Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Aktie

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. A very warm welcome at the conference dedicated to the presentation of the results of Bank Pekao S.A. for the first half of 2026. We have Cezary Stypulkowski, CEO, Dagmara, and Ernest Pytlarczyk. And over to the CEO.

Okay. There are good forecasts for the second half of the year. So we are optimistic. Profits are under pressure, but you are all aware of that. We operate in the environment of the highest tax thresholds in Europe. So the surplus of income tax also hits the results of the bank. It is worth stressing that our core categories continue to grow.

Core categories of credit assets, maybe slightly less in mortgage loans. But here, we have the kind of thinking that I shared with you at previous conferences, that is we, as the bank, try to reposition ourselves as the bank that has a holistic approach to the market rather than focusing only on volume drivers.

In the fourth quarter, we expect a very decent commissions growth. Annually, that is 11% up. The bank also keeps increasing its digital penetration in retail banking. Here, we had some backlog, but I think we are quite adept in catching up with the leaders and a strong capital position, Dagmara will probably tell you a few words about the issuances that we had previously this year, and that actually completed our plan for this year.

Key reference point, I think maybe it's worth saying that cost/income ratio normalized that results from BFG charges continues at our ambitions are above our ambition levels. I have repeatedly said that the bank is in the process of investing, reorganizing and I do not approach this target dogmatically.

So the fact that we stay around 35% is our achievement. The portfolio growth, risks, cost under control, Marcin will probably talk you through that in greater detail. The good news is also that in those areas of client activity, where the bank is still underweight in terms of market share, we see continuous growth.

You can see that both in consumer finance and in micro business funding volume. And the flagship element, medium market, that's our key element in terms of positioning. So we can say that all segments decently contributed to our results of the first half of the year.

You will find here the indication of the most salient and ambitious growth parameters with reference to sales or scale of revenues from individual types of operations and trusteeship services. Maybe that is not the major business line, but still very valuable because this generates valuable revenues and commissions, and we attach a lot of importance to that.

As you might recall from the presentation of our strategy, that is undoubtedly a focus we pursue. And against our peers, we are doing well. I referred to the strategy presentation. We still have years horizon within this strategy because it was a short-term strategy in which we wanted to prove to ourselves that the bank was capable of organic growth.

And it seems that our market shares do budge a little bit up. Of course, we cannot expect miracles. We do not expect to completely transform the market within a short time. This opportunity existed historically in the past with our Italian predecessors in particular. But we can say that this year has already confirmed that the bank does have this capability of mobilization, and that's something we are happy with.

All those indicators maybe except for ROE, but that is explainable by tax issues. So we are everywhere else within our targets formulated in the strategy. So we reached slightly above the horizon. We keep growing. We become more accessible by slowly reorganizing the bank, we gain a little bit of -- more of operational efficiency.

Our offer is continually enriched for analysts and investors, that might not be such an important issue, but I would like to stress one thing, namely something that we started last year, namely the return to Pekao S.A. as the most international bank with a focus on polish ambitions on traveling.

And last year, we had the first promotion focused on travel and now we have a greater scale promotion to encourage traveling among our customers. And the first summary of the results indicates that it seems to bring fruits. That means that the bank needs to reposition itself yesterday, actually, I experienced 2 events.

One was with the client, and another was with a business partner. That was a client of Bank PKO BP who complained about the Bank PKO BP by writing directly to me. And in the second case, that was a partner who works with our bank, and he still misspelled the name of our bank. So that's something that set us thinking.

There are several products. Well, prepaid Mastercard from SME, you can read about that. For sure, it matters for SMEs, but this does not change the world to a greater extent. And the important thing is that we consistently build availability of our services through digital channels.

Historically, we had some -- we had lagged behind the market in this regard. But now we can say freely that we are at par with our competitors. And also, we endeavor to have a big bank in digital services and show a new phase of Pekao SA in the retail banking to show us some more modern bank.

As a person who now uses mobile app of Pekao SA, I must say that on a few occasions, I was surprised by its features. I tended to think it was maybe not that good. And now we can say that we are really at par with the market. And now, PeoPay, it matters because for the younger clients, this is an attractive feature.

Travel package has already been mentioned. So we can say that let's wait for next year and some transactions that we concluded this quarter. Of course, here, you can see a list of major transactions. In the second quarter, maybe it is worth focusing on us being the arranger and dealer in Eurobonds for BGK. We signed a strategic agreement.

We are the main domestic partner with aspirations to go beyond that market. So here, we have those EUR 2 billion that BGK had. It is also worth mentioning the transaction which seems to have disappeared from my slide, but we are open to those customers who are firmly entrenched in the Polish market, but also who come to us and are interested in PLN funding.

That allows me to hand over smoothly to my colleague, Ernest.

We have GDP forecast 3.5%, which is a slight downward revision. The reason was a weaker beginning of the first quarter. The second quarter was quite good, and we have to say that Poland is not the epicenter of the events related to the oil crisis with the war in Iran.

We had a well-timed CPN package. We were afraid this would hit the consumers, but basically, the timing of CPN was such that the consumers did not feel quite so strongly that hit. The inflation expectations have not stabilized, and it seems that our economy has coped best in Europe with this situation.

The rest of the year is likely to be similar, some investments, slightly less consumption and the investments will drive the economy, but also the banking business. We see that in our loan portfolio of enterprises. In reality, we hope that this will continue.

And also, we prepared a report that discusses several years ahead. Not all topics, especially macroeconomic topics for Poland have been well investigated. So we made an attempt to orient ourselves in the market and think of some signposts for the future.

Energy transformation is something that makes a great macro difference. We are a construction site in terms of a variety of power plants, gas, wind, energy storage facilities. AI story is keeps coming back in various narratives across the world. And it also seems that the AI popularity wave also boosts a variety of sectors here.

We are to only a small extent dependent on imports, plus it's easy to build here -- on top of that, there is this nuclear energy theme because Polish electorate is quite favorable to nuclear energy, which is not typical of the entire Europe, and that makes Poland stand out against the backdrop of Europe.

We spend almost 5% of GDP on armaments, and that is not likely to change anytime soon. If you follow the news, that is probably a reason to justify the investments. The first wave of expenses on armaments is mainly focused on local content. And in the second wave, there will be more interesting things going on because there will be more collaboration with European enterprises with better know-how.

And we can talk about positive fiscal multipliers, the second wave. Of course, we also have to note that is the armaments increase will have a positive impact on GDP. But also, there are some challenges that Europe has to face Chinese shock. Europe will reach for protectionist policies, a variety of customs barriers, plus there will be an attempt to structure supply chains based on European resources.

Poland has an extensive industrial base, and it's impossible to think of this industrialization escape in Poland or bypassing Poland, plus location in the right place in Europe. So these are the 3 pillars. And as a result, we are quite optimistic about Poland, noting greater growth in GDP than other large European countries.

For the current year, it's 3.5% compared to on average below 1% in midsized EU member states. And a few words about the nominal dimension. A few months ago, there was a major concern that we will have major interest cuts, then the market locked in 4 cuts. We didn't believe in that story.

And now we are at the point where the National Bank of Poland starts talking about the cuts.

As I mentioned earlier, Poland was handling the oil shock pretty well. And now the inflation is not really sticky because once it's become sticky, it's really hard to manage it later and reverse the trend. Nothing dramatic happened here. Our projection is that there will be no interest rate hikes. We don't have the automatic transmission that ECB goes up, we go up accordingly.

Next year, we will probably see a cut, but not a major one. So the environment will be with the higher volumes, especially with mortgage loans, especially with such a curve with such expectations regarding the interest rate, the prospects for refinancing become burning and it will happen eventually.

Today, like the 5, 6 of that financing happens outside of the mother bank. So that's an interesting point. Large volumes amongst the corporates sort of spill over to smaller players and AI theme and the defense theme. I believe there is an interesting macro environment for the defense sector.

Good afternoon, everyone. So perhaps a few words about the actual numbers. Our lending was up by 10% in total. This is yet another quarter when we are growing faster than anticipated in our strategy. I would identify 2 areas: retail and corporate. In terms of corporate loans, mids, SME and large corporations are growing at a 2-digit rate. When it comes to mid and SME, for the past 6 months, we acquired over 1,000 new customers, which is excellent news.

In terms of the large corporations, they are up by nearly 13% on a year-to-year basis. And we would like to keep that lending bank corporate dynamics for the next quarters. In terms of the retail lending, we have a major uptick in cash loans. The volumes were up by 15% with sales 16% up year-to-year.

In Q2, we've seen the record high sales of cash loans, PLN 2.3 billion. Mortgage loans were growing at a slower rate, 1-digit growth. Now moving on to the deposit side. Total deposits were up by nearly 7%, retail 8%; corporates 11%. We are really happy to see current accounts moving up. Last year, it was 73%. And this year, at the end of June, we've seen 75 -- over 75%. This is the share of the current accounts.

And we keep on opening new accounts. We opened nearly 230,000 Premium -- Swiat Premium accounts and Przekorzystne accounts and more than 1/3 of it is dedicated to customer under the age of 26. In terms of investment funds, you may remember that at the end of Q1, we faced some challenges in the market because of the war. This gap is being filled slowly but steady. And in June, we've been at PLN 4.4 billion.

And a few words about issuances. Last 6 months we were quite active on the euro market. We had 3 issuances, EUR 1.71 billion in total value. What I should say is that the terms were really excellent for the execution of all 3 issuances. And we see a growing base of international investors. So this is a major feature for the past 6 months.

In terms of NIM, on a year-to-year, average WIBOR was down by 150 bps. Our net interest margin was down by 35 to 46 basis points, depending on treatment. Two things that need to be acknowledged, lower interest rates, and that was offset to some extent by higher volumes. We explained in our strategy, but we want to make sure that across all the key segments where we were underweighted, PEX, micro, SME and mid, we want to really grow our market share, and we want to grow at the faster pace than historically, and we've been delivering accordingly which translates positively in offsetting the negative effect of low interest rates and the NIM decline.

So looking forward, we are actually positive about NIM, and we believe that the interest rate cuts from last year and the one interest rate cut that we had this year has been properly accounted for in the current level of NIM. In terms of our sensitivity to interest rate cuts, it's 10 to 15 basis points per 100 basis points in terms of cuts.

What has already happened and what helps us manage the sensitivity is, as I said, growing volumes of our loans. And on the other hand, the hedging strategy that we had in place and the growing volume of IRSs. We do see the dominance of periodically fixed rate in our mortgages that are newly sold, and we also manage our deposit side of the balance sheet.

In terms of commission and income, another strong quarter, 11% growth on a year-to-year basis. And as you can notice, we've seen growth across all the contributing categories. So commissions on loans, on cards, asset management, strong 2-digit growth, but there are other contributors such as account fees and FX margin.

Now moving on to the costs. We make sure that we keep operating costs under discipline. As our CEO mentioned, we are transforming the bank, and we continue to invest. So there are 2 cost drivers in the cost base. On one side, we see the cost of wages and the cost of wages have been going up year-to-year. The rate is the 1-digit rate. On the other hand, we have assets and depreciation and here, the growth is 2-dgit.

And this is the result of the IT investments, new strategies -- new strategy projects and more active marketing efforts. As I mentioned, we are investing actively in the bank, which means that depreciation as a sort of translation of the CapEx will be growing. And now over to Marcin.

In terms of cost of risk, they continue to be stable. It was 42 basis points for the last quarter and 42 -- 47 and 42 year-to-year. So we stay within the range that we've been sitting in for some time. And there are 2 contributing factors that are well familiar, very low cost of risk in the retail segment, where the loss ratio is very low.

And that's also connected to the new estimates of the write-offs in the segments where we see the less likelihood of the default. Now in the corporate segment and enterprise segment, the cost of risk are oscillating within the normalized levels for the long-term projections and still lower than past year -- some years ago. And that affects our NPLs. Actually, it has -- NPL has been quite stable, and it was even declining because we sold the NPL retail portfolio, approximately PLN 200 million in nominal value, PLN 26 million in profit in Q2. NPL coverage, the nonperforming loans.

So the coverage has been growing slightly, and it's higher in the Enterprise and corporate segment because of the lengthy court proceedings in case of bankruptcy or restructuring processes involving larger, more complex entities. Dagmara, over to you again.

So finally, let's highlight some facts about the capital. We keep a strong capital position. We have the surplus in CET and then the total capital ratio we -- in our strategy, we say that 50% to 75% of the net profit will be paid out in the dividend. And with these capital ratios, we are safe with it.

In terms of MREL, again, we meet the criteria. And we reached the ultimate level above 24%, even taking into account the increase of the anti-cyclical buffer that will happen in September this year. We are working on 2 things. One is securitization, and that should materialize at the turn of '26, '27. And another thing is AT1 issuance. And that will be all. Thank you.

Now it's time for questions and answers. And we encourage you to ask questions in our streaming window, and you can send them my e-mail to myself. Not many questions received so far. We understand that there are many conferences today organized by different companies to share their performance numbers. But I do have some questions from analysts.

Some analysts have been asking what about the credit spreads? And what is the competition level in the area of the credit margins?

Let me take this question. We see a major pressure on the margins here, especially in the corporate segment. And now when we look at our -- where we sit in the market and given that each bank has the ambition to grow in the corporate sector, I have to say that this is the strongest pressure by far.

There is a handful of questions about European Court of Justice ruling. Well, we disclosed the amount in our report. The question is whether this is just one-off charge to PLN and what is expected to happen next?

Well, I would like to really distance myself from [indiscernible] of the role of the adviser of the law chancellery and the legal counsellors law firms. So I would rather refrain from comments here. This is -- this phenomenon is the affliction of the Polish market. But the discussion is ongoing, how to interpret that ruling. And my personal opinion is that we should stop offering this product in the current form, in the form that was challenged.

The ruling of the ECJ implies that we should really split it in 2 elements that were combined into the package, which will be difficult for the customers. The whole area, I should say, of the customer protection is sort of shifting towards such a direction where many products will be very complex from the customer point of view, and they will be just tick the boxes without really thinking. Many of us do it daily because there are so many legal requirements but this is not digestible for the customers.

And by itself, they become the source of risks that we are discussing here. We are not discussing the credit risk here. We are not discussing the balance sheet risk. In Poland, we tend to focus on the legal risk and the legal risks are byproducts of the emerging industry that is living off it.

So my answer to that is that we estimate as a certain scenario. I'm not going to explain it in details, but I'm not going to make it a secret since I am the chair of the Polish Bank Association Board. But we have a discussion with the banking sector. And as a community, we have already voiced our opinion to ECJ how this product could be offered in reasonable terms and how to settle the contracts that are currently active.

There is a question regarding interest margin. Is it already reaching the bottom? And possibly what kind of trajectory here we can expect in the second half of the year?

As I have mentioned, reductions in interest rates, both this year and last year should be included in the margin for the second quarter, and we do not expect any material decreases further.

There was also some interest in our description of the slide on write-offs about this one-off client disappearance. Did it matter for the second quarter? And what can we expect in the upcoming quarters?

Well, we wrote that it had an impact. So let me add some information. PLN 420 million, that was the cost of the write-off. And for this client, that was about PLN 100 million. As for the future, the environment is stable. And if we have this kind of a client in the future, there is a few bps increase in the cost of risk, and that is shown in our quarterly results. So basically, the trajectory in the near future is to be stable with possible some changes that are very difficult to predict now.

