Our CEOs will talk about the private large portfolio companies, about how they are getting on with the business. Giorgi, our CFO, will talk about portfolio valuation, then he'll talk about liquidity, dividend outlook, we do a wrap-up and Q&A session. Let's talk about the key developments. In EV per share, which is the key metrics for us, it grew 14.1% Q over Q in Q4. Very good results. We are very happy with that, obviously. Full year was 61% growth, basically, this is driven by both the Lion Finance Group performance and strong performance of our private large portfolios. We had also the strong quarter for our private portfolios.
The EBITDA has grown by nearly 18% in Q4. Please note that Q4 2024 was a pretty strong performance as well. We had a big growth in Q4 2024. The base was high, we performed very well against this high base. We completed the $50 million buyback program. We are starting as a part of the GEL 700 million buyback program. We are starting the $50 million share buyback program as of today. That will last for a couple of months. We'll see how we're gonna get on these buybacks. NCC ratio has declined significantly to a record low, to nearly 2%. We are very happy with that.
That's also resulted us to be more bullish on the buyback amount. You know, that NCC ratio is one of the key ratios we follow. Looking back on 25, the key developments, we exercised our put option on water utility company. In the end, we recorded IRR of 25% on this investment, and MOIC nearly four times. Overall, we are happy with completing the cycle of the, on the water utility company and how we have performed. On the other side, we did a small, but it's also good to know that we are finding some good assets in Georgia to buy.
In the healthcare sector, we bought the Gormed at an acceptable valuation for us, which was better than the buying back the GCAP shares. We bought it less than four times EV/EBITDA, basically, this business. We completed a 300 million lari buyback program. Very happy that we completed nearly more than a year earlier than we anticipated. It was a good performance overall in this with these regards. We started, kick-started new 700 million, as I mentioned, lari program, and so far, we are progressing pretty fast. If you look at the buyback, what we've done so far, we did the this capital return, both the debt and the and the equity capital.
We did the early redemption of $100 million of the our bond. We did already repurchasing of GEL 138 million worth of shares, and we launched now another GEL 134 million share buyback program. We are not far away of hitting the GEL 700 million capital return program, which basically we were aiming to do it till the end of 2027, and we started six months ago this. In six months, we have managed to complete nearly 80% of this capital return program. We will need to announce in 2026 how we're gonna go about this program. We will extend it, or we will end early, and we start a new one.
It's not clear yet, but in the course of 2026, we should let you know how we're gonna go about this. This is a overall, how many shares we bought back. Nearly 16 million shares we bought back, a total of $246 million we spent in these buybacks, and it represents 33% of share capital we had in the peak. Pretty significant portion of our shares has been bought back, and we are happy that this program has given us, has produced a lot of value for us. On next slide, we have a macro update. That's obviously, is one of the key factors of our good performance.
You see that past five years, the GDP per capita has nearly doubled, sorry, more than doubled to $10,000 per capita, which is a significant growth. We also have, you know, the preliminary data for 2025. We grew the GDP, grew by 7.5%. We are about the 100 billion GDP level, which is pleasant to see. You also saw that the deleveraging of the sovereign. We peaked at 60% of GDP of debt to GDP. That debt to GDP came down to 34% as of the year-end.
If you look at the external debt, it's 23%, very much manageable levels, and actually, I would say that the sovereign is quite under levered. Due to that, we saw a very successful refinancing of $500 million of Eurobond in January 26. It's with a yield of 1.25%, which was probably one of the record low yields, and actually spreads over treasuries. We recorded 150 bps spread. Inflation is under control at 4.8% level, core inflation runs at 2.4%, which is another, you know, the good news.
Overall, it's good to see that the inflation is low on the back of such a high GDP growth numbers. Not only the GDP grew, but also there is a big pressure for the lari to appreciate, as we have a big inflow of foreign currency. We are at a record high 6.3 billion reserves level, which is an all-time high by far. You see a big $2.4 billion buybacks. Sorry, not buy, I call everything buyback. The interventions what National Bank did, so National Bank bought $2.44 billion worth of the foreign currency in 2025.
