VZ Holding AG (VZN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the full year results 2023 analyst conference call and live webcast. I'm Iruna, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Giulio Vitarelli, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and good morning, and welcome to the presentation of our 2023 full year results. I assume that everyone has been able to download our presentation, which is available on our website or via link you will find in the invitation for this call. I will guide you through the presentation, together with our Chief Financial Officer, Rafael Pfaffen. Rafael will take over agenda item 2, and I will take you through agenda items 1 and 3. We will both take your questions at the end of the presentation. So let's start on Page 3. The market environment remained challenging over the whole 2023. High inflation, rising interest rates and uncertain economic outlook, especially in Europe, concerned investors. And we shouldn't forget the uncertainties triggered by the liquidity problems of some banks in the U.S.A. and the emergency sale of Credit Suisse to UBS. But towards the end of the year, the situation brightened somewhat. So the expectation of the first interest rate cut resulted in a market rebound at the end of the year. Against this backdrop, we were able to continue our growth path, thanks to our company's robust business model. So we have seen unchanged strong marketing response, a high number of new client inflow for consulting services and the continued high conversion rate from consulting clients to platform clients. As a result of this, we were able to continue on our growth path in all business lines and benefited from tailwind from interest business. We experienced a high new clients inflow for consulting services, as we will see later in detail. And despite difficult markets, AUM-related revenues increased by 7.4%. Banking income grew by 24.2%, thanks to the tailwind from higher interest rates. This led also, thanks to base effect, to an above-average net profit growth of 23.5%. As you know, after consultancy project, many clients opt for 1 or more of our platform services. And as a result, we gained over 8,000 new platform clients, slightly more than in 2022. The net new money number per consulting FTE reached CHF 19.9 million and was just at the upper end of the long-term range. We are able to attract a total of CHF 4.4 billion net new money. Given the market condition, we are satisfied with this result. As planned, we have further increased our consulting capacity, namely by 7.3% to an average of 220 FTEs for 2023. And our academy is well staffed with young talents, so we will be able to expand the consulting capacity in future years as well. For 2024, we expect to increase capacity at 237 FTEs. And a few words on Germany and the U.K. There, we are growing according to plan and in the same steps as we grow in Switzerland. Let's take a look on the most important key financial figures that are summarized on the right side on Page 3. Our top line growth came in at 14.8%. So we are at CHF 463.8 million compared to CHF 409.9 million for 2022 as costs grew by 7.6%. As I said, we were able to increase our bottom line by 23.5% to CHF 187 million. These figures reflect an EBIT margin of 47.2% and a net profit margin of 40.3%. As mentioned in the first half year results, we have to keep in mind that we had to introduce IFRS 17 standards for our insurance business in 2023. IFRS 17 does not have any influence on the bottom line. But in a nutshell, it means that we are now netting the income from insurance businesses, the claims and certain operating costs in the top line. For better comparability, we have also adjusted the previous comparison periods, and these changes in the top line have led to adapted margin targets. We will go into these new margin targets in more detail later. Our balance sheet shows still solid ratios, well above the industry and average, and we want to keep it that way also in the future. That's very important for our clients and for us. By the end of the year, we were at the equity ratio of 14.2% and the CET ratio of 26.2%. More details on this topic will follow later from Rafael. On the AUM side, we were able to generate roughly CHF 4.4 billion net new money, which is slightly lower than in 2022. And AUM stood at CHF 44.9 billion, which corresponds to an increase of 14.8% compared to the end of 2022. That are the key figures. Now we'll go into some details on the following pages. On Page 4, we can see the details of our revenue streams. All 5 components came in higher than in the previous year. The largest component, the management fees on AUM on the bottom, came in with a growth of 7.4%, as I said, despite the challenging financial market environment. Of the other components, I would like to emphasize, first, strong growth in consulting fee income. The 19.9% reflects the strong demand for our consulting services. More about that later. For the first time, the earning of the new VZ Group are included in the insurance result. That's why we have an above-average growth in this line with 48.6%. For the following years, the insurance business will be back on the average growth path of the last years. In addition, banking income grew, thanks to higher interest rates. And for details, we will go on the next page, 5. Here, you can see the 3 elements of the banking income. As you know, transaction fees and trading results decreased due to the development of financial markets. Then another point is the strong demand for all-in fee models and index-oriented investment styles. We expect the stronger demand for all-in fee models and index-oriented investment styles to continue also in