Good afternoon, this is the Chorus Call Conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the ANIMA Holding nine month, 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 Luca Mirabelli, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you. A warm welcome to everybody connected. I'm Luca Mirabelli. I'm the Head of Investor Relations for Anima, and I've been the Head of Investor Relations since almost two days. I started yesterday. I'm very honored to be here, and clearly my role today will be limited to little more than giving the floor to the CEO, Alessandro Melzi d’Eril for his usual comment about the results we presented today. Thank you, Luca, and welcome on board. Hi, everybody. As usual, I'll bring you through to our presentation. I will start from page four. In the nine-month close at the end of September, we have reached EUR 184 billion of assets in terms of asset under management, +5% if compared to last year. AUM up EUR 8.5 billion year-on-year and EUR 6.8 billion year to date. We registered approximately EUR 300 million of net new money versus EUR 800 million last year. Net flows continue to be characterized by a strong repositioning toward fixed income solutions, in line with the historical allocation of our client base. The WAP, the weighted average performance, is positive year to date and more or less in line with the Italian market, even though we are less exposed to the equity component, as you know perfectly. If you look at the numbers and the numbers of the income statement, we have a positive margin trend. Our top line is still affected by a lack of performance fees. Given the margin is at 72%, thanks to our resilience of the top line and our cost efficiency, even if we saw some inflationary pressure. The cash flow remains strongly resilient and a double-digit rate. Page five, the composition of our assets, this is by segment, as always, 50% of assets invested by the retail, 50% by institutional. We have something new this time. If you look on the institutional chart, we have a new component, 45% of AIFs of closed-ended funds, thanks to the acquisition closed in July of Castello. And we'll get back to it. Page six, investment performance. On the left side of the page, the WAP is more or less in line with the Italian industry, as I was saying before, even though our historical lower level of equity exposure. On the right part of the page, you can clearly see that we have, if compared to the industry, we have a lower level of equity, while we are more exposed on the flexible and balanced. If you look at net flows, page seven, as I was saying before, a position towards fixed income that accelerate in Q2, continuing Q3. We experienced negative net new money in our flexible funds, largely due to a decrease in wrap plan. As I explained this item more than once, basically, with the decrease in. With the increase in interest rates, we are now structuring target date funds fully invested in fixed income, while historically, we were structuring target date funds with a balanced composition within the portfolio, and the equity component of these funds was invested through a funds of funds mechanism. So now we have these funds getting to an end, and so we have these assets that are going out, while the new funds are fully invested only in fixed income without these funds of funds mechanism. Just to remind you that the funds of funds, if you invest in funds of the house, you cannot duplicate the fees. So this these assets, basically, these outflows, has profitability and revenues negligible for the company. If you look at all the wrap component within our asset under management, these accounts for almost EUR 17 billion of assets, but only EUR 3 billion are potentially exposed to the effect that I mentioned earlier, throughout 2025. Equity flows remain positive, mostly thanks to accumulation plan. Overall, the impact on margins remain neutral, looking at the different composition of our net inflows. Page eight. We continue with those flows due to the clients repositioning towards, as we were saying before, fixed income products. We here in the chart have a list of funds that we launched this year with the money that we have been able to raise on this fund. As you can clearly see, we have funds with a massive amount of money flowing in, and these are pure fixed income products. We don't have pressure on fees on the fixed income component. This is out of the table, as I said more than once. And this is basically providing to us a stable profitability without additional charge on the customer. What's new? This is something that we didn't have in our past presentation. I would like to talk you through about Castello a little bit. Page 10. This is our group structure after the acquisition that we closed in July of the 80% of Castello. Castello is a key player in the Italian real estate industry. This move, basically, is aimed at strengthening our company in the alternative asset management business, unlocking for us new growth avenues and, of course, maximizing shareholders value in the medium term. Page 11. Castello is one of the top 10 Italian real estate asset manager, with EUR 4 billion of assets, approximately. 