Morning, welcome to the presentation of our interim results for 2023. As usual, I'll spend a few moments reflecting on the highlights of the first half. I'll give an overview of the economic landscape as we see it, as well as provide an update on our strategic development before I hand over to Donal, our CFO, who will bring us through the financial details, then we'll have some time for questions. As we move through the closing phase of the three-year transformation plan that we announced in December 2020, we're very pleased with how AIB Group is performing. We've overseen considerable positive change at AIB in terms of the strength of our customer franchise, the range of the products and the services that we present to market, the efficiency of our operations, and the quality of our balance sheet. At the outset, I want to thank my colleagues across the group for the energy and professionalism they invested in our transformation plan, that they brought to the task of onboarding, migrating customers, and seizing the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity presented by the imminent departures of Ulster Bank and KBC from our core market. Our group is in vigorous good health. Against a resilient economic backdrop, we're reporting organic growth in our lending book and continued deposit inflows on the liability side of the balance sheet. With a larger customer base in our core market than ever before, more assets at work, and a normalized monetary policy environment, we're reporting a very strong financial performance for the first six months of this year, with profit after tax of EUR 854 million. Given the performance to date this year and the momentum we see in our business, we're again upgrading our guidance for 2023, with net interest income expected now to exceed EUR 3.6 billion, with the expected ROTE tipping above the 20% mark. This performance is firmly underpinned by continuing conservatism in how we run the business. We're cautious and forward-looking in our underwriting, we're rational in our pricing, and we're prudent in our provisioning. We've no doubt that this is the correct approach today and for the long term, and it is supported by very strong capital and liquidity positions, with a CET1 of 15.7% reported at the end of June. As I said already, we are nearing the end of our current strategic cycle, and the group is in a position of great strength. We complete our product suite, migrate the great majority of the Ulster Bank portfolio acquisitions, while advancing the digitalization of our business with clear benefits for customers, for risk management, and for efficiency. We're also pleased with the progress on the broad ESG agenda in the first half of the year, with a strong performance by our renewable energy lenders being counterbalanced by a significant and deliberate pullback in new commercial property lending. Our leadership in the ESG area was recognised by our peers earlier this year in the Most Impressive Financial Institution ESG Bond Issuer award by GlobalCapital. In addition, a key milestone in the group's strategic evolution was reached at the end of June, with AIB returning to majority private ownership. I think it's only fair for us to regard the first six months of this year as very successful across a multitude of fronts. Turning now to the economy, while we are expecting a moderation in the pace of growth, the real rate of expansion in modified domestic demand is forecast to remain comfortably in positive territory. This confidence is underpinned by employment levels pushing to fresh all-time highs, a rate of unemployment of 3.8%, healthy household and business balance sheets, and a savings ratio of 14%. Households and businesses will also be supported by the ongoing fall in the rate of consumer price inflation, with a forecast of 2.8% penciled in for 2024. We do recognize and take account of the headwinds from the uncertain global environment and the sustained tightening of monetary policy, which are reflected in a softening in our own manufacturing PMI readings. We remain positive about the resilience of the domestic economy. We will continue to be a leading provider of capital to support economic, social, and environmental progress while maintaining robust credit discipline. We're now closing out on our 2021-2023 strategic plan, with 12 planned initiatives concluding successfully in the first seven months of this year. The scale of that plan's ambition required significant collaboration and effort right the way across the organization over the last number of years. I am pleased to report that the majority of transformation project activity is now behind us, with the migration of the bulk of Ulster Bank's tracker mortgage book taking place successfully last weekend. The group is now very well-positioned and is poised to deliver a strong and sustainable performance over the years ahead. 2023 has been a busy year on the product front, with years of planning and careful execution manifesting in an enhanced suite of customer propositions. AIB Life, our JV with Great-West Lifeco, is now live in the market, and we are pleased with its performance and look forward to it making a material contribution to the group over the medium and long terms. Highlighting the quality of the integration of Goodbody, we launched Goodbody Private, which significantly enhances the wealth proposition available to our customers. Meanwhile, we have just launched our AIB Business app, which allows us to align the mobile experiences enjoyed by both our personal and our business customers. We will continue to invest in new propositions to support our customers and to enhance our operational efficiency. The inorganics front, the Ulster Bank portfolio acquisitions and migrations are now substantially complete. A combined basis, these transactions introduced over 45,000 new customers to AIB Group, with associated drawn balances in excess of EUR 8 billion. We also welcomed 227 ex-Ulster Bank employees to AIB, who will work to service our expanded customer base. Together with our existing franchise, these acquisitions position AIB as Ireland's leading corporate business and personal bank. They add materially to our performing balance sheet today, as well as our prospects for sustained strong growth in the years ahead. From an organic lending perspective, headline new lending growth of 2% masks quite significant differences in the performances of our various business sectors. New mortgage lending was broadly flat, with the market adjusting to lower switcher activity and to a varying speed of interest rate changes across the competitive landscape, while personal lending increased by some 29%. Property lending was down by 20%, reflecting a conservative and risk-conscious disposition towards that sector, while new business lending was ahead by 12%, with particularly strong performances reported by both our corporate banking and our energy, climate action, and infrastructure teams. Reflecting the quality of our customer franchise and our underwriting discipline, our balance sheet is very resilient. Mortgages remain the largest part of our lending book, accounting for some 50% of loan exposures, with an increased appetite for our fixed-rate offerings, pushing that share of the portfolio to 62% today. Around 60% of mortgages have been underwritten since the introduction of the Central Bank of Ireland macroprudential rules in 2015, the book is characterized by relatively low LTVs in terms of both flow and stock. Our commercial real estate book, over 40% is residential in nature, with offices and retail assets accounting for 25% and 16% respectively. In line with our conservative and forward-looking approach to asset quality, we have increased CRE stage 2 assets by EUR 2.3 billion, we remain cautious on new lending opportunities in this space, at least in the near term. Meanwhile, we have made further progress in reducing non-performing exposures, which stood at 3.3% of gross loans at end June. Legacy pre-COVID NPEs now stand at 0.3% of gross loans, highlighting the huge progress made over many years in strengthening the quality of our balance sheet. It's worth recalling that in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, NPEs at AIB reached 30% of gross loans. Sustainability is core to our mission and will continue to play a central role in our strategic development as we prepare to enter our next planning cycle. Supporting all our customers in their transition to a lower-carbon future creates significant opportunities for remunerative and risk-conscious capital deployment, both domestically and in selected international markets. We continue to make progress towards meeting the ambitious 2030 targets we've set ourselves, not only in terms of lending, but also in relation to our own emissions as a business. We're looking forward to the autumn energization of our first solar farm in Wexford under our corporate power purchase agreement with NTR, which is key to our own net zero ambitions. We remain the leading ESG issuer domestically, and our peer-recognized leadership in this space is creating new advisory opportunities for the group. We were delighted with the further reduction in the state's shareholding in June, which returned AIB to majority private ownership. We, taking into account the partial relaxation of government remuneration restrictions, have updated our remuneration policies to provide healthcare for our colleagues from next year and a variable remuneration scheme of up to EUR 20,000 to be paid next year on foot of this year's performance, and accruals for this scheme are reflected in our costs outturn for the first half. We have delivered on our commitment to transform the group. More customers, more lending, more products and services. These are the underpinnings of our performance. Through ongoing and sustained investment in our digital infrastructure, we will continue to enhance the quality of our customer experience and the operational efficiency of the group. Of course, we remain disciplined in our underwriting and rational in our pricing, because that's in the best long-term interests of our customers and our shareholders. While the 2023 performance of AIB will be regarded as truly exceptional, with a ROTE above 20%, we are very confident in the ability of our franchise and our business to generate very strong returns over the years ahead. The capital that we expect to generate will be deployed to invest in our business, both organically as well as potentially through small earnings accretive bolt-on acquisitions, should such opportunities arise, while being very firmly committed to delivering progressive returns to our shareholders. The group is now in its most robust position in decades, and we're committed to building on that strength in the interests of all the stakeholders that we serve. We've had an exceptionally strong start to this year, and we're set to deliver superior returns over the years ahead. Having restored AIB, we will invest all our energies in ensuring the group remains sustainably strong for decades to come, and we look forward to updating you on our plans for the next phase of the group's development and our medium-term targets to 2026, when we close out this year. I'll hand over to Donal now. Thank you very much, good morning, everyone. We obviously finished 2022 with a very strong trajectory, so I'm gonna run through the financial highlights for the first half of the year. We had a profit after tax of EUR 854 million, total income of EUR 2.2 billion, and that was made up of interest income, up 98%, and other income, up 15%. Our costs were EUR 897 million, which is up 15%, and the amount of employees in AIB rose to 10,000, just over 10,000 staff. That gives us a cost-income ratio for the half year of 41%. Our gross loans are now EUR 62.8 billion, which is an increase of 3% from the end of the year. That's made up of two parts. Firstly, organic growth of 2% in the underlying business, which Colin would have talked to, and in addition, we onboarded some additional Ulster corporate loans of EUR 700 million. The tracker portfolio, which Colin alluded to, was executed in July or onboarded in July at around 80%, so that's not included in those numbers. Our asset quality remains very strong, and our ECL coverage is at 2.6%, with an NPE ratio of 3.3%. Our funding position is very strong. We saw an increase, a slight increase in customer accounts in the first half of the year, and overall, all of our liquidity ratios are very strong. Given the strong underlying performance, our CET1 fully loaded ratio is 15.7%. In terms of the income statement, there's nothing really here, that I won't touch on a little bit later, other than to run through some of the key financial metrics here. Our net interest margin, 2.94%. Return on tangible equity, 21.5%, and earnings per share for the first half of the year, at EUR 0.31. In terms of net interest income, obviously a huge number