Equity Group Holdings Plc ($EQTY)

Thank you, as you remain outstanding. I want to invite [indiscernible] for the prayer.

Thank you very much. Let us bow ahead for Per. Father God in haven this morning. We are grateful for your faithness, for your goodness and your masses that are new every single morning. We want to thank you for the gift of life and health, and thank you for the gift of one another. As we gather here this morning, Lord for Q1 results. We pray that Lord you be with us. We commit this meeting into your hands, pray that L you're going to give us the great and strength, especially our team leaders lead us in this all good. As we look back, we are grateful for the milestone, the achievements and all that been able to do this far. And we continue. It is our prayer that you hry continue to rest upon all of us. You bless the work of our hands, you bless our families. You continue to bless the strength that L may be able to deliver as per our expectations and our aspirations. We thank you, Lord, and we honor you for this humble prayer of faith in the name of the father, the son and the whole spirit.

Let's take our seats as you appreciate. We once again want to invite you to the release of Q1 2026 Equity Group financial results. And for those who are following us online, especially members of the Fore state and also the investors and analysts, the questions that you might have, kindly feel free to post them online and our team leader together with the management to be able to respond to those questions. It's now my honor to invite our Group CEO and MD, Dr. James Mwangi, to take us through the Q1 2026 results. Welcome, Dr. Mwangi.

