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Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Before I hand over to Magda Palachinska, head of investor relations, a reminder that today's call is being recorded. Ma'am, you may begin.

Good morning and welcome to Unicredit's second quarter 2023 results conference call. Andrea Arcel, our CEO, will lead the call. Then Stefano Porro, our CFO, will take you through the financials in more detail. Following Andrea's closing remarks, there will be a Q&A session. Please limit yourself to two questions. With that, I will hand over to Andrea.

Thank you, Magda, and thank you all for joining today. I would like to start the call with a heartfelt thank you for all the employees of Unicredit that continue to deliver as they have quarter after quarter. Thank you all. The global political and economic environment continues to be marked by uncertainty with concern regarding the impact of inflation, higher rates and transition to sustainability within a new geopolitical environment. Yet so far in 2023, as within 2022, the European economy is outperforming our prudent assumptions. The European banking sector has remained resilient, with sequential concerns around banks not occurring. Liquidity has remained stable, passed through, and cost of risk more benign and profitability at elevated levels. we continue to push into the future the expected shocks. Within this environment, Unicredit's excellent results are a demonstration of the resilience of not only Europe, but of the European banks. Yes, risk remains, and inflation combined with a possible further economic slowdown and the development of new technology need to be managed. So we remain vigilant. We take preemptive actions, prudent and ready to adapt. But what this presentation will demonstrate is the excellent progression of Unicredit Unlocked and of our industrial and cultural transformation. But our people are leading the evolution and doing so as one team, united by the same principle, the same values, and with the same mission. The vision driving that mission is for Unicredit to be the bank for Europe's future and a new benchmark for banking. Let's start our presentation with slide two. Let me start with a snapshot of our current results. They show just how well we are progressing towards realizing that vision. We have delivered our tenth consecutive quarter of profitable growth, the best second quarter and first half ever. Underlying net profit in the first half of the year was 4.5 billion, or in excess of that. This is adjusted for 230 million of integration cost, that we are expensing to continue supporting our operational efficiency improvements in the face of inflation, whilst becoming more agile and self-funding significant investments. Net revenue rose 38% year over year. This is especially impactful. Sorry, we seem to be having a problem with the slide. One second. Net revenue rose 38% year-on-year. This is especially impactful given the drag from targeting quality growth, one that shows risk discipline, improvement of mix, and a focus on EVA-positive transactions. Cost fell 1% and RWA 7% year-on-year, in spite of growth, inflation, and our investment for the future. The effectiveness of our operational and capital levers is shown in our 39% cost-income ratio and our 8% net revenue on RWA ratio. Both are best-ever, industry-leading, and a result of improvement on both variables of the ratio, so both numerator and denominator. So far this year, our return on tangible equity at 13% CET1 is at 21%. It is still at 17% considering the excess capital that we still carry. Our CET1 reached 16.6%, structurally higher than our target of 12.5% to 13%. whilst at the same time we will have distributed in excess of 15.5 billion between 2021 and 2023, well above our initial target. This is thanks to our much higher than initially expected profitability and organic capital generation. Indeed, we generated 210 basis points or 6.5 billion of capital in the first half alone. The strategy we're implementing is uniting our bank as one empowered franchise, capable of delivering consistent quality profitable growth and outsized distribution over the long term. As such, we are upgrading both our net income and distribution guidance, respectively, to equal or greater than 7.25 billion and 6.5 billion, while absorbing yet-upsized integration costs of 500 million and continuing to increase our CT1 year over year. all providing a strong foundation and outlook for 2024, as we expect to be broadly in line with the increasingly higher bar set this year, with clearly identified levers to achieve it. What you're seeing with this result is the combination of a sector benefiting from generally supportive macro, some of which is structural, as we're not going back to negative rates, and the large contribution from the relentless execution of Unicredit Unlocked. The latter is what continues to drive our differentiation versus peers and enables us to beat expectation. Let me take you again through its essence. Understanding it is understanding our transformation to date and our further potential. Let's start with our winning strategy to achieve our vision. We have a group-wide determination to put clients at the center to understand what they want today and what they will need tomorrow. We serve them across three foundational countries, boosted by 10 of the fastest-growing and most innovative markets in Europe, coming together as