Alpha Bank Sa

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Mina, your chorus call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Alpha Services and Holdings Conference call to present and discuss the first half 2023 financial results. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Alpha Services and Holdings Management. Gentlemen, you may now proceed.

Welcome, everyone, to AlphaBank's results call for the second quarter. Of this year, this is Vassilios Psaltris, Alfa Bank CEO. I'm joined today by Lazaros Papagaryphalos, CFO, and Yasson Kipapjoglou, the head of investor relations. And let's go straight to slide five, please. Profitability in the first half of the year exceeded 12%, with circa 360 million of normalized earnings. Revenues are up 20% year-on-year, and this is driven by higher rates, volume growth, and an increase in recurring fees. Operating leverage and strict cost discipline have driven the cost-to-income ratio to the low 40s, while asset quality remains relatively benign, with cost of risk having largely normalized and coming in better than the four-year guidance. As a result, we have generated 50 cents of recurring earnings per share in the first half of the year, and this is up 75% on a year-on-year basis. And as Lazaros will detail later, it is important to highlight that we have grown on earnings and profitability in a disciplined manner. We have maintained our sustainable commercial pricing policies, aligning with our peers on the liability side while defending loan pricing, and we have built our capital and liquidity buffers further. We are at the start of our three-year journey, but as we highlight in our recent investor day, our plan is front-loaded. Our progress thus far clearly demonstrates that we are well on track to meet our financial targets of increasing profitability and generating capital to support growth and distribute value to our shareholders. As you can see on slide six, this is a reminder of our six strategic priorities that leverage our strengths and work on areas where we want to improve our performance, enabled by our investments in people and digital. These six strategic priorities are the operational leaders we're using to achieve our financial ambition. We aim to selectively update you on the progress we're making with every quarterly result. This time, we will focus on retail and balance sheet resilience. And let's start with retail on slide seven, please. Following on from the investor day in early June, we have announced our new branch structure. We have also rolled out a new access model for circa 20% of the network. while we provide an all-access model for the first three hours of operations with appointment-only service for the rest of the day. As you can appreciate, this necessitates that client interactions are predominantly advisory in nature, which is only possible when most of the transactional and everyday banking services have been digitized. For example, following the launch of an initiative to migrate know-your-customer activity to digital channels, we have seen a jump in adoption rates, leading to significant FTE savings. the equivalent of one employee per 10 branches in the space of just six months. This has allowed us to deploy more capacity towards advisory services, with 40% of branch staff now being relationship managers from only 34% last year and 21% in 2021. As a result of our hard work, our retail network has been able to capture more than one-third of the total market flows in the relevant wealth segments. We have also operationalized our strategy with regards to capturing the emerging affluent client segments, with more than 300 relationship managers dedicated to the segment now having client books. The emerging affluent segment now accounts for more than 10% of the total alpha bank sales of world products, having increased its contribution sixfold versus last year. Let's now look at another of our focus areas on slide A, and this is the resilience of our balance sheet. we have made strong progress in the first half of the year. At 13.6%, our fully loaded core equity of one ratio is now clearly above our management target of 13%. This improvement is driven by organic capital generation of 116 basis points in the first half of the year. Combined with the timely issuance of 81, this has allowed us to create the equivalent of one billion of total regulatory capital year to date. This has also been assisted by the conclusion of a series of transactions that have simultaneously reduced risk-weighted assets and de-risked our NPE plan, as we now have significantly fewer health for sale assets. Our most recent senior preferred issuance allowed us to build a $600 million buffer to the non-binding emerald targets of 2024. None of this has been taken into account in the most recent pan-European stress test due to methodological constraints. Yet despite that, we have seen a 330 basis points improvement in our capital depletion versus the last iteration of the test, paving the way for potentially lower capital requirements. Please also note that we have performed better than our European peers by 152 basis points versus the average. Last but not least, our liquidity position has been further strengthened. Our liquidity and stable funding ratios are ahead of our target, whilst we have as much as 30% of our deposit base in cash and cash equivalent instruments. To conclude on my side, let's now turn to slide nine, please. The improvement we are seeing in profitability is coming from two sources. Firstly, we are seeing a structural improvement in the profitability of our business units as the leaders were operationalizing combined with macro tailwinds to produce sustainably high returns. Our operations in Greece are showing better momentum while the profitability of our international business has been has seen a step change. Secondly, we continue to reallocate capital away from problematic assets to fund the growth of our performing business. We have seen returns on regulatory capital based on our 13% target for Core Equity Tier 1 grow from 9.5% last year to 16.5% in the first half of the year. Group returns on the regulatory capital that we need to carry are reduced by the regulatory treatment of our deferred tax assets. leading us to deliver a return on tangible equity of 12.2% in the first half of the year. Now, Lazaros will give you more detail on our guidance for the year, but Lazaros, if you allow me to steal the punchline and allow me to say that we have upgraded our guidance for profitability for this year from the 10% we promised with our investor day to well in excess of 11%. Now, Lazaros, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Vassilis. I suspect it's the CEO's privilege to steal all the good bits from the CFO section. Let's now take a quick look at