First Financial Holding Co Ltd
TWSE:2892

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First Financial Holding Co Ltd
TWSE:2892
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Price: 27.6 TWD 1.1% Market Closed
Updated: May 31, 2024

Earnings Call Transcript

Earnings Call Transcript
2021-Q4

from 0
K
K. C. Lee
executive

Hi, I'm K.C. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to join us for First Financial Holding 2021 Full Year Earnings Result Webcast Investor Conference. As usual, we will start with our presentation, including 2021 performance summary, financial highlights and operating results. After the presentation, we will invite Ms. Annie Lee, our EVP and Head of IR to proceed the QA session. [Operator Instructions] Now I'd like to turn over to Mr. Keith Ke to begin today's presentation. Keith?

K
Keith Ke
executive

Thank you, K.C. Okay. Please turn to Slide 5. This slide shows group's full year performance trend. As you can see, after a setback in 2020, the group's net profits was back on track last year with TWD 19.7 billion earnings and a 17.4% growth Y-o-Y. Please turn to Slide 6. Here, let's wrap up the year 2021 and have a forward-looking of year 2022. First Financial Holding reported TWD 19.7 billion earnings with 17.4% growth Y-o-Y, which was a strong rebound to pre-pandemic level. We believe bank would accelerate its growing trend in coming years as the rate hike was likely to start. As of the non-bank part, total non-bank combined a milestone with double-digit proportion of total profits. Both Securities and Insurance made huge contributions last year. Supply chain transformation and labor shortage boosted the corporate loan demand. Domestic loan growth exceeded our expectations last year. We believe the reopened country borders and loosened travel policy would further help to boost our business. Upward yield cycle would drive the wealth management demand, especially for those FX pricing products when Fed starts the rate hike. And finally, we would also like to mention about our newest opened branch from FCB USA. San Mateo branch nearby San Francisco was opened in February 2022, and it shows our mid- to long-term overseas growing ambition. Okay. Let's move to financial highlights. Please turn to Slide 8. This slide shows group's key figures. Net income, EPS, ROE and ROA all had double-digit growth, while other figures outperformed better than the same period last year. On the left-hand pie chart, it shows Securities and the Insurance units combined an over 10% proportion of total profits.

Please move to Slide 9. This slide provides a breakdown of group's net income. As of the top line, total net revenue increased 5.1% Y-o-Y. Both credit charge and the insurance reserves were lower than previous year and have the bottom line with 17.4% growth Y-o-Y we just mentioned. Please turn to Slide 10. This slide displays the earnings of major subsidiaries. Bank finished TWD 17.7 billion profits with 12.6% growth Y-o-Y. Securities had a tremendous earnings growth to reach TWD 1.5 billion profit, which was double amount comparing with year 2020. Other subsidiaries also had from 16% to 38% growth Y-o-Y, which combined a harvestable year of the group. Please turn to Slide 11 -- turn to Slide 12, let's move to the next part, operating results. This slide shows group's and the bank's net incomes and ROAEs. Please take it as reference. And Slide 13 provides a breakdown of bank's earnings structure. Cumulative net revenue came to TWD 46.9 billion with 6.2% growth Y-o-Y.

Net interest income increased 13.1% while fee income improved 8.7%. Other than the good performance from core earnings, gains on investments dropped 23.2% Y-o-Y instead. However, better asset quality control was another bright spot, too, underpin the bottom line. Please turn to Slide 14. This slide presents the loan book mix. Total loan book reached TWD 2.04 trillion with 6.9% growth Y-o-Y. As of the breakdown, corporate loan was the key this year to support the loan growth. Large corporate loans improved 14% Y-o-Y. SME also had a 9.5% growth. Our other parts, mortgage loan had 5.5% growth while FX loan improved 3% even though overseas branches was flat. However, the domestic part was strong. And Slide 15 shows the Q-o-Q trend of loan book. Please take it as reference. Please move to Slide 16. On this slide, it shows the trend of LDR, spread and NIM. LDR continued to drop to 69.6%, which was mainly dragged by FX LDR's 44.2%, while NT dollar LDR still maintained at 80.1%. Loan-to-deposit spread improved 1 bp to 1.41% while NIM also edged up to 1.01%.