There are also a few questions related to the capital and issuance. What will be the size of AT1 issuance? And when can we expect it?

We expect it at the turn of the year. The Polish market, about PLN 500 million.

And one more business question. Does the bank plan to introduce personal investment accounts, IKE? And do you think that this new product could support brokerage business and asset management?

Well, I generally think that the evolution of the retail market in Poland is likely to go in the direction of increasing importance of asset management like products. We are coming to an end of the time when banks differentiated themselves by availability of this type of transactions.

Deposits and loans, well, I'm afraid to start discussing this because it is full of legal traps. And I think regulators and the entire financial sector should think carefully which products could engender more risks. But considering how quickly the society at large is getting richer, because the indicators showing the increase in revenues are quite aggressive, and we can see that in our operations.

So the importance of long-term products for saving will also gain an importance also in the context of demographic changes. So this is definitely something we will consider.

And one more question regarding why we reduced our estimate of sensitivity of results to 10, 15 points.

We increased the scale of hedging instruments, IRSs mainly. Importantly, we are talking about hedging per se in the budgeting window that is up to 2 years versus structural hedging, which was characteristic of our operations earlier. Hence, this difference of 5 bps to what we had previously. There are no further questions as of now, but please do continue asking questions on any topics you might have, and have a happy holiday. Very enjoyable holiday.

Thank you.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Artur Nowak-Far. I'm the Vice President of the Supervisory Board of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna. Let me open the Ordinary General Meeting of shareholders of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki S.A. convened today by the Board. I would like to welcome all present, the shareholders of the bank and their proxies.

The members of the Supervisory Board, members of the Board and the experts of the bank, representatives of media, all our guests that accepted invitation to participate in the Ordinary General Meeting. Before we move on to elect the Chairperson of the Ordinary General Meeting, I would like to ask [ Nico], representative to present information on voting.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. You have received tablets for voting. Right now, you can see 2 buttons, your data button where you find the information about representation, how many shares you have, and how many you can use during this meeting and the second button with documents. Under this button, you will find documents on this specific Ordinary General Meeting.

When it comes to the process of voting, once the voting is announced, the tablets automatically will start the mode of voting. You will see the decision-making buttons. You take the right decision when you select decision on the next screen with summary information, you'll find information on your voting. If everything is correct, you press confirm button and it sends information to the system. Voting is -- the system is also available for split voting.

Thank you very much. Let's move on to the second item on the agenda, election of the Chairperson of Ordinary General Meeting. Please provide the candidates.

Good morning, [indiscernible] of insurance company. I would like to present Leszek Koziorowski to become the Chairperson of the Ordinary General Meeting.

Do we have any other candidates, please? I can see -- I would like to ask Mr. Leszek Koziorowski to ask him whether he agrees for becoming a Chairperson. Thank you very much. Let me close the list of the candidates. We have one person on the list. And let me remind you that according to Article 420 Article 2 of the Commercial Code, this is the voting on personal aspects.

So let me -- it's a secret voting, and you can find information about it on documents attached to the website. So let me open the voting on election of Leszek Koziorowski as the Chairperson of the Ordinary General Meeting.

Is there anyone who would like to exercise the right to vote and cannot exercise this right? If not, let's start voting.

[Voting]

Let me ask you again. Is there anyone who would like to exercise the right to vote and did not perform the right to vote yet?

I can't see anyone. Therefore, let me close the voting, and I will kindly ask for the results.

Resolution on the election of the Chairperson of the Ordinary General Meeting of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna. In secret voting, there were 177,137,703 votes cast -- valid votes cast out of 177,137,703 votes, which constitute 67.4887% of the share capital. There were 177,137,703 votes for. There were no votes against and no abstentions. Therefore, all the votes were in favor of the candidate. So let me say that we adopted the resolution, and I would like to give floor to the selected Chairperson of the Ordinary General Meeting. Sir, the floor is yours.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to thank you very much for unanimous election. I would like to welcome all the shareholders and all proxies. I would like to welcome representatives of the Supervisory Board and the Management Board with the President and Mr. and Madam Presidents who are here with us.

I would like to welcome Mr. Robert Blaszczak and [indiscernible] that without him, we will not have any final document, minutes of the meeting. So Mr. [ Notary ] will take notes of the whole meeting. Before I move on, let me first prepare the documents. In a moment, we are going to continue the meeting.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your patience. I'm ready to continue the meeting. We are on Item 3 of the agenda published and proposed by the Management Board of the company. Item 3 is about statement of the correctness of convening of the Ordinary General Meeting of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna and readiness to adopt resolutions. I am obliged to make the following statements here. First and foremost, let me notice that to the Ordinary General Meeting was convened according to the regulations on public companies, Article 402 and subsequent articles.

Announcement was published 62 days before the meeting by the reports #13/2026 -- as of 31st of April 2026. And subsequently, upon the request of the shareholder, the agenda has been modified and published as an extended agenda under report 14/2026 as of the 8th of May this year. Therefore, as the Ordinary General Meeting, we are bound by the extended agenda published in the report 14/2026. We are going to discuss the agenda in a moment. On top of the current report, there is an information about the agenda and convening the meeting. This information was published on the website of our company according to the provisions.

Today, we have in total here in the room and online shareholders representing 177,137,703 votes -- shares and the same number of votes, which is proven by signing the list of attendance that confirms the shareholding structure. Of course, the changes are possible, but this is the situation right now during the ordinary meeting. Given these statements, let me say that the Ordinary General Meeting has been convened correctly and it is able to adopt resolutions foreseen by the agenda of today's Ordinary General Meeting published in the report 14/2026.

Let me mention some technical aspects before we move on to the next item on the agenda, along with the reports 13 and 14, there were drafts of resolutions published and resolutions to be adopted today. The drafts of resolutions have been published on the website of the company. Today, we are going to vote on the resolutions in the same content as the ones published in the reports. unless during the meeting, another draft of resolution is presented. But always, we will mark it. And without any other changes, we are going to vote on the draft resolutions resulting from the reports. Therefore, I'm not going to read them out. Unless there is someone who is expecting it. However, some resolutions are quite lumpy and some just repeat the content.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are ready with Item 3 of the agenda. Let's move on to the #2, Item 4, adopting of the agenda of the Ordinary General Meeting of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna.

I have a question. Do you have any proposals, opinions, proposals for the modifications to the agenda? I can't see anyone. Therefore, let me ask you to vote the resolution. In the current report 13, it is a resolution for Item 4 of the agenda on the adoption of the agenda of the Ordinary General Meeting. I would kindly ask to make system ready for voting. System is ready. I understand that it has been explained how to use it. Let me open the voting on adoption of the agenda of the Ordinary General Meeting as it was stated in the current report 13/2026. Let's vote.

[Voting]

Did you all have a chance to cast your vote? As I understand, the answer is positive. So I would like to close the voting session. Let's publish the results.

I would like to see the results being displayed right behind me. Hopefully, you can see them on the screens. I would like to see them on my screen as well so that it's easier for me to read them aloud, and we want you all to be able to see them instantly. So let's see the results of the voting session.

Thank you so much. So I consider the resolution to be adopted. And in favor, we have 177,137,703 votes in favor of it. The resolution has been adopted by the general meeting. Let's proceed according to the agenda. Within the agenda, we have points from 5 to 9 when it comes to the agenda. We are at the Ordinary General Meeting pertaining to the financial reporting of the bank for the year 2025. We have several documents to review. Let me remind you that all the documents, annual basis have been published by the bank. There is a seasonal document that you are familiar with.

Right now, I would like to give the floor over to the President, and we would like to hear some short introduction from you. Over to you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, dear guests. Thank you so much for being present here today at the General Meeting of Shareholders of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki S.A. It's a very special year, a very special moment, a year of exceptional results, but we have to consider the long-term perspective, assessing the future conditions under which we are going to operate.

The year 2025 was the best one for the bank when it comes to the generated net profit. The Capital Group generated the level of PLN 7 billion when it comes to the net profit and the return on capital accounted for 20%. This is the result that has been generated, thanks to a relatively consistent commercial operation and stable interest margin, stable volumes and the entire portfolio that we have at our disposal.

Let me underline in a clear manner that our objective is not only to present all the record-breaking numbers, we want to build sustainable lasting value for all the shareholders long term. It is a great satisfaction for us to present to you a single result and the proposal of profit distribution that goes hand-in-hand with our dividend-based policy declared in our strategy. The bank for many years has been a dividend company. Over the last 25 years, only in 2 exceptional years, the bank was unable to pay out the dividend. It was actually delayed and it was paid out in another year. In the current year, the stock exchange in Warsaw was celebrating its 35 years of operations. And we, as the bank, we have been appreciated as the only institution on the stock exchange in Warsaw, namely over the last 35 years that paid out the highest record-breaking level of dividends.

Our policy and our strategy when it comes to payout ratio, it's at the level of 50% up to 70% in each and every year of our strategy being in place. At the same time, we remember that the responsible policy for the shareholders has to go hand-in-hand with taking care of our shareholders and the security of the bank. When it comes to more demanding things in terms of provisions because the circumstances are really testing. Hence, we have to take care of the capital. We have to make sure that the bigger part of it is allocated remains here in the bank so that we can develop our bank commercially. And this is also our objective, hence, the declaration at the level of 50% up to 70% when it comes to the so-called payout ratio.

The results of the banking sector, including our bank, have been influenced by the entire macroeconomic environment in the year 2025, decreasing inflation as a result, decreased interest rates and after 2 years of break and the level of interest rates that has improved, and we benefited from it as well as the entire banking sector. And the Monetary Policy Council cut interest rates by 1.75 percentage points from the level of 5.75 to the level of 5%.

At the end of 2025, decreased interest rates took place in the second half of the year. Hence, the results from 2025 failed to influence its negative influence fully. When it comes to the interest margin, it was influenced by the over liquidity of the banking sector. We had more credits than deposits. Hence, the margin remained at the same level. We take pride in it. The margin continues to exceed 4%, but we do realize that in the environment of decreased interest rates, there will be a pressure on the margin. But before any possible discussion, let me say that we hope that this year, we assume for further cuts of interest rates in the wake of all kinds of political events, but probably it will not happen very soon.

We hope that the economic growth will be maintained at the level of 3.5% as declared. We formulated it a month ago. There were some adjustments in this respect, but not significant ones. And I must say that another significant element is, first and foremost, a very powerful position of the consumer-based market in Poland as well as investments that we were able to bounce back, and this is something that we're counting on for a long time. It was announced. But the timeline right now shows that the year 2006 indicates that there will be a growing demand for financing, especially when it comes to the corporate sector.

The bank seems to be perfectly prepared for the current situation. We'd like to play a pivotal role when it comes to the financing, the coming investment cycle. I don't want to call it an investment boom, but definitely some kind of activity, especially in the sector of enterprises seems to be quite visible for us today. This is true about enterprises, but also all kind of infrastructure-based projects that are in the pipeline currently in Poland on quite a large scale, also supported by the activity of the state.

Our advantage given the current market conditions, I can call them Polish conditions specifically are the competencies of our corporate banking. That position us as the leading institution here on the Polish market. Very powerful position historically when it comes to financing enterprises as well as the expertise of the investment banking as well as the debt market.

Given the conditions of the year 2025, we noted a growth of 11% when it comes to our portfolio of corporate credit. And when it comes to the issued treasury bonds, the total value came to PLN 11 million. So we are the leader of the market. You have to be realistic, namely that in the case of the biggest transactions that are instigated in the Polish market, mostly the ones focused on infrastructure. The banking sector is not sizable enough. So we are dealing with some kind of limitations stemming from limitations in terms of the level of capital that we have at our disposal as well as the entire banking sector in Poland.

The banking sector seems to be a pivotal element when it comes to financing Polish economy. Approximately, it is responsible for 80% of financing when it comes to everything allocated to the enterprises more than average. However, our capabilities are not unlimited, and this can be attributed to a slower growth of the capital as compared to the dynamics of the economic growth here in Poland.

In the context of sizable vast infrastructural projects, a huge challenge is to be able to finance them by the national sector. I can say that when it comes to the biggest investments, the potential of the sector comes to 1 to maybe 1/3 of the level of the financing needed. What is also critical is that we keep to enhance our position when it comes to what is crucial from the point of view of our relations with customers, we can see that the number of extended loans seems to be growing. It used to be a challenge. We remain powerful when it comes to investment projects factoring and leasing.

And the provision -- commission-based result keeps growing faster by 11%, which is the fastest pace when it comes to the comparative group of all the banks. This matters because the diversified revenue-based model increases the resilience of the bank in the environment of the ever-decreasing interest rates. Last year, as I signaled, we adopted the strategy. We are reaching behind the horizon when it comes to the year 2025, '27. Short term or midterm, when it comes to our strategic perspective, it seems to be more adequate to the fluctuating environment of the banking sector.

And it operates based on 3 pillars: growth, availability and efficiency. When it comes to the growth, I talked about it before. When it comes to the availability, we have a number of projects in the pipeline to this end. And as for the efficiency of the bank, to a large degree, it is being expressed by way of the growing number of approvals by our customers. And the NPS index seems to be ever improving, especially given our retail customers. Obviously, the growth means the growing credit action, and it will be continued also in the current year.

Nevertheless, the strategy, the year 2025 helped us to gain momentum. Right now, we are consolidating our operations when it comes to consolidating some projects. Some projects should be advanced this year and some next year. And we have to be open. When it comes to the prospects of the sector in Poland, they do not depend only and exclusively on the quality of the management in individual banks because what matters are also regulation-based conditions as well as the availability of capital. The higher effective taxation of banks, significantly higher, the highest one in Europe, I could say, the growing requirements in terms of capital, and this can be attributed to pan-European regulations, especially the defective structure of the European banking tax.

This influences significantly the way the entire banking sector operates here, and it reduces the capacity to replenish our capital and to rebuild the economy on the scale that is so much needed. This is not an argument against the security of the sector, no. Basically, we have to build our security in a reasonable scale without reducing our potential for growth. This is a dilemma when it comes to the managers and Polish banks. It is really a demanding task indeed.

Given this context, let me pinpoint the following concept. As announced last year, I'm talking about PZU Group and PKO SA Group, quite complex also in terms of Investor Relations. It involves a number of stakeholders. From the strategic perspective, this could enhance the position of the entire conglomerate. This could release a significant amount of capital for the next year. We are not talking about an operational merger. Now just putting an order to the ownership structure. And in this way, we could release of more than PLN 20 billion, the most valuable money on the market, namely equity. And this could go hand-in-hand with European trends and the long-term strategy on the bank assurance that organizes conglomerates in Europe.

This organization would position the entire conglomerate according to the dominating model. At the same time, as I said, it could help us to release a large amount of capital. And in this way, we could be able to take advantage of all kind of regulatory preferences that banks enjoy as compared to insurance from the point of view of holdings.

The year 2025 also proved to be a period of structuring certain internal affairs, enhancing managerial or executive standards of the bank. The review of the operations of the audits commissioned by the Supervisory Board revealed some irregularities. As a result, we instigated some corrective action. We enhanced procedures and we made sure some clear-cut boundaries were set where some cases of irresponsible management was proven. We need to enhance trust to the banking sector. This can be done by way of not only the result, profit, the ability to grow, generate balance. It is also done, thanks to the quality of corporate structure and the transparency of the structure based on honesty.

