Earnings call transcript: Vontobel’s Q2 2025 reveals profit dip

Vontobel Holding AG, a Swiss financial firm with a market capitalization of $4.26 billion and an attractive dividend yield of 4.96%, reported its second quarter 2025 earnings. The company revealed a decline in profit before tax and operating income, despite ongoing efficiency measures and strategic innovations. The Swiss financial firm reported a net profit of CHF 116 million and announced several new investment strategies amid a challenging market environment. According to InvestingPro analysis, the company’s current valuation appears to be fairly priced relative to its Fair Value.

Key Takeaways

• Profit before tax decreased by 15% year-on-year to CHF 148 million.
• Assets under management reached CHF 233 billion, with net new money of CHF 2 billion.
• Operating expenses reduced by 2% as part of a CHF 100 million efficiency program.
• Launched three new investment strategies, including its first active ETF in the U.S.
• Anticipates gradual recovery in equity flows and expansion in fixed income strategies.

Company Performance

Vontobel’s overall performance in Q2 2025 was marked by a 15% year-on-year decline in profit before tax, totaling CHF 148 million. The firm’s operating income also fell by 5% compared to the previous year, reflecting the challenging market conditions. Despite these declines, Vontobel managed to attract CHF 2 billion in net new money, bringing its total assets under management to CHF 233 billion. The company has been actively implementing cost-saving measures, evidenced by a 2% reduction in operating expenses. InvestingPro data shows the company maintains a moderate risk profile with a beta of 0.82 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.84, while delivering a solid return on equity of 11%.

Financial Highlights

• Profit before tax: CHF 148 million (15% decline YoY)
• Net profit: CHF 116 million
• Operating income: CHF 689 million (5% below last year)
• Cost income ratio: 77.9%
• CET1 ratio: 16.7%

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Vontobel is optimistic about a gradual recovery in equity flows and plans to expand its fixed income and multi-asset strategies. The company expects net interest income to range between CHF 75-85 million in the second half of the year. Vontobel is also focused on optimizing capital management and targeting growth through its integrated business model. InvestingPro subscribers can access detailed analysis including 12+ ProTips and a comprehensive Pro Research Report, which provides deeper insights into Vontobel’s growth potential and financial health score of 2.31 (FAIR).

Executive Commentary

Christel Rendu de Lint emphasized the value delivered to clients through advice, active management, and customization. Georg Schubiger expressed confidence in Vontobel’s integrated model and its capability to drive growth. Additionally, Thomas noted that higher market volatility can be beneficial for the firm’s strategies.

Risks and Challenges

• Margin pressures in institutional clients could impact profitability.
• Fluctuations in trading volumes may affect revenue stability.
• Macroeconomic uncertainties, particularly in emerging markets, pose risks.
• The success of new investment strategies is uncertain in volatile markets.
• Regulatory changes could impact operational strategies.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the margin pressures facing institutional clients and the fluctuations in trading volumes. Vontobel’s management also provided insights into their capital optimization strategies and the performance of their emerging market strategies.

Vontobel’s Q2 2025 performance reflects both the challenges of the current market environment and the firm’s strategic initiatives to navigate these conditions. As the company continues to focus on efficiency and innovation, its outlook remains cautiously optimistic.

Full transcript - Vontobel Holding AG (VONN) Q2 2025:

Sandra, Conference Operator, Chorus Call: Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the presentation of Vontobel half year 2025 results webcast. I am Sandra, the course operator. I would like to remind you that all participants have been listening remote and the conference is being recorded. The presentations will be followed by a Q and A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing and 1 on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press and 0. The conference must now be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time it’s my pleasure to hand over to Christel Rendu de Lint. Please go ahead.

Madam.

Christel Rendu de Lint, Executive Management, Vontobel: Good morning and a very warm welcome from Georg, Thomas and myself. Today Georg and I will focus on the highlights and share some more details on how we are executing on our strategy. Thomas will then take you through the numbers in detail, after which we look forward to opening the line and taking your questions. Let me start with the environment in which we delivered our half year results. Equities delivered a choppy yet positive performance after a shaky start driven by tariff headlines. Indices recovered strongly as trade tensions eased. Investors rotated towards Europe and Asia. Bonds generated modest gains. Credit spreads tightened after the April sell-off, while safe haven demand kept high. Quality issues well supported. Government yields moved lower across maturities, most visibly in Switzerland after the Swiss National Bank cut rates to zero. In the U.S.

rate cut, expectations were pushed back, yet yields still drifted down on rising growth concerns. FX markets saw a pronounced shift. The dollar declined sharply against most majors as fiscal worries grew, whereas the Swiss franc appreciated further, cementing its role as a safe haven. For Vontobel, this backdrop had a mixed impact. Lower Swiss rates and the weaker dollar weighed on net interest and translational income and the extreme volatility of April temporarily slowed down activity of our Structured Solutions clients as well as partly of Institutional Clients. On the other hand, and durably so, the volatility and structural shifts are leading both Private and Institutional Clients to seek firms with a solid balance sheet with high quality investment capabilities offering diversification potential and indeed we could successfully capture these flows. Let me turn to our financial and strategic highlights.

