Unicaja Banco Sa Ord

Good morning everyone and thank you very much for joining us today for the result presentation of the fourth quarter 2024 at UNICAJA. We will be presenting a summary of our strategic priorities for 2025-27 as well. The presentation today has been uploaded to our corporate website prior to the opening of the market, and it's also on the CNMV website. There are five sections today. Our CEO, Isidro Rubiales, to my right, and Pablo Gonzalez, our CFO, is also present. They will be going through the presentations. Isidro will start with a brief summary of the year. Pablo then will give a bit more color on the financial key figures. And then Isidro will take the floor again to share a bit more information about our ambition going forward at the new strategic plan for the next three years. And then we will conclude the presentation and open the Q&A round. We will first give the floor to people asking questions here in person, and then we will give the floor to questions over the phone, first in Spanish and then in English. And if there are any further questions after that, we will check via the Zoom link whether there are any questions. Without further ado, Isidro, you may take the floor. Muy bien.

Thank you, Jaime, for the introduction. Good morning. Thank you for attending this recent presentation. Given the fact that closing the fiscal year and a period was particularly relevant, we decided to hold this presentation in this press room in order to share this event with all of you, those who are here on site and those who are connected remotely. Let me start out with a quick introduction that shows where we are standing and where we come from. We have embarked. upon a process after completing the integration of a corporate transaction with Iberbank. after going through a number of difficulties, but we have come to the end of that process. We wanted to change our image and our logo, therefore placing our odds on the process of changing our culture in the organization while preserving the values that have accompanied us throughout the process. Therefore, we now have 40% of female senior managers in our board of directors, and there are also independent directors right now. We have completed our senior management team. We are fully satisfied with the final composition of our team because we have brought on board A lot of outside talent, Luis Colorado, Juan Medina, and Estrella Bota, have joined senior management of Unicaja in order to develop our strategic plan. We are also leveraging ourselves upon some key strengths. We continue to be close. to customers in the territories with financial ratios that are very sound, which from a capital perspective and liquidity perspective enable us to face our strategic plan standing on sound grounds in order to carry out different actions. So we have been prudent in managing risk, as you know, and after the presentation you will see that we have been able to keep cost of risk at a moderate level. From that standpoint, we're now ambitious and we are embarking upon a new scenario going forward in the next three years with a special focus on our commercial activity with two key strategic pillars, transforming retail banking on the one hand and also transforming corporate banking. Our goal is to reach sustained structural profit. Our income statement in 2024 reflects that. Some of these results after a number of steps taken in 2023, you can see our structural profitability always adjusting our results to the credit profile of the institution. Now that we have set out the solvency levels of the organization, our structural profitability target, we want to increase shareholder remuneration. One of the highlights of 2024 is our capacity to fulfill our shareholder remuneration target. So that is where we are coming from, and this is where we are heading to. This is a picture of 2024 and our results by year end, which show how we have established structural profitability, aiming at sustainable profitability over time. These are some figures. We have paid out an interim dividend last year that accounted for six cents per share. Now, the Board of Directors will approve a final share of 7.4 euros per share, therefore If we compare this with the $0.05 per share that we paid the prior fiscal year, we are multiplying the shareholder remuneration by 2.7 times year-on-year. We have been able to do this thanks to increased profitability and an increased payout. Therefore, in 2024, dividend will account for 60%. credit book quality and the capital ratios achieved over the year. As for shareholder remuneration, this accounts for a profitability of 11% in terms of payment in cash. If we add $100 million as a result of the share buyback program, remuneration for shareholders will reach $444 million. 344 for dividends and 100 million as a result of the share buyback. Therefore, we will be reaching 100, actually this will be 14% higher compared to 132 million paid in 2023. Therefore, we are talking about an increase of 14 year on year and 77% as for shareholder remuneration and dividend payout for 2024. Now, after this quick introduction, We are going to discuss the business activity during fiscal 2024. And here we have four key headlines showing the highlights achieved during 2024 as for business activity. Customer business volume improved by 2% over the period, mainly leveraged by Increased deposits by nearly 5% of balance sheet funds reached 7.1% year-on-year. A new lending in the private sector afterwards. Pablo will give you more color on this. This accounted for an 18% growth year-on-year. However, credit volumes came down slightly, even though there was some stabilization in terms of private lending. From a profitability perspective, we reached a net profit of $573 million. We two-folded 2023 results, and we believe that... As of 2023, and thanks to actions taken in 2024, we have been able to reach sustainable results for the medium and long term. $573 million, that was the net profit, 115% more vis-a-vis 2023, therefore exceeding our guidance. Our OTE adjusted at 12.5% is now higher, and therefore the cost to income is now 44%, therefore 4%. less gear on gear. We have been able to achieve all these results, providing positive credit quality at the same time. We have been reducing MPAs for a long time. In 2024, we were able to reduce MPAs by 18% and foreclosed assets by 28%. We have done this through MPA coverage, which have grown up to 71% vis-a-vis 68%. Q4 2023, and the cost of risk has been controlled, therefore falling to 23 basis points. We have been able to do this, boosting solvency and liquidity with a CET1FL ratio accounting for 15.1% plus 40 basis points vis-a-vis Q4 2023 with a total remuneration in 2024 of 77%. We have been doing this by keeping liquidity ratios, which account for some of the best in the European banking system. And now let me hand over to Pablo, who will give you more details about 2024 results. This is our guidance performance except for commissions and costs. We can say that most of our financials performed according to guidance with net interest income standing at 14%. We were able to improve our guidance by year end. Growth eventually was 14%. Commissions fell by 4%, as you know. During 2024, we were particularly focused on retaining customers and writing off any commissions that do not add value. As for costs, they grew by 5%. As you know, in this case, there are several agreements that were particularly important, talking about agreements with individuals. The cost of risk. reached 23 basis points by contrast with 30 to 35 basis points, which was the guidance. As for ROTE, it stood at 10.4%. Now, Pablo, I give you the floor. Thank you. Isidro?

