10/28/2025

speaker
Conference Operator
Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the presentation of the BNP Paribas Third Quarter 2025 Results with Jean-Laurent Bonafé, Group Chief Executive Officer, and Lars Maschenil, Group Chief Financial Officer. Sandro Pieri, CEO of BNP Paribas Asset Management and AXA-IM, will present the AXA-IM strategic integration within the group. For your information, this conference call has been recorded. Supporting slides are available on BNP Paribas IR website, invest.bnpparibas.com. During today's presentation, you will be able to ask your question by pressing star and 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to ask a question, please make sure to be in a quiet area to maximize audio quality. I would like now to hand the call over to Jean-Laurent Bonafé, Group Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

speaker
Jean-Laurent Bonafé
Group Chief Executive Officer

Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Before we move on to the quarter's results, I would like to just take a moment to share some context related to the decision issued by the civil court in the U.S. case and how we see things moving forward. So this morning, first we made a public statement which explained our position on this matter. This verdict is in connection with very old facts relating to banking services that BNP Paribas provided more than 15 years ago. We are highly confident that our planned appeal will demonstrate that this judgment was incorrect. U.S. law has allowed and the court has decided to apply Swiss law to this case. An evidence of such Swiss law has not been allowed to be presented. Misapplication of Swiss law has been confirmed by the Swiss government itself. The applicable laws don't lead to liability or causation in this case. The banking services that the bank provided didn't cause plaintiff's prejudice and no evidence has been brought to prove that it did. Because the verdict is fundamentally flawed, the bank will pursue its appeal and is confident that the verdict will ultimately be overturned. The appeal case will be reviewed by a panel of three professional judges. Now, we are aware that this case has prompted some speculation about the precedent it might set. So let me be very clear on this point. The damages awarded were specific to three individuals. Extrapolation is not permitted. The court has very clearly indicated that any future claims will be assessed on an individual basis. So given the ongoing nature of the litigation, we will not be commenting further on this topic today. BNP Paribas once again is confident in its legal arguments and that the verdict will be overturned on April. We look forward to focusing on our discussion today on this quarter's results. So if we move on slide four, our third quarter results are solid and allow us to confirm our target of over 12.2 billion euros of net profit for 2025. Our revenues are up 5.3% this quarter. Revenues of our operating divisions excluding AXA-IM are up 3.5% and a strong 4.9% at constant exchange rates. CRIB revenues posted another record year with 4.5 cross, 7 plus 7% at constant exchange rates, driven by global markets and security services. Global banking was resilient despite a more challenging context than last year. CPBS revenues have accelerated and are up 3.1% thanks to the strong performance of our Eurozone commercial banks with acceleration in net interest income up 4.5% and an improvement in specialized businesses. Personal finance is delivering on the strategic plan, we detailed in June, and Arval's organic growth is an elevated 9.3%. Finally, IPS consolidated XRIM for the first time, and I will comment on this later. IPS recorded 2.9% organic revenue growth with a robust performance for wealth management, insurance and asset management, also mitigated somewhat by real estate and IPS Invest. We remain committed to cost control and we have already implemented most of our targeted 600 million euro cost savings measures for this year. This results in a two-point Jaws effect for operating divisions excluding XIA. At 39 BIPs, our cost of risk remains within our guidance of less than 40 BIPs, despite a more challenging environment. Lars will elaborate on this later. All in all, our net profit was up 6.1%, meaning we are on track to achieve our target of more than 12.2 billion euros