For the first half we delivered $148 million profit before tax. This is a solid result in the context of very strong Structured Solutions revenues last year and a sharply weaker dollar. Our operational resilience as well as cost discipline help offset some of the revenue and translational impact. Assets under management increased slightly to $233 billion, supported by $2 billion of net new money. Private Clients continued its very strong growth path, achieving 6% net new money growth right at the top of our target range. Institutional Clients net new money is negative at half year but saw a positive second quarter with strong inflows in our fixed income funds year to date above the industry growth. We closed the first half with a strong CET1 ratio of 16.7%, comfortably absorbing the Basel III Final impact and the EHA Klein book acquisition.

We further diversified our funding base with an inaugural senior unsecured bond, and our overall conservative stance on risk once again proved its value during the exceptional market volatility in April. We also made important progress on our priorities in this first half. We continue to realign and expand our offering towards areas which play into our investment strength, have attractive economics, and secular growth prospects. We notably brought three new investment strategies to market: a European equity income fund that builds on the great success of our innovative Swiss equity income product, an active ETF in the U.S., and an asset-backed finance fund in private credit. Private clients could for the first time also access a revised offering centered around personalization and built on a modular open architecture platform that combines best-in-class internal and external investment modules.

The integration of the EHA client book was completed ahead of schedule, and we selectively appointed senior hires. These include a U.S.-based CEO for Vontobel Americas, key market heads in institutional clients, and additional relationship managers in our focus markets. Finally, the $100 million efficiency program is tracking firmly to plan. Our priority to sharpen and accelerate our operating model and client delivery is yielding tangible results. Exit rate savings reached $62 million, enabling continued investment in growth areas while keeping the cost base on a downward path. We will execute this program to completion by end 2026. Looking to the second half and beyond, we have a clear strategy and priorities to drive sustainable growth. Vontobel operates a unique integrated business model. We are an active-only investment firm with a single investment factory that serves two complementary client segments: private clients and institutional clients.

We are convinced this setup is the best way to make sure all our clients, wherever they are, in whatever segment they are, can benefit from the full range of our investment capabilities and our products. The balance of the two client segments is mutually reinforcing, complementary, and creates clear diversification benefits. Product innovation and best practices move between them. We can address and serve a larger market. We capture both the steadier revenue growth in private clients as well as the more cyclical but highly scalable business of institutional clients. You will hear many asset management firms speaking about wanting to break into wealth management and vice versa. We have both. We strongly believe in this model and our capability to drive it. Building on that conviction, we last year set three clear priorities. We then, together with our more than 2,000 colleagues, move straight into execution.

We deliver value to our clients through advice, active management, and customization. We grow profitably in private clients and institutional clients. We deliver on our efficiency goal. The wording is intentionally put: clients first, grow profitably, run the firm efficiently, and we will continue to create generational value for our clients, employees, and shareholders alike. Let me now home in on how we are in the process of activating this strategy, turning it into concrete actions and results. Starting with Investment Solutions, the single investment platform that serves both client segments, consistent with our priority to deliver value to our clients through advice, active management, and customization, we are accelerating our execution on a number of priority initiatives. First, build on our leading fixed income capabilities and our market-leading strategies and performance. This ambition is already translating into tangible results across several of our flagship fixed income strategies.

At 2024, assets under management now exceed $24 billion across our asset-backed, multi-sector, and outcome-driven strategies in our fixed income boutique. The emerging market sovereign debt strategy has grown beyond $3 billion and consistently ranks top quartile across every time horizon. Credit opportunities, which we only began to market this year, already exceeds $500 million in assets and ranks in the top 5% over one, three, and five years. Second, get ready for the recovery in equity flows. We have sharpened investment processes, tools, and teams as needed. Third, expand our private market and solutions offering. We will carry forward the momentum we have with Ancala in private credit equity solutions and the expanded private offering for private clients. Fourth, build on our strong multi-asset track record in private clients.

We are now scaling these capabilities in institutional clients not only through mandates where we already have a solid Swiss franchise, but also through mutual funds in key markets like Germany and Italy. Finally, technology. We are accelerating the development of our cutting-edge tech platform, empowering investment teams with advanced tools to deliver mass customized solutions. Through this disciplined execution, we are systematically expanding our capabilities in faster growing segments that both deliver clear value to our clients and attractive economics for the firm. Now over to Georg.

Georg Schubiger, Executive Management, Vontobel: Hello from Zurich and a very warm welcome from my side. Let us move to private clients where we again have achieved very strong inflows with 6% annualized net new money growth right at the top of our target. All regions were positive, and we were notably able to capture growing interest from U.S. clients. All relationship manager tenures had positive flows, with seasoned relationship managers contributing more than 40% to the total. Our success is deeply rooted in a disciplined implementation of our investment-led approach concentrated sharply on our focus markets. We will continue to first selectively add and develop top calibre relationship managers. We will use our robust process for sourcing, onboarding, and developing talent. Our focus remains on relationship managers with established client networks who embrace our investment-led culture and disciplined approach to risk. Second, put investments and advice first.

