Turkiye Is Bankasi AS
IST:ISCTR.E
Turkiye Is Bankasi AS
Born from the ashes of a nascent republic in 1924, Türkiye İş Bankası A.Ş. stands as an emblem of economic revitalization and progress in Turkey. As the brainchild of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the bank was established to spearhead the economic independence of a nation freshly freed from the shackles of foreign dominion. Over the decades, the institution has grown from its humble beginnings into one of Turkey's leading financial powerhouses. It operates a vast network of branches, both domestically and internationally, providing comprehensive financial services ranging from retail and corporate banking to advisory and asset management. This integration allows the bank to tailor a broad array of financial products to meet the varying needs of its diverse clientele, from individuals to large corporations.
Türkiye İş Bankası primarily generates revenue through traditional banking activities, such as interest income from loans, which remains its core economic driver. It lends to individuals and businesses, accumulating interest over time, and subsequently pays interest on its deposits. This interest rate differential, or net interest margin, is crucial to its financial health. Besides, the bank diversifies its revenue streams through fee-based services including transaction processing, foreign exchange transactions, and financial advisory roles. This multifaceted approach not only mitigates risk but also enriches its financial robustness, enabling Türkiye İş Bankası to maintain a resilient position within both domestic and international markets. With a commitment to innovation and an eye on digital transformation, the bank continues to evolve, ensuring it stays ahead in the competitive financial landscape.
Earnings Calls
In 2024, Isbank demonstrated resilience with a 40% increase in Turkish lira loans, driven mainly by SMEs, while maintaining a solid asset quality with an NPL ratio of approximately 2%. The bank anticipates a robust performance in 2025, projecting a net interest margin (NIM) expansion of 450 basis points to reach 4%. Fee income surged 115% in 2024, with expectations to sustain around 50% growth this year. Operating expenses were controlled, aligning with inflation. With a balanced focus on strategic sectors and efficient operations, Isbank is well-positioned to capitalize on the anticipated economic recovery.
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome all to Isbank's 2024 financial results and 2025 guidance audio webcast. Our presenters are Ms. Izlem Erdem, Chief Economist and Deputy CEO, responsible for IR and Sustainability and Ms. Nilgun Yosef Osman, Head of IR and Sustainability.
[Operator Instructions] Now I hand over to our presenters.
Thank you, Ozge. Welcome all to our webcast in which we will present our 2024 financial results and expectations for 2025. This is Izlem speaking. Thank you all for joining.
Before dialing into our financial performance, I would like to briefly summarize the macro environment we were operating in and provide a color on the macroeconomic outlook of 2025.
In the fourth quarter of 2024, annual inflation continued to decelerate while CBRT cut the policy rate by 250 basis points in December. Thus, a rate cut has already started. CBRT emphasizes that the policy rate will be determined in a way to ensure the tightness required by the projected disinflation path, taking into account realized and expected inflation as well as the underlying trend. The rebalancing of economic activity continued in the last quarter of 2024. Tight monetary policy had a greater impact on industrial production than on demand. Throughout the year, production figures indicated a downward trend, while demand indicators also showed signs of momentum lost to some extent.
The continued improvement in the current account outlook and reserve accumulation also indicated that the economy's vulnerabilities were being reduced. The current account deficit to GDP ratio is expected to fall below 1% in 2024, which is significantly lower than the previous year. In addition, CBRT continued to accumulate reserves, which have reached historical highs. Moreover, the budget debt-to-GDP ratio was realized in line with the MTP's forecast.
Based on recent inflation data and our expectations for the rate cut cycle to continue, we anticipate GDP growth to be realized around 3.5%. While our annual CPI inflation expectation is 27%, we foresee the policy rate to come down to 30% by the end of the year. Considering the improving current account outlook, strong reserve accumulation and the expected disinflation, we maintain our forecast for a real appreciation of the Turkish lira throughout this year.
In the next page, we have our 2024 realizations versus the guidance we shared. Throughout the year, we have been discussing the challenges regarding the margin management posed by the operating and regulatory environment. Elevated funding costs due to tight monetary policy, both in the form of additional policy rate hike and quantitative measures put significant pressure on our net interest margin. As for net interest margin, we have left the worst behind as of Q4, thanks to continuous asset repricing, and we started to post a positive swap adjusted net interest margin.
For the rest of the guidance items, we have continued to register quite strong results. Fee income has always been one of our main focal points. Concentrating our efforts in this area, we have consistently enhanced our performance, obtaining better results in every year. Consequently, we achieved another strong annual fee income increase around 115% outperforming our target again.
