Good afternoon, dear participants on the call. This conference call is dedicated to the disclosure of Sber Group's consolidated financial results for 2025. Thank you for joining. We have prepared a short presentation for you, and after the presentation, we will open the floor for your questions. We have one hour, so please be mindful of the time if you would like to ask a question. We have with us today, the CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board of Sberbank, Herman Gref, and Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board, Financial Director, Taras Skvortsov. We will provide an overview of the results, and this will be followed by a Q&A session. Please note that this conference call is being recorded today on the 26th of February, 2026.
The remarks may contain information about the plans and forecasts of the top management, which may be changed in the future. For more details on potential risks, please refer to the disclaimer on the second slide. Now I give the floor to Herman Gref.
Good afternoon, distinguished investors and analysts. Today, we are summing up Sber Group's results for 2025. You saw that our net profit grew by 8% this year, and the return on equity exceeded 22%. It exceeded the target level. We hit our key operational and financial targets. All in all, we are happy with the results we got last year. The external conditions, the bigger landscape, may have been rather intense and unfavorable amid very high rates and external restrictions.
We had a very significant slowdown in economic growth, almost 5 times, from 4.9% in 2024 to 1% in 2025. The share of industries that were affected by the slowdown grew significantly last year. Among the affected industries were mining, trade, and all in all, roughly 46% of industries demonstrated negative dynamics. Positive momentum was in development. Pressure on companies was exacerbated by growth in prices, especially on exported commodities and a strong ruble. Due to a deceleration of consumer inflation from 9.5% to 5.6%, the Bank of Russia began the cycle of gradual rate reduction. We see that already the first cycle of reduction is affecting lending activity, but that impulse is still not enough to improve the situation.
We see that the key parameter by which you can assess potential growth in the future is investment dynamics. For three quarters in a row, investment dynamics was negative. Further reduction of rates may, as we expect, stop this negative dynamic, maybe turn it around. We looked into the key rate that may be favorable for slight growth investment activity, and we believe it is around 12%. It should be around 12% per annum. What we're expecting is reaching that rate as soon as possible, because when we do, this will level out dynamics across the economy. For the banking sector, 2025 was a challenging year as well. The profits in the industry decreased eight percent year-over-year. If you remove Sberbank out of the equation, the decrease will be even more dramatic than that.
Capital adequacy last year became the main challenge for the banking industry. One of the factors that I didn't mention is tighter regulation, among other things, across a number of parameters. This particular factor does now and will continue to have critical importance for increasing lending in 2026 and 2027. Last year, we increased our capital by 16% to RUB 8.4 trillion, while capital adequacy increased from 13.3% to 13.7%. That is capital adequacy under N20.0. Despite having paid record-high dividends last year of RUB 787 billion in mid-year. Half of that amount went to our minority shareholders, and it's great to see that their number is growing. Today, this number exceeds 2 million. The other half, or RUB 394 billion, went to the state as our controlling shareholder.
I should note that Sber is among the largest taxpayers in Russia. The total amount of our taxes and insurance payments last year was RUB 948 billion. This means that the total amount of revenues to the consolidated budget, state budget for 2025 exceeded RUB 1.3 trillion. The growth of equity, due to high margins, allowed us to invest in the development of the group's services for our clients. In particular, in retail, in 2025, we got 800,000 new clients, and today we have almost 111 million clients in total. The number of monthly users of our SberBank Online and SberKids apps grew by 2 million to 87.6 million. Last year, we updated our loyalty program to enable our clients to select categories for increased cashback.
As a result, the number of SberSpasibo loyalty program members exceeded 100 million. In 2025, our clients spent over 134 billion Spasibo bonus points. SberPrime subscription currently has almost 23 million users, just recently was recognized as the most balanced multi-service subscription on the Russian market. SberPrime Plus became the best, the most profitable among high-income clients. Today, 117 million people use the Sber ID accounts to log into the services of Sber and our partners. Since the beginning of the year, the number has grown by more than 22 million. We continued to develop an ecosystem around our clients' life scenarios. For example, we created a special section called For Life, a personal lifestyle space within SberBank Online that serves as a one-stop shop for financial and everyday use cases.
More than 50 million people have used it already, more than 20 million clients appreciated the convenience of performing daily tasks in the Home section, and 5.5 million motorists used the Auto space. This whole ecosystem is underpinned by our GigaChat AI assistant. It is a cognitive layer that works on the client's side. It includes 16 AI agents that are available on 8 key digital services, every month, they advise over 12 million retail clients. In 2026, we aim to improve the AI assistant and equip it with a deep understanding of each user's personal context. AI has also been protecting our clients' money. Sber's anti-fraud system uses more than 100 AI models, it is a multi-model system that includes hundreds of specialized agents.
It ensures maximum effectiveness, according to our own records, globally, it is unparalleled. The effectiveness stands at 99.99%. Essentially, within a single bank, we won over fraud. 0.01%? Well, that is negligible. Of course, we aimed at 100%. We are almost there. Given the scale of our business, I would say that 0.01% is, well, still something we need to deal with, but it's. Still, it means that we have been able to save millions and millions in customer funds. This is an achievement that we take pride in. I can't think of any other examples in the world, especially with companies that would be in similar conditions as we are.