73 closed-ended funds, more than 400 assets within the funds, and more than 450 investors in Italy and abroad. There are a wide range of experiences. They are leader in the hospitality segment, but they cover basically all the segments within the real estate industry. And they have a strong track record in terms of acquisition in the past, with EUR 2.2 billion of assets acquired in the last eight years. If you go to page 12, in effect, and you look at the chart on the lower part of the page, you can clearly see that the strong acquisition capabilities demonstrated by Castello during the years. This chart is very much similar to the one of ANIMA in the same period, so we have a similar DNA of both organic and M&A growth. Castello holds 4% of the real estate asset management market in Italy. As I said before, ranking among the 10 major companies in the sector. Page 13, our project in the alternative. We talked about it more than once, but just to remind you that we started the project in 2020, with the startup of an alternative. We launched our first private credit fund in 2022. We raised 160 million euros, approximately. In 2023, we launched the second private credit fund, under EUR 80 million of assets today, and we closed the acquisition of Castello, reaching, for the entire, let's say, for the second of the group, EUR 4.2 billion of assets managed. The idea is to continue to grow organically and also potentially through M&A in the, in this segment. The, let's say, the favorite asset classes, will be private credit, real estate, and infrastructure. And so I think that here, this business can, can be an important leverage for the group, and we will try to maximize the value of this business, in the next few years. Looking on our numbers, page 15. Net revenues, consolidated net revenues, this includes also the Castello numbers from the 19th of July on, of course, after the closing. Net revenues reached EUR 235 million, with performance fees of EUR 3.3 million, decreasing from the EUR 8 million of last year. The EBITDA, EUR 178 million, decreasing from last year, basically, the decrease is fully explained by lower average AUM if compared to 2022, and by the decrease in performance fees. If you look at the net income, we are up if compared to 2022, by almost EUR 10 million to EUR 96 million. Right side of the page, margins. The trend remains stable. This is driven mainly by the favorable product mix. Negative net new money on flexible funds, as I explained before, flexible funds with negligible profitability for the company, and plus one traditional life insurance has very low profitability for the group. Of course, focus on actively managed products help bringing up our profitability in general. Cost-income, excluding performance fees from revenues, as always, remains at the best European level among asset managers. I would skip page 16. This that give you the number of, more specifically of the Castello position. I would go to page 17. Net fees gradually recovering. I mean, we had 2021 very positive, of course, then we have a decrease in 2022 because of the decrease of assets, of course. Now we are slowly recovering, but continuously recovering quarter by quarter, and we will continue to do so. On the right side of the page, this component, salaries or personnel expenses, but this component is increasing, due to investments, mainly in front office sales and alternative business. Page 18. Just to explain to you how we get to an increased, net income, given the decrease in the EBITDA item. So we start from the net income of 2022, if you look at the chart. We register minus EUR 18 million approximately of EBITDA, but then we recover, we were able to recover EUR 9 million with investment in, basically the fund, in funds, in house, in funds of the house. These are EUR 9 million compared to last year. 10 million invested in liquidity, because of investment in liquidity. The unwinding of a derivative on, on a financing that we closed in June. 2 million on, from taxes, and, 1 million from other, small biases. So this, and this will bring, is bringing our, net income, nine-month net income up to EUR 97 million. Net financial position. Net financial position, basically is, -EUR 61 million, at the end of September. This is, this include EUR 71 million of dividend paid in May, EUR 82 million debt repayment in June, as I said, as I mentioned before, EUR 60 million of the, Castello position, paid in July, and EUR 33 million of the share buyback that we closed a couple of days ago. This robust cash generation of the company indicates, is allowing us to continue to provide an interesting yield to our shareholders. And also to look at the concretely to potential M&A when opportunities may arise. Page 20, operating expense and liquidity management. This is the if you want is more specific into the net financial income accumulated 2022 and 2023, just to explain you how we got to such a significant increase in this year. The active liquidity management basically brought a positive income of EUR 9 million in the nine months of 2023 in terms of interest income. As I mentioned before, we have a derivative, the unwinding of the derivative, fully covering the interest expenses on the outstanding bonds. So getting to some closing remark. Page 22. We are in a, I mean, we are in a, in a difficult period for the asset management business. We are seeing that, and we saw that at the end of September, the industry registered negative net new money by EUR 32 billion overall. This is the first time since 2011 that the industry is registering negative flows. We were able to register positive flows by EUR 300 million into managed products. I think this is because of our diversification in terms of distribution networks, our product offering, and our positive environment for our historical core solution based on fixed income, mainly