CaixaBank Aktie

Good morning, and welcome to CaixaBank results presentation for the first quarter of 2026. We are joined today by our CEO, Gonzalo Gortazar; and our CFO, Javier Pano. As usual, we plan to spend about 30 minutes with the presentation and about 45 minutes to an hour with the Q&A. The Q&A is live, and you should have received instructions by e-mail on how to participate. Needless to say, at the end of the call, my team and I will be at your full disposal. And without further ado, Gonzalo, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Marta. Good morning, everybody. And let's get into the substance. So first quarter of the year, and we feel quite happy with the way things are progressing, particularly in light of the unstable environment that we have outside of Spain and particularly in the Middle East and its consequences. So, you see volume growth, 7% in year-on-year revenues. You saw the NII, which is in line with our expectation and our guidance in the quarter, still affected by negative repricing as we had explained in the last presentation. Very positive figure from services, insurance and fees and commissions, 7.5% year-on-year, quite remarkable in terms of the speed at which we continue to see asset quality improvement coming down to just below 2% in terms of NPLs and maintaining a very attractive cost of risk, which we see sustainable for quite some time.

Good capital creation. We decided to -- as in line with our policy to effect another share buyback, which we are announcing today. Return on tangible equity close to 18%. And in fact, we are improving our guidance for the year from, you would say, tweaking from around 18% to above 18%, and we'll get into the reasons for that. We reiterate our guidance and positive spirits about what we're seeing despite the very concerning environment in the Middle East. So start with the economy, not on this slide, but just learned the figures for GDP in Spain, 0.6% growth quarter-on-quarter, which is higher than our expectations. Our economics team was expecting somewhere between 0.4%, 0.5% and embedded into our current estimate of 2.4% GDP for the year was 0.5% growth.

So tracking better than expected. And I think this is remarkable because the first quarter not only has Iran, but also in Spain, we had some heavy rains in February and problems with particularly train infrastructure and to be honest, seeing 0.6% growth in the first quarter is very good news. We still have to incorporate into this 2.4% growth that we have for this year forecast. We need to incorporate the impact of situation in the Middle East and the measures that the government in Spain has taken to offset this partially what may come from increase in crude and oil prices and gas and fossil fuels and the consequences. But now we have, again, a positive data from this first quarter. So quite good. Eurozone numbers have been a bit more mixed between the strong Germany and weak France and Italy.

But overall, the environment, again, is very resilient. And if you look at what's driving growth, which I'm not going to go through the list because you know what's happening in Spain in terms of very positive dynamics, very strong inertia. And some of the factors that, I wouldn't say, prevent us from having an impact from the Middle East, but certainly moderate any negative impact from the Middle East, particularly the lower reliance on fossil fuels, thanks to renewables in Spain. And now we're seeing the last few weeks, remarkably low prices in Spain relative to most other European countries, potentially positive as we're seeing already impact on tourism based on the spending of cards for nonresidents. We've already seen in these weeks better dynamics for tourism in Spain. We'll obviously have to continue monitoring the situation.

But all in all, to be honest, within all the conservatism and prudence that one has to have in such a volatile environment, we see both Spain and ourselves in a very good relative position. Even the Bank of Spain is saying even in an adverse scenario, they still see growth in Spain at 2%. Time will tell. Obviously, the impact of rate movements, which is, again, very volatile, but clearly is suggesting increases in rates by the ECB and already increased rates in the markets are also positive, as you know, our NII sensitivity. I'm sure that Javier will discuss that in some detail. So with that kind of background, which is, in this case, is very, very relevant because really is critical.

What we see is our performance being, I'd say, above expectations, above our internal expectation in terms of client acquisition, 372,000 in the last 12 months in relational clients, volume growth of 6.6% and the market shares with some delay, but we continue to see sustained continuous increase in market shares across most of our product range. Transformation, technology, AI, we're spending a lot of money and a lot of time in making sure that we adapt to what the new technologies offer to our clients and to ourselves and that as far as we can, we not only adapt, but that we lead. Here are some of the initiatives, basically, they have to do with how the clients interact with ourselves through the app mostly, how our employees interact with the bank, and this is A, it's helping employees in various forms, most relevant that we are deploying out to the whole network is for the preparation of commercial meetings with customers, which is bringing down preparation time by 75%, i.e., freeing up a lot of capacity to grow.

And then there's a lot of AI and technology we're implementing looking at how we run operations, how we sort of, review processes end-to-end and how we make them much more efficient. We are very happy with the fact that this is not just plans, but actually things are happening and starting to have an impact as we speak in these quarters. Going back to financial performance. Lending, 7.2% growth year-on-year for the performing portfolio. Growth quarter-on-quarter in a quarter that is obviously seasonally difficult. We have 1.1% growth. It's quite notable. And then you see residential mortgages, 6.7%; consumer lending, 12.3% and business lending, 8.8% is very strong across the board and comparing to previous years, the traction and the pickup of activities is very remarkable.

And obviously, at some point, we'll stop growing even faster than the previous 12 months, but the ability to maintain those levels is what's embedded in our guidance. And certainly, the first quarter has surprised us on the upside. Customer funds, again, similar story, 6.3% growth in wealth management in deposits and market movements. But we also wanted to share with you what was the last quarter because, obviously, that's when we had the negative market effects in March, in particular. You can see that despite those effects of negative EUR 3 billion, actually in April, we were up by more than EUR 7 billion. So we're recovering that -- those impacts very easily, again, subject to markets, but so far, so good. And then most remarkable, the net inflows have stayed positive in the first quarter and continues and accelerate in the month of April, as you see the run rate at EUR 1.5 billion.

So a pretty good performance despite the events in Iran makes us quite satisfied with where we are and obviously confident that we can continue on that -- in that direction. You have some more details on Wealth Management. You can see how net inflows have been relatively well balanced between mutual and pension funds and savings insurance. The end of the first quarter, end of period AUMs are at the same level as the average. And as you can imagine, after what I said of the April performance, this is going up. So it obviously looks good for the rest of the year if market does not deteriorate again. Now the story of our potential on this part of the business is well known to you, our preeminent position, what we've done and what we see is another quarter that indicates that position and opportunity.

Similar reasoning applies to protection insurance, 12% premium growth, very balanced between life risk and non-life. MyBox continues to be a great success. And here is probably the area where we're gaining market share more rapidly across the business lines. You can see last 12 months in life and non-life. And here, you have some delay in the data. Some of it is still from December, but it's actually working well across the board, health, auto, household, good performance, gaining market share in line with what we've done for the last 10 years and a lot more in front of us because there's clearly much more potential in Spain and generally the Eurozone. And I'd like to finish with just a summary of what I said. You see what we're saying for the environment, the economy in Spain, we have lower reliance.

We're better shielded from Middle East crisis. Our clients are less levered than ever. And the financial sector generally is in a position to support the economy. So the similarly or to the opposite of what we saw in the great financial crisis, where Spain was badly hit and the financial sector. Not us, I have to say, but the finance sector overall, obviously had some trouble. Here, we have the opposite. The finance sector is going to help the economy, which is quite nice. And on our side, it's our scale, our balance sheet, our limited risks give us a lot of confidence. We think that we have a good period ahead of us, hence the reaffirmation of our guidance and that slight increase for short-term return on tangible equity, which I'm sure we'll discuss later on. And with that, I guess, Javier?

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Gonzalo. Well, from my side, as always, the additional details on the P&L and the balance sheet. Starting with the consolidated income statement. As you know very well, net income at EUR 1.572 billion. This is up by 7% year-on-year, more than 5% quarter-on-quarter. Moving upwards first, NII, moving to revenues. It's up by 0.6% year-on-year, quarter-on-quarter, down by 2%. You know that this quarter affected by seasonal impacts, mainly our last year day count and last year negative -- still negative loan industry resets, although I'm sure it's pretty sure it's the last quarter to have those negative impacts. Then on revenues from services, pretty good news.

As Gonzalo was saying, strong commercial activity here mainly on protection, up by 7.5% year-on-year. Quarter-on-quarter, slightly negative as we are comparing with the fourth quarter last year. You know the fourth quarter always a strong positive seasonality. So that is why it's slightly negative. Below other revenues doing well, also up by 6% year-on-year. Dividends, I would remark that we have the dividend from Angola from BFA, slightly smaller than last year. You know that we sold part of the stake. This is why we have a slightly smaller dividend on that front. Equity accounted up by more than 10% year-on-year, strong contribution from SegurCaixa Adeslas.

Other operating income and expenses and trading pretty much in line with last year. Total operating expenses also in line with guidance, moving up by 4.6% impairments in loan loss charges, although higher in euro terms, if you look at the cost of risk on a 12-month trailing basis, it's currently 23 basis points. So this is down by 2 basis points versus last year. Good performance on other provisions and gains and losses. And my final comment here would be that on taxes, we are including a write-up of DPAs for EUR 135 million. A few words on Portugal. Here, we are disclosing the -- what we call the BPI segment. That is for the first quarter, EUR 89 million net income. You know that the BFA dividend is in the Corporate Center. Well, here also a really strong performance in terms of business volume, up by 5.5% year-on-year. Since we took control back in 2017, business volume up by 43% versus 26% the rest of the industry.

So a remarkable performance that results into broad-based market share gains, as you see here on key products, even on a year-on-year basis, we are gaining market share in Portugal. High profitability, RoTE 17.4%, in line with the group and a really strong balance sheet with NPLs at 1.6%, coverage 82%. And on the right-hand side, you have several KPIs on the -- well, transformation process on IT and digital in Portugal, and we are going to be able to follow up as BPI has its own program on that front also. With that, let's move to the usual details on NII. On the central part, you have the usual quarterly NII bridge. You have a negative impact here from day count, minus EUR 28 million. This is larger than last year as the size of the balance sheet and volumes in general are also larger.

We have positives from business and ALCO. On ALCO, you may see that we have increased the size of our hedging portfolio and the fixed income portfolio. This has been done late into the quarter. So the impact in the quarter is not that much. But once you have, let's say, a longer-term view on the upper left bridge, you may see the evolution on a year-on-year basis. You will see that business volume and ALCO is clearly offsetting the negative impact from client yields. As I was saying, on ALCO, basically, what we have done is to front-load hedging activity for the second quarter, taking advantage of the significant increase in market rates at some point, even the market pricing for rate hikes from the CB.

What we have done is to frontload part of our, let's say, regular hedging activity. And here, you have hedges up by close to EUR 6 billion, the fixed income book by close to EUR 2 billion on top of like EUR 3 billion of maturities that we have had in the quarter. Below, you have margins and yields. I would remark that net interest margin is already starting to move up to 163 basis points, a trend that is expected to gradually continue in coming quarters. The customer spread at 300 basis points ex hedges on deposits. And you see that it's down by 2 basis points. The pace of reduction is clearly coming down and well set to stabilize and start increasing again soon. And on the right-hand side, bottom right, you have the back book yield of the loan book, 345 basis points down by 4 basis points.

This is also set to stabilize and start growing soon and cost of deposits ex hedges at 45 basis points. Besides on deposits, let's zoom in on the composition. Here, you have -- remember, the average quarterly balances for interest-bearing and noninterest-bearing. The most remarkable in my view here is that the relentless growth of noninterest-bearing deposits, up by 6% year-on-year, also with positive evolution in the quarter, as you may see. We have a reduction on interest-bearing balances. This is basically clearly outflows from the public sector and the weight of those interest-bearing deposits at 26.4%, pretty much stable since already a few quarters. The cost of those interest-bearing balances is stable in the quarter at 156%.

And this is despite the fact that, as you may see, 12-month rates are already starting to move up, starting to price rate hikes later into the year. Moving to revenues from services, really good performance here, up by 7.5% year-on-year. The remarkable in my view here is that the combination of wealth management, protection insurance and CIB revenues is growing by 12% year-on-year, much more than offsetting the underlying, let's say, deflationary pressure that the industry is feeling on fees on lower added value products and more basic fees on certain products, maintenance fees on current accounts, debit cards, et cetera. But the good thing is that the key engines are really firing on all cylinders and much more than compensating that.

You may see Wealth Management up by 9.4% year-on-year, strong growth despite the volatility in markets in March. Protection insurance up by 13.5% year-on-year, strong commercial activity here, mainly on life insurance and health insurance and also on the back of all the cross-selling attached to new mortgage products. Moving to costs. Here, everything according to plan, up by 4.6% year-on-year. Depreciation costs, as you may see, moving up by 7.4%. This is the result of the IT and AI transformation drive that is going on, but everything according to our planning. Cost to income at 39.6%, which compares extremely well with the peer average that is above 50%. Asset quality as good as ever. So we have been able to reduce our NPLs by circa EUR 300 million fully organically, EUR 8.3 billion, the stock of NPLs, that is an NPL ratio of 1.98% below our peers here in Spain.

You may see that the evolution across the different segments is really a good one, even on a quarter-on-quarter basis. So not any sign of the deterioration in any portfolio. Record high coverage, 79% and with the unassigned collective provisions that have remained unchanged at this quarter over EUR 300 million. Cost of risk, as I said before, 23 basis points on a 12-month trailing basis, even lower if we annualize the first quarter at 22 basis points. Liquidity also as ample as always, 220 sorry, liquidity sources, LCR 194%; NSFR 145%, really solid loan-to-deposit ratio, really stable, 87.6%. That compares extremely well with peers, as you know very well. And this is on the back of really stable retail deposits and corporate operational deposits.

A few words on MREL and funding. We are ending the quarter with an MREL ratio at 28%, 26%. This is an M-MDA buffer at 336 basis points, pretty much the same as the MDA buffer, slightly 1 basis point below 340 basis points. And on the right-hand side, you have our funding activity, 60% of our 3-year plan already executed circa 40% in foreign currency. Remarkably, a few weeks ago, USD 2 billion senior non-preferred with very big demand. And also a few days ago, a new ratings upgrade by Moody's, upgrading our baseline credit assessment to A3. That results into an upgrade on AT1s, Tier 2s and senior non-preferred, stable senior preferred, but this is already taken into account the incoming impact of the full deposit preference, which is actually very good news.

And finally, capital, we are already deducting the EUR 500 million share buyback from our CET1 ratio, that is a negative impact of 20 basis points. Capital accretion plus 65 basis points, organic risk-weighted assets, minus 9 basis points. This is basically new lending, minus 41 basis points from dividend accrual and AT1s and then just a few negative 2 basis points from other impacts. So we are ending the quarter with a CET1 ratio of 12.51%. And then on the right-hand side, you have the evolution of the book value per share, obviously adjusted by the DPS of EUR 0.50, up by close to 15%. And finally, just a recap of our usual guidance slide. Here, we are upgrading our ROTE to more than 18% from circa 18% as we have better visibility into the year and some improvements here and there. So thank you very much and ready to take questions.

Operator, we are ready for the next questions, please.

The first question comes from Maksym Mishyn with JB Capital.

Two questions from my side, please. The first one is on loan book. Press reports, you may have changed your approach to mortgages. I was wondering if this is the case and how you plan to grow your loan book by segments for the remainder of the year. And the second is on NII guidance for 2027. If you plug in the current forward curve, where would you see your NII in 2027?

Thank you, Maks. I would start with the mortgage question. There's been no change in our strategy on mortgages. What we are seeing clearly is the fact that we have a very broad presence throughout Spain and the fact that we can fund fixed rate mortgages for the long term as well as cross-sell is definitely a competitive advantage. We still think that given the competitiveness of this market, what we should be aiming is to maintain market share. It's nice to have a small few basis points growth, but that is really the factor.

Mortgage pricing is increasing in Spain. It is still obviously below the cost of funding at the same term if you don't include the associated profits from the cross-sell.

But if you include the associated profits, then the return is attractive enough. And over the longer term, obviously, you gain clients that tend to be quite positive. So not really any change. The press in Spain is very focused on what's happening here. I keep saying that we have very attractive rates. In fact, some of the lower rates in Europe, both floating and fixed rate mortgages. And obviously, that's positive for the economy. But at the same time, given the way, a, we're efficient as an industry and the way we price, including the cross-sell, this is also sensible growth for the industry.

In terms of how do we see the future, you've seen very strong residential mortgage market. I think it is likely to moderate its growth, at least looking at our own production levels, what we see for the second quarter is volumes that are below what we produced last year in terms of new production. That doesn't mean the stock of lending is going to come down. We'll keep growing, but we'll keep growing at, I think, a lower pace.

And this is about sort of the limitations we have in Spain in terms of building new houses that even though the new houses initiated new permits are close to 150,000. The reality is for the last figures alone, the new houses that were finished were only 83,000. So the timing is a long process for sort of land approvals and just the whole real estate process is not helping. So you're likely to have a slowdown in volumes there. Consumer is doing very, very well. You see this double-digit growth we had last year. Actually, we have even increased it in the first quarter, which is surprising. I think that double digits should come down to high single digit when you look at sort of likely moderation for the future.

But so far, what we see is very strong consumer behavior. Even the figures from GDP this quarter indicate precisely consumer sort of behavior being one of the forces that is driving the economy ahead. And clearly, there's room for more, even if we have to be cautious. And then business is, again, doing very well. We have the expectation to grow above nominal GDP growth, taking into account that some of this growth is also coming from our international branches where given our very small position, we also -- we tend to find good investment opportunities with great risk profiles that contribute positively to our return on equity. So that's the sense. Certainly, in this quarter, no change in strategy and more momentum than we would have expected given how intense in events the quarter was.

Maks, I touch on NII. Well, from here, we are expecting upside every quarter, I would say, we expect sequential positive evolution on NII quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year. I have to say for the foreseeable future, that goes into '26, '27 and also '28, honestly. So what's the combination of everything we have been talking about in the past. So it's -- well, better rates in this case, no longer rate cuts priced as it was the case earlier in the year.

Volumes, Gonzalo was commenting our views in terms of lending, but also on deposits is pretty a bit our view.

And what was a headwind, which was this negative repricing, that we still had that negative impact in the first quarter of this year that is ending. It's ending already in the second quarter. And as a consequence, what was a headwind becomes even a tailwind. So you should expect consecutive quarter-on-quarter positive evolution on NII. There is upside to '27 with the current market rates. So better rates is always a positive for us. We are guiding you with some sensitivities.

You know that the first year sensitivity is low because actually, the loan book is not repricing that much during the first year, but you have the full impact of higher rates in the second year, which actually coincides pretty much with 2027. The point is that I would like to flag is that the yield curve is not moving parallel. So there is a clear flattening of the yield curve in the sense that short-term rates are moving up much more than long-term rates. If you look at short-term rates year-to-date, maybe implicit for '27, maybe up by depending on the moment you look at it by like 40 basis points, 50 basis points but implicit rates for 29 are, let's say, almost flat versus year-end. So it's not a parallel move.

So the sensitivity in that case is slightly lower than what we are guiding because we are guiding for a parallel move. But in any case, the net impact is a positive one. So let's see how everything settles. It's important today also the bank ones from DCB in that sense and see at the end of the day what central banks end doing because what is being priced by the market is that central banks act, raise rates, contain inflation. As a result of that, long-term rates are not moving that much. So all that is having an impact.

And finally, although we are really upbeat on volumes and on lending, -- we have to see how the uncertainty in the Middle East ends impacting overall. So it's too early for us to give new guidance for 2027. But in any case, what I can confirm is that there is upside to current levels and more into 2028, if I have to say, because we start having already quite a good data or consensual data for '28. And on that front in '28 is where we see clear upside to current consensus. That is from my side. Thank you.

The next question comes from Alvaro Serrano of Morgan Stanley.

Maybe a couple of follow-ups really, just Javier, on the hedging while you're on the subject. You flagged that 7.5% sensitivity is still there, and I get that it's not a parallel movement. But if you look at the curves, there's 2, 3 hikes priced in depending on the day, which may or may not end up happening. So I kind of wonder why not sort of be a bit more sort of aggressive in locking some of that curve in considering your rate and quite high versus historical standards. It looks like you're underhedged.

Like I mean, I see that you've increased the swap book, but why not more? And is this something to do with the stickiness of the deposit growth you've seen lately? So comments around how much of that curve you can lock in and why you're not locking it in? And then the other question is more maybe for Gonzalo on the general environment.

I know your comments around sort of some seasoning of the growth in mortgages. But it's more broadly, I don't think anybody is that worried about asset quality in Spain given the war, but maybe activity levels could slow down. At what point do you think -- are you worried sentiment might deteriorate in some of the strong growth in corporate and international might slow down? -- or if at one point, you might decide to slow down that growth if uncertainty continues? Just color on that would be much appreciated.

Thank you, Alvaro. Maybe, Javier, do you want to.

Okay. Well, on hedging precisely what we have tried to do this quarter, as I was saying, to some extent, front-loading hedging that otherwise would have been done further down the road. We front-loaded it to -- by the end of March when precisely ECB was expected -- what was priced by the market, what ECB was expecting to price up to 3, 4x.

To what extent we can do even more is always an open question and intense debate in the ALCO committee. Keep in mind that while managing the sensitivity of a bank, you have to make always an assumption on which is going to be the behavior of customer deposits, okay? And well, although we have our models and back tested and so on, there is always a certain degree that if this time, something can be different. So what I mean by that is that it's extremely difficult to be fully hedged.

So if a bank says that it's fully hedged, well, you never know. So we have a natural tendency to keep positive sensitivity to rates just in case models are not exactly accurate -- and well, we will always retain a certain degree of positive sensitivity, as I say. But it's always a debate, Alvaro. So we think that we have done a lot this quarter, and let's see how things evolve.

Eventually, when the yield curve started to price one rate hike, it looked like it could be really a nice level, then you have 4 hikes priced. So it's always a little bit tricky in terms of market timing. But it's always we are thinking all the time about.

Yes, Alvaro, on the second point, obviously, we do not have the crystal ball at some point consumer confidence and business confidence may suffer as a result of what's going on in the world. That's a possibility. I would say if we move to a scenario in which consumer confidence is weaker, which has not happened and could have happened, but has not happened yet, clearly, then we actually could see an increase in the savings rate. And then that is not going to be necessarily negative for P&L.

So some impact the current situation has to have. But the fact that so far, we've seen really none and also the fact that over the last few years, we've been constantly surprised by the strength of the economy despite that, obviously, the more significant event was the Ukraine invasion. And we actually in Spain did very well, gives us some confidence. What's happening now in the electricity market in Spain is quite striking. If you look at the pool prices in March, you have Spain, Portugal and Finland at the very bottom and then sort of most of Continental European central economies, prices that are more than double the level in Spain. Obviously, it's also this depends on wind, sun hours, all that. But even if you look at extended periods, you see there is a very strong difference. And population continues to grow.

I see it's not easy to break this cycle. We have the risk if you look at 2, 3, 4 years that the cycle gradually sort of loses force and then we gradually convert to lower levels in GDP. But when you look at the next 12 months, barring a very serious environment outside, I think we are pretty confident. In fact, when you look at our expectation for this 3-year period, where we moved the 4% growth in business volume to 6%, given how well the 2025 and now the first quarter of 2026 have gone, really, there's an implicit slowing down of business volume growth in our targets. And in the current scenario, that kind of makes sense for us intuitively to say, well, all this cannot be positive.

But then when we look at the data quarter after quarter, we see that things are moving in the right direction. I still feel that we may have a few months ahead of us that will be tough. The situation for oil in the strait and how lengthy it is likely to be for the market to be normalized even if there is a satisfactory agreement, and that's not clear that there will be one in -- at least in the short term. So I think we are seeing some -- at least for some months, complex period.

The markets are kind of seeing through it, which is very helpful for AuM and commissions and all that and obviously, also for new inflows. We've seen our clients being very calm about events and knowing that what happened with the pandemic, what happened with Ukraine, what happened with the tariffs that sort of running away from the market at the wrong time is not a good thing to do.

So I think we're likely to be quite resilient even if there is a kind of more adverse scenario. What I was saying that Bank of Spain is bringing now growth to 2% GDP in an adverse scenario. I think that we may have some impact, but we would still be meeting our 6% guidance or revised guidance for this 3-year period. Having said that, again, I started where I go back to where I started. We don't have a crystal ball. We'll have to adapt the strategy if events suggest something different. And from an asset quality perspective, we're seeing no pressure. And again, with the low level of leverage of our clients and the relative insulation from what's going on, we're not expecting issues there. We are obviously now seeing NPLs falling much faster than what we expected. And April is no different. I wouldn't see a different second quarter on that front. So we'll see, but it looks pretty good.

Thank you, Alvaro. Operator, next question, please.

The next question comes from Ignacio Ulargui of BNP Paribas.

I have 2 questions, if I may. I mean one is on deposits and deposit costs. So when you look to the deposits, I have seen a very good growth in the quarter. Seasonally, Q-on-Q, you have grown noninterest-bearing deposits by around 1%, which I think is quite supportive. If you could elaborate a bit on what is behind that strategy so that we can just see that growth going forward, I think is crucial to the NII performance. And linked to that, I just wanted to get a bit of a sense if you have found any change in deposit -- in customer behavior in terms of deposit costs now that rates are looking to go up again, whether people is becoming more price sensitive on deposits? And then one clarification and being mindful that it is a very volatile line, but I saw a gain, losses and disposal of assets in the quarter. Looking to the quarterly report, it comes from real estate asset disposals. I mean how should we think about this line going forward?

Thank you, Ignacio. I'll just make a few comments and let Javier continue. But I will start with the latter. I was reading some of the comments this morning from the analyst community kind of typical, okay, up beat, but it's low quality because revenues or NII offset by fees, services, et cetera. And the bid is low quality, which I perfectly understand. That's the usual analysis that one would do. This particular line is associated to our disposals of real estate assets. It's not a transaction or a big transaction. It's very granular, and it is a consequence of a very strong real estate market, which given the imbalance between supply and demand is not going to change. So you're seeing here a line that traditionally resulted in bad news is going to be consistently resulting in moderate but good news, positive line.

So when one look at the quality versus low-quality bid, obviously, the low quality is usual because it's a one-off. This is below the line, but this is not a one-off. We're going to be having positive results quarter after quarter, I would say, with maybe some ups and downs. But clearly, results that are positive from real estate sales margin that we had this quarter was around 40%. It's not that we're selling just a bit above the market prices in our books. It's a very significant change in the real estate market dynamics. So this is, to me, a high-quality good news because this is not going to be a volatile negative line that is occasionally positive, but it's going to be positive in a consistent manner.

So I wanted to make that comment because it's -- I think it's relevant -- very relevant question and a point. In terms of deposits, there's not much change, and we're very happy with our performance, I would say. But Javier, I'm sure you would be able to elaborate much better.

Indeed. So yes, we are happy and the mix also. And the remarkable precisely what you said, the good performance of noninterest-bearing deposits. What is behind that is more of the same actually. So we are operating in a growing market. So we are gaining clients. So we are gaining payrolls. Employment is growing. So our market share is huge in the payroll market. So it's basically more of the same, more operational balances, deposits are growing because also the economy is growing. So in nominal GDP terms, so deposits should be growing in line with that. So -- and we are being able to capture that part of the business. So as you saw in the presentation, year-on-year, noninterest-bearing up by 6%. We think that this trend, this is the direction of travel.

I will not pre-commit with a specific figure here, but it's clear that we are expecting the noninterest-bearing part to keep growing steadily. You know that the second quarter is a very important quarter with a strong positive seasonality. We expect that this year will be the same. So we have big expectations on that front also. So hence, for the third and fourth quarter, you will have the retained balances from those big inflows we have usually during the second quarter. On the interest-bearing part, you can see that the time deposit -- say, retail time deposits because time deposits are only retail. You know that basically SMEs and corporates, the interest-bearing deposits are current accounts that are indexed almost a major part to the overnight rate with a margin, but to the overnight rate.

Hence, no impact so far from higher market rates because this is linked to the overnight and the overnight has not moved at all. On time deposits for retail, it's true that, let's say, 12-month rates are already higher. So we may have some slight increase on that part. Remember that last quarter, Matthias gave you a guidance for our -- the cost of our deposits in the mid-40s. So obviously, with higher rate, maybe we are -- for sure, if those hikes crystallize, we will have a higher cost of deposits, but obviously, will be compensated or more than compensated for sure on the asset side. But the situation is calm, I have to say. So no tensions at all. Everyone is being very rational. So no tensions on any single player. So we're happy with the way we are managing that.

And also there is a new cycle ahead. So we thought that, that would take more time, but now we are facing a new rate cycle. And our assumption is that the performance of our deposit base is going to be in line with the performance we had on the previous cycle. And those are the assumptions we are making in terms of deposit betas, et cetera, back to all that discussion. So this is how we are confronting this new situation.

The next question comes from Sofie Peterzens with Goldman Sachs.

Here is Sofie from Goldman Sachs. So my first question would be how we should think about kind of cost growth beyond 2026? I understand there might be some wage negotiations and inflation is picking up. So how do you think about like salary growth beyond '26 in '27, '28? And then my second question is that when I look on Slide 30, I see that the international branches start to be a quite meaningful part of your loan book, almost 10% and the growth there is very high at 27% year-on-year. Could you just talk us through what international CIB branches include in which countries are you present? And how do you see growth in this division going forward?

Thank you -- thank you, Sofie. In terms of your first question, you're right that obviously, inflation has become now a number that is obviously going to go up in the short term. It's not clear up to what level. I guess that's what ECB and many others are trying to second guess. Future markets indicate 3.2% on average for the next 2 years. We'll see because, obviously, also this was 2.8% a week ago, and that's -- but there is obviously a different inflation rate that to what extent this sort of leads into wage inflation or not is precisely what the ECB, as you know, is trying to avoid Spain has, for some years, reduced the indexation of wages to inflation is less common.

The wage growth, in fact, has moderated recently. Currently, it's around 2.7%. But there is obviously here uncertainty, and I think it's very early to say how negotiations that for us will start next year, most likely, affecting 2027 and onwards will evolve. It's also something that typically, we've maintained for ourselves for obvious reasons. But you're right, to point that same happened at the time of Ukraine that inflation is going to have some impact generally for companies, corporates, financial institutions, everyone, and we'll have to see how that develops. And then on CIB, we have basically 4 very large markets in which we operate in Europe is France, Germany, Italy and the U.K. with 4 large branches in Paris, Milan, Frankfurt and London. Then we have a significant and a fairly attractive presence in Warsaw, in Poland. In fact, we started there earlier.

All in all, we now have outstanding that are over EUR 35 billion currently. It is true that it's growing -- it has grown fast because we basically started -- actually we started now 12 years ago with converting -- we had rep offices and we start converting them into branches. We decided that we would do it very slowly because my experience is that when people expand outside of our markets, they tend to run risks that they are just not fully aware of. And this has been the result again of 12 years as branches and then obviously gradually in different countries. The exposure is almost all of it investment grade.

So we have refrained from going down the investment rating spectrum because we obviously feel that we do not have the necessary sort of investment focus of long-term competing SMEs and other types of high-yield market in other countries. But most of the clients we're banking with our clients that we knew because they were banking with us in Spain, because they had subsidiaries in Spain or because they are subsidiaries of Spanish companies. So this is something that has been actually very low risk for us. NPLs have been consistently at near 0. And what we have now is a clear mandate is not to necessarily grow the business, but to continue to increase the profitability of the business. It's already obviously double digit in terms of return on tangible equity and adding to what we do, but we're expanding the number of products and services to this corporation.

Still, we are the sixth largest bank in Europe by market cap and people call on us. And when we call on someone, they open the door because we are on a relative basis, sort of small and we have this great sort of funding franchise, we actually become competitive and very quickly. And hence, this is a nice sort of complement to our business longer term, you'll see. But obviously, we continue to move towards European Union in reality, the same way we say we're not seeing value on acquisitions. We see clear value in being a corporate bank in the Eurozone given our size and our opportunities. And the way to do this rather than making an acquisition one day, we think it's been building our business gradually organically without any rush, but sustainably. And that's what we do.

We're very happy, and we'll keep -- I think we'll keep providing good news on this front. But again, the emphasis is not growing at all costs. The emphasis is continue to building a reasonable business completely connected with our CIB franchise. So this -- when we see -- we talk about Germany, to me, it's part of a business where there's a branch in Madrid and Barcelona and Germany and Milan and Frankfurt -- sorry, Frankfurt and Paris. It is just part of the same business and managed in that way.

Thank you, Sofie. Operator, the next question please.

The next question comes from Miruna Chirea of Jefferies.

First, I have one on the outlook for deposits in Spain. I appreciate your comments that the situation in Iran has a very limited direct impact on the Iberian economies. But given the higher uncertainty backdrop we are in, do you think there is upside to deposit growth as households increase their savings rate in Spain? And another one related to this, if we are in the situation in which we do get a hike from the ECB, what would be your best guess of deposit betas on any upcoming hikes? And then just a quick follow-up on mortgages. Are there any metrics that maybe you could share with us just to get a better sense of how much cross-selling of insurance, mutual funds and so you are doing on to your new mortgage customers?

I think one of your peers was reporting, for example, the average number of customers per -- the average number of products per customers. So anything along those lines, I think, would be helpful.

Thank you. I'd say on the latter point, the -- generally, what we offer our clients is up to 1% of the rebate in their mortgage rates depending on the products that they buy from us. And this is contractual. So if at some point, they cancel, then the rate goes up. So I think that's something that is working very well for us. Now not the same, I think, ability for some others to compete in this market. But obviously, I'll let Javier elaborate on this and the other questions.

Well, yes, on that one, you saw our protection insurance performance up by more than 13% year-on-year. So on that front, obviously, the new mortgage origination, new mortgage production is having a positive impact for sure. So we have commented that. Maybe we can be more specific on -- but more than also how many products per client -- this is not like -- because on the selling process, we don't set specific targets for that. So at the end of the day, it's more about building the relationship with the client. And over time, we get the penetration. Remember back when we were talking about revenue synergies coming from former Bankia clients that were not that engaged on protection or wealth management, et cetera.

So it's more a gradual process. So it's not like saying, okay, a mortgage automatically results into cross-selling, which it is because as Gonzalo was saying, there is a rebate on yields from that. But then you establish a relationship and beyond the initial rebate on the yield, you start building that relationship and getting more traction. So what this is -- this is the way we work. And everything starts not on the mortgage many times, but on the payroll being for us, the anchor product, the way we have to acquire the client. Then from there, we get the mortgage, we get the consumer loan, we get the protection services, et cetera.

Back to your point on deposits, if there is upside in case of an increased uncertainty, well, what we don't see is a transfer from AUMs to deposits. What happens usually is that those clients that look for, let's say, a lower risk profile on their portfolios, what they do is move from, let's say, equities to money markets, et cetera, but not to deposits because -- you know that in Spain, if you convert into cash your AUMs, you have to pay taxes for any unrealized profit you have done since the very beginning. So whilst you move your asset allocation within the AUM universe, then you don't pay those taxes for unrealized profit. So we don't see upside from that.

In case -- every time we have had strong market impacts, what has happened is that we face some slowdown of inflows. And during that short period of time, we may have some upside or uptick in terms of deposits. But honestly, not that material. And once things tend to normalize, everything settles. So I will not say that we are not considering actually on our forecast any upside on deposits coming from that angle you mentioned. In terms of deposit betas, I answered to a previous question that we are working with the same assumptions because it's the most recent back testing you can conduct of the last rate cycle. And we are considering deposit betas in the very low 20s and so that's basically what is behind our assumptions. And every time may be different, maybe even better than that or who knows.

But as a starting point and as a way to calculate our sensitivities back to our previous answer to Alvaro is this deposit beta. Thank you, Miruna.

And if I -- Miruna, sorry, because as Javier was answering, I realize that you had asked about these sort of products per client and just trying to make some comparison. My experience honest from the outside and then both from the inside is these numbers are not really easy to compare. When we look at how banks define clients, there's a very different definition because not everybody that has an account with us is a client. They need to meet certain minimum activity or balance levels. And then similar thing applies to what's a product. And there's -- so then you can get into a product per client that is very different if you compare across institutions. We have more emphasis on looking at when we know what we sell, we sell payrolls and obviously, our associated payrolls is the deposit and activity. What we sell is payments, cards, what we sell is insurance and funds.

And then when you look at the market shares that we have in these products, and you see market share in insurance that is -- if it's life risk is -- you need to add in the next 5 or 6 to get to our level altogether to get to our level. If it is health, we're by far the leader. And when you look at the bancassurance, we are much ahead in auto, in household across everything. So that obviously means that we're cross-selling more to clients and that our products per client are clearly above the average of our peers. But when you look at numbers, it's very arbitrary how you define the 2. So that's why we don't use it that actively for external purposes, even if, obviously, we keep track internally to -- of our own definition.

Thank you, Miruna. Operator, next question please.

The next question comes from Marta Sánchez Romero with JPMorgan.

My first question is a follow-up on deposits. So growth is running at 5% year-on-year, which is in line with your guidance, but it's below the 6% we saw for the system as of February. And it's behind what we've seen for your large domestic competitors. Could you break down that performance across retail, corporate and public sector? And where specifically do you think you're losing ground? Related to this, on payrolls, your market share looks stable year-on-year, but one major competitor has launched an aggressive mass market campaign. Are you seeing any early pressure on new payroll captures? And my second question is on costs. We've seen a few banks in Spain launching voluntary redundancy schemes. Is that something you contemplate? One of your peers today was mentioning a 3-year payback. Where do you think yours would be today?

Thank you, Marta. On the second point, no, we're not contemplating voluntary redundancy schemes. We're adding people to our network, and we feel that we're going to keep growing the business. And I will not comment on payback, but something that is not on the cards. On deposit, we may have to sort of double check the numbers because I think we certainly see in terms of payrolls, gaining market share, not just -- not maintaining, gaining market share. The year-on-year for us is 22 basis points. We have a pretty good sense. Obviously, the market has been very competitive now for some years. There was some time when only a couple of institutions during the crisis were pushing for payrolls because rates were negative, and that had a cost by itself.

But we knew that it was an anchor product for many other things, and that's why we have the 36% market share that we have today. A lot of this, I have to say, is also associated with our capillarity, our retail presence. We have 4,200 points of sale in Spain, and that makes a big difference. I know that often you look -- not you personally, but the market looks at it as could we operate with fewer branches. And we always said we could, but it wouldn't make sense because the branches are very profitable. My experience from talking to some of the large U.S. banks there is a huge difference in capturing payrolls when you have a very large retail presence.

You capture more and you capture sort of noninterest-bearing deposits. And that is clearly what's happening to us. And even if our peers are very good peers and competitors, they have less than half the branches than we do. And that makes a big difference. Obviously, at the same time, we have top of mind in terms of brand awareness for many people that come into Spain. Actually, we are a natural bank to go. So there are many reasons where we're doing well. And I think we'll continue to do well. Obviously, market is going to be competitive and will make our job tough. And -- but it's tough today. I am not particularly concerned about that one. But our deposit evolution has been pretty good, I think. Javier?

Indeed, and Marta, what I think that here, the key is the mix between interest-bearing and noninterest-bearing. And to a previous question is what I answered. So noninterest-bearing up by 6% year-on-year every single quarter in the last 12 months or 4 quarters. And well, I mentioned, I think, in the presentation that we have had some outflows from the public sector this first quarter of the year. But basically, because it's always more volatile and they have their own schedule in terms of what they collect from taxes, whatever payments, investments. So we would not read too much. Honestly, to grow in deposits paying 12-month LIBOR or the overnight rate is very easy. The key is to grow with the adequate mix, which is I think that what we are doing. But honestly, we don't think that we have any weakness on that front.

So we are quite upbeat on future evolution. The situation is very calm. We are rolling over our time deposits at a very nice yield versus market rates. So not seeing much competitive pressure, honestly. So everything is very clear for us. No problems.

You should know, Marta, and with wholesale clients, Obviously, we tend to be the bank that not -- or let's put it another way, we are not the bank that pays most for deposits because we have a liquidity when we're talking about wholesale, our liquidity situation is affects particularly the public sector, which is the reason why you may see a difference this quarter. The numbers we have for private sector deposits and for nonrated deposits indicate a very good absolute and relative performance versus others. And obviously, you need to see it in a sustained basis, but we see no reason why that would change going forward.

Thank you, Marta. Operator, next question please.

The next question comes from Francisco Riquel with Alantra.

My first question is on revenues from services, which are growing 7.5% in the Q1. And I wonder if you see upside risk to the mid-single-digit growth guidance. You have commented on wealth management market impacts recovered already in April, steady inflows, insurance also growing double digits, banking fees resilient. So if you can please elaborate on these revenues from services and the guidance. And my second question is on the -- to the ROTE guidance. I understand on the core headlines remain unchanged. So it should be taxes. So if you can please comment on the tax rate, DTA write-ups and how sustainable is that going forward?

Okay. Paco, I think on the second point, it's not just taxes. One of the lines that I mentioned before was precisely results on real estate sales with clearly indicating better numbers than what we had anticipated. And I think given the turn in the real estate market, this is pretty sustainable. But Javier, please.

Yes. Back to services, yes, good performance. And as I was mentioning during the presentation, 70% of the revenues coming from wealth, protection and CIB. And this is growing more than 12% year-on-year. So really happy to see that. AUMs with the strong recovery in April, we are back to a situation that is more normalized with the uncertainty that all of us we know on that front on markets, but quite resilient so far. So our guidance here is to expect to be somewhere between mid- and high single-digit growth on that line, skewed towards the higher end if markets performed, I would say, in a stable manner. So I think that's the guidance. We are expecting inflows in line with last year. So that's the summary.

In terms of protection, we are doing pretty well. I said before also that it was mainly on Life and Health. Good cross-selling coming from new mortgage origination. I think that on that front, we may be between high single digit and even double digit. But let's see. This is -- the good news is that here, we don't depend much on markets, actually nothing. And we are quite a bit on that P&L line. Volumes are doing pretty well, and we have been gaining traction since several quarters, as you know. And then, well, banking fees, it's always the same story. So it's about the deflationary pressure, generally speaking, on low added value fees. We started with maintenance fees. Now you have pressure also on transfer.

You have instant transfers that have to be made with a low fee like a normal transfer previously. So all that is having a kind of deflationary pressure. That is being, to some extent, compensated by better volumes, but the pressure in terms of margins is still there. But the good news is that 70% of that pool of service revenues is growing over double digit. And hence, we are doing pretty well. So that's the message. As always, a bit on AUMs and wealth and protection and CIB being more and more stable and recurrent. What has been commented before to a previous question about our international branches also is adding to this over time to this steady pace of revenues on fee revenues from CIB also as from, let's say, the initial lending, you start to obtain additional business.

So that's the story. Is there upside or not? Maybe, but it's too early to give you formal guidance honestly Paco, considering all the uncertainties we still face in the year, mainly coming from the market evolution.

Thank you, Paco. Operator, the next question please.

The next question comes from Andrea Filtri with Mediobanca.

Actually, following up from Paco. What is driving the ROTE upgrade? Is it higher profits or lower tangible equity? And on the higher profit, if you could detail a bit more. And can you guide us a bit more accurately on tax rate expected for 2026?

Yes. Sorry because, Paco, I missed the answer on taxes. We have -- well, basically, Andrea, it's part of your question also. So we -- the write-up from DTA has been EUR 135 million. And we think that this figure can be the max you can expect every quarter. So it's going to be higher than last year. So you are right. Why? Because, well, I made also a comment about 2028 NII that where we see upside -- clear upside to consensus. We are incorporating to our recovery model on DPAs, the long-term projections for the bank, and those are becoming better and better. So the recovery pace of off-balance sheet DDAs increases. So this is why we have some step-up on that -- from that front. So I think that EUR 135 million is what you can expect max. It can be a little bit below that some quarters.

But in any case, it's going to be higher than last year. And as for the return on tangible equity question, the improvement is -- well, Gonzalo mentioned the, let's say, gains and losses and the real estate behind that. You have taxes. We have quite a good feeling in terms of cost of risk, and we see volumes doing well. So to some extent, it's not only specifically some lines. But the general feeling that everything is doing fine and there may be upside here and there. And as a consequence, it is why we upgrade our ROTE to over 18%.