of moving parts here, given the speed, that which rates have moved. Just if I was to, to break these down into the main blocks, our liability costs would have increased, up to EUR 273 million. That's broken down into pay costs on deposits of around EUR 77 million, and then EUR 196 million really on wholesale liabilities, where we hedge all of our issuance. In terms of customer loans, there's obviously a benefit there of 33 basis points, and that's on a net basis. The underlying customer loans were up around 81 basis points, and a structural hedge is incorporated here, and that's at -48 basis points. There's a strong benefit from our investment securities of EUR 258 million. Our strategy has always been to asset swap all of our bonds, so this really sees the impact of the rising rate environment. Indeed, on the balances held with the central bank, there's a benefit of 116 basis points, or EUR 695 million. Overall, our guidance for 2023, we're happy to upgrade it from EUR 3.3 billion to greater than EUR 3.6 billion, and a net interest margin of greater than 2.9%. I think this slide is a really important one, just to really give a sense of the underlying factors that are gonna impact NII for 2023, and indeed into 2024. We've assumed an ECB deposit rate of 3.75% at the end of the year, and we've also assumed a Bank of England rate of 5.5%. The other key ingredients into this, I would say, is loan growth and loan growth assumptions, which I will touch on later. Overall, we see 10% growth in 2023 and around 3% growth per annum on an organic basis going forward. In terms of deposits, what we're seeing in terms of flows or movements from current accounts into more term deposits or term deposit accounts, in the first half of the year, our deposit beta would have been less than 10%, though we have been introducing more and more liability products for our customers, and we are beginning to see customers slowly transition into these products. By the end of the year, we probably see an exit deposit beta of just under 30%. Then as I look into 2024, we think that we'll be able to manage it and hold it in or around that level. Another key part of the interest income equation is related to our structural hedge. Obviously, I would have talked to this at the end of the year about our plan to term out duration and increase the quantum of the hedge. What I've tried to do here is break down the half year and show the quantum and the average yield for euros and sterling, and where I see the exit yields and the exit quantums for the end of 2023. Obviously, at the end of 2022, our quantum was around EUR 20 billion. This has increased to EUR 32.2 billion. We do see that increasing to EUR 33.1 billion, but there's a lot going on underneath the surface here. As we go into 2024, we think that the duration, particularly in euros, we wanna maintain at or above 4.3 years. The yields is obviously going to continue to increase as we continue to reinvest at higher yields. The decay that we see for, in 2024 is around EUR 10 billion, and that's obviously gonna be replaced with more hedges that are at the money. Overall, like I would have said, we wanted to slowly extend the duration of the hedge, and you can see with the older swaps maturing, being restruck at higher levels, as we go forward, that is going to provide a lot of support in a changing interest rate environment. Very strong other income, particularly in, on fees and income, fees and commissions. Probably two areas that I would draw your attention to. Number one is the impact from the forward contract from the tracker portfolio, and that was around EUR 125 million-EUR 126 million in the first half of the year. Obviously, as that transaction matures and comes on our balance sheet, that will come out of other income and into interest income. Really the driving force behind the fees and commission and the trajectory that we're seeing there, it's generated from the increase in new accounts and new customers, where we, we have 635 new customers, which Colin would have alluded to. We do see really strong trajectory coming into the second half of the year. Overall, for this year, we see other income around EUR 780 million. Costs are EUR 897 million, which is up 15%. Two main areas here. I would say on the staff side, we're seeing, and have seen, salary inflation from 2022 into 2023. We've increased our headcount by around just over 1,000 people, and we've also included an allowance for variable pay, which Colin would have alluded to, in 2023, of around EUR 30 million, and that will be for the full year. Overall, in G&A expenses, we're seeing inflationary pressures coming through here, not per se from an AIB perspective, but from external suppliers. Obviously, we have an expanded product range, an expanded number of customers that we need to manage. Exceptional costs, EUR 130 million. Legacy items and strategic items, which we believe are, are primarily concluded now, so we'll maintain our guidance for the full year on exceptionals. As we look to the future, with respect to positive things or headwinds, we obviously have a larger customer base, and we, we need to manage those. We need to onboard all of the inorganic initiatives, which we have effectively concluded in July. The inflationary environment, though still there and reducing, is having an impact, and like I said, there will be an impact in 2023 and 2024 from variable pay and insurance, but we do obviously have the benefits from our transformation program still accruing. Our full year costs are expected to be circa EUR 1.8 billion, with a cost income ratio in the low 40s. In terms of ECL, small charge for the first half of the year, maintained our cover rates at similar levels to the end of the year. I think that the credit story, as I would say or see it, is retail consumer portfolios are remaining very resilient, notwithstanding the fact that rates have moved and net disposable income have changed or reduced. We're keeping a close eye on this, but certainly very few signs of deterioration to date. On the positive side, the businesses or the industries and sectors that were most heavily hit by COVID or impacted by COVID, they've all rebounded very strongly. We're talking leisure, hotels, et cetera. We're seeing really strong performance in that area. The one area where I would say we're, we're, we're pretty focused on is specific areas in the real estate world, and more specifically in the office space or in the residential investment