We have controlled our OpEx growth at around average CPI inflation level, staying at the lowest level among peers with our continuous focus on intense cost discipline. Please note that we have achieved this outcome in a year in which we have many value-adding projects for developing of the country on our 100th anniversary. Needless to say, as a result of our accomplished customer relations through our widespread network, prudent underwriting approach, deep expertise in credit analytics and historic leadership in collections, we continue to have the best asset quality metrics among peers. Last but not least, capitalization was also intact.
On the next page, we have the major P&L items as well as the profitability and efficiency indicators. In the fourth quarter of 2024, support of asset repricing in net interest income became more apparent, and we managed to increase our swap adjusted net interest income by a remarkable 126% on a quarterly basis, registering the highest improvement in peer group by far. As I mentioned, thanks to our sustained efforts, outstanding net fee income generation continued registering a quarterly increase of 8%, carrying the annual growth to 115%.
OpEx was flat compared to previous quarter and year-over-year increase was in line with both average CPI inflation and our guidance. We will delve into the details of this in the relevant slide, but for now, I will just reiterate that we have outperformed all our peers with this performance. At the end of the year, fees coverage of operating expenses increased to a strong 83% and cost to average asset ratio stayed at 3.8%. On the other hand, our return on equity in 2024 stood at 16% as a result of significant pressure on net interest margin.
Now we can touch upon the pillars of our strategy that will positively differentiate us in 2025. In terms of lending, we will continue to be selective and focus on gaining further market share in key sectors and segments, such as SMEs, exports, tourism, agriculture and other sustainable financing areas. Please also note that these areas are exempted from monthly growth caps as they are prioritized by the regulator and as Isbank, we have proven ourselves in growing in these prioritized areas as exceptional loans have become 70% of our total Turkish lira launch.
We believe that our balance sheet is better positioned for the year ahead. As you know, in an interest rate cut cycle, funding costs will immediately reflect each and every rate cut from CBRT. On the other hand, in line with our selective lending strategy that focused mainly on SME financing, we were able to lengthen maturities during 2024. Therefore, we believe that our assets will be subject to downward repricing with a time lag that covers the duration gap in Turkish lira lending and deposit funding. So we anticipate to post the highest NIM expansion in the peer group. Needless to say, we will sustain our proactive and agile balance sheet management approach in the period.
Considering the high volume of reserve requirements, we will benefit from any potential easing on the quantitative side. However, we haven't assumed any easing in existing reserve requirements level in our guidance. So this might be seen as an upside potential for us. Relying on our traditional strengths and expertise with regard to customer relations, underwriting, credit modeling and collections, we will continue to differentiate ourselves positively in terms of asset quality metrics.
We believe that we still have a strong potential to increase our fee generation capacity. Therefore, we will continue to keep our fee growth above the average annual inflation, which we expect to be around 33% and have a revenue increase in real terms. Ongoing efforts to diversify the type and scope of fee-based services on digital channels coupled with new customer acquisition will be supporting the fee growth going forward. Along with the contribution of digitalization, we have potential to further improve our efficiency metrics by maintaining cost control and benefiting from optimized headcount.
On top of this, we will continue to focus on enhancing the synergy and efficiency of the participation portfolio, which is a significant contributor to our diversified revenue base. We still have several projects to promote effective management of our participations. We believe that ongoing optimization and streamlining in this portfolio will reinforce our performance as a group.
Now, I leave the floor to Nilgun for the details of the bank's performance.
Thank you, Izlem. Welcome, all, and thank you for joining the webcast. In this slide, you can see the main balance sheet items. In the fourth quarter, we strategically managed our selective loan growth, taking into account monthly limitations and mainly concentrating on lengthening maturities, which will continue to support our loan yields in the ongoing rate cut cycle. Largest driver of the increase in the last quarter was particularly SME loans, which is one of our focus areas. While maintaining our prudent and selective lending approach, our annual TL loan growth reached 40%.
On a dollar basis, annual growth in FX loans stood at around 21%. On the FX side, our growth mostly stemmed from the export business. At the same time, tourism continues to be a key area for us. On the funding side, we maintained our concentration on widespread granular core deposit base. There was around 38% annual growth in TL deposits while FX deposits declined by 2%. Needless to say, we maintain the largest demand deposit base among private banks. As of the end of 2024, 41% of our deposit base is comprised of demand deposits, providing substantial support to our funding cost base. Moreover, core deposits that are sticky in nature make up around 74% of total deposits.