Let us now go through the commercial activity. We're going to start with customer funds. And I would highlight, as a strength of our franchise, the increase by more than 5% of total customer funds. This is broken down in 4.7% growth in balance customer funds and 7% of balance sheet funds. Moving on to wealth management and insurance. I would highlight a 12% increase in assets under management since 2022 and a 20% if you consider mutual funds exclusively, which is our main line of work. I would highlight that if you look at net subscriptions, we've been growing steadily for two years, and this year we have grown by 1.7 million. The boost we've given to asset management is actually very relevant, It's starting to yield fruit, and we see our market share improve as well. Thanks to this, we've improved our revenue from assets management and insurance by more than 10%, and it now accounts for 17% of the gross income. If you look at lending, following on Isidro's remarks, I would highlight... a stable drop this quarter, slightly above 1% and 4% for the year. This is basically half of the drop that we had last year. I would like to highlight that if you look at corporate loans, 8%, Well, half of that is the amortization of the ICO loans. We have some 940 million left out. This will make the book very stable. And starting next year, we can have a very positive outlook, even growth, consider growth of the lending book. This stabilization of lending, which we have observed for two quarters now, is driven by the growth in new subscriptions. And this happens across all lending books at around some 20%. And I would highlight particularly corporates and freelancers who grow by 30% this year. Moving on to the P&L. So I would highlight the growth this quarter. I would highlight how the margins, the NII is very stable at 8%. This yields a 14% year-on-year growth, basically. We were foreseeing a slight increase. It's eventually become a significant increase of our net income, and this proves our capabilities to create margin. Fees have increased by 4.7 this quarter, and thanks to that, we've been able to offset the 5% drop we mentioned earlier. All this drives the gross margin up by 15%, and the operating margin, taking into account the 5% increase of operating expenses, is at 14%. All in all, profit before taxes is at 120%, $816,573,000 after taxes, which is more than double the net income last year. Now, if we go into the details of the P&L, let's start digging into the NII as we normally do. I would highlight that through the year, from the end of 23 to date, the EUR has dropped by 140 basis points over 12 months, and it's the main rate used in our portfolios, particularly our mortgage portfolio, and as a result, This has yielded a 13-point drop in the yield from customers. Twelve points are accounted by the fact that This all happens earlier on in the year, so we've been able to stabilize the cost of deposits through the year. And then there is one relevant point I would like to highlight, which is that if we want to look at the real picture of the margin we get from our clients, we need to look at the cost of deposits and lending. And we've added also all the assets and the liabilities as cost and income. as could be, for example, fixed income portfolio, the loan to deposits, to duly reflect the margin that some clients generate, particularly liability clients. We need to take into account all investments, right? So I think that the improvement of this margin is quite telling. If you look at the evolution of the interest rate, we've been able to make our customer yield stable at around 80%. Now, if we move on to the bridge and the evolution this quarter, I would say the cost of deposits is more expensive at around 1 million. This is due to greater deposits in balance. The average cost, as you can see, has not increased, but the 1 billion additional deposits that we have have impact. because they are deposited, let's say, in the central bank, that would be the $7 million in impact. meaning the evolution of deposits, you might think it's negative, but it is positive because it's a greater ability to get revenue. And you can see this in the liquidity line. There's $11 million in recoveries. The more significant negative impact is the reappreciation of loans. And you see a $23 million drop in lending. $18 million out of that is due to the price and the rest due to the volume, the fact that our lending book drops. smaller. Additionally, I would mention two more points that offset the drop. Mission issuances are done at a better cost. We not only need to see at the impact on clients because the way to partially offset less revenue from the lending book is done through issuances which are issued at a variable rate so they offset further $7 million. And then with excess liquidity, we've been able to beef up our fixed income portfolio by $2 million. So beyond the customer spread, there are other variables to make the NII stable, I would say. in a nutshell. If you look at fee income, it's positive through the quarter, 4.7. Basically, this is driven by the non-banking fees, particularly mutual funds and insurance. And I would also mention that payments and accounts have progressed in a very steady manner. We've been making an effort through the year, as Isidro has mentioned, to manage fees from these services, and we've tried to steer them towards higher added value services, such as non-banking fees. That's the outcome of that 8% in the year in... that you see. Because of this, the evolution and the contribution of non-banking fees amounts to 41 and 45% respectively. They're slightly below the fees we get from transactional fees, but starting next year, we do think that the weight of non-banking fees will be greater. We assume this trend will continue into 2025 and beyond. Moving on to other income, I would highlight a significant improvement this year driven by less contributions to the deposit guarantee fund amounting to $88 million in Q4 2023. There are none this year. And the contribution to the SRF have also dropped. This is partially offset by an increase of the windfall tax up to $68 million in 2023 and $88 in 2024. And we've been doing and the other operations we've been doing this year. If you look at operating expenses, I would highlight that growth is fairly in line at 5.5%. That's the increase in operating expenses, and this is driven by personnel expenses. We've reached agreements with the... the representatives of our headcount and we have updated the remuneration of our employees and we also see a better because we have a better profitability we've been able to offer variable pay to part of our employees so this increase in operating expenses comes along with a better cost-to-income ratio. We've moved from 48 to 44 percent. Another silver lining, the cost of risk this quarter. It's at 24 basis points that I can't, 20 basis points, sorry, and 23 basis points for the year. We're actually considering 35 basis points, and this is basically driven by the high quality of the assets. If you look at the total provisions and its evolution, they have improved significantly from 546 to 319. This is basically driven by less, well, extraordinary provisions that we had to do for foreclosed real estate. We've gone from 286 to 15 million only. And if you look at loan loss provisions, they are less than what we had to provision last year. And if you look at other provisions, there is a slight increase there, driven by two facts. First, the nine millions, the adjustment of the tax that took place last year, and then the restructuring costs that we've registered this quarter to... renew the headcount. Now, moving on to profitability, I would highlight a significant improvement in profitability, basically driven by bigger income, 15% bump