FCMB Group Plc (FCMB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the FCMB Group Plc First Half 2024 Investors and Analyst Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please note that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker, Mr. Ladi Balogun, Group Chief Executive Officer for FCMB Group Plc. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our H1 2024 investors and analyst presentation. I have in the room with me, my colleagues, Tunji Onamusi, who is Head of Investor Relations; Mr. Gbolahan Joshua, Chief Operating Officer, FCMB Group; Mr. Deji Fayose, Chief Financial Officer, FCMB Group. We also have Mr. James Ilori, the CEO of FCMB Asset Management; Mr. Femi Badeji, the Executive Director, Corporate and Investment Banking in FCMB Group; Mr. Chuk Nwanze, the CEO of Credit Direct Limited; Mr. Yemisi Edun, CEO of FCMB Limited; the Nigerian Bank and Ms. Toyin Olaiya, our Chief Risk Officer. We will be running a slightly different format to our presentation to what you were used to. We will only have 3 speakers to make it more efficient. I will take you through, if you move to Slide 2, you will see the agenda. I will take you through the highlights and strategic updates. And we will then have our CFO, take you through the group performance review, the banking performance review, the nonbanking division's performance review. And then we will have our Chief Operating Officer, take us through the digital business review, and I will close by giving you what our outlook is. If I move to Slide 3. I think it's just important to state what many of you already know that we are currently in the market with a public offer, and we're raising 15 billion shares approximately at the price of NGN 7.30 per share. We are very pleased with the reception, the offers receiving a few days in. We're just rounding up the first week, and we are open until the fourth of September. This is the first phase of a 3-phase plan to raise NGN 397 billion in total. We will be immediately after this closing a private placement of approximately somewhere between $30 million to $40 million that will be convertible at this price sometime next year. This is really designed to make sure we manage our EPS and dividend per share in 2024 and also ensure that we provide those foreign investors that have indicated interest, better visibility on where the currency is headed before they convert next year. We then -- and that's all part of Phase 1, which basically represents what we see as the main dilutive part of our public or capital raising program. Phase 2 will be minority sales in 2 of our subsidiaries. In other words, selling somewhere between 25% and 30% in 2 of our subsidiaries, and we have a target amount we expect to raise that. And Phase III, we are working currently on a preference share private placement towards the end of 2025, which will close the gap and take us to the NGN 397 billion. These plans are tentative as they become more firm, we'll be able to give specific numbers. But in all instances, I would say that we are already in flight for all stages of the plan. And we expect that we will close the public offer, as I mentioned, on the 4th of September, and then the other elements will begin to close very rapidly. It's our objective to ensure that we keep a very close watch on earnings per share and dividend per share, although there may be a slight dip in 2024 because the funds will probably come in late sometime in Q4, and from this offer. However, we expect that from 2025 onwards, EPS should be growing fairly rapidly throughout all aspects of -- every aspect of the total raising program that we're doing. We'll still ensure that EPS grows very strongly. More details can be provided during Q&A, if anyone wants that, but I will move on to Slide #4. A quick snapshot of our performance in H1. We had a strong H1 where we saw most of our volume indices growing by somewhere between in terms of business volumes, on balance sheet, growing between 50% to 60% with total assets growing at 60%, deposits 63% and loans 58%. Our asset management business exhibited fairly robust growth of 35% ahead of market broadly. And we saw 13% growth in our customers to 13.3 million customers. Overall profit growth was 68%, and we closed H1 at NGN 64.2 billion. Quick recap of our strategy and an update on how we're performing in terms of the sort of key metrics that we track for that strategy. We have an ecosystem that we're building, which has a clear purpose, which is to foster inclusive and sustainable growth in the communities we serve and we seek to do this by connecting people, capital end markets. There are 6 key elements to our ecosystem, the first being our platforms, which are fundamentally our businesses. Banking, consumer finance, investment banking and investment management -- the platforms that I would say are live at scale and materially contributing to our earnings. We are in the process of incorporating a technology holding company that will hold 2 businesses, a cross-border payments business that we have launched under the brand name Rova out of the U.K., it's still in, what I would describe as, a soft commercial launch but customers are onboarding steadily onto that, and we're getting a lot of insights, and we want to begin growing that more next year and a Banking as a Service platform that offers both digital banking platform technology to our customers as well as wallets and virtual accounts to our customers. And that we expect will also be scaling increasingly both this year and on to next year. Our products are fundamentally in payments, lending, FX, wealth, brokerage and financial advisory. And