Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Chintan Shah from ICICI Securities. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Yeah. Thank you, Nirav. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Q4 FY 2024 results conference call for South Indian Bank. We have with us from the management, Mr. P.R. Seshadri, Managing Director and CEO, along with the senior management team. Without further delay, I would now like to hand over the floor to the management. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Thank you, very much, Chintan. Thank you, Nirav. Good evening to all of you, and thank you for joining us, for the South Indian Bank Limited Q4 FY 2024 earnings conference call. I'm joined by my colleagues, Mr. Thomas Joseph K, EVP and Chief Business Officer, Mr. Anto George T, CGM and HR, CGM, HR and Operations, Mr. Sanchay Sinha, Chief General Manager and Head, Distribution and Branch Banking, and Vinod Francis, our GM and CFO, along with other senior colleagues of mine. Let me start with the key highlights of financial performance for the financial year 2024. The bank declared its highest ever net profits for the year, at INR 1,070 crores, which is a growth of 38% compared to the INR 775 crores in the previous year. This represents the highest net profit that we've ever registered, which is a matter of some pride for us. Net interest margin for the quarter came in at 3.38% in Q4 2024, and for the full year, stood at 3.31%, which is the highest such number in 18 years. So we have to go back 18 years to hit 3.31% again. The bank was able to show healthy growth in the average assets during the quarter. Average assets for the quarter grew 5%, which is again a sign of reasonable robustness on the business side. The bank declared its highest return on assets at 91 basis points, and the highest return on equity in the last ten years at 12.13%. Net interest income for the quarter was INR 875 crores, as against INR 819 crores during Q3 FY 2024. Majority of this growth in net interest income came on our banking asset side. A small proportion, a small fraction, approximately INR 10 crores or so, incremental revenue, came via increased interest income on our treasury book. So therefore, a large proportion of the growth in net interest income is coming through the sustained growth in assets. The bank successfully completed its rights issue during Q4 FY 2024, taking the capital adequacy ratio of the bank to 19.91% and Tier I capital to 17.65%. Total business of the bank grew by 11% to INR 182,346 crore. Total deposits also grew by 11% to cross the INR 100,000 crore mark. CASA balances increased 8% year-on-year to INR 32,693 crore. Provision coverage ratio, excluding write-off, improved by 354 basis points year-on-year to reach 68.66%, almost 69%, and PCR including write-off, the way RBI measures it, improved to 79.10%. Overall, gross NPA reduced by 64 basis points to 4.50%. Net NPA reduced by 40 basis points to 1.46%. Recovery and upgradation in NPA accounts for the quarter stood at INR 424 crore, against a slippage of INR 284 crore for the quarter. We continue to grow our gold loan business, which now stands at INR 15,513 crore, with an average LTV of 74.92%, including loans that have been bought out, and an average ticket size of approximately INR 1.56 lakh. Gold loans grew at 12% year-on-year. Personal loan is another segment where we see good traction. Since the launch of pre-approved personal loans in 2021, as on March 2024, our personal book was approximately INR 2,282 crore. Our corporate business continued to grow robustly, coming in at about INR 32,000 crore at the end of this quarter. The total growth on the corporate side is approximately on a year-on-year basis, is approximately INR 8,000 crore, which accounts for a substantial portion of our total growth as well. Credit card is another area where there was significant growth. During the year, we closed the total book as at March 2024, was approximately INR 1,620 crore. Home loan and auto loans, areas where we are trying to increase our focus, was able to grow 26% quarter-on-quarter for HL, and 23% quarter-on-quarter for auto loans. The home loan book as at the end of March 2024 was approximately INR 5,083 crore, which is 29% of our retail segment, and the auto loan book was at INR 1,599 crore, which is 9% of our retail segment. We launched a bunch of new products, which will hopefully enable us to increase our NIMs. These include affordable housing, commercial vehicle and equipment, and we relaunched the LAP product. For those of you on the call, Loan Against Property is a product that is underrepresented in our balance sheet. Approximately INR 1,800 crore of that asset category only exists on our balance sheet, and we think that that is an area where we can get some growth with reasonable characteristics at higher spreads, which will, you know, contribute to the overall NIM of the organization going up. We will continue to maintain the momentum and disbursements and collections in the coming quarter, so that we achieve our desired targets. With this, I'd like to open the floor for questions. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We'll now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question, may press star and one on their touchtone 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. Participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. Ladies and gentlemen, you may press star and one to ask a question. The first question is from the line of Jai Mundhra, from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. Congratulations on a good quarter. So I wanted to check first, if you can elaborate, you have provided some details on the strategy, but if you can also highlight two key things. One is that you are saying that you are improving branch productivity, and you have launched sales value addition as a metric to, you know, sort of track the branch productivity. If you can elaborate a little bit more on that, how do you intend to do that? Does this changes a lot of things, or this is going to be a gradual incremental thing? And how would it impact, let's say, the overall financials? That is question number one. And secondly, on the, if you can throw some light on the loan mix, because even in this quarter, it looks like that corporate, the growth has come from, mainly from corporate versus, what we are trying to do is to grow more on, you know, MSME side. So, these two questions, sir. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jai. Both are very good questions. Let me answer the second portion of the question first. It is right that, you know, even in this quarter, we were dependent on corporate to give us a reasonable chunk of our growth. I think the transformation of our organization wherein retail starts firing again will take a little bit of time, and I think there needs to be a reasonable amount of patience, because we need to get the structures put in place that can originate these loans, and b, we need to, you know, build salience with respect to these products with the customers as well. So both of these processes have started. We are seeing growth, as I said, home loans on a quarter-on-quarter basis, there was a 26% growth. But having said that, it is on a low base. So as long as, you know, we now need to repeat it quarter-on-quarter, and we need to keep getting significant growth for it to start materially impacting our balance sheet. So that is gonna take a little bit of time. On the MSME side, again, we made a bunch of changes to our organization. We used to have, earlier, we used to have a sales force that was responsible for onboarding these customers, but not for managing them. There was this, you know, for these larger ticket MSMEs, there was a confusion as to whether the branch was managing it or this, relationship managers were managing them. So now we're moving to a structure where very clearly relationship managers will manage them, and branch will only provide, service at the branch level. And, origination of these assets can happen either at the branch end or through these relationship managers. And, from a tracking and reward point of view, we will reward both ends, in the RMs as well as the branches. So these kind of transitions are taking place, and for all of this to settle down and, start resulting in very significant increases, in balance sheet, is gonna take a little bit of time. So it would be hard for us to display growth immediately. But having said that, we can see trend lines, which are encouraging, and we think that as we go forward, it will start playing out the way we want it to play out. With respect to sales value addition, it's very simple. What we're trying to do is, for every product the branch sells, we have tried to use our historical data to see what is the value that accrues to the bank as a consequence of that sale. So this is based on prior history. So if you open a particular type of account, what balances historically on average have you had? For how long have you had it? And what is the expected P&L that drops into the bank? It's something that we've computed. Using this, we have created goals for the branches in such a fashion that the expectation is the branch produces sales value addition, which is equivalent to 50% of its cost. The other 50% being actually met by servicing existing clients. Our hope is that, if every branch of ours adds 50% by value of, by, by way of sales value addition, then our top line will start growing quite rapidly, because right now we are not doing it. So even today, only approximately a third of our branch cost was recovered during the quarter. Which means that our existing portfolio had to support the other two-thirds. So as that increases, auto- and, you know, remember that all of this will drip through into our P&L. So, the sales value addition that we compute is the net present value of the expected revenue streams that we see in the future. And so as sales value addition increases, automatically, the revenue streams will start building, and I think that will start playing through into our P&L. I mean, at least that's the hope. Right. No, so if I get it correct, what you're saying is that, the sales on the branch would endeavor to recover, 50% of the branch cost through sales value addition, which is, you know, a normal, sales, value addition to the, to the branch, and the rest will be, covered by existing set of clients. Is that what it is? Because- Yes, yes. So what we are saying is, out of INR 100, if there's a 100-rupee branch cost, INR 50 we want to cover by way of sales of new products. So the discount value of future value that we see from these products sold is INR 50, and the other INR 50 is the cost of maintaining a portfolio. So, you know, we have a relationship with millions of customers. Managing those relationships is also expensive. 50% of the cost is towards that, and the other 50% is being paid for by new customers. So if we can get to that level, we believe that we will be in a position to start growing revenue quite healthily. Because last quarter, we think, was a better quarter than most. When we built this metric, our expectation was roughly about 100 branches will meet it, because that was the historical trend line. But last quarter, approximately 202 did meet it. So we have seen a significant uptick. One of the things that was very satisfying is that current account origination for the quarter increased fourfold for us in the last quarter. Right. And the average balances, average quarterly balances, increased by almost 70%. So of accounts that were originated in one particular quarter, how did the average balances for those accounts, you know, track over multiple quarters? We looked at it, and we found that the average quarterly balances went up quite nicely. So some of this is on account of this measurement standard that we put in place. Some of it is extraneous factors, but we are reasonably, you know, enthused by the end results, actually. We are quite happy with what has happened. Would this involve a lot of change in the branch's KRA or the incentive structure, to the field and the branch, or this is that, that module has also been done? Sorry, sir. Your Sorry, sir. Your voice is not coming clear. Okay. So what I was checking is, would this structure already be in place? Of course, it is in place, but does this require too much of a change in the incentive structure or the, you know, branch KRA or this it should be steady state, and the templates has already been set up? Thank you. So the templates have been set up. We've been live now for. We started on first of January. So we've completed one quarter. We are using this as a mechanism of incentivizing branch behavior. So the first time we have a branch incentive structure, we hope to use this as a method of measuring branches as we go forward, but right now we have two other- we have another HR-related measure of measuring branches, but the two are getting closer and closer together. So because this whole thing about trying to figure out what the value addition is, is also a little complicated, and it is driven by behavior of our branch folks. And as we get more and more data, we get better and better at it. The idea is that we slowly, over time, move to a single method of measurement, and if this works, this will be the method of measurement going forward at the branch level. Understood. Thank you very much. Thank you. Participants, you may press star and one to ask the question. The next question is from the line of Kunal from DSP Asset Managers. Please go ahead. Hi, this is Vivek. My question was on co-lending. Since you are focusing