Leonteq Aktie

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Leonteq Half Year 2026 Results Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Sharie, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Dominik Ruggli, Head of Investor Relations and Communications. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Today, at 6:30 a.m., we published the results press release, the results presentation and the half year report for 2026. All these documents can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website. I would like also to refer you to the usual cautionary statement at the end of the press release. That statement also applies to the information provided verbally in this presentation and the Q&A session.

Here with me today are Chief Executive Officer, Christian Spieler; and our Chief Financial Officer, Hans Widler. We will start the presentation with our key messages for the first half of 2026. Afterwards, Hans will provide you a detailed discussion of our financial performance in the first half of '26. Christian will then return to take you through our strategic progress and our outlook for H2 2026.

The presentation will last about 35 minutes, after which we are happy to take questions. We intend to close the conference call latest by 10:30 a.m. With that, I hand over to you, Christian.

Thank you, Dominik. Also from my side, a warm welcome to all investors, analysts and media representatives on the call. The first half of 2026 has been a pivotal period for Leonteq. I'm very pleased to report that we have returned to profitability in line with our guidance. This is a testament to the successful execution of the measures and initiatives we set out to deliver, and it demonstrates the progress that Leonteq has made across multiple fronts.

We delivered double-digit growth in turnover and in fee income, driven by growth across all regions. We have significantly reduced our cost base, which demonstrates the effects of our cost program, and we have maintained a strong capital position. With the closure of all regulatory legacy matters, we have reached an important milestone and have removed a key constraint on growth. While there is more to do, we are on the right track, and we will continue to execute our strategic priorities with focus and discipline. We confirm our full year guidance and expect to report a positive pretax result.

Now I'll hand over to Hans for the financial update.

Thank you, Christian. Also a very warm welcome from my side, and thank you for joining us here today. I'm pleased to present to you the financial results for the first half of 2026. Reflecting the successful transition to our enhanced regulatory framework in November 2025, and the completion of our cost program at the end of last year, we have ceased to report underlying results. Hence, today, our discussion and analysis of our financial performance will focus on IFRS reported financials.

Let's start with our income statement on Page 6 of the presentation. In the first half of 2026, we recorded increased client activity and fee generation, driven by continued improvement in client sentiment since the second half of last year. This was further supported by the recent closure of all regulatory legacy matters, which has had an immediate positive impact on client momentum.

Net fee income grew by 10% year-on-year to CHF 96.8 million and by 7% compared to the second half of 2025. At the same time, hedging activities returned to a positive contribution, although below the prior year period, which was driven by the April 2025 short-term spike in market volatility after Liberation day. In H1 2025, our net trading result amounted to CHF 13.4 million compared to CHF 39.5 million a year ago and compared with minus CHF 42.6 million in the second half of last year. The net interest expense improved to CHF 0.6 million compared to CHF 4.9 million in the prior year period. This was primarily driven by balance sheet optimizations.

Consequently, our total operating income was CHF 111.6 million compared to CHF 124.3 million in the prior year period and compared to CHF 48 million in the second half of last year. While year-on-year, this is a 10% reduction in total operating income, we are very satisfied with the underlying improvement in the quality of our earnings.

On the cost side, operating expenses decreased by 10% year-on-year to CHF 99.2 million, reflecting the benefits of the resizing program. Compared to the second half of 2025, total operating expenses are up 4%, driven by normalization of accrued variable compensation. I will give you a detailed breakdown of the costs shortly.

In line with our guidance, Leonteq returned to profitability in the first half of 2026. The company reported profits before taxes of CHF 12.2 million. Income taxes were positive at CHF 0.5 million, mainly driven by a reduction in profits recorded in foreign jurisdictions. Group's net profit increased by 37% year-on-year to CHF 12.7 million in the first half of 2026, and earnings per share increased by 34% to CHF 0.71. Finally, our return on tangible equity also improved to 4% in H1 2026, which puts us back on the right trajectory towards our 2028 target of 10%.

Moving now on to Page 7. I want to first look at the turnover generated through our platform, which you can see in the graph on the left-hand side. Our platform turnover increased by 10% to CHF 15.9 billion. This growth was supported by a strong increase in demand for Leonteq's own-issued products, which was up 21% year-on-year. We also benefited from the enhanced risk and credit profile on the bank-like regulatory framework, which supported the ongoing improvement in client sentiment.

Turnover generated with Tier 1 partners decreased by 17% year-on-year to CHF 3.8 billion. This reduction was partially offset by a 25% increase in turnover with Tier 2 and Tier 3 partners to CHF 1.5 billion in addition to the strong increase in Leonteq issuances. This development is in line with our strategy to diversify revenue contributions across a larger number of different issuers.

From a regional perspective, Leonteq maintained its strong position in our home market in Switzerland. Together with our platform partners, Leonteq remains the leading issuer of SIX listed yield enhancement products with a market share of 34%. Across all SIX listed structured products, we rank as the third largest issuer with a market share of 14%. Net fee income in Switzerland amounted to CHF 43.6 million in the first half of the current year, up 4% compared to the prior year period.

Operations in Europe generated net fee income of CHF 37.3 million in the first half of 2026, but also up 4% year-on-year, reflecting the successful expansion of Leonteq's range of quantitative investment strategies and the improved client sentiment.

We additionally appointed a new Head of Sales Europe, who will join Leonteq in a few weeks' time. This is the first step in our efforts to strengthen again our sales force through dedicated hires. In Asia and the Middle East, net fee income grew by 57% year-on-year to CHF 16 million. This was driven by a significant pickup in demand in the private banking segment as well as the expansion into institutional type transactions.

Moving now to Page 8. I'd like to give you more color on the drivers behind our cost base. We initiated a resizing program 1 year ago, and the following results demonstrate the significant progress we have made in reducing our cost base. Personnel expenses decreased by CHF 7.8 million or 13% year-on-year to CHF 51.6 million. This was driven by the FTE-related reduction in fixed compensation as well as lower recognition of deferred compensation from prior years. The overall number of FTEs declined by 6% year-on-year to 531 FTEs.

Headcount in Switzerland reduced, while headcount in Europe increased as a result of staff growth in our Group's service center in Lisbon. Consequently, our ratio of non-sales and non-trading staff in Lisbon improved from 21% in June 2025 to 28% in June 2026. Other operating expenses remained broadly stable year-on-year at CHF 30.4 million in the first half of 2026.

While we achieved cost reductions, for example, in electricity and market data, these were partly offset by higher banking fees and inflation-driven price increases, particularly in software licenses. Depreciation of tangible and intangible assets declined by 7% to CHF 16.5 million. This was mainly driven by the exit of the bench initiative, where we wrote off the platform last year. For the full year 2026, we reiterate our cost guidance and expect total operating expenses of approximately CHF 200 million.

Continuing to Page 9, let's look at our balance sheet. Overall, Leonteq has a highly liquid hedge book and runs a very conservative investment portfolio. This puts us in a sound position to manage our assets and liabilities in very different operating environments. In terms of numbers, we reported an increase in total assets of CHF 1.2 billion to CHF 12.4 billion at end-June 2026. This is predominantly driven by an increase in trading financial assets on the back of higher equity hedging positions, which in turn, increased our securities lending activities.

Cash and receivables increased mainly on the back of higher client and trading activities. We also optimized our investment portfolio, which was reduced by CHF 0.5 billion to CHF 2.2 billion.

On the liability side, Leonteq own-issued products increased by 5% to CHF 5.6 billion, underscoring the continued confidence by our clients in Leonteq. Further, we shifted some of our funding activities in relation to the before mentioned increase in equity hedging positions and saw an increase in short-term credits and liability by 22% to CHF 2.8 billion. Lastly, our shareholders' equity increased by CHF 18 million to CHF 710 million.

Continuing on to Page 10, let's look at our regulatory capital position. Our eligible capital increased to CHF 655 million at end-June 2026, mainly driven by retained earnings and positive currency translation adjustments, following the appreciation of the U.S. dollar against the Swiss franc.

Risk-weighted assets increased by CHF 208 million to CHF 3.97 billion compared to CHF 3.76 billion at December 2025. This predominantly reflects higher market risk RWAs, driven by increased business flows and higher market volatility at end-June 2026 compared to year-end 2025. We herein maintained our strong capital position and reported a CET1 capital ratio of 16.5% compared to 16.9% at the end of last year.

As communicated in February 2026, the Board is determined to return excess capital to shareholders. Provided that the CET1 ratio is maintained at a level meaningfully in excess of 15% and on a sustainable basis, the Board confirmed its intention to launch a share buyback in early 2027 and will consider a total distribution to shareholders in the form of a dividend plus the share buyback in line with the group net profit for the full year 2026.

I will now turn over to Christian for his remarks on our strategic progress update.

Thank you, Hans. When we presented our full year results earlier this year, I asked you to look beyond the unsatisfactory results for 2025 and measure us against disciplined delivery of our strategy and steady progress in our performance step by step. I also mentioned that we need the time to complete this turnaround and to fully deliver on Leonteq's value creation potential. We manage this delivery against a clear execution framework, resize parts of the business that are not profitable, optimize established areas and expand initiatives with strong future potential.

Let me walk you through how we're executing our ROE strategy and the measurable progress made since the beginning of the year. Let's start with the resize pillar where we are reshaping our cost base with discipline. We are improving our footprint where it is strategically and economically sensible. As planned, we completed the sale of our Japan entity in Q1 2026.

We're also on target to complete the controlled exit of our Pillar 3 initiative called bench by end 2026. And we are actively improving the structural efficiency of our organization with 28% of non-sales and non-trading staff now based in Lisbon. Also here, we are on track to reach our target of approximately 30% by end 2026.

In our optimized pillar, we are improving profitability by focusing on the levers that matter most, stronger operational execution, lower capital consumption and tighter control of complexity and risks. The enhancement of our operational leadership we completed by end of the second quarter 2026 with the streamlining of our leadership structure in Markets and Investment Solutions.

Further, we transitioned to the Basel III Fundamental Review of the Trading Book framework in November 2025, significantly ahead of schedule and in record time. Since then, and because our capital requirements are mainly driven by market risks, we have implemented capabilities to monitor RWA movements on an ongoing basis. It allows us to better track and understand our sensitivity to market movements. This is a continuous process, which takes time, but we have shown that we can maintain a capital ratio well in excess of our minimum capital requirements and well above the share buyback threshold. Furthermore, we have increased balance sheet light turnover by 28% to CHF 3.6 billion, corresponding to 23% of the total turnover, highlighting our continuous journey to a more capital-efficient business model.

With regards to our white-labeling partners, we have revised our acquisition framework and are working on further diversifying our partner network across regions. Now most importantly, our expand pillars. We are developing initiatives that generate more recurring revenues, improve our capital efficiency and expand our total addressable market. This includes businesses like quantitative investment strategies, QIS, actively managed certificates, AMC, the retail flow business and LYNQS. To be clear, this is not growth at any price. It's targeted expansion into areas where Leonteq already is a leader or has a clear right to win and can achieve superior margins.

Let's now move to the next page to provide you more detail on each of these expand initiatives. Starting with our AMC. We continue to make progress in expanding our recurring revenue base through our AMC offering during the first half of 2026. With our next generation of AMCs, we managed to attract strong client inflows, resulting in an increase in outstanding volumes to CHF 2.4 billion. This corresponds to an annualized net new money growth rate of 9%. Demand remained particularly strong among Asian clients, where outstanding volumes increased by approximately 45% during the first half of the year.

In addition, we enabled PostFinance to act as guarantor for Leonteq's next-generation AMCs. This gives clients the flexibility to select a high-rated guarantor, which further strengthens the attractiveness of our offering. Furthermore, as you can see in the chart in the middle on the slide, our AMC solution is already well established across all regions.

Now here on the next slide on Page 14, we see the development of our QIS offering. We further expanded our product offering to include a broad range of quantitative index strategies, including advised, decrement and thematic indices. Referring to the chart on the left-hand side, the number of quantitative investment strategies more than doubled to 700 indices.

This reflects the growing client demand for our customized solutions. The offering attracts particularly strong demand from institutional investors and family offices, contributing to a more diversified client base and increased share of wallet among existing clients. Clients value our flexibility and ability to deliver tailored solutions quickly and efficiently.

From the chart in the middle of the slide, you can also see that so far, we have mainly focused on rolling out our QIS offering to clients in Switzerland and Europe. For the QIS offering, you need specific product and structuring know-how. Now that we have seen a successful traction in Switzerland and Europe, we are starting to build up such resources and know-how in Asia to serve the local client needs. This presents yet another growth opportunity for us.

Let's look now at our retail flow business. We entered the market of listed leverage products in Switzerland in April 2025. As of June 30, 2026, Leonteq had more than 20,000 products listed on SIX Swiss Exchange and BX Swiss, establishing Leonteq as one of the leading issuers in the Swiss market.

Looking at the chart on the left-hand side, you can see that we increased turnover on the SIX Swiss Exchange 15-fold year-on-year to CHF 170 million. The second chart in the middle shows the translation of these numbers into market share within the relevant product segment. Within just 14 months of entering the Swiss market, we achieved a 7% market share based on turnover and 10% based on a number of trades.

Another strategic milestone was the receipt of BaFin approval for the license extension in Germany, enabling our German subsidiary to support our trading activities in Zurich. We have since made good progress in preparing for the launch of listed leverage products in the German market.

On Page 16, you can see our progress we've made with our digital investing platform, LYNQS. Starting with the chart on the right-hand side, you can see that we increased the number of products initiated through LYNQS by 42%. As a result, our click and trade ratio improved to 36% in H1 2026 compared to 34% in the prior year period.

In other words, more than every third product issued today is initiated directly through our digital platform. We continue to enhance our platform capabilities to further improve client experience. In the first half of 2026, we expanded the platform's capabilities by adding credit-linked notes. This broadened the range of available payoffs and marked the platform's expansion into fixed income products.

So let me wrap up today's presentation on Page 17. Following the conclusion of all pending regulatory proceedings, we have clarity and certainty for our business priorities. Our focus remains the diligent execution of our growth initiatives. Our aim is to accelerate growth, among others, by increasing our sales force in selected key growth regions and optimizing our target market strategy.

