Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the IDFC First Q4 FY24 earnings conference call hosted by ICICI Securities. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during this conference, please signal an operator by pressing star and then 0 on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Chintan N. Shah from ICICI Securities. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Yeah. Thank you, Darleen. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Q4 FY24 earnings conference call for IDFC First Bank. We have with us from the senior management, Mr. V. Vaidyanathan, Managing Director and CEO, along with the senior management team. So without further delay, I would now like to hand over the floor to the management. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Good evening, everybody. Thank you very much for joining us this evening. This is Vaidyanathan here. Good evening, everyone. I'm Sudhanshu Jain. Good evening, everyone. This is Saptarshi Bapari. Hello, everyone. Good evening. Between the three of us, we'll be able to take you through the key points about our bank and, more importantly, the outlook for the next few years. Now, when we look at the picture, we all know that India is well placed to becoming something like a $7 trillion economy by 2030. As you know, about 66% of India's economy is consumption, of which about. You're speaking that. Hello? Yeah. Of which about 56% is private and 10% is government. Now, 60% of a $7 trillion economy will be something like a $4 trillion economy will be consumption. And we feel that we are extremely, extremely well placed to participate in this extra growth. And the second part is, of course, when we look at the numbers of India's credit today. It's close to about $2 trillion. And by any estimate, by 10 years, it should be something like $6 trillion. So a good part of India is yet to be built. So even though we may be a new bank and an early-stage bank, the big story for India's growth is yet to happen, and the big story for our bank is also yet to happen because all we've got to participate in the incremental story, and we will still have a big part to play there. So for example, one key change that's going to happen when this credit growth, credit book for the country grows from, say, INR two trillion to INR six trillion, the big change compared to the past is this INR four trillion which is going to come in the next 10 years is going to come significantly from retail, is going to come from micro enterprises, medium enterprises, small enterprises, agriculture, rural India. This is one big area waiting to open up over the next 10 years. Therefore, this opens up a very big opportunity for us. Now, because something's an opportunity doesn't mean that we will get it. There's no natural. There has to be a reason why we will be best placed to get that opportunity. So today, I'll spend a few minutes with you just sharing with you how we feel about how we are placed for that opportunity. And then, of course, later in the conversation, we'll come back and discuss the financial results. I point this picture out over the next five years or so because we have completed exactly 5 years from the time the merger has happened. And therefore, it's a good time to just step back and talk about the next five years all over again, or say 5-10 years. Now, therefore, why is it that we are well placed? Now, one of the biggest things to be able to grow and participate in this new big growth that's coming up on all the sectors we talked about is basically deposits. We really feel that it's not today, not because we've been successful in deposits. We're not building a story around it today. From day one, that is in December of 2018 or March of 2019, we have been maintaining only one line that the bank has to really crack liabilities, has to crack deposits. If we solve the deposits, frankly, on the asset side, we really have a good machine which is really tested now for 14 years. We get a good NIM. We get a good margin. We make a return on equity of over 20% in that. So really, assets is not a problem. We'll talk about that in a moment. Let me come back to deposits. On the deposit side, our deposits today is close to about total deposits about INR 200,000 crore. Out of that, about INR 6,000 or 7,000 crore is certificate of deposits. So you can say customer deposit is like INR 193,000 crore. Now, that is not even 1% of the Indian banking system deposits, which is like INR 21,000,000 crore. 1%. We are just 1%. We're just putting in context. Now, deposit of one doesn't mean you're going to grow. What is the reason again? The reason is that we have built a good brand. And a brand attracts deposits. This is one really big achievement our bank has had over the last few years. The brand is seen, let me say, as a really high-quality brand, seen as an institution. If it's seen as an institution, it automatically has some amount of people get a sense of safety, security, comfort about dealing with the brand. Second thing is that as a bank, we have focused upon building really fantastic products. Now, our Zero Fee banking is just one way of expressing when we say that we mean to give customers we don't want to touch the customer's pocket for this reason or that. When we charge a lot of fees to customers, then it is always a temptation for any bank to say, "Okay, I'm charging INR 2 for a particular transaction. Let me make it 2.5," and the bank books a lot of fee income. We charge zero. There can be no temptation for product managers to. There's no opportunity for product managers to just touch it by this combination or that combination. This option doesn't exist. So therefore, when we make fee income, we make it a truly clean way. We sell a particular product. We sell, for example, credit cards. We say, "Okay, put a photograph on the card and pay me a fee of INR 500." Or we sell a wealth management service and specifically charge customers fees for a particular service again. So we are building it the clean way. And then that does give a strong feeling about the brand because while the customer is sleeping, not watching, we don't touch bank accounts by changing some terms here and there and all that. So this is very, very fundamental. And I must share with you the success of the deposits, which all of you know are successful deposits. I don't want to deliver this too much, but just want to leave one data point with you to drive it home. So our retail deposits were INR 10,400 crore in December of 2018. Now, today, that retail deposits alone just leave everything else. So retail deposits alone is INR 151,000 crore. That's a growth of INR 141,000 crore in retail deposits in five years in this bank. And mind you, we were a new bank. Now, I look forward to more optimistically about our deposit growth for the next five years for a reason. If you think of large banks like, let me say, the largest bank in the country, let me say, having maybe INR 4,000,000 crore-INR 4,500,000 crore of deposits, these banks or many of the other large banks as well, they have a large deposit base, and they get deposits from two means. One is called ETB, existing-to-bank customers. So here, if you have a large deposit base of, say, INR 4,000,000 crore, you credit interest to those customers straightaway of 5% in a year. The same customers bring some more money, and then you're done. You're done with 70% growth just by existing customers. The second engine to fly on is new-to-bank customers, where you've got to bring customers from outside into a bank. So many of these banks straightaway get a benefit of ETB. So they have two engines. Our bank has been flying on one engine, which means we only because we're a new bank, we only got new-to-bank. We did not have an existing base. Now, when you will wake up and say, "Now, we only have INR 200,000 crore. Now, these INR 200,000 crore will give us some deposits anyway." So our engine too is so therefore, the reliance on NTB will come down. Therefore, our ETB itself will start giving some deposits to us. This is one reason why gradually, as we gather momentum, we'll have two engines to fly rather than one. Flying on one engine for the past five years has been more difficult. Subsequent years, it will be easier. This is one reason that makes us very confident. Therefore, we have already put out a guidance that we will be this INR 150,000 crore of retail is totally about INR 200,000 crore of total money, INR 193,000 crore of total deposits. We have guided that this will be INR 600,000 crore in five years. Let me tell you pretty straight and honest that we don't see a risk to this at all. We believe it will be achieved. And we don't need to go crazy on interest rates and things like that. Just normal interest rates would be today. Probably, it can even drop it over time. But still, this INR 600,000 crore will be very achievable for the reason I described to you. The second thing that's going on is that if you see large institutions, they've been building the capabilities. They've been part of large ecosystem creation. Someone has cracked the entire broker market. Someone has cracked the entire NRI market. Someone has cracked some of these markets for 15, 20, 100 years, or maybe for 40 years. In our case, in our case, these have still been built. For example, our current account business is still being built. Our ecosystems are coming along. But the good