Hello, good afternoon, or good morning. I hope you enjoyed a good summer holiday, although it was the heat wave and a lot of news during the summer, I guess everybody was very much connected.

For us, we are here to present our second quarter and first half results. I would like to thank you for your interest and for your continued trust in Banca Transilvania and our business development.

Second quarter was actually quite a strong one in terms of business generation and asset creation, despite the fact that geopolitically, economically, socially, there were a lot of challenges, but we think that Romania's structural drivers for growth still remain intact in terms of production, in terms of infrastructure investments, growth. Romania is on a, let's say, transformational good track from a consumption economy, we are going towards a production and industrial economy.

Although the growth of GDP doesn't look very promising, still, I guess the convergence of European Union median and average numbers is quite promising. We have delivered a quite resilient performance, and if you look at the first 6 months of the year, you see that at the group level, we have delivered 2.5 billion lei net profit, over 27% increase with an return on equity of 22%.

While the profitability remained strong, we see also good drivers, especially on the fee and commission income, which supported on all business lines profitability. Lending momentum was also quite strong.

Most of the pipeline items during the first quarter that we were mentioning had been started to being realized. We see, as you will see in the slides later, strong demand from large corporates, mid-corporates, and also slightly increased demand from SME customers as well.

While we were growing our business line, our capital position is also very strong. Definitely, we are adding our first half profit to our capital position, plus the €1 billion non-preferred issuance that we had in April, in the month of April, support our business growth further.

We have seen higher account openings, higher customer numbers, higher business volumes, and also very happily, our digital adaptation of our customers is very strong, so that with the help of BT Pay, BT Go, even in a challenging environment, we are very comfortable of delivering further our budgeted numbers. I will now leave Aurel to give us a bit of insight of what happened in Romania and how the macroeconomic landscape stands, and maybe a few ideas about the future, near future, and then we will come back to business numbers again.

Thank you, Omer, and thank everyone for being with us today. In terms of macroeconomic, despite every macro headwinds that we saw so far, our long-term plans and future development remain stable.

Just as some key figures, you can see the nominal GDP versus the real GDP growth. The nominal pace was maintained, but lately during '25 and '26, we had a more sluggish development of the real GDP.

Nevertheless, we might be in a moment of bottoming out, since from here, we are seeing a much stronger growth starting with 2027. In terms of budget deficit, actually, all the measures that were taken during last year or started to be taken from last year, they paid out, because now we are seeing at half year a much more narrowed budget deficit up to 2%.

This would mean that if this trend will continue, we might be bending between 4% as a simple math or around 6%, which are the actual expectations, keeping in sight also the agreements that we are having with the European Commission, well below the level that was actually agreed. The inflation, on the other hand, even though it spiked at around 10% recently, it is now declining.

We have the last reading at 8.2%. Most probably, the fade-away effect of increases from last year concerning VAT and releasing the cap on the energy prices and so on will have a positive impact later on during this year, and the overall inflation, the year-end inflation should land between 6% to 7%.

With the narrowed budget deficit, also a trade deficit which looks much better than it looked before, with a low financial intermediation, which is still at a level of 20%, 23%, this all gives us positiveness in terms of future developments. Obviously, the non-residents direct investments and personal remittances and European funds are the ones also driving future growth.

Meanwhile, in the banking sector, we see well-capitalized banks overall, with a positive pick up in terms of lending growth. As Omer was mentioning, related to the corporate loans, also the household loans are both well above the European average.

On the liquidity side, notably, we see a rebound for corporate deposits, whilst the household maintained anyhow more positive approach compared to the European average. Strong asset quality in terms of non-performing loans, we are actually at 3.2% at the sector level, and also in terms of Tier 1 ratios well above everything what is in the surrounding area.

In terms of how we see the future, meaning the short-term future until the end of '26, we have not revised our numbers during the last quarter. We are still maintaining the 0.2% real GDP increase with an inflation the average between 6% to 7%, with a relatively stable unemployment rate, a very stable monetary policy of 6.5% driven mainly by higher inflationary environment, and the budget deficit, as mentioned, at a peak of 6%, but for obvious reasons from what we are seeing until now, it should land below that threshold.

The public debt is accounted to reach 61.8% with a relatively stable currency. As opportunities and mentioned before, the European funds, Cohesion, SAFE, and RRF are the most relevant drivers for change, having investments in transportation, in the energy field, even healthcare, and they are here to stay and contribute to the overall well-being of the economy.