We confirm our full year guidance and expect to deliver a positive pretax result for 2026. And lastly, provided that the CET1 ratio is maintained at a level meaningfully in excess of 15% on a sustainable basis, the Board confirms its intention to launch a share buyback in early 2027. In this context, the Board will consider a total distribution to shareholders that is dividend plus share buyback, in line with the group net profit for the full year 2026.

With this, I would like to thank you for your attention. I hand back over to you, Dominik.

Thank you, Christian and Hans for the presentation. We are now happy to start with the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Anne Risold, Octavian.

First question is, now that you have solved your regulatory issue, what are the most immediate opportunity to accelerate growth? Or what -- in other words, what are the low-hanging fruit that you expect to capture first?

And the second is, as part of the strategy, you mentioned that you want to grow business that are less dependent on market volatility, including this AMC product. After reaching CHF 2.3 billion last year, at the end of last year, now you had CHF 2.1 billion. And what are the expectation or the growth path for the midterm, for this in terms of volume growth?

And maybe on the guidance, you reached your guidance for the half year, now having CHF 10 million. Is it -- would it be possible to refine a bit also for the full year? Because if you say continue to be positive, it's maybe a bit vague. Would you have any more definition of the pretax profit expected for 2026?

Okay. Thank you for the question. So immediate growth opportunities following the closure of all the regulatory legacy matters. Look, we had already seen an improvement of client sentiment throughout the second half of 2025, and that trend has continued over the second half of this year. That said, clearly, once we announced the closure of all the regulatory legacy matters, we did see a significant pickup in client activity from that date onward across the board of our existing client base. And if you think about it, that's just natural because an overhang, a question mark that was there was removed and people just felt a lot more comfortable again engaging and doing more business with us.

So the truth is just on the -- broadly, we're going to just do a lot more business with our existing client base. At the same time, we are obviously -- and that is independent, but it's also in a way linked. We are growing our client base significantly through specific target markets and hires in sales. So we will be growing that. And obviously, the clearance of regulatory issues is a very positive backdrop for that growth part that we have.

On the strategy and to your question on the volatility, yes. So we have -- as we said, we emphasized very much the growth of the businesses that are less dependent on market volatility, asset management like product AMC, actively managed certificates and the QIS product space, which also cater for more institutional business. And this is -- we see a continued strong trend in the market, continued strong demand for these products. We have an extremely innovative offering in this space, which is considered leading globally. And we see that continued demand across all regions.

So we believe that this will support our growth significantly going forward. We are not commenting on exact targets for the individual segments. But rest assured that these areas are in our focus. We are very well positioned, and we see significant growth going into the future.

Hans, on the topic of guidance, do you want to...

Sure. Certainly. Thank you, Christian, and thank you, Anne-Chantal, for the question. We gave guidance that we -- reiterate our guidance that we gave earlier to have a positive result. So the focus of management is on continuously delivering on the strategic execution on that, specifically the expansion pillars that we have defined. In this regard, our focus is clearly to increase further the fee income, the turnover, but at the end, of course, also the profitability.

The next question comes from the line of Daniel Regli, ZKB.

I have a couple of questions, if I may. First of all, it's kind of a follow-up to Anne-Chantal's question on the closure of the regulatory proceedings. Can you give us maybe a little bit of an indication of the magnitude of pickup you have seen with customers post the closure of the proceedings or the conclusion of the proceedings, to give us a little bit of an idea what kind of recovery is possible for H2?

Then on the net trading result, I wasn't able to find the breakdown into treasury result and hedging contribution anymore. Maybe I was just a little bit low in time, but could you give us a little bit an indication how these 2 elements of the trading result have developed?

And then the third question is on the payout. Did I get this right that shareholder distributions in line with group net profit means more or less a 100% payout ratio for full year 2026?

And then last, can you give us a bit of an outlook for the cost development into next year? What do you expect there? Should we continue to expect kind of flat costs? Or is there any kind of growth in cost expected coming from the initiatives you have started?

Thank you, Daniel. So in terms of the magnitude, it's hard to quantify that, and we're also not like we want to give these detailed numbers. But the point is that we very clearly saw a pickup of engagement, willingness to talk about new projects and simply a totally different approach of engaging for future business with us. So the regular flow of business has been, as I said, improving since the second half of 2025. That's been a constant trend, and that trend continues.

But we -- above and beyond that, we clearly saw in the days and weeks following the announcement that people were, again, calling in to say like, "Okay, are there these new projects that we can tackle." And it's in the space -- a lot of it is in the space of the high value-add products, AMC and QIS. But it's hard to say are we -- what the exact volume impact of this was already and will be going forward, but it's definitely going to be positive because we can see from that request for these specific high value-add products that we can deliver that clients have significant additional comfort now of engaging in these long-term, high value-added projects with us.

Hans, do you want to...

Thanks a lot. Thank you, Daniel, for your respective questions. With regard to trading result and treasury results, you see the breakdown still as part of the respective documentation that we provide in the Excel sheets. The treasury carry amounted to H1 2026 in the trading line itself, minus CHF 8.2 million, while hedging contributions amounted to CHF 21.6 million positive.

In this regard, you need also to consider that, as you can see, the interest expense reduced by approximately CHF 4.3 million. That is, in essence, we optimized also our financing structure more towards Leonteq issuances, given the continued strong demand in this regard. And as you also see, we increased physical hedging activities with equities. And hence, those were financed accordingly by treasury activities.

With regards to your question on payout, your assumption is correct, assuming that Leonteq continues to -- obviously, Leonteq intends to maintain CET1 ratio sustainably and meaningfully above the 15%. Assuming that and the positive net result, you can expect an unchanged dividend of 30%, which is our current dividend guidance. And on top, we announced today accordingly a share buyback at the level of 70% of the net profit.

Regarding your last question, with regards to the cost guidance, we gave you a cost guidance for the current year that we reiterated with regards to the CHF 200 million. With regards to the years to come, you can expect a moderate cost increase given the very selective investments that we undertake specifically into the areas of sales and structuring and the initiatives that we have in place. But as you noticed also from the historical developments, the number of trades lead practically to very little, if at all, to incremental operating costs. That is the platform per se from an operating cost level is strongly scalable.

And sorry, one quick follow-up on the treasury results. So for H2, should we kind of expect a similar treasury result as we have seen in H1? Or is there any changes to be expected?

I mean we are not giving guidance on treasury result level, but it should not be very different to what you see.

The next question comes from the line of Sylvain Perret, AlphaValue.

So I have 2 questions. My first question is on the margin evolution. Judging by your fee income growth and your turnover growth, margins seem to have stabilized in H1 compared to full year 2025. And I wanted to know if you could share your views on the margin evolution from there? And if you expect to see some improvement as the client demand increases in the coming quarters or if you rather see them remaining stable over time as you will prioritize volume over margins?

And my second question is on the retail flow business launch in Germany. Provided that the business is launched in H2, how fast do you expect to see a sizable contribution to your revenue generation after the launch?

Thanks for those questions. So look, margins are influenced by a range of factors, including the product mix, client demand and the underlying transaction volumes. As a result, we do not manage our business based on the overall margin level, but focus on the broader quality and profitability of the business. The product mix, for example, has an important impact on margins.

