Banca Transilvania S.A. (TLV) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Vassilios, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Banca Transilvania Conference Call to present and discuss the First Half 2024 Financial Results. Please note that the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Omer Tetik, CEO; and Mr. George Calinescu, Deputy CFO; Ms. Luminita Runcan, Deputy CEO, Chief Risk Officer during First Half of 2024, Mr. Aurel Bernat, Executive Director of Financial Institutions and Investor Relations. Mr. Tetik, you may now proceed.

Hello. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us, actually. Initially, when we sent the invitations, we received a lot of out-of-office [ replies ], but many of you reverted back and asked the connection link. So for the ones who had or having vacations. Thank you for joining us towards the end of August. We would like to give you a brief, let's say, update about how we did -- actually, how we did you see it in the financial results, but also some details about how we reach those results. And also as our colleagues from the company mentioned, we will try to answer your questions. We already have some questions received also by mail. My colleagues will help me to answer them. I mean 2024, so far had been one of the busiest and most interesting years because while we had been seeing quite how to say, accelerated growth, especially in the second quarter in lending, mainly on the SME banking and retail banking. And changes in positive numbers as compared to first quarter. Also during the first half of the year, we have managed to make important steps in M&A side. As you know, we have signed the transaction with OTP, we have signed the acquisition of BRD Pensii, the pension fund of Societe Generale Group in Romania, but also we closed the transaction, the acquisition of BCR Chisinau in Moldova by Victoriabank. So especially on the OTP and BRD side, we are still, I would say -- sorry, in BCR and OTP, the integration works are ongoing, quite a nice experience for all the teams. And for BRD we will be very BRD Pensii, we will be waiting for the authorities approvals, hopefully soon in order to start also our integration with [ BRD Pensii ] and better asset management structures there. I mean we -- as we were mentioning, after first quarter results during that discussion. SME Banking had a slow start in the first quarter, but together with new [ IMM ] invest SME invest programs, we have covered well actually, and we did almost most of our budgeted numbers for the whole year. On the other hand, we have seen also in the Retail Banking, strong growth in lending in the second quarter. And for us, it was very strong in the mortgage side. We will give you more details on the business numbers later on. Here, together with us, we have also Luminita. Luminita -- who during this first half of the year, very successfully served as the Chief Risk Officer of BT Group. Now she assumed a very important task responsibility. She is the new CEO, new Chief Executive Officer of OTP Bank. And she is the leader of our integration project. We are sure that based on her experience and track record. It will be a good asset and we'll ensure successful and timely integration. As I said, I will -- we will give you more details later on. Meanwhile, Mr. Catalin Caragea had been approved as the new Chief Risk Officer of BT. And starting from this month, he will be taking over the responsibilities of Luminita. We wish both of them success and ensure our support definitely. Before we enter our results, I would like to give the floor to Aurel to tell us a bit the macroeconomic situation and also banking sector developments. There have been also some recent announcements and numbers issued by National Bank of Romania, National Statistics Institute which we try to embed in our presentation. But definitely, more information will follow soon. Thank you, Aurel.

Thanks a lot Omer. I will jump in the macro slides in a couple of seconds. I will start with a statement. We have a -- we see a stable macroeconomic landscape and I will give you briefly some other details. In Romania, we have now a GDP increase of 0.7% compared with the same period of last year. After the first quarter with 0 plus -- plus 1% and 0 plus [indiscernible] for the second quarter of 2024. This growth was led mainly by consumption. Consumption at its own turn led by increase in wages and also lending, you will see this further down the road. Compared with the European level, which is 0.6%, we are marginally above this threshold. But what is relevant is that we consider that during the third and the fourth quarter of this year, we'll be having an increase in terms of GDP, much closer to our target of approximately 2% increase by year-end. In terms of inflation, what we are seeing, we reached 5.8% inflation in Romania. This is a slight increase during the downward sloping trend that we have for a couple of quarters in a row. We see this as only an increase of -- for the moment because otherwise, we see a downward sloping trend in terms of inflation. The EU level has been 2.6%, also in increase, and we must stay that 14 out of 27 states across the European Union had the increase in terms of inflation. And just to give you another benchmark for instance, Belgium had during the same period of time, 5.4% inflation rate. In terms of interest rate, the National Bank of Romania had 2 meetings in a row at which they cut 25 basis points. Now the interest rate in Romania reached 6.5%. In terms of lending, we have a short delay in switching between slides -- sorry for that. In terms of lending dynamics, both the corporate side and the household had a positive increase. Corporate lending increased with 5.76%. And on a monthly basis, we had the highest [ base ] this year, obviously stimulated by some governmental programs such as [indiscernible] Invest and also the loans for farmers. The EU corporate lending increased with 0.7%. So we can say that in Romania, we have a positive evolution from the lending side. In terms of households, we had nearly 6% year-over-year increase with a higher increase in terms of consumer loans, when we had lower double-digit and housing loans of 2% year-over-year, just as also as a benchmark at European level, both corporate and also the households grew flattish with a plus 0.3% year-over-year. On the deposit side, we are well above the European Union's average, both for corporate and also for households. On the corporate side, we have a base of nearly 8% year-over-year. But the most important thing is to see that term deposits as well as overnight now have the same pace of increase of around 8%. On the household side, deposits had an increase of 12%. The growth rate for term deposits is lower, it's slowing down due to the fact that the interest rates are also at a lower level nowadays. And the overnight increased with 4%. Interesting that at the European level, both corporate and also the households had an increase of 2.7%. So overall, the Romanian market looks tempting from this point of view having deposit well above the European average. In terms of NPL ratios and capital adequacy, you have -- the numbers speak by themselves. We have a nonperforming loans 2.49% as of June 2024, with a capital adequacy ratio higher than the European average, 20.05% compared to 17%. The good news is that the total net assets increased with 13% compared to June last year. And both return on assets as well as the return on equity, had an increase -- had a percentage of 1.82 and 20.15% for the ROE at June 2024. The loan-to-deposit ratio, which is one important aspect going further and keeping inside the potential of blending for the sector reached 66.35%, which means that the liquidity within the banking sector in Romania is extremely high.

