Welcome you to our conference call, during which we will present the consolidated financial results of Sber Group and Alfa-Bank for Q2 and the H1 of 2026. Today, the results will be presented by Taras Skvortsov, Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board, and then we'll be happy to answer your questions. Please note that the conference call today on the 29th of July 2026 is being recorded. The remarks may contain information about the plans and forecasts of the top management, which may not coincide with the actual results in the future. For more details on potential risks and terms, please refer to the disclaimer on the second slide of the presentation. Taras, you have the floor.
Thank you, Yana. Good afternoon, analysts, journalists and Sber investors, everyone listening to us on this call.
Today, we will be summarizing the results of Sber Group's operations in the H1 of 2026. Sber's net profit increased over six months of 2026 by 18.6% and exceeded RUB 1,019 billion at a return on equity of 24.2%. In Q2, Sber earned RUB 511.2 billion. ROE for this period was 24%. Crucially, the number of our clients continues to grow. At the end of Q2, the number of retail clients reached 110.6 million. As for corporate clients, we ended up with 3.5 million. More than 2.1 million people already use the Smile to Pay service, which is 54% higher than at the end of last quarter. The turnover increased by 19% over the quarter to RUB 40 billion, and the number of installed terminals is approaching 1.7 million. We are consistently expanding the functionality of smart terminals. Clients today can use the pay-in-installments service at 400,000 terminals.
This not only opens up new sales channels for Sber, but also has a positive effect on operating performance. In particular, we see that this service increases the average purchase amount by 20%-40%, and in some categories by 50%. In June, we presented the world's first payment terminal with embedded AI called NEO. The device will become even more user-friendly thanks to an advanced biometric system. The number of monthly users of the Whoosh payment service reached 3 million, and the turnover grew by 14.2% over the quarter to RUB 45 billion. The number of transactions reached 54.5 million. This confirms that alternative payment scenarios are becoming a part of our clients' daily lives, and they do appreciate it. We continue to develop the SberSpasibo loyalty program to increase client engagement and retention.
At the beginning of 2026, it has gained 3 million members with 103.6 million in total. Key advantages are given to SberPrime subscribers. That's almost 22 million people. Sber continues to support small businesses amidst the growing tax burden due to higher VAT. In early 2026, we launched a 50% VAT refund program for acquiring. Over 173,000 entrepreneurs participated in it in six months. In Q2, economic activity showed certain signs of recovery. Nominal business turnover increased by 12.7% year-over-year, among other things, due to the current situation in the global energy market. Some improvement also occurred in consumer demand. Personal expenditures increased by 12.6% year-over-year, mainly due to the non-food segment. The growth of household income and salaries was slowing down. We have revised our expectations for the H2 of the year.
Overall, we expect a moderate growth of the Russian economy in 2026, no more than 0.5%, and previously our forecast was around 1%. After a gradual slowdown in price growth from January to May, in June, we saw accelerated inflation caused by the situation on the fuel market in Russia. Keeping current trends in mind, we revised the overall forecast for 2026 and now expect prices to increase at the level of 6.5%- 7%. Now let's take a close look at our financial performance. In Q2, net interest income increased by 26.7% year-over-year to RUB 1,067 billion. Over six months, income growth amounted to 22.5% year-over-year to RUB 2,051 billion. The loan portfolio growth remained the main growth driver, including the H2 of the year, 2025.
Our corporate loan portfolio amounted to RUB 32.3 trillion, having increased by 1.3% in Q2, mainly due to the growth of disbursements in the residential real estate sector, as well as in metallurgy and transport. Our share in the corporate lending market at the end of Q2 was 32.5%. Given the slowdown in the Russian economy and the prospect of maintaining a tight monetary policy, by the end of the year, we downgraded our forecasts regarding the growth rate of the corporate lending market from the range between 10%-12% to the range from 8%-10%. Sber will grow in line with the sector. At the end of Q2, the cost of risk of the corporate portfolio increased by 0.6 percentage points and amounted to 0.9%. The focus now is on such industries as metallurgy, agriculture, forestry and food.
