Deutsche Bank AG

And gentlemen, welcome to the Q2 2025 analyst conference call and live webcast. I'm Moritz, the chorus call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in a listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer 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 Ioanna Patvenice, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you for joining us for our second quarter 2025 results call. As usual, our Chief Executive Officer, Christian Saving, will speak first, followed by our Chief Financial Officer, James Van Malka. 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, Joanna, and a warm welcome from me. Our first half results demonstrate clearly where Deutsche Bank stands today. Our strategy has proven itself in different environments. Our global house bank served clients at times of elevated volatility in the second quarter. And thanks to our diversified model, we delivered resilient revenues, which grew 6% to 16.3 billion euros, in line with our full year goal of around 32 billion euros. And while it is still early, we are encouraged by the strong start of the third quarter. Non-interest expenses declined 15% year on year, to 10.2 billion euros, in line with our full-year outlook, resulting in a cost-income ratio of 62%. This strong operating leverage produced a return on tangible equity of 11% in the first half year, which means we delivered returns in line with our target of greater than 10% in both quarters, including the second quarter that was impacted by increased volatility. Our CET1 ratio of 14.2% enables us to deploy capital to grow our business and to support clients while increasing returns to shareholders. We are absolutely focused both on delivering our year end targets and on preparing the next phase of our strategy to further boost returns and value generation for our shareholders beyond 2025. As you can see on slide three, We delivered a pre-provision profit of 6.2 billion euros in the first half, nearly double the same period in 2024. Adjusting for post-bank takeover litigation impacts, pre-provision profit was up 29% year on year on the back of strong operating leverage of 10%, resulting in a 37% increase in the pre-tax profit over what was already a strong operating performance last year. Robust revenues reflect our well-diversified business mix, with 74% from more predictable revenue streams than the corporate bank, private bank, asset management, and FIC financing. Net commission and fee income increased by 4% year on year, in line with our goal to boost revenues from fee-based and capital-light businesses. As anticipated, net interest income in key banking book segments and other funding also remained resilient. Excluding the impact of the post-bank takeover litigation provision in both periods, non-interest expenses declined 4%. Adjusted costs remained flat, and as we intended, significant progress on our operational efficiency measures is offsetting business investments and inflation. Now let's look at divisional developments on slide four. All four business delivered double digit returns in the first half of this year. And we believe they will continue to build on this. Our diversified business mix is poised to perform in a fast changing environment, particular as our focused investments to serve clients are paying off across the platform. Our corporate bank As a leading market position in Germany and with deep roots in our home market, it's perfectly positioned to help clients capitalize on opportunities created by investment programs in Germany and Europe and the improving business momentum overall. We expect revenue momentum to pick up again once government investments and initiatives to support the economy show their impact. We are already preparing for this. As an example, we are cooperating with KfW and EIB to support lines in Germany with tailored solutions. Additionally, its global market presence positions the Corporate Bank well to support multinational clients as they respond to the rapidly evolving environment. The Investment Bank is focused on consolidating its position as the leading European FIG franchise. while origination and advisory is looking to grow market share specifically in advisory aided by recent investments driving further revenue diversification. Our platform is ideally placed to help institutional and corporate clients serve the German and European infrastructure and defense agenda, especially in Germany, where we have the leading ONA franchise, including in aerospace and defense, where we have recently invested further in our dedicated sector coverage team. And our investment and corporate banks have already seen increased demand for defense finance. Our O&A team has been involved in deals spanning equity capital markets, M&A, and financing, while the corporate bank sees growth potential particular in trade finance solutions for short-term and long-term financings. In the private bank, we are pleased to see the progress on our transformation, reflected in the improvement in returns seen year to date. Personal banking continues to drive efficiency through workforce reductions and branch network optimization, mainly in Germany. These steps, combined with increasing digitalization, are enabling us to streamline operations and innovate our offerings. At the same time, we are focusing on investments in growth across wealth management and private banking, deepening segment coverage, leveraging the bank's broader product suite for our clients. Progress made and the fact that the private bank is well positioned to help clients take advantage of current trends make us confident we will see returns improve further in the medium term. Asset management stands to build from its diversified assets under management of more than 1 trillion euros. And we believe it is ideally placed not only to serve German and European investors, but also to act as a gateway to Europe for global investors. Clearly, both our asset-gathering businesses will support one of the strategic initiatives of the Savings and Investment Union, fostering citizens' wealth by broadening their access to capital markets as we are Germany's leading wealth manager globally. and retail fund manager, in addition to being its leading capital markets bank. Before I hand over to James, let me conclude on the progress toward our 2025 delivery on slide five. Let me start with revenue growth. Since 2021, we have achieved a compound annual growth rate of 5.9%, in the middle of our target range of 5.5 to 6.5%. Second, we have achieved around 90% of our 2.5 billion euro target for operational efficiencies, with 2.2 billion euros in cost efficiencies either delivered or expected from completed measures. And we continue with our strict cost management approach, which includes strategic and tactical measures to deliver our profitability and efficiency targets. Third, Capital efficiencies have reached a cumulative total of 30 billion euros, already at the high end of the bank's target range for full year 2025 and contributing to our strong CET1 ratio. We delivered another 2 billion euros of RWA reductions this quarter through securitization transactions. And we are not stopping here. We already see opportunities to deliver further capital efficiencies in the second half of 2025. With a CET1 ratio of 14.2% this quarter, we feel very comfortable with our commitment to surpassing our 8 billion euro target for total distributions to shareholders. In fact, we already applied for a second share buyback in addition to the previously announced 2.1 billion euro distribution for this year. And James will shortly cover our pathways to materially reduce or potentially eliminate the impact of the output floor from the implementation of CRR3. To sum up, our first half results demonstrate that we are on track to meet our 2025 financial targets, and we are fully focused on delivering them. In parallel, we are working on the next phase of our strategic agenda to further increase value generation beyond 2025. We see significant potential to unlock additional value from the combination of our strategic actions and market opportunities arising from growth stimulus, defense spending, and structural reforms in Europe. The Made for Germany initiative, which we launched together with leading German companies earlier this week, underscores a shared commitment by both government and industry to prioritize growth and competitiveness. We also see increasing global investor demand to deploy funds into the German economy. All in all, given our unique domestic positioning and global reach, this is a clear net positive for us. We have built a resilient and diverse business mix and a strong capital base, and we are now in the sustainable growth stage. This allows us to fine-tune our business model and extract further value by strictly applying our SVA framework, targeted re-engineering, and further developing our leadership culture. We look forward to updating you in more detail on our plans later this year. With that, let me hand over to James.