TBC Bank Group PLC (TBCG) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Thank you, everybody, for joining our first quarter results call today. As usual, I'm joined on the call by our Group CEO, Vakhten Boutskiri-Kidze, our Group CFO, Georgi Megrelishvili, and our Head of International, Oliver Hughes. We'll start with a presentation and then we'll go to Q&A. And with that, I'll hand over to Vakhten. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I am pleased to present our results for the first quarter. We made a good start to the year delivery. Group's net profit of L365 million, up by 15% year-on-year, with return of equity of 23.4%. Georgia had another strong and consistent quarter, with net profit of L362 million, up by 14% year-on-year, and return of equity of 24.1%. helped by a decent start to the year in lending as loans rose by 12% year-on-year. In Uzbekistan, as we had previously guided, we continued to recalibrate our loan book in the first quarter, which impacted our revenues and overall profitability, but net profit was still up by 14% year-on-year, with double-digit return of equity. But we continue to successfully diversify our loan book, including building out our business lending with more than $150 million portfolio and we see a very good momentum across our core verticals and product pipeline. Overall, following the first quarter, I believe our growth outlook for the full year remains on track. Turning now to Georgia. Georgia's economy continues to post dynamic growth, with real GDP growth accelerating to 9.1% in the first quarter. As elsewhere in the world, the Middle East conflict has impacted inflation, which has ticked up to 4.3% in March. In response to today, the National Bank of Georgia has raised the refinance rate by 25 bps to 8.25%. Reflecting this strong start to the year f...