space. In the first half of the year, we would have moved around EUR 2.3 billion of assets from stage one to stage two in these sectors. Obviously, this is a, a yield impact on valuations, tighter interest rate cover ratios. This is just a prudent forward-looking approach. Overall LTV in our commercial real estate portfolios are around 54%. We're just being cautious and very focused on that particular area. For full year 2023, maintain guidance here, 30-40 basis points through the cycle, and more likely to be at the lower end of that range for 2023. In terms of balance sheet, not really too much changing overall at the half year. You know, the larger change will take place in Q3, as we see the impact of the Ulster tracker portfolio come on board. Overall, for the half year, EUR 45.5 billion held with central banks, EUR 31.2 billion at the ECB, and around EUR 4 billion with the Bank of England. Loan book movement. Overall, we've seen 3% increase in the first half of the year, and for the full year, we see that being greater than 10%, which is slightly more than what we would have imagined at the last quarter. Our funding position remains very strong. Loan to deposit ratio, 59%, LCR 164, NSFR 158. You can see that the largest part of our liability base is in our retail banking franchise. It is in customer deposits, and within those customer deposits, around 53% of those will be covered by various guarantee schemes. Very strong from a liquidity perspective and from the MREL perspective, and ratio is 31.4, and that's in excess of our requirements. The CET1 outturn is very strong, 15.7%. That's a 5.1% buffer to our head of SREP, and a 5.9% ahead of SREP on a transitional basis. Few moving parts within that, obviously, really strong financial performance, so 150 basis points of capital generation. 40 basis points charge for the buyback that was executed in 2023, a 50 basis points reduction for the acquisition of the Ulster Tracker portfolio. We've made a 100 basis points charge with respect to a dividend, which is at the upper end of our policy payout range, and there's a 40 basis point impact for RWAs for redeveloped and approved models in the mortgage and corporate space. We did make some efficiencies of 20 basis points, which is part of BAU, but overall, a really strong outturn in CET1. I'm gonna wrap it up now. Guidance for the year, just to pull it all together. We see net interest income greater than EUR 3.6 billion. Net interest margin, greater than 2.9%. Other income, around EUR 780 million. Cost of EUR 1.8 billion. Cost of risk at the lower end of the 30-40 basis point range, and a ROTE of circa 20%. When we're to think about distributions, no significant change here from what we've talked about before. Obviously, the focus for us has really been on business performance, organic capital generation, being mindful of all regulatory developments, and really driving that performance for 2023. In 2024, from 2023's profits, we will look to pay ordinary distributions utilizing our normal dividend policy and consider additional distributions to move from our CET1 towards our medium-term target. As we move to our next strategic cycle, with a continued focus on creating shareholder value and sustainable returns, we will review our medium-term targets and update these in due course. Thank you very much. Thank you, Donal. Now we're going to go to the lines for some questions. Our first question this morning is from Raul Sinha at JPM. Good morning, Raul. Good morning, Colin, Donal. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Can I have two, please, to start with? The first one is just on NII, just thinking about the very strong momentum you've got. You've, you've just described the performance that AIB will deliver this year as, as somewhat exceptional. I think last call, you were keen for us not to upgrade the 2024 NII expectations too much. I mean, obviously looking at this performance and even triangulating what you're saying around deposit beta with your hedging activity, it appears that there should be a little bit more of a follow-through into 2024 in terms of the NII upgrade. Would you care to comment on that? Maybe if you don't wanna talk specifically about 2024, could you talk about the stability of NII from a medium-term perspective? That's the first one. Shall I give you my second one, or? Yeah. Do you want to take that first? Give us the second one, yeah. In terms of the second one, I guess, the ordinary dividend, again, going back to the exceptional nature, nature of profitability this year, the ordinary dividend payout potentially should be towards the low end. Just thinking about, you know, whether or not you want to maintain a progressive dividend as well, over the medium term. Should we think about the mix within your distributions to be weighted predominantly towards buybacks, perhaps greater than 50%, in terms of payout from buybacks and perhaps towards the low end of your, of your payout ratio for the dividends? I'll briefly speak about the second question first before I hand over to Donal to address the first one. We have an established ordinary dividend policy, 46% payout of distributable profits. We're not going to provide guidance at this stage in relation to the exact level. That is obviously going to be the subject of board debate when we actually conclude 2023. We have consistently said that we wanted to embed the inorganic acquisitions, we wanted to complete the transformation program. In 2024, we would look to begin the process of returning our surplus capital to our shareholders, subject to a supportive economic environment, subject to regulatory approval and subject to board approval. Our intention is to do that or start that process in 2024 out of the 2023 performance. Yeah. Hi, Raul. I think with respect to the NII, the outlook, certainly from my perspective, is all very much in line with what my expectations were, with respect to asset growth, with respect to how we've increased our structural hedge. The great unknown is really around behavior, customer behavior. As we brought on online, more products of different durations, et cetera, trying to estimate what the behavioral aspects of that were gonna be. We've seen kind of a low flow from current accounts to term accounts in the first half of the year. We do think that it is going to increase in the second half of the year, but like I said, as we go into 2024, you know, I still see the betas, you know, close to, close to that