Welcome to Lion Finance Group's quarterly earnings call. Today we're pleased to present our performance and results for the second quarter and the first half of 2026.

My name is Nini Arshakuni, I'm head of IR and today I'll be moderating this call. I am joined, as always, by the group CEO Archil Gachechiladze, group as well as Bank of Georgia CFO Giorgi Shagidze, Ameriabank CFO Hovhannes Toroyan, and our group economist Akaki Liqokeli.

We'll go through the results presentation first and then in the second half of this call you'll be able to ask questions. Please be aware that this call is being recorded.

With that, I'll first hand over to Archil for the opening remarks and then we'll continue with the deep dives. Archil, please go ahead.

Thank you for joining the call. I'm very happy to report a very strong quarter.

In the second quarter, we had we registered a very high quality of the franchise, which is shown in the net promoter score in both markets being very high, as well as a significant growth of our retail franchise, which is reflected in growth of monthly active users in Georgia, reaching very close to half of the half of the population, meaning the total population including the small kids and so forth, not all bankable, of 1.9 million, which is 13.3% higher than last year, and much higher growth, a strong penetration happening in Armenia, getting close to 400,000 monthly active users. What's also interesting is that in Georgia, we also achieved more than a million daily active users, so that more than a million people open our application daily.

In terms of the revenue numbers, our second quarter was up by 23.4% and 19.6% for the first half year. Profit was similarly a strong growth, where we had 20.6% growth in the first quarter second quarter, sorry, and 19 17.3% for the half year.

Also, which was very strong showing, was balance sheet growth both on loans, as well as deposits with 23% and 26.8% accordingly. That's in constant currency.

As you may remember, we guide about 15% growth, but usually deliver around 20% or so over the last few years as as the macro has been stronger than than the average outlook that we have for for longer term. Having said that, 23% is is even stronger than our historic average.

That's happening while we have a lower than guided cost of risk of 0.6% in the second quarter and 0.5% for the first half year, and delivering about 27% return on equity. Very strong numbers not only in terms of profitability, but growth in terms of revenue as well as balance sheet.

We also had positive operating jaws in in both markets and then obviously combined. All in all, very, very good numbers, as well as strong numbers in terms of the quality of the franchise shown in terms of coverage of monthly active users and the satisfaction of the customers.

I'm very appreciative of of the whole team's efforts that that lead and deliver these results. With that, I will I would like Akaki tell us about the macroeconomic environment in Armenia and Georgia.

Hello everyone. I will share with you the recent macroeconomic developments and outlook for our core markets, Georgia and Armenia.

Let me start with growth performance. In the first half of the year, Georgian economy has demonstrated and maintained strong growth performance with real GDP growth reaching 7.9% year-on-year.

With this strong number and also improving economic resilience, we have revised our full-year real GDP growth forecast for 2026 from 7% to 7.5%. The Armenian economy expanded by 4% year-on-year in the first quarter, reflecting high base effect from the previous year and some pre-election uncertainty.

Preliminary numbers show that the growth trajectory improved significantly from quarter two, and our full-year real GDP growth outlook for Armenia is 5.5%. Overall, these growth projections remain significantly above the peer median, and they are expected to be driven by services in the following years, as it was the case in the previous periods, as the right-hand side chart shows.

This service-led growth is expected to be broad-based, export-oriented, and productivity-enhancing. To give you a few highlights in this area, Armenia launched the largest AI factory in the CIS region just a few days ago, and Georgia has moved on to the construction phase of its first deep-sea port.

The strong growth performance has been also supported by diversified and resilient external sector inflows, including export proceeds, tourism revenues, and remittances. As this slide shows, the overall inflows continue to increase in the first half of 2026 despite escalations in tensions in the Middle East.

The resilient inflows have also supported currency strength. Georgian lari and Armenian dram continue to appreciate against the US dollar in the first seven months of 2026.

In fact, these two currencies are among the three best performers in the broader region, as the right-hand side chart shows. Importantly, the strength of Georgian lari and Armenian dram has been also underpinned by credible macroeconomic policy frameworks in the two countries, reflected in declining deposit dollarization trend and also growing demand for local currency government securities among international investors.

These structural drivers are expected to remain in place in the following years and support local currency values. The currency strength also contributes to price stability.

In recent months, we have seen signs of inflation stabilization in both countries following some uptick in previous periods driven by global increases in food and energy prices. More importantly, service price inflation has been relatively stable in both countries, reinforcing our confidence that inflation should go back to central banks' 3% targets next year as base effects unwind.

The central banks continue to be attentive of remaining inflation risks as global commodity markets remain volatile. In May, the National Bank of Georgia increased its policy rate by 25 basis points, signaling its continued commitment to price stability.

For the rest of the year, we do not anticipate any policy rate moves from either central bank. In 2027, we see room for around 75 basis point cuts by National Bank of Georgia as it gradually exits moderately tight policy stance.

The central banks have been also actively building international reserves. This has been enabled by resilient inflows and ongoing trend of deposit dedollarization.

