Ladies and gentlemen, very good morning to our press conference for half year results for 2023. I wish you all a warm welcome. We will start immediately with our press conference. For the sake of the meeting, I would just ask you, if it's not done already, to mute your microphones, and also if you cannot, to activate your video call. The presentation will take about 20 minutes, and then.
This meeting is being recorded.
Okay. Then, we will have a few minutes for the Q&A at the end of the presentation. I will just now mute my video, then we will be able to start. Let's start immediately with a few numbers for our half year results. It was a very good half year. Actually, from a revenue standpoint, it was even the best in our history. We generated CHF 265.6 million of revenue. It's a little bit better than the one we did in the, let's say, very exceptional half year, 2021, when everything was going up.
You remember, this was COVID time, and I think every bank in the world made a fantastic first half of 2021. With pleasure, we, we, we realized that even better results here in the first half of 2023, in a financial and banking environment, which is complicated, I have to say. Stock markets are complicated. But what really triggered these very good results is a stable revenue from our net fee and commission income here compared to the second half of 2022. Slightly, slightly growing, but here you see immediately the the the impact that made the difference was the generated interest revenue on our, on our balance sheet. We have a few slides about this a little bit, a little bit later.
All in, a very good half year, with CHF 265.6 million of revenues. We also have very good client assets. We have... This is a record. We are now at CHF 66.9 billion of assets. It has been triggered by decent market performance here, if you compared with, if you compare with the second half of 2022. Also, you can see it here in black, this is the net new that we captured in the first half at CHF 3 billion. This is more or less in line with our expectations. We have a target of CHF 7 billion for 2023, and we think we have currently about a little bit less than half.
We, we, we estimate that the second half, there will be some acceleration on that, from that standpoint. You see here, if you look at the CHF 56.9 billion, the cash part represents about 17%. This is very stable compared to other half year and to our historical numbers. That has always been a little bit about, about, about these figures. The real impact on the revenue is not the cash part, which is stable, but really the change in interest rates environment in the market that really triggered, let's say, normal interest revenue after this period of negative interest driven through.
The other factor to, to watch is, besides the, the net new monies of CHF 3 billion, here on the left side, you have the historical figures. You see, really there is the, this, year 2021, that was a little bit exceptional, where we had net new monies in the magnitude of CHF 5 billion. H1 2022 was tagged by, by some external growth. It was the integration of the bank we acquired in Luxembourg. Here you see again, we are, let's say, back to our normal growth, which is this famous 3, CHF 6 billion-CHF 7 billion we are targeting a year. You can see here that in H1, it was a little bit better than H2 2022. We went from CHF 2.7 billion to CHF 3 billion.
On the number of clients, this is a very stable growth here. We are now at 555,000 clients. You see also that the average assets per customer is very stable as well. We are around CHF 100,000, so this obviously is just the average, so dividing the assets by the number of clients. Behind that, there are very different realities, from very small clients to very big clients. We have a very diverse clientele, but this is what makes Swissquote a little bit special and unique in the financial landscape. We are able to attract and able to serve a very large base of clients. These clients here, we have computed a few interesting numbers.
We always got the questions, "But are the new clients as good as the old clients you already have?" Here we tried to put this a little bit in numbers. Here we have these 555,266 accounts, and if we look at the maturity of those clients, we have clients that we acquired between 2019 and 2022, and this represents 48%. We have then in gray, the clients up to 2018, so the older clients, this represents 46%. Then we have the new clients, these are the ones that we acquired in 2023, and these represent 6% of the total. Now, these 6%, they generated 5% of our revenue, so this is about normal.
It's a little bit lower because obviously, the one clients we acquired at very last day of the first half, had no time to contribute to the revenue. This will happen in the second half, obviously, but it's just to show you that it's about normal, so we are able to attract clients with the same, the same behavior and also the same, the same revenue profile. You see the same here on the asset side. The 6% of new clients now holds 3% of total assets. They're also, I believe, the same, the same, the same phenomenon. You first open the account, and then obviously, as you like the service, you are paying and using, using our service.
This is 3% here. When we look at the figures, by the end of the year, we'll obviously grow to 6%. Then we have the rest of the clients with a fair normal distribution, and these numbers are coherent. It also shows that there's no distraction in quality of clients. It's a very stable growth machine, even though we are active now, not only in Switzerland, but in many parts of the world. Speaking about that, looking at the CHF 3 billion of net new money, first of all, where does it come from? The biggest part is from Switzerland.
This represents 59% of the, of the, of the net new money growth, but 41% comes from the international clients. You have here on the left side, on the world, you have the distribution where it actually comes from. Then the type of clientele we are acquiring. B2C, these are assets from clients acquired directly through the platform, but we do also have a very good white label and software and solutions for, for B2C clients, so asset manager or the banks, white label solution. It's actually B2B, B2C, the, the one, and this represents 67% of the CHF 3 billion of assets. Also a figure that is quite common to, to, to Swissquote.
