Thanks, Shahan. Good afternoon and welcome, everybody, to the third quarter 2026 results of Qatar Islamic Bank.

We'll quickly take you through the highlights of the results for the nine months ended 30th September 2026. We are pleased to inform that we have reported a net profit attributable to shareholders of Qatari riyal 3.525 billion for the nine months ended 30th September 2026, representing a growth of 2% as compared to the same period for the previous year.

The net profit attributable to shareholders for the third quarter of 2026 was Qatari riyal 1.3 billion, representing a growth of 1.6% as against the corresponding quarter of last year. Total assets of the bank grew by 6.5% over December 2025 to Qatari riyal 235.5 billion and by 9.7% as compared to the same quarter of 2025.

The core activities of the bank, represented by financing assets, continued to grow in the third quarter of 2026. Financing assets, primarily driven by an increase in corporate credit, now stand at Qatari riyal 160.7 billion, representing a growth of 16.1% as compared to December '25 and a growth of 21.9% as compared to the same quarter of '25.

Customer deposits now stand at Qatari riyal 145 billion, representing a growth of Qatari riyal 2.2 billion as compared to December 2025 and higher by Qatari riyal 11.1 billion or 8.3% as compared to September 2025 as the bank continues to work towards optimizing its source of funding and cost of funds. The net operating income of the bank, which is net of profit attributable to quasi-equity holders, for the period ended 30th September 2026 was Qatari riyal 5.2 billion as compared to Qatari riyal 5 billion in the same period of last year, representing a growth of 3.9% as compared to the same period of 2025.

Our non-fund income continues to grow with the net fee and commission income at Qatari riyal 700 million for the nine-month period of 2026, which represents a 5% growth over the same period of last year. The expenses of the bank are now standard Qatari riyal 845 million for the nine months ended 30th September 2026, with the continued emphasis on efficient cost management, enabling the bank to maintain its cost-to-income ratio at 16.2%, which continues to remain the lowest in the Qatari banking sector.

On the asset quality front, QIB was able to manage the ratio of non-performing assets to total financing assets at 1.51% and maintain a healthy coverage ratio for non-performing financing assets at 95.1% as of 30th September 2026. The bank has continued to build in total impairment provisions of Qatari riyal 367 million.

The bank was also able to improve its stage two coverage ratio to 9% as against [unclear] 8.6% as of 30th September 2025. These actions taken by the bank reflect the bank's strong risk management framework as well as the conservative provisioning policy.

The bank continues to closely monitor the evolving geopolitical situation and it's undertaking ongoing assessments to evaluate any potential implications on its operations. The bank's capital adequacy ratio is very healthy at 23.6% under Basel III guidelines, giving us sufficient cover for any future balance sheet growth.

Having taken through the key highlights of the financials, we will now go on to the Q&A session. I'll hand over to Shahan.

Thank you.

Hi, good afternoon. I hope I'm audible.

Rahul, we can hear you.

Yes, thank you so much for the earnings call. A few questions from my side, please.

Firstly, on the loan growth. In the previous earnings call, you mentioned that the loan growth in the second half is going to be flat, but yet we have seen around more than 2% quarter-on-quarter loan growth in 3Q.

What is driving this loan growth? That's number one, and within that, if you can also help us understand what's the level of acceptances?

How do you see loan growth for the rest of the year? That's number one.

Secondly is from a NIM perspective, it has remained quite volatile in the last two quarters. How should we see NIMs through the end of the year?

I think the volatility is also coming from the investment book when I see the yields on your investment book. If you can sort of shed some light on that, and how do we see NIMs going forward given the proportion of government lending has been consistently increasing in the overall loan book?

Thirdly is on cost of risk. We've seen that the cost of risk has been, it's almost nil in the third quarter.

How do you see coverage ratios from here, and how do you see cost of risk also and in the fourth quarter and also getting into 2027? These are three questions from my side, please.

Hi Rahul, and good day, everybody. This is Gourang Hemani, the Chief Financial Officer.

Addressing your questions, Rahul. Yes, we had mentioned the fact that we expect the second half of the loan book financing book to remain flat.

That was on the back of the natural growth that we achieve every quarter and some sell-down that we were expecting on some of our syndicated financing that we have done in the first half of the year. What we have seen in the Q3 is that we saw the natural growth happening.

The excluding acceptances, the growth has been roughly around 2.7 billion out of the total growth that you see. That's more coming from overall from the different sectors that we in the private sector area that we are normally doing, including personal banking and some of the other key corporate banking areas like industries, real estate, etc.

We are still working on the fact that we expect some of the syndicated financing to be reduced. However, some of it is to be acquired by some conventional banks, it's taking a little bit more time in terms of how we structure it, etc.

It's still in the pipeline. I would say maybe our year-end growth would be financing levels would be at these levels or maybe marginally lower than what you see now.

In terms of the NIM, the fact that you mentioned that you've seen the volatility, I think that is very normal in the way the interest rates are moving in the market in general. We've seen a Fed hike in this quarter, which was matched by the QCB increasing its lending rate and the deposit rate.

It's always a question of, as we have been mentioning, that it's a question of timing. The repricing of the deposits or the funding and the repricing of the assets are never synchronized.

There is always a period whereby you see one moving ahead of the other and causing the NIMs to work in a little bit kind of a non let's say a linear fashion like the way it would be in the past. Overall, I think we had already given an indication in the previous call as well that we expect the NIMs to contract marginally because of our increased share of government-related financing.

I'm sure you would appreciate the same given the fact that our share of government-related financing has increased from 7.5% to 14%, 7.5% in December to 14%. Even the growth that you see in the real estate sector, a large part of it, almost more than 80% of it, is related to government-related entity, though it is classified as a real estate because of the nature of the activity.

In general, overall 85% of the growth excluding acceptances this year has been with government and government-related entities. That is definitely at lower margins.

Moreover, I think and rightfully so, the bank has been working to continue to maintain liquidity buffers given the way the current geopolitical situations are and it's something that the bank has not shied away by trying to pay a little bit more whether it be for the deposits or whether it be for securing bilateral funding from the banks, etc. in Q2 and Q3 so that we are able to shore up our liquidity ratios.

Just to give you an idea that our LCR is north of 175%, NSFR is north of 125%, excluding acceptances, our financing to deposit ratio is at 100% or below 100%. We believe it's a decent compromise to be made in the short term to be able to better manage the challenges that come due to the ongoing geopolitical scenarios.

I think we still believe, on a quarter-to-quarter, the NIMs will continue to be a bit more, let's say, volatile because of the fact that if Fed does follow up with one more hike, then again, we need to look at the timing of the hike before the end of the year. Then next year, we also believe there's at least one hike coming next year, followed by maybe one cut by the end of next year.

That's the management view at this point of time based on more or less in line with what the markets are expecting. This is going to create overall on a full-year basis, we continue to maintain that our NIMs for this year would be about 8 to 9 basis points or maybe slightly more because of the longer than expected geopolitical challenges that are there, but, in general, for next year, we believe the NIMs to remain stable overall to what we achieve in the second half of the year.

Cost of risk, the third question which you asked, Rahul. As I said, for us, the cost of risk is always a function of two things.

We always, as a bank, tend to provide much much larger amount in the first half of the year than the second half of the year. Overall, while our absolute non-performing financing has remained flat, though the non-performing financing ratios have come down.

The absolute level of NPFs have remained flat, the ratio is coming down purely because of the fact that our financing book has grown significantly over this year. However, the stage three coverage ratio is maintained at 95%, the stage two coverage ratio is maintained at 9%, stage one coverage ratio, excluding acceptances, stand at 2.89%, I think, vis-à-vis the industry average of 0.4 or something around that level.

We are very healthily provided. We need to continue to evaluate as to how the asset quality moves forward.

At this point of time, we believe that our risk management policies and provisioning policies remain very prudent with enough buffers in place to be able to absorb any material changes in asset quality if it were to happen. Far, overall, we've neither seen in the market nor for us whereby the ongoing conflict has resulted any major implications.

