Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Mediobanca Half Year 2021 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press phone one on your telephone keypad. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today. I would now like to hand the conference over to a speaker today, the Chief Executive Officer, Alberto Nagel. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good afternoon to everybody, thank you for joining the call. We have recorded 6-month results, which are in line to the pre-COVID levels, totaling EUR 1.3 billion of revenues for EUR 0.4 billion of net profit, the return on tangible equity in the region of 10%. This was backed by a strong business recovery in all business segment, also, within a second lockdown, with a smoothed impact. Notably, it is interesting to see the core revenue trend, which total EUR 1.3 billion, which is the effect of a real business diversification. In fact, we have had 6% increase in wealth management in revenue, a solid AUM trend with improved margins. CIB up 50% half-on-half, delivering the best semester ever on strong recovery in deal execution. Consumer banking at EUR 515 million, down 4% half-on-half, temporarily due to the lockdown impact on new business. This quarter, in general, this first half show a record level of fees that were up 70%, this was driven by IB and wealth management. The robust commercial trend was such that it was coupled with solid asset quality. Core was down to 50 basis point, with coverage ratio up in all categories. In the meantime, we have had quite a positive exit from moratoria, we were able to set also some prudential extra provisioning. Strong generation of capital brought the quarter one at 16.2% with 70% dividend payout approved. This based on a potential removal of the ban within the date of the dividend, which is normally in November and December. Significant non-financial ESG achievement. We will say more on this. This has been also very important in terms of environmental and governance achievement. The performance has been strong also in Q2, not only in Q1. In Q2, we have had even better trend in terms of net profit, EUR 211 million, up 5% Q-on-Q, ROATE in the region of 10%. Revenue up 8% Q-on-Q, driven by NII and fees. This, as in the first quarter, was backed by strong new business in all segment. Every single business line or division recorded quite high return on allocated capital. Wealth management reached 21% ROAC, based on steady growth in revenues, net profitability and profitability, in particularly in more valuable recurrent components. We have been working a lot on brand repositioning, product offering, distribution upgrade, taking the opportunities offered by a unique business model, which is the combination of private and investment banking. We have finally reached a deal to acquire Bybrook, and this is reinforcing our alternative asset management platform. In consumer banking, the ROAC remains on the high level of 28%. We have managed the second lockdown impact, which was smoothed, and we have a new business back to 75% of pre-COVID level. On average, loan book and revenues only temporary loads. Corporate investment banking recorded another very important quarter. This was based on the back of capital markets, in particular ECM and DCM, while the first quarter was more on M&A. Asset quality improved further because we have had an important write backs concerning our largest UTP position, which has been reclassified in stage 1. Hence, we have recorded a 19% return on allocated capital. Ongoing robust activity in CIB client. This was, as I said, evident in Q1 and in Q2. In Q2 was more ECM and DCM. Advisory contributed as well, and we have had also a sound lending trend, which was able to basically support the NII. Also on the back of solid underlying volumes, we managed to increase marginally our loan book, which reached EUR 16.8 billion at the end of December. In wealth management, we have accelerated the asset gathering pace with EUR 2.3 billion of net new money in the six months, and notably EUR 1.3 in the last three months. Within this, it is important to say that we have increased by 50% the most valuable part, so the managed assets that from EUR 0.6 went up to EUR 0.9. The deposit level remains still important, but in proportion is less than it used to be. Here on slide seven, you can see how important is the trajectory of the TFA across the different years. We have had an increase in the last four years from EUR 31.5 to EUR 66.6, out of which from EUR 17 of assets under management, assets under administration, we went up to EUR 42 billion. We have had a high productivity and distinct offering in wealth management where CheBanca! in the affluent segment went on enhancing the network despite some delay that we have had in the first part of the year. And we have maintained superior productivity levels with an increase in sales force of 30 professional and net new money per capita in the last 12 months among the top five players. So notably, we ranked second in Q2 in terms of productivity per relationship manager and financial advisor, as you can see on slide eight. In private banking and, in general, in the other part of wealth management, we have been working a lot on distinctive offering in illiquid space with over