A landmark achievement of 2025 was Sber's recognition as the global acquiring leader, according to The Nilson Report rating. It was the first time we took the top spot. That was the result of years of investment in our own innovations and infrastructure. We process over 100,000 transactions per minute. We expanded our range of transactional solutions and were the first in Russia to return the possibility to pay with an iOS device by introducing the Whoosh service. Its daily audience in Russia is now over 2.5 million people. Biometrics-based payments are gaining popularity among our clients, and in 2025, they became available across 1.5 million terminals. The number of monthly service users almost doubled over the year, while the volume of payments grew sevenfold and exceeded 150 billion RUB.
Once again, with our scale, that sounds timid, but still it is a new service, and it always takes some time, several years, for it to start working properly and become a full-blown service, but already we see that it is gaining momentum. I personally, I forgot the last time I used a card because I'm so used to performing transactions with my own face, with my biometrics. It's very convenient. AI, our main technology, the technology that is front and center for us, continue to develop its applications in lending and risk assessments, enables market share growth even in today's challenging conditions, and it also ensures an acceptable risk profile. Our retail loan portfolio grew by 6% since the beginning of the year to RUB 19.2 trillion.
Sber's share in the retail lending market increased by 1.4 percentage points to the record high 49.4%. Throughout our history, especially back when we only had the bank, of course, we couldn't have imagined such a share. Amid expected changes in the state program for family mortgages, home lending became a key growth driver, especially in November and December. The portfolio grew by 11.6% since the beginning of the year to 12.5 trillion RUB. Our share in the mortgage market increased by 2.6 percentage points to 57%. Amid high deposit rates, people started to save more. Retail deposits increased in real terms by 22.1% and reached 33.5 trillion RUB.
This allowed us to maintain our market leadership and make sure that our share gained 1.5 percentage points and exceeded 44.2%. During the year, the number of corporate clients increased by more than 200,000 to 3.5 million companies. We're also working on our loyalty program for them. Already, about 1 million companies actively use SberBusiness Spasibo. For corporate clients, we have created a full-fledged Gen AI stack that has all the tools you need to integrate AI in your business. Several thousand companies, including industry leaders, already leverage Gen AI solutions by Sber. Our all-purpose AI Giga Assistant in SberBusiness is now available to more than 3 million users. More than 50 AI agents work on the SberBusiness platform to perform independent, everyday business tasks of entrepreneurs.
For example, an AI agent for business development planning finds a company's areas of growth and generates individual scaling scenarios based on performance indicators. An AI agent participating in tenders can draft documentation, calculate the terms, and submit a bid for participation in a tender. AI also helps us grow our corporate lending. The size of our AI-driven portfolio exceeded RUB 5 trillion. In 2025, Sber approved more than 700 AI-assisted transactions for housing construction, for housing construction funding, for the total amount of RUB 1.3 trillion. As a result, our total corporate loan portfolio increased by 15.4% year-to-date to RUB 31.2 trillion in real terms. While the share of our corporate lending market increased to 32.8%, that is +0.4 percentage points over the year.
For 2026, we set an ambitious goal to migrate the majority of transactions to a fully automated process. AI solutions form the basis of a comprehensive risk management system designed to provide a reliable risk profile for the entire group. Despite the high interest rates pressure and economic slowdown, our cost of risk during the year amounted to 1.3%, which is slightly better than our own expectations. The expected cost of risk was 1.5%. The quality of the total loan portfolio is at an acceptable level as well. The share of Stage 3 loans amounted to 4.86%. Gen AI helps us maintain high operational efficiency. At the end of 2025, our cost-to-income ratio did not change and stayed at 30.3%.
According to this metric, Sber is in the top five largest banks in the world with a capitalization of more than $50 billion. Gen AI has already become indispensable in optimizing our IT processes. We use GigaCode, the multi-agent platform, GigaStudio, to write code. With GigaStudio, the accuracy of its text generation is 87% now such no-code solutions decrease the journey from an idea to working solution. Our suite of AI tools accelerates the product development process by an average factor of two to four. Nearly 50% of AI-generated code is accepted by developers without changes. However, we are still at the early stage of GenAI transformation, and we will move to autonomous software development in the future. The inflection of AI agents is not limited to our technology team.
We rethink everything our organization does. Currently, Sber is developing more than 900 agents, 950 agents, to be precise, that will improve the efficiency of all of our teams. For example, in cybersecurity, we have implemented the multi-agent system called Cyber Analytics, which autonomously addresses 70% of cyber incidents. It also reduced the time for risk events analysis by more than 20 times. Overall, our teams are working on more than 670 GenAI initiatives. The economic effect from GenAI solutions based on GigaChat is estimated to be RUB 51 billion in 2025. This year, in 2026, we plan to double this indicator. The total effect on profit from AI in 2025 amounted to almost RUB 475 billion, of which RUB 51 billion is GenAI.
All of our GenAI solutions are based on our proprietary fundamental model, GigaChat. Its development remains our strategic priority.
In 2025, the monthly audience of GigaChat increased tenfold to 19 million active users, and the number of prompts exceeded 800 million. At the end of the year, we released a new generation of our GigaChat 3.0 and Kandinsky 5.0 models to the public domain, which became Europe's largest open-source release. We believe that the development of our own fundamental model is not only a prerequisite for our future competitiveness, but also a key element of Russia's technological sovereignty. 2025 was the watershed year for us in terms of GenAI implementation. This required major investments in team development, training, and completely changing our attitude towards the radically new opportunities that generative AI opens up. I can assure you that these investments are already paying off. Last year, we optimized our headcount and reallocated the resources to new disruptive tasks.
These changes lay a solid foundation for Sber's development for many years. In conclusion, I would like to give you our outlook and approaches that we're going to use in 2026. Amid the expected gradual easing of monetary and credit policy, we are slightly revising our GDP forecast upwards to 1-1.5 percentage points. We are also revising upwards our expectations for the corporate lending market and the growth of our funds due to customers. In terms of our target financial indicators, we maintain our guidelines mentioned earlier, including the 22% ROE and the capital adequacy ratio at 13.3%. We want to make sure that we are fully compliant with the strategy that we adopted three years ago.
We understand that this year it will be even more challenging to achieve these parameters, given the macroeconomic situation, a pretty challenging situation with macroeconomics, and the fact that many of our customers face major challenges, and the fact that the rate, the key rate goes down, is going to go down gradually, the year will be challenging. At the same time, we are committed to achieving all of our parameters. This is what we have committed to before our shareholders and our clients and investors, as well as the supervisory board. We need to make sure that we are in line with the commitments that were made so that you continue to trust us. 2026 will be an important milestone for us, and it will be the final year of the three-year strategic cycle.
Already now, we have started to set go for the next strategic period until 2029, with a focus on an AI-native business model that will make it possible to transform Sber into a human-centric company. We will definitely share our ideas about this new strategy with you at the end of the year. Thank you for your attention, and I'm happy to answer your questions.
Thank you, Mr. Gref. We are now moving to our Q&A session. To ask a question, please use hand raise feature in the Reactions section. As soon as we give you the floor, make sure that you click the Enable Microphone button. The first question is from Yevgeniy Kipnis from Alfa-Bank. Yevgeniy, you have the floor.
Good afternoon, colleagues. Mr. Gref, thank you very much for the presentation.
I congratulate you with such great results in such a challenging year. I have a couple of questions. I would like to start with the regulation. From the first of March, there will be additional add-ons for the largest companies. Do you expect the growth of spreads related to key rates for the new issuance in the corporate sector? Maybe the old loans will be refinanced, and will it have a major influence on your ROE metrics that are not factored in into your 2026 forecast? Thank you.
Thank you very much for your question. We tried to factor in and assess the influence of this add-on, of this buffer, for the current period.
You, you have to understand that, well, from the central bank who made this add-on for the future periods, and thank the bank for that. We do not disclose the information about individual customers in our corporate portfolio. The share of these customers, the so-called customers with a high indebtedness, is pretty low in our portfolio and pretty small. It will definitely affect the dynamics of the new loans for such companies, but I do not think that this will have a major effect on the dynamics of our portfolio or on the costs of risk. It will affect the lending dynamics, that's true. For some large companies, we will have to find individual unique solutions.
I think the more rational way would be for them to find some other ways to raise funding other from the banking sector.
Yes, thank you very much. If I may, I would ask you other questions. Building on that topic of the regulation, if you look at that strategically, there is a feeling that the measures of the central bank, the current measures and the planned measures, like the risk weights, possible additional add-on for the systemic importance and other measures, asymmetrically affect the largest banks, especially if you talk about the dividend payout commitments. Do you think that this regulation might encourage the fact that some of the credit business will be migrated from the largest banks to smaller players?
Yes, thank you very much, Yevgeniy. You are a bank analyst. We can see that. Very correct questions.
In the first part, I will agree with you. I mean, it is obvious that the regulation and other things are targeting large banks, including us. In the midterm, if you're talking about the midterm, we see. We have some measures in place to ensure that we do not face these limitations and restrictions. We are working on that. For sure, we are not going to drive down our lending activity because of that. Yeah, you have to appreciate the fact that, and the large banks have their specific nature, and the migration of our customers to smaller banks, I mean, theoretically is possible, but in real life, it's not possible. We do not expect major changes related to the macroprudential add-ons or the risk-sensitive limits. We do not have any.
I mean, I think we have the room for maneuver to address this restriction. I do not think it will generate major business problems.
Understood. Thank you very much. If I may, one more question, the last one, about the quality of the credit portfolio. We can see that you have a pretty good Q4 in the cost of risk in corporate and retail portfolios. In 2026, based on the forecasts of your organization and others, this year will be, in terms of the dynamics, more or less the same as 2025. At the same time, the key rate will be decreased significantly. Can you say that the provisions cycle has ended? What are the trends in corporate loans repayment? Thank you.
