Sberbank of Russia (MOEX:SBER)
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Earnings Call: Q4 2022

Mar 9, 2023

Operator

Today we're going to hear from CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, German Gref. He's going to make his presentation, and after that, we're going to have a Q&A session. In total, we are going to have a one-hour call. Interpretation into English is available. Please use the special web link for English speakers. We are recording this session today, on March. As part of our call, you may hear forecasts, predictions, expectations, which may deviate from the actual figures. Please see more about the risks in the disclaimer section in our presentation. Thank you. With this, I give the floor to Mr. Gref.

German Gref
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

Good afternoon, dear investors, dear shareholders. Today is a very big day for us, a very significant step for us. We are reporting consolidated results across the group. After a long break, we are disclosing the capital adequacy.

Over the past year, we earned more than RUB 270 billion in net profit, and the share stood at RUB 12.4 per share. Sber equity grew to 5.8%, and the equity of CET1 capital of the group was 14.8%. All these results were calculated without the regulation taken into account. Our team did colossal work last year. Despite the crisis and all the hardships of the crisis, we never switched the focus from our customers, from customer safety, and we continue to support customers even throughout the whole 2022.

Our retail customers now stand at 17 million. After blocking sanctions were placed on Sber, our SberBank Online and other digital applications and solutions were removed from the largest stores, application stores. Despite that, we not only maintained, but we also gained digital customers.

The number of monthly SberBank Online grew by 2.6 million people since the beginning of last year to 78.7 million. As for the users that use the service daily, the DAU, this now stands over 40 million. Our retail loan portfolio over the year grew 12.2% and exceeded RUB 12 trillion , mainly through credit cards and mortgages. We disbursed almost RUB 5 trillion worth of loans to retail customers, including RUB 2.5 trillion of mortgage loans. Mortgage originations with state support exceeded RUB 1 trillion . After a brief break during the most challenging period, we were among the first to recover consumer lending, our share in this market now grew to 37.7%.

SberCard, our credit card, is now known as the card with the best terms and conditions and has been gaining traction in the market. Over the year, the market share grew 2.6 percentage points to 46.4%. Despite the turbulences of last year, we gained in retail deposits by 7.4% at the year-end, net of exchange rate fluctuations. We were not using any limitations for the customers, as many other banks. We did not introduce any fees and commissions for FX accounts. We did not encourage customers to transfer their funds into rubles and currencies of friendly nations in any other way. We were instead offering beneficial conversion rates and increased deposit rates. This helped us reduce the share of FX deposits by half.

We also returned convenient and familiar payment methods for customers, thanks to SberPay, available on Android. We also launched new payment solutions, Sber stickers and payment by biometrics. We also expanded the QR payment capabilities. The total acquiring payment and transfers over the year gained 22% and exceeded RUB 73 trillion. On a separate note, I would like to mention the growth in the number of SberPrime subscribers. Already, we have more than 6 million customers using our financial and non-financial services through SberPrime subscription.

Over 2022, the subscription helped save more than RUB 10 billion in customer funds. What is particularly important is that we never ceased our innovations. This year, we have launched AmazeMe, a recommendation platform, to be more accurate to take their life situations, to fine-tune our customer offers, both financial and non-financial services.

Our range of smart devices. We developed SberBoom, a smart send, and we have recently launched it in the market. We've also launched the Salute TV platform. For the corporate customers, this was a year of change, radical change. Many companies had to redesign their business models. They had to replace foreign businesses. They had to create new supply chains. Even amid the most challenging period, we never stopped lending and gained 13.2% net of FX revaluation and exceeded RUB 18.6 trillion. Here the point of growth was lending to developers. That segment grew 1.7x , and now the portfolio in this segment exceeds RUB 3 trillion.

As for the lending to small and medium-sized businesses, our share of the market grew 5 percentage points and reached 46%, while the portfolio now stands at RUB 4.4 trillion. We are still leading with the state support programs and restructuring programs. Same as in 2022, the most popular programs were our own support programs with payment holidays. We see that now the majority of our customers are returning to normal debt service. The portfolio of SME loans with state support exceeded RUB 1 trillion. We also gained with our loan portfolio in terms of sustainable finance programs. At the year-end, the portfolio in that segment exceeded RUB 1.3 trillion. At the end of 2022, Sber approved its own social taxonomy. We now have our own social loans.

100% of funds through those loans are allocated for socially significant, societally significant projects. ESG agenda is still very much our top priority. We are still committed to fulfilling our goals, and we maintain the plans to reach carbon neutrality by 2030. Sber has increased its audience of active users on SberBusiness Online to 2.7 million customers. Our customers are now making their first deals with digital financial assets. We have given them the opportunity to settle internationally in the national currencies of friendly states. We've also expanded the list of acceptable currencies for conversion operations. Despite the challenging external landscape, we maintained the quality of the loan portfolio at a very high level. The share of impaired loans was 3.9%, which is 100 basic points lower than the beginning of the year.

We are conservative in risk assessment, and we have significantly in increased our loan impairment provisions to 143%. That is a 35 basis points increase over the year. We also increased the provisioning for across the board in terms of loan quality. As for technology, the swift adaptation of business to the changing environment would not have been possible without successful technological transformation, which is now part of our culture. In this area, the key goal of last year was maintaining uninterrupted operation of all our systems as the foreign vendors were pulling out of the market. Roughly 85% of them left the market. We were prepared for it because the architecture, as we initially designed it, was made independent from our external vendors.

As of today, the vast majority of our application systems, of our applied systems, were developed by Sber. 80% of the critical IT landscape is in its target state, and this is the goal that we achieved one year earlier. In 2022, we successfully repelled 490 large DDoS attacks and thousands of smaller DDoS attacks, and we prevented RUB 173 billion worth of customer funds from theft. Those were cases of social engineering where customers were themselves trying to transfer money to fraudsters. Phone fraud against Sber customers dropped almost 20 times, even though the total amount of phone fraud in 2022 grew 40%. We prevented 99.3% of all thefts.

The number of incidents in our systems went down 6% as the deployment of IT solutions grew almost 1.5x . We deployed almost 1.6 million changes last year. We reduced by half the cost of data storage. We deployed through the external market a number of new technological products, where the core product is concerned with the computing power of the two supercomputers that we have, Christofari and Christofari Neo. Our HR platform, called Pulse, was made available to external customers, and it got awarded as the best digital solution of the year for corporate training. SberJazz, that we're using right now for our call, is the solution that we launched last year. We are now an AI-native organization.

We use artificial intelligence in the vast majority of our key processes, in creating new products, in improving customer experience, and in developing customer centricity. We use AI across the board. The financial effect from introducing AI in our business last year stood at the record high of RUB 235 billion.

Last year, our flagship conference, AI Journey, was held for the seventh time in a row, and it was very successful despite the quite unfavorable external landscape. Last year, another area of focus was increasing our efficiency. We very swiftly launched a large scale program of anti-crisis measures aimed at reducing our OpEx and CapEx. The parameter of the group was changed. We withdrew for a number of joint partnerships. We optimized separate business verticals. We sold our Switzerland and Kazakhstan banks. We settled the problem debt with Fortenova.

We quickly closed our branches abroad. We wound up our operations with financial instruments in foreign markets. As a result, we returned from abroad over $6 billion. We are very prudent and rational with our risk assessment. This is our basic principle. We created, in line with that principle, a very comfortable cushion.

In the full volume over the first half-year of 2022, we, you know, created almost RUB 550 billion in loan provisions, including blocked asset provisions. We radically optimized our expenses. We reduced operational and capital expenses by RUB 240 billion, which will have a long-term positive effect on our efficiency. As a result, the operating expenditure went down 1.5 percentage point in 2022, while across the banking industry, without Sber, that metric grew 12%.

Another challenge of last year, the attrition of specialists from the industry. Despite the negative trend, Sber showed a good result in 2022. The personnel turnover decreased over the year and the number of job offerings is now at its minimum over a few last years. In 2022, Sber was recognized as the best employer in Russia. Now the forecasts and predictions. The GDP growth rate, we believe, will be around zero in 2023. Inflation, as we see it, will fluctuate around 5%-6% amid low unemployment, increase in salaries, demand recovery and the weakening of the national currency. As a result, the Bank of Russia will not be reducing its key rate in 2023. As for the banking market growth rates, you can see our expectations on this slide.