That tells you the strengths of the lari, strengths of the economy, and how strong the external balance of the country is becoming. Now let's see the NAV per share development. In Q4, 14.1%, as I mentioned, was driven primarily by Lion Finance Group share price increase, 10%+, and then we had a 3.5% yearly growth of our private large portfolio companies. Buybacks gave us nearly 1 percentage point increase in this, and I think it's worth noting that due to the LFG share price growth, our live, let's put that way, NAV per share is actually up 20%. Very strong NAV per share growth we are having.
Full year, you see contributions, 42% from LFG, G, and 15% from the operating performance of our private portfolio. We have the 11% contribution from the buybacks, and then you have a negative contributions from OpEx, liquidity, and other portfolio companies, little bit declined in NAV per share of 0.7%. Overall, 61% NAV per share growth. If we look at the since inception of the GCAP or since the merger in 2018, CAGR of our NAV per share is nearly 20%, which is very pleasant to see this number. 5% CAGR, 26%, and 3-year CAGR, 33%.
These similar numbers are in US dollars and pound sterling terms. Actually, they are a little bit higher. Basically, the overall performance of lari allows us to have a very similar performance in dollars and sterling. Free cash flow development is strong. We have recorded $65 million, but what is the big thing to notice here is that per share, free cash flow grew by 52%, from $1.22 per share to $1.86 per share.
That's a significant growth, and this is not only we grew our free cash flow, but we also cancelled a lot of GCAP shares, which led to the strong NAV per share growth of more than 50%. Sorry, free cash flow per share growth, more than 50%. The development of our portfolio companies, what has happened? Aggregate development in Q4, we had a revenue growth of nearly 12%, and the full year growth was 15% revenue growth. On the other hand, in EBITDA, we grew nearly 18% in Q4 and 28.6% in the full year EBITDA growth. It's a strong EBITDA growth performance there as well.
If we look at the operating cash flow, also strong growth for an operating cash flow level, 15% growth for our large portfolio companies, and aggregate cash balance is up YoY by 25%, nearly. Update on deleveraging. NCC overall has declined significantly to 2.3% after announcing our $50 million buyback to adjust it's gonna be around 5%, which is way below our 10% level. You see the net capital commitment overview, how it has developed over the 2025. Strong contribution is the cash balance gross what we had, and basically, that's kind of the way we have decreased our NCC ratio.
Here you have the development over the time. As you see that we were pretty levered around six, seven, eight years ago, and now I would say that we are under-levered, and this is how we wanna stay. We wanna stay at a low, at GCAP level, with a low debt, you know, on our balance sheets, and that's why we have a 10% over the cycle target, basically. Let me move the floor to our retail pharmacy CEO, Tornike, please.
Hello, everyone. I'm pleased to share a brief business overview and update on the performance of our retail pharmacy business for the fourth quarter and full year of 2025. Let me remind that our business consists of three main directions: retail, wholesale business, and international operations. Retail is our core business, generating 75% of our revenue. The second one is wholesale business, which is our fastest-growing direction, and management is primarily focused on driving its continued growth. The third one is international operations. At the moment, we are having a limited presence in Armenia and Azerbaijan and aim to expand further in the region. Let me discuss our core retail business in more details. Based on 2024 figures, we continue to be the largest player in the retail pharmacy market in Georgia, with around 34% market share in organized trade.
We are operating under two well-positioned retail brands, GPC, which targets the high-end segment, and Pharmadepot, serving the mass market. We also operate two franchise brands, The Body Shop and Alain Afflelou Optics, and are active in Armenia and Azerbaijan as well. We have unique category structure in retail, having around 50% share of beauty and other versus med category. Beauty category can be described by higher margins and no price regulation risks. We expanded our network by 50 new pharmacies added in Q4, including 2 additional in Armenia, most of them in cost-efficient formats that required limited capital expenditures. As of year-end 2025, we operate 453 pharmacies. Next slide, please.