In the first half of '26, we saw increased activity in leveraged products, which are typically shorter-term products with lower margins but higher turnover potential. At the same time, we recorded improving margins on traditional autocallable products. In addition, I would say certain parts of our business model, such as AMCs and parts of the QIS offering, generate revenue primarily on outstanding volumes, resulting in higher share of recurring fee income. So from our perspective, the key metric is the continued growth in overall business volumes and fee income across the platform.

Our business operates with a relatively high fixed cost base, but benefits from a highly scalable platform with low marginal cost. As a result, we place greater emphasis on growing overall volumes and revenues than on managing to a specific margin target. So ultimately, what really is to look out for is the volume growth and the revenue growth. Margin focus can actually be misleading when you look at a business like ours, because our business is highly dynamic, it's innovative and tech-driven. And we have low marginal cost, a relatively high fixed cost base. So what really drives our profitability is the volume and the overall level of fees.

On the RFP, we've made very good progress, and we've seen -- actually, we've been almost surprised by the incredible take-up of that initiative in the Swiss market. I don't want to extrapolate necessarily from the speed of success we had in the Swiss market with our RFP initiative. But of course, we have the ambition to have a very meaningful and impactful start in the German market as well. But again, as I mentioned before, we are not providing detail on the product level in terms of these projected revenue parts. But you can rest assured that our ambition is measurable and very meaningful.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from Sim Young, AWP.

I have 2 questions regarding the CET1 ratio and the planned share buyback. Can you give some light on what you expect for the CET1 ratio for the full year 2026? And also, you said there will be the share buyback if the CET1 ratio maintains a level meaningfully in excess of 15% on a sustainable basis. Could you elaborate on what do you mean by sustainable basis?

How long and meaningfully in excess of 15%, how much more over 15% is needed? For example, the 16.5% in the first semester, is that meaningfully in excess?

And also, if I may, one more thing. You said well there's more to do. So what do you think are the most important examples what Leonteq still has to do to achieve?

Thank you for the question. So look, on the expectation of the CET1 ratio, we're not guiding specifically on that. As we said, we're targeting a CET1 ratio, which is sustainably and meaningfully above 15%. We've now demonstrated that we were able to have 16.9% ratio at the end of last year, 16.5% ratio now. So you can expect us to, of course, shoot for a similar result or higher result in the future. But at this point, we're not guiding specifically on that number.

With your respect to the question of the share buyback and the meaningful above 15%. Now here's the thing, we are -- look, we need to have gained experience with the FRTB framework. It is a very advanced framework. It is actually the best capital framework for an organization like ours. And we now have about 8 months of experience with this framework and calculating our capital ratios, and we can observe how the capital ratio behaves as a function of market movements, changes in the market overall and also the volumes that we see in our underlying business. And those are really the things that we are watching and want to be really comfortable with before the Board can consider announcing the actual share buyback.

But clearly, as you've seen from the enhanced statement that we made today, or the Board made today, in like over and above what we said at the beginning of the year, we are clearly getting more comfortable with the whole framework and the stability of the ratio and how it moves. And I think this will be taken into account in the Board's decision at the beginning of 2027 to consider launching a share buyback.

Hans, do you want to take the second one?

Sure. I'm not 100% sure whether I grasped the third question entirely correctly. With regards to the capital, we work obviously on a further optimized...

No, it's not it. Sorry, I didn't make it clear. The third question wasn't regarding the capital just in the whole, because you also said it in the press release and Mr. Widler said it now also that while there is much more to do, you achieved a lot, but I was wondering if you could say a few words on what do you think are the most important things that are now still left to do? What is that?

Thanks a lot. I assume so. Thanks a lot for clarifying. In essence, it's really to deliver across the pillars that we have defined within our ROE strategy, specifically on the expense side. If you look at the AMCs, they have grown by 4%, right, accordingly, but we believe that the potential is obviously substantially higher. So we clearly want to extend the capabilities and specifically also the distribution power in this regard.

If you look at the index-based offering, quantitative investment strategies, you see that the revenue contribution from Asia is practically in existence as of now, as shown in the presentation separately. So we believe that this is also a key offering for the Asian market. Certainly, we can substantially leverage there. Looking at the LYNQS offering, you see that 1/3 of the product initiation is going through LYNQS, despite the fact that the further rollout, obviously is envisaged in various other markets.

At the moment, the functionality to initiate trade through the platform is used in Switzerland, and in Hong Kong and Singapore, we can obviously much further leverage in this regard. Then retail flow, we indicated to go live in Germany. The German market is 10x as big as Switzerland. Certainly, we need to build up first a different reputation. This is why we are not guiding a time line in this regard, but the potential that we do believe to capture is substantial.

And with regards to the FTE side, I think we also tried to give you some more color. We have reduced the relative distribution force compared to the total FTEs, and we clearly work now on changing, reversing the respective trends because we do believe that there should be ideally a front ratio of about 1/3 to a back ratio of 2/3 over time. And we are not there, given the recent focus on the regulatory legacy matters.

Does that give you some more color? I'm not sure, Christian, whether you want to add something.

The next question is from Reto Huber, Research Partners.

Just one question. Just the fee income from long-term savings and retirement products, they continue to shrink. So I was wondering what are your plans with the business line that's driving that income and whether we could expect some recovery one day?

Thank you, Reto. We are obviously fully committed to both the pension business, our respective partnerships, and we clearly have the ambition to grow that business further. We have communicated at year-end, right, that one of our major partner in that business on the recent merger. And for obvious reasons, their focus is still on the respective post-merger activities. That said, we are in close contact with the respective partners as with all and work closely on the relaunch of the respective additional new product offerings also in this regard.

Okay. So basically an unchanged situation.

That was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Dominik Ruggli for any closing remarks.

Well, maybe one last comment on the -- because you mentioned the pension savings situation as being unchanged. That, I would say, is not exactly correct because that merger has been completed. And as it's typical during merger period and also quite for some time after, there are changes and organizations are obviously tied up with implementing those changes. But we believe that, in fact, we're confident that we can now pick up discussions in the course of the second half of the year, again, for intensifying the business and potential new product initiatives. So we're actually looking at that quite positively, and we do think there has been a change, in the sense that the merger has been closed.

Thank you, Christian. So with that, we thank you all for your attention and the interesting discussion. We're looking forward to speaking to many of you directly in the next few days. Have a nice day.

Bye-bye.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.

Good morning everyone, and welcome to the press conference call of Leonteq's Full Year 2025 Results. Today at 6:30 a.m. we published the results press release, the results presentation, the annual report and the sustainability report for 2025. All these documents can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website.

In today's discussion of our financials, we will use information that references alternative performance measures. For that, I refer you to the APM section at the end of the press release where you will also find the usual cautionary statement. That cautionary statement also applies to the information provided verbally in this presentation and the Q&A session.

Here with me today are Chief Executive Officer, Christian Spieler; and our Chief Financial Officer, Hans Widler. We will start the presentation with our key messages. Afterwards, Hans will provide you a detailed discussion of our financial performance in 2025. And Christian will then take you through our strategic progress update.

The presentation will last about 45 minutes, after which we are happy to take questions. We intend to close the conference call latest by 11:00 a.m.

With that, I hand over to you, Christian.

Thank you, Dominik. Also from my side, a warm welcome to all investors, analysts, and media representatives on this call.

