Good morning, and welcome to the third quarter presentation for Sbanken. My name is Jesper Hatletveit, and I'm responsible for Investor Relations. Today's presentation will be held by our presenters, CEO Øyvind Thomassen, and CFO Henning Nordgulen. We will start with giving you the status of the business and the financials before we open up for Q&A via the telephone conference line. All reports and presentations can be found on the bank's web pages. I now give the word to our CEO, Øyvind Thomassen. Thank you, Jesper, and a very good morning to all of you. We are today closing the chapter on the third quarter of 2021. We are still awaiting the final conclusion on the offer process with DNB. Just like me, I'm sure that our customers, the Sbanken organization, and our shareholders are undoubtedly excited to learn what the future holds for the bank. Sbanken today has close to half a million customers. Customer satisfaction is key to everything we do at Sbanken, and I'm glad to see that Sbanken, once again, has claimed the top spot on EPSI's annual customer satisfaction survey, being the only bank to achieve a score above 80. In Norway, vaccine rollout accelerated this summer, and the vast majority of Norwegians are now fully vaccinated. Although we are still seeing sporadic surges in infections, we are confident that we have put the worst of the pandemic behind us. This is important for the macro environment the bank is operating in but also when we consider the development of our own organization. We are finally able to welcome the talented team of Sbanken employees back to the office, a team that continues to show great devotion to the bank and its customers in uncertain period. Looking at the third quarter, we do find clear positive elements in the numbers. During the previous four quarters, the bank made active choices to prioritize margin over growth in the low interest rate environment. This led to sub-market growth within lending, but I'm glad to see that the trend has now turned. For the quarter, we record a 0.5% positive growth with the mortgage book growing 0.4%. Car loans are performing particularly strong following the introduction of a new price point back in May. The trend continued into October with 1% growth in lending, and with the current run rate, a growth of around 2% in Q4 is achievable. We are not satisfied with the bottom line this quarter and the return on equity performance of below 10%. It is, however, important to note that the figures are still influenced by the ongoing transaction process with DNB. This includes product adaptations which was introduced in Q2 to combat customer churn following the offer announcement. There are also some non-recurring costs related to the transaction. Sbanken's balance sheet is undoubtedly conservative with the predominant share of customers lending being in low LTV mortgages. Asset quality has continued to develop in the favorable direction. This quarter, the reported loss level is a mere three basis points, and we have strong confidence in our provisioning levels. Capital efficiency is key for Sbanken to deliver on our financial targets, especially considering the significant level of overcapitalization and that the bank is operating at a completely unfavorable risk weights for mortgages. In October, banks were once again free to distribute dividends in accordance with their normal frameworks. Following this, we were finally able to distribute the NOK 4.4 per share in dividend for 2020, a dividend which has been delayed from the start of this year. We are also happy to see that our proposition on sustainability and transparent ESG reporting is being noticed by the market. In the Oslo Stock Exchange ESG100 survey, Sbanken was awarded a grade of B+, an improvement of more than two grades from last year. Sbanken, a fully digital bank focused on the Norwegian retail market, has limited environmental impact, but it is important for us to set a strong example to our customers and to other stakeholders. This includes our strong proposition of enabling sustainable fund investments for customers through our savings platform. With that, I'd like to pass the word over to you, Henning, who will take us through the Q3 numbers in detail. Thank you, Øyvind. Starting with the highlights, the results in the quarter are influenced by the short-term effects of the ongoing transaction process and actions implemented to change the growth trend. Compared to Q3 last year, interest income is reduced due to developments both in volumes and asset mix, which had an impact on the net interest margin. Net fee and commission is up from Q3 2019 and in a positive trend. Financial instruments yielded a net negative of NOK 18.9 million in the quarter, primarily a result of repurchase of own cover bond and partly a result of investments coming to maturity. Operating costs are still below normalized levels, largely attributable to the transaction process, while loan losses are down NOK 23 million for Q3 last year and are stable at low levels. ROE was 9.2% in the quarter. However, adjusting for non-recurring items and excess capital, ROE was at 12.8%. Net financial income may fluctuate between quarters, and this quarter had a negative ROE effect of 0.8 percentage points. Turning to the loan book and profitability, we still aim for a long-term balance between profitability and growth. Looking at the right-hand side of the chart, we are more influenced by short-term developments than historically in the last quarters. It is also quite visible that in the previous five quarters we have maintained profitability but had challenges with asset growth. The competitive new mortgage products reduces product profitability, but from relatively high product yields. As Øyvind explained initially, it's been important first to secure asset volumes and then return to a positive lending growth. Going a bit more into the details, net interest income is down NOK 49 million from Q3 last year. This was primarily due to shift towards lower-yielding mortgages and volume reduction within consumer loans. This is in line with the soft market for unsecured credit, and we maintain our market share with the unsecured credits. Deposit funding is strong, and average funding rates are marginally improved, also given that the funding mix changes favorably with the stable capital market funding and growing deposit volumes. In the short term, the mortgage interest rate guarantee will continue to put pressure on the net interest margin. As usual, we cannot comment on our pricing strategy in connection with the expected rate hikes. Net fee and commission income continues to trend up, and we see a positive development on all product lines within savings, card, and payment processing. Despite the society returning to more normal situation, we saw less travel-related revenues in card and