Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome. 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 do so by pressing star then one. Press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. It is my pleasure. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jürgen Junginger, Head of IR. Please go ahead. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining our conference call. Today, the agenda covers our results of the first quarter and the 2023 outlook, and some additional information on our lending portfolio. I'm joined by our CEO, Jochen Klösges, our CFO, Marc Hess, and our Chief Market Officer, Christof Winkelmann. Jochen, Marc, and Christof will lead you through the presentation, and this will be followed by a Q&A session. I please hand over to Jochen. Please. Jürgen, thank you very much. Good morning, everybody. A warm welcome to the presentation of our results for the first quarter of 2023. It's been just over two months since we last met. A lot has happened during this period. Regional banks in the U.S. failed, and two major Swiss banks merged into one. Markets were highly nervous at times, and credit spreads for many institutions widened significantly. There is once again a particular focus on property markets, which are now experiencing a correction after a decade of continuously rising prices. In this context, we have been seeing a more challenging environment for our US office property finance portfolio since last summer, and consequently, we have been working with our clients on finding individual solutions since then. To report on a quarter in which Aareal Bank Group has once again performed very well indeed. Today, we are talking about a quarter with good results and sound risk parameters. We have doubled operating profit compared to the first quarter of the previous year. Once again, the key driver was on the income side. Our strategy, including growth initiatives, has paid off. Moreover, we were able to benefit from higher interest rates. We are also reporting a moderate growth in loans, and the volume of non-performing loans has decreased slightly. We remain very solidly financed with our capital ratios well strengthened. Today, on the back of our good start into the year, we are confirming our full-year outlook, which we presented in early March. Aareal Bank is capable of dealing with turbulences and challenging market phases, something we proved in coping with the coronavirus crisis, to name just one example. Back then, you remember 80% of the hotels we had financed were temporarily closed. Yet today, there is not a single non-performing hotel exposure in our portfolio. We are close to our clients, and with our expertise, we anticipated and current-staged the market developments which we are currently seeing in the US. In fact, we have been preparing for some time now. We're taking a selective that is risk-aware stance Vis-à-vis new business. We are provisioning cautiously, and our funding is well diversified. We regularly perform stress tests on our portfolios and consider different crisis scenarios. At the same time, Aareal Bank Group benefits from its segment lineup. While rising interest rates are pressuring property valuations, higher interest rates are generally good news for our deposit-taking business. Moreover, our software subsidiary, Aareon, is growing, which translates into higher net commission income. We continue to invest significant time and money there to further improve Aareon's position for the future. I will come back to this later. Before looking at the first quarter results in detail, I would like to comment on a topic that you are likely to find just as interesting as our first quarter results. What is the status of the takeover by financial investors? I will put it that way. We are currently on the home stretch. On April 11th, the investors gave notice that they have now also been given clearance by the Monetary Authority of Singapore's central bank and financial markets regulator. Yesterday approval was received from the Association of German Banks for the Deposit Protection Fund. This means that the approval by the European Central Bank is the only required regulatory clearance outstanding now. The investors are confident that they will obtain this by the long-stop date, which is May 24th. Now I would like to hand over to Marc, who will provide more detailed information on our financials. Please, Marc. Thank you very much, Jochen. Good morning from my side as well. Let me start with an overview of the first quarter. We completed the quarter with an operating profit of EUR 62 million, as Jochen just mentioned, that is double the figure of the same quarter in the previous year. The income side was the main driver here, with net interest income up by 14% year-on-year. We are benefiting from rising interest rates as well as from portfolio growth over the last 12 months and from our broadly diversified funding mix. The commission income showed double-digit growth too, driven by both the Banking & Digital Solutions segment and by Aareon's performance. The reported increase in admin expenses is attributable almost entirely to M&A and the announced efficiency measures at Aareon. The low level of risk provisions is also noteworthy, even more so since the management overlay for US office loans accounts for two-thirds of the reported figure of EUR 32 million. I will come back to that later. On the next slide, we take a more detailed look at the development of the key income components. With net interest income of EUR 222 million, we achieved the highest quarterly figure since becoming a public company back in 2002. This was driven by a combination of portfolio growth, good margins, broadly diversified funding, along with the positive effects of the interest rate environment of payment deposit business. Increase in net commission income to EUR 72 million was largely attributable to growth at Aareon, with the share of recurring revenue