Asa International Group (LSE:ASAI) — Investor Presentation

0:01 Good afternoon, and welcome to the ASA INTERNATIONAL GROUP PLC investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time by the Q and A tab situated in the right hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all the questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Karen Kersten, CEO. Good afternoon to you.

0:32 Thank you, Alessandro, and my name is Karen Kersten. I'm the CEO of ASA INTERNATIONAL, and warm welcome to you, investors or potential investors for ASA INTERNATIONAL or other interested parties. We would like to take you through short introduction to our company and then to the results of 2023 and the first part of twenty twenty four. So if you look to ASA INTERNATIONAL, we are one of the world's largest international stock listed microfinance institutions, and we provide financial services to low income female entrepreneurs in Asia and Africa. Our vision is to contribute to just and financially inclusive societies.

1:22 Our purpose is, like ESG United Nation goal number one, to reduce poverty, and we want to enable female empowerment to female entrepreneurs, and we want to enhance our social as well as our economic position. Our clients are typically low income, and we want to increase financial inclusion. Our company values are professionalism, integrity, and teamwork. Teamwork not only applies to teamwork across colleagues, but also of colleagues with our clients. Our clients who come together in the so called client groups and client group meetings typically have the role of client chairman, treasurer, and secretary, and our clients help up, help us with maintaining a very high quality of our loan book.

2:17 If you look to ASA INTERNATIONAL at a glance, we are operating and handing out loans in 13 countries in Asia and Africa. That helps us in a well diversified portfolio, because in emerging markets, there might be a political or climate risk, and by being in so many countries, we can diversify. One of our characteristics is that we are deeply rooted in communities with over 2,000 branches. Our employees that amount to 13 and a half thousand nearly, they are mostly in the role of loan officer. There are only less than 150 staff centrally working at the headquarters in Amsterdam and Dhaka, Bangladesh, and all the others are in the fields or in the headquarters of the operating entities, mainly serving our clients.

3:13 We do serve 2,300,000 clients, and most of them are female clients. Our outstanding loan portfolio is $370,000,000 with an average outstanding loan of only $160 per client on average. The par, which is a metric which indicates the quality of the loan book, measures portfolio at risk, and that's the percentage of clients who are overdue on a payment of more than thirty days, and our par ratio is very low with 2.1 and a high quality of the loan book. That brings us to where we operate, and as already indicated, we are active in 13 countries across four regions.

4:05 India and Bangladesh are the roots of microfinance. In South Asia, we are present in Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka. We are shrinking a bit in India, and we do have a shrinking strategy there because of the market circumstances, and the prior bad performance hit by COVID. If you look to Southeast Asia, we are present in Philippines and Myanmar, and Myanmar is doing remarkably well after several setbacks because of the the war situation there. And if we look to West And East Africa, East Africa is really promising market with Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Zambia, with not only a growing portfolio, but also high quality portfolio.

4:57 And then in West Africa, we're present in Nigeria, Ghana, and Sierra Leone, whereby Ghana is a key market for us where we are launching as the first markets our digital financial services. If you look to these pictures, it indicates where we come from and where we are going to. On the left hand side, you see a typical client group meeting with clients sitting together, and they come mostly on a weekly basis and pay their weekly interest rate and pay back their installment. They do that with cash payments, and they have a so called loan booklet in which the loan is written down, a savings part if there's cash collateral, the the payment of the installment and the interest, and it's paid in cash, and clients come together and the processes are very much manual.

5:53 We are migrating to mobile payments and a digital financial services app in the future. Recently, when I was visiting Ghana, each time when I'm visiting an operating entity, I'm asking who has a phone, mobile phone, who has a smartphone, who would like to be paid out alone by a digital financial services mode, and who would like to do payments via mobile phone and or save money with us. And in the last client meeting in Ghana, where I asked this, a 100% of the women would raise their hands and say yes to all of this. So there was a 100% smartphone penetration, and clients really looking forward to the digital offering on top of the branch network and the face to face client meetings.

6:48 Our client persona. So here, this is our typical client persona. It's a female in the age range of 18 to 65 years old. She has an income of around 3 to $4 a day, which is the World Bank definition of poverty or below poverty line. And our clients do get very small loans and have a no or hard access to formal credit services at a bank. They do have strong social ties in the local community, and they are entrepreneurs, and they need working capital to buy goods and sell goods, and so they are in a cash generating capacity. These women are predominantly urban, but also some semi urban or rural, and they are working in one form of another in informal trade sector, services, trading, manufacturing, agriculture.

