3/6/2026

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to OTP Bank's full-year 2010-25 results conference call. Please be advised that this event is being recorded. During the presentation, all participants will remain in listen-only mode. Following the formal remarks, there will be an opportunity for questions. We are pleased to have two members of our senior management with us today. Peter Csányi, Chief Executive Officer, and Laszlo Benczyk, Chief Financial and Strategic Officer. At this point, it's my pleasure to hand over the floor to Peter Csányi, Chief Executive Officer. Peter, please go ahead.

speaker
Peter Csányi
Chief Executive Officer

Thank you very much. Good afternoon to all of you, or good morning, depending on which continent you are located on. It's very nice to have you here for the 2025 result announcements. As per the usual format, we will give a short presentation on the results and then we'll have the Q&A session following thereafter. So kicking off on this page, you can see that We have continued our successful journey last year in 2025. In terms of loan book growth, we have achieved a solid, strong performing 15% organic growth rate, coupled with 22% return on equity, which is very good, especially given the high leverage ratio, 11% leverage ratio, according to Basel IV, which is basically tier one capital over total exposure, which is about one and a half, two times higher than most of our peers. So we can say that our return on equity has been especially strong. Combined with stable portfolio quality, our Stage 3 ratio has been declining slightly from 3.6% to 3.5%. And as usual, very strong capital position with common equity Tier 1 over 18%. and also very strong liquidity profile and a stable deposit-funded kind of franchise. Overall, a 77% net loan-to-deposit ratio and wholesale funding amounting to only 7% of our total assets. So overall, from a high level, we see a good performance in our view in 2025. Talking about the results last year, 1,146 billion Hungarian foreign net income, which is a 7% increase year over year, combined with, as I mentioned earlier, a strong return on equity. Our operating profit grew by 10%, driven primarily by the strong organic growth I have mentioned earlier, and a small margin improvement seen throughout last year. Our taxes on the bad side have increased 15% due to a 7.5 times increase in the Hungarian windfall tax. I will talk a little bit more about this when we talk about the Hungarian operations. Our cost-income ratio has been relatively stable last year, 41%. And in terms of risk ratios, our credit risk and total risk-cost rate has slightly increased, but most of this increase is due to Russia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. If you can actually see on the bottom right-hand side of this page, if you look without Russia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan, the risk-cost rate was more or less stable or even slightly improved over the last year. And if we zoom into Hungary, unfortunately, our profit after tax has slightly declined 2% year over year, despite a very strong organic loan growth, 17%. percent loan growth and a 27 basis point improvement in the net interest margin. The decline in the profit after tax was mainly a result of the increase in the windfall tax and further raised by the Hungarian government. It grew almost eight times, and the transaction tax grew by 33%. Unfortunately, for this year, so 2026, these extra taxes will grow further by around 27%, amounting to around 329 billion Hungarian forints in total. That overall results in a net tax rate of 53% for 2026. And as you can see, this amount of tax is actually higher than the full year profit in 2025. Going into the different business lines performance over last year. If you look at Hungarian retail, the most important development in the retail market was the initiation of a subsidized mortgage loan program introduced by the government in the second half of the year. This represented practically more than three-fourths of the total dispersed mortgage volume in Q4. As you can see, the loan application volumes increased nearly three times from the second quarter to the fourth quarter of 2025. And our market share at the same time in new mortgage volume Lending went up by 2.4 percentage points to 33.5%. It is actually the highest for more than 10 years. And as usual in subsidized loan programs, our market share is even higher. In the new HomeStart loan program, our market share in new disbursements It was around 43% in 2025. We like this product. The NPV of this product is significantly higher than normal market mortgages. So we are happy to see this pick up in mortgage loan volume. In terms of cash loan, our origination was up 36%. So again, a very, very strong growth rate achieved in the cash loan market as well. And our deposit market share has stabilized over 41%. So during the last four years, we don't see a significant change in this. We view this as a very good sign, especially given the increasing competition in Hungary, not just from local players, but also from cross-border financial service providers. We view this as a positive sign that we are able to retain a high market share in retail deposits. Now, turning on to the Hungarian corporate segment, we have seen a very positive development in the Hungarian corporate segment. On the top left-hand side, you can see the large corporate loan volume changes. And as you can see, after practically two years of stagnation, we have seen a very strong pickup, 18% growth in corporate loan volumes in 2025. and this is not just the case in the large corporate segment on the bottom left hand side you can see that micro and small business loan growth volume have has also picked up 13 percent growth throughout last year and we are also very happy to see that it's not just a strong organic growth but we have actually improved our competitive position and increased our market share. This you can see on the right hand side on the top. We have reached our highest ever corporate market share, 21%. 