Ladies and gentlemen, we have the management team connected. Please go ahead, sir. Okay, thank you. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to our Fourth Quarter FY 2023 Earnings Call. Hope all of you are keeping well. Fourth quarter not only was a successful quarter by itself, but also marks Ujjivan's crossing several milestones along its journey of becoming a leading mass-market bank and setting new benchmarks. Some of the milestones we crossed are quarterly disbursements of INR 6,001 crore, up 23% year-on-year and 24% quarter-on-quarter, so this is a crossing of the 6,000 mark. A yearly disbursement of INR 20,037 crore, up 42% year-on-year. This is the first time we have crossed the 20,000 mark for the year. Total deposits at INR 25,538, up 40% year-on-year and 10% quarter-on-quarter. Again, another landmark or another milestone crossing the 25,000 mark. New benchmarks on profitability side, our quarterly profits crossed the 300 mark at 310 for the fourth quarter and INR 1,100 crore mark for the full year at INR 1,100. This makes us the second most profitable small finance bank as well as the second most profitable player in the MFI business. We launched our visual voice vernacular-based mobile banking app, which aims to increase digital penetration among semi-tech savvy customers. I'll take some time here. The app is a result of a futuristic thought process and makes it very convenient for this category of customers to access mobile banking and transact without much assistance. Currently, the transactions include like EMI payment, balance check, money transfer, et cetera. However, we are working towards transactions like loan application as well on this app. It is the first application of its kind and will go a long way. We have already received a lot of accolades here, including the Aegis Graham Bell Awards for 2022 for innovation in customer tech. Total downloads of this app have crossed 130,000 within a few months of launch, we are already seeing customers using the app to repay. Another first thing that we have this year is the payment of equity dividends. Given the strong performance, the board has suggested to share a portion of with our shareholders. We have already paid INR 0.75 as interim dividend, the board has recommended an additional final dividend of INR 0.50. I would mention here that this is one of a kind high payment because of the special case as well as the bank crossing so many milestones in fiscal 2023. During the quarter, we picked up branch expansion with 31 new branches, taking the total to 629 for the financial year ending March 2023. Total number of branches during FY 2023 was 54. We marked our presence with five new branches or five branches into the state of Telangana this year. These branches have already garnered good number of deposits in excess of INR 175 crores. Now we expect to open 100 branches in financial year 2024. That includes entering the state of Andhra, which will be our 26th state. An update on the merger with our promoter, UFSL, Ujjivan Financial Services Limited. We have submitted our application to the Bengaluru NCLT after receiving all requisite approvals and now await the NCLT guidance on dates to hold meetings to get the various regulatory clearances like shareholder approval. As you are aware, my tenure as MD and CEO has been approved until January 25. The board has been working on identifying my successor. Among other aspects, the candidate should be having a strong business orientation, connect with ground and dedication towards building a mass-market bank. The board would identify the potential candidates, internal or external, much before the due date to ensure a smooth transition. On the disbursement side, not only did the bank cross milestones this quarter, but also individual businesses made their own milestones. The housing disbursements were INR 439 crores, up 44% year-on-year and 27% for the quarter, crossing the INR 400 quarterly disbursement. Similarly, FIG disbursed INR 318 crores, up 165% year-on-year and 33% quarter-on-quarter, crossing the INR 300 crore quarterly disbursement. Our micro loan disbursements, group and individual, were also at the highest ever with INR 4,929 crores, up 35% year-on-year and 30% quarter-on-quarter. Our group loan gross customer acquisition during FY 2023 stands at INR 9.1 lakh, constituting more than half of the growth during the year. Our gross loan book grew 10% quarter-on-quarter to INR 24,085 crores after a total write-off of INR 67 crores, of which INR 55 crores is technical write-off. We are quite pleased to share our performance on the deposit side as well. Total deposits grew 10% quarter-on-quarter. CASA grew 11% versus December, which is despite the industry trend of flattening CASA trends. Our collections and asset quality continue to improve, putting us among the industry best on this regard. Our NDA collections are back to pre-COVID days, with overall collection efficiency continuing to track the 100% mark. Our GNPA is down to 2.6% from 7.1% at the beginning of the year. While NNPA are at remarkably low levels currently in the range of 0.04%-0.05% for the last three consecutive quarters. Restructured book continues to show healthy collections. The book now constitutes less than 1% of our total gross loan book with a very high provision cover. We had slippages of our fresh GNPA of around INR 19 crore this quarter, while upgrades and recoveries were INR 59 crore for the fiscal. Slippages were INR 335 crore with upgrades and recoveries of INR 506 crore. The collection and asset quality