Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Swissquote Half Year Results 2026 conference call and live webcast. I am Valentina, the conference call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. In the interest of time, and to allow as many participants as possible to ask questions, we kindly ask that each participant limit their questions to two. This shall apply to questions asked by phone and to written questions. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing via the relative field. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Marc Bürki, CEO. Please go ahead. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Thank you for joining us to our press conference for our first half results 2026. We are here at our headquarter in Gland, and I am with our CFO, Yvan Cardenas, and we both will go through the presentation. I hope you had a chance of downloading our PowerPoint presentation, otherwise, you can follow this here on the screen. We will go through the slides, and then at the end, we will have time for some questions. I will immediately start with the first slide. We had a good half year in terms of growth. The clients' assets are at the absolute record level. We are now close to CHF 100 billion of assets at CHF 96.3 billion. That is a plus of 19.8% compared to one year ago. Also in terms of net new money, it is almost one of the best half year we ever had. Purely organic growth of assets at CHF 5.1 billion. In total, we now have more than 1.2 accounts. The revenues we generated with our clients amounted to CHF 364.2 million of net revenues. That is also a plus of 1.7% compared with the figures one year ago, and a good pre-tax profit of 50.2%. On the next slide, the net new money. Sorry. Sorry. We had CHF 5.1 billion of net new monies in the first half, and if you see here on the left, that is almost one of our best results. I think it is the second best. It was only surpassed by H1 2025, where we had CHF 5.2 billion. The growth story continues. Very good results in terms of number of accounts. We added 64,000 new accounts in the first half of 2026 for Swissquote, and 24,000 new accounts for Yuh. You see here the final results at 1.2 million. You also see the difference between classic trading accounts with Swissquote, where the average assets is at CHF 115K, compared to Yuh, where logically the assets is much smaller. It is a neobank, so people have less assets on the account, but still CHF 9,500. If you compare this with our international peers, that is much higher than what you can find at other neobanks. So, a nice growth of 6% on number of clients from H2 2025 to H1 2026. In terms of net new monies, this is the famous CHF 5.1 billion I was mentioning before. We have our three hotspots where the main growth is coming from. Switzerland is still our most important place where we are. It is CHF 2.7 billion of net new monies in the first half. Europe with CHF 1.7 billion. For Europe, we wanted to show you where actually the growth is coming from. It is mainly Benelux, France, and Germany, up to 74%. This is where we are concentrating our biggest sales and marketing efforts, and we had quite a success in those countries. Middle East, Asia, this is mainly our subsidiaries in Dubai with half a billion, 587. That is also a very good number compared to previous half year. The rest of world is a little bit more modest, but it is more driven by some selective outflows organized by our company. We are a little bit more selective on our clients in terms of revenue potential than before, and from time to time, we do close a certain number of client relation. CHF 5.1 billion again, it is really a very good number and you see the global dispatch here. We have 54% coming from Switzerland and 46% coming from our international operations. Also in terms of distribution, 54% is B2C. That is still our main driver, and the rest is B2B or B2B2C, with 46%. So a very good distribution in terms of net new monies, and also something that makes us really positive over the longer term in terms of our growth engine is thriving, and this is also the reason why we do not change our forecast for 2028. We still think that we will make half a billion of profit in 2028, and with about CHF 900 million of revenue. This is purely based on asset growth forecast over the next year. With CHF 5.1 billion, we are in advance. Our average forecast that we use to forecast our future numbers is a growth of CHF 7 billion a year. You see here that with CHF 5.1, we are really ahead of our plans. Client assets here has now reached CHF 96.3 billion. Of course, it is the highest number ever. It has been a little bit helped with good markets. As usual, we have 15% of those CHF 96.3 billion that are deposited in cash. It is also the one element which is pushing us towards a Category three bank in Switzerland. We are not far away. The one element that we are measured on to become a Category three bank is the total balance sheet, and we are at CHF 16.9 billion, and the trigger is CHF 17 billion, so we are really very close to becoming a Category three bank. Here, the average assets has slowed down a little bit. This is not last due to lower volatility. We guess it's a very short-term impact, and it will recover in the coming half year. The distribution of revenue shows a little bit what happened in H1. We had good growth in fee and commission income. We had good growth on interest and stable revenue for e-Forex and trading. What really was missing in the first half was the revenue on crypto assets. There, in our budget, we estimated that in 2026, we will do CHF 85 million, compared with what happens over the last two years, but we only did CHF 14 million in the first half, and this really is due to very low volatility. If you follow a little bit what's happening on cryptocurrencies and the biggest one of it, the Bitcoin, it almost didn't change. It stayed around $63,000 to $65,000 for a Bitcoin, and very stable, very low volatility. This, of course, is not favorable to trading with such a low volatility. It's a little bit difficult to forecast the Bitcoin volatility over the next year. What we did for the second half 2026, we stayed a little bit conservative. We say, "Okay, let's just double everything," and more or less, and this is the new guidance for 2028. Now, of course, if volatility would come back on our cryptocurrency, then this would completely change the figure. But again, we rather stay conservative there, and we estimate that the second half will be like the first half. Next slide is the net revenue by customer profile. Here on the left side, you really see the domicile where we are making our money. It's still a Swiss business to 56%, but Europe is now picking up. It represents already 25% of our revenue. This is the place where we have a strong growth with our bank in Luxembourg, and it's also something where we do invest a lot. We invest in staff and people and systems in Luxembourg because we think we have a very good product that is appealing to European mass affluent market, and this is our strategy for the coming months and years, is to continue pushing our brand and our products, and we know and we can see that we are successful there. Number three is Middle East. That's mainly our operations in Dubai. That represents 12% of our total revenue. Now by customer type, this is on the right side. This also is a very stable figure. It's about two third is the B2C business. That's still our main business, dealing with direct clients, and 28%, that's the institutional business or the B2C business, and this is a figure that is very stable and hasn't changed a lot over the last years. A look on the revenue by asset class. On the left side, you see that it's a well-diversified picture. Now, the crypto assets here, as mentioned before, represents only 4% of our revenue. We estimated