Barclays PLC
Q1 2013 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 30 Jul 2013

[Operator:]

Welcome to the Barclays Half Year Results Fixed Income Investor Conference Call. I will now hand you over to Chris Lucas, Group Finance Director.

[Christopher G. Lucas:]

Good afternoon, and welcome to our interim results fixed income call. This is the second fixed income call that we've done. And given the feedback in February, we decided to keep the format the same. I'll start by highlighting some key aspects of our results. I'll then hand over to Benoît de Vitry, our Group Treasurer, who will talk about funding, liquidity and capital, as well as balance sheet and leverage. After that, we'll open up for questions. This call is designed to address issues affecting our debtholders, so we don't plan to discuss the Rights Issues that we announced this morning. Moving on to the results. You've seen that we reported a solid performance this morning, demonstrating the ability of our business to generate earnings. Despite a challenging macroeconomic environment, income in our larger businesses remains resilient, and we continue to maintain or strengthen our competitive position. Impairments have continued to improve. This reflects both our conservative risk appetite and the quality of our risk management. Costs remain well controlled. Excluding Transform charges, we've reduced operating expenses, and our cost-to-income ratio is moving well in the direction of our 2015 target. Enhancing our financial strength remains a central focus, and we continue to make steady progress in adapting to the new regulatory environment. The plan we've announced this morning will further strengthen our capital and leverage position. We've also made good progress with our Transform program, which is designed to help us deliver our 2015 targets. Our financial performance should be viewed in the light of the significant restructuring costs we've taken, especially in Europe RBB and the Investment Bank, as well as the macroeconomic environment. We will be investing in the second half of the year in order to build long-term competitive advantage. Both restructuring and investment are essential to achieving our targets but they will impact our numbers in the intervening period. We've also announced further provisions for PPI the interest rate hedging product this morning, which we believe significantly reduces uncertainty about these issues. That's all I want to say on the results. I'll hand over now to Benoît to talk in more detail about treasury topics. Benoît?

[Benoît de Vitry:]

Thank you, Chris, and good afternoon, everyone. We continue to make progress on our goal of ensuring the treasury function takes a holistic view of the needs of the group and implements cohesive, capital balance sheet funding and liquidity plans for the benefit of all stakeholders. Before I address each in turns -- each topic in turn, I would like to explain how I see our today's announced plan to meet the PI leverage ratio request impacts Barclays' debtholders. We have been managing our adjusted gross leverage ratio for some time now and see leverage ratio as a sensible crosscheck and backstop on which what it measures. As stated on the full year 2012 call, we are taking steps to reduce both volatility and overall leverage. We do so now with a request to meet the PRA leverage ratio of 3% by June 2014. While our estimated transitional CRD IV leverage ratio is 3.1%, focus has now shifted towards our fully loaded CRD IV ratio. Assuming that all CRD IV capital and leverage adjustments were implemented overnight, our fully loaded leverage ratio will have been 2.5% at the end of June. In calculating the PRA leverage ratio, we have applied PRA adjustments of GBP 4.1 billion to our estimated fully loaded CRD IV CET1 capital. This adjustment has reduced from the GBP 8.6 billion used by the PRA in its review, principally by taking account of Conduct Provisions and a reduced impact of prudential valuation adjustments. This brings our PRA leverage ratio to 2.2% at the end of June. Let me talk you through our plan to deliver a 3% PRA leverage ratio by June 2014. I will focus on the leverage as we are confident that we can deliver the PRA 7% adjusted CET1 ratio target by the end of the year. After careful considerations of the options, the board has agreed on a leverage plan that balances the interest of all the company's investors, customers and clients with the objective of meeting the PRA leverage ratio target by June 2014. The PRA agreed Leverage Plan should be viewed as a positive for Fixed Income investor as it will bolster our capital and financial strength in absolute terms and relative to global banking peers. The actions contained in the Leverage Plan are

[Christopher G. Lucas:]

Thank you, Benoît. With that, I'd like to open up the call to questions. As a reminder, Benoît and I are joined here this afternoon with Stephen [indiscernible], our Head of Capital and Term Funding Execution; Rupert Fowden, our Head of Capital and Leverage Management; and Craig Dobbin [ph], our Head of Funding and Liquidity Management.