Yes, Evgeny, thank you very much for the question.
The picture that we see is as follows: the cost and risk of the cost in the retail for new loans is going down. If the dynamics of the retail portfolio rebounds, the cost of risk will go down compared to the previous year. In the corporate sector, the situation is different a little bit. You cannot have such an extended period of time with such a high rate, real rate, and expect no negative consequences. These high rates have been in place for the third year. The real rate in our calculations is around 11 percentage points to the annualized inflation, the inflation that has been calculated for the last 3 months. Obviously, it will affect the financial situation of the company, and it will affect the cost of risk, therefore.
In the corporate risk, the cost of risk will go up. It's likely to happen, but it's hard to say what will be the dynamics of the rate, what will happen in the next six months, but we think that the cost of risk will remain the same as in the previous year. That's our current vision. I cannot really tell you with 100% certainty that this or that will be the dynamics in the retail sector, because, I mean, well, the year has just started, so it's hard to figure out the trends. We're in a very dynamic, macroeconomic and geopolitical situation. During these times, it's very hard to tell you what will happen in the end of the year, but this is the vision that we have.
The retail is going to be a bit better. The corporates will be a bit worse, but the level will be almost the same as in the previous year.
Thank you very much. Svetlana Aslanova from [Ellie] will ask the next question. Svetlana, make sure to switch on the mic. Okay. Olga Naydenova with Sinara will have the next question.
Yes. Hello, can you hear me?
Yes, please.
Thank you very much for giving the opportunity to ask a question, and congratulations with great results. I have a couple of questions as well. One related with the net interest income. Your interest margin is growing up significantly, but it's thanks to the insurance business, mostly.
For better understanding the dynamics of the income of the lending business and the situation in the insurance business, it would be great to understand how the insurance business income is reflected in the net interest income.
NIM is pretty good, that's true, and it is growing. The margin is growing, if in the insurance business as well. I can now not really tell you what is the balance between the influence of these two, but last year, we have went through the tipping point in terms of the insurance. I wouldn't say that we're very much happy with the, our wealth management team, but we have gone through the tipping point. We have changed the trend in a number of areas. We have significantly increased our share.
We have a pretty good margin indicator. We have a pretty good outlook for this year. We think that the margin and the growth of our share in the insurance market will be the main drivers. We hope they will be the main drivers. We had to spend a number of years to relaunch our insurance business. I'm fearful of being too optimistic about that because this relaunch, this redesign was very challenging. We had to redesign our technology team there. I mean, it is a very complicated market in all areas. you know, knock on wood, I will try to say that I would say that hopefully, this year will be better than the previous year.
I am trying to be very, very cautiously optimistic here. It's not that I'm sure, but we have some very good chances of showing some good results in this business this year. I can see that the team is working to the right end, and I mean, looks pretty good. We have moved from the discussions and debates and strategic planning cycle to the real implementation, to the execution, and I hope that by the end of the year, we will give you some good results. I think that, to be honest, I didn't expect such a question. I don't have the data for that, but we will give you more data afterwards.
Thank you very much. I have another question related to the acceleration of the operational expenses growth for the team, for...
of the headcount and as well as the appreciation and depreciation of tangible and intangible assets. What do you expect will happen this year? What is the dynamics that you see right now in terms of the headcount and in terms of the labor costs?
Thank you very much for the question. The dynamics is as follows: last year, we had no dynamics for the payroll. We were in line with the planned expenses. I do not know any other company in Russia who would optimize the labor costs so much. We have done a lot of work in 2025. I think that this year, the dynamics will remain the same, more or less. As for the headcount, we do not see any extreme indicators, any major problems.
As for the intangible assets, I mean, we understandably increase our costs, our expenses on training models, and this is a major driver for the growth of our investments, and therefore, is related to the amortization. I mean, we have to do that. In the nearest years, we are going to see the growth of the investments, of the expenses, as well as the amortization. Unfortunately, there's a problem with the regulation. Everything related to training and the development of a software product. I mean, I think there is a lot of room to form maneuvering and discussing that with the public authorities, so that these costs cannot be amortized.
I mean, we have all the logic that would support our position in this debate. We will work with the regulator to make sure that we do not work in these extreme conditions. I do agree with you. You are correct, the dynamics will be higher than expected. I think last year, compared to the last year, it was, what? 20%. Yeah, that will be around 20%. You know, thanks. I mean, investors around the world are concerned with Gen AI investments. Thanks to the fact that we started to implement AI a long time ago, our cumulative income, our cumulative AI-driven profits, helps us to pay off the Gen AI investments.
Because the we have stopped the investments in the traditional AI, all the investments are going to Gen AI right now, and if you take the balance of our investments and compare to... If you compare the Gen AI investments with the profits, with the additional income, it's not comparable. If you take the overall figure, it is a pretty good figure that I've named. It is a pretty good figure of the AI-generated profit. We're going to drive the investments, and I think that, yes, it will be unproportionate, of course, but it will be positive. We have zero chance not to invest in the technology. There's a couple of reasons for that. You know, I'm not going to dive deep into that topic.
