Thank you, and welcome everybody to the first quarter results presentation. A good set of results that we are reporting today. Importantly, we are reporting an environment which will be conducive of good development for the business, both from internal growth, but also from the rate environment that is changing around us, as we will see in the presentation today. If you go through the presentation on page two, we're pleased to report over EUR 38 million of adjusted net profit, an increment of over 37% over the previous year, including over EUR 30 million of pre-tax synergies, which are below the run rate of EUR 70 million for the full year, so with positive expectation for the next quarters.
The performance of the business has been strong, both in the corporate center where synergies are allocated, but also in the operating business in Securities Services and Payments, which has performed well, despite the challenges of the first quarter in terms of market performance and economic slowdown. We are showing a strong recovery in our core factoring and lending business, with new volumes growing at a fast pace and a resumption in the growth of the loan book. Importantly, as we'll see in details in this presentation, we're extremely well-positioned to a rising interest rate environment.
Not only for the interest rate growth which is expected going forward, but also for the effect of the increase of rates that has already occurred on the long-term end of the curve from January to today, with a strong impact on our PNL going forward. If we look at the businesses, as I mentioned, Factoring & Lending has shown a strong rebound of volumes, over 40% year-over-year, with a loan book which has started again to grow at double-digit, as indicated in our business plan. The profit before tax growing at single-digit, because of lower recovery in NPL collection, which has been more deferred due to a different timing of collection, particularly in Spain.
Securities Services have seen growth in volumes, driven mostly by commercial development, given the performance in the markets and given good cost control operating leverage, profit has gone up by 16% year-over-year on a PBT basis. Payments have seen a growth across many of the areas, particularly in card settlement transactions, and profit before tax has grown at over 30% year-over-year. Synergies have been strong, but we still have to see all of them given a different timing of how they occur through the year in the quarter. Costs have been kept under control, and net interest income has grown. Although you remember, we still have the effect of the mark-to-market of the DEPObank government bond that is flowing through our PNL. Capital remains exceedingly strong.
We have a CET1 ratio of 16.7% and a total capital ratio of 23%. We've issued, I would say, at a lucky right time, a perpetual AT1 in January for EUR 150 million, which gives us plenty of capital flexibility, going forward. We confirm, as we indicated, the intention to pay dividends on a half year basis, and the profit of this quarter already earmarked for that payment. Plus, clearly, there will be the profit of the second quarter.
We remain not exposed from a commercial point of view to the Ukrainian and Russian markets, and we've signed a small acquisition to integrate a consulting company which has been working for us for a number of years to support in the development our ICT infrastructure, particularly on the factoring and lending business. Overall, on page three, we see a lot of pluses in the results today and also in the outlook. A strong increase in volume in factoring and lending with a good Q2 pipeline. A good environment and also development in securities services and payments with good tailwinds. The visible impact of synergies in the corporate center, and importantly, the positive impact of interest rates, which still has to flow through the P&L of the business.
We have on one side to collect portfolio, which will be rolled forward at much higher interest rates than is currently yielding. We've seen in Poland for the first time in years a positive spread for the bank of deposits, and therefore the ability to collect and create margin on the deposit collection, which we have restarted in Poland. The AT1 has been we think a great success in terms of increasing the capital flexibility of the business and the fact of having integrated this MC3 consulting company will give us further impetus to improve our operation in the factoring and lending business. We still have some challenges. NPL collection have been not as strong as we expected in the first quarter.
Lastly, we had a strong quarter in Spain, given the timing of collections through the core system. Particularly in Italy, we still have to improve on our NPL recovery, although we are still recovering at very high rates of recovery. There are still areas of high liquidity, particularly in some countries, notably in Spain, and therefore payment times remains steady. We haven't seen a worsening on that side of the business. If you look at the divisional reporting on page four, you can see that all areas have shown growth compared to the previous year, Factoring & Lending, Securities Services and Payments and the corporate center. Therefore, we are reporting the strong earnings that I mentioned before.
I leave it to Giorgio to present the divisional reporting. Please, Giorgio.
Thank you. Thank you, Max. Good afternoon to everybody. We are now at slide number five, and we are going to introduce the Factoring & Lending performance. We had a strong bound in volumes that are higher compared to the same period of the last year by 30%. These results, thanks to the commercial effort and also the expectation of higher DSOs going forward. The collection is down by 13% year-over-year due to the progressive absorption of liquidity. It's important to consider that at the beginning of the year, the loan book was smaller.