Moving on to the next slide. In 2025, we expect the loan growth to originate mainly from TL side, especially from the SME lending, which aligns with the framework of regulations and monetary stance. We will maintain our selective lending approach, as always. Our expectation for TL loan growth is around 35%, while we are expecting a moderate increase of around 10% on the FX side. Export financing and tourism will be the areas that we will continue to prioritize. By offering tailored solutions and leveraging our expertise, we expect to continue to gain market share in these selected segments. On the funding side, we anticipate increase in lira deposits to be in line with TL loan growth.
Next slide showcases a number of our achievements in targeted sectors in 2024. As we have been sharing with yourselves, SME lending is a strategic priority for Isbank, where we have a unique strength and expertise. We will get into the details in the asset quality slide. This is an area in which we have not only a robust market presence, but the healthiest asset quality metrics, thanks to our cherry picking and collection capabilities as well as extensive customer data.
As such, in 2024, we have been able to increase our market share significantly in this segment despite relatively high competition. As of the year-end, our market shares in line with BRSA definition, both for cash and noncash SME loans among private banks stand above 20% with remarkable increases. Noncash SME lending provides considerable support to our fee base as well. We have also been emphasizing our concentration on export business. Our efforts in this field are turning into concrete results. In total export lending, the market share we gained during the last year was close to 6 percentage points reinforcing our leadership position among private banks with an outstanding market share of 31%.
As of the year-end, nearly 40% of our FX lending consists of export loans, a strong indication of low risk structure of our FX loan portfolio. The growth of export loans in FX also helped us shorten the average maturity of FX loans.
On the next page, we have the NIM and spread evolution. In the fourth quarter, margin recovery continued. We posted 122 basis points NIM expansion in the last quarter on top of improvement in the third quarter and closed the year in the positive territory. In 2025, throughout the year, the gradual rate cut cycle will provide a strong improvement in generating net interest income, thanks to our well-positioned and strategically designed balance sheet. Accordingly, we expect to have the highest NIM expansion of 450 basis points within our peer group with an exit margin of 6%, carrying our full year NIM to around 4%.
As of the end of December, share of securities in total assets was 19.7%. We have increased TL fixed income securities by 36% annually, in line with our proactive positioning, which enabled us to consistently maintain our robust share at 44%. Despite the downward trend in inflation, we continue to benefit from CPI linker revenues with another TRY 14 billion interest income in the fourth quarter. As you know, we are using 12 months ahead CPI expectations for the valuation of our CPI linkers portfolio. Therefore, as the expectations have a smoother trend compared to headline inflation, we are benefiting from stable and consistent revenue stream from this portfolio. Going forward, expected decline in CPI will not have a major negative impact on our revenue generation capacity compared to other methods used in the sector.
On the next page, we have external funding and liquidity indicators. FX LCR was again at comfortable levels with 280%. FX wholesale funding continued to be an integral part of our efforts to maintain an optimal mix on the liability side in order to manage the maturity profile efficiently and diversify our funding sources. ESG remained a priority in FX wholesale funding so that we increased share of sustainable funding from 41% at the end of 2023 to 62% by the end of 2024. In December 2024, considering the market conditions, we announced that we will be using our call option for January 2030 Tier 2 notes, and we redeemed in January.
Apart from that, we were the first comer among Turkish FIs to international bond market in 2025 for our debut additional Tier 1 bonds. The spread of the $500 million issuance was an all-time low among the AT1 issuances by Turkish banks to date. The transaction was more than 3x oversubscribed, attracting strong interest from various investor groups across a wide geography.
Going forward, for FX wholesale funding opportunities, we will continue to evaluate market conditions as well as the needs of our balance sheet management and continue our cooperation with our counterparties.
Moving on with net fees and commissions, 2024 was another year in which we outperformed our fee income guidance. As always, we counted on our efforts to expand our fee income base by diversifying the fee sources, enriching the type and scope of fee-based services, optimizing tariffs and enhancing customer experience through digital channels as a key to promote fee growth. Accordingly, fee income generation was outstanding at 115%. All items supported the growth in 2024. Of course, considering the current high base of our fee income, it will not be realistic to expect 3-digit growth in every consecutive year. The potential impact of expected rate cuts on interchange fees is another frequently asked issue.
