Earnings Call: Q4 2024

May 6, 2025

Summary

FY24 set records, with operating profit up 69% and consolidated profit after tax up 58.9% to BDT 10.1bn, despite heavier provisions. FY25 priorities include digital launches, retail and trade growth, amid NPL and dollar-market risks.

Hello and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to City Bank PLC's earnings disclosure web event of the fourth quarter of 2024. I am Seyda Saima Hussain, your host for the evening, welcoming you today. Thank you all very much for joining us. Today, we have here amongst us the honorable 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 Wholesale Banking, Mr. Mesbaul Asif Siddiqui, Chief Risk Officer, Mohammad Firoz Alam, and Deputy Managing Director and Head of Internal Control and Compliance, Mr. AKM Saifullah Tasnim. At City Bank, we take great pride in engaging the investment community in our endeavors. While disclosing our performance and actions, we adhere to a strict code of full transparency and responsibility. City Bank has always measured 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 the finest bank 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 respected 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 the event, we attempted to choose the most fitting time slot so that we could accommodate most of the participants, both from local and foreign facilities 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 screens. During our presentations, you can log in and place any relevant question in the window. We shall try our best to address them in our Q&A 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. Good afternoon from Dhaka. It is a great pleasure for us to present the financial statements of 2024. 2024 was one of the best year in City Bank history. That is why it is a great honor for me to present this result to you all. We will start some overview about the macroeconomic situation. First, we are showing you the GDP. We are projecting to end the financial year of 2024 with 5.3% GDP growth, though multilateral development organizations are projecting lower GDP growth. But on the other hand, they are also projecting higher GDP growth around 5% to 6% by 2026. We have faced several headwinds especially 2024, and we are hopeful that we will be able to overcome all these challenges, and we will have the higher growth trajectory again. The inflation was one of the concern for the economy, and you can see that the double-digit inflation has come down to single digit, and Bangladesh Bank is projecting to bring down the inflation to 7% to 8% by the middle of 2025. Here you can see the export, import, and the remittance and foreign reserve position. The foreign reserve position is around $20 billion to $21 billion. The good thing is that the government has actually settled all overdues, most of the overdues. Whatever the FX position, foreign reserve position you are seeing here, that will continue and expected to grow further as remittance is growing very satisfactorily in this year, around 23%. By middle of the year, it will reach around $27 billion, which will be the highest ever remittance in the country's history. Export is growing at the rate of 8%, still, though, global issues like tariff actually has brought a little bit confusion about the growth of export, but still we are having around 5% to 10% export growth. Import is a little bit depressed because of the prices of dollar that we face especially last year and beginning of this year, but gradually it is going to increase. The credit growth, this is a challenging area, which has actually decreased to 6.8%, though the Bangladesh Bank started to have around 9.8% credit growth. NPL is a challenge for the industry. Overall, NPL ratio for the industry is around 17%, though the private commercial bank is having around 12% NPL ratio. Now I am showing the City Bank's result for 2024. As I already have told you that 2024 is a remarkable year for City Bank. We ended 2024 with 12% growth in loans and advance and reached BDT 445.7 billion. But on the other hand, interest income has grown by around 33%. From BDT 34 billion to BDT 45 billion. The main reason for this high growth interest income is that Bangladesh Bank has lifted the limit on interest rate. That is a very good news for the banking industry. That is why the interest yield on advance has grown from 7.95% to 9.78%, increase is 183 bps. We are expecting to have more growth in interest rate in coming days. Loans and advances, here you can see that most of the loans and advances is being held by wholesale banking division. Previously, we used to show the corporate bank and commercial bank separately, but recently we have merged these two segments for the better business. Wholesale banking as a whole, they contribute 60%, and rest of the 40% is contributed by retail, small and micro finance, medium segment, and car. We have been more focused on retail and small segment, and that is why it was more than around 70% five years back, and now it has reduced to, wholesale banking contribution has reduced to 60%, and the focus in other areas is continuing. Though for last two years, we have actually had a little bit slow growth in retail and micro finance to avoid the risk associated with the macroeconomic situation. Our long-term growth is to give more focus on retail and micro finance. Here we are showing that in 2024, we had the highest ever deposit