Welcome everyone to Shin Kong Financial Holding Company's 2022 first quarter earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent background noise. After the presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please follow the instructions given at the time if you would like to ask the question. For your information, this conference call is now being broadcasted live over the Internet. Webcast replay will be available within an hour after the conference is finished. Please visit www.skfh.com.tw under the Investor Relations section. Now I would like to introduce Mr. Stan Lee, Senior Vice President of Shin Kong Financial Holding Company. Mr. Lee, please begin. Thank you, moderator. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome again for joining Shin Kong Financial Holding 2022 first quarter earnings call. Before we start, I would like to introduce my colleagues who are with me today. Here in the meeting room are Hanwei Lin, Chief Actuary of Shin Kong Life; Yin-Fang Liao, Head of the Investment Team of Shin Kong Life; Isabella and Christine, members of the IR team. We are also joined by Fiona Lin, Principal of Deloitte Actuarial & Insurance Solutions. Fiona has been working closely with us over the past few months in reviewing our EV work, and she's here to help us answer any question you may have. The presentation we are about to go through was sent out two hours ago. You may also download it from our website or participate through webcast. If you do not have the presentation, please let us know now. Your lines will be muted when we are presenting. If you are cut off, please dial back in or call Christine at 886-9689-29230 for assistance. Now please turn to page four. SKFH recorded consolidated after-tax profit of TWD 3.48 billion for the first quarter 2022. Earnings per share was TWD 0.24. Consolidated shareholders' equity amounted to TWD 246.9 billion, and book value per share at the end of the first quarter was TWD 16.99. Life insurance EV per share of SKFH was TWD 24.3. EV of Shin Kong Life increased 10% year-on-year to TWD 341.2 billion in 2021. VNB was TWD 18.2 billion, and VNB margin increased to 34%, 6% higher than the year before. More details on core business of each subsidiary will be covered later in the presentation. I would also like to share that the company completed a capital raising of around $400 million through its issuance of GDR in April. The funds will be injected into Shin Kong Life and Shin Kong Bank in June to enhance their capital position and support their business strategies. Page 10. Boosted by strong sales momentum in foreign currency policies, FYP for the first quarter grew 68.8% year-over-year to TWD 18.56 billion, securing a market share of 6.8%. Shin Kong Life has adopted a value-oriented product strategy and promoted foreign currency policies and protection products for stable interest spread, better asset-liability matching, and CSM. FYP of foreign currencies increased 84.4% year-over-year to TWD 15.68 billion, accounting for 84.5% of total FYP. Sales of health insurance grew 12.5% year-over-year due to stronger demand from clients. FYPE reached TWD 4.83 billion, and FYPE over FYP was 26%, beating the industry average. As to cost and expenses, it decreased one basis point quarter-over-quarter to 3.72%. Page 13 presents the overview of Shin Kong Life investment portfolio. Annualized investment return for the first quarter was 3.84% due to lower realized capital gains amid market volatility. Breakdown of investment returns of different asset classes were real estate, 2%; mortgage and corporate loans, 1.7%; policy loans, 5.2%; overseas investments, 4.3%; domestic securities, 3.1%; and cash, 0.2%. Page 14 shows the portfolio of overseas fixed incomes. At the end of March, overseas fixed incomes topped TWD 2.1 trillion. In the first quarter, the funds were mainly deployed in investment-grade corporate bonds. As a result, corporate bonds accounted for the largest share, representing 48.9% of the total, followed by international bonds at 26.5%. Government bonds accounted for 24.3%. Over 90% of the overseas fixed income position was deployed in US dollar-denominated bonds. You may also have a look at the chart of overseas fixed income portfolio by region in the upper right corner. North America and Europe accounted for the majority of overseas fixed incomes, showing a combined share of 61.8%. Page 16. The pie chart on the left-hand side shows the mix of hedging instruments. At the end of the first quarter, hedging ratio was 81.5%, including CS, NDF, and naturally hedged foreign currency policies. CS and NDF accounted for roughly half and half in terms of traditional hedges. Driven by US dollar appreciation and effective hedging strategy, annualized hedging gain for the first quarter was 0.06%. The balance of our foreign currency volatility reserve was TWD 11.5 billion at quarter end. Full year hedging cost is targeted below 150 basis points. I will now hand over to Isabella, who will take you through the results of Shin Kong Bank and MasterLink Securities. Thank you, Stan Lee. Please turn to page 20. Shin Kong Bank managed to deliver stable results for the first quarter. Net interest income grew 12% year-on-year to TWD 3.35 billion with continued loan growth. Net income increased 1.3% year-on-year to TWD 907 million. Shin Kong Bank generated a consolidated net income of TWD 1.42 billion, despite lower investment income due to volatile market conditions. Page 21. The bank's loan balance grew 1.4% year-to-date to TWD 730 billion at quarter end. Consumer lending grew 2.1% year-to-date, representing the largest share of the loan book, as mortgage and other consumer loans increased 1.2% and 7.9% year-to-date respectively. Page 22. Net interest margin increased 3 basis points quarter-on-quarter to 1.25% on the back of rising interest rates. Net interest spread came down to 1.65%. We expect to see net interest margin and net interest spread improve as