Good morning and welcome to the first quarter of 2025 results conference call of Banco BTG Pactual. With us here today we have Roberto Sallouti, Renato Cohn, and Julia Rocha. We would like to inform you that this event is being recorded and all participants will be in a listen-only mode during the bank's presentation. After Banco BTG Pactual's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session for investors and analysts when further instructions will be given. Today, we have a simultaneous webcast that may be accessed through the website www.btgpactual.com/ir and the platform. There will be a replay facility for this call from today. Before proceeding, let me mention that this call may contain forward-looking statements relating to the prospects of the business, estimates for operating and financial results, and those related to the growth prospects of Banco BTG Pactual.
These are merely projections and, as such, are based exclusively on the expectations of Banco BTG Pactual's management concerning the future of the business. Such forward-looking statements depend substantially on changes in market conditions, government regulations, competitive pressures, the performance of the Brazilian economy and the industry, among other factors and risks disclosed in Banco BTG Pactual's final disclosure documents and are, therefore, subject to change without prior notice. Now, I'll turn the floor to Mr. Roberto Sallouti, who will begin the presentation. Mr. Sallouti, please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our first quarter earnings call. If you could please turn to page three of the presentation, we will start with the quarter highlights. The quarter, as all of you know, was a very challenging business and market economic environment, but we were still able to deliver a 23.2% return on equity. I think this highlights the resilience and the strength of our business, the diversification, and we continue to perform within the guidelines that we gave, even amidst this environment. Talking about the second point, we continue to grow our credit portfolio, growing 27% year over year. However, what's most important, we continue to maintain sector, segment, and geographical diversification and continue to have stable spreads and very disciplined provisioning levels in the portfolio. Our asset management franchise had an outstanding quarter.
We not only had record revenues and solid net inflows in the quarter, but we also crossed the BRL 1 trillion mark, BRL 1 trillion mark in assets under management and administration. We also had a fantastic quarter in wealth management, where we also crossed the BRL 1 trillion mark, had another record quarter in revenues, strong organic net inflows, and we successfully consolidated the acquisition of Julius Baer Brazil in the quarter. Turning to page four, we talk a bit about the numbers. We finished the quarter with revenues of BRL 6.8 billion, a growth of 16.1%, net income of BRL 3.4 billion, 16.5% year-over-year growth, so a bit of operating leverage there. As mentioned previously, 23.2% return on equity. Going to page five, we talk about a bit of the net new money.
Had BRL 105 billion in the quarter, of which BRL 60 billion came from the acquisition of Julius Baer Brazil. Wealth management growing 32% year-over-year, as I said previously, reaching the BRL 1 trillion mark. And asset management growing 17% year-over-year, finishing the quarter at BRL 1 trillion and BRL 26 billion. Going to page six, we talk about our credit portfolio, which reached BRL 231 billion, of which BRL 28 billion in the SME segment, a 27% year-over-year growth. Our funding grew 16% year-over-year, finishing the quarter at BRL 260 billion, slightly below the fourth quarter, mainly because we had anticipated the funding needs for this quarter, as we had the maturity of an offshore bond of around $1 billion, which we paid in the quarter. Finally, we finished with a robust capitalization with Basel index at 15.4%. Moving to page seven, we show results as we usually show them.
Once again, revenues of BRL 6.8 billion, net income of BRL 3.4 billion, net income per unit of BRL 0.88. We continue to have gains in, say, operational leverage, finishing the quarter with a cost income ratio of 37%. We finished with total assets of BRL 608 billion, shareholders' equity of BRL 60 billion. Just reminding you that 4966 had impacted our equity in BRL 964 million. Cohn will talk about this a bit more in the next part of the presentation. We still continue to have low VAR with only 16 basis points average VAR for the quarter. In page eight, we show the different business units and how they've been performing last 12 months versus the previous last 12 months. We can see significant growth in corporate lending and business banking, 30%, significant growth in asset management, 29%, and in wealth management, 21%.
