Earnings Call: Q2 2025

Jul 22, 2025

Summary

Record 1H net profit reached EGP 33.3bn, up 21% YoY, alongside 24% YTD loan growth and strong capital ratios. Guidance was unchanged, with management anticipating rate-driven margin pressure but targeting a blended NIM of 6%–6.5% as rates and inflation normalize.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to CIB's 1H 2025 earnings call. Thank you for dialing in. This is Sherif Reda from CI Capital Research team, and we are happy to be hosting today's call. From management, we have with us Hesham Ezz Al-Arab, CEO and Executive Board Member, Yasmine Hemeda, Head of Investor Relations, and Nelly El Zeneiny, Investor Relations Manager. We will start off with a summary of 1H 2025 performance, and then we will open the floor for questions. I will now hand over the call to Magd. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. This is our customary disclosure statement. This call is intended for investors and analysts only. As such, if any media representative has gained access to this call, kindly hang up now. Certain information disclosed during this earnings call consists of forward-looking statements reflecting the current view of the bank with respect to future events and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Many factors could cause the actual results, performance, or achievements of the bank to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements that may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including worldwide economic trends, the economic and political climates of Egypt, the Middle East, and changes in the business strategy, along with various other factors. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should any underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may materially vary from those described in such forward-looking statements. The bank undertakes no obligation to republish revised forward-looking statements to reflect changed events or circumstances. That ends the disclaimer statement. I will now hand it over to Mrs. Yasmine Hemeda to give a brief overview of the first half results. Thank you, Nelly. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining our first half earnings call. I am going to walk you through the key financial highlights for the first half, then I will hand it over to our executive team to give you a brief on the main strides that were achieved over the past period, each in their respective areas, and then we will open it up for Q&A. The second quarter was a notable quarter in different aspects, both on the macroeconomic and geopolitical fronts. On the geopolitical front, the Iran-Israel issue had a very minor impact on dollar inflows or supply in general. On the macro level, the impact of the two policy rate cuts in April and May, totaling 325 basis points, was felt during the quarter, affecting both assets and liabilities. In addition, while the policy rate was cut by the aforementioned basis points, the sovereign yield expanded by an average of 1% during the same period, which is perfect for us and banks in general, as it only impacts earnings assets. This, coupled with the resilient balance sheet structure, whereby 59% of deposits are in the form of CASA, enabled us to record local currency NIMs of 13.1%, which came 51 basis points higher year-on-year, while foreign currency NIMs recorded 2.71%, decreasing by 114 basis points year-on-year to reach a blended NIM of 8.94%. Looking ahead, we expect a bit of pressure on margins, but we remain confident in our ability to deliver sustainable returns through diversified revenue and continued efficiencies. Speaking of revenue diversification, we are proud to report that gross loans grew by 24% year to date. The first half saw 29% in local currency loan bookings and 16% in foreign currency. The growth came primarily from corporate loans that grew by 28%, of which 43% came from CapEx. This came in tandem with 7% growth in retail loans, mostly in personal loans, credit cards, and mortgage loans. We have also enhanced our SME offerings to reach 29% of the total portfolio. This strong loan growth momentum fed into a very strong 18% growth in the total operating income. That was driven by genuine growth of 23% in the net interest income line and 21% growth in the normalized non-interest income line, which came mainly from the growth in the net fees and commissions by 22%. Loan fees recorded an impressive growth of 42%, which coupled with card fees that almost doubled, they increased by 38% as compared to first half of 2024. On the deposit side, we recorded a 7% growth year to date, with both retail and corporate deposits growing by 11% and 3% respectively. Local currency deposits grew by 8%, of which EGP 69.8 billion came in the form of CASA, taking the CASA percentage to 59%, up from 54% last year. This was supported by our ongoing digitization efforts and trusted franchise. We continue to advance our digital transformation agenda, as reflected in the significant increase in volume and value of transactions through digital channels, with 1.9 million users in online banking digital