Good afternoon, this is the Chorus Call Conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Anima Holding First Half 2023 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. Thank you very much. Hi, everybody, thank you for attending our first half conference call. Well, I will start, as always, with our presentation. Maybe I will bring you to page four, highlights of the first half, 2023. We are now at the semester we were, we had EUR 185 billion of assets, almost. End of July, EUR 180 billion of assets. Many money negative on the first six months, but we communicated today the net new money for July, EUR 531 million. The net new money on the first seven month of the year is turning positive. If you look at the performance of our assets, the weighted average performance is positive year-to-date, only a few basis point below the Italian average. This is mainly explained by a lower level of equity if compared to the system. Positive margin trend, even though the top line is affected by a lower contribution of performance fees, lower as compared to last year and low in absolute terms. Operating margins ex performance fees is up to 17.6 basis point. If compared to last year, 17.2. This is mainly due to gross flows, the profitability of gross flows and trading administrative fees. EBITDA over 70%, above 70%, thanks to the resilient top line and the ability to keep costs under control. Cash flow, as always, very high and very strong. Robust cash flow with Free Cash Flow Yield remaining at double digit rate. Page five. Business by segment, nothing to be aligned in particular. We have a stable business mix in term by client. 50/50 between retail and institutional. Page six, the performance of our assets. As I said before, the weighted average performance is slightly below the system. This is mainly explained by our asset mix. This brings us to the right side of the page. If you look at funds by category, as always, we have another way on flexible and balanced funds. Within flexible and balanced funds, we also have a component of equity, of course, but we are underweight, if compared to the Italian industry in terms of pure equity. Page seven. If you look at the, at the flows in the Q2, we continue with the stronger position towards fixed income. We already said that in the Q1 presentation. We see the clients moving towards fixed income in general. They do appreciate these type of solutions, and so we are offering a lot of these type of funds. We have another light on that. Equity is mainly driven by Equity investment is mainly driven by practice or accumulation plan with monthly installments or an underlying of unit-linked, mainly. The negative net money performance for flexible funds is mainly driven, as we highlighted already in the Q1, mainly driven by the BRAP trend. Basically, we were investing, we explained that more than once. When we structure targeted funds, typically we invest the equity component through funds or funds of the house. Given that this equity component is shrinking and we are basically structuring funds fully, full fixed income funds, we are not investing any more in this BRAP component, the equity BRAP component that is, that therefore is reducing. This flexible component is shrinking, but we also highlight that when we invest in funds of funds, we cannot duplicate fees, therefore, we cannot double charge the client. These outflows are mainly at profitability, close to zero. Page eight. This is our top 10 funds in terms of net new money in the first, in the first six months of the year. As typical, these funds are fixed income funds, where they can also invest in part in equity, up to 20%, typically. As you can see, the gross flows are important in certain funds. This tells us that the system, I mean, the vitality of our distribution networks are very high, with a strong preference for fixed income products, as I was saying before. Another positive is that pressure on fixed income products, pressure in terms of fees on fixed income products is obviously stable. We will subside potential given the expected yield for our clients that are far higher than than before. Total customer charge is broadly stable because of a mix of different types. We are charging a little bit more on the fixed income component. We have there, we have a little bit less of cost for them coming from the investments in funds of funds. Page nine, new banking partnership. As you can see, these are the partnership we signed with medium-sized regional banks in Italy in the last years. We have been able, in addition to our long, long-term strategic partners, such as [Banco BPM, BNP Paribas, and Bank of Italy]. We have been able to sign seven new agreements in the past 36 months. The last one signed was in July. This, this is very important for us also because what we are seeing is that once we, we, we bring a regime, this type of partnership, results are strongly positive. In the first six months of the year, all these partnerships are positive in terms of making money. In page 10, if you look at the coverage of our commercial network and our partnerships, today, we can leverage on 18% of all bank branches around the country with a strong presence in the wealthiest area of the country. These are our partners, so we are very happy of being so present in Italy, and we believe that we'll be able to enlarge furthermore our commercial distribution. Some number, page 12. The consolidated PNL, total revenues are down 7%. This is mainly explained by net revenues, by net management fees declining because of lower average asset under management if compared to last year. This was fully expected by us. Performance fees down in respect to 2022, as we already discussed that more than once. Performance fees this year are particularly tough, and so we registered only EUR 2 million in the first six months. Looking at cost increases, slightly increasing. We'll get back to it, then, we'll discuss it more in depth. EBITDA, -12%, EUR 160 million, approximately, in, in absolute terms. Below the EBITDA, positive signs coming from the fact that we have the possibility and the opportunity to invest the liquidity in a