Deutsche Boerse Unsp/Adr

Welcome to the Deutsche Boerse Group Analyst and Investor Conference call Q3 2026. Today's presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. For those of you who have joined the Zoom webinar, you can use the raise hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen at any time to join the queue to ask a question, and you will be called upon during the Q&A session. If you want to withdraw your question, please use the raise hand function again to lower your hand. Please limit yourself to one question only. If you have further questions, please use the raise hand function to rejoin the queue. Let me now turn the floor over to Mr. Jan Strecker.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us today to review our financial results for the third quarter 2026. Present on today's call are Stephan Leithner, our chief executive officer, and Jens Schulte, our chief financial officer. Stephan and Jens will take you through the presentation, and following their remarks, we will open the line for your questions. The presentation materials have been distributed via email and are also available on our investor relation website. The call is being recorded and a replay will be made available shortly after the conclusion of today's session. With that, let me now hand over to you, Stephan.

Thank you, Jan, and welcome, everyone. Q3 was a further proof point both on operational delivery and on strategic direction. The quarter's financials confirmed the momentum of our business and support another upgrade to our full-year outlook. Three things for me personally stood out. Simcorp returned to double digit growth, commodities recovered after the Q2 normalization, and the treasury result grew year on year for the first time since 2024. That combination gives us confidence to raise our guidance for the second time this year. Let me take you through four points and then add two strategic updates on Europe and digital assets. The first highlight I would like to make is the growth accelerated and the quality of growth remains strong. Net revenue without the Treasury result grew 14% in the third quarter compared with 9% in Q2. Six of our eight businesses delivered double-digit growth. I think this is a true testament to our portfolio. Importantly, this was not just a market-driven quarter. Around three quarters of the growth, or more than 10 percentage points, was driven by underlying business fundamentals. The buy-side transformation, the Euro fixed income ecosystem, fund outsourcing, collateral management and the continued increase in demand for capital markets infrastructure. That said, we also benefited from a supportive cyclical backdrop, mainly the strong derivatives activity we saw in September, driven by synchronized rate hikes from the ECB and the Fed. So far, this supportive environment has continued into Q4. Why does this matter? because it shows that the business can deliver high single-digit growth on its own and can move clearly into double digits when the market conditions are supportive. Let me also directly address the three Q2 topics some of you raised. In software solutions, net revenue growth amounted to 10%. The first component of the Tier 1 EMEA client expansion that moved from Q2 to Q3 has now been signed. So the Q2 slowdown was timing, not a change in momentum. We have seen questions on ARR growth and Jens will address those later on. In commodities, net revenue recovered to 11% growth after the Q2 normalization. In addition to the market environment, the underlying drivers, namely electrification, data center demand, the energy transition, the shift of OTC activity onto exchanges and our expansion in Japan are all playing out as expected. And the third point, as I said earlier, the treasury result grew 7% year on year. That is the first year on year growth since 2024. We have been signaling this inflection for several quarters. It is now visible in the numbers. For the first nine months, total net revenue reached €4.9 billion. That's around 75% of our upgraded full-year target. This is consistent delivery across the portfolio. The second highlight I would like to make is the strongest growth came from the areas where we have been investing for years. Financial derivatives grew an exceptional 30%. In addition to the cyclical tailwinds in fixed income, the Euro yield curve ecosystem continues to deepen. OTC Clearing made further progress in client onboarding and activation, and the changed terms of our partnership program are improving the revenue quality of our OTC Clearing business and support the growth plan over the next quarters. With this, our fixed income business is on track to outperform the 2026 aspiration we set at our investor day in November 2023, an ambition that was met with some skepticism at the time. What is particularly encouraging is that almost 60% of the fixed income growth we expected this year is secular in nature. The remaining 40% reflect a more volatile fixed income market environment and rising levels of debt outstanding, both of which were always also part of our thesis. And looking ahead, we see no reason why this elevated level of fixed income volatility should not continue into 2027. Among our investments, funds has been a big part and fund services delivered 18% growth in Q3, accelerating from 14% level in Q1 and Q2. Outsourcing and the shift towards capital markets based retirement savings continue to reinforce each other. On all funds, the regulatory work streams are progressing well. We continue to engage constructively with the European Commission and expect to end the pre-notification period and formally file in the near term. Other regulatory approvals are advancing as planned and completion in the first