Vietnam Technological and Commercial Joint Stock Bank ($TCB)

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Techcombank and Techcom Securities First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Presentation. Today's session we will begin with the opening remarks from Jens Lottner, our CEO of Techcombank. Following that, Alex Macaire, the CFO, will provide a detailed overview of our financial results and key business updates for Techcombank. Afterward, Mr. Xuan Minh, Chairman of Techcom Securities will share detailed insights on TCBS' performance, and we will then conclude with a Q&A session. Our management will present in English and a live Vietnamese translation is available via separate link. As usual, there will be a dedicated Vietnamese call for retail investors on a separate session conducted tomorrow. The session is expected to last approximately 90 minutes. And with that, I would like to hand it over to Jens to begin the presentation on Techcombank.

Thank you very much, and good afternoon, everyone. And I think it's probably fair to say that these are very interesting times and a lot of macroeconomic volatility on it's kind of hard to predict exactly on how things are developing. And in the context of these things, I believe, we actually have shown a very strong performance in the first quarter. If you take a look at the numbers on TOI, PBT, the growth is actually quite substantial. And we have done a quite okay on the NII side and as well as on the NFI side. And our return on assets and return on equity is in the range of what we had guided and also CI ratio and stands actually at a relatively low level of 28.3%. At the same point in time, all the measures, which are indicating the strength on our balance sheet and be it capital, but also in NPLs and when it comes to loss and coverage ratios, et cetera and are all market leading. So and I think we are very, very well prepared for any kind of uncertainties and volatilities, which might still be coming on our way. First quarter looked quite okay also from a macroeconomic perspective and with 7.8% on GDP growth. But again, as I said, there will be uncertainties along the way, we will probably have a little bit more time to discuss those. And also when Alex will talk about the guidance. But overall, as I said, in the first quarter, which was probably a little bit less affected from the turbulences we're seeing right now showed a very robust performance in line with our prior performances. And so again, I think we are on a good track. We are in the right segments, we are with the right capabilities and positioned. So with that, let me hand it over to Alex to go in detail.

