Hello, everyone. Welcome to Lime Finance Group PLC's earnings call. Today, we're pleased to report our results for the first quarter of 2026. My name is Dinyar Shakunia. I'm head of IR, and I'll moderate this call today. And we have a few speakers today on the call. I'm joined, as always, by the group CEO Archul Gaciciladze. Also, we have our group and Bank of Georgia CFO today on the line, Georgi Shagidze, who joined the group recently in March 2026. We also have Hovannesd Orojan, who is the CFO of Ameria Bank, our banking subsidiary in Armenia, and Agakili Kokeli, our group economist, who will talk about Magro. First, we'll kick off with a few opening remarks by Arcel, and then we'll continue with the other parts.
Everyone, thank you for joining the call. We had a very interesting quarter, this time 20 years after we joined the London Stock Exchange in 2006. we went public in fact in form of GDRs and in 2026 we joined FTSE 100 as many of you may know and that is a very special moment for all of us because it kind of summarizes the achievement over the last 20 years but it's only a new beginning for more to come so as you remember but who we are, we are two-thirds Georgia and roughly one-third Armenia. It's not quite there, but Armenia is increasing very rapidly. We're serving about 2.7 million retail customers and delivering close to 30% return on equity over the last five years on average. And we have a very strong market share in Georgia of 38 and number one position in Armenia with growing market share.
Could you go to the next slide?
Yes. And in terms of the quarter, we had a very solid quarter. We had 14% year-on-year increase in our profitability and 27.4% return on equity, slightly down with more capital. In fact, our risk remained at a very low level with 2.1% NPL ratio and 0.3% cost of risk, which is well below our midterm guidance of 80 to 100 base points. I'm particularly happy about balance sheet growth. We saw 23% growth of our loans, uh very strong in armenia and also quite quite good in in georgia with and and deposits growing at 17.5 um uh also on the on the revenue side we saw strong growth uh in the net interest income and fee and commission income but uh not so uh not so strong in terms of the in terms of the effects income where we we see the pressures um costs are uh in line more or less uh with the revenue uh but they remain the focus especially in environment where they uh where the incomes are growing double digit which is very good for our consumer franchise in both countries also remains a focus there um the franchise and talking of franchise quality in both countries the nps scores remain very high and that that underlines that our retail franchise uh is very strong and incorporate as well so with this um all of this is is in fact uh based on on very strong uh economic performance and um uh that's that's why we would like to um cover a few slides on economy and akaki will do that on the next few slides thank you thank you archiel let me provide a quick update on the macroeconomic developments
in our core markets georgia and armenia and let me start with growth performance the macroeconomic backdrop has continued to be favorable and both countries georgia and armenia have entered 2026 on a strong footing. Preliminary Q1 growth numbers are quite strong. 9.1% year-on-year GDP growth in Georgia, 7.1% growth in Armenia. And services continue to be the key growth drivers in both countries. So this stronger-than-expected performance in the first quarter, together with demonstrated resilience of the economies, have led us to revise our full year real GDP growth forecasts for 2026 to 7% for Georgia and to 6% for Armenia. As you can see on the right-hand side, the sustained strong performance of these two economies combined with a positive medium-term outlook have positioned Georgia and Armenia among the top performing economies in the broader region and distinguished by significant advantage in income per capita levels compared to our intermediate peers. The recent escalation in the Middle East have introduced downside risks mainly through higher energy prices and transport disruptions however the impacts on georgia and armenia have so far been muted due to limited direct macroeconomic exposure to the region also resilient and diversified external inflows and sound macroeconomic policies furthermore we in the scenario of prolonged conflict we see upsides in terms of increased strategic relevance of the middle corridor as well as possible redirection of tourism and capital to south caucasus currency performance have been also very strong despite regional geopolitical tensions as you see on the left hand side in contrast with previous episodes of stress georgian larry and armenian dram have remained broadly stable underpinned by strong macroeconomic fundamentals and prudent policies we expect the currency stability will persist in the future as the economies remain resilient and policies remain agile the main area where we have seen the impact of the middle east escalation is inflation higher fuel prices have added to existing food price pressures and have pushed inflation higher in both countries we expect the headline inflation numbers will remain elevated throughout the year before returning to the central bank's three percent targets gradually as the supply side pressures ease uh the monetary policies remain prudent in both countries uh yesterday national bank of georgia uh raised the refinancing rate by 25 basis points reinforcing its uh commitment to keeping inflation expectations in check we expect the monetary policy in georgia will remain moderately tight throughout the year in armenia the central bank has kept the refinancing rate unchanged at 6.5 since the beginning of the year however recently the communication has become more hawkish so we don't rule out the possibility that we may see some modest tightening over the year the central banks have been also very active in reserve accumulation also in the beginning of 2026. The gross international reserves had reached 6.3 billion U.S. dollars in Georgia and 5.5 billion in Armenia by the end of March. And in both countries, the reserves remain above the international monetary fund's minimum adequacy thresholds, reinforcing macroeconomic resilience in both countries. Another key pillar for macroeconomic stability is fiscal discipline, and Georgia and Armenia have been very consistent in this area. The government debt-to-GDP ratio continues to come down in Georgia as fiscal deficits are kept at 2.5% of GDP. In Armenia, the government have been very successful in balancing elevated spending needs with fiscal sustainability objectives and despite elevated fiscal deficits, they have kept the public debt-to-GDP ratio more or less stable. This year, we expect the fiscal policy will remain growth-supportive, mostly through sustained capital expenditure. And lastly, the financial sectors, banking sectors in both countries remain sound, supported by strong lending expansion, historically low levels of loan dollarization, and solid capital buffers. So that's all on my side. Back to you.
