Good afternoon, dear listeners. Welcome to Šiaulių Bankas Investor Relations Conference. I'm Paulius from Nasdaq Vilnius, and I'll be moderating today's event. We will start with a presentation from the management, which will be followed by the Q&A session. Please be informed that this webinar is being recorded and will be available for a rewatch on Nasdaq Baltic YouTube channel. As always, I encourage every one of you to share your questions in the Q&A session at the bottom of your screen. You can submit either anonymously or with your name. With that said, I'm pleased to introduce today's presenters, CEO Šiaulių Bankas, Vytautas Sinius, and CFO, Donatas Savickas. Dear guests, please, the floor is yours. Well, thank you. Dear investors, welcome to our summer webinar for first half results of Šiaulių Bankas Group. Myself and colleague, Donatas, will be happy to present our performance update, as well as, as always, to answer to your questions. Let's get started with our presentation and update on the first half results. I would say the records quarter of the bank's performance was EUR 24.1 million of net profit. That led to EUR 43.3 million during the first half of net profit, and that's 47% growth, and the operating profit grew even faster. That was 59% growth. Our performance, I would say, based, and was supported by the growth of loan portfolio. That's the first. The second was, which is obvious, the dynamics of the Euribor, which also stimulated growing income. Worth mentioning that this income probably is not on that extreme compared to the other banks, larger banks that reported their results, which is sometimes higher compared to, to our performance, and that's due to much more our balance situation between loans and deposits. As an outcome of that, after additional explanations and discussions with the authorities, we observed that there would be no windfall tax for 2023 for Šiaulių Bankas. It means that there will be no additional tax burden on, on our, on our books. Also important event during the quarter, the Moody's observed our progress and upgraded our rating to Baa1, and that I would treat as a good achievement in the current environment. We are happy to being among other equity-listed banks on the top notch with the best ratings. Talking about our integration of retail businesses with Invalda INVL, I would say it's performing pretty smoothly according to the plan. It's many activities is going on related with that, both some hard stuff and and the soft things like culture merger and and initiatives related with that. I would say we are performing in line with our projections and as it was informed earlier, the 1st December is the day when we're expecting to act as a 1 entity with the merged retail businesses. Well, talking about efficiency indicators, also, due to the strong profitability, we are outperforming some of the key performance indicators and profitability through the Return on Equity and efficiency cost to income is substantially stronger than the initial targets. We expected to end this year as well with a substantially higher performance on those 2 indicators as were initially presented. Capital and risk indicators most likely will be on the indicated levels or around, around them. Let's move on to the macroeconomic situation update. Again, I would say interesting announcement recently about the GDP development, which is more positive than initially were expected from the second quarter. It's up by 0.9%. It's increase in GDP. Compared with the first quarter, 2.5% decline, makes a bit more positive outlook to the year 2023. If you would look to the graph, when we have 0.5% growth, according to the European Commission projections, initially that was considered as very optimistic indicator, as a very optimistic forecast. Now, it potentially could come to the true, so most likely we could be balancing around 0 or slightly positive. Of course, everything depends how the third and fourth quarter would perform. Yeah, so far, so good. I would say GDP development makes us a bit more positive compared to the beginning of the year, making our projections a bit on a bit more conservative outlook. On inflation, again, as we expected, the inflation is going down. The 7 months in a row, the inflation is moving down and now reached 7.1% in July. I would say if there would be no unexpected drivers that could drive inflation up, such as energy prices shocks or grain prices shocks, or supply chain distractions. Most likely, we will have continuously declining inflation, and as it was projection, moving closer to the 2% level, not this year, but most likely in 1 or 1.5 years. Low unemployment and consumer confidence, I would say, provides good sentiment for consumers continue to consume, and that's one of the resilient factors for our GDP also to grow. Overall, I would treat that consumer confidence is strong, and as you can see in the graph, even stronger than average on EU. Growing salaries allows us to see this as a good base for our mainly credit products for the private individuals. The performance shows that it's both good on the lending side as well as on the quality side of the loan products. With industry confidence