Earnings Labs

Deutsche Bank AG (DB)

Q3 2012 Earnings Call· Tue, Oct 30, 2012

$31.36

-1.85%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the third quarter 2012 conference call of Deutsche Bank. Throughout today’s recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. This presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the conference over to Joachim Müller, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Joachim Müller: Yes, good morning. This is Joachim from Investor Relations. Welcome to the presentation of our third quarter results today from Berlin. I hope that you have received all of our documents. Just to remind you, take note of the cautionary statements regarding forward-looking statements at the end of the presentation. And with that, I will pass on to our CFO, Stefan Krause who will lead you for the presentation pack. Stefan?

Stefan Krause

Management

Thank you, Joachim and good morning once again and thank you for joining us on our third quarter results call. We are obviously aware of the difficulties it presents to many of you that we are reporting on the same day as one of our friendly Swiss competitors that’s out with a lot of news. Therefore I’ll make an effort to focus only on some selected points in my presentation. And to start saving time, therefore, I will leave chart 3 for you to read to yourself as I will cover the topics and messages in the different slides to come. Let me go over to slide 4, as you know, at our recent Investor Day, we have announced several changes that will impact our segment reporting for year-end 2012. The key changes are the setup of the non-core segment and the transfer of the passive asset management businesses from CB&S to asset management. Please note that all these changes are not reflected in the disclosure today, we’re presenting – that we’re presenting to you and have generally left our disclosure format unchanged for this quarter to avoid changing it several times. I can tell you that many of my colleagues in finance are working very hard to prepare for our analyst session on the non-core segment, which is scheduled to take place on December 13. We will also aim to put you into a position to rework your models prior to the publication of our fourth quarter results on the 31st of January 2013. At this point I would also like to mention that as part of the resegmentation of our business we will assess the carrying value of the goodwill and the intangibles. Logically at this stage we cannot rule out an impairment charge. We are in the…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And the first question comes from Jernej Omahen from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Jernej Omahen – Goldman Sachs: Good morning. It’s Jernej here from Goldman Sachs. I just – I have two questions. The first one relates to the move by one of your competitors that we’ve seen this morning, UBS, where they’ve announced that they’re moving out, essentially, of their FICC operations outside of Switzerland, more or less. And the rationale that they give is they think that they can’t make an adequate return for their shareholders and even without FICC, which is the lowest ROE business, I think, within most investment banks currently given the capital intensity. They’re targeting a 15% pre-tax return on equity without their FICC operations. And I was wondering how do you think about that? So why is Deutsche Bank’s FICC operations so different that you can make those returns, the 15% ROE that other – your competitors think that they can’t? And the second question is how do you view the exit of, what I guess was a major competitor, whether that could be an opportunity? And the second question is just now going to be a traditional question on leverage, I guess. So, I think the leverage after this quarter is around 34-times, which is now the highest of any large European bank and I was just wondering, there’s a very detailed guidance on Core Tier 1 ratios, Basel 2.5, Basel 3, what is your sense of where sort of the comfort zone for the simple leverage ratio would be for Deutsche Bank? Thanks very much.

Stefan Krause

Management

Okay, Jernej. Good morning. Thank you for your questions. And I think you asked a good question, but obviously I would have to acknowledge that I haven’t seen all the details, obviously, of the UBS plans and that’s why please understand that I can’t comment in detail about it, but in general, as a market leader in fixed income, a reduction in capacity is obviously a good thing, to be honest. As we communicated at our Investor Day, we would expect a barbell-ing of the investment banking landscape where banks are either global universal banks or smaller niche players and the economics of Basel 3 that we said we also acknowledged at our Investor Day and other regulations makes it really increasingly difficult to achieve adequate returns when you are mid or low tier – when you only have a mid or low tier market share and we have explained to that. That’s what we believe this business will look like more – it’s a competition around scale. And we see it similar. We obviously are a market leader. We have that scale and therefore, we can – we believe that we can make money in this. We consider the investment required in our own platform to achieve our target returns under Basel 3 that they are substantial but obviously if you are a competitor that doesn’t start from the same strength, that’s being – and having already a strong scale and platform in there, it of course will be more difficult to make a decent return, but that’s why we feel quite comfortable. We told you that we anticipate that some competitors will leave that scene, which is traditionally what happens in these areas of consolidation. And then secondly your leverage number, we understand and appreciate the official discussion around it. Obviously, we believe that leverage is accrued in non-risk adjusted measure and should not be looked at in isolation. It’s also important to consider that the quality and sustainability of funding is more important as we have always told you. 30% of our adjusted assets are reverse repos, for example, in securities borrowed and cash deal from banks. So, of course, we could influence this ratio quite rapidly, and we don’t necessarily make a better bank out of Deutsche Bank, especially in these uncertain times where cash will be very important to hold, so, just a simple example, now if you look at leverage in isolation, you could come to wrong decisions when running a bank. Jernej Omahen – Goldman Sachs: Yes. Can I...?

