Operator
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Analyst and Investor Call for HSBC Holdings Plc's Interim Results 2021. For your information, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I will hand the call over to your host, Mr. Noel Quinn, Group Chief Executive.
Noel Quinn --
Group Chief Executive
Good morning in London and good afternoon in Hong Kong. I've got Ewen with me today and I'll hand over to him shortly to go through the detail of our Q2 performance. First though, I'll start with a summary of the key highlights, our progress against our transformation plans, and in particular, what we're seeing with respect to growth. For the second quarter, a good operating performance supported by a net release of expected credit losses delivered reported pre-tax profits of $5.1 billion, up $4 billion on last year's second quarter.