Amundi Sa

Hello, good morning all. I'm Cyril Meillon, the Head of Investor Relations at Amundi, and it's a real pleasure to welcome you today in the not-so-sunny London for a presentation of our full year and fourth quarter results. We are here in our London office, and this is a hybrid event. So we will have people in the room and people online via Zoom. We shall have a presentation by our CEO, who is here with me, Valérie Bodson. And our deputy CEO, Nicolas Calcoune, presentation will last for about 30 minutes. And as usual, it will be followed by a Q&A session for as long as it takes. So ask any questions. The questions can be asked, obviously, in the room as well as online. To do so, just raise your hands, albeit virtually if you are online, and we shall open your mic if you are online again. Please also open your cameras so that it is a more lively dialogue. And unfortunately, before we get started, a very short disclaimer. Throughout the presentation, we will make some forward-looking statements and mention forecasts. We call your attention to the fact that Amundi's actual results may differ from these statements. Some of the factors that may cause the results to differ materially are listed in our universal registration documents. And Amundi assumes no duty and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements. And after this task, I leave the floor to Valérie. Thank you.

Well, thank you Cyril and good morning everyone in the room and behind the screen. We are very pleased to present our Q4 and full year 2025 results, which reflect both our record activity and the core elements of our Invest for the Future 2028 plan. So I will take you through some key highlights before Nicolas, as usual, looks at our activity and financial results in more detail. First, our assets under management have now reached almost 2.4 trillion, so up 6%. This is thanks to record total 2025 net inflows of 88 billion from both passive and active management activities. In terms of clients, this performance was driven by positive inflows across retail, institutional, and our JVs. Retail inflows predominantly came from a very fast-growing third-party distribution business. And on the institutional side, medium to long-term asset collection tripled in 2025, with some major mandate wins in Europe and the Gulf in Q4. Our activity drove strong financial results, with adjusted pre-tax income up 12% for the quarter and 6% for the year, while adjusted EPS reached 6.58 euros. This performance and our strong financial position allow us to propose a 2025 dividend of 4.25 euros. This represents a payout that is 100 million euros above our 65% target. And we are also delivering on our commitment to return excess capital to shareholders from the 2025 strategic cycle. So today, we are announcing a 500 million euro share buyback, which starts tomorrow. So combined, the dividend and share buyback will return close to 1.4 billion euros to investors. around 10% of our current market cap. And more than half of these figures will go to minority shareholders. So all in all, we enjoyed success across all our strategy growth area in our Invest for the Future plan, making 2025 a strong start to our 2028 plan period. So let's take a closer look at some of the key activities. Clients first, starting with retirement, which is, as you remember, one of the key strategic priorities in our new plan. We have established a dedicated business line to package or offer and capture new opportunities. And following on... from the people's pensions in the UK, we secured another major mandate at the end of the year. Amundi is one of just three asset managers selected for Ireland's new auto enrollment pension scheme, which will serve the majority of the Irish workforce. Assets for this scheme are expected to reach 20 billion in the next 10 years. Our other major strategy client priority, you remember, is digital distribution. We saw 10 billion euros in net new assets from digital players in 2025, almost half of our full year retail flows. New mandates included a retirement offer launched with Moneybox, an award-winning digital wealth management platform in the UK. This partnership brings together Moneybox client-led product design with Amundi's global multi-asset and ETF expertise, creating three new Moneybox-branded funds. Now, geography is next, starting with Asia. We continue to deliver strong growth forward by our direct presence and all successful JVs. Asian net inflows were 33 billion for the year. Over 40% came from our direct distribution business, with contributions well diversified by country and clientele. And on the JV side, India and Korea were the main contributors, and China showed a good momentum as well. Now, closer to home, Europe continues to offer significant growth potential for Amundi, and increasing our market share in Northern Europe is, as you remember, another strategic priority. Our 2025 activity