Thank you, Lucy. Good morning, good afternoon everyone, and thank you for joining us today.

This is Janany Vamadeva, and on behalf of Arqaam Capital, I'm pleased to welcome you to Qatar National Bank's Q1 2026 earnings conference call. I have with me here today from QNB management Mr.

Ramzi Mari, the Group Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Noor Mohamed Al-Naimi, Group Treasury and Financial Institutions; and Mr.

Mark Abrahams, Group Treasury Trading. Without further ado, I'll now turn the call over to Mr.

Mark Abrahams. Over to you.

Thank you very much, Janany, and Arqaam Capital for hosting our call today. Before we begin, it is customary to remind everyone that this call is for investors and analysts only, and any media should please disconnect now.

I will begin by giving a brief overview of the global and regional macroeconomic backdrop. We will then present briefly the financial results, and finally, we will open the floor to Q&A.

The beginning of 2026 was characterized by a resilient global economic backdrop, driven by artificial intelligence and technology-driven investments and solid private sector demand. The IMF, in its January '26 update, continued to project global growth at around 3.1%, with inflation expected to ease further, while noting downside risks from geopolitics, trade friction, and potential market corrections.

Momentum has weakened materially since the beginning of March '26, due to the geopolitical events in the Middle East. This has resulted in disruption of commodity and energy markets, and heightened volatility with potential downward revision to the global growth outlook.

This has also affected the overall outlook and macroeconomic landscape for the GCC, primarily due to the suspension of trade via the Strait of Hormuz and the attacks on the region's energy, transport, and other industrial infrastructure. Specifically for Qatar, LNG production and associated exports have been impacted.

While the evolution of events remain uncertain, our baseline assumption is for a resolution via negotiations at some point. In this case, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz would lead to resumption of hydrocarbon-related exports.

However, with reduced capacity of LNG production due to the damage to the Ras Laffan Industrial Complex, we believe that higher post-conflict energy prices will support a rapid recovery. Furthermore, QatarEnergy revenues, and thus dividend payments to the State of Qatar, will also be helped by the opening of the Golden Pass LNG terminal in Texas, United States from Q1 '26.

On the non-hydrocarbon front, the sectors most impacted are accommodation, transportation, and recreation. We believe that the remaining sectors, including construction, real estate, wholesale and retail, and finance and insurance, are less impacted in the short term.

A key message that we would like to emphasize today is the resilience of Qatar's banking system and its ability to keep supporting the economy through this period of volatility. First, Qatari banking system remains robust and resilient.

Following its review of recent geopolitical developments, the Qatar Central Bank has reiterated that the financial system is operating from a position of strength, highlighting strong liquidity, capital levels significantly above regulatory requirements, and strong provisioning coverage against credit risk. Second, QCB announced a set of precautionary measures to maintain orderly market functioning and support deep liquidity in the local market, including unlimited Qatari riyal repo facilities, the introduction of a term repo facility of up to 3 months, and a reduction in the cash reserve requirements by 100 basis points to release additional liquidity into the Qatari banking system.

QCB has also permitted banks to offer temporary payment deferrals for affected borrowers, subject to internal policies and supervisory guidance. This payment deferral is not expected to materially impact QNB's results.

Third, QCB's financial stability framework explicitly centers on ensuring that the system can withstand shocks and continue performing its core functions. This is supported by macroprudential surveillance, stress testing, and regular financial stability reporting.

In addition to the safe and sound financial system, the recent weeks have also demonstrated operational resilience in the banking system. Digital banking channels of QNB were available throughout this period to our customers without any interruption due to our significant investment in IT infrastructure.

In the initial days of March, QNB ensured that certain branches in high-footfall areas remained open to serve our customers. Since the 24th of March, all branches and offices have been open to serve all customers.

Furthermore, from this date, based on government guidance, all public offices, educational institutions, and most commercial and industrial enterprises are back to in-person attendance. The country's flag carrier is gradually building up capacity and is expected to cover more than 120 destinations by mid-May.

In summary, though the geopolitical events have created uncertainty, nonetheless, the banking system has remained robust and resilient. The overall society has returned back to normalcy quicker and faster in relation to its neighbors, and the overall economy will be able to recover quickly once a permanent agreement to the situation has been finalized.

We will now move on to QNB's financial results for the 3 months ending 31st of March 2026. Key financial results were as follows.

Net profit was 4.3 billion Qatari riyals or $1.2 billion, growth of 2% compared to last year. Robust revenue growth resulted in an increase in operating income to 12.1 billion Qatari riyals or $3.3 billion, up 10%, demonstrating QNB Group's success in maintaining growth across the full range of revenue sources.

QNB's cost-to-income ratio remained strong at 24.1%, which is one of the best ratios among large financial institutions in the Middle East and Africa region. Total assets currently stand at 1.41 trillion Qatari riyals or $387 billion, up by 6% from the same period last year.

Loans and advances reached 1.03 trillion Qatari riyals or $282 billion, up by 8%. Despite the geopolitical uncertainty present across the broader region, QNB continued to attract deposits, which have increased by 5% from March '25 to reach 974 billion Qatari riyals or $268 billion.

This reaffirms the strong confidence of our customers and investors, in addition to the quality and resilience of the QNB Group. The group's regulatory loan-to-deposit ratio remains stable at 98%.

Cash and balances with central banks increased by 10% from December '25 to reach 87 billion Qatari riyals or $24 billion, further underpinning the group's consistently strong liquidity position and its ability to increase liquidity buffers and resilience against the uncertain environment. QNB Group's ratio of non-performing loans to gross loans is at 2.7%, reflecting the high quality of the group's loan book and the effective management of credit risk.

In addition, the coverage ratio on stage 3 loans remains at 100%. Total equity increased to 125 billion Qatari riyals, up by 10% from March '25.

The bank's capital adequacy ratio at 19.4% is comfortably higher than both QCB and the latest Basel III reform requirements. In relation to the QNB buyback program, QNB has completed buyback of 125.3 million shares at a cost of 2.1 billion Qatari riyals up to March 31st, 2026.

The buyback execution is in progress. We will now turn to Q&A.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lucy. Our first question comes from Jon Peace from UBS.

Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you, and well done on the resilience in the first quarter. My question was firstly, do you have any updates to your guidance for this year around things like loan growth, cost of risk, and NIM, both for the group as a whole, but also for the international subsidiaries in Turkey and Egypt?

Another question, please, just on the buyback: would you expect to finish it this year, or are you going a little slower given the current environment, or even maybe a little faster given the lower share price? Thank you.

Yes, John. This is Ramzi.

In terms of our guidance, our guidance for the full year 2025—2026 is as follows: we expect profitability growth between 5% to 7%, and we expect the loans, deposits, and asset to grow between 6% to 8%. Our NIM guidance is 260 to 265 basis points, and our cost of risk guidance is between 70 to 80 points, 80 basis points.

For QNB Türkiye operations, our combined operations, we expect their profitability to grow in local currency between 25% to 30%, and we expect the balance sheet to grow between 20% to 25%. For QNB Egypt operations, we expect their profitability to grow in high teens, and their loans to grow in 20% to 25%, and their deposits to grow in high teens, and their assets to grow in high teens.

That's for the guidance for the full group and our key operations in their respective local currencies. In terms of the questions on buyback, it's simply a function of total volumes in the market as we participate a certain percentage of the volume.

If volumes increase, our participation increases. If volumes remain lower, our participation slows down.

It's simply a function of that. We expect to finish it by end of next year, for which we have the approval already.

Thank you. Could I just ask a clarification on the guidance?

If I just compare it with what you gave us at the end of last year, you're only expecting a very slight slowdown in loan growth, and I think the cost of risk guidance is even a touch better. That's quite an optimistic outlook.

Would you agree?

