Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Anima Holding First Half 2022 Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Alessandro Melzi d'Eril, CEO of Anima Holding. Please go ahead, sir. Hi to everybody. Thank you very much for attending our first half conference call, 2022 first conference call. I would say that we can go directly to our presentation as always. I will start from page four and summarize our first semester. In the first six months of 2022, we showed steady margins and improving net management fees. Even though, as we know, AUM were impacted by negative market trends like many of us, both in terms of equity and fixed income performance. We showed positive net flows of almost EUR 1 billion in the first half. Even though, as I said, we registered a negative WAP for mutual funds in the region of -0.5%. Looking at the financials, fixed fees are up 4% versus last year for six months. Of course, if you look at total revenues, we are strongly impacted by the performance fees on absolute return funds that were not meaningful in the first six months. Net income margin still above 70%. This is always thanks to our top line and cost efficiency. Top line resiliency and cost efficiency. Strong cash flow that enable us to restart our buyback with an additional EUR 13 million that we'll end probably by 2026. Page five, the business by segment. Retail or Reclassified business by segment. Retail at 49% of AUM, banks accounting as the first among our clients, accounting approximately for 41% of the total assets. BNP's approximately 15%. Institutional, 51% AUM, EUR 93 billion approximately. Page six, looking at the performance. We continue to overperform the Italian industry, -9.5%, as I said before, versus -10.7% of Italian industry. So we [audio distorted] then we'll get back to it. In terms of funds breakdown, as always, overexposed to flexible and balanced if compared to the industry. Page seven. Okay, we wanted to show you the performance of our range of mutual funds in the semester. First of all, I would like to highlight that we don't have assets with more than 20% losses, and as we will see, we are probably one of the few. We have 6% of AUM in positive ground. Looking at this table. This chart. On the y-axis, we show the AUM, so the size of the AUM, of the fund. On the x-axis, we show the year-to-date return. This shows what I said, so that we have on red the 6% of assets in positive ground, and we don't have any assets exceeding -20% in terms of performance. If you go to page 8, as I was saying, this is a table showing a comparison of Anima, of Anima performance in the first six months, compared with the main peers, domestic and international, distributing in terms of these are only assets distributed in Italy, in Italian market, and with AUM mutual funds above EUR 30 billion. As you can see, Anima has shown its main, I think, characteristics. The ability to protect the capital of our clients, in particularly volatile environment. As you can see, our average return is -9.5%. Of course it's not positive, but this is what the market has provided. But we don't have assets with a disastrous performance. We have also quite significant percentage of assets in positive ground. I think that we did our job in this first six months of the year. Page nine. For what concerns the scenario that we are going to face now, from now on in terms of interest rates, so a scenario where interest rates are higher than in the last years, I would like to remind you what we did in the past, because I think it's important to see what we will do probably in the future. Back in 2011, Anima launched a strategy called Traguardo, which was a targeted fund, five to seven-year maturity. But of course, we are taking advantage of high interest rates on, especially on BTPs, diversifying the portfolio and providing return to our clients. We started in 2011, and between 2011 and 2014, we reached over EUR 10 billion in these strategies. Again, in 2018, when the rates hiked, we restarted the strategy, and we launched Traguardo. This is something that we take out of the closet when we have these situations. This is what we are doing with it now. Page 10. Always on this Traguardo. At the time when we launched the strategy, the investors were disoriented in terms of portfolio allocation. We were able to launch 34 products in less than four years, as I said, reaching more than EUR 10 billion of assets. These are simple solutions with delivering positive performances to our clients. We're now also granting fee generation for our distribution networks. Over time, this is the graph on the right side of the page at the bottom. During that time, the close trend highlight how clients consolidated the performances, and then they moved out of these strategies to new strategies. This is clear between 2014 and 2015. Page 11. As I said, what we are doing now, we go back to this strategy. This is not the only strategy we are working on, but it's something that we believe is particularly suitable for our clients in this period and is in this environment. We already launched a new Traguardo with almost EUR 300 million collected in five weeks. At this time, in this period, we also introduced in the portfolio an equity component that we believe can provide a better performance in the medium run to our clients, and the clients got more used to that in the last years. I think that this is the way Anima is reacting, is adapting to the new scenario, and that will help us in raising money in the next few months. Let's see some numbers. Page 13. Our