Thank you very much, Alex. Deeply honored this morning to welcome all of you to our investor briefing. We regret that it's happening at a time that we are going through the challenges of withdrawn public transport logistics. But I'm glad that the online platform gives our investors, our shareholders, our analysts and the media an opportunity to follow us online. We'll try and compress a little bit because the message that we have remains the same that this organization is going through a strategic transformation, and we'll continue to highlight the outcomes of all the initiatives and the formation of the new equity. We remain focused on our core, the essence, the purpose of this organization to drive change in society to help communities and individuals to transform their lives, enhance their dignity. But more importantly, empower them to unlock opportunities for wealth creation to create a prosperous society. So that remains the central focus of what we do and our delivery mechanism is really to achieve that single objective. When you look at deeper into the strength of this organization, it's built on our governance structure, a governance that has consistently delivered on providing insulation for this organization to continue to manage risks. Essentially, we are in a sector, the financial sector where trust is the currency and essentially, we need to ensure that trust is maintained, and we maintain trust through the governance practices, checks and balances that we build oversight, compliance with the regulations, and we do that driven by our people. The depth and breadth of management and policy organs, particularly the Board give us assurance that we have the right people who make the right decisions and consequently continue to deliver the right outcomes. In the sense of operating environment, we all know that we have very strong hopes that the global economy is on a recovery path, and we see the region was leading that recovery, becoming the fastest-growing region in the world with Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, South Sudan being on the top 20 fastest-growing economies in the world and Tanzania, DRC and Kenya not being left too far behind. So essentially, it becomes a regional momentum, which then helps us to balance off whether it's physical positions, whether it's capital flows, whether it's shock, then we are able to leverage on the diversity and cycle that each country goes through. But however, despite this, we also see that reforms that the countries have been going through -- have been delivering better macroeconomic positions. And when you look at IMF view about the economies we operate in -- if you look at the rating agencies, what they think about the country, we see all the countries really related to have a stable outlook. And so that really gives us confidence. And hence, the strategy that we have been formulating to build back this organization is about building resilience because we know despite this outlook, we could really have shocks. And at the moment, we are going through one of the most consequential shocks related to oil and the Gulf region, the challenges of the wide Middle East related to energy. And the only way to manage that and insulate that is to build the competence of resilience within our organization. We have used 4 major plans to build that resilience. The first one is liquidity, ensuring we have liquidity that can with long prolonged shocks, capital buffers that could be able to hold like we all see a full page in the business daily, reflecting on how equity has used capital buffers to clean its loan book such that we are not pushing nonperforming. We recognize loans that are not performing and we write them off and be recovering them and it becomes more of miscellaneous income as opposed to keeping nonperforming loans. You can't do that. You can't lead the industry unless you have significant capital to be able not only to absorb such a shock, but also to take advantage of opportunities for growth like you all see in our numbers that Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and DRC have really registered a very impressive growth, and that growth still is being funded. So -- and of course, the biggest asset we have in managing shocks is the agility that we have built by becoming technology-led. When you create platform capabilities, then the response is just tweaking the platforms in terms of adapting to new environment. Adoption of credit scoring agents helps you to quickly adapt to an environment. As the environment becomes challenging, you tighten when the environment becomes more enabboring, loosen the credit mechanism. The use of AI helps in enhancing the productivity of our staff quite significantly. And the last is maintaining high-quality asset portfolio and very cognizant that it's best practices to write off loans when they are not performing so that you remain a clean balance sheet, you recognize losses as they occur. So that's how we have managed the challenges of operating environment by creating agility and creating sufficient buffers that allows you to under the challenges as they come. But we are optimistic that this capability has now almost helped us to recognize that shops will always be with us. and that we manage the bank with the group with that in mind that it needs to be strong to build the capability and the competence to operate in a volatile world characterized by shocks. And because of this, increasingly, we have become systemic. The initiatives has not built a larger bank, a higher quality bank, a strong bank, but it has positioned us systemically in the market, having a dominant position in the region and being systemic almost in all the countries we operate in. And that really gives us the competence to orchestrate and facilitate cross-border trade, regional trade and capital flows within the region, and that then gives us an advantage to continue to outperform the industries. The infrastructure we have built in region in a very concentrated integrated way then brings out the asset. We are not operating in a market of nations, but a market of a region. So we have a picture of 350 million people because the cross-border trade is facilitated by all the countries being part of the East African community. So essentially, it's like operating in one country, centralized policies, centralized systems because regulations and environment is within -- and that allows then the scale and the facilitation of cross-border trade. So that footprint has really now become a major cost strength like our IT capabilities. to continue to give equity incredible strength. And as you can see, it is densified, particularly to take financial services to the last mile. When you talk of 1.4 million merchants, when you talk of 86,000 agents, what it has done is to help us the capability to have significant coverage that delivers ease and convenience, and that gives us the ability to crowd in customers, and that is what has given us 22.7 million customers on the same platform. And that you can imagine the data we get from that when we analyze the insights, the ease of decision-making because of that is the equity we have been building for the last 10 years, and I'm really glad it has taken shape, and it is reflecting in the way it is performing above market performance and now starts to increase its market share. If we go to the strategic overview, we see that the strategy is written by a very strong strategy that focuses on a framework of the African recovery and resilient plan, a pan-African strategy. It's not -- as we have said, it's not country-centric. It's regional centric. And that's why we have been able to unlock a single market perspective. And that has been built by a strong equity brand. The reason why equity is such a strong brand in the region is because it follows trade routes. So it is taken -- that brand is taken to the next market by traders, by the customers themselves. So we don't need to introduce the brand. It's introduced by trade patterns and then our organizational culture of customer centricity, the use of the need to put customer at the center of everything we do, being a people sensitive brand. And of course, a business model that balances social investment and economic pits. The twin engine of having an equity group foundation and an equity group -- the commercial then helps to get the to the transformation of people. The foundation, the social capacitate and derisk people and put them on the radar of economic transformation on the economic engine. The low -- the high volume, low margin model allows inclusivity. It allows affordability, and that explains the 22.7 million that the group has been able to together. The consideration of the customer, not just the product offering, but how they consume those products, how easily and conveniently and particularly adoption of technology, where up to 98% of our transactions are happening outside our premises with 89.5% of the transactions happening on digital platforms. The convenience we have delivered by making bank banking to be just clicks on mobile phones or on laptops or that is what has delivered unparalleled. And of course, thinking about our staff, the capability, the convenience and being an employer of choice. But essentially, all this is being brought by the capability we have put at the disposal of staff, capability we have put at the disposal of customers and the capability that allows the execution of strategy. And that is because of engineering our processes and having systems that have the capacity to deliver on order. And that is put together through a very effective governance structure that has capability that is vision, that is globally exposed, highly competent and structured in a way that it frictionlessly. That is what has built equity. So when you look at then the impact of all this in the transformation, you see an organization going through change, but change that is focused to impact an entire continent and that is mapped on the needs and aspirations of community and looking at where we are in the evolution of our economies and playing a catalytic role to ensure development takes place. We are strong believers that private sector have a huge role in financing development. That is why we obsessed with agriculture, manufacturing because we believe those are the drivers without forgetting the social investment, particularly in health and education so that you could have the right outcomes. And knowing scale is everything. Scale is everything and hence, having the ambition of 100 million customers so that we can enjoy the economies of scale and that we can have the network effect that will be necessary to build capability. And then, of course, when you roll out this, then you start seeing how it takes ships in the strategic outcomes. And we can see it's a challenge, it's an ambition. And we are honest and humble to say this is an ambition we set for ourselves to deliver. We are convinced we will deliver, and that explains why we focus on technology because we have realized we have to use the levers of technology. We have to empower people. We have eventually to become a platform. But we believe by 2030, we'll be able to deliver on this big dream. We may be behind schedule as reflected. But when you start looking where we came from, agriculture 5 years ago, we had only 3% of our loan book being in agriculture. We are now 3x that in 5 years. If we have to be 3x where we are in the next 5 years, we will have delivered on our vision. And that's why systems is what we leverage on to build these numbers. Now let's look at the banking group because, as I said, we are a financial group that is very strong in banking and insurance. And banking is where we started upfront. That's where scale has been achieved. And we are glad that other than Uganda, that just in [indiscernible] every other subsidiary is in a very good place, particularly when you look at return on average assets. And I take real pride that it took Kenya 16 years to reach a 4% return on asset. But we can now see Rwanda is above 4% Tanzania is above 4%, DLC and Uganda are coming out well. So you see the region is maturing and has matured very very quick. If you look at return on equity, we now start seeing Rwanda, Tanzania challenging Kenya and outperforming Kenya despite its maturity. And these are young investments. So we see the headroom of growth, particularly supported by the tailwind of rapid growth in the region, transformation and modernization of the region. But when you go behind these returns, then you see the biggest achievement we have made in terms of banking group is the diversification. This time last year, first quarter, the region subsidiaries were only contributing 47% of deposits. They are now at 50%. In terms of loan, they are contributing 48%. They are now at 54%, suggesting they are growing much faster than Kenya and suggesting that we are quickly consolidating our position being a Pan-African bank and Kenya becoming our headquarters. So when you look at assets, the last time -- last year, this time, we were at 47%, now 52%. So broadly, when you look at -- you could say every parameter, we are now more than 50% a regional bank and lost the view of us being a Kenyan bank, but we are glad that, that has achieved. But I think the most significant one to look at is the return on equity and return on assets because it gives you sustainability and the quality of this expansion. It's not expansion for the sake of it is to achieve the business objectives. And I would like maybe to add that capital deployment has been optimized. It's not -- and that is why we are comfortable because of being able to optimize capital then we are sufficiently funded by internally generated cash to sustain the momentum of region of growth because the capital is drawing the right return. When we move on and do a deep dive at the balance sheet, we see what we have really been looking for for many years, bouncing back. We have been debating where will growth come from. What we see this largest balance sheet in the region is growing at 16%. And that's when we start having that growth of a balance sheet of KES 2 trillion, growing at 16%, 100 and it's huge growth, 300 billion. NGN 300 billion is a Tier 1 bank, but that is just an annual growth. Another tells you how systemic this organization and how likely economies of scale is likely to maintain. But we're also very grateful that our shareholders continue to maintain the interest to fully capitalize this bank and maintain the gearing ratio pretty well, meet and exceed the capital threshold required to move on. If we look at the asset quality because it's one thing to grow. It's another one to maintain quality of asset. the strength of our bank is not based on its balance sheet, but the quality of the assets that constitute to that balance sheet. And we are glad that our NPLs have been on this journey. Last year, first quarter, our NPLs were at 14%. We're down to 10% and giving us confidence that we will deliver on the promise that we close this year with single-digit NPLs. But what gives me confidence is that it's not just NPLs are coming down, but NPL coverage is increasing from 67% to 72%, showing again recovery is not leading into all the provisions being written back. But recognizing that the rapid growth we may see with this 16% may translate into growth in loan book and we better grow the loan book with coverage. So we are optimistic that we'll continue to deliver this. The second aspect of it is how we stand in the market, and we take pride that we are outperforming the industry. NPLs for the industry are still at 15% when you are at 10%. So that positions you unique, and we hope the market will recognize the unique leadership and managerial capability that we have built in this bank and the unique capability of our staff even in difficult times. to be able to deliver superior outcomes to the industry. It speaks very highly of the quality of management and staff in this organization. And as I have always said, I regret that we are not able to quantify the value of the human asset that this organization. When you look at this -- when it outperform the industry to this extent, then you could really be able to grab. And this slide speaks to me as a person. We came from microfinance. We became a micro, small and medium bank. We have gone through a transformation and change, but we have not changed. We are still the bank of the small, medium enterprises. We have grown to over 2 trillion balance sheet as a regional leader, but we have remained true to our promise to lead people to continue to be a vehicle of transforming the bank and the scud and doing 37% of the entire micro small and medium loans in a country with 80 banks it tells the story of equity and its commitment to the people and recognition where it is needed most. Equity is needed most to change lives, enhance dignity and open opportunities for wealth creation. And this is the segment that is needed most. We take pride that our loan book to SMEs, our disbursement to SME is at least 3x the nearest bank. Again, it shows the commitment that we have to the population and the citizen. And when it comes, we see how efficient we are, again, outperforming our peers, the Tier 1 banks in terms of efficiency in everything we can. The insurance group is coming out very well. I know the slides will be in the investor briefing. You can go into depth. But you can see it has taken market leadership at a very early age when it's still a start-up, bare 3 years old, and we see that group becoming significant, providing leadership and hopefully, like equity banks transforming the insurance industry. So we really focus -- and that is not just at the group level, when you look at the Life business, when you look at the general business, when you look at the life, the health business, they all are performing well and being very steady and giving opportunity to the market. So very good start. We recognize it's still a small component of the group, but has all the trappings of becoming a major group and balancing. -- as we have said in the past, we believe that banking group and insurance group complement each other. One is short term, the other one is long term. One is on balance sheet. The other one is off balance sheet. As one owns asset, the other one holds assets on behalf of people. There's quite a lot of synergies that the 2 complement each other. And during difficult times, we always see coupling the 2 always help to mitigate the challenges because they complement each other and respond differently under stressful conditions. And so we are really committed to getting the insurance becoming big. The investment bank is going to be increasingly very important. as the region grows and investment become a major financial tool to use to unlock that growth. So we are really looking to strengthening the investment bank as