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Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to TeraGo's Fourth Quarter 2025 and Annual 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being recorded. TeraGo would like to remind listeners that the company's remarks and answers to your questions today may contain forward-looking statements that are based upon management's current expectations. All such statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of and are intended to be forward-looking statements under applicable Canadian securities legislation. When relying on forward-looking statements to make decisions with respect to the company, you should carefully consider the risks set forth in the Risk Factors section in the 2025 Annual Information Form, which is available on www.sedarplus.ca and also consider other uncertainties and potential events. Except as may be required by Canadian securities law, the company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information. We would also like to remind listeners that TeraGo uses certain non-GAAP financial measures to arrive at adjusted results to assess its business and to measure overall performance. TeraGo believes that these financial measures provide readers with a better understanding of how management views the company's overall performance. I will now turn the conference over to TeraGo's Chief Executive Officer; Daniel Vucinic. Sir, please proceed. Daniel Vucinic: Thank you, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. Today, I am here with our VP of Finance, Parveen Mithra, as our CFO, Raj Sapra, is away on personal matters. Now looking back at 2025, our team continues to have a disciplined focus on our customers, operational efficiency and positioning TeraGo to capitalize on rising demand as AI is really reshaping business Internet requirements in terms of increased quality bandwidth, secondary connections and lower latency. In Q4, we strengthened our foundation through financing initiatives, including new term debt and equity capital that enhanced our financial flexibility. We have brought in additional new institutional investors who are confident in our business and recognize the significant value in our assets. We continue to focus on customer differentiation as reliability, visibility being highly responsive and agile, providing full end-to-end managed business continuity accountability becomes super paramount. Our proof points continue to show this with our lower churn and higher average revenue per account, ARPA. In addition to this, we recently announced the appointment of May Daou to the position of Chief Customer Officer, who is accountable to build our customer-first culture, ensuring we serve, maintain and grow with our clients. We maintained disciplined investment in fixed wireless and private 5G and recently launched additional fixed wireless access broadband products to meet growing market demand. As for revenue, macroeconomic pressures continue to extend procurement cycles, which are delaying contract signings. That, combined with our customer segmentation strategy of exiting lower margin and unprofitable customers has impacted revenue in 2025. In parallel, though, we continue to have cost discipline mitigating adjusted EBITDA impact. TeraGo is a critical player in the Canadian communications landscape. We are uniquely positioned by owning 91% of the millimeter wave spectrum, our own national backbone network with 400-plus wireless hubs, covering Canada's 26 million population and passing over 11 million homes. There's really no one else like us. Very recent reports showing Canada's productivity gap with the U.S. continues to steadily widen with relative productivity tumbling by 26% since the turn of the millennium. Canada is at a pivotal moment where productivity needs to dramatically improve, and the most effective approach is to leverage technology. Industry verticals like manufacturing can leverage 5G millimeter wave private networks high bandwidth, performance and ultra-low latency to connect wirelessly to machines, robots through IoT and then feeding all that data into AI, which is very exciting. ISED's recent millimeter wave consultation is proposing to repurpose the lower 26 gigahertz band, which was previously called the 24 gigahertz, for flexible use. A flex use decision would mean that millimeter wave spectrum could be used both for mobile and fixed wireless services as today, it's only for fixed wireless services. Service providers in the U.S. are increasingly leveraging millimeter wave technology to enhance mobile connectivity in densely populated areas such as stadiums, concert arenas and urban centers. The extremely high capacity and ultra-low latency of millimeter wave spectrum makes it ideal for supporting large crowds where conventional mid-band or low-band networks often experience congestion. We are encouraged by the progress ISED made in 2025 5G millimeter wave consultation on the 26 gigahertz and 38 gigahertz bands. With that said, I will turn it over to our VP of Finance. Parveen? Parveen Mithra: Thanks, Dan. Let's move to Slide 4 of our Q4 and fiscal year 2025 financial results presentation for an overview of our KPIs. Our average revenue per customer, or ARPA, in our Connectivity business increased by 4.4% to $1,265 in Q4 2025 compared to $1,212 for the same prior year period. The continued improvement in ARPA levels is driven by favorable shifts in our customer base and product mix. Our churn was 0.7% compared to 0.8% for the same period last year. Customer churn continues to improve, reflecting our ongoing execution of our strategy to enhance customer engagement with a focus on mid-market and large-scale customers as well as implementation of enhanced renewal and retention programs. Now turning to Slide 5 to go through our broader Q4 and fiscal year 2025 financial highlights. Total revenue of Q4 2025 was $6.2 million as compared to $6.57 million for the same prior year period. For the fiscal year 2025, total revenue was $25.36 million, down from $26.16 million in the same prior fiscal year. The decrease was primarily driven by a combination of decreased bookings, delays in installations associated with multi-site deployments and a reduction in onetime revenues. In addition, management continued initiatives to optimize the customer base by discontinuing service for unprofitable accounts. The overall decrease was partially offset by revenue from new customers in the current period. Adjusted EBITDA was $885,000 in Q4 2025 compared to $1.2 million for the same prior year period. For the fiscal year 2025, adjusted EBITDA was $3.79 million compared to $4.02 million in the same prior year fiscal. The decrease reflects the early mentioned revenue pressures, partially offset by disciplined cost management and continued operational efficiencies across the business. Net loss for Q4 2025 was $4.9 million compared to a net loss of $3.2 million in the same prior year period. For the fiscal 2025, net loss was $16.8 million compared to $13.3 million in the same prior year fiscal. The increase in the net loss was primarily driven by higher finance costs associated with the company's increased debt following the financing completed during the year as well as noncash impacts, including the accounting adjustment related to the sale and leaseback transaction. While adjusted EBITDA declined year-over-year, the more moderate decrease to revenue reflects the company's ongoing focus on cost discipline and operational efficiency. Moving now to Slide 6. With respect to the balance sheet, the company ended the fourth quarter of 2025 with $12.6 million in cash and cash equivalents. In fiscal 2025, the company generated $2.9 million in cash from operations as compared to $5.0 million in the same prior year period. With that said, I would like to turn the call back to Dan. Daniel Vucinic: Thanks, Parveen. Our client-centric strategy is enhancing value for our customers, and we remain focused on delivering long-term value for our shareholders. That wraps up the prepared remarks for us today, and we can now open up the call for questions. Operator, back to you. Operator: [Operator Instructions] And our first question will come from David McFadgen from Cormark. David McFadgen: So a couple of questions. So when you look at the ARPA is definitely trending in the right direction, churn is trending in the right direction. But yet the revenue is down. I know you guys have been churning off some unprofitable accounts. So I was just kind of wondering, do you have an idea of what quarter you think you might cycle through all of this and then revenue would be on an upward trajectory? Daniel Vucinic: Yes, it's a great question. Thank you, David. So yes, we did have lower bookings, partly because of the macroeconomics that we talked about. And as you mentioned, the unprofitable customers. We also -- since we are also focusing on larger multi-site customers, some of those larger multi-site customers were taking longer to install mostly because, as you can imagine, different sites have different contract end dates with their incumbent carrier. So we have to kind of wait until those contracts are near expiration before installing. And then there's some onetime revenue impact in there. But going forward, we are seeing momentum in sales funnel, and we are seeing more clients engaging with us. But it does take a little bit of time to not only get those bookings and install that revenue to really start billing. So by the time you kind of put those two things together, to answer your question more directly, you probably see more of a potential revenue increase towards later this year. David McFadgen: Okay. And then I was wondering if you could give us an update on sort of the timing about when ISED is actually going to finally make a decision on whether the 24 gig spectrum will be reclassified for mobile use. Daniel Vucinic: Yes. So as you're aware, ISED did put out the consultation in March and had remarks returned by the end of June. And part of their consultation is proposing exactly what you said, our 24 gigahertz and 38 gigahertz to be deemed for flexible use. I know that they are working diligently on the decision. Unofficially, they can't say exactly when that decision is going to come out, but we're sort of predicting unofficially, of course, that one year from when the consultation fully closed in June of last year brings it to kind of summer of this year. So we're cautiously optimistic that hopefully it comes out around this time or at least within this year. We do note that the Industry Minister is quite busy in today's environment. But again, we're optimistic that ISED will launch the decision this year and then the subsequent auction rules and timing as part of that decision. Operator: At this time, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Vucinic for closing remarks. Daniel Vucinic: Thanks again, everyone, for joining our call today. I'd like to thank our customers and shareholders who continue to support the company and a huge thank you to the employees at TeraGo, who continue to do an outstanding job. We look forward to providing an update and progress on our next quarterly earnings call. Operator? Operator: Thank you for joining us today for TeraGo's Fourth Quarter 2025 and Annual 2025 Earnings Call. You may now disconnect.
Zhiheng Wang: Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I'm the President of ABC. Welcome to the annual results announcement of ABC. It's a great pleasure to meet with the friends, online, offline investors and analysts and friends from the media. I'd like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation for your support, trust and interest in the development of ABC. With that, I'd like to present to you the management of ABC. Mr. Lin Li, [indiscernible] Vice President of ABC and Mr. [indiscernible] Vice President of ABC and the Board Secretary, Mr. [indiscernible]. And some of the senior management are participating from a meeting online. With that, I'd like to present to you the business performance, business strategies and the outlook for 2026 of ABC. In terms of the business highlights, which you are interested in, 2025 is the last year of the 14th 5-year plan. It is a year for the new progress for ABC. In the past year, we guided by the thought on socialism with the Chinese characteristics and strengthen overall leadership of third party and implement the relevant decisions, arrangement of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, deeply practiced the political and people-oriented nature of financial work and firmly grab main line of preventing risks, promoting high-quality. Development, made overall efforts in our aspects, providing more powerful and effective service to the real economy, achieving steady progress in business, achieving steady progress in business operations with the high effective service, main characteristics of our business, our steady improvement and steady progress in the business operations. First, stable profits, ABC's net profit and operating income continue to maintain a double-digit growth, reaching RMB 292 billion and RMB 725 billion, respectively, a growth rate of 3.3% and 2.1%, respectively. Compared to first -- 3 quarters, growth rates increased by 2 bps and 0.1 points, respectively. Net NIM, 1.28% among topping the peers and average return on total assets, 0.63%. Weighted average return on net assets at 10.16% with a capital adequacy ratio of 17.39% with excellence of our business. Total assets reached RMB 48.8 trillion with a growth rate of 12.8%. New loans and financial investment in local foreign currencies totaled RMB 4.7 trillion. In sensitive of economy is a leading industry and the loan growth rate was 8.9% liability, business continued to maintain a good development with a deposit growth rate of 7.7%. An average daily increase in RMB deposits ranked first among the comparable peers. Daily deposits is consistently improving and duration of local foreign currency deposits in the end of last year was 0.58%, best among the comparable peers. We are the only bank to achieve a positive growth in RMB loans for 7 consecutive years with high-quality loans. NPL ratio of domestic banks declined for 5 consecutive years and further decreased by 3 basis points in 2025, remains a relatively low level of 1.7% -- 1.27% industry. And provision -- the special mention loan ratio, 1.39% and overdue loan ratio 1.25%. The difference between the NPL and overdue loan ratio was registered a negative growth and which was also the only bank in comparable peers with exhibited a loan ratio lower than the nonperforming loan ratios. ABC loan balance is continued to above RMB 1 trillion, an increase of RMB 39.6 billion over the previous year. Provision coverage ratio was 292.5% with both indicators of the balance of loan provision and provision coverage ratio ranked among the first among the comparable peers. The fourth return is very high. Since its listing in 2010, considering the comprehensive return of stock price increase and the dividend, the annualized average returns of investors in A shares and H shares reached 12% and 10%, respectively. In the next 3 years, that is from 2023 to 2025, and it reached to 48% and 41%, respectively. In terms of dividends, the Board of Directors proposed a distribution in final dividend for 2025 with a rate of RMB 1.3 per share and tax included. Inclusive together with the dividend already distributed in the range the total dividend of the whole year amounts to HKD 2.495 per share and RMB [indiscernible] per share tax included. Dividend payout ratio was 30%. We'll have a more resilient and more sustainable development. Last year, we did the work in the last following 5 aspects. First, we stick to our main businesses that is providing service for the agriculture, that is agricultural rural areas and farmers. We consolidated the foundation for business development and improve the quality and efficiency of providing service rural-related areas and build a differentiated competitive advantages and the loans from the country level regions balance reached RMB 1 trillion for 4 consecutive years and the balance reached RMB 10.9 trillion, and the balance accounted for more than 40% of the total loans. And the balance in the county levels has doubled during the 14th 5-year plan period. And deposit balance was 14.3 trillion, an increase of RMB 1.23 trillion over the end of the previous year and contributed more than [indiscernible] to the increase of deposits of the whole bank. Specifically, our channels for serving clients have been further improved among the 22,800 branches of the bank, 56% are located in county-level cities and rural towns or townships. ABC is only a large state-owned bank with a full coverage of county-level outlets. In recent years, we have further shifted the focus of our service to the grassroots levels existing the reach of our services continuously improving, completing them. And we have [indiscernible] 61 services, namely our physical outlets, self-service machines, mobile banking, rural service stations, mobile service, [indiscernible] and remote banks to form them into one, which continuously enhance our service capabilities to provide service to every villages and household. And last year, we moved another 179 outlets to townships built 1,742 rural service stations enrich our product shelves. And also, we have also made great efforts to build a product and service system to 10 major financial areas, including green finance and targeted property, alleviation finance, innovated and promoted inclusive products such as agric park loans, technology loans and professional farmer loans specifically serving the differentiated diversified financing needs of agricultural areas and farmers. And we can develop -- we have developed 43 products across all industries and 208 regional characteristic products and dedicated products to cover key areas of rural revitalization. By leveraging technological means, we have continuously optimized the loan application process for farmers, actively promoting on-site and remote work mode, further enhancing the convenience and accessibility of rural financial services with the balance of the reaching RMB 1.84 trillion. Fourfold increase during the 14th 5-year plan period. And grain and important agricultural products have been increased. Long industries [indiscernible] road development and related fields grew by 20.3%, 19.5% and 9.6%, respectively, and 832 property stricten counties and 160 key counties for rural revitalization have seen faster loan growth than the average growth rate of the entire bank. Second, we sticked to the essence of finance and building new advantages in business development by implementing national strategies and serving the rural economy. We insist on serving the real economy as our fundamental purpose sees the trend of new and old driving forces transformation and industrial upgrading, continues to optimize allocation of financial resources while serving the high-quality development of the rural economy also strive to promote our own high-quality development. In 2025, the loan balance of ABC reached RMB 27.13 trillion, an increase of RMB 2.23 trillion over the end of the previous year. Among them, personal loans, inclusive loans and private enterprise loans took the lead exceeding RMB 9 trillion, RMB 4 trillion and RMB 7 trillion, respectively. Our financial investment was RMB 16.3 trillion, an increase of RMB 2.47 trillion over the previous year. We made every effort to serve the stable investment and consumption with the supporting of financing were too heavy, that is implementation of national strategy and the key areas in ensuring national strategy projects. We also are going in the front and the projects are ranked among the best in the comparable industry, increase of growth rate of the consumer loans were also ahead of the peers. Personal consumption loans, including credit cards, have a growth rate of 9% and the balance reached RMB 1.45 trillion. We continue to strive the Five Priorities of finance, promote more financial resources, invest in the productivity, green development, inclusive finance and provide loans to the SMEs. Other key areas was strength in the key areas and weak claims. The balance of the technology finance loan, green finance loan, inclusive finance loan reached RMB 4.7 trillion, RMB 5.93 trillion, RMB 4.35 trillion, respectively, growth rate of 20.1%, 18.7% and 20.9%, respectively. A number of inclusive known clients ranked the first among comparable peers. Total supply of inclusive finance is the largest with the widest service coverage, further consolidating the leading bank's position with the strongest sustainable development capability. In the field of pension finance, the number of physical and electronic social security card users ranked first among peers and the number of clients and the amount of individual pension service are also among the best in the comparable peers. The loan with the pension industry reached RMB 23.16 billion and were 108.5%. We actively serve higher level of opening up, introduce a work plan to stabilize foreign trade and investment active supports the cross-border use of RMB and helps to diversify the trade markets and integrate domestic and foreign trade. Third is to focus and put the client first, expand the new space for business development while enhancing client service capabilities. Clients are the foundation of our bank. We always take client development as a fundamental and strategic task. We will press ahead with the project to expand the client base, improve service for corporate clients with a group and tiered management personal loans, improve the service model driven by digital plus model and continuously enhance refined and comprehensive client service. Client base has been expanding, reaching 896 million for personal clients and remaining the largest in the industry. Nonbanking -- nonbank financial assets on AUM for personal clients amounted to RMB 24.7 trillion, an increase of RMB 2.4 trillion and end of previous year with 13.29 million corporate clients, an increase of 1.16 million clients from the end of previous year and ranked among the top in the peers. We had 609 million personal mobile banking clients with over 276 million monthly active users and over 292 million monthly active users. Our mobile devices maintained industry-leading growth rates on both metrics. The quality and efficiency of customer service continue to improve with a focus on better meeting customers' financial needs. We continuously enrich and expand our product offerings and portfolios in areas such as deposit credit, wealth management, strengthen service, synergy between commercial banks and investment banks and domestic foreign currencies, financial and nonfinancial service and advancing rural service project, we have been steadfast in promoting customers' rights and interest, making our customer service more diverse and personalized. We have strengthened our professional service capabilities. We have improved our employee training system, provided classified professional training to strengthen the team on wealth management and providing solid support for client service. Our total number of wealth management advisers have reached 119,000 increase of 6,000 from the end of last year. Fourth, we have deepened the reforming and innovation by deeply integrating business technology data. We have created a new impetus for business development. We have actively embraced the new round of technological revolution, deeply advanced construction and smart banks, intensified data empowerment and AI applications striving to transform technological innovation, a key variable into the greatest increment for high-quality development, making the application base for technological innovation more solid, accelerating the building of AI plus capability systems such as data technology, security, providing strong support for the large-scale and inclusive application of AI, making the approach of digital operations more mature, effective reducing the burden and workload empowering grassroots outlets become more significant. First, strengthen bottom line thinking and thickening and strengthen the safety cushion and buffer for business development. We also take risk management and control as our longstop task and continuously enhance professional capability in building risk management serve the ballast for maintaining financial stability. We continue to improve the comprehensive risk management system, strengthen forward-looking risk identification and enhanced risk disposal response in key areas and consolidating foundation of internal control and compliance management. And third, an outlook for 2026. We have confidence from 2 sources or aspects. First, the economic performance -- macroeconomic performance is stable and growing, creating a favorable macro environment for the development of ABC. The outline of our 15th Five-Year Plan have provided a guideline for our development. And in China's economy is has a solid foundation with many advantages and a strong resilience and long-term positive support conditions and basic trends with great potential have not changed. With the implementation of the supporting measures of the 15th Five-Year plan are gradually implemented, the economic growth rate will continue to maintain within a high reasonable rate. And we will continue to have the strong foundation. This has led a solid foundation for us to make further breakthroughs. Over the past 5 years, we have thoroughly studied and implemented General Secretary Xi Jinping's important expositions on the financial work, and we have actively pursued this path of financial development with Chinese characteristics. And we have also expanded our product and service quality and also optimized our team building capacities and also cemented our risk control efforts. This has given us a very good starting point. Dear friends, ABC's defining feature is agriculture. This year marks our 75th anniversary. During the past 75 years of ups and downs, we have always been resonating with our national strategy and also standing in unity with billions of customers and sharing value with broad investors. 2026 is the first year of the 15th plan. And the new era calls for new responsibilities and also the new journey requires new actions. ABC will continue to strengthen our party leadership and uphold a correct view of achievements. We will continue to lay a solid foundation and contribute to the starting chapter of the 15th Five-Year plan and create more value for shareholders, customers and investors in all sectors of society. Next, let's head into the Q&A session. I would like to invite the Secretary of BOD, Ms. Liu to be the moderator. Qing Liu: Now the first question, please, on site. lady on my left, first row, please. Unknown Attendee: I'm from Xinhua News Agency. After hearing the introduction, we can see that even though the overall external environment has been quite complicated, but ABC has reaped very good operating outcome and especially in the capital market, I'm just wondering what is the outlook of ABC in next year, such as in NIM and also in the net profit? What are the main driving forces? Li Lin: Well, I will take that question. I have just shared with you in 2025, even though we have a very complex business environment, our revenue growth has remained resilient and also operating income has maintained positive growth for 2 years running. Our net profit has also been maintaining positive growth as well. And also, it is now on an upward trajectory for better growth. If we look this over the long term, the performance or the financial performance of ABC is quite good and also remarkable. Our net profit growth has been leading the industry for 6 years and operating income has also been leading among our peers, creating new historical highs. And this has shown the growth and the bonus of the market. And we believe that the 15th Five-Year plan has given us even more confidence. I have just shared with you that the senior management is quite confident about better operating performance in 2026. So from the performance of the first 2 months of 2026, where operating income or overall operations have maintained stable growth and also positive trend. Our physical loans increased by RMB 1.1 trillion, achieving a year-on-year growth and NIM has -- or say net interest income has also turned positive year-on-year, which is an inflection point in the first quarter. This has further confirmed that our operating income will continue to be put on an upward trend, laying a solid foundation for the profitability across the entire bank. In the next phase, we will keep our strategic focus while providing better financial services. We'll continue to coordinate our pricing strategies while deepening our efforts to drive down cost and improve efficiency and continue the current solid momentum, and we will focus on the following 3 aspects. First of all, we will continue to drive the positive growth of net interest income, and we also strengthen our efforts to make sure that we have a positive growth in net interest income. In terms of scale, we will continue to issue more loans and also contribute to the real economy, and we will also optimize the structure of our assets and also strengthen refined management and improve the marginal returns of the assets. We will continue to consolidate our customer base and flexibly arrange our next efforts in driving down cost of deposits. And secondly, we'll continue to expand the growth space of net interest income. We will leverage the consumption policies and try our best to satisfy the diverse demands of our customers and seize the opportunities of the capital market and amplify the service supply for wealth management products. On the other hand, we will also strengthen our analysis of the market and flexibly determine on our trading or transaction strategies as well as the allocation of different categories of assets. And thirdly, we will better control risks and cost to better coordinate development and security and ensure that we put credit risks under control and try our best to drive down risks and cost. We will also strengthen our intensive and refined management model to reduce nonessential expenses. Anyway, we will try to achieve higher profits at better cost. So we are fully confident about the performance in 2026. So much from me. Qing Liu: Thank you so much, President Wang. Next question, please, on the right, please. Unknown Analyst: Thank you so much senior management members. I would like to ask a question about loans. In 2025, the credit loans has increased pretty fast. And in retail and country level loans, we have seen very good growth. Could you walk us through the plans or, say, the growth target for credit loans in 2026? And what are the key areas that you will focus on? Zhiheng Wang: I will continue to take your question. In 2025, we have actively implemented important major strategies at the national level. We have aligned ourselves with demands of the real economy and the overall volume of loans has shown better structure and also bigger volume. In terms of the total amount, I've shared with you that we have a total of RMB 2.23 trillion newly added loans. And in terms of structure, we have invested more in agriculture-related loans as well as rural revitalization services. And we have also injected greater momentum into 5 priorities and improving quality and efficiency. This year is the starting year of the 15th Five-Year plan. And in the government work report, we have a GDP growth target of 4.5% to 5%. And we also want to build a strong domestic market to achieve technological self-reliance and also [indiscernible]. There are a series of supporting projects as well as measures for rural revitalization. I believe that these are opportunities for commercial banks in credit placement. We will maintain our current intensity of credit to support the real economy and the average growth rate would be roughly the same as last year in the first 2 months of 2026, where economy is now rebounding. So we will seize the opportunity to focus on our national major strategies and credit deployment or credit placement has also achieved a very good start. By the end of February, our bank-wide physical loan growth has achieved year-on-year positive growth. And also, this is a sign of good momentum for sure. Our green technology where agriculture-related loans have registered positive growth, maintaining at average levels for comparable peers. And -- in the future, we will continue to highlight the agriculture and rural areas and also farmers-related fields. We will focus on improving the large area grain yield improvement and also ensure that we produce new quality productive forces and strengthen financial services for links across the whole [indiscernible] field chain, focus on specialty industry and key sectors and also big customers and important projects. We will make it bigger and better, especially in financial services, such as the issuance of farmer loans to ensure that we have stable growth in loans in 2026. And secondly, we will focus on 2 different areas such as domestic demand. We will continue to lend more support to major projects on transportation and energy, ensure that we have supporting financing services for a new round of policy, financial tools or instruments. We will also align our efforts with traditional consumption models and also emerging new consumption models such as green consumption. And we will implement the physical policies to maintain a leading growth momentum for consumer loans. And thirdly, we will support the construction of a modern industrial system such as we will sort out the customer list and then cultivate new quality productive forces, step up or speed up our technological innovation to support or contribute to emerging industries development. We will also focus on industry green transformation, green development, low carbon and green transition of energy and other key sectors. This will mean that we will improve the credit placement in green sectors and also the proportion of green loans. And fourthly, we will focus on inclusive SME loans and establish a work coordination mechanism. We'll continue to increase the support for SMEs and coordinate development and security, consolidate our leading advantages in inclusive finance and make sure that we cater to the demands of our residents in education, health care and so many others. Qing Liu: Thank you so much, President Wang. Next, I would like to ask for the gentleman on the right, the lady on the right for a question. Unknown Analyst: I know that commercial banks are under pressure, but ABC has maintained very stable asset quality. What measures have you taken in order to manage and prevent risks? And I would like to know about the NPL formation rate as well as your key focus in both retail and also corporate sectors. Qing Liu: So Vice President Lin, please take the question. Li Lin: Thank you for that question. From the perspective of a commercial bank, in the future 2 to 3 years, I think that the watershed should lie in the ability of risk management because the products can be very homogeneous and also the services can also be quite similar. And even AI models can be pretty much the same in the future, but there will be definitely differences between commercial banks in risk management and provision efforts. So that's why we think that we should do a good job in risk provision and management. For ABC, what did we do in that regard? Well, I think that it can be summarized in the following points. Generally speaking, it can be summarized as really doing hard work and getting our feet on the ground. ABC has placed risk prevention and management as an internal theme of our financial work. And we have been building our strong foundation and also cementing the current base for risk management. We have been quite prudent in our operations. We think that we can't say that the commercial banks are too careful or too much careful in their operations. And also, firstly, we have highlighted the role of quality and efficiency. And fourthly, we have to be problem oriented. And fifthly, we have to uphold our bottom lines. By integrated risk management and control and also with a forward-looking reflection capabilities, we can proactively control our risks and ensure good asset quality overall. And just now President Wang has shared with us the overall business or the overall situation at ABC. In 2025, our NPL ratio stood at 1.27%, down by 0.03% compared with the end of last year. The NPL ratio for 5 years running has been on a downward trend. Well, the special mention loan ratio was 1.39%, down by 1 bp from the beginning of the year. Overdue loan ratio, 1.25%, maintained the lowest among the comparable peers. And the difference between the NPL and overdue loan was always at negative. And also, we our credit balance of RMB 1.057 trillion, and we believe ABC is the only bank with a credit balance exceeding RMB 1 trillion. And from a prudent perspective, our credit provision increased by RMB 39.6 billion. The provision for loan loss ratio reached 292.55%, maintaining ABC at a strong risk resilient position. And in terms of the nonperforming loan formation, the formation ratio of corporate loans decreased compared to last year and the NPL ratio of inclusive retail loans has increased, compared to last year. NPL ratio of the whole bank for the whole year was 0.89%. We do believe the asset quality is well under control and similar of last year. And also the formation ratio of NPL has been maintained below 1%, which is relatively quite low. For the loans for the SMEs balance reached RMB 3.93 trillion, an increase of RMB 700 billion from the year beginning and NPL formation ratio, 1.54%. For the inclusive finance or the credit cards, including rural households, which is at the key of our risk control. So if we also incorporate them, our -- the balance of our retail loan balance loan was RMB 9.26 trillion, an increase of RMB 448.5 billion from the year beginning with NPL ratio of [indiscernible]. The main indicators of inclusive retail loans maintain leading position among the peers. It is worth notable that credit card business in terms of serving consumption, boosting development and advancing quality and quantity has performed quite well. And also our credit card loan incremental increase and asset quality are the best among our peers. And also, we apply the innovation and also the systematic thinking and relative philosophies to build a new management measures for the credit businesses and also further build a comprehensive risk management system for the inclusive retail business, we have done in the following 6 aspects for inclusive retail business. The first one is to build a stratified marketing system and also to promote or roll out the new business models and also have the top-level design of the head office from the provincial branch, and we have the sandbox operation at the city level branches, and we have the template of marketing for our outlets and branches focus on local conditions, industrial clusters and professional markets and also have a county-specific system. And also we draw a financial ecosystem map or road map adapting to the needs of different areas, adapting to the local conditions and also the formulating credit plans. We screen high-quality customers, and we have SOP so as to change the [indiscernible] , inefficient and a passive customer acquisition model. And we built an active batch based and a source customer acquisition business development model. And second, we adhere to the idea of minimization or focus on the [indiscernible] long accounts and also match the credit line with the customers' demands and also expand our business