Thank you, Aurel. Indeed, with the election years almost globally, not only in Romania and with recent market volatility, numbers confirm very well that Romanian banking sector is entering with a very strong position in terms of capital adequacy, in terms of nonperforming loans ratios provision coverages, liquidity and so on. So this gives also a good perspective about maybe touching the opportunities, which Romania will have in the next 5 to 10 years. Definitely, our focus remains on organic growth while we are doing our integrations and acquisitions. But the numbers that George will present soon, they are confirming that our favorability, the preference of Romanian customers for BT is the bank of choice helps us to grow number of customers, number of transactions, which has a positive impact on the [indiscernible] . We are assuming that we are, I guess, the main players in the development of financial inclusion in Romania, which we definitely need. I would like to let George to tell us about the basic numbers, which are already posted and most probably you have analyzed.

Thank you very much, Omer. In terms of performance in the first half of the year 2024, I'm happy to say that the bank and the group has posted a very good growth in terms of all the areas related to the business in the first 6 months. So if you take a look at the net interest income of the bank, you see that at the individual level, we have a 31% increase in the first half of the year. Whereas at consolidated level, this increase in net interest income is at 23.6%. There is a very good and nice growth in terms of net fees and commission income, bank level above 15%, 15.4% and 14.7% at the level of consolidated results. Again, operating expenses show 25% respectively, and 26% consolidated growth. But here, we will see a little bit later when we go into details on expenses that the main cause of this growth is actually the new tax included in this year on the turnover tax and if you take away the effect of this tax, the growth is less than the growth in revenue, which actually allows us to have a very nice growth in operating results for the bank net profit increasing by 42.6% and 35% at the level of the consolidated results. Cost of risk, even though it's a little bit higher than last year, it is within the amounts that we have provided as guidance for the 2024, even at a bit lower if you take a look at our budget for the year. And in terms of net interest margin, we are keeping close to 3.5%, almost with the 3.46%, increasing from [3.09%] at the level of the bank. Whereas at consolidated level, they increased by 54 basis points, takes us to 4.16% net interest margin at consolidated level. Return on equity, nice growth, 31.5%. You've seen a little bit earlier, the return on equity posted by our peers at the level of the banking market. We're clearly now performing our peers from that point of view. Cost-to-income ratio, again, there is a decrease versus the same indicator posted for the first part of the year 2023. And here, 45% is a decrease by 2.26 percentage points in the context of this new tax, turnover tax. You will see a little bit later on when we go into details on cost that actually if you take away the one-off effect of this turnover tax, the decrease is even higher. Total assets, almost 5% increase at the individual and also consolidated level loans, 4.9%. If you remember, our budget for the year was a little bit more than 6%. So coming back to what my colleagues have presented before, we have managed to recover the slower growth that was reported in the first quarter of the year 2024. And the consolidated level loans growth is 4.2%. Depositing customers, 3.4% growth and almost analytical percentage growth, a consolidated level with 3.3%. NPL's at a comfortable level individually with [ 2.9% ] below our [ PL's ] ratio. Loan-to-deposit ratio increased for the bank, 80 basis points. It's still below the market average for Romania which shows that we do have a lot of room to growth and a lot of liquidity available. Hopefully, you will see later on in the year when we present the combined results with OTP that our combined loan-to-deposit ratio will improve further following the integration of the newly acquired bank. Capital ratios well within the approved minimum requirements, increasing versus the amount posted at the end of the last year. We are at the level of the bank, 24% [indiscernible] capital and total capital -- almost 28% and the group level, 23.3% and 26.5% respectively. If you could take a look at the trends in income in the first 6 months. As I mentioned before, with the 31.3% net interest income. This is driven by the good increase in the net interest margin, which I mentioned. And is complemented by a very good increase in net fees and commissions income with 15.4%, reaching RON 610 million for the first 6 months. We are happy to say that the bank exceeded 1 billion transactions driven by our customers in the first 6 months of the year which is a 40% increase versus the same period of 2023. And again, this increased number of operations is due to, as I mentioned, perhaps even in our discussions before, on the one hand, of the increased number of operations of the existing clients, which are using more and more products of the bank, but also due to the increase in the number of clients of the bank. And I'm happy to say that we have new clients on the company side amounted to 46,000 in the first 6 months of the year. And on the retail side, 250,000 new clients joined the bank in the first 6 months of the year. We took a look at -- after the first 6 months together with the other colleagues in the management team and recently, after 3 years for companies and 4 years for the retail segment, we adjusted our fees and commission structure with the aim of simplifying and eliminating the charges for basic services to provide more such services to increase our share of the market in terms of basic banking services. And also to create further structure in terms of value-added services for our clients in the future quarters. In terms of the impact of these changes, you will see them starting with the next quarters. But still, we are expecting double-digit growth in terms of net fees and commissions income for the bank. Net trading income in the first 6 months of the year increased by 31.4%. This is due to the FX transactions posted by our clients, but also due to derivative transactions. Again, a very nice increase in net gains and losses from financial assets, 60% increase. And here, the reason behind this increase is market conditions. The structure of the income for the first 6 months remains quite similar to the ones in the previous periods with 2/3 of the income being driven by net interest income and the next runner-up in the structure being net fees and commissions income with 15.4%. In terms of expenses, if you take a look at the overall structure of the expenses and the increase in terms of expenses in the first 6 months. As I mentioned, this turnover tax of RON 132 million is creating a one-off. And if you take away the effect of this one-off, actually, our expenses increased by only 17.2%. And on the one hand, this is driven primarily by personnel expenses, where even though we have adjusted the salary, we are investing and our increases are mainly in the areas of skilled personnel to support our digital growth and our risk and security in the bank. If you take a look at depreciation and amortization, 7.6% in the first 6 months of the year, and this is primarily due to the investments in digital by the bank. As I mentioned, other operating expenses, 48% increase is driven by that one-off reflecting turnover tax. So if you take away the effect of the turnover tax, operating expenses increased by a much smaller amount. And if you take a look at the cost-to-income ratio, eliminated the effect of this, even though we do have a decrease in terms of cost-to-income ratio at the level of the bank, including this turnover tax, if we had excluded the turnover tax, the cost-to-income ratio would have been to 42.12%. We have put here together also an analysis on the increase in efficiency for the employees. So even though we are investing in employees, you can see clearly that over the last 5 years, there are clear increases in efficiency. And if you take a look at how this ratio of total assets to the number of active employees has increased in the past 5 years, you see that we have indeed an increase of 21% at the level of the bank. Now, I pass the word to Omer to continue with the analysis of the results.