20 years ago, as you can see, it was less than 7%. Now, Regarding our expectations for this segment, we are kind of cautiously optimistic that this is kind of a U-turn and not just a temporary pickup in growth rate. We are hoping that this is going to be the case going forward. But obviously, we can only be cautiously optimistic. Now, turning the page and zooming out a little bit on the other markets, outside of Hungary, the overall foreign profit after tax growth was relatively strong, 11% year-over-year growth. Our non-Hungarian group members delivered 71% of the consolidated profit in 2025. We see a profit growth in Eurozone countries was relatively modest, despite a strong 8% to 18% organic loan growth volume. due to the margin pressure driven by the 100 basis point year over year decline in the Euro rate environment and relatively fierce price competition especially in certain segments and certain countries. If we dig a little bit deeper into margin, development throughout 2025. The good news is that the year over year decline, especially in the Eurozone and Euro driven countries, especially Serbia, where a large share of our loans are denominated in Euros, By the second half of the year, and especially in the fourth quarter, margins have stabilized across the group. Our sensitivity to 100 basis point euro rate decline in terms of annual net interest income of the group was negative 130 million euros at the end of 2025. However, regarding the euro rate, we expect a stable decline. environment in 2026. On the other hand, the normalization of inflation in Hungary close to the central bank target rate suggests that there can be rate cuts from the current 6.25% base rate level. So one cut has actually already happened on the 24th of February, that was a 25 basis point cut. And for the remainder of 25, we expect another one in the first half of the year. These two rate cuts are actually factored into our management guidance that I will talk a little bit later. Regarding rate sensitivity on the half side, 100 basis point half rate cut is approximately negative 20 billion Hungarian forints in terms of impact on that interest income level for the full year. Now, beyond The acceleration of mortgage and corporate growth in Hungary that I have talked about in the previous pages. Across the group, we see very strong growth rates, especially in Bulgaria, and in Bulgaria, especially mortgages. which grew 30% over last year. Since 2021, actually, mortgage volumes doubled in Bulgaria. In all non-EU countries, consumer loan growth was particularly strong, ranging between 19% and 76%. growth rates in these countries. And I would like to highlight that we have discussed Uzbekistan in somewhat of a detail in the previous results announcements. We have seen a positive turnaround in Uzbekistan from the second quarter 2025. loan growth actually accelerated and we started to regain the market shares in consumer lending. So we are very optimistic that we have turned around the situation in cash lending in in Uzbekistan. On the deposit side, we see a strong 11% overall growth in deposits. in retail a 14% growth, which is actually more than double than what we had in 2024. And it supported very strongly the profitability of the group. Most importantly, you know, in Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, deposit growth was between 12 and 14%. And in Bulgaria, retail deposits grew exceptionally high by 22%, most likely, obviously, as a result of a very successful Eurozone accession. So, overall, our loan-to-deposit ratio, as I mentioned in the beginning, stands currently at 77%, stood at the end of 2025 at 77%. Turning on to risk, despite the strong 15% loan growth that we have seen last year, our Stage 3 ratio actually declined from 3.6% to 3.5%, which is very positive news for us. Stage 1 ratio increased by 3.2 percentage points to 87%. As usual, we are continuing our conservative approach to provisioning. As you can see on the right-hand side, our provision coverage on performing loans, even without Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, was ranging from 1.5 to 6 times higher than our relevant peer group that we like to compare ourselves now turning to capital as you can see on the on the top left we are well above the regulatory Minimums in capital are strong profit generation, created around 400 basis points of common equity Tier 1 in 2025, as you see on the decomposition on the right-hand side of the page, or 15% loan growth actually consumed 1.8 percentage points of common equity tier. And we have last year bought back, performed shared buybacks, which corresponded to approximately 1.7%. percentage points of core tier one. So the dividends and the share buybacks last year was 1.7%. The amount of share buybacks that we eventually performed until the end of last year was 192 billion. And this year we suggest 300 billion dividends, four-inches of dividends to be paid after the 2025 after-tax profits. So these two items overall in 2025 constituted 43% of profit after-tax. And there have been also regulatory changes that took away 1.2 percentage points of common equity tier one. So overall, we consider our capital position to be very stable, especially if we compare ourselves to our relevant benchmarks. This is especially important because in times of crisis, we don't want to be the weakest link. So we actually want to maintain a strong capital position, not just compared to regulatory requirements, but to our peers. And if you look on this page, on a capital car ratio level, so the third column on this page, You can actually see that we are more or less in the middle compared to our peer benchmarks. And on a tier one level, we are more or less on the higher end of this, on this range. This is a position that we are comfortable with, obviously. as if and when our benchmarks actually sort of go down, we may consider going a little bit lower as well. Now, as you can see, our common equity tier one is actually materially higher, but as you know that we don't have any alternative tier one instruments. So practically the same situation remains that our biggest difference compared to our relevant benchmarks is the actual leverage ratio, which you see on the very right hand side of this page, our regulatory leverage ratio defined as tier one equity over total exposure is about one and a half to two times higher than that of other banks, which is a result of a conservative approach by the Hungarian Central Bank, which did not yet provide us with a sensible room to move to an internal model, basically. methodology for defining the pillar one capital requirements turning on to liquidity position see the usual page our liquidity position is is obviously a very strong retail oriented commercial banking business model, relatively well diversified retail deposit base. As I mentioned, 77% net loan to deposit ratio or liquidity coverage ratios and net stable funding ratios are also higher than those who are relevant peers that you can see on the bottom left-hand side of this page. And in terms of outlook for this year, we have 1.1 billion euros of total callables this year. That cannot be considered