interchange in this quarter compared to historic levels. For comparison purposes, NCI in Q3 of 2019 was NOK 64 million. Turning to operating costs, our target for 2021 was an initial cost level of around 175 million per quarter, tightening towards 165 million run rate in Q4. The basis for this was continued efficiency initiatives and a normal operating situation. Given the special circumstances in the last quarters, it has not been possible to pursue digitalization and other efficiency processes to the extent we had planned. Adjusting for direct transaction expenses, OpEx was NOK 177.3 million. Adjusting also for expenses related to workforce retention and other situation-contingent measures, which includes increased marketing spend, we estimate that the normalized OpEx would have been below NOK 175 million in this quarter. Cost of risk has been in a positive trend through several quarters, and in Q3 ended at 3 basis points, down from 14 basis points in Q2 of 2019, and below the max 5 basis points guiding from Q2 this year. There are no provision reversals and no significant model or micro adjustments in the quarter, and we maintain a post-model buffer of NOK 25 million, as disclosed in previous earnings calls and notes to the financials. On this background, we are comfortable with maintaining our loss guiding below 5 basis points in the coming quarters. With respect to mortgage lending on the right-hand side, LTV levels are stable both for the back book and the front book. Turning to funding and capital, deposits grew by 10% year-on-year, and we hit another record in the deposit to loan ratio in Q3, coming close to 80%, levels we would not have expected a year or two back, but attractive from a lending growth perspective. We have also issued a total of NOK 1.2 billion in MREL capital and are in full compliance with requirements per year-end 2021. The bank's minimum CET1 requirement is 12.5%. The target ratio is 30% and dynamically changes in the regulatory requirement, which implies that the 50 basis points increase in the countercyclical buffer will be included from 30th of June, 2022. The actual ratio at quarter end was 16.3%, which is after the 3.15 per share dividend for 2019 paid in March and the 4.40 per share 2020 dividend paid in October. Looking forward, we have a very attractive deposit funding position. We have a mortgage portfolio with ample eligibility for issuing cover bonds to further support lending growth. This could also include green bonds. We are still 330 basis points over the current capital target. All in all, a very robust platform for growing the business. With that, I give the word back to you, Øyvind. Thanks, Henning. Turning to savings, we have now passed the milestone of NOK 30 billion in funds under management. During the last 18 months, FUM is more than doubled. In addition, customer investments in securities is close to NOK 15 billion. This quarter, market valuations were fairly flat, with one result being a decrease in net inflow from non-recurring customer transactions. Contributions from saving agreements continued to rise, with close to NOK 500 million contribution to inflow this quarter. This is a clear sign of the strong growth fundamentals in the quarters to come. Our financial targets remain unchanged, with a key emphasis to deliver a market-leading return on equity of 14% to our shareholders. Distribution of excess capital, profitable growth, and scalability are key elements to bridge the current gap to our financial targets. In September, Norges Bank hiked the key policy rate from record low 0%. This decision is likely to be followed up by an additional 25 basis points hike in December, marking that we have started on a gradual hiking cycle, a clear sign that we are moving out of the pandemic. Increasing money market rates in combination with the bank's mortgage rate guarantee for 2021 is likely to lead to some margin pressure in the short term. Looking further ahead, a higher interest rate environment is likely to be beneficial for the industry, especially for banks like Sbanken with a large share of retail deposit funding. We are still awaiting the final conclusion with regards to the process with DNB, and are excited to find out what the future holds for Sbanken's customers, employees, and other stakeholders. It is important to emphasize that we remain independent institutions and competitors, and this will not change until we potentially receive a stamp of approval from the Norwegian Competition Authority. Customers represent the center of everything we do at Sbanken, irrespective of final conclusion of the DNB process. Our mission will remain to create the best digital customer experiences of the future. With that, I'd like to hand the word back to you, Jesper. Since this is the last quarterly presentation for you anyway, I hope that you will tell us some interesting stories now. Thank you, Øyvind. I will definitely not do that. I thank you for the introduction. We will then open up for questions from the conference call. Operator, please go ahead. Thank you. The first question is from the line of Joakim from Arctic. Your line will now be unmuted. Yes. Good morning, and thank you for the presentation. I just wondered if Øyvind could repeat the statement regarding growth in Q4. And the second question was just regarding the deadline of November the 18th. Is there any chance that could be extended further, or could you elaborate a bit on that, please? Sure. Starting with the growth then. What I said was that the growth in lending in October was 1%. With the current run rate, we expect to reach around 2% growth in Q4. We think that is achievable. Is that okay? That. Yeah. Is that the mortgage book or total lending? That's total lending. Of course, as you know, the mortgage growth is a very big portion of the growth of lending. I think it's fair to. I'll look at Henning now. I think it's fair to say that the development you have seen and that we commented for Q3, mortgages growing and car loans growing, that is the major contributor. Of course, mortgages is the absolute largest one, contributing to the 1% increase then or growth in October. To your second question, I think it's fair to say that the 18 October is the deadline for the final. November, 18th November is the final deadline for the NCA to come with their conclusion. That could be no further extension. Of course, there could be a process of appeal, but that is nothing we speculate in now. That will be something we need to come back to based on the conclusion from the NCA. That's great. Thanks. As a reminder, please press five star to ask a question if you have any. There are no further questions at this moment. I'll hand it back to the speakers for any closing remarks. That concludes the session. Thank you very much.
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