As we've been saying in the last few years and quarters, we continue to see these business units outpacing the rest of our business units. We did have a more challenging environment in investment banking. Investment banking down 9% year-over-year. Given what's happening in the markets, we were pretty satisfied with these results. Sales and trading down 7% year-over-year. Here, we think that it's a matter of time we will be back to growth in sales and trading. As we all know, the environment has been extremely challenging. With that, I'll pass the floor to Renato Cohn, who will talk about the business units and the balance sheets.
Thank you, Roberto, and good morning, everyone. We start on page 10 with our investment banking, where we had resilient results, reaching BRL 380 million during the quarter. It's important to note here that we saw an improvement of market activity during the second half of the quarter, as during the beginning of the quarter, markets were still feeling the impacts of the high volatility that we saw during the months of December and January. What we saw is that March was much better than February, and February was better than January. We expect that for the second quarter, the level of activity will be more similar to what we saw in March than what we saw in January and February. Most of the revenues came from DCM transactions, despite the lower number of transactions executed during the quarter.
We had a softer contribution from M&A activity during this quarter, but we continue to see a healthy pipeline of transactions to be executed throughout the year. During this quarter, we are ranked number one in number of transactions and also in volume of transactions in ECM in Latin America. Going now to page 11, we see our corporate lending and business banking, and we see that we had robust performance, achieving record revenues and a consistent portfolio expansion. Revenues reached BRL 1.932 billion, and that's an increase of 5.6% when we compare to the fourth quarter of 2024, and a 35% increase when we compare to the first quarter of 2024. Total credit portfolio increased 4.1% during the quarter and a 27% growth compared to last year and reached BRL 230.6 billion, while our SME portfolio increased 9% in the quarter, totaling BRL 28.3 billion.
Portfolio continues to expand, maintaining healthy spreads and also our disciplined risk management approach as we continue to diversify our portfolio in different market segments, different sectors, and also different geographies. Looking now at our sales and trading on page 12, we see that we had consistent performance with what we saw during the previous quarter, supported by client activity and also, as Roberto mentioned, low risk levels. Revenues came at BRL 1.312 billion, mostly from the contribution from client activity, and despite the strong levels of volatility related to the global macroeconomic uncertainties, especially during the months of January and February, and also the negative seasonality that is common during the first quarter, which is a vacation period here in Latin America. Important to note that revenues were impacted also by two one-offs in this quarter.
During the fourth quarter of 2024, we saw that Eneva had a markdown in their equity, which we recorded as equity pickup now in the first quarter, and that amounted to about BRL 250 million. The second impact is that we transferred the contribution from EFG to our sales and trading line, as we expect that the contribution of EFG results will be less relevant for the bank in the future. During this quarter specifically, EFG contributed with BRL 130 million as we sold part of our position at a premium. We expect that in the following quarters, the contribution of EFG results will go back to the levels that we saw during 2024, which were closer to BRL 25 million-BRL 30 million per quarter. Overall, we had a BRL 250 million negative contribution from Eneva. That is a one-off.
A one-off also positive contribution from EFG of BRL 100 million. Overall, the net is BRL 150 million, BRL 150 million negative contribution in our sales and trading line during this first quarter of 2025. Looking at the right side of the slide, we see the VAR remained almost stable at very low levels, just 16 basis points. That is very similar to the previous quarter where we recorded our lowest VAR ever, 13 basis points. The market risk component of the risk-weighted assets closed at 21.6, a little bit below the previous quarter, but in line with what we saw throughout 2024. Going now to page 13, we see our asset management business, where we also achieved record revenues, and we surpassed the BRL 1 trillion mark in assets under management and assets under administration.
Revenues came at BRL 735 million, which is a strong 11.3% increase when we compare with the previous quarter and a 28% increase when we compare to the first quarter of 2024. We continue to see consistent growth in management fees aligned with the AUM evolution. As we usually do during the first and the third quarters of every year, we recorded the contributions of minority stakes in independent asset management firms that we invest in. Those contributions came with strong numbers this quarter. Assets under management and administration surpassed the BRL 1 trillion, as I just mentioned, and reached BRL 1 trillion and 26 billion, which represents a 3.4% growth when we compare with the previous quarter and a 16.6% increase when we compare to the first quarter of last year.
