Banco De Sabadell Sa Ord

Marc Armengol, CFO Sergio Palavecino

Thank you very much, Luke, and good morning, everyone. It is a great pleasure to join you today for my first results presentation as CEO of Sabadell. I thought that before we move into the presentation, let me just briefly introduce myself. I became CEO in May after more than two decades at the group. And during that time, I have had the opportunity to work across Spain, Mexico, The United States and the United Kingdom Needing Transformation, Growth and Integration Initiatives I also served as Group COO before becoming CEO of TSB at the end of 2024. And with that, just let me turn to the presentation and start with a few opening remarks. On slide 4, I'd like to share how I see the bank today. In short, after the sale of TSB, Sabadell is now a simpler and growth-oriented Spanish bank delivering attractive shareholder returns. Five key takeaways. First, we are now fully focused on Spain, one of the most attractive banking markets in Europe. The Spanish economy is growing above the European average, employment remains strong, and balance sheets of the private sector are healthy. With regards to our size, we have the right scale to become a faster and more agile bank while we keep investing in our future. Second, Sabadell has invested a lot in having a modern IT platform and infrastructure, which gives us a strong foundation for the next phase of transformation. As I just said, we will continue to invest in technology as a key enabler looking forward. Third, we have regained commercial momentum after the end of the recent hostile tender offer. The numbers we will review today clearly show that. Fourth, employee engagement is at an all-time high, reinforcing our strong execution culture. And finally, Sabadell has a proven ability to generate capital, which allows us to consistently deliver attractive shareholder returns. So what comes next? My first message is clear. We are fully committed to delivering our targets. That means achieving a 14.5% return on tangible equity this year and 16% by 2027. And looking forward, we have opportunities to create additional value by becoming more agile, benefiting from having the right scale, not too big, not too small, by leveraging on AI and technology, by increasing our focus on higher value customer segments. In short, we will deliver our commitments while we continue to look for opportunities to create further value. Now let's move to slide 7 to start with the key highlights from the quarter. Second quarter performance was in line with our expectations and as anticipated marks the start of a new trend in earnings. Commercial momentum has continued to strengthen. Performing loans grew by 3% quarter on quarter while customer funds increased by 1.8%. This confirms the positive trend we have seen in recent quarters. Strong commercial momentum supports the growth of core revenues. This is a trend we had already anticipated. NII grew by 3.4% quarter-on-quarter and fees increased by 4%. On costs, the early retirement program we announced last quarter has now been fully executed. We booked an additional 37 million euros of one-off costs this quarter, bringing the total for the first half of the year to 92 million euros. As a result, we expect 20 million euros of savings in the second half of this year, increasing to 40 million euros on a recurrent basis from 2027. We also completed the sale of TSB during the quarter, and this gives Sabadell a simpler equity story. The transaction generated more than 400 basis points of capital and allowed us to pay an extraordinary cash dividend of 50 cents per share in May. On shareholder remuneration, we have completed our 800 million euro share buyback program and today we are announcing a new 331 million euro share buyback which proves our commitment to delivering attractive shareholder returns. Finally, our outlook remains positive. We expect profitability to continue improving in the second half of the year, and we remain on track to deliver our 2026 guidance. Let me now turn to slide 8, where we can see that core revenues returned to growth in the quarter. Net interest income increased by more than 3% Q&Q while fees grew by 4%. Recurrent costs remained broadly stable in the quarter. Total provisions amounted 152 million euros in the quarter and this was in line with our expectations growing