Good day, and welcome to the Flow Traders fourth quarter and full year 2022 results conference call. This meeting is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to hand the call over to Jonathan Berger, investor relations officer. Please go ahead sir. Thank you. Good morning, and thank you all for joining Flow Traders fourth quarter and full year 2022 results call. As you'll no doubt already seen, we released our results first thing this morning. I'm joined here on the call today by Flow Traders CEO, Mike Kuehnel, as well as Chief Trading Officer, Folkert Joling, who will run through this results presentation. Afterwards, they'll be happy to take any questions you may have. Before we begin, let me draw your attention to the disclaimer on page two. Please be advised that if you continue to listen to this presentation, you are bound by this disclaimer. Also, please note that the results we will discuss in this presentation are unaudited. With the formalities out of the way, I would now like to hand over to Mike for his opening remarks. Thank you, Jonathan, good morning, and thank you all for joining this call where we will provide additional color on our fourth quarter and full year 2022 results. 2022 as a whole saw an increase in the levels of market activity when compared to 2021, amidst a generally higher volatility environment. Market ETP value traded increased 41% year-on-year as investors absorbed various geopolitical and macroeconomic events. The fourth quarter of 2022 was marginally more active than the third, this was reflected in ETP market value traded increasing by 2% quarter-on-quarter. Our own ETP value traded slightly decreased quarter-on-quarter. However, for the year as a whole, ETP value traded increased by 15%. 2022 saw record ETP value traded versus last year, which in itself was a record for our business. This was also the fourth consecutive year when our ETP value traded surpassed the EUR 1 trillion mark. This is once again a testament to our market presence and leading global footprint. We also saw record value traded across each of our three asset class pillars in 2022, which demonstrates the structural return on recent investments and the development of a more diverse and resilient business. From an NTI perspective, there has been a greater relative fixed income contribution in 2022. This market environment, along with Flow Traders' own pricing and hedging capabilities, translated into total income of EUR 113.9 million for the quarter. This comprises net trading income of EUR 115.6 million and negative other income of EUR 1.7 million. As a reminder, the other income line item reflects the performance of our strategic investments portfolio. 2022 as a whole saw normalized total income of EUR 460.6 million, which was 19% greater than recorded in 2021. We delivered another strong financial performance in our second most successful year ever from a top-line standpoint. We demonstrated yet again strong margins with a normalized EBITDA margin of 42% in Q4 2022, with normalized EBITDA of EUR 48.2 million. In 2022, normalized EBITDA was EUR 208.2 million with a margin of 45%. As a reminder, our normalized income statement presentation removes the distorting impact of IFRS 2 in relation to share-based payments and excludes one of non-recurring advisory costs in order to provide an underlying performance view across the financial periods. Q4 2022 normalized net profit amounted to EUR 33.6 million with normalized basic EPS of EUR 0.78. Ultimately, we recorded normalized net profit of 2022 of EUR 150.2 million with normalized basic EPS of EUR 3.45. Taking all of this into account, Flow Traders proposes a final dividend for 2022 of EUR 0.80, which equates to a total dividend of EUR 1.50 for 2022. This will be paid in early May following our AGM. We once again retained a strong focus on implementing our strategic growth agenda during the fourth quarter, which saw further confirmation of our structural growth. Accordingly, we have worked to enlarge our trading footprint across multiple products and asset classes. And lastly, I would also like to take the opportunity now to pay tribute to the professionalism, resilience, and loyalty of all of our colleagues globally this past year. Everyone has contributed to the considerable operation and strategic achievements and successes over the past year. Folkert will now review recent ETP market dynamics on the next slide. Thank you, Mike, and good morning all. As shown at the top left-hand side of this slide, ETP market value traded increased slightly in the fourth quarter of 2022 compared to the third quarter. Although both quarters were down from quarterly volumes seen during the first half of the year. Implied volatility, as represented by the VIX, remained elevated into Q4, although trending lower than Q3 as markets reacted to ongoing macroeconomic developments. There was a downtick in ETP velocity in the second half of 2022, mainly driven by the Americas and Europe. ETP assets under management has reduced by 10% since the start of 2022, predominantly due to the broader market backdrop, overall inflows remain strong. In summary, it's fair to say that momentum and the outlook across the ETP universe continues to be positive. I will now move on to the dynamics within the fixed income and crypto markets. As shown on the top left of the slide, it is evident that the investment grade and high yield bond markets have remained reasonably robust from a volume perspective, although being slightly down from the volumes seen in the first half. We can also see that credit spreads have widened in 2022 when compared to 2021. There has also been a corresponding widening of fixed income ETP spreads during the same period. From a crypto market perspective, Bitcoin, including other digital currencies, experienced a sharp price decline during 2022. There was also a noticeable volume spike