VP Bank Group shares

2013 was an out­stand­ing year for eq­uity in­vestors. The global bench­mark in­dex (MSCI World AC) recorded a gain of more than 20 per cent, its strongest per­for­mance since 2009. 

The rea­sons for the sharp price gains are man­i­fold. The seem­ingly never-end­ing dis­cus­sion sur­round­ing the Eu­ro­pean debt cri­sis faded into the back­ground, while to­day’s neg­a­tive real in­ter­est rates have forced many in­vestors to opt for riskier as­set classes. 

Fun­da­men­tally, cor­po­rate profit lev­els have also in­creased, but the re­cent price gains are mainly at­trib­ut­able to noth­ing more than an ex­pan­sion of val­u­a­tions (i.e. higher price-earn­ings ra­tios). What at the be­gin­ning of the year were con­sid­er­able val­u­a­tion dis­counts com­pared to his­tor­i­cal lev­els were largely dis­si­pated dur­ing the course of the year. 

While the eq­uity mar­kets of in­dus­tri­alised na­tions gen­er­ally marched to the same drum, those in the emerg­ing na­tions broke rank by falling by av­er­age of al­most 5 per cent. One rea­son for this rather un­usual di­ver­gence is the fear amongst many in­vestors of an im­pend­ing mon­e­tary pol­icy shift. In re­sponse, those in­vest­ments per­ceived as be­ing es­pe­cially risky were sold prac­ti­cally across the board, a wave of sell­ing that struck emerg­ing na­tions’ shares, bonds and cur­ren­cies. 

VP Bank Group shares have been listed on Switzer­land’s stock ex­change (SIX Swiss Ex­change) since 1983. The com­pa­ny’s av­er­age mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion in 2013 amounted to CHF 569 mil­lion. Banks were amongst the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the favour­able over­all mar­ket trend. Ex­pressed in Swiss francs, the global bank­ing in­dex (MSCI World Banks) recorded a gain of roughly 22.5 per cent (in­clud­ing div­i­dends) in 2013. With a re­turn of 25.9 per cent for the year, Eu­ro­pean fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions in par­tic­u­lar ben­e­fited from the re­vival in in­vestor risk ap­petite. 

VP Bank Group stock was a clear out­per­former. With a year-on-year per­for­mance of 50.0 per cent, the shares now stand at a level (in­clud­ing div­i­dends) they last saw in the sum­mer of 2011. The price gains were achieved only in the 3rd and 4th quar­ters. The an­nual high of CHF 97.5 was hit at year’s end (De­cem­ber) and the low of CHF 63.5 at the be­gin­ning of the year (Jan­u­ary). The av­er­age price for the year was CHF 78.6.

The goal of VP Bank Group’s in­vestor re­la­tions ef­forts is to fos­ter an open, on­go­ing di­a­logue with share­hold­ers and other cap­i­tal mar­ket par­tic­i­pants by pro­vid­ing them with a true and fair view of VP Bank Group, while also in­form­ing the in­ter­ested pub­lic in a prompt man­ner about the lat­est de­vel­op­ments at the com­pany. 

The tasks in­volved in this in­vestor re­la­tions work in­clude con­duct­ing dis­cus­sions with an­a­lysts and in­vestors, dis­clos­ing ad hoc in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing busi­ness is­sues of rel­e­vance un­der se­cu­ri­ties law, pro­duc­ing the com­pa­ny’s an­nual and semi-an­nual re­ports and pub­lish­ing the re­lated fi­nan­cial re­sults, as well as or­gan­is­ing the an­nual gen­eral meet­ing of share­hold­ers. In 2013, the in­vestor re­la­tion ac­tiv­i­ties were in­ten­si­fied. Nu­mer­ous an­a­lyst and me­dia con­fer­ences were key events for in­ten­si­fy­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion with in­vestors and fi­nan­cial in­ter­me­di­aries. The first-ever In­vestors’ day in Liecht­en­stein is planned for 2014.

Reg­u­lar pre­sen­ta­tions ad­dress­ing the cur­rent trend in fi­nan­cial re­sults serve to en­hance the di­a­logue with in­sti­tu­tional and pri­vate in­vestors. An ad­di­tional means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion is the web­site www.vp­bank.com, where all up-to-date in­for­ma­tion on VP Bank Group can be ac­cessed. 

The 2012 an­nual re­port of VP Bank Group re­ceived a num­ber of awards in 2013. It was awarded gold as part of the in­ter­na­tional “ARC Awards” as well as by the “League of Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Pro­fes­sion­als” in its rat­ings of cor­po­rate an­nual re­ports. It came away with “sil­ver” from the “Vi­sion Award An­nual Re­port Com­pe­ti­tion”. Also, the com­pletely re­designed on­line an­nual re­port of VP Bank Group found in­ter­na­tional ac­claim: in Amer­i­ca’s “Vi­sion Awards” and “Ste­vie Awards” com­pe­ti­tions, VP Bank Group won “bronze” in the cat­e­gory “Best An­nual Re­ports”. These awards at­test to the high qual­ity of VP Bank Group’s in­for­ma­tion pol­icy.

In Sep­tem­ber 2013, Stan­dard & Poor’s main­tained its “A–“ (A–/​A–2) rat­ing of VP Bank Group, thereby un­der­scor­ing the solid cred­it­wor­thi­ness of the in­sti­tu­tion. In its re­port, Stan­dard & Poor’s makes spe­cial note of VP Bank Group’s out­stand­ing cap­i­tal base which, fol­low­ing pub­li­ca­tion of the 2013 semi-an­nual re­sults, the rat­ing agency newly deemed to be “very strong”. Ac­cord­ingly, S&P up­graded the out­look for VP Bank Group from neg­a­tive to sta­ble. More­over, it paid trib­ute to the op­er­a­tive im­prove­ments which are be­ing re­flected in in­creas­ing rev­enues and de­creas­ing costs. The re­port also pointed out the strate­gic progress we have made by fo­cus­ing on our core com­pe­ten­cies in pri­vate bank­ing and the fi­nan­cial in­ter­me­di­aries busi­ness. 

This un­changed, grat­i­fy­ing “A–” rat­ing con­firms the solid and suc­cess­ful busi­ness model of VP Bank Group. VP Bank Group is one of the few pri­vate banks in Liecht­en­stein and Switzer­land that are eval­u­ated by a ma­jor in­ter­na­tional rat­ing agency.Re­search cov­er­age of VP Bank Group is pro­vided by an­a­lysts at Zürcher Kan­ton­al­bank. 

Fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on VP Bank’s shares, cap­i­tal struc­ture and ma­jor share­hold­ers can be found in the “Corporate governance 2013” section.

Tanja Muster - Head of Group Com­mu­ni­ca­tions & Mar­ket­ing
Tel +423 235 66 55 - Fax +423 235 65 00
investor.relations@vpbank.com
www.vpbank.com - Investors & Media