Morning everyone, and thank you for joining E.SUN Financial Holding Company's earnings conference call. I'm Bernard from the Investor Relations.

We appreciate your participation today. Joining us today are Deputy CFO Sarah and my colleague Ruby.

Next, I would like to invite Sarah to begin with her opening remarks.

Dear investors, E.SUN delivered a strong performance in the second quarter of 2026, marking a record high in net profit for the same period. Solid growth across core banking business, coupled with strong growth in securities.

Net fee income set a new record high, growing at a rate of 39.9% YoY. Today, we also announce the financial result for July.

For the first 7 months, net profit increased 20.9% YoY, supported by solid growth in both net interest income and net fee income. We are optimistic about our performance this year and expecting to achieve good result.

With effective cost management, bank CI ratio improved to 46.4% for the second quarter this year. E.SUN will continue to strictly control the growth rate of expenses to a single-digit level this year.

For overseas expansion, E.SUN plans to open the Osaka rep office in Japan on September 4 this year and Mumbai branch in India in 2027. The Toronto branch in Canada is also in the pipeline, which will further strengthen E.SUN's North American presence by connecting Los Angeles, Toronto, and Dallas into a integrated financial service platform.

Regarding to the progress of Mercury Life acquisition, both company have been working closely on integration preparations since shareholders approved the transaction on January 23 this year. Following the FSC's approval on July 7, the transaction is scheduled to close on September 1st this year.

Mercury Life will be renamed E.SUN Life on December 1st this year. After this acquisition, E.SUN Financial Holding Company will become the 5th largest listed financial holding company in Taiwan by total assets, further strengthening our diversified earnings engines across banking, insurance, and securities.

Lastly, E.SUN's outstanding performance has been also recognized by leading international institutions. This year, E.SUN Bank received the best Taiwan Bank of the Year outstanding award from Bloomberg Businessweek, further affirming our leadership in Taiwan's banking industry.

E.SUN is committed to its ESG goal. For 12 years in a row, we have been selected into the DJSI index and have been ranked among the top 5% in the Taiwan Stock Exchange's corporate governance evaluation 11 times, marking the best performance among Taiwan's peers.

Looking ahead, we will continue to deliver long-term value to our shareholders. Thanks for your attention.

Thank you, Sarah. Now, let me walk you through E.SUN financial performance and business highlights.

Please turn to slide 4. At the second quarter, the total assets of FHC amounted to 4.8 trillion NT dollars, while the bank's total assets were 4.7 trillion NT dollars.

For the key financial indicators, the book value of FHC is $17.4 per share. The double leverage ratio is 114.62%, and the financial holding company's CAR ratio is 118.09%.

For the physical channel, domestically now E.SUN Bank runs 140 branches around Taiwan. For the overseas channels, we round 35 overseas sites in 11 countries and regions.

The securities branches remain the same as 17. On slide 5 is the business and financial review of the second quarter of 2026.

For the financial performance, net revenue of FHC was $53.8 billion, which grew by 24.8% year-on-year. Net profit was $21.4 billion, which grew by 27.8% year-on-year.

The financial holding's EPS was $1.32 Taiwan dollars. ROE was 15.46%.

ROA was 0.91%. For the subsidiaries, E.SUN Bank's net profit was $18.8 billion, which grew by 11.3%.

Move on to the business development. The loan balance reached $2.84 trillion Taiwan dollars, which grew by 16.1%, in which corporate loan grew by 20%, SME loan grew by 14%, and retail loan grew by nearly 11%.

On the deposit balance grew by 15% year-on-year. Net fee income was $19.8 billion, which grew by 39.9% and reach a record high.

For the wealth management fee income was $9.3 billion, also set a record high. In terms of asset quality, E.SUN remains sound.

NPL ratio at 15 basis points and coverage ratio at 770.8%. As a business highlight, the FSC has approved the acquisition of Mercury Life.

The effective date was set up as September 1st, and the transactions elevate E.SUN to Taiwan's 5th largest listed financial holdings by total assets, complete our three core profit engines: banking, insurance, and securities. On slide 6, as you can see in the upper part of the slide, the net profit and the EPS both set a record high, and ROE and ROA are all the best performance in the past 5 years.

Moving to slide 7, we present the net income of the financial holdings and its subsidiaries. As you can see on the left-hand side, the pie chart shows that E.SUN Bank remains the main contributor of the FHC, which contributes to nearly 82% of the total profit.

As you can see on the right-hand side, the subsidiaries delivered strong earning growth. Notably, E.SUN Securities post an outstanding 205% year-on-year increase in net profit.

On the next slide is the net income breakdown. Again, E.SUN follows the golden rule of the growth.

Net profit growth is larger than the net revenue growth, in which is larger than the operating expense growth. On slide 9 shows the revenue breakdown of the FHC.

As you can see on the left-hand side, the pie chart shows our net revenue. The net interest income accounts for 45.4% of the total net revenue, and the net fee income accounts for 36.9%, and the other income accounts for nearly 18%.

On the right-hand side, you can see that all revenue sectors deliver a very decent growth. On slide 10 shows the net fee income breakdown of the FHC.

Looking at the pie chart, wealth management accounts for 46.7% of the net fee income. On the right-hand side, you can see the growth rate of wealth management was 30.7%, which was after 4th consecutive years of double-digit growth.

