Banco do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul S.A. (BVMF:BRSR6)
Brazil flag Brazil · Delayed Price · Currency is BRL
15.35
-0.01 (-0.07%)
May 5, 2026, 5:07 PM GMT-3
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Earnings Call: Q4 2024

Feb 13, 2025

Nathan Meneguzzi
Head of Investor Relations, Banco do Estado

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Banco do Estado's video conference to discuss the results for the fourth quarter of 2024. In the whole year of 2024, this video conference is being recorded, and the replay can be accessed on our investors' relations website a few hours after the event is done. In addition, this broadcast has simultaneous translation into English. If this is your preference, please click on the button you can find on the bottom of your screen. Today's event will be divided into three parts. First, our CEO, Mr. Fernando Lemos, will give a presentation about our year of 2024 and our main delivery, as well as bringing more information on what's to come in 2025. Next, our RI and Director Gonzaga will present the main figures and performance for this quarter of the year.

Then we'll finish with our traditional Q&A session with the market analysts. The presentation will be given. We will be giving today will also be available for download on this platform's chat and also on our RI website. Now I'd like to hand it over to our CEO. Please, Mr. President.

Fernando Lemos
President and CEO, Banco do Estado

Thank you, Nathan. Thank you, everyone, for your presence. It's a pleasure to be here. I've been here as the CEO of Banco do Estado for the past 18 months, and we have restarted to develop what we thought to deliver to Banco do Estado. I will briefly discuss what we have been doing.

We created the idea to have an open bank, which meant not only open for the market, for the capital markets, but also open to our services in general, new technologies, new movements of the banking system in Brazil has gone through to provide the best service to our clients. So we've been implementing this. We started with the modernization process of the bank with a new model for the transactions, moving towards digital, the digital world. We invested millions in the IT department of the bank to modernize Banricompras, a new digital account, which has been really successful, a global account of foreign currencies, first for the individual accounts, and then our idea is to expand it to the whole portfolio. We've been very successful, and from this week on, we will start to open our digital account for the whole country, for the whole of Brazil.

We can expand to the whole country, the Banco do Estado digital account, so we can improve and increase our base, our portfolio, and renew many of our businesses in our base, in our client base in Rio Grande do Sul. We have seen that the digital account has a special feature. This is meant for people who are young, under the age of 35 years old. So this has been really successful among this age group, this group of clients. But we also realized that the bank was too connected to payroll loans. We decided to redirect our services and also approach commercial loans for small, medium-sized companies. We started with a single account, Conta Única. We have BRL 2.4 billion already being used, and we have already used BRL 1.5 billion of this total amount. This is expressive for the credit and the loans provided by the bank.

The organic growth has been really positive in the commercial loans provided by the bank. So we are not so dependent or depending so much on the payroll loans. This will keep on being an important product of our bank, but we will expand our loans, our credit to other segments of the market, especially the commercial loans, taking advantage of this characteristic given to us by Vero, which helps us get into the commercial market. We have Vero close to the bank. We have joint packages involving Vero and Banco do Estado to cover more of businesses in Rio Grande do Sul. This gives us a very good perspective. We also created the digital discount. This is a very important service for the bank, and it has been really successful with a balance of next to BRL 150 million.

Another product, which is digital, this is a self-service, let's say, product or service, which makes the lives of our clients much easier. We keep on investing in our digital services. This is our role. This is what we want to develop. We also had an issue, a problem related to the flood, the climatic event in last May, which affected Rio Grande do Sul. Because of the commitment towards our population, we invested heavily in agriculture to recover all of our segments, all of our areas also, which were flooded. We also provided credit to museums and Mário Quintana Museum, and the orchestra, the local orchestra also was affected. All of this public equipment, public buildings which were affected were helped by the bank in the form of credits to help us interact with the communities of Rio Grande do Sul.

15 million were donated for the rebuild of households too, and also credits to artists and other parts. We favored this investment in the culture of Rio Grande do Sul. We have a huge investment of BRL 400 million and more, and most of them in IT, so we can improve our investment and our capacity. We changed all the computers in our branches. They were old, so they needed to be replaced. We improved our data center. Our base is very satisfactory, so we can advance in the development of products that can meet the demands of our clients, looking for efficiency and safety, which are our top priorities. We also performed a new movement in Brazil regarding our ATMs, our cash machines.

They were in need of change, and we, along with TecBan, replaced all of our equipment which were in need of replacement to new ATMs, relying on state-of-the-art technologies and open to everyone, not only to Banco do Sul clients, but also open to everyone who wants to make use of these equipments. Clients of other banks who are within this portfolio of the 24-hour bank will have access to ATMs, Banco do Sul ATMs. This is a network of almost 150 banks. They can withdraw, they can make deposits, they can make services, they can use their services, online services, and all of this revenue of the service will be a Banco do Sul revenue. This is an open bank. This also, again, has to do with our idea of establishing an open modern bank.

