Danske Bank A/S (DNSKF) Q2 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 half of 2025. My name is Claus Inga Jensen, and I am head of Danske Bank's investor relations. With me today, I have our CEO, Carsten Eris, and our CFO, Cecil 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, Claus, and I would also like to welcome you to our conference call. So with a net profit of 11.2 billion, equivalent to a return on shareholders' equity of 13%, our financial performance for the first half of the year was solid and it met our expectations of delivering sustainable growth and income in line with our financial targets for 2026. The macroeconomic backdrop in the first half year was strong, primarily in Denmark, measured by all key economic indicators and the outlook of plus 3% GDP growth this year looks healthy. Despite the high level of geopolitical turmoil and the low consumer sentiment, the resilient macroeconomy not only supported our everyday business with customers, but also it helped ensure continually high credit quality. The result was based on continued growth across our business. Activity with our corporate customers in particular was high and led to an increase in lending, which was up by 5% compared to last year. This supports our progress towards our financial targets for 2026. Deposits increased 3% in the same period, mainly in our large corporate and retail business. Seen in isolation, the second quarter saw deposits in our retail business grow by 3%, reflecting consumer prudence in a time...