Morning, everyone. Please find a seat, and welcome to the presentation of the third quarter for DNB.

A very warm welcome to all of you in the audience who's here physically, and also welcome to everyone following us on the stream, either you're working from home or abroad. There will be time for questions after the presentation, and there is also an opportunity for journalists to talk to management after this session.

With no further ado, I will leave it to you, our CEO Kjerstin Braathen. Please.

Thank you so much, Even, and a very good morning to all of you, and welcome to the presentation of our third quarter results. It's been yet another active quarter, even with the holiday season finding itself in the midst of the third quarter.

We have seen a strong activity across the business, and the robustness of the Nordic economies is underpinning these activities. We're also very pleased to see that we are making progress in our Nordic growth strategy.

It is a fact that the environment globally outside the Nordics continues to be volatile, but what we've also seen is that the investment cycle in technology, and notably AI, continues through the quarter. We also see technology as a key driver, together with our people, in the transformation of our businesses and our ability to create enhanced customer value.

Overall, I am, as always, very grateful to our team, who work relentlessly every day, and their collective efforts to deliver value to customers and also deliver the the results that we are presenting to you today. Our mission is to simplify life for people and businesses and help them prosper.

As I've done in the previous few quarters, I would like to start with a few highlights and examples on how we do exactly that. We are increasing artificial intelligence in our integrating we are increasingly integrating artificial intelligence in the offering to our to our customers, and thus increasing the value of what we are delivering to them.

One example is how we implement these in know-your-customer processes to make them smoother and avoid asking the same questions to customer several times. Another is by a faster and smoother onboarding experience for customers, and overall improving customer journeys across the businesses.

We believe that this is also what is visible in the feedback that we are getting from our customers, and we are motivated to see that many of them report back to us that they are increasingly happy with our services. One of the highlights this quarter is to see Sbanken back up at the levels they were before integrating services into the business.

We also see an all-time high level of satisfaction from the smaller business clients. We continue to see a broadening of our offering and services in savings and investments.

This is an area where the pace of innovation, as I've seen it, has gone up, and this is one of the drivers resulting in an all-time high level of net flow into the asset management business this quarter, and a meaningful contribution from retail customers, fortifying our position as a leading asset manager in the Nordics. Lastly, a word on Montrose, which is our challenger savings app for retail customers in Sweden.

One of the news from them this quarter is that they were the first one in Europe to launch an MCP integration. That means that they are enabling customers to integrate their portfolios directly into AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Claude to get personalized insights, an example on how we are also supporting competing initiatives, because we strongly believe that competition is also what makes us all better in terms of delivering to customers.

Turning to a few highlights on the numbers we are presenting today: return on equity comes in at 14.5% for the quarter. Adjusted for the Luminor transaction, where our part-ownership of this bank has been announced in in a sale, return on equity is 15.5%, both well above the hurdle of minimum 14%.

The the profit for the period is 9.8 billion kroner. Our NII is up by 2.5% compared to the previous quarter, reflecting growth in lending across all key business areas of the bank.

One of the strongest points this quarter is net fees and commissions, up 14.6% from the third quarter last year. A few areas to highlight yet again this quarter is investment banking and asset management, both up respectively 39% and 12% from the quarter from the same quarter in the prior year.

Again, net inflows in assets under management: 54.5 billion inflows this quarter, fortifying our position in this area. Our portfolio remains robust, well-diversified.

Impairment provisions this quarter of 529 million, but we continue to see 99.4% of the portfolio in stages 1 and 2. Our capital position is strong: 17.3%, which means 100 basis points headroom to the required and expected level from the FSA.

This number also includes the deduction of 30 basis points related to the share buyback program that was announced earlier today. These solid results results in an earnings per share of 6.57, which would have been 7.07 if we adjust for the Luminor, which is more of a one-off nature.

We are growing, as I've said, our activity across the Nordics, but Norway remains our largest market, and as such, it is the Norwegian economy which is the most important for the development of our business. If we look at the outlook for for Norway, GDP is expected to come in at 1.1% this year, with an uptick towards 1.5% in '27 and the following years.