For the collection, the loan book at the end of the quarter is higher by 11%, and now we are back at the same levels at the first quarter of 2020, with the growth across all markets except Spain. NPLs collection decreased year-over-year. This is primarily due to the delay of out-of-court agreement, especially in Italy. On the other side, the NPL stock continues to grow, and this is a good basket in order to maintain the high profitability also for the future. If we go to the next slide, number 6, we have the economic results of Factoring & Lending.
The net interest income is higher 8% year-over-year, and this has been driven by the higher loan book. The total net revenues are higher compared to same period of the last year. We had higher direct topics, and this is also driven by some investment in growth and also due to the bigger portfolio that we have. The cost-income ratio is almost stable compared to the first quarter 2022. We are continuing to maintain our excellent asset quality. Our risk profile is really close to zero, and the profit before taxes reflect the growth, the positive trend of the net interest income. We have also a positive improvement also in the gross yields on average loans.
This thanks to the asset refinance in Poland and thanks to the increase of the WIBOR, despite the lower NPL collection. Going to the Securities Services KPIs that we have at page seven. We have a good trend in terms of depositary banks. The assets under depositary grew by 5% year-over-year. In the first quarter, the deposit grew at 7% on total assets under depositary. Also the Global Custody assets under custody increased by 9% year-over-year. Total net revenues are up, thanks to the higher net fee and commission income, and these are being driven by the assets under depositary and the assets under custody.
OpEx decrease is an important result in terms of improvement of the efficiency because we have higher assets under depositary, but at a lower internal cost. Also, the profit before tax has been confirmed in growth. Talking about the payments at page eight. The number of transactions and collections are up compared to the same period of the last year. The cash settlement transactions are significantly higher, +35% year-over-year. Increasing the situation that we had before COVID, because the first quarter of 2020 was the last quarter before the COVID and the pandemic situation. Checks and receivables continue to decrease, but we are following the market trend.
We have seen also an increase in corporate savings, primarily thanks to payments from corporate customers that has been penalized during the pandemic, and now they restarted, and this is also good for us. The total net revenue is higher by 11% compared to the same period of the last year. The net interest income also increased, but in this case, we have a different transfer pricing applied. That is, this was a change that we applied at the first half of 2021. Commissions are stable, but this is also a good result because in the first quarter of 2021, we had
Important revenues coming from the Fondo di Garanzia that now this has been normalized. We are happy to confirm the same result as last year. Talking about the corporate center, we can start to view a positive effect on cost and funding synergies. The profit before tax is positive and is up EUR 13.1 million compared to the first quarter of 2021. We are still not including the negative effect coming from the DEPObank acquisition in the mark-to-market aspect, so the first quarter is EUR 5.7 million. The net interest income increased by EUR 9.3 million year-over-year, primarily due to the funding synergies.
We have also positive contribution of synergies in the direct OpEx and D&A that are down by 24% year-over-year. We had a good result also in the other income that are up primarily due to the income coming from some investments. We are also putting in place a lot of different initiatives in order to continue this trend to have a more efficient engine. We are continuing to select our investment strategy for government bonds. We'll start at the end of the year the campaign in Poland in order to benefit from deposit spread. We have already had deposits compared to the
Acting in this way can give us also a good benefit going forward. Slide number 10, we have the balance sheet. It has been confirmed that is stronger in terms of assets and also liabilities. We have a strong LCR, a strong NSFR, and also the leverage ratio benefited by the additional tier one. Now we are at 4.7%, and this is a good point in order to continuing our flow. Government bond portfolio increased by EUR 140 million compared to the end of the year. The bond portfolio is half floater. We have a positive mark-to-market not accounted in PNL coming from our bond portfolio. As said before, we started our campaign in Poland.
Now, I leave the floor to our CEO in order to give a view on the macro public finance outlook and also to the interest rate environment.
Thank you, Giorgio. On page 11, you see a rejig of a slide we had in our 2019 business plan presentation, where we highlighted some of the unique characteristics of our business, which is positively geared to the issues that we are facing today in the market. It's our business that in case of increased perception of political or country risk tends to drive volumes and pricing. Customers have more demand for our product. There's lower price sensitivity. The traditional banks tend to shy away from our sector. A worsening trend in public finances also is positive for us. It puts pressure on preserving cash, and therefore that leads to higher payment times from the public administration. More public expenditure drives more invoices and therefore more volumes for us.
