BRAC Bank PLC. (BRACBANK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to BRAC Bank's Quarter 3 2025 Earnings Disclosure. It's a pleasure to be here again to share our performance and progress with our all valued stakeholders. This quarter's results reflect the continued strength of our diversified business model and the resilience of our teams in cautious economic environment. I'll begin with the broader economic context before handing over to our business heads, who will walk you through the performance of each division. Bangladesh economic growth remains subdued under the government's dual contractionary policy stance, monetary and fiscal policy, which has resulted in moderate domestic demand. With inflation easing compared to last year and expectation of softer inflationary pressure, a policy rate cut is anticipated in H1 2026. National elections scheduled for February 2026 are likely to make a turning point with post-election stability, coupled with potential policy, easing would catalyze stronger credit demand and economic recovery. Meanwhile, the current account and external balance are expected to remain positive, aided by resilient remittance inflows, steady exports, contain import demand. Together, these factors underpin a stable exchange rate outlook. We are hoping so. The wind of stability are returning, and we are steering confidentiality ahead. So let me start with Retail Banking division. Retail Banking continues to be a core engine of growth, driving deposit mobilization, leading expansion and digital engagement across millions of customers. This engagement remains our foundation for scale, diversification and brand strength. Now I'll hand over to our DMD and Head of Retail Banking, Mahiul Islam, to walk you through this performance. Mahiul?

Thank you. Good evening. It's my pleasure to share our Retail Banking updates. Before I begin, let me extend my gratitude to our investors and customers for the continued trust in BRAC Bank. During first half of 2025, we have sustained our growth in retail deposits and assets despite a challenging economic environment. Deposits remain our key strength, increased by 38% year-on-year, reaching more than BDT 36,500 crores. Compared to December, there's a healthy annualized growth of 30%, reflecting our customers' confidence in us. Our CASA mix, however, dipped slightly to 34%, a reminder that we keep -- must keep working towards lower cost, stable funding. Meanwhile, the cost of deposits increased from last year in line with industry trends. On the asset side, we delivered robust growth with the portfolio expanding 26% year-on-year and 12% in December, reaching BDT 10,900-plus crores, loans being the main driver up by 29%. Our yields improved to 10.6%, up from 9.1% a year ago, reflecting both market conditions and prudent pricing. In terms of credit quality, credit discipline remains at our core. However, we have faced challenges in portfolio monitoring due to macroeconomic stress that resulted in increase of PAR by 39 basis points to 5.26% year-on-year and NPL increased to 3.4%, mainly due to changes in regulatory guidelines for loan classification. Our colleague, Chief Risk Officer, will expand on this later on. On the growth engines and digital momentum, beyond the numbers, what excites us is the transformation in how we serve our customers. Digital account onboarding surged 83% year-on-year with over 94,000 new accounts being opened, a proof that customers are embracing simpler, faster banking. Digital loan disbursement volumes nearly grew by 4x as customers increasingly rely on our digital platforms. As we look ahead to the rest of 2025, our focus is clear: sustain deposit growth while optimizing low-cost funds; maintain asset quality through disciplined risk management; and accelerate digital adoption to create seamless customer experiences. That's all from my side. Thank you.

Thank you, Mahiul. As the #1 digital bank, we are serving millions of customers with trusted experience. Our SME business continues to be the heart of BRAC Bank, empowering small enterprises and enabling inclusive economic growth. This segment remains unmatched in scale, reach and impact across the country. Now I will hand over to our AMD and Head of SME, Syed Abdul Momen, to take you through these highlights of quarter 3 2025.