growth, around 30, more than around 25% deposit growth. We have experienced BDT 122 billion equivalent of deposit added in 2024, when the country experienced many challenges from political to macroeconomic situation. Customers are placing huge confidence in City Bank. Here you can see that deposit in City Bank has grown by 31% in 2024, and reached BDT 514 billion. Interest cost has grown by 79%, from BDT 17.9 billion to 30%. You may ask that why actually we have increased the cost, interest expense. Because of the liquidity situation, many banks actually increased their interest rate for the depositors. To cope up with this situation, we also had to increase our deposit rate for term deposit. That is why term deposit cost has increased from 6.3% to 7.6%. Still, our deposit rate is lower than our competitors and all of the banks. Still, the impact of this high interest rate has impacted our cost of deposit, which has increased from 3.46% to 4.7%, 129 bps actually increased. Here we are showing that our retail business segment, they are contributing most of the deposit with 65% contribution. It shows that City Bank retail business is actually one of the very strongest business unit in our bank, and which has become a very strong pillar for the bank, and it shows the sustainability of our capacity to acquire more business and especially the liability business from the market. Though the CASA ratio has reduced from 50% to 45%, we have done it strategically, and we will show you actually why we have actually acquired more term deposit, because there was a clear strategy behind it. Despite increase of cost of deposit, here you can see that in red line, the cost of deposit has increased from 3.5% to 4.8%, but our spread or net interest margin, that is shown in green line, has increased from 4.5% to 5%, because the yield on advance has increased from 8% to 9.8%. That is why we actually took the opportunity to acquire more deposit at higher cost because we knew that we would be able to actually acquire business at higher rate because central bank has lifted the limit on interest rate. On the other hand, there is also opportunity in treasury bill and bond as government needs to raise fund from the banking sector. The rate for treasury bill and bond has increased quite significantly in 2024. We took the opportunity to deploy those high-cost deposit to treasury bill and bond. The volume has increased from 78 billion to 138 billion, with around 76.8% growth. But income, you can see that it has grown by 244%. So our strategy to acquire deposit with the higher rate has actually given us a better result, because we could deploy the additional deposit to the loan and as well as for the investment in treasury bill and bond. Export and import business is one of the strengths of City Bank. We cover more than 6% of the market share. And where the country's export growth is around 5%-10%, import is almost without any growth. But our export growth has grown by 27.8%, from $2.5 billion to $3.2 billion. Import has increased from $2.6 billion to $3.6 billion with 38% growth. Commission fees and FX gain also increased from BDT 5.6 billion to BDT 6.5 billion, or 16% growth. Our credit card business, though 2024 was a very challenging year because of the macroeconomic and political situation. But despite this challenge, our credit card base has increased by 6% and reached around 708,000 card base. And credit card bill business has also grown by 8%, from BDT 43.9 billion to BDT 47.5 billion. So income has also increased by 26%, from BDT 1.7 billion to BDT 2.1 billion. Though in terms of size, it is not significant, but credit card is one of our core areas. We still hold the largest market share, and it gives us a huge brand mileage. And also, here I am showing that we have launched two significant cards in the market. One is the first vertical Visa card, and another is the very high-end, first-ever Amex metal card for the high-net-worth customer. So it shows that City Bank is still actually thriving very strongly in the credit card business. So overall, revenue has grown from BDT 27.6 billion to BDT 30.5 billion with 43% growth. On a consolidated basis, it is with 43% growth because our subsidiaries are having different challenges. But on a solo basis, City Bank has significant revenue growth. Against 43% revenue growth, our operating cost growth was 16.5%, from BDT 14.6 billion, it increased to BDT 17 billion. Our staff costs have increased by 14%, though we restructured our salary to motivate our talents and also to help our human resources to adjust with the inflation in the market. We have restructured our salary. So our salary has increased by 14%. Our other operating costs have increased by 19.6% because still we are investing heavily for the digitization of the bank, and the benefit of this digitization will definitely add more revenue in coming days. So this is the summary. Here we are showing the operating profit, which has increased from BDT 13.9 billion to BDT 23.5 billion. So this, again, is the highest ever operating profit in the City Bank history, with 69% growth. Then provision. 