Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome and thank you for joining the Aareal Bank conference call. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press Star followed by one on your touchtone telephone. Please press the Star key followed by zero for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jürgen Junginger, Head of IR. Please go ahead. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining our conference today. Last year we expressed our sympathy for those in Ukraine, and we do so again. Ukraine remains in all our thoughts. Turning to today's agenda, we will cover our results of 2022 and the outlook for 2023. I'm joined by our CEO, Jochen Klösges, and our CFO, Marc Hess, who will take you through the presentation, which will be followed by a Q&A session. We are also joined by Thomas Müller, our Head of Finance Controlling. Now I'm pleased to hand over to Jochen. Jochen, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Jürgen. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our analyst conference this year. Let me start by saying that we are excited to be celebrating our 100th anniversary this year. This actually makes Aareal Bank quite young when compared with some other banks, and is one reason that we are able to combine the energy of youth with the experience of age. Our bank was founded in Berlin on July 20, 1923 as Deutsche Wohnstätten-Bank AG. Of course, the bank has changed and developed over the years. Today it is both a mid-sized institution and a global player, combining a down-to-earth attitude with global expertise. There's one thing that hasn't changed. 100 years after it was first founded, Aareal Bank remains a reliable partner for its property and housing industry clients. That's the bank's hallmark, a clear client focus combined with a high degree of resilience and adaptability. Aareal Bank demonstrated these characteristics in the course of the last year, a year when once again we experienced a very challenging environment. Almost exactly a year ago, I welcomed you to our analyst conference just hours after Russia attacked Ukraine. We were all in shock back then, and even today we find ourselves affected by the deep suffering this war has brought to the Ukrainian people. We have all had to learn that nothing is certain anymore. Nothing can be taken for granted. Neither peace nor freedom is guaranteed. The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine marked a political and economic turning point. 2022 brought many unexpected twists and turns, including at an economic level. We had to deal with high energy prices, supply chain bottlenecks, increased interest rates, and above all, a rapid rise in inflation. In an effort to curb inflation, the European Central Bank shifted its interest rate policy in mid-2022. Finally, some said. Much too late, said others. Either way, I think that we have returned to a more normalized interest rate environment. Moreover, from an economic point of view, it is a good thing that money has a price again. All in all, last year was a very volatile and challenging environment for every company, including banks. That's why I am particularly happy to say that Aareal Bank Group has mastered this challenge very well. We recorded strong results for 2022 and achieved all of our key objectives. Consolidated operating profit rose by 54% to reach EUR 239 million. The fourth quarter was an important contributor to this result, with an operating profit of EUR 82 million. For the full year, operating profit returned to pre-COVID levels and reached the upper half of our EUR 210 million to EUR 250 million target range. We achieved this despite pressure from our remaining exposure in Russia and the transaction costs arising from the ongoing bid for the company by financial investors. Why then was our performance so good? It was because we achieved better results in net interest income and net commission income in line with our growth strategy and because our cost management was efficient. Each of our segments, too, delivered the operating performance we had promised. Our three business segments continued along their growth path. We have grown with low marginal costs. We are highly efficient and therefore profitable, but we are always conscious and conservative in our assessment of risks. This is also evident in our portfolio quality, which continued to improve steadily in the course of the year. Key risk indicators are better than they were before the pandemic. Let me give you just one example. The average loan-to-value ratio in our portfolio is 55%, which is 2 percentage points down from 2019. At the same time, we managed to significantly reduce our non-performing loan exposure. The share of NPLs i n the overall portfolio declined from 5.3% as of the year-end 2021 to 3.6% as of the end of December last year. This is despite Russia. We want to go further. We want to push this ratio sustainably below 3%, and we will talk more on this later. Another important strategic thrust is broadening our funding mix by tapping new funding sources and investor groups. We made very good progress on this in the past financial year and further strengthened our liquidity position. Last but not least, Aareal Bank continues to be very well capitalized. Our CET1 ratio increased further compared to the year-end 2021 and stood at a very good 19.3% as at the end of 2022. This positions us well for future growth and investments, while also providing support for any unexpected events or economic downturns. In short, during 2022, we laid a very good foundation for achieving further ambitious targets. As regards the takeover by Financial Investors, I can say this much. You know that