that it would represent about 10%. It's not a crypto story anymore, so it can only be good news if suddenly the crypto revenue or the crypto stock would gain in volatility, then you would certainly see this 4% growing again. But that's, again, difficult to forecast, and let's see what the crypto market will do in the second half. The revenues by type of business, and we distinguish between transaction-based and non-transaction-based business. This is 300, again, CHF 364.2 million revenue for the first half, and about half of it, a little bit more, is transaction-based, 52%. But the non-transaction-based, which is the interest income, custody fees, the securities lending business, this represents 48%. A good development here, and this is also something we want to keep, and even push a little bit the non-transaction-based revenue in the future. One of the initiatives we have that is working very well is the securities lending business that is now picking up. We have a very good solution, very attractive to our clients as we are sharing the revenue with our clients on a very good model. They get 50%, we get 50%, and it's a very secure model that we have organized over the last two years. The headcount as of June 30, 2026. Now we have in total 1,511 full-time equivalent. This is a distribution here on the left, you see it's mainly technology-driven. We are a tech bank, and we are proud to be a technology bank. That's our DNA. That's where we make our difference with other banks in Switzerland and in Europe, 35%. Then the sales part represents 18% and 15% in our foreign offices. This is the place where we have invested a lot in the past years, and mainly to get ready for this Category three bank status that we now have or soon have. This is now 15% of our headcount is in risk and compliance, but also quite normal for a bank of our size. Now, if you look at the variation in headcounts, compared to December 2025, you see that the biggest part, 34 of the new headcounts we hired, is in our growth initiatives. Mainly technology, there we hired 17 people. The growth of our foreign office, mainly in Europe, also pushed the headcount there at 15, and then a small growth on our Yuh staff with two additional people. That gives a subtotal of 1,482. Then the others, as mentioned before, this is growth due to our bigger status as being a bigger bank, and there we hired 29 people, and in total, we have 1,511. What's a little bit the forecast? We think it will slow down in the future. We have pre-financed the biggest part of our readiness to be a Category three bank. That should be okay now, and we also think that AI will bring a lot of additional efficiency. We do not forecast to have the same rates of headcount growth over the next year until 2028. That's a strategy of our company. We think that we now have a good size to be able to manage the mission and the growth pattern of our bank. About the profitability, if we start from the CHF 96.3 billion of clients' assets, on average, this generated 79 basis points of revenue, and this is the CHF 364.2 million of revenue we generated, and then 40 basis points on the CHF 96.3 billion is the pre-tax profit margin. You see here on the right the evolution of our profit. You see, first of all, that it did grow, and it's now stabilized a little bit here. It's CHF 153.6 million net profit compared to H2 2025. But there in H2 2025, remember, we had this special one-off that was linked to the acquisition of the 50% of Yuh from our joint venture partner, and that triggered this exceptional one-off in 2025. We should rather compare our numbers with H1 2025. Then you can see here that we are stable at a high level, which I think is a good performance given the current economic situation, the uncertainty, and also the special situation with cryptocurrency. For us, this is a good sign. We are able to generate high profit even in difficult market condition. Again, more important for us really is our growth engine. We want to grow the assets, we want to grow the net new money half year after half year. Of course, also we want to get to have new, good clients who are joining our system. And this has been achieved in the first half of 2026. Now about Yuh. This our neobank that is now owned 100% by the group, with 423,000 clients. We are the biggest neobank regulated in Switzerland. We still have a target of about half a million clients by the end of 2026. So we will accelerate the growth a little bit, and for that, we have signed a contract with Young Boys. It is very important to us because football is a good brand carrier and we think that Yuh goes very well with one of the most important and largest football club in Switzerland. And you see here a few pictures of our sponsorship agreement with Young Boys, and we are very excited, and we think this will be a great way of pushing the brand in Switzerland. We are not sure whether we have to because the growth is coming by itself. But I said in the second half of 2026, we want to accelerate the growth and go beyond the 6% growth we had here from H2 2025 to H2 2026. Very important for us also is that we are not only getting clients, but we have clients that are bringing their assets, and they are also investing in securities. And out of the CHF 4 billion, you can see here on the left that about half or 54% is in cash. That is a very different picture from the one I showed you before, where the cash part represented only 15% overall for Swissquote. Yuh, of course, it is a payment app, so the cash percentage is much higher, 54%, and it is mainly in Swiss francs, of course. We are based in Switzerland, and most of our clients are Swiss, so up to 85%, sorry, in Swiss francs. The rest, 12% in euro and 3% only in USD. But on the right side, investments in securities represent 46%. So usually people do not transfer their securities directly to Yuh. They transfer the cash, and then they invest in securities. And here you see the very nice evolution over time. At CHF 4 billion, it is a very good number, divided by the number of clients we have. This is this 9,500 average deposits per client, which if you compare this with N26, for example, you will see that this is much higher. So we have richer Yuh clients than the rest of Europe. And this is not surprising given the possibility and what you can do with our Yuh account. The headcount on the left, speaking about Yuh, is that we have 64 people. They are now mainly located in Zurich, where we have our headquarter of Yuh. You see that the split is between customer care, that is the biggest part, 60%, and then products and marketing is 32%. All the operations and bank accounts are outsourced to Swissquote Bank. Yuh is not a bank, it is a neobank, but the banking activity as such is performed by Swissquote. The things that we are very proud of is our AI agent. We call it Yuhlia, and it is really working. It is actively used by our clients. You see here on the right side, the number of conversations that are now taking place with Yuhlia, and it is a very good figure for us because, of course, whenever you do a conversation with Yuhlia, you may not call the call center. Because with Yuhlia, you can, of course, ask questions about the performance, about your portfolio, but you can also ask questions about some general questions, customer support type questions, and this, of course, is one call less in our call center each time our clients ask the question on Yuhlia. It is the version one. We will strongly develop our AI capacities there because, of course, we think this is the future, and we are just at the beginning of what AI can bring to such an ecosystem. We have a few slides on our balance sheet, and for that, I will give over to our CFO who is sitting next to me, Yvan. Yes. A few words about the balance sheet. The balance sheet has continued to grow in the first half. We can see