one. This is a bank that represents a new and emerging Europe, powered by a renewed single-group mindset that truly unlocks the unique value for our clients and other stakeholders of being pan-European. We provide our clients with a differentiated service that combines local reach with European interconnection and group-wide product factories that leverage an ecosystem of best-in-class partners. powered by an increasingly harmonized, forward-looking digital data and operations across our group. All is underpinned by solid principles and values that our people chose, live and breathe day to day. Then we move to our ongoing industrial and cultural transformation, unique in that it is from within and employee-led. We are strengthening our client proposition distribution power and product factories while streamlining our organization, processes, and way of working across all banks, all supported by our technology evolution. We continue to invest in the business for the long term, making the necessary structural changes to be future-proofed and resilient. This allows us to support our communities through social programs, our clients and people to go through challenging times, and our commitment to use and education. This approach serves all of our stakeholders well while delivering exceptional targeted financial outcome. As we continue to strive for excellence and execute relentlessly on Unicredit Unlocked, I am confident that our financial performance is set to continue through 2023, 2024 and beyond. Let's turn to slide four. Let me now take you through how we are deploying our strategy in further detail. Unicredit Unlocked is primarily driven by around our 15 million clients across Europe, serving them and their communities locally, but benefiting from tools available to a group of our size and nature. For most of our franchise countries, experts make up 50% of GDP. So our footprint is a unique gateway to the continent and possible expansion. We have overlaid this with industrial actions designed to ensure our clients not only connect, but also have access to premium, tailor-made products accessed the way they prefer. This is supported by investments in our network, which we continue to upgrade, and technology aiming to create the branch of the future in which an omnichannel approach combines a digital offering with passionate, skilled people delivering best-in-class solutions, all within a higher quality and seamless client experience. Our clients are served by 13 banks who are leaders in their own market. We have refocused our previously inward-looking organization towards our clients. We have reunified our client franchises, harmonized group segmentation and return coverage and day-to-day decision to our banks and within our banks to the frontline. This model relies on both a clear unified framework of reference and our diverse talent who have the best understanding of the local market and dynamics. Talent which is critical for us to attract, retain and develop, which is why we hired around 2,000 people and we are providing them with circa 30 hours of training to maintain pace within digitization, product development, risk and ESG. Each market is now equally served by our group product factories, which we pulled out from the individual banks and centralized. These in-house factories leverage our group-wide scale and scope also to support an ecosystem of top-class partners. The most recent example is Mastercard. We signed a groundbreaking partnership in June, the first time any large commercial bank had put in place a single card-exclusing multi-market strategy of this scale in Europe. This partnership underscores our one Unicredit approach and our further unifier across all of our markets. The centralization of our factories and group-wide partners, combining with de-layering, simplification of processes and way of working, training and putting back decisions, Capabilities in the right places are delivering the divisional result you have witnessed today and in the last 10 quarters. Best in class in each market, in each business. All of these pillars are being facilitated and enhanced by a gradually more streamlined and group-wide approach to technology and operation. The first phase of our digital evolution is nearing completion, taking back control of our heavily fragmented and outsourced technology, bringing it in-house and selectively investing in it. We have hired more than 700 developers since 2022 and are upskilling our people to ensure that we have the right capabilities, engaging our providers from a group standpoint instead of individually, and streamlining the way of working to lower cost and, most importantly, time to market. We have invested in cleaning and simplifying products and processes, freeing up resources, time and investment dollars, which can be repositioned towards what we really need. The second phase will be the gradual transformation to a modern digital and data-driven organization, which will see the acceleration of automation design of new tools and best-in-class platforms to improve our client responsiveness and more efficiency in the increasing of our consumption of technology. All of this is united by a holistic culture driven by core values and a common set of principles chosen by our people and embodied in our actions. Our industrial and cultural transformation has powered our last 10 quarters, delivered differentiated performance, and re-based our key financial metrics. We