MONETA Money Bank, a.s. (MONET) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the conference call of MONETA Money Bank regarding 1Q 2025 Financial Results. Please note that this conference call will be recorded. This event will also have a live presentation followed by a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] Today's speakers will be Mr. Tomas Spurny; Mr. Carl Normann Vokt; Mr. Jan Fricek; Mr. Jan Novotny; and Mr. Andrew Gerber. May I please now hand over to Mr. Spurny, who will lead you through the conference call. Sir, please go ahead.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Again, I have the pleasure to open up the call and present our quarterly results. So if I can ask you to turn attention to Page 2 of the presentation. During the first quarter of this year, we have generated operating income at the level of CZK 3.4 billion. This is 8.4% higher than in the relevant quarter of last year. Main contributors to the growth of operating income is net interest income and net fees and commissions. Additionally to that, we have incurred operating expenses at the level of CZK 1.5 billion. The operating expense level is nearly identical to that of in the first quarter of 2024. Henceforth, the bank delivered net profit for the period in the amount of CZK 1.5 billion. This constitutes a 14% improvement against last year. With respect to the growth of our franchise, the total asset base of the bank reached CZK 501 billion, which is 7% higher. The growth in the balance sheet is driven by the funding base. The funding base of the bank reached CZK 456 billion and has grown in this period by 7.8%. And in parallel to that, we generate growth on the side of lending. The growth is at 4% level, and we reached CZK 278 billion in the portfolio. Here, I would like to remind that the target on the loan portfolio for this year is CZK 288 billion. And on customer deposits, it stands at CZK 435 billion. So with respect to deposits, we are actually at the target or slightly above it. And with respect to the loan portfolio, we have CZK 10 billion to go in the remaining 3 quarters of this year. Turning the page, looking at important other figures. We have capital adequacy at the level of 19.1%. The capital -- the excess capital stands at nearly 4%, translated into an absolute amount. It is in totality, CZK 6.4 billion of capital over the regulatory requirement, which translates to CZK 12.5 per share. With respect to risk-weighted assets, these were reduced by 3.6% year-on-year and the main source of the RWA reduction concerns implementation of CRR3. So this is a good news. Importantly, also importantly, the MREL ratio stands currently or stood at the end of the quarter at 28.7%. So we have significant excess here at the level of 6.3%. And this is an important ratio, one of the enablers to continue with shareholder distributions into the future. With respect to return on capital, on tangible equity, the return constitutes 19.5%. So this is again an improvement against comparable period. The cost/income ratio adjusted for the one-off regulatory costs is at 40% and unadjusted ratio is 44%, if I remember correctly. Yesterday, we have held Annual Shareholder Meeting. I have the pleasure to report that all of the points proposed by the management of the bank were successfully approved and the margin of approval or rather the rate of approval stands at 98% or higher. The participation at the shareholder meeting was at 75%. So we also have had good participation by our shareholders. And now let me comment the macroeconomic or the operating environment that we are experiencing here in Czech Republic. If we turn to Page #6, we start with GDP. Last year, 2024, we had really nonconsequential growth of 1% of the GDP. The forecast for this year stands at 2% GDP growth. However, this estimate was calculated or estimated before the Liberation Day in the U.S. So we will have to contend in the -- for the remainder of the year with the fallout of the U.S. administration's policies on trade and other. So it's difficult to say whether this will materialize. With respect to the Czech Republic's indebtedness, you can see that in the third quarter of '24, it reached 43.6%. So the tendency is towards higher indebtedness, and we can expect both the government deficit and the indebtedness will increase before nothing other than the need to spend additional funds on defense of the country, and there is a built inflation into the mandatory payments. Speaking of the state budget, at the end of March, the state deficit was at the level of CZK 91 billion (sic) [ CZK 91.2 billion ] against the target of CZK 241 billion for this year. I think the quarterly number doesn't really predict the outcome, but it might be difficult for the government to actually reach and not surpass the level of CZK 241 billion. What is