that there was a 5% increase in the total balance sheet, so we could increase the cash deposits of customers in all currencies, which is positive, in particular as interest rate expectations have changed as well during the period of time. I will highlight two particular categories. Loans, that are mainly Lombard loans. We have a +12% increase in Lombard loans, so we see that the appetite of customers to invest this year, and a 12% growth in the six months, I think it is a positive development. We have continued to increase the investment securities portfolio, so we use part of the balance sheet to lock duration. We could find nice opportunities during H1 as interest rate expectations have been changing from time to time. I think we have been good in selecting the right timing and the right time of opportunities. As Marc mentioned, interest income is over initial guidance, and we will most likely have a higher interest income in 2026 compared to 2025, which is as well a positive development. A last comment on the liabilities. You see the structured product business that we have. So we as well issue our own structured product business, our own structured products, and you see that there is a 21% increase, so it is growing. We could see before that structured products represent something like 5% of net revenues. These are popular products in Switzerland, and, well, the volume efficiency is growing positively. Total assets, we are at CHF 16.9 billion at the end of June, so very close to the limit to be classified as a Category three bank. You can imagine that the 17 have been most likely crossed in July when you look at the growth of the balance sheet in H1. Most likely, as I mentioned in the [Non-English content] we should be classified in H2 as a Category three bank. If we move to the next slide, this is a usual slide that we propose on every conference. Again, volumes are higher than initially expected. Interest rates have developed better than initially expected. Swiss franc remained flat. We think that Swiss franc will remain flat in H2. Interest rates in USD have not decreased. That was what the initial guidance expected. They remain relatively stable, and we had a hike on euro interest rates. The positive aspect on the interest income is that interest income is likely to be higher in 2026 compared to 2025. We will enter 2027, most likely with higher rates than we entered 2026, which was something that we were not expecting. At the same time, the margin lending portfolio and the investment securities have continued to grow, so we could secure interest income for the future. Okay. Thank you, Yvan. Yes. On the equity side, I would say no major change. Capital ratio remains solid and relatively stable. You can see that the equity has not grown much. This is mainly explained by two items. The dividend payment that we paid during H1, in accordance with our dividend policy, and as well, you can see that we slightly increased the portfolio of treasury shares that we have. We have invested something like CHF 55 million-CHF 60 million in treasury shares in H1. We are now above 3% of the share capital, so overall the equity remained solid, stable, and no particular change in the capital ratio. Okay. Thank you. I am coming back to comment a little bit our investments in AI. As we mentioned many times, we think that AI will change the way we do banking. We also think that we are better prepared than other banks because we have developed a sovereign infrastructure at Swissquote. We have invested in technology, we have invested in systems, we have invested in people. If I should give a number, over the last 18 months, we have probably invested about CHF 30 million in our AI capacity with staff and CapEx. What are we doing with those investments? We have the four pillars that you can see here on this slide. The first one, which is kind of obvious, this is the client interaction automatization. I already mentioned Yuhlia before that, but we also have chatbot developments for Swissquote. When you want to go in contact with our agents, you have the possibility to address the issue you may have with our chatbot. It is an AI chatbot. It is very different from the previous chatbots you could see. It is working well. We have above 70% of the feedback to rate the conversation they have with the chatbot as good. Meaning that the issue is solved, and we are, of course, working hard to develop the phase two of our chatbot. This is due to be delivered in December 2026. Then internally, AI-assisted software development. It first shows that we have a potential of 25%-30% reduction in development cycle time. That is very important for us. We are pushing our engineers to use AI as a tool. It is not automatic. You first have to organize your network. You have to organize your software. You have to acquire license, and then you have to train your people to use the AI capacity. But we really think this is the future. We also think that we will reach full AI maturity in our development staff by 2027, 2028. By then, we think that AI has the capacity of doubling or tripling the productivity. This means that we will be able to bring new softwares and solution 2x or 3x faster to the market. It is not free of charge. It is really a dedicated investment in people, technology, infrastructure, and we think that we are very well prepared and organized for this AI change that will affect, as you know, many industries in many different sectors. Then one very important element for us is the, we call it payment intelligence. It is related to the monitoring of everything that is happening on our accounts. We now have 100% AI coverage. Each time you do a payment or you do a transaction, we have the capacity of monitoring these transactions using AI tools. We have developed many tools to do this, and there is one specific development, we call it Diego internally. We think that this AI agent will be a breakthrough software solution to secure the transactions. You are aware that we are in a market that is challenged by fraudulent activities, account takeovers, mule accounts, and banks like us do need to invest in technology to secure completely this part of their business. And they also now have tools that are very advanced and using frontier technologies to secure our banking activity. Then last but not least, for the product. These are the product-facing tools. If you are a client of Swissquote, you have certainly noticed a lot of changes. We have developed widgets that do analyze stocks with AI capacities. We have developed many different tools. We expect a lot of new things to come and tools that are very advanced for our clients. Now, revised guidance 2026. Again, we haven't been very creative to have a full guidance for 2026. We basically took what happened in H1, and we doubled it, and this is the results for the full year. Now, the latest guidance, CHF 730 million and CHF 365 pre-tax profit margin for 2026. A little bit on the conservative side, I have to say, especially given the lackluster trading activity in crypto. At least this is something we know that we can achieve in 2026, and so we'd rather stay there a little bit conservative. I've mentioned it before. We haven't changed anything on our guidance 2028. We still think that we can do half a billion pre-tax profit in 2028. We are reassured by our growth pattern that is unchanged in the first half of 2026. So we're quite confident that we can achieve revenues of CHF 900 million with a pre-tax of CHF 500 million in 2028. A look on the margin on assets here. Not much to comment here on these slides. You're certainly seen it. It was a classic in our presentation in 2026. Maybe, Yvan, you want to say something on that? No, yes. It's more to basically help to understand how we see the distribution of the net revenues and now with the revised guidance. Obviously, I