Overall, I think we are in a privileged position, I would say, and we're not planning to allocate as colossal of expenses as our colleagues in the U.S., for example, but we will be trying to hit a balance. It is going to be very challenging to find that balance in terms of investment in AI, but we will try to find it and maintain it.
Thank you. Thank you, Olga, for your questions. Let's try again. Let's go back to Svetlana. I hope the microphone works.
Yes, thank you very much. Sorry about that technical hiccup. Thank you very much for allowing me to ask my question.
As a sort of a follow-up on the IT, on the question about IT investments in AI, I would like to ask you to clarify your take on the Bank of Russia regulations concerning non-banking assets. If the suggested regulations are adopted, will it limit somewhat your investment in IT or other aspects of your non-banking business? Thank you.
We're not planning any group structure changes because of the suggested new regulations. All in all, we support the efforts of the Bank of Russia to improve regulation. We believe there is still room for improvement. There is still room for clarifying the measures that are suggested in the bill.
Specifically, we believe that an important job is to once again find optimal balance in forming the regulatory perimeter, rather, because currently this perimeter contains anything and everything. We are currently engaged in a constructive dialogue with the Bank of Russia in order to find the golden mean there. A separate issue is removing from that perimeter a group of companies, and including in the perimeter some non-material ones in terms of our scale. We have discussed these topics on a number of occasions, and following the novations, we will be able to suggest an optimal model for the central bank. A model that will allow us, in particular, to continue our operations. For now, I do not think this is a source of any major threat for us.
We do have, of course, our own ideas regarding the optimization within the group to prevent any adverse effects of suggested regulations.
Thank you.
Thank you, Svetlana. Let's move on. Mikhail Ganelin, Aton, the floor is yours.
Good afternoon. Hello, Mr. Gref. Congratulations on the results. Thank you for opening the floor for me. I have 2 questions. First question, a follow-up on the previous question about regulation. The Bank of Russia, in particular, plans in the next few years to increase capital adequacy ratios and introduce a diversified approach to those norms. Sber is the biggest bank, and so pressure on the capital may grow significantly. What is your take on these measures? Are you prepared for these for this introduction?
If these measures are implemented fully, according to your estimates, will the bank be able to maintain 50% to allocate 50% of its profits to pay dividends? I believe that's not a question for 2026, but for a longer-term perspective. Thank you.
Well, it's hard for me to comment on what's going to happen because right now we do not fully understand the vector that the Bank of Russia has assumed. It's a bit difficult to make estimates for such a long term, given the uncertainty. The one thing I can say is that today, the banking industry is clearly facing capital inadequacy. The largest banks, first and foremost, so the regulator will, of course, be considering the capability of the banks to replenish their capital and to maintain efficient lending.
From that perspective, I think the last will suffer the most, but we are among the first ones. The RUB 13 trillion buffer that we have, puts us in a rather comfortable position. We can be rather optimistic about our own future, even if the regulatory limits are raised significantly, we will not be suffering that much from that growth. We'll be able to raise our own internal limits, I suppose. If we were alone on this platform, I think we could exchange our opinions on this, but I personally do not think that the objective situation will allow the regulator to adopt extreme measures in terms of capital adequacy. Once again, this is not a source of major threat for us.
Thank you very much. Question number two, a more concrete one.
In 2025, Sber recorded losses from non-profile from other financial operations. As I take it concerns the ecosystem. What do you think about the development of the ecosystem? There are still some losses, what do you think about the further evolution of this segment? Maybe you will exit the capital, maybe you will venture into some other areas with your ecosystem. Thank you.
Thank you for the question. Last year, we worked really hard in that regard. We almost halved the amount of our losses, across a number of areas, a number of segments, we achieved significant results. We raised our financial efficiency. In particular, over the past quarter, we hit all of our targets in terms of optimization, I believe this dynamic will persist.
We will be gradually transitioning to sustainability, to financial results. With the non-financial services, we are less flexible in terms of customizing our offer for different scenarios. We do have to factor in all the multiplicative effects that we have on our main business, on our core business. In this respect, we can move certain services to a break-even point, but given their effect on the core business, they are financially positive for us, all in all things considered. Be it shadow accounting, shifting from one type of business to another, we see this with some of our counterparts, our colleagues in business that are bundling together loss-making and high-margin businesses in order to show that all in all, the services are profit-making. This is not the tactic that we are assuming for ourselves.
We do not believe this is optimal for us, so we will be gradually bringing all of our services to a break-even point. Once again, I reiterate that anything that holds no promise, that holds no potential or significant financial effect on our core business or some standalone benefits in terms of breaking even, all of those things will be optimized, will be sold maybe. Overall, we will try to make sure that all of our businesses in the next few years break even and start making profit
. Thank you.
Thank you, Mikhail. Let me read out the question that you sent to our QR code channel. What is the strategy of Sber regarding the Sberbank of Russia element? You've recently acquired a share there. Are you planning to make this company public after the offer?