reflects this with 40 billion in net inflows from this region, including 29 billion from the UK. Germany contributed 8 billion in net inflows with 5 billion from digital platforms. And as part of our new strategy, we will also reinforce our presence and build on strong client activity in new high potential regions. The Middle East is one of these. And in addition to strong business momentum, we also signed a new strategy partnership with First Abu Dhabi Bank to target Gulf investors at the end of 2025. This partnership combines Amundi's wide coverage of investment solutions and asset classes with First Abu Dhabi Bank regional insights and presence. Solutions next, where innovation is key to future growth. So let's start with active management, where we saw good investment performance as we continued to widen and strengthen our offer. We launched three new usage funds in key strategies. Global equity, US large caps and US mid caps. These funds fulfilled via our Victory Capital Partnership, are the first from investment platforms outside of the former Amundi US brand pioneer, demonstrating the peer potential to extend our range as promised. We have also launched in 2025 the first tokenized share for one of our money market funds, The fund is now easily accessible via standard distribution networks and or the tokenized share. This first class of tokenized shares is just the beginning and we will gradually test and add new features to our offering based on specific business cases. Smart solutions are another commercially successful innovation well suited to the current environment. These solutions enable institutional investors to optimize their excess cash by capturing their premiums offered by top-tier issuers for their funding while maintaining global utility and high liquidity. Assets and the management for these funds reached more than 41 billion in 2025, representing additional inflows of 20 billion. And this includes additional 3 billion from a European public institution in Q4. Now ETFs next, where we are further strengthening our position as the second largest provider in Europe and the number one European provider, both in terms of assets under management and inflows. ETFs assets under management reached 342 billion, up 27% year on year. In Q4, we achieved record quarterly inflows of 18 billion and 46 billion for the year. We are by far the number one collector of European equity ETF inflows. This leadership is driven by our diversified offer, which includes products like Core Stocks Europe 600, the largest selling European equity ETF on the market. But innovation is also key to capturing ETF growth. So new products, including macro thematics like defense and strategic autonomy, collected 5 billion euros in 2025. Innovation is also key to adapt and grow a responsible investment offer. In July, we launched a new global green bond fund tailored for Zerg's life insurance clients seeking diversified access to green bonds. And in December, we launched a Euro biodiversity credit fund available to both institutional and retail clients in more than 10 countries. This fund allows investors to participate in the preservation of natural capital through a Euro credit allocation. So in summary, a period of strong innovation across investment solutions that is supporting, of course, our growth trajectory. Finally, I would like to highlight Amundi Technology. We are now a recognized technology provider covering the entire savings value chain and operating at scale in 15 markets. Revenues reached 160 million in 2025, up 45% year-on-year, thanks to 10 new clients' wins, which also saw us enter two new markets, Denmark and Singapore. We talked about some of the great 2025 client wins at the Capital Market Days, including AG Bell in the UK, Since then, leading Dutch assets and wealth manager, Van Aertskot Kempen, has selected our Aalto investment platform. We also signed Bankdata, a technology services consortium made up of seven Danish banks that serve one-third of the country's population. Bankdata selected Amundi's Alto wealth and distribution solution to introduce comprehensive portfolio analytics and reporting into its ecosystem, and obviously for the clients of these banks. We also recently launched our new data as a service offer, leveraging our robust architecture, our data provider connectivity, and our market expertise. We are now onboarding our first client, a leading global insurer in Asia. So our tech business is continuing to deliver growth while also serving as a key strategic enabler for the wider Amundi Group. It strengthens our investment solutions, creates durable long-term relationships, and is a key differentiator for Amundi among European asset managers. So that's all for me for now. Let me hand over to Nicolas to take you through our Q4 and 25 activity and financial results in more detail. And I will be back, of course, for some closing remarks ahead of the Q&A.