New money came at BRL 16.6 billion, which is a similar level when we compare with the previous quarter. Most of the flows were directed to our asset services franchise. Moving now to wealth management and personal banking. On page 14, we see that we had also strong performance with record revenues, and our wealth under management reached BRL 1 trillion. Revenues came at BRL 1.048 billion, and that is an increase of 8.8% during the quarter and 19.2% when you compare to the first quarter of 2024. As I mentioned, we reached BRL 1 trillion in total wealth under management, and that is an 11% increase when we compare to the previous quarter and a 32% increase when we compare to the first quarter of 2024.
We also recorded strong net inflows despite the typical seasonality or weaker seasonality of the first quarter. Total net new money came at BRL 88.1 billion, which includes the organic net new money and the consolidation of the Julius Baer Brazil acquisition, which we completed by quarter end and accounted for approximately BRL 60 billion. If we remove the BRL 60 billion from the BRL 88.1 billion, we see that in organic net new money, we generated around BRL 28 billion, which is a similar level of what we've been generating for the last many quarters, I think more than three years with similar levels of net new money inflows. In April, we announced the acquisition of JGP Wealth Management, a multi-family office with BRL 18 billion under management, reinforcing our footprint and our products and services.
This transaction requires customary regulatory approvals, and we expect to be able to close this transaction by the end of the second quarter. Moving to page 15, in participations, we recorded equity pickup from Two Seguros at BRL 66 million, and that's a similar level of the results of last quarter. Equity pickup from Banco PAN came at BRL 160 million. Accruals of Banco PAN portfolios that we acquired during the previous quarters came at BRL 106 million. The elimination effect from the portfolios that we acquired during the first quarter of 2025 came at BRL 43 million. Overall, we had BRL 290 million contribution from participations, which is a similar amount that we had compared to the previous quarter, even excluding EFG contribution, which now is and will be recorded in sales and trading. Moving to page 17, we see our expenses and main ratios.
Here we see that we continue to gain operating leverage supported by our disciplined cost management and also as our revenues grow consistently at a higher pace than our costs. Total operating expenses slightly decreased 2% during the quarter, mostly impacted by bonus accruals and lower tax charges. Salaries increased by 12% during the quarter. Here, important to note that as during every first quarter of every year, we have a number of impacts, but the two most important components are the mandatory salary readjustments related to inflation and the salary readjustments related to promotions, a process that we do during the fourth quarter, but the impacts are recorded during the first quarter of every year.
As we saw during 2024 and during 2023, we expect that in the remaining three quarters of 2025, this line will grow at a slower pace because the growth there will be more related to hirings and acquisitions. Administrative and others remained flat during the quarter. Our cost income was then diluted from 39% to 37%, and our effective tax rate remained stable at 20.2%. Looking at our balance sheet on page 19, we see that total assets increased 3.8% when compared to the fourth quarter of 2024. Here, important to note that for a better comparison, we are using pro forma numbers of the fourth quarter of 2024 as if resolution 4966 was already implemented for December 31. We need to implement it in January, but we use the numbers of December 31 to be able to better compare one to another.
Also related to the implementation of resolution 4966 for FX transactions and also some derivatives transactions, instead of recording payables and receivables, we record now the net exposure of those transactions. That obviously represented a deleverage in our total assets. Our assets now represent 8.9 times our equity, while in the previous quarters, you might remember that this metric would be closer to 10 times our equity. Liquidity levels remained strong with BRL 71 billion in cash and cash equivalents and a comfortable coverage ratio of 151%. Our corporate lending and business banking credit portfolio now represents 3.9 times our equity. On page 20, we see our unsecured funding base evolution. Here we see that our total funding slightly decreased 2% during the quarter.
That was mainly impacted, as Roberto mentioned, by the maturity of $900 million senior bonds that matured in January and also by a 7% appreciation of the Brazilian real. Obviously, we prepared ourselves ahead of time. During the fourth quarter, we saw a strong growth in our unsecured funding base. If it was not for the FX appreciation, our unsecured funding base would have remained flat, even considering the maturity of the bond. The share of our retail funding increased 31% to 231%, and demand deposits now represent 7% of our total funding. During this quarter, we also issued BRL 800 million in tier one perpetual notes in Brazilian domestic markets at 140 basis points spreads to further strengthen our capital base.