7:46 And as you can see on the picture on the left hand side, it's all in first life needs. It can be a hair saloon, a clothe repairing services, or in food or groceries. And so those businesses are really resilient and price inelastic, and so there always is demand for foods and those kind of goods, which makes the businesses of our clients very resilient.

8:17 We do have scalable branch model. The branches, as told, they are really deeply rooted in the community. Each branch has a radius of around 12 kilometers. There's one branch manager, one assistant branch managers, and four loan officers who are out in the fields. In the mornings, they go to their clients for client group meetings. In the afternoon, they are working on the internal processes, but also visit clients for overdue loans, and they do serve clients with a loan tenure of around six to twelve months. The average loan disbursement is around $266, so the average outstanding of course is lower because they pay off the loan, so that's around $160, the average outstanding.

9:05 They do have an income generating purpose with their business. It's a very small business, and we will enhance their business activity. In one of my last client meetings, one client stood up, and she was a client group leader, and she spoke and said, I'm really, really proud because I started the loan of 50 CDs, which is the local currency in Ghana, and over time, she has grown with her loan from 50 CDs to 20 some thousand CDs, and by growing her business, she increased her household income, and she could save some money whereby her children, apart from one, all could go to university, and by that, she helped social empowerment and well-being in the family.

9:55 And then after paying off her loan, she could go into a next cycle of a larger loan, and that's where we both impact economic situation, the social position of our clients, but also are at healthy ROE levels for the business ourselves, because our clients are really good in paying back their loans and in the paying morale.

10:21 That brings us to some of the distinguishing features of the ASHA model. On the top left, the group selection without joint liability. So in microfinance, sometimes there's group liability. If one client doesn't pay, the others in the group are liable. We have a model with a single liability, so our clients are personally liable for their loan, and that makes them really ambitious and wanting to pay back their own loan. On the other hand, we do have social collateral, because in the group structure, if one client pays back her loan, the other doesn't want to be behind and also wants to pay back. I already indicated that our low ticket sizes are a key feature because via those really small and micro loans, we we go step by step, the loan is paid up and paid off, and then a new loan is granted.

11:17 So that's that's some of the key characteristics of our business. That brings us to our financial performance of 2023. And the key point to mention is that the second half performance, both operationally and financially, has improved compared to the first half year. If you look to our clients, 2,300,000, the percentage of client growth was 5% in the second half compared to the first half. If you look to our pretax profits, they amounted to 32,200,000, and in the first half, it only was 13,800,000, so it has accelerated.

12:03 On the net profit, the same is applicable. The total net profit amounts to 8,800,000, while the first half only was 3 0.7, and the hyperinflation effect has all been taken in the second half and not in the first half, so that indicates that there is an acceleration of operational performance. The OLP or outstanding loan portfolio has grown in the second half with 35,000,000 to 369,200,000. The par, so the portfolio at risk, has decreased from nearly 6% at the end of twenty two to 2%, 2.1% at the end of twenty three. Our reserves for credit losses also have decreased a lot from CHF 70,000,000 in 2022 to CHF 8,300,000 in 2023.

12:57 We do have sufficient cash with unrestricted cash position of CHF 48,000,000.

13:05 If you look to our key performance indicator, then our clients have grown by 5% in the second half year. The average growth of our loan portfolio per client also has grown 4% over the second half year. And if you look in constant currency over the whole year, the growth has been plus 16%. And please note that the dollar growth is having to absorb the devaluation of the coin, so growth in dollar indicates a higher growth in constant currency. The return on equity was 18.5% in 2022, and in '23, 10.5%, and that was close to would have been close to 18% if hyperinflation would be corrected for.

14:01 Well, talking about hyperinflation, over the '23 results, it's the first time that we as a company had to apply hyperinflation accounting. That is applicable on entities which have a three year period inflation of more than a 100%, and that's applicable to Ghana and Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone is a rather small entity for our company as a whole, but Ghana is a rather large operation. If you look at the impact of this, then it has a positive impulse on the equity of plus 600,000, and it has a decrease effect on, I would call, the paper net profit of 5,400,000.