Thank you, George. Indeed, as mentioned also earlier, our focus was continuously our organic growth, and we are happy to see that in our whole loan portfolio has shown a growth of 4.9% in the first 6 months and over 11% as compared to last year's same period year-on-year, but quite a balanced growth coming from both retail banking but also from companies. We are -- on the household parts actually, as compared to December 2023. We see a growth of 4.1%. The growth mainly or sustainably is coming from mortgage loans as compared to market, this is something that we are proud of because maybe some of you have followed the recent discussions in terms of the growth of consumer lending, consumer loans, unsecured loans in Romanian banking sector. In our case, we have seen a faster growth in mortgage loans. Although we were also definitely active in the consumer lending. And now mortgage loans are almost 25% of our loan portfolio. In the companies, we have seen a growth of almost 20% in SME banking, and this helped us to reach 5.4% growth as compared to end of the year. As further questions that received indeed, it seems that our loan growth will be above the budgeted numbers, but we don't expect it to go beyond single digits. So it will be, let's say, high single digit, but still below 10% in terms of the total numbers. Depositors base is also continuously growing. Here, something strategically assumed accept is that we have been -- as we were mentioning in the previous calls that we were the first bank, first large bank starting to increase deposit rates when the inflationary pressures and reference rate growth started to kick in. We are now, I'll say, I guess, the pioneer in the market in terms of decreasing the rates and despite a higher competition from smaller banks, which are looking for liquidity and new customers. Still, we managed to decrease consecutively every 2 to 3 months our term deposit rates and our cost of funding. That's why our deposit growth is not faster than the market, but in line with the market in terms of retail customers. Thanks to the growth of corporate business, our growth in deposits had been -- or the numbers had been stable, and we have slightly grown above the market in terms of SME customers. We had almost 4 billion new production in Retail banking. This reflecting itself in 4.1% growth. As I said, our Retail banking portfolio, including consumer loans, cards and mortgage loans reaching RON 32.7 billion. And our deposits from retail customers is close to RON 91 billion and definitely growing further. We have almost 3.9 million active customers in Retail banking with 6.3 million cards, debit and credit, confirming our position as the leader of payments and cards in Romania. In the corporate banking, SME banking companies banking, as we call the new production was [ RON 11 billion ]. This is, I would say, quite a good split between longer-term investments and working capital financing. Now with the European Union funds with the Recovery and Resilience [indiscernible] , as we call programs, we see also growing demand in investment loans, and there are more and more investments in both production or supply of green energy, but also distribution and storage capacities as well. And [ IMM ] Invest, SME invest had been a boost in the second quarter, and we have reached RON 2.4 billion of loans newly approved in this segment. There is also this agricultural support program, Credit to [ farmer ], the farmers loan where we have successfully granted RON 500 million as the main bank in Agri finance in Romania. We are continuing our partnerships with European Investment Fund, European Investment Bank on the competitiveness and sustainability projects. Their support also helps us to assume and increase our loan growth, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises. I would like to switch to Luminita now to tell us a bit more about the risk, numbers and capital adequacy.

