Good afternoon, everyone, and, thank you for joining us on today's TBC Bank 3Q23 results call. My name is Andrew Keeley. I'm Director of Investor Relations at TBC, and I'm joined on today's call by our CEO, Vakhtang Butskhrikidze, and our CFO, Giorgi Megrelishvili. As usual, we'll start today's call with a short presentation on the results, and then we'll finish up with a Q&A session. And with that, I'd like to hand over to Vakhtang. Thank you.
Thank you, Andrew. Thank you for joining our Third Quarter financial results conference call. Before I discuss our results, I'd like to mention the excellent news that came yesterday for Georgia at the European Commission recommending granting candidate EU status. All of us at TBC greatly welcome this decision. I am pleased to report that it has been another very successful quarter for TBC, as we remain focused on providing the best products and services for our growing customer base and delivering value for our shareholders. Today, I'd like to focus on the key achievements for this quarter. As usual, I will start our presentation from this slide, which reviews our position across the group's three fundamental strategic pillars.
I am pleased to say that we remain our position as the leading financial institution in Georgia, delivering almost 26% return on equity in this quarter and working with 1.6 million monthly active customers. Our digital financial services businesses in Uzbekistan are really gaining momentum, contributing 5% of the group's net profit and serving 3.7 million monthly active users. Additionally, our Georgian ecosystem, TNET, continues to grow with an annualized GMV of GEL 170 million, and transactions are up by 30% year-on-year. The next slide presents a high-level overview of the third quarter. In the third quarter, our group maintained an excellent return on equity of 27.6%.
Our CET1 ratio per IFRS remains strong at 17.5%, which is 3.1 percentage points above the minimum regulatory requirements, despite paying sizable dividends. At the same time, our loans and deposits portfolios grew impressively by 17% and 11%, respectively, on a constant currency basis. In Uzbekistan, our operations continued to deliver positive results, with a net profit of 14% and 23.4% on a return on equity. Notably, our gross loan book has more than doubled over the 12 months to over GEL 630 million. Importantly, our digital user base keeps growing, with 4.5 million digital monthly active users across the group and daily active users to monthly active users ratio at 32%. As for the Georgian operations, daily active users to monthly active users ratios stood even higher at 44%.
Moving on the next slide, I'd like to briefly go over the financial performance in the third quarter. I am proud to say that for only the second quarter, our quarterly earnings topped GEL 300 million. This previous occasion was a year ago when we benefited from the unusually high FX revenues, so to achieve this GEL 300 million level in a quarter without any FX is an excellent achievement. Meanwhile, return on equity of almost 28% speaks for itself. It's also worth noting that our balance sheet growth remains very decent, with 19% gross loans growth on a constant currency basis. Before I review our performance in more details, let me provide you with a brief update on a recent key macro development in Georgia.
The Georgian economy continues to show very positive growth, with 5.4% real GDP growth in the third quarter. Meanwhile, inflation remains low, and the National Bank of Georgia has started monetary policy easing, with more to come over the next 12-18 months. Central bank reserves are at record highs, and while there has been moderate weakening of lari in the past few months, this follows a prolonged period of appreciation. At the end of 2021, as you remember, the lari was trending at 3.10 to USD, while it's now around 2.7. The next slide further shows Georgia's solid economic fundamentals. The Georgian economy has grown at 6.8% in nine months, and we forecast 6.6% growth in the whole year.
The chart on the right shows the strong growth of FX inflows in the recent quarters, with tourism and remittances leading the way. Slide eight reiterates my point that Georgia's inflation remains at a very low level, and we expect to close to 200 basis points of refinancing rate cuts by the end of 2024, which showed by supportive for the economic backdrop to our businesses. Now, let's move to the next slide, which highlights our growing customer base and digital engagement. The group retail monthly active customer is up by 36% year-on-year, reaching 5.3 million. Our digital footprint continues to expand, and we added 1.3 million digital monthly active users over the past 12 months, which is a great achievement, and we think that in Uzbekistan, in particular, there is a much more to come....
