Ayvens (AYV) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon to this ALD LeasePlan Capital Market Day, we have been looking forward to this event. The LeasePlan acquisition initially created a lot of enthusiasm in the market and among shareholders, not least because it propelled ALD chose clear leadership. In a market where scaled is critical. Expectations were set high and rightfully so. For that reason, we share the disappointment that the new objectives you gave Monday have created. Ever since the IPO in 2017, the team and myself have been keen to be transparent and set clear objectives that we have delivered on quarter-after-quarter ever since. That's our track record. A few unforeseen events took place between the signing of the deal in January '22 and the closing of the transaction in May '23. Those wins have had an adverse impact on our initially expected cost base and margin base. The 2 main ones are, first IT investments at the LeasePlan increased very materially in '22, a period where we had no control due to antitrust requirements. John is on top of it. And since the closing of the transaction, but we will take a few more moments or months to take the best decision on the evolution of our combined IT platforms. Second, ECB decided to put a floor to the lease plan advanced internal risk models before the closing and without prior warning, this decision have had an adverse impact on our solvency trajectory. Patrick and John will come back on these 2 unexpected negative items in the presentation. We are certainly not looking for excuses, but it's worth mentioning that since we announced this transformational deal in early '22, the world has changed quite a bit. The aftermath of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have had severe impact on the automotive industry and the macroeconomic environment. Some of those evolutions had a positive impact on our revenues, mainly the used car sales profit. Some had negative impact, mainly inflation on wages and other costs. Taking together all of these moving parts have resulted in distorting numbers and practices in our industry, particular prospective depreciation. So part of the disappointment on Monday is arguably also related to bringing back the business to normality, which we anticipate clearly over the period for '23 to '26. We'll try to show all the clarity on these subjects that it deserves during this presentation. Now having said all this, it is important for me to emphasize that the strong fundamentals of this acquisition of LeasePlan last still fully intact and to reiterate our confidence in the compelling merits of this deal for ALD. The substantial synergies identified will be realized, and the complementarity of the 2 companies remain extraordinary with clear avenues of value creation in a very attractive market. So even with the negative surprises that occurred lately, we would still firmly recommend this transaction to our Supervisory Board if we had to do it today. On top of giving you a better idea of the reasons explaining the diversions between the starting point versus our initial expectations, our aim today is to demonstrate to you that the compelling power of an ALD LeasePlan combination at this junction, and to demonstrate that our confidence in managing the integration and having all the shareholder benefits outlined. Let me present the speakers of today, which you see on the slide. As you know, at closing late May, we announced a new Exco of ALD LeasePlan. It was a great opportunity to select the best talent in this industry at the top of the new group. Choosing amongst the best people in the market is a unique opportunity. John and Berno were obvious selections, and Patrick joined us the first of September. When we closed ALD LeasePlan became regulated on to being a listed group. And with Patrick's background, we now have a CFO that fulfills all the requirements in such an environment. Patrick will be a great support together with the rest of the senior management team to get us through the next exciting and challenging years of integration and development. You know myself and John, well, I hope, but Berno and Patrick will give a short intro themselves when they take the word. So to set the scene for the next hour, let me highlight the strong and positive attributes of the new combined ALD LeasePlan Group. ALD LeasePlan has today an undisputed leadership in an industry, where scale is essential for strong performance. Leadership means that we're always considered by client and partners that we attract the best talent that we offer the best deals in the market that partners wants to work with us before any others, that we have pricing power and actually, that we have a real steer on the future of our industry. ALD LeasePlan are exceptionally well positioned to benefit and capture the structural growth that's ahead of this industry. We has an important role to play in helping our clients and our partners to reduce the CO2 emissions from their mobility. And we're already well underway with the largest owned EV fleet in the world. Sustainability is a great business opportunity for us. Part of the DNA of ALD LeasePlan is a very strong cost culture, and we already have a cost-competitive advantage to our competitors with the best-in-class cost income levels. But the LeasePlan acquisition offers a strong margin and cost synergies, and this will allow us to improve the current levels over the next year, improving our cost competitiveness remaining well ahead of competition in this area. ALD LeasePlan has a very profitable, resilient and compelling business model. We interact with our clients and partners at many levels, which allows us to have a healthy mix of finance and service margins. We have a history of very long-lasting relationships and long contracts, which makes this a very predictable, resilient business with sustainable high returns. ALD LeasePlan has, in the last 30 years, never had a loss. On the contrary, both businesses has shown a continued improved growth and profitability. I've been in the senior sector role within ALD for more than 20 years, have been part of the journey over the last years, including the different crisis. And I have seen how resilient this business is also in adverse times, where we have kept growing, while managing our risk very tightly. This leads me to share with you the agenda, which we will detail what I just went through. The fundamentals of our business model in a very attractive and profitable industry, our strategic ambitions up to 26 and beyond, how we create strong value through the combination of ALD and LeasePlan. And here [ I want to ] give you a detailed deep dives into particular areas that can have significant impact on our future strategy and performance, and of course, our financial trajectory up to 2026. After the coffer break, we will take all the questions you may have in a dedicated Q&A session. We expect that there is people in the room, who is not so familiar with our business and industry. So I want to start by giving you some of the fundamentals of our business model and the industry that we operate in. It's a very attractive industry and us being a clear leader gives us an incredible power and a strong position vis-a-vis compensation. We make mobility easy and affordable for our clients, which are large corporates, SMEs and consumers. We buy the vehicles they want. We are independent from any manufacturer. We provide all the services, infrastructure and advise that they need over the period, where they have their vehicles. Sometimes we also provide other transportation means to fulfill even more mobility needs for our clients. In essence, ALD LeasePlan is an independent one-stop mobility shop for our clients. When the contract ends, historically, we would sell the vehicles. But more and more, we sent the vehicles onto another contract, a second live lease, which allows us to prolong the lifetime of the assets in our portfolio, creating another round of margins and typically lower the residual value risk. The advantages are many for our clients. Think about it in this way. Our clients have only 1 place to go, when it comes to the vehicles and mobility. We take care of the service, the maintenance, the tires, insurance, the fuel, electric charge, and in fact, everything. We also cover all the risks associated with ownership of vehicles as well as the service and maintenance. It gives for our clients full predictability of their total mobility cost as our rates are fixed over the term. It gives them very competitive mobility costs based on our superior scale, our operational excellence, our strong procurement power and our very good credit ratings. It gives them access to clear reporting a unique sophisticated and independent advisory around mobility. All this across the globe in more than 44 countries. For ALD LeasePlan and our shareholders, it's a unique model that allows superior margins. We get a margin on the financing of the contract. We get a margin on every single service that we provide. And due to the bundling of their finance and the services, we create long-lasting client relationship and actually a constant opportunity to add new services and margins. And as a monoline business, the risk are very limited, well defined, and we believe very well managed. John will give you a specific insight into how we manage our residual value risk, which is the most important risk we carry. Let's talk a bit about the industry. We have an attractive business model, very well positioned in a highly attractive industry that has been growing fast over the last years. As already mentioned, it is a structurally high return business based on the bundled services we're offering, all underpinned by the highly industrialized, digitized and scalable processes. The inherent client stickiness and very long client relationship delivers a very predictable high margin over the cycle. As already mentioned, this industry has gone through different cycles, still growing while prudently managing risks. As the industry is anticipated to have strong growth going forward, we will see probably more on new competitors being interested in our market. But it is, in fact, an industry with quite high entry barriers. First of all, scale really matters. You need bespoke systems and organization to transact the business to the required high client expectations and operational excellence to achieve the cost competitive levels they expect. You need access to competitive funding. And here, it's clearly a strong edge to be a bank. You need to be able to offer your harmonized services globally across countries and regions. And looking into the future of the transformation of the mobility sector, the need for investments will be substantial. And only the companies with sufficient scale will be able to sustain this, which is a good transition to the next slide. The mobility sector is impacted by several longer-term megatrends providing very interesting opportunities for us going forward. The last year's acceleration of electrification of vehicles and fleets has proven to be a strong growth opportunity for us. Our corporate clients are keen to pursue their net zero emission trajectories, and here, the mobility plays an important role. Our clients needs us more than before to help them do their transition to electric. We are in the forefront of the market with our technologies and advisory tools, covering end-to-end solutions, which positions us very well to continue this growth opportunity. Berno will give you more detailed input on the electrification in terms of product offering and the opportunities we see for us here. We see a behavioral change that gives a variety of interesting growth markets. The SME and the consumer segments are going from usership rather than ownership. This is a future structural strong growth opportunity in the years to come. Obviously, we are the 1 best positioned to capitalize here. In essence, it means that our products and services are going from being a kind of niche to become mainstream. It's very exciting. We also see that our clients, whether they are corporates or consumers, are demanding more flexibility. Subscription will eventually become a larger part of the market. And again, we are very extremely -- we're extremely well positioned with our already existing Flex products and Fleetpool, the largest subscription company in Europe. And finally, we see an increased interest for used car leasing as well. And with 600,000 to 700,000 used cars coming back each year, we have a very strong base to explore this market as well. Our industry will be fully digitized over the next years. Clients are expecting to be able to transact seamlessly and get served 24/7 whatever aspect of our business. First, there's a substantial further operational leverage to be taken and clearly gives a lot of new revenue stream opportunities based on data capabilities. For artificial intelligence, we are already executing several use cases and driving substantial value with data through, amongst others, our insurance programs with [ pay I should ] to drive, pay [ how you ] drive, meaning reduced premiums for our clients and better margins for ALD LeasePlan. At closing, the combination ALD LeasePlan is quite complementary, when it comes to digital. We have developed based on different focuses. ALD having built digital platform, mainly for our partnership business and LeasePlan have a focus on going direct with digital platforms. The expectations from our clients to deliver more integrated mobility solutions is, in fact, not just vehicles, but multi-modality, which means offering our clients way to travel, not only by their car, but all kinds of transformation means. This drives the creation of a more complex ecosystem. We have started the journey already with ALD Move and the strong partner DNA of ALD LeasePlan enables us to move fast in this ecosystem. The size of ALD LeasePlan in the market makes us a very attractive partner for any company, who wants to get integrated into the broader ecosystem. And as I mentioned earlier, everyone would like to work with us due to our leadership. We are sure that there is some interesting partnerships with more service providers and, hence, margins opportunities here as well. Last but not least, as earlier mentioned, a very attractive market attracts more a new competitive competition to our sector. We also see movements in the market through the car manufacturers' quest for putting in place an agency model, meaning that the dealer network will have different roles going forward. Overall, we see those opportunities in these moments that is more than the opposite in terms of new partnerships. ALD being seen as an agent could be one, new car manufacturers needing to establish themselves seeing us as a great channels for that. And in terms of competition overall, our core competitive advantages being multi-brand, funding capacity, having bespoke IT systems, our people and our talent, and being global means that we are positioned to withstand any new or existing competition. With this in mind, I would just like to rev-up on our leadership position, and I firmly believe that we have the strongest business model in the sector. Our undisputed leadership, our powerful global operating platforms and our strong financial profile, no doubt, we are uniquely positioned to create value in a very buoyant mobility sector. Let's now talk about our strategic ambitions going forward. Let's start with ESG. ESG will drive and be embedded in everything we do. I already mentioned that ALD LeasePlan has an important role to play in terms of ESG, and we are perfectly positioned to help our clients to their net zero targets. But it goes further than this, many of the businesses are struggling to find real business opportunities for sustainability. For us, it is different. We consider this area to be a strong business enabler for us in the years to come. And it means having a 360-approach to all areas across the ESG space, where ALD LeasePlan has an impact. First, with regard to the climate change, we believe we could be part of the solution, primarily by leasing more new and used electric vehicles. I already talked about EVs, so not to further comment on that. But secondly, with the large value chain and expanding business model, we have the opportunity to use every touch points throughout the customer journey to make a positive impact end to end. We'll reduce our carbon footprint across Scope 1, 2 and 3 at a pace that is in line with the net zero 2050 climate scenario. We'll also place a stronger focus on responsible procurement and implementing circularity in our maintenance and repair activities. This means as an example, then we will be buying recycled tires and recycled parts for our cars. That means less CO2 emissions, cheaper rates for our clients and better margins for us. As a market leader being listed and regulated, ALD LeasePlan will also comply with increasing regulatory requirements and act with excellent parity and transparency. When it comes to external stakeholders, this implies high standards in terms of satisfaction and also reinforce focus on the ESG credentials of clients, suppliers and partners. We do believe that we can leverage on our undisputed leadership position to shape the future of mobility. But let me put it a bit into perspective. Our global ALD Move 2025 strategic plan had the ambition for ALD to become the global leader in sustainable mobility by '25. Now with the acquisition of LeasePlan, we have achieved that ambitions in '23. And 1 can state that this acquisition has actually been a substantial acceleration of the ALD Move 2025 plan. Now of course, this is much more than that, and of course, it's clear that we need to execute the integration without delay and capture all the outline synergies, first of all. But before we move on, I think it's worth mentioning some of the achievements we had of substantial milestones within the ALD Move 2025, and before closing the LeasePlan acquisition. We secured our competencies in the subscription market via the acquisition of Fleetpool. We industrialized our Second Life Lease capacity. We developed ALD Flex for corporates. We went live with our multi-modality solutions ALD Move. We launched the data-driven insurance products and the connected car capacity. And with LeasePlan came the capacity to serve the fast-growing segment of last-mile delivery. They came with a much more efficient procurement organization and governance, and they came with a strong performing bank that collects deposits, enhancing our funding capabilities. The next 18 to 24 months will be very much dedicated to get the 2 companies fully integrated, secure the synergies and implement a global governance model and build strong operational excellence in our platforms. In this perspective, the milestone just achieved and that I just mentioned are important to have in mind as it means that we are ready to lead the industry through innovation and having substantial building blocks for the future of mobility in place. Now it will be wrapped into strong governance and with an unprecedented scale. The future of mobility, we believe, will be ours. A bit separately, I think it's worth mentioning that the fact that we will actually be getting a new brand, a new name and identity in October, a name and a brand that will underline the birth of a new global leader in sustainable mobility, a name and a brand that will allow our teams to come together as 1 and a name and a brand that will talk to our corporate clients as well as our consumers, a name and a brand that will lead the mobility sector in the coming years. Now let me take you through the strategic objectives that we have set for ourselves for '26. As you will see, we have added a few new objectives. These new objectives are better suited for the change in our industry and to our regulatory status since the closing of the acquisition in May. The first evidence of this is that in terms of growth, we will now be guiding on earning asset growth. And we're anticipating a strong CAGR from '23 to '26 of plus 6%. I would like to stress that we are not revising downwards our outlook. Previously, we were guiding on 6% fleet growth post integration. We have not provided any guidance for the integration period '23 to '26. Our long-term growth perspectives remain intact. The reason why we're now guiding on earning assets instead of fleet is because earning assets are more relevant. Earning assets capture both volumes and prices. And as you know that on top of the recent inflation on car prices, we're also seeing that the transitioning to EVs, which are higher valued than ICE cars. Earning assets, our balance sheet metric, which will help you better monitor the growth of our business. Today, we are guiding on the period from '23 to '26, the integration phase. It is correct that our expected fleet growth is not matching the anticipated growth of the market of 7.7% over '21 to 2030. This is because we have a more targeted commercial strategy, and Berno will give you details around how we see the market in the next 3 years. In the next years, up till '26, we'll be targeting profitable growth, being selective in our approach to the market segments and customers to ensure that we have a strong and good margin in line with our earning asset growth when we get into '26 and beyond. We've also taken the commitment to keep pushing for getting an exciting and innovative Mobility-as-a-Service offering in place in several countries and having at least 200,000 active users on the platform, it's ALD Move. We confirm our synergies of EUR 440 million by 2026, and it already touched upon the now targeted cost income of 52%. We always had a culture of efficiency at ALD. It's part of our DNA, and we always have been the best-in-class before integration. This culture of efficiency will remain a key principle for the combined entity. Our cost income target of 52% for '26 remains the best-in-class in the industry, even if it's higher compared to the 1 we previously expected based on the already inputs given. As we're always transparent in our communication, you can find in the appendix the bridge between both targets, and Patrick will take you to all the details of our cost-to-income target later in the presentation. Sustainability is, as I mentioned, a strong business opportunity for us, and we take serious commitment to drive down the CO2 emissions from our clients, from their vehicles and their fleets. This goes to a large extent through the electrification, and we will be delivering 50% of our vehicles in '26 as EVs. This is well above the anticipated levels in Europe and guidance given by external agencies. We are a people's business, and we know that it's our people that make the difference. In a period of integration and uncertainty for our staff, that comes with mergers like ours. We want to ensure that the employee engagement remains intact and at the high levels that we have been used to. Hence, we take the commitment to reach an employee engagement of 75% in '26. This is an ambitious level given the circumstances around a substantial merger. Profitability at the high end for financial institutions with a 13% to 15% return on tangible equity. Return on equity is a new objective to demonstrate that we are committed to shareholder value. Return on tangible equity is a commonly used metric in the financial sector. We target a CET1 ratio of 12% as we are now a regulated entity. For those of you not familiar with the financial sector, core equity Tier 1 reflects our robustness and how we manage our capital. It's a key metric in our financial management. We promise a dividend payout ratio of 50% for the years to come. Patrick will, again, give you a bit more details later. Now let's have a quick look at what the combination actually means in terms of size and the positioning of ALD LeasePlan. We are, by far, the undisputed leader in our industry worldwide, with an incredible footprint in the main European markets, #1 positioning in nothing less than 29 mature markets, double the size of our closest competitor. We are having the largest multi-brand EV fleet of more than 400,000 vehicles. In essence, it means that ALD LeasePlan is the market for 3- to 4-year-old multi-brand EVs, which, again, gives us a strong pricing power in this segment. Scale is essential, as already mentioned many times. Our procurement power is second to none, buying above 800,000 vehicles here means that we are by far the largest buyer of new cars in Europe. Tires, windscreen, rental cars, et cetera, most suppliers will need to partner with us under the right conditions. And there's no 1 who have a geographical reach that we have and the combined products and services offered by ALD LeasePlan is, by far, the leading in the industry. John and Berno will give you more details around both product offering and our procurement capacity, which are both essential for our integration and for the synergies we have promised. So let's talk about our main products in the coming 2 years, ensuring a fast and successful integration of LeasePlan into ALD. One of the main challenges in a large merger like this one, between ALD and LeasePlan, is to get people strongly engaged and behind the vision and the project. From the beginning, it was clear that we wanted to secure the best value by choosing the best people for the key senior executive roles from both companies. Furthermore, we wanted to ensure that we worked to become 1 in terms of culture and values even before we closed. And we have succeeded very well on both these topics. We went through a very fair and thorough selection process, and we have ended up with a very equal split between ALD and LeasePlan's senior executives in the global leadership team around 90 people. The results is a strong, very experienced, diverse and international team, all ready to get the integration done and reach for the strong visions that we have with our new group. We have also set up a joint working group between ALD and LeasePlan, working on joint culture and values. Eventually, we experienced that the 2 organizations shares a lot in common. In particular, it has been established that we both have had a strong client focus and a performance-driven mindset. Indeed, something that we will characterize the new group going forward. We have been successful in getting our teams and people behind the exciting story for the new group. And in many areas, we are already acting as one. The extraordinary commitment from the teams across the group will be a great enabler in our integration in the next months to come. And I can confirm that 4 months after closing, our ambitious integration program is well on track. Back in April '22, we set up the integration management office, which has been the backbone of outlining all the details in this integration plans for the countries and the central functions. This is a sizable organization within the organization. A value capture stream also under the IMO has been identified -- has identified, qualified and quantified all the synergies and the cost to achieve. The IMO will remain in place to manage the ongoing integration, which will allow the rest of our organization to run the daily business, ensuring that we continue superior client service and keeping the daily business under control. We have already achieved very important successes in key areas. We today have 1 team facing shared clients, and we have received very good feedback from our clients. We have now already bonus improvement agreement in place with most of the OEMs and other partners. We have launched the first RFPs, and we have new agreements in place with global contract partners in key countries. In terms of governance, it's strong. And we make sure that we follow actually by myself and the entire Exco every 2 weeks our progress, and we have a special committee from our Supervisory Board that also follows the integration closely as well. John will now take you through our integration plans in much more detail. John, floor is yours.