Remember, in an inflationary environment, we buy nominal invoices, and therefore, public sector expenditure grows faster than we have seen in the past, benefiting our loan book growth, our profitability and our return on tangible equity. Finally, in rising interest rate environment, we're double geared to interest rate. APR charged at a variable rate of 45%. You know, we book only so at 8%, we book only 45% of the 8%, at an ongoing basis, and then we book the remainder what we collect, five years afterwards, or when on average we collect. We have a faster repricing of loans versus liabilities, and we have a high proportion of our loan book funded by equity. A rising interest rate has a positive interest margin impact.
On page 12, we've tried to size the opportunity of what happens in case of a sudden increase for 100 or 200 bps of the level of interest rates. Basically, based on a number of assumptions, which are listed here, including constant balance sheet, the repricing of retail deposits at cost-to-deposit spread, which we know in a rising interest rate environment, usually the deposit spread widens in favor of the bank. The fixed rate assets and commissions repriced at maturity. The floating rate assets are repriced at a fixing date. For instance, the API are all on variable rates, so that benefits us.
The impact, as you see at the bottom of the table, is if you take one year forward, for 100 basis points of increment, is roughly EUR 12-13 million, and three-year forward, EUR 16-17 million. That's roughly a 10% increase compared to last year, net income on a one-year horizon and around 13% on a three-year horizon. Now, that's a parallel shift. If you look at the graph on top, is the effect that we might see if the current curve, the one in yellow, moves 100 basis points higher to the one in gray or 200 basis points higher to the one in green.
Here, we don't have the effect instead of what has already happened, which is actually the shift from where the yield curve was on at the time of the industrial plan, so a year ago, roughly, to where it is today. You can see the curve of the industrial plan in blue, and you can see the yield curve today in yellow. That's roughly a 1.5% shift upwards of the curve on the five-year horizon. What does this mean? That besides the number you see on page twelve, if you simply take the rollover effect on page ten of our fixed bond portfolio, EUR 2.9 billion, let's say three to round it up, which currently yields 22 basis points.
Now, the yield on an Italian government bond, which has a five-year tenor, which is where we invest on an ongoing basis when we had to collect bond portfolio matures, is roughly at 1.7%. Which means that this rollover effect on the EUR 3 billion portfolio will generate an incremental yield of 1.5%, which for EUR 3 billion, when that rollover happens, means a positive impact of EUR 45 million without changing the size of the bond book. Importantly, the rest of the bond book is on floaters, so the repricing and the increase in interest rates and the incline in the yield curve will occur automatically when interest rates go up. With a spread, which is 62 basis points, and therefore will have been locked in with a longer duration.
The duration of this loan book is roughly 37 months. Going back to page 12, these are the data, what is the impact of a shift from today on the interest rate curve. It does not include, as we said, what has already occurred, which has a very positive impact on our outlook on our government bond portfolio. I leave it to Giorgio to conclude the presentation.
Thank you. Going to slide number 13, we have the asset quality. We confirm our solid asset quality with very negligible cost of risk at 1.1 basis points. We don't have any material impact on CET1 resulting from the calendar provisioning. The credit under moratoria at group level are EUR 1.9 million. We have to consider that the impaired loans are mostly toward the public sector, and the NPL are mainly due to the municipality under extraordinary administration. If we exclude the municipality under extraordinary administration, our NPL ratio is 0.2%. Going to the last page, to number 14. We have EUR 38.1 million of first quarter accrued dividends, and over EUR 189 million of excess capital.
The total capital ratio is 23.2%. The CET1 ratio is 16.7%. Thanks to the additional tier one, we increased our capital flexibility. If we include the accrued dividend of the first quarter, our total capital ratio goes at 24.5%. We don't need to apply any emergency measures coming from ECB. Our RWA calculation is based always, as usual, on an internal standard model. Having said that, I leave the floor to Max also to explain our next events to conclude the presentation.
Thank you. You have on page 15 our next meetings with investors. We're starting a roadshow at the end of this week. Importantly, to recap where we are. We deliver, we think, a good set of first quarter results with strong performance rebound on our factoring and lending business, which had more difficult quarters in the last year. Importantly, we start to operate in an environment which is strongly conducive to the growth of our business. Which from a financial point of view, should benefit greatly of what has already happened in the market with the steepening of the yield curve, and the interest rate environment, which is changing. Thank you very much for attending today, and we are open for any question you might have.