Thank you, Tareq bhai. Good afternoon, everyone. It's my pleasure to share with you a brief update on SME Banking division's performance during the third quarter of 2025. Despite economic headwinds, our SME franchises have continued to show resilience, consistency and the strong growth. We now serve over 775,000 SMEs across the country and making a 25% growth from last year. As you know that we have been driving SME deposits over the years, so that drive is continuing, and our base grew by 43% year-on-year and 27% YTD, thanks to our focused deposit drives from all over the bank, including the distribution network and all the sales channels. While loans growth remained modest in the first half of the year because of the economic slowdown, the special campaign in view of that we have launched in Q3, which has helped us to regain our momentum in SME asset growth. As a result, SME loan portfolio grew by 20% year-on-year and 7% year-to-date. These results reflects the trust of our customer and the strength of our nationwide footprint in terms of SME business. Our yield has also improved and reached to 12.39%, a 2.5% year-on-year increase and a 2% year-to-date increase, which is a result of disciplined risk-based pricing and timely renewal of loans. Asset quality has remained steady with only a slight rise in NPL due to the implementation of new loan classification standards. Overall, growth has been achieved with strong control over credit quality. Credit business has grew by 33% year-on-year, reaching USD 169 million worth of trade business during Q3. Our strategic priorities remain the same, and we are progressing on each of our strategic priorities. We are progressing steadily on our journey towards becoming self-funded. Our SME ecosystem financing opportunities is strengthening. We are scaling up our supply chain financing business with the help of our Corporate Banking division and also growing the Distributor Finance portfolio. Bancassurance business is slowly getting momentum. And a major milestone we have achieved is, we have launched embedded insurance, which is a fully digital journey, and we hope this will scale up soon. Our process improvement initiatives are also going through with new integration and incorporation of new features in our internal loan origination platform, which is improving efficiency across the SME operation. In summary, we expect even stronger growth in both loans and deposits during Q4 as our loan and deposit campaigns are also gaining momentum. So I am confident that SME will continue to be the growth engine of BRAC Bank, driving profitability, inclusion and impact. Thank you. Back to you, Tareq bhai.

Thank you. SME, in fact, is not just our business, it's our identity. So our Wholesale Banking division remains a trusted financial partner for large corporation and institutional clients, contributing strongly to deposit growth and trade finance leadership. Despite a challenging environment, this business continues to deliver stable performance and deepen client relationship. Now I would like to hand over to our DMD and Head of Wholesale Banking division to present the segment update.

Thank you, Tareq bhai. As you mentioned, like despite challenging macroeconomic conditions and slower growth arena, I think Wholesale Banking has performed really well. They have maneuvered through a challenging situation and demonstrated a good growth in terms of deposit, like 24% growth and also changing mix towards a positive territory like from 51% to 54% that has significantly contributed towards positive spread. So on the deposit side and also improving mix was a big success for the wholesale bank. In terms of asset, like we have to run through a cautious policy because of the challenging macroeconomic environment. Even then, we maintained a growth of 9% compared to industry growth of 6%. We expect to see higher growth in the last quarter of this year. On the trade side, which was a big focus area for us, we grew strongly, growing 38%, clocking BDT 5.2 billion of trade. We expect to close this year at BDT 7 billion to become one of the most preferred trade bank in the country as well. So overall, I think the number from both deposit and trade was very good. Asset was slower and asset performance was a little bit lower, but we expect to see some improvement on both NPL and PAR by the end of this year to see overall very good numbers in the year ahead. That's the small update from Corporate & Institutional Banking. I'll move to the next slide. On the Treasury and FI side, like we have been the leader in Treasury and FI business, and we cemented our position like we took early position, and we have really grown our treasury bills and bonds portfolio significantly, which is now more than BDT 30,000 crores. Then on the transaction side, like on the G-Sec, we have cemented our #1 position. We now have a 16.8% of market share, which is significant, outnumbering anyone in this position. On the FX trading side, we grabbed 5.4 billion of FX transaction, again, which is #1 in the market. Remittance side, we are growing and we are now in fourth position. In 2 years' time, we expect to be #2 position. We just offered first social bond in the market. This is, again, is our initiative to offer new product to the market and develop new market. So this is a very good initiative from bank side to really support social costs and shift social financing from bank side. On the liquidity side, as you know, we are very strong. Our LCR is close to 300%. We are very strong in terms of both local currency and foreign currency liquidity, and that has been a very good area to grab more market share in both foreign currency and local currency side. I think that's a small brief from my side. Back to you Tareq bhai. Thank you.

Thank you. From the Wholesale Banking perspective, actually, we don't just finance companies. We empower industries. Thank you for your update. Strong growth must always be underpinned by strong governance and our Risk Management division continues to ensure prudent portfolio quality and sustainable expansion. We maintain disciplined underwriting and enhanced monitoring framework across all segments. Now I would like to request our DMD and Chief Risk Officer, Ahmed Rashid Joy, to share the risk update.