From the sovereign ratings point of view, we have from all the three agencies investment-grade level with the same negative outlook, the main concerns remaining the political environment and also the fiscal consolidation beyond 2026. Here, as a short note, we proved that on a short time, we were able to manage this fiscal consolidation without a social unrest.

Now the question remains whether it will be continued and how strongly it will be continued on the long run, but we are optimistic about the environment that we are in and the future development of the bank. Now in terms of development, I turn to you, George, for business performance, and I thank you very much.

Thank you, Aurel. We have a first half year of 2026, which is reflective of the good evolution that we have in the first quarter of the year, with net result at individual level of almost 2.14 billion RON and almost 2.5 at the group level.

We had questions from the analysts that are asking us, how do we stand when we compare the evolution on the first half of the year with the budget? We can say that we are right in accordance with the budget that we have for the year 2026.

What we have in the first 6 months reflects this very well. From the point of view of profitability, from the point of view of return on equity, where we're with almost 22% at individual level, and also at consolidated level, we are ahead of the target that we had set ourselves for the year of being above 20%.

When we talk about evolution of the balance sheet, assets, loans, and deposits, all grew. Total assets with almost 218 billion at the level of the bank and almost 233 at the level of the group, we had almost 4% increase both at individual and group level.

Whereas loans increase in the first 6 months by 7.6% at individual level, reaching almost 114 billion at individual level, and by more than 8% at group level, reaching 122 billion at the end of the first 6 months. Gross loans to deposit ratio increase in this period as it reflects the evolution of the loans, reaching almost 66% for the first 6 months at the bank level and 68% at the group level.

On the capital evolution, Cătălin will go into more details in the risk sections of the presentation. What I can say is that cost to income ratio in this period reach 44.6% at individual level, on a decreasing trend, and 45%, this is including the turnover tax.

Without turnover tax, we would have been 38% at individual level and 39.7% at group level. Both of them below 40% excluding this turnover tax, which increased this year versus the previous year.

When we go forward and we take a look at the evolution of the revenues, you notice that actually, net interest income increased in the first half of the year when we compare it to the last year. Here, with 3.3 billion at the level of the bank and 4.2 billion at the level of the group, we have 4.6% increase at the level of the bank and 6.3 at the level of the group.

Net interest income remains the main engine of growth for the revenues in the year 2026, with net fees and commission growing quite nice in the first 6 months, continuing the growth from the first quarter. We have 13.5% increase at the level of the bank and 18% at the level of the group, the group reaching above 900 million RON in terms of net fees and commission for the first 6 months of the year.

When we look at the net interest income margin, we see that the margin remained quite flat in the first half of the year with an evolution almost at the level of the year 2025, with 3.88 versus 3.92 for the group and 3.41 versus 3.5 for the bank. In terms of composition of the revenues, if you take a look at the other elements and you see the evolution of the composition both at BT level and the group level, you can say that the bank is showing a diversified source of revenue in the year 2026, with an increase in terms of net fees and commission, but also we have some increases in terms of net trading or gains from financial assets that are due to the evolution of the FX revenues with the clients or due to the market evolution and some one-off revenues reflected in other income besides the bancassurance revenue and dividends that we traditionally reflect there.

We actually have a question that was coming in and we can tackle it now, asking us how much are these one-off revenues reflected in other income, because other income increased quite a lot in this period. We can say that approximately 100 million are reflecting one-off revenues in the period, both at individual and at group level.

When we look at expenses, we can say that from the point of view of operating expenses, we delivered improved efficiency as well in the year 2026, despite the increase in turnover tax, which you can see that has impacted both the bank and the group quite significantly in the year 2026, due to the fact that the percentage of the turnover tax doubled in this year. In terms of personnel expenses, with 7.1% increase at individual level and 7.8% at group level, we managed to stop the growth of these expenses.

Especially if you take a look at the quarter-on-quarter evolution of this expenses, you can see that in the second quarter, the amounts are below the ones in the first quarter, and we expect this to be the level that will be normalized for the second part of the year as well. If you take a look at other operating expenses, you can see as well that excluding the turnover tax, which has increased, as I mentioned before, due to the fact that the government increased the percentage, at the bank level, the amounts are increasing by approximately 4%, while at the group level, the amounts of operating expenses are decreasing by 5% year-on-year, and both amounts are below the inflation level.