Let me also pinpoint that there is another initiative worth underlining that perfectly matches our long-term approach to building value, namely relations with the capital market. In May last year, we launched a program for the group of shareholders of PKO, a very first loyalty-based program of this kind in the Polish banking sector.

Our activities are based on the trust and cooperation with the shareholders. Our ambition is that shareholders of our bank are not only participants of our financial success, but also partners in further development and natural ambassadors of this institution. This program strengthened integration of the banking services, investment services as well, and it follows the broader strategy to build client investor relations in PKO Group.

Looking ahead, we will remain ambitious but realistic as well. We know that remain in this situation in the conditions of the lower interest rates and further burdens and requirements won't be easy. We know that bank has strong foundations, strong relations with clients, competent, employees, loyal clients and healthy balance sheet and outlined strategic direction. Our task is to use all these benefits in a safe way, responsible way, and the way that will help us to develop the bank.

In this context, let me say a few words about the value of shares of the bank over last year 2025. The level grew from 137.9 share by the end of 2024 to PLN 205. In April this year, it reached its maximum PLN 253.90. It is not my role to talk about the future value of the shares over time, but we registered the maximum in the conditions, which where we see growing burdens, fiscal burdens for the banks at the same time, drop of the interest rates. So the situation indicates the significant interest of shareholders and investors who would like to have our shares of our bank. Let me just add here that we do care for the way we communicate with investors. So that the knowledge about bank behaviors, bank's targets, objectives and strategy that is implemented as commonly known, and this has been appreciated by the market.

And of course, we would like to take care of it in coming years. In this context, let me say a few words about years to come, the year 2029, specifically when the bank will celebrate 100th anniversary. The next strategy will be actually built based on this motive. There are not many institutions in Poland with such a long track record. So we would like to use this opportunity to and cover bank in the imagination of the investors, but also we would like to use this opportunity to revitalize the bank to get back to its international situation on the market. So of course, we monitor regular risks that may impact the stability of the market. We discuss market players who support the stability and security of the financial markets in Poland. We have to face the adjudications of Polish courts that favors Polish customers. And in these circumstances, we are trying to find a way to take care of our customers to show the empathy, but at the same time, to protect the interest of the institution in conditions where the stability of law in Poland and the execution of law triggers some problems.

The attached statements on the items mentioned before and information on the version of profits. This is the decision of the Management Board of the bank confirmed by our signatures. This is the situation -- this is proving the financial situation of the bank, and we would kindly ask you to vote in favor of the resolutions that we're going to vote for. I would like to thank the Management Board, Supervisory Board for the constructive cooperation and for renewing our mandate that was granted in May this year -- in April this year, in April this year, mandate that opens the 3 years tenure and the same composition of the Board. Thank you very much for your attention.

Mr. President, thank you very much for such a broad and transparent presentation of the situation of the bank and for introducing items 5 to 9 of the agenda where we are going to talk about the financial statements of the financial year. Ladies and gentlemen, the items 5 through 9 that I'm not going to read out. And after presenting the statements, I would like to ask you a question. Are you going to participate in a discussion? Do you have any comments, questions? This is the right moment to do so.

Let me proceed in the following way. We should now use time for discussion. And as of Item 10 on the agenda, we only will be adopting the resolutions. So if there is a need for the discussion, we should start discussion now. And this is a discussion on the division of the profits and financial aspects of the financial statements. So if there is a need, let me open the floor for discussion. I can't see any volunteers. I can't hear anyone. So I understand that everything has been -- everything is clear and transparent. So the statements have been presented fully. The introduction was very broad and sufficient. So let me close now the recognitions of items 9 through -- sorry, 5 to 9.

And now let's move on to Item 10, and we are going to vote on the individual resolutions. Before we do so, let me say that the shareholders changed, and we have one shareholder more who will be actively participating. So in total, we will have 170,138,103 votes, the same number of shares. The percentage-wise, we remain the same. It's 67. more or less 4% of the share capital of the company. So this is a statement to be taken for the protocol.

And now we move on to the Item 10 on the agenda report on the adoption of the resolution of approval of the report on activities of Bank Pekao S.A. Group. And here, we have a resolution corresponding with Item 10 on the agenda point 1. Let's get ready for voting. The system is ready, and now I would ask all the participants to start casting votes. The content of the resolution is identical as the one presented in report 13. This draft resolution was published in current report 13/2026.

[Voting]

Have you all voted already? I understand, yes, let me close voting, and let's present the results.

Thank you very much. The resolution was adopted by 176,713,534 votes. No abstentions. 424,569 votes abstained. Thank you.

Point 10, subpoints 2, approval of the entity-specific financial statements of Bank Polska S.A. for the year ended on 31st of December 2025. And this corresponds with the draft resolution presented in the materials. Point 10, Item 2 with the same title. Now this resolution shall be voted. The system is ready for voting, and I would ask participants to cast their votes.

[Voting]

Can we close voting? Yes, let me close the voting. And again, I would ask for presentation of the results.

Thank you very much. The resolution has been adopted. 176,710,232 votes for, 3,302 against and 424,569 votes abstention. So the resolution is adopted.

Item 3 of point 10, approval of the consolidated financial statements of the Bank Polska S.A. Group for the year ended December 2025. And we have a resolution for this item. Let's get ready for voting.

[Voting]

Let me close the voting. I hope everyone cast the vote already. Let's present the results.

Thank you very much. Resolution is adopted. 176,710,232 votes for, 3,302 votes against and 424,569 abstentions.

We can move on to the Item 4, distribution of profit of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna. The draft resolution has been published for this item 4. Let's get ready for voting and let's vote now.

[Voting]

Thank you very much. I'm closing the voting. Let's present the results. Resolution was unanimously adopted 177,138,103 votes in favor. Let me remind you as any shareholders joined the meeting, the shareholding structure changed.

And now we move on to the next item, approval of the report of the Supervisory Board of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna for 2025, along with assessments and opinions made in accordance with regulatory requirements. We also have prepared check resolution for this item. The system for voting is ready. Let's start voting now.

[Voting]

I would like to close the voting session and let's see the results. I would like to state that the resolution has been adopted for 176,715,457, 0 against, abstentions 422,646 votes. Let's move on to point 6 on our agenda, and we are going to cast our votes by secret ballot, although it is done collectively. One resolution to be adopted that should not be voted upon by secret ballot, but let's not change the system all the time. So I would like to ask you to do it by secret ballot. This will be easier technically. Similarly, secret ballot voting will be performed for point 7 and 8. So right now, I would like to state that the next voting sessions will be performed by secret ballot.

Under Point 6, we are going to vote on several resolutions and the assessment on the individual suitability. And one by one, according to the published order, I will let you vote on the individual resolutions. The first one is on the self-assessment of the individual suitability of Mr. Bogdan Benczak. Let's get the system ready. The system is ready. I would like to start the secret ballot voting. Let's vote.

[Voting]

Thank you very much. We can close the voting, I believe. Let's present the results. I would like to state that the resolution in the proposed shape has been adopted. Votes for 177,131,788, against 6,014 and abstentions 301.

Let's move on the self-assessment of the individual suitability and this one is about Mr. Artur Nowak-Far. The system is ready. Let's start the voting. I would like to close the voting session and let's see the published results.

I would like to say that the resolution has been adopted. Votes for 176,812,819, against 324,784, and there were 500 abstaining votes.

The next draft resolution is about Madam Magdalena Joanna Dziewguc. Let's get the system ready and let's vote on the resolution.

[Voting]

Can we close the voting session? Yes, and let's present the results. I would like to say that the resolution has been adopted. Votes for 177,137,603, votes against 500, no abstentions.

The next resolution is about Mr. Krzysztof Czeszejko-Sochacki. Let's get the system ready. I just heard that the system is ready, so please start casting your votes.

[Voting]

As I understand everybody had a chance to cast their votes. Let's present the results. I would like to say that the resolution has been unanimously adopted.

The next resolution will help us to assess the individual suitability of Madam Diana Debowczyk. The system -- the voting system is ready. So ladies and gentlemen, please start casting your votes.

[Voting]

And if I may, I would like to close the voting session. Let's present the results. I would like to state that the resolution has been adopted. Votes in favor, 177,131,589, against 6,514, no abstentions.

Mr Jacek Niescior is the next resolution regarding the self-assessment of the individual suitability. The system is ready. Let's start the voting session.

[Voting]

If I may, I would like to ask you to present the results. Let's close the voting session. I would like to say that the resolution has been adopted. Votes in favor 177,137,603, against 500 and no abstaining votes.

Mr. Witold Walkowiak, this is the resolution regarding the assessment of the individual suitability. Please start casting your votes now.

[Voting]

May I close our voting? Yes, let's see the presented results. I would like to say that the resolution has been unanimously adopted. Votes in favor of, you can see them displayed on the screen.

And the last resolution pertaining to the self-assessment of the individual suitability. This one is about Mr. Mariusz Jaszczyk. Let's get the system ready, and let's start our voting.

[Voting]

Thank you so much. I hereby would like to close the voting session. Can we see the results, please? I would like to state that the resolution has been adopted, votes in favor of 177,132,089 votes, 6,014 votes against, no abstentions.

And under point 6, the last resolution to be voted upon. This one is about the self-assessment of the collective suitability of the current Supervisory Board of the bank. The current composition, namely 8 members in accordance with the contents published in report 13/2026. Let's vote on the relevant resolution. Let me remind you that upon the motion, it will be performed by secret ballot. Let's not change the voting system. As I understand, the system is ready. Please start casting your vote right now.

[Voting]

Thank you so much. As I understand everybody had a chance to cast their vote. Can we see the results, please? State the resolution to be adopted votes in favor of 177,132,089, against 6,014, no abstaining votes whatsoever, which means that we just closed Point 6 of the agenda.

We are still in the procedure of secret ballot voting. Point 7 is about granting discharge to members of the Management Board of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna for the performance of their duties in the year 2025. Under this point, again, we have several resolutions to vote upon. I will stick to the order of the current order.

The first one is about granting discharge to the President of the bank, Mr. Stypulkowski. Let's get the system ready. Please start casting your votes right now.

[Voting]

As I understand everybody had a chance to cast their vote, I would like to close the voting session. Let's present the results. I state the resolution to be adopted votes in favor, 176,643,838, against 3,041 abstentions, 491,224. So Mr. President Cezary Stypulkowski has been given -- granted discharge.

Dagmara Wojnar, this is the next resolution. Vice President of the Management Board. The system is ready. Let's start our voting.

[Voting]

I believe that everybody has a chance to cast their vote. Let's close the voting session, and we would like to see the results. Thank you very much. The resolution is adopted. 176,643,437 in favor, 3,141 against, 491,525 abstentions. So Madam Dagmara Wojnar has been discharged.

Next resolution on granting the discharge for Mr. Robert Sochacki. The system is ready. Let's start voting now.

[Voting]

Let me close the voting. Let's present the results.

Resolution is adopted. 176,643,738 in favor, 2,641 against, 491,724 abstentions. I would like to congratulate Mr. Robert Sochacki. He received the discharge.

And we move to the next resolution on Mr. Blazej Szczecki, the Vice President of the Management Board. The system is ready for voting. Let's open voting now.

[Voting]

Has everyone cast their vote? Thank you very much. Let's close voting and let's present the results. Thank you very much. Resolution is adopted. 176,643,738 votes in favor, 3,141 against and 491,224 abstentions. Congratulations sir, for granted discharge. Next resolution. Sorry, I didn't want to omit anyone. It will be very unfortunate. So Mr. Marcin Gadomski will follow the order of publication. So Marcin Gadomski, we vote on Marcin Gadomski and system is ready. Let's open voting now.

[Voting]

I understand we can close voting. Let me close voting now. Let's see the results. The proposed resolution is adopted, 176,643,738 votes in favor, 2,641 against, 491,724 abstentions. Congratulations on granted discharge.

The next person is Mr. Marcin Zygmanowski, Vice President of the Management Board. System is ready for voting. Let's start voting now.

[Voting]

Mr. Marcin Zygmanowski. Mr. [ Notary ] was asking me about this name. So let me close the voting and let's see the results. Discharge is granted. 176,643,738 in favor, 3,141 against, 491,224 abstentions. Congratulations for granted discharge.

Mr. Michal Panowicz. The system is ready. Let's open voting now.

[Voting]

Time to close the voting and let's see the results now. The resolution is adopted. 176,643,738 votes in favor, 2,641 against, 491,724 abstentions. Congratulations for granted discharge.

And the last resolution on granting discharge for the Vice President of the Management Board for Mr. Lukasz Januszewski. The system is ready. Let's open voting now.

[Voting]

Thank you very much. I can close the voting now. Let's see the results. The resolutions is adopted 176,643,738 votes in favor, 3,141 against, 491,224 abstentions. Congratulations on the granted discharge.

We have managed to implement item 10, sub point 7 of the agenda and now we are going to move to sub point 8, granting discharge to members of Supervisory Board of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna for the performance of the duties in the year 2025. We remain with a secret ballot. Thank you for your patience. We have many resolutions to vote upon.

The first resolution is on granting the discharge from the duties for Mr. Artur Olech, Chairman of the Supervisory Board. The system is ready. Let's vote now. Let's see the results. Let's close the voting. Just a moment, please. Unfortunately we still have one person voting. So let's be patient.

[Voting]

Thank you very much. Now I would like to close voting and let's see the results. Resolution is adopted. 175,485,737 votes in favor, 1,161,142 votes against, 491,224 votes abstentions. Congratulations on the discharge.

The next resolution is on Mr. Bartosz Grzeskowiak. The system is ready. Let's start voting.

[Voting]

Thank you very much. Let me close the voting now and let's see the results. The resolution is adopted. Thank you. The resolution is adopted. 165,793,138 votes in favor, 10,853,741 against, and 491,224 abstentions. Congratulations on the discharge.

We move on to the next resolution on Mr. Artur Nowak-Far. The system is ready. Let's open the voting now.

[Voting]

Thank you very much. Let me cross the voting now. Let's see the results. Resolution is adopted. 162,865,961 votes in favor, 13,780,418 against, and 491,724 abstentions. Congratulations on granted discharge.

Next resolution is on Mr. Jacek Niescior. The system is ready and let me officially open the voting now.

[Voting]

Thank you very much. I would like to close the voting, and let's present the results. I would like to state the resolution to be adopted 165,793,138 votes for, against 10,853,241 and abstentions 491,724. Again, congratulations on the granted discharge.

And the next resolution and the next person is about Mr. Krzysztof Czeszejko-Sochacki. The system is ready. Let's start the voting session.

[Voting]

I can say that I can close our voting, and we will wait for the results to be displayed. The computer seems to be taking forever today when it comes to counting the results, perhaps AI something to consider. Okay. Thank you. I would like to declare the resolution to be adopted votes in favor, 176,553,748, against 92,641, abstentions 491,724. So I would like to declare the resolution to be adopted. And congratulations on the granted discharge.

The next resolution is about Mr. Radoslaw Niedzielski. The voting system is ready. So I hereby order the voting to be started.

[Voting]

Can we? Thank you. As I understand everybody had a chance to cast their vote, I can close the voting session, and we are going to await the results. I would like to declare the resolution to be adopted. Votes in favor, 176,553,738, votes against 92,641, abstentions that's 491,724. Let me congratulate to you on the granted discharge.