We can definitely say that increased market shares and transaction volumes in both issuing and acquiring businesses in addition to ongoing optimization of existing pricing schemes, especially in relation with merchant fees, will be a compensating factor for us. Additionally, our diversified fee base, especially in a declining interest rate environment, where savings will be in search of higher yielding products will enable us to observe increase in asset management fees, combined with our long-standing expertise in capital market operations.
Ongoing efforts to enrich the type and scope of fee-based services on digital channels will be supporting the fee growth this year as well. As a result, we believe we will have no difficulty in reaching around 50% annual fee growth in 2025, which will solidify our strong position in the system.
Next page shows the NPL and provisioning trends. 2024 was quite resilient in terms of asset quality dynamics. NPL ratio stood at around 2%. Flows to NPL remained at quite manageable levels and collections continued to be strong at nearly 30%. At the end of the year, our NPL ratios in every major segment, such as SME or retail loans, was lower than private bank's average. On the other hand, we maintained our conservative approach and kept our Stage 3 coverage ratio at around 73%, highest among peers.
Our net cost of risk was 110 basis points for 2024, including currency impact. In 2025, moderation in economic activity will be the main determinant of asset quality metrics. Thanks to our prudent stance, continuous efforts and conservative risk management principles, coupled with utilization of latest technologies like AI, we do not anticipate a significant downside risk in our asset quality indicators, which will continue to differentiate us positively. This year, we expect the NPL ratio to be around 3%. Keeping our conservative approach, we expect net cost of risk to be around 200 basis points in 2025.
In the recent years, efficiency and cost management have gained more importance in relatively high inflation environment. As you know, we have been taking solid steps in terms of transforming our business models in line with our digitalization strategy, which enables efficiency gains as well. Consequently, our OpEx growth, especially on the non-HR side, was significantly lower than our peers. We will continue to focus on efficiency while leveraging our strengths in adopting new technologies, pioneering digital banking services and centralizing process management.
Within this context, we aim to have a leaner organization with further optimization. Therefore, this year, we expect OpEx growth to be contained at average annual CPI inflation levels. At the same time, we expect to see OpEx and HR expenses coverage of fee income reaching higher levels, thanks to digital transformation and effective cost control.
Next page shows the capitalization levels. Our capital ratios remained at solid levels at the end of Q4. Capital adequacy ratio without the BRSA's forbearance measures stood at 16.8%, while common equity Tier 1 was at 13.9%. We believe that our capital ratios are strong enough to absorb any potential adversities in the economy as well as to sustain the future growth. As we always share, sensitivity of our capital adequacy ratio to 10% depreciation in TL is around 40 basis points, while sensitivity to 100 basis points increase in TL interest rates is around 10 basis points. In 2025, our target will be again maintaining capital adequacy ratio above 15%.
On this page, you may see a summary of the guidance we have provided throughout the presentation. Please note that we expect these guided levels to lead us to an around 30% return on equity level at the year-end.
And this concludes my presentation. You can see more details both on our financial and nonfinancial performance in the Annexe. Now we can open the floor for your questions.
The first question is coming from David Taranto, Bank of America.
I have three, please. The first one is, could you please share the underlying macro assumptions for your operating plan, GDP growth, inflation, policy rate outlook and the timing of the rate cuts, please? Second question is about the regulatory outlook. Do you see further tightening of growth caps as a risk factor for this year? Your loan growth target is above the inflation expectations. Some of your peers also have similar expectations. On the other hand, January inflation print was a bit above expectations of the market. I mean if inflation proves to be more sticky than what we expect now, would it be possible to see the caps being tightened further in 2025?
And the last question is about the fee growth. The guidance here is well above your volume growth targets and also the peers' fee growth expectations. Could you please elaborate a bit more on your strategy here? I mean what are the untapped areas versus peers and what's the game plan to cover these areas? Payment Systems made up 2/3 of the fees last year. Where do you see their contribution in 2025?
Okay. Thank you very much for the questions. So I will start with our macroeconomic assumptions. As we mentioned during our presentation, our GDP growth expectation is at 3.5%. But we believe that in the first half of the year, we will see a moderate growth because especially the production side has already been started to slow down. There are some fluctuations on the demand side.
But at the end of the day, the prevailing leading indicators signal that 3.5% GDP growth is achievable for the whole year. And we can also take into consideration that this inflation process is going on. Although Central Bank has already started to cut the rates, as they mentioned, this is not a pure easing, in fact, because still, we have some tightness on the macroprudential side. But as this inflation process continue and according to our expectations for the year-end, our year-end inflation expectation for CPI inflation is at 27%.
