Banco Santander, S.A.
Q3 2007 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 26 Oct 2007

[Alfredo Sáenz Abad:]

Good morning. We will divide this brochure of the third quarter results, but first we will trend the group in the first nine months. After that we'll set for something [indiscernible]. We'll explain in more detail the numbers of the different business areas. And then we will explain the current state of the operation topped by ABN AMRO. Lastly, I will sum up. The first idea I want to designate is that this was one another excellent quarter for Santander and the drivers were the same as those in previous quarters. The illustration with the 5 drivers in the slide is exactly the same as the second quarter. There is only one addition and that is the result obtained in a much more complex environment when many of the world big banks are now shoved forth in the proxy. We believe therefore that the group performance, which is good, has even more value in strategic terms. First, the sole growth in earnings in particular the earnings per share, there is sustainability and quality. As I have mentioned in previous presentations, the high quality growth of our earnings is fundamental because is the firms condition for continued growth. Of note is the slant of recurrent revenues throughout the group unit, okay. Our provisions are maintained with the dictations, okay. There has been an increase that is driven basically that chain in the mix of the different business units. There is also an impact of the perimeter due to the integration of Drive. Finally, we would like to trend the soundness of the partnership. I'll start to talk about the main process under main increase in the lines. The growth in profit has been 22% more than in the same period of 2006. The profit is earnings per share is €33.90 for the third quarter. So we maintain the strong growth in profit of the last quarter. The main difference in this quarter is basically Spain. The third quarter in Spain is weaker on a previous quarter. This happens in Portugal, okay. The difference mainly with the second quarter was reduced as happened between the second and third quarter because of seasonal effects. Somebody in Spain of lower collection of dividends as the second quarter is the main period for them. Okay, as we told [ph] profit excluding capital gains exceeded to €2 million for the second time in the group history. As average [ph], our total profit for the first nine months was €6000 million before capital gains, and is still growing at more than 20% including capital gains of €866 million generated in the second quarter from the sale of estate in Antena, San Paolo. Total profit for first nine months was €6572 million, 32.8% more than in the same period of 2006. I would like also to emphasize that this figure only includes the capital gains of San Paolo. The sales of the pension fund units in Latan [ph] or buildings in Spain are not included yet. In terms of the quality of the P&L, I would like to mention that the growth in gross operation income of more than 20% doubled the rise in cost as net operating income increased by 31%. Loan loss provision increased 34% compared with 37% in the first half. Net operating income, net of provisions rose 30.6% at the same pace as gross operating income. The incorporation of other income and provisions brought gross and profit from alternative QEC to 27%. Lower down the income statement, the impact of this continued operation in 2006 under sale of minority [indiscernible] brought growth in profit excluding capital gains to 21%. These increases were negatively impacted by exchange rates, which for the whole of the group took away about 2% points. On the other hand, the entry of drive had a positive effect of 2% points. The overall exchange rate on [indiscernible]. In terms of horizontal quality, all the areas have a very adequate growth. By geographical areas, Continental Europe grew 35% with a good performance in all the units. Santander Branch network, Banesto, Portugal and global wholesale banking in Europe grew by more than 20%. Abbey [ph] rose 2% on a like-for-like basis. Latin America rose 23% the profit in dollars. And in terms of business units, retail banking increased the result by 27%, wholesale banking by 43% and asset management and insurance increased by 6%, so in result, all the units both geographically and by business areas, the growth has been very sound. If we split the different lines of the P&L, the net interest income has had a very strong growth. Income has been growing very strongly. Net interest income plus fees has been very solid. The net interest income grew 24%, insurance contribution had a growth of 40%. Fess grew basically very strongly despite of a no... basically the prophecy of no charge in fees in Spain and Portugal. Gains on financial transactions increased by 39.2% similar to the first half, okay. So revenues in somebody were driven by merger companies once. On top of that, the revenues were very consistent in the different quarter. If we look at the core revenues driven by the recurring business, you see that there has been a consistent growth quarter after quarter. And currently, this growth of the quarterly revenues has been the consequence of market in terms of volume. We have strong growth rates of lending and customer funds. And of course it is also the consequence of their appropriate strength [ph] management, which has been favored obviously in some markets because of rising interest rates. Efficiency; efficiency for us, it's always an essential aspect. It's