Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Indian Overseas Bank Q3 FY25 Results Conference Call hosted by Veritas Reputation PR Private Limited. As a reminder, all participants' lines will be in 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 Ms. Sunny Parekh from Veritas Reputation PR Private Limited. Thank you, and over to you. Thank you. Good evening and welcome to Indian Overseas Bank's Conference Call to discuss our Financial R esults for Q3 FY 2025 ending December 31st, 2024. Indian Overseas Bank, IOB, headquartered in Chennai, continues to strengthen its presence with 3,322 branches, eight retail loan processing centers, 3,503 ATMs, and 9,041 business correspondents across India as of December 31st, 2024. IOB also provides services in four countries: Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Sri Lanka, with a trust of 41 million active customers in bank's fold. Our comprehensive suite of services spans personal, corporate, and agricultural banking, along with credit cards, loans, and insurance products. In 2024, IOB was among the top-performing public sector banks, contributing to the Nifty PSU Bank Index: 14.48% annual gain. IOB delivered strong earnings growth driven by improved asset quality and reduced provisions, reflecting the broader resilience of the PSU banking sector. Our financial results are available on our website and stock exchange platforms. Before we proceed, please note that today's discussion may include forward-looking statements subject to risks and uncertainties that could impact future outcomes. We encourage you to consider these factors when evaluating our performance. Joining us today are Mr. Ajay Kumar Srivastava, Managing Director and CEO. Mr. Joydeep Dutta Roy, Executive Director. Mr. Dhanaraj T., Executive Director. We will begin with an overview of Q3 FY25 performance, followed by a Q&A session. I now invite Mr. Mahesh Kumar S. P., Chief Financial Officer, to present the financial highlights. Over to you, sir. Thank you, Ms. Sunny. Good evening to all. Wish you all, analysts, investors, and stakeholders, a very happy and prosperous New Year 2025. Regarding the bank, during the current Q3 2024-2025, the bank has achieved a remarkable growth in business mix of INR 5.42 lakh crore as of 31st December 2024, recording year-on-year growth over 9.82%. I present an overview of the bank's performance during Q3 2024-25. CASA has grown in absolute terms to INR 1.32 lakh crore, with a year-on-year growth rate of 9.45%. Total deposit growth achieved at INR 3.05 lakh crore as of 31st December 2024, with a year-on-year growth rate of 9.74%. Gross advances grown year-on-year by 9.93% and stood at INR 2.38 lakh crore. Operating profit registered year-on-year improvement of 27.30% at INR 2,266 crore. Net profit grown year-on-year by 20.89% at INR 874 crore. Provision coverage ratio improved to 97.07% as of 31st December 2024. Capital adequacy ratio at 16.97% against the regulatory requirement of 11.50%. Financial performance: total income increased year-on-year by 13.07% to INR 8,409 crore. Overall interest income grown year-on-year by 15.16%, mainly due to growth in the advances level. Interest expenses increased year-on-year by 14.43% due to growth in deposit level, and the borrowings increased to meet the credit demand. Net interest income increased year-on-year by 16.31% at INR 2,789 crore. Non-interest income improved year-on-year by 2.85% due to recoveries in written-off accounts and increase in other fee income. Provisions on NPAs marginally increased by 9% due to migration provision that is aging-related, and all efforts are made to reduce the slippage, to arrest the slippages, and reduce the NPAs by robust recovery system. Tax expense increased due to reversal of deferred tax assets and provision for income tax at overseas branches amounting to INR 3 crore. Thus, the bank has posted an impressive net profit of INR 874 crore for Q3 2024-25, with improvement year-on-year by 20.89%. Cost of deposits increased to 5.08%. Previous year, it was 4.82% due to offering of competitive interest on one deposit product, that is 444-day schemes, which is attracting more deposits. Cost of funds increased due to increase in borrowings to meet the surging demand for the credit. Yield on investments improved to 6.86% due to planned investments in high-yielding securities. Yield on advances improved to 9.02%, mainly due to improved margins under RAM segment, in addition to marginal increase in the MCLR. There is an improvement in yield on funds to 8.45%. Return on assets improved year-on-year by 2.93%. Return on equity improved year-on-year by 17.86%. Cost-to-income ratio reduced to 44.55%, and year-on-year reduction efficiency is 680 