And the next person is Mr. Witold Walkowiak. We are going to vote on the discharge for him. The system is ready. Let's vote.

[Voting]

Thank you. I hereby close the voting session. Let's see the results. I would like to state the resolution to be adopted and the discharge has been granted. Votes in favor, 165,792,738 votes, against 10,853,741, abstentions 491,624 votes. Congratulations.

And right now, we are going to vote on granting discharge for Ms. Magdalena Joanna Dziewguc. As I understand, we can start our voting, so I would like to order the voting to be started. Go ahead. Please start casting your votes. So just click on the right button.

[Voting]

Thank you. I'd like to close the voting session, and let's present the results. I would like to say the resolution to be adopted votes in favor, 165,793,038, against 10,853,841, abstentions 491,224. Congrats on the granted discharge.

And we can right now move on to the next resolution on granting discharge to Mr. Andrzej Klesyk. When it comes to his fulfillment of duties as the member of the Supervisory Board. The system is ready. Let's start casting the votes.

[Voting]

Thank you. I would like to close the voting, and we'd like to see the presented results. I would like to state the resolution to be adopted. Votes in favor, 175,485,737, against 1,161,142, abstentions that's 491,224 votes. Congratulations to Mr. Andrzej Klesyk on the granted discharge.

And the next resolution is about Mr. Mariusz Jaszczyk, the member of the Supervisory Board. The system is ready. Let's start the voting.

[Voting]

Thank you very much. I would like to close the voting. Can we see the results, please? I would like to state the resolution to be adopted. Votes in favor, 174,833,218 votes, votes against 1,813,661, and abstentions that's 491,224. Congratulations on the granted discharge.

The last but one resolution granting discharge for the performance of duties to Mr. Bogdan Benczak. The system is ready. I would like to order the voting to be started.

[Voting]

Thank you. I'd like to close the voting and let's see the results. I would like to state the resolution to be adopted. Votes in favor, 176,094,245 votes. Votes against 552,634, abstentions 491,224. Congratulations on the granted discharge.

And the last resolution under Point 10 in this cycle is about Ms. Diana Debowczyk. Let's get the system ready and please go ahead and vote.

[Voting]

Thank you very much. I would like to close the voting and let's present the results. In the meantime, I would like to declare that we have ended the procedure of secret ballot voting. From now on, let's move on with open ballot voting. Right now, the cycle of secret ballot voting has come to an end. Thank you for the results. I would like to declare the resolution to be adopted. Votes in favor, that's 176,553,738, votes against is 93,141, abstentions that's 491,224. The discharge has been granted. Congratulations to Ms. Diana Debowczyk. This is it when it comes to granting discharge, but this is not it when it comes to our ordinary meeting.

Let's move on to Point 11 on the agenda. The review of the report on the evaluation of the bank's remuneration policy of the bank in the year 2025 and adopting the resolution on the evaluation of the remuneration policy of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna in the year 2025. The relevant assessment has been presented to you together with all the reports and statements. I would like to ask if there's anybody who would like to ask a question, take the floor. If not, let's vote on the resolution submitted put forward by us. When it comes to the evaluation of the remuneration policy of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna in the year 2025, right now, we are going to vote in the open ballot procedure. Let's get the system ready, and please start casting your votes right now.

[Voting]

As I understand, everybody has cast their vote. Thank you so much. Let's see the results. Thank you so much. I would like to state the resolution to be adopted. Votes in favor, 176,713,034 votes. Votes against that's 1,923, and abstentions 423,146, which means that the remuneration-based policy has been positively assessed or reviewed.

Let's move on to Point 12 review of the report on the remuneration of members of the Management Board and Supervisory Board of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna for the year 2025, and adoption of a resolution regarding the opinion thereof. And similarly, all the materials has been published. The draft resolution is available when it comes to all the materials. Point 12 on positive assessment. Is there anybody who would like to comment on this, ask a question, take the floor? If no, let's get the system ready. The system is ready. So the resolution that has been published in all the materials in this specific form, we are going to vote on it right now.

[Voting]

Can we -- as I understand all of you have cast your vote. Let's close the voting session. Let's present the results. I would like to state the resolution to be adopted. Votes in favor, 125,605,702 votes, votes against 51,531,901, abstentions 500. So the resolution in the submitted form has been adopted.

Let's move on to the next point 13. Review of the sole assessment of the adequacy of internal regulations regarding the functioning of the Supervisory Board of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna and the effectiveness of the operations in 2025 as well as the adoption of a resolution on the assessment of adequacy of internal regulations regarding the functioning of the Supervisory Board of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna and the effectiveness of its operation. Is there anyone who would like to take floor on this item? I can see. So we have a corresponding resolution, draft resolution on our current report #13, and this resolution is going to be voted upon now. The system is ready for voting. Let's open voting now.

[Voting]

Let me close voting and let's present the results. The resolution is adopted, 177,137,603 votes in favor, no votes against, 500 abstentions. We close Item 13 of the agenda, and we move on to the Item 14.

Let me say that the report on the assessment of compliance by Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna in 2024 applies with the principles of corporate governance for supervised institutions issued by the Polish Financial Supervision Authority on 20 July 2014. This report has been presented with all assisting documents. You had a chance to get acquainted with these documents. My question is, do you have any statements or opinions on that? I can see I can't hear anything. We don't have any draft resolution here.

So I understand that we can move on to the Item 15 on the agenda. So in fact, we have just finished on the financial statements and all aspects related to the Ordinary Shareholders' Meeting. Again, I would like to congratulate on the Management Board and Supervisory Board for granted discharge and for voting in favor of these financial statements. And now we are going to move on with the items on the agenda 15, adoption of resolutions on amending the statute of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna and authorizing the Supervisory Board of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki to establish the consolidated text of the statute of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna.

So the Board proposed to vote on 4 subsequent resolutions. Before we start voting, I kindly ask you whether you need a word of comment or you have any questions on that. I can't see anything. So let me remind you that to make the resolution adopted, we need the qualified majority of 75% of votes. I'm not sure if this is going to be visible on your tablets. But if this is not obvious, let me know whether we achieve the 3/4 of votes, which is required. Now let me announce voting on the subsequent resolutions. And of course, I will read the first resolution on the amending of the statute of the bank in Paragraph 6, Section 1, Item 13 and 27. This is the resolution. Is it clear? Yes, let's prepare the system. System is ready. Let's start voting now.

[Voting]

I understand all participants of the meeting cast votes. Let me close voting and let's see the results. The resolution is adopted. We have 177,137,271 votes in favor, against 400, and 432 is abstentions. It's almost 100%. We could actually round it up to 100%. So the resolution is adopted.

The second resolution on this item is about changes of Paragraph 6. This is the -- let's open voting now.

[Voting]

Let me close voting now. I understand all cast their votes. Resolution is adopted. We had 177,137,972 votes in favor, no votes against, and 131 abstentions.

The third resolution on changing the statute refers to Paragraph 6, Section 1.35 where we add g as provided in the content of the resolution. I understand this is clear. And I hope I understand the system is ready. Let's open voting now.

[Voting]

Thank you very much. Let me close voting and let's present the results. Resolution is adopted. 177,137,972 votes in favor, no votes against, 131 abstentions.

And the last resolution under Item 15 is about the changes to Paragraph 22, section 1 item 5 that should read as follows as described in the resolution. I understand there are no questions for this point. And therefore, let me ask you to cast your votes now.

[Voting]

We can close voting now. Let's see the results. The resolution is adopted, 177,137,972 votes in favor, no votes against and 131 abstentions. The General Shareholders' Meeting adopted all the proposed modifications for the statute and the Board -- Management Board will proceed with the amendments as required by law. Ladies and gentlemen, we have released item 15.

Now we move on to 16 on the agenda. Adoption of resolutions on the composition of the Bank Supervisory Board of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna, we are talking about personal aspects. As of now, all the voting under this item should be secret ballot only for this item. Next voting -- voting on the next item on the agenda will be open again. So let me remind you that the Supervisory Board is composed of 8 persons. According to the statute, it can be composed of 9 persons. The current report 16/2025 the company informed that the company received the candidature of Mr. Aleksander Werner to become the participant of member of the Supervisory Board. The company announced the information about this candidature, shared the information about it. The shareholder Powszechny Zaklad Ubezpieczen reviewed the candidature whether it fulfills all the requirements and legal requirements. I understand that from the PZU perspective, this candidature is valid and you confirm that you stick to your decision, yes. So before we -- this information is just reminding the facts that happened before the meeting. But before we start voting on this item, do we have any proposals on the dismissals of members of Supervisory Board? No, I can't hear -- sorry. Just a moment, please.

Any dismissals? Any issues related to dismissals of members of Supervisory Board. Okay. You did not raise your hand in order to propose dismissal, right? Sir, I just wanted to be more precise. Okay. There are no proposals to dismiss any of the Supervisory Board members.

The second question, are we -- do we have any other candidates as members of the Supervisory Board? I can't hear. I can't see anyone. So we have one candidate that was raised in a valid manner. So we are going to vote on this candidate. So I understand that you -- would like to ask for 5 minutes break to consult on this matter, right? Let me announce now 5 minutes break. Upon the request of the shareholder, it's 11:44, so until 11:49 we have a break. After break, we are going to vote on the resolution. The break will last until 11:49.

[Break]

Ladies and gentlemen, 9 minutes to 12:00, let's resume our deliberations. Let's vote by secret ballot on the resolution in accordance with the draft document. You can find it in report 14 When it comes to the current agenda. So the current report #14 published on the Internet website on the appointment of the member of the Supervisory Board of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna. Taking into account the assessment of fulfillment of suitability requirements, the Ordinary General Meeting taking into account the assessment of compliance with suitability requirements appoint Mr. Aleksander Werner as a member of the Supervisory Board of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna for a joint term of 3 full years. The remaining content remains unchanged and unamended and the resolution will be voted upon. Let's get the system ready. Is everything clear what we are voting upon. So let's start the voting. As I understand, I can close the voting, not yet. This time, gentlemen seem to be taking longer.

[Voting]

Thank you very much. I would like to close the voting session. Let's present the results. I hereby declare that the resolution as proposed has been adopted. Votes in favor, 124,907,439, against 27,071,052 votes, abstentions 25,124,135 votes. The resolution was given and determined majority, which means that Mr. Aleksander Werner has been appointed as a member of the Supervisory Board, which means we finished deliberating upon Point 16 of the agenda.

Let's move on. When it comes to point 17, it is adopting resolution on the assessment of the collective adequacy of the Supervisory Board of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna under the point -- this item of the agenda, we have another resolution. You can find it in the current report #14/2026. And the draft resolution should be completed, namely Paragraph 1, the Ordinary General Meeting positively assesses the collective suitability of the following composition of the Supervisory Board of Bank Polska Kasa Opieki Spólka Akcyjna, Bogdan Benczak, Artur Nowak-Far, Diana Debowczyk, Magdalena Joanna Dziewguc, Krzysztof Czeszejko-Sochacki, Jacek Niescior, Mariusz Jaszczyk, Witold Walkowiak, Aleksander Werner, the last surname under paragraph 1. Is this clear to you, ladies and gentlemen. With all due respect, the order is random, the order of surnames.

So 1 minute, okay, 1 minute. Please be patient. I would really acknowledge your patience. We just need to take 1 minute to wait. As I understand, we can proceed. Let's vote upon the resolution on the members of the Supervisory Board. With the surnames you can see all the positions, the President, Vice President, Secretary, respectively, and the member. Let's get the system ready. And let's start the voting.

[Voting]

We understand everybody had a chance to cast their vote. Thank you so much. This was our last voting session for the day, the very last chance to cast your vote today. Let me close it and let's present the results. Is there anybody here who wishes to become familiar with all the materials when it comes to the assessment of collective adequacy they are here available to you. Well, no enthusiasm really. I can't see anybody enthusiastic enough. Thank you so much. I declare the resolution as proposed to be adopted by the identical majority, 124,821,688 votes for, 27,150,595 votes against, abstentions that's 25,122,343 votes, which means that the resolution has been adopted by the general meeting, which means that we have closed point 17 of the agenda. This was our ordinary meeting.

So once again, I would like to congratulate to all the members of the Supervisory Board and the Management Board on the granted discharge, both personally as well when it comes to the performance of the entire company when it comes to financial reporting, managerial and executive documents. All the documents have been adopted and the general meeting shares the view of the management on all the matters regarding concluding and closing the year, including the distribution of profit and the dividends. Congratulations. I would like to acknowledge all the shareholders and their potentiaries and representatives for their participation in the meeting today.

On my part, I would like to say that it took too long, if I failed to do something in the right manner, let me apologize. It was not on purpose. I would like to acknowledge Mr. [ Notary ]. So we are going to proceed on the Notary Act that will be drawn up in the aftermath of the meeting today. This will be the basis for the right entry to the National Court Register. And I would like to acknowledge the technical service of the lawyers, interpreters, everybody who took part in the meeting, which is a nice celebration of our company, right, the general meeting. Thank you so much. And right now, I hereby would like to close the Ordinary General Meeting. See you soon.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome at the presentation of the financial results for the first quarter. We have Cezary Stypulkowski, CEO; Vice President responsible for Finance, Dagmara Wojnar; Vice President for Risk Division, Marcin Jablczynski; and Ernest Pytlarczyk, Chief Economist of the Bank. Over to Cezary.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. The first quarter was successful for the bank. We recorded net profit at PLN 1.2 billion. We feel a revival of credit action both in retail and in corporate markets, maybe excluding mortgage loans, but that's a separate topic. We see increasing digitization of Pekao S.A. clients who historically followed the market.

With respect to this trend and the capital position remains very strong. I would like to stress here that we maintain a low level of risk cost although we assume that there might be a certain increase here. Anyway, the boundaries within which we move were defined more broadly than the current actuals.

We see 11% growth in loan funding covering various categories. Return on equity continues at a decent expected level. Cost to income ratio is not set in stone in connection with the need to inject capital in the bank. But stays at almost 30.5%, excluding the effects of burdens of the first quarter, mainly in relation to the contributions to the fund for banking stability.

We see the developments that relate to the principal lines in which Pekao S.A. has been not sufficiently invested in particular with regard to micro market, but the bank overall remains its strong position.

It is worth stressing here that basically in all business lines, we see growing income that is excellent news because commissions inflows for the last 18 months have been growing and that applies to many areas of activity to the largest extent that follows from the developments in asset management market, but also in other business lines, we have seen an increase in revenues from commissions, which are extremely valuable to us.

In terms of sales and retail, growth has been recorded in corporate banking, now we see particular robust income because the market is active. And in particular, large companies benefit from the funding that drive this process. I'm talking about this recovery and resilience program. This scale is slowly diminishing.

We are generally on track with pursuing all our targets. We announced a 75% dividend distribution, which will be paid out relatively soon. And a number of events took place. I will not dwell on this.

As for retail, where Pekao S.A. continues to be a serious contender to get a position among the top banks in Poland in terms of customer base service range and quality range, we are getting more and more visible, occupying increasing space.

Our clients who use Mastercard can now use Live Nation and they can get privileged access to concerts and tickets to other popular events. We haven't managed to send our team to World Cup, but Pekao S.A. can send some of its clients to be spectators at the matches because we can afford that as rewards for using our card, I will not discuss all those details regarding the ways of offering our services or accelerating modernization of the bank.

