Good morning and welcome to the first quarter 2024 Gentera's conference call. Now I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Enrique Barrera, Investor Relations Officer of the company. Sir, you may begin.
Thank you. Good day to everyone. Thank you all for joining us and for your continuous interest in Gentera. I'm Enrique Barrera, the company's Investor Relations Officer. I'm very pleased to introduce our management team. With us today are Mr. Enrique Majós, Gentera's Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Patricio Diez de Bonilla, Banco Compartamos' Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Mario Langarica, Gentera's Chief Financial Officer. Enrique Majós and Mario Langarica will present Gentera's results for the first quarter 2024 as per the report that was issued yesterday. Patricio Diez de Bonilla, along with Enrique and Mario, will actively participate in the Q&A session of this conference call. Please note that during this presentation Gentera may make forward-looking statements. These do not account for future economic circumstances, industry conditions, company performance, or financial results. Additional information on forward-looking statements can be found in the disclaimer located in our earnings release.
If you did not receive a copy of the release or if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our Investor Relations Department in Mexico City. If you are a member of the media, we ask you to contact us directly. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Enrique Majós for his presentation. Enrique, please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. Good afternoon to everyone. It is always exciting to have our call, and especially when we have good news to communicate, so let's get started. Let me start by saying that once again we are proud to report another quarter on target, and let me point out that in Gentera we have now accumulated 11 quarters of continuous portfolio growth. In fact, after the pandemic, fourth quarter 2020 was the first quarter that we reported profits again. Since then, quarter by quarter, we have been growing and improving our business results. We have consistently seen customers' and portfolio growth with a high quality in our portfolio, as well as outstanding retention rates and customer satisfaction. Let me summarize the main highlights of today's report.
First of all, let me point out that looking at Gentera's first quarter results, we can say we are successfully targeting our guidance for this year. Gentera's portfolio grew over 20% on a yearly basis, reaching MXN 65.5 billion. Once again, a historic figure which, as I already pointed out, is in line with our guidance. We also reached 5,270,000 people served as of the end of the first quarter. This is not only a record number, but it represents a net growth of 177,000 clients in only three months, and 18% or 813,000 new people served on a yearly basis. We continue improving our efficiency. Net income after provisions grew 18.3%, while our operating expenses grew only 13.3%. So we continue operating with a closed expense control policy and towards more efficiencies. Net income grew 13.7% compared with the first quarter 2023, and our ROE is over 21%.
NPLs and cost of risk remain outstanding. This is very relevant since it is the only way to maintain these positive results sustainable for the long run. NPLs stand at 3.5%, and cost of risk closed at 10.7%, which is below the 11%-11.5% we guided for the present year. Now let me point out some relevant results in our main subsidiaries. As we already communicated in our call in February, in January, Banco Compartamos in Mexico reached the 3 million customers. This is a very relevant milestone for us, not only because of the business results and perspective, but also because of the social impact that we continue generating. As a consequence, Banco Compartamos' portfolio growth was outstanding with a 29% growth on a yearly basis. In concreto, since the second half of last year, we maintain a solid, healthy, and sustainable growth.
Portfolio annual growth was over 20%, and NPLs are now at historic low levels, reaching 1.6% compared with the 2.26% that we had last quarter. In Peru, compared with the first quarter 2023, we grew 25% in clients and 13% in portfolio if we take local currency. NPLs stood at 4.6%, and we are confident that we will be able to improve the portfolio quality in the following months in Peru. I also want to point out the increasing relevance of the microinsurance business in Gentera. As you remember, last year we reported that the insurance business represented 6%-7% of Gentera's total income in 2022. This figure continues to increase, and by the end of 2023, this number was already 9%. This is relevant not only from a business perspective, but also and especially because of the social impact we generate.
