Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the LIC Housing Finance Q4 FY 2026 investors conference call hosted by Axis Capital Limited. 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 this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Praveen Agarwal from Axis Capital Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Thank you, Sonali. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this earnings call. Today with us, we have Mr. Tribhuwan Adhikari, MD & CEO, and Mr. Lokesh Mundhra, CFO, to discuss the results. I would request Mr. Adhikari to share his initial remarks on the results, post which we'll open the floor for Q&A. Over to you, sir. Yeah. Thank you, Praveen. Good morning, and welcome to all of you to the post-earnings conference call of LIC Housing Finance Limited. As you are aware, LIC HFL declared its Q4 financial year 2026 results yesterday. Before I start the highlights of the Q4 results, I would like to outline a few developments in the economy over the last quarter. Over the past few months, the global economy has been navigating heightened geopolitical uncertainty arising from the evolving situation in the Middle East. The conflict has resulted in volatility across global financial and commodity markets, particularly in crude oil prices. Concerns around supply distributions and logistic bottlenecks have led to intermittent spikes in crude prices, which have implications for inflationary expectations, currency movements, and global interest rate outlooks. The increase in oil prices has exerted pressure on the Indian rupee and could potentially impact imported inflation if the situation persists for an extended period. However, India's macroeconomic fundamentals continue to remain relatively resilient, supported by healthy GDP growth, stable financial sector conditions, adequate foreign exchange reserves, and continued government focus on infrastructure and capital expenditure. Against this backdrop, the RBI maintained a wait-and-watch stance in the first MPC for FY 2027 and flagged further escalation of the conflict, elevated energy prices, weather-related events, including the emergence of El Niño conditions, slowdown in exports, and heightened volatility in the global financial markets as a downside risk to domestic growth. While liquidity conditions have remained broadly adequate, the RBI continues to closely monitor inflationary trends, global commodity prices, and external sector developments while balancing the growth- inflation dynamics. Coming to the housing finance industry, despite external uncertainties, domestic mortgage demand has remained reasonably resilient. Structural drivers such as urbanization, favourable demographics, rising income levels, increased aspiration for homeownership, and continued policy support for housing continue to provide long-term growth visibility to the sector. With this, we present the financial highlights of the company for the quarter as follows. Total revenue from operations, INR 7,194 crore, as against INR 7,281 crore for the corresponding quarter of the previous year. Outstanding loan portfolio stood at INR 3,20,707 crore as on 31st March 2026, as against INR 3,07,732 crore as on 31st March 2025, reflecting a growth of 4%. The individual home loan portfolio stood at INR 2,70,893 crore as on March 31, 2026, as against INR 2,61,562 crore as on March 31, 2025, up by 4% and comprising 84% of the total portfolio. Total disbursements for the quarter were INR 21,019 crore as against INR 19,156 crore for Q4 FY 2025, up by 10%. Out of that, disbursements in the individual housing loans were INR 16,672 crore for Q4 of FY 2026, as against INR 15,383 crore for Q4 FY 2025, up by 8%. Non-housing individual loan segment were at INR 3,348 crore as against INR 2,676 crore, up by 25%. Project loans were at INR 847 crore compared to INR 875 crore in Q4 FY 2025. On the net interest income front, net interest income was INR 2,222 crore for the quarter as against INR 2,102 crore for Q3 of FY 2026 and INR 2,165 crore for Q4 FY 2025, showing a sequential growth of 6% Q-on-Q and 3% on a Y-o-Y basis. Net interest margin for the quarter stood at 2.80% as against 2.69% for Q3 of FY 2026 and 2.85% for Q4 FY 2025. For the full year, it stood at 2.68% as against 2.73%, which was well within the guidance given at the beginning of the year. PBT, profit before tax, for the quarter stood at INR 1,934.24 crore as against INR 1,769.58 crore, a growth of 9.31%. Profit after tax for the quarter stood at INR 1,497.41 crore as against INR 1,367.96 crore for the same period of the previous year, up by 9.46. PAT for FY 2025, 2026 stood at INR 5,595.15 crore as against INR 5,429.02 crore for FY 2024, 2025, showing a growth of 3%. Dividend was declared by the board at INR 500, that is INR 10 per share. In terms of asset quality, the Stage 3 exposure at default stood at 2.16% as against 2.47% as on 31/3/2025, and 2.45% as on 31/12/2025, reflecting a sequential as well as Y- on- Y year- on- year improvement in the same. Total provisions as on March 31, 2026 is INR 4,569 crore, with Stage 3 provisioning at cover at 50.08%. The credit cost for Q4 of FY 2026 is 2 basis points, and the full year it is 18 basis points. The company also conducted a stress sale of a stress asset through ARC for a cash consideration of INR 70 crore during Q4 of FY 2026. On the funding side, the cumulative cost of funds stood at 7.27% as on 31st March 2026, as against 7.73% as on 31st March 2025, showing a decline of 46 basis points on a year-on-year basis. Incremental cost of funds also reduced significantly from 7.73% in the financial year 2025 to 6.94% in the financial year 2026, a decline of 79 basis points. Q4 of FY 2026, it stood at 6.86% as compared to 7.66% for Q4 FY 2025. During March 2026, the interest rates were elevated due to the war in West Asia, which resulted in a shoot up of oil, crude oil prices and the fall of the INR at record low levels. We managed to reduce our interest expenses by more than INR 150 crore as compared to Q3 of FY 2026. We also got repriced some of our outstanding bank borrowing during the last financial year. In the last financial year 2025-2026, we raised fresh loans from banks and financial institutions amounting to more than INR 45,000 crore and raised more than INR 10,000 crore for NHB at very competitive rates. Out of the total incremental borrowings of the financial year 2025-2026, around 82% were at floating rates. Out of the total outstanding borrowings, share of the floating rate borrowings today stands at 52% as on 31/3/2026, as