CSB Bank Limited (NSE: CSBBANK) Q4 2025 Earnings Call dated Apr. 28, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Unidentified Speaker
Pralay Mondal — Chief Executive Officer
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Shivaji Thapliyal — Analyst
Suraj Das — Analyst
Dhaval — Analyst
Mona Khetan — Analyst
Chinmay Nema — Analyst
Presentation:
operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to CSP Bank’s Q4FY25 conference call hosted by Yet Security. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen only mode. And 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 start and zero on your touchstone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Shivajit Appleyal from yes Securities. Thank you. And over to you sir.
Shivaji Thapliyal — Analyst
Thank you. Good evening and a warm welcome to all those who have joined the call. The CSP bank management is represented by Mr. Pralai Mandal, Managing Director and CEO. Mr. B.K. devakara, Executive Director and Mr. Satish Kundevar, Chief Financial Officer. We specifically thank the management of ESB bank for giving yet securities the opportunity to host their result calls. The management will first be making some opening remarks after which we will throw the floor open for questions. I now invite the management to make t heir opening remarks. Pralai, over to you.
Pralay Mondal — Chief Executive Officer
Thank you Shivaji and good afternoon everybody. I will give a brief understanding of the global scenario and then quickly move into CSB specifics. So globally, I think all of you know that the uncertainties have risen significant in the last one quarter. It is reflected in the movement of interest and currency rates and commodity prices. Bank of England and ECB has cut rates and are likely to cut even further. However, Fed may take a wait and watch stance of the time being. The tariff negotiations are likely to impact global growth adversely and may become inflationary for the US as well.
Indian economy is not insulated either from the global uncertainties and will also be impacted to a considerable extent. RBI has taken proactive steps in managing liquidity. Banking systems has remained in surplus liquidity since the last fortnight of March 25. A series of OMOs aided by benign inflation expectation have also brought the GSEC yield curve down. The money market curve and Citicow have moved down 50 to 100 basis points during this period. The final LCR guidelines have smoothened the liquidity pressure. RBI has also lowered the growth expectation for the financial year to 6.5% from 6.7% earlier and have started to park reported to boost the domestic consumption.
Taking a cue from the ongoing 34 and consequent uncertainty. IMF and World bank has lowered GDP estimation to 6.2% and 6.3% respectively. We expect the liquidity condition to reach further and more reduction in policy rates in the TARBS in the financial year. Coming to CSB specifics on the highlights first, to start with profitability, the net profit for the full year FY25 stood at 594 crores which is 5% growth on a year on year basis and Q4 standalone was at 190 crores which is 26% growth quarter to quarter on a year on year basis. Operating profit for the bank for full year is 910 crores and Q for FY25 is 317 crores with a group of 17 and 39% on a FY and quarterly basis respectively.
Other income registered a 94% growth on quarterly basis and 66% on an FY basis. Another income constituted 21% of the total income for FY is 25. On positive income side the ratio is showing a declining trend on a sequential basis and stood below 60% for Q4FY25 at 57.92% and cost income for the full year stood at 62.8% which is in line with what last financial year was. NIM could be sustained above 4% on FY basis at 4.13% inspired the higher interest rate cost looming in the system. NIM for the quarter is marginally below 4% at 3.75.
I’m sure there will be questions on this. We’ll respond then. ROI stood at 1.79% for the quarter in that 31, 325 and 1.53 on full year basis. Bank is holding the contingency provisions intact and is continuing with the accelerated loan provisioning policy. On the liability side, robust deposit growth of 24% year on year amid a slow paced industry growth of around 10%. CASA grew by 10% YoY and CASA ratio stands now at 24.19 percentage. We complemented our funding with FCI borrowings and refinance based on cost considerations. However, there were some cost escalation happened for a few months because of the hedging cost which can cover through the conversations later and this helped us in maintaining the LCRS comfortable level.
On the liquidity side, efficient management of liquidity risk we are very very careful. We said that liquidity is something we’ll manage because it was very uncertain what was going on in the ecosystem even three months back. CD ratio stood at 86% average LCD for the quarter is 124% and NSFR ratio was 121%. On the asset growth side, net advance grew by 29% YoY higher than 2x times our industry growth of 12% YoY. All the verticals have started contributing towards asset growth and this is the biggest highlight of this quarter and hopefully going ahead. Gold Portfolio registered a growth of 35% YoY via retail assets QI for 24%.
SME continues to grow growth momentum and register a growth of 33%. Wholesale banking portfolio grew by 22% despite the impact of liquidation of DA Portfolio which degrew by 89% effectively a running of the entire DA portfolio. Corporate loans on standalone basis grew 34% but because of the DA runoff it came down to 22% yield on advances for Q4 FY25 is 10.98%. Asset quality ratios are stable. GNP and NNP ratios for the quarter was 1.57% and 0.52% as against 1.58 and 0.64 so mild improvement on a Q on Q basis. PCR now stands at 83.71 with PwO and 67.19 without PwO.
Again here we have significantly improved compared to last quarter where it was 60% we grew to 67.19%. Bank is holding a provisioning buffer of around 185 crores over and above regulatory requirements on the capital Ciar. CRR was 22.46% and TR1 ratio is 20.59%. Low proportion of risk weighted assets compared to the industry as well helps us in this pause on the shareholder value creation. Book value per share is at rs249. EPS for the year is 34.23. ROE for the year is 15.44 percentage. We expanded our distribution network to 829 branches, 791 ATMs as of March end.
We have added 56 new branches during FY and March six branches as a part of rationalization. In conclusion I would like to say that our top line, both deposits and advances showed a strong sequential and YTT growth in Q4. Our focus was slightly more on the deposit front given the liquidity conditions prevailing in the system and accordingly we could manage the funding part and maintaining the liquidity ratios like CD ratio, LCI etc. At comfortable levels. The asset verticals also contributed to the liability growth by your self funding. CASA also registered a yearly growth of 10% on the advanced front.
It is heartening to note that all the verticals have shown consistent growth signaling the journey that we are targeting as a part of our SBS20 certification. We are looking forward to modernization of entire tech stack and this is the biggest excitement that’s going on in the bank right now. And through the call I will cover some of this little bit more and we are migrating our CBS to Oracle system, implementation of various surround systems and almost everything in the bank is changing as it comes to the tech stack which will also help us in targeting new segments, new businesses, transaction banking, wholesale banking, retail, retail assets will scale up, everything will have the levers to grow now going ahead after our tech transformation is done.