the usual regulatory approvals are pending. The bidder continues to expect these approvals to be granted in spring 2023. I'm afraid that at present, I don't have any further news on this to share with you. I would now like to hand over to Marc Hess, who will talk about the financial KPIs for the past financial year in more detail. Please, Marc. Thank you, Jochen, and very good morning from my side as well. You just said it, last year was indeed very challenging for us, but also very successful. We have consistently implemented our strategy and it is yielding tangible results as you can see here on this page. Our strong operating performance continues at EUR 239 million operating profit, reached the upper end of our target range. What are the reasons? On the one hand, income continued to grow at really good pace. On the other hand, the cost increase enabling this growth was marginal, just as we promised. Net interest income rose by 18% to reach EUR 702 million. This is the strongest increase in 8 years, and it is rooted in successful portfolio growth, rising interest rates, and improved funding mix. In times of heightened volatility, it is important to keep funding costs under control. This is where a broadly diversified investor base is a real advantage. Let me say I'm happy that we have positioned ourselves well in this respect. Net commission income rose almost as much in percentage terms as net interest income by 13% to EUR 277 million. This is important because our income sources need to be diversified. Next point is important for any CFO, costs continue to be fully under control. The 8% increase on the previous year largely reflects investment in growth in Aareon and also includes the expenses of EUR 11 million relating to the takeover offer by Financial Investors. Excluding these expenses, costs in the bank have been stable, or we could even say slightly down despite of our growth. In the past year, the loan loss provisions of EUR 192 million were heavily impacted by our remaining exposure in Russia, for which we have recognized a total of EUR 134 million. On the following slides, I would like to explain our key financial indicators in more detail. Let's first have a look at our income. Net interest income, as I just said, continues to be the main driver. It grew by EUR 105 million to or 18% in the past year. This performance was facilitated by ongoing portfolio growth with strong new business, generated a good gross margin, that exceeded our expectations even. We also further broadened our funding mix, as I just explained, which enabled us to keep funding costs at a reasonable level despite t he increased spreads at the market. Another positive impact factor was a remarkable increase in the net interest contribution from our deposits during the second half of the year, reflecting the rising interest rate environment that we have seen. In this context, we are also pleased to see that deposit volume continued to grow. The predictions we made in the low interest rate environment proved to be well-founded. We said that the turnaround in interest rates would create tangible earnings potential for our deposit-taking business above and beyond its importance for funding. It is not only net interest income that continues to gain traction. Fee income, as you can see here, also did, increasing by EUR 32 million, that is 13% in 2022. The majority of this growth was thanks to growing share of recurring revenues, contributed by our software subsidiary, Aareon. The same applies to our BDS segment, where it is our strategic goal to raise fee income too. This strategy is working. License revenues for our payment software increased. Coming to costs, as I just said, they are under control. The increase in RM was mainly due to the investments in growth and M&A. In the bank, there was around EUR 11 million transaction costs related to the takeover offer. Excluding this, admin expenses, as I just said, were even slightly down by EUR 1 million. In short, we have delivered on our promise and once again shown that we can grow at low marginal costs. In more concrete terms, we can considerably expand our portfolio, leveraging the existing platform without needing significantly more resources to do so. This was one of our core beliefs when we presented our revised strategy two years ago, and it has worked out. This is reflected in our cost-income ratio, which improved by a strong 10 percentage points to 40% within the bank just in 2022. Our cost-income ratio of 40% not only means that we have already reached our 44% midterm target early, but also that we have joined the ranks of top European banks in this respect. As mentioned earlier, the loan loss provisions of EUR 192 million were heavily impacted by our remaining loan exposure in Russia. The loan relates to an office complex in Moscow. The provisions for Russia accounted for two-thirds. That is EUR 134 million of the total risk provisions in 2022. Looking at the situation from a different perspective, this also means that there were under-average provisions needed for the remaining portfolio. This not only reflects the market's recovery following the pandemic, but also our conservative risk policy during the coronavirus crisis. With this, I'd like to hand back to Jochen, who will take a closer look at the performance of each of our segments. Thank you, Marc. Moving to slide number 9, I'd like to start with the structured property financing segment. As already pointed out, we are on a growth path, but one which is well-controlled and risk-aware. This means that we are expanding our lending volume, but not at any cost. We continue to adhere to our high risk standards. In the past year, we generated almost