Good afternoon, and warm welcome everyone. I'm glad to be able to address you again, this time about the half-year results of '26.

I'm happy to report that the first half of the dividend has been paid out in June as planned, and looking forward to the second half to be distributed still this year. Following the upgrade into the A rating which we celebrated at last webcast, the Standard & Poor's followed Moody's by the positive outlook, there's another improvement in this respect in terms of recognition of our performance and general shape.

We have obviously been consistently delivering against the strategic promises of 2030 forecasts, and in this respect, of course, part of the story is organic, part of the story has always been communicated as eventual addressing of the M&A opportunities. Unfortunately, we were not successful at an attempt of acquiring the Addiko Group, but this by all means is behind us, and we have been moving on.

We have moved on basically, practically, as we speak, and will be, of course, trying to understand other opportunities. What is important to state in this respect is that, of course, full capital power, strength, and of course, liquidity strength of this group is available for further continuation of organic trends, very strong organic trends, and of course, addressing eventual other opportunities were they surfacing.

We have been also working on introducing some novelties to the market in this quarter, especially real estate fund from our market-leading fund business, asset management business, approaching 44% market share, but generally, I think this is just demonstration of our capacity of distribution of universal financial services. Financially, Archibald will guide you through the details, but generally, we can report a solid growth, be it in terms of total assets, which is partly of course also a function of us prepaying the senior preferred bonds.

On the other hand, clearly, the loan growth is what is driving our business further, and year on year, 12% double-digit loan growth is a very solid prospect. I'm happy to see this growth also at that levels, basically, in Slovenia as well, but this comes across the board, from more or less all other markets on average and client segments, and that's pretty encouraging.

If you look at this year alone, year-to-date developments, we are also more or less looking at expected close to double-digit growth versus the guided at high single digit of around 8%. I'm also specifically happy that, without really strong incentification in core markets, we have seen very solid deposit growth, whereby, indeed, there's been some pressures in specific selected markets in terms of margin compression, specifically Archibald will give you more details, specifically Serbia, Kosovo, and some other markets, but nevertheless, overall, a very solid performance also in the funding space.

We are able to fund our own growth with our own sources, constantly keeping self-funding franchises really in a solid state. Net operating income is up, which is a good sign, clearly.

Margin has stabilized, which will be obvious a bit later. Cost-income ratio is in control, I'm really happy about the cost evolution.

We were able to, despite significant investment in improvement of client experience, contain the cost, and generally, if you look at the recurring space, and here I would really encourage us also later on in the presentation to focus on recurring evolution of pre-provision profits. If you look at the level of results after tax, yes, it's below the last year's levels, but if you look at the result pre-provision in recurring space from recurring operations, it's actually up, and meaningfully up, which is pretty encouraging to see.

In terms of the margin, I mentioned stabilization, we would now hope to see this not only stable, but gradual evolution upwards. We've been working together with the teams on, in last half a year, basically, on gradual uptick in pricing when it comes to housing loans, of course, given the change in the rate environment, and in general, of course, this change in rate environment is affecting the liquidity reserve book and ability to replace that displacements significantly.

In this respect, that's a good sign of stabilization. When we're talking about the normalized returns, they are still at very appealing levels, and we aim to keep them at that level, I come to that a bit later on when we were talking about the guidance.

Really, the dividend payout is still something that we assess as highly attractive. Even at today's prices in the market, we see 6% dividend yield, and that's compared to, of course, other alternative investments with comparable risk profile and growth pretty attractive and appealing.

As said, I will be talking about the guidance. This remains one of the key pillars of the value proposition besides the growth, obviously.

By that, I would pass the word to Archibald to guide you through some more details, and then later, as usual, Andreas on the asset quality.

Thank you, Blaž. Welcome from my side.

A few words on macro. Our region well in the meantime.

Things are stable or improving on the real growth front, and of course, that's a space to be watched given the fairly dynamic environment, but it remains a robust growth environment. At the same time, inflation is under control, still slightly elevated as in other geographies, but under control.

