Société Générale Société anonyme (GLE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good morning, everyone. I would like to extend my thanks and warm welcome to our shareholders, bond holders and analysts joining us here in the room in person, but also online. We deeply appreciate and value your continued commitment and engagement with Societe Generale. Today is an important milestone for us. It's an opportunity to step back assess our achievements, discuss where we are headed and more importantly, explain how we intend to keep creating value for our shareholders. In 2022, the group was in a difficult position. Our organization was too complex. Our operating model was not efficient enough costs were too high. Profitability was too low and a weak capital position hampered our ability to grow and to distribute value to shareholders. But it was also clear that the group had strong franchises and a clear potential, potential, however, that was not translating consistently into financial performance. The average profitability languished at around 6% for the 2018, 2022 period. So in 2023, we set out to fix that. We established a strategic road map with clear priorities to build a stronger, simpler and more profitable, a group with greater capital flexibility, tighter operational discipline and a sharper focus on a higher and more sustainable value creation. And this is exactly what we have done. And of course, there is still much more to do. What I want to share with you today are the next steps we will take to create the conditions for disciplined, profitable growth reaching a ROTE between 13% and 14% in 2029 and above 15% in 2030 and beyond. But we know that promises don't earn your credibility, results do. To give you a better sense of how we plan to achieve our future ambitions, let's revisit how we engineered this turnaround. Three years ago to strengthen our foundation, we decided to increase our CET1 ratio target from 12% to 13% after Basel IV. It was an ambitious goal at the time designed to create a robust buffer above regulatory requirements, give greater flexibility to manage the group through different market conditions and to remove the perception of the dilution risk. At the time, we combined this capital objective with a payout policy of 40% to 50% of the reported net income. And as we all know, you have to make money before you can spend it and we had to earn the right to distribute more. But by Q1 '25, our CET1 ratio had already reached 13.4% after Basel IV above our 13% target. And that marked a fundamental change in our position instead of being a constraint, capital became a source of strategic flexibility. It also became the foundation for more predictable ordinary distributions as well as a lever for additional capital returns when our capital generation exceeded the needs of our business. We have moved from rebuilding capital to actively managing it. Over the past 3 years, we have also fundamentally improved the operating performance of the group. We made difficult decisions. We simplified the organization. We reduced structural complexity. We increased accountability across the group and we applied strict discipline in the allocation of every euro of expense. These actions are now producing tangible results, and we now have a cost base that is 8% lower than it was in 2022. And yet at the same time, we organically grew revenues by 8%, and this despite stable organic RWA. Those measures have improved our cost-to-income ratio, which -- by the end of this year, will be below 60%, exactly what we committed 3 years ago. That 60% is also 11 percentage points below the 2018, 2022 average level. As a result, profitability has increased to around 11%. That's 5 percentage points higher than the 2018, 2022 average and above our initial target of between 9% and 10%. All this resulted in a higher distribution to our shareholders with the ordinary payout reaching 50% of reported income as early as 2025. We were also able to return excess capital to shareholders beyond our ordinary distribution policy. And we've done this through 3 extraordinary share buybacks totaling EUR 3.5 billion. So by 2025, just 18 months after the cut the total distribution to shareholders was almost 3x what it was in 2022. In total, we distributed around EUR 9.5 billion since 2023 and total distribution, combined with the increase of our share price represents a total shareholder return of 270%. This performance is among the best in our industry. Greater profitability also strengthens our risk profile. In the past few years, our earnings have not only grown, but they are significantly more resilient. So first, we reduced the volatility of our revenues. We are now generating revenues that recur with greater predictability at lower levels of volatility across market cycles. And as the chart on the left shows, this is better than most of our peers. Second, the combination of stronger revenues, lower costs and greater operating efficiency has increased by 50% the pre-provision profit generated by the group compared to its 2018, 2022 average. And third, our cost of risk has remained low. It has been consistently below 30 basis points every quarter since 2023. This reflects the quality of our loan portfolio, our disciplined origination standards and our prudent management of credit risk. We are now better equipped to absorb shocks, generate capital and deliver sustainable returns through the cycle. This is the risk profile we intend to maintain as we move into the next phase. One look at these results leads to a clear and simple conclusion. We have met or exceeded all of the targets from our previous plan. And given how well this playbook has performed, we want to enhance it and build off our strengths. And our group is built around 3 powerful and complementary pillars, French Retail Banking, Global Banking and Investor Solutions and Mobility and International Retail Banking. Each pillar has its own strengths, sound client franchises and growth drivers. And together, they give us a diversified revenue base, a broad range of expertise and a distinctive capacity to serve our clients across their different banking needs. Of course, the strategy is only as strong as the organization's culture and capacity to execute it. And Societe Generale is well known for its resilient business-minded entrepreneurial and innovative culture as well as for a strong sense of belonging, which are unique assets. Our success is a testament to the performance of all our talented teams all over the world. And I want to take this opportunity to warmly thank them for their hard and consistent work, which delivered a particularly successful turnaround. But we knew we could do better. So we also worked hard to reshape our culture around 4 principles: ownership, efficiency, cooperation and responsibility. We changed -- and this is why we can look into the future with confidence. And those future next steps come straight from a family playbook. It's a strategic equation that has already proved successful for us. It doesn't need to be changed. It needs to be enhanced. We can take an even lower cost base, combine it with profitable growth, underpin it with disciplined risk management while continuously transforming our businesses to make them more competitive with higher level of sustainable performance. So here are the targets for 2029, lower costs in absolute terms, standing at EUR 16.3 billion, down 2% versus 2026. Higher revenues growing at a CAGR of around 3% between 2026 and 2029. And leading to a cost-to-income ratio below 55%, a low cost of risk between 25 basis points and 30 basis points and a RoTE between 13% and 14%. We have the CET1 ratio above 13% and a distribution payout ratio of 50%. Now here's what the strategy and those targets mean in terms of shareholder distributions. Our policy is built around 2 complementary components, the first is an attractive and sustainable ordinary distribution with a payout ratio at 50% of our reported net income. This will grow along with the recurring earnings and organic capital generation of the group. And this ordinary distribution will continue to be balanced between dividends and share buybacks, and it will translate into a low to mid-teens DPS growth CAGR over the 2026, 2029, period with an expected cumulative ordinary distribution above EUR 13 billion. The second is an extraordinary distribution, which allows us to return capital generated above our 13% target. If no relevant and accretive M&A opportunities are identified, we will return to shareholders -- to shareholders the entirety of this excess capital estimated at around EUR 8 billion. Therefore, the total return to our shareholders may reach EUR 21 billion for the period or 39% of our market capitalization. Think of it this way, we could distribute around 80% of our earnings each year after funding our businesses for profitable growth. Now let me outline how we will lower costs, which has been and will remain at the heart of our strategy. Over the past few years, the steps we took to reduce our cost base and improve our efficiency, have paid off. Our costs, as you know, have decreased by 8% compared to the 2022 level. That is a decrease of EUR 1.4 billion in absolute terms, despite an average annual inflation rate of 2% to 3%. Restating from perimeter impact and inflation our cost base has decreased by 17%, thanks to savings of EUR 2.6 billion. This is massive. And we accomplished this because we worked on every component of our cost base through decisions, both large and small. We adjusted our workforce to reflect our strategic priorities and the changing needs of our business. As you can see, compared to the end of 2023, head count is down 17% and 11% when adjusted for the disposals. We implement a strict control on hiring and on external spending. We simplified our organization and reduced management layers, creating clear responsibilities and faster decision-making. But creating a lasting efficiency culture takes more than that. So we conducted an exhaustive review of our processes and thousands of employees took part generating thousands of ideas on how to be more efficient. In IT alone, we reduced costs by EUR 900 million between '22 and '26, in part by consolidating our supplier base from 600 providers -- 650 providers to just 4 key partners. This reduction in spending, however, did not come at the expense of operational resilience or security on the contrary. In fact, we improved the quality and stability of our IT production bringing the number of incidents down by 80% versus 2022, and our composite IT efficiency index improved by 27%. At the same time, we have continued to reinforce our prevention, detection and response capabilities in cyber risk. But even with all that, our cost base is still too high. Our organization remains too complex in some areas, and we still have too many systems, processes and activities that are duplicated across businesses and functions. The next phase, therefore, will go beyond the measures already implemented. In 2029, we expect our cost base to be at EUR 16.3 billion, representing a net decrease of 2% compared to 2026 levels. We will continue to invest billions to support our businesses with an incremental EUR 600 million, bringing the total investment to over EUR 5 billion over the period. Our strategic approach is to spend less on what causes inefficiency and more where we can create lasting value. The savings generated will more than offset inflation and the investments required to deliver our strategy. And here's how we're going to do this. We have 3 main levers. The first 1 is technology and AI and more on that in a minute. The second one is our human capital. It is simple, really. Every recruitment decision is put to a clear test. Can the need be addressed internally, either through reskilling our own people, automation or reallocation of resources. If it can't, we'll hire from outside. We will also continue to improve spans of controls and reduce unnecessary organizational layers. The goal is not simply to reduce resources, it is to use our talent more effectively. We'll also reduce costs through procurement. External spending represents a significant part of our cost base, and we see further potential to improve how we manage this through stronger control. And it starts with a simple shift in posture before being disciplined in spending, 1 has to be disciplined in its his or her needs. This is how we will continue to decrease our cost base in absolute terms. And we're just getting started. Despite the significant progress we have already made, our IT intensity ratio, which stands at 15% remains above that of our peers and it tells us that we have plenty of room for improvement. We are now targeting an IT intensity ratio of 12% by the end of the plan. We will achieve this again through 3 main levers: The first is the continued simplification of our application and technology landscape. The second lever is to pursue the simplification of our IT operating model. And the third level is AI, which will be an important accelerator for our transformation. By 2029, we will have reduced our IT costs by 30% since 2022 despite inflation and higher investments, all while substantially improving our IT KPIs and KRIs. AI will, of course, support our journey. And we see 3 major opportunities here. First, lower cost, particularly in technology, through more efficient coding, testing and maintenance and support. Second, higher productivity by streamlining low-touch processes, automating reporting and reducing repetitive administrative tasks. And third, it should free up our people to have more personalized interactions with our clients. In short, AI makes it possible to develop and operate technology at a lower cost and it makes our teams more productive. We will scale use cases selectively based on measurable benefits and within a rigorous risk and governance framework as we are not just any business, but we are a bank. So right now, we see AI generating EUR 500 million to EUR 600 million of cost reductions with around EUR 350 million embedded so far in the trajectory. Last week, we signed a strategic collaboration with Anthropic that gives us access to its advanced capabilities and latest generation AI models. This collaboration will provide us with a highly scalable platform, enabling us to accelerate the deployment of AI use cases across the group, resulting in all the benefits I just mentioned. Their focus on enterprise AI applications will be key to supporting the deep strategic transformation of our IT environment and core systems and processes. This is, in our view, an important step in our AI journey, allowing us to combine external technological capabilities with our own data, expertise and understanding of our clients. We adjust costs first for a simple reason because of operating leverage, growing off a lower cost base creates more value and more resilience. So now let's address growth. Three years ago, in this room, I told you we would grow differently in a more disciplined manner, and we've done that. We have almost no organic RWA allocation. Our