Good morning. Thank you for joining us for Absa's pre-close call for the first half of 2026. I will make a few introductory comments on where we are as a group, the momentum we see in our customer franchise, and the operating environment. Thereafter, Deon will share our financial guidance, after which we'll field your questions. Firstly, 2026 is a critical transition year for Absa. Our new operating model is in place, and we'll report three pan-African business units for the first time, as well as on South Africa and Africa Regions basis. We have made significant progress on key appointments. With leadership of all the business units in place, these new leaders will need time to refine their strategies, build out their teams, and execute against their plans. I have great confidence in the caliber of these senior appointments, which set us up well to accelerate momentum over the medium to long term. Secondly, our business fundamentals are strong with encouraging customer trends and a healthy pipeline across the franchise. In the first five months, our Corporate and Investment Banking client revenue grew by high single digits year-on-year, with strong growth in investment banking and global markets in particular. Transactional banking client growth will take longer to build. We've started to see some large wins, which is encouraging and will provide momentum into next year. In Personal and Private Banking South Africa, we continue to grow active transactional customers, particularly in the affluent and the private and wealth segments. Further growth in digitally active customers and rewards demonstrate deepening relationships across our base. PPB Africa Regions growth in active transactional customers remains solid, with substantial growth in digitally active customers. In business banking South Africa, the customer base grew and its balance sheet momentum improved with high single-digit growth in customer loans and deposits. Business banking Africa Regions continued to grow active transactional customers, supported by strong growth in digitally active customers. Lastly, our operating environment remains challenging and uncertain. As you know, the Middle East conflict increased global inflation expectations and dampened global growth. As a result, we have reduced our GDP growth expectations slightly in our largest countries, namely South Africa, Ghana and Kenya. In South Africa, the SARB increased the policy rate in May, whereas we previously expected further rate cuts. Conversely, the policy rate in Ghana has reduced materially and is lower than we expected, creating a near-term drag, although it should stimulate growth over time. In summary, 2026 is a transition year for us, although we are seeing positive growth in our client franchise despite some short-term rate headwinds. Thank you. I'll now hand over to Deon. Thanks, Kenny. Good morning, everyone. Since we may not have gone through the detail of our trading update, I will cover it now. Starting with our guidance for the first half of 2026, my commentary refers to the percent year-on-year change in our financial results versus the first half of 2025. Revenue is expected to grow by low to mid-single digits, with non-interest income growing faster than net interest income. Net interest income remains muted, growing by low single digits, reflecting margin compression largely due to lower policy rates in Africa Regions. Net customer loans and customer deposits are expected to grow by mid-single digits. PPB net customer loans are expected to grow by mid-single digits. In PPB South Africa, solid vehicle and asset finance growth should offset modest growth in home loans and unsecured lending. Business banking and CIB net customer loans are expected to grow by high single digits. We expect mid-single-digit growth in non-interest income. Within this, growth in fee and commission income and in insurance in South Africa is expected to be solid, while trading growth moderated after a strong first quarter. Operating expenses is expected to grow by low to mid-single digits, resulting in slightly negative JAWS and a slightly higher cost-to-income ratio, with low single-digit pre-provision profit growth. As mentioned previously, our investment in talent continues to be funded by productivity gains realized. In addition, we've also been able to offset higher fraud losses and some costs to achieve in Africa Regions. We expect broadly flat credit impairments and an improved credit loss ratio. We expect slightly lower PPB credit impairments driven by better delinquency performance, partly offset by the deteriorating macroeconomic forecast build. We expect business banking and CIB credit impairments to increase, the latter off a low base. Consequently, headline earnings are expected to grow by mid to high single digits for the first half of 2026, resulting in a similar ROE to the 14.8% in the first half of 2025. We expect our group CET1 ratio to finish the half of 2026 above the top end of our board target range of 11%-12.5%, and we plan to maintain a dividend payout ratio of around 55% for the half. As Kenny mentioned, we will report all three of our business units on a pan-Africa basis. At a divisional level, we expect broadly flat CIB headline earnings, with solid growth from Investment Banking and Global Markets, and lower earnings from Transactional Banking. PPB is expected to report low double-digit headline earnings growth, in part due to lower credit impairments. We expect modest business banking headline earnings growth with solid growth in South Africa, while Africa Regions is lower given the margin compression. Lastly, we expect a smaller head office loss due to better ALM performance in treasury, South Africa, strong