TBC Bank Group PLC (TBCG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody, and thank you so much for joining us today. So after the Great Blizzard of 2026, it's a very warm welcome to TBC Group's Strategy Day for 2026. My name is Andrew Keeley, and I'm Head of Investor Relations. I have to admit that there were times over the past few days when I wasn't sure that this event was actually going to happen, but somehow we have all made it here, and it's so great to see those of you who have been able to join us in person. I think a lesson learned is probably to think twice about organizing a future Strategy Day in New York in February. But thank you also to all of you who have joined via the webcast. It's great to have you with us today. It's really great to have so much interest in TBC's story. As I think our strong results last Friday demonstrated, we believe we have the right strategy, are executing on it, and continuing to deliver value for our shareholders. And we plan to show you more on this today. So let me run you through today's agenda. We will start with our Group CEO, Vakho Butskhrikidze, taking us through the way we think about our group strategy over the next few years. After that, we will focus on Georgia with incoming TBC Georgia CEO, George Tkhelidze, outlining the plans for CIB. This will be followed by Ivan Gulmagarashvili and Nika Gvaberidze presenting on retail. We'll then have a short break. After that, it is our great pleasure to be joined by the Minister of Investment, Industry and Trade for the Republic of Uzbekistan, Mr. Laziz Kudratov. Following this, we will have a deep dive into our plans in Uzbekistan to be kicked off by Head of International, Oliver Hughes, followed by TBC Uzbekistan's CEO, Nika Kurdiani; and TBC Uzbekistan's CFO, Sharof Sharipov. We will finish with a Q&A session, in which listeners on the webcast will be able to participate and ask questions through the chat function. A couple of other housekeeping items. All of the slides presented today will be available on our website straight after the event. Finally, everybody here today is very welcome to join us this evening for a dinner of Georgian and Uzbek food, wine and song at Ubani Midtown restaurant at 6:00 p.m. And with that, all it remains for me to say is that I hope you enjoy the event. Thank you. [Presentation]

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. It's wonderful to see both familiar and new faces today and to see your interest in hearing about TBC Group's strategic plans for the next few years. To briefly introduce myself, I'm Vakho Butskhrikidze, CEO of TBC Bank Group. I have been in TBC a long time, in fact, since very beginning, 34 years ago, in '92 when the bank was established by $500 of capital. I have been CEO the past 28 years, and I have a great team around me, some of whom you will meet today. My brief today is to share some insights about how I see TBC evolving over the next few years. The title message on this slide is an important one. At TBC, we have been creating and shaping financial services markets for many years in the region, and we will continue to do so. First, in Georgia, where we went from the start-up to the leader bank in the country over the 3 decades. More recently, in Uzbekistan, we built a digital bank from the beginning that compares with the best in the world. Why should you own TBC shares? I believe we offer investors a rare mix of strong growth, high profitability and attractive returns. And the numbers on this slide really to speak for themselves. These results have been enabled by the consistent success we have had in Georgia and the rapid scaling up of our digital ecosystem in Uzbekistan. Today, my team will explain why we believe there is much more ahead for TBC, including growth in mass retail in Georgia and the continued scaling of our digital financial ecosystem in Uzbekistan. The message on this slide captures a simple truth about TBC. We know how to deliver financial services at a scale in markets that are not always easy to navigate. We are proven builders. Our digital mindset took us from Georgia to Uzbekistan long before others put this market opportunity. But life is not a straight journey, especially in emerging markets. What's key that we have the experience and quality to navigate, adapt and capture opportunities when they arise. Today, we will focus on the future, not the past. But let me pause on this slide, which shows our strong track record and gives us confidence for the future. Over the past decade, we have grown both our earnings and loans at 17% CAG (sic) [ CAGR ] in dollars. We have averaged 23% return of equity over this time. Meanwhile, we have been gaining customers. Our digital monthly active users have grown 6x over the last several years and now exceeds 7 million users. And this proven track record directly benefits you. We have returned $735 million to our shareholders over the past 5 years, and total shareholders' return has averaged 36% per year in dollars, more than twice the S&P 500. I will now tell you something of our plans in Georgia. Let me start with why I think Georgia remain a great place to do business over the next several years and more. It is well known that Georgia's economy has been booming over the past few years, and banks naturally have benefited from this. We think an annual 5% real GDP growth outlook over the next 5 years, and Georgia's location as a trading and tourist hub linking Asia and Europe brings increasing long-term benefits. Georgia also has a very robust financial services landscape. It has relatively low levels of debt and competitive market with major banks that provides a high barrier to entry and the population that expects high-quality digital banking services. It is that we continue to be a great place for -- to do the business. Turning from Georgia's economy to TBC Bank Georgian operations. We are delivering strong growth and a high profitability year after year. We lead the market in many segments, and where we are the second player, we recognize that we have to work harder to win our customers from our competitors, and we have 2 clear strategy to do so. While I'm proud of the digital ecosystem we have built in Uzbekistan, it has grown out of the digital roots that we have in Georgia. For example, I want to flag our mobile application in Georgia. After bringing our core banking technologies in-house in '23, '24, we have already seen clear benefits, faster delivery and stronger customer adoption. We added over 0.25 million digital users last year, and Ivan, our Head of Banking and Payments, will tell you how we intend to add another 300,000 users over the next 3 years. Over 80% of our deposits and consumer loans are now digital. Nika, our Head of Lending, will talk about innovations he's implementing to build the best customer experience in the market. Our aim in Georgia over the next 3 years is to become a top choice and dominant bank across all segments. Where we are leaders, we will keep moving forward. We aim to maintain and strengthen our leadership. In CIB, for example, which has an important profit center, George, our Head of CIB and Incoming CEO of TBC Bank, Georgia, will later explain where he sees the growth opportunities in the years ahead. We aim to become the bank of choice for the mass retail banking with a clear ambition to lead in areas such as payments and consumer lending. [indiscernible] will speak more about this later. In terms of numbers, Georgia aims to sustain return of equity 23% and deliver loans and profitability growth at 10% to 15% annually. Why do we think we can win? We have a track record and a leadership position that gives us a clear competitive advantage. Now that is in-house, our best-in-class digital retail customer experience is already translated into a strong MAU growth and the market share gains in target segments like unsecured lending. Finally, we have a proven and experienced management team. This includes some new faces that you will see today, that know the Georgian market inside and out. Now turning to Uzbekistan. This photo shows just a snapshot of the modern and fast-growing city that Tashkent is becoming. I sincerely recommend that you visit the country to see for yourself the progress it is making every year. Uzbekistan's economy is booming, and this is just the start of the potential it offers. IMF forecast suggest that GDP will grow at an average 6% over the next 5 years to over $0.25 trillion in 2030. I won't go into details as my colleagues, Oliver, Nika and Sharof, will cover this later. But I want to highlight that in a fast-growing economy like this, building a strong and well-regulated market is a gradual process. Over the past year, we have shown that we can adapt quickly, including by accelerating our SME lending plans while continuing to make progress. Our excitement about the long-term potential of this market remains very strong. Nika and Oliver will take you on a deep dive into the business we have built and are scaling in Uzbekistan. What I want to say is that we have achieved a huge amount in the past 5 years, and I have no doubt that we will achieve a huge amount again over the next 5 years. I would summarize the past 5 years as laying out all the essential building blocks for the long-term success in the digital banking. Our growth digital DNA inspires us to launch a fully digital greenfield bank to complement our payments leader, Payme. We develop products carefully and build the business with a clear and fast path to profitability. The next years will be about capturing the potential of our digital ecosystem to connect our millions of customers with many thousands of Uzbek businesses that now work with TBC. By 2028, we intend to have the largest digital financial ecosystem in Central Asia. This will be a highly diversified business, one that enables us to capture the long-term opportunities. We will also target mid-20% return of equity by 2028 and higher beyond that. Why I'm confident that we will win in Uzbekistan? Because we have one of the strongest fintech teams anywhere. We have a hugely popular brand and the best digital banking proposition in the market. We are very aware of our responsibility to shareholders to maximize the long-term value of TBC Uzbekistan. Last year has not been easy. They are bumps on the long-term road. And we are committed to build a big, beautiful and diversified business there. We constantly review the strategic options for this business as it delivers on its growth ambitions. This would include both organic and inorganic growth, and possibly an IPO of our Uzbekistan business. We'll, of course, keep our shareholders fully informed. Turning to ambitions for the group. Our financial targets for '26-'28 are outlined here. My key message is that we will continue to give our shareholders a rare combination of high growth, high profitability and strong returns. We will grow our loan book by at least 15% every year, deliver 23% or higher annual return of equity, and pay out 25% to 45% of earnings through dividends and buybacks in the next 3 years, with a minimum 25% dividend payout ratio and progressive dividend policy. I also want to share with you a slightly longer-term vision I have for the group through to 2030. Simply put, we plan to double the size of our business with net profit increasing to $1 billion with a loan book of more than $20 billion. Our digital customer base will also expand strongly, both in Georgia and Uzbekistan, and we target 12 million digital MAU by 2030. By 2030, we expect Uzbekistan to be a material earnings contributor to the group, accounting for 25% of the total group's profits. Nika and Oliver will tell you later how we intend to achieve this. Over the next few years, we'll also explore opportunities to further international expansion, based around digitally led retail and SME banking. As you may have seen with this in mind and given my intention to focus more on strategic priorities in our existing markets, I'm handing over leadership of our Georgian bank to my colleague, George Tkhelidze. This will enable me to focus fully on my role as the Group CEO. I believe George will be a great leader of our Georgian business, and I have every confidence in him and the team. We have to keep delivering great results. George will lead our presentation on Georgia. But before I hand over to George, I'd like to share with you that we have a very special guest with us today. Let me introduce you a man which is one of the Georgia's most celebrated global sports figure and UFC World Champion and our friend, Merab Dvalishvili. Please, welcome.

Hello, guys. How are doing?

Hello, brother.

Hello.

Thank you very much to be together with us today.

My pleasure. Thank you. I think I have microphone. How are you guys? I'm happy to be here and talk in front of you. I'm sure a lot of people knows who I am, but I am Georgian and former UFC champion, and I'm planning to get my UFC belt back. Thank you. And I think me and TBC Bank, we're both representing Georgia worldwide. And I'm not going to stop and many success is in front of me. And I believe also TBC Bank has a big success in front and then they will go even more further. And today...

Just 1 minute. May I jump here, Merab?

Yes.

So you see, all the banks worldwide they are saying that we have very good mobile applications, it's very easy to navigate, but I ask now Merab to do by himself on TBC Bank mobile application, how easy to onboard as an individual on that and also to make investments. Merab, could you help me to show to our auditorium people?

I will. I will show and -- me and technology, we're not really friends.

But it's so easy. We can do...

Brother, this is really so simple and easiest bank app I have worked with, really. And you guys, you will see it now. Because like I said, me and technology we're not really friends because I like to work with my hands, not with my brain. But today, I will show you. So like, yes, this is -- so like it's easy.