steadily rising, reflecting the ongoing transition from a license-based model to a software as a service-based model. In the Banking & Digital Solutions segment, we are also growing and substantially increasing net commission income. Overall, the unbroken upward trend in income generation demonstrates that our strategy is bearing fruit as expected, and I can tell you we are really satisfied with that performance. Turning to admin expenses on the next slide, I would like to emphasize that cost control remains a top priority for us despite inflation. Costs in the bank have increased only slightly. The cost-income ratio is at an outstanding 35% and thus markedly below our original target of around 44%. The reported increase in group admin expenses was due, on one hand, to the investment in efficiency measures at Aareon, as already mentioned, and to acquisitions on the other hand there as well. When looking at costs, it's also worth noting that as usual for the first quarter of the year, they are inflated by the bank levy that we booked fully, the full EUR 25 million in Q1 as usual. The bank levy is not included in the 35% cost-income ratio I mentioned. This is in line with the industry practice. Let me now turn to risk provisioning. As of today, we are hardly affected by the much-discussed headwinds in the U.S. commercial property markets. What we do see, however, is some pressure on office property values, which we had anticipated. Accordingly, we have booked the management overlay of EUR 21 million, which reflect a conservative 20% markdown of the market values of our U.S. office portfolio. With this, I would like to hand back to Jochen and to Christof for further details on our three segments. Yes. Thank you, Marc. New business in the structured property financing segment was in line with the somewhat lower transaction volumes that we have seen across our property markets. We were able to originate around EUR 1 billion of new business, consisting of EUR 600 million of newly acquired business, around EUR 500 million of renewals. This is also a result of our continuing selective approach and being as risk-aware as we always are and have been. What we have taken on the books year-to-date is of very high quality and truly offered above-average margins, also compared to our existing book and to market standards. The average LTV of this newly acquired business stands at 63%. Mind you, same quarter last year where new business was at 57% and the year prior that at 61%, we do see a decrease in the LTVs playing our conservative way of viewing new business. At the same time, our average gross margin was at around 300 basis points, and clearly exceeded our year-end target of 200-250 basis points. We do expect that the second half should show some more transaction volume as markets become clear and take a point of view on also mainly interest rate developments. Therefore, we are confident and are maintaining our new business targets as well as our year-end business volume on balance sheet. With this, I'll hand back to Jochen. Thanks, Christof. Let's now turn to our second business line, Banking & Digital Solutions, which has developed very favorably. The effect of higher interest rate is especially visible here. At EUR 52 million, net interest income has more than quadrupled since the first quarter of 2022, and we have maintained the volume of deposits above our target level of around EUR 13 billion. It is probably important to emphasize in this context that the structure of our deposits is very granular due to the fact that we execute payment transactions for 3,700 housing industry clients managing roughly eight million rental units. It is also welcome that segment commission income continues to grow. Our strategy is clearly bearing fruit here as well. That also holds true for our third segment, Aareon. In addition to ensuring growth, we are striving to increase the share of recurring revenues, which now account for 75% of total revenues. Overall, Aareon's revenue has increased by 15% year-on-year. Likewise, adjusted EBITDA continues to move up. Aareon remains on its growth path, helped by further M&A activities. Nonetheless, as I said back in March, we still have room for efficiency improvements. We are tackling this issue via an early retirement program, as well as by streamlining our product portfolio and processes. Aareon's task for 2023 is to make the company even more competitive. We are supporting Aareon in our capacity as shareholders with the required funds. At the same time, we need to maintain growth and income momentum in the new business. Whilst we're pretty successful on both counts during the first quarter, there's still a good deal of work to do for everybody around in Aareon. In the meantime, we are expecting the first positive contributions from the product and process optimization measures currently being implemented. Back in March, I reported that we would be consolidating our product portfolio, complementing it by adding an open platform. To this end, we have already established the Aareon Connect Partner Program. In Germany, that will provide better help to our clients in reaching their goals and keep supporting them with their digital transformation. What does this mean specifically? Well, our clients can benefit from software solutions and services provided by various partners, which can be seamlessly integrated into Aareon's existing ERP systems. Put another way, Aareon Connect assumes the function of a marketplace, where already more than ten partners solutions are being offered at present. We will gradually expand this marketplace, creating initial collaboration and value creation system that offers added value for the entire sector. Now it's our pleasure to hand over again to our Chief Market Officer, Christoph, who always joins us in what some might call challenging times for the real estate industry. He will now provide more detailed information on our portfolio and his view