All of that in an environment where fundamentals are strong, continue to be strong. Unemployment, you know the drill, it's going down, single digits in most markets in the meantime.

Fiscal balance, fiscal discipline very much in check, I would actually say these are pretty very well presentable figures by all means. Also the penetration levels, in other words, the untapped potential is still very strong.

That's driving our loan growth. Nothing has changed here.

By and large, you see loan deposits slowly going up, but by and large, it's still a very liquid market. However, LTDs have come up, and you see that here and there also reflected in somewhat muted, more muted loan growth in the meantime, more disciplined loan growth, as of course loan growth has to follow, especially for us, the deposit growth, the savings capacity of the countries.

In terms of the business, as was mentioned, a very robust loan growth, year to date 5%, we are still operating in a high single digit, if not low double-digit growth environment. Deposits, 2%, that's a bit of a mixed picture, but all in very healthy levels.

Of course, that's a space we are getting increasingly focused on to be first and foremost of all not just out there with good products, but also with excellent customer service. That's where a lot of our attention and investment goes.

Otherwise, still highly liquid, robust, well-capitalized balance sheet. Nothing has changed here, of course.

Lots of dry powder still in regards of capitalization levels and liquidity levels. This is still our fortress balance sheet, thank God.

Super robust leverage ratio, high levels of equity, cash equity, high levels of self-funding, and well diversified. Andreas will give you the rundown.

Yes, we're still growing strong in loans, as you see here, across segments and geography. This is really across the board, very high loan demand.

Of course, for us as a bank, given liquidity here and there gets tighter, that naturally leads here and there also to repricings, especially as rate environment is stable or actually on the long end going up. On the yield, you see that reflected.

Loan yields are also stabilizing, and that's what is to be anticipated and expected as there is even talks of further slight rate increases on the short end, but also quite some dynamic in the long end specifically. That would basically support stabilizing, if not slightly increasing, loan yields across our markets.

On deposit front, that's where a lot of our attention these days goes. It's healthy by all means, and of course, we have been a little bit more focused on loan growth previous years because liquidity was just plentiful.

These days, we spend much more attention on maintaining loan and deposit growth in balance. You see that by and large we are very successful doing that.

Here and there, it shows up in the price. You see that whereas in Slovenia actually there is a bit of migration out from term deposits to savings and sight accounts, whereas in other markets, we are seeing a bit of a migration to terms, and of course, that's more costly, which is what you see in the deposit yield dynamics.

On balance, very very solid performance. Our deposit betas are still very, very low.

All this leads, of course, to pretty robust revenue growth. I'd say we are on a good track, also in regards of our ambitions that we presented our Capital Markets Day.

You see NII growth 5%, and that will be improving further, also in the second half of the year, as Blaž mentioned. We disposed of some expensive capital markets funding, and of course, with the better rating going forward, as we have mentioned in the Capital Markets Day, there will be uplift coming from refinancing our wholesale funding at better terms, which is another equation we're very focused on.

Fee commission 10%, I think this is really nothing to complain about, very robust performance. Indeed, I think we rightfully highlighted the success in asset management on our front page because it really is a star performer and by far not done yet as most of the business still happens in Slovenia, but we have set up operations in Serbia and North Macedonia that are slowly getting started.

Cost remains, I would say, fairly under control. 3% year on year is I think robust and disciplined.

We still have fairly high levels of inflation, elevated levels of inflation for sure beyond 2%. So 3%, I think, is great performance but remains let's say permanent attention area.

As we continue to invest in not just better customer experience, we also invest in employee experience, head office spaces. We want to build a great bank for both our customers and our employees.

That will continue to require investments, but we will remain very rational about those. On the indicators, cost-income was mentioned.

We're pretty okay with where we are, but these numbers are not static and they develop. Also, we know that there is a bit of a cost dynamic usually in the second half of the year, but our ambitions, Blaž will talk about it, remain unchanged.