Let's start it.

Gets start. I have a language, English, as you see, and it gets start. Now I'm going to change the phone number to...

1, 2, 3...

So to U.S., and put my phone number, 516-66 -- no -- 3787. Yes, this is my phone number. So I will get a code now. Yes, it's easy, boom.

It's 2 seconds.

Now, yes, I'm going to take a picture, a selfie. Who is this handsome guy, uh? No, easy.

3 seconds.

Yes.

Confirm.

And then I'm going to set up like easy password, boom, boom, boom. That's how I do. If I lend someone my phone, that's my code always.

So done. So Merab already on board now.

Easy.

And Merab, as I know, Mark is also your friend. And could you make investment in Meta?

Yes. Yes, I can. It's so easy. So yes, I can invest in anything, Apple or -- yes. Now we -- in the Meta, right? So I have to push products, which is bottom, your left. Yes, right there. I push already. So now investment.

Investment.

Yes. And now...

Find Meta.

Yes, now I'm going to find Meta.

[Indiscernible].

Say again?

[Indiscernible].

No, no, no. Marketing -- he sells those.

So Meta is -- so yes, I'm going to -- I find already Meta, boom. And now I'm going to buy. So I'm going to change the -- oh, no, I have -- yes. Okay, I have to change to U.S. dollar. It's not in Georgia. So okay, I'm going to buy $10, right?

Great investment.

Yes, yes. Well, investment is investment. Doesn't matter. It's going to grow. It doesn't matter.

Of course.

Yes. And then buy. Easy. Boom.

Processing. Enjoyed this thing?

Yes. Now an official investment, right, an official investment. Yes, it's easy. Yes. As you see guys, really easy, simple.

Thank you very much.

My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you, guys.

Now I will hand over to George Tkhelidze.

Many thanks, Vakho, for your introductions and kind words. And Merab, thank you for joining us today. It was amazing. It's a great honor for me to be succeeding Vakho as the CEO of TBC Georgia. Vakho has been in the center of TBC's success for over the past 3 decades, as he mentioned, and I'm really greatly looking forward to continuing working with him and with an excellent TBC's team. A short info about my background. I spent about 25 years in financial sector, both in Georgia and in United Kingdom. I joined TBC in 2014 as a Chief Risk Officer, and over the past decade, I led TBC's investment, corporate business and wealth management. But my relationship with TBC started a bit earlier before I joined as a team member. I started working with TBC when I was in Barclays Capital. And in 2013, I remember that we won a mandate to work on TBC's IPO. And this was the opportunity for me to work with TBC's management team to build the equity story, to prepare the company for the successful listing in 2014. And my admiration and believe in the success and capabilities of TBC, as I mentioned, started before I became officially part of the team. So today, I will start with a brief overview with where we stand in Georgia and what are our ambitions in the next 3 years. So as you see, we have a track record over many years of strong growth and profitability. This is averaging 26% return on equity over the past 5 years, and growing our loans and deposits at mid-teens. We are leading players in all key financial services with 37% market share across loans and deposits and being #1 player in leasing and insurance businesses. But today, let me focus more on the future strategy and our aims in Georgia. As you can see, we target continuous dominance in the areas we are already leaders. This is our corporate and investment banking. And in addition, we are aiming to become bank of choice in the mass retail and payments businesses. And our management team members, Ivano and Nika, will present more details about these areas. This will add up into the continuation of our strong and consistent delivery on the promised results, and we are aiming to deliver more than 23% return on equity and 10% to 15% annual growth in loans and profits. Now I will focus on corporate investment banking and our plans here for the next few years. So if we look at the snapshot, you see clearly that we have consistently been dominating the market across multiple products in CIB, where we are having more than 14% market share. The key to our success is -- lies on the long-term relationship with our clients and our execution capabilities. We have very broad reach. I think it's important to highlight that we are working with 93 clients -- companies out of top 100 companies. So 93% penetration. Most importantly also what I want to highlight is that 70% of our clients are working with us for more than 5 years. So we are working with them for -- as a part of their corporate journeys, and we are embedded in their kind of corporate lifestyle. CIB is also a main contributor of growth and profitability to TBC Georgian business. We're consistently delivering up to 50% of profit over the past few years. So now looking a little bit deeply into our CIB business. I mean, core of our business is the lending to our corporate clients. As you can see, we have a strong track record of growth over the past 5 years. We averaged 18% CAGR. We expect that we will continue to grow double digits, well above the nominal GDP growth rate. And why we have confidence? First is our own capabilities and strong positioning with our clients, but second is the corporate landscape. Considering the strong growth of profitability of our corporates over the past 5 years, we have accumulated really stable and confident conditions, and corporate debt levels are way below of most European and West average. It's 30% of the average. So that gives us the opportunity to lend more and grow both for the daily working capital needs and also for the expansion CapEx, et cetera. Another important driver for our growth is our market-leading MSME franchise. So SMEs are contributing annually to 350 companies, who are transferring from SME to the corporate world. So that will be another strong driver. So our relationships with our key companies are representing the whole economy of Georgia. As you can see, in multiple important and key sectors of the economy which are contributing to the growth of Georgia, we are holding approximately 40% market share, a little bit more there or little bit less. But importantly, this is on the back of working with most of the leading company, Georgian companies and some of the well-known brands you can see here. These are like, I don't know, Coca-Cola, Carrefour, Philip Morris, SPAR, world-leading hotels, et cetera. We also presented another set of important sectors of Georgian economy. And what we want to see, we are everywhere, presented as a trusted partner of the Georgian corporates. And then just looking at the energy and infrastructure, you can see that over the past 3 years, we have contributed to the growth and financing of 71% of Georgia's energy supply generation and 66% of the old road infrastructure financing. I would like also to focus and look at the segments which we believe are -- have strong growth potential in the future. This is Wealth Management and Asset Management business. And we believe that -- yes, we had a very good growth, 26% of CAGR over the past 4 years. But working with the founders and executives of Georgia's leading companies, we believe that there is further growth potential. Because they are growing, as we already mentioned. Profitability of the Georgian companies is stable and has a good outlook. On the other side, our founders and executives are looking for the ways to further diversify both their savings and the investments. Another important area that we have been building over the last few years is Asset Management business. So it's only 3-year-old company. And then only in 2005 (sic) [ 2025 ], it has more than doubled its AUM. And this is on the back of growth of both on the retail investors and also on the corporate investor base. And importantly, why we believe that we have a growth potential also for the next few years. If we look at the EU comparison of Georgia, the securities represent in Georgia only 10% of the total investments, and in EU, it's 40%. So that gives us significant upside to further grow before we will be close -- even close to the European average. Similarly, another area that we have been developing over the past 5, 6 years is debt capital markets. This is a growing and very ambitious area for Georgian corporates in Georgian capital markets. You see that we are holding here 54% market share. So we are issuing and underwriting more than half of the Georgian corporate issuances in the debt capital markets. And we believe, again, considering the low levels of debt of Georgian corporates, this area also has significant growth potential. Okay. We talked about our success factors, what we are going to achieve in the future. I think it's important for me to highlight to you what gives us the competitive advantage today and in future. And there are 3 areas I would focus. First is our people. Second, this is a long-standing relationship, strategic partnership with our clients. And third is the digitalization of our business. And I'll spend a couple of minutes on each of them. So people. We have a team of 500 professionals in CIB. Many of them have huge education, coming not only from Georgian, but also from the Western universities. More importantly, we have very experienced team, and we have an ambitious and willingness to promote most of our senior people from within. Second thing is the strategic partnerships. Our clients stay with us and work with us because we have -- we are providing with unrivaled combination of industry expertise, execution -- strong execution capabilities and strong data analytics, which are tailoring all our services to their needs individually. And third is the digitalization. So I want to give you one example we are proud of. So over the past 2 years, we have been working on digitalizing our credit flow, which is the main product in corporate business. And we have brought the time to cash to 15 days. This was a significant decrease from 25 days. And now we are able to issue even most complex ones on an average within 2 weeks. And the NPS of our digital banking stands over 80%, which is also a very, very strong figure. Here, we wanted to bring a couple of real-life examples that we executed last year. First, like, last year, we were joint lead managers in the -- on the issuance of largest ever corporate Eurobond issued by the Silk Road Group. And we used these proceeds to finance now one of the iconic hotels that has been opened in Tbilisi last year, Telegraph Hotel. You see the picture here. And if you visited Georgia, I'm sure you visited this hotel as well. Another very, very important transaction is our strategic advisory and financing project, where we created a market leader in the retail, and this was the largest M&A retail transaction in past decade in Georgia. So now Daily, who is our core client, holds 33% market share in retail, is an undisputed leader of retail business. Another important pillar of our success is artificial intelligence. So we are increasingly using AI in CIB currently already, both for the internal purposes and for the client-facing tasks. This includes the daily and transactional banking tools and predictive analytics within our own in-house built CRM platform. And importantly, we believe that 20% of growth of our profit will come from the AI initiatives over the next 3 years. And this will be coming both from the revenue uplift opportunities and from the cost efficiencies. I can provide some examples during the Q&A if you will be interested in that. And in my final slide, I would like to further highlight our ambitions. So we will further strengthen our position in CIB leadership. And we believe that we are well positioned here to be go-to bank -- to continue to be go-to bank for the Georgia's biggest companies. And we believe that holding over 40% market share is something that we are comfortably confident with. We will further use digitalization and AI to further optimize our work and boost earnings, and we will tap into the new revenue streams in high-growth market segments. Why do I think we will win? Because we have highly embedded positions with our key corporate partners, and we are continuing investing both in our team, in technology and in the artificial intelligence. And we have importantly very strong alignment between client coverage and product teams and all important enablers that support the growth of the businesses. This leaves us very well placed to extend our leadership in the strong segments. As you know, I will be soon taking over as the CEO of our Georgian bank, and I'm very proud that CIB will remain in very, very strong hands. This is a team that we built over the past decade, and I'm very proud and happy that they will be taking over the leadership of corporate and investment banking. Thank you for your time and for your interest. I will be happy to answer any questions during the break. And now I would like to hand over to my colleague, Ivano, to talk about the daily banking and payments. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, George. Good morning. I'm Ivan Gulmagarashvili, and I look after the e-banking and payments business. I'm a new joiner to this wonderful team. Before joining TBC Bank, I spent nearly 25 years in financial systems. I worked at various roles for Barclays, HSBC and other financial institutions in Europe. Most recently, I spent 4 years with Amazon in the U.K. and here in the States before finally moving back to Georgia. Now I will be sharing our retail banking presentation together with Nika. We have experienced strong growth over the past few years, and we believe there is a great opportunity to gain market share in each segment. With 1.0 million monthly active customers, we have 36% market share in retail loans and 35% market share in deposit portfolio. We have a strong team and strategy in place, so we are well positioned to execute and deliver further growth in 2026 and beyond. Now let's look at the daily banking. We are proud to say that we touch 50% of our population on a monthly basis. This derives from having 1.3 million digital monthly active users and 1.0 million daily card transactions. More than 50% of newly registered businesses opt for TBC acquiring. It is impressive to see that volume we manage through our payment platforms equals to 80% of Georgia's GDP. Our strategy for 2026 through 2028 is to be the go-to financial institution in Georgia. We will further strengthen our leadership position in affluent banking and become a leader in mass retail by 2028. To achieve this, we will stay focused on customer experience, work closely with mass retail segments to better identify their needs and build best-in-class proposition to simplify our customers' daily lives. In the next couple of years, we will also widen our network of merchants and offer new solutions, enabling our customers to better satisfy their needs for payments and transfers. Lastly, to achieve the above, we are moving from transactional loyalty to a more relationship, long-term driven approach, where we value most those who do more with us, whether through higher cashback special offers or various events. Around a year ago, we launched our flagship TBC card, debit card. We are proud that we have issued 1 million cards before our first anniversary. This strong proposition enabled us to acquire new customers and revive dormant ones. More importantly, having more and more mass retail customers means that this card has become a gateway into our affluent banking service. The numbers speak for themselves. Four out of the 10 Georgians use a card. Nearly 50% of the cards are issued to new customers with less than 3% churn rate. Lastly, we are delighted that over 75% of our customers have come through our digital channels, completing their end-to-end journey under 25 seconds. We are and have been an undisputed leader in affluent banking from day one. We grew over 50% in 2025, and now we have close to 200,000 members, which accounts for 55% of deposits and 60% of the loan portfolio of the retail business. We will keep this leadership going forward and further invest in personal bankers who not only solve our customers' financial pain points, but also provide lifestyle services to make them feel special. The set of exclusive offers and lifestyle benefits is truly a differentiator in the market. For example, we have recently launched the co-branded Metal debit card that you can see here with Turkish Airlines. Turkish Airlines is the most frequently used airline in Georgia. As for the acquiring side of the payments business, we are a leader with 45% market share in e-commerce in Georgia. We have onboarded all major merchants such as McDonald's and Spanish delivery merchant Glovo. POS acquiring is advancing more slowly. We will be launching Amex later this year, which will enable smaller merchants to use our POS terminals. QR payments do not yet exist in Georgia, and we plan to be the first to offer the QR payment service to micro merchants. This should put us in a much better position as a preferred partner for this segment. Separately, we have invested to build a more integrated sales structure, which enables us to get closer to existing and, more importantly, to new merchants in Georgia. We believe these changes should help us go above 50% market share in the acquiring business in Georgia. Previously, when we launched our new debit card, we opted for simplicity, rewarding our customers' transactional behavior. While we offered nearly 700 unique cashback offers ranging from 20% to 70% cash back in 2025, this program was not really designed to create long-term relationships. On a positive note, the program's NPS reached to 56%, up from 42% in the first 3 months post launch. The merchant co-funding also exceeded 60% compared to just 20% in 2024 as more and more merchants see the value of bringing our customers to them. You can see this on the flywheel on the right-hand side. Going forward, we have made changes. We will provide most value to our customers who are most loyal to us, who treat us as their primary bank. We have also made a strategic decision to invest and build out our gamification platform, which will improve all elements of the customer life cycle starting from acquisition through to churn management. Although we have grown massively in 2025, reaching 1.0 million monthly active customers, we believe there is an opportunity to further grow in various segments in which we haven't penetrated to a maximum level. We will further look into each segment to learn more, create even more value-added services, offer tailor-made solutions and be closer to them. Now let me pass over to Nika, who will talk more about our retail lending business in Georgia. Thank you.