Thank you.
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the key. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. The first question is from Antonio Reale with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. It's Antonio from Morgan Stanley. I have three questions, please. The first one on volumes. I look at volumes, and it looks like we've turned the corner, or at least we see a stabilization, again for the second quarter in a row, and importantly, a stabilization and a strong rebound in Italy. Can you talk about the drivers of this recovery in your view and how sustainable this is going forward? There is still a lot of liquidity in the system, so I wonder if you're starting to notice a change in behaviors at the clients level and more in general, what type of growth rates in volumes would you expect to see in 2022? That's my first question. My second question is on your slide on rates.
Thank you for putting it together, by the way. I think it's extremely helpful. I would just like to better understand your assumptions here, specifically how you come up with those numbers. I realize you talk about a parallel shift in the curve, but I'd like to better understand what you assume for some of the sort of three, four key drivers that at least I understand drive your NII maturity commission, so the discount at which you buy the receivables, LPI rate, sort of what you assume in terms of ECB base rate here, deposit costs, particularly in light of the excess that we see at DEPObank, and lastly, the rate at which you deploy some of this excess between ECB and government bonds.
I ask you because I thought that this is somewhat lower than what I had in mind, especially assuming well, a change in the short end of the curve, the rates, and for a bank with your mix. I think any color you can provide us here will be extremely helpful. Also related to that, what will be the move in a 50 basis points hike scenario? As also, I would expect that the first 50 bps move in rates would have a disproportionate positive effect on your NII. Lastly, I hate to ask you on a public forum because I realize it's really not fully in your control, but I think it's important to get a sense from you.
We've seen a number of departures, resignations on your board recently, some louder than others, but nonetheless, the number of departures in the last six months have raised some questions with investors and shareholders. Could you perhaps talk about how you see governance at BFF more generally and where this can improve and any color or reasons behind some of the departures that you can comment? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Antonio. Thank you for the questions, also for the last one that you raised, which I think gives me the forum to put to bed these issue. I think, particularly for the non-Italians that are attending, I think we need to distinguish the two boards we have. We have the main board, and then we have the board of statutory auditors, which is a separate board which is appointed in Italy, originally for the audit control of the company that has over time taken other control functions. The main board has been appointed last year with a slate proposed by the exiting board and voted by the shareholders with one minority shareholder representative.
The board of statutory auditors has been indicated not by the board, which cannot actually indicate the board of statutory auditors, but has been submitted as a proposal by Assogestioni. We didn't have as a company any say or any influence on the people who were appointed to that board. Now, the resignation came about, and they are, the motivation are in the public domain for very different set of reasons. Let me take first the two resignation we had from the main board. One was a representative of Equinova, which then subsequently sold its stake. I don't know if the two things were connected, but clearly timing-wise, they were very close.
The first resignation came about from a board member who had reached the limit of the board position she could hold, given that she is in the board of a bank, and has actually taken on, after she resigned, a number of other positions. I think there was an issue around that and probably her interest in having multiple board membership. It's actually, as an aside, the restriction that the regulator puts on interlocking and number of board position one can take, it's actually something which I think will generate some issue in recruiting people in board of banks going forward. Now in the board of statutory auditors, we had a very different situation.
We had the chairwoman of the board who announced a couple of months before the GSM that she would be resigning at the GSM to take a statutory board position in a local bank in the city where she is from, to be part more of the local community. Therefore, we brought to the GSM the need to replace her on the board. That was in, if you want, on the ordinary course of business. Assogestioni proposed a new chairwoman of the board of statutory auditors, who unfortunately had a family problem, and she had to resign to take care of some family member who unfortunately fell sick.
Which then triggered a process where you need to appoint in the board of statutory auditors, given that there are quotas for men and female, the two substitute members that are available, who is a female. She got appointed. She then went through the interlocking and number of maximum boards she could sit, and she decided that given it was a temporary appointment until the new GSM that she would not give up on her other boards, and therefore resigned for the position. And then we appointed the other additional statutory auditor as the third member. Given that now we have three board members who are all men, we need to call a GSM to appoint and rebalance the board of statutory auditors.