P&L. In terms of revenues, net revenues were up 4% if compared to last year. Performance fees, let's say negligible if compared to last year. Last year was an incredible year. We did our historic record in terms of performance fees cash during the year. And this year we are doing, at the moment, probably our historic negative record, given the scenario that we are facing in terms of market performance. Operating expenses, - 4%, from EUR 44 million of last year to EUR 42 million this year. This is to demonstrate as always our capability to keep the cost more than in this period, strictly under control. EBITDA, EUR 132 million approximately. The net income almost EUR 16 million for the six months. Just note on the other income, this includes also the market, the negative market of our liquidity invested in mutual funds, of course. Right side of the page, margins. The margins are stable, notwithstanding the negative returns in various asset classes like BTPs of course. But this is also due to the fact the negative performance of Class I AUM, where we capture low, very low profitability. We have stability in the margins. This is, let's say, I think is also good news because demonstrate again the resiliency of our company also in these difficult and complex environments. Cost income. Further improvement in cost income, excluding performance fees. Then tax rate, 36% in the first half. This is particularly high, but this is just a seasonality related to the intercompany dividend paid at the end of the first quarter. This will normalize during the year. Page 14. Again, on margin. This slide shows the effect of rising interest rates on our AUM in terms of value and therefore margins. I also would like to highlight that if you look at the assets ex plus one, so mutual funds, the component that dropped significantly. I mean, the mix of these assets is very interesting, is the table on the left side on the bottom. Because as you can see, we, of course, are negative on bond and on flexible, but we were able to be positive and to cash flows on equity and balanced funds. This, of course, sustain our margins, on this part of the business. Page 15, net fees and personnel expenses. Management fees, in the quarter reflecting the lower AUM, and with the product mix, are substantially stable, as I said before. Placement fees, down to the normalized level after the weak performance is realized during pandemic. In terms of cost, looking at the personnel costs in particular, very moderate cost inflation in the fees component, and of course, variable compensation down because of weak performance fees items. If you consider our NFP position, page 16, we continue to generate significant amount of cash also in the semester. In H1, we were able to pay EUR 95 million of dividends, EUR 51 million of buyback, and yes, more than EUR 16 million of tax. I think that our cash generation continue to grant our flexibility for offer potential external transactions, but also ongoing any buybacks and with treasury shares consolidation, as we already said in the past. Of course, debt reduction. Looking at debt, page 17, we wanted to show that we don't have impact on our debt structure from the rate, from interest rates hike. Our debt is fully hedged on the bank loan side, and is fixed as concerns the two bonds outstanding. Okay. Let's go to my closing remarks. I think that in a complex situation, because the last six months were not easy for nobody of us, I think that Anima showed a set of results in Q2 absolutely in line with the one of Q1, resilient and very solid. Our performance in terms of our funds and our assets under management provided less volatile range of returns across all of our asset classes, and this is, I think, one of the goals of our company, given also the client base we have. We have to reduce losses in such a volatile and difficult period for our clients, and sometimes we will lose a point on the upside, of course. In terms of net flows, we are still positive, and we are +EUR 1 billion. We are seeing a market that, I mean, we will experience a slowdown in May and June, but I don't think this is a trend. I think this is a bumpy and volatile situation, so we may have a month that is slightly negative, a month that is slightly positive. I don't see a clear trend, while I think there is a lot of opportunities still on the market because the clients, as opposed to the past, where we experienced panic selling many times, are demonstrating a more mature approach to the market. Many of them, they are increasing their liquidity positions, but I think with the idea to get back on the market, on investments as soon as the situation will, let's say, normalize a little bit. I think that the opportunity is still there. Nobody's running away, and I think that the clients will get back to investment position very soon. Business model. Again, I said resiliency. This is a valuable business model. We are facing, like all of us, a difficult context. We know how to face it. We did it more than once in the past. Our company is able to generate an important free cash flow. And as you said, we strongly believe in our company. We already approved 15 days ago a new buyback of EUR 30 million with possible future potential cancellation in order to increase the capital return for our shareholders also in tougher years like this one. I think that I'm done, and I'm happy to answer your questions. Thank you very much. Excuse me. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. We kindly ask you to use handsets when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from the line of Gianluca Ferrari of Mediobanca. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi, good afternoon, Alessandro and Fabrizio. The first question is on the July flows. If you can give us an indication, given the negative trend in June, what is July looking like? The second thing linked to that is, I understood recently that you commented that BNP's in particular was improving. I know you don't like to comment on individual distributor, but I was wondering if, from Monte Paschi, we are getting the news on that. The second question is on the mark to market on your top liquidity. If you can update on how much you invested in your funds, and where is this liquidity invested in terms of mix or particular products, so what we have exposure. The final question is on new products. You presented Traguardo, the new version. I was wondering if you have other new products in the pipeline, and eventually which kind of products are clients asking these days, something with capital protection or what else is in the need of clients these days. Thank you. Thank you, Gianluca. Right. Okay. In terms of July we have been pretty well. I think that I hope that we will close positive. Of course, we don't have visibility on the last few days of the month, but we are doing pretty well. As I said, I mean, in May, we had June slightly negative. I hope July slightly positive. I mean, we are there. It is not a trend yet, but I mean, this is also to say that there is a strong resiliency also on behalf of the client. BNP's performance is a good performance. I mean, they are continuing to perform pretty well, so we are very happy. I mean, we don't provide the number, but they are positive, and they are doing well. The mark to market of our investments. We invest, we have invested approximately EUR 19 million of liquidity in our funds. I mean, these funds were, let's say, not risky funds, as a typical investments of treasury. As you know, we had a massive movement of interest rates that impacted also most, let's say, conservative funds. At 30th of June, we were, we realized the performance of mark to market of a performance of around -5%. As of today, we are in the region of -4%, so we already recover some part of this negative performance. We hope that we'll be able to do better in the second half. In terms of new products, apart from targeted plans, Traguardo-like, there are already a sort of a form of protection for the clients. We are proposing a lot of products with accumulation plan or targeted plans with a component of accumulation on the extreme side. We continue to propose ESG products. In terms of guaranteed products, we are not yet structuring such type of products, even though I hear in the market that this wave is coming back because clients are scared, and so let's say that I think that protected products or guaranteed products may come back on the shelves. Let's see. We are not structuring such, this type of products yet. Thank you. Thank you very much. The next question is from the line of Villa Alberto with Intermonte. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. Ciao, Alessandro and Fabrizio. A couple of questions. First one is on slide 14, where you show the pattern of net new money for the different categories of funds. I was wondering what is driving the positive performance of balanced funds, if that's mainly driven by new products, or if there is any specific reason behind that and the performance for equity funds positive, if there is any driven by single networks that are focusing on those specific funds in particular, or something that you can explain which can have a trend and if this is gonna continue the year. The second question is on Monte dei Paschi. They announced the intention to carry on with the capital increase. In the meantime, we have not new, but another government crisis in Italy. I was wondering if you have carried out any new discussion with Monte dei Paschi regarding eventually being involved in the capital increase, or anything on the distribution agreement you have with Monte dei Paschi that you are negotiating right now. Thank you. Hi, Alberto. Well, in terms of why what is the main driver of the positive performance in terms of net money for equity and balanced funds, this comes from PAC, from the accumulation plan. As Ugo said, we pushed a lot on the accumulation plan in the last years. Today, accumulation plan accounts for us approximately EUR 1 billion of net new money per year. This is the, I think this is the main driver, main money for this type of product. It is very important that this important for the client because the right way to invest, I think, in the market for our type of client and is, of course, possible also in terms of making money for us. MPS capital increase. Well, let's say that, as you know, last year we were discussing with them in July last year. We're a potential, let's say intervention with different technical possible tools in order to provide capital to them. In exchange for, on the other hand, we were asking for a stronger, let's say, commercial relationship between us. I spoke in the last month with Luigi Lovaglio, and I know him also because he was when he was in Creval, we were partner with them also there. I provided our availability to discuss the potential structure of transactions as we did with the previous management. As of today, I don't have anything to tell in the sense that we don't have updates. I know that they are. I mean, I read that they are pursuing the process for the capital increase, and let's see. I didn't have any further news. Okay. Thanks very much. The next question is from the line of Lee David with Lucid Investors. Please go ahead. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. My first question is just on the labor costs inflation in the current environment. I know the fixed portion of your fixed personnel costs, you couldn't fly, right? But the variable portion kind of fluctuates. Can you guys give us some sense like how the inflation impacting them, impacting you guys on the labor side? And I have another follow-up. Let's say that initially, I think that the labor, well, the inflation translates into labor concentration with more difficulties and in a longer term period. As of today, we are not experiencing strong pressure, I have to say. I would say that we are not experiencing pressure in general. I feel that I don't see particular risk at least for this year. Let's see how the situation will evolve, and our inflation will go in the next few months. For what concern the variable compensation. Variable compensation, as we always said in our company, are strictly linked to performances of funds and of the company. I guess this year, unfortunately, variable compensation will go down. Yeah. So, also on, I know previous question, I didn't quite understand your answer just regarding Monte Paschi, you know, how that's impacting you guys. Also just in general, you know, you have contracts with a few of these really big key partners, banks, right? Also, obviously, Italy going through banking consolidation and restructuring. I don't quite understand how are you guys being impacted during any of this, you know? Well, in general, our main contracts, let's say are Banco BPM and Monte dei Paschi. For what concerns BPM, we have a very long and solid agreement. The agreement lasts until 2037 on mutual fund and 2038 on insurance part of the business. As we always said, this agreement was negotiated in 2017 when we bought Aletti. In this agreement, let's say we put all our goodwill in managing this type of agreements. It's an agreement that protects us, I think, in all scenarios, and therefore, everything may happen in terms of consolidation with BPM, I see as an upside for us. On top of that, BPM is also, of course, shareholder of the company with 21% of the share capital. For what concerns Monte dei Paschi, the agreement is a little bit more vintage because we structured the agreement in 2010. The agreement will last until 2030. We have less structural protections if compared to the one we have with BPM. Therefore, let's say, again, this is part of our business. When we have an option, if we have it, to negotiate further an agreement in order to have a most strong and maybe longer agreement, we try to catch this type of opportunities. If we have the opportunity to sit down with Monte dei Paschi to discuss such a scenario, we will. We'll do it because this is part, as I said, of our business as a management team. In exchange, this was the idea when we were discussing last year. In exchange, of course, we will be happy to help Monte dei Paschi in terms of capital. Let's see. This, what we were discussing last year. It was public. As I said, we provided our availability to discuss. I mean, there are many details in a potential transaction, but this one, we provided our availability to discuss, and that's it. As of today, I didn't have any news to comment on. Okay. Maybe last question from my end. How is the interest rate, obviously, you know, interest rates going up, and obviously you guys having your own, you know, macro, environment change. I'm just kind of curious, how this interest rate environment, how the local Italian macro, impacting your business or any new products you can offer to in this current environment, you know, to kind of reverse the negative, the slight negative trends in June? Well, let's say, I always said that interest rates, low or negative interest rates for us are poison because, I mean, for the financial sector and for a company like us, like ours, where we have 70% approximately of the assets invested in fixed income, having negative or zero interest rates, it's tough. It's tough to provide returns to our clients. It's tough to apply commissions. In the medium long run, I see a more normalized level of interest rates as a positive for us, no doubt. Of course, we have to face a transitional period because, interest rates, I mean, what we were wishing for was an increase in interest rate, a more smooth increase in interest rates. Instead, the movement was very important in a very short time period, and it has impacted strongly the AUM value. Probably also psychologically to the clients. The clients are more scared than potential different scenarios. In general, I see it as a positive in the medium long run. We will, as we were trying to say with the slides on Traguardo, we already faced situations where we had interest rates at 4%, 5% for Italian governments, and we were able to raise a massive amount of money providing very interesting returns to our clients. Of course, we have to face this period where the strong negative performance from the fixed income component hit the clients. Okay. Okay, thank you. The next question is from the line of Bairaktari Angeliki with Autonomous Research. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. First of all, I noticed that the share of other banks within your retail AUM has declined from 3.8% in the first quarter to 3.1% in the second quarter. I was just wondering whether there was any particular outflow in that channel. I know it's small, but the quarter-on-quarter difference is quite notable. Second question, can you give us an update on the relationship that you have at the moment with Crédit Agricole now that they have fully integrated Creval? What should we expect for that distribution channel going forward? Last question, perhaps if you can give us an update on the net flows that you have seen in the second quarter from the Banco BPM network. Thank you very much. Okay. First of all, the other banks amount of assets. Well, here there is a reclassification because we migrated Crédit Agricole Italia within Creval. Let's say that Crédit Agricole Creval is today one bank. Before we had another bank, Crédit Agricole Italia, and Creval separated. Now we joined Crédit Agricole and Creval, and so we decreased the other banks component. For what concern Crédit Agricole relationship, we are, let's say that we are discussing with them. Well, they merged the banks, so they merged Crédit Agricole and Italia and Creval. Today, our agreement apply to the new bank, so we are there. We are discussing some arrangement to the agreement in order to let the agreement more, let's say applicable for them and for us. I hope that we'll be able to to reach an agreement. I mean, in principle, we already reached an agreement, but we are, let's say struggling between legals and compliances in order to find the right solutions, the right, let's say contractual solution. I hope that we will reach it definitely in the next couple of months, let's say, considering that in August in Italy everything's off. What was the other question? Net flows in Banco BPM for the second quarter. Yeah, sorry. Flows in Banco BPM, well, they are not performing very well in terms of managing money. We are slightly negative, but more on the mutual fund side, but we are positive on the insurance component. Overall, we are positive, but the performance is not aligned on our and their expectations. Of course, the situation is not so easy for all of us, so we are, let's say, resisting. Anyway, between mutual funds and unit links, we are positive. Ms. Bairaktari, are you done with your questions? Yes, thank you very much. Very clear. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Prini Filippo with Kepler. Please go ahead. Hello, good afternoon. I've got two questions. The first one is on the inflows you recorded in the first semester. Could you possibly spread them between gross inflows, redemption? Ev en both parts figures are fine for me. The second question is on your service remuneration. Does it remain at the dividend policy of paying the 50% payout in reported net profit? Also on top of the two buybacks that are in place and have been closed this year, and also considering the potential participation with the capital increase of Monte Paschi? Thank you. Well, I'll start from the dividend. Of course, the dividend, our guidance in terms of dividend will remain there. The 50% of net, consolidated reported net profit, will remain notwithstanding any extraordinary transactions or the buyback. The buyback goes on top. If we do it is because it goes on top. In terms of inflows, gross and net redemptions, we didn't provide this data, Prini. Sorry. Thank you. Sorry, just to complete one of the answers I provided before because I forgot to say. We're also happy in this period because we are, let's say, discussing with them and we restart to launch products on their networks. We launched a new private fund on June that is, let's say, raising money and so is the performance on the network is getting better. The next question is from the line of Luigi De Bellis with Equita. Please go ahead. Yes, good afternoon. Two or three questions. The first one on the management fee margin. If you can provide guidance for the next couple of quarters considering the current environment. The second one on the new Anima Traguardo fund, do you have a target in terms of gross inflows for the products in the next 12-month timeframe? Thank you. Luigi, the answer is no. Margins is difficult to provide a guidance. Let's say, if you look at the inflows, we are having stability, absolute stability. We are not seeing any decrease in terms of margins deriving from the new inflows we are experiencing. Of course, the margins could be impacted by the AUM performance, as we saw in the last period. Important movement, for instance, on interest rate, on BTP interest rates, would affect demand, the large demand that we have posted that has a very low profitability and this, for instance, impact, may impact strongly the profitability, the average profitability. In general, I would say stability apart from the market effect. In terms of Traguardo, I don't have an answer yet because we have to see. It's too difficult today to provide a guidance in terms of inflows. What we see is that, as I said before, in the past, between 2011 to 2015, we were able to do a massive amount of this product. In 2018, when the interest rates went up because of changing governments as always, again, we were able to restart with this type of products, and we did three products, very interesting products. Let's see. It depends on how we stabilize the interest rates and how it will be the situation in general. Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Mr. Melzi d'Eril, there are no more questions registered at this time. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you to all of you for attending our conference call and let's see on in three months. Thank you very much and have a good summer. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.