Thank you. Thank you, Agati. We'll now have Georgi Shagidze cover the main developments at the Georgian Financial Services. Georgi, you're on mute. Please unmute yourself.
Apologies for this. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm very pleased to join my first Alliant Financial Group result call. I look forward to seeing many of you on the future occasions. Let me start with the summary of GFS. It was another quarter of very strong results. You can see from the slide that profit grew by 11.6%, reaching 452 million, with the return on equity of 31.5%. The long book year-on-year grew by 17.8%. This happened on the back of 0.54%, cost of risk and 2% NBLs. Deposit book grew by 13%, and retail monthly active customers and retail digital monthly active users reached 2.2 million and 1.9 million, respectively. This slide summarizes our award-winning financial super app. Maybe what I can summarize or highlight here is 52.7% digital daily active users and 88% of all loans granted from our digital channels. Both results are one of the best in the industry. On the bottom left-hand side, what we have here is how our customers are giving us the ratings with the CSAT being at 93% with the very prestigious awards from Global Finance, naming us world's best digital bank in the second consecutive year, along with another prestigious award in innovation in AI in the region. The next slide summarizes our digital ecosystem in business. And just like in our retail, Here, too, the numbers are quite impressive with 108,000 digital monthly active users and 83.5 digital monthly active users as a percentage of monthly active customers. Here, too, on the bottom left-hand side, we see the Apple Store and Google Play customer ratings being as high as they actually get. In terms of the payment business, our acquiring volume of payment transactions grew by 19.7% year-on-year. The quarter-over-quarter decrease is mostly seasonal, and now we are enjoying gaining the market share of 56.9%. We have 26.7 thousand POS terminals, which is about 17% year-on-year growth, and in terms of issuing, our year-on-year number grew by 12.2%. In terms of NPS, the NPS reached 75%, which, again, is one of the best in the industry. And this is the reflection of the bank's customer-centric culture, as well as investment in people and in technology. The loan book during the period grew by 17.5%. The growth was across the board, but then the higher growth was in consumer loans and in corporate loans. The de-dollarization of the loan book broadly remained stable. quarter over quarter growth was 3.6 percent and that happened with our margins also growing by about 30 basis points. In terms of deposit portfolio it grew by 12.6 percent year on year mostly in retail and in corporate deposits and that also supported the dollarization of the deposit book. This is the last slide from my part. It's about capital and liquidity position. In both metrics, we enjoy very comfortable buffers with CET capital buffer being at 2.5 percentage point and in liquidity position, our LCR stood at 140% with our NSFRS being at 130%. thank you nini uh thank you georgie and now i would like to ask uh hoanes to continue with a review of the armenian financial services performance for the quarter thank you and good afternoon everyone i am very much delighted to present you the results of our operations for
the q1 as already mentioned we have had a very strong performance for the first quarter as you We can see our profit grew 35% year-over-year to reach 129 million Georgian Laris. Return on equity was 21.8%. Particularly as Archie mentioned, the growth of loan book and deposit base was very positive. Indeed, we had 34.6% growth in custom currency basis for loan book and almost 30% for deposit At the same time, we continue to improve our positioning in terms of coverage of the market. We have grown our number of customers, monthly active users, by more than 33%. And digital now has grown more than 47% to reach 362,000. Indeed, while the growth pace is very, very impressive, we're still less than half a million. So there is still much bigger opportunities for growth in this area, and we're going to be continuing this expansion as well. Just like BOG, we continue to invest heavily into our digital propositions. Our applications are being enhanced with a lot of new functionalities and products, and a number of improvements based on the analysis of the customer usage are being done. but i want to highlight our loyalty program that we launched last quarter and we see very positive traction with our loyalty program and beyond banking propositions that are integrating into our mobile application and both of the applications for adults and for kids are very important tools for us also in terms of financial education and financial literacy improvement in the country And as you can see from the bottom numbers, not only we were able to grow our customer base by more than one third every year, but also the depth and digital usage of these customers is growing up. Our online banking penetration has reached 83.7%, that is almost 5 percentage point increase year over year. Digital MAO to MAC ratio has increased by 7.2 percentage point to reach 73% and MAO-DAO ratio is at 44% again with 2.5 percentage point improvement. In terms of growth of our portfolios, as mentioned our loans grew more than 34% year over year and 6.2% during the first quarter. while both segments have been very active and positive in terms of growth the corporate sector grew a bit faster and that's where we see that the share of fx denominated loans has slightly increased during the q1 on