The private sector GDP, if we look at the numbers that have been recently published, continue to remain pretty healthy. The non-hydrocarbon GDP has grown by 2.8%.

The hydrocarbon GDP has definitely shown a reduction, as expected, given the way it is. Overall, we being a private sector bank and with the private sector still looking pretty healthy, we do not believe any major pressures on cost of risk.

However, we continue to remain attentive and, if required, we'll build adequate more provisions if required. Hope that answers your queries, Rahul.

Yes, absolutely, sir. Just a follow-up on the cost of risk side.

With such high levels of provisions that you're currently sitting at, how should we see management's intention towards coverage, or put the other way around, can we see lower levels of cost of risk for an extended period of time, or do you have any certain targets of NPL coverage or stage three coverage that you'd like to maintain? Or will the bank actually be in a period where they could have a lower cost of risk and therefore result in better bottom line growth?

Again, we will continue to remain very attentive to how the impact, how long this geopolitical issues continue and what are the longer-term implications of it. If you're asking, are we going to reverse any cost of risk to be able to maintain the bottom line?

No. However, the speed at which we build incremental cost of risk is definitely something we take into cognizant of the fact that we are well provided.

We have been consistently stage three coverage has been above 95%, we continue to remain attentive for the fact that we continue to maintain decent coverage ratios on the stage three. Is there a need immediately to build more provisions and cost of risk?

No. Do we believe we will continue to build the cost of risk?

Yes, it depends upon how the economic scenario evolves, right? We are a very prudent.

I think we take a lot of pride in our prudent risk management practices that we follow, and we will continue to remain attentive to both maintaining a good risk profile as well as generating a healthy return to our shareholders. I wish we could have a clear guidance to you, but as you would appreciate, it's the markets which way conditions that we have not seen in the past.

We will remain attentive. I don't have any clear guidance to give to you, but, as I said, we continue to remain very prudent.

At the same point of time, we are cognizant of trying to maintain a healthy return to our shareholders.

Thank you so much.

Hi, this is Chiro Ghosh from SICO Bahrain. A couple of questions from my side.

First is, I understand the strategy now appears to be moving more towards public sector lending. That has also most likely helped lower cost of risk.

Also, in the past, as you said, that you have been building up the reserve. Going ahead, just want to get a sense, what should be factoring as a normalized cost of risk?

In future years, what should be in our model should be our normalized cost of risk? Some kind of color on that would be helpful, first.

My second question is on the NIM, which you very clearly made us understand that why the NIM came off. With more lending to the government sector, and that appears to be the strategy going forward, what would be required for NIMs to pick up?

Would easing of geopolitcal concern, would it lower your funding cost that could push up the NIM? Just want to get a scenario where your NIM can actually go up from here on.

Third is, if you can give us some ground reality of borrowing appetite both from public sector and private sector entities, how is the borrowing appetite? These are my three questions.

On the first question, Chiro, in terms of what is the strategy of the bank has always been in the past as well that we being the number two bank in the country, we never had a fair share of public sector exposure on the financing side of it. We usually used to take our exposure on the government side through our sukuk portfolio.

As more than 86% of our investment securities is State of Qatar sukuk, we were there. This is more of a natural extension of our relationships that we have been building with various government-related entities and overall as a government sector.

Normalized cost of risk, I really don't know what to tell, what is the normalized cost of risk, because even if you look into the last couple of years, majority of the allocations have gone towards stage one and stage two. Right, the stage three ratio and the absolute level of stage three has been much better managed than overall.

If we see that the impact of this geopolitical issue is going to have on the asset quality, then we will need to improve the allocations to stage three as we keep. Even if you look at it this year, even whatever we have built so far, most of it has been allocated to stage one and partly to stage two.

However, that gets more normalized as we go into the quarter four whereby we finalize the overall provisions, etc. As I said, I really don't have any specific guidance to give you.

All I can tell you, at this point of time, we are well-provided for. We continue to monitor the evolving situation and we'll take appropriate action at that point of time, right?