this year and in the next years to come. Our interest business increased strongly from CHF 24.3 million in 2022 to CHF 61.6 million in 2023. As the first interest rate cuts are foreseeable in this year, 2024, a further increase in interest business seems to be possible but at a significant lower growth rate. This, thanks to a growing balance sheet. Turning to Page 6, we will discuss the bottom line development, which came in at 23.5%, higher than in 2022 at CHF 187 million. The reason for the jump in net profit margin to 40.3% is the interest rate development in 2023. We assume that profit margin will not improve any further in the future. Our costs are likely to grow in line with revenues again. Just to point out, due to IFRS 17 implementation, we have set our new long-term net profit margin target at 38%, up from 36% in the years before. Let's turn to Page 7 now, where, on the left side, you can see the development of our consulting capacity. The development of the consulting capacity is taking place as planned. For 2023, we had an average of 220 FTEs working as consultants for new consulting clients, and we expect to increase this number by almost 8% to 237 in 2024. And we will plan or we plan to increase this number at the same pace over the next years, too. This enables us to meet strong demand for our consulting services. As you can see in the middle of the page, the strong demand for consulting services has been reflected in the growth of our consulting revenues. There, we recorded a new high at CHF 37.3 million. This is the ultimate signal, which shows the strong demand for our consulting offerings, and this is the key element for our future growth. On the right side, as a result of the strong client demand, the net new money number came in at roughly CHF 4.4 billion, slightly lower than in 2022, but still at a considerable level. Compared to 2021 and 2022, the end of negative interest rates took pressure off clients to immediately invest funds that become available. And in addition, the uncertain environment reinforced the hesitant investment behavior. In such a situation, clients are still more reluctant with investment decisions. And what has to be considered, too, is that in 2023, homeowners reduced their mortgages more quickly than usual due to the noticeable rise in interest rate. The CHF 4.4 billion net new money translates to an average of CHF 19.9 million net new money per consulting FTE, which is at the upper end of the long-term average corridor. Given this, we decided to keep this corridor at CHF 17 million to CHF 20 million per FTE for the time being. On Page 8, we will discuss the wealth management numbers. As mentioned before, AUM increased by 14.8% compared to the end of 2022 to CHF 44.9 billion. That's the first line on this page. This growth is driven by the PM mandates and the others. PM mandates grew by 16.6% and the others by roughly 12%. Equally important for us is the number of platform clients, displayed as wealth management clients. This number went up by 12.4% compared to 2022 to over 73,000 clients, which actually are households and not single clients. This means a strong increase of about 8,000 new clients for the full year. We expect this figure to continue to increase at the same rate as the client demand on the consulting side also in the next year. Moving on to Page 9, we can see the results of our work on the platform clients. On the left side, we have the share of the 73,000 clients using only 1 platform. And on the right side, we see the share of clients using 3+ platforms. The share of clients using 3+ platforms increased to 25.3%. And as you know, our target is a share of 33% of clients using 3+ platforms. I think it's realistic to achieve this target in the next 4 to 5 years. And continuing to add more than 8,000 new clients a year, which usually start with only 1 platform, this can be considered as a strong performance. A very important measurement, too, for us is the client satisfaction reported on Page 10. We measure the satisfaction with the NPS score, the Net Promoter Score methodology. The clients raised the ratio to a very high level of satisfaction for both client segments. We measure it for the consulting clients and for the wealth management client. Considering the very challenging situation on financial markets in the last 2 years, the NPS score of the wealth management client is very reassuring for us. That means that clients are very happy with our services and the performance, even in this difficult market phase. Just to remind you, an NPS score above 20 is considered as very good, and the score above 50 is considered as excellent. Let's spend a few words on our branch office network on Page 11. In 2023, we opened 3 new branch offices in Switzerland, in Wil, in Bellinzona and Nyon. With these 3 new offices, we increased our presence in all 3 linguistic regions of the Swiss market: in the German one, in the French one and the Italian one. In the next 24 months, we plan to expand our branch office network by another 2 to 4 new offices in Switzerland, but there's nothing concrete yet. In the U.K., the expansion of the branch office network depends mainly on the acquisitions we will be able to make in the next few years. But as the next step, we plan to open a new office south of Cambridge. That will happen in 2024. What you can't see on this chart is the expansion of existing branches. We enlarged the areas of 2 to 3 Swiss branches every year because we are experiencing more customer demand, and that's also very important for us. Now for the next agenda item, I have the pleasure to pass you over to our Chief Financial Officer, Rafael, who will go through the details of our financials. Rafael, please?

Good morning also from my side. I start my presentation on Page 13. Here, you can see the revenues and expenses on a long-term comparison. This gives you a good idea on how our business developed in the last years. As Giulio has already given you quite some information about the first 6 revenue lines, I will focus on the expenses. The total revenue were at CHF 463.8 million, which is a plus of 14.8%, as Giulio has already mentioned as well. Then the expenses grew by only 7.6% to CHF 244.9 million. Here, it is important to note that not only the previous line item, insurance claims, but also both the personnel expenses and other operating expenses were affected by IFRS 17. On both items, roughly CHF 2.1 million of costs had to be included in the insurance result in the top line. Without this effect, operating expenses would have grown by 9.4% instead of 7.6%. The growth of 9.4% is quite a healthy figure for us because we expand our business all the time, and the top line grew by roughly 15%. I will talk about the personnel expenses and other operating expenses a little bit later. And the depreciations and amortizations, which you see on Page 13, increased by 6.5% to CHF 23.1 million. Of the total, revenues grew much stronger than the expenses, the EBIT increased by 24.2% and came even with CHF 218.9 million. Income taxes grew a little bit more than the EBIT. This is mainly caused by income tax rates in U.K. So we have already mentioned last time, in U.K., the tax income rates increased from 19% to 25% in 2023. And we had, therefore, to make a one-time reevaluation of our deferred tax liabilities. And all the before-mentioned items had the fact that our net profit grew by 23.5% to CHF 187 million. Then on the next page, Page 14, you see the personnel expenses. They increased by 8.5% to CHF 170.2 million. Without the before-mentioned IFRS 17 effect, the CHF 2.1 million, as mentioned before, the increase of the personnel expenses would have been 9.9%. In 2023, we were able to hire 143 new FTEs on a net basis. This corresponds to more or less 165 new employees. And at the end of 2023, we had 1,390 FTEs, which corresponds roughly to 1,600 employees, which we had and reset at the end of 2023. In the long-term, we expect our personnel expense ratio will increase again a little bit and that it will be around 39% in the future. Then we can move on to Page 15. Here, you see the other operating expenses, they increased by 5.1% to CHF 51.6 million. Without the IFRS 17 effect, the general and administrative expenses would have been CHF 2.1 million higher, and the overall operating expenses would have increased by 9.4%. Again, that's quite a healthy growth for us as we are enlarging our business all the time. Then on the Page 16, you see the EBIT, the earnings before interest and taxes, and they increased by 24.2% to CHF 218.9 million. As we have already explained now a couple of times that the implementation of the IFRS 17 standard led to a diminished top line of the different expenses related to insurance contracts are now included in the top line in the line item insurance result. And as the top line diminished and the EBIT and the net profit were not affected or not really affected by IFRS 17, the EBIT margin increased because of this. And therefore, we adjusted our long-term EBIT margin target from 42% to 44%. As Giulio has already given you quite some information on the development of our net profit on Page 6, I move on from the EBIT directly to the balance sheet, which you can see on the next page, so Page 17. Overall, the balance sheet increased by roughly CHF 600 million to CHF 6.2 billion. This is a growth of 9.9%. Customer deposits increased by roughly CHF 400 million, and the mortgages grew by roughly CHF 320 million. The growth of mortgages came in a little bit lower than usual. This has to do with the fact that Giulio has mentioned that some house owners paid back their mortgage or quarterly paid back their mortgage due to the high interest levels. Overall, our balance sheet is really safe and low-risk profile. This is also what you can see on the next page. Here, you can see on the right-hand side at the bottom, the long-term deposit rating of the VZ Depository Bank in Switzerland. The VZ Depository Bank in Switzerland makes up more than 90% of the VZ Group balance sheet. So the rating of the VZ Depository Bank is also representative for the rating of the group. And we had a very good Moody's rating of Aa3, which would correspond to a AA- rating in the S&P terminology. That's really good rating for a more or less a small bank of the VZ Depository Bank. Then on the right-hand side, you can also see the total equity. This grew by -- from CHF 771 million to CHF 926.1 million. The equity ratio was at 14.2% and the BIS CET1 ratio at 26.2%. Both are excellent figures. For example, the 26.2% mean that we have more than 3x more equity than is required under the Basel III framework. And on the left-hand side, you can see the payout ratio. We recommend a dividend of CHF 2.24 per share to the general assembly in April. This is a payout ratio of 48%, and we plan to increase the payout ratio to 50% in the next year. The book value of our treasury shares was CHF 47.6 million. And with this information, I give back to Giulio, who will give you some more details on the outlook of the next months.