significant, given that it only constitutes, just for the sake of comparison, 37% of last year's profits and in total less than 1% of our total profits. total assets. And as you can see, in terms of reducing our dependency on wholesale assets, back in 2008 we had 25% share of wholesale debt compared to where we stand end of last year at 7%. Overall, a very stable funding structure in our opinion now this is a more for debt investors rather than our our equity investors on this call um our credit rating is always a sensitive topic for us we believe that moody's ba3 and snp's triple b kind of still relatively understate our real quality and are somewhat maybe a little bit limited by the perception of the Hungarian sovereign risk, despite the fact that Hungary is only less than 30% of the actual group profit after tax. Nevertheless, obviously, we give credit to SNP for starting to break away from this approach and assigning a rating not higher than the Hungarian sovereign for OTP banks. This is something that we are particularly proud of, Standard & Poor's Global Market Intelligence, every year does a rating on the European banks, top 50 publicly traded European banks. In 2024, we were number one on this list. Last year, we ended up coming second on this list. As you can see, this is kind of a composite performance indicator as it looks at seven different financial metrics. But we are very proud that we managed to retain kind of this very strong ranking in this independent survey. And last year, EBA The European Banking Authority performed the stress test and we were number 13th on this list. If I'm not mistaken, they look at 60 largest banks in Europe and we managed to be in the top third of this group. And this basically measures what would be the reduction in common equity tier one ratio given a significant stress scenario. So this is a very, very good result for us. And obviously not an accident. This is a result of the conservative approach. capital and risk strategy that we are following. I haven't mentioned ESG yet, but our green lending actually remains a priority for us. We have set out a very ambitious goal of reaching 1,500 billion foreign green lending volume. We have actually overachieve that at the end of 2025 by 13%. And these efforts that we have placed on ESG has actually been rewarded by two notches upgrade by MSCI ESG rating last year in November. Now turning towards kind of the macroeconomic expectations going forward. Overall, we can expect a reasonably supportive operating environment to continue or even improve in 2026. We do expect an acceleration in GDP growth in Hungary. Last year, it was 0.4%. We expect that growth rate to come out about 2-2.5% in 2026. And as I mentioned, inflation has already actually moderated quite a lot, and the central bank has cut rates. Expect potentially further rate cuts. Now, obviously... Regarding inflation expectations, the Iran invasion is causing somewhat of an uncertainty obviously, which is hard to predict what will be the effects given that we don't really know how long this situation will last. will persist. So probably our inflation expectation here displayed on this page is more or less on an optimistic note, given the developments over the last few days. However, we still remain optimistic because GDP should pick up. Two other countries where we expect a pretty strong acceleration in GDP is Slovenia and Serbia. The rest of the countries may probably be similar to what we have seen last year. And obviously, there is always a potential upside if there is a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia. Now turning on to our management guidance for 2026. Now, you know, obviously we assume that kind of a supportive macroeconomic environment can be expected in 2026. Then what we expect is a similarly strong kind of organic growth. The loan volume growth may be around 15% that we have achieved last year. With similar margins, our expectation is 4.34% that we have reached also last year. So we expect that to be kind of similar and also a very similar portfolio quality. We may expect, we may see a slightly higher cost income and a slightly lower return on equity. Obviously, a return on equity mainly due to rather the accumulation of equity throughout the year. And as I mentioned to you in the previous pages are Suggestion for the Board of Directors for the dividend to be paid after the 2025 financial year is 300 billion Hungarian forints, which is 1,071 forints per share. Now, obviously, the actual DPS will be more, given that treasury shares do not receive But this is obviously, I believe, a good figure, 26% of 25 net income. We would like to maintain the intention to pay more dividends on an absolute level and also retain some room for any potential add-on acquisition. Our organic growth is obviously our strategic priority, but we will and we are continuing to look for value generating acquisitions. We would be happy to buy banks in pretty much any of our existing countries except in Russia. But we may also move outside. I don't want to go into naming any concrete countries, but obviously our of geographical focus um maybe unsurprisingly is still pretty much central and eastern europe and also we are exploring opportunities in in central asia now our position regarding buybacks cancellations of shares 81 tier 2 have not changed materially. We will obviously announce any share buybacks once we receive a regulatory approval for them. We do not propose any cancellation of the shares. Obviously, the cancellation of the shares is anyway requires an annual general meeting and the approval of shareholders. 81, we don't really plan at the moment, but we still view it as a potential bucket that we can utilize for any larger acquisition opportunity that we could not finance Otherwise, from our other existing buckets, we will continue to fill up our Tier 2 bucket. We have about a 750 million euro plant for this year that will kind of serve for any higher than expected organic growth or any potential acquisition that we see going forward. So that's pretty much the presentation that I wanted to go through. Now I would be very happy to hand over to any questions that you may have. Thank you very much.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We will now proceed with the question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please use the raise hand icon to indicate. One moment for the first question. The first question is from Máté Nemes, UBS. The first question is from Máté Nemes, UBS. Now we could hear you just for a moment. Would you try to use your microphone? No, it's okay.

