Carlos Torres Vila
Management
Good morning, and thank you, Luisa. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to BBVA’s third quarter 2016 results presentation via webcast. First of all, excuse my voice but I have a quite a cold this morning, so you might notice that along the presentation. Apart from that, we have had a very strong quarter as we had last quarter with €965 million attributable profit, which I think shows very well the strength of our business model and our portfolio which despite the environment, the low rates, the weakness in the markets, the uncertainties in various countries, the Brexit, Spanish political situation, the Turkey events, has shown that strength. We continue to have positive trend in recurring revenue growing at 5.6% in constant euros versus the third quarter of last year with good cost controls. We have registered a one-off charge in the quarter of €94 million, which is a restructuring charge associated with our continued efforts in cost reduction and funded by net trading income. The net trading income in the quarter is partly due to the sale of an additional 0.75% stake in CNCB and we sold that with €75 million capital gain. Risk indicators remain strong with reduction of NPLs of nearly €600 million versus June and low levels of provisioning and cost of risk of 0.9%. Very good news also in capital, outstanding I would say capital generation in the quarter, 29 basis points, which means that we have achieved the 11% target that we have set for ourselves and clearly ahead of schedule on that count. We have a clear priority of optimizing our capital, clear focus on profitable growth, as I have insisted before, and I think that’s showing. So overall, we have had €965 million, which represents 23.1% growth on current euros ex-corporate operations and 37.4% in constant euros versus a year-ago. Now beyond the good growth rates, I am particularly satisfied to see the effects of our focusing on two of the six strategic priorities; on capital and on efficiency, and I’ll talk more on that. Looking at the underlying trends. Net interest income grows steadily at 5.5% and the quarter was also good in fees and commissions, growing at 6.1% and both items are of course very core to support our earnings. Net trading income also was very significant with €577 million, which includes the €75 million I just alluded to on the CNCB disposal. But also we had some positive net trading income associated with markets and the ALCO portfolio. That compares with a very low quarter a year ago, if you recall. Overall, very good total revenue growth at 12.7%. Costs are growing however at 4.3%, so we have clear positive jaws this quarter and that reflects the cost controls. I mentioned three months ago that - and before as well, that efficiency is one of our strategic priorities and we are very committed to pushing that - pushing the entire organization to higher levels of efficiency. And in fact, the €94 million restructuring charge in this quarter is yet another example of the initiatives that I will comment further along the presentation. Lower down the P&L, impairments are flat, behaving well, provisioning levels are lower, including the restructuring charges I just mentioned, so very solid and very good quarter results. Breaking that down by geography illustrates well the value of our diversification and the strength of our portfolio with positive growth rates in the U.S. 2.3%; and Spain of 50%; Mexico maintaining strong double-digit growth; Turkey very impressive, 91.5%; and South America a decrease of 7.4%, that was due mostly to the impact of the non-deductible hyperinflation adjustment in Venezuela. On the accumulated result for the nine months, €2,797 million, that’s a growth of 54.7% at current exchange rates and 98.1% at constant exchange rates. Ex-corporate operations, which you’ll recall were negative one year ago because we did the Garanti transaction, so if we strip that out, ex-corporate operations the growth rate in constant euros is 10.8%. And as you can see, the trends in both revenues and costs are better than in prior quarters, in particular as it regards the evolution of costs and the strong pre-provision profit which reaches almost €8.9 billion and growing at nearly 7%. Below that impairments are also lower, asset provisions supporting the bottom line. Moving onto the evolution of revenues. Net interest income of €4.3 billion, growing 3% quarter-on-quarter and 5.5% versus a year-ago, especially high growth in emerging markets. We had a good quarter in fees, growing at 2.2% or 6.1% versus a year-ago in all areas except in Spain, and I will comment a bit more on that. But we had a good quarter in fees in the U.S. and in South America, and of course this is another area of focus in the lower interest rate environment going forward. Net trading income, I commented it was strong at €590 million including the €75 million of CNCB and total revenue growth 12.7%, which is a slight decrease versus last quarter when we had the VISA divestment, if you recall. So you can see that in the net trading income drop as well as in the gross income drop but very healthy 12.7% growth rate in revenues. Moving onto expenses. I mentioned already this is one of the priorities, more so given the high pressure we have on the top line in some of the developed markets. So clearly