Yes. Okay. So good afternoon, everyone. We'll start, as usual, with an overview of key macro data points affecting banking conditions. So as Jens explained, the environment is clearly complex, including on the geopolitical scale. I think the key message will be largely similar to the previous quarter. The real economy remains very strong. However, we see increased pressure on the liquidity side. So as Jens also mentioned, the reading for the first quarter's GDP was quite commendable, plus 7.8%. And supported by good progression of exports, plus 19% and also FDI disbursements plus 8%. However, we could see some emerging signs of stress in other areas. So deposits only increased 0.4%, well below the growth of credit at 3.2%. Meanwhile, inflation edged up a little bit to 3.5%. And interbank rates increased sharply showing, therefore, a very tight situation in terms of liquidity. So this explains why, broadly speaking, across the system we are seeing pressure in terms of CASA and pressure in terms of funding cost. So all in all, I would say, strong macro fundamentals supporting credit demand, which is good. but also tightness on liquidity, which is pushing our funding cost and therefore, compressing margins. So Jens mentioned the performance of the bank in the first quarter was quite strong, particularly in the context of the complex environment that we had to navigate. PBT reached VND 8.9 trillion, which is plus 23% year-on-year, supported by a very robust increase in TOI plus 18%. NII expanded 15%, including the impact of some NIM compression, and we will come back to that later. We had a stellar performance from fees plus 47% year-on-year. Cost of risk was well controlled and provision expenses reduced by 14% year-on-year. So overall, I would say this is a strong quarter, which confirmed that our earnings growth is coming from a good balance of volume, mix and fees and is not coming just from a balance sheet stretching. We will go now to the usual focus on our wealth business. So the key message here is some temporary pressure on margin, which we will explain, but also continued expansion of -- and structural expansion of our franchise. Our AUMs grew 74% year-on-year. The number of affluent customer increased also double-digit plus 61%.-- The CBS continued to make progress on equity brokerage, increasing the market share to 9%. We continue to dominate also the market on bond advisory with an 86% market share. The only area where we saw some quarter-on-quarter softness was investment banking fees. So the main driver here was margin in the context of higher deposit rates, but also some pipeline delays. But if we look ahead then, I would say, the trend and momentum are strong, and wealth in general become -- remains one of our big bets and strategic pillar. This slide is new and aims at shedding a little bit more light on our digital banking business, which we are using, as you know, as a leverage for operating model advantage. The key takeaway here is increased engagement driving efficiency as well as monetization. The number of digital customers reached 13.7 million, up 23% year-on-year. Digital transaction value also increased 23% year-on-year. Our cost income ratio reduced sharply to 27%, showing the ability of the digital -- our digital business to scale a diminishing marginal cost. I also wanted to highlight the fact that 95% of our retail transactions are today performed entirely digitally. So in other term transaction banking and digital banking is continuing to be a critical driver of our CASA and fee monetization strategy. This slide provides a little bit more details on our margins. I know that the key point that you are interested in the net interest margin. So saw some pressure in the first quarter on that front. We guided accordingly 3 months ago, if you remember, so this is not really a surprise. But the key message is that it's mainly due to temporary, including also some one-off effects, which will not repeat in the second quarter, therefore, temporary and not structural. So the main reason we obviously the increase in our cost of funds to 4.2%, which is like 60 basis points higher than the previous quarter in the context of intense competition in the market. On the asset side, the yields increased a little bit, but on the deposit side, so plus 10 basis points. And the reason is essentially asset duration as well as the high-quality liquid asset buffer that we are maintaining. Those HQLA assets are essentially placed with the Central Bank are not subject to any repricing and that also explains why there is a lag in the increase of the yields on the asset side. However, if we look at the last 12 months NIM, then it still stands at 3.7%, which is a very healthy position. And going forward, we believe that the shift towards lower duration assets and also the expansion into higher earning products like unsecured lending will allow us to offset the cost of funding pressure that we are seeing, and therefore, we believe that for the full year and particularly in the second half of the year, that will be a significant ref with the full year level, which should be broadly in line with what we had in the 2025, which means our I would say, maybe a little bit below 3.6% to 3.7% would be my best guess as of today. Here, you see also how our credit books have developed, I would say, a healthy expansion led by retail, consolidated credit grew 20% year-on-year. And within this, Retail credit grew even faster, plus 33%. Our medium and long-term loans expanded a little bit faster than short-term loans, which is due to the disbursement of mortgages and infrastructure. In the infrastructure sector, what duration is a little bit longer. During the first quarter, our growth remain quota constraint as opposed to demand constraint. However, as we enter now the second quarter, then we are free to expand our book up to 12%, which is significantly more than the 3% that we had to maintain in the first quarter. And therefore, you can expect the growth in the second quarter of the year on the asset side to be a very different trajectory compared to the first quarter. So this is another important slide, which shows that we are staying on track and continuing to make substantial progress on our strategy to diversify our assets. The proportion of real estate credit in our total books reduced to 29%, which compared to 31% at the end of the previous quarter. Most of the growth is coming from retail and SME with a broad-based contribution across a variety of products. As an example, and secured lending increased close to 160% year-on-year margin lending increased 47% year-on-year. Therefore, the key takeaway is that there is a continued shift at a high pace toward the direction which has set and which is meant to protect the NIM as well as control concentration risk. This slide provides as usual, an overview of the real estate market. As you can see, there is continued recovery with healthy fundamentals. Our mortgage disbursements exceeded again, VND 30 trillion. So this was an area where some people might have had some concerns in terms of whether the increase in interest rates would have reduced the appetite of retail borrowers for mortgages and the answer is no for the first quarter and also know for what we're seeing in the first weeks of April. Meanwhile, early repayments remained also whether within the historic range pointing to good liquidity on the part of primary market in Ho Chi Minh remain strong with a lot of transactions and continued upward trend on costs. So in other terms, the market is functioning very healthy. And as we will see later on the risk side, the health of our credit books in our mortgage space remains very good, which is giving us confidence in our -- the resilience of our retail credit. So this slide focusing focuses on deposits. And as you know, this is clearly 1 area where the market has experience on some stress in the first quarter. The reality is that we had to defend our deposit balances, particularly the deposit balances from the most afferent customer against a very aggressive pricing from our competitors, and therefore, we had to push up the rates on our deposits, which increased by around 70 basis points during the first quarter, our CASA ratio reduced a little bit to 37.9%. And the reason is essentially the impact of the higher term deposit rates, which are essentially incentivizing customers to transfer their cash to a higher earning product, like term deposits. However, on the positive side, our corporate CASA proved very resilient balances increased 3% quarter-on-quarter and 40% year-on-year. And if you look ahead, then you may probably know that on the 9th of April, the Central Bank initiated a concerted action to control the rates on term deposits and setting an objective to reduce our 6 months and 12 months rates by at least 50 basis points. So we acted promptly proactively reducing our rates on these tenants by 50 basis points. But beyond that, I would say that our focus is continuing to be on expanding our structural strengths in terms of deposit franchise as opposed to engaging into a pricing war with our competitors. As an example, in the household and merchant segment, we are seeing very good traction of our new shop position is essentially an integrated proposition for sales management and collection. And similarly, in the Mass Affluent segment, we will still be making some important announcements, which will also support the expansion of our franchise. So our base case for the coming quarters as regards on deposits and deposit pricing is some further easing of the market-wide interest rate pressure, combined with continued expansion of our structural franchise and deposits. Let's look now at our fee income. So I mentioned that at the beginning, this is clearly an area where we had a stellar performance. You remember probably that I mentioned it last year, the performance on the fee side was largely impacted by accounting changes on cards and on trade services. And this somehow obscured the underlying momentum in the business. This quarter, we no longer