Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. A warm welcome to our analyst call on the results of the second quarter of 2026.

Thanks very much, yeah, for taking the time once again. As in general, in particular in Europe, a very hot summer, in the middle of it, and maybe there is even more to come, yeah, for reviewing pbb's second quarter and therefore also the half-year results.

Our CFO, Marcus Schulte, and I will guide you through the key developments of the past quarter and the IFRS key figures for the pbb Group. Afterwards, as always, we will have plenty of time reserved for your questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, all of you follow global developments and their effects on markets on a daily basis. Volatility again dominated the second quarter of 2026, and the commercial real estate markets cannot completely escape this environment.

Fluctuating interest rates and moderate transactions activities characterized the past few months, and the outlook remains uncertain. In this, yeah, I would say turbulent and unpredictable market environment, we have achieved a solid result without letting up on the execution of our strategic transformation.

In Real Estate Finance Solutions, we increased new business volume by almost a fifth to €3.1 billion in the first half of the year. We have now been on a sustainable growth trajectory in this segment for 2 years.

We are growing profitably. The return on tangible equity of our new business in the first half of the year stood at over 7%.

In addition, we are gradually diversifying our financing book further. The asset classes hotel, senior living, student housing, and data centers, which are key of our strategic growth, are becoming increasingly important.

In the second quarter, they already accounted for almost a quarter of the bank's new business volume. At the same time, we are making fast progress in reducing our US portfolio.

Since the start of the year, we have reduced our US non-performing loans by more than 40% to €500 million. No new non-performing loans have been added.

Our financing business is therefore continuing to grow profitably whilst we are able to reduce risks, particularly outside our core markets. Real Estate Investment Solutions has shown a positive development.

We generated operating income of €25 million in the first half of the year, of which €14 million alone in the second quarter. With that, the share of fee-based income on total operating income is already exceeding 10%, one of our strategic targets.

Overall, pbb generated a pre-tax profit of €16 million in the first half of 2026, thereof €10 million in the second quarter. This is in line with our expectations and full-year guidance.

General administrative expenses remained at €69 million, virtually unchanged from the previous quarter. In the first half of the year, total expenses amounted to €126 million compared to €115 million in the first half of 2025.

The increase was driven by investments in our new business, Real Estate Investment Solutions. On the other hand, we were able to further reduce costs in our financing business, Real Estate Finance Solutions.

Risk provisioning in the second quarter remained as it is at a significantly normalized level of €11 million. In particular, worth noting that no further risk costs were added to our US and development portfolio.

pbb remains solidly capitalized. In the second quarter, Common Equity Tier 1 ratio rose by around 120 basis points to 14.6%.

This increase and reversal of previous quarter developments is in particular driven by beneficial regulatory adjustments within the Foundation IRBA regime. Newly published data from EBA showed that Poland, Finland, Austria, and Belgium regained the eligibility of preferential LGD treatment.

In addition to that, an active portfolio management also contributed to an overall reduction of risk-weighted assets by €1.6 billion in the second quarter. Our liquidity position remains solid.

We have largely completed our funding activities for the entire year. To even better meet our investors' expectations, we have expanded the coverage of external ratings for our unsecured bonds and added Moody's as a second rating agency in addition to Standard & Poor's.

I have already briefly touched upon the capital and property markets. Let us now take a slightly deeper look at the current geopolitical and macroeconomic environment on page 5.

The second quarter was particularly dominated by the war in the Middle East. Unfortunately, a swift resolution, which some market participants had also been hoping for, is currently not in sight.

It remains nearly impossible to predict how the situation will develop. The impact on economic development in Europe is already evident.

Growth forecasts have been revised downwards and inflation forecasts going up. Consequently, markets expect the ECB to raise interest rates once more this year.

In commercial real estate, however, transaction activities remained comparatively robust in the first half of the year, although still at a moderate level by historical standards. Despite geopolitical tensions and volatile interest rates, transaction volumes improved by 9% in the first half of 2026.

However, we are noticing in discussions with our clients that caution is mounting once again, and that the risk of deals being postponed is increasing. It therefore also remains difficult to predict further developments in the commercial real estate markets.

Ladies and gentlemen, let us now take a look at the performance across our business segments. We start with Real Estate Finance Solutions on page 6.