A significant contribution to the growth rate of corporate lending will be made by the replacement of foreign financing with domestic financing. The growth of retail loans will be positively affected by the maintaining of beneficial mortgage program. We are planning to grow along with the market. We may exceed it somewhat, especially in terms of retail lending. After this break, we are returning to our financial forecasts. The main assumptions are here on this slide. We expect the maintaining of sustainable, consistent growth across the main profit making balance sheet lines. The efficiency is still our priority. CR will be around 30%-32%. This is better than the strategy targets until 2023. As for the cost of risk, we expect 100 basis points- 130 basis points.

Amid the maintaining uncertainty, we operate based on the assumption about a pretty wide range. As a result, the margins, the profitability in 2023 will stand around 20%. This is much better than the strategy 2023 target, which was above 17%. As a result, all things considered, the CET1 adequacy will be around 15%. Today, we have also disclosed Sberbank performance over the past two months of 2023, these results confirm the sustainability of the trends that we took into account over the past months and that we used as the basis for our forecast. Over the two months of this year, the net profit was RUB 225 billion, ROE 23.8%. Thank you. This is the end of my presentation. I'll be happy to take your questions.

Operator

Thank you, Mr. Gref. We open the Q&A session. In order to ask your question, please raise your hand by clicking on the icon, and then you will be permitted to ask the question. You can switch on the microphone. Feel free to switch on video as well. As for the English-speaking participants, you can ask your questions in the chat. Our first question is Elena Tsareva, BCS.

Elena Tsareva
Senior Equity Research Analyst, BCS Global

Mr. Gref, dear colleagues, good afternoon. Thank you very much for going back to the practice of disclosing IFRS results. The presentations for this year is very important for the analysts and for all the other users, basically. The results are pretty strong, you know, given the situation of 2022, the challenges that we face in 2022, the results are quite outstanding, I would say. The question is about the dividends, given that the CAR for the AT1 is pretty good, what might be the possible dividend payout for 2022? Another question, how can the possible return of the enterprises subordinated loans can affect the dividend payout, the dividends for the performance of 2022? Thank you.

German Gref
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

Thank you very much for your question. That is true that we can boast with pretty good results. In May, on the shareholders meeting and on the Supervisory Board meeting, we are going to make a decision on the amount of the payout. I cannot really say what is the specific number, specific figure, but we are looking in different scenarios. The options are diverse in terms of the dividend payout amount. As for the our subordinated, the Basel subordinated loan, we do not plan to go back to that.

Elena Tsareva
Senior Equity Research Analyst, BCS Global

Thank you very much.

German Gref
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

Thank you.

Operator

Next question, Evgeniy Kipnis from Alfa-Bank.

Evgeniy Kipnis
Director, Head of Consumer and FIG Equities Coverage, Alfa-Bank

Mr. Gref, colleagues, good afternoon. Thank you very much for the disclosure and for the presentation. I commend you on the great results of 2022. That was successful. Maybe not really successful, but like, you know, you managed to weather all the challenges to withstand them. Now, two questions. First, to continue Elena's question about the dividend payout.

Do you think about the intermediary dividend payout scheme? Maybe you should distribute the pressure on the capital and liquidity by spreading the dividend payout. That's the first question. The second question, maybe I will ask it right away. We remember that your contract as CEO of the bank is terminating this year, do you plan to continue, or what are your plans, really? Thank you.

German Gref
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

For the spread in terms of the dividend payout, we do not look into that option right now. Currently, as you have said, we have a pressure on the capital and on the liquidity once a year. Your suggestion is to pressure the capital and liquidity two times a year.

Well, I think that this stress is better be experienced once a year, not two times a year. As for my plans, well, if I may, I'm sorry, I wouldn't like to talk about that right now. Right now, this question is not on the agenda, maybe we'll go back to that a bit later.

Evgeniy Kipnis
Director, Head of Consumer and FIG Equities Coverage, Alfa-Bank

Thank you very much.

