H2 and full-year 2022 financial results

“After a challenging year in which global financial markets experienced unprecedented turmoil, we are pleased to report that ONE swiss bank’s financial turnaround is now complete. When our merger was completed in June 2021, our baseline scenario was to achieve a net profit within 24 months. This goal was actually achieved in less than 18 months – despite the well-known series of shocks that severely impacted financial markets in 2022.

Full-year earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) totalled CHF 5.3 million, of which CHF 4 million was generated in H2 2022, resulting in a sustainable EBITDA margin of 18.7% as higher official interest rates helped our treasury activities. Our cost/income ratio, excluding depreciation and amortisation, similarly improved, decreasing to 75.2% in H2 2022 (81.3% in FY 2022), which was one of our main targets. The amortisation of intangibles continued to impact our net profit, reducing it by CHF 4.3 million. However, this charge has now peaked.

All in all, we are pleased to report a net profit of CHF 1.5 million for H2 2022, resulting in a full-year net profit of CHF 0.657 million, after four consecutive years of losses. Earnings per share for the second half of 2022 amounted to CHF 0.10. As a consequence, our regulatory capital strengthened by CHF 4.7 million to CHF 35.8 million, with a comfortable global capital ratio of 18.5%.

Nonetheless, falling asset prices across the board in 2022 combined with the strong Swiss franc to negatively impact our assets under management (AuM), which decreased by 11% to CHF 4.5 billion. This was entirely due to poor market performance and currency effects, as the net effect of new inflows and outflows was close to zero. As our AuM are predominantly invested, we believe that this decline – which is in line with what we have observed among our direct competitors – could be reversed in 2023. The current level of ONE’s share price on the Swiss stock exchange is unsatisfactory – in my view, its underperformance mainly reflects the thin market for the share.

Last year we also consolidated our position among the leading players in the M&A field by completing two minor transactions, which helped ONE to maintain its reputation as a reliable and pragmatic partner for the timely execution of various types of deal structures. Last but not least, we were also pleased to become a signatory of the UN PRI (Principles for Responsible Investment) and to publish our first Sustainability Report. We remain fully committed to being a responsible corporate citizen for all our stakeholders.

This year marks a new phase for ONE, with the post-merger turnaround and integration complete. Despite a geopolitical and macroeconomic environment that remains unpredictable and calls for caution, we believe that 2023 will bring exciting opportunities that will accelerate our development and drive change.”

Grégoire Pennone, CEO, ONE swiss bank