Our company, Vero, which was closed, which provided service only to Banco do Sul clients, nowadays, Vero can also provide services to clients who are clients of other banks. This is an effectively open concept based on our idea. We are also opening new points of sales through Banricompras. Because we are convinced, absolutely convinced that we need to get closer to people, especially after the pandemic. Many people started working at home. They usually don't travel so much anymore. So it's important to have a point of service that is closer to their community, closer to their household. So we have what we call Banco do Sul Point, and this is like a mini branch of Banco do Sul bank that can provide some services in areas which are further located from the downtown. So we can provide services to these communities.

All of our service of PIX, the automatic money transfer service, it's fully automated. We have anchored this in our credit line that was called Crédito Minuto, which was traditionally called Crédito Minuto. Now it's connected to this new area. As I said, we have been expanding. We've been preparing to expand our services to the whole country with an expressive demand already. We have a net interest income of BRL 916.1 million, which is very good. We grew 5.2% if compared to last year. We imagine that maybe the flood that affected Rio Grande do Sul would have a much bigger impact on our net income. Based on the reorganization that we made to protect our portfolio, our default ratio was very low, 1.73%. 1.73% of default ratio is very comfortable for us. We also grew our net interest income, and provision expenses are proportional.

Banking fees also had an expressive growth through the use of Vero, particularly, which is being more properly used, in our opinion. The total assets of the bank is almost BRL 148 billion, and the loan portfolio of Banco do Sul is BRL 62.1 billion, with a growth of 15%, which gives us a very good perspective for our institution. As I said, we are no longer connected to payroll loans, and we are transforming the bank into a more retail service bank in a more balanced way to face the new demands of the market. We are preparing, we are positioning ourselves for the year of 2025. We need to be careful.

Credits and loans are getting more expensive, but we have this perspective, which is a little bit different because we expect to have a very good investment of around BRL 14 billion or BRL 15 billion to recover the infrastructure of Rio Grande do Sul. This money will be provided by the state government. This comes from the waiver on the federal debt, and so this waiver will be used to invest in the infrastructure of Rio Grande do Sul, and so Banco do Sul has good perspectives for the year of 2025. We are not going to talk about specific figures yet, but if you consider the bank we had in 2022, in 2023, we had a net income of BRL 304 million. Sorry, in 2022, we had BRL 781 million, and this has grown, and now we have BRL 916 million. The ROAE also overcome BRL 10 billion for the first time.

I'm very realistic, and I remember that when I started working at Banco do Sul, we talked about the results of the bank, and we wanted to reach one billion BRL of equity, and now we have over 10 billion BRL in equity. Our ROAE is very good, very expressive, and provides us with safety and security. Thank you very much for your attention. Later, I will be with you for the Q&A session. Thank you very much.

Luiz Gonzaga
CFO and RI, Banco do Estado

This is Gonzaga speaking. Thank you for your presence. Well, let me talk a little bit about the profitability of our bank. Let's talk about profitability first, and well, we reached 916 million BRL, as our CEO said. A growth of 6.2% if compared to last year. In the past quarter, we advanced 44% compared to the third quarter and the fourth quarter.

And if compared to the fourth quarter of 2023, it's a little behind, but the measure is well positioned, especially considering everything that happened in the second quarter of 2024, considering the climatic event and also all the loans we had to reposition and also the payroll loans portfolio changes. In terms of ROAE, in the past quarter, we managed to reach 9.1% of ROAE in 2023 and also 9.1% in 2024. As the CEO said, we increased in our equity, and this led to ROAE that was the same as 2023. We had some events which were important, like the NII, which was very good. In terms of credit provision, almost no impact, and administrative expenses also changed a little bit. We had a guidance of 7.6%, and the service fees also were good with a result of BRL 916 million.

We had a financial margin or NII from the fourth quarter of 2023 to the fourth quarter of 2024. We had an increase of 14.4%, and from the third quarter of 2024 to the fourth quarter of 2024, an increase of 9.9%. We were a little behind what we wanted to have. We wanted to deliver an 18%, but our actual guidance was 16.2%, but even so, we realized it was a good net interest income. In 2024, we faced some important events: the reduction of the cost of funding with an IDS of subordinated debt abroad, a 4.27% cost plus interbank deposit certificate, and the cost was only related to the interbank deposit certificate, and it also increased our loan portfolio, which favored our margin, and the cost of operations of previous automatic bank deposit certificates favoring the margin.

