I will now hand over the call to your host, Thomas Sommerauer, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Caroline, and also a very warm welcome to everybody who is listening in on behalf of Erste Group. We follow our usual conference call routine this time, so the call will be hosted by Willi Cernko, our Chief Executive Officer; Stefan Dörfler, our Chief Financial Officer; and Alexandra Habeler-Drabek, our Chief Risk Officer. They will lead you through a brief presentation highlighting the achievements of the first quarter 2024, and after that they are ready to take your questions. Before I hand over to Willi, my customary remark on forward-looking statements. As usual, the management in this call will make forward-looking statements, and accordingly the disclaimer on page two of the presentation fully applies to those statements. With this I hand over to Willi.
Thank you, Thomas. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and once again welcome to our first quarter 2024 conference call. Last year we have raised the bar as far as financial performance is concerned, and, accordingly I'm proud to report to you that in the first quarter 2024 we continued where we have left off in 2023. I'm on page 4 of the presentation. Both operating profit and net profit are up year-on-year as well as quarter-on-quarter. This was in no small measure due to NII consolidating close to record levels, fees continuing on their growth paths, and net trading and fair value result benefiting from positive valuation effects. Cost inflation was also less pronounced as deposit insurance contributions were significantly lower than in 2023. Risk costs remained moderate.
Overall we boasted a return on tangible equity of 17.2%, I think an excellent level for this time of the year bearing in mind the upfront booking of various regulatory costs and banking tax. To sum it up, we made a strong start to 2024 and accordingly we are optimistic on delivering the financial goals we have set ourselves at the start of the year. Our excellent P&L performance, and I'm on slide 5 in the meantime, is fully reflected in the P&L dashboard. Net interest margin continued to consolidate around the level of 2.5%, fully in line with our expectations. The cost-income ratio is already well in line with the guidance we provided for the full year. As the risk cost ratio is at 18 basis points, notably without any release of FLI provisions or overlays.
With all of this we printed a return on tangible equity in the very healthy double digits in the first quarter of 2024, as already mentioned. When it comes to the development of the balance sheet I'm on page 6 already. Volume trends were muted in the first quarter in addition to being negatively affected by FX translation especially in the Czech Republic and Hungary. A weak loan demand was not unexpected as we always assume that loan growth will be back-end loaded in 2024, supported by low interest rates, and as far as Austria is concerned also underpinned by a relaxation of macroprudential measures and the government support scheme for the construction industry that was passed by parliament just a week ago. Both should lead to higher mortgage demand in the rest of the year. Consequently we stick to our full year growth target of 5%.
Customer deposit volumes increased by 1.1% year to date with our core retail and SME deposits being broadly stable, once again underscoring the strength of our deposit franchise. Moving to our key balance sheet indicators on slide 7, all readings remained in the optimal range. Our loan-to-deposit ratio declined slightly reflecting muted loan development and healthy deposit growth as already mentioned. Asset quality continued to be satisfactory with the NPL ratio staying flat at 2.3%. In Austria we saw a mild increase in defaults primarily at the minority-owned savings banks while CEE continued to perform very well. At the same time NPL coverage excluding collateral remained almost flat at 84%. Our capital generation also remained strong in the first quarter. On a pro forma basis we boasted a CET1 ratio of 15.5%. This slight quarter-on-quarter decline was driven by somewhat higher risk-weighted asset inflation.
In terms of share buybacks there are no changes to what we already said. We have already applied for a second share buyback in the amount of EUR 500 million to the ECB and hope to complete it successfully by year-end 2024. With this, let's now have a look at the operating environment. I'm on slide 9 now. For 2024 our economists are projecting a moderate economic recovery in our core markets. Importantly all markets are expected to do better than in 2023. Inflation should moderate further providing room for central banks to cut interest rates. When exactly and how much is still a matter of debate but our expectations certainly is that the downward rate cycle is fully underway in the Czech Republic and Hungary and will also start in the eurozone in 2024.
Other economic metrics such as unemployment, fiscal and external balances are expected to remain in good shape across our region in 2024 and all of this should brighten volume growth perspectives as we progress through 2024. Talking about volume growth and I'm on page 10 in the meantime let's have a look at the latest trends in our retail business. Housing loans, housing loan stock remained broadly stable in currency-adjusted terms as this slow recovery in new business volumes continued with healthy increases seen particularly in the Czech Republic and Hungary. Demand in Austria on the other hand remained weak as many customers were holding back to take advantage of a government support package for the construction industry which includes an abolition of the stamp duty for the first time home buyers until a value threshold of EUR 500,000.
This package in the meantime has been implemented by the parliament and consequently we expect to have a positive volume effect in the rest of 2024. On the other hand, consumer loan demand was satisfactory with strong demand seen particularly in Romania in the past quarter. On the liability side, our retail deposit base was broadly stable year to date. As regards deposit pass-through, retail pass-through rates continued moving up in Austria but still at a moderate speed and customers, while continuing to shift some overnight deposits into term and savings accounts and to investments, of course still maintain more than 50% of their deposits in current accounts. This, despite this notwithstanding, we continued to see strong growth in the stock of securities savings plans confirming the positive trend that started in the second half of 2022. Moving to corporates and markets business on page 11.