As well as commercial real estate and small businesses which are struggling with the high Q rate. The quality of the corporate loan portfolio slightly deteriorated. The share of Stage 3 loans increased over the quarter by 0.8 percentage points to 4.8% amid expected maturation of risk in residential real estate financing. The retail loan portfolio grew faster in Q2 by 3% and by 5.6% in six months, the H1 of 2026, and it reached RUB 20.3 trillion. The main growth was still concentrated in mortgage lending, but our results in consumer lending also improved significantly. Our share in the retail loan market increased by 0.4 percentage points over the quarter, and in total increased to 50.5%, which is a record high value.
The cost of risk for the retail portfolio continues to decrease on the back of improved quality of new disbursements, which we noticed in 2025 and into early 2026. The growth of the mortgage loan portfolio by 3% over the quarter to RUB 13.3 trillion was due to an increased demand for the family mortgage program in June because of expected changes in its terms. They were not adopted, they were not enforced, but clients had great expectations from those expected changes. At the same time, the number of market mortgage loans continued to grow gradually amid a decrease in interest rates. Its share in the total volume of disbursements doubled over the quarter and reached 33%, which is almost two times higher than a year ago. In Q2, the consumer loan portfolio began to grow, even though previously, for several quarters in a row, it was falling.
Over the quarter, we managed to grow the portfolio in this segment by 3.2% to RUB 3.6 trillion, while the risk indicators remained at an acceptable level. Our market share in the consumer loan market increased by 1.3 percentage points to 41.1%. The growth in consumer loans is associated, among other things, with better user experience driven by GenAI. We continue to expand the use cases of our consulting agents in the Sberbank Online app, which offers credit products to customers based on their personal needs. Over 22 million users every month use the credit potential service. It takes into account all revenue streams and current liabilities of clients, and automatically generates offers tailored to their individual financial situations. Our credit card portfolio grew by 0.7% over the quarter and totaled RUB 2.6 trillion. Our share in the credit card market amounted to 54.1%.
The car lending portfolio increased by 9% to RUB 0.8 trillion. Our share also grew by 0.8 percentage points to 21.6%. Overall, for the year, we haven't changed our forecast regarding the growth of the retail lending market. We expect it to grow in the range between 5%-8%, and we expect Sber to grow faster than the sector. The total cost of risk, factoring in the retail portfolio growth, it decreased by 0.25 percentage points over the quarter to 1.04%, thanks to the good dynamics in the retail segment. In Q2, the share of Stage 3 loans, including initially impaired ones, increased by 0.7 percentage points and reached 5.5%, mainly due to the corporate segment and the maturation of risks for previously issued and reserved loans. Debt provision coverage went down as corporate clients with better coverage mitigated to Stage 3, and thanks to better security.
Also thanks to the improvement of new disbursements, new loans in the retail portfolio, and the increase of their share in the portfolio. Funds due to retail customers increased by 1.6% over the quarter, or 3% since the start of the year, to RUB 34.5 trillion. Sber's share in the retail deposit market reached 45%, having increased by 0.2 percentage points during the second quarter. As for our expectations, we maintain our expectations of a 13%-15% growth in the deposit market by the end of the year. Funds due to legal entities decreased by 7.9% over the quarter to RUB 14.7 trillion, and our market share amounted to 18.5%. This negative trend of Sber and the market at large reflects the ongoing trend to reduce government funds. We see the budget closing with a huge deficit, there is a reduction in government funds.
Corporate funds are growing at a very slow pace. They increased by only 1.6% over the same period. We significantly adjust our forecasts for the corporate deposit market, and by the end of 2026, we expect a deceleration of growth to 5%-8%. Previously, the forecast was in the range between 10%-12%. We are factoring in the dynamics of the economy and increased cash turnover. It persisted in Q2 and still in July in Q3. Net interest margin of Sber grew to 6.7%. The key factor here is the faster growth of the more profitable retail business. Overall, for 2026, we expect higher margins as opposed to our previous call, and we raised our forecast for the year from 5.9%-6.2%. This was our margin in 2025. In 2026, we plan to maintain the margin without any decrease.