Finally, looking at our Basel ratios on page 21, we see that our total capital ratio stayed at 15.4% with a tier one ratio of 12.2%. As I already mentioned before, our VAR remained at very low levels, increasing slightly to 16 basis points as we continue to maintain a conservative approach in this challenging macroeconomic scenario. Once again, a very strong set of results with record revenues in corporate lending, in asset management, and in wealth management, and also in overall total revenues, record revenues, and record profits. With that, I think we can open for questions.
Thank you. The floor is now open for questions from investors and analysts. If you have a question, click raise hand at this time. Please hold while we collect questions. The first question comes from Tito Labarta with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning.
Thank you for the call and taking my questions. Congratulations, another strong quarter. A few guys, two questions if I can. Just first on your capital ratio on the quarter one, it has been trending down. I know you've been growing the loan book quite a bit. I mean, ROE remains very strong and continues to increase. Just so I want to get a sense, how are you thinking about your capital base? Could it at any point constrain your ability to continue to grow given the high ROE? Do you expect to be generating capital throughout the year? Just how you contextualize that given the profitability, but also the growth that you've been delivering. Second question, just on the interest in the other line, very strong quarter there. I know it benefited from higher rates, but it seemed to go up quite a bit.
Just want to make sure, was there anything else driving that besides the interest rate environment? How should we think of that line going forward, particularly if rates begin to peak and maybe come down a little bit by year-end? Any color on that would be helpful. Thank you.
Thanks, Tito. On your first question, we continue to believe that the profits will be enough to sustain the target tier one ratios that we want. We especially have been able to access the 81 market at very attractive spreads. We continue to expect accumulating, let's say, if we deliver the guidance, around 17% growth in core equity tier one. We think that's more than enough to continue to sustain the growth that we expect in credit and in sales and trading and all the other businesses.
Naturally, there are always some effects from changes in regulation, but these are mostly one-offs and happen once every year. We feel very comfortable that the retained profits will be more than enough for us to deliver our business plan. On interest and other, we do not think there was anything extraordinary. It is just the accumulation of capital, monetization of DTAs, for example, benefiting from the high interest rates that we currently have. Naturally, if interest rates decrease, that will decrease accordingly. We think that would probably be a better environment for overall business. When we are able to get out of peak interest rates, we would think, even though interest and other would decrease, it is a better environment for business overall.
Okay, very clear. Thanks, Sallouti. Maybe just one quick follow-up, I guess, in terms of the ROE.
I mean, you've mentioned you expect ROE to continue to increase on a year-over-year basis. Is that still the case? How high do you think your ROE can get, particularly given just sort of the changing environment? What sort of a sustainable level of ROE that you're thinking today?
Here, I'm just going to stick to the guidance that we gave, that we expect this year's ROE to be higher than last year's. That's more or less the trend that we've been having. I'll just stick to the guidance that we gave. Don't want to give anything further than that.
Okay. No, that's fair. Thanks a lot, Sallouti. Thank you very much again. Thank you. Thanks.
The next question comes from Daniel Vaz with Safra. Please go ahead.
Hi, hi everyone. Thank you for the opportunity of making questions.
I'll just try to focus on the sales and trading part. Revenues were down. It's kind of understandable given the softer capital markets activity in Q1. I'm just wondering, is there any other specific factor that drove a larger unexpected drop? Should we expect a rebound in 2025? Considering that the market, like pretty much equity markets recovered, future rates declined, is it fair to trade that sales and trading can go back to, I do not know, maybe BRL 15,000 million here? Thank you.
Thanks, Daniel. If you consider the one-offs that Cohn mentioned when he made the explanation, it's more or less stable, right? Sales and trading. Yes, I think you're right.
