Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, S.A. (NYSE:BBVA) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Onur Genc: On the forward curves in the planning period forward curves, maybe, Rafa, you can help. Regarding the first question, why not higher than now, Britta, I mean we have a payout policy of 40% to 50%. We are delivering the upper end of that range, already €3 billion, €0.50 per share. Very representative, but straight to the point number. And I’m going to repeat it for the fourth time because the question comes again, is we are committed to our 11.5 to 12, and we will return it back to our shareholders through other extraordinary measures and so on in the coming periods. You should not get anything from this in the sense that why not more? We are already doing a lot. I mean we are growing our cash dividends by 39%, 39% increase in the cash dividend.

We are doing a piece in share buyback and so on. So it’s already at the upper end of the range. We are already committed, and we have repeated it many times that we will give it back to our shareholders through other extraordinary measures on the guidance and the forward curves.

Rafael Salinas: I don’t have with me. I mean the forward curves, but at the end of the day they are just the differential rates on the different geographies for the year. So we will provide you with the exact data, but at the end of the day, it’s just equivalent to the differentiator of rates that we are seeing on the different economies with the euro.

Onur Genc: We can share that number because it’s the market information. So maybe, Britta, if you can touch base with our IR team, they will give you the specific figures.

Operator: Our next question is from Carlos Cobo from Societe Generale.

Carlos Cobo: A couple of questions for me. One, if you could update us on your currency hedging policy, both on P&L and what’s the percentage of a subsidiary where you’re hedging this year. And on capital, what’s the cost of the hedging of the capital supply hedging that we have against book value this year? Second, on Mexico, again on NII, you’ve touched on the customer that you still see upside in the customer spread, but what about the wholesale funding cost? When you look at the comparative versus peers, the system in Mexico has seen a big increase in wholesale funding costs along with interest rates, where BBVA Mexico seems to be lagging behind that process. So could you explain why that happened? How you kept that funding cost so low and whether you expect that to catch up with interest rate levels at what time?

And quickly sorry, lastly on M&A. Turkey, you said that you want to grow profitably if the opportunity emerged in Turkey in the context of post collection, some restructuring of the banking system in the country, a good use of your capital be to gain some market share in Turkey.

Onur Genc: Okay, on hedging, Rafa, do you want to comment a little bit on where we are in these countries?

Rafael Salinas: As you know, I mean, in terms of hedging, we haven’t changed our policy. I think we are hedging the sensitivity to the capital ratios. In average we tend to be 70% hedged in terms of the capital that we have in the different currencies. At this moment, I think we are around a little bit above 75% in Mexico 78% and 50% on capital on the sensitivity to capital to the currency, 50% in Turkey. So and in terms of the hedging policy for the variability of our P&L to FX evolution, we maintain our policy to hedge on average between 40% and 50% of the aggregate results that we have in the different currencies. So we haven’t changed that. Clearly, probably the main — the only change that we have done during the year, as you can imagine, is in Turkey, given the fact that there’s a significant deduction that we are doing on the P&L because of the hyperinflation accounting.

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