Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Investec pre-close conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity to ask questions later during the conference. If you should need assistance during the call, please send a message in the Q&A chat. Please also note that this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Investec Group Chief Executive, Mr. Fani Titi. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Donald. Good morning all, and thank you for joining us for our pre-close trading update. This update reflects the financial performance for the five months ended 31st August 2026, and the expected results for the six months ending 30 September 2026. I am joined in this call by Nishlan Samujh, Group Finance Director, Ruth Leas, the CEO of our U.K. business, and Cumesh Moodliar, the CEO of our South African business. I will now hand over to Nishlan to take you through today's announcement. Nish?
Thanks, Fani, and good morning, everyone. The group is expected to deliver results in line with guidance provided in May 2026. Stable year-to-date performance was underpinned by disciplined execution, strong client franchises, continued balance sheet growth, and sound asset quality. In a period of persistent uncertainty, we continue to support our clients while investing in the business for long-term growth. Our strategic priorities remain unchanged. Growing and enhancing our client propositions, allocating capital efficiently, and modernizing our operating and digital platforms to support sustainable value creation. Turning to performance for the five months ended 31 August 2026. Revenue was supported by increased client activity levels, higher average advances, as well as net inflows in our Wealth business. This was counterbalanced by the negative impact of lower average interest rates, as we anticipate to experience in the short term.
Operating cost growth reflected investment in client-facing roles, technology, and strategic and regulatory projects to support growth, as well as annual salary adjustments. Looking at the underlying drivers for our core client franchises. Net core loans from our Banking businesses increased by 6.3% annualized in neutral currency, and by 10.3% annualized in reported currency to GBP 37 billion. Benefiting from the 3.3% appreciation of the rand to the pound sterling compared to 31 March 2026. Growth was driven across our private client lending and corporate lending books in both geographies. Customer deposits increased by 2.8% annualized in neutral currency and by 6.8% in reported currency to GBP 46 billion. Funds under management in our Southern African Wealth and Investment business increased by 13.8% since 31 March 2026 to GBP 30.7 billion at 31 August 2026. We saw strong inflows in both discretionary and non-discretionary funds.
For the six months ending 30th of September 2026, we expect to report the following. Adjusted earnings per share to be between 3% and 7% ahead of the prior period. Cost to income ratio to be between 52% and 54%. Pre-provision adjusted operating profit to be between 1% and 4% ahead of the prior period. Credit loss ratio to be within the through-the-cycle range of 25-45 basis points. Group return on equity to be between 13.1% and 13.5% within the guided range of 13%-14%. Group return on tangible equity to be between 15% and 15.5%, within the guided range of 14.8% and 15.8%. The group maintains robust capital and liquidity levels, enabling us to continue supporting our clients and execute our growth strategy. We remain committed to advancing returns towards the upper end of our target range by FY 2030.
I will now turn the call over to questions.
Thank you, Nish. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please use the Teams functionality to raise your hand. Once you have been identified, please unmute yourself and ask your question. You may also type your question in the Q&A chat. If you decide to withdraw your question, please lower your raised hand. Again, if you'd like to ask a question, please use the Teams functionality to raise your hand or type your question in the Q&A chat. For those who have dialed in telephonically, please key in star and then five on your telephone keypad to raise your hand. Once you have been identified, please key in star and then six to unmute yourself, and then proceed to ask your question. Should you wish to withdraw your question, please key in star and then five.
Our first question comes from Harry Botha of Bank of America. Harry, please go ahead.
Morning. Thanks very much. Just some questions on the net interest margin movement, please, excluding the impact of interest rates. Could you possibly give us a sense, is that ultimately net positive or net negative in terms of the deposit optimization as well as the competitive pricing that you are seeing? Is that competitive pricing across both markets? Maybe a second question just around the private banking strategy. Are you starting to see a customer growth lift as you have planned in terms of your 2030 targets already? Thank you.
Thanks, Harry. I think overall, net interest margin, I would say, remains net positive. However, there are two drags on margin. As I have indicated, lower interest rates, average interest rates in both South Africa and the U.K. will create a drag in the short term. As we have always indicated, low interest rates are much better for activity levels. The second aspect is, at the end of the day, we are in low growth environments in both geographies, and we continue to experience elements of margin squeeze as the competitive landscape remains significant. That being said, we continue to grow our retail deposit base. We continue to enhance our cost of deposits overall, and that is well managed across the group. When we look to the longer term, our focus on growing our mid-market exposure and corporate exposure will net net positively impact the line. So we remain pretty positive.