positive is that unemployment in Czech Republic remains benign. It is at low level, 2.6%. So we have to hope that this holds. The forecast for 2025 is at 2.8%, but I would really like to underline here that the estimates on unemployment were done before evaluating the economic growth. Turning page a little bit on inflation and on interest rate environment. Starting with inflation. The latest figure is 2.7% inflation year-on-year. So the tendency continues to be on the downward trend. Inflation is decreasing. However, in relative terms, it is 30% above the Czech National Bank's target of 2% annual inflation. However, it seems that the inflation is abating. With respect to the key rate, we had, what was it, 7 or 8 decreases of the key rate. And if you look at the market yield curve development, I think we provide a good illustration what happened in the last 12 months. The dotted line represents the yield curve at the end of first quarter '24 and the black line, the lowest one shows where we are currently. So there is a dramatic movement in the interest rate environment. So this is with respect to the macro. If we look at the operating platform starting on Page 9, we continue to have growth in the client base. It is at 1.1% level and the bank serves 1.6 million customers. If we look at the branch network, this is unchanged from the last quarter of 2024, where in the third quarter, we closed 10 branch units. Here, I would like to highlight that medium term, we are aiming to have 100 units. Nonetheless, we are also -- or additionally, we are also relocating a number of units, modernizing them and increasing density of coverage, namely in the metropolitan area of Prague. As you know, we share network, ATM network with 3 other partners. So the network remains stable at 1,900 (sic) [ 1,936 ] machines, and I will come back to that later in the presentation. We decreased employment level in the bank by 2.2% year-on-year, and we currently employ on full-time equivalent basis, 2,453 people. You can see that the front-end employee numbers are being impacted by branch closure and some efficiency driven actions across the frontline unit. We have a stable level of employees in the control and enabling functions. This is due to, I would say, 2 factors. We are faced with additional regulatory requirements, namely in the realm of financial and nonfinancial disclosures concerning ESG, and we are also preparing for responsibilities that will come on basis of EBA regulation in January 2026. Additionally, we continue to invest into digital capabilities, and this keeps the stack stable. On Page 10, we turn to the critical part of the business model of the bank. This is digital platform. Overall, we have 1.6 million registered users. So this grows -- the digital penetration grows at 8.3% year-on-year. We intermediate through the digital, [ 713,000 ] touch points on average daily. This grows by 7% rounded up. And this concerns users of our Internet banking platform, which is declining and majority of the daily touch points are in the central mobile banking application that we operate. In line with that, you can see increase in financial intermediation with respect to payments. The payments number grew by 7.5%. So this is a testimony that we are increasing interaction with our customers and intermediation overall. We have 5.5 million servicing transactions, a significant increase of nearly 14% unreceived or accepted loan applications through the digital channels. And you can see a fairly dramatic increase on sales transactions, nearly 24% or 123,000 during the first quarter of the current year. Looking at the branch network, there are several trends in the branch network. First and foremost, we are closing cash desks, cashiers in a number of our branches based on the fact that it was expensive and ineffectual from a cost perspective, and we are trying to move the cash traffic on to the ATMs. Henceforth, you can see a fairly dramatic decrease of cash transactions at the level of nearly 40%, 37% to be correct. We are also having less traffic in the branches. This necessitates relocation of the branches into better areas which have higher footfall, namely shopping centers and locations where we can get better traffic. And you can also observe decline in the number of employed staff in the branches. This is related to the closure of the units. And additionally, the loan application seems to be flowing through the digital. We have nearly 10% decrease in the branches. Nonetheless, what is important, the network receives very high NPS satisfaction level of 82, and this is stable over time despite the changes that we are making. And we expect that this might decline in the next quarters as we reduce or eliminate the cash transaction. The third leg of our operating platform is the contact center. Likewise, similar to the