Leonteq Aktie

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.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Leonteq's Half Year 2025 Results Conference Call and Live Webcast. I'm Iruna, the Chorus Call operator. [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, Investor Relations, Communications and Marketing of Leonteq. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the press conference call of Leonteq's Half Year 2025 Results. The presentation material and the half year report 2025 can be found in the IR section of our website. There, you will also see and find the time series data Excel file and the comparison of the analyst consensus versus our actual reported results.

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 and then further discuss the financial performance of the first half of 2025. Christian will then take you through a strategy update for Leonteq before we then move to the Q&A session at the end.

With that, Christian?

Thank you, Dominik. Also from my side, a warm welcome to all shareholders, analysts and media representatives on this call. As you know, I started as CEO of Leonteq on March 1 of this year. The past 5 months have been interesting, sometimes challenging, but above all, highly engaging and rewarding.

I've spent most of my career of 30-plus years in capital markets and structured products, most of it at Citigroup and JPMorgan. And I can certainly say that Leonteq is an absolutely fascinating company in many ways. More about that later. It's a pleasure to be here today presenting the results of Leonteq to you for the first time. So let's get into it.

In the first half of 2025, Leonteq faced several challenges that have been building up over the past years, and I will come back on those later on in the presentation. In addition, the implementation of the new regulatory regime demanded significant internal resources. Uncertainty around legacy compliance matters also weighed on client activity. We are confident that these matters are going to be resolved in the coming months, and we expect this to be supportive for the second half of 2025 and beyond.

In the first 6 months of 2025, Leonteq's underlying profit before taxes was CHF 17 million, which is an increase of 33% year-on-year. We are, therefore, very much on track to deliver on our full year 2025 guidance.

For the first time since 2019, we have also disclosed capital ratios in accordance with the Swiss Capital Adequacy Ordinance. Under the simplified standardized approach, we reported a strong CET1 ratio of 14.4% as of June 30, 2025. This is well in excess of the regulatory minimum requirement of 10.5%.

We've also taken decisive action to restore profitability while maintaining strong regulatory discipline. For 2027, we are announcing new financial targets that underline our commitment to deliver significant revenue growth with a broadly flat cost base. We are targeting PBT of CHF 60 million to CHF 80 million and a return on tangible equity of approximately 10%. The newly defined capital return policy will increase our capital generation capabilities while setting a clear threshold for returning excess capital to shareholders through share buybacks.

I will now hand over to Hans, who will provide more detail on Leonteq's financial performance.

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 of Leonteq.

Let us start on Page 5, please. Our results for the first half of 2025 reflect Leonteq's ongoing business transformation. As you can see on the chart on the left side, total operating income decreased by 7% to CHF 124 million year-on-year. This result was mainly driven by lower net fee income and the reduction in the net interest result, which was offset by a higher net trading income.

On the cost side, total operating expenses are reported under IFRS were reduced by CHF 11 million or 9% to CHF 110 million. The decrease of the cost base stems mainly from a reduction in personnel expenses and lower provisions. Adjusted for one-off costs from the group's resizing program and one-off implementation costs for the transition to the new regulatory regime in the amount of total CHF 2.5 million, the underlying operating expenses decreased by CHF 13 million or 11% to CHF 107 million. As a result, our underlying profit before taxes rose by 33% to CHF 17 million in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period last year.

Let us now look closer at our top line drivers on Page 7. Our overall turnover decreased by 8% year-on-year to CHF 15 billion compared to a very high turnover recorded in the first half of 2024. This reduction was due to a decrease in turnover with our historic partners to CHF 2.9 billion, which was partially offset by a 14% increase in turnover with new partners, which grew to CHF 3.2 billion.

This resulted in a further diversification across our issuers Leonteq worked with. At the same time, turnover generated with own issued products totaled CHF 8.4 billion, corresponding to an increased contribution of 58% compared to 55% in the prior year. This clearly demonstrates the resilience of our own paper and underlines Leonteq's strong franchise.

Looking at the net fee income on the chart in the middle, we see a decrease from CHF 180 million in the first half of 2024 to CHF 88 million in the current reporting period. The reasons were a reduction in margin, a decrease in large ticket transactions, as well as production impacts in some regions due to uncertainty around legal compliance matters, which weighted on client activity.