EUR 1.2 billion raised so far and EUR 0.4 billion in particular in the last six months. Resilient credit origination for household was obtained where we have had a better trend in mortgages, where the new loan trend is now much similar, pretty similar to the pre-COVID. So with the new loan in the region of EUR 0.7 billion, it's pretty the same what we used to have before the COVID. It is different in consumer, where we managed to have the same new loan of the first Q, which is higher than our internal budget, but is still lower compared to the historic, and this is part of the second lockdown and part of also dropping consumption. Strong commercial activity enable record core revenues. In particular, you see that in the last two quarters, if we exclude earnings coming from participation in Assicurazioni Generali, we have had quite an important increase in core revenues. In general, EUR 675, if we strip out the equity account, the contribution, is the highest quarter in terms of core earnings. It is interesting also to see the trajectory again. In the last five years, we have had a CAGR of 6% of core revenues, and this is another evidence of the fact that Mediobanca is a growth story. Seen from another perspective in terms of fees, page 11, you can see how is the trajectory of fees and the composition of fees. Now, every single quarter, wealth management has become the largest contributor and is steady, and is of course steadier than CIB. This is what we want to do. We want to expand the fee pool, and we want to expand it notably through wealth management expansion. We have doubled from 2012 to 2020. We have doubled our fee pool, and while in the past the biggest contributor was CIB with 45%, now the contribution is equal, in many quarters is higher, the one of wealth management compared to the CIB one. We have also obtained a resilient NII despite the consumer slowdown. This was due to cost of funding and active ALM management. We needed to have more robust volume to offset some margin pressure. We worked on treasury optimization. We had finally won EUR 8 million of one-off, which is related to the Burgo restructuring and reclassification. Asset quality improved further, and this is basically the outcome of the moratoria management. You see on slide 13 that we are now back to a level of, in the region of EUR 1 billion of moratoria. 56% of moratoria have expired. All the consumer have expired, so the remaining part is a physiological moratoria that we have always had. There are two other buckets remaining, one in mortgages and the second in leasing. We have prudently increased the staging compared to September. You see, particularly mortgage, out of the moratoria, 22% were stage 2 and 3. We brought this to 53%, and in leasing, we brought this 17% to 31%. Every single maturity of moratoria, even in mortgages and leasing, show quite good outcomes. In particular, we have always something like 80%-85% of immediately repaid mortgages at the end of moratoria, and the rest, I would say there is 10%-12%, which is requiring another postponement, and in the region of 1%-2% of unpaid. Outstanding moratoria are at 2.4% of group loan. It was 5%, now we are at 2%, and we think that within the end of the year, we will go in the region of 2% or below 2%. The second positive element on asset quality have been the conservative approach, despite the macro scenario improvement in the last six months. We didn't incorporate in our forecast of provisioning fully or entirely this improvement. We have set aside in the different quarters. In June 2020, we have accounted EUR 40 million to the P&L because of the worsening of the scenario. Notwithstanding the recovery, in December, we have set aside another EUR 12 million in the six-month account. Consumer banking is back to healthy pre-COVID situation, where you see that our net NPLs is back to the pre-COVID level, with 2.3% net NPLs on loans. The absolute level of NPLs is going down because in the meantime, we sold the portfolio. The coverage is going up, so 71.5% is the coverage of NPE, while also performing coverage went up a lot to 3.3%. Early deterioration asset quality index is back to healthy one year ago level, so pre-COVID, and it's steady in this trajectory since already some quarters. Finally, not less important, we have had a massive event in CIB asset quality, which was long prepared because it is related to a UTP, the single largest UTP we had in our portfolio. You know it very well. It's Burgo. It's a company we've been working with in the last 30 years. We have been doing this workout in the last 10 years. Burgo was recap. We have refinancing to the market the credit exposure. We have reclassified it in stage 1. Shifting from stage 3 to stage 1, this led to important decrease in UTP. We don't have true NPE in CIB. We have some UTP. We had EUR 300 million of UTP in Burgo. Of course, the shifting into stage 1 dramatically change in better the data, and now we have 0.5% of incidents of NPE. The coverage of NPL is 55%, and the coverage of the performing was increased to 72 basis points. How? We have used part of the write-backs to set aside, in particular, you see on slide 16, out of EUR 84 million of write-backs, we have used EUR 44, and basically it goes to higher coverage in stage 2, in overlay of stage 