NatWest Group (NWG) Q1 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending March 31, 2022

April 29, 2022 5:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen welcome to NatWest Group Q1 Results 2022 Management Presentation. I would like to remind you that the call today will be recorded. [Operator Instructions]

Today's conference call will be hosted by Alison Rose, CEO NatWest Group. Please go ahead Alison.

Alison Rose

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. As usual, I'll start with a brief strategic update. Katie will take you through the results and then we'll open it up for questions. Clearly, since we last spoke, the world has changed considerably.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has led to greater macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty. And our customers now face higher inflation, rising rates, and energy costs, as well as ongoing supply chain disruption. Whilst many of them have built up healthy savings and balance sheets during the pandemic, and we are not seeing any immediate signs of distress, we are acutely aware of the pressures our customers face. So just as we did during the pandemic, we are supporting them as they navigate this period of uncertainty.

For example, we continue to deliver around 1 million free financial health checks a year, we help customers to understand the impact of different scenarios on their credit rating and improve their score, and we regularly refer are more vulnerable customers to citizens advice. Our business customers benefit from having access to dedicated relationship managers with sector expertise in all of our regions. As the invasion of Ukraine continues, together with our customers and colleagues, we have donated over 9 million pounds to the Disaster Emergency Committee, Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. We are also offering practical assistance to Ukrainian refugees in the UK.

For example, we are using one of our headquarters as a welcome hub and we are providing help with opening bank accounts. We have no operations in Russia or Ukraine and minimal direct exposure to Russia. We believe that our focus on building deeper relationships with our customers, together with two years of strong strategic progress, makes NatWest Group well positioned to deliver sustainable growth and returns in the years to come. So let me now turn to the financial headlines.

We are reporting a strong performance with profit before tax of 1.3 billion, up 36% from the first quarter last year. We generated attributable profit of 841 million, up 36%, and our return on tangible equity was 11.3%, up from 7.9% in the same quarter last year. We are delivering on our income growth, cost reduction, and capital targets. Income was up 8.6%, costs were down 4.6%.