NatWest Group plc (NYSE:NWG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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We’ve not lost any relationships, we’re managing our liquidity, and it’s very early days in terms of customer behavior. On costs, we have a good track record, you would expect us to continue to manage costs, actively are continuing investment in customer journeys, digitization, which part of our strategy will continue, obviously, we factored in the impact of inflation. And Katie has given you some really good visibility on what’s happening on our costs. You’ve got our guidance going forward of what we expect to see on costs. And you can expect both Katie and I to continue to manage costs very actively going forward.

Katie Murray: Absolutely. Absolutely. And Martin in terms of your NIM guidance. I’m not entirely sure what your question was. I think I’ve probably said everything I’ve able to see about NIM. So if there’s something I’m missing, please do jump in.

Martin Leitgeb: No, no, no. There wasn’t any more question on NIM specifically, just trying to understand whether the headwind of the deposit attrition is pretty much front loaded and then that base.

Katie Murray: I think Alison has dealt with that. Thanks very much. Thanks, Martin. Have a good day.

Operator: Our last question comes from Joseph Dickerson of Jefferies.

Joseph Dickerson: Just a quick one from me. I mean, the NIM has been beaten to death. Just on Slide 22. Can you just clarify what you mean by we’ve already written is that assuming no further majorities in the hedge are effectively reinvested. So we get the pickup in ’23, from the existing book by ’24 and ’25, you’re effectively not reinvesting because it’s quite significant in the outer years is, that’s where a lot of the –call it two thirds of the rate sensitivity in the out years comes.

Alison Rose: So thanks. I’m glad we did met. We haven’t left without talking about this slide, the IR team worked hard on it. So as I think we already said, they are already written is the hedges we already have in place that are going to just roll through. So what I’m trying to tell you here is, 2 billion, 1.6, 1.4 of stuff that’s already kind of in the tank. What you know, is that we have maturing each year, about £ 40 billion a year, it comes across the year. So you have to think about averaging of returns there. In our own models, we’ve modeled 3.3%. In terms of that, I would note that today, if I was putting on today, it’s closer to kind of 3.7. But I would expect in addition to this already written, there’s the reinvestment of that 40 billion per annum.

I talked about as well, if I looked as of today, if balances didn’t change, it’s very static. We would expect that the size of the hedge would reduce over the year by about 5 billion. But there certainly is a significant reinvestment to come as we go on top of this, this Group has already written.

Joseph Dickerson: And that reinvestment is not effectively in the forward revenue guidance?

Alison Rose: It’s naturally in the RoTE guidance, or it’s not in, is in that 2 million, 1.6, 1.4. But it’s very certainly in around 14.8 for the year and the sustainable sort of 14% to 16% in there. So I’ve clearly made some assumptions on how that reinvestment in the rates on that. But it is in addition to the green boxes that are on this slide.

Joseph Dickerson: Okay. All right, perfect. That’s what I wanted to get in.

Operator: Thank you. I’d like to hand it back to Alison for any closing comments.

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