Grupo Catalana Occidente, S.A. (GGAL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. We will begin with the results presentation of the first half year of 2025 GCO. My name is Clara Gomez Bermudez. You know me from previous presentations, I'm Financial and Risk Management Officer. And as you saw here with me in this presentation, we have Mr. Isidro Lapeña, CFO; and Nawal Rim, Director of Investor Relations, who, as on other occasions, coordinates this presentation, and she will proceed to pull together all of the questions asked throughout the presentation, and we will answer them either individually or in a pooled manner, depending on the amount of questions that we receive, group by topics, if need be. And before we start, as usual, we would like to thank you for being here with us. You know that it is a presentation that takes place online, and we also thank you for your interest, your continued interest in the evolution of our business, but also the performance of our shares. A regulatory aspect that we always clarify before starting, we'd like to remind you that the financial information that we include in this presentation of results is drafted under our management information. But since it is a half year presentation, we will also offer the comparison under international standards, IFRS 17 and 19 for insurance contracts and financial investments. And I think we should mention, although you already know this very well, INOC, S.A., controlling shareholder of the group on the last 27th of March announced the intention of presenting a voluntary takeover bid over 100% of GCO's shares, a public tender offer that, as you may have seen in the information provided by INOC, S.A. was approved on April 30 by the AGM at INOC, S.A. And we can additionally say that it has been accepted for procedure by the CNMV, and it follows the regular approval track. So we will continue with the vision, the first half year of 2025. You can see it on the screen. We consider it to be very satisfactory in all of the areas that we are showing on the slide and the different businesses and also on a continuing trend as compared to the first quarter of the year. If we start on the top line, a good growth of the business, 4.4%, as you can see on the screen, more than EUR 3.4 billion. And out of this growth, I would stress, although we will see this in greater detail later, the growth of Occident, which is one of the keys for this year, stressing aside from the good performance of the large areas of business, the commercial activities and aside from the consolidated result, which is just shy of EUR 450 million with a growth of 9.1%. Moving to stress about permanent resources at market value. We will see a specific slide for that later in different countries and sectors and a potential increase of inflation. You can see here the updated forecast of the IMF July 2025 with this growth of 3.5% globally and better in Spain than in the rest of the Eurozone. In the second quarter, there is a bit less uncertainty and some tariff agreements are coming to light. As on other occasions, we'll give you some information about financial markets. You can see it on the screen. At the top of the slide, you can see the evolution of stock market. You know this better than ourselves, a bit of a turbulent beginning of the year, better in Spain than in the European and American indexes with a trend towards recovery in this latter one. And as to fixed income, you can see it at the bottom, increasing rates as compared to the initial forecast, especially in longer-term investments, the ones that impact Spain the most as a consequence of the management of liabilities in the insurance sector, and these are around 3.3% despite the fact that short-term interest rates are dropping insight of the measures taken by central banks. Actually, even if we don't mention it on this slide, when analyzing the financial results of the group, we have to take into account that their growth is also impacted by this higher interest rate that we are getting from the long-term rates that we can also offer to our customers. And now continuing with the Spanish insurance sector to give you some context, especially about the Spanish business, the rate section of our business. As you know, the Spanish market goes back to a path of growth, the growing path of previous years with a 12.2% increase with a very good performance of Non-Life, especially in the mass lines, in Motor and Multi-risk, Multi-risk at 7%. And you already know, and we will remind you that in the case of Occident, Health is included in Life, so it's affected comparison, a good behavior also of Non-Life, although it is true that the insurance sector has made relevant transfers in the Life Savings business, single issues of almost 21%, but we'll see the differences with the Occident business later. And comparatively, Occident compares and grows better than the sector in Motor and Multi-risk. In Life, the growth is lower. But as I said before, it is due to the single premium issues. And as we've always mentioned, we prefer a more recurring business. We will see this later, but we've been able to issue more supplementary premiums because we consider that this doesn't only give us more value as a business, but also it gives more value to our customers. And as we always show the summarized P&L, income and results at the top summary of the income, I will focus on the most relevant aspects with this growth of 4.4%. And by business, Occident grows at 7%, better than the rest of the sector in Non-Life with the mass lines of business to be stressed as Isidro Lapeña will tell us about this later, the good commercial evolution. And you can see here the increase in single premiums is 7.4%, which rather than -- it's the good behavior of this over the supplementary. In Atradius, we already mentioned it. We said it in the first quarter of the year. We are seeing less growth despite that, we do grow as