Stefan Krause

Management

And, therefore, what we do acknowledge and what we have made over the last couple of quarters, as you know, we have continued to reduce our leverage ratio. We have put out a comparative number. There’s some confusion, obviously, of how to look at the number and some of the numbers provided were wrong. But we have – we’ve worked on and will continue, obviously, to focus on it, but we very much warn that looking at leverage is the wrong indicator to look at. It leads to wrong conclusions. Jernej Omahen – Goldman Sachs: Yes. Can I just ask one question on this 34% of the balance sheet, which is cash and reverse repos and basically absorbs no equity, according to your slide 26, I have a risk weight of below 1%. How much of Deutsche Bank’s revenues are associated to this part of the balance sheet broadly? Do you have a fence?

Stefan Krause

Management

Well on the cash, obviously, nothing, tiny, tiny, tiny, yes. Jernej Omahen – Goldman Sachs: Today nothing, yes.

Stefan Krause

Management

All this is part of our business, we hold this clearly to be prepared for the insecure environment. And the – as you know, the repo business is an important business for our clients. It’s certainly not a high margin business, but it is for our clients an important service we have to provide and it’s part of our business model. Jernej Omahen – Goldman Sachs: But it’s probably fair to say that this portion of your balance sheet is by far the most profitable of the entire group because it absorbs no equity, I assume?

Stefan Krause

Management

Well, if you do, yes, probably if we were to divide debt by this low levels of equity, it could be, yes. I don’t have the numbers off the top my head, but could be. Jernej Omahen – Goldman Sachs: And thank you very much, thanks.

Stefan Krause

Management

But obviously, it carries a bad leverage so it should be, in your definition, no good business. Jernej Omahen – Goldman Sachs: So my point is if you wanted to reduce the leverage, the return on equity of the group would be quite impacted, yes?

Stefan Krause

Management

I wouldn’t know. It’s so small, so forget it. It’s so small portion of the capital. So if you would do the math, it’s probably – it’s a high – very small portion, though. If you volume weight it versus the capital attached, it has probably very small impact. Jernej Omahen – Goldman Sachs: I guess this is why I’m asking the question, because I think the return on equity is disproportionate, so it’s a small portion of capital but it might be a big portion of ROE.

Stefan Krause

Management

Yes. Jernej Omahen – Goldman Sachs: If we could have the revenue on that figure, at some point in the future, that would be great. Thanks a lot.

Stefan Krause

Management

Okay. Jernej Omahen – Goldman Sachs: Thanks.

Stefan Krause

Management

Thanks, Jernej, for your question.

Operator

Operator

And the next question is from Christopher Wheeler from Mediobanca. Christopher Wheeler – Mediobanca: Yes, good morning. I’d like to ask you just a couple of questions about slide 29 and I apologize if I’m getting ahead of ourselves here. But on the cost, Stefan, you obviously showed similar data at the Investor Day, but can you just – are you further down the road from being able to tell us of the €4.5 billion of savings which you’ve shown there, the breakdown between what is effectively personnel costs and what is non-personnel costs, just roughly? But also just try and give us a flavor for what that means in terms of staff numbers because I don’t think you were keen to discuss that at the meeting back in September although you did say 100,000 staff and 30,000 contractors. And then just in line with that, just looking at the restructuring charges on the right-hand side, again, can you just give us some indication as to kind of split we should be expecting between the divisions, how much will fall broadly in the investment bank and how much will fall elsewhere? Thanks very much.

