Spain's banks face uphill battle despite dramatic profits boost

 

The dramatic earnings turnaround boasted by four Spanish banks obscures the uphill battle they still face to contain bad debts, grow their businesses and increase shareholder value against the backdrop of one of Europe's most challenging economies.

Bailed-out Bankia last week announced it had swung to a €200 million profit in the first half of 2013 against a €4.5 billion loss a year earlier.

Bankinter increased earnings more than four-fold, La Caixa more than doubled its profits and Sabadell's were up 37%.

Banco Popular was the only one of last week's Spanish bank reporting quintet to report a fall in earnings, down 3%.

Sharply lower provisions for soured property loans were the rising tide that lifted almost all boats, and are expected to do the same for Spain's flagship international banks Santander and BBVA, whose results are due out this week.

Impairments for those property loans peaked in 2012, as the Spanish authorities passed laws forcing banks to make greater provisions. Popular's impairments continued to rise in the first half of 2013 as small companies struggled with debts and more real estate companies fell into arrears.

The path beaten by banks in other challenged European economies shows that a peak in loan impairments and a subsequent sharp bounce in earnings rarely mark the beginning of a smooth road to recovery.

Bank of Ireland took its heaviest loan losses in the half year to December 2009, but earnings' recovery from that point was patchy and the bank's share price continued to fall fairly consistently until July 2011 - almost 2 years after the peak in impairments was hit.

A problem for the Irish bank was that provisions failed to fall consistently after their initial peak, and periodically spiked, making it harder for executives to speak of a consistent recovery.

It was a similar story at National Bank of Greece , where impairments peaked in the quarter to December 2011, before spiking again in the quarter to June 2012.

Over in Portugal, the country's largest quoted lender Millenium BCP, which reports results on July 29, gave investors a false dawn, hitting its first peak in provisions in the last quarter of 2011, before spiking to a new high in Q2 of 2012.

All 3 banks failed to enjoy a consistent share price recovery after their impairments peak, not just because investors weren't convinced the worst really was over for loan losses. The underlying economic situation in all three countries put the banks' net interest income - their core measure of underlying profitability - under severe pressure and recovery there was far from uniform.

Last week's Spanish results bonanza showed provisions at Sabadell fell 43% in the first half of 2013, Bankinter's fell 44% and Bankia's were down 89%.

"It's been a good year for provisions," Sabadell boss Jaime Guardiola told a conference call. Burned by their experiences with other struggling eurozone countries, investors will be tough to persuade that the worst is over. Several of the Spanish banks last week reported that while the number of non performing loans on their books continued to swell, the rate of new entries to the non-performing category was slowing, a positive sign, they said.

"I haven't really got the sense that there is much to suggest a real slowdown in the rate of deterioration (of loans)," said Darragh Quinn, a Madrid-based banks' analyst at Nomura.

"Corporate bankruptcies this year will likely be significantly higher...Unless you're positive on Spanish GDP, any Spanish bank is a risk as provisioning will remain high."

The threat from an asset quality review by the European Central Bank also looms large, an added unknown that could force extra provisions on Spain's larger banks whether they believe they need them or not.

As well as threatening to trigger a fresh wave of provisions, the sluggish economy, where unemployment has nudged downwards but is problematically high at 26.3%, also severely constrains the banks' earnings.

The first-half profits revealed by Spain's banks between July 22 and 26 were impressive only in the context of the horrific prior year comparison. The average return on equity (RoE) across Bankinter, Sabadell, Popular and Caixa came in at about 3.25% for the half year; Credit Suisse, which also reported results on July 25, boasts an RoE of 12%. Bankia did not provide RoE figures as its equity base was overhauled with its bailout and the figures would not be meaningful.

Regaining internationally-respectable profits will be nigh impossible for the Spanish banks if they cannot rebuild their lending books by advancing new loans to credit-worthy borrowers, a tall order in an economy like Spain's.

"Right now, in almost all aspects of the P&L in our national domestic activity we are subject to a great deal of pressure," Sabadell's Guardiola told investors. "The economic situation in the crisis has made it very difficult for us to have good performance in margins."

"It's been more difficult to grow credit than we expected," Bankinter CFO Gloria Ortiz acknowledged to analysts on a conference call, sentiments echoed by Bankia's second most senior official Jose Sevilla at a news conference.

Despite the bleak conditions, the Spanish bank bosses sounded a note of confidence, with Caixa chief financial officer Gonzalo Gortazar stating that net interest income was stabilising and would begin recovering next year.

Sabadell's Guardiola was more colourful, telling investors the bank had "hit rock bottom already" and Sabadell believed its results would "explode" over the coming months.