Thank you, Tareq bhai. Good evening, everyone. We continue to present our PAR, 30 DPD PAR and the NPL trend, as you can see from 2017. Now recently on the -- I will speak on the PAR. You will notice that in the last 1 year, it has increased around by 1%. So, as everyone spoke about, there is a slowdown in the economy and other headwinds. So that has resulted in increase in PAR. But even then it's on 30 DPD basis. So that's the strictest ratio that we have. On the NPL thing, you will notice that we ended the last year with 2.63%, but now it is 3.61%. So almost 1% increase in the NPL. We have analyzed that around 60% of it came because of the change in the regulation, the definition of NPL, which came into effect from June. And rest 40% were from some corporate accounts who were under rescheduling or in the early warning buckets. So that has resulted in the increase of NPL of 1%. Next slide. So on the left side, you will see that we are presenting our stressed portfolio trend. And you will see in the beginning of the years like 2021 and 2022, we have 3 colors. One is the ash color portion of the bar, which represents the pandemic-related restructuring. The green portion is the rescheduling loan and the blue one is the NPL ratio. And you will also notice that in the recent years that as color portion of the bar that has disappeared as we don't have any pandemic-related restructuring now in our books. So what we have is the NPL, as I said, it was 3.61% in the Q3, and we also have 0.20% as rescheduling loan. So if I add 2 of this, it will come 3.81%. But on the footnote, you will see that in addition, we have restructured loans, which is the extension of the tenor of the term loan, and that is only 0.07% of our portfolio. So even if I include that the restructured, the total stressed portfolio of our bank will be around 3.88%, that is below 4%. On the right side of the chart, you will see that our NPL coverage ratio is now at 105%. We continue to maintain it around 110% to 105% and our credit cost has increased to 0.83% and mostly it's because of the additional NPL that we had in our portfolio. So this is -- bottom line is that, our portfolio is stable. We ensure our asset quality because the fundamental structure of our bank is that, the composition, the 50% SME, 16%, 17% to retail, all our granular loans and the rest is 35% in the corporate. So this is a balanced portfolio that can protect the book from all the headwinds. So that's it from my side, Tareq bhai. Over to you.

Thank you for the update. We manage risk, so our clients can take bold step forward. So let's now look at the financial results that tie these efforts together. I'll hand over to our AMD and CFO to present the details.