while also have system control so as to enhance our serviceability or quality to the small- and medium-sized customers to enhance the accessibility and coverage of our financial service. While at the same time, we give up using a simple model to measure or calculate the credit line so as to put our risk within our risk tolerance. And we take the households at our center or as a priority and also build a new vision of management. We have a unified credit approval and also credit management -- to be more specific, for the same family business for the SME legal persons and business owners and the relatives or friends or in the personal or individual business, consumption and credit card businesses are putting under the same umbrella of management. We have a cross-line and cross-product coordination so as to effectively prevent the under-standard eligibility of the customers for certain products because for some of the products, we have the differentiated threshold for the eligibility of the customers. So we also prevent the overlap of the credit granting, but also prevent the risk of excessive credit granting. Fourth, we integrated online and offline businesses. We leverage on the models or the digital tools, but we are not over relying on the digital tools. We insist on the principle of enhancing people's awareness, understanding and also have on the spot investigations for due diligence, while at the same time, we enhance businesses, tax, credit history, private fund as well as other third-party data to do the customer or KYC business. We have a cross check of the authenticity of our customers, so as to ensure that the fund they use is for the real purpose for business. And we are not just following the trend. We also used open cloud to process and analyze the data in an automized way and to generate the KYC report so as to make our credit approval and more efficient and also have a process and procedure constraints and build a business mechanism. What is key here is to separate the approval from the credit granting. And also we separate the roles because impressive for some of the inclusive retail loan granting, the approval and the lending are put together. But in our practice, we insist for the online SME inclusive loan, we separate the amount of the business and also we separate the roles in the -- between the approval and the loan or disbursement, so as to form checks and balances in the process of credit granting and we also make up for the shortcomings of the decisions for the models. And also, we prevent the one people have to save for everything. And we say no to any form of intermediary person participating in the marketing or doing the -- handling the business. If some of the illegal or inappropriate intermediaries or agencies participate in that they will bring a lot of shock to the business of the bank. Sixth, we empower on the technology and also to enhance our risk management capabilities empowered by technologies, meaning on the model process identification and system real-time early warning, we use UCR recognition and GPS positioning and also cash flow clearing and AI intelligence and other technologies to do the improved ability of anti-fraud and -- and also rely on the big data or large language model, we focus on new loans, professional debtors or the intermediary loan companions and other risk characteristics, consistently optimizing the risk control model and during -- before, during and after the lending to improve the accuracy of our early alerting, so as to ensure the stability of our asset quality, and we will further enhance our risk management and mitigation in a more systematic way in inclusive retail business. Moving forward, we firmly establish appropriate attitude to our performance and do our own job well for the right purpose. We will stick to a prudent and steady risk appetite and also put the risk prevention and management as a priority. It is very promising that asset quality will be -- continue to be stable and maintain a relatively leading position among our peers. Why we are so confident? First, we have a more profound and comprehensive full-fledged risk management control system, to be more specific, we'll have credit management. We have online/offline coordination and separate the credit approval and credit branding business. And we also have a unified credit management and also to enhance accountability, we use the smart tools and to have a unified monitoring and supervising. In Chongqing, ACB set up a head office level digital risk management center for the purpose of enhance our monitoring of the early warning identification and also early check and dispose of the credit risk of inclusive retail business and also to enhance our management overdue loans and enhance the disposal of NPAs and also enhance the notification of the overdue or when the loans come due. Here, we enhanced the smart disposal platform 2.0 version and also to enhance the dispatched transfer or disposal of NPA, enhance the efficiency of the diversified NPA disposal channels. Please rest assured, the inclusive retail loan are small, scattered or there are a lot of amount of them, but we will further make a health check so as to clarify and also have an order well-organized management of this type of business. And also for the risk management of the key areas that has been further improved in terms of efficiency. In terms of the real estate loan by the end of -- as at the end of 2025, NPL ratio in the industry remain unchanged from the previous year. And newly NPL has been decreased year-on-year. We'll continue to adhere to a household-specific policy and approach, project-specific plan and step up risk control for large clients focus on key links such as funds, assets, equity strictly managing the account presale funds and separating the operation from project funds. And we'll use the 16 financial policies for rules and whitelist loan continuation. And also, we will enhance or we will provide our credit support for the high-quality or better housing projects and also will enhance the credit measures. We will not expand our business or lendings in this area in a blend way and also use the policies to replace the implicit debts. And also we have to optimize the structure of the existing debt to lower down our risk exposure and also have a market-oriented rule-based and appropriate finance approach to increase our financing in these areas so as to safeguard the bottom line of not increasing the implicit debt. And also, we will enhance our structures in a preventive way that is very important. And also, we will reduce the low-quality or inefficient customers, but at the same time, support the building of the modernized industrial system. We'll focus on the structural risks, and we will take preemptive measures for the overcapacity. We will not do the evolution so as to ensure the credit quality. Qing Liu: The next question, please. Unknown Analyst: From Economic Daily. My question about wealth management, the personal customer is around RMB 896 million, which is leading among the peers and over the several -- past several years, customers have high demands on wealth management with the fluctuations in the capital fluctuation and also people have a demand of the capital allocation. As Mr. Wang said, ABC rolled out a lot of innovative measures in wealth management. Could you please elaborate more on the innovative measures on wealth management? And what are the plans moving forward. Qing Liu: Thank you for the question. Mr. Lin, please. Li Lin: Thank you for the question. So as an entity or a bond in connecting people's saving or household savings to the circulation of economy, there is a lot of room for us to -- or potential for us to tap into in wealth management. This is an important measure to serve to boost China's strength in finance. Wealth management is an important part for the modern financial system. By developing strengthen wealth management will help to cultivate potential capital increase the direct financing and also to enhance the efficiency and quality of the financial service to the real economy and the high-quality development. It also projected for people's well-being. Next, it can also improve the residence income. Wealth management can expand their income generation channels and it can also get the public to participate more broadly in the capital market and then share in the fruits of economic development. And thirdly, it is an intrinsic requirement for high quality development of commercial banks, wealth management features light capital, stable returns, and sustainability. It is an important path for commercial banks to transition from scale expansion to value creation. ABC has been people oriented in recent years, and we placed wealth management business development as a very important priority, and we have deepened our strategy for integrated and 2-wing approach of retail development. And basically, it's all about customer development. So the 2-wing refers to wealth management and digital transformation or transition. And with our forward-looking layout, we have a driven financial development system to cement the development for operating income. First of all, we have upheld value-driven approach and also a people-oriented model. The nature of our management approach is to have an asset allocation with customer at the center. We want to create value and also provide allocation service strategies. We hope that we want to strive to become a reliable planner or say, family, financial adviser for our clients. And another one is comprehensive service capability. By the end of 2025, the personal financial assets across the entire bank has reached RMB 24.7 trillion. During the 14th Five-Year plan period, the number has increased by nearly RMB 10 trillion, ranking ourselves at the forefront of the industry. If we look at the latest figures, we can see that is now exceeding RMB 25.4 trillion. In terms of assets and liabilities, ABC's personal asset, deposits and also personal loan scale, all ranked first in the industry. So we have the most deposits, loans and also the largest number of customers. So we should be a very big and preferred bank for a large number of customers. And secondly, we have optimized the asset allocation of customers and integrate that with advancing 5 priorities. In that regard, we have created an agricultural pension financial service platform. And in ESG, we have made comprehensive breakthroughs crossing the RMB 100 billion threshold across different product lines. And thirdly, we have achieved the breakthroughs on multiple fronts. In the past 5 years, we have seen that our LBM has currently reached RMB 3.65 trillion. And also during the 14th Five-Year period, the total customer volume has increased by nearly 2 trillion. So all of this has put us also at the forefront of the entire banking industry. The wealth management products in agriculture sector has also exceeded RMB 2.2 trillion, leading comparable peers. And more importantly, we have created over RMB 340 billion for investors. We are also doing very best to satisfy our consumer demands and also insurance demands. In terms of premiums under agency, we have ranked the first among our peers. ABC Life Insurance and also other institutions under ABC, have all maintained a leading position among comparable peers. We have also adhered to a reform-driven progress approach. Wealth management and resource integration and innovation have all followed a similar path. So we have 896 million individual customers and also 22,800 outlets, and we also have very big advantages in channels and customers. All of these have turned into the driving forces for ABC. First, we are dedicated to create a full spectrum of product portfolios to leverage the advantages of integrated operations. We need to build a multifunctional portfolio or is a matrix that covers different diversified strategies, wealth management products such as trust funds, precious metal investments and more. Secondly, we have upgraded the market open platform. We have to keep ourselves open to work with third-party institutions and improve our coordination and step-up management in scientific evaluation mechanisms, introduce quality resources from the market and satisfy diversified and customized demands of the customers. Thirdly, we have to provide full life cycle customer companionship at different stages. We can ensure that we provide the right services such as wealth management and also family protection. Throughout the life cycle, we have to focus on developing comprehensive services for private businesses and in this way, we can also have cross-border wealth management and also so many other options to satisfy our customers diversified demands at multiple levels and also improve the accessibility and inclusiveness of our financial management services. And thirdly, we have been persisting in organizational-driven efforts to forge wealth management service capabilities. We ensure that professionals under professional matters. A professional team can improve our efficiency and core competitiveness, which is in investment research and customer service. First of all, we have created an open integrated professional research system. We have also strengthened the group's investments source integration mechanism built a multidisciplinary expert team and gained market insights. With the forward-looking and culture of study progress forward, we have implemented a very sound strategy for research, product introduction, marketing support and asset allocation, evaluation and final review. And we have also been insisting in reasonable expectations and qualified interactions. We know that for our wealth management subsidiaries, we require them to have a realistic pricing expectations. We also worked with these joint venture financial companies, I would check their figures to ensure that we have the best delivery with our customers. This can help us to ensure that we have a sound interaction between customer and the market. And on the other hand, we also need to ensure that our team is also customer oriented. There are many things involved in ABC's business and our unique advantage is, of course, Sannong or agriculture-related services, but internally, we want to really interpret this service brand as improving results every day. It's not that we want to just do easy work or just shut out [indiscernible], but it is that we want to see improvements every day. And next, we insist on precision management and strengthen our structural optimization and capacity development. We have -- already have professional compromising 119,000 customer manager and 6,000 wealth advisers. We have also focused on the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and emerging potential areas. We have implemented differentiated strategies according to local conditions, build benchmark. And also in a total of 500 branches, we have done so in private banks. And also in some wealth management centers, we have definitely ensure that there is a tiered system for training to empower their training system and also service or professional service capabilities on the ground. Sometimes we can go at bottom up. But other times, we think that top-down approach is also a very effective channel. Now we have 120,000 customer managers and 6,000 financial advisers. They should be working like seeds and they are providing services across the bank and serving our customers with their expertise. And fourthly, we have to uphold a digitalization-driven approach and let wealth management be one of our growth engines. By using digital means and intelligent approaches, we can ensure that we have online and offline wealth management coordination efforts and a multidimensional service network. On one hand, we can improve our online and off-line service efficiency and these digital means can also empower our business, and we will continue to advance this all channel convenient and intelligent platform building. And we will also make sure that we improve our capacity for all whether around the clock responsiveness. We are also actively using AI. We're applying in different scenarios. We have an employee, who is an AI model, and we will strengthen customer insights and intelligent layout as well as post investment companionship throughout the entire life cycle. From the performance in 2025, we can see the great wealth management income has reached RMB 35.7 billion and financial management fee income reaches RMB 251 billion, and we should say that this is a very big resilience market. Basically, we have shown strong resilience in our business and also high market recognition and also, our business has maintained very stable growth with little fluctuations. And many of our joint venture wealth management companies have proper expectations for their products. So we have talked so much about what work we have done and data and statistics. At the end of the day, high-quality development should be an all-hands-on-deck effort, which involves not only counter managers and also customer managers and wealth management managers and consultants and advisers and even sci-tech personnel. Here, I would like to take this opportunity to -- on behalf of the senior management, express our heartfelt gratitude to our staff, who have weathered through many hardships and difficulties. And with their expertise and hard work, you have been fighting right at the forefront. Thank you so much for your diligence and hard work. Qing Liu: Okay. Thank you so much, Mr. Lin, for that very encouraging words. And next, I would like to invite next question. Unknown Analyst: [indiscernible], a financial analysist. I'm wondering about the situation in international business. We are now paying attention to business going global and also foreign trade, especially the growth structure and also the overall layout with a new market environment and also new customer demand, ABC -- how will ABC support key foreign trade enterprises to go global? And how will this contribute to your operating revenue and also your efforts for high-level opening up? Qing Liu: Thank you so much for that question. I would like to invite President Dr. Wang for a response. Zhiheng Wang: Thank you so much for your interest in international business. ABC has been earnestly implementing the decisions and arrangements of the [ Party Central Committee]. And with that, we have been cementing the interplay between domestic and overseas market and optimize our cross-border financial comprehensive service system, the international settlement business volume has reached about USD 16,400, an increase of 8% year-on-year. And the international trade financing business volume has increased by 30% year-on-year. The growth rate is still very impressive. So I think that, first of all, we have been helping or supporting businesses to go global. In ABC, we have a presence in 18 countries and 21 overseas institutions, and we also have 1 joint venture bank. More than half of them are in building road countries and regions. So this has aligned with our efforts to help businesses to go global. In 2025, we have continued to ensure that the interplay between domestic and overseas institutions is well underway. Our interplay business has reached USD 118 billion, an increase of 13%, and we have seen the financing business of BRI countries has reached USD 340 billion. We will continue to focus on Sannong areas and ensure that this leading business in this area can go global, and we will also lend support to international corporation projects. Across the year, the agricultural-related financing business has been handled for RMB 69 billion. And second, we strengthened our product innovation to support the development of our new forms and new models of trade. It is safe to say that in recent years, the scale of the main players in the new forms and models for trade has been accelerated, becoming an important support for foreign trade. And in response to the new characteristics of many players in new forms and new models of trade, ABC has empowered with technology to innovate cross-border payment products and many branches have completed the registration with SAFE and obtained the qualification for direct cross-border e-commerce collection. Scale of our direct cross-border e-commerce collection business ranks among the top in the -- among the peers. And third, we have strengthened implementation of our regulation or regulatory policies, and we have enhanced the level of cross-border financial service, the reform of foreign exchange business development is an important measure for the institutional opening up of financial sector of China. ABCs continuously promoted the reform and foreign exchange business development, expanded its scope business volume and a customer base accounted for a large proportion of the whole bank approaching to 40%. The ability of promoting facilities and prevent risks has been further enhanced -- and also, we have supported the international use of RMB. Cross-border RMB settlement volume reached RMB 3.82 trillion, an increase of 8.7% year-on-year. ABC will combine the relevant arrangements for expanding high-level in the 15th Five-Year plan period continue to enhance our support for the real economy on foreign trade and build a closed loop for cross-border financial service. And to serve the high-quality joint development of the Belt and Road Initiative, and we will optimize the linkage mechanism at home and abroad, enhanced supply of cross-border linked products and strengthen financial support for key overseas investment projects and introduce a special work plan to support the development of the new land and sea passage in the West. We will also strengthen the service capability for settlement and exchange of small currencies with neighboring countries and we'll optimize the cross-border financial system service system, and support stable skill and optimal structure of foreign trade, improve the service mechanism for our customers' high-end certified enterprises and strengthen support for cross-border financial business and high-quality agricultural and rural entities continue to support foreign trade enterprise under the financing coordination mechanism for SMEs and carry out innovation and application cross-border e-commerce financing products, building diversified payment channels. And third, strengthen the supply of cross-border financial services enhance the level of cross-border trade investment and financing. And we will further enrich the system of exchange rate risk management, products support SMEs expanding foreign trade market, and we will support the cross-border use of RMB in the rural economy will play a more active role. So we will also provide a strong support for high-quality development of the entire bank. Unknown Analyst: And from [indiscernible] Asset Management, I'm [indiscernible]. My question is about inclusive finance. In the presentation, you mentioned inclusive finance, inclusive finance as one of the Five Priorities of finance about China. It is also a highlight of the business performance of ABC. Looking forward to 2026, how ABC will maintain the good momentum in inclusive finance for sustainable development . Qing Liu: Thank you very much for the question. I'd like to invite Mr. Wang Dajun, Vice President of ABC to take this question. Wang Dajun: Thank you very much for the question. Inclusive finance covering a lot of industries, covering a lot of households. One of the Five Priorities of finance of China is also an important aspect of practicing or maintaining the political nature and people oriented nature of the financial work. By 2025, ABC has thoroughly implemented decisions, arrangements of the CPC Central Committee and the central government, deepened coordination mechanisms for supporting the financing of SMEs and also enhance the ability of our inclusive financial service in a comprehensive way. We have promoted the increase of expansion and improvement of our inclusive finance. And we also achieved high-quality development and the quality and efficiency of providing inclusive financial service, mainly reflected on 3 aspects. First, we are -- we have the largest supply of inclusive credit supply. As at the end of 2025, the balance of inclusive finance loan registered RMB 4.35 trillion increase. And also, we have -- compared with the beginning of this year, the inclusive finance loan to SME RMB 3.93 trillion. And also this year, we reached or exceeded RMB 4 trillion. The balance of -- the balance and also increase of inclusive finance loan are the first among the peers. And also, we have the widest customer service coverage -- as at the end of 2025, ABC's inclusive SME customer with the loan from the bank, we have RMB 5.24 million, an increase of [indiscernible] from the year beginning. The total number and increase of the customers has been the first among the peers for 3 consecutive years. So we are providing the truly inclusive finance service. Third, we excel in sustainable development capabilities, and we shifted from the digitalization. We are leading among the peers to do so. The asset quality of inclusive finance loans are also leading among the peers. The evaluation from the regulators leading among the peers. For 2026, as in the first year of the 15th Five-Year plan period, we will work on the following 3 fronts so as to ensure the inclusive finance business to maintain our good business momentum. To be more specific, first, we will make a good use of the policy tools of the country. In the beginning of this year, relevant ministries of China rolled out the one package policy to support the coordination between fiscal and monetary finance, in particular, the fiscal subsidy for the SMEs and also the private investment guarantee plan that has brought new opportunities for the inclusive finance development. We will enhance the cooperation between the banks and governments, between the banks and the guarantee agencies, focus on new policy tools, optimize our business process and rolled out featured products and offers so as to lower down the cost of financing our SMEs and increase the convenience, so as to transform the policy benefits into the growth drivers for inclusive finance. Second, we'll make a good use of the institutions and mechanisms. ABC will continue to give our role of the 3 Sannong or the rural business departments and inclusive finance department and taking advantage of the dual-wheel drive organized structure. It is -- we are the only bank that has such kind of dual-wheel drive that is the cooperation between the inclusive finance department and the rural business department. And we will continue to leverage our advantages across urban rural areas with a large number of branches, outlets and extensive outlets coverages at the county level cities. And also, that is also the uniqueness or the feature of ABC. We will continue to demonstrate or the mechanism advantage that provide us with the willingness, ability and also expertise and also the courage of provide credit service to rural areas or related businesses. And also, we will promote digitalization in our inclusive finance. We have the iteration upgrading and further enrich and improve our -- the Huinong or agricultural bank E-Loan platform and also build [indiscernible] outlets and the inclusive finance E-Loan to build an ecosystem on inclusive finance and also roll out AI intelligent credit-related business and also consistently improve the digital risk control system. And ABC on [indiscernible] is for this purpose. And also, we will solve with the problems of the asymmetric information in inclusive finance and also for the -- further enhance our risk control and management, provide a high-quality service with a lower cost. And in 2026, ABC will continue to adhere to the general key of seeking progress for maintaining stability and coordinate risk prevention development and to serve people's well-being focused on major strategies, key areas, weakness, so as to ensure the high-quality development of inclusive finance business. I'll stop here. Qing Liu: Next question, please. Unknown Attendee: I'm [indiscernible] from the The 21st Century Business News, serving the rural revitalization is the positioning of ABC and also that is what ABC is good at, how ABC will enhance your competitive edge in providing service to the county level areas. Unknown Executive: Thank you very much for the question. Yes, provide rural revitalization is our main business, and it is also our highlights. And by the same time, it is a key focus area in our strategic development. In the past year, we stick to our main business and also to seize opportunity of the integrated development of the urban and rural areas provide financial supply or credit supply and also enhance our the quality and efficiency of providing service to the agricultural areas and country economy. And also in the several aspects, first, with the contribution of county level for our average daily deposit and loan increment has been exceeded RMB 1 trillion. Proportion of increase increased by the 10.5% and 1.4 percentage points, respectively, compared with the previously with this better structure, balance of household loan exceeded RMB 1.8 trillion with an increase of RMB 337.7 billion or 22.4% and loans for key areas, green production rural industries, the growth rate of loans in these key areas is higher than the growth rate of all loans. Third, better quality and better efficiency. NPL ratio in county level regions was very low with stable asset quality moving forward. We will have the document from the 15th Five-Year plan and there are systematic arrangement for the rural revitalization by aligning our development to the national strategy. We rolled out 2026, 2 consolidations and 2 insurance of providing service to rural-related businesses. One is to consolidate the proportion of the county level loan in our overall loan portfolio and also consolidate our advantage of providing service to the county levels. And also we ensure that we'll maintain the same intensity and also the over stable asset quality. In the new year, our 2026 will continue to enhance the policy resource investment, enhance our ability of providing financial service. To be more specific, we'll do a good job well in the following 5 aspects. The first, we will provide service to the major projects and county levels. The net growth of the country level loan growth will continue to exceed RMB 1 trillion. In our businesses, in the agricultural-related business, we'll work with the improve the agriculture-related projects and national water networks and also comprehensive agricultural production capability and also taking the counties as a major vertical, we will provide service to the major projects and also have list-based service and supporting financing. In terms of the agricultural enterprises, we'll focus on the leading agricultural industries and also leading agricultural technology companies, providing full cycle financial service. In terms of the farmers or farming households, we thoroughly carry out information finding or information collection for the farmers to expand the toolbox of farmers loans, try to have more than RMB 2 trillion of farmer -- RMB 2 trillion of balance of loans providing to farmers this year. And second, we'll further enhance our financial service capabilities, and we'll have 6-in-1 service systems, and we will also further promote relocation of inefficient outlets to townships, accelerating sinking financial service to more rural areas. And this year, we'll strive to relocate 180 outlets to townships and also further increasing the development of agricultural assistance service stations throughout the combination of service stations, mobile service, further enhance our base financial service. And this year, we will build around 3,000 -- last year, we have already built around 1,700. This year, we hope to have around 3,000 agricultural assistance service stations. And we'll innovate the innovative financial products and models for agricultural businesses, and we will roll out some new and diversified products and also use the smart bank tools in providing service to the rural areas for rural businesses and build have promoted the application of smart bank tools in the field of agricultural areas, farmers promote on-site plus remote investigations and build a system covering satellite, UAV and ground IoT and other agricultural data, enhance our support data supply capabilities for agricultural businesses. And fourthly, we will ensure that this normalized financial assistance will be put at a prominent position, and we have already formulated a package of differentiated policies, and we will try to ensure that we lend targeted support or especially policy support to people who have just been lifted out of poverty and to ensure they will not return to their previous state. We will focus on national and provincial level rural revitalization strategies and projects support underdeveloped areas in carrying out initiatives and form internal motivation for these assistance projects. And fifthly, we will ensure the compliance and risk management work of the country-level regions and ensure that we manage or prevent risks at the source and ensure that the loans will have a very strict risk identification and monitoring process and also a series of risk monitoring models. Qing Liu: Next question please. You may ask your question. Unknown Analyst: I'm from JPMorgan Chase and banking analysis. My question is about the bond market. We have noticed that last year, the contribution of bond investment is actually pretty prominent. So what is your plans for this year's bond investment? And also what is your judgment on the bond interest rate for 2026? Qing Liu: President Lin, please. Li Lin: Thank you for the question. From the perspective of the overall operation and management, we attach great importance to the financial market. And with our understanding about inherent loss of the financial market, basically 3 positioning. First of all, the level of the market and the level of the professionalism and also the level of talent that's 3 positioning. And if we want to summarize this or the characteristics of ABC's financial market business, I think that it can be summarized in 3 key words. First, big; second, stable; and thirdly, good. So first, large or big, it means that we are big in scale and stable means that we have been upholding prudent operations. So we are also very unwavering on that. And the third point is good or good quality. That means that we have a pretty good outcomes. And it is also sustainable in the long term. You are interested in bond investment business. Here at ABC, we have been committed to serving the real economy. We focus on improving our capabilities and optimizing asset allocations and better promoting and controlling risks to achieve high-quality development. You have mentioned bond investment has contributed a lot to the performance of ABC last year. I think that's inseparable from the external environment and also at the head office, the investment decision-making committee as well as the overall investment team have made a very good analysis on the market, and they have a very targeted and precise investment strategy. Looking back in 2025. At ABC, we have done 3 things right. First of all, with our strategic focus, we have cemented our investment foundation. While serving the real economy, we have improved our ability to make evaluations of the entire market as a core participator of the bond market. The financial market managers of ABC has over RMB 10 trillion in bond assets. Therefore, we really value our ability to make macro assessment of the financial market. And we have been adhering to national policies as the guiding principle and also the economic loss as our guidance. And we have been making proper evaluations of the macro policy curves as well as the dynamics of the economic environment, so that in the ups and downs or fluctuations of the market, we can identify opportunities and effectively address up to the place to manage and prevent risks. We have to seize the opportunity of interest rate fluctuations and to really understand its reference. And this ups and downs and range fluctuations. Take, for example, before the interest rate rebound window, we proactively compressed or duration and to cushion against the risk of rising interest rates. With our professional capabilities in practice, we can effectively stabilize market expectations. And secondly, in our work, we have been serving strategic situation with more precise allocation. In dynamic balance, we have achieved a new increase in scale and efficiency, facing international economic and trade landscape adjustment in 2025, the global financial market has been facing increasingly complex environment. So we have to focus our strategic focus and the strive to proactively or more proactively use a sophisticated and refined management strategies and approaches to prevent and control risks. In particular, with our comprehensive income target as the goal, the RMB bond scale has increased by RMB 2.4 trillion, compared with the beginning of last year, and we have achieved a due growth in revenue and profit and also we have a better revenue structure or duration allocation has been more balanced. This has given us an edge and cushion against the cyclical fluctuations of the market. Here, I think that it is important to highlight flexible or dynamic management and optimization of duration as well as the duration structure. We have to constantly strengthen the monitoring of potential risks coming from interest rate and exchange rates, so as to improve the forward-looking analysis and prevention of bond investment or credit risks. Thirdly, as a major bank in China, we have been acting on national strategies and serving the real economy, we have advanced the Five Priorities. In the year 2025, ABC has taken a lead in underwriting national bonds and local government bonds and credit bonds and altogether, more than RMB 3.7 trillion, a year-on-year increase of 20 percentage points roughly. So it is fair to say that we have supported implementation of active physical policy and the real economy. We have also been focusing on 5 major priorities. We have been continuing increasing our investment in industrial bond in green and low-carbon areas and technology innovation. These directions represent our top priorities. And by the end of last year, the green financing [indiscernible] balance has maintained a leading position, and we have also anchored our efforts in rural revitalization strategy. Our investment in that regard has increased by 300% and/or underwriting share ranked first in the market for this year. And especially in the Sannong, where agriculture-related sectors, we have precisely allocated or investment portfolios. And you're also interested in the bond strategy for 2026. We deeply feel that 2026 because it is the starting year for the 15th Five-Year plan, it is a pivotal year for us to build momentum and step into high-quality development as China's economy transforms itself. Here at ABC, we have served the real economy and we have coordinated development and security and ensure we have a better coordination at a macro level. We have been maintaining stability while seeking progress in our financial market operations. But all at the same time, we emphasize that we have to really delve into structural opportunities in these cycles. First of all, we have to improve our ability to assess different situations and support proper investment decision-making. So I think that you are also an expert in that regard. So I will not go into any details here. I believe that logic of global asset pricing has been undergoing profound changes. I should say that all of you might feel it to some extent. And