Dbs Group Hldgs Ltd S/Adr

Good morning and welcome to DGS's first quarter financial results media briefing. On the call today are DGS CEO Piyush Gupta and CFO Chung Suk-Hwee. Suk-Hwee will first take us through DGS's performance in the first quarter, followed by Piyush who will provide additional observations on the operating environment and the business outlook. So without further ado, Suk-Hwee please. Thanks Ayram. Good morning everyone. We start with slide 2, highlights. We achieved strong third quarter net profits of $1.80 billion. It was the second highest on the report and was exceeded only by the exceptional first quarter last year. ROE was 13.1%. Business momentum was healthy and broad-based. Loans grew 2% from the previous quarter and fee income streams other than wealth management and investment banking were higher than a year ago. Next, interest margins benefited from higher market rates, rising three basis points from the previous quarter. This was the first increase in three years. The performance was moderated by lower wealth management fees and treasury market income from exceptional levels a year ago. As a result, total income fell 3% to $3.75 billion. Expenses rose 4% from a year ago due to the mid-2021 salary adjustment. The cost-income ratio was 44%. Asset quality was stable, with the NPR ratio unchanged from the previous quarter at 1.3%. Specific allowances of 15 basis points were partially offset by a red flag of general surveillance. capital remains strong and liquidity is ample. CEP1 was 14.0% above the group target operating wage. The liquidity coverage ratio and net stable funding ratio were 138% and 132% respectively. The board declared a first quarter dividend of $0.36 per share unchanged from the previous quarter. First quarter net profit of $1.80 billion was 10% lower than the record quarter a year ago. Total income was 3% lower at $3.75 billion as higher net interest income was more than offset by decline in fee income and other non-interest income from their respective record levels a year ago. Net interest income rose 4% or $18 million to $2.19 billion. Higher loan volumes more than offset the impact of lower net interest margins. Fees fell 7% or 62 million from the record a year ago to 891 million. Lower wealth management fees and lower investment banking fees more than offset higher loan-related card and transaction service fees. Other incomes fell 16%. or $125 million from their high base a year ago to $669 million as investment gains and trading income both declined. Expenses were 4% or $57 million higher at $1.64 billion due to base salary increments carried out in mid-2021. Credit upgrades and transfers to non-performing assets resulted in a TP right-to-back of $112 million compared to a yearly write-back of $192 million a year ago. Specific allowances were $33 million lower at $167 million. Slide 4, quarter-on-quarter performance. Compared to the previous quarter, net profit rose 30% from higher total income and lower expenses. Net interest income increased 2%, of $47 million as loan grew 2% and net interest margin rose 3 basis points. On a day-adjusted basis, net interest income was 4% higher. Fee income rose 9% or $76 million from higher loan-related fees. Other income increased 98% or $331 million from higher trading income and customer treasury activity. Expenses fell 2% for $27 million as higher staff costs were more than offset by declines and other operating expenses. Total allowances increased by $22 million to $55 million as a $100 million increase in specific allowance was partly offset by a $78 million increase in general allowance right then. Slide 5, net interest income. Net interest income was $2.19 billion, 4% higher than the previous quarter after adjusting for the shorter day count. Lows rose 2% in constant currency terms and net interest margin was up 3 basis points at 1.46% as interest rates began to rise. The higher net interest margin was the first quarterly increase in three years. Compared to a year ago, net interest income rose 4%. Lows rose up 8%. more than offset the impact of a three-basis point decline in net interest margins. Net interest income will continue to benefit as interest rates rise in subsequent quarters, lifting the net interest margin. Slide 6. Gross loans increased 2% or $8 billion in constant currency terms over the quarter to $432 billion. Non-trade corporate loans rose 2% or $6 billion, faster than in recent quarters. The growth was led by Singapore and Hong Kong across a range of industries. Trade loans grew for the first time since mid-2021, rising 5% or $2 billion amidst rising commodity prices. Housing loans were a little changed as booking fell due to the additional