Turning to Georgia, you can see our leadership position across all the major segments. And the third quarter, our loan book increased by 70% on a constant currency basis, driven by very strong growth in CIB segment. At the same time, deposits rose by 11%, also on a constant currency basis, led by the retail segment. On the next slide, highlight the performance of our payment business in Georgia. Net revenue grew by 15% , reaching GEL 69 million, with card operations continuing to play a significant role, contributing nearly half of the revenues. The slowdown in this quarter in a year-on-year growth is primarily driven by the timing differences in receiving cashbacks from the payment networks. And as you see, payment remains a key part of our non-interest income business, representing almost 70% of our fee and commission income.
Next slide introduces our digital ecosystem, TNET, which comprise a wide range of products and services across four fee verticals. Next slide gives a bit more color of TNET performance. As you see, in the third quarter, GMV increased by an impressive 55% year-on-year, reaching GEL 45 million, with gross profits to GMV at 13%. Lifestyle, led by the ticketing and housing segments, the main contributors to this success. Over the same period, 5,000 retail loans were disbursed through TNET leads, accounting for around 4% share of TBC's retail loan disbursement in the quarter. As our ecosystem business continues to grow, we expect it to further increase its positive contribution to the group's fee and commission income and retail loan generation. Now, it's my pleasure to share more about our fast-growing operations in Uzbekistan.
Our digital financial services in Uzbekistan had positive contribution to the group's earnings. 5% of the total group's net profits in the third quarter, with 23% return of equity, was serving 3.7 million monthly active users. Another very important thing I'd like to flag regarding our Uzbekistan operations, in September, as probably you know, Oliver Hughes joined us, our team, as the Head of our International Operations. We are delighted to welcome such a high-caliber addition to our executive team, and we think that Oliver, Nika, and the team in Tashkent can take our Uzbek operations to a new level in the coming years. On the next slide, I will give a bit more color about the performance of Payme, leading payments provider, in Uzbekistan.
Monthly and daily active users grew by 43%, reaching 3 million and 1 million respectively, and top-line revenues and the net profit grew by 41% and 45%, and driven by for 21% increase in payment volumes. Finally, on the next slide, let's turn to TBC Uzbekistan, a digital retail bank. We continue to acquire new customers with registered and monthly active users, up by 67% and 75% year-on-year respectively. Our retail loan and deposits books continue to grow very strongly, giving us a 3% share on the retail deposits market and 12.5% shares of unsecured cash loans, what are known as micro loans in Uzbekistan.
At the same time, TBC's revenues more than doubled year-on-year, reaching over GEL 37 million, and it continued delivering positive returns, with GEL 2.8 million in net profits for this third quarter. And now I'd like to hand over to Giorgi.
Thank you, Vakhtang, and thank you all for joining our quarterly call today. I'm going to take a deeper dive into our quarterly performance, and I'll start from slide 19. I am very pleased to say that we continue to deliver very strong results and outcome, and as you can see, during nine months in 2023, our net profit is up by 9% year-on-year, reaching almost GEL 850 million. In the third quarter, we generated over GEL 300 million for only the second time, with the previous time was just a year ago, when we had unusually high FX, hence the 6% year-on-year drop.
But I'm very pleased to report we have reached this milestone this time without any one-offs, and consequently, our high profitability is actually shown in a very nice 27% return on equity for nine months, with 27.6% for Q3. Now, I'll go into more details about the main drivers of our profitability, and it's slide 20. Both net interest and non-interest income have continued to display strong year-on-year growth dynamics for nine months, with total revenues up by 18%. Net interest income was up by an excellent 28% year-on-year, and I'll explain a bit more about how we achieved this result when I discuss our margins. Despite the high base in FX revenues from last year, our non-interest income has still shown year-on-year growth for nine months, and net fee and commission income is up by a very healthy 33% year-on-year.
I would also like to highlight that our Uzbek operations contributed GEL 143 million , or around 8% of our total revenue, in the first nine months. Now, let's move to our margin dynamics. As you can see, NIM grew by 80 basis points and 60 basis points year-on-year in nine months and third quarter. Consequently, as a result, our NIMs stood at a very impressive 6.7 in nine months and 6.9 in Q3. The last quarter was a bit marginal, let's say, lower. As you may recall from last quarter's call, I mentioned that we are at the peak of the margin cycle, and we are very pleased to see that NIM continues to stay at this peak for this quarter. Now, on slide 22, I'm going to discuss the our costs.