Again, as a board of BFF, we cannot submit a proposal for that statutory auditor board. We actually invite whoever of the shareholders also on this call have an intention to submit a slate for those positions, to think very carefully that the people who are indicated have the time and the competencies to fill those positions. Unfortunately, the major issue was created around the board of statutory auditors, which again, where again we don't have any influence unfortunately on the appointment process. Not a great sequence of events. Frankly, it felt a bit like a comedy at times. It is what it is. We've lived through that. Going to more serious matters on volumes.
Look, yes, we are actually started to grow again. I would say more than stabilization. I think if you go to page 24, you can see, and it's a very positive indication at the bottom, that the customer loans in the first quarter are pretty much the same level as the year end, which is exactly what we had historically when the business was continuously growing. I think that's a good sign that actually the trajectory of growth has resumed and the accumulation phase of the business on the factoring and lending business will continue. We are seeing the same dynamic in Q2 that we're seeing in Q1. We don't see any different trend.
We are seeing more interest from customers, given the fact that the interest rate environment is making them more worried about the timing of payments from the public sector on one side, and also their own cost of funding going forward. We feel pretty good, I would say, about the performance. Certainly, the environment outside helps, but credit to our team, it has been also a much better execution compared to last year. Some of the changes that we put forward have had a positive impact in that respect. Now on rates. On rates, I think, look, it's always difficult to capture all the questions on an analysis that covers the balance sheet.
I will leave to Giorgio to comment on the 50 BPs move. My overarching comment is what you might think as a low impact is because the impact we have shown on page 12 doesn't show the steepening which has already occurred. Let's forget for a second if an increase in interest rates. Let's assume interest rates remains where they are. The curve remains where it is, in particular the curve of Italian government bonds. In that case, we have a significant impact on our government bond portfolio no matter what. There's no repricing at this point in time of LPI, of clients, of deposits. We simply have the steepening of the curve. That, as I mentioned before, massive.
Only the effect on the fixed bond portfolio on a full rollover is EUR 45 million. That's PBT, so EUR 30 million. That's 25% more net income almost than last year. It's material. What we wanted to show though, because the initial move has already happened. If you want to move from the blue line to the yellow line, what's happened if we move everything upwards. The major effect is the fact that we reprice twice the factoring business for the LPI rate and for the maturity commission. The LPI rate, we don't see the full effect on a 3-year horizon because it takes five years, remember, to collect the over-recovery.
Part of that effect is actually deferred. As you can see on the table, we have a disproportionate effect for the initial part of the increase in interest rate. Being a parallel shift where we assume that the retail spreads remain as they are today, I think also underestimates the fact that in general, deposit rates don't move in parallel with the increase in interest rates. They tend to be more sticky. We haven't included that. That's actually what we are seeing in Poland, for instance, where we've moved to a positive deposit spread. I'll leave it to Giorgio to comment further.
Thank you. If you apply a parallel shift in the interest rate curve of 50 basis points, we can observe a different movement because we have to consider that on some liabilities we have some floor at zero. The first basis points we gain, the impact of the increase of the rates, you know, from the Euribor to the zero. If we have this effect of 50 basis points on one year, we can have around EUR 13-15 million. On three years, we have an impact slightly higher than EUR 17 million. It's a strange curve.
At the beginning, we gain more, and between 100 and 200, the gain we decrease slightly, and then it goes up over 200.
It's always on a parallel shift.
Very clear. Thank you.
The next question is from Giovanni Razzoli with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Some clarifications again on the NII sensitivity, where I guess the message is we are more interested or more leveraged to the steepening of the curve rather than to the parallel shift. Basically the EUR 45 million of higher NII from the reinvestment yield, is that correct that we should get it on an average of two years and a half? That is more or less the duration of the portfolio. That's the first part of the explanation you provided us. Sorry, I missed the part relating to the floating component. What would be the upside there? Because I would have also expected a significant benefit there, as probably most of your bonds are in asset swap.
With your Euribor moving up, you should also get a benefit there. I don't know whether I got it correctly or not. If you can please clarify again this point. Another question, completely different topic, is on M&A. If we look at the press reports, seems like you have a little bit increased your M&A appetite, also on different businesses. My question is, how shall we look at your strategy going forward? How do you look at the trade-off between, you know, the shareholder remuneration, the constraint of external growth, transformational deals that you have made in DEPObank, and also the complexity of the group? How can we look at these moving parts?