NIM actually slightly going up as you've seen quarter to quarter, so that's really encouraging and is what you would expect these days with the rate environment as I described. Not to dwell on these numbers too specifically, but to reiterate: margin has not just stabilized, but slightly gone up.

That's good. NII year on year, pretty solid performance, 5%, and if you look quarter to quarter, it's even 6%.

I'd say we can be pretty okay with that. Of course, that is still area that we actually see potential to grow because the funding pressure will to some extent go away, fade away, and as the effects of better capital markets funding kick in, I think there is room to grow even faster, as we indicated also on the Capital Markets Day.

We're pretty bullish on NII. It comes actually from all dimensions.

You see corporates, individuals, securities delivering nicely. As said, a bit of that is eaten up by higher deposit costs, but we expect this to stabilize.

The sensitivities these days really fairly low and I guess in our lens that's a good position. Of course, we look at that frequently and then might change our mind at some point, but for the time being, we believe that's a good place to be.

I talked about very solid fee and commission income. Blaž said focus on the recurring parts of the equation, that's 10% growth.

It's across the board, payments, and of course, particularly good performance in investment funds and bancassurance. I remind you, we have rolled out several features that make these products now even more accessible also on our digital platforms.

We combine great product excellence now with even broader distribution capacity. We used to sell this mostly in branches, now we can sell it over the mobile phone.

I think with that we're pretty much on par in our digital UX with what you would expect from a modern bank these days. All of that, as said, drives good performance in fee commission income.

Again, we're still operating somewhat below potential because indeed there are areas where we can do better. Cards, ATMs is something we are focused on these days, and there's plenty of potential to further penetrate our customer base with lots of value-added products.

Costs, I discussed. I think good discipline across the board, and again, this is for sure not yet affecting any of bigger potentials in regards of automation because there are still quite a few untapped potentials, and AI is not even a serious debate other than in punctual deployments, and of course, broad-based as a self-service, but as a capability, I think there is still a lot to go, and in that sense, this cost function is okay.

We need capacity to invest, as I mentioned earlier, we also need pockets of rationalization, and I think at the moment this is a pretty well-balanced equation. Capital is of course given our successful raises last year and this year very robust.

We didn't spend it on the acquisition. We maintain a solid, but disciplined payout equation: this year 55%, we said towards 60s, in other words, we see upside.

Of course, this is also very valuable dry powder for potential acquisition opportunities. As I pass over to Andreas on asset quality.

Archibald, thank you. On asset quality, actually pretty much of the same, very controlled, very stable development if you look big picture.

As you can see on that chart, as Blaž and Archibald both mentioned before, solid loan growth basically in all areas. If you look a little bit deeper, then there are some ups and downs.

I have to say I'm considerably more happy this year with retail in Slovenia. Last year, we were a little bit high on gross cost of risk, we were working on models and and getting a little bit sharper.

That works well, so that looks considerably better. Where we still see inflows from a provisioning point of view is actually Corporate Slovenia, the the the old kids on the block making actually good progress in restructuring, but that's a way to go.

Here no bad news. Then we have one, two new cases which catch my attention, and you see this since we did a lot of staging last year, you actually see it now more in the provisioning than than in in staging.

Yeah. In that sense here, of course, Stage 2, as I just said, Corporate slightly up, retail actually exactly flat, and in Stage 3, the effect here in in Corporate has to do that one of the bigger cases repaid a third of the exposure from disposal of some non-core assets.

That's actually a a a good part already of that, very stable here. Of course, our loan portfolio is well diversified, nothing much has changed here.

From new business, there is a lot of wholesale and retail trade, renewable energy projects, which we anyhow like, and construction business, but overall, big picture stays of course pretty similar. We had one point of time we were showing you automotive because that was a little bit of an increased attention, actually very much unchanged.

The the only area where we see some problems, that's that's the manufacturing, and there no news compared to what I have told you already. We have here two sizable cases from from from last year, actually one of them is the one I mentioned to you before where we got the repayment, so that's actually good.