As of end-July, gross reserves reached new record highs of $7.5 billion in Georgia and $6.2 billion in Armenia. Importantly, the reserve levels remain within adequacy ranges, providing solid buffers against possible external shocks.

Also, higher reserve levels have been a major factor behind improving credit outlooks of both countries recently. Fiscal policy is another pillar of macroeconomic resilience.

Both Georgia and Armenia continue to demonstrate fiscal discipline through prudent management of public debt. As this chart shows, the Georgian authorities remain on a deleveraging path, maintaining narrow fiscal deficits.

The Armenian authorities have managed to stabilize public debt levels despite temporarily elevated spending needs. In both countries, public debt continues to dedollarize, reducing the fiscal sector's exposure to exchange rate movements.

Lastly, the banking sectors in Georgia and Armenia have benefited from favorable macroeconomic conditions. They continue to deliver robust growth and sustain strong asset quality.

Loan dollarization levels remain low by historical standards, with recent uptick in Armenia related to business lending. Capitalizations are highest among the regional peers in Georgia and Armenia as measured by Tier 1 capital-to-assets ratios.

This demonstrates prudent risk management practices in both countries and a conservative supervisory approach. This concludes my part.

Thank you, and back to you, Nini.

Thank you, Akaki. Now Giorgi will walk us through the main highlights of the Georgian Financial Services first.

Thank you, Akaki. Thank you, Nini.

Let me share the presentation. Good afternoon, everyone.

As Archil said, we had another quarter of very strong financial performance across the board. I'll be now going through Georgian Financial Services, and we'll start with the highlights for the quarter.

Our profit for the quarter grew by 14. 15.4% year-on-year, and for the first half of the year, it grew by 13.5%.

This resulted into the return on equity of 30.4% and 30.9% respectively. Our loan book grew by 17.1% at constant currency rate and 24.2% in deposits.

If we exclude Ministry of Finance deposit, the growth was about 18.4%. Retail monthly active customers grew by 9.5%, reaching 2.28 million, and retail digital monthly active users grew by 13.3%, reaching 1.92 million.

Now, this slide basically shows why we believe our customer growth is durable, and it is supported by broad digital ecosystem, as you can see on the left-hand side of the slide. On the right-hand side, I can stress few numbers.

On the retail app, our customer satisfaction was very high at 92%, with the scores at Apple Store and Google Play at 4.6 and 4.7, respectively. Our digital daily active users reached 1 million, pretty much 1 million people open our app every day.

88% of our loans were granted through digital channels. In business banking app, a similar dynamics with the customer satisfaction score at 92%, digital monthly active users being 84% of total monthly active customers.

Here, too, at the Apple Store and Google Play, we have very high scores at 4.9. I want finally on this slide to reiterate that Global Finance named us as the world's best digital bank in both 2024 and 2025 years.

Moving on to payments slide, payments are one of the core pillars for the ecosystem that I mentioned. You can see a very strong growth in acquiring volumes, 20% year-on-year or 12% or 12.7% quarter-over-quarter.

In terms of issuing, this growth was 11.9% year-on-year in terms of number of cards, reaching 1.7 million, which is about 2.5% growth quarter-over-quarter. We reach 28.8 thousand active merchant terminals, which was 13.3% growth year-on-year.

Finally, our market share for the acquiring volumes was further strengthened, reaching 56.7%. Now, in terms of customer centricity, which is shown here in terms of net promoter score, it had approximately doubled over the period shown, and then for the recent six quarters, it was more than 70%.

While it little bit dropped last two quarters, it is still within the acceptable statistical noise, and being above 70%, it is extraordinarily high, on par with very strong customers or the best customer-centric banks in the world. This allows us to anticipate customer needs and wants before the customers approach us, and then translate it into the respective financials as we do this.

Loan and deposit growth was strong as well, 17.1% at the constant currency rate growth of the loan year-on-year or 4.2% growth of the loan book quarter-over-quarter. The growth was across the board, corporate and retail banking leading the growth in loans.

The dedollarization remained broadly stable with 57.8% local currency loans contributing to total loans. In terms of deposits, the growth was 24.2% constant currency rate.

As I said, if we exclude Ministry of Finance deposit, the growth would be 18.4% year-on-year and 3.5% quarter-over-quarter. Now, in the quarterly growth here, the SME led percentage-growth-wise.

Then in terms of the dedollarization, the local currency deposits contributed to 58.1% to total deposits. This brings to final slide of my part of the presentation.

With the growth and strong profitability, actually further strengthened our positions both for capital and for liquidity. We operate with the buffers comfortably above the minimum respective requirements.

In terms of capital, we operate 2.7, 3.4, and 2.2 percentage point above the respective CET1, Tier 1, and total capital requirements. In terms of liquidity coverage ratio, we were at 152%, and net stable funding ratio at 132.9%, both above the minimum 100% requirements.

Now, we will be deploying the liquidity in dollar supporting the growth. The liquidity in local currency may remain the same, but we optimize cost of funding so that the high liquidity also has positive impact on our profitability.

Thank you, and Nini, please.

Thank you, Giorgi. Now let's move on to the Armenian Financial Services, and Hovhannes will discuss the results.

Yes, thank you. I am very happy to share also pretty impressive results for the second quarter for the Armenian Financial Services.

For the second quarter, our net profit grew about 50% year-over-year, and for the first six months, the growth was slightly more than 42% to reach 272 million GEL. Return on equity by the end of the second quarter was 23.1%.

These were predominantly due to two factors. On one hand, we have very significant and impressive growth on the balance sheet.

Our loan book grew by almost 37% in constant currency, and deposits grew 37.1% in constant currency basis, with NIM being stable from one quarter to another. At the same time, there is also a significant boost by non-interest income.

Indeed, our net fee and commission income grew by more than 38% year-over-year, and net foreign currency gain grew 19.3% year-over-year. Cost-to-income ratio came down lower than 40% for Q2.

We continue to grow extensively. Our monthly active customers grew by almost 28% to surpass half a million, and as in the previous quarters, our digital MAU grew much faster at 47% year-over-year.

This growth of accelerated MAU and DAUs is predominantly due to our digital ecosystem that we have been building around a super-app that goes beyond banking functionality. As presented earlier, it has two main pillars.

On one hand, we are building a system to satisfy the customer needs in terms of their banking and financial needs, both in terms of functionality and user experience, and at the same time, it's built around microservice architecture for better scalability. Here you can see different pillars that are building this banking and beyond-banking proposition for our customer base.

As already mentioned, our digital MAU grew by 47% year-over-year, our DAU grew even faster, 58% year-over-year, and our digital engagement increased by almost 10 percentage points to surpass 75% by end of the Q2. We launched our MyAmeria Star, that is retail application for kids, last year, and it is really picking up both for education, financial education purposes, as well as to satisfy very basic needs of younger population.

Here you can also see more details about our loan portfolio and deposit portfolio. Our loan portfolio in constant currency grew almost 37%.

The structure continues to be very balanced in terms of foreign currency, and 55% is loans in FX, and 45% is local currency. The mix of local currency has slightly gone down, and this is predominantly due to the fact that our corporate loans grew a bit faster.

Indeed, year-over-year, it grew 45% despite being the largest in the country. This really resembles with the large infrastructure and private projects that are unleashing in the country, as Akaki also presented.

Our retail loans grew 26.8% in constant currency basis, and consumer loans grew 39%. In terms of our deposits, dedollarization continues to evolve, and this is predominantly due to the fact of having very stable Armenian dram over the course of last few years.

The growth overall was slightly more than 37% in constant currency basis, whereas the share of local currency is slightly more than 60%. We do continue to be the largest lender in the economy and to the households as well.

At the same time, we were able to increase our market share both in terms of loans by 1.7 percentage point, as well as for deposits by 1.1 percentage point. I think it's also important to mention that beyond simply lending and attracting from customers, our transactional banking has seen very significant boost.

Indeed, our acquiring business volume grew by 48% year-over-year. At the same time, our issuing business payment MAU grew by more than 60% year-over-year to surpass 400,000.

In terms of capital position, we were able to improve and have more than 1.5 percentage point headroom on top of the CBA requirements. These changes have been predominantly due to three factors.

One, we did distribute the second tranche of our AT1 notes. As you might remember, we had the first tranche in February of this year at 8.5% coupon.

The second tranche of again $50 million was distributed in April by 8.0% coupon. At the same time, Central Bank of Armenia introduced some easing on risk weights for the SME starting from April, aligning it with the Basel III requirements.

As a result of these changes, also, we were able to pay our first dividends to the group in the amount of 157 million GEL. We continue to have very comfortable liquidity position as well.

Our LCR sits at 180%, and our NSFR is 126%. This is for me, and then I'll be happy to take more questions later.

Thank you.

Thank you, Hovhannes, and now we're handing over back to Archil, who will summarize the results and discuss them from the group perspective.

Hovhannes, I think the group results are good. Hello?

I think the group results are good, but when I hear Ameriabank separately, it's a hard act to follow because 35% increase in loan and deposits and then 40% in payment acquiring is a act to follow. Just one second, give it a second.

Hello, everyone. Yes.

To summarize what it translates into the group numbers, the operating income has gone up by 19.5% for the quarter year-over-year, 17.3% for first half. We saw that the net interest income has gone up year-over-year by 21.8%, of which 18% was Georgia and 28.6% was Armenia.

Obviously Armenia is experiencing much higher growth, although Georgia is also not too bad with about 17% growth or so in constant currency. Net non-interest income was up by 14.2%, slightly less in Georgia, 7.1%, and we'll see the breakdown of the fee and commission and FX separately.

The Armenia was up by almost 30% year-over-year, which was very strong showing. Now in terms of how that breaks down is that net fee and commission income showed a very healthy growth of 26.3%, of which 25% year-over-year was Georgia, which benefited from a lower base last year, and if you normalize for that, which was something to do with the Visa/Mastercard fee structure, which unwound in the fourth quarter, if you normalize that, it would be around 17%, if I'm not mistaken.

Normalized 22.3%. Then in terms of Armenia, Armenia had also an adjustment last year.

We didn't have something in the base, which this time is there. If you adjust it for that and normalized, the net fee and commission income growth would be 27.5% in the year-over-year in the quarter.

In net FX, Georgia had a slight decline, it continues to be a very competitive environment in Georgia for the FX, but showed a very strong growth in Armenia of 19.3%, which is welcome news. Operating expenses were 12.8% combined, of which 13.9% was for Georgia and 2.6% was Armenia.

If you adjust for the base effect of the sign-up bonus, which ended last in the third quarter, you would be looking at 13.5% in Armenia. In both markets, the operating jaws were positive, and obviously, the combined was positive as well.

You can see that in the cost-to-income ratio, the overall group's cost-to-income ratio reduced by 2 percentage points from year-over-year in the quarter, second quarter, as you can see, from 36.4% to 34.4%. In Georgia, the reduction was slight, in Armenia slightly bigger one, for the reasons that we discussed.

Being under 35% for the combined entity is a comfortable place to be. As we described, the growth overall for the group was 23% and 26.8% for the deposits, both well above our medium-term guidance.

Net interest margin stayed stable in Armenia and showed a slight uptick in Georgia because of slight reduction in the deposits and slight uptick in the loans, nothing significant really happened there, but it was still positive. Going forward, we should expect broad stability.

We'll be deploying dollars, but there will be some offsetting factors as well. Cost of risk, although it was slightly up in Armenia mainly due to the consumer loan proportion becoming larger, but otherwise, it's still well below our medium-term guidance of 80 to 100 basis points.

So 0.6%, and for the half year, it came out to be 0.5%. The coverage didn't change much.

The profitability, as we discussed, was 20.6% higher year-over-year, and 17.3% for the full year. Return on equity stayed around 27%, and return on average assets was a very strong showing also, just shy of 4%.

All in all, all of this translates into stronger capital distribution. The board recommended second quarter dividend of 3 lari and 5 tetri.

Since last year, we had dividend only for the half year, not quarterly. The half-year number compares to the previous half-year number by which is up by 15.7%.

We are continuing to strongly increase the capital distribution, and there'll be also another 59 million lari spent on the invested in the stock as the share buyback. We're continuing that our tradition of two-thirds, one-third roughly dividend versus buyback.

This is to summarize the fact, which we already mentioned a couple of times, that our medium-term growth, which is 15%, we are beating that target very strongly with 23% in both markets. By the way, we are ahead of the market growth.

In terms of the return on equity, we are also well above our medium-term guidance at 27%. We're distributing about 30% given the fact that we're growing much faster than our mid-term average.

We're deploying capital at that very profitable rate, and sitting at very comfortable buffers as well. That's that on our side.

We will stop here and open for Q&A.

Basically we can move to the Q&A, and we have a few raised hands already from our analysts. The first on the line is Jens Ehrenberg.

Hi, Jens.

Hi, Nini. Hi, guys.

Thanks for the presentation. Suppose well done on another very, very strong quarter.

Just a couple from my side. Firstly, on Georgia, appreciate, Archil, you said there was not too much that happened on the NIM.

I think this is the second quarter in a row where you're well ahead of sort of my expectations on the NIM. Suppose is there anything that came out of this that would give you, I don't know, sort of more confidence in the sustainability of the NIM as to where it is right now?

Then secondly, for Hovhannes on Armenia, I think you've highlighted the investment in infrastructure activity that's been supporting the corporate side. I suppose how much do you think will that remain a key driver for the business?

More broadly, how should we think sort of the split between really the underlying market growth versus further market share gains in Ameriabank?

I'll start with NIM. Yes, we believe that the ability to retain that NIM is very strong.

It will be slightly higher, slightly lower. It doesn't really change much overall in the big picture.

I understand that it's good to calculate exactly, but the life doesn't happen like this. Right now, what we can see is that there's pressure that NIM can slightly increase, in fact, but I think there are also some other factors that could reduce it.

We are saying broad stability, and we feel quite strong about it. That's all I can say about that.

Hovhannes?

Yes, thank you. Overall economic outlook in the country is very positive.

It has been very positive for the last couple of years, and for the near future, we still remain very positive, as Akaki presented. It is not only due to the large-scale projects that are happening in the country, but also the overall base for the macroeconomic stability is there.

Ameriabank, being the largest lender in Armenia, obviously is taking the advantage of the situation in a good way, that is being able to serve more and more customers, both that existed here and also the new large projects that are being established. If you look backwards, and if we look at our trends as well, there is a very solid growth for the market overall, but we have been beating the market year after year, and we will be continuing to do that as well.

I would anticipate that overall, that due to the very positive macroeconomic environment, overall, the banking system will continue its significant growth, but we will do our best to win over some of our competitors to increase our market share as well as alongside growing overall market.

Yes, especially with the retail rollout, right? For years, Ameriabank has been the number one premium brand, number one brand in corporate and number one premium retail brand, which is rolled out to the mass retail using the digital capabilities.

That will very much continue. It's just shy of 400,000 monthly active users and can easily be well above 1 million.

This will take years, obviously, but it will be happening.

Understood. That's very helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jens. The next question comes from Shail

Shah. All right.

Hi, guys. Can you hear me?