exit level. You know, as a result of that, and given the, the, the very strong performance of 23, as we go into 24 and 25, the trajectory is, is, is certainly stronger than what we would have imagined the last time we spoke. Thank you, Raul. Our next question is from Alastair Ryan at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Good morning, Alastair. Good, good morning. Just to press on, things you, things you don't want to answer again, but nice problems. First on the bad debts. I mean, the bad debts in the first half is all, you know, management overlays again, which are now a very high proportion of your total loan loss reserves. Given the strength of your book and the strength of the economy, you know, I'm trying to see where your bad debts might come from in the second half. It doesn't, doesn't. It feels like your number is very conservative there. Secondly, just on the capital. It almost feels like you need to be dis-distributing. If you're only growing at 3%, you're gonna need to be making very high distributions to, to keep your capital ratio flat rather than, rather than going down. I suppose to ask the question in a way you might answer, why, why is there only 3% growth in the, in the loan book, given the capital generation from, from next year onwards? Thank you. In relation to the provisioning, the bulk of what we're seeing and what we're reporting in the first half of the year is, is a PMA. It's our best judgment as to what may happen in terms of the credit environment as we move through the back end of the year. It's very much in line with our, our, our conservative approach. We have a very conservative approach to underwriting. We have a very conservative approach to the assets we choose to put onto the balance sheet, and we have a very big conservative approach to provisioning. We strongly believe, at a philosophical level, that that is unquestionably the best way of running the bank in the long-term interests of all our stakeholders. It is a reflection of the fact that we are dealing with an evolving monetary policy environment, and we haven't seen the full impact of the tightening monetary policy yet, and we are still dealing with a uncertain global economic environment. Yeah, I think the question around the return on tangible equity or how that evolves over time, we wanna deal with all of our medium-term targets together very comprehensively, we will do that in due course. You know, the trajectory on income is certainly a little bit more than what we would have expected the last time we spoke. We are cognizant of the fact that our return on tangible equity and our return on equity. That gap is widening. What we do have now, I think, is a very good view of where ECB rates are going and where they're gonna stop. The outlook for 2024 and 2025 is certainly a lot more certain than, than it has been for a while. We have concluded all of the inorganic items, so we certainly feel like we have all of the key ingredients now to look to the future with a, with a, with a, a good understanding of the baseline, so we can address all of the capital structure in its entirety, with respect to investment in the business and obviously, a return to shareholders. Thank you very much. Next question is from Chris Cant at Autonomous. Good morning, Chris. Good morning, both. Thanks for taking my questions. If I could just again ask on the NII outlook into 2024, please. When I think about your, your guide for this year, the greater than EUR 3.6 billion, the sort of quarterly progression applied in the first half, I, I guess you're pointing to an exit run rate post that 30% beta assumption of something like EUR 3.6 billion as of kind of the Q4 exit run rate. If you're then expecting the deposit beta and deposit trend component of the NII walk to be sort of stabilizing into 2024, and you've got EUR 10 billion of positive structural hedge churn plus a bit of loan growth, should we be then expecting 2024 NII to be sequentially higher? Is there something else that you're worrying about taking a bite out of the NII as we look into 2024? It feels like, you know, absent a significant unhedged rate move from the ECB downwards, we should actually be expecting probably some growth year-over-year into 2024. That would be the first question, please. The second is on cost. I know, towards the back of the slide, you sort of flagged you're gonna be revisiting the guidance and the targets in due course, but I think formally, you're still guiding to a sub EUR 1.75 billion cost number for 2024. I presume that isn't really what you're now expecting, absent some other cost programs that you're thinking about impacting year-over-year. I think previously, you were saying sub 1.75 for this year and next. You're now saying circa 1.8 for this year, then still sub 1.75 for next. I just wanted to understand how we should be thinking about that. Is that guidance now effectively a bit stale on 2024 costs, please? Thank you. Okay, Chris, thanks very much. I think overall, if I, if I, if I look at the, the, the, the cost picture, in 2023, we've effectively revised guidance on the income side, up around EUR 630 million. Then today, we've obviously adjusted costs for 2023, up around EUR 50 million. For 2023, I think we're all pretty comfortable with that. Our transformation program is still in place. The EUR 200 million takeout, 50% of that is completed, prior to 2023. 25% of that concludes in 2023, and then the last 25% of that will conclude in 2024. The main impact in costs that we're seeing in 2023 is from the increase in, in, in, in FTEs. If I was to speak just at the highest level on that, we probably see that quantum plateauing in 2023, and then 2024, 2025 and beyond, beginning to reduce again, you know, as we get all of the customers onboarded. The new item is, as Colin alluded to, the change in variable pay, and also the introduction of insurance for all of our staff members, which was announced last November by the Minister for Finance. We need to take that into our thinking, but we will take a provision for 2023 of around EUR 30 million for that, and then just try and understand that a little bit better for the future. That certainly is new. Look, overall, you know, our, our customer base is higher than it's ever been before. Our goal, it really is to maintain and improve our customer service. We need to bring our expanded product suite to our enlarged customer base, and that's gonna be a huge focus for us as we go forward. We're