Q1 25/26

Jul 15, 2025

Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Bank of Maharashtra Q1FY2026 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen only mode. There will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing Star then zero on your touchstone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. We have with us from the management Sri Nidhu Saxena, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Sri Asheesh Pandey, Executive Director, Sri Rohit Rishi, Executive Director, and all General Managers of the bank. I now hand the conference over to Sri Nidhu Saxena. Thank you, and over to you Mr. Saxena. Good afternoon and thank you for joining this con call and hearing out from the bank how the quarter FY25 26Q1 has been. I'm happy to share that the quarter is among our, I should say, consistent quarter. Bank of Maharashtra has been delivering this consistent performance for three to four years now. This quarter also qualifies as yet another consistent performing quarter. Whatever guidance that we have kept for the business growth, total business, advances, deposit, CASA, RAM, growth, asset quality, profitability, and efficiency ratios, I think all the guidance numbers seem to be well within the range if I should say for all the parameters, 15, 16 parameters where we are sharing guidance for the FY, the bank performance is in sync with the guidance number. Q1 traditionally we all know becomes a lean quarter for the business, lean quarter for growth. Bank of Maharashtra has been maintaining the trend. There is no spike up or down. This is a consistent growth story also. There are some enablers, of course, would like to little bit talk about that. A lot of new things have been done around products, processes, how the products are competitive in the marketplace. When our field functionaries are going and trying to fetch new business, trying to add more customers to the bank's business, are the products supporting them? Are the products finding competitive edge for them? Are they in sync with what the best of the best offerings are there in the market? We keep looking at our product profile. In fact, all basket of liability and asset products are mandatedly reviewed in the bank once in a year. All my verticals who are managing these portfolios keep looking at because environment is dynamic. In between the year also if any change is mandated or they themselves want to give some differentiated preposition to the clients, they would keep doing that throughout the year. Beyond the product, we also see the process that we are following for onboarding customers. Customers once onboarded, whether on my digital channel or through the physical branch channel, are they conveniently able to bank with us, conveniently able to transact with us or are there any pain points to address? We keep looking on beyond products and see that our processes, how they can be improved, how they can be made more seamless, give a better experience to the customers. This is very consciously done product processes, and another differentiator, the bank is very consciously expanding into new geographies. We are a fast expanding bank. While you would have seen post the merger consolidations in 2020 in the industry, some of the large banks had gone for rationalization, and that typically was the logical step to do. Under that process, some branches had to be rationalized. We are a differentiated bank that for the last three years we've been actually opening branches, reaching out to new geographies, and ensuring that our presence makes us a pan India bank, which is sometime back already achieved. The branch expansion is still going on. For the next five years, we have a broad objective approved from our board to open 1,000 branches in five years. We have broken down this large objective to the next three years, and we have carved out a list of 321 branches. Project 321 is running in the bank, and passionately vertical is driving this objective that they are opening branches. If I tell you, the branches are opened in the potential growth centers of the country, and a lot of data has been used around to identify which is the center Bank of Maharashtra should be opening its presence and down to the pin code level. The study has indicated to us that this is where the growth is happening in the district. That's how you have to look at your expanding the presence. We have this objective of opening 321 branches in the next 18 months. A lot of planning has gone behind this. We have gone for recruitments to match the expanding needs. We have gone for recruitments in the specialized verticals. We have gone for taking care of specialized skill sets in the areas of improving the compliance, the governance, managing risk, the technology risk. All these have been very consciously looked at, and skill sets in these domains have been recruited in the bank, and they are actually put together. We are ensuring that the bank is not only growing but growing in a sustainable manner. Because today if you ask me, the regulator will not have a forbearance if you are found not growing a segment, not following the guidelines or the expectations from the regulator. We are very mindful of what the expectations from regulators are. Not only that, even if a draft set of guidelines are released, we quickly have an in-house system to look at what are the prospective set of guidelines that may come and whether my current functioning is addressing those concerns that are being flagged by the regulator. We start working on building the right setup if there is something found to be improved in our present set of working. That's how we are growing, fast expanding, and we are very mindful that the growth that we are looking at is not only in the top line growth, which is important for us. Any growth in the top line, correspondingly, how it impacts the bottom line and the various ratios, which we actually