seen in the market following the collapse of FTX. The declines in the cryptocurrency valuations have naturally impacted crypto ETP value traded, which also fell sharply in Q3 and Q4. I will now review Flow Traders regional performance. On this slide, we present an overview of some of the key performance indicators for the fourth quarter as well as for the full year 2022 on a regional basis. As Mike mentioned earlier, we have seen another strong performance in Q4. Heightened market activity and disciplined execution resulted in growth in NTI in Q4. In Europe, we maintained our position as the leading liquidity provider in ETPs and delivered a robust overall trading performance in Q4. Encouragingly, our fixed income and corporate credit trading businesses continue to increase its presence across the market. Flow Traders retained our top 5 Bloomberg dealer rankings for executed tickets and volume within our Euro investment grade universe. From a crypto perspective, as a regulated and listed firm, Flow Traders continues to be well-positioned, supporting partners and the overall ecosystem. It is also important to note that regarding FTX, Flow Traders has an immaterial exposure. More broadly, we continue to manage risks effectively. Moving to the Americas, it was clearly a strong trading performance in Q4. This was partially driven by fixed income. As in Europe, we continue to build out the fixed income businesses in Americas and saw improved rankings across the various RFQ platforms. There was also continuous focus on international equity pricing capabilities, including ADRs. Flow Traders has also opened a new office in Chicago since first of February. We seek to further benefit from the city's unique talent pool and academic diversity. We also have created closer proximity to many innovative players in the U.S. digital asset space to ensure Flow Traders remains well-positioned to be part of this defining moment in the future of finance and technology. Lastly, with respect to Asia, we saw a solid quarter-on-quarter trading performance. In line with our strategy to expand geographically in Asia, we have further built out activities in China following the receipt of Flow Traders QFII license and the opening of the Shanghai office, with the purpose of helping to develop the local ETF market, making domestic and international indices effectively to make it available to investors. Flow Traders have also started to leverage the U.S. and European fixed income businesses with our coverage in Asian trading hours for global coverage of both index products and selected single bonds. From a digital asset standpoint, we acted as a market maker on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange first virtual asset ETF, and reflects our ongoing support for crypto and digital asset ETPs globally. I will now hand back off back to Mike, for the next slide where we cover the cost base. Thank you, Folkert. As you can see, we have seen 32% year-on-year and 5% quarter-on-quarter increases in fixed OpEx. As we mentioned in recent earnings releases, a major impact has related to the U.S. dollar strengthening against the euro. This has affected all the fixed OpEx categories. In addition, new hires, base compensation increases implemented in H1, and technology investments have also been contributing factors. I will discuss these developments in greater detail on the next slide. We have also incurred EUR 14.1 million of non-recurring strategic advisory costs, predominantly relating to the updated corporate holding structure and further balance sheet review efforts. These are excluded from normalized OpEx. We have also seen further growth in headcount with a 3% quarter-on-quarter increase to 660 FTEs as we drive strategic growth. The business overall continues to demonstrate healthy normalized EBITDA margins, both quarter on quarter as well as year on year. While we remain committed to bringing on board additional talent in growth business areas, FTEs are expected to remain broadly flat during 2023, given expected efficiency gains. There is a strong commitment from the entire business to maintain the fixed operating cost base in line with the December 2022 run rate. Accordingly, normalized fixed operating expenses in 2023 are expected to amount to approximately EUR 175 million-EUR 185 million. I will now discuss the development of our fixed operating expenses in 2022 on the next slide. On this slide, we have presented a bridge to provide additional detail and explanation around the development of normalized fixed operating expenses in 2022. As you can see, there has been a 19% increase in the normalized fixed operating expense development when adjusted for the strengthening of the U.S. Dollar, as well as the targeted base compensation increases implemented in the first half of 2022. The impact of a strengthening US dollar versus the euro amounted to EUR 6.6 million across all expense categories. In terms of the base compensation increases, this had a EUR 7.1 million impact. It is important to note, however, that this was offset by the change of the profit-sharing percentage to 32.5% of operating results from 35% previously. This ensures an income statement neutral impact overall. I will now take a closer look at Flow Traders' capital position. On the next slide, we show our required CET1 capital levels on the top left-hand part of the slide. After accounting for the final dividend, Flow Traders' capital buffers have remained strong and remain comfortably above our requirements under IFR/IFD. Our own funds requirement reduced to EUR 274 million at the end of December from EUR 323 million at the end of September. This reflects the nature of the trading book at that point in time. We had total CET1 of EUR 539 million at the end of December 2022, with EUR 265 million excess capital. As you will have seen, we completed the update to our corporate holding