the deposit side again very high loyalty to our franchise almost 30 growth of the deposit year over year and almost six percent growth for the q1 here we see further increase of the share of AMD-denominated deposits, and that has to do with increased number of the customer base. Naturally, we continue to improve our market share. Our market share by loans has reached 22%, that is 1.7 percentage point growth for year over year, and for deposits, we have improved our market position by 1 percentage point year-over-year to reach 19.5 percent. In terms of capital position, as many of you have probably heard, we have issued our first ever AT1 notes locally worth 50 million US dollars with 8.5 percent coupon within six days, actually, in February. And that has improved our capital position as you can see we have roughly 1.1 percent headroom over the CBA requirements at the same time we do can we have also announced the second rush of 81 nodes again 50 million USD at eight percent coupon that are supposed to be located locally as well this will enhance our capital structure and give us more flexibility in terms of being able to nurture further growth. In terms of liquidity, we continue to be positively well above the regulatory requirements. LCR stands above 200 percent and NSFR is above 125 percent, so both of these figures are giving us relevant comfort for our operations. This is on the Armenian side of the business.
Thank you, Hoannes. And now we'll hand over to Arshil for a few group financial highlights and also the wrap-up.
It's a hard act to follow when you're talking about 35% increase of loan book and 40-plus percent increase in retail number of monthly active users. But I'll try. I'll try my best. So here we go. So those are some of the numbers that we already discussed. But our operating income was up by 15%. Net interest income showed a strong uptick of about 18.4%. Net non-interest income was slightly subdued. And there, when you look at the details, we had pretty strong net gain commission income. Growth year over year in both markets, in fact. in georgia that was partly due to the fact of our new deal with the system operators and in armenia we had one mna transaction but it was not a major one it was five million out of 30 as you can see there in the net effects um it remained low like we guided previously that uh we don't have much volatility uh in in both markets in fact or either markets don't have uh too much volatility uh as well as slight uptick in the in the competition as well so we see uh pressures on the effects but all the other parts of the business have been doing uh very well operating expenses as i mentioned uh were less than the uh revenue growth so we had uh positive operating jobs in georgia was slightly higher 16.6 percent and armenia was lower but it was partly due to the fact that in the base effect we had the amortization of the sign-up bonus uh previously which we no longer do so that that is helping the numbers uh cost income ratio remained uh just below 35 percent uh where it belongs uh and then going forward let's let's let's see but that's that's the objective in terms of the long growth uh as as we uh as we said in detail already 23 growth and 17 and a half percent in deposits and and armenia really stood out with very strong numbers as you can see but georgia also i mean when the market grows about 14 we grow 17.8 we were happy with that um and and what we saw in terms of the net margin although it was flat we We had a lower margin in Armenia and a higher margin in Georgia. In Armenia, we had slight uptick in the cost of funding as well as lower yields on the overall portfolio, mainly due to the fact that the first part, which is funding, we increased the proportion of the Armenian drum, which is almost by default more expensive than U.S. dollars. as well as issuance of tier one so all of this is uh tier one is is marginal here because it was uh at the end of this uh second quarter uh but there are other debt issuances uh on on the subject side that that also affected uh and in terms of the loan yield there was several large issuances of corporate loans which put a little bit of pressure on that going forward uh we believe it should be flattish uh in in armenia in georgia we uh we did what we promised which was pushed down the deposit price and that was about 10 base points and and deployed more liquidity which we are flushed with uh and that was another 20 base points so that's that's the 30 base points that you see there all in all as a group we're flat um and um in terms of the loan yields not much to say there uh cost of risk remain uh remain at low levels of 0.3 and you see the distribution always coming from not much to add there other than the fact that our mid-term guidance is 80 to 100 basis points and we are happy to see that uh for a number of years we'll be remaining at very low levels due to higher than medium term uh expectation of growth uh in in both markets in fact i mean it's it's uh remarkable the last five years we've been growing about nine percent more or less the real growth plus nominal growth and plus local currency getting getting stronger versus us dollar uh long quality remains uh very solid uh with low low number of mpl at 2.1 percent and solid coverage um and and all of this resulted in profit uh growing by 14 year over year return on equity of 27.4% and return on average assets, which is something we'll closely watch at almost 4%. This wraps up the, oops, sorry. Oh, wrap up, yes, there are a couple of slides, I apologize. So in the wrap up, I would like to say that we are announcing a capital distribution, 107 million of of that uh 122 will be distributed as dividends and about 55 million will be uh so we'll be invested in our own stock uh that means 2.85 a lot of per share for the first quarter only last year we moved to this quarterly dividends from the third quarter onwards so there's no direct comparison but we're definitely uh in our own inside comparison we we're increasing the dividends on the on the mid teens level roughly and you see a number of shares declining over the last few years as we deploy about one-third roughly of our usual distribution in share buybacks um we guide 15 annual uh book growth and as you can see over the last five years with uh mostly other than 2022 remained uh well above that uh and and we're continuing that and in fact uh growth accelerated here uh return on equity is is at 27 and with higher and higher capital ratios in fact and in terms of distribution we're on the low side of our range that we guys 30 and 50 um and and that is to build up the capital buffers and and finance higher than than expected growth in fact so that's that's how it's going uh and with this let me pass it back to q a which is usually the most interesting part of some of our quarterly uh we're ready to take questions and i see a few raised hands already from our analysts the first race hand is from Shil Shah from JP Morgan.
Hi. Thanks a lot, guys, for the presentation. Two questions from my side. Firstly, on the margins, I know that you said Armenia to be flattish from here on. It would be good to get an understanding of the moving parts because it looks like there is maybe some increased competition or or maybe uh uh increase in the the local currency deposits which which could continue to maybe weigh on the nim going forward and on the georgian side as well clearly we have the rate hike from two days ago and your previous guidance of flattish nim with two rate cuts um as you previously said so it'd be interesting to get your outlook on the georgian nim as well and then secondly on costs um georgian costs are running at 17 you know it much higher than inflation i know that you've been running at that same a very similar level last year as well but it'll be interesting to get an understanding of where you're using these costs you know what why are the costs so high what are you investing in um and and should we expect that to normalize lower going forward or is is this the run rate we should expect going forward thanks why don't i start with the with the georgian side and then i'll pass over to uh to honest to to talk about neem in armenia uh so in in georgia uh neem should remain around you know flattish i would say uh so when when their movements in the refinancing rate obviously higher financing rate is marginally
better for us. So we could have a little bit of a backwind there and see where we go to, but I would not expect a major change in there. One thing which is clear for us is that we've announced that we want to stay on the 40% market chain in terms of deposits. There's an extra capital requirement of 50 base points associated with being above that ratio, and we would like to get capital efficiency there, obviously, as well as, you know, it's a guidance from the regulator not to go above that, about 40% for too long. And in terms of the cost, you're absolutely right that the inflation is lower. But one thing we should pay more attention to, I guess, is the average income levels in the country. uh so although inflation in terms of the cost of you know this the the inflation uh definition is is one thing but mostly what our costs are is is is people and uh and and the inflation of uh of labor costs have um have remained double digit in georgia single digit in armenia in fact Yeah. So I think that's what's waiting on the cost side. On the Georgian side, we can definitely say that we'll be looking at neutral to positive operating jobs going forward. And that's all I can say. But I do not expect a major change in that unless we see the environment changing, i.e. the growth of the economy and the average income is coming down. but it's uh it's it's bad there but it's really good on the consumer credit side where we're we're a dominant bank and we've been benefiting from uh from substantial uh increases there without having any uptick in the in the cost of risk so it's it's the two sides of the same coin but overall very positive there uh hoannes any any words on uh nim yeah sure um on the arena inside of the name i think it would be fair to say that we shall expect slight recovery of name
and there are as archul mentioned a few factors one the proportion of local currency and foreign currency that is a factor that we presume will be there so uh with the rum being very very straight stable and strong we see more and more depositors and customers leaning towards armenian drum At the same time, two of other effects, indeed, the distribution of AT1 nodes that are in essence capital instruments, and they are not leveraged yet, and they have higher impact on the cost side will be leveled out closer to the end of the year. And second is the attractions of funds from DFIs and subordinate debt that we borrowed end of Q4 2025. So technically, especially in January and February, we have been very overliquid. We have increased our capital buffer significantly with some ordinated debt. And over time, with the growth pace that we have already shown in Q1, this is going to be utilized. So in terms of efficiencies, it's going to come down, it's going to improve our slightly. So I would say towards the Q3 and 4, there should be some partial recovery of NIM on the arming business.