are leading in many of the parameters in the industry, in the growth parameters, in the financial ratios, profitability parameters. We lead the industry and typically we do a comparison every quarter. For March 2025, the full year performance, we looked at 25 metrics across growth, asset quality, NPA levels, profitability, ROA, ROE, NIM, numbers, capital adequacy, CET1, and so on, so forth. Out of 26 parameters, we were leading the industry in 18 parameters. We are not only comparing ourselves with the peers in the PSBs, all the PSBs and even large new generation private banks form part of that comparison. We submit this analysis every quarter to our board to also look at how the bank is performing. It is not only growing but growing sustainably, and also growth is with profitability. We are very mindful that the new business that we are acquiring, how it is impacting the bottom lines, and very consciously we have even taken calls to probably not onboard a new business where the bottom lines are not impacted favorably. We have taken a lot of initiatives, tried to differentiate ourselves. Technology is one focus area, and we are decided to not only come up with a new version of our mobile banking application, which today we all understand is a powerful medium of transactions for clients. Mobile banking, it's not a new version. We have taken this project on a fast track, and probably one month from now we will be revamping our existing mobile banking application and try to deliver a world-class kind of an experience through the new application that will be available. We feel that this will bring a lot of full traction to the core business. New clients in the personal segment will be attracted. We have got the regulator permission for opening a GIFT IBU and that project is approved to the bank in less than five months from the regulator when we made our request for allowing us the license. I think that is going to be one big enabler. GIFT City is getting a lot of emphasis, a lot of focus from the government also. For the last one and a half, two years, a lot of traction is seen and this should be the best time, the right time to see that we scale up our activities and operations. Within this five months, we have onboarded, the recruitment has been done wherever we wanted to have some extra skill sets and the best resources, tried to identify available in the market and onboard. The technology decision has been taken, which ideally takes six to seven months' time. We are also requesting our partner to help us start operations as soon as possible. This again will be a game changer, we feel, because it will open up a lot of opportunities, being the first global presence for the Bank of Maharashtra of 90 years. We will be able to participate in global syndications, we will be able to do ECB transactions for our good old corporate clients, and not only customer stickiness will enhance, we will be able to get new business opportunities for growth. That GIFT IBU should be in this year itself because we envisage in Q2 we will start booking business there. That's how we are moving. This is all broadly from my side. Maybe the performance presentation we have shared with the investors and maybe I'll take a pause and look at some questions or queries from your side. Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press STAR and one on your touchstone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press STAR and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question comes from the line of Rohan M with Icarus Securities. Please go ahead. Good afternoon sir. Thanks for the opportunity and congrats on good set of numbers sir. Want us to understand the NIM movement this quarter because you have done a good job on NIMs. On the yields, what was the benefit that came from MCLR repricing? How much was the impact from repo cut and what was the benefit of NIM exchange? Yes Rohan, if you see my last year guidance was to have a NIM of 3.75 but if you see last year Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 we were already having 3.97, 3.98, 3.98 and we closed the year with a 4 NIM. If you look at the guidance because this fact of rate cuts was well known and on expected lines, NIM guidance last year we have maintained despite doing 3.984 kind of number. My NIM guidance for this year is conservative again 3.75. If you look at NIM that we have achieved in the Q1 with the repo cut, my 40% of portfolio is linked to repo loans. Now I have to mandatorily pass the benefit which we have done immediately on the entire portfolio. The calculations were there, we were expecting around 18 to 19 bps as per the entire RBI rate cut that had to be passed on the 40% loan book. What has been other strategies that we have put in place? I will just like to mention those to see that my NIM contraction is not to that extent or how we can protect it. If you see my cost of deposits, it has actually come down sequentially. How it has happened is we have very consciously, during the last 10-12 months, we have not gone for high cost bulk deposits. Very consciously, strategically with the bulk deposit, when it is coming for renewal, we have not taken the renewal and we have focused entirely on the low cost. My CASA share when we closed the year is 53%. The guidance we are keeping to maintain above 50% and if you see by Q1 also it is above 50%. This is one big enabler. My average CASA has seen an improvement of 14 bps, 14% point year on year. Straight away the 18 bps of reduction in repo loans have been offset with this. The high CASA and very conscious strategy of not depending on high cost bulk to fuel my growth. That's how we have seen. Whereas probably the industry may see that kind of contraction, we have seen my NIM has come down to 3.95. Also we have still some leftover portfolio. My MCLR book is 55% now. That 55% in the last 12 months we had gone for MCLR raise 5-10 bps and over the 12 months almost 35 bps of MCLR raise happened. There is still one or two more quarters where some accounts reset will happen. These two factors put together, low cost deposit, that kitty of more than 50% and consciously doing away with bulk, high cost bulk and this little bit of MCLR resetting, remaining in accounts or happening in phases, this has actually cushioned my NIM contraction. I am mindful of maybe we can see with the benign inflation number, retail inflation is 2.