Alpha Services and Holdings S.A.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Mina, your chorus call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Alpha Bank conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the first half of 2025 and national 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 Alphabank Management. Gentlemen, you may now proceed.

Hello, everyone. I am Iasson Kepapsovlu, Alphabank's head of IR. Welcome to the presentation of our Q2 results. Vassilios Psaltis, our CEO, will lead the call, summarizing the second quarter and providing you with a few updates. And then Vassilios Kosmas, our CFO, will go through these quarter's numbers in some detail. However, we will take Q&A in the end, and we should finish within the hour. Vasily, over to you.

Good morning from my side as well, and thank you all for joining. Let's start with financial results on slide four, please. The first half of the year has put us on solid footing to deliver on our main objectives for the year. Profits for the first half of the year stood at $517 million, or $0.19 per share, and up 52% of the target we have set for the year. translating to a 14.2% normalized return on tangible equity. We have also accrued 259 million euros for distribution so far this year. That's 60% of the guidance we have set, and we intend to distribute circa 111 million, which is the first quarter accrual, as an interim dividend in the fourth quarter. Our performance is driven by the defensive nature of a net interest income, that was up 1% versus the first quarter of this year and the continuous growth of our fee income line with a quarterly result up 13% this quarter and 21% versus last year. Our net interest income trajectory demonstrates our ability to position the balance sheet to maximize the value we can extract always within prudent constraints. Fee income growth is the product of the initiatives we have taken over the years that are now bearing fruit both on the corporate as well as on the affluent side of the business. We continue to position the business to maximize the recurring value we can create for our shareholders in a sustainable way. Vasilis will give you more detail on the second quarter results, but allow me to mention one thing. This quarter, we have been fortunate to have a quarter billion windfall gain. Given its nature, we have decided to use most of this opportunity to future-proof our P&L from loading the cost of future management actions. As a result, we can sustainably reduce our cost of risk. This leads to a 2% upgrade of our EPS guidance and thus an expectation for a higher distributable amount. Now, allow me to spend some time on the strategic actions we have taken that are equally important, starting with slide five. In May, we signed the Landmark Partnership with Hellenic Post. Alphabank will offer a full suite of financial services through Alta's 1100 service points nationwide. We are proud to support Hellenic Post in its ambitious transformation journey by offering our tech expertise and state-of-the-art financial products to their customers. As such, by the end of the year, Alta branches will roll out daily banking services and soon enough customers will have the exclusive access to Alphabank's product suite in areas such as lending, insurance, and investments. This is a partnership that promotes financial inclusion, a key priority for our group, for over one million Greek citizens, particularly in rural and underserved areas. For Alfa Bank, the partnership not only increases our physical footprint to over 1,800 locations, which is the most among any financial institution in the country, but financially, it opens up new revenue, and liquidity streams for the group. It is a powerful example of how we can use partnerships to better service our clients and the wider community in a sustainable manner. Let me now turn to our strategic partnership with Unicredit, which constitutes to be a cornerstone of Alphabank's transformation and growth agenda, and this is on slide six. As of May 2025, Unicredit has increased its stake in Alfa Bank to just over 20%, reinforcing the depth and commitment of our alliance. It is not just a financial investment. As Andrea herself has repeatedly stated, it's a strategic partnership delivering tangible commercial, operational, and systemic benefits for both institutions. We have successfully combined our Romanian subsidiaries creating a stronger regional footprint and unlocking synergies in cross-border operations. Our clients now benefit from Unicredits from European network across 13 countries. This positions Alphabank as the bank of choice for over 5,000 wholesale clients in Greece. In wealth and asset management, the launch and expansion of the OneMarket's fund suite has been a major success, with over 600 million distributed to date. We have also issued three unit link products in collaboration with Unicredit, totaling $110 million in notional value and launched five structured node private placements. In wholesale banking and syndications, we have co-led over 200 million signatures of credit and guarantees and approved $300 million in international syndicated lending since the partnership began. Additionally, bilateral FX payments volumes have reached $650 million year-to-date, reflecting strong transactional momentum. In capital markets and advisory, the integration into our investment banking platform is progressing well. Together with Unicredit's advisory franchise, we're targeting joint deal origination across various sectors. Lastly, beyond commercial gains, we are also leveraging Unicredit's expertise in customer experience, process simplification, upskilling and reskilling programs, compliance, and operational resilience, areas that are crucial to our long-term This partnership aligns with Europe's vision for cross-border integration and financial stability. It supports the capital markets union and enhances systemic resilience across Europe. Looking ahead, we aim to scale our syndicated lending and M&A advisory, expand fee-based income, and broaden the distribution of asset management products across Unicredit's network. Our partnership with Unicredit gives us competitive advantage that differentiates us from the rest of the pack, one that we aim to fully utilize to enhance the value that we create for the benefit of all of our shareholders. Our story remains intact, as you can see on slide seven. Our strategic actions alongside our balance sheet positioning will allow us to maintain an upward trajectory to our bottom line for 2025, despite the income from falling rates. Our defensive net interest income profile should now be evident, as the first quarter saw the bottom in net interest income, and we are now amongst the first commercial banks in Europe to see growth in their top line. We continue to dynamically manage our balance sheet. We're capturing the tailwinds of long growth. We're stepping up on our target for fee income generation, and we are seeing the partnership with Unicredit accrue additional benefits quarter after quarter. Our profitability is on an upward path. The structural growth potential of the regions that we operate will allow us to maintain a base of net credit expansion above the 2 billion mark. At the same time, our franchise is strongly positioned to benefit from the long-term uplift in the penetration of fee-generating banking services, which coupled with the partnerships we have put in place, allow us to improve the revenue generation capacity of our business. These factors will work even more so in our favor beyond 2025, where we see earnings growing by 12% on an annual basis, still notwithstanding the impact of any share buybacks. Now let's move to slide eight, please. The trends for 2025 and beyond allow us to maintain a differentiating positive EPS growth trajectory in the medium term. These differentiations should now be apparent vis-à-vis our domestic and European peers. EPS is expected to grow by 9% per annum over the planning period, above consensus estimates, even before accounting for the effect of any buybacks. And then lastly, on my side, on slide 9, please. We have been diligent and clear on how we intend to allocate capital, and our hierarchy remains unchanged. Our first and foremost priority is to fund profitable loan growth. Our capital generation capacity suggests that we ought to be paying no for 50% of profits on an ongoing basis. And last but not least, our excess capital provides us with significant higher power to do more. The pace of capital generation and our strong capital position means that we are comfortably able to fund both an acceleration in loan growth as well as a more generous distribution and Bolton acquisitions to maximize shareholder value. And the users of excess capital to conduct Bolton M&A, an area where we now have established a track record, should allow us to boost earnings and thus increase shareholder remuneration. And with that, Vasile, over to you.