structure on January 13th, 2023. With this new holding structure, group consolidated supervision and associated capital requirements no longer apply. On a pro forma basis, this would have reduced our capital requirements by 15% if the new holding structure would have been in place at the end of 2022. From a disclosure standpoint, the concept of CET1 and other associated capital metrics at the group level no longer exist, accordingly, will not be reported on going forward. On the top right-hand side of the slide, you can see our trading capital position. Trading capital really is the lifeblood of our business and has the ability to generate attractive returns, as shown on the chart. Our trading capital increased to EUR 651 million at the end of the year, includes the proposed dividend as well as deferred variable remuneration. It is also worth noting how consistently accretive trading capital has been over recent periods with levels in excess of 60%. Considering all of these developments and the growth opportunities we very much see ahead, Flow Traders has set the full year 2022 final dividend at EUR 0.80 per share, implying a EUR 1.5 total dividend for full year 2022. Moving to the next slide, I will discuss market trends, our strategy, and recent achievements. On this slide, you can see the supportive mega-trends which we outlined at the capital markets update remain very much intact. These four mega-trends continue to shape our market environment, are acting as tailwinds to our business, and offer increased opportunity set. Crucially, these trends all feed into and reinforce each other. Particularly re-relevant to our core business is the ever-increasing acceptance of ETPs and growth in passive investing. According to BlackRock, ETP AUM is expected to double by 2025, which underscores the strength and importance of the ecosystem we are key part of. Electronification of trading is critical for all of our activities, but specifically it is within our credit business where this is the key structural trend in corporate credit and emerging market sovereign bonds. Increasing adoption of electronic trading ties into our core technology-enabled competency set. Despite the recent market events, there has still been considerable average daily volumes across cryptocurrencies seen globally in 2022. Digital assets remain a long-term growth opportunity within the underlying technology expected to drive significant transformation across global financial markets in the coming years. Regulation continues to support our business in terms of creating a level playing field, in terms of execution transparency. In addition, increased regulatory adoption of digital assets will also create more opportunities for our firm as we are an active participant in accelerating these discussions with regulators. I will now hand over to Folkert to review our strategic objectives and progress in 2022 and focus items for 2023 and beyond. Thank you Mike. With those key market trends in mind, our strategic goals and objectives across the three asset class pillars are fully aligned with the ambition outlined at the capital markets update. We made significant achievements in 2022 and have clear focus areas for 2023 and beyond. These are all entirely consistent with our long-term strategic outlook. From an equity standpoint, we are seeking to deepen product coverage and geographical footprint to align with structural industry growth. In 2022, we achieved record value traded across equity as we grew our large counterparty base even further and traded on a large array of venues. We also commenced onshore trading in China, which is a significant component of our broader Asia expansion plan. In 2023, we will increase our focus in the U.S. on index product with international underlying. In Asia, we will expand our footprint in the major markets of China and Korea. We have further expanded and diversified our fixed income trading during the course of 2022. There was a material increase in fixed income value trade versus 2021, and the single bond market making proposition has grown globally in the past year as well. 2023 will see further growth globally in our single bond market making proposition. In line with this, we will also be onboarding additional fixed income institutional counterparties the full year. In terms of CCC, the focus here is on growing our presence and participation in digital assets, FX, and commodities. We retain our long-term conviction around digital assets and accordingly have continued to grow our presence in the global crypto financial ecosystem. We expanded our coverage of crypto ETPs and have acted as a market maker on numerous crypto ETP launches. Work will continue in 2023 on accelerating our footprint in ETP spots and derivative products, as well as expanding OTC bilateral counterparty business across CCC space as a whole. To complete the picture, we have expanded our strategic ecosystem approach, which is channeled through our corporate venture capital unit, Flow Traders Capital, which is covered in more detail on the next slide to be covered by Mike. Thanks Folkert. In 2022, we announced the establishment of Flow Traders Capital, which formalized and refined our overall strategic ecosystem approach. It is clear that there is a tremendous amount of change in innovation happening in global financial markets. Given our position within the ecosystem, we believe we can play a critical role in driving this innovation and change. At the same time, we believe that single firms acting alone cannot accomplish this. We therefore want to make sure we partner with other organizations to leverage this change, as well as to accelerate our overall strategy by driving themes of electronification and transparency. In 2022, we made 16 strategic investments in total, which have a current portfolio value of EUR 25 million. This slide illustrates selective investments we have made recently. I do not propose to run through each initiative shown on this slide in turn, as you can see, our current portfolio is split across our three asset class pillars of equity, fixed income, and CCC. Interest in strategically partnering with Flow Traders remains high, whilst new investment activity has reduced, focus has intensified on strategic planning with existing portfolio companies. The pipeline for new investment in both digital assets and traditional finance ecosystems remain strong. I will now hand back the call to Jonathan. Thanks Mike. This now concludes the formal part of our presentation. We would now like to open up the floor to any questions you may have. Operator. Thank you Jonathan. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question at this time, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. Please make sure the mute function on your phone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, please press star one to ask a question. Our first question comes from Gregory Simpson from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi. Morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Just first of all maybe is could you talk about the net trading income mix by asset class? The capital markets today, you kind of gave that mix. How does it shape up in 2022 and in Q4 in particular, interested in the contribution from fixed income? That would be my first question. Thank you Greg. In line with the market activities, fixed income was more active in 2022 than in 2021. This also reflects in the relative contribution of fixed income on the total. It has grown a bit. Equity is still the strong holder and very stable contribution on the distribution. Fixed income grew relatively and because of the crypto downticks and the activities in the CCC space, relatively fixed income is slightly larger than in 2021. Equity very stable and fixed income takes that part probably relative from the CCC bucket. Got it. Okay. Just on the looking at the EMEA segment, the fall in NTI in Q4 versus Q3, I mean, volumes look quite stable and the market, like, it didn't feel particularly different between those quarters. Could you just talk a bit more about why, you know, why things are a bit slower on the revenue side in EMEA in Q4? There's always a bit of variance in those patterns. The the KPIs are very stable and strong. We, we don't see a significant change in those. No, it's not, it's nothing materially different. I think it's the key indicators that we are looking at, also a very stable pattern. Got it. Got it. Then maybe just one final one is, I don't think there's going to be an answer, but any kind of particular change on the competitive front in terms of the, you know, players you're kind of, you know, seeing in the market, or is it still kind of stable? Also, is your market share in equity ETFs very different to fixed income ETFs? Is there a big difference between those two on the market share front? Thank you. The competitor landscape in Q4 has remained relatively intact. We do see the continued developments in technology, low latency and prediction ongoing. The mix of competitors is relatively equal. The market share as opposed to different asset classes depends a bit on the segment of the pillar. We are very strong on the international side on equity, relatively less on the domestic, but has also remained similar. In fixed income, this is also the case where we are stronger on the investment grade and the high yield bucket relatively to the Treasuries. The pricing element of our competent set is the reason for this. Those market shares have remained strong in equity side, in Europe, 40% market share on exchange. Between 25 and 30 of exchange. These are all very stable. Greg, if I may add just to provide a bit more broader color. When we presented our Q3 results, we made a bridge into the diversification strategy paying off. What we see now consistently is that the structured investments we made in our business, and fixed income is a very prominent example, are increasingly paying off. I think this is a testament to the trends are right. We indicated as key opportunities for us. Secondly, creating a global footprint of our underlying infrastructure and making sure that we can capture very systematically, more and more market share. That's another leg to it. In a way, this is now for us, you know, a proof of concept for diversification work, so we can be in part significantly more as a class agnostic. Secondly, we are able to increase more operational leverage on a global basis. I hope that this ultimately then builds the bridge into becoming more competitive down the road. Got it t hank you. Just so the fixed income was 10% of NTI in 2021. Is any color where that actually was in 2022? We've not disclosed this, but slightly larger than that. Nothing material. Slightly larger. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Julian Dobrovolschi, from ABN AMRO ODDO BHF. Please go ahead. Hi good morning gentlemen, thanks for taking my questions. Congrats on the strong set of results, of course. I have a couple of them on my side. To kick off, I'd like to kind of, you know, dig deeper a bit into the trading capital and the returns on that. I was just wondering, what are the main drivers actually of growth on the returns of trading capital? In Q4, this landed at 71%, while it was at 67% in Q3. You clearly traded less crypto, which in the past was a bit of a kind of high return on capital, while the non-ETP volume stayed broadly flat quarter-on-quarter. Could you please give a bit of color from where this is actually coming from? Yeah Julian, I can kick it off. I think there are different components to that equation. One is an increased level of also internal visibility on trading opportunities. We started talking last year, actually, about we want to make capital or drive velocity of