Earnings Call: Q1 2026

May 5, 2026

Summary

FY25 delivered record net profit of BDT 13.242bn, while Q1 2026 revenue rose 40% and net profit climbed 161.5% YoY. Cautious lending, stronger investment income, and a planned bond issuance frame the outlook amid macro and credit risks.

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to City Bank PLC's earnings disclosure web event, featuring the annual performance review of the year 2025 along with the first quarter of 2026. I am Syeda Saima Hussain, your host for the event, welcoming you today. Thank you all very much for joining us. Today, we have here amongst us the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of City Bank PLC, Mr. Mashrur Arefin, Additional Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Mohammad Mahbubur Rahman, Deputy Managing Director and Head of Internal Control and Compliance, Mr. A.K.M. Faisal Akhter, and Chief Risk Officer, Mr. Mohammad Firoz Alam. At City Bank, we take great pride in engaging the investment community in our endeavors. While disclosing our performances and actions, we adhere to a strict code of full transparency and responsibility. City Bank has always ensured its success, not only in terms of its bottom line numbers, but also in terms of the goals it has set for itself in order to become one of the finest banks in Bangladesh. Our success is attributed to the continued growth of our business as well as the market's evolution to satisfy the increasingly sophisticated expectations of our respective clients in the areas of liquidity, service, reliability and mobility. We have made it this far with the help of our community, team, and stockholders by tenaciously adhering to the motto of service and trust. In light of this, we have gathered here today to discuss the bank's current financial situation and its forward-looking strategies. We shall start with our AMD and CFO, Mr. Mohammad Mahbubur Rahman, presenting the financial performance, followed by our Managing Director and CEO, Mr. Mashrur Arefin, addressing all of you, and finally end with a question and answer session. Before we proceed, I'd like to inform you all that while scheduling this event, we attempted to choose the most fitting time slot so that we could accommodate most of the participants from both local and foreign vicinities and time zones. I'd also like to add that we have opened our Q&A portal, which you can see at the bottom right corner of your screen. During our presentation, you can log in and place any relevant question in that window. We shall try our best to address them during our question and answer session, depending on the time available for the program. Ladies and gentlemen, I now request our AMD and CFO, Mr. Mohammad Mahbubur Rahman, to start with the financial performance presentation. Over to you, sir. Thank you, Saima. I am going to share the presentation. Hope you can see the presentation. Yes, it is visible. Is it visible? Okay, thank you. Good afternoon from Bangladesh. First, I would like to give you some highlights about the macroeconomic and industry outlook. Then we will present the financial performance of City Bank for 2025 and the first quarter of 2026. First slide, though actually it does not show any good news for the country as we are having very low GDP growth rate at this moment. Historically, we have been enjoying above 6% GDP growth for a long time. But due to our various domestic issues, the country is having, at this moment, very low GDP growth of 3.5%. IMF, ADB, World Bank, these organizations are projecting little bit higher GDP growth for upcoming financial years. But as we are having new democratic government, hope with their initiative, this picture will soon be much better than what we are having at this moment. Inflation was one of the major challenges for the country and due to prudent policy of Central Bank and government, they could contain the inflation from double digit to single digit. But due to recent Middle East crisis, followed by fuel crisis, the inflation again increased to 9.1% in February. But we have witnessed that it has already started declining and now has become below 9%. On the foreign exchange side, we are having actually little bit degrowth in export. In 9 months, the export figure is $35.8 billion, which was $37.2 billion, with 3.8% degrowth. But the good news is that in April, we have witnessed 33% export growth year-on-year. So we are hopeful that this growth will continue from now on. The import growth is almost stable. It is around $54.6 billion in 9 months. But the good story is that we are still enjoying very high growth in remittance, and the monthly remittance is now more than $3 billion. In 9 months, we have got $26.2 billion, and hopefully we end the financial year with more than $36 billion. Because of that, our overall foreign exchange exposure is very much positive and strong at this moment, where FX reserve has improved to $29.5 billion as per the calculation of IMF. Current account deficit has also decreased. Financial account position has become very positive. So from the foreign exchange position is very stable and strong at this moment. Another challenge that we are facing is the low private credit growth, which is hovering around 6%. Again, due to election and new government, it's taking some time to get the momentum in private investment, but we are hopeful that it will get momentum very soon. Another challenge of the industry is the