Looking at the net revenues and the distribution, it's good news that now it is very balanced. Now, the Swiss business represents little bit more than half of our revenue. This was a target we had, you know, going from a pure Swiss provider to something with an international footprint, and these numbers are growing, so it's about half-half, but we expect this to grow even further. We are investing a lot of efforts and money in our international expansion. As you can see, this starts to pay off, since non-Swiss domiciled clients now represent 48% of the revenue.
If you look at the typology of clients, from a pure B2C to B2B, B2B, B2C, you can see that the B2C part now represents 71, 71%, and the, the rest, about a third, is the, the business we do with institutional clients, whether it's for a B2B, B2C service, like the one with PostFinance, for example, or whether it's a pure institutional clients, this would apply in these sections and represent about one-third of our, of our net revenues. If you look now by, by, by asset class, let me start with the charts on the right. This is quite an interesting chart. You see the transaction-based and then the non-transaction-based revenue.
Here, for the first time ever, the non-transaction-based revenue has been bigger, and this obviously is because of the margin we made, we made on the cash positions of the client. It's a reflection on a little bit on the current market situation. If the markets would revive a little bit and becoming more interesting, then you would certainly see the 43% here of transaction-based income growing, growing again, but we would still keep the good margins we do on the interest rates. What's the normal situation? We don't think that what happened in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 was a normal situation. It was tagged by negative interest.
In a way, it's, it's back to normal since now you, you, you get decent revenues out of the cash positions of the, of the, of the clients, and we, we expect this to stay there. We don't anticipate, at least in our forecast, in our numbers, big movements on the interest rate side. We don't anticipate that suddenly the interest rates in Switzerland will continue to grow. We think that we have reached some kind of a, of a plateau, and it will stay there for a while, and this will also mean that we will be able to capture the, the, the interest rates revenue going forward.
Of course, on the net fee and commission side, if now, we're coming to an end of this interest rate hike, we anticipate that the markets here will gain in volatility, which in turn will push our non-transaction, transaction-based revenue to a higher number. We're coming to that a little bit later. It's not the scenario we have taken in our forecast for the second half. We stayed a little bit on the cautious side, and we simply anticipated the second half, which is more or less in what we achieved in the first half of 2023. To that a little bit later.
Here on the left side, also always interesting, you see a little bit the distribution, where are we making our money? With what type of financial products? Obviously, the cash part here is a big part. It's about 40%, but then the rest in shares and foreign exchange, and also, this also represents interesting revenue potential or actual revenue for our bank. Now, having a look at our growth, you are certainly seeing that the number of the staff members continues to grow. This is a very active strategy from Swissquote.
We, we invest in our future, so we, we don't take all the leverage out we could from our existing business because we, we think that we have to develop the tools and the products for the, for the future, and this is happening now. We do invest in our technology, and you see here that a big part of the 1,110 staff members we have. This is the, the part here in orange, about a third, more than a third, 400 staff. This is pure technology. These are IT specialist developers that are developing the new products. Here also, because we, we are a bank, you see that the compliance and risk staff is increasing. This is kind of normal.
With another growing client base, you also need to have the proper organizations and the right people in place to serve the clients and to make sure that we are compliant with all the regulators, all in all part of the world. This is made through systems and organization, and this, in turn, is increasing the number of staff. On the sales side, this is quite stable. We don't think that we need to have a bigger sales force, since we are an online bank and most of the client relations are made through our marketing and through the various tools we have developed. Here you see a big stability, and the rest, the rest is mainly support.
You see here that we have a stable but is good growth over the years. It's very much in control, and it's also very much driven by the strategy of the company. If you go to the right side, looking at our expense distribution, so the first thing you can see, and this is in black here, is the variable remuneration, which had been accrued in our figures. We anticipate to have a very good year. We think that it will be record in terms of profitability, so we are accruing the variable remuneration that we will pay to our staff at the end of the year, and you see this growing compared to last year.
The marketing expenses is growing as well, not exploding, but, but, but growing. Also, this is linked to our marketing strategy. We are, we are an online product, and you need to bring this to the market through different means. You know that we are a sponsor of UEFA, and this helps a lot in growing our business, mainly, mainly in Europe. We think that this is a very sound marketing strategy, and the numbers here are reasonable. All in, the market, the, the, the expenses amounts to CHF 138.4 million, and this here, I think it's on the next slide, creates a pre-tax profit, which is up by 30.4% compared to the second half last year, at CHF 124.9 million.