basis points. It has reduced. Total advances registered a growth of 3.25% over previous quarter and year-on-year growth of 9.93% and stood at INR 2.38 lakh crore. Credit deposit ratio improved by 379 basis points over previous quarter and year-on-year by 14 basis points at 77.88%. Retail improved by 25.73%, mainly due to improved credit growth under home loans, vehicle loans, personal loans, and other retail loans like jewel loans, deposit loans, etc. Agriculture sector has grown by 37.38%. MSME growth registered by 6.11%. Corporate credit declined by 19.63%. Main focus on corporate credit is towards A and above-rated corporate borrowers, which is constituting right now at 65%. Overseas credit growth at 0.28%. Restricted accounts: there is a reduction in restructured accounts to INR 4,307 crore as of 31st December 2024. NPA management: gross NPA reduced from INR 8,441 crore to INR 6,071 crore. Net NPA reduced from INR 1,303 crore to INR 976 crore. Total recovery from NPA during Q3 was INR 957 crore, and total recovery from technical write-off of accounts was INR 677 crore. Provision coverage ratio improved from 96.85% to 97.07%. Provision PCR excluding technical write-off is at 83.92%. Robust and continuous monitoring system has improved in controlling slippages. Slippage ratio reduced year-on-year from 0.17 to 0.13%. Slippages during Q3 is INR 284 crore. Capital adequacy: the focus is given towards the capital-light advances. Overall capital adequacy ratio is at 16.97%. That is without including the current year profits, whatever we have earned on a quarterly basis. At valuation slide, there is a significant improvement of equity, earnings per share, return on assets. And this is what I submit to you. Thank you. Sir, should we begin the question and answer session? Yes, please. 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 Ashok Ajmera from Ajcon Global Services. Please go ahead. Yeah, thank you very much for giving this opportunity. I'm Ashok Ajmera, Chairman of Ajcon Global. Compliments to you, sir, and the entire team of Indian Overseas Bank for a good set of numbers, even in this quarter also. You have excelled on many fronts, especially at the end of the day, everybody is concerned about your path, which is, of course, very good. You improved on the everyone is bothered nowadays on the bottom line, so you improved your bottom line a lot, even in this quarter also. Good control on the gross NPA and net NPA, good ROA number. Having said this, sir, I have got some observations and some questions and some data points to ask. So number one is in the other interest income, in the interest income, there is INR 218 crore in this quarter, whereas in the last quarter, it was zero. So I might not have got the full details, but what it could be, this is one. If you can, otherwise, I can ask my other questions also. Yeah, welcome back. That is the recovery from technical write-off of accounts. That goes to other income. Technical write-off is recovery from write-off it's a means that INR 635 crore is in addition to this INR 218 crore? Okay, sorry, I will give that clarification. The recovery from technical write-off of it is already shown separately. That is income tax income, income tax refund. Interest. Interest, interest refund. Ajay, interest on income tax. Yeah, that's what only I was wondering that this is there. We have, if you look at our this note number 18 about the tax liability, which is coming, I think, every quarter, and which is a whole disputed liability about tax. Yes. Direct tax INR 3,560 crore, indirect tax INR 1,455 crore, which the auditor has given in the note number 18. Yes. So I would just like to know, and there was also one recent, I think, tribunal decision also about the banking on the MAT credit also that, yes, you are not MAT was not applicable or something. So what is the impact on this, and where do we stand on this big almost about INR 5,000 crore of liability hanging on which there is no provision? So can you throw some light on that? Yes. In fact, if you remember, Mr. Ajmera, you raised this question in our last meeting also. At that point of time, this contingent liability on tax was around INR 10,000 crore, and in that meeting also, it was conveyed to you by me is that, of course, there is no provision because we expect that almost 100% of our demand is genuine, and we are going to get it back, so today, the INR 10,000 crore, we are standing at INR 5,014 crore only, and giving effect orders from income tax authorities of around INR 4,100 crore is already released, and that is how the INR 10,000 crore has got reduced to INR 5,000 crore. Which goes on to let me finish. Which goes on to show that whatever we said and whatever belief was that our demands are genuine and it will be acceptable. It has been accepted. 