on picking up your retail part of the advances... Would co-lending be a good way so that you can, you know, grow the retail part as well as get, you know, data, which is a very useful thing for you to embark on the next stage of growth? Yes, it would be a very good thing. So we are, we are in discussions with multiple, counterparties, as well as entities that can enable us to connect with multiple, participants. So this is something that we are actively exploring. It's taking a little longer than we thought, but, but it is something that we are working on. Excellent, sir. So just one last question: Is the growth in car book anywhere linked to the fact that the corporate, big corporate book is also growing because they tend to be very transaction banking heavy? And that's my last question. Thank you. There was some amount of, you know, out of the INR 2,000-odd crore that we did grow, a small portion, about 30%-40% came from, from the corporates. But the 60% of the growth, we grew at more than 20%, on an end of period balance basis. So about 60% of that growth is, retail on, corporate type of growth, which is another thing that we are, quite happy about actually. Excellent, sir. Thank you and wish you good luck. Thank you. Thank you. Participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. Next question is from the line of Tejas Shah from Unique Stockbroking Limited. Please go ahead. Yeah, I have a few questions. If you can throw some light on the latest CV tie-up that you've done with Ashok Leyland, I think for vehicle financing for dealers. That is one. Secondly, if you can throw some light on the rights issue versus a QIP selection. And again, we are, let us say the bank is receiving around some INR 1,200 crore odd on rights, but again, we are paying dividend and we are again borrowing some INR 84 crore-INR 100 crore. And plus, if you can throw some light on the provision coverage ratio, when are we planning to hike it up to 85%-90%? Okay. The rights issue versus QIP, the decision was on the basis of the fact that, at the point in time we made this decision, we were trading significantly below book, and we thought that if we did a QIP, we will dilute, holders who are currently holding our stock, and consequently, we went in for the rights. Anyway, that decision is, has been made, the rights issue, has happened. Our stock count has gone up, on account of, you know, one is to four rights that we've done. Last year, we paid the dividends of 30%. This year we are just, we continued with it. Every 5% dividend increase or decrease impacts the total dividend payout by roughly INR 13 crore. So we have paid approximately INR 78 crore in total cumulative dividends during the year. Last year, we paid roughly about INR 62 crore or thereabout. There's an INR 18 crore increase, and which the board felt was appropriate, given the support that we've got from our shareholders in the past. And it is not too large a number for us to quibble about. With respect to the tie-up that we have with Ashok Leyland, we have multiple relationships with Ashok Leyland, so we do substantial quantities of business with Ashok Leyland. An area that we are looking at is the financing of their dealers. So dealer floor finance is an area that we've been working on, and, we've had, you know, the appropriate, sign-ups done with, Ashok Leyland on that front. Let me just ask, Senthil, my colleague, who manages this, to pipe in if I'm, inadvertently saying something which is inappropriate. Senthil, over to you. You want to add, more context to this? Yes, boss. I hope I'm audible and clear. Yes, you are. We started this CV/CE business about a year back or maybe four to five months back, where we have come with a product line and a suite for delivering to retail, commercial vehicle and construction equipment customers. So in that context, you know, as a backward or a forward integration, we thought that we will try and engage with big manufacturers and have a tie-up with them, and use the dealer route to try and, you know, fund the dealer and then do the retail finance to take out the loan. So that is a larger thought process and philosophy behind engaging with manufacturers. So Leyland happens to be one of them. There are also leading construction equipment manufacturers like JCB, whom we have signed off with, hence the retail business through the dealer financing route. I think it's that it gives clarity. Then I think that's the strategy part. Yeah. What are we looking at in terms of the top line and bottom line, in case you can throw some light since? What are the expectations of the business coming out from this in terms of the growth? On the CBC side, I think the thought process is that if you're able to get to about, you know, INR 1,000 crore-INR 1,100 crore of business by the end of this year, then I think we will be happy. I think when we started, the thought process is to build it to about INR 1,000 crore and then a period of time build the book. ... Okay, thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Ravindra, individual investor. Please go ahead. Hello, am I mute? Yes, you are now. Thank you, sir. Congrats for the good quarter. So my first question is, the growth rate, right? So given the balance sheet size, like, loan book of some INR 80,000 crore. So big banks, right, like the Axis Bank, even though the balance sheet size is INR 2,000,000 crore or something more like that. So they are growing at 20%, and we are growing at, 12%. So why is it difficult? With quality, why can't we grow at 20% also? Yes, sir, that is my first question. Okay. Now, historically, this bank has grown at rates lower than this, so we've taken it up to 12. You are right. I mean, our ambition is to grow at the market, because otherwise we become relative to the market, we become smaller and smaller over time. But, you know, we need to grow with quality, and that implies that our systems, processes, technologies have to be appropriate for the product that we are offering, and that is a journey that we have engaged in. So we launched our first fully automated lending solution for MSME this quarter, which enables our branches to actually say yes or no to a customer in the span of approximately an hour. And, like that, we need to now create multiple swim lanes through which different products can be put through. And once those product sets are in place, is when we will be able to grow much faster than we are currently doing. So our ambition is to fix our systems, processes, and then grow, as opposed to trying to grow without fixing it, which means that we will make mistakes in the process. So right now, we think that we'll continue to grow at this 12%-13% range that we have demonstrated last year. And once we, over the next 12 months or so, our systems and processes will be fixed, new systems will come into