cooling measures in December. Growth management loans were also a little changed. Compared to a year ago, loans grew 8%. That's by non-trade corporate loans. Slide 7. Deposits. Deposits increased 4% or $18 billion in constant currency terms over the quarter to $520 billion. Current and savings accounts of Casa grew 3% or $11 billion to $392 billion. This takes the growth in CAFA since the onset of the pandemic to $152 billion. The CAFA ratio of 75% was similar to the previous quarter and 16 percentage points higher than before the pandemic. The higher CAFA ratio has increased the interest rate sensitivity of our net interest income. We estimate there are 100 basis points increased in the U.S. flat fund rates, increases net interest income by between $1.8 billion and $2 billion. The loan-to-deposit ratio defined one percentage point to 80%. Several deposits continued to be deployed to high-quality liquid assets. Liquidity was ample with a liquidity coverage ratio at 138% and a net stable funding ratio at 132%. Slide 8 on C, Income. Gross key income fell 6% from the record a year ago to $1.02 billion. Wealth management fees fell 21% to $408 million from the exceptional levels a year ago due to weaker market sentiment. Lower investment product sales were moderated by an increase in bank insurance sales. Investment banking fees were also lower by 12% to $43 million as fixed income activity fell. Other three income activities were higher. Loan-related fees grew 31% to $144 million. Cut fees rose 11% to $187 million as debit and credit card spending exceeded pre-pandemic levels and trouble picked up. Transaction-studded fees grew 4% to a new high of $240 million led by cash management fees. Compared to the previous quarter, gross fee income rose 7%, due mainly to higher fees for loan-related activities. Slide 9 on expenses. Expenses rose 4% from a year ago to $1.64 billion. The increase was due to base salary increments carried out in the middle of last year. Compared to the previous quarter, expenses were 2% lower, and higher staff costs were more than offset by lower non-staff expenses. The cost-to-income ratio was 44% for the quarter. Slide 10 on non-performing assets. Credit quality remains healthy. Non-performing assets rose 2% to $5.98 billion. New non-performing asset formation, which included a significant exposure this quarter, were offset by repayment. The MCR ratio was unchanged at 1.3%. Slide 11, specific provisions. Specific allowances amounted to $167 million of 15 basis points of loans similar to recent quarters and to fiscal repayments were excluded. Slide 12 for general provisions. Total allowance reserve stood at $6.81 billion with $3.06 billion in specific allowance reserve and $3.75 billion in general allowance reserve. During the quarter, there was a general allowance right back of $112 million on credit upgrades and transfers to non-performing assets. General provisions overlays were maintained. General allowance reserves remained prudent. The reserves exceeded the MES requirements by $102 billion and were $1 billion above Tier 2 eligibility. Allowance coverage was at 114% and at 193% when collateral was considered. Slide 13 on capital. Capital remains strong. The common equity K-1 ratio declined 0.4 percentage points from the previous quarter to 14.0%. The C-K-1 ratio included a temporary 0.4 percentage point impact from the digital disruption in November 2021 that had been announced previously. The C-K-1 ratio was above the group's target operating rate The leverage ratio of 6.3% was more than twice the regulatory requirement of 3%. Slide 14 on dividends. The Board declared a dividend of $0.36 per share for the first quarter unchanged from the previous quarter. Based on yesterday's closing share price and assuming that dividends are held at $0.36 per quarter, the annualized dividend yield is 4.4%. Slide 15 in summary. In summary, we had a strong start to the year. This was underpinned by strong and broad-based business growth, cost discipline, and robust asset quality. Our capital and liquidity positions remained strong, and the general allowance overlays we had built up in prior periods were maintained. Looking ahead, geopolitical developments in recent weeks have created macroeconomic hits and financial market volatility. We have stress-tested our portfolio, and we expect asset quality to remain resilient For their revenue risk to certain activities such as wealth management, our overall business pipeline continues to be healthy and will provide sufficient opportunities for growth. We'll also benefit significantly from interest rate increases in the coming quarters. Thank you for your attention. I will now ask you to finish.

