HSBC Holdings plc
Q2 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 2 Aug 2021

[Noel Quinn:]

Good morning in London, and good afternoon in Hong Kong. I've got Ewen with me today, and I'll hand over to him shortly to go through the detail of our Q2 performance. First, though, I'll start with a summary of the key highlights, our progress against our transformation plans, and in particular, what we're seeing with respect to growth. For the second quarter, a good operating performance, supported by a net release of expected credit losses delivered reported pretax profits of $5.1 billion, up $4 billion on last year's second quarter. We saw a return to profitability in all our regions in the first half, including good performances in both Europe and the U.S. Our U.K. business performed well with a record quarter for mortgages in Q2. We've generated good momentum behind our growth and transformation plans and made important decisions on exiting our mass market retail business in the U.S. and our retail business in France. Our RWA and cost reduction programs are both on track.

[Ewen Stevenson:]

Thanks, Noel, and good morning or afternoon all. We had another solid quarter. Reported pretax profits of $5.1 billion, that's up almost fivefold on last year's second quarter with an annualized return on tangible equity of 9.4% for the first half. Adjusted revenues were down 10% on last year's second quarter due largely to the impact of the current rate environment together with the comparison against a very strong global market second quarter last year. Importantly, we think we're now close to the trough in year-on-year revenues with volume growth in our lending businesses and our Wealth franchises driving a recovery in the coming quarters. Expected credit losses were $284 million net release second quarter in a row of net releases. This reflects a continued improvement in the economic outlook for our central scenarios, less extreme downside scenarios given the progress in global vaccinations and exceptionally low stage 3 charges in both the first and second quarters. We still retain $2.4 billion of the stage 1 and 2 ECL reserve buildup we made in 2020.

[Operator:]

We will take our first question from Martin Leitgeb from Goldman Sachs.

[Martin Leitgeb:]

If I can just start with comments you made on the risk cost outlook, in particular as we head into 2022. Given the current economic outlook that we have a scenario that risk costs could also undershoot the 30 to 40 basis points kind of full year cycle range as we head into 2022, just considering the management overlay still in place. And related to that, I was just wondering in terms of how we should think of scope for capital return? I know there are comments in the presentation about the potential for a step up in capital return. I think the dividend guidance is clear. How should we think about the scope for potential buyback? Is that becoming increasingly a possibility that as we also head in 2022? And is that a key instrument in terms of how we should think about getting the core Tier 1 ratio back to a level of 14% to 14.5%, which is the target range?

[Noel Quinn:]

Ewen, do you want to handle both of those?

[Ewen Stevenson:]

Yes. Thanks, Martin. So on ECLs in 2022, I do think that we’re going to continue to – I talked about earlier of having $2.4 billion of stage 1 and stage 2 reserves that we built up from last year still in place. That’s around 60% of the reserve buildup we put in place last year. We do think that, that will unwind or to the extent that, that unwinds, it will unwind over probably the following 4 quarters. So there will be some benefit into the first half of 2022. I don’t think that we’ll begin to normalize on expected credit losses at this point until the second half of ‘22. On capital distributions, and I’ll give a slightly fuller answer given I’m sure that there will be several questions around this. Look, relative to the comments I made at the start of the year around our capital position and capital distributions. I think sitting today, we are in a stronger position relative to what we thought. We’ve seen a much improved credit outlook. It’s our second quarter of reserve releases and an expectation that we’re going to continue to see additional releases over the coming 4 quarters. We’ve also had much lower credit rating migration than what we thought, leading to lower risk-weighted asset growth relative to what we thought a few months ago. So our core Tier 1 ratio today is stronger than where we thought we’d be and the outlook is better. We know that we’ve got some know and unknowns in terms of capital headwinds. Software intangibles, which is around 25 basis points of benefit, we expect to get removed from the beginning of 2022. If you look in combination, I think there’s around about 10 basis points of aggregate hit from the sales of our French and U.S. retail banking franchises that will impact us into ‘22 and ‘23. And we’ve got various regulatory-driven uplifts of around about $40 billion uplift in risk-weighted assets over the next 18 months. But equally, we know that we’ve just accrued under our accrual policy $0.17 of dividend versus the $0.07 that we’ve just declared. And we’ve still got at least $25 billion of RWA reductions in our RWA rundown program. Yes, we are committed to paying a sustainable and healthy dividend while continuing to progressively normalize our core Tier 1 capital position over the next 18 months. Buybacks will be one way for us to think about normalizing and using our surplus capital, and we’ll continue to keep buybacks under review in the coming quarters. And I would note that, that tonality is different to what we’ve said in previous quarters. As you recall, at full year, we wouldn’t contemplate buybacks this year. We’re now saying that we’ll keep it under review.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Raul Sinha from JPMorgan.