index slightly below the EU average, shows that our company is still a bit more hesitant and more cautious compared to the peers in EU. However, the situation, I would say also in the, in the industry, in Lithuania, I would say in general, is improving in the sectors that were much more impacted by the potential recession in the EU and US markets now are coming back, and the resilience of the businesses in Lithuania seems to be quite sustainable and for the longer term, and companies able to adapt to the challenges that they are facing due to the different impacts coming from inside or outside the country. The comment on the real estate, I would call that, this booming period has stopped, and now we are moving a bit more slower growth on, on a real estate developments. Of course, there are some differences in, in residential and in offices. Residential, I would say, still remains with the lower figures, but still quite solid. New projects are being developed. We're also financing and the mortgages, as, as you also will see later, they are declining in volume, but still continue to be provided and the market is despite the environment, which is not most favorable for the mortgages, still still is provided to the clients. Let's go to the portfolio and to drill deeper to firstly, the whole portfolio and then later to some elements of our loan book. The stable growth during the second quarter and a bit stronger than compared to the first quarter, also gives some optimism that the year would be that the year will be finished with a strong double-digit growth. Initially, we were expecting and projecting our capacity of growth slightly lower. Now we see that opportunity in the market is growth is, is potentially higher. Therefore, we we'll, we'll use our capital base to to to expand further on the on the on the loan growth. All the major loan positions reflected positive growth. In absolute term, the corporate loans provided the largest increase by EUR 40 million, and on percent, percentage side, the winners are consumer lending. The growth there is the fastest during this period of time. Mortgage line, mortgage growth is the growth is declined compared to the 2022, but still, as I mentioned, remains pretty active. I would call that a customer sentiment to consider the mortgage is still active, but the, the, the way they make decision is not that fast as it used to be in 2021, 2022, when the decisions were made faster due to the, you know, overall environment to make decision faster. Now it's a bit more hesitant, clients even applying and making requests for the mortgages, they're hesitant to, to sign an agreement and wait for probably some events in the future that will be more favorable for them. The good thing that the yields on loans continue to grow, that's mainly on all floating rate instruments. That's as we initially mentioned, this additional income generation stream for, for our P&L. Let's move on to the corporate financing side. Yeah, thanks. Again, sustainable growth during the last quarter, much more substantial growth in interest rate during this period. The interest rates moved up to 7% on the newly signed agreements, and that led to the portfolio level of yield at the 6.1%. That's the income increase, I would say, rather substantial. Despite that, you know, interest rates are increasing, I would treat that client capacity to serve the loans remained pretty strong, and we were all the time concerning about the potential increase in our non-performing loans. So far, situation is, I would say, is good. It's, it's flat, not not growing. You'll see more data on that later in the presentation. Despite that, the market also grew approximately 10%. Overall market grew by 10%. We managed to increase our market share by 60 basis points. That's the first quarter results, since the information is a bit lagging behind on the market, that led to 12.8 market share increase in the corporate lending. We are moving towards our targets to grow our market share, to be a more and more visible player in the markets and to become stronger in that sector as well. Let's move on to the mortgages and the consumer financing. I would say overall, it's a good thing for the bank that we have rather diversified businesses. As a universal bank, you know, different type of lending instruments, as well as commission income. In this situation, it's really benefiting since the mortgages are, you know, slightly underperforming, compared to the other, other instruments, corporate and consumer financing. The consumer financing shows opposite to mortgages development, strong growth. The mortgages is 21% lower compared to the growth level other than the 22. Probably we're remembering that this period of time was a pretty booming period, and we're showing extremely fast growth on our mortgage loans. On a yearly basis, you see still 33%, but the growth on a quarterly and year to date basis is 5% and 10% respectively. Still, we're experiencing growth, but not that extreme as it was in one year ago. Naturally, the same trend with the interest rate, that it's picking up quarter by quarter, since still positive impact, since still impact to the growing variable and reached the