Good morning, everyone. On this sunny day from our headquarters in Gland, I am together with our CFO, Yvan Cardenas, and we will bring you through this conference call this morning and give you some information about 2023, but also looking at what will happen in 2024 and 2025. Let's start with 2023 and one of the announcements that was in the press release. So we acquired in South Africa a long-time partner. Over 10 years, he was bringing clients to Swissquote, and we thought it's going so well that it's a good idea to acquire the company. The name of the company is Optimatrade, but obviously it will be renamed then to something with Swissquote. We haven't found the right name yet. But to give you a few numbers, this IB brought about CHF 1 billion assets to Swissquote over time, and it accelerated quite strongly over the last year. And as an IB, he was rewarded by us with participation to the revenues. So in the press release, we have written 0.4% of total revenues, so that's roughly CHF 2 million. And we acquired the company for a multiple of that in the range of CHF 6 million-CHF 7 million, depending a little bit on the results that will happen over the next two years. So it's a good combination and a good expansion strategy for Swissquote. Now, let's go back to 2023. It was a very strong year in a not-so-easy market environment, as you know, but still we had records in all sectors. We had the best net revenue ever with CHF 531.4 million. We had the best pre-tax profit ever with more than CHF 250 million, 255.4. And also the assets under custody, client assets, are at CHF 58 billion, which also is the highest number we had in our history. The same thing obviously applies to the number of accounts, that's 574,274, and here, a continuous growth story of our operations. We had a good start in the year, in 2024, with also positive momentum, which is a sign that the growth story of Swissquote will also prevail in 2024 and the year after. Sorry, I forgot to move the slides. We are now on slide number 6 here, and here I would like to comment the net revenues, so the famous CHF 531.4 million we have made. And if you hear a little bit the historical chart back in 2017, so first of all, you see that it's a continuous growth story. I could go further down to the beginning of Swissquote, but this company is growing and growing, which is normal. We are adding new clients. We are gaining new assets. We are adding new services, and this translates into additional revenue. What we call a little bit the classic business, this would be composed of fee and commission income, and interest rate income has been at the highest here in 2023 with, obviously, a strong push in interest revenues. We aim to say that it's some kind of a normalization because the year before, and specifically the COVID and pre-COVID year, was tagged with negative interest, which is not something that we think is a normal situation on the interest rates. But our Chief Financial Officer will tell you the number of rates cut we have factored in our numbers for 2024 because this is what we do. We do have careful forecasts in the future as we want to achieve the numbers we are announcing to the market. Also here in 2023, very cautious, very, let's say, low revenues on the crypto assets in 2023. We are still experiencing crypto winter, and there is a little change there, and 2024 looks much better on that front. And you see the distribution on the other revenue segments that we are disclosing, eForex and CFD, which is now almost the smallest part of our revenue segments. And then trading, this is mainly the classic Forex. When someone, for instance, would buy a U.S. share and having only Swiss francs, then obviously we provide the change, and this generates the return you see here in light gray on our chart on page 6. If we are going to page 7 now, we have client assets, total client assets at CHF 58 billion. So first of all, if you here also go back to 2017, you can see how strongly, actually, the growth was. On the net new money side, we never had a year in our history with negative net new monies. That's also a sign, actually, that the company is fundamentally growing. Then obviously there is an impact on the overall from the markets, and you see that from 2021 to 2022, we had markets that were not so good, and therefore the total assets actually declined. But here this is not the case. From 2022 to 2023, it was a good year stock-wise, and also our clients made good profit, and you can see this in the evolution of the orange part here. On top of that comes the net new money of CHF 5 billion in 2023, which brings us to this CHF 58 billion of total client assets. What we also show on the charts here is the margin of assets, 96.4%. This is within our boundaries from, say, 80%-100%. This is where we want to see the company, and you also can see here that over time how stable this is. It's a little bit more volatile market over the last three years, but it's also our forecast for 2024 that will stay more or less in the same magnitude. Now, if we're looking at this for CHF 58 billion, this is composed of securities up to 85%. The rest is cash, and this also is a very stable mix of our clients' assets. It doesn't move a lot, and which is normal. If you open an account at Swissquote, you also bring a bunch of cash with it, not because you want to leave it as cash, but this is the firepower you have when you want to take opportunities in the market. This 15%, as we say, it has been quite stable over the last years and explains the growth in our balance sheet that we will comment in a few slides. Now, looking at customer growth, again here on the left side, we have net new monies, CHF 5 billion, and you clearly see here that there is, we call it the pre-COVID and the post-COVID story. So pre-COVID, the company was growing net new money, and I'm speaking organically, something between two and three here, CHF 2.7 billion, CHF 3.1 billion, and then CHF 2 billion in 2019. And then you see that the post-COVID time as of 2020, there was really a shift, and we are now growing at a minimum of CHF 5 billion, I would say. From that standpoint, 2023 was a bit a little bit a lower year, but the start in 2024 has been great, so we were convinced that we'd go back to the CHF 76-77 billion of net new monies, which on which we base our our our forecast for for this year. The average assets per customer, very simple math. You take the number of clients, you take the assets, you divide by the number of clients, and you see here that the average assets per account is at about CHF 100,000. This is a reflection of our business model, of the type of clients we are able to attract. I would say it's much higher than the average industry, and it's certainly higher than deep discount brokers you can see here and there. It's also quite a stable number over the last five years, and this is; we're pleased with that. We would like this to continue like this. So we do want to attract clients, but the clients with a certain with a certain wealth, and this has made our success over the last over the last year. Here, the 574,274 clients we had at the end of 2023. Now, this famous CHF 5 billion, where do we gain momentum there? Well, bigger part, 61%, is coming from Switzerland, and the rest is international, so that's the rest of the world where we are active. And you see here the distribution: Switzerland, Europe, Middle East, Asia, and rest of the world. These are the first three are really hot, the hotspots of where we are and where we have the biggest growth momentum. And also when you look at the distribution, is it B2C or B2B, B2B2C? You see it's a good mix. 36% of the CHF 5 billion are related to B2C clients directly, and then the rest, 64%, is institutional, but also the many partnerships we have, so the B2B2C, for example, PostFinance, where we are providing trading services for them. This would be in the category in the 64% and qualify as B2B2C. On the next slide, we call it customer loyalty. We could also call it customer stickiness, and for us, this is a very, very important chart. Let me explain. Here on the left side, you see the distribution of accounts. So we have 61% of the accounts are prior to 2020, so these are the accounts we still have today in our books. So 61% are before or up to 2020, and then we have the ones that we acquired over the last three years. 