we are doing to lose most after COVID, people relaxed a little bit and started coming back to the branches. And we could see the curve on digital channels moving from a high of 89.4% to 83% as people got back to agents, to branches, and you could see the peak that happened. But look at where we are now, we are at higher levels of adoption and use of digital than even at the peak of the COVID period. So people have moved on. And this adoption to us is what will transform this group. This is what will make the group achieve the 100 million customers because increasingly, the customers' decisions are transforming us into a platform. of self-service. It's where we compress distance, we compress time and customers are able to onboard themselves. They're able to consume, they're able to transact whatever time wherever they are. And that then is the wide choice we have given customers for self-service, as you can see, the tools we put at their disposal is what will drive this bank going forward. And you can see customers are even moving away from variable costs like the way they moved away from fixed channels to self-service. And that tells you more about the efficiencies we are likely to move -- to have when you remove fixed cost and variable costs. And the customer, you don't have to invest a customer has their own phone. You don't need to have staff to serve them self. This is a phenomenon that is very unique in this region where the customers are becoming increasingly digital. Whether it's because of COVID, whether it's because of demographics, whether it's because of dominant telecoms that has done a very significant role in sensitizing, we think this is the future of operating businesses. And we are really glad that there is no constraint and that we have the capacity to offer choice to the customers. So technology enabling every decision. We are now at an era of -- so it is not -- we are now beyond the digitization. It's now AI. And the way we have embarked on this saying, and we said it before, we are really glad to hold ourselves is invest massively in our staff. And I'm glad out of 13,000 staff, 12,700, over 80% of our staff are now conversant with AI at different levels. We have almost 600 of our staff enrolled in a master's degree in AI. We have technology coming to build on what we have been building. And so as [ Arion ] said, we are banking on our staff. to really drive the African agenda, to use the twin engine to use systemic infrastructure we have built to transform and to catalize the transformation of the African continent using technology. It's not enough to say we are technology-led until the staff are conversant with the use of technology tools and the power of this is to enhance the productivity of our staff. They can do jobs faster, better quality and much more for the same amount of time. So when you look at all these put together, the nonbanking group continues to make inroads stilling between 3%, but we are happy with 3%. Why are we happy with 3% -- because it's 3% of a very big group, INR 2 trillion balance sheet, 3% is a very big sized organization of a start-up. And so we hold that we will see more and more of this, and we would like to allocate more and more capital. The good thing -- maybe one -- yes, the good thing if you look at the returns, if you look at the insurance return on equity, 65% Invest Bank 24%, insurance 40% nonbanking total is 36% compared to the banking industry at 24%. So capital allocation is optimized. And so we can invest because the returns are almost double what we get in the banking industry. So the bank will be -- this group will be transformed by achievement. And this is what we say. This is quality income. It's not balance sheet based. It's not capital consuming. And so we trust the market to lead it right and start to price us differently in terms of multiples. If we can move on. So when we look at the foundation, which we said is the socio arm, I think we take a lot of pride that the brand has been given a human face. It's a brand of compassion, investing in communities, looking at social investment in health, you can look at health and education and look at the amount of money that we are deploying in those sectors to transform society, but also the investment in the lead economy, agriculture and enterprise to because that's what constitutes hood of the people and support the people. So we truly have taken our seat as a community bank, as a society bank and a bank that really enables society, enables community and that is what protects this bank. The biggest protection of this bank is that it's the face of community, the aspirations of the community and fulfills the desires of the individuals in the community. So the brand is advocacy. -- within community. And symbol on one item that I really take pride of. We started this journey in 1998 of really looking at the most gifted within our society and saying, can we prepare them for leadership because everybody gives way. Today, under the wings to fly and scholarships, we have had 60,000 high schools scholars. 33,000 of them have made it to transition to universities at a rate of 82%. And you can see how they are spread globally, U.S. and Canada, 700; Europe, 100; Asia, 150 and back home best institutions broadly in South Africa, we can see what spread. But it's the demonstration of that our decision was right when you look at 246 of these scholars. Of the 1,115 scholars that we have been able to sell out of the country on scholarship, 246 have gone to avian schools and well spread 87% of them in STEM courses suggesting that this cohort can really provide leadership capability at enterprise level, at corporate level and with the network, they are building with the exposure they are getting, the quality of education, we can bet on them to help in taking the transformation of continent to the next level. So the foundation continues to really deliver on the social, but increasingly, the foundation is now focused on sustainability. Today, I woke up to a headline that most likely we are going to experience El Nino that will be the most sphere in 150 years. And like we are moving to the next phase of climate change, we need to build -- we need to ensure sustainable practices and particularly for the small-scale farmers. We take pride that we have been voted as a bank with the highest number of loans in mitigation and adaptation to climate increasingly partnering with strong partners so that we can take our initiatives to scale so that we protect enterprises, we protect the customers and also protect nature. That intersection and increasingly, this is where we think we can provide great leadership -- so the foundation continues to really propel. And because of the governance structure, we said our strength is in best governance practices. We have attracted global banking partners, funding partners and implementing partners to an extent that the scale, the program skills is one of the largest skills in the world. And that we also have attracted partners to help us manage the risk in the foundation of implementing so that we are balanced. That then leads us to really look at the numbers. And we talked about a 16% growth rate surpassing from KES 1.7 billion to surpassing the KES 230 billion growth within a year, and that growth is led by deposits that as we have seen, has grown by KES 200 billion, supported by capital shareholders' funds that has grown by almost KES 100 billion. That's how KES 300 billion. And as we can see that KES 300 billion has gone to loans, almost KES 70 billion have gone into loans. And as we can see, we have KES 150 billion going into cash and cash equivalents, demonstrating that our readiness and our capability to further growth and to support our customers because of being cash rich. That 16% growth rate of the balance sheet speaks of almost that kind of growth. We saw it nearly 6 years ago, suggesting we have bounced back. The transformation has delivered on what it was incented to do, position the organization to be fit for our types, to be fit for our demographics, to be fit for economic opportunities. And that is why we have bounced back to the traditional growth that we were used to 6 years very huge transformational initiatives, initiatives that has now really brought the outcomes. This balance sheet, as you can see, is very, very agile, very, very agile. If you add the cash and cash equivalent with government securities, it means out of the NGN 2 trillion, 1 trillion is available for disbursement. And that is the scale at which this bank is and can significantly within the region. And so it's something we are really focused on. The growth of the deposits shows the trust the organization is enjoying in the marketplace, but it's the confidence of the shareholders in increasing their capital by 30%. look, the increase in capital is 2x the growth rate of the balance sheet, speaking of the ability of this bank to grow both organically and through mergers and acquisitions as opportunities arise because they say cash is king. -- and 1 trillion of the NGN 2 trillion balance sheet is cash. That is -- and it's very well leveraged and supported by the capital base of the organization at nearly NGN 350 billion. If we take NGN 350 billion and take 25% of it, it tells the organization at 25% -- it has a single obligor of nearly ILS 8 billion. It can do process. So we have graduated to a position of being able to add infrastructure at a single adding obligor of ILS 80 billion. That is how transformed the balance sheet has been. So this change has led very well. When you get a balance sheet that becomes agile, becomes liquid, well capitalized, then you -- as a financial institution as a bank, then you see you are very well positioned to respond to opportunities in the banking. But the bigger impact of this transformation of the balance sheet is on the P&L. That's where the test is. Is it producing the right outcomes. And we see net interest income growing at 15% and masked by nonfuhd income growing at 14%. That ability to grow both nonfathered and fathered at almost the same rate is the outcome of the transformation that we have talked about. And maybe the pat who has really played a very big -- Lerence, you can raise your head, even better start. I wanted to recognize and put him at your disposal. If you want to get more insights, he can take the questions. He joined us from maybe the largest bank on the African continent in South African has really the technical knowledge. And we can see he has helped to reposition and restructure the balance sheet to deliver the nonfunded is managing the balance sheet. Some people call them treasurers, but he's very well supported with trade finance so that we could be able to get to this unlock. Again, we are the team having the right people in an organization with the right skills, with the right competencies that you are able to do. We are now delivering even on helping countries to structure their debt. And when that why? Because the balance sheet is big and you can be able to manage -- it's called debt management or national debt management, that capability will help us such that we can team up with the development banks in the region to help structure. Thank you very much, Darren. So if you look at the total income growth at 15%. But as we said, the efficiencies are creeping in. Other operating expenses down 7%, provisions down 18%, but we also about the massive investment we have in people, getting the right people in place, training and developing an entire staff cohort of that 1,000, equipping them, making them ready. But those to a great extent as one-off, and we see that growth normalize. But we said it's better invest for the future, build the complement that will build the future. Don't build brick-and-mortar and forget the brain that we run. It's not enough to build a train if you are not building and developing the pilots to try the brain safely and to keep the customers of the airline safe and delivering them to their destination. So total cost growing at 4% when total income is growing at 15%, positively the jaws opening up, and that gives us a 21% growth in profit before tax and profit after tax of 24%, which goes straight to the shareholders with earnings per share going up 24%. So the most significant thing to note is the nonfunded income. Last year is when we first experienced that huge transformation in the structure of our income, the quality of the income. And I was asked many questions. Is this sustainable? -- the answer is we're even performing better than last year. And I can commit that we will see better and better chances by next year, we'll start seeing the shift. At the moment, nonfathered income is 40% Fathd income 60%. I expect by next year, we'll start seeing 45%, 55%. 2028 chances we see the group having more nonfathered income because of the technology capability than fed income. That is likely to be a scenario. I hope theerence, you can bring it, but that is how we are seeing the change, the transformation. Efficiencies, we are seeing and I'm excited that other operating expenses last year had a big. This year has a big cr. I'm optimistic we will continue to see that as productivity of staff increased significantly because of using AI, productivity increasing significantly, using AI in decision-making, the quality of decision, particularly loans, NPLs continuing to come down, we expect this P&L to really optimize and have assurances that the shocks and of cycles will not be disrupting because only less than 50% of our income will be from balance sheet. So for investors making decisions, this is no longer a traditional bank. And I hope we will see investors rethink how they price their investment because we're increasingly becoming a technology group and hopefully, we migrate to valuations of technology platform, doing business in financial services, not a traditional bank, but a platform with financial licenses. And more importantly, significantly reducing reliance on balance sheet on balance sheet income and doing transactional payments, nonfunded income to drive the P&L. What that also means is that 50% of the P&L doesn't require capital deployment. It's off balance sheet. And that truly will speak of the efficiency in capital deployment. And that also explains why because this question keeps on coming. How can you sustain this growth without raising capital? It's because as we grow less and less of the balance sheet require capital. because we are seeking to drive non-funded cost. So I hope that helps the investors to really appreciate. We will continue to become capital-light in terms of balance sheet. And Brent would be able to articulate this. So if you have a question, Brent would be able to jump on this and articulate more. We are also excited that when you look at the ratios, everything seems to be grew. One would ask why is return on equity it's simply because the balance sheet is growing faster, much faster. And of course, that explains but that by the end of the year, we settle down when profit will have accumulated during the year. This is upfront growth of balance sheet. Sweat that balance sheet bring into profit, and I expect that return on equity this year to approach 30%, exceeding by far where we were last year. In terms of, go to deep into ratios. We see capital at core capital at 17.7% against 10%. That tells you how well capitalized, how big the buffers are. They are 70% above the legal requirement and 19% versus a legal requirement of 14%. So that also people who are James, you have said -- we want to be in 15 countries by 2030. We need to reach 100 million customers. So it's both organic and acquisition, but we are very well positioned to do that. And when you look at liquidity of 65%, as we earlier said, more than 50% of the balance sheet of 1 trillion is in cash and near cash. The bank could never be better positioned to unlock the opportunities they are. And you can see the efficiencies. Despite what has happened, we have reduced our interest rates significantly from 24 to 16 the margins because of improving asset quality. That really explained productivity of staff is coming on and that explains, but the most visible cost you may want to note is the use of technology, the productivity of staff enhancement. We are reducing our cost-to-income ratio. And during the year, we have moved from 51% to 54%. And that explains why we have a forecast that we should be able to go below 50% by the end of this year. Cost of risk, as we see, coming to closer to where we anticipated it, 1.2% and hopefully, next year going to below 1% cost of risk and then be at a very equillibrium point to unlock the value of the growth we are seeing building up. When you compare our projections and promise to the investors against the actual, we are outperforming our guidance. And so we are very happy that almost in every parameter, we have outperformed that. So the momentum is building. Momentum is building. We are aware investors that this guidance was very ambitious, particularly on deposits, but we are happy that we have even exceeded the upper limit of our guidance in terms of deposits. And we are -- what does that mean? It means we are going back to our original position where this bank is founded on the liability side is the liability franchise that this bank and that growth loan book being above the limit that also gives us confidence that the environment is at a light position, return on average assets maintaining that growth. Despite that growth in assets of 16%, we are at the peak of 4% return on assets. And as we said, subsidiaries at 53%, light above the mid of the range that we had given and the same above about subsidiaries contribution. What it means is that -- we now have our fingers on the path and the drivers of this organization. We understand and we can pull the levers. And because of resilience, we're able to respond quickly to environmental changes and maintain the equilibrium in terms of performance. The management also has the capability and competence now to understand the business and be in control other than be shocks, putting us out of track. We are able to navigate and manage the shock, and I'm very, very proud to be leading a team that has that competence and capability, not to take control even when waves count, even when turbulence comes headwinds, the team is able to navigate comfortably without discomfort in terms of variance with the trajectory. We are able to keep on the freight path as promised and deliver on time and in a qualitative way. So that broadly is what we had for you, but we have told you our view. We invite you now to interrogate this number to seek clarification to express your views and opinion and have a team of colleagues who will help direct the questions. Thank you very much for the attention. So who has the first question? I took a lot of time to explain. It looks like we don't have a question.

Very good. I like the online questions. But we can be taking an opening question from the floor. Very good. Let me take the questions. The first question on LinkedIn is from Josh. He's the Founder and CEO of Trade Africa Group. I would like to inquire if Equity Bank has any investment for initiatives meant to accelerate the implementation of the African continent of free trade area. The answer is yes. As we said, the reason why we have strengthened trade finance is to orchestrate that trade. The reason why we have focused on expanding to 15 countries is to be able to anchor that trade. The reason we have chosen to be systemic in every country is to be able to support cross-border trade. Maybe I will go to the MD of Kenya and the MD of DRC. How are you supporting and what tools and products do you have for African continental trade area, trade financing and cross-border business?

Thank you very much, GC and Josh, for the question. As a bank, as Gio explained, one of the core things in our strategy is fast opening trade routes, which is something as a Kenya business, we've been invested in. We invested that in a couple of ways. One is first to set the capabilities that enable us to open those trade routes. So we've found ourselves having a Chinese desk. We found -- we've set up a very vibrant European desk, and we continue to set up desks in areas which enables us, first of all, to be able to open Kenya businesses to the world. And if you saw what we did last week where we're able to play a very pivotal role in the French Africa Summit, again, bringing our abilities to introduce businesses from out of Africa into Africa. We've also been able to do that within Africa, which is, to your question, Josh, around the continental free trade area in terms of opening trade routes between various markets to Kenya by enabling us to take Kenya businesses into DRC, for example, where we've been able to do that with over 20 trade missions. We've strengthened our trade routes in Uganda and Tanzania and the like. When you talk of products, then we've also revamped some of our trade finance products, and that's a testament to part of what Gio did present in terms of our growth of net income growth. So we are able to facilitate trade using our normal LC, which is available to all our customers irrespective of your size. If you need to trade across borders, we'll be able to do that. We bundled up that with very easy FX solutions for you as well that when you come, you'll find the whole package in-house in Kenya as a market. Thanks, James.