speaker
Máté Nemes
Analyst, UBS

I apologize. I have two questions, please. The first one would be on the cost-income ratio guidance. I think you're guiding for a slightly higher cost-income ratio year-on-year. Could you confirm the drivers behind that? It seems like you're growing your logbook at a high pace. You're expecting a flat margin. Yes. It seems like that should be sufficient for strong positive operating joys. Is the deterioration in the cost-income ratio coming from lower expected trading and other income, or is this coming from a higher pace of growth on the cost side? That's the first question. The second question would be on your M&A criteria, particularly in Central Asia. Could you elaborate what are the preconditions, what are the key attributes that you're looking for in a potential target, and how close do you see the potential pipeline naturalizing? Thank you.

speaker
Peter Csányi
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, so probably let me start with the first question on the cost-income ratio. You are right that we are expecting a very strong growth in sort of organic growth volume. And, you know, we are rather conservative on the cost side and, you know, We like to surprise on the positive rather than on the negative side. So I would say that this is a rather conservative expectation. Obviously, our aim is to be constantly improving our cost income ratio. However, there are certain investments that we are making at the moment, especially in terms of digitalization and in AI. some of these costs obviously come in advance of any long-term saving potential. So this is something that we are prioritizing at the moment and making sure that we don't sort of artificially limit ourselves in investing into these new technologies that can be value creating in the longer term. We have announced, if you follow us, a series of cost-saving initiatives. Our headcount has been, especially in Hungary, reduced last year, especially on the network side, but we have also recently announced a 200 FTE reduction in the IT side in the central operations so we are kind of constantly looking at how we can grow the business and at the same time keep it sustainable and investing in the right things at the right time and having the right On the M&A front, I think your question was aimed at sort of how do we pick the geographies where we would like to sort of enter. I mean, obviously, number one, we do expect a somewhat stable macroeconomic situation, and I think in a certain way, we look for higher growth markets, higher than normal growth markets. So penetration levels, especially long penetration levels are relatively low, combined with a favorable macroeconomic outlook. And I would say also a relatively sizable market, right? Either in terms of sort of the population or in terms of profit potential, obviously, at the end of the day. So we look to enter into these kind of markets where we actually believe that the experience of OTP group has a has a positive contribution to the operating environment of the actual target that we are looking at, right? So we are not just looking from a broad perspective on kind of the attractiveness of the country, but how can we as OTP Bank contribute to improving the operations of the actual target that we look at.

