KBCSY - KBC Group NV (KBCSY) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-02-08 21:32:13 ET
KBC Group NV (KBCSY)
Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call
February 08, 2024 3:30 AM ET
Company Participants
Kurt De Baenst – Investor Relations Manager
Johan Thijs – Chief Executive Officer
Luc Popelier – Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Giulia Aurora Miotto – Morgan Stanley
Tarik El Mejjad – Bank of America
Raul Sinha – JPMorgan
Benoit Petrarque – Kepler Cheuvreux
Sam Moran-Smyth – Barclays
Guillaume Tiberghien – BNP Exane
Anke Reingen – RBC
Jason Kalamboussis – ING
Presentation
Operator
Hello, and welcome to the KBC Group Earnings Release Quarter Four 2023. My name is Caroline, and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this call is being recorded and for the duration of the call your lines will be on listen-only mode. However, you'll have an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. [Operator Instructions]
I will now hand over the call to your host, Kurt De Baenst, Investor Relations Manager, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Kurt De Baenst
Thank you, operator. A very good morning to all of you from the headquarters of KBC in Brussels, and welcome to the KBC conference call. Today is Thursday, February the 8th of 2024, and we are hosting the conference call on the fourth quarter and full year 2023 results of KBC. As usual, we have our CEO, Johan Thijs, with us as well as Luc Popelier, our Group CFO, and they will both elaborate on the results and add some additional insights.
As such, it's my pleasure to give the floor to our CEO, Johan Thijs, who will quickly run you through the presentation.
Johan Thijs
Thank you very much, Kurt. And also from my side, a warm welcome to the announcement of the quarter four results of 2023, which obviously, also means that we are going to disclose the full year results. Now let me start with the highlights of the quarter four of 2023. Well, actually, we have posted €677 million, a very good result in circumstances, which were not always the easiest one. The reason why I call this result a very good result is because we also in this €677 million took into account an impairment on goodwill of the building savings society in Czech Republic of €109 million and we also took impairments voluntarily on software to the tune of roughly €56 million. If we would exclude those, then the profit would not be €677 million, but €812 million. And then obviously, that sounds completely different.
Now what is also very good news is that we once again have confirmed that KBC is more than a net interest income bank. We have excellent results posted with record high sales on asset management and record results posted on the insurance side where we had strong growth in sales in the fourth quarter on both non-life and life insurance business. As a matter of fact, we also posted a record result on our combined ratio of 87% despite the fact that we put in extra buffers for inflation, which is linked to claims, and that we also put in an extra buffer for what is known in Belgium as a state fund for uninsured risk. The sum of the two combined is roughly €45 million.
Now talking about net interest income, well, also in this quarter, we have posted a better than guided results. And this is definitely something, which is also important for the quarters to come. We kept our costs under control and we were also able to further increase all the other lines in our P&L. So in that perspective, if I look at the full year results, then we have beaten our own net interest income guidance. So yes, indeed, we have been a bit too conservative. We ultimately end at €5.5 billion, whereas the guidance was €5.4 billion. So that is an over delivery on this guidance. We are spot on with our cost guidance. And we have also beaten our net income guidance, which we gave for the full year. So that is all good news....
KBC Group NV (KBCSY) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript