Bank of Ireland Group plc

Thank you, Eamonn, and good morning to everyone joining us on the call today. Before we talk through the results in detail, our opening slide presents our positive outlook for the medium term. Bank of Ireland continues to be highly capital generative. Supported by a growing Irish economy and our market position, I expect loan and deposit book growth and wealth AUM growth while retaining our proven cost discipline. Seizing this opportunity translates into return on tangible equity of greater than 17% by 2027. I'll come back to these building blocks shortly. Successfully executing our strategy is driving this performance. In terms of stronger relationships, we're growing customer numbers while at the same time reaching an all-time high with our Net Promoter Score, an excellent benchmark for customer satisfaction. We're making our business simpler with more active digital users and materially lower customer complaints. And sustainable lending is up 32%, broadly achieving our 15 billion target one year early. 2024 was another year of strong strategy execution. We've delivered positive business momentum and financial performance. The highlights include growth in loans and deposits, and a significant increase in assets under management, another very good year of profitability and efficiency, and strong capital generation and returns. This supports our 1.2 billion total distribution, up 6% year on year, the group's largest ever. Our business model is outperforming our peer group, reporting higher capital generation and total shareholder returns than the peer average. This is underlined by cumulative distributions for 2023 and 2024 of 2.4 billion. This is equivalent to more than a quarter of our market cap. The Irish economy is growing and continues to outperform the Euro area. Private sector credit and deposits are strong. and the trajectory for housing completions underpinned by Ireland's demographic advantages will grow the mortgage market. All of this presents a tangible commercial opportunity. It is clear, of course, that the world is in a period of heightened uncertainty and evolving international trade policies add complexity. We monitor this closely. Ireland is on track to run a fiscal surplus for a fourth successive year. The national debt is also tracking down, at 41% compared to 88% for the Euro area. These factors put Ireland in a good place today and position it well for any future challenges that may arise. At Bank of Ireland, our focus is on growing our business with this growing economy. To that point, on slide 10, we set out an excellent performance in Irish mortgages. Our mortgage book is up 7% with a 40% share of new mortgage lending. With the planned increase in housing completions, I expect our Irish mortgage book to continue growing, delivering stable and attractive returns into the future. And looking to that future, we continue to innovate. We've seen a positive reaction to the launch of our EcoSaver mortgage product, which rewards customers as they improve the energy rating of their home. And our mortgage service improvements are building customer satisfaction, with customer scores up considerably in the last year. On slide 11, we detail a strong performance from our everyday banking businesses. Here, I am pleased to report growing customer balances and fee income growth of 4%, while also reaching an all-time high in customer satisfaction. As with mortgages, innovation and investment drive this performance. Looking ahead, we will benefit from ongoing deposit growth, and we'll continue to enhance our digital offering at pace. That includes upgrading our mobile app and continuing to roll out a new customer lending platform for our small business and agri customers. Slide 12 sets out the significant opportunity we see for our wealth and insurance business in Ireland. Last year, total AUM increased 19% to 55 billion. Both Davie and New Ireland contributed to this result. Since it joined the Bank of Ireland Group in June 2022, Davies AUM has grown by 55%. And New Ireland Insurance has increased its protection policy sales to our new mortgage customers. Wealth and insurance fee income now represents almost 50% of total group business income, offering valuable capital light diversified income. The future for wealth and insurance is very positive. Irish household wealth is increasing. There are commercial opportunities which we will target, and I expect AUM to grow by 30% over the next three years. That's significantly ahead of economic growth. Turning now to our corporate and commercial division, here the loan book has evolved in line with our strategy. We have delivered solid and sustainable growth in Ireland and increased fee income. As previously communicated, our corporate GB and US CRE books have contracted as we allocate capital to higher returning activities. We've also made excellent progress on asset quality, delivering a material improvement in the NPE ratio. This year, we expect to drive continued growth in our Irish corporate book in line with the domestic economy. and we will grow fee income and corporate deposits, while our disciplined capital allocation will ensure continuing attractive returns. The picture is similar on slide 14, which covers our retail UK division. In recent years, we've successfully repositioned this business. This has transformed its performance. Our UK subsidiary is now delivering sustainable returns with an underlying ROTI of 15%. We delivered a 27% increase in retail UK underlying profit last year. We also completed the sale of our UK personal loan books at a modest profit. Our outlook is for a stable loan book of circa 17 billion with an ongoing focus on operational efficiency. We're investing over 100 million in our UK business over the next three years to improve products, services and customer experience. And as Mark will speak to, we've recognised the provision of 172 million in relation to our motor finance book. This is the final year of our three-year strategy, and we've had a good start to the year. Slide 15 shows we are meeting or beating our medium-term targets. We've delivered another year of high double-digit ROTI, 16.8% for 2024, while maintaining operating efficiency. and this has been reflected in our distributions. Today, we're setting out a 5% increase in our full year DPS to 63 cent and a 590 million approved buyback. This is the fourth year in a row where we have returned capital to shareholders via share buybacks. Taking the dividend and the buyback together, a combined 1.2 billion, we are today confirming an 80% payout ratio. Mark will now bring you through our financial performance in more detail, and I'll return to talk about our expectations for the medium term.

