Vienna Insurance Grp Ord

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to VIG Key Figures and Updates First Quarter 2025 Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Yusuf, the Chorus Call Operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode in that this conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. To ask a question, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and 0. The conference must not be recorded for publication or for broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Peter Herfinger, Deputy CEO of VIG. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much and a very warm welcome this afternoon. I'm happy to present together with my colleague, Liane Hirner, our first quarter results. We can present quite solid results in the first quarter with a growth in insurance service revenue by more than 8% and profit growth before Texas. of 7.5%. We also have been able to place successfully a Tier 2 sustainability bond and repurchasing part of our subordinated debts. Additionally, we have additions in Albania to our two non-life insurance companies, a life insurance company, where we will realize with synergies and also exploring the live market in Albania, which is still at a very early stage. On top, we bought a stake in Finanze. Finanze is the largest financial broker in Poland, which will support our growth of our Polish companies. And we are currently in the pits of taking over MoldoSig, which is one of Moldova's leading non-life insurance companies. and the government has invited us to participate in this bid to then further develop the Moldavian insurance market. On the next slide, you see our diversification, which we have reached until today, and we believe this diversification is important and supports our resilience. And you see on cross-written premiums, also in insurance service revenues, that there is a very nice percentages divided by our countries and region. And the same is true for the results before taxes. We're having Austria with 35%, extended CE with 26%, and Czech Republic with 23%. On the next slide, you see the economic forecast for our regions. We feel to be currently in the right area of Europe, having projected GDP growth between 3% for next year in Poland to 2.5% in Czech Republic. Comparing this with the Euro era in the year 2025 with 0.7%, we are quite in and very active environment and benefiting from the internal growth and consumption of Central Eastern Europe. On the next slide, as I have mentioned, we have been able to issue a Tier 2 bond with a principal amount of 300 million. An amount equivalent to the net proceeding is used for a combination of eligible green and social assets in line with VHE's updated sustainability bond framework 2025. The very strong order book of above 1 billion at peak was finally three times oversubscribed and led to the lowest spread over any subordinated nodes of VHE with 195 basis points. At the same time, VHE repurchased a total volume of around 126 million of subordinated nodes issued in 2015 and 2017. With this introduction, I'm happy to hand over to Liane Hirner. Liane, please.

Thank you, Peter. As Peter already mentioned at the beginning of his presentation, we are very pleased with the solid business performance we achieved in the first three months of 2025. To summarize, the insurance service revenue increased by 8.1% to 3.1 billion euros. Profit before tax rose by 7.5% to 261.1 million euros, which is driven primarily by double-digit growth rates in Poland and the extended CE segment, with Romania and Bulgaria contributing significantly to the profit growth. The net P&C combined ratio improved from 92.7% to 92.3%. This reflects a lower claims ratio thanks to fewer weather-related claims and positive developments in the motor business in the Czech Republic and Poland. Our solvency ratio as of end of March this year stood at robust 271%. up from 262% in Q1 last year. This was supported by increased own funds of about €10.8 billion, driven by the positive operating performance and by positive interest rate developments. The SCR remained relatively stable at close to €4 billion. Please note that the dividend payment for the business year got fully considered in the first quarter in line with our dividend policy. Excluding the transitional, the solvency ratio stood at 252%. Now let's move to slide nine, and let's have a closer look at the top line development in the first three months, 2025. starting on page 9, with the gross written premiums over 2. Premiums were up 8.3% to overall 4.7 billion euros. Here, Austria and the Czech Republic both did well in the Q1 with premium growth rates of above 6%. In Poland, the extended CE and the special market segments, we saw a double digit growth rate. Apart from Poland, with plus 54 million euros additional premium volume in the first quarter, the markets, Turkey, Romania, and the Baltic states significantly contributed to the premium growth in absolute terms. This very favorable development gets also reflected in the insurance service revenue figures, which we show on the next slide. Overall insurance service revenue increased by 8.1% to 3.1 billion euros. Austria's growth of 6% was mainly driven by the non-motor and health business. Czech Republic posted 7.3% growth and Poland was up 8.2%, both benefiting from sound motor and other property business as well as growth in life. In extended CEE, nearly three quarters of the segment's 90 million euros growth came from Romania, Slovakia, and the Baltics. In special markets, it was again the dynamic development in Turkey pushing the insurance service revenue in this segment to roughly 290 million euros, up by 38%, or 80 million euros. These strong developments underscored abroad based momentum across all our markets. Summarize, we have a look at page 11. We had a strong start in 2025 with robust business performance and all key metrics. At our AGM last Friday, shareholders approved a dividend of €1.55 per share, which we will pay out tomorrow, May 28th. Given our sound Q1 performance with broad written premium and insurance service revenue both up 8% and the profit before taxes increase of 7.5%, we remain confident in reaching our targeted profit before taxes range of €950 million to €1 billion for the full year 2025. Our capitalization remained strong with a solvency ratio of 271%. The SSCR reports for the full year 2024 are available on our website and we have added two overview slides including the sensitivities on the slides 13 and 14 in this presentation. I have come to the end of my presentation and we are now welcome your questions.