platforms by end of the first half, recording a 17% increase from first half 2024 and 58% increase in transaction value to reach EGP 2.3 trillion across all of the bank's digital channels. All of this mirrors the investments that we have been consistently making both on the technology and the customer experience. Expenses continue to be maintained, growing by 35% year-on-year and resulting in a cost to income dropping to 14.4%, which continues to be one of the best ratios among large financial institutions in the EMEA region. As always, asset quality improved, with NPLs reaching 2.68%. Our coverage ratio recorded 338%, but more relevantly, coverage of the performing risky portfolio reached 12.6%. We continued accumulating provisions, which amounted to EGP 695 million in total for the first half, in accordance to the recalibrated ECL calculation. We are happy to announce that we got the third-party model validation, and this was successfully communicated to the CBE, and we are now awaiting their approval for the final impact and related treatment. All of the above resulted in a record net profit figure of EGP 33.3 billion, which gained 21% up year-on-year, an ROE of 40.5% versus 35.3% as at end 2024. This significant growth and exceptional profitability were achieved while maintaining very strong capital and liquidity ratios. Our CAR was 28.4%, LDR ratio 47.7%, which enable us not only to capture growth opportunities, but more importantly, remain focused on delivering long-term value to our customers, employees, and shareholders. On that note, I will now hand over the call to the executive management to walk us through the significant strides and various initiatives that were achieved year to date. Thank you very much, Yasmin Hameida. I think to a great extent, you covered the financial performance of the bank. I am waiting today the head of the CFO and the CEO under one roof, and I am happy to announce that the commitment the executive management made to change the operating model of the bank into always on and always closer to customer bank pays off. I think we just highlighted the digital banking application, which is transformed from a mid-tier mobile application to a top-rated, one of the top five rated applications in Egypt, among other applications, and cater for more than 50 services, always on, always available for our customers, with a monthly value rate, unprecedented indeed, EGP 100-plus billion of monthly transaction a month. We just recently also launched the Instant Payment Network in order to have a faster path to CIB in terms of current accounts and savings. It is a very notable number indeed to see the 60% our current account and saving to our total deposits with all the positive implications on the cost of fund and our margins, given the overall monetary policy and the cost we start witnessing. Operating model will be an integral part that pays off to our net interest margin and our own overall cost of doing business indeed. Across all channels, CIB had a fantastic first half, delivering EGP 2.3 trillion. The transaction was 60% half year-over-year growth in transaction, and that was in response to changes we made in our technology and underlying operating model. We witnessed a change on the profile of customers we are receiving as we speak, and the time we received the transaction in SWIFT internationally announced CIB just a couple of days ago as the fastest SWIFT processor around the region, not only in Egypt, which led to, again, a faster path for current accounts and saving, which led to a better, more nimble liability strategy indeed. We faced a few tests of resilience for our operating model over the past few weeks. Egypt, as a country nationwide, we faced a communication disaster indeed, that led to a sort of disruption for the communication services for almost a week. Again, CIB proved that it is the always-on bank. Our ATMs, our point of sale, our own customer touchpoints were up and running. I was actually last week in the North Coast, and instead of segregating the lines between those who is paying in cash and those paying in credit cards, customers were segregated with the merchants were discriminating against the payment transaction based on the bank. So CIB has a separate line and everyone else in a different line. So we had the faster path to merchant transactions, which led to a 25% growth in our merchant and acquiring transaction, which is indeed 60%-70% of those numbers are free float overnight transactions. On another note, to be also a closer bank to our customers, we start optimizing the distribution of our customer touchpoints, including the physical branches. Those who are traveling to the North Coast in Egypt during the summer will notice our ATMs everywhere, and they will notice that we are processing two-thirds of cash transactions on the North Coast as we speak. The ATM and the point-of-sale transaction were actually playing a pivotal role attracting new-to-bank customers. We transform our contact center, the contact center that performed and contributed 4 million calls at the first half of the year, handling in 4 seconds, the