Net fee and commission income increased by 10.4% in Q2, largely due to the low base of last year. Over six months, the growth amounted to 5.4% year-over-year, in total to RUB 419.8 billion in net fee and commission income. Given the economic slowdown and the continued high competition in the banking sector for clients, we updated our forecast for the dynamics of net fee and commission income. We now expect it to remain at a stable level in 2026 versus 2025. In the context of steady income growth, we continue to strictly control our operating expenses. At the end of Q2 2026, OpEx increased by 14.7% to RUB 336.1 billion. Our cost-to-income ratio stood at 27.9% for the H1 of the year, which, frankly speaking, is better than our guidelines for 2026.
Since the start of the year, our equity increased by 2.2% to RUB 8.5 trillion. Our key indicator, the group capital adequacy ratio, grew by 0.7 percentage points for the quarter. At the end of the quarter, it stood at 15.1%, which is very important before the payment of record high dividends amounting to RUB 850 billion. We'll start paying them out next week. The effect from dividend payment on the N20.0 capital adequacy ratio will be seen in Q3, will be 1.4 percentage points. Another big priority of ours is technology. The idea here is not just to create new IT projects, but to create a single platform based on GigaChat in order to be able to implement generative AI in processes, in client services, and in internal products. In July, we launched a new GigaChat 3.5 Ultra model.
The main innovation here is linear attention technology, which allows the model to efficiently solve complex problems while spending fewer tokens. All of the world-class models are competing in this regard. The key trend in generative AI is still the move from basic AI tools like chats to agents that can act on their own. Over the past three months, the number of our developers that use agents on a daily basis has increased almost fivefold. Inference in generative development accounts for 1.5 trillion tokens per month. This number is growing very rapidly. In May, we presented GigaCowork, an AI agents platform for businesses. It is based on more than 20 connectors that allow agents to connect to the corporate systems of companies and take over the tasks of lawyers, accountants, finance officers, and other professionals.
We've already received over 100 applications for early access. Based on the initial test results, clients have reported up to 80% time savings for sales teams, an 80% increase in document processing speed, and a 93% reduction in candidate search time for HR. Same goes for other employees and tools of the model. We also presented Russia's first agent-to-agent platform. Its goal is to enable AI agents from different companies to communicate with one another. This opens up new horizons for process automation in the context of closing deals, supporting commercial operations, and organizing tenders. This is largely the future of economy, almost fully digitized economy. The next logical step of AI technology development is physical AI or embedded AI. The embodied AI. The biggest challenge to bringing humanoid robots to market isn't the physical shell, but rather the model that powers their thinking.
In this area, Sber is among the world leaders, which is confirmed by our results in international competitions. At the International Embodied AI Championship, which brought together more than 500 teams from 27 countries, Sber's Robotics Center team won the online stage and secured bronze in the final round, where our model, Green-VLA, was tested on physical robots. In conclusion, I would like to summarize our revised expectations for 2026. We adjusted the forecast for GDP growth no more than 0.5%. Annual inflation is expected to be in the range of 6.5%-7%. We also forecast a slight slowdown in the corporate segment of the banking market. Funds due to legal entities will grow by 5%-8%, and the growth of the corporate loan portfolio will range from 8%-10%. As for retail lending and retail deposits, our previous estimates remain unchanged.
In terms of Sber's financial performance, we revised upwards our forecast for the average net interest margin for 2026 to around 6.2% and lowered our expectations for net fee and commission income. Other expectations remain the same, including ROE 22% and group capital adequacy N20.0 at 13.5%. Thank you. I will be happy to answer your questions.