This is one of the key companies that ensures our technology, independence, and competitive edge country-wise. In the AI and high tech era, being able to produce, to manufacture your own, hardware, software suites is absolutely critical. This, this company, I forgot its name, I don't use its products personally, but for some reason, over the past year, it skyrocketed with a capitalization of RUB 4.5 trillion, if I'm not mistaken. There's that shows you the significance of this. This is our joint, these are our joint efforts, our collaboration with the government. On February 25th, we sent this mandatory offer, 14.6 kopics per share. Everything was done according to law. All of the minority shareholders, who would like to take advantage of this offer, are welcome to do so. The quotations really, really grew after that offer.
Thank you. A question from Ilya Marchenkov, Aton.
Good afternoon, colleagues. Mr. Gref, thank you for the call. Thank you for another great year. Congratulations on another great year. My first question is about capital. You answered a lot of questions about macroprudential add-ons and capital adequacy. Are there any other important aspects about capital? Are you expecting any one-off effects that have an impact on capital? VTB recently made a statement about the sale of securitized assets. Is that something that you are going to do? Another question about the hold of maturity OFZ on your balance sheet. What is going to happen with those given your capital adequacy?
Ilya, is this call boring?
No, not at all. It's very interesting.
I hope you hold it more often. I mean, with us as a company. I think your company is one of the best in the market, and very good IR department. We will not be able to surprise you with anything. We'll not be able to give you anything unexpected. That's good, given your results, once again, great results, I suppose the lack of one-off events and one-off effects is a good sign? We will only be surprising you with our stability, I suppose. One-off is not about us. That's not our story. I've been at the helm of this organization for, I forgot how many years. For the last 10 years, at least.
As soon as we configured this management over the company, and we closed the small gaps in the multi-billion balance sheets, we have not been surprising you with anything other than stable results. No one-offs, positive or negative, should be expected. Anything that comes up, in terms of one-off write-offs, is something that is done according to plan. We are a rather conservative bank. If you look at the reserves, the provisions that we form, you will see that we are one of the most conservative banks in the market. I don't like surprises, be it pleasant or unpleasant, because pleasant surprises usually have unpleasant consequences. We do not have any surprises for you, sorry to disappoint, so do not expect any dramatic ups or downs, any sudden write-offs, or a RUB 1 trillion that we pull out of the pocket all of a sudden.
The second question, the revaluation of OFZ securities. Well, yes, we are a large holder of those securities, and if there is unplanned revaluation, we will be still beneficiaries with a plus sign or a minus sign. Once again, nothing unexpected. We have the amount of our portfolio. Yes, this will happen. Right. Thank you, Herman Gref. Another question, if I may, about your net fee and commission income. Are there any new sources of such income? Maybe some growth points in that regard related to AI or AI monetization. Thank you.
Well, regarding the net fee and commission income, we have adopted this strategy of gradual abandonment of poisoned, disloyal commissions. I'm talking about fees and commissions that our clients think are unfair, so to speak.
Last year, we made very good progress in that regard. Understandably, we cannot do this overnight. It is a very delicate, very sensitive thing for our business, abandoning all those fees and commissions in just one year, but we are moving towards it step by step to remove anything that is a hurdle for the customer experience. In a number of areas, the fee and commission income is increasing, but this is healthy growth. With some other fees and commissions, the goal is the opposite, we need to abandon those. I expect to see better dynamics of growth of net fee and commission income. Once again, no miracles, nothing unexpected.
We do see some area for growth for offering brand-new products for the market, specifically products based on AI, that will yield much more significant growth in net fee and commission income, and will also give us the benefits for our for other business streams, including for the B2B area. Here we are lagging behind significantly other markets in terms of demand. Companies are just starting to adopt and embrace the changes, and what we see is, unfortunately, often a situation where companies struggle to make a fair assessment of market dynamics. Shareholders, top managers, make linear assessments of the changes, even though those changes are bound to be non-linear.
Just yesterday, I sent this very interesting article to my colleagues, written as a fan fiction, so to speak, or a bit of a fantasy novel about what might happen in the key markets as an aftermath of AI development, what the situation in macroeconomics may be with the current pace of development of multi-agent systems.
You know, the development of this so-called agent economy. You know, and it is a kind of a science fiction article that looks like a socialist realism, really. It looks like that very much. You know, it the implementation of technologies is going to lag behind a little bit, maybe in our country, but the development opportunities are going to be tremendous. You have to prioritize the way you organize this new world, how the markets are going to be organized. The financial markets are going to be disrupted in a major way.
In this regard, we have potential if we are going to respond in a timely fashion, if we're going to change and tailor the models to the needs of our customers, I think we will not only be able to maintain our competitive edge of our own business, but we will be able to grow in a major way, our fee and commission income. Thank you very much.
Thank you. That was the part with the analysts. We are now moving to a Q&A session with the journalist Georgiy Nitogipchenko from RBC will now have the floor.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes. Hello.
Thank you very much, Mr. Gref. Thank you very much for giving the opportunity to ask the question.
Two questions: the government is still discussing the platform economy, and there is a question of pricing in marketplaces, and there was a memorandum discussed that would regulate the relations with the marketplaces and large banks. Is Sber ready to have a memorandum with one of such players? What will be the optimal model, do you think?