this quarter's numbers, turning to slide 11. This quarter, we're reporting a positive bottom line of €191 million versus €111 million for the previous quarter. Excluding run-offs, normalized profits came in at €195 million, up 20% versus the previous quarter, and up close to 180% versus the second quarter of last year. As you can tell from the small difference between reported and normalized profit, there is not a great deal of one-offs to discuss this quarter. Our performance in the first half has been equally impressive with reported profits up 27% and normalized profits up 78%. versus the equivalent period of last year. Slide 12 on our balances. Our tangible book value grew at 7% year-on-year, while our regulatory capital is up 10% over last year's levels. Our TLTRO balance is down by $8 billion year-to-date, as we have repaid a further $4 billion this quarter. Our cash balances are down by less, as we have seen growth in our deposit base, which combined with issuance and liquidity released from our investment of assets previously held for sale, has allowed us to comfortably fund the growth of our remaining assets. Now turning to slide 13, to look at the main profit and loss components. Net interest income continued to grow in the quarter, up by 4%, on the back of higher rates. On a yearly basis, NII grew by 46% versus the second quarter of last year. Currently, 10% of NII comes from NPEs, but as we have said, these will trend significantly lower starting from this coming quarter, following the deconsolidation of two large NPE portfolios at the end of June. Fees and commissions grew to a more sustainable level of $97 million, up 10% quarter-on-quarter. Requiring operating expenses were up by 3% Q&Q, driven by higher property taxes and insurance costs, as well as a higher depreciation charge, while costs in the first half are down 3% year-on-year. Finally, cost of risk came in at 76 basis points excluding transactions in line with last year's run rate and below our full year guidance of 85 basis points reflecting the de-risk portfolio and benign asset quality trends. And with that, let's look at the drivers of our top line performance during the second quarter in more detail on slide 14. Net interest income continues to grow and stood at 440 million in the second quarter, up a further 4% versus the first quarter, and up 49% versus the second quarter of last year. Interest rates and the pace of increase in the overall deposit data continue to evolve better than expected. As a result, we are today upgrading our target for the year to above 1.7 billion, and we expect the evolution of our top line to be relatively flattish in the coming quarters. The assumptions underpinning our target are a deposit facility rate reaching 3.75%, with average three-month Euribor for the year at 3.3%, and an average deposit pass-through of 15%. So it is clear that these assumptions are conservatively struck. The commercial policies we employ in this period of changing interest rates are of paramount importance. On the asset side, the focus is squarely on the growing corporate book. We have been seeing the expected soft landing in spreads, but have been cautious not to pass on the temporary benefits of a low deposit funding cost to the long-term loan facilities that we underwrite. Our franchise is built upon long-lasting relationships of trust, and we want to avoid locking in levels of profitability that are below our thresholds and that would not be sustainable for us or would force us to have difficult conversations with our corporate customers once deposits reprice higher or rates fall. As you can see, we have been consistent on the need to be thoughtful on corporate loan spreads, and are encouraged to see some rational behavior in part of the market. On the liability side, we've had a very successful quarter, gathering 1.6 billion of deposits while being able to maintain our deposit data in line with the average of our peers. Slide 15 on fees. As mentioned, we've seen a solid improvement this quarter returning to more sustainable levels of activity, and we are confident we will be able to make our target for the year. Lending and transaction activity have driven growth this quarter, and this is reflected in the performance of our retail and wholesale operations. On asset management, higher assets under management have driven up management fees. However, this has been offset by lower volumes of sales and redemptions, leading to lower transaction fees, as well as a different mix of sales in favor of CCAPs. On to costs now, slide 16. This quarter, we have seen an impact from higher taxes and insurance costs. Our cost income ratios stood at 44.7% in the quarter, and just 37% in our domestic business. Despite inflationary headwinds, our performance remains well on track to meet our full-year guidance, and this is reflected in the revised guidance for the cost-to-income ratio that implies a lower cost base on an absolute level compared to last year. Moving on to slide 17 and loans. Our performing loans book has grown by 3% over the past year, driven predominantly by growth in our Greek corporate franchise, as well as through growth in our international business. As you can see on the right-hand side, the second quarter saw a notable pickup in disbursements as we exited the seasonally low first quarter, while political certainty re-established confidence in the market. At the same time, We have witnessed clear signs of normalization in repayment levels this quarter, as we saw a level of 1.6 billion of repayments if we exclude a large ticket that we syndicated in the quarter. We expect a number of large projects to be given the green light towards the latter part of the year, which, combined with a strong pipeline of disbursements in the corporate sector, make us confident in meeting the target of a mid-single-digit growth in our performing loan book this year. As you can see on slide 18, we have seen very strong growth in customer funds. Our deposits have grown by $1.6 billion this quarter, clearly the best amongst our peers. The shift to time deposits, as can be seen on the right-hand side, continues, with a level reaching 23% in June, similar to peers. The same is true of the cost of deposits, and overall, deposit beta making the inflows this quarter even more impressive. On assets under management, we have had notable valuation tailwinds this quarter, while net additions are running at an annualized rate of over 7%, driven by mutual funds and fixed income products. And with that, Let's now briefly look at our segmental performance. Slide 19 on retail. Unsurprisingly, being on the limelight, given the comments from Vasilis earlier, as well as the pivotal role it currently plays in deposit pricing. The change in the rate environment has clearly transformed profitability, with