Thank you, Taras, for your presentation. Now we're opening the floor for questions. To ask a question, please use the hand raise feature in the reaction section. As soon as we give you the floor, click on the enable microphone button. The first question's from Sinara, Olga Naydenova.
Thank you very much for the presentation and the opportunity to ask a question. I congratulate you on great results. A couple of questions, if I may. First one, credit quality and the quality of the corporate portfolio. This quarter, we have been seeing some deterioration for formal metrics. What do you expect in the mid-term? The cost of risk might increase for the corporate segment, maybe, especially against the backdrop of the current problems in the logistical infrastructure and in oil and gas sector. That will be the first question.
Can you hear me? Olga, can you hear us?
Yes. Yes, I can hear you now.
Yeah, we had some technical problems here, sorry for that. Yes, you were very right in highlighting these challenges.
According to our reporting, we can see that in Q2, we have seen a big growth in the cost of risk by 0.6 percentage points at once. As for the H2 of the year, yes. We have to say that the second quarter is the period when we reassess the rankings of the customers based on the reporting of the first quarter and the yearly reporting. There's quite a lot of factors that are played in when we use our internal methodologies to assess the customer, a client. Usually, the quarterly reporting for the clients does not change that much as the reporting for the second quarter. But as for the corporate segment, we expect a further deterioration of the risk metrics and the cost of risk might increase. Would not rule that out. We have a couple of factors that might drive that deterioration.
The economic situation, the tight monetary policy, and the ruble that is still too strong for the exporters. The exporters have a very hard time building a sustainable cash flow with such a rate. Our expectations factor in the risks from the corporate customers, from legal entities, and I think that the H2 of the year will see higher rates than we see here in the second quarter.
Your guidance on the margin is revised upwards, but it will decrease significantly in the H2 of the year. Obviously, that's something that we saw in the second quarter. I don't remember such a high interest rate margin, but is this more related to the situation with the liquidity and the problems with liquidity, the tightness of the economy? Does it influence that much?
Yes, I think I'll answer.
What's the reason for such a decrease in the expectations for the margin?
As for the margin, the H2 of the year, traditionally, we have seen a risk and challenge to pay out the dividends. Every year, we increase the dividend payout, and in terms of the margin, RUB 650 billion are the funds that we will have to remove from the balance. Obviously, starting from August, it will pressure the margin and then it will come into full sway in September. The second factor is the liquidity deficit that we see on the market. The rates on the money market are higher than the key rate. It's not a standard situation. I think that we haven't seen these situations like that in such a prolonged period of this environment. We see that some businesses went to cash again.
We have seen the cash transactions grow in the first and second quarter. July is almost over, but we see that the cash turnover increased by RUB 600 billion. It's an absolute record-breaking level. It's record-breaking for July and over the year. If you take previous months, in March 2020, when there was the most acute phase of COVID, cash was used, and there was the maximum cash turnover. It's very important for the central bank to support the participants of the market because as for the repo and other short-term financing are required. If we don't have that, the situation with the rates in the money market will continue to be high, and it will pressure the margin of Sber and the entire sector. The competition for the clients' funds, that's also a challenge.
We think it is a possible situation, and these are the targets that we have for the H2 of the year.
Thank you very much.
Olga, thank you. Next question from Svetlana Aslanova at Euler Analytical Technologies. Let's move to the next question. Egor Dakhtler, Tinkoff Investments. Egor, you have the floor.
Hi, everyone. Can you hear me? Yes. I would like to add on the questions on the quality of assets and the interest margin. In terms of the assets, we see that the coverage ratio is going down. At the same time, the guidance for the cost of risk remains the same. Is there a level of the coverage that would be significant for Sber so that we will talk about the increase of the cost of risk for this year? That's the first question.
Egor, thank you very much.
Based on our forecast and the results, we see that if in the first half of the year, the cost of risk is a bit more than 1.2%, and for the year, the cost of risk will be 1.4%, that means that it is our assumption that the cost of risk might be higher than 1.4% in the H2 of the year. As for the coverage for the Stage 3 loans with provisions, it's important to think what are these loans in this Stage 3 because we are assessing the quality of the provisions of the security. We also assess many other factors like the time required to pay out the loan.
