BQCNF (BQCNF) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Okay. Good morning, everybody. Pascal Kiener, CEO of BCV speaking. Let me jump directly on Page 4 to comment what I consider are the key messages of our H1 results. Basically, BCV is doing quite well with continued growth in all business sectors. Revenue are slightly up despite the negative or the low interest rate environment due to our, let's say, business model, which is quite diversified, the most diversified in terms of revenues of all cantonal banks due to private banking and asset management. And then in this uncertainty world and also in this environment of, let's say, very low interest rates, we try to master and to control very tightly our cost. And you see that the overall cost, meaning personnel cost, operating expense as well as amortization are up only 1%. Basically, this results in a net profit up 5% compared to last year, CHF 225 million. Then I go directly on Page 6. You see the different business volume, mortgage, other loans, deposits. So everything is up. In terms of deposits, you have to add the 2 elements, sight deposit and other client deposits in aggregate, this is +3%. In terms of rating being financial -- extra financial ESG rating, financial rating, Moody's and S&P have confirmed their rating, which is okay. We didn't expect anything else, but I think it's good to say that. And in terms of ESG rating, you see that the notation, the ratings of BCV are quite good, very often on the second highest rating in -- for the different agencies and almost everywhere the best cantonal banking are among the best in terms of extra ESG rating. This is basically the result of, let's say, a long-term focus on governance issue, durability. This has started in the last 3, 4 years, but we started before 2010. Basically, it's written in the Canton of Vaud about BCV that we should care about durability on such issues. Now back to business, retail banking, you see that the volumes are up, which is a normal growth. We have a target of roughly 4% for the mortgage business on a yearly basis, 2%, we are on track. And customer deposit is good. We were surprised by this number. I was expecting a bit less, but this is good. And in terms of revenue operating profit, this is due to the internal transfer pricing model for the time being, the savings, I mean, the 0 interest rates basically is not really favorable for the retail banking. Basically, the profit goes to the corporate center. Okay. Corporate banking. Here, we have always to differentiate different segment. You have the small, medium enterprise focus is Canton of Vaud, 2% loan up and they report stable. The point I would like to make here is the COVID-19 bridge loans. I hope you're all familiar with what it was. It was a facility offered by the Swiss banking system of banks to corporate in Switzerland, where the bank would provide the liquidity, but the risk will be taken by the confederation -- by the Swiss confederation. So this started during the COVID crisis. And now a couple of years later, what can we say? We can say that 93% are paid back, 83% by the customer and 8% by the guarantee cooperative, which is basically the Swiss -- an extension of the Swiss confederation. Now why I'm mentioning that? Because if you assume that the rest -- the 7% between 93% and 100% would also be completely lost not for BCV or for banks, but for the Swiss confederation, that would add up 8% plus 7%, 15%. When the program was developed a couple of years ago, we assumed 20% to 25% plus. That means basically that the Swiss economy and the Vaud, I think those numbers are the number for both, but this should be very similar in other compounds. The Swiss economy is doing quite well, has been doing well in the last 5 to 6 years because all those companies were able to have paid back their own 85% at least probably more. I don't expect that the 93% to 100% or the 7%, the rest 7% would all be -- we lost probably 5% out of 7%, but not more than that. So that shows that the economy is doing not too badly. Real estate is up, large corporates is always up and down depending on pricing and depending also on the window addressing end of June. Trade finance, maybe one comment here. The geopolitical issues and here, we still -- we are still a very, let's say, cautious presence in this area even more after the political geopolitical troubles in the Middle East. So we don't expect to grow this business in the last -- in the next 2 to 3 years unless suddenly, the U.S. Iran war is solved, which I don't believe. And the same for the war between Russia and Ukraine, which also don't believe that it will be solved in the next, let's say, 1 to 2 years. And in terms of credit risk, again, this is the same story for the COVID bridge loan. The economy is quite resilient. We have very limited number of new provision of new credit risk for the SME business in the corporate business in Swiss -- in the Swiss overall, sorry. Wealth Management, again, those are aggregate figures. Here, you have the private banking of the motor company. You have also the institutional asset management business of the motor company. You have Piguet Galland, which is our small subsidiaries focused on private banking and also , Piguet Fund, which is a kind of fund management company -- fund administration company, sorry. So those numbers in a way they're all up, but we should give more detail that we don't want to give to be able to assess exactly what's going on at each level. Anyway, trading, slightly up. I mean, 35%, 36%. I mean, this is more or less the same. Again, I repeat, this is a client induced trading, customer induced trading. There is no trading -- prop trading here. This is mostly ForEx and also the strong expansion in the structured product volume. This is clear that our rating, S&P and Moody's rating helped quite a lot in terms of being able to sell structured product to customers being retail customers or private banking customers or external asset manager or other small banks. Okay. That's all in a way the business part. I hand over to Thomas for the financial results.