have these effects. And you can see, therefore, quite visibly the strengths of our business and fee services, which becomes more clearly. So our fee income grew 47% year-on-year, reaching the highest level of record, and this performance allowed our return on assets to stay broadly constant as to 2.3% despite the concentration -- the compression of our NIM. If we look into the details of our fees, then insurance had a remarkable performance more than doubling TOI compared to the first quarter of 2025 which is largely attributable to the launch of full-scale operation of our life insurance subsidiary, TC, Techcom Life. On LC cash and settlement, we had a similar level of course, plus 160% year-on-year more or less which is credit to the efforts we have made in terms of product innovation and also product digitization. Very strong performance as well on FX, which is the seventh consecutive quarter of growth. We said there is 1 area, as I mentioned already, where we saw a little bit more softness, which is investment distribution. And this is largely due to the competition from higher earning products or from earning products like term deposits which has forced us to reduce our distribution margin. However, with the expectation of moderating interest rates going forward than the, I would say, the perspective for the coming quarters remains very strong, particularly at the demand from customers for bonds, in particular, remains very high. So overall, I would say our fee performance illustrate the benefit of having a diversified business model which had some stabilized volatility of the earnings, particularly in a context where we see a compression of margins in the market. So this is another slide of shedding a little bit more color on our life insurance subsidiary, which, as you know, came into full operations in January of this year around a very simple concept. First one is very limited range of products, mostly Universal Life and some riders, but very customer-centric and with extensive guarantees. For example, we have the best and the longest best benefit guarantee in the market. The second important differentiator is that it's a highly specialized company. It has essentially 1 market, 1 partner and 1 distribution channel, which means it's able to really organize its products and product distribution approach to be fully integrated into the bank. As an example, we are able to process on new policies end-to-end in less than 5 minutes in the majority of cases, which is quite impressive. And the third leverage is the fact that it's the newest and youngest life insurance company in the market. It has been designed from the very first day around cloud first and an AI-first architecture, which allows the company to be extremely efficient. So on that premise, it's not really surprising that the feedback and the reaction of the customers was extremely positive. Actually, it even surprised us on the positive side in the first quarter of operation, we therefore, reached the #1 position in the bank market with a 21% market share which is 5 percentage points ahead of the next competitor, and we reached a 9% market share in the overall market. So obviously, we don't want to stop there. We believe that this Life Insurance business has significant potential to scale, but beyond that, we also believe that there are very important synergies for the bank, particularly in terms of product cross-selling or customer acquisition that we will be able to leverage in the future. So the key point is that we have now access to a new engine of fees beyond TCBS providing low volatility recurring sources of income. Moving now to costs. So we delivered a very strong performance in terms of our cost efficiency this quarter with a cost income ratio of 28%, costs reduced by close to 20% quarter-on-quarter driven by adjustments on bonus provisions and adjustments also on sales incentives but also some optimization of marketing. If you look year-on-year, then the increase is plus 18%, largely driven by other operating expenses, which is a category you will see the costs incurred by the group in the setup of the 2 insurance subsidiaries, but also some lumpy discretionary items like consultancy costs or conference costs. But the overall point for me is that we are continuing to operate at a very high level of efficiency and with the AI investments that we [indiscernible]. We have initiatives, and we believe that this trend will accelerate and therefore, we'll be able to enjoy in the future consistent positive jaws. So this is a slide now on our credit risk. So as you can see, our cost of risk stayed broadly stable at 0.6%, which is quite low and 0.4% if we include rate of risk. NPL only slightly to 1.16% and organic NPL. So excluding the impact of the credit bureau was mostly stable at 1%. Meanwhile, Jens mentioned that our loan loss coverage ratio continued to strengthen to 129%, which is well ahead of our competitors and provides significant downside protection on earnings. So overall, the health of our credit books is very, very strong, and it's also stable. This slide, as usual, provide some transparency on our credit risk provisioning. The point you can see is the some bucket 2 formation which is ticking up. However, it's mostly early stage, and it's also, we believe, largely seasonal. Therefore, at this stage, we are just monitoring the situation and taking some proactive recovery measures. But the key point for us is that we don't see any signal of systemic risk merchants. And the risk environment more generally is in line with the guided assumptions. Looking now at capital and the liquidity position of our capital adequacy ratio strengthened this quarter to 15.2%, showing the benefits of the asset diversification strategy and pivot toward retail books in particular. Liquidity funding position remains very strong. Funding structure remains broadly stable despite a tight liquidity situation in the market. So we are not resorting more extensively to wholesale funding in order to finance our growth. And overall, our fortress balance sheet remains a critical pillar of our business model, which gives us optionality in terms of our credit underwriting strategy. This slide the rest of the banking market. As you can see, we continue to outperform our peers in most metrics. We'll turn now to our forward-looking guidance. So we're still bullish on the Vietnam economy. As you can see, we are revising our forecast for GDP growth for the full year to 7% compared to 7.8% in the previous quarter. This is just to acknowledge the fact that the year-end war could have some limited impacts in 3 areas 1 is manufacturing and exports due to weaker overall demand in the U.S. and in Europe, in particular, the second 1 is domestic consumption, which could be impacted if inflation was to rise. And as of now, we are currently expected inflation to be around 4.2% for the full year. And the third 1 is the impact of the higher transportation costs and tourisism and particularly international tourism. However, the government is still adamant that they want to achieve at least 8% growth for the full year. And given that they have full control of a very important policy lever, which is the fiscal policy, I think we cannot completely rule out the possibility that the Vietnam economy still reaches 8% growth in 2026. So this is now our forward-looking guidance in terms of 2026. So obviously, credit growth will be in line with quota. We believe we receive a strong quarter, given our business performance, our asset quality and also the effort we're making to support infrastructure investment of the country. Our cost of funds clearly is now coming to a point where probably it will not be able to go down again to the level achieved in 2025. However, we expect some moderation of the growth in the coming quarters due to in particular to concerted action initiated by the Central Bank, but also, as I mentioned, continued effort on our side to a CASA particularly in mass affluent as well as household and merchant. CASA ratio, therefore, should improve from where it is now, the NIM that I mentioned, might be a little bit below where it was in 2025 but still, I would say, around 3.6%, 3.7%. As a result of that, the NII growth will be significantly accelerated compared to what we had last year. Same for NFI, particularly given the fact that we were able to grow NFI 47% in the first quarter. Our cost income ratio would be in the same ballpark as 2025, NPL as well and definitely below 1.5%. And credit costs will also remain around the level we observed in 2025, which is 0.6%. Coming to the guidance, we will announce and present in AGM on Saturday. So we presented, as you know, in the report, which was attached to the resolution for the AGM. We guided on 2 possible scenarios, recognizing that we needed to be cautious. It was early stage in the war in a conflict in the Middle East, and we didn't really know how it would -- how long it would endue and also how intense it could be. At this stage, the numbers you see here reflect the base case and reflect our best assumption in terms of how the performance of the bank should develop in our profit before tax should hit at least VND 37.5 trillion, which is an increase of 15% -- 18% compared to last 15% compared to 2025. So at this stage of the year, we have already achieved 24% of this VND 37.5 trillion target. I would say, we are, therefore, on a good track to hit the target and hopefully exceed it. The outcomes of our strategy. I think are also quite visible already in terms of earnings mix in terms of efficiency and in terms of risk insurance, wealth and digital are also continuing to show huge potential to scale and huge potential for efficiency improvements. And I'm not even mentioning here the further upside, which could come from the AI adoption in the bank. So on the things which are in our control, I would say, we are quite optimistic in our capacity to deliver a very strong year. So with this, I will hand it over now to Xuan Minh for the section on the performance of our Techcom Bank subsidiary. Thank you.