We will resist the temptation to deploy balance sheet credit to accelerate growth. This reduces capital consumption, earning cyclicality, and credit risk. Third, invest in our market-leading digital platform for structured solutions. We will further expand its capabilities and throughput, and fourth, evaluate and selectively seize inorganic growth opportunities which add scope or scale. We will build on our successful integration of Notenstein, La Roche, UBS, SFA, and EHA Klein. These actions will keep our unique private clients growth engine running. Let us move to institutional clients by first reviewing the wider industry context for active asset managers. Please refer to the left-hand chart. The blue line plots cumulative European and cross-border passive fund flows since January 2022. They are up almost $700 billion. The black line shows active funds after three very tough years. The bottom was reached late last year. Since February, the curve has turned firmly upward.

This is the inflection point we anticipated. The middle chart splits those active flows for fixed income and equities. Fixed income is decisively leading the rebound. Equities remain negative, but the trend is clearly improving. On the right, now you see a ranking of 24 European active managers. It shows percentage fund asset growth from January 2024 to May 2025. The story behind the extremes in this chart is instructive. The leaders have either a strong captive distribution channel or a pure fixed income focus. The laggards are emerging market special. Our position between the extremes is consistent with our business model. First, we deliberately keep an open architecture and put our fiduciary duty towards our clients. First, we do not push products and our private clients are not in a captive channel.

Second, we went into the 2022 historical sell-offs and resulting home shoring with recognized but exposed emerging markets capabilities. This negatively affected growth during the period. Third, we are however a leading player in actively managed fixed income strategies. In short, we were above the peer median despite two clear headwinds. We do not rely on a captive distribution channel and industry-wide outflows affected our emerging market strategies. Our outperformance speaks to the quality of our fixed income franchise and the reach of our distribution teams. Those of you who attended the Investor Day in November last year know that we, together with Christoph von Reiche and his teams, have been working hard to sharpen and accelerate our delivery in institutional clients. We are focused on evolving our sales approach, implementing globally scalable client journeys, and commercializing strong existing track records while activating new strategies.

Let me give you a few examples of what this means in practice. First, we have sharpened our coverage model. As opposed to starting with a given product on the shelf, we now start with a complete view of the client’s needs. What this means is that coverage teams are no longer organized by product, but by client segments such as pension funds, insurers, and global banks, to name a few. Second, we deliberately accelerated our core strengths. Fixed income is the most obvious example. We concentrated our distribution on our strongest strategies and solutions. Fixed income today accounts for almost 40% of our institutional assets. It is a key driver of our flows and we see continued strong client demand, an area we will continue to decidedly lean into. Third, we are in the process of implementing a scalable client service model.

All RFP onboarding and reporting processes are increasingly moved from various regional systems onto one global platform. This cuts client response times, error rates, and costs. Fourth, we are now systematically concentrating our sales efforts on the markets and client segments where we have the greatest right to win. As Christel Rendu de Lint mentioned earlier, we have appointed experienced senior talent to lead our efforts in key markets. Finally, we are improving our efficiency and client service capabilities by making increased use of technology to standardize, accelerate, and automate our processes. This includes more traditional systems and data architectures in areas such as client reporting. It also means staying at the forefront of rapidly advancing large language model-based tools for select workflows. Taken together, these ongoing measures put us in pole position to capture and outperform on the cyclical recovery we are already seeing in actively managed fixed income.

We are ready as equities is now following in its path. Importantly, no one is sitting on their hands waiting for traditional tides to turn. Our distribution teams have already demonstrated great success in enabling our systematic expansion into solutions, private markets, and other strategies. Tangible examples include partnering with Ancala teams and a great success in distributing our innovative products such as Swiss Sustainable Equity Income Plus, which has attracted more than CHF 800 million over the last six months. The momentum we are creating with our actions gives us tangible proof that our strategy is working and that we are well positioned to turn this industry and macro backdrop into another cycle of profitable growth. Moving on to our priority to sharpen and accelerate how we operate and serve our clients, thereby improving efficiency. Let me start with the bottom line.

Eighteen months in, our CHF 100 million efficiency program is tracking to plan. Exit rate savings already amount to CHF 62 million last year. Together with our leadership team, including our COO Markus Pfister, we presented the levers to improve our efficiency. These are unchanged, but let me give you three tangible examples of what we have achieved. We now operate six core platforms. After retiring more than 30 legacy systems and migrating an increasing share of our compute to the cloud, we have insourced high-value roles. Thirty-two external contractors have already converted to permanent staff, with another dozen to follow by year end. We have renegotiated approximately 340 vendor contracts and engagements ranging from data service providers to facilities management firms. We remain committed to completing this program by end 2026.

By becoming more efficient and freeing up resources, we will at an accelerated rate generate the capital which can be deployed for organic and inorganic growth. Our clear objective is to continue our track record of through the cycle growth and attractive shareholder returns. We last year reaffirmed our strategy and explained why we are doubling down on our integrated model. We today showed the concrete actions that are already underway. With disciplined execution, we are confident that we will reach our through the cycle targets. They remain unchanged. With this, let me hand over to Thomas who will cover the financials.

