Good morning, everybody. I'm pleased to welcome you to today's conference call, and today's agenda will cover our results for the third quarter and the first nine months, and as well, an outlook for the full year 2023. I'm joined by our CEO, Jochen Klösges, and our CFO, Marc Hess. They will take you through the presentation, which will be followed by a question- and- answer session. Now, I'm pleased to hand over to Jochen. Jochen, the floor is yours. Thank you, Jürgen. Good morning, everybody. I would also like to welcome you to our conference call. Today, my colleague, Marc Hess, and I would like to review Aareal Bank Group's Third Quarter and Nine-Month Performance and provide you with an update on how we view the current situation of our business. Let's look at the key points on this first slide here. We continued our strong operating performance in the third quarter. Our results were stable compared with both last year's third quarter and with the first nine months of last year. We achieved this despite investments to increase efficiency at Aareon and a loss allowance totaling EUR 120 million in the third quarter. Profitability in our operating business has reached levels that allowed us to offset these costs. Net interest income rose by 35% year-on-year in the third quarter, and net commission income increased by 13%, mainly driven by Aareon's growth. Our strong earnings power underlines our resilience and allows us to actively manage our three business segments. Among other things, we were able to keep our portfolio of non-performing loans at a stable level. This was achieved by actively reducing NPLs while adding some exposures because of the current strained office markets, property markets in the U.S. However, we remain vigilant, and in the light of the ongoing political and economic uncertainties, we'll focus on even more conservative risk standards. I will give you more details on that later. So the good news in the current environment is that our funding activities were very successful in the first nine months of the financial year. Deposits generated from the housing industry remain above projections, our liquidity position is comfortable, and retail deposits generated by our online platforms have already passed the EUR 2 billion mark, mark or threshold. Aareal Bank also continues to have a very solid capital base. At 19.4%, our CET1 ratio remains at a high level despite our portfolio growth. We are therefore well prepared if geopolitical and economic conditions become even more adverse. At this point, I would like to hand over to Marc, who will be guiding you through the key financial indicators for the third quarter and the first nine months of this year. Over to you, Marc. Yeah, thank you, Jochen, and good morning. Welcome from my side, too. As Jochen just said, we have been able to maintain our strong income growth in the third quarter. And on slide number three, you can have a good overview of our key P&L figures. I think it tells first of all that our pre-provision profit is up by 28% in the first nine months, and this is after substantial investments of EUR 75 million into Aareon. And I think this is a clear evidence of how much we have strengthened our operating resilience over the last couple of years. This is what helped us to deal with this year's higher risk provisions to even achieve the results that we showed last year. Looking into the P&L lines, Jochen just mentioned net interest income. It reached 248 million. That's a record in the third quarter, and that's up 35% versus the third quarter last year, which really, all in all, made a decisive contribution to the results. Net commission income is also up by thirteen percent in the first nine months. At the same time, we have kept our costs under control. This allowed us to end the third quarter with stable results for both the first nine months as well as for the quarter. So now let's turn to the next slide that show you the details of the main P&L lines, starting with net interest income on page four. It increased by 38% in the first nine months, and that was driven by portfolio growth, solid new business margins, much above what we had last year and especially above what we had pre-COVID, and also our diversified funding mix helped here. Normalized interest rate levels, together with the high volume of client deposits, had also a positive impact on our deposit-taking business. We are also pleased with the increase of the fee income shown on the lower half of the slide, both in BDS and Aareon. They both contributed with 13% in total, which mainly comes from Aareon, of course. The share of recurring revenues compared to Aareon's total sales, and that's an important indicator for software companies, has gone up by 78%. No, not by. That would be great. To 78%. In absolute terms, Aareon increased the recurring revenues by 21%, and that, of course, includes the revenues generated by our SaaS solutions. So let's go to the next slide. Here you can see the admin expenses. They have gone up, at least at first sight. We have invested EUR 70 million in Aareon's efficiency program, which now includes the cost for replacing the hunting line. That's our credit facility that we gave to Aareon to finance M&A. And this has now been