Please turn to Slide 17. This slide shows the Q-o-Q trend of NT dollar and FX trend. Both stayed at the same level comparing with last quarter. Please turn to Slide 18. On this slide, it shows the deposit mix. Total deposit was up 9.1% Y-o-Y, mainly driven by FX deposits, which increased 26.8% Y-o-Y. NT dollar deposit had moderated 3.1% growth Y-o-Y. And the good news was the NT dollar CASA rate continued to rise up to 73.4%, which was good on a rate-hike cycle. Please turn to Slide 19. Here shows the loan book concentration of major exposures. Real estate was 11.3%, and we would keep eyeing on this part. Please take others as reference. Let's move to Slide 20. This slide shows the mortgage book yield, LTV ratios and the new mortgage lending trend. Mortgage yield slid 1 bp to 1.44%. New mortgage LTV ratio stayed at 64.7%, while average mortgage LTV ratio rose up to 46%. Bottom bar chart shows fourth quarter's new mortgage lending trended -- which was trending up a little bit. Okay. Please turn to Slide 21. Let's take a look at fee revenue. Total net fee income reached about TWD 8 billion with 8.7% growth Y-o-Y in 2021. As of the breakdown, wealth management fee income increased 10.1% while loan-related fee income also had another 10.8% growth. And Slide 22 shows the Q-o-Q trend of fee income. Total fee income had 9.4% growth Q-o-Q, which was quite strong quarterly. Bancassurance fee income was the driver to increase about 18.5% Q-o-Q. Please turn to Slide 23. Let's take a look of the operating part. Total operating expense ended at TWD 22.4 billion, which was 4.8% growth Y-o-Y, and cost-to-income ratio rose up to 47.8%. And let's move to asset quality. Please turn to Slide 24. On this slide, top chart shows the coverage ratio and NPL ratio. Coverage ratio increased to 620.3%. NPL ratio dipped 1 bp back to 0.2%. And bottom chart shows the breakdown of NPL ratios. Both individual and the mortgage ratios trended down, while large corp NPL ratio moved up and SME NPL ratio stayed at the same level.

Let's flip to Slide 25 for overseas profits. The pretax profits of overseas branches over total profit finished at 32.9%. Top-left pie chart shows the profit breakdown. OBU and Great China combined half of the total overseas profits, while ASEAN occupied 19.4% and North America was gradually back to 10.6%. Please move to Slide 26. Group CAR was 130.4%. Bank's CAR and the Tier 1 were 14.2% and 12.5%, respectively. After precalculating the new RWA rule, which FSC just announced last month, our bank's capital was still adequate so there should be no emergency for the rights issue. Okay. That's the presentation. I will hand back the microphone to Annie for the conclusions and Q&A.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Thank you. Thank you for Keith's presentation today. Now I'd like to start the Q&A session. The host of today's Q&A session will be our EVP and Head of IR, Ms. Annie Lee.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Now the first question comes from Huan -- Mr. Zhang. Mr. Zhang hopes to know the outlook for 2022 business momentum. First, the estimated growth rates for deposit and loans of 2022, Annie?

A
Annie Lee
executive

Well, for our core business, both deposit taking and loan expansion, we project the loan growth can maintain at around the 6% to 7% growth this year as loan demand for relocation of this Taiwan business, investing in Taiwan would continue. So the loan growth will be pretty much the same level that we have recorded last year, around 6% to 7% for the total loan book. For the deposit growth, it will still maintain its momentum but slightly slower than that of last year. We only project around -- also 6% due to the already high base period. So loan growth and deposit growth was in similar level around 6% and the loan growth around 6% to 7%.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Okay. And the second question is still from Mr. Zhang. Mr. Zhang hopes to know that -- how about the mix of the loans in 2022, such as corporate loans, SME loan, consumer loans and other loans, the estimated loan growth rate for different loans?

A
Annie Lee
executive

Yes. In different sectors, corporate loan would maintain its momentum to advance by 6% to 7%, mainly driven still by SME, which we have already booked more than 9% to 10% last year. And this year, the loan demand from SME would still remain robust. And in terms of the consumer loan, particularly in mortgage lending, we had seen some cooling measures announced by the regulators. So our original projection for this year, mortgage loan growth was around 4% to 5%. But now we would revise down a bit to around just 3% to 4% this year, slightly lower than our original projection, just 1% lower. Another area that we will see the recovery should be from our FX lending, which we would project 10% to 11% growth after we only booked a marginal growth of 1% due to the pandemic impact in the major markets, especially from our very booming ASEAN countries. So this year, the main growth driver would come from domestic corporate lending and overseas FX loans, which would, respectively, book the 6% to 7% from corporate loan and 10% to 11% for FX lending.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Okay. Thank you, Annie. And the third question, I would like to turn to our guidance of NIM and how sensitive First Bank to U.S. rate-hike and Taiwan rate hike in 2022. This question comes from different investors. So I'd like to ask Annie about NIM sensitivity and the guidance of NIM in 2022.