Thank you, Miles. Slide 18 recaps on our strong financial performance in 2024. Key highlights are robust loan and deposit growth, strong AUM growth, and an excellent asset quality performance. and a RODI of 16.8%. This all underpins our confidence in the outlook for this year and beyond. Our key income statement lines are shown in slide 19. Income and costs evolved in line with our guidance and market expectations. Non-core items are higher than our guidance, and I'll come back to this. Slide 20 details net interest income. Last year, our NII was 2% lower on a like-for-like basis. This reflects higher liquid asset income, growth in loan volumes and increased funding costs. For 2025, we expect NII of greater than 3.25 billion. This takes into account our assumption of lower average interest rates and the wind down of corporate GB. These factors are partly offset by the combined benefits of continued loan and deposit growth and structural hedge benefits. These same positive factors will be the key drivers of our NII trajectory into 2026 and 2027. Slide 21 sets out how our loan book grew in line with our strategy in 2024. The standout of this slide is strong growth in lending in Ireland, which Miles referenced. This has become more broad-based, with commercial lending increasingly contributing alongside an ongoing strong performance in mortgages. We also saw modest growth in our continuing UK portfolios. The reduction in international corporate books primarily reflects the strategic rundown in our corporate GP and US CRE portfolios. This year, we expect to see further growth in net lending. This reflects continued strong growth in Ireland, partially offset by ongoing deleveraging in the corporate portfolios that we are exiting. Slide 22 covers the building blocks of the 19% AUM growth we delivered last year. Robust net inflows were augmented by market growth. By leveraging the scale and the breadth of our propositions and distribution, we are uniquely placed to capture the future growth opportunity presented by the Irish market. Another highlight is the growth in our customer deposits. This was delivered while retaining our commercial discipline on pricing in a competitive marketplace. A key feature of 2024 was flow to term, which now accounts for around a tenth of our everyday banking balances. This year, we expect deposit growth of around 2% and a decrease in flow to term versus 2024. Our structural hedge strategy is an important factor in smoothing our NII trajectory through the interest rate cycle. Slide 24 shows our structural hedge gross fixed-leg income was higher than last year, with the average yield up 24 basis points, helping to improve income. In 2025, we see this income circa 10% higher than 2024, driven by a further increase in yield and modestly higher balances. We see this structural hedge income tailwind continuing to support our NII trajectory in 2026 and 2027. Total business income increased by 4% last year. Our wealth and insurance and retail Ireland franchises delivered good momentum in fee income. This year, we expect to see growth of circa 5% in business income, with wealth and insurance again the main driver. On slide 26, we cover operating expenses, which were in line with guidance. This performance included the investment of an additional €30 million to drive future efficiencies. For this year, we expect circa 3% growth in operating expenses. The moderation in the growth rate reflects, in part, the delivery of benefits from our investment programmes. The combined impact of both investments made and future investments to come will deliver further efficiencies in 2026 and beyond. This supports our outlook for broadly stable operating expenses post 2025. Finally, levies and regulatory charges were around 30% lower last year, and we expect them to be stable this year. Non-core charges in 2024 were 275 million euros, higher than originally envisaged. This is largely down to UK Motor Finance, where we've taken a provision of 172 million euros. There are a number of variables at play and potential scenarios here, and we've adopted a probability weighted approach. Our expectation is for more clarity on this later in 2025. We've also taken 108 million charge in relation to the impairment of software intangibles. On this slide, we also detail a gain of 85 million euros in relation to the disposal of our UK personal loans portfolio. For 2025, we expect the non-core charge to be in the range of 100 to 125 million euros, largely reflecting restructuring costs. These will support our operating cost outlook beyond 2025. Turning to asset quality, where we delivered a significant improvement last year, As shown on slide 28, our NPE ratio improved by 90 basis points to 2.2%. This is in line with European averages. This is primarily driven by strong organic cure and resolution activity, coupled with an NPE transaction in December. The 15 basis points impairment charge was better than our guidance. This is primarily due to better loan loss experience. The underlying loan loss experience charge was around 20 basis points. For 2025, the charge is expected to be in the low to mid-20 basis points, subject to no material change in economic conditions or outlook. Slide 30 showcases the strongly capital generative nature of our business model. Over the full year, we generated 310 basis points of organic capital. RWA investment of 65 basis points was in line with our prior guidance. Shareholder distributions, including the final dividend and buyback announced today, consumed 215 basis points. We finished the year with a fully loaded CET1 ratio of 14.6%, leaving us very strongly positioned. For 2025, our expectation is for organic capital generation of 250 to 270 basis points. In addition, we've increased our expectation of the benefit from Basel IV to circa 110 basis points from roughly 80 basis points previously. Slide 31 recaps all of our key guidance for this year. Together, this produces our expectation for a ROTI of circa 15% this year. Thank you. I'll now pass you back to Miles.

Thanks, Mark. We're turning now to our medium term outlook. Slide 33 captures the depth and breadth of our businesses, to which we are privileged to serve more than four million customers. Our banking, wealth and insurance model is unique in the Irish market, offering value to customers and returns to shareholders. Our blend of a physical, on the ground footprint with engaging digital capabilities is a winning formula, helping serve customers better and faster. and our colleague engagement is now at an all-time high. Engaged colleagues are vital to the progress we are making, and I would like to thank them for their contribution. Slide 34 sets out the four building blocks to our highly capital-generative business. Firstly, the markets we do business in, in particular Ireland, with the economy on track to outperform euro area peers. Another block is our lending and deposit growth. We're delivering this today and see more to come. Thirdly, our differentiated business model, notably in wealth and insurance, where we have seen very strong AUM growth and expect more. And the final block is our focus on efficiency, where we have a proven track record. Now, bringing all these together underpins my confidence for the years ahead and translates to a positive medium-term outlook. This includes a return on tangible equity of above 17% in 2027. strong and sustainable capital generation of circa 750 basis points over the next three years, with net capital generation equivalent to circa 45% of our market cap. A strong and attractive outcome for our shareholders. Thank you very much for your attention. Emil will now take us through the Q&A.