Okay. Hello, everybody. Let me be very short. Well, on Page 13, you see that basically the total income up CHF 14 million allowed operating profit to go up, because of careful cost management from [ corporate/residential], come back to that point. And nothing particular to signal with net profit up plus 10%, 5%. On Page 14, different sources of income, which Pascal already described quite well. And we only had reversals on loan impairments as we had in H1 '25. On Page 15, you give again the full transparency to understand net interest income, where you see that the net interest -- economic net interest income is at CHF 315 million plus CHF 2 million. And the balance sheet management is up CHF 1 million to CHF 10 million, which is basically the arbitrage, which you know. And we also know that this net income from BSM provides -- creates charges on the accounting and interest income and generates income on the trading line. So taking this correct way, the income, which is then really can be allocated to trading activity without BSM is up CHF 1 million to CHF 55 million from CHF 54 million. As mentioned, operating expenses in a broader sense, meaning including depreciation and amortization is, we could say almost stable. Personnel costs evolve with salary increases. Other operating expenses are slightly up with operating cost of infrastructure and software licensing, software IT maintenance expenses. And as explained last year to you, we see now the amortization going slightly down. Well, nothing to figure on the headcount, which is stable at the mother company and its subsidiaries. Total assets, while the mortgage loans and other loans have been described by Pascal, you see that we continue to invest into financial investments, which HQLA as liquidity reserve. On Page 19, liabilities, the customer deposits are up CHF 1.1 billion. Actually, it's important to note that this is a net increase. There is one big [ factor, ] which actually has been drawing a lot of the deposits. So it's even more pleasant to see that net interest income that is interest -- net customer deposits are up CHF 1.1 billion. Well, the financing over -- be it over the Swiss Pfandbriefe and Tile or our own bonds work really well. So we increased here by CHF 0.7 million -- CHF 0.7 billion, CHF 700 million. And the accounting gain of first half year with shareholder equity only reflecting well, half year results and full year dividend payments. Well, with the assets under management, so we are at CHF 142 billion, which 2/3 of this increase is market performance. So we are quite happy to see that at the end of the half year because remember, in the middle, like March, April, this was not sure. But there was a good effort and a good result in net new money in different areas from individuals, SMEs, institutionals. So we saw also overall good market development, good work at the front level. Well, the capital ratios, they are detailed on Page 21. And as already mentioned, we had strong increases in mortgages. And so obviously, this caused risk-weighted assets and so it has a slight decrease on the CET1 ratio. Nothing particular on the leverage ratio. LCRs on the Page 22 and NSFR on the Page 23 continue to evolve at a reasonable and comfortable level. So this is safe. That's all I want to say. But looking forward to your questions. Pascal?

Okay. Let me finish this presentation by looking for the number on Page 25, basically, how do we see the economy going forward. We're still quite, let's say, not optimistic that would be too much, but we don't expect any recession or growth below 1%, maybe very close to 1% this year and probably slightly better next year. So basically, the Swiss economies are resilient. They've proven in the past for the last 20 years that they went through all those crisis without too much damage. Now it's clear, everything depends a bit on the U.S. trade policy. We don't know exactly where we are. We are at 39 that it went down to 15. So I'm a bit lost here I cannot really follow exactly what's going on. I think there are still some negotiations going on. And of course, depending on the geopolitical situation, the Swiss francs might increase, and this is not very good for export, of course. And one of the main business is real estate. So the mortgage business, basically, it carries on like that for a while. It is the same story as let's say the year previous -- or 2 years ago or 3 years ago, basically, we have ongoing growth of population driven mostly by immigration, which means something like between 1% and 1.5% increase. And we cannot build enough flats or houses. And basically, the result is the vacancy rate going down. You see the number 0.87%, and we expect this dynamic to carry on for the next 2 to 3 years because I don't expect anything different in terms of immigration given the employment rate in Switzerland and given the situation of our main neighbor. Okay. That's it, and we are ready to answer your questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions]. We have a question from Stefan Michael.

I have 2, please. The first one is on the wealth management deposits, which showed very good momentum, up about 10%. Is there anything particular to highlight anything driving this? Have you offered particularly good rates? Or is it coming with the net new money inflows? Or is it a change in investment behavior? Are clients moving into more cash and less securities would be grateful if I could add a bit of color on the wealth management deposit flows. And also the risk-weighted assets, they are now up about 5%, almost 5% year-on-year compared to mid-2025. Is that something that is reasonable to expect to continue? Or is there anything that would make you think that maybe risk-weighted asset growth will be slower than this 5% in the last 12 months?

Okay. Concerning the first question, Wealth Management, I mean, there are different elements. I think element, one element, maybe one of the main driver is basically the growth in the institutional asset management business. You know that there is one competitor, which is Credit Suisse. So pension fund in Switzerland, especially in the French part of Switzerland used to have 3 to 4 banks being Credit Suisse, UBS, Pictet, or Lombard, and BCV. And basically, the UBS and Credit Suisse are together now. So that means that those pension funds try to diversify their banks, and we were able to capture part of that. And this is an ongoing process because it's not like private client that after the merger with Credit Suisse or the Credit Suisse, UBS could decide very quickly to reallocate their wealth or their funds. In pension funds, this is different. It takes time. You have Board members that need to discuss the whole thing -- so this is going on. In terms of private clients, this is done. We were able to capture some new customer, some new fund from this merger 2 years ago, but that's done today. But for the pension fund, this is still ongoing, and we expect for the future to take advantage of this merger a bit more. That's for the wealth management.

Okay. Stefan, with regard to your risk-weighted asset question, I mean, there are 2 elements which have been driving risk-weighted assets if you take a 12-month period. One being, of course, the continuous growth in particular mortgages. And secondly, we have an indirect cost of financing mortgages is that the [indiscernible], right? Basically, the last decade, every 5 years, needs to increase its capital. And this happened in the second half of '25 and created additional negative impact of CET1 of about 0.2%. So which means basically that the risk-weighted assets growth over the last 12 months period is above what you should expect with regard to the mortgage growth over the years to come.

Does it answer your question?

Yes, Kiener, pretty helpful.

We have a question from the telephone line from Andreas Venditti from Vontobel.

Maybe firstly, on the cost side, the in-sourcing of the IT, we had some impact on the cost -- on the depreciation line and the G&A. Is that process now over? So is this what we saw in the first half now a normal run rate? Or shall we still expect some impact from this movement? Then maybe on -- in general, in the various businesses in the Canton of Vaud, you mentioned one impact on deposit growth from this UBS, Credit Suisse situation. Maybe you could comment a bit on the behavior of your competitor, what you see in the market and yes, what's going on there in terms of competition? And maybe, I mean, you mentioned yourself, you should give a bit more detail on the Wealth Management segment because it's so diverse. Maybe you could just highlight a few points there.

Okay. So IT -- no, I think let's say that the bulk of this integration of our IT activities, this is done. We don't expect much more here. This is done. Your second question was the competitive situation. It's always difficult to talk about competitors. You see, I mean, the situation has changed for every company in [indiscernible]. You had 2 large banks, the Cantonal banks and Raiffeisen. Today, there is one competitor less. And the behavior and the competitive situation depends a lot on UBS. And for the time being, they are quite aggressive in the market. They want to rebuild market share, which I could, in a way, understand. So it's tough, especially in the mortgage business. In the Wealth Management business, there are a bit more competitors like Pictet, Lombard in Lausanne. But maybe for us, the main competitor is UBS, and they are stronger than before since they are a bit bigger. Okay, I cannot comment any longer. I mean we try to -- I mean, we try -- we keep our market share. We want to grow with the market in the credit business, in the mortgage business. You see in the mortgage business, we have more than 30% market share. So it's quite difficult to get much more. In the retail business, probably we are between 45% to 50% market share. So also it's difficult to grow faster than the market. And in the SME business, in the credit SME business, there is no official number, but we have some estimation, internal estimation showing that we have between 40% to 50% market share. So basically, again, it's difficult to grow much faster than the market. Okay. And the last question was giving more information. No, look, we don't want to give more because it will be very, very complex. What I can tell you is that all entities, I mean, Piguet Galland, the mother company, Gerifonds, all doing quite well. Where we are a bit more this year than, let's say, last year is basically this institutional asset management, where we could gain some new money of pension fund that try -- to try diversify their portfolio. They split their assets among 3 to 4 banks. And here, we could take advantage of the merger UBS, Credit Suisse.

[Operator Instructions]. We have a question from Cajrati Ausano.

I have a question regarding again the topic of net new money and deposits. So if we exclude the increase in deposits and the cash from the net new money, is it a good normal growth rate for the core asset management business? Or how do you see the move there going forward?

You're right. It's a normal growth, nothing special.

So actually, the quite good net new money was mainly driven by the effects that you mentioned before on the wealth management extra deposits.

Yes. The bulk is that. I mean there are some other small things, but the main part is what I mentioned exactly.

Thank you. At this time, we currently have no further questions. So I'll hand it back to the management team for any further remarks.

So, I'd like to thank you all very much for attending this conference and Q&A session. And we see you probably in February next year. Bye-bye. Thank you.

Bye-bye.

That concludes today's webinar. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.