Thank you, Andrea. Operator, next question please.

The next question comes from Cecilia Romero with Barclays.

I have 3 follow-ups. First on NII sensitivity. You were saying that given flattening of the yield curve, the NII sensitivity to a parallel move of the curve could be lower than what you guide and I understand your sensitivity is still 7.5% at year 2. But wouldn't you also see now better upside on your outcome activities given that government bond yields are higher versus last year-end? And my second one is cost. You were mentioning that renegotiation of wages if the environment continues to be what is like today in 2027 could bring some more cost inflation given the backdrop. You had also mentioned to us in the past that your IP and artificial intelligence investments of the last year will start having a positive impact on efficiency from 2027.

So wouldn't you say that there are levers to compensate for higher cost pressure? And then finally, on provisions, Spain is holding up very well and growth expectations still look resilient, but obviously, the situation is very fluid. If the Spain's macro outlook were to deteriorate, could you outline how will it flow through your provisioning model, how quickly it will impact provisioning and how severe a deterioration will need to be before you reconsider your cost of risk targets of less than 25 basis points on average, also considering that you have unassigned collective provisions of around EUR 300 million.

Thank you, Cecilia. I'll answer and try to go fast because we're running out of time otherwise. But basically, on cost, you're right that we expect savings associated to the investments that we are making. So of course, there are levers. We'll have to eventually look at how the whole thing adds up. But certainly, we will be doing those and traditional sort of efficiencies to offset other inflation and cost pressures that we are -- we may have absolutely.

Well, on NII sensitivity, yes, long-term rates have also moved up. And obviously, we are taking advantage of that in terms of ALCO management, but by a lesser extent than short-term rates. So short-term rates have moved like 40, 50 basis points, long-term rates have moved by 10 or less than 20. So this is why the sensitivity is lower because on -- when you model the sensitivity, the new production at fixed rate being mortgages or ALCO is not having the same positive impact in the future than what is priced at the short end of the yield curve. And this is why you don't benefit fully from that increase in the yield curve because there is part of the new production that is having a lower positive impact.

And this is why the sensitivity is a little bit smaller, but it's not much. So in any case, it's a net positive for the bank for sure. In terms of IFRS 9 models, we have to make a decision on that. In any case, the worst scenario is massively better than the scenario that we are managing for this Middle East situation. Maybe we have some changes in terms of weighting. We have to make a decision on that. Obviously, the guidance we have given to you is already considering any potential change we can do. Keep in mind also that the new inputs for the model is not only GDP, it's also recent history of performance, which is extremely positive. And there is another leg that is also very important, which is the performance of the real estate market in the terms of the impact that this has on value of collateral and as a consequence on provisions.

And the real estate market is also doing very well. I say that because it's not only one thing. It's history, it's real estate and obviously, macro that we have to -- in the next few weeks, we have to make a decision. But in any case, in any of the scenarios that we are thinking about, our guidance is under any kind of pressure.

Thank you, Cecilia. Next question, operator, please.

The next question comes from Britta Schmidt of Autonomous Research.

I just wanted to follow up on your 2028 outlook. You say you see clear upside to the consensus, which already bakes in 6% growth versus 2027. And we've just discussed the curve outlook and for 2028, the short-term rates don't look that different from previous assumptions. So could you let us know what is driving your more positive view or what is driving your more positive view versus consensus, but probably also your own plan given your comments regarding the deferred tax loss carryforwards?

Well, it's simple. It's more of the same. So it's a compounded effect of volumes and our internal assumptions on volumes and on lending, but also on deposits and interest-bearing deposits. And remember that we constantly have the tailwind from ALCO maturities that are going to be rolled over at a better yield, and this is constantly adding. Remember that from '26 and trying to put things simple because you can make this very complex, but I think that the best way to simplify is we have combined hedges and fixed income, EUR 26 billion and EUR 28 billion that are maturing and are being rolled over. The average yield of those EUR 28 billion is 0.55%. This is going to be rolled over at rates, let's say, between 2.5% and 3%. So the annualized impact of that rollover exceeds EUR 100 million annualized. So this is not happening day 1, but I mean that by 2028, you are going to have the full impact of that.

And then you still have the impact from maturities that you have in 2028. You have I think it's in Page 27 this quarter, a lot of detailed information. So that constant tailwind from legacy ALCO is going to be there. And that's why according to our internal projection and the assumptions we are making on deposit betas that I commented previously, we see a clear upside to the current consensus. So that's our -- my message.

Thank you, Britta. Operator next question please.

The next question comes from Borja Ramirez with Citi.

First, a follow-up on deposits. It's great to see the decline in cost of deposits and also the strong deposit growth. And this is despite some competitors that are showing increased focus on digital account deposits. I would like to ask if this is related to your digital offering.

Borja, we cannot hear you properly. So we cannot understand your question. I think it's something about deposits, but.

Can you hear me better now?

A lot of echo and resonance. I don't know what it is.

Can you hear me better now?

A little bit better, yes. Let's try.

Apologies. So basically, what are the competitive advantages of compared to the other neobanks. I think you're seeing very strong trends in deposit.

Okay. So you are talking about the -- if we understand the advantages we have versus other neobanks in terms of deposits, is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

Well, if I may, I think imagin is very different from neobanks because trying to match or do better in terms of the digital offering that it has, but it combines it with a real bank behind. And we find that our customers love the fact that even if they do not ever visit a branch, everybody knows that Imagin is part of CaixaBank. That obviously is a very strong message in terms of how confident you are to trust your money to someone else. And they also know that through Imagin, they can get a full banking offering so that you can have Imagin as your primary bank and don't need anything else. That's not typically what you see with the other new banks and particularly even if you can -- you kind of not necessarily trust the same sort of solvency and stability and confidence that a brand name like CaixaBank brings.

But then obviously, having the ability to -- our imagin clients can go into a branch, can chat with someone, the top level have relationship agents. And when we call them, they love it even if they don't use it. And at some point, they do use it. And then obviously, we think we're a fresh offering. We have obviously the fact that we know very well the market. We can go to universities and other places where we can actually have the right employee support and school, university, et cetera, to gain clients. So it's -- and then very often, it's a parent company -- not parent company. The parents that would come to the branch and would want their son or daughter to open an account or they did open it when they were kids and they want to activate it. So it's -- we're kind of family bank.

Every client of CaixaBank has someone that is a target for imagin. They are happy. We'll ask clients for how about your sons and your daughters. Do they have a bank account or bring them in. We can facilitate things. Then they will operate online. But let's not forget that we have these 4,200 points of service, and they have great tools to acquire clients in Imagin as well.

Thank you, Borja. That's all we have time for today. So thank you all for joining us another quarter, and have a wonderful long weekend, everybody. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Bye-bye.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, welcome on my behalf and on behalf of the Board to this Annual General Meeting of CaixaBank that we are holding in the Valencia conference call. First of all, I would like to say thank you to all of you who are participating here on site, those of you who are following us remotely and those who are following us in our website. In compliance with the regulation of our society and the regulation of the Board of CaixaBank, the Board has agreed in remote assistance also with remote connection and live. So every shareholder can use all their rights remotely. And there is -- all the procedures are already in the notice and the call of this meeting. Furthermore, all the shareholders have been able to have access to information to proxy voting and voting by the remote access before this meeting.

I want to say that Bureau Veritas has audited and certified this meeting as a sustainable event. You can see the report on our corporate website in the tab for the meeting for 2026. This meeting has been convened to approve, if so, all the annual balance for 2025 and all the proposals which are in the agenda. our Secretary will give you the data regarding the notice and call for this meeting and the attendance figures. Good morning, dear shareholders. The committee of this Board was published on the 22nd of February 2026 in the website of the Spanish Stockholm Commission in some -- in 2 newspapers like Laguardia. Since then, we have been publishing all the information regarding this meeting in the website, in our website as following the Spanish corporate law. As well, all the shareholders can have been able to ask to receive all the information at their home.

Let me inform you to all of those who are following us on site, you will find QR codes that will ask allow you to access all the information and documentation that is published in our website for this meeting. Anyway, we also have some copies of those documents here on site. Let me take this moment to tell you that all the shareholders and the shareholders representatives, both here on site and online will have the possibility to speak. They will have to ask for the Q&A turn. Those shareholders and proxy can go to the table, which is identified as a list of intervention, which is at the back of the room. There, you can give them your personal data and you can ask to intervene later on.

If you want for your intervention to be record in the meeting, you will have to say it specifically, and you can take that to the notary so he can check everything during the Q&A session. Let me remind all the shareholders that the time of the intervention will be 5 minutes as it is as per the regulations of this meeting. As we already said when we made the notice of this meeting, we are going to broadcast live all this meeting. So your image and your voice might be recorded. If you don't want to authorize for your image or your voice to be broadcast live, you have to say it on the table with the list of intervention, so they -- your image and your voice won't be broadcasted. If any of the people attending would need help with moving around the room or if they need help to reach the mic, please do tell the people who are helping us because they will give you a mic.

On the other hand, I would like to remind the shareholders and the representatives that are participating online that they have to follow the procedure for the online intervention. You will find the instructions in the platform for interventions. As you have there in all the instructions for remote participation, which was approved by the Board, and it is published. You can -- your writing have to have a maximum of 7, characters and then you can only submit one writing sheet. Then this is more or less the equivalent to the intervention of those who are present here of 5 minutes. Those who are connected through the platform and if they want for the interventions to be on the record, they will have to say that. All the requests for information on both remotely and on site will be will be answered during this meeting or during the 7 days following this meeting. Regarding votes. So we have votes in favor, those -- all of those who will be here, whether on-site or online and that they do not vote against.

So those shareholders and representatives of shareholders who are on site and want to vote against one or several of the items of the agenda will have to go to the voting tables at the back of the room, and they will have to give them their cards. So their votes can be counted. They can do that until the end of the voting of the proposals. I really urge all the shareholders who are with us remotely today when they want to vote to the proposals, please do so with the link that we have provided to you and you can do that until the end of the voting of the proposals.

After reading all the proposals and when we say that the voting is over, the President will declare if the agreements have been -- the proposals have been approved or not. And then it would give you the results. But the number -- the precise number of votes will be set after -- and it will be published on our website. Those shareholders or representative of shareholders who have done the accreditation here on site or remotely online, if you have a vote during the -- if you haven't voted, if you leave and you haven't voted, your vote will be considered in favor, you can inform if you don't want this to happen, you can inform their table or in the platform saying that you don't want to vote to be considered like that.

Let me remind you that once you have left the meeting, we cannot make a new register. Before reading the attendance figures, if, for instance, we have a breakdown in the remote connection, we will stop and then we will wait until we reanuate the services. And also as soon as possible, we would publish in our website, in CaixaBank website, we'll tell you about that everything is working again okay.

Following the last provisional data that we have right now at the beginning of the meeting, we have the attendance data corresponding to all the shareholders or those representing shareholders, both on-site and online, all of them and even those who vote before the meeting.

So 14,817 on site, representing 51% of share capital and 68,036 shareholders represented, which is 33.6% of the share capital. All in all, we have a number of [ 82,853,25,890 million shares ]. So seeing that there's this Board is validly convened in the second call following the regulation of our company, the regulation of the General Meeting of Shareholders and the regulation of the Spanish society law. All of that, of course, we will publish the detailed data during the 5 days after the meeting, and this will be published in our website. And it will be on the records.

Following the regulation of this general meeting, let me inform you that the Board of this meeting is comprised of me as the President of the Board and Mr. Óscar Calderón de Oya, Secretary of the Board, who will be acting as President and Secretary of the Board. As well, we have all the members of the Board attending this meeting. We also have the first Vice Secretary of the Board.

As you could see in the notice of call of this general meeting and following the Spanish Society Act and the regulation of this General Meeting of Shareholders, we have required to have present a notary in order to write the minutes of this meeting. Our notary today from Valencia will be Don Alfonso Maldonado Rubio. You have the floor. Following all the current regulation, I ask if any of the shareholders have any claims or reserves regarding the validly convenience of this meeting or the number of shareholders or the capital which is present today. If any shareholder would like to make a complaint or a reserve about all this data, please do that in writing and send an e-mail to [indiscernible]@caixabank.com. So it will be included in the minutes. It will be on the records. Any shareholder which is on site can go to the table with its mark notary at the back of the room. Thank you very much, dear notary.

Now I'm going to [indiscernible] of our report.

Good morning once again, ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, First and foremost, let me thank you once again for attending this Annual General Meeting. This will be my second AGM as Chairman of CaixaBank. And once again, I feel the same honor and same sense of responsibility as last year. It is a genuine privilege to be here again and to do so surrounded by our bank's magnificent Board of Directors. I would like to thank Amparo Moraleda personally for the extraordinary work she's carried out over these 12 years as an independent director, especially as Vice Chair during this past year. Amparo, you have shown immense professionalism in fulfilling your duties and have made a consistently outstanding contribution. Thank you very much for your dedication.

Allow me to underline once again, as I did last year, the importance of the Annual General Meeting in the bank's corporate calendar. As the most significant event for any listed company, it was truly gratifying to see the improvement in participation figures that we achieved at the 2025 AGM. We reached a quorum of more than 82% and a record level of participation, allowing us to donate more than EUR 383,000 to the [ red corors ] to alleviate the effects of the flash floods. And as we know, all of the affected areas are still struggling to recover from the natural disaster. So we are once again promoting a new solidarity initiative to support those in need.

For every shareholder who takes part in this Annual General Meeting, CaixaBank will donate EUR 3 to save the children project to support families and to promote children's well-being in the affected areas. Thank you very much in advance.

I'm proud to be able to say that here, CaixaBank was once again a leader in 2025 with a robust, profitable and socially committed banking model, a leadership built on our outstanding results, but also and above all, on a different approach to banking, close to customers, value-driven and focus on the long term.

Allow me to thank and acknowledge the hard work and dedication shown by our CEO, Gonzalo Gortazar, as well as all the entire management team he leads. 2025 has turned out to be another historic year for CaixaBank, and our outstanding results are the end product of the work, engagement and management capabilities. Our model inspires, innovates and place commitment at the heart of everything we do as we work to make our values a reality, quality, trust and social commitment. Over the next few minutes, I will share with you my view of our bank, both for the present and the future. After my address, our CEO will give you a more detailed account of the key factors behind the 2025 results and the outlook for our current strategic plan.

I'll begin by reviewing the past financial year. We have begun the first year of the current strategic plan in a brilliant fashion by further improving our positioning. The main indicators clearly show that we are executing our strategy and comfortably exceeding the targets we set. Thank you to 3 main drivers: first, positive momentum in lending, growth in funds under management, both in deposits and wealth management and also protection products; and lastly, the reduction of nonperforming loans and our capacity to generate capital and liquidity.

It's worth repeating that this growth has once again been possible, thanks to our ability to understand people's needs. In total, we now serve more than 20 million customers, a figure that it is both an immense source of pride and also great responsibility. Our universal banking model makes CaixaBank a benchmark in Spain and also in Portugal. BPI is a key part of our project. Its full integration within the group significantly strengthens our position as the leading financial institution in the Iberian Peninsula.

Also happen to be the leading institution in banking and insurance solutions, and this is only possible with a model that is close to customers and specialized that leaves no one behind. Whether you live in a large city or in a rural area on the mainland or abroad, you will find us there. Whether you're an individual retail customer, self-employed, an SME or a multinational company, we also have the solutions that you need. We're proud to have the broadest capillarity across the country.

What's more, our multichannel distribution model is underpinned by an in-depth knowledge of the customer. We possess cutting-edge technology and analytical capabilities, the best rated app in the country, CaixaBank now, and innovative and compelling value propositions in consumer finance and investment, insurance and savings management. Banks need to earn the trust of customers and markets and the best way to achieve this is by offering a long-term customer relationship model with a suite of solutions covering the entire life cycle from Imagine, which already has almost 4 million digital customers and in the bank chosen by the largest number of young people in our country to serving more than 40% of people aged over 65, another of our top priorities that has been in our DNA since day 1.

And let us not forget that at CaixaBank, we work day in, day out to make our third value a reality, social commitment, a value rooted in our essence and the one that truly defines us. This social commitment has taking shape in the realm of financial and social inclusion and in other areas with a positive social impact. More than 1.8 million people benefited from an inclusive solution promoted by the group. By providing access to financial services across all types of communities, especially in smaller and rural areas, CaixaBank serves 92% of the population.

We stand alongside the most vulnerable customers such as through basic payment and social inclusion accounts. We offer groundbreaking solutions for longevity, currently one of the greatest challenges facing our society. Through micro bank, we are European leaders in micro credits with EUR 2.44 billion granted in 2025, 18% more than in 2024. It is a key player in promoting employability and entrepreneurship.

We also promote education and financial literacy. CaixaBank Dualiza supports dual vocational training. We also run multiple training programs aimed at young people, entrepreneurs, older people and even for all of you, our shareholders through the ALA program. And special mention goes to CaixaBank volunteering program, the largest corporate volunteering network in Spain, reaching out to more than 750,000 beneficiaries through decentralized action and in close collaboration with La Caixa Foundation.

We've been recognized by Global Finance as the world's best bank for supporting society and as the first financial institution to certify its social action model and commitment to older people with iron ore. These accolades go to show that our social commitment is more than just words. They are real, measurable and transformative actions, demonstrating that our commitment to society is reflected in everything we do.

An outstanding 2025 in which we were once again a key player supporting the Spanish economy and society. But above all, we are satisfied to have created value for our shareholders, for all of you. First of all, I would like to point out the strong performance of the CaixaBank share throughout 2025, which nearly which had a significant evolution, nearly doubling its value from EUR 5.24 to EUR 10.45 as of 31st December. CaixaBank's value rose by 99.5% compared with 80% for the Eurostoxx Banks and 49% for the Ibex 35, thus comfortably outperforming both benchmarks. This signals the market confidence and recognition of the bank's strategy and the way this bank is managed.

Furthermore, CaixaBank climbed to sixth position in the Eurostoxx Bank's market capitalization ranking. These compelling results, coupled with our strong capital position have led to the Board of Directors to propose to this AGM the distribution of a gross cash dividend of 2025 of EUR 0.3321 per share. This is due to be paid on April 9, assuming you approve it. This supplementary dividend when added to the interim dividend already paid in November 2025 of EUR 0.1679 per share would bring the total cash dividend for 2025 to EUR 0.50 gross per share, 15% more than in the previous year and equivalent to 59.4% of 2025 consolidated net profit.

It would therefore be at the upper end of the cash payout range of between 50% and 60% envisaged in our dividend plan. In total, the cash dividend payout for the year 2025 would reach an estimated figure of -- sorry, EUR 3,499 billion, more than EUR 400 million above the figure in 2024. Meanwhile, during 2025, various share buyback programs were carried out. The sixth program was fully executed for EUR 500 million and the seventh is still underway for a further EUR 500 million.

In short, the financial strength we demonstrated in this first year of the strategic plan allows us to increase remuneration for all of our shareholders. More than 31% of the dividend goes to La Caixa Foundation, our reference shareholder, illustrating our pride in belonging to a group that genuinely delivers to its unflinching commitment to society.

Last but not least, CaixaBank's total shareholder return, or TSR, for short, shows compelling figures compared with the IBEX 35 and the Eurozone Bank's Index. I would now like to take a moment to analyze the context in which our bank's outstanding performance has taken place as well as the outlook as we look forward. 2025 was a turbulent year on a global scale, even though it was positive for the Spanish economy. The GDP increased by 2.8% over the year as a whole and in Spain, remained one of the most buoyant economies in the euro area. Spanish companies created jobs.

The total number of people in employment reached 22.5 million people and the unemployment rate stood at 10.5%, its lowest level in many years. Inflation remained broadly stable, averaging 2.8%. Spanish public debt as a percentage of GDP ratio fell to 100.8%, although it still remains high. In the housing market, there was a significant rise in prices due to scarce levels of supply.

As for the global economy, it was certainly a difficult year, but it held up better than expected. At the start of 2026, the general mood in Europe was positive and the U.S. economy began the year on a strong footing. However, as things currently stand in March, the global markets have been impacted by the consequences of the escalation of hostilities across the Middle East region. The duration and evolution of the conflict will determine the magnitude of its effects on the economic outlook with implications for initial forecasts for economic growth, inflation and monetary policy.

The United States security strategy and its foreign policy agenda continue to add uncertainty. They are key factors steering the performance of the world economy and the stability of global financial markets. geopolitics has become a structural factor affecting stability, competitiveness and capacity to react. The last 5 years have been turbulent globally and the second half of the decade could be similar in tone, if not more tumultuous.

Uncertainty will be the term that best defines global risks in this year 2026 and beyond. This is really becoming evident. I will attempt to offer a broad overview of this new era of strategic competition marked by complex risks that are less predictable and that are more intertwined. First, geoeconomic confrontation between powers is currently the greatest threat to global stability. It is synonymous with economic risks, inflation, reduced trade, disruption to supply chains and volatility in financial markets.

Second, technological and environmental challenges, the risks associated with rapid technological change such as cybersecurity and this information as well as uncertainty over the impact of artificial intelligence globally. Over a somewhat longer-term horizon, climate threats remain a critical concern.

And last, we have rising inequality and demographic change as cross-cutting risks affecting the previous 2. Further episodes of geoeconomic confrontation will hinder the search for effective global solutions to cross-border risks that require a coordinated response. And in this new era, Europe is indeed facing global challenges. Europe having grown comfortable in the world of yesterday must now reaffirm its values and above all, its interests in the world of today. Regulatory fragmentation and complexity in every sphere will not be conducive to European growth.

If there is one thing the world can agree on is that Europe is overregulated. Of course, regulation must exist, but it must also allow innovation to act as a driver of the economy. The right balance must be struck. We expect to see genuine progress because Europe needs it in order to become more competitive.

Turning now to the outlook for the Spanish economy in 2026. Our country benefits for a positive carryover effect given our strong starting point. The initial growth forecast was 2.4%, once again above the level expected for the euro area and inflation had been expected to be more contained. However, the impact of the situation in the Middle East is expected to alter this initial scenario with potentially more lasting consequences depending on the final duration of the conflict and its degree of disruption in terms of geographical scope, damage and disruptions to transport and infrastructure.

Markets initially did not anticipate a highly prolonged and disruptive crisis. However, the level of uncertainty remains very high. In this context, our research area expects GDP growth to be around 2% this year. In addition, markets are rising in interest rate hikes by the European Central Bank, nor should we forget the challenges and opportunities looking ahead.

In my view, here are the key ones. Spain will face several demographic challenges and opportunities over the next 2 decades. The population is expected to reach 50 million in the short term, plus a further 5 million within 15 years. We will be more numerous and with some notable traits. The first, longevity. According to the OECD, Spars have the highest life expectancy in the European Union and one of the highest in the world. We are one of the most demographically aged countries in Europe. The over 80s have doubled their share on the population of this century. A person turning 65 in 2024 has a life expectancy of almost 22 additional years, and this figure will continue to rise.

The proportion of retirees within the population will continue to grow with diverse economic repercussions. IREF, Spain's independent authority for fiscal responsibility, expects the nation's debt to gradually raise due to the aging of population, reaching 181 of the GDP in 2070. We will inevitably need to have a calm and thoughtful discussion on the sustainability of the pension system in its current state and the need to encourage long-term saving among the population nor should we ignore the need to factor in rising demand for dependency care services. This is a challenge that we should face together as a mature society without putting it off, the state, institutions, companies, social agents and each and every one of us as individuals. Secondly, the challenge posed by the labor market.

Over the next decade, around 5 million people will retire leaving behind jobs that cannot be filled solely through the entry of younger generations. Indeed, it is estimated that fewer than 2 million young people will enter the labor market during that period. The gap is significant and planning this transition is essential. Profiles with higher levels of training will be needed across all sectors, particularly in the most specialized one.

It will be key to make the most of our human capital through alternative approaches. The majority of the population aged over 65 would like to remain economically active provided there are incentives for gradual retirement. Flexible retirement policies are therefore needed to promote generational replacement making us of senior -- making use of senior knowledge and experience and ensuring the appropriate skills of the new entrants to the labor market.

The third and final point, population growth and the challenges of balance. It is beyond question that in order to maintain employment levels, immigration will be needed. It is a driver of growth and demographic rejuvenation, and it will continue to be so. And this population growth outlook adds pressure to the housing market. It is estimated that an additional 700,000 homes are needed in Spain to meet the existing demand while at most 150,000 are being built each year. This is, well, a supply problem that we need to solve.

So again, longevity, the labor market, immigration and housing are so closely interrelated intertwined that require a global overarching approach and broad political and social consensus. As for CaixaBank's outlook for 2026, the strategic plan 2025, 2027 is our compass. It's also an ambitious road map, plotting out 3 main paths forward, which we are pursuing from an exceptionally strong position, stronger growth, faster transformation and staying true to our essence. Looking at the growth pillar, our 2025 results have enabled us to raise the bar for 2027 significantly with more ambitious targets. We have more targets that go beyond those set in the beginning. Our CEO will discuss our new targets in greater detail during his address.

As for the transformation pillar, our ambition is to stay at the forefront. Technological and talent-related change is unstoppable, has accelerated, and we aim to consolidate the step change in digital capabilities to support the business. We have a team that is prepared and constantly evolving. Technological adoption and artificial intelligence will usher in new roles and new training and upskilling needs, but not the destruction of jobs overall. Successfully combining the benefits offered by technology with human capabilities will be the key to success in this exciting technological revolution.

As for the Essence pillar, we want to remain true to the course we have set. We are leaders, and we want to remain so. Being CaixaBank customer is not just about being a customer of a bank. It means contributing to progress towards a more sustainable economy and supporting the economic and social development of everyone. In conclusion, in 2026, we will have a year focused on sustainable profitability and on achieving a high payout. The new targets mark a renewed commitment to value creation for all of you, CaixaBank's shareholders. Rest assured that my utmost priority and that of the Board is to achieve an attractive payout for shareholders.

As agreed, for 2026, this would take the form of a dividend policy with a payout of between 50% and 60% to be paid through cash payments. an interim dividend amounting to between 30% and 40% of consolidated net profit for the first half of 2026 and to be paid in November 2026 and a supplementary dividend subject to final approval by all of you, ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, at the next year's AGM.

I would expressly like to convey to you my thanks and indeed the gratitude of the entire institution for the trust you continue to place in us. And I have left until the end of my address, my gratitude to everyone who makes up CaixaBank, because I am aware of the extraordinary important role that they have played in achieving our 2025 results and of course, in achieving our ambitions for 2026. They have the express thanks of the entire Board and in particular, my own.

This year, 2026, I will be celebrating 50 years in this great institution, and I carry within me what it means to be a CaixaBank employee. So I perfectly know what it means to be part of this great human team. It means an environment that is always demanding. It means that the goals we set are always challenging, yet also achievable. And it means always working alongside the very best professionals, I can assure that the contribution made by every one of us at CaixaBank matters and is always visible. Each and every one of you are the true architects of this distinctive and unique banking model of CaixaBank. Thank you for making it happen. Our CEO will now explain in greater detail our results in 2025 and the focus or the approach of the strategic plan as we move forward into 2026. Thank you very much, [indiscernible] .

And now I'll give the floor to Mr. Gortazar, our CEO.

Dear President, dear members of the Board, dear shareholders, good morning, everyone, [Foreign Language] . Now I want to address you all in this meeting that we are holding again in Valencia, where our headquarters hard and where we feel really at home. But this is especially valuable to share with all of you, dear shareholders, the evolution of CaixaBank that now we are affirming the vision and the values which are the base of our project.

As our President has said, 2025 has been a good year for CaixaBank. National economy has performed very well. And despite of the fall of the interest rate and the competition and the deacceleration of the economy, we have achieved the goals we have set up at the beginning of the year. CaixaBank moves forward in our strategic plan and a strategic plan that articulates our vision in 3 pillars.

First of all, growth, growth in a sustainable way. Secondly, to accelerate the operating performance. And finally, to have our positive contribution to our economy and society in the 3 spheres we have really advanced during 2025. And we can understand this success with the people that make it possible, more than 46,000 people in our staff who are the driver, the real driver of CaixaBank. Thank you to their effort to their commitment. This has made possible that we are a benchmark bank institution in Spain and also in Europe I want to begin my speech saying thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you to all of them.

I will tell you very shortly about the financial strength of the group and the results of 2025. And then to finish, I would like to give you some conclusions regarding the plan 2025 and 2026. Then I will proceed with my speech in Spanish as there are many Spanish shareholders among us. First of all, I would like to highlight that there has been a lot of growth this year and the relative position has been improved. We've grown around 7%. We have 390,000 increase of customers. So we are reaching 40.4% of people in Spain working with Spain. We have the loan portfolio with an improvement of a growth of 7%. We have negative growth for many years in 2025, has been very positive to this regard, very positive for our economy and for our customers.

And as you can see in consumer, we have growth 12% companies around 7% as we have increased our market share in consumption, housing and so on. So it means that we are performing very well. The same growth we can find in assets and also in liabilities in our resources, both the resources on our balance sheet, those which are managed through different tools with funds, savings and so on.

Also all the assets managing has grown a total 9.7% in 2025 and deposits in our balance sheet around 5%. So that's all in all, an average of 6.8% and a very healthy position in the market, which means that we are being very successful in allocating the resources by our customers.

Another very important part of our business is insurance, protection for life insurance, health insurance, car insurance. In 2025, with growth 13% in the different premiums with good diversification among the different insurance categories, as you can see on the slide. And as well, earnings and profits have been really relevant, 119 points in Life and Risk and also in health care and other insurances. So this business is working very well, both at absolute and relative terms if we compare ourselves with our competition. BPI, very good year. We even had at global level 7.5% growth.

So the ratios of default are extraordinary, are very, very positive. If we compare them to other Portuguese banks. And as you can see, we have increased our market share in Portugal since we merged BPI, we have been having very relevant results. We are growing in a very healthy way with a return 19.2%. And during 2025 as well, there's been a reduction of BPI of the Angola Bank has moved from 48% to 33%. Then beyond this commercial activity, I would like to highlight is the strength of our income sheet, our income statement. We can see the last 4 years here, we have -- really there was a fall in 2025 from 2.6% to 2.1%. We are below the average in our industry, and we see trends following the same line during the first quarter 2026.

The liquidity position, as always, is good. It's really comfortable for us. We have [ EUR 171, 830 million ] in liquid assets and the ratio, you can see it on the slide that both in the short term and structurally, CaixaBank has a very solid position that compares very well, not only in Spain but in Europe. We have been accessing the capital markets with a lot of success. And the rating, I mean, this is the opinion of the rating companies on our strength has been very positive. All the relevant agencies have said that we are very strong. So we also have here the organic generation of capital here.

As you can see on the central part of the slide, the result is generating 270 basis points of capital, capital beginning at 12% in a comfortable way. And this has allowed us to increase our income and to the -- so we have 68 basis points for our assets. And for the rest of it, we could attend the dividends and the debt that we have, the Tier 1 debt, ending the year with 12.6% of our ratio and thus achieving the goal of increasing the capital ratios during 2025. We are closing 2025 above 12.5%. We have a sixth program that was completed during 2025, and we have a seventh program advancing this year, and it's already 85% done.

Finally, a result of that growth of this strength in our income sheet that you can see, which is the impact in our revenue. Maybe the most important thing to highlight would be that the margin of the interest is falling despite this positive evolution. So we have to think that we should have suffered a bigger fall due to the fall of the interest rate. But as our commercial activity has been so positive, it has had a positive impact on 2025.

And we have some -- a bit of growth of the interest. So this is a good new among bad news. So income on services, total income of services, we have 5.4% as insurances because we are having more activity, and this is different from bank commissions, bank fees, which are going low. So we have that the retailers' activity is being reduced. and we are really working free of commissions with free of fees with many of our customers, but we also have the wholesalers business, and we are growing there, and we have a high profitability there that has compensated that have set off all the retailers.

All in all, we have a gross margin 2.5% and expenses, expenses, including staff expenses, we have 5%. So the operating margin is in the positive area, but it is a year that we are doing more or less the same as last year because we have the negative impact of the fall of the interest rates and well, the impact it has on our -- both assets and liabilities. So we could compensate this, and we have a slight but positive growth in the operating margin of 0.9%.

And also, we have good news regarding the financing assets, especially those allocated to credit or loans and some of them have been reduced. Risk cost of -- for 12 months now is 0.22%. This is the average of risk position for our loans that we had to manage during the year, a lower figure than we had foreseen. And despite this, our coverage ratio is still increasing. The default loans cover have gone up from 69% to 77% during the year. So the evolution of our credit portfolio has been exceedingly positive.

All in all, what we can see is that the result for the group is 1.8%. It is a modest figures, but we have to compare it with the expectation of the markets at the beginning of the year because the analysts -- the experts were expecting a drop of 10%, specifically because of the fall of the interest rates, but we could compensate that with our commercial activity, and we have a positive result, we have a result of 55%. And as our president say 15%, it's a good year for the remuneration or the payback to our shareholders. This is the summary of 2025.

We have to go on. And we have been implementing the 3 axes of our strategic plan. Let me remind you that, first of all, was growth. And we've seen the figures are really showing this growth, specifically that in the commercial activities, and we have higher growth that we were expecting with a very financial strength. And we have achieved both profitability and growth goals for '25, '26. And so we have done a review of these goals in response to the group performance and also because the entity of President talked about, we are in a little better position than we were foreseeing. All those changes that we apply in our goals for the next 3 years of the strategic plan '25-'26, I would like to highlight 3 figures.

Business volume. We were expecting to have a growth of 4% and now a new goal is 6%. I'm talking about the average annual growth. And now the default ratio, it was 2%, but now we are aspiring to 1. 75% and our ROTE, the return, we were expecting something like 15%, but now we are expecting above 18%. This is an average for '25, '26 and '27. These are meaningful changes supported by the good situation of the Spanish and Portuguese economy and also supported by our very good excellent commercial performance.

We have the same performance. Our commitment with an interesting dividend policy, we are going to keep it. We will have to the payout between 50% and 60%. The second axis of our plan is transformation. And we have advanced a lot here, not so visible as the financial results, but they are equally important. Now we want to accelerate the transformation, and this is a commitment because we work in a different way. We want to anticipate the needs of our clients, and we want to anticipate the ever-changing environment we are living in.

And then I will highlight, first of all, the renovation of the digital channels as our President was mentioning, we have right now the app, the best bank app with the best validating 4.9 over in Google. And this is the result of a big effort and commitment by our first staff making a progressive change of this app. And we hope I encourage you to work in that direction. Also, we want to tell you, we are offering new services, and I want to highlight some proposals by the [indiscernible] , which is our real estate platform.

We have 1.6 million visitors. We have 100 coaches that has contributed to the financing of vehicles. In 2025, we have an increase of 30%. And also, we are participating in other initiatives like [indiscernible] , the European consortium for stable coins. And also, we have launched the first periodic term premium insurance for the generative diseases. So we are offering new products and services with high added value to the market. Another thing which is very relevant is AI. specifically generative AI, which we have devoted more than a very important part of the 5,000 million that we have for investment in technology during this year.

In fact, at this moment, all the staff has AI tools available to improve their productivity. We're deploying agents, AI agents in order to automate several tasks, redesign processes, improving our relation with our customers, combining the judgment of our professionals with this technology. We continue to improve our technological infrastructure through the program called [indiscernible] , reinforcing our human capital. We have 650 specialist experts joining our staff.

So we, as a group, continue to be able to attract technology tech talent, which is very difficult to do for any company in general. All in all, it is a robust progress in our transformation. We are clearly being a more agile and better prepared company to accompany our customers. And this transformation is something we are executing from the approach of keeping our essence, keeping our usefulness to society, which is our third pillar in the strategic plan, reinforcing our social contribution.

And here, you can see several initiatives that foster employability, social inclusion, mobilizing sustainable finance, accompanying companies and families in a transition towards model that are more respectful and sustainable. The Chairman has already explained this.

I do not want to come into details, but I would just like to say that for all of us who work at CaixaBank is a sense of pride to see how this commitment is fully integrated in the way we act and in the way how we -- together with the Caixa Foundation, we foster these kind of activities. Criteria has 30% of the shareholding and also distributes this dividend. And with this, they can finance this extraordinary social work and revert all the profits from our activity directly into the society.

And I would like to finish my intervention by reminding what is guiding us, this purpose of being next to the people for everything that matters, this mission of contributing to the financial well-being of our customers and the progress of all the society and the values that are part of our identity, quality, trust and social commitment.

Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, we are a leading group, but we're also a group with a soul combining robustness, trust, long-term vision and dedication to service. And at a point like the one we have now with uncertainty in the geopolitical level and the potential effects of the conflict in the Middle East, it is even more relevant to have a robust institution backing us and with a position from which we can act with determination because our strength will help us to continue supporting companies, families and contribute to the economic growth despite the most -- the very complex situation we are in. And this is the way we will continue to move forward without leaving anyone behind.

I would like to finish with my most sincere gratitude to all of you, dear shareholders, because you trust us and you are shareholders of this project. The Board of Directors Chairman, Tomas Muniesa, for his vision, for his support, for his leadership, also special mention to Amparo Moraleda, who will finish her period in CaixaBank after this 12 years, she has brought to the group her great knowledge, experience and good judgment contributing in a very relevant manner to the projects of CaixaBank.

And very especially, I would like to thank all the professionals working at CaixaBank. Their work is what makes everything we shared possible. They are the ones assisting helping millions of customers every day, sustaining our operations. They are the ones allowing for our systems to be operational, helping our network of branches to work accurately and allow us to be here speaking about this successful year. We will continue to work so that CaixaBank continues to be a robust, profitable and useful and committed company committed with people and society.

Thank you so much, [indiscernible] .

Thank you, Mr. Gortazar for your intervention. Now I will explain the necessary information about corporate governance. According to the third recommendation of the code of good conduct, good governance of listed companies approved by the National Stock Market Commission, it is important to report about the most relevant aspects of corporate governance of CaixaBank since the last AGM.

In this sense, I would like to highlight the proposals that are brought for approval of this AGM in relation with the creation of -- or the composition of the Board of Directors and that have the purpose of reelecting 2 Board members.

In this sense, I would like to highlight the proposals that are brought for approval of this AGM in relation with the creation of -- or the composition of the Board of Directors and that have the purpose of reelecting 2 Board members, one of them independent director, the appointment of a new independent director who will cover the vacancy of Ms. Amparo Moraleda, who has presented her withdrawal with effects of the end of this AGM and the ratification and appointment of independent director. Moraleda, Ms. Mora, I would like to thank you again on my behalf and on behalf of all the Board of Directors, your contribution and dedication to the CaixaBank Group.

These proposals of reelection and appointment of members of the Board of Directors allow us to continue progressing in the best practices of good governance, keeping at 15 the size of the Board of Directors and increasing the proportion of independent directors that will move from 60% to 66.7%. The size and composition is considered adequate to efficiently attend all the duties of the Board as well as those arising from the working of their different committees and the workload associated to it. Likewise, we guarantee diversity of knowledge and experience in the Board as a whole and specifically in terms of gender diversity, the percentage of female directors will be kept with the approval of these proposals at 40%, having reached by 2020, the target of 40% set currently in the recommendations of the code of good governance and in the organic law 2/2024 of equal representation and balanced presence of women and men.

At the same time, the specialized committees of the Board of Directors also have a majority of independent directors. And even more so, the Board has this figure of the coordinating independent director. At the same time, -- as regards the comp -- the composition of the different committees, the committee for appointments and sustainability, remunerations, risks, audit and control are chaired by independent directors. In any case, the Board of Directors will continue to boost quality and efficiency in the way it works and that of their committees with measures that foster continuous improvement in the decision-making processes of this institution, which will be projected in their main subsidiaries.

The Board that I chair also has the idea to favor a close relation with our shareholders to this effect, as I already said in the AGM 2025, I would like to remind you that CaixaBank was pioneer in having a consultative committee of shareholders. In my interaction as a Chairman with this committee, I could as certain that your contributions are -- provide a great vision and quality. I would like to thank from this point, your dedication and your commitment with the institution.

Finally, as you know, CaixaBank has since January 2022, the certification of good corporate governance with the maximum qualification. In order to conclude my intervention, I want to mention my commitment and that of the rest of the members of the Board so that CaixaBank will be recognized as a reference institution in terms of corporate governance. Excellence in this aspect is a key priority for CaixaBank and its Board of Directors.

In relation to the recommendations of good governance, -- the Secretary will now explain with detail the degree of current follow-up of the -- following these recommendations by CaixaBank. The annual report of corporate governance corresponding to the year 2025, communicated as other relevant information to the National Stock Market Commission on the 20th of February 2026 covers the degree of following up of this institution of the recommendations of the code of good governance, declaring that 58 recommendations are fully covered, 5 of them are partially covered and one of them is nonapplicable to our company.

In such a way, in 2025, there is no recommendation that is noncompliant with that would be applicable to our company. Now we give the floor to the Secretary to develop the explanation about the degree of meeting these recommendations.

As the Chairman has said, out of the 64 recommendations of the code of good governance, also in this year 2025, CaixaBank meets more than 90% of the recommendations, partially meeting 5 recommendations and one of them not being applicable. In terms of the recommendations that have been met partially regarding recommendation 5 on the delegation facility to issue shares and convertible bonds with a preferential issue. We meet this partially because in relation with the increase of capital, we are meeting the maximum limit cap.

And on the other hand, as regards to the issue of convertible bonds, the limit of 20% foreseen under Article 511 of the corporate law is not applicable to those issues by the different credit institutions that have this additional Level 1, AT1.

In regards to recommendation 10, we meet partially in the sense that the regulation of the AGM of CaixaBank forces a different system of voting based on whether the resolutions are proposed by the Board or by the shareholders.

With this, we try to avoid the difficulty to count as regards to the shareholders in case they are not present for the voting, and we solve the case of the new proposals to be placed on the fact that these resolutions may not be compatible with those presented by the Board. At the same time, the institution has declared to comply partially the recommendation 26.

When the Board members cannot attend the different Board meetings can delegate their vote. And in this sense, the Board understands it's a good practice of corporate governance, the freedom to have delegations with or without specific instructions according to the opinion of every Board member and the absence of instructions is considered to facilitate the position of the Board member. In regards to the recommendation 36, we meet partially because as what was agreed in the AGM 2025, we have included 5 new directors. And because it had been a very short time since this was convened, we decided to do so internally and postpone the self-evaluation that was recommended with the support of the external consultant, which will be done by the end of 2026.

As regards to the recommendation 64, the company has declared to meet this partially because the payments for resolution of the contract of the -- termination of the contract of the CEO do not overcome the limit, the amount equivalent to 2 years of total remuneration. However, the recommendation covers the possibility to have this amount not previously consolidated in the savings system. So -- and finally, the recommendation # 2 is not applicable to CaixaBank because it is controlled by another institution in the sense of the Article 42 of the trade code.

In any case, the Board of Directors will continue to boost best practices in good governance, and we will continue to report to shareholders in due manner. Next, the Secretary will read the final quorum. The quorum that is taken as final for this AGM without prejudice of the technical adjustments that may be due to the fact that we'll hold this remotely. 14,841 shareholders holding 525 million, representing 50.1% of social capital and 68,326 shareholders, representing 2,326 million, representing 33.6%. So the final number is 83, 886 shareholders, representing 83.87% of the social capital.

The final quorum will be included in the minutes of this meeting and will be published in the website in 5 years after the holding of this meeting.

Taking a look at this final quorum, we ratify the legally convening of this the meeting. I would like to ask you again whether you have reserves or claims about the valid constitution or convening of the General Meeting of Shareholders.