These were events, the main vectors, the main events that led our margin to be what we reached in 2024. We will expect the margin in 2024 to regress to the regular market expectation. So the fourth quarter of 2024, we grew 9.9% to the fourth quarter, a figure which is in line with what we expected in terms of margin deliveries, which affected the whole result of 2024. Asset quality, 15.6% of growth, 7.6% if compared to the quarter, 9.4% in individuals and 6.4% in corporate. But we also grew in currency over 100%, which is important for the commercial portfolio. Development lines due to the flood in Rio Grande do Sul, we had an increase of BRL 500 million. The rural loans also had an effect because of the extension of debts based because of the flood in Rio Grande do Sul. But we grew 15.6% in our portfolio.

Individuals, 74% were payroll loans with a guarantee of these payroll loans. The real estate, that is a stagnation of this portfolio, but we grew 9.9% in the real estate portfolio we haven't operated, just what we had already agreed with the market. The works and the job sites in construction sites, we have followed all the agreements. We also have some dismissal programs and also what the company receives in terms of from construction companies like apartments and other services to pay for the debts. This is what has gone on in the real estate portfolio with an expressive figure in industry. This is not an open portfolio for the buy and sell of real estate for the individuals. This is to reinforce employment and income in the state. Credit quality, asset quality is very good. Percent, very good results. In individuals, we have 1.7% and 2.2% in companies.

These are not, I mean, the volume is higher in the individuals' accounts if compared to the companies. We checked the coverage ratio. It went to 246% in December 2023, and now it's 243%, but it grew if compared to September of 2024, which was 215%, and provision expenses, we have 2.15% in this quarter. Next, please. Our administrative expenses, we had 7.2% of growth. If we measure this, it's 5.2%. It's in line with the collective agreement. We had some effects of the climatic events. Again, this is natural and expected. We had to remodel some of our infrastructure. We had to pay for cleaning services. This cost us time and money, of course. Our contracted parties' services were below what we expected. Amortization, and we changed the whole set of computers in our network. We invested heavily on that. This has a cost.

We had some investments paid to IBM, payroll, and stock. Service and IT service, we decreased this service. We increased the volume of processing both at Vero and Banco do Sul. Obviously, this also leads to an increase in processing costs. We had some costs related to advertising to place or to position the bank in the market. We had to make some ads because of the climatic event too, and our portfolio of new services such as single unified account or Conta Única, and also guarantees for real estate and digital services, a series of products that have to be advertised by the bank. We also invested heavily on digital media and open TV, so this number in advertising naturally had to grow, and other expenses are there daily expenses that led to this percentage of 10%. So the total is 7.2%. Next, please.

Service fees, we had an increase of 8.6% led by cards. There was a change in services agreed upon with the Central Bank, the Brazilian Central Bank. We had other services which were accounted for that came to the revenue of cards. So our expenses are 24.1%, and accounts, insurance, and other revenue, consortium, and other revenues led to 8.5%. In terms of funding, we've had an excellent performance in funding, 14%, and the average SELIC is around 11%. Almost over 4% in real growth in funding. Our global funding is 81, and CDB is 85.4. This also helped us hold NII or financial margin. This funding cost in our portfolio had a growth led by overdraft. We cannot complain about that. We almost had a 5% growth in savings accounts, and almost all portfolios had good results.

In terms of capital, we had a Basel Ratio of 17.2%. We had the debt of BRL 300 million in national debt and $300 million in IDS abroad. Tier 1 Capital change had a performance of 13.8%. It was reduced a little bit if compared to the previous quarter because of the increase in the portfolio, so capital is doing well. We can continue working on credit if we keep on working like that. In our guidance, we have our guidance and our projected and estimated number. Our total loan portfolio in 2024 is 15.6% in line with the market. We do not see with this prime interest rate and the market as a whole and the market waiting for the federal government actions. We expect in 2025 a total loan portfolio from 6% to 10%. We expect to deliver on that.

In terms of net interest income, we have here the percentage. We work in the level of 7%-12%, also in line with other banks. Cost of credits, we have a change in the basis of this for in 2024. According to the new concept, which no longer applies to credit recoveries in both ends, we would have 1.4%. But now for 2025, we expect 1.2%-2.2% because our portfolio will be highly controlled in terms of default ratio. And this is one of our priorities to control default based on the new order and law. And administrative expenses, I don't know about the collective bargain agreement, but we are working with a percentage that ranges from 7%-11%. So this is our guidance.

For the loan portfolio, 10% net interest income to up to 12%, cost of risk 2.2%, and administrative expenses up to 11%. This is what we aim to achieve in this year of 2025. This is it. Thank you for your attention. Thank you, Mr. Gonzaga. Our CEO would like to give you a take-home message before we move on to our Q&A session. I just wanted to thank you all for your participation. I would like to tell you that Banco do Sul believes in all the services we have provided and all the actions we've been taking. I believe in the performance of Banco do Sul. We are no longer dependent on a single type of credit, which was the payroll loans. This is an expressive portfolio, but we do not want to rely solely on the payroll loans.

We have expanded our range, our mix of loans, and so we have an expectation to have a very good year ahead. We are bold in terms of creation of products and technology, but we are pretty conservative in terms of the number and the figure. So we want to achieve high numbers, but also be very safe. That's it. Thank you very much.

Nathan Meneguzzi
Head of Investor Relations, Banco do Estado

Thank you, Mr. CEO. Thank you, Mr. Gonzaga. We'll now start our Q&A session. So before we start, if you'd like to ask a question via audio, please press the reaction button and then click on raise hand. If your question is answered, please click on lower your hand. For additional questions, which cannot be answered here, our IR team will approach them and answer them. So let's start with the first question coming from Mr. Olavo Arthuso from UBS. Hello, Arthuso. Can you hear us?

Olavo Arthuso
Equity Research Analyst, UBS

Yes. Good afternoon, everyone. Nathan, Mr. Gonzaga, all the team, thank you for the explanations. My first question has to do with this tax rate you showed for the semester. I looked at the financials, and I could see the positive impacts of JCP coming from a base. You have distributed some of it in November and in December. I mean, I'm talking about the interest on own capital. Also there was a profit-sharing program based on the good of law, sorry, the law of goodwill. I just wanted you to provide us with more information regarding that. My second question has to do with the guidance, especially related to the cost of risk. I understand that based on Order 66, you have to work like this. But where have you booked this credit recovery?

In your release, it was more connected to margin and release. Just wanted to confirm, are you indicating in the average point of the guidance, the cost of risk, that this liquid provision of cost recovery tends to grow around 30% this year? Is that the percentage you're expecting?

Fernando Lemos
President and CEO, Banco do Estado

So thank you very much. Well, related to the first question, in terms of details, we have our colleague here who can discuss this. Can you hear me? Good afternoon. Well, in fact, in this past quarter, we have paid interest on capital below the first and the third quarters because we had to verify the capacity of the bank to maintain itself, to comply with the rules of the central bank to maintain tax credits.

But then we realized that we could pay more interest on capital, and then we paid 182 million BRL that benefited the basis in the past quarter specifically. So subsidiary companies also paid interest on capital to the bank, and this generated a balance if compared to previous quarters. And in the past quarter, the subsidiaries maintained the same level of payments to the bank. However, the volume that the bank has paid to its shareholders was increased. So this generates these benefits in the past quarter. And the good law, that is this law we have used, and then the benefits of this law for our calculations. So in December, it allowed us to provide this benefit in our taxation basis. So these are the events. These are the items that led us to these figures on our results and income results.

The participation of profit participation was inside for the deductibility for the period. It has no difference if compared to previous quarters because it was already accounted for. Basically, these are the items that provided us with these results. In the consolidated numbers, where we see the taxation of our subsidiaries and the bank, we see a positive tax of BRL 207 million in expenses. I mean, not positive. This is BRL 207 million in expenses for income tax. But if we consider only the bank and the equity, we reduced our taxation in the bank because it was already taxed in the subsidiary companies. And the subsidiary companies have presented excellent results for the Banco do Sul group. I don't know if I could answer your question, but basically, that's what happened.

Olavo Arthuso
Equity Research Analyst, UBS

Cost of credit .

Mr. Gonzaga, if you could talk about cost of credit revenues, which were considered within the NII, but then from 2025 on, they will be netted in the PDD, so there is a positive number. They reduce the number of provisions.

Luiz Gonzaga
CFO and RI, Banco do Estado

They will be outside NII and for the provision. This is in line with the market, how they present their releases, and then we have the 2025 guidance and the cost of credit. This is in our release, a column on comparative basis, and we will be adjusting the end of 2024 based on this new type of calculation. For cost of credit, it was this interval of 1.4%. Considering the guidance range for 2025, we have a 1.2%-2.2% range, so the mid would be 1.7%. If compared to 2024, we estimate, we project a growth in cost of credit based on the same comparison of 2024.

This is in line with what we have shown because this new appetite of the bank for new commercial services. Many banks have allocated this in amounts, but we allocated in percentage. But in terms of numbers, it would be BRL 800 million and BRL 1.3 billion, BRL 800 million in the minimum and BRL 1.3 billion in the max. We have had a significant involvement in cash credit recovery. We have invested in database intelligence and IT. And to give you an idea, our cash credit recovery was BRL 180 million against a recovery of BRL 720 million in 2023, a growth of over 20% in relation to one year versus the next. We have invested heavily on the modernization and expansion of this area due to this change of concept. And we believe this recovery will keep on strong and progressively grow. Thank you very much. These recovery numbers, I wanted you to confirm that.

Olavo Arthuso
Equity Research Analyst, UBS

Just a follow-up regarding the tax rate. And we have discussed with investors yesterday and today in the morning. Can you give us an idea, please, regarding what tax rate we could consider for 2025? Because it has been volatile. Both in 2023 and 2024, it varied so much. So could you give us an expectation?

Luiz Gonzaga
CFO and RI, Banco do Estado

Well, Nathan will check that and will share this with you. But well, in 2023 and 2024, we have used the interest on capital on our subsidiary company. So yes, you are right. There was some variation to pay the dividend in the market. So this gives us a difference because there are connected companies or subsidiaries. They have a difference in percentage. The payment between the companies and the bank generates changes in the global rates when you check the consolidated numbers.

Nathan Meneguzzi
Head of Investor Relations, Banco do Estado

Olavo, well, we will check this, and I will follow up with you. I'll give you a better perspective on these numbers moving forward. Okay?

Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Moving on to the second question, I'd like to call Ricardo Buchipiguel from BTG Pactual.

Ricardo Buchpiguel
Equity Research Director, BTG Pactual

Hello, everyone. Hello, Nathan. I have two questions. First of all, there was a growth of provisions from Q3 to Q4, and also an increase in operational expenses, moving from 2024 to 289. What led to these increases? We knew it was a normalized numbers or expectations based on the Q3 or checking 2024 as a whole year. How can we consider this to have a clear perspective on 2025? And my second question, well, yes, please. My second question, well, I can ask later.

Fernando Lemos
President and CEO, Banco do Estado

Well, regarding expenses, civil expenses, they follow a straight line.

We write one off, and then there's a new one. The labor-related expenses, yes, they went through some changes. It's Brazil. Sometimes we don't know if a lawsuit is going to be appealed or not, and which is going to be successful or not. We also work based on safety, and we understand that we should have some provision for our protection to protect Banco do Sul. It's around BRL 70 million, but just to provide us with a safety net regarding this perspective. We never know if one ruling will be overthrown or not, or if the lawsuit will be appealed or not. In terms of operations, we had some costs related to administrative expenses, day-to-day expenses, remodeling of branches. We had to expend a lot of money related to these administrative expenses. This led to this increase.

But even if you consider all the expenses, we reached a percentage of 7.6%.

Ricardo Buchpiguel
Equity Research Director, BTG Pactual

Oh, yeah. Thank you. Just to follow up on this item, how much of these expenses would be specific to the year of 2024, to remodeling of branches or reinforcing labor cost provisions? How much were they for the year? What amount do they represent or do they account for the year so we can have a perspective of 2025?

Fernando Lemos
President and CEO, Banco do Estado

Well, the bank grew more in companies and personal credit. They have better margins, as you said, but they also carry more risk. I'd like to understand if that's a trend we will see moving forward to make these credit lines grow more, more margin, but also more risk.

Ricardo Buchpiguel
Equity Research Director, BTG Pactual

And how do you see this positioning considering the market? Because many banks are talking about being careful because the macroeconomic scenario is more challenging.

How do you see this scenario? Could you talk about that?

Fernando Lemos
President and CEO, Banco do Estado

Well, regarding expenses, if you consider the final quarter of 2024, it was zero. The third quarter, I mean, the second quarter had expenses. The third quarter also had expenses. But if we consider only the end of the third quarter and the fourth quarter, there were no expenses. We had no expenses, if you can see the data. Well, I can ask my colleague here to add, but we have worked heavily on retail, small retail, credit cards, and other services. We have Vero, and also Banco do Sul is connected to that. And Banco do Sul is a product that, in practice, it's virtually like a check. It's a check within the client's current account. Clients can pay their purchases, also installments. And it works with Cielo, Visa, and Mastercard. This is a facilitator service.

It's up to the clients. If they can decide between a regular credit card or a Banco do Sul, they can buy with Banco do Sul as if they had a credit card or installments, so it's about their preference. Sometimes, if they get paid by the 30th of the month, they don't pay the Banco do Sul fee. They will pay some interest, and this is also good for the bank, so the client's current account is like the interest fee that they pay. The clients can buy installments from 2-30 days. It's a basis of 4.5 million customers who have these types of cards with a very high limit of BRL 6 billion. This makes a lot of difference in our daily operation. My colleague will talk about other credit strategies we have. Hello.

Luiz Gonzaga
CFO and RI, Banco do Estado

Hello. Regarding the credit strategy, we have concentrated our service on small operations, trying to massify retail credit. In all of our models, we have been reviewing our concession models, focusing on increasing the number of clients and having operations with a better margin, mitigating also the risk or the cost of credit. Our default ratios, our default levels have decreased, and we have provisioned similar amounts to those of 2023. Another strong point is looking at receivables and the flow of clients' financial flows, both for individual accounts and corporate accounts and receivables in the banks, and looking towards this financial movement as an element when it comes to providing credit and modeling credit for the retail services. In corporate accounts, we strongly focus on a connection that has been successful with Vero, which has to do with expanding the Vero network and also increasing our credit portfolio.