Underlying corporate loan growth was actually somewhat better than reported figures imply on the upper right-hand chart. This was due to the FX depreciation shaving off approximately EUR 400 million from the euro total and the minor resegmentation from SME to the retail segment in the amount of EUR 600 million. If we take this into account we actually saw a reasonable start to the year. What is even more reassuring is that the deal pipeline started to build up building well for volume development in the remainder of the year. Within the corporate deposit business we saw some increased activity with public sector entities but other than that a pretty uneventful quarter with deposit volumes increasing somewhat year to date. The markets business continued its strong performance. We were involved in the issuance of EUR 52 billion worth of bonds and generated healthy income in securities business.
Asset management also enjoyed a good start to the year with assets under management growing by 4% to EUR 81 billion with good net sales in Czech Republic, Hungary, and Austria. This supported our strong fee performance. On the digital front, not to forget, the corporate business also made good progress. In the meantime we have, as you know, onboarded almost 40,000 customers to George Business in Austria and the first 600 in Romania. And I hand over to Stefan for the presentation of the quarterly operating trends. Stefan, please.
Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. Since Willi already made the most important comments on retail and corporate loan volumes, I would just like to add a couple of points on country performance. Croatia is maintaining the growth pattern that has started after the country joined the euro at the start of 2023, and we believe there is more good growth to come in this country. Other countries showed a mixed performance with some being impacted by FX movements such as the Czech Republic and Hungary. In Austria, the demand backdrop remained fairly weak amid expectations of political support measures and the relaxation of regulatory rules related to the mortgage business, both of which were recently implemented. Actually, nothing special to say about Romania, Slovakia and Serbia for the first quarter. Overall, this resulted in a flat loan development in euro terms quarter-on-quarter.
For the full year of 2024 we remain optimistic on loan growth as lower rates, the expected moderate economic recovery and some tailwinds in Austria should help us achieve our target growth rate of about 5%. As Willi already mentioned there is very little to say about deposit volumes since our last reporting end of February. You see the updated numbers on page 14. Loan-to-deposit ratios remain in the high 80s with end-of-year Q1 number being 88.4% to be precise and customer deposits have grown by 1.1% year to date. Hence let's turn to page 15 and let's focus on NII. We are posting a strong first quarter with NII greater than EUR 1.85 billion.
With this and clean of all effects in Q4 we are trading we are trending sideways compared to second half of 2023 which is a very positive development confirming our picture of a plateauing NII fully. Q1 NII was a story of two tales though. CEE on the one and Austria on the other hand. With the very strong CEE NII I'm particularly happy with the performance of Czech Republic which proves our resilience in the face of significant rate cuts and validates our balance sheet management strategy. The same is true for Hungary where rate cuts have been even more pronounced. On the flip side the Austrian segments performed weaker as deposit pass-through rates have increased for the seventh quarter in a row and have now reached approximately 31%. Still very much in line with our expectations for 2024.
Please do not forget that Austrian NII has been increasing by 69% for Erste Bank Österreich and 55% in savings banks in 2023 so that this consolidation now was clearly anticipated. What can we expect for the further outlook? Short-term, i.e., for Q2 I would expect a confirmation of current trends for most countries as the ECB will most likely take its first step in June with limited Q2 effect. I'm more than happy to address all your questions specifically on certain countries later on in the Q&A. For the full year 2024 we keep our guidance unchanged based on our assumptions for interest rate developments, volumes both on loan and deposit side and regulatory environment. Certainly we'll revisit this forecast based on all facts available when we report half-year 1 figures on August 2nd. Let's come to fee and commission income on page 16.
Fees continued the strong performance hitting a new quarterly record in Q1 2024. Year-on-year we posted growth of 10.8% and this was attributable to our three core growth drivers: payment services, securities business and insurance brokerage. Clearly we had some tailwind from inflation driver-driven repricing but we also had a healthy contribution from increasing volumes. Quarter-on-quarter fees were up 1.5% and here it was mostly securities business that drove growth. Consequently this performance is mostly visible in the other Austria segment. What is remarkable and I really want to mention that from a strategic standpoint is the growth of asset management volumes in retail in Czech Republic and Hungary. Hence with this excellent start to 2024 it makes us optimistic that we will comfortably deliver our guidance for the year of mid-single digit fee growth.
If anything we believe that this P&L item has again good potential for outperformance in 2024. Turning to operating expenses on slide 17. Now we can report that the first quarter costs grew by a moderate 3.3% year-on-year. This was mainly due to significantly lower deposit insurance contributions especially in Austria. Quarter-on-quarter we saw an absolute decline of costs which was attributable to the seasonally higher spend that we usually observe in the fourth quarter. As far as our outlook for 2024 is concerned we still expect an increase of costs of about 5% mainly due to the continued inflation-related wage drift in all of our markets. We have been talking about the Austrian effect, starting from Q2, a couple of times while the lower deposit insurance costs should help, also for the full year cost development.
Summing it all up for the operating performance, what were the key operating result drivers in Q1? Page 18. Revenue momentum reaccelerated with NRI consolidating near record highs. Fees setting another quarterly record and trading and fair value result also making an exceptionally strong positive contribution. Expenses, as just mentioned, were seasonally lower quarter-on-quarter on decreased personal and other administrative expenses. This combination leads us to reiterate our cost-income ratio expectation around about 50% for the full year 2024 and an overall very solid operating performance for the year. And with this over to Alexandra for details on credit risk.