If you would like to file your reserves or claims, you can do so sending an e-mail to [email protected] in order to include this in the minutes. The shareholders present in the room can say so coming right now to the desk saying notary that is at the back of the room.

Next, you can also intervene as the Secretary has explained. If you wish for your intervention to be recorded in the minutes, please say so. And if you want for this to be recorded verbatim, you can -- for those of you who are present here, you can do so, and we will give you the floor in terms. So now we open the list of interventions, and I would like to give the floor to Mr. Secretary.

As the Chairman has said that we will start with the list of interventions. We will be calling each of the people that have asked to intervene so that they can address or go to the 2 stands placed on the -- on both sides of the room. At the same time, when we have finished with the interventions present in the room, we will start with those that are remotely that are connected remotely, and we will read them. As it was previously reported, we ask those who do not want to have their image recorded to say so in the desk for the list of interventions.

We would like to tell you that because of the timing when you have your interventions or if we do not have information that you are asking for during your interventions according to Article 197.2 of the Spanish corporate law and 17 of the regulations of the AGM. This will be answered in writing in 7 days after this AGM. We're going to start with the list of interventions. This is a maximum of 5 minutes, and we will ask the shareholder and the next so that can get -- and they can get ready.

Now we give the floor Marianzavaro Perez, and then we will have Victoria Margarita Baratina Gonzalez

Good morning. I would like for this intervention to be recorded in the minutes. We come to this AGM representing Adia and the small savers, shareholders and clients of CaixaBank that have delegated their vote so that we represent them in this meeting.

One more year, we are here again, and we would like to show you our concern regarding the quality of customer assistance in this institution. According to the claims register in the Bank of Spain in 2024 because that of 2025 has not been published yet, CaixaBank was the institution with the highest number of claims presented to the supervisor with a total of more than 15,000. This data states that despite the good economic results, there are still areas for improvement in terms of the relation with the customers.

In this context, it is especially relevant the law 10/2025 for services to assist customers forcing institutions to adopt their systems in a maximum period of 12 months. These regulations forces to provide personalized assistance identifying the person who is assisting and guaranteeing that all the phone calls are answered in less than 3 minutes and separate customer attention to commercial services.

From Adeslas, we will supervise the compliance with this regulation in all of the all of the sector. What kind of actions are you taking to reduce the high number of claims that you have recorded in the Bank of Spain? Can you guarantee that your system will fully guarantee to the demand established in the new law 10/2025?

Finally, we would like to remind you that many small shareholders are also customers of this institution, and we directly suffer the consequences of your commercial policies. From Adeslas, we will continue to defend a more transparent banking model, more accessible also targeting the general interest.

Now I leave the floor to [ Margarita, Aon Victoria, Margarita Bartin]. The next speaker will be [ Boniaaria].

Good morning. I want my speech to be on the record. We came to this AGM representing Adia and the small safe owners, shareholders that have delegated their votes for us to represent them here. One more year, the bank has very positive results with a record benefit of more than EUR 5,000 million. This means an increase of 1.8% compared to 2024. These results reflect the strength of the group and their position in the banking industry in Spain. However, we should take into account the following.

First of all, the interest rate margin has had a fall of more than 4%. This has been due to the interest rate situation. This means that profitability is being supported by other revenues. Regarding this, we have some revenues from fees, which are growing and from services that are growing still and compensate the fall of the financing profit. This changes little by little the revenues of the banking sector, which is really trying to be supported by fees paid by the customers.

On the other hand, we positively value the dividends, which are going to be given to the shareholders. And this policy has a high level of return for investors. However, we think that it is necessary to have a balance between the results and the fair treatment to your customers.

Beyond the economic results, we also have some issues that have an impact on many consumers. Specifically, we would like to mention the banking digitalization process. Digital transformation may improve services, but this shouldn't be an exclusion factor. In the last years, we've seen a meaningful reduction of the number of offices that you have. And this is creating real difficulties for many citizens, especially in small municipalities, rural areas and among those who have difficulty to access digital services.

The Bank of Spain has said that having offices and on-site channels is important, especially for the elderly and those who do not have access to digital means. So that's why we are asking from CaixaBank a commitment to financing inclusion. Have you foreseen to have some public and transparent criteria to open or close offices? Are you evaluating the impact of such closures, especially in the rural areas and small municipalities? And what specific measures are you going to adopt in order to guarantee service to the elderly vulnerable customer. Thank you very much.

Good morning, dear President, dear CEO, members of the Board, shareholders. My name is [ Veronia Paro. ] I'm President of the Union 7 of CaixaBank. I want to have my intervention recorded on the minutes. What now? Dear gentlemen, are you going to turn your sight away? We did tell you this once and again.

Well, now this is the day in which your staff said enough. We have a general strike, all of us because we can't stand it anymore. You have thousands of workers that they are not working on their computers right now. They are shouting outside because it's a strike calling for help and you are here, just saying this wonderful profitability and celebrating dividends. Are you worried about something else apart from money? On the street, you have the reality of our entity. We are exhausted. We are so angry that we cannot do anything else. We've been for years warning you, telling you that the commercial model of CaixaBank is killing us.

We have saying this in every AGM in many other things because the pressure that you are doing is getting our colleagues sick. And again, you are asking us to have an increase of your remuneration, which is abusive and you are justifying it with the record results. What you are not saying that which is the reason of those results? Let me tell you, because you are really taking advantage of your staff. You are having goals and targets every 4 months and then you are creating rankings, which are accumulating for your workers, but you are aware of that, which was your response? No response, silence or you just don't care because you just don't care about us, the workers.

Let's talk about the intensity that you are always mentioning Mr.Gortazar. You said that if you don't work hard, you get bored. Do you think that our staff is not working hard? This is a story. This is a sentence a quotation, which is not really good for you. You're going to increase your variable revenues in 50%, 100% in 2 years. And today, you are increasing your wages in 26%.

Mr. Gortazar, you can be very intense and very hard work with your wage. But it is very difficult to keep on working so hard when you are so pressured that you cannot have a family work-life balance. And with challenges which are bigger and bigger, you are accumulating profits on the top and the consequences are impacting those workers in the offices. Is this the recognition that you are offering to those that have made possible for CaixaBank to be a leader in the banking industry in Spain. You look like in your kings like in your ivory tower. But you have forgotten where we are coming from. If Mor, the founder of our entity, thinking about social provision and giving service to the community.

If he were here today and see what this has become, honestly, he would die again. And I'm sure that he will say Mr. [indiscernible] What did they do with our Caixa? What did they do with the culture of respect? What did they do with the social piece? They have changed and admire institution in a selling machine, which doesn't take into account the human factor. If you are not able to lower the commercial targets, at least please increase the incentives to the workers as you are raising your own wages. today, this stuff said enough. This general strike is not something isolated. This is the beginning of a conflict time if you don't really change. Is this what you really want? We are not going to be accomplices of a model that it is skill enough workers in order for you to be richer.

We want a company in which working doesn't mean to be sick, where intensity is respected and not exploited and where the profits of the top is not based on the sacrifice of those below. Please react, recognize our work with acts, please be transparent because if you don't have the respect of your people, even though you are giving lots of dividends, it means that your company is breaking inside. Thank you. I'll leave the floor now to Ingo and then Daniel G.

Good morning. Dear President, CEO, members of the Board, shareholders, dear colleagues. I'm -- in Vicente. I work in CaixaBank, and I am a member of Comissionbreas, and I work with lots of the staff who have delegated 1,700 shares. I want my -- for my intervention to be on the record. We are talking here today about figures from our union. We want to talk about people, 47,000 people, all the staff of our group, all the staff of our entity, your main asset, people who have commitment, who have created, who have built this company, people that are coming in for the old company in which belonging was not a speech, but a way of understanding your work and the entity when that people that when it was necessary made a commitment.

Today, we have record profits. And we have to remind you that without your staff, you don't have any business. This is an activity of 37,000 people assisting more than 18 million customers in Spain with trust. And this can only happen if the staff is motivated, is recognized and working in a health environment. It is not ourselves talking about it, it's the data we have.

There was a survey on the working atmosphere, 96% of the people were saying that the increase of the commercial pressure was too high and their health has been impacted. more than 71%. It is not ourselves. It's the staff that are telling you this, there is a strike, more than 90% of our offices are closed. And also after we had a strike on the 3rd of February and all the talks on the 9th of March. This is a strike, which has been called by all the unions and there is a message for you. This is enough. And in the crisis, during the crisis, the staff worked very hard, and we're really helping you now in the good times, the staff also wants to be rewarded. We don't want this extensive pressure.

We want a fair share of the profits, and we want to improve the wages. Also, we have -- we want to have -- to promote the careers and helping to the generational change of the staff and also the balance between work and family life. These people are not bored. These are not the issue. These are the solution, and they will work much better if you take care of them. You can really invest part of the profitability on it. In 1992, we have 67% of the expenses were labor. Now it's only 67%.

Now leadership models, success models with the people. We do that. You can decide which model you want. We are -- our union, we are going to vote against the item 1.2 because you can see, and we also will vote against 1.3 and 1.6, which has to do with the retribution to the top management because we absolutely oppose this model in which we increase the wages of the top managers and not of the staff. And they are also getting reached despite the staff because this kind of retribution generates pressure from the top down in order to achieve the goals. And just one figure.

In 2022, remuneration of the CEO was 48x the remuneration of the average worker. Right now, it's 71x the average workers' wage. Dear President, the CEO, the Board CaixaBank has history and a long journey away made by the workers, by those workers that today are on strike because they want to be respected. Those workers that make Caixa Bank and create its soul and its identity. [indiscernible] last year tried to find a solution saying that Commission will be on the agreement all on the strike.

Today, it's clear the way you chose and the consequences. This is a historical strike. We still demand some viables to change things. This is the right moment. Thank you.

Good morning. Dear President, Mr. CEO, members of the Board, shareholders. My name is Raquel Ruiz. I've been a worker in CaixaBank for more than 25 years, and I talk on behalf of the union and some other shareholders. I want my intervention to be on the record. This is not a formal speech. From the [indiscernible], we want to say something very clear. The situation cannot be maintained any longer. Our workers are really angry, are disappointed and above all, have reached their limit. And make no mistakes, this is not only about wages, which are important, of course. This has to do with respect with dignity and with knowing worse the limit because what we are seeing here every day is very clear.

No, you are not worried about the workers. You don't have any empathy and you are not understanding that ambition has its limits, which is the red line. The mental and physical health of the workers of this bank. So that's why today, we are telling you clearly stop now. No more hypocrisy, no more empty premises, no more ephisms because what we are suffering both in the offices and in the departments has the name, and we will say it, it's abuse. We don't know if it's because due to indifference or to what, but the result is the same.

People are exhausted and the work pressure is unsufferable. And this is the reality. Unfortunately, it's the reality we are living every day. Even though you don't want to see or to hear this, have you ever wondered why the people that are working in CaixaBank, we call the towers of the Diana Avenue M, members of the Board, are you -- don't you wonder why we have so many people on a strike today, so many offices closed. Aren't you thinking why has asked for help to the Central European Bank to stop your greed. And this help seems to be coming.

We received a notification on the European regulator about the audit they are going to carry out. You are responsible to end with this -- in this situation, you must make decisions, real decisions, specific decisions, decisions with an impact because as the rest of our colleagues said, without workers, you don't have any business. Members of our Board, you are not judged today by what you say but what you do. So we are going to vote against point items 1, 2 and 6. Thank you.

Angel Moreno. And next or Ms. Elena.

Thank you. I wish for my intervention to be recorded in the minutes. Chairman, members of the Board, ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, good morning. I represent akanatec Trade Union and many workers and shareholders that trust us. As you can see, our staff is really fed up that is decided to have their voices listened every day in every branch, in every department, thousands of professionals sustain this business with their knowledge, dedication and work. And thanks to that collective effort, CaixaBank continues to beat profit records every year. But the staff has stopped today because these targets are far from reality, and they worsen the climate every day. This cannot be at the expense of the health of all the workers.

The survey of Akanatec about well-being said that 76% of the workers identified excessive pressure as the main problem, followed after 72%, defining the targets unattainable. This is a diagnosis, a collective diagnosis. And maybe in November, when we meet the company proposing different solutions, if you had heard us, we would not be in the situation we are in today. We cannot continue like that. commercial pressure, constant supervision, constant follow-up, campaigns one after the other and cuts one after the other make us see in the branches every day exhausted people, professionals with stress levels that are higher and higher, leaves on growing and professionals feeling that their effort is never enough. And the question we need to ask is not whether the targets are achieved because sometimes they are. The question is how are they achieved? They are achieved, thanks to staff that is highly qualified, committed and responsible, thanks to which we can propose for some of you, huge salary increases, while the staff is still working or fighting on the street so that their health is not stolen from them. You are just -- you just have a short-term vision, trying to get more profits without taking into account the real conditions of the market. And this generates the contrary of what you try to seek, lack of motivation, burnout and loss of trust.

This continued pressure affects the mental and physical well-being and health of the workers and the labor climate -- labor environment also worsening the relation with our customers and weakening the project. But we do not want to just point out the problems because we have proposed realistic proposals. We have offered targets that would be sustainable for all the year. tools that can generate a proper follow-up, reinforcing staff, covering the leaves and resizing the teams appropriately, eliminating practices that generate added pressure, public rankings, constant comparisons and this is everything that makes us feel we are in a race every day.

This should be a career that is sustained for all the year, and we also offer a generational replacement, helping new and young people coming in our institution with stability and helping others with decades of expertise leaving the bank. For months, we have been trying to convey these proposals to the management with dialogue, but this only makes sense when there is real willingness to hear, to listen to us. This is why more than 15,000 workers joined the strike in the last time we summon this.

The situation has reached to a limit, and we need a change. You didn't listen to us, and this is why today, instead of celebrating the results we offer to our shareholders, we are holding this AGM in the midst of a strike, massively supported by our employees. This is really sad. Mr. Chairman, the staff is not the problem. The staff is the solution.

Without staff, there is no business, and there will be no results and there will be no future for this institution. This is why we are asking for something that is simple as well as necessary, respect. Respect for the work that we carry out on a daily basis, respect for our health and respect for our professional dignity.

We want CaixaBank to be a leader, not only in results, but also in labor conditions to listen to their people and understand that the business success and the employees' well-being are not incompatible targets, but they need to go hand-in-hand. But in order to do so, you need to be brave enough to recognize the problems and willingness to tackle them. The staff has already taken the first step, raising their voice and will not stop if things do not change. Now it's your turn to prove that you are able and you're willing to listen. Thank you.

Elena Serrano is now -- will now have the floor. And next, [indiscernible].

I would request for my intervention to be recorded in the minutes. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, members of the Board. My name is Elena Serrano, Secretary of Organization at Caixa. And on my behalf and on behalf of the colleagues delegating their vote on us, this has been an extraordinary year, and we congratulate the staff that made this possible, thanks to their work more year, one more year and again, one more turn. What is the limit is the limit that you will continue pressing this staff? when will you stop raising the targets? In the last 3 years, you have increased the insurance sales in 300%. I can only think of a couple of things that have a similar growth.

One is the salary of Mr. Gortazar; and second, the willingness of the staff to leave this company. In any business school, it is explained that the targets need to be realistic and attainable to motivate for their performance, for their compliance. You will say that we always manage to get to the figures, and it's true. But how do we do so? Of course, it is not feasible to do so with good advisory to our customers. No, this is imposing different campaigns. And based on your needs, you will orient those sales towards one product or the other. All of this known and well recognized and authorized by the company.

According to different business schools, this is the Euro 3 [indiscernible] for quality in Spanish. We understand that quality is also -- also has to do with the staff that are working so hard every day because you are not taking care of the staff. We get extraordinary figures of profit while we are staff mistreated every day. and C4 for labor climate. Here, you have a lot of work ahead of you.

We understand that the data that have not been published of the last survey will demonstrate the need for a radical change that is necessary so that we stop seeing peels against anxiety in the ward drops of our colleagues and see for growth in Spanish. We understand this is the bonus for the top management, the targets to be attained, leaves, medical leaves. The staff is today demonstrating. And it's saying this is enough. This is enough increasing targets on an ongoing manner, stop changing the rules of the game constantly, stop hindering us to manage to get these targets and stop this pressure that is ending up with the health of our colleagues. And no, this is something you are not going to solve with a bonus. This is not what we are asking for.

The staff is asking for a change in the forms, in the content and in the daily work. We ask loud and clear for you to put an end to this or it will be the staff that will need to stop, stop creating this kind of an attainable castle because of your ambition because you have a variable remuneration that is multiplying year after year. But of course, all of this is done for the staff not to be bored. Are you really bored? We also know how to increase the intensity of our claims.

So please stop making this kind of comments on the press that only make us feel ashamed by our top management that is not with dignity. Stop multiplying your salaries in the top management and recover the sense of belonging of the staff. In order to do so, increase the dialogue with the trade unions, also discussing things to improve. You can start with a higher transparency at the central services with a career and defined schedule, reduction in the challenges, better conditions for financing for the workers, remote working possibilities vacancy systems that is also more transparent and without firewalls.

We also request higher consistency to the top management of CaixaBank. This is time to stop looking to the other side. If you are concerned about the climate of this company, please get to work in order to create a better company where we all want to work in. No need, Mr. Gortazar to wait until the next AGM to listen to our requests. Our door is always open.

Thank you. Next, Antonio [indiscernible].

I would request for my intervention to be recorded in the minutes. Good morning, Mr. Gortazar. My name is Alicia Mart, representing St which is a trade union for CaixaBank workers. Since 2024, your bonus has been increased by 120%. This is [indiscernible] Gortazar. When you say when you work not very intensely, you get bored. This is a great sentence. You do not see the impossible targets and threats if you do not sell products that the customer do not want or charging 40% less than your colleague next to you.

For us, pressure is not sports. It is a chronic illness. Paid with Lexatin. It is burnout. It is anxiety leaves that make us feel totally exhausted. For you to work well, you need to be motivated with millions for us to work well. It seems that you are motivating us with a fear to be fired. We want to express our disagreement with the variable remuneration, introducing double targets versus the previous annual year without an increase in the staff and with a significant reduction in the variable remuneration. These measures, apart from increasing commercial pressure significantly are generating labor climate of burnout and anxiety that cannot be sustained in the short term without affecting performance, motivation of the staff and service quality to the customer.

More for less is always negative. You know who is not relaxed, Mr. Gortazar, the senior workers or all those who started with us in 2012. or all those that feel an upper hate having EUR 1,500 less a month while you are drinking champagne. You are asking us for more commitment or you even give us less variable bonus if we are on to leave. And we have to tell the customers why we charge fees for everything. You have EUR 14,000 a day, and this is what a worker needs in several months. It is admirable. You need to have a fixed scheme to distribute more than 2 million bonus while we are out of air. Maybe you think this is a problem of round enough. It is not just the money.

We are so fed up and so tired that this is a question of our health. You say that you need pressure so that you are not relaxed. You should try and live with our salary and that we are claiming because otherwise, if we do not sell, our life will be hell. You cannot ask for that from a mountain of dollar notes, you cannot say there is no budget while you are getting EUR 5 million. Your account must be excellent, but your humanity is in bankruptcy. Your salary is something that the market is demanding, the rise in your salary. But no, we are demanding consistency and respect. Maybe you are not worth for this position. You should inspire with your example, not with your banking account. You are a total failure in terms of ethics.

So understand that the weight of this bank is not sustained by your bonus, but the total exhaustion of employees that cannot go any further. I hope you can sleep well because your management doesn't allow us to sleep. As my colleagues say, you can come with us and work with us on a daily basis. That's something that joins all of us. Commercial pressure does not distinguish by function or by origin. Every day, every second, we need to prove that we are at the level of CaixaBank. And this is something you are not valuing. You make us ill. This is why we are all united in this world. Thank you so much or not.

And next, Juan [indiscernible].

Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I would like for our intervention to be recorded in the minutes. Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, members of the Board of Directors and CEO and Chairman. Good morning. I speak on my behalf and representing the members of the savings Union in Catalonia. We are here not to just give a speech, but to speak about reality. And the reality is that in the last 10 years, the life of the workers in this institution is harder and harder, while the results of the institution have grown.

We work at CaixaBank with great effort and labor stability because we aspire to have a differential professional future. We want to create a decent life career, and this is sinking gradually. Tell me how it is possible that while you're presenting extraordinary profits, a significant part of the staff is living with a constant feeling that we cannot get to the end of the month. How is it possible that if you say you fight against inequalities, you allow for inequalities to grow in your own house. How is it possible that one of the workers in one of the main financial institutions in the company live with anxiety, their working day and do not have the trust they deserve.

They are demanded to have commercial practices that contribute to anxiety leaves and mental health leaves because this is a reality. Commercial pressure is kept at an acceptable level. And this is reducing our professionalism and social guarantees have been reduced for years, many rights have been alienated, which were part of the moral contract between workers and the top management. And these were a security for all of us. We speak about lifelong provisions at the pension system and the coverage that for decades were a protection for the family of the workers.

Now this protection has been diluted. And even so, we continue to be asked for dedication and to feel the sense of belonging and to feel proud about being members of this group. But how can we do so if we feel every day this great pressure and with these great differences when the salary increases do not cover the cost of life and lose competitiveness when the revaluation of the provisions in the pension plan are at 0.75% when these problems are just growing, the premium, especially in Barcelona andibalaric Islands.

When we have increases of 200% of the risk profile associated to your function when the remuneration of the CEO will increase in 19.7% because you do not want to lose competitiveness, then what is the message behind -- what is the message to the staff behind because what we receive at the branches, at the commercial teams is very clear. There are 2 speeds, 2 realities.

One is presented in this auditorium in front of the shareholders and the other one is represented by the colleagues outside this building. Maybe you are systematically forgetting about introducing into the strategic plan, the correction mechanisms into it. Maybe you are forgetting the origins of this institution because this started with a pension and savings bank. Understanding that social justice needed to go hand-in-hand with the progress of this institution. It should be profitable, but also sustainable and respecting our claims.

So we, the workers of this house, do not ask for privileges, but something much more much simpler, consistency between the values that you proclaim and the decisions that you make. We want to recover salaries and provisions that should have never been reduced, and we would like to access to housing, and we want to have consistency with your values, with your history. And this is why we request for the headquarters to come back to Catalonia, and we also ask for respects to the staff facing every day the customers for the professionals that made this institution grow to the point where it is now because without this stuff, this bank will be nothing.

Algorithms do not generate confidence and dividends do not assist or give service to the customers. And if you want to continue speaking about value, social commitments, et cetera, you need to start inside your house because the fight against inequalities do not start in advertising. They start here, respecting your workers, all those that today stop and fight for their future and that of CaixaBank to all the people who have given their trust and delegated their vote on us. Thank you.

Now the floor is for Joan May and then Mr. Juan [indiscernible].

Good morning, Mr. President, CEO, members of the Board. Dear colleagues, I would like for my intervention to be on the record. I'm Joan [indiscernible], and I'm speaking on behalf of all the staff from the Balic Islands and their representative of the independent union in the Balic Islands, which have been working for more than 43 years.

Today, I will go to focus on the most important thing, the staff of CaixaBank that every day fights and works so hard to achieve the historical successful results that today you are seeing here, EUR 5,000 million of profit without the staff, there's no profit because we generate this money because while remuneration on the top has been increased so much, we are -- have only an increase of 3%.

Mr. Gortazar in 2025, you received EUR 4.5 million. And today, you are telling us to approve an increase of 20% of that amount. I mean this is helpful for the whole staff. And beyond that, those colleagues that are coming from Bankia. -- remember, in 2021, we were asked to make an effort to avoid and volunteered fire of -- so -- and you said that we were adopting rational wages little by little, and we accepted it. But after the wonderful results year after year proved that when we wanted to get rid of this progressive measure, this was justified because these results have not been just due to the economy, but this have been due to the hard work of the staff and what did the company.

Dividends is giving dividends to the shareholders before doing justice to their own staff. That's why we are achieving the end of the stage of the progressive adaptation too late and too badly. And also you are saying that we all go in the same boat. We are all rowing in the same direction. Yes. Well, we are all there. You have the increase of your wages, you have the dividend. And we, the staff, the workers are down there the rowing being the driving engine of this boat. So we are all of us in the same boat, but in a very different situation. And you are telling us faster, faster. your goals are unattainable. -- with now a quarterly report, which is ignoring the reality of our economy because as you know, we have -- we depend on tourism in the Balarica Island.

So during the first quarter of the year, it's a miracle to achieve the targets that you set. Are you aware that this pressure, this excessive pressure is making your staff sick. There is this rhythm that you are imposing from your offices. The staff can't take it any long in NA. We cannot follow this rhythm. It is difficult to understand it. We have colleagues with lots of experience. And the only thing to live on leaving the company is not a lack of commitment. is the pressure, the commercial pressure, there is a following up every day and they say that what do you have for today, if you have the time, you -- why aren't you not selling more? What would you do tomorrow to recover the sales that you didn't do today? You are saying that you need intensity, but make no mistake. The stock is not bought. They are exhausted. And you know so will vote against the item 6 on the agenda. And let me tell you 3 very clear things. Fair redistribution of profit. It's not fair that we have -- the workers have a 3% only for the workers and 20% for you.

Secondly, immediate reduction of the commercial pressure and targets, respect for the health of our staff. We have not machines. We are not AI. We are just people. So despite all this, the really with will to find solutions to the current problems of the staff. And then all in all, I would like to make reference of our founder, Frances Moraga, who said the work at the head, the people at your heart. Please be reminded, Mr. [indiscernible] we, the workers of CaixaBank.

Thank you very much for your attention. The floor is for Juan and then Ignacio Casado.

Good morning. I want to have my intervention on the records. I'm Jones, General Secretary of the Union Vale Union of the Valaric Islands with 25% of representation. Despite this, the President didn't invite us to this general meeting and all meetings. That's why. Well, we cannot understand why are you inviting some of them and not all of us, all of the unions because for some of them, they are paying for their travel expenses. We didn't receive a response. Today, we are we are coming with our right because we are shareholders of CaixaBank, and we are representing those shareholders who have trusted us and thank us. You are displacing our unions and you are dispicing our workers as well.

If I make congrats to Jan, tens of thousands of workers are on strike today because there are many challenges and there's the pressure that has to do with all the stuff. And if with this kind of strike, you are facing this strike because you cannot control your staff. I think almost all the offices in the Baleric Islands are closed. And we can prove that we are here today to fight. However, the top management, you will have saying historical strike, yes, against your -- the things you are doing, which is not working well. listen to our message, the challenges, the targets -- the commercial targets that you are establishing are unattainable. And there are 2 demands, the situation, their colleagues is an absolute chaos.

The problem is not only the high target, but also the daily issues we are facing. As an example, I could tell you that many of the sales are not rightly accounted for as we were promised. We have to do many claims, not all of them successful, we are forced to change the different customers' points, things that we are not responsible for. The commercial model says that the reference would be the CMB few the managers, created a new model some years ago, the managers don't whatever they want. Are you aware of that? Is this standard of practice? Is this is normal?

There are so many things to change if you really want to change them. Please listen to your staff if you want a beta bank. All in all, we will bought against the increase of the wages to the 20%. I mean, it's amazing that you are asking for this increase with your lay offices close because there is some strike. I think that Mr. [ Gortak ] will have some responsibility in this stride. I mean, it's incredible, it's shameful that what you are required here. But let's see, they are directors this -- if we do the same work that most of the staff are trying to leave us so many claims you have.

In your case, Mr. Gortazar, there are some other CEOs that take care of their staff. What do you do after today that is the second general strike during your history? And those are the only second -- only two general strike of CaixaBank. And as you say that you have worked with the unions. Are you proud that in CaixaBank, we have different classes of employees because in 4 days time, then we will have be in of the integrated plan for the staff of Bankia.

But there are so many things to do. Don't worry there are so many things to do. Please do something once and for all to solve this problem because every single year, we have to come here to remind you, [indiscernible] thank you very much for this historical day. One day that you will remember as a solidarity day as a joint communion in which -- we are respecting our commercial network. Thank you very much. Now the floor goes to Mr. Ignacio Casado and then Mr. Carlos Alberto Guerrero Marano.

Any system you create without us will be destroyed. We want you before. Nothing you built without us as last year. listened to this why you are so happy. I'm bloating about your profits just taking advantage of the work other people do. Listen, once again, anything you create without us will be destroyed. You set you have pressure, you have filed, you have claimed you have people, you have targets and tires and some unions. It is called outside, but please be reminded any system you create without us will be destroyed. The foundation there, the pool they have the HLS, their store Q1, Q2, Q3, you can invent as many things as they want, but any system that you create without us will be destroyed.

Yes, many of you are clapping here with the suits and you have some -- I don't know, memorabilia regarding you, you are taking a advantage of everything you probably in first class, you are enjoying all the luxury that is paid by our hard work and anxiety listen to this. Any system you create without us will be destroyed. You have our time, you have our bread, you have the chain of our children because we are afraid of being humble. You have our health in your hands, but be aware because there's not so much to end, and you are beginning to have a lot to lose and nothing that you created without us has lasted Listen to me, once again, any system you create without us will be destroyed.

Now the floor to Carlos Alberto Gerard, Mrs. Maria Duane.

Good morning. I would like for my intervention to be on the record, Dear President, dear Directors shareholders, dear colleagues. This year, I want to say thank you to all our colleagues and the workers of CaixaBank because we have having a profit since 2020 to the EUR 591 of profit after taxes. We have quotable profit the share. shares in 2020 was 1.70. Today, 6x more. These good results show that we are in a good track and the success of Bankia. In 1 year, we have duplicated our profit However, since 2026, won't have the base wages of all the people that were working in Bankia.

I mean this is an economical success. This is a professional success. All the stuff have been adapting very well to the new reality, all the workers are working very well. We are rolling together in order to achieve the different targets that have been set out every day, every single year. But the success. The economic success of this year has not been translated into the retribution and social rights of the workers. Homologation, which would be bearing the wages of [indiscernible]. Yes, we are a listed company, but we are a social company that should embrace the European principle of same salary for the same work. Because the situation really could be improved.

We had amortized into the merging of Bankia so many years ago. And then we need to make the different wages equal. It's taken us 5 years, and this stuff is rolling and growing in this road, we are moving. And then there are millions of profits in the last years, and we are not seeing solution. There are so many examples like, for instance, there's different percentage to the pension funds and also differences, which are huge or depth of sees from the workers. This is not fair. I think is saying thank you again to all the staff for the professionality and the working group. Without them, we couldn't be facing the successful results of today.

Thank you. Now Mr. [indiscernible].

Good morning or for my intervention to be on the record. Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, members of the Board, President, I am Maria [indiscernible], and I am here on behalf of the company, Banca Armada, Arm Bank. I'm representing the shareholders with a total of 374 shares. There is a genocide in Gaza. They are dropping bobs equivalent to 5 atom bombs [indiscernible] on a population of 2 million people concentrated in 20 square meters that leaves under the military for decades. More than 70,000 Palestinians are the more than more than 1,300 health tariffs and also many debt from the EU and nations, the United Nations and many journalists.

And this is only in Gaza. In [indiscernible], we also have the military occupation, the illegal settlements and the killings of the rally see are watching a genocide. It is broadcasted in the social media and the TV. This genocide has been research with International Court of Justice, and they say that there are evidence in order to rest President and the Ministry of the representative of the and uses that we are facing a genocide right now, Israel and the USA are bringing the world to the whole region all creating terrible consequences for the people and the region, and they did it on their own against the basic international law. In the face of that, one should wonder which has been the contribution of CaixaBank in increase in the military capabilities of the Israeli army and the war crimes as we said last year, and we already make it clear in our report on Gaza on the Armbank, [indiscernible] has financed and still is financing factories of weapons.

We are supplying weapons to the equally rands using this weapon to kill people specifically between '20 and '24. [indiscernible] has provided 110 million to Boeing, who is responsible to manufacture, planes, midsize and some other weapon that had been exported and have been exported to is and he -- this country is using this weapon in genocide primes and war price clarify this by the International Court of Justice, which is your role in this illegal occupation, another report, more recent report published by bond by education documents or the financing of companies that were from illegal settlements against international law.

In fact, Francesca, Albanese from the UN in HER 59-report, [indiscernible] talking about the financing, financing companies and importance on the occupying on the occupying strategies. So CaixaBank has been given loans to those companies with a value of more than 3,000 million between 2023 and 2025. On the other hand, it has investments in these companies for more than 2,800 million. CaixaBank is financing companies that are participating in this genocide. All in all, more than 6 billion. Those companies are in the list of the United Nations who are doing activity in the unlawfully occupies Palestine settlement.

This lease includes 7 Israeli banks, and we are still are having commercial relationships or any business activity with any of these banks you might wonder what responsibility has CaixaBank about this? Well, if you finance these companies, CaixaBank does participate on the benefits and the profits of these companies that they get by war and people. And so they get this private financing without this finance if wouldn't be able to follow on with the genocide with this more 6 billion CaixaBank and their managers are responsible for the general side of the sales time people. The profits that you get from them are staying with blood. What do you want to do about this?

Mr. President and Directors till when will you profit from the genocide and the occupation of Palestine. We've been announced this for 20 years and was until when do you want to continue financing these and other weapons company from Bank Armada campaign, we claim one more year, the CaixaBank stops financing these companies harming Israel because it makes you complicit in this world crimes. If you could please finish because you have exceeded your time. Your awards will mean nothing because it is already clear what we have said. Arms finance by you that have been used in line in world crimes. Will you take any specific measure? Thank you.

[indiscernible], has a floor.

I would like for my intervention to be included in the minutes. Mining, I am speaking on behalf of Banca Armada, representing 16 shareholders that have delegated 37,6 shares. We have to claim again about the situation of CaixaBank and other ARM weapons companies because you are contributing to the escalation of the farm race in Europe and in the rest of the world with serious events such as the genocide and the occupation of the Palestinian people. The defense budget has reached unprecedented levels.

In 2024, the world's budget was more than EUR 2.7 million the United States is pressuring the auto the nature members so that we continue increasing our budget for arms and weapons. They start worse, they attack sovereign states generating tension and disruptions in any economic effect in Europe, maybe defending the strategic independents are doubling or multiplying the defense budget to have new arm men systems, 1 more year after the announcement of rearm Europe of EUR 800 million.

We are convinced that this is a strategy to only benefit the industrial, the military industry. Far away from making the world a safer place. We can see that these armed conflict against Iran is increasing tensions globally. We see that investing in these kind of companies of were seen an excellent option to get reach. But don't you think that this is unethical. What is the role of CaixaBank in this situation? The financial sector has not stayed a side of the flood of millions that will come thanks to this. CaixaBank has been financing the armament sector as we have been claiming for so many times.

Apart from the legal or ethical considerations or were taking them into account, your bank was the third position of financing military companies only behind BBVA. And the 91st position worldwide. In the last few years, CaixaBank has had record profits, thanks to the financing in the military industry. You're announcing EUR 5.8 billion. But if you take a look at the period 2022, 2024, we can see how you have financed more than 480 million in weapons companies. And every year, we see more and more financing to the armament sector. These are large armament companies at international level that have been benefiting from your support, such as Airbus or in Spain, in Dranavantia, Air Nova or Senor.

These companies sell weapons to countries that are in an armed conflict and that violate human rights systematically such as the Remate. We need to mention the Sedona financing whose managers are being investigated by the courts for selling weapons to Israel and of course, not following the royal decree to stop providing armament to Israel. What are the consequences of this financing? The rearmament of Europe is generating a higher risk for direct confrontation between powers and generating lack of stability all around. This is a fact as we can see in real time. In the face of all of these members of the Board of Directors and Mr. Chairman, our question is clear. When -- until when will CaixaBank continue generating profit, thanks to human suffering and instability cost by worse? Do you think -- or are you planning to continue investing or financing in this kind of companies?

war and [indiscernible] are not inevitable. They are the result of political decisions and economic decisions where your bank is playing a key role, 3 out of every 4 arms in Euro wouldn't be produced if we weren't for the support of entities or institutions such as CaixaBank. We invite you to reflect about the type of work you want to live in. and you want to build with your profits. You cannot have your hands sustained with blood. We need to demand transparency, and we need to say no to or it is urgent that CaixaBank stops benefiting from the business of weapons. And otherwise, we will continue to be here claiming about this kind of collaboration with the armament industry. Thank you.

Okay. If my details are correct, we have stopped or we have finished with the interventions on site. We are now going to read the three online interventions. We're going to read them now. We have Antonio [indiscernible].

Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Vice Chairman and rest of the members of the Board. My interventions are always in the sense of thinking the work of all the people being part of this bank from those who are behind the desk in any branch around Spain as those who are sitting on the Board of Directors. And with the management and excellent management, we have this EUR 5,891 million in profit. As I said in the last year, I was hoping for my retirement and to have livestock business having cows given me milk, and this has been a reality.

The cow is CaixaBank and the milk is the dividend. So I would like to thank all of the workers participating in this great institution, and I would also like to mention those who are part of this great private banking team in [indiscernible] that gives me an excellent advisory without forgetting all the veterinarians that are members of this team making this institution to be healthy. I would like to thank Mr. Chairman for his first year with such great and excellent results.

I would like to recognize the new policy for dividend payout in November, plus the supplementary approved by every year and by this AGM and this will be twice a year, which is something we think you for. And as I said last year, to this Board of Directors, you have in your hands, a great bank with great reputation with great workers, and I truly hope you continue in the same line so that we continue to be stronger and more efficient. The road is difficult, but I know you will attain this.

With the [indiscernible] you do not want to forget the foundation La Caixa, which continues to be a reference shareholder with thousands of volunteers managing to have these better society in the innovator world and giving more opportunities to those who needed most. Mr. Tomas Monza, Vice Chairman, the rest of the members of the Board. Thanks for boosting these banks to the first position. And you have my support and recognition as a shareholder to those of you who are members of this bank. Greetings, Antonio by Rincon.

Now let us move on to the second intervention by Angel Arevalo, this intervention contains certain firms that is disqualifying or a bit offensive. So we will read it that allow me to stop using -- allow me to ask you to stop using these kind of terms.

Good morning, Mr. Chairman and Director. My name is Angel Arevalo and I have more than 9,000 shares of CaixaBank. I am a shareholder for many years. In 2022, I had a claim against me in the bank and because of harassment. In this proceeding, there were 6 people that were wild against me. As a consequence of lack of the irregularities I was fired from the bank in 2022 justice in the court in Spain said that there was no harassment. But the harassment protocol says that this needs to be filed in and punished for these but face claims. And I will kindly ask for this person to be fired. She is a bad professional, and she is not working professionally, and she is a bad colleague. And there were two human resources people from Cassini Leon saying that she wanted to start working in human resources.

And because she was not transferred to the department. She was recommended to file a harassment file against me. So there was no presumption of, in a sense, I could not access to this claim against me and they wouldn't even check the reality or the truth in her works. They wouldn't respect the [indiscernible] protocol, saying that if there is no harassment, these proceedings should be closed. One of them without any kind of labor expertise and who has hired this person and the person signing up my letter to be fired. He is also charged for bribery against a civil servants.

So I was fired. And they wouldn't attend to a court hearing where they had to be. They should be -- they are not complying with the code of ethics of CaixaBank. And I also ask these two people are making per DMs for not going to the court to speak. So I ask for Justice and redress I do not wish any one going through the hell I have been through. They are dangerous. And I would also like to for you to investigate the whistleblowing channel at CaixaBank because we need to investigate the matters properly and you need to have a justified response because they are not complying with the code of ethics. I see some workers are on the strike because of the trade union, but we have to work. We work by targets and you fight every day for your targets. What are they claiming about?

What are they reporting I wish they would all be owners of more than 10,000 shares of CaixaBank. I would like my intervention to be recorded.

We will now read the last intervention that was sent online remotely. And once this is read, we will finalize the list of interventions also attending online. Vicente Enrique Durban, he requests for his intervention to be recorded in the minutes.

Good morning. I would like to thank you for listening to the minority shareholders who are at the same time, customers of the bank. I truly believe that our experiences can offer a valuable perspective that could go and notice sometimes. I would like to congratulate for the approval of service in the last few years, mainly in solving technical issues and in improving functionalities online. In this line, I consider that all the operations should be done through the website and the app application so that we reduce the workload of the employees.

Based on the experience in other countries, I consider that we should also be able to ask for an appointment on the ATMs and on the website even for that same day. And so the fact that they can choose the person providing the service. And this should be done, for example, reserving 1/3 of the full schedule of the day to be assisted by a person with this prior appointment with a minimum period of 15 minutes. Now the ATM should also be replaced by other higher-speed devices. This would help us saving maintenance costs and the attention by the workers.

Now there are many. And even if they are slow and also not very agile. In the changing times where we are in with geopolitical problems, the progress of AI is -- and more informed customers, this institution should think about its investment services. we should facilitate investment services that are simpler and more effective. The current broker generates very high fees that should be reviewed in order for it to be accessible to nonprofessional customers. in the same line in the future, I would like to mention added services to cards, especially to travel, such as services, eSIM services or VIP rooms access. It seems you are progressing, but we need to take into account that these services will make a difference for young people to stay in their bank or to leave to others that offer more for less.

CaixaBank needs to fund the balance to continue offering advantages with ATM and people in the branch, which is essential for certain services for a mortgage, for example, but complementing with the rest of services I mentioned. Regarding the news on the strikes and the stress for the workers because of the commercial tensions, this is very concerning and they should be sold. This generates risks and a bad climate. So we cannot have a bad bank, we cannot afford that we need to be excellent in the treatment to our workers, and we need to find a cost-benefit balance. And workers well treated is the best guarantee for success. I trust the potential of CaixaBank.

If we managed to join [indiscernible], competitive offer, retaining younger technology younger generations and reaching our work as well. We will consolidate our leadership for many years.

Thank you, [indiscernible] Frontera.

At this point, we take the interventions as finished either those present here in the room or also those remotely. We now continue to reply to these different interventions without prejudice of the intervention that as we said before, will be replied in writing in the following next 7 days.

First of all, I would like to answer Navarro and [indiscernible] Gonzalo. Yes, you have the floor.

Well, regarding the intervention on comments. First of all, you said that the increase of revenue on services, as I said in my feed, there's been an increase of 5.4% by recurrent banker intervention has been this mine more than 4%. That's why this is not true. So you would you say it's not true. Regarding claim CaixaBank of course has more planes at the Bank of Spain because we have many customers. We are the leader in 2024. We have reversed -- that was published in the management report and that you say this is also not 12,000, as you said, the Bank of Spain compares a number of claims we comparing it with market share, and we have less claims, if you compare it with our market share.

That doesn't mean that we are not working to improve our service to our customers and to have a better service. We are really interested. This Board is interested in the whole group to give the best service possible to our customers and being honest in the last 2 years, we have many initiatives with these priorities. Now -- and we have seen some results because we are seeing that quality indicators, both internal and internal level or at [indiscernible] and even a very good resort also, you've been mentioning the digitalization of our industry, and there were some of the things you say, I think don't have anything to do with us because if a financial entity does not want to leave anyone behind.

CaixaBank, Our model is inclusive. It's in our DNA. We have 20 million customers. We won the best digital channels, but also the best offices on-site channel. We have many elderly who are customers more than 4 million. But of course, many others who are digital but also want to use our offices or some different means to talk to different managers. We have 3 -- more than 3,000 municipalities with offices, and we also have not that not only that coverage with offices, but also with some tools which are mobile offices that reach some rural areas. We have a commitment that we won't leave any municipality and this has been made public.

And we are the only financial entity present in so many municipalities in -- I mean, -- we've been working there. This is being given results and some other entities are clearly abandoning some municipalities, but we won't do this. Any question about the low 10s, last 25 years, we will comply with the requirements of this new law that regulates services to customers. But regarding financing entities. Since 2004, we have our own guy made issued by the Bank of Spain, in line with the requirements of the new law. So I can't really confirm that we are going to comply with the law. And also to say that this support customer, customer support is different from the commercial services as required by the current legislation. Thank you very much.

