Good morning all. Welcome to the Triodos Bank Half Year 2025 Results Presentation with Financial Analysts. For the first part of the conference, the participants will be in listen-only mode. After the presentation, we will hold a Q&A session, during which telephone participants will be able to ask questions. Now, I will hand over to the speakers, Triodos Bank CEO Marcel Zuidam and CFO Kees van Kalveen. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. My name is Marcel Zuidam, CEO of Triodos Bank, and I'm joined today by my colleague Kees van Kalveen, CFO of Triodos Bank. I will begin our presentation today with an update on our strategic and positive impact progress in the first half of this 2025. I will hand over to Kees, who will discuss our financial results, after which we will open the floor for Q&A. Triodos Bank is entering a new phase with a clear strategy to deliver meaningful impact by enhancing customer focus, innovating, digitalizing, and becoming more cost-efficient. Positive impact generation is our first priority. In the first half of 2025, we achieved €570 million in new business planning, bringing our total loan and investment volume to €15.6 billion.
Our deposits from customers grew by € million to €14.8 billion, driven primarily by an increase of €272 million from personal banking customers, demonstrating our stable customer base and their loyalty to our mission. In the first half of 2025, new production of our residential mortgage portfolio amounted to €333 million, or 2%, primarily in the Netherlands. Financially, we delivered a profit of €17 million. Excluding the additional provision of €40 million, we would have delivered a net profit of €27.4 million. We achieved a return on equity of 2.7%. Without the additional provision, this would have come to 4.4%. Our cost-income ratio came to 86%, and without the additional provision, this would have been 79%. Our CET1 ratio was strong in the first half of this year at 18.1%, well above our required minimum.
As a result, we've decided to pay out €0.60 per depository receipt in interim cash dividend payment, representing a 50% payout of net profit. We've also achieved significant milestones in the first half of this year, one of which was the listing of our depository receipts on Euronext Amsterdam in June, a move that clearly improved the tradability of our depository receipts and offers improved accessibility for existing and new investors. We are also pleased to report a better-than-expected acceptance rate for the settlement offer for eligible depository receipt holders at 80% as of yesterday, the 13th of August 2025.
While the higher acceptance rate resulted in an additional provision of €14 million, which had an impact on the results we're publishing this morning, we are very pleased with the high acceptance rates as we move forward with a lower likelihood of future claims, risk, and lower administrative and resource burden on our organization. Now, I would like to focus on our positive impact creation. Triodos Bank provides business loans, current accounts, savings accounts, and mortgages in addition to managing and distributing investment funds and channel donations. We aim to optimally balance positive impact as our first priority with consistent returns and modest risks. We screen our projects based on our proprietary criteria and minimum standards to determine the impact of such projects.
We employ minimum return hurdles to evaluate opportunities that meet our impact criteria, with specifically high-impact projects justifying lower return levels on an individual basis as long as the overall portfolio meets our return hurdles. Triodos Bank's impact-focused projects inherently imply more modest risk, given naturally lower ESG-driven risks. Additionally, we ensure a modest risk profile through a disciplined institutional approach. At the end of the first half of 2025, our total loan and investment portfolio has remained stable at €15.6 billion. This portfolio is invested into our five transition themes: energy, well-being, societal, resource, and food. In the first half of 2025, we originated €570 million in new business loans across our five transition themes, financing 5,600 businesses across 81 countries. The objective of the energy transition theme is to support the transition from fossil-based energy to renewable energy generation that is accessible, affordable, and contributes to energy independence.
A good example of this is Lion’s Storage Project Mufasa. Earlier this year, Triodos Bank Netherlands co-financed Lion’s Storage Mufasa energy storage project in Vlissingen. Once completed, Project Mufasa's batteries will have the capacity to charge and discharge at 1,400 megawatt hours at 350 megawatt power several times per day, enough to power over 200,000 households. It is expected to be the largest battery storage system in the Netherlands and one of the largest in Europe, significantly enhancing the stability and resilience of renewable energy sources as part of the energy transition. In the first half of 2025, we saw an increase of €288 million, or 2%, in our customer deposits, bringing our total customer deposits to €14.8 billion, an 8% increase over the past two years.