And then we created this unified account, Conta Única, BRL 1.5 billion of amounts, and also limits that are provided over that. This is a credit that is given to companies that have very good credit scores. And we have rescalated companies' cash flows, providing a revolving credit line. The clients pay interest rates monthly, and the capital they give back according to the company's cash flows. This product has very good demand. We have approximately 12,000 companies that are customers of the service, and our expectation is to double the number of this portfolio. It has very good demand in the market and also is connected to receivables and the company's cash flows. So receivables and accounts payables generate revenue. And along with that, we have the payroll that increases our basis of clients for the individual accounts with credit provision. It's very simple to understand Banco do Sul's strategy.

We were outside commercial credit provision in Rio Grande do Sul. We are going back into this marketing. We will be back to the good commercial credit in Rio Grande do Sul. We are pretty confident that we will advance credit services with confidence and safety. Our good clients were outside of Rio Grande do Sul. We are attracting these clients with good credit products that are proper in billing, in collection, in discounts, and they use Vero in a better way, in a more adequate way. The credit will be harder this year because of the cost of credit, but we can make our good credit grow. This is the strategy of the bank for this commercial portfolio. Thank you very much.

Nathan Meneguzzi
Head of Investor Relations, Banco do Estado

Thank you, Ricardo. We'll move forward from Antonio Ruette from Bank of America. Hello.

Antonio Ruette
Analyst, Bank of America

Hello. Thank you very much. I have two questions. First, I would like to understand. Yeah, to understand better the impact of 66. I would like to understand the composition of this order, this law. Maybe we have a positive impact for bonds, mark-to-market, and your balance has 58 million securities, and 18% are available for sale. We have seen in banks' disclosure of results, and we have seen some positive markings. I would like to understand better. [Foreign language] . Of the new strategy of going back to commercial credit, as you have highlighted, if private payroll loan is of interest for the bank.

Fernando Lemos
President and CEO, Banco do Estado

The first part of your question has to do with treasury bonds that are available for sale.

The market for this bond is almost residual. It can be a bad situation if Brazil goes into default, but that's a different situation. Right now, in this scenario, this is a good portfolio and represents or stands out for a reduced volume. The second part will be tackled by my colleague and also private credit. Regarding general impacts of 4,966, we expect to have 1.5-2.5 in PL. We are still refining the figures, closing in January, but the figures, the numbers will not be so different from 1.5-2%. Regarding payroll, we are paying attention to the federal government and Fenaban, and if it's in line and there is no price marking or price limitation that is too strong. This is a product that interests us due to the quality and the assurance that has to do with this operation.

Antonio Ruette
Analyst, Bank of America

Just a follow-up regarding the 4966, regarding this negative impact between 1.5 and 2 in PL. I would like to understand a little bit more if it comes from provision, additional provision, and it should be more in securities or. Well, just let me make a drill down on 4966. We have been publishing in IFRS and 4966 from 2008. From 2018 on, we have dealt with this in our IFRS.

Fernando Lemos
President and CEO, Banco do Estado

So this is more about credit that are given and capital credit, credit debt accounts, and credit cards, Banco do Sul, and also credits that are contracted and are to be released in civil construction in the long run and BNDES credits. So this portfolio we have that can be called an off-balance portfolio because these are limits that are controlled in compensation accounts.

These limits have led to a new provision in IFRS that was already quantified. So this is nothing new for us. I believe these figures that needed to be provided in IFRS were provided for, and we will continue to do that. And there was a change in the models of provisioning with a minimal provision that the central bank requires for tier one operations and tier three operations. So the situations as a whole, they bring more impact. And in terms of securities, the provision was created inside in the BR GAAP, what is not done, but in IFRS has been done, and from 2005 on, will be done as well. And an impact of 60 to 90 days in credit operations that stop accrual is 60 days. Unlocking this to 90 days, that is a small impact.

In December, it was 60 days, but in January, they will receive the revenue in up to 90 days. Part of this revenue belongs to the previous year, fiscal year. Yeah, so liquid equity. So these are the impacts regarding the implementation of 4966 here at the bank. So some of the models, we had that already done this in relation to IFRS. So it doesn't lead to significant impacts. In terms of Basel ratio, do we have an expectation for the first quarter of this year in tier one and PDDs? If we have an, if we achieve that expected credit increase, this will correspond to an increase in equity. There won't be no major change. It can be 13.4.

Antonio Ruette
Analyst, Bank of America

I hope the rate is 13. No, I was talking about the 4966.

Fernando Lemos
President and CEO, Banco do Estado

No, no, it has no effect. No, no. Thank you. Thank you.

It was said by Mr. Ivano. It's 1.5%, and it's already accounted for. It's already priced.