The labor market continues to be balanced, around 2% unemployment, and the outlook for this market is stable. Inflation has come down from the higher levels in previous years, but as stated also by the central bank, the tail towards the 2% is stickier and harder to get.

This is also what has led to the central bank hiking rates on two occasions earlier this year, which has led to a key policy rate now of 4.5%. The market expects a few rate cuts in the future as inflation is expected to go further down, and the timing of this is now in the second half of 2027, if you look at what the market is expecting.

We do note the volatility in the world around us, but the Norwegian economy remains resilient, and the outlook is also a solid basis for our business outlook ahead. I would like to share a few highlights from our main business areas and their developments.

Growth in the past year has been profitable across business areas of 5% in total. In personal customers, we continue to grow.

At the same time, we see that our customers are increasingly satisfied. We see this again as a result of deploying AI to simplify product and processes, and it also makes our people better and more targeted advisors to our customers.

Costs are stable, and the team is performing well in what is still a competitive market. There is a high level on savings, which I've alluded to under net flows in asset management, but there's also a high activity level on savings, where this quarter we have arranged investing seminars under the umbrella Hun Investerer across the country.

It's full every time, and the revenue in savings, long-term savings in mutual funds in the personal customer segment, is up by 21% compared to the same quarter last year. Corporate banking delivers a growth year-on-year of 6.2%.

Pre-tax profit is stable, a lower contribution from net interest income, but a higher contribution from net other operating income, which we are pleased to see, and is a result of, amongst other, that the cooperation is increasing between corporate banking and DNB Carnegie, where there is a decent uptick in revenue compared to last year. Large corporates this quarter and the last year is delivering as a key part of our growth platform: 10.8% growth over the last year, a pre-tax profit that is 13.4% higher than the third quarter last year.

Our growth is broad-based across both geographies and industries, and the portfolio remains robust and well-diversified. Our Nordic strategy continues to gain traction.

We have 50 new customers in the Nordics outside of Norway so far this year, and 35 of them from Sweden. The revenue from the cooperation between DNB Carnegie and large corporates this quarter is up by 32% compared to the same quarter last year.

Lastly, I would like to this quarter to mention Fremtind, the non-life insurance company that we own with 28.5 percentage points, because they are delivering very strong results. For us, they're contributing both in the net commission and fee line under insurance, which is up compared to the same quarter last year, but they're also contributing as an associated company, and their results are are solid and high, reflecting both growth, but also substantially improved profitability in the business.

I wanted to give them a shout-out also for this quarter. With that, I will leave it to our excellent CFO, Rasmus, to take you through the details.

Takk. Thank you, Kjerstin.

I will now take you through the third quarter results in more detail. We see continued high activity in the customer segments, with FX-adjusted volumes up 1.2% in the quarter and 5% year-over-year.

We note profitable loan growth in the personal customer segment of 0.4% this quarter. Volumes in both corporate customers Norway and large corporate international were up by 0.8% and 3.4%, respectively.

Growth across all geographies and industries, and geographically we continue to see that more than 50% of the growth in large corporate international is outside of Norway, primarily also in the Nordics. The 3% to 4% annual growth ambition is defined at group level.

We remain focused on capturing attractive growth opportunities while maintaining a disciplined approach to risk and return. Currency-adjusted deposits are down by 1.9%.

The decrease of 1.2% in personal customers are driven by seasonality, whereby customer gradually spent their annual holiday pay paid out in June throughout the quarter. The reduction is, however, lower than the corresponding quarter last year, and should be seen in combination with the strong inflow in assets under management.

Corporate customers Norway was down 6.3% due to seasonal fluctuations in the public sector, as well as reductions within organizations, both sectors carrying lower deposit margins. Volumes excluding the public sector and organization, and thus reflecting the breadth of the Norwegian corporates, was up by 2.9%.