Yes, go ahead.

Right. I've got a couple if you can help me, please.

First, on the Georgian deposit market shares, on the slide 20, you can see there is a little bit of a dip in terms of Georgia, also TBC. Is there anything here going on in terms of competition we should be thinking about, or is that more the strategy to get below the 40 and then we can get the 50 bps capital release on the back of that as well?

That's the first question.

It's engineered, basically. We have been targeting to go below 40 without upsetting customers too much.

We can easily go under 40 in 1 month, but you don't want to be a place where people don't think of you when they want to deposit money, right? It has taken a time and very careful consideration how to do it.

Yes, that's exactly right. We would be below 40.

That capital release will take some time, though, because the way it's applied, it's the last 12-month average has to be below 40. It will take us 6 to 12 months to get there.

Yes, that's what we should anticipate, 50 bps release.

Thank you, that's helpful. Then secondly, you've given the capital ratio for Georgia, you've given it for Armenia, and you can see a dividend upstream proposed to the group.

What's the capital position of the group? Because that's the dividend-paying entity.

That's also the acquisition entity. In terms of CET1 there and sort of the excess capital held at that level, how does that look?

There's no leverage there. Giorgi, do you want to cover that?

We don't have any capital requirement at the group level. It is a holding company.

We do keep some cash to meet various expenses, requirements as well as some cash for future growth. There is no capital requirements at the group level.

In terms of the capital position, do you remember the capital position there? It's $60 million, maybe more or less, but it's all cash.

We don't have much assets there other than the holding company, and we cleared any leverage there a number of years ago. There's not much there, and there's a little bit of cash as a buffer.

That's helpful. Then finally, just on cost of risk in Armenia, is there anything that we should be thinking about there as the consumer loans are growing quite fast and there was a pickup there in terms of retail cost of risk?

When we look at it as product by product, by all the products, we're still way below our mid-term guidance. We are very comfortable at the levels that we are at.

Obviously, consumer loans, in general, are a bit more risky, but with higher yield. Technically, in terms of risk-reward combination, we are very comfortable with the yield and risk level for the consumer loans as well.

Obviously, the more the structure of the balance sheet will change, we may see some changes to the risk position as well as net interest income position.

Great, thank you.

Overall numbers are comfortable. Obviously, when you're looking at the 40% increase year-over-year, we're looking at different sub-groups and dissecting things and so forth.

Overall numbers are still way so.

I think Shail is done with questions. Thank you, Shail.

The next on the line is Alex Kantarovich. Thank you.

Thank you for this opportunity. I hope you can hear me.

Great results. It was pleasure to go through them.

I would like to ask about the second half, if with regular adjustments for seasonality of opex, for example, if second-half trends would be broadly comparable to the first half. This is my first question.

The second question is much broader. Given that the reports of certain issues, geopolitical issues for Armenia with Russia, if you can see any macroeconomic impact potentially, that would be my worry.

Other than that, once again, great trends, great results. Thank you.

Yes, in terms of the second half, we have all the reasons to believe that they will be as strong as the first half, usually, in fact. It's more.

If we look at the history of our banks, given the high growth and because of first quarter is slightly slower, usually the second half is picked up in terms of activity and so forth. There's no guarantees, obviously, but the anticipation are all positive.

Regarding Hovhannes, do you want to cover the

Yes, sure. In terms of the recent development of relationship between Armenia and Russia, there are some limitations on the foreign trade, but that covers less than 8% of the trade with Russia.

Obviously, in a short-term perspective, there have been some sub-sectors that have experienced some shock. The government of Armenia has taken certain measures to minimize this impact.

When we discuss the issue with our customers, we feel that, by and large, the measures that have been taken by the government of Armenia are that we can call enough to cover that short-term shock. Today, most of those products are being exported to other countries, mostly to Europe or other regions.

We do not really anticipate in the mid-term to long-term any significant impact of the limitations that have been introduced over the previous 2 months on the development or economic development of the country. It is fully in line with the recent reports that have been on Armenia in terms of forecast of GDP growth and so on.

That's great. Very clear.

Thank you.

Thank you, Alex. The next on the line is Dmitri Vlasov.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to ask questions. Again, congrats on very strong results.

My questions would be about Armenia, also a bit broad ones. The first one is about your ambition to get to 30%+ market share at some point in mid-term.

Is this organic or also includes potentially some inorganic capabilities? Then the second one is on the overall market.

The figures are very impressive, and we see very little slowdown in the market overall. Do you have the understanding when we would see a bit of normalization, slowdown?

Thank you very much.

Regarding the acquisition versus organic growth, maybe I'll cover that, Hovhannes, and then take the second question. Our default case is to go on with the organic growth.

Obviously, we would be open for the inorganic, but that would depend on the regulator's openness to seeing such merger, given the fact that we are already the largest player on the market. Having said that, who knows?

Our default case is organic. Please, Hovhannes.

Yes. In terms of market position, you're right.

Overall, the market has produced very good numbers for the last couple of years. When we look at the macroeconomic forecasts both done internally within our group as well as third party, we still remain pretty optimistic about overall development.