And by the way, I have to mention that although the January inflation figure was higher than the market expectations, let me say, it was in line with our expectations. So our 27% annual CPI inflation covers exactly a 5% January monthly inflation figure. That's why we are in line with our expectations for the coming period.
We can say that especially in the first half of 2025, there will be a larger room for Central Bank to cut the rates as this inflation will be at a higher pace compared to the second half of 2025. We can expect the annual inflation figure to come down even below 35% level as of end of June. And in line with these expectations, we can expect Central Bank to cut the rates at a higher speed in the first half of the year. But especially starting from August, annual inflation, there might be a stickiness on the annual inflation.
Although the monthly inflation figures tends to decline, according to our analysis, we are expecting a flattish course in terms of annual inflation. And it might not allow Central Bank to have a similar speed in their rate cuts as it will probably be the case for the first half of the year. That's why we are expecting the larger portion of rate cuts to happen in the first half of the year and may slowdown, especially starting from August or for the last quarter of the year. But still at the end of the day, according to our expectations, we can say that we can see the policy rate to be around 30% as of end of the year, which is also in line with the 27% CPI inflation.
And as we all know, recently Central Bank revised their CPI inflation expectation to 24% at the midpoint. And if we consider the upper band of the expectation, it is in line with our annual inflation expectation. So we are not expecting nowadays a negative surprise for our expectations. And especially for January, we were expecting the adjustment -- price adjustments, especially both on the services side and on the minimum wage level. That's why these were all taken into consideration in our yearly inflation expectations.
And again, on the macro side, we believe that Central Bank is in a comfortable position in terms of the reserves. They have already accumulated strong reserves. That's why, although we might see some small, let me say, widening in the current account deficit, we don't expect a significant, let me say, deterioration there. That's why current account deficit might increase about 2% level for the year-end. But if you consider that on the long run, we have seen higher current account deficit levels. We don't expect this to put an additional pressure on Central Bank's prevailing policy set. That's why we are expecting the prevailing policy set to continue for the whole year.
But as we mentioned during our presentation, there is a room also for macroprudential easing, but we didn't take into consideration this kind of an easing. So we kept the prevailing macroprudential policy set at the same level. So if it happens, especially when KKM accounts phase out totally, we might expect some kind of macroprudential easing as well, but this is not taken into consideration in our macroeconomic assumptions and expectations. So if it happens, we can easily say that it will be a positive upward potential for us in each of our guidance we have set up to now.
In terms of the lending limitations, if we consider the recent announcements coming from the CBRT, in order to effectively manage the expectations and to ensure the success of the disinflation program, the regulators will remain their tight stance as long as it is required, especially, they want to see the improvement -- significant improvement on the expectation side. We have 3 sets of different surveys. And these 3 different segments are expecting different levels of annual inflation. So I think Central Bank wants to monitor the trend on these 3 different types of expectations and when the convergence of those different expectations starts, I think Central Bank will feel themselves much more comfortable.
But up to that point, what I mean, the lowest expectation now is on the market participants' side, but it is not the case for the real sector and the households. But although these 3 figures are not converging to each other yet, there is a significant improvement there. The levels are going down. So Central Bank will closely monitor the trend. And when they feel themselves comfortable, I think instead of a tightening, we might expect an easing from the Central Bank. So we don't think that the tightening will be the major issue for additional tightening, let me say. But recently, we have seen some additional tightening -- macroprudential tightening from the Central Bank.
They are closely monitoring the growth on the foreign currency side. They are quite careful about the level of the foreign currency, although it is not the, let me say, main policy tool of the Central Bank. They are aware of the fact that there is still a pass-through impact coming from the level of the currency depreciation. That's why they also mentioned it, they will continue to prefer a real appreciation on the Turkish lira side. And that's why we see some more steps coming from Central Bank in order to maintain any, let me say, risk on the foreign currency side. But again, we are not expecting a major, let me say, tightening from the Central Bank.
In terms of caps, yes, there are caps, but we feel ourselves comfortable with the prevailing caps because as during our presentation, we have mentioned, our major strategy is to have a loan growth, especially on the exempted areas, exempt from the caps. Because these are related with the priorities of the country. They are the strategic areas. And as always, we have mentioned, we have a special focus on the SME side. We will continue to grow in these areas. So if, let's say, there happens any tightening on the growth caps, I think it will not be a major issue for Isbank if we consider the lending strategy we have mentioned up to now.