[Operator:]

[Operator Instructions] The first question today is from Lee Street of Morgan Stanley.

[Lee Street:]

A couple of questions for me. Obviously, I know that you've restated the full year 2012 CRD IV Core Tier 1 capital number in addition to the restatements to the leverage exposure. So I was just wondering, as it pertains to the Fully Loaded Core Tier 1 ratio, given that CRD IV and CRR1 are now finalized, can we consider that the Core Tier 1 ratio [indiscernible] are essentially final and won't be subject to change [indiscernible] pretty important for your future AT1s you'll do as well as your existing Tier 2 CoCos?

[Benoît de Vitry:]

The -- as you can expect, we have spent quite a bit of time with the PRA in preparations, and we have a good dialogue with them on that. And we have a clarification from their part that -- as you should expect because the U.K. is part of Europe, CRD IV would be -- CRD IV tax will be used for measuring the exposure. So you should expect that to be -- to continue to be the case.

[Lee Street:]

Okay. So pretty robust and comfortable then with the ratios, your presented data shouldn't be subject to future changes? Is that a fair takeaway from that comment? It's not so much on leverage. It's on the actual ratios. I'm thinking for your Tier 2 CoCos and your future AT1. That's what I'm really focused on, your actual Core Tier 1 ratios you're presenting, not the leverage front.

[Benoît de Vitry:]

I'm sorry about that. On the ratios, we -- on the ratios, out-of-year models are still -- I mean, we have...

[Unknown Executive:]

So on ratios, I think it's clear that the CRD IV rules have been published as final, but there's still a way to go on the implementation of some of the technicalities respecting the EBA technical standards on some areas, particularly potential valuation adjustments, which has been a topic of discussion for us through these last few months with the PRA. So those will get clarified. Our models are currently being completed, and those models need to be approved by the PRA. We've talked the PRA through our approach, and we've made good progress there. But until they're finally concluded, we won't know exactly how that works. And the last one, I would say, is central counterparties, where it's not 100% clear exactly whether central counterparties -- all central counterparties will be approved in Europe under the ESMA [ph] rules, and that may have an impact on the [indiscernible] we have and the business we flow through there. So [indiscernible] we made good progress at closing in on what will be a solid number for you, but there's still some outstanding bits to resolve.

[Lee Street:]

Okay. Fair enough, fair enough. Second, just 2 quick ones, hopefully. The -- there was a GBP 2.5 billion adjustment in terms of the revised CRD IV Core Tier 1 capital from full year '12 to half year. No one actually asked that on the call this morning. Could you just give a short overview or just a short explanation of what that relates to?

[Unknown Executive:]

So you're talking about the PRA adjustment?

[Lee Street:]

No, the revised CRD IV, not the refinements of GBP 2.5 billion from the full year 2012 CET1 balance to get to the full year '12 revised estimate.

[Unknown Executive:]

There are 2 key parts to that. One is the restatement that we announced on the 1st of January to do with the IFRS 19 and IFRS 10 changes. That amounts to about GBP 1.4 billion of that GBP 2.5 billion. And the remainder, GBP 1.1 billion, relates to the financial valuation adjustment where we've included an additional portfolio in that and taken out any assumption that we may get tax relief on the PVA. Because that's one of the points that remains outstanding with the EBA.

[Lee Street:]

Okay, fair enough. One final one to finish. Obviously, at the moment between your fully loaded trigger of 7% for your new future AT1s and taking account of the Rights Issue gets you up to about 9.3%. I was just wondering if you think that, that level of headroom, that 230 basis points, is sufficient to get an AT1 today or -- at these levels? Or if not, what level of headroom would you be looking for before you might consider issuing?