As early as in 2025, we have made provisions for the customers that were not in the Stage 3, but we thought that their financial situation might deteriorate because our forecast for 2026 was not that promising, not that optimistic for the economy. For many industries, we assumed the deterioration and made provisions. When these loans migrated to the Stage 3, we don't have to create more provisions. Actually, the amount of provisions decrease. We have enough provisions based on the quality of the portfolio. We have a room for maneuver in case of deterioration of the situation among a number of customers.
Thank you very much. Next question. To build on the question of Olga on net interest margin, we see that Sber is quite active in growing in the project financing and corporate portfolios, in mortgage, and as well as in unsecured lending in some segments. We see a pretty good growth there. The margin will go down. That's the expectation.
We see that you revised downward some of the items in the balance sheet, and the pressure on the margin should be lower, and Sber is growing faster than the sector. What would be our approach to forecast the growth rates? What will be the level of growth? Now I will reformulate. Why Sber, given the quite active growth, does not focus on the margin, but focuses on faster growth? The strategy of increasing the market share in the challenging times is the current strategy of Sber? How we should interpret that?
Thank you very much. A very interesting, exciting question, really. Now, what do we use to make our forecasts? The segments for the corporate lending in the second quarter were growing slower than the market. Our market share dwindled by 0.8%, in retail, we were growing quicker. In the parameters that you set out, the business portfolio growth and the margin growth are important, the capital adequacy and the capital reserves is another important parameter. We analyze the ROI for the loans, we try to select the loans with the proper ROE, we select the areas where the combination is the best for us in terms of the returns. We have a stronger position compared to other banks. We have a free capital.
We have a capital that we can use, we can give out the loans to the customers that might not get the loans because they're bad debtors, but because other banks do not have capital to give out these loans. We do not see a major difference between the corporate and the retail area. Macroprudential limits are going to be tighter based on the central bank's orders. Corporates, as it usually happens, the corporate loans are in more demand in the H2 of the year. In the H1 of the year, we saw a small demand, tepid demand from customers, we expected in the H2 of the year to be higher. Even we were surprised because even with these high rates, there was a lot of demand for the financing, and we were growing our market share.
We were delivering the loans to the customers. In 2026, the same might happen. Maybe the situation might not be that active. Customers will not be that active, and we will see less active dynamics of the market. This is why we revised our forecasts. For the mortgage, we do not know still what will be the changes in the conditions of the family of loans. If the state-sponsored family mortgage will deteriorate in terms of the conditions, it might affect our mortgage portfolio. Might be some decreases there 7%-20%. Will this all affect the margin? When we talk about the financing based on fixed rates, providing new loans, even as they replace the loans that are being repaid, is the factor that drives the margin.
If we're giving out less loans, fewer loans, we might not have that pressure on the margin that we expect. These are the estimates for the H2 of the year, the main factors for the margin is the cost of funds due to clients. It's more important than the profitability of the credit portfolio. We see some risks for the retail and corporate customers. For the last several weeks, we see that as the key rate goes down, the cost of funds for the largest customers on the market, deposit-wise, increased. That reflects the deficit of the liquidity that I mentioned as I answered your question and the question of Svetlana before you. That's it. Thank you.
Thank you very much for your detailed answer.
Egor, thank you for the question.
Next question from Yevgeny Kipnis, Alfa-Bank. Yevgeny, you have the floor. Yes.
Hi, everyone. Thank you very much for the presentation. I congratulate you with the great results. You have answered the majority of my questions in great detail. Thank you very much for that. I maybe have one follow-up to the questions of Olga and Egor about the credit quality of the corporate customers. This is the topic that is on top of the agenda. My question is what might go wrong? It would be great to understand what would be the macro conditions in this cycle, not maybe within this year, to make your risk models require increasing the provisions for the corporate portfolio that would be much higher than we see now, and that we expect for the H2 of the year.