cost management, and productivity gains. The stronger rand will reduce group revenue, costs, and headline earnings slightly. We expect strong headline earnings growth in South Africa, given solid pre-provision profit growth and a lower credit loss ratio. Conversely, we expect Africa Regions headline earnings to decline due to lower net interest income and higher credit impairments. Turning to full year guidance, given the elevated geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty, we will provide detailed guidance when we report our interim results on the 18th of August. We expect to achieve a full-year ROE of around 15%, which is lower than previously guided. This reduction is mostly due to weaker net interest income than we originally anticipated given margin compression in Africa regions. However, we are confident that revenue and earnings momentum remain on track in the medium term, given healthy growth in our client franchise and NIM stabilization post the rate cutting cycle, particularly in Africa regions. Thank you for your attention. We'll now take your questions. Charles, go ahead. Hi. Good morning. Alan, Kenny, Deon, thanks very much for the time. Just one question from my side. I wanted to just drill in on the NII line item. Basically reconciling March guidance to where you are now on loan growth and NIM compression. It seems that there's quite a big deviation in three months, and that's obviously quite a large miss. Okay. Shall we take a few? Ross, go ahead with your questions. Okay. Morning, everyone. Thanks, Alan. Sorry, Charles has sort of covered the theme. If I can maybe just drill down into that a bit and just ask about, you specifically called out on from an NIM perspective, you called out Africa regions and Ghana. Just wondering, how much did the policy rate trajectory differ from your expectations? Two, related to that, what were the other key regions, or I guess countries that contributed to that lower than expected NIM? Just on loan and deposit growth, the mid-single-digit expectations for H1. Obviously tracking below full year guidance. Just wondering, is that sort of in line and are you working on your guidance still, or has that also been weaker than expected? Thanks. Maybe I should deal with those because they're all linked. I think one of the main items is NIM compression, as you've called out. Look, we've got NIM compression. We had lower rates in our forecast. Kenya, Zambia as well as Ghana. I think the big one is Ghana. We had significant cuts Q1 of this year. It's a fairly large liability base that we sit with. It's a ZAR 40 billion liability base. About ZAR 20 billion of that is unhedged because the market's illiquid. It's difficult to hedge the full component. That's a 12% rate drop year-on-year. We had anticipated a rate drop of about 6%, so it was more severe than we expected. Charles, Ross, I think about ZAR 300 billion per 200 basis points for Ghana. You get to fairly sizable NII numbers given the size of rate cuts that we've had in Ghana. Ghana was unexpected, but year-on-year, it's Ghana, Kenya, Zambia. Harry, go ahead. Thanks very much. A couple of questions on it. Interesting, I think, uncovered. Can you possibly elaborate on the solid growth that's coming through in the South African fee and insurance income, maybe how material the step-up is compared to December? Also just if you could elaborate on the higher earnings growth that's coming through in the business bank in South Africa, please. Okay. Shall we take one more? Baron, go ahead with your question. Hi. Morning, guys. My question is around the longer-term ROE target of 16%-19%. Obviously given the clearly challenging macro, how comfortable are you with that target range? Does this result or the near-term outlook change how you think about that target? Thanks. Harry, if I can go on fee and commission income, I think you would've seen here SA performance as strong. We've got good top-line growth, got positive JAWS, solid pre-provision profit, low impairment. SA is looking quite positive. I think if you look at fee and commission income, particularly better in business banking South Africa, retail South Africa. They build up momentum slowly, you can see some momentum building up there. Around business banking South Africa, we've seen low impairments, we've seen reasonable revenue growth compared to what we've seen last year. Business banking South Africa, quite pleasing to see. Baron, in terms of medium term, maybe a couple of comments there. First of all, we are convinced 16%-19% is the right medium-term target range for us. We have new leaders in seat, as Kenny has mentioned. They are busy developing strategy execution plans, and targets for their business units. We'll present that at the Investor Day in the fourth quarter, together with the bottom-up detail around KVDs, et cetera. I think this gives us good grounding of the business unit medium-term plans and the drivers of the group ROE. I think medium-term targets, we remain confident 16%-19% is the right range for the group. I think we've got to allow our business leaders just the time to develop the bottom-up detail, which we'll share at the fourth quarter Investor Day. Alex, go ahead with your question. Alex is gone. Charles, go ahead. Thanks, Alan. I just wanted to press in on that loan growth question from earlier. That also seems to be lower than your initial expectations. If you could break that down, how the disappointment has unfolded, whether that's SA or Africa. Yeah, Charles. Underlying, if you look at what we've said in our guidance around the wholesale parts of our business, better than mid-single digits. Retail SA, lower than that. We do see that improving into the second half. If you look at