And also the building of the customer franchise journey will really start at the end of this tech transformation which at best will be done in the next three to six months time. This will be a very very big year for us and we’ll be laying strong foundation for materializing our long term goals towards executing this right. We are working as one team and ensuring participants of all staff members from a digital perspective. Also we are changing the UI ux, we are changing the OBDX platform, everything and in short the FI is going to be more eventful as we have lots of balancing act between growth, cost, profitability, etc.
With the migration process. The pace of network expansion remain at least at par with this current in the last year. We will strive to maintain our guidance on key parameters and endeavor to deliver consistently quarter on quarter. So in short, as I said before, that sustained build scale journey which we had started in 2122, this is the last phase of our build journey and our scale journey will start from FY27 and this is their platform. We are linked for the scale journey from FY27 and FY27 to 30 is only execution and scaling. With that I hand it over for questions.
Thank you very much.
Questions and Answers:
operator
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the Touchstone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press. 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 is from the line of Tawal from DSP Mutual fund. Please go ahead.
Dhaval
Hi, thanks for the opportunity and congratulations on your performance.
operator
I’m sorry to interrupt you Mr. Dhawal. We are unable to hear you clearly. We’ll move to the next question which is from the line of Suraj Das from Sundaram Mutual Fund please line is unmuted.
Suraj Das
Am I audible?
Pralay Mondal
Yes, yes.
Suraj Das
Hi sir, thanks for the opportunity sir. 2, 3 question, first one is on the fee income this quarter the fee income has been very strong. If you can give some rationale and the sustainability of the same.
Pralay Mondal
If you want to ask all the questions together, I’ll answer or one by one.
Suraj Das
Okay, so that is one. The second one is on the slippages part slippages again I mean quarter on quarter has some seen some uptick. Is this because of the MFI book? I think that book was minimal for you. The second part of the third, I think you were saying something in the opening remarks in terms of hedging and all that thing.
So if you can explain that, I mean what has been that thing and is that the rationale behind your cost of fund increasing higher than the cost of deposit this full year?
Pralay Mondal
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for your question. So I’ll take the first one first which is the fee income. Yes, we had a very strong quarter on fee income. There are primary drivers of this fee income is insurance transaction, banking fees because our wholesale franchise while when you see it’s a 22% growth but this quarter itself we have grown from 900 crores or disbursement to almost 1600 crores disbursement in one quarter.
So obviously along with that some transaction banking fees have also come in as well. Thirdly, treasury income has also been good for us this quarter and also fourthly we also get some PSLC benefits out of our gold loan and other agree and those kind of portfolios. So a combination of all these and others are usual income like liability, credit cards, retail assets, processing fee, gold. Also we had a good disbursement gold also a processing fee which is large enough. So a combination of 7, 8 items which are there. But within this gold wholesale banking and treasury and PSLC these are the four major uninsurance.
These are the five major items which has contributed to this growth. And on Treasury I will combine this point along with your last question which is hedging. So what had happened is because none of us knew that liquidity will get comfortable by the end of the quarter. Right. So being a very risk averse kind of bank, we didn’t want to take a liquidity risk so we created enough buffer in terms of liquidity into the system and which happened A through deposits, B through CDs and C through FCY and four through borrowings, other borrowings like SIGB and those kind of.
So in that what we did is we were sitting in little bit of excess liquidity for first two months of the quarter. And because we are sitting on that and most of the forecasts which are expected to happen on the asset side came in the last figure end which is in the March quarter because wholesale business is like that and we did a lot of wholesale business last quarter. SME also happened in the end of the quarter. So this excess liquidity which you are sitting on created some challenge for us in terms of, you know, ease because in the money market you don’t get that kind of a yield.
So we effectively were working on very, very low spread out there. But what we did in the process is that we know we used it for trading for the, for the money market trading in the process we gained on a mark to market basis. So we sold SLR and bought back SLR in the process we made some income in the treasury side primarily because we are sitting on significant excess liquidity at that point of time. You can imagine that after growing so much of the 30% year on year on the asset book still we are on LCR 124% average for the whole quarter.
So and a lot of that has come in the end of the quarter how much we are sitting and that’s, that’s how we could do some trading. So what we lost on the inside we gained on the fee side. But this a one off this will not happen every time. It happened because a legacy yield curve came down and B we are sitting on excess liquidity. So this will not happen every time. But in the process we’ll get that income on the, on the income side, on the interest income side coming to the hedging, this is a part of this.
What had happened is we have 13% book which is now borrowings out of that almost 9%, 8.5% is FCY borrowing. So as you know, because of the global uncertainty and tariff war and all of that happened, the hedging cost went up significantly because of which while we are expecting the FCI borrowing cost to come down because these are all SOFR linked so far also didn’t come down that much last quarter and hedging cost temporarily went up which took our cost of funds higher. And that’s one of the reasons our overall NIM compression also happened because of that.
But that we made good through the fee income which we did through the Treasury. On your slippages point, yes, you are right that we have some slippages. It was a combination of two, three things. There are some migration provisions which happened this quarter, which was a part of the planned migration provision. Also our unsecured group which you had stopped sometime back pal, then two wheelers, then some of the agree, some MFI book etc. Which we sort of call either unsecured or pseudo unsecured where we take a much larger provision, 50% immediate provision we take and also the migration provision.
All of this together helped us in given us more slippages in this quarter. And the good thing is that this is starting to come down the internal answer booth is less than 3.5% for us right now. And we also took some prudent provision in terms of saying that since our overall business has been reasonably good. So let’s say there is some where we don’t need to take it regulatory, it’s not even an outboard policy. But if some security deterioration we are seeing when we are revaluing this property etc. Normally we will not take them but we took those as a prudent this thing.
Prudent provisioning we did this quarter. So it’s a combination of three things. One is migration provision significantly increased this quarter which was well planned. B is our unsecured book slip between credit cards, MFI and PL and the other unsecured book which slipped a little bit and that we took up front with 50% provision. And some of the slippages has been happening before also but those things fully got fully slipped because that’s a part of the migration provision. And third is some of the security which I mean you need to take this only if you come below 55% or 60% or something like that.