1 and stage 2, and the model buffer for EUR 12. This means that we have today, on page 17, you see the summary. We have gross NPE ratio, which is below four, it's 3.3%. An important increase in coverage, 63%. The net is 1.3%, and you see that stage 2 represents only 7% of our book and is covered 9.4%, while stage 1 is barely 19% of our book and is covered at 0.68%. The overall performing coverage is 1.31%, which is much higher than one or two years ago. We have broken down the different component of the cost of the core on slide 18. Here we have also add for your guidance, the sum in each quarter of write-backs and the sum and the details of COVID-related loan provision in each quarter. In summary, we have had EUR 127 million write-backs since March 2020, all in CIB, all in stage 3. EUR 187 million additional conservative provision, COVID related. This means that with the industrial trend of cost of risk, we have had a peak, as you have seen in Q4, and then a normalization of cost of risk that went from basically 141 basis point to 39 basis points, and the average is, in this new year, 50 basis points of cost of risk. Which is the sum of a very good trend in consumer, which went down to 200 basis point, and the write-backs that occurred in CIB. It's important also to note that, core, of first half adjusted on extra provisioning and write-backs is in the region of 65 basis points. This quarter and this first half, we had some non-recurrent or one-off operating, new operating items. We summarize them on page 20. Basically, at the end, they don't give an important impact to the bottom line because they were negative and positive in Q1 and Q2. As I said, it is EUR 8 million of NII contribution in Burgo, positive, EUR 24 million in PI, negative from Generali. We have had write-backs, as I said, in Burgo, EUR 110 broken into component EUR 26 and EUR 84. Extra provisioning using also this kind of write-backs in wholesale banking, which was more important this quarter, it was EUR 44. We have set aside EUR 15 million in Lexitor provision, and we have had some additional contribution in DGS, as you imagine. Quarter one, quite robust in terms of capital generation, in terms of also some optimization in RWA, duration approach and software. We have confirmed our guidance of 70% payout, provided that we could do it at the time of the dividend date. Notwithstanding this kind of provision, our quarter one remain on the high level of 16.2%. A very important non-financial achievement for our stakeholders. First, in terms of environment. Three major event. First, we have anticipate, we have already hit our target of green bond issuance, we did it in last September. We have launched with RAM, a stable climate global equities fund, its first carbon neutral fund, we have reached carbon neutrality as a group, by offsetting our greenhouse gas emission through verified carbon credits to fund external emission reduction projects. Social. CheBanca! commitment for 2021, they launch a project with the Arca Onlus Foundation to deliver food parcel and necessity goods for 1,000 of families in economic difficulties. We're putting more efforts and emphasis on agile and smart working platform for our community and our employees. Last but not least, governance improvement on the back of the strong support from institutional investor, from investor in general, in the reappointment of the board. We have now a board which is more independent, 60% as a total of members are independent and much better represented with women having 40% of the seats. Going to divisional results, I explain you the trend of net new money. This trend of net new money is basically driven by affluent and private banking. If we go on page 28, we see that there is not only a quantitative element to stress, but there's also a qualitative element to stress. The fact that we are working more and more with recurrent revenue, management fee, which are becoming not only the great part, but basically the only part of the revenue, big part of the revenue, the margins which are going materially up. You see this from the fact that we have a marginality close to 0.9%. You see that if we exclude performance fee, our trend in core revenue in wealth management is +7%. Net profit was in line last year, as you remember, we have had important performance fee. This year, less performance fee, but more management fee. Here, we have to speak about the trend of CheBanca! on page 29. Quite amazing trend where growth and repositioning are ongoing. We are moving more and more CheBanca! on the upper part of the customer segment onto premier banking. This is something that started last year is giving the first results, but we are still at the start of a journey. We are reprofiling better our customer base, reviewing our product shelf, reviewing the allocation of product done internally, is clearly improving margin and sustaining management fee and, in general, revenue. This is a qualitative exercise of repositioning that has to be coupled, as it is coupled, with an important franchise enhancement. We have resumed this enhancement after the COVID slowdown. We have added 30 relationship managers and financial advisor, and this is something that we will improve and we will accelerate in the next few quarters, given the positive trend