up from the unusually low level we saw in the first quarter. Finally, Recurrent net profit reached €691 million, increasing by 8.4% quarter-on-quarter. The most relevant non-recurrent impact in Q2 is the capital gain from the sale of TSB. Recurrent profitability remained at 13.6%, while reported return on tangible equity stood close to 15%. Turning now to slide 9, Thank you very much. On the international end, international portfolios are also delivering very strong growth, mainly driven by Miami and our foreign branch network. Overall, total performing loans of the group increased by 3% quarter-on-quarter and by 5.5% year-on-year, reaching 125 billion euros. Since the beginning of the year, the loan book has grown by 4.7%, which reinforces our confidence in delivering mid-single digit growth in 2026. These trends prove the strength of our commercial momentum. This is reflected in new lending activity, which we share in next slide, slide 10. Here you can see that in mortgages, the new lending increased by 22% versus the first quarter. and while the competition remains intense and we continue to manage growth through a disciplined risk-adjusted return approach. Consumer lending has also returned to growth after the blip we had on Q1 with new lending growing by 9% in the quarter. SMEs and corporate clients' loan activity has been strong with origination of loans and credit facilities increasing by nearly 40% Q1Q and Working Capital Finance also remained strong, growing by 6% in the quarter. As usual, in the second quarter, there is some seasonality in these figures, but they also reflect a real improvement in commercial momentum. This gives us confidence that lending activity has normalized and that the slowdown linked to the hostile tender offer is now behind us. Turning into customer funds, in slide 11, unbalanced sheet funds grew by around 1% in the quarter and almost 5% year on year. Importantly, the mix between remunerated and non-remunerated deposits remained broadly stable. This supports our low cost of deposits, with the overall cost of customer funds stable at 78 basis points in the quarter. Thank you very much. We remain on track to deliver our 2027 targets. Our performance in the first half of the year together with better visibility on the 2026 results reinforces our confidence. First, we guided for mid-single-digit growth in performing loans by 2026. Today, the loan book is growing by 5.5% year-on-year with very strong momentum. The same applies to unbalanced sheet funds. We guided for growth of 3 to 4 percent in 2026, and we are already delivering 4.7 growth. Third, on NII, we said that the second quarter would mark the start of the recovery. That is exactly what we have seen. Looking ahead, we have clear levers to support continued revenue growth and achieve our year-end guidance. Efficiency measures continue to support cost discipline. In particular, as I mentioned, we expect around 20 million euros of savings from the early retirement plan in the second half of the year. Core banking results are improving and just as starting to widen again as a result of the positive trend of our revenues and our costs. Widening jaws will be the key to keep improving our return on tangible equity, and we are confident that we will deliver what we committed for 2027, a return on tangible equity of 16%. I want to conclude with what matters most to shareholders, value creation. Over the last few years, we have increased shareholder value while reducing our share count. Thank you very much. Shareholder value creation has grown steadily, measured through tangible book value per share plus cumulative dividends per share. Since 2022, this has delivered a compound annual growth rate of around 12%. Looking ahead, growing profitability, strong capital generation and our commitment to distribute capital provide a solid foundation to continue creating value. This is the rationale behind our shareholder remuneration strategy, combining attractive cash dividends with share-by-backs in a sustainable and value-accurative way. In short, we are returning capital to shareholders while at the same time increasing the value of each share through higher earnings, a lower share count and sustained capital generation. With that, let me hand it over to Sergio who will walk you through the financial performance in more detail. Thank you, Sergio.