Well, look, we have a very simple position. The competition field should be a level playing field. Conditions should be the same, and we are ready to sign a memorandum. We are ready to resolve this issue through regulation. There should be no terrible conditions for the other market players, you know, because this skews the competitive edge towards the marketplaces in a major way.
Talking about memorandums and signing memorandums, well, we were offered to sign a memorandum by one of the marketplaces. We've looked at it and, you know, that was really laughable because it was a... You know, it's hard for me to really come up with the word here, anyway, I would say that it was not a partnership approach. We are not going to sign any memorandums that do not ensure equal partnership. I mean, it should be based on the understanding of the current market situation, if we are talking about ensuring the competitiveness of everyone, we are ready to sign everything.
Thank you. The second question, the banks in Russia thinks that the VAT transfer will have some secondary effects. What is the situation for corporate customers?
Are there any secondary effects, how the companies adapted?
Maybe small businesses, they do not want to they are moving to the gray zone to make sure that they do not over limit this discounted VAT conditions. Well, I think that we got the major leap related to the VAT in January. I think that even in March, already in March, we will not see the consequences of VAT increase. You know, By the way, it's really surprising that some of the ministers thought that it will not be reflected in the prices, that the businesses will just get the costs and cover the costs themselves.
Given the margins of, we have discussed that the margins in a number of industries, they just do not have any room for maneuver to cover the costs. They were translated to the prices for the customers. You know, that some of our transactions were also affected, and as for the acquiring prices for the small businesses, we made it 50/50, I think. We have 500,000 companies that are covered. We have around 500,000 companies that got 1% of VAT increase, and they kind of held it in their balance. As for the other companies, I mean, it's obvious that it's going to be translated in the end prices. Obviously, in the end, we got this.
a peak, I think that this peak is over. We won't see it in March. As for the cashless flow, money flow, does it affect that? We had a pretty good positive dynamics in terms of cashless transactions. I mean, it has stalled because it's obvious that a number of tax initiatives led to the fact that the migration to the cashless arrangement has stopped. I cannot really say that we have seen the influence of the VAT increase in this dynamics. I think that by the end of the first quarter, we'll be able to see it. We will talk about that if we see that, for now, I cannot really tell you that it was reflected there.
We were champions of the world, in a number of indicators here, and first of all, about the dynamics, that's for sure, and we have lost this dynamics. I think, yes, it is a reflection of the fact that the potential of tax innovations is going to be depleted soon. I think it would be hard to get the taxes up again without major negative consequences.
Thank you very much.
The next question from Anastasia Savelyeva from Interfax.
Hello. I have a couple of questions. The first one, a quick one: Do you plan to maintain your 50% commitment from the net profit for dividend payout? Do you plan to maintain this commitment?
Another question about the requirements to the capital. The new requirements to the capital will not affect your major, in a major way. This is your midterm plan to move 50% of the net profit for the dividends. I will ask next questions after that.
Just to fire all the questions, I'll answer them.
Since we talked about the problematic customers, what are the industries that are you most concerned about? Because it has been said that the house and real estate industry is not of major concern, but we see a case where a company faces major challenges, and you are one of the major creditors of this company. There was another question about credit activity.
You have told that the current impulse is not enough for the growth of the credit activity. The preliminary data on January and February shows the decrease in the number of sectors, the corporate lending and the demand for lending is not doing good. Do you think it is a trend, or do you think these factors are, you know, are seasonal, are more seasonal than anything?
Anastasia, thank you very much. Right, the first question, no, I'll start with the last question and the first question. Dividends, yes. This year, we plan to deliver on our commitment on paying out 50% of our profits in dividends. As for the outlook, we are going to talk about that in December.
In December, we're going to present you the final version of our strategy for the next three years. As for the large cases and the construction company that you talked about, Samolet Group. Now, this one, well, look, rumors that the Samolet Group will stop building, will stop existing, are a bit overrated. They became victims of the wrong PR campaign, you know, like, they went to the authorities to increase taxes to cover the deficit with the easy money and, you know. That, I mean, that was a very weird story for me, really. I mean, and it turned out bad for them. Anyway, we do not see any critical situation here. I mean, they got the money beforehand. They paid out the, what? The RUB 17 billion in February, I think.
They had enough liquidity. They were able to manage it properly, and we regularly monitor their dashboards. The majority of the loans are project finance loans that are fully secured by the escrows, and, you know, I don't see any major problems there. They have some corporate lending volume, but it, you know, it is secured as well. You know, many people are telling me how this construction company, Samolet, is going to die very soon, but I do not really see that. It's a pretty irregular situation. Yeah, they have more debt than is good for them, but, you know, I do not see it as a critical situation. I think, I mean, they are the ones to blame for these rumors to spread.