Stefan Krause

Management

Okay. On your last question, there’s a slide in our investor presentation that I can refer you to because we gave you a complete disclosure by business segments. The... Christopher Wheeler – Mediobanca: You did actually, yes. That’s fine. I’ve got them, yeah, sorry; I’m just looking at that now.

Stefan Krause

Management

(Inaudible), there we separated it out. You should see that and if you have... Christopher Wheeler – Mediobanca: Yeah, thanks.

Stefan Krause

Management

Further questions about it, we can answer them on the phone. Then in terms of numbers of head count, we on purpose are abstaining to give any specific head count numbers. And just please understand that there, for the sensitivity around it, we don’t disclose that number at this point in time. We will be reporting as soon as we are completed with our discussions with worker councils, etcetera, etcetera, and then obviously, we might then give you disclosures around these numbers. But at this point, I think it doesn’t make any sense to communicate these numbers. And we have given you a number of about €1.9 billion, what we called organizational streamlining, yes, and that, basically, you could take as a good proxy for the numbers, the personnel related expenses. But don’t forget that also in the streamlining we also have cuts in our hierarchy which means flattening of the hierarchy and things like that involved. So, just take it only as an approximate number. Christopher Wheeler – Mediobanca: Okay. Thanks very much, Stefan. Thank you.

Stefan Krause

Management

Thanks, Christopher.

Operator

Operator

And the next question is from Stuart Graham from Autonomous. Please go ahead. Stuart Graham – Autonomous: Hi, good morning. I had two questions please. Firstly your Basel 3 Core Tier 1 ratio, I know you don’t disclose it in the presentation but I estimate it’s around about 6.1% at the Q3 stage. Can you say if that’s roughly right? And the second question is on Liikanen, I know you probably think it won’t happen. But if it were to happen, could you give us some feel for what you think that does; A, to your business model; and B, does it impact your €4.5 billion cost savings given that was based around silo busting and I guess this is about putting silos back in place? Thank you.

Stefan Krause

Management

To start with the – Stuart, to start with your first question. I think I cannot confirm your 6.1%. It’s much, much closer to our January 1 target right now. Yes, so, it’s – and as you saw we made a substantial progress in the quarter. So, we are much higher than what you have calculated or estimated at this point. Stuart Graham – Autonomous: Could you tell us that number then? I mean all your peers tell us that number.

Stefan Krause

Management

Yes. Let me give you an approximate number. It’s about 7%. Stuart Graham – Autonomous: Right now?

Stefan Krause

Management

Right now. Stuart Graham – Autonomous: Okay, thank you.

Stefan Krause

Management

Yes. And then the – I think that on your Liikanen question, because there’s always two ways to look at Liikanen. The first way to – we just think that economically for Europe, it would be a mistake to implement Liikanen, more from an overall economic point of view. And that’s certainly our main concern, that it really doesn’t help us and it has quite significant competitive implications for Europe and has quite significant impacts on the general economy because it misses to really explain the role of banks and the role of somebody in the economy having to recycle money that is provided from the economy into business available money and into economic activity. We are, and especially that’s valid for Germany, we are a country that has a structural deposit overhang. And therefore, bank failers in Europe have been driven by structural deposit overhangs, have not been driven by any of the other concerns that politicians have today. And the fact that we failed to recognize that what we have to deal with is to make sense out of deposit overhangs and to use them and recycle them into economic activity, that that’s what is important and that’s at the end, the role of what a future European banking system should do and have to do, otherwise, we are creating exactly the banks that were the big failers in Europe. And the fact that Liikanen ignores that and ignores the true source of banking system problems has us concerned in the sense that hopefully the debate will show that there’s a thought process mistake on that. In terms of our bank, of course, we made some assumptions for our investor presentation and, of course, we assume that the global universal banking model is the one we’re going to be used and all our targets were related to our global universal banking approach. If that would be theoretically no longer possible, then, of course, we would have to restate all our targets and numbers because we would have to then take a deep look at what these impacts would be. But it’s premature to consider it because we hope still, obviously, that sense will prevail and that we understand in Europe that creating a problem with our structural deposit overhang, creating banks that have deposit overhangs will not be the solution to come to a better financial system. Stuart Graham – Autonomous: Presumably you’re doing some contingency with planning in terms of if this were to happen, what would be the impact. When do you think you would have some results of that?