We continue to try to manage our cost growth even as we put in faster digitalization, expand our operation, both in Georgia and beyond. Cost growth remains more or less in line with our business growth, up by 24% compared to Q3 last year. Favorable operating income dynamics have allowed us to maintain a cost-to-income ratio close to 35%. I also would like to highlight that cost-to-income ratio of our Georgian financial services stood at very decent 30.7% for the first nine months. Now, I would like to move to slide nine, which highlights our healthy asset quality. I'm glad to say actually there is not a great deal new to report with regard to the credit quality. Our NPL ratio decreased year-on-year across all segments and stood at 2% at the quarter end.
At the same time, total coverage was 152%, while provision coverage stood at 88%. As you can see, our cost of risk was just 90 basis points for nine months in Q3. On slide 24, I would like to share with you the performance of our core balance sheet. The loan book, as you can see, for the group, has grown by very decent 19% on a constant currency basis, while Georgian growth was 17% year-on-year, also on a constant currency basis, and 4%, QoQ, in Q3. Over the same period, Georgian customer funding grew by, let's, 11% without FX, mainly driven by CIB and retail. Now, I would like to move to slide 25, where you can see our solid capital position.
We actually continued to stay well above minimum regulatory requirements for all tiers, and our capital position is very strong. Our CET1 ratio dropped a bit to 17.5 by 80 basis points from last quarter, but was... That was driven by dividend payment. Nevertheless, we remained 3.1% above minimum regulatory requirement. Now, finally, on slide 26, I will highlight the financial performance of our Uzbek business, which continues to deliver very strong outcome. I would like to reiterate that our business there are delivering both very strong and mainly profitable growth. Loans have more than doubled year-on-year, and the customer funding is up by 74%. We generated around GEL 14 million in net income in Q3. That actually translates into 23.4% return on equity.
In terms of some financial measures of TBC Uzbekistan, NIM stood above 20%, almost 21% for Q3, while cost of risk was 7.3%. The contribution of our Uzbek business in the group is already tangible. That means 5% share in group net profit, 17% of group net fee and commission income, and 12% contribution in loan book growth, with loans for, let's say, 8% of the group's retail loan book. For now, that's all from my side. Thank you, and I would like to hand back to Vakhtang for some final remarks.
Yeah. Thank you, Giorgi, and I'd like to wrap up today's presentation by reiterating the target that we have set ourselves through until the end of 2025, which you can see. We believe we are on the right track to deliver on these aims, and I realize we need to keep our focusing on the executing in terms of delivering the best possible services for our 5 million+ monthly active customers. On that note, I'd like to thank you for your ongoing support, and we are now ready to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you, Vakhtang and Giorgi, for your comments. Now we'll open the floor for Q&A. As a reminder, if you're using Zoom, please use the raise your hand function at the bottom of the screen. If you're calling in on the phone, it's star nine to raise your hand. And when your time comes to ask a question, I'll unmute you, introduce you, and be good if you can introduce yourself. Thank you very much. Okay, so in terms of the first question, we have Robert Sage from Peel Hunt. Robert, your line is open. You can speak.
So...
Yes, thank you. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Thank you very much for taking the question. I've got three, two of them are very short questions, one of which is, I guess, strategic. And I think reference was made to the appointment of Oliver Hughes, and I think it was stated that you can see the potential for him to take-
We hear you very badly, Robert. Can you-
Sorry?
Repeat.
Can you speak up a bit, Robert? The line's not great.
Okay, is this better?
Yes.
Yeah, a bit better. Yeah.
The strategic question is with respect to Oliver Hughes's appointment. I believe you mentioned that you might be able to take the Uzbek operation to new levels. I was wondering whether you could share what his initial focus might be and what, in particular, you think he might be able to add. Also, the extent to which you might be looking at opportunities beyond Uzbekistan. The second question relates to the net interest margin, where again, you've exceeded my expectations. My question really relates to, again, the Uzbek operation, because I see that the margin in Uzbekistan increased by 80 basis points quarter-on-quarter, and I was wondering if you could give a steer, at least directionally, in terms of how you see it developing over the next year or so. And finally, just a quick one on deposits.