branch network, we have less inbound calls, a decrease of 9%. This is due to the fact that we offer better services through the digital platform, and this is explicit strategy of the bank to try to change a whole host of processes into self-care, which ideally is automated and doesn't involve human interaction. Similar trend as with the inbound calls is observable from the e-mail communications with clients. As we get better on the digital, we face less of these interactions, which are relatively costly. We have also shortened the call center hours in order to improve efficiency, and this will be efficiency of cost and reduction of the abandoned rate on the inbound. We increased the staff a little bit in order to boost the insurance sales, and this is supported by the [ fairly ], if I may, fantastic growth that we have in the lifetime value of the insurance sales. This grew nearly 37% to CZK 44 million, in line with our strategy to support the fee growth. Lastly, with respect to the operating platform, we have the ATM network. And here, I would like to highlight that overall withdrawals, number of withdrawals is decreasing as people are beginning to use more and more of contactless payments. This is a good news for our cost structure, and it's visible from the numbers. With respect to deposits, we see an entirely different situation where our investment into deposit machines is well justified because we are able to make this more efficient, and we are also able to make it more efficient through the strategic partnerships that we have with the 3 competitors, and we share their ATMs that are capable of taking our deposits and the number of transactions and the growth testifies to the correctness of this strategy. With that, I would like to say that with respect to the first quarter, our financial results testify to confidence that we will be -- we are on a good way to meet the minimum target of CZK 6 billion. That's point number one. Point number two, from a commercial perspective, as you will see from the presentation, we continue to generate good volumes, both on the deposit side and on the lending side. And thirdly, with respect to all, we are slightly ahead of our operating plan. So we consider the first quarter results in [ a singular ] to be satisfying. And with that, I will turn over to Jan Fricek, who will walk you through the P&L development in a greater detail. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Tomas. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am now on Page 15, and it's my pleasure to walk you through the profit and loss statement section. Let me repeat the key financials. In the first quarter, MONETA delivered net profit of nearly CZK 1,500 million, representing CZK 2.9 per share and return on tangible equity of 19.5%. Operating income of nearly CZK 3.4 billion is up by 8.4% year-on-year, delivered on the basis of net interest income growth of 12.6%, supported by repriced deposit base and the balance sheet expansion. And net fee and commission income up by 14.6%, primarily due to ongoing strong performance in the wealth management product distribution. These positive trends were partially offset by decline reported in the other income category due to lower FX derivative results and absence of bond sale gain in Q1 2025. Operating expenses remained stable at CZK 1,500 million, including yearly regulatory contributions of CZK 195 million fully recognized in January this year. On the cost of risk line, we incurred benign result of CZK 151 million or 22 basis points of the average net loan portfolio. Let me continue on Page 16 with the detail of net interest income development. As I mentioned before, year-on-year, we reported growth of 12.6%, while the decline 3.8% against the prior quarter is fully attributable to doubled mandatory minimum reserves, which effectively means additional CZK 8 billion of liquidity placed in the Central Bank at 0 interest rate. On the right, we provide the development of -- or sorry, drivers of the net interest income development. First of all, lending interest income is up by CZK 124 million, supported by the loan portfolio expansion, while treasury income decreased by nearly CZK 1,200 million, in line with the gradual decline of the 2-week repo rate. Nonetheless, lower market rates enabled us to reprice the deposit base and to achieve a reduction in cost of funds by more than CZK 1,300 million year-on-year. If we continue on Page 17, here, we provide a similar view on the development of net fee and commission income. We had a great quarter, delivering a growth of 14.6% year-on-year and 4.2% growth against the prior quarter. This has predominantly 2 main drivers. First of all, as I mentioned, strong performance in the distribution of wealth management products and also improved commercial terms with Visa, which resulted in a lower fee expense, which is visible in the bottom chart. On Page 18, let me add more detail to the performance in the wealth management product distribution. We delivered income growth of 51% on a basis of a 41% expansion of the outstanding amount of distributed wealth management products and ongoing solid performance in the distribution during the first quarter. These trends are also reflected in the opening income growth of nearly 72% year-on-year and trailer fee income growth of 39%. Let me continue on Page 19 with the performance in the insurance product distribution. Also here, we had a solid quarter, delivering 4.6% growth of recurrent income, while on the reported level, we show a decline of 8%, which is a function of CZK 39 million of one-offs realized in Q1 2024. So the growth of recurrent income was delivered predominantly due to improved performance in distribution life insurance visible in the bottom right corner and also improved performance in distribution payment and protection insurance. These were -- these were slightly offset by slowdown in distribution pension insurance. And we completed this section on Page 20 with the cost base development. As mentioned before, we maintained cost base stable at CZK 1,500 million. And you can also see that 3 out of 4 reported categories on this slide are showing cost savings. First of all, regulatory charges are down by 14.5% year-on-year, predominantly due to lower contribution to Resolution Fund. Depreciation and amortization charges declined resulting from extended use life of several key software was what we did in the first quarter. And personnel expenses decreased by 1.8%, resulting from lower employment intensity year-on-year by 2.2% expressed in a number of FTEs. With that, let me hand over to my colleague, Andrew Gerber, who will continue with the balance sheet section. Thank you.

Thank you, Jan, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. So moving to Page 22, we present a high-level view on the development of the loan portfolio and funding base of the bank. The loan portfolio grew 4% year-over-year, reaching CZK 278.1 billion. And at the same time, the yield on the loan portfolio was broadly stable, dropping 10 basis points, driven largely by the repricing of the commercial -- the floating part of the commercial loan portfolio. In the funding base, we grew 7.8%, reaching CZK 455.9 billion. And at the same time, we were able to reduce the cost of funding by 140 bps, reaching 2.2% as we continue to focus on repricing the deposit portfolio in the context of falling policy rates. On Page 23, we look at the high-level development of the balance sheet, which reached CZK 500 billion, up 7% year-over-year. And this was driven predominantly by strong growth in customer deposits, which were up 6.7% year-over-year and also supported by growth in issued bonds, where you can see the impact of the bond we issued in the third quarter of last year. The additional liquidity was used to support higher lending growth with net customer loans up 4.1% and also additional investment into the bond portfolio, where you can see investment securities up 19.2% year-over-year. Going on to Page 24, we look at the development of the new lending activities of the bank. New lending overall was QAR 16.4 billion in the first quarter of 2025. This is up 27.1% year-over-year and was well supported across segments and products. So in retail, you can see overall growth of 26% year-over-year with mortgage new lending up 37.3% year-over-year and consumer loans up 19.2% year-over-year. I think this is a particularly strong performance in the context of the exit from third-party distribution, which we completed at the end of the first quarter last year. In commercial, likewise, overall growth of 29%, with small business up 34.5% and SME up 26.8%. And on Page 25, you can see the effect of the additional lending activity flowing through to the balance sheet. The loan portfolio grew 4% year-over-year, reaching CZK 278.1 billion with all of the segments contributing. So retail up 2.2% year-over-year, small business up 19% and SME up 5.6%. On Page 26, we take a closer look at the development of the retail loan portfolio, where you can see the growth was supported by mortgages with the portfolio up 2.6%, reaching CZK 131.3 billion. Consumer loans up 4.5%, reaching CZK 38.6 billion and auto loan portfolio up 7%. The housing loan, credit card and overdraft portfolio was down 9.7%, and this is driven predominantly by the housing loan product, which accounts for approximately 80% of this portfolio and is effectively a runoff portfolio. If I look at the credit cards and overdrafts on their own, these balances were broadly stable year-over-year. And with that, I will hand over to Jan, who will take you through the commercial loan portfolio and yield development.

