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XP Inc. (XP)

Q2 2025 Earnings Call· Mon, Aug 18, 2025

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Transcript

Andre Parize

Management

Good evening, everyone. I'm Andre Parize , Investor Relations Officer at XP, and it's a pleasure to be here with you today. On behalf of the company, I would like to thank you all for your interest, and welcome you to our Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. Today's presentation will be led by our CEO, Thiago Maffra; and our CFO, Victor Mansur, who will both be available for the Q&A session right after the presentation. [Operator Instructions]. Before we begin, please refer to our legal disclaimers on Page 2, where we provide additional information regarding forward-looking statements. You can also find more information in the SEC Filings section of our IR website. Now I will turn it over to Thiago Maffra. Good afternoon, Thiago.

Thiago Maffra

Management

Thank you, Andre. Good evening, everyone. I appreciate you all joining us today for the second quarter 2025 earnings call. So half year is already behind us, but there is much more to come. We are still working hard, I would say, in an obsessive way to keep evolving our clients' journey experience and product offering. 2025 has demonstrated to be more challenged than we estimated, demanding more efforts from all our teams to keep growing our business in a profitable way. As a result, we are continuously increasing our profitability. Now analyzing the main KPIs. The first one is client assets, AUM and AUA for which we posted BRL 1.9 trillion, a 17% growth year-over-year. Total advisers accounted for 18,200 represent flat figures year-over-year. And on active clients, we posted 4.7 million clients with 2% growth year-over-year. During the quarter, gross revenues marked BRL 4.7 billion with a 4% growth year-over-year. EBT year-over-year is 5% lower, reaching BRL 1.3 billion, mainly because last year, we had positive impacts from overhead, turning this quarter not like-for-like. And on the bottom line, it's another record. We achieved the highest net income in our history, reaching BRL 1.321 billion. It represents an 18% year-over-year growth. On profitability, we achieved 24.4% ROE during the quarter, a 223 bps expansion versus second quarter '24. 10 out of 11 quarters posting consecutive growth. This means 10 out of 11 quarters posting consecutive growth. On capital ratio, we printed a comfortable level at 20.1%. It represented an increase of 110 bps quarter-over-quarter. Regarding diluted EPS, we posted 22% growth year-over-year, another quarter in which it grew faster than net income, driven by our share buyback program execution. As we speak, we still have a share buyback program of BRL 1 billion to be executed until next…

Victor Andreu Mansur Farinassi

Management

Thank you, Maffra. Good evening, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here with you to discuss our financial performance for the second quarter of 2025. Starting with total gross revenues. Total gross revenues for the quarter reached BRL 4.7 billion, representing a 4% increase year-over-year and a 2% increase quarter-over-quarter. It was another quarter that retail gained participation in total revenues, now representing 77% out of total. This quarter, once again, our main driver for retail growth year-over-year were fixed income and other retail, which includes retail new verticals such as global accounts and consortium. On the wholesale bank, corporate was the highlight, partially offsetting the negative impact on issuer services due to a tough comp from 2Q '24. I will share more details during the next slides. Retail revenue posted BRL 3.6 billion in the quarter, a 9% growth year-over-year and a 4% growth quarter-over- quarter. The quarter growth was mainly driven by equities, which presented a higher ADTV in the period. Equities printed slightly more than BRL 1 billion with 7% growth quarter-over-quarter. On a year-over-year perspective, fixed income was the main contributor, growing 20% and reaching BRL 988 million in revenue. It's important to mention that in other retail concept, the main contributor is the float remunerations, where we had higher average volumes with higher interest rates during the quarter. Now let's move to the next slides with Corporate and Issuer Services. Before moving to the quarter results, it's important to mention that on 2Q '24, we posted all-time high corporate and I services revenues, backed by a strong DCM activity. Therefore, we have a tough comp for this quarter. Issuer services presented BRL 268 million, minus 30% year-over-year and a minus 5% quarter- over-quarter. On the other hand, corporate revenues posted a solid 14% increase year-over-year…

Andre Parize

Management

Okay. We're going to start our Q&A session. And the first question is from Eduardo Rosman from BTG.