returns on allocated FOMO next year one at 24%, up 21% at points versus the equivalent period last year. Revenue growth has been the driver of the reduction in the cost income ratio, but the business has also seen a notable reduction in its cost base as it continues to optimize its footprint. In our wholesale division on slide 20, as you can see, revenues have grown 10%, half on half, as high rates and higher loan balances have counterbalanced the subdued level of disbursements. Becaring costs were again down meaningfully as the transformation program continues to bear fruit, and as a result, we have seen an improvement in profitability by one percentage point. RWA optimization, including the recently completed synthetic securitization, are likely to optimize capital allocation further for wholesaling leading to a further boost in its profitability. Slide 21 on our wealth and treasury operations. Revenues are flat versus the first half of last year, but of much higher quality as one of trading gains have been replaced by recurring net interest income from our securities portfolio, as well as slightly higher fees. This is reflected in the cost to income ratio which excludes trading profits and has come down from 55% in the first half of 2022 to 30% this year. Normalized profits that exclude one of trading gains have thus nearly doubled. Finally, on our international operations on slide 22, we have seen a near tripling of normalized profits as revenues have benefited from excess liquidity and volume growth. with returns on allocated capital up 22% at points versus the first half of last year. Our international business has posted 17% of the group's recurring profits during the first half of the year and is clearly showing tangible progress towards being a true contributor to value creation for the group. As Vasilis mentioned, much of our targeted improved profitability out to 2025 will come from reducing the capital consumption and hence drug from our NPAs and other operations. As you can see on slide 23, the loan book and balance sheet has fallen sharply year on year and we continue to target this division being responsible for circa 10% of group RWAs compared to nearer 20% at the end of last year. And with that, let's move to asset quality on slide 24. NPE formation in Greece was again zero this quarter, with inflows affected mainly by single corporate exposure. Robust carrying activity and repayments effectively drove total formation to zero. On the right-hand side of the slide, you can see further information on our cost of risk evolution. The underlying cost of risk came in at 55 basis points in the second quarter with an additional 13 basis points for servicing fees and eight basis points for securitization expenses. That brings the overall cost of risk excluding transactions to 76 basis points for the quarter versus 75 basis points in the previous quarter and 76 basis points for the whole of 2022. As asset quality trends remain benign, we now believe that cost of risk will likely come in better than our full year guidance of below 85 basis points and would expect a number closer to or even below 80 basis points for the year with the NPE ratio closer to 6.5%. Let's now briefly look at the quarterly evolution of our fully loaded capital position on slide 25. As already mentioned, our strong capital generation here today has significantly strengthened our capital ratios that now stand above our management target of 13%. As you can see on the top graph, our fully loaded common equity tier one has increased by 109 basis points in the quarter. our organic capital generation was strong at 71 basis points. We continue to find growth through internal means, whilst our capital generation capacity is further levered through the recovery of deferred tax assets. Our capital ratios are also proving resilient, as there was effectively one basis point positive impact from fair value through other comprehensive income this quarter, due to the low sensitivity of our book to shifts in the yield curve. And then lastly on transactions, there was a positive impact of 56 basis points this quarter from the conclusion of two NP transactions, namely Project Sky and Hermes and a synthetic securitization. This means that our reported and pro forma capital ratios are now fairly aligned. Our reported fully loaded common equity tier one stood at 13.5% at the end of the second quarter, or 13.4% post-dividend accrual, while pro forma for the anticipated RWA relief from transactions, our fully loaded common equity tier 1 stands at 13.6%, well above our management target of 13%. It is important to note that we expect a further benefit of 20 basis points to our capital ratios following the conclusion of another performing loan securitization envisaged to be concluded within 2023 and reducing RWAs by circa 0.7 billion. As previously communicated, we aspire to reinstate dividend payments out of 2023 profits and we aim to secure regulatory approval in early 2024. On the next slide, you can see that our capital ratios are well ahead of regulatory requirements, while the 400 million Euro 81 issuance that was completed earlier this year further built our capital buffers. And then lastly, on slide 27, we present our financial targets. We are today upgrading our 2023 guidance, and at this stage have not reviewed our 2025 targets, which are simply presented here as a reminder of what we shared at our investor day. While our guidance for 2023 was only shared on our investor day in early June, the trends that have materialized in the last couple of months have further strengthened the case for even better levels of stability this year. I have briefly mentioned the main components throughout the presentation, but since we have everything in one place here, the main changes relate to the following items. We now expect net interest income to lag above €1.7 billion from €1.6 billion previously, with rates higher than expected and deposit beta evolving better than expected. We don't expect any notable deviations in our expectations for fees or costs, but off this high revenue base means that the cost income ratio will now be below 45%. Our cost of risk will likely end up somewhat lower than originally expected as asset quality remains relatively benign and we now target circa 80 basis points for the year. effectively implying 85 basis points for the second half of the year. Better trends also mean that our NP ratio should get to 6.5% by the end of the year. As a result of the above, profitability will come in well in excess of 11%, adjusting for excess capital. Earnings will grow to above 29 cents per share. Our tangible book value will land above 6.2 billion euro. And our fully loaded common equity R1 ratio will likely land closer to 14%. And with that, let's now open the floor to questions.

The first question is from the line of Alevi Zakos Alevisos with Axia Ventures. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you very much for the presentation and congratulations on this strong set of results. I've got a couple of questions and a quick clarification, if I may. First question, as you pointed out, the deposits grew very fast, both internationally and domestically. And I was wondering, is this something that you try to target more and you identify a big opportunity given that deposit betas in Greece and some other countries are not increasing as fast And could you shed some light on the incentives that you may be offering to some clients in order to bring more deposits into the bank? And then the second question is regarding the performing corporate loan spread. It's notably resilient despite the rates increasing with your peers being materially lower. Do you think about perhaps improving your pricing or bringing it a bit lower, let's say, in order to gain some market share in terms of lending? Thank you.

Hi, it's Vasilis. As far as the deposit growth, I mean, it was always very much one of our key targets. I think what has changed since the beginning of the year is that after years where it was a bit lower in the ranking, we made sure that all of our commercial people have it really high up on their priority list. So this is not something which comes out of any particular incentives that we give to customers. I mean, it was evident also that our pricing is market average, but rather from the increased focus that we have both in terms of our trust in our retail network as well as also in the quite widespread relationships that we entertain with businesses. On your second point, you may recall that we have been already for a few quarters making this point that in terms of, I mean, if there may be even a theoretical dilemma between making sure that you make your choices based on profitability vis-à-vis on market share, we would definitely go for the first, not for the latter. This is important. This is a sign of health and sustainability. in the relationships, as it has to be something that is fruitful for both sides. On top of that, it is also important that we have risk-adjusted pricing, and that's why we are very diligent in going into those cases. This means that in certain situations, we may let it go. We may leave other peers of ours that may have a more aggressive risk appetite or that they may be willing to lock in at very narrow spreads for longer tenors when they leave that. So it's not really a matter of improving pricing to get that, but rather making sure that we are navigating within the corridor that we have promised to our shareholders in order to deliver the value from our lending business.

That's great. And a clarification, if I may, on the CD1 capital. Your pro forma number increased, and that increases actually the year-end target to 14%. I wanted to know, the 13.6%, it does not include the extra synthetic securitization of the $700 million. Is that correct?

That is correct. It is only pro forma for transactions where we have seen the economic impact, and thus we do not include anything on the synthetic securitizations. The proforma numbers only relate to NPE transactions.

Okay, so the proforma including the synthetic is basically closer to 14%, right?

That is correct.

All right, thank you.

The next question is from the line of Iqbal Nita with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you very much for the call and congratulations on the great results. It's clearly an excellent year for the Greek banking sector, so I just want to try and understand the risks to the positive trends that we're seeing. So, for example, loan growth, it has been a bit slower than expected, impacted by repayments in the first half for the sector as a whole. Given the high interest rate environment, is there a risk to the outlook for the second half of 2023? or 24 from a demand perspective in your view. And just staying on loan growth, I wanted to understand a bit better on the implementation of RRF projects, how that's coming along, and is there any bottlenecks that you see around these in the coming two to three years? And then secondly, on asset quality, asset quality is clearly still resilient, but we have seen some very early signs of deterioration given the single corporate that impacted the sector. So perhaps which sectors are you watching, industries or sectors are you watching more closely in terms of, you know, potential risk of asset quality deterioration in the coming quarters? Thank you very much.

Thank you, Misa. Just because the sound quality was not perfect, I'll just recap the questions to make sure we got them correct. Effectively, you're asking, number one, on the risk to loan growth, given what we've seen in terms of repayments, but also in light of higher interest rates for 2023 and also 2024. The second question related to an update on the progress we're making on the RRF. And then the third question related to asset quality and if there are any particular sectors that we are focusing in in terms of trends. I think all three of those most likely relate to Lothar. So, Lothar, if you please.

Coming to loan growth, we have reiterated our target for a mid-single-digit loan growth target. Indeed, in the first half of the year, and that was also true for last quarter in 2022, we have seen some repayments and prepayments from corporate customers. However, we have seen this trend abating, and we do expect further lowering of repayments in the coming two quarters. Also, we have seen an increase in disbursements You have seen 1.9 billion euro disbursements in the second quarter and we do expect higher disbursements in the second half of the year. So that trajectory is making us reiterate our guidance for the full year for performing loans on a group basis to trend above 33 billion. That is, as I said, mid-single-digit growth in performing loan balances or approximately $1.5 billion of net loan additions in the second half of the year. That also includes the materialization of the pipeline we have in RRF and Hellenic Development Bank facilities that we have already underwritten. As far as asset quality is concerned, you have seen that we have recorded a flattish second quarter, overall negative in the first half of the year. We do expect to see better trends in the second half of the year, both in terms of new defaults in retail curings, as well as liquidations, which are backloaded in our plan. Therefore, we are guiding for a 6.5%. It may be lower NP ratio at the end of the year, supported by good organic trends in the second half.

Thank you very much.

The next question is from the land of with J.B. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks very much for the presentation, and congratulations also from my side. I just have a couple follow-ups, firstly on NII. I believe your guidance of $1.7 billion would imply that it may be close to peak already. I do appreciate this is quite a conservative guidance, but taking into account the current trends, would you expect to see some upside risk to this in the second half, particularly maybe driven by deposit betas? And looking beyond into 2024, if you were to assume no changes to interest rates, how would you expect your NIMS to evolve? And again, obviously here, the main driver being deposit betas. Secondly, on capital, which is progressing ahead of expectations, you're already at your initial guidance of 13.5% post-debit accrual. I'm just wondering if that could potentially signal any upside to your dividend payout aspirations, given you're currently accruing a very small amount, or will that be just obviously dependent again on what the ECB says? Thank you very much.

Let me start with the last point on capital and dividend aspirations. Indeed, you have seen in the second quarter a strong buildup of capital, which currently sits above our management target for a 13% common equity one or 17% total capital ratio. This suggests that everything we put on top is excess capital compared to the management target. do expect those excess buffers to further build up until year end and beyond. You may recall that in our investor day, we have shown how our profitability until 2025 builds an excess pool out of which payouts will materialize. Obviously, this is an aspiration of the management to return to its shareholders a good dividend payment, potentially coupled with buybacks in order to get to a higher total return for our shareholders. Having said that, we are aspiring a dividend payout for 2023, profits to the tune of 20% or so. This is commensurate with our capital trajectory and of course It will be the first dividend payment after many years, so we prefer to be conservative in our approach and the regulatory dialogue with SSM, which is currently in progress, but we do expect to see an approval coming in 2024. Now, on net interest income, your question was about the PACE. in the coming quarters and whether we have seen the peak. Based on the trends we see with regards to our deposit base and the shift towards time deposits, which is slower than expected, you see that currently time deposits make up 23% of total depots and they are not expected to exceed 27% or so what year in 2023, plus the fact that we see now higher rates, we do expect to see deposit beta lower than initially anticipated towards the 15% for the full year. That is driving better NII definitely and enables a re-rating of our for the full year, above €1.7 billion. We don't expect the second quarter to be the peak. Most probably this will be the third quarter, also absorbing a reduction in the NII from NPE portfolios, which gets deconsolidated. That is an €8 million impact in the third quarter of the year. And given the fact that Beyond NII improvement, we also lower our asset base. You have seen the repayment of TLTRO facilities. Our NIMs are improving, and they are expected to be better than initially guided for the entire year of 2023. We are not giving guidance beyond 2023. We are just reiterating our targets for the period beyond 2023 as presented in the investor day.

Okay, that's very helpful. Thanks very much.

The next question is from the line of Nelly Simon with Citibank. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you very much for the opportunity. I have a few questions, some of them just technical. Can you confirm that the AT1 cost, the coupon, which I guess will hit the numbers next quarter, is that fully tax-deductible? I think it is. That's question number one. Question number two would just be on further NPA transaction costs for this year. I think you guided for around $30 million. Is that still what you're anticipating, or would you accelerate cleanup given the strong top line? That's question number two. And then likewise, in terms of just the cost guidance, I think you had said you were targeting OpEx slightly lower than 2022. Is that still the case? And what kind of non-recurring costs are you targeting for the full year? Thank you.

I'll take the two easy questions. I'll leave the slightly harder one for another. The AP1 does have full tax shields, and this will come in Q3. And on the cost guidance, you are correct. We have said that we expect them to be, recurring costs be slightly down year on year. And maybe, Lazar, if you want to comment on the guidance for NPA transaction costs for the year.

As we have explained also in our investor day, the higher volume NPA transactions that we've done in previous years are not expected to repeat themselves in the coming quarters or years. There could be cleanup, marginal opportunities for portfolio transactions, but they are well covered within our cost of risk guidance that we have explained earlier on. So, we do not expect any material worth mentioning NPA transaction costs for the second half of the year.

Very clear. And actually, just one last one on capital. Have you deducted the 20% expected payout ratio from your CT1 that you reported? It wasn't quite clear from the disclosures.

Correct, we have.

Got it. Thank you. That's all from me.

The next question is from the line of David Daniel with Autonomous Research. Please go ahead.

Congratulations on the results. And just a quick question from me. You've obviously been active in primary markets, but just would you give us an update on your issuance plans, or should we be thinking about 24 rather than H2 this year?

Thanks. Sorry, Dan. Could you repeat the question a bit slower, please?

Sorry. I was just asking about debt issuance plans for the rest of the year, or should we be thinking about next year now, given you've been quite active?

Yeah. Indeed, we have been quite active with 181 early this year and then a senior preferred during the summer. Having said that, and especially when it comes to senior preferred and MREL, we have created a good buffer against 2024 targets to the tune of 600 million euro. So we can now plan having a more comfortable buffer against the minimum requirements, and we'll tap the markets when we feel it's the right time. We don't expect, under the current plan, additional transactions in the second half of 2023. Thank you all.

The next question is from the line of Justin Kohn, Maximilian with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hi, yeah, good morning. Two from me, one on asset quality, one on capital. So when I look at your 6.5% MPE ratio target for the end of the year, I think that probably requires an MPE reduction of about 300 million. Would that be right? And could you give us an idea how the split would be between organic hearings and liquidations, as you mentioned? And again, just confirm that Any costs related to liquidations would be absorbed by the eight base points cost of risk guidance. And then capital, interesting to see the DTA recovery right at this quarter. Should we be expecting a little bit more on that front going forward?

Okay, just to review the questions for the crowd. On asset quality, if we got it together, you've made an estimate of about 300 million reduction in MPEs in order to get to the target that we have portrayed. That's roughly correct. And you want the split between organic and liquidations and whether that's covered within our cost of risk. And then on DTAs, if we expect a similar level of DTA recovery going forward. Lazar, I think both for you.

On asset quality, your estimates are... fairly reasonable compared to the absolute level of organic reduction expected until year end to get down to 6.5%. We do expect organic deleveraging higher than 350 million. In this target, liquidations indeed play an increasing role in the second half of the year because the plan is back loaded on liquidations at $150 million or so for the second half. Given the fact that we have more liquidations in the second half of the year in our organic deleveraging plan, that is one of the reasons we're giving also a guidance for slightly higher cost of risk in the second half compared to the first half of the year. Now, as far as deferred tax assets is concerned and their role to regulatory capital creation, you know that we have a good volume of deferred tax assets which are excluded from the regulatory capital calculations and they get included as time goes by with profits and we increase our tangible book value. And this is the case quarter on quarter as we write profits calculations. In this quarter, the second quarter of the year, the mix of our results, the tax results, has been such that created even more DTAs. This is not the level that we expect to encounter in the next two quarters as far as DTA at-backs is concerned.

Okay, thank you. And just a little follow-up, if I may. So in the second part of the year, as you said, slightly higher cost of risk budget in any way, so nothing too meaningful then in terms of additional NP transactions or perhaps a dip in coverage.

No, as we mentioned previously, we don't expect any material charges for NP transactions in the second half of the year.

Okay, thank you.

The next question is from the line of Nigro Alberto with Mediobanca. Please go ahead.

Yes, thanks for taking my question. Just two quick ones. The first one, can you remind us how much the contribution to the Single Resolution Fund and the Deposit Guarantee Fund will reduce next year? And sorry, but after these two days, I need to ask you if you think that the government could propose a similar measure in Greece about the bank levy and perhaps offsetting our synthetic charges, systematic charges from next year. Thank you.

I will take the first question on the single resolution fund contributions, which annually amount to 60 million euro. That is a good part of our general and administrative expenses number in Greece. And indeed, this is expected to fade out until 2025 as per the regulation.