[Unknown Executive:]

Yes, I mean, I think that in the context of the AT1 triggers, obviously, it makes sense when you've actually done a Rights Issue of this size to move to a fully loaded trigger in any event. Otherwise, there's no real value to the Additional Tier 1 security you're selling. I think that our message to the market back in November when we sold our original AT1 is the direction of travel with the context of capital growth was clear, both organically, and also the direction of travel from the regulator's perspective of how much capital banks needed to hold generally going forward was clear. That certainly proved to be right in many respects, and I think that, that is exactly the same message we would deliver within the context of AT1 this time around. We've given the message that we're going to reach the 10.5% target. That's our common equity Tier 1 target on our fully loaded target, and that's precisely what we'd expect to articulate on the road in any AT1 issuance.

[Operator:]

The next question is from Allen Bell of JPMorgan.

[James A. Bell:]

Just 2 questions for me. The first question perhaps for Stephen. I was just wondering how you think about the opportunity costs for leaving legacy instruments outstanding, which have been disqualified for regulatory purposes, so that excluding the PLAC, in this instance. So how you think about the opportunity costs, whether you view it against the cost of issuing senior secured as you show on Slide 10? I guess, for your -- filling in your PLAC, you clearly have [indiscernible] secured there. So when thinking about filling up that PLAC, do you think, "Well, I could issue senior secured, that's my cheapest." Or are you trying to fill that with [indiscernible] capital?

[Benoît de Vitry:]

Well, this is Benoît. On the first part of your questions, as you know, James, we can't comment on our intention to call outstanding instruments ahead of time and any [indiscernible] management against size as it's subject to regulatory approval and prevailing market conditions anyway. Our core decisions are still based on the variety of factors, including regulatory positions and [indiscernible] impact and this has not changed, so we're not going to comment on anything we're going to do on existing securities.

[James A. Bell:]

Okay. That wasn't -- the question is more like how you look at the opportunity costs, whether you were going to be looking to fill your total capital ratio with purely subordinated debt? Or whether you're happy to include senior because Slide 10 would suggest you're happy to include senior in there.

[Benoît de Vitry:]

No. If I think the -- that part of the question is, we are comfortable with the capital structure as we show today. We are currently running 17.2% to our capital. The reason that we have indicated on the capital stack that we could use unsecured senior debt is, in case of a stress, you will have -- you could have a situation that the Core Tier 1 goes down. And therefore, you need to be able to fill that up with senior unsecured. So that's not the way we tend to run the [indiscernible] at the current time.

[James A. Bell:]

I see. Okay. And just my second question. Have you locked down exactly what your trigger for any future AT1 issuance would be? Obviously, your Tier 2 CoCos were at 7%. Where would you be looking to do AT1 CoCos?

[Benoît de Vitry:]

I think -- I hope you have seen the PRA statement today, where there was a very clear directions on their part on the AT1. We have not -- since we already formed a Tier 2, we don't expect to have any more Tier 2 before I think the [indiscernible] for the time being, is not relevant.

[Operator:]

The next question is from Corinne Cunningham of Autonomous.

[Corinne Cunningham:]

A couple of questions just on new store at AT1. First of all, obviously, all your existing deals have been done in dollars, do you think this is a marketplace where you will be able to tap different currencies? Or do you think it's still the case that it's only really dollar-based investors that are primed and ready for this style of issuance?

[Benoît de Vitry:]

I'll start to respond to the questions. We -- as you know, when we have showed the approval to do, in our ECM as well, [indiscernible] way down. And when we did the first and second roadshow for the Tier 2, there was clearly a difference of opinion between different region on what part of data [ph] that they have, where [indiscernible] down was [indiscernible] preferred in the U.S. and less preferred in Europe. Before one -- if you get to issue [indiscernible] format, you may have more interest in different currencies.