up in revenues and provisions have dropped by 42%, which more than offset that 5% increase in costs that I mentioned. We've moved from 371 million to 816 million, in profit before taxes and 573 after taxes as mentioned as a result. This is all reflected in our regular profitability ratios. The return on tangible equity is moving up to 9% from a 4% adjusted to a 12.5% CET ratio. It yields a 10.4% ROTE. well above our initial guidance. Now, another piece of good news is regarding non-performing loans. This has been a focus of our management in-house. We've been able to reduce non-performing loans and also for closed assets. So there's an 18% reduction year-on-year and 4% quarter-on-quarter in NPLs. And then the NPL ratio is down at 2.7%. We compare very well vis-a-vis our peers. And the NPL Coverage has increased by 2% this quarter and 4% year-to-date. This NPL coverage is very cautious, particularly taking into account that more than 50% of our NPLs are asset-backed. And if you look at non-performing loans... particularly foreclosed assets, the reduction is even greater. It stands at 28%. And the total reduction of non-performing assets and foreclosed assets is 22%. And the incoming flow is relatively low, I would add. The net accounting value, meaning the outstanding risk of foreclosed assets, is at 220 million, and the coverage ratio is 77 percent. Now, if you look at the whole picture, we're going from 1.8 million to 1.2 million approx, and we've increased coverage. We've gone from 74% to 71%. So the net NPA ratio, the actual real risk we have on balance is at 1.4%. These numbers give us peace of mind, and this removes the legacy we have with all those corporate operations in the past. Looking at solvency, I think Isidro has touched upon this already. This year, we've distributed more than 150 basis points in capital, and also we've been able to improve our fully loaded capital ratio by 40 basis points. says that we're very capable of creating value for shareholders sustainably. We have 40 basis points in improvement this quarter. If you look at the fully loaded ratio, this has been offset in the dividend payout. We were paying out 50%. And as the policy has changed, or rather the board has proposed to increase the payout to 60%, once we've made the adjustment for the year, it has absorbed the capital income for this quarter. The reason why there is a 30 basis point drop this year is a result of the valuation adjustments and the drop that has taken place this quarter. Now, moving on to the embryo ratios, they're up this year slightly at 26.9, and we still have a reasonable buffer in the CET1 and the MDA buffer. I don't want to go into the details of liquidity, as Isidro has mentioned already. We remain one of the financial entities with the best liquidity ratios. Loan-to-deposit is at 67%, and the NSFR at 159%. The request is at 100%, so we are very much accustomed to very high levels, and we don't really see the operational leverage capacity that UNICAHA has. If you look at the fixed income portfolio, we've increased the portfolio slightly, and we've generated liquidity. We've gone from 27.3 to 27.8. Remember that 85% of this portfolio is at an amortized cost, meaning it's a structural portfolio that manages the returns. We obtain from managing our clients' liabilities. The performance has increased slightly at 2.6%. That's the yield evolution, and we manage the interest rates actively to maximize as much as possible the yield. I will just mention that... Well, the makeup of the portfolio is basically public debt, and the risk profile is very low. And with that, I will give the floor back to Isidro. He will discuss the main lines of our strategic plan and conclusions. Thank you, Pablo.

To kick off, we have been able to stabilize our situation after some difficult times, as it is normally the case when you have to do operational integration. We, since the beginning of the crisis, we have been engaged in different integration processes, as a result of which we have been able to become an institution with a national footprint. Fiscal 2024 enabled us to report structural profitability adjusted to our risk profile. We are now very excited to embark upon a new cycle for the next three years. We intend to become a universal bank that is closed to all, driving profitability in a sustained manner, building capacities to guarantee that we may continue being both solvent and leaders in the future, always leveraging serves upon the territories where we are present, always being close to our customers without compromising our commercial activity in other territories. So we intend to remain leaders while building business capacities. We are going to carry out this plan by continuing to carry out a number of structural measures as we have been doing so far. Also leveraging ourselves upon our strengths. We have been able to build capital. We have been able to maintain financial positions in terms of liquidity. In a very solvent manner, we also intend to improve where we can improve. We intend to diversify our revenue sources when we have leeway to do so. This is our plan and our goal. and we are going to implement two strategic lines. We intend to transform retail banking, and we intend to grow in terms of business and corporate banking. We have a number of drivers for that purpose. We will leverage ourselves upon people, technology, agility, and operational excellence. We have been taking clear-cut steps. We want to take a customer-centric approach. We want to give value to customers. And we want to turn or become the benchmark institution for our customers. There are also some cross-cutting pillars in order to boost other lines of business, for example, sustainability, AI, customer experience, digital banking, risk models, distribution models, and the possibility of entering new partnerships and launching new products in order to act as business catalysts. This sustainable business model should enable us to render more than 1.6 billion in sustainable profitability in the coming years. This will provide an alluring shareholder remuneration. In 2024, we reached 77. Our commitment is to provide a return above 85% in the next three years. We shall do so by keeping solvency levels of the minimum 12%, which is the reference. I'm talking about CT1F fully loaded capital that is going to be in excess of 14% in the coming years. Now let me share with you some key concepts concerning our main lines of action. First, we're going to engage in retail banking transformation. So far, we have been implementing a number of structural changes and measures in order to focus on the retail banking segment. For us, this is a core line of business. We want this transformation to lead to a new customer experience for Unicaja's clients. We want to become the number one bank of choice for our customers. We're going to talk about customers again and again because we want to use this approach to improve our strategy, our customer experience, the customer satisfaction level. We have some new channels in place in order to enhance our relationship with customers, simplifying our product offering and re-engineering processes. will eventually lead to an enhanced customer experience. There are three key areas concerning retail banking where we intend to continue improving. Mortgages, on the one hand, this is going to be a core product for us. The market share was 6% in the past. We want to regain 6% market share. Therefore, we have to grow by 40 basis points. As for consumer loans, as you know, Our starting point was quite small. Our aim is to two-fold our production so that In the past months, we have been able to produce more and more consumer loans by leveraging ourselves upon acquiring new customers. As a result, pre-granted loans have increased. We