Thank you very much, Andrew, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Please let me continue on the Page #27, where we are depicting the commercial loan book growth. And as you can see, we have delivered a very strong growth across most of the product categories. Overall commercial loan book grew up by 7.8% in the last 12 months and at the end of Q1 2025 has reached the level of CZK 94 billion. In fact, the growth was recorded in all product lines because, as I commented already last quarter, the decrease in Q4 in working capital line was caused by 1 large commercial exposure being moved from working capital to investment line. If I would disregard this rather geographical change, we grew up all the product lines in an excellent pace. Now, let me please move to the next page, Page 28, showing the evolution of the loan portfolio yield for the whole bank on the left side of the page and more detailed split per segment on the right side. Overall, yield stayed remarkably stable with only 0.1% decrease in the last 12 months. What is also remarkable is the fact that this minimum decrease is mainly driven by commercial portfolio as there is a significant portion of the loans priced on the float rate attached to PRIBOR, meaning that despite the decrease of the reference rate during last year, we were more than successful in defending the loan yields. Now, let's move to the funding side of the balance sheet. And for that, please let me hand over back to Andrew.

Thank you, Jan. So moving to Page 29. We take a look at the overall development of the funding base of the bank. Overall, the funding base grew 7.8%, reaching CZK 455.9 billion, with retail and commercial in absolute terms contributing more or less equally to the growth with retail up 4.9% and commercial up 13%. And again, here, you can see the impact of the bond issue in the third quarter on the wholesale funding. On Page 30, we take a look at the development of the customer deposit funding cost as a result of our repricing strategy. So you can see that the cost of customer funds decreased from 3.51% to 2.13%. And this had the impact of increasing the net interest margin from 1.7% to a peak of 2.1% in December of last year and then falling back to 1.9% as a result of the doubling of the mandatory reserves from the beginning of this year, as Jan mentioned earlier. Moving on to Page 31. We look in detail at the development of the retail deposit portfolio. And here, I think the key thing is that, we're seeing broad-based growth across both current accounts, up 5.6% and savings and term deposits up 4.7%. So overall, I think a strong performance in retail deposits in the context of significant downward repricing. And now, Jan, will take you through the remainder of this section.

Thank you again, Andrew. We have similar split for the commercial deposit book on the Page #32. And similar to retail, we have achieved a very strong growth in all categories. At the end of Q1, we ended up with CZK 102.6 billion, which represents a growth rate of more than 13%. Please let me also mention that the decrease of Q1 compared with the end of Q4 was caused by 1 single customer that held significant amount of deposits on its current accounts for a brief period over the end of the year, which is visible on the upper right chart. Now, let's move to the next page, Page 33, showing the evolution of the average cost of funds. At the end of Q1 2025, we have managed to decrease the average cost of funds for the whole bank to 2.2%, which supports the improvement in the net interest income. On the right side of the page is then the split to specific segments. And what is clearly visible is that, thanks to our very diligent and detailed pricing approach, we have achieved to decrease the average cost of funds to 2.3% in retail and to 1.5% in commercial at the end of Q1 2025. And that was the last page of the balance sheet development section. And as we are moving to the next chapter of risk metrics and asset quality, please let me thank you for your attention and hand over to our Chief Risk Officer, Normann Vokt. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Novotny. Good morning to you. We are now on Page 35 with an overview of key risk metrics for Q1 this year as compared to '24. Let me start on the top left of the page. The cost of risk came in at 22 basis points, which is very much in line with our provided guidance of 15 to 35 basis points. Continuing with loan loss provision coverages and total NPL coverage, both values came down year-over-year to 1.42% and 111.1%. The key drivers of these drops are predominantly NPL sales, partial releases of ECL management overlays and also adjustments of the input of our macro variables to the IFRS 9 models. And in terms of the NPL ratio, this dropped by 10 basis points year-over-year and remained flat compared to Q4 in '24. Moving to Page 