Azimut Holding Spa Ord

Good afternoon. This is the course call conference operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Azimut Holdings First Quarter 2026 Results Conference Call. 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. Giorgio Meda. Very first. Chief Executive Officer of Azimuth Holding. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for Azimuth's first quarter 2026 results presentation. As you know, I'm Giorgio Mera, CEO of the group, and I'm pleased to be here in Milan with Alessandro Zambotti, our CEO and Group CFO, and Alex Sopera, Head of Investor Relations. So following and defining a record-breaking 2025, I'm quite proud to say that the first three months of 2026 have proven that our growth trajectory is indeed structural and accelerating. We have started the year exceptionally well, setting a very powerful pace that underpins another year of expected high-quality growth. So let's get started and move to slide number three, please. Despite adverse and volatile market conditions during the quarter, our teams across the globe have once again demonstrated the true strengths, scalability, and resilience of our diversified business model. We closed the first quarter achieving a staggering 4.6 billion euros in head inflows, an absolute record alongside a highly solid net profit of 125 million euros. Importantly, I want to highlight that 4 billion euros of these inflows were entirely organic, making it our best result on record for organic growth, and this translates also in attractive double-digit growth in recurring net profit. Alongside these strong operating numbers, we are making steady progress on our broader strategic priorities. First of all, in the U.S., we have successfully integrated NSI, further strengthening our footprint in the world's largest wealth market. and where we are about to launch a suite of active ETFs, bringing our market-leading global asset management capabilities directly to American investors. Meanwhile, the TMB spin-off remains firmly on track. It is a transformational step, I remind you, for the group that will unlock significant value, and we are working diligently towards its completion, and Alessandro will discuss it in more detail later in the presentation. And on the back of this strong start of the year and our continued operating momentum, we confidently confirm our full year 2026 guidance of 10 billion euros in net inflows and 550 million euros in net profit. And with that, let us please move to page number four. Here we detail the financial metrics that underscore this robust start to the year. Total assets reached under 44 billion euros at the end of March, up 32% year-on-year, and this reflects both strong organic growth and the continued expansion of our global platform. In terms of net inflows, the story here is a sustained commercial momentum of our global platform with half of the inflows generated outside of our domestic operations remains strong and continues to be the cornerstone of our success. Importantly, this growth is translated daily into high-quality financial growth. Looking at the top line, we delivered 271 million euros of revenues. We have revenues up 14% year-on-year, and this is highlighting the resilience of our business mix. The same momentum is visible in profitability, with recurring EBIT increasing by 14%, a group net profit reaching 125 million euros, with recurring net profit actually being up 15% year-on-year. Let me also highlight that global operations have contributed 14 million euros of net profit, representing 12% of the group's total. This contribution is still below its long-term potential and was temporarily impacted by subsidiary items and business growth effects as we scale our platform. However, the direction is clear and we expect this contribution to continue growing as our global platform matures. In summary, Q1 2026 sets the page for another year of robust and sustainable growth. So turning to slide five, we look here at the bridge from our reported net profit of 115 million euros in the first quarter of 2025 to our current 125 million euros. As the title of this slide suggests, this is a clear story of high-quality earnings expansion driving record profitability. So we start from the left, and you can see here very clearly a strong 14% uplift in our recurring operating performance after cost. If you want to see that differently, we grew by 20 million euros. We also generated 4 million euros in value performance fees, split equally across both our initial funds and our insurance products. And let me remind you that this has been done during a quarter where market conditions certainly, you know, were not the easiest for everyone. However, it's important to know that, you know, the markets around the world and our global operations book performance fees on a semi-annual basis. Hence, you know, there will be certainly a better contribution coming at the end of Q2. These strong quality operating drivers were only slightly offset by 2 million euros impact from our strategic affiliates and the GP stakes. primarily due to lower dividends from the GDP stake in business and due to an 11 million euros impact from other items below EBIT and Alessandro will detail on those later. While this reflects higher gains on our own investments year on year and the continuous strong growth on NOVA, there were some negative fair value options, net of non-operating costs, finance expenses and higher minorities. So, yes, the ultimate takeaway from this bridge is that our retirement profit grew by an impressive 15% year-on-year, reaching 128 million euros. Now, turning to slide six and seven very briefly, we provide here a deeper look under the hood of our classified profit or loss statements by business lines and geography. So we start with integrated solutions like TIX, which is our core business dedicated to retail and affluent customers. Here, our clients, let me remind you, daily benefit from our full vertical integration and the direct synergy of our investment professionals and financial advisors. As a result of this, business commands superior margins, and as we are seeing robust growth here, coupled with disciplined cost control, in Italy, we see this vertical expanding across all metrics, and ultimately, our net profit margin increasing year on year to 71 basis points. In our global division, the higher net profit margin here over here reflects the scalability of our proposition across our key international financial hubs. and result in increase in recurring and ancillary revenues. Looking at our institutional and also business, we delivered a strong asset revenue growth driven primarily by NOVA and MSI. While the bottom line for this specific segment is temporarily impacted as we integrate the ladder and the science of our platform, we remain highly confident that the strategic value and future revenue potential will unfold in short order already during the course of 2026. So finally, looking at our strategic affiliates, we are seeing that strong business growth is progressively and finally translating into improved profitability, yet impacted by financing costs as investments are still in an expansion phase. So moving to slide seven and zooming in by region, the message is very much the same and consistent across our entire global footprint. seen outstanding resilience and commercial momentum with our net profit reaching under 10 million euros and our net profit margin remaining exceptionally strong at 67 basis points. Globally, top-line growth in America is being driven by the premier change. I mean, we said following the consolidation While the net profit contribution from this global operation is temporarily impacted right now, it's fully expected to unfold progressively as we bring disasters to scale. And all of these, while maintaining an healthy group, require net profit margin of 14.1 at this point. Ultimately, the takeaway from both of these slides is clear, continued platform expansion, resilient margins, supported by cost discipline are driving our net profit increase across Italy, the Americas, the Asian Pacific region, and Europe and the Middle East areas. So now moving to slide eight, more on the qualitative side of our business performance. We see that our commitment to global excellence and global and local expertise is benefiting not only our clients, but also recognized by the industry. On this slide, you see a selection of recent awards that we have won around the world. I'm particularly proud to highlight that Azimut was recently named the world's best independent wealth manager at the Private Banking Awards 2026 by Euromoney in Singapore. This prestigious global recognition highlights the strengths and consistency of our independent business model. It acknowledges our commitment to excellence and our ability to combine a solid international presence with a long-term strategic vision. And all this in turn allow us to deliver high-quality tailored advice services to clients worldwide. Beyond this overarching global award, you will see top recognitions across our entire asset management platform. For example, in Brazil, EasyQuest was recognized at the Mayores do Mercado 2026 Awards organized by Exame BTG Patrol. Furthermore, in the United States, North Square Investments was named as a winner at the 2026 Libre Fund Awards for its Prosperity Income Securities Fund. From the Americas, our specialized Islamic funds and our Asian wealth management teams, our investment capabilities are being celebrated locally and globally. This broad success proves that we are delivering superior performance and measurable client value in each market that we operate in. We zoom here on the performance of our Italian clients, and we look at the net weighted average performance that we have delivered since the start of the year, as I mentioned earlier, in adverse and, you know, volatile market conditions. We had a very solid start, and certainly, you know, the period was not easy for everyone in the market, but, you know, we managed, you know, to overcome, you know, the sharp turbulence in March triggered by the geopolitical anxieties that led to a sharp excited market correction. However, our teams have stayed highly disciplined and maintaining a constant dialogue between our portfolio managers, our financial advisors, and ultimately our clients, and we have successfully navigated this complexity. I'm pleased to report that despite the highly unpredictable market, our net weighted average performance delivered to clients here to date is at 2.1% that is currently beating the industry benchmark by about 50 basis points. So furthermore, our outlook remains confident with resilient global growth, solid corporate earnings, the potential easing of global trade tensions expected in mid-May. We are perfectly positioned to capture a further upside for our clients. At the same time, let me stress that we are driving forward our strategic expansion and continuous product innovation in private markets. And certainly here, empowered by our global ecosystem, we recently secured exclusive access for our Italian clients to a prominent U.S. artificial intelligence project, allowing them to co-invest alongside leading institutional investors. And including this club deal, our power market inflows in recent months have exceeded 950 million euros, projecting us firmly towards our goal of over 2 billion euros of power market funds raising by the end of this year. And with this, I hand over to Alessandro to give you more insight into our financials.