As I mentioned at the beginning, in the first half of 2026, we were able to increase our new business volume, including extensions of more than 1 year, by 18% to €3.1 billion. It continues a steady increase that we have shown over the past 2 years.

Another positive aspect is the share of new commitments, which stood at 67% in the first half of this year. As a reminder, in the first half of 2025, only 23% of business were new commitments.

The asset classes hotel, senior living, student housing, as well as data centers, which are key for our strategic growth path, account for 14% of new business in the first half of the year. In the second quarter, it already was as much as 23%.

Compared to the first 6 months of 2025, this represents a significant increase in the relative share of our growth asset classes and now at a significantly higher volume of overall new business. The diversification of our portfolio is thus making clear progress.

We also remain successful in terms of profitability as underlined by a return on tangible equity of 7%, fully accretive to our strategic target. Despite the challenging market conditions described, we are also satisfied with our new business pipeline.

With €10.4 billion, it remains well stocked. pbb's financing portfolio remains stable at €26.8 billion in the second quarter.

We have achieved this even though the reduction of the US portfolio progressed faster than expected. That brings us, on slide 7, to our exit from the US market that is another key component of our transformation.

We made very good progress in reducing our US portfolio in the second quarter. Two performing loans and two non-performing loans, with a total volume of €200 million, were repaid.

This represents a reduction of 9% in the second quarter. Over the first half of the year, this reduction amounts to as much as 14%.

It is encouraging that we are making faster progress than planned in reducing our US non-performing loans. As a result, we were able to reduce NPLs by 19% in the second quarter and almost half them overall in the first half of the year.

We are therefore very confident that we will achieve our annual reduction target of US NPL portfolio to €400 million sooner than originally planned. We are also well on track with regard to our SRT transaction, which was agreed last December.

In the second quarter already, a first transaction repaid earlier than contractually agreed, and we expect further repayments over the course of the year. Let me now move on to the update on our second business segment, Real Estate Investment Solutions, on page 8.

In the second quarter, it generated a solid operating income of €14 million, an increase of €3 million compared to the first quarter. This was driven by pbb invest, our investment management, which contributed €12 million, representing a growth of €4 million compared to the previous quarter.

This growth was primarily driven by good transaction activities. Assets under management rose to €3.1 billion.

Additionally, we have outstanding capital commitments of around €175 million. Our partner business, Originate and Cooperate, contributed additionally operating income of €2 million to the segment.

As a result, Real Estate Investment Solutions posted a pre-tax profit of €2 million in the second quarter and the first half of the year. The return on tangible equity for the same period stood at around 7%, a considerable, capital-efficient contribution to profit without any significant commitment of risk-weighted assets.

With that, I will now hand over to our CFO, Marcus, who will guide you through the bank's key financial figures in more detail.

Thank you very much, Kay, and good morning and welcome also from my side. As usual, I will take over to walk you through financials, portfolio developments, capital, and funding.

As outlined by Kay, all in all, we report a solid second quarter and first half year with a pre-tax profit of €10 million and €16 million, respectively. The first half is therefore in line with our expectations for this truly transformational year 2026.

That brings me already to our group P&L on slide 10. In comparison to the previous year, pre-tax profit for the half year is significantly up from -€249 million to a positive +€16 million.

As last year's figures have been heavily affected by the one-off risk charges in connection with the decision to exit the US. Since then, we have driven forward a lot in our strategic transformation, i.e., we closed the SRT and significantly reduced the US portfolio, we derisked the development portfolio, closed the acquisition of Deutsche Investment, implemented our target operating model, and stringently worked on increasing the REFS portfolio profitability.

With this strategic transformation, our average REFS portfolio volume has come down from €28.7 billion in H1 2025 to on average €27 billion in H1 2026. NII, which also had to digest €22 million SRT costs in H1, is down by €46 million year-over-year.

On the flip side, REIS fee income is up by and to €22 million. However, this increase is not yet compensating for the effects of the mentioned portfolio derisking, overall operating income is down by €39 million year-over-year.

At the same time, and this is important, the one-off US risk charges of H1 last year were and remain entirely adequate, and the derisking has been successful with no additional net risk costs for the US ever since our decision to exit the US in Q2 last year. Overall risk costs have normalized in line with our guidance, and profit is back and up, albeit at the projected moderate level.

After the significant portfolio derisking of 2025, this year is now more about the continuous and step-by-step progress in our strategic transformation. Therefore, in the following, I will focus entirely on quarter-over-quarter rather than year-over-year developments.