Thank you, Valérie, and good morning, everyone. I will now comment on our activity and the financial results. Starting with our asset under management, which reached 2.38 trillion at the end of December. This is again a new record for Amundi. Assets were up by 6% over the year. Almost two-thirds of the growth is coming from net inflows, like 88 billion euros of 4% of AUM. And the rates come from a positive market and forex effect of 62 billion euros, despite the depreciation of the US dollar on the Indian rupee. On the fourth quarter, our asset rose by 2.7% with similar trends. Moving now to our LC net inflows. As I said, they were mounted to 88 billion euros. They are sharply up versus 2024, which already showed a strong increase compared to the previous year. In other words, we have enjoyed strong business momentum in the past three years. Furthermore, this business momentum was driven mostly by medium to long-term assets from our two client segments, retail and institutional. Long-term net inflows indeed more than doubled at 81 billion for all these clients. Long-term flows were positive in both active and passive management. Passive management was very successful at 76 billion euros, including the 46 billion ETFs as Valérie highlighted. And active management gathered 13 billion, almost double the net flows of the previous year. This income was again the main driver, but growth also came from the return to positive net flows of active multi-asset management. Conversely, Treasury products posted net outflows, largely related to the ECB rate cuts, on a slightly more risk-on approach by our institutional clients. Turning to our joint ventures, they collected 20 billion. I will come back later on with more detail. And finally, the US distribution of Victory Capital for the share we own in this partner posted net outflows of 1.4 billion. However, the strategies managed by Victory Capital that Amundi distributes to its clients in Europe and Asia gathered 800 million euros despite a lower appetite for US strategies last year. I will not comment in detail on the fourth quarter because it is in fact very much in line with the full year trends, with some acceleration in areas like long-term assets in general, in particular LTF, but also active management. Coming to performance. Our investment management teams delivered sustained performance in 2025, as illustrated on the slide. Close to three quarters of our open-ended funds were in the first and second quarter over one year, three years, and five years. And 233 Amundi funds are rated 4 or 5 stars by Morningstar. The investment performance is particularly good for fixed income and multi-asset flagships. For example, in multi-assets, global multi-assets on its more conservative versions, global multi-asset conservative, ranked in the top 5 and 10 percentiles of their category. On the fixed income side, global aggregate, or main flagship, outperforms its benchmark by more than 300 basis points, and our Euro-subordinated strategy by more than 600 basis points. And beyond this particular highlight, I think the main message from this slide remains sustained consistency at a high level of investment performance. Looking next at our client segments, starting with the retail. Retail flow was positive at 22 billion euros over the full year. These flows remained driven by third-party distributors, which continued to post very healthy inflows of 33 billion euros, with 27 billion in ETFs and positive flows in active management. Flows are also very diversified by region. In Europe, first, with 23 billion, with a high level of activity, in particular in Northern Europe, in the UK, in Germany, in Netherlands, but also in Spain and Italy. Asia continued its healthy momentum with 6 billion of net flows. And in addition, we gathered material flows from high-potential regions like the Middle East, Canada, and Mexico, in line with the strategy or strategy to conquer these new markets. Beyond third-party distribution, our Chinese joint venture with Bank of China also enjoys strong momentum, with 2 billion gathered year-to-date. And turning now to our international partner networks, the net outflows total 14 billion, as you can see, They are fully attributable to Unicredi, where outflows totaled 16 billion in the full year, of which 4 billion in the last quarter. Finally, the French part-time networks in France are showing positive net inflows of 1 billion. The fourth quarter's net inflows in this segment are entirely due to treasury products, in particular due to corporate clients of these networks, whereas long-term assets are positive. Moving to the institutional segments now. In 25, net inflows were 48 billion, with a strong performance in long-term assets at 61 billion, triple the level of 24. Passive management accounted for a large share, 44 billion, of which almost half coming from the mandate one with people's pension. But we also gathered close to 20 billion from active management, for the most part in smart solutions, the smart solutions Valérie highlighted. If you look at BISOC segments, institutional and sovereigns posted record levels, thanks to a series of mandate wins in Europe and the Middle East. within particular sovereign funds, central banks, or state-related entities. Employee and savings and retirement business that we presented more in depth last quarter, posted a high level of long-term inflows once