The third question, I've seen that in the Q1 results, there are some extraordinary cost of EUR 2 million related to the M&A. I understand this is a detail, but if you can share with us what they refer to, because in the context of the quarter, they may also matter. Thank you.
Yeah. On the floater component, well, yes, it's as you see on page 10, the floaters are linked to the Euribor six months roughly. So, that has a direct impact if there is an increase in rates on the yield on the asset side. The net interest income actually depends on how much the movement is compared to the deposits that have a floor, which are roughly EUR 2.5 billion. T he first 50 basis points of that is usually captured as a net interest income. Thereafter, clearly it is captured a bit less.
We have the deposits usually priced within the three-month Euribor, so again, the steepening of the curve helps a little bit. On the repricing of the fixed-rate portfolio, it's yes, 28 months, so slightly more than 2.5 years. The calculation I did before actually should go through in three years' time. When I mentioned the five-year is, as you might remember, we always said, in order to have a three-year average portfolio, we need to buy five-year bond, because by the time you buy them, you roll over the average duration actually drops at three years. On M&A, we continue to have M&A. Should let me do a joke.
We actually announced an M&A today, which is a small acquisition, but it's important for us strategically. We will continue to look at M&A around the three areas that we've indicated to the market. First is to integrate our business with similar businesses or vertically integrate in what we do. That's a small example. It actually allows us to integrate more what we do on the operational side of our factoring and lending business. We are looking at other businesses that have public sector and healthcare exposure, which is, if you want, the nearest to us.
We're looking also for other businesses where we can diversify our platform at the same time maintaining, as correctly pointed out, a certain simplicity to the group and generate significant return to our shareholders through better deployment of our capital, of our excess funding and operational efficiency. Which means, again, we cannot comment on what the press has reported. We are looking at a number of opportunities which expands also the M&A scope, which expands as we go. We see what we get if they come to fruition. Overall, in terms of complexity, and we come back to that point, we have actually a much simpler business than a traditional bank.
Are we going through a lot of details in how we represent the business? At the end of the day, we have two commission businesses that generate a float, which fund a factoring business. That's it. We don't have multiple business lines. We don't have a retail branch network. We don't have competing channels. It's actually a fairly simple business compared to a traditional bank or even, if you want to, other specialized bank that operate in Italy, which have chosen to diversify in various verticals instead of diversifying geographically as we have done. For us, keeping complexity under control is certainly something very important because we know with complexity comes cost, it comes risk. I hope I have answered your question.
Thanks.
The next question is from Niccolò Binda with Intermonte SIM. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thank you for the presentation. I have two questions. The first one is about the factoring business. The NII on RWA ratio decline year on year negatively affected by the lower LPI collection. On this front, I was wondering how much this item is under your control, and which is your expectation for the next quarters. The second question is regarding the tax rate. I was wondering if you could provide us a guidance for the full year 2022, as I saw that in this quarter, the tax rate was something like 35%. Thank you.
Yeah. I leave Giorgio to comment on the tax rate. He's our tax man. On the LPI, as I said, compared to last year, we collected quite a bit in Spain in the first quarter, which also has 1% recovery, so the big impact on the P&L. We are not happy about our performance on the LPI collection. The good thing is we are collecting at high recovery rate, so we are not collecting and discounting. If you don't collect today, we know we always collect tomorrow, because remember, most of the LPI fund is actually under legal action.
If we don't settle with the debtor at a certain point, a court will award us 100% of the LPI, and we collect 100% of the LPI. We're always playing a game of chicken with the debtor, trying to pressure them to settle, not wanting to settle with too high a discount, and wait for the court case to progress so we can put more pressure on them. I think there on the team, we have made a number of changes as well when we merged with the international department in September, and some of those changes are coming to fruition now. Because of negotiation, it takes a while before we get that sorted. Now the money is there, it's our right to collect it.
We don't make a discount to accelerate collection. If it's not done today, it's done tomorrow. On the tax rate?
On te tax rate, we h ll, is 29%. The main difference is related to the fiscal losses coming from DEPObank that we utilized at the end of last year. Now we don't have no more losses for this.
The main difference that we have in terms of outlook. We expect the tax rate to remain in line with what we have today.
Thank you.
