Deutsche Bank AG

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Q1 2025 Analyst Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Yousef, the Chorus Call Operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and that this conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and 1 on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and 0. This conference must not be recorded for publication or for broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Ujjana Partinic, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2025 Results Call. As usual, our Chief Executive Officer, Christian Saving, will speak first, followed by our Chief Financial Officer, James Von Mocker. The presentation, as always, is available to download in the Investor Relations section of our website, db.com. Before we get started, let me just remind you that the presentation contains forward-looking statements which may not develop as we currently expect. We therefore ask you to take notice of the precautionary warning at the end of our materials. With that, let me hand over to Christian.

Thank you, Ujjana, and a warm welcome from me. Before we turn to our performance, I want to offer my perspective on recent events. The geopolitical landscape is rapidly evolving, and uncertainty and volatility are likely to stay elevated for the time being. This will likely impact the world economy. We still believe globalization will persist, but we expect to see a substantial reordering of trade corridors and supply chains, and this may accelerate some of the long-term trends we have spoken about for some time. And we are particularly encouraged to see what is happening in our domestic market with regards to fiscal changes and structural reforms, leading to a much-needed economic boost for Germany and Europe. All of this underscores why we believe our global house bank business model and four clients through these unsettled times. And already, since the start of the second quarter, we are seeing clients increasingly seek our expertise and advice. Now let me turn to our results. We are very pleased with a very strong first quarter performance. We delivered revenues of 8.5 billion euros, up 10 percent, a strong start towards our year revenue objective of around 32 billion euros. Our cost-income ratio was 61 percent, with adjusted costs of 5.1 billion euros, in line with full year guidance. Our loan portfolio quality remains solid. Stage 3 provisions are down nearly 30 percent year on year, normalizing as expected, while stage 1 and 2 provisions were higher and including overlays in this more uncertain environment. Our pretext profit of 2.8 billion euros was up 39 percent year on year. And with net profit of 2 billion euros, our return of tangible equity was 11.9 percent in the first quarter. Our CET1 ratio of 30.8 percent sets us up well for the rest of the year, both to support our clients and reward shareholders. To summarize, the start of the year was very strong. We believe that we have the right business model, both to face uncertainties in the environment as well as to steer the bank towards delivery of our 2025 targets. Beyond that, we have a clear management agenda for further developing our global house bank offering for our clients and sustainably increasing returns for shareholders beyond 2025, which I will talk about shortly. Let's now turn to our resilient operating performance on slide 3. We delivered pre-provision profit of 3.3 billion euros up 34 percent year on year. Revenue momentum combined with cost discipline resulted in strong operating leverage of 11 percent with each operating division delivering positive jobs. Revenue quality is strong. 71 percent came from more predictable revenue streams than the corporate bank, private bank, asset management and FIC financing. Net commission and fee income increased by 5 percent year on year in line with our goals and reflecting our strategic investments. Net interest income in key banking book segments and other funding also remained resilient year on year. Non-interest expenses declined 2 percent year on year to 5.2 billion euros as non-operating costs normalized as expected. Our progress on operational efficiencies enabled us both to deliver adjusted costs in line with plan and continue to self-finance investments. Turning to slide 4, let's now look at the progress with our 2025 delivery. Turning first to revenue growth since 2021, we have achieved a compound annual growth rate of 6.1 percent within our target range of 5.5 to 6.5 percent. Double digit first quarter revenue growth contributed 700 million euros towards our target of 2 billion euros incremental revenues in 2025. Second, in respect of operational efficiencies, we have reached 85 percent of our 2.5 billion euro target with 2.1 billion euros in cost efficiencies either delivered or expected from completed measures. Third, we have made further progress with our capital efficiency measures with 4 billion euros of RWA reductions delivered this quarter through a combination of data and process improvements and a securitization transaction. This brings us cumulative RWA benefit to 28 billion euros at the high end of the bank's market range of 25 to 30 billion euros by the end of this year. We have announced capital distributions of 2.1 billion euros this year including the 2024 dividend and our recently launched share buyback program. This will take cumulative capital returns to 5.4 billion euros since 2022 and we remain committed to surpassing our capital distribution target of 8 billion euros in respect of the 2021 through 2025. Put simply, our 2025 targets are in sight. Let me now turn to our long-term management agenda on slide 5. Our aim is to deliver a sustainable increase in returns through three levers, increasing value generation for shareholders, re-engineering our target operating model and reinforcing leadership. First, we will deploy shareholder value add methodology in our planning process and decision making to optimize resource allocations across the group. And progress is underway. In the private bank we have reduced RWA exposures in below hurdle mortgages and in the corporate and investment bank we are undertaking client level reviews. We are also making progress in re-engineering our target operating model. In the private bank we continue to transform our personal banking operations by reducing branches and moving to digital channels, resulting in a planned reduction of almost 2,000 FTEs. We are transforming our corporate bank German platform and overhauling front to back processes in the investment bank, leading to improved client experience and efficiency. Finally, we are strengthening leadership by streamlining governance structures. We have already reduced our committee's councils and internal policies by about half. This speeds up decision making and increases accountability while maintaining a robust control environment. As promised, a few words on how we are well positioned to help navigate clients through the dynamic environment on slide 6. In Germany and across Europe we see fresh commitment to support growth, boost competitiveness and accelerate reform. We believe Germany's loosening of the debt break will unlock considerable investment opportunities and the proposed pension reforms are expected to boost activity in the capital markets. At the European level we see commitments to invest in defense and infrastructure and much needed embrace of structural reforms, for example the savings and investment union and measures to boost secularization. Globally trading patterns are shifting, supply chains are being rewired and new partnerships and alliances are emerging. All of this plays to our strengths. Clients need a partner with the expertise, financial strength, product breadth and global and local network to help them navigate this changing environment. And we aim to be that partner as our leading franchise and diversified businesses are best to advise clients at European and global levels. Our corporate bank was voted the world's best bank for corporates by clients. We combine global reach with local presence to support multinational clients as their supply chains evolve. We are already a partner of choice with around 40% of our revenues with multinationals come from cross-regional corridors. With deep roots in Europe and in Germany's Mittelstand we are ideally positioned to help clients benefit as fiscal stimulus feeds through the real economy. Our investment bank is also ideally placed to help institutional and corporate clients navigate this environment. We have the leading global non-US FIC franchise. We were the top ranked European bank in global FSA issuance and in EMEA cash rates while in Germany we have the leading ONA franchise. And we are well positioned to support the broader German and European defense agenda where we have the leading franchise in aerospace and defense in Germany providing clients with holistic global coverage. We are also Germany's leading wealth manager and retail fund manager through our private bank and asset management businesses. This positions us well to help clients capitalize on savings and investment reforms. We have already rebalanced our wealth management business mix resulting in increased assets under management flows and we continue to scale up in our core growth markets. DWS with assets under management of over 1 trillion euros record net inflows of 20 billion euros in the first quarter and a market share of 11% in European ETFs is ideally placed not only to serve German and European investors but also to act as a gateway to Europe for investors globally. To sum up, across all our businesses we believe we are very well positioned to serve German, European and global clients in a fast changing environment. With that let me hand over to James.