EUR 9 billion in new business. This is around half a billion EUR more than in the previous year. We were able to seize numerous attractive opportunities in our target markets in 2022. Let's have a look at margins to see just how attractive they were. Gross margins were at 240 basis points on average. This is 35 basis points above our targeted margin. There aren't many players who are known to be a reliable partner in structuring commercial property financings across multiple jurisdictions and currencies. Our clients know and appreciate that. It is one reason why we can realize higher margins. At the same time, our lending policy remains risk-sensitive. Our average new business loan-to-value ratio was a very good and conservative 55%. Our new business is broadly diversified across regions and sectors. Hotels accounted for the largest share of new business, followed by office and retail properties. From a regional perspective, our new business focus was on Western Europe and North America. We are seeing that compliance with sustainability criteria is increasingly becoming a driver of the value of the property besides the quality and location of the properties. This trend is reflected in our own ESG activities as well. In the past year, we issued green financings worth around EUR 1 billion. Add to this around EUR 800 million in existing financings which became qualified as green. This brings us now to BDS, where net commission income rose to EUR 31 million, reflecting growing revenues from banking and software products. Another positive is that average deposits from our housing industry clients grew consistently to more than EUR 13 billion as at the end of last year. That is far above our target of EUR 12 billion and also reflects a larger housing industry client base. Growth in deposits also supports our growth in the lending business, as these deposits are an additional source of funding for us. We are also benefiting from rising interest rates, as you can see from the chart on net interest income. Net interest income rose to EUR 92 million for the year and amounted to EUR 43 million in the fourth quarter. This business line does makes a substantial contribution to our net interest income and to our operating profit. One more encouraging development was that since mid-2022, we no longer had to charge negative interest to our clients. Now, let's talk about Aareon. The transformation into a leading Software-as-a-Service company is progressing well. Compared with the previous year, SaaS revenues have increased by 25%. This increase, in turn, drove the run rate of recurring revenues compared to total sales revenues up by 3 percentage points to 74%. As you may remember, developing Aareon into a Rule of 40 company by 2025 is one of our most important strategic goals. We are very close to that goal, and this is something we are really proud of. Our adjusted EBITDA margin was 24% at Aareon, and revenues increased by 15%. What we need to do now is make good use of this positive momentum to lift Aareon to the next level. We want to keep evolving Aareon as the European properties industry's leading software company. This will cost money, and we are prepared to make the necessary investments. Aareon's new management board with Harry Thomsen at the helm have already triggered numerous changes. Product development is now more heavily geared towards our clients' needs. Aareon's product portfolio has been systematically reviewed to identify potential for consolidation and innovation. The review has shown that Aareon completed many successful acquisitions in the past years. These acquisitions have helped push the company forward and strengthen its position as number one in the European market. In times of economic uncertainty and inflation, however, software companies too must keep their costs under control and strengthen their profitability. This trend is more than evident in the market right now. Aareon is no exception, and that is why we will invest in efficiency initiatives. Specifically, this is what we have in mind. Firstly, we will consolidate our product portfolio, complementing it by adding an open platform. To this end, we will build a partner ecosystem over the next few months that will help our clients reach their goals and support them along their own digital transformation. Secondly, to further boost Aareon's sustainable profitability, we'll invest in its efficiency and power to innovate. This requires, on the one hand, setting up an early retirement program. We need to attract young talent and increase our attractiveness as an employer. This will help us to achieve our ambitious targets. We will consolidate space at Aareon and create state-of-the-art attractive working conditions reflecting the new working models brought about by the pandemic. We will spend around EUR 35 million on these measures during the current financial year. Let us now turn to look at our loan portfolio and at asset quality in more depth. As you can see, our credit portfolio continued to grow during the past year as planned and amounted to just under EUR 31 billion as at the end of last year. In fact, we surpassed this threshold of 31 billion during the third quarter. FX-driven changes caused a reduction in the fourth quarter. We are still fully on track here. The green property financing part of the total loan portfolio, that means properties qualifying as green property according to Aareon's demanding Green Finance Framework, is growing and has reached EUR 6.5 billion or 21% of our portfolio, up from 17% as at year-end 2021. As you can see from this slide, our portfolio risk indicators again improved and are largely outperforming pre-pandemic levels. On average, the