now have a sustainable competitive advantage that we are determined to further consolidate. Let me take you through our new transform core financial KPIs and their drivers. We believe we have cost leadership. This is critical to maintain a differentiated level of profitability, particularly given recent and prospective inflationary pressures. It is also critical to maintain our edge over fintechs and other market players. We have moved from force to efficiency leadership in Q1. This is a structural change versus the past and is driven by targeted cost reduction that does not affect but rather invests and propels the quality of our revenue growth. In absolute terms, we have reduced our cost base since 2017 by 18%. Critically, however, since 2021, this was done while substantially propelling and increasing both gross and net revenue rather than shrinking them. We aim to continue and even strengthen this competitive advantage. Quality revenue growth. We transformed both the growth and quality of our earnings. We moved from revenue laggard to revenue leader, delivering 10 successive quarters of top-tier quality growth. We fundamentally transformed our ability to grow our revenue base while improving our mix. Targeted quality revenue growth has meant being disciplined on risk, delivering EVA positive new business and focusing on fees and other capital light EVA positive sources. net revenue to rwa improved from tenths to third whilst fees to rwas improved from fifth to second as we're strengthening our factories we have and will continue to address weaknesses generated by past retrenchment but so are selling or constraining quality businesses We have made significant progress in rebuilding our high value added client content in a number of ways. Firstly, organically, by hiring best in class talent attracted by our ability to deliver 15 million clients across Europe in a captive fashion. This is the case in both advisory and capital market and client risk management demonstrated by the caliber of talent now in house and the visible results. These are targeted to our existing client base. Secondly, by selectively internalizing critical parts of the value chain, for example in asset management, building central product selection and packaging able to deliver projects such as Nova and OneMarkets. Thirdly, through our two-way partnership with best-in-class product providers such as Allianz, Asimut, and more recently Mastercard. Finally, we are reviewing further opportunities of growth. For example, in payments, both corporate and retail, where we see a significant opportunity, and in unit linked, where we could internalize our dominant business in Italy. All of this requires significant investment in talent, in training, in technology to both power group-wide factories and local distribution channels and deliver seamless integration between them. Let me give you an example to explain that point. Let's take insurance. We have already rationalized our providers from nine to four and transformed them into partners. Today, Allianz designs best-in-class protection products tailored for our clients. Together, we have trained our people and provided insights to our clients. The result is a step up in our Italian protection market share to 14%. We're taking it even further. An integrated tech platform at group level is being launched, allowing real-time access to product with streamlined processes and technology solution. This will further power our growth in the segment. Our transformed quality revenue capacity is another competitive advantage that we will continue to focus on. Structural... lower cost of risk. Over the past few years, our gross and net NPs have fallen dramatically, respectively to 2.6% and 1.4%. Our underlying cost of risk has structurally declined from at least 40 to 50 basis points to 20 to 25 basis points, so halved. subject to confirmation within a longer time series. Indeed, our underlying cost of risk, excluding Russia and overlays, between 2021 and 2023, year-to-date, has been well below 20 basis points, reaching single-digit basis points over each one of the last six quarters. it has benefited from a particularly benign environment and write-backs from repayments, which underscore how conservative we are on staging, classification, and provisioning. Generally, this is due to the substantially higher quality of our credit portfolio as compared to the past that we have markedly accelerated since 2021. Second, the substantial more conservative, absolute and relative to peers, both backward and forward-looking staging and provisioning policy. We are covered much higher in every NPE stage. We believe we have moved firmly at the forefront of our peer group in this matter and are better prepared than any to weather the current macro and geopolitical uncertainty. As a result... Cost and cost of risk are much more within our control now and in the next few years than most of the market had realized. We are prepared with this healthy provision and overlays in a quality credit portfolio to provide a solid buffer and positively differentiate cost of risk, both for now and in case the market turns. This is another competitive advantage and we are determined to continue strengthening it. Capital excellence. Our transformed capital efficiency has been a major contributor to our sustainable performance, and we ranked first on this measure relative to peers in Q1. This has three main drivers. First, we focus on deploying. We focus on deploying capital above the cost of equity. 