about the markets. Christoph, the floor is yours. Yes, thank you very much, Jochen, for that nice introduction once again. I do have a bit of a feeling it's a deja vu, at least of one of the later times that I was part of speaking to all of you. It was, I think, September of 2020. We were reporting on the Q2 figures of that year. If you remember, that was just about in the heights of the onset of COVID. At that point in time explained how we would view the world going forward, not having a crystal ball, but taking our portfolio, the sponsors, the assets, locations, performance, and trying to guess them as best as we can, how such development could turn out, looking at historical standards and measures and what we believe is a good amount of expertise in our house. We at that point in time projected the recovery of the hotel portfolio that at that point in time was just about EUR 10 billion, was going to take about four years, i.e., at the end of 2024. I think I've been called optimistic at that point in time by many, many different sources. It turns out to be that I was maybe too pessimistic because I think we got to that line two years earlier. That was at the end of last year, which was very favorable to all of us, and that's why Jochen was reporting that there is not a single NPL in the hotel portfolio on the book as of today. I think it is a testament to how we approach not only hotels, but how we approach real estate. We are absolute experts. We are used to cycles. That is part of being active in real estate, also as Jochen had alluded to beforehand, we hadn't just started looking at U.S. office a couple of months ago. We had started that process already well at the beginning of last year, seeing signs that there might be a downturn in certain markets and have prepared ourselves. Last but not least, sometimes I get the feeling that the current status of maybe what's called office U.S. is overshadowing everything. I do remind you that again, in that 2020 timeframe, we had the majority of our hotels closed. Likewise, we had closed most of our retail centers. Offices weren't visited, many other things happened. I think that should put this into perspective and our ability to weather the storm that we believe we are in and are taking care of. What are we doing or what have we done year to date? We are sticking to our diversification, both on asset classes as well as on regions. The book as of the end of March is largely unchanged towards the end of December. As I said, very little transaction volume, but very value-accredited new business that we were able to put on the books that are contributing to the bottom line of Aareal Bank AG. Our target still remains at EUR 32 billion-EUR 33 billion, depending on currencies and transaction volumes, which we are very confident we will reach. Just to remind you, we are not active in development financing. We haven't been for more than a decade, really. We were also very successful at expanding our Green Finance Framework, which at this point in time at the end of March 31st at EUR 2.6 billion compared to EUR 0.7 billion only the year before. On slide number 11, as we always like transparency, you can see the development of our different asset classes across the globe on average since December of 2019. What is important to see is that in most cases or in all cases actually, we are either at the same LTV that we were at the end of 2019 and or better. Likewise, the same counts for yield and debt as a portfolio on total was at an 8.9% debt yield in the end of 2019 versus 9.1% today. They contribute also to the recovery of the real estate industry over the past years. On slide number 12, I'll give you details in a moment, but I think to say it is we are coming out of a very long period of loose monetary policy. In addition to that, we came out of a time of COVID, something the world had never experienced. Mind you that most of the crises that these had to attend to always said, "Well, this never happened before." I remember the financial crisis, so has COVID. The point being that we are very good at adapting and managing risks that we take on book. We are intending to do that likewise going forward. I think what is different this time around is the speed of the interest rate hikes that there was an experience not only in North America but also in Europe. Yes, not everybody is working in the office like they've done maybe beforehand. That is partly a very good thing to keep flexibility. On the other hand, also may be a bad thing because it creates less office demand in certain pockets. One thing is clear, there is an increasing trend of office attendance, though it was maybe slower in recovery than people might have thought. There is an absolute increase month and quarter-over-quarter. As I said, the hotel and retail portfolio completely covered. So is the office portfolio in Europe. We do not have any office in Asia-Pacific. It is doing very well, that is why today I'm here focusing a bit more on the bespoke office portfolio that we have in the U.S. We are very broadly diversified, the current LTV on the overall book globally is at 55%. That is a very good portion below the onset of the financial crisis, just to put that into relation. We've put our risk management capabilities to the test over the past quarters and years, sometimes we wish that we would have two or three years of boredom. By boredom, not having to put them to the test, but do what we like doing, namely originate mortgages that are value credited to our portfolio. We are, at the same time, also in these terms, supporting the green transformation. People would always like it to go quicker and better and faster. I think we're doing a lot, and within the industry availability of such transformation opportunities, we've come a very long way. Our team in U.S. has been there since 2006, and we have been active in the U.S. since 2000, demonstrating our dedication and commitment to that market, our