I think in addition to what Kenya has done in the DRC, we've also taken advantage on our position as a systemic bank. So we've observed a surge in public investment basically on how the DRC is opening up on our trade corridors, not only within the DRC, but as well linking to other neighboring countries. But the most, I think, important investment was in terms of internal capabilities. So what we have done basically beyond the technology infrastructure, we've also attracted great talent. So those talent can really help us to get into the discussions with many partners, not only with the government but as well as public sector, but more and more with DFIs. So through our product capabilities, so we can play a role in sustaining trade, not only within the PRC, but linking to all the neighboring countries. Thank you.

Maybe, Terence, from a trade finance treasury perspective, maybe -- yes, maybe we could have a mic go to Eva and the Director of Trade Finance also.

Thank you, Dr. James. So what we have also focusing on, particularly over the past few months is to deliver structured trade financing solutions. And we worked on bundling those structured trade finance solutions with treasury solutions, which are tailored to specifically meet our client requirements and needs. So it's client-centric solutions that we have worked on. So you would see also -- and that's one of the reasons why the nonfunded income line has increased over time is because we have structured those solutions to solve specific client-centric solutions.

Let's say, at the group level, it's also visiting the clients. So there has been multiple visits to multiple markets over the last few months to ensure that we continue to calibrate what we -- the solutions that we have to obviously meet that continuous need, not just now but also into the future. Thank you, James.

Thank you very much. Eva, products are not adequate unless you have a platform to enable payments. Eva is Director -- Group Director for payments.

Thanks, James. Indeed, cross-border trade can only be. Fulfilled if last mile or payments have been enabled. And we have diversity when it comes to our payments offering, both proprietary and partner solutions. We have, I think, quite proud to have our own proprietary cross-border solutions as well as we're now a member of PAs. We know what Pubs is trying to bridge when it comes to cross-border trade across the region. But also most importantly is being able to deliver payments in simple, safe, secure and affordable ways. So as we go into a technology-led model, that's what our promise to the African continent is being able to offer this on a single platform with all the diversity that exists.