compared to 45% as on 31/3/2025. On the technology initiative, the company has launched a project in February 2026, which we call the straight-through process. This is basically a machine-enabled credit appraisal process enabling automated underwriting of loans. This initiative is expected to significantly reduce manual intervention in the sanction process and enhance overall customer experience through much reduced turnaround times. With this brief introduction, I would like to invite you for your queries. Thank you. Thank you very much. We will now begin with the question- and- answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star then one on the touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants, you are requested to use hands while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue is set up. A reminder to all, you may press star and one to ask a question. We will take the first question from the line of Mahrukh from Tara Capital. Please go ahead. Hello, sir. Can you talk about your growth outlook in terms of what disbursement growth and individual home loans you expect next year, and even your margin outlook? Your margins did expand in 4Q, but from year on. Your Stage 3 ECL has gone down. If you could comment on what level you would like to keep it at. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mahrukh, for your question. Coming to the first thing regarding the growth estimates. Honestly, Mahrukh, right at the moment, we are sitting in a very volatile geopolitical situation, right? West Asia crisis, going on. Nothing seems to be moving as such. Of course, a lot of initiatives, a ceasefire and all that have been taken. On top of that, India itself is being impacted, the energy crisis, as we may call it, the sort of inflationary pressure on the all the other things. Honestly, growth will depend on the geopolitical situation and the economic situations. Yes, growth in the last year has been muted. 4.4% was the growth for the full financial year, largely contributed by intense pressure in the housing finance industry. As you are aware, LIC Housing Finance, basically we are into the individual home loan segment, where we are competing with banks and with the repo rate cut of 100 basis points by RBI. The bank's repo rate was immediately reset because their rates are linked to the repo. We had to frantically take a call on reducing our rates, also. That did impact, of course, there was a time lag, a delay in us reducing rates, so the impact was felt in the business inflow into the company. It was a very competitive year last year. The competition did impact the, I would say, the growth, which we received, 4.4% as against a double-digit growth, which we were alluding to in the beginning of the year. But yes, that is the way it is going to be. In the beginning of last year, I had clearly said that given a choice between protecting margins and going for growth, I would prefer to protect my margins than really go helter-skelter for growth. That is how we have been able to protect our margins. Going forward, honestly speaking, yes, what we are at right at the moment, difficult to hazard a guess what the situation is gonna play out throughout the year. Q1, definitely, we are targeting a 15% growth for Q1. Going forward, definitely, if the conditions are what they are, a 10%-12% growth is what I'm expecting this year, and I'm pretty sure we'll get there this year. On the margins front, 2.80% was the NIM for the quarter. 2.68% was the NIM for the entire financial year, well within the guidance of 2.6%-2.8%, which we have given in the beginning of the year. February and March were reasonable months. Yeah, February, I would say January and February were good months for us, where we were able to borrow at very competitive rates of almost 6.8%. Thereafter, February and March, especially March, with the West Asia crisis evolving and growing, there was pressure on the borrowing costs. The costs are still, I feel, elevated. I think in Q1, we would be able to maintain a margin of 2.6%-2.7%. For the year, difficult to predict right now. Assuming that things remain normal, I would say for the year, a margin, growth, sorry, a NIM of 2.5%-2.7% is what we are aiming to achieve. On the ECL front, yes, on the asset quality front, asset quality has been improving quarter- on- quarter. Our GNPA ratio has come down from 2.47% at the end of last year to 2.15% at the end of FY 2026. NNPA is down from 1.22% to 1.08%. The provisioning requirements are reducing. As regards settlement, no major big settlement was witnessed except for this one settlement of INR 70 crore, which we could do in the month of March. The big-ticket settlements are still in various stages of negotiation. Expecting, yes, advanced information, there is one big account which has been resolved. As per the guidelines of RBI, we have to wait for one full year before the resolution or the settlement can take effect in our books. That settlement happened in the month of May of last year, so this year, in the month of May, current year. The effect of that settlement will be felt in our books. Asset quality is definitely going to improve much, much further in the coming financial year, better than what we witnessed last year. Okay, sir. I just have one question. Sir, may I please ask if your successor has been identified? Yes, my successor has been identified. In fact, a very unfortunate incident took place. The successor who was identified earlier suddenly passed away on the 9th. Yes, sir. May 9th of May. Mr. Sanjay Dayal, who was the appointed CEO and designated to take over from me. He suffered a sudden heart attack on the 9th of May and passed away. Now, we have another successor in place, Mr. Sandeep Kumar. He has joined us just yesterday, and he will be taking over from me on 31st of August, 2026. Okay, sir. Thank you so much. Thanks a lot. Thank you. We will take the next question from the line of Kunal Shah from Citigroup. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thanks for taking the question. Firstly, when we look at it in terms of the overall repayment and prepayment rate during the quarter, it's been slightly higher outside of the HL loans, particularly on the LAP side. If you can just highlight in terms of how the trends have been in BT-out, how has been the repayment rates in the home loan, and why the prepayment or runoff rates were quite high in Q4, despite I would believe like there would have been some improvement on BT-out during the quarter, as you indicated last quarter. Yeah. Well, Kunal, yeah. Good morning. Yeah, if I talk about the prepayment is a natural phenomenon in the housing finance industry, right? Along with every EMI, some amount of principal does come in, and then people having extra cash or extra money to spare, they do try to pay off their outstanding loans. If I talk about the last quarter, the prepayment has basically been, see, on average in the company, the prepayment is about INR 2,000 odd crore every month, right? Yeah, yeah. Kunal, I just want to supplement. For the last quarter, the net BT was INR 1,250 only. Prepayment by way of a lump sum payment by the customer, it is a normal phenomenon of the industry. It is important what BT or exactly we have raised. That is, it's not in an alarming situation. This is quite normal during this quarter. This compared with Q3, yeah, INR 1,150. If I have to compare it with Q3, how much was that net BT? If I compare BT of Q3, in Q3 BT, 8,916 loans went out of our book, amounting to INR 2,157.29 crore, right? In Q4, this figure came down to INR 6,480 and INR 1,187.71 crore. Approximately INR 1,000 crore reduction in BT-out in Q4. It is not that BT-out has increased in Q. In Q2 and Q3, the BT-out was significantly high. Q2 it was INR 2,838 crore. Q3 it was INR 2,157. Q1 was INR 1,341, and Q4 was INR 1,187. BT is more or less settled by at about what approximately if I round it up to about INR 2,200 crore in a quarter. You know, Kunal, for repricing or, repricing of our, this, instructions we have issued somewhere in the last week of October. After October, BT-out is checked to a great extent. Yeah. In the last Q4, it is not so much material. Got it. When we are looking at 10%-12% disbursement growth for the full year, in fact, you are suggesting closer to almost INR 73,000 crore-INR 75,000 crore of disbursements for next year. Looking at the current run rate, in fact, the loan growth would still appear to be in the mid-single- digit or so. Maybe earlier you have been guiding for taking it towards 8%-10% odd, is there any possibility? Would there be any levers? Are there any initiatives which you are taking in order to pull that up? We should see nearly like a mid-single- digit growth continuing for a while, given this geopolitical situation? Kunal, if I talk about the book growth and the disbursement growth. Disbursement growth was impacted in Q1, Q2 and Q3 of last year, right? If you look at Q4, our disbursement growth is 10%. This was where we wanted to be for the full financial year, but somehow it happened in Q4 only. This has continued in April of Q1 of this year. In April, I have a disbursement growth of almost 20.87%. The growth is picking up. As regarding the levers. We have looked at what we really need to do to really achieve this so-called elusive double-digit growth, which we have been alluding to in the past two to three years. Two, three things we have identified this year, which is going to be totally different from what we have been doing in the previous years. Number one is, all this while, 36, 37 years of our history, we have always been focused on sourcing housing loan assets, or rather, the organic method of doing business. For the first time, since the last quarter of last year, we spent the last quarter of last year in formulating a co-lending and a DA policy, a direct assignment policy, which is now ready. This year we are going for co-lending, more so in the retail segment and partially and cautiously in the project finance segment. This is one initiative or one step which I think would help us grow our business as well as our book, number one. Number two is what we are looking at. Traditionally, we have been sourcing business through our agents, right? 90% of my business comes in through them. We, apart from them, we have just two corporate agents. One is our own subsidiary, LIC Cards Services Limited, which approximately does about 10% of the total business of the company. The other is an individual entity or a company called SP Enterprises. This year, what we are looking at, there are a lot of business aggregators available in the market, people like Andromeda and others. We are consciously going to engage with them and try to engage them to source business for us. That would probably give us some volume of business. INR 4,000 crore-INR 5,000 crore is what I'm looking for in the first year. That is one. Number three is, we have been focused. We have been trying to do affordable business, but it has not taken off in any big way. Yes, we were cautious about it. Consciously, we were going slow because we were aware of the high risk in this segment. The other thing was that, since in the last 36, 37 years we've never done affordable, the true meaning of affordable. We've mostly been comfortable doing IHL, individual home loans to the salaried and the self-employed class. This year, a decision has been taken that we need to set up a separate affordable vertical and something like what PNB has done, the Roshini vertical of PNB. We'll be setting up a similar vertical. The process will start very shortly. It'll be completely new, and totally, people will be onboarded from outside because I believe people in our company, we are not attuned for that. We'll be hiring people from outside. It will be a completely separate vertical wherein the entire sourcing, the entire credit appraisal, the entire recovery, the entire collection machinery will be handled by people who are attuned with, who are experienced in doing affordable business. That is another. The fourth is, we are increasing our feet on the street, our resources in the marketing side. We have achieved, we have received approval of onboarding about 200 people for the marketing vertical. The process will be completed by the end of Q1. These 200 people are about what, 6%-7% of my, the total employees. I have a total employee strength of 2,500. This 200 will be about 7%-8% of the total employee strength. This also will add to my feet on the street and actually my business push, which I intend to have. These four, five things which I talked about should give me at least a double-digit growth in the current financial year. This is on disbursements? This is on disbursement, yes. Yeah. On the book growth side, on the book growth side, yes, one area we are looking at, or one area we had not been very focused on, was on the BT-out, right? People moving out. Last year, BT-out for the company as a whole, was about what, INR 12,778 crore. That's approximately a rundown of almost INR 1,000 crore per month. This is one area which we need to focus. We have set