replaced by external credit facilities. The investments in efficiency measures at Aareon are starting to pay off. We are expecting an annual cost savings of up to EUR 20 million as a result of those measures going forward. Cost at the bank remained stable, with a cost income ratio in the banking business of only 31% in the first nine months of the year. I think even a better number in the third quarter; we have really reached very good levels here. Looking at risk provisions, which remained at a high level in the third quarter. This reflects the persistent headwinds coming from the U.S. office market, as you know. We continue to monitor the portfolio closely and have prepared for further NPL reductions during the first quarter as well. So we booked risk provisions totaling EUR 120 million in the third quarter, of which EUR 18 million are reported in the fair value and P&L line. Risk provisions for the first nine months amounted to EUR 316 million, with EUR 262 million in the risk provisioning LLP line, and EUR 54 million in the fair value and P&L line. During the third quarter, we increased risk provisions for the swift reduction of our NPL portfolio from approximately EUR 60 million to close to EUR 100 million, and this includes the loss arising from the sale of our remaining Russian exposure in the second quarter, and really puts us in the position to manage our NPL stock actively. Now I would like to hand back over to Jochen. Thanks, Marc. Now let's turn to our three business lines, and to start with structured property financing. We continued to pursue our selective approach, as in the previous quarters, and originated new business with conservative risk profiles. New business volume amounted to EUR 2.4 billion in the third quarter, and to EUR 6.5 billion for the first nine months of this year. This means we are on track to achieve our new business target for the year of EUR 9 billion-EUR 10 billion. Conservative risk standards remain an important factor. At 53%, the average new business loan-to-value ratio were at a very conservative level. We also continued to achieve attractive gross margins that average approximately 290 basis points, and that we were not only above target, but also clearly above previous years' level. Our new business is diversified by region and sector, with hotel properties accounting for the largest share in the first nine months of this year. This asset class is growing and remains attractive, something you probably noticed if you tried to book a hotel room over the summer. We are now seeing the rewards of our persistence during the pandemic. Our hotel clients appreciate that we stayed by their side. Our specific expertise in this sector and across all phases of the cycle is now paying off. We also established a dedicated new team in September to increase our exposure to financing alternative living properties. We are aiming to expand financing activities in this growth segment, which comprises student housing, micro apartments, and co-living properties. We will leverage our expertise in the hotel segment and in our already established student housing activities. At the end of the day, we're talking about a type of assisted living for people who don't need or can't afford larger flats. Instead, they prefer larger communal areas and all kinds of services, such as laundry and housekeeping services, a concierge, or a gym. As you can imagine, this has a lot in common with hotels. With a lending volume exceeding EUR 1 billion, Aareal bank is already one of the leading financing partners in this alternative living sector, and we want to build on that. This brings us to the Banking and Digital Solutions segment, where normalization of interest rate levels and the volume of client deposits in-house had a positive impact. Deposits from the housing industry average EUR 13.5 billion during the first nine months, which remains above our target level of EUR 13 billion. The structure of deposits is granular, because we execute payment transactions for 3,700 housing industry clients managing 8 million rental units. These deposits largely reflect the housing industry's working capital, and we benefit from a deep integration into our clients' payment processes. As expected, with the higher interest rate levels, we and other banks are observing a growing shift to term deposits. Yet, in our books, we also observe a growing proportion of tenant rental deposits, which are generally managed. This means we are holding up despite increased competition for deposits. This reflects our strong client loyalty and strong roots in the housing industry. Moving on to Aareon. Aareon is also performing well. Sales revenues grew by 13% in the first nine months, including revenues from software as a service. Recurring revenues rose by 21% year-on-year, raising their share of total revenue to a very good 78% on average for the past 12 months. The picture on the earnings side is also positive. Aareon's adjusted EBITDA for the first nine months rose by 37% year-on-year, with the adjusted EBITDA margin showing an increase to 26%. Aareon continued its acquisition growth path. In the third quarter, acquired IESA, the leading provider of property management software solutions in Spain. Aareon also succeeded in