a crucial driver of our results. And I've been speaking about these mandibles for quite a few years. But you can see that in 2007, we haven't just maintained lease mandibles but have opened them even more than in 2006. Efficiency, we've gone from 48% in September to 44.4% now, so we've improved on the results of June and we will continue along these lines. And by the end of the year, we'll improve our efficiency ratio, our cost income ratio across income ratio even more, and not in every market. In Continental Europe, we are already below 38%. Abbey is already at 50%, so we are also within the group of the British Bank. And in Latin America, it is almost 40%, which is a ratio that I'm very sure we would have seen and think above even for Europe. Cost, which is another of the key aspect in order to maintain these strong gross levels and these costing cum improvements, we have also always tried to selectively improve our cost. If you look at the different units, we can see that the cost has grown only very moderately in real terms especially if we consider that we are undergoing strong network expansions, we have increased our high price to 12% in the last month. Santander consumer and finances has grown even more. It's grown 20% in its cost but that's due to two major component; first growth projects and secondly, the parameter effect because of the inclusion of Drive. And if we were to subtract this, the cost would have only grown, well there would be 13% points less cost growth than what you see in this chart. Abbey is still rationalizing its cost there successfully. We've reduced our cost by 4% in Sterling in there currency. And in Latin America basically the budget are being met. The Latin American countries are experiencing cost growth in line with their budgets. And I off course want to remind in Latin America, we are continuing to develop our regional branches. We've increased the number of branches by 8%. We have opened 1300 new ATMs versus September last year and obviously has an impact on the cost. It is an area and which was still investing in our retail structure apart from this as you know, we also have strong development projects both for our businesses and our brand and technology, and these of course have had an impact on the cost in 2007. As for point number 4 in this structure, we saw earlier we can see that provisions have grown in the group by 29 % in the third quarter in comparison with the third quarter 2006, there has been something on an acceleration in the growth rate and as a result the nine months accumulated have increased by 34%, which is slightly lower than the first half which was 37%. But if we were to subtract the impact of the integration of Drive into the parameter, the growth would have been only 13 % which is same as in line with the growth and groups lending or in other words the growth in our provision and in our lending are fairly much in line. Looking at Drive independently because obviously, we need to keep an eye on Drive; Drive has remained stable with around €100 million to €110 million per quarter in provision. And of course all of these provisions, volume of provisions very much in line with the performance of the groups most recurrent results as you can see in the chart on the right. Our net operating income of provisions compared to the growth of provision itself, so nothing new in this area of provisions in comparison with what we have been saying in the first and second quarters and with what we said in the investors day back in September. Nothing new either in terms of a more detailed analysis of these provisions by business areas in 2007 and the comparison with 2006. When we look at the growth in specific provisions we will see that on the one hand, the change is due to the consolidation of Drive which represents more than half the increase in Europe. We've included Drive in Europe so as not to break up... something that consumer finance European units. And the increase in Latin America has been the result mostly of the impact in Mexico of the NPO ratio in credit cards, which has already stabilized in terms of the risk premium. We have seen significant reductions in wholesale banking due precisely to the effect of the generic provisions and also we are seeing smaller provision in the Santander network. Therefore higher provisions in Latin America, Brazil and Chile because of greater lending; Mexico because of the credit card business and the primitive effect due to Drive's entry. Finally point five of this structure as we showed you at the beginning in order to structure our presentation of the results of the said quarter, we said that another key was the strength of the balance sheet. The NPO ratio has remained stable. There was a slight increase in the quarter, but it has remained pretty much at the same level that we had in the third quarter of 2006, so very stable. Coverage is still very high at 158% unless in numbers means that we have generic provisions more than 9 billion, sorry almost 6 billion in generic provisions with a total coverage of almost 9 billion. 6 billion generic, 9 billion total. And together with this very effective risk management, another of our priorities is an efficient use of capital. And in this contact, our capital [ph] will remains to 6.2% obviously before the ABN acquisition. And so these were the basic ideas of this third quarter and of the nine months of the year. And now I'm going to give the floor to José Antonio Alvarez, so he can continue to tell you about the different business areas and business units in the group.