Thank you for your comments on the financial details, Rafael. Let's go to the outlook now on Page 20. As we mentioned on different slides before, the demand for our consulting services is still high, and we assume that it will increase also in the next years due to demographic and the challenges that we face in the pension systems. That is the base of our business model and the key for our future growth. That means that we will continue to build up our business by increasing the new client inflow. And as planned, we will work on increasing the consulting capacity by 7% to 9% per year over the next years. And we are working on the client conversion rate of consulting clients into platform clients. With the platform clients, we are working on increasing the platform usage per client. And as seen, we are also increasing or expanding the physical presence with our branch offices, with 2 to 4 new branch offices over the next 24 months. On the digital side, we will continue developing our financial portal. So as next steps, we will extend the self-onboarding and self-service functionalities. Then we will add the possibility to refinance mortgages digitally for our clients. The investment in our financial portal is very important for us because it is the digital interface to our clients, and the share of clients who use it is increasing steadily. And if a client uses the financial portal, the probability of using more platforms normally increases and keeps the client close to us. So it is very important for us to invest in the financial portal to develop the financial market, and it has the same importance as the physical presence with our branch offices. In Germany, it's -- the situation is very similar to Switzerland. Also there, we are working on marketing our services and increase new client inflow and working on consulting capacity and the conversion rate of our clients to platform services. In the U.K., there, we are still working on improving the marketing intelligence to gain new clients in an organic way, in broadening the internal trainee program for new advisers, and we are working on smaller IFA acquisitions. Then we are exploring the possibility of implementing our own PM platform, portfolio management platform, but this will take time. Today, the PM mandates are serviced externally. And integrating the PM platform could bring an increase in efficiency in managing the client portfolios and increasing our revenues without raising prices for our clients. The importance of the PM platform will increase, especially in view of future growth. And we decided in our first step that we will reduce the number of external platforms from today, 17, to about 3. This will happen in the next 24 months. The outlook on the financials for 2024, of course, it depends on the development of financial markets. And -- but if financial markets remain stable, revenue and profit growth should be within the long-term average in 2024. Due to base effect, growth will be stronger in the first half of the year than in the second. As mentioned before, interest business is expected to come in higher, but on a significant lower growth rate than in 2023. Key factors there will be the timing of the first interest rate cuts and the growth of our balance sheet on the other hand. For our client and for us, it's still important to keep solid risk ratios with a CET ratio of around 25%, while maintaining our ROE at around 20% over the next years. And as Rafael mentioned, we will also continue with the gradual increase in the dividend payout ratio from 48% to 50% in 2025 for the fiscal year 2024. Yes. Overall, we can state that with our business model, the long-term growth story, with a potential growth rate of 10% per year on the top and bottom line is still unchanged and will remain unchanged also over the next years. Here, we come to an end with our presentation. Now I will give back the line to the operator, and Rafael and I, we are ready for your questions. Please, operator, go on.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Andreas Venditti with Vontobel.