This performance is reflecting a good continued cost discipline, as well as procurement initiatives and also simplification the process and increase of the contribution of the digital channels. In terms of cost to income ratio, as I mentioned, the trend is constant at the individual level, but is decreasing quite significantly at the group level and reaching 38% and 39% respectively, 38 at individual level and 39 at group level.

What does it mean in terms of this reduction in cost? Does it mean that we reduced the investment in the franchise?

No, this is not the case. We continue to invest in technology, we continue to invest in cybersecurity, in data improvements and artificial intelligence.

We continue to improve our digital customer journeys and to modernize our distribution model. These initiatives will help us in improving our capacity to grow.

Now, I will hand over to Omer to continue with the main business line developments.

Thank you, George. As I mentioned at the beginning, all our business lines had strong results in the second quarter and in the first half.

This gives us also comfort about delivering the budgeted numbers on the lending and asset generation side. Coming back to retail banking, our, how to say, total retail portfolio reached 44.7 billion per total, with a growth of 3.1 billion.

Although the growth in the first half of the year had been more on the consumer loan side, still our outstanding portfolio is quite balanced between secured and unsecured lending. How to say, due to let's say very aggressive, let's say, price competition, we are trying to be very selective.

We are trying to work with our existing customers that we have a history and trying to create also additional value. We are not just trying to create a mortgage loan by itself.

We have granted 6,400 mortgages during the period, out of which 1,000 are green mortgages. How to say, we are also happy that our deposit growth continues.

Although we are not, for the ones who are following more closely, we are not one of the most aggressive banks in the pricing. We are in the mid-range, I would say, in terms of our deposit pricing.

Despite the switch of the customers from current accounts and savings accounts towards term deposits, we have managed to grow our total deposits and reached 113 billion lei almost. In the how to say lending side, our strength is coming from digital origination in the, especially after we managed to enroll products, lending products, unsecured lending products through BT Pay.

We have seen a huge growth and 36,000 consumer and card loans had been granted through BT Pay in the first 6 months of the year. We see the impact of higher transactions, transaction volumes and amounts also in our fee and commission income results on the retail banking side.

Our bancassurance is growing quite strong. Going to corporate banking side, we have definitely a very stronger momentum in the corporate banking, especially on the large corporates.

We are happy to see that also in the second quarter, mid-corporates and SMEs had been growing also well. Our growth had been over 10% in the first 6 months of the year, year to date.

This is well above the market averages. Our combined SME, micro, mid-corporate loan portfolio reached over 29 billion lei, which is 9.7% growth year to date.

Large corporate banking had been channeling the pipeline into production in the second quarter. When I'm saying that we are comfortable about delivering the budgeted numbers, hopefully when we will present the third quarter results, you will see that even more of the pipeline had been coming to production, becoming real production.

Large corporate loan portfolio reached almost 40 billion lei, with the deposits of 14 billion lei. I would say, SME and mid-corporate deposits are at 46 billion.

These are mostly in the current accounts and creating also business volumes for us. When we, how to say, dive deeper on the SME banking, corporate and SME banking, we see that even the microloans, very small tickets for small companies, increased around 300 million, and SME loans by 1 billion lei in the first 6 months, and mid-corporates with 1.3 billion lei.

New production is 18% higher year-on-year, where BT Go, our mobile banking app, is very much central to our strategy. Customers benefiting from the let's say comfort and utility of BT Go, where they can not only make payments, but also access other services, including invoice issuing, had been switching to BT more and more, both for their borrowings, but also current account and transactions.

Agribusiness is also another driver this year. Although how to say, it had been couple of challenging years, this year the harvest looks good and new production in agribusiness reached 1.3 billion, almost 1.4 billion lei, total agribusiness portfolio being at 7 billion.

Another driver is also together with the investments supported by European Union funds had been our healthcare division. Our healthcare division new production is at 1.4 billion lei, with a total portfolio of 3.2 billion lei.

Where together these two specific business lines, agri and healthcare, they are serving more than 70,000 customers, where BT's company accounts, the ecosystem reached over 600,000 unique customers. Large corporate definitely, as I said, had been the driver of growth because of the definitely ticket sizes.