call and handling a customer in less than 4. This is about 4 this first half, and this is unprecedented number when it comes to our contact center as humanized touching points. That led to also transforming the contact center into a sales point and as a business center to almost EGP 100 million, I think, of net profit and revenue, because we transformed part of our agents into a sales force on the ground. There is big changes happening as we speak when it comes to operating model and technology infrastructure. A big revamp to make sure that the time to market is faster. Cybersecurity threats, we are protected against. As you may heard, and as you may know, we were facing a huge talent turnover over the last year when it comes to people management in general, especially when it comes to technology people, data scientists, cybersecurity customers. I am happily announcing 56% employee turnover this quarter compared to 20% last year. We changed big time our human capital model, especially when it comes to emerging technologies and the future jobs. This is basically my highlights on the operating model and how that could reflect on a service model and a better and resilient, more pricing, aggressive bank, as you see. Always on, always close to our customers. Thank you, Islam, very much. I will now hand it over to Mr. Omar El-Husseiny, our Chief Global Markets Executive. He will walk us through what major initiatives undertaking in that area. Thank you, Yasmeen. Thank you, Islam. Good morning and afternoon, everyone. Just two quick comments. Behind the numbers, the first half witnessed a huge growth in our loan portfolio. Year to date, we made CapEx around 41% from the overall growth in the portfolio. We have added in Q2 around 36 new-to-bank corporate clients. This is the math behind the numbers. Specifically for the sectors, we have been seeing growth into the government sector, financial institutions, wholesale and trade, and other activities like industrial and services. That's the first point. Second point, the recent integration that we have between our treasury group, financial institution, DCM, GTB, and Enterprises and Governmental Relations under one roof, the new reform in the global markets has definitely created a more agile and client-centric platform. This is just not a regular reorg for the departments that we're having in the bank. It's a strategic enabler under one roof. We are already seeing lots of stronger and internal collaboration between the team, deeper client relationships. Over the coming quarters, we believe that this will be translated into more diversified, recurring, and scalable non-interest income, which is a CAR pillar of our five-year strategy. We now hand it to Rashwan. Hello, everyone. Just to put some highlights behind what Islam mentioned around the innovation and being close to the customer. We discussed last time in our last call about the new innovative product that we launched called Swype, which is one of its kind loan on a card product. During the pilot phase, before the mega launch, the product had been quite successful with underwritten limits of more than EGP 1 billion for 20,000 retail customers. That is all happening before even the mega launch and the campaign that happened during the past couple of weeks, so that we're expecting run rates for acquisitions and portfolio buildup to accelerate post the mega launch that happened recently, which gives us an opportunity to build a much more profitable retail portfolio on the asset side. Recently, just to highlight some impact on what Islam said about the digital channel, we've recently launched the Instant Payment Network capability over the mobile app, and we've been trying to analyze what kind of impact that would have on the customer's profitability, average revenue per customer, et cetera. We started to see on the digitally active customers, significant uplift happens to the average AUMs, the customer holds with CIB, especially on the CASA level. We've seen more than three times growth or differential between the digitally active customers and those who are not active. That would give us more faith and investments to spend on pushing customers towards digital channels and making sure that we have the best digital application, digital experience on the app, always rich with features and customer centricity around the capabilities, payments, et cetera. Within the same domain also as part of the transformation that took place during the past few months, we transformed completely the payroll business model in terms of acquisition, onboarding, et cetera. This had led to 50% uplift on the new to bank acquisitions, and payroll for us is a major driver, not only for CASA portfolio buildup, but also for consumer assets penetration, healthy consumer assets penetration, and also the deepening the relationships with the large corporates and SME customers and making them more sticky with the banking with CIB. So the integration between channel modernization, acquisition model revamps, customer service levels across branches, contact center, et cetera, and the collaboration that happens with the large corporate team, GCR team, and EGR team, et cetera, helps us bring in the floating balances around the organization to a much higher level. That explains big part of the CASA balance mix benefits that we enjoy at CIB. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Rashwan, our Chief Retail Commercial Banking and Financial Inclusion Executive. We can now open it up for Q&A, Sharif. Thank you CIB management team. We will now open the floor for questions. If you have a question, you can type it in the Q&A box or tap the raise hand button and I will unmute your line. We have a question in the Q&A box from Nick Paget. He is asking how much of Q2 CapEx lending was for maintenance CapEx versus expansion CapEx? If there is any qualitative comments that you can add about the expansion CapEx ramp up and outlook would be helpful. The short answer to this question is, the majority of the 41% that we had since year to date is maintenance. Expansion is not yet there, although we have some discussion with our clients. What we expect from the discussions that we are seeing on the grounds is we will see expansionary CapEx in 2026, especially as soon as interest rates will be coming down, the easing cycle of the Central Bank of Egypt will be resumed. It will be much more cheaper and things will be much more clarity in terms of the macroeconomic and political conditions around Egypt. Thank you. We have another question from Romy Hadzar. He is asking, your CAR is 28.4%, way higher than regulatory minimum and you are generating 40% ROE, meaning you have capacity to pay dividends is very high. Why don't you surprise market with a nice special dividends? Well, very simple. I mean, we had a discussion at the board about the dividend policy, and it is obvious that the macroeconomic condition is getting better, much more stable. We do not want to be over-capitalized or under-capitalized. Definitely the board is receptive to the idea of having a proper dividend policy that meets the requirement of the shareholders, and meanwhile, it does not leave the bank either short of capital or excessively over-capitalized. Islam, do you want to add something? No, I think, given the current payout policy we are adopting, which is striking the right balance between the returns should be generated by our investors and balancing the constraints we bought, for the sake of capital adequacy, which is to a great extent, a function in our macro landscape, which has became extremely relieving compared to what used to be faced before. I think we are in a better shape right now to have a more relieving discussion on the payout before the end of the year. Absolutely. Thank you. We have a question from the raised hand button from Rahul Bajaj. Rahul, your line is now open. Please go ahead. This is Rahul Bajaj from Citi. Thanks for taking my question. I have three questions actually. The first one is on margins, and as you alluded earlier, there will be pressure on margins as interest rates come down. How should we think about the kind of normalized level of margins where margin will settle compared to where we are today? I mean, is the 2022 or 2023 levels, should we look at those levels, one of those years as the base year to think about margin settling down over the next 1-2 years? How should we think about the course, the trajectory and the kind of lowest point, in this kind of margin normalization? So that's my first question. My second question is on the loan growth, very solid growth, in 2Q specifically. To what extent this growth is driven by one-off factors, there are elements where loans have been drawn down and you expect a repayment to come very quickly, so that might reverse some of these trends. Similarly, on the one-off topic, I see that the fee income jump was quite solid in 2Q. Were there elements of any one-off in the fee income line? My third and final question, I think you mentioned that the third party report on that IFRS 9 model recalibration has been positive and it feels like based on your commentary that the CBE approval is now more of a formality. If I may kind of infer it that way. If we get that approval, hopefully very soon. I've historically seen CIB has this big jump in fourth quarter provisioning usually. Should we expect a similar cycle to play out going forward as well, like a fourth quarter rise in provisioning, compared to the first three quarters? Or that will be more normalized going forward under the new sort of IFRS 9 mechanism. How does it work out? Thank you. Rahul, should I answer? The first question on the net interest margin. When you look at the overall monetary policy in the country, the Central Bank of Egypt cuts the interest rates by almost 325 basis points as we speak. When you look at my local currency interest rate margin, it just went down by 65 basis points, indeed. This is basically a function in the resilience of the balance sheet, because at the end of the day, margin is an outcome. When you look at my balance sheet, you will find the current accounts and savings, weight went to 60% to the total deposits. This is one. Second, when you look at my asset