The world has changed dramatically in the last few months. The issues in Ukraine have caused a massive slowdown. I think both World Bank and IMF growth rate forecast a downgrade close to a percent. Inflation is coming through, particularly in the entire commodity complex, metals, food, Most of the world is opening up. But as you know, lockdowns in China and still urgent fund issues in Hong Kong continue to persist. So that's a little bit of a mixed story. And I think about the world, the macro at large. Here I think about the Ukraine situation in particular. You know, the first-order impact for most of East Asia, and certainly for us, is de minimis. We really don't do too much in Ukraine and Russia, etc., There is a second-order impact, and that comes principally through the commodity complex. You know, gas prices are up, oil prices are up, metals are up, like I said, food is up. And that obviously is likely to create interesting categories in banking. You know, you have customers who deal in all parts of the spectrum, so you never know, you know, who might stub their toes. But it's very the third-order risks which are likely to flow through, which are very hard to understand and model right now. The second question, what happens to margins? So far we're finding that in many sectors, companies are being able to push prices, particularly in food and agri and industries with inelastic demand. But I don't think that's going to be the case everywhere. So you'll probably see margin space in some industries. If this goes up on the back of inflation, debt servicing is going to start creating its own set of headwinds. And as I mentioned before, it's likely to be more for small and medium enterprises than for large companies. So, when you put all of these together, it's quite clear that the outlook over the next year or so is going to be difficult to vocal, something that you've got to keep a careful eye on. Fortunately for us, our whole portfolio of companies will remain quite resilient. and IP, methods and mining, all of the usual industries expect to get impacted by Ukraine. We have been test testing our property portfolio, the consumer side, FFGC in the context of China, etc. And we are actually seeing no imminent areas of concern or stress in our portfolio. As I said, SME is likely to face more pain, but again, if a risk tested and risk tested portfolio in the last few years, because it's been challenged for the last three years. So our portfolio is largely secured. Retail portfolio is also very secure. Our non-secure book is quite small. The rest of it is mortgaged. We really see no material impact from the China lockdown. Again, given specifically the nature of our export, it's very high-end. Our target markets are high quality. And we really have very little in the FMCG complex, which is downstream. So we're not seeing too much of that. That understanding, we will continue to be somewhat conscious about releasing general provisions. We've built up a good buffer of general provisions over the last couple of years. And given all the surgeries in the environment, we will continue to be thoughtful about when we start releasing those general provisions that would be appropriate. Now, obviously, because we're going to be benefited by the tailwind that comes from interchange, we can afford to take a more cautious view on GP reviews without really impacting the bottom line of the review. Next slide on outlook, this is on the business. If you look at the business, as I pointed out, a very strong first quarter. And so despite all the doom and gloom around the world, underlying business for us continues to hold up quite well. Loan growth was a couple of percentage points, very broad based across countries, across industries, it was in property, it was in CMT, it was in energy. I think we are in good shape to do 3-4% growth in the first half of the year. The second half of the year will remain to be seen how much growth they come through. One of the periods that we are not seeing the growth that you anticipated obviously was the mortgage book, the tightening measures in Singapore in December. is obviously a slowdown handful. And so we think we get some growth in the book this year, but nowhere near what we originally thought we would. The fee outflow is next. Some parts of our premiums that seem to do really well. Cards is benefiting. Again, as Hauke pointed out, the card spend on credit and debit is up over 2019 levels. The spend on travel is coming back, though it is still much smaller than the 2019 levels. But as the border cut people open up, that should, the decreased travel should give us another boost on our free income. The 2019 free income is doing well. Our cash management and payment volume is up over 15 odd percent last year. As we are going into the second quarter, I think we are tracking flows at the last year's level. But, you know, relative overall to last year, that could prove to be a little bit of a 10-win. The other is investment banking. Debt capital markets, fixed income was slow in the first quarter. In the last two weeks of March, we got a study of these and we did quite a few. But for the first quarter, they were slow. ECF was also slow. Issues out of Singapore and Hong Kong was down some 35%. We led 10 deals in the first quarter including a couple of SPACs. But overall the environment for investment banking continues to be somewhat challenging. Unless the markets don't open up, that could create some small tensions. The thing that really outperformed the 10-year markets, we continue to have a very robust quarter. all this considered it was fantastic and we benefited really from market volatility across most of the debts the interest rates in particular but also credit and effects we a lot of big moves as you know and i think we're able to capture most of these big moves uh quite well i think as i mentioned the last quarter in part we've benefited from to customers, we see a lot more of the customer flow and I think that's allowing us to position our books much better. Obviously the big upside for us as we go forward is the sensibility to invest rates. We continue to model our book and it seems to us that 18 to 20 million bucks of basis points is something that is quite robust, which means that's what we say, let's go up 100 Look at that report, the rate went down, the 8 rate cuts between late 2019 and early 2020. And we said before the 8 rate cuts cost us about $2.8 billion in interest income. So it's not logical to assume that if you get those kinds of rate increases back, you should be able to grow a lot of that income back. So that's the positive. If rates go up faster or sharper, then obviously that benefits. I find our expenses continue to be quite thoughtful. There is an intensive measure, as we mentioned before, wage inflation in particular is coming through. But we're being thoughtful about how we manage our expenses to make sure we're investing sensibly for the future while keeping an eye on what we need to go in the short term. So I'll stop there and I'm happy to take any questions.