compared to the same half year of last year with this 1% that you can see on screen. And the revenue and the good evolution of short-term credit insurance is due to the good evolution of caution and accepted reinsurance in Atradius, this or surety insurance, I meant to say, sorry. And this could be aggravated by tariff policies, which could lead to less economic activity. We are taking measures to continue to promote commercial activities in Atradius. And finally, you can see the contribution of Mémora, the funeral business of the group with EUR 142.3 million, which compares positively with the previous year, which means a growth of 5%, as you can see on the slide. And on the second half of the summarized income statement, you can see results and on the results, the main lines, we see a favorable evolution of consolidated result, a bit over 9% growth, not only the consolidated result, but also the attributable result. As you can see, with EUR 376 million and a very good performance of all businesses. At Occident, 11%, a bit over EUR 173 million in Atradius. I'll talk about this later, 7.5% growth and also a good performance in the funeral business. And now on to Occident. Maybe the most relevant thing as a summary, we would stress that despite the fact that in 2025, we are having more weather-related claims, 2024 was not a strong year in that department. And together with the blackout of April 28 and to more big claims in Motor, we get this growth of 11% of the Occident result. And with all of these, the combined ratio of Motor despite the greater impact of peak events in [indiscernible] is around 93%, clearly below the 94% and clearly improves versus the previous year. At Atradius, the good evolution that you can see on the screen is mainly due to less peak events and the repayment of -- or the collection of claims from previous years. And in the end, this translates into the combined ratio that we saw on the first slide of this presentation of around 74%. Mémora, very good evolution along the lines of the expectations we had in previous presentations. And thanks to the measures that we have taken and that we will talk about in more detail later. And as forecasts for this year, we are optimistic. It is true that there are uncertainties vis-a-vis the second half year ahead of us, hoping we can repeat results similar to the first half year. uncertainties in several areas. On the one side, weather-related claims ratio, what may come during the rest of 2025 because as I said, 2024 was an exceptional year regarding weather events. The political world situation may lead to a hike in inflation, which may impact the costs of the business. And it is true that in Atradius, there have barely been any peak events and that this potential peak in claims ratio may come along with the normalization of the claims ratio. And in Atradius, the most difficult side of things will be the income line. I will not stop to talk about more results, EUR 13.7 million. Throughout the presentation, we will give you more details. I will not stop to talk about the non-ordinary result. The EUR 3 million that you can see on screen, it's immaterial and it is mainly due to financial investments partially offset with advertising costs. So in a nutshell, almost EUR 415 million consolidated result, EUR 376 million attributable result, as you can see on this slide, and a good volume with this 4.4% turnover, as you can see on this slide. And well, you know this very well, but I will indeed talk a bit about the diversification of the business because as we've said on previous presentations, it is one of the key elements of the good evolution of the group throughout the years. You can see here the balanced weight of Motor versus Multi-risk, 12.8% and 15.2%, respectively. And of course, the weight of the Life business, around 20%, taking into account the channel, which is the mediation channel, mainly in Occident and also good diversification in terms of geographical areas. This is one of the things that we go for, and we see this percentage of Mémora, which is a bit over 4% now. I will not stop to talk about the next 2 slides. You know this very well. The main business of the group is in Spain. It is true that we have a strong international presence, especially through Atradius and also presence in Portugal through Mémora. And in sustainability, I remind you that without going into each of the areas, it is amongst our top goals. We have the 2024, 2026 sustainability master plan. We continue on the path we had set in the past about these areas. Always a brief comment about share price performance. You know this even better than ourselves. I would like to remind you that inside of the INOC, S.A. announcement of the voluntary takeover bid on 100% of the GCO shares at the end of March, the share price evolution is impacted by this. And in the past few months, basically, you can see it on screen. At the end of the half year, the share price was about EUR 49.2 per share. Normally, it's oscillating between EUR 49 per share or a bit below that, very good performance, better than reference indexes, but it is true that in a way, this has been impacted by the voluntary takeover bid that has been presented by INOC, S.A. And comments about dividend payout. On July 9, a dividend of EUR 0.25 per share was paid out. As you can see, it compares with the July dividend of -- with a total of EUR 30 million and the dividend of July 2025 goes a bit more than 20%. So a difference of EUR 0.25. And I would just like to say that the historic dividend payout of GCO has been growing over time on an annual basis, and you know this very well, and we've always maintained our commitment to our shareholders, a commitment that we have maintained in crisis years. And without further ado, I'll pass the floor over to Isidro Lapeña, CFO of the group, who will give you more details about the evolution of the year and the main indicators broken down by business.