Thomas, CFO, Vontobel: Thank you, Georg. Good morning and a warm welcome from me as well. Profit before tax in the first half of 2025 stands at CHF 148 million compared with CHF 173 million in the prior year period. This amounts to a decline of 15% or 10% at constant currency. Despite the decline, we view these numbers as solid given significant macro-economic headwinds. We have seen Swiss National Bank and European Central Bank rate cuts, a significantly weaker dollar, and Structured Solutions revenues normalizing from last year. This led to CHF 29 million lower revenues at constant foreign exchange rates or CHF 39 million as reported. Our efficiency program offset some of these headwinds and contributed CHF 21 million to the profit before tax. We continue to invest into growth in private clients.

This amounted to additional costs of CHF 8 million in the half year, which are comprised of the EHA Klein teams and selective hiring of relationship managers. The foreign exchange rate development reduced profit by CHF 8 million. Like many Swiss multinationals, we carry a structural Swiss franc exposure. About 80% of our costs are in Swiss francs while only around a third of our revenues are. We also have seen one-offs linked to the efficiency program and the final EHA Klein integration of CHF 10 million, CHF 1 million more than last year. The effective tax rate fell to 22%, reflecting that the one-offs from last year did not repeat and reflecting the implementation of selected improvement measures that also offset the increase in the Dubai tax rate from 9% to 15% for the full year. We continue to guide to a 22% tax rate.

That all leaves the group net profit at CHF 116 million or CHF 124 million at constant exchange rates. All in all, a solid result given the environment. Turning now to assets and flows, assets under management increased to CHF 233 billion despite the CHF 9 billion foreign exchange headwind on the decline of the U.S. dollar. Net new money contributed CHF 2 billion and market performance contributed CHF 11.3 billion, including the CHF 1.8 billion from EHA Klein. On flows, private clients delivered very strong CHF 3.3 billion inflows, 6% annualized net new money, which is an almost 40% acceleration versus the first half last year. What is equally important is the fact that inflows were broad-based, with inflows across all regions and across all relationship manager tenures.

Institutional clients recorded CHF 1.3 billion outflows, mainly due to the loss of one large quant mandate of CHF 1.3 billion in the second quarter. Please note that the CHF 1.3 billion include CHF 500 million of inflows which are booked in the Centre of Excellence for technical reasons. The flows in the second quarter have been positive, driven mostly by fixed income and equity solutions. The operating income was resilient at CHF 689 million, 5% below last year. Net interest income is guided. At the last full year results, declined by 29%. This reduction is explained by the SNB and ECB rate cuts and the fact that just short of 50% of our deposits are denominated in Swiss francs. Net fee and commission income grew 2% on higher mandate assets and higher asset levels. Trading and other income was 11% lower than prior year.

However, last year we had strong trading volume from February to May driven by high demand for MAG7 and crypto products. What we have seen this year in contrary is four to six weeks of muted client activity after Liberation Day. By segment, private client revenues normalized from last year while institutional client revenues mainly reflect the impact of the U.S. dollar and a lower share of emerging market products. The private client revenue margin declined by 14 basis points to 87 basis points. Roughly half of the change stems from lower Structured Solutions revenues compared to the strong last year. The other half comes from previously guided compression in net interest margins as Swiss rates are now back to zero. Now let’s take a closer look at the institutional client margin which stands at 34 basis points for three years.

Industry demand for emerging market funds and mandates has been weak. We also see this in our business mix. The share of emerging market related products has declined from 21% three years ago to 10% today. This has directly impacted the overall margin because emerging market strategies generally carry higher margins across all asset classes. If we look ahead, there are both head and tailwinds. On one hand, the second half 2025 year-on-year comparison might still show some residual mix pressure. On the other hand, several developments point to higher margins. First of all, client interest in our emerging market strategies is returning and we have seen positive inflows into the emerging market debt fund. In other words, there are clear indications that the share of assets of emerging markets has flattened out.

Second, our strategic priorities to expand our capabilities in solutions and private markets will be margin accretive over the medium term. Finally, the fixed income flows are concentrated in higher margin products. Based on the recent inflows and the current pipeline that we see for new business, we expect margins to remain broadly stable in the second half. Moving on to costs, operating expenses decreased by 2% to CHF 541 million as our efficiency program is starting to yield tangible results. Personnel costs were CHF 355 million, down 2%, despite some inflation, selective hiring, and the ongoing insourcing of external resources. Our efficiency program could offset parts of the revenue decline. The cost income ratio finished at 77.9% or 77.1% at constant foreign exchange rates. This increase is entirely driven by lower revenues in net interest income and transaction revenues, both of which have very low marginal costs.

Let’s move on to the balance sheet. We continue to maintain a strong and highly liquid balance sheet. In the first half, total assets rose by CHF 2.6 billion to CHF 35.5 billion, driven by seasonally higher delivery versus payment positions and CHF 1 billion of additional client deposits. Our balance sheet comprises more than CHF 20 billion of liquid assets and our liquidity coverage ratio stands at 160%. Leveraging this strength, we have successfully placed our first CHF 200 million senior unsecured bond in March. The bond issuance diversifies our funding base and represents a first step towards establishing Vontobel as a regular capital markets issuer. Creditor exposure remains low in line with our investment-led growth strategy and we will continue to operate with a conservative risk stance, which has consistently served us well through periods of market stress.