Thank you, Tim. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is John Saffrett. I'm 1 of the deputy CEOs of ALD LeasePlan. As Tim has outlined in the previous sections, we have an ambitious plan for the future of our company, and we have a very well-defined and organized program structure in place to support the effective delivery of those ambitions. In this next section, I'll explain in more detail how we intend to achieve a level of unrivaled operational efficiency and excellence, and how we will crystallize the synergy commitments that you've heard about previously. The ALD LeasePlan program will generate EUR 440 million of synergies by 2026. We reaffirm the commitments we've shared previously with the market, having carried out a more detailed post-close analysis of the opportunity in front of us. Now these synergies are split almost equally between top line margin-enhancing opportunities, notably driven by significant procurement savings linked to our enhanced scale, and operating expense synergies driven by mutualization of our operating platforms. And you'll see a more detailed financial trajectory later on in the presentation. But on this slide, you see the time line for crystallizing those synergies, with a target to have secured nearly 80% in 2025 following the successful progressive delivery of the integration plans across our entities. And as you've heard, we've made a rapid start commencing negotiations with some key suppliers and partners, including OEMs immediately after closing, and we will secure synergies worth EUR 30 million in cash terms by the end of this year alone. Now if we consider the margin and procurement savings in more detail, we've identified that a large proportion of these come from achieving pricing terms on the main goods and services we buy to service our clients, our direct costs. And our starting ambition is to achieve a normalization of terms as a minimum across all categories of spend, including vehicles, service maintenance and repair costs. Now let me give you an example to illustrate this by considering the opportunity on vehicle purchasing, which contributes 25% of the total value creation here. When we review the respective existing terms of both companies, we see and have already crystallized with some OEMs, the value creation across 3 dimensions. The global bonuses that ALD LeasePlan receives linked to our enhanced buying power, buying more cars, the local bonus terms and discounts we can obtain due to an alignment of existing terms at the local level, and an increase in the discounts we can obtain on bulk purchase in preconfigured vehicles due to our plans to expand the volume of vehicles we will buy in this way. Each of these elements is relatively simple for us to execute, and the early synergies we have secured are an illustration of this. But there are other categories of spend, where the opportunities are significant, most notably linked to leveraging our increased scale and improving our steering capabilities using new digital tools and data analytics. For example, as previously mentioned, we will increase the amount of vehicles we prepurchase and direct to our clients via our various channels, doubling this volume and benefiting from the additional margin opportunity I outlined previously. On average, historically, we have achieved savings of more than 20% when we can use preferred partners for our servicing work. And therefore, we will ensure an increased steering of our fleet to improve our margins using our digital tools. And on large commodities, such as parts and tires, we will target a stronger control on selection of manufacturer here to enhance our profitability across these categories. And a strong historical cost control culture means we are well placed to ensure that we continue to drive the best value for ALD LeasePlan through our procurement scale. And therefore, as you see the power of scale, which ALD LeasePlan creates brings some clear competitive advantage, which can be crystallized efficiently and effectively, and which drive improved financial performance in the medium and long term. And the same scale effect is apparent across our operating platforms, where the combined size of ALD LeasePlan allows us to mutualize processes, systems, real estate and operational functions. Our operational expense savings are built across 3 main pillars. The majority of these savings come from operational efficiency improvements linked to the consolidation and mutualization of our service delivery platforms. Savings from the harmonization and mutualization of our IT platforms and by leveraging the operational scale of Societe Generale in areas such as infrastructure hosting and corporate platforms. And in the area of indirect spend driven by achieving better terms across all categories as well as on real estate. And these synergies will contribute to some key improvements in our operating efficiency metrics, which contribute to the cost-to-income trajectory, which Tim has outlined earlier. An improvement in our IT cost per car to service our clients of 20%, showing the benefit of our ambitious digital harmonization on investment plans, and our ability to manage IT costs, while still maintaining our ambitions to be best-in-class in terms of digital service levels to our clients. And a car to staff ratio improving to 300 cars per FTE, a 15% improvement versus the combined ratio at the end of 2022 to reaffirm our position as the most efficient platform in our industry and with the cost-to-income level, which is best-in-class. Patrick will share more information on this later in the financial trajectory. And even during the integration coming from a higher starting point, these synergies will contribute key improvements in our operating efficiency, which contribute to that cost-to-income trajectory Tim has outlined earlier. Now I'd like to take an opportunity here to cover the increased IT costs, which we know has caused some anxiety to all, and has had a negative impact on our cost-to-income at this stage. In 2019, LeasePlan began an extensive technology program to upgrade their existing systems and to digitize their core processes to address the growing competitive demands of the industry. During the period between signing and closing, under antitrust rules, ALD were not allowed to monitor or intervene in that program, and therefore, the project continue to be driven solely by LeasePlan management. However, upon closing, it was 1 of the first priorities to review this program and assess how it could support ALD LeasePlan in the future. And following these first reviews, we see a significant increase in spend compared to what was anticipated in January 2022. Whilst the program continues, we have put some additional controls around spending to enable us to carry out a more accurate assessment of the benefits of this investment. And this is being done as part of our global digital architect to definition for LeasePlan, ALD, to assess how all of our digital assets can best be leveraged going forward. Now we continue this review of our combined existing platforms to define that target digital platform for ALD and LeasePlan. And once we have a clearer understanding of the ongoing costs and benefits of these investments, we will update you accordingly. We do, however, anticipate that overall IT costs will reduce further once we have completed our review. But we should reemphasize our ambitions to deliver best-in-class digital service to our clients at competitive digital cost levels in the medium term. And our target digital architecture, including some of the LeasePlan systems, which look extremely promising, will be defined and delivered with this ambition in mind. In conclusion, we remain very confident of our ability to deliver these synergies over the course of the program. And to build on what has been presented earlier, let me just give you a more detailed view of what the integration program looks like operationally at the country level. Here, you see the main highlights of the integration plan for our biggest entity in France, over 600,000 vehicles and 1 of the largest European vehicle leasing entities on a stand-alone basis. A clear governance has been established with the Country Managing Director and local coordination management team now operating the business on a consolidated basis. An ongoing open and transparent dialogue with our key asset, our employees, to ensure that they understand and buy into our ambitions. A clear communication plan with clients to establish a single point of contact for them to deal with as well as with our key suppliers and partners. As you would expect, a laser-like focus on securing those synergy commitments made now outlined on the previous slides, and IT operational integration plan, which has been defined in detailed pre-closing, has been rectified and is now in progress post closing as well as real estate plans being confirmed. And finally, a rapid rollout of the Societe Generale Group Risk and compliance management framework to ensure we keep the business secure and safe during the integration process and beyond. As a management team, we have full confidence in the execution of our integration plans and the management teams we have put in place, and it's why we are confident to reconfirm our synergies ambitions to you today. I will now hand you over to Berno, who will tell you how this scale translates into a power of choice for our customers. Berno?