gonna drive efficiencies through digitization and simplification. Thematically, they are the things that will be on our minds for the outer years, and then I've tried to give you some specifics that have impacted us for 2023. In terms of NII, I think that 2023, if we're to talk about peak NIM, et cetera, 2023 will definitely be the peak year. That really is just because the, the speed at which rates move and the benefits that we're seeing in the, particularly in the first half of the year and, and going into the second half of the year, you know, they're, they're just not likely to repeat again. You know, the, the, the hard thing to predict is, is the behavioral side. I've really tried to, to, to, to give you an understanding of our current thinking there around the deposit beta. You're right around the, the, the structural hedge as we go forward, 2023 into 2024, with, with, with, with the churn there at new rates, that will be a marginal benefit on an overall basis, but I would... 2023 will be the peak year, but the impact on 2024, 2025, I don't see as being too material. Thank you. We're next, we're going to John Cronin at Goodbody. Good morning, John. Good morning, thanks for taking my questions. Just firstly, like a clarification one on the deposit pass-through. Does that exit second half, less than 30% beta relateS to the entire suite, the EUR 103 billion, or just the interest-bearing component? Just a clarification there. Secondly, perhaps another clarification. On rate sensitivity on the table at the back end of the presentation, you outlined that a 100 basis points reduction in official rates would drive a EUR 288 million head to Euro NII. On that look, is there anything you can tell us around what assumptions you're making within that disclosure around fixed and variable mortgage rate, pass-through of lower rates? Are you assuming it's just automatically pass-through, or are there different assumptions? Thirdly, on the RWA efficiencies that you mentioned, I know we've kind of spoken about this before, and it's, you know, obviously at 2024 or later, sort of timeframe, but if you-- is there any kind of directional sense, roughly, that you could give us in terms of the potential sizing of CET1 capital ratio benefit that you could generate through those efficiency programs over, perhaps a, over an elongated time period? Thank you. Hi, John. Thanks very much. Just to go through these, when I talk about beta, I look at the entire deposit portfolio, so it's everything. I don't try and segment it down. In terms of the IRBB assumptions, you know, I haven't highlighted these specifically. I've been really focused on my assumptions around pass-throughs in a rising rate environment. I n terms of focusing on the downside sensitivities, I don't really want to go into too much detail on those, 'cause I really wanna work through and validate some of, some of those assumptions directionally. It's obviously correct. You know, structural hedge has increased from EUR 20 billion to EUR 32 billion and is extending in duration. It's certainly a lot less, but I'm just not comfortable with any of the assumptions in a falling rate environment just yet. I'm still really focused on the asset side and the rising rate environment. In terms of SRT, you know, we have organizationally focused on the inorganic activities, and now they have concluded. I've included in the slide, basically, you know, my intention to execute an SRT transaction in the first half of 2024. What I would say is, it's certainly not my intention to do a jumbo portfolio type of SRT. I think these types of products, this is a capital management tool. I wanna be able to introduce it and be able to execute transactions on a multi-year basis. You can expect to see multiple SRTs over the coming years, and quantums probably not in the particularly large size, maybe targeting EUR 1 billion per transaction. I would say, like, it depends on the portfolio which you're focusing on. Some are gonna have a different impacts, but we certainly look to be targeting on a EUR 1 billion transaction, something like a 30 basis point benefit. You know, I'll be able to update closer to the time, when we're closer to deal time. Thank you. Now we're going over to Diarmaid Sheridan in Davy. Good morning, Diarmaid? Thank you. A couple questions, if I may. First of all, just around the loan book and the guidance of, greater than 10% growth. I guess if we include Ulster Bank, that looks like you're, you're not assuming much more by way of, of growth in the second half. Just curious to see what, what, what you're seeing at, at the moment, and, and what particular parts of the portfolio are, you know, commercial real estate is obviously going to be a struggle in the second half of the year. What areas are, are growing relative to what areas are, are, are a little bit more stagnant? Maybe just to follow on, from, from John's last question there around, risk-weighted initiatives. I mean, obviously, if we look at your mortgage portfolio, now that you've got TRIM reflected, you've a very high risk-weighted density on that portfolio. You also have quite a material standardized component from mortgages. At what point in time does that begin to normalize, I guess, to an extent? You know, the system across Europe is much, much lower than that. When we look at kind of lending in Ireland, LTVs are not, you know, massively out of line with anywhere. You know, we've got macroprudential rules which cover a very significant proportion of the book. When are you going to start to see benefits of that, you know, relative to what the IRB model today indicates you need to employ on those portfolios? Thank you. Okay, thanks, Diarmaid. In terms of the various parts of the loan book, personal lending very strong in the first half, up, up 29%. Business lending up 12%. Within that, the strongest performing part was again, our energy, climate action, and infrastructure division, which increased its total new lending by about 2,025%. Mortgage growth pretty flat. The key driver there is the absence of switcher activity more than anything else, and we don't expect to see switcher activity picking up in the back end of the year either. What you've seen in the first half in terms of CRE lending, down 20%, half 1 over half 1. I, I think that's probably broadly indicative of the trend we'll see as we move towards end 2023. Look, Diarmaid, on the, on, on the risk weightings, the way that we would tend to think about this is clearly never to make positive assumptions about RWA improvements, because one can only set oneself up for, you know, negative surprises. Obviously, as new business is, you know, originated and operated on new models over a period of time, there is a benefit, okay? It is a multi-year benefit. Really, the, the, the rationale for me wanting to introduce, let's say, more capital-efficient technology like SRTs, is to be able to optimize the capital in different portfolios at different times, et cetera. I might look at a corporate portfolio, I might look at a mortgage portfolio. It'll just give us the flexibility to be able to manage where, let's say, the market may price risk versus where, where we have a different risk weighting internally. Historically, in years gone by, I've, I've, I've steered clear of executing transactions like this. You know, the cost, I felt at the time, was prohibitive at a time when our, our, our, our capital was particularly strong. As we go, as we move into the future, I want to get more efficient on the capital. I want to have all of the different levers that are available, and if risk is priced different in capital markets versus obviously our, our, our own risk weightings, well, then, that's, that's, that's, that's the way in which we will be able to narrow that gap. Thank you. We're now going to Grace Dargan in Barclays. Good morning, Grace. Maybe if I could just come back on the beta t he implied, just less than 30 by the end of the year, that's a really significant step up in H2. It'd be interesting to hear what kind of mix shift you're assuming to get there. Are you assuming any kind of underlying pass-through on current account savings? It just seems very difficult to get to that kind of below 30%. Then secondly, on the structural hedge, you've given some really helpful commentary. Maybe you could just probe a little bit more on that. I appreciate you don't have a, a kind of evenly rolling hedge, and you've called out the EUR 10 billion next year. Maybe what do you expect to be reinvested in Q3, Q4 this year? What is the yield on the subset of those swaps being reinvested in H2 and in 2024? I guess in particular, one UK bank disclosed that they've effectively pre-hedged some of their structural hedge. Would you do that? Would you be prepared to do that? Interested for your thoughts. Thank you. Okay, thanks very much, Grace. I think overall, on the structural hedge, the bulk of the activity for 2023 is all but complete. Really, what I tried to do in the slides was show you the exit, the exit stage, which will encompass all movements. As I go to 2024, difficult looking at quantum, sometimes you would rather duration over quantum. The hedges that we will do throughout 2024, in sterling, it's very formulaic. You know, every month we just re-hedge at 10 years, okay? We maintain that duration of around 5 years, whereas in Europe, which is our core market, with all of the retail behavioral stuff, it can be a little bit more nuanced. Obviously, to maintain a duration, greater than 4.2, 4.2 years, you're going to see, you know, hedging activity, I'd say, between 3 and 8 years, you know, at a weighted average of around 5%. The timing of that will probably be fairly straight line on a quarterly basis through 2024. In terms of yields, it really depends what kind of, what kind of forward curve you want to imagine. In terms of the betas, look, it's very hard to predict. I would say for H1, within Ireland overall, the deposit betas were very low. All of the banks are introducing different saver products at different levels, yet there hasn't been that much movement, perhaps because, you know, there wasn't much certainty around, let's say, peak ECB rates. You know, I just have to imagine that as time goes by, we will see a normalization of behavior, to an extent, and certainly, management's best view at the moment is, is, is in line with that exit beta of just less than 30%. Okay, thank you, Donal. We're now going to Seamus Murphy at Carraighi ll. Good morning, Seamus. Good morning. Yeah, good morning. Sorry, Don, I just want to come back, please, if you don't mind, just on to related questions to your peak NIM assumption in 2023. I suppose I was just looking at your average balance sheets on page 31, and when we think about the customer spread, it's broadly flat since ECB started to raise interest rates. I think it's up about 30 basis points, and that's primarily due to a sharp fall in loan margins relative to 3-month Euribor. Like in other banks in Europe that we look at, which are Euribor- sensitive, customer spread has expanded significantly. I suppose in your case, it has not, and most of you are in upside coming from other items in your balance sheets. When we think about that, as we look forward, then assuming that the majority of your balance sheets or your loans are contractually linked, ex your fixed rate mortgage book, then surely the customer spread would have to rise if we assume a flat deposit beta, sorry, kind of like a 30% deposit beta entering into the second half of, into the first half of next year. I suppose the, the question is, it really seems impossible to call peak NIM if you do have a repricing on your loan side, and your customer spread should rise over time. The second question then, I suppose, a similar question in relation to the peak NIM assumption in 2023, it was just structural hedge. I know people have asked about this bit, my understanding was that you had, I think, EUR 20 billion at the end of 2022, and EUR 14 billion of that had a very short maturity of 18 months. I do appreciate that the new additions to the hedge will be a drag because the yield curve is inverted, but these additional EUR 14 billion that you're targeting will be a drag to NIM. If your, the new additions, like in terms of the EUR 14 billion that's rolling, I think that you previously said that costs you EUR 400 million-EUR 500 million of NII in 2023, but that comes back. Therefore, really, we should be thinking about, you know, an additional EUR 300 million-EUR 400 million of additional upside on your NII. So when I add those things together, unless we see a really, really sharp rise in the deposit beta way above your expectations, and it's very hard. I mean, maybe my math are completely wrong, but it's very hard to see how NII doesn't grow more substantially into 2024 rather than what you're calling out on the call this morning. Thank you. Yeah, I think you've, well, you've certainly done the sums correctly there, I give you the moving parts with respect to maturities and new hedging activity overall. I n 2023, you know, there, there's, the, the, those maturities at lower yields, we are moving, moving the weighted average yield on that portfolio more at the money, certainly in euros, sterling, obviously 3% away from rates. Look, that, that, that, that's as it's, as, as it's described, the effect there will, will, naturally be, be positive, the, the extent of that will be, will be, will be down to what happens on interest rates. I just don't want to, it would be incorrect of you to run away on the net interest income side. You know, there will be an improvement on the SHP, but there is going to be increased costs related to paying away on liabilities and deposits. We haven't really see it, seen it yet, but there's an inevitability to it. Indeed, it's something that we will be encouraging our customers, you know, with a, with a different, product suite and moving to that more normalized ALM position, which we are moving towards quite carefully and cautiously. For me, that's the key focus for sustainable underlying profitability, 2024, 2025, getting to that more normalized ALM position and putting in place, various, protection measures, to, to, to protect against, let's say, the, the, the range of possible outcomes in a, in a, in a changing rate environment. Thank you very much indeed. We're now going to Borja Ramirez at Citi. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two quick questions. The firstly is a follow-up on deposit beta. Your loan-to-deposit ratio is at 59%, so it's one of the lowest in Europe and below your domestic peers. I would, I would expect your deposit beta to be below your peers, given you have a bit more, maybe more flexibility, in terms of managing deposits. Also, and I understand that with regards to the evolution towards the second half of the year. Is it correct to assume that deposit beta should, should, they should- it should be quite stable there or a slow increase into the summer season, and-... Also if you could give details on the latest developments, given the increase in the deposit rates. What have been the customer trends in terms of moving from into your new liability products? Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. Well, in relation to customer behavior, we haven't seen that much migration from demand deposits into the fixed products that are out there yet. We are expecting it to happen as we move through the summer into the autumn and towards the year end. That behavioral assumption is one of the driving factors behind what Donal has been talking about in relation to beat expectations as we exit 2023. Yeah, with respect to the LDR 59, that's gonna change, obviously, in Q3 with the onboarding of the old Ulster Bank, but still very, very low. You know, we're in a small market, but it's still a competitive market. Obviously, we will look to ensure that we're able to price assets, liabilities fairly for all of our customers, and obviously ensure we do that, at appropriate levels. To make sure that all of our balance sheet is working on an accretive basis. Thank you. We're at the last question of the morning. We're going to Andrew Stimpson at KBW. Good morning, Andrew. Morning, everyone, thanks for taking my questions at the end. 2 for me, please. Firstly, on commercial real estate and then 1 on returns. On c ommercial real estate, have you, I know you've shifted to stage 2 there. Have you had to take any actions on any of those exposures yet? i.e., have you had any covenant breaches or waived the covenants or anything like that? I'd be interested in the color there. Then on the second 1, I, I have to say, I really hate it when analysts do what I'm about to do, so you'll have to forgive me, please. One of the things we've had from, from bank investors is whether governments or anyone else will allow banks to make such high returns. Has there been any sort of guidance, pushback, anything like that from any supervisors, regulators, local officials, who, who are, who are, you know, gonna raise their eyebrows at a 20% return on tangible equity? I, I know that's an annoying question, as it's great to see a bank produce great returns like this, but nevertheless, that is a question that I think is gonna come up. Thank you. On the returns, the, the, we are characterizing, the ROTE that we expect to deliver in 2023 as exceptional. I certainly am not aware of any eyebrows being raised in any quarter, in relation to the, the exceptional performance that we have delivered, and the very, very strong financial results that we, we, we presented, today. There is a direct and symbiotic relationship between how strong this bank is and the strength of the Irish economy, and, we are not, alert to or aware of, any signs that the success of the bank is generating concern at regulatory or political levels. Yeah, just specifically on the commercial real estate question, you know, as we look through the overall portfolio, and we're trying to look at areas that are gonna be impacted by higher rates, typically, valuations lag what we all imagine is gonna happen, okay? I think given that rates have moved 4% in around 12 months, well, we can, we can, we can figure out, you know, at a total level where valuations should go. We've really just looked at some of our transactions that are maturing in 2023 and 2024, and we're imagining what the impact is gonna be on those from a higher rate environment. We make a number of different assumptions. ICR cover breaches are going to be an inevitability of banks that lend to commercial real estate if they were underwritten at tight levels in the first place. Any change to that would be a significant increase in credit risk. We've really been quite front-footed on this. I know there's a spotlight on this segment from the market. We're very happy to highlight our portfolio. We'll work with all of our borrowers. We're gonna ensure that we are able to continue to lend through the cycle to all of our customers. In terms of actual real deterioration, we're not seeing any of that. This is just a forward-looking view on those parts of the real estate sector. There you have it. We've just moved past the top of the hour. Thank you very much indeed for your questions and for your attendance here this morning, and we very much look forward to getting back to you all in the autumn, when we present our update for the third quarter. Thank you.