After taxes, net, we keep CHF 106.5 million of net profit. This compared now to the revenue on the pre-tax profits. We have a pre-tax profit margin of 47%. You see it growing since the second half of 2021, and this is also one of the targets we have to say, to stay in that region, so above 46%. If you can see here, over the last half years, this has been very stable, and it shows that there is leverage in our company and in the service we are providing. Let's have a look at our balance sheet.
This was a big driver of our revenue in the first half, 2023. Well, first of all, what you can see is that the total balance sheet has grown to now to CHF 10.6 billion, so that's CHF 400 million more than at the end of the second half, last year. It's... Look at the liability side, the cash position, it did grow from CHF 4.2 million to CHF 4.4 million. This is in Swiss francs, this is a very good number. This is also proof that we do attract clients, but they are keeping cash with us here and also on the dollar side, it went from $2.2 billion to $2.3 billion.
The situation in Europe is a bit different. There, we, we lost about CHF 100 million, this is mainly this is not outflow of money. This is mainly due to investments in financial positions, which also have an impact on our, on the, on the cash positions of our clients. You see our total equity here growing from CHF 741 million to almost CHF 800 million in the at least the second half, triggered by the profit we are generating. Now, what are we doing with the cash? Well, a big part is still with central banks. This represents more than 45% of the of our total balance sheet.
You see here, this is almost CHF 5 billion, which is not invested, it's really with central bank. The good news is that this also is now generating revenue. We have treasury bills, about CHF 759 million. Then we have various cash positions at counterparties for CHF 1.5 billion. The investment security portfolio here at CHF 2 billion, it did grow from CHF 1.7 billion to CHF 2 billion. This is because we think that we are now coming to the end of the rate increase, so it's a good strategy to start to be a little bit longer because we do not anticipate higher interest. It's the strategy we have.
Be super careful in the past, now it's paying off, and we are able to go a little bit longer with our maturities. Still, you know us, we are super cautious in our approach. We still have a liquidity coverage ratio, which is very high. It came down a little bit from the second half, 2022, but still is almost 400%. We are far above the minimum of 100%, which is required. Same thing for the funding ratio here, with 262%. Also a very sound and solid number. The interest rate risk came down at 4.7%.
You see the max here is 15%, and it has improved even compared to the second half last year, since it went down from 6.2% to 4.7%. What I would like to show you on the next slide is how we are making our money. It's a little bit complicated slides, but we had it already last year, so let me explain to you. If you go on the upper left corner, you see our total assets of CHF 56.9 billion. Client assets, CHF 56.9 billion, and you have the cash part, 17% we mentioned before. 17% of CHF 56.9 billion, that represents CHF 9.4 billion.
This is the number here in the middle of the chart, and you see that only 31% of this CHF 9.4 billion is actually invested. It's invested in two things. First, the and this is on the, on the, on the right side, we have our investment security portfolio. This is CHF 2.1 billion, this out of the CHF 2.9. You see here a few technical numbers. You see the average maturity, which is less than two years. Also you see the average margins we're making here at 170 basis points.
As this investment portfolio will mature, we will of course reinvest and take new positions, so the average margins going forward will have the tendency to increase. We also have a margin lending portfolio. This is CHF 0.8 billion. These are mainly Lombard loans, I think up to CHF 600 million. Then we also have this leasing business with Tesla, which represents the rest, about CHF 200 million. All in CHF 0.8, which is also generating a margin. It's about about the reference rate, which is generating, is between 1.5 and 300, 300 basis points. If I could just go one, back one slide here.
There's something I wanted to, to show you, which is the, the loan portfolio. You see that it has, it, it did come down a little bit from CHF 814 to CHF 791. Nothing, nothing dramatic, but of course, when interest rates are, are rising, the, the Lombard loans are becoming more expensive, and certain, certain clients would then cancel their Lombard loans and, and take action because it's, it's becoming, it's becoming a little bit more expensive. It's kind of a, of a, of a normal behavior here. Again, out of these CHF 800 million, so CHF 791, you can see the figure here, 0.8. The biggest part is, biggest part is, is Lombard loans.
Now, going back to the figures in the middle, what are we doing with the rest of these CHF 9.4 billion? Well, not a lot for now. The liquidity portfolio represents CHF 6.5 billion, so that's the 69% of the CHF 9.4 billion. You see how, how it's distributed. It's there, we mainly get the interbank rates, SARON for Switzerland, for Swiss francs, for example, and then we are capturing between 1%-1.7%. All this together, so the loans and the investment securities portfolio, and then our liquidity portfolio is generated CHF 102.7 million, you can see in our figures.