newly signed agreements at the level of 5.7%, and on the portfolio level, is approaching to 5% yield. What else on the mortgages? Yeah, still, still, the previous fast growth reflected on our increase in the market share, and still, I would say, rather substantially, but by 1.4 percentage points, and that's more than 6% market share at the end of the first quarter of our bank. On the consumer side, I would say one of the most successful quarters in our history, with a strong growth on a quarterly basis, 10%, on a yearly basis, even 36%. Strong performance mixed with our cooperation with the partners, with our marketing campaigns, with our interaction with the bank as a sales channel. Mix of different instruments led to significant growth during the second quarter. With that, we still maintain a pretty strong and high yield on the portfolio. On the new agreement side, during the second quarter, we even have increased our interest rate up to 10%. That's, that's a good result, having experienced it in such a growth in competitive markets, to maintain or even to increase, to increase our interest rates. Good. Let's go on to the daily banking. It's also, as I mentioned, diversified structure of different type of incomes. As always, or most like, most time in, in, in, in the life, there is some good trends and some weaker ones. Starting with the weaker ones, I would call that, despite that the cash operations, which it still remains as a top three position in our net fee and commission lines, but it has a tendency to go downwards, and there's a number of e-events that are stimulating this trend downwards on the cash operations. The recent one is mainly related with the stricter sanction risk management, related limitations that were implemented in the bank. That leads to smaller income generated from, from that activity. The, the obviously negative impact on the payment services. Despite that we have a flat development there, we have lower income from international non-SEPA payments that also impacted mainly by the restrictions to some regions and our risk appetite management mainly managing sanction risks. On the other hand, a positive that the other payments outweighing the, the decline in international payments and compensates that with the other part of, of that services.... On a positive side, I would say the continuous growth of number of clients and becoming active clients is a positive, as well as migrating to the higher value services that generates higher income for Šiaulių Bankas. That's either the more advanced and more value generating for the clients, service packages or credit card itself. Those sales are generating higher, higher return, and we consider continuing that path, and that on the longer run, we, we sure would compensate those, that those lines are potentially still have a pressure in the long run to be drivers of fee and commission income. Important element, which is each year, I would say becoming more and more important, is the development on the, on the digital agenda. The new initiatives also is continuous. The first thing that we just recently upgraded is the access to our e-channels using, using only usernames, which mainly from a user experience, the new thing. The still very safe access to, to the bank, but with less information needed to, to type in for the clients, entering all our electronic channels. As well as we now testing and most likely this month, we'll, we'll launch the so-called ePIN or electronic PIN for the payment cards. That would make, make faster and simpler the process of renewing or getting the, the, the cards, payment cards for the clients. As well, for the business clients is a renewed Open Banking solution, which is important for our partners to, to, to log to the bank through Open Banking, so it's much more convenient structure of the data that how companies through Open Banking can operate with us. The last but not least, the project that we are already several quarters in, it's the digitalized card in the phone. As we we're expecting and we're making testing works with our IT provider, and at the end of the year, we're expecting to launch that both for for the Google and Apple interfaces. The development in digital continues, and we're expecting that this agenda will continue to be strong in our plans. With that, I will pass the word to, to colleague Donatas, and later probably will join you back to, to answer your questions. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Vytautas. Good afternoon, dear investors. I would like to start commenting slide about funding and liquidity with the news that make our access to broader markets easier. In June this year, Moody's Investors Service Rating Agency upgraded bank loan term deposit rating to the highest level in Šiaulių Bankas history. It should be noted that this upgrade was made despite uncertainty and slowing economy. The fact that consistent and balanced growth of Šiaulių Bankas that means that such, such strategy is paying off, and it's important achievement for us and confidence-boosting indicator for clients and for investors as well. As I mentioned, this upgrade makes our access to the markets easier, and we're using this opportunity by issuing subordinate loan this quarter. The main source of funding remains deposits, both term and demand deposits. During the quarter, we saw continuing shift from demand deposits to term deposits, and it is understandable that when the savings became good investment opportunity for depositors, they moving to the more attractive instruments. In the meantime, we also continue using other terms of funding, and during this quarter, we repaid part of TLTRO loan of EUR 150 million, and the remaining EUR 400+ million will be repaid either in next year, in the middle of next year, or we'll use opportunity to repay earlier. Which alternative we will choose will depend on the market situation. Both options are available right now. Cost of funding continued to grow up, and we expect a similar trend in the coming quarters as well. At the same time, the liquidity risk metrics such as LCR ratio stands at safe level of 225%, and loan to deposit ratio is very balanced and it's close to full balance and it's almost at 98% at the current moment. We could move on to the next slide. It's about operating expenses. Naturally, as the bank grows, both parts of OpEx is growing up. Main part of salary expenses grew by 17%, and the main factor for that increase was the continuing growth of headcount and impact from regular annual salary review that was made in the second quarter. Operating costs increase, other operating costs expect, except salaries increased by 28%, the biggest part of that expenses are IT. IT expenses is growing as bank launches and implements initiatives related with the digitalization and all systems that requires automatization and efficient management, whether it would be the sales enhancing systems or regulatory or compliance systems, they all relates with the IT expenses. Despite the growing expenses, the operational efficiency is maintained at very good level, which is currently 35%. Talking about the capital and risk management, probably I first, I would start with NPE metrics. We see that it increase NPE ratio a little bit. In absolute terms, it increased more visibly, but when we try to find what drives such increase, we cannot observe any systematic shifts what we saw during the second quarter. Several customers became non-performing exposures, but we hope that they could get back to the normal after some healing period, and no conclusions can be made about any systematic threat so far. Cost of risk in the first half is at 0.4%. It's slightly above our target 0.3% for the whole year, and we expect if situation will remain as is right now, we will follow the plans, and no adjustment should be made in that part of expenses. Important and very important metric for investors especially is the capital adequacy ratio, which is, how to say, it has a direct connection with possibility for dividends. As the bank grows, it requires more, more capital to maintain such sustainable growth rate and due to the fact that bank is profitable. This, these earnings allows us to fund our growth and to share some extra profit with investors. Such sharing would be more generous if we wouldn't have increase from regulatory requirements. Usually we, we had one limiting factor, capital adequacy ratio requirement, but in the last few years, the another factor that becomes as obstacle to share dividends appears such as MREL requirement. The MREL stand, abbreviation MREL stands for Minimum Requirement for Own Funds and Eligible Liabilities. This ratio is growing up, and when we, we see the, our current level and making forecast towards the year end and the beginning of next year, we see that we'll have only very slim margin above requirement. Therefore, that would be, will be the main limiting factor for dividends, which, which would be above our dividend policy. Dividend policy level mentioned in dividend policy is the main target, and we, we are pretty sure that we will be able to meet these promises that we made in our dividend policy. Let's move on to the last slide of our presentation before the Q&A session. Usual, usual graphs and tables with the updated figures. I would like to mention that in May, companies Invalda INVL, Tesonet, and Willgrow, increase their shareholdings in Šiaulių Bankas, following the implementation of the second series of the transaction with the EBRD. Still 1 year left to complete the share acquisition processes. As of today, out of 18% shares that are going to be sold by EBRD, 12% already have been sold. Worth to note that together with the, the, these changes that we anticipated in advance and we present future shareholders, shareholding, biggest shareholding structure. We, we see that founders of the bank that are on the biggest shareholder list, they are also increasing their stakes in the bank. When we follow the trend of the share price movement, we see that it was not, hmm, obviously optimistic, but the, the... One of the biggest reason was that this trend was influenced by sell pressure from one institutional US-based investor, who sold its stake during the first half of year. Should be mentioned that he sell what we he wanted to sell, exit from Šiaulių Bankas, and this supply was well absorbed by the