[Raul Sinha:]

A couple of questions from my side as well. Perhaps one just to follow up, Ewen, on your comments. How will you define surplus capital for HSBC? Because I'm conscious, you're talking about potential for growth opportunity after a very long period of time coming back onto the table. And obviously, you do have a very strong capital position with buybacks -- with write-backs to come but also potential to deploy that capital. So it's quite difficult from the outside to understand how much might be structurally excess surplus capital to . So any thoughts on how we could go about doing that, that would be helpful. The second one is just to come back to the comment around NII stabilization. And if I look at some of the moving parts within that, the HBAP NIM down 3 basis points in the quarter. Again, U.K. NIM down 3 basis points. And quite a few of your U.K. peers are talking about NIM pressure to come. And there's $9 billion-odd of sort of IPO funding in here in Q2 as well. So I'm just trying to understand what gives you the confidence that NII has finally stabilized. Is that more driven by the fact that you're seeing this card values pick up? Or do you think that's probably likely to be NIM accretive sort of loan growth coming down the pipe? Or is there something in Q2 trends, that's perhaps was stating the pressures?

[Ewen Stevenson:]

Yes. So on use of capital firstly, yes, obviously, we’ve got organic growth. I think we’re still sitting – sticking to our target of mid-single-digit loan growth over the next coming quarters into 2022, and I’ll come back to that in terms of where we’re seeing that growth. We also have been public about the fact that we are thinking about a number of small bolt-on acquisitions, which are almost exclusively centered on the Asian Wealth space. And I would use the word bolt-on quite carefully. We are not looking at anything material. But in aggregate, we are looking at 3 or 4 opportunities in the Wealth space across Asia at the moment. Yes, I think our distribution policy, as it relates to dividends, is very clear. The 40% to 55% payout range. As I said, for this year, I think you should expect us to be at the lower end of that range because of the unusual benefit that we all have had from ECLs this year. And then on top of that – buybacks on top of that. So I think you can sort of do the math and know what we’re solving for. The only thing that you won’t have on that is the bolt-on acquisitions. But if you think of 3 or 4 smaller bolt-on acquisitions of, say, $0.5 billion each will help in relation to that math. Net interest income stabilization. Yes, I think we are – we’ve seen HIBOR now broadly stabilize. If I look at second quarter of this year, the average 1-month HIBOR rate was 9 basis points. I think in Q3 so far, it’s been around 8 basis points. So we are troughing now. I think if you look at the underlying growth, we had about $16 billion of loan growth in the second quarter. You can take about $9 billion of that away for the Hong Kong IPO loans, you can add back $3 billion because we shifted the U.S. portfolio that we’re selling into held for sale. And there was probably up to $5 billion of GBM runoff, Global Banking and Markets runoff, in the loan portfolio, particularly in the non-ring-fenced bank. So we think we grew the underlying loan portfolio by about $10 billion to $15 billion, which is about 1% to 1.5% growth in the quarter, which is 4% to 6% growth for the full year, which is very much in that run rate that I talked about. Yes, you’re right that there may be some – still some modest income pressure in the U.K. But I think you saw this quarter in the U.K., lending growth more than offset any decline in net interest margin, and we continue to remain confident about our ability to grow faster than peers in the U.K., particularly in mortgages.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Tom Rayner from Numis.