winning initial partners for the new Aareon Connect partner program in the U.K. and more clients on partners in Germany as well. In the third quarter, Aareon refinanced the facility provided by Aareal Bank with external long-term debt. This will reduce Aareal Bank's future net interest income by a low double-digit million EUR amount per annum, but will be offset by positive effects of around EUR 20 million annually from Aareon's efficiency enhancement program. We are anticipating the first cost savings of around EUR 10 million from the efficiency program already this year. Let us turn to the next slide. Solid new business during the course of the year has allowed us to increase the portfolio volume as planned, to EUR 32.8 billion as of end of September this year. This means we have already reached our target range for this year. Our portfolio composition has not changed much compared to the end of 2022. It continues to be broadly diversified across regions and property types. After we finally exited Russia in the previous quarter, we have now decided not to renew a final and last exposure in China. We are focusing on countries with credit and legal standards that are in accordance with Western jurisdictions. We do not offer loans for project developments, hence, we are thankfully unaffected by issues which have been making recent headlines. Yet we continue to provide financings, specifically for properties that require renovation, to improve their energy efficiency and enhance sustainability. This is evident in our growing green loan portfolio, which has reached a volume of EUR 3.4 billion, more than doubling within a single year. For example, last month, we completed an exciting new initiative in this area in Brussels. Fynn is a project is a former office building that has been converted to a sustainable mixed-use property. The building is a prime example of a change in the use of commercial real estate. It combines now office use with residential space, retail and storage space, and a hotel. The office part has already been leased long-term to the Flemish government. It is noteworthy that two-thirds of the concrete from the old high-rise building will be reused in the new property. This is how the circular economy works, and we are supporting this transformation with a green loan. Let's now take a look at the KPIs in the credit portfolio. The overall picture is, in fact, better than in 2019. Despite the strong headwinds on the U.S. office property market, the average loan-to-value ratio of 56% is at a very conservative level. It provides a good cushion in turbulent times like these. Moreover, at 9.6%, the yield on debt has once again improved significantly. As pointed out, hotels are doing very well now, with strong cash flows, thanks to the clear pickup in travel after the coronavirus pandemic, now in the second year. The retail sector is also recovering faster and more strongly than expected, benefiting from catch-up effects due to the post-corona normalization of life. Retail sales have increased significantly across Europe. In some cases, they are back above or above 2019 levels. Allow me to say a few words about office property. This sector has been in the spotlight for some time, especially, with regards to the topics of working from home and office occupancy. Let me be clear at this point, offices in good locations which satisfy modern standards, especially in terms of energy efficiency, remain attractive investments. That said, let's take a closer look at our U.S. portfolio and specifically the U.S. office portfolio on the next few slides. The U.S. portfolio totals EUR 8.6 billion, with offices at 50% and hotels at 32% being the two main asset types. For 90% of our entire U.S. exposure, the layered LTV is below 60%, and less than EUR 90 million have an LTV above 80%. In the U.S., we are only feeling headwinds in the office sector. The other asset types are fairly stable. Let's move now on to the U.S. office portfolio. All values have been reviewed during 2023, with 56% of this portfolio valued externally. These external valuations show the decrease of 20%-44% in the non-performing portfolio and a decrease of around 80% on average in the performing portfolio. At the end of September, we stress-tested our portfolio for a further 20% decline in value. The stress test showed that the average LTV of our office portfolio would increase from 68% to 85% in such a strong scenario. On this basis, less than EUR 60 million would have an LTV over 100%. In summary, the result shows that we have headroom, even under very conservative stress conditions. Let's briefly turn to the European office portfolio. You know, when we presented our results for the previous quarter, we looked into the question of whether the current situation in the U.S. was going to spread to Europe. As you can see in the chart below, on the left, LTVs in our European portfolio are still at a very comfortable level in all regions. We continue to enjoy significant buffers here. In Europe, we only finance offices in prime locations. In France, for example, only in Paris city locations, where in addition to existing properties, we also finance conversions into green offices. This accounts, in the meantime, for around 1/3 of all of our