Hello, everyone. Great to be here. And thank you to my colleagues for a great overview of businesses. Briefly about myself. I'm Nika and I used to work in TBC Group more than 15 years. My previous job was in TBC Uzbekistan for 4 years, where I was responsible for business acceleration from the day one. And 1.5 years ago, I joined back TBC Bank Georgia. Today, my colleague, Ivano, covered daily banking, and I will cover retail lending. Retail lending is one of the strongest engines overall of TBC Bank dominance and profitability, and we believe that right focus and dedication in this product field is essential for overall success in retail segment, which is very much credit driven. Very briefly regarding numbers. As you can see, our total loan portfolio is more than $3.6 billion. And I want to emphasize here our strong presence in mortgages -- in secured loans, which represents 72% of our total portfolio and gives us 43% of market share. And just to clarify, our secured loans combines mortgages and home equity loans. At the same time, we successfully accelerated unsecured products. And out of total disbursement, 83% comes from digital channels and overall total portfolio is more than $1 billion. I will tell you more regarding unsecured products in upcoming slides. So to summarize this slide, we can say that our lending strategy combines stable, strong growth with profitability and driven by higher digitalization. Our lending proposition is thoughtfully designed as a life cycle offering after researches, observations and analysis of data. We linked products to clients and their profiles. This approach helps us in better targeting, better cross-sell and best customer experience. For instance, buy now pay later, or BNPL, is a key entry product in our lending ecosystem, is designed for acquisition and cross-sell afterwards. And it needs to be mentioned that 75% of BNPL product users are converting into other products, in credit cards, mortgages and cash loans. And it also needs to be mentioned that overall stickiness of BNPL product users is more than 95%, which means that practically we are not losing BNPL product users. Cash loan is a monetization portfolio growth and cross-sell engine with super simple user journey, creative commercial offerings and comprehensive coverage of customer needs. Therefore, cash loan is the backbone of unsecured products with huge portfolio and customer base. And lastly, let me touch mortgages here, as in our anchor product with strong growth, huge portfolio, stickiness and trust among the clients. This slide explains how we scale lending sustainably through customer centricity and clearly designed product value proposition. We continuously learn from customer behavior and feedback, tracking usage, funnel management, cross-sell and conversion. And this translates into tailored offering, data-driven decision-making, conscious underwriting, which is very important, and best-in-class experience. So this process and value chain, every single step matters a lot. And overall, it creates customer-centric driven product excellence, which translates into strong results and sales. Here in this slide, I will focus more in unsecured products, because we see huge improvement and potential here to grow. And this slide summarizes development, innovation and movement, what we've done in last 2 years. To emphasize the important ones is that all our unsecured products are end-to-end digital. We launched numerous of commercial creative campaigns, and we managed to deploy all must-have product features in 2024 and 2025. So our last 2-year portfolio growth is 37%. Share of loans digitally delivered is 83%. And our time to cash, in less than 2 minutes, and in most cases, it's less than 1 minute. And we hold market share above 30% and it's growing very fast. A few words regarding risk management. Our automated decision-making is based on strong usage of internal and external data sources, and we have topped our model performance with Gini coefficient from 65% to 75%. Before I move to next slide, I want to emphasize that these results demonstrates a proven execution track record and gives us a strong base for scaling business further. Continuously building best-in-class products is our forward-looking North Star, and we believe that by delivering these initiatives, we will strengthen our lending franchise even more. For instance, I will emphasize several ones. We are aiming to improve our value proposition for self-employed segment, which is a very important subsegment for overall retail. We are launching subscription-based lending, which means that paying a small fee customer can get special product terms, and this will be much more personalized. AI-driven soft collection, which will help us in both risk reduction and cost optimization. And for instance, modernized overdraft in digital, which is very important for payroll clients and especially for those who are not banking with us. Therefore, our ambitious forward-looking is very clear and very business driven. We want to be first and largest credit product provider in the country, and therefore, best choice for individuals. And this ambition translates into dominance. And in market share, we are aiming to achieve over 35% by the end of 2028. We are aiming to have strong portfolio growth from 20% to 25% annually, whilst improving our penetration into our customer base by 25%, which means that by the end of 2028, every fourth client should hold at least one credit product. And this everything should be achieved by powerful digitalization above 90% of all products sold. Just to summarize retail banking and again highlight the key takeaways, what me and my colleague, Ivano, mentioned. By the end of 2028, we aim to become first choice for mass retail by reaching 2.5 million monthly active users. This growth strategy focuses on 3 core areas: go-to choice in daily banking, strong acquiring network and redefining loyalty and engagement system. Also, we aim to have a strong lending franchise reflected with our anchor presence in mortgages, remaining comfortably above 40% market share, and the rapid growth in unsecured products, which itself reflects large scale of digitalization above 90% and strong dominance above 35% market share by the end of 2028. That's all. Thank you for your attention, and now we will have a short coffee break.

Thanks, Nika. Just to say, we'll probably only have about a 5-minute break now because the minister will be arriving fairly soon. So please grab a coffee or use the restrooms and come back in a few minutes. Thank you very much. [Break]

Take your seats please for the second part of today's proceedings. Thank you very much.

Welcome back, everyone, and welcome to the second part of our Strategic Day. We will focus on Uzbekistan. As I mentioned earlier today, we are hugely excited about this opportunity. As this business grows, one of the strategic options we would consider, a possible IPO of our business in Uzbekistan. But before we dive more into TBC Uzbekistan, it's my great pleasure to introduce a very special guest we have with us today. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Laziz Kudratov, Minister of Investment, Industry and Trade, Republic of Uzbekistan.

Thank you, Mr. Butskhrikidze. Dear ladies and gentlemen, it's a great pleasure for me to be here. Thank you for the invitation. First time for me to attend such event dedicated to a specific company. So it's a great experience for me as well. I will not talk too much. I want to keep my message clear and straightforward. Uzbekistan is open for investment. Uzbekistan is stable, and Uzbekistan delivers on its commitments. So over the past 5 years, we have focused on one thing: building a predictable and reform-driven economy. Our growth has been above 6.5% annually. Last year alone, GDP growth was 7.7%. We have attracted and consumed since 2017 $70-plus billion of foreign direct investment. When we started the reforms in 2017, we used to attract at around $3 billion of foreign investment per annum. Last year alone, in 2025, we reached $43 billion, which is more than 10x growth compared to 2017 when the reforms started. And this is, of course, not just activity. This is structural transformation. And the figures are showing that investors are confident in Uzbekistan. They are comfortable and they are actively entering the Uzbek market. International rating agencies upgraded our sovereign rating from BB- to BB positive. That is a signal of confidence and it reflects macroeconomic discipline and consistent reforms. Our next clear objective is to achieve investment-grade status within the next 4 years. This is why we are aligning our fiscal policy, debt management and financial sector reforms. This is not only an ambition, it is a structured and measurable target. Uzbekistan today has more than 38 million people. It is the largest population in Central Asia. We are young. More than 60% of our population below 30 years old, which is the solid driver for the sustainable growth. We are increasingly urban and rapidly digitalizing. Consumption along with the economy is growing, financial services demand is expanding. This is why the financial sector is central to our reform agenda. We are increasing competition in banking. We are attracting strategic foreign investors, and we are preparing major state and private companies for IPOs. And TBC's performance is strong proof that the market works, growth is real and returns are also real. Privatization is our key priority. We created a $2 billion national investment fund managed by Franklin Templeton. Preparations for an international IPO are underway. And in addition to this, 29 large state-owned enterprises will be privatized this year. We're also modernizing the financial system together with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. We are working together to improve regulation and to introduce financial stability tools. We are also working on a new law on alternative investment funds, which is being prepared now. Our goal is to attract at least $1 billion of alternative investments over the next 3 years. We also have an ambition to create and to turn Uzbekistan into a regional financial hub. This is why we are progressing rapidly with the establishment of the Tashkent International Financial Center, which will have a common law regulation within its jurisdiction. Housing finance is another priority. We are developing mortgage-backed securities, covered bonds and public-private partnerships. We will be doubling the housing construction by 2040, and for this, we are building a stable long-term mortgage market, which is -- we are confident will be attractive to institutional investors. Energy is another success story and equally important sector. Since 2018, we have attracted $35 billion of foreign direct investments through PPPs and added 9,000 megawatts of capacity. By 2030, we will be reaching 54% of green electricity in our energy generation mix. That is why we are open for partnerships in energy storage projects, including hydrogen and hybrid solutions. These are large bankable projects open to international partners. Ladies and gentlemen, the global economy is shifting, supply chains are moving and new growth centers, as you see, are emerging, and countries that combine stability, reform and demographic strength will lead the next phase of growth. And Uzbekistan intends to be one of them. And we are not offering promises. We are showing results, results that are backed by the concrete reforms. The momentum is real and the opportunities in Uzbekistan are concrete. So we would like to invite you to be part of these solid transformations. Thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you. Many thanks for your comments, Mr. Kudratov. And now I want to hand over to Oliver, our Chairman of Uzbek Operations. Please, Oliver. [Presentation]

I hope everybody can hear me. Great. So welcome. Thank you very much indeed to Minister Kudratov. Thank you, Vakho, for the intro. Welcome, everybody, to the session on TBC Uzbekistan. I'm glad to say that we also have almost 400 attendees online. So welcome to you. I'm Oliver Hughes, Head of International Business for TBC Group. And this is a session, obviously, on TBC Uzbekistan. I'm going to be talking about TBC Uzbekistan, one of the fastest-growing digital financial ecosystems in the world today. And I'm going to be starting with an overview of the market, talking about our strategy, talking about why we're going to win. Then Nika Kurdiani, who's the CEO of TBC Uzbekistan, is going to take us through our product, our platform and all the advantages that we have in the market, which are going to power us to success and now powering us already. Then Sharof, our CFO, will wind up the session by talking about some useful metrics for you to understand the business and give us the outlook. And then we'll move into Q&A. So we've talked a lot about Uzbekistan, about -- and we've been hearing all day about how the economy is powering forward. Obviously, it's all true. The economy is going to grow to over $250 billion, which will basically be doubling in a short space of time, by 2030. We've also heard that the socio demographics of Uzbekistan are amazing, and they really are. So by 2030, the population will grow to 42 million people, which will be adding 4 million new people between now and then. The amazing thing about the socio demographics is that you get this wonderful generational effect. So the penetration of digital services obviously increases the younger you get. TBC is a digital bank. In Uzbekistan, we're completely online. And so the younger the person, the more likely they are to be our customer. And every time a new cohort comes into the market, our market share automatically goes up. So it's a wonderful socio demographic environment to be working in. I'll talk about the low banking penetration a little bit later, but that's a very important backdrop to what we're doing in the country. There's huge MSME potential. So there are 0.5 million MSMEs in the country, and there are 5.5 million self-employed people. This number is growing. Uzbeks are very commercial, they're great sellers, and this is something that the government is obviously very keen to foster as one of the pillars of economic growth going forward. The banking system is still state dominated. So 63% of banking assets are in state-owned banks. And we've heard about the clear reform agenda. Thank you very much again to the minister for being here today. So the privatizations, but also FDI is one of the important metrics here. And almost $40 billion of FDI came into the market last year, and that's a number which is constantly growing. So that's a great endorsement. Uzbekistan is a fast-changing country. So like many frontier markets, the regulatory environment is shifting, and something -- this is -- we have to navigate very carefully. You can see in the white boxes here the GDP per capita, and this is a very important metric as well. So the GDP per capita was $2,000 in 2020. It grew to almost $4,000 per capita last year. But by 2030, it's set to reach over $6,000. So while household incomes are growing, you can see on this slide, where Uzbekistan is in the bottom left-hand corner, that it's very underpenetrated in terms of retail and MSME credit. So even though it's a rapidly growing market from a very low base, it's still only 11% retail lending to GDP. This is obviously something which is set to grow despite the Central Bank of Uzbekistan's cautious stance. In terms of the entry into Uzbekistan. So TBC Group has the Georgian business, which is very cash generative. So through these organic cash flows, TBC Group was able to go into the Uzbek market using its own cash. We invited a couple of investors with us. We're very fortunate to have our partners, EBRD and IFC, who have 10% stake in the business each. And a decision was taken to enter the market with a mobile-only banking model. So we have 2 apps, Payme and TBC UZ, the banking app. We drove a wedge into the market with our own tech stack, with our own licenses, banking license from scratch. And we chose 3 product segments or verticals to concentrate on. That was mobile payments, digital cash loans and online deposits. And this enabled us through the focus and great execution we had to build up a very strong position in those 3 product verticals very quickly, which took us to breakeven in record time, basically a little over 2 years. So we drove this wedging through more of a monoline approach. But over the last couple of years, we've been diversifying our business as we build out a digital banking ecosystem with lots of different product verticals. So we've been adding debit cards, our flagship Salom debit card product, Osmon credit card, business daily banking, business lending, BNPL, subscription and lots of other stuff. And this has been built by our world-class team in Uzbekistan. It's our proprietary stuff in-house. We've also done some selective M&A acquisitions. So we acquired BILLZ, which you'll be hearing about later from Nika. This is the leading SaaS platform for retailers in Uzbekistan. So where things make sense, where it's value accretive, we'll look at that in terms of acquisitions beyond organic. And we're unlocking the ecosystem effect over time by adding more and more products and services in order to grow the number of products per customer in our very large customer base. So we have 23 million registered users, unique registered users in our ecosystem in Uzbekistan, 6 million monthly active users. We're a top-of-mind brand in Uzbekistan. So we're the first in terms of financial services in Tashkent. We're top 3 in Uzbekistan in general. Which is pretty impressive results for basically just 5, 6 years of being operational in Uzbekistan. We have very, very strong distribution capabilities. So we're market leaders in digital online marketing, in performance marketing. We have some offline sales capability. And obviously, we have a very large customer base, different customer bases into which we can cross-sell. So we're able to reach deep down into our very large customer base to monetize through multiple product holdings. So now that we've achieved critical mass, our goal now is to drive lifetime value and grow that in terms of customers in the customer base. We've become one of the largest unsecured consumer finance player in the country with almost $950 million of loan book at the end of last year. We're one of the leading players in the emerging credit card segment in the market, which is new but growing very quickly. We're a top 3 player in terms of installment loans and BNPL. In general, we're a top 10 consumer player in Uzbekistan in terms of retail deposits and retail loans. And the next phase is for us to build out the B2B side of our ecosystem in this 2-sided ecosystem play, because through business lending, through business daily banking, through B2B payments acquiring, we can attract more sellers onto our platform. And this is something that Nika is going to be talking about in his section. Basically, the more content from our partners we can put on our platform, the more consumers will come to our apps and spend time in them. The more consumers we have, the more sellers we have, who are bringing more content, and we get this wonderful virtuous circle and the ecosystem effect is unlocked. We've also become one of Uzbekistan's leading payments players. So last year, we processed over $9 billion worth of payments volume. And Payme and TBC Bank now capture over 20% market share in terms of payments. We have over millions -- several millions of users doing transactions on our platforms every day, which makes us one of the largest payments ecosystems in Central Asia. And transactional business is very important because it means that customers are not only sticky and bound to our platform, but we also have -- we generate lots of data, which drives insight to build engagement and also enables us to monetize our customer base. Competition is intensifying in Uzbekistan. So the country has a very well-regulated financial services system, and it's increasingly digital. There's lots of digital e-government services and digital services from privately held players. This is attracting competition, but competition is good because it raises all the boats. So the more muscular competitors we have in the market, the better for everybody. They're investing in the market. They're educating consumers, and they're building infrastructure. So it's not just alone trying to build this ourselves. And as you can see, we have lots of different ecosystems appearing in Uzbekistan. There are some of the domestic players, for example, Uzum, Alif, Click, Octo and there are some foreign players as well. So for example, Yandex, Wildberries, Ozon, Temu. And we believe that, as we look at this table, we have lots of different competitors in different spaces. So in payments and consumer lending, MSME banking, transactional business and MSME lending. We're very well positioned to compete. And this is becoming increasingly the clash of the ecosystems in Uzbekistan about share of mind or share of attention. So we're very well placed because we have strong brand recognition, we have good product differentiation, and crucially, very strong customer service. So we can compete in this space against these emerging competitors. It's becoming exciting. We've tried to scope out the opportunity in Uzbekistan. And basically, the whole market is growing. We're growing more quickly than the market. And so our market shares in all the segments in which we operate -- and we're adding more and more product verticals -- will grow over time. We see our total addressable market in 2 dimensions. These are based on the National Statistic Office data from Uzbekistan. So one is the TAM of total loans. This is retail lending and MSME lending, which was around $23 billion last year, and over the next 3 years, will grow to around $41 billion by 2028. This is fairly rapid growth. It's a good clip. However, that means that the credit to GDP penetration still remains low. It will go from 15% in 2025 to around 18% in 2028. So still a low level of penetration. That's retail and MSME. And the second dimension in which we see our TAM, our addressable market, is the total contribution of financial services in the country, which last year was around $7 billion. This will double to $14 billion by 2028. Our obtainable market, our SOM, last year was around $2.7 billion, and that will almost double to $5.3 billion by 2028. Our market share of this net revenue was around 8% last year, and that will comfortably grow to over 10% in 2028. So lots of growth to come. And looking a little bit further ahead to 2030. We're building the largest digital financial ecosystem in Central Asia. We aim to have by 2030 -- it's our ambition -- 10 million monthly active engaged unique users across our ecosystem, $3 billion of loan book in MSME and retail, $250 million of net profit. In order to do that, we have to become or stay one of the leaders in all of the segments in which we operate. So Nika Kurdiani will tell us just how we do that. We believe we can get there, and we're moving in that direction very quickly. So just while Nika is coming to the stage to take over, I'd just like to reiterate that one of the strategic options that we're considering very seriously is IPOing, listing the Uzbekistan business. So thanks very much again for your attention. Nika?

Hello. Thanks for being with us. Mr. Minister, thanks again. So I'll try to dive deeper into how we do things. But before going into some product highlights and strategic highlights, obviously, there is a question, why we win, right? And Oliver mentioned super ambitious targets, which are cool. Of course, they are our North Stars. We're sure about achieving them. But in reality, it all stands on a fundament, which is -- I will mention just a couple of them. Super experienced team. Oliver said we are a superstar team that we manage together in Uzbekistan. Many experiences, many different great companies in the background. And the main thing is also, in my opinion, the mentality, right, the way we approach things, the way we think about the product management, product development, customer experience building and everything that builds this success. And one last thing I want to mention from this slide is the customer base we managed to collect in 5 -- a bit more than 5 years now, which is 23 million registered users and monthly active 6 million people. And this is massive because Uzbekistan, it is growing every year, but we already have 23 million out of 38 million, right? This is very important for us. This is our strategic flywheel. And the way we think about it is basically that each of these items on the slide are the strategic pillars we try to develop. Firstly, of course, the product has to be fantastic. But if the product is great but the customer experience of delivering this product is not good enough, then the product doesn't help. We are a technology business. We are in digital banking business, in digital payments business. So if the technology is not stable, there is no trust and there is no usage for the products. So basically, technology has to be fantastic. We are investing a lot into branding, into design because we think that this helps in building the love marks. People have to love our brand. They want -- they have to be willing to connect with our brand and represent our brand. So in this regard, having the chance of building a love mark is super important pillar of our strategy. Analytics, AI, data-driven thinking is something that we cultivate, something that we cherish really, and we have almost every decision based on very deep analytics. And this is super important for taking right decisions, doing right product developments. And finally, profitability is something that I call personally a thank you from the customer, because if the customer is happy with the whole cycle, then finally comes the moment when the customer is paying a fee, which is a thank you. Otherwise, they wouldn't pay. And this rotates the cycle once more. So the flywheel concept is super important for us and everything that we think is going through this cycle. Yes. Then the second also important concept is the use cases we are trying to solve for our customers. We have on the slide the 2 sides of our ecosystem. As Oliver said, one is consumers, the other one is businesses. For consumers spend, save, earn, borrow, invest and protect are the main use cases we are trying to develop. And for the businesses, it's sell, mortgage paid, manage finances, operate efficiently and access funding is something that we are developing. And considering our mission statement, which is making people's life easier, we are trying to make people's life easier through spending less of their time on the services we provide and spending less of their money on the services we provide so that, again, they are thankful and decide to rotate. I won't go into each of these items, but this is the product pipeline. The green dots are the ones we delivered and we are scaling, and the gray ones are coming up. But basically, there are lots of things that we are planning to introduce into Uzbekistan market, and we are working on most of them. This is our -- Oliver said, our flagship, Salom Card. Basically, we had a debit card, of course, from the day one, but it was mostly supporting other products. And once we thought that we are ready to go into daily banking market, basically, we developed Salom Card, which is, in reality, best card on the market because the customers don't spend money on it, they earn money from it, because we accrue interest, we pay cash backs. And we see the uptake as well, right, in almost a year from the launch. We launched it -- went to the market fully in January last year. We have already 950,000 people end of last year, but now it's already more than 1 million. And this is a key to our consumer [ ecosystem ]. Basically, the card is integrated. And I'll be showing a slide where I'll explain better, but the card is integrated into the whole cycle of consumers' ecosystem. Big things coming up in Q2 is Salom Card for youth. And we mentioned it multiple times today that Uzbekistan is a young country. It is a country that is getting younger every year. So the Salom Card for youth will be introduced in second quarter and Salom Card for premium customers as well will be introduced in second quarter. So this will further increase the access to different segments. The next product is Osmon Card. We first launched with cash loans. Then we went into POS loans, point-of-sale loans. Then we went into BNPL. And lastly, in the consumer credit product line, basically, we went into credit cards. We have already around 150,000 users, and the number is growing. We think this card is already in this product category #1, #2 in the market. And this will further grow because it is a very important product for us and we know exactly how to build it. So investing a lot of attention into Osmon Card. Osmon in Uzbek is sky. So it's Sky Card. This is brand-new product. We basically piloted it last year, tried to understand how it works. But then we had the full go-to-market in the beginning of this year in 20th of January, actually. And we already have 140,000 users. This is a built-in BNPL into our mobile app. So basically, the customers are transacting within our mobile apps and this BNPL works within it. And it is a fantastic acquisition tool. It has a fantastic NPL because it's -- NPS because it is basically delivering just one togal experience for access to the BNPL. So we are very hopeful it will scale. And now, currently, we are -- I'll show you a bit later, we are integrating this product with various platforms like marketplaces and retail chains. This is another very big bet we are doing, and hopefully, we're going to launch it in the middle of the second quarter. We are doing this year is the car financing. Uzbekistan has 100 cars per 1,000 population. Kazakhstan, a neighboring country, has 200 and Europe has 600. Almost all banks are offering car financing. However, it takes on average 10 to 2 weeks -- 10 days to 2 weeks to close the loan and buy a car. We intend to disrupt this market like we did in cash loans, where we launched cash loan in 1 minute. And basically, we intend here to do car financing within 1 day. The whole experience will be not in branch in the car saloon, but it will be in-app experience, where the customer will buy a car, literally starting from the app of TBC. This beautiful crystal is Novvot, which is the crystallized sugar that is used also in Georgia, by the way, with tea or the kid candy. And we are calling our loyalty platform -- the new loyalty platform that will be launched very soon in Uzbekistan Novvot. And people will be collecting Novvot crystals. They will be collecting cash backs. They will be getting discounts from our partners. The whole idea here is basically now that we have 2 ecosystems to connect merchants and consumers to each other through a loyalty platform. So basically, we have now already 55,000 registered businesses in our ecosystem through BILLZ, through Payme, through TBC. We have 23 million registered users. And we are trying to build a loyalty platform where basically merchants will be offering to our consumers certain actions, I don't know, commercial offers, discounts, Novvot points, so that they can motivate them to go into the merchants and buy something. So Oliver was explaining it well that the more content is in the middle, the more motivation that consumers and businesses have to be on the platform. So basically, this is exactly one of the tools how you build this self-reinforcing network effect, 2-sided network effect. Yes. And it will connect BILLZ, TBC, TBC business and then Payme, because these are the key brands and then products and then businesses basically that are connecting these 2 sides in our ecosystem. This is another ecosystem product. We call ecosystem products, the products that can span all over our businesses. We launched last year subscription, paid subscription services for TBC and for Payme. We saw increased uptake in terms of volumes, that the customers would do once they are subscribed, they are paying for this again. So we are earning all the subscription, but at the same time, the customers increase their transaction volumes. And on average, the earnings per customer increased by 4x. The issue is we have it separately for Payme and separately for TBC. I mean this is good because both customers are happy. However, we want to connect the subscription across the ecosystem. And this is something we're going to be building this year and launching next year. And once we have single subscription for all across the ecosystem, basically, we will have more motivation for the customers to use products within the ecosystem. And this will once more help the network effect. And yes, the figure, we have around 700,000 subscribers already. This is also something very new. We are building this product from last year. We had it in the friends and family mode, Payme Travel. By this, Payme will be entering travel vertical. And the ambition, of course, is to become the biggest travel agency in the country. We sold last year 1,000 tickets. And this year, once we launched BNPL, we will couple these products together. We will couple it together with Salom Card because Salom Card will offer a 10% cash back on travels. And basically, these 3 together will give to the customers the best price and best offer on the market. And by this, we hope, and we have seen it in other places, the sales will increase 10x. We intend, hopefully, in summer to have the first month where we're going to sell 1,000 tickets per month. Now moving to the business side of the ecosystem. I mentioned the use cases we are trying to solve. And we started building this in 2024, actually. September 2024 was the first month when we launched our web app for businesses. It was poor in terms of value proposition, but we developed ever since. So now we have a fully functional daily banking web portal. And we are also launching in March our mobile banking basically for businesses. So we're going to have mobile and web for businesses, and it covers all critical use cases for daily banking for businesses. And we have already 55,000 registered businesses in the ecosystem, and you know that we started our pilot in the first quarter of last year. We also entered business lending. We started it also somewhere in the beginning of last year. And we already have $94 million portfolio for self-employed people and we have approximately $20 million in the book for SMEs, micro SMEs. And of course, we are further building it out. We are increasing the volumes -- increasing the volumes to our customers, and we are adding some products now. So this will become our and is already our main focus in terms of growing our loan book. This is another, in my opinion, super strategic tool that we are now scaling. It is one of the main payment apps and interfaces on the market. It's called Payme Go. And what we are trying to do is basically we are trying to build within the interface of Payme many different things. So one is the wallet, so you can link all your cards. And of course, we are showing the Salom Card, which will have the biggest motivation for the customer to be linked into Payme Go. You can scan QRs, you can let your QR be scanned. And you have all the benefits, meaning cashbacks from all cashback providers on the market. You can also have toggle for BNPL. It's just literally like Wi-Fi toggle in the phone. You have all your loyalty cards inside the Payme Go. Meaning that if you're using a loyalty card from Korzinka, for instance, the biggest retail chain in Uzbekistan, you will -- by paying, you will automatically get the benefits, meaning cash backs. You will get the loyalty points from Korzinka and you will get loyalty points from Payme. And also transport hub, basically. With Payme Go, you can travel in any transport, basically, bus, metro, so on and so on also. So basically, this will become our strategic answer to payment acceptance. And the key thing here is that it is not driven by the merchant side of the ecosystem. This is driven by the 23 million users because it is already working in TBC and in Payme. So we will push into the business side of the sellers' ecosystem through our individuals, through our consumers, and we have 23 million registered of them. This is the uptake. In December, we had already 600,000 Payme Go users. And basically, the volumes were USD 38 million through Payme Go, and this is increasing. Yes, BILLZ. We bought BILLZ -- controlling stake in BILLZ last year. And on this slide, there are many figures, but I just want to explain the main concept why we did it. Basically, it is easier to change a bank for a business than to change an accounting system, than an ERP system, right? Because once you have all your inventory brought into the system, once you have your accountant working with the system, once you are basically linked to it, it becomes heart of your business. So before changing and trying to switch to a new system, you will think 10x because it increases your switching cost. So mentally, companies tend to switch banks more frequently than their core accounting and ERP systems. And this is exactly why we went through it because it is the heart of the seller's ecosystem that we are trying to build. And we are enhancing BILLZ as much as we can with all our products so that it becomes not only the biggest in fashion retail and in certain verticals, but the biggest retail POS system in Uzbekistan. Now moving to the customer experience bullet on the flywheel. Basically, we spent all last year in redesigning our both apps. Basically, on the left side, you have the old app, and on the right side, for Payme -- for TBC and Payme, you have the new ones. We are launching Payme in -- on the 26th of March, which is the birthday of Payme. And TBC is already launched to 10%, and we are rolling it out further slowly because it's a brand-new design and then the structure is totally new. So we have to be very careful. But it has shown a very good uptake and very good engagement from the customers. Lola, you saw it in the clip. Lola is our AI assistant, and we intend to think this way. So -- and this is how I'm always explaining. So if you think about early 2000s or the decade of 2000s, the banks were modernizing their branches. They were saying that basically the branch of the future is coming. And it was more digital and all these kind of words. Then 2010-2020, it was about do-it-yourself trend, right? So we all went into digital mobile banking, and we took out the relationship from the customer. Basically, it was the interface. And the next decade, basically, in my opinion and in our team's opinion, is about bringing the relationship back into the mobile app, but through AI assistant. And this is exactly what we are betting on. So basically, Lola will deliver ChatGPT type of experience. When you talk to Lola, like the boy, our consumer was doing there, and basically, Lola will be transacting with you, giving you advice on your financial standing and many other things. We are running Lola already on the friends and family mode. It speaks Uzbek, it speaks Russian. It knows how to differentiate the mixture of Uzbek and Russia, which frequently happens. And basically, it can talk back to you. It is running on friends and family mode. And slowly and slowly, we will be rolling it out. And yes, Oliver mentioned about our top of mind. We are super proud of it. We are #1 for both Payme and TBC in Tashkent and we are #3 for TBC and #2 for Payme nationwide. And having this result in 5 years, this is really remarkable and the fantastic work of everybody in the team. And final slide, flywheel again, and 2 sides of our ecosystem. The main thing I just want to mention here are all these lines between products. The whole idea which we try to put visually is that within the ecosystem, all products should support each other so that they can enhance themselves. For instance, Salom Card in travel brings more customers to travel. Travel offers better discounts for Salom Card. Then we have for the tourist agency a working capital loan from TBC business, and so on and so on. So the whole idea of the 2 sides itself reinforcing ecosystem is to make sure that there are products that work together and there are customers and businesses that see value in the content that is creating on the platform. So the more content there is, the more businesses and customers they are on the platform. Thank you. Sharof? Sharof is our new incoming CFO for the group in Uzbekistan, and he will be telling you some commercial metrics. Thank you.

