Welcome to CGD's conference call. This call follows the first quarter 2022 consolidated results release, which took place yesterday. It is possible to follow the results presentation from the CGD website. The CFO, Ms. Maria João Carioca, the head of Financial Markets, Mr. Marco Azevedo and the head of IR, Mr. Nuno Vilar, will guide you through the presentation and a Q&A session will follow. Good morning. This is Nuno Vilar from Investor Relations, and I want to welcome you to today's first quarter results presentation, which will be hosted by our CFO, Maria João Carioca. Without further ado, I hand the floor, and we'll start the presentation. We'll take your questions at the end. Thank you. Thank you, Nuno. Thank you everybody for joining. I echo Nuno's comments in welcoming you and thanking you for your time and availability. I will walk us through the presentation that was delivered yesterday and published yesterday and has been made available to you, I understand. I'll be referring to the page numbers of the presentation available in the site. Let me start with a few brief highlights on our activity this quarter. I'll refer to page five in the presentation. It was a quarter where external context, let's say, has been pretty abnormal, and there's a situation of war in Europe, which I'm sure none of us would expect to refer to within our lifetimes. That is absolute abnormality. But within that context, Caixa has performed relatively stable as evidenced, relatively stable performance. Our consolidated net income reached EUR 146 million. It's a significant increase vis-à-vis 2021, 80.5% increase, and our ROE yielded at 7.2%. Where activity is concerned, again, relatively stable growth. We've registered growth both in deposits and in credits. We've also seen marks of our transformation and our ability to address the evolution of our customer needs. Digital is still growing. A lot of what's going on in terms of our transformation program has also had positive impact in costs. That precisely has translated into evolution, still a favorable evolution in the cost-income ratio, which is now down to 49%. Where asset quality is concerned, we continue to operate at a net NPL ratio of 0%. That stands for the work that has been done in recent years of improving our ability to recover non-performing assets. has also reflected some of the additional activity that we continue to perform, driving the properties held for sale to further decrease this. Right now we registered a 19% decrease in properties held for sale, and this is actually the lowest value since 2008. Our capital position, I'm sure it's familiar to all of you. It's pretty robust. It reflects our nature as a publicly, as a state-owned bank. Our CET1 ratio is at 18.2, clearly above the average for Portuguese and for European banks. our Pillar two requirement is actually reflected as part of our performance and it's dropped for 2022. It's dropped 25 basis points. Actually this is something that we point out, given that for the European banks, the average has actually risen. Our requirement has been updated and are fully in line with expectations. I think this is the major highlights for the activity. There are also a couple of additional circumstances and elements that I would like to highlight. The first of all being the fact that our strategic plan for RENIC 2021-2024 is in progress. I'll refer back to it and give you some additional color on what we're doing. We've also had upgrades in our ratings by Fitch. It has brought us up to investment grade by all the rating agencies that follow us. It's the first time that we go back to that full investment grade notation for all the rating agencies after 10 years of restructuring and difficulties. This is a very positive mark for us. That has also facilitated the early redemption of our AT1. We did so. We have previously announced it. Our supervisor has seen it favorably, and we executed it at the end of March 2022, so it was a good end of the quarter. Finally, I would also highlight, I think it's a plus with us and most Portuguese banks, but our exposure to the conflict in Ukraine, our direct exposure obviously is very, very limited. There is no materiality in our exposure to companies in either Ukraine or Russia. The impacts that we're seeing will fundamentally be indirect impacts. That here was the overall highlights. I will now walk us through a little bit of what we've had in terms of developments in the strategic plan, and then I'll go right into activity and what is going on with our accounts. Directing you to page seven for a short discussion on the highlights that we've shared on the strategic plan that we have ongoing. It's fundamentally very geared towards building the future. We maintain our position as the bank that aims to address the requirements of the Portuguese households. We see ourselves continually as a universal bank, and we're very much addressing the fact that we see increasingly evolving customer service requirements and innovation requirements that we want to address, particularly as we see that those will raise our ability to capture value pools that historically were not dominant in our balance sheet and were not dominant in our