Standard Bank Group Limited - Special Call (SBK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good evening, everyone, and thank you very much for joining the Standard Bank Group pre-close call this evening. My name is Sarah Rivett-Carnac, and I will be managing the call. Joining us today is Arno Daehnke, the Standard Bank Group Chief Financial Officer; as well as Brooks Mparutsa, Barbara Bell, Sayuri Govender and Willa van den Berg, the business unit CFOs. This call follows the voluntary trading update we issued on SENS this morning, where we referenced the group's financial trends for the 10 months to the 31st of October 2025 as well as reconfirming the guidance we provided in August. I will now hand over to Arno to provide some comments related to the announcement, and then we'll open the line for questions. Thank you, Arno. Over to you.

Good evening, and thank you all for joining us. As Sarah noted, I will add some color to the announcements, and then we will turn to questions and answers as we usually do. Starting with the macroeconomic environment, to date, global economic activity has been relatively resilient despite geopolitical and trade policy uncertainty. In November 2025, the IMF revised global growth projections higher for 2025 to 3.2% from 3.0% in July 2025. Year-to-date, inflation has declined, and this has, in turn, allowed for monetary policy easing across many countries. On average, across the portfolio of 21 countries in which the group operates in Sub-Saharan Africa, inflation has eased. Interest rates have declined in all countries, except Botswana and Mauritius. Interest rates increased in Mauritius in February 2025 by 50 basis points to 4.5% and in Botswana in October 2025 by 160 basis points to 3.5%. Notable monetary policy easing was observed in Ghana, where interest rates were cut by 900 basis points to 18%, Mozambique by 325 basis points to 9.5% and Kenya cuts by 200 basis points to 9.25%. While macroeconomic reforms and stabilization efforts have brought relative stability, particularly in Nigeria, Angola, Ghana, sovereign stress has remained elevated in Malawi and has increased in Mozambique. After successfully implementing reforms to combat money laundering and terrorism financing, South Africa, Nigeria and Mozambique exited the Financial Action Task Force gray list in October 2025. This is expected to boost investor confidence and to lower the risk premium for doing business in the countries in time. The IMF expects real GDP growth for the Sub-Saharan Africa Regions, to be 4.1% and 4.4% for 2025 and 2026, respectively. In South Africa, the environment has improved as the year has progressed. The government of national unit tensions have eased and the structural reforms and associated activity have continued. Inflation has declined, providing scope for interest rate cuts. The South African Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee cut the repo rate by 25 basis points in January, May, July and November 2025, bringing the repo rate down to 6.75%. Lower interest rates are positive for client affordability and activity more broadly. In November, the Finance Minister announced the new inflation target of 3%, and this previously was 3% to 6%. You also noted that the target has a tolerance band of 1 percentage point either side of 3% and a 2-year implementation rates. The Standard Bank Securities Research team expects inflation to average 3.3% in 2025, down from 4.4% in 2024. In 2026, they expect average inflation to increase to 3.9%, but to remain within the tolerance band, thus enabling the SARB to ease further. The current base case is further 25 basis point cut in quarter 1 2026 and then a pause until 2027. Growth in South Africa has been lower than expected at the beginning of the year. Confidence was dented by trade and tariff-related uncertainty and the governments of National Unity FATF in the first half of the year. There are, however, nascent signs that confidence is improving. For example, consumer confidence has improved from lows seen in the first quarter of 2025 and financial confidence has increased for the first time in 3 years. On the 14th of November 2025, S&P upgraded South Africa's local currency credit rating to BB+ with a positive outlook. The outlook reflects the possibility of stronger-than-expected growth despite trade and tariff-related headwinds. We expect South Africa's real GDP growth to be 1.0% and 1.3% for 2025 and 2026, respectively. Our current expectation for 2025 is slightly higher than the 0.9% we expected in August this year. Turning to our operational trends for the first 10 months of the year. For reference here, where I refer to the current period, I'm referring to the 10 months to 31st of October 2025. And likewise, the prior period is the 10 months to 31st of October 2024. Overall, the group's performance trends in the current period were broadly in line with those reported in the first half of the year. Starting with banking and our 3 banking business units. Banking revenue grew by mid- to high single digits period-on-period. Net