Standard Chartered PLC Q1 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Thomas Andrew John Rayner - Numis Securities Limited, Research Division - Analyst : Just wanted to stick, firstly, just on the sort of revenue sustainability question. You've spoken about Wealth Management. I just realized that the first quarter was very strong in Hong Kong, particularly in terms of stock market turnover, which I think drives mutual fund sales and retail sort of equities trading. I just wonder how much of your Q1 performance was driven by that rather than some of the other things you mentioned because I think in April, that has dropped off quite notably. So just a question there about the sustainability of that aspect of the Wealth Management performance. And also, just on revenue, can I just sort of check that the expected currency impact this year is still around $400 million? Because, obviously, the currency impact is quite small in Q1 relative to that full year guidance. That's the first question. I have a second one on costs, please.

Question: Thomas Andrew John Rayner - Numis Securities Limited, Research Division - Analyst : Okay. Just moving on to costs. Can you add a bit of color around this sort of normalizing of the performance-related pay? Because we heard the same thing from HSBC a couple of days ago that -- I don't know if there's been a directive that sort of determines how you have to accrue now your performance-related pay. But I'd just like to get a sort of better understanding. You are signaling as well that it might have an impact on the full year. Again, I suspect if that's going to be higher, does that mean that revenue will also be higher than current sort of expectations? But just to sort of to try to get my head around this PRP issue a little bit better. And also, on the restructuring charge, most of that will be taken in 2021. I mean, what's the likelihood that we get another restructuring charge top-up, say, for 2022? Because we don't want to move into a situation where we have rolling restructuring charges sort of going on and on. So I just wondered, again, your thoughts around the restructuring charge as well, please.

Question: Thomas Andrew John Rayner - Numis Securities Limited, Research Division - Analyst : Yes. Sorry, Andy, it was more about whether there's likely to be another one of similar size when we get to sort of end of this year looking into next year. Just how specific the restructuring is to specific things you're doing rather than becoming a sort of general restructuring of banks going on and on. That was the focus of the question.

Question: Martin Leitgeb - Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Research Division - Analyst : I just wanted to follow up on revenue guidance. I'm not trying to revise your guidance here or comment on consensus, but I was just wondering how conservative it is just given what we have seen in the first quarter. So loan balance is up 4%, and I think the notion that margins might be close to have stabilized. So 4% absolute growth in a single quarter rather than annualized, and consensus foreseeing revenues going up by roughly 4% in 2022. In that scenario where we have a fairly strong recovery in Asia globally after the pandemic and snapback in activity, is there meaningful upside risk to that number so that loan growth could be over and above the 5% to 7% kind of goalpost you have said earlier? Is that a fair assumption? Or are there other elements which would make us more cautious? REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. APRIL 29, 2021 / 6:30AM, STAN.L - Q1 2021 Standard Chartered PLC Earnings Call And the second question related to the [USB] announcement in terms of retrenchment on its Asian footprint. I was just wondering, is there a similar exercise of thinking being undertaken by Standard Chartered just to evaluate some of the smaller retail footprints where the group might lack scale? Or is your way to addressing this essentially to reduce and thin out the branch footprint that would essentially address some of the issues of the lack of scale?