2024, another challenge in the banking sector is the NPL. Overall NPL has increased in the market, and Central Bank also tightened the NPL regulation in the right direction. So we also appreciate that. So that is why our NPL ratio has increased a little bit, and volume-wise also, it increased from BDT 14.3 billion to BDT 16.5 billion. And also our provision charge has increased from BDT 2.8 billion to BDT 6.8 billion. Also, we had to make a provision against our investment in capital market. Also our investment of subsidiary in the capital market caused us a higher provision. We have taken the full provision for all the decline in the price. It has been covered. Provision coverage ratio is still above 100%. Having said that, having this high level of provision charges, our net profit is even higher. That we will show in the next slide. Here you can see the breakdown of the result of our subsidiaries along with City Bank. City Bank profit has increased from BDT 6.1 billion to BDT 10.8 billion, even after having very high provision. Our profit for subsidiaries, especially in capital market, has decreased. City Brokerage profit has decreased from BDT 61 million to BDT 48 million. Our merchant banks profit has decreased from BDT 152 million to BDT 90 million. Money transfer, we have Exim Tower in Malaysia. The profit level is almost the same, a little bit decline. We also have a finance company in Hong Kong. Their profitability also decreased because of some dollar and rate issues. The thing is, the main challenge from the subsidiaries that has come from the capital market, for trade investment, we had to incur BDT 883 million of provision in our consolidated accounts. With this additional provision, our consolidated profit still crossed, for the first time, BDT 10 billion milestone. Last year, 2023's profit after tax was BDT 6.3 billion, which has increased to BDT 10.1 billion because of the higher operating profit and higher revenue. Again, I am reiterating that this is highest ever profit for the City Bank as a group. Here you can see the last few slides where we are showing the return on equity. We are showing the return on equity on a solo basis as well as consolidated basis. On a solo basis, you will see that our return on equity has increased from 17.6% to 26.1%. Based on consolidate, our return has increased to 23.9% because we had to make a provision for subsidiaries. If capital market come back to a normal situation, then you can estimate that how much the return on equity will be on a consolidated basis. Because then we will add more profit from the subsidiary that we couldn't do in last year. Also, return on equity, the same. It has increased from 1.2 to 1.7, but on a consolidated basis, it is 1.6. We have already declared dividend, and it will be approved in the next AGM. For 2024, we have declared 12.5% stock dividend and 12.5% cash dividend. The rate is overall 25%. In 2023, also, the overall rate was 25%. Earning per share, it increased to 8.06 on a solo basis. Bank earned 8.06 earning per share, which, on a consolidated basis, it is 7.5. Again, if we have a proper functioning, good capital market, it's very easy to say that earning per share on a consolidated basis will be higher than the solo basis. The NAV is also around BDT 35, which was around BDT 28 in 2023. Capital adequacy ratio on a solo basis is around 16%. On a consolidated basis, it is 15.3%. It is very strong. We are holding very strong capital base. This will ensure the growth in coming days. These are the few actually regulation that has a significant impact on banking industry, especially the changing loan classification regulation. Also, we are going to have implementation of IFRS 9 by 2027. So, Bangladesh Bank has given a roadmap. This will give a better governance for the bank in coming days. Now, actually, we have few slides for a very important area, that is the sustainable finance. City Bank is very much actually strategic. This is one of the very strategic intention of the bank to become very strong in sustainable financing area. I would like to request our CRO, Mr. Firoz, to explain these few slides about the sustainability finance. Thank you, Mahbub. Firoz bhai. Thank you, Mahbub. Good afternoon. As you know, sustainability an important part of our core value and business practice. We integrate environmental social consideration across both our lending portfolio as well as our internal operation. Let's see our key achievement in sustainable finance. We see the last year, sustainable finance disbursement growth was 167%. In amount, it was about BDT 400 billion total. Sorry, in Taka, in total disbursement. Previously, it was BDT 91 billion. It was BDT 400 billion against our total requirement of BDT 91 billion. Similarly, in green finance, disbursement growth was 200%, and in Taka, it was BDT 33 billion against the requirement of BDT 5 billion. In percentage, if we consider that our achievement was 34% of total term loan disbursement against Bangladesh Bank target of 5%. We are also working on green liability product, which is new in the industry. Last year, we launched innovative Green Savings Account in February 2024. The key features of this savings account was the total deposit amount will be financed in green and sustainable project. At the same time, for every account, we plant one tree. You also know City Bank started its sustainability journey more than a decade ago. In addition to financing green and sustainable initiatives, we are very much focused on our internal ESG practice. Key in-house initiatives, including City Bank is the first bank in Bangladesh to join in the Net-Zero Banking Alliance in United Nations. City Bank take some initiatives to reduce their carbon emission. As part of that, we