know-how, and our continued investment in the majority into the major MSAs and in that one, the CBDs that is our target business. On page number 13, as I've said, we are diversified in property types. In the U.S., 50% we are clear are made up of office financings. Probably a lot of banks will have a higher percentage of office. We, however, as you're very well aware of, we also like other asset classes such as hospitality and retail, which balances to our point of view and gives a diversification to the portfolio. Mind you that 91% of our portfolio on a weighted LTV are below 60%, which gives us a lot of winning room for any potential storms that there might be. Only less than 1% is between 80% and 90%. Again, a testament to the quality and severance of that portfolio. On page number 14, we're now monitoring the U.S. portfolio in detail for more than a year. We have visited all of the assets. That is including the board members that have visited the majority of those assets to make sure the decisions that are being taken are the correct ones. Sometimes they are tough decisions, sometimes they are more fun decisions. I can tell you I like the fun ones more, but the tough ones also need to be taken, and we're doing that. I think we've shown that over the past two years also in the US with an increase in the NPL over the crisis or the pandemic and the decrease thereafter. JP Morgan, just to set the line, for people that say that offices are not of use anymore, and especially when it comes to New York, people have figures in their minds of roughly 20% of vacancy. That is true. As an average of that market. I also then asked, "Well, what was the vacancy before COVID?" Then most people can't answer. I can tell you it's roughly 10%. It wasn't zero and went up to 20, it went up to 10%. In parallel in New York between 2019 and 2021, i.e., completely during the pandemic, some of the largest ever supply growth in New York office has happened, such as Hudson Yards, demonstrating some 12-14 office buildings, skyscrapers, by the way. Let alone one, then the build with 93 floors being 100% occupied, taking space. It is natural that there'll be some vacant space. The tendency for vacant space is not the A-class A market office buildings. It is the B-class office buildings and the C-class that tend to suffer more in these times because people are looking for quality. By the way, they are willing to pay for that quality because it is conducive to their way of doing business, to get people to work together. That is something that we have seen across the globe, but also in the US. By the way, I'm not a fan of doing 45 days of home office simply for the fact that the same people that are promoting this today have told me only 3.5 years ago that we all need to be having a collaborative workspace, sitting next to each other like chicken and to what we created. I think the truth probably somewhere in between. It does today, it gives flexibility. Unfortunately, offices are mostly full from Tuesday to Thursday and not on Friday and Monday. That gives a challenge, still also means that there needs to be space because you can't just rent that office from Tuesday to Thursday. We have about $3.9 billion in office financings spread across 50 transactions. That means the average size of our transaction, $78 million in the US. The majority of that is A-class office buildings in A-class markets. The average LTV as per quarter end is at 63% LTV. Let me tell you that we have revalued in the past four months all of our office exposure in the US. This number might not entail 100% of the revaluations, but by far the majority. Even after that, you see that the LTV is at 63%. It does not mean that there are some that are a bit higher and some a bit lower, and it will be difficult in certain cases to manage through. To put in perspective of what risk level we're talking about, it is not a close to EUR 4 billion portfolio that is threatening our year or existence, as it is sometimes written in diverse newspapers. We have instead created a management overlay and assumed a 20% decrease of our portfolio. Stage one and stage two provisioning, including an additional EUR 21 million. The yield on debt in our office portfolio stands at 6.6% in the US overall. If you are to exclude refurbishment, which we are doing as part of our regular business, it is a good portion above 7%. The by far the majority of our loans are hedged and are benefiting of interest rate hedges. May I remind you that only 11% of our tenants or the tenants of our clients expire with their leases in 2023, and in 2024 it's a near 8%. 19% over the next 24 months, I think, is a very foreseeable amount. On page number 15. As I've mentioned, the yield on debt, if we were to exclude EUR 0.6 billion of refurbishment and transitional assets where we are helping these buildings to transition to a more ESG-friendly environment, the yield on debt would be sitting at 7.6% versus the 6.9% overall. As I also mentioned, we are largely located in Class A markets, mainly with sorry, with in Class A buildings with EUR 3.1 billion out of the total portfolio, EUR 0.8 billion are Class B buildings, and only EUR 50 million are in Class C buildings. Let me also remind you just to look at the classification of the building. These Class B buildings are located in Class A markets. If you were in New York to look at the Meatpacking District, which is a very hip and very, very, very expensive market to live and work in, these buildings, the brownstone buildings, they don't qualify as a Class A building, and they never will. They're very sought after, and they do have their reason for existence. It gives you a perspective on where our perceived risks are. Only 2%, if you look at the layered LTV perspective, are between the values of 70%-80%, and as I said, almost 90% in A locations. On page number 16, we have, in addition to our management overlay, shown you what happens automatically if we were to