I see there was a small contraction in the deposit base at the same time when asset growth was quite strong in the quarter. I know that looking at quarter-to-quarter fluctuations can be misleading, but I was wondering if you have any comments on that?
So I will take the first question, and second then third question, you will take. So, thank you, Robert, for all of these questions. So for the Oliver, so, by the way, we have this slide on the screen, and as you see on this slide, in August, we published our medium-term targets, what we are targeting. It's a very tough but also very ambitious plans which we have in our Uzbekistan. What does it mean for us? That we want to increase monthly active users in Uzbekistan, 5 million + in 2026. This is the first. Second, to have a monthly growth of the portfolio by to 80% per year. So this is the second and the third.
We are targeting to have a minimum GEL 200 million net profits in 2026. So if you take exchange rate, it mean that we want to generate, you know, $80 million net profits in Uzbekistan. And Giorgi mentioned that even today, Uzbek net profits became material for the group, but, looking on these figures, it mean that in 2026, even it will become more material for our operations. To answer your question, so for us, key important to go more deep in Uzbek market for this year, for 2024, 2025, and afterwards, we will see if there will be some interest and for to go for the other market. So to answer your question, our... We will concentrate next two years on Uzbekistan. Giorgi, you are on mute.
Sorry, apologies. So hi, Robert. So I'm going to take two of your questions. The first one was about NIM, and as I mentioned, we are very pleased to see that we managed to remain on the peak. That's actually we are at the peak, we think so, like 10 basis points there or here, it doesn't really change the definition of the peak. And again, from now on, we expect gradually coming down, but pace can be a bit slower than we expected, for example, due to a few factors at the moment. But again, we do expect to remain at a very decent level in the foreseeable future from the NIM perspective. On Uzbekistan, it's very small book, and as you know, it's fully ICL lending at the moment.
For medium term, we do expect to remain around 20% NIM, maybe a bit more, at least for next year or two. That would be our kind of expectation and target. The second question on the drop of the customer funding side, it is nothing else than just managing our liquidity and balance sheet management, because our loans grew, but we were over-liquid, and our liquidity now at a lower level, because we used to have a positive carry, not anymore, and expecting our reference coming down and et cetera. Now, we just do the balance sheet and cost optimization, let's say, exercise.
Thank you.
Does it cover your questions?
It does. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Robert. Okay, and our next question comes from Rahim at Investec. Rahim, go ahead. Your line is open.
Good afternoon. Can you hear me?
Yes. Go ahead, Rahim.
Hi. Sorry, can you hear me now?
Yeah, we can hear. Yeah.
Yeah. So two questions from me, if that's fine. Just the first on the Georgian operations, your cost of risk continues to come in lower than we had anticipated, or at least I had anticipated. Just give us a sense of whether that's something that you expect to continue for the next few quarters, or there should be a normalization towards your kind of 1% guidance, or historic trajectory. And then the second question was just again about Uzbekistan, to kind of follow up on the second question.
You know, with Oliver's arrival, can you give us a sense of perhaps where the areas of focus might be in terms of, you know, new products or development, especially in TBC UZ, and, you know, kind of where that area of focus is going to move to, over the next, say, six-12 months?
Yeah. Giorgi will take first question, and I will try to answer the second question.
Yes. On the cost of risk, like, our guidance remains unchanged. It's around 90 basis points -110 basis points for the Georgian operations. We were below that level for a quarter or two, but again, we do expect over time it to actually be within this range. Will it be next quarter or, like, within two quarters? It's a bit difficult to say, but overall, like, when modeling cost of risk, we can safely assume, let's say, within this range.
Yeah. To take the second question: so Oliver openly said he has a huge experience. So he was a CEO of the company, probably the largest digital bank worldwide. So he began this journey from the zero and brought it back to that level. So we are continuing our strategy. You know that we have a retail business here, but we will continue to be fully digital bank. But quarter- by- quarter, we will increase our operations, and we will bring the products which will be similar and which will include in our digital operations, such as, for example, we want to increase our type of the consumer loans, but more wide range of the products.