Thank you, Mark, and good morning, everyone. Before going through the P&L, let me briefly address the one-offs in the quarter. The sale of TSB generated a gross capital gain of $340 million, mainly booked under gains on sale of assets. We also recorded minus $3 million from the FX hedge on the sale proceeds. Then, we booked 37 million of remaining non-recurrent costs from the ELLE retirement plan and a 45 million negative impact from the sale of a legacy equity stake to Cerberus, with no capital impact thanks to the associated risk-weighted assets reduction. In total, one-offs had a positive net impact of 249 million in the second quarter and 201 million in the first half. Turning to the financial results on slide 16. Recurrent return on tangible equity stands at 13.6%. This is fully consistent with our plan and keeps us on track to reach our 14.5% full year guidance. Let me now walk you through the main P&L lines. NII has clearly reached an inflection point. In the second quarter, it increased by 3.4%. The improvement was driven by three factors. $16 million from customer NII supported by higher loan and deposit volumes, $3 million from the day count effect, and $11 million from non-customer NII, mainly due to the ECB deposit facility rate and excess liquidity from the TSB sale. Our key message is that NII has started to recover. Moving on to slide 18, NIA is evolving as expected. After bottoming in the first quarter, it recovered in the second quarter, and we expect further gradual improvement over the rest of the year. The ECB deposit facility rate assumption of 2.5% after the summer is not the main driver for 2026, given our low first year sensitivity to rates. The more important driver is commercial activity. We expect loan volumes to grow at a mid-single-digit rate and unbalanced customer funds to grow by around 3% to 4%. Loan yields should continue to improve, while deposit costs should rise, but more slowly. As a result, we expect customer margin to exceed 290 basis points by year-end, non-customer NII to remain broadly stable, and therefore total NII to grow by more than 1% in 2026. On the next page, fees increased by 4% quarter-on-quarter, supported mainly by service fees. The strongest contributions came from payments, corporate and investment banking activity, and seasonal effects, while asset management fees remained resilient. Looking ahead, we expect fees to continue improving, supported by higher activity in payments and other services, growth in assets under management, and stronger CIB activity. Overall, fees are performing well and remain aligned with our full-year guidance. On cost, this quarter includes the final non-recovering charges related to the efficiency measures in Spain, completing the yearly retirement plan launched in the previous quarter. Excluding these one-offs, recurring costs were broadly flat, reflecting continued discipline in personnel and administrative expenses. Year-on-year, recovery costs increased by 4.9%, mainly due to higher depreciation and amortization, following the reclassification of the payments business in the fourth quarter of 2025. Adjusted for this effect, recovery costs increased by 3.8%. Importantly, half of the efficiency plan savings will already materialize in 2026. As a result, we're improving our cost guidance and now expect recurring cost growth below 3%. The widening jobs is the key driver of our expected profitability improvement. Revenues are accelerating, while costs remain under control. Core banking results have already started to recover in the second quarter, and we expect further improvement through 2026 and into 2027. This is what underpins our target of reaching a 16% ROT by 2027. On the next slide, cost of risk stood at 40 basis points, fully in line with guidance. This reflects the resilience of our asset quality and the sound risk profile of the loan book. Credit cost of risk was 31 basis points. Total provisions included $115 million of loan loss provisions. 2 million of provision releases from real estate asset disposals 24 million of MPA management costs and 15 million of other provisions Looking ahead, we expect asset quality to remain strong and cost of risk to stay broadly stable at around 40 basis points Let me now move to the balance sheet covering asset quality, liquidity and solvency Asset quality continues to improve. The NPL ratio declined by another 8 basis points in the quarter and by 34 basis points year-on-year. At the same time, the total coverage ratio remained broadly stable at around 70%. Stage 2 exposures continued to fall, down approximately 1.5 billion over the last 12 months. Stage 3 exposures also declined, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of the portfolio. Net MPAs stood at just 0.7 of total assets. Overall, the credit profile remains resilient. Now moving to slide 25. Our liquidity position remains strong. The loan-to-deposit ratio stood at 93%, while the net stable funding ratio was 131%, and the liquidity coverage ratio 188%, both comfortably above regulatory requirements. On ratings, Fitch upgraded Sabadell's long-term rating to A- from AAA+, reflecting its new criteria and our large resolution debt buffer. During the quarter, we executed two securitizations, a traditional cash securitization of consumer loans and a synthetic securitization of SME loans. In addition, our Mexican subsidiary completed its inaugural peso issuance, equivalent to 200 million euros, diversifying its funding sources. Following the sale of TSV, our funding needs are lower. The AT1 buffer is expected to normalize in 2027, while we will continue to manage MREL and liquidity buffers through opportunistic transactions. On the next slide, our CT1 ratio stood at 13.11%. This quarter, we generated 61 basis points of organic CET1 after 81 coupons, added 3 basis points from fair value reserve adjustments, and absorbed 18 basis points from risk-weighted asset growth, mainly driven by strong loan growth. The 60% dividend payout accrual reduced CET1 by 26 basis points. In summary, we grew the loan book by 3%, accrued a 60% payout and still generated 20 basis points of capital in the quarter. With that, I will hand back to Marc to conclude today's presentation.