In terms of operating performance, our retail revenue grew by 7.6% and 11.6% in 2025 and Q4, respectively, supported by same-store revenue growth of 6.3% and almost 9%. This was despite the exit from our textile retail business, which slightly affected headline growth. We are encouraged by this trend, as it reflects healthy consumer demand and solid in-store execution. In 2025, we have strong growth on the wholesale side as well. Revenue grew by 22.6% as we continue to deliver on our strategic focus. This robust growth achieved across all wholesale channels, it's mainly driven by increased product availability across all channels. We also saw an increase in average bill size. It's 10% YoY.
Gross profit margins improved to 33.2% in Q4, driven by better sales mix and improved supplier terms. On the next slide, let me share how it's translated in financial performance. EBITDA grew by 26.7% in full year 2025, and we reached the record high GEL 103 million. In Q4 alone, EBITDA grew by 17.5%. We have a strong 93% cash conversion from EBITDA, exceeding 90%+ threshold for year 2025. From a balance sheet perspective, we remain cautious and disciplined. Our adjusted net debt to LTM EBITDA is 1.3 times, which is below our target ceiling of 1.5. We also distributed GEL 15 million in dividends during the quarter.
Total dividend for the year is GEL 35 million, reflecting confidence in our cash flow and overall financial health. On the final slide, to summarize, we have maintained solid revenue momentum, especially with same-store sales growth and strong wholesale results. Profitability has improved, supported by gross profit margin improvement and prudent cost discipline. Finally, a healthy level of leverage and strong cash generation, giving us flexibility for future investment and shareholder returns. Thank you again, for your time. I'm happy to take your questions during the Q&A session. Now let me hand over to Giorgi Baratashvili.
Thank you, Tornike. Perfect. Thank you very much. I'll be presenting our insurance business. Just a quick reminder that we divide our lines of business by two main lines. It's P&C, that is run under the brand of Aldagi, and our medical insurance line that is run under the brands of Imedi and Ardi. I would like to emphasize that we had a record high performance for the year of 2025, and among them is for Q1 is one of the best, and I will dive into the figures also and operating performance. Our insurance revenues grew by 10% in Q4, and the full year of 2025 was about 23%. The good part of that is that our pretax profits grew even more.
We had an 18% growth in pretax profit in Q4, and the annual growth was translated to 22%. Our net premiums written grew by 19% in Q4. That was about GEL 100 million, and annual growth was translating to 25%, exceeding GEL 400 million. Going into the depths of P&C and medical, our medical business grew by 28%, and that's record high growth for the quarter, and it was translating to 35% for the year, full year for 35%. For the P&C, we had 10% growth in net premiums written, and for the full year, it was 15%.
I will overview the P&C business right now, our P&C insurance company, Aldagi, remains to be the leader on the market with 35%-34% of the market share. It's a quite big gap, more than 10% with the closest competitor. Our P&C business revenues grew by 17% in Q4, and almost 20% full year 2025. The increase was mainly driven by the expansion of the retail of the motor portfolio. That was also aligned with credit life insurance. As you know, we are really de-dedicated to the retail growth, we are already looking and watching closer to the development of the retail. Our pretax profits grew also really rapidly.
We had an 11% growth in Q4 and 20% growth full year. Our ROEs remain record high at the point of almost 34%. More than GEL 8 million dividends were paid to the shareholder in Q4, and in total, almost GEL 20 million of dividends were paid from our P&C business. Key operating metrics remain very solid. Our net premiums grew by 10% in Q4. Full year 2025 reached 15% growth. Combined ratios in Q1 grew by 1%. It was mainly driven by the composition of the commission.