Eduardo Rosman

Management

My question here is on capital generation and dividends and buybacks, right? So just help us understand a little bit more your capital generation because it seems that you've been able to improve it this quarter. Actually, you are growing your capital base, I think, faster than your net income, right? So -- but you're still way below the level this year in the level of buybacks and dividends when compared to last year, right? So can we see an acceleration of that now in the second quarter? How do you see that? We see that you have this soft guidance of above 50% for 2025 and 2026. But can you please help us with more details?

Victor Andreu Mansur Farinassi

Management

Thank you for your question. First, dividing the answer here in some parts. First one, as we anticipated, the net income would grow a bit faster than the RWA over this year, delivering some leverage in capital terms. And I think that was the case. Also, as you comment, we didn't distribute as much of the net income as we generated over this quarter. The second part, we are still capturing a bit of leverage over the 496 new regulation. The benefits will be delivered over the year in the DRC and the market risk, principally in the credit spread risk inside of market risk. The second part will be delivered over the risk-weighted assets, operational risk. Also, we expect to see that over the next quarters. Another part here, talking about the trend for the year. We expected to see the RWA growing slower than the net income. And the new tax regulation may change a bit the dynamics of the DCM market. And depending on how it goes, we may warehouse a bit faster than initially expected to take advantage of the demand from clients to issue before the regulation takes place in 2026. Even though we don't expect any of those to impact our target team -- our target to pay more than 50% of our profits this year because we still have a lot of spare capital. And remember here, our CET1 ratio is at 18% and the average of the industry is at 12%. So a lot of space. So we may announce the rest of the payout over the rest of the year. And the discussion between dividends and buybacks depend on the price of the stock, and we need to discuss that with our Board.

Andre Parize

Management

Next question is from our Yuri Fernandes, JPMorgan.

Yuri Rocha Fernandes

Management

I have a question regarding our corporate -- like corporate lending strategy. I know it's something for you. But you have been discussing new products, new strategies. And a question I have is if corporate lending matters for the entire ecosystem. When we go to your AUC, we see that the commercial is the -- is the portion not growing as much actually and net new money is the same. So just trying to understand if you -- how is your perception about corporate lending and if you believe this could be something that is missing for your ecosystem and your strategy?

Andre Parize

Management

Could you repeat the question? We couldn't hear in the beginning. Sorry about that.

Yuri Rocha Fernandes

Management

No, let me stick closer to the mic here. So I would like to understand a little bit about corporate lending. If you believe corporate lending is important for your strategy overall.

Victor Andreu Mansur Farinassi

Management

This is Victor. Thank you for the question. Our idea in corporate lending is the same as other products we originate to sell. You may see the corporate book growing, but everything that we put in, we expect to put out at the same moment in time. So the growth you see in the credit portfolio is exactly that. The portfolio grew hopefully BRL 3 billion, and that will go under a securitization and we're going to sell those assets over the next quarters.

Yuri Rocha Fernandes

Management

Thank you, Mr. Victor. But I don't believe like being more or less active here, it's could be more helpful for your operation.

Victor Andreu Mansur Farinassi

Management

Yes. Yes, it could. But the same as capital markets, we have our risk appetite, and we are buying credit to sell or originate a security to sell. It occupies the same risk space. So we are not going to increase our portfolio over our risk appetite because of any other strategy because they use the same pocket.

Andre Parize

Management

Okay. Next question is from Thiago Batista, UBS.

Thiago Bovolenta Batista

Management

I have 2 questions. Maffra, in the beginning, you commented about the new initiatives to try to speed up the net new money on XP in the second half of the year. Can you give a little bit of more details about those initiatives? The second one about the guidance for next year. Are you still comfortable with the guidance that you gave, I would say, 2 or 3 years ago? If you look to consensus for this year on top line, consensus is something close to BRL 20 billion of top line. So to achieve the low end, you need to expand 14%, 14% next year. It seems still feasible, but I wanted to hear for you guys if the guidance for next year is still achievable.