Thank you, Stefan, and good morning once again from Vienna. I'm continuing now on page 19. As Willi has already mentioned, risk costs came in at 18 basis points for the quarter without any releases of FLI provisions or sector overlays. With this, we remained comfortably within our guidance. On the left-hand chart, it is clearly visible that the minority-owned savings banks, as in Q4, accounted for the majority of the bookings, but even with this, the savings banks maintained a historically strong level of profitability. Overall, the trend of slight increases in new defaults continued at a slower pace in the first quarter of 2024, pretty much in line with what we expected and also communicated a quarter ago. Looking at Central and Eastern Europe, the risk performance there continues to be excellent. In Croatia, we again posted net releases thanks to rating upgrades and improved collections.
In terms of overlays and FLI provisions as shown on the slide and also mentioned, we still have approximately EUR 750 million on the books and hence we are fully confirming our 2024 guidance of lower than 25 basis points of risk costs. Let's now turn to asset quality on page 20. The NPL ratio and NPL coverage ratio stayed at comfortable levels. While we continue to see some further NPL inflows especially again as mentioned at the minority-owned savings banks in Austria but also at Erste Bank Österreich, the situation in Central and Eastern Europe remained exceptionally strong with NPL ratios even improving year to date in several countries such as Croatia, Romania or Hungary. This is really very reassuring. NPL coverage was broadly stable year to date. Going forward, given the high collateral of the new NPL inflows we expect coverage to remain around current levels for 2024.
With this I hand already back to Stefan.
Thank you very much. We are turning to page 21 and spend a couple of comments on the other result which came in significantly improved, both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter in both cases around about EUR 150 million better. The main year-on-year drivers or as already highlighted in the Q4 call, were the EUR 110 million roundabout lower resolution fund contributions due to no payments in 2024 in the eurozone countries Austria, Slovakia and Croatia. In addition to that the banking tax burden affecting other result was also lower as extra profit tax in Hungary was cut in half and this positive development was partly offset by the first-time booking of such tax in Romania in the amount of around EUR 9-10 million for the quarter.
Please be aware that the quarterly banking tax in Slovakia of about EUR 21 million is actually reflected in the tax line not in other result. For the quarter-on-quarter comparison the main differentiator are the Q4 bond sales and some other effects that have of course not reoccurred in Q1. Summing it up for the P&L on page 2022 for Q1. The strong quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year operating performance driven by top-line growth, continued moderate risk costs and a strongly improved year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter other result results in a net profit after minorities of EUR 783 million. Given all components of our outlook, we confirm our return on tangible equity target for the year 2024 of about 15%. With this, let's spend a few minutes on wholesale funding and capital turning to page 24.
Wholesale funding volumes went up in the first quarter on the usual start-of-the-year issuance activity. In our case, mostly driven by covered bond issuance and in addition we were more active in the CD market in euro and U.S. dollars as pricing was advantageous. This is the reason behind the increase in debt securities. The rise was partly offset by lower volumes of interbank deposits on account of the continued reduction of the TLTRO balance. Overall of course our strong funding profile was still primarily built on retail deposits as described earlier. On page 25, I guess yes page 25, we are showing the latest update of our MREL issuance execution. As you can see from the list of the transactions in Q1 2024 we have done another €500 million non-preferred senior and a €400 million Erste Croatia preferred senior issuance.
Let me use the opportunity to mention that the various capital markets activities of my colleagues across the different resolution groups, which are very much supporting, the excellent progress in delivering on the group-wide MREL funding plan. Looking at the Erste Group debt maturity profile on page 26, we registered total issuance of EUR 2.5 billion, a little bit above EUR 2.5 billion, in the first quarter. In January 2024, we issued a EUR 1 billion covered bond benchmark, 7 years maturity, at mid-swaps +50 and another EUR 1 billion later on, then in March, just short of 10 years, at the levels of mid-swaps +55. With this, we have mostly done. We are mostly done for this asset class with our funding plan and also for the other bond types. We are well advanced already early in the year.
TLTRO redemptions happen as scheduled and let me remind you that the maturity profile does not include AT1 instruments as we do not implicitly guide for future calls. Reported own funds and we are already on page 27 came down slightly quarter-on-quarter as for CET1 quarterly profits are not yet included and we called an AT1 tranche in Q1. Risk-weighted assets were up year-to-date in equal measure driven by business growth most of which corporate off-balance sheet business and worth mentioning increased operational risk on the back of the regular annual severity recalibration. This updrift in operational risk is a non-recurring effect of course. Finally for my part let's look at the CET1 waterfall on page 28. As a result of the capital and risk-weighted asset developments I just presented our reported fully loaded CET1 ratio came in at 15.2%.
On a pro forma basis we stand at 15.5% i.e. just slightly down from year-end due to the FX translation to OCI and before-mentioned RWA effects. In terms of capital return there are no changes to our plans. Subject to approval by the annual general meeting in May we will pay a regular annual dividend of EUR 2.7 for the business year 2023. With the half-year 2024 numbers already together with the new CEO Peter Bosek we will inform you about the intended dividend for the business year 2024. As we have already communicated two months ago we are targeting buyback in the amount of EUR 500 million. To this end we have already filed an application with the ECB and still hope to conclude the transaction by year-end 2024. With this I hand back to Willi for the outlook.