think if we will compare Ladies and gentlemen, please hold the line. The connection with the speakers has been lost. The conference will continue shortly. Thank you. Okay. Sorry about that. We have been kicked out of our presentation for whatever reason. We do not know exactly where the disconnect happens, but I will restart from the revised guidance 2026. As I mentioned, I am not sure whether you could hear me, is that the revised guidance for 2026 is based on doubling the H1 2026 figures. We have not been very creative there. We just have taken our numbers, and we multiplied it by two. It is a little bit on the conservative side, especially if you think that, for example, cryptocurrency could revive a little bit in the second half. Let us stay conservative. We know that we can achieve CHF 730 million of revenue in 2026 and CHF 365 million of pretax. That would be about the figures we achieved in 2025, if we take away the one on the profit side we had in 2025. Here, Yvan maybe comments on marginal assets. Yes. Here you have a bit of details to how compute the net revenues distribution that we have now included in the revised guidance 2026. Here you have a comparison between the new guidance and the previous years. I think what I could comment is the changes between the initial guidance and the revised guidance. You see that on interest income side of things, the situation is better than initially expected. We were expecting a decline in interest income in 2026 compared to 2025. Now we expect the interest income to be higher in 2026. There is a positive development on interest income. On the crypto assets, as many times commented during the conference, the environment was weaker than expected. There is a change compared to the initial guidance. We think there could be a recovery somewhere in 2026. But for the time being, do not rely much on it, and any recovery will probably not be early enough to compensate the delay we have on the crypto asset income. One last comment is about client assets. Having in mind the target of CHF 7 billion per year that we have, it means that with the current level of client assets, we could be very close to CHF 100 billion in 2026, which is significantly ahead of what we expected. On client assets, the positive aspect is we might be significantly ahead of plan at the end of 2026. Okay. Thank you, Yvan. I will just comment a few slides in the appendix. The first, this is something we have a very precise look. We want to know if the clients we hire, the new clients joining the system, if they are equally as profitable as the old clients, and you can see this here. So among the 797,000 Swissquote accounts, we had a growth of 7% in the first half, and also 7% on the Yuh accounts. This 7% transform into revenues, and you see here that with 7%, we made 4% of revenues. Why not 7%? Well, this is a normal distribution. Of course, the clients we hired on the 30th of June didn't have time to contribute to the figures. So normally, you should expect these numbers divided by two, so 3.5. So you can see that in terms of revenue, it's a good number. So we have normally active new clients. So a very stable figure there. About the market share, we try to measure our market share in Switzerland. This is a stable figure. First of all, you can see that the addressable market is growing. So this is according to many studies we have seen. So the addressable market for us in CHF trillion is growing over time, and it has reached now CHF 2 trillion, and that's only for Switzerland, of course. The good news is that our market share is growing in a growing market. So we now reach 3% overall market share in Switzerland. So this also means that first of all, we still have a high growth potential here in our home market in Switzerland, and we are growing our market share, which really is basically good news. Now, a few last information about our development roadmap in H1 2026. First of all, we're very proud of having achieved a CASP MiCA license that was very important to us as we have an active crypto business, you know that now if you don't have a CASP MiCA license in Europe, you're not able to provide cryptocurrency trading as of 1st of July. Right in time, we have received our CASP MiCA license. We have also developed the trading in silver. That has been very attractive lately. Of course, as mentioned before, we have developed a lot of new enhanced security features for our bank accounts. Okay, now a last look, and then we go to the Q&A session. There will be many occasions to meet us. We are present at the UBS Best of Switzerland Conference, and then, also in September 2023, we have the Bank of America Annual Financial CEO Conference. We will be at the Credit Suisse Equity Conference. Then, in March 18, we'll have already the presentation of our full year results for 2026. So thank you for joining us here this morning. I guess we have now time for a few questions. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you've entered a queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode and eventually turn up the volume from the webcast while asking a question. Webcast viewers may submit their questions in writing via the relative field. In the interest of time, and to allow as many participants as possible to ask questions, we kindly ask that each participant limit their questions to two. This shall apply to questions asked by phone and to written questions. The first question comes from Haley Tam from UBS. Please go ahead. Good morning. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Haley Tam from UBS. My two questions then, please. Firstly, the 2028 targets, I think you've been very clear about those. That is very strong growth. If we apply 2026 guidance, it'd be 17%, I think, every year in pre-tax profit over the next two years. Could you confirm for us what your assumption is for crypto as a percentage of that 2028 target? My second question in terms of the net new money, very strong, CHF 5.1 billion. I think you've consistently beaten that CHF 7 billion target now for three years, I think. Was there anything unusual about the H1? Was there something in the Middle East or the Dubai flows that were elevated? I know there's usually an H1, H2 seasonality, but just trying to understand how we should think about this sort of level of flow going forwards beyond 2026. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I take the second questions and give the first one to Yvan. For the second questions, I think it's true that the Middle East helped a little bit, but not massively. Actually, you can see here the uptick in the net new money was at half a billion, CHF 587.3 million to be precise, and that's higher than the previous half years. This really is due to the situation in the Middle East where people or expats that were, they tried to put their money offshore, and this helped a little bit. But of course, compared to the CHF 587 million to the CHF 5.1 billion, this is only 10%. So really the growth is coming from our main jurisdictions where we are, which is Switzerland and Europe. Yes. To comment on 2028 and perhaps to add on what Marc just mentioned, Haley, I think that, well, we have, let's say, unfortunate crypto volatility in H1. On the other side, what is interesting is to connect this trend with the level of net new monies. We are near record levels. The record was last year, in H1 last year, when we had a strong momentum on crypto assets. I think what H1 has demonstrated is, while there is a diversification in the business model, while we could not more than compensate, we could compensate this decline in crypto assets. There is a low correlation between the capability of the group to acquire new customers and cryptos. I think this is something that was a bit challenged back on time, is how much Swissquote is relying on crypto momentum to acquire