that we see. In private banking, we are reaping, I would say, the advantage of a model that today is pretty unique in Italian market. Why? Because we operate a combined offer, private and investment banking. I think that today we are one of the best-positioned bank to do this because we have a strong IB, which is now supporting a strong private banking. We are targeting 500, 600 families in Italy which are entrepreneurs. I think this approach of serving those clients with a combined offer is now tangible in net new money, is tangible in the fact that we are producing a number of solution which are illiquid and are covering real assets, and is having a lot of traction. We need to continue in this, and basically, the acquisition of Bybrook that you see on page 31 is part of the strategy. Engaging with clients with innovative and new type of product, sometimes or in most cases, not liquid, which are managed by excellent portfolio manager. This is the case of Bybrook. The story, I think, is well known. It's a company which was founded in 2013. It's London-based. They were sponsored by Blackstone. They have had quite a good track record in raising assets and giving above-average return. Now they have in the region of EUR 2 billion, with an average ROA of 80 basis points. This is important for us because we will combine Bybrook Capital with Cairn. Cairn is a specialist in CLO with great track record. This will clearly improve the product offer, will raise the marginality of the combined entity, and will foster new growth because this is evidently an asset class which is having and will have more demand in the quarters to come. Consumer banking, we have managed the impact of the second lockdown, which was much less severe, but notwithstanding, was creating a bit of attrition in terms of new loan origination. We, as I said, were able to print another EUR 1.5 billion of new loans. This has been done in the context of powering up our distribution, through enhancement of online, now representing 24% of personal loans sold directly, and branches, with 12 openings in the last six months. We have also put a lot of emphasis in new products, closed loop card launch in July, and instant credit through PagoLight, which is in final stage. At the end, new loans were up 18%, half on half, and they were reaching EUR 3 billion. Net profit was marginally down, compared to last year, 18%, but 6% half on half. On the back of lower revenue, lower outstanding credit and lower revenue, which was anyhow better than our internal forecast. Loan loss provision up 12%, but down 27% half on half, with core below 200 basis points in this second Q. You see on page 36 the trend of the second lockdown impact. The market in general in 2020 contracted heavily. 34% was the decrease in the market year-over-year. Compass has outperformed the market in car and in purpose loan. It was a bit behind because of personal loan, due to stricter conservative approach since the first lockdown, although gradually recovering. Fast recovery of the new loans since the end of the first lockdown, with new loans, as I said, of this second quarter replicating the same level of Q2. Distribution was enhanced, as we see on page 37, with an improved online distribution as a percentage of direct PP loans. Limiting or reducing the impact of third-party distribution, which is less buoyant as expected compared to the past. Direct distribution went up to 64% of personal loan. It was 57%. ROAC confirmed at high level despite COVID slowdown. We still are in the region of 28%, and we are enjoying this kind of profitability thanks also to excellent core, which is now 222 basis points, but is very similar to the pre-COVID level. NII trend was better than expected. We had expected a -5% this year. For the time being, we are at -3%. Corporate Investment Banking posted another very strong quarter. As I said, this quarter was driven by capital market and financing. This was also in the presence of some good activity in capital market solution, but less than historically. We had a lot of positive and some negative in CIB, we still have some improvement to be done. We have also managed a resilient NII, also net of EUR 8 million of positive one-off. This led to cost income down to 41%, and as we said, we have enjoyed the Burgo reclassification. The quarters and the semester was good in terms of different type of transaction. You see on page 41, it was the effort of last transaction, but also we are growing a lot in mid-corporate transaction as well as in some sponsor M&A-led transaction. We have increased also the level of international cross-border transaction. This is, of course, also on the back of Messier & Associés partnership. As I said, ECM and DCM was and is still quite robust. Equity raising, IPO, and bond placement has been and is still quite good in terms of trend, and Mediobanca profit from good market and good market position, as you see on page 42. The portfolio of corporate loans remain quite healthy in the sense that we have, like others, exposure to some impacted sector from COVID. On average, we have exposure to leaders of the sector, listed company. Some of them have already run through a recap, some are doing. We have only had some request of waiver. We didn't have liquidity issues observed at