Yes, thank you, Giorgio, and good afternoon to everyone. So moving to slide 10, and let us break down the quality of the revenues. Total revenues reached 371 million euros, which represents a 30-50% increase year-on-year. This was primarily driven by our recurring fees, which grow by nearly 39 million euro, or 14% year-on-year. If we break this down further, our global business growth by 28 million, and this was significantly boosted by an 18 million euro perimeter effect from the successful integration of NSI, Kennedy Capital, Skypost, and NOX. And furthermore, our existing global business added almost 9 million euros by solid organic growth in Brazil, Singapore, and Egypt. It's also looking to Italy. We also deliver strong growth across the business line, adding over 10 million euros to our current fee. And this was supported by the usage perimeters of the public fund, the private market fund, our advisory service, and also our partnership of NOVA. And while we achieved impressive double-digit growth here on here, and let me spend also a moment comparing these figures against the fourth quarter, we achieved quarterly growth despite the natural trend of having fewer billing days in February. And if we adjust for those missing days and account for the adverse March market that Giorgio mentioned before, our growth is actually higher than compared to the So, therefore, we look completely ahead with increasing of the figures over the remainder of the remaining part of the year. Looking at the performance fees, we recorded a 2 million euro increase here on year. This positive result was mainly driven by momentum in Monaco, Singapore, Turkey and Switzerland, which successfully offset a 1.3 million euro negative footprint effect in Italy. Furthermore, looking to our insurance revenue, we reached €35.5 million for the quarter. This includes a very solid base of €28.5 million in highly stable recurring revenues due to the underlying asset growth and a favorable product mix. And also, as well, we benefit from €7 million in insurance performance fee, mostly recorded in January and February. Finally, our Central Commission income and the other revenues also showed a strong positive development, primarily driven by higher central fees across Dubai, Switzerland, Monaco, and Singapore. So overall, this is a picture of highly resilient and high quality of revenue generation that perfectly supports our growth looking also to the following quarters. So then moving to slide 11, we analyzed the evolution of our operating costs. Total operating costs for the first quarter amount to €206 million, which represents 15% increase year-on-year. These projections are entirely coherent with the expansion of our consolidation perimeter and the underlying growth of our business. Breaking down the main components, distribution costs increased by 4 million euro to 116 million euro, and this variation is directly correlated with the growth in our recurring revenues both in Italy and abroad. And within this line item, we observed a tiger social security and service payment for our Italian financial advisor, which were largely mitigated by lower provision for valuable incentives and reduced marketing costs and costs related to events. Looking to the personal and the SG&A expenses, we have an increase of 20 million euro year-on-year. to reach €82 million. I would point out that €19 million of this increase is entirely linked to our global business. This primarily reflects the changing perimeters that we just mentioned for the recurring fees and are related to the United States and Brazil for the amount of €14 million. On the other way around, in Italy, we have an increase of 1 million euro, confirming our ongoing cost discipline in our domestic operation. Finally, depreciation and amortization and provision increased by 2 million euro. This movement remains substantially linear and primarily reflects the perimeter effect that we just mentioned also for the previous line of the P&L. So in summary, our cost dynamics remain firmly under control and are directly aligned with the strategic expansion of our platform. So now moving to slide 12, we highlighted our operating and net profit figures that are stood by strong organic growth and geographic diversification. At our recording here, it rose to 157 million euro. And this represents a 14% of increased billionaires. Below the operating line, finance income amounted to 7 million euro for the first quarter compared to the 15 million euro in the same period of last year. This 7 million euro is primarily driven by a positive 10 million euro contribution from our assets and portfolio performance. And this positive interest was partially offset by a negative 4 million euro adjustment related to the fair value option and equity participation, alongside a negative 1 million euro interest from the IFRS 17. And then looking to the tax position, we recorded a rate of 22% in the first quarter, but our guidance for the full year 26 remained at around 25%. Finally, looking at the bottom line of our reporting net profit was 125 million euros, and our recurring net profit reached 128 million euros. This confirmed an highly robust 15% expansion here and there. So let us now turn to slide 13 and talk about the net financial position. Our balance sheet remains very strong and provides an highly solid foundation of our strategic initiatives. At the end of March 26, our total cash and cash equivalents stood at €980 million. On the liability side, you will note our bank loan figures stood at €45 million. This financial debt was coming up from the acquisition of an SI, and we are currently at the renegotiation of this debt. to secure better financing terms for the group. Looking at our cash deployment during the first quarter, we have sold 43 million euro in M&A and investment to support our expansion in the U.S., Brazil, and Italy. We also did a duty 60 million euro share by backup, which is approximately 488,000 shares and an average price of 33.4 euro. This outpost was partially offset by a positive 24 million euro influx related to the reimbursement of stamp duties and net of taxes that we paid in advance. Importantly, this robust 647 million euro net cash position doesn't yet include the upcoming cash dividend of 2 euro per share that will be paid the 20th of May. So now moving to slide 14, we outline our capital structure and shareholder remuneration targets. I will not go into full detail here again as we presented this plan in March. The key message is that we remain committed to returning approximately 25% of our current market capitalization to shareholders between now and the end of 2017. So as part of this commitment, the AGM has recently approved our share buyback program with cancellation of shares. This covers up to 10% of our share capital, equal to about 500 million euros at current prices. From the execution standpoint, we will conduct this share buyback in various branches over the next 18 months, and we expect to start the first branch after the dividend payment in May 26. But as usual, we progressively update the market regarding any buybacks that we will execute. So let's now move to page 15, where I give you a quick update on the TMB project. The project is currently on track, and also the TMB division is proceeding with the solid growth results. Since our last update, we have completed the remediation activities related to urban capital management, which have now also been reviewed by our internal audit team. The regulator is currently conducting their customary follow-up assessment, and our dialogue with them remain constant, transparent, and highly constructive. The prerequisite is that to continue and receiving the necessary regulatory approval from the regulators for the overall TMB transaction. Based on the current timeline, we remain confident that the project will be completed before the end of 2016. So I now hand over to Giorgio for the conclusion.