36. Here, we have a more detailed overview of cost of risk over the last 5 quarters. So the 22 basis points equals CZK 151 million in absolute amounts. This was supported by a CZK 27 million gain from NPL sales in the amount of CZK 319 million, which we conducted in Q1 and also a release of CZK 56 million coming from the ECL management overlay. If you look at the 2 segments, retail, they recorded a cost of risk of CZK 181 million and commercial produced a release of cost of risk similarly to Q3 and Q4. The Q1 release was largely driven by repayments of 2 commercial loan exposures, which were in Stage 2 and Stage 3. If we continue to -- with Page 37. Here, we have 5 data points of the development of the loan portfolio, provisions and coverages. Again, let me start on the top left here, we see a growth of the gross loan portfolio of around CZK 10 billion year-over-year, where at the same time, loan loss provisions dropped by around CZK 600 million with an ending balance of a tick above CZK 4 billion. Within these CZK 4 billion of provisions, we still do have ECL management overlays in the amount of CZK 338 million, which dropped quarter-over-quarter by CZK 56 million and year-over-year by CZK 220 million. The loan loss provision coverage I covered before, and I said the NPL ratio on a very low level, flat quarter-over-quarter with a value of 1.3%. On the next page, Page 38, here, we show the development of NPL in and outflows. So year-over-year, the NPL stock dropped by CZK 274 million and ending up with a balance of CZK 3.6 billion at the end of Q1. If you just look at the first quarter, here, we saw a net NPL formation of CZK 44 million, which was lower by CZK 50 million compared to Q1 in '24. And then the last page of the risk section, Page 39. Here, we show the evolution of delinquencies, 30, 60 and 90 plus since 2020. Basically, if you just look at the last -- the first quarter of this year, all values remained on a very low level, 2 of them, the 30 and 60 plus even dropped further below the year-end figures. Summarizing the risk section, I think we can state the overall credit performance with a cost of risk of 22 basis points is in line with the guidance of 15 to 35 bps. Looking a bit forward, the implications stemming from the U.S. tariff and trade policy remains an uncertainty. We obviously will monitor the developments and the potential impact on our IFRS 9 reserving models. But at this stage, we do not intend to take any actions. And last but not least, the ECL management overlay, the current balance which we have, we will back test it every quarter, but the current assumption is that, they will be largely reduced to 0 until the year-end. And with that, I hand over to Jan, who will share with you more details on liquidity. Thank you.

Thank you, Normann. I'm now on Page 41, and let me continue with key liquidity ratios. In the first quarter, MONETA maintained a robust liquidity position, further improved during the quarter, which is visible across the 5 stars with the loan-to-deposit ratio, it stood at 64% at the end of March against 66% a year ago and also share of high-quality liquid assets on customer deposits increased to 42% at the end of March. Below that, both regulatory liquidity ratios are significantly above the 100% regulatory limit and both were further improved, namely liquidity coverage ratio increased to 367% and the net stable funding ratio to 182%. And if you flip the page, I can comment on the high-quality liquid assets position development. We successfully expanded the position by 10.4% year-on-year or CZK 17 billion in absolute amount. And as you can see from the chart, we increased the position in the government bond, while the decline of balances at the Central Bank reported in the Q1 this year are attributable to doubled mandatory minimum reserves that are not qualified or classified as the high-quality liquid assets. And let me now continue with the capital section starting on Page 44. In the first quarter, MONETA realized a significant capital benefits stemming from the implementation of CRR3 new capital regulation as was already highlighted by Tomas Spurny at the beginning of the call. And this benefit impacts the majority of trends disclosed within this section. So first of all, capital adequacy ratio improved to 19.13% at the end of March against management target of 15.25%. Tier 1 capital adequacy ratio increased to 15.34% against 12.5% management target. Below that, we show the excess capital over management target in absolute amount, and you can see more than CZK 800 million increase since the beginning of the year to a level of CZK 6,369 million at the end of March, out of which the distributable Tier 1 capital excess stood at CZK 4,650 million. We complete the circle with the risk-weighted assets that decreased by 5.5% or CZK 9.5 billion year-on-year. And this is the best