Assicurazioni Generali S.p.A.

Good afternoon. This is the Coral School Conference operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Generali Group Half Year 2024 Results presentation. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Fabio Cleva, Head of Investor and Rating Agencies Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Generali First Half 2024 Results Call. Here with us today, we have our Group CEO, Philippe Donnet, the Group General Manager, Marco Cesana, the CEO of Insurance, Giulio Terzariol, and the Group CFO, Cristiano Boren. Before opening the Q&A session, let me hand over to Philippe Donnet for some opening remarks.

Thank you and good morning. Thanks to all of you for this call. Today, we present generally have your financial results for 2024, which include the positive contributions from Liberty Seguros as well as Conning and its affiliates. As you know, these acquisitions were fully in line with the priorities of our lifetime partner, 24 Driving Growth Strategic Plan. to further strengthen our insurance leadership in Europe and keep building a truly global asset management platform. Before we open the call for questions, I want to highlight five key messages. First, these results highlight once more Generali's continued growth in operating results, up 1.6% from half-year 2023 to over 3.7 billion euros. This growth was driven by the life business, up 7.8% to over 1.9 million euros. By asset management, up 5.5% to 255 million euros. By wealth management, which rose to 311 million euros, up by 33.8%. Our group's total assets under management stood at 821 billion euros with a 25.2% increase from full year 2023 that mainly reflects the inclusion of Koning and its affiliates. This brought third-party client assets managed by our asset management companies to 252 billion euros up from €105 billion at year-end 2023. The adjusted net result stood at €2 billion, the 13.1% decrease compared to the first half of 2023, primarily due to capital gains and other one-offs that were recorded over that period, including, for example, that of a real estate disposal in London. Excluding these effects, the adjusted net result would have been stable. The Solvency II position remains solid, even after deducting around 9 percentage points from the acquisition of Liberty Segros and 2 percentage points from the share buybacks we announced this morning. The second key message is that we return this to sizable positive net collection in the live business. When we presented our full year results for 2023, I stated that this would be one of our key priorities for 2024. We achieved over 5.1 billion euros of positive net inflows in the first half of this year, driven entirely by protection and unit-linked, our preferred capitalized lines of business. We also recorded a very significant reduction in saving outflows. We are confident this trend will continue in the second half of the year, with Italy expected to return a positive net collection We made the tactical decision to reduce margins temporarily to pursue significant volume growth, and this result demonstrates our ability to successfully steer our live business, also thanks to our proprietary distribution network. Higher net inflows in life also mean higher inflows to our new asset management platform, something that would be even more the case future collectors following the acquisition of Koning and its affiliates. My third message is about property casualty. Our very strengthening measures have driven higher P&C premiums, which grew by 10.5% to €17.4 billion, or by 5.7%, excluding the contribution of Argentina. This is happening at a time when frequency is stable, and we are seeing improving claims inflation across all markets. These trends and the strong focus of our management team's technical excellence give us the confidence to reaffirm our undiscounted combined ratio guidance of below 96%, even after the consolidation of Liberty Segworks. I would also like to emphasize that the underlying technical result excluding the impact of discounting prior year and natural catastrophes improves by over 50% in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period of last year. This tangible improvement underscores the effectiveness of technical discipline. Fourth. With only a few months left before the conclusion of our Lifetime Partner 24 Driving Growth Strategic Plan period, we are now very close to its full period. I would like to highlight how the continued diversification of our profit sources throughout the current cycle is also proving the soundness of our long-term vision for Genelli as a global life and P&C insurer and asset manager. Besides this, we are very proud of the strong progress we have made on our lifetime partner journey. And in the first half of 2024, we further reinforced our peer group leadership position on the relationship net promoted store basis. Furthermore, we continue to deliver on our environmental and social responsibility priorities with a particular focus on tackling the causes of climate change and fostering the resilience of our communities. To position the group for continued sustainable growth, we are working on a new strategic plan for the next three years that we will present on January 30th, 2025, and we look forward to welcoming you all in Venice for this very important occasion. As the fifth and final message, let me emphasize again that today we announced that our 500 million euro Chez Babac will begin shortly. following the implementation of the long-term incentive plan. As I said at our last Investor Day in January, we will continue to look for the most efficient balance between shareholder remuneration and M&A on a yearly basis, possibly even with annual buyback. I thank you once more for your attention and for your interest in our group. Over to you, Marco, for your remarks. Thank you.