Thank you Stefan. I'm concluding this presentation with our detailed guidance for 2024 on page 30 or I should rather say the full confirmation of what we have said a quarter ago. If anything we are more optimistic today to fully achieve all targets we have set ourselves two months ago and consequently I would not be surprised if the guidance will be reviewed at half-year. But for now if we look at the net interest income numbers are pretty much developing as we expected. For the time being we see consolidation at the top and expect a minor decline when interest rates are cut in the eurozone. Hence we maintain our guidance of approximately 3% decline in 2024. We also believe that the loan book will grow by about 5% this year but that is growth will mostly happen in the second half of the year.
We are confident that the cost-income ratio will remain at a strong level of about 50%. We again expect risk costs to be moderate at less than 25 basis points in 2024 and benefiting from further releases and impacted only by a small deterioration in asset quality. Of course we are confident that we will achieve a return on tangible equity of about 15%. In terms of capital return Stefan has already said everything there is to say about the dividends or a planned share buyback combined with our long-term growth profile we believe that this represents an attractive proposition to investors. This ladies and gentlemen concludes our presentation remarks. Thanks for your attention. We are now ready to take your questions.
Sure, thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. We will take the first question from the line of Benoît Pétrarque from Kepler. The line is open now. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. It's Benoît Pétrarque from Kepler Cheuvreux. Thanks for taking my questions. So yeah, the first one will be on the pass-through rate in Austria. So you mentioned 31%. I think it's up five percentage points, quarter-on-quarter. So what do you expect going forward and, I think you mentioned that this is still well embedded into your 2024 guidance, but just wanted to check where you think we might end up in the current interest rate cycle. Actually linked to that question, the number two will be on this new federal savings product, the Bundesschatz . So what is your expectation in terms of, you know, customer flow?
I know it's a bit early days but do you have already seen any customer reaction and obviously how do you expect your you know your pricing strategy to potentially move with that new product and new competitor? And then the last question is on the very strong NI in CE. You know what are moving parts playing in the Q1? I think loan growth was limited so I guess it's many deposit margin. But you know what do you expect in the coming quarters in Central Eastern Europe on NI and you know is strong performance sustainable? Thank you very much.
All right. Thanks very much, Benoît. I would take the first and the third question and then leave it to Willi, who is very deeply into this Austrian topic, for commenting on that other question. Yes, the deposit pass-throughs have been accelerating upwards, and if you look at the ECB statistics, you will find Austria together—I think if I read it correctly—Portugal or so among those countries which had an acceleration of deposit beta up. I don't expect it to go much further from here, but it's very hard to predict. We think that in the Q2 we will have a reconfirmation of the trends, but then it should be stabilizing, especially once the rates come down and the absolute interest expenses will start to go lower.
But I can only confirm your assumption in the question that this is all still exactly in line with what we have been including in our overall guidance. In the NII, yes, I definitely think it's sustainable, especially when loan volumes would kick in as expected. I would even expect further towards the end of the year and going into 2025 that we should see some support from the volume side. Obviously, there are always some specific events here and there on one or the other country development which can change that. For example, Hungary, I'm not so extremely optimistic for the second quarter, to be honest, because we have had a substantial rate cut and obviously this will eat a little bit into our over-liquidity returns.
But all in all, yeah, CET1, NII stable, strong and, definitely also for the outlook, a very very good path forward.
Can we take to your second question? First of all, and I think this is broadly shared within the banking industry in Austria. This is very well perceived. We see this as a positive contribution to competition, and secondly, what is more important is it creates awareness for the securities business. But it's still too early to say to what extent this is really going to impact the deposit business with retail customers, but definitely we are not worried about that.
Okay, thank you very much for that.
Thank you. We will take the next question from Mate Nemes from UBS. The line is open now, please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, and thank you for the presentation. I have three questions, please. The first one would be on the loan growth outlook. It sounds like the loan growth assumption of 5% increase year-on-year is to a large extent dependent on the pickup in growth in Austria. I was just wondering if you could provide any further color on that, beyond perhaps the retail segment. And also, I'm wondering to what extent are you confident hitting the -3% NII growth expectation should the loan growth disappoint materially? That's number one. Apologies. The second question would be on RWA inflation. The Op risk severity recalibration seems quite material in terms of the increase. Could you provide any further color on this, anything that we should be aware of?
The third question would be on risk cost and risk cost outlook. I was wondering what led you to change the overlay release assumption for the guidance? I think it used to be one-third release of the FLI and sector overlays. Now it's EUR 200 million. Any color on that would be appreciated. Thank you.
Let me start with the first question you raised, when it comes to loan growth guidance of 5%. Two remarks to that. The first one, when we look at corporate business, we see a well, let's say, developing pipeline. So there is confidence that we can meet our targets. And secondly, when it comes to retail mortgages, again, please bear in mind we have established a very well and broad, established support package for private households. So there is the expectation that, beginning with the third quarter, this business is going to pick up. So we are pretty confident.
Yeah, and let me just add to this question, especially the part on NII. The volume growth is, of course, a factor, but it's definitely more forward-looking, a factor ranging into 2025 and following. I don't think that whether we will have 3.5% or 5.2% loan growth at the end of the year will change the game so dramatically for 2024. And let's not forget that for CEE NII, we have also the fixed-rate assets maturities and repricing. We have been talking about the reduration a couple of times. So it's not only the loan side but also the securities portfolio. So hence, yes, volumes play a role. We will need a good volume development in the long term. Short term, for 2024, it's not so much depending on one percentage point up or down.
Then I will take over on RWA op risk. As you rightly recall, this was a recalibration. So first of all, which is very important to state, this is not showing a deterioration of the loss profile. So this does not mean that recently, the losses from op risk have increased. What happened and you might know from the methodology there is this ten-year rolling window in op risk in the calculation and in this ten-year rolling window some smaller tail losses dropped from the calculation while larger ones from the past including, when you recall it's quite some years ago, the FX conversion that we had in Hungary with EUR 300 million and EUR 50 million Erste Bank Croatia they are still in. And by the fact that smaller events dropped these remaining bigger events gained more weight and this led to this updrift.
But this does not mean that loss rates have increased. Second, on risk cost outlook, there has not been a change, to be very open. We always accounted for EUR 200 million-EUR 250 million of FLI and overlay releases and this assessment has not changed. Yeah, so current expectation is EUR 200 million. It can also be, yeah, what we said between EUR 200 million and EUR 250 million, so no material change in any assumption.
That's perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We will take the next question from Johannes Thormann from HSBC. The line is open now, please go ahead.
Good morning everybody. Johannes Thormann , HSBC. Also three questions please. First of all, on the savings plans, it seems that the growth is even accelerating. Is the number of the new savings plans actually increasing? So any marketing push behind it or what is driving this growth and what are the average investments? Secondly, on the risk cost, follow-up on the FLI, the EUR 500 million-EUR 550 million remaining FLI after this year: will this be a base you always need to have or is there still some amount which could be released in 2025? And what kind of sectors are you borrowing? Any changes to those industries or still the old typical names? And last but not least, just a simple one on the tax rate for 2024: any changes due to the shift of the Slovakian banking tax into the tax rate?
Thank you.
I would take the savings banks costs question. If I got it right, Johannes, you have to help me because the line was a little bit weak. I think it was savings banks costs, right? OpEx?
No, no, no, the tax rate.
No, no, tax rate was the third question. This is easy. Tax rate I can, but the very first question you had.
The savings plans.
savings plans. Okay.
Okay, Johannes, I want to take this.
Sorry.
Okay, good. This is a well-established initiative. We kicked it off already in 2022. Meanwhile, we have 1,235,000 so-called securities savings plans sold. And the good thing is this is well-established in all core countries, led by the Czech Republic with more than 500,000 and so on and so forth. In Austria we are talking about 110,000 plans. The average amount, on a monthly basis in Austria we are talking about EUR 150 in CEE on average EUR 90. No special campaign. It's well-established in the network.
Okay, and I put away the tax question very quickly before I hand over to Alexandra. Yes, it is in the tax line. Yes, it has, of course, a certain updrift effect. We are applying a 20% net tax rate for the first quarter, and we will, of course, update you as we go throughout the year where we will land for the full year.
On FLI, Johannes, the remaining or the planned remaining EUR 550 million per year in 2024, we do not expect that this is the stock. Of course you know, FLI moves with macro but we would expect also for 2025 that we could release some EUR 150 million-EUR 200 million and the remaining part, we then would consider an FLI stock. On the typical suspects, in terms of industries, we still have some energy overlays left, not so much. Those we expect we will fully release over this year. Cyclicals, we also regularly review and chemistry and metals we currently would not see a big change. And of course we are, as we started many quarters ago, regularly monitoring all the industries but as of today we do not see any other industry which would qualify, let me call it like this, for additional overlays.
Okay thank you.
Okay, we will take the next question from Krishnan from Barclays. The line is open now. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my question actually. I have three questions actually. First, on the NII, actually could you talk about the other's NII which has increased quarter-on-quarter and what are the drivers and what could we typically see going forward and for the year? And also in past years you have been kind enough to provide the guidance for the 100 basis point movements on the rates for different geographies if you could update us on that. The second question is on the fees side I think. You talked about you could have better performance in the fees and you could do better than the 5% guidance.
Are you putting it up or you're just talking about YOI performance about it? And third is on the risk cost primarily. This is for Alexandra. So if you could just break down the FLIs by geographies or by divisions, that would be helpful.
Okay, Krishnan, to—I take the two operating performance questions. So really nothing special on other Austria NII. A little bit of a, an effect in Q4 there, so there's definitely nothing special to mention in terms of overall developments. Everything just business normal. And no, we are not upgrading the CEE overall growth. I think it's 5% sorry? I think the question was about volumes in CE, right Krishnan?
No, no. Fee and commission.
Fees and commission income. Yes, we see potential there. Sorry, thanks very much, Thomas, for helping me. No, we definitely have a very optimistic outlook there. Obviously, we need to get a little bit more evidence in the second quarter where some of the trends are reconfirmed because obviously at the beginning of the year there are some sales activities, some campaigns which could maybe dilute a little bit the longer-term trend. But if we get a reconfirmation of the trends in the second quarter, we definitely will consider an upgrade of the guidance in this income line. Definitely right.
