Welcome to Lion Finance's Third Quarter results call. My name is Nini Arshakuni.

I'm Head of Investor Relations, and I will be the moderator for today's call. I'm joined on this call by Archil Gachechiladze, our Group CEO; Hovhannes Toroyan, who's the Chief Financial Officer of Ameriabank, our banking subsidiary in Armenia; and Akaki Liqokeli, our Group Economist, who will be covering the macro.

We're pleased to report another set of solid results for the quarter with very strong customer franchise growth across our business operations in Georgia and Armenia. Our loan book grew 22% in constant currency.

It was even more -- with even stronger growth in the Armenia operations. Overall, our profit for the quarter amounted to GEL 547 million, an 8% increase versus the prior year.

Return on average equity stood at solid 28%. Cost to income was 35.3%, an improvement versus the prior quarter.

And our cost of credit risk ratio was 0.5%, and we maintained robust asset quality across the whole business. Before we dive into the details of these results, we'll first start with the macroeconomic developments, and Akaki will kick off, and then we'll hear from Archil and Hovhannes.

And in the end, we'll open the floor for questions. Akaki, now you can start the macro part, and let's move on.

Thank you, Nini. Hello, everyone.

I will be presenting the macroeconomic update for our core markets, Georgia and Armenia. Let's start with growth performance.

In the first 9 months of the year, both economies delivered solid growth numbers, supported by robust domestic demand and resilient external sector inflows. Accordingly, we have maintained our full year real GDP growth forecast for 2025 at 7.5% for Georgia and 5% for Armenia.

That said, the uncertainty around the baseline remains elevated due to geopolitical instability in the region and domestic political tensions. Nevertheless, the demonstrated resilience of the economies, along with continued improvements in relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan has strengthened the outlook.

And we have revised our expectation for 2026, is the strong growth will persist at 6% real GDP growth in Georgia and 5.5% growth in Armenia. Importantly, our projections are in line with the latest IMF forecast, which place Georgia and Armenia among the top performers in the region in terms of average real GDP growth over the next 5 years.

Turning to the composition of growth. Both economies have increasingly shifted to domestic demand drivers, particularly consumption, which is supported by sustained increases in household income from employment and remittances.

And ongoing fiscal expansion in Armenia is also helping in this regard. Investment spending is also contributing positively, aided by ongoing public infrastructure projects.

External sector inflows are also contributing to growth. The income from exports, tourism and remittances is increasing at a solid pace in Georgia.

We also see that the inflows have gained momentum in Armenia after one-off highs registered last year. Also, the nontravel export of services, particularly IT and transport, demonstrate solid growth and contributing to overall hard currency inflows.

The strength of inflows is supporting the stability of local currencies as well. Georgian lari and Armenian dram have been broadly stable against the U.S.

dollar over the last 2 years in contrast to most peer currencies. The real exchange rates are also adjusting smoothly after strong depreciations in previous years.

This is working through lower inflation with no impact on nominal exchange rates. We expect GEL and Armenian dram to remain stable over the medium term, supported by solid macro fundamentals and prudent policies.

Exchange rate stability is also essential for keeping inflation low and stable, which we have observed in both countries in recent years. However, more recently, we have seen some uptick in inflation in Georgia, where the headline number was 5.2% year-on-year in October.

This is mostly driven by price increases on several food items from last year's low levels. And we expect this to be temporary and short-lived as inflation expectations remain well anchored as reflected in low core inflation numbers and the National Bank of Georgia maintains moderately tight monetary policy with the refinancing rate at 8%.

In 2026, as inflation pressures ease, we see scope for 0.5 percentage point cut -- rate cut by the NBG. On the Armenian side, the inflation is more stable, and refinancing rate is slightly lower at 6.75%.

In 2026, we also expect a limited space for cuts within 25, 50 basis points. The central banks of Georgian and Armenia have been also very active in foreign currency purchases this year.

And as a result, there is -- official reserve levels have reached record high numbers. And they are also converging toward the minimum adequacy levels.