2021 and 2022 represent 28%, and then in 2023, we had 11% of the total. So this is important for us because it shows actually that once you have a client, he would stay with you for the longer term, 61%, and but also that the growth story continues. Then when you look at the distribution of assets, you have almost a similar picture. So the 61 old clients, so to say, represent 74% of our CHF 58 billion, and then the newer guys, 19% and 7%, respectively. It's what we have seen in the past is that you would accumulate your assets with Swissquote. You open first the account, and then over time you bring additional assets, and this explains then the growth here and the difference between the 11% of new clients in 2023 but only the 7% of new assets. We know that the clients we acquired in 2023 will continue to grow their portfolio with us also in 2024. If you now take the numbers, and look at the net revenues, so the distribution of net revenues versus the time when we acquired the clients, and there also it's a very healthy mix. So, the 61 old clients still represents about 60% of our net revenues, so they continue to use our services, but the new clients are more or less in the same. They have more or less the same activity than the older clients, so this also shows a lot of stability in the client quality that we are able to acquire, and the use of the services that we bring to them is very stable over time. If you look at the customer profile, and if you look at the right side here, by B2C and B2B and B2B2C, it's still mostly direct business, retail, or mass affluent business that represents 74% of our CHF 50,531.4 million of revenues, and then the more institutional part of our business represents 26%. And now if I look at the customer domicile of our clients, about half of it are in Switzerland, 49%, and then the rest would distribute but where we have our hotspots: Europe, 19%, Middle East, Asia, 18%, and then the rest of the world, 14%. Now, if you look at net revenues by asset class and nature, well, first of all, very good news on the right side. Now here, the biggest part now of our revenue is non-transactional-based, up to 58%, and this obviously is linked to the uptick in interest revenues. That's, it's good news for the company, and also it stabilizes the revenues forecast for 2024 because we don't see a lot of changes there. We have some forecasts about the interest rates environment in 2024, but this part, let's say, it's easy to forecast, very stable, and then the part that is a little bit more volatile because it's linked with the performance of the markets, so to say, these represented 42% of the mix. Now, in 2024, this may change a little bit, not because of the 58% that will be more or less stable, but the activity of the clients; we have seen here since the beginning of the year that this has been quite good. So this gives us a lot of confidence that we are able to reach our numbers. So the CHF 595 million latest estimates we have for 2024 and the corresponding CHF 300 million of pre-tax that we will generate. Now, if you look at the revenue by asset classes here from the highest to the lowest, so cash represented 35% of net revenues. So cash is an important or has again become an important part of our revenue, so through interest revenues, and then we have the fixed incomes, shares, forex, CFD in the same buckets, around 15%-11%, and then you see the rest of the distribution here on the left side of our chart. Now, if you have a look at our costs, which is something we have a very cautious approach to it, so the biggest part, about 50%, represents payroll and related, and here, some information you see it goes a little bit up and down here, specifically because it seems between 2021 and 2023, and this is connected to our bonus system, which is company-wide, and which also is some kind of a amortization of our costs, and related to the achievement of the results or the overachievement of the results. And as you know, in 2023, we overachieved our initial budget, and this had an impact on the bonus system we are able to give to our employees. The evolution of the headcount here, this is the black line on the same chart. Now we are below 1,200 employees, sorry, and it's interesting to see the distribution of the headcount. It's very important for us to invest in our technology, to invest in our infrastructure, IT, and this represents the biggest part of the various employee category here, up to 35%. Then you see the distribution, the foreign offices, so all the network of sales desk and other banks, mainly in Luxembourg, this represents 14% of the total headcount. Here on the right, the sales part, customer care, the 23%, this is mainly in Switzerland and at our headquarters. Then you see the healthy mix of headcount. It's very important for us because this is exactly our DNA. We are a tech company with a bank license, and so it's logical to have the biggest parts in developments and IT. If I go back on the left side, you have in the second cost segment is other operating expenses. This is linked to the revenue, so part of the cost goes with revenues, so the higher the revenue, the higher this cost block is, and then the depreciation and marketing, which has been quite stable over the last three years. So on the marketing side, this is the one that we control the most. You may have seen in our press release that we have renewed our partnership with UEFA, and yeah, you may know that we are the sponsor of the Europa and the Europa Conference League, and we think this is a great tool to push our brand all over Europe, which is a very important place for us to grow our business. Speaking about growing and growing the profit, this is the main idea of these slides here. You see the growth of pre-tax and net profits over time. You see also the jump that happens in the pre-COVID time between 2017, 2018, 2019. This company was having more or less a profit around CHF 50 million, and then you really see the growth pattern that we could activate since 2020 with these now best results ever of CHF 255.4 million pre-tax, and after tax, it translates into a net profit of CHF 217 million. Also here important is the pre-tax profit margin, which has been stable now over the last three years, and this is also where we put the forecast probably even higher because there is leverage in our business. The marginal additional clients does not cost us a lot of money, so you may see this pre-tax profit margin grow over time in 2024 and 2025. This is our forecast. So if we relate this to the CHF 58 billion of assets we had at the end of 2023, and which we take the revenue of CHF 505.30 million, this would represent 96 basis points, but we can also express this in basis points when we speak about pre-tax profit margin, and then this is 48 basis points. Now, let's have a look at the balance sheet, which is stable at CHF 10 billion from 2022 to 2023. This is a good sign. You see that the part due to customers here on the right side has decreased slightly. There's a good mix of deposits in Swiss francs, US dollar, and euro, and it has been also stable there, so it relates to the 15% I mentioned before, a very stable part of our cash. And what are we doing with our clients' deposits? Well, mainly it's placed with central banks, up to CHF 4.6 billion, so these are placed between one and 15 days, depending on our strategy. Treasury bills has slightly increased to CHF 394 million, and also the part we place with other banks is quite stable around CHF 1.5 billion. Maybe interestingly, the investment