costs are a management priority, and will continue to be. As you can see on the slide, the costs have grown at a decreasing rate quarter-after-quarter as a result of the controls, the cost controls and the measures that we’re taking, and as a result, the operating jaws are closing. They are almost there crossing. Costs growing at 7.4%. revenues at 7.1% for the Group. Efficiency has improved in the year of 50 bps to 51.8%, remains below the peer group average which is well in excess of 65%. In September, we have completed the CatalunyaCaixa merger successfully and we plan to accelerate the integration, the cost synergies by one year. In terms of the measures that we’re taking, the overall plan has several initiatives across different levers. The key ones would be around distribution model transformation, which is clearly related to the investments we’re making to transform our business model towards digital, and we’re already having specific measures that I will comment on. Second important element is the operations model transformation; centralizing, digitizing, automating. There is huge potential here and we have defined a reference model and we’re implementing this by country. Thirdly, the engineering models on the infrastructure and the software development, which is critical to enable our strategy. So we are adopting the new paradigms of Infrastructure-as-a-Service leveraging the cloud, as well as in the new way of developing software and DevOps. And then there are others more associated with specific areas like in marketing or better use of our corporate premises and our organizational and workforce-related measures. And you can see in this slide a non-exhaustive illustration of some of the measures, for example, in Spain banking activity, we have already accomplished the integration of CatalunyaCaixa with a reduction of 436 branches, which have been closed already. Additional 100 branches will be closed before the year end. We estimate 2,000 exits in Spain in the year in the banking activity. We are working on the tellers’ optimization, reengineering of some of the back-offices and recoveries, SMEs. In the U.S., we had a significant streamlining of the CIB business. In the corporate center, we’ve signed a few partnerships that you might have seen announced with the likes of Red Hat or Cisco or Amazon Web Services to incorporate some of those tools and improve our efficiency, and we will continue to implement further measures as we go on in the next few quarters and we will be sharing the results as we go. As a result of the revenues and cost trends, pre-provision profit reaches just above €3 billion, growing 23.3% versus a year-ago. The drop of 6% in Spain is because of the weaker environment but it’s growing nicely in the U.S. 14%; in Mexico, 12%; Turkey, 81%; South America, 3%. It’s a lower growth in South America because of the Colombia - the impact of the Colombian rate rise and also the Argentinean inflation, but very strong provision profit. And then asset quality continues to be good and the risk profile of the Group continues to show strength. Impairments come down 2.3% or 6.3% in the quarter. Cost of risk is flat at very low levels, 0.9%. NPLs are down by €2.1 billion, which leaves the NPL flat. Coverage is down from 74% to 72%. That has a lot to do with just write-offs in Spain, but no change in the underlying coverage. So as you can see, we continue to perform better than our guidance in terms of cost of risk and that’s the case across most of our footprint. On capital. Our capital ratio reached the 11% fully loaded at the end of September, which was the target for sometime next year, so clearly in advance. Impressive 29 basis points capital generation. We’ve seen the contribution of earnings of 24 basis points, dividends detracting 8 basis points, so 16 basis points related to that organic part. And then despite the fact that we had to see the downgrade of Turkey by Moody’s, which has had a negative impact of 15 basis points on our core capital ratio at the Group level. We have been able to grow 13%. So compensate that and grow an additional 13%, so 28 basis points increase because of other elements. Part of that has to do with positive developments in the markets, to which we have some exposure in things like Telefónica stake or the CNCB stake, as well as the fixed income portfolios, sovereign and corporate. But a significant part of those 28 basis points have to do with our efforts to allocate capital more efficiently and optimize how we do that. So focusing on growth that is profitable and really not deploying capital where that profitability is not there. So that shows in a good evolution of risk-weighted assets, which has contributed significantly to the quarter evolution to the generation of capital in the quarter. Also, as in previous quarters, I would highlight the high quality of our capital. We remain as one of the banks with the highest risk-weighted asset density and lower leverage. And I would remind you also that apart from reaching our targets, we have also filled the tier-1 and tier-2 buckets already. Looking at other metrics that are also quite strategic. As in prior quarters, we have grown our digital customer base and our mobile customer base. Digital customers are more than 17 million, growing 20% versus a year-ago. Mobile customers 11 million, growing 