up a separate, I would say department, which we are calling the business retention department. This year, people have been put in place, and they will be completely focused on the BT-out. Any case going out will have to go through this particular, the people in this department. We will try whatever is possible on our part, including compromising on the rates we offer, to hold back business or retain the business which we have. Retaining business is always profitable because people going out are not only a drain on the income of the company, but also sourcing new people is a slightly more costly proposition as compared to retaining existing customers. Kunal, net business transfer is around INR 7,000 crore only. Looking at the size of the company, the portfolio is more than INR 320,000 crore. net BT-out of INR 7,000, around INR 7,000 is very normal, I think, looking at the industry practices. Got it. Got it. Thank you. Thanks a lot, and for patiently answering all the questions. Thank you. Thank you. We will take the next question from the line of Sanket Chheda from DAM Capital. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, sir. Just wanted to check, the 10%-12% guidance that you gave is on loan growth, right? That's it. Yeah. 10%-12% is on the book. On the book. Right. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Like, like Kunal was, about INR 73,000 crore disbursement is what we are targeting in retail. INR 4,500 crore disbursement is what we are targeting. That is the budgeted disbursement which the board has given us. INR 73,000 crore in the INR 4,500 crore in construction finance or the wholesale book. Total taken together is about what, near about INR 78,000 crore. That is what the budget of the company is this year. If we get that will give us near about a 15% business growth. That should definitely translate with all the steps we are taking, including the retention of the portfolio department, which we opened. We expect that the BT-out INR 1,000 crore per month should come down significantly. That should give me a loan book growth of double digits, 10%-12%, what I'm talking about. Since we are out of the rate cut cycle, you expect the BT-outs to come down and hence, the guidance of 10%-12%, is it fair to say? Right. No. Can you come again, Sanket? No. Since we are now at present or out of the rate cut cycle, wherein usually, during the rate cut cycle, we face a lot of BT-outs, and now you expect that to come down, the pressure of BT-outs. Is that the right assumption for next year? Yeah. At the moment, I think the rates are more or less fixed. I think there's not going to be, I'm pretty sure there is not going to be any more rate cuts in the prevailing circumstances. I don't think RBI has any leeway to that. On the contrary, there is a possibility if things go, if the situation turns from bad to worse, and this West Asia crisis prolongs for another two to three months, you may there could be a possibility of a rate hike, right, increase in repo rate. Again, this rate war, you see, the problem with us now we are competing with banks. My IHL portfolio is 82%. We have brought it down from 85% to 82% at the end of this year. We are trying diversification into the LAP and LRD segments. Yes, we are still 82% IHL. IHL is also a prime segment, basically, CIBIL score INR750 and above. That is exactly the domain, I would say, the territory of banks. Competing with them on the rate front is proving to be very, very difficult on our part. Inherent advantage of the cost of funds. Their cost of funds are slightly lower. Likely, slightly thing is that we borrow from banks, right? Basically, we are competing with our lenders, which is a difficult proposition. Hopefully, yes. Hopefully, I think the rates are settled. Going forward, let us see what the RBI does, and we will have to match. See, the problem is our banks are totally repo rate- linked, right? There's an advantage for us in an increasing rate cycle. The moment the repo rate goes up, bank rates will immediately go up. We do have some opportunity, probably one month and a half timeframe, where we can sit back and probably not immediately hike the rates and probably go in for a rate hike at a slightly later stage, which can give us this one month, one and a half month advantage over the banks. Let us see how it plays out, and we'll be waiting for an opportunity and try to cash in on that. Sanket, I want to add one more thing. The BT-out for the month of is negligible. BT-out, BT-out, net BT-out. BT-out was INR 1,100 somewhere in the retail segment, and the BT in was INR 1,011. Net BT-out is hardly INR 100 crore. Looking at the size of this company, INR 100 crore BT-out, net BT-out is insignificant for the company. Mm-hmm. Is this for the April year- end? Yeah, Sanket, yeah. What? Voice is not very clear. Yeah. Did you say something? Sir, I was saying, relatively, you are right that banks will always be more competitive on the cost of funds. But within our peers or the NBFC set of companies, since we have a higher share of say capital market borrowings, our cost of fund in turn will be relatively slower, right, in a rising interest rate scenario. Yes, yes. Our cost of funds is definitely much less than that of NBFCs. We are AAA rated, which is the highest rating you can get in the industry, right? Our cost from borrowing costs for the year was 7.27% cumulative and 6.94% incremental. This is the overall rate at which we borrowed in the last financial year. We expect, yes, as far as the thing is concerned, we will definitely be getting lower rates as compared to NBFCs and other HFCs. We'll try to take it at an advantage. Again, the problem, as I said, no, we are competing with banks. Even a borrowing cost of incremental borrowing cost of 6.94% as compared, to the borrowing cost of a bank, including, CASA. which probably would be 5.5%, and it is still on the higher side. We have a little bit of more tightrope walking to do as compared to banks. Yes. We have to be competitive, as I said, because it's because of the line of business, the segment, in which we operate, IHL. We have to be competitive. We have to compete with banks. We'll do that. Sanket, this year our maximum borrowing is from banks and at floating rates only. Almost 82% we have borrowed at floating rates, especially from banks. There is a reduction, substantial reduction in the rate of interest. On incremental basis, last year, banks' borrowing was at 7.85%. This year is 6.90% only. Lot of cost benefits we got in the current year. Correct. You know, what I was alluding to is since we have a lot of NCDs, they typically have a three-year, five-year maturity. In that context, also our rate, even if the rate increases, our rate increase will be relatively slower going forward. The last question I wanted to have is, if you can tell us something about April disbursements, in terms of how it is versus last April, any sense you can give. No. disbursements in terms of what, Sanket? April, disbursements in the month of April, how they have fared with last year? Like, for the quarter you were saying 15%, but April to April the disbursement growth would be, what? Yeah, I told you. April to April, my disbursement growth is 20.87%. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Sure, sir. Those were my questions, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We will take the next question from the line of Abhijit Tibrewal from Motilal Oswal Financial Services. Please go ahead. Yeah. Operator, am I audible? Yeah, you're audible. Abhijit audible. Yeah. Abhijit, use your handset mode. Yeah. Is this better now? Yes. Yeah, better. Better. Abhijit. Yeah. Good afternoon, sir. Thanks for taking my question. Sir, two things. One is, during your opening remarks, you have shared that, domestic mortgage demand has remained reasonably resilient. Then you also shared that almost, 20%-21% kind of growth in disbursements that we see in April this year. Just trying to understand, I mean, out of few, real estate companies, developers who've reported, we have started seeing some acknowledgement that footfalls have moderated a little bit. Conversions are now taking longer. Customers are taking longer to make a purchase decision. Just trying to understand, have you started seeing any of that in April and May? Because your growth in April tells a very different story. So just trying to understand, I mean, what is your view on this? Yeah. Abhijit, yes. Yeah, last quarter we also grew by 10%, yeah, which was significantly higher than the growth in Q1, Q2, Q3. Carrying it forward, in April, we have shown a growth of almost 21%. Right now the impact of either the West Asia crisis or the, I would say, slightly reduced outlook for the economy has not yet played out enough. I think typically the reason is because of the segment we operate in, right? We are mostly into IHL, the salaried class mostly. Number two, we are basically our ticket size is on about INR 32 lakhs per loan. Basically, we are operating in the middle- class segment. Right now, in this segment, not seeing too much of an impact. If this crisis continues, the energy crisis continues, inflation goes up, definitely there will be an impact. The other part of it is, which has me worried also to some extent, is the impact of AI, right? In India, we've been hearing about a lot about AI, and especially in the Western world. Right now, the impact, yes, there have been layoffs in India, but not to that extent. Going forward, we'll have to be very, very cautious, and I would say on our feet and toes in assessing the impact on AI because some of the large centers where I do business, LIC HFL does business, are basically centers which revolve around the IT industry. Centers like Bangalore, centers like Chennai, centers like Hyderabad, Gurgaon, Pune. These are centers where a big chunk of my business comes in from. These are centers which are totally, I would say, revolved around or evolved around the IT industry. If AI, the impact of AI, does impact these centers, it is definitely going to impact my business also. That is the worry for me. Yes, West Asia crisis is a worry because basically if you look at the housing in, you know, thing, especially the segment I deal in, the middle-class segment, it is all sentiment- based, right? If I go to buy a house being a middle-class man, I would first need to be very sure about my future, my future earnings, my capacity to repay. If there is any doubt, any hesitancy, I would defer the decision to purchase a house or take a loan, et cetera, et cetera. That could play out. That could be maybe what is playing out in when the developers are saying that we are witnessing slightly lesser footfalls or lesser interest. The other part of it is most of the developers, at least the big developers, if you see, they are into the semi-luxury and the luxury segment of the market. This is an area where we don't operate in. There is also the sentiment plays a big hand. If a person or a businessman or anybody with money sees that my future income is protected, he's definitely going to go in for an INR 3 crore, INR 5 crore, INR 10 crore or even an INR 100 crore. The Camellias. That could probably be the reasons. Right now, touch wood, we have not felt the impact as such. Going forward, keeping our fingers crossed, hopefully nothing happens. Got it, sir. That's useful. Sir, the other question I had is, I am hoping you've not made any PLR changes in this quarter, which is yet to reflect in the reported deals, right? No, no, we have not made any PLR changes as yet. Yes, considering our cost of borrowing, which has increased, say in the months of March and April, also, probably in the month of June, we will have to take a call on what we need to do. Definitely, at these rates, at these levels of borrowing costs will be difficult to maintain the PLR at the rate at which we are maintaining. Got it. Sir, just on that, I mean, from what I understand, mostly in the HFC space, we are price takers, in the mortgage segment from banks. Unless there is a repo rate increase, do you think a PLR increase can be pushed through to customers? Well, if you're analyzing the banks, at least the quarterly results of banks, the NIMs of all banks are under pressure, right? Liquidity situation is tightening. Although right now I have said that it is more or less adequate, but I think in the coming times, unless RBI intervenes in a big way, the liquidity situation is going to be tighter. Again, I think banks also need to take a call as what they need to do with their NIMs. Similarly, if they increase, then being in a competitive segment, yes, as I said, we have a leeway of probably a month, a month and a half. Within a month, a month and a half, we'll also have to increase if we want to protect our margins. Got it. Thank you. Abhijit, one thing. Our cumulative cost as on 31st March was INR 7.27. As of now, there is no increase in that cumulative cost. Otherwise, it's there is a dip of at least two bips in that cumulative cost of borrowing. As of now, I don't think there is any need of increasing PLR or any rates. Let's see the first quarter, then definitely we'll review it, and then accordingly we'll take a call. Got it, sir. Got it. The last question that I had is, I mean, have you taken any technical write-offs? Sorry to interrupt in between, Abhijit. I would request you to kindly rejoin the queue again for more questions. Sure, sure. Yeah. Thank you. Before we take the next question, ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that further management will be able to address all the questions from the participants in the question queue, we request you to kindly limit your questions to two per participant. If you have a follow-up question, please rejoin the queue again. We will take the next question from the line of Renish from ICICI. Please go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Hi, sir. Sir, my first question is on the NIM. Right. When we look at the spreads, actually, it fell sequentially, and largely due to, you know, continuous asset contraction. Just wanted to understand, how do you see asset yields, you know, moving going ahead? Also, considering, you know, we want to restrict BT-out, and also, at the same time, we are thinking to modify PLR, you know, in the next couple of months. Yeah, anything on the asset yield, what do you see, let's say, near-term? Yeah. Around talking of spreads, we ended the year with a spread of 1.94%. When compared to last year, the spread was 2.06%. Yes, definitely, there was a 12 basis point compression in the spreads. This was expected. We were expecting this because of our competition with banks, the low lending rates, the BT-outs, the rewriting. You know, rewriting happens when a customer applies for rewriting at a lower rate as compared to his existing rate. Rewriting almost INR 40,000 crore of business got rewritten, where the rates got reset. We had to reduce our rewriting rates also to keep them in- Right. Line with or in line with the market. Yeah. It's going to be a challenge maintaining NIMs, I'm telling you. What we are trying to do. Okay. Cautiously, for the past two years, we've been trying to diversify our business from the predominantly IHL segment into the LAP and the LRD. I would say I am reasonably satisfied. In two years, we've been able to increase the proportion of our LAP and LRD business to around about 15%. Last year it was at about 12%, so this year there's a 3% increase. Yes, nothing great, if you talk about the percentage increase, definitely directional. If you realize, if you understand, right, the changing, you can change products, you can change everything, changing culture is very, very difficult. A predominantly IHL-dominated culture and moving it to LAP and LRD is going to take some time. It's going to take some time, we are definitely there. We would ideally like to have at least 25% of our business in the coming two years from LAP and LRD, which are margin-accretive segments. That is the way forward. The other thing, the affordable, of course, it will take time because we are setting up the vertical this year. I expect another two to three years where we can get into the affordable. The third part is our construction finance, right? Last year was not a very good year for us. There was a negative growth in the wholesale book, largely because of the restrictions imposed by the board on processing wholesale loans where the developers are late, rated triple B and above, right? That we have addressed. We have now come out with our own credit rating model, wherein this tip of BBB will be removed. I think in the next month onwards, I think we should have a fairly level playing field for construction finance also. That will give us some margin because construction finance are lending rates are slightly higher in construction finance. I think it's more about 11%, near about 11%, right? That should help me protect my margins. Got it. If I recollect, the LRD and IHL yields will be very similar, right? No, LRD is slightly higher than IHL. We do not. If my IHL starts at 7.15%, of course, that is for the top bracket, top-notch 800+ CIBIL. My LRD would be starting at somewhere around about 9.25%. Right. Okay. There is a big lot of. That would be what? Closer to 10%? Starts at 9.25%. Average, I would say, would be around about 9.75%. On average, I think LRD would be at 9.75%. LAP? LAP would be at 9%. Average would be about 9.3%, 9.4%. Lower than LRD. Oh, LAP is lower than LRD. Yeah. Okay. Okay. This is how it is. Got it. Actually, just lastly on this affordable piece, is there any target in our mind that, you know, let us say by 2028, we want to scale this book to this level or something? Renish, no. Right now, no target. Yeah. Right now, we are planning for the baby to be born. Whether he becomes an IAS officer or a pilot or an astronaut, we'll see after he's. Okay. Okay, sir. Thank you and best of luck. Thank you. Thank you. We will take the next question from the line of Shubhranshu Mishra from PhillipCapital. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. Good afternoon. This growth that we are targeting of 10%-12%, how do we decompose that segment-wise? As, how much are we expecting for individual home loans, how much for LAP, how much for construction finance? Also, if you can give me segment-wise yield on books and segment-wise GS3 numbers. Thanks. Segment-wise yield on books and segment-wise? GS3 numbers gross Stage 3 numbers for the segment-wise. Okay. Let me just look at the segment. Yeah. Talking about this, 10%-12% growth in the book, as I said. Yes, retail we will be targeting about near about, I think, 15%, right? That is what the budget is for. The budget of INR 73,000 crore. Last year, we had done INR 66,000 crore. The budget is around about 15% for retail. Project finance, we have reduced our budget from INR 10,000 crore because last year we just did about INR 2,000 odd crore. We have reduced it from INR 10,000 crore to INR 4,500 crore. Honestly, my heart says that we should be able to do more because now, as I said, we have come out with a new credit rating model, which does not put this obstacle or limitation of triple B-rated companies. I should be able to get a fairly wider pool to source my business from. Although we have set it at INR 4,500 crore, I expect at least INR 6,000 crore-INR 7,000 crore from my project team to come put together. LRD, last year we witnessed a growth of LRD and LAP, we have witnessed a 25% growth. That is not contributing to too much of thing of my book right now. LRD and LAP, I would expect this 25% growth rate to continue. In fact, I would expect it to accelerate because, as we've