Sheila, I guess you don't have any further questions, so we'll move to the next question. Sorry, let me quickly. The next question is from from Jens Ehrenberg, so I'll let him speak.
Cool. Thanks, Nini. Can you hear me all right? Yeah, perfect. Cool. Thank you very much, guys, for the presentation. And congrats on a quite outstanding quarter, obviously, with the performance and the FTSE 100 inclusion. Great to see. Just a couple from my side. Firstly, on the outlook for the sort of FX revenue line, I appreciate it's a tricky one to forecast. If we look at the quarter, we'll see there's been a lot less FX volatility than we've seen previously. Is that sort of 130 million level that you've delivered in the quarter, is that a level you would assume normally if there's not too much FX volatility? And then secondly, just taking into account of your persistent loan book growth coupled with what is still really, really good credit quality and very low cost of risk. How do we think about that going forward? Do you think that sort of credit quality will eventually see a bit of an impact from that strong growth? And then last one is probably for Hovannes, if that's all right, I appreciate you'll give me a very diplomatic answer, no doubt. But just on the digital uptake in Armenia, I appreciate we got lots of headroom to grow here. Again, this quarter, impressive growth rate in terms of the uptake there. How much longer do you think those growth rates will be sustained until there's some sort of normalization? Or do you think, well, it's that successful, you'll see that persist for the near future?
Sorry, a couple of things in there, but thank you very much. in terms of uh in terms of fx alone on georgian side let me take it um uh so the fx side you asked for the overall numbers and and probably it's fair to assume that those are the numbers of low volatility and and unless anything changes uh strongly then those are the numbers that uh we would expect having said that it's an environment where um you know there are many many um many things that affect our our numbers uh in terms of the long growth versus quality yes we've been growing um and the quality of the loans have remained benign um one thing that affects it is is high growth and uh over the last five years our two both of the countries have benefited from a very strong growth uh high inflation at some point as well but now it's it's it's more moderated but still a valid target until we have that i think we will enjoy uh enjoy good quality uh of of the uh of the loan book because we have not changed to change the under underwriting standards in any way in fact so uh so so all the growth that you see there is is not because we've become more tolerant to the risk but rather because of the economies going well and because of us uh increasing the the quality of interaction with the clients um and in terms of the midterm guidance on the cost of risk you you know that's that's about double of what we see in terms of cost of risk right now over the last few years um so there we don't expect that until the economy slows down now will the economy slow down depends on many different things but we have uh this idea of the middle corridor which is actually becoming very real more and more uh there's conflicts on the north side south side so more and more europe and and uh and central asia in fact and increasingly china is interested in this corridor uh being there and being real as an alternative to some of the other corridors that exist not that we'll replace all the others that would be uh that would not be realistic but rather is an alternative to exist to all the other transportation routes and that means that there will be a lot of investment going in in the infrastructure and then uh supporting uh supporting businesses as well so that could in fact provide a medium to long term good growth numbers for both countries uh for for i wouldn't say you know for for two decades but definitely
five ten years uh and that's that's um say something um so with armenian growth maybe yeah sure um i want to take off from the point that archio made i mean indeed our economies are performing pretty good and as you remember last year we're saying that especially in Armenia there are several large projects that could really have significant impact on the overall macroeconomic performance of the country likewise few days ago in Armenia we had a huge first ever Armenia EU summit where maybe you've heard most of the EU leaders have arrived and a number of mutual agreements and declarations have been signed that could be another significant boost to the economy so events happening around the country possess significant positive upside risk or potential for micro economic development and that's potentially gonna fuel our growth further in terms of digital uptake and increase of the number of customers indeed we were able to grow our customer base by on average 34 percent for the last few years and at the same time we do expect to continue this extensive growth for the next two three years at least where we're going to end up i think we are looking at our partners in georgia we are still far far behind in terms of utilization of the local potential and we believe and hope that we're going to be able to at least match the achievements that georgian peers have in their respective market so and again the traction speaks for itself mows and dows are growing from 45 to 55 percent every year for the last three years and we expect a similar pace i mean it's going to be very difficult to continue 50% growth every year but it's we expect to have similar growth in the next two three years yes but on the balance sheet you'll probably moderate and you can't control on balance sheet yes I mean it it's gonna be much lower we have been growing again slightly more than 30% for the last couple of years and we would expect to have some moderation there super now that's understood thank you very much thank you thank you Jens the next question comes from Dmitry Vlasov from Udenko hi Dmitry hi thank you very much