77% of corporate RWAs are now to SCVA positive clients as we improve the profitability of our legacy portfolio and our discipline in new business. Second, we improve the profitability of our commitments via cross-sell and pricing, or ultimately exiting or securitizing positions where ROACAP is creative. Third, we are growing capital like products. This is yet another competitive advantage that supports our return on tangible equity and organic capital generation. We are determined to continue building upon it. Our P&L advantages combine with those of our balance sheet, creating performance with strengths. Our CT1 remains best in class among peers. We continue to grow capital in spite of our best in class distribution, thanks to our outsized organic capital generation. Our liquidity ratio remains strong, sustainable, and well above peer average, allowing better management of margins. We maintain a high-quality credit portfolio with conservative proactive staging and provisioning, further improved by high overlays and lower default rate. We are focused on investing wisely to maintain profitable risk-adjusted return for the long term, to the benefit of all our stakeholders and in many forms. These last two slides have sought to explain what a dramatically different group Unicredit is today, despite being less than two years into our strategic plan. Our commitment to continuing this fundamental and holistic transformation remains, as does our commitment to delivering strong, sustainable results and distribution. It is our knowledge of how much more this transformation can unlock that gives us confidence in the future beyond the effect of this positive macro. Let's now get back to the present. This is our tenth consecutive quarter of quality profitable growth. We have balanced our three levers to deliver this in a sustainable fashion. Net revenues rose significantly in both the half and the quarter, driven by quality NII growth and a tightly managed pass-through. Fees remain robust, especially if we exclude the impact of lower current account fees in Italy that had not yet been waived by all banks. This is 20 million adverse per month. And cost of risk at very low levels, both given macro and the new change unicredit I have just described. Of particular note is the dynamic of our deposit pass-through, below expectation at circa 24%, and showing signs of approaching more normalized levels outside of Italy. This supports our new pass-through guidance. We have been able to more than compensate the inflationary pressure on cost, both in the half and in the quarter, while continuing to invest. Integration costs enable us to continue on this path, and we're stepping them up. The positive momentum in our gross operating profit continues again, beating expectation it rose close to 52% in Q2 and 42% in H1. our capital excellence continues with both outsized capital generation and further consolidation of best-in-class CET1. Unicredit return on tangible equity continues to rise and we are surpassing our peers on this metric, having significantly lagged until a few years ago. At the same time, thanks to our substantial share buyback at depressed valuation, we are further propelling a very significant per share value creation. We are fairly unique in this respect. Let me take you now through each country or region. Our Italian business had yet another excellent quarter, demonstrating its ability to deliver sustained quality profitable growth and outstanding returns well above peers. Net revenue rose 19% year-over-year to $5.2 billion, gross revenue up 23%. This was driven by NII growth of 66% thanks to strict management of the pass-through. Fees were down 5.2% year-on-year, mostly due to active relief provided to customers on current accounts applied since April. Without such relief, our fees would have been down only 2.6%. We saw good results in assets under custody, products and excellent ones in protection, as I was commenting. Costs fell 2% in Italy, thanks to our continued focus on simplification and streamlining. And despite continuing investment, both in the frontline, with circa 370 new hires in 2023, and in our branches with circa 550 completely renewed branches from the beginning of 2022. RWAs were reduced by 12%. As a result, we achieved a strong operating and capital efficiency with a 35.5% cost-income ratio and 9.1% net revenue to RWAs. Profit before tax rose 31% to 2.9 billion. ROAC exceeded 25% and the region contributed 86 basis points or 2.7 billion of organic capital generation to the group. Our commitment to our community, clients and employees remain undiminished. this quarter, delivering, amongst other things, the launch of a second tranche of Unicredit per l'Italia, a 10 billion package to support clients, both individuals and business. We also introduced a package of up to 1 billion to support those impacted by the May floods and offered mortgages dedicated to energy sustainability to help family and individuals in the realization of their housing projects. Today's strong set of results and the very concrete steps we have taken to support families and businesses confirm that financial and social objectives are not in conflict, demonstrating that Unicredit can deliver for the benefit of our investors and of Italy as a whole. Germany's structural transformation continued to power excellent results. Net revenues were up 13% year-over-year. Gross