German Gref
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

Next question. Olga Naidenova from Sinara. Please, you have the floor. Olga, please switch on your mic and ask a question. We do not hear you. Olga, we can't hear you right now. Maybe we'll move to the next question while Olga is setting up the mic. [uncertain] from [uncertain] . Please, you have the floor. Dmitry? You should have a go.

Speaker 12

Good afternoon, colleagues. Mr. Gref. In 2022, we were witness to several waves of migration from Russia, including the migration of IT experts. How did that reflect Sber, and what do you expect in 2023? Will there be any problems with hiring IT personnel and keeping the IT experts in your team?

German Gref
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

Thank you for your question. Yes, that is true. Last year, we faced two waves of churn. As I've said before, currently, we have pretty much compensated and offset this churn because we now have Our teams are now full, as full as we have never seen before, actually. So the number of employees is just the way it should be. There was a churn of middle and senior level employees, so these were the people with the better experience and skills.

Currently, we do not have that many experts of this level on the market, so we'll have to improve quality-wise. And we do feel the lack of skills at some level, but we think that this gap is going to be closed soon. This year and at the start of next year, we see the situation when a number of employees are going back, are relocating back to Russia. We're talking about data scientists and developers in important areas as Java.

Mobile app developers are going back, Python developers. Currently, we do not feel this problem as acutely as we used to. You know, quality-wise, the problem cannot be as evident as you might think. You know, the young junior people that come to us, that join us, they grow pretty rapidly. We have a good coaching, mentoring, and boot camp activities. We invest a lot in this area, in their training. I think that we will be able to move through that challenge without losing much.

Operator

Thank you very much. Next question, Alexey Shiryaev from Otkritie Financial Company. Yeah.

Alexey Shiryaev
Client Relationship Manager and Corporate Client Department, Otkritie Financial Corporation Bank

You can hear me all right? Yeah. Mr. Gref, good afternoon, and thank you for the transparency together with the results. It's much easier to do analytics. The question is, there is some information that there will be a one-off payment from the state companies towards the state budget. Do you have any understanding in terms of what will be the formula to calculate that payoff, and will it affect Sber? Will you do that?

German Gref
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

Thank you very much for your question, Alexey. Currently, there is no final understanding of that situation. There are different versions that are being discussed, different options. We are included in that conversation, in that potential effort. Anyway, as the law will be passed and put into effect, we, as a law-abiding company, will be committed to make the payment. Despite the level of our revenue that we had last year, RUB 270 billion for the entire group, we paid around RUB 200 billion of taxes of revenue taxes. Neither the regions nor the country as a whole lost that much because many expenses, including the provision charges for the international assets, were not included in the factors that can be that can decrease the tax payment.

Last year, we paid a lot in terms of taxes. We plan to pay out the dividends. If there is a law that on this additional one-off payment is passed, then we're going to pay it, obviously. We have put that one-off payment, tax payment in our conservative forecast, and we have been traditionally conservative, so we are accounting for that.

Operator

Thank you very much. Olga, please.

Olga Naydenova
Senior Equity Research Analyst, Sinara Bank

Thank you very much. Thank you very much for that disclosure. I would like to learn about your plans on developing the ecosystem services. How much have you invested in these services? What are the plans? How is the ecosystem going to be developed further down the line?

German Gref
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

Thank you very much for your question. We plan to continue our development efforts as an ecosystem company.

We see that this trend is strengthening, and we see that our strategy that we have developed, is pretty good. It's proved to be the right strategy. Obviously, in 2022, we had to focus our efforts on our key areas. We had to sell some assets. We had to exit some of the other assets. Well, from now on, we are going to grow our ecosystem services based on the partnerships, not the ownership scheme. We had to move to that model a bit earlier than expected, but still the plans are there. We are going to continue and maintain our goals of developing our company as an ecosystem client-focused company. What about the scale of the of Sberbank contribution to the ecosystem efforts?

Well, investment volume, we are developing a strategy right now. We try to assess our potential investments for the next three years. As the strategy is being approved, we are going to disclose that information when we have some understanding.

Olga Naydenova
Senior Equity Research Analyst, Sinara Bank

Thank you very much for your answer. maybe just one more question about the credit quality. If you could shed light on the restructuring of volume and your expectations in terms of the change of the quality of the portfolio for this year, for example, how will the quality change?