We are planning to bring the credit card such products to our product list in the Uzbek market. And also in the medium term, we are planning, in addition to our retail product, to bring a micro and SME product. So this is the plans which we have in our medium term. So to summarize, we want to be a fully digital bank, but in addition to retail products, also to have micro and SME products.
Great. Thank you both very much.
Thank you, Rahim. And we have a question from Carlo. I don't have a surname, so please go ahead, Carlo. Carlo, your line is open.
Yes. Now I think you can hear me. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Okay. Here is Carlo Berta from MainFirst. Just one question. I think, there is a perpetual that is, that can be called next year. What is the, the policy of the bank? Would it be just... Is it too early or, or you guys are, are already thinking about it? Is it going to be just based on, pure economics and where the, the refinancing rate, the interest rates will be, or, or you, you think you, you're going to call it? Thank you.
Thank you, Carlo. You probably know we kind of can't really comment on this. What I can really say about this point, we do understand what market expects and market, let's say, sentiments. That's all I can say for now.
Okay. Okay, thank you.
Okay, thank you. And, the next question we have is from, Ronak Gadhia. So Ronak, you're good to talk. Thank you.
Good afternoon. This is Ronak Gadhia from EFG Hermes. I guess mine are just a couple of follow-up questions. Firstly on NIMS, Giorgi, you mentioned, you know, NIMS are at peak, and we should expect lower. But could you give us a sense of what, you know, where the NIMS could end up, you know, where the NIMS could eventually end up? Could we go back to where they used to be, say, back in 2021, or even with NIM declining, we should still expect higher than 2021 levels, because obviously, large denominated loans have grown, at the same time, Uzbekistan exposure is also increasing. The second question, again, somewhat of a follow-up on your Uzbekistan business.
We've seen one of your competitors scale up, or at least continue to build up their ecosystem, quite aggressively. Uzum seems like, you know, they've added in buy now, pay later, e-commerce, have a tie-in with a local bank. So could you just talk more specifically about that competitor and how that plays into your growth outlook?
Giorgi will answer the first question, and I will try to answer second, yes.
Very good question, Ronak. What I can say, definitely we are not going to 2021 levels of... So we'll definitely going, going to stay higher. Just to provide for group, Uzbekistan will help a lot, of course. We do think we are going to maintain six handle for a long time, for a while. Whether it be 6.5+ or 6.3+, it's difficult to say. We will need to see. But definitely, like I would say, a six handle, again, 6.5 may be good level to consider, at least for the next year or two. And for Georgia, Georgia's operations, there we do expect some squeeze.
But again, our expectation, we would stay, again, quite well above those levels you mentioned, maybe 5.5-6. That's the level for Georgia. We should consider, I would say, medium term, not the next quarter or two, but over time, that's the level we may stabilize.
Yeah, to answer second question, Ronak. So in Uzbekistan, you know that today we have two businesses. We have a fully digital bank, and we have a second largest payment provider, and we are trying strategically to build a financial service ecosystem. We are not going to the marketplace here to build, so ideally, strategically, we will have a financial service ecosystem, and we will find interesting strategic partnership with the potential marketplace in Uzbekistan, and we'll have a strategic partnership with them.
Just maybe as a follow-up, if we were to see the example of Kaspi in Kazakhstan, not having the entire digital ecosystem, would that be a bit of a competitive disadvantage for TBC? Because your rival, you know, your competitor could offer, you know, the whole package of okay within their ecosystem, whereas you might not be able to.
We don't think so because we believe that we have our competitive advantage, and if we build our financial service ecosystem in the right way, and we will have a strategic partnership with the existing marketplace in Uzbekistan, we will, we will have our competitive advantage on the market with the population of 37 million. There could not be one player in Uzbekistan. So the market is big, and we have cases in the Asian countries, and we have cases in Russia, in the Asian countries, that there are a few players. And we have a success case is that the financial service ecosystems are successfully partnering with the ecosystems and strategically, and they are winning the markets. And we can take a Tinkoff case in Russia.