On the margins, we saw a reduction from 67 basis points in H1 2024 to 57 basis points in the first half of 2025 due to a lower contribution from historic partners, while new partners increased their production. Further, the fee income from large ticket transactions decreased substantially to CHF 2.4 million in the first half of 2025 compared to CHF 10.6 million in the prior year period.

From a new business initiative view, net fee income from the pension savings, fund derivatives and balance sheet-light businesses declined. On the other hand, recurring revenues from actively managed certificates continued to register notable growth in terms of both outstanding volumes and net fee income. An increasing income contribution came also from our new retail flow business initiative, which is set to further expand in the coming years.

Looking at our net trading results, the blue chart on the slide shows that we generated CHF 39.5 million in revenues. This is approximately CHF 30 million more than in the 2 previous semesters, which mainly resulted from higher market volatility in April of the current year.

Moving now on to Page 8. I would like to give you more color on the drivers behind our cost base. Costs are down CHF 11 million or 9% on an IFRS reported basis, clearly demonstrating Leonteq's ability to tightly manage its costs. We reduced personnel expenses by CHF 7 million. This was driven by lower variable compensations, reductions in FTEs as well as further transfer of services to our nearshoring center in Lisbon. Leonteq has now 567 FTEs compared to 583 FTEs at the end of 2024.

Leonteq also recorded lower net provisions due to the conclusion of regulatory matters. At the same time, we experienced a certain cost inflation in other operating expenses driven mainly by IT-related costs such as market data or software licensing. Leonteq's underlying cost base went down by 11% to CHF 107 million. This underlying cost base excludes CHF 1.2 million from regulatory transition costs and CHF 1.3 million for extraordinary resizing costs, as mentioned before.

Considering these developments, Leonteq is well on track to meet its cost guidance for the full year 2025. The guidance remains unchanged, with underlying total operating expenses of CHF 220 million and one-off costs of up to CHF 10 million for 2025 as we continue our resizing efforts and the implementation of the regulatory regime.

Let us now move to Page 9 of the slide deck. I'm glad to provide you the long-awaited transparency about the need for the strong capital base that we have built up in the past years. This is now possible, thanks to the enhanced regulatory capital regime. Since 1st January 2025, Leonteq is subject to enhanced capital and large exposure requirements as defined by the Swiss Capital Adequacy Ordinance, which governs capital requirements for banks and account holding securities firms in Switzerland.

Effective January 2025, the revised capital adequacy requirements known as Basel III Final entered into force. For Leonteq, most relevant are capital calculations under the standardized approach for market risk introduced under the so-called Fundamental Review of the Trading Book, which I will refer to as FRTB from here onwards during the presentation. FRTB, however, comes with a certain complexity and takes time to implement and validate.

As announced at the beginning of the year, Leonteq temporarily applies the simplified standardized approach, SSA, for a transition phase of up to the end of 2026. During this transition phase under SSA, Leonteq applies agreed phase-in levels ranging from 0% to 100% for the market risk scaling factors. At the same time, we are well advanced with implementing the transition to risk-weighted assets calculations according to FRTB. These will replace RWA calculations according to SSA in due course. Based on the first estimates of the FRTB calculations, we expect to report a CET1 ratio of at least 14% upon implementation of FRTB.

Let us now look at the current capital ratios calculated under SSA on the next page. Under the new regulatory regime, Leonteq's eligible capital decreased to CHF 658 million as of 30th June 2025 compared to CHF 740 million as of 31st December 2024. The decrease was mainly driven by a dividend distribution totaling CHF 53 million as well as the strengthening of the Swiss francs against the U.S. dollar, impacting Leonteq's structural FX position. Leonteq's RWA as calculated under SSA remained roughly stable at CHF 4.6 billion as a result of an increase in mortgage risk RWAs due to a 25% phasing of the scaling factors. This was offset by a decrease in other risk RWA on the back of our restructuring efforts on the crypto asset offering in Germany.