we are offering a growing array of third-party products in our ecosystem, insurance, airtime, data, and business and technology services. Our capital, which is both our own capital, which is deployed to support economic growth and the growth of the customers and partners in our ecosystem and third-party capital that comes from DFIs, funds, which we mobilized very intentionally towards supporting our customers and partners in our ecosystem. And of course, our customers are a key part of that ecosystem at 13.3 million and growing and data that we're harvesting and the ecosystem is helping us basically be able to more effectively market and also make decisions. When we look at the -- how this ecosystem is performing, we see very resilient growth across all the platforms that are at scale, with profits of banking growing 47%, profits of consumer finance growing 154% year-on-year, profits in Investment Banking growing 111% year-on-year and Investment Management 33%. As I mentioned earlier, our borderless banking platform is now live. Fundamentally, that provides multicurrency accounts. We're launching remittance services in Q4, and it provides high-yield savings accounts in 3 currencies, GBP, dollar and Naira, and virtual and fiscal cards in multiple jurisdictions. And soon -- whilst it's starting off with individual accounts, we'll be adding business accounts to that. And as I mentioned, this is off the back of our U.K. retail banking license, so we have global operations with that platform. Banking as a Service, I mentioned earlier, that is live. We've seen 18% year-on-year growth. Still fairly low growth as we fine-tune our offerings and make sure that we have a platform that is robust and scalable, but we're already seeing about NGN 293 million in H1, and we expect that this will pick up much more rapidly as we go into 2025. In terms of our products, payments, 24% up year-on-year in value of transactions via mobile NGN 7.7 trillion, lending we saw 58% growth in the books to NGN 2.4 trillion, card and savings accounts grew 41% year-on-year to NGN 2.3 trillion, wealth 35%; and Financial Advisory, we generated fees of over NGN 558 million in H1. Third-party products, we saw 43% growth in insurance revenue, airtime and data revenue was modest at 5% to NGN 807 million and other services stood at NGN 119 million. These are mostly sort of in-app vending services that we offer of other third-party products. One of the key elements of what we're doing is through our investment banking business, helping to raise and mobilize capital both domestically and internationally to support the growth and the development of our economy, and we were able to mobilize over NGN 422 billion in H1 to support our customers. We expect the figure will be significantly higher in H2, thereby topping the almost NGN 1 trillion that we raised for our clients last year. The important thing about the capital that we raised through the investment bank into our ecosystem is that it helps to drive a whole bunch of other activities from transaction banking and other lending opportunities that we are able to now deliver off the back of that capital that we deploy to our customers. Moving on to Slide 6. As I mentioned earlier, we have a stated purpose, which is to foster inclusive and sustainable growth in the communities we serve. And we've begun to establish a number of KPIs by which we track this and also some objectives and key results that we're also following. The first is around financial inclusion. We saw over 800,000 loans generated or dispersed at about NGN 180 billion to individuals, micro-enterprises and SMEs, which was about 126% year-on-year growth. A lot of that coming from digital. And we saw, therefore, the digital lending revenues grow to about NGN 33 billion. On the agency banking side, we're also acquiring customers quite aggressively with over 900,000 customers acquired through our agent network, so increasingly servicing the underbanked or unbanked. And we provided over NGN 10 billion of micro loans to about 46,000 beneficiaries in the first half of the year. Another key area of focus for us is helping to support stability in the exchange rate by driving exports and also diaspora remittances. And in that regard, we facilitated over $900 million of export flows into the country in the first half and $140 million of diaspora remittances. In the promotion of sustainable economic growth and development, we secured over $125 million of DFI funding and donor agency funding to support SMEs, especially women-owned SMEs, the agricultural sector, where we saw lending grow by 20% to over NGN 159 billion in the first half of 2024. We continue to support the growth of businesses, the growth of the small holder farmer community with over 370,000 small holder farmers receiving loans from us through aggregators and 58% of them being women-in-agriculture in rural communities. And that also goes to speak to what we're generally doing on women empowerment with over 200 women owned businesses repeating support and mentorship from us, capacity building for over 800 women-owned SMEs. We disbursed NGN 12.5 billion to women-owned SMEs in terms of funding. Climate action, we now have 79% of our branches and business locations on renewable energy, and we've begun a gas transition plan for the remainder that may be using any form of diesel generators. And then in terms of our customers, we've supported over 14,000 homes and businesses to move to renewable energy. This summarizes the strategic and group highlights that I wanted to give, and I'll now hand you over to Deji Fayose to talk you through the financial performance of the business.