41% and with a penetration of 23%. We continue with our efforts to drive digital sales also through digital channels, which is also one of our six priorities with constant monitoring and seeking for - looking for customer convenience and the best possible experience. As you can see, the percentage of all units that are sold digitally continues to grow every quarter and we are now between 15% and 25% of all sales, all unit sales are through digital channels over total sales, and that was only 10% or less, as you can see in 2015. So not only does this represent more business, but it’s also a more efficient way to drive the business, and what’s more important with higher customer loyalty and satisfaction, which is another of our priorities to drive up our NPS. And we have continued to work on improving this aspect, the customer experience. I’d highlight a few things this quarter. On one end on adapting our relationship model, a few examples, we’ve launched the Remote Manager model in Mexico that has been so successful in Spain. We are also testing that in Turkey. We have in Turkey launched the mobile appointment system, so that you can take a branch appointment through the mobile phone. In Argentina, OPINATOR to get customer feedback. Experiencia Única, which has had such tremendous positive impact in Mexico, we’ve exported that to Peru. We’ve also continued to drive sales through digital channels, as I just mentioned, and launched new digital products and functionalities. Some examples are the instant payments in Spain mobile-to-mobile together with the rest of the industry, and it has been quite a great success in our particular case for sure; cross-selling of digital insurance in Mexico, the Signature Express product loan in the U.S. We’ve had great success with BBVA Valora in Spain. So this is a great tool for clients and non-clients to help them make a decision when they are buying a home because this is a very easy tool that you can very quickly just find out the value of market - current market, going market value of any property in Spain. And the results have been amazing. Even just after one month, more than half-a-million users have been using this tool and this has already led to a significant increase, for example, in mortgage applications, more than 40% increase in the mortgage applications, more than half of the applications are coming from this tool. And what’s even more important is better funnel metrics of those applications. We also have good metrics in the PFM tools in Spain or in Mexico and other things in the U.S. external account aggregations. In Peru, Cotizar, which is a pricing model for consumer and commercial loans, and a great use in Turkey of the mobile notifications in online banking. Anyway I could go on, but let me move on to the area results. In Spain, banking activity had results of €317 million, a growth of 23.8% versus last year, a decline versus last quarter because of the VISA Europe disposal we had last quarter. We have pressure on core revenues. Net interest income comes down 5% due to lower activity and lower ALCO contribution. Fees and commissions are also down 9.5%, although our commissions here do not include those associated with insurance. If we were to include them here, as our competitors do, the drop would be 4.8%, not the 9.5%. And for the nine months, accumulated versus last year, the drop would be 1.3%. This is because of the strong performance in the sales of insurance products in the network. In Spain, control of costs continues, including the additional restructuring charge that has been registered. Good news on loan provisioning, and accumulated result of €936 million. In activity, the leveraging continues. So the growth in commercial is not offsetting deleveraging in mortgages and in the public sector. And then we have of course focus on profitable growth in Spain. Customer funds are also flat, but good trend in demand deposits growing 20%. Key ratios. We have increased our spread by 8 bps as the cost of deposits has come down from 37 basis points to 30 basis points. There might be still room to improve this as the Euribor has not been fully priced. Risk indicator is strong. NPLs down by €112 million and the ratio drops to 5.9%. Cost of risk flat at a low 0.4%, and efficiency clearly it’s a management priority, we are working really hard on this and we will continue to do so. As you can see, the cost growth has been coming down quarter-on-quarter, it’s at 6.6%, and that has basically to do with the CatalunyaCaixa integration, which accounts for almost all of that. And that integration we can say has been a complete success. We expect €200 million cost synergies, which is a 6% of the current cost base and that will start to materialize by the end of this year and we’ve brought it forward by one year. And this implies, as you know, the closing of 436 branches in Catalunya and nearly 1,700 exits of the 2,000 that we estimate for the year in Spain. Moving on to Real Estate. This quarter we continued to see positive market trends, demand increasing 13%, prices up 2%, housing permits are up 40%. Positive evolution of all leading indicators. And we continue to reduce the negative impact of this activity in our P&L by 24%. Our exposure is also down 13.7% and our goal is to keep reducing the negative impact. We expect that to continue