14:48 So here you can see the impact both on the balance sheet and the profit, and it has to be said that there is a communicating vessel between the profit and the translation loss reserve we had to make for the FX, which makes that for Ghana and Sierra Leone, we don't need to go down in equity for those reserves because of the hyperinflation is being corrected via the P and L. If you look to the current running year, Ghana and Sierra Leone are expected again to be in a hyperinflatory year over the three year period, and Pakistan and Ghana are on the watch list.

15:36 We do have a well diversified portfolio, and if you look to the growth of our portfolio in constant currency, you can see on the bottom right hand side that East Africa has grown with plus 36 over the year in constant currency. East Africa really is a promising market, not only in terms of growth, also in terms of quality of the portfolio and also the positive outlook of smartphone penetration, and that's why we are intending to have our next market for launching our digital financial services in Tanzania and Kenya. You also can see that Nigeria has suffered not only in constant currency, but even more steeply in dollar terms.

16:25 The devaluation of the local currency over the year has amounted to a 100%. If you look to the largest countries, then in each region, our top four countries in each region, there's one market who is the top four of our largest countries in terms of OOP, which is Pakistan, Ghana, Philippines, and Tanzania. These FX effects make that we are alert on the holding entity, not only helping the operating entity, but that we really stimulate payments being made from the operating entity to the holding entity in terms of dividends, transfer pricing and interest and loan repayments.

17:13 In the operating entities, the local currency predominates, and by paying out those cash streams to the holding, we can convert from the soft local currency to the hard currency at the

17:27 holding entity. So we are really encouraging the operating entities and also helping and to see if we can safeguard those dividend payments, interim dividend payments, and transfer pricing. Some regulators, especially in Ghana, Nigeria, Pakistan, Myanmar and India, require an approval, not only of the transfer pricing in some markets, but also dividend and interim dividend payments.

17:59 I hand over to Samfir. Thank you, Karen. So this is our condensed income statement and balance sheet. We, together with the board, I did approve this yesterday, and we do get audited by UK. And our annual report, these financials are coming out on the twenty sixth. So the message here is, you know, financial performance improved in h two of twenty twenty three. And if we look at the the income statement, we we have a profit before tax of 32,200,000, which includes the hyperinflation effect of 5,400,000.

18:53 From there, we have a net profit number of 8,800,000 for fiscal year 2023. You do see a a big gap between the PBT and the net profit, and the reason can be attributable to certain one off items that hit us in 2023. So at the nominal rate of tax expenses for the countries, that number should have been 12,000,000, but there are some one off items that got added to that, which is, you know, part of that, excuse me, difference.

19:40 What are some of those items?

19:43 The most notable ones are there is a underprovisioning of super tax for Pakistan that we had to charge this year, which has a retroactive effect to the previous years. That's approximately $3,000,000. There is deferred tax benefits that we couldn't avail for India and some of our holding entities. That's another $3,000,000. We did not get any credit for the hyperinflationary adjustment for approximately 1,300,000, and there were disallowable interest expense line items for Tanzania that we couldn't also avail.

20:41 That's 1,500,000. So altogether, those make up the the the 20,000,000 difference. And the good part is, you know, some of these would go away next year, namely the the Pakistan and the Tanzania one. Going a little bit deeper in into the balance sheet, and and this will help you make better investment decisions than us. OLP grew by 5%. And in constant currency terms, we we saw an increase of 21%. The number there does include, you know, our off balance sheet portfolio, you know, which is coming from India. That number is different in the actual balance sheet than what we are showing here.

21:39 We have fund deposits,

21:46 which took a dip when compared to last year. And the reason there is because of we we had to return some of the savings in Kenya for regulatory purposes. Interest bearing debt increased to $268,000,000. We do did get a 107 to 9,000,000 of fresh debt in 2023. The total equity number, very important most important, increased when compared to h one twenty twenty three Despite taking a hit of approximately $24,000,000 from FX devaluation, we show a a healthy 11% growth there.

22:44 This slide shows what your, you know, money will get you. Basically, a relationship between yield, cost of funding, and margin. We ended the year with an yield of 39.1 with a cost of funding of 10.8%. Our margin stood at a healthy 31%. We did disperse more on countries that have higher yields, like some of the East African countries, and, you know, that that, you know, contributes to the increased yields.

23:35 There were upward adjustments of interest rates in India and Sri Lanka, coupled with the fact that, you know, there is no more rate caps, also contributes to the higher and healthy yield and margin. Our funding rates remain broadly stable compared to fiscal year twenty twenty two despite, you know, commercial rates going up. These benchmark rate increases, you know, in some of the markets were balanced by, you know, the improved pricing from local funders. International funders, you know, has been expensive, and we we tend to focus on local funding, which is cheaper.

24:33 A view of our funding profile. Here's a mix of how we fund the business. Basically, it's a mixture of equity, microfinance loan funds from lenders like Blue Orchard, Oiko Credit, Symbiotics. We do focus on local deposits that is cheap funding, loans from development banks and foundations like DFC, OEB, and Bio. They also partner with us. And and then, again, you know, there are the commercial financial institutions. Again, we maintain a favorable maturity profile where our asset side, you know, our loans to the to the customers are are shorter than the the the liabilities, which is the the the creditor's tender and their their, you know, loan terms.

25:46 179,000,000 of fresh debt raised in 2023. Unrestricted cash balance stood at 48,000,000 at year end. We do have a strong funding pipe pipeline of approximately 171,000,000 as of 03/31/2024. As at year end, we did have some covenant breaches, but we work with our lenders, and we were able to receive waivers for all of them. So, again, on this funding mix, our aim and and goal is to, you know, focus on local deposits and transform, you know, some of our institutions, you know, into a regulatory environment.

26:47 With that, I pass it to Karen again. Thank you, Tanvi. Well, let's go from the financials in 2023 to how this year is going. So an update to March 2024. And we've two indicators, two lines here, a green and a blue line, and the green line is a measure for growth. This measures the percentage of disbursement as a percentage of the collection. So everywhere where we are above 100%, it indicates that the portfolio is growing. In 10 out of our 13 markets, the percentage is above a 100%, and hence, the markets are growing. The blue line is an indicator of the quality of the portfolio.

27:35 This so called collection efficiency percentage is what we collect as a percentage of what we should collect from our clients. In 11 out of the 13 markets, we have a collection efficiency of between 97 and a 100%. You also can see that our portfolio is growing even in dollar terms, although there are fixed evaluations. So the current portfolio is at $380,000,000, which is 13% higher if you look for the like for like month March 2023. The blue line on the bottom is the indicator also for quality with a par 30 that was in end of twenty two was 6% and now amounts to 1.8%.

28:25 So compared to end of the year, there's further improvements, and the overall quality of the portfolio is 1.8% of the client is more than thirty days behind on one or more payment installments. The performance driven approach. So our vision and strategy, the vision, as explained, is to work on a just and financially inclusive society, and our strategy is to grow financial inclusion. We would like to add a digital channel and digitize our internal processes, and also offer digital more products and services. To derive that, we want to drive performance, and we've changed the governance and structure and several committees by installing a small executive committee with each area is ultimately responsible across geographies.

29:28 Also, several new committees are set up. For example, an asset and liability committee looking at concentration risks, how to hedge the FX currency, also to how to match the asset and liability side of the balance sheet. Also, have leadership team meetings to make sure that we have two way traffic to our key leaders in the organization. We're not only setting targets, but we are also measuring. And what we've changed is that in the past, the leaders got a target, and they would do their best to deliver in local currency. At the moment, we are setting targets before the year end starts, and our leaders are committing to dollar results.

30:14 So there's a change in that. We defined clear target performance indicators for each countries. They range from outstanding loan portfolio, number of clients served per loan officer, the quality of the portfolio, the margin, the cost to income ratio, and we measure that via the so called quarterly business performance challenge meetings and really look at the actual performance versus the permitted targets. Another way to drive performance is that we look at leaders and role modeling of leaders, and we are seeking new profiles along with the implementation of our new strategy that needs a digital channel, but also more products and services, and so more enhanced risk models, more products.

31:00 And so we're looking for some new leaders, but also in role modeling and collaborating and sharing best practices. Our growth strategy is we would like to deliver a sustainable growth, and to reduce poverty, we want to increase increase financial inclusion and hence hand out more loans, introduce new loan product, have more clients, more branches, and also grow the voluntary savings by our clients. On top of that, we like to add a digital channel whilst maintaining the branch model and this proven credit methodology via the group meetings and field presence.