installed solar panel in our 38 branches and sub-branches. We have 33 solar powered ATM and 19 solar powered agent outlet. If we see some key highlights about the green financing, we disbursed last year BDT 2 billion in the renewable energy project, for financing of the 100 megawatt of solar power plant and 60 megawatt for the wind power plant. We finance BDT 9 billion in energy resource and efficiency machineries and BDT 6 billion in LEED green certified client. We take some initiatives for financing in the waste management and circular economies. Last year too, we finance in couple of project in waste management under our small business and medium business. Thanks. Next slide. Our effort in sustainability have not gone unnoticed, and our work has been recognized both nationally and internationally. Key achievements include, City Bank was the top sustainable bank for the last four years in a row by Bangladesh Bank. City Bank recognized as climate-focused bank by USAID, Green Tech Foundation, and Dhaka University. City Bank also ranked top 10 sustainable bank by Sustainability Magazine of U.K., and also ranked seventh best bank in Asia Pacific by The Banker Magazine for sustainable revenue ratio. Okay. To learn our sustainability initiative and progress, you can scan our QR code to access the GRI standard sustainability report of 2023. We are also in process of preparing the sustainability report for 2024. That will be also uploaded in our website. That is all related to the sustainability. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Firoz. This is kind of a last slide from me. Not only just business or sustainability financing, our key asset for the bank is the employee. For that, actually, we have launched many programs, and among them is we have launched employee value proposition, which will create future banker and future leader for the bank, who will ensure the real sustainability of the bank. I will not actually explain line by line, but this is also unique initiative in the banking industry, which will definitely give a very good result in future. Then, we are sharing some picture about various rewards that we have received in 2024. I am not going into detail. With that, I would like to actually end my presentation. I would like to request Saima to conduct the rest of the program. Thank you. Thank you very much, sir, for your enlightening financial performance presentation. 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. Thanks. Thank you, Saima, and thank you, Mahbub, our CFO. Thank you, Firoz, our Chief Risk Officer. Yes, we had a very good year. I believe the best year ever. That result is very clearly have been presented by Mahbub. I am really proud. I am thankful to you for your support. If you ask me to summarize why I said that it has been the best year, the revenue, basically income grew last year by 43%, whereas expenses grew by 17%, 16.5%, meaning we earned much more than we spent. The whole industry also came to know that we entered as one of those four banks, first time in our history as a local private commercial bank, conventional bank, first time we entered in the operating profit area. We entered $200 million, which is 2,000 crore BDT, roughly I am calculating 100 BDT, $100, keeping that in mind. We entered the territory. That is a very much proud moment for us. It is a new area for a few of those banks, Dutch-Bangla Bank, City Bank, BRAC Bank, and Pubali Bank. Last year we entered that. We ended the year with an operating profit of BDT 2,351 crore, which is around $235 million, $230 million. Operating profit automatically grew by around 70%. I thank all the business units who took care of the income. Income came from, interest income was good. Fee commission income, as Mahbub mentioned, there was a good amount of fee commission income. There was huge growth around $1.3 billion worth of BDT growth in low-cost deposit last year. That was also phenomenal that at a time when people were shying away from Bangladeshi banks, City Bank's deposits net grew by around $1.3 billion equivalent BDT. With that, it is not that the cost of deposit, we lost control over the cost of deposit. Cost of deposit grew only 1.2%, but at the same time, our yield on advance also grew, meaning we perfectly gave a balance to the extra cost that came in the form of paying to the depositors. Our overall spread was maintained at 5% last year. Right, Mahbub? It was 5%? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yield on advance was 9.8% and cost of deposit was kept below five at 4.8%. Overall, we earned 5% interest income. At the same time, investment income was also good, but it is not that City Bank earned only from investing into government treasury bill and bonds, though that is the case, that was the case with many banks in the country. If you seriously analyze our profit and loss account, you will see that only 19% of bank's total income came from treasury bill/bond investments. 76% came from core banking activities, which basically means interest income, fees income, and the commission income from trade business. Overall, with that kind of an operating income, first time Bangladesh saw four banks entering $200 million territory. From that, it was always a hope for us that after taking adequate provision against the stress book and bad debts, we will be able to maintain a profit after tax of over 1,000 crore BDT, which is roughly $100 million. We successfully did that, and that showed a profit after tax growth of 58.9%. So big thank you to all of you, the investors, the well-wishers of City Bank, to the regulators, to the developers whose softwares we use, to our other stakeholders, our subsidiaries, and everyone. 