This share prices have a 15 minute delay and are shown in the local time of the market in which the quote is displayed.
LAST UPDATE: 22/03/2024 - 15:07
Banco Santander’s executive chair Ana Botín confirmed today at the bank’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) that Santander is on track to meet its 2024 targets. In that case, based on the bank’s current shareholder remuneration policy, cash dividends and share buybacks against 2024 results would amount to over €6 billion1. In 2023, the bank achieved its best performance ever, resulting in a record amount returned to shareholders (cash dividends and share buybacks) of €5.5 billion.
“2024 has started with excellent business and commercial dynamics. We continue growing the number of customers we serve (+2 million) and will increase our income around 9% year-on-year (in current euros) in the first quarter as a result. Costs have now remained flat for three consecutive quarters, resulting in a further improvement in our efficiency ratio to 42.7% which we expect to close in the first quarter, reflecting the impact on both costs and revenue of our ongoing transformation.
The cost of risk will be in line with our forecasts for the year, with improved performance in Europe, offsetting the impact of portfolio growth in Latin America, and the expected normalization in Consumer. The capital ratio remains above 12% in line with our target for 2024.
We have many growth levers across the group. For example, we expect our Retail business to achieve a return on tangible equity (RoTE) above 16% in Q1, annualizing the impact of the banking tax in Spain which is registered entirely in January 2024, supported by solid performance in South America and Spain. Our Consumer business will show a customer net operating income growth of around 6%, supported mainly by the business improvement both in Europe and the US.
As a result, we expect to reach a RoTE for the group of 16% in Q1, annualizing the impact of the banking tax in Spain, with an expected growth of TNAV plus dividend per share above 13% year-on-year, with today’s data.
I am very confident that we will deliver a considerably better performance in 2024 than 2023, which was already a record year, and will meet our 2024 targets. That being the case, cash dividends and share buybacks against 2024 results would amount to over €6 billion[1].”
Ana Botín, Banco Santander executive chair.
[1] The bank’s shareholder remuneration policy is approximately 50% payout of the group net attributable profit (excluding the impacts that do not affect cash or capital ratios directly), split in approximately equal parts in cash dividends and share buybacks. Implementation of this policy is subject to future corporate and regulatory decisions and approvals.