2025 presented a mixed set of developments. We closed the year with an unsatisfactory result, as challenging market conditions and lower activity from our historic partners weighed on our earnings. We also continued to feel the effects of legacy matters in our business.

At the same time, we began to see improved client momentum in the second half of the year. The transition to the new regulatory regime in a very short time frame was a major achievement, reflecting significant commitment across the entire organization.

At the end of December 2025, we reported a strong CET1 ratio of 16.9%. We have also executed against our strategic priorities in a disciplined manner along our ROE plan: Resize, Optimize and Expand, with the focus on resizing and optimizing in 2025. We can now fully focus our resources on expansion while continuing to transform the company.

For 2026, our full focus is on growing and expanding promising businesses, and we expect to return to a positive pretax result for H1 and full year 2026.

I also want to draw your attention to our further announcement today: the nomination of Felix Oegerli as new Independent Chairman proposed for election at the AGM 2026. Felix is an accomplished leader in the financial services industry and brings experience across the major business areas in which we operate. He retired last year after more than 11 years at ZKB as Head of Trading, Sales and Capital Markets. Before that, he ran the Kantonalbank's liquidity management, short-term interest rates and prime finance activities for more than 5 years. Earlier in his career, he spent 21 years at UBS, where he held positions including Global Head of Prime Brokerage and Deputy Global Head of Securities Lending and Repo. I am convinced that this background and skills will be of great value in the continued transformation of our company, and I very much look forward to working with him.

Now I'll hand over to Hans for the financial update.

Thank you, Christian. Also a very warm welcome from my side and thank you for joining us here today.

I would like to start by putting our performance into the context of the market environment we faced as shown on Page 6. 2025 was indeed a challenging market environment for Leonteq with 2 distinctly different half years. Looking at the left-hand side chart, we provide you with the development of 1-month implied versus realized volatility of the Standard & Poor's 500.

In the first half year of 2025, we saw a significant increase in market volatility following the so-called Liberation Day. In the second half, the realized volatility decreased significantly and was constantly below the implied volatility.

Why is this relevant? We keep a structurally long volatility position on the trading book as a macro hedge against market dislocations. In periods of heightened market volatility, we benefit from significant positive contributions on the trading side. Due to the fact that the realized volatility was constantly below the implied volatility, we recognized negative contributions from our hedging activities in the second half of 2025. Such a pattern is very rare and unusual over an extended period of time.

Looking at the right-hand chart, the Swiss franc, which was the best performing currency in the G10 last year, continued to strengthen against major currencies. This impacted parts of our revenues given a large component of our client flow is denominated in U.S. dollars and in euro.

Let's move now to Page 7 to look at how these parameters concretely influenced our numbers. Our net income declined by 17% to CHF 178.5 million in 2025. This was on the back of 4 key factors.

First, we had a temporary halt in new business activities with Leonteq's largest insurance partner due to a merger-related shift in priorities. Second, on the structured product side, we saw a decrease in margins from 70 basis points to 59 basis points on the back of a change in our partner and product mix. Third, contributions from large tickets decreased from approximately CHF 14 million to CHF 7 million year-on-year. And fourth, the before-mentioned strengthening of the Swiss franc impacted fee income by another CHF 5 million.

Let's look now at the net trading result, which is influenced by our hedging and our treasury activities. In 2025, the net trading result decreased to minus CHF 3.1 million compared to CHF 21.5 million in 2024. On the hedging side, we recorded positive hedging contributions in the first half of 2025. These were reversed in the second half on the back of the realized volatility which was consistently below the implied volatility as mentioned before.

Contributions from Leonteq's treasury activities were also negative, primarily due to a change in our investment portfolio in preparation of the newly defined business-specific liquidity regime. This resulted in reduced credit risk exposure, but also yielded in lower returns. For the same reason, we extended and used available credit facilities leading to a net interest result of minus CHF 6.4 million.

On the cost side, underlying operating expenses decreased by CHF 36 million or 16% in 2025. I will give you a detailed breakdown of the drivers and also the view between reported and underlying costs on the next page.

Overall, on the back of lower net fee income and a reduced trading result, we reported an underlying pretax loss of CHF 21.5 million for 2025 despite significant cost reductions and renewed momentum in client business activities in the second half of the year. On an IFRS reported basis, which includes one-off charges that are non-recurring in the amount of approximately CHF 11 million, the Group net loss amounted to CHF 33 million.

Moving now to Page 8. I would like to give you more color on the drivers behind our cost base. On a reported IFRS basis, costs are down CHF 25 million or 11%. We reduced personnel expenses by CHF 20 million. This was driven by a more than 50% reduction in lower variable compensation committed for 2025 compared with the previous year. We also reduced our head count by 7% and reduced our contractors by 24%.

Leonteq also recognized lower net provisions of approximately CHF 5 million due to the conclusion of legacy matters. On an underlying basis, our costs went down by 16% to CHF 194 million. This excludes CHF 2.2 million one-off costs in relation to the transition to our new regulatory framework. It also excludes CHF 9 million for one-off restructuring costs which we incurred in 2025.

For 2026, Leonteq expects total operating expenses of approximately CHF 200 million. This slight increase compared to the underlying cost base 2025 reflects 3 factors. First, the planned launch of the retail flow business in Germany, which will require marketing-related expenditures. Second, we expect to see a certain normalization of the variable compensation following 2 years of significant reductions in bonuses for our staff. Third, we further expect certain index-related price increases, in particular on market data services and software licenses. These increases are partly offset by the full-year effects of cost reductions achieved in 2025 and result in net increased costs of approximately CHF 6 million.

Let us now move to Page 9 of the slide deck. Since 1st January 2025, Leonteq is subject to enhanced capital and large exposure requirements as defined by the Swiss Capital Adequacy Ordinance. This governs capital requirements for banks and account-holding securities firms in Switzerland. Simultaneously and effective January 2025, the revised capital adequacy requirements known as Basel III final entered into force. Under this framework, most relevant are capital calculations under the standardized approach for market risks for Leonteq. These were introduced under the so-called Fundamental Review of the Trading Book. I will refer to FRTB from here onwards during the presentation.

Leonteq's business model is largely driven by the issuance of structured investment products with embedded derivatives. Therefore, Leonteq is required to perform capital calculations according to FRTB. Taking into account, the complexity of risk-weighted asset calculations under FRTB, Leonteq was allowed to temporarily apply the so-called simplified standard approach over a phasing period until end 2026.

Leonteq invested significant resources in implementing FRTB, which required substantial changes in systems, data infrastructure and calculation engines. We completed the transition to FRTB in November 2025 and thus significantly ahead of schedule. The implementation of the risk-weighted asset calculations according to FRTB had a material positive impact on Leonteq's capital position. The market risk risk-weighted assets decreased by 16% resulting in an increase in the CET1 ratio of approximately 270 basis points to 16.9% at the end of December 2025.

This is a strong capital ratio and well above the guidance provided with first half year 2025 results. Looking now ahead, we will continue to optimize our capital framework to reduce the sensitivity to risk-weighted asset fluctuations. We also want to maintain an appropriate buffer under different stress test scenarios, and for that, an appropriate observation time period is required.