Thank you, Tareq, Salam, and good evening to all. As you've heard from our colleagues, in fact, Q3 has been the best quarter so far. So if you look in terms of overall performance, I think Q3 stands out. I'm pleased to share that if we look at the quarter-on-quarter performance of the bank, it has consistently grown and improved every quarter in terms of revenue, in terms of our cost management, our [ ALI ] and also the bottom line. Bank has delivered a very strong set of results year-to-date Q3 and exceeding its plan mostly. However, except for lending growth, as many of my colleagues have touched upon because of the headwinds and the surrounding environment. However, in Q3, what we can see is that, the lending engine is firing enough, particularly SME and retail has been continuingly outpacing the market. So if I may start with our major driver of our growth, deposits. Here on, this slide is representing last 4 years -- quarter 3, year-to-date 3 quarters results. So overall, if we compare it year-on-year, our franchisee grew about by 33%. And as you can see, all the segments have contributed in the deposit growth, SME, retail, corporate, everybody. But if we look at the last 9 months, our deposit book has grown by about 31%. Moving ahead, this is our customer segment composition. We can see this retail share and SME share is growing, which is very good news, and we have been actually strategizing to making share more of share from these 2 particular segments. Next slide. This is our CASA and term deposit mix. As you can see, our CASA mix is about 41% current account and savings account. And overall, in the last quarter, particularly in the quarter 3, the CASA focus has been emphasized, and we are happy to share that the CASA growth has been outpacing the term deposit growth. Overall, in the 9 months, bank has grown its deposit book by about BDT 15,000 crores. I must mention our huge distribution network who has delivered about 90% of that growth and consistently breaking their records every quarter. They have also onboarded about 218,000 of our new relationships of all the business segments put together. Moving ahead, if we look at our loans, yes, we have grown about by 18%, led by SME. But if we look at our first 9 months, the loan growth grew on an annualized basis of 11%. But as I was mentioning, in the quarter 3 was giving us the sense that the sentiment is positive. We could see, particularly in SME, momentum is back. Retail has been delivering really record milestone every month, while we expect corporate to rebound in the last quarter. So hopefully, we would, inshallah, close this year with a high note, while it has been slow as per our expectation. So moving ahead, this is the segmental contribution. SME and retail has regained position compared to last year. Moving ahead, next slide. This is the stand-alone performance scorecard. As you can see, our revenue year-on-year has grown by about 31%. If I dissect into our interest income and nonfunded income, roughly 75% of our revenue is coming from our interest income. It is from lending and all our investment book. While if I separately say how was the growth rate, our interest income has grown by about 28% year-on-year and nonfunded income was at roughly about 13% to 14%. Since the lending growth was relatively slower or soft, as a result, the related income or associated income with the lending has also been slow. But however, our trade has been doing fantastic, and it has grown quite rapidly. And therefore, we have a lion's share from the share of nonfunded income from the trade side. But it's also to be mentioned that since it's quite competitive, we could see the pricing is going down. However, we are also countering this with a larger volume and anticipating that we will end this year with a very high note. Another piece of our nonfunded income is our FX, which is -- we have been, as Syed bhai was mentioning, we are fourth largest [indiscernible]. But overall, since the overall liquidity situation and tightness has gone away, we have been seeing the price or the margin has been squeezed significantly. We hope to counter this with the additional volume in the coming days. Our cost-to-income ratio has improved to 46%, thanks to the strong revenue growth, but not to -- definitely to -- we will continue to invest in our people, infrastructure, network and our future readiness. If I look at our OpEx, our OpEx year-on-year and particularly in 9 months grew by about 26%, but our revenue grew by about 31%, a clear 5% jaws in that process. I would like to highlight that our yield has improved by 13 basis points. On the other hand, our cost of deposit grown by 86%. So clearly, our lending spread has improved by 50 basis points. In the first 9 months, our lending spread, as I mentioned, 4.57%. But overall, if I take our investment book and overall interest earning book, our spread is about 4.2%. Our CASA mix, I already mentioned, it's 41%, NPL, our CRO mentioned. It's predominantly the transitional impact and including some -- a few accounts in the corporate and SME side. I would like to focus on our profit after tax. It's about 28% growth, which is also reflected in our earnings per share, clearly. I think if we look at our return on assets, it has gone by about 8 basis points soft. I think since our asset growth was particularly heavy on the quarter 3, we'll really have a little time to recoup the commensurate income. I think by the year-end, this would be more or less similar to last year, 1.46%. In terms of return on equity, it has gone down by about 137 basis points. It is predominantly of our large investment book, the mark-to-market, the revaluation reserve impact, which has actually brought it down to 16%. But as we go along, when we realize this unrealized revaluation gain, it will adjust and I'm pretty confident that the return on equity is on an underlying basis will be around 17%. Our capital adequacy ratio has gone down by about 40 basis points. It's predominantly from the large held for trading book that we are carrying with our government bond. That is actually causing the risk-weighted assets and thereby reduced our capital adequacy. Moving ahead, the story continues. As you can see, at a solo basis, our revenue was 31% up. With all our subsidiaries, it is 34%. And if we look at the profit after tax, it's about 52% higher year-on-year, thanks to our subsidiary, bKash for its strong contribution in the group performance. I would not like to -- I would not want to go to the subsidiary contribution. If we look at, we have got 4 subsidiaries. Investment, our merchant bank is suffering on its proprietary capital market book, the mark-to-market loss, which is about BDT 17 crores, but it has improved from last year. On the brokerage, about BDT 4.5 crores profit. Saajan is recouping and gaining its momentum. We hope that by next year, June, it would get into profitability. And bKash, as I was mentioning, has delivered a fantastic set of results. It's more than doubled their profitability in the same period last year. So overall, as a group, we have delivered about BDT 1,536 crores profit. I think I would take the opportunity, Moin bhai is with us, CFO of bKash.

Thank you. So our strong balance sheet growth, improved profitability and stable asset quality shows resilience and execution strength. Finally, our subsidiary, bKash continues to be a national fintech champion. I'll pass it over to our bKash, CFO, to share their progress. Moin bhai?