Now we are going to reply to the interventions of the unions and of Mr. Guerrero. Regarding just to be efficient, we will reply to all of them. At the same time, we are fully aware of the importance of the health of our workers. Any concern regarding this has to be, of course, listen to and talk to in an institutional dialogue although our CEO will give you specific replies, let me give you some general points. As I said in my initial intervention, CaixaBank an incredible and committed staff a way of work is based on respect dialogue and recognition of the value that everyone contributes with to our company. I want to be very clear about another topic.

There are no place for light interventions or any violence. If we have an issue, we have to act immediately. But we are working in a very competitive environment, and we have to be very demanding as a leader institution. But being demanding means having clear targets and being focused on the customer, always with a healthy and professional relationship with our teams. I want to remind you that even in the difficult times, we always achieve agreements with the unions, and this history proves that the serious and responsible dialogue works and that our staff is and will be one of the main assets of our of CaixaBank. As an evidence is we have the best working conditions of our industry.

That's why being this year of union election, we will listen to all your demand with respect from our institution because we are convinced that cooperating historically with the unions is the way forward. In fact, we have invited to this meeting to all the unions which have representation of more than 1%. Regarding the payments to our CEO, let me focus on a general vision of this proposal based on several year -- several year recognition of the commitment and leadership that CaixaBank means. His direction has been determined to reinforce profitability and the transformation of our group as well as moving forward in our strategic plan.

What our proposal follows the comparative analysis that are end uses and reflects an objective reality the wages of our CEO, especially on the variable company still has to join some comparable entities, both at the European level and at the IVX25 level. We have to combine this and to compare his weight, and so we have find a balance between the responsibility under payment. And what we want to do in this way is to keep our talent in this demanding environment. Then I want to say that the main adviser at international levels have been this proposal. So this proposal is like a standard proposal at the European level.

Let me finish with a personal comment. The leadership of our CEO, has been an asset and it is an asset, which is fundamental for our entity to have Gonzalo is one of the strengths of CaixaBank. [indiscernible] if you want, not to be the comment than here.

Well, I just want to say thank you to all the intervention of the union representatives I want to begin for the things that join us. First of all, thank you to all the workers. We share that gratitude we share the respect we share the gratitude for the work they carry out. Secondly, the commercial target goals are very ambitious. Yes, we agree with you. There's a high workload. Our stuff works very hard in order to achieve the goals. Yes, we agree that. And also share they will to talk to you. Our door is also open. It's been always open and that's the way we have been doing that in the past time in the future. I would also like that -- well, there have been many in the venture, but some of the statements should be a little bit clarify.

Sometimes we've had the business challenges in insurances had a rise of -- that's not right. This has not been done properly. Please do talk to the human resources and will tell you that -- there's been an increase on the target, but that's not a proportion. The having the charges every quarter, it is standard in the market. We see that in the -- some of our competitors even have every few months. There they have -- well, the net profit has increased 1.8%. Now this is our results just a little bit above last year due to the economic environment. the retribution of our staff has been increased by more than 6%. So you can see that this is of the public knowledge and you can check that.

And I'm very, very happy that we are transplant and our start really deserve this increase of the 6%. We have talked about social benefits. Our pension plan is the biggest in Spain. We have more than 8,900 million that we manage, and we are offering benefits to restaff in 2025, social benefits had been EUR 515 million, including that 8%, 8.5% on the salary contribution on the salary to the pension fund. So it's something that I will start really value. This pension fund has a very good performance, 5% yearly performance with a wonderful management, each one of the pension funds work better. We have covered many vacancies. We have higher 4,300 people to cover vacancies. Of course, we are doing what we have to do with support and staff when the need. Of course, not all of them have been covered in the next day with the right people because that's statistically impossible, but we try to do our best.

And we always solve this in the end, and that's the way we want to work. You talked about an opinion survey. We have a survey that indicates that -- the staff is more satisfied that before, that doesn't mean that we don't have to work very hard. But I think that the message is that we are on the right track. They see that we are a very competitive company that contributes to the financial welfare of the society. And also, we are nondiscriminatory. There are social benefits. There's a recognized recognition by the manager of the works, people feel safe. We have stability in different positions in [indiscernible], all this has been recognized it doesn't mean that there's not room for improvement.

Of course, there's always room for improvement, and then we'll do after the strike today an intervention commercial challenges and targets. Yes, they are difficult. So we agree with that some of the union representative say that during the last year, we have achieve all our targets and we are more than 100% of our commercial targets. But this means that our challenges are at enables. So we achieve them, so they are possible.

Then some last comments regarding what the President say the success of Caixa has been based on the high level of professionality and being quite demanding, and our staff also wants to be a benchmark in the market. Challenges, of course, will be ambitious Secondly, technology, technology that we already have and the one we are implementing. That will allow us to be more productive until to get with many of the administrative workload we are doing a lot every day, for instance, preparing the commercial interviews with AI. But also, we have an agenda for the year in which we will be able to offer that technology to our workers so they can be more efficient, and they can get rid of some work loads, which are bureaucratic, that will mean that we have the best paid workers because we are the more productive.

If you just do the opposite and we are not so productive this will mean in the long term is that we are not so productive is that we don't we will not have the competitive advantage in face of the new stakeholders in our industry, which have less costs and expenses. So we have to be more productive. Then we are demanding but in the mining has to go hand in hand with the trust of our team. We have been reinforced for the biggest financial increases during the last decade, there's been the [indiscernible] we have been successful that we did the biggest bank merge in Spain and all these of calls as directors and also as managers have to make us stress our workers, and we have to demand and we have always as managers to trust our team and to give them the autonomy they need to achieve their goals and of course, to give -- to be polite.

And if you see that this is not working or something is happening tell us because we want to do something about it. Regarding today's intervention, on the strike that we've seen today. We are doors open. We want to talk to you. We want good communication regarding the commercial target and any other topic. Always being demanding, but also trusting our extraordinary stuff.

Thank you. Now we'll reply [indiscernible] excuse me. And also, I wanted to say something to Carlos Alberto Herrera, specifically for him, if I'm not mistaken, just to that I want to say thank you of the success in the margin of Bankia, you have been mentioning faring the same condition from Bankia and Caixa. We have a commitment. With that, we have always scared the condition of all the workers. And yes, it is not even demand required by the labor regulation. Well, like we did some years ago, and we agreed to do that. And we are really doing that. And the income is on April 2026. So this is something which is already solved following the initial agreement.

Armbank. We have two interventions regarding ARM bank. And I would like to address them because these are recurrent in this meeting. And so our response is in line with what we always said, we are committed to the human rights. This is a structural commitment. It's in our DNA. And of course, we follow the international framework, which are the principle of the United Nations responsible bank in responsible investment and sustainability in insurance. Those commitments either all what we do.

Regarding the defense industry, our principles are public and transparent. And they -- you can see it on our web pages, everything is published, and it established the red line is established a limit none of our companies has relation with any company who's selling weapons to any countries that are fighting. We only were with companies that comply with some requirements in order to be sure that we know who we are financing. None of our companies is financing any armies in places where there is a breach of the human rights. Gaza has been mentioned. I do share my concern about this topic and my sympathies and my best wish for the people of Gaza. So they can forget about the tragedy that they are leaving.

What I can say is that the whole of the funding of CaixaBank strictly complies with all the requirements and principles I mentioned. And of course, we comply with the law with the sanctions established by our -- the national authorities, the Spanish government on all the monitoring processes that we follow. We also have to be realistic. The geopolitical context has changed under uncertainty in the future security and safety is a principal concern for Europe and for the state members, and we have to reinforce it. And the financing industry in Europe. And we, of course, have to contribute to these needs that Europe is showing and of course, following all the requirements and respecting all the human rights.

But obviously, from a financing industry, we have to help the agenda on security of Europe and Spain. I would now like to replay [indiscernible], thank you so much for your intervention and for the recognition words that you have conveyed to us. As I said in my initial statement, the real engine of this bank is its people. This is why I especially think your evaluation about the daily work of our staff in the branches and in all the teams to sustain the functioning of these institutions. Your comments encourage us to continue working with the ambition of offering an excellent service and keep the robustness that is key for us as well as for your recognition of the dividend policy and the Caixa Foundation -- for us, this is an essential pillar.

I truly thank you for your support and your trust. Our commitment is to continue progressing with responsibility and with the idea to continue serving our customers, shareholders and society. In response to Mr. Arevalo, Mr. Secretary?

Yes, the intervention of Mr. Arevalo proposes to different things. First, speaking about the circumstances of when he was fired, this was in the courts under the competent authorities with a final decision we are not coming into evaluating the court decision.

This is a favorable decision that CaixaBank has accepted, and this is something that is finished. Second, [indiscernible] proposes series of claims, complaints that he has presented in the whistleblowing channel, when he complains about all the facts that he has rated in his intervention, and I would simply like to say that if that is the case, I would like to guarantee Mr. Arevalo data is complaints are well known by the institution. These channel deals with all the complaints, but we have a confidentiality duty and we cannot evaluate or promote the confidential with blowing channel.

Finally, the reply to Mr. Fuentes? Gonzalo?

Yes, Mr. Fuentes, I would like to thank you for your intervention and your suggestions. We love to hear that there are shareholders who are customers and who are involved and that give us an opinion about the evolution of the company. This is very useful. This recognition words are motivation for us to. And of course, it seems you perceive progress in different fields, service quality, the use of technology.

And it also confirms that we need to continue working to cover these expectations on service level. We have the ambition to be the banking institution with the best on-site service and with the largest branch network, but also with the support with the best technology to our customers. And this is something we're working on and we will continue to do so. In order to do so, we need the best staff possible, which we have and also a high level of degree and the necessary investments in technology, and this is something we are working with in these last few years. There are many specific suggestions that we will send to the quality department and to the rest of the departments involved so that they can include in the plants those suggestions that may fit into our plans ongoing.

Thank you, Mr. Fuentes. Next, we will read and approve the resolutions. I give the floor to Mr. Secretary. Given that the information and documents regarding the motions for resolution for this AGM have been made available to the shareholders according to Article 9 of the regulations of the unless anyone demands. So we are not going to read all of them fully. We will give a summary, maybe giving context if needed, with the proposal of the corresponding report. As we have previously informed we would like to tell you that the voting procedure after the reading of the summary for the motions for resolution.

According to the regulations, the Chairman will declare the agreements as approved if it checks that we have had the necessary favorable votes without prejudice of the detailed information result of the voting that will be published later on the corporate website according to the regulations in force that will be included in the minutes of this AGM. We ask the shareholders and those representing the shareholders to express both agent or abstention to all of the items in the agenda.

If you haven't done so, do you go to the desk at the end of the back of the room so that you can do so, after reading the summary. At the same time, we asked the shareholders and proxies that are on attending online to this ATM that wish to vote the different motions for resolution to do so through the link provided at the platform for remote assistance or attendance until this voting is finished. Solidus continue the items 1, 2 and 3 of the agenda we propose the approval of the individual and consolidated financial statements and the respective management reports for the year ended on 31st December 2025, audited by the auditors. At the same time, we also propose the approval of the consolidated nonfinancial information statement for the year ended on 31st December 2025.

At the same time, we propose the approval of the Board of Directors management during the financial year end in 2025. And with all the details that you have that is including the supplementary dividend on the 9th of April. And the third item, we propose a reelection of the company's accounts auditor and its consolidated group for the financial year 2020. Pricewaterhousecoopers according to the recommendation of the Audit Committee. Fourth item, reelection and appointment of members of the Board of Directors, the election of [indiscernible] reelection of [indiscernible] antiviral also appointment as new directors [indiscernible] and have diversification and appointment of [indiscernible]. And we state that these appointments will take for years and the appointment of [indiscernible] is subject to the verification of suitability by the European Central Bank.

At the same time, we informed that all these proposals for reelection and new appointments will keep the number of 15 Board members. So if there's a vacancy, this will be covered by the cooptation system by the Board or by a new proposal to the AGM. Fifth item in the agenda, we have different financial aspects covered First, capital reduction of the share capital and his election to the Board of Directors to issue securities contingently convertible into shares of the company or the instruments of a similar nature for the purpose of meeting regulatory requirements.

In the 6th items, we have remuneration setting the remuneration of the directors and approve the amendment of the remuneration policy of the Board of Directors with these agreements, we would also like to establish a EUR 150,000, the annual amount for the remuneration as a whole for the directors. At the same time, we propose to modify the policy for the remuneration of the Board of Directors, 2025, 2028, that will replace the previous or the current policy, 2025 to approved in the last AGM with the produce of the effects produced and consolidated under its valid nest.

Apart from this, we approved -- we propose to approve variable components in the different remunerations to the directors and the maximum level of remuneration -- variable remuneration for the employees that have an impact on the risk profile of the company. At the same time, we would also like to bring to voting the annual report on remuneration of the Board members, which is available to all the shareholders.

7th item in the agenda that has to do with authorization and the delegation of powers to interpret correct, supplement, implement and develop the resolutions adopted at the AGM. And the last one is just a consultative item, which is about the communication of the report of the Board directors for the purposes of the Article 511 of the Spanish Companies Act, which will have convertible shares for million. You know that we need to speak about certain functions according to the law, but this time, there is no need for that. According to the law, we continue to finish the voting, we kindly ask shareholders and proxies to vote against or abstain if you haven't done so. This is at the back of the room so that we can count all the votes. If you are remotely do so through the platform of remote attendance.

At this point, I declare the period of voting over for all the motions of our solution regarding all the items in the agenda by the shareholders and proxies representing other shareholders attending to the AGM, either on-site or remotely. They have all been approved by the necessary majority according to the law.

Mr. Secretary. For technical reasons, due to the fact that we are holding this meeting on site here and simultaneously remotely, the calculation of all the voting will be done taking into account both cases, on-site or online, and this will be published on the corporate website in 5 days after this holding of this AGM according to the Spanish corporate law. and it will be included in the minutes of the notary. We take this AGM as finished. Thank you so much for your attendance and see you next year.

Thank you, everyone, for coming to this session with CaixaBank. I'm thrilled to introduce one more year, both Gonzalo Gortazar, CEO; and Javier Pano, CFO. Thanks for being loyal attendees to every year to this conference. We appreciate that.

Let's start with the usual polling question. What is the most important target for CaixaBank to achieve to ensure continued outperformance? The EUR 12.5 billion NII in '27, the mid-single-digit growth in revenues from services, the 4% CAGR in cost, the less than 25 basis points cost of risk or to distribute all the capital above 12.5%. Well, I think that's clear.

No surprise.

So we're going to have a word about that.

Maybe.

But let's start with the business plan. You're 1 year into it. You've obviously updated the strategic targets. Wondering you touched on the main highlights you've achieved so far? And what do you -- how do you measure progress from here?

Well, thank you. Thank you for having us, Alvaro. Pleasure to be here. And I'd say we had a very good first year for -- of our 3-year plan, where we basically grew business volume, both on the asset and on the customer fund side by 7%. We grew premiums by actually 13%, which was quite nice.

We grew market share generally across the board. We grew the number of net new clients by 390,000. And on the back of all that, it was pretty clear that we would most likely beat our 3-year targets. So we reset those, and we moved to expect 6% growth in business volume. And associated to that, accordingly, increasing profitability with return on tangible at 20% next year and reduction in cost income.

And generally, obviously, a pretty good environment on growth back 1.5 years ago, when we started talking about growth in the market, we were actually met with some skepticism, and we thought that growth was possible. And in the end, growth was actually 50% higher than -- or even more than 50% higher than what we were expecting. So we feel good about that part of the plan.

Then we talk about transformation. Transformation is a bit more difficult to observe and everybody is talking about how many things they are doing. And sure we'll talk about AI, which everybody is asking us and everybody else. But really, it feels also that we have sort of used well our time in terms of transformation. We -- part of that is hiring more IT professionals so that we internalize some of the capacities that we think we need to have in-house, and we have added 650 last year. We renovated our app, which we call Now, as you know, it's now ranked #1 in the Google Store in Spain and consistently for some time.

Now we've increased strongly digital sales. We've launched new initiatives like platforms of Facilitea Ocasion Coches, which is housing and cars, has -- they have had pretty good acceptance among our clients. And we've made another push, Imagin, where we had leadership in this sort of age of 20- to 35-year-old. We're the largest bank with Imagin in Spain. We have -- half of our net client growth is coming or half of our client growth is coming from -- or through Imagin.

And hence, generally feeling that we have good progress in not just the short term improving financial performance and growth, but also looking at the longer term and taking advantage of the good times to make sure that our advantage is sustained over time.

The momentum of the business is obviously very good, but maybe not immune. Can you give us a bit of context how you see the resilience of the business in the current sort of uncertain Middle East sort of geopolitical environment, how do you see the resilience of that business and any sort of early signs of how clients are reacting or how you're thinking about it?

Well, the Middle East brings uncertainty to everybody, obviously. We think that uncertainty, fortunately, both Spain and us in particular, are pretty much removed from the center of the action. So we don't have any particular direct concern at this stage. There's obviously the second order consequences of what's impacting energy costs, supply chains, rates and the economy. All these things are obviously things that we follow very closely.

But I would say with a position of relative strength, we are, I think, still of the view that it's more likely that this situation will last few weeks and hence, in a few months' time, we'll have a normalized energy market, maybe at levels that are probably higher than the ones that we saw pre-war, but consistent with the rapid normalization. And hence, for an economy in Spain that we expect to pre-war grow at 2.4%, what we're saying is based on the sensitivities that we have run on basically energy for Spanish GDP, we're probably going to end up closer to 2% and to 2.5%. That's the kind of impact associated to an intense, but not a long war.

And at those levels, I think asset quality volumes are substantially in line with what we were expecting at the beginning of the year. In fact, at the beginning of the year, we were expecting 2% GDP growth. We we actually raised our estimates after the very strong sort of closing of 2025. And on the other hand, obviously, we have a sensitive to rates, and I'm sure we'll get into that later that indicate that if rates go up, that's likely to increase our profitability, particularly in next year.

So as long as we are talking about this kind of conflict, I think we are in pretty good shape and certainly master of our own destiny and we'll obviously have to adapt the strategy and tactics and certain decisions to the environment. But generally, we have a fairly positive view of the future.

I was going to say that the key highlight of the plan was the EUR 12.5 billion, but I feel that now is a common knowledge. Maybe we can discuss what are the main assumptions behind that EUR 12.5 billion reminds the audience. Obviously, the hedge is a big step up. It has a big step-up next year and is part of that. And I think it's interesting that this morning, we did a poll where the audience doesn't seem too convinced that rates will be going up. So maybe in that context, do you need rates to go up? Can you lock it in ahead? Maybe is there room to increase the hedge and take advantage sort of around the EUR 12.5 billion?

Okay, sure. I try to elaborate and good afternoon. And well before talking about 2027, let's talk also about 2026. So...

I thought I was...

Just to remind everyone that we have brought forward our initial 2027 target for 2026, and we are expecting NII to be over EUR 11 billion already for this year. We're expecting an acceleration that is going to be more clear into the second half. In the first half, we are still facing some negative repricing on the asset side.

On that sense, I would like to remind the audience that something we already flagged on our results presentation that during the first quarter, probably we have some negative quarter-on-quarter evolution because it's a very seasonal quarter in terms of volumes also it's that they count which clearly has a negative impact. We have also more floating rate loan repricing in the first quarter than in any other quarters.

But having said that, from here, we're expecting a clear acceleration into the second half. Basically, it's a compounding effect coming from volumes. We had, as Gonzalo was saying, a really strong year -- last year, and we have revised our assumptions for volumes. We're expecting the loan book to grow somewhere between 5% and 6% for '26 and '27, and deposits very close to those figures. So we are quite positive of that. And you know that on deposits, we have quite a nice mix in terms of interest-bearing and noninterest-bearing, which is an extraordinary contributor to our NII story.

So from here, basically into 2027, beyond this additional compounding effect from volumes, we have some idiosyncratic circumstances. You know that we have some legacy and fixed income investments -- legacy fixed income and hedges that actually are yielding a very low yield. So we have like over EUR 30 billion combined hedges plus fixed income that is maturing between '26 and '27 that is yielding a yield that is less than 0.5%.

So the plan is, well, to roll over those hedges of those fixed income maturities. Market yields are currently like over 2.5%. So this is an extra boost of 200 basis points on a EUR 30 billion plus investment. So that means that it's a positive impact of over EUR 600 million annualized on our NII. So this is the main, I would say, explanation behind this extraordinary increase on our NII that is expected for 2027.

In terms of volumes, I think that we have been quite conservative. Gonzalo was mentioning that we were actually budgeting considering GDP growing circa 2%. That is, by the way, what we now expect with -- considering the current circumstances in the Middle East, the most probable scenario. So well in line with nominal GDP is the kind of loan growth and deposit growth that we are expecting.

So we think that 2027 guidance at EUR 12.5 billion that I see is the most important aspect of our guidance is a safe bet. So I think that is -- we are safe on that. Moreover, we may face some upside. As you all know, the market is currently pricing rate hikes already this year. The yield curve is -- in the short term is higher by, let's say, circa 30 basis points approximately.

So this is a positive outcome. You know that we retain a positive sensitivity to rates, so approximately 7% impact on NII for a 1 percentage point shift on the yield curve. This is 1 year forward sensitivity, which actually is 2027. So you can modelize this pretty well. So there is eventually some upside. And in terms of hedging, well, we are always tactical, opportunistic. So we can always take advantage to try to advance a little bit those reinvestments or additional hedges, we can -- we have to do further down the road. So yes, it's obviously something we will try to do to exploit those market opportunities.

You both touched on the strength of the loan growth, up 7% last year, almost across the board in terms of loan book. But one thing that's become more relevant in your case is relatively new is the loan growth outside Spain via the international branches. When we think about that additional growth opportunity, how big can that be as a percentage of the overall book, even from an operational perspective, how far do you think it can go? And can you give us a bit of color on what sectors, what regions that growth is concentrated in?

Sure. Our international presence is on the CIB side, focused on the large European countries, mostly the U.K., Germany, France and Italy, that's 95% of our activity. This is something that we have developed gradually by -- we used to have rep offices in all these sort of large capital cities in Europe. We converted them into branches. London was over 10 years ago, and we have been building the business gradually to make sure that we obviously make no mistakes and there have not been any meaningful ones.

The rationale for us is we become a very large bank in Spain. In Spain, there's a lot of foreign European multinationals and corporates operating. And we got very quickly the invitation to be banks at the parent company level. We also had the opposite, Spanish companies developing a presence in Europe and asking us to actually go with them. So it was very natural as a normal extension of our business.

What we're not doing is some funny business we don't know how to do. We're doing a business we know how to do in Spain with corporates, but at the European level and then how that's been the history. Obviously, when you start from basically 0 exposure, you tend to grow in relative terms faster. Last year, we grew by 20%. Our international book is now around just over EUR 30 billion.

Again, investment grade, large EU economies in -- with companies that we know well and without any surprises. How far will it go? Gradually, the growth is going to be coming down because we have a larger base. We don't know how -- we do not have an absolute target level of we need to grow this portfolio in any way. We just need to make sure we do good business in terms of risk return, taking only the sort of the very top of the risk pyramid because that's really the strategy.

It's working out well. It's a double-digit return on equity. And I think we still have room to grow, not just growing our lending exposure, but growing sort of a full range of services that we have been developing in the various countries. We have close to 200 people more or less looking at our presence in those places. We also have a good nice presence in Warsaw in Poland, but that's smaller. We've been even longer there in Poland operating.

And then we have a good international branch in Morocco, which is very attractive, but very small because of the nature of the business there. But we are the largest Spanish bank in Morocco and Morocco has now obviously pretty good prospects and certainly good returns for us. So it's part of our CIB strategy, working very well and not generating any concerns as an opportunity. But on a marginal basis, it will be gradually contributing less and less.

In Spain, obviously, the growth is good and accelerating and you're taking market share in mortgages. which has led to a debate around pricing that we ask you frequently. You've discussed 150 basis point spread for the total loan book. How do you see mortgages fit in there versus what you see in corporate and consumer?

Well, obviously, mortgages is massively tighter than that blended average. Well, you said that we are gaining market share. Our aim is not actually gaining market share in mortgages, so maybe a few basis points this year. We have a back book market share circa 25%. So our aim is to maintain that market share basically. So it's extremely competitive segment. You know that you have to rely on all the cross-selling attached to a mortgage to make it profitable, which it is.

And in our particular case, I think that we are well equipped for that because we are good at cross-selling. You know that. And one of the most important products on that cross-selling is insurance. On insurance, we not only get the commercial margin, we also have the industrial margin as we own the factories.

And also, our balance sheet structure probably allows to take that, let's say, duration risk into our balance sheet more comfortably than some of our competitors. So I don't know. But in any case, it continues to be a tight market. Well, we have other segments that are clearly compensating that. For example, consumer lending is a business that is growing last year double digit. And this year, we are also very positive with much better margins. And SME lending, I would say that is maybe on corporates in line with the average. So I would say that this is the case.

In the case of mortgages, that extra margin that is added by the cross-selling is not landing into NII in several cases. So you have the business on insurance or wealth management or other areas. But we tend to look at the profitability looking at the whole thing at the broad spectrum of products that are being cross-sell with the mortgage.

Maybe to touch on fees and the mid-single-digit growth that you're targeting over the plan. How much more do you have in terms of product penetration in your client base? I'm thinking about the old Bankia customers. And how do you square that with the sort of vulnerability to the short-term volatility we're seeing in the market at the moment?

Well, on that front, it's right what you say. Still former Bankia clients are still lagging a little bit versus the average former CaixaBank clients. But -- well, this is not the main source for our performance on those businesses. So you know that we have 2 key businesses here, wealth management and protection insurance. We have on wealth management, a market share in Spain that is approaching 30% and is well above 30% on protection insurance, and it's a market share in that last case that is growing significantly.

So well, here, the point is basically that the penetration of those products in Spain is still low. So it's still below the average to put you some numbers. On wealth management, a number of clients with, let's say, wealth management activity with us, it's slightly over 20%. And on insurance, it's high 20s. So -- but this is well below the average of the eurozone. So there is a lot of potential still. We have a lot to do.

The tailwind coming from former banking clients, obviously, is a nice to have, but it's not the main driver. So we are targeting revenues from wealth management and protection insurance in the high single digits area. So that's the case, and it's basically the main driver for that mid-single-digit service growth that you are mentioning. We have other areas with more traditional banking fees that are more subdued, more subject to some competition. Lately as a result of precisely what Gonzalo was commenting on international CIB activities, we have been able to have a more recurrent and frequent pace of fee revenues coming out of CIB. So all this is doing well, and we feel that this mid-single-digit guidance is also really solid.

Okay. I'm going to bring up AI that you already touched on. And another the polling questions we had earlier in the morning was you've got a crowd here that think AI is a net positive for the banks. I think that you should feel at home...

I can only get it wrong.

I guess the question is how you're thinking about it? And when -- is it sort of a source of potential disruption, high competition versus the efficiency debate? And I don't know if you can maybe give us some color around workforce potential sort of savings in central services, noncommercial FTEs, for example, give us a flavor of what the long-term potential is around those efficiencies and not necessarily within the plan, but thinking 3, 5 years out.

Sure. Obviously, AI is a very important development for all sectors and particularly for the financial services sector. I think there's a broad agreement on that, fortunately. And certainly us, but most financial institutions, I know of are actively adopting it. How we see AI for us is a perspective of history, AI -- generative AI and LLMs may be relatively new. AI implementation is over a decade old, certainly for us. And hence, we've been working.

And together with AI, AI is critical. It's important technology, but the raw material for AI is data. So you need to have the data, you have the data in a way that is workable. We, in 2012, already decided to move on to a single data pool platform, which we've been evolving over the last years and moving it also to the cloud. But I think there, we have a significant advantage because for the market in which we operate, Spain and Portugal, we have very rich data. I would argue that richer than anyone else because of our size, we have it properly stored and we can access it in a proper way. And we have the people that have been using that data for quite some time.

AI is going to be an accelerator of this competitive advantage that we have with data. Many other people will have AI, but most of them will not have the same data, certainly not as rich as we do. And hence, the key here is adoption. We have the AI, the tools. Some of them may require some investment. And in fact, they do. We have the data.

The question is, let's make the most out of it. Let's make the organization adopt it. We are at a very sweet moment for us to do it because we have growth. We have growth in Spain, growth in Portugal. We're gaining market share. We have that engine -- commercial engine that we have always had at full speed.

And hence, you look at a tool that provides clearly higher productivity is the best of the times because basically, we can put more revenues onto our platform, make sure our people don't feel AI as a threat because that obviously goes against rapid adoption of the tool, and they see it as an opportunity because they are going to be more productive and they may get rid of those tasks that are more boring, mundane, whatever, do more business, be more productive, we'll make more money as a bank, they will make more money as employees.

So this is -- now 10 years ago, when we were restructuring the whole sector because revenues were coming down, blah, blah, blah, this message would not have been possible. Now fortunately, the hard work is done, certainly for us after the integration. Now we're growing, and we have a tool that gives more productivity to grow faster and hence, become more efficient in terms of cost/income ratio by growing revenues rather than attacking our cost base directly.

This is the way we see adoption over the next 2, 3 years. Obviously, when you look beyond that, I think there's other elements to take into account. Current degree of outsourcing for the industry is fairly relevant. For us, it is. This is mainly operations and IT. And here, there's likely and not overnight. I don't think AI is going to change the way we do business next year. Certainly, when you look back 5, 10 years from now, you will see there's been a major change, but it's going to be progressive. It's not like a cliff change, certainly not how we see it in Europe and in the banking sector.

So by the end of this decade, I think we would have been able to reduce a lot our reliance on operations and IT, basically external FTEs. We currently have the equivalent approximately of 12,000 external FTEs, which is close to 25% of our internal FTEs, fairly significant potential then. And then over the long term, we'll see.

We are very actively developing new businesses. I talked about the Faciliteas, but we have plenty of other initiatives coming. And those are predicated for someone like us on the basis that we are digital and physical, and we have very large market shares in both worlds. And the real world is both physical and digital. We compete with purely digital players. They like our physical presence and vis-a-vis other physical players, the fact that we have anyhow over 12 million digital clients actively visiting our app every day provides us with a scale in Spain that allows us to develop new businesses.

And I think the Facilitea cars platform, where we now have 14,000 cars is an example where, obviously, we have the clients and online clients, but we can speak and we did to all the car dealers saying, this is the idea that we have. We want you to come on to our platform because we have the commercial people to go knock the door and they trust us as a serious organization, they came on to the platform. So we have both -- obviously, both sides of supply and demand and very quickly gain scale.

We had actually 30% growth in vehicle financing last year, which is quite remarkable. So there's plenty of ideas, opportunities for people that are active commercially and have that mindset of creating more jobs. And then when you look at sort of the decade of the 30s, there's going to be substantial retirement because just reaching retirement age. And I think generally, we may see depending on the industry or on the other sort of factors, what you may see is a different replacement rate, which certainly makes for an adjustment that is more both socially and financially agreeable.

So all in all, we feel it's a great tool. We want to be ahead. I think we have some advantages, and we're moving very quickly across the board in how clients interact with the bank and sort of introducing AI agents in our app and other relationship, how our own employees relate with the bank when -- typically when advising clients. So obviously, through Salesforce and Agentforce now we have deployed to -- or we are deploying to the whole commercial workforce over 30,000 people, AI agents that shorten interview preparation by -- time by 75% and obviously improve effectiveness because you make sure that AI doesn't forget about opportunities that you should include in the conversation and can react, obviously, instant time to a conversation.

And then there's a lot of process reengineering around everything we do. It's based on numbers and sort of information. And really with AI, you can redesign things to be much more productive. And hence, in the midterm, we're going to see that reduction of outsourcing that is also going to contribute to the bottom line.

So increased efficiency, obviously, there should be and there will be some savings passed on to customers. I think this is a lot of economics that margins will have some pressure. I don't see that as a cliff effect and sort of a big bang and now our margins are gone, it's just a continuation of the natural sort of loss of economics that as you become more productive, you're going to need to be more competitive in your product offerings.

You touched on it on the employment aspect, which is one of the things that's been debated around the unintended consequence from AI. The asset quality picture remains very benign. I think that's not been questioned. But as a CEO, when you think about the second order effects of AI on unemployment, how do you think about underwriting that environment? Can you talk us through your discussions with the management team? How do you think -- how can you preempt that? Or how do you think about that risk?

Well, I would say, again, we have time. We don't have much time to adopt it. I think that's not a message to sit back and relax for organizations or people. We need to adopt it. But for these to transform into profound changes in the job market, in particular, this is not going to be immediate, not because it takes time to adopt. The kind of productivity gains are going to be gained over time.

And if you look at Continental Europe and the way you deal with these things, this is not, I think, some other markets when the labor rigidity and the social contract is different. So you get somehow -- some companies very quickly react and act unemployment, and that may temporarily create an issue.

I think Europe is reacting in a different way, the same case I talked about retirement. If you look at Spain in the next 10 years, 25% of workers are going to reach retirement age. So question is who is going to pay the pensions of these people. That used to be the question. Now we may have an answer is that workers that will stay will be more productive and will be able to pay these pensions.

And this can be sort of as a big picture can be done in a smooth way. Obviously, in some companies, in some sectors and in some occasions, things will be a bit more abrupt indeed. But I think overall for the economy, we're not seeing a concern. I certainly -- and very often, actually, some of the sectors that are more affected. When you talk to CEOs of some of them, they say, actually, we're busier than any time because they are asking in the temporary period asking more of our services. So I can do this more efficiently. But then given that I can do this more efficiently, let me add other things that we can do at the same time.

So I think shorter term, this is going to accelerate activity. And over the longer term, I think the demographics in -- particularly in Europe, will be able to cope with this sort of job transition. And we'll have to follow it and adapt as things develop.

Last question, and then I'll open it up for questions, although I'm going to preempt that it's been a quiet crowd during most of the day. So let's see. Last question for me is on the 20% ROTE target for 2027. How do you think about distribution versus organic growth? And maybe sort of alluding to that or in that context, talk about potential for M&A. We've seen in the sector bolt-ons, you already have very high market shares in most of the products. How should we think about that and the long-term profitability picture because you already have sort of very high profitability. How should we think about the long-term ROTE picture beyond the plan?

Well, I would start saying the 20% figure is a milestone is what we're estimating for next year. It's not the destination as the circumstances -- if the current circumstances stay in all likelihood, we'll continue to improve our profitability going forward. And obviously, that is the main target that we have is a combination of profitability and growth. So it's profitable growth.

And this links immediately with what do we do with our profits. Best thing we can do our profit -- with our profits is reinvest them organically with low risk at least 20% plus levels. And this is the first priority we have. This obviously, because of the growth that you can expect in the eurozone, even if it's Spain and Portugal growing faster than the average, this still leaves a lot of earnings that we're going to use to remunerate our shareholders with our 50% to 60% payout and the rest in the form of share buybacks. But the rest is not a fixed number. If we're able to grow faster organically, and retain those kind of 20% profitability levels, that's a better proposition because that sounds to me should be worth more than 2x book. And if I -- we take money out of the bank, that's going to be a onetime book.

So whatever we can grow the business with the right profit and with the right risk characteristics and low execution because it's organic growth, we will do. Again, it looks like we'll have to grow the business 50%, 60% and still more capital that will be distributed in the form of share buybacks. Whatever is the excess of 12.5% target that we have gives us plenty of comfortable room given the nature of our business.

Those are the sort of the highlights. And I think at this stage, we feel pretty good as to how we make progress. There's absolutely no M&A we have in mind. We do not want to do business outside of our geographies or do business that requires M&A. We don't think there's value creation when you go cross-border in retail banking. And we think that is a natural distraction that could happen, but we are going to be very disciplined in terms of capital.

The excess capital and the profitability that we generate is not ours, it's our shareholders. And hence, what goes beyond organic growth will be paid out in either dividends or share buybacks. There's no product need we need to fill in Spain or Portugal. We are very concentrated in these markets, but there we have all what we need to compete. And what we do not have, obviously, we need to develop organically. And sometimes we will find partners to do something together. We not accelerate growth, but not M&A, not capital intensive.

Great. Any questions?

A fellow CEO of a large European bank like yours mentioned the need from the European banking system to prepare for the competition coming from hyperscalers and fintechs. In the context of the Spanish market, how sort of would you be thinking about these challenges in the future where you have, for example, incumbents that are growing. There's a digital bank that's become the, I think, the fifth largest bank in the market and is still capturing clients. How well do you think your bank is prepared for that challenge that may be coming from these hyperscalers and fintechs in your market?

Thank you. Obviously, this is a key part of our strategy. It's very important to make sure we've been very successful in the past, but we want to be very successful in the future. And rules are changing because technology is allowing new players into the market, absolutely. So I think one is to be very conscious, zero complacency. We need to be best not just with the old environment, but with the current and the future one.

And on that, we've been planning for a long time. One example, because it's just one, is Imagin, which we launched as the first mobile bank in Spain 11 years ago, which has a larger market penetration than the new entrant in its target ages and is actually doing very well. When I look at the business volume for Imagin per customer, and I compare it to the 2 main new entrants, it's 9 to 6x per customer higher because Imagin is a well-rounded bank. It has really a very complete offering, whether it's funding, whether it's investing, insurance and obviously, lending, we benefit from a huge advantage in terms of data and lending. And we just need to make sure that we play to our advantages.

So if there are things that we're not doing well and there are always things that we can improve, we just need to make sure we get there and that digitally some of the native players have been ahead of the incumbents, and I think we're closing that gap rapidly. I'm saying Imagin -- and well, CaixaBank is -- Imagin is very close, is the highest rated app in the Google store, and that includes the new entrants.

So it means that our offering, which we revamped over the last 1.5 years is pretty good digitally. And we'll continue to compete, I think, very reasonably on that space. But at the same time, we have people. I don't think anybody is going to replicate our relationship manager structure. So a lot of people get quite sick when they have a service issue and they have a real question and they can only talk to robots. And in our case, you are an Imagin client, you have a chat and the ability to chat someone you can chat with a chatbot, obviously, but you can also speak to your relationship manager if you want to. And that has been very successful. So I think we have enough tools in our pocket to compete and maintain our sort of preeminent position. We certainly are very focused on that.

Next question.

Two questions on my side. The first one is on the recent threat from the U.S. Are you concerned about that? And are you seeing or aware about anything...

Can you repeat the recent...

Threat from the U.S.

Threat...

Threat, yes...

It's really about, Trump...

Threat from the U.S.?

Yes, Trump, yes...

President Trump, yes...

We...

Just on the...

The second is just on consolidation, if you expect more M&A in the Spanish banking sector.

On the first one, I think that we have much more in common. And I would say rather than Spain, it's very clear that at least to says there are some diverging views on the war between European countries and the U.S. I think it's in the interest of everybody to maintain that sort of history of friendship. And I would say we are not concerned on that front because there's much more that actually ties to each other than the current sort of disagreements on important topics.

And then on M&A, I would say we're not going to participate. Is there room for further M&A in Spain? Absolutely, yes, there is. Is it likely to happen in the short-term? I doubt it given the recent experience with one fairly large attempted deal and the fact that people are kind of feeling good currently and improving profitability and have limited pressure to engage into transaction. M&A always means you give something away, and that always is difficult. If everything looks rosy or most things look rosy, I think that's less likely to happen. Having said that, M&A at some point just happens as we learned yesterday and gets to surprise everybody.

Great. I think we're 10 seconds until we complete the allocated time. So thanks very much, both Javier and Gonzalo. Thanks.

Thank you.

Good morning, and welcome to CaixaBank results presentation for the fourth quarter and the full year 2025. We are joined today by our CEO, Gonzalo Gortazar; and by Matthias Bulach, our Chief Accounting Management Control and Capital Officer, who also sits at the Management Committee. Our CFO, Javier Pano, is temporarily away on sick leave, but he's recovering well and expected to return shortly.

In terms of logistics, same as usual, we plan to spend about 30 minutes with the presentation and about 45 minutes to 1 hour with the Q&A. The Q&A is live, and you should have received instructions by e-mail on how to participate. Needless to say, my team and I will be at your full disposal after the call. And without further ado, Gonzalo, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Marta, and good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking the time. And I will start with the highlights as it should be the case. A very good year for us. I think when I look back, it's probably the best year over the last 12, 13 years since the great financial crisis. And it is because we're really seeing a very balanced growth in the activity.

Obviously, NII has recovered from June. And this quarter, you see again a 1.5% growth. But when I see a balanced growth is really that we are seeing volumes pretty much at 7%, both in the customer funds and on the lending side well above what we were expecting for this year, which was even at the time, you may remember when we presented the plan, it was seen as on the sort of too optimistic side.

And in the end, fortunately, the economy has proved that actually that was possible, and we have our -- we have beat our targets with some ease and not just because the economy is growing also because we're gaining market share. Revenues from services are up, as we say, in line with the improved guidance. We started with low to mid single-digits growth for the year. And in the end, we have that 5.4% with a strong fourth quarter.

Asset quality has been a trend for some time now, but the fourth quarter has shown an acceleration in terms of the reduction of nonperforming assets and the cost of risk has ended up at this 22 basis points. So when you look at it, it's been sort of very round in terms of capital creation, also a fairly positive year. It is allowing us to set the dividend per share, which is growing 15% and really establishing the payout at the upper limit of our 50% to 60% range. Very complete.

And it also feels the year that is not just a one-off, but is part of a trend and a year which we want to capitalize on to 2026, which has started I'd say, in very -- with very good conditions and basically a continuation of what we have been seeing. Return on tangible equity at 17.5%. With all what I've said, we obviously have reconsidered our targets for now next year for 2027. I'm sure by this time now, you're all familiar with the new targets, but I think it's important to reiterate which they are.

Return on tangible equity at 20%, give or take. That compares to the above 16% that we set a year ago. So it's obviously a remarkable 1 year, allowing us to increase 4 percentage points. Our guidance for return on tangible equity. And for the average of the period, now we expect it to be above 18%. So obviously, that's probably the headline, but the other important targets for us, cost income from low 40s to high 30s.

NII now seeing EUR 12.5 billion as the reference figure for 2027, which means a 4% annual growth versus a flat that we had said in November last year, revenue from services and cost in both cases, we're maintaining our guidance, mid-single-digit growth for services. and 4% area for costs. Volume growth, we said 4% in the case of lending and above 4% in the case of customer funds. We're now rounding all that up to around 6% compared to that -- above 4%.

And again, I think we have a pretty good traction here to be not necessarily just at or around 6%, but possibly slightly above that level. Nonperforming loans below 1.75% compared to below 2% and most importantly, cost of risk, which we feel confident now we can stay below the 25 basis points number compared to 30 basis points that we said a year ago. So this is our revised ambition for 2027 or for the 3-year period.

In terms of capital, no real change, same payout, 50% to 60%, same capital target of 11.5% to 12.5% and the threshold for additional distribution, which for 2025 is 12.25%. And obviously, we are clearly above that level. And for 2026 and '27, it will stay at 12.5%. So this is a revised ambition. I'd say the strategy is very similar. It's just that we can do more, and we're obviously going to try to make it happen.

Macro, we should be seeing they may be public already because I think it was expected at around 9:00, the GDP figure for Spain. We are expecting 2.9% for this year, 2.1% for 2026. I have to say this is a relatively old projection. And based on the most recent data, I think it's likely that this figure will be revised upwards, but that's subject to the information that we get on the fourth year economy for Spain.