interest income growth was driven by good book growth, supported by strong origination in investment banking, particularly relating to energy infrastructure, particularly relating to the energy infrastructure sector. Improvements in disbursements noted in PPB and BCB in the 6 months to June 2025 have continued into the second half. Higher repayments in Standard Bank Offshore remained a drag on loan growth. Deposit growth has remained strong in both South Africa and Africa Regions, reflective of the strength of our transactional franchises. As noted in the BA900 data, deposit growth in South Africa was 8% year-on-year in September 2025, and this continued into October '25. NII growth was dampened by the negative endowment impact of lower average interest rates. In PPB South Africa, competitive pricing pressures continued, particularly in mortgages. Noninterest revenue growth remained robust, a larger and more engaged client base, combined with increased client activity led to strong net fee and commission revenue growth. Continued uncertainty and market volatility supported strong trading revenue momentum. Turning to banking costs. Despite an increase in activity-related costs, cost growth remained well contained. Banking revenue growth was slightly ahead of cost growth. Moving on to credit. The group's credit loss ratio for the 10 months to 31st of October was around the middle of the group's through-the-cycle range of 70 to 100 basis points. Corporate and Investment Banking credit impairment charges were higher period-on-period off a low base in the prior period. We hold provisions in Malawi and Mozambique on the back of the sovereign stress, which I referred to earlier. Personal and Private Banking credit impairments were lower period-on-period due to a slowdown in early arrears formation and lower inflows into nonperforming loans as reported previously and in line with expectations. Business and Commercial Banking credit impairment charges were also lower period-on-period, driven by improvements in both South Africa as well as in Africa Regions as a consequence of deliberate risk remediation and concentration risk management. Next, our insurance and asset management business. IAM continued to deliver a robust performance. Earnings were higher period-on-period, driven by an improved performance in the South African retail life insurance business and an improved claims ratio in the South African short-term insurance business. The former was driven by improved persistency and risk experience. The latter was assisted by the absence of catastrophic weather-related events year-to-date. Turning to ICBCS. ICBCS continued to perform well, supported by a strong performance by the precious metals business. Earnings from our 40% stake contributed positively to group earnings growth in the current period. As expected, the currency impact on our performance was muted. Moving on to capital. The group remains well capitalized and liquid. We published our Pillar 3 report for the quarter ended 30th of September 2025 last week. The group's common equity Tier 1 ratio as at 30th of September 2025 was 13.6%. Turning to our guidance for the 12 months to 31st of December 2025. As mentioned before, our guidance remains unchanged. We are committed to delivering one, banking revenue growth of mid- to high single digits with net interest income growing at low to mid-single digits and noninterest revenue at high single digits. Number two, banking revenue growth at or above operating expense growth, resulting in flat to positive jaws and a flat to lower cost-to-income ratio year-on-year. And third, a group return on equity well anchored in the group's target range of 17% to 20%. We look forward to closing the chapter on our SBG 2025 strategy and related targets when we report our 2025 financial results on 12th of March 2026. We remain confident we will deliver against the SBG 2025 targets we laid out in August 2021. We will provide guidance for 2026 financial year when we report our results in March. Lastly, earlier in the year, we provided you with the group's new 4 targets for the period 2026 to 2028. For reference, these are to deliver compound average headline earnings growth per share of 8% to 12% and a return on equity of 18% to 22%. We will host a Capital Markets Day to unpack the strategic and financial drivers that underpin these targets. This event will take place on 26th of March 2026. Further details will be provided closer to the time. In closing, in the 10 months to the end of October, the group continued to perform well, supported by our well-diversified portfolio of businesses and regions. In recent months, we have seen an improvement in disbursement, activity and credit trends in South Africa. We expect this momentum to continue into 2026. And in Africa Regions, our businesses continue to perform well in terms of growth and attractive risk-adjusted returns. Thank you, Sarah, I will hand back to you for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Thank you very much. I think we can start with Harry.