revenues were up 14%. This was driven by NII up 9% and fees up 5%, driven in part by the successful delivery of our capital-like corporate financial advisory business and also asset management fees. cost fell nearly 5.3% in Germany, with the ongoing transformation more than compensating for inflation and setting a new run rate for the future. RWAs were down 5% year over year. We also achieved a very strong operating and capital efficiency in Germany with a 41.7% cost income ratio and 7.3% net revenue on RWA ratio. Profit before tax was up 36% at 1.3 billion. ROAC reached 18.7% and the region delivered 57 basis points or 1.8 billion of organic capital to the group. We continue to invest in our clients and our frontline, delivering the introduction of a cashless advisory branch model for local high quality customer advice. Our corporate client portal has released further functionalities, including the introduction of power of attorney self-service. This quarter has seen Germany continue to deliver simplification with integration of COO and digital to deliver a full end-to-end and customer-focused approach. All of this is resulting in us being named top employer in Germany for the 13th time in a row and receiving the Edge Move certification for D&I in 2022. Central Europe. Central Europe's quota was defined by consistent stability and delivery of high profitability. Net revenues were up 29% year over year. Gross were up 27%. This was driven by NII up 39%, fees slightly down following general market pressure, but up in transaction and financing. Costs remained flat year over year. As the discipline continued across all country and our focus on operating and capital efficiency was reflected in a 38.5 cost income ratio and 7% net revenue on RWA ratio. Profit before tax was up 65% to 1.1 billion. ROARC was 20.6% and the region delivered sorry, delivered 29 basis points or 0.9 billion of capital organically. We have made significant progress in retail digitalization, signing up 67,000 new clients in first half 23 in Czech Republic and Slovakia alone. We launched our first green mortgage covered bond in the Czech Republic and succeeded in obtaining the Green Start certificate in Slovenia. We established the inaugural Girls Go Finance event to strengthen girls' understanding of finances through our partnership with Teach Austria, an initiative we intend to roll out across all of our Teach for All markets. Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe profitability continued at pace this quarter, driven by business intensity and further efficiency gains. Net revenues were up 47% year over year, with gross revenue up 31%. This was powered by both NII up 44% and fees up 4%. Our focus on active cost management continued to balance a continuous efficiency drive with investment in digitalization and automation. Our focus on operating and capital efficiency was reflected in a 34.1% cost-income ratio and 9.2% net revenue on RWA ratio. Profit before tax landed at 800 million. ROAC was 34.4% and the region delivered 18 basis points or 600 million of capital organically. We continue to invest in our network and business and customer transformation. This quarter we introduce cashless branches in Bulgaria. we effectively balanced our S with our E commitments, rolling out a number of social programs for vulnerable groups focused on youth in Romania, whilst also supporting the employees of this group. At the same time, we saw 170 million of new lending to renewable energy within Bulgaria. Client solution. As we have discussed extensively about our investment in our factories, we will now provide just some key highlights and additional data for this quarter. Client solution revenue was resilient in the first half and relative to a strong base. Revenue fell 3% year on year and would have been up 1% excluding Russia. Corporate solution revenue fell 2% in the first half, but grew by 3%, excluding Russia. Overall fees were up 5% year-on-year, with RWA consumption down 13%, driving record profitability. Transaction and payment revenue rose 12% year-on-year, while advisory and capital markets was up 7% and reached the number one fee ranking in its home market. Client risk management revenue fell 13%, but would have been flat, excluding Russia. Specialized lending was down 9% year-on-year, but flat, normalized for TLTRO, and one large one-off. Individual solution revenue fell 4% year-over-year. Strong performance in protection continued, while life insurance remained under pressure, particularly as we kept discipline around Ramo Primo. Brokerage and custody showed the strongest growth, up 90% lead by strong client demand for bond products. Our commitment to our purpose begins with us and the actions and decisions we take with respect to our own people, our clients, and those communities that we are increasingly part of. These actions were evident in the overview that I gave for each one of the regions. action targeted for the need and challenges of each local market. But beyond that, whether it is closing the gender pay gap, the partnership we forged to fight discrimination, supporting arts and culture, the work of our foundation, which will now invest this year alone 20 million in projects to support youth and education of our Unicred Start Lab, Our commitment to deliver on our purpose remains a central tenet of our strategic plan. I am now handing over to Stefano, who will provide more detail on our numbers on H1.