Volumes in large corporate and international was up by 1.1%. We remain having a strong deposit-to-loan ratio within the customer segments of 71.6% this quarter.

There's positive development in the net interest margin and customer spreads that reflects a profitable growth and customer repricing. The net interest margin was up 1 basis point to 171 basis points, and the combined spreads were up by 2 basis points.

Both lending and deposit spreads have lag effects related to repricing, and should be seen in combination, as illustrated in the combined spreads. Moving on to NII developments, where we explain the effects in more detail.

The net interest income was up 372 million in the quarter. Spreads are up by 173, and should be seen together with a positive contribution from interest on equity of 71 to see the full effect of the repricing.

Customer repricing effects was the main contributor to increased NII this quarter. We also note positive deposit mix effects, as mentioned previously.

The pressure on margins due to competition was somewhat lower than in the previous quarter. Higher average volumes during the quarter contributed 58 million, but we note that volume growth picked up late in the quarter.

One extra interest day amounted to 115 million. Following the central bank's rate hike of 25 basis points in September, we announced a customer repricing which becomes effective on November 29th, impacting NII positively in the fourth quarter, together with the full effects of the repricing announced in July.

We have a strong and well-diversified fee platform, and are very pleased to see a growth of 14.6% from the corresponding quarter last year. Investment banking services was up by 39%, and we note particularly strong results within investment banking, which was up by 57.4%, driven by ECM, DCM, and M&A.

We also saw a strong contribution from our Nordic platform on this line. Asset management and custodial services was up by 13%.

As mentioned, we note an all-time high net flow of 54.4 billion in the quarter, of which 6.8 billion came from the retail customer segment. 30 billion of this quarter net flow was driven by single institutional clients.

Assets under management up 68 billion from the second quarter, resulting in a total asset under management of 1,849 billion this quarter. Money transfer and banking services were down by 9%.

We did see seasonally higher activity related to card payments with travel on our customers' summer holiday season, offset by costs related to credit insurance, as mentioned previously, assisting on the originate-and-distribute model within LCI. Sale of insurance products was up by 16%, as highlighted by Kjerstin previously, and mainly driven by positive development in defined contribution pensions, as well as increased income from non-life insurance.

We continue to work diligently on our cost base, which was down by 355 million compared to Q2. Contributors were market effects on closed defined-benefit pensions and seasonally lower activity.

Increased IT cost was partly due to data centers and AI expenses. Fixed salaries are down by 86 million, reflecting our continuous work on increased efficiency within the corporation.

Variable salaries were down compared to Q2, but up 58 million compared to the corresponding quarter last year, reflecting the higher activity than typical Q3 in DNB Carnegie. We remain committed to delivering on our cost efficiency, as highlighted by our recently announced staff reductions.

Now over to portfolio quality, which remains robust and well-diversified, stable from last quarter, and with 99.4% being in stages 1 and 2. The personal customers portfolio, constituting 50% of our balance, remains strong.

We continue to see benign levels of interest-only applications and past-due payments. For corporate customers Norway, the impairment provisions totaled 287 million, and the increase in stage 3 impairments were related to customer-specific events.

The portfolio remains strong and well-diversified across industries and geographies, with no structural changes or negative migrations to note. We remain comfortable with the overall credit quality in the portfolio.

Now moving on to capital. Our CET1 ratio remains strong at 17.3%, with 100 basis points headroom to the regulatory expectations.

The CET1 was positively impacted by profit generation in the quarter, which was partly offset by a higher REA driven by volume growth. We've completed the 2% share buyback program under the current Annual General Meeting authorization, and today announced a new 0.75% program, impacting CET1 by 30 basis points.

Leverage ratio remains strong at 6.3%, well above the regulatory requirements of 3%. Our capital situation, sum, remains strong, and enables us to continue deliver on our dividend policy and support our customers in times ahead.