target date funds and our target solutions. Equity flows remain positive, thanks to PAC or automated plans. This is something that we want to highlight because we said more than once in the past that we were pushing a lot on accumulating accumulation plan that were very important for the client, and today we see they are very important also for the company. Inflows are going towards our fixed income solutions, mainly target date funds with Italian govies underlying. This helps the client having very interesting returns and the company to have interesting margins, also thanks to the fact that we are a little bit repricing upward this type of products. And this is also why the margin outlook remains neutral. So we don't see particular pressure on margins, and I think that for the time being, margin pressure is out of the table. Looking at our alternative business, I think that we have strong ambition in this business. I think there is a lot of space for us to try to grow and to reach important results. This is a business with potentially important revenue synergies, coming from the fact that with a joint offer, traditional business, traditional products, and illiquid and alternative products, we can try to reach different segment of client base, mainly private banking, financial advisors, and a certain type of institutional clients. More on top of that, having an alternative business brings business diversification, both in terms of flows and AUM dynamics. It's a business less volatile, with different dynamics than that can help our stabilizing our business in different type of market situations. Page 23. Of course, the business and then the strong cash generation that this business provide. Dividends and buyback. Now, our dividend policy, current dividend policy is 50% of consolidated net income. We did more than that, more than once. And we were, we are, we were able to provide consistently a yield to our shareholders above 5%. On top of dividends, in the last years, we decided to pursue different buyback programs with cancellation of shares. We canceled approximately 14% of the share capital in the last years. We launched a program also this year, EUR 13 million, announced in 2nd of August and completed 31st of October. We now have approximately 4% of shares in portfolio. This has brought important benefit in terms of liquidity on the stock. It's something that we have clearly in mind in order to increase the yield for our, for our shareholders, recurrently, if you want. The stock, the 4% that we have in portfolio, we'll see what to do, but typically, as we said, historically, we will get to the AGM of year-end, and we decided to cancel large part of the share, or, or we keep the shares if we see that there is some M&A ongoing or very, very close to be flattened. On top of the capability to generate cash and to remunerate our shareholders, we keep an important flexibility in terms of M&A. I think that this company is generating massive amount of cash, and we are able to remunerate our, our shareholders and look at the market actively. We estimated a spending power at year-end, after dividends, of approximately EUR 500 million. This is preserving our investment grade rating, and also not considering the potential profitability of some potential targets. So I think that this slide shows how the company can continue to provide a very interesting institute to our shareholders, without affecting the capability of looking at the market, from a strategic standpoint. So, thank you very much, and I'm fully available to your questions. 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 telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. We kindly ask you to use handsets when asking questions. Anyone with a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from Elena Perin i of Intesa Sanpaolo. Please go ahead. Yes, good afternoon, and thank you for your presentation, and welcome, Luca, on board. Actually, I've got three questions, if I may. The first one is on the trend for operating costs, because, well, you had a significant year-on-year increase in the third quarter, the double-digit increase. So I was wondering, what is your outlook for the fourth quarter, and if possible, also for 2024? And then, my second question is about the inflows, the trend of outflows in October and your expectations for the fourth quarter. And finally, I've got the question on the performance fees. Do you have benchmark funds in your portfolio? I was wondering if, in the fourth quarter, we could see some performance fees to help your top line. Thank you very much. Here I am. Here I am. Well, looking at the cost, actually, we registered it compared to last year, looking at the same perimeter, so excluding the acquisition of Castello, that, of course, is bringing additional cost in. We have approximately +6% overall on cost. It is slightly higher than our historical capability of keeping cost under control. Because we didn't want, even though we knew that this was a tough year in terms of net flow, of flows, we didn't want to give up on investments, both in terms of marketing activities and personnel. We are anyway getting back to pay more attention to this item, waiting for the market to, let's say, for the situation to change. So we will become a little bit tougher on cost, but I mean, the increase of this year, I think, was mainly driven by our, let's say, willingness to invest and by a little bit of inflationary pressure as well, of course. If you look at the net