Stefan Krause

Management

Well, we have done a fairly rough estimate of that. That is, of course, something you always do. But obviously, at the moment, we don’t comment on these numbers. You may understand, Stuart. Stuart Graham – Autonomous: Sure. I understand. Okay. Thank you.

Stefan Krause

Management

Thank you, Stuart.

Operator

Operator

And the next question is from Kian Abouhossein from JP Morgan. Please go ahead, sir. Kian Abouhossein – JP Morgan: Yes, hi. Apologies. I might have missed a slight part of what you said earlier, but you have this equity number which looks very good, equity sales and trading. And I was wondering, you indicate that your cash equity numbers were actually up quarter-on-quarter. I just wondered if you can talk a little bit conceptually of what’s driving that strong number. What are you doing as you indicate you’re gaining market share? And the second question is on your market risk-weighted asset slide 28, you indicated Basel 3.5 and 4, will not be a revision to Basel I and will not have a material impact the way I interpret it. And just wondered what your interpretation is of Basel 3.5 and 4. I assume you are referring to the trading risk review and proposal and if you could share some views of what you see as an interpretation of this? Thank you.

Stefan Krause

Management

Okay, let me start with our sales and trading cash equities quarter-on-quarter, what’s up. So, our market share gains occurred geographically in Europe and Asia. You know that our – that we had a good development in these two geographies. These are geographies where we normally are – have strength. We have improved – we saw improved client activity and it just shows our longer-term investments in this business. We saw in its – and I can only tell you good client activity and overall. And then we saw in the quarter, especially towards the end of the quarter, a much better market sentiment also in the U.S. Yes, that helped us. And as you know we have informed you and told you a couple of times that we have gotten to a much better U.S. position than we used to have and we are clearly now, after the crisis when we relate to our (inaudible) we believe ourselves to be a winner in the crisis. It’s reflected in this business that we have really – we have had some good strengths, yeah. So, in that sense, it was a sound business with geographically, Europe and Asia, with a good sentiment in the U.S. and our good market position and acceptance in the United States. So on your question on the trading book review, we obviously agree with the BCBS objective to seek a more consistent framework for our trading book risks. We would add that the fundamental reviews should cover the current hedge work of market risk capital framework in its entirety because I think it will help us all to get more clarification on this. We are very positive about the reviews; focus on concerns around value at risk and the risk of market illiquidity stemming from the…

Stefan Krause

Management

No. I think the indicator gives you the right reason. We are a really global diversified bank and we are more diversified than others are and, therefore, obviously, this is what our netting is recognizing. And, yes, we have a higher netting but that is our business model. The reason you build and create a business model is exactly to diversify risks is an old way of risk managing your business, and that’s what the bank does and the indicator tells you the bank does it well. Kian Abouhossein – JP Morgan: Okay. Thank you very much.

Stefan Krause

Management

Yes. Okay. Thanks, Kian.

Operator

Operator

And the next question is from Cyril Meilland from Cheuvreux. Cyril Meilland – Cheuvreux: Yes. Good morning. I have a question regarding the PBC business and especially the performance of Postbank. Because a large part of the increase in revenues quarter-on-quarter is coming from other products, so I just checked and it’s apparently not coming from PPA amortization which is relatively flat quarter-on-quarter. So could you comment – I think you mentioned some gains from disposals of the non-core assets of Postbank. So can you elaborate a bit more and tell us where this rise in revenues is coming from?