internally, we say domestically, our economy is now building momentum and the pricing signals are expected to recover and the monetory policy remains not really accommodative. The government bonds has increased and supply has increased, and the issuance has been also significantly front loaded. And since the beginning of this year, the curve of the bond market yield has been more steeper. So we estimate that the bond market will take on a volatile trend. Credit bond as well as green and sci-tech bond will be even more active. The fluctuations were volatile or transaction or trading opportunities will coexist with those low volatility assets. And also in foreign markets, there will be increasing interplay between exchange rates, bond stock and commodity markets, so we have to have the overall picture in mind. One important part of our work is to integrate all platforms at ABC and pull together the research power to conduct research across different markets, cycles, sectors and asset categories so that even in complex fluctuating scenarios, we can really lend ourselves our certainty. And secondly, we focus on national strategies to accurately empower the real economy. First of all, we have used -- or adopted a proactive physical policy. We have been deeply integrated into modern industrial system. So here, we're focused on some of the modern and strategic emerging industries and also, we will intensify efforts to allocate more resources to high-quality industries. And thirdly, we will advance Five Priorities, especially in pension finance, inclusive finance and green finance and so on. And next, we will continue to optimize our investment portfolio while controlling and preventing risks will ensure prudent growth. Thirdly, we will give full play to our advantage as a major bank in China. We will deepen services for domestic and overseas investors, and we will continue to cement our core commercial functions, piggybacked on a full range of bond varities and pricing capabilities. We will continue to improve bond market liquidity and stability and improve our cross-market allocation capabilities. On the other hand, piggybacked on the Bond Connect, Swap Connect and so many others or other mechanisms, we will ensure we provide better services for cross-border investors and leverage the advantages of domestic and international linkage and supports high-quality Chinese businesses to go global and expand their development channels. And fourthly, we will empower or digital transformation with science and technologies. So we have to uphold the leading role of science and technology and digital means and risk control and prevention, bond and research and also so many other areas we have to have whole chain integration, and we ensure that AI is applied in different application scenarios, such as position management and pricing and trading so that we can improve for quantitative analysis and also intelligent investment decision-making and empower development or high quality development of ABC. Qing Liu: Thank you so much, Mr. [indiscernible]. Next question, please. Unknown Analyst: I am a financial analysist from [ CICC ]. What ABC has done in supporting the development of sci-tech businesses what are your best practices? And how will better develop the sci-tech finance business or the fintech business? Unknown Executive: I think that I would like to take this question. We know that the technological finance is a very important part of our self-reliance and also the construction of a technological strong nation, and it also involves the construction of a modern industrial system and new quality predictive forces here at ABC. As of the end of 2025, we have already provided services to over 350,000 technology-based businesses and the balance for loans is RMB 47,000. The annual growth rate is more than 20%. The coverage and overall loan volume has been at the forefront at this industry. To be more specific, enhanceability of technology and financial service at ABC continued to carry the special actions to enhance the capability of technology and financial service in the whole bank, focus on Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area, Yangtze River Delta area, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Chengdu-Chongqing other high lines of technological innovation establishing 25 provincial and municipal level technology and financial service centers and building more than 300 specialized technology and financial branches established professional talent pool for technology and finance. We have allocated professional equity investment personnel to each subsidiary and build a large number of financial technological and industrial professionals in the ABC Group. Second, we expanded the coverage of products and the services we have taken the lead, introducing guidelines for our technology and finance credit policies, promote the 5 [indiscernible] capabilities and 7 abilities on credit evaluation model inclusive to technology and enterprise -- technology enterprises in a build of full life cycle credit service system covering the institutes and the sci-tech parks and also the technology workers in total around 50 specific products and customers. For example, in providing service to the agricultural technologies, we rolled out in the agricultural park science enterprise loan, especially also have the agricultural or machinery loan, effectively providing service to the leading agricultural technology enterprises. And also, we provide the seed industry revitalization and also make good use of various policy tools. We know that in 2025, digital bank and other 7 departments issued a series of policy tools to support technology finance. And ABC actively connected and implemented those policies. We support the creation of a technology innovation on board in the bond market. The first batch of RMB 20 billion of commercial banking technology innovation bonds were issued while we increased the underwriting and investment in various market entities in science and technology, innovation bonds also underwrite an investment are at the forefront of the industry. And also we implemented the policy -- monetary policy tools. And also, we signed a contract amount of loans and technology innovation, technological transformation has been achieved. And also, we participate in the policy and pilot projects -- we were the first to sign a RMB 50 billion of Social Security Science and Technology Innovation Fund in Zhejiang and Yangtze River Delta and also established 30 various types of science and technology innovation funds, including establishment of 18 AIC equity investment policy, city funds, and we have a full coverage of investment. The cumulative lending [indiscernible] technology-based enterprise exceeded RMB 25 billion. Those measures have supported the development of technology innovation. 2026 is the first year of the 15th Five-Year plan period while fully focus and will get [indiscernible] in terms of the technology finance and to empower the new productive forces and provide service for the economy so as to contribute to accelerate the strength of China -- China's strength in science and technology. First, we will provide service to the modernized industrial system, promote innovation technology to combine what were integrated with the industrial innovation, focus on the upgrading of traditional industries, focused on the new and future industries, focused on the modernized infrastructure, focused on the major national scien-tech projects to seize our targeted industries and customers, enhance our policy and resource support and enhance our professional service capabilities so as to accelerate the formation of new product forces. And second, we have a full chain, full life cycle comprehensive or one-stop service by adapting to the laws and patterns of the innovation and also the growth pattern of the enterprises. We will invest early, invest in small and investing in the long term and invest in the hard technologies and also continue to enhance our policy and support system. And also, we upgrade entire chain and entire cycle, the technology finance or financial service solution of ABC. We have the -- based on the advantage of ABC full license investment, lending bonds and leasing, consulting, [indiscernible] play to the role of AIC in serving technological innovation and equity investment. We work with government agencies and also to research institutes and VC firms and other financial institutions to meet the comprehensive financial service demands of the enterprise to our customers. We accelerated the promotion and application of our data tools to adapt to the trend of digital and intelligent development, we deepened the AI+ empowerment of technology and financial service. We coordinated the deployment of our large language models and development of intelligent agents, optimize the service platform for industrial finance, which has registered now 5 million high-quality technology enterprises, enabling precise service capabilities and also make in-depth use of innovation, external data, such as innovation points, intellectual property and investment and loan linkages optimizing the precise evaluation model for technology enterprises and also use AI agent system that enhance our quality in providing service. Qing Liu: Thank you Mr. Wang. A question online, please take a common question that we haven't touched upon. Well, this year is the first year for mandatory sustainability information disclosure. And the investors in the capital market are very interested in the sustainability of listed companies. Also, ABC is performing very well in ESG work. So what is progress of the sustainable development -- sustainable development and what are the next steps? Unknown Executive: Thank you for the question. Well, we will disclose 2025 sustainability development in line with our annual report, in line with the new regulators and benchmarking to the international initiatives, demonstrating the performance of ABC in our sustainable development. We actively implement a national strategy in sustainable development and incorporate the targets in responding to climate change in our day-to-day work management and business operations, enhance resilience through sustainable development, enabling the benefits to all stakeholders. To be more specific, first, we focus on improving our governance and implement Chinese characterized financial governance. We incorporate the party leadership into our work and also enhance our sustainable topics, scope of the disclosure of sustainable development. And the BOD is supervising, senior management is implementing and also the executive level effectively implementing the policies forming a connected governance chain and enabling the concept of sustainable development into the top-level design of business operations in the 15th Five-Year plan and further stimulating the quality and momentum of high-quality development. Second, we'll fully implement the green finance strategy. We steadily promote our own energy conservation and carbon emission reduction, actively practice the concept and take carbon peaking and carbon neutrality as our guide and actively guide capital to towards key areas such as carbon reduction, pollution reduction, green expansion and growth in terms of green finance, balance of green loan is nearly RMB 6 trillion and equivalent to an annual reduction of RMB [indiscernible] million tons of CO2 and RMB 66 billion of green financial bonds have been issued in China ranking first in the industry. The balance of green bond investment has increased by 37%. In terms of ESG risk management, we have built ESG evaluation indicator, matrix system for our clients, launched ESG evaluation function for corporate clients. We also explored and conducted climate, risk stress test for agricultural, personal housing and wind power enterprise loans, applying the result of climate risk analysis investment and financing management. And also in terms of our operations, we actively practiced green office green procurement and in green travel and the total carbon emission per capita of the whole group in 2025 have decreased compared with the previous year. We always put people at the first place, enhance our -- to improve our people, employees well being. ABC will have a wide range of stakeholders. We take customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction at our core or at our priority, strive to give back to our shareholders, give back to the society, contribute to the society, continuously expand the accessibility of financial service mentioned and ABC will provide service outlets to cover all more than 2,800 country-level areas and making it the only bank to achieve a full coverage of country-level institutions or outlets. In 2025, ABC has relocated and built 179 new outlets in rural areas or towns, further fulfilling the rural areas with insufficient financial service. And also in regular provision for mobile financial service has cumulative served 120,000 rural households. Agricultural service projects significantly enhanced service capabilities. We built 3,308 elderly friendly service outlets with remote banking hotline providing service to senior customers throughout the year. We have 22,000 warm-hearted union service stations providing considerate service for outdoor workers and new citizens. More than 9,900 public welfare activities were held -- were launched. ABC has also thoroughly implemented the talent empowerment strategy for professionals and frontline young employees. We have implemented major talent projects for key groups, selecting over 2,200 young talents and adding 47,000 talents to talent pools of different levels and types, building 6,115 facilities for workers strive to create -- realize greater value for our shareholders. We also enhanced a 2-way interaction in the capital market for 3 consecutive years, ABC has led its peers in terms of total market capitalization growth. We have maintained a high dividend payout ratio. We continue to shine the brand ABC philanthropy with full employment -- incremental 4 major actions of rural revitalization, protection care fulfillment and through donation volunteer service, mutual assistance and other means to provide a generation or benefit to the general public. And also, we have volunteer service hours exceeding 850,000 hours, and that has also given a recognition and a branding for ABC. Moving forward, we'll continue to follow [indiscernible] strategy of national system of development, deepening the development of the management system and provide a better service to our customers and to our employees as well as respond to the concerns of stakeholders to ensure high-quality development through the sustainability practices to create a better value to our shareholders through the good sustainable practices. Qing Liu: We have a very thorough discussion today. For the sake of time, we will have one last question from the Beijing venue. Unknown Attendee: And from [indiscernible], I have a question on AI. Now AI is applied widely in banking sector in the management and business expansions and a lot of results have been achieved. And Mr. Wang also said ABC will vigorously promote application of smart AI in smart banks. So what achievements has been made and what measures have been taken? Unknown Executive: Thank you for the question. My colleagues just now in their presentation also touched upon a little bit on the application of AI in smart banking development. AI is buzz for now, ABC also seized the opportunities of AI development. We set up the specific office for smart banking development and also in [indiscernible] coordination. Also, we will focus on the AI agent application, focused on the project and also, we will build AI+ capability system to ensure the smart inclusive or wide-range use of AI. Past year achievements are reflecting the following aspects. First, the accelerated our service, innovation and product innovation, we keep the accelerating the research and development of digital products. We have launched a fly handbag in way to provide the loans for drone operators, we also have a farmer e-loan. Also at the same time, we innovated technology finance credit products. We call that tech loan. And also scale of online credit business has increased. As at the end of last year, the balance of agriculture e-loan was RMB 6.8 trillion, an increase of 18.7% over the end of previous year, also improve the quality of efficiency of online service. The monthly active users of personal mobile banking have been leading among their peers. We also rolled out the new version -- 5.0 version of the inclusive finance [indiscernible] build an online inclusive business covering multiple channels. And also, we have increased in the efficiency and effectiveness of smart risk control. In terms of credit risk management, we have the on-site and off-site prelending due diligence, also deepened automatic identification and comparison of GPS positioning, image information, applied advanced technologies such as generative AI, strengthening multidimensional verification of real people, real events and real scenarios. We also continue to strengthen a centralized monitoring for the 5 group of customers in terms of the group customers and large medium-sized customers, small SME customer, personal loans and agricultural loans and also enhance our smart disposal platforms. We have also achieved batch handlement or disposal of these cases so that we have promoted NPL disposal. AI can also empower anti-fraud efforts as well as anti-money laundering. The quality and efficiency have both been improved. And -- this can also help us to reduce our business burdens. For example, in terms of intelligent customer service, we can deepen application of AI models to fill in the forms, for example, and effectively reduce the burdens of frontline agents. The average time required has been shortened to 176 seconds from more than 200 seconds. We have also speed up the construction or the development of intelligent investigation review report templates. The automatic generation ratio of this report data exceeds over 70% for small enterprises, credit recipients and group credit. This has reduced the manual workload of credit personnel in drafting -- and just now our AI model mentioned by our senior management can also fulfill the smart or intelligent Q&A session. And this function can also empower the consumer protection or compliance and other processes. And this AI model, [indiscernible] has also won many awards, for example, in the recent Consumer Protection Day, the 15th of March has also announced that it has won the Financial Consumer Protection Golden Award for 10 outstanding cases in financial technology innovation services. So it is quite popular within our bank. And fourthly, AI is a systematic work. especially in terms of application in ABC, we have been systematically promoting the application of AI. We already painted we mapped out a blueprint for AI application and compelled the AI capability map. And with a platform dedicated to AI application, we can promote it capacity building of computer power to successfully deploy multi-industry leading-edge models. And this will also help us to develop even more model metrics regarding AI. Next step, with intelligent platform building, we will continue to improve the accuracy and convenience of financial services and also its inclusiveness. Qing Liu: Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen, very big thanks from my bottom of heart for all of you in participating in this 2025 annual result announcement of ABC. We have implemented regulatory requirements and implemented an investor-oriented management approach and also clarified our mechanisms, targets and approaches for market capitalization management. We have appealed high-quality development and highlighted our features as well as serve the real economy as one of the major banks in China and strive to create more value for investors and shareholders and disclose the information in a timely manner. Our stock prices and also valuation have all achieved improvement. Thank you again, all investors, analysts and friends from the media for your continued interest and support in ABC. And I would also like to thank the senior management for your sincere sharing of the operating performance of ABC today. If you have any questions in the future, you are the most welcome to contact ABC's team. So that's all for today's result announcement conference. Thank you so much. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]
Xia Yangfang: Dear investors, analysts, friends from the media, good morning. CMB 2025 Annual Result announcement will now begin. I am Head of the Office of the Board of Directors of China Merchants Bank, Xia Yangfang. We have released the 2025 annual results last Friday. And this conference will be carried out both offline and online webcasting. Now please allow me to introduce the attendee of today's on-site meeting. Sitting on the podium, they are Mr. Miao Jianmin, Chairman; Mr. Wang Liang, President; Mr. Peng Jiawen, Executive Vice President, CFO and Secretary of the Board of Directors; Mr. Xu Mingjie, Executive Vice President and Chief Risk Officer; Mr. Zhou Tianhong, Chief Information Officer. Joining on-site and online, we also have Non-Executive Director, Mr. Zhu Liwei; Independent Director, Mr. Tian Hongqi, Mr. Li Chaoxian, Ms. Li Jian, Mr. Wong Yuk Shan, and Mr. Lu Liping, and also relevant Heads of Department of CMB. On behalf of CMB, I would like to extend a warm welcome to your participation, and thank you for your long attention, support and investment in CMB. Today's meeting will have 2 sessions. One, we will invite Mr. Miao, Mr. Wang to introduce the bank's 2025 result, which takes around 30 minutes. And the second part is the Q&A session, which takes around 1 hour and 30 minutes. The meeting will be provided with Chinese to English simultaneous interpretation. Now we will have the floor to Chairman, Miao; and President Wang on CMB's 2025 performance. Jianmin Miao: Dear investors, analysts, friends from the media, good morning. Welcome to CMB's 2025 Annual Results Announcement. Today's results announcement will be introducing contents of 3 parts. First, I will introduce group's 2025 annual results. And then I'll give the floor to President Wang to introduce the operational information and then I will briefly introduce our outlook and strategy for the year 2026. In 2025, we seek to quality, efficiency and scale, coordinated development and strive to build a world-class value creation bank and speed up our transformation towards the full initiative development and promote high-quality development, maintain good operations amid stability and strong resilience and innovation vitality, which was reflected in 5 parts. First, we remain steady in terms of our operation, and we cope with the downward trend of the interest rate in sufficient demand and growth pressure. Our revenue and profit realized both dual growth ROAA and ROAE maintain a leading in the industry. Net operating income RMB 337.2 billion, up by 0.05%. Net profit attributable to the bank's shareholder RMB 150.2 billion, up by 1.21%. ROAA, 1.19%; ROAE, 13.44%, down by 0.09 ppt and 1.05 ppt year-on-year. Net interest income, RMB 215.6 billion, up by 2.04%. NIM was 1.87%, down by 11 bps year-on-year, with a narrower reduction and maintain a leading level in the industry, influenced by the fluctuation in the bond market. Non-interest net income, RMB 121.7 billion, down by 3.31% year-on-year, among which net fee and commission income increased by 4.39% year-on-year, which is recording the first positive growth since the year 2022. We seek to refine management and continue to promote reduction in cost and maintain a cost-to-income ratio of 32.01%. Secondly, we maintained growth in asset and liability and maintain our advantages in low funding cost. Assets exceeding RMB 13 trillion; total loans and advances, RMB 7.26 trillion, up by 5.37%. General loan RMB 6.94 trillion, up by 6.57%. Total liability, RMB 11.79 trillion, up by 7.98%. Total customer deposit RMB 9.84 trillion, up by 8.13%. Demand deposits daily average balance account for 49.4% remain at a high level. Interest-bearing liabilities average cost ratio 1.26%, down by 38 bps year-on-year, and we maintain our advantages in low funding costs. Thirdly, we consolidate our structural advantages and have strong capital strength. Non-interest income accounts for 36.08%, maintained leading in the industry. Net fee and commission income accounts for 61.85% of the total non-interest income. Retail finance makes over half of the contribution. Its net operating income and pretax profit account for 56% and 50% of the total. And we also maintained quite good level of CAR under the advanced measurement approach. Core Tier 1 CAR, Tier 1 CAR and CAR were 14.16%, 16.51% and 18.27%, down by 0.7, 0.97 and 0.81 percentage points compared with the end of last year. Under the weighted approach, the core Tier 1 CAR, Tier 1 CAR and CAR were 11.92%, 13.9% and 15% down by 0.51, 0.73 and 0.73 percentage points compared with the end of last year. All levels of CAR's decrease was mainly influenced by the interim dividend payout and the reduction of OCI. Fourth, asset quality remained stable and risk compensation capability remained to be robust. NPL balance, RMB 68.2 billion, up by RMB 2.6 billion. NPL ratio, 0.94%, down by 0.01 percentage point. Credit cost 0.6%, down by 0.05 percentage points. Allowance coverage ratio 391.79%, down by 20.19 percentage points. Loan loss reserve 3.68%, down by 0.24 percentage points, maintaining a high level of risk compensation capability. Fifthly, we strive to build a digital and intelligent CMB and actively practice ESG philosophy. We focus on AI, increased IT input and talent reserve. In 2025, our IT input was RMB 12.9 billion, accounting for 4.31% of the bank's net operating income. R&D personnel exceeded 11,000 people accounting for over 9% of our total employees. We have an open mindset and embrace cutting-edge technology rollout and implement application and strive to build up our AI systematic advantage. We construct a leading, intelligent, computing infrastructure, model performance and computation efficiency continue to increase. Our core computing rate, our token cost has reached an industry-leading level. Our average token throughput has increased by 10.1x compared with that of 2024. Our bank-wise large model developers exceed 10,000 people, and we continue to introduce the cutting-edge model and implement domain-specific model as many as 183. Our average iteration cycle significantly shortened as well. We deeply implement this technology into our business ecosystem and implement over 800 applications and realize both tech and business value. We build our intelligent era, organizations and teams and construct talent pipeline that are cross functional. We promote deep integration of technology and business and build such intelligent organizational ecosystem. We incorporate ESG philosophy into the bank's development strategy and decision-making and promote sustainable development. We promote the development of green finance and enhance our green operation capability. Green loan, green leasing balance grew by 21% and 23.89%. We assist enterprises to issue nearly 100 ESG bonds and raise their firms to support energy conservation, clean production, clean transportation and other industries. We attach great importance to green investment. Our companies and subsidiaries are holding more and more balance of green loans, green bonds and ESG products. We continue to strengthen our green operation and deepen the carbon emission reduction and enhance our own carbon management refined level. We continue to enhance the quality and efficiency of serving real economy, tech, green, inclusive and manufacturing loan balance have taken up more and more proportion. And mentioned, MSCI ESG rating has received the highest level of AAA rating for 2 consecutive years. This is my brief overview of the 2025 result. Now I'll give the floor to President Wang on the bank's operational information. Ying Wang: Thank you, Chairman Miao. Now I'll introduce the bank's 2025 operational information. The year 2025 is an extraordinary year facing multiple challenges under the leadership of the Board Directors, we have with good pressure, maintain determination and promote the international comprehensive, differentiated and intelligent transformation and maintain a good trend of operational results and our business are moving towards new and better direction and building up our own strength and competitiveness, which were mainly reflected in the following 5 parts. We continue to consolidate our customer base and our business development are both directing towards good volume and quality. We remain customer-centric and strengthen high-quality customer acquisition and strive to build our -- build ourselves into clients' principal bank and first bank to approach. Retail customers totaled 224 million, up by 6.7%, among which Golden Sunflower and above clients, 5.93 million, up by 13.29%. Customers holding wealth products amount to 64 million, up by 10.15%. For corporate customers, it was totaled 3.62 million, which was up by 14.4%, among which corporate customers newly acquired reached 657,000 serving tech clients as many as 350,000. And for corporate withholding customers, their amount was 1.53 million. We also optimized category asset allocation. Total loans and advances account for 55% of the total asset. Retail loan accounts for 51% of the total loans and advances and investment assets accounts for 31.77% of the total assets. Interbank assets account for around 7.36%, down by 0.02 percentage points. Bill discounting account for 4.43%, down by 1.09 percentage points. We continue to strengthen liability management and enhance the proportion of high-quality liability. Total deposits account for 83.43% of the liability, up by 0.12 percentage points. Core deposits daily average balance account for 87% of the total customer deposits daily average balance, up by 1.17 percentage points. Interbank deposits grew rapidly. Its demand deposit account for 93.77%. Customer deposit cost ratio 1.17%, down by 37 bps. Interbank deposit cost ratio, 1.02%, down by 29 bps. Secondly, our 4 major segments are developing in a balanced and coordinated manner, and we are showing stronger development resilience. First, we secured a dominant position of retail finance and our leading advantage were further consolidated. Retail AUM balance exceeded RMB 17 trillion, up by 14.44%. Year-round increment reached RMB 2.16 trillion, hitting a record high. Retail customer deposits totaled RMB 4.5 trillion, up by 11%. Retail demand deposits, daily average balance accounts for 47% of the total. Retail loan, RMB 3.72 trillion, up by 2.07% market share growing steadily. We strive to overcome adverse factors such as weak demand and consumption, our credit card business continued to grow in their market share. Active credit card users surpassed 70 million, developed against the trend. The transaction value was RMB 4.08 trillion, down by 7.62%. Credit card loan amounted to RMB 939.1 billion, down by 0.92%. The credit card transaction value and loan balance remain leading in the industry. And secondly, we speed up to build our characteristic in corporate finance and build up our strength in specialized segments. The FPA balance was RMB 6.73 trillion, up by 11.08%. Corporate loan balance, RMB 3.22 trillion, up by 12.29%. We focus on modern industrial system. We prioritize our loan granting in tech, green, inclusive manufacturing and other industries and increase our competitiveness. Corporate deposit balance RMB 5.34 trillion, up by 5.46%. Corporate deposits are accounting for 50% of the total. And retirement finance improve in both quality and efficiency. Annuity and trust surpassed RMB 300 billion pension fund under custody RMB 1.55 trillion. Private pension accounts exceeded RMB 15 million and contribution was among the top in the industry. Transaction banking focused on the trade finance and treasury management needs of the corporate customers. The number of customers using treasury management cloud further specialized. Third, Investment Banking and Global Market business further specialize and innovate. FPA contributed by IB business grew by 10.38%. The bank, as lead underwriter that instrument was RMB 579.16 billion. Number of clients in GM business of client flow trading and transaction volume both grew. RMB bond investment transaction value grew by 1.96x. Bill discounting business grew by 12.89% ranking second in the market. Fourth, wealth management and asset management continue to expand. We enhanced asset allocation capability grasp opportunities arising from the capital market and the wealth management business experienced robust growth. Three asset allocation clients was amounted to RMB 11.76 million, up by 13.31%. Retail wealth management product balance grew by 12%. Agency distribution of non-money market fund, trust scheme and premium -- insurance premium grew by 18.13%, 150.65% (sic) [ 155.65% ] and 25.93%. (sic) [ 25.96%. ] Corporate wealth management product balance reached RMB 524.9 billion, up by 31.28%. Asset Management business totaled RMB 4.71 trillion, up by 5.13% as a custody scale, it ranks among the top in the industry, reaching RMB 26.09 trillion. Extensive wealth management income grew by 16.91%, top for the past 3 years and accounting for 52% of the total fee and commission income and increased by 5.78 percentage point. Fifth, we speed up the business development in key regions and enhanced the contribution brought by the branches in these areas. We have 16 branches in key areas and their customer base, AUM, core deposits and other key indicators are having higher level of growth than the average level of other branches. And retail AUMs proportion increased by 0.79 percentage points, and the corporate loan balance account as proportion was up by 0.12 percentage points. Third, for international and comprehensive development, we actively build up our new strength. We actively serve Chinese enterprises going global and resident needs of making global allocation of their assets enhance our service capability. The overseas contributions are making more and more contribution. Their total asset grew by 12.88%, and the net operating income grew by 33.78%. Institutions in Hong Kong grasp opportunities and make good performance. Their total assets grew by 13.84%. Net operating income grew by 36%. Net income grew by -- net profit grew by 63% and CMB Wing Lung Bank's retail AUM grew by 22.14% for CMBI. The number of Hong Kong IPO underwritten and sponsored actually ranked #2 and #4 respectively. For cross-border business, it shows strong momentum. Number of corporate customers in respect of international BOP exceeded 100,000 and the volume of international BOP grew by 12%. We deepened our comprehensive development and subsidiaries delivered various performing highlights. Their total asset was RMB 952.8 billion, up by 11%. Their operating income accounted for 12.26% of the group's total, up by 1.96 percentage points. Net profit, RMB 16.38 billion, up by 41%. CMB leasing focused on new energy, new infrastructure, new tech, new mobility, and new intelligent manufacturing and new material, aka to 6 new industries to build their service mechanism. Their total asset was RMB 325.3 billion, up by 5%. CMB Wealth Management's product scale, RMB 2.64 trillion, up by 6.88%, maintained the top in the industry and equity-related products actually increased in their market share. CMB Fund has managed a total scale of RMB 961.5 billion, up by 9.29%. CIGNA & CMAM insurance found under Fiduciary Management RMB 223.3 billion, up by 23%. CMB Investment commence operations, and we make new breakthrough in the layout of our comprehensive development. Fourth, we upheld bottom line of risk and compliance, enhance risk management capability and have an even stronger solid foundation for development. We strictly classify assets and fully expose risks, actively resolve risk assets and maintain a good management of credit, market, operational liquidity and compliant risks and other type of risks. Our asset quality remains stable. Special mention loan ratio 1.43%, up by 0.14 percentage points. Overdue loan ratio, 1.25% down by 0.08 percentage points. NPL to loans overdue for 60 days ratio was 1.18%. NPL formation ratio, 1.03%, down by 0.02 percentage point. As we are facing with the profound adjustment of the real estate market and rising individual risk, some mismatch in supply and demand in some industries, we seek to risk-oriented approach and dynamically adjust risk strategy and resolve risk in key indicators. Corporate NPL ratio, 0.89%, down by 0.17 percentage points. Property NPL ratio 4.78%, down by 0.16 percentage points. Manufacturing NPL ratio, 0.43%, down by 0.06 percentage points. Retail NPL ratio 1.06%, up by 0.1 percentage point. Residential NPL ratio was -- residential mortgage NPL ratio 0.51%. Retail SME NPL ratio 1.22% and credit card loan NPL ratio, 1.74% and consumption loan NPL ratio, 1.02% all remain at a relatively low level in the industry. Fifth, we strengthen the management and innovation to promote a high-quality development and we have strong core momentum for future growth. First, on one hand, we consolidate our foundation and conduct refined management. We consolidate our management to strengthen asset liability, forecast, operations, service and team management so as to guarantee our high-quality development. On the other hand, we continue to promote our innovation capability and maintain a leading technological capability. We consolidate our technological foundation. The overall accessibility or availability of the cloud has surpassed 99.99%. We use hybrid deployment, elastic scaling and other technologies to increase the input/output ratio of cloud. Big data service has covered over 76% of the business personnel. We have been implemented large model in 4 business scenarios and saving 15.56 million men working hours and effectively enhance our efficiency. We upgrade retail Xiao Zhao, intelligent service and construct AI Xiao Zhao service for the corporate clients. We speed up to build our AI organization. Over 98% of the personnel has already passed the preliminary level of competency certificates and adapt to the change of the technological risk condition in the AI era. The above mentioned is the major operational information of the year 2025. Now I'll give the floor to Chairman, Miao, on the 2026 outlook and operational strategy. Jianmin Miao: Now I will briefly introduce the company's outlook and strategy of 2026. Looking into 2026, for the banking industry, challenges and opportunities coexist. On the one hand, the external environment are exerting greater impact. And we see a pricing risk and in geopolitical condition, the world economy are sluggish, multilateralism, free trade are under severe threat. The new and growth driver continue to switch, and there are strong imbalance between supply and demand. The market expectations tend to be weak, and the bank are continuing to face with the 3 lows: low interest rate, low interest spread and low fee rate, and they are taking pressures in their profitability. On the other hand, for Chinese economy, the supporting condition and the future condition has not changed, that the economy will continue to be developing in a good momentum, along with more proactive fiscal policies and monetary policies, we seek to make domestic demand in the dominant position, build up strong domestic market, and we believe that there will be more favorable factors for the operation of commercial bank. In the year 2026, we will stick to our value creation bank strategy and continue to