Thank you, Nika. Good morning, everyone. As Nika said, I'm Sharof, the CFO of Uzbekistan business. And what I would like to tell you about -- today is about how everything you have heard earlier from Oliver and Nika fit together to deliver our financial results. In this section, I'll be covering the pace of our growth, our ability to rapidly scale new products and diversify our revenue base and the foundations of our financial strategy. As highlighted by Minister Kudratov and Oliver, Uzbekistan is growing rapidly, thanks to a favorable demographics, solid reforms and growing digital adoption. Over the last 5 years, Uzbekistan on average has been adding 1 million people to its population every year. And we, TBC Uzbekistan, have been doing exactly the same in terms of our active user base. We have done so, as highlighted by Nika, by focusing first on the retail side of our ecosystem. Every second person today in the country has had some sort of interaction with TBC Uzbekistan. We're now excited to be growing our capabilities on the business side of ecosystem as well. It all comes together to highlight that we are a rapidly growing ecosystem in a fast-evolving environment. But we are not looking for growth at any cost. In fact, we are optimizing for the profitable and sustainable growth trajectory, and cost of customer acquisition is paramount in this respect. We are proud of the fact that we spend on average about $1.42 in digital marketing costs to attract a new user. This figure not only compares well to our global peers, but also has halved, as you can see, over the last year or so. This low CAC is one of our key strengths because it allows us to rapidly scale and launch new products, including when we are cross-selling products such as Payme Plus and Salom Card throughout our ecosystem. However, building an ecosystem is not cheap. You need to build foundations across a number of verticals, which often means costs upfront and payback in revenue later. We are acutely aware of this, and that is why we focus on growing our revenue per user year after year. That figure has grown at over 60% in the last 2 years and increased from $37 to $86. This metric is a key element of our unit economics trajectory. And going forward, we'll be increasingly assessing it separately on a per user and a per business basis. Our vision for the ecosystem relies on the abundance of relevant and tailored products. Over the last 5 years, we have developed a range of almost 30 essential and high engagement products. The fusion of innovation and crossing the chasm models are not simply theories to us. In fact, they are the reality that we live with every day. Thanks to our strengths on the customer acquisition and productivity front, we are regularly launching products such as Salom Cards and moving such products across the chasm, which often separates early adopters from the mass market. Thanks to our strength in product innovation, we are actually also able to actively diversify our revenue base. Our vision for our business model is not about building a bank plus, plus, but rather building a holistic ecosystem. And we are regularly looking to develop new sources of high-quality non-interest income. Fees and commissions today already comprise about 24% of our gross revenues, but we are actively looking for every opportunity to further improve that ratio and challenge historical dominance of P2P transfers in that space by rolling out new products such as BILLZ and service payments, subscriptions and our most recent success, insurance. As noted by Nika, we are now assessing our financial performance from a perspective of core verticals, each structured around a key customer need that we cater to. From a financial perspective today, these verticals are spending, borrowing, saving and protecting. And we already have critical mass across all of these verticals. In spending, we are very much proud of our 20% market share in payments and 6% market share in cards. In borrowing, despite our relatively recent entry into the MSME segment, we are -- our market share there, about 3%, is already coming close to our 5% market share in retail loans. In savings, even without physical branches, we are already the 10th largest bank in the country by the size of retail deposits with about 4% market share. And finally, and as a testament to our product innovation strength, in protecting, we have built the second largest life insurer in the country with over 20% market share in just 9 months last year. If we look at every vertical in a bit more detail, we benefit in the spending vertical from a sustained growth in the volumes, supported by the deepening customer engagement and increasing use cases. Our GTV grew over the last 2 years at over 60%, almost 70%, and it highlights the role which our platform increasingly is playing as a high-frequency everyday payment utility for millions of users. We process on average about 1.6 million transactions per day with an average value of $16, which creates a large, scalable and recurring base for this vertical, all the while supporting us from a fees and commissions perspective. This vertical generates very attractive sources of fees and commissions income for us. Usage-driven recurring revenues are the backbone of the scale of this vertical. Overall, this vertical has generated just under $70 million in gross revenues for us in the last 6 months and -- characterized by high user engagement and capital-light economics. Our borrowing vertical has achieved a remarkable scale since inception. Our loan portfolio today stands at just short of $1 billion and has been growing at over 70% annually. We have disbursed over 6 million loans since inception with an average $600 value, which creates a large basis for the scale in this segment, all the while providing us with solid interest margins. Retail segment and ICL, in particular, still dominate our loan portfolio at 83% and 65%, respectively. However, the business segment is growing rapidly and came to comprise 16% of our total loan portfolio at the year-end, fueled, in particular, by the growth in products such as loans to self-employed and loans to medium enterprises. In our saving vertical, we offer simple and high conversion products. They fulfill a key saving need for our customers, both in the mass retail and the business segment. Here, we build the deepest form of a banking relationship, all the while gaining a stable source of liquidity. Our deposit portfolio crossed the $0.5 billion mark last year and has been growing at almost 70%. And Salom Cards, one of our key product success stories, have been paying dividends in this vertical as well, thanks to its innovative product structure that allow us to gradually acquire primary current account relationships with our retail customers, even though in Uzbekistan these tend to be tied to the wider corporate banking relationships of the employers. And finally, protecting, our most recent addition. It represents from our perspective, a highly attractive market segment and offers opportunities to cross-sell significant products across our ecosystem. Even at this early stage, the traction is strong with almost every second a new ICL being covered by insurance. In the near term, we'll be looking to expand our insurance coverage to other products in other verticals, products such as loans to self-employed in borrowing and credit cards in spending. For us, this segment represents a very attractive monetization opportunity to cross-sell insurance products throughout our ecosystem, all the while generating additional income streams from yet another capital-light source. In conclusion, I would like to leave you with a small set of key metrics. These provide a helpful context about how we think about value creation as we execute our financial strategy going forward. As of the end of 2025, these were our market share across our core verticals of about 8%, an engagement overlap between the core verticals of about 25% and net income per user per active client of about $8. In the near term, our financial strategy will be focused on the following 3 clear priorities: number one, expanding market share by leveraging scale, brand strength and product depth; number two, increasing cross-vertical engagement among customers by growing the number of products per customer; and finally, number three, enhancing net income both per user and per business for improved product mix and pricing. We are excited about the market that we operate in and the potential of our business. And I look forward to sharing more with you about our journey going forward. At this point, I thank you for your time and attention, and I hand over to Andrew, who I think will kick off our Q&A session. Thank you.

Thank you, Sharof. Okay. So we're now going to go into the Q&A session. And I shall be joined on stage by Vakho, by Oliver, by Nika, by George and also by Giorgi Megrelishvili, our CFO, who I think all of you know well. We should have some mics. Or maybe I have this -- so to kick off, it would be great if you are joining online. Please put your question into the chat, and we'll try to go through as many of them as possible. But first of all, if there's anybody here in the room that has a question, please go ahead and feel free to ask our management team anything you like. Thank you. Ted?

[Indiscernible].

Sorry. Hold on just one second. We need a microphone.

That was a great presentation, guys. You did a great job talking about the huge runway for growth in Uzbekistan. But coming back to Georgia, when you think about banking penetration rates there and the fact that you guys are kind of in a duopoly, just give me an idea on the kind of long-term revenue pool and kind of banking penetration metrics in Georgia that make it still an attractive market.

Georgia, as we discussed, has a great macro growth still, 5% on average per annum. So great potential. What we see from a loan perspective to answer your questions directly, we need to be on loan growth somewhere from 10% to 15% depending on the [Technical Difficulty]. Also -- can you hear me better? I think it was mute. So to repeat very shortly, we need to expect at least 10%, double, let's say, digit growth, 10% to 15% for loan growth. I won't go into details. But as we highlighted, we do believe that Georgia's net profit will also grow double digit, like 10% to 15%, depending on the year. So Georgia, although not as a huge potential as maybe, let's say, our Uzbekistan business, it has great potential. It's still a very much growing business, and more to come in the coming years.

Next question. Dan?

You mentioned the potential IPO of the international business a few times. So maybe you could talk a little bit more about the timing for that. And then also maybe relatedly or perhaps separately, talk a bit about your thoughts on entering new markets aside from Uzbekistan?

Yes. So a potential listing is one of the ideas that we're thinking about. So there's no final decision in terms of timing, where that venue might be, but it's something that we are thinking about very, very seriously because it kind of makes sense in the longer term as we crystallize value for TBC Group in terms of what has been successfully built and scaling in Uzbekistan. So watch this space. You'll get more information over time if that is actually what we decide to do. In terms of international, we potentially -- yes. So we've always made it clear that we would think about market #3 once we have Uzbekistan executing, scaling up and running on the track that we want it to be. It's a little bit early. We have tons of stuff going on in Uzbekistan. And as you can see, we're doing all sorts of build-outs. We're building vertical by vertical and scaling in all sorts of different directions. So we've got all hands on deck as we execute and build out that track record in Uzbekistan. So it's a bit early to think about market #3. We have a few ideas, but we will come back to that and communicate to investors over time.

Any further questions in the room?

Don't be shy.

Yes, Roman.

I noticed that you were more willing to offer targets, numerical targets for Georgia than you were for Uzbekistan over the next several years. So I'm just wondering if you could maybe shed a little more light in terms of what you expect for profitability segment by segment and how the market might look?

For Uzbekistan. So we'll do this together with Nika. You snuck in quietly there. Good to see you. So we actually gave quite a few numbers. We gave an ambition by 2030 of $250 million of net profit, a $3 billion loan book ambition. We believe that we can grow our market share of -- our share of net revenue for financial services covering MSME, retail and payments from probably around 8% today to over 10% in 3 years' time, by 2028. So we gave you a few kind of helpful numbers. Sharof gave you some unit economics or something that's very close to it, which helps people move in the right direction if you're thinking about building the models, which obviously we understand analysts quite often want to do. We didn't give granular numbers in terms of, let's say, market shares for different product lines. Partially that is because it's a market which is forming, and maybe the data is actually shown in slightly a different way in terms of central bank reporting, for example. But you can see from the trajectory that we have in many of the products that we've been building and launching and scaling over the last 2, 3 years, where this is going to take us. I mean we can obviously separately go through some of the numbers, if you like, and explain a little bit more as to how some of the numbers that Sharof was sharing will actually feed into the bigger picture, but that's basically where we are today. Nika, I don't know if you want to add anything to that.

I said one more figure, which is 10 million monthly active users by 2030, which is almost doubling of the base in just several years. And this is massive as well.

And in addition to that, we told in our presentation that in 2030, we want to have Uzbekistan deliver 25% of the net profit for the group.

Next question.

My name is [ Tayona ]. I'm native Georgian that grew up here in New York and seeing TBC Bank here for the first time. I just want to congratulate you for such a successful conference. So thank you for having us here. My question is for Nika. What would you say had the biggest impact in terms of growth in Uzbekistan, given that you've only been there a little over 5 years? And then a question for Vakho. In terms of the U.S., are there any plans for the U.S.? Are you thinking about having more events like this here? Or any future plans regarding United States?

Yes, so -- I don't have one. So...

Yes. So the biggest impact, I would say, is what Oliver mentioned, is the fact that Uzbekistan is getting younger every year. And this automatically feeds into digital adoption. And this is massive. So basically, if you look at the penetration figures of smartphones, Internet, data, all this that is important to build a proper digital business, basically, these are very high comparable to very high penetrations in other markets. So in my opinion, this was the biggest factor that helped us to launch successfully. And another cultural thing, again, in my opinion, linked because of the age, average age being so young, is that the people in Uzbekistan are very adaptive to new technologies and new tools for their daily life. And us offering, for instance, a cash loan that can be granted -- decided and granted within just several minutes, it was a massive transformer. So basically, these kind of things really made it happen.

Yes. And it's very logical. As you see, as TBC Group here in New York, it means that this market is very important for our development. And already, just to remember you, 25% of the existing investors we have from U.S.A. And especially last 2, 3 years, we see growth of the new type of the investors, so-called growth investors as we begin to grow up our business in Uzbekistan. To summarize, we think it is very important. And Investor Day, we are not doing every year. It's once in 3 years, and we decided to come to New York for this.

Okay. There's a question over there.

I have a question about the customer acquisition cost in Uzbekistan. It was interesting how it increased a lot from '23 to '24, and then it's obviously come down a lot since then. Wondering if you could just explain the trends, like what caused it to go up so much? And then why has it come down?

Sharof, do you want to take this one? I'll give you a chance.

I think the short answer is it takes a lot of more effort at the beginning to acquire critical mass. And then as I think was highlighted by Nika and Oliver, you get into the self-sustaining ecosystem effect. We have been spending quite a bit in the early periods on marketing cost. And I need to be clear that marketing cost is not the entire customer acquisition cost. It's just one of the elements. So that is why you're seeing the trend as it is. We have basically accelerated in last year -- sorry, the year before. And then as we start coming into a critical mass, we're now reaping the benefits of it from economies of scale. Hopefully, that answers the question.

Just to add one more point. It's important to consider that when we entered Uzbekistan in 2019, the first step was acquisition of Payme, right? And you may think that Payme already gave us several million customer base, which is not true. So Payme back then had around 700,000 to 800,000 customers. So basically, the growth from 700,000 at the start to 23 million is a massive effort. And as Sharof correctly said, initially, you invest a lot and then you are trying to cultivate your own customer base already because there are referrals, word of mouth and all these kind of things that kick in. That's why it is optimized and coming down.

Maybe we can take one of the online questions, and it's coming back to Georgia. We got a question from Dmitry at Wood about what our plans are in terms of capturing market share in Georgia. We talked obviously about looking to grow market share in various segments. And where do we think the majority of these gains will come from?

Sure. I think the structure of our presentation and participants is answering this question, right? We specifically invited Nika and Ivano to present mass retail banking and payments. These are the 2 areas where we would like to grow and further strengthen our positioning. And I think the strength will come through the focusing on real customer experience and our clients, listening to them, but also through the -- our data analytics and AI capabilities, anticipating their needs and then executing on them. And we believe there is also amazing cross-sell protection -- potential with our MSME and corporate banking because we are holding close to 44% market share, and there is an amazing opportunity to cross between these 2 lines.

There's a couple of questions, coming back to Uzbekistan, on the regulatory environment and how we see ourselves kind of negotiating that over the next few years and how this impacts the way we think about transitioning the business from consumer to business.

Yes. So firstly, every country that is on this trajectory of growth and reforms has the regulatory framework that is constantly changing, adopting and developing itself. So this is kind of -- nothing strange in this. The point is from our side that we have to be adaptable, flexible and very good in pivoting from one side to another. And this is exactly what we did. I mean in the group, TBC has massive experience in business banking. We have -- I don't remember the last figures, but around 40% in MSME banking in Georgia. We have a very strong team that did this business, including myself for many years. So we are now successfully pivoting into SMEs, which was, in any case, a plan -- initial plan in terms of sequencing. First, we were trying to go into consumer, build the scale and then bring in the business customers. And we started that in 2024, actually before the regulatory environment started to change significantly. And now we are in good shape to continue and deliver on the regulatory needs and requests and on our business plan.

Just to add to that very quickly. So obviously, we've done lots of investor communications around this over the last 6 months or so. So Andrew, Giorgi and myself, we met lots and lots of investors to discuss this. And we've been saying that there's been a lot of regulatory changes over the last 6 to 12 months, and there will be more. So there's more stuff coming down the tubes. And everybody has to be aware of this. But we're able to adapt. We're in a market where there's lots of things happening to all the players at the same time. And we're technologically enabled. We're able to move very quickly. We have a very experienced seasoned team, as Nika has said. Sometimes markets go through these processes. They're necessary. And we'll come out in the next 12 months or so and go back into growth.

So another question has come in from [ Rahim ] at Cavendish. It's about the potential IPO of the Uzbekistan business and just whether we can elaborate at all on kind of structure this would take or -- so...

Yes. So basically, I think the answer is the same as we gave before. We just don't have details at this stage. It's one of the strategic options we're considering.

Okay. And another question, given the various moving parts in terms of the business, is there any guidance we can provide generally on how we think about cost growth and the cost-income for both Georgia and Uzbekistan over the next few years?

I'll take this one. So overall -- I'll just answer at the group level. We do probably continue double-digit growth for a year or 2, both in Georgia and Uzbekistan. In Georgia, obviously, it will be lower. We do target -- like to move gradually to high single digits, maybe not this year, but next year. We do target our cost-to-income ratio to be mid to high 30s, at the moment where we are, and we target to decrease it. Ultimately, what it means, we are targeting to grow our revenue more than costs. So that will be our key target. And we ensure that every dollar we spend generates more revenue, therefore, even strengthens our already very good profitability.

Okay. So we've got a question from [ Sasha ] at Prosperity. It's around the longer-term return on equity that we think about in Uzbekistan. And he's generally asking, we're talking about earning $250 million plus of net income. And just some thoughts on how high you think the kind of return on equity can go in Uzbekistan.

So in the presentation, we highlighted that by '28, we target mid-20s, but it's just the beginning. Over coming years, on a normalized basis, we don't see any reason why it should be 30-plus. So it will be gradually building up. This year will be pivotal probably, coming up to the mid-20s and going 30-plus.

Okay. A question from Kevin at Wasatch. What makes you confident in terms of growing the Uzbek loan book this year given overall the kind of pivoting of the business? And could you also comment on how you see the outlook around cost of risk, particularly given the launch of new products?

So what makes us confident is our product pipeline and the business generation capabilities we have in the team. Basically, we know exactly what we have to do, and we are executing on that plan. So there is no whatsoever worry that we won't be able to do it. It takes time, and we will have the bump back to growth very soon. And we are already doing lots of things in terms of disbursing new loans and new type of loans. Again, we have to remember that in the beginning of last year, we had very few business loans, and the business loans were mostly in the consumer finance book. They were not called business loans. Now we look at the book and it's around $130 million already 9 months into the business. So we are sure about our execution capabilities. The digital marketing force is massive. And that's why we think it's doable and growth is very soon to come again.

And maybe just to add to that very quickly. So we have different balance sheets inside TBC Uzbekistan, inside the group, and we can deploy them for different product sets. So that's also an important part of the answer to Kevin's question.

Yes. Maybe to elaborate, we have microfinance institution with its separate license. We have BNPL institution. We have a leasing company. We have a bank. And all of them are growing.

Okay. Another question in terms of -- I think George talked a little bit about some of the AI initiatives that would boost revenues and potentially cut costs. So any kind of further details on that?

Sure. It's a good question. And actually, I had an opportunity to discuss it with our guests during the break. So as I mentioned -- like I'll give you an example from the CIB, not only what we will be doing, but what we have been doing starting from last year, 2025. So this benefit is coming both from the revenue uplift type of projects, but also the cost efficiencies. And there were like 3 projects we are estimating where we will get this 20% revenue share over the next 3 years. One is our CRM system. And we are now moving to the bionic model when AI and the relationship manager will work on the client portfolio and will generate tailored offers for clients, considering the sector they are representing, the profitability that they are targeting and also the behavior that we are seeing in the online banking, in the other channels of the bank. And this will be generating uplift in the penetration and share of wallets. So this is an example where we will be generating more revenues from the same customers. Second project that I wanted to also highlight is linked to the cost efficiency. So as I already mentioned in the presentation, the main product is the lending for corporate business. So that means that writing on the and working on the analysis of the financials of the businesses. Writing the credit memo is the major part of our business, and we have the highest headcount there. So we are moving to the generating of the credit analysis and paper supporting with the support of AI. And by the end of this year, it will be already 50% that will be generated through the AI. So that means that we will need less resources. And as we will be growing, we will not need to grow with the same pace we were growing last year. And this will be supporting the targets that Giorgi highlighted. So this is another very, very clear example. And third, we are in the world where the compliance and regulatory needs are changing. And many of our clients are learning about this requirement when they're initiating transparent, different type of payments. Currently, integrating the AI chatbot within our Internet and mobile bank for business customers gives them the opportunity to know in advance what type of documents and precheck they need to go through to execute the payments. So this will save the time not to have -- not to be proactive rather than be reactive. And also saves the time to interact less physically with the banking representative rather than do it through the online channels.