more, let's say, worthwhile way if compared to the past. We are registering important positive sign coming from deposits and other investments such as government bonds, et cetera. We have a slide on that. Adjust net income also thanks to a lower tax rate if compared to last year. Tax income slight if adjust net income and net income, just net income slight if compared to 2022, net income +6% if compare to first half 2022. Looking at margins, the margin trend is slightly up. Main reasons for that are the favorable product mix on gross flows, as I said before. The focus on actively managed products, and fixed income flows being directed towards more, let's say, product with higher fees for us, for fixed income or balanced solutions. That, of course, has better profitability for the company. Cost income, excluding performance fees, always remaining best level if compared to European asset management. Page 13, on the left side of the page, management fees gradually recovering. We are on a positive path, and we believe that we will be able to continue like this, so recovery is compared to the past, after the slowdown driven by the decrease in assets. Right part of the page, looking at the HR cost, personal cost, we have an increase in terms of fixed salary. This is mainly driven by some seasonality in HR training expenses that will be partially reabsorbed during the year. From the fact that we continue to invest in mainly front office sales and on the alternative business. Still on cost, page 14. Left part of the page, as you can see, we have a slight increase in cost. This is mainly driven, let's see, entirely driven by the new marketing expenses. We are getting back to pre-COVID level of investment in marketing activities. We also, as I said, more than once, we don't want. we want to continue to push in this respect, because we know that the goodwill that we are building up with our distributor in this period, this is something that will bring back results once the situation will stabilize and will normalize for the asset management business. If you look at the liquidity on the right side of the page, instead, the liquidity and the management, as I was saying before, we were able to exploit, better exploit our liquidity sitting on current accounts, having noted an interest income on cash, very interesting on H1, and also reimbursing the, let's say, in advance, the banking debt we had outstanding, and taking benefit of the hedging position on this debt by EUR 4 million, approximately. We, let's say that we were able to more than cover the interest expenses on debt in the first semester. Page 15, looking at Net Financial Position. Net Financial Position, first half, as always, is reflecting the payment of dividends in May by, of EUR 71 million, and the debt repayment in June. This has not affected the Net Financial Position, it's affecting the gross debt position. The debt repayment in June by advance debt repayment by EUR 82 million. The cash generation will continue, is continuing, and will continue also this year. This will allow us to keep our and to continue to have flexibility on possible extraordinary transactions. A new buybacks, and eventually also share, possible share, share count reduction. Buyback, 16, page 16. In line with our first commitment, to grant additional remuneration to our shareholders, also through shares buyback, we, the board resolved to, to start with a new tranche of buyback, of EUR 13 million, that will be, will, go live, in the next, in next few days. We will start, I don't know if or it's today, today. We will start today, we'll continue for probably, let's say, an estimate end of October. The share buyback, we, we decided to restart with a share buyback, because as we said more than once, we want to, for our shareholders, we want to grant, a dividend that is 50%, as a floor, 50% of reported consolidated net income. As you know, sometimes we go a little bit over this, this type of guidance. On top of that, if we have the possibility, always keeping our the flexibility in terms of extraordinary transaction for the company, we want to also, we want to increase the shareholders' remunerations through buybacks, and even, and potentially also through cancellation of shares at the end of the year. We already did so in the past. We, as you can see here from the slide, we in the last, in the last few years, we delivered quite significant returns to our shareholders, and we canceled 14% of the share capital in the last three years. Page 18, some final remark. The messages are that we continue with strong cash flow generation. We will deliver so, we know that this company is very strong in cash generation and providing resilient and consistent results. We have some additional support net profit coming from the investment of liquidity. This is good news, is a good news for us. The positive performance of funds is always, is also, let's say, if you want, allowing us to stay in the market and to continue to grow our business in the best way possible with our distributor and clients. We are, let's say that the fixed income that we know that is also a competitor in terms of Italian Govies sold to the client, there is also a positive underlying for our funds. As we always said, doing our business in the fixed income without yields to the client is impossible, because you cannot provide any return to the clients, and it's difficult to charge fees if you don't provide any type of returns. Having today, more interesting yields and the possibility to structure products with fixed income products, with govies, corporate, NAVs, I think this is beneficial for us in the medium-long run. Having the possibility to provide suitable products for our type of client, with interesting profitability for the company. Finally, second half start with some good news. We were able, after having received the authorization by Bank of Italy to close the deal with Castello, we closed the 80% share capital acquisition of Castello. We also started with a very good July, found more than EUR 300 million of net new money. This was very important because this is driven mainly by the retail and in particular by gross flows on fixed income products sold to the client base. From the contribution of the alternative business, Castello, not only in the second closing of our, of our second private fund, that contributed for more than EUR 100 in the month in terms of net money. Finally, as I already said, we decided to restart the buyback program with EUR 30 million from now on until probably end of October. I hope I provide you with the key messages for this semester, and I'm fully available for your for your questions. Thank you. 