% something and we may see further rate cuts. My guidance if you look at is 3.75% for the full year. I feel the kind of consciousness in terms of doing business growing fine, but growth with profitability, that kind of focus that we are having, this guidance we will definitely achieve for this year as well. Sure sir, this was helpful. On the yield also, despite the compression from repo, we have been able to maintain almost flattish Q-on-Q yield on loan advances. Does the MCLR movement explain the entire thing, or is there also a component of loan mix change? This quarter we have increased gold loans, we almost doubled that, and we have run down agri and MSME portfolio by almost 7% Q-on-Q. Did that also have an impact on the managing yield? Yield on advances has been 9.28% which is a healthy yield. I'll tell you a couple of things have worked to have this kind of profitability numbers. We are very consciously on the profitability and the pricing aspect in every transaction that we are doing. We have a T-bill linked rate product with us, board approved, and where we could have lent to Central PSUs, AAA corporates and built up our top line. Whatever exposure we had, we actually consciously, the product is there, but today we don't have any exposure in that. The segments, it's not that we are not mindful of quality. It is all investment grade and is what we are looking at. Consciously, any business, any new customer acquisition, if it is not impacting favorably the bottom line, we are not so willing to look at that. Sometimes out of sheer competition we will match. We also then try to look at how the relationship can be made profitable. If it is a vanilla credit, that relationship we are having, can we have some ancillary business from that corporate? Some of their payment collection requirements, can that be routed through us? Some fee-based income can come, some payroll business can come. We are very mindful on the profitability with every customer at transaction level. We have tried to drive this point in the field. Function is also essential. Part of my review now from this quarter, 17th, 18th, we have acquired some software which helps me to let the branch see how profitably they are operating. If they are growing, fine. It's not only the top line in this FY that we are going to review. We will see whether their growth at the branch, how the profitability has behaved. Bringing in that kind of consciousness in the field functionaries, I'm sure people will be more conscious at the ground level as well in terms of how they look at offering concessions, special rates, can they compensate any final rate with some ancillary business, and so on and so forth. This is how we are looking at this issue. Yes, with more rate cuts that can happen, my 40% loan book immediately gets repriced. We have kept, I think, conservative guidance despite even maintaining NIM for last four quarters above 3.95%. We are keeping a guidance of 3.75% which again is a very good number. In fact, with 3.75% we again lead the industry. The next number could be, if I'm not wrong, 3.5% or 3.6%. 3.5%. That's how we differentiate ourselves in this NIM metric also. Sure, sir. Lastly, we have added duration in the investment book in 1Q. I just wanted to understand your thought process for doing so, given that yields have fallen. Yeah. You know that when the RBI reduced the repo rate, but the market, they have not swum that and rates were pumped. We were knowing that going forward the RBI is further going to do the rate cut. We have purchased longer term duration security in GTAC and HDL also in order to maintain yield or to protect our yield. That is the thing that it has impacted the hour ambulation. The whole idea is that and protect the yield, and going forward when the rate, there will be rate cut, we can take the benefit of the market. Thank you. You want to add anything, Divesh? Yeah. When we have purchased when the yield was on the harder side and now rates are coming down, cooling down, there will be the good appreciation. Even return from the book will be the good and efficient. You see that we are sitting on the appreciation of roughly INR 600 crore, and same is the case of STM. Going forward you will see that some of the appreciation will come in the form of the. To improve the probability of. Thank you. Mr. Rohan, please rejoin the queue for more questions. Next question comes from the line of Suraj Das with Sundaram Mutual Funds. Please go ahead. Hello. Am I audible? Yes, Suraj, please go on. We can hear you. Yeah, hi. Hi sir. Thanks. Thanks for the opportunity. Sir, I think I'll follow up with the previous question only of Rohan. I think last quarter your 40% of the loan was linked to repo. Now I guess your transmission of the repo rate cut would be immediate, which would be T+1. 