We took those prudent calls little upfront this quarter. So between these three the slippages are slightly higher which also led to slightly higher NPA for the quarter. But we are pretty confident that come Q1, Q2, Q3 next year we should be able to do a lot better than this. So overall slippages were around 119 1.19%, 1.19%. But if you look at it previously, our slippages in March quarter last year was 2.16. June quarter was 1.64, September was 0.93, December 0.85. After doing so much of this thing, what we have done, it has come to 1.19.
So it’s not that it is significant, but yes, it was slightly higher and this will start coming down next quarter onwards. Hello,
operator
thank you. Question is from the line of DHAWAL from the ESP mutual fund. Please go Ahead.
Dhaval
Yeah, Hi. Hi. Can you hear me?
Pralay Mondal
I can hear you.
Dhaval
No, no, no apologies for that. No, no, I think congrats on a good quarter. I just had a couple of questions. First was relating to the margin trajectory. Some of that you explained, you know, in the earlier answer, but just directionally how do you think margins move from year on for let’s say the full year FY26. And if you can give some qualitative comment about first half and second half, that would be useful. And the second one is on the fee income side. You talked about several factors driving the fee income delta last quarter to this quarter.
If you could just sort of normalize it from a one off that you called out. How much of this is sustainable? When you think about FYI, 26 or 25. Like would we see similar to asset growth from this base or it could be lower or higher. Any comments around that would be quite useful.
Pralay Mondal
Yeah, sure. So your first question was on this thing neem. Right. So there in addition to what I said, see our overall mix is changing. So the wholesale business has started picking up and while it has grown effectively by 22% actually if you take the BA portfolio out, we have grown by 42% on wholesale and incrementally. I just shared that from 900 crores of disbursement last quarter. This quarter we have disbursed 1600 crores. So that is one impact. Of course that helps in many other ways including fees and other things. But it also does not help me necessarily.
It has cost to income also, but it doesn’t help me. That’s one second part is that this year there has been some slippages and once we have those slightly NPA which is little larger, some of the NIM gets impacted marginal, but that is also there. The third is that we have decisively pulled back on various businesses like high yielding businesses like pl, abri, mfi. I mean as I said before that we are only degrowing those businesses and when we’re degrowing those businesses, the high yielding businesses is significantly coming down as a promotion and hence overall when I like look at business to business like wholesale, what is the yield? SME, what is the yield? Retail, what is the yield? All of that gold, what is the yield? All of that is holding but our overall yield is coming down because of the business mix change.
High yielding businesses we are effectively de growing and slightly lower yielding business on the wholesale it is growing and this is a part of a journey which will now which we had expected and which we had been decisively. The fourth point is what I said that the cost of fund went up primarily because we all know that because of liquidity issue what the situation was. And cost of fund also went up because A some of the FD cost was slightly high which we took and secondly because the thing which I just mentioned that HCI borrowing what happened the hedging cost.
I mean normally would have expected to come down but it actually went up. You know that calculated create a calculation issue for us. So with all these our overall yield. Sorry overall the other thing what had happened is because we are sitting on ID cash for two months of this quarter significant amount which treasury used to make some money on the fee side that also where effectively you are either on zero negative margin there, right? I mean when you pick up an incremental deposit as 7 and a half percent g sec where it is. So that is also it’s a one off.
I mean if you can say fee off also one off. This is also one off. So overall it neutralized. So from an RUA perspective if we look at it, I don’t see there is any change which is going to happen because of this one off. Because one on off will neutralize the other one off that will happen in next few quarters. Now giving the perspective what goes ahead now I think from a mean perspective, okay, we have definitely hit the bottom. We will not go below where we are right now but on a year on year basis it will be.
We have to see because on a year on year basis the mean is 4.15%. Our current NIM is this quarter is 3.75 and for the full of next year the guidance will be somewhere in between 3.75 and 4.14. Somewhere in between it will be there and probably somewhere close to 4% is what will be there. But I don’t think we will go anything below this. I mean decisively. Okay, so that is on the. On your name. What is the second question?
Dhaval
The second question was.
Pralay Mondal
Yeah, the fees is sustainable. Okay. I’ll tell you why. Because what we didn’t do is we didn’t book the MTM booking of treasury and we lost opportunity because we are conscious that G SEC will continue to come down. Okay. And given that we will have significant opportunity to book fees in this financial as well which is FY26. Okay. And we have not utilized that because who will do that? I mean we know that interest rates are coming down. What we did is the ID cash which is lying around. We use that up little Bit. And hence there is a little bit of amount that that has sort of neutralized between mean and fee income.
But I think that on a broad basis we don’t see any fee income coming down next year, if at all. We’ll grow on top of this fee income quite handsomely.
Dhaval
Understood. This one final thing on the growth. So what we saw was a very strong closing of FY25 on the overall growth. Do you see a similar trajectory in FY26 because we had some tailwinds on gold, etc. But just generally how would you think about growth for FY26?
Pralay Mondal
Frankly speaking, you know that growth is absolutely not a problem for us except for funding the growth. Okay. On the asset side our wholesale has taken off, our SME has taken off, our gold is doing well. Our retail will take off this year after our core system migration and everything. Because all our systems will be in place in the next three to six months. So the problem is now we have to see that whom will we be what funding to grow. Okay, so asset growth we can do even higher than what we are doing today.
Our constraint will be how much liability we can generate. And that is what will constrain our growth. And also because of that we will be in a good place to say that which is a franchise growth we want to have that will fund and which is the lesser risk adjusted return we are getting. That’s where we’ll do business and hence we’ll do a little. We are good place to do little bit of a choosing and picking of the kind of assets which you want to do next year. What we will not do, in fact I always say that we play in the range of 8 to 12% on the yield side.
That has become more true because we have almost topped most of the businesses which are above 12% on the yield side. And 8% we generally don’t go below 8% ever. So between 8 to 12% is the range. And now we are in a good place to pick and choose. And hence overall I think anything within 20 to 25% growth is given for us now. But of course we have to see. But good part is not of that’s another point is lot of our fixed deposits. One strategy call we took last year that we will not lock ourselves into long term deposits, okay? Because we knew that the interest rates are going to fall.