[José Antonio Alvarez:]

[Alfredo Sáenz Abad:]

Okay, well the ABN AMRO operation clearly was still quite... we can't really provide lot of information yet because of the current state of the operation, the acquisition operation but all the same, I am going to go over the main events and also steps will be taken in the near future. Firstly, I would like to say that this operation is going to be a very positive one for our group because it fits perfectly well in our strategy, and our capacity. So on 5th of October, we completed the initial offering, which was led by the three banks in the consortium. This was accepted by 86% of the capital and therefore we exceeded the minimum that have been established. On the 10th of October, we declared the unconditional bid and we opened up to 31st of October at the area before the rest of the ABN shareholders, so that they could place there shares if they wish at the disposal of the bid. On the 16th of October, we made the initial payment that is we paid out 86% of our share, which represented €16 billion euros, and after that the company created by the three banks, RSS holdings is now the holder, the owner of the majority of the capital of the ABN AMRO. And the plan is that in the fourth quarter, which will include the... by the equity method results, so our participation in our affairs. The purpose would be made from members for the governing bodies of ABN AMRO, for both the supervisory board and the management board and these members will be ratified in general shareholders meeting to be held by ABN AMRO on 1st November. And finally I would like to say that the consortium has 60 days... a period of 60 days to present to the Central Bank in Holland, but that supervisory bank has plan for pushing up the different assets amongst the different shareholders. So this plan for segregation has been carried out in a very precise way. We have a project that... which can be seen here in this graph. We did that creating a structure, which will be dealing with the segregation within ABN. And we in front end benefit that of structure, which we could call a sort of mirror project, so that we can proceed [ph] what is also to us as a result of this plan for segregation. And this separation plan of certain governing bodies, which include the... let's say the incorporation in the supervisory board of our representative of each of the members of the consortium and the management board will be in charge of carrying out business as usual one as ABN AMRO. Santander has appointed two representatives for this and there's going to be transition management committee, which is sort of front committee, which will be responsible for coordinating and taking decisions throughout the whole process of segregation of assets for each of the members of the consortium, and there is also a office called PMO that is project management office, which will be giving support to this coordination and there'd be a number of working groups with TSG's, which will be responsible for receiving the information and drawing up the plan for separation and as proposed by the transition management committee and the management board. So as I have said we have created a mirror structure, obviously the main purpose of this mirror is to, project is to maintain the proper functioning of ABN during the transaction period until all the business is separated, and to ensure proper optimization of the businesses in the existing business of all the amends of the consortium. So in summary, I think we could say that we have had an excellent quarter in a complex environment. We have had complications rather in the financial environment as a result of the instability in the international markets because of the prices in confidence and liquidity problems and in this environment, the factors that we have had very good results, especially as I've already said, if we look at what's been happening in other international banks, especially the wholesale banks. And we have been able to maintain our strong position in result, strong position in our balance sheet and also strong position in liquidity, precisely because of our strength, our basic strength such as our high weight in retail banking, our diversification on a geographic level and also our traditional quality of risk, which is not exposed to very complex products, which are the ones which have really caused the recent crisis and this has allowed us to maintain high level of growth in our results and in our income, especially and this has taken our growth to more than 200%. So as you have seen in Europe, all the commercial units have had a good quarter in results. In Abbey we are still meeting our objectives, in spite of the fact that the sector in the United Kingdom is showing signs of weakening and in Latin America accompanying a very good performance in credit activity, banking activity throughout the region. And this is allowing us to grow in [Technical Difficulty] there is a certain degree of limiting in questions with regard to possible write-off of the goodwill sovereign as a result of the current [Technical Difficulty]. Question And Answer