Thiago Maffra

Management

Thank you for the question, Thiago. The first question about net new money. As we mentioned on the presentation, we still see the BRL 20 billion per quarter in retail as a reasonable level for the next quarters. Of course, if we see a change in the macro environment, starting interest rate cuts or something like that, we should see the BRL 20 billion accelerating. But for now, that's the level that we are comfortable. Of course, this quarter, it was a little bit tougher on SMBs and corporate lending, but -- and corporate segment, but we are confident that the BRL 20 billion is -- it's a good stable level. How we get there? There are a lot of initiatives in the company. If you go back a few years, I would say that the main one was channel diversification. Back in 2021, we only had one channel, what we call the B2B, the IFA channel. Today, we have the internal advisers. We have the RIA model. So if you look at the numbers today, more than half of the net new money is coming from the new channels. And we keep investing in increasing the number of internal advisers, the number of IFAs on our network. So expansion is one of the levers here. The second one, when you have a tougher environment and higher interest rates, competing with products, CGs from the banks, especially the tax-exempt ones, it's not that easy. So all the time, we are like creating new products to compete with the banks. We just launched some new products here this quarter. They are performing very well. It's a type of fund with senior tranche and it's a Selic rate here and tax exempt. So it's a very good one. So we are all…

Andre Parize

Management

Okay. Next question is from Mario Pierry, Bank of America.

Mario Lucio S Pierry

Management

Guys, can you give us a little bit more color on the -- on inflows so far in the third quarter? Because again, it sounds as if you're confident that you can return to this BRL 20 billion per quarter. Are you seeing -- have you seen so far in the first half of this quarter, a number close to the level that you feel confidence? So that's my first question. My second question is related to your EBT margin. Yes, it continues to improve. However, you are still below right, your medium-term guidance, and it seems like revenues are growing a little less than you anticipated even though you're still maintaining the plus 10% for this year. Is there anything you can do on the cost side if the revenues don't come through this year?

Thiago Maffra

Management

Thank you so much for the question. We'll take the first one. We cannot talk about the net new money for the quarter so far. But my answer for you will be we are confident in delivering the BRL 20 billion or around BRL 20 billion for the next quarters, as I mentioned before.

Victor Andreu Mansur Farinassi

Management

Mario, taking the second part here about EBT and SG&A. First, talking about EBI. Our product -- the EBT depends on the product mix, as we discussed it before and also the tax rate. And the trend in both of them should be trading around this quarter if the market keep the way it is. And talking about SG&A, we delivered a lot of reduction in the efficiency ratio over the last 2 years, almost 400 basis points. ;And since we keep investing in strategic areas as new advisers and technology and you name it, we may see the index more flattish over this year. And it's valid to reinforce our commitment to cost control and efficiency even though, but we are not going to stop investing in our core because of a bit more of unpredictable levels of revenue coming from the wholesale banking side. As Maffra said, 2026, there is a lot of time to the end of 2026. And for now, we are comfortable with the levels.

Mario Lucio S Pierry

Management

Okay. That's clear. Let me rephrase the first question then. When we look at inflows during the second quarter, did you see an improving pattern throughout the quarter on a monthly basis? Are you seeing flows improving? Or do you see them improving in the quarter? Or is it relatively the same amount of inflows per month?

Thiago Maffra

Management

Mario, I will give you the same answer that I gave before. I believe we can deliver the BRL 20 billion. If you get the last quarter, it was BRL 16 billion. I imagine that one customer or 2 could make the difference here. So billion. It's the number here and around BRL 20 billion, it could be a little bit higher or a little bit lower, okay? But that's the pace right now.

Operator

Operator

Next question is from Marcelo Mizrahi, BB.