And the third question is related with the fee growth. I think we have proved ourselves because during the last few years, we managed to attain high fee growth figures. So we continuously emphasize our commitment to generating fee income, expanding our fee base, introducing new fee chargeable products and services, increasing the customer penetration in this area. And the outcomes we delivered in fee business in the recent years have been quite robust as a clear indication of our commitment. So I can say that for the last 3 years, we have registered a compound annual growth rate of around 130%, which is outstanding in fee generation.
Of course, this resulted in a significant progress in our fee coverage metrics as well. Since we now have a substantial fee-base, going forward, it might not be realistic to anticipate a higher, let's say, 3-digit growth rates for each and every year, as we have already mentioned. However, this doesn't mean that our fee generation capability reached its plateau. We believe that we still have significant potential to generate fees and more importantly, concrete action plans to realize this potential in terms of customer acquisition and penetration and gaining further market share in number of selected areas.
Over the recent years, our initial target with regards to fee business has been eliminating the dependency of commissions to certain areas and diversifying our fee base as much as possible. For instance, in terms of diminishing the reliance of fee income to lending growth, we have been quite successful. And going forward, there are certain areas that we would like to further -- take further steps to expand our fee base. As an important example for this is we will be trying to attract the cash flows of customers to Isbank through customized products and services.
This project includes altogether increasing the digital penetration of commercial customers, which will enable us to become a transactional hub, contributing not only to commissions from money transfers, but supporting the demand deposits as well through increased volumes.
And new customer acquisition is also a very important area for us, not only the acquisition of new customers, but also the activation of existing customers is also a major focal point for us. By the end of 2024, number of digital customers reached 16.7 million, which constitutes the highest figure for the sector. And please also note that the increase in the number of active digital customers over the last 3 years was around 7 million. Consequently, by the end -- by the year-end, share of digital transactions reached a remarkable level of 97%.
We believe that our stance in this regard is continuously enhancing the quality and quantity of our products and services and improving the customer experience rather than trying to attract customers via promotional offers. So we believe that all these will differentiate us and will continue to differentiate us in terms of fee generation.
I think we covered all the questions.
At the moment, we have no other questions. We have a written question -- written question, though, regarding the level of our FX liquidity versus our short-term external liabilities.
Yes, we have a solid FX liquidity buffer, which covers our short-term FX repayments. Also, I can say that our FX LCR was again at comfortable levels, around 280%. So we don't have any concern in this area.
[Operator Instructions] So another question asks about our expectations on the asset quality side in 2025.
In a high interest rate environment, it is normal to expect some sort of deterioration in the inflows, especially on the retail side. That's what we observed last year, especially for the credit cards. This year, we are expecting a moderate increase in the flows from nonretail side, but not from a specific sector rather on an across-the-board basis. This is also quite inevitable as we had a prolonged period of high rates in the market and slowdown in the economy became visible in the last 2 quarters.
This might, of course, negatively impact profit margins of some firms. On the other hand, last year, in our lending activities, we focused on the companies with the best application and behavioral scores, especially in the SME segment because this is the strong point of Isbank, and the overall integrated score breakdown of the portfolio improved. We expect any asset quality risks to remain on the manageable levels for Isbank in 2025, taking into consideration the structure of our portfolio.
And as for the net cost of risk, we guided for 200 basis points indicating a slight normalization, let me say. But please note that this guidance is on the conservative side.
I think there are no other questions. So I'm handing over to our presenters for closing remarks.
So thank you very much for your participation. We believe that we have presented another solid performance, indicating resilience and expertise in navigating challenging operating environment. We feel confident that 2025 will be a promising year for Isbank, for our sector and for our country.
Just before finalizing our webcast, I would like to introduce Mr. Mehmet Turk as the new Chief Financial Officer of Isbank. I will continue my responsibilities as a deputy CEO in charge of Investor Relations, Sustainability Leader and as Chief Economist of the bank. I look forward to continue our close engagement with all of you. In the coming periods, we will be holding the financial results webcast together with Mehmet. Mehmet, would you like to add some more points on us, please?
Thank you, Izlem Erdem. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Izlem Erdem for her valuable contributions and dedicated service as CFO. I'm excited about the journey, and I look forward to maintaining strong and constructive communication going forward. Thank you.
So this is the end of our presentation. Let's continue to be in touch with each other. We wish to see you in person as well. Thank you. Have a nice year.