According to our estimates, [ $6 billion ] will be sufficient to reach the debt level in Georgia and [ $5 billion ] in Armenia, and those levels are quite realistic to be achieved in the following year. Strong reserve positions are essential for macroeconomic stability as well as fiscal discipline that we also observe in both countries.

Georgia remains on a consolidation path with tightly managed fiscal deficit within 3% of GDP and also the government targets to reduce further the debt level below 35% of GDP. On the Armenian side, the temporary increase in spending needs has led to somewhat elevated budget deficits in the following years.

But notably, this is -- more spending is going to CapEx projects, and the government is committed to maintain the public debt below 55% of GDP, and this is also supported by ongoing IMF arrangements. Lastly, a few words about the banking sectors, which benefit from favorable macroeconomic conditions in both countries.

Lending growth has converged to the nominal economic growth in Georgia. And in Armenia, we also see some moderation to more sustainable levels as the mortgage subsidy program is phasing out.

Loan dollarization has been stable after substantial decreases in previous years, which contribute to lower exposure to exchange rate risk and the asset quality remains solid with Armenia and Georgia among the top countries in the region in terms of low nonperforming loans according to IMF. So this concludes my part.

Back to you, Nini.

Thank you, Akaki. Now we'll move to discussing our performance in Georgia and Armenia separately, and Archil will first start with Georgian operations and strategic highlights, and then we'll move to Armenia.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining the call.

Let me share the presentation. Nini, can you see me share the screen?

We see the screen. We don't see -- yes, now we see the presentation.

Excellent. So thank you again for joining the earnings call.

We will discuss some of the numbers here. So I will present the operating parameters of our Georgia subsidiary, then Hovhannes will present the Armenia side, and then I'll summarize in terms of the overall revenue numbers and costs and so forth.

So the Georgian subsidiary had a very good showing of return on equity of 32% with 16% year-on-year growth in loans and 14% in deposits as well as continuing to increase its retail coverage with retail monthly active users achieving 1.74 million users, up by almost 15% year-on-year. Just a kind reminder basically that our mobile application retail as well as business is basically financial superapp with a lot of different capabilities, including not only daily banking and multicurrency accounts attached to a single card and so forth, but peer-to-peer payment and bill split and so forth as well as fractional trading on U.S.

markets, low-cost fractional trading and many other capabilities. And for that reason and not just that, but as our overall digital capabilities of the bank, we have been recognized second time in a row by Global Finance as the Best Digital Bank in the World, and in the run-up to this competition for the best in the world, there were some big global names, including Revolut and others.

So it's -- I would like to congratulate our team behind this effort. And it is a nice achievement and recognition for our bank to have that given that our home markets are rather small on a global scale.

So what we see here is that we are going from strength to strength in terms of the monthly active users. You can see this number here, the middle gray line, which is up by 14.7% that I already mentioned.

And the daily engagement is very good. Basically, it's about 50% now, which is very strong.

What's also notable is that our business users are growing year-on-year monthly active user of our business mobile application is up 19%, which is quite incredible. In terms of the shares sold digitally, we have achieved a new high of 70%, which is very good.

So more and more of our loans and deposits and cards and other packages are acquired fully digitally. And on top of that, our NPS score, we achieved a new high of 74% -- not percent, 74, I apologize, in terms of the NPS showing, which shows you the strength of our franchise and the satisfaction of our customers with our services and daily banking that they do.

That has translated into a 21% increase in terms of volumes of payments, that's POS terminals and e-commerce with a slight pickup in the market share year-on-year. Some people have asked the question in terms of this used to be 57%, that's restated to exclude peer-to-peer payment that went through the card rails, but that's not really an acquiring business.

So we excluded that. And if you restated it for longer term, that's -- those are the numbers.

In terms of number of people using -- unit individuals using our cards, year-on-year, it's up by 13.9%. So given our high penetration, it's an incredible number, well above 1.5 million now.