Stefan Krause

Management

Yes. As you know, Postbank – if you remember, when we acquired Postbank, we had shown you the balance sheet of Postbank, which roughly half was the core bank – the core retail bank that we were interested in and about €100 billion in assets were assets that we were not intending to hold over longer periods of time. By the way, Postbank was one of these classical banks with a deposit overhang that obviously was then forced to invest in other non-retail based assets, yes, and those create the problems we think that Liikanen doesn’t address very well. So in that sense, we went ahead and had announced that we will de-risk Postbank and we will cut their risk-weighted assets to – that at the time were around €70 billion to €80 billion to about €40 billion which is what we believe to – that we need to run a clean retail bank. And with now, obviously, the program that was started as the initiative of our new strategy, we have sped up the de-risking at Postbank again. It has done very well so far, but we did some additional measures. And what basically happened, because when we acquired Postbank, we had taken PPA effects on those assets and we had already taken some market valuation assessment, we were able to sell them better. Obviously, then we’ve generated some gains, yes? And that’s just the logic of and the results of our acquisition accounting, and that’s what you see reflected in terms when we talk about profitability. The PPA effect for Postbank in the quarter was about €190 million. So, obviously that was also a contributor to the good performance on the group level of the Postbank results. You will see that as we continue to de-risk assets that were part of the market adjustment, the market valuation adjustment in Postbank over the next couple of quarters, that we may see similar effects happening. Cyril Meilland – Cheuvreux: Sorry, but the PPA amortization that you mentioned on slide 35, is only 46 for the quarter. So, the €190 million you’re referring to...

Stefan Krause

Management

That is the irregular. We have... Cyril Meilland – Cheuvreux: Okay.

Stefan Krause

Management

Two components. We have regular PPA and irregular PPA. Cyril Meilland – Cheuvreux: Yes.

Stefan Krause

Management

And that’s only the irregular PPA. Yes? Cyril Meilland – Cheuvreux: Okay.

Stefan Krause

Management

Okay.

Operator

Operator

And the next question is from Derek de Vries from Bank of America. Derek De Vries – Bank of America: Hi, thanks for the questions. Just the last area I had that I want to touch on a little bit was litigation. I guess you guys are on track for about €1 billion of litigation charges this year. First is that the right level to think about as we think into 2013, 2014? Is about €1 billion of litigation charges is the right level? And then in your – I just sort of skimmed through your text around litigation. It looks like there’s a new issue that’s popped up and that’s U.S. embargoes and related matters. I was wondering if you could just give a little bit of color; what’s changed since Q2 that has caused you to add that to the text there? And then I guess the last issue on litigation is there was the charge in the quarter, what is that for? Is that – I assume it’s U.S. RMBS, but please correct if I’m wrong.

Stefan Krause

Management

Yes, Derek. Thanks for your questions. Obviously, I think this topic of litigation will keep us busy, as you correctly said, quite a while, you’re right in that. The problem is we don’t have any projections on these litigations as they are largely settlements or discussions in court cases, we can’t really project out numbers on specific periods. I think your number approximately will be close to that number you quoted for this year. Very difficult to say what the levels in the next couple of years exactly will be. You do know that we have a capital charge imposed by Basel to protect our capital. So our regulatory capital has a 2.5 – €12.5 billion risk weighted assets charge associated for litigation and that should cover litigation over the next couple of years. That may give you some indication of the size. We have given a second disclosure of €2.5 billion which is what we expect litigation to be, which is obviously not estimable and therefore we cannot provide accounting reserves for it. That would be the second number. But it’s very difficult to give specific forecasts on which period exactly these litigation charges will come. And then we don’t give specific comments on any cases for this quarter. These settlements generally are obviously private and confidential. Derek De Vries – Bank of America: Okay. But I mean, you added the text on the U.S. embargo, so, I guess something happened there. Is it an investigation or – I guess what happened that caused you to add that text in this quarterly report?

Stefan Krause

Management

As we always look at our disclosures, we always – and we have discussions with regulators and have discussions with auditors around it. We need to obviously review all the cases that go through and as you correctly said, we look at any disclosure we have to provide. This is just an additional disclosure that we deemed appropriate to do that we might have not done in the past, but nothing specific or nothing material associated for this disclosure, just improving our transparency around it. Derek De Vries – Bank of America: Got it. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Excuse me, Mr. Müller, there are no further questions at this time. Please continue with any other points you wish to raise. Joachim Müller: Yes. Thank you. I guess this concludes our third quarter results discussion. And with that, I’d like to thank everyone for their interest and see you on the road. Bye.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for joining and have a pleasant day. Good-bye.