I think more the trend that we're seeing with higher flows towards other markets other than the U.S., which we saw happening, and we can see that at the equity market levels in Brazil. We see that the level of the FX, I think these are all net positives as we continue also to grow our wealth management franchise, our asset management franchise, capital markets in Brazil, even though they're, let's say, they're being affected by the high level of interest rates, have shown resilience, and you see it becoming more sophisticated. Definitely, we think that over time, we would expect sales and trading to go back to growth. Maybe not the growth that we're seeing in the corporate lending or in the asset management business, but we definitely think that it would go back to growth as the trend goes back to, let's say, normal.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Marcelo Mizrahi with Bradesco BBI . Please go ahead.
Hi guys. Very good to be with you for the first time. My question is regarding the neo accountability, the provisions. Can you help us to understand how the neo accountability, so the higher provisions translated into the results or into the shareholders' act or the breach comparing last quarter and comparing to the level that was reported right now?
Hi, Marcelo. Thank you for the question. I think that the main impact was the impact on the equity, right? BRL 964 million. Most of it came from the impacts of Banco PAN, which was close to BRL 700 million there, a little bit less than that. The remaining part was also, which was recorded at BTG directly, right?
It was also the main impact was also related to portfolios that we acquired from Banco PAN, right? For BTG, there is very little impact because we already used the expected credit loss methodology for our corporate lending book, which is the majority of the credit lending portfolio that we do at BTG. Most of the impacts came from Banco PAN. That is already recorded, obviously, in our equity and detailed in the different stages. Not sure if that answers the question.
Okay, okay. Yes. Another question is regarding the SME portfolio, which was very good in this quarter. The growth was expanded a little bit more than the last quarter. Just to understand if there are any new operations here or the perspective of the credit loans, corporate lending into the next quarters. Thank you.
No, this is just the development of the business as we roll out new products, as we continue to onboard new clients, as we mature older vintages of clients and they start to interact with more products with us. It's the normal development of the business. Nothing extraordinary here.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Jorge Kuri with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, everyone. Congrats on the numbers. I wanted to ask your view about rate cuts for SELIC. The consensus from economists is still that the first rate cut happens next year, but we're starting to see the fixed income market pricing a possibility of cuts as soon as November. I wonder your view on that. Second, if that is the case, how fast do you think the core business that's more rate-sensitive can recover?
Can we potentially see some upside to estimates for the second half of the year? Do you think that that is maybe just the first half, 2026 recovery? How do you envision sort of like the rates and picking up from here? Thank you.
Thank you, Jorge. Actually, personally, this will be my personal view here. I do not expect rate cuts this year. I think we are still in a volatile environment. We are still seeing good growth numbers. We still have some inflation expectations that are not anchored. I think it is natural that the market is always trying to anticipate the pivot because, as we all know, the level of interest rates are very high, both on a nominal and real basis.
Since we have a 3% target and we have to anchor expectations there, I personally think that probably what is priced in right now is maybe a bit optimistic. Especially on the business side overall. Naturally, as a former trader, I allow myself to change my opinion at any moment, but this is what we're thinking right now. Strategically, we are basically only positioning for rate cuts somewhere in 2026. We think, yes, definitely, we would benefit in investment banking. We would benefit in asset management, in wealth management. It would create a better environment for credit. It would probably create a better environment for sales and trading.
So we think that overall, even though interest and other would suffer, it would be much better for the business if we go back to, let's say, a 4.5 BRL interest rate with a 3% inflation target. Let's say even if we're running between 3 and 4, interest rates closer to 8.5 would be much better for business, as we all know.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Yuri Fernandes with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi, Renato. Sallouti, and thank you for the call. I have a first question regarding our asset management results. It was very clear from Renato that this is seasonal, first Q and third Q. This seasonality was a little bit higher than in the past. Just checking if this is the new normal.
I do not know, maybe you are buying a higher stake in the dependent asset managers, and this will be like this quarter over quarter will become more normal in those quarters, or if there was any kind of more extraordinary tailwind for the asset management line. A second question on EFG. I remember this has been a long story, right? You bought these years ago. You sold this to the partnership in Generali. How much do you still own on EFG? I guess Renato mentioned maybe you sold a small position. Just checking the BRL 130 million gains, how much was for sale of this asset? Basically, how much you still have on these? Maybe if I may ask here, if this is for the investment here for you when you move this for sales and trading. Thank you.