Thank you, John, and good afternoon. As I'm new to this team and have not met all of you allow me to introduce to you myself. My name is Berno Kleinherenbrink. I've been with LeasePlan for 22 years. Initially as country CEO for the Netherlands business and since 2016 as a member of the Executive Committee responsible for commerce in a cluster of countries containing France, Germany and the Benelux. Within LeasePlan Netherlands, I've managed the integration of 3 leasing companies into what is LeasePlan Netherland's here today. And when I started in the Dutch business, we had less than 50,000 vehicles, currently, it is more than 5x that size. During my tenure, we have successfully entered the direct SME segment. We pioneered private lease with well over 40,000 contracts today and created a complete online services suite for our drivers. I'm honored to be a management board member of the combination ALD LeasePlan, and to share with you the choices we have to offer to our customers. And coming from LeasePlan, we've seen this merger as a huge strategic opportunity. And as Tim explained, the integration is progressing very well. Over the past years, we have seen a continued shift from ownership of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles to usership. And when we refer to ownership in this case, we mean outright purchase, car loans and financial lease. Usership is operational lease, flexible lease, rental as well as any form of paper use. Analysis conducted by CVA shows that in 2021, about 2/3 of all new car registrations in Europe were in some form of ownership. By 2030, the percentage is forecasted to be only 40%. And as a result, the market for operational lease is expected to grow significantly at an average growth rate of close to 8%, or from 4.9 million registrations in 2021 to 9.5 million in 2030. The more traditional operational lease segments, corporate and SMEs, will continue to grow both at approximately 6%. And in particular, the private lease segment is expected to increase dramatically from 1.8 million to 4.2 million vehicles. The growth in the private lease segment is driven by the overall trends from ownership to usership as well as a better understanding of the true cost of owning a vehicle. Currently, consumer demand has slowed down due to economic uncertainty and high interest rates, but we expect that to pick up again in the second half of the period. The transition to electric vehicles is another factor that enhances demand for operational lease from private individuals. The demand for operational lease for light commercial vehicles also continues to grow, in particular, in the SME segment. And the shift from ownership to usership is even stronger to an accelerated shift towards electric vehicles as major European cities are contemplating restrictions on diesel and petrol vans driving into congested urban areas. ALD LeasePlan, as a combined entity, has tremendous competitive advantage in almost all segments of the traditional lease market. The merger brings together ALD, leading in the partner channel, and LeasePlan with a superior position in the corporate segment. In this overview, we've highlighted in the blue color, where we and our customers believe we have a best-in-class competitive advantage. As you can see, for virtually all of the items crucial or important to customers in a selection process, we're best-in-class. We offer a full coverage of all available make models in the market, superior consulting skills, a very compelling energy transition support model, digital solutions for drivers and scale that allow very attractive total cost of ownership. In the partnership channels, we know what it takes to succeed and spend years in fine-tuning our offer to the evolving needs of our partners and their end customers. Our scale also allows to further improve the curated offer of very attractive pre-configured vehicles. Before the merger, we jointly already pre-bought well over 50,000 vehicles per annum, and we expect to substantially increase that volume. Although we are very well-positioned in the direct private segment, D2C, we will continue to invest to further improve our position, in particular, a smooth digital onboarding journey with superb lead generation and conversing impacts of this allow us to capture this evolving opportunity. ALD LeasePlan have a best-in-class product range that we offer for a broad range of customers. With a global fleet of more than 130,000 rental vehicles, we satisfy mobility requirements that require the highest level of flexibility that can be as short as a 1-day contract. This is not limited to passenger vehicles, but also applies to light commercial vehicles. In Germany, we offer a subscription service via a wholly-owned subsidiary, Fleetpool, corporate clients are requiring more and more multi-modality solutions combining modes of transportation from bicycles, car sharing, trains, buses or a tax-optimized travel budget. And via our Belgium-based entity, skipper, we offer this highly appreciated service to an increasing customer base. Our international key account team serves more than 500 clients, most of which have a truly global fleet. We are the undisputed leader in this segment, where we continue to invest to meet the evolving needs. Scale and digitization are key components to remaining successful. ALD LeasePlan has operations in 44 countries, and this offers an unrivaled geographical footprint, in particular to our international customers. A harmonized and, when needed, centrally controlled account management program is in place to match the requirements of our customers. And over the years, ALD LeasePlan have built up a network of hundreds of partnerships. New OEM entrants in the European market are keen to partner with us to accelerate their entry into the evolving electric vehicle market. In the past, we've joined forces with entrants like Tesla, Polester, Lincoln Co, Neo, to name a few. And as we speak, our partnership team continue to close new OEM partnerships. The partners we work with are very broad in nature, ranging from banks like Nordea, Sabadell or evidently Sociate Generale, but also car dealership groups, insurance companies, energy providers and, of course, plane and straightforward brokers. This provides ALD LeasePlan an excellent access to even the smallest of capillarities in the markets we operate in. I would like to show you a few testimonials. [Presentation]