31:51 The enhanced digital processes will enable our client loan officers to serve more clients. Thirdly, we want to offer digital products and services, so also online loans, online payments, online savings, and value added services via the so called supplier marketplace. By this enhanced offering, we also hope to attract new clients. Today, we do have our own developed AMBS loan system. We have successfully migrated from this ANBS system in Pakistan to a new core banking system, a renowned terminal system, the financial inclusion suite, and we are currently rolling that out in Ghana.

32:40 We're not rolling out only the core banking system in Ghana, but also digital financial services and the supplier marketplace. After Ghana, Tanzania and Kenya will follow and more markets after. On the client channel side, we do have branches, and we want to keep that because that's one of the key characteristic characteristics of the ASHA model. On top of that, we want to add the digital financial services and a supplier marketplace app. That brings us to an enriched products and service offering, not only loans, deposits, mainly cash collateral and savings, but also online loans, savings more from our borrowers, also from the public payments and a supplier marketplace.

33:29 In terms of internal processes, we want to migrate from manual and complex processes to digital and simplified processes, allowing our loan officers to serve more clients. That brings us to the summary and outlook. The 2023 financial performance was compared to the '22 lower primarily because of financial FX movements, demonetization in Nigeria, and the first time application of hyperinflation accounting to Ghana and Sierra Leone. Our results over the second year improved, and our constant currency loan portfolio grew by 21% in constant currency, and the number of clients grew by 5% over the second half year.

34:22 Also, the quality of the loan portfolio grew. It was 6% par at the end of twenty two, and towards the end of '23, it was 2%. The key contributors in terms of size, but also quality are Pakistan, Philippines, Ghana and our East Africa mark, Tanzania and Kenya. Regarding the outlook for '24, we remain positive, and so the second half is of '23 is more a marker for '24 than the whole year. So we expect improved business performance for our operations compared to '23 because of that stronger second half. Having said that, the inflation and FX movements, which are related to that, are expected to continue to impact the group.

35:13 Also, hyperinflation is expected to take its turn in '24. We expect Ghana and Sierra Leone to be under hyperinflation accounting for the running year, and Pakistan and Nigeria are on the watch list. All in all, we look back on a healthy performance in '23, mainly because of a good second half year and the first months of 2024 gives us a remaining positive outlook on improved business for the remainder of the year. I now hand back to Michel. Yeah. Actually, back to Alessandro first, and then we'll go to questions. Alessandro. Perfect. Karen, Tambe, and Misha, thank you very much for your presentation. What I'll do is I'll just bring your camera up to full screen now for the q and a. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q and A tab, which is situated on the top right hand corner of your screen. But just while the company take a few moments to read these questions that have been submitted today, I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation with a copy of the slides and the published q and a can be accessed via your investor dashboard.

36:21 As you can see, we have received questions throughout today's presentation. And, Misha, at this point, if I could just hand over to you to chair the q and a, that'd be great, and then I'll pick up from you at the end. Yes, thank you. Indeed, we got a couple of good questions. Thank you very much for those. And the first one is, how do you look to mitigate high inflation and currency depreciation? So Can you take that one? So high inflation, yes, that is a challenge, because high inflation and currency depreciation go hand in hand. We have a few measures. So first of all, the loans we do have in our local entities are hedged. So they are all in local currency, or if they are in dollars, they are hedged.

37:08 So our loan book there, so from our lenders, is hedged. We have introduced the equity hedging policy, so we'll look carefully at what the FX forward rates are compared to the cost of hedging. And then another very important measure was, as in the presentation, is floating back up to the group, the income stream, so in terms of transfer pricing, dividends, and interim dividends. Because by paying our dividend to the group, we transfer them from the soft currency in the entity to the hard currency at the group level. And we are really looking at taking all these measures as far as we can influence them. Yes. Thank you, Karen.

37:55 Then the second question is that when you consider the varied performance across different markets, Can you elaborate on specific strategies that you employed in markets like Pakistan, Philippines and Ghana that contributed to their excellent performance in terms of portfolio quality and growth? Well, the word specific strategies, I would say, have a strategy of increasing financial inclusion, implementing the digital channel, and then going to more products and services. Pakistan and Ghana are front runners, because Pakistan is the first market where we introduced core banking system, and Ghana is a market where we are now implementing this, and it's the first market to implement digital financial performance.