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 one on their touchtone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star two. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star one at this time. The first question is from Gianluca Ferrari with Mediobanca. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi, good afternoon, Alessandro. Four questions for me. The first one is on the EUR 531 million net inflows in July. If you can tell us how much is coming from Poste Italiane? It seems a very outlier in this period, so I wanted to understand what, what is the, the impact from Poste. The second is the variable cost, HR cost are up 14% year-on-year, despite much lower performance fees and much lower net inflows. I was wondering if we have a deferral of previous bonuses that are having an impact here, or what is explaining this increase in bonuses? The third point is on Castello and the private debt funds you already have. What's next year in alternative? Are you planning something in private equity, or you want to expand more in the real estate, real assets? A bit of color on what is the strategy here on alternatives. The final one is on performance fees. If you can give us a sort of guidance, considering where you are and where is the distance from benchmarks and watermarks year. Thank you. Okay, Gianluca, thank you very much for your questions. Well, July net new money, as I said, main contributors, focused income product, mainly driven by distribution on Poste Italiane. We did Poste Italiane, we are out with a product that is doing very, very well. With a single product, we are over EUR 500 million with them. And therefore, there is a part, a big part of retail coming from them, in the region of EUR 300 million in the month. There is more than EUR 100 million from alternative and then other things, other distributors. Looking at the, talking about the HR, the variable cost, yeah, there is the usage component, I mean, the usage accruals component. There is, there is making a little bit more difficult to read the data, because there is EUR 1.2 million of accruals and differences with each one, 2022. Basically, if we normalizing the data, we would, we would have had EUR 1.2 million more last year. This is the difference. This is why you're seeing a weird data as compared to 2022. If you look at the alternative business, private, well, our, our, the strategy is to create, as I said, in other calls, is to create an Italian platform to do the alternative business, multi-asset class, ideally a leading Italian platform, able to provide different products to our client base. The products that we believe are more close to our DNA are, for sure, private credit in general, so could be real estate credit, SME trade credit, et cetera. Real estate, infrastructure. Within infrastructure, for instance, renewable energy, where Castello has already a position with three funds under management. These are the main strategies that we are targeting. Private equity is, I think, in terms of DNA, is a little more, little bit more difficult and also is more crowded as in terms of competition in Italy. This is not our first target. Let's see if some interesting opportunity may arise, but for the time being, this is not our first priority. Performance fees, providing a guidance is not easy, as you know. Let's say that in terms of high-water mark fund, we are 1.5%-2% in our major flagship, 1.5%-2% from the high-water mark. On target-date funds, we may catch something. I think that to see more performance fees coming, we need to see a movement in terms of interest rates downwards by 30 to 50 basis points. Instead, I think that, I mean, for this year, we will see poor numbers. Okay, thank you very much. The next question is from Alberto Villa with Intermonte. Please go ahead. Si, good afternoon. Couple of questions. One, back to the net inflows in July, very strong. I was wondering what, what was the underlying, let's say, organic in, in sense, in the sense that, obviously, we, we have had a lot of volatility in 2023 with the negative months, positive months like July. I was wondering if you can comment on the current outlook for retail monthly inflows. Where do you see the inflows, let's say, being more, let's say, recurring compared to what we have seen so far in terms of retail? If there is any institutional, positive or negative that we should take into consideration going into the second part of the year, just to understand, let's say, how to model a potential number for the net inflows this year. The second one is on the slide you shown the new agreement with the banks. I was wondering, what is the potential going forward for, for, let's say, future inflows coming from these new agreements, and if there are, in your view, opportunities for new agreements in the short term? Thank you, Alberto, for your questions. Well, managing money trend. Well, yeah, for sure this year, the monthly net inflows were a little bit bumpy. I also believe that the monthly monthly inflows, I've always said that it's very difficult to, to look at monthly inflows and to understand the trend, because in in a very diversified business with institutional retail, this may vary significantly month by month. For instance, this year, as we talked about, we talked about it more than once, we lost the beginning of the year mandate by EUR 400 million. Not taking into consideration, this mandate would have been positive by almost EUR 1 billion. It depends very much. It's difficult looking at the monthly flows to to make an estimate. Anyway, I think that the positive sign and the important sign of the inflows in July, is