Banco Santander, S.A.
Q4 2012 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 31 Jan 2013

[Alfredo Sáenz Abad:]

[Spanish] Good morning. Let's begin the results presentation for 2012. As usual, I'll review the highlights and the group's results, and then José Antonio Álvarez will give you a more detailed overview of the different business areas. And finally, I will conclude with our vision and our priorities for the coming quarters. The economic environment in the year was complex, particularly in Europe, where we've had to overcome extremely high tensions and loss of confidence in the euro, tensions which have lessened in the last months after the progress achieved in the process towards the European banking union and the launch of support instruments such as the immediate [indiscernible] or the OMTs of the European Central Bank. Better performance of the United States with moderate growth but, above all, of Latin America, an area for which the IMF forecasts significant growth for next year, particularly for Brazil, which would go from about 1% growth in 2012 to 3% in 2013. In this context, our priority was always to strengthen the balance sheet from 3 points of view

[José Antonio Álvarez Álvarez:]

[Spanish] Good morning. As our CEO has pointed out, I will be reviewing the highlights of the different business areas within the group. I usually begin showing the breakdown of profit by geography. The picture has not changed significantly in this last quarter. Brazil brings in 26% of the group's profit. That's on the emerging market side, and Poland, 5%. Spain brought in 15% of the profit; the U.K, 13%; and the U.S. has remained around 10%. Starting as usual with Continental Europe. The income statement reflects the difficult economic environment that our CEO mentioned, with low economic growth, continued deleveraging, particularly in Spain and Portugal, low interest rates and a high level of regulatory and political uncertainty. Profit was EUR 2.3 billion, 1% up on 2011 because at the upper part of the income statement performed well with net operating income up 8%, sustained revenues and costs under control in all units and higher loan-loss provisions, much higher in Spain and Portugal. Moving on to the different units within Continental Europe. Santander and Banesto's branch network have performed well, as we will see later, absorbed, however, by larger provisions which were required at this point in the cycle, Portugal, also in a difficult economic context, saw its profit come down by 29%. However, Santander Consumer Finance had excellent performance in a very difficult market, with car sales falling all over Europe and it was able to increase its profit by 9% and significantly increase its market share. Poland's contribution to the group has also increased 44%. This is because of a perimeter effect. We only consolidated 9 months in 2011. But without this perimeter effect, the increase was also very significant, 21%. Let's look at each of these units, starting with the Santander network. I'd like to emphasize the ability to attract deposits and retail [indiscernible] commercial paper for a total of EUR 20 billion. As a result, our loan-to-deposit ratio at the Santander went down below 100%. Lending fell 4%, gross; 7%, net due to the fall in generation of additional real estate risk and also increased provisioning and coverage. If we look at profit, we saw a increase of 7% in the year. Revenues have remained significant, supported by customer funds and larger spreads on loans and -- however, there has been a fall in interest rates with the 1-year Euribor, which has brought costs up. We have seen an increase in term deposits particularly, which has increased the cost of funding. Loan-loss provisions increased in the quarter but remained below those of the first half of the year. So in short, a difficult context with strong deleveraging but good growth in deposits, sustained revenues, flat operating expenses and provisions -- ordinary provisions stabilizing. Moving on to Banesto. I'm not going to go into too much detail, but I will give more detail than usual because they won't give a detailed results presentation, although they will have a conference call tomorrow so they can answer any questions about the information we'll be providing you with today. Similar trends to those of the Santander network, deposits up 4%, lending down 7%, so it's loan-to-deposit ratio improving by 11 points. Lending, we have seen differences in the different segments, relatively stable. Loans to individuals and businesses down 2%, but a very significant fall in real estate lending and loans to large corporates, 10% down and 34% down, respectively. As for deposits, very good performance for individuals and SMEs, a fall in corporates. Clearly, Banesto performed much better than the industry as it has done in the last few years with some of the best ratios in the sector. Its coverage rose by 20 percentage points in the year. As for profit, Banesto has very good performance in the upper part of this income statement, with basic revenues growing 2%; and net interest income up 8%; costs almost flat; profit, EUR 94 billion -- EUR 94 million because loan-loss provisions were higher than in 2011. But at the group level, from the management perspective, when we talk about Banesto, we do not include the provisions for real estate, which are made at the central level. If we look at Banesto's individual figures, which do incorporate all of these provisions, the bank made a loss of EUR 955 million. The difference between the 2 figures, you can see on this slide. If to the EUR 94 million attributable profit we add the real estate provisions charged in the individual accounts and incorporate the part corresponding to losses of minority interest and consolidation adjustments, we get the EUR 955 million in losses that I mentioned earlier. If we look at the year-end accounts at Banesto, we see that it's a very solid brand, its capital ratio is 9.2%, core capital higher than that of the end of 2011, strong liquidity as well, with significant volume of deposits and long-term funding. It has also returned everything that it borrowed in the first LTRO auction in December. Its NPL ratio is better than the industry. Its ability to generate revenues is also better than that of its peers in the last years. And it's cost income ratio is the best in the sector. And so Banesto is a very solid brand, which, in the last years, has had much better trends than its competitors. However, as you know, we have announced the integration of Santander Banesto and Banif, 2013. And as we have said before, this is an integration which we think will create value for Banesto's customers, shareholders and employees. Also, at the group level, it consolidates Santander's leadership in Spain and will enable us to take advantage of the concentration of the banking sector to improve our profitability and efficiency. There will be 4 basic drivers, as we said when we announced the operation