rate hikes come into play. Page 24. Wealth management income was down by 1.2% year-on-year to TWD 666 million, mainly due to the decline in income from mutual funds as clients became conservative in their investment decisions. However, bancassurance income grew 65.8% year-on-year and partially offset the decline in the fee income from investment products. Page 25. Asset quality was benign, with NPL ratio at 0.14% and coverage ratio at 959.3%. Both ratios were better than the industry average. Page 27. MasterLink Securities generated brokerage income of TWD 1.37 billion for the first quarter, which was down by 4.6% year-on-year due to lower daily turnover in the stock market. Its prop trading business suffered a weak quarter due to choppy market conditions. Consolidated after-tax loss was TWD 124 million for the first quarter. I will now turn over to Hanwei Lin to talk about the update on EV AV. Thank you, Isabella. Please turn to page 29. For 2021 embedded value, the earning rate of VIF goes from 3%-4.77% in 30 years for NT dollar products and 3.79%-5.22% for US dollar products. The equivalent investment yield is 4.02%. For VNB, it goes from 2.82%-4.73% and 3.97%-5.07% in 30 years for NT dollar and US dollar products respectively. The adjusted NAV increased 6%, VIF increased 22%, and the COC increased 25%. As a result, at the end of 2021, EV of Shin Kong Life increased 10% year-on-year to TWD 341.2 billion. In 2021, Shin Kong Life adopted a value-driven strategy and a focus on foreign currency policies, protection products, and health insurance policies. VNB margin increased from 27.8% to 34.4%, and VNB decreased just 9.8% to TWD 18.2 billion. AVs for five years of new business and twenty years of new business were TWD 415.7 billion and TWD 521.1 billion respectively. Page 30. Under the base case scenario, risk discount rate was 9.5%. We also provide the sensitivity test of investment return and the risk discount rate for your reference. Page 31 shows the detailed breakdown of adjusted NAV. Shin Kong Life adjusted NAV at the end of 2020 was TWD 208.1 billion. Profits in 2021 contributed an increase of TWD 12.6 billion, while unrealized gains on financial assets caused a decrease of TWD 3.6 billion in the adjusted NAV. Other adjustments are TWD 3.8 billion. Therefore, Shin Kong Life adjusted NAV at the end of 2021 reached TWD 220.8 billion. Page 32. VIF grew from TWD 192.5 billion to TWD 234 billion in 2021. The main contribution came from new business issued, which added TWD 20.7 billion to VIF. Page 33. VNB decreased 9.8% year-on-year from TWD 20.1 billion to TWD 18.2 billion in 2021. The decline in the premium from new business deducted TWD 5.5 billion from VNB. As the proportion of high-value products increased over the year, the improved product mix was a positive impact that added TWD 1.7 billion to VNB. The economic assumptions change also added TWD 1.9 billion to VNB. That wraps up our results presentation. Moderator, please start the Q&A session. Yes. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad and you will enter the queue. After you are announced, please ask your question. Should you wish to cancel your question, you may press zero two. Thank you. Now, please press zero one to ask the question. Thank you. Our first question is coming from Jennifer of Nanshan Life. Go ahead, please. I have one question on embedded value. Your cost of capital increased TWD 23 billion year-on-year. What's the impact of C3 interest rate risk? Thank you. I think about the TWD 23 billion increase, about TWD 21 billion are from the C3 factor increase. Jennifer, is that clear? Out of 23, Hanwei Lin said that 21 is because it's driven by the adjustments of C3 risk factor. Okay. Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you. We're now in question and answer session. If you would like to ask the question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. As a reminder, please press zero one on your keypad if you would like to ask the question. Thank you. Next we have Jamie Huang of JPMorgan for questions. Go ahead, please, Jamie. Yeah, thanks. Just one question for Shin Kong Bank. Is that for your trading gains in the first quarter? I think you mentioned it was partially affected by lower bond trading gains. Just trying to check whether that's also due to the rise in market yields. Should we assume the second quarter the situation will still be relatively unfavorable given the further increase in market yields on that front? If there is anything you could do to mitigate that kind of adverse impacts. Thanks. Thank you, Jamie, for the question. Yes, as I mentioned in Chinese session, the year-on-year decrease from the investment gains basically because of relatively rare opportunities for us to dispose bonds with enough gains. Will that be the same in the second quarter? I think, for disposal, the difficulty is still there, right? Well, we don't have significant exposure to the P&L bond position though, so we don't have to worry too much about the mark-to-market loss even without disposal. Right? So, I think, here's the same rationale that if rates remains at this level or even slightly higher, to realize the gains will be, well, equally difficult compared to what we had in the first quarter. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. We are now in question and answer session. If you would like to ask the question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. Moderator, if there's no question, then, let's close the meeting now. Yes. Thank you, Stan. Ladies and gentlemen, we thank you very much for your participation in Shin Kong Financial Holding Company's conference call. There will be a webcast replay within an hour. Please visit www.skfh.com.tw under the Investor Relations section. Should you have further questions, please don't hesitate to contact the IR team of SKFH by phone or by email. You may now disconnect. Goodbye.
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