Thank you, Ladi. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I will now pleased to take you through Slide 8 to 24. We cover the group of [indiscernible] with you view, our banking and our nonbanking division review as well. I am pleased to start with Slides 8 to 16. We are going into our group of formats will be in detail. And so the slide on screen is a snapshot of our group income statement. What we can see is a gross earnings year-on-year have grown by 57%, driven by 47% and 13% increase in our net interest income and non-interest income, respectively. This was despite a growth of 40% in operating expenses and also saw a year-on-year decline of 33% in impairments. On the next slide, Slide 9, which we did this quarter. We can see that our interest income grew by 80.6% closing at NGN 269.2 billion at the half year from NGN 149 billion in the previous year. This was largely as a result of our growth in yields on earning assets and whilst our interest expense also increased by 112% due to higher funding costs recorded over the period. And this has led to a decrease in our margins to 5.4%, and we'll touch on that when we get across gross margin slide. On the other hand, our non-interest income grew by 12.6% year-on-year closing by NGN 94.2 billion at the half year, largely driven by a growth in trading income over the period. Our revenues from electronic banking contributed the highest to fees and commission growing by 47% year-on-year despite the decline recorded in foreign exchange revenues year-on-year by 29%. In Slide 10, we see that the above factors I've just mentioned has led to an overall growth of 68% year-on-year profit before tax, which also resulted in a 110 basis point and 20 basis point growth in our return on average equity and return on average assets, respectively. In terms of our group earnings contribution on Slide 11, we recorded resilient year-on-year profitability across all our 4 business divisions as at the end of Half Year 2024, with the consumer finance business growing by, sorry, contributing 154%, investment banking 111%, banking group 47% and investment management 33%. In addition, at the half year, contribution from all our non-banking divisions grew from 19% as at 1H 2023 to 29% in 1H 2024, while the banking group contributed 71%. Slide 12, please. Slide 12, just a snapshot of our Group earning numbers, which I have just discussed in the previous slide. I'll now take you through a breakdown of operating expenses in Slide 13. Increase in our year-on-year operating expenses grew by 48.4% likely as a result of growth in personnel costs following the upward division of remunerations across the group as well as regulatory costs from NDIC and AMCON expenses. And overall, the Group recorded a cost-to-income ratio of 52.3% as at the end of 1H 2024. Slide 14. Net interest margins, like I would touch on before declined to 5.4% at the Half Year from 7.2% in the previous year. This was due to an increase in funding costs over the period and as a result of higher interest rates from the upward review of MPR and increase in CRR which led to the purchase of excessive double digit [indiscernible] liquidity requirements. And the bulk of this deposit ever replaced towards the end of 1H, and we expect that in Group it continues to sustain its net interest margin to respective cost management and yield optimization announcing our overall balance sheet efficiency. In terms of our asset quality, it remains stable, as we can say, an improvement in the NPL ratio to 4.2% at the end of Half Year from 5.2% last year. Our net impairment loss on financial assets also declined year-on-year by 33.4%, which resulted in an overall improvement in our cost of risk, so our cost of risk to 2.6% from 5.9% in the previous year. The next slide is just a snapshot of our ratios. I think quite a number of these have disclosed. So I think we can proceed to the next couple of slides. I will now walk you through Slide 17 to 21, which is the highlight of our banking subsidiary, all right. Year-on-year, our banking subsidiary, total assets have grown by 60%, deposits 63%, and loans 56%. We had a year-on-year decline in our return on equity as well as cost to income ratio, but it was a direct result of the higher profitability levels we have in 2023 from FX valuation income. However, this way we know that operational profit in the banking subsidiary actual evaluation impact as of half year has grown by 85% year-on-year, which has resulted in the 47% growth in PBT close enough with NGN 45.9 billion at half year. Slide 19 highlights the performance of the various business segments and banking subsidiary. [indiscernible] see that's been year-on-year growth in earnings from Personal Banking, SME, treasury, corporate banking. And while we've seen a decline year-on-year in commercial and institutional banking. On Slide 20 and 21, we just want to quickly walk you through our loan portfolio and our loan book. And I'm starting with Slide 20, so we're looking at the loan portfolio by sector and currency segments. Year-on-year, our loan book grew by 53.5% on the back of -- a letter on the back of the devaluation of the Naira. However, there was year-on-year organic growth that we also recorded for manufacturing, finance and insurance, commerce, government, and agriculture. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, we also saw the same group on same sectors, except commerce that dropped. I think going forward, we'll continue to drive growth cautiously through our focus sectors. I think for the loan portfolio, it's also wise to note that there was a drop in our oil and gas downstream quarter-on-quarter coming from the paydown of some trade lines. This one is at good that we can see in other sectors during the quarter, as you can see on the pie chart. All sectors, we didn't plan our regulatory limits and hope to carry this forward as we move into the next half of the year. Slide 21 shows the loan book performance as well along sectors and currency segments. NPL in the bank dropped by 60 basis points year-on-year from 4.9% to 4.3%. And remained flat quarter-on-quarter despite the heightened risk environment and challenging macroeconomic headwinds that we're seeing in the country today. NPL value however, grew year-on-year by 30%, 9% quarter-on-quarter. The year-on-year growth was further caused by deterioration that we saw in real estate commerce and the oil and gas downstream and these loans are all secured and mostly secured and the difference is the workout. 60% of our NPL is coming from the elsewhere portfolio with a balance of 34% from elsewhere while 57% of NPL for fully recycling corporate banking. Our focus is to remain -- sorry, we remain focused on the quality of our loan book. I will consider to monitor the performance in line with our risk appetite. The last section that I will take you through Slides 22 to 24, which is the highlight of our nonbanking divisions. On Slide 22, you can see gross spendings have grown by double or triple digits across that nonbanking divisions, leading to double-digit and -- sorry, leading to double digit and triple digit year-on-year growth in PBT across the 3 divisions, consumer finance, investment banking, and investment management. Other key metrics to note that the decline in NPL and consumer finance business by over 200 basis points year-on-year. And we'll also see a drop in our cost-to-income ratio in invest banking from 50% to 34% and the year-on-year growth in AUM of 35% in our investment management and with the pensions business contributed 70% of total AUM to close about NGN 1.2 trillion as of 1H 2024. Slide 24. So Slide 24 is a snapshot of these businesses are running to a quick summary. So for consumer finance, leveraging digital technologies and from the streamline of operations, it has added over 57,000 new customers at the half year and increased disbursements by 84% year-on-year, which has led to an increase in income from digital originated loans to from NGN 4.7 billion last year. So NGN 15.9 billion as at the end of H1 2024. This is a year-on-year increase of 237%. Also improved operational efficiency in that business through process automation as a result decline in CIR that half year to 47.9%, a 361 basis points from the previous year. The consumer finance business continues to remain as well as to maintain strong liquidity and capital buffers support growth in loan disbursements, customer acquisition and funding optimization, which will continue in the second half of the year. For the investment banking business, it's a similar story. Gross earnings and PBT have grown year-on-year by 50% and 111%, respectively at the end of half year, driven primarily by increased capital markets activity as companies as companies continue to explore capital market offerings as listed in the market [indiscernible] from the banks. Capital market business level -- our capital market business led or participated in 26 transactions at the end of H1 2024, helping to raise over NGN 422 billion for our clients. The prices for this business for the second half of the year includes the strengthening of equities business, remaining focused providing support to our clients by continuing to offer appropriate capital markets solutions and provide exceptional client service with the aim of retaining existing clients and acquiring new ones. Finally, for the Investment Management business, AUM and management fees from digital products increased by 110% and 80% year-on-year by 13% and 19% quarter-on-quarter, respectively. We also recorded a net inflow of NGN 4.2 billion in the second quarter, which is a 264% year-on-year increase. [indiscernible] reorganization of our sales distribution network and staffing in key regions [indiscernible] Lagos and Abuja, which has positively impacted performance in a transfer window for us. Overall, the investment management PBT increased by 33% year-on-year to close at NGN 3.47 billion with our pensions business accounting for 50% of profit before tax with our other business lines contributing the balance on the back of better than budgeted assets under management growth at the end of 1H. I will now hand it back to our Group Chief Operating Officer, Gbolahan Joshua, to take you through our detailed business with you.