Talking about the commercial real estate, the residential real estate, it is obvious that the high rates, as well as the decreased state support, the fact that there's too many flats on the inventory of the construction companies in the regions, the fact that the moratorium for the fines has been removed. For now, we cannot really tell you if this fact is going to be critical, but obviously it is going to affect to have a major effect. I think that they were not very cautious about it. They thought that this is going to last forever, but the government has never planned it to be a forever arrangement, you know, to have this sanctions-free regime. It might be a major problem for many companies, and we, you know, we're looking at the company-by-company basis.
We're analyzing the situation. I mean, there is a number of things that are of concern, again, I mean, there were major amounts. I mean, this is a large player, like 60% market share. We're talking about totally different quality. We do not have any critical concerns. Well, I mean, we are very conservative, we have good provisions, we have good LCR indicators. In this case, I do not think we will see any major problems, even if one of the players suddenly faces some major challenges in any of these markets. I do not think it will cause major problems for us. The fact that we're cautious and conservative in terms of risk management, helps us to talk about that with confidence.
You know, it's better to overestimate the risk rather than to underestimate it, and you know that I'm very cautious, in giving my ideas about that. Every week, we have a special committee. We look at the industries, at the cases, and we see some deterioration of the quality, of course. I mean, it's not possible not to see that. I mean, I have talked about a number of industries with negative dynamics that showed negative dynamics during the year. Yeah, the cost of risk will deteriorate, but I do not think it will be radical. At least I'm talking about our portfolio. It's hard for me to analyze the portfolios of other banks, but the situation is not that problematic.
If the central bank is so good as to add some speed to the decrease of the key rate, it will affect the investment activity dynamics, and it will add stability for the credit portfolios of the bank. Yeah, there was another question about the negative dynamics in January, and is it seasonal? Now, I think it's yeah, it's seasonal. Standard thing. Seasonal fluctuations that we looked at. I mean, the last year's seasonal fluctuations were pretty obvious and no, nothing to see here.
Okay, we have the last questions. We have just a couple of minutes to wrap it up. Elena Fabrichnaya from Reuters will ask this last question.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes. Yes, please.
I have a question about the ruble rate, exchange rate.
When do you think the ruble will start changing the direction of the growth? Secondly, in Tuesday, there was the discussion with Mr. Putin and Mr. Mishustin about the budget deficit. You have also revised the your forecast on the economic growth this year. What were the drivers for that? Thank you.
Well, the dynamics of the economic growth cannot be assessed in February. There's a number of parameters, including the one that you have mentioned, the dynamics of the ruble exchange rate. This year, I see 0 chances of seeing such a strong ruble rate. It is counterproductive. Counterintuitive, and, you know, whatever other adjectives that you can use. It is against all theories, because last year, our payment balance was $40 billion.
I mean, this year is obviously going to be lower than that. Having the exchange rate of 80 RUB per dollar with these parameters, is going to be absolutely incredible if that really happens. I mean, you cannot rule out anything, but it will be against theory, practice, and logic and other things. Expectations, our colleagues believe and are more conservative. They think that it will be around 85-90 RUB per dollar. My personal expectation will be around 95 RUB per dollar by the end of the year. Maybe, given the circumstances, might be around 100, but it will depend on the policy of the central bank. You know that our Minister of Finance changed the budget rule, if that means the decrease of the transaction, mirroring decrease.
If this transaction mirroring is decreased, the ruble rate will go down. With such discounts and such oil prices, it must go down, because these two factors in combination will lead to the fact that the exchange rate by the end of the second quarter will change. I mean, the parameters, it's hard to, it's hard to predict the parameters according which it's going to grow. It isn't, you know, very intuitive, so to speak. I have said that our macroeconomists think that it will be 85, 90. I think that, you know, again, I mean, we appreciate the fact that there are two components here. The first one is the volume of the mirroring transaction and the payment balance.
If the payment balance is between 10 and 15, the Bank of Russia will be gradually pulling out of the market. Meanwhile, it should be 95 to 100 by the end of the year. Still, if I do have to sign with blood on this forecast, I'm not sure I'll be able to do that.
Thank you very much to all the participants. Thank you, colleagues, for your time, for joining today, and thank you for your support. I do sometimes feel a bit adventurous myself, but I think you can find different ways of entertainment. It doesn't have to concern financial results, especially when it comes to the assets of millions and millions of people and companies. We try to be stable, we try to be predictable.
Our surprises for you are about being stable amid very, very unstable and uncertain environment. It is way more difficult than doing somersaults of volatility and freestyling in front of an excited audience. I think we will be freestyling internally, we will be demonstrating to you stability and robust financial results. I hope you appreciate that. I once again would like to thank you for your participation, for your questions. We are open to even more questions, even deeper questions. We are always transparent for our shareholders. We will continue with this policy going forward. The situation today is peculiar with a lot of limitations, as soon as that situation ends, we'll go back to the same transparency and level of disclosure that we had before.
We will be disclosing all of the facts and figures so that you can see it for yourself. I assure you, even though we cannot demonstrate all of the facts and figures that we would like at the moment, but I hope you can trust us. We have done our homework, and we're only demonstrating you things that we ourselves are sure of. Once again, thank you. I hope you're healthy, and I hope you have a great day. Thank you very much. See you next time in April.