Thank you, Omer. When it comes to the risk area, I want to reiterate the fact that all the ratios that we are presenting to you show a very prudent risk management that the bank is currently performing. We are doing our job with a long-term view when it comes to the evolution of the bank, but also having in mind the market specificity and the possibility to adjust the strategy on the market evolution. Having said that, I would like to make a couple of comments when it comes to the credit risk management. The bank still enjoys a very sound credit risk management, and this is to be seen in the ratios that we are presenting to you. As depicted in the graph on the left side of the slide, we are seeing a very low level of cost of risk at midyear, which reflects the very good quality of the portfolio and also the low level of NPL that the bank enjoys. Based on the results that we are currently presenting to you, we are confident that by the end of this year, we are going to be on the safe side, meaning that below 100 basis points as per the guidance that we have said previously. The provision stocks that you can see on the right side hand of this slide, increased by 4.1% year-to-date to date, thus reflecting our conservative and prudent risk approach. Therefore, our cost of risk at midyear, 0.08% was influenced not only by the good performance of the loan book but also by the higher new production when it comes to the loan granting and also from the recoveries from the previous written-off loans. You can also observe the fact that the ECL of the bank increased by almost 13% mid-June versus end 2022. The increase of the provisioning was done in a smaller pace than the increase in the loan book in the same period. There is a slight increase in the Stage 2 loan provisions mostly related to retail and larger corporate customers, but the levels we are seeing are not a significant concern. The bank continues its prudent approach to identify any potential deterioration in the loan portfolio. When it comes to the asset quality of the bank, what is to be seen is the fact that at midyear the bank records a very comfortable level of NPL by [indiscernible] definition, which is 2.1% and below the market -- the local market average, which stands at 2.41%. Also, it is important to mention that even in this downward trend of the NPL over the last year, the provisioning of the bank remained constant. Giving us and our shareholders the comfort about the way in which we are managing the assets of the bank. During the first 6 months of 2024, as we have mentioned previously, we have observed a very slightly increase in NPL ratios, mainly driven by consumer loans and SMEs but not at level of significant concerns. When it comes to PAR 90, the figures are presented in the right-side of the slide. We are mirroring the tendency of the NPL. This is being influenced by good recoveries, but also by the market trends. Due to inflationary pressures, we have seen some deterioration in PAR 90's when it comes to retail and SME customers, but the level that we currently observed are, let's say, not of concern. When it comes to the capital position of the bank, my colleague already mentioned a couple of figures related to this. I just want to point out the fact that the bank enjoys a very comfortable solvency levels as depicted in the graph. And also, you can see that the bank has a very strong significant capacity of internal capital generation. All funds of the bank at midyear reached RON 16.2 billion, a 21.8% higher compared to the record of midyear 2023. Also, the risk weight asset density reached 34%, a very, very comfortable level compared to the previous levels recorded in the last 2 quarters, mainly 38%. And this is due to the guarantees that the bank enjoys through [ IMM ] Invest program, and also with by the securitization -- synthetic securitization that we have done and we have announced it to the market. The local market, the bank enjoys a very high liquidity, as is the case in Europe, that is why the ratio we are following, and I'm referring here to loan-to-deposit ratio, immediate liquidity, LCR and NSFR, all these ratios are well above the minimum threshold established by the regulator, which position the bank in a very good way towards future growth. We also are presenting to you on the right side of the slide, the way in which we have accomplished the [indiscernible] requirements by the end of last year and also mid-year 2024. All the levels required by the regulator are mentioned on the slide. And we are reporting to you that we have a comfortable 7% buffer above the levels that we have been set by the resolution authority. That would be the comments I wanted to share with you when it comes to the key risk indicators. Thank you.

