Good afternoon, thanks for joining the conference call. Q1 results will be presented by our CEO Giuseppe Castagna and our Joint General Manager and CFO Edoardo Ginevra.

Let me remind, as usual, to limit please yourself to two questions maximum. Now let me hand over to Mr.

Castagna.

Thank you. Thank you, Arne.

Thank you, everybody, all people which join our conference call. We are happy to present a very strong set of number for Q1 '26, a solid start, I would say a compelling business model in action, because we are following exactly the path that we presented last year with our updated business plan in February '25.

Profitability grew to €480 million of net income, with RoTE and RoE in line at 20% and 15%, in line with our plan target for 2026. Also, common equity tier 1 is very solid, 13.6%, with an MDA buffer of over 400 million.

We will see going forward that common equity tier 1 presents some very good surprise going forward and reaching almost 14%. The key driver, as envisaged in our business strategic plan, are the benefit coming from the development of the product factories.

As you can see, in '25, we had a contribution, average contribution per quarter, of €377 million. Now, in the first quarter, is €406 million, and the target, the quarterly target for this year, was €400 million.

We are already above the target. Let's only have in mind that when we started the plan, the contribution from product factories was slightly above €200 million in 2023, of course, always as a quarterly average, and €242 million in 2024.

A significant enhancement, already in line with the trajectory of 2027 in which we envisage to reach €430 million per quarter. Also, since Anima injection, of course, there was a significant improvement of the organic performance.

If we go to the pre-tax results of Q1, we have a bettering of almost €90 million, coming half of this from higher non-NII revenues, in particularly commission and contribution from product factory, and the remaining 50% coming from lower operating costs, almost €23 million, and lower provision for over €30 million. A significant progress vis-a-vis our target.

On page 6, a quick remind of the most important voices in terms of revenues, costs, and cost of risk. Revenues grew more than €100 million always on the quarterly average of 2024, bettering also the average of '25, considering, of course, that Euribor is reduced vis-a-vis both years, '24 the Euribor average was 3.5%, '25 was 2.2%.

We also confirm the enhanced efficiency in cost management, in which we were able to reduce cost-income from 47% to 44% in 2 years, and from 46% comparing to last year. We also register a sharp decline in total provision, going down from €137 million of quarterly average in '24 to €78 million for Q1 '26, and last year was €100 million, the quarterly average for '25.

The cost of risk has been reduced from 46 basis points to 32 basis points. Talking about effective credit management, we see here the evolution that we had, of course, in particularly starting the first year of our merger, but following this path, we have been able to further reduce the gross NPE ratio to 2.1%, which is in line with the average of Italian banks and also European banks, which is 1.8%.

The gross NPE ratio was down almost 600 billion this year, less 21% from last year, and if we go to net NPE ratio, we are down from 1.5% to 1.1% in the last 12 months. If we consider net NPE ratio excluding the NPE guaranteed from the state, we are down to 0.6%, and if we consider only the net bad loan, excluding the state guarantee, we are down to 0.1%.

This is the demonstration that we have been changing the quality of our portafoglio since the pandemic. We have here showed that since 2021, the average default rate year by year was below 1%, with record 0.68% in the first quarter 2026.

We really believe there is a demonstration that our quality portafoglio is a very solid quality. Also, the stage 2 loans were down in 1 year from almost 9% to 7.5%.

On page 8, I will just say that we were able to maintain to 13.6% the common equity tier 1, but again, we will go more into detail at the end of the presentation on capital, and vis-a-vis the SREP requirement, we have an MDA buffer above 400 million, 400 basis points. Let me remind that, as I was mentioning before, we will see that if we consider figure at 30 of April '26, considering the recovering of the fair value of other comprehensive income, we are almost at 14% of common equity tier 1.

Some key highlights about the profit and loss. We have a comparison with year-on-year and Q-on-Q.

Good results in terms of net interest income, even, of course, with a slight reduction Q-on-Q. The effect is completely offset by the 2 days effect 2 days less effect of Q1 '26 vis-a-vis Q4 '25, which account for a lower €17 million.