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

Well, it's not really necessary to do an impairment because the evaluation of the goodwill is not related to the share price. It's related rather to the capacity for generating profit and the value of the assets that is the value of the bank, so that's the first idea I have to express. But from a technical point of view the impairment is not necessary unless there is a clear reduction in the capacity to generate profit. But I think the goodwill is going to be reviewed at the end of the year. That's when we'll have to take any decisions on this matter. But we have... you must understand that all these write-off are also done on the basis of the P&L, so that they have no effect on the capital because goodwill has already been subtracted from the capital, so it has no... there is no impact here.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Also, there is a question for UBS, about our appeal to the market and financing during the third quarter, this had [ph] a good access to the market and they would like to know about the appeal process.

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

I'm going to pass this floor to my colleagues who will answer better.

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

Well, it's true that after the subprime crisis in early August, liquidity in the markets was seriously damaged, especially in products that are related to credit that is securitization and it's also true that spreads in seeing and secure and mortgage certificates have reduced considerably, and we've already stated the liquidity position in investors day. We are a bank that finances itself in a conservative way, the wholesale financing has an average life of 4.5 years and placement in short-term markets, commercial paper etcetera, deposits certificates, etcetera, although necessary and limited and we were net lenders in the interbank market and I think, even after the operation of ABN, our position continues to be very good. We are still net lenders in the interbank market and we have done some operations, and market open, the prices are rising with the operation in subordinated debt have a significant employment [ph] 4 billion at high prices, so we are not talking about a lack of liquidity, so much as larger credit spreads. And during this period, basically we could say that we have financed ourselves with the excess liquidity we had and also some issues in the short-term. And finally, we have been able to place some securitization in the market, basically in drive during this period from September to October. We've placed $1.1 million sorry and basically I am referring to the subprime sector where we have been able to place $1.1 million in securitization in the market at higher prices than we had in July. And so we have this winnings [ph] in liquidity, so the liquidity environment is one of the wider spreads rather than lack of liquidity.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Okay, there are also some questions from different banks on ABN and the possible financing through rights issue. Because of the equity position, we had number of months ago and also the enlargement after the issue of convertibles?

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

Well, there is no change in projections that we gave on I think the 20 of May or so, when we spoke in London. We issued 7000... 7 billion, sorry, we have a total of 3.3 billion and the next issue is going to be soon, probably, obviously before the end of the your, but it was not yet decided exactly, what date is it going to take place. But we're still waiting according to same basic promise, the same basic ideas that we have been updated both basically what we have been doing is being to concern our projections.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Also, there is a question from Antonio Ramirez [ph] about the rest of the Continental European and Latin America, where there has been a slow down, quarter-on-quarter and negative performance in comparison with last year, could you explain this please?

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

Well, in Latin America, I am very clear about this because in Latin America, there has been a poor performance in Puerto Rico in the third quarter and as the financial manager already stated in Latin America, last year during this period in 2006, we had some capital gains of as a result of the sales in Bolivia and Peru and obviously these two effects taken together in comparison with the third quarter of 2006, this has resulted in the poor results. In Europe, nothing special has happened really, perhaps the effect comes more from the movement in hotel banking, where in the third quarter of 2006, there was some very strong corporate operations, which resulted in a strong growth in revenue, as you may remember and it's also true that we had low provisioning, specially in the genetic products and we have been able to recover during the first and second quarters. But if we are talking about operating margin, operating profits, well, that's probably the effect of the slowdown in the third quarter, in comparison with 2006. Overall, but I think, this might have a lot to do with the operations that took place in Spain also in the third quarter. In Europe rather, including Spain in the third quarter of 2006, which to some extent, because they didn't take place with the same degree of intensity, in 2007 this might be the reason for the slowdown in profits. But the attributed profit in the third quarter of 2007 was 106%. Now the figure is 98%. So we are talking about figures that are really very high for growth in attributed profit in Europe, over these two periods.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

There are three questions from Harpreet Parhar [ph]. Firstly, can you update the cost of implementing the MiFID standards in 2007? What do you think is going to be the impact of these in 2008? And the second question is, if the increase in equity premium... in both the regions can be transferred to rest of Latin America in 2008. And the third question is when do you expect consolidation on a global level of [indiscernible] and there are number of economists asking about when we are going to be consolidating all of this and what are we going to be during the division of the assets?