promote our 3 capabilities of wealth management, digital and intelligent technology and risk, expand our moat and explore a new layout of high-quality development. Firstly, we will maintain our strategic determination and follow the developing principle of the banking industry focusing on high-quality tech self-reliance, strengthening the domestic market and high level of opening up and other key areas to seize opportunities and seize the customer need, strengthen the capability of innovation and promote professional differentiated, comprehensive financial service to clients and maximize our value that we can bring to customers, employees, shareholders, partners and the society. Secondly, we will focus and sell through the cycle and maintain our competitive edge. In the low interest rate cycle, we will make sure that we will pay more attention to stabilizing the NIM and maintain industry-leading level. Secondly, we will build up our strength and make up for what we are not good at and strengthen our asset allocation capability, maintain our strength in wealth management business. Third, we pay special attention to the pricing and risk management of credit assets and maintain good asset quality. Fourth, we will promote the reasonable growth of RWA, optimize the capital allocation and maintain high level of CAR. Thirdly, we will seize opportunity to speed up the transformation of the 4 initiatives and build up the new strength, speed up international development and promote overseas institutions to achieve high-quality development, build up our cross-border business and help enterprises going global, promote the comprehensive development of our subsidiaries and increase their contribution to the bank. So to build up our differentiated competitive edge, consolidate our systematic advantages in retail finance and speed up to form a new growth pool in key areas. And we will also speed up our digital and intelligent transformation, stick to AI-first philosophy and build up an intelligent bank, realize the model upgrade and construct our new mode in the new era of AI. Fourth, we will build up our resilience to promote the balanced and coordinated development of the 4 business segments. We'll consolidate the dominant position of retail finance, build up our strengths in corporate finance and promote a stronger and better IB and Global Markets business and speed up the development of Wealth Management and Asset Management business and promote these 4 segments to promote each other and support each other in a higher level and construct a more resilient and competitive business development layout. Fifthly, we will guard our bottom line to consolidate a fortress-style risk and compliance management system. We will stick to prudent and steady risk culture, enhance our capability to judge -- to understand the market, prevent credit risk, market risk, operational risk, liquidity risk and other risks and strengthen AML and internal control management to make sure that CMB could remain steady and resilient in the path of high-quality development. Thank you. Xia Yangfang: Thank you, Chairman and President. Now we will enter into the Q&A session. We will have the questions from the investors and analysts first and then from the media. As we have many participants today, please follow the instruction given by the operator to raise your question, and please limit your question to 1 only. Please raise your name and the agency you represent before having the question. Operator: Now we'll have the first question. [Operator Instructions] The first question, please, from this gentleman. Richard Xu: I'm Richard Xu from Morgan Stanley. And congratulations first for the brilliant results that you have achieved in 2025. And also you have achieved very good results in retail even within this very turbulent external environment. So my question is for the Chairman first. So this year is the start year of the 15th 5-year plan. And what is the plan or strategic vision or expectation from the Board to China Merchants Bank. And nowadays, we have seen very same very fierce competition among the banking sector. So against this backdrop, how can Board ensure the market-oriented mechanism of China Merchants Bank so as to expand its advantage -- competitive advantage? Jianmin Miao: Currently, I think the banking sector is still in a downward cycle. So banks are facing very down mounting challenge. And during the 15th 5-year plan, our requirement from the Board to China Merchants Bank is to stick to the high-quality development and accelerate innovation. It means the high-quality development and stay to the true course. It means to be professional to be market-oriented road. And this is a key to the high-quality development. And also, at the same time, need to have innovation so as to consolidate our strength and also to be differentiated from the peers, and also to accelerate the transformation so as to responding to the challenges, which has been brought out by the downward cycle of the market. And also, what we have seen is to be internationalized and to be more comprehensive operation and also digitalization intelligent banking and also to be differentiated from the peers. These are very 4 key elements of the banks. In terms of internalization, we have achieved quite obvious results in the past 2 years. In terms of the comprehensive operating management, the subsidiaries of the banks are contributing more to the bank's operating income. So this is a very good advantage of CMB as well. And differentiated positioning is also CMB's advantage. From the Board, the business model for CMB will be, that we have advanced business model and also innovation driven and also to have the distinctive feature and also to be the first-class bank, which can create value for -- create value. So this is very important also the moat for CMB. Finally, there will be the digitalization and an intelligent bank. In the past, we have been advanced and also better than peers in terms of technology. Now our -- we want to build up the first digitalization bank among the industry. And later on, we will have our Chief Information Officer, who can supply more. So, market-oriented mechanism is the backbone of CMB. And I think that the reforms of the remuneration system will not affect CMB's market-oriented system. So for CMB, the gene or internet is the corporate culture of CMB. So this is the moat of CMB. And in the past, some of our analysts and also customers are expecting or thinking that different -- have CMB has different moats such as the low cost income -- low-cost funding source, some say that is the retail. But I think the very basic one of our moat is the customer-centric culture, and this has been our corporate culture and is the key our foundation of our business, because we are customer-centered and customers have good experience with the bank. That is why they want to bank with CMB, also deposit with CMB. And the deposit with CMB doesn't mean that they only want to put some money in CMB, but they want to do the financial trading and financial asset management with the CMB. That is why we have the lowest funding cost among the banks. We have the highest demand deposit ratio among the banking peers. So the Board's requirement is to deepen reformation and accelerate internalization and also differentiation. And these are to be intelligent and to be comprehensive operation. So this is very important for CMB. And then I would like to invite Mr. Zhou to supply more for the intelligent banking. Tianhong Zhou: So for the past years, we -- one of the very key issue strategy for CMB is to have technology leading bank. And from last year, we also have made a plan for the next 5 years technology development. So -- and we have fully arrangement plan for the next 5 years. And I think in the next 5 years, the key is to be technology-leading is one of our key strategy. And we all know that AI has been a very important trend. And from -- at the end of 2022, the Chairman has a requirement for CMB is to build ourselves into one of the first intelligent bank among the industry. So we have made quite a lot of efforts on that front. Now in terms of large model, we have made quite good achievement in 2024. We have more explorations and have experience -- has gathered experiences. And Mr. Wang Liang put out the idea of the AI-first strategy, saying that among the whole bank to expand the application and also the mindset of the AI-first strategy. So firstly, we have upgraded our organization and team, which are more applicable to the AI era. And especially large model is a very big breakthrough in the technology history. But it cannot substitute fully the human intelligent. And to some extent, it can be replaced. So we have a kind of analyze about what people are more good at and what AI models are better at and how AI can assist or to be separately work together with our human staff. We have analyzed around 1,580 projects and to analyze how AI can assist on how AI can help with the work. And we have quantitative data on that and some are, say, high-value projects and some are mid-value and some are low value. So, for those high-value projects, which AI can assist more, then we will have more resources to put on. So 69% of them have been already implemented. Altogether, there will be 856 projects that have been implemented or we can call it a scenario that have already been applied among the whole bank. And just now we have in the results announcement brief, the Chairman said we have already implemented this AI application in 856 scenarios. And now we are accelerating the place, so as to analyze and improve the important business procedures. And secondly, I think that AI development is very -- have a very big difference to the traditional software engineer software. So it means that there will be high uncertainties where we are upgrading AI model. So for CMB's experience that we think that 6x of upgrading before we can really put the large model into practice into real work or into real practice. So last year, we have made quite good results in the application of the large model. The upgrading period has been shortened to around 8 days of this model. So -- which means that it's faster for us to apply this large model. And for 2025, so we have achieved quite results in 2024, which shows that for the large model application in CMB, the depth and the width of the application of AI has been expanded in a very fast manner. And I also would like to share with you why important data in this regard. In 2024, the daily throughput of the token is around 10.1x of what we have in 2024. So it's a very fast speed. And daily average token throughput is RMB 25.6 billion. And in important areas, the AI large -- the application of the large model has already exerting -- have taken effect is serving around 10,000 Sunflower customers. And we have over 10,000 assistants for our Sunflower relationship manager and also for how our corporate manager help them to improve the customer recharge ratio by around 14%. And and also for corporate credit loan business and also the AI model is also helping them before loan granting and during the loan lending and also after that, especially for micro loans, around 82% of the micro loan, loan submission and also credit approval is done by AI and large model. So -- and they also -- and also accelerated the approval process of the micro loans, which is 44% faster than what we have last year. And also in the past, for the -- how we can implement the credit approval, approval conclusion in the past that has been done by human beings by the human staff, but now it's assisted by the AI at large model and the system will kind of follow how the credit approval conclusion has been really implemented. And also, it has speed up of our early warning system that is also better than our human staff. And I think the early warning is 42 days faster than what we have in the past. So which you can see that it's both helping us in all fronts, improving business development quality and also improving efficiency. In terms of improving efficiency that for the whole year, it has saved around 15.56 million human -- working hour, has saved that. So this is efficiency improvement of the efficiency. But we all know that AI is improving or is kind of upgrading in a very fast manner, but there is illusion. There's forge that the models are doing. So banks are the area that is highly regulated and need very prudent risk management. So we are fully kind of alert to the illusion of the AI. So and controlling risk is a very important aspect of AI. So, very importantly, we need to be very prudent in developing AI models, which can be reliable and also we have achieved quite good results in 2025. In 2026, I think we will move on and doing more efforts in this regard, better to implement our digitalization and intelligent banking strategy. Xia Yangfang: Thank you. The second question, please. Meizhi Yan: Yan Meizhi from UBS. First of all, congratulations on the very good results in 2025, especially against this very complex environment. And last year, our operating income and profit are both have recorded positive growth is very good. My question is, if we look into 2026 or even forward, how we can expect the growth rate of the operating income and the profit growth such as to be accelerated to around 3% to 5%? And also another question is about our ROE. I know, CMB's ROE has been higher than other banks. Last year, it's around 13.44%. The average banking level is around 9% to 10%. So in the past years, for the ROE side, we are seeing the ROE has been declining for CMB as well. So if we look ahead for the next 2 or 3 years, how will you expect the ROEs bottom? So will be the bottom be around 10% to 11%? So my question is for Mr. Wang -- Mr. Wang Liang. Thank you. Liang Wang: Thank you for your confirmation in our -- of our 2024 results. Before going into your question, I think this year is the 20th year when we first IPO-ed in H-share. We have financed around RMB 31.3 billion in our H-share market raised fast fund. And our total dividend payout is around 2.6x of the fund financing that we have got in the H-share market. And the total CAR ratio of the share pricing is around 15.07%. So I think that even though there is volatilities of our share price, especially during the financial crisis, I think for long-term investors, I think you can make quite a good return from CMB and also we continue to be very firm in creating value for our customer and also to have the return for the investors. And thank you for the long-term trust and long-term investment for our -- for the shareholders in CMB. And that is why we can see our H-share's PB is higher than our A-share's PB. Thank you very much for the overseas investors, especially for our H-share investors. And just now your question was about how we expect the operating and profit growth of our -- in 2026. I think that for the past years for operating income, we have been facing very big pressure over the past years. And this year is 0.01% growth rate. It's kind of the first time that we have recorded a positive income from 2023 and 2024. Finally, it's a positive growth, even though it's a very small growth, but it's a very hard earned one. The small growth can also illustrate or demonstrate that we have been very resilient in our business growth. And this year, why we are facing such a big challenge or pressure? I think, one of that is that, while our traditional advantage lies in retail, but retail business has been affected -- highly affected by the policy side and also highly affected by the external environment. So we try to make up the shortfall from the retail sector by moving up or have more growth on the other business sectors. And this year, we have a slight positive growth this year. But whether we can continue to have the 3% or 5% growth in the next years, I think from the business indicators, we will be very proactive and to make efforts to achieve growth and also such as for the customer base growth and also asset and liability growth as well as especially AUM growth. So these are the preconditions for how we can make growth on the financial data. And in terms of the financial data for this year, our expectation is that -- we think that stable -- we will have stable growth. And also, we want to make improvement. We will try to make improvement in the stable growth, whether we can achieve that goal. It's hard to tell, but we will make efforts to own that, such as in the NIM sector, last year, we stood at 1.87%, 11 bps year-on-year decline. And this year, I think that the year-on-year decline of the NIM will be stably -- will be stably declined, but the magnitude of the decline will be smaller than last year. Last year was a year-on-year decline of 11 bps. This will -- the decline will be smaller than that. The main reason is that from the policy side, I think that we are expecting more rate cuts and also the RRR cut this year. If there will be more rate cut, it means that it will affect our asset yield as well. And the second reason is that when we are looking on the credit side, we are seeing that quite weak credit demand. There is very fierce challenge or competition for the credit. So people are trying to grow more volume. Banks are trying to grow more volume to make up the shortfall from the decline in interest rate. That is why we cannot see the end to a rebound of the interest rates. So this will also pose a challenge to our NIM to our interest income. And the other sector is on the -- factor is on the liability side. On the liability side, last year, the funding cost has been down by 38 bps. Last year funding cost is already one of the lowest among banks. But among the peers, the room for us to further decline will be smaller, and that is why we are still facing pressure on the NIM side. And in terms of the non-interest income, last year, we have seen fast growth on the wealth management fee income so as to make up the shortfall from other non-interest income. But this year, we'll continue to see other fee rate cut policies on such as a mutual fund. So this will also affect our fee income from the agency sales of mutual funds and challenge, that is also a challenge on the fee-based income. And also the third uncertainty comes from risk sector. For the corporate sector is under control and also stably declining. But still, we are facing mounting pressure on the retail side, especially for micro loan consumption loan. So we try to control the risk so as to reduce the credit cost and to maintain a stable profit growth. These are the negative factors that we are facing. And why I say that growth on the operating income and also profit side, we are still under pressure. But last year, we are trending into a better direction. It's more kind of contributed by our active -- where we have active believe we tackled the challenges, how we have responded to that. So we have quite good results last year, which is -- you are seeing it stably turning to a better trend. And as for the question about -- you also asked about the ROE, like this year, we have slower profit growth, but the growth rate for our equity and after the dividend payout, we still have quite a big volume of the equity, which is supplemented to the existing one. That is why equity is -- growth rate is faster than the profit growth rate, which lead to a decline on our ROE side. And ROE this year is 13.44%. And from the Board and also from the senior management, we highly emphasize the level of the ROE. As long as we have high ROE, we can have a relatively stable return to our shareholder. We are strengthening the management on our ROE to improve the return on our capital. But my judgment is that, still we are facing the pressure on ROE decline or the trend will continue. Whether it will bottom out at around 10% or 11%, I think we will control the speed of ROE. I think 10% will be depending on the future external circumstances and also interest rate, I think the 10% will be a bottom for us to have a better control of our ROE because I think a bank if can maintain ROE of 10%, it means a good return for the shareholder. But we also compare that our bank's ROE and also the advanced banks in the world, we think that CMB is still in a leading position. So I think that we will try hard to maintain a sustainable ROE. Jianmin Miao: And for 2026 and for the next few years, I would like to conclude what we have Mr. Wang has just said. The first one is that the cycle is the same, namely the CMB's business cycle is the same, in line with the sector cycle, but we are -- the marginal performance of CMB is better than peers. No matter it's in a downward cycle or upward cycle, I think we are trending toward a more a better trend. And thirdly, we still have our existing advantage during this cycle, even though our business cycle is in the same trend with the sector trend. But marginally, we can see we are improving and also, we have a very obvious advantage. This is a conclusion of our performance. This is my conclusion for CMB's performance in 2026 and continue forward. Xia Yangfang: We'll have another question from the on-site participant. Jia Wei Lam: I am Gary from HSBC. I have a question about NIM outlook. We noticed that in the fourth quarter, your NIM was experiencing quarter-on-quarter growth, which is for the first time for the past 3 years, I would like to learn from the senior management. Do you expect the trend to be continuing in 2026? And when do you expect the turning point of NIM to be up here? How do we understand that? Jiawen Peng: Thank you for your question. So just now President Wang has mentioned a bit about the judgment about NIM. I fully commit that the direction is correct. In 2025, our NIM was 1.87%, down by 11 bps. To see from quarter-on-quarter change, quarter 1 -- 1.91%, 1.86% and 1.83% and 1.83% in quarter 1, 2, 3, 4. There are some characteristics of our NIM. The declining trend continue, but the magnitude actually shortened. In 2025 the reduction was 70 bps. In the annual operation of our NIM, we see some rebounds in the fourth quarter. But there are 3 bps up on quarter-on-quarter change. And for the group-wise, that was 2 bps. You can also see from our external change of the interest rate environment, there are some contribution given by these factors about our NIM. So there are quarter-on-quarter increase for the bank wise in terms of the NIM in the fourth quarter, in asset and liability management of the bank, we have made great achievement. In pricing, we have been quite following the self managing mechanism, and we have strictly followed the principle to give the loan pricing. So generally, we have improving the loan pricing condition. The second perspective is that we have made achievement in improving our structure. We have increased the proportion of assets that are earning higher asset yields. Even though in the demand side, we are experiencing some pressure, but we strive our best to promote the growth in assets, and it has also contributed to the final results. In the fourth quarter, for instance, for some low earning assets, for instance, like bills, we have been reducing its proportion. So all-in-all, that factors contribute to the rebounds of our NIM in the fourth quarter. You just asked about us whether this trend will be continued in the year 2026. So generally, I think my -- our judgment of the development of 2026, we believe that NIM will still decline, but we are having this wish. And we are having this judgment that the magnitude of decline will be smaller. I think this is a trend for the past several years as well. You may expect to see the first quarter data that also was the beginning of the year. But when it comes to our judgment, generally speaking, the NIM will be somewhat lower than that of the quarter 4 indicator. The mainly influencing factors are still those external factors such as weak demand in assets, and it further leads to the declining in the loan pricing. And there are also some technical reasons behind. Last May, there are some LBR cut, and we have some floating pricing loans that will be repriced in the first quarter. That accounts for around 78%. There are around 78% of the loans that are to be repriced in the first quarter. So in the first quarter, it will be a concentrated period of time when we see the most amount of loans to experience repricing. The other part is that deposits. The deposit repricing has not yet complete for the past year. But just now, President Wang also mentioned that deposit repricing for CMB, we should not neglect that CMB has quite a high proportion of demand deposit. We have not that much room to further decline in our deposit cost. So that in the liability side, the cost reduction will attribute less comparatively speaking. In 2026, NIM will continue to reduce, decline, but the magnitude of decline will be better than that of the past year. We will take further measures of liability and asset management. We have made a very accurate and very comprehensive management. We have been asked by our Board to maintain a leading level in NIM and we aim to achieve these goals in the year 2026. The first is to realize the magnitude of decline of NIM to be smaller than that of the past year. And the second is to achieve the stability of NIM as soon as possible. We wish that we could achieve this goal in the second half of the year. And third, we can maintain a leading level in the industry about our NIM. Thank you. Xia Yangfang: Thank you. President, Peng. Let's just wait a second, and we have also got some questions from online. And I think the next question will be given to an online participant from Guotai Haitong Security, Zhu Chenxi. Zhu Chenxi: Can you hear me? I have a question for President Wang. You have just mentioned that CMB has been listed for over 20 years. And you have taken us go through the history, for the past 20 years, such a long period of time, CMB is actually begin to develop -- think about its development model ever since the financial crisis in 2006. I think by that time, you actually penetratedly choose Retail and Wealth management as your development priority. And as we take a look back, this choice has made CMB a leading position ahead of our peers around 1 decade. We have deeply plotted our choice to deeply develop retail finance. And we have experienced a glory brought by the retail strategy in the year 2017 to '21, which was also shown in the evaluation in the capital market. We have also experienced some pressure due to the change in the external environment. Standing in this time point and looking into the future, we are now in a new phase of economic development. How do you consider -- how does CMB consider a new competitive edge for yours in the future? Liang Wang: Thank you for your question. As you say, CMB has been listed -- has been adopting the retail strategy since the year 2004. We have forge our systematic strengths. And this strategy has bring us a lot of contribution in our overall development and retail finance has made over half of the contribution for us in terms of net operating income, in terms of profit and et cetera. And of course, we have overcome some difficulties and experienced some pressure. The retail credit and the credit card business, they are all under external environment pressure and Wealth Management business, the agency distribution of fund management and about insurance policies, we are also experiencing challenges brought by the fee reduction. So this year for CMB, how to adjust ourselves, how to adapt to this new environment and maintain sustainable development, we need to have some new mindset. So on one hand, we have been developing a coordinated and balanced development of the 4 major segments. The 4 major segments are Retail, Corporate, Investment Banking and Global Markets and also Wealth Management and Asset Management. So by consolidating the systematic advantages brought by retail finance, we will consolidate its contribution to CMB and speed up to build up our strength in corporate finance and corporate finance, especially for cross-border finance, manufacturing finance, tech finance and et cetera. They have all made good achievements. For IB and Global Markets business, they are becoming our new growth pole. Asset Management and Wealth Management business, they are all showing good growth momentum. So these 4 major segments, they are coordinated and balanced and supporting each other. And for the second aspect, we will speed up our four initiative development, especially for the international development. For CMB, we propose to develop cross-border business overseas business, FX business. These 3 businesses will be the pillar of our cross-border finance development, our international development. In comprehensive development, we will give full play of our full licensed characteristic and enlarged our subsidiaries development and to make sure that these subsidiaries are the top players in their areas. We have also made good results in these fields. Fourth, we will -- we are also sticking to our differentiated regional development philosophy. Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen used to be the 3 core cities that makes the most contribution to us. We will be driven by these 3 core cities and to and transform into the 3 major regions: Yangtze River Delta, Greater Bay, and the Bohai Rim, the 3 key regions will serve to be the new 3 core regions of our business development so as to make us more sustainable in development. We can make sure that by developing these 3 regions, the business in these 3 regions, we can maintain a good momentum in the future development. I think by leveraging on these several aspects, we can transform from the previous retail-driven strategy to a multi-segment balanced and coordinated development of our new development model so that they can support each other, promote each other. For the past 2 years, all our domestic and overseas branches, our subsidiary branches have both -- have all realized product making and our business tend to be more balanced, more sustainable, and we are walking towards an era with multiple contribution given by different sources of revenue. And to answer your question, I think -- these are the measures that we have been taken and what are the positive results that we have achieved. Xia Yangfang: We have a question from on-site participants. Shuo Yang: I am Yang Shuo from Goldman Sachs. I noticed that you have been experiencing fast in retail finance. I noticed some risk in the retail finance -- retail loan business. For the second half of 2024, you have quite a fast growth rate of the non-mortgage loan. And I would like to understand the risk about this part of loans? And could you further elaborate? And could you also provide more details about the provision in these part of loans? Xu Mingjie: Thank you for your question. So just now President Wang have mentioned that the retail credit asset quality. Since 2019 after the pandemic happened, credit card risk begin to arise. And then until the year 2022, we observed that the corporate property loan risk begin to expose and then it continues to rise in terms of its risk. Excluding the credit card loan, the rest of the retail loan, for instance, the mortgage, the consumption, the micro loan, ever since the year 2024, we also see their risk begin to rise. Until now, the rising pace of their risk tend to be slower. So for some specific number, I think I will leave it behind. But for special mention, NPL and overdue loan, their balance and the ratio both increased in terms of micro loan. For consumption loan, its NPL ratio, it decreased a bit compared with the end of last year. Special mention loan ratio rise a little bit. Well, in terms of the future outlook, in the short run, property market is still under a deep adjustment so that the residents income, whether or not it could be improved for consumption, for micro finance loan, they are still under pressure. Well, along with the path that the government are playing a bigger role in terms of their proactive fiscal policy and monetary policy and with the external environment tend to be trending towards a good direction ever since this year, micro finance loan and consumption loans, this NPL balance increment are now tend to be slower marginally. In the low interest rate environment, some profit-making products, they're actually experiencing some slowdown in the profit-making level in their risk variance level. So in the following pace, we will further optimize our structure and stick to a collateral-based business, especially for consumption loan. And consumption loan, we will strictly got our bottom line of onboarding these clients and further optimize our customer structure, which will have early warning, early risk exposure and take proactive measure to lower the risk of arising from retail credit and to guarantee that the retail assets tend to be good -- maintain good in its asset quality. For allowance -- for allowance and provision for the past year, the allowance coverage ratio was down by 20 ppts compared with that of last year. The main reason is the NPL balance increased. The NPL balance increased by RMB 2.5 billion, a growth rate of 4%. The provision balance tend to be lower. So the numerator decreased and the denominator increase so that the allowance coverage ratio decreased for personal credit, but for personal loan, in classification, we tend to follow our strict manner. In the overdue days, entering into the doubtful level into the subdue level, we still keep our very strict classification management. In provision, we are making the provision one case by one case. The main reason is that the overall balance of the personal loan continue to increase, and the allowance, the provision tend to decrease. That is the major reason. So looking into the future, the major reason is that the NPL balance need to decrease, so that our allowance coverage ratio could be better. So actually, this indicator is quite sensitive to its numerator. If CMB under this external environment, if we can control our balance of retail NPL, we could maintain a good condition of this allowance coverage ratio. We are still under challenges in the year 2026. Retail credit risks are a market problem or an industry challenge that every banking peers are facing. The retail assets are under pressure so that it's not just CMB are facing this question. By responding to this challenges, we will maintain and take proactive measures to guarantee the retail asset quality to be stable. We will conduct very strict asset classification and make very adequate and accurate provision. Our allowance coverage ratio is now 391%, which is 20 percentage points lower than that of the previous year, but the absolute level of this indicator is still higher than that of our peers. We will maintain a very steady and prudent provision strategy and make sure that we have abundant coverage of our NPL to guarantee that we are having a good provision level compared with our peers. Xia Yangfang: Next question, please. Shuaishuai Zhang: I'm from CICC, Zhang Shuaishuai. My question is about the intelligent -- follow-up question. Just now I think Chairman and also President and also Mr. Zhou has already have very specific answers on that. And I see that we have more disclosures on the intelligent part. So my question is, from the financial data, how we can evaluate the effect from the application of the investment into AI because you have put a lot of resources in AI? And another question is that you want to build up into the first intelligent bank. So how we can evaluate that, how we can compare you with other Chinese banks? Now CMB want to do more, AI want to be best among the banking industry. How we can -- we evaluate the advantage of CMB in this spectrum? Tianhong Zhou: As for the large model from its birth to now it's 3 years. So it's not a long period. The application of this technology and every day, we are -- we can see news from the media that is improving. And I think the real impact of the technology on the society is still in the process. Currently, the very -- the industry, which have been deepened reform by the AI technology don't have much. We don't have much industries on that. But overall, we can say there's not many industry that have been deeply reformed by the AI technology and banking sector is quite a different sector and the regulator's attitude towards the application of AI in banks, not only the Chinese regulator, but the overseas regulators such as Singapore regulators, they are quite prudent on that front. And as well as -- such as the Singapore authority, they have also made very strict regulations on the application of AI. So for the Chinese regulator, the requirement is that the apply of the AI technology should be taken account from the human staff. So it means that the application of the AI among the banks should be human staff plus AI application is a requirement from the regulator as well. And from CMBs, we think that in the width and depth of the application of AI, we are faster than peers. But currently, for 45 kind of the areas, we have analyzed what human staffs are doing. For the projects that human staffs are doing is around 3,400 done by human staff, but amounted around 1,500 could be assisted by AI. So it's a dynamic process that we are kind of analyzing and also improving. And from a very macro perspective, we see that AI is taking effect in many areas. But I know that the question you have raised is also something that I'm thinking about. And what changes or big changes that the AI application has been done to CMB. I think there are some changes but still in the process. There's changes in the macro side, such as for the Sunflower customer, the customer reaching out ratio has been improved by 14% for our relationship manager. So it's taking effect. And for customer transaction volume has been increased by 20%. So it's also quite a good number. So overly, I think it's taking effect. But from this kind of up -- so we think that the technology is still improving and moving forward, there's great potential on that. And we are firm in this AI-first strategy. This is to your first question. Second question is, well, how can we say that -- how can we evaluate intelligent back? This is something we are done. And I think that we are starting what are the indicators that can evaluate -- how we can evaluate digital intelligent bank? The first intelligent bank in terms of -- I think that from these aspects such as for the application of the large model like the research technology and research capability in terms of the application, we can -- we are ahead of the peers. And also, we need to improve the efficiency of the usage of chips. And in China, we are more use the domestic chips and how we can better improve the efficiency and how we can improve the computing efficiency. We're still improving, but it's not very mature yet. And it relies on the entity that is using the chips. We are very strong in terms of cloud, and we have around a team of 300 people, who are engaging in the cloud technology. And also, we have a reasoning platform as well. And for the computing around 35% are done by ourself is quite the level of the top Internet companies is like 19% of us to make use of a cluster of chips and responding very fast and do not have much delay. There are many difficulties in technology, but we have done quite well. And the width of the application, we have already applied large model to 859 scenarios and more of them are contributed -- concentrated in the high-value scenarios. So we have a very big width on that. And for CMB, we have a special area even compared with advanced banks in the world, we have a very good fusion of technology and business. And technology could be better applied to business. So CMB has done quite well in the fusion