Right. Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to VakıfBank Audio Webcast, third quarter 2024 bank only earnings results. Now, we will have a question and answer session following the presentation by our speakers. If you would like to submit your written questions, you can send them anytime by clicking the Q&A button, which you will see there at the bottom of your Zoom screen. All right? That will be after the presentation, but you can submit those questions at any time. If you would like to ask an audio question, you can join the call by clicking the raise hand button, which you will see down the bottom of your screen as well. Now with that, I will hand you over to our hosts for today's webcast. They are Mr. Ali Tahan, Head of International Banking and Investor Relations at VakıfBank, and Mrs. Zeynep Nihan Dincel, who is the Head of Investor Relations at VakıfBank. Speakers, over to you. Thank you, Rob. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to VakıfBank third quarter 2024 earnings presentation. As usual, we will start with the presentation. To save time and to use the time effectively, we will skip some slides, and we will focus on some important highlights. Starting with the earnings and profitability on page two. This quarter, in line with the market consensus, our quarterly net income came at TRY 8 billion, which is 12% up Q-on-Q-wise compared to TRY 7.2 billion in the second quarter. That TRY 8 billion quarterly net income brought nine month cumulative net income number to TRY 27.2 billion, which is up by 81% compared to same term of the previous year. At this stage, we would like to also highlight that in this quarter, we didn't touch to our pre-provisioning amount. There is no pre-provisioning reversal, or there is no pre-provisioning addition. So TRY 8.5 billion pre-provisioning remains intact on Q-on-Q basis. And this number achieved without any pre-provisioning reversal. Taking those numbers into account, quarterly average ROE came at 16.4%, and nine month cumulative average ROE came at 19.5%. When we look at to the core banking revenues, which consists of net interest income and net fee and commission income, the growth, especially on the annual terms, seems to be even stronger at 125% from almost TRY 40 billion a year ago to almost TRY 90 billion in this quarter. This is also very eye-catching indeed. The next page is the key highlights of the quarter. First of all, the most eye-catching part of the quarter for us is the milestone in terms of the history of the bank. For the first time, in the last 70 years, we have a total asset size above than $100 billion. A quarter ago, it was hovering around $95 billion-$98 billion. As of this quarter, now it is above than $104 billion. This threshold of $100 billion asset size materialized as of this quarter for the first time, and therefore, this is an important milestone in our history. As a result of that, we are keeping our strong second ranking position among Turkish banks in terms of asset size ranking. Secondly, we will also discuss in detail this quarter, especially compared to private peers, our relative net interest margin performance seems to be indeed satisfactory. Especially in terms of the components of net interest margin, we are happy to see that we performed best-in-class Turkish lira cost to spread improvement on Q-on-Q basis. Our Turkish lira loan yields increased by 230 basis points Q-on-Q. Our Turkish lira cost of deposit decreased by 40 basis points. As a combination of those two net-net, we have 270 basis points improvement in our Turkish lira cost to spread performance, which is the best among the peer group of the Turkish banking sector. Another important highlight of the quarter is strong net fee and commission income. This is also in line with the sector trend. As of September year to date, sector's net income growth capacity seems to be also very strong. This is also the case for Vakıf. We have annual fee income growth of above 100%. 104% is the specific number. This is also the case for the quarterly evolution. Q-on-Q-wise, our fee income increased by 15%. As a result of such strong fee performance, NII to OpEx ratio further increased to 65%, which was 58% a year ago. This 65% is also one of the highest in the last decade average, let's say. Another important point for the quarter is related to asset quality metrics, especially this quarter, in line with our guidance and in line with our expectations. We are witnessing normalization, both in terms of net cost of risk as well as in terms of NPL ratio. Net cost of risk materialized at 85 basis points Q-on-Q in this quarter, which was negative, as you can remember, in the first half of the year. This quarter we see some sort of normalization in terms of net cost of risk. On the NPL ratio side, our NPL ratio further increased to 1.8%, which is also exactly the NPL ratio of the sector. We are not different than the sector average in terms of NPL ratio. Compared to a quarter ago, we are witnessing around 30 BPS increase in our NPL ratio, which is mainly coming from retail and credit card inflow, actually. Another important point of the quarter was related to ongoing very active international funding transactions. Since the beginning of the year, we raised almost $9 billion funding from our wholesale borrowing activities. Especially in the end of quarter, in the beginning of Q4, we also successfully achieved another fresh $500 million sustainable Eurobond issuance with yield of 6.95%. This transaction itself is also important given it was the only Eurobond transaction conducted by any Turkish FI with the yield in 5.7% level. Apart from that, in the beginning of third quarter in July, we also successfully printed another capital deal in the form of Tier 2 with amount of $700 million. After a very successful additional Tier 1 issuance in April, we continued to