capital and drive also across the entire global footprint even, the visibility of arising trading capabilities and build an organization behind that in order to capture that. That is clearly and has been and still is the key priority for us. That's a key driver. I think a second point is that we feel that the investments we have made over the last few year also give us an opportunity to capture the right opportunities around high volatility and market dislocation. There's clearly also a point on global alignment, across the firm. We've been very diligent in fighting complexity of a growing organization and building systematically more alignment into the business. This gives us significantly higher speed in being able to react to arising trading opportunities for us. In a way, this trading capital return footprint is a key indicator, and there are multiple KPIs below in order to make sure that this comes not as a surprise to us, but we're very systematic in driving the trading capital return to these levels and also making sure that we can maintain it there. There's more behind in order to make sure that the entire organization can capture these opportunities, structurally quarter by quarter. Got it t hanks. Just kind of building on that, you said that you'd like to kind of keep it at this level for the medium term. What kind of confidence would you have to kind of, let's say, generate the same returns in trading capital in 2023, for example, assuming there is no crypto and assuming the same split in trading, let's say, volumes across all the asset classes. Is 30% something feasible to kind of stay at in the mid-term? There are a couple of points to highlight. The first point is, it's always driven by market development that's hard to foresee. We have seen, as you, as you know, the figures, we have seen trading capital returns above 100%. We've also seen levels of 60% or 50%. I think, what we have been building out is a very resilient model now that gives us an increasing level of comfort that there might be an up-leveling of a new trading capital return. The second layer is in the capital markets update, we have been quite vocal on building out our research, predictive trading capabilities. It's fair to say that, if we further diligently do that and embrace that and embed that in the business, that this will have or could have, at least that's our hypothesis, a meaningful impact on trading capital returns going forward. As a third highlight I would like to make, because we have been quite reflective internally on not the average return, but the incremental return. If we also embrace more capital to external sources, as we highlighted earlier, we had a very stringent review process on how that would impact our trading capital returns, and we are quite confident that this won't be dilutive. In a way, what we want to demonstrate is a high degree of scalability of the business. It's important to make the link out of the trading capability evolution, which is a critical component, the ability of the organization to become further global, to continue our investments in the key priority areas, and fixed income is one of it, but also on the CCC layer. At the same time, maintain our strong equity position globally. If this all comes together. It's a fair assessment from our perspective that we can maintain or even further expand. Yeah. Well got it. Thanks Mike for all the, all the flavor. Switching on to a different one on a strategic point of view. You mentioned, in the, in the, in the discussion today, but also in the press release that you opened a new office in Chicago. Could you kind of speak more about the rationale and, you know, vision behind that? I, let's say, try to build a team of, IT tech roles, you know, traders. What's exactly the vision behind that? How does this correlate with the fact that you mentioned that you actually expect the FTE account to stay flat year-on-year? You are right. It's predominantly focused on tech capabilities. There's also a lot of existing experience and knowledge in that region. That probably would mean with the, with the, let's say, a head count not growing unless we grow the businesses. That is still a fact, obviously. That it could mean that we hire new staff in Chicago if we would have attrition in New York, for instance. Not with additional growth. The size expected is relatively small at the moment. We have a couple of smaller representative offices across the globe. We have main trading hubs, and we've got a couple of smaller offices. In this case, with the plan is to start with a tech footprint, so it's not materially changing a headcount plan at all. It's kind of a buffer just in case, what I just also mentioned, just in case, let's say there are people dropping off from other regions, then you can try to kind of, let's say, hire more in the Chicago base. Yes. There's a strong tech recruitment plan underneath. Definitely. Sounds good. Thank you so much. Yeah. If I may just add one point. This entire effort on further globalizing the firm is also very much related to boosting, further boosting our brand name. We are very focused on understanding what needs to be true and how we need to act in order to make sure that we dip into the top talent pools across the world. That's one of the key ingredients of making sure that we can maintain our growth. Chicago has been identified for obvious reasons as a critical component in that equation. Yeah thanks. Just maybe also add one. Actually, it's a question that I got it from one of the investors. The question is as follows: I mean, if you wanna really boost the trading capital, the idea with one of them, let's say, besides of course taking debt, is to basically cut down even more the payout ratio and the dividend, and basically pump all the net profits into the trading capital. You of course done that already, so the payout now is reduced to 61 