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

The last question, on the, question of consolidation is going to be... that's going to take place as soon as we have done the legal separation of [indiscernible] from ABN and as a result of the agreement amongst the four supervising boards, we are basically doing the equity method and all, any area for global consolidation Israel. We are talking about the MiFID. Well, the fact is, I don't know what that cost of MiFID is, it's certainly very costly in the work, but I don't know how much in cost in money. And the impact... well, I too would like to know what the impact is going to be. I hope it is going to be the same for all of us. I'm clear about that. And Dominic [ph] subjects were Puerto Rico, I don't think we can really transfer that but in the rest of [ph] May for 2008, Puerto Rico is in a recession. It's showing negative growth. At least we don't think, this situation could be applied to the rest of Latin America in 2008 and certainly it's very from the consensus.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

And there is a question from Deutsche Bank about ratio of non-performing loans in Spain, why is it rising and how can we see fit this in with the level of provisions, which is not too high over the quarter?

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

Well, the increase rose in September and commercial of June. In June we had an impaired ratio of 0.51 then it was 0.56, so it rose by 5 base points. I don't think this is a very high rise. I think it's a very small rise quite offset. Also we have provisions that we've stated in investor day with regard to risk premium, which are sitting very well in the overall situation now, level of provisioning I think is more than comfortable, we could say.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Now question from Upendra Choudhury from the analyst on to the rate of Brazil intergroup after consolidation, which is going to reach about 20%. Are we concerned about this rate? Do we think it's appropriate considering that this is for an individual country within Latin America? And the second part of the question is, could we say something about growth in credit in Brazil in the shorter medium term and to what extent can we maintain that level of growth.

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

Well, I think we've had great news. It's not a matter of concern. It's really great news, because we have an opportunity in a country like Brazil which is a country that is growing tremendously. It has a tremendously dynamic situation and it's going to enter investment grade soon. And ahead of it, I think it has very positive prospects in both growth, macroeconomic growth and banking growth and therefore, it's going to offer tremendous opportunities for generating business and I think there is no element of concern in the short-term. It's just a question of having the necessary diversification, which we already have and we have certain components in the continent of Europe in islands in the Europe that is U.K. and also in countries with high levels of growth. Our position is tremendously good and what we have seen in Brazil and in the operations in Brazil, I think we are noting positive elements rather than elements of concern. It's quite the opposite. I think there is really a lot of opportunities there, so what's our prospects for growth. Well, if the macro situation in Brazil continues to be positive as we can think it will continue to be, then I think the demand for growth or the demand for credit rather for the speaker will continue to rise markedly above 20%, which is the current level of growth. I think it's going to grow between 20% and 30% and the increase in credit, well I think the figure that's a figure doesn't matter, but I think certainly all of this is going to give tremendous impetus to the banking business and to our results. And so therefore I think it's very good news but it is something that is reasonably sustainable. And I do hope that over the next few years, it will be a source of great satisfaction for the group. We are working on it.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Okay. There is a question about our stakes in sovereign and Sepsa from Kana Norimoto from the Citigroup. Are we planning to sell our stake in sovereign and can you update what the divestment plan is for Sepsa, and any potential capital gains?

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

The first question it is no. We are not planning to sell our stakes in sovereign and the second is that obviously, as we have said repeatedly our stake in Sepsa is currently an investment, which is available for sale and when we have more precise information, we will give it to you. But right now there is no additional news to be discussed.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Okay there are two questions from Louis McGarry and Quentin Soza from European Dynamo Capital [ph] with regards to synergies in Brazil and the part of both revenue and costs.