Thank you, Deji. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Gbolahan Joshua. I'll be taking you through additional business on Slide 26 to 32. On Slide 26, digital revenues were NGN 45 million for H1 2024. Split as follows: lending contributed 73%, payments including agency banking 26%, and wealth 0.4%. NGN 45 billion revenues with 99% growth from the NGN 22.6 billion generated in H1 2023. We saw strong growth in both fee income, which grew by 47% and interest income, which grew by around 25%. Key drivers of revenue and increase in our digital lending volumes, payment volumes and a growth in the AUM digital wealth business. For digital loans, we disbursed NGN 169 million to over 753,000 customers H1 2024. Value of loans disbursed has grown by about 37% year-on-year from NGN 122 billion in H1 2023. Digital lending portfolio size is NGN 152.5 billion. It's grown by 75% from NGN 87 million in H1 2023. Digital lending now accounts for 73% of digital revenues. It's up from 65%, same time last year H1 2023 due to strong growth in our consumer finance subsidiary, CDL and digital lending from the Nigerian banking subsidiary both from the SME and the retail. For digital customers, we now have 11.1 million customers that's up 13% from 9.8 million customers in H1 2023. Slide 27 shows the trend of our customer acquisition, acquired was 700,000 customers in H1 2024. Total customer based on a 13.27 million, we expect to acquire an additional 1.3 million customers in H2 2024, leading to 2 million customers acquired for the year and closing the year with 14.5 million customers. The next slide, which is Slide 28, to breakdown by Agency Banking business. We've seen strong growth in customer acquisition on the back of a revamped digital onboarding platform. Revenues have grown 23% quarter-on-quarter and 78% year-on-year, and revenues from our agency banking business has [indiscernible] in H1 2023 to 1 billion in H1 2024. Slide 29 just shows a breakdown of the contribution of revenues for digital business. Lending at NGN 33 billion had a long [ 26% ] year-on-year growth from NGN [ 14.6 billion ] in H1 2023, the largest driver of our revenues. Payments on wealth grew by 20% year-on-year from NGN 10 billion to NGN 12 billion. Retail digital loans have grown by 48% and SMEs to loans have grown by 32% year-on-year. Slide 30 shows the trend of our quarterly revenue trends from the digital perspective. Revenues have moved from NGN 12.5 billion in the second quarter 2023 to NGN 23.6 billion quarter 2, 2024 and 88% growth in revenues year-on-year. Slide 31 shows the trend of our digital lending book. Digital loans has grown by 75% year-on-year accounts for 6.3% of our total loan portfolio and 20% of local currency loans. For the retail digital portfolio, it's split 87% and 13% between our banking subsidiary and CDL. Slide 32 just shows the summary of all digital activities. For SME loans, we've disbursed NGN 104.9 billion in H1 2024, 32% grew from NGN 79.7 billion at the same time last year. Portfolio size is NGN 77.7 billion, up 46% growth from NGN 63 million same time last year. Retail digital loans, we disbursed NGN 65 billion in H1 2024, 51% growth from NGN 43 billion at the same time last year. Volume of loan disbursed about 743,000 loans, average ticket size NGN 34,000. Portfolio size of NGN 74.8 billion, 130% growth from NGN 34 billion same time last year. For digital work, revenues are up 91% year-on-year, basically driven by 105% growth in wealth AUM from NGN 11 billion in H1 2023 to NGN 22.6 billion in H1 2024. On the last slide chart just shows a breakdown of our digital payments, 46% of revenues come from the mobile business, 36% from the card business, which includes our payment gateway. I will now hand over to Ladi who will give us the outlook for H2 as well as speak about our capital raising activities.