So given that the repricing of our deposits will start happening in another quarter or two quarters and hence our ability to manage NIM and then get growth on deposits may not Be that difficult because our 44% of above which is gold is kind of a non elastic to the pricing or non elastic to the interest rate decrease because those customers that book will remain between 11.5 to 12% in terms of yield. So given that non elasticity that side and if we able to get deposits at lesser rates, we should be able to grow deposits also is my view.
But yes, that’s the constraint which will constrain the growth. So it depends on how much deposit growth we can take.
Dhaval
Just one final thing is on this tech transition, any interim impact that you see on the performance etc or it should be quite smooth. Is your base skill expectation like anything that you want to call out migration for FY26 I know 26, 17, 27 onwards the growth expectation is quite strong but just 26 anything that you want. To call out
Pralay Mondal
See, I will be practical to say that we have to see how this transition goes because any tech transformation of the size and scale what we are doing probably one of the first in the industry where we are doing ogl, opsa, Oracle, the core system, the entire tech stack, the entire digital stack, the entire opsa, the OBDS platform, the entire database migration has already the entire this thing data center migration has already happened and the kind of enter CMS we are implementing new new CMS system. We are taking the LOS new system we are constantly building.
We also are doing the supply chain implementation. So effectively we are building the bank afresh and in the next six months the bank will be completely new in all aspects. Okay. The way the customer sees the bank and that way that we service the customer, the way we build products, the way we create franchise on the transaction banking, wholesale, retail, SME everywhere is completely going to change. Our main constraint in this bank was systems are not there. That’s why you’re not able to do what we wanted to do. So given that it will be not savvy to say that it will be.
I mean we are not ignorant, we know that this will go through some transition. But so far yesterday was our second dry run and people are very happy with the dry run because we had very little incidences or no incidence yesterday when we did the dry run. But dry run is like a net practice and we are going for the main main match somewhere in Maine. So we have to see how it goes. We are giving giving ourselves three to four months for stabilizing it. We have done everything possible during training, development, everything I’ve done.
But we have to see we are giving ourselves three to four months of stabilizing and starting from Q, sorry Q3, which is second half of this year, we will completely go all out in terms of scaling and building the bank. So that’s where we are. There could be some issues here and there which is unforeseen. Unknown. Unknown. But broadly we have the right people and the right vendors or OEMs or partners who are working with us. We don’t see too much of an issue as such.
Dhaval
Perfect, thanks and wish you all the very best. Thank you.
Pralay Mondal
Thank you so much.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mona Ketan from Dalit Capital. Please go ahead.
Mona Khetan
Yeah, hi sir, good evening.
Pralay Mondal
Yeah Mona, how are you?
Mona Khetan
Yeah, I’m good. So firstly again just touching on the fee date. So if I look at the fee income for full year at age 74 cr 87 crore vs 53 crore or so last year, could you share the breakup between processing fees, commission, third party fees, you know, forex profit, etc. Or could you just look for the full year perspective between this year and this year? That would be very helpful.
Pralay Mondal
I don’t think we share that level of details in this thing. But whatever we have, we have shared already with you. So beyond that we don’t give breakup of how much is golden fee, how much is forex fee? I don’t think we give that weapon. Do you give that with the British? No, we don’t give that weapon.
Mona Khetan
Okay, but any color in on in terms of how much is coming from corporate related fees, that itself could help us understand.
Pralay Mondal
That’s what I just covered that in one of the previous questions in detail. But just to summarize it, overall 21% is our non interest income to total income out of that around. Generally what it happens is we are somewhere around 18%. So core fees around 14 and non core fee which is treasury and other related fees around 4%. Okay, that has changed little bit. So this quarter and only for this quarter, next quarter it will hopefully come back. So this quarter I think core fee has remained around 14 to 15%. Around 15%. And non core fee which is primarily treasury and PSLC has been around 6%.
Yes, 21 minus 14 or whatever. 6, 7%. So that’s the only change which has happened and I explained in great details why it has happened and why our name has got replaced by fee because of this excess fund we are sitting on next year. Also I would assume that the whole of next year because I can’t share that but I know the number where we are sitting on as of today on the 10 year G SEC. What all on the. On the portfolio, FS portfolio where we are sitting right now we know and hence that will be much larger than what we had because we really didn’t encash the AFS last quarter.
What we did was trading profits so that opportunity will be there next year as well but that will also be reported under non core fee. So our core fee broadly if you have to estimate next year as well our core fee will remain around 15%, 14 to 15% and whatever. On top of that we get. You can sort of calculate it on every quarter around non perfect which includes treasury and baselcant.
Mona Khetan
How much of this Course you reported about 87 crore of course how much of this?
Pralay Mondal
I can broadly tell you. Yeah, broadly I’ll tell you it’s very easy because our core fee instead of getting into the details our core fee has four type components. One is gold loan fee, one is insurance, one is credit card, retail assets and forex and wholesale listing. Then other things will be penal charges and transaction banking fees, forex and all of that stuff. So in this the heavyweight is picked up by insurance, gold loan fees and to some extent the forex and transaction banking fees Primarily these will contribute to almost 80% of our fees which are all.
And then there’s a liability fees, processing fees, not processing penal interest, penal penal charges and all of that stuff. So 70, 80% and almost 100% of this is scalable if at all. The reason I think I should we should do better next year because next year, second half of the year we’ll launch retail assets and corporate banking has just started the transaction banking once we have the CMS and supply chain systems in place will do lot more on that side. So I think our core banking phase, sorry core fees will only improve over a period of time.
Mona Khetan
Secondly on the volume book are you seeing any impact of the graph popular that has come upon?
Pralay Mondal
Actually it’s too early to talk frankly, you know because it has not yet become a circular, it is a job discussion point and representations are going on to IG and things like that. So because these are. Some of these are little operational intensive and things like that so and hence I’m not sure that the final circular is yet out. I think impact will be in terms of primarily more process orientation lot of changes has to be done to the systems to be fully compliant to some of these things and because we know in advance now we have already started and because our new system will come soon in next quarter so along with that we’ll start making those changes to the system.
So it’s more execution, more system, more this thing. There are few things, for example auction and all of that. Those things don’t worry us too much. Even businesses, which is like replacing business and all that. What is being mentioned there, those also, if they don’t come through the pleasures, it will come to us directly. So if you ask me, those businesses will not stop. So amount of work we have to do is lot more and compliance kind of has to be a little more detailed and systems has to be revamped. I think those are the three main things.