If you look on total volumes of non-performing loans, we're now at €460 million, so that's unchanged, 2% of the portfolio. Almost half of that is actually with with zero delays, they are they're therefore unlikely to to pay-trigger, or some of them, of course, there are some standstills.

When we look on coverage ratios, they are now again going up. We were end of last year actually slightly below 50, now we are again at 53.

That's anyhow very solidly above EU average, now again fully in the range actually which which we see as healthy. If you look on the provisioning side, as I said at the beginning, here you see some movements.

The portfolio development in the first year with first half of the year with €48 million is not that small. On the other side, we see still, for me a little bit surprising, actually still quite good repayments from from off-balance.

Overall, what you have to see is on on IFRS 9, also here overall picture very much flat. If you look inside, the the effects which we saw last year was in retail and Corporate Slovenia, now you see reflected in the in the provisioning.

Here we have some charge, whereas in the rest of the group some relief, overall basically flattish, and that overall brings you to €32 million impairments. Since we are now on on on €20 billion loan book, that's surprisingly then exactly 32 bps cost of risk.

Looking forward, if you ask me, I'm I'm really expecting that this year we will be in the range of guidance, between 30 and 50 bps cost of risk. I'm optimistic that we will be in the lower half of that, whether we will like last year do the trick then at the end to stay slightly below, I'm rather a little bit skeptic.

We see some inflows, if you ask me we will continue to see that, but on the other side, it will stay very controlled, very stable, no big surprises. Given what is the macro environment all around us, I think that's actually a good news.

With this, I'm handing back over to Blaž.

Thank you, both. The the summary is that we have been of course performing against expectations, more or less in line with expectations, and towards the guidance and the research consensus.

It's it's another year of strong performance. We have, as said, in the M&A space tried to, make a breakthrough with one bigger acquisition.

We we simply have moved on, as said, and I'm consciously wearing today the heart of Sarajevo because this this endeavor has actually forced us to focus again. We will simply in the upcoming mid-term period, given the fact that the doors to Croatian market seem to be shut until there is any mutual agreement between both governments, focus on domestic turf, Slovenia, and above all, really become even stronger specialists for the Western Balkans.

We have been talking about our desires to enter the last missing Western Balkans market, which is the Albanian market. We have, of course, not been hiding our ambitious ambitions to solidify our position in Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

We, of course, will address eventual opportunities coming also from the asset management, captive insurance space, be it in Slovenia, be it in of course other countries of our of our presence. In this respect, I believe this is fully in line with our strategic guidance and strategic framework.

Organically, we are showing strong performance, organically we are moving on, and through the M&A, I we believe there will be opportunities down the way down the road. In this respect, we believe it's still worthwhile retaining certain reserve capacity in our capital base.

Nevertheless, we we've told you last time around and within of course our Investor Day presentations that we might be stepping up the dividend payout towards 60%. This year, we are still operating with a 55% of last year's profits and to be paid out in December as usual, and then next year, might consider obviously stepping this up towards somehow towards 60 somewhere towards 60%.

All of the indicators here in the in the outlook seem to be achievable from today's perspective. We're firmly standing behind them, give or take, right, minimum deviations, but it's been a very strong Q2, and in this respect, as as mentioned, some one-off improvements, be it in our structure of funding base, be it in of course rate environment overall, be it still fueled by strong growth, we believe that, yeah, clearly this is not only achievable, but, we might here and there in these or other corner positive surprise.

Overall, we feel strong and confident. We are, of course, equipped with capital base and liquidity strength still, and we have a clear understanding of how to move on.

As said, if, you cannot make one step forward, you maybe make one step back, but then you make two forward. From today's perspective, this seems to be something that we are looking forward to actually.

Thank you very much for as always being with us on this journey, and by that, I would open up room for questions.

On the credit market, I would say it's more of the same. I leave to colleagues to elaborate further.