Marcelo Mizrahi

Management

So my question is regarding again about the corporate portfolio, which was a huge growth in a quarterly basis and not too much in a yearly basis. But just to understand what's the trip of this credit, what's happening exactly here? And looking forward, another question is regarding the net new money of the corporates. To understand if there are any new strategy here, if there are any news here to justify this net new money negative on the corporate side.

Victor Andreu Mansur Farinassi

Management

Thank you for your question, Victor here. The first part Sorry, the first part about credit portfolio. As we said before, those are credit we originated to sell. So basically, those are operations we did with corporates and we originate receivables that will be securitized and then sold to our client base. That's something that we did before over the other quarters, and it's the same that we're going to do again. So we expect to sell that. And talking about the corporate the new money, I think the problem here is the dynamics of the market. We are seeing -- we begin to see that in the first quarter and then the trend intensified a bit in the second quarter. What we are seeing, the banks that give credit to the companies, they are asking for reciprocity in terms of investments to deliver some credit lines. Since we are not in this business and we are not able to give the main product that is credit, we are seeing the money flow to banks that usually have some products as cash flows, anticipation of cards and et cetera. So that's basically the case.

Andre Parize

Management

Moving to the next question Tito Labarta from Goldman.

Daer Labarta

Management

Firstly, just following up a little bit more on the revenue growth, right? I mean you're maintaining the 10% for this year, around 10%. Maffra, you said it should accelerate in the second half of the year. If you break that down, right, retail growing 9% year-over-year. So that's a big closer. I guess, first, do you think retail in and of itself will accelerate in the second half of the year? Or two, is it more the Issuer Services, the corporate and the other lines do you expect -- I mean, those obviously should accelerate given the somewhat weak first half of the year. But just if we could break out between retail and other revenues and which lines can drive that revenue growth to [indiscernible].

Victor Andreu Mansur Farinassi

Management

Tito, this is Victor. So basically, we can break that revenue growth between the first half of the year and the second half is 3 factors. The first one is very easy to explain. We have 6% more business days. So more business days, we have more trading days, more interest rates over capital and clients' cash and also a higher Selic rate in the second half of the year against the first. That's the first part of the explanation. The second one is the new verticals and new advisers. So basically, we keep hiring advisers, and we have a lot of products that are still in rollout and are growing a lot as international investments, consortium and other products in the new verticals portfolio. And the last one that is more volatile is the product mix. If we have a second quarter, if a DCM that is stronger and more primary offering from funds, we may see a lift in retail revenues and also in issuer services revenues. So basically, those are the 3 components and why we are expecting to have higher revenues in the second half against the first.

Daer Labarta

Management

Great. No, that's helpful. Just one quick follow-up. Maybe on the fixed income revenues, which are still strong at 20% year-over-year, although it did fall a little bit in the quarter. I mean you mentioned higher rates. How do you think about -- are you getting to sort of like the peak level on the fixed income? Or can that still continue to outpace the other segments just on a relative basis, how you see the fixed income revenue relative to [indiscernible] given the demand [indiscernible].

Victor Andreu Mansur Farinassi

Management

Okay. Tito, I heard the first part of the question, but the second was a bit confusing here, but I will try to answer you. First, in fixed income, it's important to mention that for retail clients, we are in the highest average Selic rate in almost 20 years. So we are in the highest level of the cycle. So in the perception of the clients, they never had interest rate -- spot interest rates that's as high as now. So why it is important to mention that? Because clients, they don't go longer in duration when that happens, if this slope in the interest rate curve. So what we are seeing is increasing in volume, but a decreasing ROA given that duration profile. So when interest rate starts falling or the interest rate has a more normal shape, we may see the duration going higher again and the ROA increasing. but that's a bit of the dynamics of fixed income right now. And what can change that over the second half of the year is the DCM market and the primary offerings that may go to market if the pipeline goes as it is because of the new tax regulation. So a lot of primary offerings attract clients, and we may see they get longer in duration again. So basically, we expect the fixed income line to keep performance well. And depending on the primary market in DCM, we may see this number a bit higher.