There has not been any changes in the revenue streams and underwriting profit, while the annual P&C and annual combined ratio was improved by 1%, 1.2, and it was down by 286.5%. That was attributable to the improvements of the corporate motor insurance, mainly. Our individual insurance grew by 12%, and policies written grew by 18%. Our renewal rates still stay record high. We had a 75% renewal rate in Q4, and annual growth was at 78%. Going to the health insurance, our health insurance business also keeps to be the market leader with 33% of the market share, and we had an outstanding performance in health insurance. We had a 5% growth in Q4.
That was mainly driven by underwriting discipline and by selection for the state tenders. While the annual growth was translated to 27%, and that's the record high of the existence of our health insurance, for the annual growth. Our pretax profits grew even higher, meaning that the revenues, what we then generated and the underwriting discipline was translated into higher pretax profits. We had a 31% growth in Q4 in pretax profits and 26% full year of 2025. ROEs here in Q4 were still record high, 36%, and the annual ROE was set at 31%. Key operating metrics, very strong, I would say. Again, something to underline.
Our, we had a 28% growth in net premiums written, in Q4 and 35% change by, in, full year 2025. Our combined ratios, medical were improved by almost 2 points in Q4, and that was as I said, driven, mainly by the selected criteria for the health tenders, state tenders, and the revised underwriting approach. We had an individual insured in medical. We have, in medical insurance, we had 80%, 277%, that it was 8% decrease, but that was intentionally mainly again of the, select and, revised underwriting approach and the, criteria of selection the client base. The renewal rates stood at high point at 80% in Q4 and 81%, in, full year.
The improvement mainly in the lower loss ratio, driven, as I said, by the tariff increase, and the decrease in number of insureds is mainly attributable to medical state tenders. We had a 17% tariff increase. We managed to increase our tariffs and put premium per policy by 17% in Q4, and GEL 9 million dividends were paid only from the health insurance business. That was for the full year, it accounted almost to GEL 14 million lari. Again, we also love to push our retail arm in health insurance, and we can see on the figures that we already reached 17,000 insureds, driving to a GEL 2 million increase in the premiums in Q4.
The good part and the good story is that we already secured tenders of $50 million that will be effective from Q1. I mean, there's an additional revenue, additional gross written premium that will be and that will be the inception, that will incept in Q1 2026, with the revised underwriting criteria and revised underwriting discipline. A few things that I would like to underline about Q4 and full year 2025 to summarize. Next slide, please. We had outstanding performance. I would say that record high for the insurance, where for the both lines of business, where our ROEs in medical exceeded 30%, and it was almost at 31%, and even higher in P&C at 33.5%.
Uh, our retail business in both in P&C and health insurance are expanding, and we have, uh, we, we reached already, already seventeen thousand. Just to remind you that we, we, we were not presented in this business few years ago, so we launched few years ago, and we are, um, we are increasing our insureds rapidly. Uh, the good part is that we are, uh, repricing our, um, uh, products in, uh, health insurance. That i- that drives, uh, mainly that, that brings the, uh, sustainable combined ratios and the improvements in the combined ratios in the health insurance, as you saw. Plus, on the other side, we keep, uh, record high renewal rates, and additionally, uh, record high dividends were paid to, to GCap. Uh, Georgia Capital in the Q4, we paid more than seventeen million, uh, in, uh, Q4.
That was full year, it was GEL 33 million, and that again, was 30% higher, and it was than the previous year. The change and the increase was 30% YoY in terms of the dividend payout ratio. That's in short about the our insurance business, and I will pass the floor to Irakli Gogia. He will overview the healthcare business. Thank you.
Thank you, Giorgi. I'm very pleased to report another strong quarter on the healthcare services business. We continued our focus on the outpatient services, optimized our revenue mix, and improved patient retention. Outpatient revenue grew by 23% in 2025, with its share in total revenue, rising by 1.6 percentage points to 43%. We continued to expand our service offerings across regional and community hospitals, targeting previously underserved medical needs. We introduced new specialties, including arthroscopy, sports medicine, and interventional cardiology, further enhancing access to advanced care in local markets. Our initiatives helped us deliver double-digit revenue growth, with EBITDA increasing by 18% and the EBITDA margin reaching 19.5% in 2025.