[Unknown Executive:]

Yes, I think that's right. I mean, the expectation we would have for -- because it would be when we come to market with an Additional Tier 1 capital security in accordance with this plan, our first new world AT1 would probably be to do a large investor roadshow as we did last time around and canvass appetite across many different regions and many different currencies, and we'll listen to investors with respect to their respective appetites at the time and make a decision then.

[Corinne Cunningham:]

Okay. And regarding the existing Tier 2 CoCos, it seems to me that they -- I know you always said that you wanted to do 0.5% of CoCos with a Tier 2 host. But it seems to me that the regulatory backdrop has become a bit tougher in terms of what the regulators are actually looking for. Does that change your view as to the role of those Tier 2 CoCos? Or do you -- or are you still very happy to have 0.5% of risk-weighted assets out there, as a, I guess, some kind of stopgap, I guess.

[Unknown Executive:]

No. It doesn't change our view at all. If you recall what we said to the market back in November, was 2% contingent capital because ultimately, that gets you from a 7% trigger back to a 9%, which is a minimum common equity Tier 1 standard of the bank at this time. So 2% was the right number. The 50 basis points of top-up in Tier 2 has already been achieved, as you all know, through the [indiscernible] that we've actually issued in the market so far. The new trigger requirements, interesting. Obviously, you have a different trigger in both those 2 different types of capital security. But ultimately, they come together anyway over the course of the next few years. So given the date, 10 years on the outstanding Tier 2s, you wouldn't expect to refresh that.

[Benoît de Vitry:]

Yes. And also, when we issue the Tier 1 -- Tier 2 securities, we're very clear they were used for specific stress and values with the PRA. This is still valid. This has not changed for we do get some -- some specific benefit in the capital stack with them.

[Corinne Cunningham:]

Okay. And just -- sorry, I didn't quite catch one of your answers on the -- to the previous question. When the question was about whether or not your 5% portion of the PLAC or capital base, whether you were saying your base case is to fill that with sub and just have some senior that is ready to top it up? I didn't quite -- I just literally didn't hear the answer to that one.

[Benoît de Vitry:]

Well, sorry, I will ask Rupert to say it in English more. He might do a better job than me.

[Rupert Fowden:]

So I think the point Benoit was making was we aim to fill the stack with capital, so 17% would be filled up with Tier 2, the top end of that stack. If you then go into a stress, clearly, you're going to lose some capital at the bottom end, at the common equity Tier 1 end. And so -- but that will flow through, so your 17% will automatically drop to, say, 16.5%, 16% and so on. What that will do, if you've got some senior issuance stacked behind the Tier 2, that will automatically drag that senior issuance you've already got outstanding into the 17% number.

[Unknown Executive:]

That's all [indiscernible] I'll just add one thing. In the context of a BAU philosophy, keeping capital in place for 17%, obviously your trade-off there is to make sure that you actually keep your senior unsecured debt spreads as tight as possible. And there's an inflection point really where actually paying up for additional capital to keep that 17% whole gives you a much bigger trade-off in the context of senior unsecured because, obviously, the lion's share of your debt stack is actually senior unsecured credit. So it's certainly the right thing from an efficiency perspective to do, to keep that 17% capital number on a BAU basis.

[Corinne Cunningham:]

And there's obviously [indiscernible] with the new RRD and the bail-in requirements and that's set on a different basis so that's 8% of total liabilities as opposed to 17% of risk-weighted assets. Have you thought yet about how you would like to fill up the 8%? Or is that sort of to be decided when the rules are finalized?

[Unknown Executive:]

Yes, we certainly have. As you know, and as we've just articulated, the rules are still in the infancy at the moment. The RRD requirement is 8% EMREL [ph]. In actual fact, if you look at a lot of bank balance sheets, it's not 100%. It's not that different from the 17% in ICB PLAC requirement. The devil's in the detail. It depends on the precise determination of the liability stack for the calculation of the EMREL, but there's a long way to go on that. I mean, it's just entering trial-log [ph] phase now, and I'm sure that there'll be plenty of positions put out by both the investor community, the banking community, et cetera, before we get locked down. It gives us a little bit more clarity as to precisely how we'd run it. But on the first blush, it doesn't seem to be that different from what we've articulated in the context of the 17% ICB proposals.