Basically, as we all know that there are so many problems in the world with the war and then in the Middle East and then the commodity price and so far -- and also in Vietnam, we have a rising interest rate environment in the past few months despite that our business continued to be strong. carried over from last year. In the first quarter, our revenue has been growing about 37% in general. The profit the profit increased only about 11%. So basically, the main question here is why our revenue grows much faster than the profit. And the short answer is that the financial expenses has been increasing because our cost of fund has been increasing in the environment, especially in Vietnam that we have the deposit and the lending rate in Vietnam has been increasing quite a lot in recent months. Overall, in terms of business, everything remains solid. We continue to be the #1 in bond advisory business. In first quarter, basically, we are probably the only player in the market, we can draw about 86% market share. We are #1 in margin lending. Our margin lending business has been growing very fast. With the new funding -- the new equity funding from last year. We continue to see the ratio in terms of margin lending per equity is very low at TCBS, and we have a lot of more room to grow in general coming to the year. So we are #3, still #3 in terms of stock trading in general and #2 in stock trading in Hanoi Exchange. Let me go through the picture on the capital market in the first quarter for Vietnam in general. Basically, Alex talked about the macro. We continue to have a strong macro picture in Vietnam. We have good GDP. We have manageable inflation even though we foresee that there are certain -- some increase in inflation going forward in the coming quarters because of the commodity price, the oil price and so far. But overall, it's good. We have -- the interest rate environment has been not very favorable in Vietnam. So the funding cost is higher for most of the businesses in Vietnam, interior fourth quarter of last year and carry into this quarter. The capital market is not too bad. We increased about 6% in terms of the index, the VN index in the first quarter. The volume trading has been very good. We continue to see a lot more interest from the investor, both from foreign and local investor coming through market and trade more become more liquid in general. We have the secondary emerging market status update. The is going to be official in September of this year. It's not truly a new news. But in general, it's a great certain sentiment for the market in general in the first quarter. So overall, it's good. The bond is -- usually the first quarter is allowed seasonal low-end season for the bond issuance in Vietnam because most of the corporate, they need to wait for the audited financial statement audited annual report in general in the first quarter to be finished in order to be able to issue more bonds. So we will see the pickup quite dramatically in the second quarter and third quarter of this year. And that also reflecting in our book building currently. So we will see a lot more bond issuance in Vietnam in second quarter. In terms of business performance, overall investment banking business, especially on the bond issuance business has been growing strong. We grow about 27% in the first quarter. The Margin lending is strong. It's clearly about 50% of the total income in the first quarter, but I expect that the -- because the margin business is pretty stable in general. We have a balance sheet or we have a on the lending and it continue to earn interest quarter-over-quarter. So it's pretty stable. The bond distribution has been weak, especially weaker compared to first quarter of last year. I think mainly because of the higher interest rate environment in the deposit. So more people would tend to go into the deposit mall. We see -- we don't see a significant drop. We actually see an increase in distribution -- in bond distribution well product distribution but the margin on bonds, especially in the rising interest environment, we see is shrinking in the first quarter. Basically, we make less money on the trading fee on the bond business -- on distribution business for retail in the first quarter. I believe that the trend will get better in the second quarter and the fourth -- the third quarter in general. Most of our bonds are floating. So there is a lack of about 3 to 6 months in terms of interest rate, but then the bond will be reset to a new level, and we will make more money on the bond distribution business in the second quarter and so forth. Let me go -- have a deep dive into the 3 major businesses. The bond corporate issuance. As I said, we have about 86% market share in the first quarter of this year. So we advised more than USD 1 billion in general. This has been strong and will be going pretty strong in the second quarter and third quarter of this year. On the distribution, the volume is not too bad compared to first quarter of 2025. Basically, seasonally, we have a long holidays as well in the first quarter. But in the second quarter, we will see a pickup in the volume -- distribution volume and also in the margin on the business in general. The market has not been very strong in general. So we see we see a weakness in fund distribution. Basically, we have a marketplace for on the funds like a supermarket for funds in Vietnam that we distribute funds from many asset management companies as well. And we see a slow demand so far in the first quarter. I think mainly because of the uncertainty in the stock market, the market has been very voluntary in general and also the global geopolitical situations that are also impacting into the performance of the market. So people tend to be reluctant to put money into funds, they tend to prefer to put into fixed income or term deposit. Brokerage and margin lending, our market share has been increased about 1.4% in terms of market share, 140 basis points if you compare with the first quarter of 2025. In general, the retail trading market share at TCBS as been increasing quite strongly. The only thing that impacts our first quarter market share is the institutional trading. We don't have a lot of institutional investors in general trading with us. Most of them are retail and that somehow impact the market share -- overall market share of TCBS. That's why we are now in the first -- since the first quarter, we have been moving into serving the institutional investors as well. And we start to introduce new features that other competitors don't have to offer the institutional investor. For example, we launched a pool for our institutional investor clients who want to trade without swinging or without getting notified in the market in general. That has been received quite well by some of the funds that are trading with us. And we launched prefunding. We launched the Bloomberg connection so that the institutional client can trade easily via the Bloomberg platform. Margin lending in general has been strong. We continue to see the strongest trends in this, and we still have a lot of room for more margin lending in general. So we see that will carry -- continue to carry very strongly in the second quarter and third quarter of this year. In terms of cost, our cost stay similar to last quarter, in general, we don't expect a lot of cost in staff, for example, most of the cost that has been increasing mainly in the absolute term on IT expenses, we have been moving very aggressively together with Techcombank into the AI space, and we try to bring AI to only employees in TCBS to use and to try to cut down on the inefficiency in general and improve our productivity. So that has been the trend, and we continue to be very strong. We continue to invest very strong into AI in this year. This is probably 1 of the main strategy that we moved in this year at TCBS. In terms of the balance sheet of TCBS is very straightforward and simple. Our margin lending per equity is about 1x. So we have about another 1 time to go. In Vietnam, the maximum you can land is about 2x of your equity. So currently, it's only at 1x. So we have a lot of room to offer more and more more margin and more lending to our investor in general. Capital structure, our debt equity is also less than 1%. So the balance sheet has been very strong. I think the key note on the structure of the balance sheet is that we have been trying to move some of our lending to offshore we do syndicated loan with Asian investors or Asian banks in general and increase that portion somehow to to hedge against the potential uncertainty in the very high interest rate environment in Vietnam. And we see that in the past when in a low liquidity and high interest rate environment than the domestic bank in Vietnam not to give our credit to financial institutions like TCBS. So we try to hedge that and increase the offshore lending so to make sure that our lending business, our margin lending messages will stay stable in general. The negative impact on that is somehow the interest rate and the hedging cost because we fully hedge on our lending our borrowing in general. We don't want to have any exposure in the FX risk in general. So we fully hedged on the loans we have with international banks. And that the cost has been quite high in general compared to last year of 2024 (sic) 2025 and that's also impacting into our financial expenses. And therefore, the profit growth has not been as strong as the revenue growth in general. What we continue to be emphasizing pay a lot of attention into AI, how to institutionalize or democratize AI into the daily work of our own our staff in in TCBS, and we also received some awards on that area as well. Outlook for 2026, basically, our -- we expect that we need to -- we expect that the 2026, we will grow about 26% in terms of revenue. In terms of profit, it will be about 18% to 20% is the base case. Of course, there's a lot of uncertainty, but also there are certain opportunity for us and the macro picture in Vietnam has been very strong. And if it continued to be very strong and continue to have a lot of demand in terms of funding in Vietnam, then this is a very base case for us in general. But on the negative side, if there's certain negative development in the world and the uncertainty on oil price on some commodity price and the environment -- interest environment in it now continue to be high, then it could be some downside. But I think these are the target that pretty much achievable for us in the year 2026. Both in the investment banking area, we do have still a lot of demand from the corporate in terms of loan advisory. The world distribution, we expect it to be strong and probably stronger than last year, starting from the second quarter of this year. Margin lending business is very solid, and we continue to earn quite good size of profit in general, and we continue to see an increase in margin lending book for us in 2026 and so forth. Funding, I mentioned about the diversification of funding for us. We try to have more option loans to balance out the domestic loans from domestic banks in general so that we manage our lending book better in general. Technology in AI, we -- this year, we spent we continue -- this is probably the year that we start to expand into many other new businesses within the financial service space, for example, the crypto, the digital gold, B2B lending, some of the new structured products in general. We also try to set up a subsidiary in the new IFC center in Hajime City, TCBS subsidiary, the securities license in the IFCs as well. So with that, the strategy is that to to maintain the current level of staff and employees, but we will invest heavily into AI to increase significantly our productivity and to be able to to expand into more businesses without having -- hiring a lot of more people in general. So that has been the strategy of this year, and we will be doing this. So with that, thank you. I will turn back to the team, and we open up for Q&A. Thank you.