Thank you very much, Sergio. To close today's presentation, I'd like to highlight that we remain firmly on track to deliver our guidance. On core revenues, both NII and fees returned to growth this quarter, as we were expecting. For NII loans and deposits, we see continued growth. Customer margin has bottomed out and is expected to improve. And altogether, these trends support our guidance of more than 1% NII growth in 2026. Also, return to growth in the quarter, and we expect that momentum to continue in the second half of the year, ensuring our year-end guidance. On recurring costs, we have improved our guidance from around 3% to below 3%. Costs are performing as expected this year, and on top of that, we will benefit from the savings associated to the early retirement program, which will amount to 20 million euros in the second half of the year. Asset quality also remains strong with a declining NPL ratio and cost of risk fully in line with our guidance of around 40 basis points. We expect cost of risk to remain broadly stable in the second half of the year. As a result, we remain on track to deliver our 2026 commitments and, importantly, our profitability targets. 14.5% return on tangible equity this year and 16% in 2027. Finally, let me remind you once again that next week we will launch our new €331 million share-by-back program. With that, let me hand back to Luke for the Q&A section.

Perfect, thank you Mark. We will now open the Q&A session and I would kindly ask you to limit your questions to a maximum of two. So operator, could we open the line for the first question please?

Yes, thank you for the presentation. Two questions. The first one is for The new CEO, I wonder if you can comment on your strategic priorities. You mentioned in the presentation that you want to leverage on technology and focus on high-value customers. If you can elaborate, the current strategic plan runs until 27. I also wonder if you want to present a new strategic plan and when. And then my second question is on deposits, which are growing below loans. You have changed your online offering. You're now remunerating balances up to 100,000 euros. You previously limited the remuneration to 50,000. You said it was just a transactional account to gather new clients. I wonder what has changed. If you now feel that you have to pay up for deposit gathering to manage the loan-to-deposit ratio or if there are other commercial reasons. Thank you.

Thank you Francisco for the questions. Let me start by answering the first one. My top priority when I landed was making sure, and we see the results of that, that we would be able to deliver on the commitments we had on our strategic plan. And today, after kind of having been here already for a couple of months and a half, I kind of provide a message of reassuring that we will deliver on the 14.5 return on tangible equity that we committed. As you mentioned, we have a strategic plan that ranges from the period of 2025 to 2027, so we are halfway on delivering on this strategic plan, and this is going to be our top priority. While we do that, we obviously think about what comes next. And I briefly mentioned that in my introduction. We see a big opportunity in terms of leveraging on AI to improve the relationship with our customers to empower our relationship managers and provide them with technology to provide better service and better experience to our customers and we will work on making this a reality and at the same time we also see a potential improvement on our internal processes a lot of our processes will be In terms of customer segments, I have been saying that since the very beginning when I landed. I believe that Bank Sabadell has a right to compete head-to-head with anybody. In the long term this will provide us probably with a less vulnerable position in front of new entrants and it will kind of turn our P&L structure towards a more fee-based type of income In the future. So that's our strategic direction of travel. We will have the time to bring that into plans and we will certainly before the end of the end at the end of the 2027 plan provide a strategic new plan to the market. You also were asking about deposits. and our online acquisition campaign. I'm just going to make a quick comment on that, just highlighting a couple of topics. Number one is we do have attractive acquisition campaigns in place that aim at acquiring the right profile of customer Thank you very much. We are not interested in price chasers. We are interested in a good profile of customers that we can develop in the future. And on top of that, let me just again call out that our cost of funds has remained stable for the quarter at 78 basis points, if I remind well. And I'm just going to hand it to Sergio in case you want to add something to that.

Thank you Mark. Just a brief comment from my side. As you said, we manage the cost of our different funding sources and we combine our funding sources in order to finance the growth that we are actually enjoying. Director General of the Office of the Director General of the Office of the Director General of Our loan-to-deposit has moved from 92% to 93%, and this, again, is in line with our expectations. So we will keep combining our finding sources. In deposit, 86 billion are non-remunerated, linked to Stable and Transactional Current Accounts and then we have 48 billion remunerated and there we attend or try to attend all the segments so wholesale, retail deposits, online deposits with different pass-throughs some higher, some medium and all in all we get to that 78 basis points of cost for deposits that as Mark said Can we move to the next question, please? Next question is coming from Max Machine from JB Capital. Please go ahead pressing star six.

Hi, good morning and welcome, Mark. Thanks for the presentation and taking our questions. Two from me, please. The first one is the guidance on fees. If I recall, in the last call, you indicated growth of closer to 4%. Are you more positive now, say, in mid-finger digit? And if so, why? And the second one is on loan book growth. And in the corporate segment, it has slowed year on year in the second quarter, despite the pickup in the new productions. What kind of outlook do you see for the second half of the year and how does the mid-single-digit growth in loans look by segment for 2026? Thank you.