counterparties that request loan modification, negligible moratory requests and lower cost to such a guaranteed financing, so less than 1% of the portfolio. Still very low exposure to LBOs. It's less than 5% of the portfolio. This led then to the sort of staging that we have described before. ROAC at 19% due to strong revenue and asset quality, managing well the cost. Principal investing, nothing to say on top of the fact that this has been a normal quarter of contribution from Generali. The previous one had a negative one-off coming from the settlement of BSI, we are back to normalized level. On holding function, we have improved results in the sense that we have improved the loss by 4%. This is lower than a year ago. GOP was improved. The gross operating profit was improved by 21% due to strong contribution from treasury and better cost control, only partially offset by higher provisioning on leasing loan book and DGS contribution. Funding position is quite healthy. You see our MREL requirement confirmed for 2021, with high surplus. We are among the, I think here, the best bank in terms of MREL requisite in Europe, and we have abundant capacity on top. The funding shows a stock up with the cost of funding flat at 80 basis points. Here, on one end, we have managed a better cost of funding on absolute level for the new funding, for the new issuance, and also take into consideration TLTRO contribution. On the other end, as we know, the absolute level of interest rates was much lower than forecasted. At the end, we stayed flat in terms of cost of funding in the region of 80 basis points. Only a few words as a closing remarks. With ROTE at 10% in the middle of the COVID, CET1 at 16.2%, payout ratio at 70%, gross NPE on loans at 3.3%, I think we have a quite sound revenue and balance sheet situation. This is an evidence that Mediobanca is able to grow through the cycle and deliver above average sustainable growth and return to total shareholder. This is again based on our business model, which is focused on specialized structural long-term growth business geared towards the best counterparty in terms of risk-reward. This is very important, in particular in a tough moment like the one we are living in COVID, a business model which is exposed and geared toward the best risk-reward. On one end, large and high mid corporates, on the other end, at the other extreme, households, which tend to have historically a very important and positive payment or repayment capability. We think that the next six months will be good as well in terms of sound commercial activity in all business segment and full control of cost of risk. We expect another good half of the year, net of some one-off in positive and negative. We will not, of course, enjoy another write back like the one of Burgo. I think we continue to have quite good trend in terms of operating core revenues. We, of course, reaffirm our strong commitment to have quite an important shareholder remuneration, ECB allowing us to do this. I think I'm done, I'm available for your question now. Thank you very much. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A queue. This will only take few moments. If you wish to cancel your request, please press the hash key. Once again, it's star one to ask a question. Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, it's star one if you wish to ask a question. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Antonio Reale from Morgan Stanley. Please ask your question, your line is open. Hi, good afternoon. It's Antonio here from Morgan Stanley. Thank you for the presentation and taking my questions. I've got three, please. The first one on NII, second on CIB fees, and lastly on distribution. The first one on the NII. As I look at the NII and consumer finance new loan origination, there's been a lot more resilience than we initially feared. You've done 75% of your pre-COVID run rate origination in the quarter. If I remember right, your previous guidance was for NII expected to trough between Q1 and Q2 of 2021, which seems to be the case after adjusting for the EUR 8 million one-off in the quarter. My first question is this still the case, shall we expect a gradual improvement in the underlying NII going forward? How do you see NII and consumer loan origination for the second half of this year? That's my first question. The second one is on the fees and CIB pipeline. In the short term, of course, this was affected by the monetization of some large single tickets in CIB, which you rightly flagged as part of your outlook. If I look at sort of the big picture and medium term, CIB is finally showing some signs of normalization, which you also talked about in your business plan. As we gradually and slowly come out of sort of a global pandemic, and Italy also has sort of a new government, it seems almost like the potential for a blue sky scenario. I'm wondering what you're hearing from your CIB clients or how do you see your CIB pipeline go from here with a medium term outlook. Lastly, on your distribution potential. You have a number of distribution agreements with banks. You've talked about, extensively in the business plan, about the switch effect and also on slide 37, I think actually, thanks for that, on your intentions to increase the direct Compass branches. I see