difficulties come next year as well, but through very rigorous controls and management, we will do our best to make sure that we don't see any further deterioration in asset quality.

We have Kim Do Ha from Hana Investment Securities.

Before you had your earnings release with Hana F&I, I think you had a disclosure and we -- I don't know if it's a good environment for you to increase these types of capital in this environment with some risks. So can you tell us about your goal behind this disclosure, this action going forward?

Thank you very much for your question. Please hold.

I am Park Jongmoo, Group CFO, and thank you very much for your question. And I believe that you ask a question about KRW 200 billion for Hana Capital. And for Hana F&I, there was KRW 150 billion of capital increase that was decided by the BOD. And the biggest reason behind this increase was to strengthen our nonbanking side. For Hana Capital and F&I, they are actually leaders in their respective markets. In addition, regarding the ROE compared to the group ROE, their ROE is at a very robust level. We do know that the market environment might not be as friendly as before. But looking at the overall flow, we believe that we need to preemptively prepare so that we can acquire opportunities for high-quality assets. So that is why we decided on the capital increase for Hana Capital. And for F&I as well, recently, we see that NPL opportunities are coming up in the market. So we want to be prepared so that for next year, we can have very good operations. Thank you very much.

Next question from SK Securities, Seol Yong Jin.

Now I understand that you extended your unsecured lending and also you adjusted the LGD adjustments and credit exposure. So can you provide some color regarding that? And also in Q4, here that you also have plans to make adjustments on the securitized loan LGD adjustments.

So please bear with us 1 moment.

Yes, I am the CRO of the group, I'm Kim Ju-Seong. For loss -- given default, we have both to adjust the unsecured and the secured portions, the bank association had set up a task force team. So the banks have gone together to talk about the methodologies. For credit LGD, the forward-looking coefficient would be adjusted. So through the LGD, we -- there will be adjustment on the provisioning. So for the reason why you think that Hana Bank has a more elevated level compared to others is because previously LGD is based off of the actual data of the company, the business data and Hana Bank has a better LGD recovery rates and other companies. So we had good figures. But now it's forward-looking criteria. So that had an impact. After this session, you will know that although that Hana Bank seems to have a higher level, but on an absolute basis, the size itself is not big. So I think you can safely say that all of the 4 major commercial banks are more or less the same. Now in Q4, we also need to provision for the securitized loan LGD, and it is much more complicated compared to the unsecured loans. So at this point, the banks haven't been able to come up with the appropriate methodology. But I think the provisioning level is expected to be higher compared to the unsecured loan LGD. But at this point, we don't know the specific number.

It seems that we do not have any questions in the queue at this point. I believe that we had a very fruitful Q&A session. If you have any further questions, please contact our IR team, and we will do our best to answer your questions. With this, we will conclude Hana Financial Group's 2023 Q3 business results presentation. you can revisit the earnings release on our website. Thank you very much.