also have a multi-channel approach. can distribute products both through our branches and through the online channels. We also seek new strategic partnerships that can be true catalysts. We have reached two agreements, one with Santa Lucia. We want to grow by 25% in new insurance premiums in the next three years. As for private and personal banking, We will also focus on a number of action plans. We will be launching new products such as a robo-advisor and broker and planning tools in order to provide better quality planning and advice for customers. We will also strengthen our own asset manager. We surpassed $10 billion in resources under management just recently. So we want to... reach 30% all in all in terms of balance sheet resources. This is what we have been doing over the past months. Pablo mentioned that we now have positive subscriptions amounting to 700 million as of 2024. We intend to continue engaging in new partnerships to provide better services while exploring any other scenarios that might enable us to formalize other agreements in order to act as true catalysts for our banking and non-banking businesses. Eventually, our goal is to increase our diversification in terms of revenue sources. We have a big focus on mortgage loans, but as a result of the strategic plan, we want to diversify our revenue sources by leveraging ourselves on retail, banking, self-employed customers, and also through commissions and fees. We have also been challenged by a growth in the business and corporate banking segment. in order to set our strategic ambition for the next three years. And even though the stock has come down, actually that drop has been stabilized. As Pablo said, the drop in credit in early 2025 was 8%, but now we have been able to increase production through new lending. We have been able to grow by 31%. We have been able to stabilize this figure at 4% thanks to the amortization of some ICO guaranteed loans, which accounted for a big stock and which have somehow upset the capacity of reaching new lending formalizations. We also intend to leverage ourselves upon current customers in order to grow in terms of the lending book. by 25%. That's our goal in terms of shared wallet lending to clients. We also intend to keep on enhancing our customer base with some clear-cut measures. We want to improve customer experience among corporates, and one of the key elements is to make progress in order to introduce substantial improvements to our online banking system. We also intend to grow in terms of market share among SMEs and corporate customers. We will increase our production with current customers. We have been doing so reaching 25% in the national territory, but we will try to go beyond Madrid and Barcelona. We intend to become, again, catalysts in order to boost activity. We have also focused on on increasing the weight of our corporate banking segment in terms of working capital. Right now, we intend to move from 11% to 24%, as you can see on the slide. That is the best way to... be close to cooperates and render a better service. We believe that we need to provide specialized services or specialized segment-oriented services. We also intend to reinforce Our response, apart from the product developments and technological enhancements, we will also reinforce all of the team members that are engaged in wholesale banking, and we intend to increase the number of SMEs and corporates by 300. Okay, here you can see some business enablers. This is critical for any institution that wants to enhance its activity. We are going to focus on technology and AI. We intend to invest in infrastructure and cybersecurity. We also intend to reinforce everything that is concerned with process resilience. that sometimes customers have some issues using digital banking. Therefore, our goal is to render digital banking more resilient and efficient. We have been able to make some improvements to enhance our online banking tool for retail banking customers. We will continue driving digital banking because we believe that this concept is complementary to providing on-site service and we believe that having a good relationship with customers and a one-channel approach is key in order to continue promoting online banking. Agility and operational excellence. There are already some use cases concerning AI. We believe that AI can be used in order to enhance processes and improve the relationship with customers so that the interaction of between customers and the institution can be better. We have identified 30 strategic projects that should enable us to boost our capacities, improve our processes, and eventually provide a better customer experience. In addition to these 30 strategic projects, right now we are also helping people to carry out their activity. but using AI-driven tools. We will see how this all evolves in the future and how it will be embedded into our activities across the board. Again, we also want to build a new commercial management portal. We are going to design and implement an operational excellence center. because operational excellence will be key. This will also be connected to AI as a tool to enhance processes. And finally, we will also focus on talent and culture. I believe that we are now transforming our organization from a cultural perspective, After overcoming a number of roadblocks, we had to focus on improving our relationship with our employees. I believe that we have carried out some key developments in order to reach true customers. engagement by our employees. We want to continue working in that respect. We are committed to engage our employees so that they have a true sense of belonging. We intend to do some reskilling initiatives so that at least 600 employees can be trained for some specific areas. We want them to be trained on new areas Capacities, we will also hire some new employees. We intend to hire more than 350 employees for different areas concerned, for example, with IA, user experience, customer experience, technology, and risks, respectively. We made a big effort at the end of 2024 in order to allocate provisions so that we can make an additional investment to hire more people, to hire more than 350 people, as I said before. We are also making extra efforts in the amount of $350 million for recurrent And despite these increased costs, and thanks to the sustainability of recurring costs, our cost-to-income ratio will be below 50% between 2025 and 2027. We will continue to focus on sustainability in 2024. We already showed our commitment to the environment through the issuance of green bonds. Our goal is to reach $1.6 billion. We also have some decarbonization targets for three portfolios accounting for 70% of lending to the private sector. We are also committed to society. Unicaja's shareholder composition, as you know, is characterized by many shareholder foundations, which keep us close to the territory, and they are also a catalyst. to remain close to our customers. Now we have been able to pay out more than 135 million in dividends for shareholder foundations, which in addition to 132 million euros on account of taxes show our commitment to society. We will continue to provide financial education to our customers. We also intend to contribute to a more sustainable world by providing great finance to corporates and individuals. We remain committed to our employees. And our clients, as for employees, we continue to provide incentive plans and different KPIs from a sustainability perspective. In 2024, we carried out all these actions, which will keep unaltered during 2025. We will have a new... transition plan and we will have new functionalities and new features in order to calculate our footprint. These will remain the afford as strategic target for us. All these aspects are aimed