Thank you very much, Max. On fees, we have seen, I mean, I would say that underpinning our optimism, we have the strength we see on commercial momentum. And for that, I think the best way to look into that We are seeing a strong growth on fees of 4% Q2 versus Q1. And this is after we put in place many measures on Q1 to make sure that we would reach our levels of expected fees. These plans are well underway and we see this kind of growing up throughout the year. and getting us to that mid single digit, lower range of the mid single digit growth on fees. On the loan book growth, I'd say we are seeing, again, strong performance quarter on quarter on mortgages of 22%. Mortgages is a loan book that, as you all know, is very competitive. So we are managing carefully the balance between growth and levels of profitability. But we are seeing the growth that... The President of the United States, the President of the United States, the President of the United States, to make sure that we grow more on the short-term loans for companies but we see all this kind of taking off nicely and we feel comfortable with the levels of guidance we have provided. I don't know, Sergio, if you want to add something else. I think it was a very complete answer. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Max. So, yeah, we can jump to the next question then.

Next question is coming from Alvaro Serrano from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, pressing star six.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions and welcome to these calls, Mark. One of them is kind of a follow-up question and then one on provisions on loan growth. Mark, you explained that you're not going to be chasing volumes. Thank you very much. De Sabadell Sa Ord, Josep Oliu Creus, Cesar Gonzalez-Bueno Mayer Thank you very much. Thank you very much. to explain or maybe the mix to explain why it was slightly higher. Thank you.

Shall I get started with the second one, with the provisions? Sure, go ahead. Thank you. Just to continue with Álvarez's question. Regarding provisions, when we look at the credit provisions in the second quarter, $115 million, and the first quarter, $94 million, we could say that those quarters look like combined what should be the run rate going forward. So Director General of the Office of the Director General of the Office of the Director General of the In the second quarter of last year, we updated scenarios and at that time that came with a meaningful release. Then we had releases in some segments. So I would say that that was an extraordinary positive. While if we look at the combination of provisions in the first half, I think should give you a clue of provision is going forward. We are currently at 40 basis points and this is the last 12 months and this is in line with our view of what's going to happen at the end of the year. We still expect some circa 40 basis points for the entire 2026. So I could say that for the year so far we are running on what should be I think normal. And Marc, do you want to continue with the segments and the more detail?

Sure. Let me just call out a couple of things. Number one is we are seeing healthy growth on the Spanish economy. We are seeing low levels of indebtedness of both families and companies. So we are seeing growth opportunities, I would say, across the different segments. Having said that, though, I'd say that on a year-on-year comparative basis, we see probably the biggest growth opportunity on consumer lending, where we see probably a double-digit opportunity for growth. We see on SMEs and corporates a mid-single-digit opportunity. We see on mortgages low to mid-single-digit year on year in line with the system, although we are seeing some tensions in the market. and I would say that on our international franchise on Mexico and Miami probably above mid single digit at constant exchange. So we do see good opportunities across the board and more importantly than that in a safe and sound manner. Thank you.

Okay, so let's move on to the next question please.

Next question is coming from Marta Sánchez from JP Morgan. Please go ahead, pressing star six.

Good morning. Thank you very much. My first question is on something that Mark has mentioned. So you've got an ambition of a more fee-driven P&L, but the product factories to build that aren't obviously there. So what's missing and absent capital constraints, which bolt-ons would fill the gap? And my second question is on credit and service fees. That line fell 5% year on year despite 5% volume growth. My question has two parts. What's driving the margin compression? Can you split the SRT cost versus rewards, competition, et cetera? And second is the pressure structural. Should we model it persisting or stabilizing from here? Thank you.

Thank you very much Marta. I'm going to take the first one and pass the second one to Sergio. On the factories of products we do have, let me touch on the topic from two different perspectives. First, on the industrial case, I have no doubt whatsoever that this is the right model for Banco Sabadell. We have been very successful at growing our asset management business at growing our insurance business and all the other businesses where we have partnered up Josep Álvarez Hernández, Manuel Tresánchez Montaner, Manuel Tresánchez Montaner, Manuel Tresánchez Montaner, Manuel Tresánchez Montaner, Manuel Tresánchez Montaner, Manuel Tresánchez In terms of our P&L, rest assured that we will explore any opportunity to improve this. The different agreements have different maturity dates and we are exploring all the opportunities to make sure that we extract the most value out of each of these relationships. And Sergio I'm going to turn it over to you for the second question.