In terms of capital ratios, Leonteq reported a strong CET1 and total capital ratio as of 30th June 2025. Both were well in excess of the regulatory minimum levels of 7% for CET1 and of 10.5% for the total capital ratio. This demonstrates that Leonteq has been prudently managing its capital base prior to being subject to the capital adequacy ordinance. As stated before, Leonteq is well advanced with implementing FRTB, which will replace RWA calculations under SSA in due course. Upon full implementation of FRTB, Leonteq expects to report a strong CET1 ratio of at least 14%.

With that, I hand back to you, Christian.

Thank you, Hans. I would like to give you my perspective as new CEO and outline the cornerstones of our strategy to bring Leonteq back to success and shareholder value generation. When I started Leonteq earlier this year, I found a company with strong and distinct capabilities, but also areas that require change. It was obvious that we needed to sharpen our focus, simplify how we operate and rebuild trust. We've moved quickly to set a clear direction and define what needs to be addressed.

Let's take a step back to understand why Leonteq is where it is today. In the past years, the company launched a range of new business initiatives to compensate for an anticipated decrease in margins in the traditional structured product business. Some of these initiatives overall delivered a double-digit compound growth rate, but could not offset the industry trend of the traditional autocolo business becoming more volume-driven. In addition, interest rate hikes in past years reduced the relative attractiveness of our yield enhancement products.

These factors, combined with legacy compliance issues, resulted in the subdued performance in recent years. Furthermore, the targeted regional diversification has not been adequately managed. Finally, the investments in new businesses as well as regulatory-driven staff growth increased not only complexity, but also the cost base. Over the past 21 weeks, we have taken decisive actions to address the situation.

Let me give you an overview on Page 12. We've initiated efforts to restore trust from our stakeholders. I personally met with more than 100 clients, business partners and counterparties and engaged with our major shareholders. Significant work both internally and with our regulators has gone into addressing compliance legacies, and we expect these to be resolved by the end of 2025. The Executive Committee has been reduced from 7 to 5 members to enable faster decision-making and streamline internal processes. Separately, an extended senior management team was established to strengthen leadership and enhance coordination across functions.

Back in April, we also communicated that in view of the upcoming retirement of our CRO, Reto Quadroni, we were well advanced in the search process for his successor. Now I'm delighted that today, we announced the appointment of Eric Finn Schaanning as our new CRO starting from October 2025. On behalf of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee, I would like to extend our sincere gratitude to Reto for his many years of dedicated service as Chief Risk Officer, and I'm delighted to welcome Eric Finn Schaanning as a highly qualified successor to the role.

Another important element that we started to address is that we established a culture of accountability and defined clear responsibilities and goals. The implementation of FRTB is well advanced and will be complemented -- completed in due course. Importantly, we have defined a focused set of strategic priorities and an execution road map for the next 12 to 24 months. These actions will help put us back on a steady and profitable path.

Now before I elaborate on these strategic priorities, let me remind you of what Leonteq is at its core. As I mentioned in the introduction, I've been around for a while, and I've seen a thing or two in the international world of structured products. Now looking at Leonteq, as we've done in a very fundamental way over the past few months, the group clearly has some exceptional features. In a nutshell, Leonteq is a structured products powerhouse with fintech DNA and a large and valuable client franchise. Our USP lies in our ability to combine these three factors to generate value.

Let us go one by one to see how we're going to expand on this from here. Firstly, our clients. Today, we have a large client base of mainly private banks, independent asset managers and family offices across EMEA, APAC and LatAm. We serve more than 1,500 onboarded intermediaries who in turn have hundreds of thousands of end clients behind them. We intend to grow our client base even more by accelerating onboarding and also trading more with larger institutional clients. We also have a growing retail franchise in Switzerland and Italy and clearly want to continue expanding our direct reach to self-directed investors.

Secondly, our products. Leonteq has outstanding product capabilities, with its product universe being one of the largest of investment solution providers. We have a fully dedicated structuring, trading and STP manufacturing expertise and derivatives. These capabilities will be in focus for better promotion and wider deployment of our innovative capabilities.

Thirdly, our technology. Our cutting-edge client-facing technology platform provides business partners with front-to-end integrated structured product solutions. Going forward, we will focus on better monetization of our leading technology and wider distribution of digital solutions. I'm convinced that through an effective and efficient combination of these core strengths, we will unlock the true potential of the company.