benefit from very supportive Eurobond market, and we further diversified our wholesale transaction with a fresh Basel III compatible Tier 2 transaction. To continue with the presentation, I would like to take your attention to page five to give much more detailed color in terms of net interest margin and expected net interest margin for the upcoming quarter. The first point I would like to highlight is related to relatively very conservative and moderate CPI estimation, especially compared to private peers. As of third quarter, we used 43.5% October to October CPI estimation number. This number, compared to other banks who are using 47%, 48% CPI in the third quarter, seems to be creating also additional contribution in Q4. As you can see in the middle of the page on the right-hand side, given October to October annual inflation announced at 48.6%, it means that in Q4 we will enjoy additional TRY 10.3 billion more interest income from CPI-linked portfolio as correction, and it will further boost our net income capacity as well as our net interest margin performance in the final quarter of the year. Another point I would like to draw your attention to is related to net interest margin levels. Despite such relatively humble and moderate CPI estimations, both net interest margin performance as well as swap-adjusted net interest margin performance in the quarter came relatively better compared to peer group banks. Reported net interest margin came at 3%, which is flattish compared to a quarter ago. Because of the decline in our swap usage and as a result of that swap cost, we see a very significant improvement in our swap-adjusted net interest margin. Our swap-adjusted net interest margin improved from 1.25% a quarter ago to 2.37% area. This is again with very moderate CPI estimation numbers. On the right-hand side, we also showed what would be our third quarter net interest margin if we assumed to use materialized October to October CPI expectation. In that case, rather than 3% reported net interest margin, our actual reported net interest margin would be 4.58%. In a similar way, again, our total adjustment in interest margin would be 3.94% instead of 2.37%. In this sense, clearly, we delivered relatively high net interest margin levels despite a very modest CPI expectation. The good things is that hidden potential will be reflected in the final quarter of the year, which will support both Q4 net interest margin as well as Q4 net income. Because of this reality, by far, and because of also additional seasonality impact, we understand that Q4 will be the strongest quarter of the year, both in terms of net interest margin performance as well as in terms of overall profitability. On the right-hand side below chart, we also show in detail improvement in our Turkish lira cost of debt, which we labeled as best in class. A quarter ago, it was a negative Turkish lira cost of debt business with 1.339 bps contraction. This quarter, thanks to very high yield repricing on the lending side as well as cost-disciplined deposit management, now we switch to positive territory from negative territory a quarter ago. From minus 1.39% area to positive 1.31 bps area, which means Q-on-Q-wise, 270 basis points improvement. This 270 bps improvement is also one of the highest among the other peer group banks. We expect this Turkish lira cost of debt improvement will continue, especially in the Q4. net-net, both in terms of security yield as well as in terms of overall Turkish lira cost of debt point of view, we are expecting to announce best quarterly net interest margin metrics in the final quarter of the year. These are the notes we would like to share on the net interest margin slide. For the sake of the time, I will skip fee income slide and OpEx slide. There is not much value on those slides. I would like to take your attention to page eight on the lending slide. This quarter, unlike the first half of the year, our quarterly lending growth seems to be slightly above than the sector averages. This is especially the case for Turkish lira lending as well as overall lending. On Turkish lira side, we had 6.6% Q-on-Q growth versus 6% for the sector. On the hard currency side, we also had another strong growth in dollar terms with 7.8%. As a result of that, total lending growth in quarterly terms came at 8.6%, which is slightly above than the sector average. I think this timing difference, especially with the peer group banks, also helped us to deliver relatively better net interest margin rather than the first quarter, rather than the second quarter. Having slightly higher quarterly lending growth also created additional benefit in terms of net interest margin performance. We are still keeping our strong position in terms of ranking as number one, the biggest bank of Turkey among the listed banks, of course, both in total lending as well as in Turkish lira lending and in hard currency lending. We also have a very especially strong market share on corporate and commercial lending, where the real lending growth came not only in this quarter but also since the beginning of the year. Q-on-Q-wise, on the corporate and commercial side, we had 8% growth. On the SME side, we had 11% growth. On the retail side, we had, like, 7% growth. On the retail side especially, the growth was mainly coming from overdraft lending as well as from the retail credit card business. Another page I would like to take your attention is related to page 10 on the asset quality. I mean, as we also highlighted in the beginning of the presentation, NPL ratios both for the sector as well as for the bank increased further. But still, compared to overall historical data, those ratios seems to be humble and moderate numbers. Our NPL ratio increased from 1.4% to 1.77%. When we compare with the sector, I think we are almost at the same page. Sector NPL ratio is 1.73%. We also have a very slight increase in terms of the share of Stage 2 in total lending. It further increased from 7.9% to 8%. Especially, because of regulations. We see some additional increase on the restructured loans, and this is the main driver of stage 2 increase. As we discussed, NPL ratio increase mainly attributable to the NPL inflow coming from retail and coming from credit card side, which is the guidance we were sharing since the beginning of the year. Still those metrics are under control. We were talking about normalized net cost of risk levels. This quarter, we had 85 basis points quarterly net cost of risk, which was -28 basis points in the second quarter. We also expect another similar net cost of risk for the final quarter of the year. That total annual net cost of risk of 2024 will be coming to slight positive territory as we guided a quarter ago. On the next page, on the deposit side, this quarter, all the deposit growth was coming from the Turkish lira side. Deliberately, just to also keep our net interest margin levels strong, we were giving exit to hard currency costly deposits. This quarter we had 3.3% contraction in our hard currency deposit portfolio. However, total Turkish lira deposit growth was at double digits with 10.1% Q-on-Q growth, and that was the main driver of total Turkish lira deposit growth. One eye-catching development on the deposit side, which is also a positive development from our side, is the further increased share of retail and demand deposits. Total share of demand deposits further increased to 28%, which was 22% in the beginning of the year. In a similar trend, we also see additional increase of share of retail deposits, which is much more granular, to 47%, which was 39% in the beginning of the year. Those developments on this kind of portfolio shift within total deposit portfolio is also helping us to create a much more sticky and granular deposit portfolio, which is also supportive from net interest margin point of view. The last page I would like to draw your attention to is related to capital. As you can see, on page 13, our total reported CAR almost reached 16%. Of course, 130 basis points increase we enjoyed, thanks to Tier 2 issues we printed in July with the amount of $700 million. This transaction size boosted our Tier 2 ratio by 130 basis points. Other part of the increase in our total CAR is mainly related to internal capital generation capacity and profitability. Especially this quarter, this kind of additional contribution from Tier 2 issuance was also remarkable. These are the points we would like to share related to presentation. Before leaving the floor for your questions, we would like to also spend one minute in terms of guidance and expectations for this year. The only change in our guidance will be related to overall profitability, which is also the case for other Turkish banks. Because of the current environment, as you are all aware very well, all the banks change their ROE expectation in a downward trend, and it is also the case for VakıfBank. Rather than previous 30% average ROE, the realistic full-year guidance for the average ROE will be changed to low twenties instead of 30% ROEA. This is mainly the function of relatively limited recovery in our net interest margin compared to expectations in the beginning of the year. Low twenties seems to be a much more realistic guidance for this year. This is the only change, and this is purely driven by net interest margin performance. For the sake of the time, I would like to stop here and leave the floor to the Rob again. If there are any audio questions, we can start with that, and thereafter we can switch to written questions. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Tahan. Thank you. That's Mr. Ali Tahan, the Head of International Banking and Investor Relations at VakıfBank. Thank you so much for that presentation, sir. Right. As Mr. Tahan said, you can now ask your questions. If you would like to ask a written question, just a reminder, you will see it down the bottom there. There's a Q&A button at the bottom of your Zoom screen. You just click on that and go ahead and ask your question. If you'd like to ask an audio question, that will require you to click on the raise hand. There's a little icon at the bottom, a raise hand icon, and then we will put you on the call, and you can ask your question. Either will work. In the meantime, I don't see any audio questions. Mr. Tahan, if you'd like to begin with the written questions until we get an audio question, if we get one. Thank you. Over to you. Thank you, Rob. We have two written questions. Nihan will be reading, and I will trying to be answering. Thank you, Ali Tahan. The question came from Valentina, Barclays. Hi, Ali Tahan. Thank you for the presentation. If you could please elaborate a bit more on your strategy that you have adopted regarding your Turkish loan-deposit spread management. What would be different versus peers? Going forward, how do you see net interest margin development in Q4 and 2025? What key macro assumptions do you use? Thank you, Nihan. Thank you, Valentina. To answer this question, actually, what we did differently compared to peers is related to loan portfolio we were growing actually. Since the beginning of the year, we were growing much faster on corporate and commercial lending. Most of the private peers were growing on retail side. But rather than retail, we were preferring to grow on corporate and commercial lending. Every quarter, we are also switching from floating to fixed portfolio within our corporate and commercial lending portfolio. Secondly, maybe the approach in terms of residential mortgage business seems to be also critical. We are still behind the competition on residential mortgage business. Year to date and Q-on-Q, we have a contraction in our residential mortgage portfolio. As far as I