On your question, let me repeat if I understood correctly. So you're asking this 200-250 release on FLI that we are and release of sector overlays that we are planning where we would see it. Yeah, let me start so.
Yes.
The FLI out of this, EUR 700 million, EUR 500 million is FLI and the SE status is that roughly EUR 220 million are booked for Austria and EUR 285 million for CE. And as mentioned and as you know the FLI moves with macro so where we would see the release will strongly depend on the macro development but as we see that CEE is really doing very well I would expect as of today, a little bit more in the FLI of CEE than in Austria but we will do the FLI update in second quarter and then we will know more.
Yeah, thanks a lot, and I think just the 100 basis point rate moment—what do you think of the, on the NII sensitivity actually?
I think there is not a big change to this, and just need gives me the opportunity to emphasize that we always should look at currency sensitivities not so much country sensitivities reminding you of a significant share of euro balance sheet in countries the like of Czech Republic and Czech Republic and Romania. So I just can reconfirm around EUR 300 million NII sensitivity but for a full year of a 1% move in ECB euro rates. Let's not forget that around 40% of this would be showing up in the savings banks. I think the Q1 already has been showing that our sensitivity indications on the Czech currency are quite accurate and that we are benefiting from the rate cut cycle that the Czech National Bank has been kicking off.
Thank you. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. We will take the next question from Mehmet Sevim from JP Morgan. The line is open now, please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for your time. I had just two questions please. Well, firstly on NII, and I know Stefan you actually implied this during your comments but the full year guidance does seem to imply that NII will go down a lot in the second half of the year if we take into account the first quarter run rate and also what you said on the second quarter. So can I ask what's your feeling about the second half NII at this point in the cycle maybe without even thinking about guidance? But you know in terms of the rate expectations, growth, etc., what do you think NII will look like in the second half of the year? And maybe one follow-up on Czech Republic actually. Could you talk about what's driving the resilience in Czech NII in this declining interest rate environment?
I know you said euro rates are still supportive, but in terms of the deposit costs, for example, thereafter the 125 basis points cuts, have you started repricing your deposits down? And if yes, what kind of reaction have you seen from your core customers, and how do you expect that to continue? Maybe any color on that would be helpful. And finally on CRE and the savings banks risk costs, it seems like you've done quite a visible allocation this quarter to CRE there as you had signaled before. But could you give us more color on the state of business in this segment, and what is driving it and how do you expect the next few quarters to look like? Thanks very much.
Yeah. First, Mehmet, let me remind you what is our current expectation when it comes to ECB key rates. We assume which probably is very much the market opinion at the moment. We assume a 25 basis points cut in June. And then one can read from the statements of the ECB council members that their I think their idea is to cut three more times than in September, October and December. I think that's on their minds. However, there is a certain risk to this assumption for two reasons. First, U.S. dollar rates. It seems very much that the Fed is definitely open for what happens in 2024. I mean you need read the market comments as much as I do.
So there is definitely a factor which they cannot completely ignore on the ECB side. And the second thing is obviously what will happen to core inflation but also the energy component, later on in the year in Q3 and so on. So I think while the June is more or less a done deal at least we read it that way, the further path is very much depending on developments, in summer or with let's say Q2, Q3 figures. Having said this, everything you hear from us in terms of NII outlook is currently built on the base case, of these 4 cuts. And this would mean that we would see a deterioration in terms of NII displayed NII in Austria, on the back of that.
A little bit of pressure on the other euro countries but much, much less so leading to a Q3, Q4 on the Austrian activities which is substantially lower than Q2 and Q1. That's on that front. Of course, should this change or should the deposit pass-throughs slow down or stuff like that, it can only, it should only get better from here. NII in Czech Republic, maybe two things. First, Q4 was relatively weak. Q1 was relatively good. But we are overall on the path of this rate cut cycle on the right end. And depending, discussing the deposits, the repricing has been starting and we don't see any changes there in terms of so to say pressure from the market. We are very well positioned.
Our liquidity position gives us the comfort to be market followers. And we are back benefiting actually from some of the let me say signs of, I wouldn't call it stress in any form but some signs of pressure on P&L in other houses. So, I'm very optimistic with a combination of good volume development and overall right balance sheet management position, to deliver a very good NII in Czech Republic in 2024.
Then I would take over on your question on commercial real estate. Let me start at commercial real estate in the classical sense so meaning shopping centers, office, logistics and hotels is all doing very very well across the board also in Austria. What we are seeing in Austria is residential real estate and this mainly residential real estate developments in Vienna undertaken by smaller and medium-sized developers. These are developers where Erste Bank Österreich did not do so much business with, some Sparkassen did, and we see exactly the same pattern that we have seen in Q4 2023. We have seen the NPL inflow has a little bit slowed down in Q1.
I would not rule out that it will now stop immediately, but I'm quite confident that in the second half of this year, those weaker market participants, yeah, we have seen them all, yeah, to be very blunt. But this is really focused on a small segment, residential real estate in Vienna. Of course not the non-profit housing associations. They are doing excellently and are also a big share in our portfolio as you know. I would expect a slowdown in the second half. Yes, you're right. We have booked risk costs, but when you look at the absolute amounts of EUR 90 million and take into account that we have not yet released any of these EUR 200-250 million, the overall picture is not so dark.