yield, even on the asset management and the ALM, there were interesting dynamics. Our treasury generated the highest asset yields among the peer group. That is what kept the margins within the safe margins, and that is what we budget for by the end of the year. This is on the margin side. Another question on the loan growth. Are there any one-offs? No one-offs indeed. This is the normal growth. Our GCR business and the corporate finance team was working day and night to structure deals because there is an ample opportunity within the market, and the CIB balance sheet is more than positioned to acquire that market share. We have seen positive market share in the main segments, industrial and service sector, specifically within the market. On the ECL model, it is, I would say, a matter of formality. This is process led kind of an accounting standard that have been set by the Central Bank of Egypt. If you read even the stated standards, it is published on their website, you need to follow that path. Technically, we took the first stage, around getting the external auditor approval on the size and the treatment of the excess. Second, we got the Central Bank of Egypt guidelines about performing the assessments. We perform both. Then once you conclude, you need to take a high-level third party validation in order to make sure that the assumptions revised and tested and recalibrated. That have been done, introduced to the Central Bank of Egypt a week ago, a couple of weeks ago. Now we are waiting for a call for a session to discuss the third party validation and the possible accounting treatment and how we could do that, keeping in mind that CIB is publishing international according to the IFRS in London and in Egypt, and the treatments according to the local, the EGAP, and the international standard is varying. So there is a discussion regarding that topic specifically needs to be run with the Central Bank of Egypt. That should take place within, I think, within the coming few weeks. That's the expectations. Did I miss anything? On the fee income, there is no one-off indeed. There were some one-offs last year because of the devaluation situation. But indeed, most of the growth on the non-interest income is coming basically from the organic activities. There is no one-offs reported. I may add one more thing there, Hesham, about the loan growth. One minute. We have to give some credit to the team that re-looks at the business process, because one of the initial challenges we had is that the business process made the turnaround time too long, that practically the bank was losing the market share because whoever has a shorter turnaround time and much more efficient execution, customer requirements, were really the key players. The transformation that the team did between corporate risk and GCR resulted into shorter, much more efficient and much more effective that put the bank once more on the front of the business growth as a bank of choice in terms of corporate credit. Mr. All clear. Thank you. Thank you. We have another question from the raise hand button from Mohammed Anwar. Mohammed, your line is now open. Please go ahead. We could move to the next question from Salum. Salum, your line is now open. Please go ahead. Hello. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you just fine. Please go ahead. Okay. Thanks for the presentation. I have two questions. The question number one, how shall we project the trading income for 2025, 2026? If you could give some guidance on this, including the foreign exchange part of the trading income. If you could reiterate the cost of risk guidance for 2025. Thank you. I'll take the second part, then I'll hand it over to Mr. Omar to cover the FX part of the trading income. Like we said, we already have cut a very long way in terms of the ECL and the new recalibrated model and the validation, and we've already been accumulating the total provisions in accordance with the new recalibrated model. If you just take the first quarter or the first half and annualize it for the rest of the year, this should give you a solid number for the total provisions for the full year. I'll now hand it over to Mr. Omar. For trading income, if you compare it to last year, of course, last year we had one exceptional performance during the March. As we speak right now, the expectation is to remain where we are in terms of it's the same for the budget, more or less, and we'll keep it as it is for now. We don't expect huge movements up and down or deviation from what we did in the first half. Thank you. We have a couple of questions in the Q&A box from Amo. First one is asking, off-balance-sheet stage 2 loans increased from EGP 29.8 million in March to EGP 66 million in June. What drove the increase in the quarter, and if provisions are needed, the provisions hardly increased any. No. Please go on. Okay. Just one thing to note on the stage 2, it doesn't necessarily imply any sort of deterioration in terms of asset quality because the stage 2 loans encompass basically the watchlist loans and any other loan that was downgraded 2 notches since inception. So just