This, for the full year, we delivered EBITDA of GEL 93 million, representing a 35% YoY increase and surpassing the 28% growth rate achieved in 2024. In our hospitals. Next slide, please. In our hospitals business, EBITDA grew by 13% in the first quarter. Operating cash flow reached a record high of GEL 29 million in the quarter, resulting in a full year EBITDA to cash conversion of 84%. We outperformed our internal target of a second year in a row, with operating cash flow plus revenue growth exceeding 100%. Occupancy rates increased by 7 percentage points over the same period, while the average length of stay decreased significantly from 4.6 to 3.9.
This development is fully aligned with our stated objective of improving efficiency and enhancing capacity utilization. Next slide, please. In first quarter 2025, number of admissions in our polyclinics business increased by 13%, while number of tests performed in our diagnostics business increased by 11%. This resulted in revenue growth of 18% and EBITDA growth of 35%. Within the diagnostics business, current utilization remains below 50%. We view this as a clear growth opportunity and intend to significantly increase utilization by driving demand and improving operational efficiency. Next slide, please. To summarize, 2025 was a strong year for our organization, marked by both financial performance and strategic progress. We delivered significant EBITDA growth, supported by improvement in EBITDA margins.
This reflects the strengths of our operating model and the continued focus on efficiency across the group. Cash generation remained robust, particularly in the first quarter, resulting in a full year EBITDA to cash conversion ratio of 86%. Importantly, this strong cash flow performance enabled us to further strengthen our balance sheet. Net debt to EBITDA declined from 4.4 times to 3.7 times in 2025. Alongside this performance, we continued to invest in our clinical capabilities and people. We further strengthened our medical teams and enhanced the depth of expertise available across our network. That concludes my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you. Giorgi?
Thanks, Irakli. Hello, everyone. Over the next few slides, I will quickly summarize the excellent results of our portfolio company's impact on our valuations. Starting with the overall overview, as you know, at the full year, we had the independent valuation company perform the valuation analysis of all our large portfolio companies, which was then audited by our independent auditors. You see the outcomes of these valuations on this slide. About 50% of our portfolio is Lion Finance Group, while about 40% is within our large portfolio companies, and the emerging and other businesses continue to be around 10%-11%.
The valuations continue to be applied consistently from the previous periods, with the maximum reliance on the future DCFs, which are driven by the future cash flows that we expect in all these large and emerging and other portfolio businesses, based on the actual results and the expectations that we have for each individual company. As we move to the next slide here, you will see how the multiples have changed. These are the implied multiples from the DCFs, and they've remained broadly consistent with the previous quarter. Although we have had, you know, for example, in retail pharmacy, a decrease from the beginning of the year, similar to the healthcare services.
Broadly, we think that we have approached the level where these multiples are, will continue to be, more or less consistent at these levels, unless, you know, cost of equity, change that might lead to changes into the implied multiples. Next, you will see that, you know, the impact of these valuations and how that has impacted our overall portfolio value. Our overall portfolio value, for the first time in our history, has gone above GEL 5 billion, and that was supported by two things, primarily. One, the continued increase in the Lion Finance Group, because of their excellent performance, that drove around GEL 300 million plus in the portfolio value growth.
There was another 133 million lari that was driven by the large portfolio company's growth, which was, you know, spread across the healthcare, insurance, and the retail businesses that we will see on the next slide. Here, what we wanted to highlight is this growth has been, you know, consistent across the portfolio companies. The small decrease in the emerging and the other portfolio companies was related to capital-heavy businesses that we have there, but that was in line with our expectations. On the next slide, now, this is the breakdown of how these excellent large portfolio companies' results drove the value creations. In retail pharmacy, the majority of the value creation came from the growth in the EBITDA, as you saw and heard from Tornike.