commercial activity. Going to page 14, I just call your attention to what we see as our six strategic pillars, because I think they tie back to this intention that I set out for the plan. What we see in this plan is as a way of continuing to be a leading bank, and we'll see how we've held on to a number of our leadership positions, and we're building our position in a number of additional businesses. This is all about service quality, certainly. It's also about value proposition and being able to be where our clients require us to be. Increasingly so we see it as an issue of sustainability and social impact. That's also one of the core focuses of our strategic plan. This plan combines this maintenance of historical leadership with a transformation that hopes to bring us certainly into steady grounds as a profitable public bank. Which state-owned, and we see ourselves as such. Our ambition is to make sure that that specific characteristic, that idiosyncrasy of our capital base, does not hinder us at all from becoming a best place to work and certainly a very competitive bank. There's three additional pillars in our program. They're all about profitability. They're also about consolidation of governance and risk models. Our risk appetite is certainly something that has been evolving very sharply over recent years, and we want to keep it as such. We actually see it as one of the cornerstones of our future performance. Together with, of course, the matters that concern our people, our culture, our ability to retain some of the core values that define us as a bank, but also to embed in those the values of transformation. These is, these are pillars that are cornerstones for moving forward. What we see ourselves on page 19 is having a very solid starting point for this new transformation program. As I certainly recall, back in 2017, we were actually launching a restructuring program with a very different focus, with a very different stress point at our starting point. Right now, what we see ourselves is in a period of 2021-2024, starting very favorably both comparing to Portuguese average and actually allowing us to broaden our horizons and bring these comparisons into solid European territories. Upping the scale, if you'd like, to compare us definitely with what are solid performances in the European banking industry. It's certainly a very stressed industry these days, so we're trying precisely to follow up with the best practices to make sure that in what concerns efficiency, and we measure it as cost-to-income, in what concerns solid capital base, in what concerns our ability to return to our shareholder, whomever shareholders may be, in our case, it's the Portuguese state. All those three elements combined with what we think has been at the cornerstone of our ability to deliver in those fronts. Making sure that we maintain non-performing loans at good levels, and that we combine those non-performing loans ratios with solid coverages, bringing it down to liquid NPL ratios as they stand right now at about zero. With this solid base, what we've defined for our ambitions for the plan has had very much taken very much into account the fact that we are currently under a very volatile context. We've had the pandemic situation, we're now facing a war situation, and that of course will bleed into what the reality for 2021-2024 is as we've been experiencing it. Our building the future is stated fundamentally as targets of solidity and resilience. We do see ourselves as increasing our current ROE levels to over 8%. We see that efficiency will continue to be one of our main concerns, so the cost-to-income will have to come down further to levels below 45%. We still see the combined effects of our coverage ratio and NPL is critical, but we do understand that our NPL ratios will have to remain below 3%. That will of course have to play into the cost of risk that it has come down significantly in recent years, and we do see it remaining below 25 basis points up to 2024. Our capitalization structure reflects our ownership model. Still we see our CET1 fully loaded for the consolidated operation of the Caixa group at above 15%. Those actually are the five indicators that shape up our goals in terms of financial solidity. There's an element of transformation that we've added to this. It certainly has to do with our ability to address the way our clients relate to us. That's about digital mobile clients that we aim to have in over two-thirds of our customer base, 65% or above. Our ESG rating scorecard, this is something that we see as being a fundamental part of our ability to add value moving forward. We're looking at an objective way to measure that, and we're resorting to the rating scorecards that we are being provided by two of the lead agencies providing that sort of assessment, and we aim to reach some of their highest levels. A complete scorecard, this is what we'll be using for reference in measuring our success for the future. Coming back to the first quarter of 2022, what would I highlight concerning our activity? Let me start on page 22 with a note on our business volume growth. Solid growth, and by solid, I think, one of the elements has to do with how balanced