[Operator:]

The next question is from James Hyde of USA Prudential.

[James Hyde:]

I've got -- first of all, I would like to just examine the possible tail event that could help anything headline ratios get to near 7%. I see that since you've taken the conduct risk charges now, there is now this GBP 4.1 billion that the PRA deducts. I just wonder is there -- what kind of -- what kind of exposures are they working on that? Also related to this, I just want to understand your NPLs and potential problem loans seem to have had a big restate from around GBP 19.9 billion, GBP 20 billion down to about GBP 16 billion. Probably, this is a question for Chris. And so I just want to know what's going on there. And how does that fit in with the likely asset quality reviews and standardization of NPL definitions that might come in Europe? So I'm just trying to get a feel for are we likely to have some old-fashioned credit surprises. That's the first part. Second part is I just wanted to try again to get some color on where you think this new Basel leverage definition gets you to in terms of total denominator. I know someone tried with Anthony this morning, but I want to try again. I want to try to get a feel for where that ratio would be? And if -- how much of a challenge it would be to meet them?

[Benoît de Vitry:]

So I think it's important to understand that the adjustment is not in the trigger calculation for the -- there would be no [indiscernible] of the -- in the AT1 or the current Tier 2 we have. But before -- in terms of the question of size, we've indicated on the Tier 2 that we have, based on the current CET1 measure, we have 500-ish basis points. And on the CRD IV, you have 400 basis points-plus capacity to absorb shock. The GBP 4.1 billion PRA deductions you were referring to is to deduct against the [indiscernible] portfolio, specifically of some mortgages, U.K. commercial real estate and Europe mortgages and PVA adjustment. This is a PRA adjustment for which is not -- we're not taking any loss on it at this stage.

[James Hyde:]

Sure. That's exactly the point is -- that is -- actually, it's a different ratio and I just wanted to sort of understand what it was to see if it could come as a sudden shock that would actually hit the relevant ratios rather than the PRA adjusted ratio, that's why I was asking.

[Benoît de Vitry:]

I mean, you can calculate the capacity we have to absorb a shock. If we issue a debt where we have a CET1 ratio, [indiscernible] about 10%, you would have 300 to 350 basis points capacity to absorb shock for -- or based on the GBP 440 billion RWA base, that would be GBP 115 billion of losses.

[Christopher G. Lucas:]

In terms of the potential credit risk loans and coverage ratios, I just want to make sure that we were looking at the same data. I'm on Page 66 of our results announcement, and it's showing me CRLs and PCRLs are moving around but by a much smaller amount than you were suggesting. [indiscernible]

[James Hyde:]

Well, it's the restate. I think there's a restate, that's why. I'm not saying they're moving around in like-for-like, but there seems to have been a restate from the full year spreadsheet, the IR spreadsheet that's provided.

[Christopher G. Lucas:]

We're looking for PLACs. Richard [indiscernible] is here, and he will go off and do a bit of investigation and come back to you.

[Operator:]

[Operator Instructions] And the next question today comes from Louise Pitt of Goldman Sachs.

[Louise Pitt:]

Many of my questions have been answered, but I just have a couple more. The first one is your indication that the AT1 issuance that you're proposing by June of next year is going to be included is different to existing contingent capital, obviously. Do you expect that determination to be industry wide for the U.K. banks? Or is this a specific situation to Barclays?

[Benoît de Vitry:]

I can't comment on that -- I think it's a PRA questions. There's a PRA statement supporting our announcement this morning. One is a very clear paragraph we describe what we expect the definition for AT1 for -- which I would assume is for a bank like us. Have you seen this PRA statement?