Most recently, during April, the CET1 ratio increased by 60 basis points to 16.7%. Net capital generation from retained earnings added 80 basis points. The gross impact of the Basel III Final regulation, which became effective on January 1, 2024, in Switzerland, amounted to 80 basis points but was more than offset by 130 basis points of continued capital management improvements during the first half. Since last year, Basel III Final regulation in total has amounted to a gross CET1 ratio reduction of 2.2 percentage points, of which we have already offset 1.5. The EHA Klein book acquisition resulted in a 20 basis point decline due to associated goodwill and intangibles. In short, our CET1 ratio is comfortably above the 8% regulatory minimum and our 12% internal target. This leaves further headroom to support organic and inorganic growth.

We now turn our focus to the long term health aspect of Vontobel. As previously mentioned many times, we assess Vontobel’s health against three key measures. First, the ability to grow revenues and profits. We focus on delivering long term through the cycle growth even if macro conditions weigh on individual periods as we have seen in this first half. Second, the ability to create value with a return on equity of 10.2% versus an estimated cost of equity of 9.1%. We generated positive economic value, and finally generating capital. Tangible book value per share growth, including the cumulative dividends paid, further increased and remains among the strongest in the industry. The return on equity, the return on tangible equity of 13.8% and the return on CET1 capital at 18.5% remain ahead of their respective hurdles, confirming that our strategy is generating sustainable shareholder value.

To summarize the financials, we generated a solid profit before tax of CHF 148 million amid lower rates, a weak dollar, and a sharp but brief slowdown in client activity after Liberation Day. Operating expenses declined as the benefits of our efficiency program become visible in the P&L. Private Clients continued their strong trajectory with 6% annualized growth while Institutional Clients turned positive in the second quarter. Also, our balance sheet remained strong. The CET1 ratio rose to 16.7% despite the new Basel III Final FRTB regulation. We further diversified funding with a successful first issuance of a senior unsecured bond. With that, I hand back to Georg.

Georg Schubiger, Executive Management, Vontobel: Thank you, Thomas. The first half of 2025 was a period of disciplined execution for Vontobel. Let me briefly summarize. We delivered solid results and positive flows in a challenging and volatile macro-economic environment and against a strong prior year comparable period. We executed on our priorities with discipline. Three new investment strategies launched, EHA Klein integration completed ahead of plan, and our $100 million efficiency program is firmly on track. Looking ahead, we are determined to carry this execution momentum into the second half and beyond. Thank you very much for your attention. We are happy to take your questions now.

Sandra, Conference Operator, Chorus Call: We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and 1. On the telephone, you will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered a queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and 2. Participants are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and 1 at this time. The first question comes from Nicolas Herman from Citigroup Inc. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning. Thanks for the presentation and taking my questions. Hopefully you can hear me okay. Yes, great. I’ve got a bunch of questions, but I’m going to start with three and then I might circle back later on in the call. I guess just on if I could start with asset management, please. A couple of questions, one on margin and one on your offering. Just to clarify, are there any one-offs or lumpy items that are distorting your institutional client margin? I guess it just seems a bit counterintuitive to me that in a period where equity flows appear to have been relatively better and the proportion of emerging markets has been stable, that we’ve seen such a strong deterioration in your gross margin, much more so than in prior periods. Although I did like your comments around the outlook for that business.

On your offering I saw that you launched your first active ETF in the U.S. I guess which client segments is that particularly targeted for? I guess more broadly the active ETF market is steadily growing in Europe as well. Could this product structure make sense across your offering? The final question I had was on capital and M&A. Thomas, you talked about how you’ve offset 1.5 percentage points of the 2.2% impact from Basel III Final. Do you see more scope to optimize your capital from here? I guess just more broadly with a now rebuilt surplus capital position and M&A activity is picking up across the industry post EHG, are you optimistic on utilizing and deploying that surplus capital for further, I guess particularly inorganic growth? What kind of opportunities do you see in the market? Thank you very much.

Thomas, CFO, Vontobel: Good. Let me get started with the margin. Thank you for your questions. I will dive into the first part. Yes, there is a one off, but the one off was last year, so you’re right to point that out. We had last year a one off, roughly a one basis point, which explains why it kept up last year and was going down this year. As I have mentioned in last year’s presentation, the key driver here that we talk about is emerging markets in equity and fixed income. However, what we seem to see is that the emerging markets are stabilizing. Now, if you look at what is going on in the market in the last couple of years, 70% of all flows have been going to the U.S.

If you take the MSCI, the emerging markets market capitalization in % of MSCI, what you see is it has been going down since a couple of years now and now we see this flattening out and we are also seeing increasing demand now. The institutionals seem to slowly, slowly re-risk while we hear about re-risking from the U.S. on the retail side, much, much more in particular in trading oriented areas. On the institutional they’re only slowly, slowly coming back to this higher octane. What we’re seeing here is the inflows and the pipeline, as I said earlier, is in high margin products. Yes, we see fixed income running ahead. In fixed income we’re not talking about the low margin, we’re talking about attractive high margin business such as 24 asset management or credit opportunities. The second question, Christel.