Some questions from Simon at Citi. Could we elaborate a little bit more on how we manage and operate the 2 different -- our 2 different core platforms in Uzbekistan, TBC Uz and Payme.

How we manage. We manage well. And basically, they have 2 distinct roles in the customers' daily life. So Payme is for daily payments and everything around that. And TBC is for daily banking and everything around that, including lending. So these 2 apps are reinforcing each other. We are connecting more and more customers from one platform to another, and I mentioned some of the tools today. It is subscriptions. It is loyalty platform. It is Salom Card that is present in Payme app, and so on and so on. So basically, they're feeling each other rather than creating as a headache of managing 2 platforms.

And a question, another one from Simon on whether we've identified other potential markets where we think we might need to replicate the kind of successful entry we've had in...

Outside of Uzbekistan?

Yes. Yes.

Yes. So we've been through a bit of a thinking mental exercise in terms of looking at different markets to understand where we may be able to deploy a similar business model and deploy our tech stack, which is purpose-built for Uzbekistan. We have, let's say, a short list of potential candidate markets. But we are doubling down, tripling down in Uzbekistan at the moment. So that idea is a very slow burning idea in the background, and it's just a little bit premature to start sharing some of that detail. But there are markets out there which are of interest over time.

And then the final question was...

[ Bob Cavati ] on -- 2 questions on the markets. I guess help us just understand what would make -- what would shape your decision other than -- it could be capital commitment, it could be size of the market growth, et cetera, or any sort of pre-existing synergies, regional synergies between the countries. Like how would you make that decision? I understand it could be still a bit away. That's one question. Second question, in Uzbekistan, there are multiple brands. Is there any thought in the future about merging the brands under one umbrella, like one app, one super app?

You take the second. I'll do the first. Yes. So in terms of identifying market #3, so we have a framework, and in that framework, there's a lot of parameters to help us make this kind of selection process through the funnel. So can we get a banking license, for example. Is there a path to a banking license. Does it have the right regulatory framework. What's the GDP profile of the country like. What's credit penetration to GDP. A lot of other parameters. There's also a proximity parameter to our home markets and can we attract talent. So there's a lot of criteria that we would bring to bear when the time comes, which is not now. But we have a way of thinking about this.

Yes. And on the second question, we are not thinking about merging the brands. And we know what this means and the negativities we may get out of it because brands are loved. Payme is loved. Payme has massive love in reality. We have measured it and we know it. The same for TBC. So if suddenly one of these 2 disappears, there will be loss of customers, and we don't want to have it. The same for BILLZ. What we are thinking and entertaining is to have somehow mentioning of more that this is all TBC to enhance TBC brand, but this also has to be introduced very carefully. So we are not rushing at all. What we are making sure is that the platforms cross-communicate the way I was explaining, so that there is Salom here, loyalty there and all these kind of links between the products.

Thank you. And just to say, Minister Kujaratov now has to leave for an interview. So Minister, thank you very much for your attendance...

Once more on behalf of TBC, thank you very much, Mr. Kujaratov.

[Foreign Language]

Okay. So another question from Simon is on how we think about the fee income outlook in both Georgia and Uzbekistan. And particularly in Uzbekistan, where obviously there's a lot of regulatory change affecting the way that we're thinking about lending, does that have any impact in terms of the fee income outlook in Uzbekistan? And in Georgia, obviously we're rolling out a lot in terms of TBC card and how we think about how the fee income outlook in Georgia can evolve.

Let me cover the Uzbek part, and I'll hand over to Giorgi on the Georgian part. From Uzbekistan part, I should say, and hopefully, you saw that throughout the presentations we made, we are great fans of an ecosystem impact, right? And it's not for just a single reason. There are a number of reasons. But one of the key reasons from my perspective is the capital efficiency of it. Focusing on simply growing banking-related revenues is very attractive, but nevertheless, it requires consistently larger volumes of capital. Now fees and commissions, on the other hand, from my perspective, are relatively efficient. Yes, there is some capital requirements in some instances. But at the end of the day, they are more efficient than borrowing. From our perspective, we are very focused on growing the ratio, which I mentioned previously, the share of our gross revenues which is coming from fees and commissions. There are a number of initiatives which we're exploring, including one of the particular products which we're looking to launch later in this year in conjunction with what we're trying to do for the MSME segment around foreign currency transactions, the FX business. So we believe that could be yet another stool or another leg to our fees and commission potential. And Giorgi, I guess.

So on the long term, short term -- so on the long term, we do expect our fee and commission income to grow, probably starting from next year, high single, double digits. My colleagues highlighted exactly how it will be done with the new products, penetrating markets. So as I highlighted previously, for '26, this outlook doesn't change. But it's temporary, only '26 to be flat or maybe decreasing. But our operating top line will grow by double digit. Our net profit will grow double digit, '26. And over long term, our fee and commission income will also grow double digits. So that is the answer to your question.

That basically brings the Q&A to an end. We don't have any further questions. Oh, we have one more in the room. Yes, please go ahead. If you could introduce yourself, that would be great.

My name is [ Miro ]. I'm Georgian. I work for JPMorgan Chase as a business relationship manager. Great presentation. I remember a couple of years ago, I spoke with Mr. [ Talent ] about TBC Group entering Uzbekistan market. And impressive progress and achievements group made. So congratulations on that. My question is for Mr. Kurdiani. You discussed business owners offering business products in Uzbekistan market. And more products you are signed up for, less likely you were going to leave the bank. So it's going to make you more loyal. You mentioned you're offering some lending products, some investment products, advanced online banking. I have 2 questions for you. When we say lending products, what does it include? Is it just a combination of credit cards and loans? Would it include line of credit now or in the future? And the second is if TBC Group is planning offering 401(k) services for business owners, like retirement services?

So firstly, we don't have investment products yet. This is something we are exploring because the regulatory frameworks are changing. So we may have a situation where people in Uzbekistan can invest in stocks, and we will be doing that for sure. On the business side, we, for now, are lending small ticket working capital loans. We currently are developing the collateral platform that will enable us to go into bigger volume business loans, which will be collateralized, and we will have credit lines and investment loans there as well. And currently, we are working on business overdrafts and factoring products. We are exploring this market because there is a market in Uzbekistan for factoring. And of course, overdraft goes hand-in-hand with the daily banking for businesses. On pensions, no -- I mean, there is no such thing in Uzbekistan yet and we are not offering that.

We actually have another -- a couple of...

[ Isaac Schwartz ]. I wanted to ask something about the Georgia market. Clearly, the sad war in Russia and Ukraine has been a really big stimulus to the Caucuses in general, and Georgia has been a huge beneficiary. And everybody prays for people in those affected countries, that there'll be a resolution. And potentially with the new U.S. administration, there actually will be. And so I was just wondering how you estimate the kind of anti-stimulus effect. As we understand, it's been very potent in Georgia and Armenia and maybe to a lesser extent in the Central Asian states. So that's it. That's my...

And you are right. So we covered in our part of the presentation that the real GDP growth in Georgia last -- not in 2025, but last 3, 4 years, it was more than 7%. And forecast for '26, '27 is 5% plus. And we believe it's a pessimistic assumption what we see already in January and February of 2026. And in addition to that, we believe there will be some kind of the resolution find out in Ukraine. But we believe that not only for Georgia, but also for the region, it's extra upside because that resolution will bring more stability in the region, including Georgia and Uzbekistan. And probably investors from their side will decide to make more investment than they are doing today.

[Indiscernible].

Yes. Not just in a short term, but in the medium term we believe that after the resolution, the cost of equity in Georgia and also in Uzbekistan will go down.

One thing to add as well. We will have opening of the big market that is closed for Georgia at the moment. Currently, we can't trade with the countries that are in war. But once the resolution is find and gradual sanctions are lifting up, we have a huge market at the moment, like 2 or 3 huge markets that will open for Georgia, that will bring some, let's say, additional benefits. Therefore, they will be negative, they will be positive. There may be timing lag. But overall, in the medium term, we don't expect any material negative impact.

Just a couple of final questions online. So coming back to Uzbekistan, there's a question from Alex at Roemer around our loan growth forecast generally for the sector and that we see the potential for retail and SME lending to almost double over the next few years. And do we feel that, that kind of squares with the central bank looking to try to kind of cool down certain segments of the market like consumer lending? And is that feasible? And just the second question is how we think about the evolution of the net interest margin in Uzbekistan over the next few years?

Sure. So the numbers that I gave where it's going to grow almost doubled to $41 billion, that's the total loan book for the country in retail and MSME. So MSME is going to be growing much more quickly. It's very underpenetrated. But that would still only take the level of penetration for the country for retail and MSME loans from the current 15% thereabouts, of which 11% is retail -- so a very low level of penetration retail to GDP -- up to around 18% by 2028. So that's -- again, just to reiterate, that's including retail and MSME. So that's a very low number. So MSME is only 4% of MSME lending to GDP, which is super low. So they don't feel like they're stretching credibility in terms of the growth numbers. Yes, the central bank is very careful about unsecured consumer lending in particular but leverage in general. And they're quite right to do so because the country from a low base, but it is growing -- has been growing quite quickly in terms of consumer lending. And they're very cognizant of the fact that they don't want to see the loan book getting out of shape across the country or any bubbles appearing. So they're trying to cool that. But still from a very low base, you get the base effect. I don't think that looks like a particularly challenging number in a country where the GDP is growing at such a rate, over 7%. So we'll see how that goes. But I think they feel like the right numbers. In terms of net interest margin, which I think was the second question from Alex, yes. Our NIMs came down a little bit as the loan book changes. So the mix in our loan book in Uzbekistan is changing quite a lot, especially as we pivot during this critical year. So we're seeing more MSME loans. The working capital loan portion of that, in particular, has lower gross yield. So that changes the loan mix and the resulting NIM. We have secured loans. Nika was explaining we're going to start with car loans, and there will be secured loans for SME. And that also has a very different pricing profile. We have credit cards, which probably take it the other way. So there's lots of things going on in the loan mix, which will be moving the NIM around. But a lot of that is offset by the fact that our funding costs are coming down really quite quickly, at quite a clip, and that will be accelerating. We have a bit of a lagged effect on the funding side due to deposits. So you reduce the headline deposit rate, and it takes a while for that to kick in because people top up the old deposits. So you actually have the inverse effect in the short term. But that will all play itself out through this year. We've communicated that we think we can have a NIM which will recover to around 20% at the end of this year and will be sustainable going forward. So around 20% NIM, more or less in that ballpark we think that's a sustainable number.

Thank you, Oliver. Okay. I think we've reached time on the Q&A session. So thank you very much to the management team for coming up and answering the questions. Thank you very much for all of those who asked questions online in the audience. And thank you, everybody, for both being here today in person and online and taking an interest in TBC and our story. And we look forward to continuing to communicate with you over the next few years as we implement the strategies that we've been outlining today. So once again, thank you very much for your attendance. Thank you.