[Tom Rayner:]

I was really going to push you a bit more on the dividend policy. I think you've kind of explained it, I think, fairly well now. But obviously, if we see a big increase in -- I think in the consensus payout, I think, this year is 50% because it sounds like you're going to see earnings peak because of the very low impairment number and therefore, you're going to let the payout ratio drift down towards the bottom. And I guess as things normalize, the payout is back up again. I mean, is this just not really just saying you've got a progressive dividend policy. I'm just wondering do you actually need this target payout range. What sort of purposes does that serve now? Or should we just be thinking you're looking to maintain a progressive dividend that you can increase each year. And secondly, I was going to also focus a little bit on to the NII guidance and whether that -- the fact you're not specifically talking about NIM is indicative that you are expecting now more NIM pressure. And it sounds like you are. But again, I wondered if you could talk to that with related to signs of maybe slower growth in Asia? Maybe it's going to take longer for interest rates to normalize than we thought only a month or 2 ago. I wondered if you could just talk to that as well, please.

[Ewen Stevenson:]

Yes. On -- first on dividend policy, I don't think we've said that we have a progressive dividend policy. We've said that we've got a 40% to 55% payout. I think, obviously, we're conscious of the market's desire to have a progressive dividend policy, but it's not an official part of our policy. So we would expect, having said that, that we would ideally like '22 dividends to be higher than '21 dividends. So in the first half of this year, again, we accrued $0.17 versus the $0.07 we declared. We had an EPS of $0.36 in the first 6 months, and we've paid out $0.07, and we've paid out just under 20% of our earnings in the first half. So mathematically, we do expect a more substantial payout in the second half of this year. And we would anticipate that '22 dividends should be higher than '21 dividends without committing to a progressive dividend policy. On net interest income, I don't think we're going to see an aggregate NIM pressure from here, equally I'm sort of loathe to call the bottom and NIM and you know I hate forecasting it for you. So -- but I do think the combination -- that if any relative NIM pressure from here coupled with stronger loan growth means that we are close to getting back into a cycle now of seeing net interest income growth. And I think certainly by the time we get into 2022, we'll definitely see non -- net interest income growth, given NIM will definitely have, I think, stabilized by then. And on rates, again, relative to where we were 6 months ago, where our planning position was that we are unlikely to see any policy rate rises probably until the very back end of '23 or more certainly 2024, I think we're much more enthusiastic now that we may begin to see policy weights rising led by the U.K. from sort of mid '22 onwards. And certainly, '23 benefiting materially from higher policy rates.

[Noel Quinn:]

And Tom, if I could just add a couple of comments on the NIM. Generally, we’re seeing the volume growth, the new deal activity being transacted good NIMs, good margins. We’re not having to trade margin to get that volume growth. There is one area where there is a lot of activity, and that’s U.K. mortgages. But even there, the margins we’re generating on U.K. mortgages are above the back book margins. Albeit they’re slightly lower today than they would have been 3 or 6 months ago, but they’re still well above the back book margins. So we’re not seeing a trade-off on margin for new business relative to volume in any significant degree. And then on dividend policy, I just want to remind you, we put the dividend payout ratio 40% to 55% because we wanted to get the balance right between distributing capital to generate a decent return for our investors, but also retaining sufficient capital to fund future growth and future opportunities. And now to the extent that those future growth opportunities are not there, either organically or inorganically, then we’ll consider buybacks or capital return. But if we do see growth, then we have the ability to fund that growth through retention of capital. And our previous policy probably didn’t get that balance right. We were too much into distribution and not enough in to funding future growth.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Omar Keenan from Crédit Suisse.

[Omar Keenan:]

So I just had a question on the Asia Wealth Management strategy. Just bearing in mind that you're looking at a couple of bolt-on opportunities. When you look at the HSBC Wealth Management offering in Asia, where do you think might be a particular geographic or product gaps that you might be looking to fill in? And secondly, just -- I had a question on the U.K. business and mortgage growth, which strategically is looking to take market share. I was wondering if there's been anything -- been any thoughts around perhaps pursuing inorganic strategies there as well?

[Noel Quinn:]

Okay. Thanks, Omar. I'll take that. Certainly, the first one. On Wealth bolt-ons, we're clearly looking at pan-Asia. We believe we have good organic growth opportunities with the platform we have in Hong Kong. And therefore, that would be the primary focus, I think, in Hong Kong would be primarily organic growth in Hong Kong. We're organically investing in China to grow our Wealth business there. And we've given you the plans for that, recruiting an additional 3,000 people over the medium term with already 600 done in the first -- up until the half -- first half this year. If you're looking at, therefore, where the bolt-ons are likely to be, they're likely to be rest of Asia. In terms of capabilities, we're looking at both product and distribution capabilities to accelerate our organic growth plans there. We're willing to invest organically in the rest of Asia. But if we can find some bolt-on acquisitions that can accelerate those organic investment plans, that would be helpful. We are looking at 3 to 4 as we speak, and they are a combination of products and distribution capabilities being acquired in areas such as insurance, high net worth wealth management and asset management. So those would be the primary areas of focus. On mortgage growth, just -- Ewen can fill you in a bit more on that. But just for clarity, our share of mortgages in the U.K. was below our natural footprint share of customers in the U.K. And what we're doing is rebuilding to a more natural mortgage market share to match the market share of customers we have in the U.K. and the banking market. So yes, we're taking market share from others, but it's to rebuild to where we believe we should be more naturally positioned.

[Ewen Stevenson:]

Yes. And maybe just to add a few more comments to what Noel said. If you look at our current account market share by value, and we’ve got a more affluent customer base, yes, we have about a 13% to 14% share of current accounts. Our stock share is currently 7.4% of mortgages. We are and have been consistently growing our flow share in excess of stock share. We grew flow share around 8.5%, 8.6% in the quarter, yes, about 100 basis points higher than our stock share. And why are we able to do that, partly is because if you went back a few years, we didn’t have established broker distribution which, as you know, is around 70% of the market in terms of distribution. Over the last few years, we’ve fully built out broker distribution and we’re sitting on a lot of excess liquidity in the U.K. business, which went up even further during COVID. We think the returns on new business, highly attractive. So I think you should expect us to continue to target higher growth in the mortgage market if we can continue to take share of the type of margins that we are currently seeing. And sorry, on the – you should read into that, too, that given that we have we think substantial organic growth opportunity, we do not see the need to go out and invest inorganically in the U.K. mortgage market.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Aman Rakkar from Barclays.

[Aman Rakkar:]

Yes. Just one quick follow-up on mortgages, if I may. Just around your the RoTE. I mean is there any chance that you could give us an indication of what kind of ROE you're booking on mortgages as you currently observe it now? And then just around GB&M, if I could ask around your expectations for the full year in that business. And I know FICC was kind of down a decent chunk in Q2. I mean, how much of that do you think is down to normalizing markets versus restructuring? And do you think we can continue to expect any kind of revenue attrition from restructuring this year in that business?

[Ewen Stevenson:]

Yes. Look, on mortgages, we're not going to go into the detail, but we're earning returns on capital materially above our cost of capital. Yes, partly because, as you know, U.K. mortgage risk weights are very low and we've got plenty of excess funding. So that is very accretive business for us. On Global Banking and Markets, I think we've said previously that we expect 2021 to be down on 2020, but above 2019. I think that continues to be our position. As you know, the whole Street had a particularly weak quarter in fixed income, partly because of the strength of fixed income a year ago. And we do think that there are some lines in that fixed income business that are important to us like FX that will naturally recover as customer activity recovers, both on the commercial side and the retail side out of COVID. Equities for us had -- actually had a really good quarter, outperformed peers, but it's a relatively small part of our overall Global Banking and Markets franchise. And Capital Markets and Advisory, remember, we are weaker than some peers in the U.S., and we have stayed out of SPAC financings, which has been a big driver of some of the profitability of some of the peers. But overall, when we've done the comparison versus peers, we didn't see anything in there that -- other than sort of in the pack for fixed income and outperforming in equities.

[Aman Rakkar:]

Can I just ask -- got a quick follow-up on the mortgages. I mean there is set to be quite a lot of regulatory RWA inflation coming down the pipe in the next 12 to 18 months. I mean do you have any sense as to whether that might provide a floor to any of the pricing at a system level? Or do you think the system is already pricing basically adjusting for this RWA inflation?