In light of the reported financial loss and in line with its capital return policy, the Board decided that Leonteq will not pay a dividend for 2025. The Board considers it prudent not to return capital at this point in time. This will allow the effectiveness of measures taken to further optimize the company's capital framework to be monitored.

The Board is determined to return excess capital through a share buyback in early 2027, provided that the CET1 ratio is maintained at a level meaningfully in excess of 15% on a sustainable basis. This is also very much in line with the capital return policy defined last summer, and we are confident that we will be able to deliver also on this ambition.

Continuing on Page 10, let's look at our balance sheet. In terms of numbers, we reported an increase in total assets of CHF 0.5 billion to CHF 11.2 billion at the end of 2025. This is predominantly driven by an increase in trading financial assets on the back of higher equity hedging positions which in turn increased our securities lending activities. Cash and receivables decreased mainly due to a decrease in transaction volumes towards the end of the year.

Our investment portfolio remained broadly stable at CHF 2.7 billion, but the composition is today even more conservative. In preparation for the business-specific liquidity regime, Leonteq shifted its investment approach to higher quality liquid assets resulting in reduced credit stress exposure.

On the liability side, Leonteq issued products increased by 2% to CHF 5.3 billion, underscoring the continued confidence by our clients in Leonteq.

We shifted further certain of our funding activities in relation to the before mentioned increase in equity hedging positions and saw an increase in short-term credit and liabilities by 20% to CHF 2.3 billion.

Lastly, our shareholders' equity reduced by 14% to CHF 0.7 billion. This was predominantly driven by 2 factors. First, Leonteq made a CHF 52.9 million distribution to shareholders in April 2025. Second, the depreciation of the U.S. dollar against the Swiss franc had an OCI impact on our structural U.S. dollar position of CHF 46.6 million. This capital impact, however, strongly correlated with the currency impacts of risk-weighted assets.

Overall, Leonteq has a highly liquid hedge book and runs a very conservative investment portfolio. This puts us in a sound position to manage our assets and liabilities in different operating environments.

I will now turn over to Christian for his remarks on our strategic progress update.

Thank you, Hans.

I have now been CEO of Leonteq for roughly a year. I would like to briefly outline what I found when I took on the role, how we addressed key challenges, and where I believe we stand today, where we're going next.

My first and foremost observation is that with both the existing talent and some new leaders I added when I joined, Leonteq has indeed a very strong team. This team is highly business and customer driven and extremely committed and gives me confidence we'll succeed.

Let us now look at our business model and put this into context of our strategy. Our business model is in fact very simple. Leonteq generates fees by selling structured products through distributors. These financial intermediaries generally distribute these products to end investors. The fees usually are generated by charging margin on transacted volumes. So this is a straightforward business model.

However, as you can see on the left side in the grey box area, we operate a highly specialized product factory for structured investment solutions. This requires highly skilled teams, advanced trading systems and sophisticated risk control. The business model depends on high volume transaction processing, which means operational complexity and execution intensity.

We work closely with financial intermediaries and partner institutions to distribute our products. But in some of these relationships our pricing power is limited, which contributes to margin pressure. To attract more volume to the platform, Leonteq has built over the years a number of additional core services to support the needed growth in fees. In particular, these are: First, different white labeling setups to onboard new issuance partners.

Second, the company started to offer auxiliary services such as accounting, risk metrics, lifecycle management support and regulatory reporting services for its partners.

Third, a SHIP infrastructure was built to allow partners to back-to-back hedge the exposure on a trade-by-trade basis to external hedging counterparties.

And fourth, a powerful digital investing platform called LYNQS was developed.

However, all these services are provided free of charge. So to a certain extent, you can think of all these services in the grey box on the left as Leonteq's fixed cost base.

Over the years, also the operating environment has fundamentally changed. The economic dynamics of the structured products market have steadily deteriorated over the last 15 years, with fee and margin compression, excess capacity, and aggressive pricing becoming the norm. Competitors are increasingly pursuing scale, commoditized offerings, and volume-driven models, all of which have put pressure on industry margins.

In response to these market dynamics, a number of countermeasures were taken in the past. These you can see on the right side in the green box.

First, the number of partners were increased to leverage the existing fixed cost base and to reduce the historic dependence on 2 large partners. Whilst this dependency was in part reduced, it also affected one stable revenue sources as well as margins.

Second, the client base was widened through regional expansion and a significant increase in target markets from 30 to 70, together with a widened client risk spectrum within a few years.

Third, the product offering was diversified which triggered significant investments.

Altogether, these countermeasures led to an increasingly diversified revenue mix with a nevertheless high and increased cost base, but also with a continued dependency on volatile trading results.

As a further challenge, which you can see on the top in the red box areas, increased regulatory scrutiny since 2022 and a lingering reputational overhang have impacted Leonteq's client business and reduced strategic flexibility. Combined with a generally reduced risk appetite, certain counterparties and partners have been limiting their exposure to us. Or the company has itself limited certain activities since the beginning of 2025.

On top, our new much stricter regulatory framework has required major investments in systems, processes, risk infrastructure, and liquidity management, weighing on our profitability and absorbing significant management time last year.

This is why we introduced our ROE strategy, our execution framework to build sustainable performance. Resize parts of the business that are not profitable. Optimize established areas. And expand initiatives with strong future potential.

So the goal is clear: a structurally stronger Leonteq with less dependence on volatile trading income, improved profitability, and more resilient returns.

Let me walk you through how we are executing on this strategy and the progress made so far since last summer. Let's start with the Resize pillar where we're reshaping the footprint and cost base with discipline. We have materially reduced our cost base. Underlying operating expenses are down 16% to CHF 194 million in 2025. We're actively improving the structural efficiency of our organization with 26% of non-sales trading staff now based in Lisbon, and targeting about 30% by end 2026.

We're decreasing our footprint where it is strategically and economically sensible. For example, we signed an agreement to sell our Japan entity which is expected to close in Q1 2026. And we're making very good progress in exiting our pension savings initiative, bench. In the past months, we managed to transfer saving balances of all bench customers to other providers and target the controlled wind-down by end 2026.

In our Optimize pillar, we are strengthening efficiency and capital discipline in the core. We're improving profitability by focusing on the levers that matter most: stronger operational execution, lower capital consumption and tighter control of complexity and risks. We're taking a pragmatic approach here: improve what works, fix what doesn't and remove avoidable friction in our model.

Now most importantly, our Expand pillar. We are building up initiatives with more recurring revenues and a more efficient capital profile and are increasing our total addressable market. This includes businesses like: quantitative investment strategies, QIS; actively managed certificates, AMC; the retail flow business; and LYNQS.

To be clear, this is not growth at any price. It's targeted expansion into areas where Leonteq has a clear right to win and to achieve superior margins.

Let's now move to the next page to back up my statements with concrete data points that demonstrate why we're confident about our strategic trajectory. As you can see on Page 14, we saw an improved client momentum in the second half of 2025 despite all the headwinds we faced. Our client transactions increased by 14% to more than 140,000 and we issued a record of 33,000 products on our platform in the second half of 2025. Also in our home market Switzerland, we increased our market share in structured investment products to 29% in H2 2025.

On Page 15, I want to take a closer look at the regional performance. Net fee income in Switzerland declined by 16% to CHF 39 million in H2, mainly driven by a decline in fee income from the pension savings business. This decrease is related to a temporary halt in new business activities with our largest insurance partner on the back of a merger-related shift in priorities there.