speaker
Máté Nemes
Analyst, UBS

Thank you very much.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Gábor Kemény, Autonomous Research.

speaker
Gábor Kemény
Analyst, Autonomous Research

Hello. Thank you, Peter, for all your thoughts so far. My first question would be on Hungarian corporate lending, and you seem to allude to a turnaround there. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? what you have seen changing and what makes you confident that we will see a better growth trajectory in this segment going forward. And then a couple of follow-ups on your previous points, if I may, please. First, in AI, I understand that you would not like to limit yourself in terms of what you can do and commit to a guidance, but the other banks we talked to, tend to indicate like cost savings potential from AI and you seem to be indicating like cost outlays and at least in the near term rising costs. So I would be interested to hear on what you're actually spending on and what's the trajectory on value creation from these AI initiatives. And if I may be, I may follow up on the M&A point as well, per your criteria. Can you comment on what you think about the Kazakh banking market? Thank you.

speaker
Peter Csányi
Chief Executive Officer

Hi, Gabor. Thank you very much for the questions. On the Hungarian corporate volume growth, Obviously, going into the war and high inflation environment experience in Hungary in 2023 and 2024, has been preceded by an extremely high investment rate. So the investment rate in 2021-22 has been exceptionally high in Hungary and that has effectively plummeted in 2023 and 2024, right? So from a macro point of view, if you think about cycles, then As I mentioned, we can be cautiously optimistic that kind of the cycle is over and sort of a pickup can be expected given there has been such low investment rate in the last two years, which has also been reflected in our volumes. And given what we see in 2025 on our own sort of long growth volumes, This is the reason that, as I mentioned, I'm cautiously optimistic. Obviously, to a certain extent, Hungarian elections may have somewhat delayed certain investments and with the elections this year maybe some more stable environment can lead to a higher kind of investment rate and actually if regarding corporate loans it has never been, the penetration of corporate loans compared to GDP has never been this low, at least since 2007, I have the numbers here. So I am optimistic that, you know, can be only going up from this level. Going to your second question on AI, We do see significant cost-saving opportunities in AI. We are introducing in various areas, in fraud management, risk, so loan origination, for example, and also somewhat in the front office, in the customer facing side, kind of the chat bot is powered by AI in a number of countries now. So we do see a significant cost saving potential, but not just cost saving potential. I think if we manage to make our offers much more personalized with the help of AI to our consumers, then this can also help us with a sort of revenue uplift. You asked what are we spending on. The way I think about it is we kind of prioritize the cost side right now and more the back office side. tools that we can utilize AI so rather than on the front office where we can still potentially make big mistakes if we do something wrong so we prioritize the back office and where we can still have control on the outcome of the AI tools this is what we are spending on now But we are also very careful not to damage our reputation or cause any bad decisions by relying too much on this technology yet. We are heavily testing what they can do. And then on the M&A, you know, we are present in Uzbekistan for a number of years now. Uh, given that, uh, you know, we, um, uh, have more experience, uh, about that region. Um, I would say Kazakhstan is a, is a very, very good economy, um, significant population, much more, I would say much more developed than Uzbekistan. So, um, it is an attractive, attractive market in, in, in my opinion. Generally speaking, Central Asia is where we see, as I mentioned, probably a much higher growth expectation going forward than some of our Central Eastern European or even Western European markets.

speaker
Gábor Kemény
Analyst, Autonomous Research

That's very helpful. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Mehmet Sevin, JPMorgan Securities.

speaker
Mehmet Sevin
Analyst, JPMorgan Securities

Good afternoon. Thanks very much for your time. I have just a couple follow-up questions, please. So one on loan growth for 2026. You're obviously adding to another strong year of growth and 15% effects adjusted. I was just wondering if you could please break this down by geography, especially if you assume that the mortgage growth in Hungary should slow down. So where are you expecting this growth to come from? And on the NIM outlook, now the exit level for Q was almost 4.5%. And the full year level was 4.34%. And I think we're guiding to a flattish NIM for this year. So this doesn't like quite a significant drop in the quarterly run rate in 2026. If you could please just explain the drivers there. It also seems like the sensitivity in Hungary to rate moves has now increased. I was just wondering where this comes from as well. And, yeah, that's it for me. Thanks very much.

speaker
Peter Csányi
Chief Executive Officer

I will hand over this question to Lasso, so I'm not the only one speaking. I'm sure you miss him a lot as well. Thank you, Peter.

speaker
Laszlo Benczyk
Chief Financial and Strategic Officer

I certainly miss you. We decided to give this kind of overall numerical guidance, 15%, and around 15%. Across the board, we expect similar trajectories to continue into 26. I mean, the mortgage growth in Hungary was just one quarter, right? That was a kind of irregular last quarter growth due to the new subsidized structure, which was introduced in September and which continues. So at least I think it's fair to assume that the first half of this year loan growth in Hungarian mortgages will be quite strong. So the kind of impact of this subsidized structure on the annual growth rate in Hungary can be similar this year than it was last year. And it's almost like this for every part of the puzzle. When we still expect further acceleration, it's Uzbekistan, consumer lending in Uzbekistan. And then I think the big question mark is what Peter already talked about, is the Hungarian corporate, where we are... cautiously optimistic, but it's actually somewhat difficult to forecast that because there was such a big shift or change in the dynamics of growth. So, again, we don't expect a major change in any of the countries compared to their own rate. Yeah, the net interest margin kind of around last year. Again, we didn't say that exactly last year. We said around last year figures. So you could say that this is somewhat kind of conservative, given the development, what we have seen. Obviously this is also subject to the rate environment and that is driven by inflation and the kind of events of the last week may change the expectations to some extent and I mean the higher rate environment is certainly positive for us. Indeed, I think that your third question, the sensitivity to the half-rate, that changed quite materially during last year. So at the end of 2004, we had kind of 6 billion half-per-year sensitivity to basis points. So therefore, we said that last year that this was kind of immaterial. And this went up to this kind of around 20 billion per 100 basis points decline in an annual NII impact. And this is driven by the fundamental strong growth in deposits, especially retail deposits. which are fixed and also because of the maturity profile I mean quite a chunk of fixed bonds Hungarian bond portfolio came into the kind of short term maturity window so there's some change in this in the sensitivity in half clearly super that's very helpful thank you

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Simon Melis, Citigroup.

speaker
Simon Melis
Analyst, Citigroup

Oh, hi. Thanks a lot for the opportunity. I hope you're all well. I have four questions. The first question is around the RWA growth in the last quarter. So it was up 5%. I think the risk weight to assets went up quite a bit from 61 to around 64. So just wondering what's driving that increase in risk weight density and is that going to be sustained? My second question is just around Russian dividends. I think you haven't received approval to take money out of Russia. Do you expect that to change, or are they waiting for the election maybe? Third question would be about deposit growth. I saw that it was down in Hungary a little bit. Is this a trend, or is it just seasonality? And then my last question, kind of following up on what Matej asked as well, was on the other incomes there. the trading, FVA, other income from subsidiaries, what's the outlook for this year and going forward, given your view on rates in Hungary, which I guess impacts the valuation of the subsidized lending. Thank you.

speaker
Peter Csányi
Chief Executive Officer

Thank you. Regarding the... I hope you're well, too.

speaker
Simon Melis
Analyst, Citigroup

Hi, Peter.

speaker
Peter Csányi
Chief Executive Officer

Regarding the... RWA growth and kind of the density, most of the increase has been due to operational risk parameters rather than any significant other factors. So it's mainly due to operational risk weight increases. On the second question regarding the Russian dividend, As you know, we have paid since September 2023 a total of 67.7 billion rubles of dividend. This includes 25.9 billion rubles in 2025. Our overall intention management's intention remains unchanged. So we aim to continue the recreation of such dividends from the Russian market. And as you know, just to be clear, it's not the actual dividend payment, which is actually prohibited for us at the moment or temporarily suspended, but rather the repatriation of that dividend to Hungary. You know, the time when our dividend payment has been Denied at the end of last year was at a time when the European Union was considering actually confiscating some of the Russian assets held abroad. You know, one could say it could be a result of a sort of a wider political consideration. That is actually what we have been told. The central bank has told us that it's an actual political decision. But I'm kind of optimistic that that can be changed this year. And our intention remains unchanged that we want to... repatriate as much dividend as possible from Russia. On the deposits growth that you asked about, sort of the slump in the growth rate in Q4 last year. If you look at, you can go to page 28. This is mainly a result of a decrease in the corporate growth rate, a 7% decline quarter over quarter in the corporate segment, which is pretty much a seasonal one-off effect that we don't expect to continue going forward. And regarding your last question on other income, our other income growth may be less in 2026 than in 2025. But in 2025, the other income was primarily driven by income from Russia, 73 billion Hungarian foreign income. from Russia, which was a 72% growth fee over a year. So this was very much driven by one particular subsidiary.