you're on track to get there. My question is, I think in the recent past, you've been open to the idea of potentially exploring new distribution agreements. How should we think about this compared to your digital offering, which seems to be gaining significant momentum post-COVID? Thank you. Thank you very much, Antonio Reale, for your questions. NII, we have guided, saying that we would have single-digit decrease in NII as a group level for the year. That could be for Compass, 5%, for the group, 3%. What we're seeing is that we are having a better trend. This better trend, net of one-off, you carve out Burgo, is EUR 8 million, is 1%. This means that instead of being flattish, we are at minus 1. We can have a continuation of this trend net of one-off in the second half. This will be supported by the new loan origination. It will be key for us to see, in particular in February and March, the new loan production, and also not only February and March, but let me say, also the Q4, the new loan production of Compass. If the new loan production of Compass reach, basically, I would say EUR 600 million-EUR 650 million per month, then we will have improved results. This will really create a very good starting point for 2021, 2022. The NII is improved also because of TLTRO. Much better than we thought. Because the overall impact full year of TLTRO contribution is in the region of EUR 40 million. This is something that when we guided, was not so clear in terms of impact and is better. CIB fees. Here, as you know, we have been working a lot and we are still working to have a diversification of fee in CIB. In CIB you can have very good quarter, then you can have less good quarter. The way to normalize it is basically having a lot of contributor to the pipeline and to the fee pool. We are working in terms of geography, we are working in terms of segments. We have now a much bigger midcap segment, and we have also now contributing more than in the past ECM. You remember that ECM has been always important for Mediobanca, but for a period of time, either IPO or recap were not there. I think we have entered the period where both IPO, we have quite a good pipeline of IPO this year, and recap of company which need to put some equity, will be there, because as you know better than me, during the COVID, we haven't seen in Italy, unlike in U.K., important recap. This recap will happen because there is a need to do this. I am positive on the pipeline. I am positive on the fact that this is a trend that support capital market and M&A and acquisition finance. The last question was on distribution agreement. I didn't understand well it. Did you mean Mediobanca reaching agreement with the third-party distribution network and consumer? Yes. Yeah, I think we are open for that. We are open for that. We may look at this consolidation happening in Italy with interest also in this respect. You are right because there may be an opportunity for us to, in particular in the COVID period where non-performance will go up, cost of risk will stay high, to have someone like Compass, which is providing a product against fees, and so helping banks to beef up the fee pool and reduce the NPL ratio. Of course, they will have lower NII, but they will have better fees. We are open for that, and in the middle of this consolidation process, we will look for that. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Azzurra Guelfi from Citi. Please ask your question. Your line is open. Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for all the detail on the asset quality of the group. Can you give us the guidance for the full year? You remain confident of the guidance that you provide earlier on of around 60 to 65 basis point, overall at group level. Also when you look at the risk management, you have a very strong risk management in asset quality. I'm thinking about the expansion that you're doing into the alternative space in the private banking division. These are clearly assets that are not on your balance sheet, but they can bear, if you want, reputational risk, if anything were to go wrong. How do you approach this risk and how does it square with the group's strong risk control that you have? Because they are starting to become more significant in terms of asset size. The last one is on dividend, if I may. You have reiterated your guidance for around 70% payout for this year, subject to the regulator. If we go further a couple of years, if you were not to expand significantly in the wealth management, how should the market think about all this excess capital that you have? Would it be used for organic growth? Would it be used for, I don't know, extraordinary dividend? I know it's harder to square it now given the regulatory framework, but just to have an idea, because these also impact your profitability because you have a high level of capital. Thank you. Thank you very much, Azzurra. Yes, I confirm the guidance of core for the full year in the region of 60, 65, maybe more 60 than 65. Let's see if we have the confirmation of the trend, which were quite good of the first 2 Q. If I got well, because the line was not so clear, you said which kind of attention you put in the alternative in terms of operative risk and risk management. Here again, alternative, it's something that, for