half of 2027 remains from our standpoint on track. The rationale for all funds is unchanged. Clearstream and all funds largely operate in different parts of the fund value chain with complementary geographies and client bases. This is also fully aligned with the European Savings and Investment Union agenda, which needs exactly this kind of cross-border fund infrastructure. Security services grew 10% in Q3, year-to-date 14%. Growth continues to benefit from fixed income issuance, retail participation and collateral management. After the very strong first half, this is a healthy and sustainable growth level. And last, on ISS stocks, Ginni Gomez has moved quickly since taking over the CEO role in August. While there will be some restructuring to reflect the current environment, the focus is on executing the AI roadmap and reviewing the product portfolio. The aim remains to position ISS stocks for the next phase of growth within the framework we set out at the Capital Markets Day a year ago. My third highlight I would like to emphasize is the margins continue to expand. For the first nine months, EBITDA growth without Treasury results reached 17%, and the overall EBITDA margin stood at 61% at the end of Q3. On costs, the headline increase in Q3 was 7%. The main driver was share-based compensation, a phasing effect linked to share price development. For the full year, we continue to expect operating cost growth of around 3%, excluding all funds-related exceptional costs. Jens will provide the bridge in more detail. And the fourth and final highlight I would like to make is we are raising our guidance again. The core business is slightly ahead of the original plan. We confirm our guidance for net revenue without treasury results, though based on the development in the first nine months, we see potential to slightly exceed this level. The Treasury result is now expected to exceed €0.8 billion. And as a result, total net revenue is now expected to exceed the €6.5 billion. This is the second guidance upgrade this year. It reflects three quarters of delivery, resilient growth in core business, expanding margins and the Treasury result that is now contributing to growth again. So let me close with two broader strategic updates. The first is Europe. The move from capital market union to the savings and investment union is more than a change in terminology. It puts investors and investments at the center of Europe's capital market strategy. The objective is clear. Mobilize private capital at scale, reduce dependence on bank intermediation and public funding, and help finance Europe's innovation and growth agenda. The opportunity is large. EU households hold around €35 trillion in financial assets, with around €10 trillion still in bank deposits. Equity ownership remains far below the US level. Even a modest shift from deposits into capital markets products would create a very large pool of long-term investment capital. We now see policy momentum from the bottom up to exactly support this. France has the PEA. which channels retail savings into domestic equities. Italy has the PIR, a tax advantage wrapper for long-term capital markets investment. Austria, my home country, just yesterday introduced the Zukunft Depot, a tax-exempt securities account to build capital markets-based wealth for children from birth. Poland, a year ago, has expanded its PPK system, enrolling millions of workers into capital markets-based workplace pension schemes. And now the big news in a way and the big hype for the moment is around Germany as Germany is moving forward with the Altersvorsorgegebot and the Frühstartrente, similarly a support system from children at birth or after six years. Adding a capital market-based component to both private and state pensions is a major step for Germany. Further national initiatives are being discussed. This is how change starts in Europe. Member states create working models and then the EU framework begins to align around it. So we are very optimistic. For us, this is directly relevant. More big institutional retirement funds and retail participation means deeper markets, more fund activity, more demand for data, trading, clearing, settlement. It supports the full investment lifecycle, exactly the space we are building out through our strategy leading to transformation. The second update I would like to give is around digital assets. Here as well, the move from concept to live market infrastructure is becoming more tangible. The ECB's recently launched Pontes initiative is an important building block. As the wholesale digital central bank currency, Pontes provides the digital cash lag that connects directly into Clearstream's digital securities infrastructure. This enables true delivery versus payment in central bank money for DLT-based assets, closing the gap institutional markets need before tokenization can scale. What gives us particular confidence is that we now have major sovereign governments and European supranational institutions in our pipeline as fully sized issuers, not pilots, but real production use of our infrastructure. Luxembourg kicked it off just last week. Beyond Clearstream, the Kraken partnership continues to develop across collateral management, stablecoin connectivity, and tokenized asset distribution. MICA and the broader European regulatory framework play to our strengths. Clients want digital innovation, but they want it inside of trusted, regulated infrastructure. That is where we intend to be leading. So let me conclude. We delivered 14% growth. upgraded guidance for the second time, and the pipeline is strong heading into Q4. The trajectory we laid out in the capital markets day is intact and it is accelerating. With that, let me hand it over to you, Jens.