And so it's 2.5% up Q-over-Q. Loan growth was 16.5%, constant currency, 16.1% and a quarterly number of 3.6% on a constant currency basis, which is very strong showing the markets growing about 13%.

Deposit was up also by 14%, a slight bump on a quarterly basis. Capital position remains strong.

CET1 and Tier 1 is a big focus, obviously, because the sub debt is widely available for a number of providers. So it's more tightly managed.

But this is plenty of capital. And as a reminder, we target a management buffer of 1.5% above the minimum requirement.

We can go slightly lower, if need be, but basically, that provides a slightly higher cushion that we target. Now I would like to ask Hovhannes to step in and present the shiny results that Ameriabank has.

Can you see my screen?

Yes, Hovhannes. Yes.

Yes. Perfect.

Thank you, everyone, for your time. For the Armenian operations, I want to mention that our profit grew 22% year-over-year to reach GEL 111.5 million.

Our return on equity also improved quarter versus quarter to reach 21.8%. As Archil already mentioned, both loan and deposit portfolios grew at significant rates, namely loan book grew 36.5 percentage point in constant currency basis and deposit portfolio grew 28.6% again, in constant currency basis.

We continue our expansion in terms of acquiring more customers. And here, you can see that both total customer base, monthly active customers as well as MAU/DAUs are increasing pretty solidly, and I'll be talking about it on the next slides.

Here, again, likewise, we're working on developing superapp locally that is becoming more and more popular. Indeed, the usage of our mobile application that is called MyAmeria has increased more than 60%.

That is also remarkable given the high penetration that we have in the local market. And there, we have several different features, more than actually 100 new features introduced during this quarter.

And we also introduced our loyalty program that we hope will tie up our customers with us in the long term. As we spoke last quarter, we have launched MyAmeriaStar, this is application for kids, 2 quarters ago.

And we can be very happy that it's gaining more and more popularity among children and is serving to become a financial educational platform for a number of kids in Armenia. In terms of digital usage, as I mentioned, if you look on our growth on an annual basis, it's mostly at or about 60% for both MAU and DAU, and we are very also happy and proud to share that also our digital uptake has improved more than 5 percentage point quarter-over-quarter.

That is also remarkable given this very rapid growth of the number of customers that we have, number of MAU and DAU. Here, I also want to mention that we have been doing a number of campaigns to attract new-to-bank customers as well as to activate the customer base that we have.

And we are offering a number of perks and benefits to our customer base. So when we'll be talking about fees and commissions, the costs on there are running a bit faster related to card transactions due to the campaigns that we are doing.

For the loan and deposit portfolio, again, we have remarkable results, 36.9% on loans. It's very important to note that the growth is very balanced, both on the corporate and retail side.

Also, just to remind that last year, we had elevated demand for the mortgages due to this tax rebate program. I want to mention that on one hand, the growth pace of the mortgages has decreased, but it's higher than whatever we had in 2023 and 2022.

So there is a very healthy growth continuing in this market. So we have no fears about any potential bubbles in this sector.

As for the deposits, again, 28.8% growth year-over-year. And here, I also want to mark another milestone agreement that we announced very recently with another DFI, EBRD.

We have been very active with our DFI partners to attract more liabilities to support our long-term growth. As for the capital position and liquidity position, I'm very happy to also mention that there is improvement in both areas.

Our headroom versus requirements has improved versus quarter 2. Also, the Central Bank of Armenia has made -- officially introduced the changes to the local regulation, where in line with a couple of other changes.

Now banks can do perpetual bonds as part of their regulatory equity. Also, there is significant improvement in our liquidity ratio.

You can see 202% and 121% for NFSR and LCR ratios. So we are standing very sound, both in terms of capital position as well as liquidity.

Our NPS has also further improved to 77.4. It's 1.4 percentage point increase versus previous year-end.

And obviously, with the remarkable growth rates of the loans and deposits, our market share both for loans and deposits has increased by 1.6 percentage point. So as we announced earlier, we see significant untapped market opportunities, and we will be working towards increasing our market share in the local market.