Thank you, Yuri.
Related to the asset management business, there is no specific event. Sometimes some of the asset management companies that we invest in perform better or depending on the cycle or the moment. We had good results here as we had also very good results during the first quarter of 2024. There were also good contributions there. Now it was a little bit better than what we had in the first quarter of 2024, just comparing the same moments, right? Nothing specific there, right? It also includes the evolution, not just of those that are not one-offs anymore, right? They are recurring revenues that we record in the first and the third quarter. Then, the evolution of the assets under management and administration. I think it is a sum of the evolution of all the business as a whole.
In the second question, which was related to EFG, the one-off, as I mentioned, was close to BRL 100 million, right? Which is the sale of part of our investment or that we had in the bank that we did during the quarter. We own a little bit less than 3% in the bank of EFG. For the bank now, it is kind of a portfolio position. Depending on market conditions, we might sell a little bit more or maintain that position. We expect that the recurring revenues that we will have, that that position will have from EFG, will be in this level that I mentioned, which is around BRL 25 million-BRL 30 million per quarter.
Super clear, Renato. Thank you for sharing all those numbers. Congrats on asset management and other lines that were super, super good this quarter. Thank you.
Thank you, Yuri.
The next question comes from Renato Meloni as an autonomous . Please go ahead. Mr. Meloni.
Hi. Hello? Can you guys hear me now? Thank you. Yeah, we can hear you. We can hear you. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Thanks here for taking the question. I wanted to touch a bit on the credit cycle, how you're seeing the development year throughout the year and where you might be seeing risks for growth, right? Also related to this, just thinking more long-term here, right? The SME portfolio hasn't really, I mean, it's growing well, just like large corporates, but as a percentage of the total portfolio, it has remained fairly stable for the past few quarters. I'm just thinking maybe the end of next year, where do you want to get here? Where do you think the balance can be?
What does that mean for your net yields as well? Thanks.
Thank you, Renato. On the credit cycle, I think we talked about this at the end of last year that we were anticipating tough conditions for credit. Actually, I would say that the performance of the portfolio has been, I would say, better than what we had prepared for, which I think is good news. We continue to understand that the level of interest rates presents a challenging environment for companies that are more leveraged. At the same time, eventually, the economy will slow down, and this will also have implications for the different profiles of the credit that we have. This varies from the large quarters to the SMEs to the consumer credit. As usual, we model for much more challenging conditions that we are seeing. These eventually might happen.
If they happen, we are ready for it. I think I would say that so far, the credit cycle has surprised us positively by the end of Q1 to what we had, let's say, prepared for. On the SME segment, yes, I think this more conservative approach has limited the growth there. We have been very satisfied with the growth of the business banking side. With that, we continue to gather more data of the different SMEs. At some point, we will feel comfortable with the data we have and also with, let's say, the part of the macro conditions to start exploring credit lines which have higher spreads, but also have higher risk. We are not comfortable yet. We continue to focus on SME, on the low-risk products, the ones that have liquid guarantees.
That is why we have been growing more or less in line with the total portfolio. As you said, we think this is a great opportunity where we have very low market share. We are convinced that if we are disciplined, we continue having very good product, very good service, we can continue to grow this business line over time. Naturally, this business line has higher spreads than we have in the high-grade corporate. With that, we also continue to grow in Latin America as a whole, Chile, Colombia. The fact that we also have not only sector, but segment diversification. We also have geographical diversification that leaves us very comfortable to face the different environments and the different markets that we are present.
That is pretty clear. Thanks.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Thiago Batista with UBS. Please go ahead.
Hello. Are you listening? Hello?
We can hear you, Thiago. Okay, we can hear you.
Hi, Sallouti, Renato, Júlia. Thanks for the opportunity and congrats for the results. I have two questions. The first one on the wealth management business. I want to hear from you guys, your strategy with all the acquisitions that you guys have been made. You bought just year to date, Julius Baer Brazil and JGP. Only to understand your strategy here. The second one, on IB, how you guys are seeing the outlook for the IB business for the year. I know that Renato mentioned in the beginning that the last months were better than the beginning of the year. When you look for 2025 as a full year, the biggest case now is a contraction of this line or not really?