market. We see that the, the number of shareholders that currently stands slightly, hmm, below 20,000 shareholders, probably they absorbed such supply. That's all from, from my side regarding the main part of presentation. Now, Q&A session, we will be happy to answer your questions. Thank you, Donatas and Vytautas, for the presentation. I will take a moment to say that it is already available on the Nasdaq Baltic website, as well as on Šiaulių Bankas website for investors. Now we will proceed with the questions. Before that, I would like to remind you that you can submit the questions in the question box of your screen, either with your name or anonymously. The first question is: What is the goal of the subordinated bonds issue? Does it support growth or other reasons? Yeah, well, thanks for the questions. Other questions, seems that would be some of them popping up continuously. Answering to the question on the subordinated debt, I would say it's both. We would say we started with the some regulatory requirements, that we needed some additional Tier 2 capital to mainly comply with the subordinated and MREL requirements. On the other hand, we have additional amounts of that instrument that will be allocated to the growth, some it's in range of EUR 10 million. That would be purely for the growth reason. The other thing is the better structure of the capital layers. We are introducing a larger Tier 2 capital, which is less expensive than the Tier 1. That would allow to, you know, comply with with the dividend policy easier and to optimize the capital structure. I would say the reasons is for the both purposes to, to comply with regulatory requirements, as well to, to use opportunity to grow in a market which is still, I would say, despite all the volatility, are still rather favorable. Thank you for the answer. The second question is: Why the bank's performance and share performance have been average? Does management consider a share buyback option in 2023? Well, a few questions in one. I would not say that the performance is average. It's, I would say, on our capacity level, and we are utilizing our balance sheet as much as we can, and the performance, as we presented with the 60% operating growth, with the Return on Equity 19%, I would say it's pretty strong. The performance is there. The stock prices is not always correlates directly with the performance. We're expecting to catch up continuously, and we presented to the investors the reasons why. Even considering that the growing capital, and even if you are slightly below the book value, you still with the growth of a capital in, in a balance sheet, we continues to grow the, the, the price of a share as well. Overall, I would say the performance is good, and and the perspective we see is a positive in the market to, to grow for, for our bank. Therefore, the share performance should catch up. Compared to the peers in the Baltics, our performance was only 5% lower in compared to the Estonian players. I'd say not, not that, not, not that significant for that period of time. And talking about buybacks, yes, we have allocation of some amount to, to, to that, and we now in a dis- in a discussions and a process with the regulator to clarify the usage uh of of a back cash buybacks. And once we receive this permission, we'll be available to, to utilize that option in the market, especially if the share price would be not in, in the sufficient level. So that's... We're coming closer to this usage of a cash backs, cash buybacks potentially even in, in in the end of this year. Could you please review what are the growth strategies for the future? Yeah, good question, probably not expanding too much, but mainly mentioning several key drivers for our growth in the future. It as our base, so it still will continue to use our credit-related instruments and a growth and income generation from the credit instruments. There we have strong history and we are performing pretty well today, and I would say that's a good base for the future growth in that area as well. The other part is the retail offering, together with Inval, both client base and the products. I think this is the good mix of the additional part of the products provided mainly to the private individuals, so we expect the growth there. It's of course not a short-term target. It's a long-term ambition to, to be a strong player in, in the markets, in, in the retail business, covering main client needs such as daily banking, lending products, as well as investment and savings. With that, with that transaction, with that merger, we fully will be capable to, to be the full offer bank to, to current and the new clients. With that related, I would say development on a capital market, business dimensions. There we see the potential to grow, and this again, also the current strength of Šiaulių Bankas and together with expertise that are joining us from Inval. I, I see the strong area of additional income generation in, in there. As enabler to the...t o make that happen, I would say that continuous digital and technological improvements is in our agenda, and it's, it's a part of our future strategy, which we are now working on. As was mentioned, last