understand, it is not the case for private banks especially. They have relatively bigger appetite compared to our appetite. I think this kind of differential in terms of lending composition, corporate commercial versus retail, and having too much appetite on residential mortgage or not, as well as fixed floating change composition, these are relatively different. As a result of that, in terms of loan yield, I mean, without taking into account the cost of Turkish deposits, just in terms of by looking at Turkish loan yields, I think we are at the top of the list, and this is simply a function of this strategy. We are much more optimistic in terms of overall core spreads in Q4. As I try to explain, in Q4, not only we will enjoy a very additional strong contribution from CPI linkers compared to peers, because we are still using very humble numbers as of September, which is not the case for most of the peer banks. Relatively speaking, we will have additional positive advantage on security yield. On top of that, thanks to this strategy we are implementing since the beginning of the year, we will also see the highest purchase core spread performance in Q4. From every component point of view, Q4's net interest margin will be the best compared to previous quarters. For 2025, the budget, as well as the macro, I mean, in terms of the macro, we are mainly using the official government macro expectations they announce on Medium-Term Program. For the banking sector and for our own numbers, the budget process is still under discussion. It is not finalized yet. Once it will be completed, of course, we will be discussing more in detail. Preliminary data suggest, of course, in the first quarter especially, there will be substantial decline in the interest income from securities because we will start CPI estimate number as 25% in the first quarter. Therefore, in terms of the first quarter, let's say, there will be too much contraction on security yield. To some extent, it will be compensated by additional improvement in our Turkish core spread. Equally important, of course, the timing and the level of interest rate cut from Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye will also be very critical in terms of net interest margin evolution. So therefore, net-net, for the next year, the budget is under discussion. It is not finalized yet. Q1 2025 specific, all the banks and us, we will have a hit from securities portfolio because especially, as Vakıf, we will start using with 25%, which is the official government CPI expectation for 2025 year-end. From 48 to 25, it will create too much contraction. On the other hand, most of this negative impact, hopefully, will be compensated by additional improvement in the Turkish core spread business, right? These are the important positive and negatives side of the first quarter net interest margin outlook. Once the budget is ready, of course, we will start communicating with detailed explanation. Thank you. We have one more question from Valentina. You have been quite active this year on the wholesale markets. How do you see current market conditions, and do you have more appetite for Eurobond issuance? Indeed. Especially this year, in terms of private placements, in terms of, Eurobond issuances, in terms of, every wholesale, funding transactions. This is, the best year, maybe the most active year in the last decade. As VakıfBank, maybe we are one of the most active issuer bank on the Eurobond side. Between the period of September 2023 to October 2024, within thirteen months period of time, we, printed four different, public Eurobond issues. Two of them were senior sustainable Eurobond issuance, and the other two were in the form of sub debt, both Tier 1 and Tier 2. Of course, in such frequency in a very sharp, short period of time, this is unprecedented. We don't have any comparable period in the past, similar to what we experienced in the last 13 months period of time. As long as market conditions remain strong, we would like to be active on the wholesale market also. Especially, we would like to also use our DPR program much more frequently going forward because we will also have sizable redemptions within our DPR program. To the extent possible, we would like to refill our program capacity with additional fresh DPR issuances. Apart from that, of course, we will also continue to cooperate with IFI entities from different parts of the world for ESG-labeled projects. Especially in this manner for next year, wholesale transactions, DPRs and fresh, new, different IFI transactions will be much more visible. Of course, we will also continue to look for Eurobond issuers, but given we had too much in recent periods, maybe compared to 2024, it will be used less frequently. Rather than the regular Eurobond issuances, we will be focusing more on DPR and IFI. Thank you, Valentina. We don't have any other written questions. If there is no any other audio questions, actually, we can turn off. All right, Mr. Tahan. I just want to remind the folks. Just a minute or two. This is a golden opportunity for you folks to ask Mr. Tahan anything you'd like. He is an expert in this field. Just a reminder, just another minute or two, if you would like to ask a question, just click the Q&A button at the bottom of the screen. Mr. Tahan, if there is no other information that you would like to mention, I think, yeah, you can conclude. That would be great. Thank you. Thank you, Rob. Thank you, everybody, for your time and for your participation. As usual, together with Nihan, Ece, and all IR colleagues, we are at your disposal at any time. If you have any follow-up questions, please let us know. Thank you very much again for your time. Thank you very much, Tahan. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your participation. That now concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect. Thank you.