percentage points. Have you actually thought about cutting it even a bit more in the short term just to kind of, let's say, boost the trading capital quickly and then eventually flip it back to where it was? The perception is as follows. We operate very much in a dynamic decision tree, if I may say it like that. If we bring in more trading capital to the firm, there needs to be a deployment process, so you're not immediately able to deploy it. Coming back to your point on incremental trading capital returns, we have a very stringent and very competitive approach in making sure that we steer that, so to avoid dilution. In light of the fact that you need a bit more time, over the different cycles, which cannot be foreseen, we are quite reactive to that. We are getting internally in terms of the capital allocation to a clear view, and there's also a predictive model in place to understand how we can play then the investment side versus the dividend side. I think that's the true answer to your question, that given the high cash generative power of the business and our not just ability, but focus on making sure that we are always accretive on trading capital returns when new capital is being added, we have flexibility. I think that's we explained in the past how important that is for us in order to make sure that we explain the link between the dividend policy and our deep conviction that the business is still significantly scalable at attractive returns. Okay g ot it. All right t hank you so much. Welcome. Our next question comes from Michael Roeg from Degroof Petercam. Please go ahead. Good morning gentlemen. I have a couple of questions. The first one is on your workforce that you want to keep unchanged versus year-end 2022. However, the number of people is only 5% higher than at year-end 2021, and yet you have a lot of growth initiatives, including new offices here and there, and a lot of initiatives on slide 11. Keeping the workforce unchanged should be compensated by much more efficiency. Could you explain a bit what kind of efficiency measures you wish to implement and in which fields of the operations that will happen? There is also the fact that we've been hiring a lot of young staff over the last couple years who we have been training. That process from graduates coming in to becoming fully effective also takes time. From the number of people that we've been hiring since 2019 and onwards, these all will become way more effective. That's one element. On the, on the other side, the effort that we're making on the inside, the link between the benefits of the NTI and the cost and the way to get there, we've putting a lot more focus on that in the last couple months, and we feel confident that we can realize a lot of efficiencies gains coming out of that insight that we have created. Maybe one additional layer, that's more the mid to long-term perspective. When we conducted also our review last year on our strategy, understanding what are the opportunities, where can we go from here? There was a clear reflection that we need to also put a strong focus on how to create a lean organization and how to avoid redundancies, how to capture more scale for the next few years in the most ideal way. A lot of reflection has gone into avoiding redundancies, functional duplications, and creating more standardization. That's also a key element that might not be seen right away, but we are very much convicted that this is one of the key ingredients, making sure that the company further growing. We are not facing a cost spike. We are not facing any, you know, limitations on further growing the firm. It's a broader picture around the pieces Folkert highlighted and the more long-term perspective, the next few years, how does the organization further need to be built in order to capture that growth? Okay that's clear. Mike you also mentioned you can grow further if you want to, but based on the flat workforce, you also gave a cost guidance, fixed costs. Yeah. What kind of Euro- Dollar rate did you include in that guidance? We had different or put different scenarios into it in order to have some flexibility. The reality is that we felt most comfortable with the range we gave in the press release. In our own calculation, assuming that there won't be significant changes, we are round in the middle. If there are some deviations, we also have a longer mitigation list in place. It's already a very holistic approach, with clear ownership across the organization, on how to drive then the cost evolution throughout the year in order to make sure that we stick to that target. Okay. Basically the U.S. dollar weakened recent. Last year, you had a negative impact from a stronger U.S. dollar on your cost base. This year, it looks like it's going the other way around so far this year. Of course, we don't know what it will be happening later on. Surely, if there's gonna be strong swings, you cannot compensate everything. Is it fair to assume that you basically put in today's spot rate for the U.S. dollar in your cost guidance? As part of the scenario setting, that's what we did. It's important that I highlight what I said before. We approached it via different scenarios, also expecting different changes then to the exchange rates in order to make sure that this is in line. I have to highlight, the cost guidance we are giving is then also on a normalized level. It's important for us that the starting point, the EUR 161.6 we have been given in the presentation on adjusted basis is a clean figure. What I'm trying to say is we will monitor the US dollar exchange rate development over time, and depending on where this comes out, we have different levers to pull in order to make sure that we can really counteract. The more important piece to that equation, however, is that the key focus will be really on driving structural efficiency. This is about functional redundancies, creating