Yes, given what we know and what we have in the pipeline, this is the update in the guidance. We have slightly moderated the bottom line and the asset growth, whereas from a cost of risk, the reason why we are slightly more optimistic is, as QNB has been very different from other peer banks, where we have over the years post-2021 built a lot of buffers and provisions in.

This is something that would give us a lot more stability in uncertain times. That is where we are coming from.

Brilliant. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ramzi. We have our next question from Chiro Ghosh from SICO.

Please go ahead.

Hi, this is Chiro Ghosh from SICO Bahrain. I have a few questions.

First one is related to international deposits. I know the number which we see on the international deposit is kind of mapped with the also, but can you tell us how much is your Qatari operation, what kind of international deposit is funding your Qatari operation?

Basically, want to see if there is any outflow, or if you can give us some color on that one. Second one is a little bit on the North Field projects delay.

The North Field project here has been deferred basically, what will be the kind of impact? Because I see the loan growth has been reduced by only 100 basis points, but would it be a longer-term impact, or are you compensating it with some lending to some other sector?

That is on this one. The third one is related to the QCB, the support which have been offered.

I believe that most of the line items you are anyway comfortably above it, basically with the capital and all, but if you can give us some clarity on the liquidity side, or rather, has this QCB policies benefited you, or you would have been indifferent either way? These are my three questions.

Thank you, Chiro. In terms of deposits, if you actually look at it, we give you the breakdown of deposits in our presentation, and you can figure out what are the international depositors.

If you go to slide 21, Europe and others are principally our international depositors, and you would see that actually they have been flattish or slightly higher from a quarter-on-quarter, on year-on-year basis. Our international depositors that we have in QNB are extremely well diversified by currency, by tenor, by geography, and these are very multi-product relationships that we have built over the years.

This is something that they have remained stable despite political uncertainty that is going on. In terms of North Field expansion project, as you would recall, we have never said that we would directly lend to those projects.

Yes, we do benefit from the associated development around it, and what we think is that our loan growth guidance basically reflects government expenditure which government has already committed, not related to LNG, and our international diversification, our loan growth in other markets that we have being both Egypt and Turkey and other international markets. In terms of QCB support or liquidity measures, technically speaking, the benefit of those measures actually came in, particularly on the liquidity front, actually were reflected in the post-results in the first week of April.

Even without that benefit, we were able to increase our cash and bank balances and increase our deposits. Yes, of course QCB measures have helped, but it is not something that we banked on, and it's something of course that are additional benefit for us.

Just to add to what Ramzi just said, the repo facilities that have been offered by the central bank, QCB has 0 exposure as of today.

Okay. No, my question was: so if they reverse it, it's fair to assume that QNB would have very negligible impact, right, once it is reversed back?

Yes, as and when they are reversed, we look at that time, but it's not something that we have taken into account for us to continue.

That's all from my side. Thank you.

Thank you. We have our next question from Olga Veselova from Bank of America.

Please go ahead.

Thank you for the presentation and for taking my questions. I have three.

One is on Central Bank support measures for borrowers. I wanted to check what are the criteria to borrowers which allow payment deferrals.

During your presentation, you mentioned that you believe QNB will not be impacted by this measure. Why?

That's one. Second, on overall support measures from the Central Bank, for which period are they provided?

Is there a deadline when they stop being provided? Third is when I look at your investor presentation, we noticed that for domestic business, there was actually decline of loans and deposits Q-on-Q in Qatar alone, and this were offset by increases in deposits and loans in international operations.

Domestically, I wanted to check what was the nature of decline of domestic deposits, and why do you think this will change later in the year? Thank you.

Okay. In terms of Central Bank's support measures for borrowers, the criteria is quite broad-based in the Central Bank circular, which it talks about that borrowers which in bank's opinion are impacted by the current geopolitical events.

The time period, which is related to the second question, is that for particularly for borrowers, it talks about initially 3 months starting from the 1st of March, and then it can be reviewed, the circular says, as and when the deadline approaches. Why do we say we will not have a material impact is because it's only a deferral of the payment.

It is not reducing the interest rate on any of the facilities or it is not talking about giving free lending during that period. Even if you look at how certain things played out back during the COVID crisis, we had a facility in which the interest rates were reduced at the maximum amount of borrowers which took the facility during the COVID crisis, which was a much broader crisis, was about 25 billion riyals.

We expect we don't have the numbers yet, but we expect the numbers for borrowers which would take this facility would be lower than this, and this is only payment deferral. It does not impact from an interest income perspective.

In terms of domestic loans and international loans, one thing that we should keep in mind when we are disclosing in our financials, we do not disclose by booking entity. We disclose by the residence of the customers.

While we in Qatar have a lot of customers where book international loans and both international deposits, while the entity remains our Qatar operations, the customer composition can change. That is what you see in our investor presentations.

Can you help me to understand the latter better? What exactly has happened?

You say those customers which have residence in Qatar, they had decline of or outflow of deposits. Is that correct interpretation?

We would say yes. That's for customers in resident, maybe they went out, but more than offset by customers from outside Qatar.

It wasn't the same money. Customers outside of Qatar, it wasn't the same money which were re-channeled to different jurisdiction.

It was new money coming in, right?

I would not have customer details, but it could be that money coming in from outside as well, but I am not at liberty to tell you exactly which customers caused it.

Right. Thank you very much for your answer.

Thank you.

Thank you. We have our next question from Murad Ansari from GTN.

Go ahead.

Yes. Good afternoon, and thank you for the presentation and congratulations on a resilient set of results.

Just two questions from me. One was on fee income.

It was fairly strong performance on fee income despite bulk of March being impacted by the conflict. Just wanted to get a sense of what were the key drivers on fixed fee income side during this quarter.

Secondly, on the hyperinflation charge, It's quite significant in this quarter, if you could help understand how to think about this over the next few quarters, and we were seeing about 400, 500 million charge over the last couple of quarters, and this quarter is over a billion, if you could help us understand how to think of this over the next few quarters. Thank you.

Murad, if you look at our fee income side, especially from Qatar operations, it is principally driven by our balance-sheet-driven fee income that we have, and even in terms of uncertainty, those things continued. We had very strong performance from our Turkish and our Egyptian franchises, which more than offset whatever was a little bit of weakness coming in from our cards business in Qatar.

On an overall basis, it was very strong income. Now coming to hyperinflation charge and how does it play out, why there is a significant increase in hyperinflation charge compared to last quarter, they are three primary factors which impact hyperinflation charge.

The first is the net monetary position, which is essentially the equity, net of fixed assets. The second is the inflation rate, and the third factor is basically the exchange rate.

What has happened between last Q4 2025 and Q1 2026 is that the inflation rate has moved from quarterly rate of 4% to a rate of 10% in the first quarter of 2026, which it has more than doubled. That is what is simply being reflected in our hyperinflation charge of Q4 versus Q1, whereas exchange rate has remained broadly stable.

It's only down by 3%. What is the outlook?

With the way our outlook for inflation is, we do not expect that the total hyperinflation charge for the year will be lower this year than 2025. So, 2026 will not be lower than 2025.

That's our outlook for the full year.

Sure. Just picking off that, the opex growth that we've seen, is that also a reflection of the exchange rate movements from the international operations?

It is principally coming in from a higher nominal increases in Turkey. We should remember Turkey inflation remains at 30% in nominal terms, and b, when it is translated to dollars, exchange rate devalued only by 3%, which effectively we're talking about significant increase coming in from Turkey.

That's what's driving primary increase in opex in all of our opex lines.

Thank you so much.

We do have a couple of questions in the chat box. There's one question on margins: "The probability of interest rate cut has reduced.

What is your NIM sensitivity to 25 bps rate movement? Can you give some clarity on your asset quality within the Qatari market?

Are you seeing any defaults which you're compensating with improvement from your international operations?" The last question is, "Your trading income sharply rose in this quarter.

Can you give some color on it?"

In terms of our NIM sensitivity, that does not change. A 100 bps decline would basically decrease our overall net income between 600 to 800 million riyals on an annualized basis.