thing is that whether it is supply chain financing, whether it is getting the accounts of the small retailers, merchants, traders, it's all hard work because it's got to be built brick by brick. But good news is that we are really doing very well on current accounts. Now, it's coming along pretty well, gathering momentum. We are very confident that current account business will grow into the next 4-5 years. And again, once you crack once you get deeply embedded in the ecosystem, then that machine then fires for itself. So that's about deposits. The second part of the story I want to share with you is it's the fact that we are now a universal bank. Now, this is point number 2. First, I described assets, liabilities to you. Second, I want to tell you, universal bank. Now, universal bank, there is some extra, let me say, stability of earnings across multiple lines of businesses in a universal bank. In our case now, we're not just a large sort of it's not a large retail bank. That's not the way we're thinking about ourselves also. So we have retail, SME, rural, of course. We also have corporate. We build fantastic services and trade now. We've got very good digital services, cash management. On wealth management, it's just been five years. We have our wealth management business now touched something like INR 16,000 crore. And it was like INR 1,600 crore five years ago. It's like 10 times growth in the last four years, not five years. The last four years, it's grown 10 times. It's like wealth management is just flying off the roof for us. I mean, off the charts for us. So there is something special about our products. In everything we put, there's something special. We just don't make regular products. The rest is a brand. Brand takes it over. Distribution takes it over. Digitization powers it up. So second part, therefore, is universal bank, for example, wealth management. NRI banking, we are developing, making strong inroads, treasury solutions. All in all, universal bank. The third reason why we feel good for ourselves again, we say that the big opportunity is there. Why should it come to us, or why should we be able to get it? We are embedding ourselves deeply in this customer-first theory. Now, we are not trying to make a quick buck on this side or that side, all that I told you. Therefore, the product suites are putting together all customer-friendly. Our people are trained to be very friendly to customers. We really take a dim view. People are found to be rude, or they write stupid circular mails to customers. If customer writes an email, we write back an email with a holding message, not responding for two, three, three days. We kind of look at these practices, and we say, "Look, this is bad." We keep improving every single day. We found that our access was not up to the mark. Then we opened out so many gates for customers to reach us through the internet, the call center, on the website. Now, we show our ways to reach us very prominently. So we're making every way for customers to reach us. We want every way for customers to solve customers' issues in the first interaction. So those are things that I mean by customer-friendly. Then the fourth thing I'd say is that our customer does have a positive culture. We're trying to keep a positive work culture in the environment, in the bank, and all that. Now, the fifth thing I'd say is probably the last couple of points is that first is on the loan side. Now, after all, we're raising money. Frankly, for us to raise money at 6.3% is a dream. When we were running the previous part of the IDFC, for us to get money at 9.5% looked like a déjà vu. And suddenly, at 6.5%, we feel like we're swimming in oxygen all the time. It's just so fantastic to be able to raise INR 50,000 crore-INR 60,000 crore at 6.3%. We just feel just so much in the money just because the amount of deposits we're able to raise and just feel so, let me say, so easy. It feels so nice and makes our job much easier. So third thing coming back to is the deposits. So oftentimes, people think of our loan book and say, "Hey, guys, listen, your NIM is 6.3%." People scratch their head. How is it possible to have such low credit costs? It's a common problem that we face when we meet investors, investor calls. We just spend 20 minutes on this one subject saying, "How is it possible?" We have a reason for that. End of the day, there is like 14 years, a long time for an NPA to stay 2% gross and 1% net in low credit cost. It's a very long time. We explain this by cash flow, cash flow, cash flow because we're a super specialist in cash flow financing. And I think time solves a lot of questions, and one of them is cash flow. But there is one more reason that we are we are specialists in rural India. I want to bring this point out to you because end of the day, rural India is so unserved. Let me just share with you that we put out our rural financing book in the bank. If you see the slides there, you'll find our rural book is INR 24,000 crores. But really, in the balance book, what we call the rest of the portfolio, there is close to about INR 16,000 crores, which we cannot categorize in rural but actually rural. Things like they've gone into loan against property or home loans. They've gone to that categorization. But if you classify them back in rural, that's another INR 16,000 crores, meaning that INR 16,000 crores for rural home loan is showing as part of overall home loan. So if you strip them back and put rural, that's like INR 40,000 crore. But if you see the growth of the loan book over the last five years, the loan book has grown by INR 90,600 crore in the last five years. And INR 90,000 crore of loan book and INR 34,200 crore have grown in rural financing alone, which means 38% of our incremental book built in the last five years has gone in rural. Now, this has helped us meet two, let me say I don't like to say birds with one stone. I don't like to say that someone can kill birds. But let me think of some other metaphor. Frankly, it's a bad metaphor. So let me just think of some other let me say we solved two problems with one solution, which is what are the two? So one is we're able to get good margins because the rural India products, for example, our products in rural India are JLG, of course. We do microenterprise loans. We do microhousing loans. We do micro LAP. We do commercial vehicle. We do tractors. We do all that stuff. So we do KCC. We do two-wheeler. So we just started into gold loans. So think of it as a product suite is large. So the benefit of starting a diversified portfolio in rural India, two things. One is it gives us net interest margin, which is very good. It gives us to play in a market that is underserved, underpenetrated massively. You can just do enough and enough business and keep going forever. It's not getting saturated at all. So that's one big benefit. We get margins. Number two problem we are solving is PSL. Now, when we started in March of 2019, we were short on PSL by a big margin. We had about INR 25,000 crore of IDFC book. We had about INR 25,000 crore for Capital First book. That's about INR 104,000 crore. And believe it or not, we had INR 3,500 crores that we had placed in RIDF, which means that we were not able to meet our PSL requirements. And we were placing money in RIDF at some really ridiculous rates of 3.5% locked money for 7-8 years, and all that. Because we built a rural business so strongly, our RIDF outstanding, so we are now able to meet our own requirements and able to sell portfolio to the market. That's a surplus. And therefore, now, we are making a bit of a profit by selling PSL certificates. Therefore, our RIDF bonds outstanding has come down from INR 3,500 crore to INR 926 crore. So that's why I told you there are two big benefits we're getting, not one, which is I told you that margin. And second, I told you we're solving the PSL problem, which, by the way, is a big drag in the bank. The third problem we're solving for is also asset quality because somehow, for whatever reason, the rural people are that much more conscious, more sensible. They're not exactly supported by lawyers and all that stuff. They just pay their dues. And maybe just that much of God-fearing or whatever. We just credit performance is fantastic. Our growth in PSL is not even 1.5. Net is not even 0.5. So it's gaining very well. And we monitor that closely. So let me say these are the three benefits that we're getting on that front. So the reasons why I told you, therefore, is that we have developed some why we said apart from the commerce being India, opportunities are going to be very big. But more important than that, we are well placed because we have unique products on the asset side, which can give good margin at low credit cost. And so that's a very, very unique capability our bank has developed. Second, I told you the liability side. The last thing I want to say is that a bank has invested is investing on technology all the time. Frankly, technology investment because a lot of people say, "Okay, guys, I invested well. I invested well." It's not about investment. It's not about pumping money down technology. People can do stupid things in technology also. You can move a lot of things to cloud. If you move the whole architecture to cloud just as it is without using the tools and technologies and well-integrated cloud, then it is as good as just keeping it on-prem, just scaling it more on infrastructure. Those are not really value-adding. We have developed some really fantastic capabilities for bringing our data lake together in a single source of truth, a golden source of truth. They have multiple of systems, individual business units. They're no longer going and pinging the individual systems. They are now going into a single source of truth with the data lake. These are fundamental architecture capabilities the bank is building below the hood, which you can't see as an outside investor, that there are really very powerful things happening at the bank on the technology front. Then, of course, we have a strong stack of technology. Of course, you can build the rest of the UI/UX. And then we are focusing on that. So last thing I would say is technology. And of course, finally, to have been profitable is a very big plus because frankly, when we're posting losses for 2019, 2020, if you met depositors, of course, I must say that people were still good to us and gave a lot of deposits. But there's still a little bit backings of all when raising deposits, and the bank is posting losses. So it was hard. Now, two years of profit. Last year, INR 2,400 crore. This year, INR 2,900 crore. When you're talking with that level of profitability, people also feel more comfortable to raise deposits. Our employees feel that much more spring in the feet. Last year, of course, ESG is becoming a big deal. We never focused as much on ESG before. Business, we thought it was natural ESG. We were not looking at it with a frame, and we didn't study it so closely. But the more they're studying ESG now, we are finding, "Oh my God, we could have done so much more for the elimination of plastic, making the offices green, eliminating couriers, moving over email, avoiding printouts, double-sided printing, avoid color printing." The whole thing, it's a long list of things, but I can just say that we're working on it very seriously. But let me say it's an initiative last two, three years. And it's already beginning to show in our scores on the ESG front. So let me just say that these are important foundation blocks the bank is building. At least if you ask me personally, I'm very bullish about our bank for the next few years. For this quarter's numbers, you may have seen it. I'm quite happy to open it up for any discussion. Thank you. Sudhanshu had with him a bunch of notes. I think since it's been 20 minutes since the call started, probably Sudhanshu, is it a Q&A? You want to go to the Q&A? Yeah. Let me give you a quick example of the Q&A. Oh, you want to make some brief comments? Yeah. So maybe I'll just touch on some key numbers. As you would have noted, that now, our balance sheet is almost, I think, INR 300,000 crore. It expanded by 23.4% on a year-over-year basis. The growth is largely driven by a strong deposit franchise and a growth coming in from there. You would have noted even individually, the deposit book has also crossed INR 200,000 crore, and so has the lending book. Customer deposit continues to be strong. You would have noted that it has grown by 42% on a year-over-year basis. Another area where we feel that we have done reasonably well is on the CASA front. If you see that, we have been able to maintain the CASA ratio at about 46.5%. Even average CASA deposits for us has grown by 28% on a year-over-year basis. We continue to expand our footprint. We are now at 944 branches. We have almost opened about 135 branches during the current year. If you see on the high cost legacy borrowings, we continue to repay those. That has come down sharply, almost by about INR 6,000 crore in the current year. There's a runoff, which is scheduled for about INR 7,000 crore, which will happen into the next year as well. The incremental credit-to-deposit ratio has been 76% for us. So that's largely driven by a strong deposit, which has been coming in. The cost of funds for the quarter has been stable, if you would see, at about 6.43%, largely stable over the last two quarters. While the cost of deposits has slightly inched up by seven basis points during the quarter, but some benefit came in because of the runoff of the high cost legacy borrowings. On the funded assets, the growth was strong at about 25% on a year-by-year basis. We have a very diversified business in our product segment. We have given quite a lot of details in the investor presentation. Maybe that can be referred to. The infrastructure book, which is a rundown book now, is sub 1.5% of the total funded assets. The book is only now about INR 2,800 crore. Credit cards, again, that's a relatively new business. We have already issued about 2.5 million credit cards. The book is now at INR 5,500 crore. The card spend has been quite strong for us. It has increased by 58% on a year-by-year basis. Quickly touching upon asset quality, you would have seen that the gross NPA is now less than 2%. In fact, it's improved by 16 basis points during the current quarter. The net NPA is also now down to 0.6% with a sequential improvement of about 8 basis points. If we exclude the infrastructure book, which is a rundown book, in fact, the GNPA is more like 1.55%, and net NPA is only 0.42%. We are maintaining a healthy PCR of 73% on the book if we exclude the rundown infra book. Similarly, on retail, the GNPA is now down to 1.38%, and the net NPA is only 0.44%. The standard restructured book is now only 0.31% of the funded assets. Point to note here is that 95% of the book is secured in nature. We are holding about 20% provision on this book. The SMA-1 and the SMA-2 books, also the retail book, is stable around 0.85%. On the corporate side, this number is actually quite minimal. The gross slippages for the quarter were lower at INR 1,347 crores compared to INR 1,421 crores in the previous quarter. This is almost a reduction of about 39 basis points. Similarly, net slippages were down to INR 724 crores as compared to INR 866 crores for the previous quarter. Here, also, the reduction is about 16 basis points. Moving on quickly to profitability, the profit for the year is up by about 21% at INR 2,957 crores. In fact, we had slightly higher treasury gains in FY23 as compared to this year. And if we exclude that from both the years, then the growth in profit is actually 28%. Profit for the quarter was marginally up at INR 724 crores against INR 716 crores in the previous quarter. Core operating profit was very strong. It grew by 31%. Happy to report that it has now crossed INR 6,000 crores. The net interest income has grown by 30% on a year-over-year basis. The net interest margin on an AUM has improved by 31 basis points during the year. Fee income also had a tremendous growth that increased by about 40% on a year-over-year basis. Large part of this was retail-led, which you would have seen from the presentation that almost 93% is retail. Operating expenses increased by 33% on a year-over-year basis. The increase was, I would say, across employee expenses due to business volumes, due to branch expansions, increase in some tax expenses, and so on. Credit cost, as a percentage of funded assets, was at 1.32% for FY2024. We saw some normalization during the course of the year. This was around 1.5% for Q4 FY2024. Moving on to the last section, which is capital adequacy. The capital adequacy stands at 16.11% for us with a CET 1 with a CET 1 ratio at 13.36%. During During the year, because the RBI had increased certain risk weights, we had an impact of about 100 basis points on the overall capital and about 82 basis points in CET 1. LCR was strong at 118% at March end. We continue to maintain healthy levels of LCR. With this, I have covered broad numbers for the quarter and for the year. We can move to the Q&A. We have a good 30 minutes spent for Q&A. Please make yourself comfortable. Feel free to ask us anything you feel like at this stage. 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 withdraw yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to please use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We have the first question from the line of Pritesh Bumb from DAM Capital. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. Good evening. Congrats on a very, very steady quarter. Two questions from my side. One is, as you mentioned, about the deposit franchise being more now sustainable and can run on a two-engine side. So will it be possible to outline that if we should not incur the cost we were incurring earlier, given that the branch banking was a major cost center earlier? Can we see that inflection point from now on, that the OPEX ratios will start moving down? Yes, yes, of course. You should expect that from us. So, any targets because our guidance does not include any in the next 5 years, any cost-side type of guidance. But anything you can outline for the next 2, 3 years? By the end of this year, we expect the cost-to-income ratio to be roughly flattish for the next two quarters. Q3 and Q4, we see meaningful reduction. Q4-ish, clearly, we feel will be in a strong wicket. The reason is actually simple to understand. As all of you know, our credit card business will start moving to profitability by Q3, Q4, so the bank's on planning. If you remember, we have always said that the 2025-ish end-ish will start moving, and the 2026 will make money. So that's a crucial inflection point coming towards Q4 of this year. Did you put out product segment by segment cost-to-income ratio? Can you show that screen to me? So for example, the credit card business, our cost-to-income ratio in FY22 was 240%. In FY23, it's 164%. In FY24, it is 116%, a big drop. By FY25, we expected almost. Some 100%. Some 100%. We'll come below 100%. So this is one reason why we expect Q4 to look very good. Similarly, our cost-to-income ratio on retail, rural, and SME business is running at 55% now for two years at a stretch. So it could marginally come down, but it's a fairly stable at 55, should come down, of course, in due course. Our wholesale banking is running stable at 33%. So therefore, the only drag was liabilities. So coming to your so therefore, just to conclude the point, we feel that it's scale. Our cost-to-income ratio should start turning down. But material, let me say, in Q3, Q4. Sir, so the second question was on basically a lot of discussions around tech and how things are happening in the industry. Just a small question was that you have some of the products where you have leadership in, for example, FASTag. You have significant UPI volumes. How are we geared up to handle these kind of volumes? Because this seems to be a niggling issue in the industry. Actually, our bank, let me just say that nobody can ever be too sure, first of all. Okay? This is an area we always watch for. Frankly, we can never be complacent. Let me say, we can never be too secure. Because we're conscious of the risks of the tech or not being innocent, tech can play a role. We have been implementing, let me say, the latest technologies. Many of you call us a high-cost bank. You call us names. But I can just say that it's well spent, that I can assure you. So we have invested in the best CRM system, in the best ticketing system, in the latest versions of the middleware. Our applications are, let me say, the best of what India has to offer because some of these things, they're industry standards. So applications are applications. We have built a really good engineering team. We do performance testing literally all the time of our engineering teams. We are building fantastic, I hope. I don't know if you, Prithesh, yourself have used it, or maybe anybody else who can speak on this forum. Over 210 people are here. I can almost tell you that anyone of you who have experienced the bank, experienced us, not just known our brand name, experienced us. I would say that you would say really good things about our app. Our app is really becoming fantastic. I'm scared to use the word fantastic for ourselves. But let me just say good. Let me just say that our app is really good. And we're developing. Its response time is really very good. Our uptime is fantastic, really, on almost all lines of business. Let me just say we invested wisely in technology. And as I said earlier, it's not about the money we spend. It's about how we use them. So we really spend a lot of time right at my level, my rundown level. We try not to take any chances. And if we find any issues, then we take it very seriously. If anyone else flags an issue to us, we really jump up and down to figure out how to solve it in the quickest possible time. Our board is very engaged. Our board also is even at my level, I understand technology. My subordinates understand technology. My two-down understands technology. Our board has a specialist who understands technology. We all put an effort after that. Sir, got it, sir. Thank you so much. All the best. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Gaurav Jaiswal with Prabhudas Lilladher. Please go ahead. Good evening, sir. And thank you so much for the opportunity. And congratulations. I just want to understand on the deposit front. I mean, they've been doing a fantastic job in terms of ongoing everyone deposit. But when I look at the deposit per branch, that has shown a pretty good growth of 14% in the fourth quarter, which is similar to that 12%-13% in the fourth quarter of last year. So I just want to understand, how should we think about branch-level deposit growth going forward? When do we think we will actually outgrow the industry? Because the industry deposit growth is at 13%-14%. So on a branch level, when do you think we will see ahead of deposit ahead of industry deposit growth? If you think in terms of vintage, we've just been five years. I reminded you earlier that our deposit in 2018 was INR 10,000 crore, which is, if you think of it like a starting. So in that sense, we are new. Okay? We are not like but our deposit per branch is only running at INR 200 crore, just for information, Gaurav, INR 200 crore per branch today. So there is something very strong about the way we have built the capabilities of our employees. Of course, a lot of it has got to do with the digital. Some has got to do with the culture. We are crazy about customer service. We really get pretty we take that. So I think core culture, service, tech, all that is coming along. So I'd say that's the way we are. Now, in terms of we don't want to only depend on branches because we feel that's not efficient. In tech, you invest once. You can multiply minimal. You can give far better returns than investing in branches. So our incremental going in thesis in the next five years is that we don't need as many branches. We just don't need as many branches. We feel that our current tech is firing very well. So as many branches, meaning that if we in other words, if for us to grow to our current deposit base of, say, INR 200,000 crore, we needed, say, 950 branches, it doesn't mean for to take the business to, say, INR 400,000 crore, we need 1,200, 1,800 branches. And to take to INR 600,000 crore, we need 2,700 branches. Not like that. It's not needed anymore. For example, when we take our book from, say, currently INR 200,000 crore to INR 600,000 crore, we don't expect to add not more than maybe just about maybe 500, 600, maybe 700 branches. More of 600 more. But it's not 2,700 more. So the incremental throughput per branch for the bank is very good. I mean, what we're saying is that deposits will grow disproportionately more than the number of branches you will add. That we are very clear about. Got it. So that's good to hear. Very clear. Do you mind in your FY25 sorry, your next five-year guidance, do you mind sharing with us what kind of assumption are we assuming in terms of per-branch deposit growth? Because I guess that affects our cost assumption as well. Right? So just want to understand a bit more on that. Okay. To be very specific, we have said that currently, we have 900. We said we will get to 1,800 branches. That is 2x. That is 900 more for INR 400,000 crore of deposits. Today, we have INR 200,000 crore. We're going to say we're going to add INR 400,000 crore of deposits by adding just INR 900 crore more, which means that our branch productivity is going to double on our incremental branches. That's basically the way we're thinking about it. Frankly, internally, we are feeling very confident about this. In our senior management, if you were a fly on the wall, if you just walk across any branch and talk to. I really invite you, please, any of the many of you on the branch. Please walk across any of the branch, talk to any of our branches and staff, befriend somebody whomever you want to know, and talk to them how the bank is doing. They will tell you how the bank is doing. The feeling is very, very nice within the bank. Got it, sir. And last one is on the credit cost. How should we think about the credit cost going forward? Obviously, we are kind of normalizing back slowly, right, from a very depressed level similar to the industry. So do you think this process continues slowly in the next year? Or how should we think about this year? See, credit cost is a direct benchmark of what happens, that the input parameters that flow into that become a credit cost, like how the set points are collection efficiency, etc., that lead to it. Now, we are finding very stable performance on our books. We feel that our credit cost for the next year could be currently is about 1.3%. As it normalizes, we expect to go to 1.65% or so next year. But it's likely to be more front-ended for a reason. I'll just get back to you at time. But we feel Q3, Q4 credit cost to be we expect to be quite low. And think of it like almost a flat line also the next year. But more probably like 1.65% next year. Got it. And our fourth-quarter credit cost per your calculations is 0.5 also? Didn't get the question. Sorry? Sorry. So the fourth quarter, what's the credit cost per your calculation? Per your definition, what's the fourth-quarter credit cost? For the full year, it's 1.3. Just wondering for the fourth quarter, what's that? Ladies and gentlemen, the lines for the management team have disconnected. Please stay with us while we reconnect with the management. Ladies and gentlemen, the lines for the management have reconnected. Sorry to drop line. So your question was, what was it for the quarter? It was 1.5% for the quarter. And next year, we're guiding for 1.65%. Actually, we feel internally more like 1.6, but think of it like 1.65. So 1.5 for the quarter. Got it, sir. But what I just want to just flag once again. What we feel very, at least, good about us within this is that it's not that our yield of the book is high or NIM is high. The fact that we're able to do that with low credit cost is a very unique capability. We really believe that. But your question and guidance, I told you enough. Got it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Deepak Vohra from Premier Capital. Please go ahead. Yeah. So good evening, all. I really thank you for the opportunity. And first of all, congratulations on the result. My question is largely on the cost-to-income ratio, again, although we have come down from the levels five years ago. But I feel that we are still at a much higher level than the guidance shared during the merger, which was around 55%. Also, if you see the financial year 2024 versus 2023, on an annual basis, the cost-to-income has actually gone up rather than getting down. And in the last year, we have made a significant investment for the BCCI sponsorship. So I just wanted to get a better understanding on what drove the higher levels for financial year 2024. Yeah. So if you see, yeah, cost-to-income has been, we agree that it has been stable during the current year. It has not improved that significantly. But if you see, in the previous year to that, we had an improvement of about 500 basis points. And when they said that we expect cost-to-income to meaningfully come down starting H2 because of legacy liabilities sort of coming off because of credit card moving towards profitability and many other factors. So we know this is one key deliverable for us. And we expect to better on this front as we move along. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. We wanted to flag one more point to you. Everything we're building in the bank. I understand many of you are concerned about the cost at the bank. That's right. The thing is that trendline is good. Of course, this year, we didn't do a good job in the sense it just flattened out. Interest rates went up. And that kind of suited a little into the margin. Otherwise, we could have done better. But still having said that, let me just say that everything we're building in the bank is thinking long. And this is a super important to note. For example, there was no pressure for us to have launched credit cards. Well, we could have lived without credit cards. Our life would have been okay. But then you would have paid a price when you woke up in 2025, 2026, 2027, 2028. When you started to launch a credit card business, we'd have to come back and be different to you. Or we'll have to the numbers would be going the other way around when it's supposed to be improving. So we just launched so many lines of businesses, whether it was gold loans, whether it was Kisan Credit Card. We launched a Prime Home Loan, which is also, by the way, a drag on the bank at this point of time. It's not making any money. It is just because that's the way the long-term nature of these products are. For example, with a home loan, you book all the DSA payouts and cost evaluation, everything upfront today. The money will come, and it comes over the life of the contract. But we are not holding back. We are building what we have to build because otherwise, the future will be difficult for us. So prime home loans we started. Credit cards, I gave the example. Then education loans we started. If you're a commercial vehicle, you want to meet a PSL requirement, we are all negative products today. They're not making any money. In fact, they're negative. We started cash management business, a lot of technology build that goes into it. We started trade finance solutions. We started a lot of builds for that. Forex solutions we're building, negative drag on that. Gold loans we started, negative drag on that, losing money as of today. But it will not lose money forever. It's just a build-up stage. We have INR 1,000 crore. KCC, I told you, farmer loans, tractor loans, wealth management, FASTag, Forex card, you can name the list of products we're launching one after the other inside the bank. They all lose money initially because everything needs a scale of time. So that's why we are concerned that once they all start gaining momentum and they come off with a J curve, when you wake up in 2026, 2027, 2020, 2029, they'll all be throwing back cash. Perfect. Perfect. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Prakhar Sharma from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hi. Oh, V. Vaidyanathan, and team, congratulations on the performance. I just wanted to ask you on a couple of things. One, could you give some sense of the loan growth expectation, let's say, how you're building up for the next year? And as the operating efficiencies start to play out, maybe credit costs start to normalize at a slightly higher level, in a three-year view, what should we think of ROA, ROE terms? Thank you. Yes, Prakash. Maybe I'll answer that question. So loan growth has been 25% in this quarter. If we see, in fact, on a quarter-on-quarter, the growth is 6%. And within that, also, in certain segments, we have slowed down. Consumer loans have slightly come off. Even digital loans have not grown in that proportion. So we feel that loan growth would be more around 22%-23% into the next year. Moving on to the credit cost, as Vaidya guided, we should range around 1.65%. And certainly, our endeavor on ROA would be to touch more closer to, I would say, 1.45%-1.5% in the next two to three years. Prakhar, by the way, thank you for your research report on us. It's so detailed and in-depth. Wow. It's a great job. Thanks so much. Not because you said good things about us as well. But just the quality of the report is something that's super interesting, Prakhar. Thank you. Thank you. That's a flag. Thanks. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Nitin Aggarwal from Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Good evening. Congratulations on our strong performance. Really, the deposit progression is nothing less than outstanding, sir. Hearty congrats on that. Thank you. So I have two questions, sir. First is on the LAP portfolio growth. So after a gap of 4-5 quarters, we have seen a double-digit growth in the LAP portfolio. So how are we looking at this? Has there been an improvement in the credit environment? And this used to be one of the main businesses, and now seeing this traction this quarter. So anything more to read into this? And second is on the liquidity coverage ratio because while the deposit growth has been very strong, but still, there has been a slight drop in the LCR on a sequential basis. So what has really caused that? Let me take you on the one. See, LAP, frankly, whether it's LAP or any of the business, it's just in our hands. We can book as much as we want. This is where we are a small player. We have fantastic tech capabilities on being able to originate loans with good asset quality. So well, if you need to do more, we don't have to relax any credit norm. We just have to just open some more locations, and we're in. So really, the currently LAP is growing 20%. But we are moderating more the amount of amounts we want to grow, keeping the amount of capital in mind. We should be thinking of raising capital now. So we want to make our capital run longer. So we are more conscious about how much we want to grow the balance sheet in a given year. That's why we guide for the 22%, as Vaidyanathan said. The short point of this was that we don't have any problem. We don't have to worry about growth for our side. It's in our hands in that sense. Good quality, not to worry. Now, LCR, frankly, it's marginal. I don't think there's any specific if you keep going the way we're growing deposits, we are very clear that next year, deposits also will grow. We'll keep our LCR certainly no higher than 80%. Does that make sense? No, no. LCR, LCR. Not LCR. I mean the CD ratio. Yeah. CD ratio. CD, yeah. The CD ratio next year, for example? Yeah. Should be around 75-80. Should be 75. So we are so confident, Nitin, that on our deposit story, that next year also I mean, by the way, it's been five years going. Our incremental CD ratio is really very good. And we believe even next year, we can keep it under 80%. And on LCR, maybe incremental. Yeah. So Nitin, on LCR, we would continue to maintain around 115% levels. And so we feel quite comfortable. We don't see it as a challenge. Either 115, 120, somewhere in that zone we will be staying. Yeah. So some liquidity got deployed during the current quarter, but we feel quite comfortable. Okay. Sure. Thank you so much. Yeah. Nothing to worry. Yeah. Thanks. Right. Right. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rohan Mandora from Equirus Securities. Please go ahead. Thank you, sir. So just continuing from the previous question on LCR, sir, on the previous four quarters, if you look at, LCR has been more than 120%. But in this quarter for 4Q, annual average, we are giving 114%. So is there some reclassification of deposits that's happened? That is what I wanted to understand. That is one. Second, sir, thanks for the elaborate discussion on the rural business that we are building. So if you could just help us understand, what would be the rural ROE that we are making right now? And second, see, if you look at the last five years, it has been good from a monsoons perspective. So in case the macro turns adverse in that, are we building in some safeguard buffers on that portfolio, or what could be the thought process around that? Why don't you take the LCR question? I'll come to that. Yeah. So as I mentioned to Nitin that, of course, we were maintaining slightly higher LCR into the previous quarter. This quarter, we have come down to about 114% on an average. One is we did not want it to play the rate game. It's quite intensive, as you know, right, in the last quarter. So we feel that even into the future quarters, we should be able to maintain LCR comfortably around 115%. So it's more, I would say, a quarter phenomena where slightly some normalization has happened. But we feel quite comfortable on the LCR. Like we answered the previous speaker, Nitin, this is not business as usual. There is lots of liquidity. In fact, if you do a smell check in the market, and I really request to do that, you find out will you ever find a bank ever in any corporate fighting for deposits in a large corporate? And there are a lot of these names that go around during year-end. Somebody wanted to pay INR 500 crore, INR 800 crore, INR 1,000 crore. We just genuinely say thank you to them, saying that, "Look, we're just not there in this. We just don't need it." And that's because our retail flow is so strong that from the branches and everywhere, so strong, we just don't need it. So I assure you, please check. There is nobody who will ever tell you that our bank is out in the market for the bulk deposits. It is not there. Coming back to the point, so this would be good. Now, on the rural front. Just to follow up on that because investment is also going up by almost 19% Q-o-Q. So that should have typically prompted an uptick in LCR. The liquidity has actually increased. So that's where there was some confusion. No, no. But we clarified that. No, that's correct. correct. Currently, it's all liquidity. Think of the 1%-2% here or there. Let me just say it's not a particular amount. Okay. Now, if we come back to the rural question, now, will the rural economy if it's not the rural economy, urban economy, I think people just kind of give stamps and tags like these. We don't like these kind of classifications. They are not just not one homogeneous rural market, no homogeneous urban market. I think it's new there. So the thing is that within rural market, there are just so many markets. For example, if you're doing a home loan or a loan against property or you're doing a good cash-to-asset model, then they all have their then they perform well. And you have to treat them over cycles. And we have seen 14 years. Let me tell you what is 14 years so that you just get to appreciate that better. Every loan, every month is a cohort to track over a life cycle. 14 years means just think about it. That's the number of cycles we have gone through, not the 14 fewer cycles. Every year within that 14 years is a cycle. So within just so many cycles, we understand this economy very, very deeply, whether it is a rural housing or a rural home loan or urban home loan or urban rural market or microenterprise loans. Our JLG business was happening even before the merger happened. Merger happened in 2018. But my predecessor, Dr. Rajiv Lall, thankfully, had acquired a JLG company called, I think, Grama Vidiyal. And that turned out to be a phenomenal company for us. And I often thank him out of heart. I thank God he gave me a good franchise way. We've been tracking it very, very closely. The main thing is systems and domain knowledge. Systems and domain knowledge. Systems are systems. There's no substitute for good systems. But good systems build domain knowledge. Don't worry. I mean, if there's anything to call out, we'll call it out also. We will be totally honest, transparent. As you know, you've been with us for many years. Hopefully, many of you. We've never hidden problems. If there's an odd issue somewhere here, then we'll point it out. Nothing as of now. Sure. Sure. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kunal Shah from Citigroup. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, sir. So this entire breakup in terms of the cost to income, if you can highlight in terms of the proportion, how much would be getting into the credit cards and the liability of the total cost of INR 16 crores or INR 1,000 crores, just trying to see in terms of how much of leverage can it bring about in terms of the overall cost to income as and when it normalizes? I don't know the number offhand. Yes, Kunal, we are not calling out that number. But when they talked about credit cards, we certainly see the trajectory improving there. And on liabilities also, why we saw some uptick during the year, because we have put out more branches and so on. But we expect to sort of improve on these numbers. Our incomes from insurance, selling of third-party products are improving. We have still some ground to cover there. So I feel that with a combination of better cross-sell, distribution of asset products on branches, insurance products, and so on, we should continue to get an uptick on the fee income as well as our costs should normalize on the liability front into the next year. And Kunal, let me add one more point to you. And thank you to everyone hearing this call. See, we talked of a long-term picture, right? 5, 8 years, we said, "Look, IDFC grew like that. And we believe we will do well in that for the reason that we said earlier." But let me just give you a short-term view, like a 1-year view, so that you know what to expect from us. Now, our view is that these next couple of quarters, we should expect maybe next quarter, we should expect flat-ish kind of performance from us on our earnings front or somewhere in that zone. And maybe Q2 should see some improvement. But Q3 should see good improvement. And Q4 should see strong improvement. So it's going to be very back-ended this year. And I'll describe that reason also to you. If you understand the reason, then you feel comfortable. So that's why I mean to give you a short-term guidance. Now, it goes like this: that in the first quarter, of course, we'll get salary increments and all that stuff, which, of course, happens to everybody. Then second thing is that but it does cause a temporary slight touchdown to the numbers. The second thing, but more important I called out last time, and I'll say it again to you, about FLDG. So we are a good player in the digital market. And there are certain partners with which we do business. Now, we were earlier in a model whereby when we did a digital loan, the full income, maybe 17%-18%, came to us. And the full credit cost came to us because there was no FLDG. Now, recently, the FLDG is permitted. Now, what did we do? It was a good thing in the interest of the bank in the longer run to move to a model where the partner absorbs the credit cost. But well, it works both ways so that the partner wants income today. So what we are doing is that this quarter onwards and that happened after the quarter that will come up, the next two quarters, you will see a payout to the partner. So therefore, our OpEx will go up in Q1. But what will happen is that when Q3, Q4, this is about the short-term loans, the six-month loan kind of stuff. So when Q3, Q4, when the credit cost will come on those loans, that credit cost will be incurred by the partner, not by us. Therefore, you will see that the credit cost in Q3, Q4 will be quite low and benign. And you will suddenly see a tax shooting up in that time or going up in that time is probably a better word. And Q1, you will see our cost because they're going to pay the partner, it's going. So there's one reason, this FLDG. Second thing, liabilities. We'll be paying off some 700 or 1,000 crores of liabilities for 9% in Q1, Q2. So you will see by the time Q4 comes, you will see that benefit will come to us, credit cards, and prepayments, and all that. So you should expect a moderate performance from us next quarter. And I mean, on the profitability front and then takeoff during the third quarter. So please keep this in mind. Many people have put out research reports on us. We'll hope not to disappoint you on that, on the overall number. I saw Prakhar's report recently. Let me try not to disappoint you. We'll be somewhere there, hopefully. The other thing is that, so that's on this front, on how the FLDG and the story setup plays out. The other thing is that, like I told you, we are not binding ourselves to exactly what the market is expecting, etc. I'm just making it very plain to you. We are building for the long run. If something is important to us, we will invest. We will just go in and just do it, and like we've been doing. It's important to be disciplined. We don't waste one penny. But we are building for the long run. We'll build what we have to build. I can only tell you the long-term result of our approach will be very, very good because we'll come on a very good platform. Sure. Thanks. Thanks. This is very helpful. Secondly, in terms of the core P&L, so you clearly articulated the trajectory over next four quarters. But looking at maybe what you are targeting, 1.4% ROA with almost like, say, 1.65% credit cost. So ideally, when we look at the P&L from 2.25%-2.3%, what are the levers which can take it up further, say, from here on? Will it be more of cost to income? Or maybe still there is some, so obviously, some borrowings repayment will help in terms of the new trajectory. But besides that, any other levers available because fee income is also upwards of 2%? Margins are also at this level. So will it be largely cost to income? Largely, let's say cost to income. But also, see, frankly, when people look at cost to income, they often