40% of the portfolio seeing something like 75 to 100 basis point rate cut, but still your yields are intact. What is the rest? I mean mathematics are here. If you can just explain beyond the, I mean whatever you have mentioned. Because if you transmit 75 to 100 basis point on the 40% of the portfolio, it would be something like 30 to 40 basis point kind of a yield decline, but your yields are intact on a QOQ basis. As I mentioned, in terms of pricing our loan offerings, we are very mindful of that. The emphasis is always that business is happening and profitable business is happening. Growth is with profit, profitability with that kind of a philosophy. Today, when a proposal is brought to a committee of the Board or my committee or my ED's committee or CGM's committee or GM's committee in Head Office, I am talking about, they are all mindful and very consciously looking at this aspect. It is not just growing the portfolio. We have kept our aspirations to become a bank of greater significance, to grow in terms of our ranking among the 12 PSBs. That's an aspiration. We are not going mindlessly, you know, taking top line growth and not looking at how it is impacting the bottom line. We have also done a couple of things around. Beyond this CASA, maybe I can, we have looked at these co-lending opportunities. We started off the year with around two NBFCs where we had done some co-lending, and we have developed some advanced technology where the entire transaction of disbursements, collections, validating of payments is taken care of by technology in a seamless manner. We are, through proper integrations with the IT of the NBFC. Today, we have nine partnerships. Here again, we are leveraging on their strength, their reach to areas, geographies where we are not present in the segments. Suppose it is gold. They have been doing this kind of activities for decades. They have their robust audit mechanism, robust recovery mechanism. When I am doing the business from the branch, same business, gold loan, versus when we are doing co-lending partnerships, we are able to charge 100 bps more there. That kind of things are actually, somebody mentioned, I think I skipped. Their gold loan portfolio has grown 58% of year-on-year growth in the gold book. We had put the focus in the last beginning of the year itself. Gold loan has grown, and we have taken care of the associated risk that are there in the business. Only after putting in place the entire system of safekeeping of pledged jewelry, the valuation, the two critical components. Once we have set that infra in place, we have gone ahead and done that business in large manner. In co-lending, we are getting more, better yield, better returns, better pricing. Maybe you like. Suraj, you see last year we have reached MSR 35 BPL and that increase in number will be applicable at the time of reset with that annual reset. Number of resets happen after the repo cut. That's why despite the reduction in repo, increase in MCLR and such reset, it has protected our yields. Sure, sir. That's very helpful. Sir, while your cost of deposit has come down, I think your cost of fund has not. That is also partly because your borrowings have increased. Is this opportunistic in nature, or could it be strategic also that you are replacing your bulk deposit with some of the borrowings this year? If you can give some rationale there. Surat sir, what you are saying is cost of deposit has come down by 15 bps. I just mentioned and we discussed cost of funds also have come down 4 bps, not as sharp as the cost of deposit. Overall, cost of funds have come down 4 bps. Yes, there was a conscious strategy to look at other options of refinance or raising resources funds through infrastructure bonds and those kind of enablers, provided approvals from the beginning of the year. Also, we have gone to board and taken at appropriate time. We will keep doing these raises to see that overall borrowings and cost of funds and things are remaining under control. Our NIM is getting favorably impacted through such measures. We will keep very mindful of those things to not or less depend or not depend at all on high cost bulk and look at other options to raise resources. To answer Suraj, if you see, though there may be higher cost in respect of raising the alternate resources, looking to the benefit involved in respect of the exemption from CRR and SLR cost and the ability to directly divert such fund to the advances where the margins on higher sides, it has improved. It has positive impact on our NIM. Thank you, Mr. Das. Please rejoin the queue for more questions. A reminder to all the participants that you may please distinguish yourself for two questions. Next question comes from the line of Ashok Ajmera with Ajkan Global. Please go ahead. Thank you for the opportunity. Compliments Nidhu sir and the entire team of Bank of Maharashtra. First, for coming out so fast with the results on the 15th. I think you are probably the first bank which shows, like, you know, your accounting, your corporate governance, and your entire CFO and team deserve rich compliments for this team. Having said this, sir, you have also maintained the NIM in spite of the pressure of the rate cut, you know, like, and not passing on the entire interest to the borrowers. Still, you maintain your NIM, brother. It's a good name, sir. Compliments for the same. Also, having said that, sir, this quarter, though a lean quarter and a needed quarter, I think for the first time in the last three years we have gone into the negative business growth. I think the last was June 2022, which is for the first time, I think, in what, 12 quarters or so. Coupled with that, my question is that you still maintain the trading guidance of 17% which you had given for FY26, deposit 14%, CASA about 15%. In any cases, there are. Do you think that looking at the performance of this quarter you will be able to maintain the same guidance and achieve the numbers, or you would like to revise the guidance on the business growth and the credit growth especially? This is the first. Ajmeraji, thank you for complimenting my team. Yes, they are working really hard. Every vertical is putting in their best efforts and you would have seen traction in every segment of the bank. Bank is business and other issues, other activities. How we are looking at ramping up our HR, how we are looking at ramping up our other infrastructure which is going to support our growth. Our expansion needs new branch opening, so every vertical is doing that. Thank you, they deserve the