growth was. We've registered growth both in customer resources, both in loans and advances to customers. Credit has been growing, customer resources have been growing as well. That has been a reality not only in Portugal but also in our international activity. There's this element of balance that is rather satisfactory to us in this first quarter as the markets have been volatile and as realities across the different geographies where we operate have been pretty different. All in all, an increased turnover of a lot of billions EUR in Portugal alone. Going further to page 23, I would also highlight the fact that this growth in terms of new production and credit is now showing evidence of what we aim for in our strategic plan. We're holding on to a leadership position in very solid, clearly double-digit growth in our legacy, in our historical mortgage production activity. We are now showing very solid growth in what was one of our bets, so to say, in terms of our new strategic plan. We aim to grow in new value pools. We see consumer credit as one of those value pools. We've put together a plan to reshape our quality of service, our customer experience, our decision time, our time to cash, and that is already producing results. We're showing here growth in our production capacity that is very much in line with our expectations. These are continued growth expectations for the year of 2022. This is just first quarter. We expect the pace of growth to hold solid in the high figures that we get. Solid growth in families in individual business. Also on page 24, some figures on how we've been growing for companies. I think that's also one of the elements we've been paying close attention to. Again, the context is one of economic stress, a lot going on in terms of global value chains, a lot going on in terms of the aftermath of the pandemic crisis. We've been monitoring this type of involvement with our clients, and we see the growth, again, double digits on the 20s growth in bank guarantees, growth in factoring, confirming. A number of these products that we take as good signs of solid and ongoing ability to grow by our customers, by the companies that certainly said. All in all, we've seen our SME loan portfolio grow by 9%. In the quarter as stressed as the first quarter of 2022 was, we see this as a positive sign. Moving on to page 26, highlighting one of the elements that we brought into our 2021-2024 dashboards, so our ability to transform into self-client difference. We now stand at 2.1 million clients that are digitally active. Given the size of Portugal, this is definitely the largest active digital customer base in Portugal, and it's still evidencing double-digit growth patterns. That's precisely what we're driving at. In particular, we see growth in mobile active customers as very positive, as those clearly have a different banking income profile and certainly a different engagement profile with the bank. This is one of our seeds for the future that we nourish more actively. Page 28, with a short reference to our sustainable development in 2022. I will not stay there for long. I just wanted to highlight the fact that we are actively trying to cover the three elements of ESG. We're certainly active in terms of sustainable finance. We're also very active on the social front. We've always been, but we see it increasingly as increasingly structures in as an important front. At the bottom of the page, some of the awards and those I would highlight fundamentally because they also address our ability to tackle the governance element, and it's certainly a difficult element. We do take seriously the obligations of transparency, of clarity in outlining our obligations where sustainability is concerned. Just wanted to share this with you. Moving now into accounts territory. As I started my presentation by highlighting this is a quarter where our net income stood at EUR 146 million. A couple of non-recurring elements that I will be addressing just now. Standing at 7.2 ROE. Healthy growth, and we will delve a little bit further into the nature of that growth, but fundamentally good quarter for us. Page thirty-one, we address some of those elements of non-recurrents that I mentioned before, but wanted to highlight that, still very significant growth in terms of our domestic activity and growth in the fundamental core banking activity. We see an increase in total operating income. We also see a reduction in provisions and impairments, fundamentally from our continued credit recovery activity, but also the fact that our credit portfolio is actually performing, evidencing a healthy situation. Also, sustained growth in our international activity, and we'll address that as well. Mozambique and Angola are showing pretty solid performances. A couple of non-recurrent events from some of our large ticket sizes in terms of recoveries. There have been a few asset sales that have had significant impact on our results, and we highlight them as non-recurrent because they are fundamentally within our list of largest size and longest standing assets for sale. It's positive resolution that they finally have stepped out of our balance sheets, but it's clearly a non-recurrent value