Let's look on Page 14, how we will do that. We've defined a focused set of strategic priorities and an execution road map for the next 24 months. The plan is built around 3 pillars. We will resize inefficient or underperforming areas of the firm. As you would expect, we have taken a detailed look at our cost base, and the measures we outlined are in support of our overall ambition to keep our costs flat.

However, I would also like to stress, whilst we continue to strive for efficiency, our way forward is focused on establishing revenue growth in a sustainable manner. This is why we have identified areas where we will optimize established activities, and we will expand high potential initiatives. These growth areas are set to be funded through business-generated earnings as well as through optimizing our resources, all with a view of improving profitability, strengthening capital efficiency and restoring trust in the business.

Now let me take you through the measures and milestones that fall under each of these pillars. Resizing first. Leonteq will exit the Japanese market by selling its entity there due to continued loss-making contributions to the group. This is expected to be announced in the second half of 2025. Leonteq will exit bench by 2026, which is one of our pension savings initiatives. We are taking this step as the go-to-market and client demand was significantly below management expectations and plans.

By the end of 2026, Leonteq also intends to have a total of approximately 30% of its non-sales and non-trading staff base located in its Lisbon service center. We already have a total of 85 FTEs in Lisbon, which is equivalent to around 20% of our non-sales and non-trading staff. So in line with our plans, we expect to grow our Lisbon workforce to more than 120 FTEs.

Let us now look at the second pillar, Optimizing. We have identified several established activities which require adjustments to thrive. First, we are creating a more efficient management team, changing global and local sales leadership and increasing accountability across the company. This optimization has already begun in Q2 2025 with the appointment of the new Head of Investment Solutions and of new heads in Switzerland and Asia. We will also increase revenue generation with existing white labeling partners to optimize the return on allocated capital. Also, we have defined a new partner acquisition framework that will help us to identify new partners with the best strategic fit for Leonteq. On the crypto asset side, we have restructured our offering in Germany to optimize RWAs while we maintain our Swiss business in this space unchanged.

We now come to the area where we plan to expand, and which we believe will be the main driver of our revenue growth. First of all, we plan to increase the share of wallet with our clients in areas where we have a competitive edge. Then our business of actively managed certificates, AMCs, has consistently performed well and has continued to experience growth in terms of both outstanding volumes and net fee income in H1 2025. We intend to drive this business forward by implementing a new generation of AMCs.

We also focus on scaling further our platform for quantitative investment strategies, short, QIS. Our QIS platform offers highly customizable index strategies such as volatility target and thematic baskets. Both QIS and AMC are areas where we see significant and accelerating client demand across regions, and both areas are expected to increase the share of recurring revenues for the firm.

We will also deploy our award-winning digital solutions platform, LYNQS, in further key markets. This will allow us to further increase our footprint at a low marginal cost. And finally, we intend to expand our efforts to distribute third-party products. This is an important area of growth, as it will allow us to leverage our significant distribution power with lower capital consumption.

Now in order to enable investors and analysts to better track our performance and delivery against these strategic priorities, we will enhance transparency in our semiannual reporting. We are, therefore, providing further details on our measures in the appendix of this presentation, and we will be disclosing new or amended metrics for issuers, regions and trading books.

Let us look at these on Page 15, where we are unwrapping the Leonteq reporting cube for you. Semiannually, we will provide you with IFRS results, KPIs and capital figures and where possible or meaningful, we will break these down in 3 different views. First, we will continue to disclose revenues on a regional level. This reflects how we manage our distribution capabilities and client franchise in our target markets. Second -- and this is a completely new reporting view -- we will be disclosing revenues on trading book groups. This reflects how we manage our risk exposures by asset class and product groups.

And third, we will look at the issuer view. Here, we will disclose turnover by targeted size of our issuer groups rather than by the time when they were onboarded. This reflects how we manage our multi-issuer offering and credit quality profiles. We are convinced that this will help investors and analysts better understand the Leonteq business and revenue model and better track our performance.

Moving on to Page 17. We can now see how all this comes together. Through our focused strategy to Resize, Optimize and Expand, we seek to deliver a 7% compound revenue growth over the '24-'27 period that will broadly be with a flat cost base. In terms of financial targets, we aim to deliver profit before taxes of CHF 60 million to CHF 80 million and return on tangible equity of around 10% for the financial year 2027.

I would like to emphasize here that this journey, however, is not a straight line, and our revenue growth will not be linear. That being said, we aim for better results in 2026 than in 2025 on the way to our 2027 targets. By delivering on this plan, we intend to be in a position to return excess capital to our shareholders in the future. And you might have noticed that the abbreviation of our strategy, ROE, summarizes our focus in terms of delivering a return on equity to our shareholders.

Let's look at this in more detail on Page 17. In the context of the new regulatory regime and taking into account the estimates we have from FRTB calculations, we are revising and updating our capital return policy. In order to increase our capital generation capabilities, we are setting a new dividend payout ratio while setting a clear threshold for returning excess capital to shareholders through share buybacks.

Concretely, Leonteq now targets an ordinary dividend payout ratio of approximately 30% of group net profits for the financial year 2025 and going forward. This is to be paid out in equal installments out of retained earnings and reserves from capital contributions. In addition, the Board will consider distributing CET1 capital which is meaningfully in excess of CET1 capital ratio of 15% at the end of the financial year. In such cases, excess capital will be returned to shareholders through a share buyback program launched in the subsequent year. Our ambition is to return excess capital to shareholders for the first time in the first half of 2027.

Before taking questions, let me summarize the key points we would like you to take away from today. Despite a challenging first half year, Leonteq delivered an 11% decrease in underlying cost and a 33% increase in underlying PBT. Leonteq is thus well on track to deliver profitable underlying results for 2025. This path will also be supported by a removal of uncertainty stemming from legacy compliance issues. These are expected to be resolved by the end of this year.

Our transition to the new regulatory regime is on track. We have reported strong capital ratios under SSA, and we will maintain a strong ratio when we move to FRTB in due course. We have defined a clear path to consistent profitability over the next 24 months. Delivering on those plans will put us in a good position to return excess capital to shareholders in H1 2027.

I'm convinced that we can do this. Together with our highly capable and committed team, we're reshaping Leonteq into a more focused, solidly managed and performance-driven business. I'm confident we are on the right track.

With this, I would like to thank you for your attention and pass over to Dominik for managing questions.

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

[Operator Instructions] The first question from the phone comes from Risold, Anne-Chantal with Octavian.

To start with, I would like to know on the fee income stream, we have seen a strong decrease in H1. And I would like to know if there was -- or what was the impact of your enhanced regulatory and risk framework on the decrease of the large transaction result and if there is something going forward that could impair large transaction opportunity? If you could also give us more general, an update on what you expect in terms of fee income for H2? That's the first one.

Second one is on the new business initiative. You have, as you mentioned, several initiatives. AMC looks like has been developing very well. Other one, a bit less. If you could give us maybe some outlook from the various initiatives? And maybe also, you mentioned expanding your distribution -- expand distribution of new products issued outside Leonteq. Maybe if you can give us a bit more color, what product or what you would expect in this field? And finally, on the new capital return policy, you mentioned share buyback above a CET1 ratio of 15% or you mentioned a meaningful above 15%. So what is meaningful for Leonteq, if you give us some indication?

So Hans, why don't you take the first one, and I'll take the second and third question.

Sure. Thanks a lot for the question, Anne-Chantal. With regards to the fee income and the drivers for H1, as mentioned, Leonteq was impacted to some extent from the legacy compliance matters and the uncertainty it created for certain of our clients that specifically influenced the fee income in the first quarter of 2025. As also indicated, large ticket transactions reduced from CHF 10.6 million to approximately CHF 2.5 million in H1 2025 compared to the previous year's period.

With regards to your question related to the regulatory capital impacts, the large ticket transactions per se, we do not anticipate that they are impacted from such regulatory changes. It's actually the opposite. We are quite certain that the respective large ticket transactions will stay as they are. What the fact is that they vary from quarter or half year to half year accordingly. On average, we see those that they are rather in the range of CHF 8 million to CHF 12 million. In H1 2025, we saw less in this regard, but we expect that they will come back on a ratable basis as they have come in the past.

Okay. Going to your next question around new business initiatives and outlook here. So as you rightfully pointed out, AMC is not a new business initiative for us. It's a very strong existing one in U.S. as well. And in this space, just to comment on this specifically, we're expecting continued very strong growth. We see it in the market, and we have a very competitive product offering here that we believe positions us right in the center of this dynamic, and we will continue to benefit from the market shifting towards those products.

On the expanding the distribution, that has several dimensions here. One is just our expansion of distribution for onboarding, as I mentioned, more clients and do transactions with larger institutional clients. But then when you specifically refer to third-party product distribution, we have this large distribution network which we currently use only for our own manufactured products. There are very interesting products out there which we will not be manufacturing ourselves just because we don't have the capabilities to do so, but which could be very interesting and will be very interesting to our client base.

And you asked specifically what. So those could be, for example, private equity products. It could be certain quantitative investment strategies that we can't manufacture in-house that we buy from external providers that have a high name recognition and where we can sell those into our wide distribution network, so -- and generate fees this way. And this is a capital-efficient way of generating fees. So that answers this question.

And then I would move on to your question regarding the capital ratio and the distribution of excess capital. We said meaningfully above 15%. That is, the clear ratio here that we're targeting is 15% and meaningfully means that we just want this ratio to be consistently stable above the 15% to then distribute capital. This is the idea behind the meaningful.

I'm no longer at Credit Suisse, I'm at Zurcher Kantonalbank. Never mind. I have a couple of questions, if I may. The first question is on the kind of decline in the volumes with historic partners. And maybe can you give us some additional color on whether this is related to kind of the new contract you're having with Raiffeisen Switzerland?

And then secondly, and more generally, I was a bit surprised by the drop in the product margin in H1. Obviously, given the volatility environment, I would have expected rather an expansion in the fee margin rather than a decline in the fee margin. Can you maybe elaborate a bit on this and whether you might see a kind of a pickup into H2 in terms of margins?

And then third, about your pension savings business. Obviously, you're shutting down this bench platform which you have launched not too long ago, I think. Can you maybe elaborate a bit more and what is kind of the plan for the remaining pension savings business?

And then obviously, thanks a lot for the additional transparency you would like to provide. But first question there is kind of you will stop, as I understand, then the disclosure of historic and new partners as you have done so far? And then second question, can you maybe help a little bit understand how exactly this Tier 1, Tier 2, 3 and third-party issuers are then kind of split among each other? Or can I expect that Tier 1 is, at the moment, still more or less the historic partners? Or is there a bigger discrepancy between the old and the new disclosure?

Okay. Thank you for those questions. Let me take the second and the third question first, and then I'll pass over to Hans to take the first and the fourth. So on the product margin question, now here's the thing with product margins, right? There is a fundamental trend, which is -- and this is something that's been around in the markets forever -- of existing products driven by competition, and technology margins are reducing over time.

Now we did see in the period, of course, where volatility unfolded pretty significantly in -- back in April, we did see an increase in the product margins, but that is normal in the more volatile environments to happen. But then that reverted back to the margin picture that we saw before. And that is on a macro level, driven by this increased competition and technology, which is why we are increasing our client base while we are driving lower-margin product more to electronic distribution means and as a consequence, having a lower cost base against that distribution and while we're focusing on innovation to actually increase our higher value-added products, which we will take to the market with a greater focus. So that's to the product margin question.

And then on the pension savings business, well, we continue to be in the pension savings business, and we actually do continue to come up with new products in this space. It just turns out that this specific product and its design and the context of the distribution strategy in this -- with this product did not prove as it was envisioned originally in the business plan. And at some point, when you realize that with the targeted distribution that you had and the design of the product, this doesn't work out, you also have to call it a day and say we discontinue this one. But it's by no means a discontinuation of our effort in the pension savings business. We are continuing to work on new products there with our partners, and we are continuing to be in this business. Hans?

