Executives
Management
Luisa Gomez Bravo - Head of Investor Relations Angel Cano Fernandez - President, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director Jaime Sáenz de Tejada - Chief Financial Officer
Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, S.A. (BBVA)
Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Sun, May 3, 2015
$21.34
-3.24%
Executives
Management
Luisa Gomez Bravo - Head of Investor Relations Angel Cano Fernandez - President, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director Jaime Sáenz de Tejada - Chief Financial Officer
Operator
Operator
Good morning everyone, and welcome to the First Quarter Result Presentation of BBVA. I'm Luisa Gomez Bravo, Head of IR, and as usual, joining me today are Angel Cano, President and COO of the Group; and Jaime Saenz de Tejada, our CFO. As always, Angel will begin with the presentation of results and we will be moving on to the Q&A after that. As you know, we will try to answer as many questions as possible during this presentation and the IR team will remain available throughout the day to answer any pending questions. Without any more delay, Angel please.
Angel Cano Fernandez
Head of Investor Relations
Thank you, Luisa. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Before starting with the first quarter's 2015 results let me just shortly review the main highlights of the closing of Catalunya Caixa's deal announced last Friday. We have acquired a healthy institution in a changing economic cycle in Spain. We are boosting market shares in both Spain and Catalunya, where BBVA becomes the largest and second largest in the market. And most importantly, it adds 1.5 million customers to the group. Regarding impacts, no material changes with those announced in July 2014, and I have no doubt that the terms and conditions of the deal will generate shareholders value with attractive returns. The annual recurring cost synergies are expected to be close to 40% of its cost base in 2014. In terms of EPS, we expect neutral impact in 2015 and accretive in 2016. From 2018, we expect €300 million average annual contribution to net income and capital impacts will be manageable at around 55 basis points. Now, we are looking forward to implementing and completing the integration process. You will find more details on Catalunya Caixa's figures in the annex. Now, let me go straight to the first quarter 2015 results presentation. This quarter, BBVA's result continued the upward trend reported at the end of last year. For me it's very important to highlight that this growth is strongly supported by the good performance of recurring income. Focusing on this quarter, three remarks; first, the positive FX impact; second, following recent changes in the Venezuelan FX regime, we've decided to adopt the use of the SIMADI rate for accounting our Venezuelan franchise, trading at 93% lower than the previous SICAD I exchange rate. The new exchange rate at VEF183 has led to a bottom line this quarter of…
Q - Luisa Gomez Bravo
Management
Thank you, Angel. So now we will move on to the - straight to the Q&A. There are plenty of questions, so we questions, so we will start with an overall question from Vitor Roma from Goldman Sachs. Could you please clarify what is the overall FX impact in the quarter results? Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: The positive FX impact has been €67 million this quarter. That's excluding Venezuela. If we include the FX devaluation that has taken place in the quarter, the positive impact will be down to $43 million and this is of course net of cost course net of cost of coverage.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Thank you. Moving on to capital regarding DTAs, Britta Schmidt from Autonomous and Raoul Leonard from Deutsche Bank ask the following. Getting you do not raise capital for Catalunya Bank, the support from DTA guarantees in CT1 capital will increase. Have you been approached yet by the European Commission regarding a possible investigation? What lobbying is happening in Spain and what do you think could be an outcome?
Angel Cano Fernandez
Head of Investor Relations
Okay. First of all, for us, we are considering this potential event, that - as a remote one first of all because the consideration of DTAs inof DTAs in Spain is due to the lack of carry back effect like in other jurisdictions, other countries they have done in the past. So in our case it's the result of making provisions over the last 2-3 years regarding years regarding the foreclosures and loan loss provisions. So this is one comment to consider. The other one is the potential effect in BBVA capital ratios. So we have more or less an impact of close to 70 basis points in the worst case scenario in this case. But what we think is the potential effect from these file is going to be remote, as I said before, and just it's going to be a part of our new supervision from Frankfurt. Well, it's true they are going to consider this capital or these deductions among all the different elements that are part of capital.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Thank you. Please can you update on the monetizable DTAs you have in euros and how much do they contribute to the core capital ratio? Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: The current number is €4.9 billion and we are talking 70 basis points of core capital. After the integration of Catalunya Caixa that brings in an additional €3.5 billion of DTAs, the overall DTA number will be 168 basis points, around 170 basis points.