Summing up, we deliver a strong set of results in the third quarter, reflected in our key figures: return on equity came in at 14.5%, and compensating for the sale of Luminor would have been 15.5%; cost-income ratio at 39.8%; and earnings per share was 6.57 kroner, summing up for the year so far, 19.58, and with Luminor compensation or pro forma, it would have ended up at 7 kroner and 7 øre. Before we open up to questions, I would like to invite you all to our Capital Markets Day at our offices in London on November 10th.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Rasmus and Kjerstin. We will open up for questions, and there are microphones on the side, if you could give me a little signal.

Yes, Simon from ABG here in the front. Just wait for the microphone to arrive so everyone on the stream also can hear your question.

Thank you. Simon Brun, ABG Sundal Collier.

Just firstly, a question on the competitive environment in the market. Rasmus, you mentioned, or maybe it's for Kjerstin, I don't know, that quarter-on-quarter, the competitive environment has eased somewhat.

Can you elaborate on that? Is that sort of broad-based across both the customer segment and commercial?

Are there any changes relative to if that is smaller Norwegian banks, or larger Nordic banks, one of which alluded last week that the competition is intensifying? Thank you.

Thank you, and thank you for asking that question. We see no material change in the competitive landscape, and are merely commenting on the impact into our numbers and how we are continuously showing a disciplined allocation of capital and balancing growth and profitability.

Indeed, we see that our offering is attractive across customers in personal customers and SME and medium-sized enterprises, but these continue also to be the areas where competition is the most intense. We're also pleased to see that the development is healthy in the both the NII and the growth this quarter.

Is this on? Yeah.

On taxes, in your notes, you refer to a disagreement or dispute with Norwegian tax authorities about the paid tax for 2019 to 2023. Can you just share some additional thoughts on how we should think of that, and if that will be a lengthy process going forward?

It already has been a lengthy process. It's been ongoing for several years, and we have highlighted this in our annual reports as it progresses.

The new information on this is that they've added two more years on their assessment on this transfer pricing tax issue. This is a well-known tax issue to us.

There is ongoing dialogue, and we expect it to also proceed for a while. There's no change to our fundamental assessment on this matter, and as such, we have not made any provisions on this tax effect.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thomas Svendsen from SEB, you could just pass the mic. Thank you.

Thank you. Question to the asset management operations, and sort of the massive flow of funds, both in this quarter, but also in Q2.

Are you taking market shares? Are you working in a different way?

How are the margins on the new business you get on board?

Thank you, Thomas. We've highlighted this quarter and last quarter that there was, both of these quarters, a large one-off placement from one institutional investor with a limited sort of contribution to the margins, but a considerable contribution to flows.

The amount was approximately 30 billion this quarter, and the same last quarter, but still, even beyond that, there is a very high level of inflow. Whether we're taking market share or not, I haven't checked.

We also have increasingly a diversified sourcing of funds, and 25% of the flows outside of this one placement from a single institutional investors stems from outside Norway, 25% stems from outside Norway, 6.5 billion from retail customers. We continue to see a high level of savings, which is also what contributes to what I said in personal customers, a 21% growth in earnings from this area in the last year, but a healthy flow across the board.

I know there have been others who have reported recently, you're probably better positioned than I to gauge the relative performance, but to me, it looks pretty strong.

Just a second question on costs. You talk about new technology, AI, etc.

Which customer segments or functions in the bank do you see the biggest efficiency upside from introducing new technology?

I think as a general note, we think that AI is transformational, and we think it's transformational to many industries if not all of them. That means that there are opportunities to work differently and to enhance customer offering across all of the areas that we are working.

If you look at where we have done the most so far, which we have commented on previously, it's been in the areas related to KYC, which is also partly what we announced in the restructuring recently where we are reducing the number of employees. It's also from chatbot services and improved customer service in our call centers, enabling our advisors to better help customers, which is why we also see, yes, a more efficient operation in this area, but also more happy customers.