time, we continuously working and seeing this transaction with Inval as not only transaction that enlarges our institution, but also that renews our strategy and builds the new way of running bank as a much more modern and future-oriented, future client and future client needs-oriented bank. I would say that's in short the strategic growth areas or potential strategic growth areas for our institution. Thank you for the answer. How do you anticipate the windfall tax influencing the bank's Return on Equity and Return on Assets? Has the bank made any adjustments to its long-term financial targets or strategic plans due to the introduction of the windfall tax? I will take this question. I see that a lot of similar questions are coming, and it's understandable because it is a new topic and the... It was described that it will affect the banks very significantly. Despite the fact that the law itself was passed in May this year, it was not so easy to understand how to calculation should be made. Therefore, we made, we made consultations and wait for explanation from the tax authorities regarding the very concrete questions. After we get from it from tax authorities and estimate what is the situation with Šiaulių Bankas, we came to a conclusion that no impact for the 2023 will be, will be for Šiaulių Bankas at all. There are no need to, to make the adjustments to Return on Equity or return on, on assets. With regard, because this windfall tax will apply for 2 years, it's still too early to estimate the exact impact for 2024. It could be the case that it could be 0 as well, and it will depends on the speed, how new loans will be granted to the customers of Šiaulių Bankas and what interest will be paid for depositors. If, even if the best scenario will not be implemented, so the impact will be quite small, and we estimate it will be in any case below EUR 10 million for the next year. Again, we will follow this situation and keep investors and market updated on this respect. Thank you for the answer. Let's move on to the next one. Šiaulių Bankas lending to businesses has been strong in contrast to the underlying market. Were there any specific sectors that show growth in, in this year, half of the year? Was business lending growth kind of broad-based? When we look at the exposures that were disbursed in the second quarter and affected our loan portfolio growth, we cannot distinguish any particular sector. As the bank portfolio is well diversified, so, so the, the, the new loans are also following the same trend with no concentration on any particular segment. Answering your question straightforward, is, is kind of broad, broad-based. Thank you. The deposit market is arguably highly competitive now. Do you expect any easing of that competition in the remainder of the year? Short answer would be no, because this competition will remain probably at the current level or could be even more intensive, because as, as you probably know, the, the government is having the initiative to move state-owned companies and institution funds to the central bank, and they have the timeline for, for that, and the, the, which companies when should move their funds to the treasury account with the Bank of Lithuania. We will have no direct significant impact to Šiaulių Bankas, but we're making assumption that probably it will affect other bigger banks, and probably they'd be more willing to, to compete with, to the depositors. Therefore, the competition will remain quite intense as it is now, but we used to this. We have a good experience competing for, for the depositors and having in mind this situation, that we have broader possibilities to find alternative funding. We are pretty sure that we will have success in that competition. Thank you for the answer. After strong first half of the year, is it reasonable to expect some moderation in net interest margin in the second half of the year, given that deposit prices are rapidly catching up with Euribor, and demand for term deposits is increasing? Yeah, probably I will continue. Yeah, so probably I touched a little bit in the previous question that the situation will with the deposit prices will continue. As not all depositors repriced during the first half, we will have increase in interest expenses. Therefore, net interest margin would be moderated as it was expressed in the question formulation. Thank you for the answer. Now we have 2 questions submitted at once. We will skip the 1st one since it was covered in previous questions. What is the reason that only a relatively small portion of 90-plus days past due loans in stage 3 bracket are mildly provisioned? Is it due to the collateral of these loans? Have you reposited the assets, and are you monetizing the collateral within these defaulted loans already, or how come the provisioned amount has stayed stable over time for these loans? Very broad and detailed questions. Main reason that about the mild provisioning of stage three loans are usually the collateral. Šiaulių Bankas has that long time tradition to have our loans with good collateral. Regarding the second part of questions, have you repossessed the assets? Probably answer is no, because if we repossess asset, then