Thank you very much, Gbolahan. So just on the last slide, Slide 34 now. I believe I've already covered much of the capital raise activities, so happy to answer a few more things that I'm seeing pop up in the Q&A, but we still forecast in spite of all the headwinds that we will be able to attain NGN 140 billion in our activity this year. And that's really been driven by a number of factors. We expect maybe just 1 or 2 months of capital being injected into the business and then the support of that. So we may see a slight drop in our EPS by about 20% is our estimation from last year. But of course, we have full use of this capital for next year, that situation will change dramatically. We expect that we will be inquiring about over 1.3 million customers in the second half of the year. This will support growth in transaction fee, current and savings accounts and also AUM growth, both of our digital wealth and our traditional asset management businesses in places. Digital revenues are expected to grow by about 50% year-on-year, whilst the costs will remain obviously much more control because we are building a lot of our own technology and relying less on vendors. Our net interest margin will pick up, we think in the second half of the year. We've got a much better handle of sort of funding position, and we expect that quite a lot of expensive funds in paydown and low-cost deposits growth is picking up quite fast. Of course, the additional capital will also go initially just to paying down our most expensive 100 and something of billion naira of deposits. We expect that the investment banking business will have a stronger H2. We are currently on about 4 or 5 of the bank capital raising exercises, so we certainly be able to close the year at a cost-income ratio that will be in the 50s handle, and that will be driven by synergies coming from the ecosystem strategy and efficient profit growth in our Wholesale Banking business and the cost-efficient nature of our digital revenue. So that's it for us, and we look forward to responding to your questions.