This was primarily due to an increase of €272 million, or 3%, in our deposits from personal banking customers, bringing our total deposits from personal banking customers to €10.1 billion and demonstrating our stable customer base and their commitment to our mission to make money work for a positive change. This increase was particularly visible in the Netherlands, where we have worked to accelerate growth by introducing targeted initiatives with younger customers, such as the youth-focused account benefits and the Move Your Money to the Good Side campaign, as seen here on this slide. Our residential mortgage production in the first half of 2025 totaled €333 million, primarily in the Netherlands, partially offsetting a slight decrease in Belgium and Spain. 62% of our mortgage portfolio has an energy label rating of A or higher.
Our total mortgage portfolio increased by €124 million, or 2%, compared to the end of last year. This is driven by increased repayments in our existing portfolio, as well as competitive market pricing. Over the last two years, our residential mortgage portfolio has increased by 15%. Overall, this growth is seen in the Netherlands, where we have focused market positioning, deliberately allocated our resources, and have therefore been able to price competitively due to skill. This is also where we see our synergy in action, with our decision to cease the origination of new residential mortgages in Belgium and Spain to align our resources with where we can make the most positive impact. In the first half of this year, we also made considerable progress on our strategic pillar.
Our first pillar is securing our frontrunner position in impact finance, where we, in addition to the €15.6 billion we invested in 500 and 600 business accounts across 81 countries, as I mentioned earlier, we have advanced our nature-based solutions activities. One of our goals with this is to invest €500 million in nature-based solutions between 2020 and 2030. In the first half of this year, we advanced two Triodos Investment Management (NBS) funds propositions, improving their tracking, eligibility, and reporting capabilities. Further, in April this year, we decided to leave the NZBA after a majority of members voted to lower climate ambition and weaken requirements. This does not mean that we are lowering our climate ambitions. On the contrary, we have restated our ambitions and remain steadfast in our aim to reduce our CO2 emissions by at least 42% by 2030.
Our next pillar is our Pursue Focused Growth pillar. We are conducting a careful review of our product-market combinations and sharpening our geographic footprint. This can be seen in Belgium, where we have ceased the origination of residential mortgages, as I mentioned earlier, and our decision to review our German business. This can also be seen in our strategic repositioning in Spain, where we will be concentrating our services to Madrid and Barcelona and prioritizing business lending. As a result, we will close nine smaller Spanish offices and cease the origination of new residential mortgages and personal loans. We are focused on streamlining our business, reviewing where we can make the most positive impact and scale our business in the most effective way. The last pillar is our Driving an Efficient and Robust Operating Model pillar.
There we are modernizing and streamlining our technology infrastructure by, for example, migrating to a new core banking system in Spain. We're implementing AI and piloting customer services enhancements, all while ensuring compliance and that remains a priority. We're implementing a group-wide program to strengthen our financial crime risk management. Last week, we were also pleased to announce that our Executive Board will be reinforced with the addition of a Chief Transformation Officer and a Chief Information Officer. As Chief Transformation Officer, Suzanne Schilder will be responsible for leading the optimization of the group-wide product-market portfolio and commercial footprint, with a goal to enable focused growth through disciplined strategic capital allocation and strategy implementation. As Chief Information Officer, Barbara van Duijn will lead the digital transformation as a key driver of our strategy, further modernizing and simplifying our IT landscape and facilitating the use of data and AI.
Barbara has been with Triodos Bank since 2015 and has been Group Director Digital and Technology since November 2023. The CIO role will replace the current role of Chief Operating Officer, which means that our colleague Nico Kronemeijer will step down. We're also delighted that our CCO, Jacco Minnaar, will be reappointed as our Chief Commercial Officer for a second term. The Supervisory Board will notify all our depository receipt holders of the intended appointments and reappointments at an Extraordinary General Meeting on the 26th of September 2025. The convocation for this EGM will be published tomorrow, 15th of August 2025, and the appointments will take effect after the EGM. With that, I would now like to hand over to Kees to walk you through our financial performance for the first half of this year.