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

There is a presentation about these synergies on the website, but if you can't find it, you can get in touch with us and we will give you the details.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

There is a question from Louis Pinya [ph] from DB about the selling of our real estate while we close it with the announced capital gains of 1 point some billion and when?

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

Well as I said in my presentation, this is a subject that is still ongoing. We have had some offers for all the real estate that we have put on sale. They would be studied to some of very good offers actually and so I expect the operation to go through. When, very soon. That's a decision that must be made by the bank when the time comes.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

All right. Mario Lowes [ph] from UBS Securities. Several questions, first says he is positively surprised by the evolution in customer spreads in the third quarter versus the second especially when compared with competition in Spain in two quarters with increase of those spread by 50 basis points, and he wanted to know if that's a price effect or a business mix effect? He is also asking about the new loans to SMEs and new mortgage-backed loans for SMEs and the other types of loans, new loans?

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

We can explain about those later, if you like.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

And then they are asking about the evolution of the income in the corporate headquarters and also the impact of the depreciation of the dollar on our accounts, both consolidated accounts and the corporate headquarters?

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

Very well, I am going to give the analyst from UBS Securities just a flavor of what's happening in this third quarter 2007 in Spain. I said... it's true, it has been very good in comparison with our other competitors, but that's because of the good management of our spreads mostly and if we look forward, we are not actually pessimistic, but quite the contrary, we are quite optimistic, because although it's true that the business will be slowing down in terms of lending volumes because there is a less of a demand for credit and in 2006 or even in first quarter 2007, we have seen a slowing down in the demand, we are not growing at 20% anymore. It's more at 15% or 16%, so we are seeing a slight slowing down of the business, but we are also at the same time seeing a very clear improvement in our spreads for several reasons, different courses for that. That is as far as lending. On customer funds obviously comparing interest rates now, is also 2006 it has a positive impact on customer funds and as a result, we are over all seeing a very beneficial evolution of our spreads, but there is delivery management on the part of our branch network in terms of selecting the right product mix and right price or spread targets. Of course, there is a slowing down of the mortgage business, but at same time we are seeing growing activity with SMEs in general. It's the business that they are not of course, is also a contributor to these results we have mentioned.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

All right. There is a question about the revenue at corporate headquarters and the impact of the depreciation of the dollar.

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

Well, in the corporate headquarters, as I explained as you know, we have a short-term dollar position, long-term euro position and overall in the three quarters that has generated about 200 million impacting the ROF of the corporate center and in the last quarter, it's been about 170 million more or less and that explains the movements in the corporate center, which is I think the only part of the group, which has significantly changed.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Abdoulaye Friest [ph] has several questions. He is asking about provisioning in Latin America, which is growing and can we explain our expectations for that market. He is asking about dollar hedging in, I think Q4. We have 4%... 100% euro dollar hedging sovereign. He is asking that's already been answered and the capital enlargement too, so really just provisioning in Latin America.

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

Right. I don't really think there is going to be or has been specific circumstance beyond the growth of the business to explain the growth of provisions. Our business in Latin America is growing very strongly, both lending and customer funds if there might be some minor element, perhaps greater acceleration of investment funds in some countries and deposits of that may on fees, even perhaps it could also be in effect of the change of our asset mix, which will also generate more fee income. The credit card impact, of course in Mexico and perhaps in some other countries may also have an effect, but really what we are seen in Latin America as I have already explained, is that the business is growing extremely strongly and that growth is accelerating, both those contribute fees and those that contribute net interest income are launched in Santander global connect in Latin America and that's generating fee income. The insurance business in Latin America is growing very strongly. It's accelerating as it did, when we launched the input to go on Spain. And that's also having an impact on our fee income. So it's probably a combination all our fees effects. More insurance, more Santander global connect, more investment funds, all of these elements are contributing to this growth in our fee income and revenues.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Nigel Sanapa [ph] has several questions, most of them have already been answered, there is maybe two left. He is asking about deceleration of growth in Spain versus our deceleration versus that of our competitors. He wonders whether we are still comfortable with our target of plus 11% to 12% in our revenues for 2008. And that's for generic and specific provisions, how they will involve in Spain in the fourth quarter?