Meanwhile, of course, the comparison with Q1 '25 is impacted by Euribor, which was 50 basis points higher vis-a-vis Q1 '26. Good increase instead, plus 3% Q-on-Q, in net fees and commission, and a solid contribution coming also from income from associates, as well as income from insurance.

Core revenues were in line with last Q '25 and slightly below year-on-year. Net financial result was better than last Q '25, €25 million positive versus €49 negative in Q4 '25, thanks both to the effect of better results from NFR and reduced impact of cost of certificates.

Thanks to that, we have a total revenues which increase almost 4% Q-on-Q, with a reduction of 2% year-on-year. Operating costs down 3.7% on a quarterly base and 2% on a yearly basis, mainly due to reduction, of course, of personnel, but with a good tenure also of administrative cost.

Pre-provision income is 10% above Q-on-Q and 2% negative year-on-year. After total provision, which were down 50% on last Q '25 and almost 30% on Q1 '25, we have, again, pre-tax profit, which is 25% better Q-on-Q.

Then we have the increase of the impact coming from the new taxation, which made the contribution paid for taxes as much higher as €278 million, compared with €185 million of Q4 and €262 million of Q1 '25, leading to a net profit above €500 million, 15% higher than December '25 and 6% lower than Q1 '25. Let me remind, of course, that Q1 '25 is a pro forma which includes the contribution of Anima, which instead was not present in Q1 '25, because, as started to be consolidated in Q2 '25.

It's just a pro forma to compare the same perimeter. Net result, as I mentioned, is €480 million, which is 15% above last quarter.

We have also, on the right side of the page, showed the positive progression that we register since the acquisition of Anima, comparing the last four quarter. As you can see, both in total revenues, cost-income, loan loss provision, and pre-tax profit, we are always registering a bettering of the result, with some very positive outcome.

Going very quickly on some of the items, NII, again, was down 2.1% vis-a-vis Q4 '25, but the €17 million effect would have offsetted completely this reduction. Meanwhile, we have a reduction of €30 million, but with an Euribor which was 50 basis points above the current Euribor.

NII to full funding cost was basically at the same level in all the three quarter we are examining. On the right side, you see the evolution of the drivers of net interest income, leading to €751 million, mainly due to the day effect.

Meanwhile, you can see that we had a good results from the commercial spread, almost in line with Q3 and Q4 2025 at almost 2.90% of asset spread, basically half of them coming from asset spread and half from liability spread. Let me just anticipate that in April, the two spread are going to widening.

Meanwhile, we are more or less keeping the asset spread, we are increasing the liability spread thanks to the increase of the Euribor. Let me remember that we have also a sensitivity which stood at €150 million, with a replicating portafoglio which is slightly above our guidance of €25 billion, but is due only to the anticipation of some manoeuvre which is going to expire during the second part of the year.

Meanwhile, the index at current account remains stable at 37%. A good news is coming from lending activity.

Although, as the macroeconomic does not bring to support the decision of investing for our entrepreneurs, we were able to register a €1 billion of increase in stock of lending, almost completely coming from non-financial corporate lending, which grew 2%. Is a first signal of recovery.

Of course, we cannot say that with the current geopolitical situation is a clear signal of going up, but good news to see after some quarter of reduction the first time a positive number as increase in loan. On the right side, you see how much is allocated in the richest region of Italy, both split in total loans, non-financial corporates, and the part of non-financial corporates related to small business.

As you see, the more small the counterpart, the more increase the securing packaging that we take for granting loans. If we go to the state guarantee secured loans, we see that we go from a total of 19%, growing to 26% for non-financial corporates, which for the small business increase up to 41%.

If we couple this 41% with the collateralized loans, we go up to 63% of secured loans for small companies. Let's have a look on page 13 on the total net fees and income from insurance.

Let me say that we managed to reclassify for all the quarter we showed in this page and all the number that you will see in our enclosed slides that the cost related to synthetic securitization are now reclassified to other operating item and are not anymore into the net fees and commission, but this is, of course, pro forma for all the quarter we examine. Talking of that, you can see how the strong contribution from net fees and insurance make the quarter contribution passing from €630 million to €750 million, with also an increase from €687 million to €710 million talking only of contribution from fees.