speaker
Simon Melis
Analyst, Citigroup

Thanks for that. Just on the last point, are you guiding that the growth will be lower or that the absolute amount might be lower than 25%?

speaker
Laszlo Benczyk
Chief Financial and Strategic Officer

The growth.

speaker
Simon Melis
Analyst, Citigroup

So you still think you can grow other income?

speaker
Laszlo Benczyk
Chief Financial and Strategic Officer

Yes. Not as much as last year.

speaker
Simon Melis
Analyst, Citigroup

Very clear.

speaker
Laszlo Benczyk
Chief Financial and Strategic Officer

Thanks a lot. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you so much. If you wish to ask a question, please use the raise hand icon to indicate it. There's a question from MacFact7, GP Morgan Securities.

speaker
Mehmet Sevin
Analyst, JPMorgan Securities

Hi again, thanks very much for taking my follow-up question. Just on the Russian bond book, I see a small portion was matured this quarter and you received a repayment or at least are in the process of it. And you've then released some provisions related to it. Could you please guide on the maturity profile of the remaining book? And as these mature, would you then expect also the corresponding provisions to be released as well? Thank you.

speaker
Laszlo Benczyk
Chief Financial and Strategic Officer

Actually, on the presentation, the last slide, phase 33, you can see the maturity profile. So we are going to have another $29 million maturing this year, and then the rest up until 29. Indeed, as we say in the text here, there was a maturity in December, 63 million euro matured, and we Actually, the equivalent amount in rubles was paid to our accounts. Now, there's a kind of formal procedure to go through, through the Hungarian courts. They have to give a kind of green light to utilize these funds, and that takes some time. It has been done before and there doesn't seem to be any issue with that. So very soon we should have access to these funds. And that means that we can kind of should then, and already the situation is such that we are revisiting the provision levels, the required provision levels in general for these bonds. Because now we have a precedent that actually principal repayment happens. Now we have to discuss that with the supervisor because as you may remember, we substantially increased the coverage ratio on these bonds. due to our request from the Hungarian National Bank from our supervisors. So there will be a discussion pretty soon with the Hungarian National Bank in light of the recent positive developments and then I think at the end of the first quarter the result of that discussion will be manifest. pretty much with the exception of, I mean, if all of these bonds are repaid, then only $11 billion remains which matured before 23 September. Those are the bonds which are at Euroclear and pretty much locked. But that's like out of this 91 billion provision, that's like 10 billion is related to those bonds. So everything beyond that Should this repayment continue, and we don't have any reason to assume that they don't continue, could be released over time.

speaker
Mehmet Sevin
Analyst, JPMorgan Securities

That's great. Thank you, Daso.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you so much. If you wish to ask a question, please use the raise hand icon to indicate it. Yes, there is a follow-up question from Simon Mellis, Citigroup.

speaker
Simon Melis
Analyst, Citigroup

Hi. Yeah, just on the last topic, when are the maturities? So, I mean, how rapidly would you expect the bonds to be paid back and the provisions released?

speaker
Laszlo Benczyk
Chief Financial and Strategic Officer

On this page, page 33 of the presentation, we didn't present them, but these are in the appendix. And now you can actually see it on the screen.

speaker
Simon Melis
Analyst, Citigroup

It's still 29. I see, I see. Thank you.

speaker
Laszlo Benczyk
Chief Financial and Strategic Officer

Sorry, I missed that.

speaker
Simon Melis
Analyst, Citigroup

Yes, thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you. If you have a question for our speakers, please use the raise hand icon to indicate it. As there are no further questions, I hand back to the speakers.

speaker
Peter Csányi
Chief Executive Officer

Well, thank you very much all for participating. I hope you found the presentation and kind of the explanations useful. As always, if you have any follow-up questions after this call, feel free to email us or call the numbers displayed on this page. Happy to meet some of you in person in London as part of the Morgan Stanley Organized Roadshow that we will be doing. And with that, I wish you all a very happy weekend. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Operator

Thank you for your participation. The conference is closed now. Goodbye.

Disclaimer

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