by definition, some of the credit facilities that are among the stage 2 are risk-rated 3 or 4 or 5, which is basically very high-performing credit facilities. They've just been downgraded 2 notches, and that's why they've been included as part of the stage 2. So like I said, it doesn't necessarily imply any sort of asset quality deterioration that would necessitate any accumulation for provisions. Other than that, in terms of coverage ratio and the coverage for the risky performing part of the portfolio, around 12.6% basically makes us very adequately positioned in terms of provisioning and in terms of impairment charges that might be needed to weather any sort of unforeseen deterioration in terms of asset quality. Thank you. We have a couple of questions asking about guidance from Ammu and Ibrahim. They are asking, following the release of 2Q results, I wanted to ask whether the company remains confident in the guidance provided at the beginning of the year, or there has been any changes in the outlook or key assumptions that we should be aware of. We still committed to our guidance. There is no change. Omar just gave highlights on the stability of the FX. This is most of the positive surprises we receive. As it is, there is no changes. Our ECL will be stable till end of the year. Nothing change. This is the assurance I got from the CBE, from our CRO. Thank you. We have another question from Sifi asking, can you comment on expectations for inflation by year-end 2025 and your base case for 2026? What do you expect in terms of total CBE cuts between now and end of next year? This is part of our internal research. Based on the assumption, definitely the moving variables on the grounds in terms of the fiscal consolidation will have its own impact on inflation and definitely on the monetary policy decisions moving forward. What we expect, what inflation is, will be hovering around 15%. This is where we will land by year end. In terms of the monetary policy decisions until the year ends, there was a little bit of lag for the monetary policy transmission mechanism. What we are seeing right now is steady foreign currency inflows coming each and every single day. The supply on the foreign currency has been increased, and the demand on the local currency has been increased as well. It is completely the other way around compared to a couple of years ago. In terms of the monetary policy, in terms of the money supply, we are seeing the successful monetary policy decisions that took place up till this moment, in terms of managing the money supply and not overloading the markets in order not to resume the inflationary pressures into the market. The tightening has its own effects. Our expectations that we might see a cut in interest rates around 300-400 basis points until the year ends. Still we have a positive real rates of around 10%, which is the highest among our peers in the emerging markets. But still, we need to have, all of us, a confidence of where the economy will be moving. We need to see the impact of the cut of the easing cycle of the Central Bank of Egypt. That is what is very clear into the statement of the monetary policy, that each and every single meeting moving forward will be standalone based on the expectation of inflation and based on the dynamics of the fiscal consolidation and the geopolitical risks around Egypt. Thank you. We could go back to Mohammed Anwar on the raise hand button, checking if his mic is now working. Mohammed, please unmute your line and go ahead. Okay. We could move to Tundi. Tundi, please unmute your line. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. All right. Thank you. I want to get back to the topic of net interest margin and the sort of pressure that you alluded to earlier, right? Can you please give us a sense of your sensitivity of your net interest margin to every 100 basis point of policy rate cut? I know you mentioned earlier that you've had 325 basis point cut earlier this year, and your NIM has only reduced, I'm talking about local currency NIM now, reduced by 65 basis point. Is that the sort of sensitivity that we should take into account, or what kind of guidance can you give us around this? I'm asking this because we all know that the policy rate is going to come down significantly over the next coming years. It's just going to be helpful for us to kind of model our expectations in terms of the kind of NIM pressure to expect. So, look, again, as I told you, and based on the fact-based track record results, for the first 300 basis point cuts, we witnessed a cut of 60 basis point of our NIM. For sure, when this monetary policy continue the same way, the market will get very competitive and maybe you'll see a sort of a liquidity squeeze on the market, which will make the deposit base a little bit pricey compared to what we used before. But right now, and based on the first six-month cuts, for each 300 basis point, we witnessed a 60 basis point reduction on our net interest margin. Omar, do you want to add an angle from the ALM perspective? Yes, two points. One is, remember the last call, we said that as long as we have