The next question is from Simonetta Chiriotti with Mediobanca. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon. I have a couple of questions. The first is on volumes. I've seen that in Italy there are slightly more than EUR 200 million that are not related to the NHS or the public administration. What does this amount refer to? Second question is on the LPI collection. Is it possible to have the amount of the LPI over collection of rescheduling in the quarter? More in general terms, I mean, this item has been weak for a few quarters now. In terms of scenario, what should happen to see something change?
Then also wondering if these delays in the collection will finally determine a lower positive impact on the PNL because it is true that LPI are collected in the end of the day, but later than originally expected. Finally, actually a third question, you have showed this interesting interest rate sensitivity. What should we think of the targets that you have for 2023 in light of what is happening on interest rates? Thank you.
Yes. Let me answer on the last one. We are not changing the guidance today. We have actually done reforecasting for 2023 also because the change in interest rates has occurred only recently. We want to have that to stabilize. In that case, we'll go back to the market when the time is correct and when that exercise has been done. In terms of LPI, your voice broke up, so if we don't answer fully the question, please re-ask it. On the LPI, we had, frankly, an issue of execution.
One of the reasons why we merged the Italian factoring business and international business was also to make sure we have a better grasp on the Italian side on the collection of LPI. Let's not forget also that we are going through the court processes and the fact there's been a slowdown in the court activity during COVID. It means that things haven't progressed as much as they should be. The LPI fund is disproportionately allocated to Italy, and so the performance of Italian business because it's in a sense some of the historical purchases. The performance of Italian business has more of an impact there.
In terms of the balances which are not NHS and public administration, we have a bit more private, and we have some tax credit in there.
The amount of LPI over recovery net of rescheduling for the quarter?
Let me give the number to you. It's -3.2. It's on page six of the table. Back online.
Thank you.
The next question is from Andrea Lisi with Equita. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the presentation. My first question is on the sensitivity to interest rates. I understand that it's really difficult to capture all the different things, all the different moving parts. Just wondering to understand your assumption about the movement of the maturity commission. If you assume one of these increase in interest rates that will lead also to an increase of the maturity commission of the same size or if a different assumption is there? Especially also, what do you expect about your capacity to apply, to ask for a higher discount in a higher interest rate environment?
The second question is on the asset quality, if you can provide us a bit more color on the increase in NPEs in the quarter, and if we expect some impact on that. Last one, maybe you have answered to Simonetta, but I didn't get the point. What should happen to observe a recovery, an improvement in the over collection of LPIs? Thank you.
On the last one, it's frankly better execution and some of the legal actions that we started to come to fruition. There's no magic in there. We have a counterparty who needs to decide to pay. They decide to pay when they want to pay, when we are good at pushing them to pay and when a court orders them to pay. That's what happens. On the sensitivity analysis, we have assumed that we reprice the maturity commission at that amount, which is what we've experienced in the past. If we have a 100 basis points increase, we were able to transfer that increase to customers, but at the time when the refixing of the pricing happens.
We have some customers where we can price immediately. We have some customers where we have one-year contract. The majority is actually on that position. That's the assumption we've had. Historically, where we have higher interest rates, the pricing power is pretty good. But we've assumed that we simply have an increase which is equal to the increase in rates. As I mentioned, we also assume that if today, let's say, in Italy, we are offering deposit at 0, which means a spread of, say, 50 BPS over the IBOR overnight, then if rates go up by 100, then we price the deposit at 150. Now, so still 50 BPS higher. That usually does not happen.
For instance, what we are seeing in Poland is that now we have more than 1% spread in our favor on the deposits. But to keep it very simple, we have kept the spread remains the same. We think there is actual opportunity, as most of the banks will experience, that actually the deposits will be priced differently. The other question, which I forgot since I didn't take notes?
Yeah. It was on the evolution of the asset quality in the quarter with the increase in NPEs. If you can provide some more color on that.
Look, it's an increase on the past dues. If you look at the past dues, we've seen an increase. We also have changed some of the collection policies around the public sector in Italy, and we had a slight increase in past dues. You see actually, we don't have the data here, but if you compare to the year-end results, the proportion net impaired loans, the public sector has gone up. The increase is entirely driven by that. On the net NPLs, we are basically excluding the municipality under extraordinary administration, we're basically flat versus, down, slightly down versus year-end, and up by EUR 1 million compared to the first quarter of 2021.
Thank you.