Thank you, Thiago.
On wealth management, as you know, we are now present in all the different segments, right? High-income retail, high net worth, ultra-high. We have different distribution channels. We have our B2C. We have our advisors. We have our wealth management. We have our IFA platform. We made some acquisitions in the past, which were more focused on the high-income, let's say, retail business. Recently, there were two opportunities in the high, ultra-high segment, maybe in the ultra-high with the wealth management, with the multifamily office platforms that we acquired. They have integrated well. We have a full platform, different channels, which all benefit from a full product line and all the technology investments that we've done. You have different service levels for the different profile of clients. These are the acquisitions. The strategy has not changed.
We're present in all the different segments. There are different opportunities for us to consolidate and grow these segments. We're always paying attention to these in the market. Regarding investment banking, I would say clearly that where we stand now, we are much more optimistic than we were in the beginning or the middle of the first quarter. There were some market expectations which talked about significant decrease in revenues. We were never that conservative, but we always thought that the market was challenging. I would say that where we're standing today, if we look at our M&A pipeline and our DCM pipeline, and even the level of the stock exchange, which allows some ECM transactions to happen, and we've been seeing that happen in the last few weeks, we are more optimistic than we were.
I do not want to talk about specific changes year to year, but clearly, I think the forecasts that some market participants had at the beginning of the year are proving extremely conservative. I think the market environment now, as, let's say, emerging markets overall are benefiting from this flow that is seeking diversification from the U.S. markets, which were extremely dominant in the last few years, allows us to be much more constructive and optimistic with the results for this year.
Very clear.
Thank you. The next question comes from Henrique Navarro with Santander. Please go ahead.
Hi guys. Good morning. Congratulations for the results. My question is more on Banco PAN. You guys own the totality of the voting share. It is in your hands the strategy for the bank. There is a lot going on with the private payroll.
For some banks, some small, medium-sized banks, the private payroll could be transformational. My question is, how do you see the potential positive impact of the private payroll on Banco PAN? It could be good. It could be very good. It could be transformational. Anything you guys could share with us, I would appreciate. Thank you.
Thank you, Navarro. I would say it's very good. I would not put it as transformational because we're still in the early stages of the product. A lot still has to happen. Some players are not present yet. We're just coming in with portability. I would say it's very positive. Banco PAN, I think, is one of the top five producers of Consignado Privado. It's very positive.
At the same time, all the issues we're seeing in ESS here now makes that market more challenging as, let's say, they stopped the production of new products. I would say it's very positive. We are integrating Banco PAN back office and control. We're constructive there. It's still a business in transformation, but we clearly see the private payroll as something that is very positive for the franchise.
Okay, thank you.
The next question comes from Antonio Ruette with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, everyone. Thank you for your time. I have a question on Banco PAN as well. Banco PAN mentioned that the idea is to have a single app operating with both banks. I would like you to explore a little bit more that, how would this work and how could be the implications for both.
Also, in Banco PAN, if you could explore a little bit more the strategy of integrating the bank. This has been an agenda mentioned by both banks. I just want to get some color on what could be further gains related to that in terms of costs and potentially revenues. I have a second question here more on strategy. If we look at your revenue composition over the past years, it has changed a lot. If we look at IB and Sales and Trading, they dropped from about half of revenues to close to 25%-30%. I'd like you to explore a little bit more, if you can, the potential implications for ROE, which are the levels of ROE of these main revenue drivers, and how could this translate into your ROE evolution going forward. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Antonio.
On the Banco PAN integration, a few years ago, we had co-control, so we could not integrate the control and back office functions. When we did buy all of the voting shares, we actually did not have the bandwidth at BTG because we were going through significant growth and transformation at BTG with the implementation of banking, digital strategies, and what we call the SME business. Now, given middle of last year, we finally had bandwidth at BTG, and we started integrating back office and control functions. Our main goal is to navigate to one core banking system, which would be shared by both banks. This is something that will happen probably towards the middle of next year.