at securing that our achievements in 2024 are sustainable over time from a profitability standpoint. Therefore, today we are committing ourselves to reaching these profitability targets in the next three years. On the left-hand side, you can see that over the past years, we've posted $1.17 billion. But our commitment for the next years is to grow by 40%, reaching $1.6 billion or more. All these results will always be in excess of $500 million. This is not a one-off, even though 2024 was an exceptional year, not for us, but actually for the whole financial system as a result of interest rates. We are now being faced by challenging interest rates with an Euribor fall, Euribor being on an average of 2.1%. We are managing, however, our interest rate levels, and we believe that we will be able to reach more than 500 in 2025. always being an excess of 1.4 and a cost-to-income ratio below 50%. So this sustainable structural profitability will boost our shareholder remuneration, coupled with very high solvency and liquidity parameters. We closed our fiscal year 2024 with a 77 result distribution out of $573 million, and our shareholder remuneration will be in excess of 85% in the coming three years for the next cumulative period. And we shall do this by keeping our payout, which will be subjected to the consideration of our AGM. We, therefore, intend to keep this level at 60%. Twenty-five percent will come from additional payments. We will decide whether these are share buyback programs or whether we'll be using any other extraordinary dividends. We will keep a CET while fully loaded, capital 14%, which is far above the minimum required amounts. This accounts for more than 40% of shareholder remuneration for the next three years, more than 9% in terms of annual ordinary dividend yields without considering any extraordinary remuneration. We shall not carry out any share buyback program in 2025 because the payout has already been increased to 60%. We are going to remain seasonal in the short term, but as of 2026, as subject to relevant supervisor authorizations, we might engage in share buyback programs or any other programs to pay additional dividends in excess of that 60% that we implemented in 2024 and that we are committing ourselves to maintain in the next three years during which the strategic plan will be enforced. Before we start with the Q&A session, and I'm sure that you look forward to asking questions, because I understand that you were able to go through the presentation before this conference. Let me, however, wrap up with the following remarks. This is the guidance for 2025. As I said before, net interest income will be about $1.4 billion. After we offset the fall in commissions and fees reported in 2024, as Pablo said, that was mainly due to the fact that we don't want to charge fees and commissions that do not add value to our relationships with customers. Therefore, 2025 will remain flat. Costs will grow by nearly 5%. The cost of risk will be in the north of 23 basis points. points, other provisions, especially after what happened over the past quarter and due to the fact that some employees agreed to retire voluntarily. We understand that after the efforts made in 2024 concerning legal risk provisions in 2025, this amount will be below 100 million euros. Business volume will grow by 2% year on year, and the ROTI will be close to 10% by the closing of 2025. Okay, some final remarks. To close off, I believe that we have already mentioned this. We have been able to post a historical result by 2024 year end. We will be remunerating our shareholders with the highest dividends ever in our history. We were able to make steady progress throughout the strategic plan by implementing a number of parameters to develop our commercial activity more effectively, standing on solid grounds. Therefore, we are now ready to face the next three-year period implementing a strategy which we deem to be quite ambitious and will enable us to improve our customer experience, our employee experience, improving our relationship with customers at the same time while boosting shareholder remuneration. We want to scale up to a greater structure of profitability reaching an ROTE above 10%. We also want to keep up with our profitability levels with a high solvency level. We have been able to generate capital over the past three years. We are committed to therefore keeping our shareholder remuneration by creating more capital as we have been doing so far. Therefore, in 2024, we were able to provide a shareholder remuneration that was 77% over our results. In 2025, 2027, we intend to go all the way up to 85%, always keeping our profitability at a stable level. Now we are going to open the floor for any questions that you may have.

Thank you very much, Isidro and Pablo. We're going to start with questions here in the room. If you may please introduce yourselves. We'll start with Paco here. Please state your name for those of us listening from afar. And we're going to limit it to two questions each, okay? Just to make sure everybody has time. Paco? Paco from Alantra. My first question is, The fact that you have a capital ratio above 15%, you haven't announced a share buyback problem the same way you did a year ago. You're committed to doing this in 2026, and you say you want to have short-term options. Therefore, my question is, are you considering any inorganic operations? And along that line, could you share the criteria for any inorganic operation or deal you would consider? Are you seeking diversification, integration of synergies? And financially speaking, does any M&A operation compete with the potential return of a share buyback or other strategic criteria? Yeah. was my first question and my second question regarding the corporate business the book continues to shrink less than earlier in the year but it's still shrinking your ambition is to grow therefore my question to you is what is needed to turn this around and go back to growth you have the human resources the technology the risk resources all in line, or do you still have work to do there? Where will growth be coming from, and can you quantify it? We're talking about a 50 basis point market share, but where do you really see that growth, and can you compare the profitability of the corporate segment with retail segment? Thank you, Paco. We have not announced a share buyback program. The good news that we are sharing today is an increased payout, dividend payout at 60%. And I think it's a relevant point also. Why aren't we committed to a shared buyback? Well, we are committed to doing a lot of things in this three-year period with supervisors. We are committing to returns over 85%, and there is a commitment to remunerate and return the capital that we generate to our shareholders. The truth is that as part of the need for improvement in this entity, we are analyzing potential catalysts that might help us increase profitability. Now, this requires analyzing the room for improvement. We're talking about consumption assets and corporates. We're not talking about corporate operations per se. We're talking about tactical solutions to invest part of that capital in tools portfolios agreements alliances partnerships that might help us with our purpose in the short-term strategy with a short-term strategy with improved remuneration to shareholders and we do need this one-year short-term window to look into options that might yield a better return to our shareholders. So we're making headway among many areas. There is nothing specific. Otherwise, we would communicate it to you. Now, what are we going to do with our corporate segment? I understand it is a challenge, a big one, and you have questions about it. So our ambition, our commitment is to do it. We have started working on it. We