Welcome to our 2024 full year results media call. I'm Jan Vonder Mühll, Head of Corporate Communications, and now hand over to Stefan Bollinger, CEO of Julius Baer.
Dear members of the media, good morning. Thank you for joining our session today, in which we'll address your specific questions. Next to me is Nic Dreckmann, COO and Deputy CEO, and Evie Kostakis, our CFO, for any specific queries related to the 2024 numbers. I take it you have all listened to the analysts' and investors' presentation, or have read our media release. Therefore, I will skip the details of what was communicated early today and focus here on a recap and critical takeaways before, most importantly, taking any questions you may have. Let me summarize this in five points. First, my initial three weeks in the CEO role reconfirmed my view that Julius Baer has all the right ingredients to become the most admired international wealth manager.
Second, to deliver on that aspiration and unleash the full potential of our institution to our clients, our employees, our shareholders, and all other stakeholders, we aim to build on our strengths while swiftly and decisively address the identified challenges, both in top line and bottom line performance. Third, there are five immediate priorities that I have identified and communicated internally and externally, headlined as an enduring client focus through a disciplined entrepreneurship. I see those priorities shown on the screen here as a foundation and guidance for us to rapidly get back on track and prepare for more to come. Fourth, we have already taken the first tangible steps to increase accountability, simplify structures, and drive efficiency starting from the top with this morning's announcement of a substantially resized Executive Board. Fifth, as a next step, I'm launching a comprehensive strategy review with deep dives into all performance issues.
The outcome will be communicated at a strategy update sometime before the summer break. Before we open up for questions, I would make one more comment about the extension of the ongoing 2023-2025 cost program. It is obviously a very tough message to deliver right at the beginning of my journey with my colleagues at Julius Baer. However, it is a necessary measure as we enter a new chapter of Julius Baer's development, where cost consciousness and disciplined entrepreneurship are to be embedded in everything we do. We are now happy to take your questions.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touch-tone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered a queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. Our first question comes from Holger Alich from Handelszeitung. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, everyone. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can hear you well, Holger. Good morning.
Excellent. Good morning. Yes, thanks for taking my question. A quick one about this whole Benko, two one, if I may. First of all, it's on the Benko inquiry from FINMA. Do you have any timeline in mind when you might see the result? Because this issue is quite old now, and is there a connection between the Benko inquiry and the fact that Julius Baer didn't announce a share buyback, which seems to disappoint some participants on the market? The first one. The second one, could you just outline perhaps a little bit how do you want to foster Julius Baer growth? Are you on relationship manager hiring, or is M&A on the table? Perhaps some first idea, although you will present that in summer, just for a first take. Thank you.
Maybe this is Nic speaking. I'll take the first question around FINMA timeline and share buybacks. As you appreciate, we cannot speculate on what obvious conclusions FINMA will draw and also what kind of steps they take. However, we have already and proactively taken several significant and decisive actions ourselves, as you remember, last year, and in that sense, there is no speculation, or we cannot make any speculations in terms of timeline. In terms of share buyback, we believe it's prudent to await the completion of the FINMA review and focus in 2025 on the completion of any and all the post-private debt case related remediation measures before discussing the possibility of any share buybacks.
Holger, maybe I just add that we have a great team interacting with our regulators, and personally, I'm very committed to establish a strong relationship with all our primary regulators. I have visited FINMA on day one and seen two other primary regulators in my first week, and we are working hard to have a great relationship on all levels with our regulators. In regard to foster growth, as you said correctly, we'll have an Investor Day before the summer where we're going to talk about this in much more detail. For now, I'll just tell you that I'm really convinced that we have everything that it takes to be the most admired international wealth manager. We have a great client portfolio. We have a very compelling proposition, a unique and resilient brand, and we have excellent people.
I really think we have everything it takes to grow, and we'll communicate some of our initiatives in the summer.
Okay, thank you.
The next question comes from Oliver Hirt from Reuters. Please go ahead.
Hello again. You mentioned that you expect a fairly muted net new money growth this year around a bit more than 3% maybe. And you gave one of the reasons being that you have a stricter risk framework for your clients. Can you explain what kind of clients that you might want to get rid of? And secondly, in 2026, do you expect net new money growth to pick up towards the 4%-6% target that you had previously? Thank you.
Hi, this is Evie speaking. We did indeed say in the analysts' call previously that we expect net new money growth this year to be closer to the 3% rather than the 4+% , which was the exit rate in the last few months of the year. And I enumerated the reasons why we believe this to be the case, one of which was a further refinement of the risk management framework. And that refinement is going to be holistic in nature. In the midterm, we are, of course, optimistic around net flow development. We continue to be an anchor destination for top talent amongst relationship managers. The relationship managers that we've successfully hired in the last few years are tracking well against the business cases, against our business cases.