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

Well, the final part of your question whether we're comfortable with that 10%, 11%, 12%, 14% or even 15% target growth, I would say yes we are. Absolutely, I don't think that we are going to be content with 10% next year. We aspire to grow in our revenue in Spain by well above 10%. So we are comfortable with our target and what we said in the investor day, I can't remember of top of my head. But I think we were talking about something in fact slightly higher than these numbers. So yes, we stand by that. And the other question, sorry it slipped my mind.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Generic and specific provisions, how they will evolve in Spain?

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

Well, my forecast for provisions... generic at current less, because they are connected to volume and since volume is growing less, generic provisions will grow less and that's just logical. And for specific, there is a slightly greater growth but that's highly connected to what we have been saying and seeing slightly higher risk premiums and cost of credit, but not significantly in any case.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

And there is a question about decisive UBS versus the size of the book in driving your provisions against that book?

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

The size of the book is $4.5 billion, basically that's the drive book and it's a business, which basically has... well, it's a business where you have a lot of non-performing loans are provisions are $205 million and the NPO's generally represent $160 million, however, the charge has been $395 million because the NPO ratio in Drive is actually very high, so the impact on the P&L $395 million, but actual non-performing loans at the year end is a $160 million, so we have saying quarter-on-quarter that the performance of Drive is actually surpassing our expectations and in fact the NPO ratios have been in line with the losses expected in this business, which are significantly higher than that of any other business in our portfolio.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

All right. Two questions from Eva Mendes [ph] from Morgan Stanley and John Batchuarov [ph] from Merrill Lynch, both along the same lines. You partly answered some of these but it's basically about how we will account for our holding in the RCS consortium and what the capital target is for year end and the impact of integration on the capital... on the core capital?

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

We've already partly answered this but for our CSS 10%, we'll use equivalency messing until there is full legal incorporation, so whatever it is right now before the separation from ABN AMRO and then for integration. As for their capital structure, there are two stages, there is an intermediate stage in coordination of course with the accounting of the stake, but in the period when we were using the equivalency method, we will have and after also on impact to goodwill and our core capital, but then one-on-one subtraction of a theoretical accounting value since it's higher than 10% of our equity use subtracted from the Tier 2, on the one-on-one. That's why we issued that subordinate debt two weeks ago. And so in that intermediate period that's the way it's going to work, and then it will be global integration and it would be like any other element. You will integrate the assets globally, so it will consume capital because of the risk assets we are integrating which are 65, 60 depending a bit on the growth. And then there will be the goodwill, which would be subtracted from the Tier 1 capital. So we have published the figures, the post-integration figures for ABN AMRO. We are talking about our core capital of 5.3, which will probably be slightly higher because I remember that we haven't included in that 5.3 a wholesale of the pension fund business in Latin America, which has an impact of 26 points on the core capital. So we will be at that level that we had announced then.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Right, there is a final question from Mark Cortrianna [ph] from Standard & Poor's. And he is saying that fee income both in Spain and Portugal are tending to stabilize year-on-year and are actually dropping, comparing the fourth... the third quarter with the second. What's the reason? What do we expect for fourth quarter?

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

Well, we have had as a consequence of a deliberate policy reduction in our fee income because of our policies in Spain and Portugal we see... we want to be a bank plan and also the special accounts that have been launched in Portugal with those same objectives. Point two, also we have had a slight change in our customer fund policy, less mutual funds, more product of other types, which don't really generate deposits for instance, which don't generate commissions or fee incomes. So there is an impact of that and then also a really seasonal impact, but there is nothing really too significant. There has been no major event or change versus our trends over the last quarters, not just this last quarter but the four or five last quarters.

[Unidentified Company Representative:]

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