loan-to-value ratio improved further to a very conservative 55%, while yield on debt rose to 8.5%. This underscores the stability of the portfolio. It is also notable that loan-to-value ratios for the hotel, logistics, office, and retail property asset classes have consistently improved compared to the end of 2019. The same applies to yield-on-debt with the exception of the office sector. Let us look at the office market now in more detail. Changes are underway in the office sector. Post-COVID new work norms are gradually being established, and the trend towards greener offices is gaining importance. The market background is also affected by uncertainties around the pace and amount of inflation rate-related interest rate increases. The move to remote working is leading to a structural reduction in the demand for office space. On average, vacant space takes longer to lease and may be at lower rents than previously. Demand is gravitating towards smart buildings. These buildings are not only good for the environment but also provide employees with a better office experience. In other words, properties are being refurbished, for example, to improve their energy efficiency or change usage, and it is prime locations again with the highest connectivity that will demand a premium. That means the existing disparity between class A and class B assets will get larger. Aareon is well-positioned in this changing market. We finance high-quality properties in good locations. We have strong relationships with our clients who are highly committed with strong tenant structures. 49% of the office portfolio is in the U.S., and 22% is in France. U.S. properties are in major cities, and the French properties are almost all in Paris. In the U.S., refurbishments and temporary vacancies as the transition to New York norms takes place, will likely lead to longer reletting periods. In France, around one-third of the office portfolio is undertaking green refurbishments. While we do not finance property developments, financing the transformation towards more green buildings is a key element of our strategy. Rents may decline temporarily during refurbishments, and the yield-on-debt for the office sector showed a moderate decline in 2022 to 6.9% compared to 7.6% in 2021. However, the portfolio has a conservative LTV of 57%, which provides a good buffer. That brings us now to the second area where we will invest in 2023, and that is the swift reduction of the non-performing loans. You can see that the volume of non-performing loans was reduced significantly during the past financial year. It stood around EUR 1.1 billion as at the end of last year, down by more than 30% compared to the previous year. Excluding the one remaining Russian exposure in Moscow, the volume could have been reduced by as much as nearly 40% to around EUR 900 million. Our NPL ratio, which measures the ratio of non-performing loans to the total property lending volume, decreased from 5.2% to 3.6% over the same period. Many other banks use the NPE ratio as a reference, which measures the ratio of non-performing loans to a broader asset base. This metric is 2.8% at Aareal Bank now. The positive development in 2022 was mainly due to the retail and hotel segments, which benefited particularly from recovery following the pandemic. We have set ourselves the strategic goal of sustainably reducing our NPL ratio to below 3%. This swift NPL reduction will require investments, it will also strengthen our resilience. Our strong profitability allows us to do this, we see good opportunities to execute such swift action at present. We have budgeted around EUR 60 million for this as a one-off charge in 2023. Marc will now outline our funding activities and our capital position with the following charts. Over to you, Marc. Thank you, Jochen. Just briefly on the balance sheet, the one thing I would highlight is that we paid back 80% of the previously taken up TLTRO volume, which has now been reduced to just EUR 1 billion. NSFR and LCR, as you can see it here on the chart, continue to be at very comfortable levels. With regards to funding, one of our strategic goals has been the further diversification of our funding mix, and we made very good progress, I think we can say so, in 2022. The pie chart on the left of page 20 demonstrates the broad diversification we have already achieved. We launched a number of initiatives which developed very well, namely the partnership with Raisin, WeltSparen, Deutsche Bank ZinsMarkt, and norisbank, making our office available to retail investors. During last year's annual conference, we said that we wanted to raise more than EUR 400 million by year-end. In the end, we raised more than EUR 600 million. It is particularly pleasing to see that this dynamic development has continued into the current financial year and that we crossed the EUR 1 billion threshold now in February. We also launched our Euro Commercial Paper Programme at the end of 2021, and it has exceeded our expectations. The program comprises conventional and green formats dominated in our three main currencies, euro, sterling, and US dollar, and the volume issued was EUR 1.1 billion at year-end, 50% of that green. In 2022, we obtained a good A3 issuer rating from Moody's, and this additional rating, it proved to be an important success factor for our funding strategy as it helps us attract new investors. The bank placed a total of EUR 5.8 billion in funding instrument on the capital markets, including mortgage Pfandbriefe totaling EUR 3.2 billion. A total of EUR 1.5 billion in senior unsecured bonds was issued, including two green senior preferred issuance with a volume of EUR 500 million each. The Euro Commercial