I think it was in Russia ecosystem, financial ecosystem, and they have strategic partnerships with the marketplaces, and they had a very successful case. It was a very successful case.
Understood. Thank you.
Okay, thank you, Ronak. And, next up it is Patrick Fischer. Patrick, go ahead. Your line is open.
Great. Can you hear me? Hello?
Yes, actually, we can.
Oh, perfect. Fantastic. I'm calling from an airport in India, but I wanted to dial in. Again, first, congratulations to you and the whole team on another stellar quarter. Growth, cost control, cost income, and exceptional credit quality, just really continuing a great consistent pattern here. I've I guess two questions. One is about asset liability match, and if you can comment on that. Every financial institution's looking at asset liability matching, in particular with tenor. You've done a really great job, obviously, with the development finance institutions and having long-term funding. But just wanted to understand that at both levels, at Uzbekistan and in Georgia.
But also wanted to get another comment maybe about global interest rates and, if and when we see the global interest rates continue to stay flat or even start to decline, what additional pop you'll see in your own business? Will that improve NIMS or give access to new customer segments?
Okay, so that's probably my territory. So on ALM, all I can say is that we don't have any long-term unhedged U.S. Treasuries in our book. So from that perspective, we are very well placed. Actually, we don't have any long-term, and I can assure us that our interest rates is all situations well under control. We have a very prudent policy, and like, that's all I can say. And on the Uzbekistan side, it's just simple lending, and the customer funding getting very simple IRR, ALM, and we are very safe side there, so you shouldn't be worried about our position. And, now moving on the second question on interest rate decrease, and that's something that will not actually impact us, because half of our book almost into FX and USD, and once benchmark rates start coming down, of course, that will have some impact.
It's how we will manage and how we have hedged. At the moment, I think we are in quite a good position. However, we do expect some hit on this, and when I mentioned for Georgian operations, 5.5%-6%, that also includes potential impact, not only from Georgian reference rate decrease, but also from U.S. FX benchmark, actually more, let's say, coming down.
Yeah, very helpful. Giorgi, on asset liability, what-
Yes
... what's sort of the average duration of assets versus average duration of liabilities at the Georgia level?
We should, like, again, we should differentiate between lari and FX.
Right. Yeah.
Again, from a loan perspective, we are quite much... From FX, we don't have much like, again, FX bonds or FX like books, because I, I would say there's no FX bonds that can be more than with one year or very like small number. We are talking about months, very short-term liquidity management. And for lari, as you understand, it's a less risk, and we have local T-bills, and again, it's quite well managed through the duration.
Great. Thank you. Again, congratulations on a great quarter.
Thank you, Patrick.
Thank you, Patrick. Next up it's Simon Nellis. Simon-
Hi.
Go ahead.
Hi. Yeah, thanks, thanks for the opportunity. Most of my questions have been asked. Maybe just one on fees, and sorry if this has already been answered.
Sure.
I missed part of the earlier part of the presentation. Can you just walk through why fees were flat? I assume that you still saw fee growth in Uzbekistan, so I guess it was decline in Georgia that was driving that. If you could just unpack that for me. Thank you.
It's just simple cashback timing. The difference is nothing else, because as you know, we are getting sometimes cashback from Visa and Mastercard, so it's getting true up. So, but if you look the operating performance underlying business, it has been going up.
Okay, so that won't... And those happen on what intervals? Just so we know the seasonality or-
In Q2, we received cashback from Visa and Mastercard that we usually receive sometimes.. in Q2, sometimes in Q3, and Q3 was just usual business as performance.
Got it.
So we remain flat despite having like good cashback in Q2. So it's as simple as that. So our fee generation capacity is very strong and continues to grow.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you, Simon. Next up, it's Craig Metherell. Craig, go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, Andrew. Thanks, and just to echo all the comments around the great quarter. Just a question for Vakhtang and Giorgi around this quarter was the first that you've seen negative jaws, obviously, given the base from a revenue point of view was very high. But I just want to understand if you think that that will be this quarter alone, or do you think that going forward, you might still experience a couple of quarters where you see this negative operating efficiency.
