TBC Bank Group PLC

Hello and welcome everyone to the TBC third quarter and nine months financial results conference call. If you would like to ask a question, please press the raise hand icon on your screen or use the Q&A chat box to submit a question if you've joined the call via Zoom. If you've joined us on the phone, please press star one on your flipping keypad. I will now hand you over to Andrew Keeley, Director of Investor Relations to begin. Andrew, please go ahead.

Thanks very much, Maxine, and welcome everyone to TBC's third quarter and nine months result call. As usual, I'm joined today by Vaktang Butskidekidze, our CEO, and Georgi Megrelishvili, our CFO. So, as usual, we will start with a presentation and then we'll have time for Q&A. And with that, I'll hand over to Vaktang. Thank you.

Thank you, Andrew. Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for joining our third quarter and nine-month financial results conference call. Before I move on to our results, I'd like to briefly comment on the recent parliamentary elections held in Georgia. As you have seen, according to the official results, the current government party won a majority of votes and seats. Also, the main opposition parties are disputing the results. Here at TBC, we see no change at all to our operating environment, and we continue to focus on serving our 1.7 million customers in Georgia. We also see no effect on the Georgian economy, which continues to perform very strongly. I am pleased to announce that third quarter has been another highly successful period of our group. As seen on this slide, it has been a very strong performance across the board. Our net profit for this quarter reached a record 347 million lari, with the return of equity exceeding 26%. We continue to grow our digital customer base, now approaching 6 million digital monthly active users. We continue to grow our digital... Yes, our business in Georgia remains the source of strongest table growth and profitability. While our digital... The banking ecosystem in Uzbekistan goes from strength to strength and now contributes 9% of the group's earnings. I won't stay too long on the next slide, and I have discussed this slide before, but just to reiterate, it nicely highlights our journey over the past decade as a public company, delivering consistently from growth and returns for our state shareholders. The next slide provides an overview of our group's third quarter performance. Our group's net profit increased by 16% year-on-year and stands to nearly 350 million lari, with a strong return of equity of 26.6%. At the same time, our gross loan portfolio grew by an excellent 20% year-on-year growth. Our digital user base continues to grow with almost 6 million monthly digital active users across the group, as previously mentioned. Now moving to Georgia, this slide summarizes the macro environment, which continues to be very supportive to our business. Economic growth in Georgia remains very strong, with real GDP increasing by 9.9% in the first nine months of this year. As a result, we have revised our 2024 GDP growth forecast to 9.4%, up from 7.4% as of the second quarter. I think you are all familiar with our dominant market position in Georgia, which is outlined on the slide 8, and we continue to strive to maintain a leading market share across all segments of Georgia's financial services. Next slide shows the growing digital engagement of our customer base. In the third quarter, our digital monthly users in Georgia reached 1 million, with the digital monthly users penetration of 60%. I'm also pleased to highlight the continuing long-term threat of growth in the share of consumer loans issued fully digitally, which now stands at impressive 73%. as well as an increasing share of online retail transactions. Next slide provides an update on T-Net, our digital lifestyle ecosystem. T-Net continues to be the leading online platform in Georgia for auto and real estate classifieds, as well as the services such as online ticketing and coupons with 1.6 million mass users and greater than 50% market share in all these segments. We plan to further strengthen our dominant position in these areas while adding complementary services. In response to changes in the competitive dynamics within e-commerce landscape, we have decided to focus on a model led by our market-leading C2C marketplace, with third parties providing all the core services, including merchandise, distribution, and logistics. By integrating TBC's financial support Expertise, we aim to embed the best-in-class payments and credit projects within T-Net, driving profitable growth in this business. As a result, we have determined the growth in T-Net GMV to 500 million lari is no longer a core strategic financial target for the group, and we will continue providing specific guidance on this point. I'd like to reiterate that it does not have any impact on our remaining 2025 strategic targets, all of which we are fully confident of meeting. Now moving to our Uzbekistan business, the Uzbekistan economy also remains strong, with real GDP growth of 6.6% for the first nine months of this year. We expect CPI inflation to fall below 10% next year, which would be supportive for the local currency and further boost economic stability. Slide 13 outlines the key elements of our digital ecosystem in Uzbekistan. We remain on track with scaling up our business in Uzbekistan and rolling out new products and services. And I'm delighted to say that at the start of November, we launched SalonCard for TBC users, our new flagship daily banking product. We believe it will set a benchmark for daily banking services in the country, offering a range of benefits previously unavailable on the market and an easy-to-use fully digital interface through the TBC mobile application. We are also in the process of rolling out credit cards and transactional MSME banking, both of which will be fully launched by the end of this year. I'm also excited to announce our long-term strategic partnerships with Visa and MasterCard, which will further enhance the quality of the products and services we can provide to our customers. On this slide 14, you can see how our Uzbek business continues to perform exceptionally well. We now have nearly 17 million unique registered users, with almost 5 million monthly active users. Our loan book has doubled near to $460 million, while our deposit stood at $340 million. Importantly, both our revenues and profitability show very strong momentum, with net profit of $12 million and total operating income of $41 million in the third quarter of this year, both more than doubling year-on-year. And finally, on the slide 15, shows the growing contribution of Uzbekistan to the group's overall performance. Uzbekistan already accounts for 44% of total unsecured loans, 10% of the group's retail deposit portfolio, 17% of the total operating income, and 8% of the net profits for the first nine months of this year. And we are also continuing to gain market share with almost 15% of the macro loan market in September. And with that, now I'd like to hand over to Georgi.