As an example, I would like to dive a bit deeper into how we lead the way to sustainable mobility. Over 90% of our corporate clients see electrification as the #1 fleet strategy topic. We have a very powerful program in place to support this transition. Our consultancy teams are trained to provide the right advice about the optimization of car policy, total cost of ownership and CO2 footprint for our customers to achieve their ambitions. And we do not limit our offer to the car only, but have created a full end-to-end solution containing home charging facilities and charging cards that allow free roaming and international use. Monitoring the use of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles is available in case our customers appreciate this additional service. By 2026, we expect that half of new registrations will be electric. ALD LeasePlan have recently established a joint venture with ChargePoint, which offers full end-to-end solutions and allow us to tap into the attractive roaming value pool. This makes it all very simple to choose electric, and we, therefore, expect by 2026 to serve 400,000 drivers. As mentioned before, beyond electrification, we offer Mobility-as-a-Service, helping our clients to move from car only to full mobility through our end-to-end multimodal solution. Virtually all corporate customers are keen to offer their staff broader solutions than just the car. Mobility-as-a-Service is the combination of transportation alternatives, whether it's a leased car, a shared car, a bicycle, a train or a taxi. And we offer these solutions often in combination with local partners. By the end of 2026, we target to have 200,000 users of these services across 6 countries. Our commercial strategy is also designed to optimize financial return. In a 3-step program, we're preparing our future growth to ensure solid profitability. We're in the process of analyzing our portfolio on a country-by-country, segment-by-segment and product-by-product basis to determine where we want to accelerate or moderate our growth. In line with the profitable growth potential for each of these specific situations, targets will be applied. Execution playbooks are currently being prepared to support commercial and operational staff in accomplishing these targets. A full continuous business review cycle is already in place to monitor, and where needed, to steer a successful implementation of this program. And part of the margin improvement is upselling products and increasing the surface penetration. We already looked closer at the bundled electric vehicle offer that will tap into new profit pools. And by 2026, we target to have 100,000 of our funded contracts provided with a fully bundled offer, and I already mentioned the 400,000 roaming contracts. Demand for flexible solutions is expected to remain strong. ALD LeasePlan offer various solutions, of which several comprise of used cars that have reached the end of their lease term. And as such, we offer both flexibility and affordability. Flexible contracts are more profitable, but require a different skill set to manage. The main focus is on utilization rate and short turnaround time. Also here, we have powerful playbooks in place that apply smart combinations of owned and new used vehicles -- new and used vehicles. And we combine that with third-party rentals to accomplish world-class utilization rates that in some markets are well ahead of 90%. By 2026, we target to have at least 10% of all funded contracts to be flexible. And light commercial vehicles is another opportunity. The margins, on average, are better there for passenger vehicles and the required capital we need to hold is lower. By 2026, we aim to have 750,000 light commercial vehicles in our fleet. And also here, an implementation playbook is available that has proven to be successful over the past years, in particular in the U.K. Back to you, John.

Thank you, Berno. Excuse me. In this next section, we want to give you an insight into our global risk management framework with a particular focus on residual value asset risk management, which we know is an area that could be challenging to understand and predict when viewed externally. We will illustrate how our extensive experience, knowledge and data in this space allows us to manage and mitigate this risk in an industrialized fashion. This slide provides a summary of the key elements of our approach to risk management. As a core business of Societe Generale, ALD LeasePlan benefit from expertise, support and platforms to manage the effective implementation of the appropriate risk and compliance policies. And now with our enhanced status as a financial holding company, we will further strengthen this framework and benefit from the enhanced supervision and oversight for the ECB. This compelling combination should give our investors significant comfort on the maturity of our risk management practices. There are 3 main risk categories, which impact our business, residual value risk, which I will cover in more detail shortly as the main risk we manage in our operating model today. Credit risk where we adopt a prudent underwriting approach to our client portfolio, with a significant share of our business focused on large corporate and international accounts, especially in less mature countries and regions. And you shouldn't forget that our ultimate ownership of the vehicle asset means that even during peak financial crisis, we only experienced a minor increase in our cost of risk. And in fact, we have an extremely low average over the last 10 years with a cost of risk circa 25 bps. And ALM risks, which Patrick will cover, when he guides you through our approach to funding, but where we have limited exposure due to our shorter-term matched funding approach. Therefore, I want to focus your attention on residual risk, and guide you through our approach, which, at a high level, consists of 2 primary controls and a series of global and industrialized operational mitigants to manage this risk. Firstly, I want to ensure we have a common definition of what we mean by a residual value, an estimated value of a specific vehicle asset at a defined point in time in the future based on a contracted age, mileage and condition. Let me elaborate a bit further on this. The future value of a specific car, make, model, specification and options. At a future point in time, considering prevailing market conditions, model life cycle factors and taking specific age and mileage related conditions into account. It is set at the individual vehicle level using our industrial knowledge, our data analytics capabilities and close-linked with all of the stakeholders in the industry built over a long period of time. And obviously, our first control is indeed to use this extensive pricing knowledge and experience developed over 30 years of setting the correct value at the point at which the asset first hits the ALD LeasePlan balance sheet. And there are significant operational controls in place at the country and global level to ensure these pricing points are respected and cannot be adjusted for commercial reasons. Then at regular intervals, during the life of the contract, we apply a revaluation on that asset to ensure that the forward-looking value is still valid, taking revised market contact and conditions into account, if necessary. This fleet revaluation is controlled by a central team, who apply a rigid methodology in assessing the price of these assets taking into account some local dynamics and specifics, where necessary to form a robust opinion of the likely resale value of the vehicle at the end of the contract. And as you've seen, if an adjustment is necessary, particularly in the event of an anticipated loss, we will begin to book additional depreciation on the affected vehicle on a monthly basis to offset any anticipated end of contract loss. Now historically, we have not booked future-looking profit, taking a prudent approach to profit recognition. But in the recent context of strong used car results, we've been required to take some of these profits on assets due for sale in a short forward-looking time period. And we will take you through a working example of how this impacts our financial reporting later on. It's worth noting that this revaluation process can take into account specific dynamics such as Dieselgate or EV pricing volatility in order to apply additional stresses on vehicles where we foresee uncertainty. And this is then treated from an accounting perspective in the same way. In fact, the Dieselgate scandal provides a good reference for the robustness of the control framework on our pricing expertise, noting that in the years following Dieselgate our used car sales performance has been strong and profitable. And the EV revolution offers another opportunity for us to leverage our cross-enterprise expertise to bring together internal and external representatives covering all areas from pricing, commerce, operations and remarketing to develop a strong and accelerated understanding of the dynamics in this area. And accelerate our information, acquisition and knowledge in this new exciting market. With the largest wholly-owned EV fleet in the world, we'll be learning about the pricing dynamics on leased vehicles faster than anyone else, and hence, be able to adjust our price positions in advance of the market. Now finally, as you would expect, we also developed some very strong operational mitigants to allow us to manage this risk on a day-to-day basis. Firstly, we have an industrialized contract modification capability. This allows us to modify the current portfolio of contracts with clients and make appropriate adjustments to the accounting values where necessary, within a set of defined parameters agreed with the client. Secondly, and most importantly, we have a global industrialized remarketing capability, which allows us to sell or release our cars across more than 30 countries via a variety of channels, often simultaneously, to achieve the best price or outcome for ALD LeasePlan. This capability, built since 2009, which is, in fact, the last year that we recorded a loss on our used car sales performance, provides us with a digital in-house platform on which we sell more than 600,000 vehicles to more than 24,000 active traders. And it represents a significant strategic asset to allow us to maximize the value of the car at the end of the contract, and we continue to invest in data and artificial intelligence technology to help us to continue to drive performance on this platform. And finally, we intend to improve this performance even more by increasing the share of exports, used car lease and retail sales in the coming years, which has historically provided an improvement of up to 20% over the normal trade sale price of the vehicle. Now this control framework is overseen by a robust governance consisting of internal and external stakeholders, including the executive committee, the Main Board and Risk Committee of ALD LeasePlan, and of course, our external auditors, who review our approach to ensure it is at the appropriate standard. We trust this gives you a reasonable oversight of how we approach residual value risk at ALD LeasePlan, and the robustness of our forward-looking used car performance. I'm sure you'll have questions, and we'll be happy to take more questions on this later. But in the meantime, I hand over to Patrick, who will take you through our financial trajectory. Patrick?