Christel Rendu de Lint, Executive Management, Vontobel: Yeah. On the active ETF you ask about which channel. It’s predominantly the intermediary channel or wholesale channel or global banks channel, however you want to call it. For us it’s really the wrapping of our own capabilities. We obviously observe the higher demand that there is for this type of instrument. It is strategic and indeed we are assessing the potential in Europe as well. What we would stress is our edge obviously is the capabilities. It’s what we produce, that’s the DNA. It’s the investment skills, the investment performance. The wrapping is just a wrapping, but you need to have it if this is where the demand is also seeking it. That’s exactly how we thought about it.

Launch first on international equities, which is one of our strong track record, and it is very good that we give it this home, in particular a product that has been in high demand in the U.S. obviously by the nature of it. If I may add on before I give back to Thomas on the capital, on the inorganic you were asking, we will continue with the same approach that applies to both organic and inorganic in how we approach things, which is in a disciplined, selective but open-minded way. Disciplined as in, you remember when we hired 42 RMs last year, we had conducted over 600 interviews. We go in exactly the same way inorganically. They must add scope or scale. If it’s scale, it’s obviously in our focus market and we definitely remain open-minded to this type of opportunities.

Thomas, CFO, Vontobel: Yep. So Christel answered the second part of the third question.

Christel Rendu de Lint, Executive Management, Vontobel: Exactly. Second part.

Thomas, CFO, Vontobel: I will go on the first one whether there’s more scope to go. Let me take a step back. Basel III Final has only been introduced in Switzerland. The way it looks currently, it will not be introduced in the EU. They shifted it for one year, the UK shifted it two years, and the U.S. flat out said that such things are designed to make U.S. banks’ competitive advantage worse. It is very unlikely that under the current administration any steps in these directions are being made. We have explained that at the introduction, our impact is of course market risk, RWAs will go up, the credit risk I said will remain flat, and the operational risk RWAs are coming down, which you can see also from the report. It is mostly driven by different risk weights on the bonds. For RWA calculation, fair tails need to be hedged.

For example, we need to underlay a 25% or minus 30% move on equities with capital now or with risk weighted assets. What we have been working on is adjusting the products, adjusting the bond portfolio, and selectively adjusting our hedging strategy to the new risk weighted assets to optimize risk return. We have done the bond portfolio. What remains still is to do a bit more on products and on the hedging strategies. The long winding answer to your question is yes, there is more scope and we are currently implementing for the second half of the year, but I would say we’ve got 2/3 of the benefits. We have already realized around 2/3 and the rest we are realizing in the second half of the year.

That’s really helpful, thank you. If I could just ask one follow up please on active ETFs. I appreciate that the structure is also more cost efficient, but I guess is there any difference for you in terms of revenue and pre-tax margins for you with active ETFs? Just to be clear, I totally get what you’re saying. It makes total sense about the edges, the capabilities, not the wrapper, but just from a financial perspective, because this is why.

Christel Rendu de Lint, Executive Management, Vontobel: We are indeed going into the active ETF and will only be going into the active ETF. To answer concretely, the product that we launch has a 0.60% management fee, so that should help.

Got it. Thank you.

Sure.

Sandra, Conference Operator, Chorus Call: As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star followed by one. The next question comes from Benoit Vallou from Oddo BHF. Please go ahead.

Oh yes, hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I have three questions in fact. Maybe two on revenues and one on expenses. Regarding revenues, maybe first question is related to NII trajectory. I mean, we saw a decrease of only CHF 89 million in H1 this year versus H2. There’s been another cut in rates. You mentioned that 50% of deposits are in interest rates. Can you give us any color on what could be the trend for H2 this year? We could assume a further decrease, but maybe at a lower pace than what we’ve seen in H1. Any potential comments? The question is related to trading activities and revenues. You mentioned, of course, that client activity was more muted post Liberation Day.

Do you believe that to some extent we might have some kind of catch up, maybe in H2 this year or maybe at the end of this year? I mean, something which could occur. What’s your view on that? Related to expenses, you are on track or maybe marginally ahead of your plan. Do you believe that you could potentially have room to exceed a little bit your target of CHF 100 million? I mean, with the decrease in revenues, your cost income has deteriorated. Would you go beyond your current target?

Thank you.

Thomas, CFO, Vontobel: Let me get started with the revenues. Net interest income, generally we have a very low net interest income. If you look 10, 15 years back, it is around 8% average and this time it is 6.4%. This is a result of the business model and the strategy of investment-led growth in private banking rather than lending-led growth. Loans are for Vontobel a service and not a business. I wanted to say in the beginning, if you look, we have roughly CHF 7 billion in loans, roughly CHF 14 billion in deposits. Some of the deposit type is under structured products. It has to do with how they are wrapped and provided to the clients, 50% of which is Swiss francs, then US dollars and then euros. In essence, Swiss francs deposit is, so to say, the driver of what we talk about here.

The outlook is we’re expecting a slight decline and some adjustment for dividends because it’s net interest income plus dividends. All in all, we would say CHF 75 million to CHF 85 million in that range would look okay as an estimate for the second half of the year. We see a bit more decline. The Swiss franc reduction in interest rates will come through and the dividends will not. They’re happening in the first half of the year. That’s it on this question. On the trading side, generally trading is very, very difficult to predict. That’s why we don’t do this publicly. In general, the second half is a bit weaker than the first half. That has to do with July and August, the holiday period, and in December. Normally what we see is a significant slowdown two weeks before year end. That’s a bit the background.