That growth approached 18% in the fourth quarter. They also paid us dividends, and we had a small decrease because of the multiple change. Overall, this business continues to be the biggest private portfolio business that we hold in our portfolio, at GEL 870 million. Insurance business, where also the majority of the growth came from the growth in the net income. As you saw on the previous slide, that was around GEL 27 million growth from our perspective, and on top, they paid us dividends of GEL 17.3 million, which in aggregate, drove the net income for Georgia Capital's income statement.
In the healthcare services business, here we had a consistent growth also in the EBITDA, again, based on the close to 18% growth in the EBITDA in the fourth quarter, coupled with a very strong operating cash conversion in the fourth quarter that also drove a positive impact on our PNL from the net debt change, which was around 15 million lari gains. Here we had an uplift in the multiples because of the consistent, continued, and sustainable growth in this business that we saw over the last few quarters. As our expectations in the future quarters have also led to the slight multiple increase. That's about valuations. Now we jump into the liquidity and dividend income outlook.
We continue to have a very strong liquidity, even though during 2025, we paid down our debts from $150 million - $50 million. That's the only remaining, you know, debts that we have with the Holdco. These are the locally issued bonds that mature in 2028. We still continue to hold about close to $90 million cash on our books, which puts us at around $40 million net cash position. Lastly, this is the dividend income outlook, where we continue to have another strong year of dividend inflows. You can see that across both listed and the private investments, we had a very strong growth, especially on the private sides.
When we also look at the dividend income per share, given that we've been reducing our share count over the last few quarters, despite those reductions, we still expect that our dividends will continue to be above 200 million lari, and dividend income per share will continue to grow. As you see, last year, the growth was 50% plus. That's largely it to summarize the valuations and the liquidity outlook. I think with that, we'll go back to Irakli to wrap up and open up for the questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Giorgi. To wrap up, strong and heavy growth, we are way ahead in our capital return targets of 700 million lari. In six months, we nearly did and committed 80% of this amount. Our portfolio companies are growing nicely with the EBITDA in 25 growing nearly 30%. By the way, we have a strong start in January, all of our companies. Our NCC ratio is down, well below our target of 10%. So far, economy is doing extremely well. So far, so good. Please, let's open the floor for questions. You can raise your hand and ask the question, or you can send your question in our chat.
Raising hands is preferred, more engaging.
Thank you, Irakli. Since we can start the Q&A session, we have some few questions from our attendees. Currently, Dmitry has raised his hand. Dmitry, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much, and congratulations on excellent set of results. I have a few questions. The first one is on the potential upcoming investments. Since the discount to NAV is narrowing, should we expect you to be more aggressive with the investments in the nearest future? I'm talking about bolt-ons and bigger ones. That's the first question. The second one, I know that in the past, you only focus on Georgia when we think about big investments and not part of your portfolio companies, but maybe you consider to start looking outside of Georgia at some point, maybe in the attractive neighboring CIS countries? The third question is about the capital return program. Congrats on basically going much faster than initially expected here.
The question is, there is this relatively small amount remaining, and now you said you would provide an update going forward, but maybe for that amount, do you think you have a preference whether to spend it on the bond or buyback? The final one is on the growth in your private portfolio. Basically, do you have a view for 2026, 2027, which of your private portfolio asset would perform the strongest? Thank you.
Okay. Thanks a lot, Dmitry, for very engaging questions. On investment side, basically, I don't like to use the word aggressive because we are very, we want to be very pragmatic where we are investing and very diligent. You are right. Since the discount is narrowing, there are more opportunities are opening up for us, and we are looking at the opportunities. Obviously, the investment is very investment business is not predictable. It's very difficult to say what you have a deal or not have a deal, but we don't want to force investment in that sense, that we are investing for the sake of it. You know, okay, we can find some good opportunities at cheaper than the GCAP share price, and okay, let's invest.