Nathan Meneguzzi
Head of Investor Relations, Banco do Estado

Moving on, we will listen to Eduardo Nishio. Hello, Nishio.

Eduardo Nishio
Chief Equity Analyst and Head of Bank Coverage, Genial Investimentos

Hello. Hello, Nathan. Regarding one, first of all, we had until a little ago, we had a mismatch of BRL 20 billion between assets and liabilities. You have changed this in the balance sheet. Your hedge is minimal, and we've been working with this change, growing less in the payroll loans, the commercial services growing more to offset this. And we also made changes in deposits. I would like to know or to understand if there is any timeline you expect regarding the whole hedge, the whole balance sheet, and what is the hedge today and what is the mismatch today in terms of million reais. And this is the first question. And the second question has to do with your guidance.

Fernando Lemos
President and CEO, Banco do Estado

Making some assumptions, we achieve an ROI that is below, much below what would be expected from the bank, 10-11% of ROI for the bank. And some credit lines, they go from 1.4%-1.7%.

Eduardo Nishio
Chief Equity Analyst and Head of Bank Coverage, Genial Investimentos

And then if you consider, on top of that, a growth of 9% of the portfolio loans, and there is a growth of liquid PDD that is relevant for 2025, should we expect that? And why is this growing so much in 2025? And regarding the administrative expenses, well, we have an average of 9%, which is high. That has to do with another thing, another point. You are lagging behind the competitors. Do you want to improve your efficiency rate in 2025? And what do you expect to do to reach that? Considering the number of branches, you haven't changed this after the pandemic, but now with the rollout of the digital services, are you going to add costs? I would like to know more about that and the digital services and the number of branches and the efficiency rate. Your question is a very long one.

Fernando Lemos
President and CEO, Banco do Estado

Many questions in one. Later, you have to repeat, I guess. We have to repeat part of the question. Times change and things change. There is a mismatch. We reached BRL 21 billion in 2022. Now we have a residual value of BRL 10 billion in our predated accounts. Accessible prices and costs of 4%, and we have funding. We have seen this in CDBs and financial bonds, LCI, LCA. Over BRL 1 billion in the funding of these portfolios.

We also increased credit in the assets we have generated now, all of them indexed assets connected with BNDES. Considering the increase in the credit portfolio, we have Conta Única, and 95% is post-fixed accounts in CDI. As a whole, we still have around less than 8 billion BRL. If we consider the accounts, we have netted the effects of the interest rate. We have a margin for all of our portfolios in the service. We are working with a SELIC interest rate of 16%. To consider all of this credit, we have a cost of funding of 16% to secure margin. Anyway, we have payroll loans. Also, INSS had an increase, a promising 1.96%. The bank is really, really protected in terms of interest rate mismatch for liabilities and assets. What was your second question again?

Eduardo Nishio
Chief Equity Analyst and Head of Bank Coverage, Genial Investimentos

Regarding the guidance, well, the guidance implies a relevant increase in cost of credit and administrative expenses for 2025. And then if you make some assumptions and simulations, we have a ROI that is below the history and the potential of the bank, 10%-11%. And what about your efficiency rate?

Fernando Lemos
President and CEO, Banco do Estado

Well, regarding ROI, I haven't calculated this, so I can tell you, I don't know. Well, anyway, credit has an expectation of an additional growth, not identical to last year's, but we will grow with high profitable margins in retail. It's priced. For corporate services, we have an internal campaign to open new corporate accounts for small and medium-sized companies. We know this market. We know how to work with that. We have a historic spread of over 10 years of history working with this spread and also overdraft. It's a special revolving credit service at Vero.

We open a limit for company or corporate accounts. They will have a Banricompras between 10, so they can go to a supermarket, they can buy 60 days of credit, and they will always have a residual amount of these services. So credits will come in the form of margins. There will be a good margin. And we also have credit wholesale with a. And the default ratio is very low, safe. So considering the mix, I think it is within our expectation. And in the NII, we hope to achieve the top expectation. Well, Gonzaga, he also talked about cost of risk, cost of credit. If you change the mix, well, we have some risks in some services, but they are offset by the financial margin, by the NII. Yes, that's it.

We have a high margin for these lines, for these services, because there's no point in achieving BRL 10 billion in credits with a margin of 1.5%-2% a year, and spreads of 3% a year. That we have in major companies. But if we have more accounts, we divide this cost of risk between many more accounts, so we have a better margin. Our delivery, we are committed to delivering this to our consumers and shareholders. Regarding administrative expenses, yes, we have this cost. We have invested, and we renew all the set of our computers with IBM. There is this CapEx that is accounted for related to the investment in renewing our equipment. We understand there is this expense and also labor costs and also this inflation, 5%.