the time being, we have devoted only to client, which have, in private banking, a good level of sophistication. Often we review this kind of product and offer at the central committee, the risk committee, which I chair. I am involved in this. Our memory, it goes back to the time of when the hedge fund, as you remember, were in the portfolio of private banking, and everybody had problem back in the 2000. It's very important to have some white hair and to remember of the problems that illiquid alternative can create because there is a boom, but then can be as boom and some problems. You are quite right. It's something that we need to monitor. The experience we had in Esperia with Edge, we didn't put gate, other had to put gate. We put our money to solve the problem at the time, and the money of Mediobanca and Mediolanum. It's a memory we have in front of us. Dividend. We want to stick to what we said in the plan. The only problem is the phasing. In the plan, we said we're going to go down to 13.5. The pace at which we will go will depend on, A, the COVID impact, B, the, I would say, operative trend, 3, ECB. Basically, what we want to do is couple the dividend distribution with resuming buybacks program, and we will see whether there is a chance to do this also this year, so in the general meeting of October. As you remember, we need to get the authorization, A, to cancel the existing own shares, B, to launch a new program. What we want to do is combine a very good cash distribution with some regular program of buybacks in order to smooth this capital ratio towards 13.5 within 2023. If you do the math, this means that, [Foreign language] addressed, we have all room to have a very good, excellent distribution in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Christian Carrese from Intermonte. Please ask your question, your line is open. Thank you for the presentation. I was just wondering, what do you think about the consensus view on full year results? I see that the consensus is set at around EUR 640 million for the full year in terms of net profit. You already did EUR 400 million in the first half, this means the consensus is discounting some 40% decrease in profitability in the second half. I understand that it seems that you are confident to keep the guidance at 60-65 basis points in terms of cost of risk. I was wondering what could go wrong, not to have such a decrease in the second half. Secondly, on the wealth management, if you can give us an idea or your thoughts on, again, external growth, if there is any industry that you are looking at the current moment. Thank you. Thank you, Christian. Consensus by definition is always right for me. If I have to do an observation, I would say that confirming a guidance of 60 basis points of cost of risk, I think there is a possibility to improve the bottom line. It will much depend on what is happening in terms of customer behavior in this Q and next Q. Not only in terms of core, because basically the level of provision in Compass is doing is already very prudent. Is taking already in some sort of deterioration, which today we don't see. Because the level is so good, we want it to be more prudent, so we are provisioning more. The real question mark to me, not only for this year, but also for next year, is the level of new printed loan in consumer. If new printed loan in consumer goes, as I said, in the region of between EUR 600 and EUR 700, of course, we have NII going up. Otherwise, it would be more difficult, we have to, as we have done this year, to offset this kind of pressure with additional loan printed in other sector, as I said, with a bit of help from TLTRO. External growth. I am very happy with the results of wealth management, I have to say that I'm becoming even more upbeat about the organic growth potential that we have. This organic growth has been important, has been slowed a bit by the COVID. If we have, I would say, a couple of quarters where we can operate and recruit a relationship manager and financial advisor, I think we will see even better results. Why? As you know, this consolidation in banking is creating a lot of opportunity. In the moment where banks are under consolidation opportunity threat, you have much easier time to recruit good people. I think that with what we have done last year in terms of repositioning CheBanca!, in terms of offering a relationship manager the possibility to enjoy Mediobanca relationship, Mediobanca client base and product, notably in IB, I think we will have easier way to recruit, this organic growth can be even better. This growth trajectory can be improved by an external move, but it has to be something that is not blocking our organic growth. To say something, we have a potential between EUR 4 billion and EUR 5 billion of net new money every year, which is important. We will not put this at risk to do a transaction that basically is adding a very low contribution, it's distracting our growth. Today, as we know, there is nothing valuable available. Let's see if in the next few quarters something is arising, we are not worried about this because basically our organic growth trend is so good that it can be improved by an M&A, this is not something that we have to do at any cost or in any cases. Very clear. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Domenico Santoro from HSBC. Please ask your question. Your line is open. Yes. Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for the presentation. Just a bit of follow-up on the cost of risk. Apart from CIB, that goes up and down depending on the write backs, but we know that your underlying quality is very good. I'm surprised about the consumer credit trending down to less than 200 basis points. I'm just wondering whether we should expect even more decline over the next couple of quarters, or from this level, you expect these numbers to be stable in a way. Also looking a bit forward, and assuming that things will start to normalize after Easter. Then a question again on the M&A, because I listened to the answer that you gave to the colleague before, but read every day different articles in the newspapers, and I wonder at this point how the relationship with some of your key shareholders is going, and assuming that you want, of course, to comment on this, whether we should instead expect a bit of more M&A appetite to translate into some sort of bigger deal, even tempting you to call for fresh capital, assuming that the deal works on an Excel spreadsheet, but also in real life. Thank you very much. Thank you, Domenico. The core in consumer is unexpectedly low. We didn't expect such a low core. This may be the result of customer less active, more prudent, keeping cash, reducing the debt. On the other end, we see the flip side of this, which is the fact that we bring less loan. What do we expect for the future? In the next two quarters, we expect flattish cost of risk for the time being. We don't have sign of deterioration. It may be that once they become more active in consumer loan, there may be a slight pick up in cost of risk, can be physiological. Today, I think we need to have third quarters to see this kind of trend. For the time being, as we said, we see very low cost of risk and a bit sluggish new loan production. Maybe the two trends may differ in the next few months once the mood, the consumer mood, the visibility on the support measure from the government is given, and we may have a better trend. I think at the end, we will have a bump in consumption, because normally, I think that if you, for one year, have been stuck not spending money, not having the will to do any consumption act, a certain moment, you restart to do this, and I think we may have a bumpy period of new consumer. When, this is more a question mark, if it is before summer or after summer. It may be that at that point, this cost of risk is going slightly up. I would say this More in the second part of this year than the first part. In terms of relation with our shareholder, in particular the key shareholder, definitely we have regular, very useful confrontation. We are aligned in terms of strategy and moves. The fact, as I said, is that finding a good target for M&A with management is not an easy task, even for us that we do this for job. We need to be patient on one end, vigilant and putting the gas, pressing the gas onto organic growth. It may materialize, it may not, it is not reliant on us. As you know, as you said, well, we have all the means in terms of capital brand, position in the market to do it. We don't think that this is the only way to deliver very good return and dividend to our shareholder. Thank you. Thank you. Our final question comes from the line of Luigi De Bellis from Equita. Please ask your question. Your line is open. Yes, good afternoon. Just one question left for me on the CET1 ratio. Very solid position at December 20. Can you elaborate on the trend expected in the coming quarters, in particular, if there are some regulatory headwinds or tailwinds to take into account or the evolution of RWA in the second half of the year? Thank you. Thank you, Luigi. Well, I think that we don't see particular headwinds. On the contrary, we have the CRR2, which is not happening now. It's happening, I think, in three years. We report always the two ratio, the fully phased and the phased in. The difference is something like 120, 140 basis points, provided that this kind of measure is taken out, which is not given. Also, I don't think with this situation of banks, it is going to be so easy to remove something that is not only touching Mediobanca, but is more touching the financial conglomerates. On the other end, we don't have TRIM, we don't have other measure coming that have affected heavily Core Tier 1 or capital ratio of other banks. We have stated basically the Core Tier 1 trajectory. If we pay 70% in terms of payout, it will stay in the region of 16. Of course, if we need to stick, on the contrary, which we hope not the case, to the rules that is now valid, our Core Tier 1 will go up in the region of 16.5 or even more. If we have to pay, not the 70%, but 11, 12% of payout, which is embedded in the current limitation issued by ECB. Thank you very much. We have no further questions at this time. Dr. Nagel, please go ahead. Thank you very much for your patience, and I hope to have you all back in our Q3 conference, which will be held in May, the next month of May. Thank you very much. See you soon. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude your conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect. Thank you.