Thank you, Jens, Alex and Xuan Minh. Before we move on to the Q&A session, I'd like to highlight a few notes. Based on feedback to keep the session flowing smoothly, we'll skip those questions related to financial guidance or request for detailed financial metrics that have already been covered in the presentation just now or will be addressed at the upcoming AGM this Saturday. We kindly ask that you refer to those presentations, which will be posted online shortly after today's event. And of course, the IR team will be available to answer any further detailed questions once you review those materials. With that, let us begin the Q&A session.

The first question is for Jens, on the macro outlook. In the context of heightened global geopolitical tensions, does Techcombank have an internal assessment or outlook on the Vietnamese government's GDP growth target? And how does this outlook translate into expectations for credit growth across the banking sector?

Thank you for the question. Yes, of course. Probably we would not be doing our job if we would not look into the scenarios. I think the scenario which Alex presented is basically our base case. So the base case would say we're at 7% probably took off 0.8% and the internal assumptions which we had were around 17% and credit growth for the market. And so that would bring it down maybe by 1% let's say, 16% would be in the base case scenario for the market, which is probably roughly in line with what the Central Bank has guided. Again, there are some uncertainties in it because as Alex rightfully mentioned, there is a big amount, which is the efficiency of the fiscal policy of the government, and there's a lot of room for spending, and there's a lot of and funds available. And so if really the government comes out and goes with a very expensive fiscal policy and supporting a lot of projects, as a new government and is coming into place. And there might be, again, upside, right. So the downside scenario, which is, again, if you're saying 60% is maybe on the base case, there is a chance that things might not be turning out as hoped. And that would be really a protected situation in the Middle East and the flow of oil would be disrupted, more uncertainty and the markets would probably racked with higher interest rates, the Fed might find a little bit harder to really lower interest rates, there might be a flight to the U.S. dollar, so depreciation and pressure on some currencies, et cetera. So if you put that together, and we might be ending up in a scenario of maybe around 5.5% and GDP growth. And again, that would assume that and the dollar price per and barrel brand would actually stay at an elevated level of maybe at around $100 per barrel for a longer period of time, which would mean a substantial uptick from the $65 before we went into the war. So that would actually probably bring down credit growth rather maybe to a 12% trajectory because just then there will not be so much demand. And as I said, the transmission mechanisms in here, would mostly be a cost push inflation because a lot of the and inputs, especially also in infrastructure projects, but close to everywhere and fertilizers agri products and even ship production and the dependency on the Middle East and the oil production is actually tremendously substantial. So we would have a cost push inflation and as well as probably a higher interest rates and more elevated on foreign exchange depreciation pressure. And that would then translate into different sectors. So let's go maybe sector by sector. So and of course, real estate would be, to a certain extent, affected on both sides. One, demand might actually be going down a little bit just because interest rates are getting higher, but then also at the same point in time, input costs might be a little bit higher. And again, I don't think this will be so tremendous because I think there is still actually a lot of good positive momentum as Alex where even despite the high interest rates, and we saw actually demand. So that would actually be okay. Industrial real estate and that might be coming down a little bit. FDIs might be the main reasons because maybe if global demand is really weakening, are you expanding your production capacity, et cetera. And so if FDIs are coming a little bit down industrial real estate, might be affected construction and companies same. And I think today, they were already and some information in the press like, for example, long-time airport and where it becomes harder and harder to find people while at the same point in time, and the input costs are actually increasing. Key export-oriented services or industries, they might also be affected if global demand and is reduced. If you take a look at the latest forecast, we are basically 20 bps down. And if you take like IMF forecast from global GP growth, 3.3% to 3.1%, but that is still assuming base case scenario that is not assuming really this protected situation, which would then bring it further down, which would all the mean apparels, electronics, all of that would be coming down. And then on plastic automotive sectors and might also be a factor, while at the same point in time, probably EV costs, which are and quite important also right now. And for Vietnam might actually see even more demand and especially fuels are coming down. So I think it's a little bit of a mixed picture. But again, when we look into this downside scenario, and as I said, it might be 5.5% GDP growth, maybe then 12% kind of market growth on the credit side with a constant pressure on pricing and probably also NPLs might be going up as some and companies might actually struggle with the surrounding environment. And then that is the main reason why we basically then put another scenario forward for the AGM and said, okay, if we are getting into that scenario, might be difficult to hold the 37.5%. This is not our base scenario. And our base scenario is exactly what Alex has presented with an even still upside to that scenario, depending on really gets over relatively quickly and the very expensive fiscal policy is coming out. We could actually see a different scenario which goes closer again to the 8% up. But again, that's then an upside scenario compared to the base scenario, which we're talking about.

This next question is for Alex. What is the bank's view on outlook for the USD VND exchange rate and domestic interest rates? And has Techcombank has revised its net interest margin forecast for 2026?

Yes. Thanks for this question. So -- as we mentioned, there is a level of pressure at the moment in terms of funding for the banking system in Vietnam. And this somehow also reflect the overall monetary situation of the country, right? So what we have at the moment is also some pressure coming from the higher cost of input, so higher cost of imports, particularly for fuel, like for oil and gas. And this combines with potentially also a relative slowdown of the growth of exports, and therefore, the trade surplus of Vietnam could be a little bit more constrained in 2026 compared to 2025. And then overlaying this context is the interest rates and particularly now the perspective that the Fed could keep rates stable or even increase in light of inflationary pressure in the U.S. And investors are taking that into account as well, they are revising their scenarios. And we believe this could put some pressure on the value of the dog. And that's the basis for us to expect maybe a 2% depreciation of the dong versus U.S. dollar. So your second question was on the level of interest rates in the market. I will not come back to the NIM but forecast just on the level of interest rate in the market. So as you know, there has been some very rapid escalation of the pricing competition between banks in Vietnam. We estimate that interest rates on deposits probably increased around 100 basis points in the fourth quarter of last year and 140 basis points, that's for new deposits. 140 basis points in the first quarter of this year, including negotiated rates, which are maybe a little bit more difficult to capture if you're just observing the quoted rates on Internet. So as I mentioned, an important development was a decision by Central Bank to implement a concerted action to bring costs down by at least 50 basis points at the 6 months and 12 months tenure. In addition to that, we can see that the Central Bank is very willing to inject liquidity in the market to avoid any situation of extended stress through open market operations or in exchange swapped. And this is essentially the basis for us to currently assume that interest rates will moderate a little bit in the remainder of the year, maybe reducing by 30 basis points, 30 to 40 basis points.

Thanks, Alex. Let's bring Xuan Minh for a bond market question. With market deposit rates remaining high, around 8% to 8.5% corporate funding costs are elevated. How does TCBS assess the outlook and capacity for underwriting and corporate bonds this year and our smaller issuance size is becoming more common as companies explore alternative funding channels.

Basically, there are 2 components, the demand for volume, the demand from more corporate bond issuance in general, we see and we actually are having the booking in and the pipeline has been very strong. A lot of demand from corporates in general. In terms of the interest rate, basically, that's somehow, I believe, that also impact on the demand in some degrees as well because with the raising interest rate, then the basically on the bonds we do issue. We always have a floating rate. It's usually the deposit rate plus certain margin, 4%, 5% in general. And of course, when corporate now issue bonds, then they would need to pay for a higher interest rate and for us to be able to sell to our investors in general. So net-net, the demand for corporate bond issuance has been -- continued to be strong in general for us. We don't see a decline yet in terms of building for us in this year in general, high interest rate, then the corporate bond interest will be also high in general. In the long term, the interest rate remain very high in a high interest rate environment in general. In the long term, it may impact I believe that is in the current environment in general. If you borrow 12%, 13%, even 15%, and then it's very hard for business for corporates in general to make good money to make good margin because the financial expenses is pretty high for them in general. So we believe that the interest rate environment would come down. Hopefully, it will come down somehow in the second half of this year, but remain to be seen in general. But that's the situation for us. The demand is still very strong from the corporate side.

Thank you, Mr. Xuan Minh. Back to Techcombank. This 1 is for Jens. What is the bank's liquidity strategy under scenarios of increased market volatility and have market risk management frameworks, particularly foreign exchange risk and interest rate risk in the banking book being reassessed or adjusted?

So I think from a risk management perspective, that is a little bit "business as usual for us ." So I don't think we need to readjust and the frameworks of the governance principles. And I think what we need to adjust is ultimately the parameters against which we are stress testing. And so of course, if you have a situation like with U.S. dollar and development or oil price, and we need to assess that. In general -- and we are really keeping a lot of our market risk very, very limited. So for example, if we're doing a foreign exchange lending, and we would actually hedge the entire position from an FX perspective, but even from an interest rate perspective. And we're also not gapping very much. So we're really matching short-term and long-term funding. Of course, there needs to be some kind of translation, but ultimately, a lot of our loans are floating. And so we can adjust the interest rates so that we can actually really have a match if we need to adjust our funding because most of that is 3 to 6 months on term deposits, which then -- and if interest rates are increasing, we basically also translate that on the corporate side. So from that perspective, again, we don't need to change any of the frameworks so we look into the interest rate of the banking book, and we have changes in equity values and what are the risk if 1 basis point changes, how would this translate overall position, et cetera. I mean, all what you would expect from a bank to have under SPV regulations, but also on the Basel III regulations is actually available and we're using it. And then the last point I would like to make, as Alex has said, we have a very, very conservative stance towards and liquidity. So we're probably having the highest buffer in terms of highly liquid assets, which we can, at any point in time, basically take to the central bank for liquidity and that cost to a certain extent, a lot of money, but I think it really keeps us in very, very good standing. So therefore, yes, we're seeing the volatility, but we don't expect that this will affect us in a major way and even if the volatility might even increase.

Thanks, Jens. The next question is for Alex on customer impact and portfolio exposure. To what extent has Techcombank's customers been affected by the geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East, have recent market fluctuations, had any noticeable impact on asset quality? And in higher-risk environment, does Techcombank bank prioritize growth or balance sheet safety.

Yes. Thanks. So the short answer is that we do not expect any significant impact from the developments in Middle East on our customers. So we have looked at the proportion of our customers who are in the oil and gas sector in logistics or in sectors directly related to oil and gas. And then what we have found is that this proportion is very small, like 0.6% which supports our estimate that the impact would be in the short term on our books. And as you've seen during our presentation, the current health of our credit books also supports this view. In terms of our underwriting strategies, obviously, we are particularly vigilant with regard to those customers who are operating sectors, particularly exposed to the Iran war conflict either from the point of view of the imports -- inputs from the point of view of their sales and, therefore, markets. And at this stage, we are not seeing any significant situation requiring action. We are just, I would say, tightening a little bit on our underwriting policies, maybe also staying ready to step in proactively if there was any early situation of stress. However, I would just highlight that we are only a few weeks into this conflict. There is also a possibility that solution might be found in the short term. And therefore, we do not believe that it would be appropriate to make a drastic shift in our underwriting and risk approach just now. I think it's just too early.

Thanks Alex. Now back to TCBS. Xuan Minh Could you please update us on the licensing progress and launch time line for tokenized assets?

Well, basically, we -- a lot of people apply. So far, we have shortlisted of 5 companies to be considered. I believe that is currently the application -- our applications as well among them. are being considered by various ministries in general. The timing, I would know, but I expect that it will be probably in the in the third quarter of this year. From our side, basically parallel with the application, we also developed on the platform on the back end prepare everything on the processes so that we can be ready in terms of operation and open for business probably a day after we get the license. So this is the status. We continue to work on developing our platform and the exchange in some of the systems to be able to run the business and to start the business as soon as we get license.

Thank you, Mr. Xuan Minh. Let's now turn back to the bank specific topics. Alex, could the bank share the current mortgage lending rates? Please also comment on the change versus the beginning of the year. In addition, what is the average floating rate of the existing real estate loan portfolio? And how much has that declined from peak levels in 2023?

Yes, very happy to do so. So overall, when we set the rates on our mortgages. We will look at the competition because the reality that we are -- even though we have a significant market share for mortgages, we are a price taker. We are not like price setter. And therefore, we would look to always maintain a competitive position while ensuring that the return on our rate-weighted assets and would be -- would meet our criteria. I think the difficulty with mortgages, as you know, you have a fixed rate period usually at the beginning. And therefore, when you set the rates, and you have to take into account the possibility of further increases in the coming months. After you underwrite the loan. So the current level; of interest rates on new mortgages is around 10.3% for the initial fixed rate period, like we set the rate for 12 months at around 10.3%, which compares to 12.5% in 2023 and around 7% at the end of last year. So interest rates, as I mentioned, on the new term deposit rates increased by 240 basis points and we adjusted the rates and mortgages by the same quantum taking into account also the possibility of a further increase during the interest fixing period. As regard to floating rates, so those mortgages, which are in the floating rate period, then the rate currently is on average 12% our books, which compares to 13.3% at the peak in 2023.

Next question is on TCBS, Xuan Minh, could you update us on TCBS' pricing strategy for margin lending in the current high rate environment? Will you prioritize maintaining NIM or lowering rates to attract clients.

Basically, currently, TCBS is #1 in terms of margin lending in the market. But even though that we only have about 11% So our target is 1 way that we need to reach about 20% market share level in general. So the strategy has been that we try to continue to increase our margin lending and using a few strategic advantages or strategic direction. Basically, we try to be very competitive on margin rate in general, and therefore, agreeable on lower NIM for us in general. Basically, we try to do a very competitive rate to win customer from the market because our market share is only 11%. So we have -- still have so many other room to grow our market share. And also providing additional and unique services to the customer that is using our margin in general. Of course, at the same time, we try to be more strategic on the funding cost. And the idea is how to continue to dry down the funding cost in general, especially on -- in this environment. The funding, I think 2 key factors that we need to pay attention to the stable funding sources. That's why we try to diversify into offshore lending as well offshore borrowing as well to make sure that we have a stable fund for our investor and therefore, winning more market share, especially in the -- like in the current environment in Vietnam, where liquidity is somehow pretty tight at the domestic banks in general. We try to take advantage of that. We try to take advantage of borrowing lower interest rate from international bank compared to our competitors as a competitive advantage to win more market share on the on the margin lending. As I mentioned before, our margin lending size equity for us is only less than 1x. In Vietnam, the maximum you can do is 2x of your equity in general. And most of our big competitors actually reaching that level. So we still have a lot of room for growth. And we also try to take that advantage to win more market share and win more business from our clients.

Thank you, Xuan Minh . Staying with TCBS, another question on funding and financial expenses. TCBS' financial expenses increased significantly. What drove the increase in cost of funds? For the U.S. denominated borrowings, could you update on pricing versus domestic loans, the rationale for foreign borrowing and how hedging is managed?