[Alfredo Sáenz Abad:]

[Spanish] After the provisions that we made in 2011, Santander faces in better conditions a year, which will be another very demanding one for managing banks in the countries where we operate. Beginning with the Eurozone. Here, we're already seeing a gradual recovery in the confidence of markets in the euro, which will help to offset a very weak macroeconomic environment. Progress toward a banking union and a greater integration are already beginning to be felt in the markets, particularly in the peripheral countries with sharp falls in risk premiums. In Spain, the recapitalization of banks and the private sector adjustment already completed, will join the impact of the structural reforms underway to recover growth in the last part of the year. In the rest of developed countries, the dynamics of recovery will continue with the U.S. at the head if a definite agreement is finally reached on the fiscal cliff. And the U.K. will grow more than in 2012. Emerging markets will continue to make the difference. Latin America's average growth will accelerate to around 4%, spurred by the recovery of Brazil. In Europe, Poland will register positive growth compared to a flat Eurozone. In short, we still see weak global macroeconomic scenario but that will improve during 2013 for a more solid recovery in 2014. The regulatory sphere, with new liquidity and capital demands, is trying to adjust to the current situation and not halt the recovery. A good example is a new definition of the liquidity coverage ratio, known in January, which, along with other changes, will be gradually implemented until 2019. In 2013, the different growth scenarios will require Santander to manage things in a differentiated manner tailored to specific conditions in order to develop the growth foundations for the coming years. It will be vital to strengthen our pre-provisioned profit. In Spain and Portugal, we still have recession and de-leveraging. Our priority will be to execute the merger between Santander-Banesto and Banif in the timeframes and form expected. For this purpose, teams are already in place, agreements with labor unions reached, various commercial actions with customers are being carried out, et cetera. In business, the focus will be on spread management above all, improving the cost of funds and throughout the risk cycle, where we see a normalization of the cost of credit as of the second half of 2013 and in 2014. Santander Consumer Finance points to solid profits and levels of profitability above that of its European peers, backed by country and product diversification and excellent management of the whole risk process. We will continue to gain market share in new car financing in Europe, as we did in 2012. And we expect the area to be self-financed by the end of 2013. In Poland, we have 2 objectives

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Good morning. We're going to start taking questions that we received over the web. And then if we have time and if we get the questions over the phone, we'll try to answer those as well. And we are going to organize the questions by concepts. We're going to start with questions about the regulation prospects and strategy. There are several questions on plans, existing plans. Jaime Becerril from JPMorgan asks whether we still have plans for an IPO in the U.S. and in Poland, and if we have any plans for the U.K. Juan Ramirez [ph] from Keefe is asking about the timing of the IPO of Consumer -- Santander Consumer Financing in U.S -- in the U.S.A.?