Paper Programme comes on top of these figures. We have seen a very good start to our funding activity in 2023. We have issued two Pfandbriefe totaling EUR 1.5 billion. We will continue to work on increasing our deposit volumes and on optimizing our funding mix. After all, given the targeted portfolio growth, diversification means that we will need to issue less senior benchmark funding, for example, which will reduce our dependency upon the capital markets to some extent. Let's talk about capitalization. As Jochen already said, our bank is well-capitalized. Our capital ratios are at a very solid level. Despite the expansion of the lending business, we were able to increase the CET1 Basel IV phase-in ratio by 1.1 percentage points to 19.3%. This means we are well-positioned to realize our strategic plans while also being well prepared for any potential economic downturn. Going forward, we intend to retain our profits for 2023. This will further strengthen our capital ratios. Despite of the increased credit volume, risk-weighted assets even decreased thanks to the market improvement in portfolio quality that we discussed earlier. Now let me turn back to Jochen for an update on ESG. Thanks, Marc. Let me go back to the important topic of ESG for a minute. We have built a good foundation for our company over recent years. Firstly, we have established a clear set of rules, our Green Finance Framework, which sets out processes and rules for the classification and financing of green loans. Secondly, having scrutinized our portfolio, we have strictly distinguished between what is green and what is not. Thirdly, we have progressively expanded our green financing business through both new green loans and the qualification of existing financings. Fourthly, we have established our ability to issue green bonds and thus the ability to refinance green properties. This enables us to enter into a second phase. We will continue to support our clients in their transition to a greener future. We want to increase loans made in accordance with our Green Finance Framework to around EUR 5 billion by 2026, which would be more than double the level as at the end of 2022. In terms of software, we will increasingly offer solutions that help our clients to raise their own environmental standards, and this applies both to the banking and digital solutions segment and to Aareon. This support is likely to become more visible in our revenues by 2026. Marc, will you now take you through our 2023 outlook. Over to you again, Marc. Yeah, happy to do so. As we just explained, Aareal Bank Group is benefiting from strong earnings momentum and financial strengths. Our strategy of growing at low marginal costs is increasingly paying off. At last year's annual conference, we announced our target for 2024, an operating profit of up to EUR 350 million. Given our strong operating performance, we are now confident that we will be able to achieve this result on an operating level in the current financial year 2023, thus one year earlier than planned. This has given us extra scope for additional measures that we will take this year, making us even stronger for the future. We have earmarked around EUR 60 million for an additional risk provisioning budget as a one-off investment to achieve a swift NPL reduction, with a goal to sustainably reduce our NPL ratio below 3%, as Jochen just outlined earlier. Around EUR 35 million will be allocated, as already discussed, to increase efficiency at our software subsidiary, Aareon. Taking these just under EUR 100 million in one-off investments into account, we are targeting an operating profit in a range between EUR 240 million-EUR 280 million. That's our goal for 2023 financial year. I have to stress that making reliable forecasts remains difficult in the current geopolitical conditions, obviously. On the next slide, we have detailed the targets. The strong operating performance we have just outlined allows us to expect a further increase in revenues. If the interest rate environment remains at current levels, we expect to see net interest income between EUR 730 million and EUR 770 million. Net commission income is expected to be between EUR 315 million and EUR 335 million. Risk provisions are expected to be in a range between EUR 170 million and EUR 210 million, including the additional budget for a swift NPL reduction of around EUR 60 million. Admin expenses are expected to be in a range between EUR 590 million and EUR 630 million, including investments into Aareon of around EUR 35 million, as just outlined. Excluding these two one-off effects of just under EUR 100 million, adjusted operating profit is expected to be around EUR 350 million, a level that was originally targeted for 2024, as just highlighted. We want our credit portfolio to continue to grow in the current year and expect a range of between EUR 32 billion and EUR 33 billion, not including potential exchange rate effects. To achieve this portfolio growth, we are targeting new business of between EUR 9 billion-EUR 10 billion. In the BDS segment, we want to keep deposits at the level of EUR 13 billion, even though competition is tougher in a positive interest rate environment. The segment's net commission income is expected to continue to grow at an average annual rate of 30%. For Aareon, too, we expect revenues and results to continue to increase. We expect sales revenues between EUR 325 million and EUR 345 million, and adjusted EBITDA of between EUR 90 million and EUR 100 million. Now back to you, Jochen. Thank you, Marc. Let me sum up. Firstly, you see the figures are evidence that our earnings momentum is strong. We have delivered on our promises in the past financial year and have laid a very solid foundation for this year. Secondly, our strategy is working. Our operating activities are successful, our market positioning across the three business lines is excellent, our funding base is sound, and our capitalization is strong. Still, we continue to be risk aware. Thirdly, we are setting the course for the coming years from a position of strength. We continue to invest into our future resilience and flexibility because we can. It's one of the year Aareal Bank Group is in an excellent position to shape a successful future for itself. Thank you for your attention. Marc and I will be very happy to answer your questions right now. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selections. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question is from the line of Timo Dums with DZ Bank. Your question please. Yes. Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions and also congratulations to the good set of results despite the several headwinds that you had to take in 2022. I would like to focus a bit on the outlook. Your outlook actually depicts quite a healthy picture and, I mean, as you already pointed out, you expect also at least a small pickup in your new lending volume. Could you maybe reconcile that with the risk of a potential recession in some core markets that you could potentially face? Also could you also discuss a little bit your margin expectations? I mean, 2022 has been very solid and you even achieved another improvement in Q4 despite being less selective. You expanded a little bit your new business quarter-on-quarter. If you could discuss your moving parts that would be very helpful. Thirdly, the commissions income, it's also expected to increase and to increase quite substantially. If you could share with us the moving parts there, that would be helpful. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for your questions and thanks for the very positive feedback. Yeah, coming right to your questions about the outlook. Of course, we clearly have in mind that we are again here working in an environment which is quite volatile. You know, we constantly stick to our general approach in commercial real estate lending to be pretty much diversified. Of course, we are currently even more risk sensitive when we're talking about, for example, new financings in the office space in North America. In other parts, for example, logistics, hotel, we see a very, very healthy and good recovery in the markets and see clearly additional opportunities to write new business. Again, you see that we've been able to generate a very good new business last year, but also being quite picky about certain risks, and that's what we showed in our track record last year and that's also the plan for 2023. Your question about the margins. I would say we expect gross margins in the commercial real estate business on the same level we saw on average during 2022. I would say gross margins, which we realized in the fourth quarter last year, have been extraordinarily good, but you can take the average margins of the whole year, 2022, as a proxy for our expectations for doing business in this year. The net commission income is obviously driven to some part by BDS. We still have the intention to grow our net commission income in BDS on a double-digit number. 10%-15% or something in that area should be the increase in BDS in 2023. The major part is obviously driven then by the further growth initiatives we implemented at Aareon. We expect a further increase of net commission incomes from the software business as well. Hope that answers your questions. Great. Thank you. May I have a quick follow-up, I mean, maybe on the new business side. Some of your competitors, they have clearly stated that they have basically withdrawn from CRE financing. Is this something that you see also on the competitive landscape on your lending business that you could achieve better margins because of that? I would say, in general, there have been a number of competitors who have been much more reluctant to do new business during the last couple of years. We've been always there for our clients, and I guess clients do honor that very much, which is positive. In total, I would say there is always a very, very strong competitive situation in the markets. We have to cope with really remarkable numbers of very big, large international institutions. These are our competitors and will be our competitors. And there are some things, for example, take a look at the U.S. markets last year, where CMBS markets have been very weak. That supports our targets to increase step-by-step our margins. Again, we are always acting in an environment where we have to cope with a significant competition. That will not change. Okay. Great. Thank you. Pleasure. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone at this time. The next question is from the line of Richard with Payman. Your question please. Hi there. Thanks for taking my question. Congratulations on a great set of numbers. I'm sorry to drag you back to the transaction. I appreciate that Advent and Centerbridge will be the ones driving that process. It's maybe somewhat concerning that the transaction was announced almost a year ago, and we're still waiting for some clearances. I wondered whether you could just clarify a few things. You know, which of those clearances are still outstanding? You know, is there dialogue between yourself and the acquirers in terms of when... You know, what's going on with those clearances? The final question is, are the regulators aware that there is a long stop date for the transaction, and hence, you know, they need to hopefully make a decision before that long stop date? Any