38:47 We chose those markets because they are large markets, high quality earnings, and especially for Ghana, having a good digital penetration. Okay. Thank you. The next question is, it's a bit related, but still more focused on competitors. How do you plan to maintain your competitive edge in markets like India, Nigeria and Uganda, where strong competitors already exist? Yes, the competitive edge, well, the best question for that is asking clients. And when in a client group meeting, every time we ask why do you choose for ASA, many clients answer, we like the pricing of ASA. There are also other non regulated small players that that might ask higher rates to clients.

39:44 So they mentioned the pricing. They do mention that we are really present and go to the clients rather than the clients going to the financial institution. They like the professionalism and the service and the integrity of ASA, and also they are really enthusiastic about the upcoming digital financial services. So the answer is professionalism, integrity and teamwork, being with the ASA INTERNATIONAL in the close vicinity of the clients with really motivated staff, and then preparing for the future with our digital offering, and offering more products and services. So that's how we look at, yeah, addressing competition.

40:31 Okay. Thank you, Karen. Then the next question is, can you elaborate on the impact of the new core banking system and digital financial services platform on operational efficiency and customer engagement? And a second question there is, what measurable benefits have been observed since the initial rollout in Pakistan? Yes, it would be a very good question. And it would be too early to already look at the benefits because the migration of the core banking system just has happened in Pakistan. If you look at expected benefits, then so in Ghana, that's a more important market because there we will launch the digital financial services for the first time.

41:21 And what we do expect is that by rolling this out, a loan officer can serve more clients, because currently, a loan officer is going to a client group in the morning, and in the afternoon spending time on internal processes. If the digital financial services app is there, it's not only the channel to the clients, it's also the channel the loan officer uses for the internal processes. So by saving time, a loan officer can serve more clients over time. Also, we do expect benefits from having a more enriched client offering, and with payments and savings that we have anchor products to really bond the clients to ASA.

42:10 Other benefits are that if we get our savings from our clients and the public, that our cost of funds will be more favorable, and hence our margin could increase. Okay. Then we got another question. Also, given the competitive dynamics in regions like The Philippines and Nigeria, how do you plan to differentiate your offerings to gain market share? Yes, the differentiation really is the ASHA model. So that is the close vicinity to the clients and keeping that and adding on top of that the digital financial services. So there are competitors who are only digital, and that's a different offering.

42:57 There are also competitors like mobile phone who go in micro credits, nano credits, and it's a different form. There are also competitors who are really manual and don't have an ambition to go into digital. So for us, the differentiating factor is that the key elements we presented on the ASHA model, that we keep them, and then on top of that have a digital offering, so we go with the developments in time and take and reap benefits from a digital offering, but also keep this high credit quality close to the vicinity of the clients' local presence. Okay, that was the last question. Thank you very much for your good questions, I will say. And we go back to Alessandra.

43:48 Perfect. Karen, Tamri and Misha, thank you very much for answering those questions from investors. And of course, the company can review all the questions submitted today and we'll publish those responses on the Investor Meet company platform. But just before redirecting investors provide you their feedback, which you know is particularly important to the company, Karen, could I just ask you for a few closing comments? Yeah. Yeah. So in closing, so ASA INTERNATIONAL is one of the most large international listed companies on microfinance, and we differentiate ourselves by the ASHA model, which offers micro credits to female entrepreneurs with a very high credit quality and a high collection efficiency.

44:36 We want to cater for the future by offering a digital financial services and going into more products and services to our clients. If you look to our performance, the twenty twenty three results were at the second half was outstanding compared to the first half, and we do see that trend continuing in the first half of twenty twenty four. We had to deal with hyperinflation and hyperinflation accounting, which had a positive impact on our equity and a negative impact on our paper profits, but it didn't impact operational financial results in the entities. We are confident on the further continuation of this line in 2024 results in terms of operational performance, And yes, we do expect hyperinflation accounting to tick back in, in 2024.

45:34 Also with a fixed devaluation, we are really thrilled about the DFS launch, the digital financial services app in Ghana this year, and so we're really confident on further implementing this strategy of digit going digital and offering more products and services, and also to drive performance via those new setup committees, measurements, and role modeling. Perfect, Karen. Thanks very much. And, Tambo, Amisha, thank you for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations? This then take a few moments to complete, but Some should be greatly valued by the company.

46:24 On behalf of the management team of the ASA INTERNATIONAL GROUP PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.