businesses grew by 8% between 2022 and 2026. We did that by transforming our core businesses and playing to our strengths. French retail grew by EUR 1.4 billion during that period. BoursoBank is now a real bank that scale and profitable with more than 9 million clients. It has around EUR 85 billion of assets and leads in the French online banking sector. At [ HG ] we're growing and building on our leadership in savings and wealth management, supported by record life insurance inflows. Global markets are less volatile, delivering recurring and predictable earnings while achieving a record profitability of 20%. In Financing & Advisory, we implemented a new model to make more efficient use of our balance sheet. And this increases our petty to originate financing solutions and distribute them to investors while supporting our clients even more effectively. With the integration of LeasePlan, Ayvens has reinforced its position as a global leader in fleet management with close to 3.2 million vehicles worldwide. And they do operate in a complex environment, but thanks to, again, our disciplined approach, we managed to increase margins and preserve profitability. We expect group revenues to grow by an average of approximately 3% per year between '26 and '29 supported by a disciplined organic RWA growth of around 2% per year. This growth will be broad-based and balanced across our 3 businesses. It will not depend on any single franchise, market environment or source of income. And just because we now have capital, doesn't mean we're looking to grow all businesses all pants. First, we will accelerate growth in BoursoBank and in our wealth and savings franchise in France. Those businesses are cat-light and highly profitable. They can build on existing platforms, expertise and client relationships to generate additional revenues with limited RWA consumption. This operating leverage argument, so to speak, also applies to global equities, financing and advisory to our retail banks in the CEE region and to Ayvens, where capital investments in RWA will bring accretive returns, thanks to scale and high marginal returns. Our U.S. platform represents a distinct growth opportunity. It's already a highly profitable, well diversified and business with a large and deep client base across financial institutions and corporates in a growing economy. We will increase our capital allocation to the region to take advantage of this compelling combination of opportunity and strength. So by now, our objective should be clear to direct resources towards our most profitable growth opportunities and maximize the value created from the group's existing franchises. More broadly, our approach in terms of portfolio management remains consistent. 3 years ago, we defined specific criteria, those principles still apply. What has changed, however, is our capital position. This means that we can be open to potential M&A opportunities, but let me be clear, we do not need acquisitions to deliver the financial targets we are presenting today. And any transaction would have to meet strict conditions. It would need to have a compelling strategic fit, reinforce 1 of our core franchises and be consistent with our risk appetite. It would need to meet strict valuation criteria, demonstrate financial accretion and offer credible opportunities for synergies. We'll, therefore, remain selective and disciplined, and we will only pursue an opportunity if it offers a more attractive use of capital than the alternatives available to us, including investments in organic growth or returning capital to shareholders. Let me also address our minority interests. From a strategic perspective, we already have control of these businesses through our majority ownership. At the same time, we regularly assess the most appropriate ownership structure for each of them. This includes considering the strategic importance, growth potential, capital requirements, valuation and so on. And here, the technical benefits of reducing the minority interest frictions, in our view, do not outweigh the strategic consideration nor the principles we apply to managing our excess capital. And at this point, we are satisfied with our current ownership of these assets. Our responsibility is always and will always be to maximize value for the group and its shareholders. Good performance results from solid execution and risk management is, of course, vital to that execution. Our risk profile benefits from the -- first, from the diversification of our business model. We operate across different geographies, client segments and economic sectors. We also combine complementary businesses across a wide range of markets. Our diversification is also reflected in our credit portfolio where our exposures are well spread across industries and top 5 sectors represent less than 13% of our EaD with limited client concentration. This diversification matters, of course, as it reduces our exposure to any single market business or sources of revenue and it provides greater stability and resilience to our overall earnings, as I showed you earlier. Now with regards to market risk, I implemented a significant shift in risk management, which has been in motion since 2021. We have significantly reduced the amount of market risk taken by the group. You can see that in the drastic reduction in our market stress test limit usage. At the same time, we improved commercial performance and grew our business substantially. Our Global Markets activities have delivered record revenues, demonstrating the strength of the franchise and the quality of its client-driven model. We are, therefore, generating stronger revenues with significantly lower market risk intensity, operating with an improved risk return profile and with a better quality of earnings. Let me bring these elements together. Over the past few years, our cost of risk has remained low and well controlled. We have an S1 S2 provisions buffer in terms of cost of risk, which is effectively almost double that of our peers' weighted average. At the same time, we have significantly increased our preprovision profit. And this provides us with a much stronger hedge against any potential deterioration in the environment or in the credit environment. Looking ahead, we are targeting a cost risk of 25 to 30 basis points over the 2026, 2029 period. And the target reflects a prudent approach and incorporates a degree of normalization from the low levels observed in recent years. Let me now turn to the transformation of our businesses, which will be critical to unlocking further growth and higher profitability. Of course, the transformation of any business is always impacted by the broader environment and how it's rapidly changing in both challenging and promising ways. We're no exception. The global economy is undergoing profound structural change. This environment will remain complex and volatile, but it is also creating significant opportunities for us. Because of our business portfolio, franchise strengths, well aligned to core secular trends, thanks to our global multi-local reach and because of our willingness to embrace change. Let's start with French retail. Over the past 3 years, we have delivered a significant transformation of this franchise. We have a strong and integrated platform that is unique in France. It serves more than 17 million clients combining the #1 online bank in France, our traditional network in France, a leading private banking franchise and strong capabilities in insurance and savings. Together, these franchises give us a particularly strong penetration with all individual and corporate clients in France and the ability to address the full range of their needs. We now manage close to EUR 0.5 trillion in deposits and saving assets. Life insurance outstandings have reached EUR 170 billion, an increase of 27% since '22. Private banking assets under management now exceed EUR 145 billion. That's up 30% over the same period, and BoursoBank has AuA of EUR 85 billion, an increase of more than 70% since 2022. These strong achievements have improved profitability, and we are well on track to achieve all our targets for 2026. 3 years ago, when the cost-to-income ratio of this business stood at 73%, we set a target of below 60%. It is fair to say that at the time, few considered that achievable. Today, we have not only delivered on that commitment. We have exceeded. Our cost-to-income ratio reached 58% in the first half of 2026. This 15 percentage point improvement reflects a powerful combination of revenue recovery and cost reduction. At constant perimeter between '22 and '26 and consensus 26, revenue increased by 14%, while costs declined by 11%, 25 percentage points of positive jaws. This operating leverage has also translated into significantly stronger returns with RONE reaching 14.2% in the first half of '26 compared with an average of just above 10% between 2018 and 2022. So 3 years ago, we were facing many challenges, and we had 2 unbalanced and some somewhat unstabilized assets. On the 1 hand, we had significant opportunities to improve efficiency in traditional retail banking, both through cost reduction and better commercial performance. On the other hand, we have the massive opportunity to grow to double really the size of BoursoBank. We simply had to grab this unique opportunity to establish our leadership and despite, as you know, an otherwise conservative approach to spending, we had to build our group's future. And we managed to do that. Today BoursoBank has 9 million clients and EUR 85 billion of AuA, EUR 300 million profit and 60% RONE. And overall, our French retail banking pillar has a cost to income of 58% and RONE only above 14%. We now have a unique French retail banking setup, strong and profitable, stabilize and mature with critical size across all market segments and channel and ready to embrace the future. And we will take this business step-by-step into that future by combining all our businesses into 1 integrated but differentiated franchise. One market, 1 business with several assets to address it under 1 management, dedicated to the individual retail banking business in France. As you know, we announced the appointment of Benoit Grisoni as its leader starting October 1, and Benoit will be under the continued leadership of Lubomira Rochet and my supervision. From now on, all our individual clients will be served by 1 integrated franchise led by 1 management. BoursoBank will continue to serve digital clients across all levels of wealth, and grow aggressively its footprint and its asset base in the French market. The traditional network will focus strategically on the mass affluent and affluent clients. This will be done in close cooperation with our private banking franchise, which will continue to operate its high net worth client business on the 1 hand and continue the existing and widely successful cooperation with the traditional network in addressing the upper band of the affluent segment. The product offer, the relationship model, the relationship channels will be highly differentiated by client segments, using all our assets consistently from BoursoBank to private banking. And importantly, the pricing and cost to serve will be highly segmented and differentiated across client segments with the clear objective of reaching consistent profitability across all client segments all the time. We will develop synergies across the businesses and seamless transitions for clients interested in moving from 1 channel and product offer to another as their needs and behaviors change. And finally, we will work to eliminate all duplication over time, whether that's product factories, digital tools and services or process design. This vision will be implemented step by step over time to protect the franchise and to execute the transformation in the most effective and responsible way. And that implementation starts now under the strict principles. Over time, this vision has the potential to disrupt the cost-to-serve equation in the French market, while carrying a higher on increased potential. Its benefits will flow through progressively for years to come. They will support the delivery of not only our 2029 targets, but also the further profitability increases we project for 2030 and beyond. Building with this vision, we are setting out a clear road map through 2029. We're targeting cost-to-income ratio below 55% by 2029. And first, we continue to grow BoursoBank aggressively as we capture growth and a meaningful contribution to the group's profitability. Second, we'll continue to improve the efficiency of the unified platform we will adjust the number of branches in our network to better reflect continuously changing client behaviors. We will streamline our central functions, simplify processes and further reduce duplication, as I said, across the platform. We are currently removing 1 regional management layer. And finally, we will focus our efforts on a strong position among affluent clients and leading franchises across our traditional network, private banking and life insurance in the French market. The step-by-step transformation of our entire business will unlock the unique potential of our French retail. The powerful platform of BoursoBank is built on 4 strengths. First client acquisition. BoursoBank combines the leading brand in online banking, brokerage and financial information with a highly efficient acquisition model. Its client base has grown by 29% per year over the past 3 years. At the same time, that acquisition costs have declined. Second, client loyalty, a comprehensive product range, a leading digital experience and consistently high client satisfaction resulted in a churn rate below 4%. Third, client potential, BoursoBank's clients are young, financially attractive, if you may say so, and still early in their relationship with the bank. As these relationships deepen, their value continues to grow with assets increasing 6-fold since 2016. And fourth, scalability with around 1,000 employees and highly automated processes, the platform operates with a very low cost to serve, and this naturally supports a return on normative equity above 60%. So BoursoBank combines client growth, deepening relationships and exceptional scalability. The result is sustained double-digit growth and profitability well above its competitors. We see 2 complementary sources driving BoursoBank's revenue growth. The first is the increasing value generated by our existing client base. As clients mature, they become bigger and bigger contributors to revenues and profitability. But we intend to go beyond that to monetize our client base. We will enhance our advisory capabilities notably through AI, and this would allow us to address the greater share of our clients' financial needs. The second source of growth is new client acquisition, of course. The French market continues to offer a highly attractive opportunity. Traditional banks are not yet able to provide the market with the same combination of service, product breadth and competitive pricing, while new banks still offer more a limited range of products. So