Streamlining of client onboarding, and that's something that we have been doing remotely. And really major things that are worth talking about is the fact that we were the first bank that, together with BGK, allowed the clients to apply for de minimis security, mainly to medium and small enterprises.

We also played a major role in BGK's project concerning defense spending. We also have a strong foothold. So that allows BGK faster and more efficient relationship with their clients.

As for the number of active clients who use remote channels, first of all, mobile channels. This number is systematically growing. We attach a lot of importance to that. We lagged behind and we had a lot to catch up on. But here, things are improving.

Also, cash loans are growing, cash loans that are sold digitally. And for this category of products, that's a very important parameter. We had a few spectacular transactions in the first quarter. They are enumerated in the presentation, so I will not discuss them in detail.

Maybe apart from mentioning the fact that we signed an agreement with airports, the consortium include 3 banks and that was funding for the extension of Okecie Airport and the participation of PPL in the construction of a new infrastructure for air traffic in Poland.

Over to my colleague.

When we talk about macro segment, we should start with the war in the Persian Gulf, with U.S.A., Israel war against Iran. This war has a certain impact on our forecast. For the time being, the revisions of projections for Europe are not major, Poland distinguishes itself here against the European background. It has some domestic growth drivers. The channels of impact of this higher oil prices through consumers as long as consumers feel no immediate shortages. This crisis is not really Eurocentric. We tried to see the possibility -- the increase of energy prices in Europe that was not really significant enough to make this crisis Europe-centric. The U.S. is more affected by this. Nevertheless, some adjustments for Poland are needed.

We will see this influence mainly through consumption because probably, the real disposable income will decline. And one important component of GDP should be watched carefully. We know that consumers respond very badly to overall European inflation by reducing the consumer spending.

We see the developments in monetary aggregates. Lower interest rates are affecting both corporate market and households right now. Volumes growth in loan market is something that we can see and that will develop to a 2-digit growth in corporate loans. And the accumulation builds in this year, there will be even more spending on defense.

For the time being, that's 20%, maximum 30%, and that share will gradually grow. Also, there was a previous demand, deferred demand for mortgage loans, refinancing. Now it's about 30% of new production. That accounts for refinancing. The portfolio that is at fixed interest rates relies on this. And if the current interest rate is higher than 1 percentage points then the interest rate at which the loan was granted that has to drive the market and that will drive the transition of customers between competing banks.

As for interest rates and inflation, today, 3.2% inflation last month, the number was lower than expected by analysts. But that is due to how statistics treats the impact of fuel prices. I think there will be no major impact on the calculation of the Ministry of Finance in taxes.

However, it will have implications for the trajectory of interest rates. We talked about 3 reductions in the market this year. Now the market is looking at increases. The rate might remain unchanged this year. But one way or another, we will see a real impact on the banks. Decent credit action already shows that this will affect Poland.

Now economists estimate that the impact will be neutral for Poland, neutral meaning that if there are the right catalysts in place, we will development, both in corporate and then retail market. So the environment seems likely to be good for the banks with volumes and high interest rates.

Good morning. Now a few words about our results. We talked about us wanting to grow and accelerate. The growth of loans was 2 digits in the first quarter, 11%. Let me start with corporate loans. We said in 2025 that we were in for growth in loans in corporate market, and that would translate into the results of Pekao.

And indeed, the corporate loans are growing both in large corporate sector was over 16%, and in mid and SME almost 14%. It is also relevant that we acquire new customers in mid and SME segments, that's over 990 new clients that we added recently. In retail, if we look at Pekao S.A., we said that we were underweighted in cash loans. So that was one of our strategic products.

And this is the area in which we want to push this growth a bit stronger. That is another consecutive quarter where we have a 2-digit growth of cash loans. It is excellent news to us that most of cash loans are sold in remote channels. That is one of the elements of our strategy to make sure that those remote channels develop as well as possible.

The CEO mentioned mortgage loans, we are at a slightly less than 3% growth year-over-year. Going further, savings, deposits of 5% growth, both in terms of retail and corporate. Now regarding the structure, it is changing slightly here because compared to last year, we have more current accounts. It's about 75%.

Last year, they accounted for 72%. We open accounts as well. We have opened over 113,000 accounts premium and beneficial and 30% out of the new ones are for young customers. We call them young, that is up to 26 years of age. And one more thing about investment funds. As we all know, taking the war that's ongoing. Most TFIs have witnessed some significant disruptions.

We have been able to get shielded from that. And our loss has been relatively small. The analysis of the situation tells us that this is mainly due to the profile of our customers and the funds, the dominating types are low investment risk funds, just as a formality, let me say that LCR is 238%, loan-to-depo 68%.

Now going further to the NIM, Net interest income is lower by PLN 100 million, 3% year-on-year. We know that we have been functioning in the environment of decreasing interest rates. When we talk about our net interest margin, this is 30 basis points lower year-by-year with an average 3-month WIBOR of almost 200 basis points lower year-on-year.

So looking at our margin here, the net interest margin, well, we can say that we are able to defend it quite well. What has impacted that? The active deposit policy on the one hand, but on the other hand, we are seeing growing volumes. You have seen that loans, SMEs and mid sector. And also looking deeper, we are continuing our hedging policy. Thus, there's one more component here.

I said about that earlier. We repriced the portfolio of lower -- less beneficial securities to replace them with more beneficial, more profitable ones. So interest rates decrease translates into a 15 basis point decrease in NIM.

Going further charges and commissions. This is a 2-digit growth, 13.3%. The growth in commission income that I think is a historical high quarter-to-quarter comparing 1 year to another. And you can see that the growth in commission is visible in all the categories.

So you can see commissions on the managing brokerage services, but we also see commissions on cards and loans growing. That's a result of our growing activity and increase in the loan portfolio.

One more component that has contributed to this outcome is what we talked about earlier in November 2025, we said we were going to change the charges and commissions tariff for retail customers. This has, in fact, happened.

So quarter 1 of 2026 is the first full quarter that illustrates the outcome of this increase and illustrates that. Now for costs, operating costs, 7.4% increase year-on-year, you need to distribute them into 2 components. Those are overheads. Personnel costs increase of 4%. And that, of course, has to do with inflation and increased remunerations.

But on the other hand, you have depreciation and amortization, and we were signaling earlier that these costs could increase. And that's the outcome of the bank's transformation, so increased IT costs, project costs, new strategy, slightly more active marketing activity. So like I said, these are -- this increase is slightly bigger.

It is worth saying that quarter 1 has also witnessed the BFG and the Financial Supervision Authority charges included, and that's more than half of our basic costs in quarter 1. We know that BFG is also recognized in quarter 1. So the effect will not be seen in the following quarters.

Okay. Over to Marcin, please.

Thank you, Dagmara. Good morning, everyone. As you can see, the cost of risk remains stable. We are moving more or less in the range of 30 to 50 basis points. And we have been seeing that for a long time, it's below the 65, 75 bps, which is what we've written in our strategy.

What we can observe and what is also something that we've been seeing for a few quarters now is the exceptionally low risk cost in the retail segment. The market situation is very good in the labor market. There is a realistic growth in remuneration, which means that while we've slightly stunned consumption, we are not seeing consumption boom, the loan capacity is on quite a good level.

Now in corporate part, the cost of risk is more normalized compared to what we saw earlier when we look at long-term trends. But this is also reflected in the economic indicators in 2022, 2024 or early 2025, we observed the number of nonprofitable enterprises.

Well, this was a historically good ratio. This resulted from various support measures that were put in place. Right now, these indicators reflect more the long-term trends, I would say. We are obviously observing the Hormuz Strait situation and how it impacts our portfolio. We do not see any alarming signs right now.

However, highly energy consumption industries that use gas or diesel transport, ceramics, chemical industries see the outcome. But on the other hand, we're also looking at industries that perhaps can be indirectly impacted by the crisis, more specifically, industries such as textile, furniture, electronics and perhaps an interesting fact here.

The second group potentially sees the impact translate into financials faster because chemicals or plastics are more expensive, and the demand for these products is mainly placed in Western Europe, and it has not really deviated for a number of years. So you can reflect -- you can see that reflected in their outcomes.

Now when you look, we have a stable indicator of 4.5% of NPL, let me also mention [ SREP ] and ED. As you know, for a few months, these are criteria that condition the -- to pay the dividend, NII, and it has quite a good buffer of more or less 10%, which impacts the ability to pay the dividend. And now moving back to Dagmara.

A quick look on the net profit generation path in first quarter of 2026 and comparing it to last year. As we said earlier, we made a profit of PLN 1.232 billion, something that's worth mentioning is that there is an outcome of commission that contributes PLN 100 million plus.

The interest rates net outcome is negative, but there are 2 elements dropping interest rates. On the one hand, an increased volumes of net on net, and that actually gives us a negative impact of PLN 100 million there. And what I said earlier, BFG contribution quarter-by-quarter, they are higher, PLN 110 million. And let's remember that in 2026, we are seeing an increased CIT rate, which also translates into PLN 100 million in our results.

Now a few words about the capital. Equity, not much has changed, strong capital position. The CEO has mentioned 75% of net profit is something that we're going to pay out in the dividend. This proposal will be presented to our management and we are in compliance with MREL requirements.

Two things that I wanted to stress here. Number one is we are updating prospectus. Right now, you can expect up to 2 issues of MREL this year, benchmark in euros, and we are planning also in late 2026 or early 2027 to implement roll out the first securitization in the bank's history and in the group's history. And right now, over to the CEO.

There's not much I can add, really. Essentially, everything has been said. I think we will put ourselves in your hands and respond to questions.

Let's just -- let me just present the -- many people are willing to say that this is our logo. But we were given that as the most dividend-paying institution in the stock exchange in 35 years. And this is the accumulation of the bank's results.

So if there are any questions later on, please do not hesitate to contact us. We will take them all. We've got a few people in the room. Please raise your hand if you want to take the floor.

You have lowered the GDP forecast by 0.2 percentage points. Could that translate into the loans and the cost of risk? My question refers to the context of the Middle East. Do you see potential implications of this uncertainty?

Okay. Well, that could not be the last word we were saying with the decreases, right? We're not sure what's happening, what's going to happen. When we see the mechanics, there are very simple dependencies. It all depends on how long the Hormuz Strait will be closed, right?

That impacts the prices. And luckily, they're not shooting one another. So they're not destroying infrastructure. So perhaps, the markets are not panicking yet. It's a question of how many vessels are there and how much stock there is. But when we look at the stock exchange, well, we're looking at this impacting the oil prices.

Now as an economist, I can see that a lot of the factors are local and internal. Both IMF and the European Commission has the highest forecast for growth for Poland. So I don't think we're quite that exposed, but you need to be humble on the other hand, you need to take -- acknowledge that this is a significant geopolitical factor, and it will impact the consumer.

We are saying that already we've seen 1 or 2 months right now where perhaps the impact is not so major because it's the issue of end of winter, production for stock, but reserve -- but this will definitely become apparent and result in some sort of an adjustment.

We're not panicking quite yet. There could be quite different outcomes. What Ernest has said, definitely, the world was moderately better prepared to face these events, and they happened when the season was ending, the heating season was ending.

But when we take into account the fact that unlocking the Strait is key, but we don't know really how big a capacity has been excluded due to the losses incurred, right? That concerns both the Middle East and Russia. What's comforting in this context is that, well, [indiscernible] to OPEC limited the production quota to specific countries, and they were different. There is an additional capacity that has been kept.

Also in Europe, it gets some 20%, 30% of its oil from Middle East. I think greater squeeze can be felt on gas than on oil because at the moment, it applies to Europe of oil accounts for about 40%. U.S. and Norway, that comes from this direction, and about 50% of gas from the U.S. and Norway.

Frankly, I'm most concerned about the fact that in the U.S., against the backdrop of an increase in fuel prices, there might be a situation related to unpredictable customs policy that leads to a customs explosion. They want to introduce -- but they might want to introduce some change of price of gas at the pump.

And this can dramatically impact the price of fuel in Europe -- well, maybe not dramatically, but it can impact Europe because the capacity for availability, if we are blocked from Russian market and U.S. market gets blocked, it would mean a major issue for us.

After 1983 and 1989, we felt a certain change in terms of dependence on Middle East oil. It was then that the reserves were built up, the energy agency was established and everybody tried to build up a 90-day stock. But the circumstances back in the day were different. Back then, there was a unilateral withdrawal of supplies suspension of oil to the Netherlands, I think.

And at the same time, monthly supplies were reduced. Now we are talking about the possible blockage, plus and even more concerning matter namely, the scale of destruction that has taken place. In the gas infrastructure, the destruction seems to have been bigger than oil supplies and the gas is more centered. There is a smaller number of suppliers of liquid gas.

So if that comes to pass, obviously, it may not remain neutral, but we are very far away from this scenario yet. What seems clear now is that the markets opt for a stabilization scenario. And well, sometimes situation develops from news to news.

And what about distillates? They no longer fetch maximum prices. Yes, so probably there will be quite a few variable elements. As Ernest very aptly put it, the adjustment might not be the last one. There might be more developments.

Another question. On Page 18, you show a pretty slide. Could you please comment on which direction this structure might potentially go to? I mean the change of interest rates, 15% of assets and your exposure. Could you add a commentary on this? How you see the evolution in this regard?

All right. Let me put it this way, 100 basis points decrease translates into 15% decrease in NIM. Frankly, the capacity for absorption is slowly coming to an end. We still do have some room of maneuver on deposits. However, as of now, I would assume the figures as presented in the slide.

Our policy is not of securing our balance sheet. We measured our sensitivity to interest rates. And after this type of assessment of our assets, we get to secure our balance sheet. Also, we increased some short-term hedging in 1-year and 2-year time line. But otherwise, it's as Dagmara said.

Let me also remind you that if we look at the results for 2025 compared to, say, market information that was published, the impact of the decrease of interest margin in Pekao S.A. was relatively minor. And as I said, the possibilities for further absorption are diminishing.

We have two questions that were asked online. One is about housing loans and the scale of refinancing of this portfolio. The balance is stable. And quarter-to-quarter, it even slightly goes down. Sales look quite well. So there is a question about the scale of funding and how we see in the upcoming months.

Well, with reference to what we said, what Ernest said in the macroeconomic introduction, it seems that the market overall, and we do not differ from the market. Well, maybe we are not so aggressive in refinancing as other banks. Well, that is now about 25% of production, the refinancing among banks.

Probably, if we refer to new production, you have to an extra 10%, which is not shown as refinancing. Nevertheless, the banks reduce the interest rates on fixed interest rate loans. That follows from retention campaigns, which are often based on annexing existing contracts rather than new production and new contracts.

We had a peak point in our bank in March. And since the crisis and the Hormuz Strait started, the prices have increased and quite significantly, the refinancing was slowed down as a result. So clearly, that depends very much on interest rates.

And from the perspective of market analytics, the spread of 1% between the rate at which the loan was granted and the current rate in the fixed rate of interest loans is something that facilitates most refinancing activities. We can also analyze vintage data on interest rates and spreads, which refinancing applies. Also, in our case, we differ from most of the sector. We have this safe loan, 2%, which is non-susceptible to the risk of refinancing.

The second question is about the free loan sanction in the context of this recent judgment of the European court. The judgment was issued a week ago. And this judgment is linked to the admissibility of charging interest on noninterest cost of loans.

If you look at the Polish market, probably we will not find an established line of interpreting of this judgment. So we'll have to wait for lawyers to develop this interpretation.