Thank you, John. Hello, everyone. My name is Patrick Sommelet. I'm Deputy CEO and CFO of ALD LeasePlan. I'm very excited to be with you today and to tell you a bit about my background, I've been with SocGen for the past 20 years after having worked on capital markets and merger and acquisition for HSBC and Merrill Lynch. At SocGen, I've had several positions, mostly in the financial department, Head of Investor Relations, CFO of Boursorama for 6 years, and most recently, Deputy CFO for the ALD Group. I have taken this new role at the ALD LeasePlan since the 1st of September. So moving to Slide 36. The performance of ALD and LeasePlan has historically been strong and resilient. However, I remind you that over the past 2 years, our results have been boosted by a very specific environment. Indeed, COVID and the war in Ukraine disrupted the production and logistics chains for quite a long time. As a result, new passenger car production in Europe was down 27% in 2022 in average versus 2019. Today, the cumulative shortfall of new cars amounts to 12 million in Europe. This situation impacted the used car market leading to both company to register exceptionally high used [ share ] [indiscernible] since 2021. In addition, in accordance with IFRS accounting rules, both companies had to adjust higher the level of their car fleet, leading to reduction in depreciation cost with strong impact on quarterly results for both ALD and LeasePlan. As you can see on the chart, reduction in depreciation costs and exceptionally high used car sales results amounted to 23% to 24% of total revenues in 2021 and up to 41%, 42% in 2022 versus only 5% in normal years before 2021. All of you know that this exceptional environment cannot remain forever. We believe it will progressively normalize, and we have taken this into account in our financial projections with prudent levels of used car sales results per car for years '24, '25 and '26. This does not mean that we will not have used shares profit in the next years, but that these profits will progressively normalize towards lower levels. The same parameters have also been retained for the PPA exercise, the results of which will be finalized by the end of this year. I will come back to that in a minute. On Slide 37, we see our macroeconomic scenario, which takes a view that inflation start from a high level in '23, admittedly, and then should decrease in '24. So between 5 and 6 in '23 and between 2 and 3 in the following years. We anticipate GDP growth to be moderate in '24 and auto yields between 0.5% and 1%, in line with the various scenarios on the street. In this environment, interest rates should progressively decrease, while staying higher than pre-COVID levels, around 3% in '24 and between 2% and 3% after. Operational leasing demand in our businesses should remain strong despite the effect of higher interest rates on credits and lower GDP growth driven. And this trend should be driven by the structural trend from ownership to usership that we have talked about. As I was saying, we anticipate a progressive and slow normalization of UCS results and an acceleration of the transition to EVs. On Slide 38, we talk about our funding strategy. Access to funding is key in our business. We anticipate that the recent rating upgrades by the main agencies obtained following the closing of the acquisition in May '23, will provide us with greater access to the market and to a larger pool of investors. Moody's is reading us A1 since closing. It's a new rating. Fitch and S&P rate the group A- up from BBB at S&P and BBB+ at Fitch. LeasePlan was investment grade, but had a lower rating. These ratings are today the best of the industry. Our target funding structure is the following. Total funding should come at 25% to 30% from Societe Generale. The amount of funding provided by [indiscernible] increases a bit, but moderately as LeasePlan comes in our balance sheet with a sound funding strategy. 25% to 30% would come from the issuance of bonds. ALD and LeasePlan are established market issuers, including of green bonds. 10% should come from loans from commercial banks, 10% from securitization and 25% to 30% from the deposit base of this plant in Netherlands and in Germany. All of these funding levels are already up and running and functioning well. There are no projects and these are not project to be developed. We intend to grow our [indiscernible] asset by 6% per year between '23 and '26. This imply annual senior bond issuance of EUR 4 billion to EUR 5 billion per year, new securitization transaction of EUR 1 billion to EUR 1.5 billion per year and a reasonable growth of our retail deposit base by EUR 1 billion per year from EUR 11 billion today. On Slide 39, I would like to say a few words about the ongoing PPA exercise and opening balance sheet for the new co. IFRS rules for the accounting of acquisitions leaves the buyer up to 1 year to compute the opening balance sheet of the new company through a purchase price allocation exercise. Depending on the fair value assessed by the buyer of acquired assets and liabilities, this exercise can have an impact on the goodwill and the transaction and lead to account for potential amortization of new assets created. We expect to finalize the exercise by the end of '23 with 2 main items to be a fair value. The future value of LeasePlan cash flows, which includes the value of the leasing contract, the service revenues and costs on 1 side, and the residual value and an intangible asset related to the value of the customer relationship on the other side. We have no final clarity today about this exercise, but we do not anticipate major impact at the principles and policies applied by both companies are similar. The approaches to vehicles valuation are very consistent with similar and prudent future UCS profit curves. In both cases, it is assumed a significant and regular decrease from 2023 levels. The creation of an intangible assets does not have an impact on our CET1 ratio as it replaces goodwill, which we've already deducted. And the amortization of this intangible asset has been included in our financial trajectory. UCS profit assumption for the PPA in '26 are at around 20% of current levels at ALD. This is very important because 1 should not anticipate that the acquired fleet is mark-to-market at current very elevated UCS profit levels, leading to very important positive impact. Instead, our fair value is based on the anticipated UCS, when we sell the car 1, 2 or 4 years from today. On Slide 40, the main items of our financial trajectory for [ '23 to '26. ] As already mentioned, we target a growth in earning assets from -- of 6% per year from '23 to '26. This will be achieved, thanks to prudent development of top-line margins and supported by selective growth on our most profitable clients and segment, as commented earlier by Berno. By '26, we expect to have a cost-to-income ratio of circa 52%, which represent a 4-percentage-point decrease compared to the pro forma level observed in '22, adjusted for the exceptional items impacting 2022 numbers. And for that, we have provided you in appendix with the combined income statement for both companies in '22 to help you understand and reconcile the underlying financials of the new firm. As you will see, exceptional items are distorting financial performance, the first of which being the elevated levels of used car sales profit. We are well aware that this new guidance is less ambitious compared to what was previously communicated. We acknowledge and share your disappointment. But nevertheless, I would like to state that ALD LeasePlan remains best-in-class in terms of efficiency and will deliver attractive industry-leading profitability. There are 2 main items, which explain the variance in our cost income estimated for '26. First, the increase in the price of car further to the war in Ukraine, which inflates our earning assets. It initiated more than we had previously assessed. Therefore, the corresponding increase in risk-weighted assets has upside the debt instruments needed to comply with capital requirements, which ultimately weighs on revenues. Then, and as mentioned by John, LeasePlan IT investments, which we looked at during the due diligence, increased materially in '22 in the interim period between signing and closing. Since closing, we have had better clarity on these investments and are taking action to review them. Taking all this into consideration, our cost-to-income is expected to remain the industry standard in terms of efficiency. It is also important to bear in mind that this cost income is computed using only the leasing and service revenues and that we are excluding use case profit from the competition, unlike some of our competitors. This means, obviously, that cost-to-income ratios are not directly comparable. Our cost-to-income will reflect the benefit of EUR 440 million of annual synergies, which will progressively materialize into our P&L [indiscernible] '26. You see on the chart, the phasing of synergies as well as cost to achieve the integration of LeasePlan. Our return on tangible equity will range between 13% and 15% in 2026, which represents undoubtedly a very attractive level for our financial services company. On Slide 41, we see how we get from the [ 56 ] pro forma '22 levels to [ 52. ] First, leasing margin will improve on the back of increasing earning assets, supported by a reasonable fleet growth and still some car inflation -- car price inflation. This will improve the cost-to-income ratio by 9 points. Then we have the effect of synergies, which represent a 10-point improvement. On top of that, we has the adverse impact of the cost of the regulatory capital structure and the increase of funding costs, which comes from higher interest rates. In total, this represents an adverse impact of 5 points. The inflation and overheads expansion on volume and cost of being regulated in the 4 years combined, represent an increase of 10 points up. This represents, before synergies, an increase of roughly EUR 300 million, of which 2/3 comes from inflation. The rest of it being split between the costs needed to accompany volume growth and the cost of being regulated for another small portion. You see that until merger, ALD was the most efficient player in the industry on the right side. LeasePlan was well positioned, but we have a cost-to-income clearly higher. The combined entity, once synergies implemented, should be the best positioned player. On Slide 42, I want to come back to the change in guidance we have given last Monday from 47% to 52% in '26. So we have revised this guidance, and let me walk you through the specifics of these changes. Transaction-related impact, including a slight year of synergies, account for a 1% improvement in cost-to-income. The positive impact of car prices increases and fleet growth on our margins represented 3% decrease of cost income. Conversely, the improvement of revenues on the back of higher car prices comes with an inevitable increase in other heads, representing a 5% decrease in cost income. Finally, the main novelty compared to 2022 has been the increase in IT investment compared to what we had estimated during our due diligence. All in all, we record that this change comes as a surprise to you, but we will remain again, and it's important to have it in mind, the industry standard in terms of operational efficiency at 52% from assuring '26. On Slide 43, we take a view of our capital targets. So our objective is to have a core equity Tier 1 ratio of 12% going forward, which translates into a total capital ratio of about 16%. Our capital distribution policy will be 50% dividend payout ratio. It's important to have in mind that at the end of Q3 '23, we will most probably to take into account the risk-weighted assets floor Tim mentioned earlier. This floor has been decided by ECB following the review of LeasePlan with their credit model, and this will lead to an increase of EUR 4 billion of RWA, which is factored in the financial projections we have published. This target equity tier 1 ratio and this target puts us comfortably above regulatory requirements. This being said, I give the floor to Tim for the conclusion.

Thank you, Patrick. So a few key takeaways, and I guess it's time to wrap up this presentation. I sincerely hope that we have touched upon all the areas and questions that you had in mind when you arrived this afternoon. I also hope that we have demonstrated that even if some of our objectives for '26 are not as good as previously expected, our cost-to-income is best-in-class, while our return on tangible equity will be positioned at the high end of the financial sector. So rest assured that our management team is fully committed to deliver. Our integration is well on track, and we will secure the synergies that we have promised. I hope that we have been able to convince you that we have a superior financial profile. And last but not least, that our strong leadership gives us a significant leverage to shape the industry going forward with all the benefit that comes with that. Thank you for your time. We'll now have a coffee. And after we meet for the Q&A session. The break is supposed to be 20 minutes, so I suggest we meet back here 3:45. Thank you. [break]

Let's start with Q&A session. I propose that we take the questions from the participants in this room first. And then we can take the questions from the people, who are online and questions from the chat box. So operator, can you please explain how the people who are connected by phone can ask a question?

[Operator Instructions]

Thank you. So let's start with the questions in the room. So Sanjay, can someone -- mic to Sajnay.

Sanjay Bhagwani from Citi and excellent presentation, by the way. So a few questions. First 1 is on the targets for earnings asset growth? I understand you're guiding for 6% earnings asset growth for the next 4 years. Can you please provide some split between it? How much is it basically, let's say, the funded fleet? And what are you assuming for the average value of the vehicle going up given the mix and everything is benefiting? I'm just trying to assess, it seems to be very conservative given the underlying market for your key segment is growing somewhere around 6% to 7% per annum. So maybe if you can provide some color on this 6% number, what's driving this?

Right. I can start giving maybe a bit more global view on how we see the market, and Patrick can I give you some numbers on what is volume and what is price. So I think -- I think what we try to come across with is that there is obviously a very strong market growth in the next 5 to 10 years anticipated. 50% of that market growth is coming from consumers, the consumer market, which we definitely think is interesting. But in the next couple of years, we do not necessarily believe that, that's where we will have a real bold attack. First of all, the market is a bit below what you expect right now because of the inflation and increase in car prices. And secondly, we have done quite a substantial piece of work over the last 6 months to understand the margin structure of these segments. And the margin is not necessarily supporting, let's say, the returns we expect for the next years. And last, but not least, it's also true that it's a business that is new to us, and we do not necessarily have the operational, let's say, leverage to target that very bold at this point. We will develop those capabilities over the next couple of years. And if you take that growth out of the market, you will see that we are growing in our core segments, being corporates and SMEs, typically pretty much at the market rate. So I think that's important to state that we do look for making sure that we have a profitable growth in the coming years. I think with the size and the scale that we have created by the 2 groups, we do not necessarily see that growth is very important for us, the next call of years. Not saying that it's not like that going forward, but the next couple of years, it's about integration, making sure that we deliver the integration plans and the synergies and then make sure that we keep, of course, our very strong footprint in our core segments where we know the profitability is good. So that's I think how you should be looking at how we anticipate to operate in the markets on the sales side and commercial side going forward. Do you want to give a few words on the...

It's fair to say that also the 6% is a target in 3 years. and it might not be even in each year. We are still in an environment now where the price of cars are very strong and increasing. And if we look at '23 alone, we have very strong asset growth with a slow fleet growth between 2% and 3%. So the 6% should be between 2% and 3% fleet growth and then prices -- inflation in the price, and we see we're starting the budget, '24, and we see that the countries, they have also they see a very strong price increase related to the price of cars in the market, but also to the penetration of EVs. So just to say that it might not be 6% in each of the years, but on average, it should be 6%.

That's very helpful. A follow-up on the returns of these earnings assets. So I understand at this point, you make somewhere around 6% to 6.5% leasing contracts for services margins on the earnings assets. How do you feel about the trajectory of this? Can this go up let's say, significantly given first thing probably you may start getting the discounts again from next year. So although your earnings assets are growing at 6%, but what you make on them probably increases quite a lot. Then again, I think on the EV solutions or the services margins going up, ALD Move, ALD Flex and many other data and everything, if we just add up. So how should we think of these returns on these assets, which is currently, let's say, 6% to 6.5% going more to into '26?

Yes. So I think, Sanjay, it's true that we have been trending around 6% of margin. If you look at the last couple of years, we have not been there, we are more around the 5.7%, 5.8%. So I think what we look at is to restore the marketing, making sure actually that we get to the 6% or a bit above the 6%. And definitely, we want to make sure that we are growing our margins in line with the earning assets.

And just 1 last question is on this -- on the lease plan. So, so far this year, I think you haven't accounted for any reduction depreciation on the lease plan or even on the used car sales results. So maybe I think you already mentioned that the fair value exercise is going on already. Can you please provide a bit of color that what are your initial findings? Is there anything that can be negative surprises into that? And where can we expect, let's say, the UCS results and the residual values of the used car to be treated same in the P&L as for the ALD? And for that -- for the period where it is not treated, can we expect like a one-off write-up or something like that or a goodwill reduction? That will be my last question.

So I'll pass the question on to Patrick. But just to make sure, I think we need to limit to 2 questions per people because -- so now you did your third one, that's fine though, but and we'll answer -- 2 per person.

So we are conducting currently the PPA exercise. There's no major surprises. The price of the car are probably a year on the value of the fleet without discounting, but the discounted -- the discount rate has increased. So it's a matter of thing of these 2 elements will land for the final valuation of the lease contract. We've been prudent in our UCS estimate for LeasePlan. So it's a balancing -- it's balancing. It's between the PPA exercise and the asset and the future of USC profit. For the time being, we are not anticipating a major impact on the assets, and we've been relatively prudent in our UCS profit expectations. And we'll see whenever we have clarity on the final results of these sites, we'll come back to the market.

Kiri Vijayarajah from HSBC. I'd like to come back to your opening remarks, Tim, and the very opening remarks, where you identified 2 things that had changed from the deal announcement and the deal closing. So the ballooning IT costs at lease plan and the action taken by the ECB. I'm really just trying to get my head around how permanent or semipermanent those are? And why it's taking until 2026 to unwind 1 year's essentially overinvestment or overspend whatever is driving that? And also, how to think about the imposition of those IRB floors by the ECB? I know it's always tricky to try and second guess what the ECBs kind of decide, but just your thoughts on the action taken by the ECB and how sort of permanent or otherwise, you guys think that will be?

Right? I think on the IT spend, so of course, it's not a situation where we cannot do anything. Of course, we have already put actions in place to make sure that, first of all, we control that cost now and much more strict than what has been obviously the case before closing. I think what is maybe interesting is maybe John gives a bit of color on what kind of system it is, and obviously, all the attributes that we anticipate with it and actually some of the actions we can take to, of course, limit, and let's say, the cost going forward.

Yes. So LeasePlan began that investment in 2019, and the ambition was to develop a platform, which was a global, fully digitized leasing company. That was the ambition. And they built some very strong foundations to support that, which are quite unique in the industry. You have a global codified product catalog. And by codified, I mean, they've looked at every product and service they sell, and they've codified it so it can then be developed and turned into something digital. They've looked at every business process they operate, and they've standardized and harmonize that in a codified form, where they've said maintenance authorization should be executed like this at the most efficient level. So they've applied Six Sigma techniques to this as well. And they've codified and developed that asset. Okay. So what you have is the foundations of a global, fully digital lease co, that could operate at comparable digital cost levels to digital banks, level on digital leasing companies. The challenge is then in the actual deployment of that, as we know from our experience on the LD side and we've had extensive experience of deploying systems down the line as well. So we don't want to just dismiss the asset without taking a proper look at it. What we've looked at since closing is, and I've had the chance to actually see the system because we're in a pilot phase in a couple of countries to form an assessment on how close we think it is, okay, to being deployed. And what we could do with that asset post this integration period as well because we can't deploy that asset globally in every country in the middle of an integration because then the integration will take 15 years and we'll never finish anything. But what we can do and it is being used in a couple of the countries as the foundation for the integration in those countries. And when we get to '25, we'll have a view about has it crystallize those benefits, okay? Is it what we think it is? And if it is, we can then prepare an investment plan to go forward to then roll it out into some of the major countries and really drive the cost income number further 2026 and beyond. And we're right in the middle of that analysis, I have to be honest, and that's why it's challenging for us when we talk about the IT cost because there's a lumpy IT asset on the balance sheet. There's a lot of OpEx there. We've taken immediate actions on the OpEx to mitigate some of that and manage it. Again, we're very good at that on the ALD side, and we've proved that over the previous years. And now we need to just take a view on that asset and how we treat that asset going forward and whether believe that asset is a valuable part of the digital architecture going forward as well. First [ gut feel ] , I think it is. First [ gut feel ], but don't quote me on that. maybe not in its exact form, okay? So maybe not in its entire form because they've looked at lots of different areas of the value chain. Our belief is that the value is only really in certain parts of the value chain. So we may take -- we'll take that part of it, but not that part of it, okay? And there's obviously an overlap with some systems. We have -- there's an overlap with some systems Societe Generale has on the corporate side. So we don't need to take the whole thing, but there could be some gold in there, and we don't want to dismiss the opportunity in terms of what it could bring to us post '26.

And perhaps, maybe just to add on to that, I mean, the initial work done about the globalization of services and, let's say, the products is obviously something that we can reuse with or without the system at the end of the day and which we need to do, we are implementing a much more globally coordinated governance, which is actually what is driving a lot of part of the synergies on the procurement side, for example, which is already in place. And obviously -- so whatever happens, there's definitely part of that program that will have a very positive impact on us going forward. Now as John said, a big portion of the investment is going into the balance sheet for the time being and will not be released before some of these modules are alive. And hence, you obviously cannot really do anything to that particular part at this point, but, as John said, on the OpEx, obviously, we have taken immediate actions and...

And Sanjay, if I may add 1 thing. Sorry, Tim. It's very rare for an existing industrialized company to codify their entire product service and business process catalog, okay? Because normally, you don't get enough time because you're spending money and you don't show any benefit in terms of systems being deployed because those are the foundations of a digital company. If you build a digital company from the ground up from day 1, you start with that. But to convert your existing actions into that, normally, and I know I've been a CIO for a while, you don't get time because 3 months after you start the project, the CEO is banging on your door and saying, "We haven't deployed anything," and you start to deploy staff and make trade-offs. So that asset, as Tim said, is an extremely valuable asset for ALD LeasePlan, whatever happens in the future with the digital technology that's been built. And ECB, maybe I'll leave that to Patrick.

I think the thing is put on that. Surely, it was not a good surprise for us. We got the final confirmation, I think, during the summer of this floor, but it's there to stay for some time because it's then a dialogue with ECB to convince them that we can have better models, well documented with the right calculation. Now if I look at the ALD LeasePlan in total, we've published for the first time our RWA in June, at the end of June. If you look at those RWAs are actually higher than the earning assets. And I find it very weird that in a financial service company that you have RWA above earning assets. That shows the amount of optimization, which is currently being done, and that's partly the effect of those -- this floor, the ECB decision. But there are other areas to look at. It's only the beginning of the journey to be an optimize the financial services company. So there might be something to do there, but in time I mean, under the [ SG ECB ]...

I think we have questions. Matthew, yes.

Matt Clark from Mediobanca. So I guess 1 question is coming back to the horizon because as you've painted the IT overspend and the related asset. It's almost as if this might be a good thing rather than a bad thing. And yet we're facing a 2026 cost-to-income ratio with 4 percentage points of the slippage versus original target is because of this IT asset that might ultimately be a good thing. And your ROTE at 13% to 15% is very much lower than the historical range you delivered before we had the high used car sales result. So I guess my question is, is 2026 really the right horizon to be assessing your run rate profitability, and what can happen beyond 2026 when you work through this IT project amongst other things? And then second question, I guess, is maybe to come back to capital and risk-weighted assets and so on. I mean, your CET1 ratio pro forma for the EUR 4 billion would be slipping below the 12% level. Are you capital constrained here? Is that a reason for curtailing your risk-weighted asset growth? And how do you think about paying out a 50% dividend on kind of windfall used car sales resulted in that context? Is that the right usage of that capital? Why haven't you reverted to a dividend per share that you can then grow over time at a more moderate level, but gives a high degree of certainty to the market in the meantime?

Talking about [indiscernible]. Maybe on the first one. So I think -- I mean, we are going through an integration process. And I think with what we have seen, we, of course, want to make sure that we have a plan that we believe in. It's probably true that it's prudent in many ways. Obviously, as I say, there could be an upside if we get -- take the right decisions and get the cost under control in a very efficient way on the IT side. That would typically be an upside that is not in the plan today. So -- but again, I think it's too early for us to give any indications on that. It's also true that if eventually we cannot bring this system to live in the 3 countries that we have anticipated, obviously, we will have to put another system in place, and there will be a cost associated to that. So it's not like necessarily that would be 100%, let's say, gain on that particular part. I think on capital, I mean, there's no doubt that if we would have excess capital, and again, there could be different areas to look at that, as you said, could be that used car markets are much more bullish also in '25 and '26 than we anticipate at this point. I mean, of course, we will review that. Again, we have a target of 12% CET1, and if there is room, obviously, we would anticipate that we could review our policies and either in terms of a better dividend payout or even a buyback program as such. But again, it's too early to say. I think when we look at '23, we are just around the 12%. But obviously...

My question was more from the other angle, actually, that rather than do you have excess capital to return. If you're going to see your CET1 ratio slip when this EUR 4 billion risk-weighted asset comes on, is it the right thing to be doing to still pay out 50% of earnings? Should you not be deploying the capital into your business rather than giving a windfall in a peak year?

So maybe, Pascal, you can -- Patrick, you can add in. But overall, I think, of course, we have the EUR 4 billion in our projection today. So -- and we are well positioned in terms of our capital ratio. So on...

Yes, that's the current projection. We currently have a projection, which is around 12% and it depends also on the end of the year, and we are still -- '23 still ongoing. So we are not -- we do not have excess capital at current. But the truth is -- well that the truth is also that in the next year, we will be building capital access because it's still a very profitable company. And then we have to see also the impact of Basel IV implementation. Basel IV implementation is to -- slightly too early to tell, but it might have a positive impact on some of the RWA constituency, which, for the time being are very high. So at the end of the day, even in the short term, we are not capital rich. The capital position should increase over time and open a new decision to be taken.

I think, Julien, next to you.

Julien Onillon, Stifel. I have 2 questions. One on the market and 1 which is not around the market and new business that really understand. So coming back to your market. You mentioned very clearly that the 7.7% growth is not your market completely because it's due to consumer. And that the market growth is probably more -- would be more around 6%, which is your long-term growth target stable [indiscernible] However, if you take the current plan, you have a growth and you just mentioned it about 2.5%, maybe 2%, 3% of volumes growth over the plan, which means that, if you want to get a 6% growth, you will need a 10% growth of the market or your market and your growth, which looks like in -- from 2006 to '30, well, we don't know what will happen at by this times. But 10% growth in volumes from leasing, it seems very, very, very optimistic. So it's coming from the market assumption, but maybe also your own assumption in the way. So that's my first question, how effectively you match those numbers? My second question is -- but it is more about the corporate governance in a way. A year ago, Societe Generale were owning 80% of the company. Now I would like to ask you this question now that Societe Generale owns only 51% of your company. Are you a division of Societe Generale? Or are you an independent company with the reference shareholders, which provide you a lot of liquidity? It's a very different aspect -- if you are a division to Societe Generale, we can understand that your share price went down, when there were the crisis in the U.S. of the bank collapsing in California. Here we can understand that Societe Generale is making an investment project plan -- strategic plan early this week. And then that you come after that because it's Societe Generale, let's say, and you are just a division. You can understand also in a way and that your share price is maybe massively undervalued because in a way, you don't consider like an independent company. So my question, but otherwise, if you're not, if you're effectively Societe Generale is a shareholders, a reference shareholders, and is just a provider of liquidity, and if Societe Generale, what guarantee do you have that Societe Generale will not interfere in your business, not interfere on new communications? That's very important because at the end of the day, we are seeing that on Monday, when Societe Generale went down 10%, you went down 14%. So you see directly the influence of Societe Generale on your share price performance and indirectly, obviously, for the minority shareholders and for the shareholders, it's a strong, let's say, negative.

Well, maybe I'll start with the last 1 first, the -- and then Berno can actually give you a bit of input on the market, and I think. So I think the way -- well, first of all, ALD LeasePlan are designing our own strategy. There's no interference from SocGen on that particular part. We design how we want to conduct our business. We have a lot of support from SocGen and in particular, becoming regulated entity, we have benefited a lot from all the expertise on the SocGen side to do that. As you said, SocGen is a very important fund of this business, and they are guaranteeing up to [ EUR 15 billion ]. So I think being a division of SocGen, I would not necessarily say that. Of course, we are quite ingrained Societe Generale. And I think we have a lot of benefit from doing that or being there. And I would say, if you look at ALD LeasePlan or ALD over the last years, obviously, SocGen has been a very, very strong shareholder for this business. In most of the crisis, as we talked about in the initial part of the presentation, obviously, a lot of our competitors went out of the market, when there was no or when actually the market went really sour, SocGen pushed ALD constantly and have given us, I would say, the position we have today. So I think there is a very strong understanding of the rationale of ALD inside, LeasePlan inside Societe Generale. And of course, we have to make sure that we are aligned to a very large extent, you have a structure, where there's 2 listed companies. But I mean any kind of interaction between SocGen and ALD LeasePlan is arm flings. It's checked at Supervisory Board level. We have independent Board of Directors, who are ensuring that there is the [ arm flings ] relationship. And also today, we have only seen that typically SocGen is a positive factor in trying to push ALD LeasePlan forward. If you think about the market and the growth and that is a bit different and perhaps alluding to the fact that SocGen is today on a different trajectory in terms of growing their net earning assets or their earning assets, obviously, the 2 only businesses that has been allowed to grow is ALD [indiscernible] today.

Yesterday, yes.

I think bank today. And of course, first of all, because it makes a lot of sense for Societe Generale to grow these 2 businesses and in particular, ALD LeasePlan. So I would say we -- we see it as a big strength at the end of the day. And we have a lot of, let's say, support in particular areas where the new group, the new co has obviously a need for support.

But did you have -- did you had to ask Societe Generale for this growth? Because you can -- LeasePlan standalone didn't have any banks. They were able to grow to find funding to find the bonds to grow. They didn't know, because they didn't have the bank behind them, who are the main shareholders, that were able to grow it and then directly, you should not have -- say, in a way from shareholders, nice. Should you want to lend us money, lend us money. That you're right. But me I will find other source of funding.

Yes, true, but LeasePlan actually went to the Dutch National Bank in 2011 to be bailed out. So I think, in a normal market, we can fund this business obviously. And -- but I think if you look at the funding plan that Patrick showed you, it's quite ambitious to issue EUR 4 million to EUR 5 million funding our bonds, I mean, it's more than the 2 companies ever did together in the past. So I think if we look at the restrictions on the business today, it's more around the funding capacity of this business rather than anything else. And without the EUR 15 billion that is guaranteed for SocGen, we would not be able to find the funding for growing this business to be very honest. So Berno, do you want to talk a bit about the market?

Yes, I'm happy to talk about the market. So thank you, Julien, for the question. Maybe to nuance the numbers a little bit. The numbers that we've shown from CVA are actually up until 2030. So that's a relatively long period in time, and they were made a couple of months ago. The -- what we, in particular, see is that the effect of more expensive cars, so increasing prices on cars as well as higher interest rates, have had quite some impact on the consumer segment. The consumer segment is hardly growing at the moment. And we believe that in a lot of cases, consumers are simply waiting with their decisions on what to do. So they're not moving at the moment. So that being said, if you want to grow in that particular segment, that you have to be very, very aggressive on your pricing on an already, let's say, perceived high price to get to that volume. So we want to be more cautious because we are less experienced in that segment. And we see that effect in the market. Our expectation is that once interest rates normalize and also once the OEMs are getting a bit more eager for volume, that we will see a more balanced pricing that's feasible there so that we can better participate in that part. We do have, and over the next months, approximately 6% growth in the consumer segment, so that's not low. But levels, we want to be cautious not to shoot ourselves in the foot and be too aggressive. We see a bit the same in the SME segment. Also short-term growth is a bit lower than the number that we have shown there up until 2030. Small and medium enterprises, they behave a little bit like consumers in the sense that they're also careful. Once they see prices going up, they look in particular at the lease installment, less at the total cost of ownership, let's say, over a fleet. So also the effect is there. And then in the corporate segment, currently, we are growing with the market, and we know that because in a lot of cases, we have so-called single vendor relationships, if you add that all up, then we have a very good reflection of what's happening in the market. And our growth today is in line with the market. Going forward, we have a big integration program. So that means that there will be, of course, an impact also on, let's say, the propensity for us to grow. And at the same time, we've also noticed that the last percent growth is typically something that really erodes your margins. And we really want to be careful about that last percent growth. Plus we've gotten also insight into our portfolios that in some cases, there might be more interested in balancing a bit of the growth of and really benefit with improving the margins. Does that mean that we will be losing market share? If the market grows this year is [ 6% ] which I don't believe it does. But if it goes 6% next year, too, we will be losing some market share. But we believe that it's better to position ourselves with better margins at this particular point in time, healthy growth also for the longer term.

So if I understand you, effectively, you still believe that the growth of the market in the current [ 3 to 6 ] years depending interest rate, obviously, and so on, we remain probably clearly below those 7.7% and that you will not recover to get the CAGR of 7.7% after 2026. And maybe if it's go back to 7% will be nice. But it will not move to 14% to compensate the more growth.

Yes. Our average is not going to be that. No.

I know, it's not a number by the way -- consulting firm, anyway...

Yes. Because then if we do that, then, of course, we would be hunting for that last percentage growth, and that would, of course, be quite detrimental to the margins. So we're just going to be careful. If the market is more forgiving in terms of margins, then we will just simply accelerate our growth. That's feasible. But we're going to be very, very careful and really select where the growth is reasonable.

I think the question just behind you, Mourad.

Yes. Mourad Lahmidi, BNP Exane. Actually, I want to come back on the cost of runs in terms of IT at LeasePlan. So thanks for showing this bridge between the 47% cost-to-income to the 52% and the 4% impact. Is the 4% what you see today and you pencil that in 2026? Or is it what you expect the impact will be in 2026? I guess my question is, what's the phasing of those cost of the runs over the next 3 years?

Patrick?

So there is a large part of this overrun, which is already in the accounts at the end of '22, but not all of it. So difficult to be more specific. This is a situation business plan of the IT expenses of LeasePlan as they stand, already well spent at the end of '22, more to come by the end of '26. Now as John specified, now they have created a large IT assets on which we have to look at to assess whether or not where we want to confirm this level of investment or to do something. So this is the examination of that will be ongoing in the next couple of months.

Okay. And another 1 on pricing. So you will get a lot of savings in terms of procurement in terms of capital purchasing. How much are you going to reinvest in pricing, so again, shares against competitors?

So I think it's always a good question when you actually get savings that it doesn't end up in the pockets of the customers. And, to be honest, both on the lease plan side on the early side, we have -- we have actually experienced that in the past. So we said from the very day 1 that we -- that the savings that we find here, obviously, through the integration, has to become ours, basically. So there is today controls in place to make sure that this, let's say, these savings does not end up in a lower margin at the end -- and to the customers. I think where we can see, we -- the way our discounts and our bonuses work is that the discounts we get typically on our cars would go to our customers, and that makes us competitive. So if we get 10% or 15% discount on a car, that's what we put into the contract for the customer. The way we actually get our benefits is through bonus programs. That is not part of the pricing, but actually a kind of a kickback, which means that we can control, obviously, that it's not been giving into the pricing of the customers. So -- and we have been very specific in the way that we have outlined the way we're going to take the procurement synergies, it has to come through kickbacks and bonuses that way, we can ensure that it goes in our pocket and not the customers. And you have probably noticed that in the last couple of years, the manufacturers was in a particular great situation. They did not have to give discounts. They did not have to get bonuses. At the end of the day, we actually still got our bonuses, but we lost our discount for the customer. So the customers have actually taken the burden of that to a very large extent. And obviously, we believe now that we are in a much better position, first of all, our size and scale, but also the fact that the manufacturers are in a situation, where they have more cars than they can sell. So obviously, we're going to expect that the customers will also benefit, but not because of our bonuses, but because the manufacturers will have to actually subsidize their products more than they have done in the last couple of days, but yes.

Nicolas, next to you.

Just a quick question on the ECB. I'm sure their appetite has grown with looking at your business model and regulating your activity to what is the share of the industry because I don't have this number with me, that is regulated by the ECB and what is the share that is unregulated, like you were some time ago? And how do you think this is going to evolve and its impact? I'm sure Arval will be able to manage this. But especially lots of smaller players? What's -- how do you think this is going to happen with them? How many years could it take? And what about the consolidation of all these guys?

Yes. That's a good question, Nicola, I would say. Well, it's quite clear that this industry is becoming big. And obviously with -- where we trust about the private lease, this is going into a completely different era than it was in the past. And as I said, we are becoming mainstream more than niche and that's on the radar of the ECB. And we have seen that from the first day we actually started interacting with them. And it's quite clear they want to regulate this business going forward. So we believe that if we don't do it now -- well, did not have a choice, we do it now, but we would have been forced at the end of the day within probably the next 2 to 3 years. We have seen that Volkswagen have taken all the operating lease activities this year and put them back on to the bank. They took them out of the bank probably 5, 6 years ago, but they brought them back in and probably pushed a lot by the ECB. So it's coming for, I think, at least all the bigger players in this industry. And I think for us, it's good to have it behind us and actually do it while we do the integration and where we reset the organization anyway. And of course, well, Arval is not regulated today and then they even deconsolidated from BNP. So we'll see what happens there, but we do believe that ECB wants to have a fair level playing field for all the players.

Maybe to add that in the docs here at dart text from ECB, operating leases are treated as financial services. it's a dart text, but if it is confirmed at the end of the day, unless payers get an exemption that operating needs would be treated as a financial services to ECB.

Yes, any question here?

[indiscernible]. On the IT cost, I was wondering you basically have 400 basis points of cost-to-income ratio that you pencil in for 2026. Of course, you're still evaluating the whole IT spend, but I suppose that you will stop the program tomorrow, how much impact would that have on the cost-to-income ratio? I mean you basically say we don't get the full 400 basis points back. But is it basically if you stop it tomorrow, will it be minus 100 basis points? I'm just trying to get a feel for the sensitivities there? And, yes, what -- well, maybe there are some positives that you have in that ratio?

Yes. I think it's -- we cannot be really specific on that because it's too early actually to -- but obviously, the 400 bps we have the [indiscernible] anticipating that we do nothing, and we actually keep on investing in the program. So as John said, we have already taken the first initiatives. So -- and we do anticipate that there is, of course, ways to bring down that cost without damaging the program. But to give you an exact number, whether it's 200 bps or 100 bps, that is not really possible at this point. But obviously, we have kept a prudent approach to this, again, because we don't still know exactly how we're going to approach it.

Okay. That's clear. And the second question, that's on the consultancy cost. So EUR 70 million of consultancy cost. That LeasePlan that was on 2022. I was wondering what does that relate to? And also how fast will the EUR 70 million run out of your cost base? So -- and how does that impact your cost-to-income ratio in 2026?

So if I understand what is the reference there is also consultancy costs in my understanding, were relating mostly to 2 things: [ ECB ] models, which were still being worked on and also IT development because a large part of the IT spend was outsourced to external consultant. So some of it will go as we have had the floor, but we still have to work on the RWA optimization. So it might require additional costs. So that's why, yes, it's something that did exist. That's partly part of the IT investment and that we are still looking at.

So I think what we can say is that as part of the synergies, we have counted in as well that LeasePlan is regulated today by the ECB. We are getting regular. We are regulated but we have been working on that and getting prepared for that. And you could say today, we have 2 costs of being regulated to some extent. And obviously, over time, the ECB is unpredictable, but we do anticipate, as part of the synergies, of course, to get to one cost of being regulated. And I think it's also true to say that LeasePlan was normally regulated by the local regulator, the [ DNB ]. And in '21, they were pushed to -- they were taken all of us regulated by the ECB. And obviously, the requirements from the ECB have been very different to the requirements from the local regulator. And that has, of course, increased, let's say, the intensity of remediation and other things on the LeasePlan side that eventually we anticipated is part of one cost as well on being regulated. But that's in the synergies already.

[indiscernible] has a question.

[indiscernible] That is something I cannot really reconcile is the aspect of pricing power of your industry and value proposition. I mean is it only based on price, given your size, synergies versus your peers, I understand the burden of ECB, but I would have expected you to be able to offset part of it, just thanks to pricing power that some of your competitors cannot have at some point?

Well, I think we are in a very competitive industry. Obviously, we have assets today that nobody else has and has a value -- can we mention the name of the new customer we do...

Not yet. No.

Not yet. Okay. Well we just signed up a very big global account, which, of course, looks at the price, but also the way we can actually support them. And you saw Bayer with the testimonial, basically saying that we're doing much more for them than just actually delivering the cars, which is really, really important. So you're right. I mean -- but I mean, there is a price in the market. There is obviously other quite significant players who also have a very strong reputation and a very strong service offering. But we do believe that, obviously, with the scale we have today and we do have a certain pricing power in the market. Having said that, being a market leader also means that we should be leading also on the price. We should not be the one actually pushing down the price in the market. And there's actually no reason to do that. And again, in terms of our service offering, it is second to none. And obviously, that should give us a lot of leverage on more than just the price. All right, if it answers your question on the...

Do we have other questions Matthew and Julien.

Sorry, may I again, Matt Clark, at Mediobanca. So n this is a -- I guess is a question for Patrick, about the 13% to 15% ROTE target range. And that's -- what are the variables that are driving that range? So what has to happen for you to be at the low end? What has to happen for you to be at the high end of that?

Well, I think it's a question of we see profitability and so the profitability -- underlying profitability has been hampered since the initiation of the deal by the increase in cost income and also the regulatory funding costs related to higher RWA. And then there is equity and we -- today, we forecast our RWA the way we did with some assumption for Basel IV implementation. And depending on the confirmation of the assumption, the work we have to do with ECB, we might actually have a lower RWA which would lead to potentially lower equity and higher return on equity. This is depending really on the coming years and the implementation of Basel IV. But those are really the main parameters we are looking at very closely.

Just because you don't have a range for cost income, right, I guess, but that would explain it. The uncertainty is more about capital base environment season.

Yes.

Yes, traditional questions. First, just for clarifications. For 2026, your target is 50% -- 52% in terms of cost, clearly. But is the assumption there is numerators and the denominators, which is important, you are -- are you assuming effectively a EUR 500 per car of leasing margins, which is the average before the price are rising? Or are you assuming something different in terms of average price due to, for instance, a better secondary car market, for instance. That's the question because, obviously, there is a cost, but there is also, obviously, the income and can be a bit different if you have EUR 700 per car of leasing revenue or gross revenue on leasing or EUR 500, which is different. So first question. Second question is more about the environment -- current environment, which is, as we mentioned, difficult with interest rates increasing with the recessions, mild recession with a slowdown in the economy. How is your competitors, the car manufacturers, which are leasing, what their behavior currently in terms of market? Are they aggressive knowing that they have a potential major challenge in front of them with the, let's say, Chinese potential, let's say, manufacturer coming in the market and that may be they're better to keep a very good market because they are in reality the main competitors in terms of size. And therefore, not to be too aggressive on the leasing in order to keep a sort of profitability in this business. So it's very interesting. I would like to have your view on that. And maybe currently and what you view about the next, let's say, 5 years, when maybe the Chinese imports of EVs might be much more bigger than it is today.

Let me start with your second question and then Patrick, you can give a few inputs on the revenues. So I think -- I mean when we look and it is true we will see the manufacturers entering our space, but they will be entering the segment, which is typically on the consumer side and on the SME side. So not necessarily our core markets. I would say, if you look at the market today, ALD LeasePlan together probably with [indiscernible], owns the access to that to the big corporate markets. The manufacturers will never get there. Whatever they say and try, they will never, I think, at least the next 10 years catch up with what we do there today. So if they want to sell cars to that segment, which is very important for the 50% of the market at the end of the day they have to come to us. So that's it. Now where we will see them being much more aggressive is, of course, in the -- specifically on the consumers. And that's where we have said for the time being, obviously, we are not necessarily taking a very bold approach to that. The fact is that the car manufacturers will subsidize their captives and they typically start with a EUR 3,000, EUR 4,000 better position than us. Now the way we can address that if we really want to go, is through the bulk buying that I think John talked about where we buy preconfigured cars, and we get discounts that have actually allow us to compete in that market with the manufacturers. So I think it's -- again it's a very different market. First of all, as we said, the margins for the time being is not exactly where they should be to support our returns. And they're not necessarily buying all the services we want them to do. So -- hence, probably the car manufacturers says where they want to go. The Chinese car manufacturers are coming in very quickly. You're right. It's a great opportunity for us. First of all, they actually want somebody to help them enter the market to partnerships like we do. We signed up BYD and we have signed up quite a few of the Chinese manufacturers. So we help them enter the market. And at the same time, it's a very good leverage on, let's say, the European manufacturers to make sure we get the right discounts. So we see them in 2 different ways. One, as a partnership opportunity. And secondly, a way for us to get the right conditions on not just the Chinese cars, but also the European cars. On the...

So on the margin, what we have factored is a very prudent and slow expansion of margin on the back of our focus on the most profitable client and segments and true as well that the margins have been lower in these recent years than they were before. So we also have this strategy to privilege profitability of our growth, pure growth to restore margin. And it's also that with the market share that we have growing, growth is still good but we don't need to grow market share with the dealer, which is transformational. We need to focus on looking for profitability.

I think we have time for one more question.

If we don't have any more questions in this room, we can take the questions on the phone. And I think we have Delphine on the phone. So operator, can you...

Question from the conference call is from Delphine Lee from JPMorgan.

My first one is just to -- just a clarification on the RWAs and the Basel IV impact. Do I understand this correctly that there could be some positives coming out of Basel IV. Is that a net positive? And so the EUR 4 billion is all the regulatory headwinds are we going to see? Or is there more to clarify that? And then my second question is, sorry to come back to the return on tangible equity target of 13% to 15%. I guess, you are trying to be conservative in your plan, which is positive. But just trying to understand how we came from the stand-alone having prior even before 2021 and 2022 with very low levels of car -- used cost sales back in, I don't know, 2018 or 2019, with high teens in terms of return on tangible equity even more than 20% to 13% to 15%. If you could just help us bridge the gap because your earnings assets are growing and cost-to-income ratio is improving. So just if we take a step back, what are the big building blocks of that lower return on tangible equity?

Thank you, Delphine. I think it's 2 questions for Patrick.

On RWA, so it's too early to tell about -- to talk about good news, but we need to work about the Basel IV impact on our RWA. It's a newly regulated company. So we have to work on that. And truly, today, we have a very high ratio RWA to earning assets. So it might be optimized. The EUR 4 billion on the floor, yes, I think it's all. We do not anticipate additions. And I think it's already large amount. And for the profitability target versus 2019, I think it compares in a period where margin -- top line margins were much higher actually. And the company was not regulated. So it's mostly, I would say, those 2 impacts that are playing against the level we are targeting now.

Okay. I think that concludes.

Well, actually -- well, we don't have anyone on the phone, but we have one question in the chat box. It's the last one, I guess. So it says you target 50% of EVs in new registrations in 2026 knowing that you were at 28% in '22, is it a joint KPI for all EVs, meaning battery electric vehicles plus PHEV? And if so, can you share the current battery electric vehicle share and the target for 2026 as battery electric vehicles have a greater contributions to your sustainability goals than PHEV.

Yes. So yes, we can share that. I think the 50% in 2026 is a bit of 40% full BEVs and 10% plug-in hybrids. And I think actually, what we have seen in the first part of this year is that we are now delivering more BEVs than plug-in hybrids already. So we think that, that is the right target. And we do believe that we will be around 80% by 2030, and there will be full BEVs. So just to complement the question.

So we don't have any more questions in the chat box.

All right. Thank you very much for your time and for all your questions, and we hope we have been able to answer most of them in a good way. Thanks a lot.

Thank you.