It is also a let's say secondary business generator for us because besides being able to work with very reputable, low-risk customers, it supports, for example, our growth of factoring, almost 4 billion lei reaching the factoring amount. From an insignificant factoring player, we are becoming one of the market leaders.

POSs, acquiring business, salary accounts, current accounts are all coming with a small, let's say lag, maybe, after granting this large corporate loans. We still have a very strong pipeline of syndicated or bilateral transactions and comfortable that we will be even surpassing our budget for this year.

Speaking about all the lending activity, now we are definitely also have to be attentive on the risk side, and I will ask Cătălin to give more insight on the risk numbers.

Thank you, Omer. When looking to the capital and risk posture, we can see that this is mirroring the the balance sheet and the profitability standing of of the bank and of and of the group as a as a whole.

In terms of capital ratios, both the group and the bank standalone are looking in a favorable position. If I would mention just the total capital adequacy ratio, this is well above the minimum regulatory and well above the targeted level of 20% that we continue we are continuously announcing.

If we look to the evolution, we can see that we are continuously growing the total amount of the own funds. This being solely driven by the self-capability of the bank to generate a profit and to incorporate this profit in the in its equity, in its capital position.

If we look from the from the year-end 2025, we are seeing an increase of around of 1.1 billion RON in terms of own funds, although incorporated at half year 2.1, the net amount of 1.1, it's much lower because of the transitional provisions, regulatory transitional provisions that hit at the beginning of the year the own funds through several through in fact to one big component, which was the fair value through OCI evaluated bonds, which have been the negative reserve have been deducted from the own funds, though benefited previously by a temporary exception from the from the regulator. This not being for for for BT, this being a market market situation.

If we look to the RWA density, we are seeing a slight updrift from 2025 to June '26. From If I'm looking to credit risk, from 78% to 81%, this is fully explainable by two factors.

I would say that half of it is given by another temporary regulatory exception exception that was applicable in 2025, and this is referring to the euro-denominated sovereign exposures for which the risk weights were brought to a to a higher level by the regulator. Basically not having anything in common with the with the with the credit risk of the portfolio.

Another effect is given by pure business effect, because this year, our focus on was on two particular segments, as also Omer was explaining you, on large exposures, on large corporates, and also this year we observed a higher business volumes and coming about unsecured loans, yeah? This, of course, this this came beside coming with good revenues, they came with also with with the higher risk weights that it is seen in the in the RWA figure.

However, this is this is still within the and well within the our tolerance. If we look to a broader picture, we can see that if we look to that capital requirements imposed by by by the regulator, we don't see any movement in throughout 2026, and also the movements that we have seen at the beginning of the year were driven by a slight updrift in the Pillar 2 requirement, this being in line with the with the asset evolution of the bank, because as bank is growing, of course, the regulator is seeing a bit more risk.

Of course, the effect was of 16 basis points, this was negligible for us, easily absorbable. However, if we look to the distance between the minimum regulatory and the and the the the published capital ratios, we are seeing a very comfortable level from the total capital adequacy ratio where we have a more than 3.5% buffer to 5%, almost to to 5% when coming to Tier 1 CET1, a level which it's capable to absorb the the business growth that it's it's planned and is budgeted, as well as any potential negative effects that might come due to to any, let's say, systemic effects over the over the credit portfolios and not only.

When looking to the asset quality, the asset quality shows an improved picture when compared with March figure. If you remember at the at the Q1 results, we were announcing some corporate defaults, which brought the NPL ratio slightly above 2.5%.

However, in the second in the second quarter, we didn't have any negative or adverse effects in the in the loan book, and we also deployed some clean-up clean-up measures, writing off around of 250 million exposures, together also with the debt sale, a small debt sale of around of 50 million. All together, around of 300 million, which brought us our NPL ratio back to the level of 2025, which, compared with with the market averages, 2.9, is placing BT in a in a good position.

When looking to the cost of risk, cost of risk it's at the end of June, it's within our 70 basis points budgeted risk cost level, even below that. This was on a basis so the decrease versus 71 basis points in March was on a on a better portfolio quality in in the second part of the of the of the of the first of the first semester, corroborated with augmented business volumes.

If we look to the and this is compared with with with June 2025, it's around almost 20 or even more than 20 basis points lower risk cost ratio. At the group level as well, we we are witnessing a better position in terms of risk cost when compared with June 2025, not so much difference, just 3 basis points lower than in 2025.