Portugal is doing fairly well, again, with pretty strong dynamics also in the Portuguese case. So we feel there's clearly some upside. In any case, since the pandemic, you see both Portugal and Spain as a very much leading growth in the Eurozone. And the factors behind that are still there. Population growth, employment growth. We had 600,000 new jobs created last year, 2.8% growth in employment, pretty impressive. Finally, the unemployment rate becoming a single-digit one, hopefully, will continue to go that way. At least that's what we are seeing an economy that is now powering ahead on the back of private consumption and investment. So the domestic strength is pretty relevant.

And hence, it also gives us some protection of international environment, which despite all the risk is still doesn't look that bad either. High saving rates, growth in disposable income and a very low private sector leverage, which is still, as you see, 31 percentage points below the Eurozone. All of that gives us sort of room to grow, also comfort if or [indiscernible] if at some point, news are not as good.

And the rate environment is obviously more positive than we had a year or not at year-end because our strategic plan was based on September figures as you see there. But obviously, the current yield curve is more attractive, is higher and steeper. And from that point of view, it's obviously a tailwind for our NII. So I start saying growth and had a very strong year for us compared to the previous decade, I would say.

And this is why when you look at clients growing 390,000 in the year, look at market shares. And there, you have client penetration up to 40.4%, customer lending and customer deposits in both cases, 14, 12 basis points growth in market share. These are not huge growth, but with our size and also with our prudent approach, this is exactly the kind of market share gains that we're looking for savings insurance. And then on the life risk, you can see 158 basis points market share gains on the non-life.

We've also had very significant market share gains across the board, really in health, in motor and in household. Now payroll deposits, very important, also up 27 basis points. So it's not only what you can see on the right-hand side, which is volumes doing very well, close to the sort of 7% area versus the 4% in general case by case, but I won't go through it because it's pretty visual for you.

But it's not just volumes, it's also relative performance and market share that indicates that the organization is in really full shape with all engines working. Imagin continues to be a key part of our growth strategy, particularly in terms of number of clients, clients that bank with Imagine. They're not clients that just do 1 or 2 specific transaction categories, but have imagin as their bank. And you can see that because when you look at the business volume, it's actually fairly balanced and ample.

Transformation, I talk about growth, but transformation was the other pillar of our 3-year plan. And obviously, a bit more difficult to measure. Growth is easier from that point of view. But just a few highlights, the new app, which we have deployed during the year actually gradually through small improvements rather than sort of a big one-off. And it's worked out very well because it hasn't created turmoil. The app is rated now #1 in Spain, and that includes sort of established banks and new entrants makes us obviously very happy with that, but we need to continue and we are continue working daily to make sure we keep improving it.

And some of the onboarding and digital sales numbers that you see there are clearly results of that strategy. AI, we are making major efforts in adopting AI throughout the organization. Every employee has access to AI tools, namely Copilot. But we have obviously developed use cases throughout the organization in all areas. I would just highlight that we have, I think, an important progress this year when we get all commercial managers through the Salesforce platform to access AI, and that is going to lead one example to 75% reduction in the prep time for client interviews, which is obviously very significant productivity improvement.

The quality, the depth of the interviews will also be improved as we obviously have more information. I didn't want to go through a very long list of things we're doing because obviously, this is affecting back office. It's affecting IT, client claims, client support, all areas in the organization. But some of these, I think, are going to bring results sooner. IT professionals, we remember in this transformation, we wanted to internalize and in-source many capabilities and that's what we have been doing, expanding our digital capabilities during last year.

It's remarkable to have been able to hire 650 new IT professionals when there's obviously strong competition for talent, they like to come and work with us. And new solutions, you've seen the development of Facilitea Coches and on the car side of Facilitea Casa during this year. Both are, I think, very significant successes for us, working very well. And some of the results you see there in financing for vehicles has increased 30% this year.

And we have developed this new portal with 1.6 million visits already. The cash back that we launched just in November already has 1.3 million clients. So certainly a pretty -- pretty significant sort of development of new solutions. So this is obviously something to continue for us. Lending growth, 7% on the performing side. And you can see residential mortgages, 6.5%; consumer lending, 12.4%; business loans, 7.6%, very strong growth across the board, very balanced.

That 7.6% is both in Spain and internationally, but Spain is up 5.5%, again, basically gaining market share and defending profitability across the sector. And on the customer fund side, again, almost 7% growth, 6.8%. You can see that finally, market effect has been positive, almost EUR 10 billion, EUR 9.7 billion, but net inflows and growth of on-balance sheet deposits have been very significant as well.

So again, outperforming, growing market share, and I'll get into some more detail, but obviously, this is a key strength and a key attraction of our business going forward. Wealth Management, we have grown net inflows almost 40%, a lot of it mutual pension funds, but also a strong performance in savings insurance with market share gains that as I said before, and basically a business that keeps doing very well.

The figure for AUM at the end of December is already 7% higher than the average AUM during the year. So it gives you an indication that we're clearly seeing good potential and the market in January have been positive for -- certainly for our AUMs. Protection insurance has been stellar 13% growth. And you can see that both life risk with very strong mortgage market, but also with very strong MyBox Jubilación and our sort of stand-alone life risk products doing very well, but non-life has picked up to 11.7% as well.

And here, you see on the right-hand side, precisely the gains in market share that I mentioned before in non-life and in life risk, even more significant. But it's pretty good outcome for the year. The speed at which we continue to grow this business is remarkable. And obviously, as you know, it adds quite a lot to our bottom line. And with that, comment on shareholder value creation and shareholder remuneration.

Earnings per share up 5%, dividend per share up 15%, round number, EUR 0.50 per share. Look at growth in book value per share and dividends in the year, basically 16%. And obviously, on the share buyback front, we are not even half through the seventh share buyback with EUR 0.5 billion. And obviously, as our capital is at 12.56%, our threshold for 2025 is at 12.25%. We have excess capital, again to continue with this share buyback program, which, as you know, we'll announce when it is formally approved by the ECB and the Board.

In the meantime, we still are -- have time before we conclude our seventh share buyback. Distribution plan for next year stays the same. The only difference is while the threshold for this year was 12.25% in capital, as you know, because of the countercyclical buffer, it will move to 12.5% in 2026 and beyond. So that's my part. And with that, Matthias, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much, Gonzalo. Good morning to everybody. Today it is up to me and to guide you through a little bit more detail on the income statement and on the main caption of the balance sheet. Starting with the income statement for fiscal year 2025. As Gonzalo said, EUR 5.9 billion of net income, up 1.8% in the year and actually checking on all the boxes of what was our guidance that we gave out and updated throughout the year 2025.

NII down 3.9%, in line with the minus 4% guidance. Revenue from services in line with the mid-single-digit guidance, up 5.4%. Expenses up exactly 5.0%, in line with the guidance and cost of risk, we guided for below 25 basis points, and we are closing with 22 basis points, so clearly below that guidance with return on tangible equity standing at 17.5%, so on the higher end of the around 17% guidance that we updated.

Looking into Portugal. Portugal net income reported of EUR 473 million on the back of very strong commercial dynamics, business volume up 7.5% and actually with a stronger dynamic than the group as a whole, gaining market shares across the products, but specifically on the liability side on deposits and on savings insurance, another year with strong market share gains, helping bringing down efficiency all the way to 42% on very solid levels.

Profitability up to 19.2%, also above overall group levels and already a significant characteristic of BPI with a very strong asset quality, 1.5%, almost half of the sector average and with very strong coverage ratios. And that is also taken into consideration by the rating agencies, which are upgrading throughout the year or putting us an outlook positive in BPI. Moving to the typical quarterly income statement analysis, and we will be getting into the details of some of the income lines, obviously, NII up 1.5% in the quarter, another quarter of strong NII recovery.

Results from services, revenues from services with a very strong quarter, up 6.3% Q-on-Q and 4.7% year-on-year, both on the back of a strong wealth management contribution, but this quarter, specifically on protection insurance, which is up 7.5% on the quarter. The expenses line down on the quarter, 0.2% to meet that 5% guidance on the fiscal year 2025. And net income pro forma the accrual of the banking levy of 2024 of a linear accrual up 5.5%.

Maybe a couple of comments here on the tax line. The tax levy on the banking industry, we registered EUR 611 million throughout the entire year, which is a little bit higher than the EUR 600 million that initially we guided for basically on the back of stronger performance both in NII and in fees, and that is the basis for the calculation of the levy.

And on DTAs, we wrote up EUR 171 million in the fourth quarter for a total of EUR 420 million of DTA write-up throughout the year, basically given the better visibility and the full visibility that we had in the last quarter, both on pretax income for the year as well as on future profitability, which is the basis of those write-ups. So a certain acceleration of the pace to an overall year of EUR 420 million.

Going line by line, looking into NII, as I said, a strong quarter again, consolidating our recovery, leaving clearly behind the trough of NII in the second quarter of '25, up 1.5%, still obviously impacted by client yields and loan yields, which are still reducing, but on a less intensity, I would say, than the last quarters. So a fading impact from client yields compensated -- more than compensated both by a strong evolution of business volumes, both in the asset and the liability side, as Gonzalo was pointing out, and an increase of the contribution of the ALCO to EUR 45 million.

We increased hedges on the quarter by almost EUR 10 billion to stand at EUR 68.4 billion, and the ALCO book was stable Q-on-Q to stand at EUR 76 billion by the end of the quarter. Customer spread down by just 4 basis points to 302 basis points if we adjust for hedges. And this is on the back of a positive evolution of our client fund costs, which go down 2 basis points from 49 to 47 basis points, again, ex hedges.

And the reduction of the loan yield, as I said, is fading, 6 basis points down in the quarter to 349, and that compares to 20 basis points down last quarter. So clearly, fading impact from negative loan rate resets. Looking at the crown jewel of our balance sheet and hence, the supporting factor of that NII evolution of our noninterest-bearing deposits, up EUR 17 billion in the year, EUR 2.2 billion in the quarter with respect to -- or in contrast to interest-bearing deposits that are just up EUR 5.6 billion over the year, EUR 2.2 billion over the last quarter.

The total average share of interest-bearing deposits is stabilizing at around 27%, and that is at lower levels than we initially expected in the strategic plan when we were guiding for around 30% of that share, which is now clearly stabilizing below those levels. I would like to point out also the reduction of 10 basis points of our deposit costs in that in a quarter, and I think this is remarkable, where the overnight rate actually was stable on average levels in the quarter and still the deposit cost is coming down.

That means that the 50% of indexed rates was pretty stable, but the other part, which is term deposits, we still have been able to reprice them down by almost 20 basis points, leading to this 10 basis points of reduction of overall cost. So there's still some room of positive repricing downwards of our term deposit base.

Moving to revenue from services. As I said, a very strong quarter and a very strong evolution year-on-year, focusing on the year-on-year, 5.4% up on the back of Wealth Management with 11% growth. Protection insurance, 4.8% up. And if we adjust for an extraordinary impact from BPI last year in 2024, that would be actually up 6.3%. And banking fees still subdued at 0.6%, but supported by CIB fees that are up actually 33% year-on-year on the full year number.

So if we take only these driving forces in our growth engines, wealth management, protection and CIB revenues, actually, that composition would be up almost by 11% year-on-year. So putting a clear sign on the strength of our growth engines here. Costs, not much more to add to what was said already. Q-on-Q, stable, down by 0.2%. Cost to income remains at very low levels and is now below 40% at 39.4%, clearly below peer average in European peers and also with a much stronger evolution over the last 5 years, outperforming the evolution of European peers by 10 percentage points, as you see on the down -- on the bottom right side of the page.

Moving to the balance sheet. Asset quality, very, very strong again in this quarter, down 20 basis points, our NPL ratio to 2.07%. And this is bringing forward actually by 2 years, what was our target set in the strategic plan where we wanted to be at around 2% by the end of 2027. So we're bringing forward the completion of that target by approximately 2 years, nice reduction across all the segments, as you see on the bottom left part. So there's no single segment. There's no single part of the portfolio actually that is not experiencing that positive evolution.

Coverage up by 8 percentage points in the year to 77% and remarkable that we are still holding EUR 311 million of unassigned collective provisions. That is down EUR 30 million in the quarter and also in the year as in the end of the year, we've been assigning part of that provisions to specific provisions, but the bulk of it still available and still available to protect into the future and into 2026, our cost of risk.

Cost of risk down to 22 basis points in this last quarter, down from 24 basis points in Q3, and that is basically on the back of slightly lower seasonality this quarter of provisions than we experienced last year. And hence, cost of risk standing at those 22 basis points, clearly below the 25 basis points that we guided for.

Liquidity, I think already very structurally messaged here. Very strong LCR above 200%, NSFR just below 150%. Loan-to-deposit stable at 87% as both loans and deposits are growing approximately at the same speed and hence, loan to deposits still very comfortable, EUR 226 billion of liquidity sources with very positive comparison to peers and to peer levels as well as a very strong and stable deposit base based on transactional retail deposits and with a very high percentage of them being insured by the deposit guarantee fund.

And moving typically to the annual review that we share on the MREL position, MREL standing at 28.18%, and that is 327 basis points or EUR 8 billion of M-MDA buffer over requirement mainly covered by subordinated MREL instruments, actually subordinated MREL stands above the total MREL requirement. After a year of very intense activity in the markets, EUR 9 billion of issuances across all the asset classes and 2/3 in euro, but 1/3 also in currencies that are not euro, specifically in dollars.

We started 2026 already very successfully with a senior nonpreferred issue combined with the tender offer, EUR 1.25 billion of issue and EUR 0.5 billion from the tender offer, and that is supported by the positive and strong view of our rating agencies, which similar to what I explained in Portugal, actually upgraded us throughout the year or put us an outlook positive as the case of Fitch.

And coming to capital. Gonzalo already went into some detail, 12.56%, 13 basis points up in CET1 and clearly above this 12.25% threshold that is in place for the end of year 2025. Capital accretion positive of 63 basis points. Organic RWA increase just 5 basis points, and this is supported by 3 SRT transactions, significant risk transfer transactions that we executed actually in this fourth quarter, impacting positively by just below 15 basis points on that caption.

So positive evolution supported by market activity. Dividend accrual and AT1 coupons, obviously, then distracting 38 basis points and Markets and others coming down 8 basis points. And here, as every fourth quarter, we are updating our operational risk RWA models. That is a yearly update, and that impacts also just below 15 basis points on that part. That means that the remainder moving parts of this market and other bucket are slightly positive.

On shareholder value creation distribution plan, nothing to add to what Gonzalo has been pointing out. And fiscal year '26 guidance, you've seen that all this morning already. Gonzalo mentioned 2027 view. And just to say that the 2026 view is fully consistent, obviously, in this journey towards 2027 targets. NII expected to be above EUR 11 billion. And that is bringing forward by 1 year the initial target that we had for the fiscal year 2027 clearly on the way then to move up to that around EUR 12.5 billion target for 2027.

Revenue from services up 5% within that mid-single-digit range that we also are envisioning for the entire 3 years horizon. Operating costs up by approximately 4.5% after a 5% increase in 2025, 4.5% in 2026 and clearly on track, and we reiterate our commitment and our guidance of 4% CAGR for the entire 3 years of the strategic plan horizon.

Cost of risk below 25 basis points on the back of that very strong asset quality and return on tangible equity at around 18% to fulfill that around 18% average return on tangible equity over the 3-year horizon and the approximately 20% in 2027. On capital targets and distribution, nothing more to add. This is all well known to you. And with that, I think we are ready for questions.

Yes. Thank you, Matthias. Thank you, Gonzalo. Operator, we are ready for Q&A. So you can come in the next question please.

Next question is from Antonio Reale, Bank of America.

Antonio from Bank of America. A couple of questions from me, please. One on NII and one on use of capital. So starting with NII, you're guiding to be around EUR 12.5 billion in 2027, and you've added in the quarter, almost EUR 10 billion from structural hedges alone. Volumes are growing 6%, 7% a year. So just my question is, what are the key assumptions you've made that drives your NII outlook here, particularly if you could talk about rates and volumes assumptions, please?

My second question is on use of capital. You are at 12.56%, just above the new go-to level, and you've been paying 100% of your excess capital out in the form of share buybacks. With the balance sheet that's growing and the returns that you're now making, you're guiding for 20% RoTE in '27. How should we think about sort of best use of capital for Caixa? What's your appetite for additional buybacks here?

Thank you, Antonio. Let me start with the second question, and I let Matthias address the NII in some detail. There's nothing new about use of capital. You're seeing higher growth, which means obviously more capital that we can employ in the business. And as the business is targeting a 20% return on tangible equity, that's great news. Really, that's what we would like to see become -- we discussed this a year ago or become a compounder in terms of high RoTE and good growth.

That's, I think, what will lead us to the best outcome for shareholders. And the reality is that as the growth is coming together with higher profitability, we still see the future as in a scenario in which we can have a high dividend per share as this year in that 50% to 60% payout, grow the business and grow faster than we were expecting at 6% rather than at 4%. But still in our numbers, we continue to generate capital.

And obviously, one proof is that we already have excess capital at the end of 2025. So you know there's sort of cash in the bank for further share buybacks already. And going forward, we continue to see that despite higher growth, we will be generating excess capital between our targeted levels. Now we'll continue to monitor developments. We are using slightly more intensively SRTs as well.

Matthias mentioned that we had some positive impact in the fourth quarter that will continue to be there. So no change in capital. This is higher growth, higher profitability, but also higher capital available for shareholders. So it looks too good, but it is really how we're seeing the business. It's very strong conditions. Matthias, NII, all yours.

Sure. Thank you very much, Antonio. What are the main drivers behind what we see for NII evolution both into 2026 and specifically beyond? I think on the one hand, obviously, it's volumes. We guided now for an update of around 6% CAGR, both on loans as well as on liabilities, up from that 4% guidance that we gave you back in the strategic plans Investor Day.

Now that obviously volume growth that we've seen already this year at around 7%. The guidance is for a CAGR of 6%, that means we are positioning volume growth both in 2026 and 2027, probably around 5% to 6%. So that is, I think, the main driving force behind our expectation for NII evolution over the next couple of years or even beyond.

Secondly, obviously, rates evolution. Rates has been a drag on our NII over the last quarters, obviously. We expect that drag actually to fade out over the next 2 quarters. The loan yield resets should move into positive territory from the third quarter onwards of 2026 and hence, still a certain drag over the next 2 quarters, compensating partially that volume effects that I was talking about.

But then from the second half of 2026 onwards and specifically into 2027, and I would say, beyond into 2028, we see a clear positive evolution on the back of rates. On the back of rates because as you know, there's a significant part of our portfolio, which is actually on variable rates. And we do believe that we will be able and capable of controlling client fund costs, controlling and limiting growth of deposit costs, as we said currently at 47 basis points.

We believe actually those levels of year-end to be quite structural. We should be able -- even though there might be some pressure from the index part of our deposits, we should be able to control that evolution of deposit costs over the next quarter. I would say if 47 basis points is our year-end number, we should be in the mid-40s probably during 2026 as the certain pressure that we might have from the index part, we should be able to control and to limit that both from still some repricing from the term deposit part as well as increasing the share of growing stronger in the noninterest-bearing deposit part than in the interest-bearing deposit part, and that should help us to control and to keep deposit costs down over the next quarters and also actually to very nicely control that once rates are picking up.

So volume effects, which are already occurring and which we expect to keep on in that benign macroeconomic environment, rates should be picking up and helping us on that front. A small detail on what we see in the more quarterly evolution over the next few quarters. We do expect NII 2026 actually on a quarterly level to grow year-on-year in each and any of the quarters.

But there might be a certain reduction -- a limited reduction in the Q1 NII respect to Q4, basically for some seasonal effects that typically happen in the first quarter. The first quarter tends to be somewhat weaker in terms of average fund balances as January tends to be clearly weaker month than December. We do have 2 days less in the first quarter than we do have in the fourth quarter. And also there's more negative loan repricing actually in January. There's a certain seasonality here.

So what we would expect is Q1 to fall slightly against Q4, but then picking up growth right after and specifically accelerating growth into second half of 2026 and obviously into 2027. On the back of all those, let's say, more business and external rates factors, we do have also significant idiosyncratic factors, let's say, that are based on our -- the structure of our hedges.

Recall in the Page 30 of the webcast presentation, you have got all the details, but recall that between the fourth quarter end of '26 and the first quarter of '27, actually, we do have around EUR 15 billion of legacy deposit hedges that are maturing. They're maturing actually at negative rates. So we would assume a rollover of that hedges at current market forward rates that would give us an uptick of about 2.5% on those EUR 15 billion of legacy deposit hedges, and that is annualized around EUR 400 million of NII boost that will be coming from this natural rollover of those hedges.

So there's no external factor that is pretty much already in our balance sheet, and it's a natural and automatic thing to happen. So there's a clear boost for 2027 NII from that front. And on the other hand, we also disclosed the maturity profile of our ALCO book. Actually, in last year 2025, EUR 6.5 billion already matured at 0% rates. And you have seen that our ALCO portfolio actually grew by EUR 12 billion in 2025. So that is renewed and that generates obviously some support for the 2026 NII as this is maturities from 2025.

And once they are renewed, obviously, they help in the year-on-year evolution into 2026. And that goes on in 2026, there is EUR 9 billion maturing at a 0.4% yield, and there might be a reinvestment capacity of increasing that yield by 2.2 percentage points, generating EUR 200 million of annualized NII through that 2026 maturities. And that goes on in 2027, there's EUR 8 billion maturing at 1.6% that would reinvest it would lead to EUR 100 million of annualized NII.

And in 2028, also, there's EUR 14 billion actually maturing at 1.1% that also would give EUR 300 million of annualized NII support. So from all those factors, both external factors, let's say, business evolution and market rates, we feel very upbeat specifically in 2027 as we are guiding for this EUR 12.5 billion as well as beyond looking into 2028. And then there's those internal factors from the maturity of hedges as well as from the ALCO book. So we actually feel very strong in 2027, and we do feel similar also into 2028 based on all these factors that I was just explaining.

Next question is from Ignacio Ulargui, BNP Paribas.

I have 2 questions. I mean one is on deposit growth. I'm coming a bit back on what you were commenting, Matthias. Looking a bit more on the volume. So you said 6% customer funds growing in the plan. If you could break that down between deposits? And how do you think kind of interest-bearing and noninterest-bearing could grow into 2026 and '27, that would be very helpful.

And a second one on credit quality. I mean, asset quality has performed very strongly. I think it's the lowest 4Q gross inflows into NPLs in a decade. Your target of NPL is 1.75 which, I mean, if we extrapolate a bit the trends that you have seen in 2025, probably it still is very conservative. So I just wanted to get a bit of your views about cost of risk, asset quality dynamics so that to get a bit of comfort on the improvement of the 5 bps of cost of risk and how much generic overlays you have still?

Thank you, Ignacio. I'll take the second question as well. I'll start with asset quality is -- starts from the economy. The economy, I was saying that the GDP numbers were about to be published. And in fact, they have been a very strong fourth quarter for Spain, 0.8% growth quarter-on-quarter on GDP. To give you an idea, we were more in the 0.5% expectation. We knew based on the numbers of the last few weeks that this was going to be higher.

But clearly, a very good number. There's been some revision of previous quarters. So the overall growth has been 2.8%. But most important is just looking at 2026, the outperformance of the fourth quarter already gives us automatically just if we don't change any other assumption, just the rebase of the fourth quarter would mean that growth would be 2.3%. And looking at the numbers, private consumption is up 1% quarter-on-quarter. Gross fixed capital formation, so investments basically is up 2.2% in the quarter.

Exports are up 0.8% is -- these are very, very strong numbers. And as long as the numbers continue to be there, there's absolutely no reason to think that asset quality is -- we're going to have any negative surprise. We -- Matthias mentioned, we have still this stock of non-assigned provisions above EUR 300 million. Economy is doing well. Our clients are less leveraged than ever. And we do not see any problem in any part of sort of big broad categories, be it mortgage or consumer segment.

The statistics for January in terms of asset quality make it the best January I remember. January is typically a bad month, the famous Cuesta de Enero, as we say in Spanish, that's reflected. And this year, we're seeing a much lower impact than others. So we internally have all the confidence that, yes, that should make sense for us to be below 25 basis points. And we tend to be conservative, particularly in cost of risk because there's an element of unpredictability on it, and you cannot rule out completely. Obviously, the international environment and whether we have a sort of a major crash in markets or some other big impact elsewhere that eventually feeds into the economy and hence, changes things is always a possibility.

It seems unlikely and in any case, something where we have pretty good cash. 175% may actually be conservative, I agree. I think if the trend continues, we will go beyond that number fairly soon. But you know we're a conservative organization when giving guidance. We look at guidance, and there's a very high percentage of cases where we have better guidance versus occasions that have happened where we didn't meet our guidance because something happened.

So I would be pretty confident on these numbers on cost of risk for the next years as long as the economy stays where it is, which we have no indication that is changing from that position. We're seeing on the opposite sort of stronger numbers.

Thank you very much, Ignacio. On deposit growth, I think we have been guiding for overall customer funds to be growing at around 6% now during the 3-year horizon versus the initial target that we have of around 4%, of which we said 3% of that would be customer deposits. So I think it's -- 2025 might be a quite good starting point when thinking about composition. So obviously, we do still see significant upside on wealth management after 9.7% year-on-year growth in 2025. And we do see CapEx to grow in deposits over this 5.3% growth in 2025 also.

We move that target to now 6% overall. That means, as I said before, we might be somewhere around 5% to 6% on the overall customer front. And the structure that we've seen in 2025, we expect that more or less to be also into 2026 and beyond. So having said that, we do think -- we do see deposit growth now very clearly in the mid-single-digit zone for the strategic plan horizon. That is outperforming our target of above 3%.

And why? Because we do believe, and as Gonzalo was just pointing out on the macroeconomic evolution, we do still see a very strong disposable income growth and savings rates actually remaining at high levels. It is coming down slightly, but we still do see at very high levels with respect to historical average. Loan growth is strong and that multiplies also into deposit growth in the sector and hence, gives us opportunities to keep on growing significantly here. And as I said, we have a focus on growing nicely the client base, 390,000 clients this year, and that obviously also gives capacity to grow in deposits from new clients, and that means in transactional deposits and not shifting around the savings of our existing clients, but actually growing into new client base and growing into transactional deposits.

So thinking then about what is the part of noninterest-bearing versus interest-bearing I would say, the current rate environment, which is stabilizing after the up and down over the last 3 years, stabilizing and with certain tendency to -- and the forward rates to increase, but clearly on a very gradual pace, we would expect that actually noninterest-bearing deposits being rather stable, and I would say rather stable even in absolute terms, not necessarily in relative terms, obviously, potentially growing slightly, but we would expect that the noninterest -- the interest-bearing part actually clearly growing slower than the noninterest-bearing part. And hence, we don't expect any shift from one to the other. As I said, growth should also come from new clients, new transactional relationships with our clients. And hence, we see strength in the growth of that crown jewel of ours, which are the noninterest-bearing part.

Thank you, Ignacio. Operator, next question please.

Next question is from Maks Mishyn, JB Capital.

Two questions from me, please. The first one is on loan book growth. Your peers mentioned that mortgage market is less attractive due to competition at the moment, and you seem to be growing above the market. Could you share your thoughts on why it is attractive for you and not your peers? And then if you could also break down the upgraded loan growth target by segment, that would be very helpful.

And the second question is on capital. Just wanted to hear your thoughts on the recent proposal by the ECB to simplify capital regulation.

Maks, we are not hearing you properly. Can you -- maybe take the cellphone a little bit away and repeat the question because we lost you.

Is it better?

Yes.Yes, this is better.

Sorry. So the first one is on loan growth. Your peer mentioned that the mortgage market is less attractive due to competition, and you seem to be growing above market. Could you share your thoughts on why it is attractive for you and other peers? And also, if you could upgrade the loan growth target for the next year, that would be super helpful.

And the second, I just want to hear your thoughts on the recent proposal by the ECB to simplify regulation for banks in the Eurozone.

Thank you, Maks. I will start. And Matthias, you want to complement anything you tell me. On the mortgage market, I would say there's a very strong competition. There's always been 10 years ago, 5, 15, 20, it has typically been more on the floating rate mortgages. The market has moved almost completely, but not completely, but to a large extent, on to fixed rate mortgages. And that means that different players find it more or less attractive. I think depending on the structure of the balance sheet, there are core liabilities, the liquidity position. I'm just saying this is an important factor to keep in mind.

But whether it was floating or now on fixed rate, we have obviously very competitive margins. And what we are doing, our share of new production is pretty much in line with our stock, around 25%, slightly it's 26% in the figures up to November in terms of share of new production versus a 25% stock. So that's why we're gaining 12 or 10 basis points in market share. But it's basically, we're maintaining our position. I think that's reasonable for us.

And what you see is some players have been much more aggressive than others. And I think it has something to do with the structural balance sheet. And then the other big factor, which obviously is also differentiating is to what extent you cross-sell because we know mortgages are now below funding costs after the various sort of subsidies that are given by banks and on average, the market rates that are being given to the ECB latest numbers I've seen in November is 2.4% for fixed rate mortgages, obviously, below the swap rate, but that's after the modifications for all kind of business that clients bring in.

And on that front, we obviously have an insurance business that is absolutely different from what others have. I was just looking at the premiums on the non-life for our affiliate Adeslas is around EUR 6 billion. You look at the numbers of our 2 main competitors, the premiums for non-life are around EUR 600 million. So it's not just a bit more than our fair share. It's 10x more. And that gives an indication that with -- once a client is in the Universe Caixa, clients more profitable.

And hence, when you incorporate that, you probably see that both because of our funding position and our ability, given our sort of 36% market share in payrolls, our ability to hold long-term fixed rate assets, number one, and our ability to cross-sell, the market has moved to an area where we have a competitive advantage versus others. But still, I think we're being very disciplined because, again, stock of back book and the market share in new lending is very much aligned.

So that's the background. And in terms of simplification, we're watching and obviously would love to see moves from that point of view on simplification for banks. And I think something is going to happen. I'm a trading maybe less than we would have hoped for. And I think the progress we're seeing so far deals more with operational issues, which is great because it's going to lead us to sort of spend less time and maybe have less people sort of spending time on supervisory matters, and that's good, but that's not really going to change the game. I think sort of changing capital requirements is something that is unlikely. I personally don't find it desirable. I think the current capital requirements, yes, are very ample and solid and gives us as a system, a great degree of stability. And I think that's good over the long term.

What I think is important is that we provide stability and that there's no doubt about capital levels going forward because the current levels are more than enough. I think supervision needs to be simplified. We have 27 supervisors, and we're not one of the most complex financial institutions in Europe. We're operating basically in the Eurozone and mostly in 2 markets. It gives you a sense of complexity and some of that should be addressed. There's obviously progress specifically on disclosure on topics affecting sustainability on securitization, which is very likely. I think the sort of development of instruments for saving and investment union, which is not exactly simplification, but it has a relationship with are also quite relevant. We'll have to watch and see.

But this is, I think, going to take quite some time, and we may actually end up in a position that is not too far away from where we are now, barring sort of some, as you say, operational matters. And the other one, which I think is very important, is stopping the flow or significantly slowing down the flow of new rules, Level 2, Level 3, which is obviously, I think, more of a concern and easier to stop because it's more a political willingness to change the way future things are done to change the status quo is going to take time and may not be as significant as we would hope for.

If you allow me to complement Gonzalo on Maks. On your question on breakdown by segments of that loan outlook that you're asking for. 2025, we grew 7%, our performing loan basis, of which 6.5% was growth in mortgages, 12.4% in consumer lending and 7.6% in business lending. Now we are guiding for a 6% CAGR over the horizon of the strategic plan, and that implies somewhere between 5% and 6% for the remainder 2 years. And hence, let's say, the adjustment you would have to make to the 2025 numbers, I would say the structure of 2025 is a reasonable one that we would be seeing also in the future as basically the main driving forces macroeconomically speaking as well as from the market, we still see them holding true also for 2025 -- for 2026 and 2027.

So let's take the structure of 2025. And as Gonzalo said, we want to be active in business lending, specifically in SME lending. We want to be active and gaining market share in consumer lending and typically be more in line with the market and hence, maintain our position for all the reasons that Gonzalo was commenting on mortgages. And that is more or less the structure that we had in 2025, and that is what we would be expecting in 2026.

Why do we guide for slightly lower growth rates on the business volume? Even though macroeconomic performance is strong and keeps us strong, there is a certain reduction in the pace of growth, obviously, as Gonzalo said, 2.8% this year with the figures that were just published, and that might be slowing down slightly over the next 2 years, obviously. So together with that evolution of macroeconomic growth, obviously, we see nominal GDP growth as an anchor point both for growth in assets and liabilities. And this is why we are thinking that there might be a certain slowdown from 2025 levels. But then again, the future will tell. And obviously, we will do all the best to do better than that. But this is what is our current view.

Next question is from Francisco Riquel, Alantra.

The first one is on fee income guidance that you are not changing, but wealth management and long-term savings volumes are growing ahead of expectations. So if you can explain what is the offset here, if it is, again, banking fees that you see weak trends? Or if you can please elaborate on the fee income guidance given that wealth management is ahead of expectations?

And second is on the cost guidance that you have maintained also for -- in the new plan. I wonder if you are investing more in AI and in the technological transformation that what you were anticipating at the beginning of the plan? And what type of productivity gains shall we expect and when?

Thank you, Paco. I would say, again, leaving the fees for you, Matthias. If you agree on cost and AI, yes, this is a key factor for our investment program, which is going according to plan. So in terms of the big numbers, we are reiterating the cost and the OpEx, CapEx spend last year, this year, 2027. And in terms of the efficiencies of the productivity that we expect here from AI, I think, is twofold. Most importantly, in a growing market and in an organization that is actually growing market share, it's going to allow us to have more revenues over the same platform basically. And I think this is very important for us. So that's the main factor.

And the second one, obviously, is on the cost base. We -- and particularly when you look at sort of the engine room. I would say there are 2 places where we expect efficiencies. One is IT, and this is one where it's actually -- first, we need to invest more also in terms of people and with this Cosmos program, which is the whole sort of technology upgrade that we're doing, we now have over 2,000 people working full time on that. Now some of them are internal. Some of them are from partners and hence, call it outsourcing. And this is going up. It's going to come down. We said at the time of the plan, we will start with 6,000 people, of which basically 1,000 were internal IT employees and 5,000 external. We expect by the end of 2030 to have reduced that to 4,000 people, but to have more people internally.

So we are basically in-sourcing, but the total FTE expense internal and external is going to come down. And this is something that you're going to start feeling really 2027 onwards because in the meantime, what we need to do is, as we transform, have actually more resources. And then there's operations as well where we have significant outsourcing, and I think that's likely to come down.

So those are the sort of big areas to look for. But again, I'd say most of these efficiencies are coming into 2027 and beyond. That's why also if you look at our implied guidance for 2027 is more in line guidance of growth in order to make the numbers is more aligned to the 3% number compared to the 4.5% that we're doing this year. That's because not only, but among other things because we're having efficiencies already materialized in 2027. And obviously, that should continue beyond.

Thank you. On fees, Paco, I think, obviously, as you said, we are very upbeat on wealth management fees coming from that capital. As we said in the -- actually in the strategic plan, mid- to high single-digit growth here. 2025 has started very, very strong, and we do see strong growth also going into the future. As Gonzalo said, year-end balances in wealth management are 7% higher than average year balances of 2025. So we do see a very good starting point also here into 2026 and beyond.

So that means that, yes, we are more cautious on banking fees. Actually, of our fee structure of our banking fees 20% more or less are CIB fees and 80% are recurring banking fees. We said CIB has a very strong dynamics. We've been growing 33% year-on-year full year 2025. So there's a very strong backwind and tailwind here, even though, obviously, those growth rates tend not to be sustainable. We do believe the levels are sustainable, and we should be able to grow still from there, but obviously at a certain lower pace.

And that means that the drag we still do see coming from recurring banking fees and that 80% of fees, of which more or less half probably are in types of fees, which are basically exposed to quite some competitive pressure, namely speaking about account maintenance fees, payments and transfer fees or credit card fees, which obviously in that competitive environment and that profitability environment of client relationship are under pressure because they are lower value-added services. And in that capital, obviously, we still do believe that there is actually potential that these type of fees are still reducing over the next years as competition will be fierce in that area.

And innovation in those areas, obviously, will also have an effect of bringing fees down. And that should then be compensated and this is our job by the other part of the fees on other transactional services, security trading, foreign exchange or loan-related fees, where we do expect a positive evolution, obviously, from the macroeconomic environment and from transactional increases. So there, we do see a positive way to partially compensate that reduction in recurring banking fees.

Next question is from Cecilia Romero Reyes, Barclays.

The first one is on deposits. Obviously, the reduction in deposit cost is slowing and in part is because obviously, rates are stabilizing. Some competitors have standard attractive campaigns. How do you assess the current state of deposit competition in Spain? And are you seeing any incremental pressure from neobanks?

And my second question is just a follow-up on the fee question. Could you remind us where are SRT costs included within your fee line? And is an acceleration of SRT making your view on banking fees more conservative if included there? Or is this not having a big impact?

Thank you Cecilia. On deposits, I would say no change. We're not changing our strategy, and we are very comfortable about our position. We're not seeing any particular negative impact or difficult environment associated to neobanks. On fees?

Yes, the SRT Cecilia, the SRT part is in the banking fees. And hence, yes, there is a certain impact there. And as we are speeding up and as you have seen in the fourth quarter, SRT activity, there will be a certain drag also on banking fees, on other banking fees based on the SRT activity. Actually, in Q4 '25, there was EUR 12 million of impact, that is EUR 5 million down year-on-year, if you look at the quarterly data. And in the full year 2025, there was EUR 36 million, actually EUR 12 million more of fees paid on that capital. So yes, that is generating, obviously, as we are picking up activity here, a drag on banking fees.

Next question is from Sofie Peterzens, Goldman Sachs.

This is Sofie from Goldman Sachs. So my first question would be on your customer margin, which came slightly below 300 basis points. I know you talked quite extensively about kind of deposit costs and also lending rates. But how should we think about the customer margin? Is it fair to assume that the 297 basis points is a trough? Or could it kind of fall a little bit more in coming quarters?

And then my second question would be the 20% return on tangible equity that you guide for in 2027. Is that sustainable to assume that will be the new run rate beyond 2027, so '28, '29, considering volumes are good. You mentioned cost efficiency should start to kick in post kind of '26. So how do you think about like the longer-term return on tangible equity level?

Thank you, Sofie. On the profitability, I think we said and Matthias also mentioned NII and others, we see environment continue to be fairly positive beyond 2027. So by definition, that should be positive for return on tangible equity. You are somehow asking about our next 3-year plan, and that's a bit too early for us to get into the detail. But to be honest, my sense is this is not just a level that is sustainable, the 20%, but it should be actually the level on which we start working towards further improvement in profitability. But that's my qualitative sense based on all what I have seen. And obviously, we also have a very positive view for 2028 in particular.

On customer margin, Matthias.

Yes. Thank you very much, Sofie. On customer spread, I'm afraid to say that the 297 or 302 depending on whether it's with or without hedges, has not yet been the trough. As I said, customer deposit cost at 47 basis points might be rather stable or we do see some potential here still for certain improvement, but probably a minor one. And yes, we do still see negative loan yield repricing specifically into the first quarter and the first 2 quarters of this year, 2026. So we would expect that to come down still slightly into the second quarter, but then we should be starting to see a recovery. And we still see the area of 300 basis points as our sustainable level once rates are picking up slightly over the next quarters.

Next question is from Alvaro Serrano, Morgan Stanley.

It's kind of a follow-up, one for you, Gonzalo. The implied cost growth in '27 looks like around 2.5%. And with the revenue growth, your cost income is going to be in the mid-30s. And obviously, you've laid out both Matthias and yourself, how there's more to go for in '28. So the question is kind of where is the -- should we be thinking that 30% cost/income ratio over time is possible? Or the bigger question is at what point, Gonzalo, do you think that it's better to invest in the business because you think you might be missing out on growth or underinvestment? Just help us through think how you're thinking about the business and the long-term potential in the new world?

And second, on the 6% loan growth CAGR, I realize it's a touch lower in the outer years, but still above what Spain is growing. And of course, there's some international growth there. But the question is, are you factoring further sort of market share gains? Or you're expecting the growth in the market to accelerate significantly or a bit of both? Just a bit of sort of color on your market share expectations.

Yes. On the second one, market share, I'd say, yes, we are gaining market share now. We gained market share this year. It's likely if we have a position that I think is very strong on -- from a competitive point of view that, that process will continue. And we aim to do that subject to appropriate risk and pricing decisions. So if the profitability is not there, the risk criteria is not strict enough, we will certainly not grow faster than the market. But we have seen that the market is very big. And given our positioning, we can do that. And I think there is clearly a potential to see lending above nominal GDP, which is kind of the logical assumption to be made. But when we look at relative to our past and relative to Europe with 31 percentage points lower leverage of the private sector and an economy that is clearly outperforming, you can see obviously some cycle there.

So I think 6% is reasonable. And yes, it includes some market share gains. But again, when we talk about market share gains, we're talking about 10, 20 basis points. Generally, this is the kind of market share gains that are consistent with good pricing decisions and good risk decisions, not something that is huge.

And in terms of the cost income, I think it's important to say cost income for us is an output. It's not the target by itself. We -- now you look at our numbers and round numbers, we have 18% return on tangible equity this year, 40% cost income, a bit below the cost income. But our aim is not to bring down the cost income at our cost. Our aim is to create value. And obviously, if we can do the same volume with lower cost income, that's great. But very often, if you just focus on bringing down the cost income, you're not going to do investments at 18% return on tangible equity.

So once you get to -- and many banks would dream in Europe, as you know well, Alvaro, to have a 40% cost income. And once you have a very profitable platform, you actually want to create value and that means growth. And that may mean doing and taking business initiatives at 40% cost income that create a lot of value, 18% return on tangible equity, but do not contribute to the objective of reducing further cost income down to 30%.

Now as an output, if our strategy is successful and we continue to grow the business, the cost income should continue to go down. But it's not going to be our target. It's going to be a consequence of sort of management of revenues and costs to make sure that we produce sort of value when we make investments. So it will come down, but we're not targeting a given cost income. We're targeting shareholder value creation. I may just remind you of the case of Banco Popular 25 years ago, they were managing for ratios and return on tangible equities and cost income. And at some point, that doesn't make sense. And we're certainly going to be looking at NPV positive value decisions and that if our strategy is successful, will lead to lower cost income. We'll see when and to what extent.

Next question is from Marta Sanchez Romero, JPMorgan.

I got 2 questions, one on the structural hedge and the other one on capital. So on the structural hedge, you're adding receiver swaps, but you're reducing your holding of sovereign bonds. Can you explain the rationale of that? Any worries on the sovereign debt market? And also what is behind keeping the sensitivity still at 7.5% versus the 5% you had at the beginning of the year? If you could help us model how the ALCO portfolio size should expand going forward, that would be very helpful.

And then on capital, 2 quick questions. What are you expecting in terms of RWA growth? In the previous plan, you were growing more slowly than loans. I think 3% CAGR you had at the time. Now you've got 6% growth in performing loans, how RWA should grow? And just quickly on the buyback, have you already put forward a request to pay that surplus capital to the ECB and the Board?

Thank you, Marta. On the second point, capital, we are not -- we've made a policy out of it finally to say let's be consistently. We will not talk about when we do internal approvals and discussions with the ECB. We'll just communicate to the market when we have it and it's formally approved by the ECB and the Board. Absolutely no change in what we've been doing. We're talking about the seventh, eighth share buyback now. And you know how we behave that we're fairly quick, very disciplined.

Look at all the banks in Europe, they say this is our target, but then you look at the capital, and it's way above that target. We are -- it's a bit like an ATM. As soon as we generate the capital, we give it back. So don't worry about that is something we're going to continue. RWA growth, obviously, it's going to be a bit higher if lending grows at 6% than at 4%.

And I'll let Matthias elaborate on to it.