Efficiency.
-given the investment mode you're in, and the higher revenue base, or if it's just a one-off this quarter? Thanks.
I'll cover that, and there are a few things to consider. First thing, like we had, as we say, quite a high income growth, like during the recent periods that continued our like positive operating growth. But on the other hand, also, we are starting and building our business both in Georgia, like TNET or outside Georgia, into Uzbekistan. Therefore, we are going to spend a significant amount of money to, particularly in 2024 and 2025. Therefore, there may be a few quarters when we have a not positive growth, but we don't see it as a something that should be, we should worry about or something we should really focus. Because, A, we are going to meet our 23%+ return on equity target.
That's definitely what we are going to do, and the spend we are going to spend is will be used to grow further business, to increase our profitability, that it's not a short term, but medium term. That doesn't mean we are going to spend so like cautiously. We are still going to maintain our cost-to-income ratio in mid-30s, like maybe basically 35 or 36. Difficult to say, but suddenly it won't become 40+ or 45. But again, we do think that investing into future, particularly when we have such a growth businesses, it's the key part of our kind of strategy and vision.
Yeah. To add more from my side, what is Giorgi saying, for us, key important to have a return on equity 23%+ to control the efficiency cost-to-income ratio. But on the other hand, we have to understand we have a very high growth business in Uzbekistan. So as you see on this slide, 80%+ growth annually, it means we have to invest heavily in Uzbek operations in 2024. In 2024, maybe in some quarters, maybe the jaws will not be so. We will see different jaws as we have seen in the third quarter. But fundamentally, we are controlling as a management and yearly growth, growth we will see the ROE at 23%+, and also jaws will be the right ways, right trends in all of the trends.
All right. Thanks very much. Appreciate it.
Thank you, Craig. We've got a couple of questions that have come in on the chat. One which I think Giorgi has mainly answered, but may want to elaborate on. Can you please give more details about the future trend of the cost-to-income ratio?
I think that's-
And then-
About exactly. And there is-
And another question is on the market share in the Georgian market regarding retail deposits and why that's been falling over the last couple of years. And the next part is, under our different business segments, other Azerbaijan and TNET are making a loss. Will this change in the future?
Okay, thanks. I think I asked, of course, to cover a few questions. It's under mid-30s, as we say, and we need to see. But again, we are not worried. The key thing is to continue our profitability and business growth. On the next question, on the retail deposit side, we need to look at it from the perspective and split between residents and non-residents part, and, or in the overall market share, we have been losing market share. But if you look only on resident market share, we are, we kind of, we have not... We remained our market share, and it comes from our risk appetite and approach, because at the moment, we are not very active in the non-resident market, and we prefer at the moment, kind of to be to focus on the local, let's say, on the local side.
That would be kind of our position and answer, because we view them as a maybe non-sticky at the moment. There are a few reasons for that, that I'm not going into. And the second part of the question was about other segment. Other segment is not TNET or Azerbaijan. It includes everything else, including PLC, headquarters, et cetera. What I can say, TNET is not loss-making. It's not hugely profit-making, but at least it breaks even, so it's not drag on the group. And also Azerbaijan is just GEL 10 million, GEL 3 million - GEL 4 million. So it's, like input is immaterial. So the other is mainly, I would say, PLC, headquarters, and et cetera, costs that coming on the top of the, Georgian financial services or Uzbekistan operations.
Yeah, just I want to emphasize that on the retail deposits in Georgia on the... So for us, the core deposits in retail is the Georgian residents, and as Giorgi mentioned, on the core deposits, on the Georgian residents, approximately when we increased or we have the same market share last three, four years. So for us, it's key important to keep 38% or something like that. So we believe that the non-resident deposits are very volatile, especially last two years, so we, we have not any appetite to bring the non-residents deposits, especially non-retail non-residents volatile deposits to TBC Bank. This is the explanation.
Okay. Vakhtang, Giorgi, thank you very much. We don't have any further questions at the moment. So maybe Vakhtang, I'll hand over to you just for any closing remarks.
Yeah. Thank you very much for your questions. So it was very good quarter for TBC Group, and we will continue to work with these trends. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks.