UBS Group AG (UBSG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, once again. What a better way to start than with one of the most influential banking executives out there. We're very pleased and happy to start and kick off our 29th Financials Conference with Sergio Ermotti, CEO of UBS. Many thanks, Sergio, for joining us today, and a warm welcome to everyone. We've got a few things to get through. As always, plenty of topics over, and I want to leave enough time also for questions from the audience. Shall we get maybe start this, Sergio?

Maybe to start, can you run us through your thoughts on how you see fundamentals holding up? And how do you manage a global business like UBS in the current environment?

Well, first, I think that the economic data, while they are still somehow dispersed, seems to lead into a soft landing situations where across the board, consumers are still quite constructive. We see clients still on a risk-on attitude. Rates coming down is helping for sure. From our standpoint of view, they are -- it's pretty much aligned to our expectations by year-end. So we have been flagging 100 basis points potential cuts in the U.S. by the end of the year, 50 basis points in Switzerland. So for the time being, we see a quite risk-on environment. And unless there is any disruptions coming out of the post elections in the U.S., I do not expect any major changes.

Now it's been a little over a year since the closing of Credit Suisse. Your commitment to stakeholder hasn't really changed, and the progress has been visible. You're almost 1/3 of the way through the plan. Now entering the next phase of your integration, what would you say your team is delivering better so far? And where do you think you need to do more versus your projections?

Well, I guess, when I look at cost progress, when I look at noncore legacy assets wind down and simplifications, we are, I would say, around 6 months ahead of schedule. So I think I would say that we are in a good trajectory. And honestly, I think that things are going pretty well. So we just finished a very important milestone, the legal entity mergers that required a lot of efforts because we got -- basically, in 40 jurisdictions, we got 80 regulators giving us 180 approvals to merge the legal entities, and this is very much the prerequisite to tackle the next round of cost reductions. So in that sense, I don't think we could do much better than what we have been doing now. I'm not complacent. I'm not saying that -- but the next migration is going to be the client data migration. There, going faster only means creating potential operational risks. And there is a very little appetite, if not zero appetite, to do that. So I'm pretty much confident that we are on the right track, and we should just continue to execute alongside what we communicated externally, and that will be enough to create value for shareholders in the foreseeable future.

So a ton of gigabytes to integrate. So a key part of the integration is, of course, achieving cost synergies. And so far, you made good progress on gross cost savings and in cost reductions in the noncore unit, as you mentioned. When do you think we can expect to start seeing gross cost saves convert into net cost savings in your core businesses? And how should we think about the trajectory from now on?

Well, unfortunately, you won't see too much of -- much more cost savings coming through before the late part of 2025 and going into 2026 because, de facto, we are still running 2 banks, 2 systems, 2 infrastructure. So while we took down, let's call it, around $4 billion of cost so far and the big chunk is coming from noncore, which is mainly driven by the Investment Bank infrastructure, everything which has to do with Wealth Management and the Swiss business is going to just be decommissioned in the second part of 2025 and into 2026. So only then you see the true cost of what we call underlying costs coming down. So again -- and also it's very important to understand that as we -- as I flagged a few times, the trajectory of cost is not a linear one. So while we have a ramp-up of cost to achieve in the next few months and quarters, the true cost reductions will only come later as we execute the plan, as I just mentioned.

Very clear. And with respect to -- I mean one of the debates, of course, has been around the outlook for your Investment Banking business as you look ahead. How do you see things evolve there? And what metrics do you look to assess the performance in your IB business?

Well, the business is developing as we expected. We had a pretty good run in the last 3 quarters, ending the second quarter in terms of getting up the productivity of the 1,600 people we onboarded from Credit Suisse. Now we have a more comprehensive offering in banking. We also enhanced our markets business, our research coverage in the U.S. We see market share gains in Equities, in FX. We see market share gains in banking, particularly also in the U.S. So it's not just an absolute tailwind we see in terms of fees, but also, most importantly for us, was to see a structural market share gain. So I see the momentum as very strong momentum in terms of pipeline and the ability to win mandates. Of course, when I look at the current market conditions, how these mandates translate into transactions that gets closed, it's another matter. So we all see that the second -- the third quarter is a little bit more challenging. On the other hand, we saw a very constructive environment in terms of volatility in markets in the second quarter. So overall, I stay very confident that we are monetizing all the investments we did. In terms of how we measure the business, it's still the same. So nothing has really changed. We want to see a 15% return on allocated equity over the cycle and while remaining with a maximum 25% consumption of risk-weighted assets, excluding the noncore legacy numbers.

That's very clear. Maybe a word on your business -- on your Swiss business, I should say. Sabine Keller-Busse, President of your Personal & Corporate Banking unit, spoke about the Swiss outlook and the Swiss business at a conference earlier in the month. What were your key takeaways from this? And more broadly, what is the outlook for your P&C?

Well, the takeaway is that we just took the opportunity while we were hosting our Best of Switzerland Conference to update investors and clients there on our integration efforts. As you know, the Swiss business started the integration 6 months later than the rest of the bank because we were still evaluating what to do with the Swiss entity of Credit Suisse. When we decided to go for the full merger, we started really to embark into the integration. Our -- the Swiss business is generating -- is using around 30% of our resources. It's very important. It's 1 of the 2 pillars of our strategy, alongside with Wealth Management. it's supported by a strong and focused Investment Bank and Asset Management. But when you look at, in essence, in Switzerland, we are covering the full spectrum of banking activities. And it's very important for us, both from a financial standpoint of view but also from a diversification standpoint of view. Our commitments in Switzerland is still the same. So we are optimizing right now what we inherited. Some businesses were run at unacceptable levels of profitability or risks. But we are talking about not a significant part of the equation, but it's pretty hard to tackle. We will still commit around CHF 350 billion of loans to the Swiss economy. So which -- it's around 99% of the combined exposures the 2 banks had. So pretty much more of the same. We want to return to the same returns UBS had before the acquisition, so around 19% return on allocated equity, which is fully aligned with best-in-class returns for this kind of business when you look at the Nordics and our peers. So it's very simple. So it's a very important business, where we also continue to see growth, particularly in the areas of supporting entrepreneurs and wealthy clients.

Maybe let's move on to talk about wealth then. That's over 50% of your revenues. And we can start perhaps with a big-picture question first. After looking at the market, we've seen a decade-long bull market. The wealth management industry now seems to be encountering a bit more challenges ahead, with structural headwinds hitting both the revenue and cost sides. Your Credit Suisse takeover almost happened at the ideal time. Do you think the industry is facing structural changes? What opportunities and challenges do you see ahead for the industry as a whole?

Well, honestly, I don't see these changes being particularly relevant to this point in time. It's more of the same. I've been seeing this kind of structural changes and commoditization and erosion of margins for the last decade. So I think that what we are facing right now is nothing new. For sure, now technology and potentially new opportunities are coming up to free up resources, generate better returns that are also helping us managing even more efficiently our clients' relationships in terms of pricing as well. So there is -- whatever we optimize from a cost standpoint of view, a big chunk goes back to clients. So that's the reason. It's very important for us hot only to manage more effectively the stack of clients we have but also to continue to grow. And if I look at the dynamics supporting Wealth Management are -- the secular one, are still intact. So household wealth creation, the needs of people to save. The fact that in every place in the world, high-net-worth individuals, ultra-high-net-worth individuals are becoming more sophisticated in the way they want to be served fits very well into our business model. And the acquisition of Credit Suisse has accelerated our growth. It's the equivalent of 7 years or so of organic growth. It's particularly important in certain areas of the world, like Latin America, Southeast Asia, where we have a very complementary -- we had very complementary footprints. And now we have a critical mass to reinforce our leadership position. So I still look at the business in a very positive way in terms of growth trajectory, notwithstanding the fact that the competitive landscape is also coming from nontraditional banking players is there. So sponsors are keen, and asset managers are keen to tap into Wealth Management clients directly. But -- so we are not standing still. As you saw, we also launched very recently, de facto, a new initiative that combines all our alternatives capabilities under the roof of UBS and Credit Suisse combined that allow us, overnight, to create the #5 player in terms of alternatives with [ CHF 250 billion ] of assets. So definitely there, we have room to continue to respond to all these challenges.

And on the U.S. side, the U.S. is your single largest wealth market. What do you see as the key drivers of the U.S. growth now? Is it expanding financial advisers, organic digital investments or M&A?

No, the top priority in the U.S. is to restore profitability to a more sustainable level. So I think that we are profitable, but we are not as profitable as we should be. Our aim is to narrow the gap with our competitors. I always said it's extremely challenging, and if not impossible, to close the gap with our competitors in the U.S. because we have a completely different feeder and business model in the U.S. than many of our peers. But we need to achieve mid-teens return in the U.S. And this is possible by doing better what we can do, by bringing together the UBS capabilities, particularly also in respect of the new, for example, capabilities in banking that will allow to leverage the $2 trillion client assets we have. We have -- in the U.S., we have a high penetration of high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients. Those clients are entrepreneurs that owns businesses, participations. We need to do much more than we've done in the past between banking and Wealth Management. We need to institutionalize our relationships further with low compensable businesses in terms of payout, so like lending, like deposits, like trust planning. And so I'm convinced that over the next couple of years, we will narrow the gap. And that is going to be then a starting point to then eventually go into a new chapter. Until then, focus is execution and fixing that part. And so I'm confident that with Rob Karofsky now leading the team, we are entering in a good path in terms of the next progress we will show.