integration of business and technology. And there are some concerns that maybe AI can substitute human being. So I think the people who will be phased out in the future are the ones who cannot use AI. So, we are encouraging our staff to use AI. So that is why we can see a very fast speed of the usage of token. And people are -- staff in our bank have very -- have been very open-minded, and they're trying to use the new technology. So we are ahead of the peers in this regard. But what can we say about the, what is -- what is intelligent bank. I think we are still studying how we can evaluate that. And just now, I mentioned about the illusion elution and these are also challenges where kind of input more -- to put more investment on that. And what we are trying to do is to reduce the illusion and to build a more reliable agent. And for CMB, we think there are some top companies like the AI, OpenAI and Anthropic. They are not open sourcing and they do not say anything about that. So how we can limit the illusion of AI application, and there's -- let's talk on that. It means that we need to input by ourselves, and we have made quite good progress on that, especially in the past 6 months. And also, we have made quite a good target on that. Thank you. Liang Wang: From the investment and output perspective, because if you want to build an intelligent bank, there will be much impact for CMB. Our investment into the -- investment is to optimize the resources allocation. It's not the same as other companies. Other banks may have not invested in this regard and need to increase a lot of CapEx in this regard. But for CMB, we have been continuously increased resources into that. So we are optimizing resources. It doesn't mean to increase much capital investment into that. So it doesn't have much impact on the cost side. So banks, IT -- I can see that we are -- in terms of business perspective, we have already built up our advantage. So next phase, we are building our advantage and our moat in the technology area, so that CMB can have a long-term and sustainable competitive edge. Jianmin Miao: And I have one more -- one more point, point to that. I think a good question is better than a good answer. This is the same question that I asked Mr. Zhou. So today, I think that he has answered my question before, but it's not a very, very good point and doesn't satisfy me. Today, I think he made quite a good point today. Feifei Xiao: Just now, for the retail -- my question is about the retail business for this year, both for asset size and also for asset quality. And CMB is regarded as the best retail bank among the industry. How you can continue to grow your retail business and also consider the change of the environment to upgrade your retail business. Could you please explain from the perspective of retail credit and also for the retail credit business, how you can -- what is your short-term and mid- and long-term change and also how you can arrange that? Jianmin Miao: Thank you for your question. And as you mentioned, that just now I mentioned that CMB's retail business is facing quite big challenge, and we have made -- we have tried to be more comprehensive operating as to make up the shortfall. But even though we are growing our other business, we didn't forget the retail. Retail continue to be our strength and can be our advantage. So everyone in the CMB talks about retail and knows about retail and trusts retail business. So this is a culture has been embedded into CMB -- embedded in the mind of everyone of CMB. So we will continue to expand our advantage on the retail front. So for this year, the retail contribution to our income has been quite stable. It's not growing very fast, like in the past. But the business actually have changed. In terms of structure, such as you can see the customer base, like that we have a very big retail base to 224 million, especially the high-end customer growing faster. Secondly, our AUM is growing very fast last year, reaching around RMB 17 trillion and up by RMB 2.6 trillion. So the growth rate is a high ratio. In the past years, annually increment is around over RMB 1 trillion, but last year, it's over RMB 2 trillion. And thirdly, even though we have seen a quite a big decline in the growth rate of our retail credit growth. But last year, we are continuing to see more market share in the market share in terms of the retail credit. So this shows that the strength of our CMB's retail business is actually expanding. In order to consolidate our strength of our retail business, we continue to expand the customer base; secondly, to improve the product system; thirdly, to upgrade the service system like we are combining online and offline service channels, so as to improve the customers' experience with us; and also fourthly, distribute our ecosystem, such as we work with the mutual funds and also trust companies as well as asset management companies to build up our friendship with the ecosystem. So we have more better products that we can provide to our customer and create value for the customer. And fourthly, very important, is to prevent risk to improve our system kind of strength in the retail side so that we can see the contribution from the retail side is still around 50% to our operating income and also profit. Just you also mentioned about the retail credit and also the Wealth Management business. For retail credit, we have the credit card, we have a mortgage. We have consumption loan and micro loan, the 4 major projects -- products. So last year, we have negative growth on credit card. But our strategy is that we maintain a stable and low volatility trend to prevent the risk. So we think that some of the decline in our revenue or the business growth in order to maintain a stable asset quality last year, the credit card's NPL ratio is around 1.74%. It has been stable over the past years and be better than the peers. In terms of mortgage, we continue to grow the secondary housing facing the decline in the demand side. And so that is why we have slight growth on the mortgage side. The growth rate cannot be compared with a fast growth rate in the past. So for micro loan, we are doing inclusive financing. And -- so inclusive financings and also micro loan, 80% of them have collateral with the property as a collateral. So the risk -- overall risk is under control. And consumption loan, we think that we are centered on the retail customer that we have already salary payout and also AUM. And this kind of short-term demand for us. So it's -- the asset quality is also stable. So for our total retail credit, quality totaling around RMB 3.6 trillion and around 50% of our total asset. So it's continued to be an important area that we allocate our credit resources for. We will continue to namely to kindly to take advantage of the -- advantage of retail credit and its small ticket size and also the risk is more diversified. These are the advantage of the retail credit card -- retail credit business. In terms of Wealth Management business, I think that we will seize the opportunity brought by the capital market, especially people's demand for -- to allocate more of their assets to the financial products. And so for product side, we need to be more advanced, and we have mutual private fund and also for precious metal and also overseas investment, and as said and also Wealth Management products, we have different product lines. And also, we need to upgrade our product system to better satisfy our customers' needs. And secondly, very important is how we can improve the service -- so how we service our customer. Online together with the offline is combining them together, very important. This year, we are more allocating our offline relationship manager service the high-end customer, and this is a better resources allocation of the relationship manager. So in terms of Wealth Management, we will continue to maintain our fast growth strength. So the total income of the Wealth Management can also continue to grow. And I have a goal for CMB, namely for a restart of the retail business and also faster growth of the corporate business. So for Retail, it means that Wealth Management should be strong and also continue to build, maintain the -- one is to improve the asset quality and secondly is to maintain the solid advantage of the funding source and also to strengthen our advantage in Wealth Management. Xia Yangfang: We'll have next question from an on-site participant. Lincoln Yu: I am Yu Lihan from JPMorgan. I have a question regarding the capital. We have noticed that in 2025, CMB's RWA growth rate was 10%, which was faster than the 8% asset growth rate. I would like to understand the underlying reason behind. Is that a one-off reason? Or is a normalized influencing factor that will continue? Looking ahead, how do we look at the RWA growth rates as a loan growth rate for the future 1 to 2 years? And what is the trend of the CAR? Will we continue to face downward pressure? What's the influence to return of the shareholder and also the cash dividend payout? Liang Wang: Thank you for your question. I will answer first on RWA. So every year, when we are discussing about RWA, we have been emphasizing that we aim to lower the volatility and maintain stability. So for many years, our RWA, the level of it was around 9% to 8%. And it's overall stable, but we will adjust it a little bit according to the external environment. It's more or less around 9%. So just now you mentioned that in the year 2025, the RWA growth rate, 8.8% under the weighted approach, 9.5% under the advanced approach. Generally, it's following our philosophy. Compared -- but compared with our asset growth, you might think that it would be a little bit higher. So I would like to explain more a little bit. So I think the influencing factors are, in the year 2024, the swift from the new capital regulation is actually conserving some capital for us. So that, that will be having a low base effect comparing the year '24 and '25. And the second reason is that when the credit loans are under pressure, the corporate loans are taking higher proportion and these type of loans are having higher risk weights. So to some extent, it will enhance the RWA. And then the 3 influencing factor is that as we have quite strong capital strength, we could use it to support some off-sheet business, for instance, the bill discounting business and et cetera. And the fourth reason is that, in bond investment, we have enhanced our bond investment and enhanced the market risk assets. So these 4 reasons above mentioned, generally contribute to our higher growth rate of RWA. But I once again want to emphasize our philosophy. We would like to lower the volatility of our asset allocation. And I think it's also a capability to help us to sell through the cycle. We will maintain our mid-level of RWA growth to 9% to 10%. And there will be some slight changes according to the external environment. We have also noticed that our CAR experienced some slight decrease, but the reason is mostly about some one-off reasons. For instance, we have had 1 interim dividend payout in the year 2025. And last year, due to the market volatility, we have experienced some volatile influence in our OCI account. This is also another factor influencing our capital strength. But excluding this factor, our CAR continued to be stable. But when our CAR tend to be more and more abundant and when we are facing more and more pressure from the capital, it's quite difficult for us to see a continuous increase in the CAR. But even though I still wish that we can leverage our own efforts to achieve a balance in business development, capital growth and et cetera. So I think that for the dividend payout question, I have also just answered that we tend to be stable. I think it's a triangle balance that we aim to achieve that is business development, dividend payout and capital strength. Xia Yangfang: We will have another question. Leon Qi: I am Qi Leon from CLSA. I have an asset quality question. We noticed that in the fourth quarter, CMB's NPL formation has been increased. I would like to understand the reason behind. Is it because of the micro or consumption loan you mentioned before? Is it about some quarterly reasons? And we also noticed that President Xu, you have mentioned about the decrease of the allowance coverage ratio and our principal to manage this indicator. I would like to understand that how do we balance the product growth and allowance coverage ratio? How to achieve the balance between them two? Xu Mingjie: So for the fourth quarter, our NPL formation was RMB 21.1 billion. There are some slight increase compared with the third quarter, an increment of RMB 5.9 billion, mostly from corporate loan, that is RMB 4.6 billion. So corporate loan NPL formation saw an increment of RMB 4.3 billion compared with that of the third quarter. And for retail loans, the NPL formation was around RMB 6.3 billion. And for credit card, the new formation is RMB 10 billion. So generally, the fourth quarter, the increase in the fourth quarter in terms of NPL formation are mostly from corporate loan. So the corporate loan -- so these NPL formation loans are mostly from corporate property industry. Some existing risk identified risks. And there are some exposure of individual cases and individual clients. And some individual event cases or clients risk exposure, they will cast influence on the NPL formation for a single quarter. So there will be some fluctuation during quarter-on-quarter indicator. But overall speaking, if you take a look at our corporate NPL loan, we are experiencing some improvement. So for us, since the year 2022, we begin to expose risk in the real estate sector. Ever since the year 2022, the real estate NPL, NPL formation tend to decrease. And in the year 2025, our real estate NPL formation continue to decrease. And it's also at the lowest point for the past 5 years. To see from the first quarter of 2026, the corporate loan and asset quality remains stable and they are in order. For those risks that have already been exposed, especially for those real estate groups, we have made quite adequate and abundant provision. So the average level of LRR was 3x higher than the average level of those of the general corporate loan. You have mentioned about the allowance coverage ratio. In the year 2025, the figure is 391%, which is 20 percentage points lower than that of the previous year. The fourth quarter NPL, we have made some provision, 14.14% higher than that of the previous quarter. But you can still see that the absolute level of our allowance coverage ratio is still quite leading in the industry. So making provision is being influenced by many factors. We would make provision case by case, and we should take several factors into consideration. First, scale, the product structure, the corporate loan and the retail loan were different in terms of their weighted risk and customer quality and customers' internal ratings are still factors that will influence the provision we made, including how do we take a look at the external macro environment. If we consider the external environment tend to be stable or do we expect there are more uncertainties in the future, we will also consider this factor into consider -- make this consideration and then to make a relevant provision. One very important factor is that during the phase of the post-pandemic era and the deep adjustment of real estate property, these 2 periods of time are the major reason why we have been making abundant provision. So generally speaking, these 2 adverse factors, they are fading out. The real estate market are hitting the bottom -- are in the process of hitting the bottom. So we don't see the necessity to make even more provision for this industry. You can also take a look at our absolute level of the provision. It's quite abundant. In the year 2021, the figure was RMB 37 billion. And for the last year, the level was RMB 42.6 billion. But compared with our loan scale, the ratio experienced a slight decrease. The allowance coverage ratio is not a figure that we used to balance profit. It is calculated based on our expected credit loss, based on our loan scale, based on our internal credit rating. So we will still make very abundant provision. But if the NPL balance increase, it will cash influence on our provision. If one day, our NPL balance stop to increase, I think we will see some uptick in our provision and in our allowance coverage ratio. Xia Yangfang: In order to ensure the rights of the individual participant, we have collected beforehand through e-mail about their questions. And as most of the questions actually overlap with what we have also discussed previously, so we will have 1 representative questions read out by our staff. The question is CMB last year have received approval to establish AIC. I would like to understand what is the major business of this company. And except for debt-to-equity transfer business, do you consider to make equity investment? What is the function of this company's role in CMB's comprehensive development? Jianmin Miao: Thank you for the question. Last year, approved by the regulator, now we have set up our investment company, namely the AIC. And last year, we have opened the AIC successfully. And this is a very important milestone of our comprehensive operation in order to have a better integration of investment banking, and also commercial banking to better service those start-up companies. And now we have a more -- we can provide more comprehensive service and have coordinated business in terms of investment banking and also commercial banking. According to the regulator that want this to -- in 2018, there is a policy that -- in 2018, there was a batch of the AIC company that have been set up to do the business, namely to convert the debt into equity. And nowadays, business are also changing. So more are doing toward the equity investment directly. So CMB's AIC will be both for the debt conversion to equity business and also at the same time, equity investment services. So for Commercial Banking doing equity investment is kind of a very big transition of the business model. So we need to have the right person and right business model in place and right purpose in place. So from the regulators' perspective, they are For newly opened AIC, the regulator need to have new approval for the business qualification on that. And we are also have a conversation with the regulator and communicating with the regulator because we have very good foundation in terms of equity investments, like we have the CMB International and also CMB International Capital. We have done equity investment in the past. We have around a team of 200 people. We have many successful investments in the past. And many of the enterprises have been successfully IPOed. So -- and have done quite good results. So for equity investment, if we can get the approval from the regulator, then means that AIC together with CMB Leasing can have a better integration of the business and to -- based on the business foundation that we have and the team that we have to better have a development of our AIC. Xia Yangfang: And now for second section for a question from the media. Yes, please. Unknown Attendee: I'm from the Security Times. My question is for the Chairman. Just now you mentioned about the moat. You have mentioned that for many times. And also in your speech, in our annual report, you also said we need to have a differentiated moat. So a follow-up question about the moat is that, in the past, people are talking about retail service and brand name. These are the moat also funding source of CMB. So entering into the new era, what will be the difference of the new moat for CMB. Will that be technology, talent or ecosystem? If you have some key words to conclude CMB's next 5 years core competitiveness, what would you quote, which keywords will you use? Jianmin Miao: So the so-called moat is the core competitiveness. What we are -- in which area that we are stronger than other people and which we are far ahead of other people. So just now I mentioned in the past, the moat for CMB, many people are saying, is retail is the moat and fintech was the moat. But I think the real moat is that our philosophy, namely customer-centric, which has been integrated already internalized into our corporate culture and has become a routine of our staff. This is the biggest difference between CMB and other enterprises. If you go to the other branches of CMB, after the working hour, if you -- after working hours, you go to the branches there. You see -- you can see the difference between CMB and other people. Our staff never off work on time. Just now before the results, I asked the office of the -- office of the Board. So after the results announcement, they have passed the information to me about the information they get for the communication between them and the investors. So I think this is the culture, and this is the biggest moat that we have. And no matter is the concept, no matter is the philosophy of all technology. So by -- it's all done by human beings even without this culture, without this dedication spirit to work, other moat is nothing that will be fall down. This is a keystone that support our moat that CMB is customer-centric is the most that we have built up. No matter it's talent, no matter it's technology or other co-committees. I think the keystone is the culture. As long as culture is there, then we have moat. So one day, we changed our culture, customer-centric culture, then I think the other moat will also be diminished. So in the past, in the downward cycle of the banking industry, why we also have seen some downturn, but still, we are better -- continue to have a better performance than the peers. This relies on the culture of CMB. Xia Yangfang: The next question. Unknown Attendee: I'm from the 21st Century. My question is about -- for the deposit movement. Many -- there are many institutions saying that in 2029, there will be around RMB 5 billion to RMB 7 billion deposits mature in 2026. Some may go to Wealth Management, fixed income and other products. So from the liability perspective, whether you are facing some pressure. So when this kind of term deposits mature, what is your observation? Whether they will be go to other aspects? Just now you mentioned about your subsidiaries and how you can get the deposits which are mature in 2026? Jianmin Miao: Thank you for your question. Recently, there's a lot of talks and discussions on that. My understanding on that is currently for the matured term deposit, the outflow of the matured term deposits, there will be 2 key elements, how much will mature and second, whether there will be an outflow. For the media have calculated an amount. And for CMB, for the amount that will be mature, the term deposits this year will be a little bit higher than what we have in the last year, but it's not an extraordinary number. I think it's still in a normal range. And I think more people are more caring about in this low interest rate environment, if the deposit rate cannot satisfy customers' demand on the asset yield, so how -- where the deposit will go. And some say, it may go to the capital markets, some say it may go to Wealth Management and also mutual fund products. There are many discussions on that. So for the outflow of deposits, I think from a different angle is that, from the customers' perspective, if the deposit outflow, where it will go. If it goes to the wealth management or mutual fund products, then we think that we can provide service to maintain the AUM with CMB. Maybe it may not be shown as a liability, but it's still the customer funds is with us. So we can see an outflow of deposits based not an outflow of customer. And that is why we emphasize the definition of AUM. So that is why you see last year, our AUM is up to RMB 17 trillion and a growth rate of 14%. So this is also a way of retention of the deposit and we are not worried about that. And the second angle that can provide is from the funding perspective. Some funding are going from the deposits go to capital market as the stock, which in return can be deposit as a third-party deposit with us. So these are recorded as interbank deposit for us. So from a funding perspective, if we can provide a service and then can continue to have an inflow from the interbank market, it means that outflow of deposits, but funding is not outflowing. So from this perspective, we think from these 2 perspectives, outflow or maturing of the term deposit is not a terrible thing. The first one what we are trying to do is not to prevent an outflow of deposits, namely to have abundant products in place and also to prevent the deposit outflow. Secondly if deposit really outflows, then we have product in place to retain the customers' AUM with us. Just now you mentioned about the subsidiary of CMB, we have Wealth Management subsidiary. This is also a test of the professionalism of our subsidiary and it means that taking the funding to continue to be within the bank. And secondly we will service our financial institution customer, namely the fund can return inflow into CMB from the capital market. And fourthly, very important. And I think the outflow of the deposit is also a reshuffle of the banking sector for -- if we can use our advantage and service and product to retain or regain the market share with us to have more funding from our -- from the market. This is something that we are working for. Xia Yangfang: Next question? Unknown Attendee: I'm from [ Xinda ] report. My -- the first one is for cross-border business in 2025 for CMB has actually has the funding between the CMB and also the overseas margin can have a connection on that. So what is the plan for CMB's plan for the Bay Area? In 2026, how you can use the platform in Hong Kong to have a better cooperation with the institution in Hong Kong? Secondly, is for Wealth Management. My question is for Mr. Peng. Wealth Management is regarded as an area of the growth of CMB. So how do you expect the fee income from Wealth Management and also that overall fee income for 2026. Jiawen Peng: I will answer your first question. Just now I mentioned that CMB is highly emphasized on the cross-border business and highly emphasized in the Bay Area busines -- economic integration of the Bay Area, and we want to have a bigger play in the Bay Area. So CMB's headquarter is in Shenzhen. And for the mid- and large-sized enterprises, we are the very few banks that have headquartered in Shenzhen. And secondly, in Hong Kong, we have Wing Lung Bank. We have CMB International. We have CMB branch. And also in Macau, we also have our branch. So we have covered major cities in the Bay Area. This is our geographical advantage. And thirdly, we -- from the national policy also support the growth of the Bay Area and to improve the influence of the Bay Area and to have a better connection between the 3 cities in the Bay Area, especially the funding connection between the cities. And it means that we can have more business in this area, such as for the Wealth Connect and our market share of the Wealth Connect of CMB is leading. And also, we are promoting the capital market and to strengthen such as Hong Kong is improving, stance and positioning as a financial center. So we are strengthening our cooperation with the financial institutions in Hong Kong. So there are many Hong Kong -- many China domestic enterprises are going IPO in H-share. So our CMB International is playing a bigger role on that, such as for IPO and IPO underwriting, and IPO sponsor, they are leading the market. And also for commercial banks, we have Wing Lung bank. And also Wing Lung Bank can also be a collection bank for the IPO. So this -- the comprehensive service that we can provide to the enterprises that go into the overseas market. And also domestic residents are having more investments, investment in Hong Kong because Hong Kong, the overseas products have a better yield for customers. Some of the customers would like to allocate, have some overseas allocation, and we are strengthening our capability in this regard. And I think that these are also paying off and taking quite good results. So -- these are the advantage that we have taken from the external environment and also from what we have our own institution, I do think that in the future, there will be a very big opportunity, especially in our major Bay areas in the world that will be tough in financial institutions, which will merge. In Bay Area, there are already some very leading financial institutions among the Bay areas. CMB even though have only a history of 39 years old, but I think we have the advantage in terms of geographical advantage and we have a coordination between the domestic and also overseas platforms. So we will have a better play in this regard to support the integration of the Bay Area to support the prosperity of Hong Kong. A brief answer to your second question. Last year, fee income was up by 4 -- or over 4%. This is mainly driven by wealth management products. which is up by 21%. The contribution is from the agency sales of the wealth management, up by 19% and 40% for mutual funds. And also, we have seen growth on other agency sales of the trust products. There's a small decline on the agency sales fee of the insurance products is mainly because of the change of our product structure. If you look at the premium, it's up by 27% up. But due to the structural change, the realization of the fee income that we get from -- of insurance products is changing namely from -- we are -- that is what have led to a decline on that front. So I think the external environment has been quite beneficial to the fee income of wealth management. So in 2026, we are more optimistic on that, especially the -- from the national policy also regarded regarding consumption is very important, have played a key role in the future. So these are the positive factors for fee income, but there are also challenges as well as you can see geographical conflicts having quite a posting risk to the economy. And also secondly, there's a policy side for fee rate card for mutual fund as well. And also thirdly, from the consumption side, even though there are major policies, but still depending on the real effect, whether you can drive -- whether you can drive our credit card fee income or not. So we think that the fee income from the -- we hope that it will be better than last year, but there are also structural problems like the credit card is so facing great pressure on that. We hope that the decline of our credit card magnitude will be better than last year. And also for fee-based income, we hope that it can continue to have a good growth. Thank you. Xia Yangfang: Due to the time constraint, I think the last question from the media. Unknown Attendee: Dear senior management, I am Shanghai Securities. [indiscernible] I have a question for Mr. Wang. In such a backdrop of narrowing NIM, you proposed a value creation bank strategy and deepened 4 initiative transformation, I would like to understand these strategies, what changes have it brought for CMB in specific business development? Liang Wang: Thank you for your question. So in the interest rate declining environment, fee reduction and narrower NIM, these challenges have brought pressure for our development. We proposed a value creation bank strategy and that is our philosophy to create value for customer, shareholder, partners and the society and to realize common prosperity of all. This is a philosophy. It's also a guiding principle for us, to serve as an underlying principle to create value instead of expanding scale separately. It requires us to provide better service to our clients to increase volume, increase value to make a good judgment of what business is good business and how to cash our business development into return to the society. So this will contribute to the bank's sustainable development. So value creation bank strategy is bringing changes for us in our methodology, in our philosophy of operation. We are more reasonable, and we tend to respect the principle of banking operation. In international development, in comprehensive development, we all see contribution brought by these initiatives. In financial indicators, the full initiatives have also contributed to our capability of making sustainable development. I think digital and intelligent development and comprehensive development, these will help us to find our strength and to make up for what we are not good at. So the full initiative bring us business returns, but also enhance our capability. Xia Yangfang: Thank you, President Wang. Due to time limit, we have now conclude today's meeting. For more information and details, you may refer to the annual report we released online. If you have more questions or comment, you are more than welcome to contact the CMB IR team. Thank you again. Goodbye. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]
Operator: Greetings. Welcome to the HireQuest Inc. Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions]. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Walter Frank of IMS Investor Relations. You may begin. Unknown Attendee: Thank you, operator. I would like to welcome everybody to the call. Hosting the call today are HireQuest's CEO, Rick Hermanns; and CFO, David Hartley. I would like to take a moment to read the safe harbor statement. This conference call contains forward-looking statements as defined within Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended. . These forward-looking statements and terms such as anticipate, expect, intend, may, will, should or other comparable terms involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that will occur in the future. Those statements include statements regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of HireQuest and members of its management as well as the assumptions on which such statements are based. Prospective investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, including those described in HireQuest periodic reports filed with the SEC and that actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by such forward-looking statements. Except as required by Federal Securities Law, HireQuest undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect changed conditions. I would now like to turn the call over to the CEO of HireQuest, Rick Hermanns. . Richard Hermanns: Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our call today. As we've spoken to on previous calls, the macro environment has driven a challenging time for the staffing industry. . That said, we remain solidly profitable and executed well in 2025. As many of you already know, we acquired MRI network, our global executive search and permanent placement brand back in 2022 as a way for us to tap into the increasing demand for executive search and permanent placement staffing offerings. Since we acquired the business, hiring for both executive search and permanent placement have slowed and that dynamic impacted our ability to scale and grow MRI. MRI network had two components of its business, a permanent placement executive recruiting piece and a contract staffing piece. After careful consideration during the fourth quarter, we announced our strategic decision to change the ownership structure of MRI network by divesting the permanent placement piece of the business into a new entity in transitioning majority ownership to a newly formed leadership group made up of current and former franchise owners. We believe this is a positive strategic shift for MRI network and the future growth of the brand. By restructuring ownership and aligning MRI's leadership with experienced franchise owner operators, we're making sure the network is being guided by the people who live its mission every day. This reset is focused on growing and strengthening client partnerships to unite a global network of executive staffing and permanent placement offices into a cohesive, high-performing organization. Importantly, HireQuest remains fully committed to MRI network, and we'll continue to retain partial ownership and support the brand with the essential infrastructure purchasing power and shared services across our staffing and recruiting network. So what that means for HireQuest and you as shareholders of HireQuest is that as of January 1 of this year, the permanent placement portion of MRI is operating under this new entity in which HireQuest has a minority ownership stake in. And HireQuest continues to operate and have full ownership of the contract staffing piece of the MRI business, which is the part that more closely aligns with our other franchise offerings. In another development, we announced in December that HireQuest Board of Directors had approved a share repurchase program that authorizes the company to repurchase up to $20 million of its outstanding shares of common stock. We believe that a share repurchase program is currently an efficient use of our capital, reflects our commitment to prudent capital management and deployment and reinforces the confidence that the Board and management team have in HireQuest long-term strategy while also returning capital to our shareholders. Prior to the close of the year, we surveyed over 400 offices across our HireQuest direct, [ snelling ] and MRI brands to get a better sense of the overall job market and hiring trends as we headed into 2026. The data we collected points to a studying market with fewer extremes and early signals of reallocation across industries. In other words, while we don't expect 2026 to be defined by hiring boom or bust, we do expect more balance in the labor market that appears to be stabilizing around new priorities including flexibility, fit and the kind of skilled work and labor that can't be automated by AI. Some key statistics from the survey include 68% of offices surveyed set time to fill for open rolls steadied in 2025, while 35% saw increases. This is generally considered to be a clear indicator of market stability. 