Thank you, Mark. We're not really sure what is the question about. I think you mentioned the... Let me just hold on for a second. I think, Marta, you were referring to some services fees and was driving the change, but not sure what line that is, so maybe we can follow after the call. I think you mentioned also about the potential cost of SRTs. Of course, SRTs come with a cost. The cash accreditations, the cost is recorded in the wholesale funding cost because those are securitization bonds that appear on the balance sheet. And then for the synthetic securitization, it's a cost that we record in the commission's line. So yes, the securitizations affect the revenues. Josep Oliu Creus, Cesar Gonzalez-Bueno Mayer Wittgenstein, Sergio Palavecino Coloma, Federico Rodríguez Castillo, Gabriel Martínez Rafael, Nuria Lazaro Rubio Next question is coming from Cecilia Romero from Berkley's. Please go ahead pressing star six.

Hi, Mark, Sergio, and thank you very much for taking my questions. My third one is on guidance, just actuarification. Are you re-debating all of your 2027 targets today, not only ROT? And then I have one in NII and cost of risk actuarification. In terms of NII, this quarter, Treasury, ALCO, and others contributed to 11 million euros. How much of this was supported by the returns from the cash received from the TSB sales? Why I'm asking this is because you mentioned that non-customer NII is supposed to stay stable. So I was just wondering why it's compensated for the loss of that income during the rest of the year? I don't know if that's clear. Then on the cost of risk, you mentioned obviously that you expect cost of risk to stay stable for the rest of the year so that the provisions that we have seen this quarter, are they the wrong rate for the remainder of the year? And I still don't understand that given the improving NPL ratio and as you mentioned, healthy economic backdrop with very minimal mortgage cost of risk, what are the key drivers preventing a faster decline in cost of risk from the current levels? Is that your consumer and SME growth ambition? Thank you.

Thank you very much Cecilia. I'm going to take the first one and leave the second one for Sergio. We are ratifying our guidance for 2027 with a return on tangible equity of 16%. We are not providing the breakdown at this point in time. We usually do that by the end of the year before the year comes and we will definitely do that this time again.

Yes, exactly, although we are confident on the different lines. And then for the detailed question on the contribution of the sale of TSB, it has added 4 million, the gap between the proceeds that we received at the end of April and then the extraordinary dividend that we pay at the end of May that was one month that we were able to hold more than 2.4 billion at the ECB deposit facility so that was 4 million and then I think you were also asking for the provisioning whether the Thank you very much, Mr. President. Director General of the Office of the Director General of the Office of the Thank you very much. and we expect those 40 basis points for the year. Thank you.

Thank you, Cecilia. Shall we move to the next question, please?

Next question is coming from Ignacio Largui from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead pressing star six.

Thanks very much for the presentation and for taking my questions. I just have two questions. One is... On asset management and insurance fees, if I just look to the performance in the quarters, these are down quarter on quarter despite good performance in off-balance funds. So I just wanted to get a bit of a sense of how should we think about these asset management fees going forward and if within the guidance you have any performance fees included into the fourth quarter. The second one is on the ALCO portfolio and how should we think about the contribution of the bond portfolio going forward. and if you could remind us the sensitivity to higher rates. Thanks.

Thank you very much, Nacho. I'm going to leave both questions to Sergio.

Thank you, Marc. I think they are quite detailed questions, yes. Regarding the expected performance in asset management and insurance, we, you know, in the second half of the year, we expect an increasing contribution of the asset management in particular Thank you very much. Director General of the Office of the Director General of the Office of the The bonds that we sold to Santander, the Embrel TSB bonds. In the ALCO portfolio, 30% of the book is swapped to Euribor 6, so this portion will reprice with Euribor 6, this 30%, so we expect an increasing yield going forward. And then we can increase the book as we increase the balance sheet. And the front and the new investments, the yield of the new investments are actually higher than the ones on the book. So both because of repricing and new investments, we expect more contribution going forward of the ALCO book. Thank you.