the demonstration of the capability of the company to stay on the market, but also in a different market, in a difficult market condition, to stay on the market and to work with our clients. If you look at the sector, as we know, the asset map is - EUR 18 billion, if I remember well, in the first semester. We are doing far better than the average of the market, and I believe that we will be able to continue so in the second part of the year. I expect to close positive for sure, our, in terms of managing money, saying of how much is very difficult, because we are not in a clear path for the sector. We are resisting very well. We are working very well with a lot of our partners. We are doing a lot of gross inflows. Just to give you an idea, we are positive in Monte Paschi, slightly negative on banking, but positive on the insurance component. We are strongly positive in Poste Italiane. We are working a lot with our partners, and we see that there, there is a lot of vitality in the network. I think that we would need a little bit more of visibility in a decreasing trend of interest rates. This would be beneficial for performance fees, but also for, for the trend of the sector and the relationship with the clients. It's difficult for me to be more precise in, in terms of, in terms of answer. Looking at the agreements, we with the new partners, we expect to be able to sign additional partnership, yeah, in the next few months. In terms of potential, these partnerships today can... I mean, we have a potential of raising, in terms of gross flows, EUR 600 million-EUR 700 million per year. I think that we should target to reach EUR 1 billion-EUR 1.2 billion of gross flows coming from our partners. This would, could be, a potential in terms of, net new money per year of, EUR 200 million, EUR 300 million, maybe EUR 400 million at some point of, of managing money per year coming from these partnerships, altogether. I think this could be, a very interesting potential for us. Thank you very much. The question is from Elena Perini with Intesa Sanpaolo. Please go ahead. Yes, good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. I've got two, two questions. The first one is about your recurring fees, considering that net, net inflows seem to accelerate and the current, current prospects, market conditions, would you expect recurring fees to improve on a quarterly basis in the next the next quarters? The second question is on is on Castello. I was wondering if you can update us on your on your targets in terms of assets under, under management for the next few, few years with with reference to the alternatives, and what we can expect in in terms of net income contribution in in full swing from this acquisition? Thank you very much. Okay. Ciao, Elena. first question, fees. yeah, on fees, yeah, we, we, we, we expect the management fees to grow quarter by quarter because the trend now is of growing asset under management. In terms of making money, as we said, we are on the right path, and in terms of profitability, the profitability is increasing. absolutely, yes, we expect increase quarter by quarter of fees. the second question is on Castello. Well, we are, at the moment, we are working on the new industrial plan of the group, that of course has a big part also in terms of alternative, and therefore, I would prefer to talk about targets, long-term targets on this part of the business, in November, when I'll have more, let's say, having done more work in terms of internal work, in terms of strategies, and in terms of the targets. I would, I will give you an appointment in two months. Okay. Thank you. The next question is from Luigi De Bellis with Equita. Please go ahead. Yeah, good afternoon. Just two quick questions. The first one on the cost: Could update us on the outlook for cost evolution in 2023 and beyond, and on fixed rate, labor costs have increased by 10% year-over-year. What should you anticipate for the upcoming quarters? The second question on the products pipeline: Do you have plans to launch new particular products in the second half of the year and early 2024? What are you focusing on? Just some color on the product pipeline. Thank you. Hi, Luigi. Here I am. Well, in terms of cost, as I said, I mean, we are, we are, we are, we are seeing an increasing cost on, on the administrative expenses driven by marketing investments, entirely explained the marketing investments. We want, we want for the moment to keep to keep the, the pressure in terms of positive pressure with our partners, and so we, we want to continue to invest with this magnitude. In terms of personal cost, we invested as well, and this is reflected by the increase in cost. There we see the some seasonality as explained in terms of training of resources, so this will be partially reabsorbed in the, in the, in the last part of the year. There we will continue to invest, but also looking for some efficiency in order to, let's say, keep, take out on the table part of the pressure that we saw in the last year. Because, I mean, we invested partially, and we also had some inflation pressure beginning of this year, that we had to, to face in some way. I don't see a trend of increase, of course, with this path, absolutely. I think that we will bring back the increasing cost in terms of personal cost to our, let's say, historical path that was 2%, 3% per year. Of course, not taking into consideration extraordinary transactions, this is, this is clear. The product pipeline. Product pipeline, of course, we have in pipeline, more than one product. Let's say that we, we continue to focus on product fixed income link, if you want. We have new solutions for our for our partners that we are studying, and already some of these solutions is already, ready to be launched, but I can't tell you. I'll tell you once we, we have launched the, the solutions. Thank you. Mr. Melzi d'Eril, there are no more questions registered at this time. Okay. Thank you, everybody, for attending our conference call, and I wish you to have holidays for the one of you that will be able to do so. See you in two months. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.