improvement during FY 2023 highlights the success of dynamic collection strategy, which encompasses balanced usage of on-roll and off-roll collection team, along with multiple agencies and data analytics. Slippages have started to normalize towards the end of FY 2023, we believe bad debt recoveries would continue during FY 2024. On the financials, our NIMs for the year stands at 9.5% in line with our previous guidance. This is a blend of rising cost of funds, which has been partially set off by yield expansion. The cost of fund rise is being driven by rising repo rates and aggressive pricing in the wholesale deposits. While we believe rate growth may start to plateau, the rise in cost of funds may take time to flatten as our old funding slowly gets replaced at current rates. The yield expansion is due to reducing NPA, driving higher income generating loan book and some rate hikes taken in the asset businesses. Last change in micro banking rates was on 1st of March 2023, when we had a 50 basis point hike. The pre-provision operating profit for fiscal year was INR 1,485 crores with a negligible credit provisioning. PAT stands at INR 1,100 crores. For the quarter, pre-provision operating profit and PAT stands at INR 411 crores and INR 310 crores respectively. I'd like to just give you a brief outlook for the financial year 2024. Fiscal 2023 has laid a strong foundation for the next financial year, 2024, and we are committed to build on this base further. While we would like to continue to invest in technology and digital platform to increase productivity and also improve customer experience, enhance business growth, we also plan to increase our investment towards branding and marketing in order to enhance brand visibility and consolidate on the good work that has been done during the past six quarters post-COVID. Our gross loan book growth to be 25% or more during FY 2024. Our focus remains on driving sustainable growth through customer acquisition in micro banking and growth in our secured book. Housing has been growing strong, our MSME and vehicle portfolio will see a pickup during the current fiscal year. The MSME book has not seen a growth in FY 2023, as there has been some strategy transition towards a more balanced portfolio mix. Here I'd like to also say that in line with the Reserve Bank of India guidelines with Fintech, we have had to move out of one of the relationships, and that has reduced our exposure in the MSME business. We are working on two or three new partnerships which should get going in the second half of this year. Deposit growth for this year is going to be 30% or more, with further focus on CASA and granular book growth. We are focusing on digital deposits, which will see a commercial launch early during the current fiscal year. We have been focusing on making alternate service channels like phone banking, video banking, IVMB more relevant and productive. These investments would start bearing fruit in the current financial year. We expect to keep credit costs sub 100 basis points and an ROE around 22% for most for financial year 2024. Other details are now available with our investor release. Fiscal 2023 was an extra-extraordinary year in terms of business performance and profitability and has laid down a strong foundation for our coming years. We are on track to create a leading mass market bank, serving fast-growing, aspiring middle class of the Indian society. I'd like to stop here and request the operator to begin the Q&A. Thank you. Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephones. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use landlines while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We have our first question from the line of Lavanya Sisodia from ICICI Securities. The line is. Get the call on hold. We'll move on to the next question from the line of Manuj Oberoi from Yes Securities. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi, this is Rajiv here. First of all, good evening and congratulations on very strong set of numbers. Sir, I've got a few questions. Sir, firstly, what is the implied view on NIM? When you give a 22% ROE guidance for FY 2024, what is the implied view on NIM? Because in the last quarter we saw the NIM decline despite the fact that strategically improved on the portfolio, and that was because of increasing liability liquidity and coming off of LDR. How do you see these two things play out, and how then eventually how will you see the NIM behave in the coming quarters? Manuj, we expect that the NIMs in the coming year will be 9% of that. In the current quarter, given it was the last quarter of the year, the liquidity inflow on our deposit side was quite high, which increased the proportion of our treasury book also where generally the yields are on a lower side. This is why there was That is something that can be corrected in the first quarter itself. We should see for the full year next year, NIM should be 9% or more. Got that. See on the collection efficiency, while you've given the collection efficiency in the restricted portfolio in the month of March was 111%. Can you also give us the collection efficiency on the NPL portfolio for Q4? How much was it? on the NPL portfolio? Yes. NPL has been starting around 40% or more for us. Okay. Okay. I mean, just broadly here, if you're collecting 40%-50% of the NPLs on a regular basis, the restructured asset collection efficiency is also pretty high. What is your thought about, you know, provisions going ahead because we are carrying about 98% provisions on NPLs. When you give this sub 1% credit cost guidance, are we taking in some benefit of rollbacks and write-backs of the current provisions that we are holding? Some bit of rollback might happen because, like you mentioned that the unstructured book where we have a very high provision, the collection efficiency is very high. Even on the NPA book, there is a collection efficiency which is 40% +. Some bit of rollback might happen. All blended in, we are giving a guidance of sub 100 basis point. Got that. Thank you, Deepak. Thank you so much. Thank you, Manuj. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to answer queries from all participants, kindly restrict your questions to two at a time. You may join back the queue for follow-up questions. We have our next question from the line of Renish from ICICI. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. congrats on a good set of numbers. Thank you. Just two questions from. Yeah. Thanks, Deepak. Just two questions from my side. One again on the NIM side, you know. This quarter we have seen asset yield expanding by 50 basis points, with this cost of fund increasing by only 30 basis points. Despite that, you know, NIM contracted. If you can just help us through the reconciliation. Is there a bit of this IBPC securitization angle? No, no. Like I mentioned in my earlier remark also, the treasury book size increased because there was a good amount of inflow on the liability side. There was so much, so much of deposits that India came in and our LCRs were very high. There was a five, almost 500 basis point higher treasury book size that we had this quarter compared to last quarter. Got it. That impacted the overall NIMs rather than anything else. Margin expansion was basically driven by the investment yield rather than the asset yield, is what you are trying to say? no. You are talking about the yield expansion? Yeah, yeah. The yield expansion was driven by, one, we took a rate hike in our MFI portfolio in September. Full quarter impact of that. Another rate hike we took in March, another 50 basis point rate hike was taken. Put together these two things, plus the NPAs are continuously coming down. That is why the yields are expanding and the same thing will continue in the coming year as well. September 2022, how much rate hike we have done in MFI? 50 basis point. Both are high for a 50 each. one-five? five-zero. Okay. Another 50 basis point in March. Yes. What is the blend, I mean, the lending rate now in MFI? 23 and 25. 23 and 25. 23 for GL, 25 for IL. Okay. 23. One more thing is that the IL is growing faster and IL has a higher rate. That also is helping on the yield side. Got it. Got it. Secondly, just a related question, I missed that part. If you can just give us the slippage recovery number for this quarter. This quarter slippage is INR 19 crore. one-nine? Gross NPA addition was INR 19 crore and upgrade and recoveries were around INR 59 crore. Okay. Okay, slippage is for only INR 19 crore. Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. That's it from my side. Thank you, Deepak. Thank you, Renish. Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Gautam C. Jain from GCJ Financial Advisors LLP. Please go ahead. Good evening, sir. Good evening. Many congratulations. Was very good set of numbers. Thank you. My question pertains to your cost to income ratio. This year we are closing around 55%. What we want to guide for the, you know, next one year or two years, how much our absolute cost will go up, considering we are opening 100 branches next year. Gautam, we are not giving a guidance right now on cost to income ratio or any other aspect. Overall profit side, we have given a guidance that ROE will maintain 22% or more. For cost to income ratio specifically, we can say that there is going to be a lot of investment which is coming in on the branch side, on the IT side, on the human resource side. It would not be something this, the kind of drop that you saw this year, that kind of a drop would not happen. This year you saw a significant drop, from 52% from in Q4 last year to 55% this quarter. That kind of a drop would not be possible. Okay. Any comment on the cost of fund? Has it stabilized or it's going down? Can you comment on it? Cost of fund we do not expect to come down while, even if the interest rates in the system plateau out, the full year impact of the TVs and all the funds that were raised last year during the course of the year, that will impact the overall cost of funds. The cost of funds, at least for the time being, will keep moving up at least until maybe towards the second half of the year when the fresh rate or fresh funding is coming at a lower rate if the interest rates are coming down. On the interest rates, I want to just mention that, you know, our strategy on the deposit mobilization structure is that once the interest rates start showing in decline, we'll be able to take advantage of that. Okay. Okay, great. Thank you. That's it from my side. Thank you, Gautam. Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Shreepal Doshi from Equirus. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. Thank you for giving me the opportunity and congrats on a, on a good quarter. Yeah. Thank you. Wanted to understand what is your branch expansion strategy for the next couple of years, which geographies will you be targeting? Yeah, I think, you know, we had 54 branches which we added during the financial year 2023. We plan to add about 100 more branches during FY 2024. These will be spread across the country and different types of branches. Some of them will be purely branch banking, some of them will be composite, some of them will be micro banking branches. Rest assured that we are looking not just at branch banking to grow the business, we are also looking at digital business to be able to grow our way forward. That is the dual strategy which we have. In terms of new states, we are entering Andhra during this financial year. Last year, the new state we added, 25th state was Telangana. Our 26th state this time will be Andhra. That's the way we are looking at this year. Going forward, the digital strategy will begin to play a greater role as we are looking to, you know, manage the costs and also look at, other ways to expand our business. A lot of, you know, technology on the ground, video calls, video banking, phone banking, all of those will play a bigger role as we go forward. Got it, sir. Just a second question, just in line, in on the same line. Do we expect any material improvement in the OpEx upon asset metric, going ahead in FY 2024 and in FY 2025? We might see some improvement, but we'll not be able to quantify anything right now. Okay. Okay. The last question was on, you had given guidance for deposit growth. Sir, if you could please repeat it, I would say thank you. See, deposit growth, we are looking at 30% for this year. Got it. Thank you so much, sir. 30% +. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Yash Dantewadia from Dante Equity Research. Please go ahead. Hi. Good evening. Am I audible? Yes. Yeah. Hi. Hi. Good evening. Hi. My first question is regarding your write-offs. During the last three financial years, your write-offs have been close to INR 1,345 crore, out of which we've recovered approximately 12% of the write-offs. Your peer company with a similar sized loan book has written off close to INR 600-INR 650 crore. What I would love to understand is the reasoning behind this, and ideally what percentage of the write-backs would we look to recover back? I can say that, more than INR 1,000 crore of active technical write-off books is there with us right now, from which we can expect recoveries, in this year or coming year. You basically you're telling me that you'll recover close to 60%-65%. I'm not giving a%. All I'm saying is from whatever we have written off last year and during this year, around INR 1,000 + crore is pending, or is still in our active technical write-off book. From that we are continuing the recovery effort and whatever recovery will come this year will come from that. Also, two concalls, I think in the last concall you said that the recovery should slow down from here. We still haven't seen that happening. The recoveries are still at the previous pace. What do you think about that now? Well, last quarter, yes, we did caution that the recoveries may slow down. We are happy that it hasn't slowed down yet. You're expecting the momentum to continue? We expect that the momentum will continue, but, definitely next year's recoveries will be lower than this year's. Okay. My second question is regarding the floating provision. What's the latest update with that? Since your net NPA is the lowest in the industry, when will you reverse it? We are not looking to reverse it. It's there on the book as a cushion to the balance sheet. In case of any emergency or extraordinary circumstances, with prior approval to RBI, at only such circumstances we'll look to add it as a specific NPA provision. Oh, okay. Right now, INR 120 is in NPA provision, INR 100 is in other provision and INR 30 is being used as a, to steer to capital. Also regarding gold loan, what's the latest update? Have you seen any traction in this space yet? Gold loans is something that we hope to do much better this year. We've already started the process. We've got people on board, and we have identified the branches in which we will be doing our gold loans. It is mostly in the south region and this year we should see better growth in the gold loan portfolio. How will it affect your NIMs, ma'am, the gold loan portfolio, growing the gold loan portfolio? Gold loan that we are looking at is slightly lower than the overall bank level yield as of now. Definitely on the NIMs side they are on the lower side, but given they are more shorter tenure and all the renewals are quite frequent and it is in line with whatever 9% guidance that we're... It's already baked into the 9% guidance that we have given. Okay. Ideally, would you like to give any guidance for the gold loan portfolio? At what pace would you like to grow it? No, we are not giving any specific guidance. Okay. Thank you for taking all my questions. Good luck. Thank you. Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Harsh Shah from Dimensional Securities. Please go ahead. Hi. Good evening, sir, and congratulations on great numbers. My first question is on the growth. Last year, FY 2023, we saw much quicker growth in the MFI book group and individual MFI segment. A couple of years back, we had guided that we will be looking to grow the non-MFI book at a much faster rate. When we guide 25% kind of growth, what is the growth that you are expecting in MFI and non-MFI segment going ahead? One of the things that you have to keep in mind is that coming out of a COVID situation, our microbanking book was much better positioned since that is a business that we know very well to recover. That is why, between FY 2022 and FY 2023, we have seen an increase in the unsecured book in proportion to the rest of the book. Going forward, we are also, you know, we have also brought our housing portfolio and our housing