[Louise Pitt:]

Yes. We've seen it all this morning. But in terms of both ratios that you're going to have different trigger levels in the Tier 2 and the proposed AT1 on contingent capital, are you intending, on a quarterly basis, to report your capital based on both calculations?

[Christopher G. Lucas:]

Yes, we are. Yes.

[Louise Pitt:]

Okay. And then just finally, you commented in the slides that you put out for fixed income for the call this morning on single point of entry and the resolution plans. I'm just wondering if you could comment a little bit more on your potential holdco issuance? Are you expected to be required to issue additional debt and/or capital? Obviously, the capital is currently at the holdco level, but you have a lot of debt at the bank level. So how is that expected to change under the current guidelines?

[Unknown Executive:]

We're still in discussions with the regulators about the overall positioning in the context of issuance. I think that, fundamentally, obviously, you're very familiar in the States with the holdco issuance model. We have equity and subordinated debt coming out of holdco. I think that the -- a number of things to take away from that really are that if you were to employ the same model here in the U.K., if you were issuing Additional Tier 1 out of holdco or Tier 2 out of holdco, for example, there are fundamental principles in the RRD that say that no creditor can be left worse off than they would have been in insolvency, which makes sure that, ultimately, there should be no significant structural subordination between holdco issuance and [indiscernible] issuance. At the moment, I think we are still considering where we will issue our next capital security out of. But that will be determined prior to going on the road and selling the security itself, but we don't consider that to be a problem.

[Louise Pitt:]

But just a follow-up on what you just said, in terms of the RRD guidance that no creditor should be left in a worse position. You mean that you couldn't subordinate the existing bank debt?

[Unknown Executive:]

Yes. I think the idea would be that if you actually raise something at holdco, if you were to downstream it to the relevant portion of debt, whether it's senior Tier 1 or Tier 2, and if it was downstreamed as that senior Tier 1 and Tier 2 debt, then that claim would be recognized in an insolvency as ranking alongside external debt currently issued by the operating company.

[Louise Pitt:]

Oh, you mean instead of downstreaming it as equity?

[Unknown Executive:]

Yes.

[Louise Pitt:]

[indiscernible] Okay, understood. And then finally, I just want to comment on something that you said earlier, which I think is really helpful and not many banks have commented on, but the comment about paying off the Tier 2 in terms of your total 17% capital ratio keeping spreads tighter by having that buffer as Tier 2. I think that's something that is really welcoming to hear on your calls. I just wanted to make sure I made that comment to you because I think that is something that not a lot of bank management teams are actually recognizing, so thank you for that.

[Operator:]

The final question today comes from Tobias Grün of Wellington Management.

[Tobias Grün:]

Most of my questions have actually been answered, but I had one very brief follow-up one, and that is the AT1 that you're going to be issuing sometime between now and June of next year. Is there any clarity on what this would convert into if triggered? There were rumors flying around earlier today that it might be debt into equity. So that's in sharp contrast to existing Tier 2 CoCos. Can you comment on this?

[Benoît de Vitry:]

Well, we -- no, I'm not going to comment on what we are going to choose. I would just say that now we have shareholders' approval to issue [indiscernible] we didn't have when we did the first issuance on Tier 1 CoCos. Now we have the option to use one or the other one, and we will choose whatever is the one we prefer at the time.

[Tobias Grün:]

Okay. So it's a combination of costs to you and, I guess, appetite from the market?

[Benoît de Vitry:]

We have a policy to have a very diversified source of funding. There's also -- other considerations discussed is whether investor -- there's a lot of other consideration we have, which are not just only costs. But to answer your question, we will have the choice of one or the other one.

[Christopher G. Lucas:]

Well, thank you very much, indeed, for joining us. We've got one outstanding question that we're going to do a little bit of research on and come back. Other than that, thank you very much, indeed, for joining us today. It's much appreciated.