Broadly, we don’t see too much of an impact of this on our business at this point of time, but we have to wait and watch for the final.
Mona Khetan
And secondly on the same loan book disclosures that you give around LTV and number of accounts. So I see that the number of accounts has declined beyond few despite the sharp growth from about 4.9 lakh or so to 4.5 lakhs. So what changes? And also LTV has fallen sharply. So.
Pralay Mondal
Yeah, yeah. So LTV following is good news because obviously with prices going up so much, we at least we are not very comfortable taking the risk of a high LTV on such a high price because we do a very detailed sensitivity analysis of every 10%, 5% drop in gold price and which can happen, I mean nobody knows. So given that we are, when prices goes up, our LTV actually comes down. And that has happened for us. On your question on ticket size, effectively what you’re saying, the primary reason for that, one of the primary reasons for that is that we sort of stop sourcing golden business below 2 lakhs because as for the guidelines below 2 lakhs you cannot have a security.
So because of that we stopped doing that. And that’s where numbers are coming from. And hence we moved up. And because of that the ticket sizes improved, our ticket sizes went up. If you look at it, our business growth is slightly lower than the overall industry business growth. And this could be one of the reasons because we moved out of the lower ticket size because you cannot really do it as part of the new compliance process. So that is one of the reasons. Second reason of course is that we have as gold prices have gone up while our LTB has gone down, but still value has gone up.
Okay, so from that perspective, ticket price has also gone up. So These are the two main reasons.
operator
Sorry to interrupt. May I request Ms. Mona to please rejoin the queue? We have participants waiting for the turn. Thank you. The Next question is from the lion of Bhavesh Kana from Swan Investment. Please go ahead. Bhavish. Please go ahead with a question. Your line is unmuted. Bhavish. We are unable to hear you as there is no response. We’ll move to the next question which is from the line of Chirag Singhal from First Water Fund. Please go ahead. Yes, you are.
Pralay Mondal
Yeah, yeah.
Unidentified Participant
So first question on the guidance on the credit cost fund. So you mentioned that there were a couple of one offs in Q4 and you also did some prudent provisioning. So for FY26, how should I look at the credit cost?
Pralay Mondal
I think if you look at our overall credit cost it is somewhere around 29 basis points. We are keeping our credit guidance below 30 basis points next year. Okay. And we should be able to comfortably achieve that is our view.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. And second question is on the other opec. So even that has gone up, you know, significantly if you look at it in Q4 versus previous quarter as well as last year. So again if you can provide some color as to how should I look at it for accountability going forward. See if you look at it overall our OPEX has been reasonably managed but I think, I think it is a 28% growth. How much? What does it see? So I think overall our OPEX has not gone up significantly. But yes, what we’re saying is because of the significant technology cost which has 20%. So that’s what I said, right. Operating cost has gone up by 23% on a year, on year basis. But on our Q3 to Q4 it has gone up by 50 odd crores. That’s what they’re saying, 60 odd crores. Okay. Which is a 17% growth in operating this thing.
And I am just seeing the line by line Q1Q 17% out of the other expense. Yeah, other OpEx. Yeah, other OpEx has gone up by around 35% primarily because of some of this technology related stuff which we are doing as execution starts coming. So there’s a capex and OPEX there. So for example to give you a data, I mean without being too clinical about it is our. We have fully utilized our OPEX budget on the technology side. But CapEx we have not fully utilized last year. Okay. Because lot of the execution items as it close comes closer to the D day lot of OPEX expense starts manifesting itself on the technology side because we are now very close to the close to the migration.
So that is one of the reasons there has been significant increase on the extremely good Buy on significant increase in the opex. Right. The other reason is in the past quarter we had some PSL buy on the MSR portfolio because we could not achieve our target on margin on small farmer and that buy through PSL did come on the expense side and most of the buy we did in the fourth quarter. So these two have contributed to the overall OPEX increase. But on the overall PSL we were actually net positive incomes on income but NSF we are negative. That’s why you had to buy and most of it we bought it in fourth quarter. These are the reasons.
Unidentified Participant
Right. And if you can help me with FY26 guidance since you read that in first two quarters we’ll have some more cost towards the technology. So overall how should we look at this number for FY26?
Pralay Mondal
I think we should be okay on our OPEX broadly because costs are already baked in now. We are just executing it right now. Okay. So I don’t see a major. When I was doing the budgeting for this year I didn’t see a major OPEX increase. Visa visa at this point of time. So we should be okay. In fact if at all. What we plan to do is not in the first two quarters. In the next two quarters which is Q3, Q4 once the technology transformation is done and it’s working fine, everything Q3 and Q4 will expand significantly on our manpower because if you saw last year we didn’t grow our manpower.
We are working on the productivity and all of that stuff and without full technology we didn’t want to unnecessarily invest there. So now the investment on pending investment on PP and this thing will come in the second quarter, sorry third quarter and fourth quarter of this year and hence some of the staff cost will start picking up from Q3 and Q4.
Understood.
Unidentified Participant
Understood. That should be it from my. Thank you.
Pralay Mondal
Yeah, thank you.
operator
The next question is from the line of Chennai Neymar from Prescient Capital. Please go ahead.
Chinmay Nema
Good evening sir for a couple of questions from my friend. Firstly, could you give some color on the health of the unsecured book which you talked about previously in terms of the asset quality and if you’re expecting any more deposits from it in the coming quarters.
Pralay Mondal
So this way we have taken some prudent calls and we are fortunate because now it’s starting to taper down for us primarily because the portfolio is big growing. So whole of last year we have been constantly degrowing the portfolio. We started this degrowth a year back and hence currently our overall unsecured book is around 3.3% of the overall bank. Within that also there is one portion which is credit cards which while it comes as a credit cost, but we have ways to ensure that on a net ROI basis we are neutral. So from that perspective, I think while on a percentage basis it might look high, but the book itself will be so small less of credit cards that it will not have a meaningful impact next year.
So I think in another 2/4 between MFI Personal Loan, 2 Wheeler and all of these products, it will start getting negligible from their perspective and hence another one or two quarters to go and another one or two quarters it will be in line with what it is today. After that it will not become material to the bank.
Chinmay Nema
So the incremental provisioning during the quarter, is it entirely attributable to Facebook?