place, post that, we should be able to step up our growth and come closer to the market norm. I trust that answers your question. Yes, sir. So the next question is on the cost to income ratio. It looks like it's trending up, maybe some 64% or something. And what is your aspirational range for that? And another thing is, given that we are going into the higher yielding assets, so how can we control the, I mean, what, I mean, are we going to control the NPA or we don't? So given the new book, right, the NPA is very negligible. Is it going to look like the same, or is it going to increase the NPA numbers, if we go to the higher yielding assets? So thank you very much for that question. We are acutely aware of the fact that the cost income ratio for us is higher than our peers. It's an area that we are fully seized of, and we are wanting to correct that over a period of time. There are no immediate fixes for this. We've looked at our expenses very clearly and very closely. We find that roughly two-thirds of our expenses are not controllable, i.e., they belong to areas where changes are difficult. Approximately a third of it is controllable, where we have some element of leeway to actually impact those expenses. Under the circumstances, what we are doing is, we are looking at our expenses very closely. We are monitoring every expense that we make very, very tightly. At the same time, we are hoping to grow our revenues quite considerably because we do believe that we have, excess capacity in our organization, which needs to be, leveraged. And as revenues grow, automatically, revenue expense ratios will rise, if the expenses do not grow at the same, time. Our ambition, we had actually disclosed in the last quarter, we said that we want to take off about 1,000 basis points from our revenue expense ratio. I do believe that, that is going to be a difficult, task, and it will take multiple years. It's not gonna happen overnight, because of the nature of the expense that we have. But, you, you make a very, very good point with respect to, revenue expense ratios. If you were to ask me what is the biggest challenge I face as an individual in this company, I would say that that is the biggest challenge that we are facing at this point in time, because it does reduce strategic choices that are available from a management perspective as to what we can do with our business. With respect to your second question, which is basically you're saying you're going to higher yielding business with your portfolio- Sir, sorry to interrupt you. We are losing your audio. Uh, Ladies and gentlemen, please stay connected while we rejoin the management back to the call. Participants, please stay connected while we rejoin the management back to the call. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience. We have the line for the management reconnected. Sir, please go ahead and continue. Okay. I don't know where you lost me, but I thought I'd answered the first part of the question. Yes, sir. Second part of the question. ... Yeah, second part of the question with respect to credit costs, we- No, sir, higher yielding assets. Right. Higher yielding assets, NPA. Yeah, we are moving into higher yielding assets, and these are relative, when I say higher yielding assets, this is relative to the current asset book that we have. So as you know, we have 40%, I'm sorry, corporate, and within that corporate, we have a large chunk of triple A corporate. So therefore, our assets that, on the corporate side, our yields are quite low. So relative to that, we want higher yield, which does not mean that we are taking higher risk, necessarily. So we don't expect very material change in the portfolio performance. It has performed quite well. In our deck, we now have given you ever 30+ at 6 MOB, one graph, which you can look at. We expect the trend lines to stay where they are as we go forward. Thank you, sir. All the best for your future purpose. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next follow-up question is from the line of Tejas Shah from Unique Stockbroking Limited. Please go ahead. Hi. We missed the provision coverage, which means what is the roadmap going ahead? So we are currently at about 79.1%, the way RBI measures it, and we are at about 69% and change the way you would measure it without the technical write-off. So far, the provision coverage ratio has been built up by excess of recoveries over slippages, and we believe that that trend line will continue. So over the next year or so, we expect another 300-400 basis point improvement on this number. At some point in time, we will need to take a management call on whether we need to aggressively do technical write-offs, which can materially alter both the gross NPA as well as the net NPA and the provision coverage ratio. But given the fact that majority of our assets are secured, and given the fact that we have now reached approximately 70% PCR, we are not looking at very aggressive write-offs and provisioning at this juncture. Cool. If you can also throw some light on the retail segment revenue and retail banking, basically, because the revenue and the incomes are, I think, there is a decrease in that in terms of the income. Basically, when I say your other retail banking, there I think there is some drop in the income. So if you can throw some light, where are we losing money over there? I, I'll turn this question over to Vinod, who is our CFO, to provide color on this question. Yeah. This is basically with regard to the segment reporting you are referring to? Correct. Yes. So in the segment reporting, if you see that the allocation, what we do is based on the asset side. So whenever the asset, there is a change in the different segments, the expense getting allocated to those segments also getting altered. So we cannot readily map the income, what we earn from that particular asset, particular segment, to the real income what goes into the profit loss account. Therefore, the segment reporting, the allocation is based on the asset side. Okay. Um- Hope that clarifies you. But then, again, year-on-year, if we are seeing, we are seeing 100, means 60% of INR 441 crore gone down to INR 21 crore, so what? There's a massive drop, right? That means we are not, we are not making money over there or what exactly? Or is shifted to some other area of the banking which is getting recognized. So it's not that we are not making money over there. We are making money over there. That is, as I told, the allocation that comes into the segment, that shows the calculation is made based on the asset side. For example, if the treasury, the asset side is reducing, it will get the expense that is getting allocated to this get reduced, and proportionately, the segment where the highest assets will have higher allocation of expenses. So that's why a particular segment may have a lower revenue, showing a lower revenue. It's not that the actual revenue from that segment is lower. That is totally different from the revenue that flows into the P&L. That's my point. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next question is from the line of Milan Shah, individual NRI investor. Please go ahead. Yes, good afternoon. Thank you for this opportunity. So it was... My question is a follow-up on the earlier question on the segment results. So, you know, this is something that is not clear to us. So while everybody is congratulating on a good quarter, if you look at the segment information, the profit during this quarter is INR 392 crore versus INR 522 crore last time. So leaving aside the issue about allocation, we- there's a drop of almost INR 120 crore in the profit, and this is in spite of a INR 100 crore treasury income, which we know is not generally repeatable. So I'm struggling to understand how this is a good quarter. We are showing a loss on the corporate side of INR 44 crore, it seems. Sir, mainly when we see the corporate, we have main growth comes from the corporate segment, and here the corporate means the segment is above INR 7 crore... what we classify as segment for the corporate sector. So the growth, majority of the growth happens in corporate sector. The higher allocation will now probably goes to the corporate sector. So the, where the asset size of the other segment, for example, the treasury has slightly de-grown their asset size, and also with the other segments coming down and the corporate segment going up the asset base, definitely the allocation of expense and other interest expense will go higher to the wholesale and banking and corporate sector. So that's the reason, even though the revenue has increased, the loss is almost on the same line, because the expense allocation has increased in the corporate sector. No, I think, see, that, it's not making much sense, to be honest. Because, see, we are, you know, let's leave aside the segment. How do you at the overall level, at the quarter level, see, your total expenses are what they are. You know, let's forget the inter-segment allocation, but your profit overall for the quarter is INR 392 crore versus INR 522 crore of last time. So how does the allocation impact that? Sir, maybe we have the detailed reply, maybe we can connect to that, after this call, sir. We'll give a detailed reply based on the detail. Yes, I think so. Yeah, because it has nothing to do with the allocation. You know, how do we explain a drop in absolute terms of almost 20% in the quarter versus last quarter? That's what we need to understand. It's not the revenue base the drop has happened, is on the profit. So, definitely we'll have a connect to that after this call, and we'll give the details. Yes, please. Please do that. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. Participants, you may press star and one to ask the question. Next question is from the line of Chintan Shah. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. So sir, one to three questions from my end. Firstly, sir, if you could help us with the break-up of other income. Vinod, do you want to take that? Yeah. Other income breakup. Sir, you want the item-wise breakup or the broad breakup? Yeah, uh, If you give the broad breakup, then, Apart from that, yeah. Like, a revaluation of investments, forex income, that way, sir. Yeah. Our core fee income is at INR 191 crore. Mm-hmm. If you compare with the Q4, compared to the Q3, it was INR 179 crore. And the treasury and forex, in Q3, it was one fifty-eight crores, and in Q4 it is INR 80 crore. So the major dip happened in the treasury is mainly because in Q3 we had the benefit of lot of IPOs and other market favorable conditions, which helped to gain higher incomes in Q3. So in Q4, the income is slightly down on the treasury side, and in others also, we have slight dip from INR 115 crore to INR 75 crore from Q3 to Q4. That dip mainly happened mainly because of the lower recovery from the fully written-off accounts, which we had higher in the Q3, and also the FLDG also, that is income booking from FLDG, which we don't have in Q4, but we had in Q3. So these two factors, two, three factors have contributed for the dip in the other income compared to Q3. So, sir, if you could quantify the amount of lower recovery from written off in Q3 from Q4? One second. Sir, in Q3 it was INR 30 crore, and in Q4 it is INR 7 crore. Okay, okay. Sure. Sir, if I may get the number of write-off, write-off for the quarter. The write-off, we have not done as such potential write-off, we have not done. Only the write-off that comes in the P&L is the settlement that happens as part of recovery. And the amount is roughly INR 20 crore. And the amount is roughly INR 20 crore. Okay. And sir, one thing on the margin, so if you look at the margins, they were up by around 19 with QOQ. This is despite the yields being up only around six with QOQ. So largely the margin seems to be driven by the investment yield. So, basically, there is a kind of a divergence in the COF and COD in this quarter also. COF has gone up slower than the COD, so any specific reason for that? And similar on the yield side as well, the advance yield is lower, fixed while the yield on asset is much higher. Similar reason on that side as well. So if you see our cost of deposit, that has slightly increased when compared with the QoQ basis, because we have a lot of repricing happened in Q3 and Q4, so the impact has come in Q4. So that has slightly squeezed on that margin side. But however, our yield on advance is on increasing trend, and that will continue, that we are expecting to continue. So basically, our net interest income grew from INR 819 crore to INR 875 crore. The increase, about INR 10 crore increase comes from increased, income on the, on the treasury side. The treasury book shrank a little, approximately INR 2,000 crore, end of period. So the average numbers I don't have with me, but, it shrank but gave us a little bit higher, income. The rest of the growth came because we had substantially higher average assets for the quarter than we did in the prior quarter. So our average assets had grown 5%, and as a consequence, the total net interest income that is flowing through had increased quite considerably. ... So if there are other technical details about the movement of these rates, et cetera, then I will request Vinod to touch base with you separately and walk you through the numbers. Okay, it's awesome. And, one more thing also, on the, so the recently newly launched products, namely Affordable Housing, CV or CE, and Revamped LAP, which we have done in this quarter. So some more nuances on the business in terms of LTV, ticket size, and sourcing, whether we are doing it internally or via a DSA