overall in Spain. Including both banking activity and real estate, the result for the quarter is €211 million, growing 50% versus a year-ago and for the nine months €621 million, growing almost 9%. Moving on to the U.S. Quarterly results of €120 million, growing 2.3%. The drop versus last quarter is mostly related to the evolution of net trading income. Recurring revenues, as you can see, have positive trend with net interest income growing as we see the repricing of the asset book on the back of the rise in the interest rates. And we had a good recovery in fees in the quarter supported by CIB business. Costs are under control with 2% with a good evolution versus last quarter - versus the rate of growth that we had in prior quarters. Impairments also have a positive evolution. We have the Shared National Credit review at Compass, was completed during the quarter and the impact was not material. And in the year, we are at €298 million attributable profit, down 24% due to the impairments we had in the oil and gas portfolio at the beginning of the year. Regarding activity. Lending activity decreases. It’s actually flat, as we focus on the more profitable segments in that search for profitability versus growth which is key to our strategy. We want to invest our capital to maximize our profitability. Customer funds growing 1%, 1.2%, improving our mix to demand deposits. Key ratios in the U.S. The customer spread has an upward trend. As I mentioned, the yields go up with the rise in interest rates. And as you know, we have quite high sensitivity to interest rates hikes in the U.S. Risk indicators remained stable after the impacts we had in the first quarter, we are back to normal levels. Cost of risk is better than expected at 0.4%, including that review by the Shared National Credit. And year-to-date, we are clearly better than guidance, which was 55 basis points. And in the efficiency, this is what I was alluding to before, better trend in both revenues and in costs, which is improving the efficiency level. Clearly, it’s the worst efficiency we have within BBVA and we have some room to improve that but management is squarely focused on this, pushing down costs with the initiatives in CIB including the exits I referred to and there is further room but you can see that already the rates of growth are coming down. In Turkey, despite the current environment in the country, the results for the third quarter are impressive, very good €141 million attributable profit growing 91%, and €464 million for the nine months, growing 46%. Comparison versus last quarter is affected by the VISA disposal in net trading income. But core revenues are performing very well and net interest income growing 11% with good price management. And that would be even higher, if you recall, we have the reclassification of the costs over the swaps. On a comparable basis, the growth of net interest income would be more like 22% in the quarter and 19% in the year. Fees are growing also at double-digit despite the regulatory pressure. Even though they come down in the quarter because of the Turkish Airlines one-off we had in the second quarter. We don’t have net trading income in the quarter, but we’ve had a negative one last year, so that’s a positive in the comparison. Cost control, positive jaws. Costs growing at 4% versus a year-ago, and this is including a €36 million, which is a one-off item associated with a change in the accounting for a brand at the consolidated level for BBVA. So, very good evolution of costs and outstanding bottom line trend. In terms of activity, the loan growth slowing down to 8%, 7.4%, mainly explained by foreign currency lending, which is down, while loans in lira are growing still at 13% and we are gaining market share there with growth in the most profitable retail segments, so we’re seeing some deceleration but we are growing in the most profitable segments. Key ratios in Turkey. The customer spread increases to 5.59% on the back of good price management and reduction in the cost of deposits due to the lower interest rates, which impact positively in Garanti’s case. Risk indicators excellent; sound asset quality. Slight deceleration we have in the NPLs as some specific tickets are coming in in the corporate book, also some impact of the events of July and the aftermath of that. But as you can see, the cost of risk is decreasing to 1.1% and it’s in line with our expectations, which we expect to close around those expectations for the year in line with last year. Efficiency, impressive cost evolution in the year with very open jaws and efficiency at 39.1%, which is a very good level - and that’s including, as I said, the €36 million extraordinary impact in the quarter. Mexico. Another excellent quarter in Mexico, bottom line double-digit growth, good trends are maintained. So we have €486 million net profits growing 13%, and on an accumulated basis €1.441 million, that’s a growth of 11%. So we have top line growing double digits and that goes through the entire P&L. Core revenues - also fees are growing nicely, credit card consumer. And positive jaws, 10% versus 5.9% growth rates of revenues versus costs in the quarter. Impairments are growing but in line with the activity growth rates, and as I say, the bottom line growing at more than 10% at constant euros. Maybe the biggest headwind here has