Pralay Mondal
I didn’t get your point, but the incremental provision what we did this quarter was because of I explained in great details that some part of that is some of the migration provision, some part of that is because of the unsecured which we took a significant provision and third is because of some security deterioration which happened in some of the legacy portfolio. While it is not regulatory guideline to take those calls, but we took those calls because we said that we’ll start the new year on a clean slate. From that perspective we took some more current provisioning based on securities which we have.
So between these three we had slightly higher slippages in Q4.
Chinmay Nema
And for my second question is on net interest income. If I look at the last 4, 5/4, the net interest income has been somewhat flattish. Previously you’ve talked about the competitive intensity that comes into play if you pass on the increased cost of borrowing. Could you give some more color on this? Essentially trying to understand why it affects CSP more than the industry or where do your borrowers turn to if you increase the yields on the product?
Pralay Mondal
Yeah, so I explained in great details on this few questions back but let me attempt once again. So you’re right that our NIM has come down but on a standalone basis for a full year basis 4.14 is it too bad a number? Probably the answer is no because when we mirror like a proper portfolio eventually in the long run I’m not proposing anything above 4 4.5% kind of a name if at all it will be closer to 4%. That is what guidance I have been giving also through so it’s just that our Neemo is slightly higher because we had a slightly higher golden proportion and Incrementally.
Now other businesses are starting to pick up. But the real reason for our NIM depression has been because of the liquidity challenge which was there in the ecosystem. We are sitting on excess liquidity this past two months of this quarter. And we did book FCY bookings where we had a significant hedging cost which came up which has gone away also now because it is linked to dollar index and dollar extent is back to 100 or below. So given that perspective, I think we have a slightly. While HCI borrowing cost should have come down, it went up temporarily again this quarter it is coming down.
So it was a blip. That’s why you saw the huge drop because now our borrowings is 13% of the portfolio. Our borrowings used to be almost nothing year back. So. But eventually that will start, it will follow the SOFA and start coming down. So it was a kind of a blip last quarter. But on a trending perspective I think we have been coming down and that is what is expected because most of the mix of the businesses are changing and our deposit franchise CASA is not that high etc. So to that extent our cost of funds is higher than 6% and that will sort of taper down only when the interest rates overall falling.
The good part is when interest rate starts falling on a competitive basis we will be better off because our fixed rate loans are slightly higher. Like a loan and other fixed rate loans is 60%. 23% is McLim which will mirror the overall curve of the deposit cost. And our link to EBLR and TBIL is around 15 to 16%. So to the end where we are fixed rate loan also like gold while they are shorter tenor but the sensitivity of the yields are much less like credit cards in a rising cycle and a falling cycle. In both cycle they remain the same.
The interest rate so gold is also somewhat like that. We’ll retain our yield around 11.5 to 12%. So when you look at one year from now we will be slightly in a better competitive advantage from a NIM perspective purely based on yield versus the funding cost which is a spread. So given all this I think we are very very confident that because of that one off that happened last quarter on hedging and because of this trending which will happen, our cost of funding will also start coming down gradually mirroring the overall G sec. I think this is our hitting our bottom on the name.
I don’t think us coming down further anymore. Our overall guidance will be somewhere around 4% in between what our quarterly neemo’s and yearly neemo, yearly NIM is 4.14, quarterly NIM is 3.75. So our next year guidance is somewhere in between of this around 4%.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rohit Priyadarshani from Mittal Analytics. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. Congratulations on the good set of numbers from my side. What is your medium term like 2 to 3 year target for maintaining the return on assets and return on equity?
Pralay Mondal
Yeah, so our return on assets, our guidance is between 1.5 to 1.8% and return on equity between 15 to 17% this quarter. Return equity went up little bit, but for the full year basis we are slightly higher than 15%. So. So it will be range in the 15 to 18% in that range and ROA will range between 1.5 to 1.8. But closer, closer now it will be closer to 1.5 right now for one or two more portals.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah. Okay. Okay. What are the two to three key risk areas? The management is most focused on mitigating it in FY26.
Pralay Mondal
See, one of the risks which is there in the ecosystem was this unsecured book. I think we have broadly mitigated it. Unsecured, including MFI and retail. We have broadly mitigated it. So we some more flow through will happen, but that will not be that material. Maximum six more months. After that it should taper down. Second risk was liquidity risk, which is a bigger risk for a bank like us because we are a small bank and for our ability to attract retail deposits is slightly lower compared to some of the larger banks.
So thankfully the liquidity in the system is much better now. And hence I think we have passed the most difficult year for the bank last fy. And still we have done reasonably well as the liquidity has improved and overall deposits are getting, I mean getting little more easier compared to before. So we one of those risks are starting to get better for us and mitigation is happening automatically in the system. The biggest thing for us is not risk, but the opportunity. How do we manage the opportunity which is telling us once the port system migration happens, obviously for two, three months, once the inter migration, the transformation happens, things has to take time to settle down.
And in the process, one or two months, people will be busy doing that. So once that is done, which is another maybe three, four months from now, after that, the biggest opportunities to build the business from scratch based on the new system, it is there. So if you ask me, the biggest risk for US is this migration and entire transformation and biggest opportunity is also that and we are waiting for that. So I think that’s it. Otherwise I don’t see any. The legacy risks are also more or less done because we corrected our portfolio on SME, we corrected our portfolio on wholesale broadly.
So I don’t see too much of a risk. Liquidity risk is hopefully not there but obviously the global risk, the tariff risk and all of that stuff and a smaller player will always have challenged when the whole ecosystem gets impacted. Otherwise I don’t see any major risk. Otherwise. Thank you so much.
operator
The next question is from the line of Rupesh Satya.
Unidentified Participant
Hello sir, thank you for the opportunity. Am I audible?
Pralay Mondal
Yes, yes please.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah. So my first question sir is a cost income ratio. Cost income ratio used to be 57, 58% annual. I’m talking about the annual number. It has moved up to 62% in last, you know, two years. So where do you see this number in FY26 and FY27 if you can give some view I, I understand that the technology capex is there then maybe from second half of the year it will taper down. I understand all of that but if you can give some number it will be very helpful. That is question number one. Question number two sir is in terms of philosophy at the AUM level where do you see the gold loan percentage? It is at I think 44% if I remember the number.