A
Annie Lee
executive

Based on our statistics, we have some articulation on the portfolio that we own. Currently, NT dollars portfolio stands for around 80%, and the FX loan represent 20%. So in that sense, we have some results that if the NT dollars high-grade for 25 basis points, 25, then it would translate into around 5 to 6 bps increase for our NIM expansion. And in terms of the U.S. rate-hike, if the same 25 basis points will be in place in the future, so every 25 basis point hike in U.S. dollars would also represent around 1 to 2 bps NIM expansion. So in that sense, if the twin currency all high-grade this year and they all increased by 25 basis points, that would combine and NIM expansion by, let's say, at least 6 to 7 bps, yes.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Okay. Let me conclude Annie's conclusion. If U.S. rate hike and Taiwan rate hike in 2022 for the next 12 months, then we will expect total 6 to 7 NIM expansion -- 6 to 7 bps NIM expansion after 12 months. Is that correct? Okay.

A
Annie Lee
executive

Correct.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Okay. And we have another question that is also from Eric of KGI. Eric hopes to know that the impact of FSC new property risk rate regulation toward the ADC exposure and other household purchasing for -- such as the third one, okay? How is that impact on tightening these fixed rates asset regulation for First Bank?

A
Annie Lee
executive

Currently, the concentration of our loan portfolio into this property-related lending amounted to around 8%-something, 8%. That was the area that most impacted because that would increase our capital cost by around 11 to 15 bps. This is based on the risk-weighted calculation. But the good thing is that because this new tightening regulation is mainly applied to the new lending, it would not be applied to the existing portfolio. So what we have to be more cautious would be for those portfolio, especially for the so-called the ADC loans, which would be expired in this year because we may have to consider that we will see whether we would roll over this lending, and that would impact our risk-weighted factor. And for this balance this year, we will be somewhere around TWD 6 billion, so it's quite minimal anyway. And going forward, as this cooling matches from the regulators will be in place and will continue to go on, so for the large lender like us, we would see to be more selective on this ADC lending. And also we will see to hike our lending yield in order to compensate the increased capital cost in the future while we're going to engage into this rollover of new lending. So the impact of our current portfolio was not that imminent, but it will mainly impact the pricing and also the scale that we can engage with new lending with this ADC portfolio. And it is quite minimal, just around TWD 6 billion for this year.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Okay. And I think that should have answered the question for the new risk-weight assets regulation. And following question is from Guotai. Mr. Zhang hopes to know what's the reason that we saw the fourth quarter, the new mortgage lending grew quite a bit. Is there any special reason for that? And what's your guidance of the mortgage lending of this year?

A
Annie Lee
executive

Traditionally, Chinese or, I mean, in Taiwan, it is quite customary that the developer would hand over the completed residential real estate to buyers so that you can have a new house to moving, to enjoy living there. So towards the end of the year, it will be the peak season that this completion of new real estate will be quite normal, so in the final quarter last year completely reflected this phenomenon. And of course, that we adopted a more aggressive attitude, I mean, to attract these new buyers for their completion of the residential property was another key reason that we boost our mortgage lending toward the end of last year. We actually lower our mortgage lending yield to compete with our peers, so that would help us to attract more homebuyers to turn their borrowing to our banks. So these were the 2 major reasons that the mortgage lending in the fourth quarter last year grew quite substantially. Lower rates and the year-end handover for completion of residential property. Development rates will be the key to drive up the mortgage lending.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Okay. And I think the next stage, we will go into the fee income part. A question from Mr. Jemmy Huang of JPMorgan. Hopes to know that what's our guidance on our fee income growth in 2022 and also any strategy for fee income?

A
Annie Lee
executive

The good things in the market would be, the rates will move higher starting this year. So we would see the momentum for wealth management would continue. So our projection for the fee revenue as a whole still remain at around 8% to 9%, similar to that of last year. Especially for wealth management part, the demand for both fund sales or the bancassurance still remain resilient. So our target for this year's wealth management fee revenue would stand by 8% to 9%. In the area of our loan business that we continue to collect the commitment fee or other syndication fee revenue from our lending. So this year, we would target a 7% to 8% loan-related fee revenue. The other areas should be in the overseas business for this year, as we see the recovery from overseas momentum, so the fee for overseas operation would see a growth by 6%.

So in total, the fee momentum should stand at 8% to 9% combined with this wealth management, loan-related and overseas. And the last part would be FX transaction that should be in the mid-single digit also around 5% to 6%. So fee revenue in the high single-digit level, 8% to 9% this year.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Okay. Thank you, Annie. And we have a follow-up question from Mr. Shih Chung. Mr. Shih hopes to know how the growth rate target is around 6%. Is it constrained in any way by Bank capital adequacy? Or is that loan growth target truly reflect underlying loan demand in Taiwan right now?

A
Annie Lee
executive

Well, the thing is that we normally take our loan growth based on the GDP growth. Frankly speaking, last year, our overseas loan focus did not advance very aggressively. So the main driver for loan book mainly came from domestic market. So for this year, we are still more focused on domestic loan demand, especially for the corporate lending. So I must say that if the recovery in the major markets, let's say, in U.S. or in ASEAN or other areas can recover as we expected, our loan book may perform better than we originally expected. So for this 6% to 7% growth is pretty much a firm growth in domestic only.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Okay. Thank you, Annie. And we have -- we are going to the investment gains, policies and guidance and strategy right now. And the question comes from different investors, but they all ask the same question. First one, the guidance of investment gains this year. And the second one is we saw that in the fourth quarter, there is 23% decline on investment income. How should we attribute to swaps revenue, FI trading gains and dividend income? So there are 2 combined questions. The first one is regarding the investment guidance this year, and the second one is we recall the 2021, there's a 23% decline on investment income. So how should we attribute to different parts of the investment gains?

A
Annie Lee
executive

Okay. The truth is that for last year's top line, you can see that actually our net interest income grew by 13%, 1-3 percent, and treasury gains dropped 20%-something. That pretty much reflects the fact that the extra liquidity has been channeled back to the traditional interbank lending instead of a swap transaction. That also tests the performance of the treasury because if the interest rate gap between NT and U.S. dollars widened, then the gains for this arbitrage will be recorded on the treasury gains instead of net interest income. So this can explain why the net interest income grew so significantly. However, the treasury gains dropped also quite substantially.

For this year, as most people would expect the U.S. with hike rates more aggressively than NT dollars, then we would expect when the interest rate gap between Taiwan and U.S. gradually widened, the floor of the swap transaction would become more active or proactive. Then that would help to boost our treasury business, especially for the arbitrage between the 2 currencies. For this reason, we actually set a target to grow our treasury business by 8% to 9%, apart from the swap gains and also our investments into the equity market would also become more active so as to capture the higher dividend return about 4%, that will help to increase our total gains from our capital markets. And other parts will be, we actually increased our holding for -- I mean, we boost our floating rate note holdings that would help to increase our interest income in the short-term duration via this active adjustment of our portfolio. It would also help to boost our treasury performance. So if I conclude our treasury strategy this year, it will be 3 parts. One is to capture the high-grade opportunities that boost our FRM holdings and also to increase our transaction for the swap transaction. And the other part would be engage things equity market to help to boost the dividend income that would target growth for treasury by 8% to 9% this year, hopefully.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Thank you, Annie. And we have another question regarding the rate-hike sensitivity, which is from Goldman, sir Gurpreet. And Gurpreet's question is pretty long. Let me just get it straightforward. This question mainly is that how much of the rate guidance depends on the competition, which will lead the rate-hike pass-through on the asset side.

In other words, there's a lot of liquidity in Taiwan banking system. So what would be the lowest sensitivity that you see if loan rates can now move higher or investment yield on securities also does not rise? Asked differently, how much would deposit and loan spreads helped in NIM uplift? So I think his question is...

A
Annie Lee
executive

How can we survive from the competition that we can now reprice our assets.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Yes, yes. I think if the question is kind of like if we focus on the loan and deposit spreads, how would it help in NIM expansion and uplift without thinking about the liquidity of investment or liquidity operation or swap or something like that? Just to focus on the loan and deposit spread to help in NIM uplift.

A
Annie Lee
executive

Okay. Let me put it in this way. The calculation that I just talked about, that NT dollar for 5 to 6 bps and U.S. dollars by 1 to 2 bps is based on our current portfolio, our net interest-bearing assets. This is something that we have set out the portfolio that we own. And we actually minimize the scale that, particularly for the NT dollars scale, because if NT dollars rate-hike 25 basis points, we only increase by just half of that. It means that we're only pricing about 14, 1-4 bps, based on our past experience. So that's pretty much reflect that we have minimized the calculation already.

And in terms of the U.S. dollars bps, the NIM expansion, we will also pricing lower translation by just 20 bps, which is around 20% lower than the 25 basis point rate hike. So in that sense, we are not fully pricing the rate-hike every time or in the full scale because we have lowered the actual asset repricing scale. So you can see that, in fact, if we have no any loan growth or if we just sit on our current portfolio, this is something would increase without doing anything as long as the rates continue to move higher.

So I think your calculation is based on a very dynamic projection. But we actually sit on the very not so dynamic, this is something that we have already owned on our portfolio. I must say that this is quite conservative statistic already. We can fully reflect the impact for every 25 basis point hike, the NIM expansion would be even larger than this.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Expectation?

A
Annie Lee
executive

Yes, yes. So if you know what I mean, we have already minimized the scale already. Just half of the NT dollars and 20% lower than the U.S. dollars rate hike.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Okay. I think Annie, I just want to say that it's a pretty conservative prediction for the NIM expansion based on current portfolio, which is that 80% of our portfolio is NT dollar assets and 20% is USD or FX asset.

A
Annie Lee
executive

And we're only pricing half of the scale NT dollars and 80% of U.S. dollars rate-hike.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Yes. And only part of it have price into the NIM expansion. Okay. Let's move to the credit cost part. A question from credit cost is, first of all, for some individual case. The first 1 is from Tina Chen. Tina hopes to know is there -- do we have any exposure on Taiwan Land Development Corporation? If there is, how much will that be?

A
Annie Lee
executive

Taipei.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Taipei, yes.

A
Annie Lee
executive

Okay. Zero, we have zero exposure.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

All right. We don't have any exposure, on Taipei Taiwan Land Development Corporation. And another follow-up question is from Monica Wang and Sunny Bank. She hopes to know, is there any exposure on Russian for bank and for life?

A
Annie Lee
executive

No. We have zero exposure.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Okay. No exposure on Russian for Bank and -- for bank side and the life side. And another follow-up question is what's the estimated credit costs in 2022 for First Bank?

A
Annie Lee
executive

After we charged off most of overseas appeal, this year, we would see a lower credit charge. So we would project less than 14, 1-4 bps, credit cost this year after we booked 17 bps credit cost last year. So this year, 14, 3 bps lower than the last year's 1-4 bps.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

14 bps, okay. It's net 14 bps. And we also have another question, which is from Tina Chen. Tina hopes to know that we knew that there is automobile manufacturing, new influx. And how are they going, and is there any provisioning plan for this case?

A
Annie Lee
executive

Yes. We had already charged off all of the exposure on this NPL, which is the affiliate company of Yulon in China. They're a China subsidiary or a joint venture company for these automakers. We have cleaned up the NPL in the final quarter last year, around USD 50 million, around USD 5-0 million, yes.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Around?

A
Annie Lee
executive

Yes. USD 1-5 million -- sorry, 50, 50, 5-0, 5-0.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Okay. Thank you, Annie. And so the total impact will be the USD 5-0 million? Okay. And we have another question is from Morgan Stanley, Ms. Peggy Shih. Ms. Shih hopes to know why is our new NPL influx increased a lot in the fourth quarter? Any specific case? I think that one Annie just mentioned the automobile manufacturing in China, Mainland China is Dongfeng Yulon. Okay. And so that also answered the question from Mr. Jian of Goutai. He wants to know what's the reason that the overseas profit decreased quite a bit in the fourth quarter, the same, the second question, okay. And also, we have another question from Mr. Chen and Eric. That is our dividend policy of this year. Can Annie elaborate more on dividend policy? And how will it be like, for example, the cash dividend, more cash dividend, combined with a little bit stock dividend, something?

A
Annie Lee
executive

Yes, we normally would have both cash and stock dividend but mainly pay out in cash. And I can say that after we posted record high profits last year, our dividend policy this year will be so generous anyway. The payout ratio for cash dividend should be -- we hope we can maintain a higher level -- slightly higher level than last year. Last year was around 68% or 65%-something, yes. But 60% above is a promise, but we would see to increase a bit for the cash dividend payout ratio.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Okay. Okay. You heard that...

A
Annie Lee
executive

Pay higher for the cash dividend.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Pay higher for the cash dividend.

A
Annie Lee
executive

But still combined with some smaller...

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Smaller part will be the stock dividend. Thank you. I think it answered several people's question.

A
Annie Lee
executive

Yes, you're concerned.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Okay. And we have another question is from -- the CI ratio outlook from Ms. Xu as well. What's our CI ratio outlook this year?