compliment. As regards, I think there is some error in understanding. This quarter also has seen a year-on-year growth of 15% in total business which has gone up to INR 5.46 lakh crore and we have added INR 70,000 crore. Maybe somewhere total business we are growing. There is not a single parameter. In fact, business alone is, as I said, not important. You look at asset quality, you look at profitability metrics, ROA, ROE, you look at capital adequacy, you look at the stress numbers. You will see for the last 36 months, 48 months, if you plot a graph it will be a consistent performance. There is no single quarter where we will see spike up or down. This quarter also in terms of business it is there and what is actually supporting, I already explained the new geographies that we are entering into. That also, new branches are adding annual business to the bank kitty and for 500 branches in the last three years, 120 in the last whole year and this Project 321. I think the pace of growth with the new branch, new geographies, new markets that we are going to enter gives GIFT City. I view that alone holds a huge potential. I think growth will not be a challenge at all. We will have to keep looking at which are the profitable opportunities and how to reach out to them and how to see in this era of competition how we can differentiate ourselves. Sometimes through pricing, sometimes through quick decisioning, sometimes just to differentiate ourselves by the reach out, how we reach out to the top rated borrowers and how we completely understand their financial needs and deliver them. That's how we will keep differentiating and growth guidance that we have kept, total business to grow at for this year also 15%. I see there will be no challenge in doing that. Advances within which will grow at 17%, deposit we have kept a guidance of 14%. Point well taken, sir. A few data points and some clarification and explanation. This quarter we had a little higher slippage of INR 727 crore as compared to the last quarter. Our SMA2 numbers also have gone up to INR 171 crore as compared to INR 40 crore in the last quarter, which is a little bit of a cause of concern because the numbers have gone up substantially high. On this too, I would like to know something about the profitability which has gone to the results of the AFS stock because there is a gap of INR 226 crore. I mean there's an addition if you look at the net worth of June and March, I think INR 226 crore. What was the profit figure which has gone to the reserves on account of the treasury operations? Treasury otherwise also performed very well. If you look at the segment-wise, the treasury profit for the quarter is INR 625 crore income as against INR 360 crore. These are the few data points and some explanations. Sure. Divesh, you answered the treasury part. You answered SMA too. Ajmeraji, INR 727 crore of slippages. Yes. Within which, if you look at, you ask me INR 343 crore. So 47% of that slippage has come from the agri segment. What we have done is, what we have looked at, this is the trend we have seen in Q1 for the past couple of years, three to four years. The agri segment, because of the cyclical nature, is finding a slippage in Q1. Since we are aware, we have very consciously looked at how fast, how quick these slippages, either if not arrested, how can their accounts be updated. I am happy to share, last year during this 15 days we upgraded INR 100 crore. We have already upgraded to INR 40 crore from this fresh slippage. As I said, agri, which is a cyclical kind of thing, I don't see major concern emanating here because if you see the monsoon prediction, if you see how monsoon has already reached, I think the agri segment is going to have good prospect for this season as well. With overall prospects favorable, I think the agri segment challenge that typically is seen in Q1 is not going to impact much this year the way it would have done last year. Divesh, you can take. Yes, sir, treasury, there are three major components which have contributed. One is that domestic profit, so it has increased from Q1 of INR 2,537 crore to INR 141 crore. We had some maturities where we booked that this particular quarter and we also had this opportunity to book profit in mutual funds, which was not there in Q1 of FY25. So INR 104 crore added through domestic profit additional Q1Q forex. Also, as you know, the market has been a little active and we could book better forex profit from trading and that has added to almost INR 40 crore. These are the major additions you are talking about in terms. Of the treasury income growth to supplement diversity, what you rightly said that in respect to AFS, you know, further epic season in this quarter, it has gone to the result directly. It will go to result, not to profit and loss draw. That has also added to our capital. As much as the MD sir already gives some response on the agricultural slippages, I will tell you that the agriculture season is this type good. There are some review renewal delayed happened in some of the zones. Definitely, that review renewal once done, then again, whatever slippages are there, we will definitely recover it. Coming to the SMA level, the observation you have taken for the SMA2 42,171, but if you see the SMA1, it gone from the 24,014 to 114, so it came down by INR 1 billion from SMA1. Some accounts shifted from the SMA1 to SMA2, and it will always happen. It will be rolled back sometime, it will roll forward also, so definitely we will take care. If you see our slippages and the total stress on the book every year and every quarter, it is in improving stage. One more thing, as me between SMA1 and SMA2, if you see historically, this figure has been more or less equally divided, so some distortion here and there happens, but it's not just something which is alarming, and team is on the job. Our slippages will remain under control. Thank you. Mr. Ajmera, please rejoin the queue for more questions. Next question comes from the line of Akshay Badlani with HDFC Securities. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you for taking my question. The first question is more on the strategic side. I think whenever we see our MSME NPAs, overall asset quality in the MSME book, it stands out compared to other PSU banks. What are we doing separately or what are we doing differently compared to other PSU banks that our underwriting has been superior for quite some time now when we compare it to other PSU banks? We are very, very conscious on quality. As I said in the beginning, we have aspirations to grow. We have numbers also in mind. I don't mind if it takes two more quarters extra to reach that milestone of growth. We are very conscious that the loan book that is getting generated, created, how it is, we are actually making it is prime borrowers or what kind of segment we are lending to. If you ask me, not only in MSME, we have strengthened our underwriting benchmark standards. The bank has been growing fast. Even if I give you an example for a retail segmented loan, no underwriting, not a single loan under any scheme is permitted for an individual if the credit score is below 681. We have linked our underwriting statement standard to TransUnion CIBIL, and below 681 is their definition of a subprime. We are not lending. We have restricted completely for the last 10-12 months even if it restricts my growth. A lot of things that we did around products, the processes, I think we have not seen that pain coming in. Our growth has only gone up. The differentiator in MSME that we are trying to do and we have successfully done also is to reach out with quick decisioning. I am able to, because the ground realities are, if I am able to convey my decision, customers can happily, we can negotiate and charge a premium to our good and fast and quick decisioning. 25 basis more I can charge. This is what philosophy we work with and we do the reach out to the right segment borrowers and identify them. We have put in place some cluster schemes where we give some special enablers with pricing or otherwise also, and the CMR scores we have kept below which we don't underwrite in MSME also. These kind of strengthening of underwriting benchmarks is ensuring that what enters in my system in the loan book is a borrower which is of some prime category kind of a borrower. This is again going to help me, not now only, there are no kick mortality numbers. In times to come, one year, two years, we will see that my loan book, even if there is a cycle and the cycle has to reverse, the philosophy we have is we should not be seen the worst hit if the system goes down. I am not out of system, but I will be not the first to be hit because that's how we are building our loan book consciously of prime borrowers. I think it partly does answer your question. The philosophy has been like this in past also. In 12 months we have been more consciously strengthened our underwriting standards to make sure that what we are saying is happening in a better measure. Understood sir. Thank you. The second question is around the OpEx intensity. I think this quarter we have added around 850 plus employees. You mentioned in your opening remarks as well that we are focusing on recruiting newer equipment and higher equipment. My question is where exactly are we recruiting now? How has it changed vis-a-vis earlier, how we used to recruit or from which segments we used to recruit? When I see the OpEx for this quarter, it's not reflective of the additions that we have made in the employees and branches. So. Is that impact going to kick in in the next few quarters or is it something else? Understood. I mean I will explain. If you look at my cost-to-income, cost-to-income last year was 38 point something. We have closed this year, even this quarter, at 37.57. Guidance is to maintain cost-to-income below 40%. This parameter again is one of the parameters where we lead in the industry. Even if I am maintaining it below 40%, I will be best in the industry. Despite having 38%, 37% kind of cost-to-income, my guidance is kept to maintain below 40%. Knowing that when I am going for this fast-paced recruitment, there is some likely increase in the employee cost that will happen. I will try to maintain below 40%. If you see, it is not happening actually and I will tell you the reason behind it. We have a robust recruitment plan for supporting this massive branch expansion. The entire branch opening and recruitment is not happening on day zero. It is going to come in phases. Today, when I am going to open my branches and I am saying potential growth centers, we will see that these branches are turning around also fast. Once I do some OpEx around the new branch opening and if I am at the right location, incrementally, what revenue they will generate for me will be more than offsetting the cost that will be experienced. The third thing is we have opened 500 branches in the last three years. The branches that were opened three years from now are all profitable as per our parameter. That's how we will see that those which were opened two years from now, around 50% have already turned profitable. We will see gradually what we opened in the last 12 months, by the next 12 months they are open. That's the point I am trying to make. First of all, this big change of recruitment, big change of new branch opening is not happening overnight. It is coming in a staggered phase manner. We have kept a defined timeline and recruitment is also matching that part. At least for the last 12 months, I have seen my cost-to-income has not gone up. My guidance for FY25-26 is also to maintain it below 40%. I strongly feel that we will be able to maintain it. Sure. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Abhishek Kothari with Aviva India. Please go ahead. Sir, you have a plan of QIP this year. Could you timeline the same as to when would you be raising funds? Sorry sir, please repeat. Fundraising, equity fundraising. Sir, you have a board approval of QIP. By when is it going to be likely? In which quarter? Right, pardon me, did not get your question in the first place, but as of now, last year we did a GUI dilution, we achieved 7%, we did an equity raise. Today my CRAR stands at 20.5%. It is a healthy CRAR that I'm maintaining. We have kept the guidance, these are the best times. This is what regulator says to maintain it at reasonably high levels to see that we are adequately cushioned to meet any cyclical downturn. That is what the regulator overall guidance keeps coming in that these are the best times, you should create cushions and buffers. We have kept a guidance to maintain CRAR at around 18%. There is no immediate case for me to go and raise capital, number one. Number two, last year we came down from 86 to 79.6. So 7% dilution has brought me below 80. Optics have changed, it is just a mere 4.6 if I have to meet the SEBI regulation. What will happen when we will do that? At opportune time and opportune mode, we have taken no decisions on that part. We have done a lot of investor engagement. That is as a matter of our sacrosanct duty to the investors. Last 12 months we have been meeting investors both domestic, foreign, covering all markets. Those who are invested with us. As of today I have a board approval. We have taken board approval for raising INR 7,500 crore debt plus equity. At the opportune time and opportune mode we will look at this option also. Okay. This quarter you explained that your slippage ratio was slightly higher due to agri portfolio. A normalized slippage ratio guidance for FY 2026 as well as credit cost guidance. Slippage guidance is to maintain it within 1, below 1, and credit cost 1%. If you look at my provision coverage ratio, provision coverage stands at 98.36%. With this high level of provision coverage ratio that we are maintaining, the aging provision pressure is hardly there. With the fine NNPA that we are maintaining, my guidance of NNPA is 0.2% to 0.25%. My NNPA number is 0.18% for the last two quarters, March as well as June this year. This is the guidance that I am keeping for both the metrics that you asked. Thank you, sir. That's it from my side. Thank you. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Bhavik Shah with Incred Capital. Please go ahead. Hello. Hi. Sir, congrats on very good numbers. Just new question, sir. What would be our outstanding AFS reserve as on the 5th June? AFS reserve. If you see that it is which we have transferred to capital is around INR 497 crore. Yeah, that would be slow. Right. What would be outstanding amount? That would be outstanding amount INR 290 million. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sir, have we transferred 5% of held to maturity? Have we sold that? I guess we don't need approval to sell that, right? Yeah, till that, we have not exercised that option. Do you plan to do that over the course of the year? Pardon? Okay. You plan to do that over the course of the official 2026. At appropriate time we will take the decision because we are having appreciation AFS. We will see that it is required or not depending upon the yield movement. Okay. Understood. The last question, sir. Within the staff cost, what would be the employee provisioning this quarter versus last quarter as 15? Provision as 15, provisioning roughly INR 220. INR 220. Okay answer. What was in last quarter? I think INR 240 crore. 240 crore. Okay. Okay. Under success. Thank you so much, sir. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Asheesh Pandey with Kotak Securities. Please go ahead. Hi team. Good afternoon and congratulations. First question is on your MCLR-linked loan book. Can you share what was the average yield on the MCLR-linked loan book in this quarter and previous quarter? MCLR, we have around 55%, which is a high number that gives a definite advantage when we compare with other lenders in the industry. Their MCLR share is not as high as ours. There is a lot of scope to grow the retail book. You can explain. I'm still undinked if you see that average yield on that 9.75 will come. Sir, what was the number in the previous quarter? Previous quarter, I'm not remembering, but it will be around 9.75% to 9.80%. Can we find that out and tell in the meeting or we can share? Suppose the meeting is going to close, it's fine. Kotak Securities, please take a note that we share the number. What was the last quarter MCLR yield and what is this quarter MCLR yield? No problem, sir. Secondly, what proportion of the MCLR linked loan book is yet to be repriced to the higher rate? We kept this exercise at the, because MCLR goes by calculation, and during the 10-12 months, with every review that is taken monthly in the ALCO, this decision has been taken. CRO, you can add something. Yeah. See, last year, last one year, remaining to be real prices for 5 basis points. One of the components of MCLR is the cost of deposits and also the market dynamics. We had to reduce the market dynamics and also try to take it how it has been done. Generally, that is one month links. Our MCLR, you see that one year link MCLR is around 70%, so that is the main thing to that. Considering this inject from the market revenue and the cost of deposits. Just to add to what CROs told. Whatever raise we would have done, the repricing of that particular is going to have on the reset date, which is an annual exercise. There will be a couple of accounts and I think one or two more quarters where this repricing in the MCLR loan book is going to still happen. That advantage actually has worked in some way to even ensure that we have not lost on our NIM number. The way the calculations had shown, NIM has come down from 4 to 3.95 only. Still, one or two more quarters if that explains or answers your question. We have