I mentioned before, we tried to balance the funding source from both domestic and international markets as well. International market, basically you can borrow at lower cost in some degree, but more importantly, at the longer duration tenor in general, in Vietnam, if a financial service like TCBS borrowing from domestic bank, you can borrow very short term in general. And that somehow creates certain uncertainty, especially on the tight liquid environment in Vietnam like a couple of months ago. And therefore, we prefer to choose a safer size to manage our borrowing we try to increase the offshore funding. For example, we just recently signed up nearly USD 500 million syndicated loan from offshore, which is good, and that would provide us a very stable income in the next few years. stable loans and funding in the next few years and somehow to fund for our -- for the growth of our margin lending business in this environment. So basically, that's the strategy. Currently, the hedging cost is high. and therefore, that somehow impact our financial expenses. But for the long term, I think it's a good strategy. And I think it's a much safer and more prudent strategy for us to pursue this business.

Now hedging policy question for Techcombank. Alex, could you please elaborate on the hedging policy applied to U.S. denominated borrowings and confirm whether the hedges fully cover the tenor of the underlying debt.

Yes. Thanks. So I can indeed confirm that our policy is to cover our FX exposure, and therefore, we have a very low appetite in that area. So the FX exposure is managed by the treasury function and the business as part of the first line of defense within the bank's risk appetite. And then it's also subject to the control of the risk function as a second line of defense. So as I explained, our approach is in general to cover our FX exposure. So we use our foreign exchange swaps, which are consistently rolled over. We would sometimes keep an open position depending on liquidity requirements, depending also on market situations, and otherwise as an example, as of today, we have a residual open position of USD 100 million, which is a long U.S. dollar position. But overall, I can indeed confirm that we are not taking any meaningful risk on FX or for exchange interest rates.

Thanks, Alex, for confirming that. The next question for you is on mortgage credit risk management. I guess the backdrop of deposit rates trending upward again. How does Techcombank assess the debt servicing capability of mortgage borrowers? What is the outlook for potential NPL formation from this segment? And what is the provisioning strategy to address these risks?

Yes. Thanks for the opportunity to get back to that important point. As I mentioned, there was a question mark, right, from investors and also something we wanted to see which is the impact of the higher interest rates on the mortgage market. And as I mentioned during the presentation, today, we can see that the market is operating well. There is no real sign of stress. Our disbursements remain high, both during the first quarter and during the first weeks of April, same for repayments. There is no resign of deviation. What we can also observe is that within the mortgage borrowers, the higher proportion of people who are taking a mortgage to buy a property to live in the property for a real housing need as opposed to buyers who would be more speculative and seek capital gains. So this is obviously a positive in terms of the overall health of the mortgage market. So -- yes, I mean, in terms of the NPL, therefore, we do not currently anticipate any significant increase. So we believe that we will stay in the same ballpark as of today. And same goes for provisions. And with regards to provisions, we are strictly applying the policy of the Central Bank which is a very prescriptive and formula in terms of how much provisions you need to book based on how much collateral you have and also based on the number of days past due.

A follow-up for you, Alex, on the mortgage portfolio. Is there any observable difference in credit quality between primary and secondary mortgages. Does the bank have a target allocation for these segments? And what is the split between owner-occupied loans and investment-related mortgages?

Yes, so basically around 60% of mortgages are primary mortgages and therefore, 40% are secondary mortgages. I would say there is no significant difference in terms of behavior between these 2 types of mortgages. If anything, primary mortgages are probably a little bit less risky. So the NPL rates would be maybe at 1.7% instead of 1.9%. And this is due to the profile of the borrowers. We are usually talking of relatively higher segment properties, therefore, with a different kind of profile of borrowers. And also, we are working in close coordination with the developers, which have been working with us for a number of years, which also gives us more opportunities to proactively manage any situation of stress. With regard to the now the proportion of speculative buyers versus end users on buying for housing needs. I would say more than 50% of our mortgage borrowers are seeking to buy a property in order to live in it, right? The exact proportion is difficult to determine what a majority. And as I mentioned earlier, an increasing proportion of them are essentially buying to live in the property rather than buying to speculate. However, I would say there is still a proportion of buyers who are also looking to make capital gains. This is not specific to Vietnam. I think it's a feature in Asia. People do by real estate properties for asset accumulation for wealth preservation also for inflation protection. Even though they are not making any significant investment return because the rental yields are not very high. So in any case, what we would do is that we would look to combine 3 criteria, which are repayment capacity. So the borrower needs to have a clear plan to repay the loan in terms of liquidating another property, inheritance, asset disposal, whatever. They need to have recurring income and therefore, the capacity to service the debt. And three, the loan-to-value would be set at a conservative level, typically 70%. So this is the combination of criteria, which ensures that basically, we are able to maintain the NPL and the cost of risk at a very manageable level on our mortgage portfolio whatever the segments we are looking at, whether we are looking at speculative buyers versus homebuyers and then users or whether we are looking at primary mortgages or secondary mortgages.

Next question is on TCBS, Xuan Minh could you update us on TCBS' plan to develop and grow your institutional client base?

Yes, I mentioned before that we see the trend of institutional investor coming to Vietnam increasing. And we believe that we now quite -- is the right timing for us to start to come into that market place and try to serve our institutional investor in general. We have been trying to develop certain features in certain services that is unique to us, and we don't want to be mid-to following the traditional and the same way that many other peers are doing. We -- a few things, for example, we developed our [ nat pool ]. We try to connect with many service providers so that -- and trading platform so that our client on the fund can easily trade very low touch in general with very high speed for us in general. So for example, that pool, we are developing that. We are we develop a lot of connectors for our -- that can connect directly with the trading platform of some of the big institutional funds in the world so that the trader can trade very easily and transparently with high speed. We developed certain prefunding feature with very high with very high like the very high pre-funding allowance or services or size in so that the institutional clients have more room for the investment into Vietnam in general. So basically, we are trying to come into that space, and we hope that we can increase more market share in general from the institutional investors in general going forward.

Thanks Xuan Minh. Now shifting to insurance. This one is for Jens. Could you share more about Techcom Life? How do you expect its contribution to fee income to evolve? And what milestones should investors watch as indicators of progress the next strategic cycle.