Today we are selling 50 million insurance policies annually, which is clearly an impressive figure, and this year we started allocating 16 million insurance policies in the first quarter of the year. Now, my last remark regarding our business operation has to do with the use of data and digital technology. These elements continue to contribute and foster our business results. So let me give you one specific example on this. As you remember, last week last year, sorry, we increased our operating expenses after increasing our loan officer's sales force due to the opportunity that we identified to address a growing credit demand in Mexico. After one year now, and as it was expected, we are capturing the benefit and value of this investment.
Productivity levels of our loan officers in Banco Compartamos are in the higher levels ever, even considering that last year we increased our sales force by more than 1,500 new loan officers. Crédito Grupal methodology productivity increased 6% since December 2022, and Crédito Individual productivity increased by 8%. Productivity levels in Compartamos Financiera in Peru also improved around 10% in the last year. En ConCrédito, we also had solid productivities. We maintained the same level of productivity than one year ago, even when in the last 12 months we increased the group of asesoras, our sales force, by more than 20%. We expect to continue increasing our productivity levels in each of our subsidiaries along with the rest of the year.
As you can see, technology and digital transformation will continue to provide our customers a more convenient set of products and services, and at the same time, Gentera's efficiencies will also improve across the organization. Now, before finishing my remarks, let me talk about some recent changes in our board's member composition and also tell you about the dividend payout for the year. We are very happy to welcome two new board members in Gentera and our new statutory auditor in Gentera. Mercedes Aráoz Fernández and Christian Laub Benavides are both members of our board in Peru, and as of this quarter, they will be also participating in Gentera's board. We believe that the experience of both of them will bring a lot of value considering the increasing relevance of Compartamos Financiera in Gentera and the potential growth that we still see in the Peruvian market.
On the other hand, Manuel Gutiérrez García , our statutory auditor, is leaving our board after more than 20 years of valuable and relevant contributions. Along these years, Manuel has contributed to build Gentera's best practices in terms of corporate governance. We are profoundly grateful to Manuel, and we wish him the best on his new personal and professional projects. Therefore, Alfonso Lebrija Guiot is joining Gentera's board, taking the role of Manuel. We welcome Alfonso, and we are sure he will give continuity to Manuel's contribution. Regarding Gentera's dividend payout, in our last shareholders' meeting, a 40% dividend payment was approved in two installments. The first payment will be on May 14th, and the second one will be paid on November 29th.
Well, let me now pass the call to Mario Langarica, and afterwards, as usual, Patricio, Mario, and I will be here to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.
Thank you, Enrique, and good day to everyone. As always, we appreciate your interest in Gentera. As Enrique signaled in his remarks, we're very excited with the solid results that Gentera achieved in the first quarter of year 2024, and are very excited with the strong dynamics that we're expecting for the rest of the year. Before we enter into the specific financial data, we want to emphasize the success of our decision to increase our sales force and to upgrade our infrastructure to capture the market opportunities that we saw early in 2023 to grow our clients, our portfolio, and our business. These actions allowed us to reach a record of 5,279,000 people using our financial services, breaking another record in our loan portfolio, maintaining healthy asset quality.
As you can see in our Q1 2024 results, Gentera generated a historic loan portfolio of about MXN 65.5 billion, growing 20.6% compared to Q1 2023. It's important to note that our credit subsidiaries, Banco Compartamos, Compartamos Financiera, and ConCrédito, show all double-digit growth in their specific loan portfolios. These dynamics lay solid foundations to keep growing as expected for the rest of the year. Now, let me jump to talk about the evolution of different lines in our income statement. As anticipated in previous calls, the growth in our interest income and our margins has materialized following the growth in clients and in our portfolio. Interest income grew 24.9% versus Q1 2023, reaching MXN 9.3 billion. Net interest income grew 19.4% to amount MXN 7.5 billion. Consequently, NIM amounted to 39.4% this quarter, in line with our expectations for the year.