new customers, and now we see that we could most likely, three years in a row, over-achieve net new monies targets, whatever crypto environment. From my CFO perspective, this is something extremely positive as a learning lesson from H1 is, while even with a very weak environment of cryptos, we are very close to record levels of client acquisition. Now, to come back to your question on 2028. While we remain confident and we think that the assumptions are intact, mainly because of what I have just been mentioning. If I remember the assumption that we have published back in early 2025 for the guidance, supporting the guidance 2028, the first key assumption was net new monies, CHF 7 billion per year of net new monies. We will most likely over-deliver three years in a row. So we over-delivered in 2024, in 2025, and most likely in 2026. I think the worst would have been to have a slowdown in client acquisition. So this one, I think we are very comfortable, and most likely we will over-deliver on the level of client assets. We cannot predict market impact, but we could easily be at least CHF 10 billion above the initial level of client assets forecasted for 2028. This will help to compensate if we have a bit of pressure on the revenue margin on assets. As well on the mix of revenues. The mix of revenues was 60% transaction based, 40% non-transaction based. We see that we are now already at this level. It is even a better mix than we initially targeted for 2028. This is certainly supported by interest rates, and interest rates are basically staying much longer high than we initially expected. So we will provide probably more information with the full year results 2026, but our confidence comes to the fact that the critical assumptions for 2028, they are intact, and we most likely are over-delivery. For sure, in 2026, we have a short-term volatility. But this, we knew it. We never expected the journey to 2028 to be linear. We knew we could face more adverse scenarios. We could face short-term volatility. But what we have tried to do is to protect the most critical underlying assumptions. On the level of crypto assets for 2028, initially, we had in mind they could represent 10% of the CHF 950 million. This is something that we will update with the full year results. I think that while we could challenge the ability of Swissquote to reach this 10% with crypto assets, I think it's still feasible, easily feasible. On the other side, the share of interest income could probably higher than initially expected. I think one could compensate each other, and we see at the same time that we have new revenue streams growing, structured products, securities lending. We have initiatives that should as well help and should be significant in 2028 compared to 2026. That's very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from Christoph Blieffert from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. The first one is on net interest income. Your NII guidance basically implies a decline in the second half versus H1. If you could share the underlying assumptions with us, this would be helpful. The second question is on crypto. You have been highlighting a CHF 5 million loss on crypto inventories in the half year report. If you could help us better understanding your market making activities and the remaining value at risk, this would be helpful. Thank you. Yes, Christoph. Thanks for the very key questions that you're raising. The net interest income forecast is built by the CFO. Historically, I think the net interest in forecast is relatively conservative. I think the positive aspect is we expect interest income in 2026 to be higher than in 2025, and this was not what we initially expected. H1 was extremely positive. Balance sheet was growing. Interest rate expectations were volatile and changing, so we could capture good opportunities. In H2, interest rates could still continue to grow. There could be a hike in euros, in USD. We have not bet on these increases, so we have assumed interest rates to remain flat in H2, and we have been slightly more conservative in the growth of the balance sheet. At the same time, we know we have a few expirations in investment securities in H2, and we have been a bit conservative in our capability to renew these expirations at the existing rate. I think we have a good level of interest income for H2. This is much more than initially expected. Then, yes, for the time being, it's slightly below H1, but it's still an excellent number compared what we had in mind six months ago. The other question about the crypto assets, I think it's important to highlight it. We have reached more or less CHF 14 million of crypto assets income in H1 2026, but the level of brokerage was higher because we have this above CHF 5 million negative mark-to-market. This is sort of a one-off that is impacting the numbers. CHF 5 million is not significant when we look at overall net revenues, but it's significant when you do CHF 14 million of crypto asset income. Where does it come from? You know we have this increase crypto exchange, so in an exchange, you basically have sellers and buyers. You need liquidity. This liquidity is provided by market makers. What we do is we bridge our exchange with other exchanges. Could it be Coinbase? Could it be other venues, other exchanges that are known in the market? So to ensure we always have the best bid/ask spread across all these venues, we basically have our own internal market-making technology that is here to bridge the liquidity from our exchange to another exchange. There is no way to bridge liquidity between two order books without basically bearing a certain risk. The initial bid and ask that we have on an exchange is provided by the Swissquote crypto inventory. When you offer 52 crypto assets platform, even if you would buy 100K- 200K for each crypto asset, basically it creates an inventory of around CHF 5 million-CHF 10 million. This inventory is fair valued every time we close the books. Last year it was slightly positive. I think it was CHF 2 million positive, but we did 85, it is not significant. In H1, prices have decreased by 40%-50%, and I am afraid then we had to recognize this negative mark-to-market that we are not forecasting to happen anymore in H2. This is important when understanding the numbers we have forecasted for H2. The total value of this crypto inventory at the end of June is CHF 8.9 million. This will be technically the maximum additional downside that we could face should the situation recover. Let us say should prices recover, we would probably have more volume activity and as well recover part of this unrealized mark-to-market. I hope it is clear enough, Christoph. I know it is a bit technical. Very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Then I would add that, of course, for the inventory to go down to zero would mean that the entire crypto market would go down to zero, which is not our baseline assumption. Okay, next question. The next question comes from Daniel Regli from Zürcher Kantonalbank. Please go ahead. Hello, good morning, and thanks for having me. For questions, I have basically two follow-up questions on previous questions from other analysts. One is on net new money. Obviously, last year we also had a very strong H1, and then the second half year was, let's say, more, quote unquote, normal. Should we expect kind of a similar seasonality this year, or was there anything which would lead you to assume that H1 could continue to be much stronger than H2? Or, is basically the jury is out for H2 and it could well be that we see another CHF 5 billion of net new money in H2? My second question is following up on the kind of CHF 500 million guidance for 2028 and the assumptions behind. Obviously, I think you originally had assumed a 90 basis points margin on assets for this CHF 500 million. Can you