Angel Cano Fernandez
Head of Investor Relations
And then - Jaime, another couple of comments. First of all, we have no doubts about the DTAs value. There is a clear value behind this concept. And considering our ability to generate results over time and especially in a more normalized environment in Spain, DTAs will be significantly lower in a 10 years period. So once fully-loaded ratios are enforced, and therefore, the above mentioned above mentioned impacts will be reduced in a material way.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay. On core capital Britta Schmidt from Autonomous, Carlos Peixoto from BPI and Raoul Leonard from Deutsche Bank ask if we could please elaborate on the evolution of the fully-loaded BIS III ratios during the first quarter, and also if we can talk a little bit about the RWAs and core capital impact in absolute euros since the devaluation in Venezuela. Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: Okay, we generated 41 basis points fully-loaded core Tier 1 this first quarter. That's 25 basis points coming from net earnings. Organic risk-weighted asset increase - that is excluding what has happened in Venezuela - consumes 14 basis points. So the organic capital generation of the quarter will be that 11 basis points. Then we have the sale of CNCB and mainly through the reduction of risk-weighted assets that brings an additional an 20 basis points. And then we have other - an Others column that adds up to 10 basis points and there we have different impacts in capital gains on available for sale securities, as you know, excluding always sovereign. Then we have decrease in treasury stock. We have a slight positive impact from the new FX rating in Venezuela and then lower tax losses carry forward. The overall evolution of risk-weighted assets is down in the quarter. Risk-weighted assets go down by €3.5 billion in the quarter and the reason being the new FX rate in Venezuela. As you can imagine the rest of the portfolio's increase is asset based and so it's risk-weighted assets. The CNCB sale has also reduced the risk-weighted assets in the quarter.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay, on guidance and capital, what fully-loaded CT1 ratio do you expect for the end of 2015 and what would the ratio be in the first quarter if we had included the sovereign available for sales unrealized gains and if we expect to include them going forward? Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: Okay. The expected year-end number remains at above 10% as we've guided at the end of last year. Then, as you know, we have unrealized gains on sovereign portfolios of around €3 billion which are not included in our core Tier 1 number. So you can do the math.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay. Well, the pro-forma ratio for Garanti and Catalunya Caixa acquisitions has been included in the presentation. And also what was the dividend accrual in capital in the first quarter of 2015? Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: Okay. There we have to make the distinction between accounting rules and solvency rules. In solvency what is deducted is what we actually pay. Accountingwise in shareholding funds, we have deducted €145 million, the full amount of the dividend announced in the month of March of 2015 even if more than 19% of our investor base accepted shares instead of cash. That will be deducted in the second quarter. As you know, this is an accounting change that was introduced in March 2014.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay. Regarding dividends and the dividend policy, Raoul Leonard from Deutsche Bank asks if we can please update our dividend strategy, scrip versus cash outlook and if our intention is to pay dividends out of normalized earnings pre-Garanti one-offs.
Angel Cano Fernandez
Head of Investor Relations
So we don't - we've not changed the dividend policy during this quarter, so it's the same we guided last quarter. So in the end it's - for this year is two scrip dividends and two cash dividends, first of all. We are moving in the future to this payout ratio policy between 35%-40% and always talking - having as a reference the normalized any kind of extraordinary results.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
TLAC, Carlos Peixoto from BPI asks if we could please elaborate on our expectation on the TLAC requirements, namely additional TLAC instruments issuance and its impact in the P&L. Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: I think that we've shared our view about TLAC impacts on the roadshow of the AT1 that we did in the month of Feb. As you all know, again we believe that TLAC impact for BBVA will be very manageable. We are expecting a TLAC deficit of between €9 billion and €11 billion something around €10 billion, which we believe is perfectly manageable for a bank of our size. What type of instruments will end up confirming this bailing capital is something that still is to be decided, especially taking into account the different potential regulatory and legislative actions that can be taken during 2015.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay. And lastly on capital regarding regulatory equivalence, Raoul Leonard from Deutsche Bank has a few questions. Can you update us on the impact to RWAs and capital ratios on regulatory equivalence? Are Colombia, Peru and Turkey still excluded from the list? What would the impact be to your reported core Tier I ratio if these countries were included in the EU regulatory equivalence? Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: Okay, so pretty much the answer is the same. The three countries are still excluded from the list. We don't expect them to be included until probably the end of the year. The impact has already been recognized on the capital numbers that we shared with the market, and it has been something around 10 basis points.