Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the quarterly presentation for SpareBank 1 SR-Bank for third quarter 2023. I guess we will divide the presentation into three. One, we have announced a merger today with SpareBank 1 Sørøst-Norge. And secondly, we are doing a capital markets transaction, which will be the second part, and the third part will be the third quarter results. I miss you. Why am I still on? We have today announced that SpareBank 1 SR-Bank will merge with Sørøst-Norge and will become Norway's largest savings bank. We believe that this will make us more able to serve our customers and ability to give larger credits and position us as one of the major banks in the Norwegian market. And we also hope that this will be positive for our employees, as well as accretive to the value of the shares of our shareholders. Merging Sørøst-Norge, which I'm using that term for short, I hope that's okay, and SR-Bank, we will become by far the largest savings bank in Norway. Here you see we're number one and seven today, becoming six. And it's also fun to see that among those six, four of us will be within the SpareBank 1 Alliance. I'll come a bit back to the synergies in the merger, and so I'll leave that for now. But we will have a total capital of around NOK 500 billion and a loan book of NOK 375 billion, and a book value of our equity of approximately NOK 40 billion. The technicalities in these mergers are the... I guess you're familiar with equity certificates. Sørøst-Norge is today an equity certificate bank, which will be transformed to a limited company with ordinary shares, one share, one vote. And then, the new company will be, or the limited company will be merged with SpareBank 1 SR-Bank. In the merged group, 44% of the shares will be owned by local savings banks, foundations, and you see the split between them to your right. The dividends, you know, starting from SpareBank 1 Sør-Norge, which is the new name of the merged bank, will then be distributed to these among all shareholders, obviously, but, you know, 44% of it to these foundations, and they will do, you know, local community grants and give the funds back to the local communities in a good savings bank tradition. And all seven foundations have given us a positive signal on approving the merger. As I said, SR-Bank will be the acquiring entity, and I've also told you about the transformation. And the compensation in the merger will be a combination of equity, capital or shares in SR-Bank, as well as a cash element. If we go a little bit into the details, we have agreed on an exchange ratio of 68.88% to SR-Bank's shareholders and 31.12% to SpareBank 1 Sørøst-Norge's owners. We will also give an equity consideration of around NOK 1 billion as part of the settlement, or as a cash consideration as part of the settlement, sorry. We are also today announcing, as I said, a new capital raise of NOK 1 billion, which means that the merger will not lead to any loss of capital for the banks or the combined bank. If we look at the financial aspects of the merger, this will increase the earnings per share for both banks and both shareholder groups. The synergies on an annual basis on the cost side are around NOK 150 million per year. They are fairly limited due to the fact that these two banks are very much, you know, complementary when it comes to distribution and distribution facilities. However, on the capital side, Sørøst-Norge is today a standard bank, you know, for capital purposes, and they will now have the benefit of becoming an IRB-A bank as part of today's at the SR Bank. The capital synergies are in the area of NOK 2 billion -2.5 billion. As some of you who follow us closely may recall, we announced that we are becoming a SIFI bank from September of next year. We envision that the new group will become a strong competitor and a challenger in the Norwegian market. We are today, or we have today announced that we will do a private placement this afternoon after the close of the market at 4:30 P.M. today of NOK 1 billion. It's guaranteed to be fully subscribed, and the book building process will start just after the market closes. It's guaranteed subscribed at a price of 2% below today's weighted volume weighted average of the trading on the stock exchange today. Once it's completed, we will have a core capital of 18.6%, and compared to our current target, which is 17.35. The announced merger, we hope, will be a good and powerful story to all our interested or stakeholders, our clients, our employees, our owners, as well as society at large. We will do our utmost to also make it a very good and strong financial entity and do our utmost to take out the synergies that we have communicated in this story. So I'll leave you over or hand you over to Inge, our CFO. Sorry, I forgot to say that Morten Thorsrud is also here, Head of Investor Relations. But Inge, our CFO, who also will be the CFO of the merged bank, is now going to take you through the third