miss a point that cost to income is a derivative item. It is not an input item. Yeah. So, cost to assets, yeah, broadly, if you were to look at cost to assets. Yeah, yeah. Whichever way we look at it. I think these are all the ways to look at it: is that are the incremental unit economics strong? If you look at how our people have grown over the last five years, let me show you that view on the 40% increase of people, I think. So bear with me. I'm going to pull out the caption page that I talked to you. You see, our loan book has grown at a compounded rate of 13% over the last five years, 13%. So for a normal bank, what should your people be going by? You take any bank. Typically, the people grow at a rate of usually, the people grow at the rate of a book. But what is unique about our bank? Our people have been growing at sorry, our loan book is going by 13%. But people are going by 40%. How is this magic possible? It's possible because only incremental book is more profitable than the past. Yeah. It's more retail. Yeah. Retail driving the overall. It's profitable. It must be throwing more money to the P&L. Otherwise, how would a book grow by even this year, the latest quarter that went by, the latest year that went by, even in the period when interest rates went up, everything happened, our people have grown up by 31%. Loan book grew by 25. How did this magic happen? Just think about it. 25 of the loan book growth this year. So operating profit is on the 31. So this kind of story is clearly telling you this I'm telling you latest quarter. So this is something that's telling you that the fundamentals of the bank are really very strong. We have to be just patient, not get in a hurry, and not become a please all people, stick to discipline, and build this book patiently over the next two, three years. This is how this magic happens. If you're stable about it, one or two years, you'll find the ROA will probably be stable. Your ROA 1.1 will probably still be 1.1 next year because it still is around we'll build it. But when you play the same stroke over and over again and this joy of the fact that people grow 30 and the book grows 25 or 22 or 23, when that jaw continues to open, you do that year after year into 2025, into 2026, into 2027, into 2028, suddenly, you'll say, "Wow, this bank is now just fantastic. And the numbers look very good." But I am really requesting all of you to be calm about this and patient about this because we are building to a plan. We are sharing our plan. You can read all the incremental economics. You can talk to our people. You can do all your research. I'm quite confident that this will smell right to you. Okay. Okay. Okay. Great. Yeah. Thanks. And all the best. Yeah. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vikram Subramanian from Marshall Wace. Please go ahead. Hello. Hi, Vikram. Hi, Vikram. Hi, sir. Thanks for taking me through that. I just wanted to check on the growth guidances. So you had mentioned 22%-23% advances growth with incremental LDR of somewhere close to 80%. So should we assume 28%-30% deposit growth by 2025? And do you think that is internally achievable? Just some comments on that, please. Yes, sir. Easily achievable. Okay. Okay. Another question from who? 30% growth, deposit size slightly above 30% and achieve those numbers. See, one key thing, Vikram, to note and it's a good question, by the way, is that our bank is doing two jobs today. Okay. This is a very important note. We are funding our own growth. And we're repaying so that's one item. And second, we're already repaying, also paying the legacy liabilities, which is I mean, the bonds and all that. So Saptarshi Bapari, cumulatively of the bonds the last five years, how much has it paid off? 29,000. So INR 29,000 crore we paid off. How did we get INR 29,000 crore plus grow our loan book? So we are doing we are having to do two jobs today. So after the end of this year, in 2025, we would not have to most of the legacy liabilities will be paid off. So when you wake up in 2025, 2026, at that time, you'll only need to fund our growth. We don't even need a growth deposit growth going at this pace. So this is a very important point, actually. So therefore, the pressure on the bank to raise deposits will also come down. Let me say, certainly, after 2027, 2028, 2028, 2029, we have only one job to fund our growth. We don't have to pay up any past dues. So in fact, banks will breathe easy. Maybe, God knows. Depending on the environment at that time, we may even bring down rates. We give it a good we give it we give it a good probability that we will do that. And that's how we'll play it. And that could actually add to the margins at that point of time or profitability and all that, so. Sure. Thanks. Thanks for that. So that was clear and good to know. Just another question. Sorry to harp on this liquidity coverage ratio. I guess a couple of other participants asked as well. Just not able to reconcile this almost 7 percentage point fall in LCR despite deposits increasing 9%-10% QQ. And liquidity on the balance sheet has also increased. So are there any change in the buckets? Not able to understand that. Why don't we just to answer the question, why don't we just come back to you on this? But Sudhanshu answered it a couple of times. I answered it a couple of times. So maybe we're not able to add through this one. But is there anything else you want to add, Sudhanshu? No, no. As I said, I'll say 115% itself is a very strong number. And there would be some short-term because LCR is generally repayments within one month, right? So there were some borrowings which sort of came up for repayment. As I said, we didn't want to play the raid game. We could have mobilized some more funding to sort of keep the LCRs at higher levels. But we chose to maintain LCR at around 115%. And we feel that we'll be comfortably able to maintain it even going forward. So our requirement is 100%. So I think we also have to optimize our liquidity. So I feel that if you're maintaining around 115%, that should be broadly okay. And believe me, that our deposits are granular. If you go and see the LCR disclosure, deposits from retail customers, from small businesses, those ratios are quite steady. While the overall customer deposits have grown by 41%, these segments have also grown, I would say, at least at that, slightly better. So you should not get too much worried on the LCR front. I'd say one more thing. To go back to the previous question either you asked or one of our participants, the thing is that why are we growing deposits at 40%? I told you where we are having the growth need as well as the past liabilities. We have right now about maybe INR 12,000 crore-INR 13,000 crore of the legacy liabilities. 12,000. crore. And also the other liabilities like bonds, etc., which were not legacy legacy, but we borrowed after the merger happened. That's close to INR 15,000 crore. Okay? So this is because it was available at a very low rate during COVID. So we took it. Now, during the next couple of years, we plan to even pay that off by deposits, not by borrowing. So therefore, you will see us grow deposits strongly over the next two years for paying off both legacy borrowing I mean, borrowings is borrowings, by the way. I mean, the bonds and loans. So we'll pay off pay that off the deposits. Next year also, we'll do that, both the legacy as well as this one. So we'll pay off everything. And then we'll pay deposits from the bank. So this is the reason why for the next couple of years, we'll see us raising it. After that, like I said earlier, that will slow down the growth of deposits. And then life will be relatively easy. By the time Engine One will also be firing, Engine Two will be firing because existing stock existing stock also deposits. It will be something like INR 400,000 crore. Well, 4 lakhs will give us probably about INR 40,000 crore just like that from existing maybe it's not 40. Maybe INR 30,000 crore will become existing stock itself. So you should see us maybe dropping rates, like I said earlier. Sure. Okay. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sonal Minhas from Prescient Capital. Please go ahead. Sonal, the line for you has been unmuted. You may proceed with your question. Hi, sir. This is Sonal Minhas. I hope I'm audible. Yes, sir. Hi. Yes. Hi, sir. So again, great set of numbers on the deposit side. I think that's been the standout trend for the last 4-5 years. And thanks for including disclosures on the NPA side as well, segment-wise. I just had an observation on the same slide number 42. Our slippages have been in the range of 2.75% on an annualized basis with 3%. And the NPAs, as we see, are between 1.5%-2%. So I just wanted to understand subjectively which segments, obviously, paying more. Are we putting some speed breakers among these segments, specifically mentioned in slide number 42? Anything subjective commentary on that would be really helpful. Thanks, Sonal. I don't have the specific slide on hand right now that I want to refer to. But let me just take your question generically. Yeah. The question is, where are we slipping more? I think that's where that. No, no. That's fine. So, see, there are some businesses. See, first of all, the blend of our slippage on a net basis used to be about 2% on a net basis. We always have growth. We always have recoveries. We always have a net. So that's like 2% or? Yeah. 1.8. 