ING Groep N.V. (NYSE:ING) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Tanate Phutrakul : Hi, Rahul. Just on cost development in the second quarter. Probably three things to note. The first on regulatory expenses is down €247 million. So right, a good evolution. We have guided the market already that by the first quarter of 2025, we expect that regulatory expenses will be €400 million lower than where we see it today — well, where we see it in 2021. And our expectation is that the regulatory expenses for this year will be approximately €180 million lower than previous year. So that’s on regulatory expense. On OpEx, yes, we do see that the inflation pressure is coming down the publicly announced indexation in Belgium, which used to be 10% in December. By June this year has gone down to around 4%-4.5%.

So that pressure is coming down. But having said that, we also do spend more money in terms of client acquisition, in more advertising and those are also present in our numbers. But a 7% OpEx clean for volatility is a good guidance of where our OpEx have run in Q2.

Raul Sinha : Thank you.

Operator: The next question comes from Tarik El Mejjad from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Tarik El Mejjad : Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. A couple from my side. I mean the first one on the revenues, maybe just to summarize a bit what you’ve been saying for my colleagues’ previous questions. So I noticed in your slides in Q2 slides that you’ve in the guidance — or sorry, the targets for total income, you removed the line with like above 10% total income growth for ’23. I mean, obviously, you are double that. I mean, consensus, sorry, is double that and you’re showing strong trends. So can you maybe update that guidance or tell us how you — what you think about where consensus is maybe that give us a view on where the fees and NII trends from here? And then second question is on the capital and distribution.

I appreciate you’re doing an update in Q3, but that’s been an issue here for a while already where you clearly generate more capital than you can distribute, which is a good problem to have. But when you do the maths, I mean it’s very difficult to imagine how you can convert with 2.5% and you reiterated that last Friday of the stress test today in every occasion. But I mean that implies a massive step-up in distribution in the special every year starting from Q3. So is that something that could be on the table? And second question, how can you deliver that given the liquidation of the shares and so on? Does that mean that you will have also some cash special and not only buyback on top of the current run rate? Thank you.

Steven van Rijswijk: Okay. Thank you, Tarik. Let me start on the capital distribution. If you — indeed, I mean, we do the math as well. So indeed, our capital moved up again on the back of these results and also on the good capital management, especially in Wholesale Banking this quarter. So what I also said in the presentation that we will give an update in the third quarter, but that we also then see that the roughly equal steps if we want to move, and we want to move to around 12.5%, that hasn’t changed. And it also means that we need to — that the steps need to reflect the higher capital that we’re having. So I think that what you’re saying and I are saying are exactly the same with having that math in mind. Then on revenues, no, we’re not giving additional guidance. I mean above 10%. And with confidence, I can say it’s above 10%.

Operator: The next question comes from Benoit Petrarque from Kepler Cheuvreux.

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