Is it possible to give us a sense of the net interest margin and asset growth trends? Has asset growth accelerated in the second half of the year? Have we seen, I guess, further dilution on net interest margin? And then is there any guidance on average shares in issue and share buybacks in the second half, please?

Harry, nice to see you on the screen. Thank you for that. On NIM, when we saw you in the middle of the year, we did mention an anticipated contraction in NIM. We do expect to anticipate contraction as we had guided at that point in time. On asset growth, as I mentioned just now, we see continued very strong growth in CIB, well in the double digits year-on-year growth. And certainly, as I mentioned just now in BCB and PPB, the disbursement rates have increased in the second half of this year continue to accelerate boding well for 2026 and going forward. Do you have a third question?

Share buybacks.

Share buybacks. Yes, importantly, yes. Yes, Harry, for now, probably no share buybacks worth noting further executed in this current period.

Next, we can go to James Starke.

Two questions from my side. First up, and maybe if we can pass this to Willa. If you can just comment on the performance of the CIP in Liberty in the second half, particularly in relation to the ZAR 120 million gain you saw in the first half given the favorable bond moves we've seen over the past few weeks? And then the second question, perhaps if you could just expand a little bit on the loan growth, touching on the kind of product types that are seeing the best disbursement volume growth pickup in the past month or 2 across CIB, PBB and BCB.

Willa, over to you for the CIP. I can't see -- there we go.

Good afternoon, everyone. James. Thanks for the question, James. Just 2 things that drive the shareholder portfolio is the rates, as you point out, and the property valuations. Keep in mind, we did flag at the half year that in March this year, we implemented the OCI treatment on our rates exposure though in the shareholder portfolio. So we don't expect big volatile numbers or to be as sensitive as it was in last year's numbers because of that OCI treatment. And on the property valuations, those happen once a year by independent valuator. Those are done in December in the year. And the lead indicators on that portfolio continue to look good and favorable compared to previous years.

Thanks, Willa. On the asset growth side, as I indicated, James, it is the investment banking origination. The energy and infrastructure is a large portfolio, which is growing strongly. But we're also seeing good growth across other sectors as well, such as financial institutions, the consumer sector, diversified industries, telecoms and media, actually across the board, we're seeing good growth. And then James, you would have seen from the BA900 information, South Africa overall is growing pretty robustly. I think I saw 10% overall. And in that context, we are growing even faster than the South African market. So we are winning the deals in South Africa. And of course, Africa Regions does has a lot of momentum as well as normally has in this particular business. On BCB, yes, business lending disbursements are up materially. So we're seeing strong growth there. And then also in the business -- that business, we're also seeing growth there. And also in PPB, we're seeing mortgage disbursements also up quite nicely. Bearing in mind, we've got a very large base there. We've done very strong origination a few years ago. So there are base effects which you need to take into account. So you won't see the overall book growing as fast as we're seeing the disbursements. And then some reasonably good growth also in personal unsecured loans and somewhat will say in PPB FATF. We also are seeing a pickup in credit card turnover transactions. So not so much on the actual balance sheet side, but certainly credit card turnover. We've seen some good momentum there. So as part of Black Friday actually, just last Friday and on top of Monday today, we're seeing good activity on those products as well.

I think next, if we can go to Baron Nkomo.

Just 2 questions. Firstly, how sustainable is the strong deposit growth into 2026? And can you comment on how you see the funding mix evolving in light of the strong growth? And then secondly, can you comment on the performance of Liberty's Life Insurance new business sales in the period, specifically guaranteed annuities?

