National Bank of Bahrain B.S.C. (NBB) Q3 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Foreign Language] Good afternoon, dear NBB Group shareholders and stakeholders, and welcome to our investors meeting that is going to demonstrate our financial and nonfinancial results and accomplishments for the third quarter of the year 2025. We are delighted to conduct this meeting after we have recently published the group's financial results in addition to the required documents that were published on both the bank and [indiscernible] website. Representing NBB group on this call is our Group Chief Executive Officer, Sir Usman Ahmed; our Group Chief Financial Officer, Sir Mohsin Rahim; and our Group Chief Strategy and Sustainability Officer, Zaina Zayani. My name is Hisham Alfateh and I am NBB's Group -- NBB's Corporate Communications Officer. I'll be the meeting's moderator, I would like to make the following points before we start, please. this meeting will be conducted in English language and the presentation of this meeting will be published after the meeting on the [indiscernible] website and the bank's website. All questions are welcome and they are definitely -- they are required please to be written in the question section of the chat and all comments are welcome and they are required to also be written in the different areas where we can, preferably on the chat. We will now start the investors meeting with NBB's Group Chief Executive Officer, Usman Ahmed, the floor is yours as we share the presentation.

Thank you, Sam. [Foreign Language] Good afternoon, and a very warm welcome to all our shareholders and stakeholders. It's a pleasure to have you here today on our third quarter call. We will give our usual updates on the strategic advancements that we've made during the year as well as our financials. But before I go into that, given that we've made an important announcement on the 2nd of November, I'd like to start by giving an update on the ongoing discussions with BBK on the merger. As you know that we have signed an MOU with BBK on the 2nd of November to explore a potential merger. Both banks are in the phase of conducting reciprocal due diligence on each other at this point in time. And as we progress on this merger, we will continue to keep you regularly updated on all key developments. This merger comes at a -- the potential merger comes at a particularly pivotal time for NBB. Over the last few years, particularly in the last 7 years, we've made very significant advancements in modernizing and transforming the organization. We have invested over BHD 100 million in various initiatives, including our digital channels, including improving our resiliency from a technology perspective as well as focusing on elevating the customer experience through all the innovations and advancements that we have made. This is reflected in the enhanced customer value proposition, some of which we will elaborate on further as part of our third quarter update for 2025 as well. But in particular, it has led to significant increases in market share for both our leading retail and corporate banking businesses in Bahrain, where in Bahrain, our customer assets have grown at a compounded annual growth rate of over 8% in the last 5 years. customer deposits have grown at a compounded annual growth rate of over 5% in the last 5 years. In addition to this, of course, we have been investing in our overseas businesses. Our overseas businesses in UAE and Saudi offer very important diversification as well as growth opportunities for NBB. The compounded annual growth rate for these businesses over the last 5 years on assets and deposits has been roughly about 60% and 38%, respectively. As we grow, we continue to also expand into new business lines. We've been building on the trust and loyalty of our customers. to expand the product offering in wealth management, and that's been a key area of focus for us this year in addition to further improving our SME value proposition. In particular, this year, we have launched a dedicated SME business banking centers across the Kingdom of Bahrain. And of course, our market-leading and flagship Islamic banking business under Bahrain Islamic Bank, which is a majority-owned subsidiary of National Bank of Bahrain continues to grow significantly, and it's been a particularly standout year for BisB in 2025 so far. Now the backdrop of all of this is, of course, an ever-changing and rapidly evolving operating environment, shift by both the evolution in the operating environment from a global perspective as well as in the region. And I think in the region here, what we're seeing is that it's a particularly opportune time and a particularly pivotal role that the banks in the GCC are playing, particularly the national champion banks like the National Bank of Bahrain, where we are increasingly playing a very important role in not just the local markets in which these national champion banks operate, but also across the region. The environment in Bahrain continues to be strong from a banking perspective. The financial sector is the #1 contributor to GDP in the country. And we see that this environment is getting ever competitive as one would expect in a thriving financial sector, which in turn is also increasingly shaped by acceleration in adoption of digital technologies as well as artificial intelligence. All of this bodes extremely well for the realization of the Kingdom's economic vision. And in this context, we think that the time is now right to further accelerate our growth, further accelerate the journey that I've outlined briefly over here by creating an enhanced Bahrain national champion bank. And that's really the backdrop with which we have approached the potential merger with BBK. This merger would give us the platform for accelerated growth over time. It would further improve the regional relevance of NBB as the regional networks of -- both the banks are complementing each other. Together, the combined entity would have a further strengthened customer value proposition, depending on the strengths of both institutions and providing us with further increased scale and balance sheet strength to continue making the digital investments and the digital transformation that I referred to earlier. And of course, the business mix between both banks is complementary as well. And we will be able to together leverage in the broad pool of talent and the skilled resources that we have in NBB and BisB, deliver enhanced outcomes for all stakeholders. For the economy of Bahrain, this would mean further support to realizing Bahrain's economic vision. For our shareholders, it will translate into stronger returns over time. And of course, for colleagues in both NBB as well as future colleagues in BBK, this will result in greater career and development opportunities. And most importantly, for our customers, this will continue to build on the potential merger will continue to build on the full suite of product offerings that we have and further expand our digital offering. So in conclusion, what I'd like to say is that the merger is something that we are very excited about. We believe that it has very substantial benefits for all our stakeholders, and we are going to continue to engage on this very positively and constructively in the months ahead. We expect the transaction time line to hopefully get concluded before the middle of next year. And in particular, we are aiming to accelerate our momentum now that the MOU has been signed, and we are advancing on due diligence. As far as the updates are concerned, we remain committed to transparency. And just like we are discussing today, we will continue to keep all our investors, our shareholders, our stakeholders fully updated and informed as we make significant progress both through the official Bahrain post updates as well as opportunities to engage, like today. I'd like to just now spend some time on our key business updates for the year before I hand it over to my colleague, Mohsin, our Group CFO, to take us through our financials in depth as well as my colleague, Zaina Zayani to take us through our key updates on sustainability as the Group Chief Strategy and Sustainability Officer. We will then open the floor up for any questions from our participants today. So much like what I described over the last few years, we continue to grow on the retail as well as our corporate banking business. So far, during the year, our retail loans are up 6% against the backdrop of an overall growth in the market of 3%. Our mortgage business continues to be our flagship, very important retail offering where we have gained 9% market share since -- so we've gained 12% growth since 2021 against a market backdrop of 9% growth. Our deposits in the retail bank are also growing at a healthy pace, faster than the market, driven by our low-cost deposits under the Tharaa prize account and our salary account products and of course, certain new digital innovations that we have introduced on our retail digital banking app. There have been a series of releases both over the last few years as well as this year. This year, we have also introduced our ability for customers to buy treasury bills on a digital basis. And all of this is resulting in -- has resulted in a 43% growth year-over-year on digital adoption amongst our retail customers and our transaction volumes are significantly up with 88% of our accounts now being opened digitally. On the corporate and the business banking side, as I mentioned, in addition to introducing specific centers for servicing our SME clients, we have also been growing on the corporate banking, large corporate, public sector, FI segments. And this growth has been adopted on a very prudent and very customer-centric basis, remaining mindful of the challenging interest rate environment in which we are operating. Our loan growth has been 4% on a compounded annual growth rate basis since 2021, pretty much in line with the market, but our corporate and business banking business has grown at a significantly faster pace at 9% as compared to a market growth of around 1% for the same period. As we are very focused on becoming increasingly relevant for our clients on a day-to-day basis, transaction banking remains to be a key area of focus. And this is where we've been investing in significant new product capabilities as we are now live on our supply chain financing solution. We're doing cross-border supply chain finance for customers between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. We've also introduced 24/7 USD clearing and open banking solutions for our corporate customers. And of course, we are continuously upgrading our digital corporate online banking platform. This year, as we announced earlier, we have won several awards for our transaction banking business, and that is all driven towards combining our balance sheet strength, our relationships as well as our technology to attract more operating account flows from our customers. If we can go to the next slide, please. And this is a quick update on our wealth management business. We have been a preferred banking partner in the Kingdom for decades for high net worth and ultrahigh net worth individual relationships. What we are now embarking upon since the beginning of this year is to expand our relationship by becoming a lot more diverse and a lot more relevant for their investment needs. And in this context, we have launched a structured products platform, which is designed to offer investors principal protected investment alternatives linked to various underlying assets. In this context, they can express a view on any asset class that is of interest, whether it is a basket of artificial intelligence stocks or it's commodities or it's foreign exchange. And here, we are combining this with our technology platform that I mentioned earlier to also offer alternatives for investment in treasury bills and down the road in mutual funds and other asset classes. So this has been a very important and key area of development for us to strengthen our private banking business. In addition to this, we are also expanding in KSA and UAE, specifically in KSA in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We have initiated last year a deep coverage of the Eastern province from Bahrain, and we are engaging with clients on a cross-border basis as well as on the ground by virtue of our license presence in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In addition to that, the UAE business continues to grow. We've seen a twofold increase in profitability of the UAE business and have introduced certain specific coverage and product initiatives such as liability-centric SME propositions in the UAE as well as looking at escrow account arrangements on a sectoral basis to target the real estate sector. PSP continues to deliver customer-centric growth and has made significant advancements this year against its medium-term strategy, well supported by the NBB parent entity. So with that, I will hand it over to my colleague, Mohsin, to take us through the financial performance for the third quarter and year-to-date.

Thank you, Usman. Starting from Slide 7, we will cover the financials for the Q3 as well as on a September year-to-date basis, the NBB's group's performance. Looking at this slide, as you may notice, there's growth in year-to-date attributable net profit and operating income. In Q3, the Group's attributable profit was up 2%. This growth is consistent with the growth that we have delivered in the first 2 previous quarters as well. So again, this is on the back of improved customer loans, improved FX income and also supported by investment gains related to our treasury securities. With respect to year-to-date attributable net profit, as of September, year-over-year profitability is up 2%. Again, this is on the back of 11% that we achieved last year. So there is consistent growth in our attributable net profit on a year-over-year basis. This is -- this shows that even after a very strong prior year, we have maintained an upward momentum and supported by growth in our -- again, by fee income and loan growth as well as the expense discipline and stable credit quality. Our operating income for Q3 is slightly down by about a little over BHD 1 million. This is only due to the timing of some of the gains that we have booked on a year-over-year basis. which we don't anticipate having a major dependency on going forward. Moving along on a year-to-date operating income of BHD 153.3 million sets a record for NBB, 1% or almost BHD 2 million increase versus last year is again on the back of the 9% growth that we experienced as of September year-to-date 2024. This demonstrates the resilience of our earnings as we continue to grow our top line of an already elevated base. Moving to Slide 8. You will see the Q3 income statement. I will start from a net interest standpoint, I'll give you a little bit of context, right? The 3% drop on a year-over-year basis is about BHD 1.1 million again. The market is still pricing deposits higher even after the 100 basis points rate cut that we had in the fourth quarter of 2024. Similar to our peers, we are experiencing pressure on our deposit rates. The change in the overall mix of deposit is also contributing towards the NII pressure. Our fee income remains strong at almost BHD 11.6 million, and this has been consistent. And as you can see, we are maintaining and continue to deliver a strong income, fee-based income on a year-over-year basis. Our operating expenses are up 9%, which is not unexpected. As we -- this is importantly, I just want to highlight one more point is on a quarter-over-quarter basis, our expenses are flat this year. We are down in this quarter slightly versus Q2. However, these are some timing-related expenses. And I would share with you later that we are only experiencing only 4% growth as of September year-to-date basis later on in the next slide. Operating profit is down, as you may notice. But again, we were up significantly or 10%, double digit last year. This is, as I highlighted, is attributed partially to expenses as well as drop in our NII in the quarter. Year-over-year reduction in provision indicates continued resilience within the loan portfolio and is not exhibiting any signs of stress. The associate income is related to a latest associate that we added in Q4 '24 and which is improving our associate income on a year-over-year basis. With respect to noncontrolling interest, there are normal changes given the transfer pricing arrangements and our net attributable profit is up 2%, again, going up from 5% in 2024. So this sort of gives you an overview of our Q3 progress on our profitability. Moving along. On a year-to-date basis, again, we are down on our net interest income. However, the net interest margin remains strong at 2.7%. This is again related to the high cost that we pay on deposits to our customers, which is impacting the net interest income, consistent with the other peers in the market. The other income performing -- performance is very -- is outstanding. You can see we grew 18% last year. And again, we are growing 22%, so which is almost over BHD 15 million increase over a 2-year period, which is pretty significant. On the operating expenses, it is up 4%. As I mentioned, there is a strong discipline on managing and rationalizing our cost base, and we are making sure that our cost base remains well under control. Operating profit is down 2%. But as you see, it was up 10% previous year. And again, it is attributed to some of the pressure we are facing on the deposit cost. Loan provisions, this includes recoveries of some hof our exposures versus previous years. And this also suggests that we have a strong credit management process, ensuring that we manage and maintain our loan provisions at an adequate level. The other provision associate is up essentially due to the associate that we have added in our portfolio in Q4. And on a net attributable profit basis, we are up 2% to BHD 66.9 million and coming on the back of BHD 59 million 2 years ago. Further down, moving to balance sheet highlights. As you may notice, our liquid assets came down 8%. But however, the shift is going on the investment side, which went up by 30%. We're taking advantage and making strategic decisions to optimize our net interest income through asset reallocation. It is not about any challenge or issue related to our liquid assets. We remain very resilient and the balance sheet, as you can see, as we have also delivered 3% growth on the back of 19% growth that we had last year. So a strong performance, a strong balance sheet, leading to almost 7% increase in our total asset base. Customer deposits, continuous upward trajectory since on our total customer deposits are up 3%. CASA has been up 10%, which is a very commendable performance by the team here at NBB. We went up almost to BHD 1.8 billion, going up from BHD 1.6 billion. Time and call deposits are down slightly as we manage our cost of the deposits at a total bank level. Cost of risk, we managed to -- we maintain the cost of risk at about 30 basis points. This is consistent with our previous focus on ensuring that there are adequate buffers that remain on our balance sheet for any uneventful circumstances, which we don't foresee any reason in the future. Coverage ratios are strong. At Stage 1, we are maintaining coverage ratio of at least 50 basis points, as you may notice in Stage 1 section. With respect to Stage 2, there is a positive migration of an exposure from Stage 2 to Stage 1, and it had lower provision earlier and migration resulted in increased coverage ratio. On a Stage 3 basis, we have increased provisions for specific risk driven by DCF and it's not a significant increase. On key ratios, strong and healthy returns metrics, 15.8% is the ROE, which is very strong in this market and our return on assets stands at 1.6%. This shows that both equity and asset is reflecting disciplined execution and the right level of pricing and good mix of business. NPL and capital. NPL ratio drop indicates that our credit risk management framework remains strong. On the right-hand side, we are showing our liquidity metrics. We are well above the regulatory threshold and higher LCR ratio of 335.4% means that the bank holds 3.3x more high-quality liquid assets than it needs to cover its net cash outflows over a 30-day stress period. So it also indicates the bank's liquidity position is extremely strong. That's it from my side, and I will hand over to Zaina from me to go through the sustainability.

Thank you, Mohsin. [Foreign Language] I'm very happy today to take you through our key sustainability highlights for this quarter. So our commitment to sustainability has transitioned NBB as a regional leader, [indiscernible] prestigious award, such as the Bahrain Best Bank for ESG and Bahrain Best Bank for Corporate Responsibility by Euromoney. It has also earned us many leading -- ranking [indiscernible] from Bloomberg being the first Across All Sectors and Amongst the Banking Services Sectors in MENA as well as leading positions Among the Banking Services Sector in Bahrain by Bloomberg and Across All Sectors in Bahrain. Moving to the customer centricity pillar and as we put customers at the center of everything we do. Our digital adoption has grown significantly both in the retail and the business digital banking services. This is evidenced through a growth of 43% year-on-year in transaction volumes and 41% in transaction values. Today 88% of all our new accounts have opened digitally in our [indiscernible] banking app. In terms of the business digital banking services we have grown 12% in transaction volumes and 20% in transaction values, with 35% growth has been achieved in digitally registered among our customers. Moving on to the governance and ethical behavior as well as nurturing our workforce pillar. Today, we have 94% of our employees completed anti-money laundering training and 92% of our employees completed the privacy and security awareness training. We also have achieved the equal and fair opportunities pillar achieving 37% of representation of women in the workforce where 10% are coming from senior management. We also focus on diversification and inclusion by employing employees of determination standing at 8 per [indiscernible] and also work on empowering our workforce to training and development of our employees with 34,000 total training hours as of date and 39 average training hours per employee. Moving on to responsible banking and community investments, we stand today at 40% growth in social housing program value [indiscernible] and have also achieved many initiatives in community investments through our donations and contributions funding at BHD 1.8 million. We also encourage our employees to volunteer through different activities and have achieved over 1000 volunteering hours amongst our amongst our employees. Last but not least, we also aim to have direct environmental impact through preserving our natural resources pillar. This has contributed to 7% reduction in energy consumption per employee and 8% in total energy consumption reduction year-on-year and we stand at 12% waste recycling ratio. These initiatives have been a result of many initiative such as replacement of petrol powered cars with hybrid electric vehicles and other [indiscernible] as well to improve the efficiency and [indiscernible].

Thank you, Mohsin, thank you, Zaina, thank you, Usman. I think we'll start off with the first question that is on the chat already, which says retail loans and it's actually -- the question is related to the first slide, Usman, that you had explained. But again, for you, I signal for Usman. Retail loans growth plus 6% in 2025. So are we looking at a year-to-date or 9 million in '25 versus 9 million in '24? Just to clarify. And similarly for the rest of the growth percentages in the key business update slide, if you could please clarify, then there's a question...

What is the reference to 9 million, sorry...

The retail loans growth are we looking at year-to-date or 9 million in 2025?

No, it's the percentage that has been mentioned. That's a percentage I think the reference is to the slide where I was talking about the retail business -- retail loan growth, it's 6% up since the beginning of the year for us, our retail loan growth against the market backdrop of a 3% growth. And on mortgages, what we've described here is the journey that we started in 2021 because we introduced the mortgage product in 2021. over a space of just 4 years, we have been growing at 12% compounded annual growth rate. Today, we have a market share of around 8%. And the market has not been growing at that rate we've been gaining market share over this period.

A question about social housing program where the value has gone up by 40%, as you stated Zaina. Can you tell us why percentage of -- can you tell us what percentage of the total lending portfolio that accounts for? And is there any impact of the latest Mazaya governmental updated mandate on banks? Twofold. One is, can you tell us what percentage of the total lending portfolio that accounts for 30% increase in social housing. That's the first part of the question.

I think Mazaya is -- the social housing is roughly about 60% of our total mortgage portfolio. So the numbers that you see here are part of the overall mortgage lending book that we've mentioned earlier. And with respect to the new sort of schemes, I think that this continues to be a very important area of growth, not just for the purpose of being able to provide well-priced, good quality subsidized housing to Bahraini citizens, but it is also -- it also has a very important multiplier effect on the economy. And we're currently aware of several initiatives around expanding the availability of housing in the coming years. It leads to more construction contracting and real estate activity more broadly in the economy. And we are -- as you know, we've announced recently that we've also signed a BHD 250 million facility that we arranged as sole coordinator for this current Bank. So our focus on housing mortgages has got several key strategic linkages to our overall strategy. And that is, of course, growing our retail business, deepening our customer relationships there as well as contributing to economic development more broadly, while expanding our market share on the corporate banking side as well.

