SCBFF - Standard Chartered PLC (SCBFF) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-07-30 16:57:06 ET
Standard Chartered PLC (SCBFF)
Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call
July 30, 2024 03:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Diego De Giorgi - Group Chief Financial Officer
Bill Winters - Group Chief Executive
Manus Costello - Global Head of Investor Relations
Conference Call Participants
Robin Down - HSBC
Andrew Coombs - Citi
Aman Rakkar - Barclays
Joseph Dickerson - Jefferies
Edward Firth - KBW
Amit Goel - Mediobanca
Guy Stebbings - BNP Paribas
Gurpreet Sahi - Goldman Sachs
Nick Lord - Morgan Stanley
Presentation
Bill Winters
Good morning and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our Second Quarter 2024 Results Call. We are very pleased to have delivered a strong financial performance and are very encouraged by the progress on our established strategy.
We are delivering exceptional cross-border services to the world's most sophisticated entities and individuals across our Corporate and Investment Banking and Wealth Businesses. Income of $4.8 billion was up 7% in constant currency, reflecting confidence in our performance we are upgrading our income guidance, and we now expect growth for 2024 to be above 7%.
We are maintaining strong discipline on costs with expenses up 4%, while asset quality has remained resilient. This has resulted in underlying profit before tax of $1.8 billion, which was up 15%. Our financial momentum, together with progress on key strategic drivers leaves us confident that we can consistently and sustainably drive towards higher returns.
With our strong capital position, we are delighted to announce our largest ever share buyback of $1.5 billion which will start imminently. Diego will now take you through the numbers in more detail, and I’ll cover the progress our businesses are making before we come back for the usual Q&A. So Diego over to you.
Diego De Giorgi
Thanks, Bill. Good morning and good afternoon to everyone on the call. In my remarks, I will be comparing year-on-year on an underlying basis and speaking to constant currency unless stated otherwise. The Group delivered top-line growth of 7% with operating income of $4.8 billion in the second quarter, as the dynamics we saw at work in the last quarter continued into Q2.
NII was $2.6 billion, up 6%. Wealth Solutions continues to drive the strong growth in non-NII, which was up 9%. Operating expenses were up 4% due to inflation and continued investment into business growth initiatives. Pre-provision operating profit was up 13% in the second quarter and was up 26% in the first-half demonstrating our strong progress towards sustainably higher profitability....
Standard Chartered PLC (SCBFF) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript