mBank SA

mBank SA

1,392.50
PLN
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58.01BMarket Cap
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Q1 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptApril 29, 2026

Joanna Filipkowska

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to mBank Group's quarterly results conference call after the first quarter of 2026. Thank you for joining us today.

My name is Joanna Filipkowska, Investor Relations, and joining me today are Pascal Ruhland, Chief Financial Officer; Marek Lusztyn, Chief Risk Officer; and Marcin Mazurek, Chief Economist. As usual, the presentation materials are available on our Investor Relations website, and today's call is being recorded.

With that, let me hand over to Pascal to present the highlights of the first quarter.

Pascal Ruhland

Thank you, Asia. Hello, and also welcome from my side.

Let me start with a brief overview of the key highlights for the first quarter. In Q1, we delivered strong, well-balanced growth while continuing to operate from a very solid capital base.

On the asset side, gross loans of the group increased year on year from 131 billion to almost 146 billion, representing nearly 11% growth. At the same time, we saw very strong momentum in the liability side, with our deposit base rising from 201 to 237 billion, an increase of 18% year over year.

Importantly, this growth was achieved without compromising our balance sheet strength. Our Tier 1 capital ratio stood at 14.1%, which is well above the regulatory requirement of 10%.

This gives us comfortable capital buffer and the flexibility to pursue our growth ambition. Turning now to the profitability and efficiency.

Despite a challenging market environment, Q1 marked a milestone quarter for us. We delivered the highest gross profit in our history, driven by growing revenues, excellent cost discipline, very low risk costs, and a decline in legal risk provisions.

Our normalized cost-to-income ratio came in at 30.8%, confirming that operating efficiency remains a key strength even as we scale our business and continue to invest to support future growth. As a result, gross profit increased by 54% year on year, reaching a record 1.5 billion compared with 990 million a year ago.

This translated directly into shareholder returns, with a return on tangible equity improving to 20.5%. This level of profitability underlines both the strength and the sustainability of our business model.

Finally, this performance has also been recognized externally. Standard & Poor's upgraded our outlook to positive while reaffirming our BBB+ rating, and Fitch reaffirmed our BBB rating, but this further is strengthening our credit profile.

Let me briefly touch upon our market position. Starting with households, we continue to gradually build market share across all key retail products.

Retail loans, mortgages, deposits all improved versus December, and are clearly up year on year, confirming the ongoing strength of our retail franchise. In the corporate segment, we also made progress quarter on quarter.

Our loan market share recovered after temporary dip at the end of '25, and remained broadly stable year on year. At the same time, our share in corporate deposits increased slightly both quarter on quarter and year on year, and continues to stand at very strong level, above 10%.

The key takeaways here: steady momentum in retail and stability in corporates, fully in line with our long-term ambition to exceed 10% market share in all strategic key products. Let me now briefly walk you through the key P&L developments.

Total income reached 3.1 billion in Q1, increasing both quarter on quarter and year on year, demonstrating very good resilience despite a more challenging interest rate environment. Net interest income declined by 3.7% respectively 3.2% year on year, reflecting lower interest rates and pressure on asset yields.

Importantly, the pace of the decline remained very well contained relative to cumulative rate cuts, underlying our very effective balance sheet management. The net interest margin decreased further to 3.5%, driven mainly by lower loan yields and reduced returns on floating rate securities as well as central bank exposures.

Net fee and commission income developed very well, rising by 6% quarter on quarter and almost 15% year over year, fully in line with our expectations. Net trading and other income was supported by much stronger trading income, as well as gains on non-trading financial assets mandatorily measured at fair value.

Turning to costs, total costs excluding compulsory contribution declined by 11% quarter on quarter, reflecting the absence of several year-end items. On a year on a year basis, costs increased by 8.4%, mainly driven by higher personal costs, IT-related expenses, and depreciation, though very consistent with our growth and investment priorities.

The reported cost-to-income ratio reached 37.9%, impacted by the annual contribution to the BFG resolution fund. On a normalized basis, the ratio stood at very healthy 30.8%, well within our strategic threshold.

Credit quality remains very strong, with a cost of risk of only 30 basis points, and Marek will elaborate in a moment. As expected, legal risk costs related to FX loans continue to decline materially.

As a result, operating profit increased significantly, and profit before tax reached this record of 1.5 billion, the highest pretax result in our history. Net profit amounted to 953 million, and this quarter-on-quarter decline was fully driven by the higher tax burden under the new corporate income tax regime for the banking sector in Poland.

Despite the elevated effective tax rate, ROTE, as mentioned, was very strong and reached 20%. Overall, Q1 confirms that we have a very strong underlying profitability with record-high gross earnings.

Now, let me step for a moment away from the financials and turn to the execution of our Full Speed Ahead strategy. Here, we are clearly now moving from vision to delivery.

Financial innovation and product development are key enablers of our momentum, and Marek and I would like to highlight a few concrete examples of the last months. Let me start on the left side with Smart Terminal.

A smartphone becomes a payment terminal for corporate customers. No external hardware, no intermediaries, and fully integrated in our mBank app.

It is a first-of-a-kind solution. Your point of sale by default in our app.

Importantly, it also addresses regulatory requirements under KSeF and solves the client issue. This solution delivers immediate, tangible value to our corporate clients.

Please follow me to the right-hand side of the slide for the second example: our fully digital mLeasing platform, which redefines leasing execution. It offers end-to-end online processing, qualified e-signature, 24/7 availability, and full omnichannel capability, more or less delivering faster, paperless, frictionless service with really minimal formalities.

Taken together, these two initiatives as example, this underlines our consistent focus on digital, client-centric solutions to enhancing the convenience for our customers. Here, we reinforce our competitive edge to be the frontrunner in the digital game.

With that, Marek, I hand over to you.

Marek Lusztyn

Thank you, Pascal. On the following slide, let me turn now to the two strategic initiatives that we are directly driving growth in our corporate and small and medium enterprises business.

On the left-hand side, you see our strategic growth engines in the corporate segment, a core pillar of the Full Speed Ahead strategy. We are deliberately relocating capital towards six priority areas with clear ambition to double their share in the corporate loan portfolio from 20% in 2025 to 40% by 2030.

This strategy is already delivering. By the end of Q1 2026, we had provided 9.6 billion zloty in growth stream financing, lifting the share of those priority areas to 23.9% of the portfolio as the end of March, while our target for the full year is 25%.

On the right, we highlight smart lending in the SME segment, where technology is fundamentally reshaping the credit delivery. We have built a fully digital, end-to-end lending process for the K3 segment, covering the entire credit journey: from electronic application, to remote signing, to automated decisioning and disbursement.

The solution supports exposures of up to million zloty, delivering credit decisions three, four times faster than the traditional paths, and has been live since Q3 2025. This is a scalable growth model, and under our strategy, we aim to double the number of the SME credit clients by 2030, with 40% financed through simplified credit processes.

Progress is already visible today: in Q1 2026, 7% of K3 credit clients were processed via the smart lending path. Overall, Q1 was a very strong quarter for the lending activity in the corporate banking.

The core loan portfolio increased in volume by 2.8 billion zloty, clearly confirming the effectiveness of our strategic focus. Pascal, over to you.

Pascal Ruhland

Thank you, Marek. Following up on that, let me briefly walk you through the new lending activity.

In Q1, we delivered very strong loan production across all segments. Mortgage sales reached a record of 4.5 billion, almost doubling year on year, confirming our strong position in the Polish zloty mortgage market.

We continue to focus on fixed-rate mortgages, which still account for more than half of the new production and 55% of the total mortgage loan portfolio of the PLN. Non-mortgage retail lending also reached a record, 3.7 billion, demonstrating sustained client demand.

Corporate loan sales remained solid at nearly 12 billion. While lower than peak quarters, the mix improved, with clean new lending increased both quarter on quarter and year on year, fully aligned with our ambition.

This strong sales momentum translates directly into portfolio growth. Retail loans were the key driver.

Mortgage loans to individuals continued their strong upward trend, supported by stable growth in non-mortgage retail lending. As a result, our core retail loan portfolio, excluding FX mortgages, grew by over 14% year over year, and we further gained market share.

Our share in household loans rose to 8.1%, while in the PLN mortgages, it increased significantly to 9.1%. Corporate lending also rebounded strongly.

Excluding repo-type transactions, the corporate loan book grew nearly 5% quarter on quarter, as Marek was mentioning, fully consistent with our growth ambitions in this segment. Turning now to deposits.

Customer deposits reached 237 billion, up 18% year on year, reflecting the continued strong client trust in our capabilities and in our brand. Growth was well-balanced: retail current and saving accounts remained the main engine, while corporate deposits also increased at solid pace.

This translates also here into market share gains. Our share of household deposits increased by 0.2 percentage points, while in corporate deposits, we reached already 10.5 percentage points, comfortably above our strategic target of 10%.

In addition, clients are increasingly investing through mBank. Investment funds distributed to customers reached 16.8 billion, and despite market volatility, mTFI, our asset manager, continued to grow strongly.

Let me briefly now move to income and margins. Despite a lower interest rate environment, total income increased slightly, both quarter on quarter and year on year, highlighting the resilience of our revenue model.

Net interest income declined and net interest margin fell to 3.5%, reflecting the rate cuts and asset repricing. Importantly, this pressure was more than offset by non-interest income.

Net fee and commission income increased by almost 15% year over year, driven by higher client activity, brokerage, and debt issuance fees. Also, we delivered strong trading and other income, including FX performance and a positive revaluation of our stake in BLIK.

On the next slide, a brief word on costs and efficiency. Reported costs increased quarter on quarter due to one-off regulatory contributions fully recognized in Q1.

Excluding these effects, our underlying cost base declined, reflecting disciplined cost control. Personnel and material costs were well managed, while investment focused primarily on IT and strategic capabilities.

As a result, our normalized cost-income ratio stood at this around 30%, clearly within our threshold of 35% and confirming that we at mBank remain one of the most efficient banks in the market. With the point of efficiency, I'm handing back to you, Marek.

Okay.

Marek Lusztyn

The next one is on credit losses and cost of risk. Going to our cost of risk, as you can see on the left-hand side, impairment losses and fair value changes on loans declined significantly in Q1 2026, both from a quarter on quarter and year on year respective.

Total impairment losses fell to 104 million zloty, almost 60% down quarter on quarter. This improvement in the cost of risk was mainly driven by the corporate segment, where we have recorded sizable provisions releases on three individual cases from commercial real estate.

Already answering one of the questions from the Q&A that was directly related to to that, this is basically driven to those three single name events that were primarily repaid. One was reclassified back to the to the stage 1.

At the same time, we maintained prudent and forward-looking stance given the geopolitical environment. Following the update of our macroeconomic forecasts, we have adjusted the weights of the macroeconomic scenarios used in our credit risk models, and this resulted in precautionary overlays of around 80 80 million zloty.

These charges were not linked to any specific deterioration in portfolio quality, but rather reflected a conservative calibration to higher external uncertainty with respect to the geopolitical and macro environment. In retail banking, impairment charges declined by 22% quarter on quarter and 5% year on year despite growing portfolio, and that was primarily supported by the non-performing loans sale.

Overall, credit performance across retail products remained stable and and solid. As the results of all of those developments, our cost of risk dropped to 30 basis points in Q1 compared to 77 basis points in the previous quarter, and remained clearly below our through-the-cycle and strategic assumptions.

Looking ahead at 2026, we continue to expect the cost of risk at around 70 basis points by the year year-end. Going forward, loan portfolio quality.

Overall, asset quality remains very solid and well controlled, and this is clearly confirmed by all key risk metrics which are displayed on this slide. As you can see, starting with the impaired loan portfolio, we see that the total balance is broadly stable year on year at under 5 billion zlotys at the end of March.

Quarter-on-quarter increase was driven mainly by the methodological changes, not the portfolio quality as such, that's namely introduction of the group definition of default with slight movements over the quarters, mainly reflecting portfolio management actions, including the earlier mentioned sales of the impaired loans. NPL ratio of mBank Group remained stable at Q1 at around 3.4%, which is one of the lowest in the Polish sector.

That confirms that credit risk remains under control despite challenging macro environment. Polish zloty mortgage portfolio remains particularly strong, with the NPL ratio falling below 1 percentage point, confirming the very high quality of this book.

Next, coverage ratio remains prudent, above 70%, with the decline versus Q4 driven mainly those above-mentioned events in the corporate portfolio single-name related. Looking ahead, we expect stable payment discipline in retail with slight improvement versus 2025, supported by rising real wages, solid GDP growth, and stable interest rates.

Marcin will comment more on that in a minute. For corporate, we expect overall stability in key credit risk parameters, with the macro environment continuing to support portfolio quality despite ongoing geopolitical uncertainty.

With that, Pascal, back to you.

Pascal Ruhland

Thank you very much. Let's turn now to our new slides: profitability.

Net profit rose strongly to 953 million and is up year on year despite the higher regulatory and tax burdens. Lower net interest income, as you have seen, was more than offset by strong fee growth, trading income, lower provisions, and a sharp decline in FX legal costs, partly absorbed by the higher fiscal charges.

As a result, our profitability, and this is shown on this slide, is very strong: ROE at 17.5% and return on tangible equity higher than 20%. Following up with our capital position: as shown on the slide, we continue to operate with comfortable capital buffers, well above the regulatory minima, supported by profit retention.

Total risk-weighted assets increased to 135 billion at the end of March, up by around 9 billion since December '25. This increase was mostly driven by growing business volumes, with some additional impact of regulatory changes, as expected, including the implementation of group definition of default.

With group definition of default concluded, we do not expect significant negative regulatory changes in RWA in the following quarters. All in all, our capital ratios remained sound, with a CET1 ratio of 13% and a total capital ratio of nearly 16%, providing buffers of around 4 to 4.5 percentage points above the regulatory minima, and this gives us enough firepower to pursue our growth ambition.

To sum up, Q1 confirms that mBank is delivering strong growth, defending profitability in a lower interest rate environment, and maintaining exceptional efficiency. Let me conclude from our side with our outlook.

I would like to start with today's announcement. This morning, we launched a tender offer of up to €500 million across our two bonds totaling €1.25 billion.

This transaction further optimizes our liability profile and underlines our proactive approach to balance sheet management. At the same time, let me remind especially our debt investors that for 2026, we expect to issue a benchmark-sized green non-preferred senior bond, something we really like you to not miss out.

Turning now to the business outlook: we expect total revenues to remain broadly stable year on year despite pressure on net interest income from lower interest rates, which is supported by an active balance sheet growth and solid fee income. We will remain very committed to cost discipline.

The cost-to-income ratio is expected to stay below our strategic target of 35%, while we will continue to invest selectively in our growth and transformation. FX-related legal risk should not longer be a significant burden, supported by the shrinking Swiss franc portfolio, fewer court cases, and improving legal clarity.

Overall, this outlook confirms that our confidence and our strategy will be executed: continued market share gains should follow, stable revenues despite rate cuts, strong efficiency, disciplined legacy risks, and proactive capital management. With that, Marcin, over to you for our economic view.

Marcin Mazurek

Thank you, Pascal. Economic situation right now is, I would say, favorable, but at the same time mixed.

Without the conflict in Iran, we would have said that the stellar growth in 2026 is ahead of us. Recent rises in oil prices and also some problems with shipping other goods, I would say, put some clouds over this very optimistic scenario.

Right now, we expect that the GDP growth in 2026 will be a little below 4%, namely 3.7%. Why?

The first quarter was rather weak. It was mostly related to weather effects and low temperatures in January and February.

Going forward, we expect that there will be some fallout due to higher oil prices. Our modeling suggests that it's going to shave off some percentage points from GDP growth.

That's why we decided to lower growth perspectives from 4.2% to 3.7% that I mentioned before. At the same time, the economy seems to be well-balanced.

As the shock hits, unemployment rate is low, consumer moods are staying high, and inflation hovers around the target. Recent number from today is 3.2%.

That's why the situation is very comfortable for MPC to keep rates on hold. Of course, if inflation goes up further, there will be some discussions within the MPC whether to hike rates or not.

We think that the bar for hikes is set very high, but yet at this time we are analyzing closely the pass-through of oil prices to the whole economy. Right now, we think it's very limited and will be limited due to the fact that overall demand conditions in the economy are rather moderate than high.

Turning to monetary aggregates, we are seeing a full upswing here. The economy is firing on all cylinders, and so are loans and deposits, both in corporate and household sector.

We are seeing a, I would say, meaningful upswing here. As far as the financial market are concerned, we've recently seen some bond yields increases that was globally driven.

From that point, we moved down a bit, but still bond yields remain elevated. It's mostly connected with the overall impression that the inflation in the global economy would be higher for some time, and there is a risk that central banks would react with higher rates.

We think that the most probable direction of yields is rather to the downside from now, but of course we remain very alert. As for the currency, it remained exceptionally stable in this very volatile environment, although we see some minor zloty depreciation over the next quarters, mostly over the uncertainty regarding the fiscal policy.

We think that the zloty would be rather stable and stay below 4.30 with respect to the euro. Thank you.

Joanna Filipkowska

Thank you very much, gentlemen. Now let's start the Q&A session.

The first question is on fee and commission income: "Fee and commission income growth is strong. At the last conference, you guided for stable year-on-year fee and commission income.

Is it still valid after a strong Q1?"

Pascal Ruhland

I'm taking the question, and thanks for the question because our signal was every time sending an increased net fee and commission income developments on a year-on-year basis, we expected that net fee and commission income on a year-on-year basis has significant growth.

Joanna Filipkowska

Second question on costs: "Do you plan to maintain cost discipline in the upcoming quarters?"

Pascal Ruhland

We, as you know all, that we are very cost conscious in this respect, we every time think before we invest if this is worthwhile. Nevertheless, what we have in our strategy is further investment in IT capabilities and also to deliver our products to our clients.

The cost base is expected, if you exclude this one-off of BFG resolution fund, to be increased, but we will maintain the cost discipline internally in every single investments we are taking.

Joanna Filipkowska

Thank you. "Volume growth does not seem to offset the decline in net interest income.

What is the sensitivity of NII to a 100 bps decrease of interest rates?"

Pascal Ruhland

You're right that we see pressure on our NII due to the rate cuts. In this slide, you see that we have now an interest rate environment, if you compare to last year, which was already a record year for us at mBank, that we are today working in 225 basis points lower interest rate environment, which obviously has, in our profitability scheme, a drag on NII contribution.

Though it will be offset on a significant portion by our volume gains we are having in terms of growing faster on the loan side than our competitors and also maintain momentum on the deposit side, but it will be not 100% compensated from today's perspective. On the delta NII sensitivity of 100 basis point rate cut, we have barely moved since the last quarters, it's short of 700 million Polish zloty.

I want to remind everyone that we are working in different currencies because we are also active in Czech koruna and Slovakia, and also our corporate customers demand significant euro and US dollar. Out of this 700, which would be a total sensitivity of around 7%, if you take the overall NII contribution of the house, it would be a bit more than 50% on the Polish zloty if it would move, and here we're talking then about something around 450 million Polish zlotys.

Joanna Filipkowska

"What share of new mortgage originations is related to refinancing?"

Pascal Ruhland

That is not yet a main driver of our sales, therefore this is something we are looking at, but we are not yet needs to be worried about.

Joanna Filipkowska

"How come FX result in the sector is declining despite growing import and sector?"

Pascal Ruhland

Good question. We're seeing strong momentum on the FX results on the group as well as especially in our corporate business, though we actually see that we can, with our customers on this further trade volumes, also earn the FX results.

On the sector, I cannot comment.

Joanna Filipkowska

"What is the share of risk-weighted assets growth not related to organic growth in Q1, and can you please remind us what to expect from previously indicated extraordinary effects in 2026?"

Pascal Ruhland

In general, if you look into our RWA growth, which was now on a quarter-on-quarter basis driven by 9 billion, you can say that the regulatory effect is a third about that, and the rest two-third is driven by pure volume growth on our corporate and retail side. Forward-looking, we do not expect any significant RWA increase related to regulatory environment because, as we have said the last year with GDD, group definition of default, we have concluded successfully the last big package which is known.

No worries. Exactly.

The mic is away.

Marek Lusztyn

While we are having a bit of a technical issue here in the room, I will take over as a moderator from Asia for a minute. There is a next question on: "Can we comment on the dividend ambitions and the potential payout ratios?"

Pascal Ruhland

It's clear that this year, with the profit of 2026, we want to return as regular dividend company, and we set ourselves also communicated to the market a dividend policy, and we aim for starting with 30% of the net profit of this year that is also already included in our capital projection because we take away the 30% in every net earnings we are today generating and not adding it up into our capital stack. That is the clear ambition that next year we pay to the shareholders 30% dividend distribution.

Joanna Filipkowska

Thank you, Pascal. "Can you elaborate more on the stage 3 increase?

What sectors was the rise in? Do you see a need to increase coverage?"

Marek Lusztyn

That there is not a specific sectoral-driven reclassification, and we do not see a specific need for a coverage increase. As you can see from historical charts, it's hovering around 75%, and we expect this to stay at these levels.

Joanna Filipkowska

Thank you very much, gentlemen. I think we covered all the questions that were asked today.

Thank you very much for the attention and for joining our conference, and have a nice afternoon. Bye-bye.

Pascal Ruhland

Thank you so much.

Marek Lusztyn

Thank you.

Pascal Ruhland

See you soon.