Thank you, Tareq bhai, and thank you, Masud bhai, [Foreign Language] to everyone. So I'll just take about a couple of minutes to take you through how bKash has performed over the past 9 months. So just our biggest assets, i.e., our customers. We finished the first -- the September with 81.4 million customers, up from 79.4 million in the same period. So we acquired 7 million in the first 9 months of the year as opposed to 7.5 million. So our -- as we keep growing our customer base, our acquisition rate, as normal logic will continue to come down. For example, we were acquiring at the rate of 27,000 customers in 2024. Right now, it's about 26,000. So 1,000 customers per day is coming down. In terms of active customers, of the 81.4 million, we had 45.4 million as active, which translates to about 55.7 million active. So -- and in 2024, the same number was about 54%. So our active ratio is also going up. Market share, this is not a like-on-like comparison because the entire industry has not been reporting the numbers to Central Bank. So a few operators have not reported. So this number is not a right comparison. In terms of merchant at the end of 2023, you see a merchant, despite our focus on merchants is showing a marginal decline. The reason for the decline is that, we are focusing more on quality merchants rather than just acquiring merchants. So we are -- we continue to acquire merchants, but for the merchants who are not transacting, we're not -- we're delisting them. So that's the reason why -- so our active ratio of merchants have increased, but the total absolute number has decreased. In terms of transaction volume, this has been one of the highest in recent past. We are increasing our volume by 30% over the same time last year. Agents at the end of -- we added about 10,000 more agents, so which just further embeds our presence across Bangladesh. Next slide. Gross revenue, that's increased by 30%. The biggest driver of this increase is cash out revenue. That's increased -- that itself increased by 31%. Second biggest driver is P2P, which is about 42%. On all products, there has been increase, but these 2 are the larger ones. So if you see the revenue net of VAT increased by 33%. Cost of services increased by 29%. So at the backdrop of 33% increase in revenue, cost of services increased by 29%, which goes to say that we have made some optimization in our channel costs. So our gross margin went up from 35% to 37% in these 2 comparative periods. Operating expenses and administrative expenses increased by 23%. Two or 3 biggest drivers of this is salaries is depreciation and -- salaries and fixed assets and foreign exchange losses. Commercial expenses, the primary driver is advertising expenses. So that's why the increase of 9%. Comes to operating profit of BDT 523 crores, which is about 132% increase over last year. Net finance income is the income generated from our own working capital. This increased by 37% because we are making profits, our volume of our own capital is increasing. After workers' participation profit fund, our profit before tax comes to BDT 672 crores, which is a 97% increase. Income tax expenses increased by 36% because we were making more profit and also the income tax rate changed from 25% to 27.5%. That brings us to a bottom line of BDT 505 crores, which is a 131% increase over same time last year. So that is, in a nutshell, how the financial profiles of bKash has been for the first 9 months of the year. It's been a great year for bKash after 15 years, and we continue to perform and hopefully have a -- continue this trend of increased revenues and profits.

Thank you, Moin bhai. This is indeed a great year for bKash and as well as for BRAC Bank. With record transaction volumes and profitability, bKash is shaping the future of our digital financial inclusion. I will hand over the -- hand over to Mr. Deb to prepare question or queries.

Yes, we have received a couple of questions regarding BRAC Bank performance as well as bKash. So I will start with the bKash as Moin bhai just concluded his speech. So Moin bhai, over to you. The first question is, nowadays, we are hearing more stance regarding the money laundering claim against bKash. So what is your view on that?

Okay. So we've always maintained a strong stance against money laundering, and we have our solid anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing measures, which is a part of the regulatory and compliance framework. We have -- we regularly have workshops with employees. We continuously have communication materials right down to our agent levels. So there have been instances where we have found out that some agents have been involved, and we immediately discontinued them. So to us, this is superbly important, supremely important, and we have a very strict standing against such occurrences.

You have just shown that market share of bKash has significantly increased. So will there be any chance that the government might launch investigation to determine if the company is engaging in anticompetitive activities or not?

So as I mentioned in my first slide, the 82.2% is -- and the 65.3% is not a like-on-like comparison, but because certain operators has not submitted the numbers to Bangladesh Bank, so it's a distorted number. So -- and in terms of anticompetitive, I mean, our biggest backbone in this entire country is our agent point. And just to show that bKash is not into anticompetitive, these agent points are not exclusive at all. Any operators can come and use the agent points. And that goes to show bKash's intent of being -- not being anticompetitive. And with regulatory support -- it's because of regulatory support and our -- the way we look at our customers and when we value our customers, we will change these dominant market share. Yes. So firstly, again, 82.2% is not the right market share.

That's all for the question that we have received bKash. I will go back to BRAC Bank management team regarding the question that we received against BRAC Bank. So first question related to our G-Sec bond. So I would request Shaheen bhai to answer the question. The question is that, according to the World Bank, October 2025 commodity market outlook, in 2026, commodity price may decrease further. So it is assumed that within the next 8 to 9 months, inflation may be at around 6% level. So why BRAC Bank isn't investing more on long-term, especially in 10, 15, 20 years bond and that by which we actually get future capital gain in the last half of 2026 or the early of 2027? Over to Shaheen bhai.

Okay. We will evaluate how inflation comes down and also what is our focus on interest rate and then also what is the alternative option for investing fund. So considering all this, we will take decision. As you know, we have already built our position. We'll consider to pile up on that only on the basis of alternative options. So we'll be watching out the position and the market data and accordingly take action.

