TBC Bank Group PLC

Welcome everyone to the TBC first quarter 2024 results call webinar. My name is Emily and I'll be your coordinator today. If you wish to ask a question during the webinar, please use the raise hand button if you have joined the call via Zoom. Alternatively, you can type your questions into the Q&A chat box at the bottom of your Zoom screen. If you have joined us on the telephone lines, please press start followed by the number one on your telephone keypad if you would like to ask a question. I will now hand over to Andrew Keeley, Director of Investor Relations, to begin. Please go ahead.

Thanks very much for the introduction, Emily, and thank you, everyone, for joining today's first quarter results call. I'm joined on the call by our CEO, Bhaktan Utsavikidze, and our CFO, Yogi Meghalishvili. As usual, we'll start with a presentation, and then we'll move on to Q&A. And with that, I'll hand over to Vaktan.

Thank you. Thank you, Andrew, and dear all, thank you for joining our first quarter financial results conference call. Before I discuss our first quarter results, I'd like to make a few brief comments about the current situation in Georgia. As many of you have seen in media reports over the past few weeks, there have been protests in response to the planned legislation relating to the disclosure of revenues from the foreign sources by companies and organizations. And we are, of course, monitoring this situation closely and very much hope a resolution can be found. In the meantime, I'd like to reassure our shareholders and interest investors that our bank is continuing its normal daily functions for our customers and we have not seen any disruption to services. On a broader impact on our operating environment, I'm happy to answer any further questions during our Q&A session. Turning to our results, I am delighted that we can share with you another successful start to the year with almost 300 million LARIC groups net profit and more than 25% return of equity for the first quarter. Additionally, our digital monthly active users have grown by 1.2 million and reached 5.6 million. Our business in Georgia continues to grow strongly, with loans up by 18%, and we are the market leaders in both loans and deposits. It is almost 40% here. Meanwhile, in Uzbekistan, our business goes from strength to strength, with gross loans more than doubling and net income contributing 6% of the group's total income. Slide 4 shows our journey over the past 10 years as a public company. We conducted our IPO in June 2014, and I think we have made great progress in the decade since. You can see we have stayed very focused on consistent delivery from growth and profitability for our shareholders. Our track record speaks for itself, an average return of equity of around 22%, 25% annual growth in net profit with a consistent 25% to 35% dividend payout ratio. We have also expanded our active customer base to nearly 6 million by strengthening our presence in Georgia and by building digital financial services in Uzbekistan's growing market. The next slide presents a high-level overview of the first quarter performance. Net profit reached nearly 300 million laria by 16%. Our growth maintained an excellent return on equity, 25.1%. And at the same time, our gross long portfolio grew by 21%, reaching 22.5 billion dollars. And importantly, our digital user base keeps growing with 5.6 million digital monthly active users across the group. Moving to the Georgia business slide, I'd like to provide you with a brief update on the Georgian economy. Economy growth remains very strong in Georgia, with first quarter growth coming up at 7.8%, and we now expect 6.4% real GDP growth in 2024. Meanwhile, the inflation remains low, which has enabled the National Bank of Georgia to cut interest rates, with the refinance rate now at 8.25%, down by 1.25% each point year to date. The next slide shows how we are the dominant financial services provider of the Georgian market. As you can see, TBC Bank is the leading bank in Georgia by all key metrics, with approximately 40% of market share in total loans, deposits, and assets. We have more than 1.6 million customers who are using our authentic services on a monthly basis. Additional TBC insurance dominates the non-health insurance market with over 75% market share, and TBC account for almost 90% of the losing market. Now let's go to the next slide. This slide shows that our growing customer base is becoming more and more digitally engaged. Out of 1.6 million active monthly customers, almost 60% are digitally active. And as you see on this slide, more and more of our products are being issued online. The share of consumer loss issued by fully digitally has increased by almost 20% over the past year to nearly 70%. The next slide introduces our leading digital lifestyle ecosystem, T-NEX, which consists of a wide range of products and services across four verticals. In the first quarter, GMV increased by approximately 20%, reaching $36 million, out of which 55% comes from the lifestyle led by the ticketing. Over the same period, the number of the transactions also grew by 20% and reached more than $4 million. Now, moving to the Uzbekistan business, I'd like to provide you with a brief update on Uzbek economy. The GDP has averaged almost 6% growth per year over the past decade, and we expect 5.6% growth in 2024. The country is opening up, modernizing, and attracting more and more investments, and we expect GDP to almost double from $90 billion in 2023 to $160 billion in 2030, with alongside strong growth in financial services, and this will bring huge opportunities to us. So next slide outlines the main parts of the digital ecosystem we are building in Uzbekistan. As you know, we have been operating in Uzbekistan for about five years, and I'd like to stress that all our businesses are profitable. The focus over the 12 to 18 months will be on a new product development and scaling up of our businesses. On the banking side, we plan to launch credit cards later this year, as well as daily and MSME banking. In PayMe, we will allow the travel services, while now our POS installment loan platform, PayMe Nasir, will enhance our BMPO capabilities. On the next slide, you can see the performance of our Uzbek businesses. The results are quite impressive. We count around 14.6 million unique registered users, out of which 4.7 million are mass-led to customers. Our loan book continues to grow at a tremendous pace, more than doubling year-on-year to $345 million, while our deposits stood at around $245 million. In terms of profitability, we have been profitable for the last seven quarters, and we earned $7 million in net profits and $38 million in total operating income in 2034. And lastly, on the slide 15, we see that Uzbekistan is becoming more and more material contributor to the group. It already accounts for 42% in the total fast consumer loans, 8% in the retail deposit portfolio, 12% in the total operating income, and 6% in the net profits. And this number should only grow. And we are also gaining market share in every quarter. In our core product offerings, ICL Lending, we are one of the leading player players on the market, and we have already 15.3% market share. In terms of the retail deposits, we have 3.4% market share, and there is much more upside to come here. Now I'd like to hand the interview to you.