just tell me, do you kind of still commit to this 90 basis points longer term, or has this kind of changed, or have your assumptions changed in this regard? Okay. Very well. Thank you, Daniel. Very good question. I take the first one, and Yvan will take the second one. About the net new monies, it's true that we have a little bit of seasonality, but it's not systematic. In H2 2023, was less good than H1 2023, and then the situation completely reversed in 2024, where the second half was the strongest. In H1, it went in the other direction. It's a little bit difficult to forecast. Sometimes it's a little bit market dependent, but I think, really the growth and especially the growth coming from Europe is pushing net new money. We are anticipating good net new monies for 2026. Now whether it will be just the double, it's difficult to say. Our average forecast is that we will be able to reach half of what we are expecting for the year, the CHF 7 billion. That will be at least CHF 3.5 billion. So CHF 3.5 billion and CHF 5.1 billion, that would be at CHF 8.6 billion. That would be also a super good number. That's probably the lowest number we can achieve. Potential good news there in the second half. On your question for 2020, Daniel, currently we stick to the 90 basis point. Why? Because we have, and we will roll out more and more products and services that are not necessarily related to the level of client assets, and Yuh will be helpful in this regard. So, 90 basis point remains the underlying assumption. I think when we look at mid-2026, I understand it could look challenging, but we have growing products, and we have more products and services that are not necessarily correlated with client assets. That being said, I think if somebody would be skeptical about the capabilities of Swissquote to reach 90 basis point, I think the level of client assets and the level of net new money we have is likely to compensate in such a scenario. Basically, net revenues will be a function of client assets and revenue margin. You can over-deliver in client assets and slightly under-deliver on revenue margin, you may reach exactly the same number of net revenues. Okay, got it. Thanks a lot. The next question comes from René Locher from ODDO BHF. Please go ahead. Yes. Good morning. I hope you can hear me well, and thank you. A few questions on, or two questions on costs or expenses. The first one, slide 22, Marc, I was wondering, have you already expensed the CHF 30 million investment in AI? That is my question, because I saw an interview, I guess it was in Bilan, where you mentioned that you are going to spend CHF 30 million in AI, but over the period 2026- 2028. Again, my question is, already expensed and now we get the benefits? That is my first question. The second one, also on expenses. I got some pushbacks actually on operating leverage. If we dig a little deeper into operating expense, I can see that depreciation is up quite heavily, and I assume that was depreciation of proprietary software. So, what was the reason here? Marketing expense was up 14%. Just wondering, yeah. Was it the contract with the BSC Young Boys? Thank you very much. Okay. I can take these ones. Do you want to take the second one? Yes. I can take the first one. I start, perhaps. On the marketing, first of all, I have to say that the level of client acquisition is very positive, and this is the most important for me as a CFO. Then on the marketing spend, we now consolidate Yuh. When you look at the numbers of Yuh, in the tables, in appendix, we show basically the incremental contribution of Yuh. You see that Yuh, in this level of maturity, is spending a significant amount of marketing. The incremental contribution of Yuh, when you compare it with the incremental revenues, you are close to 50%. Yuh is growing. I think they grew accounts by 20% last year, so they are growing fast, and this needs to be supported by marketing. You need to establish a brand in Switzerland. This probably explains a bit the fact that I understand you are surprised by the level of marketing expenses. On depreciation, what you have to keep in mind, and I think we have mentioned it in the [Non-English content] as apparently you read the French, René. We say that during the acquisition of Yuh, you have this accounting specificity of purchase price accounting. We have recognized intangible assets. We have recognized goodwill, but as well, intangible assets that we have to depreciate. Goodwill is not depreciated, but we have recognized certain number of assets that have to, and they will temporarily increase the depreciation cost of Swissquote. This is coming from the acquisition of Yuh. Have a look and very happy to guide you more into details later on after the call, if needed. Now I give over to Marc. Yes. Thank you, René. When we speak about AI expenses, there are three segments to consider. The first one is staff. It is many people. You hire the specialists that are able to deal with AI, mainly building the infrastructure, building the data infrastructure, and also building the gateways to the various AI and large language models. Then you have CapEx. You need to build your infrastructure. Even though a large part actually is happening in the cloud, but if you want really to build a sovereign data warehouse and AI system, you also need to buy hardware. We did acquire H200- systems and the chips mainly in 2025. Then the last figures, these are the consumptions. Whenever you go outside of your internal systems, you consume tokens, and these tokens are expensive. They are going up and up. By the way, this is the biggest threats for the industry in general. Not only banking, but the industry. You are getting addict to these systems that are sold at a discount price for now. But sooner or later, the price of tokens will go up, and these companies will want to make a business out of that. This is the huge difference with an internet infrastructure. Internet was a common good, whereas the AI infrastructure is mainly in hand of private companies, mainly U.S. company based. It is even more important that you can build your own internal AI infrastructure, because when you consume, when you have large language models that are built in your premises, then the tokens are almost free of charge. On one side, staff, CapEx and tokens. Staff, I think we hired now most of the people. To give you a few numbers, overall in 2025, we invested CHF 20 million in those three segments I mentioned before. In 2026, we will invest CHF 15 million, and then it will go down to CHF 10 million and CHF 10 million for 2027 and 2028. 2027 and 2028, the expenses will mainly be the cost of tokens. This is the part where we are consuming tokens of those frontier models, even though we try to throttle it. But when we say we are installing or using these autopilot or advanced systems to double or triple the efficiency of our development team, it comes with a cost, and the cost is the consumptions of token. The number you have read of overall CHF 60 million from 2026- 2028, this is correct. But it is probably more in a little bit of CapEx and lots of token consumptions rather than stuff. But in your assumptions, if you take CHF 15 million, that would be five more of what we have already expensed in 2026. And then as of 2027 and 2028, you can add CHF 10 million in our costs for AI. Mm-hmm. Okay. Very interesting. Thank you very much. Thank you, René. The next question comes from Miriam Killian from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Hey, guys. Thank you for taking my question. I hope you can hear me well. I have a question for you all. If you are approaching the CHF 17 billion threshold for FINMA category three banks, could you maybe quantify the potential incremental capital requirements and cost burden associated with that? That would be helpful. Yes. Thanks for the