[Alfredo Sáenz Abad:]

[Spanish] In the world of IPOs, there are no news, nothing new to mention. We still have the same idea of doing an IPO in the U.K., but we have no date for that. In Poland, we will follow the plans that we already have. We don't expect to do an IPO on the short term. We're going to place the shares that have already been committed with the supervisor, with the regulator. And in the United States, the IPO of a part of Santander Consumer Finance x drive in the United States, that will be done from the second to the third quarter of this year, depending on technical aspects and also depending on the market circumstances. The idea is to do a placement. Private equities are not going to happen. We're going to reduce our stake, but not by very much. We're not going to sell 65% that we have now. We will sell an amount that we still have to define, but it's not going to be very much. And that's what I can say about IPOs. In Spain, well, I can say that what we've already said on previous occasions, we are studying very carefully all possibilities that arise in the market, and we will be presenting offerings, but these have to be prudent, serious, sensible. And that is all I can say. We have no other news on that front. And I think I answered all your questions.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Andrea Filtri from Mediobanca and Britta Schmidt from Autonomous are asking about all the noise in Italy surrounding the Antonveneta transaction. Any comment on our part? Because different names that are being bandied, including Santander. Do we have anything to say about this?

[Alfredo Sáenz Abad:]

[Spanish] Not a lot. It's true the bank carried out a successful divestment of Antonveneta at a time when, if you will remember, the Italian bank had a lot of appetite for growth and for acquisitions. We were on a different point of the cycle, and were in quite a different mood all together. But obviously all of these things that are being discussed in the media have no basis as time will show.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] As for our payout policy -- well, there's 2 questions, sorry, about growth in volumes for the group. But if you agree, since we're going to talk about each of the units, we can answer those in turn instead of giving the global figures. As for payout, there's 2 questions, Mario Lodos from Sabadell and Daragh Quinn from Nomura. Given the better capital ratios, are we considering, once again, paying dividends fully in cash or maybe to scrip to cash [ph]? What is going to be our payout policy in the future in general?

[Alfredo Sáenz Abad:]

[Spanish] Well, that will have to be defined when the time comes by the Board. And in fact, right now, what we've decided stands and what we haven't decided hasn't been decided, so I can't really give you anything more accurate than that. We will continue to offer scrip dividend, at least in 2013 and probably partly or wholly also in 2014. But I can't comment either because I can't really -- since that's up to the board when the time comes.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Moving on to the financial management capital ratios part. There's a question from Britta Schmidt with regards to the breakdown of extraordinary revenues in 4-T. I think José Antonio explained them at corporate center level. If you need any additional clarification, let us know and we'll send you the details. As for capital, there are several questions. Antonio Ramirez, Carlos Peixoto and others with regards to the fall in core capital in 4-T versus 3? What's the currency impact, the real? These are all of the questions surrounding why the core capital ratio fell in 4-T, in Q4, rather.

[Alfredo Sáenz Abad:]

[Spanish] Well, it's true that in Q4, as compared to Q3, there has been a fall of 6 or 7 basis points in our core capital. The main reason behind that is, in fact, the exchange rate effect. You know that we have hedges, that hedges sometimes are spurred, others are forward, others are options. And in our hedges with options, there's usually some variability that we take on. In the quarter, we've been negatively hit, particularly by the depreciation of the real. And that's the biggest effect.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] About capital, there's a couple of questions more. Antonio Ramirez is asking whether we're willing to increase capital if we were to make an acquisition in Spain, such as Catalunya Bank? And then there are several questions from David Vaamonde from Fidentiis, Mario Lodos and Carlos Garcia about capital, Basel III impact, fully loaded, and the CRD4 impact, which is exactly the same thing.

[Alfredo Sáenz Abad:]

[Spanish] All right. As the first question, I'll answer and say, no. We're not going to increase capital. The second question, impact of fully loaded Basel III. Well, as we've said before in other quarterly presentations, the bank will, at all times, with Basel III remain an over 9% core capital ratio.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Question from Carlos Garcia from Societe, about deferred asset volumes.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] You will see a breakdown as we do every year in the report both on the asset and liability sides. The trend will be very similar to that of previous years.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] And a question from David Vaamonde, Fidentiis, about the core capital ratio of the parent.

[Unknown Executive:]

The parent has a ratio of 10.26 exactly. That's the Santander parent core capital ratio, just above 10.1, which was in the third quarter.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Antonio Ramirez, asking about capital requirements for banks in the U.K. Can we expect a greater impact on risk-weighted assets for the parent, or do we think there will be greater capital requirement to cover that?