Headline operating income is up €13 million from €77 million in Q1 to 19, €90 million in Q2. Even if positively adjusting Q1 for the -€10 million US fair value risk charges back in that quarter, operating income would still be up by €3 million from so-adjusted €87 million.

As a brief reminder, in Q1, operating income was a bit distorted by a -€10 million US fair value risk charge, which accounting-wise had to be shown in the operating income, but is economically speaking risk cost, which, by the way, back then were more than compensated by a US Stage 3 release of €11 million in the risk provisioning line. Beyond that -€10 million Q1 adjustment, the fair value and others results normalized by the further €10 million in the second quarter and was therefore overcompensating the -€6 million lower realization income in Q2 by net €4 million.

At the same time, net interest and fee income was slightly down by €1 million, -€1 million, to €93 million. These headline developments then sum up to the aforementioned increase of adjusted operating income by €3 million or unadjusted operating income by €13 million.

After this headline overview of the positive operating income development, let me briefly walk you through the development of NII and fee income in more detail at the bottom left of this page. Overall, NII was down by €3 million to €81 million.

While NII in REFS remained stable on a stabilizing portfolio of €26.8 billion at quarter and in a stable REFS margin, our ongoing prefunding activities and a €200 million lower investment portfolio burdened NII, in total -€2 million NII, which are reflected in the Corporate Center. In addition, €1 million NII in ONC in the first quarter did not repeat as such in the second quarter.

However, on the other hand, fee income in REIS increased by €2 million to €12 million. The increase in fee income by €2 million was not fully compensating for the NII reduction of -€3 million.

Expenses remain strictly managed. General admin expenses as well as total costs remain stable quarter-over-quarter.

Risk provisioning is optically up quarter-over-quarter from € -2 million to -€11 million. Additions in Stage 3 for European NPL have been partly compensated by releases in Stage 1 and 2.

However, if adding the aforementioned -€10 million US fair value risk charges in Q1, total risk costs actually would have been down by €1 million from an adjusted -€12 million in Q1 to -€11 million in Q2. All in all, total risk costs remain in line with our expectations.

I will come back to more details on actual Q2 risk provisioning in our second deep dive, but before that, I would briefly spend a few words on operating expenses on slide 11. We continue to keep costs strictly managed, with investments basically being financed through cost efficiency measures, i.e., the implementation of our target operating model, including internalisation, IT and process optimisation, as well as digitalisation.

Operating expenses decreased quarter-over-quarter in our core REFS business segment, while having slightly increased in REIS and Corporate Center, mainly due to investments and IT costs. Across segments, however, G&A were stable quarter-over-quarter, while operating expenses marginally increased by €1 million quarter-over-quarter due to depreciations.

Total costs again were fully safe. Adjusted by the aforementioned -€10 million US fair value risk charges in the first quarter, the cost-income ratio stands at 77% for the first half year.

Thus, we remain on track for our guided cost-income ratio of 70% to 75% by year-end. This then brings me to the envisaged deep dive on Q2 risk provisioning on slide 12.

Net releases of €6 million in Stages 1 and 2 mainly reflect positive effects from portfolio developments and interest rates, which were actually down quarter-over-quarter, and net additions of -€17 million in Stage 3 are driven by 18, -€18 million additions for European NPL, while the further US NPL reductions that Kay explained came with a small net release of +€1 million for US Stage 3 loans. On loss allowances on slide 3, 13, all in all, they remain virtually stable as net additions for the European NPL were marginally overcompensate for consumptions in relation to the reduction of US NPL.

This said, overall NPL increased by around €100 million. European NPL increased by around net €200 million, whereas US NPL, as Kay mentioned, decreased by around -€100 million.

As Kay said, there was no new development NPL and no further need for LLP for our development loans. In reflection of the higher coverage ratio for the reduced US NPL, the overall REFS NPL coverage ratio is slightly down to around 27% from 28% at the end of the first quarter.

This then brings us to our segment reporting, where I would start as usual with the Real Estate Finance Solutions, REFS business, which is our on-balance sheet business as on slide 15. All in all, the improved financial performance of the REFS segment predominantly reflects the stabilized portfolio and REFS margin, resulting in a stable NII of €80 million.