It's easy to understand that there's much more we can extract from this from our cash position, especially taking into consideration the very good rates we have. We didn't do it so far because we're still in a very active increase of interest rates from the central bank, so it was not a good idea to be too to be too aggressive there. Now, since we are coming to the end, to the end of this interest rate hike, it's a good strategy to be a little bit longer, still preserving our good ratios, of course, but there we think that we can extract better interest income out of the- out of our cash position.
The CHF 102.7 million now, added to the CHF 162.9 million we do with non-interest income, generates the net revenues of CHF 265.6 million for the first half, which again, as I mentioned, is the best, our best figures ever in the history of Swissquote. The equity here is about almost at CHF 800 million. Why is it growing? That's simply because we are making profit now, one half year after half year, and you see it growing strongly since H1 2022.
We are paying out part of that profit to as dividend and you know our dividend policy, but still, the biggest part is actually kept at Swissquote and is used as potential fuel to to to finance the the the growth we will have over the next half year. This explains the the very high Tier 1 capital ratio of 25.5% here. You see it's stable since the since the second half of 2022, and obviously it's far above the the 11.2% of of required as a Category 4, as a currently a Category 4 bank. Let's look at the the guidance for 2023. We we revised upwards the the guidance.
Remember, we were at CHF 490 million for the entire year when we announced the yearly figures last in the beginning of the year. We now think that we will be able to produce CHF 530 million of revenues for the entire year, and this will then generate CHF 250 million of pre-tax profit. It's needless to say that this would be our absolute best figures historically, at CHF 250 million of pre-tax profit, is would be the best numbers we will ever have produced.
We are very confident that we can reach this number, it's a sign of the soundness and the quality of our operations. Now, another look, which is important to understand when we do, when we do a longer-term forecast, what we try to compute is the assets growth. This is the main, the main trigger we are looking at. I mentioned already before, this CHF 6 billion-7 billion of net new monies we are targeting. Then the question is, what, what type of margin can we make on that assets? The way we compute this, you have to be careful. It's not the margin on assets on the specific products.
We, we do more than 3 basis points on crypto assets, but it's the margin compared to the total assets. This is the reason why you can, you can sum them up and then come to these global numbers of 94 basis points generated in the first half that we aim to generate in 2023. You see that the biggest part here, this is comes from securities trading. This will add 57 basis points in 2023. The interest part, this is 34. You see that the crypto business that has been so active back in 2021, we only think that it will generate about 3 basis points compared to total assets. We still are very active in the crypto space. We didn't exit the business.
On the contrary, we are developing our tools, our, our services, but we are no longer dependent on good crypto crypto performance, on good volatility on the crypto assets. This has been completely de-risked from, from our operations, but still, if we would see an end of the crypto winter, obviously, we would strongly benefit from that from that situation, and then you would see the 3, these 3 basis points going up and then fueling an even larger growth. Also, as you can see here, if you compare with 2022, 2023, we think that we'll do about the same margins, 57. We don't think that there has been a fundamental change. 2022 was a difficult year, as we remember, in for the market volatility and the market performance in general.
We think, at least in our estimate and the way we construct our budget, we don't think that 2023 will be different from that standpoint. We will never be short of a good surprise. You know, you can, you can have better performance on the crypto assets and suddenly a strong volatility coming back. We could imagine that since the interest rates hike will come to an end, that this will then, in turn, have a positive impact on, on the market, the stock market, and the stock performance, and then you would see, you would see this part growing.
There is potential for lots of good surprises, but we are a cautious bank, not only in the way we are dealing with our balance sheet, but also in the way we are doing our forecasts. They're staying a little bit on the cautious side of things, and this gives the forecasts here or the estimates for the full year of more than CHF 500 million revenue and almost CHF 250 million of pre-tax profit for 2023. We're almost coming to an end here of our presentation. There's only one thing I would like to mention. We have a new launch, a new product, which just started. We call it Invest Easy.
These are, as the name says, are easy investment tools for people who do not want to invest directly in stocks. They would like to do it with tools, and we have developed one of these tool. The interesting part here is that we also have a saving pot, so you could, you could only keep the cash, and then we would pay you up to up to 2% on, on interest rates if you, if you want to only hold the cash. This is what most of the bank would do here currently in Switzerland. You know, you would have low interest rates paid on your trading accounts, but then higher interest into the saving pots. We are doing, doing the same, and it makes sense.
You know, if you, if you don't want to take risk with your investments, then probably have it in just a saving pot that pays a decent return is for now a good strategy, and this is a tool we do, we are now offering. Here, a look on our, on our investors relation agenda. We'll have a very active period to come. We will participate to the Baader Investment Conference in Munich, and this is on the 21st of September. Beginning of November, we are participating to the ZKB Swiss Equity Conference, and then in March, on the March of next year, we'll already present the full year results, 2023, and we already have the date here for our general meeting, which is foreseen for the 8th of May.