Andre Parize

Management

Next question is from Siraj from Citi.

Arnon Orzes Shirazi

Management

I have 2 questions here. My first one is related to nonpeople-related expenses. We saw a 38% year-on-year increase. I know that it was explained by marketing and also technology, but it seemed a little bit too much for me. And also, the second one is related to tax how the tax increase, especially on offshore funds has been involved? And what drove the positive income tax rate for this quarter?

Victor Andreu Mansur Farinassi

Management

Okay. Thank you for your question. First here, talking about SG&A. We had a lot of investments in marketing. We had some events that are the first time that we're doing the size that we did. We had the B2B experience event for all our IFAs network outside of Brazil, where we announced some important measures for the year. And second is the GAF. It's an agribusiness event here in Brazil that we sponsored, and it's very important to us because we get closer to the clients that issue tax-exempt notes, corporations that are able to issue tax-exempt notes. Also investments in markets to get our reputation a bit more stronger and more visible over all brands and newspapers and et cetera. In terms of technology, it's one of events that we did in terms of cloud and other kinds of tech. Talking about the trend over the year, keep in mind the next quarter, we have our main event of the year, the expert. So also another quarter if no people expenses that are higher than comparison quarter-over-quarter. Moving to tax rates. I think we talked in a few opportunities that given the dynamic of the market and the product mix, if the market making activity and secondary market a bit more stronger than investment banking and broker-dealer revenues that our tax rate should be trading around 15%, and that was basically the case. Now we closed 14 something over the last 12 months. And if the product mix keep the way it is, that's the number that we may see over the year.

Arnon Orzes Shirazi

Management

But as related to offshore tax, the potential increase, what thoughts?

Victor Andreu Mansur Farinassi

Management

Okay. Perfect. I think as any other financial institution in Brazil, there is a lot of ways to plan our tax structure, and we are confident that the impact will be marginal in your business.

Andre Parize

Management

Next question is from Neha Agarwala from HSBC.

Neha Agarwala

Management

Just once again, sorry to go back to this, but the corporate net new money was significantly weak versus what we seen in the previous quarters. I understand the volatility, but anything specific this quarter that led to this big decline compared to previous quarter? And should we expect more of that next quarter? Or was this like a one-off trend with some one-off moves? And my second question is, you talked a bit about the fee-based model and that's only 5% of your AUC and that's been growing. Can you talk a bit more about what impact we could see from that on your take rate, if any?

Victor Andreu Mansur Farinassi

Management

Okay. Thank you, Neha. I will take the first one. I think the corporate dynamics is a bit there what I said. If the banks that give credit to their clients keep asking for investments in terms of reciprocity, we may suffer a bit more in the 3Q or 4Q since we end up going to this business. But also, it's important to remember that the ROA of this money is extremely low. So the impact in revenues to losing that money, they are not relevant. But it's very hard to predict what we are going to see over the next quarters, as you say, these are more volatile cash.

Thiago Maffra

Management

This is Thiiago. Thank you for your question. I will take the second part. When we think about fee-based model, I believe there is an evolution about the model in Brazil. If we get the U.S. market, for example, today, if you look in terms of AUC, it's 70-30, but in terms of revenues, it's more like 50-50, okay? In Brazil, as I mentioned, it's still very small, okay, but it's growing. As I mentioned in the presentation, today, we are prepared for -- to offer to our clients any kind of model, consultancy, fee-based, IFA model, transactional based model, we can serve our clients in different ways and charge in different ways, okay? So we are agnostic and we offer what's best for our clients. What we expect for the next years, as I mentioned at the beginning of the year, this year was to grow, I would say, from 3%, 4% to 7%, 8%, okay? So it's growing. And -- but it's going to be a long journey here. It's not going to happen like one day to the other, but we will grow. And again, we are the best platform to offer all the models to our clients. And we believe being agnostic to models is a real differentiation to serve our clients better. But thinking about revenues, if you look only the take rate, it goes down a little bit, not a lot, but it goes down, okay? But usually, it comes with a higher share of wallet. So usually, when we start to serve a client through a fee- based model or through consolidation of funds outside of XP. Usually, the AUC or the wallet or all the money that we oversee it's not 100% here because today, we offer that model. We can consolidate what's outside of XP. Usually, you make more money or I would say, equal money in terms of revenue because you increase the size of the wallet, okay? So I would say if in the next quarters or years, we'll start to see the take rate going a little bit down, but at a very slow pace, but the share of wallet per client will increase and we will compensate the lower take rate.