So thanks again for the question, and I think Alex has already shared a couple of points, but maybe it's good to reiterate on some of those. So first 1 is I think the reason we set up the insurance business is that we believe it's really very critical going forward. And as kind of a lot of questions of an aging population, but also a richer population is coming up and what kind of products are required. And I think insurance is critical to those. And I think at this point in time, and the expectations we had for that business are probably over and above what our own initial plans were. And as Alex said, more than 20% market share on the bancassurance side, being the fifth largest insurer, a growing insurer when it comes to an APE. I think that all speaks for the fact that there probably is a need for insuring like ours. So what does it mean? So first 1 is, we try to be very, very customer focused, don't have such a broad product range, really be very focused on protection on certain accumulation certainty, just reliability. And I think that's what our customers actually like. At the same point in time, we are trying to deliver that through a very, very modern platform. And the fact that we have set up this company in a very short period of time, but also that 95% of all the insurances are actually straight through processed in a very, very short time and policies can be issued is all due to the fact that we actually have a very modern technology platform. In addition to that, we are completely leveraging all the data technologies and the data tech stack, which we have built in TCB and can be leveraged in TCE and Ally, but also actually in our general insurance business. And that means these companies from the onset are AI-ready, and as Xuan Minh actually has said, we are pushing very, very hard to shift these whole models right now on the AI side, not just for productivity, and I think that's 1 point, but I think also creating completely new value propositions in terms of understanding customers and being able to serve customers around the clock giving advice, et cetera. So -- and from our perspective, we have shown [ 400 billion ] and I think the overall income of that is around VND 440 billion first quarter. And as we have said, we believe that probably in 5 to 10 years, and we believe that this business probably can be as large or even bigger than what TCBS is right now. And the real things to watch out for is actually ultimately are we continuing to grow at the current level? And what's the product penetration. And I think internally, we are measuring a lot of like customer satisfaction and how are we delivering straight-through processing efficiency ratios and all of that. But ultimately, we have relatively an aggressive acquisition targets and penetration targets but also persistency targets, which means that are we selling it in the right form that people really using that product as a long-term investment and protection vehicle? If not what we've seen in 2023, unfortunately, that a lot of these persistencies were actually very, very low. And so therefore, again, and I think we -- when we submitted the original plan, there were some targets for under growth. I think that is probably the lower case and what we had submitted and we might actually be even more aspirational, but it's very clear we want to be probably over the next 5 years. And from a stock perspective is a little bit hard because others have been, let's say, more advanced or longer in the market. And so therefore, they have a bigger amount of total premiums -- premium volume. But again, I think from our perspective, in kind of 2 or 3 years, we want to be and the fastest-growing insurer from all insurers in the market. So right now, we are #5. So we want to be on the APE side to be #1. In bancassurance, again, I think we are at the 20%. And I think we would like to be somewhere in the 30% range. because we believe there's a lot of opportunity still for us. And then I think what you will also see and what you should be looking for is we will expand our distribution range. And so you would expect us probably to set up an agency networks, but in a very, very different manner. I think we will not set this up in the way how it's currently seen in the market, but probably much more as a professional financial advisers who are very much focused on these insurance products. So it will not be quantity, which will make a difference here, but actually the quality. So that is in our plan, probably ready for next year, we're testing and targeting these models. But again, as I said, 30% and market share on the bancassurance side, and plus being probably in 2 or 3 years and the fastest-growing overall insurance company in the market, and that's what you would -- should expect?

Thank you, Jens. Next question is also for Jens on new digital payment initiative. Regarding the launch of Mobifone digital payments, where the bank is a strategic shareholder, could management update us on the business objectives and second bank's role going forward?

So again, I think rightfully, we are a minority shareholder. So we're having an 11%, so probably its MDP more for to comment on these objectives. But again, I think what is out there in the public domain is that MDP really tries to be creating a new backbone for the digital payment infrastructure. As an Vietnam goes to digital 4.0, there's a lot of demands on real time digital payment infrastructure and being able to have a multimodal connectivity across all the different participants, fintechs, banks and consumer finance companies, merchants, ecosystem partners. And at the same point in time, having a much higher level in terms of services when it comes to reconciliation and anti-money laundering, et cetera. And I think that is what MDP tries to provide. It's not that -- no press is not a stable provider of these services. But I think there was the feeling and that there are probably certain services which are required in the market, which are not provided. And the feeling was that this company, MDP could actually provide those maybe in a faster and more effective manner. And our role ultimately is that a little bit of adviser but also lead customer. And we are the largest user of Napa. So our market share in Napa transactions around 16%. So if you would think about a super user and for such payments, which probably would be used. So our role is to a certain extent, saying what is needed. And at least from a banking perspective, 1 of the largest transaction banks in the country. So the systems are very much kind of basically taking up these requirements and are geared towards that. And then at the same point in time, and we are also receiving the benefits of these new systems because as we're going on them and we'll channel a lot of our transactions through these systems, we will actually be the beneficiary of all these new services coming up. So at the same point in time, also, we are providing expertise how to build and systems at scale, right? And because of our own systems, we have increased our and transaction volumes on our systems over the last couple of years by 4 times. So we know actually how to build a scalable systems and how we can actually make sure that these things work and retube seamlessly stable levels quickly. So again, it's advisory functionality and at the same point in time kind of being a super user who helps to fine-tune the systems. And again, right now, we are on the system, and we are basically clearing with 1 other bank already on quite a lot of our transaction across that system. It performs actually as expected, very well. And then as we start rolling it out, we believe there will be benefits for us as a user of the system, which we can then give to the ecosystem to margins and also financial institution partners.

And finally, a shareholder return questions, which we have received multiple times. Could the bank share the dividend payment plan for this year and the key principles guiding the dividend decision going forward?

You're absolutely right. And I think this question comes up often. And I think usually, I give the same answer. And this time, of course, it will probably be even maybe a little bit less urgent because we have the AGM in 2 or 3 days, and then I think it will probably be very clear. But let me share what I believe again the considerations are and what we might most likely see. So we are seeing a very strong performance of the bank. And we see that our capital is very strong. It's close to double that of the regulatory minimum. And if we look into Basel III, if we would cut over to IRB systems. And the capital would be even higher. So I think capital wise, we are very well equipped and the earnings momentum is strong. And as I said, we have in the past that we can and have a dividend policy, which would justify going forward and to pay dividends, should the board decide to do so. At the same point in time with all these uncertainties, right, which we're having right now. And the question is, are you let people participate through stock dividends? Or are you doing cash dividends? Or what is the perfect mix between these 2. So again, I think the Board will probably deliberate an overall mix between these 2 instruments. And then I would expect that to be coming out, as I said, over the next 2 or 3 days, should they decide to do so because it needs to be announced before the AGM. But again, I think from the core conditions where we had enough capital, enough earnings momentum, we need to internally finance our credit growth. And all of that in place, I think there is room to do stock and cash dividends. But again, ultimately, this is up for the Board to decide.

Thank you, everyone. On behalf of Techcombank and Techcom Securities, thank you to Jens, Alex, Xuan Minh and the broader management team for today's insightful updates. And thank you to all analysts and investors for your questions and continued support. This concludes our first quarter 2026 financial results presentation. As mentioned before, the presentation materials and replay link will be posted on the IR section of our website shortly. If you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to reach out to the IR team. We look forward to continuing our dialogue and delivering sustainable value to our shareholders. Have a great rest of the day.