I don't see particular dynamics that would stick out from today's lens. On the bond refinance, we monitor and observe capital markets every single day.

Obviously, we will not jump to conclusions. Markets are strong, remain strong, and in that sense, we put a lot of effort in keeping constant dialogue with investors.

Nothing to jump to conclusions, but yes, in the second half of the year, we'll get very focused on the sub-market and of course subject to if M&A were to happen anywhere, of course we would immediately rethink our funding plans and possibly size up or accelerate. For the time being, it's a regular refinance coming up next year, and towards second half of the year, we'll start to basically prepare ourselves.

The rating I think improvement plus the continuous, let's say, convergence of our spreads to markets and peers will probably remain, and of course, we will do the legwork in terms of investor work and making sure these books will be well filled when we call the market.

On credit activity, more or less I can only add we will do more of the same, just following what Archie said, which is focusing on retail. Housing landing is an anchor product.

Account and housing loan to me is an anchor product, obviously, with all the ancillary products come into it. Corporates, we of course do, but we do this consciously, conscious to the capital allocation.

It has to be risk-adjusted. We are not interested in high volumes at low prices, just for the sake of growth.

More or less a high diversification pattern is to be followed, which is ideal distribution more or less of almost half of the home turf, the other half out of the home turf, and it's approximately 53, 52, 53% retail, the rest corporate and SMEs, across all of these geographies and having more or less critical mass market shares in all of the markets with the exception of Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where we have been growing in specific niches and focused niches like housing loans to 11% already. It is simply doing more of the same.

This is pretty shopping market, right? That's a lot of shopping around, and corporates are pretty flexible when it comes to 10 basis point points here and there.

We've never seen these deposits as sticky. What we are really focusing on is account and account balances, yeah, and payments, right?

Some short-term or long-term deposits are to us already a question of what makes sense and what doesn't make sense. We don't see this as a critical development, we believe this is well-controlled development.

We could of course always pay more and attract more deposits, but they have to be deployed productively, and as long as there is no more need, we simply don't do it.

As we've kept saying, as long as there was no vision within 12 to 18 months on potential productive allocation of capital, we could of course always consider paying out the dividend. We are stepping it up as a signal towards 60%, right, from 55%.

Generally, from today's perspective, we believe there will be targets. I can't be more concrete than that, but I can only state that we believe there will be targets in pretty short term, which might justify, of course, keeping the reserve and the buffers.

If there were more M&A activity Archibald signaled, we might even think of potentially accelerating some of the funding program in terms of capital instruments. We're not saying we would, but if there were many opportunities coming our way in a more unexpected pace, we of course also could and should and would.

Currently, we believe we are just about right positioned to be able to address opportunities and at the same time keep the high dividend payout.

Oh,

Sorry. Good afternoon.

Thank you for the call. Congratulations on the results.

Mr. Brodnjak already maybe answered my questions regarding the maybe muted loan growth in the second quarter.

You said you will not be chasing volume just for the sake of growth. Maybe we the analysts are too spoiled to see that the region has kept the nice momentum in growth, and you kind of visibly slowed down.

Can you add something else to what you already said? I'm sitting here in Serbia.

I have seen quite a nice quarter for the sector and you are lagging behind. What I'm asking.

Yes. Compared to other banks sitting on subsidiary LTDs of above 100, we have a multiple point of entry MREL approach, and we simply stick that our subsidiaries are self-funded, right?

When we demand from them to remain the self-funded position, of course, they have to make sure that there is balanced evolution of loans and deposits. We don't simply let them go berserk with high volumes of lowly priced corporate or public sector loans.

We really want them to focus on what is the gist of long-term sustainable growth, and that's retail, right, and SME business. This is the answer to your question.

We don't tolerate LTDs well above 90%, we simply don't tolerate it because this is opening up risks which potentially can compromise on the entire MREL context of the group. This we simply as a group will strategically not allowing.

That's why we are happy with a growth that not necessarily 25% and it's maybe 12%, right, and is funded by all means. That's the answer to your question.