Speaker 5
congrats on strong quarter I have a follow-up question on costs and specifically for Armenia so could you remind me what the what the potential here in terms of the cost to income it's interesting you say that the costs in armenia specifically in labor grow slower maybe i'm just wondering if there is a risk that they could accelerate uh at some point uh yeah thank you in reality i i do not think uh we're gonna have acceleration of the labor costs in armenia indeed as archul mentioned in the presentation These costs are moderate also due to the signing bonus arrangement that were there up until last year and it's not there anymore.
Indeed, when we look at our cost to income ratio, we have declared it earlier that eventually we also want to push our cost to income ratio down. Our target is to keep it below 40% in the midterm. But if you look at 2025-26, have been years where we have been investing significantly into our infrastructure development. While having the largest loan portfolio in the country for more than 10 years, our footprint branch network is very, very limited. So last year we opened four additional branches. this year, we are opening five new branches that will offload some of the branches that we have and improve the service quality within the branches. And while, as I mentioned, our online banking penetration is more than 87%, our branches serve less than 1% of all the operations that we do, we feel that slightly more branches will improve overall to meet our customer needs. other than that other than this investment into infrastructure development there should not be any unforeseen increases in labor costs whatsoever so hopefully 20 27 28 we'll see the cost of income cost to income ratio coming down thank you very much thank you dmitry
Speaker 1
uh the next race hand is from ben meyer hi ben hi can you hear me yes go ahead actually two quick ones um the first one is again on asset quality obviously there's another quarter of good performance in that area but i appreciate the tensions in the middle east can have a bit of a lagged effect uh on credit quality is just interested in how the metrics have performed in april and in the first week of may and then my second question is just an m a you're you know you delivered a 27 return on tangible equity during the quarter obviously sets a very high bar in terms of uh potential m a targets you can look for and if you you know you're benchmarking
that against the roi of a potential acquisition so i'm just wondering if you're seeing any tags that offer those kind of returns or you're still quite happy just to redeploy everything back into business thank you i'll take those so in terms of the uh in terms of the uh some negative signs of uh on the on the credit quality side we we don't see any major uh we don't expect any major changes in fact so um it's uh it's definitely we are seeing higher slightly higher um inflation and that may have some effect but overall the the first quarter including march numbers in georgia came very strong in fact in ameen as well so we we increased the economic prediction for the for the full year uh for the real growth so we don't expect any um any change in terms of the credit quality of our portfolio um in terms of uh what was the second question again there's just some M&A just you obviously delivering the business is delivering very good profitability so it's just in terms of M&A there there's there's very difficult to find the combination of of a case where you have a real growth of eight nine percent and and the stable currency and the corporate governance that we have in both countries so it's that it will be difficult to uh to to repeat having said that there are some very interesting markets in south eastern europe and and central asia and we are looking for for uh for acquisition targets uh having said that we'll be always um deciding in terms of what's better how to deploy the capital is it with the acquisition or or buying our own stock um so so that's the benchmark that uh we'll be using to decide still to go or not to go in different markets uh but yes then there are not many markets that are delivering uh similar kind of uh returns with stable currency great thank you thank you ben uh i don't see any further questions at this point very good then uh thank you very much for joining this results call um another strong quarter for all of us uh and more importantly i think um looking ahead uh we are looking at a strong growth or or at least we are expecting a strong growth in both of the economies and as quality of the franchise remains at the highest level we've ever been historically uh we are we are there to benefit from from all of this and contribute to it uh in in ways that we can so thank you for your support and interest and and uh stay tuned for for more news and in in the second quarterly results call in one quarter. Thank you.
Thank you everyone and take care. Bye-bye.