Yes. Thank you very much, Marta. As you said, we were guiding for a 3% performing loan growth in the -- back in the Investors Day, and that translated into about 2% growth in RWAs. Now we are guiding for 6% growth, and we do think that also helped by both the Basel IV impact that at the end of the day was more positive than we expected as well as an uptick most probably in SRT activity that we should be able to actually adjust that growth rate downwards and actually generate a sort of potential 2 percentage point gap between loan -- performing loan growth and RWA growth helped by these 2 factors.

And on sensitivity, we do feel quite comfortable in that 7.5% sensitivity that we are managing right now. Recall that we are coming from ranges of 20% to 30% back in 2021 when obviously rates were negative or very, very low, bringing that down to 5% last year, and now we are hovering around those 7.5% levels in that environment where the ECB signals that the rate cutting cycle may have come to an end and the market expects certain increases from the current state. And the yield curve is actually pointing out to a steepening. We do think that, that 7.5% level is a level that we feel comfortable with in an environment in which we obviously would have been or are exposed to macro risks, both on the upside as well as on the downside.

As to hedging strategy, we use both instruments, both ALCO book in order to invest and structural hedges. This quarter, we've been using approximately EUR 10 billion of structural hedges to hedge and to assure the sensitivity of 7.5%. And that might change depending on the size of the books, depending on sensitivity depending on opportunistic behavior also if sovereign spreads we feel are at the level they should be, we feel investment opportunities, we might be using more longer maturity instruments such as adding to our ALCO portfolio and picking up some of that sovereign spread or being more in the shorter range of maturities, which we typically do with the deposit swaps.

So I would say we will see in the future. We want to keep some flexibility here to be able to react to market circumstances as they unfold and no clear guidance at that point on to which part of the portfolio should be growing more or we would be using more.

Next question is from Ignacio Cerezo, UBS.

So I have 2 small ones actually and one slightly more qualitative. And the numerical ones are, if you can give us the NII in 2027 with no rate hikes. So we have actually flat as pancake type of yield curve.

The second one is if you can give us actually the percentage of natural attrition you have on your headcount every year. And the qualitative one is on consumer lending, obviously growing quite strongly, 12%, I think it is at the end of the year. I mean, mimicking view on actually the trends we're seeing on a sector basis. I mean, does this raise any concern around asset quality about the kind of clients actually you're targeting or you're still within pretty tight kind of risk standards with your own client base preapproved like you have been doing in the last 3, 5 years. So if there is any change in terms of the risk profile of the clients you're acquiring on consumer?

Thank you, Ignacio. Risk profile, no change in asset quality. We keep our standards. We're very comfortable with them. And that's perfectly consistent with good growth when you have such a large position and a lot of information with clients. Natural attrition for the headcount, I think we may actually want to come back to you, obviously, I want to make sure we give you the right number is small. NII?

Yes. NII, 2027 actually is not largely dependent on interest rate hikes. As I said, typically, the repricing of the portfolio is somewhat backloaded. And in the current interest rate curve, that increase that we are expecting slightly for 2026, but slowly and a little bit into 2027 actually would not have a significant impact on our EUR 12.5 billion guidance. As then the interest rate hike is much more backloaded and would much more positively affect 2028 and beyond. So I would see, obviously, that would have an impact, we would be below most potentially that 12.5%, but not far from guidance if interest stayed on current 2% deposit facility rate.

Next question is from Andrea Filtri, Mediobanca.

You said consolidation will continue in Spain and that you're not interested in moving abroad. Can you elaborate on what you meant by that? And also, you made positive considerations on the U.S. as a market. What do you plan to do there?

On the U.S. as a market?

What you said -- last question, Andrea, we didn't hear it properly.

I also read positive comments on the U.S. What do you plan to do there?

Yes. Consolidation, very clear, no change. We are not interested in consolidation. We have a very strong position in Spain. And we do not want to grow and we do not need to fill any product areas through consolidation. We want to grow organically. In Portugal, we have a great operation. We have a lower market share, but actually a business that is growing even faster than the Spanish one. So we're very happy with what we have. And what we see is increased value creation by combining the engines and the way we do business between Spain and Portugal with the whole, obviously, autonomy that BPA has because it's a great Portuguese and it needs to say as a Portuguese bank.

And we're not seeing value creation in cross-border, to be honest, this is sort of a discussion that takes a very long time, but we don't see synergies. And as we look for shareholder value creation, we do not think we're going to find it in cross-border M&A. The U.S. is certainly even further away for us from the point of view of M&A, absolutely no interest there. Still it's a market where, obviously, we bank with many U.S. companies that are mostly operating in Europe. It's a market that we follow closely because it's relevant for the whole world.

Next question is from Borja Ramirez, Citi.

I have 2. Firstly, on the NII guidance, I would like to ask if you could provide the assumption on the deposit hedge growth? And also this EUR 10 billion of deposit hedges, could you remind me on which interest rate they have been acquired? And then my second question would be on the SRTs. If you could remind me what is the expected delay benefit and the fee cost, please?

On the deposit hedge growth, we don't give a specific guidance on what the volume is. But structurally thinking about what we should be doing is, obviously, we are adding, let's say, nonmaturing deposits on our liability side. And by the way that we are adding those nonmaturing deposits, we need a natural hedge on those, either through increase of the mortgage -- fixed mortgage portfolio, for example, or other fixed rate assets in the loan book or if that is not enough, then in order to manage the 7.5% sensitivity, obviously, other types of instruments should be used, namely being either hedging our deposit base or investing into fixed rate assets.

So structurally, I would be thinking about the evolution that you're putting into your model in terms of noninterest-bearing deposits, which is our fixed rate liability side and then a combination of investing into fixed income assets, both on the loan side as well as on either of the 2 instruments, fixed income portfolio on the ALCO book or structural hedges.

And -- sorry, on the interest rate acquired in the -- we do disclose the detail of the information of the next actually 4 to 5 years of the maturities of the ones that we acquired. So you have a very detailed portfolio evolution of those. Obviously, in the moment we acquire, as I said before, we typically tend to invest a little bit more long term when it is ALCO book and fixed income portfolio and a little bit more short term in duration when it comes to hedges. And this is already obviously then already -- and you can see that in the differences of those maturity rates that we have in the Page 30 of the disclosure.

And then the SRT, Matthias mentioned that before, but it's also in the presentation, it's minus EUR 12 million in the fourth quarter and minus EUR 36 million for the full year '25. So for the cost of SRTs in the fees.

Next question is from Miruna Chirea, Jefferies.

It was on costs, more specifically on your investments in digital. I think 1 year ago at the Investor Day, you were talking about EUR 5 billion of total investment in digital over '25, '26, '27. Could you remind us, please, what is the phasing of this in each of the 3 years? And how should we think about investment in digital going forward? So what is the run rate from 2028 onwards?

Run rate from '28 onwards, we will obviously explain at the time. There's no decision made. But clearly, the effort that we're doing with '25 to '27 is a special effort that is not something we're going to repeat or planning to repeat in '28, '30. But again, specific numbers, we need to wait. And in terms of the breakdown of that investment, I think there's no change from what we said. But Matthias, do you want to...

Neither change in the breakdown nor on the phasing in of that. Obviously, there's a certain ramp-up phase when it comes to the investments in the first year in terms of incorporating the staff and incorporating the workforce that we wanted to incorporate, and this is obviously a phasing. On the other hand, there's a certain front-loading then with expenditure with our partners. So I would say the most reasonable assumption is that is in that 3-year horizon, rather stable in terms of investment needs over these 3 years.

Okay. Operator, I believe we have time for one more question, please.

The last question is from Lento Tang, Bloomberg.

I have 2 follow-ups, please. The first question is on structural hedges. On Page 30 of the slides, you have this maturity profile. In the past few quarters, they were mainly added in the second quarter of '27 to the third quarter of '28. But this quarter, you added significantly in 2029. So just wondering if you could give me your thought process why the change?

And the second one is on SRT. So you previously guided EUR 6 billion by 2027. I just wonder if you have any change of view there given some of your peers have ramped up activity there.

Starting with the second one on SRT. We guided for the EUR 6 billion gross issuances by 2027. And as I said before, loan growth is stronger. We expect now 6% performing loan growth with respect to 4% that we expected in the strategic plan. So there will be an uptick most probably of volumes. We don't have a specific updated number on those as we will be making that dependent on market conditions. We want to be active in that market, but we also want to be very sure that we well manage maturities that we will manage the reinvestment risk of those and obviously, that we -- to some extent, don't go crazy about it in the sense of adding too much reinvestment risk in our CET1 capital ratio. So yes, expect us to be more active in that market, expect us to add some billions on that target, but not excessively neither.

And on structural hedges, as I discussed before, we are typically taking those decisions to a certain extent on an operational basis each quarter when we see what is the interest rate curve environment, we are updating our business volume forecasts, obviously, into that 12- to 24-month horizon, which we are managing our sensitivities. And then depending on the structure of the curve, depending on the structure of the sovereign spreads, we are managing that more on an opportunistic basis. There's no such a very predefined strategy other than, as I said, on the long tail of the curve, we tend to be in fixed income instruments and for the rather short term, we tend to be in deposit hedges. And then we will be deciding quarter-by-quarter depending on business outlook and market conditions.

Okay. Thank you, Lento. So that's all we have time for today. Anyone left out the queue, IR team will contact them later. Thank you all for joining us. Thank you, Gonzalo. Thank you, Matthias, and bye-bye. All the best.

Thank you very much.

Good morning, and welcome to CaixaBank results presentation for the third quarter and the first 9 months of 2025. We are joined today by our CEO, Gonzalo Gortazar; and our CFO, Javier Pano.

Just a brief reminder in terms of logistics, we will spend about 30 minutes with the presentation and about 45 minutes to 1 hour with the Q&A. The Q&A, as you know, is live, and you should have received by e-mail the instructions on how to participate. Let me end by saying that my team and I will be at your full disposal after the call.

And without further ado, Gonzalo, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Marta, and good morning, everybody, and welcome to this results presentation. It's a quarter that, I think, confirms the trends that we've been seeing for the last year and even further where volume growth sort of accelerates despite the seasonality.

Obviously, we need to understand that comment in the context of the weakness due to seasonal reasons in the third quarter, you see how basically, loans and customer funds are close to 7% up; premia for insurance business, 13% up; and remarkably growth in number of clients, almost 400,000 new clients in Spain on a net basis, which indicates, clearly, the group is in the right direction, growing client base for much more than population growth in Spain.

So very good dynamics for the business, for the organization. With respect to NII, as we predicted last quarter, finally, we've seen an inflection point with a pretty decent increase, 1.4% quarter-on-quarter. So Javier will elaborate on the Q&A. We'll have further details on trends. But certainly, it feels very good at this stage.

Revenue from services, up over 5%; asset quality, record lows. Cost of risk, in fact, we're improving guidance as Javier will sort of detail. Capital in the right direction. And obviously, this quarter, we, as per our policy, are announcing the interim dividend to be paid in November, which is the top of the range of 30% to 40% of first 6 year -- of the first 6 months results, sorry.

And announcing a further share buyback, the seventh I'm keeping core equity Tier 1 above our targets and with, again, strong trends, particularly given the deduction of the share buyback that is included in the figures. We're upgrading our return on tangible equity to circa 17%, which indicates again the good trend of the business, which we obviously expect to see for the foreseeable future.

The economy, the economy has again surprised on the upside. We have raised our estimates for Spain from 2.4% to 2.9% currently. A couple of days ago, we had the figures for the third quarter very much sustaining the projections that we've made for this year, this 2.9%. We expect some slowing down, but to a pretty decent level, just above 2% this year for Spain, similar level for Portugal.

By the way, Portugal published their GDP figures yesterday, also very strong. So a nice outperformance of the Iberian economies, expected to last. And certainly, we are a clear beneficiary there.

What's behind this? First of all, the labor growth. You can see over 0.5 million of new jobs created in the last 12 months. Disposable income and savings rates, both moving in the right direction. And obviously, that's a tailwind for our customer funds and for the economy.

Consumption figures that we saw a couple of days ago, private consumption up 3.3%. Investment part of the GDP, very strong growth, 7.6%, and very remarkable export of services, close to 10%, 9.5%, and of that, the tourism-related services is only 5.8%. So it gives you an indication of the recovery and the strength of the Spanish economy goes much further beyond pure tourism, which is very relevant because obviously, tourism is going to continue to contribute to the economy, but not to the same extent that it has had in the past and as the sector has recovered.

Continue to have a very low private sector leverage compared to the Eurozone, which is great news, both in terms of defensive scenario if there are issues. And certainly, glass half full opportunities for loan growth, which we see sustainable -- sorry, which we see sustained for the next year.

So in that context, obviously, volume growth, 6.8% up. Client acquisition, as I mentioned. On the right-hand side, you have a reminder, this is coming from FRS Inmark of our client penetration, we have 40.4% increased during this year, along with that increasing client base. It's very important to see here the group gaining the traditional commercial strength that it has always had, and the fact that the type of relationship that we have with our banks is much stronger than the other peers. As you can see, 72% of our clients use Caixa as their primary bank, which is well above all.

Market share gains, I'd say, across the board, but highlighting some of them. Payroll deposits, in particular, which is very relevant, certainly. On the lending side, consumer and business lending, in particular, not so much in mortgages, where we are stable, a slight -- a few basis points reduction in deposits and generally in life risk. But as you will see in protection, we also have pretty good trends.

imagin, as mentioned in the previous quarter, we're planning to give you a brief update on representation. Continuous nice growth and number of clients, market share, particularly in payroll business volume, half of our net new client acquisition comes through imagin -- sorry, half of our gross client acquisition comes through imagin.

And just to remind you, it's at this stage, a full-service bank with obviously stronger component of customer funds, but also many other products, including lending, which is not typically what you see in neobanks compared to imagin.

It's been a year where we've not only focused on growth. Remember our strategic plan, we talk about two pillars. It was growth and transformation. And here, you have a few initiatives. Obviously, the world continues to change very quickly. And we're planning on taking advantage of that.

We're not on the defensive. We have to defend our positions, but we think there are great opportunities in the current environment and launch of the portals and Facilitea Coches, which by the way, we won a gold award a couple of days ago in the Qorus Banking Innovation Global Award, which is very nice, and we won another three and bank in the world that has won more awards at these prestigious event.

Facilitea Casa growing nicely. We have, by today, already 1 million visits to our platform. So a successful example. Generacion + [indiscernible], which is at the beginning of a very significant project targeting sort of seniors. Tap To Pay, Apple Pay Later, VidaCare, all cases where we are actually leading the industry in Spain. Stablecoin consortium, another one, and the cash back program, which we have just launched is another example.

I just want to make sure you have the feeling that it's not just about the current quarter or the current year. We're spending money and planning to make sure that growth not only stays but accelerates in the future.

Loan book, 5% growth, and the stock of mortgages quite remarkable, 10% plus in consumer lending, business lending 4.5%. Obviously, very good trends.

I won't spend more time because I mentioned it before. Loan origination, new production, strongly as the market is in residential mortgages, consumer lending and new business lending. So pretty good trends and trends that we see for the time being certainly staying with us.

Customer funds, strong performance, 6.9% year-on-year, I think pretty balanced look at figures on deposits and wealth management. There is, again, in this case, a seasonality impact. That's what you see deposits coming down quarter-on-quarter. But certainly, when we look at details and the trends, they are much better than they were in the third quarter of last year.

So nothing to worry about those numbers. They are actually good numbers once you adjust them. And when you look at a comparison of how we're doing in terms of deposits, Spain obviously outpacing the Eurozone by an ample margin, but CaixaBank further gaining market share there is a great sign.

The off-balance sheet business, wealth management doing very nicely. And you can see that the -- our market share continues to be much bigger than even our two main peers combined, 29% versus 24%. You really almost need to add the third peer to get to our market share, which is obviously a reflection of the kind of franchise we have in wealth management, which has been actually doing very nicely this quarter and this year.

Protection insurance, as I mentioned, again, strong growth, 12.7% in total premium. And as you can see, both life-risk and non-life doing very well. I mentioned the life-risk market shares. You can see here a similar on some of the key non-life market shares, again, doing very nicely. So a key part of our business and one where we have, again, delivered a pretty good quarter.

Vis-a-vis our strategic plan, obviously, there's a big gap, all of it in our favor. Market is helping, there's no question. We actually at least have that ability to identify this trend and hence, focus on the growth opportunity that we had at hand. And we're doing much better. And as you heard before, also doing better than the market gaining market share.

All that gives us quite a lot of confidence. Obviously, capital distribution is a key part of what we do. Based on increase in earnings per share, we have, as I mentioned, set the interim dividend at the maximum of the range that we had announced in our dividend policy.

And got recent approval for another EUR 500 million share buyback. Well, we haven't yet finished the sixth share buyback. So we have share buybacks for some time now and a strong capital position give us confidence that we will continue in this direction. Javier?

Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much, Gonzalo, and good morning, all of you. Well, from my side, as always, the details on the P&L and balance sheet. I have to say that all trends are in line with our expectations, if not better. So we are quite a bit.

Here, you have the consolidated income statement. Net income pro forma, the quarterly accrual of the 2024 banking tax, you may see EUR 1.445 billion. That is flattish year-on-year. If we move to the revenue front, well, as I mentioned, NII, we had already the trough in the second quarter. As you may see, up by 1.4% on a quarter-on-quarter basis.

Revenues from services despite being in the third quarter quite seasonal, we have had a really strong quarter also. You may see up by 6.2% year-on-year, flattish quarter-on-quarter, but that's remarkable, precisely due to that seasonality. The main driver being wealth management on the back of strong inflows, also markets doing well. You may see here year-on-year up by close to 12%, quarter-on-quarter also up.

Protection insurance on a growing trend, underpinned by commercial dynamism. And then finally, banking fees, flattish on a year-on-year basis, quarter-on-quarter, impacted by seasonality with strong CIB this year.

On other revenues, the most remarkable, I would say, is that in the third quarter, we have strong positive seasonality from SegurCaixaAdeslas, something that is very well known. Expenses, nothing to say, on track to meet our guidance for the year. And on cost of risk, you know that we have fine-tuned our guidance for the year to less than 25 basis points. So also on track to meet our improved guidance.

On the tax line on the P&L, you know that beyond the corporate tax, we have the banking tax and also, as in recent quarters, we have some DTA write-ups.

With that, an overview on Portugal. For the first 9 months of the year, EUR 351 million net income. Volumes are doing even better than in Spain. So as you may see, volume growth up by 8.5%. Relentless market share gains across the key businesses, I would say. Efficiency circa 40%. Profitability is just shy in terms of RoTE of 20%, NPL 1.5% and with nice coverage, 85%.

And -- well, a significant milestone because we had this quarter disposal of 14.7% of the stake in BFA, the Angolan stake. Well, this is equivalent to circa EUR 100 million. And as I say, a significant milestone, an IPO in Angola. So with that, our stake is now 33.4%, not major or not material impact on P&L or solvency from that disposal.

With that, let's move to the details. NII, as I was saying, here you clearly see the drop from the second quarter. And on the right-hand side, on that usual quarterly bridge, you may see that still, let's say, client yields having a negative impact as we still have a negative index resets on the floating rate loan book.

This is a trend that will still continue for a few quarters. But in any case, this is more than compensated by volumes. You may see business volumes and also the ALCO this quarter, we have increased the size of the fixed income portfolio by EUR 2.6 billion net because we had also some maturities. And also we have increased hedges by EUR 5 billion to EUR 58.5 billion outstanding.

Below, you have the customer spread, slightly over 300 basis points. The evolution of yields, the back book yield of the loan book, 355 basis points, down 20 basis points, but also the cost of client funds also down to 49 basis points, including -- excluding, in this case, hedges and foreign exchange. Well, in any case, we expect a clear acceleration of NII on the -- from the second half of next year.

A zoom on our deposit base, client deposit base. Here, you have the evolution of average quarterly balances. You may see steady growth, but the most remarkable is the mix precisely. That improvement in volumes of noninterest-bearing deposits, you may see, on average, the third quarter up by circa EUR 7 billion.

It's true that also we have some increase of interest-bearing balances. In this case, remember that is not only retail, it's also corporate SMEs because we do more business. So also, we have some increase on that. But in any case, the weight is very well contained, as you may see, a gradual reduction 26.8% weight of interest-bearing balances.

At the same time, we'll continue to reduce the cost of our interest-bearing deposits. Now standing at 1.66%, significant reduction in the quarter, as you may see, with a strong correlation with the evolution of the overnight rate as we have, as you know, circa 50% of those interest-bearing balances fully indexed and the major part precisely to the overnight rate.

Changing gear, we move to revenue from services, up by 5.7% year-on-year for the first 9 months. The main driver, as commented, wealth management, up by 13.4% for the first 9 months, also an accelerating trend on protection insurance, up by 4.2% when adjusted by a positive extraordinary on the last year and flattish fees, which is, I would say, quite remarkable.

And you may see on the chart on the right, precisely, that this year, we have had almost no negative impact from seasonality. So really strong trends on that front.

A few words on costs, up by 5.2% year-on-year, on track to meet our guidance. Remember, for costs up by circa 5%, cost-to-income below 40%, which is, by the way, well below the peer average. Asset quality and loan loss charges, asset quality really strong.

You may see here NPLs trending down this quarter by EUR 300 million. I would say almost everything is organic, that reduction with the NPL ratio also trending down 2.27%. And you may see across the different segments that there is a broad-based improvement, so not anything part of our loan book to worry about, honestly.

The coverage up by 3 percentage points in the year to 72% and we still keep our unassigned collective provisions unchanged for the year, EUR 341 million.

On the right-hand side, cost of risk, loan loss charges, 24 basis points on a 12-month trailing basis. So remember that we have fine-tuned and slightly improved our guidance for cost of risk to less than 25 basis points. So we are set to meet that guidance comfortably.

Liquidity, the same picture as every quarter, ample liquidity sources, EUR 229 billion and a liquidity coverage ratio at 200%, 199%. 148% for the net stable funding ratio. The loan to deposits is not moving at all. It's really stable, 86%, as we are growing on lending, but also we're growing on deposits almost at the same pace, so quite nice.

And you know that the liquidity ratios are well above our peer average basically due to a strong and stable deposit base composed mainly from stable retail deposits and wholesale operational deposits.

Capital, we are already deducting the seventh EUR 500 million share buyback, minus 21 basis points. From there, we have plus 67 basis points capital accretion that includes net income plus DTA consumption, then we have minus 8% from organic risk-weighted assets, that's basically lending. And from there, minus 38 basis points, dividend accrual at 60% plus AT1s and just minus 3 basis points from other impacts. That results into a CET1 ratio of 12.44% by the end of the quarter.

On the right hand side, additional details, you know that we are still executing the sixth share buyback. We are today announcing this interim dividend close to EUR 1.2 billion, which is EUR 0.1679 per share. And the seventh share buyback, EUR 500 million set to start at some point after we finish the sixth one.

Bottom right, well, you know that the stress test results was just released a few days after our second quarter results presentation. Here, you have the CET1 drawdown under the adverse scenario for the case of CaixaBank is minus 162 basis points. And you may see here that compares extremely well versus our comparables.

And finally, this upgrade on guidance, fine-tuning as there is only one quarter to end the year. So NII now expected to come down by circa 4%. And then we have cost of risk expected to be less than 25 basis points and return on tangible equity circa 17%.

So thank you very much and ready for questions.

Yes. Operator, can you let in the first question, please?

The first question is from Maks Mishyn, JB Capital.

I have two questions from my side. The first one is on loan book growth. It keeps on accelerating nicely, and we seem to be gaining market share across the board and even in mortgages. Some banks indicate that the market environment is very competitive there. And can you please share your thoughts on why you think you need to grow there?

And the second one is on provisions. What was the reason for the quarter-on-quarter increase? Do you think that the 25 basis points that you expect for 2025 could also become the number for 2026? Or is there any reason it could increase?

Thank you, Maks. On loan book growth, indeed, we're doing very nicely, I'd say, in terms of market share, we're gaining market share, as I mentioned, on the business front and consumer lending. In mortgages, we're not gaining market share. Actually, market share year-to-date has decreased by 10 basis points.

It doesn't mean that we're not doing a lot. That's why we have this strong increase in loan production. But we're doing a bit less than our fair share, I would say, given that it's only 10 basis points, in line with our fair share.

And yes, this is a very competitive business. When you look at the numbers that banks disclosed at the ACB, you actually see that the Spanish mortgages are the cheapest in Europe currently, in terms of new production, around 2.5%.

So it is indeed a business that only makes sense as long as, a, you have the ability to fund it from an ALCO point of view because now the market has moved mostly again to fixed rate mortgage. And there, you will see that different banks have different capacity to add long-term fixed rate mortgages.

Obviously, given that we have a disproportionate share of transactional deposits, and you can see that because of our payroll market share close to 36%, 37%. We're obviously very well positioned there. And in terms of having that in our book because it is a natural hedge and all the banks do not have the same sort of long-term duration of liabilities. So not to the same extent, I would say.

And second, most importantly, obviously, to get the numbers to an attractive return, you need to cross-sell other products. And that cross-selling is absolutely critical. If you look at our franchise and how we do our business and the market shares we have in insurance, in particular, but obviously, not just insurance, you are, I think, in agreement probably with us that we do cross-selling better than the average in the market so that we have a natural competitive advantage there.

We are only doing mortgages as long as they make sense. We don't have any particular sort of extra point to grow in mortgages. It's just doing the business when we think it is attractive. And in the case of mortgages, obviously, it needs to incorporate both things, the ability to fund long-term fixed rate and the willingness because it fits in your ALCO portfolio. And then secondly, that ability to make it profitable as sort of an overall relationship with the client.

But again, skipping away from mortgages. The key point is growth is actually in consumer lending and on the business front, particularly on the SME front, which are the two most attractive margin opportunities in the market. That's where we're growing market share. So we're extremely pleased with our loan growth is going absolutely in the right direction.

Second point was on provisions, and I'll let Javier comment on that. But I think generally, we're seeing no change in the very good trends we have in asset quality, what you've seen also in the sort of early doubtful loans, i.e., sort of less than 90 days, we continue to see very good trends. We haven't used, obviously, the overlays, as you said. We keep reducing the nonperforming loan numbers. So mathematically, you see these this kind of change.

I think going forward, this is a trend. If we manage to keep bringing down our NPLs, coverage will increase for the industry generally. You remember before the sort of great financial crisis in 2005, 2006, coverage ratios in the industry were above 100 because you had very -- and actually didn't make that much sense because most of the provisions or significant part of provisions were not covering actually nonperforming loans, but all the risks of exposures potentially becoming nonperforming loan. So we'll see.

But still, I think at this stage, it's very nice to see that we have a very low cost of risk, 20 basis points annualized in the quarter and still that is not affecting the quality of our coverage. It's quite the opposite, we are increasing that coverage.

Then quarter-by-quarter because this is lumpy sometimes. So there may be portfolio sales and write-offs and et cetera, you may have some volatility. But I think the trend is these levels are probably the ones that we will see for the next few quarters.

With that, I'm afraid I've gone into most of it, Javier. I'm sure you have things to add.

No. On cost of risk, well, we are quite a bit on the evolution, and you just saw that we were upgrading our macro views in general. Well, the dynamics in the economy, both Portugal and Spain are so good. So we are working on our budget for next year as we speak, but I don't foresee major changes on the levels of loan loss charges for next year, honestly.

So obviously, unless there is an external shock, no, but let's assume that this is not the case, and the situation continues to do as well as is the case currently. I would say that you can count on no major changes. We'll fine tune obviously, when we will comment in January, but the assumption is that it's going to be in line.

Thank you, Maks. Operator, next question, please.

The next question is from Ignacio Ulargui of BNP Paribas Exane.

I just have 2 questions, if I may. One, looking to the other side of the balance sheet to the deposit growth. If I just look to Page 20, you are clearly exceeding the target of deposit growth that you were aiming in the plan. Just wanted to see how you think about deposit growth going forward in '26 and '27. The second question, I think that Javier, you touched a bit upon this on the call, but I wanted to look to the reinvestment of the ALCO. Some of your Southern European competitors are investing around 2.6% the bond maturities have a 1.6%, 1.5%. ALCO. How should we think about the phasing of that reimbursement in the NII over the coming 3 years?

Thank you, Nacho. I'll maybe take the first question on deposits. There are 2 main factors. One is the trends in the market and then it's how do we do in terms of relative performance, market share. On both fronts, I feel very confident at this stage. So we're definitely going to be outperforming the expectations that we had in our strategic plan.

The market is still showing significant growth in disposable income. Our estimate for next year is again another 2% of gain in terms of real disposable income, so 2 percentage points above inflation. And the savings rate is sustained pretty high across -- actually across Europe, certainly also in Spain, where it used to be much lower.

I think there might be a slow sort of gradual decrease. But at this stage, it doesn't seem that the numbers are going to be very different. So as long as we are in a growing market, then it's up to us. And what we're seeing this year is, I mean, we have the machine and 100% of its functionality.

And actually, the quarter passes the further quarter, the more confident we become. This is a virtuous circle. It's a great organization we have. And undisputed leadership in Spain, over 50% larger than our competitors and now it seems that, that position is going to stay for the foreseeable future, very stable, that's a great advantage.

We have the team very focused, and we have been doing greatly this year, particularly in the non-remunerated part, which is obviously one that creates the highest value. I say the outlook is very positive for next year. And certainly, if the macro -- the macro numbers continue to be there, which is our expectation, not just for the next year but for the following months. So pretty good momentum and likely to be sustained.

Okay. If I may, Ignacio. On the ALCO reinvestments, well, you know that in order to manage our NII sensitivity, we are basically using both swaps and bonds. This quarter, we have added to both on a net basis in the case of bonds because we had also some maturities.

You know that you have a slide on our presentation on the appendix with plenty of details on the yield of all maturities per year or even per quarter for hedges. So you can count on rolling over those fixed income maturities for sure.

So we need to do so in order to keep that sensitivity, let's say, contain it within our targets. And you are right, no? So the average yield is 1.5%. So any reinvestment basically from 4 to 7, 8 years is usually the maturities. We are investing in it's going to be accretive.

And more specifically, what is maturing until the end of this year is having a 0% yield. Next year, we are having close to 9 billion maturities at a yield of 0.4%. So you may see that this is clearly accretive. And this is part of the reason beyond commercial volumes where we are quite a bit on NII for '26 and '27 and beyond because this is an additional tailwind.

I mentioned NII sensitivity. I would like to take the opportunity to note that we have slightly changed our NII sensitivity target to 7.5% to a parallel shift of the yield curve. This is no changes in practical terms, but it's basically allowing for some additional hedging flexibility precisely to accommodate faster volume growth, generally speaking.

And keep in mind that we are disclosing sensitivity for the period 12 to 24 months. What we have benchmarked that we see that our peers are usually giving sensitivity for the first year, so 0 to 12 months. If you think about our sensitivity for those 0 to 12 months it's circa 4%. So pretty much in line with what everything is disclosing. It's a more asset view. The view that we are giving us you.

So basically, please note that. So we are going to be opportunistic here depending on basically the spread between swaps and the sovereigns. We are using to add to the portfolio. And depending on that, we are more keen to use swaps or fixed income. The shorter the maturities usually, we tend to use swaps because you capture a narrower margin. So it will have a wider margin at longer maturities.

The next question is from Francisco Riquel, Alantra.

Yes. My first one is a follow-up on the first question from Ignacio. So I see demand deposits are growing 7% year-on-year, time deposits are flat. So can you comment on customer behavior in a lower interest rate environment. Your strategic plan was based on a stable deposit mix. And I wonder if you see upside here. And if you can also update on your guidance for deposit costs, both with and without hedges.

And my second question is customer spread. I see is proving resilient in Spain above 3%, but Portugal has fallen to below 2.9%. So you are growing faster in Portugal than Spain. So I wonder if you have noticed increased competition in this market or if it is related to different speed of balance sheet repricing, so you can give guidance for customer spread in both countries?

I will just say an introductory word, I'll let Javier deal with it. But in terms of this mix between time deposits and demand deposits. Obviously, as interest rates have come downwards the pressure to move from side deposits to demand deposits is more or less disappeared.

We're also seeing to some extent, the balances invested outside like T bills and others, generally in the systems that are coming back to the balance sheet. But clearly, there is potential to do better there. This year is -- it has been the case. But anyhow, Javier knows this inside out.

Well, on customer behavior, I think that basically, we are being successful on 3 fronts here. So first thing we are being able to pass on lower market rates to our -- to the cost of our interest-bearing deposits. You know that almost 50% of that is indexed, so it's pretty much automatic. So there's not much commercial effort on that front.

While we do that at the same time, we are growing nicely on noninterest bearing. And that growth on noninterest-bearing is not because is flows coming from interest-bearing so it's not like we are parking, let's say, whole money on noninterest-bearing that eventually will move from to another part of the balance sheet or even to outside the bank.

So it's not the case. So it's basically operational balances, more clients, well, close to 400,000. As you could see in a year, more clients or more payrolls, more everything. So at the end of the day, you have more operational balances at 0 cost. And while we do all that, at the same time, we are being able to grow on off-balance sheet solutions, on wealth management solutions being mutual funds or being savings insurance.

So the pace of inflows into those products is approaching EUR 1.5 billion per month, which is quite significant. While at the same time, we keep growing on noninterest-bearing and keeping our interest-bearing pretty much stable.

So I think that we have -- we are mastering honestly, this -- all that. We have the right incentives internally, obviously, client first and the right fund transfer pricing system and is working nicely, honestly.

And we think that this trend is going to continue. So we are quite a bit on this business. On the customer spread, yes, we are above 300 basis points. I think that eventually, we're going to be slightly below 300 in early part of '26.

That does not mean that we are going to have NII pressure because you know that there are other parts volumes plus ALCO that are more than compensating that. And you asked about differences with Portugal, it's a different dynamic because first, you have a larger percentage of interest-bearing balances on deposits. It's approaching, now its circa 45%.

It was 47%, now it's 45%. In the case of Spain, it's below 30%. Also there is a clear difference and as such, also considering that on the asset side, Portugal has a larger percentage of floating rate loans or mortgages, for example, in Portugal are fixed rate to maturity is not that commonly used as in Spain.

So you have, at the end of the day, a little bit more NII sensitivity in Portugal than in Spain. Hence, the impact on the customer spread are not exactly happening at the same time. But in any case, Portugal NII is set to stabilize and set to grow soon also.

Keep in mind also that in terms of our ALCO activity, although we have an ALCO in Portugal, we tend to manage our NII sensitivity more at group level. Hence, all strategies and ALCO hedging, et cetera, is more thinking about the broader view, not particularly in the case in Portugal. So thank you, Paco.

The next question is from Ignacio Cerezo of UBS..

First one is on -- I mean, the indication Javier has been given around the NII in 2027 based on volume and yield curve developments, if you can do a mark-to-market or update us on that number?

And the second one is kind of a recurring question. Actually, we ask you every now and then. But is there any possibility of artificial intelligence investments kind of creating a bit of a cost angle emerging at some point in the next 2 to 3 years? Or you think the cost growth actually is going to remain around that mid-single-digit region for good?

Thank you, Ignacio. I'll take on the second one, maybe and Javier can provide an answer for the first one. AI definitely. We have now increased our investment spend significantly in this plan that you're seeing with, as you say, mid-single digits growth this year and also a faster than sort of trend growth next year.

We start to see clear benefits from 2027 onwards. The main emphasis now for us is to make sure there is wide adoption of the technology, which at this stage, I would say, we're doing very well, every single area I wouldn't say every single employee, but almost.

But certainly, every single area has a number of projects, and some of them are finalized. So those are in design stage. Others are in work in progress. And we have a team centralized that sort of prioritizes make sure that we are sort of doing products that are compatible that I can't talk among themselves and benefiting, obviously, from the scale that we have and from working with certain providers like Salesforce or Gemini or CoPilot, Microsoft, et cetera.

So this is working at full speed. I have the sense that we're moving forward very well. We have a wide adoption in the organization. And we clearly have sort of use cases where the productivity impact is very obvious. Others are going to take some time.

Very often, what we will aim to is to be able to do things internally rather than outsource them. And hence, we will capture a very efficient cost saving in due course. But this is not going to happen. Certainly it's not happening this year, where we're having more spend and savings.

And I think you're not going to see that start until 2027 and then onwards. But generally, obviously, this is something that is very much debated everywhere, whether AI and the productivity gains from AI, who is going to appropriate them.

A lot of these opportunities are going to be appropriated by clients, is -- is the nature of sort of business loss that obviously, as we become more productive and more competitive, our competitors will, at the same time, clients will be more demanding in terms of what they can expect from banks and banks, the good banks will be offering it.

And hence, the appropriation of these sort of economies and productivity gains is going to be, to a large extent eventually running to clients, no. Like it has been in the past, if you think of mobile, et cetera. But we feel we are sort of at the vanguard. And hence, we will certainly be able to keep some of these gains and what is more important as long as we are a step or 2 ahead of others.

I think we're going to be giving a better customer experience, bringing innovation faster to the market. And hence, also gaining in terms of additional revenues, which is, to me, the name of the game long term, the market share and the number of clients that we keep and the ability for us to sell them the services we're selling now and others.

Well, in terms of 2027 NII. Well, first '26 where we are now very clearly seeing that it's going to be above fiscal year '25. So this is our view currently on the back of what volumes. But I would say that it's important also to say listening yesterday to the ECB press conference. It looks also that ECB is more a bit in terms of downside risk from the macro point of view.

So I think that clearly the bottom and rates is also here to stay. And well, that makes us also more confident to give you guidance. We were mentioning that EUR 11.5 billion mark for NII for '27. We see really very clear upside to that currently.

So we are quite a bit for '27, honestly. Probably we'll have to wait until our resource presentation in January to be more specific on that, but our view is that we have very, very clear upside into that figure. All in all, substantial upside compared to our initial views on over the strategic plan view. Remember that we were envisaging EUR 11 billion NII in '27. And now we clearly see this figure coming much earlier than expected.

The next question is from Alvaro Serrano of Morgan Stanley.

A couple of really follow-up questions. On mortgage pricing, everyone is complaining about the pricing, but it obviously remains very competitive. The question is more, have you seen any sort of changes in behavior lately, obviously, the merger is not happening anymore between BBVA and Sabadell. We have seen some sort of banks saying they're raising pricing but have you observed that in the last few weeks is one question.

And second, also a follow-up maybe for you, Javier. You -- I didn't fully follow the logic as to why you've increased the NII sensitivity now to 7.5%. Is it your -- do you think the next move in rates eventually will be up? Or are you just looking for a better moment to increase the hedging because you continue to create a lot of liquidity. So -- or maybe this is another reason that I missed?

Thank you, Alvaro. On mortgage pricing and generally pricing in the market. With respect to the impact of the failed takeover. I think it's too early to say. I haven't seen any particular change from that point of view, but I wouldn't expect it necessarily. These things take time, even mortgages from sort of making an offer to actually getting the mortgage close. It's a long period, sometimes 2, 3 months.

So we will have to see generally when the market is so competitive and so intense in terms of price pressure, I think eventually it tends to -- even if it will stay very competitive, it usually tends to at some point, sort of lean towards a more sort of rational pricing, we'll see. I think, the impact of rates coming down and now the sort of the general core being steeper than it was 12 months ago.

And as all these things stabilized and credit growth continues to take place, and hence, there's impact on liquidity and particularly on capital as -- and I'm not talking only about mortgages, you may see that actually margins on the asset side get a bit more rational. But it's not easy to forecast. This is not anyone in control. This is a market, it's a very competitive one, we'll have to see.

Well on NII sensitivity, we are allowing for some small additional hedging flexibility to accommodate a faster volume growth. So that's basically the message. Think about that. So this is a forward-looking measure.

So in order to estimate your sensitivity 1 year from now, you need to work with assumptions -- your best assumption on volumes going forward, which is going to be the composition of your balance sheet 1 year from now, okay?

What is happening is that we are outperforming those views constantly. So we are -- what we simply do is to get a little bit more latitude in order to have some more room to decide on our hedging as we are having this outperformance constantly.

So it's very simple. In practical terms, nothing is changing. Keep in mind that this is an asset view of NII sensitivity because it's the sensitivity 1 year from now. It's not usually what other peers are reporting that are reporting the sensitivity as from today for the next year. And if what I am providing today you is that the sensitivity is circa 4% as we speak. So pretty much in line with what everyone is disclosing.

The next question is from Britta Schmidt, Autonomous Research.

Just coming back to the volumes. They are generally ahead of the plan also for wealth management and protection insurance. So do you have any view as to whether in principle that could be positive for the CAGR for revenue from services included in the plan.

My second question will be on operational risk. Is there anything that you would track for RWAs in Q4? And how you're thinking more broadly about the development of operational risk also in the P&L with regards to more digital risk and cybersecurity risks? And then the last question is on Portugal. What expectation do you have regarding tax rates in Portugal? And any view on the discussion around a potential sector contribution to the budget?

Thank you, Britta. On the latter one on tax rate in Portugal, obviously, we'll have to see how things develop. And Obviously, it won't have a material impact on the group, given the relative weight of Portugal, but we'll have to see what is eventually done.

On volumes, obviously both, on balance sheet, off balance sheet protections everything in terms of volumes is running ahead of the strategic plan. I would be very inconsistent if I wouldn't say that should translate into better CAGR over the 3-year period. As long as we continue to sustain these levels, we should be doing better than the strategic plan on both fronts.

So how much better obviously is the question and -- there will be time to discuss certainly expectations for 2026 and then 2027. And at some point over the next few months, most of you will start looking into 2028, and we will discuss in 2028. And that I'm sure Javier can develop looks good as well, particularly on NII because we'll have a similar trends.

Operational risk, a general question is, is it going to be increasing? Obviously, I don't think so. But whether -- what's the impact on the fourth quarter, that's more rather than trend specific, which Javier will explain.

Well, for operational risk, you know that we have this impact on risk-weighted assets for the fourth quarter. We think that it's going to be in line with last year. It's going to be less than 15 basis points in our view.

And I have to say also that as we are talking about the fourth quarter risk-weighted assets, we are have in the pipeline a few SRT transactions that will settle into this quarter.

So this is going to have a positive impact probably more or less offsetting that impact on risk-weighted assets from operational risk. To be -- yet to be confirmed as we are finishing those transactions, but broadly in line with the impact from operational risk.

The next question is from Borja Ramirez, Citi.

I have 2. Firstly, on corporate loan growth. If I understood well, you seem to be preparing your balance sheet for stronger loan growth. I would like to ask this is mainly related to higher corporate investment and opportunity for corporate loans. So that will be my first question.

And then my second question would be on NII, please. If I calculate the Q4 NII for this year, based on your guidance, it seems to be around EUR 2.7 billion. If I analyze that assume 4% balance sheet growth. For next year, I get to EUR 11.3 million of NII for 2026. This is above consensus, and this does not include the benefit from repricing of ALCO or deposit hedges.

I would like to ask if this calculation makes sense from a technical point of view. And also, if you could indicate what is the benefit in NII for next year from repricing ALCO or the deposit takers, please?

Thank you, Borja. On loan growth, we have, obviously, the ability to grow our loan book because we were very liquid. You know that both from LCR, but particularly net stable funding ratio among the highest. Structurally, we're very liquid. And Spain generally is not very levered.

And when you've seen, for instance, the numbers for these third quarter GDP, the 2.8% growth behind those numbers. As I mentioned before, you have an investment component of GDP growing at 7.6% and year-on-year. And of this part equipment was up 11%. So now somehow we have this CapEx cycle going on. We've been talking about whether this would happen for many years.

And now it is happening. And hence, there is a very significant opportunity here. It is also an opportunity in consumer lending. I mentioned that SME and consumer lending are the 2 areas where we're gaining market share in a large -- or a relatively large amount case 30, 40 basis points, so there are 120 basis points in consumer lending.