But if we look at the numbers, this topic, and that's something that we also covered in our financial statement. In the first quarter, there were more than 1,700 court proceedings, and the disputed value was PLN 48 million. Of that, 165 cases ended with legally binding rulings, and in 143 of those cases, the rulings were positive for our group.

We also have this disclosure in our financial statement that we will follow the development of jurisprudence in Poland and interpretation of rulings related to those loans, and we will respond as appropriate to new developments. As of now, we cannot do much more than just disclose the current status in our financial statement and watch closely future developments.

We also had a question about CIT impact, was there also the effect of revaluation of assets from deferred tax?

No, this year, we did not include that in our recognized tax. We reassessed the asset when a regulation was issued that CIT would be higher from 2026. The full effect of a revaluation of CIT and the deferred impact was included in 2025. We did it as a provision.

I do not see any more online questions. Are there any questions in the room? If not thank you very much. Thank you. See you next time.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome at our conference with the presentation of our financial results for the fourth quarter and the entire 2025 of Pekao S.A.. We have Cezary Stypulkowski, CEO; Dagmara Wojnar, Vice President, responsible for Finance Division; Marcin Gadomski, responsible for Risk Management Division; Lukasz Januszewski, Vice President responsible for Corporate Banking Division; and Ernest Pytlarczyk, Chief Economist of the bank.

Over to the CEO.

We've already had the rehearsal of this conference with the media. So probably things will go smoothly, and we might speed up a little bit. I would say that what characterized the entire 2025 and actually we treat it as such an achievement of the bank that's acceleration of credit action and strengthening of the importance of commissions profit. I have already said repeatedly, we used the opportunity that we had built up until 2024 when other banks were under strong pressure. But our market shares were flat. Now they budged a little bit, not sold, but budged a little bit.

The second thing is the result on commissions with all the caveats that we need to clarify, probably you will have some questions regarding these, and we will do our best to answer them. But that result is significantly higher corresponding to the declarations that we announced here in this room back in April. Its structure is already encouraging, although it's not so that we have resolved all problems. Nevertheless, we have steadily retained all the necessary ratios. The most important thing is probably the proportions of the entire aggregate. The result is plus PLN 7 billion return on equity more than decent and covering the cost of capital, probably one of not too numerous years where the banking sector was able to cover the cost of capital.

And it seems to me that the public awareness is not yet widespread regarding the need for the banks to rebuild the capital. And the demand seems to be disappearing rather than growing. There were some issues related to cost of risks. So probably you will have questions on that. NPL, where we stumbled a little bit on those 5%. And consequently, we restricted dividend flexibility.

Now it's under full control. Here, you can see the key areas with our strong dynamics. And this is exactly in those segments in which we wanted to achieve high growth because these are products with higher margins. We've always been a strong bank among large corpo segment, also closely linked to the public segment in Poland. We are now rebuilding our position and the numbers are very attractive.

Now you can see a slide with a greater granulation of our profit and the key drivers that had a positive impact, particularly the sale of cash loans grew. It's not so that we had a revolution of our market share, but the bank historically wants to be a deposit-oriented bank rather than loan-based one. But I must say that things are relatively well. We are very happy about the rebound in micro. It was a certain surprise to me when I joined the bank that the micro segment was relatively weak given the 500 branches of the bank across the country. It's not so simple because micro is strongly determined by digitization where we lagged behind. Actually, we do lag behind still.

But things are on track, and we are happy about the growth -- relatively happy about the growth. The gap, digital mobile gap that the bank had as the lack of investments during the years is now being made up for. We have Lukasz with us who can give some credibility to our entry and ambitions in the corporate segment because he's responsible for that. And in corporate banking, as I said, the bank had always been a major leader and both the ambitions to be the premier bond house in Poland consolidated in trusteeship services, our services are also developing and ForEx is just bread and butter following the general line of business development.

And with regard to the strategy, we can say that all the elements are on track. We are above the targets. However, we should keep our detachment because we formulated our strategy under specific conditions in the first quarter last year with certain assumptions regarding the development of interest rates. The decrease is deeper than we had expected. But it is quite an achievement of the bank that we had managed to maintain interest margin. This is something that cannot be repeated, just to make things clear. But also from the perspective of the structure of our balance sheet and its components, that achievement has to be appreciated, both from the perspective of our treasury and business lines. I could say we have managed to manage that. That will probably be the good description.

As I repeatedly stressed, cost-to-income ratio -- maybe if you follow my statements from my previous incarnations, I have always been obsessive about that. And Pekao, we have more leeway in this. But I believe we need to make up for the backlog resulting from the lack of investments in the past. We -- with decreasing interest rates, the figure can be at risk. But we assume that the process of technological revitalization of the bank will take some 3 years. Therefore, the flexibility at that stage will be greater. Current costs and also deferred depreciation.

As for dividend, for years, the bank has been the postman delivering pensions regularly when others were unable to do so because they were bound by the rules of the supervisory authority. However, we paid out the dividend, and we don't want to change this more. We will do everything in our power to be able to pay the dividend in the range of 50%, 70%. There are a lot of elements that are structurally linked to our functioning within conglomerate structure. But we keep this track. Over to Marcin.

Maybe I will briefly announce something that we call decarbonization plan in line with the directive on sustainable reporting, that is transformation plan. It might be misleading. That's why we changed the name to decarbonization plan. For the years 2025 to 2027, we defined our assumptions for ESG. And environment, of course, is a major component, all environment-related issues. Now with -- in accordance with requirements, we published our plan, and we defined 2 major branches or 2 major components of our credit portfolio. That is the funding of energy sector and mortgage loans that are under this plan in terms of targets by 2030.

We want to reduce intensity of emissions in those 2 portfolios by about 40%. We are talking about major growth in our plan. And the growth focus on renewable energies, gas-powered power plants. And also in this time horizon, we assume that some portion of funding of nuclear power plant will be there with a decreasing proportion of funding of fuel -- fossil fuel powered plants. This is also in line with energy efficiency of buildings. Here, our portfolio will be funding buildings that are energy efficient to a greater extent. We will also fund renovations aimed at reducing the consumption of energy. The entire document is published on our website.

I really want to vent here. I already did that at the previous conference, but I want to stress very clearly our determination to make sure that the goals related to the broadly understood environmental aspects and social aspects. So here, the bank is determined to organize itself around those issues. The doubts that emerged not a long time ago, I talked with a representative of a foreign bank where a single e-mail was enough to cancel the whole problem. We are not in this camp. We will uphold our determination in this regard. But I would also like to share something I have already talked about, a certain excess of discussions about CSRD.

I also asked our report to be divided into 2 parts. One is financial, including ESG. And the other part is only focused on ESG. And this is overdone. Of course, there is some thought behind it Omnibus addresses the matter to some extent. But I believe this is the best proof how much intellectual effort is being made to produce pages from 111 to almost 350 versus report on activities, which also includes certain ESG activities, which comprises 100 pages. I would like to see analysts willing to read that. That is the most advanced professional group.

Have you read that on Page 207, there is a table with very few numbers. So my point is I'm just bearing my soul. That's my deep need to signal that there is too much form compared to the content. We can achieve a lot without getting engaged, involving people intellect of highly sophisticated individuals that produce material that only Andre is able to read. So I have this urge to express my view here.

Now regarding how we organize ourselves, Well, it is with great humility that I have to admit, well, the bank has a lot to -- of catch-up to do in many areas, but there is some success. It has something to do with PZU and the ability to calibrate in a friendly matter these products means that, for example, with reference to mortgages on properties, we have quite a good product, which is quite well received on the market. And we are able to offer it in those 5 outlets that we have. And also binding our mortgage with the PZU product should, in fact, result in better sales. But it is not due to insurance that people go for mortgage, right? There will be perhaps some questions that already were answered in the previous conference.

Now the CyberRescue, I could be biased here because this is a structure that was created in my other incarnation, if I can take the liberty to use that term. But the banking sector actually owes its customers some extra effort in terms of CyberRescue. Now in the past, I took part in many initiatives to sensitize customers. They were campaign awareness campaigns, social campaigns to that end. And in the structure of accelerator, the CyberRescue solutions have been developed and it's not just the issue of securities against cyber attacks on banks, but it's also a service that we have implemented and we are proliferating in our bank for individual customers whose goal is to arm our customers whenever they are faced with the cyber threat, not necessarily banking cyber threat to have a contact point.

I'm not going to tell you stories. I remember when I, myself, was a victim of such an attack. I realized just how lonesome people are when they are undergoing this situation, CEO of the bank copes because they have people that can call, but an average customer finds it more difficult. That's why I decided to devote more time to it during our first conferences and customers due to GDPR or all the other wonders in the world have legible access to such solutions. And this is what banks can do and CyberRescue serves that purpose, and it's a hub that has competent people that can give some advice 24/7. It might not have to be perfect. It needs more investment perhaps, but the openness to this is meaningful.

So it's not a question of 300,000 people giving consent vis-a-vis 5 million who haven't, right? We will have to reinforce the efforts here. We know that bank is behind in the area of digitalization and the self-service zone is something that will be spoken about again. Lukasz will speak about it mainly, but we have some progress here, systematic and inevitable. Most likely, it will be more visible towards the end of this year and next year. And we have an increase in customers in many aspects. Perhaps a few words about our 30% share in creating an infrastructure for family foundations. But what's most joyful to us is that an increasing number of our customers that have a slightly higher profile than those to our competitors are using our mobile banking app. And we have an increasing share in the products that should be sold digitally.

Perhaps it's not yet up to our ambition, but it's growing. We might not be showing this, but for example, the idea of selling insurance products, which are perfect fit for this type of sales. So on the right-hand side, you will have a whole list of the solutions available. And, Lukasz, over to you.

Hello. A warm welcome. I had the pleasure to join the Management Board on the 1st of September. So over the next few slides, some information that I'm going to share with you. We will intertwine these facts with the corporate banking division that I'm responsible for. And then also with the division of Robert Sochacki, we cooperate very closely our areas intertwined to make sure that we are client-centric because the way we establish, report and build relationship varies between the 2 sectors, but the banking platform and the synergies that can be achieved, especially from the point of view of technology and product are really worth having a joint outlook on these issues.

In 2 years' time, the bank will be 100 years old. So we know about banking. We know about products. But what we believe in and what we were betting on in 2025 is the knowledge of industries because in the corporate business and what customers are facing in a transformative economy, a growing economy like ours are a number of challenges. And in order to be able to find the right solutions, you just need to know your business. And that's where we're investing. We are going to ensure further on to make sure that our people other than main bankers also do understand the corporate businesses they deal with. And the enterprises, the sectoral specialization expertise is important.

We can deliver this knowledge, this expertise and this discussion in various manners. We are talking sometimes about hundreds of millions of financing, but we will be having a different conversation when we're talking about several hundred thousands PLN or a few million PLN. But the problems remain the same. And the answer to those is digitization, webinars, making sure we can use the technology to be able to share and multiply the know-how and democratize this knowledge, we have made some investments to that end already.

On the other hand, our local presence matters. We might not be the biggest country, but we are quite vast in terms of geography. So hence, our specialists are located in 74 corporate centers, which shows the scale of our operations. Thanks to that, we remain close to our customers. Now relationships will remain the foundation of our growth. And this is a strong pillar, I must say. We have achieved a significant increase in terms of customer acquisitions, both in SME and the mid-market sector. Now for the mid-market sector, we have customers with a turnover over PLN 50 million. And we have acquired 1,013 customers. That's the data from last year, which illustrates really well the fact that, well, customers like banking with Pekao SA, and they do want to cooperate with us.

So the financial leg is very important in the growing economy. But on the other hand, what Cezary has spoken about room for improvement is digitization. And this has a few dimensions. First of all, our ambition is to grow faster than the market, and we have a 2-digit growth on the market. So we need to renew quite a lot of our portfolio in corporations every year and then new acquisitions are added on top of that. So the simplification of processes will be focusing on processes that have to do with financing.

On the other hand, we need to be cautious in terms of cost generation. We don't want this to be head-in-head parallel to the growth of our employees. It's not just a question of cost, but it's also a question of quality. If we want to be the leader of understanding industry, we need to invest in our employees. It's very important. In 2025, we used AI, especially for the purpose of preparing meetings for our customers. And we have prepared advisers to face our customers during meetings. And we can see that this application of AI technologies is doing really well.

On the other hand, we are also using quite important events. We take our logo, Bison logo, to the stock exchange, and we bring this idea closer to our entrepreneurs who are thinking, considering expansion, and we're bringing them closer to various methods of getting capital equity or getting financing. So there's a whole area of advisory services that we have spoken about. So the digitization that I wanted to refer to, it has this leading motto. Cezary speaks about this often, and that's the technological debt that we have in Pekao. We want to return it in the currency of time. We want to provide these constructive conversations about challenges.

And we want to give it back to our customers to make sure that the relationship they have with the bank is convergent whenever we talk about important things such as development, expansion, diversifying exports, structuring their financing, et cetera. These are issues that entrepreneurs really want the bank to be able to talk to them about, not necessarily issues that you can deal with yourself via electronic banking or something else. So these are issues that we are going to be investing in strongly.

Now economic transformation and enterprise transformation is also happening in the public sector, especially municipalities, communes, cities, agglomerations. And here, Pekao SA happens to be the leader in terms of this cooperation. So both the energy transformation and all the aspects that we have touched upon in the area of environment is something that we strongly support. So my speech has been a little bit generic so far. But on the other hand, well, 2025 kind of illustrates all that in the current growth of credit volumes, customers are responding really well to our proposals. We increased our market share, both in corporate and enterprise sector.

Our market share has exceeded 15% also for large corporations. We have reached almost 14%. Like I said before, we have -- we acquired customers both in SME and mid sector. And what we wanted to share with you is something that you might have noted already is that our factoring company has reclaimed its leadership in the rank, thanks to PLN 100 billion turnover and the year-by-year growth is 21%. I wanted to stress that because it's not just a question of implementing the strategy that we perceived as comprehensive for our group because we put the factoring offer and the leasing offer under one umbrella, but this also has another dimension, and that is of addressing potential bottlenecks or challenges in the flow of payments or receivables. And we are really, really proud of reclaiming this #1 position here.

On the other hand, our leasing has noted some growth as well. We are #5 still, but it had a 2-digit growth in volumes, which is good news to us. Volumes have also grown in the more granulated sectors and that is financing micro entrepreneurs, an area where we were undervalued before. And some selected transactions here in which our bank has had a significant role to play. This is a selection, and you will find us, I'm sure, in a majority of significant transactions from last year. Something that has had significant media coverage lately was the launch of a first since decades, Polish ferry on the seawaters, we've had quite a contribution to this.

So from the point of view of enterprise banking, it's very important to stand on 2 legs, right, to have the large strategic players in your portfolio. But on the other hand, some of the SMEs. And we can see quite clearly that this allows us to see the flows in the economy. And at the end of the day, it also allows us to better assess the risk. Dagmara will be talking about our financial results more clearly. Other than the growth in assets, we are happy to see that our outcome also has 2-digit dynamic in terms of commissions. So the growth in acquisitions plus the focus on customer relationships translates to higher product rates, better transaction rates, and we are looking to see further growth in our results in this trend.

So I would end here and give the floor over to Ernest.