Thank you, Clara. Good afternoon, everyone. We will start with Occident. At Occident, as in previous quarters, we will continue with a good performance of sales, commercial activities and with an excellent customer retention, which has allowed us to reach a relevant growth in turnover, reaching EUR 1.905 billion, which means an increase of 7% as compared to the first half year of the previous year. If we talk about recurring premiums, increase has been 7% with increases, especially in Multi-risk and Motor with 10.3% and 9.4% increase, respectively. The ordinary result is at EUR 173.3 million with an increase of 11% and the technical result has grown by 12.4% coming up to EUR 164.8 million. Divided by business in Non-Life combined ratio has improved by 0.7%, going up to 89.3% with a significant improvement in Motor and in Life. The technical financial result increases by 3.2%, as we will see later. Divided by lines of business, Multi-risk with EUR 520.8 million turnover, posting a strong growth of 10.3%, above the growth of the sector, which has been 6.8%. To stress, the growth of the main lines of business as a consequence of good commercial activities. The combined ratio is at 87.3%, so a decrease of 0.2% as compared to the first half year of the previous year. I would like to stress a slight decrease of technical costs as a consequence of a high claim ratio related to weather events and the relevant increase of acquired premiums, 9.8% -- written premiums 9.8% and a reduction of 1 point of the efficiency ratio. So the result has increased by 11.6% as a result of all of this up to EUR 57.9 million. Now on to Motor, we can see a relevant increase in turnover, 9.4% above the growth of this sector which has been 8.9%, reaching EUR 438.5 million in a competitive environment with an upward pressure on prices, but in our cases, not translating into an increase of cancellations. The combined ratio is 93.7%, 1.5% below the first half year of 2024 due to several factors, the increase of written premiums completely aligned with the increase in turnover, improvement of declared claims and the result of reinsurance, which means that the technical cost drops by 1.1 points and the improvement of the efficiency ratio with a drop of 0.4 points as compared to the first -- the same period of last year. As a consequence, the result of this line has had a strong increase of 43.3% with technical results of EUR 24 million. As to Multi-risk in turnover, we see -- we go up to 5.4% if we talk about -- if we include written premiums and an increase in technical cost, which is more than offset by the improvement of the efficiency ratio. As a consequence of this, the line maintained an excellent combined ratio of 85.6%, 4 points below same period of 2024, in line with the rest of quarters with a technical result of EUR 30.5 million, 8.1% above the first half year of the year before. Life as a whole growth in recurring premiums, 3.8%, increasing turnover in all areas. Technical financial result increases by 3.2% reaching EUR 99.9 million, stressing improvements in Life and funeral and the worsening of the technical margin with a technical loss of 100.4% that you can see on screen. As a summary for Occident, the increase of turnover and written premiums and the improvement of the efficiency ratio by 1 point, which means a cost reduction of 6.3%, which is almost EUR 8.5 million have allowed us to offset the moderate increase of technical costs from 0.3 points as compared to the same period of last year. As a summary, we are getting better in terms of the profitability of the business. We are 89.3% with the result of EUR 173.3 million with an increase of 11% ordinary result. Additionally, the contribution of EUR 6.5 million non-ordinary results coming mainly for realization of investments offset by expenses leads us to a total result of EUR 179.8 million, and this means a 10% increase as compared to the same period of last year. If we move on now to Atradius. In Atradius, we see that written premiums -- earned premiums reached EUR 1.152 billion, an increase of 1.1% with a positive improvement of surety and reinsurance with a downward trend of prices and certain uncertainty on the geopolitical situation that is affecting credit insurance, which continues along the lines of deceleration in almost all markets. The result -- the ordinary result is EUR 224.9 million with an increase of 7.5% and the technical result is at EUR 323.4 million with an increase of 3.4%. I would like to stress the excellent behavior of the claims ratio, which is normalizing upwards in terms of the number of claims, but less severe claims and positive runoffs, meaning that the claims ratio is at very contained level with the combined ratio going down 0.6 points as compared to the first half year of 2024. As to the geographical distribution of income, we see a decrease of earned premiums in Asia, Americas, Western Europe with an increase in others. And in terms of profitability, we must say that we continue with our cautious provisioning criteria described in previous years and the gross combined ratio continues with an excellent behavior with a ratio of 74.1% where the number of claims increases, but the claims ratio stays contained, especially or specifically 1.9 points less claims ratio than at the end of June 2024. Risk exposure, an increase of 2.6%. We still maintain strict selection criteria, and we continue with an adequate diversification of risks by countries and sectors, which allows us to have an excellent quality of our portfolio. As a summary, income continues to grow despite the geopolitical situation and uncertainties. The technical result increases 3.4% despite the upwards normalization of claims and our cautious provisioning policy, thanks to the lower amount of severe claims, big claims, reinsurance improves our result. Transfer ratio is 25% and the technical result improves as a consequence of the reinvestment of new interest rates of fixed income and liquidity. So the result -- ordinary result is EUR 224.9 million with an increase of 7.5%. Additionally, the total result is impacted by nonrecurrent losses of EUR 3.1 million corresponding to extraordinary expenses and realizations and an increase of 8.1% of the total business result as compared to last year. Clara, maybe now you would like to talk about the Mémora results.

