Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Five Star Business Finance Limited Q1 FY25 earnings conference call, hosted by JM Financial. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touch tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Sameer Bhise. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Five Star Business Finance Limited's Q1 FY25 earnings conference call. First of all, I would like to thank the management of Five Star Business Finance for giving us the opportunity to hold this call. From the management side, we have Mr. Lakshmipathy Deenadayalan, Chairman and Managing Director, Mr. Rangarajan Krishnan, Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Srikanth Gopalakrishnan, Chief Financial Officer of the company. As always, we will have opening comments from the management, post which we will open the floor for Q&A. With that, I would now like to hand over to Mr. Lakshmipathy Deenadayalan for his opening comments. Over to you, sir. Yeah. Thank you, Sameer. Good morning. I welcome everyone for this Q1 earnings call for the financial year 2024-25. This is our eighth earnings call. You have seen us in last 8 quarters of performance, what we say and what we do, and what we have delivered in last two full cycles. Before getting into the numbers of June quarter, let me give you some highlights. Generally, June quarter is a muted quarter for all lenders. For Five Star, we have done extremely well and did highest ever numbers in this quarter. To highlight a few, I'm happy to say that our asset under management has crossed INR 10,000 crore in June quarter. Very emotional, being the chairman and managing director of Five Star. When I joined 20 years back, we were at INR 10 crore. Today, when I look back and see the growth, what we have done in last two decades, we have reached at INR 10,000 crore. This is 1,000 times in last 20 years. Thank you for all the support that shareholders have been offering to giving to me and the management team to run it in a steady and a stable way. Second highlight is our profitability, which has crossed INR 252 crore in June quarter, which is our ever highest quarter of PAT recorded in the history of Five Star. Third highlight, our ROE, it is the return on equity, it is a very important metric for our shareholder, is at all-time high of 18.95% in a quarter, and we will comfortably cross 19% for the full year. So with these positive highlights, what we have done in June quarter, let me get into the numbers. Starting from branches, we have opened 27 branches in June quarter, which keeps our total branch strength at 547 branches. Disbursement, sorry, which saw INR 1,318 crore in June quarter, comparing to INR 1,336 crore in March quarter, which is almost flat. It is a good sign when a lender was able to deliver the disbursement equal to the best quarter of March, that gives a very good kickoff for this full financial year. When we compare with June of last year, we did a disbursement of INR 1,132 crore, which is 16% higher than year on year. That has reflected in increase in our volume. As I said, we have crossed INR 10,000 crore. We are at INR 10,344 crore as of June end, versus INR 7,583 crore in last June, registering a 36% year-on-year growth. And from March, INR 9,641 crore, registering a 7% growth on Q-over-Q. Now, taking you to the collections, which is the most important part. Our collection efficiency in June was bit lower comparing with March, that's the usual effect of June quarter. Adding to that, was the election heat and heat wave across entire country, that had an impact on the collection efficiency. Nevertheless, it was only a small blip. We were at 99.5% in March. We are at 98.5% in June. The unique customer collection efficiency, which we normally call collecting dues from our live customers, was almost equal with March. It was at 97.8% in March, versus 97.2% in June. So that shows the slowdown is very, very small. This was reflected in Gross Stage 3 assets, moving from 1.38% in March to 1.41% in June, a small blip increase of three basis points. Whereas it was stable comparing with last June, it was 1.41%, that is 1.41% in this June, too. Now, moving towards the cost of funds. Our cost of funds on book was 9.6% in June quarter, which was same in March quarter as well. But the good, good news is the incremental cost of borrowing is coming down from 9.58% in March to 9.47% in June. So this shows the interest from lender's perspective and the risk premium, what Five Star was, was added to Five Star, is coming down. The increase in AUM and good collections has resulted in one of the good profitability for Five Star. Our total income has gone up to INR 669 crore in June quarter, comparing to INR 483 crore last June, year-on-year, registering a 38% year-on-year growth. And from March, it moved up to INR 619 crore to INR 669 crore, which is a growth of 8%. Translating into good profit, as I said earlier, highest ever profit that we have made in a single quarter. We have done INR 252 crores of PAT, compared to INR 236 crores in March and INR 134 crores in June last year, registering a 37% year-on-year growth and 7% Q-on-Q growth. Finally, moving towards the returns. The return on assets is stable at above 8% compared to March. And as I said, the return on equity is at all-time high at 18.95%, compared to 18.65% in March quarter. And as I commented earlier, we'll be comfortably crossing 19%+ for a full year in this financial year. So with these numbers, I will hand over to Srikanth, our CFO, to give detailed commentaries on all the numbers. Good morning to all of you. As Mr. Pathi said, this is a very, very memorable quarter for us. We crossed the INR 10,000 crore mark in our AUM, so this is a progress that has been built over the last many years, and, it's a moment of real joy for all of us. I'll touch upon some aspects which, Mr. Pathi has not covered. I don't want to repeat whatever he has already, stated. Our active loans has gone up from about, it has gone up to about 4.1 lakh, which is a 29%, growth on a year-on-year basis. This clearly shows that the growth is still led by increase in borrower base rather than increase in ticket size. The ticket size remains almost flat at about 3.5 lakh. Our yields continue to remain consistent at around the 24%. The cost of funds is at 9.65%, so the spreads are flat as compared to the previous quarter and similar to June 2023 as well. There is a compression in NIMs on account of increased debt and increased leverage. The NIMs dropped to 16.72%, as against 17.74% in quarter one of last financial year. Our cost to income continues to be very attractive. Inclusive of credit cost, this number was at about 34.34% for this quarter, as compared to 36.6% for the June quarter of last year. Again, as we have guided in the past, we expect our cost to income to be around 35%-36% levels in a steady state scenario. So there is not a very great room available for, you know, continuous reductions in the quarters to come. This has resulted in an ROA of about 8.23% for the quarter and a return on equity of 18.95%, very close to 19%. From a borrowing perspective, we have about 42 lenders who have lent to us. One other encouraging fact, in line with our stated strategy, we have started the process of diversification of our borrowing. Our borrowing from banks, the proportion of borrowing from banks reduced from 79% in March to about 74% as of now. If you compare on a year-on-year basis, it has dropped from 84% to 74%. During this quarter, we received incremental sanctions of about INR 850 crore. We availed INR 825 crore at an all-inclusive cost of 9.47%. The company continues to be conservative in terms of maintaining good liquidity buffers and unavailed sanction line. So we had a liquidity buffer of about close to 1,900 crore, 1,891 crore, and unavailed sanction line of about 400 crore. We will also see more non-bank capital market transactions, and DFIs getting added in this quarter and the quarters to come. We have seen you know, a marginal dip in the collection efficiency. Mr. Pathi has already talked about that. But, but for you know, those marginal increases, which has also impacted the current and the delinquency buckets a little bit from a provision coverage perspective, we are still very healthy and robust. We have a Stage Three provision coverage of, of 52%, and then overall provision coverage of 1.3%. So we will continue to remain, you know, optimistic as well as cautious. We will maintain a good level of provision buffer to protect us against any unforeseen risks. One of the other encouraging facts during this quarter is the penetration of digital payments. If you recall, we had highlighted in the last earnings call that we will end this year with about 70% non-cash and 30% cash payments. We were at about 53, 47, 57, 43 as of last quarter, but for this quarter, we have actually made a very significant improvement on that. We are at about 65% of non-cash payments and 35% of cash payments. So to achieve the number of 70/30 that we had guided you, seems a very, very comfortable position for us. At this point of time, we don't want to revisit our guidance, but the 70/30 is extremely achievable for us, so that is another positive that we have achieved during this quarter. So given all of these things, we had one of the best quarters in terms of profit after tax at INR 252 crore, a growth of 37% year-on-year and seven percent on a sequential quarter-on-quarter basis. Our net worth stands at about close to INR 5,500 crore. It's at INR 5,430 crore. So again, we have demonstrated good performance across profitability, quality, and growth, which will continue in the quarters to come. With these opening remarks, we open up for any questions that any of you may have. Thank you. Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Mahrukh Adajania from Nuvama Wealth. Please go ahead. Hello. Congratulations on the results and on the INR 10,000 crore mark. I just have a couple of questions, firstly, on your liquidity. So now, do you see yourself maintaining such excess liquidity for a long period of time? Because, I guess the liquidity buffer has kind of increased over the last three, four quarters, right? As in the level of liquidity buffer. Would that continue for some more time? And then, the other question is that, there's varied feedback from lenders on how heat wave has impacted collections. Yours don't seem to be impacted in any big way, so, any comments you would offer on how you could have good collections, in an otherwise bad quarter? Yeah, uh- For others. Sorry, that's what I mean. Yeah. Thank you, Mahrukh. Let me take up the second question, then Srikanth can come in for the first question. Yeah, Mahrukh, it was a, it was a tough quarter for all lenders. Generally, after pulling back everything from customers in March, generally, there will be a muted quarter for June. Let it be banks or non-banks, the trend is same. But what happened in this June was, a prolonged elections and prolonged heat wave had a impact on the cash flows of the customers. Adding to it, the June was the school season, so people have to pay their kids' school fees. So there were three challenges for every lender. I'm not talking about Five Star. For each and every retail lenders at retail level, where they have one or two loans to repay, it was not easy for the customers to repay the EMIs on time. But as I said, we have a very strong collection infrastructure at the ground level. This helps during these kinds of things, and we have been able to monitor this very well because we know that May and June is going to be the difficult one. So we had a good strategy, collection strategy, put in place in May and June. That has really given a good result. There was a small blip, as I said in the opening remarks, from the collection efficiency, and you see DPD got a small dip in each of the buckets. That will get corrected in due course of time. So I can even give you the update of July, which closed yesterday. It gives an encouraging sign, and it is better than the June month collections. We have to wait and