Another excellent result for the start of the year is that even after the strong growth that we have experienced in our loan portfolio, Gentera's cumulative cost of risk amounted to 10.7%, which is better than our expected level for the year. NPLs at the end of Q1 2024 stood at 3.57%, which is a very good level, better than first quarter 2023 , and in line with our objective range between 3.5%-4% for the year. We're growing strongly, maintaining sound asset quality. Provisions for loan losses for first quarter 2024 amounted to MXN 1.75 billion, 23.1% higher than last year's quarter, mostly explained by our portfolio growth. Compared to fourth quarter 2023 , we observed a 16.5% contraction in this item. This was mainly driven by a lower-than-expected impact in our portfolio related to Hurricane Otis.
As anticipated in our last conference call, we are glad to confirm better-than-expected recovery in the economic situation of our clients that allow us to generate better collections. Also related to Otis, we decided to write off in advance MXN 36 million while still maintaining MXN 24 million in additional reserves. Net interest income after provisions grew 18.3% compared to first quarter 2023 , implying a NIM after provisions of 30.3%. During the year, we expect to maintain NIM after provisions around that level. Net fees grew 25% compared to first quarter 2023 to amount MXN 878 million, mostly related to our insurance business. The incremental use of Yastás and Banco Compartamos branches also benefited Gentera, depending less on third-party channels and reducing fee expenses in relative terms. Operational expenses for first quarter 2024 amounted to MXN 4.5 billion, representing a 13.3% growth compared to first quarter 2023 .
Most of this growth comes from our larger sales force and upgraded infrastructure. As explained before, other very relevant components of the expense line are the strategic initiatives and investments that we have been developing and implementing to make our operation more productive, more efficient, and more modern. As mentioned before, the positive effects of these efforts have already started to flow to our revenues and expenses lines, generating again a virtuous trend of positive jobs that we plan to keep going forward. Net income for Q1 2024 amounted to MXN 1.508 billion, representing the second-largest quarter result in our history. Gentera's controlling participation of net income amounted to MXN 1.412 billion, representing an EPS of MXN 0.88 for the quarter, a 10.3% increase compared to Q1 2023. Gentera's controlling ROE reached 21.4%, and our largest subsidiary, Banco Compartamos, posted a return on equity of 34.1%.
With this solid start of the year, we reinforce our view that for 2024, Gentera's controlling ROE should be around 20.5%, all of this maintaining solid and healthy liquidity levels, strong and diverse access to funding sources, and robust capitalization levels. That is all for my remarks. Thank you all for your attention, and now we can move forward to the Q&A session.
Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad at this time. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure that your mute function is turned off to allow the signal to reach our equipment. Thank you. Our first question comes from a line of Olavo Arthuzo with UBS. Please proceed with your question.
Hi. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking my questions. I have a very quick question about Peru because the bank as a whole, it presented a good ROE recovery and a good rebound, thinking about the performance from the last quarter. The consolidated ROE could have been even higher if it wasn't for the performance in Peru. Basically, the ROE there showed some weaker performance, I believe here, given high provisions, and it basically decreased back to 13% levels. Just please, any color here would be great to understand what happened. Also, if you could share your thoughts on the outlook we should work for Peru, it would be great. You just mentioned a few minutes ago about a positive outlook for Peru, but if you could give us some color on what is going on over there, it would be great. Thank you.
Thank you, guys.
Thank you. How are you? This is Patricio. In regards to Peru, as you have seen the entire context, not only for the microfinance industry but the entire financial industry, it's facing some operational difficulties. Last year, we had certain effects from climate events and social demonstrations that affected the portfolio. Today, even though the economy for Peru is expected to grow and we are seeing dynamism in customer growth, the reality is that there are some pressures on the NPLs for not only Compartamos Financiera but the entire industry. There are certain not concerns but actions that we are taking in order to maintain asset quality under control. As you have seen, NPLs for the Peruvian operation are still picking up, even though we have taken actions, bold actions, this April that we expect to normalize the asset quality by the third quarter of this year.
So with that, we have exceeded provisioning, and this is why the ROE for this operation has decreased this quarter. But we are expecting this to pick up for the year-end, and this should normalize and meet the guidance for ROE that Mario just talked about. So going forward, we're still seeing in Peru a huge opportunity. The penetration of the financial system remains low. As you remember, we are growing very fast in customers in the group lending methodologies. So the prospects for the Peruvian operation is still to grow, but we will continue monitoring the asset quality to be able to grow with positive portfolio asset quality.
Okay. That's great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from a line of Ernesto Gabilondo with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you. Hi. Good morning, Carlos, Enrique, Patricio, and Mario. Congratulations on your results, and thanks for taking my questions. My first question will be on NIMS. I would like to hear what is the level of interest rates that you're expecting for Mexico this year. And considering your assumption, would it be reasonable to expect stable NIMS this year? And how should we think, for example, in terms of the NII growth, considering that the loan book is expanding roughly at 20%? Do you think it could be kind of growing at the same pace? And then my second question is on other income. We noticed it was affected by non-recurring impact related to the insurance business. So can you give us some color on what was behind the impact or the size of the impact, and how should we expect for this line going forward?
The last question is on your digital transformation. If you can provide us an update on the timeline of your digital investments, what would be the next steps? And can you anticipate us part of your pilot projects within the core business but also in terms of Yastás with ConCrédito? Thank you.
Hello, Ernesto. How are you? Thank you very much for your questions. Yeah. Well, the levels of interest rate that we're expecting for the rest of the year are around for Mexico around 10%. We are seeing a little slowdown in the velocity of the reduction of rates from the central bank, but that doesn't affect at all our expectations for the end of the year, given that our interest income is growing faster and our risk is well controlled. So we maintain our expected levels for NIMS of 40% and 30% for the rest of the year. Regarding other income, probably you remember last year, in the first quarter, we had a non-recurrent extra insurance income. And now what has happened, and it's just because of the quarterly cut, is that we have a negative effect on that line.
We expect that for the rest of the year, that will be more than compensated with the commercial cash-in, cash-out flows that we have with the insurance company. So for that line, you should expect an average level of around MXN 200 million for the year. So that is just a quarterly effect. It should be more than compensated for the rest of the year.
Hi, Ernesto. How are you? This is Enrique. And let me give you a little bit of color and update around our digital transformation process, as you asked. As we have explained before, we feel very proud about what we are doing, not only in Mexico but also in Peru and in ConCrédito. I can tell you that in Peru, we have already 100% of our operation running on a digital platform that allows the loan officer to be more efficient. That's one of the reasons why we can see now we have better efficiencies and productivities there. This is happening in Peru since last year. Also, in Mexico, 2024 is the year of testing and deploying a very similar digital platform to operate our end-to-end credit process.
First of all, we're going to do it in the Crédito Individual side, but we are, at the same time, also running everything to deploy this in the Crédito Grupal. But also, and maybe this is one of the things that you might be looking at in our results since last year, the use of data, data science, and digital technology is already giving us benefits in all our subsidiaries. And the benefit that you can see is basically in two things. The first one is we have better risk assessment capabilities, and that's one of the reasons why you have been looking at improving our NPLs and cost of risk. And the other thing is we have better cross-selling capabilities.
So in some way, a lot of what we are doing in terms of growing our business, increasing our customer base, and also, of course, the portfolio is because of the cross-selling capabilities that the digital technologies are providing us. So that's an overview on what we are doing, and we can expect that, as I was saying in my remarks, that along the year, we are going to continue capturing the benefits of these tools that are all along across the organization.
Ernesto, one question that I didn't answer was if we expect that the financial margin and financial margin after provision should keep growing at the same pace as the growth in the portfolio, the answer is yes.
Oh, perfect. Excellent. Thank you very much. And just to follow up on this digital transformation, just wondering, I know that you are testing and doing pilot projects with the corresponding banking network from Yastás and ConCrédito. We are seeing something similar from other types of competitors like FEMSA with OXXO and trying something with SPIN, and at some point, we'll start to lend through the OXXO. So considering that you also have kind of the same structure and relationships, even in lower-income segments of the population, what will be your strategy ahead of competitors?
Thank you, Ernesto. This is Patricio. And the reality is that when we talk about the digital world and digital economy, you need to first transform the physical cash into digital tools, right? So first, you need to have the products available. This is something that we already have. And secondly, you need to have the infrastructure conveniently located in order for customers to deposit cash into the different products that we offer. So Yastás plays a key role in such a journey in the way that our customers go and deposit cash into our debit cards. They are starting to use such debit cards via their mobile apps and also making transfers and using the payments through these tools.
The reality is that once you have that money converted into digital tools, you can start analyzing data, as Enrique said, and trying to understand the dynamics, not only the creditworthiness of the customers but the transactional information of them in order to develop products and to cross-sell and tap into opportunities for further relationship with the user. So again, the reality is that Yastás plays here a key role into not only financial inclusion but digital inclusion. And this is a path that we think that we have a competitive advantage because Yastás, I mean, the network is in the last mile where convenience stores are difficult. It's difficult to be located.
Oh, excellent. Thank you very much, Pato.
Thank you, Ernesto.
Our next question comes from a line of Tito Labarta with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.
Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for the call and taking my question. A couple of questions also. There was a slight increase in your funding costs in Mexico. Just want to understand a little bit kind of what drove that, and how do you expect that to evolve throughout the year, particularly if rates maybe stay higher for longer or when you expect rates to come down? So how do you see the funding costs in Mexico specifically? And then second question, just on the loan growth. I mean, loan growth pretty healthy, slightly above the guidance you gave for the year of 18%-20% despite the weakness in Peru. How sustainable is this, not just for this year but maybe beyond this year? Could there be some upside risk to that guidance you gave on the loan growth for this year also?
Just want to see how you're thinking about the sustainability of the loan growth. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Tito. Well, regarding the funding cost, the most important. Increased funds from the growth of the portfolio. But in relative terms, as rates keep going down and with the recent decreases in the rates in Mexico and Peru, in relative terms, the cost of funds should keep improving going forward. Remember that the cost of funds or the interest expenses represents only 13.6% of interest income. So it should be improving for the rest of the year at the pace that the central banks keep reducing rates.
In terms of portfolio growth, Tito, we've been very vocal about the size of the market, not only in Mexico but also in Peru. Financial inclusion remains an opportunity in both countries. In spite of a large market, we've been dealing with weak competitors due to financial and operational difficulties. We realize that there's a large market to be served in the sense of a weaker competitive landscape. This is why last year, we decided to do the investments in infrastructure in both countries, not only our footprint but also the team required to tap into this opportunity. We are heading towards our portfolio guidance this year, and we should expect also a double-digit growth, I guess, for 2025. Still a large market that we are serving well, and we expect to do so in the coming years as well.
Okay. No, that's very clear. Maybe just want to follow up on that front. I mean, you talked a little bit about the digital initiatives, but are you seeing any competition from fintechs as more and more begin to get relevant in Mexico?
Of course. The fintech world is very dynamic. There are new entrants with very aggressive methodologies. The reality is that there are certain overlaps with customers, but the reality is that when you talk about the lower-income segments in both countries, we are not seeing such a dynamic activity in the fintech landscape. So again, we think that, yes, there's competition, but the reality is that we think that we are very well positioned, not only financially but with the product offering that we have in order to tap the opportunity that I just described.
Okay. Perfect. Thanks, Patricio, and thanks, Mario.
Thank you. Thank you, Tito.
Our next question comes from a line of Yuri Fernandes with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.
Hello. Good morning and congrats for the quarter. I have a question regarding your group lending in Mexico. I recall you started consolidating Comerciante and Mujer maybe in the beginning of 2023, and I guess now you had many groups in the first, second, or third cycle. So my question here is, how is that strategy behaving? Are you seeing any signs of asset quality for the good or for the bad? Are you being able to improve the efficiency? Because I guess the big plan behind this was to make the loan officers more productive. So if you can share how is your impressions on this, and if you believe this can drive more efficiency gains, I guess your efficiency ratio today is 6%-7%. Group lending is super important in Mexico. So what should we think about your total efficiency ratio evolving going forward?