Our seasoned relationship managers that have been with us for a long time have started to contribute again to net new money growth. Therefore, in the midterm, we remain optimistic. You will hear more from us during the Investor Day update before the summer.
Pick up next year in net new money, right?
It's hard in January 2025 to talk about what will happen in 2026.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Notker Blechner from Finanz und Wirtschaft. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Are you hearing me? Are you here? Yeah, good morning. Yes, you doubled the profit in the last year, but why don't you increase the dividend? That's the first question. And second question, could you detail more the CHF 110 million cost reduction program? You told that you will have 400 job cuts. Will there be also some IT moves to Spain, which was speculated in the media? Could you detail more about this program? Thank you.
Good morning. I'll take the first question on capital distributions. As you know, we have a capital distribution policy that remains unchanged. It entails a progressive dividend policy. Every year, the board of directors will pay the higher of last year's dividend per share or 50% of our adjusted profits, and as such, the dividend proposed by the board this year is CHF 2.60. The second component of that capital distribution is if at year end our CET1 ratio is above 14%, the board of directors may decide to do share buyback, and that capital distribution policy remains unchanged.
This is Nic speaking. Let's be also reminded in 2023, the dividend didn't change on the back of the net profit development. So just to keep that in the back of your mind. On your cost question, allow me to give you a little bit more details. First and foremost, it is not a new cost program. So we'll extend the program scope after having so far successfully executed on the existing 2023-20 25 cost program with a roughly CHF 140 million gross savings. The objective of our cost program is to address, as mentioned, the disappointing development of the cost/income ratio over the last years, which is partly driven also by exogenous factors. When we're talking about the scope that you were asking, we're talking about personnel as well as general expenses. So we're looking at all dimensions when it comes to our costs.
When looking a bit into more details, we're looking at procurement topics, meaning contracts with third parties. We also look at technology and see whether we can consolidate infrastructure and applications. We're also looking at marketing. As mentioned by Stefan, we try to simplify the group governance and streamline back and mid-office functions to also reduce complexity. And we'll further optimize also the operating model at the front and intensify low performer management to catalyze operational efficiency. And finally, we'll also rationalize external staff, consolidate our vendor landscape, and we are improving the demand management. So as you can see, there are plenty of areas that we will be focusing on.
The next question comes from Noele Illien from Bloomberg. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning again. Just a quick question on the share price reaction. What do you make of it, and are you surprised by it?
Hi, Noele. Good to hear you. Look, we are focused on long-term value creation for shareholders and not short-term market moves. I think we have a really compelling business model, and I mentioned a few of these things this morning: high-quality client portfolio, unique and resilient brand, and we have seen this in the recent past. Excellent people. We have an entrepreneurial mindset, and everything I have seen going around the system makes me think that we have a great business model in place, and so this is, for me, just a short-term market move that will not affect our strategic thinking.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Daniel Zulauf from Börsen-Zeitung. Please go ahead.
Just a quick one on the cost measures. You haven't mentioned a number of employees that may be concerned of these new measures. I have did my own calculations, taking the average annual pay of an employee divided by the CHF 55 million, and I come to like a figure of 300 people that may be compensated for losing their job today this year. Is that around the figure that you would agree with? Or are you thinking about completely different figures?
Good morning.
Apparently, you're.
Please go ahead.
Apparently, you are not open to communicate on these figures by yourself.
Hi, Daniel. Good morning. This is Nic speaking. I think you got a few things mixed up. Let me try and help you here. So the targeted cost savings, as mentioned before, are to be achieved through the reduction of both personnel and general expenses. We were communicating earlier this morning that we're talking about CHF 110 million of gross savings for the year 2025. Now, personnel expense at Julius Baer make up 70% on average, and 30% make up general expenses. So if you do the calculation, the number of affected staff will obviously be only available after we're running a consultation with our employees because we take this very, very seriously and try to also get input from our employees where, in addition, we can actually look at cost savings. But it's fair to estimate that roughly 5% of our current staff levels might be affected.
And obviously, we're trying to reduce this by either voluntary leavers or by pensions or retirements. So I hope that helps.
Okay, so we are talking, as a matter of fact, we are talking about 300 + people, right?
We're talking between 300 and 400 people.
My calculation was not that bad, was it? Okay, thank you.
The last question comes from Thomas Paul from AWP. Please go ahead.
Yes, I would like to ask a little bit about the client behavior and how they behave regarding investment. There was the question around deleveraging and maybe the start into the new year. How do clients, what is the client mood about the client activities? If you could say something about that. Thank you.