this year. Moving on to our CT1 ratio, at a very solid 12.5%. we have fully absorbed the impact of the AXA-IM acquisition of 35 BIPs. This strong quarterly performance, which Lars will elaborate on shortly, enables us to deliver beyond our pre-FRTB target of 12.3%. Let me pause briefly on this point. We are now concluding a four-year regulatory and supervisory cycle, characterized by the finalization of Basel and significant model updates, cycle which has been particularly heavy for BNP Paribas. This cycle has represented around 160 basis points or 12 billion euros equivalent to 3 billion per year. We are now entering a new cycle where risk-weight growth will primarily be driven by organic momentum estimated at less than 2% per year, based on recent historical trends. This is an important and positive message, as it naturally opens up new perspectives in terms of capital generation. Moving to slide five. Our third quarter performance demonstrates acceleration across our operating division, as well as the first-time integration of AXA-IM. Despite a particularly high FX impact this quarter, our operating divisions generated two percentage points chose effect, excluding AXA-IM, and posted an increase of profit before tax of 7.5%. The third quarter reaffirms our confidence that the growth trajectory we embarked on is delivering. Moving on to slide six. First, our scale CIB platform is a strong engine of growth, reaching excellent level of efficiency and profitability, as illustrated by its strong of 22.2%. We expect it to continue gaining market share while maintaining its proven capital discipline. Second, IPS already benefits from a high ROAM, 23.7%, which is expected to improve even further. We also maintain that IPS is said to reach 20% of the group's pre-tax profit in the coming years. We are creating a European leader in asset management at the core of our integrated model. The impact of the AXA-IM acquisition will be substantial. It will add more than 50 basis points to our group return on tangible equity as early as 28. And I will come back to this in a few minutes. Beyond asset management, we are developing our European Wealth Management Platform, and IPS will also benefit from both external and organic growth at BNP Paribas Cardiff, as well as from its strategic partnerships. Finally, CPBS. The Eurozone commercial banks are starting to benefit from a supportive interest rate environment, as evidenced by this quarter's performance, and we are improving the profitability of each business line when needed. Today, we are announcing a deep dive in the first half of 26 to present the financial trajectory of CPBB in Belgium. We intend to improve the ROAN from 13% in 24 to 20 in 28 and 23 in 30. Together with the plans we have already presented for CPBF and personal finance, this means we will improve profitability from 10% drawn to about 18% on a third of the risk weight or two-thirds of CPBF's risk weight. BNP Paiba Bank Posca will also host a capital market day on the 11th December. The plan that is coming to an end this year enabled us to implement BNP Paribas model in Poland and the new 2030 plan will bring Bank Polska profitability to the best standards of Polish banks. At Arval, the strong organic growth plus 9.3% in third quarter 25 will no longer suffer from the bad effect linked to used car prices. Overall, We will raise group return on tangible equity to 13% as early as 28 and reach a core equity tier 1 of 12.5% post-FRTB in 27. This marks the first two steps in the rollout of the future 2730 plan. Let me now outline on slide 7 the significant positive impact of the AXA acquisition on our financial trajectory. We expect to generate €550 million of revenues and cost synergies by 2019. Thanks to AXA-IM, IPS will see its contribution to group earnings rise to about 20% in the mid-term, and we expect our return on tangible equity to see an improvement of more than 40 basis points from this acquisition at group level. We expect as well our return on the €2.8 billion of invested capital to reach 18% in 28 and 20% in 29. This is post-tax. This is equivalent to more than 600 million euros of additional net earnings. We reaffirm on slide 8 our 26 trajectory, leading to an acceleration in shareholders' returns. I will now hand over to Sandro Pieri, CEO of BNP Paribas Asset Management, to discuss the AXA-IM project.