At the same time, costs are lower, profit is up. In more detail, when again adjusting operating income for the aforementioned -€10 million US fair value risk charges in the first quarter, operating income has also stayed entirely stable at €72 million quarter-over-quarter.

This includes stable SRT costs of -€11 million in each quarter. Operating expenses, however, are down by -€2 million, mainly reflecting seasonal effects plus ongoing cost efficiency measures in personal costs.

They are overcompensating for investments and IT costs. Q2 risk provisioning again entirely stems from REFS.

My remarks on the group level therefore apply 1 by 1 for the REFS segment. Also here, optically, LLP are up by €9 million to -€11 million, but when again adjusting Q1 for the €10 million fair value risk charge, risk costs are actually marginally better by €1 million from -€12 million to -€11 million quarter-over-quarter.

All in all, this results in a €3 million pre-tax profit increase in REFS to €14 million, which is again explained by adjusted income, which is stable, but supported by lower costs and slightly lower total risk costs. I will now spend a few words as usual on the KPIs of our performing REFS portfolio before going to the NPL.

They are showing that the overall risk profile remains solid following our derisking in 2025. CRE markets continue their slow recovery even though CRE market activity remains currently subdued in the context of rate volatility and the impact of the Middle East conflict.

This said, the average LTV stabilized at 55%, with valuations changes having stabilized on a very low level. Exposure at risk, defined as the volume with a layered LTV above 70% for the performing portfolio, further improved by almost a third in the second quarter.

On the one hand, this is in part a result of some shift of performing loans into NPL, but on the other hand, this also reflects a continuous improvement of the performing portfolios. Now moving on to the NPL portfolio in Europe on slide 17.

As already mentioned earlier, the European NPL portfolio increased by around net €200 million in the second quarter. This was driven by three new additions of around +€300 million and one NPL repayment by around -€100 million.

We say we are not satisfied with this development. However, it is important to note that the three European office NPL additions are idiosyncratic in nature and were clearly on our radar.

In specific, that additions do not represent a broader trend for the office portfolio. The quality of our European portfolio overall remains solid as is evidenced, among other, by the aforementioned clear improvement in the portfolio's KPIs.

That said, looking forward, specific office properties in specific submarkets as well as our development exposure, where we expect to continue making very good progress, will remain closely monitored and actively managed. Moving forward, we also remain highly focused on diversification, i.e., mitigating concentrations risks with regard to ticket size, regions, property types, and sponsors.

With this in mind, the share of office new business was down to our target landing range of around 30%, and the share of growth asset class in the new business increased to 23% in the second quarter. Overall, we expect total NPL, including the US, to come down to below €2 billion by year-end.

This then brings me to our business segment Real Estate Investment Solutions, REIS, our off-balance sheet business. REIS increasingly contributes to income following the consolidation of Deutsche Investment at the beginning of the year.

It is now also showing a €2 million pre-tax profit for the second quarter. In somewhat detail, REIS operating income is mainly driven by regular asset management, property, and facility management fees from pbb invest.

Operating income from pbb invest increased by €4 million quarter-over-quarter to €12 million in the second quarter and was helped by €3 million additional performance and transaction fees. The €4 million increase in income from pbb invest was overcompensating the €1 million lower income from ONC, net income for the segment overall was up by €3 million.

ONC itself contributed €2 million from regular agency and syndication fees, slightly down from €3 million in the first quarter. At the same time, expenses in REIS are slightly up by €1 million to €12 million in the second quarter, mainly reflecting planned increased FTE.

All in all, REIS PBT therefore increased by and to €2 million in the second quarter. As this is capital-light business, and with a RoTE of 7.6% in Q2, it is already accretive to our medium-term RoTE target for the group.

I will skip slide 19 and move on to our third segment, the Corporate Center, and I'm now on slide 20. Here, as we bundle our treasury activities, including the investment portfolio, which is including the former non-core portfolio.

Before starting, allow me to summarize that the higher pre-tax profit from REFS, you explain €3 million, and REIS, it's been explained €2 million, is marginally counteracted by a -€1 million lower pre-tax profit in the Corporate Center, so that group PBT across segments is up by €4 million quarter-over-quarter, as explained. With that, I would like to make three brief comments on the Corporate Center itself.

While operating income in Corporate Center remained stable, operating and other expenses are up by €1 million due to increased strategic investments, which are also reflected in the Corporate Center. In sum, this means that PBT in Corporate Center is down by €1 million quarter-over-quarter.