Thank you very much. I'll talk about the deposit growth and Willa, you can jump on your screen again for the life insurance. Yes, we think it's sustainable in retail certainly and in BCB as well. And in CIB actually, across all of those products, we're seeing high single digit, if not low double-digit deposit growth. So that is a positive development. And we're seeing deposit growth quite a bit stronger than the asset side and loan growth. The funding mix, we continue obviously to access wholesale funding to support the CIB business in particular, because CIB is growing quite strongly, the asset side, as I spoke about just now, we continue to raise wholesale funding in bond markets, in loan markets and in other wholesale markets as well. So probably won't see a substantial shift in the funding mix, but we remain active in capital markets. In fact, having a record issuance in this particular year, capital markets on debt instruments. Willa, over to you on the Life business, please.

Thanks for the question. We've continued to see the same patterns as we had at half year. So to your point, any guarantee type products, the sales continue to track behind last year, including annuities, whereas our single premium investments that are more direct investments into the market continue its upward trend.

Thanks very much. Can we move to Ross?

Just to follow up on Harry's question on NIM. With regard to the endowment spec in particular, firstly, if you could just comment on how policy rates are playing out across all your exposures or your exposed countries versus your August expectations? And then just to clarify on your NIM expectations, it sounds like into Q4 and into Q1 next year, Q4 this year, Q1 next year, it's pretty much in line with what you previously commented and then sorry, what you previously expected in August. And then just sorry to add on, on the -- with regard to your potential M&A targets in Kenya, are there any -- if you could just remind us the particular characteristics you're looking for?

So interest rates overall in the portfolio are panning out as we had expected. Our base case assumption was that we will only have a rate cut in quarter 1 next year, not last week in South Africa, sorry. Thank you, Sarah. So that's an extra 25 basis points. On NIM, previously guided 10 to 15 basis points compression. It probably will be at the lower part of that compression, not quite as high as 15 basis points, closer to 10. We continue to hedge in South Africa. As you well know, that hedge program has dampened the exposure significantly. And currently, per 100 basis point average interest rate cuts in South Africa is around ZAR 800 million NII sensitivity, not too dissimilar to what we discussed in August. M&A in Kenya, I can't really comment on that. We're looking at multiple opportunities, M&A, organic or inorganic growth there. And once we have an appropriate target, we would like to think about if such a target actually is materializing, then we will let the market know. So at the moment, there's no certainty or clarity on that.

I think if we can go to Charles Russell next, please.

The first one is how material is the extra provision that you're taking against Mozambique sovereign credit exposure? I understand that this falls outside of the banking CLR that you normally guide on. And maybe if you could make reference to the prior year impairments on financial investments, I think that was ZAR 712 million, that's number one. Number two, just a comment on the general -- sorry, Global Markets trading revenue growth relative to June's 20% level. And then finally, you've mentioned the FX translation of Africa as being relatively muted. Can you comment on Africa's overall growth in ZAR relative to South Africa's overall growth?

Right. On the extra provision, look, in context of the group overall, it's not material. But we have already provided what we think is a well-provided provision, which is already in our P&L and in the numbers I've spoken to now. As I indicated, I wouldn't say it's material in context of the group. It's quite material in context of the country, of course. But -- and that is outside of the CLR that provision held against financial investments, you're 100% right on that. Yes. So when we'll speak to you in March, we'll update that. We will give you the actual quantum of that number. I don't want to talk to that quantum now. It would not be appropriate and also we have our external auditors currently auditing our numbers and looking into that as well that's underway currently. GM trading revenue continues to perform well, tracking well ahead of last year, and the momentum has gone. It seems like into the fourth quarter as well. On FX, apologies, I made a note of that. Sarah, just help me with the last question was.

The last question was on the growth of African Regions relative to South Africa.

Yes. Yes. Africa Regions is again having a good year and South Africa is also having a good year. So we must bear that in mind as well. And South Africa is performing better than we've had in the past. Africa Regions is a little bit dampened by this provision, which I spoke about just now in Mozambique and in Malawi. I mentioned both of those. Mozambique is the larger and Malawi is much smaller. But yes, overall, we see good performance in both of those jurisdictions with South Africa growing stronger than it's been in the past, not strong in Africa Regions, but stronger than we've seen in sort of through the cycle growth of South Africa.