Thank you, Isidro. Our CFO already mentioned it. We -- on a brief summarized slide, we would like to describe the evolution of the funeral business, Mémora. You can see good evolution of income and the result, as you can see at the bottom with an ordinary result growing by 12.7% and with a margin over EBITDA of around 25.4% as we have already -- had already mentioned, which is the usual margin. We are usually around this 25% margin -- EBITDA margin. And to stress about Mémora, on the one side, the good evolution -- in terms of the long-term relationship we're establishing with our customers, this leads to more income, as you can see on the slide. And of course, we're focusing on cost contention, which is part of our DNA. We always work on this slowly but surely. And as couldn't be otherwise, we see results in the positive evolution of the results. Despite all of this, we hope that the Mémora business will continue to offer a good evolution and quite a stable one over time. And as we mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, since this is a half year presentation, we will also offer the comparison with international accounting standards included in the half year reports audited by the account auditors, which refers to financial investment and insurance contracts. Conceptually, I would like to remind you of the differences between both sets of standards, basically based on technical provisions. The new regulation is more similar to solvency regulation. In the case of Life, the old regulation of embedded value. And basically, the calculations are more based on hypothesis. Additionally, there are also changes vis-a-vis how financial investments are treated. We mentioned it on previous presentations of results. Essentially, they stick to treating capital gains and losses that are included in the P&L and not the equity. The international accounting does not impact solvency ratio or the management of our business. And as you can see on screen, it offers results that are substantially similar to those mentioned in the presentation of results in the body of the presentation. The ordinary result, as you can see on the screen, is about EUR 700,000 higher with this form of accounting and the differences you can see in the main 2 lines. On the one side, the total technical result, you see under the new international accounting, it is barely EUR 12 million above. And this is because of the more accelerated timings, which compensates with the lower financial result with the EUR 7.8 million less due to the fact that international standards consider the interest rate for Non-Life provisions, and this has an impact on income and applied interest, which is higher with international standards. And this balance of results vis-a-vis our accounting or our management information has an impact on the combined ratio. The combined ratio of Atradius is the net combined ratio net of reinsurance, and they are basically identical. And this all confirms the good performance of the business of the group regardless of how it shows up in the different forms of accounting. On this slide that you know from previous presentations and historically, we've always shown it. Well, in the end, it's the good evolution of own resources, specifically permanent resources at market value, which grows by 5.8%, going up to EUR 6.9 billion. And this is due to 2 main reasons. On the one side, the good results we already talked about, but also the good evolution of the valuation adjustments, the capital gains, you can see EUR 102 million in terms of changes in valuation adjustments due to capital gains or the good performance of the equity of the group. And this is -- or on this slide, we can show the financial strength of the group through the solvency ratio, but also through the rating given to us by the rating agencies. Moody's assigns A1 with a stable outlook for Atradius and A.M. Best gives us an A confirmed for operating entities for Occident and Atradius and to stress in the case of Atradius is the strong competitive position as an adequate capitalization and the conservative investment portfolio. And in the case of A.M. Best, they also stress how robust the balance sheet is, the good operational results and the adequate capitalization of the entities. At the top of the rating, you can also see the issuing rating of GCO with this Baa1, where they also stress the financial robustness of the group and the diversification of the 2 main entities of the group, Occident and Atradius. And on the left-hand side, you can see the evolution of the solvency ratio. The solvency ratio at December 2024 was growing slightly as compared to the previous year with this 236 -- a bit above 236% ratio, very much along the lines of the solvency ratios of comparable entities, the peers of the Spanish insurance sector and in some cases, slightly higher. And you know, and I will not stop to talk about this, that all of the solvency information is detailed in the report, solvency and financial information report published on April 4 for the operating entities and a bit before that for GCO. And finally, I think we should mention investments together with provisions, it's key for an insurance company. And I would like to stress that we continue with a prudent investment policy. We are reassured when it comes to the volatilities of the market. You have seen this with a good evolution, the positive evolution of equity capital gains. As you can see on screen, our main asset is fixed income. The equity portfolio is very much diversified and in sectors that are historically resilient, the growth that you can see of 8.7% vis-a-vis year-end is thanks to the good evolution of the equity we already had, not because of great investments and a strong and comfortable treasury position. You can see here, cash and cash equivalents, lower investment on fixed -- we use this to care for the claims ratio of the different areas, and we feel very comfortable with it. And with all of this, the truth is that we are following up closely the evolution of the markets and the volatility of the markets in the event of any rebalancing of equity portfolios being necessary. So we will finish the presentation here. As on previous occasions, we will now answer the questions asked throughout the session. We would like to thank you for your interest because based on the volume of questions that we have received, we have perceived this interest. We've received your interest. Nawal Rim has pulled together all of the questions asked. We will try to answer them all. Maybe some of them will be answered via the regular channels through the Investor Relations team, and we will answer the questions pulled by topics as on previous occasions. And before we start with the Q&A, I would like to thank you again for your interest. Thank you very much for attending this online presentation of the presentation of results of the first half year of 2025. And well, since we are at the end of July, I would like to take the opportunity to wish you a lovely month of August.