German Gref
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

You know, we, in terms of the quality of the loan portfolio, we do not expect the risk in our credit portfolio to grow that much before the end of 2023.

I'm reiterating that we're quite conservative in terms of provision charges and the expectations with provisions. We believe that the amount, the volume of the provisions that we have put, it's 0.148% compared to 108% by the end of 2022. We are really conservative, and we do not think that we will need any more provisions. Our retail portfolio is demonstrating pretty good quality. The restructuring for the retail customers last year increased by a mere 0.2%, 0.2 percentage points. That's a much more positive result that we actually expected ourselves. As for the corporate loan portfolio, we also see that many of our borrowers have already adapted to the situation.

Many of them are putting in the effort to do that, to adapt to the situation, to adjust, and they're doing it successfully. We also significantly decreased the volume of the loan portfolio in foreign currency. I do not think that we will have any significant problems this year. The level of the red area, red zone in terms of loans decreased 8.5%. We are focusing on the following areas: the oil and gas industry, aviation, commercial real estate. These are the areas that we're going to focus on, as these are sensitive areas. We have a pretty positive forecast. It's quite early to say. You know, it's still March. Yeah, this is how our vision is going to look like for the nearest future.

Operator

Thank you very much. Now, questions from the journalists. First question from Interfax.

Speaker 13

Good afternoon, Mr. Gref. You said that you were able to get $6 billion from abroad. How did you manage to get this money back and these funds? In what form did you manage to return them? What are the losses still? Yeah, another question: Do you plan to increase the capital, the equity, based on the capitalization of the profit? Are there any discussions in terms of the putting in the equity in Sberbank?

German Gref
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

Well, as for the form of the funds, well, that was just money that we got back from our foreign assets. Maybe I didn't quite understand your question, but, you know, the first several months were critical, and our team were very active, working day and night to return our funds back, and we were able to get our assets back. Obviously, we're talking about derivatives first here. That was the most sensitive issue.

As for the our capitalization, profit-driven capitalization, as before, we were planning to capitalize based on the profits. We do not need any other sources. The plans have not changed. We're in good shape, and in the nearest future, we do not see any need, any additional sources of capitalization. Moreover, I think that we will be paying out dividends to our shareholders.

I hope that they will not be disappointed because, if we were able to weather such a storm this year, then I think that next year we'll be able to deliver.

Operator

Thank you very much. Next question, . Olga, please unmute your microphone.

Olga Tsurakova
Journalist and Head of the Financial Department, Kommersant JSC

Yes, hello? You can hear me all right? Yeah. In your press releases for IFRS, For 22 performance, you mentioned that Sberbank is very aggressively cutting the costs. Did you decrease the salaries? Did you decrease the headcount or the dynamics of the OpEx is positive thanks to other parameters? Could you please expand on the anti-crisis measures that you have implemented? Thank you.

German Gref
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

Thank you very much for your question. All the things that you have mentioned was there, yes, except for the salaries. We did not decrease the salaries. As for the top management, well, obviously, since we earned less of our profits and our main major incentive driver is the profit, is the volume of the profit, that means that the top management got much less than expected. It all depends on the level of the management. The deputy chairman of the board lost a major part, and the losses were less dependent on the level of the management. The lower the level, the lower the losses.

As for the employees, grass level employees, we actually did not decrease the salaries and actually increased the incentives for the frontline employees that were working in difficult areas that are near the border. We have created this kind of a structure within Sberbank, kind of a working group that looks into our budget and to all of our costs. Basically, there was no item in the cost structure that was not decreased. As I said before, RUB 240 billion of our costs were cut. The net profit for IFRS are RUB 270 billion. You could do simple math in terms of calculating our net profit without these cost-cutting measures. We manage our efficiency, our cost efficiency, and we have to adequately address the current situation.

These skills that we have have always been the key skills that helped us. We were able to cut the OpEx. Our expenses were down 2%-3% compared to the previous year. As for the banking sector, it was around 12% of increase. Well, if we didn't do that, we wouldn't have the figures that we have now. Our sustainability, our plans are still there. Thank you very much. I hope I answered your question.