We go to [Audio Gap] ...

Is the question in the chat?

Let me read out the question in the chat. So what is Standard Bank exposure to China-denominated trade and funding? And how quickly could that exposure shift to RMB settlement? That's the first question. And then the second question is, to what extent was geopolitics a factor in signing up for CIPs?

Yes. The shift to RMB settlement is obviously a gradual long, long-term shift, and I wouldn't expect that to be rapid in the near term. We obviously work with ICBC and various other Chinese clients to set in RMB, but it's not a material part of our business. We all know that the dollar in fact with the other day is 89% of currency trades as a dollar on one side or the other side, and that's probably going to be a trend in the medium term. We wouldn't be weighed by geopolitics for the signing up of CIPs. We have important clients in China. We've got important clients in this markets as well as in European and Middle Eastern markets. And we think about our clients, first and foremost, and not about geopolitics. There's a question in what are the projected balance sheet effects. These would not be material context of the group. I understand you correct. You certainly wouldn't picking that up.

Hopefully, that answers the questions in the chat. Can we go to -- okay, great. Thank you. Can we go back to James Starke, please?

Arno, just a follow-on on the NIM discussion and in particular, regarding your hedging program in South Africa. Are you able to give us a sense of perhaps the average duration or average maturity profile of the hedging program?

Yes, 3 to 5 years, James. I think Ross' question maybe...

Ross, go back to you if you've got any additional question.

Yes. Thanks, Sarah. Since we have a bit of time, I thought I might ask just on retail asset quality. So just firstly, it sounds like that's broadly in line. Is that a fair comment with the August expectations? And then I don't know if you mind just elaborating a bit by product segment, how is that playing out? Are any product segments performing better than you might have expected in August in South Africa, in particular, in PPB and BCB? And then secondly, just on the -- you referred to the Black Friday. I know it's early days, but I wonder if you could put that in the context of the last few years, if we can take from your comments on SA being better this year. I guess that's an overall comment for the year. But are you seeing like a ramp-up more than you've seen in the past or understandable if it's too early to comment on that as well?

Yes. Maybe I'll let say Sayuri, she's on the call talk about the retail asset quality and Black Friday is just -- yes, just the last business day, trading business day. So I probably can't comment too much on that unless say you have some high-level comments you can give. But over to you on the asset quality. And then Robert, maybe if you want to also comment on the asset quality in BCB. Okay. I'm sure Sayuri is going to come on now.

No -- thanks for the question, Ross. So maybe I'll just run through the portfolio to give you a sense, and Arno has spoken about it earlier. So just in terms of asset quality, from a home loans perspective, we are seeing that, that muted growth come through. And Arno mentioned the disbursements being quite strong. So just to maybe mention on the home loan side, because we had such strong disbursement growth previously, and you would have -- you'd recall a few years ago, we had disbursement numbers sitting in above the ZAR 70 billion range when it came to the COVID years when we were the only players who were taking on loans -- the home loans book at that point in time. So that runoff factor is quite big. So when we look at what's coming on to the book now, and you'll see from a market share perspective that our market share is reducing slightly, and that's because we are looking at profitable business as opposed to taking on business and growing market share. So you'll see a slight deterioration come through, although we'll still be #1. We're still #1 on our new business, market share. So the home services book, which is the biggest book in our portfolio, is still looking really good. It's profitable. It's still very strong. So I think very comfortable on that side. We're also seeing strong disbursements like Arno mentioned in our personal lending book. So also double-digit growth there as well as in the VAS side. So a good solid growth coming through on our asset quality. When it comes to Black Friday, we have seen an improvement year-on-year. So that is a pleasing result. I think we generally have seen good growth come through during the Black Friday and the weekend as well and its Cyber Monday today. So it is a little bit early to see that full picture. But from what we can see, we are seeing good improvement year-on-year.

So, whilst you're just on, could you possibly comment on the credit performance in the different products.

Yes, sure. So I think just from an overall credit perspective, we are seeing improvements in our NPLs. So we have mentioned previously that we have seen that our NPLs have peaked and we've mentioned that previously. So there is a slow and steady recovery that we are seeing. So that is positive and will positively contribute to our credit numbers for the year compared to the prior period. So that's definitely positive. As I say, it is a steady recovery. So we're not expecting anything that is significant to come through, but good indicators from client behavior and what we're seeing. So the big piece there on NPLs is that we are -- we do still sit with that legal book that does have quite a long tenure. So we'll continue to see that wind down very slowly and that mix being a bit bigger in that Stage 3 bucket because we've got lower inflows into NPLs. So it's a positive story, I think, on the home loan side. We are seeing overall as well, just a general improvement in terms of recoveries and repayments. So there is definitely a better collection strategy, and that's helping us on the credit side as well as the fact that the -- with the interest rates reducing that is actually giving a bit more affordability, lending more affordability to our clients, and we're starting to see that come through. That's also contributing to that disbursement improvement and activity that we're seeing in the second half of the year. But slow and steady is the message. Thank you.

Thank you Sayuri. Barbara, do you just want to comment on credit quality, the VCB book, please?

Sure, Arno, and thanks for the question, Ross. So I think Arno already touched on the growth that we're seeing. So SA has seen a slightly faster growth rate in the second half than we saw in the first half, really translating those disbursements. But in terms of the actual credit performance, very similar performance to the performance you saw at half year. So we are seeing pretty good credits out of South Africa. The VAS portfolio is still slightly higher than the prior year, but that really is more the normalization of the portfolio. The previous year, we had some recoveries and some drive-out dates that naturally softened the blow, where this year, we're seeing a lot more normalization, but there's been nothing surprising or untoward in the second half relative to the first half. And then from the Africa Regions perspective, the remediation, the work that we've been doing from a risk perspective continues to bear fruit. So we see a very similar performance in the second half relative to the first half from an impairment perspective. Slightly higher in the West regions, but very good performance out of the East and South and Central portfolio. And then offshore remains elevated. As you're aware, there's some remediation we're doing on that portfolio, and that continues into the second half, but we should be through that going into 2026. Thank you.

Thank you, Barbara. And then I noted 2 questions there. Brooks, maybe you can take both of them. One deals with the petroleum and commodity sector in Africa. The other one deals with infrastructure advances. If I can leave that over to you, Brooks, from a CIB point of view.

Brooks, just checking, you can see the questions. I'll read them out for you.

Yes, I can see the questions. Good afternoon, everybody. In terms of sort of our investments in the Middle East, as you're well aware and have probably had through the press, we have recently opened our Egypt rep office, and that is in large to capture the trade flows between the Middle East, North Africa and Africa Regions. What we have seen is our clients in the Middle East as well as in North Africa very keen on investing in Africa as a whole. And we are really, from our approach, really back our clients with that. So it was a natural fit for us to look at the trade corridors in as much as we have, for example, focused on the China trade corridor into Africa is to focus on the GCC as well as North Africa into the rest of Africa. This is not unsimilar to what we've done with our global multinationals, whether those be in Europe or not North America. In terms of the sectors that our clients are interested in, it's actually quite wide ranging. Diversified industrials, which includes the food production sector is one that our clients are interested in. Energy as well as infrastructure. Our clients are very interested in that coming out of that region as well as TMT, which is telecoms and media. So quite a broad range of interest from our client base. And they see our increased presence, particularly in GCC as well as North Africa being able to enable them to access our expertise and experience into Africa. So we see it bearing fruit certainly in the medium term. And it's certainly a differentiator for ourselves compared to our competitors. In terms of the other question, infrastructure advances, infrastructure advances have continued to grow very strongly. If I look at the 10 months to October, this is actually above where we expected to be at the interim stage. So as Arno has mentioned, we've continued to see very good growth in energy and infrastructure for the 10 months, and we expect that to continue for the remaining 2 months. Our pipeline remains strong. And hopefully, we'll be able to close a few more of those significant deals between now and the end of the year. I'll hand back to you, Sarah.

Great. Thanks very much. The next hand is from Myuran Rajaratnam.

I was driving when Arno was talking about South Africa versus Africa ops. I hope I heard it right. He used the word good to describe both, notwithstanding Mozambique and its issues. If you have to look at it in terms of real performance, that is excluding blended inflation in Africa versus excluding South African inflation, would the description still still hold? So because you've got lots of moving parts in the inflation in Africa. So I just want to get a sense of what is the real inflation adjusted performance in these 2 big geographies, Africa versus South Africa.

Yes. The easiest way to look at that is to think about constant currency performance in Africa Regions versus rand performance because ultimately, inflation will result in higher interest rates and a weakening currency, and that comes through as a headwind in currency translation. And we've been saying throughout this year that the currency translation impacts are not material, and that is still correct. So there is not a material adjustment between the constant currency earnings we measure in Africa Regions versus the actual rand earnings we receive in our accounts, not nearly as material as we had 2 years ago when there was a very sizable adjustment. So that's maybe the best way to look at it from a constant currency versus a real point of view, as you say. Our real performance is normally the earnings growth above inflation. And obviously, we have a good print above inflation in both Africa regions measured in rands as well as in South Africa measured in rands, obviously. So there's strong real earnings. I hope that answered your question.

I've got one more hand. We can try again.

There's a question on dividends. Maybe I could take that whilst the other hand goes up. So Sarah, there's a question on dividends, updated in terms of dividends being settled, yes, we're obviously paying dividends twice a year. The payout ratio measured in earnings is normally between 50% and 60% over the last few reporting cycles, it's been around 55% to 56%. And we continue to expect dividend payments in March between 50% and 60% of earnings, probably closer to the middle of the range at that point in time.

Thanks. We can go back to [indiscernible], I'm not sure whether you want to ask a question or put it in here.

Yes. I mean, I don't know if you can hear me, but if you can.

Yes, we can.

Just to go back on East Africa, Arno, you said that you're considering both organic and inorganic, and you could go M&A. Let's assume that you go M&A route. How much can your balance sheet take if you were to go truly transformational M&A? I know it's hypothetical. So yes.

Yes, we would never -- the beauty of our portfolio is the diversified nature. No one single country is successfully large. You would know that our largest country is Nigeria, and that approximately is 5% to 6% of group earnings. So we wouldn't want to suddenly have an entity which accounts for much more than that. I think that is destroying some of the diversification benefits, which we worked hard to achieve and which has been very rewarding for shareholders, as I've often told you. So it's not so much on what the balance sheet can take. It's what's appropriate for the mix of the business overall. We want to be in the top 3 in the market in Kenya, top 3. It doesn't mean we need to be the best, okay, or the biggest rather, we want to be the best, of course, but not the biggest. And if we can double our business, that would be a good measure, right? The group has got substantial financial resources. We could make very large acquisitions. I doubt we would go into that realm and have a very large transaction.

Is there a specific area that you might be -- I mean, retail, commercial that you think you could back up on?

Yes, I think across retail, commercial and small enterprise, all of those areas are profitable for us and are important to grow in. So it's not one single area we are looking at.

Great. So I think that's all the hands, and that's all the questions in the chat. So I'll hand back to Arno. Arno, if you want to make any closing remarks.

Yes. Thanks very much. We appreciate you dialing in and all the relevant questions and the interest you've demonstrated. I just want to remind you again, our results next year in March or on the 12th of March next year. Please join us then. And of course, we've got our Capital Markets Day, which we announced today, that's very exciting for us, that's on the 26th of March, so 2 weeks later. And hopefully, you can also join us for the Capital Markets Day, and then we'll unpack our '26 to '28 performance then and how we're going to be achieving and hopefully exceeding our targets at that point in time. So I wish you all the best for the festive season, and thank you again for the interest in dialing in.