BoursoBank is uniquely positioned between these 2 models. It combines the simplicity and pricing of a digital platform with the breadth of products and services of a full service bank. Building on this competitive advantage, we are targeting a total client growth of more than 50% between now and 2029 and that would take our client base to more than 14 million. To us, it's crucial that we maintain strong balance between rapid client acquisition and high profitability. We should not overearn. We are, therefore, targeting RONE above 45% each year from '26 to '29. Bottom line, BoursoBank will combine continued client growth with increasing value per client, allowing it to expand that scale while sustaining a very high level of profitability. Wealth and savings represent a major growth opportunity for the group as well. France is 1 of Europe's largest and most attractive savings market. French households hold around EUR 7 trillion in financial assets. That's the second largest pool in Europe. The savings rate is around 18% of disposable income. An aging population is placing greater emphasis on retirement planning. But with state-funded retirements benefits shrinking, individuals will need to take greater responsibility for their own financial future and they will need investment solutions. We also expect wealth transfer between generations like we've never seen before. By 2040, an estimated EUR 9 trillion around 3x the French GDP is expected to be transferred from baby boomers to other generations. And these trends will change both the scale and the nature of our clients' needs. And here, our unique position, our new highly segmented approach and our focus on mass affluent to high net worth individual clients positions us well for these opportunities. At BoursoBank, our goal is to increase the AuA to EUR 115 billion by 2029. Our private bank, our '29 target is EUR 180 billion, in insurance, our ambition is to at least exceed EUR 200 billion by '29. The value of our model lies not only in the strength of franchise, but in their combination. Here's a summary of the different financial targets I just laid out. Turning to Global Banking and Investor Solutions. Our corporate investment banking franchise is built on strong foundations as well with leading positions in highly profitable and differentiated businesses such as equity derivatives, structured finance, equity research and tokenized finance with SG Forge. We serve more than 6,000 clients worldwide with a well-balanced client base across financial institutions and corporates. Our revenues are also diversified by product, as you can see, contributing to the strength and resilience of the franchise. In 2025, GBIS generated record revenues of more than EUR 10 billion. But when we consider its profitability, the quality of the franchise becomes even clearer. GBIS is among the most profitable corporate and investment banks globally. RONE reached 19% in the first half of '26 an improvement of 3 percentage points since 2022. This performance has also been supported by a more efficient capital-efficient revenue mix with fees growing and representing 45% of revenues in 2025 compared with 40% in 2022. As a result, GBIS is on track to outperform all its 2026 financial targets. The cost-to-income ratio stood at 62.1% in '25 and improved further to 60.5% in the first half of 2026. That's already significantly below our target of less than 65%. Both our Global Markets and Financing & Advisory businesses are also on track to exceed the respective 2026 objectives. GBIS, therefore, enters the next phase from a position of strength. We have leading franchises, diversified revenues, disciplined cost and top-tier profitability. Our 2029 road map is based on the same 4 priorities as the group. Together, these actions will support the cost-to-income ratio below 60% in '29. We expect Financing & Advisory revenues to grow by an average of 3% to 5% per year between 2026 and 2029. For Global Markets, we are targeting revenues between EUR 6 billion and EUR 6.5 billion compared with approximately EUR 6 billion in '25. We will do all this while sustaining top-tier profitability through the cycle. In Global Markets, our goal is twofold: capture opportunities in underpenetrated client segments and address selected gaps in our product offering. So while historically a core component of our client base, hedge funds and asset managers currently account for a substantially lower share of our client mix than the industry average. And we therefore see significant potential to scale our presence in this segment. At the same time, we'll strengthen certain product capabilities so we can diversify our business mix and increase the contribution of recurring revenues. Prime Brokerage, for instance, will be a key priority. We see a clear opportunity to gain market share there as we expand already existing relationships with institutional clients and grow our cash prime brokerage balances. And finally, we will grow fixed offering beyond the flow business and we will build on our strong origination capabilities to expand credit distribution. Together, these initiatives will broaden our franchise and support profitable growth. In '25, Global Markets revenues were 28% higher than the 2018 to 2022 average. While our market stress test usage declined by more than 70% over the same period. In other words, we have generated much higher revenues while taking far less market risk. But this performance is more than just high quality. It's also predictable. Back in the '19 to '23, 2019 to 2023 period, our revenue volatility was broadly in line with our peers. Since the third quarter of 2023, volatility has been almost half that of our peers. This improvement is not accidental, of course. Reducing revenue volatility was a clear strategic priority for us. We have intentionally improved our business mix, reinforced our risk discipline and increased the contribution of more recurring revenues. And this has translated also into strong capital efficiency. In 2025, our revenue to RWA ratio in Global Markets was around twice the level of our peers. And at the same time, Global Markets delivered RONE of 20% approximately 6 percentage points above our CIB peer group. These operating principles will continue to underpin our growth ambitions through 2029. And and we will pursue opportunities where we have clear competitive advantage, always within a disciplined risk appetite and with a strong focus on risk-adjusted returns. The other key division of GBIS is financing and advisory, as you know. And thanks to our client base and leading positions in structured finance, we increased total origination volumes by 60% between 23% and 25%. This growth was achieved with more efficient use of capital as over the same period, we doubled the volume of loans distributed to investors, increasing our distribution rate from 40% to 50% in 2025. We intend to take this model further. By '29, we are targeting a distribution rate of 60%. More origination and more distribution increases client impact as well as fee generation and leads to a more efficient balance sheet usage. And total origination volumes will grow by 50% between '25 and '29, while maintaining disciplined RWA consumption and, of course, attractive risk-adjusted returns. We also see meaningful upside potential in investment banking. The combination with Bernstein is generating strong momentum in equity capital markets, particularly in the United States. We will build on this distinctive expertise through targeted investments strengthening our sector teams and our client coverage. We will focus particularly on expanding our advisory business with financial sponsors and on reinforcing our presence in the U.S. market. Finally, Global Transaction and Payment Services will provide an additional source of profitable growth. We intend to address their new client segments and increase our share of wallet with existing relationships. This should support an average annual deposit growth of approximately 10% between '25 and '29 providing a valuable and recurring source of revenues and liquidity. Strong risk profile of course, is 1 of the core features of the Financing & Advisory franchise. Our credit portfolio is well diversified here again across sectors, geographies and clients and this diversification, combined with disciplined origination and prudent underwriting standards, reduces our exposure to idiosyncratic risks and support the resilience of the franchise. This is also true for sectors that have recently attractive greater market scrutiny. Our exposure to private credit remains limited and controlled as does our exposure to software IT consulting and data centers. And more broadly, our track record here speaks for itself. F&A has consistently delivered a low and stable cost of risk, including through periods of significant economic and market volatility. These operating principles will remain firmly in place. These are the different targets for GBIS businesses. Over the past 3 years, we have also reshaped our mobility, International Retail Banking and Financial Services businesses. We completed the disposal of most noncore activities in Africa and exited equipment finance. This gives us a simpler and more focused portfolio. With the successful integration of this plan, we have built Ayvens into a global leader in mobility. Ayvens has what it takes to capture the long-term growth of this market, namely scale, expertise and operational capabilities. This pillar also benefits from a strong and well-recognized European banking franchises in the Czech Republic and Romania as well as from a specialized consumer finance activities. Together, these businesses provide the group with valuable diversification across different geographies, client segments and revenue sources. Our lending portfolio there is also well balanced between retail and corporate clients, contributing to the resilience of the platform. And importantly, this diversification comes with strong profitability. Since 2023, the pillar has delivered an average RONE of approximately 14%. Its cost-to-income ratio reached 53% in the first half of 2026. This positions us to achieve our 2026 target of below 55%. So as we enter the next phase with a streamlined portfolio of strong and efficient franchises that generate attractive returns and provide the group with complementary sources of profitable growth. These businesses are accretive to group profitability and consistent with our strategy. Now here's what we have planned next for MIBS. Our first priority is always to further improve the efficiency of the business model and bring the cost-to-income ratio below 47% by 2029. In our international retail networks, we will use our strong positions in attractive markets to grow consistently aiming at market share gains in target market segments. At Ayvens, growth will remain selective. The industry does not yet offer the optimal risk/reward balance across all segments, and we will not pursue volumes just for volume's sake. We will focus on the client products and markets, offering the most attractive profitable growth opportunities while preserving strong margins and responsible risk management. Historically, our consumer finance business has demonstrated strong profitability, and our priority here is to rebuild that performance progressively through prudent origination and again, a clear focus on risk-adjusted returns. So the direction from MIBS is clear, efficiency, selective growth and rigorous capital and risk discipline. And this will make MIBS an increasingly accretive contributor to group returns by 2029. Each of our 3 international retail banking franchises has a specific road map at KB in the Czech Republic, we will preserve our leadership among large corporates, grow selectively in SMEs and accelerate in retail through AI and the KB+ digital platform, which was a key investment in the previous plan. This will support further growth while maintaining high profitability in a profoundly transformed entity. At BRD in Romania, our priority is to consolidate our market position and close the efficiency gap with peers by scaling our digital capabilities. And growth will remain selective there as well. In Africa, following the streamlining of our portfolio, we will continue to manage our 5 franchises according to our proven playbook. In Consumer Finance, we have a focused footprint and leading car finance positions in France, Italy and Germany. And looking ahead, we will look to grow in this business by strengthening partnerships with leading manufacturers particularly in new car financing. And we will do so while preserving our highly efficient model and strict credit origination standards. And together, these levers will enable us to improve the business RONE by 2029. Ayvens , as you know, is the global mobility leader, and we have positioned it to realize its long-term growth potential and shape the industry for years to come. Three years after the beginning of a complex integration with this plan, Ayvens successfully delivered its 2025 financial targets and is firmly on track to achieve its 2026 objectives. And by shifting from a volume-led expansion through disciplined profitable growth, the Ayvens teams have done a remarkable job restoring strong margin amidst the rapidly changing mobility market. Under a skilled new management team and with strong governance, Ayvens is now ready to enter the next phase of its strategic development. And that next phase, we will build around 3 priorities. The first is selective growth in the most attractive customer segments. We see significant potential in retail, both among SMEs and individual clients. We will focus where margins are strong, namely in the light commercial vehicles category for SMEs. This is less a market growth opportunity and the market penetration opportunity where Ayvens scale, expertise and product capabilities provide a clear competitive advantage. We will also deepen plan relationships through additional services like insurance, electric vehicle charging solutions and enhanced fleet management services. This will increase value per client while further diversifying the revenue base. Second priority is cost reduction. Ayvens is committed to reducing its cost base through 2029. Technology, AI and a more effective allocation of resources will help simplify the operating model and improve productivity further. A major lever will be the optimization of the cost to serve across vehicle operations from delivery and maintenance to end of contract management. The third priority is to prepare Ayvens for the future of mobility. We will develop new sources of value, including used car leasing, next-generation automotive technologies and over time, the transition toward autonomous mobility. By 2029, we are targeting a cost-to-income ratio of approximately 49% and ROTE between 14% and 16% at Ayvens level. This summarizes the key targets we have set for mobility, International Retail Banking and Financial Services. Let me now hand over to Leo, our CFO, who will take you through our financial trajectory and targets. Thank you.