We are very diligent in that sense. I mean, we like to take it slow. I will combine this one, this question with our bolt-ons, because on bolt-ons, we are for our large portfolio companies, we are more bullish, let's put it that way, because we wanna grow, and our portfolio companies are performing well. We have more, we are more bullish in acquiring our through our large portfolio companies and some smaller companies, basically, to do the expansion.
in that sense, we are very much open to go outside Georgia, because we see the opportunities in neighboring countries, and we think that that's kind of opportunities which will serve well for the value creation, and the growth momentum, what we can buy for our large portfolio companies. There we are more kind of open-minded. In terms of the capital return policy, the GEL 700 million, well, the small amount is left. I seriously cannot answer the question. Both are on the table. We have only $50 million of bond remaining, which we can retire it fully, or we can basically do a buyback.
Let's see where the NAV discount is gonna be when we finish our current $50 million buyback program. If it's still at 25% level, where it is right now, probably we will prefer to do more buybacks. That's kind of where I guess it's my answer, but 2026, towards the end of 2026, we will have a clear picture of new capital return policy, because there is clearly a need, and we need to think about how we're gonna go about it. I guess that's it. Dmitry, have I answered all of your questions?
Yes, Irakli, thank you very much.
Thank you.
Very clear.
Thank you.
Thanks, Dmitry. Next, we can see that Ben Maher has his hand raised. Ben, you can join our conversation.
Hello?
You can-
Hello? Hello, can you hear me now?
Hi, Ben.
Hi, Irakli. Sorry, I was lost the connection. Dmitry actually answered a lot of the questions I had, so I only have a couple. Just again, relates to the M&A points. you mentioned you're more bullish on the Boston acquisitions. Is there a specific area of the large product portfolio, i.e., retail, insurance, healthcare, where you see greater opportunities at the moment or expect to see in the near future? I guess my second question is on the stake in Lion Finance. When you think about this, is the primary focus on the PFIC status or are other factors also considered when evaluating whether to reduce the stake further? Obviously, the share price last year was very, very impressive, in Lion Finance.
I would just be interested to get your thoughts on how you see this stake evolving in 2026. Thank you.
Thanks, Ben. I think on M&A, I really cannot say more than that. I don't want to speculate on the sectors where we see more or we see less. It's very volatile in general, you know, sometimes you don't see anything, and sometimes you see a lot, et cetera. I think that, in general, we like to do a bolt-ons for our large portfolio companies, and we are open-minded to go outside Georgia. That's all I can say at this stage on M&A. Regarding the LFG state, it's a PFIC driven at this stage, and it's purely PFIC driven, and that's what we do. Maybe we adjust a little bit here and there, and this is pretty much it.
We like the performance of the bank. It's extremely good performance. Quality of management is very high, superior to its competitor, for sure. As you see, a big gap in operating performance between the Bank of Georgia and its closest competitor. Also, we believe that the strategy of the LFG is way superior, going into the neighboring markets and taking the stake or acquiring the large players, rather than doing the small kind of consumer-driven lending, which is then limited by the regulator, and it's really doesn't depend on your own performance. You are at the mercy of the regulator. Overall, we are very happy with LFG strategy, performance, the quality of the management, et cetera.
Our pure decision is driven by the PFIC, nothing else.
Great. Thank you.
Thanks.
Yes, we have some few incoming questions in the Q&A panel. I would like to remind the viewers, if they have some sort of questions, they can always type in the Q&A section or raise their hands. The first question that we have in the Q&A panel is from Thomas Paris: "Thanks for amazing execution. Is there a limit on the weight of Lion Finance within the portfolio? If that limit is passed, does this trigger sales?
sorry, I don't... Can you repeat that? I had a problem with my speaker.
Yeah, of course. The question was: Thanks for amazing execution. Is there a limit on the weight of Lion Finance within the portfolio? If that limit is passed, does this trigger sales?