the exposure will disappear, and then we would have the real estate. It's not the case at the moment. We are not using such practice because the quality of loan, as I mentioned, remains quite healthy, and we see no signs of systematic deterioration of these loans. Thank you for the answer. What impact does the ECB's decision to not pay interest on minimum reserves have on your NII? Sorry for delay. We, it's a quite, new decision, that it was announced only a few days ago, and our initial estimation that it will give an, negative impact to our net interest income by EUR 50,000 per month. Thank you for the answer. What's the update on retail business merger with Invalda? Yes, I've touched a bit that, that topic on, on update, but to expand a bit more, as, as we're planned, according to the process, we on the 1st of December, should become as a, as a 1 merged entity. Different things should be executed before that. But according to the process, we're going according to the plan. There are still licensing with Bank of Lithuania, and SB is progressing and we're expecting to that, to, to receive that shortly for the newly established Šiaulių Bankas Asset Management Company, to which the part of the business will be transferred. As I mentioned earlier, there's a number of project-related things happening. There's hard things, as IT system integration, and I'm also about happy about that, the progress that we continuously in, in, in green and there's no major concerns of on IT side, which is always important element in, in, in a transactions like, like this. On this soft part as, as well as, you know, a lot of development in our organization. Both organizations are preparing for the merger, not only technically but also, as a culture. There's a number of development from HR, HR perspective or from a managerial perspective is going on. Even such a soft thing as a participation is in one united summer festival of, of both organizations is going to, to take part this month. That shows that the work is, I would say, progressing smoothly. In some cases, we're already acting as a one team, and that increases chances that the most of the value will be utilized successfully anyway. It's technology is one thing, but behind that, it's human beings who are interacting with each other and provides a real value. Therefore, I would, I would expecting that everything is moving according to the plan, and from the first of December, we'll be able to work as a one organization. The parallel to that is the strategy development, and we've decided not to make the merger as the merger itself, but also to develop and work on the strategy. Currently, we're internally in discussions within the bank and with supervisory council on a strategic development. Once we're ready for that, we'll definitely bring that to the investors, as well. Thank you. Thank you, Vytautas, for your answer. Would you expect to maintain or improve the loan portfolio growth in the second half of this year in comparison with the first half of the year? First half of the year. Yeah, to make short, I would say in general, I would say to maintain the growth, that's our target, because the first half was rather intense. Probably will be, will be some deviations. Most likely, the consumer lending will be, will be not the growing the pace it was. Potentially, mortgages would grow faster than the first, two quarters. We see those trends, but definitely it's hard to predict how the market will develop, how the private individuals will react to the further development in the internal and external, impacts. Overall, I would say, it's, maintained, it's expected to maintain the growth as we have, since we have additional capital to that. That's a good sign that there was no internal restrictions to, to make a, a bit faster growth, if we would see that the, the market is favorable to that. Thank you for the answer. Before delving into the next one, I will, I would like to take a moment to say that we're getting quite a lot of questions, and, if there will be any of the questions that we won't be able to answer right now, Šiaulių Bankas will be more than happy to receive it via the contacts that you can find on, on their investor relations website, and, they'll be happy to answer those right away. Do you still expect to pay back the final TLTRO tranche at maturity in September of 2024? What stops you from paying it back earlier? Is it the duration matching that you have done on the asset side? What margin do you currently have to pay on the outside- outstanding facility? Okay. I tried to touch this topic during main presentation, but I put the summary to present right now. So, main scenario is to repay at maturity in September 2024, but we are open to see whether it's profitable or not, because the fact that ECB decision not to pay interest on of minimum reserves could affect our decision. We will estimate other alternatives at each alternative repayment date. With regard to what we pay to the outstanding facility, it's the calculation of the... of the cost of funding is quite complicated, and the final interest rate becomes clear at the repayment date. Of course, we're making a accrual, accrual, accrual