Thank you, Slavomir, and good morning, everyone. Let me start with the key macroeconomic assumptions that underpin our financial trajectory. Our outlook calls for a subdued growth in the near term, followed by a gradual recovery through 2029. Inflation is expected to steadily ease while short-term interest rates normalize from the current levels as energy markets stabilize over time. However, we expect both nominal and real rates to remain structurally higher than during the previous decade. Long-term sovereign yields are also expected to remain elevated and volatile, reflecting higher term premium and public financing needs. While our euro-dollar outlook remains relatively stable across all of the period. Taken together, these assumptions describe a scenario of moderate growth, progressively lower inflation, some normalization in short-term rates and persistently elevated long-term yields. This scenario, of course, is not without risk, geopolitical tensions, commodity prices, public financings or market volatility could lead to less favorable outcomes. For these reasons, our targets are mainly driven by factors within our control, the structural reduction of our cost base, disciplined and profitable growth, rigorous risk management and the continued transformation of our businesses. In other words, the delivery of our plan does not depend on macroeconomic tailwinds. It depends first and foremost on our ability to execute. Turning to the key revenue drivers for '27 to '29. The group targets a compound annual growth rate, a CAGR of its revenues of around 3% from the end of '26 to the end of '29. All businesses will have a balanced contribution to this growth, as can be seen in this slide. Revenue growth in French Retail, Private Banking and Insurance RPBI will be supported by the Wealth & Savings segment as well as by a strong contribution coming from BoursoBank. In the case of BoursoBank, this will be driven among other factors by the significant increase in the number of clients served by their franchise. In Global Banking and Investor Solutions, GBIS, growth will mainly be driven by targeted commercial initiatives in structured finance, financial services and credit activities. Now with regards to Mobility, International Retail Banking and Financial Services and MIBS, revenue growth will be underpinned by a strong commercial momentum at both KB and BRD as well as by a sustainable and profitable growth at Ayvens. These revenue streams will be supported by an organic RWA CAGR of around 2% over the whole period. I would like to focus on RPBI for a moment. I try to address a request that many of you have made in the past. First, as a context, let me remember that the NII is an important driver, of course. But even within RPBI, it represents only half of the total revenues. This is substantially lower than in many European peers. Moreover, as a proportion of the group's total NBI or RPBI's NII only represented 17% in the first half of 2026. As we have been doing in the past, we will continue to share our expectations on the direction of trouble, which continues to be 1 of gradual progression and moderate growth over the following years. Let me now explain some of the dynamics, which I hope should help you to gain a better view of that trend. First, in this perimeter, we maintained a very low sensitivity to changes in market rates, thanks to our proactive hedging policy. As you can see, the NII sensitivity is only plus EUR 10 million for minus 100 basis points part of the shift in interest rates. Second, we expect deposits to grow by 1% to 2% annually from '26 to '29. And also importantly, at this point, we expect our deposit mix to remain broadly stable. That's driven by the fact that term unregulated deposits are at peak levels since the rate increased back in 2022. This implies that the share of term and regulated deposits should stay close to current levels. This is 40% of total deposits. Third, the average maturity of non-remunerated deposits is 5 to 8 years, which gives you a reference of the rollover pace of our [indiscernible] portfolio. As a result, volume dynamics and the replacement of bad book deposits are expected to be the key drivers of NII dynamics during the '27 to '29 period. And as I explained earlier, we expect NII to grow gradually over the coming years. Although, of course, in any case, this is a trend, and therefore, may not always be completely linear. Now let me take you through an accounting change we are introducing regarding BoursoBank's client acquisition. Under IFRS 15 standard, client acquisition costs may be capitalized when their recoverability can be demonstrated through future revenues. We now have more than 15 years of reliable customer cohort data and enhanced profitability analysis. This provides robust evidence of the recovery of these costs. In this context, starting Q3 '26 acquisition costs, around 75% of all marketing expenses will be booked and therefore, amortized through P&L over a 7-year recovery period. This recovery period is determined by using only revenues eligible under IFRS 15. We which, in this case, only take into account net fees. The capitalization will lead to the recognition of an asset in the balance sheet, which will be 100% risk weighted, which will reflect the long-term investment made through the acquisition costs. Overall, this change will follow -- will allow for a more favorable representation of the customer value creation over time. This will happen through a closer alignment between the accounting and the clients' lifetime economics through a better matching of commercial investment and revenues, namely acquisition costs and related revenues and also through greater visibility into sustainable and profitable growth. Disciplined cost management will support the group's performance throughout 2029. Here's how. Having delivered EUR 2.6 billion of gross savings or about 17% net cost reduction since 2022 pro forma. This is including inflation and perimeter changes as shown in the slide. The group enters this new plan with a relentless focus on enhancing efficiency. We expect to bring our cost base below EUR 16.3 billion or a minus 2% compression versus 2026. This is after accounting for inflation as well as additional investments to further grow our businesses. Adjusted for these items, inflation and investments -- the underlying gross savings amounts to approximately EUR 1.9 billion. The cost savings measures will reap benefits well before 2029. In fact, most of the savings will be delivered earlier in the plan providing a meaningful improvement as soon as 2027. It is also important to point out that we will reduce the structure through natural attrition. In other words, we will not have to invest in any cost to achieve these reductions. With regards to operating performance, the group is expected to deliver a significant step-up over the course of the plan. As you can see, gross operating income, as shown on the left, is expected to increase by around 25% between '26 and '29. This translates into a significant improvement of the cost-to-income ratio in '29, with a target below 55%. This is an improvement of more than 5 percentage points versus the end of 2026. This performance will be driven, as explained before, first, by our structural cost discipline and therefore, net cost reduction and then by the organic revenue growth, which together will more than offset for inflation and additional investments in the period. Our targets for cost income ratios across our businesses demonstrate our ambition to further improve efficiency throughout the group by 2029. In RPBI, the cost-to-income ratio is expected to improve to below 55% in '29 compared to below 60% in our '26 targets. For GBIS, we're expecting to be below 60% in '29 and versus below 65% in our '26 target. And finally, in MIBS, the cost to income ratio is expected to be lower than 47% in '29 versus below 55% in our '26 target. These improvements reflect our continued focus on operational excellence, simplification and disciplined cost management across all of the businesses of the group. Within the context of the pillars cost-to-income ratio, it's important to mention that in the last few years, we have significantly reduced the corporate center drag and therefore, narrowed the gap between group RoTE and business ROTE RONE. First, since '23, restructuring charges have been recorded at the business level rather than at the corporate center. This was then to better reflect individual business performance and enhance accountability and ownership. Second, we optimize the management of our excess liquidity while also improving the group liquidity steering with the businesses. Ultimately, each business must be fully accountable for the value it creates and the capital and resources it consumes. Now while substantial progress has already been made on that front since '23, we believe there is still more to do. And in this context, from 2027 onwards, we will keep on working on optimizing our liquidity buffer, and we will reallocate to the businesses EUR 0.3 billion of regulatory and overhead costs, which were previously booked at the corporate center. To put this into context, this further reallocation represents 75% of the overall costs booked at the Corporate Center in 2025. Those initiatives will reduce the difference between Group ROTE and RONE to less than 3 percentage points in '29 compared to the current 5 percentage points. Moving on to review and risk management. Let me now come back into it since Slavomir already gave you the strategic approach. But nevertheless, we will maintain a prudent and disciplined approach to ensure that we remain resilient across a broad range of economic scenarios. The combination of low cost of risk, a prudent provisioning and higher pre-provision profit provides the group with a strong buffer against potential shocks. We are, therefore, targeting a through-the-cycle cost of risk of between 25 and 30 basis points throughout the '27 '29 period. With regards to profitability, we're targeting a ROTE of 13% to 14% in '29. Importantly, the improvement will be broad-based. Each of the 3 businesses will contribute in a balanced manner reflecting both the strength of our diversified model and the progress expected across all our franchises. This increase in profitability will be supported by a combination of a structural cost reduction, organic revenue growth and continued risk discipline. Together, this will generate stronger operating leverage and improve the quality and resilience of our returns. In terms of trajectory, we expect RoTE to increase steadily over the next 3 years. Finally, as Slavomir outlined earlier, with regards to shareholder distribution, we're proposing an attractive policy. This policy is comprised of 2 complementary components. The first 1 is an ordinary distribution, which is equivalent to 50% of group net income after interest in 81% and will be delivered through a balanced combination of cash dividends and share buyback. This should translate into a low to mid-teens cash dividend per share CAGR growth over the '27 '29 period with an expected cumulative ordinary distribution above EUR 13 billion. An interim dividend will also be announced each year in H1, continuing the approach we apply today. The second component would be the return of excess capital. We intend to maintain a CET1 above 13% throughout the '27 '29 period. If no additional accretive organic growth and no relevant and accretive M&A opportunities are identified, we will return to shareholders the entirety of this excess capital. The accumulation of excess capital over the period is expected to be approximately EUR 8 billion. Extraordinary distribution, if any, will be communicated once a year during our Q2 results as is already the case. Taken together, the potential shareholder distributions could exceed EUR 21 billion from '26 to '29, both included or 39% of our current market cap. In other words, this can be translated to distributing around 80% of our earnings each year after funding our businesses for profitable growth. This frame work combines the visibility of an attractive ordinary payout with the additional return of excess capital, and it reflects both the strength of our capital position and our continued discipline in allocating capital to where it creates the most value. I'll now give back the floor to Slavomir.

Thank you, Leo. So I want to spend a few minutes now on ESG. In the last 3 years, we have made a substantial progress decarbonizing our activities. It was driven by a sense of responsibility. It is also creating significant and growing business opportunities. The growing business between the 2 curves shown here on the far left provides tangible evidence of our execution with the doubling of our financing of low carbon energy since 2019, we have managed to dramatically flip this ratio in favor of low carbon energy production and by a wide margin. But we're not just raising our contribution to financing new energy technologies. We're expanding the scope of our contribution to capitalize on growing business opportunities. Our competitive edge here is our expertise and our reputation. We have established ourselves as a leading project finance house, and advisory partner for clients investing in the transition. Between now and the end of this decade, we remain committed to mobilizing EUR 500 billion of environmental and social projects. We play a bigger role than just financing the energy transition. Our expertise helps clients both navigate the transition and adapt to the consequences of climate change. Investment needs are growing rapidly across water infrastructure, climate resilience, nature restoration and supply chain adaptation. We see this both as a critical challenge, of course, but also a significant business opportunity. We have already deployed EUR 1 billion to support emerging leaders of the transition, and we now intend to invest an additional EUR 1.5 billion in debt and equity which will allow us to support both established transition players and earlier-stage companies in developing client solutions, they can bring to a broader range of clients. We also firmly believe that 1 of the best investments is the 1 you can make in your talent. Our teams are playing a key role in the group's performance. And when that team is diverse, the return on that investment is even greater. That's why building an inclusive culture remains 1 of our key priorities, while our progress may be slow at times here, our ambition remains firm to achieve greater gender balance by reaching by 2029, 35% of women in senior leadership positions at a group level and 40% in France. We are looking to accelerate our talent development by expanding leadership training to 2,000 employees by 2029, which is vital for critical expertise as well as continuous talent pool development and sound succession planning. Something else that enhances performance is a sense of ownership. That's why we'll continue to strengthen share ownership through employee share ownership through our annual share plan. Ours is 1 of the largest employee shareholding bases among European banks. It's our way of saying that if you have helped create value, you should benefit from it. And the more alignment there is, the more performance there will be. Our investments also extend to the wider community. Societe Generale develops educational programs that help build people's skills in terms of financial skills, confidence and opportunities they need to thrive in society. And finally, we're expanding our philanthropic efforts by increasing our corporate Foundation's annual budget by 50%. And this will make it possible to widen and deepen our initiatives across our 3 areas of focus: education, culture and the environment. Another important strength of our group is governance. Our governance framework is built on a clear separation between the roles of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and is supported by a highly independent Board. This ensures a clear allocation of responsibilities between the oversight and executive management of the group. Together with appropriate challenge and accountability. The Board brings together a broad range of backgrounds, nationalities and perspectives as well as vast experience across a wide range of expertise. Our governance also benefits from independent external expertise, notably through our Scientific Advisory Council. The council provides an external and scientifically grounded perspective on climate and environmental matters as well as on technology, public policy, macroeconomy, urban planning and human rights. This makes it possible for us to challenge our assumptions, understand emerging developments and strengthen the quality of our decisions. And as you can see, these efforts have not gone unnoticed with consistent external recognitions. We remain committed to as ever to best-in-class covenants. Let me conclude by bringing together the key elements of the plan we have presented today. What makes Societe Generale distinctive. Three strong and complementary pillars, leading franchises and a diversified business model with a significantly strengthened financial and risk profile. Our ambition for 2029 is equally clear translate these strengths into structurally higher profitability and greater value creation for our shareholders. Our plan is built around a simple and disciplined equation. First, a lower cost base. Second, balanced and profitable growth across our 3 business pillars with a focus on capital-light activities, high marginal and risk-adjusted returns. Third, rigorous risk discipline and finally, transformation so that the group's operations continuously improve through simple organizations, stronger cooperation, more scalable platforms and the disciplined deployment of technology and AI. The financial targets on the slide outline the expected outcome of this strategy. It is broad-based across the group and driven primarily by actions within our control. By 2029, Societe Generale will be an even simpler, more efficient and more profitable group with stronger franchises, resilient earnings and an attractive capacity to return capital to shareholders. But our ambition does not stop in 2029. The actions we are taking today will create value and sustain our profitability well beyond the horizon of this plan. And looking beyond 2029, we see significant potential for the group to continue improving its profitability. This potential will come from 4 drivers: disciplined and efficient capital allocation, continued growth of our franchises with high operating leverage, sustained cost discipline and the full benefits of the transformation of our French retail. These benefits will build progressively and extend well beyond the form of horizon of this plan. We have strengthened the group. We have restored its capacity to perform and to unlock the full potential of our franchises. We entered this next phase with clarity of purpose with discipline and an unwavering commitment to the responsible and effective stewardship of your capital. Thank you very much. Thank you. Let's now take a small break. Small break. You deserve it. We deserve it, but you do it even more. So thank you very much and a small break before opening the Q&A session. I don't have a watch. So I don't know, like 15 minutes or something like that, okay? See you in a second.

Two questions max per guest. And if you can please introduce yourselves organization that you represent. So let's start. all at once, so I'll pick. If we can go on the third left, please, with Tarik.

Tarik El Mejjad from Bank of America. I have 2 questions actually, and I will start where you left it, Slavomir, around the 15% RoTE target after 2030. I just want to understand, you added this extra guidance without any backing from cost income or any granular guidance. Is this to show actually that your 13%, 14% is more a 14% RoTE because going from 13% in '29 to -- above 15% sounds a bit of a jump? Or is it actually to position yourself with European banks and some banks closer to home maybe in terms of profitability? So question one, -- my second question is slightly provocative, sorry about that. It's actually about BoursoBank. And you talked a lot about cross convergence. And the question actually, is it actually more about integration? You've -- I think you've said it in so many ways and words that Borsa is growing fast. There is intergenerational wealth transfer. There's a maturity and vintage of existing clients, profitability. So running these 2 networks, I mean, this may be not 29%, but this direction of travel is more integration maybe on the retail side, not maybe the wealth and the SMEs. And this appointment of Benoit Grisoni as Head of the whole French -- Deputy Head of French Retail is not a strong hint to that.

All right. So I can't say that I wasn't expecting the first one, right? So let me walk you through the reasoning, right? We provide a range for 2029, not just because we provided one last time, but also because in the current circumstances, I mean, it's difficult to exclude all kinds of sets of scenarios in terms of macroeconomic conditions, in terms of market conditions and so on and so forth, right? So also, I would expect everybody to position their expectations somewhere in the middle of the range, right? So once you start to saying this, you see that the differential is substantial versus the 15% in the RoTE of 2030 and beyond, but it's not -- doesn't need heroic achievements to get there, right? And so what we're saying with this guidance is that the continued usage of the same equation, right? This is what you have on the last slide. It's the same playbook, right? Simply factor in more capital allocation to organic growth at improving further and further high marginal returns, add the same approach in terms of risk management and to volatility of earnings, et cetera, and then add a few hundred millions in terms of the upper band of the AI opportunity. As you know, we recognized EUR 350 million out of an opportunity, which we see but don't want to bank on yet closer to double that. And then add indeed, and that's going to be a segue into your second question, add the steady-state effects or, let's say, wider, bigger scale effects of what we're trying to do in French retail. And without any, again, heroic assumptions, you're going to get there, right? And this is what we want to say is that there was a first step, it's behind us. There's a second step now, the upshift, but there's, again, room to go further, right, across the board, right? So you could also -- because of what we're saying about our strategy and what we've done, et cetera, that, yes, there's further cost efficiency, right? I can't tell you right now that costs are going to be down in absolute terms in 2030, that would be stupid of me. But the idea that focus on operating leverage will be a high point of our agenda remains true to French retail now. So yes, I hope I used quite a bit of word to say that things are changing and are going to change deeply, right? So let's talk about this, right? Let's talk about integration. This is integration or is something slightly different from merger, right? I don't think that at this point, anyone would think about the merger nor that the merger would make sense because of the purity and clarity of the business model, of the unique selling proposition of BoursoBank of everything that goes so well in that asset, right? Equally, on the other hand, we do have still room to be better. But first, by thinking about this market in one unified way, right? Again, what's the before and after, if you allow me to say it this way. Today, we have BoursoBank, which is mostly all clients, all types of clients, of course, but it's -- the vision, right, is it's a channel. It's a successful channel with its own, let's say, strength. On the other hand, we have traditional network. And so you can see that the former way of thinking about this is driven by channels. And I think -- well, I mean, I don't know if it was a good idea in the past, but it's true that today, it's not a good idea, right? You need to look at clients and at their behaviors and use that as the input into your model, not that you happen to have a channel that you've built over the last 160 years, right? So the idea here is by having one approach to the entire market, knowing that we're the only ones to have all these assets at the same time, we're going to optimize the offer based on client needs and expectations and behaviors and optimize cost to serve, right? So we don't want to have, again, BoursoBank on the one hand, traditional retail where you have everything from mass market to actually large international corporates and everything in between, right? This is not, in our view, the right way to manage this. So from now on, individual clients, one management, one business addressing all the changes in the French market with BoursoBank doing what it does right now. And SG continuing to do what it does, but much more segmented and focused on mass affluent to high net worth with private banking, meaning -- and this is maybe the most important sentence I said earlier, which is we have a segmented approach in terms of offer, pricing right, and cost to serve. The most important idea here is you have to segment your cost to serve much more -- at a much more granular level and much more effectively. So in the end, you have BoursoBank, you have the focus on wealth and savings where we already have much better strength than the overall footprint in our market, and you have a separate approach for each one of the segments. And this will, in our view, over time, create massive opportunities indeed in terms of operating model, in terms of cost to serve and in terms of simply profitability, right? And choices are going to be made in terms of how we address everything, right? All the clients are welcome, but they get a segmented offer that is in line with what they expect.

Okay. Thank you. We'll take a question from Giulia here just in the second row on the left.

Giulia Miotto, Morgan Stanley. I have 2 questions, one on costs and one follow-up on French retail. So costs, I thought the below 16.3% was the highlight of the day and quite a commitment, especially because in the previous plan, you had 2 tailwinds, the SRF and the restructuring costs coming down. You don't have that going forward. And there is inflation, peers are investing. So what can you tell the market to give us confidence that this is achievable and also it doesn't cost an underinvestment, if you wish, in the business and will not prevent you to compete with the peers? And then secondly, if I expand on French retail. So will a client now have the same app? Will the interface be the same for BoursoBank and the networks? Will the systems be the same? And if that's the case, why cost income 55%? That number surprised me because you're already at 58%. So I would have thought a number much closer to 50%, especially if you are sort of integrating the networks into BoursoBank would make sense.

All right. So on the first question, I think the most important idea here is -- I'll come back to our track record, but I don't want to lead with this. The most important idea is that when you run operations inefficiently, you're actually destroying value at a high pace and in high volumes, if you will. And we've proven that in the last 3 years by -- and I'm taking the most important achievement, I guess, from a cost reduction perspective, which is the EUR 1 billion almost shed of our IT spending, right? We've done that, and I gave you stats while reducing incidents and increasing efficiency and productivity and quality of production, availability of production and so on and so forth, substantially. The incident is 80%. And so here, what you absolutely need to understand what you're thinking about this is that we're not perfectly optimized and trying to do much better. We're coming from something which was really all over the place in terms of efficiency, having done a lot of work in the last 3 years, but still having substantial real true efficiency spending increase opportunity. I'm going to give you another stat, which is when we look at the structure of some of our teams, and we've improved that and hence, the improvement in IT cost and in IT intensity ratio. But we have still teams where we have doubled the number of non-coding, nondeveloping resources in a given -- versus coding resources in a number of projects or a number of areas. So the sheer efficiency gains are not what they were in terms of potential 3 years ago, but they're still substantial. Procurement is this other example where -- I mean, we did a lot of things. We think that we can do much better in this case, and it's what? It's policies that are at the group level, much more control in terms of application and so on and so forth. We refer to what we call the control tower. So we've implemented something very strict in terms of controlling the headcount and controlling replacement rate of the attrition. And this is, of course, an extremely important process. But we also have a spend control tower, we call it like that. And what you see there, it's not about like think about this as -- it's not about like just we're deciding that 1 every 2 expense requests, we say no. Of course, that would be again, stupid, right? And so what we're trying to do here is understand through this much higher level of management, let's say, much more detailed level of management, understanding what's going on. I'm going to give you an example, right? One of the things we spotted and started to address already with Laura, our Chief Operating Officer, is that a number of requests on significant IT spend come late, right? And so you can have a much smaller impact on procurement if you don't have alternatives to keep it simple, right? And you're much more in the hands of your suppliers if you start thinking about that procurement process in this particular case late in the process. And so here, by changing the way we look at these things by taking the right amount of lead time, we put more pressure and more -- we create more alternatives in terms of this procurement discussions, right, and so on and so forth and don't underestimate the level of, let's say, still entropy in the system. And we're in the process of in procurement, for instance, of putting that back together at the right level with the right level of control and so forth. So we -- you should be confident because of that. And lastly, because of the way we work, like we're not working -- I insist on this out of our joint office and saying, "Oh, you know what, I look at this benchmark, you're 10% above, why don't you cut 10% and just come back in 6 months once you're done, right? The approach is completely different, right? We have this ongoing running every single week, right? Every single week with reviews at all kinds of levels. Leo gets 3 meetings a week on this. I get every week where we follow a super granular cost and efficiency plan, where we have thousands of initiatives, which are replenished very regularly and so on and so forth. So we feel very comfortable that we are going to reach this target. In terms of the French retail question, I think the heart of the answer is it takes time, right? It takes time to affect total change there because the answer is not so much that it's going to be the same interface. I mean, it's going to be blue and pink for BoursoBank unless we make a very aggressive decision to change the colors and red and black on the SG side. But to your point, yes, ultimately, we don't want 2 entire teams, right, doing digital applications and digital processes design and production in our company. We want only one. And at that, we want the best one, right? So absolutely, right, part of this whole logic and part of what's going to help uplift support the '29 targets, but after that uplift even further the profitability is this idea of convergence across everything while maintaining the purity of the channels with a focus on wealth and savings on the traditional side. So going back to your 55% well, first of all, 58% is an H1 number, right? So always remember, and you know that in Q4, usually, you have a number of true-ups, et cetera, which could kind of change a little bit that number at a quarterly mark. But more importantly, right, the next step is 55%. But of course, right, the contribution of the steady-state contribution of what we're trying to do should drive this performance higher.