see how August and September turns out for Five Star. But just because of expected one, and because of strategy put in place, our impact was bit lesser compared to other lenders. Yes, I also saw other lenders' numbers, but Five Star is fortunate to have lesser impact comparing to them. So Mahrukh, on your question on the liquidity buffer that we are maintaining, our intention is to maintain around 15%-17% of our AUM in the form of liquidity. This is broadly the thumb rule that even bigger NBFCs are actually following... and we would like to maintain it about 15%-17%. We are probably 1%-2% higher than that. But if you look at from a trajectory perspective, this number has been coming down. We were at about 20% of our AUM that we had as liquidity in December. That has actually dropped to about 18% as we speak. See, it is not a question of the fact that we want to have a higher liquidity buffer. It is also a question of the kind of sanctions that we get, what are the sanctions that can be accommodated, and what are the sanctions that can be, you know, pushed out a little bit. So there is a little bit of balancing act that we, that we play on this. But we will definitely ensure that we maintain about 15%-17% liquidity. And, you know, one or two percent higher will be because of, you know, specific names that, we have been looking at onboarding. If they come in, like, for example, IFC could not have been tranched out, but we needed IFC, and, since we had to take the entire INR 500 crore, there are still INR 400 crore of untranched sanctions that we have, that we have, as we speak. So it's a balancing act that we do, but, about 15%-17% is what we would like to maintain in a steady state scenario. Okay, thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. The next question is from the line of Raghav Garg from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead. Hey, hi, thanks for the opportunity. I have a few questions. So one is, you know, on the business officers side, I see that the addition to business officers was really flat this quarter, whereas, you know, in the last several quarters, you seem to have beefed it up. So what's the thought process here behind no addition of these officers? Is it that you hired a lot in the last four, five quarters, and you want to utilize that capacity first? That's my first question. So, Raghav, in the last earnings call, we explained to all of you that the strategy from a branch expansion perspective is divided into two parts. One part is what we call as a split branch or a cluster approach, wherein one bigger branch is getting broken and, you know, it is, from the bigger branch, we're opening another new branch. So when this happens, there is a set of officers who get transferred from an existing branch to the newly opened split branch. So this constituted about 50% of the branch openings last year, and the balance 50% is all completely, you know, branches that are started from the scratch. So if you look at in the first quarter of this year, we opened about, you know, 27 branches. Again, the split is very similar. So wherein a number of new branches have been opened, this is just split from an existing previously big branch. And when this happens, officers get transferred from the bigger branch to the newly opened smaller branches. So it's not a linear addition of officers with respect to the branch openings. This is what is also giving us the leg up in terms of little bit of lower operational costs that you can see reflected in our financials. Understood. That is why, it's leading to, say, higher number of accounts being handled for employees, impact, right? Just the segregation of branches, you know, in terms of new branches and cluster expansion. Correct. Understood. And just out of the 27 branches that you- Raghav, just to clarify it further, it is not higher number of accounts given to an officer. Where an officer had a lower number of accounts, it has been adjusted in last quarter. Okay, sure. Understood. Understood on that part. Just out of that 27, you know, how much of that would have been because of the cluster expansion, and how much of those branches are completely new? Raghav, roughly it is 50/50. Okay. Understood. Yeah. Just one last question on, you know, in terms of the number of loan accounts or loans disbursed. The growth is about 11%. There is quite a bit of moderation. Where do you see this number, in terms of growth for FY 2025 and, you know, the sustainability, for, say, next three, four years? Raghav, are you talking about the AUM growth? No, I'm talking about the number of new loans disbursed in this quarter. Number of new loans disbursed. See, the point that we are saying is that is linked to the overall dispersal quantum that we are looking at. So, for example, between last year and this year, our disbursals, disbursements are expected to go up by about 25%-27%. And with a little bit of push-ups in the ticket size, which will come because of inflationary increases, we will probably see the number of loans grow by about 20%-22%, rather than getting to 20, 25.7% kind of a number. So I would say broadly, anywhere around 18%-20% is the number of loans that it keeps going up on a... That is, will be the disbursement number on a quarter-on-quarter base. So, Raghav, there are three things for the growth to kick in for Five Star. The first one is the branch addition. I restate that even in this year, we'll be adding close to 80-90 new branches and close to 100 split branches. So the numbers will be close to 200 branch count, whereas new branches will be 80-90, and the rest will be the split branches, as Ranga explained, to handle the risk better. That's the first lever. The second lever is addition of officers. That will also be done in this year. Third is increase in ticket size. We have been doing it at 3.5. This year it will be close to 4. So all three levers put together, I'm very confident that we'll be growing at 30%+ for the full financial year. ... Understood. That's, that's helpful. Thanks a lot. That's all from my side. Yeah, thank you, Ranga. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Renish Bhuva from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, sir, and congrats on a good set of numbers. So just two things. One on the disbursement growth run rate side, you know, which has been falling since Q2, which has been now decelerated to 16% YOY. I can understand that it's seasonal, but you know, still, I'm instead looking at the YOY growth and not the sequential growth. And also, when I look at the disbursement per branch on a two-quarter, like this is just to eliminate you know, the impact of new branch opening, that run rate is now fallen to INR 2.7 crore in Q1 FY25 from the peak of INR 3 crore in FY24. So how one should read this data? I mean, a falling disbursement per branch, also, this is deceleration in disbursement growth, right? Yeah, Renish, let me clarify to all shareholders who are there in the call. Don't go, run rate per branch, for next, at least for 18 months, because, as Ranga said, there is a clear-cut strategy for Five Star, to make all super branches, into, split branches and bring the number of officers, which were close to 15 officers in a branch, close to 8 officers in a branch. That addresses a lot of risk, and that also spreads our wings across the geographies wherever, we are present. So you have to only, look at the AUM growth metrics for at least next, 3-4 quarters, because if you go by branch count, it will be looking like as if the business done in a branch has come down. It's not like that. For example, if a super branch would have been done INR 2 crore business in a month, when the super branch is being split into two, ideal branches, the run rate still be at 1.25, but it will be read as 1.25 per branch. So it's, that's not the right metric. It's what I think, Ranga and Srikanth can clarify on, on that, too. But you have to see the AUM growth, on quarter-on-quarter, year-on-year, where Five Star, wants to, put up. That's what I gave the commitment, that, even for this financial year, there is no change in our, guidance. We will be at 30%+ growth for the full year. For the first quarter, we have grown more than 7%, and we'll be comfortably crossing 30% for this full year. Yes, June being a seasonal one, and we have pulled out a lot of business in March month, there will be a slight drop in the June month, which will get corrected in the September, December, March month. That's how every lender will look at that annual growth. No, sir, my, my question is more on the, disbursement growth side, right? I mean, it has been running at some, 40, 50% YOY growth, then it fell to 33% in Q3, then it fell to 20 in Q4, and now it is at 16%. So I can, totally understand, you know, the branch metrics, which you just highlighted. But then, deceleration in disbursement growth rate, you know, how, you know, what, explains that there is a, there? Yes, Renish, the disbursement slowdown is here to stay. Not only for Five Star, for every lender in this country, there you will see the slowdown in disbursement. It's not because of the opportunity is coming down. We have to also take into account what is the regulatory thought process and what is the regulatory commentary, which we are hearing on a day-to-day, on a quarter-on-quarter basis. So we should also be mindful of that. I said in the last quarter itself, let the dust all get settled. Let our asset quality speak for ourselves. I think, then the growth will be back, on the same numbers what you have been referring to. So, Renish, it is also a question of a little bit of muted disbursements during COVID. So if you are comparing, let us say, 2022 to 2023, where the disbursement number was much higher, it is not because 2023 was high, significantly higher. It was because 2022 was muted, and 2024 saw, you know, some bit of a pent-up demand as well. So you will see some moderation happening. I think those two are a little bit of years where you had some aberrations because of the base effect. But otherwise, you know, like I said, if we are looking at a 32% kind of a growth on our AUM, the disbursement growth will be more around 25%-27%, because there will be some bit of ticket size increases in their loans for a 7-year tenor. So it won't go tandem, hand to hand with the AUM growth. There will be about 4-5 percentage points difference between the AUM growth and the disbursement growth. Got it, got it. In fact, my last question was on this repayment rate side, right? So, you know, we have been always highlighting that our behavior tenure for loans is 7 years, right? But when we look at the repayment rate, it is hovering around 22%-25%, which means, you know, the behavior tenure is much less and, of course, including prepayments, buyout, et cetera. And when we look at last 3 quarters, it is actually turns out to be some 7% sequentially, which is, unless it is, you know, up to 25%. So how one should look at the actual tenure of your loans? Because then eventually it will, it will start impacting the growth, you know, if disbursement doesn't come. You are right. I think one point that I want to correct in what you said is, we always say that the origination tenure is about 6-6.5 years, while the behavior tenure is more like 4-4.5 years. You are right to the extent that you will see about 20%-23%, 22%-23% or 2% kind of run rate, you know, run off every year, which will translate roughly to about 4.5 years of behavioral data. I think that's a number that's broadly remained range bound for the last 4-5 years, and we don't see that number significantly changing in the coming years as well. So there will be normal repayments, and there will be some level of prepayments, which has also largely remained range bound between, you know, 9%-12% on a year-on-year basis. Got it. So just last question, if I may. Sir, what is the reason for, you know, moderation in credit costs? You know, which is again, a reflection of lowering stage two, stage three provision, despite of the fact that collection and multiple DPDs are sequentially. So, Renish, I