that has now been captured. Overall, an increase of approximately EUR 65 million in results. That's 81% over the first quarter of 2021. A brief comment on page 32 to highlight the fact that net interest income is growing as well as the retail net interest margin. This is for consolidated. It's true both for the domestic and the international businesses. You are aware of our balance sheet structure, so a lot of what goes on in our interest in our retail net interest margin has to do with our mortgage business, and it translates into the P&L at a relatively slow pace, but it is now showing positive growth. It is now evidencing that the gap is still needed, but nevertheless, continued positive growth in terms of not only margins but also income. That we see as a positive sign. The continued but non-sharp growth we see as something that will allow us to maintain solid, sustainable relationships with our clients. I would also highlight on page 33 the continued growth in our sales commissions. Again, growth being sustained fundamentally by products that have to do with clients' savings and investments. It's one of the aspects that we're following up given the current market uncertainty and current instability. It was a pretty rough first quarter, but given all the work that was delivered in 2021, we managed to sustain very healthy growth in terms of service and commissions in products such as investment funds, which was sort of one of our goals, but certainly another one of the value pools that we want to increasingly capture. I would now step into cost territory. On page 34, we give you an account of what's been happening with our cost evolution. This first quarter is clearly marked by a number of non-recurring effects, amidst which fundamentally the fact that this is a quarter where we account for our whole staff adjustment program for the whole year. We're starting a new strategic plan cycle. This year, the amount that we have accounted for, that we expect to have in terms of staff adjustment costs, is higher than last year. EUR 25 million has been put into this additional cost element. That is a fundamental driver of our cost evolution this quarter vis-à-vis last year. I'd also highlight the exchange rate effects, of course, within our international units, mainly Mozambique, where EUR 6 million of their cost increase has resulted from exchange rate impacts. If you take away those two, let's call them abnormal effects, what you see is international activity with a EUR 3 million growth in costs. Putting into perspective the fact that these are high inflation countries, this is to negative real growth. That's positive for us. In terms of domestic activity, we're still seeing the cost reductions that we aimed for. The thing that we do not see reducing in terms of costs has to do with regulatory costs. We face an 18% increase in regulatory costs. We understand the nature of this, but anyway, it's a hefty bill for a bank the size of Caixa. That's on page 35. Moving on, page 36, positive in-the-20s growth in terms of recurrent net core operating income, it's before impairments. Page 37 brings us to cost to income that, as I highlighted before, continues to show a favorable evolution. We have stayed below 50% in the consolidated cost to income, and that's heading towards our goal for 2024. If I step now into the balance sheet and the first element of our balance sheet on page 39, total customer resources continue to grow. Fundamentally, we still have a very solid individual customer base, and we see individual growth, but still growth in that area. We saw some of the expected impacts this quarter from market uncertainty in terms of fundamentally funds, where we've had long and in-depth discussions with our clients to make sure that we manage market volatility to the best of their interests. Same on page 14 in terms of growth, this time in terms of loans and advances to customers, particularly satisfactory to us, the growth in corporates, 2.1% at the right bottom of the page on page 40. This is still across the board growth in our loans and advances activity, and we find that positive given the current context. Page 41, the other elements to take into consideration when growing the credit portfolio. We're now at 1 basis point cost of risk, cost of credit risk. We see we're now back to levels of about pre-pandemic levels. It's certainly one of the aspects that we are following more closely and still taking a relatively conservative approach in terms of overall provisions and impairments, given the fact that a number of our client sectors are now facing the second shock, the first, the pandemic and now the war, and we're still monitoring closely, but thus far, we are seeing very positive evolutions. On page 42, I will also highlight our NPL evolution. There's always inflow, of course, as expected, but we are indeed holding on to a net ratio of 0%, to a great extent because our activity in terms of recovery, both in cures and sheer recoveries, is still producing very solid results. All in all, we are holding on to the 0% net ratio that we aim to maintain as much as possible. If we go just shortly on page 44 to highlight our specific impairment where NPLs are