[Operator Instructions] We have no questions on the phone lines.

Yes, we have a number of questions coming through to us on the platform. I'll read them out and then I'll assign them to my colleagues. So the first question we have is from [indiscernible], he is asking, are we expecting further revaluation gains and FX trading income during the year, seeing the bank is now square when looking at net open position. That is first question. The second question is, was the increase in foreign currency borrowings and liabilities are to enable the bank...

[Operator Instructions]. [Technical Difficulty].

-- up behind the presentation, about 10% of our revaluation gains are realized. In terms of why we have a low impairment charge year-on-year, when the CFO was speaking, he said last year, we've seen our revaluation income come down by over 35% year-on-year. And so last year, about 70% of the evaluation income, we took it in as impairment. So because of the valuation gains are lower this year, we don't have to make the same level of impairments on a year-on-year basis. In terms of FCY borrowings and liabilities, was it on [indiscernible] demand achieves in [indiscernible] becoming square or not becoming square for some in terms of closing out our position and orders in terms of business requirements.

On the impairment charge, did you take that one. Yes. Okay. So the second question, from -- on [indiscernible] pardon me, if I'm not trying to pronounce the last name is how much is the estimated cost of the windfall tax. I think it's unclear at the moment. We know the bill itself is yet to be signed by the President. We, however, would state that as of now, only about 10% of our revaluation gains are realized, that we will -- so we expect that the impact will be fairly modest and whatever projections we're making have already impacted. In terms of -- the next question, again, really speaks to the same thing. And I believe we've already answered that, which is what percentage of realized gains-- what the percentage of our realized gains in 2023. I have explained earlier, I think actually, the average is around that 10% cross-board. The next question is coming from [indiscernible], who asked there was a noticeable decline in the group's impairment, what drove this? I believe that's already been answered. On the impact of windfall tax, I believe that's also been answered. Then pressures on net interest margin in 2024 with a moderation in capital ratio. What is our strategy for boosting them and what's the 2024 guidance for NIM. I think generally, in terms of strategy for improving on them. We expect that in the first half of the year, we did take quite a lot of hit on the rise in interest rates. A lot of those expensive funds are now being caged down as we've been growing our low-cost deposits, which is a general momentum that happens anyway. Low-cost deposit mix is improving. That will further improve as we raise capital. And therefore, we do expect, therefore, that the NIM will improve for the second half of the year. As to what we'll be guiding, I don't know whether we're in a position to state that right now. But I think you would most likely should expect an improvement probably in the region of fixed we should be looking above 6%, definitely mid-6s is what we expect. And then there was a question about projections -- sorry, pardon me, trading gains and whether we could walk through the trading portfolio, our projection for 2024 in trading gains?

So I think we can provide more detail offline on that because we have currency trading gains. We also have trading on fixed income securities and all that. So we can give high breakdown post the call.

Okay. Then we were asked how is participation so far going with ongoing capital raise. Is it fair the bank will be able to meet its intended capital raise amount given the increased competition within the market. So I would say it's going very well. We have existing shareholders that have committed already to very significant amounts of the offer, and that has taken up a large chunk. We are also seeing that our digital platforms are bringing in quite a lot of retail investors, and we are leveraging multiple channels in that regard, our app, internet banking, our website and also, of course, people can access the NGX website. Surprisingly, we're seeing a lot of stability with that, even with the NGF. So it's great to see that their investment in infrastructure is working very well. And when we add that to the mix, we're seeing already several thousands of subscriptions, and we're only in, I believe, day 2 or day 3 since we opened up that channel. So based on what we are seeing, we do expect that this offer will probably be oversubscribed and the question will be whether it's oversubscribed above the 15% limit that we have, but we're quite confident it will be, and then we will move on to the next phases of our road map. We mentioned 2 units being sold -- this is a question from [indiscernible]. 2 Units being sold to help beef up capital to meet thresholds. We are considering sales of minority interest. Currently, we own almost 100% in our pensions business. We also own 100% of our consumer finance business. Both of those businesses, we have received a number of inbound inquiries for minority investors and we are evaluating those opportunities as well as IPO opportunities depending on what the market conditions are. But those are likely to be the units. Now the next question came from [ Sadik ]. What is the management's view on SMB U.K. and outlook considering its recent slow financial performance, what's the outlook for NPL for agriculture and government. So on U.K., we do have a very strong outlook. We are currently going through a digital transformation of that business. And we expect that as that is completed, we will see transaction banking picking up very significantly. Our balance sheet also growing materially. And the Rova platform that we built right on the SMB U.K. So that's our retail business, both SME and individual digital retail will also be on that platform. So we see growth more along very capital-efficient area, and we expect that it would certainly pick up, the outlook for NPL in agriculture and government, both of those, we believe, will remain fairly low, but I would let our risk team speak to that. So I don't know if Toyin or Bimpe are on the call.

Yes. Bimpe is on the call. I don't know if you can hear me.

Yes, we can hear you.

Okay. So speaking to cost of risk, we expect that to moderate around 2.5%, 2.7%. So it should be about soft rate.

Thank you. The last question that remains unanswered is our loan guidance for 2024 and for 2025. I will ask maybe Gbolahan to say about that.

On a full year, we are giving a loan guidance for 2024 for 20% to 25%. I think for '25, we'll give that guidance on our 2024 full year. What are we, on Page 1, is this because what was Page 1...

Okay. Good. I believe it is [ 2% ].

Loan growth [ 32% ] from end of the year to...

And then for full year, we're giving what?

During 2025, but we are also putting caveat in terms of demand [indiscernible]...

Okay. All right. Thank you. Are there any other -- there are no more questions here written questions.

We have no questions from the phone lines.

Okay. Thank you very much, everyone. If you haven't done so already, please make sure you subscribe to our [ offer ], and we look forward to chatting with you at the end of Q3 where we present [indiscernible]. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.