Okay. Thanks, Piyush. We will now open a timeout for media Q&A. Before you ask your question, please state your name as well as the media house you were present. Diana, can you say whether there are any questions from the media, please?

Are there participative questions to pose? Please press 01 on your telephone keypad now, and you will be placed in the queue. To cancel the queue, please press 02. Once again, 01 on your telephone keypad now. We have got the first question from Takashi Nakano from Nikkei. Please go ahead.

Hello. You have a number of digital projects such as digital exchange and private index and . So are these business expanding plans? And are there any new projects planned for the digital business?

Actually, Ravindra ji, particularly last time, we had a few focus on the fire that we put out in the last few hours. The digital exchange was one of them. We floated the carbon exchange where we are 25% shareholder. We also floated something called Partyard, which is a blockchain-based settlement system. We launched something called DBS Fixed Income Marketplace that is to facilitate fixed income issuance for clients. They're actually also looking at monetizing some of other software capabilities that we've built over the years. So there are quite a few digital activities that we have sorted and spawned. The truth though is that these are still relatively small. It's going to take some time before they hit strike and before you start seeing the impact of that, of these, in terms of P&L. On the digital exchange itself, Amazon and the company are But trading volume for the first quarter actually slowed a bit and again reflected the issues I incited earlier on risk management. People are doing a little less activity right now. Nevertheless, as we go into the year, we are expecting to make this whole offering, the cryptocurrency offering online for I tell you investor customers. So I do expect that volume to continue to pick up in the course of the year. We're also doing tokenization and this thing. We've done one last year. We have a couple more in the pipeline of different asset forms. So you should expect to hear more from us in this space.

We can take another question.

Our next question, Gula Warden from The Edge. Please go ahead.

Hello. Hi. I'm . Sophie, thanks for the call. I've got about four questions, but I may compress them. Has there been any change in your guidance on loan growth and the interest rate impact? But has there been any update in your guidance on the credit costs? Because the economic outlook has changed so much. That's one question. Then the second question is about your funding mix because you allowed your new 62% of CASA. But are there any signs of customers looking to switch to FDs and what sort of impact would this likely have? And the third question is on the balance sheet. One of your peers said this morning that there was an interest rate impact on the valuation of its high-quality liquid asset, which you hold for your liquidity coverage ratios and net stability, whatever, coverage ratio. And I noticed that your HQLA has actually risen quarter on quarter. So is there any impact on this from rising interest rates, and how would this be treated? Yeah, and then last one was the impact of rising rate in an interest income, but you've mentioned that.

Thanks, thank you. Okay, I'll take the three questions. Maybe Sophie can pitch in on the third. But in terms of credit cost guidance, really there's not any material change in our specific provisions guidance at this point in time. You know, a couple of what is it where it says that in the past I used to a guide that we should be looking at 22-25 basis points or SPs. But in the last three years, we have got a lot more confidence about both our portfolio and our current disciplines. And therefore, you know, on the SP line, somewhere between 15 and 20 basis points is likely to be a more considered level of provisions that we might have. The difference is certainly not only that I have guided earlier that Whatever we get on SP, there is a good chance that we could release tender provisions this year. So the net allowances number could be like last year, close to zero. At this point in time, as I said, we would be a little thoughtful about whether we do release the provisions or not. If we get a lot of benefit and changement from interest rates, we might hang on to those tender provisions for longer. But it's too early to comment on that right now. Outside of that, our credit guidance hasn't changed. Like I said, all our step-by-step thing and our underlying thing is not showing us any imminent issues in any part of our book or any part of our portfolio. In terms of the funding thing, actually our TASA ratio is 75%, not the number you mentioned. And it is, as Sophie points out, it used to be sub-53 pandemic, it's now 75, it's very broad. And so far, we're not seeing any material outflows from TASA into the policy. In our modeling, we assume this will happen. As Dave tried, he said we'll switch from TASA to free deposit and we factored that into our intestate sensitivity, return to SDs etc. But we don't see too much of that happen at this point in time. The intestate sensitivity guidance is given of 18 to 20 trillion dollars of basis coin. It actually models for all that. It's included in that number. And finally on the balance sheet, the impact on our fixed income portfolios. Like everybody else, we obviously hold a long bond portfolio of high quality equal assets and other assets. And when rates rise, that portfolio gets marked down. But the way of counting was that markdown doesn't go to the PNF. It goes directly to equity. And so you can see that in our shareholder fund. Our shareholder funds are down about a billion dollars. That's because we've taken... the impact of that directly into equity in the quarter. So please, you want to elaborate on that?