For the NIMs to go up, I think it is, at this point of time, it is more about the fact that we have a fairly healthy NIM, and the target is to maintain the NIM as we keep moving forward. As I explained, a bit of reduction has come from the fact of the exposure to public sector, the cost of funding has gone up because of the way the geopolitical situation has evolved.

Just to put into perspective, just two days before this war broke out, we were able to issue sukuk for $750 million at 4.4%. I think today US Treasury at 5 years is around 5% level, okay?

It's an evolving market situation, not only for us, but for everybody. NIM, I think, at this point of time, the positives overall for the let's say positive catalysts, while I wish I could give you, I think the more likely scenario for next year is the fact that because even if this geopolitical situation normalizes, for it to continue to reflect into your NIMs will have a bit of a lagged effect, right?

We believe that and the way the markets are looking at the US Treasuries and the medium-term rates in US are not going down very quickly at this point of time as well because of the inflationary pressure. The best-case scenario at this point of time is that if the Fed increases the rates, and if QCB lending rate follow, we should be able to maintain the NIMs and maybe might have a marginal pick-up unless and until it could get eaten up also because of the cost of funding pressures if the liquidity remains tight overall, right?

From that perspective. On the borrowing demand, I really can say that if you look at the industry numbers, I think the overall financing book domestically has been marginally lower while there's been an increase in the international lending by the banking sector.

For us, I really don't see how I can complain in terms of the borrowing demand given the growth that we have seen. We've grown by almost 18 billion, excluding acceptances, this year.

I think we are pretty content with the growth that we have achieved. I think it's definitely been a very positive story for the bank so far.

I think a bank like ours, which has got a strong liquidity position and also strong capital positions, took advantage of the fact that we were able to step in and provide the required funding needs that the system had at this point of time. As I said, the private sector side of the bit is still going as normal.

The non-hydrocarbon GDP growing up by 2.8%, as I mentioned earlier, continues to generate a normal organic demand, but new projects, etc., we don't see anything much happening. Rightfully so, everybody, even the corporate borrowers, etc., look for the right clarity of the impact and the period of this geopolitical challenge to really take a call and initiate any major projects.

We're confident in terms of that the market is in a pretty let's say well-balanced position at this point of time. However, there will be opportunities.

For us, I think we have really participated and taken our share of it and don't see the need to grow significantly at this point of time.

Over the 3-4 months, is it fair to assume you will still stick to more on the public sector side or real estate with a back-up public sector over the next 3-4 months?

No, not at this point of time. Some of them were large project-related funding where we don't expect them to get repeated again back in Q4.

These were something that is being worked upon and carried forward from 2025.

Okay. That's very clear.

That's all from my side. Thank you.

Hi, yes. This is Lee from Al Rayan Investment.

Just want to follow up on those questions on the financing side. Looking at your slides, your financing sector on the government side is about 12%.

I understand from the call already a lot of the growth in financing assets are coming from the government side. How large do you think this pie will grow in terms of government and GRE financing as a percentage of your pie?

That's the first question. The second one is if I look at the real estate side, which is 24%, of which you mentioned that a large part of the growth this year on real estate was also due to the government side.

Would you be able to give a split of that pie on the financing asset, how much of that 24% belongs to private sector and how much of it is to the government sector?

In terms of pie increasing for government sector, I think I just answered Chiro that what we have seen, at this point of time, we are fairly content with the growth unless and until there's some decent opportunity that comes. At this point of time, we don't expect any major growth coming from now till the end of the year.

In terms of the real estate, I think I also mentioned it earlier as well, more than 85% of the growth that we saw in the real estate sector, more than 80% of the growth that we saw in the real estate sector also came from government-related entities. That's the major one.

Other than that, majority of it is in the private sector mainly including individuals, mortgage financing, etc.

Thank you. Given the current environment and, of course, seeing that your non-performing financing assets are quite stable at about 1.59%.

Given the current environment with the geopolitical risk, is there any concerns on the real estate side given that it's quite a large chunk of the total book?