What we have seen in the first half is after the Liberation Day when the decline started, we did not see a pickup in volume. Our explanation for this is the clients that are trading. There are two reasons for that. First of all, higher volatility is generally good. What we have seen is significant political uncertainty, and this is generally not good for the trading volumes. Secondly, what I have also explained last year is we don’t make the money with trading in the sense of the work that we take active positions. The money is more than 90% made from clients. It’s client margins, bid-ask spread, and all these kind of things. That’s why the client demand is very important. We have seen this blip for four weeks to six weeks.

Otherwise, the half year has been good and it was running good already at the end of May. There may be a bit of catch up possible, but it’s very, very difficult for us to predict. It of course depends on how the markets are developing.

Christel Rendu de Lint, Executive Management, Vontobel: The last one is if we’re going to exceed $100 million. We are definitely sticking to it. We’ve announced $100 million. This is, you know, we stick to that. We can reassess depending on market or structural conditions rather, but for now you go with the guideline of $100 million.

Okay, thank you. May I have just another very quick question? You mentioned the impact of the weakness of the USD. I mean, does it have also an impact on your normalized tax rate?

Thomas, CFO, Vontobel: No, it doesn’t have an impact on the tax rate. These are different effects because the taxes we pay, of course, are on the statutory account. In the local currency, with the local number. As we calculate it back, I mean U.S. dollar calculates with U.S. dollar taxes. In Swiss francs they go down, but also the revenues go down. That’s why the tax rate itself should not be affected by that at all, unless there’s some timing differences which would explain a very, very small piece of it. Generally, no impact on the tax rate.

Okay, thank you very much.

Sandra, Conference Operator, Chorus Call: The next question comes from Daniel Wrigley from Zürcher Kantonalbank. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thanks for taking my questions. Obviously a bit of a follow up regarding the questions on client activity, in particular with regards to the Structured Solutions business. There, we have also seen a bit of a drop versus last year.

Can you maybe just help me again?

Understand why last year, last year’s H1 Structured Solutions contribution was so high. I think you well explained why this year was a bit softer. I think also compared to previous years, last year’s H1 results seem pretty, pretty outstanding in Structured Solutions. Thanks.

Thomas, CFO, Vontobel: If I move you back a little bit in time, last year, the year started in January, a bit slow, but then from February to end of May we had quite a run in the markets. The recovery was quite strong, in particular in the Magnificent Seven and in particular in Nvidia. We saw a lot of demand in the Magnificent Seven and in Nvidia structured products. The second thing is Bitcoin had this very strong run during that time as well. Also, we saw extremely strong client demand for our crypto products. Those two things have now this year not happened, obviously, we have seen an opposite effect. In general, all in all, we have a very strong platform and we continue to gain market share. The underlying business is very healthy. Of course, we’re driven by client demand as I’ve highlighted earlier.

That was just very strong with Magnificent Seven, Nvidia, and crypto last year.

Shouldn’t the kind of volatility environment.

We have seen this year, I’d say.

Mid to longer term, be helpful to the Structured Solutions business?

Yes, as I said, higher volatility is in general good. These four weeks that we have seen, or six weeks, it wasn’t volatility, it was uncertainty. What we see more and more with private clients on the private side, and we also see it in the trading, is that clients, when they are uncertain, just do nothing. They don’t buy, they don’t sell. The pain was not big enough. It reversed within a proper period of time with a strong rebound. That’s why clients took some time to come back and start trusting again and start trading again. That took four to six weeks as I said earlier. That’s what we’re seeing. Yes, you’re right. In general, higher volatility is good. If you see a higher volatility environment for the second half, that’s accretive.

What we have seen in those four weeks is due to maybe too high volatility, too high volatility and in particular political uncertainty. It wasn’t that something is going on in the market that people could understand and position themselves against. It was a political thing that came out basically of the left field. That’s our explanation why we have seen, and that’s also what our distributors tell us, why we have seen less demand.

Okay, thanks a lot. I understand.

Sandra, Conference Operator, Chorus Call: We have a follow-up question from Nicolas Herman from Citigroup Inc. Please go ahead.

Yes, hi. Thanks for taking my follow up questions. I guess it’s a big picture question for Christel. You should get ready for the recovery equity flows. When you presented your strategy, and I can totally see the kind of the trend that you’re illustrating here, when you presented your strategy, you flagged the relatively low yields in equities versus fixed income. I guess just what makes you much more constructive, I mean that hasn’t really changed. What do you see that’s really kind of changing this demand picture from a client perspective? The second one would be it’s great to see you sign inflows into your emerging market funds. Could you help us with the performance in those strategies please?

Maybe the percentage of assets in the top two quartiles for your emerging markets, equities and debt strategies, you obviously help us with the overall segment, but just maybe for emerging markets specifically that would be helpful just to give us a sense of how well geared you are into that. Should I stop there and just go ahead? The third one I had was on multi asset. It looks like there may have been some small outflows there. Is that correct? The final one on wealth management, there has been a relatively notable decline in recurring fee margin, both I guess versus the full year 2024, but also versus on a year on year basis. Just what is driving that please? How to think about that line item going forward, please? Thank you.