again. And finally, credit, agricultural, and social insurers, the long-term inflows of 17 billion benefited from the renewed interest in euro contracts in France. The short one may be on the outflows from treasury products. They originated, as I indicated, from the red cuts implemented by the central banks and the resulting short for our clients for better yields. An illustration, once again, of this is the success of the smart solutions we mentioned. Again, I will not comment in detail on the fourth quarter. As you can see, the trends are very similar to the one we saw for the full year, with 13 billion in total. Finally, our Asian joint venture spotted net inflows of 20 billion over the full year, with good performance in all countries. South Korea posted 6 billion, mostly in long-term assets. And we saw some outflows in the last quarter, which are purely seasonal and linked to treasury products. China, with ABC, continued its recovery with 2 billion inflows over the year. And our Indian joint ventures posted more than 10 billion euros of inflows. The decrease compared to 24 is partially explained by the decline in the Indian Rupee versus Euro. And for the rest, it was driven by lower inflows from institutional clients in less favorable markets. However, net inflows into savings plans in retail continue to grow in a very healthy manner. Moving now to our net results. You are now very familiar with the pro forma restatement that we made to 2024 quarters to make the series comparable after the closing of our partnership with Victory. So I will not detail them again, but you have of course all the details in the appendix of the slide deck and in the press release. All my comments will refer to adjusted data, and your and your variations refer to 22 proforma figures. 24, sorry, proforma figures. So let's start with the review for fourth quarter, and in particular on revenues. As you can see, total revenues were just shy of 900 million euros on this quarter. They were up by more than 8%, thanks to a healthy growth in all business-related fees in asset management and technology. First, net management revenues were up by 7% compared to the last quarter of 2024, of which 4% for management fees, strength for strong asset gathering in the past 12 months, and performance fees were very elevated thanks to the performance delivered by our teams across a large range of expertise. Technology revenues were up by 37% at 35 million euros. This reflects both healthy growth in licensed revenues and a high level of build revenues thanks to the launch of new client projects. Finally, a short word about our financial income. It's stable compared to the end of 24, but this reflects contrasting elements. On one hand, the decrease in euro short-term rates resulted in a material drop of the return we get from our voluntary placement of our cash. However, on the other hand, this was offset by better mark-to-market valuation and carried interest from our private asset investments. Turning now to our cost at 450 million euros. They were up on the quarter by 6%, more than two points below the top loan growth in the context of very healthy business development. This good cost control over our costs was achieved thanks to our continued efficiency efforts, including the first savings from the cost optimization plan we announced in the second quarter of last year. This allowed us to continue our investment in our strategic priorities to nurture our future growth. Approximately one-third of the year-on-year cost growth originated from investment, in particular from technology. As a consequence of this large Jaws effect, the adjusted cost-income ratio was 50%, 51.5% to be precise, on this quarter. Finally, our adjusted pre-tax income topped 500 million for the first time in a quarter at 519 million euros, to be precise. It went up by 12% thanks to, again, the healthy growth in operating profit, up by 11%, and the acceleration from our associates, up by 21%. It fell the contribution from our Asian joint ventures, which was up by 20%, driven mainly by our Indian joint venture, and despite the decline in the rupee. And the contribution from Victory Capital, which was up by 19%, reaching 35 million euros, thanks to the synergies, and again despite the currency headwind. The adjusted net income was 376 million euros, almost the same level as in the fourth quarter 24, despite the exceptional high times in the tax charge. First, of course, the tax surcharge in France, which represented around 11 million on this quarter. And second, the withholding tax on an exceptional dividend we received from our Indian JVs, which represented a cost of 12 million. This exceptional dividend was paid out in preparation of the IPO of EVIFM, which is, as you know, scheduled for the first half of this year. And we received, indeed, 130 million as a seasonal dividend, But as the joint venture is considered according to the equity method, this dividend does not contribute to our results, but only to our cash position. Finally, let's get a look to our financial performance for the full year. The trends, as you can see, are very similar to those of the first quarter. The pre-tax income rose by 6%, to an all-time high of almost 1.9 billion euros, 1.858 billion euros to be precise. And this growth was driven by an equivalent growth in revenues, 6% driven by business-related fees, of which 4% for management fees, which