haven't developed many of the things in our strategic plan yet. I said that we've seen a significant drop in the lending book, and most of that is driven by the amortization of the portfolio given in the time. There's an exceptional volume of ICO-backed loans that, well, has now been repaid. So stabilization comes from... our ability to produce at present without really sharing the value of what we're going to do going forward. Our ambition is to continue to grow and this will be progressive. Of course, first we need to put our capabilities in place and then we need to deliver on the growth. Now, one of the main components to take into account is the the economy itself. We're moving towards lower interest rates. For many years, companies have been demanding for working capital rather than investments. We do think that in the current rate scenario and in the current economy, companies will need further funding. And there are some important catalysts we need to focus on. First, our clients. We have low rates of of participation with our own clients. So that's our natural pool to grow. We need to increase our share of wallet with them by 25%. We've developed many systems to develop the limits up to our growth limits, and we're going to increase lending to current clients based on these limits. And then we will be creating digital capabilities and products to grow in working capital. Over the last few years, we have not been active in working capital, and our clients can help us grow there too. Then we need to reinforce our commitment. We're going to increase our headcount by more than 300 people for a company our size. This is a significant effort. An important part of these resources will come from hiring specialists, and we want to look for specialists in specific segments. The agri-sector, for example, is key in our initial... We've had a small activity compared to the market share we have there, so we want to be very active in the agribusiness. It is essential in many regions. And we're going to deliver quarter by quarter. Of course, we will make an investment effort. We will make an effort to acquire clients. We will make an effort to specialize per segment. And then we will step up our ambition regarding the share of what we want to have with each client. And that will all help us change the direction of our lending book from a drop to a stabilization. And we will be delivering year by year. I think I have addressed both your questions, right? I hope satisfactorily to you. Thank you very much for your presentation. My name is Ignacio from BNP Paribas. I have two questions, one regarding increased lending in your plan. You said you want to increase your business volume by 3%, and I understand Well, I just want to confirm how you see the lending growth over the next few years. Can you share a bit more color on the market share translated into volume? And the second question is regarding the partnerships, such as the one with Kinzer. What impact will this have on the P&L? Do we see less expenses, less fees, the P&L remains the same, more volume? Could you explain a little bit better the banking and non-banking partnerships and the impact they have on the P&L? Thank you. So growth will be gradual. We start with certain segments in lending where we're starting small. In consumer loans, for example, we want to multiply our income times two. So growth will be progressive. That 3% figure you mentioned, is growth is slightly below our growth in deposits this year, for example. We want to maintain the growth we've delivered in 2024, and then we want to grow somewhat, while remaining relatively conservative in corporate lending. Now, this starting point, Well, these capabilities are still in its infant stages, so initially our ambition will be less than later on. There is something that should help us grow, not only in retail, but also among corporates. There's an agreement with Pfizer that will not only deliver savings, but more income from fees in payment methods. We do believe this partnership will step up our capabilities, products, technologies, experience with our clients. And as you can very well imagine, this is having a lot of impact on freelancers and SMEs. And this is where we want to grow in corporate lending, especially with our clients, with current clients, because this is the segment where we stay closer. through the network. It's not really about cost savings. It's about offering better products and services and improving a customer experience so that we have more clients and therefore more income from that segment. And the segments, once again, are SMEs and freelancers. That's what makes most sense. And we want to improve the customer experience with that technology. Pfizer is a worldwide company. a leader in payment methods, and this is a great commitment for us. And they are coming to Spain with us, and this is an agreement we've been working on for quite a long time, and it showcases our effort to seek the best partners, to deliver the best products, efficiency, and quality of service to our clients. Okay. Max here, please. Good morning. I think Max is missing JTB Capital. I have two questions. First, regarding other provisions, could you please... share more color about employee exits, what was the cost of that and what other savings? And have you included your forecast in the 5% increase to personal costs? And then regarding the cost of risk, do you expect an increase in the cost of risk in 2025? Where would that coming from and how could we expect that? Thank you. Well, let me just clarify. Close to 50% of the provisions this quarter have been allocated to the voluntary exit plan. This is not a cost-saving decision. This is a decided approach to hire 150 people more that will help us improve enhance the profile of our headcount. It is not a cost-saving plan, it's a change plan, and it accounts for 50% of the effort this quarter in other provisions in that line. We do believe it is necessary to bring new talent, have a younger headcount, and enable older employees to leave voluntarily in good terms. But we're not doing this to save on costs, but rather because we want more muscle to hire the talent we need, particularly in highly specialized, the resources that we need for our plans. And then the cost of risk. There are two components I would like to mention. The cost of risk It tends to be at around 30%. That's our profile. We do have an ambition to grow in consumer loans and corporates. 30 basis points. The speaker corrects himself. 30 basis points, not 30%. Sorry. So we want to be conservative. And this is a result of our risk profile. For good and bad, our risk profile is low. We offer guarantees and we've withstood a few complicated macro scenarios, COVID, wars, inflation. And still, our Unicaha portfolio has withstood the blows fairly well. Unemployment has been a key variable. And at the end of the day, the cost was always below what we expected. The truth is that we are evolving towards greater diversification. We want to grow in consumer loans. We want to grow in corporates. And it seems reasonable that the cost of risk will remain at around 30 basis points. Pablo, would you care to comment? So we're talking about businesses with greater profitability, but also a greater cost of risk. So as these businesses grow, we will have to accommodate to their cost of risk. And the evolution will very much depend on the evolution of the economy. So making an effort or a forecast that is too optimistic on the cost of risk assumes no uncertainty. But the macro uncertainty is given right now. We've reflected this in the NNI forecast. We dare not give any numbers, just the bare minimum that we can comfortably cover, but it's really hard to do more than that. We pride ourselves in being realistic.