quarter results. There you go, Inge. Thank you, Benedicte. Probably SR-Bank is well familiar for all of you participating today. We will now become the second largest Norwegian-owned bank in Norway, and we are very pleased to announce today merger, which will be a very strong platform for profitable growth going forward. If we look at the growth now, it stands at 8.6% last 12 months. We have a strong contribution, both from the retail market with 5.4% and also for the corporate market. We now have also growth within the Rogaland County. If we look at the macroeconomics, it looks very prosperous. The unemployment rate stays below 2%, and we expect still the unemployment rate to be low, as we now probably see the top of the rate curve with one expected rate hike of 25 basis points from the Norwegian Central Bank coming up, but then probably we will be at the top. If we look at the figures, we presented a return on equity of 14.5% of the third quarter. Year to date, it stands at 13.9%, which is above our capital target or the ROE target of 13%. On the impairment side, we have a net reversal of 7 basis points so far this year, and that shows and underpins the high quality of our credit portfolio. Growth remains strong, as mentioned on the lending side, also on the deposit side, because if you look at the deposit growth and exclude a few customers within the corporate market, that we have changed price and thereby deliberately taken away from the portfolio due to a volatility of these deposits, we still have also a steady growth on the deposit side. The capital ratio stands strong at 17.9%. However, we raised this NOK 1 billion in equity to undoubtedly have both growth capacity and dividend capacity as we enter into the year, which we expect we will be able to merge with our counterparty. The cost income ratio stands at 38.9%, which is also below our target of 40% cost to income ratio. These targets and figures are showed on this slide, and, as mentioned, above the target of 13% on return on equity, 53 basis points ahead on the capital, the Common Equity Tier 1 capital ratio, and also the low on cost-income ratio, which should make the bank able to pay dividend according to our dividend policy. That says approximately 50% of our profit every year distributed as dividend. And if we look at the figures, you see that we have a NOK 172 million increase in net interest income this quarter. That is equal to 12.1%, and that is even with a sharply increasing NIBOR, which has put a pressure on the lending margins even this quarter. Year to date, we have an increase of NOK 1,191 million, which is equal to 36.9%. And of course, that is underpinned by the annual growth of 8.6%, but also shows that the contribution from net interest margin, which has increased by 27 basis points this year, has a large impact on the net interest income. Net commission and other income is seasonally a bit weaker this quarter compared to last quarter, but if you look at it year to date, it's up NOK 157 million, which is 11.8% growth rate, which then is even higher than the lending growth rate at the mentioned 8.6%. The contribution from the net income on financial investments is close to zero this quarter, with only NOK 11 million, which is far below what we regard as a normalized level. On the other hand, we have a net reversal on impairments of NOK 78 million this quarter. But, if you look at the normalized level on these two lines, and the hit on the financial is even larger than the reversal effect is on the impairments. That means that underlying profitability of 14.5% really shows the strong underlying profitability within the bank. So we are pretty confident that the quality of earnings is high where we stand now, and we have even two more rate hikes that will be coming to effect due to the eight weeks in advance notice that we are obligated to give our customers. That will take effect during the fourth quarter, and that means that as the NIBOR curve will flatten, the lending margin also will increase, we expect. This shows the waterfall on the changes from last year to this year, and as mentioned, a major contribution from the net interest income, and I believe I will both go into further details on that. If we look at this slide, you can see that the combined margin is slowly improving. Even though we have a pressure on the lending margin, we have been able to more than compensate this on the deposit margin. As we have kind of moved away from a zero interest level, it's more kind of easy for a bank to have margins on both sides of the balance. This is even further shown on the retail market, where you can see a significant improvement in the deposit margin, but also clearly shows the pressure on the lending margin, which was as low as 39 basis points this quarter. But then we've had two quarters in a row with a sharply increasing NIBOR. But even two quarters back, you would see a very different margin, which is explained by a flattening NIBOR during