Right. So, so where do you see, at the philosophy level where do you see that number in two, three years? And then the third question sir is despite liquidity, despite you know, negative carry on your book and all of that you are saying that the min and stay at 4%. So then the how and then you are still saying that you know, 1.5, 1.8% ROA is your guidance. So, so then I mean there is no margin for you know, any cost of credit spikes, there is no margin for error for any cost income spike. So how, how do you, I mean how do you balance all of that? Because it Roe ROA calculation doesn’t work.
It looks to me at 4%. So those are the three questions.
Pralay Mondal
Sure. So let me handle the first two first. These are more qualitative questions. So cost income, I had always guided that till FY27 it will be somewhere around 65, 62 to 65% and then once the entire ecosystem of the banking gets built up around the core system transformation and other things we are doing, the whole franchise will start playing out. And very quickly between FY27 to FY30, the cost to income will go down to 50%. So the journey of cost to income from 65 or 62 to 50 will happen between FY27 to FY30 and that I have articulated almost every call, every meeting which I have with investors.
On your second question on gold, we will continue to do well in gold as long as we can. But other franchises start picking up. If you see SME has grown by 33% this year, highest growth for SME ever in this bank. Our wholesale banking while it is grown by 22%. But if you take the DA portfolio out, which we ran off and that’s a lazy portfolio, we ran it off effectively, wholesale has grown by more than 40%. Retail will start the story. I mean this year retail actually to take agri and MFI out, retailers grown by more than 40%.
But because we are degree in retail aggregate and unsecured, some of this. So our overall growth is around 24 or 25%. But actual growth, what we are focusing on and which are meaningful portfolio for us in future is growing upwards of 30, 35%. So all of these will ensure that gold loan is a mix, will start tapering down and golden price every year will not go up like this. The way it has gone up, right? Sometime it will stabilize, sometimes it will come down, etc. So given that perspective, our long term philosophical thinking is wholesale will be 30%, SMA will be 20%, retail will be 30% and gold will be 20%.
That’s our FY 2030 journey. But meanwhile, because you’re also asking the cost to income question, to ensure that we are there, we have to have a good profit making product as well. And we understand the golden business that is helping us in building the other businesses at this point of time, FY27 onwards, we will see other businesses, they will start contributing more and hence we will have a more meaningful mix. Your third question was on ROI 3. I think it’s very, very clear that we are a 1.5 minimum ROI bank and ROE between 15 to 18%.
And one needs to, you know, you can do two things. Either you can plan for cost of credit or you can decide good credit in the beginning itself. So there are philosophies, I’m not saying what is right, what is wrong. There are philosophies to hire in business and provision for higher credit. And there are philosophies by which you do lower yielding businesses, best risk adjusted businesses, long term sustainable growth businesses and better cross sell Business in the long run. So what you are building on the wholesale side for example right now we are not doing a single business above nine and a half, 10%.
Okay. So give and. But our ROE will come there not through a mean but their ROE will come through fee income and cross sell and supply chain and all of it for which you are building systems. Same thing with SME. SME is somewhere around 10% but they are building cross sell over a period of time. Retail is all across sales at the end of the day. So we at least I don’t believe in too much of a high risk, high return kind of a game. We playing that 8 to 12% and there our margin for error is very limited.
If you look at our last three, four years you see where our NBA and credit cost has been. Okay. And this year it had been little high because of two accounts and those are all legacy accounts. And I said before that almost of the legacy accounts are now at the end of the life cycle for our bank because we have been working on them. So given that I don’t think that because as soon as you start making in a huge credit cost for the businesses you are doing in then automatically you start doing higher building business and automatically you will follow that cycle of higher.
It will become a self fulfilling process which you don’t want to do. Right. So from that perspective we are pretty confident that we should be able to do some around 1.5 ROA and 15% ROE on an average without too much of a problem.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Okay. Thank you. Just one question sir. Through this transformation, right. I mean what you are trying to do, I totally understand the logic. Is it fair to assume that you know AUM and profitability will grow at 20% barring you know any black swan events for multiple years. Is that a fair assumption to me?
Pralay Mondal
Yeah. Give us another year. Okay. Ask us this question. The next annual call we’ll be able to answer more decisively. But that’s the attempt.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sagar Shah from Spark BMW. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Good evening sir. I just had two questions and thank you for taking my questions. My first question was regarding our actually liabilities. Actually you had highlighted initially on the call that the problem with main problem is not on the asset group but is on the liability group growth actually. So this year in FY25 we increased branches by around 50. And in this particular year our bulk deposits as compared to total deposits has also increased by from 33 to almost 43% out of out of our bulk and data depots. So going ahead in the next two, three years, what are you saying? What steps are you taking to increase your retail base to increase your customer acquisition strategy? That is my first question.
And the second question was related to data. Data keeping that in spite of a sequential growth loss upside by almost 10% sequentially from Q3 to Q4, our net interest income actually reduced. So were there any huge interest reverse in this quarter that led to a decline this quarter? So those are my two questions.
Pralay Mondal
Yeah. The second question I have answered in various ways, so I will keep it short. But let me answer the first question. It’s a very good question. You’re absolutely right. The branch distribution, if you look at it currently our branch distribution in Kerala is somewhere around 33, 34% right now it was 57% I think a year back. Okay. Or little more than that previous track. And there’s a time when it is to send us. So what it means is that more and more branches, we are building it. More and more branches we are building it.
We are building for future. No longer we are building a branch which will break even in one year. We will only do gold loan and those kind of businesses. These branches have been built for the new transformational technology. Products, processes, retail, wholesale transaction, banking, SME. All of this keeping in mind and hence you cannot time it right. Can I start doing all this after my tech transformation is over? Then we’ll be sitting and waiting for these branches to come up and people to come in, etc. And hence, very strategically we have put these branches in various locations in north, in west, in rest of south, everywhere.
So we are a well distributed. There is a slide, I think where we show the branch distribution across the country and it shows how well distributed we are becoming. Now each of these branches will be able to get leveraged lot more once our transformation journey is over and the new products and processes are in place. And this will help us in building the entire granular liability franchise. But what happens? What is till then can we sit quietly and do nothing when we have an asset opportunity? That’s where we are taking some more bulk deposits which comes at a slightly higher cost.
That’s where we have taken FCI visit. So this is like a bridge funding for us. Our entire retail journey starts on the liability side. That will start in another 12 to 18 months. And that acquisition story which you are talking about, very important, that will start six months from now. And we are going to create a full acquisition Team, we’re just waiting because today if I do it will not get good customers because we cannot offer the products or services which some of the other banks have offerings. So how will you get good customers? So that’s why we are, we have delayed it, but we didn’t delay the branch expansion strategy in the right areas which will leverage this entire transformation which we are doing.
So that’s the first answer. If I can add something more to that. Just not the branch distribution and liability retail assets will happen around those customers because the same customer you talk sale will not go to too much externally to get business. Most of our assets, businesses fee businesses, everything will happen internally to our liability customers and hence acquisition strategy will become very big. And that will help us in our assets, fees, everything. That’s why I’m saying that our journey is just beginning now if you ask me coming to the second question on growth versus Nim, I think I explained it two times actually.
The NIM this thing was primarily because of high funding cost, little bit of carry cost which we had because and that we used in trading and getting it on the fee side. And hence we had a little bit of a issue there. But I think it is behind us. That’s why I’m putting my head and saying that we have sort of bottomed out on NIM right now. From here on. We’ll only improve on NIM from here and we’ll be some around closer to between 3.75 to 4.14. Somewhere in between will play in the whole of next year,
Unidentified Participant
right, Sir. So can you quantify the interest reversals in this quarter?
Pralay Mondal
Sir, there is no interest. I mean there will be probably, but that is not meaningful. Which is. Which is you want to add answer to that. I don’t know this number.
Unidentified Speaker
When there are slippages there will be interest reversal. But that information, that kind of information is not given there. What you should ultimately see in terms of what is the credit cost that is there because whether there is interest reversal or everything or there are provisions, ultimately everything will be captured in the provisions number. And for the full year our credit cost is in 29 basis point which is reasonable.
Pralay Mondal
And then if we look at IT of Ross NPI is 1.57 which is lower than last quarter. Net NP is 0.52 which is less than last quarter. So from a slippages perspective, except for what I already explained slippages I don’t explain again, I think we are broadly okay 29 basis points and our comfort level is will go below this next year is a reasonably paid cost to have.
Unidentified Participant
Great sir. So at least my last one from mine. So at least from in FY26 and FY27 will we see the expansion of branches the pace to be higher than that we what we saw in FY25.
Pralay Mondal
So we have every year grew by anything within 50 to 100 branches. We will retain that kind of a pace after our acquisition because how much we can invest till you have the product services and processes. Okay. So you will see a significant expansion from FY27 onwards. But to ensure because we already have 829 branches right now. So that is a large enough branch distribution to leverage for at least one more year and FY27 onwards we’ll start expanding because otherwise we will be expanding and keeping it ID for systems to come or products to come.
So I think we have invested enough and the investment to branches will expand only after FY27 1. Right. This year will. This year we’ll expand similar to last year. Okay. Similar to last year.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, got your point. Thank you so much and all the best sir.
Pralay Mondal
Thank you very much.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mona Kan from Dollar Capital. Please go ahead.
Mona Khetan
Yeah. So the corporate account that had switched about a year ago, 100 crore or so. Just wanted to know.
Pralay Mondal
I can’t hear you. Can you be pretty closer to. I can’t hear you. Yeah.
Mona Khetan
Is it better?
Pralay Mondal
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mona Khetan
So my question was related to the corporate account that was skipped about a year ago. Any, any update on the recovery there and what sort of provisions we hold against you.
Pralay Mondal
So we unfortunately because it has gone into a little bit of a legal tangle right now. That’s why we could not recover. But we have fair bit of assets out there which is you know secured with us and hence we should be able to recover at some stage. We had expected it but it went into a litigation at this point of time. So we are going through the entire process at this point of time. Having said that we have taken provision as per our board guidelines which is around 50% and we have taken little bit more against some of the security etc.
And that’s proven provision because we had thought that we will be able to recover some money this year because we pulled. We have taken some prudent provision and we is that which I. Which is I was referring to some of my earlier comments. So net. Net. Net net. If you look at the PCR the PCR has come to 67% now from 60% last quarter and that is one of the reasons for that.
Mona Khetan
Okay, thanks so much.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sai Kiran Pulavati from an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, hi, thanks for taking my question. Sir, before you enter for the building, do you feel that are there any gaps in the top management or do you feel some gaps over there to get filled up? That’s question number one. And question number two. How do you ensure that you can get your liabilities to grow at excess of 25% when the system’s deposit growth itself is very low, what kind of initiatives you are taking and how you ensure that on a sustainable basis to grow the balance sheet and or maybe. Much significantly higher than the industries. Thank you.
Pralay Mondal
Yeah. So on a management we have no gap at all. Okay. Every senior position starting from CXO level to CXO plus one to regional head to distribution head to product heads, even now wholesale, entire team is now going at a very rapid pace. The SME team is already in place, Transaction mining team is in place. So every team and every senior management is completely in place and we don’t have any attrition. So attrition, senior management, I’m saying of course at the entry level, junior level, there will be attrition. So that way we are doing extremely well in my view.
And the team is very engaged with trying to build a bank. So the whole motivation is to build the bank to the extent I think there is a lot of kind of engagement with the top management team here. Coming to a question, we are not talking about high tiers. I think we should do better than that. Okay. And the reason for that is if you could do it last year with that kind of a liquidity issue and that kind of a challenge which was there on the liability side, I think it will get easier this year for us primarily because we have little better experience and post our migration and post our entire systems and process and products in place.
Second half of the year we should start picking up lots more on the liability side and thankfully that time hopefully the price will get priced in into the liability business as well. Because we also don’t want to go too much into long term liability even now. But I think by the second half of the year when we’ll be fully ready with all our products and services, by that time hopefully the liability prices also get rationalized a little bit more. So we are pretty confident of anything within 20 to 25% growth. And last year we grew by 25 to 30 in a very difficult environment.
So the management is confident of that.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you. That’s it. From my side. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen. That was the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Pralay Mondal
Thank you very much for your questions. And we look forward to our next meeting. Again after a quarter. Till then, hopefully we should be able to do even better than what we have done this quarter. Thank you very much.
operator
Thank you. On behalf of VS Securities. That concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. And you may now disconnect your line.
Pralay Mondal
Thank you very much.