Earnings Sentiment

Sentiment Analysis of the earnings transcript to help figure out if there are any bullish or bearish sentiments that could be gathered from it. We're doing ML and AI based analysis on the earnings call to get some more insights.

Please consider a small donation if you think this website provides you with relevant information  

    

Sentiment Distribution

   

Earnings Call Transcript Word Cloud

     

Bullish Statements during Earnings call

Statement
And as mentioned on the previous slide, the boost in other income was further driven by financial markets, benefiting from good client flow and market volatility
Going forward, I'm confident that we will continue to deliver robust financial results and successfully execute our strategy
We started 2023 with a very strong quarter in both our retail and wholesale business, by keeping focus on our customers and delivering value and demonstrating stability in their water turbulent time for the banking sector
We continue to record organic growth and add another 106,000 primary customers, we choose ING for our superior customer experience
Another achievement was a growing fully mobilized, to help our wholesale banking clients transition to a more sustainable business model
Overall, in a turbulent quarter, we have delivered a very strong start of 2023
ING continues to be a strong investment case as the best European bank with consistent strategy execution, income growth, discipline on expenses and strong asset quality
This comes on top of the structurally higher fee base, a strong performance on total income, a year-on-year growth of 23%
For the quarter, we realize the strong 13% ROE, increasing our four quarter rolling average ROE to 9.7%
And lending in wholesale banking, we've seen a very good quarter in the fourth quarter because of a number of larger syndicated loans that is a bit lower now
We accomplished all this in another exceptional quarter
And I'm proud that our performance has been strong throughout these years and I'm confident, we will continue to deliver value
This confidence underpins to my belief that we have the right strategic focus and affordance like balance sheet with a strong funding and liquidity profile, which provides a robust foundation to build on
Our one priority is to deliver a superior customer experience, a key differentiator for customer growth
The positive impact was also clearly visible in Wholesale Banking with our Payments and Cash Management business benefiting from higher interest rates
And this additional distribution will bring our CET1 ratio to 14.4% on a pro forma basis, and I'm pleased that we take this additional step in returning capital to our shareholders and optimize our capital structure
Our capital position remained very strong, and we have announced an additional €1.5 billion distribution
And this income growth will support an improvement of our cost-to-income ratio
So we continue to currently see benefits from these interest rate differentials and that supports the greater than 10% revenue growth
And we are pleased to continue to support economic growth and our clients in meeting the demand across our businesses and regions
Slide nine shows the continued strong development of NII
Our people make a big effort every day to build a superior experience for our customers and to support the transition to a more sustainable society, which see these efforts positively reflected in primary customer numbers and volumes mobilized in transition finance, and our financial results show that accelerating NII momentum is a clear tailwind while fee income has proven to be resilient
In investment products, the continued growth of accounts is a strong base for fee growth when market confidence improves and this confidence will also support growth of lending fees
When excluding volatile items and regulatory costs, pre-provision profit was up 31% year-on-year and 11% higher quarter-on-quarter
The first quarter of this year showed a strong performance of our pre-provision profit
And combined with our strong capital position, we are in a position to return capital to our shareholders, including the share buyback we announced today, our shareholder returns for 2023 already stands at an attractive 8%
Over the past years, we have built a solid track record of delivering an attractive return for our shareholders
In combination with our strong and stable deposit book, we feel very comfortable with this level of liquidity
So all in all, a very good quarter and no signs of deterioration on that part
In our P&L, we continue to see the benefits of the current rate environment, both on our retail customer deposits, and our wholesale payments and cash management business
       

Bearish Statements during earnings call

Statement
Lending fees in Wholesale Banking were lower after a strong fourth quarter
In Lending NII, we saw year-on-year pressure on mortgage margins due to rising interest rates as client rates generally track higher funding costs for the delay as well as declining income from prepayment penalties
If you look at the positive negative interest rate, acquisition of customers using deposit was a negative proposition from a P&L perspective
Going forward, with still heightened macroeconomic uncertainty we expect loan demand to remain subdued
On the fee growth, you're slightly below your target range
Lending fees were lower year-on-year, mainly due to lower demand for mortgages
And taking all this into account and with the inflation rate declining, we expect cost growth for 2023 to be more subdued than the year-on-year development suggests
On contrary, this quarter has been characterized by a very low number of individual defaults in wholesale banking, while in retail banking as well we do not see a structural deterioration in our major portfolios
The second element I want to say now, like I highlighted before, in a number of the markets we are a challenger, and that mean that we sometimes do actions like you have seen in Germany, we're more on the front foot
You see that in mortgages where I said that depending on the market and that goes for all the large markets in which were active, the current mortgage production is between 30% and 50% lower than we typically see
In retail, mortgages continue to grow, although at a lower pace, reflecting an overall slowdown of demand driven by uncertainty in higher interest rates, higher net core lending and business lending was mainly visible in Belgium
And to reiterate the point, we don't see competition for deposits being very heated in light of fairly muted demand for loan growth
This was more than offset by lower utilization in working capital solutions and lower lending volume in trading commodity finance, reflecting lower commodity prices
We see -- I think that what you do see is mortgage levels in the markets and talk about the markets in general are down 30% to 50%
So therefore, that you see some stabilization and also in wholesale banking, the loan demand is relatively subdued
So the question is really why do you keep that guidance unchanged? Or another way to ask it, is there anything when we look into the Q1 results today, that you think will not be sustainable or could turn more negative before the end of this year? And the second question, still on revenues
Quarter-on-quarter, this effect stabilized and lending margins slightly decreased or increased
And currently, we see an environment whereby loan demand is relatively subdued
Just wondering a bit more color on the markets and whether attractive savings rates are the other main driver of that? And then secondly, you mentioned so far subdued loan growth
We combine this with further restricting the financing of new oil and gas fields by extending the existing restriction for upstream to the infrastructure activities that unlock new fields
   

Please consider a small donation if you think this website provides you with relevant information