If we talk about the cost of risk of 2%, 2.5%, maybe even 3%, something we saw in the cycle of 2014, 2015, and 2016. What should be the factors for us so that we see these figures for the corporate clients?
Well, Yevgeny, many factors that could drive the cost of risk have already materialized. For example, the Moscow Exchange Index has been going down for the 19th week. The change of the trajectory of the key rate decrease on their July meeting, they changed the step for decreasing the key rate, the market has overestimated the returns on the bonds and shares. The new sanctions that are being discussed in the U.S. Senate, discussing new sanctions and the possibility for the President of the U.S. to impose the sanctions.
These are the factors that are combined, and when we have a zero or even negative growth of the economy, and if the ruble remains strong, and when we see sanctions, and at the same time, the Central Bank has this tight monetary policy, the high rate, when all of that materializes, that means that there will be a major increase of the cost of risk for the corporate customers. As for the macroeconomic figures, we see a major decrease in the investments for the companies. They were usually making these figures based on the returns. Lower returns, lower investments. We do not see major headcount cuts.
There's always been a shortage of deficit. Unemployment is at 2.1%-2.2%, which is historically a very record low level. To expect that this happens would be premature. The growth of risk will occur, but it will be within the range of the guidance that we presented today to you and the market. 1.4% is probably the maximum, above which we are unlikely to go. Thank you very much for the question.
The next question is from BCS, Artem Perminov.
Hello, colleagues. Thank you for allowing me to ask a question. I also have a question about the cost of risk. Essentially, in Q2, we see that to a large extent, the provisions that were created, there was a positive effect from revaluation of loans at fair value, it decreased the total amount of provisions of the funds allocated for provisions.
What is it related to? I understand that it's related to, among other things, the revaluation that I mentioned, or maybe you could comment on this, what this revision of loan quality has to do with? The second question is about losses from non-core activities. We saw that it grew in the second quarter. Why, and does it have anything to do with loyalty program expenditures? Because as far as I know, they are partially within the same item, the same line of expenditure.
Thank you for the questions. As for the line in statements that you mentioned, the revaluation at fair value, it reflects a large one-off return of recovery of problem debt. It used to be a loan at fair value, and in Q2, in April, we settled the debt, several dozens of billions of RUB.
That was this big one-off factor, which will not repeat in the coming quarters. As for the non-core activities, this is not exactly the right term. I would say non-financial activities. Yes, you're right about the loyalty programs. That partially has to do with that. We have our partners investing in loyalty programs for the clients, but also in Q2, what we had was somewhat one-off, I would say, provisions that we created for depreciation of certain assets, understanding that the market situation was deteriorating. We do this regularly. We do this analysis regularly. If we see that the potential of a business becomes worse, we create additional provisions for devaluation. There are a lot of operations related to this business that are not reflected in those two lines, revenue and cost.
We would like to encourage all analysts to look at the results of the group overall, including interest income, for example, because very often we attract a client, they perform certain operations with us, certain transactions with us. This is part of our biggest strategy for developing our ecosystem and relations with the client, maintaining our clients long-term, maintaining mutually beneficial relations with the client. Pointing at certain factors while ignoring the others would be wrong. In the H2 year, we expect this to be better. Thank you for the question.
The next one will be from Vasily Nigan, Sovcombank. Vasily, please open your mic.
Good afternoon, and thank you for the presentation. I have a question about AI. You mentioned on several occasions that you're developing artificial intelligence. Could you share the effect that it has on operating expenses?
Meaning what is the share of expenses on AI in the total amount of your expenses?
You can see indirectly this effect on our expenses by looking at the amortization section of funds and core assets. This is mainly with amortization. That is one factor that we take into account. Testers and developers, they do not account for a big amount of cost, but amortization, depreciation is a big factor. We see a lot of major American companies. There was this one company that was a leader last year in terms of net profit, and in the second quarter, it suffered negative cash flow because of investment in generative AI. They are spending CapEx more than the cash flow that they get from their core business. This is not our case.