office property financings in Paris. Likewise, our financings in the U.K. are mainly concentrated in the city of London. It is also worth noting that we see considerable structural differences between the two continents. Let's now take a look at the group's portfolio of non-performing loans. The NPL ratio remains stable at 4.1% compared to the previous quarter, and this despite additions from the U.S. office property sector. This is because we successfully continued our swift reduction of legacy NPLs. We will not let up in this respect, so NPLs worth another EUR 300 million are currently being prepared for resolution, and as already mentioned, we have increased provisions for the swift NPL reduction. Marc will now look at our funding activities and our capital base and then explain our outlook to you. Over to you, Marc. Thank you, Jochen. Let's take a look at our balance sheet structure on page 17. We can certainly say we are well-funded. Our EUR 24 billion of long-term funds have a longer maturity than our CRE lending book. And in addition, with our housing industry payment deposits of around EUR 13 billion and retail deposits over now EUR 2 billion, we have established a well-diversified and stable funding and liquidity base. You can see our liquidity and funding, and funding ratios here. The LCR stood at 206%, and the NSFR at 116% at the end of September. The treasury portfolio investments are in very liquid, mainly public sector bonds, and we hedge our balance sheet against interest rate change risk. Thus, we have no significant unrealized losses within the portfolio. On the funding side, you can see that on the next slide, we continue to benefit from our broadly diversified funding mix. This makes us somewhat less vulnerable to prevailing high capital markets volatility. As you know, we have been working diligently over the recent years to broaden our funding sources, and as a result, we have attracted new investors, for example, through our cooperation with Raisin and through the launch of a commercial paper program. At the end of October, Fitch reaffirmed our ratings with a Senior Preferred A- with an unchanged negative outlook. Fitch especially referred to Aareon's good geographical diversification relative to peers, our sound capitalization, adequate funding and liquidity, and the resilient profitability. Fitch also noted that the benefits from rising net interest margins have so far offset higher loan impairment charges in the bank's U.S. portfolio, as you have heard today from us again. Let's turn to capital. Our capital ratios remain very solid. Our CET1 ratio is at 19.4%, and it's slightly up compared to the end of 2022, and unchanged to the second quarter of 2023. And this is despite the portfolio growth and the macro headwinds that we have seen. The leverage ratio is at 6.3%, and you can also see the fully phased ratio would be at 13.4%. So that brings us to the outlook on page 22. Overall, we continue to anticipate that we can achieve an operating profit at the lower end of the range, between EUR 240 million-EUR 280 million. On an adjusted basis, that is excluding what we mentioned, the extraordinary expenses for the investments in Aareon and the swift NPL reduction budget, that would all in all correspond to more than EUR 350 million. We now anticipate an investment of around EUR 90 million into Aareon, including the external refinancing cost of the hunting line for the full year. Of course, we have to say that significant geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainties continue, the effects of which are, of course, difficult to assess, unfortunately. If we look into the P&L lines, NII is expected to come in above the original guidance due to the strong year-to-date results. Net commission income is expected to be between EUR 315 million-EUR 325 million. However, given the challenges facing the U.S. office property sector, we are assuming that the full year risk provisions will significantly exceed the forecast from the beginning of the year. Just how much this is going to be is, of course, currently difficult to assess. And with that, I would like to hand back over to Jochen for the concluding remarks. Thanks, Marc. In conclusion, allow me to summarize. Firstly, the current environment is challenging, and there is great uncertainty regarding future political and economic developments. However, we're in a strong financial position. We have built strong earnings power over recent years, which enables us to absorb a variety of costs. All this shows our increased resilience. Secondly, our capital ratios are robust, and our funding is broadly diversified. We're in a position to actively manage our activities across all business segments, and we are maintaining our conservative risk standards with a watchful eye. And thirdly, even in a challenging environment, we are sticking to our medium and long-term goals to pursue increased efficiency and consistently implementing our strategy in our three business lines. And now we look forward to your questions. Thank you. 