However, we are seeing a difference in between the bank and and the group, and this is explainable by two facts: one is consolidation effects, and the second one, it's just as a reminder, at the end of last year, we brought in our group a new a new subsidiary, which is running microfinance in a consumer lending in Republic of Moldova, and of course, being that the specificity of this subsidiary is bringing a higher risk cost, but of course, this is backed by by higher revenues, of course. If we look to the evolution per stages, here we've done throughout 2026 some methodological updates.

We are seeing that we did improvements when coming about the risk management framework, and we are seeing in terms of Stage 1 a higher share of of Stage 1. This is on one hand given by by these methodological updates, but also on the other hand by higher volumes.

Of course, we are originating volumes in in Stage 1. However, if we look to the total amount of provisions, we didn't release provisions.

Although we are making adjustments and improvements in the risk methodology, we we we still preserve our reserves. We keep our reserves there.

This, as a matter of of fact, we can see that on Stage 2, when we are looking to the coverage for Stage 2, we allocated more provisions in in a conservative manner. If we look compared with 20 end of 2025 or March '26, the the coverage increased up to 4 percentage points for for Stage 2, which is placing us, when looking to our competitors and to our to the market average, much above, much in a much more conservative posture.

When looking to the liquidity, our liquidity position is, as always, very favorable, with very good indicators when coming both LCR, NSFR, as well as loan-to-deposit ratio. Loan-to-deposit ratio, although increased a bit, is still at a at a at a very low level at 68%, placing placing the bank and the group as a whole in a in a good position from a liquidity perspective.

When looking to the MREL capacity, here, of course, we we are seeing the effect of the in the own funds that I explained you before, with the transitionary provisions which are fading out. Here, we also had the positive effect of the €1 billion SNP, the record €1 billion euro SNP, which in April took its place in the in the MREL capacity and still keeping a very comfortable buffer of 213 bps on above the minimum regulatory.

Just as a reminder, we our risk appetite is saying that we want to be on a continuous basis 50% 50 bps on top of the regulatory. Basically, we are having a 4 times higher buffer.

Of course, this buffer is built in order to account for the for the business growth that is is to come in the in the upcoming period. This being said, I will give the the floor to Relu.

Thank you. Cătălin, now everybody will know my nickname, which is Relu, by the way, but it's my pleasure having it.

In terms of ESG, ESG rating is 14.6, which represents a low-risk level. It is still improving, given by Sustainalytics.

For the bonds and their impact, we had an equivalent of €1.5 billion, which were fully allocated in terms of proceeds as for the last year-end, 40% green and 60% social. You can also see the key impact metrics which are relevant, but I think that we should also talk about the accessibility and inclusion, because it took quite some tremendous work from many of our colleagues.

We have more than 350 ATMs and recycling machines with audio guidance. We have the branches with wheelchair accessibility and one fully adapted flagship.

We have this inclusion throughout our environment, starting with the BT Pay and assisted devices and on with different support from the Romanian Association for Blind in terms of measures for co-designing. That would be in a nutshell.

Going further, I will turn to Omer for digital.

Thank you, Aurel. We had been already mentioning in different moments, but I cannot just, how to say, give up on emphasizing this more, because BT Pay definitely, how to say, with the number of coverage, number of usage, utilization, is the best practice in Romania.

When we look at the numbers, how to say, the mobile NFC payments are increasing 24%, and how to say, volume of transfers increased 26%. If you add up how to say, inflation and our customers numbers growth, this is even a higher performance.

This explains clearly that our existing customers are also switching to our mobile banking app, BT Pay. BT Pay, it's not just the payments and current account application.

Now we are investing heavily to developing its ecosystem with savings products, investment products. Actually, 62% of the new BT Asset Management customers new production came through BT Pay.

We are also launched how to say enrollment capacity for BT Capital Partners. 30% of the new customers in BT Pensii, our pension sales, had been through BT Pay, and we are also now developing for BT Broker to be more active.

There are already products accessible through BT Pay. It's also, how to say, through round-up and other savings products, BT Pay is becoming our maybe largest branch, largest sales channel by far.

On the other hand, recently we have celebrated 3 years of age of BT Go, where over 600,000 companies as of end of June have enrolled and out of this 600,000 customers, 86% are transactionally active. Number of transactions reached 60 over 61 million, and volume of payments over 700 billion.