Thank you very much, Clara Gómez and Isidro Lapeña, for the presentation. As usual, we will start with the Q&A. And well, the question -- there are many similar questions. I'll group them together by topic. First, Motor at Occident, several questions about the growth of written premiums, 9.4% above the sector. What are your forecasts in this line? And as to the combined ratio, it has improved by 1.5 percentage points as compared to last year, and it is at 93.7%. What's the reason for this continuing to improve? And what do you expect for the rest of the year?

Well, we're very happy about the evolution of the income of this line of business, the increase in written premiums above the sector, as you said, Nawal, this has been thanks to excellent commercial activities in terms of sales and cancellations, which has led to a net increase in the number of policies and policyholders that we are very satisfied about. And what about our focus for the next -- the rest of the year? We expect to continue along this growing path, aligning with the increases of the sector or even surpassing them. And in order to answer the second part of the question about the profitability of this line, we maintain a positive gap of over 2 points with the rest of the sector in combined ratio and having a combined ratio of 93.7% is very satisfactory to us. It's very good news, especially in such a competitive environment where the sector is facing a relevant increase of the cost of claims, especially in bodily injuries in the scales, but also in material damage where we are feeding the cost of inflation. The prospects from now to the end of the year is that we expect a similar trend with increases in written premiums, technical costs that are contained and reduction in expenses, thanks to the efficiency measures taken.

We will now continue with Multi-risk. The questions are summarized as the expectations of combined ratio for 2025. We've slightly improved the combined ratio despite it having been a quarter with more weather events.

Yes, Nawal, in this first half year, our combined ratio has improved by 0.2%, thanks on the one side to more earned premiums, which is leveling up with the increase in turnover. But in Multi-risk, we have not managed yet. We're almost there. And on the other side, better productivity, which have exceedingly offset the increase in technical costs due to higher claims ratio connected to weather events like the ones we have seen in the past few weeks. As you may remember, we've also suffered from the impact of the blackout in April 28, it wasn't very material in terms of result, but it has meant a relevant operations effort to maintain service quality at optimum levels for our customers. For the remainder of the year, we expect that earned premiums will continue improving. We will continue with a very cautious and rigorous selection of risks, especially in industrials, and we expect to see efficiencies deriving from the merger so that this combined ratio is at 90% or below. There are still question marks as to how the peak events and weather events may impact us. We know that they will take place indeed. And despite the reinsurance consortium, they may have a negative impact on the income statement, but we do have a great trust in our risk management to have a very good second half year and to keep the combined ratio below 90%, as we said before.

Okay. Now on to questions about Life. We received some about periodic and single premiums and the reasons for those. And some questions specifically about Health, stressing that the line has improved its growth, whereas it still has a combined ratio above 100%. So what do we expect for this line? And will the combined ratio land below 100% at the end of the year?

Thank you, Nawal. In Life, we are happy with the increase in premiums that we are seeing, thanks to greater commercial activity and a good contention of cancellations. We are seeing -- we're growing in all lines. I would like to stress the good performance of our periodic premium portfolio, which is what offers better value and profitability. They are growing at a very good pace, 4% and single premiums grew by 7.4% because of the very good sales of supplementary premiums. As to Health, as we've always said, for us, Health is a strategic line, even if it's not so relevant in terms of income as other lines. But if we focus on the growth in Health premiums, the increase in Health premiums in the first quarter, it was more moderate, 0.6% due to the agreement we have with Telefónica, which is renewed in January and limits the increase in premiums. This effect is diluted over the month. And in the second quarter, the growth has been better with 2% at the end of July. Excluding the impact of Telefónica, the business depends on our management, it's growing at 5%, 6% below the sector, true, but also improving quarter-on-quarter. As to the second part of the question about the combined ratio, which is at 100.4%, I must say that even if we are slightly at technical losses, we're improving. If you remember at the end of March, we were at 104.4%, but we see that the measures -- the selective measures are already leading to positive results to adjust better to the different profiles of our customers. So by the end of the year, we expect these measures can take the line to a progressive improvement and to make it profitable to bring it again to a combined ratio below 100%, which is a goal I think we will reach in the midterm.

We will continue with you, Isidro, because there are a few questions about Atradius. Questions about the forecast for the year and they are mainly combined ratio questions. What are the reasons for this drop? What ratio do we expect for the end of the year?

Thank you, Nawal. This was mentioned it a bit in the presentation as to the growth in Atradius, what we've done in the second quarter was to revert the situation we experienced in the first quarter because we are focusing especially in commercial activities, and this is starting to bear fruit. We continue to have very stable retention rates. And the world forecasts of growth are positive. So we maintain -- we hope to maintain a stable level of income toward the end of the year. It's difficult for us, it seems to grow in credit insurance. We're offsetting it with surety and reinsurance and income is conditioned by the sales of our policyholders, which are, in turn, impacted by the macroeconomic uncertainty, tariffs and the exchange ratios, which are quite random. As to what you said about the combined ratio, it has improved by 0.6% as compared to the first half year of 2024, but let's not fool ourselves. This improvement is mainly due to the change in the expectations attached to big claims -- big claims because we have not expected any that can have a big impact on the combined ratio. If we focus on the standard reality, we are observing a negative trend and above previous years, practically in all markets. So we're already seeing this upwards normalization in the claims frequency that we already forecasted in previous quarters. Prospects towards the future and for the rest of the year, we will continue with our cautious underwriting policy. We expect to maintain a stable level of income with a normalized combined ratio in an environment of uncertainty due to the evolution of FX and tariff agreements and the economy in general.

Okay. So the purely business question are already behind us. And now we're moving on to questions that are more related to the financial result and financial investments. Financial investments risk and entity risk has grown by 3.5% especially because of fixed income, variable income and real estate. What are you forecasting? And are you concerned about the volatility of the market? Clara?

Yes. I think we have to break down the financial behavior of Occident and Atradius and financial results have been relatively positive, 0.9% growth vis-a-vis at Occident and this we already mentioned in the presentation of results. This is due to the good performance of fixed income, which is our main assets and the interest rates in the mid- and long-term of this fixed income. In our case, the mid- to long-term evolution of the rates impacts us more than short- to mid-term. And as to the financial results of our investments, part of those assured with our customers supply savings who we can offer more attractive rates. This is why the financial margin does not show the same growth as the obtained interest rates. This is regarding Occident. Regarding Atradius, the behavior is different. The increase of the financial result is 10.4%, mainly due to the increase in fixed income, but also because of purely exogenous reasons as the CFO, Isidro Lapeña, said before, it is the impact of FX due to the depreciation of the dollar versus the euro. And finally, even though I think you did not mention it in the presentation, but there have been several questions about investments, even if you didn't ask specifically, I would like to say that on the real estate, if we compare with the previous year, we did not grow in real estate investment. It looks like that on the slide. But as is mentioned in the first half year report, we've bought certain funeral parlors with which we've consolidated our long-term view of vision for Mémora. And this means there's an increase in real estate investments. As to the latest bit of the question, are we concerned about the volatility of the markets? We expect to end the year with positive growth. It will, of course, depend on the evolution of the market. And it also depends on the economic context, and we monitor this volatility closely, but we are reassured because we have a consolidated fixed income and equity portfolios that we've built along the years and that we can say is very much consolidated. I think now, we've answered all of the questions about this part.

Yes. Actually, we will continue with you, Clara, with a question more related to the dividend. They say -- they ask whether our policy has changed because the increase of the dividend of July has been 20.8%.

Well, I'll summarize it in one word. No, we have quite a stable policy. Our commitment has always been that of a growing dividend stable. And as we've said on several occasions, this has also taken place during crisis. The increase of the dividend in July has been relatively higher than usual at this point, EUR 25 per share. But at the group, we continue with an annual commitment of offering a growing dividend without expecting big changes in our dividend policy vis-a-vis the commitment to our shareholders.

Finally, Clara, before we close the Q&A, investors or the persons online want to know about the process of the voluntary public tender offer and the time line.

I think this is the last question. It is true, and I said it at the beginning of the presentation as a summary of this public tender offer process. Well, there's not much we can say at the moment that hasn't been made public and announced by the controlling shareholder, INOC, S.A.. I would like to remind you, just to give some context, that INOC, S.A. as a controlling shareholder of GCO has direct and indirect control of 62.03% of the share capital. And in March, they formulated a voluntary public tender offer on 100% of the shares of GCO to increase their direct control on GCO. And the terms are what the regulation established and INOC, S.A. aims at delisting GCO. And I think I mentioned that at the beginning on the 16th of May, the CNMV accepted to review the transaction. And there's not really much we should say at the moment, it's not in our hands, but we can say -- but as far as we know, the process is progressing as expected in this type of transaction. Having said this, just a reminder, in the event of INOC, S.A. getting the authorization by the CNMV and when the acceptance period begins within the first 10 days, the Board of Directors of GCO will have to issue a report, a detailed report on the public tender offer. And for that report, the Board will use 2 expert reports, 2 furnace opinions issued by prestigious organizations to have an independent assessment of the valuation of the independent expert assigned by INOC, S.A.. And we know as could be otherwise, that INOC, S.A. will report in due time any progress made.

Okay. Thank you very much, Clara. With this, we conclude this presentation of results of the first half year of 2025. Thank you very much, Clara Gómez, Isidro Lapeña, for the presentation and for answering the questions. I would like to remind you that, as usual, any unanswered questions will be managed directly through the Investor Relations team over the next few days. And I would like to invite you to the next presentation of results that should take place on the 30th of October, Thursday, to present the results of the first 9 months of the year. And finally, I would like to remind you that you can visit our website that contains all the information that may be of interest to you. I would like to thank you for your participation. Have a happy summer and see you soon. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]