In terms of asset quality, at this time, it's too early to say what are the sectors being impacted, but as we have said earlier in the call, our exposure to those sectors is extremely low, and we can cover it from our existing cost of risk guidance. Our trading income has gone up, as we talked about in an earlier question, principally coming in from our Turkish franchise and our Egyptian franchises.

Thank you, Ramzi. There's another question on loan growth: "Over the past few months, we've seen the overall lending growth in Qatar stagnating.

How do you see the current operating environment due to the war, along with impending reconstruction activity affecting the loan growth outlook?"

Let's talk about this quarter's loan growth first. It is about 93 basis points.

This is slightly lower than what is generally expected in Q1. Why this was impacted are two one-off factors: one is we had a devaluation in Egypt, and secondly, there were certain repayments in Qatar operations.

If we exclude both of these factors, our loan growth in Q1 would have been a very decent 2% sequentially. Going forward, our guidance for loan growth remains 6% to 8%.

We expect it to benefit both from Qatar-related operations, public sector, as well as from our international operations.

Thank you, Ramzi. There are a couple of questions, but it mainly asks about loan growth and cost growth, which you've already answered.

I think we have one audio question from Jon Peace from UBS. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking a follow-up question. I just wanted to revisit the strength of the non-interest income in Turkey and Egypt, and were there any sort of one-offs in there, and how sustainable would you see that non-interest income rate?

Thank you.

If you really want to compute it, you should take a quarterly average of the previous four quarters to get more of a stable fee income from our franchises.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you. We have another question on loan growth in the chat box.

Another one is asking about: "Do you have any guidance on capital ratios or any intention to issue sukuk or tier 1 or tier 2 bonds?"

No, none. We are very comfortably ahead on all our capital ratios, and we don't have any intention of issuance at this time.

Thank you, Ramzi. We have a follow-up from Murad Ansari.

Please go ahead.

Again, it's it's on loan growth. You've you've revised your your guidance down by about a little bit for for the year.

Just just some preliminary thoughts on on which segments do you think that, you could you're expecting the slowdown to come from? Within Qatar is is, you've had good couple of years, last couple of years both on retail and and corporate.

Is does the, the the events, the conflict, does does that change in any way your your view of how to assess domestic credit, or in terms of any sectoral exposure, etc., or are you fairly comfortable with how things are recovering and and expect a fuller recovery soon?

From a retail perspective, that is not a very big portion of our book and has not been. Principally, we are corporate bank from a lending side.

What has changed is that, at least in the short term, we're talking about 3 to 6 months, we expect public sector borrowing would replace some of the loan growth which was coming from the LNG expansion, the associated facilities with that. This is why we have slightly reduced it by 100 basis points.

Our view regarding loan growth in Qatar remains consistent that we would expect in the long run to see mid-single-digit growth, at least until late 2020s.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ramzi. A couple of more questions in the chat box.

One is: "ECL charges have increased to 2 billion. What sectors or geographies are contributing most to the provisioning, especially given rising geopolitical risk?"

ECL charges have increased because we have also slightly attuned our model, and we have slightly increased the downside risks and slightly reduced the base case assumptions and removed upside risks. That's one.

In terms of how the charges are broken down between geographies, half of it is coming from our Turkish operations and the remaining half is coming from Qatar and a small portion coming from remaining international operations.

Thank you, Ramzi. There's another question: "Would you mind repeating the net profit guidance for 2026?"

5% to 7% growth.

The next question is asking about Türkiye, expectation for policy rates and inflation rates, guidance for Egypt in 2026, and has your guidance changed given the rate environment and outlook?

We have already given the guidance for Turkey and Egypt earlier in the call, and our expectation for inflation rate is going to be close to 30%, which is very similar to current levels for the rest of the year.

Thank you, Ramzi. I think that's all we have for today in terms of audio and the chat box.

Thank you very much, everyone, for joining the call, and we do appreciate your participation. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

This concludes today's call.