been moving from sovereigns into loans, that it will have negative implication on our NIM. It goes without saying, because sovereigns are gross of tax and the loans are net of tax. So this is one. Two, and of course, as long as we're moving to loans, that means more exotic business. That means lower NIM and much more higher ROE. This is one. Two, based on the dynamics that we're seeing, remember again, in last year, we said that although that we expect interest rates to go down, we will be seeing a decoupling between sovereign rates and monetary policy rates. That's exactly what we're seeing, especially those days. The Central Bank of Egypt has been cutting rates from one side. Based on the fiscal consolidation and the fiscal changes and measurement that had been pushed by the IMF, budget deficit has been increasing. If you had a look on the numbers for the fiscal year of 2025, 2026, the cost of debt service is huge. Although the Ministry of Finance has been assuming the sovereign interest rates around 14%, which is 10% much more lower than the current prevailing rates. Based on the balance sheet dynamics and based on the asset allocation and controlling our cost of funds, we might see, yes, a little bit pressure. As Islam was saying, our active management for the balance sheet in terms of liabilities and asset allocation is preserving deterioration in NIM and the pressure for as long as we can. Understood. Thanks for that. Just lastly, there was a caller who's asked that earlier. What kind of level do you think this will kind of settle at in the next couple of years? Is there a number we can pick? I am talking about a local currency NIM now that you think will be the minimum level, after all these different ALM movements you are going to have over the next couple of years. I think definitely we have been benefiting from the high interest rate environment in Egypt. As soon things started to normalize and as soon as we see single digit interest rates and single digit inflation, our NIM presumably will be reaching around 6%, 6.5%, more or less. This is what we have. This is our target, and I think we will be reaching it. It all depends on the timing of the easing or the resuming of the easing cycle of the monetary policy and the magnitude. On the other side, the magnitude of the fiscal consolidation and fiscal measurements that will be happening, either removal of subsidies on fuel, electricity, water, and gas, and what will be the magnitude of those removal of subsidies and how this will be translated into the interest rates. Understood. Just to clarify, 6.5% is local currency or blended? Hey, Tony. It's on a blended basis. Blended. Okay. Yeah. If I take you back to 2010, if you remember, our blended used to run between 3 and 3.5. This 3.5 should translate now into 6.5 because of what we've fundamentally been doing on the cost side of the NIMs. Like Islam and Omar have touched time and time again, and Rashwan as well, about the CASA. We're pretty adamant that we can not only maintain that level but grow it even further. This will continue to feed very, very positively into the NIMs, despite what goes on the asset side. Understood. Thank you. Thank you. As a reminder, if you have a question, you can type it in the Q&A box or tap the raise hand button and I will unmute your line. We have a question in the Q&A box from Hassan Mahfouz asking, "Can you provide a breakdown of drivers of OPEX growth? I think when you look at the numbers on our statements, it looks like there is a growth of 36%, but in reality, you need to normalize that number for the devaluation impact and the inflation, because technically, we are not running a negative job for sure. That's why we see a growth on our ROE and profitability margins overall. The revised normalized number is not 36%, it's 16%, compared to a normalized revenue line growth of 18%. Technically, we are running a positive job of 2%. This is the reality of the numbers. The main driver behind those facts is basically, this is the impact of the inflationary pressures we faced last year and the revisions we made for some of the vendor contracts here and there, especially the technology contracts mainly, which is denominated in foreign currency too. We will pause for a minute to allow for more questions to come in. Since there are no further questions, would management like to make any closing remarks? My closing remark is, thank you for everyone who attended the call today. I am personally very pleased with the performance of the bank and the teamwork that I have seen from the management. I intentionally do not comment on the financials. I let the managers who are managing the bank really to make those comments. Thank you all the management team for their contribution. As well, I would like to congratulate all Chelsea supporters for winning the World Cup. Let's celebrate for the coming four years. Thank you so much. Thank you, Sherif. Thank you, everyone, for dialing in, and looking forward to updating you in the next quarter's call. Thank you. Thank you all for attending CIB's 2Q 2025 earnings call hosted by CI Capital. Have a nice day.