securities, so the bonds portfolio, has increased from CHF 1.7 billion to CHF 2 billion, so we did capture part of this rate increase through investment in bonds, but there also we think that the short-term yield on the bonds is quite interesting, so we didn't feel the need of going a little bit longer. I think it's a good strategy, and then also gives us very sound ratios here on the left. The liquidity ratio is very high still, slightly down from 2023, but exceptionally high with 470%, and also the funding ratio also increased in compared to 2022 to CHF 277 million, and the interest rates risk is also low at 5.3%, so very, very good numbers. The company is well capitalized, well invested with a healthy balance sheet. Now, obviously, interest income was a very important part of our revenue in 2023, and I would like to show you a little bit the headroom we still have, so let's start. It looks like being a little bit a complicated slide, but it's quite easy to understand, and it's not the first time we are showing this slide, so let's start on the left upper left side of the slide. So we're starting at this famous CHF 58 billion of assets we have, and you see that I said 15% of that is in cash, and that represents here in the middle this CHF 8.6 billion. So this is our play money. This is the money we can invest and generate a return out of that. 34% of this CHF 8.6 billion are used for loans and investment securities, and you see on the right side, so 34% of CHF 8.6 billion represents CHF 2.9 billion, and this is mainly invested in investment securities, this CHF 2.1 billion with high-quality products. You see the distribution here. Then we have margin lending, mainly, so these are Lombard loans and a little bit of our leasing business, and this represents about CHF 800 million, so not a lot of change there. Now, the rest, the 66% of this CHF 8.6 billion, this is the liquidity portfolio. This is CHF 5.7 billion, and you see here the distribution in the currency-wise, so the biggest part is Swiss francs, and then we have 20% is US dollar and 15% is euro, and this, this, together with the yield we do on our investment securities portfolio did represent in 2023 a total of CHF 213.1 million. You see what happens in 2023, so the rates did increase from, Swiss francs 0.95% at the beginning of the year to 1.7%, so, if you take the mix, it's obviously we did not earn 1.7%, but we earned something in the middle as the rates were increasing, and the same pattern happened in US dollar and euro. Now, we think that in 2024 it will go the other side around, but it will go slowly, so, comparing 2023 with 2024 will have about the same, interests will have about the same interest revenue. Now, the CHF 213.1 million together with the rest of our revenue, so that the yield or the margins we did with our clients' assets, so the investor securities, represented CHF 318.3 million, so combined, we're coming to the net revenues of CHF 531.4 million in 2023. Okay, so we're almost at the end of the presentation. Let's have a look on our equity. So it's the highest number, obviously, because it's been pushed and driven by the profitability of the company, and so it's growing. As the profit is growing, you see here this chart of the total equity having a very strong growth over the last four years. Now, we are at CHF 898.6 million. I'm convinced that in 2024 we will reach and be much higher than the CHF 1 billion of equity in the company. Capital ratio at 25.1%. It's a good number, high number, and this is obviously post payment of dividend that you see on the right side. So in 2023 or in 2024, based on the profit of 2023, we will ask the general assembly to pay out the dividend of CHF 4.3 per share. This is almost the double than the one we had in 2022, and we have also now defined or fine-tuned a little bit more our dividend policy, and we will aim in the future to pay out about 30% of our profit, and for 2023, this represents CHF 4.3 per share. Why this reversal here of the payout ratio? We are now convinced that the profitability is so strong that it is able to fuel the growth of the company, and also to develop our equity in a healthy way, so we don't need to retain more than 70% of our profit. That's sufficient to finance our growth over the next years. Now, let's come to the most important slides here because all the rest was almost known already, since we publish our financial figures quite early in the year. So what will happen in 2024? So first of all, we will continue our established growth story in Switzerland mainly. We will continue our strategy to transform Swissquote into a full digital bank. We have made a lot in terms of our service level, and we have been rewarded with a strong growth of clients and clients' assets, and this also will happen in 2024. Swissquote is becoming a digital bank, full digital bank, with a strong position in Switzerland. In Europe, and mainly when we say Europe, this is mainly the Benelux where we have our other bank in the group, Swissquote Bank Europe. They're based in Luxembourg, they are focusing on the Benelux, Germany, France, so the stronghold where we can attract good clients. We are targeting mass affluent clients, so mass affluents. This is a little bit on average, they have a little bit higher deposits on the one we have in Switzerland. If I take the numbers of Swissquote Bank Europe there, the average deposits is at EUR 200,000 compared to the CHF 100,000 we have overall, so a little bit higher, a higher type of clients, a more wealthy clients, I would say, and this is, combined with our strategy, so we will continue to push that in Europe, and we think this is a successful path to our growth. And then comes the rest of the world and mainly the Middle East where we have our offices now for years in Dubai that are growing well, and there's also the places in Asia, Singapore, Hong Kong, where we have successful operations. So this is the strategy in 2024, and we are confident that we can grow the business by 12% on net revenues, and we will reach CHF 595 million, short of CHF 600 million. We think that the pre-tax profit margin, because of the leverage effects we have in our operations, will grow up to 50%, a little bit slightly higher than 50%, and this will produce a pre-tax profit of CHF 300 million. So the expenses will grow to CHF 295 million, so this is a slight growth, compared to last year, compared to 2023 where the costs were at CHF 276 million. It's growing because we are still growing a little bit the headcount. We need this for our developments and for our operations, but you see now that the costs are now fairly under control. We have another way of showing the number. There's CHF 595 million we want to achieve. We can express this in margin on total assets. I wouldn't focus too much on the numbers, but it's more important or interesting to see a little bit the dynamics you have, so we think that there will be first, an improved market activity on the crypto asset side, so compared to the CHF 65 billion we'll have at the end of the year, this will represent about six basis points. Then the rest, this is interest rates. It margin-wise, it will decrease a little bit from 39-35, so as we said, we have factored in these rate cuts in 2024. Whether they will happen or not, we think they will, but they're also, we have been fairly conservative, and we think that, and this is the third pillar, that we will regain momentum again in securities. There's a renewed interest in trading and in the trading activity, and this is something we have seen very strongly in the first two months of the year. Now, let's have a look on here, sorry, let's have a look on the midterm outlook 2025. We announced since 2021 that in 2025 we will reach a pre-tax profit of CHF 350 million, and we think we can do this in next year, and here you can see a little bit the growth in pre-tax profit margin. So from 2022-2023, the growth was at 37%, 2023-2024 estimates is 17%, and we only