61% of recruiters expect the time to fill to remain stable in 2026, while 15% expect improvement as candidate supply normalizes. On average, employers are moving faster to secure top candidates in full-time roles, demonstrated by the late 2025 hiring urgency uptick. Looking ahead, we expect several trends including AI and automation, reshoring and tariff relief and economic and political shifts to be key forces that will shape 2026, that 2026 hiring landscape. HireQuest is keeping a close eye on the many markets in which we operate, and we believe that we're well positioned with our franchise staffing model to benefit from a stabilizing market and to meet the shifting demands of employers in 2026. Lastly, I'd like to acknowledge that on March 3, snelling our nationwide temporary and direct hire recruiting service celebrated 75 years of continuous operation, placing it among the longest running staffing firms in the United States. On behalf of all of HireQuest, we congratulate them on 3/4 of a centric of success and look forward to many more years as a leader in their respective markets. With that, I'll now turn the call over to David to provide a closer look at our fourth quarter and full year financial results. C. Hartley: Thank you, Rick, and good afternoon, everyone. I appreciate you all joining us today. I'll now provide a summary of the fourth quarter and full year results. Total revenue in the fourth quarter of 2025 was $7 million compared with revenue of $8.1 million in the prior year, a decrease of 13%. For the full year, total revenue was $30.6 million compared to $34.6 million in 2024. Our revenue is made up of two components: franchise royalties, which is our primary source of revenue and service revenue, which is generated from certain services and interest charge to our franchisees as well as other miscellaneous revenue. Franchise royalties for the quarter were $6.6 million compared to $7.6 million for the same quarter last year. And for the full year 2025, franchise royalties were $29 million compared to $32.7 million in 2024. Underlying franchise royalties are system-wide sales, which are not a part of our revenue, but are helpful contextual performance indicator. This wide sales reflects sales at all offices, including those classified as discontinued. In the fourth quarter of 2025, system-wide sales were $122.3 million compared to $134.8 million in Q4 2024, a decrease of 9.3%. And for the full year, system-wide sales were $500.2 million compared with $563.6 million in 2024, a decrease of 11.3%. Service revenue in the fourth quarter was $392,000 compared to $428,000 last year. And for the full year 2025, service revenue was $1.6 million compared to $1.9 million in 2024. Selling, general and administrative expenses in the fourth quarter were $4.5 million compared to $5.1 million in the fourth quarter last year. SG&A for the full year was $20.7 million compared to $21.4 million for the full year 2024. Included in SG&A expense is net workers' compensation expense, which totaled $89,000 for the full year compared with about $2 million in the full year of 2024, a decrease of $1.9 million that demonstrates the progress we've made to reduce the impact of this expense on our business and lower it back to historical levels. Core SG&A, which includes the impact -- which excludes the impact of workers' comp, MRI ad fund expenses and any nonrecurring operating expenses was $4.1 million for the quarter and $8.5 million for the full year. We provided a table in the press release issued earlier this afternoon with a detailed reconciliation of core SG&A to SG&A, along with tables for the non-GAAP profitability metrics, net income to adjusted net income and net income to adjusted EBITDA, which I'll discuss shortly. Net income after tax was $1.6 million in the fourth quarter or $0.11 per diluted share compared to net income of $2.2 million or $0.16 per diluted share last year. For the full year, net income was $6.3 million or $0.45 per diluted share compared to $3.7 million or $0.26 per diluted share in 2024. Adjusted net income was relatively flat year-over-year for both the fourth quarter and full year 2025. And in the fourth quarter of 2025, adjusted net income was $2.7 million or $0.19 per diluted share compared to adjusted net income of $2.6 million or $0.19 per diluted share in Q4 2024. And for the full year, adjusted net income was $10 million or $0.71 per diluted share in 2025 compared with $9.9 million or $0.71 per diluted share in 2024. Adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter was $3.4 million compared to $3.8 million last year. And for the full year, adjusted EBITDA was $14.1 million compared to $16.2 million in 2024. Given the size of noncash operating expenses running through our P&L, we believe adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income are both relevant metrics for us. So now moving on to the balance sheet. Our total assets as of December 31, 2025, were $88.2 million compared to $94 million at December 31, 2024. Current assets included $3.9 million in cash and $39.3 million of net accounts receivable while current assets at 2024 year-end included $2.2 million of cash and $42.3 million of net accounts receivable. We ended 2025 with about $33 million in working capital compared to $25.1 million at the end of the year in 2024. The biggest driver for the increase in working capital is that we ended 2025 with $0 drawn on our credit facility, down from $6.8 million drawn at the end of 2024. So at December 31, 2025, we had $40.3 million in availability, assuming continued covenant compliance. We have paid a regularly -- regular quarterly dividend since the third quarter of 2020. Most recently, we paid a $0.06 per common share dividend on March 16, 2025 to shareholders of record as of March 2. We expect to continue to pay a dividend each quarter, subject to the Board's discretion. And with that, I will turn the call back over to Rick for some closing comments. Richard Hermanns: Thank you, David. As always, we'd like to thank our employees and franchisees for their hard work and commitment, and we look forward to speaking with you again when we report the first quarter results in May. With that, we can now open the line to questions. Thanks. . Operator: At this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Kevin Steinke with Barrington Research. Kevin Steinke: Rick and David. I was just wondering about the environment you described in terms of stabilization and some clients moving more quickly. If you see that benefiting any of your divisions or brands more than the other, thinking of HireQuest direct versus snelling? Richard Hermanns: Kevin, I appreciate the question. I would say that it hasn't necessarily been more pronounced in any particular division, but it's very apparent, and it's carried through into the first quarter. So the market has definitely, throughout the quarter, it is definitely seems to have found its bottom. And again, I don't want to contradict what we just said, which means it's certainly not going to -- doesn't seem like it's setting up to be a boom year. But after three years of a steady decline, we're pretty hopeful that, that's over with. Kevin Steinke: Okay. And circling back to the MRI transaction. Can you maybe just give us a sense of quantification of how we should think about that affecting the numbers as you move forward in terms of just the revenue and expense impact from the ownership change in that business as it flows through your income statement. Richard Hermanns: Yes. I'm going to leave that question to David, other than as far as getting into some of the specific numbers, I will say, generally speaking, the -- about 35% to 40% of, let's say, from 2025 of what we had in MRI has been retained via the contract staffing. So there will be a decline from that portion that makes any sense. Now realistically, the perm placement division was breakeven at best. So from an actual income standpoint, the effect will literally be nothing should be nothing. But David, if you have any more on that? C. Hartley: Yes. So in 2025, the executive search portion of MRI contributed about $65 million of system-wide sales and just a touch under $2 million for royalties. And like Rick said, from an expense side of things, it was, it was breakeven to this past year, slightly down a little bit in terms of profitability. So -- so those are kind of -- that's kind of what we should see as things start to normalize in 2026. Operator: Kevin, do you have an additional question? . Kevin Steinke: Yes. Just quickly, you didn't mention acquisitions or the acquisition pipeline, just wondering if you had any update there. Richard Hermanns: Well, thanks for that question. We had in the middle of the fourth quarter, we had one that we were hopeful, and I would have -- if you'd have asked me in November, I would have said there's an 85% chance we were going to close on that thing. And then they got cold feet and they got cold feet. So look, we're all -- again, we're always looking for it. However, clearly, we've had a bit of a dry spell in finding any decent ones. And at the end of the day, we're just simply not going to chase a deal just for the sake of having it. It just doesn't really -- doesn't really help us. And so I would say what we're finding more than what we want is ones with like client concentrations. And so we try to avoid. We try avoiding those because those are the ones that tend to fall apart when you buy them. And so we've had probably a bit less activity than really what I would expect because of the fact that we've had three years of a down market, I would have thought there would be more that are there. But -- the only thing I can say is after doing this for 35 years, it's just when I say that, that all of a sudden, some nice deal will fall in our lap. So we're just -- we're always out there working, working, working the phones and trying to get deals. And so that said, right now, we don't have anything right now. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Okay. We currently have no questions in the queue. I'd like to turn the floor back to management for closing remarks. Richard Hermanns: Well, I want to thank everybody for joining us today. I think that again, the results presented just further our contention that the HireQuest model is a very stable profit-centered proven method to be resilient in difficult circumstances. The fact that we went from nearly $7 million of debt to debt free, for example, in a year that was really by any macro sense of things was down, again, just indicates sort of the strength of our model. And so again, we just -- thank you for joining us today and look forward to presenting our first quarter results here in, I guess, in about six weeks. Anyway, thank you, and have a good day. Operator: This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
Operator: Hello, and welcome to the Americas Gold and Silver Fourth Quarter 2025 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. I will now turn the conference over to Paul Huet, Chairman and CEO. Please go ahead. Paul Huet: Thank you, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to welcome you to our fourth quarter year-end 2025 conference call. This call will be recorded and available to watch on our website event page later today. Please note that all dollar figures will be expressed in U.S. dollars throughout this call, unless otherwise noted. We will also be referencing a slide deck that will be shared during the webcast for this call. Joining me today are Warren Varga, our Chief Financial Officer, who will walk through our fourth quarter and full year financials; and Oliver Turner, our Executive Vice President of Corporate Development. I'll start off with a few key updates before turning it over to Warren. Before I begin, I would like to remind you to review our cautionary statements regarding forward-looking information and non-IFRS measures. These statements are included in our year-end MD&A, news release and in the presentation slides. Let me start by saying how excited I am about the massive transformation we have delivered at Americas Gold and Silver throughout 2025 and into early 2026. But before I outline our progress at the mines, I would like to announce a very significant milestone for our company. Just a few weeks ago, our Galena team achieved a major safety milestone. We have completed one full year in over 550,000 man hours of work. During that year, we had no lost time accident. Nothing is more important than the safety of our miners. And I would like to congratulate the team on the culture around safety we are building at Galena and in Mexico as well, well done team. 2025 was a year of transformation for our business, and we delivered exactly that. In 2025, we achieved a massive 52% increase in attributable silver production, up to 2.65 million ounces. At Galena, this was accomplished despite a total of 20-plus days of planned shutdowns for significant upgrades to both #3 and core shafts in addition to many other derisking optimization projects that I will discuss later on this call. So a massive increase in production while we're shutting down and growing the operation is quite impressive. 2025 was also highlighted by a production record year of 1.2 million ounces set by Cosala, where our team delivered the highest annual and quarterly silver output in operation in history, while successfully ramping up the EC120 to commercial production. This is another remarkable milestone and a testament to the exceptional execution by our entire team at Cosala. Congratulations to everyone at the operation for achieving these record-breaking numbers while setting the table for a very strong future. At Galena, consistent productivity gains came alongside our focus on major capital projects and the integration of the newly acquired Crescent Mine. I'm proud of our team for advancing key operational initiatives, including the introduction of long-hole stoping. The expansion of our underground mining fleet the upgrades to #3 and core shaft, all of which position us to support increased development and accelerate mining rates moving forward. Over the course of 2025, we have made major progress in mining, infrastructure and in development at Galena, our transition to long-hole stoping is going exceptionally well. To date, we have mined 7 to 9 long-hole stope panels designed at specific width, while three new long-hole stopes are currently being developed at the moment. I think it is very worthwhile noting that in 2024, we had 0 long-hole stopes, so this is an extremely exceptional step in the right direction and where we're wanting to head at Galena. In Q4 of 2025, we accelerated upgrades by installing the new 2,250 horsepower motor and a redundant motor at the core shaft, further derisking the operation and supporting our growth plans. Phase 2 of the #3 shaft upgrades remain on track for completion in Q2 of 2026. With the arrival of all the parts coming in this month, in March and early April, needed to complete the upgrades on the braking systems and the lillies. This will bring the total hoisting capacity to over 100 tonnes per hour, representing a 160% increase compared to the 40 tonnes per hour achieved in 2024 and when we started this project. We have all seen major productivity improvement. In '25, we had about a 200% improvement on mucking operations. We're now seeing around 200 tons of ore move per ship up from around 50 tonnes of ore when we were doing conventional mining. This is through the use of remote control mucking. Other significant achievements at Galena included a new Alimak ventilation rate, new declines in place that are debottlenecking mining areas. We made major investments into our underground mining fleet replacing and upgrading a large portion of our year with more expected in 2026. Lastly, we are bringing Galena into the modern era of mining, we are currently installing a modern fiber optic communication that will allow us to remotely monitor and optimize pieces of equipment in the mine. In just 1 year, we have completed a large number of projects and upgrades to the mine, and we will continue this strong progress in 2026. At present, we're off to extremely fast start there as well with key infrastructure and equipment upgrades in place within a few short weeks of closing the acquisition in December. Firstly, we added line power to all three audits and are actively setting up the operation to deliver ore to the Galena mill later this year after commissioning the secondary egress. Our updated mineral resource estimate has shown a larger and higher grade ore body at Galena, a tremendous result in our first year of drilling. Even when excluding the historical resource at present, our 2P is over 25 million ounces; M&I over 115 million ounces; and in third is over 133 million ounces of silver. And I just want to remind folks, this is not silver equivalent. This updated resource gives us even greater confidence in the quality and longevity of our assets. I also want to note that our operations in the Silver Valley are still among some of the shallower and we know there is more silver to be found here. We are quite excited to continue drilling and exploring these previously underexplored properties, both in Mexico and in Idaho. As a company, we recently launched the largest exploration program in history, with approximately 64,000 meters of drilling planned across the Galena complex, including Crescent and Cosala. This follows the discovery of 10 new high-grade silver, copper, antimony and silver lead veins at Galena. Highlighted by intercepts of approximately 4,900 grams per tonne of silver, 4% copper over with of 1.3 meters and 2,600 grams per tonne silver and 1.4% antimony, over 0.7 meters wide. The continued discovery of these high-grade veins like 34 veins, 149 veins and the newly discovered 520 vein announced today are strong examples of the tremendous potential of Galena to continue to grow with high-grade discoveries. Something the mine has been doing consistently for well over 100 years. This February, we announced a landmark joint venture with United States antimony to build and operate a new antimony facility at the Galena Complex, creating the first fully U.S. mine to finish antimony solution and creating additional downstream value for our shareholders. Our full year antimony and copper byproduct production from the Galena Complex further demonstrates the value potential of our unique position as the largest active U.S. antimony mine. Beginning January 1, '26, we finally started receiving revenue from these byproducts under the new offtake agreement negotiated with Ocean Partners at NTEC Resources as earlier announced in June of 2025. Looking ahead, we're extremely excited about the opportunity in antimony production as we continue test work initiatives and evaluate numerous pathways to unlock the substantial byproduct value of antimony at the Galena complex. Moving forward, Americas remains squarely focused on playing a leading role in strengthening U.S. critical minerals supply chains. Finally, we introduced our formal 2026 production, cost and capital guidance. For the full year, we expect consolidated silver to be 3.2 million to 3.6 million ounces at an ASIC of $30 to $35 per ounce sold. This is yet another 30% increased production over last year. The last year, 50%, another 30% as we continue along that trend that we're heading towards over that 5 minutes. It keeps us well on track and on course to return Galena back to those historical production and record levels. These are big, big step-ups year after year. Our cost guidance reflects deliberate investments in advancing operational improvements at Galena and Crescent, including the completion and commissioning of the new surface past fill plant, as we've been discussing for some time, as well as the planned transition in our mining methods over the next few years to getting 60% to 70% long-hole stoping and a mixture of 30% under hand capital. These changes will drive higher productivity, lower cost over the medium and short-term time. Consolidated capital expenditures are targeted between $90 million and $120 million, including Crescent development while exploration capital is targeted between $15 million to $20 million. 2026 will be another pivotal year for infrastructure upgrades that Galena and our complex so desperately needs, building directly on the strong foundation we've established in 2025. Overall, I'm extremely pleased with the progress we have made over the last year, which has laid a strong foundation for a very -- for a continued growth of 2026 and beyond across both Idaho and Mexico. I'll now turn the call over to Warren for our financial highlights. Warren Varga: Thank you, Paul. This morning, we released our Q4 and full year 2025 financial results. Our audited financial statements and MD&A for the 12 months ended December 31, 2025, are available on our website and under Americas Gold and Silver profile on both SEDAR+ and EDGAR. For the full year, our consolidated revenue increased to $118 million, up 18% from $100 million in 2024, driven by higher silver production and strong realized prices. We achieved consolidated attributable silver production of 2.65 million ounces with approximately 3.4 million ounces of silver equivalent, including 9.3 million pounds of lead and 2 million pounds of copper in addition to 561,000 pounds of antimony. As for our cost structure, cost of sales per silver equivalent ounce and cash costs and all-in sustaining cost per silver ounce produced averaged $25, $26 and $33 respectively. On the earnings front, we reported a net loss of $87 million or $0.33 per share in 2025 compared to a net loss of $49 million or $0.46 per share in 2024. Our adjusted earnings loss for the year was $35 million or $0.13 per share compared to $34 million or $0.32 per share in 2024. Adjusted EBITDA for 2025 was a loss of $4 million or $0.02 per share compared to $1.5 million or $0.01 per share in 2024. We remain optimistic about the future with silver production expected to grow as we advance the restart of the Crescent mine and continuing optimizing the EC120 mine at our Cosala operations. To support this growth, we closed a $133 million bought deal financing in December 2025, which also funded the cash portion of the Crescent acquisition. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Oliver Turner. Oliver Turner: Thank you, Warren, and good morning, everyone. The past year has been an incredibly active and productive period for the entire Americas team. From completing the Crescent acquisition, delivering strong exploration successes, announcing the U.S. antimony joint venture for the antimony processing facility in Idaho and delivering strong operational results across all sites, we've made significant progress in many different areas. On the market side, we've continued to see strong institutional support and interest. The tightly held ownership of our shares has increased from just 7% in late 2024 to over 65% presently, certainly a strong signal of market support. This level of alignment continues to be a key differentiator for Americas. And over the past year alone, our team has conducted more than 400 institutional investor meetings. We've also seen meaningful index inclusions with Americas being added to the VanEck's GDXJ and SIL ETFs, along with a significant increase in the SILJ ETF shareholding. Over the course of the year, we've also added five new analysts covering our name, and we greatly appreciate their support, bringing our total coverage universe to seven research analysts. With increased generalist interest, we've also seen increased Tier 1 media interest as highlighted by recent interviews with both FOX Business and Bloomberg following our U.S. antimony joint venture announcement. Since the beginning of our transformation in late 2024, USA shares that significantly outperformed the Silver peer group, yet we still trade at a significant discount to NAV compared to our peers providing a rare combination of both silver growth and value in a single stock with nearly 80% of revenue exposed to silver, a growing antimony revenue stream, major new exploration discoveries and a strong growth profile ahead of us, we believe the market is up to fully recognize the value we are building, which makes an exciting opportunity for investors interested in investing in silver today. Looking ahead, our 2026 calendar is filled with conferences, media engagements and meetings week to week. And we look forward to keeping the market and our shareholders updated as we execute on our strategy to scale a premier Americas-focused silver and critical metals producer. With that, I'll turn the call back over to the operator for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions]. Your first question comes from the line of Justin Chan of SCP Resource Finance. Justin Chan: Congrats on a transformational year. My first question is just on your production guidance for the year. Could you give us maybe a bit more breakdown between what you think the ranges are for Cosala and Galena? And then any guidance on sort of how to model that on a production ramping up basis as you commission the shaft, the past plan, et cetera? Paul Huet: Sorry, Justin. I think I heard the question here -- it's Paul here. I think the breakup between the guidance between Mexico and Idaho, and then the update on the shaft. Was that the question? I think that's it. Justin Chan: Yes, first the breakdown between the assets and then the cadence. Paul Huet: Yes. So look, we're going to be in the ranges, obviously. So this year is another huge step up for us, right, as we're transitioning into long haul, we did 9 stopes -- 7 to 9 stopes last year, depending on how you measure panels. We're going to be stepping that up again this year. So looking at 2026, we're looking at a range of $2.2 million to $2.6 million out of Galena and then the rest is coming out of Mexico, again, Mexico is going to have another big year as we step up about 1.2 to 1.4. So bringing us into that guidance that we put out forward with the projects we've got for the shaft, those are big steps. We've got two big projects we've got to finish up this year. And that's in order to sustain the long haul and fill the stopes property. We've got to get that batch plant in place. And that's been one of our projects from day 1, and we're expecting to have that done this year, which is another big milestone. With respect to the shaft, the parts are almost on site, actually, half of them are. Some of the parts are on site, we're going to be -- we have a -- we want to make sure everything is on site so we can make sure that we do a scheduled planned outage. We'll be planning to be down for 12 days as we upgrade the shaft. These are things that have to get done in order for us to maintain the new product, the new tipping rates that we want to do at that 100 tonnes per hour. So April, those -- those will be done. Justin Chan: Got you. So just to reiterate, so the shaft upgrade basically should be in April and model that into Q2? Paul Huet: Yes. So, the shaft upgrade done. And then the biggest -- our biggest thing is -- so that's about a 10-, 12-day shutdown. The biggest one that's the back plant in Q4. That's always been the biggest one because it allows us to fill the stopes much faster. It takes us maybe 6 to 8 days to fill a stope today. We'll be filling stopes in 24 to 36 hours once those new complexes are built. It become the site to all the construction going on for the new facilities, there's a lot of work going on at the moment to prepare for that new facility. Justin Chan: Absolutely. Another one is just with -- I guess for the balance sheet and all your CapEx plans, can you give us your capital allocation split for this year? I know 30 to 40 is at Crescent, but maybe there's more detail you can give. Warren Varga: Yes, I'm happy to just take that line, it's all over here. So on the growth side of things, total of -- so the $90 million to $120 million includes about $60 million to $80 million growth. That's growth across all assets. A significant portion of that is going into Crescent this year. We also have about $30 million to $40 million in sustaining that includes some capitalized infill, but the majority of the exploration budget is going to be expensed and will be in that $15 million to $20 million number that we talked about. Justin Chan: Okay. Got you. And then maybe just one on some of your growth projects that are maybe less into people's models right now. Do you have an update on Relief Canyon in Nevada? Do you have any plans for that. And then maybe one on the antimony JV? Paul Huet: Yes. Look, when it comes to Relief Canyon this year, we're going to be doing a pretty internal study. At the moment, we're going to be squarely focused at making sure our silver district in Idaho is running where we needed to be. Relief Canyon is going to undergo more of a study this year that we're looking at. Justin Chan: Got you. Like a scoping level study something like that? Paul Huet: Yes, it's going to be an internal study. So last year, we didn't have any -- we didn't do any studies. We want to understand some of the ore, some of the resource and some of the freight grabbing stuff. Look, a lot of that stuff is almost identical to what I had me and Mike at Hollister. That material appears to be very, very similar to what we mined before. The grades different so we want to understand it. We're going to do an internal study led by our COO, Mike Dylan, and we're going to come back to the market. And we're going to come back to our board first and decide what's the best thing to do. We're getting a lot of inbound calls on it. There's a lot of interest on it. It needs metal prices. I don't think we're ready to just give it away to anybody. It would be crazy to just give this away. There's opportunity here. Justin Chan: Got you. And then on the antimony JV, I guess are there any kind of updates or milestones that we should expect in the next, I guess, over the course of this year to account for. Paul Huet: Yes. So the team has developed. I'm actually here taking this call right now from Bolivia, and you visiting the new plant that was built, I'll be at the site in probably about 12 hours to go visit a new plant that is feeding the product already into Montana. We're building something identical to this thing. So the purpose of us being here in Bolivia is to actually see the process, understand it and see what it is we're trying to replicate in Idaho. So it's moving out of speed that it was faster than I expected that for sure. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Nicolas Dion of ATB Cormark Capital Markets. Nicolas Dion: Congrats on the progress at both of your minds. Just 2 questions for me. I guess I'll start by following on the questions on the guidance. Does your 2026 guidance include anything from Crescent? And then second to that, how should we think about the trajectory of production and costs at Galena looking beyond 2026? Paul Huet: Yes. I'll start a bit on the Crescent, and Oliver, you can go on the cost. So Crescent what just need to be reminded that we we're going to be drilling a lot of Crescent this year. Crescent will have some very small amount, by the way, a small amount because we have to put in secondary egress. The reason this thing can't go into production yet is because the ramp's got to be connected. There's got to be raises and those take us -- it's going to take us a bit of time. At the moment, we're going to be looking at extending on all -- on the vein systems and doing like we did at Fire Creek, just extending the veins understanding the geology. But for now, this year, the tonnes are going to be low. We'll be mining just on vein, no stoping. We can't stope until the secondary gas are put in, and that's probably a third quarter thing. But we'll be getting tonnes for sure and ounces out of Crescent just smaller amounts. And then on the costs, Oliver, you can talk a bit about the future. Oliver Turner: Yes, happy to, Nick. And so just a couple of things in -- as we step into the years ahead. We've been out there talking about taking Galena back to its historical record production levels, which was, of course, in 2002, the mine did 5.2 million ounces and we said that would take us a couple of years to get there. That firmly remains in place, and that growth plan is still there, so nothing has changed there. And as we do scale production, like a bunch of the things you talked about with respect to the transition to long hole stoping we're already talking about a 70-30 split that's progressing extremely well. We've got additional byproduct credits, obviously, that are now payable with the new contract in place from tax that will also being netted out against our all-in sustaining cost numbers. So a steady decline from here onwards as we execute over these next couple of years at Galena is certainly expected in terms of where things can get, we'll put a guidance at the appropriate period of time for those numbers. But significant cost decreases as we ramp towards that historical production number. Crescent as well as Paul just talked about lots of work going on there. Once we're into full production there. We expect that to be contributing ore to the Galena mill. That historical PEA that's out there on Crescent, obviously, not RPEA the prior owner's PEA from 2015. However, that gives you a good indication of the potential of Crescent. We think we can potentially do better than that, but we need to get in there and do more work. And then, of course, down at Cosala, we're fully into EC120 now. Last year, we had a record year despite some limitations geographically in the state, which the team navigated through excellently. We expect another strong year that's going to be in line with last year at Cosala, but then what we identified here with [ Alikrane ] just north of San Rafael, San Rafael is the mine that we "depleted" last year. Well, now we've got a new discovery just north of it, which looks extremely interesting. We haven't really been able to drill to the extent that we would like to at Cosala. Obviously, we're allocating some meters there this year, and we're excited to get in there, but there's numerous targets, just similar to the Alikrane discovery that we'd like to get into at Cosala and then, of course, really get in there to evaluate the impact on optimizing mining activities. So Cosala will grow from here as well Galena. So we still expect that ramp up over the years to come. Nicolas Dion: Okay. That's helpful. And my second question was going to be on Alikrane at Cosala. Can you maybe elaborate on that discovery a bit more in terms of, I guess, the potential you see there? And how close it is maybe the San Rafael development, et cetera? Oliver Turner: Yes. So it's like it's a brand-new discovery. One of the key things that we really enjoyed in our due diligence of this company was when we went down to Mexico in 2024 during our due diligence several times, obviously, prior to taking over management of the company. We are really impressed by the exploration potential at Cosala. There's been numerous outcrops that have been drilled there. And I believe the last five of them turned into five mines at Cosala. Of course, that's not a poor projection on turning future outcrops into mines, but it certainly bodes well for the prospectivity of the region. There are 7 outcropping areas that have been identified that are just screaming to be drilled. And one of those areas in Alikrane has yielded the sort of first discovery under this team, which is a really strong start. It's only 600 meters north of San Rafael. Look at the whole district down there, it's not stretched out over a large area in terms of where these mines are, and they obviously all feed centralized milling. So that's an area as we continue to drill into it this year could potentially be feeding the milling center there in the years to come. This year we'll be focused entirely on EC 120 from a production standpoint. That's the higher grade silver copper. But other metals can come back into the mix there with exploration success like we've seen at Alikrane. Nicolas Dion: Okay. Very good. And last one, I don't know if it was mentioned, but what was the split of your exploration program between the two mines? Oliver Turner: Yes. But 3/4 of that will be spent in Idaho and about 1/4 of it we said in Mexico. So give or take, the $5 million would be in Mexico and $15 million in Idaho. And that's across both at Crescent and at Galena will be drilling aggressively. We're going to have north of 10 drills drilling across both sites there, which is a huge step up. Those sites haven't seen more than a couple of drills turning at them for many, many years now. So this is the largest exploration program in this company's history, 64,000 meters as a reminder for everyone listening. Those are all drilled from underground. So those are essentially short holes in Idaho. So you get a lot of peers points, a lot of data points for that meters there. And we've already seen some strong results with 34 Vein discovery, which went into the new resource, which helped to boost those grades. We saw a grade increase there. 149 is not yet in the resource, but we're looking to get it in there as well. And then, of course, the new 520 discovery, which is over near the core mine, which is connected to Galena underground is another high-grade discovery. And this mine has been doing this for well over 100 years and certainly looking like it's going to continue for a long period of time. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Amanda Lewis of Desjardin. Amanda Lewis: So first, we saw a major increase in resources at Galena. Can you just walk us through what drove that change and what it applies to the long-term mine life at Galena, especially with the present integration? And then just also what drove the large grade increase at Galena. Oliver Turner: Yes, happy to. Go ahead, Paul. Paul Huet: Go ahead, Oliver. Go ahead. You go ahead, Oliver. But the one thing that as we're talking about great, I just want to remind people, one of the things that about last year in the drilling and everything we had. When I think back of 2025, and I think while we actually mined 9 stopes last year. And almost every conference I go into or all that goes into people ask us about the grades, the grades and how the impact of those 9 stopes. We're carving these things out surgically with long hole we have seen the best grade at Galena in 2 decades. The best grade this mine has seen in 20 years was last year, a record year, the best grade in 20 years while we're carving out long-hole stopes. I'll go ahead and talk about the resource, but I think I just wanted to inject that because a lot of the questions we were asked throughout the year were about how will it impact the resource? How will it impact the grade? And will we see a tremendous drop in grade because of ad evolution. The opposite occurred for us, yes, the best grade in 20 years. So go ahead on the resource. Oliver Turner: That's a very good point. I mean one of the key considerations here is as we're integrating more long-hole stopes in this mine plan, right? We're shifting from 100% underhand cut and fill or conventional mine to a blend of mechanized long-hole stoping, and there will always be some cut and fill in this mine, but about a 70-30 split. As we baked more of those long-hole stopes into the reserve, we haven't seen a major impact on grades there, right? So we're applying long-hole mining stopes there. and the grade is staying very high. Reserve grade is over 500 grams, over 520 grams actually in the silver at Galena. So maintaining very high grade. And one of the key factors for that is the fact that we're able to mine extremely narrow with these long-hole stopes. That first stope we took was 1 meter live. We've taken numerous narrow long-haul stopes there with the same basically with that we'd be able to mine with cut and fill. So that means that plan dilution is exactly the same as what we're getting with cut and fill. So really strong performance by the team there. And the mine looks well positioned. One other thing to mention here too is, Galena is in the top 5 highest grade silver mines in the world, and we're only increasing grades with these discoveries. So one of your questions there was what drove the grade increases. The 34 vein discovery, which we announced midway through last year, when we first drilled that off with that headline hold as 983 grams, well over 3 meters there and widths, triple or minimum mining width. We initially had a 1 million to 2 million-ounce target on that vein. We put another update out about a month and a bit ago, and we ended up expanding that to 6 million to 7 million-ounce target across multiple different veins plays. That vein system continues to grow. And it's just an example of what's been happening with Galena for over 100 years here and will happen well into the future. So we're quite excited about that inclusion that was included in the resource and helped drive grades up even net of depletion, even with incorporating those long-hole stopes there. We had the 149 vein, 25-kilogram hit, 20 centimeters wide, but you dilute that 5 times, you're down to a 5-kilogram intercept or cut there. That was not yet included in the resource. So there's still more great upsides to come there. And of course, the 600-gram plus hits that we've seen at 520 in the core also not included. So the good news on grade improvements in drill it's being increased with intercepts with the drill bit. That's real data feeding that that's increasing those grades, not just in manipulation of cut-off grades in either direction. So very excited about that. Down at Cosala, you also saw reclassification resources. We moved some resources into inferred from M&I, not impacting the mine life whatsoever that we have at EC120. We're going to be infill drilling those areas and bringing them back into M&I this year. We've applied very stringent controls, both in Mexico and in Idaho with this resource, and we've done this at multiple different companies before where we build our own resource. But of course, now we can build our mine plans around going forward. So strong results across the board of both and feeding it with the drill bit and look, we're going to be doing a ton of drilling this year. So excited about what that can mean for the year-end resource a year from now. Amanda Lewis: Okay. Great. That's very helpful. And then just lastly, could you just provide a bit more color on how the long-hole stoping is going? I'm specifically wondering how the mining teams are performing and what areas do you still want to work on? Paul Huet: Yes. Oliver, I can talk about that. So as we've been talking about, we've taken out depending on how you look at a 7 or 9 panels already, we are changing up a bit of the way we're drilling to make sure that we're very consistent in our blast patterns. We're this mine hasn't seen a long-hole for us. So depending on where we are in the mine, we are quickly recognizing and this is not uncommon in any of the mines I've worked out in my life. By domain, if the areas are very steep, 89, 90 degrees. We might need one less hole. So we're just improving or improving are optimizing our drill patterns, our blasting patterns, if we're down to 72 degrees, we need an extra hole. But what we're seeing is we're determining our stope height, our length. And the intent is that 70% of everything we do going forward will all be long-hole. All we're doing right now at the moment is optimizing it, though. We just continue to get better and better and better. In the first couple of stopes we have done. And the more efficient we get, we'll just be moving more tons per day using remote controls instead of drilling and blasting jackwave, which has been done forever. So long-hole is like most people understand. It's not a complicated thing. It just needs to be done right. You've got to have your top that's good. You got to have your bottoms, that's good. And we want to make sure that you can check in our case, we check our breakthroughs. So they're not in the footwall or hanging on and we don't have a lot of deviation and unnecessary additional dilution. So pretty simple game in our world, given we've done it all over the world. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Wayne Lam of TD Cowen. Wayne Lam: Maybe just wondering on the new discoveries, obviously, some positive elements that could support a further increase in production. Maybe if you might be able to give us some color on the new 520 vein and the time line on that and whether the core Shack upgrades put the infrastructure and positioned to be ready for production and it's just a function of drilling and development. But no actual constraints on the processing infrastructure? Paul Huet: So that upgrade we did in the core motors at the very end of December 2025 was the first time that we ever have redundant motors. So we're preparing ourselves for using that shaft. There's still some work to do in the loading pockets and other areas that we have identified. But the new vein 520 has been part of a drill program at core. So given that it's a brand-new discovery or we've got quite a few holes into it already, we're going to drill it quite a bit and see. Can we access it from the #3 shaft? Or can we access it from core? One of the advantages we have in this district is that core and #3 shaft are connected. In fact, that's our secondary egress. So we travel across to get out in the event that the #3 shaft is down. So we will be able to mine that 520 vein from the #3 shaft even when the upgrades come into the #3 shaft, this quarter in March and April as we're doing these upgrades. So once again, more drilling into it, we're going to start looking at it. How do we mine it from the best location? So it's very fresh. It's very new. We're quite excited about it. It's not going to be the only discovery we have. There will be many more. We have 10 new veins here. There's no doubt there will be more discovery. One of the biggest things we always saw about these assets, they were underexplored, and we needed money and we're drilling them now. So 520 needs more drilling. We have optionality to mine it from either shaft or #3 shaft and skipping it up either one pause a bit out there because of the work that needs to be done. Wayne Lam: Okay. Great. Yes. Sounds like a pretty big opportunity. And then maybe at San Rafael, just wondering with the higher silver price than as EC120 ramps up? Is there potential for continued mining there and to add incremental tonnage to the production profile? Paul Huet: Oliver, let you take that one, I believe. Oliver Turner: Yes. So San Rafael particularly the higher-grade upper areas, which we were mining towards the end of last year. There are still some portions there that can come into the into the mill there down at Cosala. But the majority of mill feed this year is related to the EC120. Of course, all of this subject to improvement based on drilling and exploration results. And obviously, we're not going to be putting Alikrane into there within the next 6 months or anything like that, but continued positive drilling intercepts there in the upper portions of San Rafael can add some more feed and then also continued drilling success from underground at EC120 will allow us to get into some of the higher grade areas there as well. So coastal the team executed excellently there last year with a record production for the asset. Looking for similar this year with upside pending drill success there this year? And then obviously, we'll be scaling it in the years to come. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Heiko Ihle of H.C. Wainwright. Heiko Ihle: Most of them have been answered, but just two quick ones. The 55 170 decline, obviously, should provide a decent amount of efficiencies. When should that fully -- I assume this is already in effect, but is there like a bit of a period over when we should see those impacts? And then also just from a cash point of view, given that there is less work now getting done, is there a -- should that impact cash costs at all? Paul Huet: Sorry, Oliver, you're going to take that I'm not sure I heard the question at all. Go ahead, Oliver. Oliver Turner: No problem. Yes. So on the decline, that's currently under development. So we'd expect that to be getting those multiple access points here towards the end of the second quarter. So expect that to have an impact. I mean this is all part of our 2026 mine plan anyways. So it all based into the guidance that we have. Certainly, when it comes to cash costs, I think your -- the way that you're thinking is right there, Heiko, we do expect cost to continue to decline as we go quarter-over-quarter this year. So you'd expect more of a back-end weighting to improvement in cash costs as we ramp up ounces, but also some of these projects that we've been working on start to impact the bottom line. One of the things that we did see in the first -- what's it been 14, 15 months, that we've been at the helm here. We did highlight in the release there is on mucking efficiencies. The company was in 2024 and prior moving about 50 tonnes per shift with conventional methods. We're over 200 tonnes per shift now used employing the remote scoops that we have, haul trucks underground. This is all the new equipment that we put in place last year. And now we actually have a fiber optic system that's being laid down #3 and it's going to be developed on different levels there that will give us basically mesh WiFi and communications access all throughout the mine. It seems like something that's sort of standard in mines these days, and it absolutely is if you're building a new mine. But this mine hasn't seen any of that modern technology installed in it. So that's another very easy target and low-hanging sort of area -- of low-hanging fruit that we can target there to improve efficiencies. That will then link in to the lot of the equipment we're using and it's not just mining equipment. It's fans, it's ventilators, it's automating all sorts of parts of the mine and monitoring it in real time. We expect that to continue to improve dispatch efficiency cycle times and productivities across the board. All of that starts to be impacted once that system is in place, which again, is the second half of the year. So you're going to see steady improvements in efficiencies over the course of this year. You're going to see costs come down at the operating level. Over the course of this year, all of that kind of works in tandem as tonnes come up ounces come up costs go down, byproducts come up, efficiencies go up. So you'll see a positive trend this year, Heiko, as we execute quarter-by-quarter, and things will get even better next year, obviously, in '27. Heiko Ihle: Fair enough. And then just one quick clarification. How much do you -- would you say you spend on fuel at Galena or even across the company per month or per quarter? Just purely out of curiosity. Oliver Turner: Warren, do you want to take a stab at that one? Warren Varga: No, I wouldn't even know at the top of my head. Heiko, I'll give you a number after the call. There's not off the top of my head. Paul Huet: Yes. I mean we just feel, given what prices have been doing, but I assume the impact is fairly small. Oliver Turner: It is, Heiko. One of the things remember there, of course, is that Galena is integrated into the grid power system, of course, in Idaho. There's not a lot of diesel consumption at site. Obviously, some of our underground equipment runs on diesel. But broadly speaking, the mine is powered by grid power. So not the same impact that you'd expect to see in a large open pit in terms of diesel cost impact, but we can get you that number. Paul Huet: And remember, we have a lot of rail, right? Our rail transport a lot of our foreign waste in the mine. Operator: With no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference back over to Paul for some closing remarks. Paul Huet: I just want to thank Oliver and Warren for helping me on the call today. And I really want to take a moment to thank you all, our shareholders. Our teams at both sites, look, we're coming up for 1 year without an LTA in Mexico as well. That doesn't happen by accident. So great job to both sites for outstanding safety commitments. And I'm looking forward to 2026. It's a very exciting year, another big step-up again for us. we continue to deliver on our operational successes. So thank you, everyone. Have a great day, and we'll talk soon. Operator: This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.
Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Sigma Lithium's 2025 Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. We would like to inform you that this event is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] There will be a replay for this call on the company's website. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Anna Hartley, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Anna Hartley: I'd like to welcome you to our 2025 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today is Ana Cabral, Co-Chair and CEO of Sigma Lithium. Our earnings press release, presentation and corresponding documents are available on our website. I'd like to remind you that some of the statements made during this call, including any production guidance, expected company performance, update on mining operations, the timing of our projects and market conditions may be considered forward-looking statements. Please note the cautionary language about forward-looking statements in our presentation, MD&A and press release. Before turning the call to Ana Cabral, we will be showing you a short corporate video as we think the pictures will paint a thousand words about what's happening at Sigma. [Presentation] Ana Cabral Gardner: Hi, everyone. Well, thank you, Anna, for showing us this video of our operations. As you can all tell, we're very, very proud of what we built here in Vale do Jequitinhonha. So without further ado, I'll go straight into the fourth quarter 2025 earnings release presentation, which covers the entire full year 2025 annual financial results. We're going to make quite a lot of forward-looking statements, and we would like to encourage you to read the disclaimer of this presentation that's going to be posted on our video. Sigma is the largest industrial mineral producer in the Americas. We've delivered operational excellence. We are a low-cost operation, and we are executing a high-growth strategy for 2026, 2027 and 2028. This is because we are a management operator company where our interests are fully aligned with the interest of our shareholders, which are to build long-term value. Our main competitive advantage is our resilience, which comes from operational efficiency. Our efficiency is, again, driven by the fact that the management is owner of the company. More importantly, we are located in a country in Brazil, which is a politically stable traditional mining jurisdiction, where we have a very low-cost operating environment. On sustainability, we are 100% sustainable. We have the Quintuple Zero lithium, which starts with 5 points. We do not have tailing dams, so 0. We do not use drinking water, 100% of the water is reused and recycled from sewage, 0. We use 0 hazardous chemicals in our operation. DMS is basically a physics-based process, so third zero. We use 100% clean energy, so 0 dirty energy. And we have had 0 accidents with lost time for almost 3 years. Again, a picture is a thousand words. Here's a picture of our waste tailings before and after the artificial germination program. It's blended into the landscape. It's basically stacked up rock, fully geotechnically stable. And we went through the sustainability initiative of actually planting the rock into a green mountain. So what you see now is essentially the picture below. We are 100% sustainable. We produce the Quintuple Zero lithium. We have zero tailing dams. We have 0 drinking water. We have zero hazardous chemicals. We have 0 dirty power. 100% of our power comes from clean electricity. We have had 0 accidents for 2 years and 7 months, 5 zeros. At the bottom, a picture is a thousand words. You see the before and after of our waste tailing piles, which are basically the rocks removed from the pits. Rocks, very stable, geotechnically stable. But more so, we have planted the face of those rocks with artificial germination. We basically did what we call proactive regeneration and the picture shows how it looks like now just a year after those piles were created. So geotechnically safe, sustainable, blended into the landscape, which further enhance the environment. We have built the fifth largest industrial mineral lithium producing complex in the world. So in the picture, you can see that we have a state-of-the-art industrial plant, integrated into a mine. But the plant is not just an industrial plant, is a state-of-the-art clean technology lithium processing facility where we achieved 70% recovery of the lithium, which is amongst the highest in the sector, and it compares with processing methods, which are a lot less sustainable. Sigma is the economic engine for developing the valley of Jequitinhonha. We lifted the valley towards prosperity. That is a key region of Minas Gerais, which is the second richest state in the Republic. We created 1,000 jobs, 11,000 indirect jobs and 21,000 beneficiaries from our social programs of microcredit and small-scale agriculture. We also have granted drinking water access to 18,000 people. 85% of our workforce is regional. 50% of the economically active population has benefited from our social programs. We have renovated, created and built schools that put over 500 children in after-schools or school programs. We have been instrumental in delivering 6.8% of GDP growth for the whole state of Minas Gerais. And still, every year, we serve 3 million meals so that the new waves of people keep coming to help build this lithium valley. So we have a built to last company. It's a resilient business that's been thriving throughout lithium cycles. That's what we have achieved in 2025, and that's what we will continue to deliver in 2026, large scale, low production costs and traceability. We have had 0 accidents for 2.7 years. We uphold the highest health and safety standards in the world, top ranking amongst all companies in metals and mining. But more importantly, we have demonstrated speed of execution, low CapEx to build and to restructure operations, such as what we've done with mining. And we are in a low-cost operating country, which supports us to achieve all of that. So now I'm going to go through the operational and financial highlights of 2025, and I'm going to give you a preview of the first quarter 2026 estimated. We have had unparalleled resilience throughout the last year to date. We have generated cash flows across 2025 lithium volatility. Our business was built to last and to endure the cycles. Four key examples, we signed $146 million in offtake agreements with very robust intrinsic values. Intrinsic value is the advancement we receive from clients for the right to have deliveries of tonnage throughout periods. First offtake agreement was basically to fund working capital. It was signed in '25 for deliveries throughout 2026. The total is $96 million for 70,000 tonnes of deliveries. The second was a $50 million typical offtake prepayment that was signed for 40,000 tons of annual deliveries throughout the next 3 years commencing in 2026. Second, we have been the demonstrators that a commercial strategy well executed can actually yield actual results even in this market, even throughout volatility. We have been tracking seasonality, and we have achieved $67 million in net sales in the fourth quarter of '25 and the first quarter of '26, solely a result as this sound commercial policy. First, we monetized lithium seasonality to by basically receiving price adjustments in the fourth quarter, working with our clients to time the deliveries and the final sales, resales of their products throughout the contract season of 2025. That has resulted in the revenues for the fourth quarter. More importantly, we have generated cash flow from a whole new line of business, which is selling the lithium fines, high-purity lithium oxide fines that we have reprocessed through our industrial plant out of our dry stack tailings. That happened initiated in 2025 and then throughout 2026. We've deleveraged our balance sheet and we repaid debt. That was our third highlight. 60% of our short-term debt has been repaid. 35% of our total debt has been repaid in the years such as 2025. On top of that, number four, we have upgraded and restructured our mining operations completely for safety, for efficiency, for low cost, for cadence and for better delivery. We transitioned from an outside contractor to full operational control, and we are poised to demonstrate those efficiency gains and cost optimizations throughout the next quarters. Here are pictures that, again, a thousand words. It just shows the lithium fines piles being moved across to the shipping halls already at the port. The result of those sales have actually monetized what we used to call green premium, which doesn't really exist. But the fact that we actually created this new line of product out of the dry stack tailings definitely delivered to our investors what we call a sustainability premium, meaning actual financial results from the investment we made on a dry stack unit for the Greentech Plant. This is a page with our offtake agreements. The offtake agreements single-handedly enabled our mining upgrade, our long debt repayment and the capacity expansions. We have an announcement. We signed a 40,000 tonne a year typical offtake agreement that is going to net us $50 million in a true prepayment to be closed within the next 3 months. That amount is equivalent to 120,000 tonnes to be delivered over the next 3 years. The use of proceeds will be for our growth strategy. We also announced and signed the 70,500 tonne 1-year offtake agreement for a total of $96 million. That offtake agreement is for deliveries throughout 2026 and the purpose of it is for working capital. That's the working capital that enabled the mining upgrade and some of the debt repayments. Now in 2026, we have two more offtakes to conclude. First, we're going to amend our contract for the equipment leases of the mining upgrade large-scale machines that have been backed by an offtake for 3 years. Initially, it was for 11,000 tonnes. The number probably will increase depending on the scale of machinery that we are able to secure in the second quarter. So again, the continuity of the mining upgrade to better, more efficient, more cost-efficient and safer operation. The second offtake that we're about to close is the 80,000 tonne a year for 3 years that is going to net us $100 million in a typical prepayment. That conventional offtake will have used proceeds to pay down the long-term debt that currently is sitting in our balance sheet as short-term debt because it matures in December of 2026. That was a 4-year shareholder that has been gracefully given us by our shareholders in late 2022 to enable us to have working capital to commission our plant. So that debt will be replaced by an offtake, which is a very sound and very logic operational move for Sigma. On this page, we again demonstrate how the competitive advantage of low costs create resilience from the price pressures that lithium has undergone this year, especially coming from new regions, sometimes not necessarily compliant or traceable product, but more importantly, from the constant refining innovation that the main markets have demonstrated by bringing the ceiling of this industry constantly lower. The ceiling for, for instance, lepidolite that once was $20,000 to $25,000 per tonne is now around $17,000 to $18,000 per ton, but going lower to a target of probably $15,000 per ton. It doesn't matter. Irrespectively, we are actually working below the floor of the industry, which is product coming from the African new supply regions. So long as we are sitting exactly where we are in the cost curve, we have the resilience of operations that allow us to, for instance, sign offtakes without floors and continue to deliver excess returns every time prices are in the current levels. On the left, we demonstrate the resilience with our total cash cost, which are all-in sustaining costs plus interest. On the left in green, we show the full year achieved all-in sustaining costs plus interest and the guidance. So we're pretty much in the same ballpark. And as a result, we felt comfortable to put in the guidance of $532 for all-in sustaining costs plus $60 for interest for 2026. In the next slide, we show the numbers of how we are able to bring our people safe to their families every single day, day after day. And this is what we work for. We have never had a fatality in 13 years of operations. We have been producing for almost 3 years. We have never had a fatality. But more importantly, we're getting to almost 2.7 years with 0 accidents with lost time. So our people go home every day and come back to work the following day. That is the highest operational global safety standard in the entire battery materials industry, but more so, we sit at the top of the ranking across all metals and mining companies. We have had 1,600 employees here. We now have 1,000 employees. It's a large operation, and we still achieved that, 966 days consecutively without accidents. We're very, very proud of it. So here is to the numeric operational excellence. A number is a thousand words. The unique resilience and robust cash flows can be demonstrated by each and every one of the main items of our 2025 and first quarter '26 estimated operational performance. First, offtakes. We had signed a $96 million offtake prepayment in '25 that enable us to receive working capital by having our production paid in advance. Then we just signed a $50 million traditional offtake for 3 years of 40,000 tonne deliveries totaling 120,000 tonnes to be delivered over the next 3 years. But in advance, up until June this year, we're going to receive $50 million, traditional typical offtake. Irrespectively, we have managed to repay debt to a magnitude that is significant considering the volatility in low points lithium prices reached in 2025. We paid 60% of our short-term debt and 35% of our total debt. That was basically because of cash flow generation. This company was built for cash flow generation. We are a cash machine. In the fourth quarter of '25, we generated $31 million of cash from operations. In the third quarter of '25, the previous quarter, we generated $23 million. So we increased our cash flow generation in 35% from third quarter to fourth quarter of 2025. More importantly, the lithium materials production has had a decrease in volumes because of the full restructure we conducted in mining. But given that we are an industrial operation, we delivered another source of revenues. In fact, we built another business, which was reprocessing the dry stack tailings into what we call low-grade lithium fines. So ultimately, we had equivalent of 70,000 tonnes of the main high-grade product in revenues sitting as inventory accumulated throughout the last years. And that material became this new line of business of what we call high-purity lithium fines. So for the full year of 2025, we produced 183,000 tonnes of high-grade premium lithium oxide. For the full year of 2024, we produced 240,000 tonnes of high-grade premium lithium oxide. So our annual production decreased in 24%. However, how did we generate so much cash flow? How did we accomplish so much repaying debt? By basically creating a new line of business, which is what we call the sustainability monetization, the green premium in numbers. We reprocessed the lithium contained in our lithium fines in our dry stack piles, and we created a whole new business, which is selling high-purity lithium fines, which have a lower grade, but in monetary value, it's equivalent to 70,000 tonnes of the high-grade premium lithium oxide. So all in all, we're not even solving for volumes. We're solving for cash flow and cash flows were delivered, and debt was repaid. And here are the numbers, which speak for a thousand words and do not have an opinion, numbers are numbers. What we want to show on this slide is, again, the quantification and a pictorial of how commercial successful strategy actually helped us to deliver revenues in the third quarter of '25 and in the fourth quarter of '25. We have fantastic clients who are commercial partners. So we sell them the material. We do a final sale and they take the risk. That sale takes place using a provisional price. So we take some of the risk, but we also gain some of the upside. In other words, when our clients resell their product, resell to their clients, we have a profit sharing gain or a profit sharing loss. Last year, we had a loss. This year, we had a substantial gain. Again, this was achieved by mapping seasonality and seasonality in this industry is pretty clear. It happens in the restocking period that takes place after September. It's called contract season. So our commercial partners worked with us to basically execute their final resales mostly after October of 2025, which allowed us to reap the benefits of a much better pricing environment than what was experienced throughout the whole year because of the tariff volatility in the metals market. So when you look at the greens, you can see the resales by our clients. When you look at the red, you can see the sales from Sigma to the client. And you look at the line, you see the lithium prices and the tremendous volatility that happened throughout the year. In partnership with our clients, we captured not only the first peak of volatility, which happened in August, but also the subsequent curve of price increases that happened throughout contract season beginning in October 2025. That helped us book over $20 million in final price adjustments in the third quarter of 2025, and it helped us book over $14 million in final price adjustments in the fourth quarter of 2025. These are substantial revenues, so that's a quantification of what a sound commercial strategy is. On this slide, I'll go very slowly because we have quite a lot of information to unpack. But again, it's the financial discipline that generated the high operating cash margins. High operating cash margins are the source of the cash flow we posted. In 2025, if you compare the fourth quarter of '24 with the fourth quarter of '25, we have substantially increased our operating cash margin. If you compare the full year 2024 full year and 2025 full year, our gross margins have decreased, yes, because the pricing environment in '25 was very challenging. But what is interesting is that the cash margins and the cash flow generation came from one thing and one thing only, we were able to reduce our costs faster than the decrease in our revenues. So despite the mining restructuring, despite price volatility, we were focused on what we could control and what we can control and on what we always control, which are our costs. So if you look at the bottom of the page, you can see that the quarterly comparison between fourth quarter '24 and fourth quarter '25 shown a 77% reduction in costs. That's way more than just variable costs. When you look at the annual cost reduction, you can see that full year '24 to full year '25, we've had a 21% decrease in costs. So when we talk about these operating costs, we had operating costs, SG&A, ESG plus all others. So it's truly an achievement of financial discipline. We're always cutting what we control. We're always optimizing costs. So with that, we can go back to revenues. In other words, when you look at net sales revenues on a quarterly basis, we've had fluctuations, which again just demonstrate how volatile lithium prices were. More notably, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, when we restructured mining operations, we had a 41% decrease in net sales revenues. However, when we look at the first quarter 2026 estimate, we more than compensated for that decrease. Why is that? Because we not only opened this new line of lithium fines, which were the low-grade high-purity business that we created out of our dry stack tailings, but also all the work we've done in mine restructuring began to show results. So on an annual basis, the revenues decreased 27%. And so when you look at the bigger picture here, what is actually visible that, yes, revenues decreased 27% on an annual basis. Cost decreased 21% on an annual basis. So costs decreased less than revenues on an annual basis, but we were very quick to compensate that and to fix it in the fourth quarter, where we cut costs and we decreased costs in 77%. So this is how financial discipline is demonstrated with numbers. In this slide, we show the quantification of the financial discipline, but now on balance sheet optimization. We have significantly deleveraged despite all the price volatility, despite all that happened with revenues. From fourth quarter '24 to the fourth quarter '25, we lowered our short-term debt in 60%. From the fourth quarter '24 to the estimate of first quarter '26, which is actually the numbers that we have closing, we lowered it by 68%. So the work continued. We didn't stop. Then when you look at the third quarter '25 against current, we lowered the debt in 49%. That's a complete restructuring in the way we fund ourselves, in the short term, in a way we look at working capital even, meaning clients are now funding our operation because of our successful commercial partnerships with our clients. We make it win-win so that it cost us less in working capital and we deleverage our balance sheet. This slide, I'll go very slowly on it because it shows our cash flow generation outlook. It's quite simple. It's quite straightforward. And again, it just demonstrates how Sigma is a cash machine. Why? Because we have high margins. We are built for cash flow generation. We have estimated that in the next 12-month period for Phase 1, we're going to probably have 240,000 tonnes of production. As we've shown before, for the year, we're going to deliver 200,000 tonnes. Now because of our optimum cost efficiencies, we are going to be yielding an all-in sustaining cost, including interest of $592. That's our estimation for the next 12 months, as we've shown you in guidance. That creates cash flows no matter what. If lithium retrocedes to $1,500 a tonne, we're going to be generating about $158 million in free cash flow after interest, free cash flow. If lithium stays around where it is now between $1,800 and $2,000 a tonne, we can generate anything between $218 million to $260 6 million of free cash flow just with one phase. As we double capacity, which will be in place by the end of next year, capacity and we prorate production as we commission, you can sharpen your pencils and you can do the math of how much cash flow we're going to have with two plants. More importantly, as we calculate all-in sustaining costs and all-in cash costs, the only optimization we've done were on G&A and ESG. You don't need 2 of me or 2 of most of our personnel to run these businesses on the administrative side and interest because we're going to cut interest in half, given that the interest is on the total debt that we are going to contract precisely to build plant 2. So we have not factored in the actual operational scale gains that come from running 2 plants using infrastructure that is built and utilized now for 1 plant. So the infrastructure sharing of 2 plants are probably going to bring more cost gains, which are not here in these cash flows. But just with this conservative analysis of doubling operations and having some synergies on G&A and interest, we're bound to generate basically $600 million in free cash flow if prices stay where they are. If prices retroceded to about $1,500, that's okay, too. We'll generate $384 million in free cash flow, meaning after interest at those levels. What becomes really interesting is when we build a third line, which could be done concomitant with the second line. That means that at 770,000 tonnes of production, and again, we're just calculating efficiencies here on G&A, ESG and interest. And we flattened the interest. We haven't cut interest further. We just cut G&A further because, again, to be a commercial person or to be an administrative person, you don't need to triple your numbers when you have triple plants. So interest is flat, but G&A and ESG was the only number that was reduced. What does that mean? Our all-in cash sustaining costs, including interest, goes down to $495 per tonne with 3 lines. So if prices retroceded to $1,500 by the end of '28, when we plan to have this capacity in place, we could be generating $581 million in free cash flow. If the prices stay where they are, we could be generating $900 million in free cash flow. That's a significant amount. And it just shows how building long-term value means building a company that is geared to generate operating efficiency, operational excellence and quite a lot of free cash flow to shareholders. As management operators, our interests are 100% aligned. We're building a business to last. We're building a business to create shareholder value for all of us, management and outside shareholders. So this slide shows the cash flow bridge, the cash bridge with its respective explanation. So again, more numeric demonstration that the disciplined execution that we have delivered in '25 and continue to deliver throughout '26 has created this operational resilience despite the very volatile market conditions. We have had operating cash generation. This is why we didn't raise capital because we were able to generate the amount of cash to deliver and to execute on plan, on target. So let's start at the end of the third quarter of '25. We had $6 million in cash. As forecasted and as discussed in those materials, and I encourage you to go back to them, we continued on the trend to deliver cash flow from operations. So on a net basis, we delivered $31 million in cash from operations, mainly final price adjustments from transactions from sales that had taken place on a provisional price basis as we discussed earlier. Then we had our cash operating costs. We have executed CapEx towards the mining upgrade, and we had $26 million of debt repayment and interest repayment as we've shown in #1 and #2. Debt repayment was just debt repayment, amortization of principal. Interest expense was the annual cash expense for the $100 million of long-term debt we've had in our balance sheet. So we had a flat cash position between the third quarter '25 and the fourth quarter of '25. This is financial discipline. We conserve cash. We burned 0 cash. So with the knowledge that there was a whole new business of lithium fines coming on stream, which, again, we flagged during our third quarter presentation, we had inflows in the first quarter '26, which were the cash sales of those lithium fines that we affected and closed on the beginning of the year. So we achieved $30 million on the sales of the lithium fines, and we achieved $5 million on the sales of the premium high grade. That was the beginning of sales resulting from our mining restructuring. Then we had a $24 million CapEx bill for the mining upgrade, mining restructuring and all that we had to do. But as we conserve cash and as we generate cash from that new line of business, which was reprocessing dry stack tailings, we were able to not only pay our CapEx for mining restructuring and upgrade, but also to continue to do debt principal repayment. So we paid down another $5 million in debt, which means we increased our cash position in the first quarter of 2026 by 100%. So we doubled the cash position. So this is, again, numbers. Numbers don't have an opinion. And it's very much in line with the strategy for cash flow discipline that we have laid out in the third quarter '25. We're giving you an advancement here or a preview as we call it. We have another $14 million of cash sales from the -- we call lithium fines business, the reprocessed dry stacking tailings. Then we have another $50 million of a true long-term offtake agreement prepayment that is poised to close by the end of the second quarter. And then we have about $32 million of the first installment of the $96 million offtake that we signed just in 2025 for the high-grade premium lithium, which is the 70,000 tonnes that we are planning to deliver in 2026. So again, we closed the first quarter '26 with $12 million in cash, and we have a significant amount of cash coming our way in the second quarter of '26, having executed pretty much most of the mining upgrade, as you can see in the CapEx bill for $24 million we paid in the first quarter of '26 plus the $4 million we initiated in the fourth quarter of 2025. Now we're going to do a bit about the operational work we have done to restructure our mining operations. This was done for, again, the construction of long-term value for shareholders. We had to do this. We had to take control of our mine because without that, we would not be ready to deliver the cadence that was necessary to affect the capacity expansions of the second and third