Letter from the Chief Executive Officer

Dear Stakeholders,

Since launching UniCredit Unlocked in 2021, our winning Strategy set to achieve our Vision – to be the Bank for Europe’s Future – has also propelled us to become one of Europe’s best performing banks and one that sets ambitions and a path for others to follow.

UniCredit’s 2021-2024 transformation has been nothing short of exceptional, achieved while also consistently delivering outstanding financial results quarter after quarter, setting a new benchmark for banking.

We unified, refocused, and galvanised all our people around one single Vision, Strategy, and Culture. We restored trust and empowerment in our 13 banks and our people: all coming together as ONE Group.

We simplified and streamlined our organisation, processes, and ways of working, transforming our efficiency while also investing in our people, digital and data, product factories, and distribution channels to offer more to our clients.

We have lived by our Values and focused on our fundamental Purpose: to Empower Communities to Progress.

We continued to honor our ESG commitments with notable social investments, such as our €2.6 billion “UniCredit for CEE” initiative and our new Edu-Fund platform, supporting programmes addressing educational deprivation in our communities.

Together, this has firmly set out our proven blueprint for banking not only in terms of financial achievements but also in terms of how we should support the communities in which we operate and always attempt doing what is right, driving necessary change. This is, we hope, the ambition and path we have set for our sector.

Record-breaking results

Our 2024 results were the very best in UniCredit’s long history. The most recent quarter marks our 16th consecutive quarter of profitable growth.

Our RoTE reached 17.7% notwithstanding the substantial excess capital we still carry, and is best-in class when adjusted for such excess capital. Our stated Net Profit reached €9.7 billion (€10.3 billion underlying). Our organic capital generation of 444bps – equal to €12.6 billion – has allowed us to accrue €9.0 billion to be distributed, while maintaining a CET1 ratio of c.15.9% with c.€6.5 billion of excess capital vs our CET1 ratio target.

Our Net Revenue reached €24.2 billion – up to 4% year on year – further reinforcing the quality of our top line as NII profitability remained best-in-class and our fees, driven by our rebuilt market-leading product factories, reached a top tier 33% of total revenues.

Our operational and capital efficiency also improved further with a CIR <38% and a Net Revenue/RWA ratio of 8.7% respectively.

We continued to build our lines of defence to protect and propel our future taking extraordinary charges of €1.3 billion.

Over the last four years, we delivered Total Shareholder Return of 513%, outperforming our European peers1 by four times, with total cumulative distributions of over €26 billion, more than 1.5 times our market cap at the beginning of the period. Our EPS and DPS growth (CAGR) of 48% and 64% respectively speaks for itself. We are the most shareholder-friendly bank in Europe.‍

Into a new era

The last four years have laid a firm foundation for our next phase of quality growth. We have prepared ourselves to take the essential next step. We will redouble our commitment to unlock more value from our Bank and go beyond the benchmarks we have set. In summary, we are now moving to the second phase of UniCredit Unlocked: Acceleration.

It will be our attractive geographical presence, client and business mix, protected by our unmatched lines of defence and leveraged upon by our team that will allow us to further positively differentiate ourselves from our peers and set a seven-year track record of superior performance through the cycle.

We are both excited about the opportunity we have in front of us and confident we will achieve it.

Our approach is showing the need to reform our single market so it functions as it should, empowering our European communities instead of stifling them.

We are showing the leadership Europe needs on this issue, to support our bloc’s structural growth and bring an end to years of economic stagnation.

The power behind our model for banking is the people of UniCredit, united as ONE by a Vision, a Strategy, and a Culture we all believe in, who have made it a success. I am both grateful for their efforts and honored to lead them.

When we launched UniCredit Unlocked we were stepping into a new era for the Bank. I believe that we are doing it again and in doing so we will improve even further. I believe that, together, we can Unlock our Acceleration!

Yours,

Andrea Orcel
Chief Executive Officer, UniCredit S.p.A.