We still deliver a very decent growth in the wealth management business. On slide 11 presents the capital adequacy ratio of both FHC and banks.

Both maintain its capital ratio at very adequate level. The CAR ratio of FHC is 118.09%, and the Tier 1 ratio of the bank is 12.03%.

Moving to the subsidiaries, first, we take a look at the E.SUN Bank. On slide 13 presents the deposit and loan structure of E.SUN Bank.

The total deposit grew by 15% year-on-year, in which the foreign currency deposit grew by 19.36%, and the total loan grew by 16.12% year-on-year, in which the foreign currency loan grew by 40%. On slide 14 shows the loan portfolio breakdown of E.SUN Bank.

E.SUN has very diverse loan structure, with our large corporate loan, SME loan, mortgage loan, and secured personal loan are all accounts for around 20% to 25%. On the right-hand side, you can see across all the loan categories, we had very decent growth in the second quarter.

On slide 16 is overseas development of E.SUN Bank. The overseas branches and the subsidiaries' net profit contributed 25.3% of total net profit.

The loan balance grew by nearly 20%. For the overseas network, as part of our overseas expansion strategy, the Osaka sub-branches will open on September 4th, while the Mumbai branch is expected to commence operations in 2027.

On slide 17 shows the deposit structure of E.SUN Bank. The overall LDR is 69.6%, and the LDR for the foreign currency is 39.9%, which has been increased in the past few years.

On slide 18, the NIM and spread, E.SUN NIM has remained at a very flat level. On right-hand side, you can see that the spread has been improving over the past few quarters.

It all thanks to the well management of cost control, cost funding controls, and loan pricing strategy. On slide 19 is the wealth management fee breakdown.

The bancassurance accounts for 32.6% of the total wealth management fee income, and the mutual fund accounts for 36.3%. On slide 20 is the credit card business breakdown.

We have 4,881,000 active cards, and per card share spending hit the record high in the past few years. On slide 21 is the asset quality of E.SUN Bank.

E.SUN maintains sound asset quality with the NPL ratio at 15 basis point in the first half, and the credit cost is 19 basis points. On page 23 is cost-income ratio.

Thanks to the very well management of the cost control, now E.SUN Bank cost-income ratio is 46.4%, which has been improving since 2023 from nearly 90%. The next is about E.SUN FHC's other subsidiaries.

First, on slide 25 is E.SUN Securities. In Q2, benefitting from the AI-led company market rally and active trading activities, E.SUN Securities post strong growth, with stock brokerage fee income up 112% year-on-year, and annualized ROE reached 44.9%, both representing the strongest performance in recent years.

On slide 26, you can see the performance of E.SUN Asset Management. Domestic fund AUM reached $132 billion NT dollar, and discretionary mandate AUM reached $168 billion, representing a combined growth of 51% compared with year-end last year.

This slide shows the milestone toward the acquisition of Mercury Life. The FSC approved the acquisition on July 7th.

The effective date for the share swap was set for September 1st. After the acquisition, E.SUN FHC is expected to rank 5th in the asset size among listed FHCs.

That conclude my presentation. We will now move on to the Q&A session.

If you have any questions, please submit them through the online Q&A box. We will address as many question as time permits.

We will take a moment to collect the incoming questions. We have received our first question from an investor.

The question is, what is the outlook for NIM? Regarding this questions, let me provide some color.

With higher loan yields, improving US long-term rates, and lower funding cost, we expect NIM to continue improve. Therefore, we remain comfortable with our 1.33% year-end NIM target.

The second question is if we will change our guidance of each business. Indeed, we have changed some guidance of our business, such as loan and deposit.

For the guidance of loan, we expected to grow by 13% to 14% this year. As for deposit, the growth rate will be changed to 12% to 14% YoY this year because we have to match the demand of loans and the growth of loans.

For the wealth management fees, now we remain our target at double-digit growth, and we believe for the second half of this year, the performance of wealth management will still be very strong and will be still be very good. The third question is regarding to our loan drivers.

I think the domestic loan growth will primarily driven by the strong demand of AI. The sectors recording the most significant growth essentially from the ICT and electric electronic products.

For the overseas branch, the growth momentum comes from the financial centers, such as Hong Kong branch, Australia branch, LA branch, and Singapore branch. It's mainly from the infrastructure finance, such as data center and renewable energies, and other asset-backed leasing financing, such as aircraft and the vessels financing.

This lending opportunities have benefit from the very robust global investment demand, which contributes to the solid loan growth, both domestic and overseas. For the growth the loan growth outlook for the second half of this year, we believe the strong demand of AI server and semiconductor supply will continue to very robust for the second half of this year.

In addition, we can see a number of large corporations have recently announced plans for syndication loans and major capital expenditure project, which we think expected to serve as the main growth drivers for the loan expansion for the half of the year. We have the investor ask the question regarding to the our dividend policy.

I think E.SUN will continue to maintain the progressive dividend policy, which means higher EPS will supported with high dividend distributions. We will also try to remain to maintain the dividend yield about 4%.

As there are no further questions, we will conclude today's Q&A session. Should you have any further questions, please feel free to contact the Investor Relation teams.

We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Thank you, and have a wonderful day.