We also have here from the key figures. I've mentioned most of them. Here on the second page, there's just one I would like to show you, which is the Yuh accounts. You have to know that they are not part of the 555,000 clients we are mentioning, but it's a, it's a very strongly growing business. We, we have, as I speak, passed the threshold of 150,000 clients, and also you see the clients' asset is, is, is growing at the same magnitude. We are now more than CHF 1 billion of assets for clients using our, our Yuh joint venture products. This is the joint venture. We do have this PostFinance, and we are very happy in the way it is progressing.
Looking at the numbers here, you see that the net results from investments here is still a loss. It's CHF 2.3 million in the first half. This is the view from Swissquote, since we are providing services to you. We do charge these services to the joint venture, but we're also paying for the loss currently, and this represents a non-meaningful numbers of CHF 2.3 million. We estimate that with the current growth, you will break even shortly, and then we'll have a positive margin contribution to the entire Group. Here, I think we're coming to an end of my presentation. I hope you liked it and of course, we are now taking a few questions.
Well, just to mention here, I am with here at the desk in Gland, at the headquarter, I am with Céline Lüthi. She's the Head of Finance, she will be delighted to take financial questions you may have. We also have remotely our CFO, who is joining via telephone. He is also eager to answer your questions. I'm not 100% sure whether he has a good quality of his phone connection, so let's try. Of course, we are available as well. Who would like to take the first questions? I see that Daniel Regli from Zürcher Kantonalbank is raising his hand, please, Daniel, go ahead.
Good morning, thank you for the presentation and for Daniel Regli from Zürcher Kantonalbank taking my questions. I have four of them, if I may. The first is quickly on your full year revenue guidance. I would want to ask you whether you can give some additional color, particularly on the net interest income side. You already mentioned that it's relatively cautious. I just made a quick calculus on the basis points you give on the slide. I assume your net interest income assumption is about CHF 195 million for the full year. In first half year, you had about CHF 102.5, give or take.
Your assumptions for, for the H2 are a little bit more cautious with regards to net interest income, or what should, what should I read into these numbers? The second question is a bit on, you know, like, the sensitivity of the cost line to, let's say, additional revenue. You alluded to that now your rest or your guidance is relatively cautious. What would it mean to the cost line if you kind of add a certain amount of additional revenues to the number you are giving? The third question is on, can you give us some color a bit on the trends in client activity you have seen throughout the first half year, but also maybe into June or maybe starting of August, July and starting of August?
Then, last but not least, have you seen any additional benefit with regards to client additions through the special situations we are having among the big banks in Switzerland? Thank you.
Just you... Are you back?
I hope so.
Yes, you are. Yes, I got your third question about the trending clients activity, right?
Exactly.
The last question.
Yeah, exactly. It's about whether you have seen an additional benefit with regards to client additions through the special situation we are having in Switzerland among the big banks.
Mm-hmm. Okay, okay. Yeah, let me, let me start with the, with the last one. No, we haven't. Actually, as you can see, the growth, the growth is quite stable, but we haven't been the first recipient of the outflow of the assets from Credit Suisse, you know, which has a- There has been a trend in the very dramatic moments of the fall of Credit Suisse. But I would say the type of client relations they had and the one actually that would flee the bank didn't necessarily come to Swissquote. As I mentioned, we are in the retail segments.
We do not offer private banking services. We do not offer services, investment, investment banking services. So I think there are probably banks that are way better positioned than we are to, to, to, to get the biggest chunk of this money. Also to mention that the, the assets of Credit Suisse, Switzerland, I don't think they, they did change so much. This is more of an international trend that Credit Suisse went through, unfortunately. Going, going, going back to your first questions about the full year, yes, true, we, we are cautious because we want to surprise the market with potential good news. No, that's a, that's a, that's a joke.
No, what we, what we did, actually, we took our, we took our budget, 2023, the one we did at the beginning of the year. Then we increased our, our interest revenue forecast by 10%. That would, but your numbers, your numbers are, are correct. There is a certain number of cautiousness in there. It's triggered by the fact that, you know, the, the, the competitive situation on the Swiss market will probably also, drive some, some, some appetite from the clients on the, on the interest, revenue side. They want to see money. They want to earn something. I mentioned the, the, the saving portfolio that we now have launched.
Of course, whatever you pay back to the clients is a net margin less that you earn from the, from the market. There we are, we are ready to, to keep up with competition if suddenly there is a strong move on, on that side. This is the reason why we have been a little bit cautious on the, on the interest revenue. Where we have been, let's say, cautious as well, is, is on the other factors, mainly the net fee and commission income. It's super difficult to, to tell what will happen in the, in the second half of 2023. You know, the, the, the international situation, as I do, and to see whether that would trigger suddenly, market movements or market volatility is, is super, super difficult.