proportionally each month. I prefer to not disclose this figure, but I assure you that we monitoring whether the having such facility is beneficial for bank or not. The fact that we are keeping these funds, that say that it's business, it's profitable business for the bank. Thank you for the answer. Big part of investors do not understand that, subordinated bond, even at such high interest rate, is a win-win deal for the bank. Could you please shortly explain that? I would say, rather good, statement and the question, the both, so I, I would say it's, it's correct that the subordinated debts, even in the range that we attracted, in range of 10%, is, is, is better to, to have. That is generating additional value for the bank, especially when currently we're generating close to, to 19% Return on Equity. In the longer run, we said that our target to maintain around 15%. That's one of the fuels that is needed to, to, to run the bank. The liquidity is one factor to have a source of funding, but another one is the capital, and the Tier 2 capital, which is subordinate to debt, is purely applicable to that. The other part of that is that the regulatory requirements probably is not always intuitive for the investors, how it changes and how it attracts part of the capital and locks part of the capital to fulfill the different type of requirements that are coming mainly from the Bank of Lithuania, from ECB, from so-called SRB, that are in charge of MREL requirements. All those components require some part of the capital, and the sub-debt is the one of the very good instruments to balance not only the most expensive equity part, but also to have additional layer of sub-debt. As I mentioned, even with the 10% plus sub-debt, it's worth to run business and to attract new loans instead of not doing that. Y eah, that's a correct observation, and I believe, more and more investors purely, you know, understands that and follows that logic. Thank you for the answer. Do you see the need for additional Tier 1, Tier 2 bond issues? With regard to the Tier 2 bond issues, we reach our appetite level, maximum appetite level. There are no useful reasons to make additional Tier 2 bond issues. With regard Tier 1 bond issues, it could be the case, and we considering that. In order to take positive decision, we have to see the appetite for such type of instruments in the market. We evaluating Tier 1 bond issue question. The decision is not taken yet. Thank you for the answer. How Šiaulių Bankas plan to leverage its technological capabilities to improve operational efficiency and cost effectiveness? Yeah, rather broad question, but important one, since the technological element is critical and probably essential for the future bank. I would give the answer to, through the angle that the sufficient scale, especially on the retail type of business, is critical to be efficient on the technology side. If you need to make investments, and we need to make investments, well, we will make investments. The prerequisite to that is the seeing that there is a scale which will provide later on the cost efficiency and the ability to generate profit from diversified income portfolio. That's our aim, to continue investment in technology and through the growth, both on a corporate side and on the retail, to achieve that, to achieve cost efficiency and operational efficiency. Thank you for the answer. How Šiaulių Bankas plan to manage interest rate, risk, and potential yield curve fluctuations in the current economic environment? Yeah. Interest rate risk is not new for the bank, and we managed to deal with it during 30-plus year history of Šiaulių Bankas. Of course, earlier the bank was smaller and not so complicated, and probably the tool that we used for interest rate risk management would be simple, more simple. As the bank grows and complexity increases as well, we need to use more sophisticated instruments, and currently, we are implementing system which allow us to measure interest rate risk more precisely. And to use the, the, the best instruments for that, including derivatives, and so on. It's not unique situation what we're having right now. It's not unique, and we, we show the path that we are managing... We are able to manage interest rate risk successfully and get from that risk profit. It's not about avoiding risks. It's a question about how to translate that risk into the profit with the limits which is set in advance. Thank you for the answer. This has been the last question of this session. As I've said before, I would like to remind you as well that you can always reach out to Šiaulių Bankas Investor Relations Department. You can find the contacts either on Nasdaq Baltic website or on Šiaulių Bankas Investor Relations website. I'd like to take a moment and thank the panelists, the CEO of the company, Vytautas Sinius, and the CFO of the Šiaulių Bankas company, Donatas Savickas, and all of the guests who have listened, submitted the questions, and are actively checking in on the company's results. Also, this recording will be available on the Nasdaq Baltic YouTube channel a few moments after this event will conclude. Thank you all, and have a nice day. Thank you. Goodbye.