Danske Bank A/S (DNSKF) Q1 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the conference call for Danske Bank's financial results for the first quarter of 2025. My name is Claus Engar Jensen, and I'm head of Danske Bank's investor relations. With me today, I have our CEO, Carsten Iris, and our new CFO, Cecile Hillary. We aim to keep this presentation to around 20 minutes. And after the presentation, we will open up for a Q&A session as usual. Afterwards, feel free to contact the investor relations department if you have any more questions. I will now hand over to Carsten. Slide one, please. Thanks, Klaus, and I would also like to welcome you to our conference call for the first quarter of 2025. Despite the fact that the past month has seen increased uncertainty regarding the global economic outlook, the first quarter has been solid. With a net profit of 5.8 billion, equivalent to a return on shareholders' equity of 13.3%, we've had a good start to the year. The macroeconomic backdrop in Q1 was strong, primarily in Denmark, where GDP growth reached 3.7% in 2024, and the economy has continued along the same path in the first quarter. When comparing to the first quarter of last year, the result came in 2% higher, mainly due to an uplift in fee income, where we continue to benefit from expanding our customer interactions. Overall, total income reflects strong customer activity, particularly for our corporate customers. Operating expenses were stable on the back of prudent cost management and improved efficiency, and our cost-income ratio was in line with our target level of 45%. Compared to the previous quarter, the result for core income was in line with our outlook of slightly lower income from the expected decline in market rates. The lower fee income was driven by the usual seasonality for primarily inves...