Vontobel Holding AG

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the presentation of FONTOBL's full year 2024 results webcast. I'm Sandra, the chorus co-operator. I would like to remind you that all participants have been listened on remote and the conference has been recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. the conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Georg Schubiger. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning and a very warm welcome from Crystal, Thomas and myself. We are pleased to share our very strong 2024 financial results and the clear strategic progress we have made last year. Let me first briefly recap the market context and how it played into our results. Equities continued to climb in the second half of 2024. The US market was particularly strong, fueled by Fed rate cuts, robust economic data, election-driven optimism, and continued strong momentum in tech and AI-related stocks. Bond yields primarily mirrored the consecutive rate cuts by the central banks. This includes the Swiss National Bank, which announced its biggest rate cut in almost 10 years in December. In FX markets, the US dollar was the strongest performer, driven by the superior growth of the US economy, a marginally more hawkish Fed, and anticipated supportive post-election policies. Overall, 2024 was a year of significant economic and geopolitical changes. Despite challenges like geopolitical and interest rate uncertainty, most asset classes delivered strong performance. In this context, Fontobel returned to growth and delivered the second best financial results in its history. Let me turn to our key messages for 2024. We delivered very strong growth in profitability with profit before taxes increasing 32% to 354 million. After two more challenging years, we returned to positive net new money growth for the firm with revenues increasing in both client segments private and institutional. Our balance sheet and capital position remain solid, with a CT1 ratio of 16.1%, well above our 12% target. This enables us to propose an unchanged dividend of 3 Swiss francs per share at the 2025 Annual General Meeting later in April. In 2024, we made significant strategic progress. We focused on our client coverage on private and institutional clients. We sharpened our execution on both the revenue and the cost side. We elevated our leadership team with top-tier expertise. And in the US, we decided to own and thus insource the distribution of our 40 Act funds. We made two acquisitions with perfect strategic fit. With Ankala, we marked a milestone in our strategy to enter private markets. We are now directly part of the full value chain of producing and distributing private markets investments. With EHAG, we further strengthened our position with ultra high and high net worth clients in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. We are successfully executing our efficiency program and are already seeing tangible results. The program is making our organization sharper, our processes more efficient and our client services faster. Our progress this year does not mean that we will slow down. We remain fully committed to completing the full 100 million program by the end of 2026. As we have often said, our business model is unique. We are one investment firm serving two complementary client segments, private and institutional. Both segments benefit from our deep and broad investment expertise. We add value through advice, active management and customization. Fixed income is a core asset class. Investors are now returning, having pulled back after the sharp market correction in 2022. Fontobel is a leading player in this space, with 24 asset management and our fixed income boutique. 24 asset management offers world-leading strategies such as strategic income and ABS, which attracted strong inflows last year. Our fixed income boutique is equally well placed. It is known for its excellent performance in emerging market fixed income. It may however need to wait a bit longer for investors to return to this segment. Private markets have become an integral part of our capabilities, further diversifying our business mix. Ancala gives our clients access to private infrastructure, benefiting from its stable cash flows, inflation protection, and low correlation to the overall economic cycle. 24 Asset Management will be launching an asset-backed finance strategy. This strategy will build on their longstanding and proven expertise in managing asset-backed securities. Last, Both our private and smaller institutional clients are leveraging our selection capabilities with third-party providers. We are also emerging as a strong provider of customized solutions tailored to meet the unique needs of our clients. One example is the Sustainable Equity Income Plus Fund. The fastest growth rates in the industry are expected to be in private markets and solutions. Fontable is well positioned to benefit from these accelerating trends, while continuing to be a partner of choice on core asset classes, as demonstrated by the net positive flows in fixed income and multi-asset last year. Now over to you, Crystal.

Good morning and a very warm welcome from my side. Let us first turn to the institutional client segment where we see positive trends. We grew operating income by 4% year-on-year with stable margins and achieved a continued improvement in flow trends. As anticipated, fixed income was the first asset class to see a rebound in flows for actively managed solutions. Our leading position with best-in-class performance allowed us to capture the return of fixed-income investors. We saw strong net positive flows in spite of emerging markets bond strategies still suffering outflows at Fontobo and in the industry ahead of the US election. We are seeing the first signs of investors regained interest in this segment. We are well positioned to capture future flows with our outstanding track records in the space. MultiAsset also saw a positive turnaround this year, with inflows driven by our innovative solutions. Flow trends have improved substantially since 2022. This amidst an industry with generally continued to see outflows in actively managed investment strategies. Overall, we realized positive net flows across most of our investment strategies. The exceptions being emerging market strategy and a one-off impact on our quality growth equity strategies due to the insourcing of our distribution in the first half of the year. As you recall from our investor day back in November last year, we will accelerate our growth with institutional clients through three key levers. First, by evolving our sales strategy from a traditional product-driven approach to a strategic coverage, dialogue and partnerships with asset owners and managers. Second, by implementing a standardized, scalable client journey, ensuring a consistent, high-quality, seamless and speedy experience for every client, regardless of location. Third, by scaling our numerous existing strong track records, as well as by activating our new strategies in private markets and the solution space. We are back to growth. We are well positioned for future flows and commercial success. For private clients, the positive momentum continued. Our financial performance was very strong with operating income up 10% year on year. We achieved net inflows of 4.6 billion, a near 5% annual growth rate. This comfortably meets our through-the-cycle target range of 4-6%. The quality of flows was high, with about 80% going into advisory and discretionary mandates and with strong growth in our core markets. This validates our investment-led approach and demonstrates our capability to grow in our core markets. These markets account for most of the world's wealth growth and have a favorable geopolitical risk-reward. With over 20 years of experience, Fontobo is a leader in creating and distributing structured solutions. Our clients can create almost any payoff profile using a broad range of global underlying assets. Our 2024 results clearly demonstrate our capabilities and how we are gaining market share. To summarize, last year was a successful year for our private client segment. We captured high-quality flows in our core markets, successfully served the higher client engagement, and delivered very strong financial performance. We grow profitably in private clients and institutional clients. We are successfully executing the 100 million efficiency program. We have achieved exit rate savings of 45 million higher than targeted for 2024. This year made eminently clear that we can grow revenues while at the same time improving our efficiency and reducing our cost base. This translated into a significant improvement in our cost-income ratio, down almost 5% to below 75%. The savings were realised through the levers communicated last year. consolidation of IT infrastructure and application, reduced vendor spend, process automation, and increased use of smart technology as presented during our investor day. We are systematically implementing further measures and remain committed to delivering the 400 million of gross savings by end 2026 as well as embedding a culture of cost discipline, we deliver on our efficiency goals. This year, we achieved a substantial improvement across our key target metrics. But we will not stop here. We have the skills, we have the business model, we have the ambition and we have the ability to deliver 4-6% growth through the cycle. We are resolute on delivering on our cost-income ratio and are steadfast in our commitment to maintain a strong capital position and attractive shareholder returns. We affirm our through-the-cycle targets. With this, let me hand over to Thomas, who will cover the financials.