more alignment in the organization, increasing standardization. The focus Folkert highlighted on making sure that incoming ranks are becoming significantly more productive over time. There's a very stringent process in place to make sure that this is working. It's a meaningful and comprehensive effort across the entire firm and also with the global executive committee being fully in charge to make sure that we have a common goal to steer towards. With that, we want to send a clear signal to the market that this is not just a top-line-driven business. We are very reflective on what needs to be true in order to make sure that we are able to further grow with a very healthy cost structure. Okay. That's quite an elaborate answer t hank you. I also have two questions on the dividend. The first one is that the press release mentions a 51% payout, but the dividend against the normalized net profits was only a payout of 43%. Why did you decide to pay out against the reported net profit, which is not your main KPI? The IFRS was the reference for the interim period. We wanted to stick to the former methods and make it also clear that IFRS is the, well, the non-Flow Traders adjusted version of the net profit in order to make it very transparent. Yeah. It's basically we wanted to stick to what we communicated to markets before. In light of, and that's the broader setting for the answer, in light of the tremendous trading capital returns we see, and the 71 in Q4 is a fair reflection of that. We also felt that that's a very prudent and comprehensible approach, making sure that we are able to further drive the business with the retained capital. Okay good. I guess we already have the answer to one of the questions of my, the other analysts with the investor who wanted a lower payout so you could grow faster. It's on the IFRS. To turn it around, last year the dividends payout ratio was lowered to free up more capital for growth. In the meantime, you have changed your corporate structure, which will free up capital for growth. If that would be sufficient, would it be a possibility to raise the payout ratio again to former glory? That last statement is not fully true. That change of the legal structure doesn't impact the trading capital. There's a difference between the trading capital and the regulatory capital. Yeah. Yeah, the trading capital and the regulatory capital are not complementary. Two different views on the operation. Okay. I thought that changing the corporate structure would remove some regulatory capital, on your some of your units that would be able to be put at work, but that's not the case. In order to be perfectly clear, the new environment gives us more flexibility to deploy trading capital. There will be, if you will, a higher capital excess. This is now important to explain what that actually means. It means that depending on arising trading opportunities, we have more flexibility. Specifically, if there are trading opportunities in more capital intense parts of the businesses such as fixed income, we have now an ability to boost these opportunities even further. There was a restriction, if you will, from a regulatory perspective in place before under IASB. In the new setting, we are significantly more flexible. Why is that relevant? It's relevant because we felt when we built the higher degree of capital velocity in the firm and the higher degree of transparency on where returns actually occur, and us wanting to jump onto these returns, we felt that we need to have a higher degree of flexibility. The point we made earlier on, we want to create or want to be on a level playing field with competition. We felt that's a key ingredient in making sure that we remain fully competitive on that front. In a way, what you will see going forward is an impact, yet hard to break out, but an impact on NTI. Okay. Does this basically allow you to do more cherry-picking than before? I wouldn't call it cherry-picking. I would basically say, we have an opportunity to double down on arising opportunities more significantly. Okay. For the growth, it is not forming a similar constraint on the growth for the future. On the current, it doesn't change anything, but for the growth of the trading capital, that makes it possible. I think to conclude it probably good to explain a bit more on the trading capital versus regulatory capital to the analyst in later stage. Let's commit to that. Perfect. Good. That's it from my side. Thank you. Welcome. Our next question comes from Michael Werner from UBS. Please go ahead. Thank you very much guys. Great presentation. Just a couple questions from me. One is on capital. I'm gonna take a little break from that right now. I guess in terms of the FTE, and the headcount base, as we think about it, you wanna kinda keep this flat. We've seen what's called around 10% or 11% net growth in FTEs over the past five years per annum. You know, I imagine that was probably 15%, 20% gross increases, you know, a loss of, I don't know, 5%-10% of employees a year. I was just thinking, you know, as we look out to 2023, in terms of your, you know, how you're budgeting in terms of the gross increase in FTE, i.e., how many incremental spots you expect to add, and then, you know, kind of backing out of that, kind of the number of headcount you expect to potentially reduce as a result of efficiencies. The attrition has been a bit higher than 5%, especially since the COVID period, where people do reevaluate their lives. Flexibility in working from home and all that, all, let's say, the personal items have reflected in those periods, generally in the entire market for people moving and making some decisions in their lives. I think the attrition has been a bit higher since 2020/2021 compared to before. For this year, we still have around 50 people confirmed starters to join us. We are anticipating a attrition which is probably still