In terms of sustainability, I will take you through 2 slides quite quickly. It seems like I'm the only one -- perhaps you can help me. I'm the only one who doesn't have a working device. In terms of sustainability, I would say that -- can you go backwards one slide? That's the first one, okay. In terms of sustainability, we should say that first of all, we had our fourth sustainability report, and we really invite you to go through it because you will find all the details regarding our green loans, corporate green loans, green mortgages, carbon footprint and so on. Here would come a very great -- thank you for the entire team that made it possible during May to have the sustainability report. What is -- another fact important is that we are among top 9 banks worldwide in terms of ESG rating for this report. And I invite you all to have a short look at the report and grasp all the elements that we have within it. In terms of the impact of our financing, you have all the details here and -- by use this slide just to reiterate our commitment towards different green loans that we are having, both in retail, corporate, mobility, which is represented mainly by our leasing company and the leasing portfolio, which is compounded of hybrid and electric cars. Once again, these 2 slides of sustainability are, let's say, only to raise your interest and to see our report. Going back to digital element.

Thank you, Aurel. Indeed, maybe even digital is our -- part of our plans in financial inclusion and also in sustainability. The bank -- after several initiatives, we have this -- the bank, the management decided that we should focus on 2 platforms. It's BT Pay for retail customers and BT GO for company, for corporate customers. BT Pay became actually the main banking application and payment application in Romania. From an initial payment wallet, we are now in a process of developing it as our mobile banking application. There are more than 3 million customers enrolled, actively using and over 120,000 BT Kiddo. BT [ Kiddo ] accounts are also active through BT Pay. We are adding new features on a daily, monthly basis in order to, let's say, increase our capacity and competencies in BT Pay, which soon will result in decommissioning other applications and us remaining, with this BT Pay also assuming or becoming the main tool of interaction for our asset management investments and savings products as well. In BT GO, which is the second application developed in-house, that's also we are very proud of. We saw over 100,000 active companies enrolled. There are more than 800,000 payments already done. We are issuing invoices as the e-invoice factor is an obligation by the law. Our customers are more and more interested in using it. We see it as a, I would say, competitive advantage. And we will be enlarging the ecosystem of BT GO with new features helping especially small- and medium-sized enterprises to solve their problems, administrative problems in interaction with their suppliers, customers or authorities. BT Financial Group had actually becoming more and more significant. If I start with the banks that we consolidate, as you see Victoriabank reached total assets of RON 5.7 [ billion ] with RON 52 million net contribution to our profitability. They are the third largest bank with [ 13% ] market share. And the potential is huge there, once we put the geopolitical, let's say, risks or threats aside. But we are focusing on retail customers, small business customers. We are trying to repeat the story of BT in Republic of Moldova as well. Salt Bank, although, unfortunately, not yet profitable after they launch a couple of months ago, still, we are happy to see that the customer number is -- active customer number is over 220,000, which is almost twice the target for end of year that we had. That enforced us to accelerate actually some development plans and soon, Salt Bank will be offering also, say, further savings and investment products to its customers. And latest beginning of next year, we will be bringing some [ lending ] products into Salt Bank. Here, the biggest potential for us is the Romanian diaspora. It's almost 6 million Romanians living abroad, especially in Europe, which are becoming more and more interested than active users of this application, this initiative, the bank itself. So we are very proud of what we have achieved there so far after just 3 months of launch. BT Leasing had a very strong year. In leasing actually, after the acquisition of Tiriac Leasing and Avant -- or former [ Idea ] Leasing; we have good results and the profitability of BT Leasing for the first 6 months is over RON 110 million. The total assets that we manage in leasing segment is over EUR 1 [ billion ]. BT Asset Management is obviously, if not the leader, it's one of the market leaders and -- with over RON 5.5 billion, EUR 1.1 billion asset size. They are contributing both to the profitability of the bank, but also offering the investment opportunities to our customers, becoming more -- we see more and more interest, especially after we started developing the premium banking concept in retail banking. We see the demand is ever growing in this segment. BT Capital Partners, it's possibly -- besides normal standard brokerage services, it's one of the main investment banking boutiques in Romania and involved in several new transactions, be it in the DCM or M&A side of the Romanian companies. We see that also BT Capital Partner became main partner of Minister of Finance in the [ Fidelis Santes ] programs. BT Direct, after years of struggle, it's a profitable subsidiary, growing strongly. We -- our colleagues, the management of BT Direct managed to benefit from the, I would say, disappearance of main players from the market, and we have good partnerships, strong partnerships and ever growing. BT Mic, our smaller version of BT maybe, our micro lending company; is over 100 -- sorry, over RON 1.1 billion total assets. They are already almost the size of a small bank in Romania, growing profitably. And our plans -- our most ambitious plans for the years to come will be on the asset management and pension funds. That's why also the recent acquisition of [ BT ] Pensii is in picture. BT Pensii growing with small steps, going towards profitability. But once we reach some decent size, they will contribute to the profitability of the group but also to the whole business to complete the whole big business picture of BT Group. I don't want to bore you too much with further details that you have already in the presentation. But as there were some questions about the integration -- acquisition and integration of OTP, I would like to ask Luminita now as a conductor of our factory there for integration to tell us more about OTP integration.

Thank you, Omer. We are in the 13th day after the closing of the transaction, and there is a tremendous activity going on OTP side with the group of large ambassadors from Banca Transilvania, who are the link between OTP Bank and the personnel to BT Group. We have more than 31 streams, 31 mini projects under the umbrella of the integration program. And the plan is quite ambitious. And at this point in time, what I want to say is the fact that all the people over there are very are extremely energetic and willing to deliver good results. We are a little bit ahead of the schedule. So from that perspective, I'm confident that we are going to deliver good results. More details probably in the following presentations for the investors.

Thank you, Luminita. So indeed, with the process of closing took a bit longer than we expected. We were initially planning or hoping to close the transaction in May, which towards end of July, August. But on the other hand, with tremendous contribution and cooperation with our colleagues, new colleagues from OTP group, the speed of, let's say, action, the progress is much faster than we used to. We have our group of people who did our -- ambassador as we call, who actively participated to previous integrations, they are going with good experience there. So I'm also sure that we will be delivering profitable, efficient and also painless, especially for customers, integration until the end of first quarter of next year. And I don't know Aurel, if you can give us some insight about BT Pensii.

Definitely. Thank you, Omer. It has been a very interesting and nice project of ours because a couple of years ago, we made our first footprint in this area of third pillar. And now we are developing our plans going into -- even further towards the second pillar and also acquiring the third. Just a couple of words to say about the transaction. We are very pleased with the pace that we made this acquisition. It will be a 2-stage transaction. The first one will mean business transfer of third pillar towards BT Pensii and afterwards, the acquisition of the second pillar from [ Berre ], Pensii and also the company itself. Why we are interested and what we consider as value drivers for us, is first of all that we see nowadays, both for the asset management side and also for the pension fund -- for the pension side, we see a hype in the market. People are interested in investing. So this is one side of the story. The other one is that by this acquisition, we acquire more than 600,000 customers, which could represent new customers for us as a group. And also that for the second pillar now, we have a higher contribution of 4.75 instead of 3.75, which was until the first of January 2024. Low penetration of pension funds as well as asset management within the industry means that we have a higher potential to capture. And quite honestly, we wish us good luck with -- also with this project.

Thank you very much. We don't want to go into the details of numbers that you already have through our report and presentation, and we would like to switch to Q&A. On the other hand, Diana will ask -- Diana will help us -- we'll ask her help in order to maybe also consolidate because there are questions which are very similar in terms of substance. We will try to answer the subjects generally in case we cannot reach because there is a high number of questions as I see. We will not be able to answer all of them, we will try to come back to you directly or through our presentation. Also, if anything, we miss, please do not hesitate to contact our Investor Relations part. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]

Hello. The first set of questions comes from Daniela Mandru, Swiss Capital. And I will try to group them by type of subjects. First item regards the evolution versus the budget in terms of operating income, operating expenses and provision expenses. And what are the causes for the deviations from the budget? Second question regards the net interest margin and the loan growth. What do we estimate for 2024?