So much part of our high-quality liquid assets are held in the investment book because we actually think that we will, in the course of time, have to hold this high-quality liquid asset. So because they are held under the FDOCI format, fair values to other comprehensive incomes, rather than direct mark-to-market in the P&L statement, you find the effects will show up in the FDO-CN line and affect the book capital. So it doesn't affect the P&L as much.

Okay, would it affect, it won't affect your dividends, will it?

No, it wouldn't.

Okay, thanks. Okay, just one last question on the investment banking outlook. especially for your equities, what's the pipeline like? Is there any impact from, you know, the China problems or any other areas?

Actually, Bhuna, I think it's very strong, both for fixed income and for ECM. There are a lot of people who would like the country to access the public market. And so the question really is, are the markets open and are investors willing to come in to these instances? Like I said, we did 10 ICOs in the first quarter, which included a couple of SPACs. We launched a SPAC business in Singapore and some interesting deals. But by and large, investor appetite is ginger. And therefore, with the ECM and DCM, we've got to continue to keep an eye on this and get a market window on which investor appetite can launch on these. And if not, then we just have to wait.

Okay, because we've not seen any weak IPOs this year.

We did a couple of weeks as well in the first quarter.

Okay, thanks.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next question, Anshuman Daga from Reuters. Please go ahead. Hi, Piyush.

Hi, Piyush. This is Anshuman here. So overall, I mean, obviously, the results had a tough comparison from a year ago. But specifically talking about the wealth management business, do you see more pain for the next few quarters? I mean, can you give some color on how rich do you expect this to happen? Because this will obviously weigh on the performance. Thanks.

Yeah, Ashwin, like I said before, the first quarter last year was, I mean, just off the chart. And therefore, first quarter this year is about 20% down from first quarter last year. It's early days, but this year, going into the second quarter, I think we tracked closer to last year. It looks like that right now. So I don't think we'll see a continued fall on a year-on-year basis. Then beyond that, it depends on market sentiment. If consumer confidence turns, you know, if the markets look up, then obviously the underlying secular nature of our business is very strong. But our AUMs are up for the quarter, as you can see. We have $3 billion in AUMs. And our next few monies also, they continue to benefit from incoming flows. So, in other words, there is a reasonable amount of dry powder in the system. And if the market turns and confidence improves, then you go back to, you know, getting growth in the business. but if confidence is the flow, I suspect we might track those at the last year.

Right. So, is the issue that clients are deliberately deliberating and also or is the bank doing that on its own as we see the collapse in tech shares and others?

It's mostly client driven. We haven't had a problem in terms of, you know, so many margins. We're quite conservative in margining. So, we haven't seen a lot of issues with respect to margin calls or any sales calls, us to call to deliver. There's a client are being a little bit careful and wary with all of the volatility in the markets.

Okay, thank you.

Diana, we can take another question.

Thank you. Yes. We've got Carly Lau, Asian private banker. Please go ahead. Hi, Pooj.

Good morning. So I also have similar questions on wealth management. Were you able to share a little bit more colours on the performance this quarter, given that the first quarter last year was a record high? And now, if you see, like, the Singapore, Hong Kong, and even South Asia, they're reopening. Do you expect that client activity will resume in the second quarter? I mean, in the second half of the year? Thank you.

Sorry at the end, just repeat what I said to Anshuman. You know, the year-on-year comparison for first quarter was unusual because first quarter last year was grey. On a year-on-year basis, our AUMs are up and therefore even with lower activity, our overall income will hold closer to last year. Whether it starts going back to double-digit growth really depends on market sentiment and your guess is as good as mine on whether market sentiment comes back in the second half of the year or not.

So do you see, so how about the AUM performance in the first quarter?