50% has already been reduced, giving effect to orders we have got. Remaining INR 5,000 crore also, it is under discussion and under consideration. Hopefully, going forward also, we are not required to make any provision against that, and we are 100% hopeful that this will also be settled in our favor. Good, sir. When you are talking about this, can we also get the clarification on AS 23? You know the loss in the value of the investment which we have made in our books, other companies. There is a, I think, a loss of INR 373 crore, which has directly been reduced from the reserve, as per the note. That's correct. So what is that, and whether other banks are also doing that? Because somehow I missed or I have not noticed such note in the other banks. That note on AS 23. Hello? This is the consolidation, if you can explain. Yeah, Mr. Ajmera, good evening. This is when consolidating both accounts. It is standalone. We do not have any effect on this. While consolidating the accounts, this effect has been taken pertaining to our RRB. That is an associate in there. So that is the effect that. Okay, that RRB is this thing. And in consolidation, we don't include Universal Sompo, where we are holding 18.06%. What is our plan on that, sir? Do we want to increase this stake, or we want to hold up this stake, sir? Keeping 18.06%. We want to continue with that. In the immediate future, we want to continue with that. Because I did not add into the consolidation also. It is just a plain investment. Anyway, sir. Yes, you can invest it only. Yes, yes. yes. It's your call. Now, sir, on the credit and deposit front. Mr. Ashok? Just a minute. Just a minute. Just give me one minute. One minute. Sure. Okay. Yeah. Sir, on the credit and deposit, I mean, on the business front, even though annualized four quarter, we are saying that 9%-9.5% growth on the credit. In this three quarters, we have grown 8.49%. So, are we achieving our target on the credit and deposit side also? Even in the last quarter, we have slowed down rather negative 1.78%. So overall, in the three quarters, it is 6.72% only, even though we are maintaining good CASA. So what are your views around this, the credit expansion, the credit growth for FY25 total overall, similarly the deposit? See, both things, credit and deposit, in the beginning of the year, we gave that guidance that we intend to grow up by around 13%, both deposit and credit. Nine months we have almost around 10%, 9%, 9.5% in deposit as well as credit. And we are pretty confident that by the end of this financial year, deposit and credit growth both will be there by at least above 13%. That is what we are working at. Having come to deposit degrowth we are talking about, so there are three components of deposit. That is CASA, retail term deposit, and bulk deposit. So CASA we have increased. Retail term deposit we have increased. Bulk deposit, because of high cost, high rate of interest, we have, as a part of the strategy, deliberately, we have shed our bulk deposit, which was high cost to the bank. That was a deliberate attempt. And because of that, only deposit was showing a negative growth. But having said that, the bulk deposit consists of only 5% of my total deposit portfolio. Remaining 90%, 95% is CASA and retail term deposit. And in both these, CASA and retail term deposit, we have grown. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you may press star and one to ask a question. A reminder to all the participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. Ladies and gentlemen, you may press star and one to ask a question. As there are no further questions from the participants, I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Okay, so thank you, everyone, for joining. As you can see, quarter on quarter, improvement in all key parameters, all key ratios, there has been there. We are ensuring that quarter on quarter, whatever is supposed to improve, that is getting improved. And quarter on quarter, whatever is supposed to reduce, that is getting reduced. We want to be known as a consistent bank, a bank which consistently performs. And if you go through over the last eight or nine quarters of our performance, you can see that quarter on quarter, there has been steady growth, which is sustainable. And that is what we intend to do going forward also. And this is the intention. This is the intent. And for achieving that, we at IOB, the entire team, is working for that. So thank you all for joining and raising your questions for clarification. Thank you so much. Thank you. On behalf of Veritas Reputation PR Private Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your line.