represents two-thirds of this growth, 20% growth for performance fees to 173 million euros, and 40% of growth for technology revenues, reaching 116 million, including a full year of Exego. But organic growth and technology gains remain very solid, excluding Exego, 30% of growth in revenues. Our revenue margin, asset management revenue margin, of course, was 15.9 basis points, pro forma, again, of the deconsolidation of AMD US, like in the first half of 2025, but down by 50 basis points from full year 2024. We already commented on this decrease in the previous quarters. It is entirely due to the strong growth we have enjoyed in the institutional climate segment, ispative management, and as well as inactive fixed income. So both the clients and the product mix have therefore waited on our margins, but the growth has been profitable on a bottom-line basis, of course. Finally, on the revenue side, contrary to business-related revenues, net financial income was down by 5% due to the rate cuts by the ECB and partially offset by the positive mark-to-market as for the last quarter. On the cost side, costs were controlled against 6% growth in line with revenues, reflecting again the investment we made in our growth drivers. And indeed, more than half of the cost growth is related to an increase in investment, in particular again in technology. As a result of this good cost control, our reparational efficiency remained best in class with an adjusted cost-income ratio of 52.1% for the full year. This good operating performance for fully controlled business was complemented, once again, by strong contributions from our associates. Our Asian joint ventures contributed 135 million euros, or 10% of our net result, and up also by 10%, despite, again, the currency headwind in India. And the contribution from Victory Capital was 95 million for the last nine months only, up by 12% over the profit contribution of Amundi US over the same period in 2024. As a consequence, including the tax surcharge in France, a total 74 million, our adjusted net income would have been over 1.4 billion. And including the tax surcharge, it was 1,354 million euros. And the earning per share was 6.58 euros. This good level of profitability only strengthened again our financial position, as you can see on this new slide. We are probably the traditional asset manager with the largest tangible equity base globally. Indeed, it reached 4.9 billion at the end of 2025, up by 10% over a year. As Valérie announced, this strong balance sheet allows us to propose to the General Assembly next June a dividend per share of 4.25 euros. This represents a payout of 74%, 1 million euros over what it would have been if we had applied the minimum 65% target. This decision is part of our disciplined capital management. If we can move to the next slide, our final surplus capital at the end of December 25, the end of our previous plan and before distribution on ICG was 1.4 billion euros. We will appropriate this amount for three purposes in line with our commitments. First, M&A. The acquisition of our stake in ICG is likely to use 7 to 800 million euros for the final 9.9% share we target. Second, the ordinary dividend, the 100 million above the minimum payout I just mentioned. And third, additional capital return. the board has indeed decided on a final amount for share buyback of 500 million euros well above the minimum 300 million we had committed at our capital market day in november this will represent an earning accretion of around three percent at the current share price and this share buyback will start tomorrow and is likely to span over a full year, given the share liquidity and the regulatory constraints applicable to such an operation. It worth noting that if we combine the total ordinary dividend for 2025, around 900 million euros, and the share buyback, we will return to our shareholders this year just shy of 1.4 billion euros, almost 10% of our current market capitalization. One last word regarding our partnership with ICG and the equity stake we are in the process of building. As you know, we have acquired, via a structured transaction, 4.64% in ICG on November 19th, the day after our capital market day. So we own the shares with full voting rights, however the structured transaction is still in the process of being unwound. The next milestone is for us to get the mandatory approval from various authorities. We should obtain them in the course of the second or third quarter, and by that time we will be allowed to appoint a director to the board of ICG, and to start equity accounting for our stake, the 4.64% I mentioned. This will also allow ICG to start issuing new non-voting shares to us for a total economic interest of 5.3%, taking our final stakes to the target 9.9%. They will do so while at the same time buy back an equivalent amount of ordinary shares on the market and canceling them to avoid dilution. This process is expected to last several months depending on course on ICG share liquidity. And it should be completed early 27 at which point we shall equity account for the full amount. I hope this clarifies the process. Of course, ICG will be integrated in our reporting as an associate in a similar way to Victory and Cyril and the team at your disposal for the detail. I will now hand back to Valérie for concluding remarks before we take your questions. Thank you very much for your attention.