inflows, well, we are October, we will close October negative because of this wrap component. We had a lot of target date funds ending their life in October, and so this wrapping phenomena affected the net inflows in October. But if you take out, I mean, if you don't consider the wrap component, we are positive in October. And we are seeing interesting sign in terms of the vitality of our networks. As I said, more than once, this year, we did, and we are doing very well with Monte Paschi. We have a little bit more difficulties with Banco, but we are deploying, let's say, a crash, a crash program in order to recover in the next few months. For the rest, we are performing pretty well. We are happy, if considering, of course, the context. Optically, we have this, this element of, of wrap that in October is affecting, and because October was particularly full of end of life of these target dates. Performance fees, we are, yes, we have some—we may catch some some additional performance fees on year-end. Let's see, we also hope that some decrease of interest rate that we saw in the last year may generate, but some additional performance fees. We don't expect huge numbers, but some we, we may have some million EUR, on, on, from here to the end of the, from now on, until end of December, in terms of performance fees. Okay, thank you. The next question is from Luigi De Bellis of Equita SIM. Please go ahead. Yes, good afternoon. I have two questions. The first one is on Castello. So can you provide an update on the expected contribution for Q4 in terms of management fees and cost, and your expectation for 2024, including net inflows expectation for the company? The second question is on the shareholder remuneration and capital allocation. So can you give us an update on your buyback strategy? And on M&A, you mentioned it, the EUR 500 million of spending power. Are there some dossier on the table, or are you currently working on any new distribution agreement with current or new strategic partners? And just a last one. In the last days, we are starting to see some reduction in interest rates, so how are your funds positioned in relation to an interest rate decrease and distance from high water mark? Thank you. Thank you, Luigi. Well, Castello, if you look at the page 16, we provided the nine months of Castello. This business is pretty much stable in terms of revenues, so it's pretty easy to track the fourth quarter. So you can assume more or less that the company has a stable path during the year. It's less volatile as compared to our liquid business. For what concern next year, we are working on industrial plan. I'm not ready to provide guidance for next year, so we may get in touch and we will talk about that in the next call. Buyback, well, buyback, as I said, as I said before, buyback, as of today and in the last four years, five years, has become something regularly used by the company in order to increase the yield for our shareholder. And we will continue to do so. So, it's something that we have clear in mind, and, w e are not reactivating the program now, but it's something that clearly we have in mind, and is a tool that we will continue to use in next, in the next future. And as I said before, the idea is, is always of buying back shares and then using the shares for M&A, if any, or canceling the shares, reducing the total number of shares at year-end, as we did in the last three years. Interest rates, yeah, of course, we wish in the sense that the reduction and decreasing interest rates is something that affect positively, positively affect our business in general and, of course, our products. Also, taking into consideration the strong fixed income, the strong fixed income, the fact that we are still towards fixed income in terms of general asset allocation. So this may affect the market performance of our products and potentially the performance fees, moreover, with target-based funds. So a strong decrease or a significant decrease in interest rates may help us in producing additional performance fees. In general, a decrease in interest rates, I think, would change the perception of the sector and the market trends. This would help, bringing back a lot of clients on managed solutions. And therefore, I think that a more, if you want, normalized level of interest rates would be beneficial, and will be beneficial for the sector in general and for ANIMA, moreover. Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Sorry, I forgot, I forgot an answer for Luigi, the M&A one. So we don't have, as of today, I mean, we are always, if you want, active in scouting the market, and we continue to scout the market. We don't have significant outflow, if you want, we don't have significant transaction on the table with potential significant, significant cash out, but we are always scouting the market, regularly scouting the market. New distribution agreements, we continue to work with medium-sized banks, small/medium-sized banks, in order to attract them in our, within our partners. We are not discussing with our major distributors in order to reshape our agreements. For the time being, we are, we are doing pretty well with them, and, we continue to do so. Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time. Okay. So many thanks to everybody, and see you in February for our year-end call. Thank you very much to everybody. Goodbye, also on my side, and we'll keep in touch, and we'll certainly get in touch within the next days to establish proper contacts. Thank you. Bye-bye.