Usman, a question to you, and I'll give you some time to answer, but there's a question to you would be, where do you see our future growth opportunities coming from? That's one thing and the one related to it is you're investing a lot in digital transformation, where do you see the biggest opportunities going forward. But before you answer that, Mohsin, there's a very interesting question to you, which [indiscernible] NIMs and NIIs have been under pressure this year. Have they now plateaued? And what is the likely trajectory in 2026?

NIMs and the overall net interest income is very much dependent on the market, the local market and the attraction, how we attract and what we pay for our deposits. That's number one. The second component is the shape of the yield curve, how we look and are managing our deposits as well as loans or the total balance sheet from a yield curve perspective. What we have seen is the impact -- the loans typically reprice faster than the deposits. And because of the nature of the loans, it's typically more on the floating side. However, when we look at the deposit repricing, typically, the TDs, et cetera, take a longer time. So this constitutes some sort of a potential, I would say, a short-term imbalance due to the mismatch of pricing between the assets and the liabilities. But we do see given how the interest rate environment is evolving and we have to wait and see what rate cuts will happen in the next year and especially in the fourth quarter, if any. So we will make every measures, and we are taking NIM optimization measures very constructively, and we are making headways in preserving our net interest income as well as the NIM.

[indiscernible] Before I go to Usman. The BHD 250 million discount Bank deal that we signed 11 or 12 days ago will be reflected in the Q4 quarter, correct?

So the facility has certain drawdown schedule. Of course, there's an element of upfront fees associated with the under [indiscernible] which has been recognized and there is going to be a drawdown on the facility as we progress with -- as [ Salam ] Bank progresses with utilization. So yes, we will see some uptick related to that drawdown happening in the fourth quarter. And just coming back to the earlier 2 questions, yes, I think for us, if you think about our key business lines that I described earlier, in Bahrain, in the retail bank, starting with that, we have a significant growth opportunity through targeted sub-segmentation of customers where we will be able to specifically cater to certain subsegments through technology-driven insights and data-driven insights to tailor the value proposition as well as the experiences. One good example of that is earlier this year, we have started focusing very heavily on the expat segment. Historically, the expat segment has not been an area of focus for us, but we see an opportunity there as we see a retraction of some of the traditional global international banks from Bahrain from the retail segment. And we have been focusing very, very heavily on that segment as a result of that. In this context, we've developed some data value propositions that are more appealing for expats. And we're backing that up with the infrastructure, for example, the USD 24/7 trading that I mentioned earlier on the transaction banking side. In retail, we will also continue to advance on our prestige segment. We've done some key hiring to focus on the segment that is between our mass retail and private banking or ultrahigh net worth segment. We see an opportunity there. Mortgages will remain a core area of focus. There's significant growth potential over there for us being a relatively recent entrant and the proof of concept there is what I've described earlier in the last 4 years. Moving away from retail, we are also looking at continued deepening of our share of wallet with our corporate and commercial banking clients in Bahrain. We have a very strong focus on digitizing the customer experience there. Our corporate online banking platform is receiving phenomenal acceptance and success with our existing clients. And we have essentially a very coordinated effort around making sure that our transaction banking, our markets business, our foreign exchange services business as well as our balance sheet lending business is working in very, very close coordination to be able to deliver the best solution. So I think deepening our share of wallet is a very key priority. We've also made some strategic hiring in the corporate banking business, particularly for cross-border financial institutions business, and that's an area of focus for us going forward over there as well. As I mentioned, UAE and KSA, we are the only Bahraini bank that has full-fledged commercial banking licenses in 2 of the largest economies in the GCC. And we are extremely focused on growing those franchises. There has been significant investment made over the last few years. We now have dedicated markets presence, so ALM tests on the ground. UAE is already live on corporate online banking as well. We have, as I mentioned, we've also started targeting SMEs in that segment. And then we have -- for both the markets to be able to cater to potential opportunities on partnerships, we have actually made a strategic hire in Bahrain for exploring fintech partnerships for UAE and KSA and that's another important potential area of future growth. It sort of links into the second part of the question, which is around how those investments in digitization going to pay us off further. So I think the first point there is that whatever I described in terms of the BHD 100 million plus of investments that have been made over the last 5 to 7 years, those have all been self-funded by the bank. And those have been made through the profitability growth that we've had over the years while delivering over 50% increase in earnings per share for our shareholders. So we will continue to essentially leverage that backbone of infrastructure and resilience that we've created to now build on further customer-centric technological advancements. And for example, in the context of fintech partnerships, what we're looking at is how do we take our banking license, take our digital platform, our upgraded core banking platform and offer virtual account solutions for fintechs in Saudi and in UAE. So there's a lot of exciting new initiatives underway. And I think we're in very good shape to approach the future, both on an organic as well as an inorganic basis by virtue of the investments that we've already made.