The next question is from Thomas Passer with Elwa Capital Management. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. I just want to, I'll keep this very short. You've got EUR 3 billion of fixed securities with a 2.5-year duration. You gave a spread of 150 over the 22 basis points. The current yield is higher than that. Using 150, that's EUR 45 million in additional interest. You've got EUR 2.9 billion of floaters. Your Euribor has gone from -40. The December contract is at 63 basis points, so it's up 100, so that's EUR 29 million. Then from the merger accounting, you have EUR 26 million of drag that's going to go away. If I add all those up, I get another EUR 100 million in that, in page 12, where you haven't taken into account.
In addition to that, you have your loan portfolio, which has also given you IBOR. Is that all correct?
Yes. You need also to bear in mind that the deposit that come from DEPObank are floaters.
Yes, I understand that. Right now, as you pointed out, when the rates go from -50 to 0 and even go higher, you're not going to take them up. Correct?
No. We don't pay an increase on EUR 2.5 billion of the 8.5. For EUR 6 billion-
Yeah.
There is actually a pickup in cost.
Understood. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question is from Michele Baldelli with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon to everybody. I have a couple of questions. The first one relate to the payments division, just to have some color on the relationship between growing card transactions, but revenues from fees are kind of flattish year-over-year. If you can elaborate a little bit of color on this. The second question is, given that you had already a very strong market share in the NHS in Italy, and given your very strong growth of this quarter, can you give us some color on these? Are you getting, let's say, to a level of very, very high market share, or there are players going out or reducing exposure to this segment, if you can give any more detail. Thank you.
Yeah. I think the last question is an interesting one because we never think about necessarily market share in the market, actually the penetration of the product. If you think about an ex-NHS expenditure in Italy, there are for goods and services, roughly EUR 30 billion. We have probably a third of the market, if not slightly more. We are factoring now EUR 590 million to make it through the year EUR 2.4 billion. It means that the market is actually factoring a fraction of the EUR 30 billion. Let's say EUR 7.5-10 billion, you still have EUR 20 billion which is not factored.
What we have been able to do is actually to We got some cash from other players, mostly to convert new customers to the factoring. We contracted with one last year, so we were positive on the outlook. Also, there is a rebound on expenditure on the healthcare side. If you look at the forecast, for instance, on the hospital pharmaceutical expenditure, which is forecasted for this year to be EUR 12 billion. In 2023, it's forecasted to be EUR 12.7 billion. A EUR 700 million increase is actually pretty substantial. Percentage-wise, it's not enormous. It is about 5%. Compared to the size of what we buy, it's very large, and so it generates a substantial potential for us.
That's, I think, quite important. On the payment division, Giorgio mentioned before on the commission side, we actually had last year a strong payment on an outsourcing contract we had for the Fondo Centrale di Garanzia, which was not as large this year. This has been less issuance of government-guaranteed loans, and therefore, that was counterbalanced by the growth in cash transactions.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Alfred Tagliaferro of TGI Holdings. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Can you hear me?
Yep.
Fantastic. Congratulations on your very good quarter. Given the recent increase in yields that's been much talked about, you guys are well on track to earn above EUR 200 million in NPAT in FY 2023, which is obviously well within guidance of EUR 170 million-EUR 180 million, and also far in excess of consensus, which seems slightly low. Given the look-through P/E ratio when including the excess capital and the cum dividend, you know, NPAT probably being well above EUR 200 million is around 4.7x, why are you not using your excess capital to aggressively repurchase shares, given you've now received an authorization to repurchase, I think, 5%?
Yeah. As you probably know, we need to go through an approval process with Bank of Italy. We receive authorization by the shareholders, but the decision on the purchase of shares is with the regulators, not with us. That will take the time that it takes. We can't, unfortunately, compared to other businesses, decide and then progress immediately. That's really the reason. That's why we have introduced instead the half-year dividend policy to try to give back the excess cash that we generate to the shareholders in an accelerated form this way.
Okay. Thank you, guys.
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Massimiliano Belingheri and Piergiorgio Bicci for any closing remarks.
Thank you. Look, we're quite pleased, to be honest, on our results. I think it's a good demonstration of the synergies coming through from the integration of DEPObank only one year after we acquired the business. A good environment for our factoring and lending business and, given the structural balance sheet, the opportunity, even if rates don't go up, to actually benefit from the steepening of the yield curve. That grows the business, so we think we are on strong footing to continue to perform strongly. Thank you again for your time today.