With regard to private clients, maybe Cumesh could give you some detail from a South African perspective, and Ruth will step in as well from a U.K. perspective.
Thanks, Harry. From a South African perspective, we are actually seeing good levels of activity in the private client space, particularly in respect of our mortgage book. From a client acquisition perspective, we are seeing continuing positive client acquisition. Over the coming period, we expect our annual rate of net new clients to increase. Right now, we are tracking between 7% and 8% of core client growth in the SA context.
Thanks, Cumesh. Hi, Harry. Just talking about the U.K. and private client growth, continuing to see very good growth in the space. Our mortgage growth has been around 9%-10% through this period. We are in the early stages of launching our enhanced transactional banking offering, which is very exciting and is landing very well with the few clients that we have launched to so far. We do expect the rate of increasing client growth to pick up as we move forward with this in time.
Harry, just on the net interest margin story, you will know that in South Africa, we continue to improve our gathering of deposits in the retail sector, and we have been working to reduce our dependence on wholesale funding. So that over time continues to be positive on our cost of funding. Clearly, with the pressure that both Nishlan and Cumesh talked about from a competitive perspective, that has a downward impact, but the volumes because we are doing more are better. So those are the forces that shape your overall net interest income outcome.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, please use the Teams functionality to raise your hand or send your question in the Q&A chat function. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would still like to ask a question, please use the Teams functionality to raise your hand or send your question in the Q&A chat function. Oh, there is a question from Siphelele Mdudu. Siphelele, please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for the opportunity, and thanks for the call. Just wanted to find out if you guys can hear me first.
Yes, we can.
Yeah, we can.
Okay. SA continues to do well. You are guiding ROE in the upper end and credit losses to the lower end. I have asked this question before. It seems to me you are leaving profits on the table. Why are you not being more aggressive in terms of growth in SA, where profitability seems to be even much better?
Cumesh, I think that is one for you.
Thanks, Nish. Siphelele, as we look at the market, we look across all the segments we are operating in, across both corporate and investment banking, business and commercial banking, private banking. We actually have seen across all of those segments, excluding our structured property finance book, outside of all of that, we are actually seeing double-digit growth in our lending books across those segments. For us, that says that we are remaining market relevant. We are pricing competitively, and at the same time, managing our risk profile carefully. We do not believe, however, that our risk appetite is too conservative. We are continuing to see opportunities across different segments. Also as part of our Africa region strategy over the next period, we look to grow what we call our Africa regions book. We believe that we are being very growth-minded in the way we are approaching it.
There are areas that we will look at specifically around business and commercial banking. We have got very good loan book growth but off a lower base. There, we would anticipate that as we continue to grow, that you would have a slightly more elevated credit loss ratio in respect of that particular portfolio over time. Again, we are targeting a very specific segment there. The short answer is we believe we are appropriately managing our risk against growth objectives. We will continue to grow more aggressively into areas where we believe there is real opportunity. Two segments that we are focusing on would be, one, the business and commercial banking, which I have mentioned, the Africa regions, and a third segment that we are starting to see greater levels of activity is in the income-producing real estate sector.
Those would be the three that I would say to you, we will make sure that we are risk adjusting our appetite to take into account market conditions and opportunity.
Okay. Thanks a lot. That is much appreciated. Then, if I may ask on the U.K. book.
Yeah.
Ruth.
Hi there, Siphelele. Just in terms of the U.K. book, we have actually seen the credit loss ratio moderate through this particular period. As you know, it's been pretty stable over the last number of periods, and we continue to focus on very similar types of lending to what we've done before. We've seen very good and strong growth in various areas on the corporate side, fund finance, aviation finance, energy and infrastructure finance, as well as our mortgages, in spite of a very weak macroeconomic backdrop in most of the countries we're operating in, except for the U.S. So we continue to gain market share in that space, and we feel that our risk appetite is very appropriately placed for where we play in the market.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please use the Teams functionality to raise your hand or send your question in the Q&A chat function. If you have dialed in telephonically, please key in star and then five to raise your hand, and then star and six to unmute yourself once you have been identified. At this stage, as there are no further questions, I will now hand back to Investec Group Finance Director, Nishlan Samujh, for closing remarks.
Thanks, Don. Thank you for your time this morning. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch with our team.
Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect.