DWS Group GmbH & Co. KGaA

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to DWS Q3 2026 Results with Investor and Analyst Conference Call and Live Webcast. I'm Sörgen, the Chorus Call Operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference being 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 start 0. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's our pleasure to hand over to Oliver Flade. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, operator, and good morning to everybody from Frankfurt. This is Oliver Flade from Investor Relations and a warm welcome to everybody to our earnings call for the third quarter of 2026. Before we start, I would like to remind you that the upcoming Deutsche Bank analyst call will outline the asset management segments results, which have a different parameter basis to the DWS results we're presenting now. I'm joined by Stefan Hoops, our CEO, and Markus Kobler, our CFO. Stefan will start with some opening as well as closing remarks, and Markus will take you through the main part of the presentation. For the Q&A afterwards, please could you limit yourself to the two most important questions so that we can give as many people a chance to participate as possible. I would also like to remind you that the presentation may contain forward-looking statements which may not develop as we currently expect. I therefore ask you to take note of the disclaimer and the precautionary warning on the forward-looking statements at the end of our materials. And with that, I will now pass on to Stefan. Thank you, Oliver.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our Q3 2026 earnings call. Greetings from Abu Dhabi, where I'm joining you from today. As many of you know, we consider ourselves paranoid optimists. We are confident in the direction of our business, but we're never complacent about where we stand or what still needs to improve. This mindset also shapes how we look at our third quarter. I could spend time dwelling on our record inflows, record assets under management and our best ever nine months financial performance. But to be fair, we are operating in a growing market where almost everyone seems to post about new records. So today, rather than adding to this concert of records, I want to give you an honest assessment of what we like about the quarter, we were not yet satisfied and what we're doing about it. Let me start with the numbers. Client momentum does look strong. Our total net flows were in fact our best ever. Total net flows reached 30.9 billion euros and assets under management rose to around 1.22 trillion euros. We generated 16.6 billion euros of long-term net flows, up from 11.6 billion in the second quarter. Revenues amounted to 784 million euros, with management fees increasing by 5% quarter on quarter. Total costs were 459 million euros, down 2% quarter on quarter, reflecting our continued cost discipline. Overall, this translated into profit before tax of 325 million euros, up 6% quarter on quarter, and earnings per share of €1.15. This brings EPS to €3.66 for the first three quarters of the year and moves us closer to our short-term target of 10% to 15% EPS growth per year. Those are solid numbers, but headline figures alone do not provide the full picture. The more relevant question is what sits behind these numbers and how much they reflect our own execution. We like to think of this as a more distinct assessment of where we stand and where we believe we need to do better. You may recall that at the beginning of the year, we mentioned continuing to grow revenues and improving the composition of our fees as our key challenges for this year. This meant that our recurring management fees needed to grow strongly to offset performance fees normalizing from last year's elevated level. With an increase of management fees by 14% year-on-year to 745 million euros, we demonstrated the strength of our core business, enabling us to grow revenues despite the as-expected lower performance fee contribution. We are also encouraged by the continued strong investment performance of several of our flagship active equity strategies. This positions us well to capture future retail flows, particularly in the German market, where long-term investment performance remains a key driver of client demand. Turning to Xtrackers, we are pleased with the business's continued growth. While some may say that we simply benefited from a growing market, Let me offer a different perspective. The European ETF market continues to grow and attract new providers. Yet, despite this increasing competition, we have maintained our high market share. In an increasingly crowded market, holding your position is not a given, which we see as evidence of the strength of the Xtrackers platform. We are also pleased with our continued cost discipline. Our cost-income ratio improved by 1.9 percentage points quarter-on-quarter to 58.6%. And as I said last quarter, our controllable costs remain flat despite continued investment in our strategic growth initiatives. This means that we remain on a good path towards our 2027 goal of a cost-income ratio below 55%. Turning to areas where we are not yet satisfied, our institutional and alternative businesses continue to punch below their weight. We have strong capabilities in both areas, but we are not yet translating them into the scale and growth we believe should be possible. Our new global brand identity. The new brand has immediate international recognition and clearly reflects what we want to be. The gateway to Europe for global investors. This is particularly important as we continue to expand our international and institutional business, while DWS, Xtrackers and Reeve remain our established product brands that our clients know and trust. As an important step in strengthening our alternatives platform, we announced the acquisition of Peakside Capital Advisors earlier this month. Peakside manages 1.7 billion euros and it expands our value-add and opportunistic real estate capabilities, particularly in Germany and Central and Eastern Europe. Its founders and senior team will remain with the business and we expect the transaction to close by the end of the year, subject to regulatory approvals. We will also support Frankfurter Lebens plant acquisition of Athora Germany. The transaction would create a growing insurance platform with around 17 billion euros in assets and provide an opportunity to become the preferred partner for managing the group's alternative investments. The strategic collaboration is another concrete step towards strengthening both our institutional insurance business and expanding our presence in alternatives, an area where, as I said, we are not yet where we want to be. These are concrete steps in the right direction, but we know there's more work to do. After Markus has taken you through the financial results, I will come back to where we see further opportunities for growth and how we intend to capture them. But first, let me hand over to Markus in Frankfurt for a closer look at the numbers.