Thank you very much. Good morning, Marisa Marco from BBG. I would like to ask about MPL coverage ratios and portfolios. In a lower interest rate scenario, I believe that MPL and ALCO coverage ratio is very important. Two years and a half seems too low. So what's your estimate as for MPL coverage ratio and the real duration? I would like to know whether you're going to increase this book or not. And also... I would like to learn about the public debt that will be re-appreciated in view of higher interest rates in the ALCO portfolio. Okay, Pablo, I'm sure that you can cover this question better than I. Well, as for portfolios and coverage ratios in managing portfolios and in stabilizing the NIM, we estimated that interest rates could go up. So the duration of movements are triggered. Shifting from 2.1 to 2.7 means that we will be increasing the coverage ratio too much. At the beginning of the year, This number was low, but we have been shifting towards a more steady point. So we are now stabilizing income coming from these books of portfolios. On the asset side, income is coming down due to the mortgage loan depreciation that is offset by a more stable loan portfolio and by a reduction of... the cost of liabilities. So somehow this is also offset through agencies. With us trying to strike a balance as for the stock of the coverage ratio, we may say that it could be 50 to 50 at the beginning of the year, but we now believe that it's going to be 85 in terms of these portfolios. We have also allocated some coverage to the mortgage loan book that is no longer tied to a floating rate but to a fixed rate for the next years. We expected a lower interest rate scenario we believe that neutral rates might be around 2.7 according to the guidance of central banks. So actually they believe that it's going to be between 1.75 and 2.5. Do we need more of a neutral rate? Perhaps the answer is yes. Given growth expectations in the Eurozone, it seems that the Eurozone is expected to grow by 1%, which goes beyond the 0.7% reported here today. But we believe that it's going to end at 2.25%. To be prudent, we are preparing ourselves in case we have to experience a low interest rate scenario. we continue generating liquidity through our franchises and deposit stocks. In fact, as for this low interest rate scenario, I believe that the goal is 2.5% in terms of deposits. Since we are aiming at structural profitability, some bonds are going to mature shortly, and therefore this maturity will offset by downward interest rates. And this renewal is partial. But since we envisage some structural liquidity, we believe that the commercial portfolio will not grow so much. But we are talking about more than 5 billion euros in net liquidity that we can use in order to stabilize that margin. And of course, we will act in a tactical fashion. We believe that the market will give us Good opportunities, there have been no slop in the curve as of late, but now that is going to change, and therefore we believe that the NIM might grow. We therefore have a factor in which you have said, but not the renewal as such. Thank you. Marisa, Alfredo? Alfredo, you're always quick asking questions. Alfredo Darosa from Deutsche Bank. Along the lines of Marisa's remarks, concerning your 2025 guidance, it seems that you're more aggressive as for full estimates. compared to the prior guidance. And as Pablo said, it seems that you're not aiming at greater sensitivity. What's the reason behind that? Is this due to an increased cost in terms of the NPR coverage ratio? Do you think that this is going to be the case until interest rates go down? Or do you think that this is due to the fact that I may Slide further. As for mortgage loans, you intend to regain part of your market share. However, this is a segment where we have observed a lot of price pressure over the past three years. Have you considered that growth? in your guidance. Have you factored this in? Do you think the yield might be adjusted? Even though if the volumes are better, this figure might be offset. You are also operating in some territories, such as Malaga, where there is plenty of real estate development. It seems that today banking institutions are not well prepared to take advantage of that circumstance. As we speak, no major risk might be envisaged due to the fact that real estate demand is going up. Do you think that this could boost your growth estimates going forward, or have you already considered that as part of your strategic plan? Okay, let me answer the question concerning lending. One of the key problems concerning mortgage loans has to do with price competition, which affects us. We performed very well in 2024, despite the fact that the mortgage loan book was affected. Very often, fierce price competition in that segment, and also the fact that the supply of this kind of mortgage loans is low. Sometimes it's difficult to be truly competitive. However, we're talking about a core product here, and therefore this is key in order to build a long-lasting relationship with customers. Also due to our territorial footprint, we believe that in a low interest rate scenario, that the small margin that you can earn from mortgage loans should actually be reversed because competition is higher in high interest rate scenarios. At the end of the day, we are talking about a product that is profitable. Sometimes we are competing at profits. challenging prices, but from a financial maturity perspective, customers also change their behavior throughout their financial life. We have been able to deliver one of the best results in our history, despite the fact that we have lost some market share. This is nonetheless still a core product for us. So we are thinking not only about profitability, but also about the engagement that we can obtain with customers by granting mortgage loans. We have some relevant territories. Today, we can participate in those segments where perhaps you do not have a leading position because if you have the right channels in place or the right processes in place, we can grant mortgage loans in some of our non-core areas. I didn't quite understand your question about real estate credits. Well, real estate developers seem to be sort of a damned word because they were considered to be the reason for the big crisis. That real estate business where we do not manage big volumes, we intend to reverse that. Today, real estate developers finance themselves. Sometimes they set their own terms and conditions. There is no speculation right now. And, of course, they try to take advantage of the current loans. However, when granting loans... there is also a difference between individual customers and real estate developers. Therefore, in order to... keep on focusing on this core product in those locations where we are physically present. By using digital channels, we expect to regain that 6% market share that we lost over the past years. I think that those products will be more profitable in a low interest rate scenario according to current market spreads. I believe that in order to reach new customers, we can use this real estate development segment. Okay, as for margin. What are the hypotheses underlying our decisions? You should take into account that the mortgage loan repricing continues. We always lag behind a little bit, even though this quarter we were going to see an impact on the lending book. The average year of this portfolio is near 3%, or 2.50. So we still have some leeway. However, our current hypothesis establishes a rate of 2.12, 2.14 over the year. So by year end, the curve is expected to be more or less the same as the one we have today or the one in November last year. So with that curve, there will be a book repricing. We still have two or three quarters to go for the mortgage loan book reprication. Issues are also taking place faster. They are tied to Uribe at six months. Therefore, they are also depreciating faster. We still have some room to keep on pushing deposits up. Up until October, deposits grew. Afterwards, they began to fall. The reduction of the cost of deposits is now lower compared to the portfolio yield. Therefore, we have been working in order to stabilize that situation, but we are not going to reach $1.5 billion. However, we intend to stabilize that result even if we reach $1.75 billion. Even though we consider 2.12 as part of our guidance, we have been able to offset the sensitivity of our balance sheet. Pablo, let me clarify that this 