more near term, month-on-month lead indicators and pipeline, we're certainly seeing better strength come through into the second half. It is true for the first half, mid-single digits, slightly lower than our full year guidance on this. We'll probably guide in more detail in August. We're seeing better performance pipelines, et cetera, overall. Thanks, Deon. Kabelo, go ahead. Yeah. Thanks, Kenny. Thanks, Deon, for the opportunity. Two questions on my side, I guess, on the back of Charles' question. It just seems your CIB growth is lagging peers in this half. Just a bit of color around, were there deals that were moved, or is it just overall weakness? Perhaps you've saw a harder impact from a more cautious approach from your corporates or your side of business due to the Iran-U.S. war. Secondly, on costs. In line, I guess, overlaid by the slower momentum on revenue growth strategically understandably saw all the hires that were made. Just your thoughts around how does that shape the near-term emergence of revenue given and the headwind potentially, or the play out between those two in the near term, and the impact on the cadence of you getting towards your medium term 16%-19% ROE guidance. I'll make a few comments on those. Kenny, you can add if you'd like. CIB, we've guided that global markets and investment banking growth is solid. transactional banking is down. It's similar to trends to what we saw in H2 last year. This is a business that takes a bit of time to turn the momentum around. Within transactional banking, lower NII in the Africa regions, particularly Ghana, but a number of those markets that I mentioned. They have big liability bases. Therefore, the interest rates affect them as well as business banking Africa regions the most. Last year, the team would've called out some pressure on NIR due to client repricing. We're required to maintain the primary relationship. That was mainly in South Africa. More recently, we've seen some good client wins and pipeline. Onboarding these clients and monetizing that takes a bit of time. I think more medium-term prognosis looks a bit better. Short term, what we saw second half of last year flowing through to this year. transactional banking in the main in CIB. I would say global markets had a very strong first quarter. It moderated in the second quarter. Some of those opportunities, good client flow, good growth in client revenues within global markets. That ability to monetize like they saw last year wasn't there. Last year there was significant growth in the first half. I think it was 29 odd percent up. Yeah. The base was fairly high. True, yeah. Still good growth in global markets off a high base, but moderated a little bit in the second quarter. My comment on costs, Kabelo, I think we very focused on costs. The investments we have to make in leadership talent is required for the medium term, those cannot be delayed. We are very focused to deliver sustainable performance in the medium term. At the same time, we are seeing opportunities in the short term to take out discretionary costs as well as manage our strategic investments very carefully, in the current environment. In the medium term, we are making good progress in building out our structural cost program, where we think we have opportunity to take out absolute costs in the medium term to support our 16%-19%. We'll provide those details at the quarter four Investor Day. Yeah, if I may add, the following. The appointments that have been made are aimed at doing the following. Firstly, strengthening the bank's strength, particularly in our three business lines. You'll see that these appointments have been concentrated in the main in building proper leadership depth across the three business units. The leaders are now in their seats, even though there are some people who will only be joining us in July and August. We haven't really seen the full impact of the appointments that have been made. In any event, even those who are in their seats, the longest is Zaid, who started in January. Sithole only started in March, April, and Deon only started just over a month ago. Whilst we are encouraged by the caliber of the people that we have appointed, we are under no illusions that they'll need a couple of months to assemble their own teams, review the strategies that are already in place, and where there's a need for intervention and strengthening of the plans that are to be executed, they will have to do so. Which is why we're describing this year as a transition year, in that we're changing parts of the engine whilst the plane is in flight. I think we have landed very good caliber people who will help us drive the culture change, increase the focus on clients, and ultimately ensure that we're able to deliver on our medium term plans. Awesome. Thank you. Starke, go ahead. Hi. I'm sorry. Thanks. On the ROE guidance for H1 and FY 2026, just wondering about the denominator effect there. Previously, you've called out the change in other reserves and the impact that's had. Just wondering if there's any detail you could add on that. Alan, do you want to take another one? Yeah, Harry, go ahead. Great. Thank you. Just to follow up on the points around the new hires, I just wanted to get a sense if you're starting to see any impact from the new hires in CIB in terms of revenue generation. I'd also like to get a sense whether you see, given the current lending growth momentum and revenue momentum, scope to deliver positive operating leverage in 2027. Ross, around denominator effect, we've not seen the same impact on reserves that saw last year. I think, if you look at growth on reserves, it's far more normalized. We did call out capital above top end of range. In second half, NAV is something we'll continue to look at in terms of capital allocation and where we can see returns and opportunities. What I will say around new hires in CIB, look, some have landed, Kenny, there's still quite a few to land in July where the action starts. Maybe you want to comment to that. Yeah. On the question, are we seeing early signs of wins? Absolutely. We make reference to some of the early wins that we've had, and these are large client deals, mainly in our transactional banking business. By definition, transactional banking takes time to onboard the clients, just given the logistic and the IT work that needs to be done to integrate into their own systems and so on. We're fairly confident that that should be completed by the end of the third quarter of this year. We'll start to see the actual revenue impact in the fourth quarter of this year and definitely then get the full year benefit in 2027. The nature of the engagement with clients, even from an investment banking point of view, and the quality of how we're structuring deals and some of the advisory mandates that are starting to come through I am a reflection of the step up that we have done in the caliber of people that we have in our CIB business. The momentum is there, the credentials are there. It's a question of really just going through the timeline before we start to see the revenue impact. That revenue impact will definitely be seen in 2027. We are also building capability that we didn't have at all, i.e., our capability to do structured deals that involve both the skill set in our lending business as well as in global markets with a view of accelerating distribution and so on. That skill set was underdeveloped, and we're bringing people who bring that to bear, and we'll start to see deals of that nature coming through as we go closer to the fourth quarter. Harry, around positive operating JAWS. I think what we'll see now, given that revenue performance that we've seen in the first half, kind of flat to slightly negative is more the direction for this year. Look, second half remains uncertain in terms of macroeconomic outlook. Like Kenny said, particularly in CIB, while some people have started, others are still serving notice. A lot of these individuals lead big event trades. Those types of things are less easy to see, in terms of how they'll manifest on the top line. We are a bit cautious around full-year outlook given that there is some macroeconomic uncertainties. We also need to see people land and actually start to deliver and execute given notice periods and the like. We'd rather be cautious at this point. I think flat JAWS, slightly negative. There is some event revenue that could turn that. Kabelo, just checking, is that an old hand or a new one? Old hand. Apology. No worries. James, go ahead. James. Can you hear me now? Yes. Yeah. Good morning, Kenny, Deon, Alan. Thanks for the opportunity. Just on the forward-looking information applied under IFRS 9, have you used any different macro variables from what was applied with your FY 2025 results, so we can just get a sense of what it compares in the five-month period? Thank you. James, this has been changing monthly since March. I would say these models take time to run, et cetera. We applied May macro forecasts, which were significantly negative. If you look particularly the down scenario, relative to what we saw at the end of last year. I did call out impairments flat. Within that, we have built model-related MEV provisions as a result of that deteriorating macro. What I would say is that it was much bigger at the end of May. We moderated it a little bit given the developments that we've seen now in June. We've still got a net build as a consequence. Thank you. Jared, go ahead with your question. Thanks, Alan, thanks guys for the call. In the guidance where you break up the result per region and speak about Africa regions earnings declining due to the lower NII, which has been discussed ad nauseam, but you also cite higher credit impairments. Can you just talk about the credit impairments piece dragging rest of Africa lower? Is that specific to certain regions, certain specific isolated credit losses in CIB or is it central provisions? If you just break out some detail on that impairment piece in Africa, please. Jared, I would say that there's nothing abnormal there. We had a very low base, including recoveries last year. If you look at business bank, even in CIB. It's more a base effect rather than normalization, rather than any big standout impairment losses. I don't see any more hands, but there is a question in the chat from Adam who asks, when can we expect to see a decrease in your cost-to-income ratio? It's a key focus for us, Adam. We expected this year to see the first signs of that. I think we are seeing some of that pressure on the top line. Our cost growth plans are well on track for this year. It's more top line. Clearly, our 16%-19% requires positive JAWS. This is a key focus for us. Both revenue line as well as cost takeout are key priorities for us. The full benefits of all the structural cost initiatives that are underway will only come through in the subsequent set of years starting in 2027. There are quite a number of initiatives, including some cost take-outs, and that come with additional, unfortunately, expenditure this year. We are comfortable, though, that despite the fact that there are all sorts of changes that are taking place within the organization, new hires, that we're still able to maintain a very tight cost discipline as reflected by our cost growth. They offer sort of low to mid-single digit figures for this year. The actual benefit of these additional initiatives will only flow in the subsequent