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay. Moving on to few other questions on the Group regarding asset quality, Carlos Peixoto from BPI asks if we can elaborate on the reason behind the pickup in the NPL net new entries at the Group level, what were the geographies behind this deterioration? And Rohith Chandra-Rajan from Barclays asks about the cost of risk, do you expect this to be stable with the current trends continuing, Spain improving and other geographies growing? Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: Okay. NPLs showed pretty good numbers in Spain and they were down by around €550 million in the quarter, following similar trends as we've seen in the past few quarters. Cost of risk in Spain remains stable, around 1% in the quarter, while net provisions were down by 10% versus what we've seen in the first quarter of 2014. Our guidance here remains the same and our expectation is for them - for it to reach between 80 and 85 basis points in Spain during 2015. So solid performance in Spain. Regarding the rest of geographies, no surprises I think; and if any, on the positive side. Starting with Mexico, cost of risk is down by 10 basis points between 3.3% with an NPL number of 2.8% and no surprises on the provision line. The same is true for Latin America; Cost of risk remains stable at 1.2%. This is actually a surprise from the guidance that we were expecting a slight increase in Latin America. That hasn't happened. And we've seen a very limited increase in the case of the U.S. in the cost of risk number from 0.16 to 0.28, again within the guidance that we gave this year of an increase of between 10 and 15 basis points. So I would say that in general a good quarter in terms of NPL numbers and cost of risk. And what we will continue to see during the year is less impact from Spain and a slight increase from geographies outside the country.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Thank you. A question on trading income from Britta Schmidt from Autonomous and Laura Hernandez from Invercaixa, please explain the reason for the high trading income, what is the outlook for the coming quarters? Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: Okay, trading income. I wouldn't say that trading income has been too high. It has been €263 million, down from the fourth quarter of last year. But it is true that it's €70 million up from the first quarter of 2014. If we use year-on-year comparison, we see a decrease in Spain of a little over €100 million, half of it explained by less capital gains from the ALCO portfolio and the other half by less contribution from our Global Markets Division. The rest of the franchise have performed well, especially South America, impacted by the FX devaluation that was done in Venezuela and the corporate center, where we've seen very strong capital gains coming from the industrial portfolio.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Thank you. Moving on to Mexico, regarding the NII line in Mexico, Alfredo Alonso from Kepler, Britta Schmidt from Autonomous, Mario Ropero from Fidentiis, Francisco Raquel from Enemasuno, Daragh Quinn from Nomura, Stefan Nedialkov from Citigroup, Alvaro Serrano from Morgan Stanley, Robert Noble from RBC and have a few questions on the NII. The loans are growing by 13%, but net interest income is growing by only 6% year-on-year. Do you expect NII and loan growth to converge during to converge during the coming quarters?
Angel Cano Fernandez
Head of Investor Relations
First of all, then the lagging trend behind the 6% just talking about the retail business; however, the commercial business is growing at expected pace and very close to the activity growth. So without considering the global markets activity in the country, NII has been growing by 11%. And this is more or less the pace we are expecting for the rest of the year to see how the net interest income is growing very close to the activity growth.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Thank you. NII is decreasing by 2% in constant euros with net interest margin decreasing. Why should we expect this trend to continue? Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: Yes, this is quarter-on-quarter numbers. As Angel has just said, we've seen a lower loan growth in this first quarter versus the fourth quarter of last year, just 2%, which is actually a fairly good number if we take into account the seasonality that always takes place in the first two months of the year in Mexico. And also the only - the other reason that explains it is the lower contribution from our global market activities, which was fairly low during this first quarter. Going forward, as Angel has just said, we expect NII to converge with the very strong loan growth that we are experiencing.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
And regarding the outlook for net interest margins in Mexico, which segments of the market are you prioritizing? Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: What is happening and this is has been true for the last year - is we've seen a very strong growth in the commercial side. That's true for public sector, for large corps and also for SMEs in Mexico. This is what is driving growth and growing at a trend of - at a rate, sorry, of around 24%-25% per year. That's something that we should expect to be maintained going forward.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay. And also regarding net interest income, when do you expect rates to go up in Mexico and what would be the impact on the Mexican business with rising Mexican interest rates? Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: As we've said in the past, we are expecting Mexico to follow whatever the Fed does. So our expectation is for an eventual increase in interest rates in the country. We have a positive sensitivity to increases in interest rates in Mexico. For every 100 basis points increase, the NII impact will be a positive 7.4%.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay. Regarding costs in Mexico, Mario Ropero from Fidentiis, Francisco Raquel from Enemasuno and Stefan Nedialkov from Citigroup are asking or stating that we are making investments there, but could you give an update on the investments still to be done and the calendar, when should costs start to grow in-line with inflation again?
Angel Cano Fernandez
Head of Investor Relations
If you remember, we launched an investment plan, a 3-year investment plan, finishing some time in 2016. So what we are expecting to see, a flattish evolution of cost in - I mean flattish; talking about the inflation evolution for 2016. But all-in-all and taking to consideration the revenue trend what we are expecting is to see NII growing faster than this quarter and being able to offset this cost trend during 2015. So what we are expecting during the year 2015 is to see how the jaws are widening.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
And regarding the pace of the program where have we - so I would say…
Angel Cano Fernandez
Head of Investor Relations
Yes.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay. As you know - the expected end of the plan was 2016?
Angel Cano Fernandez
Head of Investor Relations
Yes, this is our ultimate general forecast, is to finish the investment there in terms of the network, in terms of the most important investment for technology and the digital transformation of the country. So - and is the time when we are going to see how the precision is starting to go down, affecting positively the jaws and the P&L account?
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay, thank you. And asset quality in Mexico, Britta Schmidt from Autonomous and Mario Ropero from Fidentiis asks why the pickup in provision charges and what can we expect going forward, if our mix is moving away from credit cards, do stable loan losses imply worsening quality in other parts of the portfolio? Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: No, the increase in provisions is only based on loan growth, as we've mentioned before. The actual NPL ratio is down by 8 basis points. Cost of risk is actually slightly down from last year, and we are gaining market in actually the very lowest risk assets. So going forward, as I said before, our guidance remains the same and the cost of risk should remain around 3.5%.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay, moving on to questions regarding Spain - and obviously a lot of questions on the NII - Luis Pena from [Sidnidef], Alfredo Alonso from Kepler, Vitor Roma from Goldman, Britta Schmidt from Autonomous, , Rohith Chandra-Rajan from Barclays, Francisco Raquel from Enemasuno, Mario Ropero from Fidentiis, Carlos Peixoto from BPI, Raoul Leonard from Deutsche, Laura Hernandez from Invercaixa, Daragh Quinn from Nomura, Stefan Nedialkov from Citigroup, Alvaro Serrano from Morgan Stanley - I think I would have taken less basically saying all of you - Benjie Creelan-Sandford from Macquarie, Carlo Digrandi from HSBC, Ignacio Cerezo from Credit Suisse, Alex Koagne from Natixis and Andrea Filtri from Mediobanca, all ask about obviously NII evolution in Spain. Specifically on the evolution, can we talk a little bit about loan growth quarterly trends? Maybe let's start talking a little bit about volumes and then we will move on to spreads, okay. Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: Okay, I will try to answer both. We have a year-on-year increase in NII line - in NII, sorry, of 3.9%, which we believe is fairly strong number. It is true that quarter-on-quarter NII is down by 2.8%. We must remember that we had a very strong fourth quarter last year. We've seen a flat loan growth in this first quarter. Excluding repos, it's a minus 0.1%, so effectively flat. Customer spread has remained stable. It's down by 1%, by 1 basis points, sorry. We've seen a very strong reduction in deposit cost, 16 basis points, but it has been offset by an even higher 17 basis points reduction in asset yields. The main reason behind this strong reduction in asset yield is actually the reduction in the Euribor rate. It explains 70% of the impact. Actual margin pressure, spread compression, it's only 5 basis points in the quarter. As we expect, the last thing, as we've said contribution from the ALCO portfolio should continue to go down during 2015. The outlook, though, remains the same. We are expecting loan growth for 2015 between 1% and 2%. Regarding spreads, I think we should expect a stability going forward. And the overall NII guidance remains what we gave at the beginning of the year, so in the low single-digit is what we are aiming to achieve in 2015.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
And that is excluding Catalunya Caixa obviously. And specifically, a little bit more detail on some of the things that you've mentioned, Jaime, specifically on deposit rates. Could you let us know about the back book and the front book regarding the decrease in wholesale funding costs in the quarter and how that is performing? Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: Okay. On the deposit side, the overall - the total cost of time deposits is down to 1.12% in the first quarter of 2015, down from 1.27% at the end of 2014. Front book is down to 28 basis points, so a pretty similar number from what we had at the end of 2014. So as you can see, we still have positive tailwinds coming from a lower funding cost number.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay. And regarding the ALCO, a little bit more detail on the average duration yield and unrealized gains on the ALCO portfolio in relation to margins. Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: Well, we still have a very strong unrealized capital gains in the Spanish ALCO portfolio. They are around €2 billion. The total size of the portfolio remains pretty similar from what we had at the end of last year at €36 billion. As you know, pretty much everything is our sovereign bonds. The average duration it's around 3.3%, 3.3 years sorry and the average yield is above 2.75%.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay. And regarding loan growth, a little bit more color on the growth that we see, consumer and wholesale portfolios how that is evolving? Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: As we saw in the fourth quarter of 2014, again this first quarter we saw increase in the commercial segment. We grew the commercial loan portfolio by 1% during the quarter. So pretty consistent, which is what our expectations are for 2015. In the case of the retail segment, it's down by a little bit over 1%, as you know, mainly driven by the mortgage portfolio, which we expect it to continue to deleverage during 2015. So I would say that no surprises on volume terms in this first quarter.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay, thanks. And that pretty much covers everything on the NII. Moving on to costs and transformation costs, Britta Schmidt from Autonomous and Francisco Raquel from Enemasuno asks if the results include any additional costs for the digitization program in the first quarter of 2015 and the €120 million, which is, as answered in the first question, the transformation costs in Spain in the quarter what are the cost savings expected and the cost evolution in Spain in 2015 and 2015?
Angel Cano Fernandez
Head of Investor Relations
As I mentioned in the presentation, we booked €120 million more or less for restructuring, in the end digitizing the network and the business in Spain. So in this case [indiscernible] compared with last year we are trying to have more or less the same amounts of restructuring provisions every quarter. So at the end we are going to offset, as I mentioned during the presentation, with net trading income during the year. So we are not expecting to have any negative impact from this restructuring process. The effect on savings in the earnings is the one I mentioned during the last quarter result presentation, so we are expecting this about 2% reduction at the end of the year in Spain and we expect to have another reduction in 2016 thanks to this restructuring process.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Thank you. Moving on to other income, what is driving this strength there and specially the deposit guarantee fund and the resolution fund as you know go in that line? And so what are we seeing there and specifically what do we expect to book in the fourth quarter of 2015 regarding deposit guarantee fund and if we think the SRM charges for the Group in 2016 will be lower than the total contributions in 2015. Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: Okay. First of all, yes, the other income line is mainly driven by deposit guarantee fee plus the changes in accounting of the deposit guarantee fee plus the resolution fund. In the case of the deposit guarantee scheme, as you know, an accounting change took place last year that was conveniently explained. The 2015 impact will be accounted fully in the fourth quarter of this year and then number - the overall number will be pretty similar to what we saw in 2014 around €200 million. In the case of the deposits on the resolution fund, as you know it's not easy to calculate. We do not have the full numbers of all our peers, but our expectation is for that number to be around €100 million. And again we will also be accounted fully in the fourth quarter of this year. Regarding the 2016 number yes, as you know that number the way that is calculated will change in 2016 that will benefit Spanish banks and our expectation today is for that number to go down by roughly a third.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay, thank you. And asset quality in Spain, Carlos Peixoto from BPI was asking about NPLs and cost of risk guidance. I think we already answered that previously. Moving on to Caixa Catalunya, Luis Pena from Sidnidef asks if BBVA reiterates the €300 million contribution from the bank as of 2018 and when will the integration of the bank be completed? Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: Yes, we do reiterate the guidance of €300 million from 2018 and integration took place the 24th of April when we signed the transaction. So it's integrated within the BBVA Group as of that date. So you should input in your numbers around 8 months of Caixa Catalunya in 2015.