high NPL ratio. It shows that it is now 30%, which actually reached more than 35% at certain point of time, but it has declined. This is not actually the correct kind of representative picture for the industry as a whole, because this industry has many good banks. So if you actually consider the NPL ratio of good banks, you'll see that the NPL ratio is below 3%. So strong banks are having a very strong balance sheet and credit quality. Now we are showing you the picture of the City Bank's performance for 2025. in 2025, our loan growth was 13.6%, and we reached BDT 506 billion. Interest income grew by 21.2% and reached BDT 54.8 billion. The higher increase of interest income because of the yield has improved from 9.8% to 10.5% year-on-year. Our loan book actually comprises of mostly wholesale banking, and then followed by retail banking, and then microfinance and medium and other card and agent banking. So our strategy is to have a diversified portfolio. We have been working on this strategy for a long time, and in 2025, we have witnessed that the growth in retail agent and small microfinance was much higher at the rate of 20%-29%, whereas the wholesale banking and the medium segment growth was around 11% or 10%. So our growth in small retail segment was very high, and we are continuing with this strategy for upcoming years to diversify our portfolio and manage risk in a better way. Deposit, on the other hand, grew by 22.8%. We have been enjoying very high deposit growth in consecutive 2 years. 2025 was also a very good year for deposit growth and our deposit size was BDT 631.7 billion. But interest expense has increased because Central Bank introduced actually a higher interest rate to contain inflation. So in line with the monetary policy, we had to actually increase the interest rate of the term deposit, especially. Because of that, the cost of deposit has increased from 4.7% to 5.5%. But we also have a strategy to deploy this high cost term deposit in a better way. We'll show you in the next slide. So most of the deposit comes from retail. You can see in the pie chart, retail is contributing 56%, followed by wholesale banking with 24%. Our main strength is the continuous growth in current and savings accounts. Last year also, we added more than 300,000 customers, and our CASA volume growth is continuing. If you look at the bottom of this presentation, you will see that our CASA growth was 16.9% when interest cost was very high. The growth in FDR was higher, definitely because we attracted deposit with higher interest rate in term deposit, but our growth in CASA is continuing. That is why if you actually look at this graph, you see that we are maintaining the spread. We could maintain the spread in 2025 very successfully. Our spread, which is shown in a green color, remained at 5%, which was 5.1%. Though there is increase in deposit cost and with successful management of yield and managing right amount of current and savings account, we could maintain our spread at the rate of, at 5% level. Investment, this is our strategy for a short-term basis, because as there is a low credit growth, so we deployed a significant portion of the deposit in investment when yield curve was very high and still high because it is a part of the monetary policy. We are enjoying good investment growth. Here you can see that it grew by 48% and the closing figure was BDT 207.9 billion, which increased from BDT 140 billion. Also investment income also grew by 112%, from BDT 16.9 billion to BDT 35.9 billion. Most of the income actually come from interest income from the treasury bill and bond. The additional amount was BDT 15 billion. Also we earned capital gain from same portfolio of BDT 4 billion. Out of BDT 19 billion increase, most of the increment of income has come from the treasury bill and bond, naturally. Another pillar of the City Bank is the trade business. Here you can see that, though the country's export is negative and import growth was around 4%. In our case, our export business growth was almost 7%, and it reached $3.4 billion. Import volume was $3.9 billion with more than 9% growth. Our commission income also grew from BDT 5.1 billion to BDT 5.8 billion. There is a little bit decline in FX income as FX market was quite stable in 2025, and that is why there is almost no growth in FX income. Our commission income from trade business has grown satisfactory. Credit card is another main business of City Bank. We are the number 1 credit card player in the market. You can see that even in a low credit growth market and when the inflation was high and overall economic activities was low, even in this challenging situation, our credit card business actually grew in 2025. The base grew by 7.3%, and the credit card business has grew by 25.8%. Income also grew by 14.6%. We are enjoying a good growth in credit card business. Overall revenue, because of good growth in interest income and investment income and also fees income and credit card business, our overall revenue growth was 20.4% and increased from BDT 39.7 billion to BDT 47.9 billion on a solo basis and a consolidated basis, almost the figure is same. Operating expense, on the other hand, it grew by almost 25%, and the major reason is the revision of our salary that we did in 2024, basically. The result of this restructure actually mostly came to 2025. Because of the salary structure, new structure, this cost has increased by almost 35%, increased from