There are 2 questions, one related to the employees of the bank after the merge should it go through and one question to you, Mohsin, I'll start with you. Could you give us the corporate lending growth versus retail in the third quarter of 2025 and a breakdown of the percentage of corporate versus retail loan books out of the total loan book. Now that will be helpful. Do you have the information handy?

I didn't provide that information. But typically, what we publish in our financial statements, we do not provide a substantial breakdown. And I can be able to provide offline to individuals who have any specific questions. I can come back to you on that.

So probably this is the last question, and it was going to be about the employees of the bank after the merger. Says how will you ensure employees are looked after the potential merger of BBK has.

Yes. So I think for us, firstly, the employees that we have colleagues in NBB Group, both in Bahrain as well as in UAE and KSA are extremely valuable assets for our future growth. And there's an immense wealth of experience, knowledge, dedication, skills that NBB has. And the merger is going to leverage all of that to be able to drive the future growth of the organization. But in the process, it is going to create opportunities for mobility. It's going to create opportunities for talent development. It's going to create opportunities for once-in-a-lifetime experience to work on a transaction of this scale, which is actually quite rare, even in the regional context, let alone not having precedent in Bahrain itself. So I think the learning associated with the experience plus the opportunities of being part of a much bigger regional organization in itself is going to create the basis for us to be able to further develop talent. And we will be continuing to invest in training and continue to be investing in upskilling and reskilling. We are offering world-class credit risk training. You may have seen some of the coverage over the last few days, advanced credit risk program for senior bankers. It's actually on the back of a core credit risk training program that we've launched earlier. We have run extensive training earlier on artificial intelligence. We've launched our own artificial intelligence academy initiative. We are also investing in specific training with respect to customer centricity, customer experience. So that the bigger organization that we have is only going to increase our capacity to be able to do more of what we're already doing.

I like what Usman, you always referred to the potential merger being a merger of growth and the efficiency across the different segments that... Thank you very much. I think with that, we conclude all the questions. [indiscernible] and she's probably waiting for the information as we speak. Dear shareholders, dear stakeholders, thank you very much on behalf of the National Bank of Bahrain Group. We'd like to thank you for attending the investors meeting. Most importantly, thank you for your questions, for your feedback and for your incredible support throughout the journey. Usman, maybe this is the time for you to end the Q3...

I want to echo what you mentioned about thanking all our shareholders for joining today. I think it's a particularly exciting time for NBB, and we are going to continue to keep you updated, as I mentioned on further significant developments with respect to the merger as well as all other strategic achievements and progress that we make on these calls. As you mentioned, the information is there -- going to be there on the website. So please feel free to check it. But if there's any further questions, we're always here to take that from you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.