So a quick macro update. For sure, already in 2025, which is the subject of this presentation, a lot of trends were outlined already in the last quarter. We had an increase in GDP. This year, it's likely to be 4% up. The structure of investments, the growth of investments may reach even 10%. 2026 and '27 we'll see accumulation of the absorption of funds from the resilience and recovery program. Those investments will regard mainly large companies and large exposures. But will also have an impact on consumption and labor market. This is probably one of the aspects that differs us from the consensus. We see that the labor market is loose. It's not going to exert an inflationary pressure or an excessive pressure on pay rise.

We had 6.1% remuneration dynamics, which is much below the consensus. We think we will go below 5%. This sheet is a summary. We could see 5% for pay rise, then there was an inflation and 2 with double minus is, again, inflation. Inflation is going to be very low, below the target. It consists of salaries, which slow down and cheap exports from China and the extension of the energy shock. There is an oversupply of many energy resources. And also regarding GDP, there is a lot of investments. In consumption, the dynamics is much lower than in previous years and the labor market is kind of loose. We do not expect a significant increase in unemployment rate. No, definitely not.

But in certain respects, it is a major variable regarding the general sentiment, social mood. And as for dynamics of interest rate, something that is very important for the banking sector, we expect 2 or 3 cuts. It's hard to say yet how many exactly. But probably the growth in volumes is likely to compensate any loss resulting from lower interest rates. The volumes are going to grow aggressively, in particular, in corporate segment.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My colleagues have given you a business overview, and I will tell you in greater detail how we embedded that in numbers and what our results for 2025 are. Starting with loans. These grow in general 8%; retail 5%; corporate 11% up. In retail, it is worth noting that we had a growth in cash loans, which was up 13%. It is also important that we are going to transform. The cash loan is sold through electronic channels. Almost 90% of agreements regarding this loan are sold through electronic channels.

As for corporate loans, mid and SME are growing, corporations are growing, micro is growing. And here, we see 2-digit growth. Lukasz has already mentioned the clients. The acquisition of new clients is important to us. And if we look at 2025, the acquisition was good, about 1,100 new clients in mid segment were acquired. To sum up the credit loan side, we said in our strategy that we wanted to grow in key areas. And those key areas were defined as cash loans, micro, SME and mid. These were the areas where Pekao historically had not been properly balanced because in corporate segment, it had historically and continues to have a good position.

In 2025, we consolidated our position, our shares, market shares in those segments that are important to us. Loan credit side, 4% growth in deposits, both in retail and in corporations. It is worth noting here the role of TFI investment funds. We have 20% year-on-year growth on assets under management. Apart from deposits, we are opening new accounts, almost 500,000 new accounts were opened. And a large portion of those new accounts, about 35% of these were accounts for young people up to the age of 26.

When we talk about liabilities, it is worth talking about issues. We had 2 issuances for MREL, one Tier 2. It is worth saying that we had a significant almost threefold oversubscription and the issuance offered excellent conditions. The conditions bring us close to major players from Western Europe. And if we look at 2025, we see that in our portfolio, we had over 100 new foreign investors in debt issuances.

Foreign investments now. 2025 saw intense decrease of interest rates. 3-month WIBOR dropped year-on-year 7%. And our interest margin remained, as you can see in the slide, on the same level. It is worth detailing how we did that. On the one hand, as you have already heard, one driver was the growth of volumes. The growth of volumes in segments that generate higher margins. Therefore, the structure of the balance sheet and the structure of loans changed somewhat in 2025. Then on the side of liabilities, we reacted very soon to the fall of interest rates, decrease of interest rates and the policy of managing deposits helped us to stabilize this margin.

There was also a change in the profitability of our portfolio of securities. In 2025, we repriced old COVID papers with lower profitability to new debt papers with higher profitability. We also have hedging that is growing in 2025. If we look at our sensitivity, 15 basis points versus 100 basis points decrease in interest rates. As you can see in the fourth quarter, our NIM dropped to 4.7%. And if we look at how we start 2026 and if we keep in mind the upcoming interest rate cuts, keeping this for at the front will be a challenge.

If we move on, a few words about our result on commissions. This is something we are happy about. That is another quarter in a row where we have a 2-digit growth. Year-on-year, the growth is almost 11%. This is also something that we communicated in our strategy. Historically, in the commissions, we grew at 1%, 2%. And we said we wanted to change this. But this actually happened in 2025. We treat this profit on commissions as a stabilizer of our income. Taking into account the decrease in interest rates, this is an element that does stabilize results a little.

If we look at 2025 as a whole, each component of the result on commissions contributed to this overall growth. There was a growth in commissions on loans, cards, brokerage services. This element was quite significant there. Let's remember that in 2024 and in 2025, the profit on managing brokerage assets and services contained an element of success fee that takes into account the results of our investment funds. So that is a major element of our success here.

If we move on to costs, we also declared that on the one hand, we would try to keep personnel costs under control. And on the other, we needed some space to increase depreciation and fixed costs. Personnel costs decreased year-on-year. Let's remember that in 2024, at the end of the year, we announced a program of voluntary retirement or voluntary leaving of the company. We had 5 people who took advantage of this program of voluntarily leaving the company. On depreciation, we have 17% growth.

We had an increase in IT, telecommunications, a little marketing and advertising depreciation and amortization also growth because projects that we started contribute to it as well as activities, investments we announced in our strategy like modernization of our branches, modernization of the call center. These are the elements that we started implementing in 2025, and we will continue over the space of the strategy.

Now the cost of risk, over to Marcin.

Thank you, Dagmara. The cost of risk, as you can see, is at a low level, 39 basis points, which is significantly lower than the strategy assumptions at 65, 70 basis points. In the fourth quarter, the cost of risk in the retail segment was even negative. And throughout 2025, it was close to 0. That resulted from an excellent situation in the labor market. There were no signs of excessive loan rate among our clients or in post society at large. We have a good loan repayment rate. And also in the second quarter, we reassessed, reevaluated risk parameters that we use to make write-offs for impaired value. Also, the result on nonworking loans, non-repaid loans throughout the year.

As for costs in corporations here, these are more normalized. In 2024, we had a situation where some companies that a lot of energy intensive experienced problems resulting from energy prices. Now the situation is stabilized. So there are no systemic factors that contribute to losses in this portfolio. It is more about individual problems of individual companies that they have some issues regarding their operations, then they are more exposed to possible perturbations.

As for systemic factors, for sure, in some segments, we have competition from Asia, also related to customs and shifts in customs. However, these are not elements that would have a major impact on the overall situation in corporations. Low cost of risks, combined with restructuring allow us to stabilize NPL. It is even decreasing slightly. In the corporate part, it is higher because, unfortunately, on the major issues if there is something like several dozen million worth, such cases continue for years. And this ratio has a major inertia.

But in retail, as you can see, it is at a much lower level. This is a ratio that allows us to pay the dividend in line with our dividend policy. Also, there is also the ratio of sensitivity of interest result that is something that we meet. This is imposed by the regulator, Financial Supervision Authority, but we are on track here. And back to Dagmar.

Capital position. As Marcin has said, from a regulatory perspective, we meet the criteria for dividend payment. We assume the strategy payment at the level of 50% to 75% of net profit. Talks are underway on this now. CET at 15%. This CET does not contain profit for the second half of 2025, only 25% from the first 6 months of the year.

If we move on MREL, we meet the MREL requirements with a surplus. In 2025, we had 2 MREL issuances, one in Tier 2. And it should be said that these were broad spectrum, green senior preferred senior. And the only thing that is still missing in our range of instruments for capital management is an instrument for AT1 management, and we will want to have an issue like that.

To sum up, we end 2025 with the highest to date profit achieved by Bank Pekao. I could say that we are accelerating both in volumes as most of our volumes grow at a 2-digit rate, we're also gaining market shares. Our result is stabilized by the component of the profit on commissions. And in spite of the issues that I have mentioned, costs are kept under control. We have a safe risk level. This was not discussed broadly, but we are -- we continue to be bank #1 in stress tests by EBA. And all that translates into building value for our shareholders.

Thank you very much, and over to Cezary.

Well, I will not be boasting too much about the awards if you want, you will read about this, but we have been given a few. And one thing that Marcin has whispered into my ear is that I made a Freudian slip actually. I confused the 2 names. So it's either a confusion or contamination of names, one of our friendly banks, which still means that we have some problems with calling things by their names. So it looks as though this is so deeply rooted in our conscious, where it happens on such a level. So we have a structural problem, which we will be trying to address.

One more to add, not much is there really.

Okay. Let's give our audience a chance and take questions.

Thank you for visiting us. Our conference is always a hybrid event, so -- but you can still show up if you like.

Question from the audience.

To make sure that I'm seen in the audience, I'm from [indiscernible]. I wanted to ask you about the mortgage market. I understand that it is not your core market and that this strategy really allows for growth in other segments. But you are an important player on this market anyhow. What is happening there? Because we do -- we are guessing that there is a significant share of refinancing, but we don't have a lot of data here. We are mostly based on feel. The scale of prepayments or overpayments could be something to think about given the interest rates, which perhaps is not very encouraging to do so.

But also, does the -- the big proportion of mortgages doesn't really translate into a growth in the purchase of real estate, which doesn't seem to be so big. So what's really happening in the mortgage market?

Okay. A few points. Definitely, the reported sales is higher than what is actually new money on the market of -- on the real estate market. Now in our case, the early repayment would account for about 1/5 of new products. But from what we can see on the market, it's probably a little bit more than that. Talk about estimations. But you need to also take into account the phenomenon which is getting more and more visible now is that some of that production is not seen because if a bank reacts to what's happening in the market and then annexes the contracts, thereby lowering the interest rates, you don't see it as new products, but the outcome is similar.

So that means somebody has lowered their interest rates. And this is a phenomenon that is not yet visible on a mass scale as it is on mature markets, but the market is picking up on that. So -- as a result, I think it is good for thought in terms of how this mortgage product presents itself here. Other than the legal issues, we are looking at a product where the fee for early repayment is very much limited, which creates the situation where the interest rates are dropping, they are variable. But when they are growing, it's fixed. We are -- we have been learning that. We have been forecasting that. And in our hedging policy, we have been trying to address it.

Still, the standard of coping with this challenge will perhaps get a better shape after this decrease in interest rates because it's not yet been harmonized.

Yes. Well, I am reticent regarding mortgage product, not because I believe it's unimportant. It is very important, especially from the point of view of customer relationship, depending, of course, on the customer groups. This is mostly a trend driven by demographics. But it is a product where the Polish banking sector has been losing money systematically as a result of lack of regulatory security and the public noise that has been part of this deal. And we are subject to some regulations and some disciplining measures. We are accountable for the deposit part of it. And I would be cautious. We don't know what can happen to us in this area. But every year, there is a surprise.

Well, if we were to continue the account for mortgages, I think it's worth doing an exercise, right, with the fixed rates, et cetera. Well, most -- the most reasonable conclusion is that the banking sector has been losing money on mortgages recently. So we live in a world where this product from the point -- from the professional point of view is very difficult to defend. So well, you need to find your way forward in it. My mantra would be that it's a product that essentially you should sell to your own customers that are loyal and they have a specific age profile. However, the market has gone a different way.

There are some intermediaries on the market who make money on that. And they don't take any risk upon themselves, but they take a fee. So my impression is that there is no holistic look on this market regardless of the narrative that's visible here, which means that some more loosening of the market dynamics. Some believe that the long-term mortgage is a very valuable project in the long term. I generally agree. But well, the only thing that's certain in the long term is the fact that we will die.

The same economist also said that people would be working 3 days a week in 2000, and that never came through. But the fact that we will all die is definitely correct, and he was right about that.

You mentioned that your strategy was created in a different environment. Investments are speeding up. You are repaying the technological debt from what I've heard with some outcome towards the end of this year and the beginning of next year. Have you thought about updating your strategy before the 100th anniversary?

Our strategy was written up to 2027. It was a short-term strategy. There have been banks that announced a 10-year strategy. So we were pretty much in kindergarten. We assumed we had a short-term assumption, and we updated it to test what the bank could do if it was -- if it had slightly more discipline and it was better managed. And some goals were set. The volume development and that has been a success. It remains to be seen how lasting the success will be. Fast growth often leads to a fast fall. So we've seen that happen. So we're on a trajectory, but we need to still consolidate our path.

And the other one is a question of commissions. How do we manage that to make sure that the growth has a reasonable pace here. And these 2 components have been successful. 2027 was included as the end of the strategy. 2029 is our 100th anniversary. So the effort is going to be to make sure that we route our strategy slightly deeper. And that's going to happen 2027 onwards, right, seeing 2029 and after as a perspective.

Right. Some of the questions were probably already answered during the speeches, but over to Kamil, please, who always finds something.

Santander. Let me just ask about dividends. Is it going to be closer to 50%? Or are you comfortable with 75%?

The comfort is within the scope.

From the point of view of the results, everything seems to be clear. There will be some detailed questions about the reorganization of PZU. Please, can we have a status update?

Well, we believe that we managed to develop over a few months a potential scenario for this transaction, what it could look like, assuming that there is a willingness from the side of shareholders to go forward with it. And indeed, this is also linked to how the PZU Group itself and its insurance section should transform so that such a transaction can take place. And after many months of work, we have developed a market scenario, which is not quite so complicated, which links us to the developed scenario.

So PZU is working on splitting its structure into holding and operations and work is underway as far as I know, to keep it going. And I'm appealing to my colleagues in PZU to give a more precise answer. Now furthermore, we have some aspects here that go beyond our competence, professional or technical that are linked with what we all know, some political background, which is quite sharp at the moment. It could be perhaps -- it could perhaps be linked to some discussions that could go beyond what I can predict in my professional capacity as far as the market conditions for this transaction are concerned and it goes beyond my capacity to interpret that.

But as has been said many times before, the prerequisite of that is that the laws are adopted also from the point of view of PZU's capacity to divide and to isolate its holding inside the structure regardless of the transaction of the deal. And this will probably materialize in the form of some argumentation. But in the near future, it will probably gain more shape.

Any further questions? If not, thank you very much. 30th of April, first quarter report. Thank you so much for your presence and see you soon.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome at the presentation of the financial results of Pekao S.A. Group after 9 months. We have our CEO, Cezary Stypulkowski; Dagmara Wojnar, CFO; Marcin Jablczynski; and our Chief Economist, Ernest Pytlarczyk.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We will briefly discuss our financial performance. And later, we are standing ready to take your questions. I just want to start with a disclaimer that we ask you to have some understanding about the upcoming transactions. We will have an opportunity to present a short wrap-up during the meeting of the general meeting of the shareholders. It's part of the agenda. Therefore, I do not want to have answers duplicated, but I'm not going to be very dogmatic just saying no.

Well, what happened over the past 3 months? It was a good quarter. Our profit was up, and this data was released this morning. I think that the most important changes with our lending activity. It is true for the entire sector, but we do have a feeling that we were able to jump a bit higher in terms of market shares, especially on the corporate side. We uphold a strong capital position. The bank has been stable in this regard for many years. And what is critical for Pekao S.A. is improved digital penetration amongst our customer base, and this is happening as we speak. Perhaps the pace is not one of my dream, but we do see progress.

The net profit that we reported is very robust. Now looking at the capital, it is also solid. You may say that it's very decent. And it would be really hard to say that it was excessive. Cost to income, I think that the bank is holding very well. We fully appreciate the fact that the banking sector is under the cost pressure. And this is mainly because of the BFG charges.