model. And, secondly, would these be higher yielding products, but adjusted for the initial OpEx cost, which will be front-ending, would they be ROE accretive over a period, means, how would it be, when will it show up in the ROE? And what could be the size of this book after two years, say, two years from now on? Yeah. All of these products, I mean, for it to be material to us, have to be at least four, four figure crores. Affordable housing used to be a core product for the bank once upon a time. I mean, we moved into prime housing three or four years ago and vacated that niche. We are going back to an area that we have done business with in the past. Too early for us to tell you what the yields are, et cetera, but our aim, ambition is to get at least INR 1,000 crore in each one of these product categories, if not more. Mortgage LAP, for instance, we want to do a couple of INR 1,000 crore during the year. So we can, we've not specified goals for ourselves, but that is what we would intend to do and what we have sort of cemented in our mind as to what we want to do. Okay. Sure, sure. So probably, but, it will show in a year, only by the end of this year or probably by next year, first half, we could see some impact, then it's positive impact on the ROE. Would that be a fair assessment or it will take some more time? Yeah. It will... Only when it becomes material will it start showing. Yeah, that's a fair assessment. So let us say affordable housing, we want to do INR 2,000 crore during the year. By the time we get, since the balance sheet size is already INR 80,000 crore, for it to materially impact our, you know, NIM, et cetera, we need to have a certain critical mass. So that is gonna take, if not nine months, a year. Sure, sir. Sir, that's it from my side. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Next question is from the line of Palak Shah, from Elara Capital PLC. Please go ahead. Yeah, I just had a few questions on the guidance front. If you could guide about the what kind of growth, margins and ROE are looking from the mixture perspective, from my side? Ma'am, we would, we want to grow at the rate at which we grew this year, which is about 12% of assets, 12%-13%, so either 12% or early teens on the asset side, and deposit side is a similar number. Because this is the time when we are transitioning from our older models of business to a new model of business, which requires a great deal of investment in time and energy on our part to change our processes, et cetera. We've hit about 3.38% NIM this quarter. In the medium term, we want to get to about 3.5%. So we are doing everything in our power to increase NIMs. And majority of this is gonna happen by restructuring the balance sheet, by getting higher yield books to grow, whereas the low, constraining the lower yield books. And the constraints on the lower yield book will start once our higher yield engines start operating. So as of this moment, our higher yield businesses are not keeping in volumes at the level we want. Therefore, we are not constraining the lower yield business, which is basically corporate. But 18 months out, we would like to see approximately 350 basis points NIM, and increase that thereafter. Yeah? Okay, and ROE? ROE will stay where it is, ma'am. As you can see, it's we are at roughly about 100 basis points now. We don't see any immediate trigger for it to increase. ROE increase will come once some of our expense-related challenges are met with by increase in revenues. So currently the driver is cluster. We will stay at about one in the near future, and once our revenues start growing quite considerably, that's when ROE numbers will start increasing. But in the near term, it will remain where it is. Okay. That's it from my side. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next question is from the line of Chinmay, from Prescient Capital. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. Just a bookkeeping question from my side. Could you share the average LTV on the gold loan portfolio for the entire year of FY 2024? It's 74. It's It's 74 and touch, Chinmay. Got it, sir. And what would you say would be the steady state number that you'd be looking at? Because I think a couple of quarters back it was somewhere around 83%, if I remember correctly. So... Including buyout, it's at 74.92%, so about 75%.... and excluding buyout, which is basically our own portfolio, is at 70.73%. So, the long-term trends are that it will continue to drop, is my view, because majority of our growth is coming from our own sources. Understood, sir. And what is the average yield on this portfolio for the year? Can I get, you know, to answer that separately to you? I mean, I don't have the data with me at this juncture. Sure, sir. Sure. Thank you, sir. Yeah. Thank you. Next question is on the line of Prabal from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead. Yeah, thank you. I'm audible? Yes. Can I- Go ahead. My first question is on the yield. We have seen- Prabal, sorry to interrupt you. We are actually losing your audio. Can you speak to the handset, please? Is it better now? Slightly. Much better. Okay. Sir, so my question was on yield. We have seen sequential increase in the loan yields while we are also simultaneously increasing our share of corporate book. So what explains this dichotomy? Very, very good question. It is, you know, reasonably aggressive pricing action in the sense that demanding and getting a reasonable price with the corporates. We had some leeway with on our the finance company books. The NBFC exposures that we had post the change in risk weight we did go back and try and renegotiate wherever it was possible, so that we got a incremental yield to cover for the incremental risk weight that RBI had prescribed for us. So that enabled us to take our corporate yield a little bit higher than where it was in the past. Plus, you know, just overall trying to be a little bit more careful with respect to how we price ourselves on the corporate side enabled us to take the total corporate yields up. I have with me my colleague, Biji, who is our Corporate Bank Head, so maybe she can throw a little bit more light on this, and then we can come back to me. Good evening, sir. Thanks for the question. So basically, what we have done is that, of course, in terms of the large corporate AAA ones and all, the pricing is a bit finer, but we try to balance it through the, you know, converting wherever possible to the, to the WCDL, where the incomes are on, WCDL means the core loans where the yield is on a higher side. Then, making a mix of the supply chain finance. Earlier, Manjusha-ji, I was asking about the tie-up with Ashok Leyland. So similar tie-ups with many OEMs we have done. So those dealer finance cases which are coming in, then a mix of other vendor finance cases which are coming