Bper Banca Spa Unsp/Adr

Good morning. This is the Chorus Call Conference Operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the BEPR First Half 2024 Consolidated Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Nicola Spongi, Head of Investor Relations at BEPR. Mr. Spongi, please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to welcome you to our second quarter 2024 NLINX conference call. Before I give the floor to our CEO, Gianni Franco Papa, please note that our slide set and press release can be found on our corporate website. I would also advise you to take note of the disclaimer on slide two of the presentation document. That said, after the presentation, our CEO and our CFO, Simone Marcucci, will take care of the Q&A session. I will reiterate that this is reserved for financial analysts, whom I will kindly request to ask a maximum of two questions each, so that everyone will have the opportunity to contribute to today's call. Thank you very much. I will now leave the stage to Mr. Papa, CEO of Bittar.

So good morning to everyone. Thank you, Nicola, for your introduction. Before I start walking through the presentation slides, I would like to inform you of the recent appointment of Simone Marcucci as group CFO. In the same way, I would like to thank Gianluca Santi for his very valuable contribution as CFO. Now, let's move on the presentation on slide four. As you can see on slide 4, the bank continues to pose strong results throughout the first half of 2024. Revenues grew by 4 percentage points, reaching 2.8 billion euros, underlining the strong resilience of our business model. Profit before tax was up by almost 16% at 1.1 billion euros. Allow me to add that this figure has been adjusted excluding approximately €150 million related to the gain on the disposal of the MPE servicing platform in Q1 2024 and excluding approximately €174 million of HR-related actions in Q2 2024. Our cost-income ratio remains stable at 50.6% in the first six months, as a result of our continued focus on cost discipline. As already mentioned, the cost-income ratio excluded €174 million of HR-related actions. We achieved further progress on cost of risk, improving the ratio to 41 basis points, underlining the high quality of our portfolio. Reported adjusted return on tangible equity stands at a robust 16.5%, along with the CET1 ratio reaching 15.3% thanks to our strong organic capital generation. Finally, the bank's liquidity profile remains robust, with LCR and NSFR ratios broadly in excess of the minimum threshold required. Let's move on to slide number five. As you can see, we have been able to demonstrate a positive performance throughout all P&L drivers. We will provide you with an in-depth review of each and every item along this presentation. For now, I would like to underline the important progress of adjusted net profit generation in the last quarter, which almost increased by 26%, as you can see on the slide. That said, I think that for purpose of clarity, it is also noteworthy to comment on progress of stated net profit, which was lower both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter, mainly due to a very limited tax rate reported in Q2-23 and Q1-24. Moving on to slide six, I'm delighted to state that on the basis of the bank progress, we have revised our guidance of net interest income to stable, and we have revised our cost of risk guidance towards an improved outlook. On the other hand, our guidance on operating cost has been revised very moderately upwards. All in all, we confirm our 2024 guidance on all other items. Now, I would like to move on to the core part of the presentation on slide eight.