concerned, we now stand at 65.2%. I would highlight that given the level of 44.5% where European banks stand. We're significantly above European banks average, and that's a very favorable comparison, particularly for a bank that has had our track record and where we've put such effort into improving our ability to manage non-performing assets. We're still following very closely moratoriums on page 40, 45. I think fundamentally, I would highlight the fact that both in Portugal and at consolidated levels, our portfolio overall stands at healthy levels. We're monitoring particularly closely Stage three, but we see no major variations there. I think fundamentally we'll keep it on a close watch, but right now it's still holding at steady patterns, certainly much better than the one we feared last year at about this time. I've highlighted already on page 46 the fact that our property held for sale has a significant reduction. Same with our investment properties. Fundamentally, shedding assets that are not part of our core business and making sure that we keep them on a healthy level overall. Stepping in a little bit on page 47 into our capacity to access funding. No major variations there. We still hold our TLTRO at EUR 5.8 billion, actually. We are expecting ECB to give us notice of what is to happen with the program, but I think current expectations are becoming very clear. We of course have accounted for that most likely scenario and are fully ready to meet it. At this stage, it stands steady versus the level that we had last year. On page 48, a short note on the composition of our securities portfolio. With the movement in interest rates, this has become, of course, of particular attention. I would highlight at the center of page 48 the development we've had over the last year in terms of the composition of our sovereign debt securities portfolio. We've been actively de-risking it. We've done it at a pace that has allowed us to minimize the economic impact of such de-risking. Where we stand right now, and given the current context in terms of interest rates, we see it as a balanced position, certainly a risk position that is commensurate with our balance sheet and with our risk appetite. We will, of course, continue to monitor it, and we will, of course, continue to adjust it, balancing the de-risking of interest rate risk vis-à-vis the business risk that we are, of course, taking on as we de-risk it and as we bring more and more a higher and higher proportion into amortized cost accounting. All in all, an evolution that over the past year has led us in the direction that we aim for in terms of risk, and that has brought us to a comfortable position given the current interest rate risks developments. A short notice on our loan to deposit ratio on page 49, holding steady at 63%, still below what we would be aiming for, but understandably given the current situation and given our current and our historical, actually customer profile. Liquidity on page 50 has certainly not been an issue over the past recent years, and the ratio is still evidence of very solid position vis-a-vis requirements. The same where capital is concerned on page 51. Our CET1 stands at 18.2, and we've highlighted there the requirements at the different levels. As you are certainly aware of, we are well above them and have been managing that actively given our capital base and given our shareholder position. All in all, we registered the supervisor's perception of CGD global risk, and we gladly registered the fact that we've had a reduction of 25 basis points in our capital requirements. This particularly is to be highlighted given that it is counter-cyclical vis-à-vis the market. Page 52, again, to highlight our rather robust capital ratios and page 53 bringing us to expected dividends. We're proposing dividends absolutely in line with our dividend policy for the results of 2021. That brings us to a dividend payment of EUR 241 million to be proposed for our general meeting. Short update on MREL requirements, fully in line with expectations, so no major news there. Bringing us to page 55, ratios that we've been monitoring, some of them less sensitive in the current context. Certainly, we've traded asset density, also meriting careful monitoring on our part. I'll wrap up here, just leaving you with the highlights of activity in the first quarter. Again, going back to the note, what for Caixa has been important that even though markets has been particularly volatile, we've actually had overall positive and certainly steady paced first quarter. We expect many of the trends that we see here and that already reflect part of our transformation path to continue to build favorably throughout 2022. Hopefully that will be the topic for our next conversations coming shortly. I will now hand over the stage back to the audience and open up for Q&A. I would ask Marco Azevedo and Nuno Vilar to join me in answering any questions you would like to pose. At this time, if you'd like to ask a question, please press the star and one on your touch-tone phone. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing the pound key. Once again, that is star and one to ask a question. We'll pause for a moment to allow questions to queue. We have a question from Martin Ennis from JP Morgan. Hi. Thank you very much for the update and the presentation. Maybe two questions from me, a little bit different. You talked. The first one is about your sensitivity to changes in interest rates. I was hoping you could probably give us a bit of a sense as to what, say, a 50 percent or 50 basis points parallel shift would result in your net income for, say, either this year or probably 2023. The second question relates to your underwriting standards in Africa. We've seen a significant increase in, you know, the credit portfolio and the contribution from these markets. I was just hoping you could probably give us a bit of an idea of, you know, what sort of standards, what type of, credits you're underwriting there, just to sort of understand from the risk perspective, you know, how they compare to the Portuguese portfolio. Thank you. Thank you very much for your questions. Concerning our sensitivity to interest rates, actually what we've been driving at over the past year, as I mentioned before, is a de-risking of our overall portfolio. Right now what we stand at is a portfolio where sensitivity to parallel shifts is actually very much reduced. We've been drawing sensitivity analysis and up to 100 basis points shift in par, you know, parallel shifts. The impact is very small. It's, I'd say almost negligible given our balance sheet size. We do have some sensitivity concerns, premium risk spreads versus alternative debt, but definitely very desensitized in terms of risk where parallel shifts are included. I don't know if, Marco, you want to give some additional color or comments. Even if just broadening the question to the overall balance sheet and not only to assets at fair value, I would say that the 50 basis points interest rate increase may be something about a low double digits figure, like 10% roundabout impact on net interest income. Eventually something around EUR 100 million gross impact on net interest income. As the balance sheet in Portugal and well in southern Europe is typically skewed into variable rate credit and in a context where interest rates increase that will tend to benefit that interestingly. Now, on the second topic of your question concerning underwriting in Africa. We've not registered any fundamental changes in our underwriting criteria in Africa. The local situations have been evolving. I think the one country where I would highlight a strategic change in terms of our guidelines for the credit portfolio is Mozambique. In Mozambique, we've been also heading towards a de-risking of our credit portfolio. In some steps we have reassessed our relative allocations of individuals versus corporates versus sovereign debt. We see very interesting opportunities where individuals credit is concerned. So the proxy of consumer credit, if you like, in that market, but it's heavily securitized credit, fundamentally to people working in the public sector. That has been growing healthily, and it has allowed us for reconfiguration of our credit portfolio that is adding value without adding significant risk. We've also rebalanced our public debt versus corporate debt. As you know, corporate debt in that market in particular is rather high risk. The rebalancing has allowed us for an interesting gain in terms of additional profitability without significant risk in portfolio. We increased less than 10% of our capital. Yes. I think it's put into perspective just to a limited overall credit exposure. Hopefully, this will address your questions. Glad to take any further clarifications as required. No, no, that's very helpful. You mentioned Mozambique. What about Angola? Does it tend to be also sort of, you know, very much individuals that work for the state, like, you know, what I would call, you know, salary-based lending? Or is it more corporate and sovereign type of lending? In Angola is a rather minute operation, just to put it into perspective. You're right. There are no fundamental change. There's a significant amount that is sovereign debt, given the relatively low presence that we have in terms of the corporate markets in Angola. Overall, no fundamental change in the credit portfolio composition. They have been performing rather well in terms of sovereign debt, so some of the impacts, it's relatively small in the overall composition of our accounts. Some of the positive income impact you register there fundamentally has to do with the positive performance the sovereign debt has been exhibiting. Thank you very much. Thank you. Once again, that is star and one if you'd like to ask a question. We'll pause for another moment. It appears we have no further questions at this time. I will now turn the program back over to our speakers for any additional closing remarks. Okay. Once again, I wanna thank you for participating in today's call. I wanna remind everyone that should you have any queries in the future, feel free to contact the investor relations team, and we'll get back to you on any issue that you need further information on. Thank you again, and have a nice day. Thank you for attending the conference call. The audio webcast will be available on the CGD website.