No, that's a key part of your equity story. I guess another important part is on capital. You've been clear that you see a 14% Common Equity Tier 1, a sustainable level over the medium to long term. The market continues to worry that the Swiss rules might take that number higher. Could you talk us through what you see as the moving parts from here?

Well, I fully understand that the market is clearly waiting to see -- to get more clarity on this matter. I think that at this stage, it's really still too early to speculate about the outcome. It's not also, I would say, easy to resist in commenting on comments that you're seeing, but we need to stay focused on delivering facts. We are engaged in technical discussions as we speak. We are not in a position to dictate or make a request. We are in a position to try to explain so that all parties can come to a balanced outcome, one that will allow a fair and balanced outcome, one that will allow UBS to stay competitive and also be a relevant supplier of services for the Swiss economy. So I guess we're going to find probably more in the late part of this year, early part of next year. But we are not really in control of timing and the outcome.

I'll wait and see. So that's on the capital debate. You've made it also clear that you remain committed to delivering on your mid- to long-term ambitions for shareholders' distribution. How should we think about the mix between dividends and buyback going forward?

Generally speaking, I mean, nothing has changed. Nothing is likely to change in the foreseeable future because I think it's -- our ambition is to grow our current cash dividend mid-teens -- in the level of mid-teens year-on-year and then complement this with share buybacks. As you know, we have been announcing $1 billion share buyback for 2024. We have executed the share buyback. And now we will announce the next capital returns plans for 2025 in the early part of February when we announce the fourth quarter results. So our view is that we want to continue to return, give returns to shareholders that are aligned to our 2022 payout. And as I said before, share buybacks are not a stop-and-go kind of exercise we do, so they're going to be part of the mix in the next couple of years. Of course, we need to now see exactly the outcome of the too-big-to-fail review on how we pace it. But I'm pretty confident that we're going to have a progressive component also in that respect.

Okay. I think we can start maybe to get a sense of the questions from the audience. If anybody would like to ask a question to Sergio, please raise your hand, and we'll get a microphone to you, please. There's one question here.

Mark Hoge from BDL. It's too early to comment on the capital recalibrations as you mentioned. But what about potential levers that you have in terms of mitigation? There's been speculation of shifting excess capital from Credit Suisse entities in the United States, for example. So what are the levers that you have, I mean, notwithstanding what the eventual requirements will be?

Well, it's very difficult to do scenario analysis and talk about that without knowing exactly what the rules are going to be. But in respect of rationalizing legal entity trap, capital and liquidity, this is exactly what we do regardless of the outcome. So it's a necessity. So we have clearly inherited a completely different legal entity infrastructure and booking model. And that's the complexity I referred to before when I spoke about the fact that we need to migrate clients. We need to migrate infrastructure in order to achieve the synergies, both in terms of cost and the full capital and liquidity benefits of it, right? So -- but that part of the equation you have to assume we would have done it regardless. So it's not a game changer in that -- from that standpoint of view, vis-à-vis the too-big-to-fail changes.

Any more questions? There's one in the middle.

I have to ask you for the U.S. So I mean in your wish list or realistic list, what is easier to achieve of the restructuring of the U.S. business: to give more products to the clients, so it's penetration to do things efficiently because there's a cost issue to grow clients? I mean in your wish list, what is -- how should we follow those milestones that Rob is going to try to achieve?

On my wish list, you have all of the above. So I mean the issue is that there is no silver bullet. You're not going to have a magic one business or one solution to narrow gap to our peers. You need to do everything. You need to work on revenues. You need to work on cost. You need to work on product capabilities. You need to work on growth of the business. So I think it's really much everything. So we have very clear ongoing projects on how we're going to deliver them. Some of them are more immediate. Others will take time. And it's only through a very focused and disciplined execution that we will achieve those targets.

Maybe one more question from me then on -- we've talked about progress made on one of the areas which was most visible was your Non-core and Legacy unit, which is considerably smaller than only a year ago. Maybe could you talk about the performance to date and the outlook of your noncore cost savings all the way through 2026, how you see things come through?