Thank you very much. So Josh, you can see we can partner in many, many touch points. so as to facilitate trade. I may say the big one, Josh, we -- and I'm championing this because I'm a strong believer in infrastructure is everything is digital public infrastructure to modernize the -- our economies and to give visibility to everybody in Africa who wants to do trade. So if we get our governments to implement digital fabric infrastructure, primarily interoperable system, data regulations more importantly, digital IDs that really validate who one is, then we could see more and more of trade. If we could layer credit scoring on top of this digital public infrastructure and behavioral scoring, then that will really verify the capability, the competence of a person, and we could do trade with each other like we know each other forever because of the information that would be in a person's citizen wallet that builds the digital ID. So it's imperative that we'll be able to do this. If we create innovative layer on public digital infrastructure with a bias to add trade facilitation and particularly movement of documents, then that becomes easier. Of course, we will require reforms, which we are also focusing on to allow cross-border trade with limited inhibitions. The second question comes from [indiscernible] Tech. Is young Africa [indiscernible] Kenyan training program still available. Those trainings are very impactful to our businesses, Dr. John.

Thank you very much, Dr. Mani, and thanks for the question from Oasis. The Young Africa WA program was one of our very successful and flagship programs in enterprise development and financial literacy within the foundation. It's a 5-year program that started in 2019, where we partnered with Mastercard Foundation, targeting to create a total of 810,000 jobs over the 5-year period. We're very pleased upon reflection of the close of the program last year to have noted that the program was able to create over 2.5 million jobs, pretty much triple the target or beyond triple the target of what has been aspired in terms of job creation for young people with a focus on young women specifically. Beyond that, when we look at it in terms of how much it was able to fuel in terms of enterprise growth for those MSMEs, we saw a 65x multiplication in terms of the investment that had been put into that program, but it also was able to open up in terms of access to finance to drive these MSMEs. In summary, over the 5-year period, the program was able to avail a total to date of KES 441 billion for those MSMEs, which have continued to grow. Beyond the close of the program, of course, as we transition to its second phase, we've continued to see reach to these MSMEs grow. As at the close of the program, we had impacted 720,000 MSMEs. But since the close of the program and to date, that number has since grown to over KES 1 million. It's currently at 119 MSMEs that have been read through the program. So given the success, it only goes without saying that now we are looking at it to say when we speak about financial inclusion and reaching populations that were previously excluded, goes without saying that we are now designing Phase 2 to see how can we be more inclusive, how can we continue to promote the growth of those MSMEs through our 3-tier program on entrepreneurship, education, financial literacy and then digital literacy as well. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Those numbers my boggling, train 980, then 670,000. They each created an average of 4 to 5 jobs and that created over 3.1 million jobs. And we rent USD 5.1 billion. The program has continued. We are scaling it because that was piloting and derisking and now we have institutionalized it within the foundation and the branch -- the subsidiaries, and we are also looking for partners to be able to take it to the next level to try and convert the demographics into demographic dividends, creating job creators, creating entrepreneurs and creating employers. To the Chief pharmacist, you can take the floor. The question is how far has the Equity Group progressed with its plan to produce pharmaceutical products to support the Equitia hospitals.

So with the Equityfy hospitals or the primary care clinics that we do, we are in the process of doing the backward integration, working with the manufacturers directly, and it's a phase-wise approach. What we are doing is we're actually working with our current local manufacturers in Kenya and in East Africa and identifying what are the products they're making, and we are largest consumer in our formulary to have the locally manufactured products. And we're in dialogue to do the economies of scale. For the manufacturing, it's about the economies of scale, and we're working with them to identify the volumes of the key essential drugs that are used in our primary care clinics and also in the country, identifying what are the opportunities within the country, working with also the ministry to be able to see how we can work with them and see what are the Kenya national strategic programs for the local manufacturing so that we can also have a seat there and identify what are the molecules we want to make in the country, in the region. Also, we are working with the governments outside Kenya as well. We are working with Indian governments as well because 90% of the pharmaceuticals that come into the African continent are manufactured in India. So we're also in dialogue to identify opportunities to manufacture in the continent, and the bank has been aggressively supporting the local manufacturers in the region to enable them to procurement of the equipment, derisking their investments so that we can actually make this country ready. So it is definitely a phase-wise approach, and we are hopeful that by 2030, we should be able to help the pharmaceutical be part of the manufacturing ARP initiatives, and we are working towards that.

I make it [indiscernible] we have 154 Equity Afia clinics. They are seeing 200,000 patients per month. We have become the largest consumer of pharmaceutical products in the region. To increase that consumption to a level we could be able to negotiate for contract manufacture or to manufacture ourselves, we are working to open up independent 1,000 pharmacies. The first pharmacy that is the pilot pharmacy has opened so that we could be able to aggregate and then bring affordability of pharmaceutical products at scale at country level such that you are able to get them from Equity Afia 1,000 pharmacies. The is to reduce the cost of commodities by between 60% and 80% to contract. And that's why we're looking at even global manufacturers. So that's but it needs to be done differently. I think there is a question from Baulen Morris to me about 2030 being in 15 countries, which countries? Jimmy Bogo, Citizen TV asked the same question and when it's open secret that we want to be in 15 countries by 2030. And it's also open that we adopt a creeping strategy to expand because we follow trade routes. And if you look at our first country was Uganda because we had the highest traffic on that route in terms of trade. Then we went to Tanzania to Rwanda to South Sudan. And when DRC joined the East African community, it became the biggest traffic between Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, so we went there. We have seen the construction of the Robit corridor linking Angola and DRC. Even that we have become systemic, a 24% market share in DRC. Corrido is controlling maybe 24% of the trade. That corridor makes Agora attractive. But that corridor also extends to Zambia and Mozambique because of Tanzania, the Tazara railway line is being rehabilitated because of the trade volume, because of commodities. So those 3 countries become countries of great interest. And we all know that we are completely interlinked with Ethiopia. We have been in Ethiopia with the rep office for the last 7 years. So again, Ethiopia. So I would rank those as the top priority because of the trade routes. And then if we get into those countries, we'll see where else the trade route leads us because we still have 5 years to go. Brent, a question from you from Joshua and strong Q1 results, which investment areas does the group see as the biggest drivers of long-term growth and shareholder value?