[Alfredo Sáenz Abad:]

[Spanish] No, we don't think we're going to need any additional capital or that we're going to have to cover with more capital. We are very comfortable with capital in the U.K. We have a capital surplus in fact, so there's no reason to think or no reason for concern.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] And to finish with capital ratio questions, we have a question about assets at risk. Do we see an improvement with the current transmission ratio of 44% of assets at risk to total assets, first. They're referring to the regulatory context and whether we think this ratio will change, and do we expect it to rise or fall and how?

[Alfredo Sáenz Abad:]

[Spanish] Well, this ratio, this 44% ratio depends on 2 things

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Okay. About liquidity, there are several questions, about the LTRO, as you can imagine, there's a lot of questions. Rohith Chandra from Barclays, Axel Finsterbusch from JPMorgan, and Mario Lodos from Sabadell are asking about basically 2 concepts. The repayment of the EUR 24 billion in LTRO, the rationale, will we be repaying anymore? And the second question is the impact on our income statement, and whether we have anything deposited with the ECB and how much? And to finish with the questions about the LTRO and so on, whether we have returned from outside Spain, specifically in Portugal?

[Alfredo Sáenz Abad:]

[Spanish] Right. As we said in the presentation, we have repaid or returned yesterday the EUR 24 billion we had taken up in December, in the LTRO in December. Whether we plan to repay anymore or return anymore, we are using it as a cushion basically, or insurance. Basically, we have it deposited with the ECB, the same amount we took up at year end. We have EUR 35 billion, and we still have deposited with the ECB a significant amount after paying those EUR 24 billion back. So the decision of whether to repay any more or return any more, well, the answer would be probably, yes. But it will depend on the evolution of the markets and the impact on our income statement, well, it costs 75 basis points, charged to the corporate center, as I said. And the liquidity buffer, it had a negative impact on our income statement, as I said. As for Portugal, we've not returned anything. We still have EUR 5 billion in the LTRO. The situation has improved significantly there as [Audio Gap]

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] There is a question about -- well, from Ignacio Sanz at UBS about ALCO portfolios. Can we elaborate on the size of those ALCO portfolios? How much do we have in the different divisions and what is our position there? I suppose that means both maturities and volumes.

[Alfredo Sáenz Abad:]

[Spanish] Well, ALCO portfolios overall, we have that in portfolios available-for-sale. As you know, as we always say, we don't hold any to maturity. And so the ALCO portfolio is in portfolios available-for-sale. Total for the group, I think is EUR 92 billion. Most of it, I'd say, 60% to 80%, is public debt. And the split is, in Spain, about EUR 24 billion; Parent has maybe EUR 18 billion, 19 billion; Banesto, EUR 4 billion or EUR 5 billion; Portugal, EUR 2 billion; Brazil, EUR 11 billion. So these are the main portfolios. Poland, EUR 2 billion. These are the main portfolios.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Sergio Gamez from Merrill Lynch and Francisco Riquel from N+1 are asking about capital. What are our expectations for organic capital generation this year, and how do we expect our core capital ratio to evolve in the year?

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Well, basically, it's always hard to predict how markets are going to evolve. But this year, we generated about 80-some basis points before provisions. And since this year, we don't expect as big a provisioning effort as this year. We expect those 80 or 90 basis points to be our ordinary organic capital generation, maintaining the current payout policy, which is already in place for this year. So that's basically what we expect in terms of organic capital generation. Of course, that could vary based on other things like risk-weighted assets, exchange rates and the usual. But what we expect is around that level.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Frédéric Teschner from Natixis is asking about the impairment of our goodwill in Italy. Is there any goodwill left?

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] And the answer is, no. We've provisioned everything that remained. And is there any other type of goodwill at risk? What we've considered at the end of the year is that there is no other goodwill needing to be provisioned right now.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Carlo di Grande [ph] from HSBC is asking something along similar lines with respect to risk-weighted assets. Have we seen the full impact of the advanced models or IRB? And do we expect, due to some other reasons, that there might be a fall in risk-weighted assets in the following weeks? I think you've answered that already. Moving on to risk quality, there are general questions at the group level in terms of what we predict for the cost of risk in the next 2 years, and more specifically, there are several questions about the cost of risk in Spain.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Britta Schmidt from Autonomous, Daragh Quinn from Nomura and Antonio Ramírez from Keefe are asking whether we still maintain our guidance of 150 basis points for the cost of risk in 2013. What is our forecast?