Well, I mean, I'm very pleased with the progress we made so far in noncore. If you go back into the 2022 pro forma, I think that noncore took out $3 billion of cost. If you look at only in the recent -- the last 12 months or so, probably $2 billion of cost. We -- and which -- talking about cost, we always mentioned that the biggest and most important priorities around noncore was cost, taking out infrastructure. I mean early on in the debate, people were asking a lot about the assets, credit and market risk exposure. Risk-weighted assets, which we are taking down also very proactively, I mean, around 60%. But this is not the priority for me. The biggest real game changer is to take out the cost. And here, I'm very pleased with what we are doing, and still, work needs to be done. And we flagged that we believe that we can continue to make good progress on that front. So the outcome is going to be, as I mentioned, 50% of the $13 billion we save, gross is coming out of noncore. And so if I look at the journey, still a little bit more than half done. In terms of risk-weighted assets and LRD, we are down 60% from the peak, so day 1. We still manage very proactively in the unwind of these transactions. But there -- I think that there we have the luxury to look at really value creation for shareholders. So we always look at how much capital we free up, what is the cost of capital that we free up. And as we progress, we can now embed much more also the element of cost to sustain the business as an element that will drive also the next round of risk-weighted assets reduction. So still work to be done. We closed 45% of the books, so -- which tells you pretty much is another number to tell you. Great progress, but still at least 18 months to 2 years of efforts to go.

[indiscernible] Any more questions for Sergio from the audience? One more thing I wanted to ask you was on the wealth market, particularly in Asia. You've got $600 billion invested assets. UBS has been successful in China. Now my question is with growth slowing, can this continue to contribute to near-term growth? In Hong Kong, particularly, we've seen a combination of negative GDP and falling property prices. Should we worry about growth from here?

Well, of course, the journey -- as we mentioned a few times in the last couple of years now, that's the journey in Asia and China is not the one we saw in the last 20 years. Having said that, we have been in Asia and China for 50 years. We do see -- we're going to continue to grow in Europe, of course. But the 2 engines of growth for us, which is going to deliver superior perspective, are still the U.S. and Asia. Asia will -- as you mentioned, will grow. The growth will be less linear, less probably important in absolute terms, but wealth creation and the demographic trends are really supporting our business. We see a lot of scope for continuing to invest in very focused way in our Asian businesses, including China. So we remain extremely supportive of that.

The general impression is -- and it was partly what I was alluding earlier on the wealth question, is that it seems to be that there's less market-driven growth going forward and a lot more operational leverage to be extracted to be able to sustain those margins and defend margins in wealth. Do you think that's a fair assessment when you look at your business globally?

Yes. But there is also a lot of changes in Asia. You look at the corridor between, for example, Asia and the Middle East, it's really growing a lot. So in terms of people moving for business, wealthy people moving their domicile, and our infrastructure is really prepared for that. So the global footprint we have and the very unique capabilities we have are helping us to capture not only the growth but also the movement of the stack of people moving between different countries and jurisdictions. So I really believe that this environment is quite helpful for us in terms of displaying our capabilities. In a lower-growth environment, of course, you get less beta, but it's also making the life of our competitors more challenging. So I mean, let's face it. We have been able, in the past, in the last 10 years, in moments of downturns in Asia to outbeat our competitors in terms of growth. So I do feel that we're going to pursue the same. Focus is not just about surfing the wave here. It's about also creating a differentiating proposition to clients and capture the extra value.

That's very clear. One last question for me is one of the themes of this conference, of course, is to understand how banks prepare for a lower interest rate cycle. And I just put the same question to you: how are you preparing UBS on a global business basis to interest rates going down?

Well, as I mentioned before, we are preparing. We are planning and the -- short but also medium terms. And the business outlook for us is very much influenced by an understanding that rates are going to come down. As I mentioned, in the U.S., we were flagging 100 basis points for the rest of the year cut in the -- by the Fed, by the end of the year, so we got 50. The Swiss National Bank hasn't announced yet their policy, but we do expect 50 basis points contraction between now and year-end. So we are preparing for that. Now the uniqueness of our business model is it allow us to be fairly confident that if the kind of soft landing and lower rate environment is not disruptive or influenced by macroeconomic shocks, so we have shown in the past that we can operate profitably in a lower rate environment or even in a negative rate environment because only 25% of our revenues are coming from NII. When rates comes down, we are able to display, even more forcefully, our unique offering across the asset allocation and the transactions, our capabilities. Usually, you have a pickup in volumes. Usually, you see clients relever their positions. So we have a kind of offsetting dynamics. Lower rates means clients are more willing to take on leverage. If you look at the leverage, we -- contractions we had with clients in the last 24 months, you see it very clearly. So I'm not saying that we have a full 100% hedge, but pretty much a diversified outcome because of that. So we are not complacent that we are confident that we can navigate a lower rate environment like we did in the past.

And that's very visible in the revenue mix. Okay. Unless there's any last-minute questions from the audience, I'll thank you, Sergio, for a very insightful session. And thanks for taking the time to join us today.

Thank you.