question, Miriam. I think it is very close to questions we received on the Q&A chat. We most likely are today above the CHF 17 billion. When you look at the growth of the balance sheet in H1, basically you can assume that in July we have most likely crossed this threshold. We will be notified soon, I think by FINMA, that we are now officially a category three bank. However, my understanding is that we have been treated as a category three bank for a certain time already, and we have increased headcount in control functions in the last month. We did so as well in H1. Obviously when you are a category three bank, you have more regulatory scrutiny. The regulator is looking more closely at you. I think this is already the case for a couple of months. It was the case in 2025, and I think it is the case in 2026. The main change is the minimum capital ratio that will increase. We already commented about it in the full year results, but a category three bank has at least a minimum capital ratio of 12%. As well, now there is increased regulatory supervision. Should you go to the website of FINMA, you can, for example, see that category three banks are basically subject to onsite visits of FINMA. Generally, they rely on external auditors, but as a category three bank, they will as well do their audit themselves. In 2026, for example, we had scheduled three onsite visits from FINMA, which is generally between two and three. I think today the numbers of 2025 and 2026, they already reflect the cost of doing business as a category three bank. This will be my CFO estimate. All right. Very helpful. Thank you. We now have a follow-up question from Haley Tam, UBS. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. Yes, just a follow-up, actually, on the capital allocation strategy. Can I just confirm there's no change to your internal 18%? minimum capital ratio target, and the idea that if the growth buffer reaches CHF 500 million, you could do additional distributions. I just wondered whether you could give us any color on when you think it might be reasonable you'd reach that sort of level. Thank you. Yes, Haley. I confirm there is no change. If not, we will make it explicit. In order to connect your question with the one that we have on the chat, you can see that we have purchased a few treasury shares in H1, as I mentioned, for CHF 50 million to CHF 60 million. This is mainly correlated to the employee stock option plan that we have. We basically provide employees with a long-term incentive plan, and this is hedged with the purchase of treasury shares. When they will be later exercised, then we basically get rid again of these treasury shares. We have this capital allocation strategy. I think obviously we'll grow the capital buffer in 2026 compared to 2025. We'll see where we stand at the end of 2026, but my guess is we'll probably be very close to the 500 somewhere in 2027. The idea was exactly to contemplate additional distributions. Could they be in the form of share buyback program? This is very likely, but this is a decision of the board of directors, and they will basically conclude on the discussion the day we are at 500. But no change on the capital allocation strategy at this stage. Thank you. There are no more questions from the phone right now. Back over to you, Marc, for any written questions from the webcast. Yes. I can group them for you, Marc, if you like. Mm-hmm. Yes. One question is a bit perhaps specific, and related to the marketing is how much does it cost the sponsorship with BSC Young Boys? Yes, I think I can disclose these figures. It depends a little bit on the performance of Young Boys. When they participate in UEFA Champions League or UEFA Conference League, there is a premium that we pay. What we have budgeted now for a full year starting as of June 1. So from July 1, 2026 to June 30, 2027, it is about CHF 900K. Because unfortunately for now, Young Boys are not qualified for any European competition. So that is bad news on one side because the brand will be less visible, but it is good news on the other side because we will not have to pay the premium. So in our budget, we will spend about CHF 1 million, so to say. I am taking them a bit as I see them. Well, this one is, can you describe the main difference between Yuh and Swissquote in terms of offering and price? What will be the incentives for Yuh client to move to Swissquote? Any cannibalization? Okay. Well, the main difference is the investment universe. It is a reduced investment universe on Yuh. Well, you have the most attractive shares, but you not have the 3 million of products and securities we have on Swissquote, and this is by design. So the investment part in Yuh is reduced mainly to securities, mainly to shares, and it is some kind of an entry solution if you want to invest in part of your wealth in the financial markets. So Yuh is still, to the biggest part, payment applications, is linked to a debit card, and of course the investments in securities is less expensive than it is on Swissquote, where you have the full set of products and services and the full set of investment possibilities. So there is also the reason why we keep both brands apart. We think it also protects us a little bit against the fights on the costs for transaction fees. This is our response to the deep discount brokers that you can find in Europe. So there we actually compete on the lower side with Yuh, and so that also helps us protect our margins on Swissquote. Then we have another one that is very close perhaps to this one. Can you share your view on how market dynamics are changing, particularly with respect to competition? With Saxo Bank stepping up its marketing efforts in Switzerland and neobanks such as Revolut expanding their footprint, are you experiencing any pricing pressure on your core brokerage or transaction fees? Yes. It's a good follow-up question, and we think that as well as Saxo, as Revolut, they are actually competing more with our neobank application. None of those competitors in Switzerland who have the sophisticated full set of trading and investment services we have on Swissquote. So competition has always been strong in attractive markets, and Switzerland is an attractive market. What is a little bit bizarre is that Revolut is able to have such a position in Switzerland without having the proper license. This is maybe something that will be solved in the future, but that's a little bit bizarre because on the other side, if we would enter European markets without having a proper license, that's of course something that is not acceptable and is not accepted in other jurisdictions. This is a little bit something particular here in Switzerland. We are aware of competition, but we don't think that the current competitive landscape will change anything in our growth patterns in the future. Another one, Marc. You work with, and I think it's a good one in relation to AI initiatives, you work with very sensitive data in banking. Yes. Can you tell us a little bit about your AI setup? Do you run a model on-prem? Looks like the person is quite aware of the Yes of the aspects that are key in AI, and how do you make sure the data is handled diligently? Yes. That's exactly what I mentioned before. This is why it's so important to have a sovereign system and that you understand what you are actually doing. Temptation, actually, to send everything in the cloud is very high. Of course, our key data are not shared with the outside world. It's completely hermetically distracted from our cloud application. This is why also we invested heavily in the past to build up this infrastructure, so to make sure that no sensitive data are going outside. This is something that you have to build up by design in the beginning of your AI infrastructure, because otherwise, because the temptation to do it differently is of course very