indicator of the benefits stemming from the CRR3 implementation. On Page 45, we add more detail to the capital position on consolidated level. First of all, the position remained broadly stable at CZK 31.5 billion with reduced risk-weighted asset density to 32.7%. And below that in the chart with the excess capital development, you can see that the benefits stemming from CRR3 regulation in the change in RWA category was partially offset by higher capital requirement and also expiration of the post-COVID capital relief, which is reported within the category other changes in capital. At the end of March, on top of the excess capital, MONETA also maintained the reserve for future dividend distribution in amount of CZK 1.3 billion or 90% of consolidated net profit. So altogether, at the end of March, we maintained available capital of CZK 7.7 billion or CZK 15 per share. And let me complete the capital section on Page 46 with a view on individual capital position. Also here, the total balance remained stable at CZK 45.7 billion with reduced the risk-weighted assets density to 32.7%. And the excess over MREL management target increased from 5% to 6.3%. So altogether, you can see that MONETA maintained a robust capital position with significant excess capital on both relevant levels, which enabled us to keep the dividend payout ratio at target level of 90%, and at the same time, to keep sufficient capital for the future balance sheet expansion in line with our market guidance. With that, let me hand over back to Tomas Spurny for final remarks.

Okay. So maybe we briefly look at Page 48. This is the guidance. I would like to, at the moment, reaffirm the bank's ability to reach the minimum net profit target of CZK 6 billion. I would like to add maybe a couple of comments to the balance sheet development. Currently, we are focusing on small business lending and SME lending. This is due to the fact that the return on capital deployed in these categories supports our profitability. And secondly, we are also seeking to acquire more customers from this realm, namely from the small business due to the fact that this contributes positively to the cost of funds as testified to the fact that in small business or rather in commercial, the average cost of funds currently is at 1.5% against 2.3% in retail. So this is our strategy. With respect to retail, I think you can expect nascent growth in mortgages. We are seeking to maintain, reprice and grow at a relatively slow pace on the mortgages, and this is due to the fact that if you -- this doesn't contribute to the strength of the bank's yield on credit products overall, so we are trying to have growth, but the growth should not be excessive. Secondly, we face fairly fierce competition on the consumer lending. Henceforth, I do not expect that this year, we will be able to exceed the growth of 5% on the consumer credit category. Nonetheless, all of this is in line with the projected growth of the loan portfolio, which we published in the market guidance. We are also cautious as we don't know the full impact of the U.S. administration's trade policies, and we face some other risks. What is also important to say is that, we do face risk on the wealth management product distribution as we have seen in the second quarter, a couple of trends, higher redemptions. This is visible from the presentation as people are being spooked by the volatility and the sudden movements. Nonetheless, we are investing into reinforcing the distribution staff of investment bankers that are distributing these products, and we will complete that process by the end of the third quarter. We are also reinforcing on the front end, the small business, which is currently growing at 19%. The bank calculates that under a relatively severe scenario on the distribution of wealth management, we have about CZK 100 million of operating income at risk for this year. Nonetheless, we believe that this will be compensated by the volumes and other income. And if such scenario were to materialize, we are still able to deliver and hopefully exceed the minimum profitability target. And I will leave you with that and turn over to you for Q&A. We appreciate your patience with us and your attendance to the call. We are ready to answer your questions.

[Operator Instructions] At this time, I can see no further questions. So I'd like to hand back to Mr. Spurny for any closing remarks.

Wow. It's my remark. Very good. Well, this is where we are. We are looking forward eagerly to report results of the second quarter, and we hope that we shall again have such good participation, and we tremendously appreciate your attendance to the call. Have a good restful weekend. Thank you very much on behalf of MONETA's team.

Thank you very much. As we conclude today's call, we'd like to thank everyone for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.