So let me bring out maybe 3 points from our results that one should observe in terms of answering that question. So the first point is growth momentum, as James mentioned. And this momentum is underpinned largely by our ability to replicate what we've done in Kenya in the other subsidiaries. So the growth momentum that you're seeing and that will drive long-term growth and shareholder value is the geographic diversification that you've seen over the number of years. And as James mentioned, this will continue into new markets. So 52% of our earnings are now outside of Kenya. And importantly, you'll notice in the presentation that those subsidiaries outside of Kenya is growing 34% profit after tax. This is compared -- but bear in mind also, Kenya is still growing at 14% or 21% profit after tax. What is also important to appreciate with the growth momentum and Terence and Brent in terms of trade finance, treasury, what we're doing in payments with Eva is productivity and capability diversification. So just to give you some numbers, nonfunded income contributing 40%, growing at 14%. And within that, you'll see diversification in capabilities in terms of insurance, growing 59% profit in terms of 59% revenue, FX revenue growing 24% and fee and commission income growing 28%. So our allocation of resources and capital into geographies, into different product suites reflect our ability to create shareholder value. There is an upfront cost that comes to this. There was a lot of hesitation in our allocation of capital into the DRC. DRC is now contributing 1/3 of the business and generating higher returns or will generate or has generated higher returns than Kenya if you look at the 2025 results. Now what is also important is the ability to preserve the shareholder value, and that speaks to the risk management that we're putting in place, but also speaks to the fortress balance sheet that we currently have in such an environment that we're operating in. So you'll see our liquidity levels, our capital position has sufficient buffers for us to weather any of the shocks while we grow the business. And then thirdly is around what one would call latent value. James mentioned that we're sitting with a lot of liquidity. If you look at our proportion of loans, we have significant capacity to continue lending to customers. And again, this speaks to the business model that we have put in place. So the biggest drivers of shareholder value is the ability of management to weather the storms, more importantly, in terms of downside risk, but importantly, of growing the value is our ability to replicate what we've done in markets like Kenya into new regions. So we believe expanding into new markets, putting investment into new product capabilities, including what we're looking to do on the technology front with a lot of investment there will deliver higher returns and dividends going forward as well.

Thank you very much, Brent. asked which specific sectors in equity -- is equity country most bullish on for Ring and why? And what are some of the measures we are taking to bring up the nonfunded income stream? I think that we have answered. So which areas are we really bullish. We all are aware of the African recovery and resilient plan is our framework that demonstrates the opportunities on the African continent. Majority of our people are in trade. So we are very strong in facilitating trade using creative trade finance instruments, treasury instruments. So trade is very, very important because that's where the bulk of the people are. The second area that we have really focused on is creating global ecosystems for the products that we produce. And we have single past tea, and we know what we have done with the French government. We have been able to establish the European market for specialty tea through France. We're doing the same, the global market for coffee through Italy, livestock through Italy through partnerships that links our producers with the global consumer through established ecosystems. We are facilitating those ecosystems, and we would like to have our SMEs populate those ecosystem, and that is a huge area. We're helping livestock, those in the leather industry to acquire equipment for the leather industry supported with financing from Italy and linked to the offtake arrangement that we have made on leather. So that level of ecosystem building, global ecosystem, linking our producers to the producer to the market and removing the brokers. That is an area we are really, really fighting. The other area that we all know is agriculture. And we saw the contradiction that we were only giving 3% of our loan book to agriculture when agriculture was contributing 30%. And we felt that, that was why agriculture was not transforming fast enough. It was not modernizing enough. I'm glad that at the group level, we are now nearly 11% of our entire loan book in agriculture. But we are very, very proud of Kenya, which is now at 16% of its entire loan book. But in agriculture is the entire value chain from production to agro processing and populating global ecosystem. So that's how we are doing. Of great interest and which we have done with a lot of pride is going to DRC and challenging Cor to also become active parts in the mining industry. And I'm glad that we have received a proposal and analyzed and approved a proposal of $400 million to set the Cokori's own mining that we are actively participating in the entire ecosystem. I think the biggest contribution we have made in DRC is value addition on its mineral resources. We entered -- when we entered Coppa DRC, copper was being sold as. We then went to sheets. We at cathode and power generation for those plants. So there quite a lot of financing to make value addition to be done in Kenya. So agricultural produce, agro processing, Minerals manufacturing to produce the final product. It's our hope that we shall see the strategic minerals being processed in Africa and specifically in DRC. We are supporting and we signed up with the World Bank to really sponsor the development of ingots to generate power to allow DRC to do value addition on its strategic minerals. So essentially, it's all areas of value addition, all areas of production, all areas of trade. But of significant importance is to support also social investment in health and education. because that determines the quality of the human capital, the productivity of the human capital. And that explains why we are in pharmaceuticals, why we are in education across the board, including financing universities. The last one is the fintech space. And that's where I'm very, very proud that we have been able to start our first hub to facilitate innovations. And we are learning how to finance IP as much as venture studios so that we can lead it up into talent. And I'm sure you also when we forecast during last week's summit, part of the sponsors of the concert where we launched our African creative African initiative so that we can find talent. We use talent so that our young people are fed to really drive innovations that are built around their talent and capability. Moa, I think the same question, Zambia, Mozambique, Gora, we have confirmed our ambition in terms of timing, we prefer mergers and acquisitions. So that timing is when the opportunity crystallizes and when we are happy with an opportunity. And yes, very impressive first quarter. Do I expect a higher dividend this year? Naturally, that would be the expectations. But as usual, we commit, we affirm that we abide by the policy. And because Mu, you have asked when are we entering the 4 countries. If it happens to be this year, then we do -- we will guarantee you the 30%, but how much more we can pay will be the trade-off between investment. And -- but as we said, we're very well capitalized. We're in a position to progressively dynamically meet the expectations of our staff. It seems that -- very good. There is a question. And in that manufacturing concept, where are we disbursing most, we have formed a significant partnership with the Chinese investors in this region. And we really -- maybe the Chinese team can take the mic and explain a little bit how you are getting our customers populate the supply chain of the Chinese companies because undoubtedly, if you look at [indiscernible], the entire 150 billion-plus project for its completion, we need a lot of SMEs to operate that entire project value chain. So we have become specific. Those 2 colleagues fluent in Chinese, understand the Chinese culture, and I'm really glad 80% of the Chinese companies operating in DRC, we are their bankers. We take a lot of pride, but our greatest pride is when we get them to partner with our customers and get them in the value chain. How are we doing in that area?

Okay. Thank you, Dr. Mwangi. My name is Claire. I'm from China debt business. Currently, we are a group of 4, but we have ambitions to grow this business. We have onboarded over about 5,000 corporates, SMEs and Chinese individuals. And we are good in trade, manufacturing, construction and real estate. Currently, we have a balance sheet of about CNY 20 billion in assets -- in liabilities and CNY 10 billion funded assets and CNY 20 billion unfunded assets. And especially on the real estate side, we have onboarded over 100 real estate developers and they built over 100,000 units per annum, and we have a market share of 80%.