And also precisely the more juicy parts, not necessarily the ones that require more funding in terms of size, but the ones that have the best returns. And on the corporate front, more sort of a larger enterprise and CIB business, the reality is that we're being very active.

This is a place where we have been and I don't think we've mentioned it today. But obviously, you know that our CIB fee business has been doing very well or Javier mentioned it indeed. And we see an opportunity there as well going forward.

So it's good across the board today and somehow previous days because of various comments here and there, the headlines are being taken by the mortgages and the pricing, the realities were we're growing most and certainly where the returns are more attractive is in these 2 parts of the business, consumer lending and SMEs, together with CIB. So that is something that we expect to see because once you unleash this CapEx cycle, this has some pretty good inertia.

Hi Borja. Well, we are refraining today to give you a specific figure for 2026 NII guidance. What I said is that it's going to be clearly above '25. That's pretty clear. How much needs to be seen. So we are still working on our budget. We have to fine-tune a few things and we'll come up with more specific guidance in January.

As per your numbers, first thing, keep in mind that still the first half of the year we have some negative repricing on floating rate loans in general. This is going to be more than compensated by other parts of basically volumes and also ALCO, but keep in mind that this is why we say, okay, there is an acceleration from the second half because that repricing process will already be ended.

And consequently, we have a clear acceleration on NII. Keep in mind also that there is some seasonalities in first quarter last day. So I will not say that you can extrapolate exactly the same quarterly evolution for every quarter. So let's see, honestly, I think that there is not -- there are not many banks already giving guidance for 2026. In our case, we are giving already plenty. So let's reconvene on in January.

The next question is from Miruna Chirea, Jefferies.

I had 2, please. The first one was on customer spreads, which you were guiding that you expect in the first half of 2026 to stabilize somewhere around -- somewhere below 200 basis points. Could you please discuss if you think that there is some scope for the spreads to expand into the end of the year as maybe you are growing high -- you are growing stronger in higher-margin corporate loans and consumer credit than in mortgages.

And then my second one, please, was on margin. Could you please give us a sense of what the returns are in the margin versus the traditional bank? So any sort of color that you could give us in terms of the difference in margins, the cost to serve clients and the cost of risk between margin and the traditional bank would be helpful.

Thank you, Miruna. You want to start with...

Yes. Well, as I was saying to the previous question, we still face some negative index resets on floating rate loans on the first half of next year. So this is adding some pressure on customer spread. It's going to be slightly below 300 basis points but not much.

And yes, eventually, over time, this may recover. We have to see lending but also deposits to what extent also we can keep pushing down our average funding cost as we have not probably because we push down our interest-bearing yields, but probably because we have a larger wave of noninterest-bearing deposits.

And as a consequence, we can slightly bring down our average customer funds, funds costs. So we have to see, so, I would say, conceptually, you are right. So over time, we should marginally gain on the customer spread. But it's going to be in any case hovering around 300 basis points. So that would be my best guess.

The back of the envelope numbers are approximately 150 basis points coming from the loan book, EUR 150 million from deposits. So if you assume like 2% rates, market rates, so this is 350 yield on assets and, let's say, EUR 50 million on deposits. So this is back of the envelope, we can fine-tune that once we give you guidance for next year, but this is the broad message.

Yes. And [indiscernible], I would highlight the following. Cost to serve is definitely much lower you would guess that I have to say it's different than other pure neo banks because we are increasingly putting together let's say, people and assigning relationship managers to the top of the pyramid because we have them and we have them to give service from our what we used to call in touch, the remote service, now we call it connector, to clients that are mostly digital of CaixaBank and we started about a year ago, something to offer a relationship manager to imagin clients, sort of experiencing how that would go, and we found that or inviting our emerging clients loved it.

So they would call and answer the call and when we would offer that we would assign a relationship manager they would love it. And then you have all these call me, call back, et cetera, follow up that we're doing also remotely to imagin clients. But all in all, it's very much more efficient cost to share on the bank.

But again, we're trying to make sure that the clients of imagin, if they want to they also have a physical remote always. And obviously, they can visit a branch if they want. That's by the finish in the case. And our branches obviously are very keen to bring imagin clients on board. So imagin benefits from the fact that we have a branch network, it works nicely.

So all in all, cost of service is lower and client and business acquisition is faster. And that's why we have a much more sort of well-balanced and grounded set of products and services and our balance sheet looks much more like a bank than rather just I'm selling a time deposit that's very high or some of the things, as you've seen in many of the new entrants in Spain and elsewhere.

So it's very different. The returns of the whole operation are attractive because the margins are not generally very much in line with the operation at CaixaBank. It's about a better sort of -- or a better -- it's a more specific sort of way of serving clients that is more appreciated by a certain part of the population. And that look and feel of being part of our community, which we are -- which we're doing.

But as a result of similar margins and a lower cost of share, obviously, the profitability is very attractive, and it has nothing to do with some of the neo banks that have been sort of losing money for a while. We obviously spend time -- spend money and time and effort in client acquisition with a very significant success, but we actually monetize that relationship very quickly.

So it's a very sustainable and growing business model and one that I think it's fairly attractive. Remember that we are not -- imagin, is not incorporated as a separate subsidiary, so we do not have proper sort of financial results in P&L.

What we have is internal management accounting, which we follow very closely. And to a large extent, also finally, it depends on what do you do with the excess funds because even if we have a significant part of our activity on the asset side, imagine it's still very -- sort of has a very large surplus of customer funds and rather than having an ALCO run at the margin level, which will make any sense.

Obviously, those funds are investors as part of the global ALCO group and how you do all these assignment of pricing and margins would enter the bottom line. So that's why we're not getting into that. But the qualitative is lower cost to sales, same margins, obviously very attractive business.

The next question is from Sofie Peterzens at Goldman Sachs.

This is Sofie from Goldman Sachs. So basically, a follow-up on the volumes. I mean the volume outlook is good, but are there any restrictions or a limitation for CaixaBank to do grow volumes and -- what I mean is, basically, are there any kind of funding restrictions, you have too much market share in some products that you can't grow any further?

Or if you have any capital constraints anything that we should be kind of mindful of around the volume growth and anything that could limit that? And then my second question would be around kind of the competition from fintech players we're seeing, press articles that some of the fintechs want to grow very significantly in Spain. I know you commented just on imagin, but how do you see competition from fintechs?

Right. On volumes, I would say, no limitation. On second part, you mentioned about index plans or -- fintech, sorry. Sorry, the sound here is not to some reasons it wasn't great. Fintech, obviously, this is great to have them. They are obviously forcing traditional banks to rethink the way they do things, and it's for the benefit of the client. So as a society, I think we should be very happy. As a bank we love it in the sense that our business is much more interesting because we need to keep constantly reinvent and rethink what we offer to clients and the way we offer our products to clients.

So I'd say it's a welcome development. Obviously, it's welcome as long as you think you have the tools and the ability to compete and we certainly think we are. When you look at the penetration of neo banks, you'd see some of the statistics on particularly Revolut and Trade Republic growing strongly this year, it used to be in '26, now it's not growing, it will depend.

But the other one that is growing very nicely is imagin. We have 9% share of payrolls and imagin and when you look at the others, I'm not going to get into the detail because obviously, we don't like to mention names and figures of competitors but the others are -- none of them is any close to 1% on the latest figures of primary banking relationships.

So they will obviously try and gradually, and I'm sure, to some extent, they are already doing it, try and gain clients to become their primary bank rather than start with 1 or 2 or 3 products, and that's the name of the game.

And the name of the game for us is to make sure that we offer the same experience, the same kind of relationship, and there's no reason why we shouldn't be doing it. And I don't usually refer to awards. But again, at this Qorus Banking Innovation Awards globally, again, imagin won the gold, so the first position in customer experience accounting, for instance, which and the beating and this was a category for neo banks.

So we have -- obviously, we have things that others do better. We're not better in every single product services, et cetera, where we're not, we are very realistic. We follow the market. We try to obviously make the necessary adjustments to what we do to get there. And this is constant. We have a huge advantage.

When I was referring previously to imagin and the fact that we now have relationship managers that you can rely on. And you have real people you can talk to if you have a customer service complaint or problem, you can even walk into a branch.

If this works well, as long as you want to stay digital, 100% digital, you stay and you have a great digital experience. But if you need something else or somebody else do something else that works, sort of, in the right way. I think we have a huge advantage.

And imagin is -- but precisely now starting to position itself and say, it's a digital bank, but those people, there's heart behind us and you have a problem, you need to talk to someone or you would need to upscale on certain products, you don't understand and you don't want to talk just to the robot AI. We're going to have all of this.

It's not the word saying this is not important. This is critically important. We're going to have all of this. But we can have all of these and more. And hence, we think we're in the long run going to be winners, but it's a nice and intense sort of competitive battle which we're doing.

With imagin and obviously, when I talk to imagin, I talk about imagin, CaixaBank is doing the same things with a different, sort of look and feel, but the reality, is positioning is very strong and actually imagin has now the highest relevance in as a brand in Spain and, huge loyalty and hence, we have, I think, a pretty relevant competitive advantage now vis-a-vis other incumbent traditional banks, thanks to having the ability to play in 2 ways.

The next question is from Andrea Filtri, Mediobanca.

Yesterday, the ECB de facto approved the launch of the digital euro. How do you envisage this new entrant to impact you? And how would you factor it in your next business plan? Do you think you can actually make money out of it as well? And could you also give us your reasons for not having pursued by Novo Banco? Finally, just a very quick follow-up. How long do you think you can maintain overlay provisions for?

Okay. Well, let me start with digital euro. We've been following this closely as many of you know, we actually were the sole bank that cooperated with the ECB in the first sort of work around the prototype for the digital euro in a P2P solution, and we'll continue to have an open line because we have a conviction that this digital euro is very likely to go ahead.

And obviously, it has the potential to transform a number of areas. It has the potential, we don't have perfect visibility. We don't know exactly how much it will impact, if there is still some time, as you know, the plan is now for some time in 2029, probably the summer.

This has been delayed as we, I think, discussed our view was it will happen, but it will take place later. So that's why -- we didn't discuss that much in this business plan or 3-year plan that will finish in 2027. Obviously, in the next one, it will have some implications. What is eventually going to be the role of the digital euro, we'll see, obviously, the limits that finally deciding on it are important, are important because obviously, there will be more or less sort of liquidity moving on to the digital euro, depending on the limit.

How successful it is going to be, it depends to a large extent on the private sector as well. If the private sector develops real cross-border payment initiatives like Pan-European Bizum, where, obviously, now there's a lot of cooperation we are now in -- already with Italy and Portugal together and there's sort of discussions with Nordics and with Vero.

And I think we should have an equivalent sort of instant payment mechanism that works well across the union -- and this could -- and probably should leave together with, at the same time, digital euro public, which has other benefits. What would the role of the stable coins be by then, programmable money. I would guess that certainly, they would be using more business applications as the digital euro as of today is focused on the retail front.

And fortunately, because we've been speaking about the strong case uses for a wholesale digital currency, the Central Bank digital currency, the wholesale euro. Now we have the Pontes and Appia project, both mid and long term to develop those initiatives.

And again, we are actively cooperating with representatives of us in one of these initiatives. So overall, over this, how exactly it will play out. We'll have to see, Andrea, I think it has the potential to be very relevant. It may not be that much if the private sector has developed other alternatives. We cannot run the luxury of getting it wrong and thinking this is not going to be relevant and then finding it is.

So, it's so critical and core to our strategy that we will are going to be there. And there is certainly -- our hope is that we're going to be making money, obviously. There's no question we're going to be able to do things differently and obviously offer also a different client experience. There will be if, in the case of the digital euro, some costs associated to it. So be it.

I think at this stage, even if it's not final, it looks like we're moving in the right direction in terms of using the current infrastructures and positioning the digital euro as a payment initiative mostly, which is where I think it makes more sense.

But again, there are even broader and I think larger users in the wholesale side, those will be also a significant component. So we'll see. And obviously, for the next 3-year plan, certainly, we'll have further discussions about what's happening in the payment space and the digital euro. With respect to a question on acquisitions, we do not comment on acquisitions names.

We didn't do it. We're not going to do it past the situation. It is our duty to assess opportunities when they appear in our core markets. But we always say the bar is very high for us. We have a great business. We have a great business in Spain and in Portugal, and looking at our results this quarter is a good proof of that. So when we do any analysis the bar needs to be very high.

And obviously, that means what is the opportunity attractive. Does it have synergies, can we execute? And then what's the price where this is a real return because we have plenty of things to do in Spain and Portugal organically.

And obviously, any M&A is always a distraction. So you need to make sure that it's a very clear case for that to happen. If there's no very clear case, then obviously, you're not going to be seen as there.

And then there was a final question on overlays. Well, eventually, it will be used. Honestly, we don't have an exact time line for that. But over time, that's the base case. But we don't have a specific calendar honestly.

The next question is from Pablo de la Torre Cuevas, RBC Capital Markets.

The first one is a follow-up on loan growth in Spain. And I know it's a smaller portfolio for you, but public sector loans are growing above 14% year-on-year and one of your peers have actually recently noted how it expected growth in this segment to accelerate from here. So I was wondering if you could help us understand your expectations in this segment and how we should think about the loan growth there in the context of your Investor Day loan growth targets of around 4% as well.

The second one is on fees. And overall, the trends there seem pretty positive and in line or better with your targets, but it seems like growth in banking fees, specifically continues to lag other areas. So could you please just elaborate on when you expect the loan growth -- the fee growth there to converge towards your target growth rate? And what, in your view, needs to happen for you to achieve this?

Thank you, Pablo, on maybe briefly, and Javier, you take it from there, but loan growth of the public sector, margins are very low, usually -- and this gets usually moved by fairly large transactions. Very often as a result of auctions and sort of public solicitation, et cetera. We do not think of us like coming a specific target there, we're going to be there if the numbers work out.

And there's very often the alternative of public debt, which is traded and hence, liquid and you obviously want a pickup for that lack of liquidity than usually maybe there's a difference in rating. And if you move to the sort of regions or to the local council. So I don't think it's going to make a lot of difference or numbers. And we're not going to be particularly pushing, but we're not going to be away from it either.

We need to take decisions on a more opportunistic basis for the large transactions. And for the more sort of relationship based, I think those are going to be more stable.

Yes. Thank you, [indiscernible] just to add that on that front is to some extent, like an alternative to ALCO in some cases because it's public sector, so it's alternative to fixed income. And well, at least in our case, we have like a strong, let's say, common view with CIB that usually takes care of the new origination, also from the ALCO in order to assess whether it's a good opportunity and actually may go in the same direction as our ALCO decisions.

On fees, on banking fees, I think that we have been commenting already from -- for quite a long time that there is like an underlying pressure on that path. On recurring banking fees, basically, pressure on maintenance fees on current accounts, on debit cards, some areas, some areas in payments also to some extent, subject to some pressure. Now we have instant payments.

So the key here is to be able to more than compensate that with our usual strengths that you know very well, which is wealth management, protection insurance and well, and lately, I would say that we have been commenting that also this year with an increase, let's say, regularity of the CIB business.

So I think that's the key because at the end of the day, this is kind of underlying pressure on those, let's say, fees related to products with low added value. And our view is set to continue. Obviously, we try to defend ourselves as best as possible but I would not say that this is going to bring us a big turn around anytime soon.

But the key I insist is to be able to compensate -- more than compensate clearly because we are targeting -- this is why we put together all that, what we call revenues from services now that includes wealth, insurance plus, let's say, traditional banking fees because you need to get the broad picture of the 3 big buckets.

And you know that we are targeting mid-single-digit growth for the combined but probably the part that is going to be lagging is going to be recurring banking fees.

So the last question is from Cecilia Romero Reyes, Barclays.

My one was on capital. At your Capital Markets Day, you mentioned that your CET1 target will increase to 12.5% from the current 12.25%. The difference between your target and your MDA level of SREP or SREP is above the European average. Could you consider maintaining the CET1 target at 12.25% next year, taking into account your current view on capital requirements, growth needs, et cetera?

Thank you. Javier, do you want to take it?

Well, the short answer is no. So we are moving our target to 12.5%. What is behind that is the is basically the countercyclical buffer that is kicking off next year in Spain, Portugal. So we had a clear view on that.

We want to be conservative on our capital targets. And in any case, we think it's quite a good buffer, as you mentioned, but comfortable one. So I think that also investors appreciate that. So no, there are no plans to keep that at 12.25%.

Thank you, Cecilia, and thank you all for joining us. That's all we have time for today. Have a nice weekend and Happy Halloween.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Please take a seat. We're very pleased to be joined this afternoon with Gonzalo Gortazar, CEO of CaixaBank; as well as Javier Pano, Group CFO. Thank you both for taking the time to join us.

Thank you for having us. Thank you.

So why don't we start with sort of where we left things. You're now making more than 16% ROTE. That's one of the highest levels in Europe. A key question that always comes up when it comes to European banks is how sustainable is this level for you to defend in the outer years?

Sure. Well, obviously, what we're seeing is conditions that are attractive and that are more attractive than the conditions we could foresee when we presented our 3-year plan back in November. And that plan had a target for us to be over 16% by the last year of the 3-year plan that was 2027 and on average, about 15%. To be honest, everything is going better than expected. As I said, external conditions, growth has come back faster than foreseen, margins, asset quality.

So I would say rather than think about 16% as a sustainable level, it's clearly a level on which we want to grow our return on tangible equity, and the conditions currently suggest that we can be above that level. Is it sustainable? Guys, I'm saying above that level from 2027 onwards, in particular, when we have that target. And obviously, today, we're already well above that level. Is it sustainable? I think it is. To be honest, the most important thing is we are in a situation in which we have had 10 to 15 years of pretty difficult times in Spain.

I know generally in Europe, we have negative rates, but we have a deleveraging for more than a decade. Now we're seeing that our clients have less leverage than ever. Hence, there's more potential for loan demand to pick up, which is happening. The economy is among the large economies in Europe, the one that is growing faster. Portugal is doing very well at the same time. So yes, we feel pretty good, not just about the current conditions, but about the sustainability of the conditions for us to continue growing and continue growing our profitability.

Now when I look at one of the key drivers of profitability, of course, NII is not top of mind still, and you guided to -- NII to be around EUR 11.5 billion in 2027. Now can you remind us the key moving parts that are affecting your NII outlook from here?

Well, indeed, but -- well, actually, we guided over EUR 11.5 billion.

Over 11%...

Just to be more specific. Well, basically, we -- you know that this guidance for 2027 is coming from when we presented a 3-year plan 1 year ago, November '24, that we knew that rates were coming down, this would be impacting NII. But over time, thanks to volumes, hedges, legacy portfolio maturities, et cetera, will gradually recover. And back 1 year ago, we said that would be circa EUR 11 billion. Now we are saying really above EUR 11.5 billion. So that's basically where is it coming from? The improvement is coming from better volumes. So we were expecting loan growth circa 4% for the 3 years.

We will probably talk about that later, but we are already having better momentum than that into 2025. Also deposits are doing better. So volumes are doing clearly better. You have a steeper yield curve. So basically, you know that we lend long, we borrow short. So any rollover of legacy portfolios, et cetera, is going to be at better yields than initially expected. And well, that's the summary. So we are guiding for '25 NII to come down by mid-single digit.

We already called the trough for NII in the second quarter. So in the next few quarters, we are going to have better NII quarterly than the second quarter, further accelerating into the second half next year. So '26 is already be -- better NII than '25 and then even further accelerating as we have more impact from the compounded effect from volumes plus particularly some specific legacy maturities in fixed income and also some hedges that are maturing and that will boost NII further into 2027. So that is basically the summary. And at the same time, we are managing well pricing in terms of deposits, which is a key contributor for NII.

We will come to that. But if we can focus a little bit more on loan growth because this time last year, very few would have anticipated the sort of the pickup in loan demand that we've actually ended up seeing. And as you said, both Spain has been one of the fastest-growing economies this year in developed markets. And so can you give us a little bit more color around the outlook for loan growth? What are you seeing both from clients and from your competitors on the ground in Spain?

Well, as you said, we've seen a strong rebound from a sort of basically flat level for close to 15 years. And that was something that at some point, it had to happen. But I remember maybe having this conversation 5, 6 years ago and saying it has to happen, but it never came. And now it has come. The leverage of Spanish families and business is approximately half -- as a percentage of GDP, half the level that it used to be in 2009, 2010. It's been an incredible deleveraging in the country. Same thing when you look at the net external debt for Spain was close to 100% of GDP. Now it's below -- clearly below 50%.

So the private sector is in a completely different situation, 30, 32 percentage points below the average levels in the Eurozone. So that gives you the indication that there is a -- potential for growth is there. Our families and our businesses have a low level of leverage, which is also great news in terms of if there's ever a downturn for asset quality. But now clearly, they have the potential to take on more debt. And this cycle has finally started. Clearly, we now have 3, 4 quarters of accelerating loan growth.

We saw already consumer lending growing 6%, 7% last year. This year is growing a bit higher. But now we've seen the mortgage sector growing and particularly the business one. Year-on-year, we have a growth that is just below 5% on the loan demand and an accelerated one. I think we will obviously see some seasonality in this third quarter. But still, we have a good chance to have a pretty decent growth in lending. We had assumed 4% for the compounded annual growth for the 3-year period for our plan, but it was always kind of -- will start slower and then gradually will pick up to get closer to sort of evolution of nominal GDP and -- nominal GDP.

GDP was upgraded today both by the government, GDP expectation by the government and by Bank of Spain. But anyhow, we are already growing in 2025 so far in line with nominal GDP. I see no reason why that would change. Obviously, there can be a big shock to the economy global, worldwide, some shock of -- to the confidence that you can never discard it. But actually, we didn't have the great -- or the greatest environment for business confidence over the last quarters.

And even in that -- in those circumstances, we had a pretty decent lending growth. So it's, I think, something pretty robust and something that even if it's just along nominal GDP growth at close to 5% -- 4.5%, 5% which is a good level. It would still mean that we have, again, lower the level of debt that we used to have and 30 percentage points lower than the Eurozone. So there is plenty of room to see a fairly resilient lending demand in the next years. Here, obviously, what we need to ensure is that we do that profitably because we're not here to lend more, we're here to lend more, but profitably. And certainly, you can expect us to do that.

We've come a long way, and I think it's remarkable to see that level of growth now. When everyone sort of thinks of banks and growth, the first association, I think the market does is to think of loan growth picking up. One tends to overlook. I think the importance, especially in the case of a bank like yours, of deposits growing and how meaningful that is in terms of liquidity management for some of the points that I talked about earlier. Now can you give this audience a little bit more context around the initiatives that you've taken here and really what sets you apart from your competition when it comes to deposit franchise?

Okay. Thank you. Well, I try to summarize this by saying that we are being successful on 3 things at the same time. So when we talk about customer funds management, so we are being successful first on keeping our deposit interest-bearing balances, let's say, contained. Now, I would say, stable. While at the same time being able to reprice those noninterest-bearing balances according to market prices, which have been obviously down in recent times. Second, also, we are growing on noninterest-bearing balances. We are disclosing very clearly that on our quarterly reporting.

And this is due to the increase of the transactionality of the clients with the bank. So that means that we have more clients. We are gaining year-to-date like -- 360,000 year-to-date. So year-on-year 360,000 clients. We are gaining payrolls. Spain is generating circa 0.5 million of new employments year-on-year. We have a 36% market share in payroll. So that means that we are acquiring payroll accounts. That means that you have more transactional balances, let's say, liquidity buffers for households, et cetera. So we are gaining that part. This is really important in terms of NII.

And third, at the same time, we do that, also we are being able to have inflows into wealth management that basically are off balance sheet. So basically, here, it's mutual funds and also savings, insurance. In terms of noninterest-bearing balances, if you look at our recent performance, it has been already a few quarters, approximately EUR 5 billion on average every quarter increase. And we are having inflows into asset management approximately EUR 1 billion per month.

So that means that per quarter, it's like circa EUR 8 billion, EUR 9 billion improvement of high-quality customer funds. Some of those having a direct impact on NII, but also on our, let's say, fee-related business, wealth management mainly. So I think that being successful on managing all those 3 parts is the key for our success. So we have, I would say, the right internal framework to show the right fund transfer pricing system, the right incentives. So we have been able to fine-tune when necessary. Obviously, client first always, but it's something important, and we have been successful at that.

Rates have come down, of course, noninterest income growth has been a market focus, I would say, and you've upgraded your revenues from services in terms of guidance. And now markets are always difficult to predict, but you've had a strong year so far. Can you talk a little bit more about the outlook for noninterest income across different products and particularly emphasizing those opportunity you see as greater?

Sure. Well, noninterest income has been traditionally our, I think, most successful sort of P&L revenue line. It's only in the last 3, 4 years that NII and rates have moved, that obviously the main actor has been NII, but traditionally looking at us, really, we went through this very difficult period for banking in Europe and particularly in Spain by growing very strongly our noninterest income line, and that was obviously focusing on asset management, payments and to a very large extent, wealth management, including insurance. That is our competitive advantage, I would say. NII is a question of finding again what's the right level.

And as -- obviously, as Javier said before, there's quite a lot of upside there. But in terms of structural growth, here, we have our advantage with our 38% market share, for instance, in life savings. That means when we have 25% generally, it means we're doing something that is different from others. We basically cracked the code on having the right product, so the right factory, but at the same time, most importantly, the distribution part of the bank that understands and is comfortable with selling products that are obviously more sophisticated than time deposit, but they are critical given the longevity needs of our clients.

And this is structural. The one thing we can be certain of is a year from now, we will be old, 1 year older. That's one of the easiest predictions. The fastest-growing segment for our clients is obviously over 65. And that is where we have probably the strongest position, certainly the strongest position in Spain when you speak to customer service [indiscernible] recently, 50% of banking clients say there is one bank particularly specialized in senior citizens which is CaixaBank. By the way, they also talk about imaginBank being in the same situation for the younger part. So it's not that one thing is exclusive or the other.

But wealth management is clearly going to be a big factor. On the protection side, we still have a relatively low level of protection vis-à-vis our European peers. And again, we have a great position, health business in particular. And the health business, by the way, is going to be aided this year because of the renegotiation of the terms with MUFACE, the civil servants, which was a loss-making part of the P&L, which is no longer going to be -- and is no longer affecting our P&L.

So pretty good growth there. This will be somehow offset on more traditional banking fees. People in Spain and many other places but particularly in Spain don't like to pay fees. They don't understand why they pay fees. But while they have their money with us and we can make profitability on the balance sheet because of not remunerated deposits and some of our transactions, that's fine with us. So that is the picture. I think it's probably going to be with us for some time, gaining market share in insurance and protection as sort of key levers for a pretty good noninterest income performance.

That's very clear. Now capital returns is and has been and continues to be an important pillar of your investment thesis. You have a payout of 60%. You've increased the frequency of those payments as well as the frequency of share buybacks. You're at 12.5% now and you've been basically committing to pay 100% of your organic capital generation. Now with balance sheet growth and at the banks that you've talked about, and the returns that you now make from deploying this capital towards additional business, how should investors think about sort of the return on investment here versus the appetite for additional buybacks, for example? And related to that, if I may, and maybe this is a question for Javier, what flexibility do you retain to sort of further optimize RWA density?

Well, we have a very well-established framework for our capital evolution. So you already mentioned, cash payout 50% to 60%; interim dividend, November; final dividend in April. And well, we have a very clear threshold above which we accelerate capital evolution via share buybacks. This has been the case already for some years. Now this threshold is established at 12.25% for the CET1 ratio, moving up to 12.5% for next year as we are incorporating all the new counter-cyclical buffer requirement into our, let's say, capital management targets.

So it's very clear. So well, look, when we disclosed our 3-year plan back in November, we were expecting loan growth circa 4% and we said, okay, you can assume that risk-weighted assets would grow circa 3%. I'm talking 4% CAGR, 3% CAGR. So well, some, let's say, management actions in terms of risk-weighted asset management, SRTs, other tools that we can use. Now we face faster loan growth. But you may think that we are going to be also accommodating our toolkit in order to absorb that additional loan growth. So you should always expect our risk-weighted assets to grow below the pace of new lending.

So well, that's clear. So the market is there. So we are quite active. So we have even reorganized things internally in order to be more efficient in this, let's say, capital management tools. And well, that's the situation. So we think that in any case, we are going to be generating capital organically beyond, let's say, this 50% to 60% cash payout. So that well, from time to time, we will continue to have share buybacks. We are executing a share buyback as we speak. We already have a CET1 ratio of 12.5% as we closed in June. So the threshold for additional capital evolutions this year is 12.25%. So we already have the buffer in place. So we think that we are in the right position.

And maybe we touch on costs and IT investments because I think it's an important part of your plan. You're targeting over EUR 5 billion in CapEx and OpEx related to IT and digital over the plan period. When do you see the biggest returns in terms of efficiency gains? And how much of these investments have already been front-loaded?

Well, I would say back to your first question about sustainability of ROTE, we're doing a great effort now in making sure that our profitability long term is sustainable, our profitability, our growth. And that means we have to invest now, also over EUR 5 billion. There's EUR 1 billion that is really discretionary where we took a conscious decision we could spend this EUR 1 billion or not. I don't think you would notice a lot if we hadn't spent that extra EUR 1 billion. This is again through '25 to '27. But we thought we owed it to obviously, our shareholders longer term to take advantage of strength to make sure that we, again, future-proof the bank.

And that means some investment now this year, next year, '27. This year, we're growing costs around 5%, as you know, which indicates some inflation pressures associated to labor and others from the inflation period that we had before. And 1% of that growth is, again, this IT program. We are going to be obviously collecting the results and harvesting the fruits in the future. I don't think that means '25, '26. It will probably be '27 onwards. Investments are associated to just upgrading legacy, increasing resilience, cybersecurity, a lot of it to AI, particularly generative AI and a number of other things that you can imagine.

We're seeing already the benefits of that throughout the organization. Customer service, clearly, whether it's call centers, that's opportunities for our relationship managers to be more effective when they call clients to make sure that they have the push of the button, all what they need to have an intelligent conversation with the client on what their issues have been, what the opportunities may be, what's the next best offer to make them. Operationally, obviously, there's a lot that we can automate. We're really aiming for zero operations, all obviously automated.

It's going to take time. We're investing heavily in people, but that means in technology. It means we're going to have more people in our payroll, but much less that we have to depend on them through outsourcing of sort of software programming development, et cetera, a very significant effort. We have already launched a number of initiatives, which I'm not going to explain in detail in the benefit of time, but it's a platform for secondhand used cars, which has been a total success, a platform for housing where we have already 50,000, and we launched this earlier in the year, it's been very, very quickly.

We are launching now a cashback program, which is absolutely new in Spain and a number of other things. So heavy investment. And again, what this is, is about making sure that we can increase our profitability over the longer term and certainly make the bank resilient in an environment where, obviously, competition, new entrants are part of the picture. We have no reason to think that new entrants are better equipped than us. But in order to be better equipped than them, we need to make sure that we invest and match and surpass the capabilities where we can.

We covered, of course, a number of line items, and you seem to be -- the message has been particularly positive and much better than you had anticipated as part of the plan. So I'm going to ask you a question on asset quality. Nonetheless, even though I've heard you say in one of the meetings that credit risk is one of those risks that is subtle, things generally look good until they don't. And the provisions so far have turned out to be much better and much lower than probably any of us would have anticipated. I think you guided to 25 basis points cost of risk this year. How sustainable is this level going forward? And maybe it's a philosophical question about what do you think this credit risk is if it's not in bank's balance sheet?

Javier, do you want to take this one?

Well, it's really a benign environment, as you say. So -- but it's macro related. So we have plenty of positive things impacting. So you have, as I said before, employment growing, disposable income. Now on top of that, we have rates coming down, certain rates, but there's still plenty of legacy portfolios, mortgages indexed to certain rates. So it's really a benign situation. I would say that employment is the key. So if you ask me what may happen for this to go wrong, well, it's macro related, something coming from whatever. I don't think it's going to be something specific in Spain or Portugal.

So it has -- it may have more to do with any kind of geopolitical or other impact that -- well, we have had a few examples recently, at the end of the day, not having much impact, but eventually something may happen. If it's not for that, honestly, we are quite a bit and also we are reducing our NPLs. We are being able also to dispose in the market. So there is a liquid market for NPLs. Well, that's trending down. We have a nice coverage ratio for those NPLs. Also we hold unassigned provisions. So circa EUR 350 million that are still pending to be assigned.

So it's really a comfortable situation, and we don't observe any material pocket of industry or sector that is worrying us, not even those early signs of deterioration before it's 90 days past due or 50 days, 60 days, et cetera, nothing at all. So we think that in this environment, we are going to be able to keep reducing gradually our NPL ratio. And as a consequence, our cost of risk, we guided for '25 if nothing wrong happens around the world. So I think that is sustainable. So if you ask me, okay, this is through-the-cycle cost of risk. This is not the through-the-cycle cost of risk because eventually, we'll have a bad term in the cycle and cost of risk will be higher. But if things continue the way we are having today, I think that, yes, that is sustainable.

There are 2 things I would add. One is just the great financial crisis was very hard in Spain and very long. We have short memories, but not that short. And certainly, at Caixa, we have absorbed quite a few institutions that basically went under one way or the other. So actually, the prudence in risk underwriting for us now, but also in the previous year has been very strict. And that gives us an additional degree of comfort. And back to where the risks are, you have to think that generally, obviously, the banks are being more and more regulated, have been so. Hopefully, there will be some simplification coming from the new program from the EU.

Banks have been losing market share to nonbanking financial institutions, and obviously risk is not to all nonbanking financial institutions. There are some that are very sound and great, but are accumulating in that part of the space. We talk a lot about SRTs. SRTs are a great tool, but basically, this kind of risk transfer works best. When you sell a regulatory risk that there's a lot of capital for you, but it has a lower economic risk, and hence, there's someone else that is a better holder of that instrument.

The converse of that is that what you're keeping is assets that have higher economic risk and regulatory risk. And I think that is why we will be doing, as Javier is saying, SRTs, and we will be doing much more than the ones we've done even though we've done that for a few years. It's a tool to use with care. No use would be bad. I think there's an extreme where it won't be good for the system either because you will end up not knowing where the risks really are and thinking the risks are in one place and they are in another, in this case, being kept by some financial institutes. Time will tell.

I'm going to ask you one last question, and then we'll ask the audience for any Q&A for you. M&A, I could ask you about M&A. I mean you've proven over the years that you're able to pursue M&A opportunity when this come available. I mean, Bankia, of course, has taken a lot of management time. In Portugal, we've seen Novo Banco was acquired by BPCE at a very high valuation. So what's your stance on M&A? And there also, if I can broaden that question, any product, factories that you'd like to strengthen further or any markets you'd like to add?

Well, M&A is not something we're considering. We clearly are very focused on Spain and Portugal. We believe in domestic consolidation, and we have proved that in the past. We do not believe that today, there is value in cross-border consolidation, at least as a rule and certainly for us, lots of premium to be paid for no synergies and quite a lot of complexities around that. So we're not spending much now. We haven't spent it. While, as you said, we did well, and we're very happy about having grown our market, our market share in Spain.

And actually, we did acquire in Portugal. BPI was a cross-border consolidation where we made that deal in 2016, but it was quite special. We already had 45% of the bank. And obviously, in some very close markets like Spain and Portugal, I think there are some good logic for that kind of consolidation. There's no factory or segment or something. We're not great at everything, of course. We're not the best in everything. But we are sort of good enough either to be there or to develop organically what we need. Bear in mind that our system is one where a bank or a financial group like us is present in every part of the financial system arena. And it's not that we don't know asset management or payments or we like -- we are everywhere.

We like to dominate our market. And we -- the same way that we're not focusing in doing things in the half of the world, we are absolutely 100% determined to make sure that we exploit every single opportunity in Spain. When we do not have the capabilities, we develop them. If need be and in this new world, we would partner up with sort of start-ups or whatever to do something specific, maybe in technology, maybe in product know-how to make sure that we develop quickly rather than wait and do everything internally. But we're not, at least at this stage, seeing that there's any capability or any part of the market where we're not present and we need to buy. Where we're not doing well enough, we'll partner up or grow organically.

Any questions from the audience? Please raise your hand. I think there's one here.

Probably the toughest part of your operating environment right now is new business mortgage margins. Could you talk a little bit, please, about why you think they are so tight and how you think about the trade-off between market share evolution and the ROE hurdle that you're running the group for?

The mortgages have been very competitive in Spain for as long as I remember, certainly before the financial crisis. They used to be floating based with spreads of 20 basis points and things like that. Today, the market with some sort of cycles, but today, the market is most primarily fixed rate mortgage. But still, it is not a product that per se usually meets cost of capital. And that's why the reason why banks can either not be in that product if you took an isolated product or took a view as to what does the mortgage bring.

If you gain a client with a mortgage, normally, you're going to cross-sell. In fact, in our case, contractually, we will have a number of conditions for the mortgage rate to come down, having the payroll, having a home insurance or risk insurance or an alarm or a certain amount of savings. In a way that when we lose that part of the revenue, if the client decides to take that insurance away, immediately, the spread goes up. So it's not yet wishful thinking. It's actual contractual profitability. On top of that, we know that beyond the products that the client has contractual right to -- or we have those businesses by contract, on top of that, there's obviously even more.

As long as banks perceive the situation in which the overall client with the mortgage is profitable and the market continues to be extremely competitive. And bear in mind, people shop around for the mortgage. They may not shop around for some other financial products. But I mean, most of you whenever you got a mortgage, you would have consulted and made sure you've got a very good price, very good rate. So you have many institutions with 3%, 4%, 5% market share that are very competitive. We'll outprice any bank if they are not taking what the market rate is, which is -- anyhow, it's not observable.

But in practice, if you are not in the market, you immediately start losing volume. There's a very high correlation of volume and profitability. For us, obviously, is an attractive business when we look at the overall client, and it's a core part of the business. So we will continue to be a participant in the market where we still meet our return on our risk-adjusted return hurdles, but not on the specific product, but on the bundle of products that comes with the mortgage. And my expectation is that this is probably likely to be the pattern in the market based on how it has actually performed in the past.

We might have time just for a very final question if there's any from the audience. Otherwise, it's always super insightful to hear you both. Thank you, Gonzalo; thank you, Javier, for joining us today once again.

Thank you very much.

Okay. Thank you.

Good morning, and welcome to CaixaBank's results presentation for the second quarter and the first half of 2025. As usual, we are joined today by our CEO, Gonzalo Gortazar, and our CFO, Javier Pano. In terms of logistics, we plan to spend about 30 minutes with a presentation and 45 minutes to one hour with the Q&A, which, as you know, is live. And after the call, my team and I will be at your full disposal.

So without further ado, Gonzalo, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Marta, and good morning, everybody. Second quarter of the year, we see a strong performance. And obviously, what we are doing as a consequence is improving guidance. I think the highlight is the volume growth. You've seen the numbers. We're gaining clients, performing loans 4.8% year-on-year. Deposits 7% up. Wealth Management despite the volatility in the market is up 8%, it's quite remarkable, knowing where we're coming from and just reminding you the discussions we had at the time of presenting our plan in November about growth and whether it was feasible or not, what we're seeing is that growth is happening much faster and in a stronger form than we all expected, which is good news. And this is part a reflection of our improving market share. And obviously to a large extent, it's also a reflection of the Spanish economy and the Portuguese economy doing very well as we'll discuss later on. I think this is certainly what I highlight the most.

This volume growth is powering revenues, as we're saying, but most importantly is powering revenues not this quarter but in the future. So certainly makes us more optimistic about our performance going forward and particularly into the rest of '25 and '26, '27. We're saying -- we're calling the trough in the NII cycle. We think this is the lowest quarter. Javier will comment on our expectations going forward.

You've seen services, both fees and wealth management protection and banking fees, pretty good so far, 5.4% increase. Cost of risk and asset quality with a 2.3% NPL ratio and the cost of risk, which is 24 basis points for the last 12 months, even lower if you look at the first half of the year is also something that we're seeing at this stage quite stable, and we're not expecting a deterioration going forward. We're seeing very good, very good trends.

And from a capital point of view and liquidity will continue to be sort of evolving in line with our targets. We have a return on tangible of 18.5% this quarter, a bit closer to 20%, if not for the banking tax, which is obviously a very relevant feature. Net income is up 10%, and we are improving guidance, as you have seen by now, particularly in revenues from services from low to mid-single digits to just the upper part of the range, mid-single-digit range, reducing cost of risk guidance to around 25 basis points, an increase in return on tangible equity above 16%. Those are the highlights of a very positive quarter for us, no doubt.

The economy. And the economy is doing very well. As you know, we have seen now also the figures yesterday, which had very strong increase 0.7% quarter-on-quarter of GDP in Spain, which has also seen the numbers for the Eurozone at 1 -- sorry, 0.1% for the Eurozone quarter-on-quarter. So a big gap between Spain and the Eurozone and a gap that I think it's reasonable to think that it's going to stay in place. Certainly, that's our expectation for this year and the following years.

Remind you some of the key growth engines, immigration, the labor market helping obviously very much the economy and our business. And on the other hand, we still see growth in disposable income and very high savings rate is obviously helping a lot the liability side of the balance sheet. You've seen that 7.5% year-on-year growth is quite remarkable. I think also quite remarkable vis-a-vis our competitors of those that I have seen so far publishing suggesting that we have -- we're doing something well. And I think whatever we're doing well is likely to continue because we're now having no distractions. And back to that sort of different growth pace that we have always had.

We will have some impact from, obviously, the tariffs accord in the economy, both Spain has a very limited exposure to the U.S. and also the reality is that given that actually second quarter numbers for the economy are coming in much stronger than what we expected. We expected actually 0.5% quarter-on-quarter growth for the Spanish economy in the second quarter, and it's been 0.7%. So that different growth rate is, in my view, going to be more than enough to offset any impact, which we estimate around 0.2% on GDP of the tariff accord, which has tariffs that are unfortunately higher than what we were anticipating. We were anticipated closer to 10% rather than the 15% number that is obviously still preliminary.

Strategy, 2 pillars for our planned growth transformation. That's what we're seeing. I mentioned growth right now, so I'm not going to repeat myself on the fairly good numbers. Transformation is also very relevant. Digital sales, digital onboarding, digital clients, adoption of G&A, you have a few ideas there, and we're obviously going to keep updating you on our progress on this front and our teams are available. But we're taking advantage of these relatively good times to make sure that we make our competitive advantage sustainable going forward for the very long term.

Few transformation ideas on the business front, that we have launched either in this quarter or very recently. Facilitea Casa, the house portal. We already have 42,000 listed properties. It's obviously very early days, but it's actually delivering a very good service, both for our clients, our real estate agents and it's going to allow us to be closer to the action, one of the most important segments that we have, which is obviously mortgage but all the products around buying a new house and that includes not just mortgages but obviously insurance and some other financial and nonfinancial services. So very promising that we have launched, and we already have that level of listed properties. We'll keep growing the business and obviously improving things as we go ahead.

Similar example with cars on Facilitea Coches, we have financed 11.7000 vehicles through this portal in the first half of the year. Most importantly, obviously, this is attractive -- it's improving our relationship with car dealers, and attracting more and more associated business around not just what goes through Facilitea, but the -- generally, the vehicle financing business, it's actually up 34% for us year-on-year. It's close to EUR 2 billion. And obviously, there's a very significant potential here given the initiatives and the fact that actually, there's no other similar platform in Spain with the same characteristics of our platform.

Now say over 8,000 vehicles listed and this keeps growing. We discussed it in the past, I'm not going to go deeper into it for the benefit of time, but obviously, very promising. Tap-to-pay, which we've launched both for Android and now for Apple as first bank to offer the service. There will be further news on that front. [Foreign Language] Generacion +, if you want in English, a very special ecosystem and offering #1 financial and nonfinancial services for the senior citizens where we have obviously made some good progress historically, but particularly in this quarter with the launch of the initiative, a big, big opportunity for us.