1.4 is just a reference. It's not our landing point. Alfredo, do you have any other question? I'm Alvaro from UBS. I have two questions. The first question is concerned with the customer spread. Which is the landing point of the customer spread, and can you give us the breakdown between the customer, between the yield and the customer spread? And as for ICO guaranteed loans, I would like to know about its deleveraging ratio. As for the customer is spread, Even though it is relevant, it's not the single variable that we factor in when calculating NIM. If we analyze the book profitability, the fully deposits upsets the full in the customer margin. Usually, we take into account credit profitability. We are at 3.33%. It's going to keep on going down. It is true. that the corporate book is above the bank book. And so there is some offset in there, but the difference is not big. It might continue to fall down to 2.70 with a 50 basis points drop in terms of loan profitability. However, deposit yield might go from 70 to 50. That is the estimated fall. That's the ballpark figure. However, this is partially offset because agencies are tied to a floating interest rate, whereas the portfolio is tied to a fixed interest rate. Therefore, the NIM might go down a little bit more than the customer spread. These are our estimates without actually managing the interest rate risk actively. This is quite a structural component, and usually we take a medium and long-term strategic view to handle this component. Right now, there is a lot of microeconomic uncertainty. Interest rates go up and down constantly, and we are talking about a range of 50 basis points all the time. quite frequently, therefore it would be too risky to say otherwise. Last year we changed the NIM three times because we thought that interest rates were actually leading to a big discount. Now we have to wait and see how things evolve in the course of 2025. We I'm going to allow a few more questions because we are running out of time. So now we're going to give the floor to the operator for those analysts who are connected remotely to ask questions if they have any. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now going to start with a Q&A session over the phone. If you wish to ask a question, please press star five on your telephone keypad. Otherwise, if you change your mind, Press 5 on your telephone keypad and please make sure that your device is unmuted. Carlos Joaquin Peixoto from CaixaBank is going to ask the first question. Please go ahead. Good morning. I have two questions. The first question is concerning fees, banking fees. In 2025, you say that fees will remain flat. I would like to know what lines of business will be affecting fees in 2025 and your estimates as to fees performance between 2025 and 2027 according to the strategic plan. And now, my apologies if I repeat the question. You spoke about 12.5 in terms of the return on the common equity tier one, but then you have also mentioned that it could reach 14%. Do you think that 12.5% is the reference value for Unicaja's right capital level? Or do you think that you might be distributing capital to reach 14% between now and 2027? Thank you, Carlos. Okay, we believe that fees will continue to perform on a flat basis because in 2025, 24, sorry, we made a number of efforts that still have some spillover effects for example, maintaining our fees. But that would be offset by some increase arising from diversification. So we intend... to increase these fees, but mainly in the area of, in the case of insurance and in the case of customer funds on balance. That's why fees will remain flat in 2025. Throughout the strategic plan, however, this sacrifice stage will come to an end. We still need to complete the 12-month cycle. Afterwards, we believe that fees will go up as a result of increased activity. We are reaching some agreements with Pfizer, as I said before, which will also lead to some improvements. But there are two sources that will enable us to increase fees as part of our strategic plan, and they will come to the non-banking activity most surely, as well as from customer funds on balance. or any similar resources. Regarding capital, we have been keeping the minimum of 12.5%. That's our reference value. That's not our target, however. And then 14%. That is the target under our strategic plan. It's not a target as such, actually, but we just want to confirm that despite the fact we intend to increase shareholder remuneration by paying out 85% over our result, if we want to grow, we will also be using up more capital. These two elements, remuneration and risk-weighted assets of that, will lead to ratios above 14% at any point in time. I believe that we are pretty comfortable keeping that gap between 14% under the plan and the minimum reference of 12.5%, but always with a good buffer taking into account regulatory requirements.

We have time for one more question before we wrap up at 11 since we have a press conference coming up. Please, operator. Next question is by Borja Ramirez from Citi. Please go ahead. Hello, good morning. Thank you very much for your time and for taking our questions. I have two questions, please. First, could you remind me what is the sensitivity of the margin to the rate and what part of the book is floating after coverage? That's the first question. And the second question is regarding capital. I think the shareholder remuneration is really good. My question is... Could you give more information on the evolution of risk-weighted assets in 2025? If I look at the results and a payout increase, will you still have your capital north of 14 percent? So I'm just trying to see if there's any upside there. Let me talk about the sensitivity. The sensitivity analysis, as we've verified over the past few years, is worth what it's worth. It is a constant analysis that assumes a reinvestment of what is coming up to maturity at the rates of the time, fixed or variable time. equally. But there's been a transformation from variable to fixed rate in mortgages, and the sensitivity to rates has been different to what the models forecasted. That said, it's not that I don't want to ask you a question on sensitivity, but there is a shift in a scale, as I've mentioned, and then there's a stabilization. That stabilization means that if the change is 100 basis points, it's at 4%. If it drops more than we expected, then the impact after 12 months and once the whole book has been repriced will be at around 3% or 4% despite reductions through the year. Bear in mind that we're managing interest rate risk and we shift to fixed rates as we can. We incite deposits, which is the greatest amount. The duration doesn't change. Every year it's the same. But other assets with term, with two- or three-year terms, after one year, the term is one-third less. So managing interest rate risk is limited by the term of the liabilities. It is behavioral rather than contractual. So we need to be cautious there. That said, I think I've been pretty clear regarding where we think lending and deposits might be and where do we get stabilized. And the masses are a consequence of that. The masses of the portfolio with the coverage is slightly, fixes is slightly higher than variable when you add up mortgage, corporate, and others. Regarding your question on capital, the evolution of capital in 2025 will be marked by the results paid out or not. We've already said we're going to pay out 60%. We've talked about inorganic growth, and there will be a slight increase in risk-weighted assets as we want to not lose any more risk-weighted assets. And if there are rates, we want them to be little aggressive and want to increase this with this is consumption and then we have this year our uh... issue which will generate fifteen to twenty basis points so i would say we will generate some capital all in all and we will remain in a comfortable position vis-a-vis uh... well in a comfortable position to attain the goals of our strategic plan. In 2025, we want to keep our options open, as we've said, just in case any catalysts or deals come our way, any tactical solutions that might help us further diversify our sources of revenue and help us move towards our ambition in certain segments. Thank you very much, Isidro, Pablo, and everyone. Our apologies. I know other analysts had questions. The investor relations team will reach out to you as soon as we're finished. Thank you very much for your time and interest.