Olga Tsurakova
Journalist and Head of the Financial Department, Kommersant JSC

I also have another question, if I may. Olga Shinkova, Kommersant. What do you think about the effect of macroprudential limits on the business in the second quarter? Do you expect any decrease in the dynamic of customer lending at the end of the quarter?

German Gref
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

Could you repeat the first half of your question? I did not hear that.

Olga Tsurakova
Journalist and Head of the Financial Department, Kommersant JSC

My question was about your regarding the macroprudential limit effect on the first quarter results. Can those limits result in decreased dynamics in customer lending?

German Gref
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

Okay, I got the question. Thank you. We think this will have an adverse effect, but not very significant, because traditionally, in our portfolio, the share of these loans is way lower than in the industry as a whole. This effect will materialize with regards to other banks, not us. We do not see a significant effect in our case.

Operator

Thank you. Rita Stankevičiūtė from TASS, over to you.

Rita Stankevičiūtė
Journalist, TASS, Russian news agency

Thank you. Hello. Mr. Gref, two questions. You said that in March, the amount of dividends would be discussed. Have you discussed them? Do you now understand the amount of dividends you're going to pay? The second question, the profit this year, as you said, may be compared with the profit of previous years. Maybe it's too early to say, but still maybe you already have some estimates.

German Gref
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

Well, I don't feel comfortable announcing anything at this point, when it comes to dividends. March is too early for that. It's also impossible to do that because, we still do not have any final figures, any final decisions. That is regarding your first question. As for the second question, you saw the facts and figures from our analysts. You're probably right, the figures will be close to the profit we made before the crisis. We hope so, at least. We live in a turbulent time, so you should tread lightly, you should be prudent, and of course, it will depend on the larger economic picture.

Operator

Thank you. RBC, next question. Yuliia Kovalska , over to you. Please turn on your mic. Yuliia, please click on the microphone icon.

Yuliia Kovalska
Journalist, RBC

Yes. Great. Thank you. If you switch on your camera, we will also be able to see you. Hello, I have a question about the ecosystem businesses. Could you tell us the total revenue from ecosystem businesses that stayed within the perimeter of the group of the ecosystem in 2022? Also, what is the effect on the net profit from the ecosystem in 2022? Was that effect positive or was it negative? Thank you.

German Gref
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

Thank you, Yuliia, for the question, unfortunately, we are not able, at this point, to disclose information for each ecosystem company separately. This is also in line with the regulatory position of the Bank of Russia.

We had to spend a long time getting all the approvals. At this point, we do not have the approval, the permission to disclose on a business-by-business basis with the ecosystem. All in all, I can say the result was better than we expected. The contribution to the total financial result is still negative. Again, that was taken into account when we were building our strategy, and we knew that it would take a while to grow those businesses. To get to the break-even point and the income-generating point, we have made significant investment in accelerated growth. Overall, the situation with those businesses is quite good.

Yuliia Kovalska
Journalist, RBC

A quick follow-up, if I may. Given the sale of some businesses from your ecosystem in 2022, still, the result of the ecosystem was negative. Did I get that right?

German Gref
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

Yes, that's correct. Overall. First off, as you can imagine, the sale did not take place overnight. Throughout the year, we had to do some preparatory work, and the deal was closed toward the end of last year. Overall, as I said, your understanding is correct. The result is negative. Unfortunately, there is this period of explosive growth that has to be taken into consideration. We can invest in the unit economics to accelerate it further. All in all, as I said, all things considered, 2022, in terms of stabilization of the key businesses, was also a major year for us, was a defining year. We stabilized the business model. We stabilized the businesses of almost all our subsidiaries.

There is still a lot that has to be done, obviously, I can say that the companies have been developing quite successfully.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from E katerina Litova, Vedomosti. Please turn on your microphone.

Ekaterina Litova
Head of Finance Department, Vedomosti

Hello. My question is this: The growth in concentration of your loan portfolio, how much is that a priority for you now? How much is that a risk for you now? As far as I know, this is a big risk for major banks because of the issue of capital adequacy. Does Sberbank have any proposals, any suggestions about how to handle this risk?

German Gref
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

Thank you for that question. We see the reverse trend actually in our case. Over the entire 2022, we were trying to diversify our risk, last year, we were able to significantly decrease that risk.