When that happens, you would benefit from, let's say, all of the features that a single core banking would give you, meaning that we could share the app and just have a different branding. With that, we think that we can have significant cost synergies because today we have two core banking systems running. Over time, there would be only one with marginal increase in costs at BTG's because BTG's is very scalable. That would allow us to allocate the cost differently and will give us a lot of operational efficiency in both banks. This is probably something for middle that we will start seeing middle of next year, but it's something that we're very optimistic because we think it will increase efficiency, it will increase client experience, and it will reduce operational risk.
It's something with which we're very optimistic and bullish, even though it takes a bit more time than we would like for this integration to happen. Talking about revenue composition, you are right. We continue to expect wealth management and asset management franchises with don't-use capital to grow stronger than the rest. We continue to expect credit to continue to grow stronger than sales and trading and investment banking. That's why we're comfortable giving the guidance that we gave in the last few years, which has been an increase in operational leverage and consequently an ROE expansion. As I said in one of the previous questions, we don't want to give guidance beyond this year, but clearly, this trend has been we've been seeing this trend over the last few years.
If we continue to be successful in benefiting operational leverage in growing faster the business franchises that do not use capital, it is fair to believe that this trend can continue.
That is great. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Pedro Leduc with Itaú. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, everybody. Thank you so much for taking the question. On corporate lending revenues, wondering if you guys could give us a little bit more color on the moving pieces here. First, we notice you are growing in service and just credit. You can help us see how big the non-traditional credit revenues here are representing in terms of field. The SME portion. Last quarter, you mentioned how big LATAM already was within the total portfolio.
If you can update us there and give us a sense if this LATAM portfolio has a higher or lower consolidated spread than what we see here. Thank you.
Hi Leduc. Thank you for your question. Look, to be sincere, we did not see this quarter anything different than we saw in the last few quarters. In SME, we continue, especially in SME, we continue to see benefit from the banking business. LATAM has been relatively stable. I believe it was 15% that Cohn mentioned last quarter. Sorry, 20. He's waving to me. It was 20%. It's more or less stable. No big changes. I think here there's nothing very different than we saw in the last few quarters. Trying to be very specific here, the most specific that I can.
Okay. Okay. That's helpful already.
If I follow up to that, I know you guys are evolving into the SMEs or less and larger corporates. There are some recent announcements made. If you could give an update on how it is progressing, if we should see a more meaningful presence throughout this year from these new clients that you guys are tackling in corporates. Thank you.
No, definitely. Yes. We have been expanding our geographical presence throughout Brazil. We have been investing in marketing. We have been investing on the different products. Yes, we are quite optimistic with the results, and we are very optimistic with the trends we are seeing. We do believe this will present very good opportunities in the next few years for the business as we continue to grow this business line.
Thanks and congratulations. Thank you.
The next question comes from Brian Flores with Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi team.
Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to ask a question. A quick follow-up on Leduc's question. Wanted to ask you, you're outgrowing the system by a wide margin in corporate lending. Of course, we have seen as banks start reporting this previous week and this week, maybe some deceleration in some segments. Just wanted to explore how are you thinking about the environment in Brazil and if we should see the maintenance of this, I would say, rhythm, or are you thinking about decelerating a bit? If you could explore a bit to what are you seeing on asset quality, I think that would be very useful. Thank you.
Thank you, Brian. We grew the portfolio of an almost taken 27% year over year. I would say probably say that towards year end, this will be closer to 20% than to 27%.
It does decelerate a bit. You also have to remember that we benefit from having low market share in SME, in middle market, and in the corporate segments. In the large corporate, I think we have a bigger market share. We benefit from the very low market share we have. We also benefit from growing in different geographies throughout Latin America. We definitely might slow down a bit from this 27% that was very strong. We do think that we will continue to outgrow the market in part because of the geographical diversification and in part because of the segment diversification, especially in the segments where we're coming from a very low market share.
Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you. That brings us to the end of the question and answer session. I will now return the floor to Mr. Roberto Sallouti for his closing remarks.
Thank you very much to all of you for joining our call once again. Once again, thank you for your trust and your partnership. We look forward to talking to you at the end of Q2. Thank you very much. Have a great week.
Thank you. This concludes today's presentation. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a nice day.