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 touchtone 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 leave 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 comes from Lougovtsov Alexei with Bank of America. Please go ahead. Hello, and thank you very much for your presentation. I just wanted to ask you about next year funding plan, and what bonds you will be using to meet maturities? Yeah, thank you very much for your questions. I think we had some interference, but I hope everybody on the line understood your question. Just to repeat it, it was about next year's funding plans. I think it would not differ very much from this year's. You know, we are an active issuer of covered bonds, so we plan to issue a series of covered bonds next year, probably beginning very early in the year. Then we also said, not for liquidity reason, but in order, let's say, to keep our thresholds for our rating, we would need to issue some Senior Non-Preferred. So this is certainly also something that you could expect for next year. Then a little bit further down the road, we may look at Tier II, but this is not yet decided whether this is something for next year or for the years to come. Therefore, a Senior Non-Preferred, what kind of size you think will be required? Well, certainly benchmark size, yeah, but not excessive volume, so to say. So, benchmark for you is EUR 500 or? EUR 500. Yeah, that's EUR 500. Euros. On the Senior Preferred, and- Well, as I just outlined, we are very happy and successful with the deposit gathering that we have on the cooperation with Raisin. So now we are at EUR 2 billion. We are also expecting, let's say, to increase that number slightly, probably not with the same dynamics as over the last 15 months, as we only started last year. So, you know, we are not taking any overnight money. This is all term, and therefore it's a good replacement for Senior Preferred. And therefore, as of today, I wouldn't say that we go out with a Senior Preferred. Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. star followed by one. The next question comes from Christian Leukers with CQS. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. Yeah, thank you for the presentation. I was just wondering about sort of M&A or any acquisitions or anything that you might have room for. Is there... I mean, I know you've had quite a ownership change and sort of setting down of potential territories, rather setting down area and that sort of thing going on. But I was also just looking at your structured property finance book and thinking there might be some opportunities to buy portfolios or anything else. And would that be in your current outlook for growth? I mean, I can see you've got a bit of growth put in for next year, but basically, is there additional room to maybe do some acquisitions or smaller bolt-ons? Thank you. So, good morning. If I understood your question correctly, it's about M&A activities at Aareon. You see, in the bank, in the bank. M&A activities in SPF is currently not on our agenda. So we are pursuing here a strategy which clearly steers in the direction of organic growth, and we have ample of opportunities to grow our business in various property sectors and regions. So there's nothing on our radar screen in terms of M&A for structured property financing. Can I just ask, so has your underwriting criteria changed on the structured property financing for the new fund book? So, if I understood correctly, you're asking for the underwriting criteria of the commercial real estate business. So you see, finally, we tried to take opportunities in various market situations. We had quarters where we did less new business, quarters where we did more new business. Finally, you can see that we achieved much higher gross margins as of about 290 basis points this year, clearly above previous years and clearly above our targets, our plan. At the same time, we are very strict on LTVs. I guess, the average LTV of new business was 53% during the first nine months, and we will definitely stick to that very strict underwriting policy for the next quarters. Thank you very much. Welcome. There are no further questions at this time. I hand back to Jochen Klösges for closing remarks. Okay. Thank you, everybody, for participating. You know, these are still challenging times. But I think you might see, if you take a closer look at our figures, that we are doing both things. We're trying, obviously, to cope with all the challenges which arise in various situations. You know, we are now in the fourth year of, let's say, challenging environments, starting in 2020, now in the year 2023. At the same time, it's important for us to really build on our strategy to invest in our businesses, to grow the business, obviously, always very much risk-oriented, and to increase our efficiency. You can see that clearly when you take a look at our cost-income ratio, for example. We maintained very good capital ratios, a very comfortable liquidity position. And it's gonna be the way we manage the bank forward, seeing, taking opportunities, being careful, in the same time, trying to increase the value of our franchise operation and our operations. So finally, I could only invite you if you have further questions. I guess Jochen and his team are ready to take further questions and happy to answer your questions. And yeah, hope to see you soon, and thanks for participating again. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.