the first quarter of this year. The margin on the lending side in the corporate, excuse me, in the retail segment, is volatile due to the lag effect on our notice in advance to our customers. On the corporate side, the margin picture is more stable, and that is due to the fact that both the large extent of the lending side and deposit side is NIBOR denominated. SME and agriculture shows more the same pattern as the retail market, which is a combination of NIBOR denominated engagements and what we or pricing, which is decided with a specific rate level. Looking at the early indicators, both on the corporate side and the retail side, shows very stable environment. So far, the Norwegian economy as such has performed very well, even with the significant rate hikes. And as mentioned, the unemployment rate stays low, and most Norwegian households are two-income households, and that also gives a robustness when it comes to the retail sector's ability to service their loans. Looking at the industry breakdown, there's not much of a change. We have a high quality also in the commercial real estate portfolio, where we've had a thorough investigation on the 12 largest exposure, which shows the LTV of approximately 55%, and with the duration on the tenant side just beyond five years. So we don't have any kind of significant worries with respect to the commercial real estate portfolio as of then. The operating expenses is flat or actually reduced quarter-over-quarter. But last quarter we had NOK 30 million provision, which shows that taken into comparison the cost side is relatively flat from second quarter to third quarter. If we dig more into the year-to-date cost growth, you will see that in the parent bank, we have an increase of NOK 255 million. In the other business areas or companies within the group, there are more limited changes. And then on the right-hand side, if we dig into the NOK 255 million, the largest factor is the full-time employees and wage growth, where the wage growth accounts for NOK 33 million of the NOK 96 million, and the number of full-time employees accounts for NOK 63 million. That is due to the fact that we have significantly increased our distribution power. We have opened two more branches during last year. We have had a cooperation with Swedbank, where we have approximately 10 full-time employees transferred from them to us. And also, if you look at the pension and other personal expenses, last year, we had a reversal of NOK 17 million, which explains why we had a significant increase on the pension and other personal expenses. Also, in the administrative expenses, we have the mentioned one-off from Monio of approximately NOK 30 million. That means that we have a cost pressure due to the wage inflation and the inflation in general, but we also have now a very robust platform for profitable growth. The merger between us and SpareBank 1 Sørøst-Norge should improve that position even further. I believe that ends the presentation on the figures. Perhaps we can just wrap up, and then it's open for you to ask questions. Please just unmute and ask questions, and we will do our best to answer. It looks like we have one hand. Is that Håkon Øsberg I saw? Yes. Yes. Good afternoon. Hi, Håkon. Hi, just some questions from me. Start with just the timing on the capital benefit. So just, if I understand it correctly, first you have to merge, and then you have to send an application to the FSA, and then you have to wait one year or a bit more than that, and then you will get the, the capital benefit. Is that how we should think of it? Well, um- Not necessarily. Well, the merger will hopefully be decided in both general meetings, the fifth of December this year, and then we have targeted to merge operationally from first of July, 2024. And then we can start to migrate on the capital side, you know, to transfer loans into the IRB models and systems within SR-Bank from Sørøst-Norge. We have the same platforms, the same models, you know, in the SpareBank 1 Alliance. So yes, we have to apply. Yes, we are, we have to ask for permission to do so, but we expect that to hopefully not take too long, too much time or to be too long. But even when we receive the permission, it will take approximately three years until we can put the capital into profitable business. But that will happen gradually, so that is what we expect to be the full run rate of the capitalization. And of course, awaiting the full run rate, we also have the option of distributing capital to our owners, because we will not allow to have too much excess capital over time. So our main ambition is to have a profitable growth, but if we're not able to put the money into work and underpin that ambition, we of course will distribute excess capital to our owners. ... so just for, if a new bank were to apply for an approval, for IRB model, that typically takes more than a year, for the FSA to look into that, or it has at least in the past. Do you expect your approval