We just decided that more or less we'll do, we'll do there our budget. Altogether, it's still, it, it will be still a growth. If we do CHF 230 million-CHF 250 million of pre-tax, this means that we'll that we will do about the same pre-tax profit that we made in the, in the, in the first half of 2023. Of course, again, I agree, it's a little bit on the cautious side, and we could surprise the market with better, better numbers.
On the cost line, I think the good news or the potential good news I, I mentioned earlier in terms of activity or higher interest revenue will more or less go bottom line, because, because, our cost base will, will grow, but very but very slowly, especially in the second half. The, even though we will add a few more staff, you can see there is a certain plateau that we are now reaching, and, and, in nature, we are cautious, but, but this is when the, now the leverage effect of our business model will kick in. It's not because suddenly the clients are making 1 transaction, in, in, on average, 1 transactions more a year, that this will generate any additional cost.
This will straight go to our, to our pre-tax profit. And no, I don't know if I already have replies to the third questions, which is if we see any trend in client activity. No, it's a very boring moment for investors, you know, tagged with uncertainty. If you look at the the VIX numbers, I think we are at a historically low, and nothing really is happening on the market. There's, there's a lot of expectations with international events that can happen. We need to have a clear-... indication now, we've, we're coming to an end of the interest rates hike, but there also the forecast are sluggish. So this in turn makes the, the clients very careful and very cautious in their position taking.
We don't, we don't expect, at least in our budget, in our forecast, any, any change in clients' activity for 2023. We, however, think that this is not the normal situation. We think the situation has normalized in terms of interest revenue, because the previous situation was not normal for sure, and negative interest is not a normal situation. Now we also don't think that the current client activity is normal. You see here, if you divide the number of transactions here, we did in the first half of 2020 this year. Here, you can see it here. We did 2.3 million transactions.
This is about the numbers we have in the second half of 2022, and a strong decrease compared with 2022. There is absolutely potential for, for growth there. If markets would just come back a little bit to normal, then you would see jumping back to more than CHF 3 million, and this will have a strong impact on our, on our figures. Then, as I mentioned, this would go almost up on that.
Thank you so much for your explanations. Can I add one quick follow-up on the NII guidance? Can you maybe quickly talk about the NII run rate at the exit of H1?
What, when, when, when you say run rate, what, what do you mean?
For example, the monthly net interest income in June.
In June, yes. Well, I think, I think it's the best, it's the best month ever, because, because it's, we are, we are in a growing interest rates environment. Month after month, this is getting a little bit better, simply because our cash is sitting at, yeah, central banks, and there, every interest will cash in immediately. I don't have the figures for... 16, okay, which is 16.3. Yes. Celine gave me the numbers, so it's CHF 16.3 million for June, which is CHF 200K better than the CHF 16.1 million we had in May.
Okay. Thank you so much. Very, okay, very helpful.
Thank you. Good morning, René. How are you?
Good. Good morning. Well, I'm, I'm sorry, I guess Christophe was before me in the line, but nevertheless.
Sorry, you... I see you in first position. This is why. Sorry.
Yeah. Sorry, sorry, Christophe. Nevertheless, a few follow-up questions. First of all, let's start with the operating expenses, annual report, half year... No, half year report on page 12. Well, I always get a little bit the feeling that when you are achieving high revenues, you also tend to spend a little bit more on the operating expenses. What is interesting here, I mean, going to some provisions, you have higher depreciation than amortization. Yeah, again, from that point of view, yeah, I guess you explained already, revenues up in H2, operating expenses should remain at a more reasonable rate. This brings me then to my next question.
I thought that the pre-tax margin is a little bit higher than 47%, because top line was driven by net interest income, and here you have no, hardly any cost, you know. From that point of view, yeah, don't you think that the pre-tax margin should be closer to 49%-50%? That's the first question. Again, pushbacks I got from investors or clients is that your clients might put a little bit pressure on you for higher deposits, right? As I understand, I mean, for typing in Switzerland, there is no pressure from other banks, so this is good news. I don't know if you have seen, there was an article today in the news blog talking about windfall tax on interest income also in Switzerland. That's what we have seen in Italy the last two days.
Just your thoughts here, and yeah, perhaps also on 2025, the midterm targets. I have not seen any comments here. Do you confirm the targets of approximate CHF 750 revenues and CHF 350 pre-tax? Thank you .
Okay. Well, let me, let me take the, the, the first one. It's true that we, since, since we haven't changed our 2025 forecast, we haven't put the same, the same charts we had already put in the... We absolutely do confirm CHF 350 million of pre-tax. That's, that's the, that's the, that's the goal, and I think we, we're going there. We, we're growing between CHF 6 billion-CHF 7 billion of net new money a year. If we, if we, if we assume that we can keep this 90 basis points of margins, we will create this CHF 750 million of, of, of revenue, and then in turn, the CHF 350 million of, of, of pre-tax profit.