Then I can ask a second question regarding ConCrédito. Very quickly, just what drove the decrease on NPLs there? I think it's now like 70 bps quarter-over-quarter. So if you can provide a little bit of color on ConCrédito, if it is sustainable, where you see the NPLs of that unit evolving, I guess it also helps. Thank you.
Thank you, Yuri. And this is an excellent question. We started the transformation and the evolution of group lending methodologies a couple of years in 2021, I guess. And we started trying to have some flexibility features into the product: smaller groups, different tenors, men and women. And the reality is that the pilot that we had in 10 offices, we are still monitoring this pilot. It's progressing every time. We are seeing good asset quality in the pilot, more productivity. Our sales reps in the pilot have over 400 customers per loan officer with good asset quality. So it helps for the top line as well as reduce the cost of serving those. And the reality is that this transformation had different aims. The first one was to have better customer satisfaction. Greater flexibility, smaller groups, it's something that it's easier for the customer to deal with.
So this is why last year, we were able to grow as fast as we did in customers given the fact that we have a more flexible product. So that's something that it's working well. The second piece was to maintain asset quality under control. So we started using data in order to analyze each individual within a group in order to create smaller but healthier groups. And this is something that it's going well since the asset quality of the pilot is progressing and, as I said, doing better every quarter. And finally, to be more efficient, and as I said, the reality is that we had two sales reps, one for Crédito Mujer, one for Crédito Comerciante, and now we have one single team for group lending. And this is the one that is having higher productivities than the mean for the bank.
So having said that, again, we deployed this at the fourth quarter of 2023. We are starting renewing those customers in this first semester of 2024. So far, so good. We are feeling comfortable with the progression of such transformation. This is part of the evolution of our group lending methodologies that maintain Compartamos as the best practice for this product. I wouldn't say it in Mexico, but elsewhere as well.
Hi, Yuri. This is Enrique. Moving to your question on ConCrédito, yes, we are really happy with the results that we are obtaining on ConCrédito's business. As you remember, last year, we had some troubles after a growth phase in which we needed then to control the growth that we had in the past. So yeah, the team really focused on this. Our goal is and will be always to grow with quality, and that was the strategy that we follow. So I can tell you that, yes, this improvement in our NPLs has to do basically with three things.
The first one, and I already mentioned it in the last question, the use of better data and business intelligence, the algorithms, the tools, the risk assessment tools that we have developed in our risk areas, not only in ConCrédito but also joining now the risk team in Gentera, have done a very, very impressive job. So that's why we have a better way to address the risk and to address new customers. The second reason why we are dropping down the NPLs from 2.2% in the last quarter to 1.6% this quarter is that the growth that we had in empresarias last year is now maturing. What I mean is that when you capture new empresarias, they go into a cycle in which they need to go through a learning curve and mature. And now we are looking at this group of empresarias maturing and having better results.
Of course, the third reason is the experience and discipline of our team to manage the traditional cycle of growing and controlling. So yeah, we are happy about this. Most importantly, we believe this is giving us solid foundations to continue with this trend to the future.
Nope. Super clear. Just making sure. So the improvement is mostly driven by ConCrédito per se, right? It's not like crédito individual product. I think ConCrédito is much more relevant for the total, but just checking that this is where you are seeing the improvements coming from.
Yeah. Sure.
Okay. Nope. Thank you.
Our next question comes from a line of Brian Morton with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. I was hoping you could give us a little bit more color on the trends within deposit growth, particularly in the on-demand deposits within Compartamos. If you continue to grow deposits at this rate, at what point would you expect to see an improvement in the funding costs? Thanks.
