Alpha Services and Holdings S.A.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Mina, your callers call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Alpha Services and Holdings conference call to present and discuss the full year 2024 financial results. 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. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to RFI Services and Holdings Management. Gentlemen, you may now proceed.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I am Yasson Kepatsoglou, Alphabank's Head of IR. We're at the full year stage, so the two items on the agenda are the results for the year and the plan for the future. We'll tackle them in that order, switching between Vasilis Psarpis, our CEO, and Vasilis Kosmas, our CFO, as needed, and you get to guess who's who. As ever, the whole team is here, and we will take your name at the end. And with that, over to our CEO, Basigli, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Yasin. Good morning also from my side, and thank you for joining. A lot to cover indeed, so let's dive in, starting with slide four, please. 2024 has seen us make marked progress towards our business plan objectives. We have delivered $0.35 of EBS with 9% annual growth in normalized profits, translating into a 14% return on tangible equity, while our capital ratio has climbed to 16.3%. Our reported profits reached $654 million, and we have accrued 43% on that. That means $281 million, or $0.12 per share, for distributions, and this is subject, as always, to regulatory approval. We will propose to use 75%, or $210 million, for a buyback. reflecting the views of our shareholders on the superior return of buyback generated given that the stock is currently trading. Those of you that have been following us for a while will remember that we identified several strategic priorities at our investor day in 2023. On slide 5, you can see that we have been making solid progress on these. Our profitability has doubled. driven by structural improvements across our business divisions, coupled with targeted reallocation of capital. We have managed to meet our three-year target for capital generation a year early, and we are rewarding our shareholders with increasing payouts on the back of that. We are dynamically adjusting to a changing environment, ensuring that we are best positioned to maximize the value we generate whilst we continue to invest heavily on the key enablers of our business plan, that means digital capabilities and our people. On slide six, you can see the tangible rewards that we are reaping. Our performing loans are up 16% over the two years. EPS and return on tangible equity have doubled, whilst capital generation has increased even faster. Moving on to slide seven, It should thus come as no surprise that 2024 has come in well ahead of our targets for the year. Across all metrics, we have been able to beat our guidance. We have every intention to continue to build upon this track record of delivering on our promises. As you can see on slide eight, the uplift we have seen in profitability has come from two sources. Firstly, through the structural improvement in the profitability of our business units, and secondly, through the reallocation of capital from dealing with problematic assets of the past to funding future growth. Remember that we have been extremely diligent in ensuring that we fund profitable growth, and profitability is viewed holistically, not only by ensuring sound pricing and underwriting policies, but aiming to service a wider range of needs that our customers do have, and optimizing the capital that we allocate for that. This holistic approach has allowed us to see improvement in profitability despite spread pressure. Slide nine. The operational work that we are doing is what allows us to drive these results. What you see here is just the tip of the iceberg, as we would need a dedicated event to provide you with all the details. Retail is fully digitalizing everyday banking needs under a new service model that has freed up our people to devote time on complex customer needs. Wealth continues to scale its engine and is customizing its investment proposition. Wholesale has operationalized its redesigned teams with industry experts, now providing specialized advisory services and financing knowledge for clients. On the international front, 2024 has been dominated by the improvement in the return of the capital employed in Romania, but Cyprus is also making strides in growing its book. When it comes to our balance sheet, we have optimized the capital stack, we have ample amounts of excess liquidity, and we are well positioned for rate declines, all while reducing NPEs below 4%, and that is two years ahead of the plan, while delivering the capital target of 16%, one year ahead of the plan. And last but not least, we have completed 2.6 billion of sustainable disbursements in just two years. Turning to our partnership with Unicredit now for an update on slide 10. One-market funds bought by our private banking and affluent customers are now up to 400 million, while the joint venture in Bangka Surans is expected to close early in the second half of 2025. Our wholesale offering continues to benefit from our partnership, looking at cross-indications, trade finance, guarantees, letters of credit, FX, clearing, trading and treasury, factoring, as well as brokerage. As we have said before, we have also begun to pitch jointly for certain DCM deals, and we are now expecting to expand also to ECM and M&A. The impact of this relationship are both direct and indirect, which means we are unable to give a hard number quantifying all this effort. But even though certain impacts have direct incremental benefits, as with the sale of all market funds, for example, in most cases, our partnership with Unicredit gives us a competitive advantage that differentiates us from the rest of the pack. One, that we aim to fully utilize to enhance the value that we can create for the benefit of our stakeholders. And lastly, on slide 11, before I hand over, I think I have demonstrated clearly how we are delivering well ahead of our plan. This is flowing to the bottom line, both in terms of earnings growth, but also importantly, in terms of capital generation, as that is what allows us to fund future growth and distribute value to our shareholders. In two years, we have been able to deliver 100% of the three-year plan for capital generation. We have deployed $0.6 billion to fund the growth of our balance sheet. Just over $400 million has been set aside for distributions to shareholders, and we still have significant firepower over and above our management targets. We'll come back to this towards the end of the presentation, but for now, to run through our 2024 results in more detail, Vasile Kosmar, over to you.