A third area that I would highlight is the efficiency in coding, where our technologists and developers are now more and increasingly supervising agents writing the code than actually writing the code themselves. We are well underway on this journey, but we will continue to, and we do work, also across the bank in other areas where this will lead to improvements and enhanced value for our customers.

Thank you.

Thank you. Any questions, further questions?

Do we have one question in the midst on that side?

I don't need the microphone.

For the stream.

You need this. Sorry, thank you.

Please introduce yourself.

Yes, Felix Sandblom from BearingPoint. I just wondered, now that interest rates are returning back to 2024, 2025 levels, do you expect profitability to go back to the same levels as we saw in these years?

We have a very clear sort of financial targets on profitability as such, and we deliver in line with that, which is minimum 14% for this quarter. We've also announced some decisions that have been made in the aftermath of the interest rate levels.

As we always do in an environment where there are different moving parts and pieces, for every decision we make, we will consider, of course, the rate levels in the market, the competitive situation around us, and any other relevant circumstances. Across the business, where it's important also to highlight that two-thirds of our revenue and activity stems from other areas than personal customers, but across the whole of the business, we work to grow profitably, but also to grow our fee-related business more than our lending.

With that, we are strongly committed to delivering on more than minimum, more than 14% return on equity.

Another question, since the others also asked two. The stock market is very exuberant at the moment, and if there was a correction of let's say 30% to 50%, which has happened several times in history, how would that impact DNB?

I think a correction of 30% to 50%, yes, it has happened, but it has happened rarely in the market. Of course, we are mostly impacted by the underlying investment activity and the cash flow and results from our customers in relation to the lending activity on the business.

What we would expect if the markets were to correct substantially would be somewhat lower activity across some of the investment banking areas. Generally, IPOs tends to dry up if that is the impact, and debt investor tends to be more cautious and activity lower in bond markets, particularly in high yield.

Of course, it would impact our asset management business. Again, the last point that I would highlight is in a world where volatility has been higher than what we've seen prior to the past five years, we remain in one of the most robust, if not the most robust, economy and economic area in the Nordics in the world to deal with any turmoils.

Thank you. If there are no further questions in the audience, I'd like to take the opportunity to introduce our new head of Investor Relations, Mitra Hagen Negård, who is sitting here in the front.

Are there any questions from the online audience? Then please give her the microphone.

Thank you. The first question is from Martin Ekstedt in Handelsbanken.

Should we take the new buyback program of 0.75% of shares outstanding versus the previous program for 1% initiated in July to mean that you are setting a lower pace for buybacks, or will the new program be executed over a shorter time period than the previous one?

Thank you. Our capital allocation commitment remains strong, that we will disperse excess capital back to our investors.

As such, with a smaller program, the period of buyback is expected to be shorter, and that's what should be read into it.

Thank you. I have another question.

Please go ahead.

Aleksander Løwstedt Lager from Arctic: As last quarter, you mentioned large AUM inflow from one institutional client. Can you give me more details on this?

We've talked about also that this quarter with the similar amount, we have no other details other than saying that this is from one institutional investors, and as such a low-margin contribution, but a very sound inflow in terms of volumes.

Thank you. I will proceed.

Two questions from Sofie Peterzéns from Goldman Sachs. The first one: In Q2, DNB said competition and mix change weighed on NIM, net interest margin, by approximately 1.5 basis points each.

What was the impact from competition and mix change this quarter on NIM?

We haven't been specific about the impact beyond saying that it's a lower impact this quarter compared to last quarter. Again reiterating my response to the important question that was mentioned, we are, by saying that, not signaling a substantial or material change in the competitive environment.

It continues to be fierce, and we also continue to monitor and balance our growth and profitability throughout the business.

Thank you. Her next question: When do you expect the tax dispute to get resolved?

We have no clear timeline on that. As mentioned, this proceeded already for several years, and these processes usually take a very long time.

Thank you. No further questions on the web.

No further questions. I think that concludes this session.

Let's hope the scenario from BearingPoint doesn't occur, and let's all have a good Wednesday. Thank you all.