Right. So, Bereto, could we have the next question, please?

Next question is coming from Britta Smith from Autonomous. Please go ahead pressing star six.

Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Just to follow up on the ARCO portfolio, it looks like it's grown in non-EU governments and agencies. Maybe you can give us a little bit of colour as to what you have invested in. I was wondering whether you could also share the volumes and yields of what will be maturing in the second half, the 800 million, but then also for 2027 and 2028 in that book. And then a couple of clarifications. You mentioned the seasonality this quarter. Could you tell us what the long goals would have been without the seasonality in Spain? A follow-up on the service fee, I think Marta was probably referring to slide 19 where we can see the service fees year-on-year declining quite a bit. And following on from a discussion around structural pressure from new entrants, how do you think you will need to position yourself with regards to the mix of asset management insurance versus service fees in the future? And then lastly, I'm sorry, there's just one little request that I have. There is a big difference in the lending yield in customer and deposit cost for the customer spread between the international business and the Spanish business. You helpfully give us the deposit cost in Spain, but maybe you can also break up the lending yield in Spain so that we can track this a little bit separately. Thank you.

Sure. Thank you, Britta, for your questions. Regarding the outcome, The investments that are eligible for us have not changed. We do invest in sovereigns, mainly Spain, and then we diversify it into other sovereigns, traditionally a bit of Italy, a bit of Belgium, a bit of France. And then we, on top of this, we might invest in other very high-quality names like supranationals, KEFW, and these type of names. So This is the type of, I would say, top asset quality because it's a portfolio that looks into the rates. It's a bit on rates and a bit of a spread because of the maturity, but it's top quality. So there is no credit exposure, meaningful credit exposure, I would say, away from the sovereigns in this portfolio. Regarding the seasonality of the loan book, there is some seasonality in the quarter because of some of the payments to retired people. I think this is adding, in our case, some 60 basis points on the growth, 60 basis points on the growth. And it happens every year, and I think it happens to every bank, right? Then regarding the lending yields and deposit costs in Spain, I don't have that information right in front of me, but we can share that with you or look for it. And regarding the fees, yes, as you mentioned, we do adapt our fee scheme to the competition that we see. Of course the level of service fees in the past went down because those fees were very high when interest rates were negative. It was a way that we found to pass on a negative interest rate to our customers and since rates are higher and higher and in order to preserve customers and balances we have been happy to reduce those fees and be attractive for customers and balances. That's already taken into account of course in the performance of the quarter and in the guidance of the year. The driver this quarter as we mentioned has been the pickup in payments that was of course weak in the first quarter lower payments in the first quarter and then as we have already discussed the other contributors and going forward we acknowledge those levels of competition for services that are connected also in a way with the level of rates and the more value Ignacio Cerezo from UBS

Hi, good morning and welcome Mark to this presentation. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one is specifically on the interim joint venture. If you can give us your view basically about future developments actually after it expires I think is next year. And the second one is on the percentage of remunerated deposits We have seen an improvement this quarter actually in terms of the weight of non-remunerated. Do you expect this trend to continue or should we expect actually an increase of the remunerated deposit within the mix?

Thank you. Thank you very much, Nacho. On the first question, we are currently analyzing all the options. and kind of taking a balanced approach between the quality of service and the cost of the service. So we will share with you more when we make our mind clear. So we cannot say yet. We are looking at it, and we will find out soon. On the percentage on remunerated deposits, I think there is some seasonality on the behavior of this quarter. We have mentioned that we have kept stable the mix of non-remunerated versus remunerated deposits this quarter and as I was saying before we are paying close attention to the acquisition path and how do we make sure Next question is coming from Borja Ramirez from Citi. Please go ahead pressing star six.

Good morning. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I have two questions, please.

Firstly, on capital distribution, could you kindly remind us of the dividend policies?

Will you be paying an interim dividend later this year? And is it possible also the split between dividends and buybacks of the distribution? And linked to this, if you could please remind us on your strategy on M&A.

Sure, thank you very much, Borja. On the capital distribution policy, the board has currently approved a policy to distribute, to kind of pay out between a 40% and a 60% of the profits. As you know, we have announced today 331 million share by back that is part of the remuneration to shareholders as an interim payment for the 2026 results. and our plans and on top sorry on top of these 40 to 60 percent payout we are committed to distribute any excess over the 13 percent of capital ratio and this policy has remained unchanged so we should expect three payments throughout the year one interim Two interims and one complementary once the results get announced for the year.

