NatWest Group PLC (NYSE:NWG) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call April 26, 2024 4:00 AM ET
Company Participants
John-Paul Thwaite - Group CEO & Executive Director
Katie Murray - Group CFO & Executive Director
Conference Call Participants
Chris Cant - Bernstein
Aman Rakkar - Barclays Bank
Andrew Coombs - Citigroup
Jonathan Pierce - Numis
Fahed Kunwar - Redburn
Alvaro Serrano - Morgan Stanley
Robin Down - HSBC
Guy Stebbings - BNP Paribas Exane
Ed Firth - KBW
Raul Sinha - JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Benjamin Toms - RBC Capital Markets
Operator
Good morning, and welcome to the NatWest Group Q1 Results 2024 Management Presentation. Today's presentation will be hosted by CEO, Paul Thwaite; and CFO, Katie Murray. After the presentation, we'll take questions.
John-Paul Thwaite
Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. I'll start with the headlines. Katie will take you through the financial performance, and we'll then open it up for questions. I said in February that we are driving returns in 3 ways. First, by continuing to grow our businesses in a disciplined manner; second, by driving bank-wide simplification; and third, by deploying capital efficiently and maintaining strong risk management. We are focused on these priorities in order to generate capital to both reinvest in the business and make further shareholder distributions.
We have continued to make good progress in the first quarter and the year has started well. So let's turn now to the financial headlines, supporting customers and the U.K. economy is central to our strategy, creating greater value for customers, resulting greater value for shareholders.
Customer lending increased to £361 billion, making this the sixth consecutive year of lending growth. We are seeing early signs of improving demand in mortgages, and our net lending to large U.K. corporates continues to grow as business confidence improves.
Our deposit balances have grown to £420 billion, ahead of expectation, with migration to higher rate savings account slowing as expected. And assets under management and administration grew to £43 billion, up £2.3 billion since the year-end. This customer activity underpins our strong performance in the quarter. We generated income of £3.4 billion, with costs of £2 billion, delivering operating profit of £1.3 billion and attributable profit of £0.9 billion. Taken together, this resulted in a return on tangible equity of 14.2%.
Strong earnings added 10p or 3.4% to tangible net asset value per share, which was 302p. Our CET1 ratio for the first quarter increased to 13.5%. This includes an accrual of £367 million towards our interim dividend in line with our targeted ordinary dividend payout ratio of around 40%. We have completed last year's £500 million on-market buyback program and started the £300 million buyback announced in February, which we expect to complete by the end of July. We have capacity for another directed buyback when the window opens in late May. You will be aware that the government has reduced their shareholding to below 29%, a reduction of more than 8 percentage points since the year-end, in line with their intention to exit fully by 2026.