There is no, there is no limit as such. We are just driven by the PFIC, as I said, purely by PFIC. That's kind of you can use it as a guidance, and they can use it as a, as a limit, I guess. We don't want to be PFICs, and that's how we are managing our balance sheet and our investment.
Thanks, Irakli. The next question comes from Niall O'Connor. There are actually two questions which are interconnected. The question is: Given your very strong and steady cash generation, wouldn't it make sense to keep some level of leverage? I recognize in the past I have encouraged you to deleverage.
Very good. It's good that you are flexible in changing your mind. In this case, we are on the other side. We want to be delevered on the Holdco- level, because in the end of the day, it is a double leverage when you have. Our operating companies have their own leverage, and we have on top our own leverage. We can use that, let's put that way, that capacity, if we need to make a big investment, and we may lever up, but we need to have a very clear deleveraging path. We can use that leverage capacity for the investment, the firepower. My inclination is to keep it very, very low leverage.
In case we find very lucrative investment opportunity and we lever up, we will need to have a very clear path to delever, and we need to present to you that's how we are going to delever. It's like we have a very clear view on this leverage.
Thanks a lot, Irakli. The next question comes from Anton Berg. Thanks for the great results. Is the OpEx for 2025, GEL 47 million level a reasonable level to expect for?
Giorgi, you wanna-
Yes. I can answer that question. Hi, Anton. Thanks for the question. I think from our perspective, the guidance that we provide is that our OpEx will be 75 bps of our NAV, and we do expect that in 2026, that will continue to be the case. As you saw in 2025, that was less than 75 bps, but, you know, pretty close. We think it will continue to be the same structure in 2026. That might mean that the number might be slightly higher than what it was in 2025, but in any event, we do expect it to be 75 bps or less of our NAV.
Thanks a lot. Our next question comes from Andrei Borkowski. The question is: Is the Georgian property market in a bubble? Lots of overseas capital has been coming into real estate, for example. How sensitive is the group performance to the ups and downs of the Georgian property market? How do you look to emulate, admire as investors or business operators?
So I've so economy growing, GDP per capita doubling in past four years, actually, that gives you a big firepower from the locals. Maybe five years ago, to sell anything worth, so $5 million or $10 million was unimaginable. Now, you the liquidity of that ticket size is way higher and maybe even more. It's a bigger ticket size you can actually buy and sell with the local capital. The local capital has been increasing, so it's not, I don't think it's in a bubble, to start with, but I don't think that, I think that it's more like a we have a quite an oversupply on of real estate in the market, or risk of oversupply on the market, basically.
The prices are not going up as it should have, actually. We have a real estate development company, and this real estate development company is performing well, but we are not very bullish to do a big projects there, for sure. We are pretty cautious on that side. In terms of whether we admire any investor or invest philosophy, we don't admire anybody so far. We want to be admired.
Thanks a lot, Irakli. We have one last question from Brad. What are the ways you can increase utilization in healthcare services, and what sort of margins is possible at higher utilization levels?
Irakli, you want to answer this one?
Yeah. Thanks, thanks, Irakli. Thanks for the question. To increase utilization, first of all, we should continue what we were doing. It's increasing our market share, and attracting new doctors, new patients. Maybe we attract some customers from abroad as well. We could also roll out new services, and also we will continue optimizing beds, so, that increase the number of beds in the departments where the demand is higher, et cetera. On the margin side, we think that 25% EBITDA margin is achievable.
Given the last 2 years, we increased the EBITDA margin by 4%, for 4.45, or something like that, we believe we will get to 25 in mid-term. Increase in outpatient revenue will help that agenda as well.
Thank you, Irakli.
Thanks, Irakli. Those were the questions which we all received. If you have any outstanding questions to ask, please type those in.
There's no further question. Thank you, Anana, for your mediation and the questions, and thanks everybody for being engaged and finding time to attend our call. As I said, we continue, our portfolio companies are continuing the good performance in 2026. The year started strong, so stay tuned for the Q1 results.