From the senior citizens to the digital, younger citizens Imagin, I just want to give you some details on how it's going because it's relevant, and you sometimes don't see all what's happening there. Look at business volume, it's up 23% year-on-year, EUR 20 billion. And if you look at what the business volume includes, it's basically a full service bank. That includes client funds, on balance sheet, off balance sheet and lending mortgages, consumer lending. It's a real mobile bank, not just sort of a monoliner or a secondary bank to people is really, as you can see, 55% of our clients actually have their recurring income deposited into Imagin. So it's basically a primary bank for most of our clients, and it's a very significant tool for client acquisition, 50% of overall client acquisition. CaixaBank is coming through Imagin.

We already have 8.5% of payrolls market share in Imagin Bank. So that means it's actually one of the larger banks. And obviously, when you look at the mobile banking penetration, it's leading bank for the 18 to 34 years, or the 16 to 34 years old. But obviously, including the segment that is included in CaixaBank, non-Imagin it becomes, by far, leading penetration, 40% is almost double in the next year. Well, we'll keep you updating on Imagin, but I just want to make sure that we have the full picture of us doing very well also in businesses that are growing very fast and are very critical for our future.

Loan origination, very high numbers, 46% residential mortgages, 10% consumer, 26% new business lending, good front book yields. And obviously, as I said before, great news that we've seen that kind of growth. You'll see it here on the balance sheet. Sorry, we have too many numbers maybe you have the year-to-date, quarter-on-quarter and then below the graphic part is year-on-year. Obviously, the year-on-year shows 2 things. One is the absence of seasonality. There's very strong growth and also the trend, which is very impressive. I would highlight particularly mortgages and business lending, a big jump in June.

If you look at the GDP numbers for the second quarter that I mentioned before, you'll see that there's a very significant contribution from gross fixed capital formation, both residential and CapEx. CapEx actually is up 11% compared to last year. So this CapEx cycle in Spain, despite the fears we had because of the uncertainty associated with geopolitics and tariffs, et cetera, it's actually happening. And obviously, we're making it possible and lending is picking up as a consequence. We've seen it obviously already in consumer last year, still growing fast now to 8.9%.

And as you can see, the quarter-on-quarter figures, they have some seasonality included, particularly, I'd say, on the business lending front. But what you can see is there's still some degree of acceleration of growth in the numbers. Customer funds are up 4.8% year-to-date -- 4.8% year-on-year and 4.7% year-to-date. Obviously, the market effect has been limited in this first half of the year due to the volatility still is positive. It was negative at some point, but after much better June, it's positive.

I think we'll see it in the next page, important to see how net inflows have continued to be positive at all times. And when you look at the balance sheet numbers, 4.8% quarter-on-quarter, again, some seasonality in there, but numbers are quite impressive, quite good. Javier will accelerate also -- will elaborate also on the breakdown there. And that's pretty good news, I would say.

As I said, net inflows doing very well despite potential impact of market uncertainty and stability during the quarter that has not materialized. You see how even in the month of April, we had positive inflows. And obviously, then a quick recovery in May, June to levels more in line with what was the first quarter of the year. So pretty good news, keep that differential market share, again, 29% in Wealth Management compared to 25% if we add Peer 1 and Peer 2, which makes basically speaks by itself.

The protection business doing well, 12% growth year-on-year, above our target for the strategic plan, good breakdown between life risk and non-life and a good breakdown again in Non-Life, both health, auto and home insurance, gaining market share, basically continuing our cruising speed and with a huge success of the MyBox offering, which continues to be differential for our customers.

But just a few words on BPI. Just looking at the sort of long-term horizon of what has happened since 2017, which was the date when we acquired control. And today, you see those market share gains in lending in mortgages and deposits and in savings insurance in the region of 220 to 300, even close to 400 basis points. This is the trend on which BPI is. And obviously, that trend has allowed the bank to be more efficient and more profitable, stayed with a very attractive asset quality ratios. And hence, continues to be for us one of the most attractive parts of our business and one where we see continued opportunity for further growth and profitability.

Thank you and your turn.

Okay. Well, thank you, Gonzalo, and good morning to all of you from my side. As always, additional details on the P&L and the balance sheet. Here, you have the consolidated income statement. As you know very well, net income this quarter, approaching EUR 1.5 billion. This is down by 4% year-on-year on a pro forma basis when considering the quarterly accrual of the banking tax paid last year. But it's already up quarter-on-quarter, better revenues, all in all, you may see NII pressures clearly awaiting. We'll discuss all that in a few slides in a minute and actually almost stable on a quarter-on-quarter basis, down by 0.4%.

Then on revenues from services. The main driver here is Wealth Management. You may see double-digit growth year-on-year. Quarter-on-quarter, slightly negative, precisely impacted by the market correction on average AUMs, but well, as you could see, the pace of inflows remains unabated and has clearly recovered from the month of April. So we can expect also a very good performance in coming quarters.

Protection insurance, really strong commercial activity although the P&L impact is a little bit masked by some positive nonrecurring factors we had during the second quarter last year. But in any case, you know that here, we have quite a strong view on future performance, and we are fully convinced we are going to deliver on that. And then banking fees with more recurring banking fees that had some pressure in the past. This is also being, I would say, better contained, but we have had a really strong quarter on CIB, as you may see, on a quarter-on-quarter basis, fees up by 6%. This is driven mainly precisely by CIB.

Then other revenues. Here, I would like to highlight that this year, we had the BFA dividend recorded on the first quarter, and you have this difference on a quarter-on-quarter basis. And that, as you know very well, the Telefonica dividend is no longer with us.

Then on expenses, no news at all. Everything is going according to plan. Remember, this guidance for costs to grow circa 5%, and we are not changing that view. And then on loan loss charges clearly -- really benign asset quality environment. So loan loss charges below initial expectations, hence, we are improving our guidance on cost of risk, as you already know well. And my final comment on the income statement will be on the tax line, where again, as forecasted, we are including a DTA write-up.

With that, let's move to NII. Here, you have the evolution quarter-on-quarter minus 0.4%. It's stabilizing earlier than anticipated. Now we are expecting that the second quarter is the trough of this cycle. So we are expecting that the next quarter's NII is going to be higher than the second quarter of 2025, not by a wide margin, but in any case, higher and then clearly improving and accelerating from the second half next year.

On the usual NII bridge, you may see all the different impacts on NII, client yields still having a negative impact. This is still some quarters -- some additional quarters having this negative impact. So here, still lower rates impacting our floating rate loan book not being fully compensated by lower costs on our customer deposits. Then volumes clearly adding quite a significant push and then the significant counterbalancing effect from ALCO basically hedging, different hedging strategies we have been deploying and also fixed income portfolio with increased yields as we are adding to the portfolio and also we are having maturities at very low rates.

Below, you have the charge for the customer spread at 309 basis points. And then you have also the back book yield of the loan book at 375 basis points, still trending down, but also a significant reduction this quarter of our deposit -- client deposit costs you may see ex hedges and foreign exchange down to 58 basis points from 68 basis points.

Additional details on deposits, clearly, one of our strengths and is offering -- increasing support for future NII evolution. You may see here the quarterly evolution of average balances for deposits. You may see that on a year-on-year basis, those are up by 7% by -- on a quarter-on-quarter basis, only 1.6%. This is because the strong seasonality of the second quarter is not impacting average balances. But in any case, the most interesting here is that our balances for noninterest-bearing deposits are increasing significantly over EUR 5 billion in a single quarter and set to continue increasing in coming quarters. At the same time, we keep the wave of interest-bearing balances almost unchanged, but actually gradually trending down now 26.9% and the peak being in the fourth quarter last year at 27.2%.

On the chart on the right-hand side, this is the yield of our interest-bearing deposits sharply down to 1.92% from 2.28%, and you know that we have approximately 50% of those interest-bearing deposits that are fully indexed. The major part to the overnight rate below, you have precisely the quarterly evolution of the overnight rate, the Euro STR. So you may see that the cost of our interest-bearing balances is tracking to a large extent precisely that evolution.

An additional slide on market rates and ALCO. On the left, you have the same chart we disclosed last quarter, obviously updated. On the upper left chart, you have the deposit facility rate yield curve. In blue, it's the current deposit facility rate and in gray, you have the -- that yield curve as of September '25, which was the base case for our strategic plan projection. So you may see that clearly, there is a steepening of the yield curve, you may see this more clearly on the chart below that one. Here, you have the yield of, as an example, at 10-year European Union bond versus 12-month Euribor, you may see that there is a steepness of over 1 percentage point.

And well, this is a very positive backdrop for the bank. So you know that we basically lend long and borrow short, and also, it offers plenty of opportunities for ALCO management, which actually is what we have done this quarter, you may see that we have added to the portfolio. We have taken advantage of the strong market volatility to add to the portfolio over EUR 5 billion in the quarter. You may see that the legacy yield is gradually improving. It's a quarter where we have not added additional deposit hedges, but that continues to be a key tool to manage NII sensitivity, so you can expect us to be active on that front also in the future.

With that, we change gear and we move to revenue from services for the first half, up by over 5%. As commented before, the main driver, Wealth Management, up by 14% for the first 6 months of the year. Also protection doing well when adjusting for those extraordinaries, we had positive extraordinaries we had on the first half last year, up by 2%. As I said before, really strong commercial activity. We're expecting the effect of that to be felt in the P&L more clearly in coming quarters, and then successfully being able to stabilize our banking fees, less pressure on recurrent banking fees in some areas, maintenance fees on current accounts, debit cards, et cetera, with a little bit less pressure. And in any case, with really strong performance from CIB and being more and more recurrent source of revenue for the bank. With all this backdrop, we are improving our guidance for revenues from services to mid-single-digit growth from low to mid-single-digit growth.

A few words on costs. Actually, no news at all. You may see that for the first half, costs are up by 5%, and this is where we are planning to be by the end of the year. So meeting our guidance. On the right-hand side, you may see the evolution of our cost-to-income ratio. You may see that we have been hovering in the 37%, 38% area since early '24. And this is clearly much better level than the average of our peers in Europe.

A few words also on asset quality. First, on NPLs, a sharp reduction of NPLs this quarter, approximately EUR 500 million. That results into an NPL ratio of 233% (sic) [ 2.33% ] in the month of June. What we have been active this quarter that NPL portfolio disposals is part of our business as usual. It has been the case this quarter successfully.

And in terms of the different segments, you may see that there is nothing to worry about at all. And you may see that the NPL ratio is really not far from the average. So really benign environment in terms of asset quality. If you combine this with high coverage at 70% and also, at the same time, keeping our unassigned provisions unchanged at EUR 341 million. So this -- well, is resulting into a clear reduction of cost of risk, so 24 basis points for the second quarter. You may see that actually, the loan-loss charges in the second quarter have been the lowest in the last 18 months. Well, in this -- with this backdrop, we are improving our guidance for cost of risk now expected to be circa 25 basis points.

Liquidity, no news, which is very good news. We continue to hold a really comfortable position, EUR 228 billion of liquidity sources, liquidity coverage ratio of 217%, net stable funding ratio, 150%, I think it's a record high. And you may see that this is -- compares extremely well with the peer average. And this is on the back of a really strong and stable deposit base with a strong wave of stable retail deposits and wholesale operational deposits.

We have the bulk of our funding plan, almost completed, still something to be done in the last part of the year, but the bulk is already done. With that, we update you on our MREL structure with an MREL ratio at 28.24% really with an ample buffer above requirements, 382 basis points actually. And we are compliant actually with this requirement with subordinated instruments.

As I said, a successful delivery in terms of funding EUR 7.2 billion issued in year-to-date across all asset classes. I would remark here a really successful USD 3 billion senior nonpreferred with really huge demand. We have -- on the right-hand side, you have the breakdown per currency and 36% of the funding this year in U.S. dollars.

Finally, capital. We have a really strong capital accretion in the quarter 69 basis points. That includes net income plus the DTA consumption. We have then minus 33 basis points from organic risk-weighted assets, it's the first time we disclosed this bridge this way on the appendix, you have the same disclosure for the first quarter, just for the record. Then we have minus 40 basis points for dividend accrual at a cash payout at 60%, as you know very well, an AT1, and then we have small other impacts. And that results into a CET1 ratio at 12.47%. This is already over EUR 500 million above the threshold for an acceleration of capital evolution.

And well, I mentioned that it has been a strong quarter in terms of lending. But in any case, profitable with return on risk weighted assets at 2.3% clearly above the average of recent times. We keep executing our 6th share buyback that was launched in June. And also, we are today announcing an interim dividend to be paid in November and finally approved by the Board in October, ahead of our third quarter results presentation, and it will be a dividend between EUR 885 million and EUR 1.181 billion.

And bottom right, well, you know that we don't have an impact from the output floor. But clearly, as everyone has been disclosing those impacts, you may see that in our case, we are approximately 12 percentage points above the level of the output floor, which is a small group of banks we have this position. It's not the case for others.

In our case, for this -- to comply with this regulatory requirement, we don't need to set aside capital in coming years or not being any kind of constraint for growth as I say, to comply with this requirement in coming years. And the final slide, which is the recap of the improved guidance on revenue from services just to recap, up to now -- expected to be up by mid-single-digit cost of risk circa 25 basis points and return on tangible equity as a consequence over 16%.

So thank you very much, and I can imagine we may face a few questions.

So operator, we are ready for Q&A. First question, please.

The first question is from Maks Mishyn of JB Capital.

I have 2. The first one is on the NII. You see better quarterly trajectory. Our loan book is growing above expectations, yet you do not upgrade guidance. Is there any particular reason why? And the second one is on loan book growth. You are gaining market share across the board, new lending as well as back book. What are you doing to grow your market share? Should we expect a similar pace in the coming quarters?

Thank you. Maks, I will comment on the second one, and I'll let Javier get into the NII guidance. I think we're not doing anything particularly special in terms of lending growth. First, that obviously, the market is growing faster than anticipated, and that has to do with the macro. But beyond that, we are gaining market share slight gain when we talk about gaining market share, it's probably 10 to 15 basis points in the period, in the last 12 months.

And obviously, there's also some volatility sort of -- because some of these balances can change in -- particularly on the wholesale side. But yes, we're gaining market share. I think we just have our -- all our engines working and full attention, no distraction. We made a tremendous sort of integration. And now we have really the machinery working nicely close to our clients. We have over 4,000 people in the business segment. And it's just working. We're not changing anything fundamental competing on -- mostly on service, being close to clients, being predictable and obviously, being fast and agile. We can do more, and we'll keep doing more.

I don't expect gains of market share that would be significantly higher than those that we are talking about, maybe 20, 30 basis points a year is the kind of sort of cruising speed that for an institution of our size is logical. And we're pretty optimistic, I have to say. I mentioned some of the initiatives on the retail side, Facilitea on the mortgage front, on the vehicle side, consumer lending, we're gaining market share, clearly, and we have a good transformation program on the business front, taking advantage again of our size and of the recovery and obviously, bringing new initiatives. We have specialized some segments because we have both the scale and the expertise to do so.

We remain very integrated, which is a big difference with our other competitors in my view. We have all our business, private banking business and retail in various regions under the same responsible. The synergies between these businesses, particularly the business of private banking and the business segments are very significant, and that works naturally because of our DNA, our incentives and our organizational structure, I think we're basically very well equipped to compete and to win.

And we may not have shown that over the last few years because of sort of time spent in the merger and then obviously, various special circumstances with the pandemic and sort of falling volumes. Now that we see the market growing, to me, it's kind of natural that we're going to capture more share than our competitors. And obviously, that's what we're going to keep trying. Obviously, always defending profitability because it's not worth growing if you don't have the right margin. NII.

NII. That's for me. Well, as I said at the presentation, we are calling the trough for NII the second quarter. So we are expecting that next quarter will be higher than the second quarter, not by a wide margin, but higher and clearly accelerating into the second half of last year.

Basically, we are still expecting a negative contribution from, let's say, client yields on that NII bridge for some more quarters as we still face negative repricing on the loan book for some more quarters. But on the other hand, this is being expected to be compensated clearly by the positive impact from volumes and also from ALCO contribution. So basically, we are reiterating our guidance for NII to be down by mid-single digit. But our expectation is to be at the lower to midpoint of that range. So I would say that this to some extent, has upside. But we stick to the guidance for the time being. But I would say, with upside.

For 2026 on the contrary, we have a clearly better view. And now we expect NII to be clearly above '25 levels in 2026. And for 2027, remember that we have been guiding for NII to be over EUR 11.5 billion. So we see now a clear upside, very clear upside, I would say, for 2027. So the dynamics are really positive. You could see on the evolution of average balances for deposits that gradual increase of noninterest-bearing deposits, well, this is very gradually filtering into the impact on NII is not having an immediate impact, but it has a compounding effect that makes us to be more optimistic beyond a certain point next year. So that's basically my message here, Maks.

Operator, next question please.

The next question is from Ignacio Ulargui of BNP Paribas Exane.

Yes. I have 2 questions, if I may. One is on deposit growth. And I mean if you could elaborate a bit, you had [indiscernible] 4%, if I remember correctly deposit growth target for the plan. I mean how do you see that evolving given the solid performance that we are having in deposits this year? And more in the short term, how confident you are about retaining the strong growth of deposits that you had in 2Q? We saw that last year, you were a bit more cautious on that, how do you see the potential capacity to retain the deposits into the second half of the year?

And the second one is looking to the strong lending growth that you have delivered in the first half. I mean, could you just elaborate a bit more on the incremental profitability of this loan growth? I mean how confident you are that market share or lending growth that you are delivering is incremental into the profitability, if you could give us a bit of essence of that?

Thank you, Ignacio. Maybe I'll give some color. I'm sure Javier will have thoughts to add to it. But starting with deposit growth, we obviously had a very strong first half of the year. Again, if you look at it, so only 6 months, there is some seasonal impact on the figures. But even if you look at the last 12 months, you continue to see a growth that is sort of north of 7% per annum.

And when we talk about our strategic plan, we said customer funds generally would be in a much lower level and just above 4%. So it's obvious that there's upside, particularly in deposits where strategic plan was lower than that 4%. It was above 3%. We see the numbers and the economy being pretty good again. We were somewhat conservative in terms of how our disposable income and the savings rate evolve because they were very high.

And so far, we're seeing only particularly on the saving rate, only a small decline. We'll have to see. There's a term trade-off between the customer funds and also the strength of the economy, i.e., if the savings rates come down, we'll probably see faster economic growth because consumption in particular will go up. But so far, clearly, we have upside on deposits for this year is obvious that we're going to be above that 3%.

And I think for the whole of the plan, it's very likely that we are going to be outperforming on that front. We're not sort of now providing alternative figures for the 3-year plan because it would be very time consuming to every 3 months update on those numbers. But it's clear that we are substantially ahead. And if nothing sort of deteriorates for an unforeseen circumstance, we are certainly going to be above our targets.

Again, bear in mind on adjusted year 2025, the seasonal impact means that you cannot just extrapolate the last 3 months because that's -- that would lead to the wrong conclusions. And on lending, maybe just sort of say, obviously, we're doing this business because -- it's got to be profitable. So we're looking to risk-adjusted returns above, in fact, above 15%. That doesn't mean every single transaction that we do needs to have a pricing that goes to that level because we look at the overall relationship, whether it's an individual or whether it's a corporate or self-employed or any of our business lines, we tend to look both at what's the profitability of any given lending transaction, but obviously, making sure that we have an overall relationship picture because clients will give us ancillary business associated to lending decisions.

So on that front, we are not relaxing our standards. We see that our growth is very profitable. And if it wouldn't be profitable and when there are occasions that it is not, we just refrain or get outbeat by others because that's the nature of the business.

With that, I don't know, Javier, do you want to add?

Yes. Only -- well, Ignacio, you know that we have this strong seasonality on deposits. And for us, it's really an important quarter. So it actually sets the tone for the rest of the year. So we think that we are going to be able to retain the major part of those balances. Some of those are actually really seasonal. But at the end of the day, according to our experience in the past, we have some slowdown in the third quarter, but in the fourth quarter, again recovering.

So you can assume that current deposit levels are sustainable for -- till year-end. So that's basically the main assumption. And also importantly, that chart, we are disclosing every quarter about noninterest-bearing balances evolution, and we see really good momentum on that front. So I think that we are being successful here on 3 fronts. First thing is, we are being able to pass on lower rates to market rates to interest-bearing deposits.

Second, we are being able to grow noninterest-bearing deposits, which tells you about the strength of the franchise itself. And third, at the same time, we do that. We are being able to grow, let's say, on Wealth Management or, let's say, off balance sheet. If you look at the second quarter figures, it's EUR 5 billion plus of noninterest-bearing balances and EUR 3 billion plus of Wealth Management. So this is EUR 8 billion of really high-quality customer funds that we are being able to generate. So that's, I would say, probably the best way to summarize the dynamics -- underlying dynamics we are having.

Operator, next question please.

The next question is from Alvaro Serrano of Morgan Stanley.

This might be one for Javier. Just a follow-up on your just the comments you've just made around the mix of deposits, term being down, I think it's 8.5% quarter-on-quarter and you highlighted the growth in those noninterest-bearing. My question is, how do you see that evolving? It's ticking down in terms of the substantial reduction, is that driven by inflows of deposits just being more transactional or people not bothering to roll over the term deposits given the lower rates. Just a bit of color on the dynamics going forward.

My second question is around capital. Obviously, you haven't announced a buyback and you have room to do it. Should we interpret this as a timing issue? Or do you see with that kind of loan growth that you're seeing you think you can grow into the capital. I noted -- Gonzalo, you mentioned June was particularly strong, I think that's what you meant. So is that a factor in holding back on the buyback?

Sure. Alvaro, I'll just take the second question. As you said, the first one is for Javier. On the buyback, you said, is it a timing issue? And the answer is yes, it is a timing issue. We have not changed our policy and we will continue to buy back our shares when we have excess above the target, which for 2025 is 12.25%. We have over EUR 500 million, I think it's pretty obvious that it's a question of timing. We've said that we will announce buybacks when we are -- we have them approved by the Board and by the ECB and we will not comment on that during the process and -- anyhow. After 6th share buybacks, I think everybody should be pretty confident of what we plan to do, and the reality is, we're only almost -- only halfway through the 6th share buyback program. So any announcement at this stage would just be news about the future which I would expect to take place in any case, whether we say it now or we say it later. We are going to continue to generate excess capital and hence, we'll continue to do share buybacks, when we are above the targets. And obviously, we're at that level now.

Alvaro, well, on the mix, you may remember that our view was that the size of the time deposit portfolio will remain -- in terms of weight on total deposits will remain pretty much stable. We think that this is the broad message. So you could see that the peak was at the fourth quarter last year, gradually trending down but not a sharper slowdown. So our view is that a client that holds a time deposit that was yielding whatsoever, 2%, 2.5%, now at maturity is being rolled over, obviously, at a lower yield, now that front book is clearly below 2%. But still, it's interesting for clients, and we believe that the size of this overall portfolio will not change that much.

In some quarters, probably like this one, you may see some slowdown, but you should work with the assumption that the pool of time deposits will remain in terms of wave pretty much unchanged. So I think that the growth of noninterest-bearing deposits has more to do with the general activity of the bank, client acquisition. So we have over 300,000 more clients last 12 months. So we are gaining payroll. So basically is more activity in the bank, not only individuals but also I have to say, SMEs and corporates. Also, they hold part of their deposits as noninterest-bearing deposit because of basically operational balances. We are really strong in terms of cash pooling payments, all those kind of things. So we are being able to retain a large chunk of those deposits as zero cost in exchange of all the services we provide on those activities. So it's -- in our view, this will continue to grow at least for the foreseeable future. And you know that this is a key lever for NIIs in the future. Clearly, it's one of our strengths. And we think it's going to be there.

Operator, next question please.

The next question is from Francisco Riquel of Alantra.

Yes. I have 2 questions. The first one is, if you can please update on the guidance for cost of deposits that you gave in the last quarter. And this time, if possible, including and excluding the hedges so that we can see the underlying performance on how the hedges are also impacting your margin dynamics? And also, if possible, the front book of the interest-bearing deposits versus the 1.92% of the stock.

And my second question is, you change revenues, provisions, but you just fine-tuned the ROTE guidance to above 16% when you are printing above 18% in the first half. So what is preventing you from a bolder change in the ROTE guidance. Shall we expect any write-down or restructuring charges in the second half of the year?

Thank you, Paco. I will take the second one. No, I don't expect anything extraordinary. We actually haven't put a lot of fault on the bottom line at this stage as we do not usually guide for the bottom line. But we are conscious that as we upgrade guidance on cost of risk and on revenues from services, it kind of leaving a 16% was not making this very credible. So we just said it's not fine-tuning. It's just removing a limitation of consistency in our guidance. I'd say it is not going to be 16%. It's going to be over 16%. We're not putting any focus now if that over -- 16% is going to be just over 16% or comfortably or very comfortably above 16%. We'll see as the year evolves. I wouldn't put too much weight on that number and much more on whatever your assumptions are of how well we can do. And obviously, based on the guidance we're giving for the top line and cost of risk, I would certainly not expecting anything extraordinary or negative in the second half of the year.

Paco, well, in terms of guidance on the interest-bearing deposits, we are expecting that for this year, on average, for the year, it's going to be in mid-50s. That is a small upgrade because I remember well, we said mid- to high 50s, so mid-50s. But keep in mind, those are -- this is the yield ex foreign exchange and hedges, and I come back to that. But already in the fourth quarter being below 50. And so we're expecting to end the year below 50. So if you try to forecast into 2026 clearly, you have to take that as a base.

The difference between with and without hedges is going to converge very soon. You know here, the effect is that the floating rate leg of the hedges is now approaching the fixed rate level of the fixed rate leg. So you no longer have, let's say, a negative carry on the hedges. So basically, you should assume that by the end of this year, the difference will be 1 or 2 basis points up or down, but pretty much the same between each other, okay?

In terms of the front book of time deposits, we are currently in the 160%, 170% area as of the latest figures of the quarter. Keep in mind that we have approximately 50% of our interest-bearing deposits that are indexed and the major part, probably 80%, 90% to the overnight rate, so as a result, we have -- what clearly in that sense, there is like a faster repricing. It's a little bit contradictory because you have like a faster repricing on what is, let's say, corporate funds than retail funds because retail funds, you need to wait until the rollover of the time deposit that per se is no longer than 12 months. So we have an average life of our time deposits shorter than 6 months.

But the repricing of large corporate balances is done almost automatically once there is an internal rate cut because it's linked to the overnight rate. So that's basically the situation. So you can expect that interest-bearing part to keep trending down in coming quarters.

Operator, next question, please.

The next question is from Andrea Filtri of Mediobanca.

Could you give us an idea of what kind of cost of risk do you expect in the coming years? And should we expect other DTA breakups in coming quarters?

DTA. Okay. On cost of risk, Andrea, I would say, we see very good benign scenario. And hence, the current numbers are numbers that we expect to see not just this year but beyond this year, you move sort of to the longer term. We need to see what the macro environment is. But to be honest, this stage, the 2025 cost of risk is a good indicator for future years as well.

Andrea, yes, on DTAs, write-backs, we are expecting this to be almost recurrent. So I think that you can take the average of the first half as I would template for what may come for the second half. It's not exactly the same every quarter. This quarter, for example, has been a little bit higher as we have been able to incorporate some deductions. So no longer only tax losses carried forward, also some deductions.

And well, this is -- well, it's really a complex issue and you cannot forecast exactly the same amount for every quarter. But I think that taking that average is fine for projection. And beyond '25, I think that this is something that will continue to be with us. I cannot recommend now exactly by which amount, but as the profitability of the bank has clearly recovered, we are being able to write back DTAs. And this is, as I say, it's going to be with us for the future.

Operator, next question, please.

The next question is from Britta Schmidt of Autonomous Research.

My first one would be on the RWA growth. The organic growth was -- or the organic capital decline due to RWA was 33 basis points this quarter versus 50 basis points in the last quarter. How much of that do you put down to the seasonality in lending? And what is the outlook there for the coming quarters given loan growth is still expected to remain quite strong?

The second one will be on the pricing competition. Could you give us the front book yield of your new business in the second quarter? I know it was 376 basis points in the first half, but what was it in the second quarter? And how does that compare to the 373 basis points back book in CaixaBank ex BPI. And do I understand it correctly that you're basically saying that a greater product franchise would allow you to be more competitive on the pricing of the loan book. And then lastly, maybe just a question on whether you had any comments on that regarding any news regarding the BFA IPO?

Okay, Britta. Let's -- I think Javier maybe you can take...

Okay. Britta, well, it has been really a strong quarter for lending. It has not been only lending, but also we have had guarantees, have had an exceptional quarter in CIB, as I said. So some probably single large impacts that we don't think are going to be recurrent in coming quarters. So I think that the second quarter sets the tone for the rest of the year, but you should not expect that pace of growth in coming quarters.

The third quarter is, well, seasonally weaker because you have the summer break, et cetera. then you have the fourth quarter again with better traction. So we think that our loan book this year is going to move up by approximately 5%, probably 5.5% less than 6%. If you look at what we have already done so far year-to-date is quite the bulk of that growth.

So you should not expect that same pace of risk-weighted asset growth for the next few quarters. Also, we have quite a nice pipeline of risk-weighted asset management tools that will be deployed during the second half, probably more during the fourth quarter. And well, we don't think that we have an issue with that. So we plan to generate capital above what is being deployed in terms of lending. And as I say, it's a quarter with -- we can qualify to some extent, exceptional with quite a larger than expected loan growth.

In terms of pricing, you asked specifically for the front book yield in the second quarter is 364 basis points. The average for 12 months Euribor as an indication for market rates, it's slightly over 2%. I think it's 2.1% or something like that. I had my notes. So as you may see, broadly speaking, it's this kind of 150 basis points margin we have been talking about.

You have clearly some segments with a tighter margin like mortgages, but then you have segments with a wider margin like consumer lending, probably compensating a little bit each other. And then as a base case for, let's say, SME lending precisely those 150-basis points area.

And there was a final question about the IPO in BFA. Well, in this case, we had this more uncertain situation in markets in general in this second quarter. So this is what we have been told is that still ongoing. So eventually in the second half of the year is something it may happen. You know that in any case, if you consider that this transaction let's assume that it's done at book value, the impact in terms of capital is not that material. It's like 1 or 2 basis points CET1. You know that the value of this investment in our books is EUR 300 million. So that's basically with our risk weighted at 250%. So you can do the math very easily.

Operator, the next question, please.

The next question is from Pablo de la Torre Cuevas of RBC Capital Markets.

My first one was on deposit growth. You've chosen not to increase the size of the structural hedge this quarter despite really healthy growth in noninterest-bearing balances. Could you just, I guess, remind us what is the short-term and long-term assessment that you consider to decide whether to increase the size of the ALCO book or the hedges? And what are the key trade-offs here that you consider? And maybe how could this change in the second half of the year if you expect it to change?

And the second one is just a follow-up on shareholder distributions. You explained that the buyback issue is just a matter of timing. But have you may be considered committing to a more structured buyback cadence? And maybe can you just update us as well on the return on investment and how it compares with alternative uses of capital at this stage?

Thank you, Pablo. On the second point, I'm not sure I understand when you say something more structured for our capital distribution. To me, is very structured from the point of view that we have pay out 50 to 60 and then certain capital target. And then once we go above those capital targets and when there is obviously enough amount of distributable to avoid doing very small share buybacks, then we make them effective. And that is what we've been doing.

And we've said that we will announce once they are formally approved, not when we submit requests so that gives you an indication of the kind of policy we follow. And obviously, the timing is not just subject to us, but also to the made -- the logical timing lag of these processes.

And given that we have a share buyback that is only not even half executed now that is ongoing. We feel we have time, but it's, I think, fairly predictable. And it's been in place for some time how we deal with these things.

In terms of the return on investment of buying back our shares with respective to other alternatives as we are now actively considering M&A is really a judgment on what is the value -- the underlying value of our shares, what are our expectations? I tend to think that management tend to be not the best predictor of future share price performance in their statements. And hence, what we do is we execute and we take the market price unless there are some very special circumstances, where we take the market price for a reflection of the appropriate price for us to execute a share buyback and just make sure that we do it over a period of time that is long enough that we do not affect the market.

And obviously, if at some point, the circumstances change for the better, would have looked at as a great investment, like, to be honest, we have spent EUR 8 billion in buying back -- sorry, we have spent -- basically bought 1 billion shares at EUR 5 per share. So we've invested that close to EUR 4 billion plus what it's still to be executed. And obviously, 1 billion shares today would be worth EUR 8 billion, so that's great, but that's great because the market has gone up in retrospective, it was one of the most sort of value creative decisions we have taken.

To be honest, when we look at our prospects and discuss them, we're upgrading guidance. We're looking at the factors that support us upgrading guidance as sort of longer term, more structural than just the sort of fashion of the quarter the trends in growth and lending and customer deposits, the stability of rates, the forward curve, the low cost of risk, all that suggests that we have actually good times ahead and hence, the return of our investment in buying back shares seems to us quite an attractive one. But it's based on the fact that we're going to need to take the market price as an indicator of what a bank is worth as much as we would like to think that is worth much more, which we may well think, but it's not that relevant for investors. So we'll continue to take action on excess capital and give it back to shareholders unless at some point, there are very special circumstances, which we certainly do not foresee.

Okay. On hedging, Pablo, well, there are different factors. You mentioned deposits. That's a key factor influencing hedging, but also you need to take into account the dynamics in terms of fixed rate lending. So there are several factors, also the maturity of hedges legacy portfolio. So it's quite complex. We monitor all that constantly. And basically, it has been a quarter where instead of using derivatives, what we have done is to use fixed income securities. But economically speaking, is the same to -- in terms of NII sensitivity, it's the same to buy fixed income securities or to do derivatives receiving a fixed-rate leg. So it's the same.

We have a natural tendency that when we decide to add longer maturities. So longer duration, we have the tendency to use fixed income because then you capture the sovereign spread, and that is a sovereign spread that is last year as you purchase longer-term securities. But we are quite opportunistic on that. So I mentioned at the presentation that derivatives continue to be a key tool, and in any case, it's going to be used in the future for sure because we will need to roll over or as you suggest to increase hedging as our deposit base keeps growing. So that's basically the plan. So we have liquidity, so we can invest into fixed income. And obviously, we have the ability to add hedges, both.

Operator, next question, please.

The next question is from Seamus Murphy of Carraighill.

Sorry, I have 3 questions, actually, which are all kind of related. What share of your NII do you think comes from the value of your deposit franchise, including the hedge? I mean, we think it's about 70% to 80% of your NII comes from this site, which will obviously grow over time. I just want to get some idea of your own thoughts around that or whether that's a fair number?

Second thing is, given the strength of your deposit franchise growth and your ability, obviously, to redeploy that into longer-term hedges, what do you think the front book incremental return on capital is for your franchise or for that franchise? Because obviously, there's a zero cost of risk on your deposit growth? And does -- if it's really being redeployed into a bond portfolio, then the RWA intensity is obviously really low.

So I just want to try and understand how you think about that in terms of as we look forward into '26 and '27? And then the last question is back on the hedge again. Just a small number is, obviously, when you look at the hedge when I add up the ALCO book plus the swap book, basically, I get to around EUR 127 billion, but your total noninterest-bearing accounts is somewhere like around 290. So I just want to understand, is there a fixed rate mortgage portfolio as well that's kind of backing -- that's backing the hedge or is your hedge capacity really only running at 50% of total? Or is there something else that I'm not thinking about when I think about the repricing of your current accounts gradually over the next 3 to 4 years, i.e., is there a fixed rate bond portfolio -- sorry, fixed rate mortgage portfolio and also does the hedge that you have include the equity hedge? Is that a separate component?

Seems you're going to be busy.

Yes. I'm very busy. I'm not sure I'm going to have an answer for all your questions, but I will try. In terms of the last question about the equity, no, we are not including the equity in terms of hedging. I understand that some banks are doing so, probably in the U.K., but it's not that common in Europe, but the short answer for us is that we are not doing so.

In terms of the noninterest-bearing deposits. So basically, we have hedges being the fixed income portfolio or these swaps receiving fixed rates, so you combine everything and you're doing right. But you need to incorporate also basically more hedges which is also a long-duration asset. Here, you need to make some assumptions on prepayments, which at some point may be relevant. So there is some kind of optionality embedded on that because with lower rates, theoretically, prepayments should accelerate. So you need to work with an assumption a model on the topic in terms of which is actually the real duration of mortgages, fixed rate mortgages to maturity.

But yes, I think that actually, this is offering -- giving us a competitive advantage because we have like a natural hedge in the balance sheet for our fixed rate mortgage production.

Your first question was about which was the share of NII from deposits? Well, basically, if you think about customer spread, let's say, circa 300 basis points eventually and maybe at some point, slightly below that. But let's assume 300 basis points to make the math easier. I think that you should think that 150 are coming from the asset side and 150 are coming from the deposit side. And that those 150 on the deposit side, obviously, is the mix from interest-bearing and noninterest-bearing.

So those are the, let's say, back-of-the-envelope numbers. Then obviously, NII is not only customer, customer spread. You have ALCO, you have wholesale funding, et cetera. So it's more complex than that. But when talking about customer deposits as a share of the customer spread, I think, is approximately 50%.

And the last one, but I am afraid I am not going to be able to give you an answer, although we'll do the math, and we can come back to you in any meeting or call is about the return on capital about deposits. But in any case, it's massive, because first thing, it is not only funding ALCO, so it's not only funding the sovereign. So it's also funding mortgages, but mortgages are basically non -- with low density. But if you think about only the -- what is, let's say, the excess of our deposit base that is funding, let's say, low density assets like the sovereign fixed income portfolio or mortgages then obviously, the return on capital is really high. But honestly, I don't have an answer, although I will think about it and try to give you to review an answer in the future.

Next question please, operator.

The next question is from Ignacio Cerezo of UBS.

I've got 2. The first one is on the international lending book, EUR 31 billion, growing 10% year-to-date. I think I've seen in the presentation. So if you can give us bit of information from a kind of geographical point of view, type of client yield duration, main KPIs basically of that book. And the second one, I'm sorry, might be open ended actually but is there any way that you can explain to us actually if there is a regular pattern of customer fund flows within the different products, i.e., the deposits basically noninterest-bearing deposits you're capturing. Is there kind of a normal behavior actually by which percentage of those deposits move to time deposits and deposits move to balance sheet. Maybe I'm not making myself clear, actually. Just trying to understand a little bit, actually how the customer fund flow works between different products?

Second, complex question, but give some time to think, Javier and maybe I add something. But first question on our international presence. This is mainly done through our branches. We have the largest branches in the U.K., Germany, Paris and Milan. We also have one in Warsaw, but our business in Poland because of the size of the market is relatively smaller compared to the others. This is all geared towards investment-grade clients. We have actually have a strategy of growing this slowly over the last 11 years, and we have had basically no accidents, had a very good credit quality in this portfolio.

It was originated based on 2 factors. The large corporates that operate in Spain, and we are one of the main banks and they want us to be bankers at parent company levels. And once you have that relationship and that is significant enough, we obviously have developed business with some of the large corporates in France, Germany, U.K., Italy, where we didn't necessarily have the same intense relationship.

Nothing, I think, particularly notable other than this. It's profitable. It's double-digit return on tangible equity. And at this stage, you should expect growth to slow down, certainly in percentage terms as we have, I think, even it will want to grow, we now have a decent size and what we want to keep is increasing the number of services and products that we are able to cross-sell in these situations. Again, starting from fairly attractive return on equity, which, as I said, is double-digit already, but where we think we have room to make it even more profitable. And the other point in terms of customer flows...

I can try.

I think it depends. It will be my answer. Javier, go ahead.

Well, here, I think that we have gone through a structural change when rates started to be positive. So I think that we had on current accounts, almost 100% of our deposit balances when trades became positive. We had a large shift to time deposits from customers that were actually like, I would say, risk averse or not willing to commit for loan duration products, et cetera.

And the bulk of that process is done. And to a previous question, I answered that we are expecting that part that portfolio of time deposits will remain pretty much stable in the future. So that's our view. So from here, basically, assuming that, that remains stable and we have like a stable base of savings that are, let's say, into, let's say, risk less time deposits.

From here, we have a natural process of inflows into customer funds that what is being more operational and new clients and, let's say, operational buffer for households, et cetera, remains in a current account, and that drives that increase basically on noninterest-bearing balances.

And then what is, when those same households start thinking about savings and planning for the future, planning for retirement, we were commenting in initiatives, this Generacion +, et cetera, that tends to be done, let's say, with off-balance sheet solutions. And -- also to our previous question, I answered, well, look, this quarter, we have had EUR 5 billion more average noninterest-bearing balances while we have had EUR 3 billion of inflows into, let's say, off-balance sheet solutions.

I think that once we have this time deposit portfolio pretty much stabilized and not set to grow much. I think that we are back again to a situation where we have inflows that go to noninterest-bearing balances because are operational and then the excess or when people think about savings moves automatically to off balance sheet solutions. This is the broad picture, obviously then.

In the meantime, you have some time deposits that are being canceled and moved to off-balance sheet and new money that moves to time deposits. But we're trying to incentivize the long-term planning for savings. You know that being the financial advisers for clients, so I'm bringing down a little bit the threshold for this kind of assessment and not only for private banking clients and ultra-high net worth, et cetera. But this kind of level that is below that, which is affluent clients, we call it internally premier banking. We are really strong on that part. And -- and usually, when we try to manage that portion has a natural tendency to move off balance sheet.

And if I may add, in the longer term, obviously, what you have is sort of a life cycle of our customers, combined with some higher sophistication of financial education, which we've been working on for decades. And obviously, as people are more conscious of their saving needs, this is very much in line with what Javier said. So I'm not just further clarifying it from that point of view. People have -- are more conscious of their saving needs when as they go through the way and get closer to retirement.

And if they have the appropriate advisory and education, and that's not just us, it's also the whole system. They are going to start being ready to take some credit risk or volatility, let's say, intrinsic risk and particularly also duration investment horizon, and this is something that needs to change. This is a lot of -- when people talk about the savings and investment union, you look at the situation in Europe and actually we have plenty of savings and liquidity more than in the U.S. And in fact, that's what you see real rates in Europe always lower than the same equivalent in dollar that are relatively there is more savings in Europe than investment opportunities compared to the U.S.

But there's not enough financial education for people to understand that rather than keeping the money in the bank in one form or another, they need to invest, thinking -- for me, saving insurance is a great example of the kind of investment that you need to make and what you can get much higher returns and at the same time, be protected from an actuarial point of view for by a longevity or mortality depending on the product and your moment in the life cycle.

This is a long way, and it's structurally a very attractive one for institutions like us that are very strong, both in transactional deposits, but also in long-term saving products, where we, in fact, have a higher market share. But this is a very slow process. We saw part of it when rates went negative because, obviously, that was a very big incentive both for banks and clients to look for other products.

Now we do not expect fortunately negative rates, and we're in the 2% to 3%, the incentive is lower. But clearly, you should expect to have a higher return on your investments. If you invest longer term and you move away from sort of banking deposit type of product. And there, I think we will continue to go back to a structural trend where our sort of off-balance sheet business is going to keep growing faster than our on-balance sheet business. The good thing with the current dynamics is that we are seeing basically both growing at attractive levels. But this sort of how the money flows. When you look at 10 years, people are going to hopefully have more of their investments in longer-term products, as Javier said.

I'm told that this was the last question. So thank you, Gonzalo. Thank you, Javier. Thank you all for joining us another quarter and have a wonderful summer.

Thank you very much.

Bye-bye.