Patricia Bueno
Management
Good morning, and thank you all for joining BBVA's first quarter earnings call. As in previous quarters, I'm joined today by our CEO, Onur Genc; and the Group CFO, Luisa Gomez Bravo. First, they will walk you through quarterly figures, after which we will open the line for the live Q&A session. With that, I hand it over to Onur. Onur Genç: Thank you, Patricia. Good morning to everyone. Welcome, and thank you for joining BBVA's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Webcast. Starting with Slide #3, and as always, beginning with value creation. On the left-hand side of the page, you can see the strong evolution of tangible book value per share plus dividends growing 5% in the quarter and 14.7% year-on-year, driven by our excellent results, as we will see in the following slides. It's also worth highlighting here that excluding the impact of the share buyback programs, the year-on-year growth would have been 18.1%. And on this one, as you know, in the fourth quarter of 2025, we executed EUR 993 million share buyback program. And at the moment, we are currently executing the nearly EUR 4 billion program announced in December 2025, of which EUR 2.5 billion has already been completed across 2 tranches. As you all know and as these buybacks have been carried out at a premium to book value, they clearly create value for our shareholders, but they have a negative impact on tangible book value per share. On the right-hand side of the slide, our profitability ratios have further improved, reaching an industry-leading return on tangible equity of 21.7% and return on equity of 20.7%. On Page 4, on the left-hand side, we delivered another very strong quarter in terms of net attributable profit, reaching almost EUR 3 billion, as you can see. This represents a 10.8% increase year-on-year and 18% growth versus the previous quarter. These results at the bottom of the right -- left-hand side, it brings our earnings per share up to EUR 0.51, an increase of 12.5% year-over-year, higher than the growth of the net attributable profit, thanks to the share buyback programs. On the right-hand side of the page, our CET1 capital ratio, it improved by 13 basis points during the quarter, reaching 12.83%. A strong quarter in capital generation, placing our capital ratio well above our target range and obviously, regulatory requirements. Moving to Page #5, and as an introduction to the following pages, the key drivers of our performance this quarter. First, at the top, net interest income, it grew by 20.2% year-over-year, driven by very strong business activity, loan growth at 17%. Second, net fees and commissions also showed an excellent evolution, increasing by 15.5%. Third, in the page, our industry-leading efficiency ratio, it continued to improve, reaching 38%. Fourth, in the page, sound asset quality metrics with the cost of risk at 154 basis points, showing relative stability in the current geopolitical context. And finally, at the bottom of the page, as mentioned, we maintain a solid capital position showing further improvement in the quarter. Slide #6, as always, the summarized P&L of the quarter. You can see the year-over-year quarterly evolution in the second column from the left in constant and next to it in the third column in current terms. If I highlight something, I would highlight the strong performance of core revenues with excellent growth in net interest income, excellent growth in fees, leading to a gross income growth of 18.3% in constant euros and 14.2% in current euros. Moving to Slide #7 and talking more about the gross income growth with more details on the quarterly progress in the last 5 quarters. As you can see, net interest income growth remains very strong, increasing 20% (sic) [ 20.2% ] year-over-year and 2.9% quarter-over-quarter, supported by, again, robust activity growth, increase in lending. Worth mentioning, there is always a seasonality to take into account here in the first quarter, also due to the day count. Net fees and commissions continued their excellent trajectory, as I mentioned, up 15.5% versus the same quarter last year, driven by payments, asset management, and we increasingly see a higher contribution from insurance and especially from CIB. And despite the seasonality also here, it has grown 0.9% compared to the previous quarter. Finally, net trading income delivered a very good performance, supported by positive momentum in our Global Markets business. All of the above leads to excellent gross income growth, 18.3%, as mentioned, year-on-year and 4.3% quarter-on-quarter. Moving to Slide #8. We want to share some perspectives on the evolution of our net interest income, the critical part of our revenues in our core geographies you would see in the page, Spain and Mexico. On the left side of the page, loan growth, it remains very strong in both Spain and Mexico with growth rates of 6.3% and 8.4%, respectively. In the center of the page, customer spreads. As we mentioned in the past, our results are positively correlated to interest rates in both countries. And as a result, customer spreads have declined in the last years in both countries, but as you can see on the page, at a much slower pace than the reduction observed in the interest rates due to effective price management. And on the right side of the page, as a result of both activity and spreads, NII has grown by 3.6% in Spain and 8.3% in Mexico year-over-year. On a quarter-over-quarter basis, although not shown on the page, NII shows a slight decline, mainly due to aforementioned seasonality effects. And looking forward, it's important to mention that we are already seeing the bottom of the rate cycle in both countries. We have discussed it multiple times in the previous calls. But if the rates have reached their bottom more or less in both countries, this implies continued NII growth, obviously, with sustained activity levels. In conclusion, in short, despite rate compression, our strong loan growth and proactive price management continued to support net interest income growth and with stabilizing rates, we are very positive for the future. Moving to Slide #9. On the left-hand side of the slide, we continue to deliver positive jaws at the group level, supported by the strong performance of gross income, which grew, as I mentioned, 18.3% year-over-year, while operating expenses increased by 17.5%, reflecting continued investment in organic growth according to our strategic plan. It is important to note that expenses growth rate is impacted by the voluntary redundancies implemented in the first quarter with a one-off restructuring charge of approximately EUR 125 million, mainly impacting Spain and Corporate Center. Excluding this effect, cost growth would have been 13.9%. On the right side -- on the right-hand side, our efficiency ratio, it stands at 38%, improving 24 basis points versus last year. Excluding the voluntary redundancy program, the ratio would have been 36.8%, clearly better than our guidance for the year. Turning to Slide #10. This page shows the evolution of our sound asset quality metrics in a context of strong activity growth, again, especially in the most profitable segments. On the left-hand side, at the bottom of the page, we see the evolution of cost of risk shown on a quarterly basis to allow for direct comparison between quarters. As you can see, cost of risk stands at 154 basis points in the first quarter, broadly in line with the previous quarter. It's worth highlighting here that due to the current macroeconomic uncertainty and aligned with our prudent risk management approach, we have included a post-model adjustment of around EUR 100 million in our results this first quarter, of which the majority affects our impairment figures primarily in Spain and in Turkey. Excluding this impact, cost of risk would have been 147 basis points. And on the bottom right-hand side, both our nonperforming loan ratio and coverage ratio, they continue to improve year-over-year and also quarter-over-quarter. Slide 11 on capital and shareholder remuneration. Starting on the left-hand side of the slide, you can see the quarter-on-quarter evolution on our CET1 ratio, which increased by 13 basis points to 12.83%. This is comfortably above our target range of 11.5% to 12%. But if you focus on the waterfall, our strong results that contributes 75 basis points to the ratio. Second, the accrual of the dividend and AT1 coupon payments deducting 40 basis points. Third, on the page, 34 basis points due to the RWAs growth. And this figure once again reflects our ability to reinvest part of our capital generation into profitable growth, while we also benefited this quarter and as in previous quarters from several risk transfer transactions, SRTs, which contributed 12 basis points to the ratio in the quarter. And lastly, on the page, a bucket of others of 12 basis points, which comprises as in other quarters, the market-related impacts and the credit in OCI that accounting-wise neutralizes the deduction in the P&L due to hyperinflationary accounting. Then moving to the right side of the page on the nearly EUR 4 billion share buyback program that started in late December. As mentioned, we have completed the first and the second tranches, and we still have nearly EUR 1.5 billion spending on which we plan to start the execution early next week, and the date is the 6th of May. Needless to say, again, we remain beyond the share buyback programs. We still have excess capital, and we remain fully committed to distributing our excess capital above the upper end of our CET1 target range. Moving to Page 12. We continue to make strong progress in the execution of our transformation strategy. Today, we wanted to particularly update you on AI, one of our priorities in the strategic plan, as you know. I mean, BBVA has always harnessed innovation as a critical lever to differentiate itself from competitors. We have proven it in our view, through digitalization in the last decade, and we are committed to do it again through AI. AI, a disruptive technology in our view that has the potential to transform banking even faster and even deeper than previous technological disruptions. As you can see on the left-hand side, we are pursuing this across 8 very tangible initiatives from the personal adviser for every client, which we call Blue in the bank and the AI for the banker to other areas, to risk, to operations, software development, embedding intelligence across the entire organization. And beyond the 8, which are again very tangible initiatives, we are evolving towards a truly AI-driven bank, revamping our operating system by industrializing the creation, the governance and the operation of AI agents at scale across the bank. This transformation is already reshaping how we serve clients, run our processes and it also empowers our people. We are seeing some very early but very promising results to that end, and we will keep updating you, as outcomes grow and consolidate in terms of what this means. But beyond these early results, once again, what truly will differentiate BBVA is our ability to scale AI across the group, similar to what we did in digital transformation. And moving to Page #13, before handing it over to Luisa regarding our ambitious financial goals for the 2025-2028 period that we announced last year in June, I will not read each of them, but we are performing. I can very clearly confirm to you that we are performing in line or better than our original expectations in all of the metrics that you see on the page. And now for the business areas, I'll turn it to Luisa.