been doing it for the past two years, there has been a visible momentum, shift, change in the mindset, change in the culture, confidence level of people in writing this LRD and LAP loans has increased. Approximately about a 25% growth in LRD and LAP this year, continuation from where we left last year. 10%-10% growth in retail. No, 15% growth in retail and, approximately at least, more than a 100% growth in the project. INR 2,000 crore what we did last year, and INR 4,500 is the minimum target which we have to achieve this year. Shubhranshu, I just want to add. You wanted to know the segment-wise yield. Just, in the cumulative yield on the IHL is around 9.03% for the year, cumulative yield. For a non-housing individual, it is 10.05%. For others, corporate loans and project loans, it is 10.56% on a cumulative basis. In totality, it is 9.21%, our cumulative yield for the, as on 31st March 2026. GS3, sir. What rate? Gross Stage 3 segment-wise. Yeah. IHL is 9.03% cumulative yield as on 31st March 2026. No, sir. Gross Stage 3. Pardon. Stage 3? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Gross Stage 3, segment-wise. Stage 3 segment-wise. You mean, Stage 3 NPA, is it? Correct. Correct. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes. Just hold on. Segment-wise. Stage 3. Fine. For individual loans, it is 1.03% only, Stage 3, individual loans. For NHB, it is 20%. 20%+. 21.02%. For NHI, it is 2.5%. Right. Right. Yeah. Sir, if I can just even one last. Yes, sir. 3.02%, sir. 3.51%. NHA is at 3.51%. In totality- Non-housing individual. This is basically your LAP and LRD. This is 3.51%. In totality, Stage 3 is 2.15%. Understood, sir. If I can just even one last question, sir. LIC holds a large stake in IDBI Bank, and of course, it owns us as well. Is there any discussion at the board level of a merger? We get that faster funds advantage as well, right, sir? We don't have to compete with the banks anymore. No, no. Right. That has, I think, your DIPAM has already run with no merger of HDFC. No, sorry. ID, sorry. IDBI with LIC. They're not allowing that. Isn't that logical, sir? This will, you know, reduce our pressure of faster funds, sir. No, no. Agreed. Subhranshu [Non-English content] If you have some lobbying skills, you can lobby with the RBI and tell them to permit. Shubhranshu, we are only the right person to answer this question. That is basically it belongs to LIC only. The regulator has to permit. Our parent organization. The regulator is not permitting, neither the RBI nor IRDAI. Understood, sir. Understood. This is very helpful, sir. Thank you so much. Thank you. Before we take the next question, a reminder to all the participants: kindly restrict your question to one per participant. We have the next question from the line of Gaurav Khandelwal from JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I've actually got two questions. One on, the corporate NPA resolution. How much is the amount pending? What is the size of the resolution that you expect to book in May? Any more clarity on when we can expect the rest of the resolutions to take place, sir? Well, if you look at the corporate NPA, our Stage 3, no, just a minute. Where is this figure? No, that is 20.91%. He wants the volume. Volume. So- The volume of total NPA. Breakup of total NPA. Gaurav, yes. For corporate and projects, our NPA exposure at default phase under Stage 3 is INR 2,837 crore. Okay. Any timeline? No. Corporate NPA, Gaurav, as I've been saying, corporate NPAs, these are a difficult piece to resolve because most of these are companies and they have their own legal teams. They are very adept in putting a spanner in the works. A lot of work has gone in last year, especially the big NPAs in the corporate sector, which we have. We did resolve one, INR 70 crore, through ARC sale in March of last year. There are others lined up, and I believe, touch wood, Gaurav, Q1 of the current financial year should be good. Another piece of news in advance is that we have gone in for a resolution in one of the big corporate NPAs, where the resolution has been finalized in May of 2025. As per RBI directives and guidelines, the effect of that resolution can only be taken after a curing period of one year. May 2026 is when that resolution, the effect of that resolution, goes into my books. That would reduce my NPA as well as reduce my provisioning significantly. I cannot give you the exact figures right now. Overall, I think corporate NPAs are well on the way. Just keeping our fingers crossed. Lots of cases in the DRTs and the NCLTs, which usually take time, as you know. Again, many of the people whom we have taken to NCLT and DRT are wanting to settle. Now, of course, the moment we get a proper settlement price, which is, I would say, acceptable to both, then the resolution does happen. On top of that, ARCs, yes, we are pursuing ARCs. There have been just two ARC sales so far, but we are trying to rework our ARC policy, try to be slightly more accommodative when possible, and try to offload bigger chunks of our retail NPAs, especially in the retail segment, and just specified NPAs or difficult NPAs in the corporate segment. All put together, all these three efforts would result in a significant improvement in my asset quality, provisioning requirements and the overall improvement in the asset quality as well. Got it. No, thanks for that. That's very helpful. If I just look at the bigger, the larger picture, how are you internally thinking about the ROA in FY 2027? We ended the year at 1.78% in FY 2026. From your comments, margins likely NIM is going to go down. You're going to do more of third-party distribution, so that's an addition on the cost. DSA loans would cost anywhere between 50 basis points to 100 basis points on disbursements as a percentage of the disbursement amount. Credit costs at best stay flat in FY 2027 or potentially move up. In that context, how shall we think about ROA for FY 2027? No. Credit costs, see, as far as NIMs are concerned, yes, we have given you a slightly lower guidance, but we would be looking at maintaining the NIMs at this level. Again, you'll have to see, yes, the cost of borrowing is up, as I said, we'll have to take a call on the cost of lending also, and that should happen quickly, number one. Number two, ROA 1.78% for the year, right? This year, what guidance should I give you? 1.75%-1.80% in the ROA under the existing circumstances. If things improve or seem better, we'll be looking. The target given by the board is 2%. Target given by the board is 2%, right? Got it, sir. Okay. Any plans on increasing dividends? Well, dividends, we have maintained it. Last year, we had increased it from INR 450 to INR 500, right? 