That's very clear. Thanks very much.
Thank you. We will take the next question from Gabor Kemeny. Coming from Autonomous Research. The line is open now, please go ahead.
Hi. Just two quick questions from me please. On Hungary NII firstly, you seem to be indicating that we should expect a gradual decline with falling rates. Any color you can give us on the Hungary NII evolution please? And the other one is on what Alexandra just discussed on some of the savings banks being exposed to real estate developers, the problematic real estate developers. Are any of them exposed to the extent that they might require support from the cross-guarantee system in your view? What is the likelihood of that? Thank you.
I can start with this one with a clear no. Yeah? So, really high collateral levels throughout all these, all these financings. So absolutely no reason of concern in that respect that you indicated.
Got it. Thank you.
Yeah. And on the Hungarian question, Gabor, well, we are expecting, like probably the whole market, further rate cuts and hence the income from placement of excess liquidity will be lower as mentioned before. In addition, I think you're aware that the rate cap for corporate deposits has ended, with the end of Q1 and therefore in my short-term outlook I was mentioning Hungary to be a little bit of a risk on the NII performance. We had a positive effect in the first quarter of around about EUR 9 million on that factor. So let's see how this further develops. So we are not negative on Hungarian NII by any means but this excellent performance we saw in the first quarter might not repeat in the same way.
Very clear. Thanks.
We will take the next question from the line Riccardo Rovere from Mediobanca. The line is open now, please go ahead.
Thanks. Thanks for taking my question. Two or three if I may. The first one is a sort of curiosity on how you think about FLIs when it comes to decide your capital distribution plans because you are now at 15.5% including the profit for the period which is 150 basis point above the your internal your very high internal target at 14% and you have not used a single penny of the 750. So technically one could claim that the capital is at 16%. So I'm not just asking any update on the guidance or nothing like that. Just curious to know if you consider that 750 as part of your capital or not. The second question I have is on NII again if I may.
When you look at the past experience so 2008, 2009, maybe a bit of 2010, because of the deposits in Austria, when the rate plateaued kept going up for a while which is what is happening now, but then when the rates started falling, you know, the cost of the deposit in 2009 started falling almost immediately. Immediately. I was wondering whether, you know, the lesson from the past you think can be an indication also for the future?
And somehow related to that, when you look at, see, it looks like that given that the rates are so high or were so high in Czech Republic, in Romania, in Hungary, you know, it was easy at least at the beginning, you know, to transfer on the cost of the deposit to the rate cuts because we were starting from 7% or well above 7% in Hungary. To what extent, to what level of rates do you think you can keep doing this in Eastern Europe? So if rate in Czech Republic do go to 3%, would you still be able to pass most of the rate cuts on the cost of the deposit? Thanks.
Let me very generally, Riccardo, take the last question because listening to you I was going through all the impressions I've had from my business colleagues from the countries and so on. So it very much obviously depends on the business mix that you have in the deposits and here I can definitely confirm to you that we have very fast adjusting a portfolio there. We have been providing to our customers quite attractive deposit rates as you know from the years 2022 and especially also 2023. We were also suffering in terms of NII in Czech Republic but we are now also able to reprice very quickly downwards. The market is doing that. Therefore both in terms of competitive situation as well as product mix we are able to reprice quite quickly.
How this will exactly play out in the Austrian scenario I can't tell you yet obviously because we might only be starting in June with the rate cut cycle. But given the maturity profile of our, so to say, of the term deposits especially on the retail front, I would be quite optimistic that the delay from central bank and key rate cuts to actually really also having a relief on our interest expenses will be relatively short. So that would be my comments on that. And well, I don't know Alexandra, do you want to talk about the FLI as part of capital? Should I? Should Willi?
Maybe let me start only by recalling, yeah? You said we did not use yet, so FLI and sector overlay was higher even in the past, yeah? We had 900+. We used part of it to counterbalance real default inflows already in 2023. For this year we planned the release of the already mentioned 200-250, which also means that we are using what we provisioned for in previous periods for a deteriorating environment. Some bases as also already mentioned today will remain, yeah? So there will be a base of FLI. But other than that, I would pass it on to Stefan, yeah, for the capital distribution.
Look, as a general comment, not any kind of risk technicalities on my end. Let's not forget that there are very very very different expectations between so to say the regulatory view on those, such as those discussion points, and the investor's view on the discussion points. And we have to sail and we have to manage so to say between those very different expectations of course also always fully complying with all the audit and accounting rules. So I would simply say, to be very fair here Ricardo, we have in any case plenty of excess capital. That's absolutely clear. Even if we do not account a substantial part of FLIs to it, we have substantial excess capital. We are very much talking about this.
You know that this level of 15.5 ± is a new level to us. We know and we have already Willi has already discussed this also with his successor very openly that this will be a point for discussion, with you latest then also in summer. We have a clear path forward for distributing, via the share buyback and in particular our regular dividend what we always have been communicating. Should that should that leave us still with substantial excess capital, communication about, how to deploy this excess capital will definitely have to follow. That's my general comment independent from EUR 100 million up or down on FLIs here and there.
Right. Thank you. Thank you very much. And maybe a quick follow-up on the op risk, RWA. This is an update that happens, right at the beginning of the year so technically the op risk should stay more or less at this level for the rest of 2024, right?