With this, I can conclude and pass the floor back to Nini. Thank you.

Thank you, Hovhannes. And I'll now hand it over to Archil for the overall group overview.

Congratulations to the whole Armenian team. I think it's incredible results in terms of balance sheet growth, but also in terms of the -- fundamentally, our coverage and rolling out of our retail products and enhancing monthly active users there.

So with 300,000 people using our products there monthly, that's about 10% of the population. In Georgia, we're covering 45%.

So there's plenty of opportunity to grow and roll out our daily banking excellent services to more and more clients. So in terms of how this translates into the overall numbers, you can say that our operating income grew by 15.6%.

And you see an equal distribution of 13.4% in Georgia and 21.3% in Armenia. In terms of the net interest income, the growth was stronger than the overall revenue, which was 18.4% in Georgia and 30% in Armenia, so translating into 21% growth of net interest income year-over-year.

And net noninterest income was rather subdued, and we have discussed it in our results as well, and I'll go into detail in terms of FX and non-FX numbers on the next slide. So net fee and commission income grew by only 4.8% for the overall group.

In Georgia, it was 8.6%. Last quarter, I said in Georgia would be high single digits.

So that's more or less what we have there. And in Armenia, it was down by 17.8%, largely due to the massive spending on the client acquisition and reactivation that Hovhannes mentioned as well.

In net FX, it has been largely flat, slight decrease in Georgia, 3.3% year-over-year, partly due to the stability of the currency. So this line of revenue is more juicy when there's more volatility in the currency.

In both markets, the stability has been there because basically, there's a strong inflow into the country and both national banks are basically providing the lower target basically through which they're not allowing the currency to get stronger, but they are refilling the reserves, which -- that kind of stability is not great for us, obviously. But overall, it's still solid numbers.

Operating expenses were up 17.1%, about 15.4% and 16.6% in Georgia and Armenia, and the other business was a bit slightly higher. But overall, Q-over-Q, there was a slight improvement in cost-to-income, but year-over-year slight [ decrease ] from 34.8% blended to 35.3% blended.

That remains our focus. And from next year, we should expect neutral to positive operating jaws.

Loan portfolio growth and deposit portfolio growth for both countries were very positive in this quarter. In Georgia, we grew by 16.1% in constant currency year-over-year and in Armenia was incredible 36.5%.

And as Hovhannes has mentioned, it was well distributed between retail and corporate. So it's all very good and strong growth in deposits as well.

So all in all, that -- yes, one other good news was that as we deployed more liquidity in Georgia, we had a slight pickup in the net interest margin in Georgia and a 10 basis point pickup in Armenia as well. And so all in all, it translated into an increase of 20 basis points Q-over-Q, which was welcome news.

Cost of credit was 0.5%, and that's more closer to the normal levels. And we guide between 80 and 100 basis points through the cycle, but we are in a good benign environment.

So that's what it is. We had a slight pickup in NPL ratios, which was mostly on the SME side, reclassifying some small hotels, mainly in the regions that have not performed very well.

There's no systemic underlying issue in any of these segments there. So that's about that.

So the profit was up by 7.5% year-over-year, although that basically does not show the fundamental pre-provision size of the business grew about 15%, which is something that we focus on as well. Return on equity is 27.8%.

All in all, strong showing. We are announcing a dividend -- quarterly dividend of GEL 2.65 per share as well as recommending to do the buybacks of GEL 51.5 million for this quarter, and it's a buyback and cancellation, as you know.

And you see over the last 5 years how the number of share has been reducing because of this type of capital returns that we do. This is what we promised to do, and we are continuing to do that.

I'll wrap it up here and open for Q&A. Nini, anything to add?

Yes, we can start the Q&A, nothing to add. So to ask questions, please use the Raise hand button or the Q&A chat, and please introduce yourself when you speak.

So we have the first question from Jens Ehrenberg and let me bring him on the line.

I hope you can hear me all right. A couple of questions from my side.

And sorry, I should have introduced myself. It's Jens Ehrenberg from Cavendish.

Firstly, I suppose looking at loan book growth, which has been pretty strong across both markets. Are there any key growth levers you'd look at over the next 12 to 18 months that we should be mindful of?

Then secondly, just on the level of NIMs. I mean it's great to see how robust they've been in the quarter.

I suppose in the face of uncertainty around global rates, how should we think about this going forward? Are you sort of confident in the stability of those margins?

Or is there anything we should be mindful of? And finally, more on the sort of digital side of things, particularly on the retail side.

Thinking back to sort of the time of the demerger, to what extent do you believe that, I suppose the market actually appreciates the franchise value that you've built on the back of the digital retail offering?

So thank you. So for loan growth, I'll say Georgia and then maybe Hovhannes can cover the Armenian side.

So we guide -- we don't guide Georgia separately, but our expectation is between 10% and 12%, 13% medium term, although as long as the growth of the Georgian economy remains above 5%, which is the medium to long term expectation of Georgian growth, not long term, but medium term, that allows us to grow faster than that. So we have been able to grow -- as the market grows at 13%, we have been able to grow at 16%.

There's no particular sites other than -- so retail and corporate, both are growing very strongly. SME has not been growing strongly.

It's high single digit there. And we are in discussion with policymakers how to support SME growth, SME loan growth there.

But in terms of Georgian corporates are in excellent shape. They've delevered as the denominator of the economy overall grew their profitability as well as margins were in excellent shape over the last 3, 5 years.

So they're delevered and able to invest in many different sectors. Energy remains a big sector that should attract a lot of investment over the next 3 years in Georgia.

So -- and consumer is still growing very well because the income levels have been growing at double digits 5 years in a row, 5 years, every year, double digit, which is excellent growth that we are seeing. And Hovhannes, do you want to say about loan growth in Armenia and then I'll switch to NIM?

Why don't you cover NIM as well in Armenia and then I'll turn to Georgian side.

Sure. Yes.

Absolutely. So for the loan growth, we do anticipate for the market like lower double-digit growth for the next couple of years.

For Ameriabank, our estimate is to keep it between 15% and 20%, maybe a bit higher for the initial years and then going slightly lower towards like 3, 4 years horizon. But we should be able to keep it between 15% and 20% growth for the next 3 to 4 years.

As for NIM, we do think that the level of the NIM where we are is fairly stable. So we do not anticipate any sharp changes either way, either up or down.

So there could be 10, 15 basis point change over time. But overall, we think this is -- in terms of midterm, this is -- this could be a guiding figure for the management.

Thank you, Hovhannes. I'm a bit more optimistic on the loan growth side.

As long as we grow on retail side as we want to, I think it should provide 20-plus percent growth, but we'll see. On the NIM, in Georgia, it's broadly stable.

We are in a good shape there. I don't expect any major changes.

Obviously, this business just happens. So we'll see [Technical Difficulty] there is no reason to expect a particular movement there.

On the franchise value side, you're absolutely right. So a lot of people are focused on book multiple because there's this understanding that banking is all about the balance sheet play and somebody can bring a couple of billion dollars and recreate this franchise.

And I don't think that is right. I mean when there's the front end, it's not just the balance sheet, the front end, which basically -- that's why I focus so much on the NPS, on the top of mind, most trusted bank.

So this shows the stickiness of the customer revenue and so forth, which translate then into growth [indiscernible], but also, it's the stickiness of such revenue. And unfortunately, the market has not given us credit for it because we're still trading around 5x P/E, while historically, we used to trade at 8, 9, sometimes 10x.

And if you ask me, and maybe that's subjective, but also objective measures show that we are in the best shape in terms of the franchise quality that we have ever been on the Georgian side, and now it's joined with Armenia, it's getting better and going from strength to strength there as well. So unfortunately, not yet appreciated, but hopefully, it's coming, right?

There were a few questions typed into the Q&A side. Nini, do you want to cover those?

Yes. So maybe if we kind of categorize them, there are 2 questions on the market shares.

For -- on the Armenian side, basically, the question is what percent market share is attainable in the next few years? And then for Georgia, the question is, given already large market share, how much more market share could be BOG gain in the next few years?

So maybe we'll cover the market share questions first.

I can cover both, Hovhannes, sorry. In Georgia, regulator has basically said that they would like to keep the concentration constant and not increase it too much, i.e.

below 40%. So we have basically -- so there's more capital requirement as we go above 40% in deposits, which we are currently -- we have about 50 basis points extra for that.

So we intend to keep it just under 40%, a slight percentage or 2% gain still available on the loan side. So there's not much to gain there, a little bit.

But in Armenia, we would like to grow towards 30% and slightly above that over the next few years. So that the scale advantage that we currently have actually translates into good advantage in cost-to-income ratio as well.

Okay. Then [ Mike Gabon ] has a few questions.

One is if we can give more color into the potential perpetual bond issuance from Armenia?

Hovhannes, do you want to say anything? But be aware of the public market rules there.

Sure. So we have not formally yet discussed and approved internally.

So I would really prefer to refrain from giving any guidance, but we will definitely -- I mean, we have been working with some of the bankers to understand actually [Technical Difficulty] market opportunities. And also, we clearly understand our needs.

I just can say that this is very good tool to improve the efficiency and cost structure of the equity. And we are actually seriously considering that opportunity.

But once approved by our ALCO committee and then by the Board, I think after that, we can disclose more.

Thank you, Hovhannes. So another question is from Mike Gabon as well on the Bank of Georgia's recent eurobond issuance.

The question is if -- why did we issue this 3-year bond if we have so much capital and why in Georgian lari and why 11.5%, which Mike thinks is a high rate? So [indiscernible].

Archil, can you take it?

Yes. I think lari instrument has not been present on the local -- on the international market for some time.

So I agree that 11.5% was a bit disappointing. But it's unfortunate that the people have not been looking at the lari's strength for a long time because there was no instrument, lari instrument outstanding.

So that's partly due to the fact of the high interest. But we would like to have some public financing available in U.S.

dollar as well as lari. There's no need for U.S.

dollar at this point. But in lari, there was need.

So that's why we raised it. Given how we are deploying it, we thought it was a good idea.

So I don't know what you are referring to. So if we didn't think it was a good idea, we would not raise it, but we think it's a good idea.

And it does help us to de-dollarize the balance sheet, which has a marginal improvement on the liquidity requirement as well. So that helps as well overall, which every time you de-dollarize either because of funding basically or the loans, then it helps you with the lower liquidity requirement.

So marginal side is pretty good. It provides longer-term value as well, 3 years is better than most of the deposit, which is either current or 1 year.

Nini, next question.

Yes. So the next 2 questions come from [indiscernible] Capital.

The first is, please comment on the fee and commission income Q-over-Q decline and outlook for the next several quarters. Maybe we'll take that first.

And then the second is on the operating leverage. You mentioned positive operating leverage effects ahead.

Could you guide us a bit with what cost -- with respect to cost-to-income ratio for GFS and AFS.

Yes. So on the fee and commission income, so basically, we will have improvement.

It was not decline. It was a small increase, 3.8%.

But we should be in Georgian side, growing double digit in the fourth quarter and then going forward, we should -- that should stick. In Armenia, it's a bit more bumpy, could be given the fact that we are in a very high expansion period of grabbing new clients and so forth.

So there should be improvement, but we don't provide more guidance than that. And the same is true for cost-to-income as well.

So we are guiding either neutral or positive or slightly positive operating jaws for next year, but we don't want to provide more breakdown than that.

Thank you, Archil. So now we have a raised hand from Simon Nellis from Citi.

So I'll let him talk.

I was hoping you could elaborate a bit more on what was driving the margin expansion in Georgia, I think, a little bit over the quarter in Armenia as well. I know you're guiding for broadly stable margins, but can you kind of give us some thoughts longer term about the sensitivity of your margin in both markets to rates, which might come down, I guess?

And what is your rate view kind of going forward over the next 12 to 24 months?

Yes. Let me do that on the Georgian side.

So basically, I'll start with the last one. So first -- sorry.

First was deploying higher liquidity. So we had slightly higher liquidity than normal.

And as we were deploying it, we thought that it would translate into a slight pickup. So there was a pretty simple exercise there.

Our -- in the mix, we have slightly higher consumer. So consumer is growing slightly more than other stuff.

So that's also helping the margin. So that's why it's north of 6% instead of historically lower.

So if you rewind 5, 10 years before, sometimes we have had it at 7%, 8%, but then we have had it just about 5% as well. Right now, it's 6%, partly due to the mix and high interest rate environment.

Now talking about interest rates, as our Chief Economist, shared with you, we expect around 50 basis point reduction at the end of 2026 in lari. And that should be either neutral or maybe 10 basis point reduction over time.

So initially, it's slightly positive, in fact, because we have short term and fixed lari is more of the assets, are in fixed short term than the funding. So that, in fact, has a slight pickup of 10 basis points or so.

But then over time, it neutralizes up. And in Armenia, Hovhannes, do you want to say a few things?

In Armenia, we also have a short position on interest rate on the FX. So technically, the decrease of the rates of USD or euro LIBOR will affect slightly positively, but that's not going to be anything significant because we do not really keep a very big position, I mean, open position.

As for the NIM, yes, we did have a 0.1 percentage point improvement in NIM. But here, we again are guiding it to be flat in the Q4 and probably in the next couple of quarters.

This was due to a slight increase in the yield of the loans. But at the same time, we also note that short term, our cost of funding has gone up slightly, and that was mainly driven by our attraction of DFI funding.

That is slightly more expensive as of today. But given the long tenure of those facilities, we have estimated that through the lifetime, the average cost of that fund will be slightly lower than the local borrowing.

So we are currently paying a bit more than the local market, but with the expectation to be paying less within the expectation that the rates will go down.

Let's see. So we have one question from [indiscernible] on the Georgian business.

What is your market share in private banking affluent retail in Georgia? And asking specifically about retail deposit market share.

And how much is the share of these deposits in your total deposit base? And what is the dollar...

Yes, it's -- we cannot exactly measure the market share, but my estimate is somewhere between 45% plus/minus. And in terms of the total share, I don't remember.

So we'll probably have to get back to you. So there's the solo, which is upper premium segment, which is substantial, and we do disclose.

But in terms of what you are asking for, I think it's more like wealth management. I'm not sure we disclose the breakdown of that, but we can get back to you on that.

In terms of how much we are paying, it's the average deposit cost, I also don't remember. We'll need to provide that to you.

So overall, part of the cost in Georgian operations cost of client deposits in foreign currency is 1.4%, but that's blended across all segments.

Correct.

I see Jens' hand, but he might have just forgotten to -- yes, he put it down. Let's see what else.

Then we have one raised hand from [indiscernible] think from Armenia, but let's see if -- [ Gohar ], do you have a question? Maybe it's accidental.

There are a few questions from Mike Gabon that are in Q&A. Do you want to cover those?

Yes. Let's see.

Questions on Armenia. Is there a higher regulatory capital requirement on foreign currency in Armenia?

That's probably for Hovhannes. And also, is there any notable inflows, outflows of foreign currency into and out of Armenia?

We do have higher capital requirement for FX-denominated loans, and that has been enforced from 2004. So it's not new to us.

On average, I would say, because there are different weights, risk weights for different asset classes, but most of the FX-denominated assets have approximately 50% more capital requirement or their risk weights are about 50% higher. And the second part was about the cap...

About the foreign currency inflows in and out of Armenia. Any notable foreign currency inflows happening in and out of Armenia?

Yes. I think Akaki also presented that when we look at the remittances, for instance, I mean, there is very healthy growth in Armenia.

If I'm not mistaken, it's about 16% year-over-year. And that positive trend is continuing both in 2025 and was also there in 2024.

Hovhannes, and then the clarifying question was that the cap -- Mike was asking about the cap, any cap on deposits in foreign currency or any additional requirements?

There is no any capital requirement for FX-denominated deposits, but there is a higher regulatory cost in terms of higher required reserves for foreign currency-denominated deposits regardless where they're attracted from. And now with these new changes to the regulation, the Central Bank of Armenia is also introducing higher requirements for concentrated attractions for our customers in terms of calculation of NSFR and LCR, probability of the outflow.

But again, we did our internal analysis. And due to this increased requirement to this concentrated means, the requirement for liquidity position for Ameriabank will not change.

That is very immaterial change. So we're going to be, as I presented, well above the required thresholds.

Okay. Thank you, Hovhannes.

Another question is regarding the potential M&A opportunities, if we can comment on any potential M&A plans and if we have any interest in Central Asia, I think that's the question in summary.

There's no comment that we can provide in terms of our expansion, but we are scanning the market, and that would be East Europe -- Central and Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, Central Asia, mainly 2 countries, which is Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, we're always looking. But we are concentrated on top banks, top 3, maybe top 5 for larger banks.

We don't like turnaround stories. We like stories where we can enhance and so forth.

So there's no immediate update there. Should I cover the next one?

[ Bruno Berry ] is asking about capital distribution.

Yes. So the range of 30%, 50%, which is our medium -- like the target, where do we expect it to be in the near term?

And what are our thoughts regarding the split between dividends and buybacks?

We expect it to be in low 30s as we guided a couple of years ago for 2, 3 years. And that's because the growth, we remain on the higher side, and we have been growing more than our medium guidance, medium-term guidance.

So that's why we are deploying capital there. And in terms of the split of capital returns, roughly 2/3, 1/3 has been dividend and buybacks, and we'll probably stick to that.

The next question is from Ben Maher on the line.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Just a quick one on -- I think you mentioned some regulatory changes in Armenia. I'm interested if you have any -- do you expect any further regulatory changes or any headwinds as we move into next year across Georgia or Armenia?

Any color would be helpful.

There's nothing material coming up in Armenia.

There's nothing immediate in Georgia, either. There's plenty of discussion in terms of open banking and how this is affecting and encouraging fintechs and so forth, but there's no particular big change right now.

No more questions.

So with that, thank you very much for joining our quarterly call. Third quarter was a record high.

This is the first time that we made more than $200 million equivalent, right? Nini, maybe you correct me if I'm wrong.

But I think it was the first time and given the fact that we'll be growing quarter-by-quarter, hopefully, we can deliver value to our shareholders. Armenia remains a very strong case and prospects there are also very positive, medium- to long-term prospects given the fact that Azerbaijan and Turkish borders remain closed while there's an in-principle agreement already to open those up, but this will take time, a few months but less than a year, hopefully.

And that means that the economy will open up with plenty of opportunities that will emerge, and we are very well placed there to fund and provide funding for growth to go there. And Georgia remains and continues to be a very strong economy.

So more and more people appreciate how strong the economy and numbers have been. As you can see, the growth has been good, high single digit.

Inflation is under control. CPI picked up, but core inflation remains at 2.4%.

And all of this basically translates into a strong economy, people benefiting with average incomes growing double digit, and all of this is reflected in our strength. And Georgia, so on the macro side, it's a very good story.

On the franchise value, I think we are stronger than we've ever been. So we are very well placed to benefit from this medium-term wave, which is called investment in the middle corridor, be it through this highway being discussed from Azerbaijan to Armenia or being through a more established Georgian route.

In both cases, we're very well placed to benefit from this medium-term movement. And all of that, I think, will translate into long-term value creation.

So thank you for joining this call, and we look forward to seeing you in one quarter.

Thank you, and take care. Bye.