business in line in terms of being able to now grow at a much faster pace. That will happen during the current year. Slowly our other businesses will also be put in similar position to grow at a faster pace because we are getting some of the technology and other things sorted out. Eventually we'll see a more balanced portfolio. For the next financial year, we are looking at about 68% unsecured slash microbanking, and the rest of it will be secured with a multiple number of products. All right. In over next three to five years, where do you expect to settle this MFI book at? No, we are moving slowly towards the 50% mark. Whether that comes in three or five years, we'll have to wait and see. That is the trend and that is the direction that we are moving towards. Okay. On the disbursement side, if I look at the segment-wise annual disbursement number which you have given in MFI, when I juxtapose it against the closing AUM, I believe that the rundown has increased a bit in the individual MFI and affordable housing MFI. Is it because the tenure has decreased or how has it impacted? What led to this higher rundown in both these books? In affordable housing, actually there was a subsidy repayment of around INR 160 crores that came in this year which impacted the book. Okay. In case of, individual MFI, I believe that it has come down from 19 to 13 months. Is it a rough calculation for individual MFI? What led to the sharp increase in rundown? Actually, the repayment, period or the month that we, call repayment month internally, how we call, has increased in, individual loan. It has not come down. You mean to say that the monthly EMI has gone up? If you are looking at only, the, for example, the OSP or the gross loan book, it could also be a factor of what was written off during the year and not just the disbursement movement and the OSP movement. Okay. On a macro basis, in microfinance, has the EMI remained same or has it gone down or gone up? Just trying to understand whether the tenure has remained same or has increased. One more thing, the IR% has actually gone up YOY. Sir, sorry, I didn't catch that. The individual loan percentage has gone up by a while. That is the trend that we believe. It will continue as the industry is slowly moving towards more of individual loans from group loans. Post-COVID, how has the EMI repayment and tenure behaved for MFI book? Yeah. As far as tenure is concerned, in microfinance, in both JL and IL, we witnessed that our average tenure has increased a bit as we have also started offering IL more so to the graduating customers who are, you know, have shown good repayment history in the past. As your loan amount increases, customers also tend to take loan, a loan with higher tenure, and that is what we are seeing. Our average tenure has increased by, say, close to 10%-15% in the past one year. Okay. That was really helpful. Thank you so much and all the best. Thank you. A reminder to participants to press star and one to ask a question. We have our next question from the line of Darpin Shah from Haitong India. Please go ahead. Yeah, good evening. Congratulations for a good set of numbers. I just have one question. You know, we are saying that, you know, loan loss provisions will be up 100 basis points for the next financial year. If you look at the number in terms of PAR, SMA or GNPA or even the additional provisions which we have on the restructured book, why still at, you know, 100 basis point kind of a number? Are we thinking of creating additional standard asset provisions here? No, Darpin, we are not looking at any change in provisioning policy as of now. That is the guidance that we can give right now, and we'll see how we perform in the future. This is only on the book basis where we might see some rise in, or some deterioration in asset quality after a wonderful delaying, numbers in 2023. Is it the, is it sincerity of things? No, we are not expecting any negative surprise in the asset quality. It's just a guidance of general guidance that we are giving right now. Hopefully we'll keep performing well on the guidance. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Rusmik Oza from 9 Rays Equity Research. Please go ahead. Yeah. I have two questions, sir. The first is, do you have any targets of CASA set for end of FY 2024? Right now we are at 26%. Is there any internal benchmark at what rate you want to reach in the next one year? Second is, you shared some inputs on the reverse merger. If you can give us some timelines, you know, by when do you expect this entire process to get over and when we can expect, you know, the holding company to get merged into the SFB. Thanks. Yeah. On the CASA, we are targeting to end FY 2024 at around 30%. We, on the reverse merger, right now, you know, the reverse merger is with the NCLT. We are waiting for them to come back to us with whatever requirements they have. We are, at the best, we are looking at September as the conclusion. It may extend a little further depending upon the, you know, whatever workload the NCLT has, because, you know, that tends to constrain the time. Our best effort or best number that we are looking at or best date we are looking at is September. Okay. Thanks. That's it from my side, sir. Thank you. Thank you. We have our next question from the line of CA Kamaljeet Singh from Balaji Finvestment. Please go ahead. Good evening. Congratulations for the good set of numbers. Most of the questions are already answered on CASA, on merger. What will be the next step forward to becoming a full-fledged bank? You're talking about a universal bank? Yes, sir. Yeah. We, I mean, some of the conditions which are there for the universal bank we have met, you know, the five years, et cetera. Now what we are doing is we are waiting for the reverse merger to be completed, and then the board will take a decision on whether to apply for a universal bank or not. That is eventually the direction we are going, and balancing of the portfolio between secured and secured is all in that direction. As an investor, we are very happy with the services that sir you have provided to this organization. You have stated that you will be moving on in January 2025. Is there any chance that you may continue? No. I mean, I, as you know, the RBI has a rule that CEOs cannot stay beyond the age of 70. I mean, you have seen that in other banks as well. That will apply to Ujjivan too. To that extent, the outer limit for me is January 25. Rest assured that, you know, we are in the process of finding a successor, and well before that date we will have the successor in place. We are very, you know, focused on that. The other thing that you have to keep in mind is the depth of the management and the depth of the talent that we have in Ujjivan, which has been very much responsible for the swift turnaround that we have achieved. I mean, in one year we have gone from, you know, a loss-making situation to the most profitable year, and that shows you the depth of the institution. That is something all investors should keep in mind. That makes a difference between one institution and another. Sir, looking at your capital adequacy, we don't find that you will be requiring capital anytime soon next year. Sorry, come again? Looking at your capital adequacy ratio, will be any requirement for any fund raise? This stage we are well-capitalized. We are at about 25%, 25.8% to be precise. We don't expect a need in the next couple of years based on the, you know, profitability that we have and, you know, the target. We always look at a target of not going below 20%, which is why we re-replenished the capital when we reached that last year. For the next two years, I don't see any need for additional capital. Couple of things that you need to keep in mind there is, one, with the reverse merger, capital adequacy would be having a little bump up given that the additional network that we have will be added to the book. Also that, this year, as we are guiding for a high ROE, so consumption of capital would not be very high. That was very first question. Thank you, sir, for your help. Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Priyesh Jain from HSBC. Please go ahead. Mr. Priyesh Jain? We have unmuted your line. Hello. Yes. Yeah. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Hi, Priyesh. Yeah. Hi. I wanted to know, what is the movement of GNPA for FY 2024? If you could give me the expected number of slippages, recoveries and upgrades for the same? We have not given a GNPA guidance for the next year, but we believe, the slippages have more or less normalized. Given the collection trend that we have seen, we do not anticipate any major negative surprise there. All that is baked into the 100 basis points or sub-100 basis points credit cost that we have given, the guidance that we have given. Okay. Sir, also I mentioned earlier, what are the slippage numbers for FY 2023? For the FY, for the fiscal 2023, the total gross NPA addition was INR 335 crores and upgrades and recovery were INR 506 crores. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Preet Nagersheth from Wealth Finvisor. Please go ahead. Good evening. Good evening. One of the questions I wanted to understand is that, on the profitability side, you've given a guidance of 22% on the ROE. Should we expect on the overall profitable number to degrow from the current year? From the last financial year that is. No, we are not looking a profit degrowth. What kind of growth should we pencil in? You can do your math. There will be a growth on the PAT number. The PPOP growth would be much higher. Even at the PAT number we'll have a decent growth there. Okay. The other question I wanted to understand is that, do you have a sense of how much additional book value would increase because of the merger? The reverse merger. Right now, I don't have a final number because board has today announced a final dividend of around 50 paisa, which will also go to the UFSL book. Depending upon how the timelines work out and all, we'll get to know how much of final cash will be there. As of now, if I exclude this 50 paise, I think roughly around 1.8 or ± 10 paise there will, should be added to our book value. Wonderful. Thank you so much for that. Thank you. Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Vivek Gautam from GS Investments. Please go ahead. Yes, sir. Congratulations on consistently giving good numbers. Sir, the one question is about the risk of our political risk of investing with MFIs. One fine day we see very shocking development, for example, in Assam and which has led to, you know, the leader is suffering, still suffering. What are we doing to navigate the political risk of MFI investing in India, this being an election year, any impact on us, sir? That's the first one. Second one was, what is our plans of moving towards the secured lending, sir? Thank you. Answering your first question, you're right that political risk is something which is very prominently we have seen in the past also in the last 10, 12 years, starting with Andhra crisis. You are right that in Assam also, the industry is at this point of time facing a lot of issue. At the same time, in Ujjivan microfinance, we have always believed in diversifying your risk and as far as geographies are concerned, and we are present in the majority of the states in the country. At the same time, we also have ensured that we are not beyond 15% of the Ujjivan portfolio in any of the states. So that we can, you know, mitigate the risk. At the same time, we have very strong EWS, you know, in place where we, you know, we are able to understand things in advance and take corrective steps. At the same time, when you have portfolio limited, a limited portfolio in a particular state, to a large extent you already, you know, negate the political and the risk related to the particular state. On the- Telangana High Court judgment was also there, which was helpful for the micro MFI sector or companies in this regard. Which judgment? Telangana High Court recent judgment was also there. Which allowed the microfinance lending operations in Andhra and Telangana, which after that SKS Microfinance problem was sort of banned. They thought of political interference and the risk have been reduced post that judgment, sir. Is my impression correct, sir? I would say that, you know, we have come a long way from the instance of Andhra crisis. If you take example of Assam crisis also, even Assam government and central government has given a lot of support to microfinance companies and borrowers in the state, and that has resulted into a lot of politics in the state. Things are changing, things are improving also, though there will be some risk related to political or geography, but at the same time, even the entire ecosystem is also slowly maturing. With time, you will see these instances going down or, you know, little improvement in such scenarios. Yeah, I think the Telangana High Court decision is very good because it puts end to, you know, that state governments cannot get involved in a institution which is governed by RBI. I think that is a good decision. I think in the long run, that will be beneficial as well because it provides clarity and it allows people to operate in a more secure environment. Sir, the second question was about the foray into the secured lending. What portion do we at present in secured lending? What is the future plan, sir? At present our secured lending book is. I mean, our unsecured lending book is around 73%. However, we are on a way to reduce the percentage in the unsecured lending. As I said, microfinance has done really well for us and it is growing well and our position is very strong in the market, compared to our, compared to the industry and the peers. On the secured side, housing has done really well for us. We have crossed INR 400 crores disbursement milestone in the last quarter, and it is a very profitable business for us. Even the asset quality has shown a remarkable improvement. Also in the last quarter, our zero to 12 month MOB hits 100% collection. We have seen a very improved asset quality there. Also if we have to segregate it region-wise, west is well on its way to increase the secured portion, and it is close to around 45%. The strategy that we have put in place for housing has been executed well. We did a lot of changes, and we made it very granular, local, geography, segment-wise. All this has yielded results for us. In fact, we have classified our business lines into stable, emerging and new legs of growth. The other businesses that would contribute this year to the secured portion would be the MSME, where we have put in a lot of efforts to revise the strategy. gold loans, vehicle finance, the secured agri business, and also our MSE, I mean the FIG business, which is into NBFC funding, that has, you know, started well. If, if I have to say, the NBFC funding business did its highest ever quarterly disbursement for this quarter. You know, as what Mr. Devas said in his initial speech, we should be able to arrive at around 68% of the unsecured books from the 73% which we are at now. The journey has already begun. Last question is about our presence in the northern states, UP, Bihar and Haryana, et cetera, which is wherein the collections at times becomes difficult for other NBFCs and due to the sort of law and order problems at times. How has been our experience and how are we performing? Yes. The, you're right, UP, Bihar election time also for this financial year. You know, as I mentioned that our portfolio in a particular state is limited, and that we have ensured from day one as we started a microfinance company. In these states our portfolio is, you know, less than 15% definitely. UP, Bihar you're talking about there it is much lesser than that. At the same time, one thing that, you know, emerged very, very strongly in microfinance at Ujjivan is that we have opened various channels for, you know, business generation as well as cash collection is concerned. Cash collection is something which is, you know, with time we have seen that a lot of improvement. As far as customer initiated, digital repayment is concerned, about close to 20%-21% customers have started paying digitally in the last financial year itself. This number is improving. At the same time, we have also ensured that we have various infrastructure in place, where the cash movement can be swifter as well as very safe. Today, about, I would say that close to 70%-75% cash which is collected in microfinance dispersing in these states don't go back to the branches. It is done somewhere else which reduces your risk. We are, you know, we are, you know, I would say that, especially looking at, you know, risks that we have in this space, we have got every insurance in place which helps you and keep yourself safe and your employee also safe as far as collections are completely concerned. Thank you, sir. Keep up the good work. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll take our last two questions for today. We have our next question from the line of Himanshu Taluja from Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity, and congrats for a good set of numbers. Thank you. Just, most of the questions have been answered. Just couple of questions at my end, small. Firstly, when you mentioned that you wanted to deposit growth of around 30%, what sort of a... You believe that the, a large proportion of this growth will be contributed by the retail deposits? Secondly, if you can just tell us what sort of the new initiatives have you taken in the, in order to build the retail deposit franchise? What are some of the initiatives you have taken? That's my first question. Yeah. As far as the deposits are concerned, we did say 30% is what our deposit target growth is. There again, the focus is on CASA. The CASA, which is 26% now, we'd like to take it up to towards 30%, by the end of the financial year 2024. Mm-hmm. You know, we have put in place, different ways of trying to raise the deposits. Of course, our branch network. We're also looking at the digital franchise for the deposit growth. You know, we have divided our customer base into different segments. All of these will be contributing towards the increase in deposit base. Our marketing teams are also working, you know, both digitally as well as through other channels to be able to improve the brand and focus people on what we are able to offer. I think, you know, we have something good going, and we will continue with that in that mode. What is your second question? Yeah, sir. The last question is on the since you are still awaiting the NCLT approval, any update which you can share, any communications? Secondly, once you receive the final NCLT approval, I believe the final set of approval will be the shareholders' approval. Do we expect after this NCLT approval once achieved, probably the reverse merger process will get completed within 30 to 60 days? The NCLT right now has gone on vacation, so we'll have to wait till they return in early June. Yes, there is another set of things that we have to do. The shareholders have to meet, then there is the majority of the minority shareholders. All of those things have to be done. Once all of those have been submitted to the NCLT, they will deliberate and give us the go-ahead. Once the go-ahead is given, then, you know, whatever is the, in the shortest timeline which is available, we'll put that in place. Right now, I can't give you any specifics, but we'll work on it and try to close it in the fastest possible time. Yeah, sure, sir. Thanks. Just one final data point. What is your average lending yield on a housing portfolio? The blended yield on the portfolio is around 12.8% or 12.9%. On the disbursement side, the fresh disbursement, blended yield would be around 13.2%, 13.3%. Okay, sure. Okay, sure. Thank you, sir. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you. We'll take our last question from the line of Shailesh Kanani from Centrum Broking. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thanks a lot, sir, for the opportunity. Just one question from my side. In the MFI book, if you can just give the breakup of client profile, between formal, informal, salaried, businesses, you can just share that breakup. In microfinance, you know, largely we lend to customers who are self-employed, but at the same time we have a specific product for customers who are, you know, salaried as well. Largely it is self-employed. I would say that about 2%-10% customers who are into salaried category. Rest all are self-employed. Self-employed. Does just follow from that, the El Nino factor, has there been experience in the past where the asset quality or the collection has deteriorated during that phase? If you can share with respect to MFI book. Yeah. Can you please repeat your question? Yeah. I was asking, I was trying to ask, does the El Nino impact in past has impacted the quality of the book from a customer side, given the profile of the customers? Does that have an impact on the collection or of that book? In the past also we have seen that, you know, our prepayment, et cetera, is not that affected by. One of the reason why for even also because we are not that rural. We are, we have started as a urban microfinance company. We are now present in rural as well, but large part of portfolio still is with in urban, metro and semi-urban location. At the same time, in rural location also we have seen that, our customers are not into one kind of occupation. They have multiple occupation in their household. It is agriculture with some kind of other occupation also happening in the in the same family, like livestock or shop, et cetera. That helps customer recover faster. Okay. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Ittira Davis for closing comments. Over to you, sir. Well, thank you very much to the IIFL team for conducting this session. We appreciate your support, and I'm sure that, you know, we have taken care of answering as many questions as we can. We look forward to hearing from you in the near future, either one-on-one or in the next, you know, quarterly session. Thank you. Thank you, sir. On behalf of IIFL Securities, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.