Peter Eliot: Thank you very much, and good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to Helvetia's conference call on our 2025 half year results. We have on the call today our Group CEO, Fabian Rupprecht, and our CFO, Annelis Luscher Hammerli. Fabian will start by going through the development of the business before Annelis takes us through the financials in more detail. With that, let me hand over to Fabian. Fabian Rupprecht: Thank you, Peter, and welcome everybody from my side. We're pleased to present our half year 2025 results. The focus today is of course our stand-alone results. However, we remain focused on completing the merger we have announced with Baloise. This remains on track and we're excited about the potential combined future together. We will come back to you in due course when the deal completes, and with a Capital Market Day at the same time as our full year 2025 results to outline our new strategy and targets as a combined group. We are delighted to report a 5% increase in our underlying earnings and a 7% increase in our underlying earnings per share. The improvement has been largely driven by our technical excellence initiative, and we see a strong underlying improvement in our combined ratio. The year-on-year improvement comes despite H1 2024 already providing a very strong comparative. We consider we are fully on track to achieve our 3-year targets, to which we remain committed. One significant event impacting our earnings in the first half was the horrific landslide and flooding in the valley village of Blatten. This is a good example of how important it is to us as Helvetia to be there when it matters for our customers, and we are very proud of our speedy response to the affected customers. Despite this significant event, at group level, we are well within our normal expectations for nat cats, and we have made a material improvement in our underlying underwriting profitability. Our balance sheet remains in excellent shape. Our SST ratio is estimated to be at broadly the same high level that we enjoyed at the end of 2024. The AM Best rating is under review as a natural consequence of our possible merger with Baloise. We expect the merger to close in Q4 of this year. We have again demonstrated strong growth supported by our non-life business. In our retail lines, we observe a continuation of the recent hard market and are continuing to grow our profitable lines. As part of our technical excellence initiative, we've also reviewed our other segments and been ruthless at pruning the portfolio where necessary — for example, deliberately losing low double-digit million Swiss francs at Caser and in Germany combined. Our reported growth in retail is lower than it might have been due to some one-time negative effects. In Switzerland, we changed the policy due date for motor policies, and because of Brexit, we temporarily did not have a B2B2C license, though this has since been restored. These two temporary effects combined account for a further mid-double-digit million Swiss franc impact. Going forward, we expect the market trends to continue with further hardening of the retail market. Our top line will benefit from this, even though we will also likely do a little bit more pruning in some areas. In our Specialty and Reinsurance businesses, we're seeing more competitive pressure. We have responded in specialty and reinsurance, especially in property, engineering, nat cat, and energy for reinsurance and corporate risks. We already announced our decision to stop our U.K. marine portfolio, and we are shifting our business mix — for example, our active reinsurance cover has significantly shifted from proportional to nonproportional where we see higher profitability and less complexity. We're also expanding our share in life reinsurance. In Specialties, we have increased our share in construction where profitability remains high. In the short term, with a softening market, our focus will be on margins rather than top line. At the group level, our underlying ROE is already well within our target range. Our combined ratio has recovered and for the first time is well within our guidance range of 92% to 94%, with a very strong improvement of 1.2 percentage points in the current year claims ratio, excluding nat cats and discounting. Our Life new business margin is maintained despite a 13% increase in new business volumes. On our 4 strategic approaches — in the medium to long term, our goal is to leverage our customer access to achieve further profitable growth, focusing particularly on the 50-plus target group, which we summarize as Local Customer Champion. A second mid-to-long-term approach is to grow globally in selected specialty and commercial lines using a smart follower approach, which we call Global Specialist. Our short-term focus is on margin improvement through technical capabilities and efficiency gains. On Local Customer Champion — we have established an ambitious group-wide target picture to maximize the value of our own customer base through more state-of-the-art practices in customer knowledge, advice and experience across all market units. The over-50 age group is one of our areas of focus — we already have many customers in it, and we see greater demand for insurance and pension products. We've implemented initial initiatives in Switzerland, Spain, Austria and Italy to serve this group with an even better service. Our goal is to learn from successful initiatives and scale them across market units. On Global Specialist — we continue growing within our existing global lines using a smart follower approach that enables us to prioritize profitability through rigorous cycle management. As the slide shows, growth has been possible in certain areas. We are also working toward a leading position in the local market for specialty and commercial lines in our European markets. We have laid a solid foundation in Spain and made good progress in other units. Key enablers such as dedicated technical support, capacity and access to an international network are being put in place. An Underwriting and Claims Academy will further enhance capabilities. On technical excellence — measures are already visible in our results with a significant improvement of 1.2 percentage points in the current year claims ratio. Our focus is on portfolio management, non-life pricing and claims. For portfolio management, we have established common standards for all market units, implemented virtuous circles and common guidelines, aligned a prospective portfolio steering approach using loss ratio frameworks, and developed an annual portfolio management review. We rolled out an updated nat cat budgeting process. On pricing, rate changes are now reported quarterly according to a new group-wide methodology, we rolled out common group pricing software, and implemented a technical risk price framework. On claims, we benchmarked 4 market units against the wider market, increased the proportion of claims actively managed in partner networks in certain markets, expanded systematic fraud detection capabilities, and are using AI to implement applications that increase efficiency. On operational efficiency — at our Capital Market Day last December, we announced plans to improve operational efficiency by over CHF 200 million between 2025 and 2027, with more than 360 initiatives defined. Many are already underway — Spain implemented an internal sourcing model achieving a CHF 1.4 million annual run rate reduction; Group IT optimized capacity achieving a similar reduction; France optimized office space utilization reducing the run rate by almost CHF 1 million; Austria reorganized regional sales force structures achieving CHF 0.4 million in 2025 and CHF 1 million by end of 2026. We guided that 20% of the savings would be achieved by 2025, and progress in H1 is in line with that. We have a group-wide tool-based tracking process to ensure that goals are met. The Spanish integration of Caser and Helvetia Seguros has been approved by the local general shareholders' meeting, minority shareholders have expressed support, and we have submitted the merger application to the Spanish regulator. Approval is expected by end of this year. On the Baloise merger — we're extremely confident this merger of equals is the right step for Helvetia's future. In August, the European Commission approved the planned merger. Further approvals are still pending, including at European level and from the Swiss Competition Commission. We're confident we will receive all necessary approvals in the coming weeks and months, enabling us to complete the transaction towards the end of the year. Dedicated teams are actively engaged in day-1 post-closing readiness through a structured approach. By closing, we expect to have determined candidates for all positions down to a level of Group Executive Committee minus 3. We will provide an update on the financial targets of Helvetia Baloise at a Capital Markets Day together with our full year 2025 results. Both IFRS and cash remittance will remain important KPIs. In conclusion — Helvetia has reported strong half year results for 2025. We're continuing our track record of sustainable earnings growth with all key metrics improving. Despite pruning in some more difficult markets, we report further strong Non-life growth. We've made good progress on Local Customer Champion, Global Specialist, technical excellence, and early signs of improved operational efficiency. The integration of our 2 entities in Spain is underway. We remain very confident that we will achieve our targets, including underlying EPS growth of 9% to 11%. I hand over to Annelis. Annelis Hammerli: Thanks, Fabian, and welcome also from my side. Helvetia generated underlying earnings of CHF 301 million, up 5% on the already very strong prior year, driven by an excellent technical result. At the net income level, the result is up 24% to CHF 320 million. The main reason for the increase in underlying earnings was a better non-life underwriting result. Non-insurance business also showed a big increase, but largely due to a change in methodology — intercompany interest payments within the same legal entity are no longer paid, transferring CHF 12 million of earnings from non-life to non-insurance with no impact at group level. A major feature of the H1 results was the tragic landslide in Blatten. We benefited from our diversification with improved other segments. In Spain and GIAM, improved underlying earnings were driven primarily by very strong improvements to the attritional loss ratio. Overall, we consider this to be close to a normal first half, bearing in mind that H1 is typically lighter than H2. The underlying return on equity was 14%, already well within our target range. Outside underlying earnings, we again benefited from a very strong performance by our investment funds, supplemented by positive real estate revaluations and realized gains. FX also contributed positively. Economically, we are fully hedged. However, we experienced some P&L volatility due to IFRS hedge accounting rules. Our economic hedging strategy has proved very effective. Business volume was up 1.6% at constant exchange rates to CHF 7 billion, again driven by non-life which grew at 4% currency adjusted. More than half of our growth in business volume stems from rate increases, reflecting our solid pricing discipline. Smile continued to perform well, growing business volume by 7.8%. Life volume overall was down 2.5%, mainly from Switzerland where we continue to shift from full insurance to semi-autonomous solutions with lower premiums but higher capital efficiency. In Europe, especially in Germany and Austria, we have had significant success. We continue to grow fee and commission income at 8% currency adjusted. The main improvement in underlying earnings comes from the operating insurance result via better combined ratio. The operating finance result is lower only due to the change in methodology on intracompany charges. The operating other result suffered due to the default of a business partner. The combined ratio has improved strongly and is back in our guidance range of 92% to 94%. The current year claims ratio excluding nat cats and discounting shows a strong improvement of 1.2 percentage points. There is some volatility, especially with respect to large losses, so we don't expect improvement to be fully linear, but we are clearly on a good trajectory. We have seen an especially strong impact from technical excellence measures in Spain and Germany. The higher nat cat ratio is driven by the Blatten landslide, which costs us mid-double-digit million Swiss francs. The cost ratio fell by 10 basis points in H1 2025. Within costs, the acquisition ratio looks very strong but exhibits volatility — in particular, our Swiss B2B2C business including embedded insurance has a significant impact and this period was quite good. For administration costs, H1 2024 had a bit more seasonality with less project expenditure, making it a difficult comparison — the full year 2024 numbers are a better benchmark. The investment result was again very strong. It would have beaten last year's high level substantially had it not been for the CHF 12 million change in methodology on intercompany interest payments — you should expect this to double for the full year. The operating insurance finance result is a bit higher than consensus was expecting. The historical discounting is unwinding with a slightly higher drag this period, but in the current interest rate environment, we consider this unwinding has now peaked. In 2025, we see a higher H1 weighted seasonality — the number we reported for H1 is about two-thirds of the total we expect for 2025. This greater seasonality is due to claims patterns observed in 2023 and 2024 and the shape of the interest rate curve. We consider the Life result to be broadly flat after adjusting for some normal volatility. The CSM release has increased slightly and we benefit from the non-repeat of a drag from onerous contracts in the prior year. The main reason for the year-on-year decline comes in the other result, which was a bit better than normal last year. We have reintroduced the life interest rate margin slide in the appendix at market request. The margin remained stable apart from an increase in H1 2024 due to higher reinvestment rates at the end of 2023 and lower average statutory reserves. On the CSM development — we have a strong contribution from new business, offset by a lower expected in-force return due to lower interest rates. The CSM release has an annualized release ratio of 8.3%, giving a normalized growth rate of 0.4%, in line with last year and a strong result given the interest rate headwind. We had positive economic variances of CHF 214 million from realized gains on real estate and fixed interest assets and economic assumption changes. Offsetting these were negative operating variances of CHF 192 million, the two largest drivers being reserves and a tariff change. On reserves — the model assumes we increase reserves to take advantage of gains realized, but we have not actually made such an irreversible reserving decision and may not do so for the full amount shown in H1. On tariffs — we made a small upward revision to the interest rate assumptions in our group life policies, bringing us from less competitive than the industry to more in line with the industry. New business volume rose to CHF 1.8 billion largely due to lower interest rates and therefore less discounting. We have been able to offset the drag of lower interest rates with improved business mix and continued focus on capital-light products, benefiting from a greater share of group business. Given H1 seasonality of this group business, we may not see the margin fully maintained at the full year. The margin in each segment remained fairly stable other than in Specialty Markets, where we grew new business volumes through a combination of new treaties and replacement of material expiring single-year treaties with multiyear, and changes in business mix yielded an improvement in the new business margin. The improved non-insurance result is largely due to the reallocation of intercompany interest income. We are also reporting a sustainably lower level of costs in part due to IFRS 17 project costs falling away. On the walk from underlying to net income — market fluctuations were very positive. Investment funds repeated their strong performance and this time we had a positive FX effect. Real estate sales and positive real estate revaluations were also very helpful. Restructuring costs reflect progress on the Spanish integration, other efficiency improvements, and M&A-related costs — we expect more of these in H2. Our cost of funding has fallen due to the redemption of a more expensive hybrid last year and due to FX reducing the cost of our euro debt. The H1 2025 number is slightly above the ongoing run rate due to some prefinancing activity. Together, these items resulted in our IFRS net income rising by 24% to CHF 320 million. Our capitalization remains excellent. The SST ratio remains at an outstanding level, similar to year-end. Our financial leverage changed only due to timing reasons with refinance actions in January when we issued 2 new bonds of CHF 250 million combined with coupons of 0.8% and 1.1% respectively. We continue to enjoy a diverse funding base with a varied maturity profile. I hand back to Peter. Peter Eliot: Thank you, Annelis. We'll now move on to Q&A. Operator: Our first question comes from Simon Fössmeier with Vontobel. Simon Fossmeier: Really good results — 25% ahead of consensus. I'm wondering if this has any impact on the merger exchange ratio. And why did you not delay some of the unusual items to next year? Also, Fabian, you mentioned being cautious on top line growth — could you be a bit more specific? Fabian Rupprecht: On top line growth — I was referring to 2 different trends. We see continued hardening of the retail market and are convinced we will see further growth there. We are slightly more cautious on commercial and reinsurance because we expect to see the cycle turning there. So our focus will be on margins, and that's why we are more prudent on predicting top line growth in the short term. We are working in parallel on growth initiatives under Global Specialist — that concerns mid-market reach in Europe and further growth in additional lines globally in the specialty business. On the exchange ratio — you are right, the exchange ratio is set and will not change. Our standard is that we report things as they come. We always include anything to our best knowledge and at the right time. Operator: Our next question comes from Nasib Ahmed with UBS. Nasib Ahmed: Three questions. First, can you give an update on remittances in H1 from life versus non-life? Second, on life insurance reserve releases — can you talk more about the CSM offset and your reserving philosophy? Third, what is the reinvestment yield on the life book? Annelis Hammerli: On remittances — the collection of remittances is proceeding exactly as planned. We don't report a specific number at half year, but remittances are flowing in perfectly as planned. This is a great year from the remittance side until now. On reserving philosophy — our philosophy has been for a long time and continues to be a big supporter of very steady reserve releases. With the roll-off of the portfolio, we release these reserves. These are mid-double-digit million reserve releases every year. What we do not like to do is make big jumps in reserve releases hectically following any interest rate development in the external world. Our philosophy is really to have good reserving on life and then release over time. On the reinvestment yield on life — looking at Slide 38, for Life, the direct yield is 2.7%. We'll confirm the precise comparison offline. Operator: Our next question comes from Iain Pearce with BNP Paribas. Iain Pearce: First, do you expect to be in the 9% to 11% underlying EPS growth range this year, and what drives the acceleration from the 6.8% in H1 to get into that range? Second, you mentioned some of the attritional improvement may not be sustainable in H1 — how do you expect the attritional to develop into H2? Fabian Rupprecht: On 9% to 11% EPS growth — we gave that target for the 3 years as an average. There is a little bit of backloading because some measures just take longer — for example, the efficiency measures where we guided 20% in 2025, 40% in 2026 and 2027. But I say it's a little bit of backloading — we're not a big fan of that. Additionally, the 7% you see now is comparing to H1 2024 which was relatively strong compared to the full year, with quite some nat cat in H2. We are fully confident about the 9% to 11% over the period. Annelis Hammerli: On the attritional — what we show is the current year claims ratio minus discounting effect and nat cat ratio. What is left is not a pure attritional loss ratio — there is also volatility from large losses. That number can have some volatility and will not develop in an absolutely straight line. Regarding large losses in H1, I would say it was more or less a normal year. The key message is that we're not saying the rate is too high or too low — just watch out for some potential volatility coming. Sustainability is a little bit misleading as a framing — it's more about acknowledging there will be some volatility. Operator: Our next question comes from René Locher with ODDO. Rene Locher: Three questions. First, on the Swiss non-life market — you grew 4%, Smile at 7.8%, and competitors are also reporting above market average growth. What's the dynamic? Second, 3 to 4 years ago, everyone was talking about fintech, insurtech, and younger clients, but now I'm seeing 50-plus initiatives. Is the 50-plus now more in focus than the younger generation? Third, on Blatten — what was the claims burden before and after the natural perils pool came into play? Fabian Rupprecht: On Blatten — the elementary pool is very hard to quantify at this point because they only calculate it reciprocally towards year-end. We currently assume net zero on that one. What we said is that our overall claims burden was in the midst of a 2-digit million Swiss franc figure, and that's the same before and after reinsurance because our reinsurance only kicks in at CHF 70 million. On the non-life market — individual company growth depends on how many premium increases were taken in a year. For us, part of growth comes from effective rate changes and part from real volume growth. Excluding Smile, we grew 4%, which we consider close to the market — not significantly above it. Smile at 7% is clearly above market, and that's why we love Smile — it's profitable and growing above the market. On the 50-plus initiative — to be clear, we're not forgetting the younger generation. What we want to explain is that more than half of our customers worldwide are already over 50 years old, and this share in our portfolio is increasing. We want to make sure that in our offer to those customers we respect their specific needs, which change over a lifetime. This group will grow because of demographics in Europe. We want to serve this part of our client base well — which doesn't mean we don't continue being attractive for our younger customers through different products and sales channels. Operator: Our next question comes from Anne-Chantal Risold with Octavian. Anne-Chantal Risold: First, your 4 strategic pillars were set in December before the merger. Have they been influenced since April by the expected merger, in particular in Switzerland? Second, looking at the full year reporting — can we expect the combined entity to also report an underlying approach in addition to IFRS results? Fabian Rupprecht: When we announced the merger, we said one of the reasons we think Baloise and Helvetia are a good fit is that we have a very similar vision on strategic priorities. For that reason, I don't expect significant changes to our approach because it is very similar to Baloise's. We will announce more details at the Capital Market Day. We are committed to our strategy and have started implementing it. What is clear is that with the planned merger, there may be some priority conflicts where we might need to prioritize merger activities against some originally planned strategy implementations — but we will report on those at the Capital Market Day. I want to emphasize that we expected that the individual plans of both companies will still be fulfilled and then even beaten by the positive effects of the merger. Annelis Hammerli: The full year 2025 disclosure will already be on Helvetia Baloise, if everything goes as planned with closing towards the end of the year. The exact way the new company will be steered is too early to confirm — the governance of the new company has to approve all those concepts. For Helvetia, it has proven extremely helpful to have a measure for earnings power like underlying earnings, as it provides a common language for all market units rather than relying on many different local accounting regimes. The beauty of underlying earnings under IFRS is that we have a common language to talk about profitability, which is the driver of value generation. But the governance of the new company will of course have to approve all the concepts of how it will be steered. Anne-Chantal Risold: Since closing is in Q4 and depending on timing, that leaves very short time to react for full year disclosure. Do we have any target for when you expect to report full year results? Fabian Rupprecht: We're not yet communicating a date because we are waiting for merger and antitrust approvals. Once this is clear, we can announce a concrete date. Assume it will be rather towards the end of Q4 rather than the beginning. We're very positive and confident, but we want to wait until we get certain approvals so we can be sure we communicate the right date. Operator: Our next question comes from Michele Ballatore with KBW. Michele Ballatore: Anything you can say about the SST ratio development in terms of market impact on capital generation? Annelis Hammerli: At half year, we only show an estimate, but our estimates have proved to be quite accurate in the past. There was not really a lot happening in the SST ratio. Compared to year-end, it really stayed stable, with different effects — market effects, business effects, dividend payments and so on — being rather small and compensating each other. Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this was our last question. I'll turn back to management for closing remarks. Peter Eliot: No, that's great. Thank you all very much for attending on this busy day. I wish you a good afternoon. Thank you. Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call and for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.