strong. Everyone can have large language models and then start to share clients' data or. Of course, in our internal system, this is very strongly controlled, and we have put the filters and the structuring in place so that no sensitive data is leaving the bank. Okay. There is still a significant number of questions. A quick one about instant payments in Switzerland. Any impact on the technology of the bank? This was already implemented in Europe, but any thoughts about on instant payments in Switzerland? Yes. Instant payment is a new technology, and every bank in Switzerland needs to be ready on the inbound side. This is what we have. We are accepting instant payments inbound, but we are a little bit reluctant to do it on the other side, because you need to create some friction, some latencies if you want to control the payment flow. It is good for the clients, but it is also a challenge for the banks, especially in a situation when you have lots of cyber fraud and cybercrime. There are even some jurisdictions, Singapore, for example, where they have now mandatory friction in their payment system, and they really go away from instant payments just to better secure the transactions. As we have seen international peers posting fairly good growth numbers, can you talk a bit about the competitive dynamics and your assessment of the market share development in H1 2026? I do not know if you have something to add compared to what has already been said, Marc. No. The only thing we can say is that, of course, the market is very dynamic. The market in Europe is super competitive, so our intention is not to compete on the deep discount brokerage side. I do not think there is many space left in Germany, for example, if you want to compete against the Flatex, the Gettex, or against Robinhood, or against the Trade Republic. These are deep discount brokers, and their business model is based on very cheap execution. We think that our system is more sophisticated, is to offer a very broad range of products and investments. And then also to be fair, when you share revenues, for example, if you do securities lending, because many of those deep discount brokers, they have embedded securities lendings in their regulation and their bylaws, and usually they do not share the revenue they made with the clients. For us, we have a different approach. We are targeting, in Europe, not the retail segment, but more the mass affluent segment business. There we have a very transparent and fair revenue sharing model, in securities lending, for example. I'll group a few questions, Marc. Can you share your thoughts on competition from new products such as perpetual futures prediction markets? Are prediction markets an area you intend to add into your offering? Okay. We're a little bit reluctant on offering prediction market. We think that there is a current loophole in those markets in Europe, but we don't think that this loophole will stay open very long. It's a little bit like a payment for order flow. There was also some kind of a loophole, but then it has been closed by the regulator. I think prediction markets will go in the same direction. We do not intend to invest strongly in that product. What was the other product? Perpetual futures. Oh, yes. This is already part of our offering. We do have this not directly with Swissquote internal products, but with products from our partner. One about AI. Given the targeted AI productivity increase of two to three times in the future, does this have any implication on workforce going forward? I think the implication is that the growth in headcounts will be much reduced with what we have seen in the past. We do not think there are any layoffs. That is not the case. We think that the headcounts will still grow, but at a slower pace. Of course, if you have 2x, 3x the productivity you had before, you could say, okay, you can reduce your headcount. Do not forget, the competition will also have productivity gains, and simply the entire system will run faster. I will give you an example. If you are using AI to reply to an email at a personal level, just to illustrate with a very simple example. You think that you are gaining productivity because you can reply faster to incoming emails and in different language. Do not forget that on the other side, the one person you sent the email to is also using AI. So he may reply to your AI-generated email with another AI-generated email much faster. It is simply the world will run faster in the future using AI, and the gain in productivity will be normal. Now, where the danger come from is when you are not part of the gain in productivity, because then you will be a lagger, and you have the risk of being overrun by competition. Then I think we have five remaining. We will try to go fast. Over the last periods, B2B and B2B2C contribute to halfway to half of the net new money flows, while accounting only for around 30% of revenues. Or should we think about the revenue yield and economics of these assets compared to the traditional B2C business? I can take it, yes. I think the B2B2C business model is interesting because it is a diversification model. We target self-directed customers. With the help of B2B2C customers, we can target customers that may need more support, advisory, wealth management services, et cetera. So when we partner with a B2B2C, we obviously share a bit the margin that we have. But we can as well attract customers that will not necessarily fit what Swissquote is today. Swissquote is a digital multi-asset class platform for self-directed customers. But with the B2B2C, they provide the relationship, we provide the technology. We have to share the margin. This is why the contribution to revenues is slightly lower. We have to share this margin, but we attract assets that are as well more interesting, and as well that provide probably a higher revenue margin because now the revenue is much more accurate. Two that are a bit more technical. What revenues you make on securities lending? While we do not provide the detail, what I can tell you, it is growing interestingly. In H1 2026, we did the same amount of revenues that we did in the entire 2025, and what we target for 2026 is between CHF 10 million to CHF 15 million revenues in securities lending. Another technical one, cryptos was 4% of net revenues in H1. How much of pre-tax profit? What I can say is, while the pre-tax margin of the crypto business is relatively high, it is not 100%, but it is certainly above 50%. So the impact of these revenues is quite significant, generally speaking, on the pre-tax profit. There is one about. Perhaps you can take it, Marc. Could you please talk a bit about foreign currency designated trading in H1? What proportion of trading is in currently cross-border securities, and how does this compare with history? How do you expect it to develop over time, and how should we think about the impact to foreign exchange income? Okay. That is probably a one that we should answer through an email. Yeah. We have to number crunch it a little bit. Who was the question from? John Ferguson from Jefferies. I can take it directly in a separate channel. Same for the last one of Manuel Peter from Helvetische Bank, that is about the technicalities of the consolidation of Yuh. I invite these two people to contact me directly, and I am very happy to guide them a bit more into details separate to this conference call. Okay. Very good. These were then the last questions we have received on the system. Again, thank you so much for joining us this morning for this press conference. I wish you a wonderful day, and of course, if you have additional questions, please do not hesitate to join us or to call us directly, either through email or through telephone. With that, I wish you a great day, and see you soon. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.