Angel Cano Fernandez
Head of Investor Relations
We are going to complete this integration by the end of first half of 2016. And another piece of information important is Catalunya Caixa contribution in terms of net income for the end of this year 2015. That’s why we are expecting to see a neutral contribution for the rest of the year.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay, Raoul Leonard from Deutsche Bank asks about the update on the acquisition versus the time we announced the deal in July last year. Is it better or worse than expected? Can we provide a sense on the timing of cost synergies, investments, fair value adjustments and P&L impacts in 2015 and 2016? And Damien Souchet from Autonomous specifically asks about the guidance on the €450 million of restructuring costs for Catalunya Bank? Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: Okay. As Angel has just said, in 2015 we expect a neutral bottom line contribution from Catalunya Caixa. On the NII line the contribution will be around €200 million. Regarding cost synergies, we continue to expect a reduction in the cost base of around 40% by 2018. The total restructuring cost that we expect to face remain at around €450 million. Accounting wise we expect to recognize in the PPA roughly €250 million of this figure. So the remaining €200 million will be accounted between 2015 and 2017. The actual additional number expected for 2015 will be €50 million. I think that I have answered - oh, yes, regarding the 2016 number we expect it to be slightly positive.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay, regarding real estate… Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: Oh, yes, one - sorry, one last thing; we do not expect goodwill nor significant badwill in 2015.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay, important piece of information regarding real estate, Britta Schmidt from Autonomous and Carlos Peixoto from BPI ask what volume of real estate in Euro millions has been sold in the first quarter in Spain?
Angel Cano Fernandez
Head of Investor Relations
Here I have the number. It's at the end of the first quarter €360 million of sales. And what is more important is this is the tenth month in a row having positive results when we compare the sale price with the net book value. And at the end of this first quarter having - we recorded €17 million of profit regarding the sales. So this is part of our new strategy from the second quarter of last year when we tried to look at the sales from a more value point of view and just trying to preserve the value of the whole stock.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay, thank you. Moving on to South America excluding Venezuela, Carlo Digrandi from HSBC regarding the outlook asks if we can give an idea about future trends and management expectations in the regions. And also in this sense, specifically regarding asset quality Mario Ropero from Fidentiis asks about the trends and detail regarding NPLs. And also Mario specifically asks about the NII in Peru and Chile, why weak in Peru and the guidance regarding Chile. Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: Okay. Regarding the overall guidance for the region, after the very depreciated exchange rate that we've used for Venezuela we need to slightly change the guidance including Venezuela for the region. As you know, at the beginning of the year we are expecting the rest of the countries in Latin America to offset the 50% reduction that we were expecting coming from Venezuela. As the Venezuelan contribution for the Group will remain fairly similar to what we've seen in this first quarter, the rest of the countries will not be able to compensate but around 50% of the reduction. So a slight decrease in the contribution of the Latin American region of around €50 million. Regarding NII dynamics - and now ex Venezuela and the region continues to behave very strongly. Volumes are growing at around 12%. That is true for loans and pretty much deposits also. And the NII line is reflecting this loan growth increasing by 12% year-on-year. This increase in NII line can be expected going forward converting to volume growth. Regarding lower contribution from Chile and Peru, answering Mario, it's true contribution in Chile has been significantly down from last year, year-on-year it's down by 11%. It is true that we've seen lower activity growth. But the main reason has been the revaluation of the UFA after the inflation readings that we saw in the quarter. So the remaining evolution of the different segments in terms of not only volumes, but also spreads, continue to remain strong. In the case of Peru, it is true that year-on-year NII is only increasing by 1% and the main reason being lower customer spreads on the U.S. dollar portfolio. That portfolio reduces spreads by 32 basis points and that's the main reason why NII was not as strong as initially expected. Regarding asset quality, I think that I've pretty much answered before; cost of risk remains at 1.2% and it is true that we were expecting a slight increase and we still expect a slight increase in the cost of risk number. But that hasn't happened as of the first quarter. Regarding NPLs evolution, they have increased slightly, but following loan growth. So in terms of the NPL ratio, remains around 2.3%.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay. A couple of questions clarifying Venezuela, Rohith Chandra-Rajan from Barclays and Mario Ropero from Fidentiis, Raoul Leonard from Deutsche, Ignacio Cerezo from Credit Suisse and Daragh Quinn from Nomura asks if we can discuss a little bit the impact of the Venezuela devaluation and our expectations for the performance of the business. And also questions on book value, the book value invested in Venezuela, if we get a tax shield on the hits from writing down Venezuela's investment and what was the impact to the first quarter tangible book value considering the evaluation adjustments in the number? Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: Okay, a lot of questions. Okay, as you know, the exchange rate that we used to account for year- end numbers was VEF12 against the dollar. The new exchange rate that we are using is the SIMADI exchange rate, which is now at VEF195 against the dollar. So a ##% devaluation as you can imagine, it has completely changed the contribution of Banco Provincial to the Group. Just to give you a sense of the numbers, the overall asset base that at the end of the year was €22 billion is down to less than €2.5 billion. So a very, very significant decrease. That is also true for the P&L account. Year-to-date contribution is down to €15 million in net attributable profit, and as I said, this is pretty much the number that we should expect for the year as quarter-on-quarter contribution will be pretty much negligible. This lower contribution can also be seen in the rest of the P&L line and year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter contributions are down between 60% and 90% following the depreciation. In terms of book value, the net book value plus evaluation adjustments after these FX valuation adjustment is taken into consideration is down to €153 million down from $1.58 billion that we saw at the end of the year. It does not create or generate a tax shield. Regarding the performance of the business, which was a question that Rohith asked, the Bank remains very strong locally. Volume growth is very strong. We continue to provide very good service quality to our clients loan to deposit ratios remain around 70%, NPL ratio is 0.4%, cost is risk is really good. Customer spreads remain around 19%, so we are still providing a wonderful service quality to our clients and we continue to manage what is a very strong commercial franchise in the country.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Thank you. A couple of questions on Turkey, Vitor Roma from Goldman Sachs, Mario Lodos from Sabadell and Damien Souchet from Autonomous ask if we expect closing of Garanti stake - the increase in Garanti stake in the second quarter of 2015. And then also what about the negative impact expected for the deal since we announced €1.5 billion when the deal was launched?