[Unknown Executive:]

[Audio Gap] [Spanish] And it will remain at approximately the same levels as in 2012, risk premium. We probably will start to see a slight improvement starting the end of 2013, which will be more tangible and feed through to our bottom line starting in 2014, converging or normalizing at levels of risk premium or cost of lending of around 60, 70 basis points, which is where it should be eventually. But probably, it will take us in Spain, at least a couple of years to get to that level, still starting in 2014. In 2013, again, we expect it to remain more or less where it is now, and to get where it was in 2012, excluding again, of course, extraordinary provisions for real estate, which means that NPL will continue to rise slightly in 2013, probably peaking towards the end of 2013 Q4. And since that always has a mismatch with provisions, we expect provisions to start following this [indiscernible] starting in 2014. That's for Spain. For the other countries, we don't expect any reason for concern. In fact, I imagine that there will be questions about Chile or about Mexico or about Brazil. And a lot of these trends were due to seasonal one-off effects, and we don't really see any underlying issues in any of these economies beyond the Spanish case I've mentioned. I hope that's answered everything.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Patrick Lee from RBC has 2 questions about sale of real estate. Can we talk about property sales?

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] We gave you all the details in the presentation.

[Patrick Lee:]

[Spanish] But what about the discount?

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Well, I can tell you the discount was at around 45%, 50%.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Gil Hilamez [ph] asked the same question. And Patrick's also asking about percentage which we're offering mortgages.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] We said already in the presentation that it's always below 60% of what we're selling that we're mortgaging, so over 40% is not financed through our own mortgage.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] And in connection to that, there's 2 questions from Antonio Ramírez and Patrick Lee from Keefe and RBC, respectively. First is asking about whether we expect to have to provision more for real estate loans or assets in Spain, all the way to the worst-case scenario for Oliver Wyman or are we covered now that we've met the Royal Decree requirements? And the second question is, do we expect that the establishment of the SAREB might have some additional impact on your real estate activities, whether that would be sales or prices?

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Well, our real estate provisioning is done and completed. And so from that point of view, we don't need to provision any further in 2013 for this purpose. However, in our budget we have included some potential portfolio sales at significant discounts. And so we have assigned EUR 1 billion for 2013 in our budget for that sort of thing, basically for accelerated portfolio sales or accelerated property sales within our own policy to accelerate sales. Why? Because we do not want -- we are concerned about the SAREB's activities in the property market. In 2012, Santander was much more aggressive than its peers. We sold a lot more properties than they did. But of course, we were more aggressive in our pricing policies. And in 2013, we will maintain that aggressive marketing strategy so as to anticipate or at least sell as much as we can and reduce our foreclosed and acquired property volumes before the SAREB starts operating successfully in the market, which will happen soon. But if we can get in there before the SAREB starts achieving cruising speed, so much the better. And so that's the policy we will maintain during 2013. So in summary, we don't need anymore provisions because everything is fully provisioned, and coverage is, in some cases, higher than required. Second, we have included in our budget a EUR 1 billion penalty because of a more aggressive marketing policy that might be required. These we will finance from capital gains that are already more or less in place. And thirdly, 2013 we will continue with our aggressive marketing policy because we expect greater competition in the market.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] As for credit quality, there's a question from Francisco Riquel from N+1 about refinancing levels, where we are and will we be reporting based on requirements?