[Ewen Stevenson:]

Yes. I mean, well, we are certainly thinking about that RWA uplift. I think in aggregate, I think the 10% floor at the portfolio level adds about $3 billion of RWA uplift for us, which is not material in the overall context of our U.K. mortgage business. But inevitably, if RWA floors by or output floors by way down the track then pricing will adjust accordingly, I think.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Coombs, Citi.

[Andrew Coombs:]

One on costs and then one on Wealth, please. Just firstly on cost, you flagged the step-up in variable pay this quarter. But your full year cost guidance is unchanged. So just trying to understand, that's just the timing issue in the variable pay or whether the mix of the costs in your full year guidance is perhaps slightly different to first -- to what you first thought? That would be the first question. Second question, Wealth. If I look at life insurance, manufacturing, investment distribution, the life insurance manufacturing number obviously has some benefit from market movement that makes up quite a big chunk of the revenue contribution in this quarter. If we were to strip that out, do you think that's a more normalized base level this quarter? Obviously, you've still got the offshore sales to come back. But perhaps you could just comment, both on whether investment distribution and life insurance manufacturing adjusted is a more normalized quarter and a fair base to run for compare?

[Ewen Stevenson:]

Yes. Look, on costs for this year, I think there is a mix change going on of a few hundred million. Not all of that increase in variable pay is a sort of timing issue. Some of it is a increase in the variable pay accrual relative to what we thought. But yes, the mix shift, I think, Andy, is because we had anticipated in the second half that there were various line items that we would begin to see a return to normalization from COVID that we think is going to be much slower than what we previously anticipated. So generally, costs associated with running the bank like travel, printing, office premises and the like, I think, are going to run a few hundred million lower than what we previously anticipated for this year, which offsets a slightly higher accrual into the variable pay pool. So that's why we're sort of still confident in committing to the flat cost target. On Wealth, I think, yes, you have to bifurcate between the domestic Hong Kong business and what you see there is -- actually, the Hong Kong business is doing okay and better than in previous quarters. And the -- effectively, the international business, particularly the Mainland China business, which continues to be significantly impacted because of the closure of the border. We don't expect that border to reopen until Q4 at the earliest. So I wouldn't describe this quarter as a normalized quarter for insurance. I would describe it as normalized probably for the Hong Kong business and continuing to be abnormally low for the China business.

[Andrew Coombs:]

And just on the cost -- sorry, a quick, quick follow-up. If you're saying the T&E has basically been delayed, and that's the offset. Presumably you do expect the T&E to come back in 2022. So is the hope that, that variable comp may also reverse slightly at that point?

[Ewen Stevenson:]

No. I mean – look, I mean, I think I would describe it as sort of margin for error in ‘22 has tightened because of that pay pressure that we’re seeing relative to what we previously thought. You’re right that those COVID-related savings should get back to more normal levels or what we describe as more normal levels than ‘22 onwards. But remember also, I think embedded in that is it’s new normal versus old normal. For example, we’ve reduced our travel budget. If you looked in 2019, we were spending about $400 million a year. We have taken that down to a run rate of $200 million a year for planning purposes going forward from ‘22 onwards. We’ve talked about the big savings that we see in head office expenses getting out of 40% of our own real estate ex branches over the next few years, which will reduce that part of our cost structure by just over 20%. But you’re right that those numbers were already embedded into our full year ‘22 cost target. So the other thing, just – again, just for all of you, our cost target was based on constant FX. So what was $31 billion today is about $31.5 billion of cost for ‘22.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Guy Stebbings from BNP Paribas.