58.9% growth in after-tax profit, which took us on a consolidated basis to 1,014 crore. On a solo basis, actually, the bank earned much more than that. 1,085 crore we earned on solo basis. But due to the certain provisions that had to be taken, due to certain losses in market exposures in City Brokerage and City Capital, we lost 71 crore or $7 million US worth of profit after tax. But that's okay. We are still only two banks above 1,000 crore mark in terms of profit after tax, BRAC Bank and City Bank, only two banks. These two banks are the first two banks in Bangladesh's history as conventional two banks which have crossed 1,000 crore mark in profit after tax, like the way four of us crossed 2,000 crore mark in the operating profit line, and two from them could not make it because of the provision requirement mainly. But City and BRAC did it. I am very happy. I also want many other good banks around us because then it's an overall better banking environment. So I want more of the BRAC Bank kind of banks, more of the Dutch-Bangla Bank, Pubali Bank kind of banks around us, the top players in the market. Because end of the day, ultimately, it's not about only doing good ourselves. It's also about building an economy, building a banking industry where it is safe to do different activities, money market, plus many other activities in other banks. So I do look forward to a better banking industry, and that is in the making now under the leadership of Dr. Ahsan H. Mansur, ex-IMF official, who is now the Governor of the central bank. A lot of reforms are underway, including governance side reforms and new banking company acts are coming very soon. Plus also, the resolution ordinance is coming, which is basically how do we tackle with those 12, 13 banks which are all now facing huge amount of write-downs because of the malpractices that went rampantly in those banks. You all know about those, and there has been a regime change after that. So now reforms are very much in the agenda. We are part of that. We are a big bank with a lot of international exposure and also a lot of tech exposures, huge. So, we need your blessings. I would like to say you are the mainly here who are listening to me are mainly our shareholders and our investors. So ROE wise, you basically carry about what is the return on the equity, on shareholders' equity, and this is where we have actually made a history in Bangladesh. In the last year, on a solo basis, if you look at the last quarter result, meaning last year result, we have offered a solo business equity ROE of 26.1%. On a consolidated basis with the losses of BDT 71 crore that I took due to the loss of two subsidiaries, on that basis also, we have offered a 23.9% return on equity. No bank, no bank meaning no bank, N-O, no bank could even come near us in terms of ROE. It is a very good place. We are happy that we could create happy shareholders, and I am happy that after the declaration of dividends, both in the form of cash and stock, we have very solid capital plan, capital adequacy plan. I am happy that we will still be in the range of 15% capital adequacy, even after giving these dividends, paying out this. Because first quarter has not gone too well, and at the same time, not too bad either, because industry is going through a real turbulent phase, a real turmoil time is going on. There is liquidity pressure, and there is also NPL-related kind of new developments, some of it is connected to regime change, and some of it is connected to other external factors. That is the reason I cannot say that first quarter has gone too well, neither can I say that it has gone too bad. But I can say that overall, another three, almost eight months left, City with a big income-generating machine we have already built, so we cannot be doing bad. It is going to be a good year again, with a special focus on two of the digital projects. One we call Great Wall, which will ultimately see City Bank launching digital bank. One is Project K2, which is we are coming up with an AI-powered machine learning and big data analytics-powered new Citytouch. By the end of this year, both will be happening. At the same time, we are geographically progressing to catch or to lure into us the businesses of certain big economies of the world. Our initial focus is Japan, China. China, Japan, Middle East, these are our focus areas. China especially, geopolitically also Bangladesh is moving towards that. They are a big partner of ours. This is also another strategic intent. Another strategic intent is to become the bank for bancassurance, insurance products for the entire country's population. Bancassurance is also another big focus of ours. In this year, the fifth biggest focus is opening of the small and medium segment LCs, to support the economy, to support the small traders, and which also will reinforce our commitment to really grow in the retail and small and credit card sector. Recently, we have just launched a metal American Express card for the upper echelon of the society. But on the credit card side also, we will be going into that segment, low-income group. At the same time, just looking into the way bad debt scenario is