The first one, maybe on the operating margin level. You reiterated the higher targets that you announced already with the half year results. Now obviously, the full year and especially the second half was much higher than that. You explained partially, of course, due to the interest income boom. However, going forward, you guide for revenue and cost growth to be in line, as it's been for many years, let's say. This would obviously imply stable margins compared to the targets that are obviously below these margins. Maybe you could explain a bit how you see this going forward? And maybe also, the next point, if you could add some -- your view on the management fees on AUM, especially on the margin developments there. What can we expect?

So maybe Rafael takes the first question, and I will take over the second one.

Yes. Good morning. Yes, the operating ratios or the net profit and EBIT margins are now higher than what we give as the long-term target. And here, we think that we will give some of the margins on to our customers. That's what we have done in the past. Or that we develop new features in the financial portal, where the client doesn't have to pay for, and we also want that our employees can participate in the success of VZ. And therefore, we think that the margins will come back a little bit and, at least, they will not increase. Yes. Does this answer your question in this respect?

Yes.

And then maybe a few words on the management fees on AUM. Since we experienced a strong demand for all-in fee models and index-based PM mandates for a few years now, that will remain stable. And we assume that the margins on AUM, especially on the PM mandate, will remain stable over the next years. We don't see pressure there. There, it's important that the costs for our clients came down in the PM mandate. So we work a lot on reducing the costs for our clients in the structure of the PM mandates of their portfolios, reducing the costs of the used product. Is that enough for you?

Yes.

Okay.

The next question from the phone comes from Daniel Regli with ZKB.

My first question would be on the net interest income. And here, I would ask whether you could share some more color. What do you expect from the net interest margin, and then how far this is dependent on the eventual cut in Central Bank rates? And I assume here, it's mostly the S&P rate which matters for you and not so much the Fed or ECB rates. But if you could just confirm this, what do you expect in terms of net interest margin? Do you also expect a slight expansion further from where we are now? Or should the net interest margins be largely stable and the growth mainly come from balance sheet growth? Then the second question is on net new money and your target range. Obviously, and I think you alluded to it, the net new money coming from mandates and, let's say, typical net new money with other banks would count as net new money, was actually quite good also in H2, but the mortgage growth was a bit slower, which has been a negative impact on the net new money. So here, do you kind of expect this slow mortgage growth continue going forward? Or what else would you have to kind of keep the net new money target range where it is, given you kind of were at least at the upper end of the range over the past couple of years? And then my third question is on this growing the 3+ platform users to 33%. So when I just do some back-of-the-envelope math, this means that you will keep the current growth rate in the share of 3+ platform users constant for the next 4 years to 5 years. Is this observation correct? And if yes, why do you expect this growth to be able to continue kind of with a straight line and not kind of have some logarithmic behavior going forward? And then my last question goes a bit into the same direction as my colleagues, Andreas, one -- I'm sorry for a lot of questions here. On the net profit margin, respectively, also related to the personnel expense ratio, what element in this kind of normalization to this higher personnel expense ratio, respectively, lower net interest margin -- not net interest margin, apologies, net profit margin is kind of due to reduced top line margin, partly driven by lower net interest margins? And what is kind of driven by higher expenses, particularly personnel expenses?

Okay. Maybe I start with the question around the net interest margin. This is quite hard to predict actually because we don't know what the Swiss National Bank is going to do. But if the interest levels stay stable, then we expect that our net interest margin would be stable as well. And as you have said, that the interest result would increase more or less in line with the balance sheet. And yes, as you said, the Swiss National Bank rates are the ones that are important ones for us, actually. If the interest levels would go down, then it depends what other banks do. But most likely, our margin would also decrease a little bit. But this has to be decided when that -- when it's the case. And therefore, this also could have then an impact on the net profit margin, as you have asked in the fourth question. And maybe when we are already at the fourth question, and the personnel expense ratio, yes, this is linked a little bit to the net interest margin, as we have said. And also, we want to be able to be an attractive employee for our employees. And therefore, it's also expected that we give salary increases also in the future. And that's also one contributor by the personnel expense ratio. It will also go slightly up most likely in the future.

Okay. Can I quickly follow up on this one? So -- but the increase basically from the 37% to 39% is mainly hiring additional people and increasing their salaries and not so much kind of anticipated reduction in the top line margin driven by lower interest rates.

It's more the later because we also hired quite a lot of young people. And we always -- basically, for the young people, each year, we give them salary increase. And this, over time, also adds up and affects the long-term personnel expense ratio.