year. Jared's got another question. Questions? Maybe just one more from me. You spoke earlier about still being confident in the medium-term guidance and based on the operational metrics that you're seeing and gains. Is it fair to say, just given the challenging environment and rate environment being slightly different than you expected, the definition of what is medium-term and how long it'll take to get there is slightly changed, or is that not a fair assumption? Jared, I think, if you look at medium-term, we should have bottomed the Africa regions rate cycle by this year. Now, who knows? We've seen significant rate cuts already. Ghana's come from 28% down to just around 13%, 14%. We've seen the big moves happen. We should see it bottom out and wash out. This is where we have our biggest interest rate sensitivity, in Africa regions. On the basis that that washes out, it's mainly in our base for this year. That said, it's a good base to build once again into the medium-term. Short-term, we've got to let that wash out. Medium-term, it should be supportive in terms of growth from here. Asanda, go ahead. Hi. Good morning. Hope you can hear me. Yes. Yeah, we can. All good. Thank you. Thanks for the time, by the way. To the extent that the macro persists as what we've seen, so be it growth, as well as, let's say, inflation and so on, would you say that the 16%-19% is under threat or sort of remains intact as far as guidance is concerned, even with, let's say, a deteriorating or less than favorable macro? I'm just trying to get a sense of to what extent do you think, or is that guidance, and how much of it is reliant on a favorable macro environment outside of what you're going to be doing internally? Thanks. We're not changing our medium-term guideline. We had a time horizon to that. We're also not shifting that time horizon. Let me take a step back and reflect on the net interest income headwinds in Africa Regions. We have a very high concentration in Ghana and Kenya. If you look at our Africa Regions business, those two geographies are overweight, which is why we've been talking about the need for us to accelerate the diversification of our business. If one major accident happens in one of those, we feel it at a group level, and that's exactly what the impact of a lower NII in Africa Region has demonstrated, that we're absolutely correct in wanting to accelerate the diversification of our business in Africa Region. Secondly, that NII that is lower than what we expected is driven largely by deposit NII. I think Deon has made that point. It is the deposit interest income that is susceptible to massive rate decreases. We gather all of these surplus liabilities, and we have to deploy them. We deploy them either to the asset side of the book, or we deploy them to govies, bonds or paper. The significant decline in the interest rate environment in Ghana has meant, therefore, that our earnings that relates to the deployment of our surplus liquidity to government paper is significantly less than what we thought it would be. Whilst the macros, yes, have some headwinds, if one looks at the detail and the underlying reasons as to why we have effectively had this lower NII than we had expected, it relates in the main to Ghana, and in particular, the significant reduction in interest rates in Ghana in particular, given the size of Ghana relative to the rest of our portfolio. Thank you. Charles, go ahead. Thanks. Just a follow-up on this rates story in Ghana, and sorry to belabor it, but the rates in Ghana haven't changed since the 18th of March. They've been 14% since that, and over the course of this year, so far, only reduced by 1.5%. So 15.5% at the beginning of the year, 14% 18th of March, and then it's been flat since then. I think the question is: how has this caught you off guard? Because the rates were known last time we spoke. Charles, you're right. We had a big rate cut in January. We had a big rate cut in March. The effect of that's going to wash out this year as we see the full year impact. We also called out a very strong trading performance in quarter one. You do have swings and roundabouts in the bigger business. The performance of the business up to quarter one was strong. Quarter two, things have moderated. There are no more hands, but there's a question from Kabelo in the chat. Apart from Shola, who assumes his duties in July, how many new hires are yet to land in the CIB business, and what are their expertise? Giles will be taking over investment banking, will also be starting in July. I mean, he brings an unbelievable investment banking set of expertise coming from Rothschild. The head of transactional banking sales, which is the business that is currently underperforming, will also be starting in July. That will strengthen the sales capacity and the rebuild of that sales team in transactional banking. We've got two other sector heads who will be reinforcing our client coverage team. Again, you can see that all of these investments are aimed at strengthening the client-facing side of the business, and in particular, our ability to originate deals and make sure that they are closed with a sense of urgency. We've got quite a few, but I'm fairly confident that as we bring people on board, we are also, in some instances, exiting people whom we think are not appropriate. Naturally, with these sorts of things, we tend to focus more on the new investments that we're making as opposed to some of the changes and the exits that we have to undertake in order to create space for the new entrants. No more questions. Thanks everyone for your time this morning. If you do have any more questions, please drop me an email. Thanks for joining us. Thanks, everyone. Thank you very much.