Our investment is much lower, also in terms of its relation to our cash flow, but we are growing the investment because of several reasons. One is competition in the market of AI-based models, and also the increase in prices across the board; microchips, network chips, memory cards, everything. Sanctions, of course, is a big factor. Sanction pressure drives prices upward in the Russian market. We expect that in the H2 year, and also in our further strategy, the investment will grow and its contribution in the total amount of OpEx will grow, and we expect it to be the key. Will 50% of OpEx will be related to our investment in AI, in GenAI. Thank you.
Thank you. We're moving on to questions from journalists. The first question will come from Zulfiya Khamidova, RIA Novosti. Hello, colleagues. Thank you for the presentation.
We have a question about depositors. Do you expect the bank's competition for depositors to reduce in the H2 year, or the competition will maintain at a high level?
Thank you, Zulfiya, for the question. I think the competition for depositors is not exactly directly related to the interest rates and the key rate specifically. I think it has more to do with the liquidity situation and the demand for loans from borrowers, both corporate and retail. Given what I said earlier, I said that in the H2 year, we expect demand for loans to accelerate, to grow, and also we are observing a local liquidity deficit in the banking industry at around two or slightly higher, RUB 2 trillion . So it is a substantial amount. Nevertheless, we absolutely do not expect competition to lower. I think it will persist or even grow.
The worst-case scenario for us and for the sector at large, the competition might grow. We have seen these situations back in 2024, for example, when deposit interest rates were higher than the key rate. That's not the case at the moment. The situation is pretty normal at the moment, but we cannot say for sure that the competition will absolutely not grow. The main expectation is that it will maintain at the same level, and we also allow for certain growth. Thank you.
The next question is from Interfax, Anastasia Savelyeva.
Hello. Taras, could you tell us how serious for Sber was this problem with liquidity, the liquidity deficit that you mentioned in the banking sector, and did Sberbank take advantage of the tools provided by the Bank of Russia? And the second question, a favorite question, what about the frozen assets, the blocked assets?
Do you have any news from the Bank of Russia, or maybe you gave it up altogether?
Thank you, Anastasia. As regards liquidity, we do take advantage of the repo instruments, for example, that the Bank of Russia provides and other tools as well. We have not applied specifically for a specific amount of liquidity. No, that hasn't been done. I know that other banks are experiencing a very high demand for liquidity. We managed to resolve it with our standard instruments. We'll see how it develops. As for the frozen assets, the blocked assets, yes, we do have some developments there. We have received a response from the regulator, the response to our request.
The response says that for a certain part of the assets mentioned in the letter, the regulator said that they do not believe they can agree with their deblocking, their allocation, their release, we will not be able to do this initially. We have another methodology-related question to them. Once we have received their response, this additional response, we will decide on our further steps. We will either adjust, amend our request to the regulator, we may take some other measures. I think within August, we will have decided on our further strategy in this regard.
Thank you. Next question from Georgy Nedogibchenko, RBK. Hello, can you hear me?
Yes. Thank you very much for the presentation. Two questions. First, amid the attacks on Wildberries warehouses, a lot of vendors say they have sustained significant losses.
Do you see any risk related to the growth of non-performing loans in this segment? Second question, once again, related to liquidity, the cash flow. You said that you are online in contact with the Bank of Russia to prevent the attrition trend. What is your take on the efficiency of this dialogue, seeing how the amount of cash only grew by hundreds of billions of RUB and the attrition did not stop?
Thank you, Georgy. Those are the questions that are front and center at the moment. There is a big list of companies that, over the past years, have been developing in a tight cooperation with marketplaces. They have their products, their items stored in warehouses of major marketplaces, and we see that obviously the damage is very, very significant. We have been receiving a lot of queries from clients regarding the restructuring program.