Thank you, Claire. M, allow me to say in our way... Yes. So in line with what we are doing, especially in the group and in line with the Belt and Road initiative and also the Labs project going to Ethiopia all the way, I think also the Chinese using the S crude also online to support this. So my team and I, we are happy through the leadership of KG and Baga to also support the group. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Two questions, Ra -- and the question is on capital allocation to investment FAD. Linda, I would like to invite you to speak to Richard Asset Manager, MD for Asset Management MD for the Investment Bank for forecast conversation on our investment in FA. David Kato would like to know about the issuance of shares at Equity Bank and Qatar equity shares are listed in the Nairobi Stock Exchange. We are the largest bank by market capitalization in the Nairobi Stock Exchange. easily buy shares from any broker -- our investment bank can support you, and we can also -- the business should also be able to support you. Let me close by revisiting the P&L or the income statement, Alex, we are able to project that. And broadly look at not the guidance, but the financial statement. Our balance sheet has grown by 16% from ILS 1.7 trillion to ILS 3.4 trillion, a 16% growth. It has been driven by our deposit growth, which have grown by 13% from ILS 1.3 trillion to nearly ILS 1.5 trillion. Our shareholders' funds have increased by 30% from KES 25 billion to KES 24 billion. And that 25% of that KES 344 billion is what gives us our single lending obrica. When you look at the P&L, our net interest income have grown by 15% from KES 28.6 billion to KES 33 billion, while our nonfunded income has grown by 14% from KES 19.6 billion to KES 22.3 billion, giving us total income growth of 15% from KES 48 billion to KES 55 billion. And we look at profit before tax have grown by 31% from KES 18.7 billion to KES 24.5 billion. And then our profit after tax have grown by 24% from KES 15.4 billion to KES 19.1 billion and earnings per share has grown by 24% from KES 3.9 to KES 4.9. So that broadly is the summary of the performance of the equity group for the first quarter and for year-on-year for the year results. I can see there is one more question, please.

Thank you for that Jame Mwangi. Dr. My name is Tim from the trading room, and I have 3 questions, 2 domestic international. the regional one has been settled. The first one is credit pricing, the implementation of the risk-based credit pricing. What's the update on that? And then the second one, the group has identified 2 risks, key external risks of the oil shock and the fiscal pressures. What is the impact of that on group revenue for the year and to add another intervening variable, elections are not near the periphery, but those on the horizon, what is the impact of that on the group revenue? And how does that not to the insurance? The third question, which is international has been settled. is about the ambition of 30 million customers, the candidate strategies, organic or inorganic and the candidate countries for that expansion.

Thank you very much. I think Alex, let's get to the ratios. I think we have to give -- but let me be answering your question. The ambition of this group is to be the leading pan-African bank that understand the needs of Africans, that understand the African terrain that understand the nuances and the culture of the people. If you look, we owe our success to developing a banking model that bank to those who had been codemned as unbankable, those who were excluded. And that is why we feel that we have a huge opportunity to expand so that we provide what is uniquely African archecture and built to answer to our specific needs as a society. And that also explains why we have been very successful. We have been able to replicate ourselves in whichever market we go and become systemic, irrespective of what people think of the risk and challenges. Why? Because we are market-driven. -- we respond to the needs. And that's why we want to do it gradually systematically, and that's why the of 15 countries. The impact of the gap, the elections, we are 40-year old. And if you take 40 years with the cycle of 5 years election cycles, we have seen 8 elections. And we have come to understand what elections mean how to navigate that cycle. Since 2016, we have really been able to survive 6 shocks. The first one was interest cutting 2016 to 2023. The second shock was the COVID shock. The third shock was the disruption of supply chains by COVID-2, a health pandemic on one hand, disrupting people and their life and then disruption of supply chain third shock. Then came Ukraine-Russia, which led into an energy crisis a food crisis, leading both to lead into the worst macroeconomic environment since the '70s, where interest rates went extremely high, inflation -- global inflation went very, very high. Volatility in currencies went -- and what we have learned is how to manage shocks. We now -- we then went to the crisis of Israel, Palestine. And now we are dealing with Iran, Middle East crisis. And now what we said, how do we build resilience that we normalize shocks. We say shocks are part of parcel of what we have to manage. And we are managing that one using technology because technology helps us to be agile. We are managing that by managing our balance sheet, making the balance sheet very resilient, and we said using capital buffers, using asset quality and the way we manage assets, using our liquidity. But more importantly, investing in human capital that whose productivity is significant, is able to use the tools, technological tools of AI. So we expect that capability to manage shocks is what we will continue to use. Other warnings are very, very strong, like the area that we have really focused on is trade, oil trade and all that are likely to be disrupted. So how do you deal with that? Our fertilizers are likely to be disrupted. How do you deal with that? Elections come and go, and we try to ensure we support our communities with the resilience that we have been able to build. So that's broadly how we are managing and helping customers to manage shocks as they become. But we have assumed shock management is now no more way of managing the environment. The shocks that we are receiving both political, particularly geopolitical considerations, economic shocks, legal shocks, technological shocks, macroeconomic shocks. So we have built templates on how to manage that. And we have responded most by structuring our balance sheet to make it agile to bed to these shocks. And we have said that balance sheet, if you look is very liquid, heavily capitalized and structured to be agile. Thank you very much for those 4 great questions. Alex, thank you very much for the opportunity to present to our investors, to the analysts and the public. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Dr. Mwangi. And again, I want to thank all of you for joining us here physically. And for those who are following us online, the investor booklet is already uploaded on our website together with the financial results as well as the press release and our team of Investor Relations is still available to answer your questions. There will be an investor call and we will share the details in your respective e-mails. I want to request all of us to be abstanding for the equity anthem and then final players. Once again, thank you for joining us today. God breh [indiscernible].

Thank you for guiding us through this meeting for blessing our time together as we pray we grateful for your faithfulness, your goodness and your my. -- as we look forward to the year 2026. We continue to commit ourselves to you, you may guide us in every decision to pray for in every season and clarity when the way is uncertain, our lights, direct our parts and help us to work with your purpose. We pray that you may continue to release define ideas, creative solutions and strategies that will create value to the customers we serve and all the stakeholders in the business. We want to thank you all for our investors, shareholders. We thank you for the service providers and all who partner with us in growing this business. Bless us indeed and enlarge our territory, increase our influence and expand our reach, strengthen us even as we continue to steward the resources that you have entrusted to us. Lord as we leave for this meeting and for the rest of the day, help us to work in diligence, integrity and unity and let our work bear fruit, bless us and bless all our customers and all the members of the organization. Now the bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May he lift his count on you and give you peace and then blessing or good father, son and the whole spirit be with you now and always. God bless you.