BDT 9 billion to BDT 12 billion. Also, we recruited employees in business segment to actually support our growth in business. Other operating expense, on the other hand, you can see that there is a controlled growth. The growth rate was 13.7%, and the amount increased from BDT 8 billion to BDT 9.1 billion. Most of the investment actually has gone to IT digitalization of the bank and the increase of our distribution channel, like new sub-branch, branch, and ATM machines. Here we are, what actually I have already told, so I am not actually elaborating it further. On a summary basis, our operating profit grew by 16%, had increased from BDT 23.5 billion to BDT 27.2 billion. In 2024, again, we witnessed a very strong growth in operating profit. After operating profit, then we charge our provision against loans and advances and other assets. Provision actually increased by 29.7% because the industry as a whole actually gone through a very challenging situation. We addressed all risk by charging adequate provision in our P&L. Here you can see that it increased from BDT 6.2 billion to BDT 8.1 billion in 2025. But NPL ratio has reduced from 3.7% to 2.5%. So amount also decreased from BDT 16.5 billion to BDT 12.6 billion. NPL ratio has decreased and volume also decreased. On the other hand, because of the high charge of provision, you can see that our provision coverage ratio against NPL actually has increased from 106% to 127%. We feel that we are covering our risk very strongly by keeping additional provision. Here is the actually summary of the performance of our subsidiaries. You know that we have four subsidiaries. One is City Brokerage. These are all small, actually, subsidiaries, so I am not actually going into detail. But all subsidiaries are actually profitable. The contribution from Brokerage is BDT 58 million. We have a small subsidiary in Hong Kong for supporting our trade business. Their income is HKD 3 billion. In Malaysia, we have a small remittance house. They have a little contribution. We have a merchant bank, their contribution is around BDT 82 million. After considering the profit of subsidiaries, our net profit for 2025 was BDT 13.242 billion. It is the highest ever profit in the City Bank history. Increased significantly from more than 30% in 2025 from 2024. If you consider the overall six years profit, if you compare it with 2019 when the profit was just only BDT 2.6 billion. From 2019, it has increased to BDT 13.2 billion. We are actually giving consistent high return. Also, at the same time, we are building the balance sheet in a very strong manner. These are the few ratios, especially which interest our investor. Return on equity, which was 24.4% in 2025. In 2024, it was 26%. Because of increase of our equity, it has decreased a little bit, but still, we think this is the highest ROE in the industry, in the banking industry. Return on asset is 1.7%. Again, it is one of the highest ROA in the industry. The board has already recommended dividend for 2025. We have recommended 15% stock and 15% cash. Earning per share for 2025 was BDT 8.6. Again, the highest ever earning per share for City Bank history. Book value also crossed BDT 40 in 2025. Capital adequacy ratio was 15.7% at the end of 2025. Tier 1 capital was 12.2%. Again, we are maintaining a very strong capital, which ensures the continuity of the growth of the bank. We like to also share one information. It is also in the public domain that we are issuing fifth subordinate bond worth BDT 12 billion. It is also going to be the biggest bond to be issued by City Bank. Once it will be in the balance sheet, this ratio will be improved around 17%. Again, this will ensure the high growth of the bank in coming years. Our rating of the bank, Moody's gives rating B2. This is the highest level rating available for the Bangladeshi bank based on the sovereign rating. CRAB is the leading rating company in Bangladesh who rates City Bank as a triple A rated bank in the country. This is end of 2025. Then also, we like to take the opportunity to present Q1, quarter one result for 2026 in the same forum. Again, we are starting with loans and advance and interest, to show what is the performance after the quarter one result of 2026. Loan and advance in this quarter grew by 3.2%. We are following very cautious step at this moment. Current credit growth is around 6%, but month to month, credit growth is even lower. At the same time, because of the election and change of government, we are taking some time to observe the situation. That is why our growth is very low in loan and advance. After that quarter end, our loan book is BDT 522.4 billion. We started with BDT 506 billion, that we have shown in the 2025 presentation. Interest income also grew by 4.6%, and interest income in first quarter was BDT 13.3 billion, which was BDT 12.7 billion with 4.6% growth. Interest in loan advance improved little bit by 10 basis points. Loans and advance, again, most of the loans again, still coming from our corporate and wholesale banking and second position is held by retail and then microfinance and medium segment. We are continuing our growth in retail, small and medium segment. At the same time, we are also slowly dispersing, growing in wholesale banking. After when we observe a better situation, definitely we are fully ready with liquidity capital to have much bigger growth. Deposit. Again, the growth in deposit is 4.3%. Though in terms of percentage, it may show very low figure, but in terms of the volume, you can see that in volume, the growth is quite significant and already it costs deposit amount at the end of quarter one was BDT 658.9 billion. Soon it will cross BDT 700 billion before the end of this year. Interest expense, on the other hand, increased by 13.9%. Still, the term deposit rate is increasing, and we are acquiring a good amount of deposit with term deposit because we have option to invest in alternative manner to improve the profit rate of the bank. Cost of deposit is increasing, but at the same time, we are also deploying the fund in a profitable manner. That also will show in next slide. Retail is contributing most of the deposit, with 67%. Our customer growth is continuing. In first quarter, we have added 71,000 customer. You can really see that still we are continuing new customers. Because of the increase of cost of deposit and slow growth in credit and also the increase of NPL, our yield on advance reduced from 10.5% to 10.2%, but our cost of deposit increasing. That is why for the time being, it is showing that our spread is decreased from 5.5% to 4.8%, but we have deployed this high cost deposit in a high-yielding bill. Ultimately, we have recovered much higher return from this cost. From this deposit. Here you can see that our growth in investment is continuing. The growth is around 16.7%, and at the end of the first quarter, the figure is BDT 244.4 billion. Investment income also grew by 61%, from BDT 6 billion to BDT 10 billion. Our investment in high-yield bond is continuing, and this is already that I have told you that it is a kind of short-term strategy. When we will have credit good, easily, we can convert this investment pattern from treasury bill bond to credit loans and advance. Export business is still growing. Compared to last year, first quarter, our growth is around 1%, with in first quarter figure was $896 million. Import also grew significantly. We supported import of the fuel for the country. Here you can see that the growth is 31.7% and already crossed $1.2 billion. City Bank has become the leading number one bank in trade business among local banks. In the industry, we are in the second position after HSBC. Here also, you can see that we are still continuing very high growth, especially in import business, which gives high commission income. Here you can see that our commission income is increasing also. In first quarter, the growth is around 20% altogether, and there is also significant FX gain also. Credit card business, another strong business pillar of the bank. Here also, we are continuing our growth. The card business grew by 7%, and credit card bill business also grew by 16%, and income also grew by 47%. It is another profitable business for the bank. Overall, the revenue grew by almost 40% in first quarter. It is probably one of the best first quarter we have in recent years. Revenue growth is 40% and reached BDT 30.1 billion. After revenue, we deduct operating expense. So this year, our first quarter operating growth is 17.6%, and staff cost has increased by 15%. Most of the staff cost increased because we are continuously expanding our investment in digital area, and also we are expanding our distribution channel like sub-branch, branch, and agent point and other unit office. For the business purpose, we are recruiting employees. After deducting operating cost, our operating profit is BDT 7.4 billion in first quarter with 61.1% growth. Again, it is a very strong growth we have actually produced in first quarter. After operating profit, we have charged provision for the loan and advance. The provision cost actually decreased compared to last year first quarter. NPL issuance actually increased a little bit from 2.5% to 2.9%, and the volume has increased from BDT 12.6 billion to BDT 14.9 billion. But provision coverage, we are still maintaining very good strong provision coverage with 126%. After provision and after deducting tax, our operating profit is BDT 2.4 billion in first quarter, which was BDT 921 million. So growth is 161.5%. Again, we could generate very strong, actually profit growth in first quarter. Because of that, our ROE actually improved significantly compared to last year first quarter, when the ROE was 8%. This year first quarter, ROE is 15%. Return on asset was 5% in 2025 in first quarter, and which improved to 1.1% after the end of first quarter of this year. Also, earning per share improved from BDT 2.8 to BDT 6.2, and book value also improved from BDT 35 to BDT 42.8. But because of the little bit increase of NPL, our actually capital actually decreased from December from 15.7% to 15.1%. But again, the issuance of bond, that actually I already told you that BDT 1,200 crore bond is ongoing. Actually, after the end of second quarter, we will issue the whole amount of the bond. Then this capital ratio will improve drastically, and which will ensure the continuous growth of the business. Then, we would like to also give some glimpse of the sustainable financing, which is another core area of the bank, for which I would like to request our Chief Risk Officer, Mr. Firoz, to present our performance in sustainable financing. Firoz? Thank you, Mahbub. As-salamu alaykum, and a very good afternoon, everyone. As you know, City Bank is an environmentally socially responsible bank. We are the country's first bank to be a member of the United Nations Environment Programme's Principles for Responsible Banking. Sustainability is an important part of our core values and business practice. City Bank is rated by the Central Bank as the number 1 sustainable bank of Bangladesh in 2025, and City Bank also in the list of top sustainable banks for the last 5 years in a row. The rating, actually sustainable rating, is based on the ESG performance as well as the core banking sustainability, whereas the core banking sustainability part is more than the ESG's performance. Next slide. Saima next. I'm actually okay. Okay. Okay. Now we can. Okay. Now let's look at our performance in green and sustainable finance disbursement. In 2024, the sustainable finance target for City Bank was around BDT 55 billion, where we disbursed around BDT 402 billion. Similarly, in 2025, the sustainable finance target was around BDT 164 billion, where we disbursed around BDT 477 billion. The year-on-year growth for sustainable finance was 18.7%. Similarly, we have seen similar growth in green finance. In 2024, the green finance target for City Bank was BDT 7.29 billion, where we disbursed BDT 33.36 billion. Also in 2025, our green financing target was BDT 20.53 billion, where we disbursed BDT 54.28 billion. Year-on-year growth is 62.7%. Over to the next. It's sometime to change the slide. I don't know why. Okay. To disclose our ESG impact in 2025, we published our first-ever GRI standard ESG report. Similarly, we have also published our first-ever IFRS S1/S2-aligned climate report as part of sustainability-related financial disclosure. We also disbursed in low carbon energy-efficient machinery for BDT 15.89 billion in 2025, also disbursed BDT 2.23 billion to renewable energy projects. We also financed 60 LEED-certified clients with finance for BDT 3.43 billion. We also take care of our in-house sustainability as part of this, so we installed solar systems on our 74 branches and sub-branches and 30 ATMs and 27 agent outlets. Next slide. Already mentioned that we are the first in Bangladesh, and we became a member of the UNEP FI. We also joined in PCAF, Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials, to measure our emissions more accurately and report more transparently. Recently we have signed an MoU with the UNDP to collaborate on ESG, climate finance, and green bonds. As already mentioned, some achievements. City Bank has received many awards that show its strong performance in sustainability. We are the number one sustainable bank and top sustainable bank list in the last five years. City Bank also featured in the Bloomberg ESG for the first time in 2025. In addition, we have also received many awards from local and international bodies on ESG. This is our first ESG report in 2024. You can, in 2024, scan this QR code on your mobile device for quick access to the ESG report. This is also the first climate report complying with IFRS S1/S2. You can scan this for the mobile device for quick access to our climate report. Thank you, Mawed. Thank you. Now over to you. We are almost at the end of the presentation. Before closing our presentation, I hand over the session to our MD. We have to highlight that City Bank is not only just growing our business, we have already done significant achievement in sustainable finance. This is a new addition for City Bank, that we like to create a very good working environment. The main asset of the bank is the human resource. We like to create a gender equal environment in our bank. We have already got certification from EDGE, which actually stands for Economic Dividends for Gender Equality. We are the first bank or first Bangladeshi organization in the country who has got this certification after a thorough audit. They have 3 levels of certification. It starts with entry level, which they call EDGE Assess, then EDGE Move, and EDGE Lead. Like many global organizations, we got our certificate at the second level. Many organizations start with the entry level, but we got a very good recognition from EDGE and our level is Move. We actually kind of ensure that we are practicing very fair HR policy and which is very much conducive for gender equality in our workplace. This is also another recognition that we have received from the Financial Times as the best bank in Bangladesh for 2025. These are some other awards that we have received. I am not going to detail because this information has been shared with you before. With this, I would like to end my presentation. Now handing over to Saima for the next session. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mahbub Sir and Firoz Sir, for your insightful presentation on financial performance. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to call upon Mr. Mashrur Arefin, Managing Director and CEO of City Bank PLC, to speak about the views and forward-looking strategies of the bank. Hello. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Mahbub, and you have done a brilliant presentation. Nice. Everything covered. And Firoz for sustainability. First of all, my apology that I am in a dressed-down mode today due to some personal reasons. I am actually not doing office. Now to talk about this, I know that you are all investors mostly listening to City Bank's good result of last year and a fantastic result in the first quarter of this year. Both the results actually last year have put us as the second most profitable bank in this country. BRAC Bank being at the top, then we are just one notch below them in terms of profit. Then there is Pubali Bank. Only three of us above BDT 1,000 crore mark in terms of net profit. We have already been doing fantastic during last six years that I am at the helm of affairs. Bank's operating income has grown 3.1 times, and operating profit has also traveled from BDT 690 crore to almost BDT 2,700 crore last year. In this profit after tax also has grown by manyfold. That has also seen a 4.5 times of increase. That is all about profitability. It shows our efficiency, it shows our ability to manage bad debts, ability to manage asset quality. Also our ability to attract deposits, by virtue of being a good banking brand at a cheaper cost and to maintain a right amount of, right kind of net interest margin. We are doing better in those areas. Of course, as Mahbub mentioned, country's GDP growth has slowed down. This new democratically elected government now in charge. A lot of things are in flux now. We do not know in which way things are heading. At the same time, I would like to say that our two main sources of foreign currency, which is our remittances and exports. Remittances are doing phenomenally well. Export is again rising, and import is also rising. There is a little bit of trade gap, but at the current account level, it is in surplus. Financial account is also doing better. Balance of payment is in positive, not negative. Now, the problem is the Iran war, which has started and not ending, and lot of tension going on in the market about this. Earlier, the tension was with regard to dollar-Taka devaluation, but we have not seen much of a demand of dollar because the dollar price is still stable at 122-123 range. But, outside world was looking at the banking sector reform. It has come to some sort of We need to give it time to see which way this goes, this reform. It is a new government, a lot of things we are hearing, but Central Bank Governor, new government, has already said that he will pursue the reform and these five merged entities will continue to merger is valid, and merger will not be undone, et cetera. We are seeing in the press, and with regard to Bank Company Act amendment, that work is also ongoing right now. But banks like City and a few other good banks, I would say that we are insulated from the weak performance of the many local banks, or we are ring-fenced, more technically speaking, effectively ring-fenced from the problems of weaker institutions. We do not have much of an interconnectivity, so we are doing good. We will be keeping on doing better. I'll not go into numbers, as is evident in our first quarter result. We will see that our interest income on a $5.2 billion lending book, that is coming with a NIM of around 4.8-4.9%. Our deposit LCR ratio is the biggest testament to our bank's continued liquidity flow. Our LCR is above 200% liquidity coverage ratio. Provision-wise also, provision coverage ratio is good, 125% or so. Our NPL is showing is very low, but actually it is perhaps not that low. There is a lot of government intervention going on, some sort of facilities given to business houses. They are enjoying certain rescheduling benefit for which it is showing around that. I think even the good banks, they are not in any range with regard to NPL which can cause worry. Like City Bank's, in total, even the rescheduling book put together, it will be in the range of 5-6%. All good banks are same. Whereas the bad banks in Bangladesh, they have NPL of above 30%, above 40%. I mean to say that picture with regard to NPL maybe is not as rosy as the number says, but also for City Bank, there is no worry. Right now, today also, we are keeping additional provision of around $30 million. This is kept in the general provision. Whenever needed, we will change it or turn it into a specific provision against accounts. But we have effectively done something very good. We have formed a committee. Regularly, weekly basis, we are sitting. One by one, we are identifying our problem accounts. We are a bank of 45 years old, lot of legacy, inheritance, and all that. We have very good income flow now. Income is growing at that rate, which you have seen that income revenue growth is 39-40% revenue growth. Cost growth is 17 or 17.7%. That automatically tells you these two numbers, that what is the City Bank's core strength. Our revenue is growing, our cost is not growing at that rate. We don't have any of those bad kind of assets that other many banks carry. Certain good banks are of actual regional class or global class in Bangladesh, and I'm proud to say that City Bank is one. We have great corporate culture. We have great sources of earning. Mahbub has already mentioned how much, at what rate our retail and card and small microfinance portfolios are growing. Around 30% rate. But we have slowed down the growth in corporate and commercial and medium. Right now, there is no such credit growth as well. Because Iran war is raging and business people are still taking their time to invest into BMRE and other big projects. Plus government projects, which is a big portion of the total economic activity in the country. We are not so far seeing any big government projects being taken up. So after that, credit growth also will happen, then there will be time to grow in those three large, big ticket sector like corporate and commercial and medium. But in the meantime, we are fully focusing on the growth of the non-funded business in the sense that in pushing the trade