It's a bit premature, it's a bit difficult to say exactly how this will impact our results. As I said, we have been receiving requests from clients for restructuring, and we expect this inflow of requests to grow. Those clients were also receiving loans from marketplace banks, the banks of their marketplaces, because they were more aware of the context, and it was more convenient for them. But as for the clients that receive loans from us, we will obviously analyze all of those requests. We will try to find a compromise with them and to help them save their businesses. The situation is still ongoing. It's difficult to assess the scenario and say with certainty that this will be the best-case scenario or the worst-case scenario. We will see how it unfolds.
As for the second question with the Bank of Russia, we are in close contact with the CBR, obviously, and they have been monitoring the situation on their own as well. It's important to understand that the CBR is not the only one who will be deciding on how this develops. The biggest expectation that we have from them is to prevent the extrapolation of this cash flow problem onto the situation with the banking sector in general, including the increase of weekly or monthly repo terms. There are two factors here. First, the increase in taxes. We have not adjusted yet. The Russian economy, small businesses have not adjusted yet to those changes. Secondly, the talking points, the messages that we're receiving from certain politicians saying that we should remove deposits or freeze deposits.
When we hear this, it's important to understand that this has nothing to do with the CBR. Every time there is this message, they always say with certainty that this will not happen. Still, clients do get nervous about it, and they do take out their deposits, and they turn their savings into cash, which is bad for the economy, it is bad for the banking sector, it's bad for the budget, for the whole country. Yes, we are in a dialogue with the CBR, and I'm sure the Bank of Russia will take all necessary steps. But as I said, this is beyond just our dialogue with the regulator. It is about the tax changes and the wider communication field. We are now looking forward to the news about the 2027 budget. This also has an impact on this situation and the trend.
Of course, we, as well as other market participants, are interested in reducing the cashing out of deposits in as much as possible because this is a serious problem for all of us. Thank you.
The next question is: What is the biggest risk for the Russian economy that everyone is underestimating or overestimating?
I think there are a lot of risks that the market is overestimating. The drop in the stock exchange market over the past months is unprecedented. The economic situation did not lead to this, does not cause this, because it was not bad enough to cause this major fall in the market. We saw last week that the stock exchange rebounded somewhat. Over the past days, we do see some positive dynamic. Congratulations to the shareholders buying Sber shares before the cutoff because they have rebounded on the dividend gap.
Our dividend of RUB 37.6 per share is already offset by the market, which is good. The capitalization of the Russian stock exchange market, and Sber specifically, is underestimated very heavily and has very big potential for growth. To make this happen, we need the overall economic situation to improve. We need some clarity with the sanctions regime. We also need the materialization of the steps that the CBR has taken to decrease the key rate. Once this happens, we will see a major revaluation of the entire market, especially the most high-quality companies such as Sber. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Last question from Elena Fabrichnaya, Reuters.
Hello. First of all, I would like to clear, do you think that the analysts that thought that Sber will show record high net profits of higher than RUB 2 trillion, how do you assess these estimates? What about the credit risks of marketplaces like Wildberries and Ozon? Do you see some restructuring that might materialize here?
Thank you very much. As for the record high net profit level in 2026, we have to earn more than we earned in 2025. As for some round number, whether we're going to be higher than that or lower than that, it's quite early to talk about that. You don't have to be higher than RUB 2 trillion to have an ROE of more than 22%. Depends on the economic situation.
In the H2 of the year, it will be clear what will be our results. As for the credit quality of the marketplaces, obviously we see some damages here. It's pretty significant. The credit quality went down. From our perspective, it went down. Obviously, the potential cash flow dwindled. Do we think about making higher provisions? Yes, we're discussing that. We haven't made a decision. We see that these companies have a pretty good safety margin. They're very active in responding to these challenges and working with merchants, as well as managing the warehouse infrastructure. We're constantly discussing these issues with them. I have no doubt that these marketplaces, the leaders of the market, will be able to weather the storm properly. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Taras. I would like to thank everyone for the questions. We conclude this call. Have a great day. Thank you.