A
Annie Lee
executive

For efficiency rate this year, after we have incorporated the pay hike around 4% this year, we would maintain around 47%.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

47%, okay. Okay. Yes, also comes in a question from Monica Wu of Yuanta. She hopes to know the cost-to-income ratio outlook. Okay. 47%, okay. And we have another question, which is kind of like a political question. That is that can Annie answer the -- elaborate more on the current Russian and Ukraine? How's the impact on your group's operation?

A
Annie Lee
executive

In terms of our portfolio management, we do have very minimal investments on the groups I just talked about that. We have zero exposure towards the Russian investment. But we have some exposure from our sales of investment products via our investment trust, which was some -- we have some exposure around TWD 1.7 billion. That is for customers.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

For customers investing...

A
Annie Lee
executive

From the trust fund.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Yes, from trust fund.

A
Annie Lee
executive

Yes. For Russian exposure, TWD 1.7 billion. So I must say that the current impact was quite minimal. But going forward that as the capital market would see volatility going up, and if this war can be soft or stopped in the very near future, that would not impact the attitude or mindset of investors, particularly for the wealth management or other overseas investments. We know that the Russian and Ukraine war would definitely impact the European markets. And you know that we're going to set up our Frankfurt office this year.

So how will that, I mean, change the landscape of our global view to allocate our resource into different markets, will be the key that drives the whole capital markets for this year and going forward because there's no -- the so-called real war in the market and we now have seen it.

So I would reckon that the lengthening of the war would impact both the investment markets and also the risk appetite of the investors is especially for the retail customers and also the corporate client as well because people would become more, I mean, resilient to reallocate their assets or to diversify their portfolio, not to put all their investment into 1 market or 1 single market or 1 area.

And that would -- I must say, influence how we can do business with our clients. So I do see that this would change a lot of people's mindset and their -- I mean, their portfolio in some way because for the world sanction against Russia is we have never seen this before. And we have to wait and see. But the rate-hike going forward should be quite imminent as this war would definitely make the inflation even worse. So we should see anyway. But for this year's investment strategy, that will be quite a different story anyway.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Okay. And we have the last question from of Mr. Lang, Michael Lang. Michael said that the fourth quarter, we saw that the Bank's net interest income plus investment income are clearly weaker than the prior quarter. Since the company said that there is a widening, so the Q-o-Q lower and that was due to the bank holdings generating lower interest income or the investment income appears weak as well as due to the mark-to-market loss.

So how -- so the bond portfolio changes over time in the past or 1 or 2 quarters? Or what's our view on this to weigh on and the investment income in the following 2022 and 2023? Thank you.

A
Annie Lee
executive

All right.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Well, he wants to combine both together to see how will it become -- how will it look like for the next coming quarters such as 2020 and 2022?

A
Annie Lee
executive

Well, for the bond portfolio, it would see some valuation losses because the increased yield -- long-term yields, so that will translate into mark-to-market losses on the bond portfolio. So that would also reflect into the value of the bond holding. But if you compare the fourth quarter and the third quarter of last year, that you see the falling gains plus interest income was mainly because that in the third quarter, normally, we will have dividend income.

So the third quarter of every year will be the peak of our investment gains.

The dividend income normally slow in the third quarter. And going to the fourth quarter, there is no more dividend income. So if we look into this year's projection, the interest income should continue to move higher as market has already pricing higher rate, the inflation outlook.

And for the bond holdings, the valuation losses may continue. But good thing is that if we invest more on new fixed income markets, it will boost the yield that we own. So you separate into 2 parts, the old portfolio and the new money investments so it's a separate part. But the net interest income would benefit anyway because the market rates would start to move higher and that would help our total interest income to going up.

So for this year, as the loan growth continue and the rate-hike would become materialized, the gains on the treasuries and the net interest account would -- those become more real. So for this year, we would be more optimistic for both net interest income and the treasury investment.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

All right. Okay. I think, Michael, we have answered the question, okay, or we can just discuss separately, and okay. Now so far, we have answered all of the questions. So I think we -- I will just wrap up here.

And thank you for joining us today, and we hope that you enjoy today's meeting. And should you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact us after today's conference. Annie, would you like to say something?

A
Annie Lee
executive

Okay. Hope everyone is safe and sound, and stay calm, end the war. All right. Thank you.

K
K. C. Lee
executive

Thank you. Have a good day. Bye-bye.

A
Annie Lee
executive

Bye.