Now in terms of your second question, obviously we cannot speak on behalf of the government, not even speculate what they might be thinking of. However, I think we can't fail to observe a couple of things between the two countries. Number one is that Italy has a completely different fiscal backdrop compared to Greece in terms of the necessity to fund primary I mean, Greece has already this year a primary surplus again, plus also that we have completely different refinancing dynamics. As you well know, Greece has this very positive impact from the PSI that it practically has its debt underwritten for another significant number of years, and the debt servicing costs are probably the lowest in Europe. Beyond that, also the reason why we have seen that part of that money that is going to be raised through this levy in Italy are going to be funneled to is to support mortgage holders. Coincidentally for the Ministry of Finance and the Greek banks have jointly put forward a scheme which is capping the Euribor to performing more that's older and practically rewarding them for the good culture, payment culture that they have shown over the past few years. This is a scheme that has been proven fairly popular. It's moving on for another few months until next April, so it's going to be pretty much absorbing any pressure coming out of that.

Alberto, sorry, we think there was a second part to your question. Can you please repeat it?

No, it's okay. It was if the bank levy, a potential bank levy, could offset part of the reduction of the 60 million systemic charges that we are reducing in the next two years. But thank you so much for the response.

Given that they're related to different jurisdictions, one relates to the Eurozone and the other to our sovereign, I don't think the two should be linked in any case. Thank you.

The next question is from the line of Gulub Iuliana with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, and congratulations from my side as well. Thank you for the opportunity. Just two questions. First, on NPE coverage, I noticed it stayed fairly flat year on year, but is somewhat low compared to historical levels. So, for example, in the three-year look back and also versus other Greek peers, I was just wondering if there are any plans to increase the NPE coverage going further? And the second question would be just your view on the potential timing for an upgrade of the sovereign to investment grade, also in the light of the rating upgrade from Scope, the rating agency which came last Friday with them citing the positive development in the fiscal backdrop in Greece and sustained European institutional support for the country. Thank you.

I will take the first question on NPE coverage, which stood at 40% in the second quarter. We have spent a lot of time in our investor day to explain how that coverage ratio relates to the composition and quality of our Stage 3 loans, which is predominantly market exposures and for non-performing exposures below 90 days past due. And this is a stark difference from portfolios which are mainly focused on wholesale exposures that naturally carry a higher cash coverage. Having said that, we have also given the trajectory of cash coverage in the coming years towards higher levels as a function of NTE reduction so that The NP ratio goes down to 4% until 2025, lower than €2 billion in terms of gross NP exposures. That is part of our plan. So the combination of driving NPs lower through the mix of strategies we have presented in our investor day and maintaining an allowance account at around the €1 billion level should drive cash coverage higher towards the 60% level. We do expect to see a slightly higher cash coverage by year end 2023.

Now on your second point on the potential impact from the investment rate, there are a few comments to make. Number one is that we do feel that already for some time the excellent work that has been done both on the fiscal consolidation front as well as also on the NPE climate and also from the strengthening of the bank's balance sheet is such that I think we deserve it already for some time. Therefore, it is for us a foregone conclusion. We do expect that. We have seen that from the R&I, the Japanese rating agencies, and Scope, who are not acknowledged as ECB counterparts. Therefore, we wait also for the three largest ones to have. and we have Moody's in October and S&P October, November, and then Fitch sometime in December. So within the year, we do expect that we have that progress. Now, what we expect out of that is that the investor audience that can tap Greece is going to be significantly enlarged. Mind you, this is an experience that Greece had up until 2011, we were investment-grade. So these are all audiences that we had talked, we had entertained very regular dialogue, and we're now very much looking forward to re-clinching that with them. The other point is obviously that out of that, it will be a lowering of the beta of Greece as a country, which coupled with the fresh wave of investor-friendly policies that are going to be put forward by the government. We do expect that the investor-led growth thesis for Greece is going to be validated.

Very helpful. Thank you for your comments.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to management for any closing comments. Thank you.

Well, thank you so much that you had followed up this call today, and particularly those that interrupted the vacations to do so. And we would very much want to welcome you on our nine-month call in a few months' time. Thank you very much.