BT Go, as BT Pay, it's not just an account management and payments services application, but we see our company customers, non-retail customers doing their insurance, doing their savings, and also invoice and cash flow management through BT Pay. We are very happy to see that ratings of both apps in the stores, App Store and Google Android Store, are top-notch as compared to our competitors.

I will leave George to give briefly about our subsidiaries and the group, and then we shall switch hopefully to Q&A.

Thank you very much, Omer. What can I say?

The first half of the year shows that subsidiaries are integrated more and more with the bank and the other companies in the group. We mentioned dividends, we mentioned the integration within the application ecosystem.

What I want to focus, because there are a lot of information presented in this presentation, and as well on the financials and presentation that were published, a couple of key things that happened. BT Asset Management, which have increased assets under management by over 12 billion RON, more than 100% increase year-on-year, and more than half a million active investor base.

The success of the BT Romania ETF, which has more than 400 million net assets in the first half of the year and more than 12,000 investors until now. We talk about BT Microfinanțare, where there is an increase in the portfolio of loans of 17%.

We have to mention also BT Leasing, where volumes generated in partnership with BT increase by 66% year-on-year. The digital experience of the clients has increased in the first half of the year.

Having said that, let's move to the Q&A session.

First, we'll begin with the first set of questions coming from Swiss Capital, Daniela Mândru. On a standalone basis, the ex-turnover tax cost-to-income ratio improved versus the comparable period.

Where do you see the underlying cost-to-income ratio settling for the full year 2026, and how much further efficiency improvement is realistic from here? Moving to loans, net loans increased 12% year-on-year and 8% versus end of 2025.

Do you now see full year 2026 net loan growth potentially exceeding 10%, and which segments should drive the second half? Loan growth continue to outpace deposits, pushing the net loans-to-deposit ratio up by 3 percentage points.

What is the comfortable level for Banca Transilvania?

Daniela, thank you for the questions. I will start with the second one.

It is more related with the budget. I don't want to go, let's say, to be very aggressive, but yes, when we look at the pipeline and the third quarter results, it is very likely that we will have double-digit growth of lending portfolio.

How to say, we are very careful of our liquidity, risk-weighted assets, and quality of our portfolio. It depends very much on how much of the pipeline we can realize this year or it will be next year, also because it's an active conversation with the customers.

Here, the main growth is coming from large companies and mid-sized companies, they are also assessing their budgets, geopolitical and local situation before taking bigger investment decisions. Again, I'm comfortable to say that my colleagues doing the hard work to exceed budgeted numbers.

As per the loan-to-deposit ratio, how to say, when our loan-to-deposit ratio is slightly increasing, there are concerns; when it's decreasing, there are other concerns. We think that with our business model, even 75%, slightly above 75% of loan-to-deposit ratio is quite healthy.

This depends on very much the loan structure and deposit structure and the pricing. With our current operating model and balance sheet numbers, I would say that we still have room to improve and use our liquidity in profitable lending portfolio.

That's why how to say, we are also not becoming very aggressive, as I mentioned already, in deposit pricing, as compared to our competitors, because we have a very comfortable liquidity position. As regard to let's say cost-to-income ratio, I will let George to give details.

Yes. Thank you very much, Omer.

While business is growing, cost control is continuing. We will have some savings coming in the second part of the year.

We will have increase in revenue in the second part of the year. I would say that cost-to-income ratio will stay at the same level or even be better in the second part of the year towards the year-end.

Asset quality, Daniela wants to know if we can clarify the reduction in management overlays on the expected credit losses to almost 10% from 13.5% at the end of 2025. Should the current overlay level be considered broadly normalized, or do you still see scope for further releases in the second half of the year?

As I was explaining also during the main presentation, we've done some methodological improvements in terms of provisions, and one of them was related to the PMA and the overlays. Basically, what we did, we didn't release any provisions, you don't see in the risk cost any impact out of this methodological changes because, as I said, we are looking to keep our coverage at adequate level for the risks that are flying around us today, and this is visible in the coverage ratios, which didn't drop; contrarily, they increased.

What we've done, we moved part of the overlays in the standard parameters. This was just a shift, yeah, which is much more aligned with the IFRS standards and the standard methodological requirements.

This is it. If we talk about future, I don't see at this point a need for further methodological adjustments, and of course there are no plans related to provision releases.