experience a 25% average value decrease in our portfolio. It is very sturdy. We have also looked at the market averages. The average in the US market currently assumes 15% value decrease for class A, 40% for class B, and 60% for class C, which gives it a total or average of 35% across the US. If we were to mirror our portfolio and its locations according to this grid, we would be at roughly 20% average value decrease. The above 25% value decrease gives another cushion. Our average LTV would go from 63%-83%. I think it's a very manageable LTV range. If you're looking at the loan book and asset quality on page number 17. If you look over the past three years amidst the pandemic, we were able to largely decrease our NPL exposure. We have reduced our non-performing notes by almost EUR 600 million or more than one-third since the peak of the same. We have set out our strategic goal and mentioned that to you for sustainably reducing our NPL ratio to below 3%. This will cost some money, it will increase and further strengthen our resilience. Our strong profitability allows us to do this, as you can see this quarter, we're taking additional provisioning and despite our having a very good quarter, as Mark has mentioned. We have budgeted, as you know, some EUR 60 million in addition for the quicker de-risking. We have not used it in the first quarter. We are working on transactions. We're very confident that we might invest some of that to further decrease our NPL. Overall, these are challenging times. Challenging times in the US market and challenging times in the US office market. It is not a challenging time in the European office market or in any other asset class. We are on it. We go for it. I will hand it back to Marc. Thank you, Christoph, for the insights. Let's take a look at our balance sheet structure. We are conservatively funded. Our EUR 25 billion of long-term funds have a longer maturity than our commercial real estate lending book. With our housing industry payment deposits of over EUR 13 billion and retail deposits of EUR 1.4 billion, we have established a well-diversified and stable funding and liquidity base. Our liquidity and funding ratio stood at comfortable 214% for the LCR and 123% for the NSFR, respectively, at the end of March. Treasury portfolio investments are in very liquid, mainly public sector bonds, as we hedge our balance sheet against interest rate changes, we have no significant and unrealized losses in the portfolio. On the funding side, you can see that on page 20, our broad diversification has been beneficial during the opening quarter of the current year. This leaves us less affected by capital market volatility, which has been especially pronounced given the events in the U.S. industries banking sector. Our funding activities were very successful in the first quarter. We issued senior preferred worth a total of EUR 1.7 billion, of which EUR 1.5 billion was in the form of benchmark issues. Our retail deposits business launched last year to supplement payment deposits from the housing industry continues to develop very favorably. We crossed the EUR 1 billion threshold at the end of February and have now reached EUR 1.4 billion, more than twice the level at the end of 2022, which was EUR 600 million. The figures are keeping on rising. Our payment deposits from the housing industry averaged EUR 13.7 billion in the first quarter, exceeding our target level of around EUR 13 billion. These deposits are the largest component in our fundings, accounting for 33%. However, as we have emphasized in the past, we anticipate fluctuations here, for example, due to the outflows caused by the change to the Deposit Guarantee Schemes. It was against this background that we set our more conservative full-year target of EUR 14 billion back in early March. Let me remind you, and Jochen already said that those deposits are generated from our competitive position as the number one payment provider for the German housing industry. We have 3,700 housing industry companies being our client, and they're managing 8 million flats. Thus, a very granular deposit structure indeed. Our capital position improved further during the first quarter. The CET1 ratio grew slightly compared to the 2022 year-end to reach 19.4%. Net ratio stand at 6%, also very solid levels. I also want to comment on unrealized losses on bond holdings following the strong rise in interest rates over the past month. As I just mentioned already, our bank hedges its interest rate changes with exposure almost entirely. At the end of March, unrealized losses on the bond portfolio only accounted to approximately 3% of our equity. And were fully deducted from economic capital. The OCI position was even slightly positive. Coming to the outlook, as you can see, our bank made a very good start to the year. Of course, we continue to be aware of the persistent and very high level of uncertainty in the economy and markets. This start lets us look ahead to the remainder of the year with confidence. Accordingly, we can confirm our targets for the full year. In particular, we expect that net interest income will come in at the upper and or even above our forecast range between EUR 730 million and EUR 770 million, EUR 717 million. This provides us with sufficient headroom should, and I emphasize should the loss allowance unexpectedly exceed our anticipated range of EUR 130 million-EUR 210 million. Overall, we are therefore confident that we will be able to achieve operating profits of EUR 240 million-EUR 280 million as communicated earlier. With this, let me hand back to Jochen for his concluding remarks. Thank you, Marc, and thank you, Christof again. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, let me summarize. You know the markets, the competitive environment and the macroeconomic outlook are really challenging. Yet Aareal Bank Group has proven often enough that it can be successful even in difficult conditions. We plan further growth in 2023, of course profitable and always very risk-aware. The strong start to the new year with more than doubled group operating profit underpins our confidence. In all three segments we see that our strategy is working, so we intend to hold a steady course. At the same time, we will continue to invest in the efficiency of our platform and the resilience of our business models. Finally, attending takeover by the financial investors will further improve our position for sustained and successful development. Now we are looking forward to answer your questions. Thank you very much. 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. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. Our first question for today is from Jochennes Thormann from HSBC. Your question please. Good morning, everybody. three questions if I may, Jochennes Thor mann. First of all, on the risk side, you show a EUR 21 million risk overlay in your loan loss provisions, but also an increase. You just say this is an overlay for US business, but also you show an increase in EUR 12 million by the US NPLs, despite of course negative FX effects, which should normally have decreased the absolute value of NPLs. What has been driving this? What kind of impairment has this been? Secondly, on your confidence to reach EUR 32 billion new business volumes and the EUR 32 billion asset volume and the EUR 9 billion new business volumes, what are you seeing in the market? Why transactions will come back again, at least in the second half of this year? Could you also elaborate on the margins you took for the renewals? Is this more renewals business driving this new business or is this really true business? Last but not least on restructuring of Aareon, you booked EUR 34 million. Is this all or do we have to expect more for the rest of the year? Yeah, is there anything else at Aareon which needs to be cleaned up? Thank you. Sorry. Good morning. I will take up your first question about Aareon and Christof will answer your question about the new business and the market, and finally, Marc will answer your question about the management overlay. Let me start with Aareon. Yes, we clearly gave guidance that we expect a certain amount of money to be invested into Aareon in the year 2023 to enhance the capabilities in terms of being more efficient, streamlining product portfolio, et cetera, et cetera. You're right, already in Q1 we booked there of EUR 34 million. That means we are well on track in terms of executing on the various measures we will see to be executed this year. Might there be a additional investment to be seen in the course of this years? I wouldn't exclude that of today because we are on an ongoing path to examine where we see further room for improvement. Nothing which would in any case harm our total forecasts for the year. The team, you know, we have quite a fresh and very active team. They are on board since the last year. Of course, it's their task and opportunity currently to find various areas and corners where they probably see further room for improvement and we really support that. That's yeah. There, there might be a little bit more to come this year, but this is not currently specifically to be foreseen because it's an ongoing process to see in which areas Aareon could improve its efficiency. Again, as I mentioned in my speech here, Jochennes, in the same time, it's very important that the team is able and they are able to keep the momentum of revenue growth and EBITDA growth in place, and that's something where we can report the first quarter was quite successful. I always put it in a way that I say we have two opportunities. One opportunity is currently to really keep the momentum in growth in terms of revenues and profitability. Secondly, to see where can we improve, the capabilities and processes of Aareon at the same time. We have the plans for that, generally in place. So yeah, we're quite affirmative that 2023 will be a very good year for Aareon at the end of the day. Okay. Jochennes, I would like to take the first question. On the NPLs, as you can see on that page, we have one new NPL. That was indeed one U.S. office building, smaller one, smaller exposure than EUR 50 million. We also had an outflow of one NPL in the U.S. that was a residential building. Overall, quite no increase of the NPLs in the U.S. were only EUR 12 million, as you just said. The risk provisions that on top of the overlay had to be booked in the U.S. was only single digit number. That was related to the one new NPL that we have here. Yes. Now to your second question. As I've mentioned, the transaction volume has been somewhat low in the first quarter. We're not seeing a lot of pickup in the second quarter. When you're competing and looking for the right risk return at this point in time, sometimes you get presented or you find right projects and sometimes you don't want to compete because maybe these projects are not made from uni, but from a return or for a risk perspective. As you have seen with the figures, we've been very successful in selecting very favorable transactions during the first quarter. If you were to ask me, what will you tell me, Christoph, when we're here in the second quarter call? I would tell you that our pipeline at this point in time has grown very substantially, and that by the end of the second quarter, you would be very pleased with the reported figures when it comes to the expected new business as well as the risk return that we are attaching to it. Maybe that's as much of a view going forward till the end of June. The second thing is, as we've said, in the first quarter, EUR 500 million were renewals and EUR 600 million was new business. That was actually quite good and not to your effect, because Why do borrowers refinance on, from a balance sheet of either with a sale? As we just mentioned, the transaction volume was rather low, so that doesn't happen that often. The second thing is that a lot of borrowers