need 16% growth to achieve our famous CHF 350 million. On the net revenue side, now the forecast is to be a little bit lower than CHF 700 million, because we don't need we just need CHF 700 million with the increase on our pre-tax margin. We just need, shortly below CHF 700 million to produce a pre-tax profit of CHF 350 million, and this all this forecast is based on a sound growth in net new monies, and they're also for 2024 and 2025. We table on a growth of CHF 7 billion a year and about 50,000 of new accounts, in 2024 and 2025. So all this combined together makes a very forecastable business and our pre-tax profit. We're confident that we can reach this pre-tax profit of CHF 350 million, next year. So this would conclude our this will conclude our presentation. There are a few appendices, maybe one, which I would like to comment shortly, because it is a business which is quite exciting. This is the joint venture we have with PostFinance. This is, it is a 50/50 joint venture, and it's a huge success. Now, we had by the end of 2023 more than 200,000 clients, so really a very strong growth. We were able to add 90,000 new clients since the beginning of the year, and we're not only adding clients, but we're also adding assets, CHF 900 million, almost a billion, of new assets in 2023, which pushed total assets now by our new clients to CHF 1.5 billion, and you see we have now become the number one Swiss mobile bank in 2023. We're really proud of that because that's something we wanted to achieve, and now the profitability is in reach. We will reach certain profitability ratios and thresholds in 2024 already, but net we'll have the first-time profit produced in 2025, and you see here the various services we are adding. So we have implemented TWINT. We now have virtual cards. We have a 3a pillar offering in our business, and obviously, this is also the place where we are paying high interest rates to this client segments that we are cherishing and developing very much. We'll have a very active investor relations, and you may join us in one of the events here that we have organized. I'll let you read these figures here or these dates. We would be happy if you can make it, if you can join us there, and the rest here are just the key figures. I don't want to comment, but obviously, we would be ready now to take some questions from the audience and comment one of those numbers if you ask us to do so. So again, thank you for joining us this morning, and let's open the Q&A session. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants on the phone are requested to use only headsets and eventually turn off the volume from the webcast. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from the line of Gregor Herrmann with Berenberg. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone. Can you can you hear me well? Yes, absolutely. Good morning. Yeah, great. Thank you. Just, three questions, please. The first one is on the basically the increase in, in customers you're you're having. I think at, H1, you were showing that, you had, I think 52% of customers that were that were based, from Switzerland. Now, we can see at, full year that it's, down to 49%, so it looks like, internationalization is is going well. Just wondering here on the trade per customer level, is it increasing, basically, or are you seeing that the new customers are accretive in terms of trading activity or pretty much the same? And then, the two other questions I would have are on crypto. In your guidance for 2024, could you give any insight about what level of crypto trading are you assuming? Is it flat compared to 2023, or are you actually hoping for more volumes there? And, as well, how much more profitable is the crypto activity compared to 2023? I'm not sure I can see that from the numbers you have published today, and I think that since the launch of the crypto exchange, it's supposed to be much more profitable, so can you give, please, a bit more transparency here? Thank you. Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. We have, Yvan, who is eager to dig into those questions. So Yvan, would you take the first one about customers, and the customer growth and customer mix? Yes. Good morning, Gregor. Perhaps, two general comments with the aim to answer your question. Well, the first one is in 2023, we could really see, two environments in terms of customer acquisition, you know, when rates were increasing, and then at a certain stage, they peaked and they stabilized, and, this really has influenced, customer acquisition plus trading activity. So, you know, depending on the domicile of the customer and the interest rate environment, you know, the things did not necessarily happen at the same speed. We could really see sort of a tipping point, you know, when rates peaked and stabilized, people became a bit more relaxed and with more visibility on rates, and as well, long-term rates, they started to decrease, mainly impacting as well the mortgage rates. So, you know, it could be that this change of paradigm has not always been necessarily at the same point in time depending on the domicile of the customer. Same for the trading activity. You know, we say in our press release, we start 2024 with a more optimistic than we started 2023. You know, we if you can't see us, but we probably with bigger smiles than early 2023 because we could see as well some pivot in the trading activity of customers. So I would not necessarily say that, you know, new customers, they trade more or less, but we could really see starting Q4 a better trading activity in various asset classes, not only digital assets, really in various asset classes, but probably not sufficient enough to compensate a quite low Q2 and Q3. So this is, probably, the observation on the on the first question. Marc, do you want to take the second one, or do you do you give it to me? About crypto? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, continue. I can I can finish. Well, so, so if you if you if you if you take the slide 21, you can basically calculate that we probably have included a number in our guidance, you know, in CHF that is almost twice the number of that we did last year. So, you know, it's something around 30, above CHF 30 million of crypto assets income for 2024, so this is certainly because, you know, we see good trading activity in 2024. Already at the end of 2023, if you compare the volumes between H1 and H2, you certainly see a bit of better environment that was triggered in at the end of 2023, you see that crypto volumes increased by 40% between H1 and H2, so this is quite significant. So we have increased the numbers, you know, the forecasted revenues in 2024, but still with the aim, you know, to have a conservative number that could show upside, but certainly not a downside, on the profit side. So, you know, we want a solid profit guidance for 2024, so it means we need a resilient number for crypto assets, but the number is higher given the current trend that we see in the market. Mm-hmm. Nothing to add from my side. Thank you, Yvan. Okay. Thank you very much. The next question comes on the line of Daniel Regli with ZKB. Please go ahead. Good morning to all, and thanks for taking my questions. I have a couple of questions. First, please, on the net interest income outlook in 2024, can you maybe give a little bit of color about what the net interest income monthly rate was during H2? I mean, it was, on average, CHF 118 million a month, I calculated, but how has this developed over the second half year last year, and from where do you expect to come, you know, the pressure a bit on the margin? Is it more coming from the asset side, as you alluded to, due to cuts in central bank rates, or is it also that you see some kind of increase in financing costs coming through, higher deposit rates, or pressure on you to pay higher deposit interest rates? Then the second question is a bit the follow-up question on the crypto business and just trying to compare this year with 2021. What are the differences, or is another year, 2021, theoretically possible this year if it continues as it has started? Then the third question is on the midterm outlook. You have reduced your revenue target to below CHF 700 million from about CHF 750 million previously, and it seems like you have mainly lowered your assumption on AUM growth. Can you maybe explain a bit what has led you to reduce your expectations on AUM growth? And then, last question on capital, or maybe two questions on capital. First, can you maybe give us an approximation of the capital impact of the acquisition you made in South Africa, and then secondly, on the dividend policy, did I hear you right that you basically said you need not to retain more than 70% of net profits, i.e., meaning that the payout ratio should be at least 30% going forward? Mm-hmm. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much, Daniel, for this, for interesting questions. So I will take the third one and then the second one, and then we'll give to Yvan for the one on the capital impact and then the net interest forecast to come. So first, on the midterm, I think, you know, we always said that the growth in assets under custody, assets under management will be CHF 7 billion, so this also is our strategy for 2024 and 2025, so no big change there. The other point is we don't need anymore the CHF 750 million to create the CHF 350 million of pre-tax. That was a little bit, that was a little bit the point, so we may do CHF 750 million, but we think that even though we would do only CHF 690 million or CHF 700 million, we'll still be able to create the pre-tax of CHF 350 million. The biggest driver, or the strongest numbers in our 2025 forecast was really to achieve these CHF 350 million. We are strongly working on that, and I think this is achievable, also seeing the growth patterns now that we have on revenue and profit margin. What the crypto business is concerned, could it go back to the crazy 2021 year? I would say, yes, why not? But it's as you know, it's tough to make a forecast in this so volatile market, so we went from a crypto winter to a crypto summer without having a spring, so this is a little bit the magnitude and the volatility in this market. It's absolutely doable that we are going back to the 2021 years because you can say you can see that the adoption rate now of cryptos has become bigger. You have seen what happened in the U.S. with now the ETPs and these ETFs, promoted by big, big companies, and that has gained traction and where billions have been invested already, so this makes the total collapse of the crypto products and cryptocurrency rather unlikely going forward. So we may come back to this high volatility, but I want to say this is not in our forecast, because we have seen what happened from 2021 to 2022, so basically, we're still cautious in the way we do forecast, and we take all this as good news. Now, this doesn't mean that we haven't invested in our technology. We have strongly invested there because we think it is, will be part of the banking business of the future, so you have to be positioned there. You need to have good service. We strongly worked on our own exchange. We have improved the system. We have invested a lot in technology, and for the clients, this means that the spreads have become much better, that the liquidity has become much better, and this also is really something that is appreciated by the clients. The feedback we receive now from the clients when trading with us and say, "You guys, you really have a great liquidity. There's no problem anymore to execute big orders in our exchange because of this, because the liquidity is there," and at the end of the day, this is what is important. And of course, also, you need to offer all the rest of the scene. It's difficult to be only a broker and only a provider of transactions. In cryptocurrency, you need to offer custody as that's part of the business. You need to have it in a very secure and very safe way, so you need to make transfers in and out from wallets in the cloud, and you also need to offer staking because that's part of the crypto ecosystem. So bullish on the technology, not excluding 2021 scenario back, but would be super good news for us because it's not forecasted in our numbers in 2024, neither 2025. Now, going back, maybe first to the factoring of the net interest income that was your first questions, and then the capital impact on the acquisition of Optimatrade and then our dividend policy. Yvan? Yes. Hello, Daniel. Yeah, so on the net interest income, so, you know, we have this side, net interest, contribution. I think, you know, if we basically take the final rates of 2023 that are basically probably the one that we are experiencing today, you see that, you know, we end up with a higher number than the one that is included in the guidance 2024 because we expect rates to decrease in CHF, EUR, and USD. So basically, we have included in our guidance what the market is pricing or what we understand the market is pricing in terms of rate cuts, but for the time being, you know, we probably around the CHF 19 million, slightly above, on a monthly basis because, you know, now we are really at the peak of the rates. This is perhaps the first answer. The second one, yes, so the idea or the intention is that, you know, from now, a 30% payout ratio should be maintained by the group, so this is what we already implement for this year, increasing the dividend, and moving forward, the payout ratio should be much more stable. It was a rather volatile before because we had rather a dividend per share perspective. Now, we'll move to a payout ratio perspective. There were the questions about Optimatrade. Yes, Optimatrade. Sorry, Yvan. Marc, I think, mentioned an idea of the purchase price as well in the annual report. There is a note called subsequent event. You have here an indication of what the goodwill could be. We speak about the goodwill around CHF 4 million, so it's really a small impact on the capital ratio. Thank you very much for your explanation. Apologies, if I can I take your time for a quick bit longer, just back to the midterm outlook, and you sounded rather that, you know, you reduced the revenue target because CHF 700 million is actually enough, but, I mean, I, as an analyst, would rather have you say we get to CHF 750 million and increase the pre-tax profit guidance, so I still don't fully get why you should only get to CHF 700 million revenues now in 2025 whereas you expected CHF 750 million previously. You know? Yes, well, that's a fair question, Daniel, and I remember one of my very first roadshow I did when I was a young banker, and I think it was with BlackRock, and BlackRock say, "Good CEOs always meet their targets," you know, so and the target is CHF 350 million. Now, obviously, if we would do CHF 750 million of revenue, then the pre-tax profit would be much higher, but I don't want to put the bullet in my foot and produce an expectation for 2025 that would be higher than this sacred CHF 350 million that we are now promoting since many years. So do I exclude that we go to CHF 750 million? No, I don't because I think we will have growth opportunities in the company with the Swissquote brand and with all the things we've put in place in the past, so this could well happen, but the most important numbers, me as a CEO, I want to reach the CHF 350 million. Everything above that would be good news. If I may just step in, Daniel, then it's a question of assumptions. You know, you can see that basically, we think that by keeping the same margin on assets and growing CHF 7 billion per year, we should go to the 350, you know? Then, you know, we think the assumption in terms of margin assets is solid because it needs a bit of recovery on trading activity, which we are seeing now, you know? If things may, let's say, accelerate more than this assumption, then, you know, we probably may end up with a higher margin on assets and therefore generate more revenues. I think what is important to note is because interest rate contribution is higher than initially expected when we release the outlook 2025, you know, we think the pre-tax margin can be higher than initially expected, and therefore, the 350 are easier to achieve than initially factored back in 2021 when we release the out look 2025. I see very clear. Thank you so much for the explanations. Thank you. Thank you, Daniel. The next question comes from the line of Christian Affolter with Agefi. Please go ahead. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes, very well, yes. Okay, great. So, just two questions. You mentioned that you've got a bigger part of non-transaction-based revenues now. This makes, will it still stable, or do you think that it could tilt in the future again a bit more towards transactions, especially also seeing the higher revenues on the you got on interest rates? That's the first one. On the second one, yes, in the terms of interest rates, you mentioned that you're doing the leasings and Lombard loans, credits, so why not mortgages? Mm-hmm. Okay. I take the second one and give the first one to Yvan. Well, we're doing mortgages, but we do this with partner banks because, you know, we're not; it's not one of our specialities, and we thought it's better to deal with a bank that has the organization already in place, so we are like an IP to them, and then we share the revenue, and currently, we do this with the Luzerner Kantonalb ank. So the rest actually is a little bit of leasing and Lombard credit. Lombard credit is a good one because that's part of the ecosystem, you know, if you want to take a little bit more leverage because you think that the markets are going up, then the Lombard, especially the way we produce it, is a good way. It's not a fixed drawdown. It's a facility that we give to the clients, and then they use it or not, and they like it a lot. The leasing business, it is a little bit marginal. It was very important when interest rates were negative because every opportunity to make a return out of a Swiss franc was then welcome. The pressure is now a little bit off, as we have many ways of creating a decent return. That's why also the leasing business has stayed stable over time, and the only place where we're doing that is with Tesla, so and there it is quite stable. Now, going back to the first question, Yvan. Yes. So, that's a very key one. In particular, if you look at the slide 12, then you see that basically, in 2023, we generated 58% out of non-transaction-based revenues, and this is a bit exceptional, mainly because we had this significant growth in interest income. On the same slide, you see that basically, cash, so the pure interest income, contributed to 35%, so it means out of the 58%, 35% are linked to interest income, and we know that interest income, sooner or later, will start to decrease, not go back to negative territory like in the past, but it will decrease. So moving forward, I think we'll probably closer to a 60% transaction-based, 40% non-transaction-based, which I would say, a lower interest income. We will remain short-term, medium-term, transaction-based business model, but with a better mix than we had in the past. I remember times where it was more 90%, 10%. We had initiatives. We have tried to diversify this net revenues mix. It's not something that you can change very quickly, but the trend is to a more balanced mix of revenues, but I will rather bet for a 60/40 in the past, so 60% transaction-based, 40% non-transaction-based in the future, sorry. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Christian. Next question, please. The next question comes from the line of Christoph Blieffert with Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. I have a couple of follow-up questions, first on crypto and then on NII, please. Let's start with crypto. Can you give us an indication for crypto revenues in the first two months of 2024, please? Mm-hmm. Okay. Thank you, Yvan. So I can give you, when I take January and February, the average is a bit above CHF 4 million on a monthly basis. Okay. Great. It's a bit 4-5. Excellent. On your crypto exchange, you mentioned that this is in full operation. Can you give us some indication which percentage of trades you already execute on your own exchange, please? Well, so today, we have loaded all coins on the exchange, so 100% of the coins are executed within the exchange. Then, you know, we have various liquidity sources. Sometimes, customers, they basically match together, and sometimes, they may match with, you know, liquidity providers, so with the market, but today, we have 100% of the volume that is executed via the Swissquote exchange. This provides many benefits in terms of liquidity because we can really, you know, improve liquidity, and we have various sources of liquidity for each coin, which was not necessarily the case before, and we have as well the possibility to hold out, you know, more coins faster if we like to. Mm-hmm. Can you give an indication about the percentage of trades which you can already internalize? Well, it's today it's where it's internalized, I would say, trades that basically are between a customer and another customer, but it's quite a decent percentage, Christoph. It's quite a decent percentage. Okay. Yeah. It depends a little bit, you know, how long you hold the position in the book, and this itself is a factor of how big these pockets are, and the problem in the past was that the volatility was so high that, you know, we wouldn't want to take no small risk, so we kept the trades, unless we could match them immediately against the Mm-hmm. and all the participants, we kept them on a very short time. So there is a little bit of improvement potentially there, especially if the volatility is stable, but if you look now at what's going on with the Bitcoins, even though it goes in one direction, you still have big swings in the market, so we have a cautious approach to that. What is improving is the number of participants. The more we have, the easier it is for us to hedge the transactions internally, so we expect this to improve over time and probably so, you know, this internal matching ratio, which, he said, high percentage, I would say 50%, can continue to improve over time. Excellent. Last question on crypto would be on M&A. I mean, in the past, I got the impression that you were looking on smaller, yeah, crypto exchanges or crypto providers in order to strengthen your own offering. Is this still on your radar screen? Well, it's I think it's the question, could be extended to M&A in general. So what we are looking at is to make acquisitions that we can absorb easily, so, something that would accelerate, business segment in which we already are. We're a little bit careful with transformational M&A that would completely shake up the company. The problem so far is that even though there are lots of targets in the market that would apply to this, to our, to this statement, the prices are still super high, so the price expectation is still super high. There's a lot of fantasy coming out of this crazy COVID post-COVID period where prices just went up the roof, so we're a little bit careful. We have to wait that the market is becoming more reasonable, and then I'm convinced that we will have targets. Now, are we looking specifically for crypto targets? Not specifically, I would say. It's a part of our offering. You know, that being a Swiss bank, we have a lot of requirements and duties in terms of crypto business, and it's probably the expectations from our regulator there is much higher than in other part of the world, so this also makes crypto a pure crypto player acquisitions a little bit more difficult. Okay. And then the last question is on NII. When I look on your balance sheet, your deposits are down some CHF 700 million in the second half of 2023. Can you share with