been the FX. The peso has depreciated significantly in the year almost 20%, so we have that impact in current euros that should be tampering down as the depreciation was significant after the summer of last year, so the comparison now for the last quarter shouldn’t be as dramatic. And no doubt, Bancomer continues to be the market leader in Mexico, the best ratios, profitability, ROE, ROA, NIMs, efficiency. In terms of activity growth, still at high levels, double-digit despite the certain slowdown we’re seeing. We’re increasing 11% year-on-year supported by SME, by consumer and also by other commercial. Even if the rate of growth of GDP might be slowing, what we have seen in the past few years is that Bancomer has been able to grow with GDP growth of 2%, 2.5%, has been able to grow double-digit, and that’s because of the under-penetrated system and the bankarization, progressive bankarization of an informal economy. Key ratios in Mexico. Spreads remain high, interest rate hikes have not been translated much into the asset yield because of the competitive dynamics. Risk indicators are stable. Cost of risk in line with our guidance of 350 basis points. We have an increase in the quarter due to the growth in the activity in SMEs and in consumer that I just mentioned. And then excellent behavior in terms of efficiency, which is already a highest - one of the highest in the Group and it compares well with the system, 41% versus 56%. Positive jaws in all quarters this year, which is quite a contrast with what we had in 2015. Finally in South America, we have had €179 million attributable profit. That’s a drop of 7% versus a year-ago with that impact of the hyperinflation in Venezuela that I mentioned. Gross income is growing double-digit, but costs are growing very much as well, impacted by the Argentinean inflation. And we follow that income before taxes grows 5.9% quarter-on-quarter or 10.5% year-on-year. Here we’ve also had, like in Mexico, the negative impact of the FX, which also in this case will be tampered as we move to the year-end, but all-in-all we’ll have an impact and we’ll probably be seeing a fall of around 15% in current euros for the entire ‘16 versus ‘15 results. In terms of activity. Business activity is decelerating towards more sustainable levels, 9.5% in lending and 14% in consumer - in customer deposits, customer funds. Key ratios. Customers spread - pressure on spreads in all countries, especially in Columbia because of the rising rates and the flattening curve, competition dynamics there as well and also in Chile with lower contribution of the UFs. Risk indicators, slight worsening, affected by the moderate macro growth, but very much in line with our expectations. Good coverage, NPL ratio 2.8%; cost of risk in line, 1.2%, still in good levels. And good efficiency levels despite the inflationary economies, and the impact of depreciation that in this case since we have some dollar-denominated expenses has a negative impact. So overall, concluding the presentation, we have what I think has been an excellent quarter. Solid revenue trends, increasing cost control efforts which will continue going forward very strongly, strong balance sheet, strong risk indicators heading the right way and capital levels ahead by almost a year. I’m particularly satisfied, as I mentioned, with the good dynamics and the progress shown so far in our strategic priorities which I shared with all of you more than a year ago. The whole organization is aligned to deliver ambitiously in this regard on all six fronts. As you have seen and I have explained, we’ve progressed very well in terms of developing product functionalities and adapting our distribution model to improve the customer experience, and that shows in our NPS. We have seen exponential growth in digital sales. We have achieved our capital target to a large part because of our focus on optimizing capital and how we deploy it and the focus on profitability, which is priority number four. Cost control measures to gain efficiency which is number five. So very happy with the results, lots of work going forward, but we are all very committed to succeed in the transformation journey and we will continue to focus on these priorities, on these six fronts. Particularly important in Spain, which remains a very challenging market because of the negative interest rate environment and the low lending volumes. So reducing costs will be critical and ensuring the right use of our capital. It will be quite hard to grow our net interest income this year and fees and commissions will also remain under pressure this year. So we will continue to focus on costs and more initiatives there. U.S. should deliver better results than expected due to better cost of risk and the oil and gas exposure in Compass. Emerging markets will continue to be overall very supportive of growth, particularly in Mexico where Bancomer a clear leader. And overall, the diversification will continue to give us, we believe, a competitive advantage, particularly amongst European banks since most of our footprint is in geographies where the macro perspectives are improving next year and rates are on the rise. And nothing more. Thank you very much for your attention and we move on to the Q&A. Luisa? Luisa Gómez Bravo: Thank you, Carlos. We are ready now to take the first question, please.