Angel Cano Fernandez
Head of Investor Relations
We don't have any specific date for the closing of this transaction. Our expectation is someday mid-June, but could be earlier and could be later. But normally it should be at the end of the second quarter of this year. So what we are not expecting is to add any result - from this additional investment in Turkey before the third quarter of the year. Regarding the negative impact expected for this deal, I think the best number today is €1.5 billion, is the number we said at the beginning of this transaction and we prefer not to tell you any other number because the volatility of this number is there. It depends on the currency volatility and the market price volatility as well. So in the end is - I think this is the central scenario for the time being and in a couple of months we will have the definitive one. So it's an accounting event. It's not an economic one.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
Okay, I think that covers all - pretty much business areas, just a few last questions regarding liquidity and ALCO. Carlos Peixoto from BPI asks if we can update on refinancing schedules and amount of ECB eligible assets and the current EBC exposure, which is also something that Alex Koagne from Natixis was asking regarding our TLTRO position, what - do we expect the June TLTRO to happen? It seems like deleveraging in Spain is less pronounced than the benchmark, meaning that Spanish banks including BBVA should be in the position to raise a sizable amount. Do you see enough growth to raise your full potential take-up? Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: Okay, the loan to deposit ratio remains fairly strong we are seeing as we've discussed before, flat numbers on loans and still strong numbers on deposit growth. So loan to deposit ratios have been stable pretty much for the last five, six quarters now. Regarding funding plans, we have maturities this year of around €13 billion. As we said before, our expectation is to refinance roughly 50% of these numbers. Of course everything is based on market conditions. We've already done two transitions. We've done a €1.5 billion Cedulas and a €1.5 billion AT1 in this first quarter. So we are well ahead of our funding plans. And regarding senior and secure, we have maturities of roughly €6 billion and we haven’t made that decision yet what we will do with this. Probably once we have a clear view of TLAC, we can potentially do something. Regarding ECB, as you know, at the end of the year we have taken a total of €5.2 billion in the first two auctions in September and December. We took an additional €2 billion in March. So we currently have €7.2 billion from the ECB. We haven't made a decision on what we will do in the following three auctions, on June, September and December. But it's perfectly reasonable to expect that additional can take place. Regarding the assets that we have - the eligible assets that we have are in the range of between €55 billion and €60 billion pretty similar number from what we had last year.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Head of IR
And the last question we have is on the corporate center, Damien Souchet from Autonomous asks for the guidance for this year and going forward on the contribution of the corporate center to the bottom line. Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: Yes, we had a very strong first quarter and that's even without the CNCB capital gain. We had very strong capital gains coming from the industrial portfolio. But as I think we've said during 2014, something in the range of between €300 million and €350 million per quarter will be the negative contribution that we should expect coming from the corporate center.
Luisa Gomez Bravo
Operator
Thank you. As you know just a little point on that; all the corporate operations will be booked here, so the final number will depend on the booking of those operations. And that concludes the Q&A session. Again, IR team will be available for any other issues you may have during the day. Thank you very much. Thank you, Angel. Thank you, Jaime.
Angel Cano Fernandez
Head of Investor Relations
Thank you all. Jaime Sáenz de Tejada: See you next quarter. Thank you.