This is the captain speaking. With tailwinds still on our side we continue to make good progress on our journey. The weather at your destination looks good. I''ll talk to you again before we land. Keep your seatbelt fastened as we approach peak NII On our estimates, most Italian banks will reach peak NII in Q2/Q3 2023. We see positive y/y progression in 2024 for some (ISP, BAMI) and only minor declines for others. Our NII estimates remain above consensus throughout the forecast period across the board. We expect management guidance to be upgraded, with Q2 results leading to positive revisions by consensus. We will be cruising at high altitude for many years Despite taking a more conservative stance on the evolution of funding costs (we model a decline in sight deposits to the 2018/19 level), we yet again increase our adj. EPS estimates. We remain above consensus for all stocks, most notably for BPER (+35/23% above in 2024/25e). We estimate broadly stable earnings beyond 2023 for most banks. Falling NII, higher costs and (in most cases) higher LLP are offset by higher fee income and by lower systemic charges. Abundant dividends and buy-backs will be served for the duration of the flight Healthy capital ratios and high profitability should allow for elevated distributions. Ordinary dividends could be complemented by the distribution of a portion of excess capital via special dividends or buybacks (BAMI?). We see Unicredit returning c.45% of its market cap to shareholders over the next three years (EUR17.4bn) with plenty of excess capital still available in 2025 (EUR5.1bn). Big discounts over recommended prices are still available Despite most stocks outperforming the sector in both 2022 and 2023 YTD, P/E multiples are languishing at large discounts vs historical averages. We are confident that valuation multiples will eventually expand as investors should, sooner or later, realise that the 2023e profitability levels are broadly sustainable for...