As mentioned before with operating income, NII is slightly down by €2 million quarter-over-quarter in this segment, which is driven by our ongoing prefunding activities and a €200 million lower investment portfolio. However, this is balanced by normalizing fair value result, which is up by €8 million, overcompensating a reduction in realization income by -€6 million.

Let me remind you that the Corporate Center is in general not seen as a structurally-defining profit contributor. I now come to capital and funding, and I'm starting with capital, and I'm on slide 22.

The CET1 ratio increased by around 120 basis points to 14.6% in the second quarter. This is mainly a reflection of several countries having regained eligibility of preferential LGD treatment under the F-IRBA regime due to newly published loss data from the EBA at the beginning of July.

After the loss of preferential collateralized LGD treatment for those countries had cost us around 120 basis points in the fourth quarter of 2025, the reversal for Poland, Austria, and Finland essentially brought those back in the second quarter. Looking at it from an RWA point of view, this resulted in an RWA reduction of -€1.2 billion from these countries, which is essentially reversing exactly what we had added in Q4 2025.

Furthermore, ongoing portfolio optimization and other effects have led to further RWA reduction of €400 million. In total, an RWA reduction of -€1.6 billion quarter-over-quarter.

Capital ratios continue to provide solid buffers over the regulatory requirements with more than 450 basis points to CET1 MDA and more than 350 basis points over own funds MDA. Our long-term through-the-cycle minimum levels for the CET1 ratio remains unchanged at 13%.

This brings me to my last observations on funding and liquidity, and I'm on slide 23. Our funding plan 2026 is almost completed with more than 85% of Pfandbrief funding needs covered and our €500 million green senior preferred benchmark issued in July covering most of our 2026 senior funding needs.

While the average funding spread year-to-date for the Pfandbrief came in 14 basis points lower compared to 2025, the unsecured funding spread was 38 basis points higher. That said, unsecured wholesale funding costs are still significantly lower than in 2024 and 2023, and by the way, they only represent a quarter of the total wholesale funding volume of €2 billion year-to-date.

Retail deposits remain a cost-efficient source of funding, where costs have actually come down further, partially compensating for the aforementioned increase in wholesale unsecured funding costs. At the same time, we were able to further increase the duration of our deposits.

The rather stable volume of around €7 billion is efficiently accommodating our reduced balance sheet needs. As a result of our proactive funding year-to-date, our liquidity position remains robust.

As Kay already mentioned shortly at the beginning, we now complement our covered bond ratings from Moody's with Moody's unsecured ratings. With that, we now also show a Baa2 Moody's senior preferred rating in addition to the BBB- S&P rating.

In summary, we expand our rating agency coverage to better align with the market expectations and our investors. With that, Kay, I hand back over to you.

Thank you, Marcus. Ladies and gentlemen, the bank achieved a solid first half year despite the ongoing challenging market environment.

Let me summarize the key points before we move on to your questions. We are making good progress with our strategic transformation.

Both diversification and profitability is increasing. We have been able to stabilize our real estate finance portfolio at nearly €27 billion, despite the reduction of the US portfolio proceeding faster than originally planned.

At the same time, the share of asset classes that are particular important for our strategic growth is increasing in new business. The share of fees within our operating income continues to grow.

In our Real Estate Investment Solutions segment, we achieved a pre-tax profit of €2 million. The pre-tax profit for the bank was €16 million in the first half of the year, and is in line with our expectations, especially taken into account the strategic transformation we are currently undergoing in an ongoing challenging market environment.

Our CET1 ratio increased significantly by around 120 basis points to 14.6%. This confirms our solid capital position.

Looking ahead, we remain confident that despite ongoing geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty, we will close the 2026 financial year in line with our expectations. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your attention, and Marcus and I are now looking forward to your questions.

Good morning. I have two questions, please.

Firstly, it concerns the European NPL book, specifically the three office loans added in Q2. Could you provide somewhat details about the underlying properties?

I respect that you do probably not want to give details on individual exposures, but any comment about the properties would be helpful, for example, in terms of vacancy, location, i.e., prime or non-prime, potential modernisation needs, and whether these are multi-tenant or single-tenant objects. Second question, Mr.

Schulte, you mentioned an expectation of less than €2 billion for the total NPL book for year-end '26. Within that figure, what's the expectation for the European NPL book?