speaker
Sandro Pieri
CEO, BNP Paribas Asset Management

So thank you, Jean-Laurent, and good afternoon to everyone. Maybe just a quick intro. I'm Sandro Pieri. I've been the CEO of BNP Paribas Asset Management since September 21, but I spent all of my career, which is now 35 years in asset management, before joining BNP. I've been 13 years at Pioneer Investment, where the last three years I've been the CEO. So as we approach the XIM integration, and I think we can go to the slide 10, it's very important because this acquisition enabled us to reach scale in asset management, notably in long-term savings. It strengthened the growth momentum on our IPS franchise, but also gives us the critical mass and ambition to become a leading player. We will be, in fact, the third largest European asset manager with 1.6 trillion of AUM. And if we focus on long-term savings, we are the leader in European long-term savings with 850 billion AUM. We'll also be the leader in alternative assets in Europe by a significant margin with 300 billion of AUM, which we believe is going to be a very powerful differentiating factor, offering significant growth potential underpinned by our highly skilled and renowned teams. Clearly, the new scope of our asset management platform combined with the strength of our integrated model will unlock significant synergies and operational efficiencies. By the end of 2029, as Jean-Laurent has indicated, we expect 550 million of profit before taxes from revenue and cost synergies across the entire group. And AXIM is clearly a catalyst for our long-term growth ambitions, bringing many tangible benefits. First, clearly we will rely more strongly on internal capabilities of services, leveraging our internal expertise. A good example would be the CIB security services. Secondly, clearly we'll capitalize on the development of new partnership with insurers and pension funds. Thirdly, the acceleration of cross-selling within the group business. Fourthly, the expansion of the group originate to distribute model, which will connect our asset manager with asset origination business within CIB and CPBS. And finally, the strong acceleration of our alternative asset distribution, both internally and externally. Now, if we move on to the next slide, which is slide 11, this transaction is not only about scale, but it's clearly about growth. We believe we're very well positioned to capture growth opportunities in asset management, thanks to a number of distinctive competitive advantages. First, we have an unmatched breadth of offering in Europe at scale from ETF, money market, active, medium, long-term, and alternative. The second element is that our group integrated model provides exclusive access to permanent capital with the partnership we also have with Cardiff, origination in partnership with our CID franchise, and strong distribution capabilities, CPBS, and wealth. So the ability to leverage our OneBank model is clearly a key differentiating feature. From a business perspective, the combined AUM seems to be very balanced, as you can see in one of these charts, both across asset classes, but also across distribution network with both AXA and BNP Paribas channel, but also external distribution and external institutional client, and also a very strong footprint with our joint ventures, mostly in Asia. And lastly, in terms of competitive advantages, we need to flag our leading position in sustainability, which will contribute to long-term investment performance and will also help to better meet client expectation. So if we go into the next slide, it's really once we have elaborated on the key distinctive competitive advantages. we lay down a plan which we think is very clear and we have a commitment to executing as fast as we can. And the strategy is, in a way, quite simple. On one side, we want to maximize the potential of the two investment platforms, the alternative one and the liquid. In alternative assets, our growth potential builds on a solid and very consistent track record on the size of our blockbuster funds, a full range in coverage, which spans from real estate, alternative credit, infrastructure, private equity, which also includes secondary markets, and also on the prerequisite of having a full alignment of interest between AXA, Cardiff, and third party. On the liquid side, the combination of scale, strong performance culture, and results in active strategy, both equity and fixed income, as well as the renewed ambitions for our ETF platform, which year to date has been the fastest growing player in Europe on a relative basis, reaffirms our confidence that we're very well equipped to deliver on our growth ambitions. We have a very clear client focus to ensure that we provide the best in-class product and services. So the strategy then from a distribution perspective is really focused on institution and retail and wealth, As far as institutional clients are concerned, our goal is to be the go-to platform for insurers and pension funds, leveraging on our strategic partnership with AXA and BNP Paribas Cardiff. In retail and wealth management, we're unlocking the potential of alternatives, the so-called democratization of private assets, and we also aim to expand distribution partnership through innovative digital solutions. So that's as much as I can share at this stage on a very exciting project, and I look forward to seeing you at our deep dive in the first half of 2026, where we'll share more on our strategy and unique positioning among European asset managers to offer solutions across the full spectrum from liquid to liquid, thus leveraging scale, expertise, and innovation to serve all client segments. With that, let me now hand over to Lars, who will walk us through some of the key figures. Lars, on to you.

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