don't want to sell at these times and will extend with you in order to have a better, more opportune selling time down the future. Also in U.S., just to round that up on these extensions, we are especially in U.S. able to receive further security and or down payments with largely increased spreads. Overall, I would say that the renewal business is probably at least as attractive as the new business, if not more, because the borrower also forgoes certain costs and risks that he would have if he were to transfer and go to another bank. I think it's a win-win for both sides and overall both walk off quite confident. Sorry, if I may ask two follow-up questions on this. First of all, you said you're not seeing a pickup of transactions in the market. Are the pipelining going up substantially? The growth in the pipeline is just from prolongations. What is driving this? The second thing is on the renewal business. If you say the margins are, and/or the business is as attractive as the really new business, are the margins on the same level? Thank you. Yes. Absolutely. What is growing the pipeline? It would be very nice if I could pick and choose which kind of assets are on the market for an acquisition finance or we are refinancing other banks at all times. It is a bit dependent on when these transactions come to market. If they come to market, they're looking, especially in these times, for surety of execution, for expertise and reliability. We have been working in parallel to doing the business on building that pipeline with those transactions that are requiring the expertise that we had set out to do that we have in-house when it comes to different asset classes, when it comes to, of course, border portfolios, cross-collar rights, very granular. It also depends on what kind of buyer is currently buying. In these markets, usually buyers that need less leverage. Are very substantial in value network, those are the buyers. They come along in increments and unfortunately always to the top when you want them. The pipeline going forward, I was telling you is merely that pipeline I was referring to is merely new business origination. In parallel to the second question on the prolongations, as I said, it is an economic mathematical exercise because again, if you transfer your loan to another bank, there are certain costs, risks and times associated with it. What I can say is that with approximately the same risk parameters, we would be getting, let's call it a couple of hands or more full of basis points above new business because the costs, as I said, are different. That's why I said it's very attractive to us to follow this business. It is not second class. On the contrary, I think at this point in time, I would love to have more of those just because we know these assets, we've had them for a while, and our board is committed. Thank you. The next question comes from Timo Denz, from DNB. Please go ahead. Yes. Hello, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions and also for sharing the additional details on the U.S. and office portfolio. Starting with the takeover, could you maybe share with us a little bit more details or color on why the ECB approval has not been granted yet, looking at the other authorities that have been moving already. Secondly on NII, I mean, you posted quite a strong increase and you seem to be confident also going forward and basically announcing that you may end up above the range of EUR 730 million-EUR 770 million. Could you maybe provide us with sort of an NII trajectory further going down the road? Because when I just annualize this quarterly results, I'm really well above the target range. On my last question is then on the NPL disposal or the acceleration that you announced in the previous quarter. The presentation states that you have already started with or took the process. Could you give here some more color and also how we should think about the EUR 60 million in the current changing environment, if this is sufficient, if you need to top up that amount or how we should think about that? Thank you. the question. Let me start with the question one, takeover, then I will try to answer also your question number three about NPLs, I guess Marc will take care of the question regarding the net interest income trajectory. Takeover, yeah, to be pretty honest, this is, you know, that a process between the investors and the authorities. That is due diligence all have this in mind. I guess, it's a huge success so far that the investors were able to receive all the necessary approvals so far except of the ECB. This is something which seems to me to be something like a standard process. Basically, the ECB is the final one who grants them the approval. You know, everybody knows that the transfer date is the 24th of May. The ECB has to check everything in detail. It's from a regulatory and prevention point of view, something which is also, let's say, put it that way, creates extra work for the teams within the ECB. We're here pretty confident and share the point of view of our investors that there will be a decision until the 24th of May. Finally, I guess this is kind of normal setting we are currently in, and let's see what's gonna be the outcome. As I already mentioned in my speech, everybody is pretty confident that there will be a positive decision finally. It's the call of the ECB. I guess I would like to tell you more about this, but we need to be cautious and keep things going on here. Regarding the NPL, I must say, I'll take a look at Christoph as well. I guess when we introduced the extra budget of EUR 60 million back in early March, nothing really new has happened since then. Our view is unchanged. We are trying to use that amount of money to reduce our NPLs further. We are working currently on a number of transactions, activities that, please forgive me that I won't tell you something about details that wouldn't be really favorable for our prices in that