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Yes, we will be reporting these figures, and we will be including all the information when we publish the official documents at the close of the year.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] There are several questions from David Vaamonde from Fidentis, Jaime Becerril about risk premiums in Mexico. Andrea Filtri, same thing about U.K. and Brazil. And since we're going to talk about the units, and there's quite a lot of questions about them, we'll look at it unit by unit, which is, I think, better. Oh, and there is one final question about LTV from Carlo di Grandes [ph] from HSBC. Long-term values of our mortgages.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Our back book is about 52% in the Santander network. On the front book, which usually is between 60% and 70%, in the last quarter, was at 54%.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Business areas. Moving on to business areas, specifically, in Spain, there are several questions that I will list. Quite a few about deposits. Álvaro Serrano from Morgan Stanley, Axel [indiscernible], Daragh Quinn from Nomura, Frédéric Teschner from Natixis and Ignacio Sanz from UBS and Patrick Lee from RBC again, asking about deposits. And the questions are the following

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Okay, let's see if I can answer all that and not leave anything out. First, in 2012, clearly, Santander had spectacular growth in deposits. And to a large extent, this was due to the uncertainty in the market for a lot of banks which were -- there was a lot of press coverage, there was a lot of uncertainty and so there was a corresponding flight to quality by a lot of savers. And that has brought into Santander a clear competitive advantage. And of course, that is part of the explanation. Another part of that explanation is the fact that we like the rest of the sectors, were very aggressive with pricing, because the rest of the industry had very aggressive pricing strategy this year. And of course, as you know, it's been discussed that the Bank of Spain was going to set some limitations. But it's not true. The Bank of Spain has not set any caps on price of funding or has it forced banks to keep its spreads below a particular level. What the Bank of Spain has done is to tell the industry about its concern over income statements and the impact that the high price of deposits is having on those income statements, because there are some banks, particularly those that have only a national perimeter, that are suffering operating losses and are therefore destroying capital. And that has implications on their solvency. And of course, part of the responsibilities of the Bank of Spain as potential supervisor is to announce that they might require banks with such practices to hold more capital. So this is a warning, across the board to the industry, which has meant certain moderation in these practices. And so in 2013, and that's another question, we expect to see an improvement on the price of funding because we are specifically, at least, see that the environment is less competitive and so we will be able to bring down our spreads on customer funding, and that will have an impact. We'll have to wait and see what happens in the market but we do expect undoubtedly to see some additional revenues as a result of the change in the context. In 2012, our deposits grew by EUR 22 billion as I think you heard in the presentation. I don't know whether I've left anything out. Was that all the questions?

[Unknown Analyst:]

[Spanish] Perhaps you could say something about the cost of retail funding in general?

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Well, as a result of this, the cost of retail funding, we believe, in 2013, on average, will go down in comparison with 2012.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] As for lending, there are also several questions .Álvaro Serrano from Morgan Stanley and Patrick Lee from RBC and Frédéric Teschner at Natixis are asking on our outlook for lending, whether we expect it to grow? Whether lending to the real estate sector may contribute or subtract from that growth in 2013? Whether the pressure on spreads in Spain -- this is always about lending, whether we think that, that might continue or not? Mortgages, how do we expect them to evolve given the current low interest rates? Do we have activated callers or caps.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] The answer to that is, no.

[Unknown Executive:]