Okay. We'll take a question from Chris in the second row here, please.

Chris Hallam from Goldman Sachs. So 2 questions. First, -- any color you can give about RWA growth on a sort of divisional basis? I guess the trends are reasonably different across the 3 landscapes, so to speak. And is it fair to assume that leverage exposure will grow faster than RWAs through the plans? And does that have any impact on the AT1 issuance or AT1 costs we need to think about in '29? And then second, on Slide 29, I think it is the prime balances growth, looks like roughly an ambition to double prime balances by 2029. When you think about that, is that -- what are the key drivers to grow? Is that product, geographies, people, tech, balance sheet? What are the kind of ingredients you want to put into that business to roughly double the size of balances?

All right. So let me do it this way. I'll start on the RWA, and then I'll leave the floor to Leo. I'll just talk about the business side of things and Leo on the second part of your question, and then I'll take it back for prime brokerage. So from a business perspective, the way you should think about this is more capital light on RPBI, meaning support for BoursoBank, but as you know, it's not a high RWA intensity business today and support for wealth and savings, which is also not a high RWA intensity business. So conversely, you should expect us to be on the conservative and super disciplined side of things in terms of the allocation to corporate or to broad lending into the mass market, right? For -- I mean, obvious reasons in the French market is that it's substantially lower profitability than anywhere else in Europe, and we have to take this into account. And this is the logic of what we're explaining, the opportunities actually to grow more in asset-light businesses there. So then the most important part will indeed support more GBIS, both in F&A and more marginally in markets because of prime brokerage which is -- which consumes RWA, but also, of course, at the heart of it, the F&A business, which is one of the destinations for capital. And then on MIBS, it is capital at KB and BRD. But at the level of the group, this is not super material. And we don't want to -- in growing markets, especially in Romania, we don't want to overdo it as well, right? So we will be disciplined there as well. There is allocation, but at the group level, it's not that much. And then lastly, Ayvens is a final destination for also capital investments. But as you know, and we'll see whether we have questions on this later, but the idea there is we see the market substantially still in deep transformation at the beginning of the plan, right? So we don't expect these investments to come early. We expect them to come towards the end of the trajectory.

Sure. So I mean, just rebounding on that. So obviously, there's going to be a part which is going to be driven by loan growth and therefore, normal RWAs. We can be talking about Eastern European franchises, as Slavomir was mentioning or our F&A effort. But on this, it's important to remember that we want to increase the origination, I think by somewhere around 25%. We did 50% in the previous cycle. But we also want to increase a little bit the distribution, right? So the net will have an increase in RWAs, but it's balanced, if you wish. On the other hand, on the markets activity, it will be more driven by leverage indeed. So leverage is going to be something that we will need. Right now, at this point, today, we've done almost 100% of the funding program of the group. Now going forward, we have a buffer, which is above the bucket of 81%. So right now, we're not in a constraint at all. We're actually beyond that. It's -- normally, we usually do some prefunding of the previous year. So we'll probably do the same this year. Our funding program in the coming years, we expect it to be -- remain more or less stable. So we're going to do something around EUR 13 billion to EUR 16 billion every year. Of course, if we distribute more capital to shareholders, we may increase that a little bit, but it's not going to be anything sizable.

And in terms of the prime brokerage business, so the opportunity, again, quickly, it's -- we, as you know, have a very strong franchise in equity derivatives, high profile, one of the leading ones, especially in terms of thought and innovation leadership and the capacity to do all kinds of things for all kinds of clients. But historically, we've had 2 issues with prime brokerage. We didn't develop this business organically that much because we're focused on synthetic prime brokerage. And then the second piece was obviously cash equity and research, which actually are significant components of cash prime brokerage businesses. So first thing that happened, we invested in Bernstein, and we now have a much more meaningful platform from this perspective, both in terms of the cash equity business, but also in terms of the research. And second, we have been investing in the systems because that's the other component organically. And we're now progressively, and we're now at maturity to kind of roll that out. So the idea is now that we, again, have all the components, we can really accelerate the development of this business. And as you know, the market dynamics there for all kinds of reasons led to concentration. -- right? And so the opportunity is very simple is that, as you know, I'm sure most of the clients, well, actually, they do seek an alternative provider. And SocGen because of everything we have done for decades, we are a relevant and a trustworthy provider in the space. So there's a -- I'm not -- nothing is easy, right, in that business and certainly not in CIB, but it is a real tangible opportunity where now that we have what it takes, it's possible. So you need RWA, you need sales force, which we are investing in. And to your point, there is a component in human capital. There is a component in IT spending. There is a component in capital, but which we now can put at work on something that has the infrastructure to be developed.

Okay. If we take fourth row, second left, please.

I'm fourth row a second left. Jacques-Henri Gaulard from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Thank you for the red and black.

No. Thank you Mike. I love doing that with the banks, generally, put the colors. Two questions. First, the agreement between AI and Anthropic. It's true you're not the first financial institution to announce one. Can you be a bit more specific explaining to us how this is going to work? And is there any chance that in 5 years' time, you wake up with twice the cost, which has been decided by your provider? That's question one. Question number two, it seems that Revolut is on a rampage now. They've hired somebody who is not completely unknown to you to chair the company. Just a little bit about how you view that particular type of competition in France vis-a-vis in particular, your BoursoBank franchise, which is going to be under attack, I assume.

Thank you. So on the first point, let me address the latter part of your question, which is -- is there a risk that we wake up with a substantial increase in costs wherever this thing is, let's say, applied 3 years from now? The answer is I don't think that the risk is substantial because we are going to pay attention. And I know you guys are very busy, so I don't expect you to follow what I happen to say about AI. But in our regular interaction, I think you got the gist that we were always very conservative on this topic. And you've never heard me or Leo or us in any way, shape or form, drum rolling the fact that we're going to reduce our workforce by 30%, thanks to AI. I thought always that this was absolutely unrealistic to say things like that right now. I guess that the last few weeks give a little bit of color on why that's unrealistic, especially in highly regulated, highly supervised businesses where the trustworthiness is absolutely fundamental, right? So the risk of us overspending there or not paying attention to what happens is very, very low, right? We don't want to do this. And to your point, you do have already today in some of the AI firms, I'm not going to name names, but 10% to 15% of their spending is actually the cost of tokens, et cetera, et cetera. So you can easily see a world where, yes, maybe you're down 30% with your workforce, but you're also up 50% in your IT cost. So I'm 100% with you there, and I think it's a view that we share at the management level. Now what is it? It is something where -- what have we been doing, right? To some extent, you know us, right, 25 years ago, we were running high-frequency trading desks and BoursoBank is what it is, like 1/12 of the workforce of the regular retail. So I mean, talk about being focused on efficiency and on high automation and so on and so forth. But on the other hand, we want to go from experimentation, right? Yes, sure coding is a little easier. Yes, sure people can do some things that seem to be burdensome before faster, et cetera, et cetera. But like if we stop now, take a step back, et cetera, what is embedded today in terms of AI, actual AI impact positive on either revenues or cost, it's a minimal figure, right, if we're honest, right, in terms of being at scale and so forth and so on and so forth. So what we -- our vision here is we need to change tax a little bit, and it's not about like kind of trying to grab everything that's out there and use it and experiment like we're all some form of Albert Hino or Leonardo Da Vinci of today's world, but rather take advantage of Anthropic's approach to enterprise AI, right? It's not that they're perfect at it, but it's the one firm that has in their thinking, embedded the idea that it's not so much about the models, but very fast, it's about what can we do with these tools at scale in deep transformation of companies, right? And so I'm going to say something crazy, right? Can we rewrite an entire CBS and then implement it with no friction, something we all tried at some point in the time and never succeeded at, right? And usually drowning EUR 500 million in the process, right? Is that the future, right? Is that the future? In which case, guys, I mean, the opportunity is incredible, right? Or is this going to happen maybe in 20 years' time. And this -- for this, you need constant dialogue, right? So -- this collaboration agreement gives us access to all their technology, gives us access to co-developing, adjusting their models like cloud, for instance, et cetera, specifically for the needs of our business and financial services in general, whatever we choose to work on. But more profoundly even, it gives us access to their experts so that we can think about this in strategic terms and stop just throwing money indiscriminately all kinds of ideas. So that's really that. With all that, I forgot the second question. Revolut and Bruce. Revolut, yes, this is why I forgot it. I choose to it. No, no. Listen, first of all, as I always said, you have a market competitor, right, that enters your market of choice. with a strength, with a strategy that's working and with apparently very determined views about their growth in France, you have to pay attention, and we are paying attention. Now I go back to what I think sometimes alluded to, which is today, we have still very different businesses, right? On the one hand, a bank, BoursoBank that has the entire product offer, as you can say, a proven track record in running an entire product offer from very simple things to very sophisticated ones, the brokerage, remember, et cetera, et cetera. And on the other hand, we have something which has so far covered a large ground geographically and in terms of types of clients. One could say what's the usership versus client ship in that. That's not a great idea. So -- and in terms of AUAs, it's a fraction, 1/10 of what we have. Most likely, our AUA per client is in the 8,000 to 9,000. -- theirs is below 1,000, et cetera, et cetera. So we think we're not exactly doing the same job today, but a client is a client or a user is a potential client, and this is why we're working very hard adjusting some of our marketing approach in terms of how we acquire clients. We had a certain way of doing it in France. For those of you who follow us super precisely, we have tilted that to a slightly different approach and being much more present online with a different kind of marketing, et cetera, et cetera. But in the end, what we are working off is the entirety back to what I said earlier of the market, including with high-end segments, which are going to continue to be covered by traditional networks that have to be more segmented and more optimized. So ultimately, Revolut can't be Societe Generale in the French market anytime soon. Societe Generale, the way I described it earlier, which is all of our assets together, one market, one business, one management. No one can do that in the French market so far, and we will increase substantially our usage of this competitive advantage.

Okay. Thanks. Let's take a question from Andrew, please. Third row second right.

It's Andrew Coombs from Citi. Just a broad question and then a follow-up on Borsa. On the broader question, you talked about a steady improvement to your RoTE target in 2029. At the same time, you said that the cost reduction would be front-loaded in '27. So should we assume that the revenue growth is more back weighted in '28 or backloaded in '28 and '29. And then the second question is specific to BoursoBank. You've given an absolute profit target for this year. You haven't given an absolute profit target for '29. -- but you've alluded to the RONE actually declining versus this year, so greater than 60% to greater than 45%, and that's even with the IFRS 15 accounting change. So can you just talk through both the implications of the accounting change from a numbers perspective, but also the reason for the decline in the return profile of BoursoBank?

All right. So Leo, you'll take some of these questions, and I'll -- both on costs and on the accounting change, et cetera. Well, I'll start then by addressing the strategic side of the 45, 60, et cetera, right? So it's quite simple. And 3 years ago, we already had a discussion about, is it worth developing BoursoBank, growing it. And there was a number of voices on the buy side, which not only analysts but also investors who were questioning why would you continue to develop this asset? Why don't you milk it and generate the high returns that it carries basically structurally. But I hope that by now, the answer is clear, right? And that when you have an advantage like this from a growth perspective, from a strategic disruption potential for an entire market, your first duty is to make sure that you develop it. While and you saw that, containing costs. And we did much better in terms of containing costs than what we initially planned. But this idea that we have this unique asset that needs to continue to grow and to continue to disrupt the French market through cost to serve, like think about it this way, right? The French market has a number of positive features, right? It has a number of negative features. You know the products, some of the structural constraints with the regulated savings, with the nature of our mortgage products and so on and so forth. But if you apply a radically different cost to serve to this market, right, well, you are going to create a big opportunity out of something, which initially seemed challenging, right? So this is the thinking that we have. And going back more precisely to your question, the idea is exactly what you implied, which is at 60% RONE, we have a much, much lower. We still grow, right? We still grow, as you can see. but we have a much lower growth rate, while delivering a profitability, which is equivalent to over earning, right? And so just having these 2 things shows you that it's not the right thing to do, right? You need to find something which is much more balanced between the growth and the earning, right? So from now on, we have a highly profitable BoursoBank that's going to contribute to the group, but at a lower level than it could because we still want this to grow at a very high pace, EUR 14 million in 2029. And as I said many, many times, ultimately, way more than EUR 20 million and the leading bank in France in terms of market penetration. So that's that. With everything I said, you can imagine that we're not disclosing it right now, but the absolute terms contribution in terms of net income is going to grow at a slow pace.

So taking it from there, if you wish. I mean the rhythm between the difference of the 65 and the 45 as Slavomir just explained, it's that just to drop a couple of numbers there. In the first half of the year, BoursoBank acquired 300,000 clients. Now we want to acquire 2 million, right? -- which, by the way, it's more or less the same amount of clients that we already acquired in 2025 when Revolut was already trying to get deep into France. Now the -- I would like to highlight that there is no change in the accounting framework, okay? So the accounting framework doesn't change. What changes is that we're going to apply now a norm, IFRS 15, which was in place or was implemented back in 2018. The reason why we didn't implement that norm in 2018 is because we didn't have the historical very granular by vintage data that could support how long it takes us to recover the initial investment through the revenues that are being brought by those specific vintages per year. At this point, we now have over 15 years of experience and moreover, a very good experience over the course of the last 3 years where we doubled the number of clients. So it's very specific. And then again, the numbers are specific. We cannot take into account all the revenues. We cannot take into account the revenues, for example, that are driven by the IFRS 9 norm. This is -- we cannot take into account NII, right, NII that has been -- that we acquire from the clients. We can only take into account the net fees. So going forward, we're going to capitalize the assets actually from this quarter. So that's going to be risk weighted and therefore, will have an impact on the CET1 of BoursoBank while amortizing the assets to basically align the investment made on the acquisition of the client with the revenues that we're going to get from the client going forward.

Yes. So if we didn't have that, the returns would be lower. But there was another question on the...

The second is curve.

In terms of both costs and revenues.

So on this regard, right, we've been a little bit more cautious. We obviously have more control on everything that has to do internally is intrinsic to the bank. It's on us, if you wish, as management, and that's costs, and that's why we wanted to show that the costs are not going to be backloaded, but front-loaded. And of course, this comes from a lot of work that we've been doing not only in the last 2 months, but in the last, whatever, 18, 24 months. There's a number of -- very, very granular number of projects. I think we've explained this in the past, which don't give all the benefits in 1 quarter, but are spread out through the course of several quarters or even years, right? And we monitor these very precisely, as Amir was pointing out before, I have 3 meetings per week has one, and we are constantly monitoring the milestones behind those projects so that we achieve them. So indeed, the cost reduction, it's going to be significantly front-loaded to 2027. On the other hand, as per the revenues, we have taken a more cautious view for 2027. Why? I'll try to explain basically pillar by pillar. So on the mid side, we're going to have a little bit of an impact of perimeter for some of the companies that we are still divesting in Africa this year. So we don't -- we will not have that kind of revenue next year. On the second hand, Ayvens will still be normalizing on the used car sales by '27. So basically, we're not expecting a huge increase in the revenues of Ayvens because of that reason and probably they will grow further down the line because of all the things they want to aim for. On the GBI side of things, we have an F&A, which we do think will grow next year, more or less linearly every year on the grounds of the numbers that we gave you, 3%, 5% CAGR. So that's not something that we see at risk at this point. On the other hand, on the market side, which represents 60% of the pillar or more, if you wish, Well, we gave a target this year, which was a range between EUR 5.1 billion and EUR 5.7 billion. But honestly, we always said we were going to land above EUR 5.7 billion. Last year, we did EUR 6 billion. We're on track to be there. So we're already at the bottom part of the range, right? So we've been a little bit cautious. And next year, we're more aiming for the bottom part of the range than the higher part of the range. And again, this is a big part of the pillar. So that's another piece of conservatism, if you wish, in our numbers. And then lastly, in RPBI, well, we cannot avoid to understand that next year, we may have volatility in that market driven by all the uncertainties regarding the French elections. So we have again been conservative on that end. We have the increase of rates driven by increase of inflation, which will have an impact in Librea. And therefore, that will directly have an impact on the cost of funding of our franchise and actually sets the floor for the term deposits. for the overall franchise. And then the benefits that we're going to see from the wealth management and from Bourso, it's something that's going to scale up, right, over the course of the next 3 years. So it's not that we're not going to up them next year. We think we are. But of course, those 2 million clients -- 2 million new clients in Bourso per year are escalating over the course of the trajectory. And that's why we've been a little bit more cautious on the revenue side in '27, but it's under the same assumptions that we have for '28 and '29.

Just very precisely, but it's not that all the costs happen in '27, of course, right, not EUR 1.9 billion of gross savings happen over '27. And equally, it's not all the growth happens there. You -- I know that some of you are going to take their ruler and take a pass at the slide. I mean, we try to be accurate even with that from that perspective. So to give you some color.

Okay. If we just take a question on the fourth row on the end there, please.