And Borja was also asking about M&A policy or M&A intentions.

On M&A policy, also our vision remains unchanged, I would say. We recognize that scale is important. We see that there might be some room at some point in time for further consolidation on the mid-sized banks in Spain. But at the same time, while we recognize that this could be beneficial, we do not see any opportunity whatsoever with the current conditions. Everybody has very strong standalone plans, and we don't see the conditions happening for any of this to change in the near future. Thank you.

Okay, so let's go to the next question, please.

Next question is coming from Andrea Filtri from Mediobanca. Please go ahead pressing star six.

Actually, all of my questions have been answered already. Thank you.

Andrea. Thank you. Let's move then to the next question.

Next question is It's coming from Carlos Peixoto from CaixaBank. Please go ahead, pressing star six.

Yes, hello. Good morning. Most of my questions have also been answered, but in any case, there's a final one. Apologies if you have touched this already, but I was just looking at the evolution of the deposits in the quarter, and there's a significance There's a decline in deposits in the quarter. I know that overall customer balance sheet funds increased, but I was wondering here what were the drivers for this change and whether this was related with pricing. Why didn't we saw anything or saw any particular savings in terms of deposit costs? Just to try to understand the blend between these two items. Thank you very much.

Thank you Carlos. I'm going to ask Sergio to take this one.

Hi, Carlos, and thank you for your question. The decrease is connected with some repo activity. So customers' deposits have actually increased in the quarter, and the variations that you see in that line of the balance sheet is coming from some repos that are recorded in that same line, and sometimes provide this volatility. But as you can see in the presentation, the deposit customers, so unbalanced customers and unbalanced customers, both have grown in the quarter. Thank you.

Okay, so we've got one final question. Operator, please.

Last question is coming from Sophie Peters from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead, pressing star six.

Hi, here is Sophie from Goldman Sachs. Thanks a lot for taking my question. Just sorry, going back to the fee growth. So fees were down 1%, half on half, and you go for mid-single-digit fee growth. This spike of the envelope implies double-digit fee growth, half on half in the second half, but also like around 11% year on year in the second half. So is this really... like fear to assume that fee growth will be this high in the second half so if you could just confirm that and then the second question is also going back a little bit on the cost of risk could you just split out how much of the cost of risk this quarter was from the scenario updates and how much was kind of underlying cost of risk And then the final question is on 81s. Could you just comment on how we should think about Sabadell's 81 costs going forward? Thank you.

Thank you, Sophie. I'm going to take the first one. I can't just provide assurance that we have visibility on the measures that we put in place on Q1 to make sure that we reached our guidance on fees. We are fully on track with these, and we expect to deliver on the mid-single-digit growth by the end of the year. And we mentioned that on the lower end of the range, but still mid-single-digit. and I'm going to hand it to Sergio for the other two.

Exactly. Thank you, Sophie. Regarding the cost of risk provisioning in the quarter, yes, we updated the scenarios. We changed the probability as we shared with you in the first quarter and that change in probabilities came with a 20 million increase. So, again, I think, you know, this, I think I've said this already during the presentation and I think the combination of... So the level of provisioning that we have seen in the first half of the year looks to us like a recurring level going forward. We're not seeing any deterioration in the portfolio. As you can see, the MPL ratio is actually going down, even with a decrease in the total volume of Stage 3 balances. And given that the book is bigger, The ratio is actually improving. And for 81, 81 at the end of the day what we have always said is that our idea is to fulfill the buckets. Today we have an excess in 81 because we sold TSB and of course it's going to take a bit of time until we have the maturities of some of the maturities of the instruments In order to normalize. So we expect that during 2027, given that we have some maturities in 81, we will have the levels of 81 connected with the bucket. Thank you. That was the word. That fulfills the bucket. So that's the idea, to fulfill the bucket.

Excellent. So with that, we conclude our presentation for today. Thank you, Mark and Sergio, and thank you all for participating. If you have any further questions, the Investor Relations team will be happy to help. Have a great day and a wonderful summer.