And finally, net interest income in 2013 and '14 in Spain.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Well, as for lending, I think in 2012, we were particularly hit by the fall in the EURIBOR rate, and therefore, that reduced the price on our mortgage book, which could have a much lower price and falling quarter-after-quarter or month-after-month depending on how you reprice it. I think the EURIBOR has now, I think, touched rock-bottom and probably may even rise slightly from now on. So basically, hard lending. I don't expect there to be any more pressure on spreads then we had for mortgages in 2012. For other segments, basically spreads are stable, more or less. And therefore, there, except for volumes of activity, I don't expect to see much of an impact on revenues. Price volumes, it's true that now lending volumes are down, particularly because of real estate lending and slightly also because of lending for consumer finance, not so for business lending. Although overall, lending to the system has fallen. If you look at what the Santander has been doing in our business segment, we've not reduced lending to businesses in 2012. We've maintained volume of loans to businesses, including the fund for supplier payment, which is a way to feed through loans to businesses ultimately. And in 2013, we expect spreads to remain fairly similar value, perhaps slight improvement in the mortgage book because we don't expect the EURIBOR to fall any further and no real impact on other spreads. So if lending volumes fall slightly, so will revenue spreads, I think. Cost of falling, cost of funding revenues should improve significantly, plus fee income, let's not forget, have performed very well in 2012, particularly in the last quarters. I think that in 2013, we will see revenues rise significantly in Spain.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Moving onto the unit, we have 3 units with similar questions. Let me organize them, basically U.K., Brazil, Mexico. Questions about the U.K., basically about 2 items on the income statement. Questions from Álvaro Serrano from Morgan Stanley, Patrick Lee from RBC, Antonio Ramírez from Keefe and Andrea Filtri. Tell more about net interest income, which has stabilized in Q4. Do we expect this stabilization to continue or do we think that there will be increasing weakness? What is our outlook for net interest income and its components? That's the first set of questions. And the second, just wondered if there's any news about the risk premium or about NPLs that we feel we should mention.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Let me give you an idea of what is happening in the U.K. In the U.K., we can see very clearly that there is an improvement in the profitability on the side of assets, but also in terms of the cost of deposits. The front books of new production is obtaining very good spreads in their assets and lending and in deposits. This is only reflected in the revenue, and we will see this even clearer in the future because, of course, the back book has a very important weight with regards to the front book. But I repeat in the front book, we are seeing improvements in profitability, in lending and improvements in costs in deposits. Now on the side of costs, the trend is good. We're growing below market, our costs remain particularly flat, and that is very positive. And we're also seeing stability in provisions. So we don't see anything alarming when it comes to provisions. But apart from that, we have obtained a better structure in our financing on the wholesale side, but also on the retail side. On the retail side, I wanted to underline the success of the 1-2-3 account, which allowed us to grow, in current accounts, grow significantly. But also on the cost of deposits because they increased, because we went from EUR 25 billion on the short term to the mid-term, but the structure has improved. The brand is improving very clearly in England. It is consolidated -- consolidating. In SMEs, for example, which is one of our strategic objectives, lending grew more than 20% in 2012. And strategically speaking, this is excellent news. So the brand is improving in the U.K. So very good results in SMEs, very good results from our commercial campaigns. That's on the commercial side. And also, we must mention that we have reduced our mortgage book by 5%, but we have to interpret this clearly. We are obtaining more profitability and the risk quality is better. We're being more selective. We are reducing the loan-to-value in interest only. So that is -- means more quality rather than more activity. That's how it should be interpreted. It has been a good year in terms of spreads, in terms of costs, also in terms of provisions. And so if the question is, what do we expect in 2013, well, we won't notice this in the first half of 2013. The revenue will remain stable in the first half. But in Q3 and Q4, we will see improvements. So in the second half of the year is where we will notice these improvements. So that is how we see our prospects in the U.K.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] From the U.K., there is one last question from Raymond John [ph] on provisions for contract remediation that we've made.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] We gave information on that when we announced the results of Q3. Do we expect to do more of that in 2013? And the answer is that we've already made provisions for that.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] If we talk about Brazil now, there are quite a lot of questions on the top part of the income statement, on the net interest income, several questions. For example, Álvaro Serrano from Morgan Stanley and others ask about pressures on the margins. What do we expect about the NII? Do we think it is going to fall further? What about the revenues? And related to that, what is the growth outlook? That's from Francisco Riquel. What do we expect regarding the growth of lending in 2013?

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] We expect a 6.25 during the 2013 and '14. Well, Brazil in 2012, if we look at the whole year, the top part of the income statement has been very good. The net interest income grew 17% in the year, because there were more revenues. And the lending growth slowed down a little bit, by 6%, but that's in line of what happened in Brazil, generally speaking. But the top part of the account fits very well with a growth of 17%. Costs also performed very well, in line with inflation, 5% is by how much expenses grew. And provisions grew quite a lot, but it is also true that they grew less in the last half of the year. And I think your questions focused on understanding better Q4. Well, in Q4, we have -- did notice an impact of the spreads on the revenues, although we're also seeing less provisions. Net interest income fell because of falls in the interest rate because interest rates fell, also because of pressure on the credit spreads and also because Q4 was worse off in volumes. But we hope that will recover in 2013 when the macro situation improves in Brazil. So it is true that there is pressure on the spreads in the industry and falls in the interest rate, and that has an impact on the net interest income. But it is also true that we expect that growth in volume in 2013, which can, at least in part, offset that impact. In Brazil, on Q4, we also saw a strong impact on costs because of the signing of the bargaining agreement. Because these agreements in Brazil are signed in September. And of course, it has a seasonal impact on the fourth quarter. But provisions fall, nevertheless -- fall slightly. So ever since the third quarter -- in talking about the NPL loss, since the third quarter and the second and the fourth quarter, too, we're seeing a very good performance of loans in arrears [indiscernible] of less than 90 days, which means that in 2013, we will see an improvement in the cost of credit. So what do we see in the future? We see an environment with certain pressure on margins. We see volumes that will grow throughout the year. We see fees that will grow 2 digits. We see personnel and general expenses that will increase but less than inflation and a cost of credit that will improve in line with the economic recovery. And that is my outlook on Brazil.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] Mexico. Daragh Quinn from Nomura, Álvaro Serrano from Morgan Stanley and Irma Garrido from Ahorro Corporación ask if -- well, 2 aspects. If there is a slowdown in activity in Mexico? And why did costs increase -- or actually, provisions. Why did provisions increase?