a portfolio of MC yet to be repriced. You can say that 20% to 30% it is yet to be repriced. As you see that from March 2021 we started increasing the MCLR, so 20% to 30% it has to be repriced. Understood, sir. Sir, just lastly, your agri loan book is down 8% QQ and your gold loan books, on the other hand, have increased. Has there been any reclassification of gold loans from agri to retail? Along with that, can you explain why the MSME book is also down 7% QOQ? Fully agree, MSME. This agri book. If you see that ATL gold loan that has decreased by near about 8%, that is because of that RBI guidelines for the not to take as a collateral amount less than INR 200,000. Because of that we have reclassified this agri to the retail gold loan. Because of that there is a decrease of 8%. However, if you see that recent RBI guidelines where they have allowed that such a loan can be taken agri after taking the voluntary for the customer, again it will come back to our agri portfolio. Sir, on the MSME book, that is down 7%. That is a corporate has come to MSME now around. 1,031 crore MSME is down. MSME, I'll tell you, MSME, I mentioned about co-lending partnerships. We have gone ahead and done some co-lending with the whole loan NBFCs also, and in my co-lending book, sizable amount of business also with the gold loan NBFCs, and this is all the lending to them, to all the shopkeepers, small traders, and the ones which are actually MSME. Because of the clarity in the regulatory guidelines, this co-lending portion which was gold loan NBFC with NBFC and getting classified as MSME advance, we have reversed that. I can share this is also a matter of discussion, like RBI has issued for up to INR 200,000. This circular has already been released two days back that if the MSME or the agri borrower has taken the loan for their agri or the MSME activity, that can be, that will be a priority sector advance, PSL advance. We will take review of this reclassification up to INR 200,000. We can now go ahead. We will do that. This is only a two days old guideline, I think. Two days, two days old. We will review this segment because now RBI has come out with this clarification and whatever rightfully we had been doing. If you ask me, in the co-lending, INR 3,500 crore kind of the exposure we have with the gold loan various NBFCs, now entire was MSME which has moved to non-priority retail. We will again have a relook. CRO is examining these guidelines and the guidance will come from him, and the business vertical will take the call and we will reverse this as entitled by the RBI clarification. I think that's all. Just one last clarification. This gold loan and MSME, which you can now again classify, that would be both of them will be able to classify as PSL now from here on. Absolutely there is a limit, sir. Limit is up to INR 2 lakhs. If you ask me, the average ticket size of the gold loan NBFCs, unlike public banks, they are funding to the small segment shopkeepers, which are MSME borrowers. Micro segment, their ticket size is INR 45,000 to 50,000, so comfortably we will be able to do that. The CRO is examining, and they will come back with the complete guidance, and the vertical will do that. Regarding other than gold loan, this MSME, agri, both are for this year for us a focus segment. We have done some special initiative of creating separate verticals in both of these two segments, agri as well as MSME. There is a separate General Manager heading independently these verticals, and they will have a lot of to-do list and a lot of strategy already implemented, wherein we will be now targeting for MSME in agri advance investment credit and some large ticket, medium ticket business, which will qualify for MSME as well as an agri loan. We have given them enablers, some special schemes wherein some special pricing offers are there, but of course, the borrower needs to be, it's not available to one and all. They must have some level of credit rating, and they will be reaching out again. We have formed clusters, and these clusters will be approached by my branches, zone managers, also from Head Office team in a very focused manner. Go and visit and talk to the clients there in a cluster, textile cluster, if there are hundred units in one cluster, we will contact the top ten, twelve borrowers with this kind of special offering and bring them in our fold. That's a very conscious strategy that we have planned to grow MSME and agriculture this year, and I'm sure we will wait for one more quarter, and we will see that numbers really looking up. Thank you, sir. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Due to time constraints, we have reached the end of the question and answer session. I would now like to hand the conference over to Sri Nidhu Saxena for closing comments. I think we had a detailed discussion. I only want to thank everyone for joining the investor call. Bank of Maharashtra has been trying to not only perform but to reach out with this performance consistently. Not at every quarter close with our quarterly performance that we try to engage and talk to you. We are doing it in between the quarters also. There is a vertical again and Bank of Maharashtra today has positions of Chief General Manager and this vertical of capital raising is headed by a Chief General Manager. We are consciously engaging with the entire community at large in terms of who are the brokers who are going to cover my script, my company. We will keep, of course, performing consistently to give the comfort that whenever we do plan for a capital raise at the opportune time using opportune mode, we continue to get the patronage and with our own merits and sustainable performance. We will come back to you at the right time when we do that exercise also. Thanks from my side for joining the call. Thank you. Thank you on behalf of Bank of Maharashtra. That concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.