The vast majority of this contribution is coming from investment product fees, which grew 8% Q-on-Q, split above contribution coming from Anima, from upfront fees, and from running fees. As usual, the Q1 bring a strong contribution also from upfront fees, but is a sort of seasonality effect.

The investment product placement was as much stronger as the Q1 '25. Let me remember that Q1 '25 was the strongest quarter in terms of contribution from investment product fees, due to the special effort that our network was doing during the first month of the starting of the hostile offer from UniCredit.

We managed to confirm that the capability of the network also without any kind of menace is very trained to perform very good results. Apart from the €6.7 billion of investment product placement, we managed also to sell to our clients €1 billion in March of BTP issue.

In terms of other fees contribution, we have a reduction of 2% Q-on-Q, mainly driven by two by two items. The first one is the termination of the eco-bonus scheme, the fiscal credit discount that banks managed to perform both in '24 and '25, and now is not anymore there, even though the effect, the fiscal effect, is still giving advantage to the bank, but not in terms of more commission.

The real reduction was coming, although, from the lending activity, in particularly from the specialized lending activity, the structured finance activity, which in the first quarter '25 was at a record level and now is at a more consistent level of €75 million. I would say that this is contributing to the specialized activities for €75 million.

I would say that this would be more or less the contribution we expect also in the rest of the year, although we have experienced this growth in volume that we showed in the page before, demonstrating that there could be, depending on the geopolitical situation, also a strong recovery if the situation is going to normalize. In terms of total customer financial asset on page 14, we registered a reduction both in terms of volumes of Banco BPM itself and in terms of Anima contribution, due especially to the market effect, of course, coming from the reduction of the value in the first Q of 2026.

As far as for Anima is concerned, there is also a reduction coming from the termination of an agreement with Etica, which was known since January '25, and is producing some effect in reduction of financial asset managed by Anima. Notwithstanding that, the contribution from Anima is bettering, as you can see on the bottom right side of the slide, Anima contributed to the BPM Group's P&L for €143 million of total revenues level, plus 4.7% vis-a-vis Q1 '25 pro forma, of course, and €56 million in terms of net income level, 23% higher than Q1 pro forma '25.

On page 15, we have the good results coming from the tenure of and rigorous cost discipline applied by the bank. We have a reduction of 3.7% in total operating cost, which is 4.7% from staff cost, due especially to the savings coming from the solidarity fund exit, which were quite massive in Q4 '25, and also reduction of 1.8% Q-on-Q related to ASA and D&A.

Finally, on page 16, cost of risk is down to 32 basis points. As I mentioned, we managed to reduce the stock gross from €2.75 billion to €2.180 billion, 21% year-on-year, with the ratio which has been reduced to 2.13% as gross ratio and 1.13% as a net ratio.

Remember that net bad loan ratio is down to 0.34%. I don't repeat the effect if we exclude the loans guaranteed by the state, but as you remember, we are down as far as net bad loans to 0.1%.

On the right side, some good number about cost of risk, down from 40 basis points to 32, default rate down to 0.68%, a very positive cure rate in Q1 up to 9.78%, and especially the coverage of total NPEs increasing to 160 basis points as total coverage, and 240 basis points if we exclude NPE with state guarantee. Let me remind that bad loans excluding NPEs with state guarantee are covered up to 80%.

Really without any further potential risk coming from this asset. I leave the word to Edoardo Ginevra for page 17.

Thank you, Giuseppe. A quick look at the financial components of this quarter.

The first part that is illustrated in this slide is related to the evolution of our negative reserves on debt securities, which on a net basis has been worsened by €30 million from December to March, due to the volatility that happened during the third month of the quarter. Now this amount is again almost aligned with the level as of year-end.