[Guy Stebbings:]

Just a couple of follow-ups. The first one was on margin. The mix has been diluted and then given the strength in secured. I just wondered when you think about your loan growth and the 1% to 1.5% quarterly underlying growth, and that's been consistent with your expectations going forward. Within that, we should be assuming it's still going to be tilted slightly more towards secured. We can then obviously keep an eye on rates and other factors to come to adjustment on NIM, but just helpful to think about how much of that loan growth just to flow through into NII growth. And then just going back to distributions and timing. Your 15.6% now RWA growth in the second half, it looks like you're guiding to $10 billion to $20 billion, so 20, 30 basis points of capital drag given, of course, should be much lower in the second half and this certainly suffice to be a upside. So it feels like capital shouldn't move an awful lot in the second half, even pro forma for the accrual. If that's broadly correct and you're stuck there with 100 to 150 basis points of headwind to the target coming into the year, can we take your comments around buybacks into the fiscal and sort of next 6 months depending on bolt-ons? Is that fair?

[Noel Quinn:]

If I could just quickly take the business comment. We're not expecting a significant change in our mix between secured and unsecured. I think we see the portfolio having a similar balance to history. So we're not reweighting that portfolio mix. As you know, we tend to be more of a secured book than an unsecured book. We do have a credit card business. We do have unsecured lending. But in our Wealth business, we have a strong mortgage book. And in our Commercial Banking and Wholesale business, it tends to be secured. So we don't see a significant change. Do you want to take the second question, Ewen?

[Ewen Stevenson:]

Yes. So I think – I’m not going to sort of comment on your math in terms of where our core Tier 1 ratio may be at the end of the year. But I think we would be slightly more cautious than you in saying that we expect it to be in line with where we currently are. The – partly, I think, because we are anticipating decent RWA growth in the second half of the year. But overall, in terms of – yes, the main comment in relation to buybacks is, I mean, if you recall at the full year results back in February, I said definitely no buybacks this year. We softened that language slightly at Q1. We’re softening it again now, and we will definitely keep it under review. And we’re not – we are no longer calling out that there’s an absolute ban on buybacks this year. So we’ll keep it under review.

[Operator:]

We will now take our last question, and it comes from the Manus Costello from Autonomous.

[Manus Costello:]

I wanted to just follow-up on the comments on insurance, please. You were talking about the offshore sales coming back, hopefully, from Q4 onwards. I mean previously, offshore insurance sales in Hong Kong made up about 40% of total sales for that business. Do you think we can get back to that kind of level quite quickly once the border reopened? And do you think there might be a catch-up of the lost business from the last couple of years coming through setting you up for a very strong 2022 if the border reopened? And secondly, and somewhat related, I wondered if you could give us any indication of how you think IFRS 17 will impact the business? Or if you can't indicate how it will impact the business, can you tell us when you will give us some indication of how it impacts the business?

[Noel Quinn:]

I think on the insurance, I mean, it's very hard to predict life after COVID relative to life before COVID because there are so many things that are changing, but we would expect to rebound. But also, you've got to be cognizant of the fact we're investing in the Greater Bay area. We're investing in Pinnacle. We're investing in our insurance capabilities and Wealth Management capabilities onshore. So we believe we'll be well positioned, whether it comes back into Hong Kong or it stays in Hong Kong -- sorry, it stays in the Greater Bay Area will be -- we'll have the ability to serve both markets.

[Ewen Stevenson:]

Yes. And then the question on IFRS 17, Manus. Look, we’re conscious of the fact that we owe the market an answer on this and some guidance around this. I think, certainly, in the next couple of quarters, no later than full year results, we’ll give a teach-in on what we think the impact of IFRS 17 is. But yes, broadly, as you know, reported earnings will be lower, materially lower than current reported earnings for the insurance business.

[Operator:]

Thank you. I will now hand the call back to Noel Quinn for closing remarks.

[Noel Quinn:]

Thank you. Thanks, Sharon. So to wrap up, a good operating performance, supported by a net release of expected credit losses, good earnings diversity, both by geography and by business. Good momentum behind our growth and transformation plans with good delivery in all 4 pillars of our strategy. Traction in our Asia Wealth strategy with strong growth in Wealth balances. Early growth in both lending volumes and fee income, particularly in Asia. And we're on track in both our RWA and cost reduction programs. And confidence in delivering a RoTE at or above 10% over the medium term. Thank you for joining today. If you have any further questions, do pick them off with Richard and the rest of the Investor Relations team. Thank you, and have a good summer.

[Ewen Stevenson:]

Thanks all.