Thank you for the question. I think if you just look at the tape today, there's a bout of volatility with all the announcements on tariffs that are coming from the other side of the Atlantic. And as you know, when we have spikes of volatility, we typically have higher client activity. The beginning of the year was more muted, but who knows what happens in the next few days.
Okay. And the last year, can you a little bit say the kind of deleveraging is now over or?
So we saw the minimum amount of releveraging last year. Net new money was CHF 14.2 billion. Without credit, it was CHF 14 million. So we had a net releveraging of CHF 200 million for the year. However, we have always said and continue to believe that there are two necessary preconditions in order to see releveraging kick in in earnest. Number one, we need to see a steepening of the curve. And we have seen that to some extent, particularly beyond the one-year mark. And number two, we need to see absolute levels of interest rates come down. So we've seen that in the Swiss franc, but we definitely have not seen that in the dollar.
Okay. So there is still room to go. There is still improvement.
Yes. In our view, it's too soon to hail the new era of releveraging right now.
Thank you.
We have a follow-up question from Holger Alich from Handelszeitung. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you, Steve. We have some time. Allow me to add one question. First, one from Mr. Dreckmann, please. It's quite remarkable. You have been for some time now the CEO of the bank, and now you are stepping once again back as a COO. And yeah, could you elaborate a little bit about your motivations to do so? And will you stay now as long as you think at the bank in this position? Because it's quite unusual someone is getting CEO and then he's pulled back and he stays at the bank. So why did you do so?
Thank you very much for this personal question, Holger. Maybe just two or three comments. First, I'm with Julius Baer for 21 years now. And in that sense, I have a deep love and affection for this company and obviously how we move forward. That's number one. Number two, it has been communicated very clearly beginning of last year that this will be an interim role for me. And I have been very honored and flattered to take this role. But it was always clear that I will not continue in that role. And thirdly, I think as you have seen earlier today, the announcement of my remit of responsibility, which has been extended, which obviously gives me great pride and a privilege, obviously, in terms of helping to shape the company moving forward. So I hope that clarifies.
Yes. Just for me to understand, if I may, which new responsibilities do you have which you hadn't before? Because you had been CEO of the bank with Mr. Rickenbacher, and now you're CEO with Mr. Bollinger. Which new responsibilities do you have got? Could you just say that, please?
Yes. So as mentioned earlier today, I assume the role or the responsibility also of the whole HR topic, brand marketing, communication is in there as well, as well as corporate affairs. And secondly, I also assume the responsibility for client strategy and execution excellence, which obviously I will look forward to.
Okay. Excellent. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Beatrice Borsiger from NZZ. Please go ahead.
Hello. Good morning. Can you hear me?
You're well. Hi, Beatrice.
Good morning. Yeah, I just wanted to ask a quick follow-up question on the job cuts that you announced today of the possible job cuts. Can you give me a little bit more color on what regions would be affected? And would there be affected more Relationship Managers or other personnel? Can you give me a little bit of insight on that?
Good morning, Beatrice. This is Nic speaking again. As mentioned, we are looking at these cost measures across the board from front to back. But the focus will be on the mid and back office. And it will predominantly be in Switzerland.
Okay. Thank you.
We have a final question from Mr. Oliver Hirt from Reuters. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. The first one on the ExCo people that are no longer in the ExCo, are any of them leaving the bank? And the second one on your strategic review, I wonder what scope of this review is. Are you kind of looking at this very fundamentally? Could you kind of streamline or expand the offer going into other areas than private banking? Yes, if you could give us a bit more insight there. Thank you.
Thank you, Oliver, for the question. If I understood correctly, the first question is around the executive board and the 10 people that are no longer on ExB, what they are going to do. As Nic just talked about, two of the people that are on ExB will be part of the COO organization going forward, CS&E and HR. And the rest, which is the regional heads and the product heads, products and services, will continue to report directly to me, but no longer be part of the ExB . As such, I will assume personally direct responsibility for all the revenue-generating activities. And in terms of strategic review, you can be sure that we'll leave no stone unturned and do a very comprehensive review about our whole business.
At the same time, I can tell you that we will remain true to our pure wealth management focus and build on our strengths to continue our success.
And then the Executive Committee, none of the 10 people will leave the bank?
Nope.
Okay. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Jan Vonder Mühll for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much for your questions. Before I close, I would like to remind you of our strategy update for the capital markets before the summer, when we will present our forward-looking strategy in much more detail. In the meantime, please contact media relations for any further questions you may have. Thank you very much and goodbye.
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