us your underlying assumptions with regard to your deposit base for 2024, and can you give us also some insight where those deposits really went through, why the reason why it's down? I mean, is it reinvestment of clients versus outflows? What can you share? Yes, Christoph. If I may, I'll take this one. So what you need to keep in mind so it's true that the balance sheet has decreased, you know, I think with the interest rate policy that we had, you know, I would not have expected cash deposit to specifically increase significantly, but keep in mind if you look at the slide 16, you know, you see that the Swiss franc has still increased. We had decreases in USD and euros, but keep in mind that the rates, you know, the Swiss franc was relatively strong in 2023, so when we translate these USDs into Swiss francs, you know, we have an FX impact that is not necessarily small at the end of 2023, you know, so it is the same $2.2 billion, you know, even if they remain stable during the year, when you translate them at the end of 2023, you lose a few percentage because of the FX impact. So this is a bit, you know, changing the picture of the balance sheet, but it's true that, you know, the percentage of cash compared to total current assets has decreased. If I remember correctly, we were at 17% at the end of June. We are at 15%. Then it's a picture at a point in time, you know, so, you know, it's we always said we will be between 15%-20%, so there was a bit of reinvestment in particular at the end of the year. You know, we mentioned that trading activity improved slightly at the end of 2023. There was a bit of recovery, so I think nothing to worry about, but it's true that, you know, in the context of interest rates environment, you know, I think the good news is we could keep this 15%, you know, so we remain in the usual bandwidth, but there was a bit of additional investments at the end of the year, but as well, you need to take into consideration this FX impact due to the fact that we report in the CHF currency. Excellent. Thanks a lot. Okay. Mm-hmm. Thank you, Christophe. So next question. The next question comes from the line of Michel Keusch with Bellevue. Please go ahead. Yes. Hello. Actually, just a very simple very small question on this very small detail, not really important, but just for the understanding. You know, looking at the robo-advisory accounts, I mean, in the past, you used to show them separately. Now, they're together with the savings accounts, which is not a problem, but just to understand the underlying dynamics, I was wondering if you could tell us a bit how they developed during 2023. I mean, it seems that it would be now probably 8 or 9,000 accounts, if I'm not mistaken, so just to if you could give us an indication on that. Yes. So, no, it's true that we have grouped them because, you know, we have a, let's say, sort of a wealth management initiative, so not necessarily from a regular regulatory perspective, but, you know, from a commercial perspective, we have launched Invest Easy, Invest 3a, you know, and we have decided basically to group these type of accounts that are basically assets and accounts that are really asset-based in terms of revenues and not necessarily transaction-based. So it's no, it's not only about the robo. That is a quite sophisticated tool. We have easier strategies that are available to the customer, and this is what you can see in terms of accounts. We see, sort of a recovering traction, you know, plus almost 50% growth in number of accounts. This is because the implementation of, I would say, more easy investment strategies was probably an opportune move. It triggered a new interest when the robo had probably reached somehow a plateau because it is quite a complex tool, you know, that is not so easy to step in for a new customer. So these are these few initiatives. Invest Easy, I think we have five strategies available plus 3A, Invest 3a. Mm-hmm. Okay. No, I understand. So this would explain, actually, why you have this big growth in the total number of accounts if we combine robo and savings together, but that's because of all these new initiatives and these. Exactly. Easy investments. Exactly. Exactly. What is interesting is, you can see that it has even surpassed the level of assets that we have in the eForex business, you know, so, you know, we in the past, we insisted a lot about ETFs and CFDs, but now, in terms of size, that's even bigger than ETFs and CFDs in terms of size of assets. Yeah. I see. And the second question I had is on the number of transactions per client per year. I mean, if we do the math, we see it's about I mean, as an average for the year 2023, it's about 10 per client per year. I mean, obviously, I'm aware that there's distortions because of the timing, as that's what you explained before, you know, when you have suddenly new clients, and then they're peaking and stopping and so on, but I was just wondering, as an indication for 2024, you know, what is embedded in your guidance? You said that January, February is seeing an increase in the trading activity, and if you know, if you can give us an indication of, you know, what kind of trading activity you imply in your guidance, if it's, I don't know either in terms of number of trades per client or if you don't want to comment on the number per se, just, you know, to what extent it's a conservative assumption or not. Well, so, I'll comment, if you don't mind, a bit generally, but if you look more indicated to slide 21, where basically, you know, we communicate on these marginal assets. Basically, you see that for securities trading and eForex, we plan on a, you know, on a better trading activity, you know, slightly better. The marginal assets increased from 54% to 56%, so what we think is 2023 was really, you know, the lowest end of the trading activity, so we will grow from 2023 to 2024 because, on average, we'll have more assets, so net new money plus, you know, we start the year at 58% and not at, I don't remember. It could be a 52% early 2023, so on average, more assets, net new money, but as well, better trading activity on digital assets, securities trading, and eForex, so we plan for a slight recovery, and if you do a bit of math, I think, in general, you can see what we expect, more in terms of trading activity, but it's true that 2023 was rather very low, you know, and not only at Swissquote. I think it was across the board in the industry. Mm-hmm. Yes. And I may add something. Sometimes, we forget a little bit how difficult the year 2023 was in that perspective. It's so the human brain is made in the way, in this way, that you get used to everything, but in 2023, inflation was still very high, and there was lots of uncertainties with the war. Now, we still have the war, but somehow we got used to, and somehow we are living with inflation, so, and maybe see a little bit the more positive side of the stock market anyway because everyone is expecting inflation to come down and then the interest rates to retreat, but it's true that 2023, just on the pure trading side, was not a great year, so everything that comes after should be better. We're convinced that we've reached the bottom of our trading activity, and you mentioned the number of 10. I can go back in time. You know, there was. I don't think there was a year when we were at that low level of trading. True. Yeah. Okay. That's very clear. Many thanks. Thank you. Next question, please. The next question comes from the line of Manuel Peter with Helvetische Bank. Please go ahead. Yes. Hello. Good morning, and congratulations for the good numbers. I got only one understanding question concerning your slide 10 of the presentation. There you show that over the last 12 months, you grew customer accounts at a total of 6.6%, but at the same time, you show in the pie chart above that you acquired roughly 11% new accounts. So does that mean that the delta of the 11% to the 6.6% are the customers you lost, or am I missing something? Thanks, Manuel, for the question. No, if in fact, if you look, there are various explanations. I mean, we have accounts that are closed during the year. This is certainly true, but if you look, the plus 6.6%, this is total accounts, you know, so it means as well including eForex accounts, and if you look at eForex accounts, they're rather flat. Some semesters, they could even decrease because it's a quite speculative segment, you know, we only count or report what we qualify as active accounts, so it means the accounts need to be funded, and they need to show a certain minimum trading activity. Then in some jurisdictions, you know, if you take the example of Swissquote in Europe, Swissquote in Luxembourg, you know, we have as well inactivity fees, so customers, they get charged if they remain inactive after a couple of months, and this, you know, triggers somehow sometimes customers to close accounts when they are, you know, with a very small balance or relatively inactive. So it's true the gross amount of account opens was higher, you know, but in some segments, we don't report inactive accounts, and therefore, you know, the plus 6.6% scopes out, mainly the inactive accounts, so I think it showed that the, you know, the total, 574,000 is quite a healthy number, you know, because it's mainly about active accounts that are reported by Swissquote. Okay. Thank you very much. Mm-hmm. Thank you. Mr. René Locher, you are the next one, I guess. Okay. Can you hear me? We can, certainly. Okay. Okay. So, I'm on slide 21 and 22. So first of all, I want to understand, where do you get the CHF 2 billion additional assets to increase the net new money from CHF 5 billion to CHF 7 billion? So that's my first question. And then the second question is on the 2024 outlook. I think you are using or calculating on average assets, which would then be CHF 61.5 billion. And, yeah, just on these crypto assets, I mean, don't want to be too bullish, and as you know, analysts tend to be a little bit too bullish, but you. Very full 30 to 2021, and just as a reminder, in 2021, crypto assets revenue, we had CHF 102 million. So, I mean, what I can see now or what I can calculate now is you are in fact some CHF 37 million, which looks okayish given the run rate of CHF 4 million in January, February, but just here, just a word of caution. I mean, Bitcoin and also Ethereum are about new highs, but nevertheless, you know, we should not factor in 2021 because this is too high. So that's the second question, and the third one is on 2025. Here again, going for an additional CHF 7 billion, average assets in 2025 would then be CHF 68.5 billion. One percentage point or 1% revenue margin, I end up at CHF 685 million, which is below CHF 700 million. That's fine. And then if I subtract that CHF 350 million pre-tax profit, you have, like, CHF 335 million costs operating expenses in 2020, which is another +14%, and, yeah. I mean, is my thinking right, or got something wrong when we're talking 2024 and 2025? Thank you. Well, René, first of all, I want to make very clear, your thinking is always right, so this, I have really to say, yes, perhaps on the crypto. So on the crypto, 2021, we had an exceptional year. I mean, we did more than CHF 100 million of crypto assets income. I mean, it means more or less, you know, we were very close to CHF 8 million-CHF 10 million net revenues per month, you know, so it was; 2021 was pretty huge in terms of activity. When you look outside, you know, spot volumes in the market, you see that there is a good recovery in crypto asset trading activity, but not necessarily to the extent of 2021, no. I think, you know, everything is set that 2024 could be a great year, but for the time being, you know, it's, there is a positive trend. There is a very positive trend, but the volumes are not necessarily yet at the levels of 2021. I was asked before by Christoph. I said on a monthly basis, January, February, we are between CHF 4 billion-CHF 5 billion, you know, so I think it's good because it means our assumption that is already higher than in 2023 should rather not put at risk the profits, you know, and this is always what we aim to do with our guidance on digital assets, but, you know, we're not yet there at the levels of 2021. Then yes, we confirm CHF 7 billion per year, so compared to 2023, we could say where the missing CHF 2 billion will come from. Well, 2023 was a particular year with a period before interest rates peaked and after interest rates stabilized, and, you know, digital assets, they have always been very positive for client onboarding and client reactivation, so, you know, the momentum it means probably that the momentum we see in customer acquisition in 2024 is positive, you know. This is why we insist again on the CHF 7 billion. Then you had the question about 2025. Yes, I think we don't need the CHF 700 million. We probably be at between 650 and 700, and the pre-tax margin, as confirmed in the press release, above 50%, so in the guidance 2024, you see that there is an improvement of the pre-tax margin. I will expect this pre-tax margin to continue to improve in 2025, so your math is certainly correct. And why I expect pre-tax margin to improve in 2024 and in 2025? Because as Marc mentioned before, our CEO mentioned before, you know, we think we will reach a stable level of headcount. We'll grow the headcount probably, but not to the same extent that we did in the past, so, you know, from a cost perspective, we have the possibility to adjust and therefore to stabilize our level of expenses. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes, sir. Okay. Okay. And thank you very much. Yeah. Mark. And if I may add something about the crypto markets in general, so the first is, we can say that the technology in the last year and also the acceptance of the product has matured a lot, and the most of the excesses of the past has been now punished in a way, you know, either by the regulator or by the market, and many of the bizarre providers have disappeared or will disappear shortly, and also, one thing that has not worked so well is the entire DeFi market, you know, this idea that the finance will completely decentralize and that you will have a lot of smaller companies on the blockchain doing very specific businesses, and that was a very nice concept, but it's not what the regulator wants. The regulator wants consolidation, supervision, so concentration rather than decentralization, and I think that's also good news for us, the fact that a bank actually should run the crypto business. This is a strong argument in our favor, and that one, obviously, we would agree because at the end, it's a financial product, and it has to obey a certain number of rules and regulation. Now, Swissquote actually is not a crypto stock because we are a multi-assets. We are more of a digital bank, but we think that crypto should be part of the offering, but I would insist that Swissquote is not a crypto stock. Thank you very much. Thank you, René. And then we have a last question, I guess, from AWP. The next question comes from the line of Simpson Jung with AWP. Please go ahead. Yes. Thank you. Also a question regarding midterm outlook on net new money. I don't know if I understood correctly. Just to clarify, so you expect around CHF 7 billion net new assets in 2024 and 2025 each year, so CHF 7 billion 2024 and CHF 7 billion 2025, around about? Yes. Yes, this is correct. Thank you. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So here on my cockpit, I don't see any more question. Operator, is that correct? Correct. That was the last question. Okay. Okay. Then I guess we can close here. I would like to thank you for the participation this morning. Thank you for the interesting questions, and as usual, Yvan and myself, we are available this afternoon. Should you have additional questions, please do contact us directly. So thank you, thank you to everyone, and see you soon. Bye-bye.