1.8% right now. But maybe 2%. We are quite confident 2% also. And since you provide for about 70%, then 70% of that 1.8% becomes 2% becomes 1.4%-ish. You guide for 1.6%. So you think of it like that. But usually, obviously, you need us to say our home loans have slipped the least. Home loans have probably slipped the least because it's just the nature of that cash flow assessment and customer profiles are obviously of a higher income profile. The more you go down the pyramid in the customer income profile, like your two-wheeler financing or any unsecured individual debts, etc., you'll have higher slippages, higher provision cost. But we think of it in a very risk in a very disciplined manner. We don't want to; we just don't want to run any one business that really outstrips the whole book. We're not so greedy about income deposits, etc., all that stuff. So we want to be disciplined. We have a particular mix we play to. That mix has been very stable for long periods of time. And as a combination, combination, we are quite confident that this number, we talked about gross NPA 1.38%, net NPA 0.44%, think of it and maintain it. And if you're not going to nothing ever stays stable forever. 1.30 can become 1.40. It can become 1.45. God knows. But it's never going to become 2% or 2.5%. We will not give you those kind of shocks. It won't happen. I mean, maybe in that zone, it will just meander because it's not going to come down also forever because it's come down sharply. But think of it like stabilizing from here on those fronts. And just to add, as you would have seen, that slippages have slightly come off. But there is also in terms of credit cost, there is also a function of recovery, right? So while you may not have slippages, right, with sort of increase, but we are seeing that we had slightly higher recoveries in the last couple of years, including the current year, which came from a COVID book, right? You mean COVID book, meaning the book that got charged off during COVID? Does not mean the provision taken for COVID which are reversing. That's not that. Just those are buffers, basically. Policy. We were getting recovery from that, not now. As some of this is tapering, you are seeing some normalization of credit cost. Yeah. I understand that. And so, just a request. You've been brilliant in your disclosures and your decks as well. Typically, good banks, like I've seen in their decks, they have a good opening-closing schedule of NPAs where you add back slippages, where you have technical write-offs, you have provisions, all of that in a single slide. I understand you started, I think, reporting the gross slippages as a footnote. If there's a schedule of the NPA at the opening-closing level, which is, I think, pretty standard for good banks, if you could include that in the deck, that would be great. That's just a small thing from my side, actually. No, no. We'll definitely do that. Sure. Thanks a lot, from my side. Thank you. But on slippage, things are pretty good. So for example. I understand that, sir. Just one point I want to explain to you, for example. So if you see one of our slides, we have disclosed now for 24 months in a row, we have given our collection percentage. Now, you see the number of 99.5% there. Now, frankly, that number is a very important number because if you keep 99.5%, only going to have 0.5% slip over to be 0-30, 31-60, and the next bucket, next bucket. So that 99.5% is very important. But if you see the 99.5%, it is a composition of many products, which is coming as composite, one item. You could go to two-wheeler financing. You'll see the 99%. If you see for consumer vehicles, you'll probably see the 99 point something. If you see that for home loan, probably it'll be 99.7%. So the fact that the composite comes from 99.5. So the product which are running 99.9 and not 99.5, they will have a credit cost of maybe 3%, while a home loan will have a credit cost of probably, whatever, 0.1% or something. So the blend is what eventually becomes the credit cost. And that we told you about 0.65. We're quite comfortable with it. Don't worry about it. Except I'm saying this now so that you all can expect it from us properly. I don't want to—I want you to be aware and comfortable with it that Q1, Q2, because of the way the flow plays out because I don't know if you remember or not, a couple of quarters ago, we pointed out that we moved over to a 90-day NPA recognition. We were earlier at 91 days because of some technicality. And therefore, the cycle works out in such a way that in Q1 and Q2, and also because of the FLDG map I talked about, you will see a relatively higher credit cost, nothing that out of the ordinary, but just to tell you relative. And Q3, Q4, you will actually see it flattening it out. So by Q3, Q4, what will happen? Income also will grow up because of the book would have grown. The credit card liabilities would have happened. Q3, Q4, credit cost will come down. So that's why we are showing, pointing out the fact that expect moderate performance from us on a PAT front next couple of quarters. Q3, Q4, expect better from us. Let me also point out to you that the core fundamentals, the core fundamentals, meaning the liability growth, deposit growth, NPA, asset quality, all that are the core, those are input parameters that will be very strong every quarter from now until four quarters. Got it, sir. Got it. Thanks a lot, sir, for a detailed explanation. Thank you. Look forward to speaking more. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Folks, it's been a long time. Can we close the meeting, guys? Sure, sir. Yeah. Or Or anybody else? We have one question from the line of Mr. Jai Mundhra from ICICI Securities. Okay. Yes, sir. Yeah, hi, sir. Thanks. We will close, sir, after this question. It's not a question, actually, just a small clarification. You also, I think, clarified in part. But I think for the benefit of all, if you can suggest that this quarter, we had a credit cost of 1.5%. Now, we are saying that for the next two quarters, it may go a little up, maybe 1.65% for the full year FY25. But in the second half, FY25, it should decline, right? So mathematically, it looks like that first half, FY25, could have slightly higher slippages. Of course, a part of this could be normalization. But is that the understanding, right, that the credit cost may go up, but then it will come down in the second half? Just a small clarification. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. See, the news? No, no. First of all, it's not any slippage issues or nothing like that. First of all, we'll be aware that just want to take you back a little in time. If you notice, any bank has to disclose growth into net NPA. We take it five steps back. We are showing the credit underwriting norms. Then we are showing collection cheque bounce. Then we are showing a full trend of 24 months of collection percentage. Then we are showing our SME. Then we are showing basically showing the full feed that is coming into the NPA. Then we are showing product-wise NPA. So you can see the full chain transparently end to end at our bank. You just don't have to see the NPA. Okay? That's number one. Now, in this flow, therefore, to your question, so our Q1 and Q2, the reason I told you, right, the technicality of the 90, 91 days, etc., and also Chennai floods. So on the JLG portfolio, the flow was relatively higher. But that's already started normalizing. But to some extent, you will see, let me say, a portion of that coming through in the Q1. But these are normal cycles that happen. And flood can happen somewhere, and people can pay and they can pay later. So some of these could be the not could. These are the reasons that you will find some technicality. So therefore, by Q3, Q4, anyway, like we said, if the fundamentals are strong and growth are strong, strong, strong, meaning the collection percentage continues to be like this, nothing will happen. The Q3, Q4, meaning nothing happen. Meaning by Q3, Q4, you will see some normalization. And you will see FLDG being absorbed by partners, by the FLDG partner. So therefore, Q3, Q4 will look good. And Q3, Q4 will not look horrible, anything like that. Just be a little more elevated. But nothing that will disturb you so much, anything like that. Understood, sir. Sir, that is very, very helpful. We will close this call. If you have any closing remarks to make, please. If you want to say any closing remarks. Thank you very much. I'm coming on a Saturday. The call went for almost one and a half hours. Thank you for being patient. Have a great weekend. Thank you very much. This is a full five years. The merger happened in December of 2018. So March 31, 2019, was the first financial closing. So it's exactly five years. You've been very patient with us. I must say, very, very patient. I don't know. We've enjoyed a lot of your goodwill. And we want to even when numbers are really bad, not just the bad loans, our operating profit is very bad initially for the first two years. You supported us even then. We feel that we thank you for that. And we feel that next two, three years, four years, if we stay steady, we will live up to our we'll live up to your goodwill and trust. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. On behalf of ICICI Securities, that concludes this conference. Thank you all for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.