Thank you, Marcel. Good morning all. As Marcel mentioned earlier, our financial performance for the first half of this year was impacted by an additional provision for the settlement offer due to a higher than expected acceptance rate and also a declining interest rate environment and several large one-off expenses. As a result, our net profit decreased to €70 million. Net profit, excluding the additional provision for the settlement offer, came to €27.4 million. We achieved an annualized return on equity of 2.7%. Our annualized return on equity, excluding the addition to the provision for the one-off settlement offer to eligible DR holders, decreased by 1.2%- 4.4%. Our cost-income ratio was 86%, excluding the provision, 79%. As anticipated in our previous financial report at year-end 2024, an increase in one-off costs and pressure from the interest rate environment resulted in a cost-income ratio above our medium-term target.
We introduced a number of cost management measures aimed at short-term effect. For the longer term, as part of our Efficient Banking strategic pillar, we will outline a more structural approach towards the end of the year to meet our medium-term target of 70%- 75% while safeguarding our mission-driven focus. Less favorable interest rate environment and MRR requirements drive lower interest margins. Our total income decreased by €14.8 million to €219.6 million in the first half of 2025. Successive interest rate cuts by the ECB since June 2024 affected our net interest margin. We have started lowering our main savings rates only from the start of this year, so effectively with a six-month-plus delay. Also, in September 2024, we issued senior preferred notes towards meeting our MRR requirements at a 4.9% coupon.
As a result, we had higher interest expenses associated with these notes, which led to a negative impact on our interest margin in the first half of 2025 compared to the first half of 2024. These factors combined resulted in a 26 basis points decline in the net interest margin from € 2.18 in the first half of 2024 to € 2.04 in the second half of 2024 to 1.92% in the first half of 2025. Our net fee and commission income showed a modest decline to €54.1 million compared to €56 million in 2024. This was mainly driven by a decrease in management fees and asset management income due to lower funds under management. Excluding the additional settlement provision, our operating expenses decreased. Our total operating expenses, excluding impairments, increased by €10.6 million- €188.5 million.
€40 million of this increase was due to the addition to the provision for the settlement offer to DR holders. Excluding the provision for the settlement offer, operating expenses actually decreased. Personnel expenses increased by €5.5 million, resulting from upward pressure on wages related to inflation and a small growth in the average number of coworkers. This growth was particularly related to anti-money laundering activities. Other operating expenses improved by €9 million. This was in spite of the one-off operational costs we made for the Euronext and settlement offer project of €3.2 million and €4.5 million respectively. Excluding these costs, fees for advice declined by €5 million compared to the same period last year, partly due to lower legal costs, mainly in Spain. Advertising expenses rose due to several larger campaigns in the first half of 2025, as Marcel mentioned earlier.
Regulatory expenses decreased by €1.5 million, a decrease that was mainly related to the depository guarantee scheme. Other expenses within other operating expenses were €6.5 million lower compared to the first half of 2024. This was mainly driven by an absence of restructuring provisions, as well as the release of a provision for litigation costs in Spain. We made three important steps in the development of our relationship with our depository receipt holders. As you all know, we successfully listed our DRs on Euronext Amsterdam on the 18th of June, a significant milestone, and looking at the volume of trade, we can clearly see that this step improved the tradability and availability of our DRs.
As we've mentioned a few times already in this presentation, the higher than expected settlement offer acceptance rate resulted in an additional provision that will reduce the likelihood of future claims and lower the risk of ongoing administrative resource-heavy strain from repeated legal actions. As of yesterday, the acceptance rate stood at 80%. I will share some more details with you on the next slide. Also, we received three favorable rulings from the Spanish Supreme Court. As a result of this, we see a significant reduction in ongoing litigation in Spain. Out of the 920 lawsuits, as of yesterday, more than 700 lawsuits have been withdrawn from court. As a result of this reduction, we have released our provisioning for DR-related legal claims and interest compensation in Spain, which combined stood at €3.5 million. As of yesterday, the acceptance rate of our settlement offer reached 80%, exceeding our expectations.
In anticipation of a 71% acceptance rate as part of the 2024 year-end financial results, we took a €100 million provision to cover the settlement costs. As we've stated this morning, to cover the higher than expected acceptance rate, we have taken an additional €40 million provision. We are pleased with this outcome, as higher DR holder participation reduces the likelihood of future claims, lowers the risk of ongoing administrative burden and resource strain that could arise from prolonged or repeated legal actions. On this slide, you can see an overview of the acceptance rate per country. In the Netherlands, where 62% of our DRs are held, we have achieved an acceptance rate of 84%. Looking at our DRs in general, 80% have accepted and a further 2% are in process. In Spain, where we had the highest number of legal cases, we see a significant reduction, with more coming.
From 925 cases, more than 700 have been withdrawn from court as of yesterday. In both the Netherlands and Belgium, group claims have been filed with verdicts expected in the second half of 2025 in the Netherlands and 2026 in Belgium. Both these groups combined represent approximately 8% of our outstanding DRs. Stable loan loss provision based on sound quality of our loan bookkeeping. Our loan business remains resilient. The impairment result on financial instruments, which is made up of the expenses for expected credit losses, decreased to €5.4 million. The annualized cost of risk remains stable at 9 basis points. These relatively low expenses are a confirmation of the solid credit quality of our well-diversified loan portfolio, which remains robust and focused on balancing impact, risk, and return for every loan engagement. CRR3 strengthens capital ratios and supports Triodos' dividend target payout.
Between year-end 2024 and end of June, our CET1 ratio has gone up with 166 basis points. This is driven by the changes in our risk-weighted assets, as our own funds have stayed almost unchanged. Our risk-weighted assets decreased by almost €700 million, largely under the new CRR3 rules. Both operational risk RWA and credit risk RWA have decreased. Our portfolio of residential mortgages benefited from its low risk profile. In our business loan, we are committed to our financial and impact goals. Triodos has shared its financial, but also some of its impact targets over the past period. I would like to stress that Triodos remains committed to these financial and impact goals in spite of our current shortfall in return on equity and cost-income ratios.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask questions, please dial one two five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to reserve your question, please dial one two six on your telephone keypad. The first question comes from [Floris] from ABN AMRO. Go ahead, sir.
Hello, good morning. Thanks for doing the Q&A this way and for associating also that Marcel is now as CEO doing the call. Maybe first question for Marcel, what's your first view of Triodos Bank, especially compared to what you've seen at your previous employer? What ideas do you have going forward for the company? More financial, net interest income in the first half of 2024, €64 million obviously. Could you give us a little bit more help how to look to the NII for the second half of this year? Should it be more stable given the more stable ECB rates, or are there other things we should look at? The other question about finance is commission income. Commission income was a little bit light versus what I expected.
I get it that the AUM was a little bit lower, but the general stock markets have been higher, of course, H1 versus H1 last year or H2 last year. Could you explain a little bit what's going on? Do you have outflows in the asset management business, or are there certain categories or FX exposure or something that explains this lower AUM? Last question is maybe on expenses, and that might be also something that Marcel might comment on. The expenses are still a little bit on the high side, obviously. Could you help us a little bit in the path going forward on the expense base? How should we look to it? What part is exceptionally high? Give us a little bit of a view in what base that might come down going forward. Those are my questions. Thank you.
Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, I think we lost the speakers. We are going to reconnect them. Please wait a few moments.
Can you hear us now?
Yes, we can.
Okay, great. Sorry about that.
Morning, Cora. I hope I had your three questions correct. We had some connection problems. Let me start with net interest income. We expect a stabilization of our net interest margin in the second half of the year, as well as, of course, in that line of our net interest income. Our expectations are based on one more step down from the ECB. On commission income, we see two drivers of the lower commission income. One is an outflow in our funds under management in the first half of the year. The second one is lower pricing, or lower, sorry, I have to say, lower assets under management due to price fluctuations of the investments. Our investments don't fully correlate, given their nature, to more general market indices.
We have to keep in mind that the fact that we ended up the half year for some asset categories the same price as the start of the half year doesn't mean that the average during the half year was close to that. Your third question relates to our cost. As we have said, we strive for a 70% to 75% cost-income ratio. In order to achieve that, we will set ourselves a task to work towards that, not in one jump, but over the course of the next two years to reach this target. We will look at all the different cost categories and all different business units to improve the efficiency that we have. On the other hand, we still have to keep in mind that for us, AML and KYC costs are still a rising cost category and also a rising FTE number.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial one two five on your telephone keypad. The next questions come from Benoît Pétrarque from Kepler Cheuvreux. Go ahead, sir.
Yes, good morning. I think, Marcel, there is one question from Cor on your view on Triodos Bank after a few months. I think the other question on my side will be on the capital side. 18.1% CET1 ratio. I think it's €200 million excess capital versus 15% level. What do you see this amount of excess capital or do you want to redeploy this amount? Do you think you need to keep a buffer for still remaining legal risk? Actually, linked to that, also after your 80% acceptance ratio, how do you see the legal risk? We've seen yesterday the court cases which have been put to you, to the courts. Did they mention any amounts they have in mind that would be useful for us? Maybe just a very small question. I think it's clear on the strategy in Germany and Belgium.
You seem to be a bit more vocal also on lowering your geographical presence in Spain. How many branches will be left in Spain? I guess this is also part of the cost exercise. Maybe you could give us the cost cutting expected from that. Thank you.
Good morning, Benoît. Thank you for your questions. Let me start on the question on our capital position. We are, of course, happy with the increase in CET1 to 18.1%. We will redeploy the capital over the coming years by organically growing our balance sheet, investing also in our businesses to achieve more scale. The second element I would like to mention is that it will give us more confidence in our dividend policy and our payout ratio of 50% to be consistently met over time. If I look at legal risks, we are now expecting an 81% acceptance rate based on the pipeline of depository receipts in the settlement process and the actual accepted offers. That leaves us 19% of depository receipts. Of these, 8% of total are now in an active litigation process, both in the Netherlands and Belgium.
We are of the opinion that this will have a positive outcome in the end, but it may be a long process as appeals are possible and potentially even high court appeals. That leaves 11% unaccounted for. If you take Spain out, given the favorable rulings, you can take out another 4%, leaving 7% of total depository receipts as an unknown. We believe a large part of these depository receipt holders will not now actively start litigation. They have not done so so far. Also, many of them are smaller depository receipt holders. Of course, still some may move to litigation, but we believe that the majority will not.
Do the participants on the group claim claim a certain price per DR?
If I look at the Dutch group claim, they actually claim a number of different things with different damages and damage levels. It's not one demand.
Maybe Benoît, Marcel here, regarding your question about Spain. Indeed, you're right. We have announced a strategic repositioning in Spain where we aim to simplify our proposition and operations. We will concentrate our services for our customers in Madrid and Barcelona, closing nine smaller offices. By this, we prioritize business lending, and we've also announced to discontinue the origination of residential mortgages and personal loans. Your question was, how will it add to the cost reduction? We do not disclose a specific amount on that, but certainly, it will add to our cost ambitions as of the second half of the year.
Thank you very much.
There are no more questions at this time. I end the conference back to the speakers for closing remarks.
Thank you all for joining our conference.
Sorry, we have one more question from Cor. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much. The sound was a little bit bad, I think, in the beginning. I think my first question was not totally clear. My question was for Marcel. You came in here in the new company. Could you give your first views of what you've seen? You've quite some experience in the banking world. What is different? What's your first take on what you've seen until now? Thank you.
Clearly, I've entered into a company that has a turbulent period behind it. Of course, with the Euronext Amsterdam listing and the settlement offer requiring a lot of attention from the bank as a whole and our people, we see that we are leaving that phase more and more behind us and now can move to, yeah, for what we are good at, making impact for our customers around the transition teams that we distinguish. I think I have entered into a company where I see very inspiring entrepreneurs being facilitated by Triodos to make an impact in line with our transition teams and also very mission-driven employees that really want to step up and move ahead for building our impact-driven bank. It's really an interesting momentum to enter into this bank.
I think with the strategic measures that are in place already and regarding the reconsideration of our activities in Germany, the strategic repositioning in Spain, but also the more structural cost measures that we are preparing to announce towards the end of the year, we feel that we are able to position Triodos Bank better for the future. That is, I think, where the team and I are working on. I must say, it is with really great pleasure. Having worked in the banking industry for over 30 years, it is really exciting to work in this environment, in this bank, in the situation where we are now.
Okay, very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Cor.
We are done with the questions. We have two more questions in the queue. I end the call over to you for closing remarks. Thank you, sir.
Thank you all for joining this conference call today. The presentation slides are available on our website, and the recording of the call will be available shortly at the same link that it is at now. Thank you all again for joining, and we look forward to speaking to you soon.
Thank you all for your participation. The call is now over. You may now disconnect.