Thanks a lot, Daniel, for your questions. With regards to the reduction in turnover from historic partners, we built up an extensive ecosystem with more than 10 white labeling partners, 70 different counterparties and more than 1,000 financial intermediaries. This is a dynamic construct in the sense that it continuously evolves. From time to time, white labeling partners might have different levels of appetite for new fundings and/or risk exposures. You see that specifically in the current environment where the fundings offered by the various issuers vary quite widely.

We have seen, at the same time, new partners increasing their turnover contribution by 14% to CHF 3.2 billion. So partially, it was actually also a replacement by historic partners through new partner issuance volumes. And we continue to diversify our partner base. That is, with the recent announcement of Islamic Emirates for Shari'a-compliant products as well as with [ Sandora ] and Mora Banc. To answer your questions more concrete that you asked with regards to Raiffeisen Switzerland, there is no effect from the renewal of the respective contracts in this regard that is visible here.

With regards to the risk or the portfolio approach that we undertake on the partner side by tiering them into Tier 1, 2 and 3. Historically, we have onboarded predominantly a majority of the partners that approached us. As part of the strategy review, we had a closer look and analyzed where we have strategic fits and where we have potential to optimize. And this is we are -- what we are addressing now. So we -- more focus, address the respective partnerships for the mutual benefit.

With regards to Tier 1 partners, we have 5 defined as shown on Page 23 of the appendix of the presentation. This includes next to the historic partners, specifically larger partners where we believe we have substantial growth potential specifically in Europe by addressing that through the expansion of EU issuance programs and in the Middle East and Asia. That said, we also have important Tier 2 and Tier 3 partners that complement the respective services and distribution power that we have for our clients. Does it answer your question, Daniel?

Yes. Thanks a lot. Very helpful.

The next question from the phone comes from Sylvan Pere with AlphaValue.

So I have two on my side. So the first one is on the CET1 ratio. So you guide for the CET1 ratio, sorry, to go -- to be at least 14% post the FRTB implementation. But does that include also the RWA savings from the further business optimization and resizing that you plan? And my second question is on the retail flow business. I just wanted to know if you could provide a bit more color on the retail flow business. You mentioned the fact that it was developing well, but could you quantify it a bit?

So yes, thank you for the questions. I will take the first one, and then Hans will take the second question on the retail flow business. So on the FRTB, we've developed a prototype in absolute record time. I mean, this hasn't been done before for an organization of our size and complexity to develop FRTB within 5 months. We have a prototype, and that prototype gives us an indication of where we're coming out. We now have to test this for robustness and work with our auditors to get it all signed off and ready for permanent use. But we're very comfortable with the model.

And to your question of how the optimizations planned feed into this, the optimization is really something, as you can see, that is part of our strategy for the next 24 months. Some of it will happen over the course of the next month, but still, some of the optimization will be ongoing into next year. As a consequence, as sort of like we are expecting to move to FRTB in due course, it will -- of course, some of the number will be impacted by some of the optimization, but we are comfortable that we'll -- even without optimization measures, we'll be hitting that 14% number when we publish it.

With regards to retail flow, Sylvan, we started, as you know well, first, the activities and tested engine through market making at the BX Swiss, and that went very well and continues to increase in line with the volumes that you can see on the BX Swiss as a very complementary and important stock exchange in Switzerland.

We then started this year, specifically in H1 or actually towards the end of last year with a few products already to list accordingly retail flow products at the Swiss Stock Exchange SIX. So in the meantime, we have more than 3,000 products outstanding at SIX, and we see a continuing increasing demand in this regard. We foresee to expand accordingly in the German market as we have foreseen in the course of 2026 and then beyond to widen that further into Italy in the years to come. That said, we have a meaningful contribution that we expect to further increase.

Okay. It seems we don't have any more questions. Then I'd like to thank all for your attention, but also quickly hand back to our CEO, Christian Spieler, for some closing remarks.

It's been a pleasure to be with you here today on this call. I really thank you for the excellent questions that we received. I'm really looking forward to speaking with many of you in the coming months and years in person and take you through in more detail through what we're doing here. I am really excited about where we are and looking forward to an implementation of our strategy and reaping the rewards and see the results come through. So with that, thank you very much, everybody, and have a great day.

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.