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Mr. Schmitt, for your question.

I think with regard to your first question, although understanding the level of granularity and details that you are looking for, we have provided over the last quarters a lot of transparency of how transactions, asset classes are moving. We would abstain from going deeper into the respective details of the transactions, because then you gain closer to maybe understand more on a specific asset and can track that specific asset further down.

We would abstain from that. Let me add and say, and I think repeating to a degree what Marcus was saying, those are transactions that we have on the radar for quite a while, yeah, and working on those transactions together with the borrower and also the financing's partners, if there are partners, in those transactions.

You have seen our exposure at risk coming down quite substantially is also driven on the performing book that is driven by those exposure unfortunately materializing as defaults. We have them on the radar screen and know the developments and monitoring those developments very closely.

With regard to the NPL trajectory that relates back to the entire NPL development. Marcus said we are not satisfied with the development in the second quarter.

As this is on a case-by-case basis, you sometimes think you are very close in resolving, and then, yeah, sometimes you have to start back from scratch because it does not materialize. However, what we are clearly seeing, looking into Q3 and Q4, and already have materialized partially in the third quarter, is that we see clear reductions, yeah, of the NPL coming through.

Therefore, we are very confident that we are getting that down below the €2 billion by the end of this year. That will be fueled by US NPL reduction that we continues to focus on, but also by reduction in our European book that is the clear expectation that we currently see based on transaction-by-transaction, close monitoring of the respective deals.

Thank you very much.

Hey, good morning. Also three questions from my side, please.

First, touching on the CET1 ratio. Has been a bit of a roller coaster ride recently.

Is the current RWA base and the resulting 14.6% CET1 ratio now a kind of new normal, or might there be additional adjustments to follow? Secondly, on the net operating income.

Maybe you can help a bit to shed somewhere light on that number, how that compares to earlier quarters, what drove the strong number this quarter, and how we should think about that going forward. Also the net fair value development.

Maybe you could remind us a bit about the developments here and how this is developing over the quarters to come. Thank you.

Sure. Good morning.

I will address I think both of these questions. On the CET1 question, you are right that we had some volatility, and you know the reasons, right?

At the end of the day, we were spending a great amount of time explaining these developments that we had in Q4 2025 and then in Q1 2026, which are largely driven by the fact that for using collateralized LGDs under the F-IRBA, you have to be below a certain loss threshold, and in the first place, the overall eligible for the computation under the EBA's remit. On the former point, as we had these three specific countries: Poland, Austria, and Finland, which were, in the case of Poland, very narrowly falling above that threshold, which meant that digitally we entirely had to compute the LGD for these countries on an uncollateralized basis.

That, of course, produced that swing that we saw in Q4 last year by +€1.2 billion. You are absolutely right.

We are now seeing that a year later, essentially, if they look at the annual schedule that the EBA is publicizing, we see that for Poland by a very small margin and for the others by a bigger margin, we are now falling below that market loss threshold, and therefore, we can consider a collateralized LGD again, and therefore, the RWA go down. If you look at page 39 of the presentation, you will again see what that now means for our European portfolio.

You will be able to see that for the vast majority of the countries, we are now well above the loss threshold of 50 basis points, and only for Poland we are very close to it. Essentially, we are very closely monitoring Poland, and we will, of course, continue to manage RWA very carefully, because it is possible that in a year's time, especially Poland could fall on the other way.

We will have to drive that a little bit with care given the way the F-IRBA regime works. That's basically, I think, addressing your question.

May I add, Mr. Lukesch?

Marcus, may I add, I think we elaborated long on year-end on how the computation works, and I very remember there was a question at that time how this publication is working. I think it's fair to add that with the EBA publication, which is new, which did not exist a year ago, yeah, the countries are now addressed all at the same time, yeah.

From that perspective, there is a change, and from our perspective also some more certainty and clarity for the next 12 months, yeah, as this publication has now been done. I think it's also a change as the regime last year got into force, and now we have, with the support of EBA for all F-IRBA banks, clarity around that for the next 12 months on that.

I wanted to add that because you asked for the question of stability going forward out of that corner. We certainly are currently in a better position than we have been 12 months ago.

Good. Thank you, Kay.

Good addition. On page 10, if you want to slip back to that, Mr.

Lukesch and colleagues, to your question on the underlying developments in operating income, I think, was your question, and what it means from here. I think we've been trying to explain that, of course, the reduction of the REFS book from last year on with the risk management actions that we've been taking has come to a stabilization in the second quarter.

I think what is important to note again is that the REFS portfolio and also the margin in REFS has been stable, and that means that in REFS the NII has been stable at €80 million. Frankly speaking, the changes that you saw in NII were largely explained in the Corporate Center and by the lack of NII in ONC this time around, which is only a million.

In the Corporate Center, as I mentioned, this is mainly a result of the fact that we've essentially done our funding already at the media data point in an uncertain environment. We think that is prudent, we have derisked the funding agenda, but, of course, we have now more funding on balance sheet, and the excess funding, which is not drawn by the REFS business, is essentially mirroring additional interest expenses in the Corporate Center, which means they lose a million, and then also, as the non-core portfolio comes down.

Now looking forward, I think, as I mentioned, we have done €500 million senior only in July, so that continues to be an effect in Q3, that is prefunding again. Of course, now as the business draws on the prefunding that we've been doing, this effect that I described in the Corporate Center should gradually subside, and therefore, NII for the group should gradually stabilize if the business is growing as expected, around €7.5 billion to €8.5 billion, and the stock of business is above €27 billion.

Then I think in the fair value results, I explained that we have some specific developments with accounting rules in Q1, which essentially I would personally always look through and say they're actually risk costs. Even beyond that, as I mentioned, we've seen a further normalization of the fair value result by another €10 million, and that is mainly also in the Corporate Center, and it is simply down to the fact that in Q1, we remember we saw a very sharp increase in short-term interest rates, which is affecting a little bit the fair value result in the Corporate Center, which is part of that normalization.

The realization income, I think, was affected also by the fact that we did some portfolio management in Q2. We continue to manage our RWA actively.

We manage out RWA-intensive business, and optically, that meant we had a slight realization loss for that management, which, however, was compensated by reduced risk costs on the other side. Again, something I would rather like to look through.

Going forward, I think we would also expect kind of a zero to positive realization income. Normalized fair value, slightly positive realization income, and on the conditions that I mentioned, stabilizing NII and fee income.

Hi, good morning. Two questions from me.

It seems like you referenced in the past and you're suggesting today that you will update your CRE default rate in the capital model once a year. The document that was published by the EBA in July says Q4 2025, I was wondering, is that document going to be published on a quarterly basis or on an annual basis?

Shall we also expect that the update on LGD to come always in Q2 '26, given that it gets published in July? Follow-up on this, shall we completely disregard the data from local central banks?

I'm asking this because the data from the Polish central bank have a CRE default rate that is actually higher than 50 bps. Second question, broad question.

You're doing good progress in exiting the US, but it now looks like the CRE backdrop in Europe is equally or maybe even more unfavorable than in US. Would you agree with that statement?

What are you seeing? I'm asking this again because we've seen also a competitor talking about potentially going back to underwrite business in US, I was wondering whether you categorically exclude that in the future.

Thank you.

Domenico, thanks very much for your question. I think taking the last one first.

For us, we have made a clear decision and executing on it leaving the US market, yeah. We want to free up capital and making progress there and reinvesting it into our core business in Europe, yeah.

That that's a clear strategy that we continue to execute, and have made really good progress in the first half year, as I said, not only in the non-performing loan portfolio, but also, on the performing side, where we see repayments that are even coming in earlier than contractually agreed upon. On your first question around the EBA publication, our understanding is that that gets published once a year.

It gets published because it gets published in Q1, sorry, Q2 or early Q3 because the CRR requires an update based on the annual loss rates latest by the 30th of June, yeah. Therefore, the process, and that's why I said, really appreciate that EBA has, a comprehensive publication made, yeah, combining all countries in the eurozone that that is the basis under which we, and I think also, I would expect the market, looks at those thresholds to then apply it according to CRR, yeah.

That is really a a very helpful development. Short answer is it gets published once a year based on then-updated full-year loss developments in the in the respective countries, and, we take the EBA publication, yeah, for us as the the basis for a unified and common treatment, which I think is also something of importance so that everybody has the same common understanding around it.

On the statement regarding the CRE backdrop, Europe versus US, if you may elaborate on this.

Sorry, I was jumping, Domenico, too short, yeah. You are totally right.

That's fine. That,

first of all, when we compared the US and the European market, we always elaborated that those markets are functioning structurally differently, yeah, and that remains absolutely the same and is still true. In the US, structurally you always have had, for example, way higher vacancy rates in the properties than you have in Germany.

In the US, you structurally have different financing structures as well compared to the European market. Therefore, yeah, it is in our view never right to do just a one-by-one and say, yeah, the US is the same as Europe or Europe acts the same as the US.

What we see, and that's what I said already, structurally, we are monitoring this portfolio pretty consistently. There is no structural weakness in the European portfolio, also not in the office portfolio.

However, you know that the office market is, when you look into asset classes, the one that is most challenged by the developments, be it around follow-up on COVID with work from home or also looking forward around even more work from home or reduced workforce given AI developments. Therefore, certainly the office portfolio is the one that experiences higher stress at the moment in the market compared to other asset classes.

However, what we see in our portfolio, yeah, is nothing systematic. It's idiosyncratic.

It's very defined individual cases, yeah, that have not worked according to plan and which we are now working very closely out of the NPL book.

Thank you.

Hi. My first question is on the US NPLs.

I believe at the first quarter you guided for these to reach €400 million this quarter, because you had about €200 million in the exit pipeline. This has turned out to actually be at €500 million.

Why did that €200 million not quite fully materialize? Then second on the kind of European NPLs, the new ones this quarter, you're saying they're idiosyncratic, but I guess because they're all office, that is a trend.

Maybe just more justification on why you consider them idiosyncratic. Then a quick two last questions.

Just next one's on the outlook for the new business margin, obviously stable this quarter, but how do you see that going forward? Then the last question is just again on the kind of capital volatility.

Obviously, it's reassuring that the reviews are every year and not more frequently, but that being said, how do you kind of manage capital just given that it is potentially quite volatile coming from Poland? Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks.

I'm happy to take the question, Sharada. Thanks very much for it, and probably starting the reverse order, yeah, around capital volatility.

We remain, yeah, committed to steer the bank through the cycle, yeah, and the cycle has an impact on the publication that EBA does, yeah, to remain above 13%. That is not going to change, yeah.

We do not change that steering after the positive reversal that we have seen, and therefore, we continuously will make sure that this volatility is covered within that range so that we stay above the 13%. The new business margin that you are asking for, I think, first of all, it's a very important element of steering our business.

We want to put profitable business on the book. When we look into our pipeline of €10.4 billion, what we see going forward is, although competition on low transaction volume is high, we are able to generate the business recurringly on 7% to 8% of RoTE, yeah, and at the moment, that's brings us around 220, 230 basis point margin.

We would expect that for the upcoming quarters to be the current basis on which we underwrite the business. With regard to your question on the European NPL side, well, I have to say, Sharada, you gave a bit of the answer already in your question, yeah, and I tried to address that in the answer to Domenico.

Of course, the office asset class is the one that experiences more stress relative to other asset classes. That's clear, and honestly, we do expect that to remain, yeah, for the foreseeable future.

However, yeah, why we are calling it idiosyncratic, because we do have a large office book, and across this large office book in many markets, yeah, we see not the same stress that we see in the one or the other property in smaller submarkets, yeah. That's why it's not a structural issue in the office portfolio that we have, but it's idiosyncratic on a case-by-case basis.

However, it's all office, yeah, which is driven by what I said, yeah, the relative weakness of the office asset class relative to other asset classes. Back to our first question, the last one to answer is on the US NPL, but,

yeah, Marcus? I think if I understood your question right, I think if you look at page 7, and I think also what we have said before, we said at the end of the year we had €0.9 billion US NPL and we want to be at €0.4 billion by the end of this year.

Now we were at €0.6 billion already at Q1, and we are now at €0.5 billion, where we want to be at €0.4 billion, which is why we are highly confident that we will be overachieving that target, we are ahead of track. Firmly ahead of track.

Thank you.

What you say, there is no additional questions. Just leaving it a second if someone wants to raise the hand.

If that is not the case, you all know to contact Michael and the team on our side if there should additional questions arise. Other than that, it leaves me with saying a big, big thank you, yeah, for your participation, for your interest in our half-year figures.

Happy to stay continuously in touch. Thanks very much for dialing in.

I wish you, yeah, somewhere to stay cool in a very hot summer that Europe is experiencing, yeah, and I wish you all the best for the rest of the summer. Thanks very much.

Thank you.