in. So through all these activities, we try to balance the whole portfolio. In certain cases, it will be finer price, whether the corporate is a higher rated one. But in the other cases, it is able to manage the whole portfolio in a manner that the whole yield is improving. Hope I have answered the question. Yes. Yes, ma'am. So my second question, again, on the corporate side. So, we are seeing also, the share of rest of India, increasing in the, in the corporate side. So I understand that, you have a, a reasonably better brand in the southern and the Kerala markets, but what is our right to win in the, in the rest of the India, in the corporate side, and how are you, you negotiating the pricing with the customers outside of these areas? See, in what I understand is whether the percentage of Kerala is lower. Can you please come again on that detail? Basically he's asking why should people bank with us, and why should we win in this situation? Yes. I think the answer is, very simple. Okay. We have high quality, high quality RMs, and we are very tenacious and dogged, and we've been chasing- Correct. this business for a long time. So we have a large book in Bombay, and we have a large book in Delhi, which is what- Delhi, North. Yeah. Yeah, rest of India business. So we offer every product that other people do. Only thing we do is we offer it with perhaps a little bit more personalized care than many other banks can manage. And consequently, you know, our corporate customers think that it is appropriate for them to deal with us. Add anything you may wish, Biji. Yes. So basically we work with, 60, around 68 RMs, and there are certain regional heads as well. So from the central, level, we take a pre-washed data of all the major corporates whom we want to approach. It's a kind of a wish list where we will check the basic data, and then we will approach them with a tailored product wherever we can, support them in terms of the term loans or in terms of the supply chain part, which I was explaining earlier, or in terms of short-term as well, because where, wherever there is any opportunity through the short-term, we enter through that, and then we move into the normal working capital level. So there's, people who will be approaching the corporates with a curated product, which will be somewhat matching their requirements in that present level. The homework which is being done in that area actually is helping us to crack the deals. ... Got it, and this is entirely sold or there is some element of multiple banks in the arrangement as well? There are both. Even if it is sole banking or kind of, multiple banking or consortium, wherever it is, we keep on going ahead with our own analysis, our own risk appetite and everything. We don't depend upon the analysis done by some other bank. It's based on our risk appetite and our risk capabilities alone. Got it. Great. My last question is on the retail side. Currently, the book is not growing, but as we plan to scale this book, the focus geographies will be, will be at Southern Kerala geographies, or we also intend to push into the other markets? Should I take it? Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Yes. So, we were, we are strong in the southern areas and Kerala as well, but the major cities and the major metros and all, actually, our base is low, where we have a lot of opportunities to grow. So in terms of the secured retail, if you consider the housing loans and the vehicle loans, with the tie-ups that is happening with the OEMs and the dealer side actually, is helping us to scale up in terms of the auto part. And coming to the housing segment, with all the tie-up which are, we are, which we are doing with the builders, wherever we have corporate relationships already tied up and everything, that is also helping us to penetrate to the builders. So these areas is helping us to keep us moving in all the major metros and the cities, and at the same time, the branches in the southern area is also focusing on. So it's a two channel, you can say. Through the DSA, DST, builders and dealers and everything, the whole growth is happening. At the same time, the branches are also working with their own clients and all the new additions that is happening. Got it. And when should we expect the retail, the retail book to start picking up? Of course, it's, it has already started growing, and auto has grown with more than 30% in last year, and housing is also moving up, and we have, as Seshadri Sir was explaining, the growth has started happening in that area. The logins are improving and our presence is also improving in all the major cities. Got it. The entire process of turnaround time and everything, that is in place, so the only push is required now? Yes, and then slight changes are required in the process part as well, which we are working upon, straight through processes where possible, we are trying to make it also happen. Got it. Thank you, and all the best. Thank you. Thank you. Next question is from the line of Jai Mundhra. Please go ahead. Two questions. One is, you know, we had in the last month, last month, we had said that, we have to sort of stop credit card because of, you know, observation on co-brand partner- Sorry, we are losing your audio. Can you speak to the handset, please? Yeah, hi, sir. I wanted to check an update on, you know, credit card tie-up that we had, because after RBI observation for whatever reasons, we had to discontinue that. So, A, if you could highlight, you know, what was the issue and how far are we in the current setup to... I mean, how far, how, what is the progress on that front? Thank you, and I'll ask the second question later. So, Jai, with respect to the credit card, as of this moment, we are not issuing any incremental cards. We are continuing to manage the cards that we had at the time when the RBI request for us to stop issuing new cards came into force. The balance sheet continues to be buoyant, and therefore, from a revenue perspective, we don't see any immediate risk. With respect to the points that RBI wanted addressed, given that, you know, RBI's letter is not in the public domain, I am constrained to not, you know, give you all the details. Safe to say that RBI wanted us to make a few changes, which we are working on. Currently, it is work in progress. We think that we know what needs to be done. Once we are also in dialogue with the Reserve Bank of India to understand whether our interpretation of their requirements is appropriate or not. And once, you know, we get concurrence from them that this is what they intend for us to do, we will ensure implementation happens in quick order. And our current wish list, and I'm not saying that it will happen in that form, but our current wish list is that we should be in a position to have, you know, crossed all the T's and dotted