I don't know what's coming this year, but if this inflation pressure is maintained, anyway, you have to deal with Febraban. We follow what Febraban requirements say, and this is our cost related to labor costs. We have to understand that following the same indexes. We are careful with administrative expenses, but the numbers are there. We do not see any increases. We expect to lower them. But with all of the investments we make, of course, there will be more expenses. Some of them will be good expenses. On the other hand, we will not have expenses with our banking correspondent. On the top of our expenses, it's diluted for credit payroll loan that can offset that. We don't know exactly how this portfolio will be. This is why we are so careful with administrative expenses. We hope them will decrease, but we cannot make false promises.

And with these investments, that's what's to be expected. So thank you.

Eduardo Nishio
Chief Equity Analyst and Head of Bank Coverage, Genial Investimentos

We expect to have more positive surprises in the NII, in the financial margin.

Fernando Lemos
President and CEO, Banco do Estado

Yes, yeah, that's what I expect.

Nathan Meneguzzi
Head of Investor Relations, Banco do Estado

Thank you, Nishio. I think we can answer a final question. Natalia Corfield from JP Morgan. Hello, Natalia.

Natalia Corfield
Head of Latam Corporate Credit Research, JPMorgan

Hello, Nathan. Thank you for accepting my question. It's a simple question regarding quality of assets. I'm looking at your numbers. Very good for this quarter. And I understand what we have as a guidance related to cost of risk. You do not see many problems ahead, but my question is, the portfolios which were benefited by the help to relieve the flood problems, this help is done, is in the past. So will it not impact the quality of assets?

Could you give us more colors about what is making these numbers so good and what will make them remain as good? Thank you.

Fernando Lemos
President and CEO, Banco do Estado

Well, regarding this, when the flood hit Rio Grande do Sul, we provided credit to four to six months for clients in the payroll loan portfolio and also for corporate accounts. All of these grace periods, let's say, they had due dates in November moving on. So in November, there were some installments which were extended for December and January, and we have not seen any changes regarding the indicators of default rates. On the contrary, some of them, we could reorganize the flow of these clients by using Conta Única, unified account, receivables along. So the expectation really is that the quality of this portfolio continues to be like that.

As we see it, it has increased, it has improved in terms of, I mean, after the flood. As according to what we said, the portfolio left this grace period, and now they are paying regularly. Yes, they are out of the grace period, and they have been paid. They have been paying regularly. They were given based on safety, looking at the flow of payments of the customers, looking at the cash flow. For those clients that were heavily affected by the flood and who had losses, they were benefited by the federal government lines of credit and the BNDES lines of credit. We took that time to reorganize the company's cash flow and bring the receivables like collection, receivables related to Banricompras, to credit cards. These were services that involved financial movements that have grown within the bank.

Natalia Corfield
Head of Latam Corporate Credit Research, JPMorgan

So I would say that we could better qualify our credit by using the company's cash flow. It also includes agribusiness?

Yes. Also in agribusiness, we did the same. I mean, BNDES has released and has devoted an expressive volume of resources to agribusiness, and then we reorganized the agribusiness segment. As much as we could, we could make this reorganization, and these producers who were impacted, they have a period of at least four years to pay up their debts. And the accounts, they had their due dates in 2024, in the first months of 2025. In our payroll loans portfolio, in our individual loans, 74% is collateralized, guaranteed, because most of them are public servants, and they are employed, and they will pay, of course. And INSS credits, they may be problematic, but most of our payroll loans is based on civil servants.

I was more concerned with the agribusiness portfolio. It's under control. BNDES, as my colleague said, BNDES has provided finance to the agribusiness, financing them in the long run. The losses in this segment were not that high. They had refinanced. They lost some soy crop and some rice crop, but in the order of 15%, not more than that. They had BNDES credit at 7%, prefixed rate of 7%, in a long time to pay. Many of these producers who made use of these credit lines, they have stock products or in the cooperative partners waiting for the best price to commercialize. Regarding payroll loan portfolio, they are mostly public servants and INSS clients. These are portfolios. They are pretty solid, very good, very good quality, and automatic performance. We work with the Dataprev and the state portals.

We usually do not work with private payroll loans, just a little bit. And we have BRL 2 billion in portfolio for municipalities. It's all connected with strong agreements and pretty well consolidated in terms of credit granting, credit concession, and these are for employees who have stability in their companies. So this provides us with a high level of confidence in this payroll loan portfolio.

Thank you.

Thank you, Natalia.

Nathan Meneguzzi
Head of Investor Relations, Banco do Estado

Well, we have a long number of questions by our analysts and investors, but unfortunately, we have to close this event. If you haven't had your question answered, our investors' relations team, headed by myself, will answer your questions as soon as possible. I would like to thank the participation of all of our directors, and I wish you have a wonderful year ahead. Thank you very much.

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