The next question regarding our NPL ratio. So I would ask Joy bhai to be here to reply the question. The question is that, NPL ratio increased during the period, partly due to the regulatory reclassification. Could you quantify the impact of that regulatory change? And excluding the reclassification impact, what would be the underlying asset quality trend look like? Joy bhai?

As I mentioned earlier that our NPL increased by 1%, near to that and 60 bps of it came from the regulatory changes that we have. And that mostly was in the SME and the retail portfolio. Why is that? SME and retail portfolio, they have -- I mean, primarily the term loan products and the definition -- change in definition happened mostly in the term loan products where the NPL ratio was reduced from 270 days to 90 days, and that has increased, which is around 60 bps. Remaining 40 bps were the slippages from the corporate books from early alert bucket few and from [ reassuring ] bucket, a few of them. So that's the breakdown of 1%. Now excluding these reclassifications, we do not see any abnormal spike or we do not project anything that will increase our NPL ratio in the coming years.

Related to this NPL part, the next question is how adequate do you consider your current provisioning coverage given the macroeconomic headwinds? So I would ask Masud bhai to answer this thing.

I think given the situation, we are watching the space. Of course, there has been a transitional impact, and there are certain slippages, which were on our watch list. But given the condition, we are quite prepared for this. If you look at our debt [ LI ] cost, it has been highest in the last couple of years. So we are actually preparing for this. Where we see there's a potential of getting into the red zone, we are preparing ourselves for that. But overall, I think the coverage of 105% is quite sufficient. I think by year-end, it will improve a bit further. And given the headwinds, I think we can sustain given our approaches to our portfolio among these 3 business segments.

Next question regarding our capital raising. So do you foresee any need for capital raising in the near-term to support our growth? Masud bhai?

Yes. Of course, I mean, given the strategy that we have and the rate of the growth that we are experiencing in the last 3 years, but I don't see very immediate need because our internal generation of capital has also improved significantly. But our -- according to our aspiration and the plan, I think, yes, of course, you will get to see somewhere middle of next year, we would start the process of raising equity. And I think early '28, definitely, there would be addition to our equity, the new raising -- capital raising to support our [ enhanced growth ].

So next question is regarding our Astha. So recently, BRAC Bank has started charging fees in Astha transition and some of the customers feel that this is a value destroying initiative. So I would come back to Mahi bhai regarding this and if you would like to add anything Mahi bhai?

On this note, I'd like to highlight that while our major competition had imposed the charges, which is being talked about, which is NPSB and RTGS charges in line with the Bangladesh Bank regulations much earlier to recover their cost, we had hold on to this. However, recently, as our transactions in Astha have grown significantly, we have introduced this charge in line with the regulation majorly to cover our cost so that we can offer better and more efficient services through our Astha mobile banking app to our customers. On a separate note, I'd like to highlight here 2 specific achievements for the quarter 3, while I mostly covered the H1 on my earlier note is, on the deposits, we had touched close to BDT 40,000 crores, which is a 36% year-on-year on retail side. And on the asset, we have touched in quarter 3 -- end of quarter 3, BDT 11,800 crores, which is a 33% year-on-year, which also our CEO, Tareq highlighted that it has been an outstanding year for Retail Banking till quarter -- third quarter of this year.

I'll come back -- I'll go back to Tareq bhai. So Tareq bhai, the next question is that, how confident are you in maintaining current growth momentum amid external uncertainties?

Well, we remain confident in sustained our growth momentum despite external environments because we have been maintaining strong fundamentals, prudent risk management and diversified portfolio provides -- because that's actually just kind of give us the confidence to grow or we anticipate a bright future ahead. At the same time, we are preparing all our business segments for the next year because we're anticipating that the post-election economy will reposition itself. And we expect a revamped private investment and our new expansion initiatives, which will actually create fresh kind of opportunities for us. So with disciplined execution and a unified team that we have, we aim to translate these opportunities into sustained growth.

That's all from my side. Over to you, Tareq bhai.

Do you have any other questions?

No, Tareq bhai, we didn't receive any further questions.

So we can conclude now. So in conclusion, I would like to summarize our discussion. So in summary, we are resilient, diversified and a future-ready financial institution. With SME leadership, corporate and wholesale banking trust, retail growth, a modern branch network, strong risk management, sustainable finance leadership and fintech innovation through bKash, we are creating long-term value for our shareholders. That's all for this evening. Thank you all for joining with us.