(Finance) – “We guarantee 70% payout ratio generating profits over 8 billion eurostherefore our shareholders can certainly count on a dividend of 5-6 billion euros”. These are already certain dividends that we do not have to define, they are already defined. He explained it Carlo MessinaManaging Director of Intesa Sanpaoloon the sidelines of the presentation of the results for the 1st quarter of 2024. “In this year we will also carry out a share buyback of 1.7 billion – he added – therefore there is another component already in place, which will be paid to our shareholders. Beyond that, it will possible to evaluate at the end of the yeargiven that we will have excess capital, a further share buyback that we can guarantee to our investors.”
“It’s not that banks are dividend recipientsthe majority of the remuneration must come from the profit, then the payout, then the share buyback is added to the extent that unusable excess capital is generated”.
To those who asked what he thought of the decline recorded today by the stock on the stock exchange (-3.13% at the end of the day), the CEO responded “who invests in Intesa Sanpaolo, it does so knowing that invests in a company that will always be there and will always make more than 8 billion euros in profit. The appreciation is given by the price-to-book – he explained – and there is no bank in Europe that has a stock market value compared to its assets as high as ours, the bank is considered the best and with the best sustainability profile by investors, then it can happen that in one day there may be a change in the title”.
Talking about banking riskMessina recalled “the first European risk operationunder the supervision of Enria, was made in Intesa Sanpaolo, which acquired the second best Italian bank – UBI – so us we have already done what BBVA is trying to do with greater complexity in Spain”. “
“These operations are carried out by launching the takeover bid, not by starting with public discussions”stated Messina, explaining “When I did the operation with Ubi I was defined as ‘bold’ by Financial Time; one must strike a blow when he does this operation, he must not allow people to talk about it for months and months”.
Addressing the aggregation operation more directly between BBVA and Banco SabadellMessina stated “I believe that the greatest value today can be created on internal marketstherefore all operations that can lead to aggregations between entities operating in the same countries can bring value, we will see if this goes through. As for us, we have a market share problemafter the Venetians and after UBI we have a dimension that in our country is difficult for us to grow beyond these levels”.