The cost of risk is below our projections. and the growing loan portfolio. These are the basic metrics for the past quarter, and I may say for the year-to-date. And this is what we are really proud to say that we are growing at the 2-digit rate across all the strategic area. On one hand, this is cash loans where we are underrepresented, and micro financing where the bank was also somewhat standing aside, but wherever we had a strong position, which is like that, mid and SME financing, that's truly decent growth.

And this is a nice picture. All the business lines have contributed to this good landscape that emerged after 9 months of the current year. And we are truly happy to see that eventually after years of stagnating fees and commissions, the bank was able to generate the growth of 9% during the current year.

From the viewpoint of our prior communication 6 months ago when we presented our strategy, we are definitely scratching the horizon. Perhaps we haven't gone beyond the horizon yet. But the trajectory to target seems to be within reach of our capabilities and the current positioning of the bank.

Well, this is not something that I'm going to discuss in great detail because this is probably not the information that is most critical to the analysts here. This is a range of our accomplishments for the past quarter. And I believe that the most important highlight is investment banking advisory and equities. We do want to have stronger positioning in that area. And there are some changes that in our solution to the corporate and sector and small enterprises likewise. And with regard to retail customer, we continue to improve onboarding process and facilitate the documentation processing.

And to be honest, I was quite surprised with today's reading of Newsweek that shows that we are really charging ahead in terms of how we are being perceived as the retail bank, both in our real branches and the mobile offering. Mobile offering counts because we are the underdog. So we are catching up with the leaders. And we are acquiring active mobile banking customers, and we are selling more through that channel. We know that it is going to be the key element of our strategy.

A number of important deals that we closed during the past year. I need to emphasize that we are the bond house in this market. That's our claim. We are #1. So the deal with European Investment Bank definitely should be highlighted. This is an important and demanding partner that's entering the Polish market with the financing in zlotys, and we were able to raise PLN 1 billion in that deal. So it is definitely a good idea to think about Pekao S.A. as the leader and corporate financing of various [ account ].

And now let me turn the floor to my colleague -- no, first, let me turn the floor to Ernest.

Okay. We would like to make the accounting of our projections for the current year. Well, we were predicting 4% GDP, and it's going to be less most likely. But in terms of the diagnosis of the direction where our economy is heading to, I think that we stand right. We do see the recovery in the investments. As our CEO pointed out, the growing lending volumes are triggered by the investment plans that the corporations started to work on.

And the other part of the story is consumption demand. The consumption was a black horse of this year. In Europe, consumption is picking up when the inflation is going down, especially when the cost inflation is going down because it gives more room to consumers. The time of tightening is over. It was 2024 when we had to tighten the belt. Now the consumer started to go shopping. The consumption is up this year.

And another thing that is important to note, on the right-hand side, the environment. Macro environment is really doing poorly. Europe is slightly above the 0, and the Germans announced their data today, and they are straight at 0. So they are stagnating with their economy. So historically, our key driving force for the economy is weakened.

Export. Export was actually doing less because of the situation of our trading partners and the strong zloty. But nevertheless, the economy is holding strong. It is growing. We expect 4% GDP next year. We expect a major accelerating in investments. It could be even called a boom. It would be, in a sense, the outcome of the recovery plan accumulating, and the interest rate cuts -- we believe that the interest cuts will continue. The inflation will be actually hovering over the target, and the inflation will stop being a problem across Europe. And that should translate into further adjustments by the National Bank of Poland.

Consumption. We believe that should stand at 4%, and 2-digit growth of investments in certain quarters of the year, and that should fuel the lending volumes. So next year, we expect 2-digit growth in lending, especially in corporate loans. I believe that this is a fairly conducive environment for our banking business that will help offset and compensate the interest rate cuts. The interest rate probably will go down to 3.5%, perhaps a bit higher, but it's not going to be a zero percent interest rate environment. So in that environment, banks are going to do pretty well.

That would be all from me. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, more details about numbers. Loans were up by 8% in total. And as we heard, all business lines contributed to that growth. Cash loans keep growing, and this is where we are selling mostly through the digital channel, remote channels, over 90%. Small and medium enterprise loans are going up too. And what happened last quarter, and it has continued, is growing loan volumes for large corporate customers, 19% up on a year-to-year basis. And I think that it's worth to note that we are strongly acquiring new customers, especially for mid and SME loans. The customer base growth was approximately 900 during Q3.

Now moving on to the deposit side. The total deposit base was up by 6% year-on-year, and this is where we are also acquiring customers. We are acquiring a lot of young customers, under 26 years of age. And because of the attractive sales of our investment products, as you may see from that chart, investment funds were up by 30% year-on-year. And we opened up approximately 130,000 current accounts for young customers. These are retail customers. And 50% of these accounts were for people who are really young.

Now looking at the net interest income. The net interest income was up by 8% year-on-year. Let me just say that we are facing the declining rates environment. And to the extent possible, we are trying to offset the interest rate cuts. We are, on one hand, growing the volumes. And at the same time, we are modifying our product mix, and we actively manage our deposit base. The interest margin was up 2 basis points. As I said, the volumes and the product structure and decreased cost of deposits contributed to that.

We also mentioned that our NIM, in terms of sensitivity to interest rate cuts, is like 15 to 20 basis points down, so per 100 basis point cuts of interest rates. This slide, we have been showing consistently because it really illustrates our sensitivity to interest rate changes. Well, the actual sensitivity to interest rate cuts will be the end result of our capability to adjust the term deposit rates.

Now commissions and fees. We were growing up by 9%. This is the third quarter in line when we were growing our fees and commissions by 2 digits nearly. And the major contribution comes to the capital market commissions. So this is asset management. This is brokerage services. We are also growing our margin on FX transactions, and this is mostly the outcome of the growing volume. And we do see the uptick in the fees and commissions on loans, as loan volumes are growing.

Cost-to-income ratio of 34%. Here, we have signaled that taking into account the strategy and the place where the bank is now, we will have to face some expenditures in infrastructure, technological outlays. Hence, depreciation is growing slightly higher than personnel costs. OpEx and depreciation growth, 14.6%, and human resources, costs 4.8%.

Cost of risk, maybe Marcin will address this.

Thank you, Dagmara. As for cost of risk, as has been mentioned, that cost remains at a stable level. For 3 quarters this year, the number is very similar to what we recorded last year, and the level is below what we stated in our strategy. Just to remind you, it was 65 to 75 basis points. And this is the market level. We see in general in the market that cost of risk is relatively low, lower than what we saw before COVID pandemic.

In particular, in retail section of the market with individual customers, there is just a small part of clients who faced difficulties in repaying the loans. And also, there are some parameters used for assessing credit losses. With adjustments to these parameters, we have those costs significantly lower. At the same time, in the corporate segment, the results are also below the levels to which we are aspiring, but close to the normalized levels. In previous quarters, they were slightly lower, but still below our assumptions.

As for NPL, which on the one hand, shows the risk in our portfolio, but on the other hand, is one of the dividend calculation parameters. We see there has been nothing unusual happening recently. Things are rather dull and boring and quiet. So I will not comment on this further.

Back to Dagmara.

As for capital, we maintain a strong capital position with surplus both in C1 and total capital ratio. As for [ MLER ], we also have a surplus in meeting our requirements. We are going to be an active issuer in the upcoming periods as for [ MLER ].

To recap, increase in recurring net profit, 10% year-on-year. Reported profit, PLN 5.2 billion for 9 months of '25. This growth is achieved on the income side. On the one hand, we have greater volumes of both loans and deposits, 8% and 6%, respectively. We see a growth in interest/income plus fees and commissions. ROE at 21.5%. Cost-to-income ratio, 34.5%. So we are accelerating.

We are pleased to see that loan volumes grow in second consecutive quarter. In the third quarter, they grew faster than in Q2. The CEO talked about -- Cezary talked about this. We are consolidating our market position in some parts of the market by increasing our market shares.

Commissions, almost 10% for all the third quarter in a row. And all these elements contribute, on the one hand, to improving our credit offer and supporting our customers better and being a partner in the development. But also, on the other hand, we keep in mind -- building the value for our shareholders. Thank you.

Thank you very much for this presentation. We will open now the Q&A session.

There are 3 banks reporting the results today. Kamil?

Kamil Stolarski, Santander Bank Polska. Congratulations on cost to income and fees growth. And also congratulations on the growth in corporate loans. Among the banks that have so far reported the results, Santander [ and then bank ] only showed minimum growth here. And today, at the conference, [indiscernible] said while commenting the situation in the bank, said that the margins on corporate loans grew even down to 18 bps on individual deals. So how come Bank Pekao S.A. has this growth that is clearly greater than anywhere else? And is this 18 bps thing driven by Bank Pekao S.A.?

We will not comment on the numbers and margins so deeply. But I can say that we announced in our strategy that, first of all, following Ernest's advice, we said that market would become more dynamic. And we prepared for that with greater mobilization of the resources, with deeper penetration of customers. Bank, as you know, for a couple of years, was on standby, if I may call it so. And probably this broader approach to customer acquisition, not focusing on state-owned companies only resulted in a diversification of the range of clients and diversification of risk.

Price does play a role. Of course, it is not just margins growth and volumes growth. No, that is not the case. But it seems that all in all, given that we had small downtick in net income quarter-to-quarter, not a major change, but that was affected. Also, margin was affected to some extent. This is not the only element. revaluation of the portfolio of government papers. There are some things happening at the same time. But I wouldn't be so quick to make such generalizations about margins.

Colleagues in the market signal changes, but we had some low business cycle, and everybody has some dry powder to use. It's hard to say whether we are on the eve of a major war. It's hard to predict. I was even surprised that the bank, while it had a very strong capital position, and its competitors were under major pressure of loans, we failed, at least from my perspective, to capitalize on this advantage. Now to the extent to which we can expand the spectrum of our corporate penetration in the segment where we are simply good. We have good products. We have good personnel. And now we simply have to utilize those resources better. That is it from me.

Maybe you want to add something?

I would say that, as Cezary highlighted, mobilization and the coordination of our sales, CRM and other activities, very active involvement of senior management, also some process-related changes. All these brought their effects. We see that the price pressure continues to be high. Competition is stiff.

And if you look at stand-alone credit products, we can have some doubts. But if you look at the balance sheet of the bank in total, you see still some room for improvement. We try to keep our margins whenever the competitive situation forces us to do so, we react. But we are doing fine, and we look at comprehensively at the entire relationship with the customer.

And I also have a question about financing and mortgage loans. ING said that more than 10% of sales was mortgage financing, and mBank said that many more customers came to them for refinancing than left them to seek financing elsewhere. Is there any acceleration here? And what is the policy of your bank towards refinancing of the portfolio? And what ambitions do you have to collect the debt?

Indeed, we see that refinancing is becoming increasingly important. And we have seen some dissonance in recent years between sales of mortgage loans and sales of flats and housing. And this resulted from the fact that refinancing became more active in the market.

We also see a certain growth here. However, as of now, the growth is not material yet. About half of the portfolio here are safe loans. So there is no motivation to seek refinancing. This is the phenomenon which we are following closely. It is not as pronounced here as in other banks yet. However, it is definitely something we will have to look at in the future because we see diverse attitudes of various banks, which are becoming very active in refinancing their own customers.

We are more selective in our approach. We check whether so far the clients had just one mortgage loan, or whether they have a stronger relationship with us. And the phenomenon on the whole is much lower than in other banks.

Maybe I will make a more general comment. Given that we are at a stage of declining interest rates. We can, of course, expect strengthening of this phenomenon. But also from my experience elsewhere, I can say that there are some markets, especially those saturated markets, refinancing is actually the name of the game. And some banks may position themselves in such a way so as to aim at refinancing the existing loans, which are characterized by being proven to some extent. There are markets where a large part of that market is built on this type of product. And there is no such great supply of new money. The market is also more monopolized. This is not what we see here in this market. But also a lot of loans were sold at a fixed interest rate. So something will happen here, but we do not know yet what.

Any other questions from our audience in the room?

Well, at any time, we can come back to your questions. Let me read the question that we got online. At the conference back in June, the bank claimed that 70,000 payment [ bands ] will be sold. What is the end result of that action?

To be honest, I'm worrying too, but I cannot answer this question. I think that we have to get back with the answer through a separate channel. We will do that.

Now let me combine a few questions. But we already explained the fact that we are actually reducing our sensitivity to interest rate cuts by 5 basis points. Why? What is the reason for that? And is there any competition in the deposit market? And what is our sensitivity to that in the declining interest rate environment?

Okay. We showed that our NIM is sensitive by 15, 20 basis points per 100 basis points interest rate cuts. Well, the actual was 15 basis points. This is a slight change. We speak about the range. During the past quarter, we increased slightly the share of assets with fixed rate, and that's about mortgage loans and bonds, direct securities.

As far as deposits are concerned, since like 18 months, we have had very active management of the deposit side of our balance sheet. And as you could tell during the past quarterly presentations, the deposit side helps us offset the impact of the interest rate cuts. But the deeper the cuts, the less room we have to maneuver. And how NIM is going to land in the future, it all depends on how we are going to respond with the term deposits given the upcoming interest rate cuts.

So we have one more question about the numbers. Do we have any guidance for upcoming quarters regarding the cost of legal risk of Swiss franc-denominated mortgages?

So in terms of the cost of risk, let me start with the historical background. In April, we implemented yet another edition of the settlement program. The settlement program is progressing quite well. We targeted -- and we addressed the majority of the targeted population. We observed that in terms of the incoming lawsuits, we have more lawsuits that are about the lost mortgages. So we are tracking the parameters on an ongoing basis, and we will respond accordingly.

Is it the end of the provisions? And is it the end of the Swiss franc mortgage story? I believe we haven't reached that point yet, and time will tell when this point in time -- when it comes.

We have another question. Please quantify the possible changes of site -- based on our performance. This is a simple arithmetic. So are we going to comment on that?

No, let's let people crunch the numbers. We will find out something about ourselves.

Okay. We got another question about PZU to Pekao transaction. Our CEO mentioned that on the 6th of November, we have General Meeting of Shareholders, and we do have an item of the agenda about this transaction, and it will be available on our Investor Relations website if you are not able to participate in the streaming.

The question is when we expect legislation and the decisions on the Alior Bank? And what would be the exchange parity?

Well, as I said earlier, it is our intention to speak about the transaction to the General Shareholders' Meeting at great length. And therefore, I would rather refer you to the 6th of November.

Let me just say that we have little control over the legislative process. We expect it to unfold duly. Hypothetically, I assume that it should come to a close by the end of this year. And following this assumption and given the structure of the transaction that has been presented in the term sheet, I believe that Q3 is also a good timeline for closing.

In terms of the exchange ratio, it's premature to answer this question.

Any other questions from the room?

Andrzej Powierza, Citi. I have a question about the cost structure and specifically personnel cost structure. Is it possible to estimate roughly what percentage costs are attributed to the IT personnel?

I don't think that I have such data breakdown at hand. Perhaps we will come back to you offline with this piece of information.

There are a handful of technical questions. I will address them on a one-on-one basis. Thank you so much for your attention. As we said on the 6th of November, we have General Shareholders' Meeting. We don't have the date for the publication of the annual report. Normally, it happens in February. But obviously, our Management Board will be available to you during upcoming investors conferences. Thank you so much.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]