Yes.
Yeah. Okay.
Thank you. We will take the next question from line Robert Marsella from PKO BP Securities. The line is open now. Please go.
Good morning everyone. I have three quick questions partially covered in the earlier discussion. First of all, on the residential exposure as I understand mostly concentrated in Vienna, could you share how much of the provisioning has been targeted to cover that exposure? And then, as from previous calls I recall we were always referring to the residential exposure as relatively well collateralized. So I'm just wondering what happened that it didn't work out as originally planned and whether that could have any negative implications on the timing of the overlays releases in the coming quarters. So that's first question. And the second question is more generic, how do you see the competition in digital banking? I'm here referring to George and Revolut. As we can see Revolut is having a major marketing push across the region.
How does it impact the fee schedule? Do you plan to offer to offer like flat fee plans for customers? Do you plan any changes? How do you see the state of the competition across the region? It's not just Revolut but a new, for example, digital bank from Transylvania in Romania, new mid-sized banks being set up in the Czech Republic. What's the impact on your core business there? Thank you.
Yeah. Let me start. So we do not expect, from the fact that, the one or the other small and medium-sized developer, being active in Vienna is trying any impact on the timing of the release of overlays, yeah? So, no, yeah? A clear no on this. A clear yes on your statement, on the high level of collateral. Yes, this is true. And when you look at the EUR 95 million overall which is not only coming from, from Vienna residential real estate so it's, you know, run business as usual in retail.
We did not have any bigger counter effects in this first quarter but basically this EUR 95 million is not so huge huge and when you dedicate let's say very roughly half of it to some residential real estate projects you can see that the collateral level is really high because EUR 45 million let's say for 10 real estate projects is not so huge.
Okay. Let me take the retail question. I think you are fully aware that it is our intention, when it comes to retail as well as to corporate, we want to be among the top three in all our core countries and this is not just achieved, we're heading to beat the top on top of the competition in each of our core countries with George, and this is one of the key arguments, George, and with George being present in all our core countries this gives us access to scalability, firstly. Secondly, it is meanwhile used by more than 10 million customers and we should not forget that today more than every second retail product is bought digitally. So this is a tremendous development we have seen over the last few years and this is an ongoing process as seen also by further alignment across the board.
We should not forget besides that we have a well-established brand in all our core countries. This supports a lot. This helps a lot, to get access to new customers to attract new especially young customers. Thirdly, not to forget, we have a well-established branch network, a franchise, with well-trained and motivated people. And we have seen this throughout the crisis when we talk about COVID, when competitors who were just present digitally were not able, let's say, to meet customers' expectations. We were able to do that. So, all in all, I have to say, I think, we are well-established. We are leading the pack, when it comes to digital solutions. We have a network that is well-established. We have motivated people and we have a brand that is seen as young, innovative, and prepared for the future.
I'm very optimistic when I look ahead.
Thank you.
Thank you. We, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. We will take the next question from Benoît Pétrarque from Kepler Cheuvreux. The line is open now, please go ahead.
Yes, sorry, it's Benoît from Kepler Cheuvreux. Just two follow-up questions quickly. Now, just thinking about rate cuts potentially, so could you remind us or do you hedge your valuable loan book in Austria? Seems that your management has been very strong in CEE looking at the Q1 results, but just wanted to know a bit more on your hedge on the valuable loan book. You know, UK banks are doing the structural hedge. You know, I was wondering if you tried to anticipate also a bit of rate cuts potentially impacting the yield on the loan book. And the second one is obviously we have this wage inflation coming in in Austria. I was just wondering here what plans do you have to address the wage inflation?
AI is that, you know, something you consider as well to optimize also the cost base going forward and maybe reduce FTEs? Thank you very much.
I tried to address Benoît the points as accurately as I can. So firstly, we are, as I mentioned before in the detailed answer, actually exactly basing our assumptions currently along the expectations on ECB rate path forward, and this has at least short term 2024 a certain impact on NII. This was the one part. In terms of overall repricing, I think I gave you already a couple of insights, what we expect on the Austrian side. When it comes to costs, well, it's very clear that we will have an updrift starting from the second quarter.
We have mentioned that very often, in the light of the collective bargaining which was resulting in this roundabout 8% increase, as you can read from the overall coverage also, communication and press. We are definitely expecting overall operational improvements and efficiency measures. And your question on AI we have a lot of activities mainly targeted, to be honest, on the customer front but also on process optimization which are kicking off. To be fair we are users. We believe that we can benefit from the new technology very much. We have a lot of young people especially taking care of pushing us ahead there. Willi just mentioned that also in the context of the customer services. That's the plan going forward.
Short term, to be honest, I would not dare to say it will have an effect on managing the costs in 2024. I would not dare to say that, Benoit, to be honest.
Yeah. Thank you very much for that.
Thank you. It appears no further question at this time. I'll hand it back over to your host Mr. Willi Cernko for closing remarks. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, as there is no further question at this time and this is my last quarterly presentation to you. The half-year presentation on the 2nd of August 2024 will already be hosted by my successor Peter Bosek. I would like to thank you for the many insightful conversations we had over the past two years and your continued commitment toward Erste Group. It was a pleasure to work with you over the past two years. Thank you very much and bye-bye.
Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect.