Banco Santander S A : Ana Botin’s speech

SPEECH BY ANA BOTÍN

2024 ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

1. Welcome & Introduction - p. 2
2. Summary of 2023 results - p. 2 to p. 6
3. Economic landscape - p. 7 to p. 10
4. Santander's strategy - p. 10 to p. 14
5. Our global businesses - p. 14 to p. 18
6. Culture & ESG - p. 18 to p. 21
7. 2024 outlook - pg. 22 to p. 23
8. Closing: 10 years at the helm of Santander - p. 23 to p. 27

[WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the 2024 Banco Santander's Annual General Meeting.

Thank you all for joining us today, in person or remotely.

Once again, we are holding our General Meeting in an open format, so every shareholder can participate in virtually and in person, in a secure and reliable way.

1. [SUMMARY OF 2023 RESULTS]

2023 WAS A RECORD YEAR FOR SANTANDER, both in terms of results and because of the progress we made in our transformation.

That progress is due to the efforts of the bank´s entire team, which has, once again, gone the extra mile for our customers. I would like to thank and congratulate each and every one of our employees.

At our Investor Day in February last year, we announced new medium- term targets and began a new phase of value creation.

We achieved all our targets in the first year of this phase:

• Record profit of over €11 billion, and earnings per share growth of 21.5%.
• Our Return on Tangible Equity grew to over 15%.
• We added five million new customers.
• We built capital organically to an all-time high fully-loaded CET1 ratio of 12.3%.
• And we created shareholder value by growing tangible net asset value (TNAV) per share plus dividend per share (DPS) by 15%.

We also made huge progress with our business transformation to build ONE Santander.

The premise of my ONE Santander vision is that THE SUM OF ALL THE GROUP'S BUSINESSES AND COUNTRIES IS GREATER THAN THE VALUE OF EACH OF THEM INDIVIDUALLY; a vision we have been working on since my first day.

Just as important as the results is the progress in building global platforms for all our businesses.

TODAY we have ALL WE NEED to be a bank that LEADS the future of financial services:

• We have business and regional diversification, attractive and very profitable, which sets us apart and makes us more resilient.
• We have global and local scale as a leading bank in each of our markets and a total of 165 MILLION CUSTOMERS, ONE OF THE LARGEST CUSTOMER BASES OF ANY BANK IN THE WORLD.

ALL THIS GIVES US THE CAPACITY TO INVEST IN PROPRIETARY TECHNOLOGY PRODUCTS AND ENABLES US TO ATTRACT THE BEST TALENT.

Today we are a fintech solutions factory, having launched in recent years a car leasing platform, Zinia, a BNPL platform, Openbank, and our core banking solution, Gravity, among others.

THESE ARE ALL COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES that enable us to stand out in our customers' eyes and improve profitability for our shareholders.

Today we have a team that is managing both the day-to-day and the transformation of the bank in an exceptional way. THE BEST MANAGEMENT TEAM IN SANTANDER'S HISTORY.

For the past year, Héctor Grisi has been doing a great job in managing the bank´s transformation and new culture. I would like to congratulate him on behalf of the entire board for the successes achieved in 2023.

Our 2023 results have enabled us to increase the percentage of profits allocated to pay dividends. We raised our target of 40% to 50%.

Including the final dividend proposal that you will vote on today, we will pay our shareholders a TOTAL OF OVER €5.5 BILLION against 2023 results.

Half of that total, around €2.77 billion, will be a cash dividend, 50% MORE PER SHARE THAN IN 2022.

The other half will go to share buyback programmes, which create value for shareholders by reducing the number of outstanding shares so that each shareholder gets both a LARGER STAKE IN THE COMPANY AND A HIGHER DIVIDEND PER SHARE.

Let me explain what that means for a shareholder who has held 1,000 shares since 2021:

• Once the ongoing buyback programmes are completed, Santander will have reduced its outstanding shares by 11% since 2021, which means that each shareholder will increase his or her stake in Santander BY OVER 12%.
• Over the period, and thanks to the buyback programmes, they will have earned approximately €400 IN DIVIDENDS, 24 euros more than if we had not carried out the programmes (+6.4%).

Moreover, investing in our own shares at current prices below book value, results in a return on capital investment of around 20%.