Operations in Europe generated net fee income of CHF 38 million in H2, mainly due to a change in partner mix. As you can see, we had a significant drop already in H1 2025 and are now starting to see a slow improvement from here.

In the Asia and Middle East region, net fee income grew by 38% to CHF 13 million in H2, reflecting the first positive results of the leadership change in Asia.

Whilst obviously our starting point is low, we are seeing positive trends in the second half which continued now in the start of the new year, and we clearly expect revenue growth across all our regions for 2026.

On Page 16, you can see continued progress in key growth areas. In 2025, we consistently rolled out our new generation of AMCs to a broader client base. This offering has attracted considerable interest, especially in Asia, and the outstanding volume had already risen to approximately CHF 0.3 billion at the end of December 2025. That's an increase of 46% year-on-year. Overall, across all AMC products, the total outstanding volume in AMCs amounted to CHF 2.3 billion. That's minus 5% year-on-year. This provided the Group with recurring revenues totaling CHF 28.3 million in the second half of 2025, which is broadly flat versus H2 2024.

This clearly demonstrates the recurring revenue nature of this business, even in a half year when total revenues are down notably.

We also advanced our retail flow business initiative, which represents our single biggest investment in recent years. Leonteq entered the market of listed leverage products in Switzerland in April 2025. As of end 2025, we offered more than 10,000 listed leverage products on SIX and BX Swiss, positioning Leonteq among the leading issuers in this market. With eight months of entering the Swiss market, we had achieved 7% market share in the offered product categories at SIX Swiss Exchange.

At the beginning of 2026, we also received BaFin approval for a license extension in Germany. This marks an important step in the expansion of the Retail Flow business in the German market. We plan to go live in the second quarter of 2026 and are looking forward to a well-executed start that will be just as successful as the one in Switzerland.

And finally, we continue to make progress with our digital investment platform, LYNQS. Major developments included the addition of further third-party issuers on the platform as well as the enablement of QIS for pricing. In the second half of 2025, the number of products initiated via LYNQS increased by 90% to 11,087 products. As a result, our click 'n' trade ratio improved to 33% in H2 2025 compared to 26% in the prior year period. This demonstrates the company's success in shifting trade execution to the platform, particularly for smaller ticket sizes.

Let's now look at our performance from an issuer perspective on Page 17. We saw a strong pick up in demand for our own issued products, which demonstrate continued confidence in our Leonteq product. Turnover in Leonteq products increased by 23% to CHF 7.5 billion in the second half of 2025. Turnover from Tier 1 issuers increased by 7% to CHF 4.5 billion in H2. In this segment, we saw a change in partner mix. This also had an impact on our margins. Turnover from Tier 2 and Tier 3 issuers saw a strong growth by 42% in H2 to CHF 1.7 billion. As reported before, we have revised our acquisition framework and have launched a process to identify an additional high-rated issuer.

So let me wrap up today's presentation on Page 18. We are at an inflection point. Legacy matters are largely behind us, and with the transition to the new regulatory regime now completed, we have full clarity on our capital ratios, and our capital position is strong. This significantly reduces uncertainty and frees up management capacity and resources to focus on our core priorities: strengthening client relationships; onboarding new clients; and growing revenues.

We have already seen a recovery in client activity in the second half of 2025, reflected in higher issuance volumes and increased transaction activity. Client sentiment has improved and flows into Leonteq-issued products have picked up, underscoring the continued confidence in Leonteq by our clients.

Following a year focused on resizing and optimizing the company, we are now in a position to focus our resources toward growth and the expansion of the initiatives defined under our new strategy.

In terms of financial outlook, we expect to return to a positive pretax result for both the first half and the full year 2026 and now expect to achieve our mid-term financial targets in 2028.

The key now is disciplined execution of our strategic priorities. While the transformation will take time, my first year at Leonteq has reinforced my conviction that we have distinctive capabilities and a highly committed team that can deliver progress and shareholder value.

In closing, what I ask of our shareholders and stakeholders is this: judge us by execution and trajectory. Look beyond the unsatisfactory result for 2025. Look at what we have achieved already in a short time. Going forward, look for disciplined delivery of our ROE initiatives and steady progress in our performance step-by-step. The direction is right. The measures are in motion and our foundations are solid. We need the time and support to complete this turnaround and fully deliver on Leonteq's value creation potential.

We have a capital and infrastructure-intensive business. It requires a sophisticated and costly machine. But when run well, it will deliver attractive returns and meet shareholders' expectations over time. I'm confident we're on the right track.

With this, I would like to thank you for your attention and hand back over to Dominik.

Thank you, Christian and Hans for the presentation. We are now happy to start with the Q&A session. We will take the first question.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Daniel Regli from Zurcher Kantonalbank.

I have a couple of questions. First about capital policy. Obviously, you have achieved quite a nice capital ratio of 16.9% by year-end. And you announced a share buyback in early 2027. Should the CET1 ratio remain meaningfully above 15%? So here, I first wanted to ask, can you specify a little bit more what you exactly mean by meaningfully above 15%?

And then secondly, obviously regarding 2026, since you expect a profit, can we also assume that investors will again get a dividend in 2026? And what do you have in mind in terms of payout ratio for 2026? Is it still the kind of 50% you once mentioned, or has anything changed in this regard?

Then my second question on the turnover developments. And I mean, I appreciate you trying to provide more clarity on the turnover, however, can you maybe talk a little bit more specifically about, the old world traditional or historic partners versus new partners? Obviously, I lack a bit the comparability of the new tiring of the partners since partners can move between the different tiers. So yes, can you maybe talk a little bit more about this?

And then also regarding turnover, historically you have always talked about a balance sheet-light turnover. Can you maybe specify how this has developed and in how far this SHIP project from years ago has kind of recovered in importance due to the regulatory transition?

And then maybe lastly, can you maybe talk a little bit about the regulatory legacy points which I think with BaFin you are now kind of settled, FINMA is also settled. So there remains something in France. Can you maybe talk a little bit about the timeline until when you expect clarity on this one?

Thanks a lot, Daniel, for your questions. Allow me to start first with the capital policy and your question with regards to the dividend. As you know, we switched to FRTB for market risks in November. That is just about 2 months ago. Leonteq feels it's prudent and adequate first to focus on the sensitivity of the respective capital ratios over a certain period of time before committing to the capital return policy that we have announced accordingly.

With regards to dividend, we adhere to our guidance provided earlier, that is no dividend with a loss-making result. And we reiterate the current payout ratio of 30% that was guided earlier.

With regards to the share buyback early 2027, as mentioned, it's important that we observe the sensitivity of the respective ratios over a certain period of time, and we feel it's adequate and prudent then to launch it on the basis accordingly beginning of 2027.

With regards to historic versus new partners, the split that you asked on the turnover side, the major drivers that you see on Tier 1 issuance partner are obviously the historic partners. That didn't change within the last 6 to 12 months. So majority of the respective Tier 1 partner impacts can be really compared with the historic partners. And as you can see, it is clearly our ambition to further diversify as reflected in the increase of Tier 2 and Tier 3 partner activities.