volume upward, because it gives us very good LC commission earning. Last year it was the country's highest trade volume, and this year it's $8.02 billion. This year we are chasing a $10 billion. Among the banking sectors, largest trade bank we want to be after HSBC, of course. HSBC is a foreign institution. Other than that, I would like to say that the worry that I see among the investors, that if the industry is performing so bad, what is your systemic risk? I personally would like to say that because it is that kind of a large economy where few banks will always be needed, and few of these banks, City being one of the top 3. We have decoupled ourselves from the risk, largely decoupled from that weaker local banks. We have no interconnectivity. So don't worry. Keep believing in City Bank. Right now, there is no credit growth, but huge amount of deposit is coming to City Bank, that the LCR ratio is above 200%. There are other AD ratio is also much below the mark where we could reach. Right now, growth of the bank will be in those 3 lending sectors, plus also digital nano loan. Also just to service our corporate and medium existing customers, there will be certain drawdowns and certain facilities always be available. At the same time, we'll take the opportunity now that we are getting so much of deposit, so we will, of course, we'll take the opportunity of making money on a short-term basis from treasury bill bond, which we are doing treasury bill bond investment from this first quarter. First quarter investments around 32% has come from treasury bill bond. That is to say that 68% is still coming from core businesses. So we know exactly what we are doing. We are playing a smart game smartly. We are a very well-reputed brand. Our biggest dream is to launch our digital bank, which is coming as a department of City Bank. I think within another 3 months' time, we will be a big competitor to this MFS player, which is very big in the country, with whom we do digital nano loan. So I look forward to that day, launch of the digital bank and in all the areas, credit card, retail, small microfinance. So fee income, trade-based commission income, interest income from a $5 billion lending book, plus also maintaining a low-cost deposit base, and plus also investing the surplus deposit that we carry into treasury bill bond. This is our goal, and goal is to also exit a few of the stressed accounts that we have. We formed this committee named SAROC, the Strategic Asset Recovery and Oversight Committee. Every week meeting is happening. We have a happy employee base. We have a great brand name. Our stock price also, give us time, it will. If Iran war was not there, by this time it would have been more or less near NAV price, at least it would have reached. So it will ultimately go there. Just let's hope that this war between Iran and U.S., Israel ends. New government, they have very good intent. Let me see. We are waiting for right amount of growth and inflation control, which they are trying to do. It's not easy when prices of essential commodities is going up because already the country has corrected the fuel prices. Little worry, of course, there, because we are big in retail and card and small and microfinance businesses. Let's see. We have a very good team. I am not at all worried. I believe 2026 is going to be a brilliant year. First quarter is Morning shows the day. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir, for your eloquent speech. Ladies and gentlemen, we have now reached our Q&A session. I will read out the first question. Average ROE was 24.1% in last 2 years. Do you expect ROE to continue at this level this year? That is our target to maintain the ROE at that level. Our profitability level, definitely we have a plan to maintain the profitability, and hope that there will not be any big surprise in the overall industry. If things are at If we have a stable situation and there is no reason to have a decline ROE from the present level. Thank you. Moving on to the next question. What is your outlook for loan growth for 2026 and 2027 given GDP growth is expected to be slow? Our growth is always higher than our GDP growth. You have seen from our past record. We are actually growing more in other segment, small segment. Growth in retail, microfinance, nano-lending is very high. Because their pie in that overall pie chart is lower, that is why overall loan growth is not showing significant. When we have actually growth in corporate segment, then it becomes a significant growth for the bank. We hope that from June, second quarter, there will be considerable growth from the corporate segment because then the government have a new budget and they will have a new ADP plan, and government will take initiative to start large projects. Everything will have impact on the credit growth. Also, we have not seen any major BMRE in our export segment, specifically the garment industry. We already have started receiving good response from international market in garment. Again, if there is a slowdown in Europe and U.S.A., then thing will be different. We are expecting that they will need to replenish their stock, so they will place more orders. Our garment industry, they will also start investing in the modernization of their factories. This will also help us to grow in the corporate segment. Then you will see a significant growth in our balance sheet. Again, I am repeating that our growth in other segment is growing quite fast. Thank you. Moving on to the next question. How can City Bank decrease NPL below 2% in the future? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that question. Actually, if you observe that the last couple of years, our NPL is reducing. Last year, I think the 2024, it was more than 3%, and last year it goes down to 2.5%. Our effort is to continue to improve our NPL and quality of portfolio, definitely. Our target and our strategy to continue to reduce the NPL. As part of this, our MD already mentioned that we already increase SAMD level oversee and the monitoring. Also we already set a strategy for the diversify the portfolio and also aggressive recovery. Aggressive recovery, we have dedicated SAMD team, dedicated collection team. They are more focusing on the aggressive recovery of the overdue portfolio. To address the early stage, we also have the early warning system to address before to arrest the NPL and also definitely to review the underwriting standard and for the quality booking in the future. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Moving on to the next question. What role will digital banking and ecosystem partnerships play in long-term success? I think, that is the ultimate for banking in our kind of economy, where most of the people, they have money, but those are mattress money. Those are not kept into the system. So it's a great source of low-cost deposit. Plus also when corporate, commercial kind of loans are showing such a dark history, big tickets and all, it's better to grow in that particular segment digitally. City Bank's digital nano-loan is the only digital nano-loan in the country right now. We are giving it to the bKash clientele in the bKash MFS company app, which is bKash is City Bank's subsidiary. But they do lending business with us. Capital is ours, credit risk is ours, and bKash's customer base and see how much we have given money. We have given more than 7,000 crore, which is more than nearly $700 million of 20,000 BDT loan, which is almost nothing in terms of loan ticket size. NPL ratio is hovering around 2% only. This is also credit risk point of view, good. Economic development point of view is also good. Plus also, you are taking only that much of an exposure on a particular borrower. You are dealing with millions of customers, all of them will not go bad. Given the trend has been going on, the banking sector, the lessons learned by the sector, and given the fact that most of the corporates are actually over-leveraged in a country like ours, where there are too many banks and customers easily take too many of banking facilities to try to do so many things. It is retail, cards, digital lending, digital banking. These are the sectors to grow in a country of around 200 million people where 83% population is unbanked. They do have money. They earn, they keep those money under the mattress. We want to take financial inclusion very seriously. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Moving on to the last question of this event. How does management plan to balance aggressive growth with rising credit risk in the current macro environment? We don't have any aggressive growth plan, but we have a good growth plan. Balanced growth plan. That's why you see from our balance sheet growth trend, then you see that some year we are growing in credit, some year we are growing in investment. Thing is that because of our strength of brand and the governance structure, we are receiving huge amount of deposit. We have to also invest this deposit in a right way. We are assessing the risk, we are assessing the opportunity. Based on that, we take strategy. Sometimes we have long-term strategy, mid-term strategy, as well as short-term strategy. You have to be agile. So that's what actually we have seen that when actually we have opportunity to invest in treasury bill and bond, we have invested here in this segment to have a continuous growth in bottom line and also manage the risk in a right manner. Because ultimately, we have to ensure the trust of our depositor. That is the number one issue of the bank. We are maintaining our agility, and we are also taking the opportunity at the right time as we have that flexibility at the time. And when actually we have the opportunity, then we'll grow in loans and advance. And advantage of City Bank is that our portfolio is diversified. We have strength in all segment of the industry, from nano-lending to large corporate lending. Whenever actually based on the opportunity, risk level, we'll take our position. The aggressive growth terminology is not appropriate for us. We actually basically do growth in a very balanced manner. Thank you. Thank you all for your insightful answers. Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of today's earnings disclosure event. Thank you all for your participation and patience. Before concluding, let me inform you that the recorded version of the entire event will be made available in the same web link as the live program very shortly. Those of you who missed the event or want to stream through it at a later time will find the whole event documented there. The financial presentation will also be available in City Bank's website under the Investor Relations section. We appreciate your participation and patience. Thank you again for your interest in City Bank deals. Goodbye. Stay safe and stay well. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you.