Say, what are the questions?

The AUM in the first quarter.

I just said, AUM is up by about $3 billion. We're up from, I think, $291 to $294. So we're up by $3 billion in AUM. That includes some net-to-money as well.

Okay, thank you, Pooj.

Thank you. We now have got Prisca Ang from the Straits Times. Please go ahead.

Hi, can you hear me clearly now?

Yes, that's better.

Given the current environment, do you expect to restore rates on retail customers, not the entire account, and at what point are you looking at for this?

Prisca, actually, it's not coming through clearly.

You said, I followed you to the set, given the current environment, and then you got doubled again.

Okay, she's asking whether in the current interest rate environment, whether we intend to reinstate rates on the multiplier account.

Whether we need, I frankly I haven't given it too much thought. But obviously as the interstate is overall environment, Goa, they start getting reflected in all of our pricing. Both our room pricing and eventually our deposit pricing. At this point in time, because we are sitting on so much NASA, we will be quite thoughtful about what sustainability products we create and the pricing on those.

Diana, we'll take your next question, please. Thank you. Our next question, Rebecca Isner from S&P Global Marketing Intelligence. Please go ahead.

Hi, Pierce and Sokwe. Thank you again for hosting this conference today. It's a great quarter. Just wanted to get a little bit more of your thoughts. You said that the interest rate would impact your net interest margin quite well. Could you talk a little bit more about that? Thank you.

Yeah, I guess, you know, as you know, for us, because the book is so heavily CASA funded, 75% CASA ratio, and if you look at the underlying loan books, the SingDollar loan book is all funded by CASA, and the US dollar loan book is 80% funded by CASA. So, one of the pieces when rates start going up, and by the way, the bulk of our loan books, the US dollar is on floating rates, and SingDollar is predominantly floating rates. So when rates start going up, obviously the yield of the books starts going up. And of course, the funding tends to lag. And therefore, that gives you this net incremental NIM. So depending on, you know, when the rate hike happens, the rate hike happens earlier than the NIM close to pickup. If they happen, like if there's seven or eight rate hikes, one would be, you know, fed eating. in a move gradually, then you'll get NIM impact as being less this year, but initially over two years, you will see the full impact of the NIM through our portfolio, or most of the impact of the NIM through our portfolio. So, sir, we've modeled it effectively. We've given some guidance of the 18 to 20 million bus stops impact per basis point increase in rate.

Sophie, would you like to say? Yeah, from 18 to 20 million per basis point, you should note that it is how the sort of rate play out over a full year. So it's very much dependent on timing of the rate hike. There's some dependency on pass-through assumptions as well as conversion to FT or outflow. So we have been quite, I think we have been quite proven in our modeling. So it takes into account all these factors and we think this range is a reasonable range.

Thank you. Thank you. We've got Faris Mokhtar from Bloomberg. Hi. Thank you. Yes, go ahead. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. I just want to take some clarity.

I mean, of course, there's so much interest in cryptocurrency and Singapore's stance on cryptocurrency. And you have mentioned it before in the last earnings that you were looking to expand crypto trading services to retail clients by at least at the end of 2022. But then recently at the AGM, you were also saying that, you know, probably this might not happen in the near future. So it would be great if, let's say, you know, I can get a definitive stamp from you on, you know, what's the plan with regards to extending crypto trading services to retail clients.

Yeah. First of all, quite clearly, we've already detained crypto in Singapore this year. But what we will do is get our current crypto offering online so people can deal on mobile and on internet banking. We have a very large absolute customer base and a great investor customer base. So we have the opportunity to continue to scale this business quite nicely to focus on the AI base in the course of this year. On the retail, I would have liked to see people trying to retail this year. But two things. One, it's taking a little bit longer than I anticipated to put the technology, the parasites and the prophecies around it. Also, regulators are not that comfortable around the world. Regulators are a little bit more careful about getting retail access to crypto. And so the consequence is that if we get to retail, it's unlikely to be a secure activity. We will start getting our arms around that in the earliest next year.

Got it. Thank you so much.

Thank you. The Q&A session is still open. If you would like to ask a question, please press 01 on your telephone keypad now. If you would like to ask a question, please press 01 on your telephone keypad now.

Okay, it looks like we don't have any questions. In which case, then, let's draw this time to a close. The analyst briefing will commence at 12.15. Thank you, everyone.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.