Thank you, Diana, for the questions. Actually, there are not huge deviations, I would say, minor differences between the budget numbers and numbers presented so far. I think on the income side, we did much better, thanks to the increase in business volumes and business activity. On the expense side, we are more or less in line. But as George was mentioning earlier, increases -- or the impact is coming from the new tax being applied on the banking sector, including ourselves, also accelerated investments for technology and other competencies that we develop, but also definitely, wage inflation is a fact in Romania. So we try to be competitive. And we try to attract now not just newcomers with ever, let's say, changing and becoming more complex, more sophisticated banking environment, we are trying to bring in, how to say, skillful resources, competent people, which put sometime pressure on the personnel expenses. But I would say that we are more or less in line with the budget. In terms of -- I guess the second question was related to net interest margin and net interest income. We see Miguel and from other -- some other analysts have been asking the same question. So what I would like to tell you is that if you look a couple of slides before, at some point, we were showing you the net interest margin. So the last maybe normal year, 2019, our net interest margin is around 340 basis points. So that was the period when we had a very strong current account base when interest rates were also low, but we were managing to maintain 330, 340 basis points interest margin. I think we are going towards that. I mean, end-of-year guidance is not much bigger than what we have in the first 6 months, maybe a couple of basis points, even higher because we started decreasing deposit interest rates earlier than the market. But definitely next year, with the benchmark interest rate changes, market interest rate changes, the repricing of the loans will be done at the new rates. So -- I mean, we are not pessimistic about net interest margin but we don't expect it to increase substantially from where it is now. I have seen a question asking that if the change of customers' preference from current accounts to term deposits has peaked out. More or less, I think we are there. Definitely, when the interest rates are low, our customers are not very much, let's say, incentivized, motivated to move to term deposits. And we see that our current account numbers are growing further. That's why we are comfortable that we will be able to deliver 325 to 350 basis point net interest margin in the period -- in the quarters to come. But there might be some, let's say, changes between -- from quarter to another as liquidity and [ lending ] pricing will be affected by the market changes.

Next question comes from the set submitted from Miguel Dias, Wood & Company. Are there any new information that we can disclose regarding the OTP integration? This is a repetitive question posted by multiple participants. Also related to the risk-weighted assets, why did they decrease meaningfully? And what have we done in terms of [ RWA ] optimization? Another question refers to the impact of Basel IV on the capital adequacy ratio.

So let me take it one by one. If I would answer the question related the risk-weight assets of the bank and the evolution during the last Q, I would mentioned the fact that the bank has applied new rules issued by the European regulator when it comes to the Regulation 575, there are a couple of transitional aspects that can be used by the banks when it comes to sovereign exposure. That's the main part of the adjustment in the risk-weight assets. Another important aspect is related to the program [ M&A ] investor, which benefits the bank by the guarantee -- the state guarantee that comes with the program. The further question relates to OTP. I think that details -- as per our common understanding, details regarding the figures that you are concerned about are going to be presented to you in the next conference because, as I mentioned previously, we just stepped in there, and we need to validate our previous information and triy to do very accurate calculation before presenting them to you. And the third question, Diana, was related -- that was covered, that was covered.

I guess we managed to cover. But -- so as -- I mean, as for the OTP integration, because it's a significant impact on our balance sheet and other financial indicators, we don't have any, let's say, significant bad surprise expectations. But we are now in the process of finalizing the evaluation of the purchase price and the net asset value. So once we have this clarification, we would like to be able to come back to you. We don't want to give any misleading information before confirming this with our consultant and also with our auditors. But when we will gather together for the third quarter, we will have the numbers. We have seen different expectations. I would say that the guidance is somewhere -- it will be in the middle.

And I also need to answer the question related to the impact of Basel IV on the capital position of the bank. Based on our current business model and based on the estimates that the teams are working on, we do not see any negative impact on the capital adequacy ratio of the bank starting with the first of January 2025 when we need to apply the new framework.

Next set of questions comes from Franklin Templeton, Can Ozguzel. What can reverse very strong asset quality cycle in the future? Do you think potential fiscal consolidation post election cycle can have an impact on asset quality? And somehow related to that, cost of risk and provision recoveries have been very strong. What is your expectation for 2024 net cost of risk?

Thank you, [ John ], for the questions. I mean indeed, cost of risk performance has been good because of the, let's say, disciplined payment behavior of Romanian households but also, let's say, attentively applied government support programs. We don't expect a big jump, as you also mentioned in your question that mostly we will perform better than our expectations here. But we are very reluctant on -- we going to the optimistic side of forecasting or budgeting, considering our business model and considering the, let's say, part of the world that we are functioning. However, cost of risk will be below the numbers that we have budgeted this year. On the other hand, as regard to the fiscal consolidation, there are too many speculations, although the politicians are quite vehemently denying any changes, I don't think there will be, how to say, a big impact on the -- especially households. I don't think any political party will be ready to assume such a move, considering that we will have still coalition governments in Romania. So they will not opt for this. We are following if there will be some sectorial or other measures that they may assume. On the other hand, Romania is still technically [ living ] through zero unemployment. So as compared to the Romania 10, 20 years ago, now we are bringing labor from Asian countries. That's why if there will be some impact on the disposable incomes, I think wage inflation will kick in further that we are looking forward to decrease or to decelerate. So -- and if you look at the indebtedness ratio of the households or small companies, it is not a concerning level. I think the most indebted party in Romania is the government itself.

Next question comes from [indiscernible], asks us, what are the main reasons behind the capital ratios jump between the first and second quarters? And how do we see the [ lengthening ] market in the second half of the year? I think this was covered previously. So if that's okay, we can consider it answered. Thank you.

Yes. When it comes to capital, I mentioned previously that the bank enjoys the new regulations set up by the end of June by the European Commission, when it comes to the transitory arrangement-related sovereign risk exposures and also the state guarantees related to [ M&A ] invest program.

Adam, thank you very much for, also, kind wishes as regard to the results. Traditionally, our seasonally, usually, the last quarter is the most active quarter of the year, fourth quarter. In third quarter, there was usually low activity. which we couldn't confirm. I mean, this year, the third quarter was quite strong, quite intense in terms of lending as well. So we are expecting also the European Union-induced funds programs or governmental programs to accelerate either due to the deadlines approaching or due to the elections. And everybody wants to give good news, so we expect strong lending in Q3 and Q4 as well. But there is also a lag. I mean some of the discussions, which we started in Q3, we'll be finalizing in Q4 or will be delayed to the first quarter of next year. That's why we said that we will let's say, surpass our budgeted 7% lending growth, but we don't expect it to go beyond 10% this year.

Another question from Wood & Company in respect of the finance leases. These have been growing at a quite strong pace, but this quarter was particularly strong. Any reason for this development?

Yes. Definitely, leasing is the main focus for us, and our acquisition of Tiriac Leasing and Avant Leasing, former Idea Leasing, gave us a boost. But a big portion of the numbers that you see, the increase is coming from, let's say, deconsolidating and reconsolidating some of the portfolios under BT Leasing. Avant Leasing, or former Idea Leasing, was under Salt Bank. So we have taken the portfolio from there and brought it to BT Leasing. This showed a higher increase. But still, our leasing portfolio growth in the first 6 months is 5% to 6%, if I'm not wrong, I mean only new business generation.

Next question is from Josephine Jimenez, I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly, from Channing Global Advisors. Please clarify if the bank has made [ RON ] 100 million in provisions for the ancillary taxes related to the [ Volksbank ] acquisition. And the second question, do the total assets in Victoriabank exclude the assets that authorities have placed under precautionary seizure?

I will take this. Yes, we have made almost RON 101 million provision for the ancillary taxes and the penalties for the bargaining gain in [ Volksbank ] acquisition, even though the amount computed for that is higher than this. But this is due to the fact that we have trust that even though we will be at the end of the legal procedures because we have opened [ legal ] procedures, we will still have to pay these taxes, we'll still pay less than what the fiscal authority has computed. And this is why we provided less than full amount of ancillary taxes computed. And to the second question, the total assets of Victoriabank include the assets that were placed under precautionary seizure. Actually, those assets have crossed the time been reaching maturity. They have been replaced, so -- because they are like not very long-term assets. There have been quite a movement throughout the year in these assets for Victoriabank. But the total assets include those assets.

We have another question coming from Wood & Company, Daniela Mandru, ask us to comment on the press statement made by our CEO regarding the doubling of Banca Transilvania assets in the next 5 to 7 years. We have here the full code, but maybe we can clarify it in the response.

Thank you, Daniela. I should be really very careful when I speak, very courageous and ambitious publicly. But indeed, what we are basing our, let's say, forecast in this is that financial inclusion in Romania is very low and it's still growing. GDP growth, as also announced by National Bank of Romania yesterday or the day before yesterday, will start picking up. Romania has been growing faster than European peers or other European countries, European Union averages in terms of GDP growth. As you know, our loan growth had been -- or total assets growth had been much higher than the GDP growth of Romania. So the compounded effect, hopefully, if you will, will continue performing well and the customers continue trusting us, it will be there. We are also estimating that in 2030, financial inclusion should come closer to 40% from below 30% now. Combining all these factors and maybe some acquisitions, not only in banking, but also in other sectors of interest, asset management, pensions, leasing; will help us to reach these numbers. This is also a target that we impose on ourselves to motivate ourselves. So far, we have managed to deliver. I think and I hope that the bigger team of BT will manage to deliver it further. There are no new questions at least or the existing remaining ones are more or less in line with what we have answered. In case you didn't catch the answer or we would like to reiterate, please contact our Investor Relations team. Thank you very much for joining us. We wish you, let's say, peaceful, comfortable, maybe even cooler third and fourth quarter and a profitable business as well. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, following the conference call, we would like to announce you that the Investor Relations team in Banca Transilvania will send you a short survey about the content and format of the conference call. Thank you for your input. The conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a good afternoon.