In summary, 2023 WAS A HISTORIC YEAR FOR OUR SHAREHOLDERS.

Looking ahead, Santander is a UNIQUE INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY. WE SAW IN 2023 that it offers profitable and sustainable growth combined with solvency and a medium risk profile, as well as a focus on creating value and dividends above our peers.

2. [ECONOMIC LANDSCAPE]

The overall economic context in 2023 turned out to be more favourable than initially expected as the world's major economies continued to grow.

All this amid high volatility in the geopolitical sphere, in which THE

DIVERSIFICATION OF THE SANTANDER MODEL, AS WELL AS OUR GEOGRAPHICAL FOOTPRINT, WILL BE MORE AND MORE A MAJOR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE.

[Europe and Spain]

In this new global geoeconomic scenario, BOOSTING THE COMPETITIVENESS OF EUROPE AND EUROPEAN COMPANIES IS KEY TO GROW MORE AND TO IMPROVE OUR POSITION VS THE US AND CHINA.

There is an urgent need for the public and private sectors to work together to improve the competitive position of European companies.

The newly elected European Parliament committees will have the great challenge of addressing the reforms needed to regain Europe's weight in the world's economy.

Against this backdrop, SPAIN'S ECONOMY WILL CONTINUE TO GROW ABOVE THE EUROPEAN AVERAGE, driven by private consumption and tourism.

Speeding up the implementation of European funds would help to increase investment and growth. The European Commission ranks Spain as the country where the funds can have the third highest impact, 3.5% of GDP compared with the EU average of 1.4%.

The entire Santander team is ready to collaborate on the distribution of these funds in order to have the greatest possible reach in the business world.

SPEEDING UP GROWTH REQUIRES MORE INVESTMENT AND MORE BALANCED PUBLIC ACCOUNTS.

[Latin America]

From an economic perspective, LATIN AMERICA, WHERE SANTANDER IS THE LEADING BANK, is BETTER THAN EVER poised to leverage its strengths, thanks supply chains moving closer to the US, for example. It is set to grow faster than other regions.

In the past 10 years, 37 million new customers opened accounts with us, and there are still 178 MILLION PEOPLE FINANCIALLY UNDERSERVED.

BRAZIL IS THE LEADING COUNTRY IN LATIN AMERICA: one out of every three Latin Americans is Brazilian; THE COUNTRY'S GDP ACCOUNTS FOR 30% of the GDP of the entire region and ITS COMPANIES RECEIVE 40% of the foreign direct INVESTMENT CAPTURED BY THE ENTIRE REGION.

Its recent macroeconomic performance confirms its leading profile: BRAZIL'S CENTRAL BANK has responded to the recent inflationary shock FASTER AND MORE CONVINCINGLY than many other central banks.

Its legislators have designed new fiscal rules that are ALLOWING IT TO GROW IN A FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE MANNER, and productivity improvements in its economy, allowing the country to generate TRADE SURPLUS.

BRAZIL IS ON ITS WAY TO BECOMING AN INVESTMENT GRADE country and when that happens, it will bring an economic and geopolitical revolution in the global economy.

WE ARE VERY PLEASED TO HAVE ACCOMPANIED BRAZIL'S SUCCESS over the last two decades and this year we expect to achieve the best results in history in local currency.

IT IS OUR LARGEST MARKET, AND WE HAVE GREAT CONFIDENCE in the future of the country and our bank.

[US]

The US is on track for a soft landing, with a positive outlook for 2024.

It is the biggest and most attractive financial market in the world in terms of risk/return ratio and growth, and at Santander we have the scale, the strategy and the team to compete there and grow profitably by creating value, as we have demonstrated over the last five years.

3. [SANTANDER'S STRATEGY]

In this global environment, WE ARE NO LONGER ONLY COMPETING AGAINST OTHER BANKS.

We operate in an environment in which we also compete against large technology companies, with less strict regulatory requirements than banks.

This means banks like Santander must change even faster.

I have total confidence in our ability to accelerate this transformation,

BECAUSE TODAY THE WHOLE TEAM SHARES THIS URGENCY.

Our vision is TO BE THE BEST OPEN FINANCIAL SERVICES PLATFORM [and, as a first step, TO BE THE MOST PROFITABLE BANK IN EACH OF OUR MARKETS].