United Overseas Bank Limited

Hi, good morning, everyone. Welcome to our full year 2025 results media briefing. Today we have with us our Deputy Chairman, Group CEO, Mr. Wee Cheong, and our Group CFO, Mr. Leong Yong Chee. As usual, Mr. Wee will begin first by giving a broad overview of how our franchise has performed, the operating landscape we are operating in, and then Mr. Leong will then go into more details on the financials and business performances. After both presentations, we'll be taking questions from the media. So I would now like to invite CEO to get us going. Mr. Wee, please. Good morning.

Happy Year of the Horse. Thank you for joining us today. Well, as we enter 2026, the global environment continues to remain very fluid. No political tensions, ongoing shift in supply chains, and evolving trade However, operating conditions in our core markets have remained broadly supportive. Across ASEAN, momentum towards deeper regional integration is building up. We look at trade, capital flows, and cross-border investment continue to expand. reinforcing the region role as a key growth engine. This creates opportunities, well-positioned regional banks like UOB to support clients across Asia. Now, again, this backdrop, we deliver a resilient full-year operating profit of $7.7 billion in 2025, 4% down. Our diversified business model remains of all strength. Net interest margins moderated as rates declined, but strong fee momentum across wholesale and retail businesses helped to offset the impact, lifting our full-year fee income to a record high. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, trends were positive. Net interest income increased 4%. Margin rose to 1.84% as we lowered funding costs. Net free income was up 2% while expenses remained flat. On the asset quality front, following our portfolio review in the third quarter, we proactively strengthened our provision partner. credit trends improved in the fourth quarter and are moving in the right direction, with NPR ratio low at 1.5% and total credit costs at 19 basis points. Our balance sheet remains strong with higher CET1 ratio at 15.1% and robust liquidity ratio. the board has recommended a final dividend of 71 cents per original share, bringing our full-year dividend to 1.56 per share. This represents a payout ratio of around 50%. In determining the final dividend, we excluded the three empty provisions of $615 recognized in the third quarter last year. In addition to our regular dividends, we also return excess capital to shareholders through a special dividend of $0.50 per share paid over two tranches during 2025. We remain committed to our capital return plan announced last year ongoing till 2027. Our diversified income stream helps ensure earnings stay resilient even in uncertain conditions. And we see promising momentum in our ASEAN strategy. We see increasing contribution from our ASEAN 4 markets across both wholesale and retail business. In fact, just for your information, if you add the ASEAN 4 total income is up 5% versus the group total income down 3%. So the ASEAN is actually positively trending upward.

Now let me talk a little bit about the wholesale banking.