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] The first quarter in Mexico, I think, is a little bit misleading. It might give rise to the wrong interpretation. 2012, as a whole, has been a very good year, with the growth of 15% to 20% in almost all the lines, in margins and profits, and with very sound revenues from fees and net interest income. So the year was a very good year as a whole. In Q4, on the one hand, we see very good performance of revenues, as we expected. But there are 2 things that we need to explain and might be misunderstood. On the one hand, increase in cost, and on the other hand, increase in provisions. What happened in Q4? Well, 2 things happened. With regards to the cost, we had a seasonal effect because of the increase in the number of branch offices. We've increased our staff by 600 people because we opened 46 branch offices. And that impact was noticed fully on the fourth quarter. And this is why, in Q4, costs don't look very good. But as I say, this is a seasonal impact only. That's on the side of cost. And on the side of revenue, we did very well because they grew for the seventh quarter in a row; on the side of costs, this increase in the staff or the number of branch offices. And in terms of provisions, we had a bad Q4 because of 3 things, basically

[Unknown Analyst:]

[Spanish] We have a couple of questions to finish. Some are based on liquidity. Juan Antonio, perhaps you could answer this question about liquidity in Spain. What is the average cost of the debt that is maturing? How does that compare with new issues? And whether the reduction of the commercial gap continues to be a priority in 2013 compared to the past?

[José Antonio Álvarez Álvarez:]

[Spanish] Well, the average cost, I think they're referring to wholesale funding. Wholesale funding is maturing at an average cost which is lower than that of new issues. It is also true that new issues will be significantly lower than the volumes that are maturing because of the reduction in the commercial gap. Whether that is going to be a priority, we expect the commercial gap to fall in 2013 because of what the CEO explained. We will continue to grow in deposits but at a lower cost, and we don't think there is going to be much lending because we're lending less related to real estate and households are de-leveraging. So we think that the gap will continue to fall

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] And now there's a question on whether you have any plans to make any acquisitions in the U.K.?

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] No plans.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] And Alfredo, what can you say about the cost? Because there's a question from Irma Garido that the staff is following in almost all areas, in central services, et cetera. How do you see costs performing?

[Alfredo Sáenz Abad:]

[Spanish] Well, as we've mentioned on other occasions, there are 2 dynamics in the bank. One of them is where costs grow, which is in those units that are growing. Mexico is one of them, very clearly so; to a certain extent, Brazil as well. In Brazil there is strong pressure for costs to increase and Argentina as well. But there is an -- the effect of a high inflation rate in Argentina; and also in Sovereign, where the costs are also going up. Well, with those exceptions in the other units, we're always looking to improve our cost-to-income ratio. And we don't think costs are going to grow very much. They're going to grow below inflation or even remain flat in countries where inflation is very low, like Spain, Portugal and the U.K. and other Latin American countries. In fact, in 2013, the jaws [ph], as we like to call them, we think jaws [ph] will be very small, the difference between the growth of expenses and the growth of revenue because of countries like Brazil, the U.S. and Chile to a certain extent, too. And Mexico, their costs are growing. And in the other units, costs are contained.

[Unknown Executive:]

[Spanish] At this time, we've come to the end of our presentation. There are no further questions. We hope we've answered all of them. If that is not the case, please get in touch with relations for investors, and we'll try to answer all of your questions. Thank you.