Okay. Just quickly to confirm about the net interest margin question we discussed earlier. So if the Central Bank rates remain as they are, you expect a stable net interest margin, so not -- I mean, there's 2 options. Either you have to increase the deposit rates and which could give some pressure on the interest margin, or you still have some kind of rolling off your book of mortgages, for example, into higher rates, which could then help the net interest margin. But overall, this should cancel each other out, by and large.

Yes. That's right. And also because our assets are quite -- like the duration of our assets is quite small. So we don't have a big book of assets that is fixed. I mean, we have, but it's not as high as with other banks. So as you have said, or I have said also, the net interest margin should be more or less stable, given that the interest level is at the same level as they are now.

Very clear.

Okay, then I take your second question about the net new money. As you precised, that's right. We experienced a lower net new money increase in mortgages. And that the reason is that more clients reduced their mortgages in 2023, more or earlier than usual. I don't think that, that will be a pattern that we will see also in the next years, I think there will be a normalization over 2024, 2025. So we will be back on a normal going in this and the next years. Then you mentioned our range -- net new money range per FTE. We decided to leave it at CHF 17 million to CHF 20 million per FTE. The answer is quite easy to that. We prefer to be at the upper end of this corridor rather than in the middle of the corridor. And that's why we decided to keep it as it is. And then your last question was about Page #9 of the presentation. It was about the platform usage of our clients. That's right, your calculation. We think that we can achieve our target of 33% of clients using 3+ platforms in 4 years to 5 years. And why is it linear? And why we are -- we have the meaning that it's difficult to achieve. The reason is that we add 8,000 and more clients a year to the platform clients base. And these new clients, they usually start with only one platform. And then you have to convert there to more platform usage. And this is -- it's not easy to do. But we have -- we are used to do it. We know our clients very well. We meet them every year, and we talk about the platform usage. And that gives us the security that we will be able to increase this number over the next 4 years to 5 years.

Okay. Can I just quickly come back to the range? I mean it just seems a bit, how shall I say, counterintuitive. You have been above the range for the last 3 years. I mean, 2023, you were just a notch below the upper end of the range. But given you expect this normalization in net new money for mortgages, you could have -- or if you adjust for this, you probably would have been the third year in a row above this range. So why do you expect this kind of normalization? Or should I imply then that you expect this growth rate to come down per FTE? This is kind of the one follow-up question. And then the second follow-up question is a little bit more the trends in consultancy project conversion. Maybe if you could just quickly give us a bit enough an update about where you stand there. I remember, you had a lot of consultancy projects and first contact meetings last year. And then you were saying that the conversion to net new money is slowing down a bit in H2. And are we already seeing a normalization in this conversion pace now? And could we see some, let's say, additional net new money coming through this year coming from, let's say, projects which you did last year? And just where the net new money was a bit delayed into this year?

Maybe the first question again, to the target corridor. We prefer to have the certainty that we are on the -- above the target range before we increase this range of the corridor. And that's why we decided to not increase it this year because we are not above the corridor, we are in the corridor. You're right, we are at the upper end, just a notch under the upper end. But we are not above the corridor, so that's why we decided to not increase the corridor. And the second following question was about the consultancy projects. What we have to keep in mind is that a consultancy project normally is made at the age of, let's say, 58 to 60 by the clients. And then the retirement, when the money comes out of the pension schemes and third pillar schemes, will follow at the age of 64, 65, 67, whenever the client retires. So the more clients or more client projects we had in the last year and the year before and also we have this year, it's the fundament for not this year and not next year, but it's fundamental or the growth fundament for the next few years because the money comes out of the pension schemes or the third pillar schemes after 4 years to 6 years after the consultancy projects. What was the driver for the decrease in the net new money number was especially market-driven. Now towards the end of negative interest rates, that took the pressure off clients who, for example, sold a house and had to invest immediately the money because if they did not so, they had to pay negative interest rates. That was the most important driver of the decrease of the net new money number from 2021 to 2023. And of course, also, the market implications, the markets were very difficult in 2022 and 2023 financial markets, and these uncertainties were very difficult for the client, for the decisions of the client.

[Operator Instructions]

So if we have no further questions, then we can end our presentation. And I thank you for reaching us, and thanks to the operator for conducting us through the presentation. And let's hear or see you in the next month or at -- with the half year results 2024.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.