Thank you for your question. Yes, we've been dealing with deposits for a long time now. The reality is that the strategy that we are following is that most of our customers now receive their loans in debit cards. These debit cards are being widely used, and with this transactional information, they're starting to make deposits into these accounts, which has grown the balance. Again, the reality is that it represents less than 10% of our funding. So today, it's not something that really benefits the cost of funds line. But eventually, as customers grow, as deposits become relevant in their day-to-day operation, potentially, we can see certain benefit in cost of funds.
The reality is that we are more focused in cross-sell opportunities and maintain customers for longer periods of time with Compartamos rather than to have an aggressive deposit in terms of volumes strategy that we are following. The reality is that you should expect balances to grow in line with customers, and it will represent, again, between eight, as it is now, and 12% of our deposit base for this year. This shouldn't be a potential huge benefit for the cost of funds of the bank.
Okay. Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Brian.
As a final reminder, ladies and gentlemen, press star one at this time for any questions. Our next question comes from a line of Carlos Gomez-Lopez with HSBC. Please proceed with your question.
Hello. Good morning. Two questions from me. The first one refers to Peru. Right now, the loan portfolio is around 29% of the total. It is also true that the Mexican peso has appreciated versus the Peruvian sol. In the long run, how large do you think Peru can be in your total portfolio? I mean, at some point, it was almost 40% of your business. Where do you think it's going to be, let's say, five, six years from now? The second is about the guidance. I mean, we look at the results for the quarter, which obviously are very strong. And yet, Peru was still relatively weak. You had this extraordinary item in the insurance segment that you mentioned. So if you take those out, I mean, as mentioned earlier, the results could have been even higher.
So it seems to me, if we analyze this, that you are on track to perhaps exceed your guidance right now of MXN 3.5-MXN 3.6 per share. Should we expect that in future quarters, we're going to have other effects, let's say, expenses or something else? Or is this a correct interpretation that you are ahead of the guidance that you have set for yourself? Thank you.
Thank you, Carlos. I will jump into the Peruvian question. The reality is, yes, Peru has become very relevant. As you remember, we bought Financiera Crear in 2011 with 85,000 customers. And now, we serve over 1 million. And the market there, it's large enough to think in doubling this metric in terms of customers for the coming years. So Peru is becoming every time more relevant. As you said, today, it is 25% of our loan portfolio. But Mexico is still growing fast. As you can see, Mexico outpaced the growth of Peru in this quarter in last year. And the reality is you should expect that Peru become like 30%-35% of Gentera's portfolio in the coming years. But the reality is that the bulk of what we do will remain in Mexico.
And Carlos, regarding our guidance, yeah, as we mentioned, the growth that we're seeing at the portfolio and the good behavior of the margins and the good behavior of risk obviously show very, very positive trends. But if you look at this quarter, our expenses grew lower than our guidance for the year. So we expect that we have positive winds, but also, we should be looking at some negative flows. One thing that will be slower is the reduction on interest rates, as I've mentioned before. And the other one would be additional increases in expenses that we expect mostly related to our strategic initiative. So what I can tell you is that at this point, we think that we are closer to the high end of the guidance but still within the guidance.
Very clear. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Carlos.
Welcome, Carlos.
With no questions in queue, the question-and-answer session concludes. I will now hand the call over to management of the company for final remarks.
Thank you. Thank you all for your interest and your trust and support for Gentera's team. As you can see, and this is reflected in our results, we have been working with a clear strategy in the past couple of years, and we have a clear strategy for this year. We have a very strong team. We also have a very strong operational discipline and methodology that give us solid foundations for the opportunities and challenges that we will face ahead. We feel very happy and comfortable with this. We are capturing the opportunities that the market is offering. That's something that we will continue focusing in. We are having also, at the same time, the oxygen to continue transforming our business towards the new technologies with two main goals. We always repeat this.
The goal has to be, in the first place, to be more convenient for our customers and, in the second place, to be more efficient in our operations. So we are excited about what we will accomplish in the future. Thank you for your interest. Thank you for your trust and support. And see you next quarter with more expected good news. Have a nice day.
Thank you all for participation in today's conference call. You may now disconnect.