further clarity around those would be very useful. Thank you. Thanks for the questions, Richard. Yeah. Obviously, yes, the regulators are of course aware about the long stop date. That is a given thing. Yeah. Again, I guess everybody who has ever been in these situations know that we are here, acting in a process which takes some time. Last year November when we presented our Q3 figures, we said the bidders expect a decision by the authorities in spring this year, and this is still our assumption. Yeah, in general, Marc, I would say we can say there is a very constructive dialogue between the supervisory authorities, our investors, and ourselves, if necessary. Therefore, we stick to everything we said already in November, that we think that bidders are still expecting a decision in spring. You know the long stop date is pretty precise in the middle of spring. Therefore, no further doubts on our side, on our side. Got it. That's very clear. Thank you. Welcome. The next question is from the line of Philipp Häßler with Pareto Securities. Your question please. Yes. Thank you. Philipp Häßler from Pareto. I have two questions, please. Firstly, on the outlook for the LLPs, EUR 170 million-EUR 210 million. If I deduct the EUR 60 million budget, I have EUR 110 million-EUR 150 million, which sounds a little bit high compared to 2022. Is it due to the fact that you're more cautious regarding the economic development, or do you expect additional LLPs on Russia? Maybe could you give us some guidance on the net view recognition result for the current year? How do you see this developing? Thank you. Yeah, hello, Philipp. Thank you very much for your questions. On LLP, of course, your math is correct. Even including the or excluding the EUR 60 million, we are slightly above normalized levels, which we would expect, as you know, at just around 40 basis points or a little bit less. I think this just reflects the uncertain geopolitical and economic outlook that we are still facing. We see, of course, a very good underlying result in 2022. You alluded on that if you exclude Russia. This was extraordinary, as we just mentioned. This was driven by the strong recovery of COVID, especially in hotels, especially in retail. That also shows that we have been cautious with our risk provisioning policy in the COVID years. Yes, we benefited from that slightly in 2022, and this is unfortunately not to be repeated in 2023. It's quite a normalized situation with a little bit of a buffer due to the economic uncertainty which I just mentioned. With regards to the derecognition result in 2023, I think we can say we will get back to a normalized level. You know, this was always around EUR 20 million and of course last year also affected by the TLTRO effect, this is what you should expect. Perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jakub Bleakley with Goldman Sachs. Hi there. Thanks for organizing the call. Just one question, but more about capital management and maybe that will happen under the new ownership, but it doesn't seem particularly efficient to be running with the CET1 ratio, light on tier two and fairly high reset on AT1s. Can I get any thoughts on your capital instruments, please? Yeah. Well, as you know, we have currently the obvious mix as you just outlined, including an AT1 of EUR 300 million. We have increased the capital ratio last year. This was also supported by the dividend that we retained. Reading, let's say, what we agreed in the investor agreement also says that we wanted to retain the earnings of 2023 as well. This has one reason. As you see, we are growing. Yeah, we have been growing in RSF, which we will continue, always very prudently. We would also, once the closing has happened, even increase the investments in Aareon and even more in BDS. You have seen we have done a small step here with an acquisition of CollectAI in 2022. This is the sort of transactions that we would like to do, to even enhance our offering for our deposit-taking clients. Some more investments to be done. This is why we are retaining the earnings. That's a phase-in ratio, as you know. Obviously we have a very sound and very low LTV portfolio, so, this is disregarded by Basel IV fully phased. That's also very clear. Therefore, with the implementation of Basel IV starting in 25, 26, of course, also here we will migrate to fully phased. Therefore, I think we have all in all a good capital mix, a good capital situation to, A, execute our strategy and, B, also be well prepared for future regulatory changes. There are no further questions, and I hand back to Jürgen Junginger. Thank you to everybody for joining us this morning. As always, the IR team is very happy to take follow-up questions, and Treasury and IR are also open for meeting requests. From my side, have a good day. Thank you. Jochen, Marc, final last words for today? Thanks everybody for joining and we appreciate taking your questions. You see it's I guess for everybody, it's still a complicated situation. We delivered very good results from the year 22. We have a number of activities in mind what we can do even more to enhance the position and profitability and growth of the bank. Everybody of course knows exactly that we're also here working in a very volatile and very difficult to forecast environment. Therefore, you see us here being, to some extent, very happy about 22 year results, having mind a lot to do in 23, but also being also very cautious about future developments because everybody needs to put risk management clearly at the first line of all of our activities. That is something what we are doing here as well. Hope to see you very soon, and thanks again for joining. Thank you very much.