I think what you see that our 20 our real estate is roughly if I net of the deferred profits, etc., and exclude the impact of acceptance, overall we are about 22%. This is more or less in line with the industry average, especially for the banks in the private sector.

It's not really large vis-à-vis the peers. This is the general distribution that you would see in the market.

Are we concerned? No, we are not as concerned because of the way the real estate market inside Qatar You are in Qatar, you would really also understand that it is not significantly dependent on the foreign investors or foreign flows.

Even the expatriate ownership is very limited. From that perspective, we don't see any major sell-down pressures in the real estate market, etc., that can really cause the real estate prices to go down and could put pressure on the financing of it.

No, we are fairly confident at this point of time that we don't see any systemic risk coming into the real estate sector lending or financing at this point of time.

All right, thank you very much for that.

Hi, thank you. First question, please, is on the tax law.

I just wondered whether you had any visibility on the timing as to whether you would be paying the minimum tax, and if it weren't the case that you had to pay it, would you be more likely to release the provisions you've been taking this year or to put them into general reserves, given the environment? Second question, please, is just on capital returns.

Any thoughts on whether, given your very strong CET1 levels, you would look to have a share buyback next year? Then, the last question, please, is you sometimes give us an all-in NIM number, including on the investments as well as financing.

Just wondered if you had that for this quarter, and whether you think that that number might also be stable going into next year with the second half of this year. Thank you.

Fair enough. On the first part, the tax law has already been finalized at the beginning of this year, and that's why we took the tax expenses last year.

What is there in the tax law is that the Minister of Finance has the authority to bring in the transition law. The fact that it has not come in yet, we are going under the assumption that we will have to pay taxes.

What we had said in the past is that we are looking into the fact that how we can reorganize our business so that we reduce or we get away from the fact that we qualify as a multinational entity. The way it stands at this point of time, we believe we'll definitely be liable to pay taxes for '26 and '27, and we'll give a better clarity on what does future look like as we move into the next year.

In terms of the capital returns and share buyback, I think given the way the geopolitical situations are, I think every bank should prudently look to conserve the liquidity and the capital as the case may be. Yes, there could be a shorter-term, let's say, impact in terms of higher capital adequacies that could marginally pull down your return on equity, but I think the prudent measure would be to retain the capital.

If the geopolitical situation sorts out very quickly, then I think the Board of Directors of the bank will take a decision sometime next year to say what they look into in terms of putting to use the strong capital positions that we have. On the last question in terms of the NIMs, all-in NIM, if I exclude the acceptances and if I exclude a bit of the one-time impact that we have seen on the mark-to-market on the investment sukuk side of it because of the sharp increase in the rates, if I exclude and normalize my NIMs, I think the NIM would be somewhere around 2.8% all-in NIMs would be there somewhere around 2.86% or 2.87%, something like that.

Which is about 10 basis points tighter than what we had in the previous quarters, right? It's more or less aligned with our guidance that we gave that our NIMs are expected to tighten by 8 to 10 basis points because of our increased exposure in government sector as well as, I think, the implications that we are seeing on the overall rise in the benchmark rates as well as the tighter liquidity scenario in the region.

Got it. Thank you very much.

Thank you for taking my question. I just wanted to ask if you can shed some light on your interest rate sensitivity for every 25 basis point rate hike.

What impact do you expect on your NIM? Also, when do you expect the benefits of the latest rate hikes to be reflected in the bank's earnings?

If I were to look at NIM sensitivity in a normal scenario, yes, I would have positive NIM sensitivity. Given the way the geopolitical situation is and the way it is impacting the liquidity, I would not factor any significant uptick from the Fed hikes which are followed by the QCB lending rate.

We tend to remain cautious and say that whatever be the incremental benefit, a part of it will go towards preserving the and improving the liquidity scenario of the bank. As I mentioned earlier as well on queries from one of your peers that our expectation at this point of time, we want to tread conservatively and would not like to build any positives coming from the rate hikes.

Great. Thank you so much.

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions.

I have two on my side. The first one is could you help us understand how QIB essentially prices its loan and deposits?

I'm trying to understand if the benchmark based on some internal basis, or the benchmark is more based on QCB lending rates? That's the first one.

The second one is on the deposit bit. We have seen some deposit attrition in the third quarter.

Deposits were down 2% on a quarter-on-quarter basis. Can you provide some color as what's driving that decline?

Do you see this as a more structural in nature given the tightening funding situation in Qatar? How should we think about the deposit growth for the rest of the year?

Thank you.

In terms of the pricing of financing, I think the entire market works on the fact that Qatari riyal financing are linked to QCB lending rate while dollar financing are linked to SOFR. That's the standard norm across the system, it's not something any differently being done at QIB vis-à-vis the market.

In terms of the deposits, your question in terms of the reduction, I think what we look into is that we let go of some of the shorter-term deposits, and they were replaced by some longer-term banking bilateral financing, etc. Some of it also was, if you look at when you look at the geographical distribution, you will find that the non-resident deposits we repaid, especially some of them that were coming from the region were kind of a bit reduced.

Overall, I think you need to take into cognizant that it's not we look at any source of funding in isolation, but we look at holistically. I think as a bank, when we operate, excluding acceptances, our financing-to-deposit ratio is below 100%, which is far, far better than the industry average of roughly around 130% or 140%, depending upon what you include and not for the branches of the banks, etc.

I think we are fairly comfortable. We do not set any specific targets for deposit growth or it's managing the overall funding profile to make sure that we get the right maturity, right currency, and mix.

Overall, if you look at it, our share of deposits from whether it be from government has remained stable at 32% since the beginning of the year. The retail deposits are stable at 45% since the beginning of the year.

Even in fact, if you look at it, our CASA has improved vis-à-vis what was there at the December. Overall, we are fairly happy with the mix of the funding profile we had.

We also had the fact that we issued some sukuks in Q1, and which we used to repay certain shorter-term deposits that were maturing. It's managing the overall liquidity profile of the bank to keep it fairly stable source of fundings are being more focused on at this point of time.

If that means I need to let go of certain shorter-term deposits, that's very well within the bank's strategy at this point of time. All

right, that's helpful. Can I just quickly follow up on that funding bit?

In order to plug the gap, it seems that the due to banks for the third quarter rose up. Can you just provide some color as

to what's been the nature of this? I just mentioned to you that we focused getting on a longer-term bank funding to be able to repay some shorter-term deposits.

No, right. Right.

Just wanted to understand if it's more driven by interbank borrowing or central bank repo funding, any sort of color on what's the mix of this due to bank?

It's a combination of all the various sources that are available. There was some repo done and there were some bilateral funding that were taken, etc.

It's a combination of multiple factors.

Great. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you so much for taking my questions once again. Just a couple of follow-ups.

One is a clarification. You mentioned 8 to 10 basis points NIM contraction from here.

Is that specifically for 4Q, is it a quarter-on-quarter, or is that a full-year FY '26 versus FY '25? That is number one.

Secondly is on loan-to-deposit ratios. You have mentioned that a couple of times on this call it's close to 100 or probably slightly below that.

How should we see LDR ratios moving from here? Is it a concept of probably loan growth probably slowing down to catch up with deposits or do you expect deposits to catch up?

How should we see regulatory LDR and how does QCB look at regulatory or the headline LDR? Thank you.

Sorry, Rahul. What was your first question?

Your first question was on the NIMs. On the NIMs, as I mentioned to you, that as of now we've seen in the Q3, the NIMs have contracted by roughly 8 to 10 basis points, and I was more normalizing it over the full-year period to say that we expect the overall NIMs to really for next year to be around the current levels that we are seeing at this point of time, which is almost 8 to 10 basis points lower than compared to previous quarters as well as for the last year.

In terms of the deposit catching up or the financing slowing down, as I mentioned to you, we are at around 100% and less than 100%, well within the QCB guidelines and far, far better than the industry average. I really don't think so we have any catch-up to do on any front.

We are, I think, a bank with one of the better liquidity profiles in the market.

Very clear. Thank you.

Thank you, Shahan. Thank you.