I, let me, let me try to see if, for the, for the, for the expenses-
I'm here. I'm here, Mark.
Okay. I, I hear you all. how is your-
Yes, I hear, Mark.
How is,
Hello, Rene.
That's good.
Hello. Salut. Hello, Rene, do you hear me?
Yes.
Yes, about your question about expenses. The pre-tax margin, yeah, I understand you , you expected a bit more. It's true that net interest income could mechanically imply, you know, almost an entire impact on the profitability. That being said, the management is not here, let's say, to maximize the year 2023, but rather to focus on medium-term growth. We had the same type of, I would say, of situation back in 2021 or in 2020, when we had a strong increase in net revenues. We have invested part of this increase in net revenues for medium-term and future growth.
I think this is, this is the same case here, you know, we, we, we take part of this, of this benefit to hire a bit more people, invest a bit more in the, in the future projects, because we have a, we have a, a medium-term outlook to, to reach. The, the pre-tax margin, I think it's still in line with what we have guided short-term and, and medium-term. This is what I can say about the, about the pre-tax margin. We, we have not tried to maximize the 2023. In terms of customer deposits, you, you are right, the pressure is, is relatively low for the time being. You know, on the interest income, Mark, he mentioned, we have been conservative, I think, with the, with the revised guidance.
You may remember, at the beginning of the year, we kept some buffer in our growth interest income, in case we should pay something later on this year. We certainly have kept something for the second half year, not necessarily the same amount in absolute terms, but probably half of it, you know, we have kept a bit, in case we need to pay something to customers later on. Again, focusing on medium-term the growth and not the next six months growth. I hope it fulfills your expectations in terms of response.
Yes. That's fine.
Yes. Yes, I, I think, I think Rene also made a reference to, to page 12. There, and there, you , you can see, you wanna say something about the, the dissolution of the provision at the end of last year, and the, the, the new provisions we created in 2023? Because this creates a, a difference of about CHF 3 million, that obviously have an impact also on the-
Yeah.
On the margin.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, the, the, the provision. It's a bit more described in the, in the annual report. It's basically-
Mm-hmm
... linked to the various litigations and claims that we may have. You know, we have customers, they may file a claim with us, then we try to determine what the theoretical risk, and we may accrue the provision for it. In general, with time going on, You know, if we see that there is no, no, no, no response from the customer, no, no further action from the customer, we may release part of this provision. It's true that when, when years are more positive, your appetite to bet on these claims is rather low, and You may accrue, rather, rather well.
In the years where basically it's a bit more difficult, sometimes basically, you may, might be more inclined to revise or let's say, reassess the potential risk. In general, you see there are years where we accrue, there are years where we release. It's very, it's very seldom that we have effectively to pay something, but I think it's a good discipline to accrue for these potential claims, you know, that may sometimes materialize in something more tangible. It's. When we prepare the budget, we budget basically a percentage of the net revenues to give you a bit of color on how you could model it.
Mm-hmm. Yes, that's fine. Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
Can I, can I just before I hand over to Christophe, just one last question, a confirmation. On page, on slide 6, I guess this is slide 7 in your presentation, on your customers. I, I did some calculation, and key finding was that the new clients, and the clients in the bracket 2019 to 2010, generate much higher revenue margins. I mean, just a confirmation, or is it just some stupid analyst calculation?
Well, well, you're right. Basically, you know, it, it represents 48%, and then in turn is up at 60%, 54%, 4%. You know, we know that, that the clients 2019, 2022, were good clients, saving, you know, they... Also, we are, we are climbing the, the, the wealth, the wealth chain, so we, we are able, if you look at the average, the deposit clients is going up as well. So with the improvement of our service level, we can- we are- we can offer better services to a different type of client.
Yeah.
And this-
Mm-hmm
T his in turn, makes the revenue a little bit more juicy, juicy for us. And that's a fair, that's a fair assumption, and we think that also in 2023, we'll have the same phenomenon.
Mm-hmm. Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Rene. Now, Christophe. Sorry.
Thanks for taking my question.
T hey are all related to net interest income. To start with, could you first of all confirm the CHF 16.2 million of net interest income you have generated in June? If I extrapolate this for the half year, it's CHF 1,100 million. Just a confirmation that you said CHF 16.2 million.
Mm-hmm.
Okay. Are you still with us, Ivo?
Yes, yes, yes, Christophe, sorry, I should have intervened. You know, I'm, I'm a bit far from now, but my number would have been 18, to be exact. If you ask the CFO, the net interest income of, of, of, June is CHF 18.
Okay. Now, the second question is on your customer deposits, to up 2% versus the second half. Could you give us some color of the contribution of net, of your net clients wins to this deposit base?
Sorry, could you repeat again the question, Christophe?
You have added 2% to your deposit base, which amount has come from?
Yes.
new clients? This is the question.
Yeah, so your question is to which extent the net new monies are more invested perhaps compared to the past? I don't see a big change here. We may just keep in mind that, you know, we have a bit more B2B, B2C in the net new monies than usually. It's probably a timely situation, you know, things they are not always linear. It could be that the net new monies are a bit more invested than in general, but you see that overall, you know, cash deposits still represent 70% of the total assets.
There is no, I would say, substantial change, but it could be that net new monies were a bit more invested than usually, if it's the question you have.
Okay. As a follow-up question on deposit flows, if we go a little bit more into detail, do you see the threat that clients are shifting deposits more into money market fund, and that such flows could somewhat erode your deposit base going forward?
Yes. Theoretically, I would say, yes, it's a risk. It could be interesting, you know, we have decided where we split the net new monies by asset class. Here you see that basically what is representing investment funds, ETF, fixed income products, represented something that, if I double check, yes, 17%. It has somehow increased a bit.
Mm-hmm.
In the, in the last year, it was closer to 11%, so it has increased a bit. We can see that there is a trend of customers to move more to this type of product, perhaps compared to, to other products. Shares have at the same time decreased. You know, again, the, the proportion of cash out of the total current assets is relatively stable.
Mm-hmm.
I think there is a shift perhaps in trading activity, but not necessarily at the cost of the level of cash.
Okay, good. The next, the next question is on your deposit rates. I mean, you have already released the 10 basis points for Swiss francs you pay to B2C clients, 20 basis points on USD. Could you give us some color on the deposit rates you pay to B2B clients?
Well, it's a case by case discussion. You know, in case we have B2B customers connected, I'll certainly not give a lot of information. But it's probably something that is similar to what is applied with other bank counterparties. You know, in general, we either pay nothing, or we pay, You know, it's the reference rate, less six basis points.
Mm-hmm.
And, and this was already implemented at the time when interest rates were negative, you know, because the B2B customers, we were, let's say, less kind to accept the cost of negative rates, so, it was already implemented back when, when they were negative. I, I think it's probably pretty similar to what you could, you could see in the industry. We take our reference rate, and we, we, we, we give them a cut. This is what we may, we, we may remunerate the, the B2B customer. That being said, pure B2B customers will probably keep, not a lot of cash with, with Swissquote.
You know, if, if you are a, a small bank, partnering with Swissquote, you may have an exposure, personal, you know, and you may, you may want to monitor the exposure you take with the a creditor that is, or, or credibility that is Swissquote. The, the, the probably, I would say it's similar to things that a B2B, they have less cash in proportion than invested assets with Swissquote. We even have B2B customers, they have only invested assets with us, but they keep the cash with them, you know, and they just send the money that is required to, to, to settle the transaction.
Okay. Two questions left. What is the potential to increase your investment portfolio to preserve the current interest rate level for longer? Where can it go in terms of CHF billions?
I would say that with the given size of balance sheet, the level is probably rather appropriate, and this is at least the CFO point of view. If the balance sheet continues to grow, we may increase the debt securities portfolio, but not necessarily in relatively importance.
Mm-hmm.
For the time being, I think we well-positioned, and with the growth of the balance sheet that I expect for next six months. I would not expect the debt securities portfolio to change substantially in the next six months. For the time being, I think we have increased a bit compared to the beginning of the year, but it was more with the willingness to anticipate a little bit, you know, the situation at hand, rather than, you know, this being representative of a speed of increase in the next month.
Okay. As a last question, you mentioned the Tesla portfolio you have on the balance sheet. Could you remind us who is bearing the residual value risk, please?
Yes. The, the residual value is basically we have a buyback agreement with Tesla. At the end of the, of the leasing credit, they, they, they take back the car from, from, from the customer, and, and, this is their risk. At the same time, what we do at Swiss group level is we hedge the Tesla risk, you know, because basically it means that-
Mm-hmm
the residual value, we have a Tesla counterparty risk, and this is hedged via credit default swap. We don't take the Tesla credit risk in our balance sheet. It's hedged.
Understood. Thanks a lot.
Mm-hmm.
Thank you. Thank you, Christophe. I don't see any additional hands raised by the community, so this gives me the opportunity to thank you dearly for the, for participating to the presentation this morning. Of course, I know we will have some investors relation talks tomorrow and the day after, and also here at the headquarter. We are always here for you. If you have any additional questions, don't hesitate to call us. We would be delighted to answer. Here, I would then close the presentation this morning. Again, thank you for participating, and have a wonderful day.