Andre Parize

Management

Okay. Next question is from Pedro Leduc from BBA. Leduc, you may proceed.

Pedro Leduc

Management

Okay. Good evening, everyone. I would like to explore the gross margin little bit more expanded Q-on-Q when I try to look at the moving pieces here. IFA commission incentives get nicely diluted. So I was trying to dig into this trend a little bit more, what drove it, if it was related to maybe the lower pace of net new money or the mix of your revenue movements, more equities less fixed income trying to get a sense of what is driving this gross margin expansion and how to think about it in the second half?

Victor Andreu Mansur Farinassi

Management

Thank you for your question. I think here First, talking about some events. As we said before, the expected credit losses should be trading a bit lower than last quarter, and that trend should remain like that around BRL 90 million to BRL 100 million. And the second point was a bit higher than average sales tax, and that should go back to the average and I expect the number to go -- to be as high as that. And the margin should go as normalizing when you look in the last 12 months. Yes. And the channel mix is also important to mention as the internal sales force keep growing, but also, that's a trend that we're going to see improving over quarters. But if you look at the last 12 months, that's the pace that should be expecting for the rest of the year.

Andre Parize

Management

Next question is from Daniel Vaz from Banco Safra.

Daniel Vaz

Management

In recent opportunities, you mentioned that the B2C productivity has been much stronger than the B2B, right? So the B2C has been a large focus recently, and you standardized probably an approach for selling and for the sales team, right? So it seems more well structured right now. When it comes to the B2B, I think the productivity has deteriorated like over the years. So I want to hear from you first, if you're seeing net outflows from this channel from the B2B? And secondly, if you could tell us a bit your diagnostic right on the B2B channel, if you need a higher focus right now to maybe refresh or review this model. So this has been in the press recently regarding M&As on the advisory offices, a lot of mandates. It would be good to hear from you the diagnostic.

Thiago Maffra

Management

Thank you for the question. As we have said in the past, for us, it's not one channel or the other. We believe in having multiple channels for different reasons. But when we look at the B2B, the B2B channel specifically, as you mentioned, the productivity was very low. It's still low when compared like to 2 years ago, 1.5 years or more ago. But it's getting back. It's improving bit by bit. It's not going to change a lot from one quarter to the other, but it's improving. So everything that we have been done, a lot of efforts and energy that we have put on the channel since last -- the end of last year and more specifically at the beginning of this year, it's paying off, and we are starting to see the performance of B2B channel improving. So that's why we are confident on the BRL 20 billion, okay?

Daniel Vaz

Management

Okay. So just a follow-up. So a refresh or a review in this -- the way you operate in this model, right, as you did in B2C.

Thiago Maffra

Management

Well, it's just normal evolution. You have like to evolve the model. We just announced back in on the B2B experience, the big event that we do annually for the B2B channel. This year was in Mendoza, and we announced some change on the way of serving clients. So I would say minimal standards of serving our clients. So location, number and ways, points of contact with the customers. And so I would say more like a franchisee model where we have minimal standards, and we just announced that like 2 months ago. So it's an evolution. It's not like a big change.

Andre Parize

Management

Okay. We are out of time. So in the name of the company, I'd like to thank you all for participating on our second quarter 2025 earnings call. Any further questions will be more than welcome. Just look for the IR team, and we keep in touch and see you soon. Thank you very much.