End of April, it was €300 million, €306 million, very similar to €299 that we experienced 3 months ago. BPV went down, the level of our absolute exposure to interest rate risk went down in the fair value other comprehensive income portfolio from 2.4 to 2.0 to 2.06 million.

This is only to a very limited extent represented by Italian government bonds, less than €17 €700k. Why is that?

Because with an overall level of the portfolio almost unchanged at €47 million billion, now we have reduced the percentage represented by fair value other comprehensive income to 29%, with amortized cost accounting for 71%. Italian govvies within the overall banking book represent only 38% of the total, with a constant share in the last quarters.

On the right part of this slide, net financial result improved significantly versus Q1 '25 from 15 to €25 million. This is due to the structural improvement of cost of certificates from €50 million in the first quarter last year to €27 million, mostly driven by the declining Euribor scenario.

Other NFR components went down from 66 to 52, but 66 of last year was influenced by some one-off elements, whilst this year it's very important to note the contribution of global market activities and the dynamic management of our market positions. Then, all of these elements translated into capital with a dynamic that is shown on page 18.

After accounting for the headwinds related to Basel III, the starting point is 13.49% after accounting for this 9 basis points of headwinds. 88 positive basis points came from the performance in the P&L of this quarter.

70 75 basis points is the absorption of capital from dividends and AT1 coupons. Only 19 basis points, despite the strong volatility in the market, have been absorbed by the reduction in reserves, fair value other comprehensive income, which, as we said, had been then reversed in April.

DTAs contributed positively for 18 bips, and the various other elements are negative for a modest three amount of 3 bips. 13.59%, which is the level of common equity tier 1 ratio as at the end of March, would become almost 14%, 13.98% if you want to know the exact number, if you consider fair value other comprehensive income reserves on debt and equity holdings at the record date of April 2026, at a pro forma level.

MDA buffer is above 400 basis points, and MREL buffers are at 469 basis points or 4.69 percentage point if you use as reference the total requirement, 437 with reference to the subordination requirement. Final point to mention for this slide is that we still continue to have an amount of potential capital that is to be created during the plan horizon thanks to the contribution of reserves on fair value other comprehensive income and DTAs.

According to our forecast, this translation of potential into actual capital would account during the plan horizon for 120 basis points, whilst overall, taking into account also the rest of capital to be created even out of the plan horizon, beyond the 2027, this amount is higher than 200 basis points. Now for the final remarks, let me leave the floor to Giuseppe.

On page 20, some check about the guidance and the outlook for 2026. As we have out the previous plan that we confirmed in '26 last year just 1 year ago in February '25, which was above 100 €1.9 billion for '26.

Let me say that Q1 Q1 results are already in line, thanks to revenues already in line line by line, and have overperformance in net fees and commission. As far as costs are concerned, we are instead well ahead our plan trajectory, both in operating costs and in cost of risk.

Although there is a a higher impact from the tax headwind, we can say that we have almost recovered all the gap generated by the taxation. As you may remember, we confirmed the the guidance for '26 before tax.

Now we I think we are in line to say that we are very confident to be able to reach the target for '26 already this Let me say that for sure we confirm that the delivery of €1 of dividend per share is confirmed for '26, which at today level correspond to 8% of dividend yield. Looking ahead to 2027, as we have a plan which terminates in '27.

We have a target of €2 billion 150 million. Also in this case, we feel that we have not already reached like in '26, but in a positive trajectory, which give us a lot of confidence in terms of reaching the target for '27.

We just mentioned some of the key number here: the increase of non-NII revenues above 50%, which it was the target, now is 53%, still we are not in full power with all our product factory; the net NPE ratio which is down 0.5% vis-a-vis the target '27; and the availability of a buffer of common equity tier 1, which is going to improve thanks to managerial action and RWA, coupled with 120 points basis point what Edoardo was mentioning coming from DTA reduction. We are confident to overcome the €7.7 billion of cumulative net profit for the 4 years of the plan, reaching the promising trajectory leading to €2.150 million for '27, and leaving us the room to going above the €6 billion of cumulative distribution target which we presented last year in February '25.

All the indicators are very good, both in terms of P&L and of capital strength, which, of course, can also enable us to overcome the distribution through new issue new measure to to decide at the end of this year. Thank you very much for your attention.

I leave the floor for your Q&A session.

Good afternoon to everybody. Two questions at my side.

The first one is on your CET1 ratio of 13.6%, which actually reach the 14% in April, you mentioned. It's a very good level, above my expectations.

I was wondering whether with this level of capital, if this is confirmed going forward, you can consider resuming to your share buyback plan that you have put on hold last year. Connected to this, I've seen that the lending growth was a little bit low, 1% year-on-year on household and corporate.

Can you give us a guidance for the full year so that we can have also a better understanding on how the CET1 ratio can evolve in terms of also risk-weighted assets expansion? The second question relates to the slide number 13, especially in terms of fees.

In my view, the fees were pretty good, especially in terms of investment fees. There was a restatement, as far as I understand, you have changed the representation of the fees, removing the cost of the securitization from the fee income line.

If you can share with us what was the impact in this quarter. It seems to me that this is a trend, a representation that is in line with other peers, if you can also confirm this.

Regarding the investment fees, I was wondering if you can provide us also an indication on how is April evolving, because the trend of the Q1 was very good in my view. Thank you.

Thank you, Giovanni. Of course, we are very happy to have in April 14%.

Of course, this comes from the volatility of the market, but is going back to the number we had at the end of the year, we are quite confident that this could be the roadmap toward the end of the year. We are very happy, because this was one of the question that many broker were asking about our common equity tier 1 strength.

I think that coming back to 14%, as you may remember, after overcome the denial of the Danish compromise, bring us to the same level also having had the burden of the non-Danish compromise apport. Very happy about that.

Let, of course, terminate the years, as we were saying also last year, in order to consider what we can do about the excess of capital. On fees, of course, as you were mentioning, there is this restatement is in line with our main competitor.

Frankly speaking, is not something related to the capability of selling products to our client, we decided that is better represented into the other cost rather than into fees and commission. I confirm that average on the last five, six quarter has been consistent in line with the €20 million.

Thank you.

Good evening. First question on the NII.

You say to expect an NII in line with the 2025 exit level, that means a little bit lower than €3.1 billion. I'm wondering if you can share with us the main moving parts in terms of volume, margins, and contribution of the replicating portfolio.

The second question is on consolidation. One of your competitors this morning said that Italy is a very fragmented market and needs consolidation.

I'm wondering if you want to share with us what are your thoughts on the consolidation in Italy and the role that Banco BPM can play in it. Thank you.

On replicating on sorry,

on NII, yes, we guided towards an overall level of NII which is similar to what we had in last quarter of the year, bearing in mind the potential evolution of the underlying drivers. In particular, concerning volume, we expect to continue to have moderate growth in loans and to to come back to an average level of deposits which is, again, with an with an increase versus the level we had in December.

Moderate positive contribution of volumes and potential tailwinds coming from level of rates, and in particular from the expectation of Euribor, sorry, of central bank hiking rates during the next during the current quarter, during the current part of this year. Replicating portfolio, we have oops, I was about falling down.

We have a level of replicating portfolio which is at €28 billion, €3 billion above our target level. This is because we took the opportunities of the shape of the yield curve during the first quarter to anticipate some maturities of the replicating portfolio, keeping anyway the the target level at the same €25 billion that we used to have since we approved the previous plan.

This means that over the rest of the year, we have maturities in this portfolio that we will not renew, and so coming back to the level of €25 billion, other things equal. We may, of course, reconsider this this policy, this strategy, depending on the evolution not only of the absolute level of rates, but also of the yield curve.

About consolidation, of course, yes, we feel we are in the best place to catch the potential opportunity coming from an eventual consolidation, further consolidation of the market. We had a lot of consolidation last year, some of them also related to our bank with the acquisition of Anima, and the other acquisition of Montepaschi, Mediobanca, and BPER Sondrio.

Of course, there could be room for something more. It's not only from one bank to decide exactly what to do.

We think we are in a good position to understand where the market would generate opportunity for us. For sure, we are in a strong position in terms of capability, having already realized a very good transaction years ago.

We are now at the plenty of our capability in terms of reaching the profitability we promised last year. We, of course, have also a lot of small consolidation potentially to do related to capability distribution, which would emphasize our product factory.

There is a lot to go. We are looking to everything, big, small opportunities, in terms of banks, in terms of other product factory to join to our product factory, in terms of distributors of our product factory.

Is difficult to say which one will materialize, which one will give the best opportunity for our shareholder. For sure, we are considering and studying all the situation in order to take advantage from potential availability from other counterparties.

Yes, good good evening. Thank you so much for taking my questions.

My first one is just to go back on fees and commissions. It looks like, the trends in Q4 in Q1 were were definitely better Q-on-Q, but the year-on-year comparison seemed to be somewhat a little bit weaker than what we have seen with peers.

If you could give us a bit of color what you expect in the next few quarters in terms of trend on a pro forma basis, clearly, after the reclassi- reclassification. Then, my second question is just to go back on on M&A.

Previously, you were talking about the M&A options with Cariparma, with Montepaschi. Is there is this still kind of priority for you?

Is it something that you're actively looking? If so, sort of, what what shape and form, would you like to to see and what would be your sort of, kind of ideal scenario in terms of value creation?

Thank you.

Thank you, Delphine. As far as the first question about fees, let me remember that last year Q1 was a record level, and was driven, of course, also the peculiar situation we were experiencing.

The fact that we were able almost to replicate last year, the only difference is coming from fees on lending, as I was explaining before, which, as a matter of fact, is now recovering. Let's be positive about the possibility to make a better results, as we expect, in terms of fees and commission.

Let me also says that Q2, Q3, and Q4 last year were not that strong like Q1. I have only April of this year as comparison to last year, and I can anticipate that April, in terms of investment product in '26, has been better almost 20% vis-a-vis last year, with a contribution, if I am not wrong, of €5, 6 million better than April '25.

A very strong contribution from the network. I think these are now numbers once we have a common strategy also with Anima and with our bancassurance activity that was not the case last year.

Very important for us the contribution coming from that and the possibility to exploit at the most the full power of this product factory. M&A, frankly speaking, we don't have priority.

Priority comes from the market opportunity. We are examining all the possibility.

Basically, I think we speak more about Agricole and Montepaschi just because Agricole is the first our shareholder with 23% of shares, for sure everybody could imagine some opportunity with them, as well as we are a small shareholder, but nevertheless quite relevant shareholder for Montepaschi with 3.7%. I think this is the reason why everybody expect possibly these two transactions.

To be a shareholder does not mean that the opportunity for doing an M&A are ideal. Let's wait and see.

Let's understand what the other counterparty are willing to do. I think that we are in a good position to take advantage from every opportunity.

As well as, as I mentioned before, opportunity arising from smaller M&A, which can enhance the capability of our product factory.

Thank you very much.

Thanks very much for the presentation and for taking my question. I have just one question on costs.

How should we expect costs going forward in the context of a very solid performance in 1Q? Could you consider at a given point in time using that excess capital and that potential better capital progression to take any managerial action to improve costs further?

Thank you.

Thank you, Ignacio. The trajectory of costs is, as you correctly observed, positively oriented.

We managed in this quarter to deliver savings versus and of last year in general versus the overall last year trend, because this has been the result of the cost management actions we undertook since the announcement of the plan with the redundancy program and the replacement of older cohorts with new ones for a rate of replacement that is lower than one. In general, the trend for costs that we expect to experience can benefit from additional marginal efficiencies.

Let me only observe that we are not only below the trajectory of the plan, but we expect to continue to stay below this trajectory. The only additional qualitative point I may add on that is that within this overall trend, we expect to replace part of the running costs with change costs, investments and expenses that we are implemented in order to modernize the infrastructure of the bank.

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon. Thank you very much for taking my questions.

My first one is on the 2026 guidance. For multiple results, we have seen the disclosure that there is some room for overperformance, especially in fees, costs, and cost of risk.

I would like to ask you what is holding you to provide a more positive guidance, whether it is just a more conservative view, whether it is the weaker macro given the geopolitical uncertainty, or maybe could you also think about recycling any of these better performance into investments for the future? Then my second question is also on the CET1 guidance of the 14% that you mentioned.

Could you please break down the main OCI movements that you observed in April? In particular, it would be very helpful if you could provide some sensitivity to changes in sovereign spreads, as well any movements of the Montepaschi share price.

Thank you. Oh,

thank you. This is Giuseppe speaking.

For the guidance, I think we have been quite clear. On page 20, you have all the different items compared to the business plan on '26.

Of course, before tax, we are much ahead, I would say, of what not the guidance, but what we expected before knowing the impact of the new fiscal impact. Of course, we have still some prudent approach related to the recovery of almost €100 million we have to perform in order to match the '26 business plan.

After one quarter, even though we have recovered almost all the gap, maybe is more prudent for us to wait another quarter, also due to the macroeconomics, which, as are not that stable in terms of geopolitical, in terms of inflation, interest rate, and so on. Of course, would be easy for me to say that I better my guidance in saying that would be equal or better, but does not change much.

I would therefore ask you to consider that is already a bettering, because in February, we were not saying that we would have matched the plan after tax, but only before tax. Now we are much more confident to be able to reach also the results, absorbing almost €100 million of tax effect.

For common equity, I leave the answer to Edoardo. Yes.

If you go back to the track record of Montepaschi's share price, I believe it was around 7.4, if I'm not mistaken, end of March. End of April, it was around 9.

9, this leads to 1.6 times 110 million, which is more or less our number of shares. Long story short, slightly more than 30 basis points is the improvement in April we have in the pro forma from Montepaschi, slightly less than 10 basis points is the improvement we had in fair value of the comprehensive income reserve.

Debt, fair value of comprehensive income, debt government bonds reserves.

Great. Thank you very much.

Maybe can I just do a quick follow-up on the tax rate as well since it's a very important guidance point? This quarter came in at 36%, and it was a bit worse than the 33% guidance last quarter.

Could you please clarify what's the tax rate guidance for the rest of the year? Thank you.

I think this is slightly higher than what we expect to have overall during the year. Of course, tax rate in Italy has been impacted by, as Giuseppe was saying, the budget law approved end of 2025.

We expect to stay in the region of 35%, 34% to 20 35% overall for the whole of the year.

Thank you very much.

It's slightly higher because there are items that are less impactful in terms of taxes, such as, for example, Montepaschi dividend maturing in second quarter, which is part of revenues, but is taxed before the distribution, doesn't impact on taxation.

Yes. Thank you for taking my questions, and good evening, everyone.

My question is about your stake in Anima, because you are at 89.95%, you have several times mentioned the opportunity to reopen Anima's capital to other partners to also strengthen the distribution relationship. Is still your view at the moment and how this can potentially help other bigger M&A options for you?

Thank you.

No, of course, as you were mentioning, is a possibility to open and to widen the possibility of accommodate both other banks or distributors interest in Anima or also potential M&A. To have the company listed would help, of course, the value determination of the company, the possibility to have some step in a way which would be a bit easier than if we delisted the company.

Of course, we will not keep it forever listed, for sure. Let's wait this situation in which everybody is talking about opportunities, and I think in a couple of quarter, we will make a decision about it.

As we can also decide to make a merger, to consolidate Anima, without any other action on the market. Thank you.

Good evening, and thank you for taking my questions. I have just a few.

In Q1, what drove the deposit decline, especially on the sight deposits? In terms of common equity, I appreciate the guidance and the mark-to-market as of April, but I was wondering if you could give us visibility also in perhaps other moving parts that could impact common equity that will impact by year-end.

Then, a follow-up on the cost side. If I'm not mistaken, you have plenty of room to implement a further early retirement scheme on top of what you have agreed with the unions with Q4.

I was wondering where this initiative sits in your priority list, and also in the context of meeting the net profit targets. Thank you.

I wouldn't say that is a decline in deposit. Frankly speaking, we are €400 million in March below December, which, of course, has also a seasonality, but let's have in mind that in March, we placed €1 billion of BTP coming, of course, from current account.

If I may say, in April, we are already above the figure of December '25. As the growth in deposit has been a signal in our bank, growing year by year, but, of course, we cannot expect to have €5 billion of increase in deposit every year like last year.

We have in our plan a slightly growth of 1.5 to €2 billion per year, having in mind that, of course, with the growth of last year, we are already where we thought to be able to be in 2027. We are not spending interest rate in order to keep more volumes of deposit, but because of our footprint, we increase deposit in any case.

Then maybe cost and common equity, I think Edoardo already answered, but I leave the room

Common equity, if I understood correctly, the question was about additional guidance for the rest of the year. I think that the pro forma level that we have in April may represent a good hint towards the direction we expect to have until the end of the year, in the region of 14%, bearing in mind that with the current market volatility, this is a level that is subject to a number of how to call them, statistical factors.

With some room for defining confidence interval. Talking on costs, as I said earlier, we have implemented already all the actions that were planned into our strategy plan last year.

Last year we said that basically the benefits on cost were locked in once we signed the contract with the unions. Then, we are delivering some additional improvements working on a number of levers.

For example, we signed recently an additional agreement for 100 million 100 100 head count of reduction that are expected to be implemented during the remaining part of this year, mostly in between the first and second quarter. The rest, as I said, is to confirm the current trajectory and to remix in favor of more investments, more change, more modernization of the bank.

Thank you.

Hi, thank you for the time. I have three questions.

First, on loan growth, it seems a bit weaker than the peers that have reported already. I was wondering if you could talk about your market share of new originations for the main segments, resi mortgages, corporates, etc.

Then a second question on NII. I understand you want to be cautious with the guidance overall given the macro uncertainties, but what I heard from you about the NII, it sounded like all the trends would imply an increase to the guidance, because I think guidance implies kind of flattish rest of the year, but you're talking about volumes going up, margin expansion, etc.

Why are you not raising your guidance for NII for this year? Then the third question is around if you could tell us the pace of the impact of DTA absorption on the CET1 ratio during the rest of the year.

You've done 18 basis points in Q1. I was wondering what should we assume in other quarters.

Thank you. Oh,

thank you, Hugo. Loan growth, we were much more prudent, I remember, when we presented our plan vis-a-vis our competitor.

We are happy about €1 billion of loan growth. We have a target of €2 billion for this year.

Again, we don't want to sacrifice margin for loan growth. As you have seen in our presentation, we are growing in all the segment, taking advantage also from the state guarantee and the collateral, keeping safe our stock of portafoglio.

We are quite happy about our growth. Again, I don't think you can push on loan growth in this situation in which there is some reluctancy from our entrepreneur to increase the investment.

I think it's good that we are so close to take advantage from any potential movement, but we are still waiting for bettering of the market environment in order to push on the loan growth. Having said that, again, for instance, for mortgage, we are applying some new product in order to offset the reduction we have experienced in last quarter, but we are still growing year-on-year.

On NII, Edoardo will respond.

NII, we definitely are seeing positive signals and expect to have results delivering a positive trend versus the first quarter of this year. Bearing in mind that we have mitigated on purpose our NII sensitivity to avoid excessive dependency on NII, to avoid riding too much the waves when they go up, but also to be too much exposed to the downside risk.

Net-net, if some of these conditions prove to be even more favorable, then we could revise our guidance, but for the time being, we prefer to stick to the indication to stay consistent with the exit level of December. The other question was on DTA.

More or less we have an expectation for the rest of the year of capital creation coming from DTAs that is similar to the pace we experienced during this quarter, and consistent also with what I said of the 200 of the 120 basis points of capital creation expected from DTA and fair value other comprehensive income during the remaining part of the plan horizon.

Many thanks.

Okay. For being with us, and I'm sure we will see around during our roadshow during the next days.

Thank you again.