case, obviously. Finally, I can only say, our view has not really changed since early March. That's what I wanna say to NPL. Marc, over to you regarding the net interest income. Yeah. Thank you for your question. I mean, a little bit difficult to answer because I've already given you a guidance and, of course, I hope you're understanding that I'm not gonna be Much more precise. I think it's obvious, the upper range of our targets among the EUR 17 million is well in reach, and there is a good likelihood that finally we will be above that line. Will it be, let's say 4x the number that we have seen in Q1? Well, probably not really. I think we have always guided that we expect some kind of outflow on the deposits, EUR 13 billion is our target. You have seen we were at EUR 13.7 billion, which has several sources. One is the WSF reform, where we see some adjustments on the client side. The other one is as we explained, that many of our depositors from the housing industry, they accumulated buffers with the energy crisis and everything on the, let's say second half of last year. We also hear we expect a kind of normalization. That's one factor. On the other thing, we have seen that the rate increase, especially since September, was really accelerated at the market and it's always a little bit lagging, as I say, to adjust the rate takes on the deposits. All in all, as I just said, I'm very optimistic, yeah. Please, I hope for your understanding that I will not be more precise in giving you a guidance here for a year number in an net interest income. Okay. Well, thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1. Our next question comes from Stuart Graham from Autonomous Research LLP. Your question please. Good morning. Thank Thank you for taking my questions. I have one bigger picture question, then two geeky number questions, please. The bigger picture question is how important do you think the likely credit curtailment from U.S. regional banks is gonna be for U.S. office valuations? As you know, they're major financiers of U.S. office and given their own problems are likely to be cutting credit, I would imagine. That's the first question. My two geeky number questions, again on the U.S. office. Apologies. First, how much of the $3.8 billion is currently classified as stage two or stage three? Second, how large is the stock of provisions, including the $21 million overlay against the $3.8 billion CRE office exposure, please? Thank you. That's, second question will be answered by Marc, first one will be answered by Christof and myself. My view is if I take a look at the banking landscape in the U.S., that the current issues over there are pretty much connected to regional banks which are doing financing regional commercial properties in their local neighborhoods. Therefore, I guess, there is hopefully a very limited spread to the development concerning banks which have usually the exposures in the big metropolitan areas in class A locations with class R properties. To be pretty honest, Stuart, I'm not really capable to judge the quality of the portfolio of these regional banks in the U.S. across the country. In terms of how could that development spread over to values of properties which we traditionally finance, I would like to hand over to Christoph. Yes. As Jochen was indicating, we have to look at what the regional banks. First of all, what is a regional bank and what are they financing? There was one bank that was located on the East Coast and to my understanding is a big bank. However, when it comes to real estate and or commercial real estate, the average loan size was a single digit EUR million figure. Not located mostly in Manhattan, but like this. I think that the regional banks will probably have more an effect on these kind of assets, more regional, small in size. I'm not saying that a regional bank can't finance a larger building, the clear majority will probably be more in regional assets and smaller size. Whereas take Manhattan is mostly taken care of more of the super banks, the large banks, large insurance companies, debt funds and CDO structures. If you would ask me what is the impact? For the time being, we have not seen an impact. I'm not saying there can't be an impact, but I don't believe that that will be major towards the commercial real estate that we finance. Yeah, absolutely. Long time to no speak. Thank you for your questions. I'm sorry, I'm just asking you negative questions. Apologies. No, it's not a problem. It's not a problem. Look, for the total US portfolio of $3.9 billion, we currently have in stage three, 38%. Let me remind all of you know, that indicates a relative dilution, only a relative dilution to the initial parameters. We were very good. It doesn't tell you about the absolute risk profile, which is still good. We have 4% in stage three, so around $160 million of the office NPLs that you can see on that page is US related. For stage one and two, the total risk provision is $38 million. The 38% number, what was that? That was stage two, was it? 38 was stage two. 4% is stage three. The EUR 38 million risk provision, that is for stage one and two, including the management costs. There would be some provisions on the EUR 20 million NPLs as well, yeah? There are, of course, provisions on the EUR 160 million NPL. That is, around a little bit more than EUR 10 million. Yeah. Got it. That's great. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Welcome. There are no further questions at this time. I hand back to you again, Jochen, for closing comments. No. I'd like to thank you for joining the conference call, and I think it was a really good conversation, really good discussion, really good questions we got from you. As always, we are happy to take on follow-up questions. Thanks again. Have a good day, and bye-bye. Thank you, everybody. Bye-bye. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you very much for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.