all the I's, and restart next quarter, subject to RBI approval. So that is the timeline that we're working on. Right. Subject to RBI approval. Yeah. Correct. Correct. So is it safe to say that, I mean, all our credit card issuance are with the partner, right? We don't originate too much on our own. No, we have zero card issuances on our own. It's all done through this single co-brand partner. As of this moment, there are no incremental credit cards being originated. Sure. So my question is a bit of a follow-up on the, somewhere earlier asked, on the ROE tree, right? So this quarter, this year as a whole, this was a good year in the sense that, you know, there was a good treasury income, which may or may not sustain. Asset quality has been good, probably it will sustain. But if from here, I mean, you said that the endeavor will be to increase margins by a few basis points. But, I mean, what could be the other lever? Because it looks like treasury, you know, may not see a similar gain, and OpEx, has that OpEx because of wage bipartite, et cetera, et cetera, has that been, is that already over? As OpEx as a percentage of assets, should that decline or should that improve? And, or how should one look at the ROE? So margins are more or less stable to rising, but because there is a treasury drag, how should one look at, let's say, fee income and OpEx line item? Thank you. Good question, Jai. I wish I could answer that. I would need a crystal ball, which I don't have. But let us assume, let us start with the basics. I, our biggest challenge is, as you rightly mentioned, is on the expense side. So I'll, we, we will do our utmost to ensure that the expense numbers remain where they are and not deteriorate any further. And, we will eke out, a few extra, you know, basis points on the spread side so that our revenues increase. So from the expense side, we're gonna manage it very tightly. We don't think that, we should have a very substantial increase. There will be some, ongoing increase on account of inflation-related adjustments, but not of the same order of magnitude that we current... have seen in the past. We will get, we will do our damnedest to change our product mix in such a fashion that we, we get, some uptick on the spread side. And then finally, the wild card is going to be what happens... Actually, there are two wild cards, what happens on our recovery side and what happens on the, on the treasury side. Treasury side, for the near term, we don't see much, visibility of, profit potential, because the fixed income side, given that, rates are back up to 7.20 and thereabout, there is limited, P&L that can come on the fixed income side. There is still some money to be made on the FX and equity side, which we are continuing to make, but not of the same order of magnitude that we saw in Q3 of 2024. So given all of this, finally, on the recovery side, which has been helping us from a P&L standpoint, very dramatically over the last few years, we think that we still have another six to nine months of runway, where recoveries will remain reasonably buoyant, and consequently, we have that time horizon to actually change the asset mix. So in the near term, as I mentioned earlier, our ROAs will not rise from where they are at this point, but we have levers in our hands that will help us not, you know, to keep it where it is and give us time to build alternate revenue streams and increase our NIMs in such a fashion that ROA growth is possible in the long run. I don't know if I've answered your question or not. No, that answered. Thank you for the answers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next question is from Pallavi Deshpande from Sameeksha Capital. Please go ahead. Yes, sir. Just wanted to understand on the current account, you've mentioned a threefold rise in the balances for the new customers. So just wanted to understand what's driving that? Partly driven by the new sales value-added tool that we created, which made it possible for us to measure one branch against another. So in the past, you know, when you were looking at branch measurements, you had a branch profitability report, and you had a branch sales report. And the branch sales report used to have multiple things in it, you know, current accounts, different types of current accounts, NR accounts, savings accounts, different types of savings accounts, some asset products, vault products, wealth management products, everything. And it becomes very difficult to compare one branch with another. The sales value-added metric enables us to compare one, one product with another. So last quarter, we sensed an opportunity in the market on the current account side, and we incented our people to go after current accounts. And as a consequence, we did over 20,000 current accounts last quarter, which is significantly more. Normally, in a quarter, we do significantly less. So it was a huge increase for us, and it also increased the total amount of POS machines that we had in force. So all of that put together, impacted the growth in CASA balances positively. Right. That's a great performance there on that side. Second, my second question was on the, NBFC. So what would be the share of lending to NBFCs right now of the total book? No, no. Our total NBFC exposure, ma'am, can we tell you offline? I mean, we'll just... We will, we'll come back to you offline, ma'am. Yeah? Right. Thank you. Okay. Bye. Thanks. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll take that as the last question. I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. So I wanted to thank all of you for being here. I think we've had a decent quarter. I mean, we've started making progress on growing our net interest margin. We've started, you know, the process of transitioning from an institution that was dependent largely on one line of business to having multiple lines of business that contribute to it. Our journey of simplifying our processes and our journey of building world-class technology that supports our sales engines has begun. Our first fully automated product has gone live, and we are hoping that it will perform well. We have an agenda of installing six or seven similar products before the year is out, which in turn will change the way we do business and the way we interact with our customers. So I think we are feeling reasonably good about the quarter that has just ended. We understand that the top-line numbers do not show our achievements very favorably, but I think the underlying trends are reasonably good, and we are looking forward, you know, with, you know, we are looking forward to improving our performance as we go forward. So thank you very much, everybody, for being on this call. We really appreciate it. Thank you very much. On behalf of ICICI Securities Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.