With regards to your question on balance sheet-light. Balance sheet-light turnover amounted to approximately 13%. This is comparable with last year. We will have a continued focus on expanding balance sheet-light activities as part of our efforts to optimize our regulatory capital requirements.

With regards to the regulatory update, I will pass on to Christian.

Yes. On the regulatory side, I mean, first, you've seen, and we've talked about this already before in December, the announcement by BaFin, we closed matters with them related to legacy stuff that was at a low fine. But we then immediately after got an expansion of our license. So on the side of BaFin, everything is resolved and fine.

On the side with FINMA, we have taken everything they had and wanted us to fix on board. We -- everything has been remediated. And it's all done. And so now on this front, we are -- there's a last audit going through, but nothing is expected here. So that is considered that one done. There is one large -- one other EU regulator where there was a finding in 2023 that was largely -- that was largely with respect to lack of certain processes and certain governance structures. All of those findings that we were told about in 2023 were remediated fully very quickly and are fully remediated. We were also told in that interaction that things -- that nothing new had occurred and been found since, and we are expecting that to close in the future.

Next question comes from the line of Anne Risold from Octavian.

Maybe on the German retail flow business, I mean, over the years -- I mean, it's good you have finally received the license. Over the years, we had -- that was your main investment, and we had previously some figures how much you could contribute. But if you could maybe give us again how much do you expect now that you have the license and kicking in, how much it will contribute to your profitability in the midterm? And what kind of margin do you expect from this business?

One on the -- you mentioned a lower fee from the insurance contribution because of your partner is having some restructuration or merging. Do you expect -- what do you expect on this front? Is it going to restart? Or do you think the merged entity of your counter partner may change their view?

On the -- and then on the governance side, did I understand right that also you mentioned that you described previously the regulatory update. So clearly, on the French regulatory update, do you still -- did you close this? Or do you -- when do you expect to close this with the French regulator?

And maybe one thing on the -- at the beginning of January, the shareholder agreement with Raiffeisen and 2 stakeholder has terminated, was not renewed. Do you expect that it could have any effect on your operation?

Yes. Thank you for the questions. So first on the RFB business. The RFB business so far, and that's just based on what we've done in Switzerland has generated this year around about CHF 3 million of revenues. That's a significant increase versus the prior year and like in the order of magnitude increase of CHF 2 million. And as we said, like we went into the market with only 8 months, we went to a significant number of listed products, achieved sort of like #3 player in the market. That is a very significant achievement here.

And looking at Germany, which is a much larger market, we think this is going to be a very, very good success for us. We're looking forward to it. But what are the drivers? Why do we believe this? We have probably the best team, most experienced team in this space on our platform. They joined us a few years ago. They built a tech platform, which is absolutely market-leading. And this business is largely -- there is a lot of technology drive in this business. So having a leading top-notch tech platform that has all the experience of 30 years of these people built into this platform and the experienced people on board with our execution strategy there, we expect this to be a very successful start. And altogether, the RFB business this year is budgeted to deliver around CHF 8 million of revenues. That's a significant increase.

You asked about margin. It's a high-volume business with low margin. But again, tech platform comes into play and becomes the real strength here because the ability to handle large volumes, low-margin product still, in the end, generates significant revenues, and we have a very positive outlook for the medium to longer-term for this business, which obviously goes into the double-digit revenue region.

Then with regards to our major insurance partner, [ indiscernible ], we are in very close collaboration for a potential new product launch in this regard. On operating level, we are in contact, obviously, on a daily basis in this regard. But we also have full sympathy for the respective partner given the legal merge that the priorities are short-term different.

With regards to expectations for 2026, we expect a comparable revenue contribution in 2026 as for 2025, excluding effects of a potential relaunch accordingly. Why do we expect the comparable revenue contribution? Whilst certain policy cancellations every year are standard and hence, the number of policies are expected to slightly decline without a relaunch of new products, the AUCs given the premium inflows will increase and herewith lead to a stable revenue contribution. We are highly committed to that large insurance partner and looking forward to relaunch additional products, but have full sympathy and full support for the interim period for the merger requirement adjustments.

With regards to French regulator, I will pass on to Christian.

Yes. I mean, this was effectively part of my answer to Daniel Regli's question earlier. When I referred to a large EU regulator, again, as I said, as answer to that question, we have remediated everything that has been asked for. We've been told there have been no new findings since the original raising of the issue in 2023. And as I also mentioned, we expect this to close in the future. I cannot comment on timing because the regulators work this their way, but we look forward to this being closed.

Lastly, your question on the shareholder agreement, we do not expect that to have any impact to say. Raiffeisen is our main shareholder and remains our main shareholder. We welcome them as our main shareholder. And to the extent they want to stay committed in their investment, we love that, and we'll work with them.

We now have a question comes from the line of Sylvain Perret from AlphaValue.

So I wanted to know whether you could share more details on how you perceive the market environment in the beginning of 2026? Has it become less difficult than in 2025? And if so, what positive market catalysts do you see as having the potential to accelerate the turnover growth and the fee margin recovery this year?

And my second question is on the retail flow business. So considering the good success you already observed in Switzerland and the expertise you are building there, do you expect to launch the business into additional countries besides just Germany? That's all for me.

Yes, thank you for the question. Market environment 2026, I would characterize in short as very different from the second half of 2025. What 2025 second half made it a really rare stretch of a market environment was the consistently higher volatility, implied price volatility versus the actual realized volatility. Specifically in the maturity segment of the products that we offer. That obviously for us being largely buyers of optionality led to us buying at the high price implied volatility and hedging at the lower realized volatility, which caused some of the issues in our trading result in the second half.

That again is a very rare environment and over the years to observe. And if we now look at 2026, we are in a completely different environment. It's been very different. Like, high level, realized vol has been above implied vol. And we're seeing a very active market. So it's a market environment that suits us. That being said, our outlook is it's too early to comment on an outlook for the performance for H1 in trading per se because obviously we only had about 5 or 6 weeks into the new year under our belt. But -- and it also depends, like results depend very much on how flows materialize from the client side et cetera. But we're seeing an overall what I would call healthy market environment 2026.

A question of the RFB business. So I give two answers. So one is, we're expecting to go live in Germany in Q2 2026. And yes, we do have a list of further countries where we intend to roll this out. One major country that's on our list is Italy.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from the line of [ Thomas Paul ] from [ AVP ].

I just have one question on your pension savings business. Did I understand this right? This was slowed down by the merger -- this is probably Helvetia Baloise? And will this pick up now in 2026 or 2027 meaningfully?

Thanks a lot, Mr. Paul, for your question. I mean we are not commenting on single insurance partners or on single partner names itself from that perspective. But with regards to the contributions, the reduction compared with 2024 is two-fold. On one side, we had some extraordinary effects in revenues in 2024. On the other side, we benefited still from the launch of new so-called contingencies, from new insurance policy sets. We do expect that to continue.

With regards to the timing, we are to some extent also dependent on the respective partner activities. But it's clearly a business activity that is close to Leonteq's DNA and that we will continue to invest, also with potential new insurance partners that we target.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Dominik Ruggli for any closing remarks.

So thank you everyone for attending the conference and the interesting debate. We look forward to speaking and meeting with many of you in the coming days and weeks. And we wish you all a very good day. Thank you.