a bit higher than the years before COVID. The natural attrition we're not expecting to. That should net off. We have a lot of vacancies still open as well because we do intend to grow the businesses with new activities. What we look at here is what we know, what we can build with the current staff. We have a couple of spots which we need to fill, but we also are looking for new business growth, which is not embedded in the budget yet. That will lead to also adjusting the NTI budget, for instance. If we manage to find talent, that would go along with increasing the business plans. It's not only looking on the efficiency side, it's looking at probably. It's better to see as looking at the ratio between the NTI and the cost and not just the cost. Thank you. Then, just a quick question. Have you had any loss days, trading loss days, either in Q4 or in the full year, 2022? To be honest, I don't know if I have, because it's not really something we focus on. Could be 1 or 2, but nothing really special in my recollection. I have not looked at the data because it's not something which is relevant to us, because it's not a theme here, to be honest. Okay t hanks. It's probably one or two or something, but. Okay, thank you. Then finally, just kinda getting back to kind of the capital. During your investor day last year, you indicated you have ambitions for 20% annualized NTI growth, I believe. You know, at the same time, again, that's kind of really punchy, very much kind of a growth company. Yet at the same time, you have a 50% dividend payout ratio, which, you know, is, you know, not really a characteristic of a growth company, as that capital typically is needed to be reinvested to generate, you know, the excess revenue growth. I certainly recognize that, you know, the change in the corporate structure will improve the revenue return on trading capital. You know, how should we think about that? You know, where we're kind of aiming for 20% growth, and yet at the same time, you're returning half of the earnings in the form of the dividend. Is that 20% growth achievable on a sustainable basis with the current kind of capital strategy? Yeah, that's a fair question. The answer is yes, I'll explain in more depth why. One key piece of the equation is indeed the new corporate holding structure. We sense, and this is also driven by, analyses we did over time, that that increased flexibility can give us more drive in order to increase the NTI footprint. The second point is the fact that we have structurally increased the capital allocation throughout the firm, including the velocity, is another driver where we can capture arising opportunities faster and better. That's a key part of the equation. The third point is there's a very clear perspective on our side on how our investments are paying off. I think we have clearly made the point in the past, even when we started looking into it, that we are very much following these long-term investment strategies around the underlying themes we feel strongly about, electronicification being one. The combination of us then driving that into a stronger counterparty penetration and an ability to also be significantly more competitive than others in the market is another point where we expect that the next few years will give us an increased ability to really push that further. Yeah. These components together then really drive our conviction that the top line growth is realistic and the... I wouldn't say, the trading capital return per se, it's more than a combination of trading capital return and equity returns should also increase on that front. Thank you very much. As a reminder, to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one. Our next question comes from Reg Watson from ING. Morning all. I was just wondering if you could provide a breakdown of the trading capital for 2022. You had the breakdowns for 20 and 21 at the capital markets day, so it'd be nice to be able to build a time series of that. Sorry, by breakdown, I mean to asset class, the asset class split. To answer it properly, what happened with the, let's say, the crypto markets in Q3, Q4, that made us moving trading capital away from there for the risk appetite. Let's say the balance between risk reward on those allocations went down. We moved that trading capital to other parts of the business. If you would look on a full year, that might be a bit distorted. In the end, the mix shifted a bit more to less to the CCC and more to the others- Okay. Where the growth of the, let's say, fixed income activities, has a higher projection for needs on the, on still the next months to come Mm-hmm. compared to equity. Let's say in rough terms, what we have seen is a shift from the CCC to relative. That is all relative to the fixed income books more than to the equity. Yeah. Seem pretty logical. Nothing major different. Okay, are you not gonna give us a breakdown going forward then for the NTI and the trading capital splits? Because I was under the impression that one of the key elements of the CMD was to align periodic reporting with the business structure, given that you're organized along these asset classes rather than by geography. I was under the impression we were gonna get a clearer view of how the individual businesses themselves are performing. That's happening. We're still in the transition. Okay. Fair enough. Thank you. Thank you. As there are no further questions in the queue, I'd like to hand the call back over to our speaker for any additional or closing remarks. Thank you operator. We would like to thank the analysts for participating in today's call. Please note we'll host our next analyst call when we release our second quarter and H1 2023 results in July. Details for this call and the timing of this call will follow in due course. Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. Ladies and gentlemen, you may now disconnect.