unfolding, our growth of course, will be there in the corporate commercial medium segment, but it will be only with very good customers. I welcome our new Head of Wholesale Banking, Mr. Asif Siddiqui, who I will request to raise hand. He is there very much. He is new head of wholesale banking of the bank, corporate bank, and also corporate deposit side, which you call cash management. Now they have institutional liability, a new name. So these two areas and offshore banking units all now comes under Asif, who was the erstwhile CRO of this institution. He is a Deputy Managing Director. So the focus in those big-ticket lendings will be there if those are really good customers, globally reputed customers, or local top customers with clean record and all that. We are also waiting the political stability to come, which is provisionally there now, and this is okay. We are actually happy that banking sector is much more transparent and much more discipline and governance has come to the sector, which gives us the courage to do banking more courageously. So that is where I will stop with this, saying that two digital projects are going on. One China-based focus related strategy is unfolding, and growth areas of lending have been clearly identified, retail, card, and the small. I have also said that the trade will be a big focus. We are aiming for a double-digit growth in the trade business export put together. Last year, it was BDT 7.3 billion. This year, we hope to take it to BDT 10 billion. But it may not be easy because the dollar, Mahbub explained that export is stable, remittance has seen all-time high growth and all that, but there is still pressure on the dollar because interbank market is still not really active. So still, I can end it with a note of really high hope. This bank is a bank which produced first time in our history 26% return on equity, and you look at the return on asset also, NPL ratio also. We are going towards reaching the global class level in all areas of banking that we call. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you, sir, for your eloquent words. Ladies and gentlemen, we have now reached our Q&A session. The first question is, what is City Bank's strategy for reducing the cost of funds? The strategy is to focus, be more popular, to be more an address for the CASA, current and savings account holders. This is also tied to the two digital projects we are running. The answer lies there. The next question is, do you see a rise in NPL in the coming days considering the geopolitical situation and new loan classification rolled out? Yeah. The new loan classification has already contributed some growth in NPL. That is one element why NPLs grew across the industry. Another is that a lot of businesses have certain connection with the last regime. There is another reason. Another reason is that overall economic slowdown I wouldn't say, but of course, slowdown. If you look at the GDP projections and all, Bangladesh is going through a reform phase. In this phase, before it is like the plane is on the runway taxiing. Before it takes off, there will be this period of little bit of consolidation and also slowdown in sales in certain areas. Plus, dollar crisis has not yet evaporated. As I said, that interbank market is not yet active. All of these factors together, in addition to the new CL policy coming into play, these are also reasons why NPLs will see a little bit of growth. But we need to manage. Bangladesh Bank is helping us very much by forming a task force, whereas where commercial banks, Bangladesh Bank, and business people are sitting together and sorting out the pressure on loan repayment. Thank you, sir. Moving on to the last question of this session. We know that there is a gas crisis in the textile industry in a challenging time. How much is City Bank's loan position in the textile sector? Tasif. Yeah. Actually, this gas is most not with the entire textile and apparel or RMG sector that we say. It depends on the dyeing and the spinning side. So that portion. So we all together, garments, which we also call apparel, and the spinning textile all together, we have 22% of our asset portfolio exposure. Out of that, actually, less than half or around 7%-8% is in the spinning and the textile. Most of them actually is not hit heavy by this gas crisis because alternative solution they have found. So they managed to continue their productions. So that actually also reflected in our asset quality. Repayments are still good. Our customer base is one of the key success factor of doing well in 2024, keeping the NPL ratio below 10%, despite having so many economic, I would not say crisis, it is rather a crunch. Also the pressure from the dollar pressure, flood issues last year. All together, actually, we could do well because the customer we have selected is in the best of the class, and it has been built in decade. So it is a success from the cumulative prudent decision that the management and the team has been done. We are proud of the team, that we covered that. And the customer base is at the end. Thank you, sir. 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 for the live program very shortly. Those of you who missed the live event or want to skim 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 PLC. Goodbye, stay safe, and stay well. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Eva. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.