Also, as presented, for Ameriabank, in particular, we do expect to grow with faster than the market, and in both sectors, for corporate and retail. For retail, as Archil mentioned, it's predominantly due to the rollout, and we see very impressive results in terms of the growth.

Our MAU is growing at 47%, acquiring business is growing at 48%, our loans, consumer loans are growing at 39%, and indeed, more than 96% of those loans are A to Z automated. It not only enables us to lend to bigger chunk of the population, but also the cost of loan underwriting is going down significantly.

We do hope to continue these developments further, and we still remain very positive both for the banking sector overall, and also we plan to beat the market in terms of overall growth.

Thank you very much. Could I have very quick follow-up on the financial market share?

Could you please remind me what sort of the regulatory cap on the market share in Armenia? Thank you.

There is no regulatory market cap in Armenia, at least as of today, because we are the largest lender, and we are slightly shy of 23%. As of today, there is no cap.

Thank you very much. Understood.

Just to be clear, there's no cap in Georgia either. On the deposit side, from the financial system stability point of view, above 40%, there's higher capital requirements, and it's just not worth it to go much further than that on the deposit side.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dmitri. The next question is from Ben Mayr.

Hi, Ben.

Hi. Just three questions, please.

The first one's on the customer spread in Armenia. I think in local currency, it still shows signs of pressure.

I think last quarter was mainly driven by the deposits, but this quarter seems more on the asset side. Just interested in any color behind that.

Second question is again on Armenia. Cost growth is still well below revenue growth.

I'm just interested, do you expect this to continue, or how do you expect cost growth to evolve in the second half relative to revenue growth? Then my final question, I think was already touched upon in terms of M&A in Armenia.

The capital buffer is obviously now comfortably above your minimums. If you don't necessarily do M&A in Armenia, how do you view new potential markets?

Are there any kind of countries that you'd be particularly interested in? Thank you.

Let me cover the second and third one, and then I'll ask you to repeat the first question, Ben. Sorry, I didn't really quite get the question.

In terms of having a positive jaws ratio for the last couple of years, that has been enabled predominantly due to the investments that we have been doing into our digitalization in general. As I mentioned, for example, in terms of underwriting, the cost of single loan underwriting for consumer loans is going down more than 30 times.

Moreover, in terms of overall coverage option, today, we are able to serve any customer on the territory of Armenia without having a physical presence nearby. You've seen, and I've mentioned several times about our growth rate of MAUs and DAUs, that our customers tend to use our digital channels more.

Due to the fact that single usage, technically, the marginal cost of usage of our mobile banking or other digital channels is close to zero, I think it's very much expected that costs are growing much slower than revenues. Plus, on the revenues, we do already experience significant network effects.

That was something that we were talking about 2 years ago, that rolling into mass market would enable us network effects on the revenue or asset side as well. Now, when we're serving more than 500,000 monthly active customers, we are getting more and more of that, and you can see it in our P&L as well as on our balance sheet.

If you don't mind repeating first question?

Just on the customer spread in local currency. It's down again Q-on-Q.

Just interested in any color behind that. Thank you.

Yeah. There has been some changes in the regulatory environment where our required reserves in the Central Bank of Armenia in local currency have been reduced, and instead, we have been reserving in FX.

That has created temporarily additional excess liquidity in local currency in the local market, and that has had its impact on the short term in terms of rates, both on the borrowing and the lending side. We do expect that to normalize by the end of the year.

Overall, for both technically currencies, we anticipate in the mid-term to have broadly stable spreads that will translate into broadly stable NIM.

Great, thank you.

The third one was, what are the other markets that we would consider looking at as a group to enter? As we laid it out during the investor meeting in June, that the target markets would be the Baltics, the Balkans, and two countries in Central Asia, two large countries.

Having said that, because we're focused on the largest players in the market, top three or top five account for the larger countries, that also means that we will be looking for the right opportunity.

Great, thank you.

Thank you, Ben. The next on the line is Simon Nellis.

Hi, thanks very much for the opportunity. Congratulations on the strong results.

Just a quick question on the dividend from Armenia. Are you going to be paying dividends regularly from that business, or is it going to be an annual event?

Roughly how much of the earnings do you expect to be up-streamed? That would be my first question.

Then, yeah, sorry if you've touched on this before, but could you just elaborate on the outlook for margins in both Georgia and Armenia a bit? Is the sharp increase in margin we saw in Georgia sustainable, or do you expect that to normalize somewhat?

Thank you.

I'll start with the last one. The margins, we expect broadly stable in both markets.

There are different kind of moves on the positive and negative sides, which will be I think offsetting each other. In Georgia, we'll be deploying more liquidity, dollar liquidity in Georgia.

Having said that, there's some other changes that are offsetting. In Armenia, it should be more or less stable going forward at 6% as we can see.

What was the other one? Dividend.

Ameriabank dividend. On the dividend side, it's a business that's delivering right now 22%, 23% return on equity and growing at 35%.

Obviously, we will not be counting on taking out too much money. Having said that, given the regulatory change and the deployment of the Tier 1 capital, additional Tier 1 capital, we had a little bit of extra capital, and we thought it was a good idea to pull it out.