10 INR per share. Yeah. Going forward, any discussions at the board level? Because if ROA, let's say, is flat in FY 2027, ROEs have been declining. Has there been any discussion on whether you want to increase payout to hit that 15%-16% ROE mark? Yes, there was a discussion in the board yesterday on this. Certain board members were of the opinion that we should increase dividend payout, and other opinion board members were of the opinion that maybe we could find other ways of, let me say, rewarding investors. Nothing, no decision has been taken. Let's see, going forward, how it goes. This is a call to be taken by the collective board altogether. Perfect, sir. Thank you so much. Thank you. We will take the next question from the line of Rakesh Kumar from Valentis Advisors. Please go ahead. Hello? Hello? Yes, you are audible. Please proceed. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Firstly, the question with respect to affordable housing. What is the credit composition that we are looking at? Like, like you referred to the name of PNB Housing Finance, like, where we have seen composition rising from 2.7% to 9.4% from like 2024 to 2026 March. How do we see affordable housing mix changing, or like, you know, increasing? Because it is not there right now. How it will look like maybe one year down the line? Rakesh, honestly speaking, see, the baby has not yet been born. Correct. We are first looking, getting the baby born and then seeing whether it is healthy or not, how it shapes up. Honestly speaking, right now we have no targets in mind for the first year. Yes, eventually, we do realize this is a segment as a company we have to be in. We also realize that this is a segment which is completely new to us, and so we are cautious that we should not jump into it, head first and burn our fingers or burn our heads, if I may say so. We will be taking it. We'll be setting up the vertical, and I said this vertical has to be run by people who are experts or who have experience in running or working in the affordable segment vertical, right? Affordable segment. Honestly speaking, yes, on the long run, in the long run, we would expect this segment to contribute significantly to the business of the company. Right now, we have no targets. We have not set any targets. Got it. Got it. Just one small question. Like, you know, if we look at, like, you know, in the declining interest rate, like, you know, phase, we have seen, like, our funding cost, you know, going down by 46 basis points and credit yield going down by around 58 basis points. Assuming, like, you know, from the next year onwards, if we see a rising interest rate scenario, would we see the reverse, like, and to what extent, possibly? Looking into the very competitive scenario which we are in, right? Competing with banks. I do not see a major reversal happening with the interest rates going up. Yes, interest rates going up, it does give the housing finance companies the benefit of slightly higher rates, or higher spreads or higher margins. If you have to compete with your competitors, you cannot do things which are completely different from what they are doing until and unless you are able to enter into segments into which your competitors are not very comfortable with or not very, I would say, focused on. That is precisely what we are trying to address it from the two fronts. Number one, knowing very well that IHL is our forte. We are not going to, I would say, dissuade people from doing IHL. Rather, we would say we would try to encourage people to get into LAP and LRD more. We have done that. The different rate of commission we are paying on LAP and LRD is slightly higher differential as compared to IHL. There has been a visible shift, as I said, about 15% business coming in from there as compared to 12% of last year to 3% increase in one year. Going forward, as this momentum picks on, people become more comfortable with selling LAP and LRD, I expect this percentage share to increase further. That these are margin accretive, right? As compared to IHL, because IHL is something which is giving me the lowest margins and lowest spreads. These are margin accretive, that is, the segment we are trying to focus on. Cannot happen overnight. We have a company for 36 years doing IHL. We cannot suddenly expect them to suddenly shift to whole hog to LAP and LRD. It is going to be gradual, but definitely that directionally we are there. We would like to increase the pace, of course. That will probably give me a slightly better spread, and maybe they will help me to maintain my margins, which I have declared this year, my NIMs. Rakesh, I want to add one more thing. You know, our spread is 1.94%. If you see the industry average, it is on better side. If we are able to maintain this similar spread, I think that definitely our margins are, they would be better in the current coming year. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we will take that as the last question. With that concludes, the question- and- answer session. I now hand the conference back to the management for closing comments. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Yeah. Thank you, friends. Thank you for joining us on this conference call. We have outlined what we feel are going to be our strategy or our thought process in the coming financial year. As I said in the very beginning, with the volatile situation, the geopolitical uncertainty in the markets right now, we are keeping our fingers crossed. We are looking at whatever is happening in the geopolitical world and also on the economic front in the country. Hopefully, things should turn out for the better because again, we are a global business, we're global. This crisis affects the entire world. I'm sure the world leaders would get together and try to get out of this crisis rather than sticking on to their egos. Hopefully, we started the year well. We started the year well, and we are hopeful. Not only hopeful, I think we are positive that this year is going to be a better year than that of last year. Looking forward to meeting you at the end of Q1 and discussing and analyzing the situation further. Thank you all. Thank you for participating in this- Thank you very much. Conference call. Thank you, members of the management. On behalf of Axis Capital Limited, we conclude this conference. Thank you all for joining with us today. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.