We did not see any hugely challenging situations with big borrowers, even less so with risk concentration with big borrowers. We did not see many cases like that. We see a relatively high concentration with the housing market. We've been financing more than 50% of the market, lending to big developers, developing projects. There we have big players, big market players in the Moscow market and in the market of some other large cities. On average, in total, the instrument is very reliable, is secured. We mostly use SPV and project finance with those with those situations and borrowers. All in all, the risk concentration is sits with the same beneficiary. That is the market structure, the developing market structure that we're operating in.

So far, we have not seen any major red flags or something that we need to worry about. We are in total decreasing our risk concentration, to answer your question.

Operator

The last question I think, because we're running out of time. Tatiana Voronova, Frank RG. Tatiana, turn on your mic, please.

Tatiana Voronova
Editor In Chief, Frank Media

Hello? Can you hear me? Yes, loud and clear. A quick remark. Frank Media, not Frank RG. We're not there yet. Three questions. First, about the reporting. This is great news to have all those figures available now. How long do you think you will be presenting them in such a concise format? Will there be a point where you'll be able to disclose more? The full report, the CBR position is that disclosure is good, the more the better.

The exchange, I think, has the same position. That said, Sberbank is absolutely dominating in that regard. A disclosure was put on hold because of the position of big public joint stock companies, including Sber. When do you think you'll be able to disclose more data, more information? Two more questions.

The second question is, why did you make the decision to maintain the subordinated list of Sber? As far as I know, this is not a hindrance to dividend payment with the capital adequacy that you disclosed, which is very high. The third question, my last question. When defining the strategy of the ecosystem, Sberbank, for many years, has been betting on growth, not positive unit economics. Why is that? Seeing how this is no longer a start-up, this is a different period. Previous strategy, development bursts were tied to the profits, the profit metrics. Do you think that might change?

German Gref
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

Thank you. As for the first question. I think you are slightly misinterpreting the position of the regulator. There is no position, disclose more, the more the better. There's been this piece of regulation that was recently adopted, regulating precisely the disclosure procedure. We are moving very much in line with the position of the regulator, and as soon as it changes, we'll be able to disclose more. I have no problem with that, frankly. We were the first to resume disclosure, and we were asking for the possibility to immediately start disclosing more. We never hide anything. In this situation, there was no exception.

We were not planning to hide anything either, we felt that that would comfort the market somewhat and address some of the market concerns. As I said, when the position of the regulator changes, when we have the appropriate instructions and regulations, we will adjust.

As soon as the position is, as you said it is, we will be disclosing more in the amount that we used to. The question about the subordinated loan. Well, we have been focusing so much on the subordinated loan, too much maybe. These are interrelated things. If we get the subordinated loan, we will lose the possibility to pay the amount of dividends that we would like. Of course, we can do that with a subordinated loan, but this will come to the detriment for our shareholders. What's the point?

The subordinated loan is not a problem for us. It is already recognized in our capital. We have the appropriate regulatory framework for it. Of course, we'll be able to return it, this is not the issue we have at the moment on our agenda, primarily because this will be to the detriment for our shareholders.

One more question, I think. The third question about the ecosystem, the focus on growth rather than unit economics. We are operating in this market in the position of someone who is catching up, we will be catching up for a while. Of course, we will be focusing on the growth rate primarily. As soon as, I can't really say when we will see some stability in terms of growth. I hope by 2030 that will occur.

We are now developing our strategy for the following periods of time. To 2036. We will see how it goes. What will our financial projections be? Thank you. Thank you for the good news for the shareholders.

Operator

Thank you. We are closing this call. Thank you for participating. Thank you for listening in. Thank you, Mr. Gref, for presenting and participating.

German Gref
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

Thank you very much, colleagues. I also, just as a closing remark, I just wanted to say thank you to the shareholders for your trust in us. We will be working very hard to live up to your expectations. We don't want to disappoint you. We hope that each and every shareholder that is investing in us will get a very good return on investment.

I also wanted to say thank you to the journalists, our dear friends. Thank you for being by our side all this time. Thank you for shedding the light on the different aspects of our operations. Thank you and bye-bye.

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