In other words, until we see very high growth, we'll be reinvesting the capital or retained earnings in Armenia. When it normalizes closer to 10% to 15% in a number of years' time, then obviously, we'll be taking up and channeling out the extra dividends, extra earnings.

We shouldn't count going forward, because the expectation is that the high growth will continue, 20%+

Understood. Very clear.

Thank you.

Thank you, Simon. The next question comes from Melker Samuelson.

Hi, Melker.

Good morning, guys. Congratulations to another strong set of numbers.

I wanted to ask on the slide for the liquidity on GFS. You report the increase in both LCR, as well as net stable funding.

You mentioned you're doing a liquidity exercise to sort of see over that. Could you maybe elaborate a little bit on that strategy, what you're trying to do and some quantification?

As well as I guess both on the deposit, as well as other sources of funding. Thank you very much.

Giorgi, do you want to take it?

Yeah. From the perspective of liquidity, indeed both increased.

You may remember that we even issued the bonds about 1.5 months ago, and it further strengthened it. What we will be doing is that in terms of the dollar liquidity, we will be using it to support the growth.

For the liquidity in lari, the high liquidity most likely will remain, but what we are doing is that we are optimizing the cost of that liquidity so that it still has positive impact on our balance and on our financials. Number-wise, I think the dollar liquidity, which is not reported here, will decrease most likely by 10 percentage point.

Then we may see these numbers to go down, not dramatically, though, if I'm answering your question.

Yeah. That's mostly via term deposits, or what's the deposit strategy to lower it?

Is that you reduce term deposits, or just elaborate a little bit on that.

Oh, sure. They are the large deposits that could be term or current account when it comes to corporate.

Then again, we try to be careful, as Archil said, that next time the customer needs to deposit money, always still need to be here. Then it is mix of large term and current accounts.

Okay. Very clear.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Melker. The next question is from Roman Fuzaylov.

Hi, Roman.

Hi, guys. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes.

Great. Thanks for the call.

Congrats on the results, really fantastic numbers again. A couple of questions from me.

The first one on Armenia, and I saw that the loan-to-deposit ratio remains, I think, about 125%, 130%. I wonder over time whether there is a plan to bring that number below 100% or if you're comfortable continuing to operate at this level, and if there is a plan to bring it down, whether that will be a source of margin pressure over time at the Armenia business as you replace some of that funding with deposit funding, or maybe not.

The second question is on international expansion. There was a big transaction in your kind of target geography with Lumenor being acquired by OTP during the quarter.

I wonder if that was something that you guys looked at, whether that was of interest, or not, if you had any comments on that. Thank you.

Roman, we'll start with the last one. I cannot comment on it.

Okay. I guess that's simple.

For the Armenian operations, you're right. Our loan-to-deposit ratio is about 100%.

That's somewhere where we are feeling very comfortable because if you look at the mix of our liabilities, we have a significant chunk of the IFI borrowings that would be considered very stable and long term. It really helps us because local borrowings are usually much shorter term contractually.

Obviously, behaviorally, they're getting longer tenor, but contractually, they are shorter term. Hence, we always prefer to mix it with the long-term IFI borrowings that are giving us also better comfort in terms of our gaps.

Over the times, we have confirmed that these funds are very stable in their nature. Whenever needed, we were able to rely on that as well.

Despite having loan-to-deposit ratio formally above 100% without inclusion of the DFI borrowings, obviously, due to the fact that we are working with more than a dozen DFIs, one of the most active partners of the DFIs in Armenia, it gives us full comfort.

Is there a meaningful chunk of non-DFI borrowing on the Armenian liabilities mix, or no?

We do have non-DFI FI borrowings from international financial institutions as well, but their size is much smaller.

Okay. Thank you, Hovhannes.

Thank you, guys.

Plus, we also have some funds mostly due to the trade finance operations, because we are the largest trade finance operator in the country. That is also shorter term, and in terms of size, it's smaller.

It's not more significant than simple FI borrowings.

Roman, right now, a lot of IFIs are highly motivated to increase their exposure in Armenia.

Interesting. We should expect that sort of structure to sustain 100%+ for the foreseeable future?

For the next few years, yes.

Yeah. Understood.

Thank you.

Surprisingly, what we have seen in Georgia as well over the years is that in times of crisis, in fact, that IFI funding is increased. It's countercyclical and it's very stabilizing for the emerging markets like ourselves.

Makes sense. All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Roman. Jens has a raised hand, but I think he forgot to put it down.

There is one question from Nikolai Dimitrov. He's asking, we're observing blockbuster numbers in Armenia.

Where are you in the process of repositioning Ameriabank? Would you say you're 70% there or the process is almost complete?

Definitely not complete, and we are not 70% there. In terms of what we would like to see is we would like to see more than a million monthly active users and other deposit and loan products being offered to our retail clients there.

Hovhannes, do you want to say anything there?

It depends. If the question is on the results, definitely, we are then not halfway where we want to be and where we plan to be.

If we are talking about the product mix and positioning in the market, then probably we are well beyond the 50% over the way that we've gone. If you look Ameriabank as a top-of-mind, where we were a few years ago and where we are now, we have almost doubled the top-of-mind kind of recognition of the brand.

Because, as Archil mentioned, 10 years ago, Ameriabank was perceived as let's say, exclusive bank for mid-income population. Today, it's openly regarded as a bank for all.

That's very important. At the same time, all our products and propositions that we have rolled out for the mass market, for mid-income market, I think those are also very important, significant moves to cover the needs of different layers or different segments of the population.

If the question is on the results, yes, definitely, we are not halfway there. In terms of being prepared for it, I would say we're more than half.

Thank you, Hovhannes. Very well said.

The coverage and the potential in the market is quite large. There are a lot of large projects being implemented in Armenia.

The entrepreneurial spirit is there, and we have a very strong team on the market. The brand and operation is top-of-the-line.

With all of that, we believe that the current coverage of retail of just shy of 400,000 can triple over the years. That's a fantastic opportunity in a high-growth environment.

I see a raised hand from Dan Mikhaylov, let me try to

Hello, this is Dan from Berenberg. Am I audible?

Yes.

Great. Congratulations on the results.

I just had a question on Armenia. If I look at Ameriabank's standalone disclosures, I see that loans classified under agriculture, forestry, and timber account for about 11% of gross loans.

Hovhannes, I was wondering if you could shed some light on what these exposures are given that you mentioned you had these conversations with the clients. You're not seeing a lot of risk from the trade restrictions that Russia has imposed on Armenian exports.

That would be much appreciated.

Yeah. Our exposure to the agricultural sector is mostly industrial-scale agriculture.

We do not really have, at least, significant exposure to the smaller farms. We are talking about large greenhouses, large gardens, and so on that deploy the latest technology that are much more efficient.

Then when we compare in terms of production capabilities, they are several times higher than the sector average. A chunk of it has been developed during the recent years post-COVID when the government of Armenia launched a new project of modernization of the agricultural sector and deployed through new projects of co-financing or subsidizing some of the costs of industrial, large-scale agricultural projects.

As I mentioned, obviously, we have done initial analysis, and when it comes to the recent limitations in terms of Russian exports, while some of our customers have been exporting to Russia earlier, we see that in the mid-term or even long-term perspective, this change that has been introduced over the last 2, 3 months will not really pose any significant risk neither on their business nor on our balance sheet.

Clear. Thank you.

Just a follow-up: have you had any requests to restructure any of these loans? Cuz I seem to recall that the government's now rolled out an interest rate subsidy scheme to support agricultural borrowers.

Yeah. As I mentioned earlier, the bigger thing was that short-term shock.

As most of this large-scale customers have been under the government either co-financing or subsidy programs, the government has actually announced that they're extending these programs, because some of them were maturing this year and next year, that will technically kind of take away the short-term shock from the customers. That's one of the examples where the measures taken by the government were able to kind of protect these players.

Hence, as I said, yes, there are being some complications in terms of finding new routes of transportation, entering new markets is never that easy, but I think on the both political level as well as the developments that we see on the ground are very much promising that these customers should not have any problems neither this year or in the near future.

Sounds very encouraging. Thank you so much.

Sure.

Thank you, Dan.

Dan has left. That's all right.

Should I let him

in? No, just for the color.

This projects are top-of-the-line in terms of technology, deploying the latest technology in case of orchards, let's say, the Italian trees and the drip irrigation and so forth at the highest level, automated, highly automated brand-new. The reality is that as they change the target market, their margins will be squeezed.

Having said that, their business model was outrageously profitable. Even by changing one market to the other, of course, they will make less money, but they should be fine.

The larger ones have very strong sponsor support as well, we have done through detail risk assessment and don't expect a major charge on that.

Thank you. Archil, there is the only question left in the Q&A chat from Daniela Mirkov: "Are widening EU sanctions creating any compliance risks for Bank of Georgia, and do we have any exposure to the oil refinery, to the...?"

We don't, in fact. We didn't bank the company.

It doesn't create any risks with that. No.

No more questions.

What we know, in fact, on that for everything is that they are in detail negotiations with the European authorities to see what they can do, basically, because their business model is still very valid, working on the non-Russian oil given how demanded the refinery capacity has become worldwide.

No more questions.

We will see what they will do, but we're not exposed, no. Should we summarize, Nini, then?

Yes.

I'm glad to say that this is a very strong quarter. As we are delivering 27% return on equity with a very solid capital position, which is the highest in the wider region, in fact.

We are growing at 20%+ in almost everything. In loans 23%, in deposits 28%, in acquiring business 20%+ in Georgia and 48% in Armenia.

Deepening and strengthening the Georgian franchise, growing rapidly Armenian franchise, doing all of this while having positive operating jaws in both markets and then obviously combined. Growing the top franchise, which is delivering 27%, growing at 20%+.

I think that combination speaks for itself, and I will leave you with this. I hope that for our shareholders, this is positive news, and this will stay as a positive news with you as you take your vacation.

I wish you to rest well and come back energized after the August holidays. Thank you very much.

Thank you, everyone. Take care.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.