to be swifter than that? Oh, I hope I can be more optimistic than that, Håkon. We've actually now waited for 18 months for the approval to spin off some markets into SpareBank 1 Markets, and we still haven't received permission. So, I hope that they will do it a bit faster, but as you know, we can't, we don't know. But it is to bear in mind that we share the same infrastructure. We have a kind of a common center for credit models within the alliance, so we actually are on the same platform, and thereby, it should be more kind of easy for the FSA to grant our application to take this portfolio and onboard it onto our risk system. Uh, and i- It would have been kind of a longer way to go if this were two very different banks merging. I think it's fair to say, Håkon, also, that SR-Bank has stated publicly that they have had the ambition to become an IRB-A bank, and so they have already started their preparations to become one. So, we hope that it will not take too long. Perfect. Then just a follow-up on that. So the NOK 2.5 billion in terms of capital relief, what have you assumed there in terms of risk weights, et cetera? It's more or less that you apply SR-Bank's risk weight to Sørøst-Norge or... Yes. Generally speaking, that is the assumption, and it's also aligned with what SpareBank 1 Sør-Norge has expressed as their expected capital release of becoming an IRB advanced bank on a standalone basis. So that is also kind of the same calculation that we base this assumption on as we onboard them to SpareBank 1 SR-Bank's existing advanced IRB system. Do you see any risk that FSA can be a bit stricter than that, or? Of course, there's always a risk concerning the capital requirements and the risk weights in general. But that is kind of a risk that applies to all Norwegian banks. And as mentioned from Benedicte, they have really made thorough preparations of becoming an IRB advanced bank. So this is not kind of a regular standard bank becoming an IRB bank, that they have made preparations. So we feel pretty confident that their kind of portfolio is of high quality and fit for being merged with an existing IRB advanced portfolio. Perfect. And then just one last question from me before I go back in the queue. But on when do you expect to be more concrete on integration costs and also your the medium-term and long-term targets, say, following this transaction? We hope to be more specific, you know, fairly soon, at the latest, when we, you know, announce the actual merger. But I think you can assume, Håkon, that we will rather have, financial ambitions in line with what SR-Bank has today, and that, being the largest of the two entities, and that will also set sharper ambitions than what we see if we just combine the two today. So, So, the ambition of the 13% return on equity, that remains unchanged, and I believe we can take that for granted, with respect also to the new and merged bank. But you have to remember, we have, we are obliged to operate as two separate entities until the permission is on the table, which means that the new board has to kind of decide on the new financial targets and so on. So it, it won't be until the actual merger, merger has taken place officially. Although, you know, this is what... So this is more speculation than, you know- Mm ... hard facts. and the same with integration cost as well, we will not know more before our That we will probably know a bit earlier because we start that planning and integration, you know, planning, as we speak. So hopefully, we will be able to provide you with some more information on that fairly, in not too long. Perfect. I- Yeah. Perfect. I have some more questions, but I can let the others ask some as well. So- There are no, no other hands at the moment. Okay, perfect. If you want. Very good. And then, just on the capital requirement for the new entity, just to understand the different moving parts there. So start with the SIFI, the extra capital requirement for a large systemically important financial institution. Today, you have one. Do you see any risk that you can end up with, say, a similar requirement as DNB with 2% now, as you are a slightly larger bank, or is this, in your view, very unrealistic? ... I believe, Håkon, if you put their volume on our balance, we increase the volume by approximately 40%. As we were suggested and decided to become a SIFI bank, we still hadn't exceeded the thresholds of the share of GDP or market share. So I regard that risk as very low. Still, we will be a kind of a small bank compared to the really larger banks. And with regards to the Pillar 2 requirement, slightly higher Pillar 2 requirement too. So have you done anything by looking at, one thing is what is SR-Bank's requirement and your target today, but, what, how do you see the total capital requirement for the merged entity? If you look at their composition with retail and corporate, they are almost 80% retail and 20% corporate, and that is, so to say, only SMEs. So if you look at what have kind of increased, SR-Bank's Pillar 2 requirement or other retail, it is our position within the corporate market. So as we become a larger bank, we actually increase the retail share of the portfolio in the new bank, and should, by that, kind of be regarded as less complex, taking into consideration that we've become a larger bank. So we don't look at it as if we add complexity into the bank by having this merger in between the two banks. Also, if you look at concentration risk, both on size and diversification, your geographical should be positive on the Pillar Two. Have you- I think- Yeah. Thomas. Okay, I will... Thank you. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thomas Svendsen, please. Yes, good afternoon. So just could you explain the logic in raising NOK 1 billion in equity now and paying that out on dividend in the spring to keep the payout ratio high, instead of just cutting the dividend? Because if you look in the past, there has been volatility in dividends. And second question on capital, should we... How is sort of the communication with the FSA regarding possible positive effects on the capital, or should we, unless you get clarification before the deal is closed, should we favor more you raising more equity capital before the deal is closed? Yeah. We have announced that we will raise NOK 1 billion, and that's the fixed size, and that is also what has been guaranteed on very favorable conditions. That means a maximum discount of 2% compared to the bond weighted price, this as of today. Today. Answering your question, why we raised the NOK 1 billion, it is approximately 3% of our total equity, so it's a very small issue. And as commented from you, we could have kind of avoided that by reducing growth in the combination of perhaps reducing dividend. But as we move into this period where we don't exactly know when we will have the... When we will be granted to merge from the Norwegian financial authorities, as we have an increase of 100 basis points as of the third quarter next year, we want to be able to grow the bank in a steady pace, and we also want to service our owners by paying a reasonable dividend. To many of our investors, dividend is kind of something that they are not concerned about or they... It's not regarded as important. But also to a lot of the shareholders, receiving dividend is important because they are using that money for other investments, paying tax, and so on. So we have kind of discussed the different options and we decided to raise this NOK 1 billion, but because it is also small and it is effectively in a meaning of very, very low discount, so this shouldn't be regarded as any dilutive element for any of our owners, in our opinion. We don't see any more hands? All right. Can I have one quick question? It's Håkon. Sure. Yes, please, Håkon. As many as you want, Håkon. Perfect. Perfect. Just on the, on the NOK 150 million in synergies, how do you see the split there between funding and, and, say, real, or, or, real costs? Yeah. We have announced NOK 150 million. That is equal to approximately 3.5% of the total cost base of the two banks consolidated. So it is pretty conservative. We have a portfolio of approximately NOK 32 billion in service, which has been transferred to SpareBank, the jointly owned covered bond entity within the alliance. We should be able to issue from our fully owned covered bond entity. That will add some synergy on that area. Also, becoming a larger bank where issuing senior in the international space should be beneficial when it comes to being more often in the market. So our expectation is that approximately 1/3 of the synergies will be from the funding and capital side, besides the NOK 2.5 billion in capital synergies, and the remaining 2/3 from kind of cutting operational cost with the overhead cost. And of course, what is potentially savings from going from two entities to one. Perfect. Perfect. And then the last question from me on the... In the past, you have had this temporary capital surcharge of 50 basis points. You still have that, given that you're raising money now, and is that should I read that as that this is becoming permanent, or you or you expect to to see your risk weights come up or this this this extra surcharge to to be there forever? Or, is... Or how should we think there? Well, well, I've yet to experience to take away capital requirements. If they take it away, they'd only replace it with something else. So I think you could work from an assumption that our capital requirement would be more or less the same, but potentially with another composition. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any more questions? Great. I can't see that there are more questions or any hands that are raised, so I think we'll say thank you very much to everyone that participated and to SR Bank. Thank you very much. Thanks so much. Bye. Bye. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye-bye. Have a good day. Bye.