Christel Rendu de Lint, Executive Management, Vontobel: Sure. Starting with the, if I understood your question right, we had a sound problem actually. In case that is not answering exactly your question, please come back. You were asking what makes us confident that equities will be recovering. It’s basically, if you look at what Georg Schubiger was presenting on page nine, you can see it. The run rate of outflows in active equities is obviously shrinking and the evidence is that they are, you know, it’s starting, we are starting to see the first interest into active equities again, including into EM. It’s tentative still. It’s not saying that there are massive flows into active equities, but you can see that the trajectory is the one that you’d expect normally. After the shock in 2022, it took longer, by the way.

That’s the same thing because it was political uncertainty, it takes longer and then flows come back gradually. Fixed income first, equity second. EM, by the way, is a very similar story. It’s starting where it’s perceived as being the least risky, I’d say, across all asset classes. That would be into EM sovereign because the only credit risk you take is the risk of the sovereign and hard currency, which would be seen as safer than local currency by clients. This is where we’re seeing the interest. That strategy in particular is top quartile across all segments. For the others, we can come back to you with the performance. You have two core strategies that are really the leading strategy, which is the EM debt sovereign.

You have the EM local currency, which is also in the top quartiles, and you have the EM Corporate that remains top quartile on a five-year basis, has suffered in 2023 on top of my head, and so has receded probably to the second quartile, between top third quartile and second quartile on a three-year basis. You can get all of that. On the EM equities, MTIC has turned the corner last year in terms of performance, was ahead of benchmark, was coming back in the peer ranking, needs to pull another good year to come back up in terms of ranking on the longer dated period.

Very helpful. I just wanted on that point, Christel, at the strategy day. Hopefully you can hear me better now. You flagged the relatively low yields in equities versus fixed income as a reason why you were much more constructive on the outlook for fixed income demand, I guess. Is it this kind of sign of discerning? Is that because we’ve seen a convergence with slightly lower interest rates and lower uncertainty? I’m just kind of curious, from your perspective, what is driving that kind of turn in sentiment, because that yield differential still remains from what I can see.

Yes, this is a completely personal view. I do think it’s just the, you know, it’s the pecking order of risk appetite coming back in, and in particular for active when you think about it, to re-engage into active and also just give you the taste of wanting to re-engage. If you are fundamentally thinking no way for emerging markets, it kind of also shut down that market, and that is turning. You also had early in the year the dip seek, whether that proves lasting or not lasting, hasn’t proven lasting for now, but still kind of went like, okay, is there something happening? You have the question of the diversification given the U.S. backdrop. I think it’s a bit of all of that which is rekindling interest into active, active almost more, and then equities and active in particular.

Helpful, thank you.

Thomas, CFO, Vontobel: Good. I go with question three and four. On the multi asset, the outflow was slightly positive. As we said, you don’t see that from the numbers, but the Quant boutique has suffered outflows in the first half of $2.1 billion, of which $1.3 billion was one very big mandate. The multi asset core Multi asset had an inflow of $0.2 billion. That’s how it went. On the multi asset, as you could see, we have very strong performance and one of the key strategic directions for the second half of the year is to start distributing the strong multi asset performance to our institutional client base. That is that. For the recurring fee reduction, there’s exactly three reasons that I can give you. Number one, EHA Klein.

EHA Klein was dilutive to the margin when we bought it, not only in general, but also don’t forget this is an asset deal. We took over the client. They had to go to AML, KYC, checking, compliance, all the repapering, all this kind of work. That takes time from relationship managers before they are fully set up again. Also, relationship managers need to get used to the new setup, all these kind of processes that work. It just takes a bit of time. That is the main reason. Then what we have seen is some smaller asset allocation shifts in the advisory mandates. Our ultra high net worth business is also increasingly successful, so we get bigger chunks of business. The average size of our mandates is going up and that of course has also a bit of an impact on the margin. It’s not bad margin reasons.

All of the things are good margin reasons or as I said with EHA Klein, a significant part is transitory.

It sounds, I guess with the ongoing mixture that kind of remains the direction of travel even if your pre-tax margin remains kind of unchanged. Is that fair?

Christel Rendu de Lint, Executive Management, Vontobel: Necessarily because EHA Klein is transitory, the smaller allocation shifts that Thomas mentioned were on the higher volatility or really as he rightly said, the higher uncertainty. The bigger clients, you could say yes, that could be provided we keep on gaining marginally more bigger clients. I wouldn’t. The bottom line impact is a positive one.

Got it. Okay, lovely, helpful. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Sandra, Conference Operator, Chorus Call: Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Georg Schubiger for any closing remarks.

Georg Schubiger, Executive Management, Vontobel: Thank you all for joining us today and for your continued interest in Vontobel. We value these discussions, and should you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to our investor relations team. With that, we look forward to meeting you soon, and we wish you a successful day and a pleasant summer. Thank you. Goodbye.

Sandra, Conference Operator, Chorus Call: Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.

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