On contrary, we are keeping our strategy to be well covered with provisions given also the threats that are around us, both external and internal in terms of portfolio quality.

Thank you. We will now continue with a couple of questions on the ROBOR fine from the Competition Council.

Karol Szeller from Trigon asks, if the reasoned decision is served, does the 960 million lei become payable before the final resolution of litigation? In other words, would the service alone change your current assessment?

On the same topic, Jovan Sikimić from ODDO asks to give some updates on the current ROBOR situation.

How to say, the public space had been flooded by declarations, opinions, observations. Here, again, I have to underline that Banca Transilvania and BT Group doesn't agree with the accusations, which are mainly in the public space, because coming back to the initial question, the motivation of the decision hasn't been served.

The only communication had been through media and press releases. On the other hand, we are definitely preparing with our legal advisers, lawyers, different scenarios, but the options, which depend on the court decisions as well, in case the decision that had been circulated in public space will prevail, we will be contesting, definitely.

Also, while the, let's say, court case, the litigation continues, there are several options, including the first one, which we don't agree to do, the payment itself, and offering a payment guarantee, a letter of guarantee, and continuing the litigation. How to say, as regard to the provisioning, this is also an active discussion within the bank and also with our auditors and lawyers.

The probability of eventually losing or winning such a court case and paying it, based on it, we will decide the, let's say, the decision to provide or not. For the moment, here, I wouldn't take it like a final answer, but we see the probability of provisioning as we see the probability of, how to say, in a rightful court, losing against the Competition Council quite low.

It very much depends on also the, hopefully, official documentation we will receive and when we will receive. It will be a long run, it will be a marathon, and there will be a lot of also, let's say, pollution in public space with the news, accusations, and observations.

Especially where we are now with analysts, financial, institutional investors, I'm sure that when you read the observations of independent parties from academics to market participants, you will understand that there is a huge misunderstanding, and hopefully we will clear it, although we will lose time and money during the court.

Thank you. Moving forward to some of the questions of Mr.

Jovan Sikimić on P&L positions. First, we noted strong fees.

Any high seasonality in the second quarter, particular drivers, and run rate for the second half of the year? Secondly, where do you see staff cost trajectory in the second part of the year, in line with the inflation?

NPL ratio dropped, but risk cost went up. What is the explanation for this?

Going forward in the second part of the year, we see fees growing at least at the same level as in the first half of the year. Drivers were, as we mentioned in the presentation, the increase in the number of payments, the increase in the number of clients, the new channels being used by the bank in order to support the group in terms of the presence of the products from the colleagues from BT Asset Management, from BT Capital Partners within the ecosystem.

I think that we will have at least the same growth that we had in the first quarter in the first half of the year also in the second quarter in terms of fee income. The second question was

About the staff cost trajectory.

Staff cost. I mentioned I think in the presentation, the second quarter was actually showing a decrease in the staff cost when we compare it to the first quarter.

Then we know that this is related to the fact that when you look quarter on quarter, you see the increase coming due to the fact that we have absorbed a large number of colleagues from OTP. Then you see an explanation on the variance being reflected there that happened in the second quarter last year.

When you look at the normalization of the revenues going forward in the next quarters, I think that we can see that staff costs have normalized. Increases should be minimal going forward further, because we don't estimate an increase in the number of staff to happen by the end of the year, at least not significant.

We continue with some questions around capital ratio. Can you please quantify the expected capital impact in case Romania will be downgraded to high yield?

This is coming from Divya Pujari from JPMorgan. An additional question coming from Dan David, Autonomous: can you provide guidance on the CET1 impact of future risk weight increases on euro-denominated sovereign bonds?

This is a recurring question with the impact of a potential sovereign downgrade. If last year we were saying that it is 2%, what we are estimating as a maximum impact in the total capital adequacy ratio, today I would say that is between 1% and 2%.

Why? Because the interest rates already are taking into account, and this was visible also from the very beginning of the year, this increased risk, although that this didn't materialize, we are seeing it as long as the interest rates are took already this impact, so that's why we are saying now it is between 1% and 2%, which can be absorbed by our capital position.

As I was explaining during the main presentation, this is also one of the reason beside absorbing the business growth, we are also creating some buffers for potential negative effects out of the risks surrounding us. The second question being CET1

Regulatory requirement

over the euro-denominated bonds? This is one more step.