Can we expect that you might restart aggressive sales now with these campaigns for deposits? I'm thinking here locally, but I would say that it can apply to other geographies, right?

Yes. We've had this challenge in Serbia as because the system-level loan-to-deposit ratio went up significantly in couple of years, right?

We've had comparable pressures in Kosovo and North Macedonia and recently in Montenegro as well. We simply don't entertain this.

Just growth for the sake of growth we don't believe is a productive way of deployment of capital, while it structurally potentially is challenging, of course, your MREL context and robustness of the whole group, right? In this respect, we are simply being responsible to the capital.

We like the growth, but it has to be risk-adjusted priced, and it has to be sustainable in funding terms as well.

I guess down there you keep the guidance in high single digit year on year?

Yes, but we've got we've got, yeah, but if you look at the 5%, it's still 5%, right? Is it going to be then 8% or 10%?

10% growth we claim is a good growth. It is a controlled good growth with smart pricing.

In Slovenia, we are observing we have some 30 basis points higher pricing in new production than others, and in single months we are maybe having new production below the natural market share, but we've are the first, as always, as a market leader, you start moving up with prices, and some other players follow with, some delay. We cannot, as a market leader with 33% market share in housing loans, imagine once we publish new rates, you will never be in published rates the cheapest.

You will always be the most expensive because everyone else is positioning himself or itself, just 5 basis points beneath you. It's really about the actual rates you transact at, not the published rates you actually, you know.

Then, of course, that's that's a common paradigm challenge of market leader always in such markets. We are sitting on 37.4% market share of sight deposits of households in Slovenia.

Imagine this strength, right? We don't have to compromise on, on pricing just for the sake of growing.

Of course, we will not let good clients go, that's why we have of course internal pouvois where of course we can decide differently. When it comes to high-volume business, which is usually driving, the total growth of the market, which is, large tickets in public finance, for example, in Slovenia, where we see some international competitors going really ridiculously low with pricings, this is not something we are interested in, simply, because it doesn't make sense.

This is counterproductive.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Welcome.

I would just add, Mladen, this is a marathon, not a sprint. It's easy in banking to sprint.

We are on a 2030 marathon. The 10% growth annualized would be perfectly fine.

Thank you.

Hi, B.

That's great. Thanks a lot, gentlemen, for the call and for taking my questions.

I just have one or two. Capital was, I think, flat, right, quarter to quarter despite the growth, and RWAs were also stable.

Did you already kind of put in place any relief measures? I think you talked about them on the Capital Markets Day, or any reason actually why risk-weighted assets did not grow in Q2?

No, there is no relief measure in place. The SRTs are coming up, but not earlier than next year,

I'd

say mid next year. What you see is ups and downs of things that stack up some quarters in different ways, from OpRisk to here and there models to NPLs.

No, there is no particular thing behind.

Understood. Great.

I think we touched once the topic about this Swiss franc issue in Slovenia. Anything kind of new on that front yet or

There has been certain adverse developments in the Slovenian courts, obviously, not actually allowing the banks even to charge regular interest in case the loan is annulled, which is in our understanding totally absurd and total breach of the basic logic of lending as a whole. This might, of course, have final answers maybe even in international courts in years from now and will require from us a kind of a insight into the methodological framework used.

We might see some uptick in provisions from this angle, but it should be well within the framework of reasonable. I can't be more precise than that.

Fine. Great, thank you.

Welcome.

Yes. Can you hear me?

Yeah. Thanks Blaž and everyone for the call.

I guess I just wanted to ask on the 2027 recurring revenue target. Is that purely an organic number?

Then just looking broader at the 2030 targets, how much of that can be done organically? Moving past Addiko, I know you spoke about some of the areas that you would look at, but maybe you could provide just a little bit more color in terms of the size of any one of these acquisitions.

So '27 is purely standalone. '27 is really organic.

'30 is some in a ballpark of 80 to 85% organic and the rest is envisaging certain, of course, strategic bets and M&A. I hope this response to somehow to your question, right.

In principle, as said, '27 we believe we're getting there from what we see today without transacting. 2030, we have firm belief that in the upcoming couple of years we will be able to here and there pull off a transaction in either banking space, leasing space, asset management, captive insurance, but predominantly banking, of course, would add to this capacity.

So 2030 is to some I'd say 15 to 20% somehow betting on M&A, otherwise organic.

Understood. Thank you.

Very helpful.

Thanks.

We alluded to the, let's say, a bit fight for deposits in Serbia. This is happening, it's a market where liquidity is getting tighter, and that simply drives pricing up.

You've seen it in the share of term deposits across our subsidiaries going up visibly. This still funds very profitable loan growth, in that sense, a bit of a margin drop is not drama as long as revenues go up.

Fact is in Serbia we are observing even a slight drop in revenues given that last year they had extraordinary growth in loans that now have to be funded kind of after the fact to some extent. This synchronization creates a bit of revenue volatility.

For Bosnia, I would say it's not something that worries us. We have two different entities in Bosnia, one operating very strongly, and the other one, Blaž said Sarajevo, is our uphill struggle where we kind of fight for a place in the market.

I claim quite successfully here and there, but it's a position of a small player, and of course, a small player is to some extent a price taker. Here we carve out niches that are, I think, working very well.

Housing was mentioned, and for the rest, we also accept that we are not probably a competitive player in large corporate tickets in a market like Bosnia Federation simply because we're too small for that. It's a bit of a mixed bag.

Broadly speaking, Slovenia performing very well, SEE markets here and there a bit of a transition year, '26, and '27 to the previous question on outlook, yes, we believe this will stabilize in '27.

The Skladi have introduced couple of novelties like alternative funds and real estate funds, and I'm sure that Luka and the team are, of course, closely monitoring also other alternatives. I would not exclude, obviously, them trying to issue some other stuff as well, even in a shorter term.

When it comes to the interest for Croatian market, look, this is for us as always said extremely important bridge between Slovenia and Western Balkans countries, geographically and sentimentally and culturally. After the more or less shift of the border control regime to Bosnian border and introduction of euro as a legal tender in Croatia, that's one market.

For us, it's unnatural not to be allowed to play in this one market, simply unnatural, especially since, of course, Croatian players have been allowed to play in Slovenian market unlimitedly. If you look at the food processing industry, and it's predominantly Croatian ownership in here.

I also believe it's irrational not for allowing us to play. This is to me a political question, of course, we cannot resolve, and we can only hope for it to get resolved.

We are present with leasing operation, and we are happy with the trends. Croatian leasing business has become even larger than Serbian business already in a pretty short-term, it's becoming important for us.

Whereby, of course, in captive insurance space and asset management space, this is definitely something that would be of interest. I can obviously state if there were any reasonable opportunities for us to invest, we have NLB Funds as 100% proprietary held business, we claim professional and skilled to be able to pull this off.

After all, we bought the asset management business from Generali in North Macedonia, embraced it very effectively and performing well ahead of plans. If there was any opportunity to buy an asset management company from a regular asset management space, I'm not that sure about the pension space, but maybe even there, right, this is definitely something we would be willing to look at.

We don't want to impose ourselves to someone that doesn't sincerely want us, frankly. That's also a message to our Croatian friends, right?

We don't want to be hated, and we believe we bring friendship and business, not hatred.

Thank you very much. To what we've all said, there's nothing much to add.

We just happily report that today also the three management board members got vetted for another mandate. The three of us have on the 6th of July this year actually assumed a new mandate for a 5-year period, 5-year term, and the new colleagues will also be with us for the upcoming almost 6 years, this has introduced now a mid-term stability and a more or less consistency to the 2030 aspiration to be delivered.

You can count on a stable and fully motivated and really energy-driven team to pull this off. Once again, just to wrap it up, thank you for being part of this wonderful journey with us.