think we have been building this credit cost over the last couple of years, and it sort of has reached a stage where we are comfortable with these numbers. So if you look at the PDs and LGDs, if we, if we don't build some overlay, our PDs and LGDs will result in a credit cost that, that will be much lower than the ECL provision that we are carrying today. So our thought process is, there is something that gets thrown by the model. There are specific overlay factors that we use to build the management overlays on ECL, and we are comfortable around the numbers that we are carrying. So it is not a question of the credit cost decreasing because we wanted to decrease it. It is a question of the model and the factors that we use for overlay, which gives us a number, and we are comfortable around that number. We- Yeah. Like I said, we need to question about- I just wanted to reconfirm that we have not changed PD LGDs, which is, might be a little lower overlay this quarter, might have led to the, sequential decline period. I mean, is that the correct thing? PDs and LGDs are getting a little better. For example, last year, you saw the current proportion going up significantly from about 83% to 87%. So that obviously brings down the PD. And the fact that we are able to recover well is also reflecting on a lower LGD. So there is some improvement in PDs and LGDs as we keep increasing the... And it is also a question of using the last five years' data, right? So you have the earlier quarters going out and the later quarters coming in. Five years back, our DPDs were not as good as this, so you will always see improvement in PDs and LGDs. But we sort of ensure that we build some management overlay, so to get to a number that the company, the board, the management, and the auditors feel comfortable with. Got it, sir. This is very helpful, sir, and thank you, sir. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhijit, Abhijit Tibrewal from Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Wanted to congratulate on again a good quarter and crossing that important milestone of INR 10,000 crore in AUM. So, firstly, wanted to understand this very good improvement in cash proportion in collections, which has declined to 35% now. For the full year, you're still guiding for cash collections to decline to 30%. Just trying to understand what are those efforts that have gone into this to kind of get here? Because like you'll recall, right, this was also something which was very widely debated, cash proportion being high in the past. Sometime last year, this used to be as high as 60%. So just trying to understand what changes have you done? I mean, do you now expect these things to be permanent and structural in terms of change in employee, in terms of change in customer behavior? So Abhijit, over the last two years, I would say that we have consistently been increasing the modes in which the customer can make a payment, and most of it that we have introduced is all digital modes of payment. So we first introduced you know, a payment app, wherein the you know, customer can log in into the app and then make a payment at any point of time. We have a tie-up with Razorpay for this, so a customer can make an app payment or a payment through our website. But I think the next big game changer started for us when we tied up with the BBPS. So today, a customer can log into any of the popular BBPS apps, which is Google Pay or PhonePe, and then make a payment to us through the UPI. I think that's a very big game changer for us. I think the next strategy that we introduced is that every password that we give the customer, we started printing that with a very specific QR code, wherein the customer can directly just scan the QR code and make a very specific payment to his account at the convenience of sitting in his home. This we started from January, and I think from May this year, we have started another big, big thing, which is for all fresh payments, fresh disbursements that we make starting from the month of May, the UPI Autopay sign-up is mandatory for the customer. So which means, unless the UPI Autopay is set up prior to the disbursement, we will not make the disbursement. Earlier, this used to be an offline process, and there's a lot of translation errors, you know, between the time that we make a disbursement and actually the NACH mandate getting set up. Because there could be a number of reasons, like it's an inoperative account, or it's a signature mismatch or, you know, any number of reasons where the customer can find excuses of not signing up for a NACH mandate post the disbursement. But when we made that as a compulsory precondition prior to the disbursement, we have seen huge uptake on that. And today, you know, for 100% of the cases that is happening, but it's not necessary that 100% of the customers will still make a UPI payment. But I think, you know, the effort that everybody signs up-... Very few number of customers may not have the, you know, monies in their UPI account and at the time of the repayment date, they can always come back and pay through any other means or any other digital means. But at least the efforts of the company side is very clear that unless you have an UPI, unless you do an auto UPI mandate with us prior to the disbursement, we will not be able to disburse. So I think these are, you know, clear structural changes that we have made it on the ground, and more and more customers are adopting for it. We have guided at the beginning of the year that we will be at about 70% for digital payments, and I'm, I'm fairly confident that we should cross that number considerably. So, just to add one point, and from, even from the customer behavioral aspect, there's a good bit of change that we were able to see. We were not able to get it right 2 years before. We thought the cash still is the king at the ground level, but a lot of changes happened in last 2 years. And when we approached whatever Ranga said in last 24 months, that is yielding at a much faster effect rather than a slower one. So we are very confident that, except that little rural market, that people still wanted to pay by cash, in semi-urban and the fast-growing rural market, people's adoption in digital payments are much higher and encouraging to see that our people are able to convince the customers and, move towards that. So all put together, I think we are good to go with 70s-30 and, revisit after the March, where we can take the 70 numbers too. Got it, sir. This is useful. So effectively speaking now, I mean, from March onwards, all disbursements that we will be doing, will have a precondition of an UPI Autopay? Yeah. It is from May onwards. Yeah, from, from May onwards. Sir, sir, second question I had was for Srikanth, sir. So given, I mean, the last, yesterday's Fed meeting and the fact that there are now, rate cuts which are there on the horizon, given that we still have, almost 75% of our borrowings coming from banks, you could just elaborate, how have we kind of positioned ourselves, on those, that side in terms of, fixed to floating, or for that matter, a 3-month or a 6-month MCLR? How are we positioned, and how can we, benefit, from any, rate cuts? That's it, yeah. So I think it's our breakup. In fact, we have given this in our presentation. Our breakup between fixed and floating today, we are at about 65% floating and 35% fixed. It went up a little bit because of the NCD issuance that we did to IFC. So which is why the floating is at 65%. And given the fact that we are also moving slightly away from our strategy of, you know, borrowing from banks, the floating will be a little lesser because the rest of the facilities typically tend to be fixed, especially on securitizations and all that. On the floating, if we look at the breakup of this, the floating proportion, we have about 70% of that, which is linked to MCLR and about 30% which are linked to the external benchmark rate. Even on the external benchmark rate, most of it, 75% of the EBR-linked facilities are linked to repo. So very clearly, if there is a benefit that is going to come through the rate cut, we will definitely stand to benefit from, benefit immediately from the day that the repo rate cut starts becoming effective, at least on about 30% of our facilities. On the balance, 70% of our floating rate facilities, most of these are either a 1-year MCLR or a 6-month MCLR. So at various points of time, these benefits will come in. It will not come bunched up. It depends on when we have taken the facility and whether it's a 6-month or 1-year MCLR. But I would say, from the day of the rate cut, over the course of the next 12 months, we should see a significant benefit coming on at least the 65% of our borrowings. Got it, sir. Thank you. And so last question, that I had is, I mean, while we spoke, while I think in last earnings call, you were guiding for, credit cost of about 70-80 basis points for this year. A related question here is, I mean, how are we kind of, looking at, the provision coverage ratio in Stage Two, Stage Three? I mean, likely to maintain at similar levels or, or there is a thought process that given that collections are improving, cash collections are coming down, non-cash improving, is there an idea to kind of bring down the provision cover going ahead? Maybe not this couple of quarters, but maybe one or over the next one or two years. So I think the first point on the credit cost guidance, the guidance still stands around 70-80 basis points. Well, this quarter, we are reflecting about 61 basis points. It also has a proportion of write-off. So broadly, about 30 basis points, we have written off about INR 7 crore of loan book. So, roughly the 60 basis points spread into 30 and 30, which is incrementally provision of about 7 crore and of about INR 9 crore and about the balance coming in from you know, from write-offs. See, we will continue to do some technical write-off purely for tax purposes as well, and given that the regulations permit these technical write-off. So at this point, we are not changing the guidance of the credit cost. We continue to be at about 70-80, 80 basis points for the foreseeable future. In terms of the provision coverage, we are comfortable, you know, holding this number at this point of time. Our general thumb rule is about 60% provision coverage on Stage Three assets and the overall provision coverage of 1.5%-1.6%. We are at about 1.63%. I don't think you will see any significant benefit to come in the short-term future in terms of release of provision. But if we are seeing, you know, significant improvement in the portfolio, if you are seeing the factors which we have used for building overlays are not really, you know, coming out in reality, then we may have to relook at, you know, both the model as well as the overlay, which may probably bring down the provision. But at this point of time, you know, we are not giving you a guidance for any betterment or release of our provision. We will continue to be broadly at where we are. And given that the PNL has the ability to absorb the provisions that we are creating, why, you know, why should we refrain from creating some buffers in good days, which can take care of us in the rainy days? I don't think we are going to be aggressive in our provisions. We'll be a lot more conservative. Got it. Okay. This is very useful. Congratulations again, and all the very best to you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Viral Shah from IIFL Securities. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi, sir. Thank you, and first of all, congratulations on the milestone. Actually, I have a few questions. One, just, from the perspective of quarter, was there any one-off in the other income, because we saw a sharp increase on a sequential basis? So, Viral, you're looking at the non-operating income line? Correct. So, see, this will be, you know, other costs, like, you know, storage costs and, you know, the fees that we get for the storage costs and all that. So while you are seeing, you know, a INR 5 million to a INR 1.4 million number, this is not a very material number. So it will broadly be, you know, the storage fees that we collect from the customers, you know, for storing their documents, which is typically upfronted. Got it. And, second, while we are at it, on your previous comment, with regards to the PCR, while I understand, of course, the eventual LGDs, especially on stage three, are not to the extent of what PCR we have, but, I believe there is a soft regulatory nudge also to believe of maintaining a 50% PCR. Would that be right? So, Viral, we would have probably guided you otherwise, but we are guiding 50% today because there is an expectation that we also... See, because our LGDs are much lower on- Correct. -on a very big portion of our, of our, lending book. Our LGDs will be probably more closer to about 10%-12%, number. So, you know, even a 50% is a, is a far-fetched, estimate. But you are right. Yes, there is some bit of a regulatory expectation in terms of maintain, maintaining a good cover on the Stage 3 assets, which is why, you know, we are guiding the market for a 50% PCR. Got it. My next question is for Mr. Pathy and Ranga. In this quarter, we have seen that, in the rural markets and especially for the NFI borrowers, the collection efficiencies as well as the asset quality has kind of worsened. In that environment, I understand the for us also, but it was more to the extent of what we have seen. Have you seen some bit of prioritization among the borrowers to, say, repay the secured loans and that they have their house as a mortgage versus the other needs that they would have? So, Viral, you are absolutely right. That's the underwriting model that what Five Star took 22 years back. Our underwriting is not for good times. Our underwriting is only for the bad times. So that is why in last 22 years, Five Star is able to survive on big falls, where bigger banks and NBFCs were not able to survive. So you are right, in terms of cash flow deterioration in a family, because Five Star takes the family income and puts all the family members as part of the agreement, there will be a, you know, choice of customer whom to pay. So generally, he tends to pay the mortgage loans. That's what you see in HDFC and mortgage lenders like Five Star are not affected when there is a bit of cash flow event happening, not permanently and just for a few months because of the heatwave, collections, elections, and school fees, what I said. Yes, this is a trend that you will see always, and that will not change in the middle class mindset of our country. Got it. And lastly, in terms of the yields that we have, right? Again, over here also there has been a regulatory nudge for not just MFI lenders, but even small-ticket lenders that basically there should be some moderation in that. And we have been talking about taking a rate cuts. Any updates on that, and how are you thinking about it going into FY 2025? Viral, let me be very clear, maybe crystal clear, that there is no discussion between Five Star and regulators on the pricing front, right? I think regulators have seen us for last five years, and not a discussion they had or we had with them on the pricing side. It's a market driven, and it's underwriting risk that what a company has that fixes the board fixes the pricing. So there is no point on even discussing about that, whether regulator has any concern or not. Regulator has absolutely no concern from Five Star's perspective. So let me be very clear and crystal clear about that. And yes, we have been saying to the market that we'll be passing on our benefits, what we got from the banking side. We were waiting for the rate cut to happen across the world and especially in our country, but that we are not seeing. But you will see Five Star cutting bit of rates in this financial year. I can tell you it will be around 50-75 basis points of the rates, because what benefit that we got from the bank the last two years, we are happy to say that we'll be passing on to the customer in due course for all new customers who are getting logged in in Five Star from now to March. So that's the approach that what Five Star has been taken. And we have been vocal on this. We have been telling from the first con call ever since that we met you that we will be passing on a good rate cut for our customers once the rate cut announcement is there in our country. It has taken some time, but we want to go first. You will see a rate cut of 50-75 basis points in next 9 months to go. Got it, sir. Very clear, and thank you so much, and all the best. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Chandra, Chandrashekhar Sridhar from Fidelity International. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. A few questions. Maybe just on the business growth, Tamil Nadu is now down to about 20% over annual. If you just take us through what's happening in Tamil Nadu, I mean, the, although the delta is actually coming from Andhra and Telangana. So any particular change? I mean, I can see there is a competitor, NBFC, which has also started off in a fairly large way, in this space, a larger NBFC. Just thoughts around that, whether it's, you know, and that's their home market, whether it affects the competitive positioning over there. And you know, MP is basically a market also where we had, you know, gotten a foothold, but it's sort of growing at where the company is growing at. Is there any, you know, any particular challenges which you face there? That's, that's question one. Second, two questions for Srikanth. One, you know, I think there was an expectation that the cost of funds would go up marginally because you're diversifying into NCDs, and, you know, you had to pay up a little more, because you're not getting your tenures. It's not going up. So, just maybe take us through what's there. And, and then lastly, we have now crossed INR 10,000 crore. Will we be having conversations with rating agencies around the ratings upgrades and, and, you know, what is any potential implications on, on the cost of borrowing? Thank you. Good morning, Chandra. I'll take the first question and ask Srikanth to come into second, and I'll also comment on the third. Chandra, so the first question, I'll take it up Tamil Nadu, and Ranga will talk about MP. Nothing has happened in Tamil Nadu, Chandra. We are going as usual in Tamil Nadu. I'm just recollecting what I said in last call or last two calls. Tamil Nadu growth was not catching up with the growth of Andhra and Telangana. They are extremely growing very well. Growth from a team perspective, quality of files perspective, supervision team perspective, all were cutting very well in combined Andhra, what we call as Andhra and Telangana put together. To that level, Tamil Nadu was not able to catch up. That's the only thing that what we saw Tamil Nadu as a share coming down, for Five Star. But I have told that, this year, we will see Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. I think I also, I've also been saying to the market that Karnataka turnaround story is very good for Five Star, where we had a bit of slip in COVID and, post-COVID, and it was getting corrected and now, they are one of the best performing states for, Five Star. So Tamil Nadu and Karnataka will catch up this year, with Andhra and Telangana. So that's the South story. That's where the confidence comes in, that, we'll be delivering a 30%+ growth, in South very comfortably. So I will hand it over to Ranga on a MP perspective. Sorry, just to, is there no competitive intensity being higher impacting in any way? Chandra, come again. Yeah, just the competitive intensity between Chandra, I will not say only in Tamil Nadu. Across all states, you see many companies jumping into small business loans, especially after seeing Five Star's success. For eight quarters, they have been watching us closely, both from a quality as well as profitability perspective. Yes, people are jumping in to do bits here and there. That, that has, that's the nature of the good business. That doesn't have any big impact in Tamil Nadu. As I said, Tamil Nadu team are not able to catch up the Andhra and Telangana speed. With this year putting in place, and I've met all Tamil Nadu guys last month. I'm very confident this year Tamil Nadu will see a good rise comparing to themselves, what they were in last year. So, Chandra, with respect to Central India, I think, the challenges are a little bit different. You know, the first thing is, in Central India, our ticket size is almost 40% lower than the ticket size that we see in South. So despite that, if we are able to maintain, you know, the proportion of the overall AUM in Central India, it, it in fact means that, you know, the productivities are higher, but the ticket sales are lower. On a standalone basis, if you look at MP or MH, I think each of this is growing at about 50% CAGR last year, while the company grew at about 35%-36% CAGR. ... But that said, I think we are very clear and we are investing more in Central India. You will start to see the proportion of Central India slowly going up from here. It is not going to happen in a hurry. We don't want it to happen in a hurry, because, you know, these are newer markets. You have to be extremely calibrated with what you have to do. But 100%, we are very clear that the markets will go up, and there are enough investments that are happening on the ground. Even this quarter, out of the 27 branches that we have opened, 14 branches are focused between Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and, you know, other Central Indian geographies. So we are very clear and keenly watching and investing in these states, and the proportion will go up. Chandra, on your question on, the cost of funds expectation to go up. First of all, you know, thank you for asking this question because we don't want any of you guys to think that, you know, every quarter we are going to keep dropping our incremental rates. At some point, it definitely has to go up. So, see, the reason it has not gone up during this quarter is couple of conversations which we've been having with capital markets, especially on mutual funds, where the rates tend to be higher, has not completely materialized. Like I said, you know, most of those transactions are expected to happen, either in this quarter, which is Q2, or in, Q3. So you will definitely see a jump up in the cost of funds, in the next quarter. So given that these did not happen last quarter, you probably saw the rate going down from 9.58 to 9.40, nine or so. But definitely the number will inch up once we have capital market transactions coming in. So that is in terms of the cost of funds expectation on the incremental borrowing. See, on the rating discussions, this is something that we have, we have crossed INR 10,000 crore. It's a very important landmark for us for the rating agencies. But our rating, the earliest rating agency that gave us the upgrade, gave it to us in December of 2022, so which is, like, one and a half years now. So one and a half years is a little shorter time for us to push for a rating upgrade, given that it has also been two years of good growth. And in fact, ICRA and CARE, you know, the rating is about a year old and 15 months old, with CARE and ICRA respectively. But having said that, we are having very strong conversations with them. We are demonstrating, using our numbers, why we should probably command, you know, a higher, one notch higher rating than where we are today. But realistically, I would probably think the best case, you know, if I have to put my neck out and say, it's probably, you know, end of this calendar year or end of this year, or the, you know, the more reasonable and logical case would be if we are able to go to the March results, March 2025 results. You know, I would say it has a very high probability of getting converted. But I would probably think it's at least 2-3 quarters away. Thank you. ... Can you remind me right now, the share of AUM, which is in for personal purposes versus business purposes? Sorry? Business Sorry, Chandra, share of AUM in? In business used in the business versus, you know, for non-business purposes. Broadly about 65-35. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Nischint Chawathe from Kotak Institutional Equities. Please go ahead. Yeah, so this is on the interest rate cut of around 50-75 basis points. So from when are we really affecting it? And I believe this is again only for new loans. Yes, Nischint. In fact, I think we will probably be introducing this as early as this month, which is the month of August. Sometime during this month is what we are looking at, and yes, this will be on incremental loans. You will not see the rates dropping by 50-75 basis points. You'll probably see it dropping by one third of the 50-75 basis points, because it'll take it takes time to impact the portfolio rates. Is there a particular plan or a thought process in place maybe for next year or something, you know, in terms of saying that you would want to sort of, you know, take it down every year by a couple of basis points and sort of move up the quality curve for our results? Nischint, not really. Let me recollect what I've been saying to the market. We got 150 to 200 bps of rate benefit from the banks. Those, out of that, at least 50% we wanted to pass it on to the customer. That's the background. It's not of what is the means that we are holding and what is the pricing that we are lending. That's not the point. The point is, we been saying to the market for a long time, we were waiting for the rate cut to happen in our country, in last September itself, but that, but, but that didn't happen. So we wanted to move forward and give the benefit what we got from the banks to the customers. So it only depends upon the bank's benefit, what we got to transfer to the customers. So next year, we can't give a commentary right now without knowing what is the fresh benefit that we are going to get from the banks. This is only for this financial year. Got it. Perfect. Thank you very much, and all the best. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ajit Kumar from Nomura. Please go ahead. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity, and congratulations for the milestone. Most of my questions have been answered. Just one or two quick questions. First, following up on your ACL methodology. Just wanted to know how many years of data do you factor in the model, and has it changed in recent time? And also, at what frequency do you revise or reassess your model assumptions? So, we follow as per the Indian guidelines, Ajit. I think it's five years data with you, so it's the last five years data. So every year, the previous year's data goes out, or every quarter, the previous quarter's data goes out, and the newer quarter comes in, which is as per the accounting standards. Typically, we relook at this model once in three years. Okay. Okay, sure. And, one last question, you know, harping on this incremental cost of fund, which has gone down sequentially, from which stream of funding this decline is coming? Is it majorly from bank funding, where pricing has come up, or from bond market borrowings? So we have not done much bond market borrowings, Ajit, during this quarter, so which is why you are not seeing this cost of funds going up. So largely, banks are willing to lend to us at lower rates. Even the IFC funding that we got was at lower rates. So I think it's broadly numbers is coming from DFIs and banks, which has contributed to the lower rates. I think once we get to the capital market participants, be it the mutual funds or the others, this cost will probably look like, you know, more around 9.60, 9.65, rather than 9.48. Sure, sure, sure. Thank you. That's it from my side. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kunal Garg from IIFL Securities. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Am I audible? Yeah, Kunal. Yeah. Hi, sir. Congratulations with a good set of numbers. So my question is, primarily, in the, you mentioned that there are few states where you see this, downward trajectory in the business, right? So may I know the, specific states where you see the stress in the coming months or in the coming quarters? Kunal, can you come back? We didn't say that there is any stress in any state in our commentary. What is that you are saying? Sir, you mentioned that there was some business down in the TN and Karnataka, right, compared to the AP and Telangana? No, no, what I said was, the catch-up by Tamil Nadu was not equal to the catch-up of Andhra and Telangana. The Telangana and Andhra catch-up speed was much higher than Tamil Nadu, was what I am referring, and there was no any issue or a problem in Tamil Nadu state. And I was commenting, giving a commentary saying that in this year, Tamil Nadu will catch up much better than what they were doing last year. There was no stress or any strain in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. The business here will be continuing in this Tamil Nadu and Karnataka as per the previous year, right? Yeah, very much so, and we will be very stronger this year. Okay, okay. And this is my second question is, have you given any top-up loans this quarter? So Kunal, we generally do top-up loans, but top-up loans is a very, very small proportion of our disbursements. If you don't know, in the last two quarters also that we've been taking, our top-up loans are more like about 4-5%. That's, you know, that's what we give. In fact, if you look at the overall book, the top-up receipts, borrowers who have closed their loan and come back for another loan, all put together, this is more like 8%-10%. So that's not a big source of disbursements for Five Star or a business line for Five Star. Our business line primarily is to go into unpenetrated and underpenetrated markets and get fresh borrowers from the informal to the formal ecosystem. Okay. And so my third question is, you mentioned that, from May onwards, you have made mandatory for UPI Autopay, right? So, this, whether you have, is it, is it this completion is 100% successful, or it's still there are some problems where you are giving some relaxation? Yes, it's near to 100%, Kunal. So they can either choose for a UPI autopay or they can choose for a NACH, online NACH. Both these mandates have to be set up prior to the disbursement. So we always had this condition, but the only condition was it was, it can also be done post the disbursement, because some of this was offline, and offline takes a lot more time for us. Now, what we changed from the month of May is that you have to do an online registration, which means the mandate is set up in favor of Five Star prior to the disbursement. And this is near to 100%. There will always be corner cases, but, almost near to 100%. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, sir, and best wishes. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rohan from Falcon Family Office. Please go ahead. Hello, sir. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I have two quick questions. So, sir, if you look at the MSME loan segment, that has been a high-growth area for also some of the smaller peers, however, with a smaller average ticket size. So is that smaller ticket size, does that interest you? And what is the risk versus reward dynamics here, and the minimum average ticket size that you would take on? See, Rohan, Five Star ventured into secured business loans to the informal segment of this country 22 years back. We clearly understood what was the risk and what is the reward that we'll be getting when you, when you venture into this kind of profile of customer. This is what is getting reflected in last 22 years... Yes, you have a risk and you have a good reward for that. How does you balance that is what differentiates you as a good lender. Yes, a hundred percent of our loans are secure. As Srikanth said, close to 60% goes to the business NBFCs, and balance 40% goes to the housing, constructions, and personal needs of these customers. The risk is, yes, these customers have a bit of vulnerable cash flows, and when they get into more unsecured borrowing in the market, that tends to go to a little more vulnerable. But as I said in the last one of the questions, when a choice is being given to these customers during the downturn whom to pay, they very clearly pay to a mortgage lender, whether it be a housing finance company or mortgage lenders like Five Star, their choice is always to us. That is what it reflects during COVID one, COVID two, or the first quarter collection efficiency. What Five Star was able to do is a benchmark of HFCs, what they have done in this country. So this is a trend, this is a risk that you have to go through. And having done very successfully, yes, there are a lot of followers of Five Star who intend to get into this segment. But if they don't understand the risk, if they don't see the cycle before getting the growth, there will be a serious dent for their asset quality, and that will slow down the growth going forward. And Five Star has learned it very well, and we have been learner for the first 10 years, and then the growers for next 10 years of our life. That's how we, we do it. All right. All right. Got it, sir. And, can you also explain on your borrowing strategy, what the rationale for moving away from bank borrowing then? So, Rohan, the rationale is a little simple. See, today there are a lot of banks who are willing to lend to Five Star. Given our asset quality, given our growth and profitability, they see this as a very attractive institution that they can lend to. But I'm sure you'd also be aware that there has been some pointers from RBI, telling that the institution would also NBFC should look at diversifying their borrowings, get a little more into the capital market and all that. And when we become a AA entity, we are also mandated by SEBI to onboard incrementally 25% of our borrowings from capital market. So given all of these processes, we have now taken a very conscious call that we will get into the capital market. We will be fully prepared for any eventualities that may come, or fully prepared when we get become a AA entity. So some of these are, you know, in response to external factors that we are doing. But if we had to borrow from the banks, I think there are enough and more banks which are ready today. But having said that, it's always good to have diversification in any of your streams, which is the strategy that we are following. All right. All right. Got it, sir. Thank you so much for the time. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rajiv Mehta from YES Securities. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, good morning. Congrats on strong numbers. Sir, you had spoken about July collection trends being better than June. So is it better in across buckets? I mean, is it better in regular bucket as well as in the delinquent buckets of 30, 60, 60, 90 as well when compared to June? See, Rajiv, I have just seen it last night. I have not gone deep into it. But overall, our performance comparing to June was better. It should be better across states, across buckets. There's no, there's not be any significant difference between overall as well as the bucket wise. Okay. And just taking forward one- Rajiv, Rajiv, we can connect offline, to- Yeah, yeah. Ask Srikanth to connect offline, so you get more data when we have it. Yes. Yes. And sir, just taking forward one comment that you made, that typically in a stressed situation, the household prioritizes pre-paying you versus their unsecured loans. But generally, do we, do we... So first is the categorization of those loans will be current with us. But so in the current portfolio, do we have, what proportion of our customers would have a default on their unsecured line but are current with us? Do we track them differently? No, Rajiv, we, we don't track our, our customers. We track them before lending a loan in a detailed way. We take at least minimum of two credit bureaus, High Mark and CIBIL, before lending. But after lending, we don't track them from a credit bureau perspective. We track them based on the DPD and what should the company do when it falls down the DPD? What are the measures that we have to take? That is pretty much in place. It's not that current accounts or one DPD customers are being tracked on a number of loans that they have taken. And we don't have any control, and we can't stop this unless until the other lenders are more clearer that once you see a bigger loan taken by the customer, we generally we should avoid lending to those customers. If that discipline is not there with other unsecured lenders, we can't do anything on that. Okay. Just to add, sorry, just to add one point here. ... See, when we have taken this at points of time, you know, I think what Mr. Pathy is trying to say is that we don't do this on a regular basis. Like, every quarter, we don't do a bureau scrub to see, you know, where other customers are vis-a-vis with us. I think when we have taken it at points of time, and we have done it quite a few times in the past, especially during stress times, so if we have done it during demonetization, we've done it during COVID-one, COVID-two, at that point of time, the behavior is very clear in terms of priority of repayments, and that's what gives us the confidence that, yeah, when it comes to stress and when it, when customers are forced to make a choice between repayment of a secured loan versus an unsecured loan, they always tend to choose secured loans, especially if it's an emotionally important asset to the family. Hmm. Clear, sir. And just one observation: when I look at AUM branch tier, then the Tier 6 branch growth has been very significant in the last 12-15 months. So incrementally, these, you know, branch, Tier 6 branches have been contributing 60%-70% of the new growth, fresh growth. How should we read this? So the branch split that is happening, so, you know, we were, we were anyway strong between Tier 4, Tier 5, and Tier 6 earlier also. Now, when the branch split is happening, so more and more branches in Tier 5 and Tier 6 are getting split, because these are good pockets for us, where the branches have grown to a reasonable size. So earlier, if you had 1 branch, now we are having 2 branches in Tier 6. I think that's what explains the contribution of Tier 5, Tier 6 towards this AUM proportion. But I think if you look at it overall from an AUM perspective, yeah, look at, look at the number of branches. We were anyway strongly biased towards 4, 5, and 6 tiers. Hmm. When you speak about branch tiering, it is by location, right? It is not by branch size. It is by location. It is by the, Okay. -actual... Population. Population, yeah, population where the branch is located. Understood. Thank you so much for answering my questions, Lakshipathy. Yeah. Thank you, Rajiv. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Shubhanshu Mishra from PhillipCapital. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Thanks for the opportunity. Two questions. The first one is around the disbursements. Given the fact that we have this churn of almost 20%-25%, which you discussed earlier on the call, what percentage of our disbursement is to existing customers each year? What percentage is to new customers? That's the first. Second is around the leverage of the customer, whether they're existing or new, how often do we check on the leverage? How many other trade lines do these customers have? I do understand that a lot of them are new to credit, but do they have any other informal credit or any other unsecured credit? There's been a lot of proliferation of fintechs who are doing a lot of unsecured lending. Of course, that's also come down, but then, have we done these checks more recently, and what are our observations? Thanks. So, Shubhanshu, like we said, most of the disbursements happen to the newer customers only. So maybe about 8%-10% of the disbursements will be happening to our existing customers, either through top-ups or additional loans or fresh facilities after they close their old loans. So about 90% of our disbursements happen to newer customers from the brand side. In terms of the leverage check that we do, we definitely do it at the time of underwriting, where we ensure that we try and get all the formal data through the credit bureau reports, whatever possible informal data through neighborhood and trade checks. But beyond that, we don't have a process of checking this data on a periodic basis, because even if we check it, it's more an academic data that we will have. I think Mr. Pathy just answered the last question, where he said even if the customer is taking a loan, the day after he has taken a loan from us, what is it that we can do? It should be up to the other lender to ensure that they, they, they are very clear that this guy has already leveraged himself with Five Star. Now, for us to take the data and do the scrub, like I said, it's an academic exercise, and we could get into, but, we don't have any periodicity at which we keep, taking this data and, try and see what is the leverage of our customers. We ensure that by taking a property, by making all the family members as applicants and co-applicants of the loan, the customer will give priority to us even in the most difficult time. So that is something that we do rather than, you know, doing a scrub data, and I don't know what we can do beyond that. All right, sure. If I can please, just one last question. The quantum of disbursement at FY24 is almost as much as the disbursement that was there in the previous two years. Do we expect some degree of seasoning impact and then impacting the credit cost going forward because of the seasoning impact of this? Because it's a much bigger number. It's almost as big as the FY22 and FY23 numbers. This is again a problem because of FY 2022 number having been impacted by COVID. So FY 2021 and 2022 are years that probably need to be kept out of our comparison. But if you look at prior to FY 2020, when we have been growing much faster or post FY 2022, where we have been showing a good proportion of growth, we don't really see, you know, any kind of a seasoning impact to come in. Obviously, there will be some impact, but we are also going to keep adding new customers, new loans, so it will sort of balance each other. So we don't really see any impact on the credit cost coming in because of fresh disbursements becoming muted and the seasoning impact coming through, so it will largely offset each other. Okay. Those are my questions. ... Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sonal from Prescient Capital. Please go ahead. Hi, sir, this is Sonal Mehta. Am I audible? Yeah, yeah, please go ahead. Sir, I wanted to understand the maturity profile of any particular loan vis-a-vis the time that the loan has been on your books because you mentioned that typically it's a seven-year-old loan, seven-year-old loan, that's the duration of the loan. So, how do you see the NPA panning out in 1 year, 2 year, 3 year, 4 year? As in, if you could just give a bit of a color around that, that'll be great. So on a static pool, our analysis shows especially the later portfolios, the last 3, 4 years when we have implemented Uncertain completely, there is a drop in the probability of default. It means the number of customers who are turning NPAs itself has, has reduced. So on this, typically what we see there is some level of seasoning that happens around the 3, 3.5-year timeline. This used to be about 2.5, 3 years earlier, but that has got pushed because of the collection efforts. So 3, 3.5 years, there is a seasoning that happens, which probably, you know, goes to about 2%-2.5%, on a static pool basis, sort of stabilizes. But it's also important that from an LGD, we don't lose any of this, because in most of these cases, while the customer might have slipped into NPA, might stay in an NPA, there is empirical evidence to prove that when he settles the loan, he actually clears all the dues. So our LGDs are very low from that perspective. But just to answer your question, yeah, around 3-3.5 years, there is a little bit of seasoning, so around 2-2.5% of static pool NPA. Stabilizes, and then we are able to recover almost 99%, you know, of the principal that would have stayed as principal at the time of NPA. Got it, sir. Thanks. Thanks for that. Second question, which is, I think, relating to write-offs, which you were talking about. If you just take maybe last 10 years or maybe last 5 years and take a snapshot, like, do you share data of how much write-offs have you done? What percentage of books with... Because percentage numbers are a little misleading, but, as you mentioned that, is it okay to say that 1% of all the books who, who are maturing, mature over 3, 5 years, typically that's the write-off in the book? How do you understand that? No, the 1% is a very high number. Generally, our experience has shown that our write-off tends to be somewhere around 25-30 basis points of our opening book. If you look at the last 5 years, we would probably have written off somewhere close to INR 60 crore-INR 70 crore of loans. So that's the overall number. But broadly, on a year-on-year basis, the technical write-off works to about 25-30 basis points. Got it. And the actual write-offs will be lower than the technical write-offs? Actual losses will be lower. Yes, yes. Yeah, Actually, yeah, this is fully, fully a secured loan. It's only a time gap that it takes for Five Star to recover the write-off from the legal course. So the credit loss, it is ultimate loss that we suffer maybe around 15-20 basis points. Understand. Understand that. Got it. The last question from my side, you were talking about giving top-up loans and top-up loans or follow-up loans, whatever you may call it, adds up to 8%-10% of the books. As a prudent measure, these top-up loans are typically given to customers once they finish a particular life cycle of the loan, or they are given while the current loan is also outstanding? Just trying to understand the process there also. Yeah. So top-up loan is not an automatic program within Five Star. The customer has to apply for a top-up loan, and he can apply for a top-up loan after minimum of two years of seasoning with Five Star. So when he applies for a loan, it's a fresh evaluation. Credit does the entire evaluation of the loan. They will check the repayment. They will check if there is any improvement or decrease in his you know loan in his overall income or in the valuation of the property. And then finally take a call on what is the loan amount that needs to be given. When the loan is given, when the top-up loan is given, the customer has to be a zero DPD customer. So if the customer's track record is patchy for whatever reason, he does not get sanctioned the loan with Five-Star. When we give a loan, we will make sure that both the loans run parallelly in the system. Because if you, if you, you know, with the proceeds of the new loan, if you want to close the old loan, the history of the old loan goes away. So we don't do that. We allow both the loans to run parallelly, which means Loan One runs to its original tenure. Maybe let's say he took a loan for seven years. He applies for a loan at the end of three years, in this example. The original loan will run for another four years, while the new loan gets sanctioned at this point of time, which will run for seven years from this period to the next seven years. Any deterioration in any of these two loans will result in an automatic degradation on the asset quality of the loan. So it's not about, you know, old loan being extinguished or the new loans being given separately. Both the loans will play to determine what is the asset quality, you know, for the particular customer. Understand that, sir. That's it from my side. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. The next question is from the line of Vijay from Sharekhan. Please go ahead. Hello? Hello. Yes, go ahead. Hi. Good morning, sir, and congratulations on good set of numbers. My question is about borrowing mix. As you mentioned that, you are going to, you are going towards capital market. ... So what kind of the percentage you see in terms of, you know, banks versus capital market? And if you move to a capital market, what kind of the benefits your company will get? Vijay, I think, in a steady state, this is not immediately, but maybe over the next 2-3 years, we are probably looking at banks to be at about 50%, and balance coming in from capital markets, securitization, DFIs, and all that. See, from a benefit perspective, like I said, you know, we can do 100% from banks today. There are enough and more banks willing to lend to us. But it's a question of diversification. What are the sources that are available for you? Certain sources can be on tap, certain sources can be a little more—like, if a bank takes an exposure today, they will wait for 12 months to take a fresh exposure, while that may not be the case with capital markets. So it is a question of, you know, maintaining the balance between availability of funds and cost of funds. So in a steady state, we expect it to be 50/50. Banks will always be relatively cheaper as compared to capital market transactions. So we'll play the rates with the banks, but capital markets can give you good quantums and can be, you know, can be faster in processing renewals. So all of those things will be taken care of when we look at the borrowing mix. Thank you so much. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Arvind, from Sundaram Alternates. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hello, team. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I think that this question has been answered, but I would like to get a bit more color on this, especially in terms of asset quality. Obviously, the MFI players have, you know, signed off, you know, some pockets of stress or risk, you know, coming up in different regions of the country. And obviously, like, our customer behavior, repayment behavior, is much better in terms of income as well as the repayment behavior, because it's mortgage loans. But are you seeing any pockets of risk, either in terms of regions or in terms of any economic activities, sir? Arvind, what you read from the, from the voice of MFIs, we also read that, and it's, it is true. I'm not denying it. I never denied it. I only said during this pocket of stress, how does a customer differentiate himself from a secured loan to unsecured loan? That's what my commentary was. Yeah. It is again proven in this quarter, when unsecured guys were facing the pressure, secured loans guys like FFCs and mortgage lenders like Five Star, we didn't see any pressure, big pressure at all. And we'll be bouncing back in the month of, in the quarter of September, whereas the unsecured lenders will take little bit more time to bounce back. So, there was a heat in elections, heat in weather, and like I said, seasonal expense of school fees in the month of June. All put together, it has affected the minds of the customer. Generally, if a customer minds get affected, they show it in the unsecured loan. That's my 20 years experience. So they will not show it in the secured loans. So, but that, having said that, I never denied that our customers have seen any slowdown in the cash flows. They have seen the cash flow slowdown, no doubt about that, because of the two factors what I said. But they will bounce back in the quarter of September and going forward. So we'll be very comfortable going forward. Hello? Can you move to the next question? Sure. The next question is from the line of Dinesh from Finsight. Please go ahead. Hello, sir. Can you hear me? Yeah. Please go ahead. Yeah. First of all, congratulations on a very good set of numbers. I joined a few minutes late. Maybe you have answered this previously, but just for my... I just wanted to know, like, how your employee addition program has been in this quarter, because I just see the number has been pretty flat quarter and quarter. So how do we see for this year end, you know, going forward? That's my first question. Yeah. Dinesh, yes, you are right. The number of branches have gone up. The number of officers are almost flat. This is what the commentary, what we have been saying in last two quarters, that the split branch, the cluster branch approaches work on their way. So that's where you see number of branches more, but no big operational costs or officers getting added here. And just to recollect you, Dinesh, whether you've been tracking Five Star for last four, six quarters, I don't know. We used to have a full-fledged collection vertical during the quarter of, I mean, during the months of COVID. That helped Five Star to have a good asset quality, and slowly and steadily we are moving the good numbers of collection team to convert into business. So that is also operate being done side by side. So both put together, as per our commentary, as per our guidance, what growth that we intend to do in this quarter, accordingly, the addition of officers is being done. Okay. That sounds good. But can we expect at least, you know, the previous trend which we have seen in the past, would that continue henceforth? Maybe, you know, because once you add more number of branches or you split branches, obviously would need some extra manpower there, right? To get more loans and disbursals. ... Yes. Yes, yes. So two things will come into play, Dinesh. One is when a collection officer gets into business, more number of files gets logged in and more disbursement will happen. That will be done. But I'm saying it will be in slow and steady. We are not in a hurry to convert everyone. We are converting wherever we see a good traction in collection, so that collection people move into business. That's point number one. Point number two, as I said in earlier question, 70-90 new branches will be formed in new locations, mostly in South and good numbers in rest of the country. Those number of officers will be a clear addition to Five Star in this financial year. Okay, sounds great. But will that lead to any increase in operating expenses or, we would expect, the OpEx as a percentage of AUM to remain fairly flat, going forward? Our cost to income, which is a clear metric of, measuring what is the cost that you incur for the income what you get, is at 34 point something, in this quarter. We will remain at 34%. That's the guidance what we have been given to the market, and there will not be any increase or decrease in this number. Okay, that sounds great. Thank you and all the best. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kunal Shah from Citigroup. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. So, sorry, joined in late, so not sure if that got answered. But if you look at the AUM vintage, maybe that's now getting more skewed towards the lower bucket in terms of 1-3 odd years. So is it more in terms of incrementally we have changed the tenor, or this is more in terms of the repayments which are happening and what proportion is left on the AUM that is showing that kind of a vintage? Because the disbursal growth run rate is also relatively slow. Yeah. Kunal, I think the answer is in the last statement that you made. It is primarily because of the incremental disbursements that we are doing. There is a little bit of the runoff impact which is there. Like I said, while we onboard the loans for 6-7 years tenure at the time of origination, the typical behavioral tenor works out about 4-4.5 years. You know, a loan which typically would have been given, let us say, in 2019 or so, should have ideally been repaid by now at a portfolio level. There will be loans obviously, but at a portfolio level, it will not be a very significant percentage. And with the newer loans, especially the last couple of years, the growth has also been good. So with the newer loans getting added, you will probably see the proportion of newer vintage loans being higher. But having said that, I did answer a question earlier in terms of our experience from a static pool perspective, where we have seen very good traction on the newer vintage loans, given our focus on D1C1, the collection efficiency. So it is not like, you know, we are probably going to see NPAs or losses that we probably saw, let us say, on a portfolio which was four years back. The newer vintages are coming in with, with much lower probability of default, much lower loss given default. So even the newer pools, the static pools on the newer vintages, will not cross 3, 2.5% of NPAs in a steady in a peak scenario, which we are expecting it to be around 3-3.5 years. Yeah. But in terms of contracted tenor, that is something which we have not with that still continuing. We have not, yes. Okay. And now looking at, yeah. Okay, and looking at that in terms of the borrowing, so maybe given the ALM and there is a clear maybe 10 percentage point decline in that tenor, so are we realigning the borrowing profile to towards the lower tenor bucket? And just maybe as you explained, there was some benefit which has come through in terms of the borrowing cost, which you will tend to pass it on in terms of the lending rates. But maybe shifting this view on the borrowing towards the lower tenor, would it further help in terms of the overall cost? Kunal, while it may help on the overall cost, I think we are very clear that we want to be at a matched ALM. We don't want to carry too much of a mismatch. So given that our behavioral tenors are around 4-4.5 years, even our borrowings are more like, you know, 4-5 years on an average borrowing. There are a few entities which give 7 years and all that, but generally they are around 4-4.5 years. And we are not looking at, you know, going too much down, you know, to the shorter tenor. So we will ensure that we borrow similar tenures. So we are not looking at too much of, you know, cost benefit to come in, because of borrowing for lower tenors and, you know, allowing any kind of a mismatch on the ALM to be there. So we will continue to borrow around 4-5 years average, tenor, which is the behavioral tenor of the asset side. Sure. And lastly, you indicated that maybe running the CIBIL check again would be more of an academic exercise. But given what is being heard in terms of customer over-leveraging, would we take some initiative this time because it's been heard across the industry? Or would we still wait in terms of our 1-30, 31-60-day delinquency just to ensure that, okay, whether it's reflecting in there and then take the action? Because I think there is a threat which is building up. So would we think maybe at least in terms of bringing some maybe guardrails out there? So Kunal, we can do this exercise, but I don't know practically, can we, with the information that, let's say, a next borrower has taken more money, will you have the ability to go and control the borrower? That's the question. You may have the knowledge, but I think if you are confronting the borrower with this information, the borrower will say, "Yeah, you know, I have taken this loan, but as long as I repay your loan."... what's your problem? You know, I think if such a question is directly asked, there is no answer. So we do keep monitoring this at, you know, our pocket, where we are expecting some stress to happen, but in 100% of the top-up cases, or let's say in cases where at the regional level we are potentially seeing some stress, we can definitely do this and, you know, make some policy-level changes if need be. Okay. Okay. Okay, yeah, that, that will be yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thanks, thanks, and all the best. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pranav Gupta from Alpha Investment Advisors. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Good morning, and congratulations on the third quarter. There are a couple of questions. First, you're talking about expansion. Do you think that, you know, for this year, with a lot of confidence, do you think or, we've seen, you know- I'm sorry to interrupt, sir, but Mr. Gupta, your voice is not clear. Just a second. Is it better now? A little. I hope you're using a handset? Yeah, that's, that's what I'm using. All right. Go ahead. I'll just repeat my question. The what I was trying to understand is this branch expansion strategy that we have for this year, almost 50% of which will come from splitting of large branches. Is this something that is this trend sort of going to continue for the next three, four years, or is this something that we just see in the near term, post which we will start opening newer branches rather than splitting a larger part of our branches? That's the first question. Yeah. Yeah, Pranav, I think, it all depends upon the number of super branches and bigger branches, what we have in Five Star. It's close to 200-225 branches, if I'm, if I'm not right. Those are the branches that we are intent to make it, a ideal branch. Ideal is a very clear, terminology where we find that the ideal branch will run through for next 3 years without any risk into it. It's not the entire 500 branches will move towards split. It's only the bigger branches. I think it will be completed in a, in, in a 12-month period. So we have already started it. Maybe in, next 9-12-month period, this exercise will be perfectly done. So that's, that's the commentary that I can give now. In case maybe, six months later, I can revisit what has happened in that. Understood. Understood. So the second question is on Tamil Nadu. So you mentioned that Tamil Nadu was not able to catch up in terms of growth over the last year, but you are confident that this year it will sort of catch up. But if you look at last year, are there any specific issues that we saw for the state? Maybe, I mean, maybe attrition, that is something that a couple of other players in that geography mentioned, or maybe some over-leveraging of customers in certain pockets. Is there something that we can point towards for last year? Or could you help us understand that better? Pranav, nothing, nothing new. That's what I have seen, because I said I met each and every member of Tamil Nadu team last month, and previous month, too. So it's a general phenomenon that, Tamil Nadu is one of the best performing states for any lenders. So you'll see, every banks and NBFC having their presence in Tamil Nadu. So it's nothing new that has happened, anything in Tamil Nadu. Andhra and Telangana, maybe we are very, very good in Andhra and Telangana, so those two states are catching up, rightly, good. So Tamil Nadu was not able to match that, speed. That's what I meant. There was no lesser speed in Tamil Nadu. If you compare Tamil Nadu with Tamil Nadu on a yearly basis, there's nothing lesser in what they have been doing. While comparing with other two states, their catch-up was slower, is what I mentioned, and that difference of catch-up will be narrowed in this year. That I'm very confident from Tamil Nadu's perspective. Understood. And sir, just one clarification. You mentioned that, for the digital push or payments through digital methods, we saw mandated, UPI Autopay. In case a customer's EMI bounces because of lack of balance or any other reason on the UPI payment mandate, do you charge any fees, or is that something that you don't do at all? We do. We do charge a bounce charge for any UPI or a NACH mandate which gets bounced. The charges will be same? It's the same. It is the same. We charge INR 500 per bounce, and it is the same for any mandate which gets bounced. Right. Right. Sure. Thank you so much, sir. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sanjay Chawla from Renaissance Investment Managers. Please go ahead. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity. I've got a couple of questions. Can you indicate what is the target leverage ratio? You know, currently it is rather low at 2.3 times. And the second question, which is related question, is, you know, what combination of dividend policy, ROA and AUM growth you expect that to take you to your target leverage and by when? Okay, as I said several times, let me repeat it. At a steady state, steady state means 2-3 years down the line, we intend to be somewhere close to 3.75-4 times the leverage. I'm talking about leverage from perspective, not debt to equity. Debt to equity means it will be 2.75-3 debt to equity, and leverage of 3.75-4. That's where ideally, Five Star wants to fit into it. So that will take another 2.5-3.5 years from now to reach that stance. While doing so, our spreads will be close to 12%-13%, and NIMs will be close to 14, 14.5, or 15%. And that eventually translates to ROA of close to 7% and ROA which will go beyond 20%. That's where we guide the market in the steady state. And we are very clearly right on the trajectory what we have been talking to the market, and we are very confident of reaching it ahead of time itself. But let me not take it up in this point of time. It will be next 2.5-3.5 years where we will reach this leverage, ROA and ROA. From a dividend perspective, I think we—I also gave a last answer to one gentleman who asked me in last earning call. You will hear a good news very soon. Let me repeat the same to all the individual shareholders. You will hear a very good news very soon. So, you know, you obviously indicating a 20%+ ROA business and, you know, getting to that leverage in 3-4 years, let's say. My question is, you know, you know, what kind of an AUM goal? You're probably looking at 25% CAGR. Am I correct on that? We are looking at 30% CAGR growth for next 2-3 years. Right. So that kind of leads you, I mean, you will have to pay a substantial dividend to actually get to that, leverage ratio in 3, 4 years. I mean, maybe 40%-50% payout on your, profit. Is that something which you know, combination you are looking at to get to your target leverage? Right now, we are not looking dividend payout from a leverage perspective. It's a board's call, that board will take a right call. If the leverage is little lower also, but nothing to worry, our ROA guidance, what I said, that 20% plus, we will reach very comfortably. Okay. Thank you. All the best. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Hemant Patel, Alder Capital. Please go ahead. Yeah, hello, sir. Just noticed that when I look at it from an AUM to branch tier, your proportion of semi-urban allocation, which is tier five and tier six, I mean, has increased from 58% two years back to around 70%. Seems like there is an inclination towards a lot more on the semi-urban side. I just wanted to understand what's driving this inclination. Second, when I look at it from an RBI classification of rural, which is 10,000 below pop, right? Just wanted to understand what proportion of this tier six caters to that segment of that market. Is there a wide space? Is there something that you would look at going ahead as you expand your book? Yeah, Hemant, the tiers what we indicate is our own classification. Tier three, we call it as 20 lakh plus population, and tier seven we call as 25,000 plus population. That's our internal metric. Nothing to refer to the commonality, what other lenders do. Maybe we will align going forward with what terminology that other people refer to. But even the tier seven, where we are now starting our presence, it has a 25,000 plus population in that region. So we are not looking into a 10,000 population at all. We don't want to get into that kind of rural market as of now, because there are plenty and plenty of available spaces for us to move the customers from informal to formal. So tier five, tier six, tier seven, these three will be the driving force for Five Star, at least for next 24 months, is what I think. Just one more question. Tier seven, what proportion that could be of the overall AUM? So tier seven, we have just started, I said. Even that is around 20,000+ population, so predominant our presence will be at tier five and tier six. Tier seven is just started. Okay. So tier three to tier six will be the major portion. 95+% of our book will be from tier three to tier six. Yeah, but I just was pointing this question towards the inclination to move more towards it. I mean, is it because you feel that the competitive intensity is more, if I were to put it in urban areas versus semi-urban areas, where you are actually heading towards a lot more in terms of granular presence? Yes, slowly the penetration is happening. It will be happening in tier one, tier two, tier three cities. So if you see tier three cities also, we are not very, very fanned out. So once you not fanned out tier three cities, ultimately what we are seeing, where the files are coming from, where the customers are coming from, it's clearly towards tier five, tier six. So that's where we will be moving towards. And we want to keep ourselves closer to the customer... There is no need of keeping our branch in tier three and sourcing a file from a smaller location in tier five and tier six. Better we keep our branch in tier five, tier six location, and call those branches as tier five, tier six locations. So that's the thought process that we are currently in process. All right, sir. Thank you. Wish you all the best. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Dinesh from Finsight. Please go ahead. Hello, sir. Thanks for giving me another opportunity. My question is very simple, you know, bookkeeping question. What's the total number of diluted shares outstanding we have right now as of Q1? And, what's the ESOP plan, you know, we have for the next few quarters and years? Dinesh, can you repeat the first one? The total number of diluted shares outstanding as of this quarter. Diluted shares is about 29.5 crores. Okay. And what's the ESOP plan for the next few quarters? Like, do we have any major, you know, SBCs... So we had approved ESOP plan about two months back, Dinesh, so that is being given. So right now we have enough, you know, both in the older plans and the newer one that got approved two months back. So we will use that to incentivize our people. If there is a need at a later point of time, we will, you know, the board will deliberate, and then we'll come to the shareholders. But nothing on the anvil right now. Right. And, nothing more, share dilution, right, apart from this, what we have already planned for, right? Is that is my question. What are the numbers? INR 29.5 crore is taking into account all the dilution, so nothing on the ESOP right now. Okay. And my last question is on Maharashtra. Like, I have, we don't see, you know, Maharashtra being such a big capital intensive and, you know, growing economy, almost on the verge of being $1 trillion now in the next few years. Why are we not expanding so aggressively in Maharashtra? So, Maharashtra, you will see us expanding very clearly this year. We were taking a little bit of a pause in Maharashtra because of COVID issues. But I think the last two years, Maharashtra has performed very well for us. This year is an expansion year for Maharashtra. You will already see us putting a good number of branches. You know, definitely, I think from this year onwards, Maharashtra will become a key market for us. Yeah. And, your loan to, you know, loan, on average, loan what we give book value, that will remain same in Maharashtra, right? Or will you go on a more conservative basis, okay, and start with a lower value and then increase it? Like, how do you thinking about it? Look, so far, I think across all the states, we don't have a different, differentiated strategy from a product perspective. At origination, the LTVs, across all the states will range anywhere between 40%-50%, depending on the merits of the case. So Maharashtra is no different from that perspective. Okay. That sounds great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraints, that was the last question. I now hand over the conference to Mr. Sameer Bhise for closing comments. Thank you very much, everyone, for joining this call today. Thank you to the management of Five Star Business Finance for giving us the opportunity. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you, Sameer, for taking us through. I'm thanking you, all the shareholders, for these wonderful questions. Any question outside, please feel free to connect us directly so we can give you the clarity. With this, we will end up this Q1 earnings call. Thank you. On behalf of JM Financial, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.