This is the last step, and this is the forecasted effect, it's over the risk-weighted assets, because at the level of the own funds, there is nothing to be expected from the regulatory side. It's one one more step at the border of '26-'27, basically that should take place at the 1st of January 2027, and this is a doubling of the risk weight over the euro-denominated bonds.

This is around, I would say today, having a forecast over the stock, because also it's important of euro-denominated stock, which will also decrease by year-end, we are seeing around of 1% in terms of capital ratio, which again, it's a factor in our capital plan. However, today it's on the Brussels table, it's a proposal for another exception over this type of exposures, basically the so-called quick fix to be again brought in place, such that the banks, non-euro denominated banks to benefit from a zero risk weight starting 2027.

This is a bet that we cannot use in our planning, because we don't know yet when this will be and whether this will be approved. We know that this is on the table, because this is a public information.

Thank you. Continuing with some asset quality questions, David Butler from AllianzGI, how do you expect the group cost of risk ratio to evolve from here?

Is 86 bps a peak, or will it run at that level into next year or could even be coming thicker?

We are saying the following: the budgeted level, it's 70 basis points, and for this year, we stick on our guidance of staying within this 70 basis points. However, we are seeing a normalized risk cost, not a stress, a normalized risk cost for our region and for our country, without having any offsetting effects like releases or artificial impact of the risk cost of 1%, 100 basis points.

What we are forecasting or what is our guidance, if we will be able to keep our portfolio quality, we will be staying around of this 70 basis points. Of course, this is also a matter of the external threats, whether this will be visible in our portfolio or not.

As I was saying also in first quarter at video conference, in case that we will see negative effects out of, for example, Iran conflict, the conflict in Middle East, this will be visible with a lag of 6 to 9 months, maybe to 1 year, dependent on the portfolio. If we are expecting to see something, we are expecting either towards year-end or at the beginning of next year to see it in our portfolio.

This is a threat that we are looking at it, and we are creating some buffers in order to be able to absorb in case that this is seen in our book.

Thank you. Moving on to the revenue streams, we have a questions from Miguel Diaz from Wood & Company.

Little bit of a disappointing results in terms of net interest income and net interest margin given the loan book growth. Could you please provide a bridge on why was that?

Was it due to a different asset mix, higher competition, spread compression, or just timing aspects?

As said, the first quarter, we were slower in lending, although we were working on the pipeline. I would say there it's a combination of different factors.

It's not a let's say huge impact, and we are not very much stressed. We think that our net interest margin will maintain above 310, 320 basis points in the period to come.

One of the factors is that, as I was mentioning, switch of customers from current account to interest-paying deposits. The other one is, indeed, very tough competition in the retail lending with also consumer loans, but especially on the mortgage loans.

Also our growth mainly on the corporate banking, where definitely the margins are lower, which helps with the fee and commission income, and in time it brings new retail customers through salary accounts. There is a gap which we have been passing through.

This is a cycle that we have been passing through in similar periods. I would say, although new lending helped more on the fee and commission income, we think that we will deliver also quite solid net interest margin going forward.

Thank you. We can accommodate one final question.

This is coming from Domenico Maggio from Jefferies. Are we expecting further other issuances until the end of this year?

I would say, as we said, we want to be active issuer, and we want to tap the markets in order to not only create anymore, but to maintain our yield curve reputation and to, how to say, to keep investors' interest alive. We are planning an issuance during the last quarter of this year.

Thanks to our very strong, let's say, April issuance and first year first half profits addition to our capital base, we have also strong buffers, we will be very much price sensitive.

We have covered all the topics from the questions, but if there are outstanding questions that we didn't manage to take, we will be awaiting investors and analysts to reach to us. I will give back now for final comments coming from management.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much for joining us and for your interest. Once again, we appreciate your questions and observations that are very important when we think about the market and our market and business strategy.

Helps us as a very sincere and direct consultancy. I hope that we will continue delivering the results that you are used to, and when I look at the pipeline and our team, I'm very comfortable about that.

Also I would like to thank especially Diana, Vlad, and everyone that you don't see now in front of you at the screen for all the preparation and communication that we have. If you have other questions, please do not hesitate to approach us through our Investor Relations addresses, and we will try to reply as soon as possible.

In case you didn't manage to have a longer summer holiday, I hope in the next couple of weeks you will have this chance, and hope to see you once we have our third quarter results to be presented here again among friends.