industrial plants. Just to recap, we are a fully integrated industrial mining operation. We have this proprietary cleantech technology that produces what we call the clean lithium. That means we have a mine that's integrated into an industrial facility. And again, stopping the mine doesn't mean the industry stops. Obviously, what we want is having a mine at full tilt and then the plant receiving fresh rock. But the plant can do many things given that we have dry stack materials. But once we think about doubling capacity and tripling capacity, we mean that our mines need to operate at full tilt and in perfect cadence so that our plant can deliver on the 70% recovery levels it actually is -- it has demonstrated it can achieve in the fourth quarter of 2024. Think of it as a blast furnace. If we turn it on and off, it will not maintain those levels of efficiency. So if the same amount of material is not fed into that dense media separators per hour, it won't achieve 70% recovery. And for that, we need mine planning, mine execution that delivers piles or delivers fresh rock to the ROM pad on the same quantities regularly, at least on a weekly schedule. So this is kind of the overall concept of 100% vertically-integrated operation. Here is a picture of a Greentech Plant at night, unquestionably a beautiful, beautiful industrial installation. This is what we've done with the Greentech plant that allow us to get to the 70% recovery. We had a 2.0 version of the plant, which was the version we operated from July '23 until November 2024. That was not recovering 70%. It was recovering anything between 50%, low 60s, almost 60%. The dry stack tailing units was not working as we wanted anyway. We actually invested a significant amount of CapEx to get the plant to what we call the current stage, which is the 3.0 version that we plan to double and triple, meaning we're building another one of this and then we're building a second one of this. But in order for that to happen, as we said earlier, we need mine and plant to work in cadence. How did we get to the 70% recoveries? We automated industrial operations. We have software, we have scatter, we have algorithms. We have detection of anomalies automatically. We have correction recommendations automatically. It's self-learning metallurgy, self-learning for mineralogy. It's a bot that basically keeps on getting better and better and better when it's fed the same mineralogy. This is a picture of our fully automated control room. Then we have the mine. The mine had quite a lot of work to be done. It was using less than efficient small equipment. It was using too many pieces of equipment. At one point, there were 48 small 40-tonne trucks trafficking through the mine. So a lot had to be done there. First, we had to fix geometry. It had to be widened. And here on the picture, you already see the result of widening the geometry. So we've done intermediary strip with the objective of widen geometry and increase the mine life and increase access and open other areas with ore that were closer to surface. So what we've done, we basically open additional mine fronts now to accelerate the ramp-up. How did we do this? By using larger equipment, larger fleet to remove strip faster. So larger equipment increases efficiency on the excavators, on trucks across the board. In parallel, while we did that mostly in the fourth quarter, the Greentech Plant continued to operate. So we reprocessed the lithium materials from the dry stack tailings during the fourth quarter '25 and the first quarter '26 with superior recovery, not the 70% recovery, but it enriched it enough to create decent cash flow to create a decent sale value, a decent value added so that it could generate the cash flow and the revenues we achieved both in the later fourth quarter, but also throughout the first quarter. So what we're hoping to happen, and we've seen happening already now in March was that recoveries get closer to 70% as we resume delivering fresh rock to the plant. Now this is how we're going to bring all that software knowledge to the plant. We started and we continue. So we have fast mining implemented in process for mine planning. We have the same software implemented for fuel control. We have fatigue automatic software detection. We have a cost control app sitting on iPads and iPhones for all the mine operators. So we have loading and blasting simulations for optimal results with minimum loads, minimum vibrations. So we're bringing the same software technologies, the same intelligence to the mining operation. And that is starting in the control room for mining, which is here, as you can see in the picture. This is a picture of the first wave of larger equipment. The equipment is going to get bigger and bigger. This is the kind of the small large equipment. So -- but more important than that, we own production control. We drive production control. Mine planning is ours, blasting control is ours. We hired a third-party driller for blasting. So we're managing different contractors with our own in-house mining team. That allow us to gain confidence on deploying larger equipment, on investing in larger equipment and on basically doing the calculated analysis of where should we be blasting for safety, for optimal geometry, but also for efficient ore recovery. Now I'm going to talk about how we're going to continue to expand. We are resuming the construction of Plant 2 this year. So we're going to double industrial capacity for the high-grade premium lithium oxide. And we're not that far. In other words, once we get to it, we're going to go from the 240,000 tonnes that we're guiding to 520,000 tonnes, and that is not that far away. More importantly, there's the potential that we may build 2 and 3 sequentially. So we are never going to decommission the construction crews, given that the CapEx involved here is actually very little and the CapEx efficiency is very high, meaning it's going to cost us $80 million to conclude the second plant, and it's going to cost us $100 million to build a third plant. So with $180 million we are able to take our production from 240,000 tonnes a year to 770,000 tonnes a year. That's a substantial increase, and that's one of the most efficient CapEx ratios in the whole industry. So this demonstrates what can happen when we double and then triple production. We run the fifth largest industrial mineral complex in the world. We are the largest lithium mineral producer in the Americas. But here, we have all of our peers. We have the lithium producers in the Americas that produce from the lakes in Argentina, and that includes the Chilean and the American producers. We also have the producers from Australia, and we have the producers from Africa. So although we are the fifth largest industrial mineral complex in the world, and we're the largest industrial mineral producer in the Americas, we are the eighth ranked producer in the world as a whole. Now look what happens when we double and we triple. When we double, we go from #8 to #6 or #5. Then when we triple, we go to # 4. All of these companies have valuations substantially higher than ours. In fact, we're valued as a nonproducing company. So the effect of doubling production and tripling production is not just numeric, it's also a clear demonstration that we can be up there in the rankings with a concomitant valuation. And that is what it means for us to build long-term shareholder value. And this is what we're planning to do. This is a slide that shows how close we are to getting there. We have made a decision in the fourth quarter '24 and in the first quarter '25 of accelerating the construction of Plant 2. And unfortunately, because of tariff volatility, lithium prices collapsed in more than 50%. So we deployed CapEx and we deployed our liquidity in the fourth quarter '24 and in the first quarter '25 towards the construction. Well, that is not the so good news. We managed, we delivered throughout '25 as we've shown. We overcame because the business was structured to generate cash flows and live through organic cash flow generation. But here's the good news. We're almost there. We've almost finished civil foundations. So what is missing really? Ordering equipment and assembling equipment, and that can be done quite rapidly. In the first plant, we were able to order equipment and assemble equipment in much less than 12 months. So this is how finishing building the second plant is actually a very expedited exercise in construction, managing procurement of equipment and managing assembly of equipment. And that's it. This is a fully licensed construction, fully licensed operation is just within our control to do this. So Sigma is very well positioned to deliver substantial returns to shareholders in 2026. And here, we're going to show why. This slide demonstrates how Sigma continued cash flow generation, production cadence in '26 and growth by building Phase 2 that will yield 520,000 tonnes of lithium will certainly position us for a re-rating of our stock. Why is that? When you look at our peers that produce lithium industrialized oxide from minerals in Australia, they have a larger nameplate production and a significantly larger cash flow. However, as we increase production, that means our cash flow will much more than increase because we have this competitive advantage of high margins, low cost and operational resilience. So our increase in nameplate production will bring a disproportionately larger increase in cash flow generation. More so, that happens irrespectively of pricing environment because of our low-cost operational resilience. The next slide just shows how we're going to get there. We've demonstrated operational discipline. We delivered on all fronts in '25. That's what we've seen on the right. We deleverage and repaid debt, we increased operating cash margins. We built a new line of revenues. We're now selling lithium fines high purity from our dry stack tailings. We increased mineral reserves by 40%, which shows we can operate for 66 years with 1 line for over 25 years with 2 lines and most likely for over 25 years with 3 lines. We strengthened commercial strategy by basically capturing seasonality. We monetized final prices in line with contract seasonality in the fourth quarter. And we closed 2 significant offtakes, almost $150 million in offtakes, $96 million to fund our working capital throughout 96 (sic) [ '26 ] to fund our upgrade and restructuring of mining operations and then a $50 million typical offtake that will basically be invested in building Phase 2. So how are we going to continue to deliver in all fronts in 2026? We're going to resume steady-state production from the mining operations, that integration mine plant cadence that we've shown before that will resume the cadence of what we call the premium high-grade lithium. We're going to close financially on the offtakes transaction signed, and we're going to close on 2 more offtakes as we disclosed when we discussed offtakes here. We're going to receive the development bank disbursement for the funding we already spent on Phase 2, and we are in discussions with several other banks for Phase 3. We're going to repay $100 million of shareholder debt funded by one of the offtakes that are in negotiation, 80,000 tonnes per year for 3 years. And we're planning to commission the Plant 2, the Greentech 2 by the end of 2026. So with that, I close -- very proudly close the full year results of 2025, where we crossed the Rubicon of probably one of the most volatile lithium environments this industry has seen. And we're entering 2026, awash in significant cash generation coming from numerically delivering operational efficiency. So with that, I close this presentation for the full year of 2025. We're very, very proud of our team. We're incredibly proud of how we work, how hard we work to cross the Rubicon of one of the most volatile lithium pricing environments I have ever seen, and I've been here for 10 years as a C-level executive. We've done it without raising capital. We've done it without a hiccup in our operations. We're entering 2026 in a much strengthened position. Why? We have the resilience that's basically quantify. We already earned our revenues by building a completely different product line. We resumed production cadence at the end of the first quarter, and we're entering '26 with roughly $48 million of quarterly revenues, which is a significant accomplishment considering we're just coming out of a volatile 2025. All of that without raising any dollars of new capital, pure organic, disciplined cash generation. And that is the quintessential competitive advantage of this company. This operations efficiency delivered and quantified in the numbers we've shown you. We're very proud of our team, and I want to thank all of our clients and stakeholders who have been there with us, holding hands and helping us cross '25 and enter '26 in this very strengthened position. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Fortune Era. The company has indicated a production target of 520 kt in 2027. Does this imply that Plant 2 is expected to reach full capacity by the end of 2026? More specifically, when do you currently expect Plant 2 to begin commissioning? And how long do you expect the ramp-up to full capacity to take? Ana Cabral Gardner: We are going to have another presentation on plant construction, but we'll tell you what we're planning to do now. As we've shown in the slide previously, what there is between us and new production is essentially resuming ordering equipment, assembling equipment and commissioning that plant. That can be done quite rapidly. If we use the timetable from the previous plant, it could be easily done in under a year. We are going to order equipment in the summer after the close of the second quarter. The reason being the offtake we just signed will be the main driver for us to deposit and prepay the equipment that we need to build Plant 2. We believe that it will take us anything between 8 to 12 months to actually build and commission that line. So Plant 2 will be fully commissioned early 2027. And as a result, the guidance for '27 is not a guidance for production, it's a guidance for installed production capacity, and we will be further updating the market as that unfolds. But what we can say is we're almost there with three-fifths of our timetable accomplished in the construction of Plant 2. And what stands between us and that level of production is purchasing, building and commissioning, which we've shown we can do quite rapidly. Operator: A follow-up question. In the guidance section titled cash flow forecast at various realized lithium prices, could you please clarify whether the price assumptions of $1,500 and $1,700 refer to Sigma's expected average realized selling price for its concentrate or the benchmark SC6 China FOB price. For Sigma's concentrate grade of approximately 5.2% to 5.5% lithium oxide, what is the typical realized price as a percentage of the SC6 benchmark price? Ana Cabral Gardner: So we are using -- we're not using the gross prices. We're using adjusted prices. So when you think about the nameplate price, we take nameplate price from SMM. And then we typically ship 5.2, 5.3 lithium oxide grade product. So the adjustment is done dividing that level of oxide by SC6 in older contracts. In the newer contracts, we divide by 5.5. The results are kind of the same. So when you look at the prices on that table, they are net prices. As you probably are all aware, gross prices have reached $2,400 just 2 days ago. So $1,800 and $1,500 are far below the current level of nameplate prices at Shanghai Metals Market. Operator: Our next question comes from Lamartine Gomes. Question for Ana Cabral. Can you give us your directional sense of how much each plus USD 10 per barrel increase in oil prices impacts the demand for lithium? Ana Cabral Gardner: Unfortunately, I don't have that number, and I am not really an oil expert. What we can say, though, is 15% to almost 20% of the fossil fuels we use here are just the fuels that power the trucks that run around our operations. In other words, every liter of diesel in Brazil has mandatorily 15% of biodiesel. Now that percentage is slated to increase. So we actually are, let's put it that way, 20% less impacted by the increase in diesel prices than any other country in the world because we have this fantastic, we call, biofuels program in the country, which was actually created 30 years ago during the last oil crisis for this exact reason for energy security of Brazil. And we are the beneficiary of that when it comes to our emissions. So our trucks generate 20% less emissions because the fuel by law has 15% and we're putting 20-ish percent biofuels for every liter of diesel. Operator: Our next question comes from Robert Cook. Please detail the timing of Phase 2 and 3 to completion both 2028. Anything more specific? Ana Cabral Gardner: Well, I was mentioning what we're going to do on Phase 2. And again, we're going to keep giving the market updates pretty regularly on that. Phase 2, by the summer, we're going to be ordering equipment. So close second quarter order equipment. As we demonstrated, that will be funded by the growth offtake we signed, $50 million or more than enough to prepay or deposit towards the equipment we need. To be specific, now what's between that order equipment and production is essentially assembly. In the previous plan, we had 1,000 man on site assembling that plant, that line. That was done in 8 months. We use what we call air procurement for some of the parts that were delayed so that we could cut short delivery times. We use a lot of what we call acceleration techniques, which in this budget are factored in. If we use the accelerated timetable, it means we're going to spend another $7 million for extra man, extra shifts and air freight for some of the equipment. What does that mean? It means that we could have a built plant by the first quarter of 2027, assuming we start in the summer. And then there's commissioning. What is the advantage of doing a plant that is a carbon copy of a plant we've been operating by then for almost 4 years. That is the plant we really know. And as a result, we believe we can cut commissioning times significantly. And more importantly, start benefiting from the get-go, begin with the same levels of recoveries instead of going through the curve of going -- starting with 50% recoveries up to 70% recoveries we underwent from the 2.0 version of the plant to the 3.0 version of the plant. So without being more specific, we're quite confident that we're going to have Plant 2 by any time in the first half of next year. But that's the reason why we're making a clear distinction between installed production capacity and production. Production is dependent on the commissioning, and we're going to keep the market vastly updated as we go along. Now Plant 3. Plant 3 is what we're very proud of actually because given our operational success, given our cost resilience and given our strength as a business throughout cycles, what we've shown basically in 2025 has not gone unnoticed by the main development banks throughout the world, by the main players throughout the world, by the main financiers throughout the world. So we do have dialogues going on for building Plant 3. Building Plant 2 and 3 together is not new. In fact, in December '22, when we filed our DFS for expansion, that was the plan. So much so that we invested in building infrastructure for 3 lines. The goal was to do 1, 2 and 3 sequentially and maximize what we call construction synergies. Unfortunately, lithium took a tumble in '24, and we quickly aborted that plant, and we stuck to just the first plant. By the end of '24, we resumed Plant 2, and we went all in, again, with the volatility of tariffs in '25, we aborted that plant and we stuck to Plant 1. But doing 1, 2, 3 is actually what we have been designing this industrial complex for. Why? We spent the money in the infrastructure, and that was not a small feat, meaning we have the water to feed 3 lines. We licensed to feed 3 lines. We have the sewage inbound treatment station to feed 3 lines. We have the power substation to build -- to feed 3 lines. So from an infrastructure point of view, we are ready for 3 lines. And this is why we're delighted to actually say that, that has not gone unnoticed. And we have, let's say, no shortage of choices from where to get funded with the appropriate kind of debt, development financing debt to build these 3 lines. Operator: Our next question comes from David Feng with CICC. Can we have some color on how Sigma would mitigate any potential fluctuations in fuel costs and power costs? What percentage does diesel costs account for in your cash cost or AISC? Ana Cabral Gardner: I don't have the number by heart, but I can talk about power. It will have 0 effect in power. In other words, when you think about power, our power is fixed at $2 per kilo -- $0.02 of $1, meaning $0.02, $0.02 of $1 per kilowatt hour. This is fixed. One important point, power is renewable here in Brazil. So it's coming from a hydroelectricity dam. And we have a 5-year agreement, which is set to expire 2.5 years from now. So we're going to be good with power. Diesel is the element that is a little bit less straightforward to explain. First, because we got biofuels on the mix, and that is mandatory by law. Secondly, because our oil company is state-owned, and they have what we call a diesel compensation account, which works like a shock absorber during oil crisis. In other words, the diesel costs don't go straight to the consumer as they increase globally. Petrobras absorbs some of that shock initially using what we call the oil compensation account and then it releases in the market. And that was created because all transport in the country mostly is done by trucks so that -- and trucks are individual entrepreneurs so that they have time to plan to actually send that cost into their customers. So we're going to revert back to you on the percentage of diesel in our costs with that knowledge. Operator: This concludes the question-and-answer section. I am returning to our CEO, Ana Cabral, for her final remarks. Ana Cabral Gardner: Well, I want to thank you all of you. And in fact, everyone watching us for the trust. We have gone through 2025, which was one of the most volatile years in lithium, delivering exactly as we said we were delivering resilience, demonstrating operational excellence and executing to plan. We already started '26 on a fantastic note because of what we've learned in 2025 as far as becoming more and more and more resilient. So that's the effort, the collective effort of our management team, of our workers, of the team here in Vale do Jequitinhonha, essentially working like what we call racing horses. We lowered the flap, we focus on our lane and we raised our own race without looking to the sides, focusing on the target. And that's how we've been running this business, and this is why we achieved these results. So once again, I want to thank on behalf of our management-operated shareholders here that work at the company and control the company, we want to thank all of our outside shareholders and reiterate our interest cannot be further aligned. There isn't another company in the sector that's management-owned, management-operated, where employees are shareholders. So for all of you watching, we're in this together. And I want to thank you for staying our shareholders because we crossed 2025, and we are incredibly well positioned to deliver stellar 2026. Operator: Thank you. Thus, we conclude the fourth quarter of 2025 conference call of Sigma Lithium. For further information and details of the company, please visit the company's website, www.sigmalithiumresources.com. You can disconnect now.
Operator: Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to CBAK Energy Technologies Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, we are recording today's call. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. Now I will turn the call over to Irina Tian, IR specialist of CBAK Energy. Ms. Tian, please proceed. Xiujun Tian: Thank you, operator, and hello, everyone. Welcome to CBAK Energy's Earnings Conference Call for the Fourth Quarter and the Full Year of 2025. And joining us today are Mr. Zhiguang Hu, Chief Executive Officer of CBAK Energy; Mr. Thierry Li, Chief Financial Officer and Company Secretary; and [ Yvonne ], who will help with our interpretation during the Q&A session. We released our results earlier today. The press release is available on the company's IR website at ir.cbak.com.cn as well as from the Newswire Services. A replay of this call will also be available in a few hours on our IR website. Before we continue, please note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, the company's actual results may be materially different from the expectations expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties is included in the company's public filings with the SEC. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required under applicable law. Also, please note that unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during the conference call are in U.S. dollars. With that, let me now turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Zhiguang Hu. Please go ahead, Jason. Zhiguang Hu: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our earnings conference call for the fourth quarter and the full year of 2025. The fiscal year 2025 was a definitive transitional period for CBAK Energy, characterized by our comprehensive structural upgrade of our product portfolio, aggressive capacity expansion and deliberate pivot toward next-generation form factors. Despite the short-term bottom-line pressure inherent to some massive capacity transitions, our top line growth demonstrated positive momentum. In the fourth quarter, our consolidated net revenue surged by 131.80% year-over-year to $58.80 million. For the full year, consolidated net revenue reached $195.19 million, representing an 11% increase over 2024. Let me detail the structural transition driving our core business. At our Dalian facility, our customers are actively transitioning away from our legacy 26-series battery product line with over a decade of history and 1 gigawatt hour capacity to our newly introduced highly advanced Model 40135 cells. To support this paradigm shift, we successfully commissioned a new 40135 product line with 2.3 gigawatt hour capacity at the end of 2025. The market reception has been truly unprecedented. Demand for the 40135 cells currently far exceeds our available supply. Meaning, we are selling every single unit we can produce, and our order book heavily outpace our current ramp-up trajectory. Similarly, at our Nanjing facility, to alleviate the severe supply shortage for our highly sought after model 32140 cells, we successfully added 2 new production lines at our Phase II facility at the end of 2025. This expansion adds 3.0 gigawatt hour of much needed capacity to complement the 1.5 gigawatt hour already operational in Phase I. And we expect these 2 new high-speed lines to reach full capacity by early 2027. Both our Dalian and Nanjing expansion are currently in an intensive capacity ramp-up phase. While this initial phase carries higher unit cost that have temporarily suppressed our gross margin and the short-term profitability, we view this as a necessary and highly strategic investment as our customers complete their transition to the model 40135 and our Phase II facility complete its ramp up by early 2027. We anticipate a dramatic and sustained resurgency in our top line revenue. Furthermore, to present the value chain, starting in 2025, our wholly-owned subsidiary, Nanjing BFD initiated dedicated battery pack integration operation by assembling individual cells into complete plug and play battery system, which bypass intermediate integrators to serve end user directly. Currently, these manufactured pack units are predominantly engineered for the light electric vehicle battery swapping infrastructure throughout the African market. In 2025, we officially forged a deep strategic partnership with SPIRO, 1 of Africa's largest 2-wheeler battery swapping enterprises. I'm thrilled to report that SPIRO has rapidly scaled to become 1 of our top 5 customers. We are incredibly proud that our advanced battery cell technology is providing the essential momentum for Africa's new energy transition. To deepen this relationship, we are actually exploring further collaborative models, including the potential establishment of a dedicated corporate entity within the Africa region to directly assist and accelerate SPIRO's localized business expansion. This African success is mirrored across other key international markets, driving our explosive global growth where revenue from REV's skyrocket by 252% year-over-year to $36.36 million for the full year. In India and broader global market, our institutional client base has expanded significantly. We have established deep collaborations with highly prestigious international blue-chip customers, including Anker Innovation, Scania, which became our direct ordering entity following its acquisition of Northvolt business unit that originally procured our products, now operating under [ Posida ] as well as Ather Energy, Schneider ACE Battery and Inverted Energy. The endorsement from these global Tier 1 enterprises provide the strongest possible validation of our product reliability and safety. Similarly, in Vietnam, we have forged a tight knit partnership with a key client DAT as DAT business volume has skewed our shipment volume in the Vietnamese 2-wheeler sector has experienced exponential growth. As investor may be aware, the PRC government have initiated a phase out policy for export tax rebates, reducing the rate for lithium-ion battery from 13% to 9%, with further reductions to 6% by April 2026 and a complete elimination by January 2027. To proactively establish a dialectical hedge against this macroeconomic headwind and protect our international margins, we moved decisively to localize our global supply chains. We have already incorporated our Malaysian subsidiary on April 30, 2025, and are actively pushing forward with physical construction of manufacturing facility there within this year to offer diversified tariff-insulated sourcing option for our top-tier international clients. We also anticipate signing and announcing additional contract with major international clients win, which we believe will serve as strong catalyst for our shareholders. Our raw material segment, Hitrans, delivered a powerful turnaround, benefiting from an ongoing upward cycle in raw material price. Hitrans experienced a sharp operational rebound beginning in the third quarter of 2025. Full year revenue for this segment surged 123% year-over-year to $89.21 million. As the raw material pricing cycle continues its robust upward trajectory, we confidently anticipate Hitrans will reach new performance highs. To structurally capture this momentum, Hitrans is aggressively expanding its proprietary infrastructure, including the ongoing construction of new 10,000 metric ton cathode manufacturing plant slated for full operation in the first half of 2027, alongside a massive 37,000 metric ton precursor facility. This strategic capacity injection will decisively elevate Hitrans' revenue [ starting ] in 2026 and beyond. Strategically, we are also advancing our corporate structure. Our stockholders have approved a redomicile merger to change our place of incorporation from Nevada to Cayman Islands. This move will allow us to streamline operational and administrative efficiency while similarly aligning our corporate structure with our aggressive international expansion strategy. Driven by the insatiable demand for our new 40135 and the 32140 battery cell, the pending completion of our capacity ramp-ups, the continued strength of Hitrans and our expanding footprint across global LEV market, we project with absolute confidence that our consolidated sales will hit a record high in 2026, delivering explosive growth. Now let me turn the call to our CFO, Thierry Li, for a deeper dive into our financials. Jiewei Li Thierry: Thank you, Jason. 2025 demonstrated the resilient dialectical nature of our vertically integrated business model. While our Battery segment faced margin compression due to the aggressive ramp-up of our new production lines and rising raw material costs, our Hitrans raw materials segment capitalized on this exact macroeconomic environment. Looking at our fourth quarter results. Consolidated net revenues reached $58.80 million, a 131.8% increase compared to Q4 2024. This hyper growth effectively decoupled from the temporary bottom line pressures caused by our ongoing capacity transactions. Within this, our Battery Business revenues were about $30.82 million, an increase of 35.8% year-over-year. Despite a 10.6% decrease in energy storage sector caused by the phaseout out of legacy Model 26650 cells at Dalian, we offset this decline through explosive growth in the LEV revenues, which skyrocketed by 524.2% to $12.92 million in the fourth quarter. Our Hitrans segment generated $27.98 million in Q4 2025, a massive 944.1% surge from Q4 2024, directly reflecting the escalating upward cycle of raw material pricing and robust downstream order placements. Our gross profit for Q4 2025 was about $4.28 million, representing a gross margin of 7.3% compared to 13.1% in Q4 2024. This sharp margin compression was fundamentally driven by the transactional friction costs, suboptimal yields and disproportionately high fixed cost absorption inherent to the initial ramp-up phase of the new Model 40135 in Dalian and Phase 2 Models 32140 lines in Nanjing. Consequently, operating loss for the fourth quarter was about $8.01 million, and the net loss attributable to shareholders was $7.38 million. For the full year 2025, net revenues were $195.19 million, up by about 11% year-over-year. Hitrans contributed $89.21 million, up by 123%, while the Battery Business contributed $105.98 million. Gross profit for the year was about $18.42 million, representing a margin of 9.4%, down from 23.7% in 2024. Operating expenses increased to $36.86 million, up 12% year-over-year, driven by a 21% increase in R&D to $15.8 million. This deliberate expansion directly funded our next-generation technology road map, specifically accelerating the development of our advanced large-format cylindrical models such as the 60115, 60135 and 60150 as well as highly specialized sodium-ion chemistries engineered for the extreme low temperature resilience and fast-charging capabilities. We also increased by 16% in G&A to $16.20 million, reflecting increased headcount for our new production lines. Our full year operating loss was about $18.44 million, and the net loss attributable to shareholders was about $9.38 million. However, analyzing the bottom line requires a dialectical view of our risk management framework. First, our other income surged to $8.27 million, fundamentally bolstered by a highly lucrative $5 million compensation payment we strictly enforced and successfully collected from a canceled customer order. This underscores the robust legal and contractual protections we secure in our commercial agreements. Second, to proactively shield our margins from global volatility, 2025 marked our inaugural deployment of a substantiative financial hedging structure. We systematically executed foreign currency forward contracts, options, swaps and commodity contracts. While this proactive risk mitigation resulted in a calculated noncash derivative fair value loss of approximately $0.44 million, it effectively neutralized extreme macroeconomic fluctuations and provided essential cash flow predictability to -- for our supply chain. Turning to our balance sheet and liquidity. Our financial foundation remains robust and highly liquid. As of December 31, 2025, we held cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash of $75.68 million, an increase from $60.79 million at the end of 2024. Notably, despite reported net loss, our net cash provided by operating activities was extremely strong at $48.55 million for the year compared to $39.70 million in 2024. This powerful cash generation was primarily attributable to disciplined working capital management, including a $63.66 million increase in trade and bills payable. We allocated $44.65 million to capital expenditures in 2025 to fund aggressive construction and equipping of our new production facilities across Dalian, Nanjing, Zhejiang and Anhui. In summary, the temporary margin squeeze is calculated byproduct of scaling next-generation capacity with the Hitrans segment providing dialectical hedge in the raw material cost, our battery capacity ramp-up scheduled for the completion in early 2027, and our deeply integrated global expansion progressing rapidly, we are structurally positioned for massive operational turnaround and record-breaking sales. Thank you, and we will open the floor for the Q&A session. Operator, please go ahead. Operator: [Operator Instructions] We will now take the first question, question is from the line of Brian Lantier from Zacks Small-Cap Research. Brian Lantier: Fantastic news to see Hitrans suddenly turning things around. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about where you see gross margins in the Battery Business? And when you think they might normalize as you ramp up capacity? Jiewei Li Thierry: Thank you, Brian. Let me answer your question. So I think it was back in Q3 and Q4 when our Nanjing Phase 2 and our Dalian operations and new products kick in, our gross margin was affected severely. So right now, we are in a phase of ramping up capacity. And we believe that the Dalian facility ramp-up would be completed in the first half of this year, which we have already received way enough orders for these new products. And for Nanjing Phase 2 because it's much bigger, so our time line is for early 2027, but we have confidence to try our best to catch up the time line. So our target would be also the second half of 2026, but the reasonable timetable will be early 2027. So ideally, in the second half of this year, our gross margin will gradually revolve. And I believe in the full year of 2026, the gross margin number at least looks better than right now. Brian Lantier: Great. And could you describe a little bit more about the cell packing business? And do you see that becoming a growth opportunity for the company, particularly in the LEV market? Jiewei Li Thierry: I will answer the question first and then, Yvonne, please help with the interpretation for Jason, and Jason I think can add some points. So we have received a substantial order from one of our major African customers who actually originally from India, and starting early 2025, this substantial order kick in and they use most -- I think all the cells purchase were from Nanjing 32140. And in order to do that, we have already set up a battery pack assembly unit within our structure, and this unit is dedicated to purchase cells from our Nanjing factory and put the cells into a battery pack and sell it to the African customer. And this customer has already become 1 of our top 5 customers as of 2025. And we are also looking forward to a much deeper and more comprehensive collaboration with each other. Maybe in the future, our collaboration will extend beyond the area of LEV into energy storage sector. So I think this is what I want to add. Please Jason, see if anything you want to add? Unknown Executive: [Foreign Language] Zhiguang Hu: [Foreign Language] Jiewei Li Thierry: There's only 1 thing that Jason would like to add, which is the advantage of our battery cell use in the LEV market. So this has already been demonstrated in the Southeast Asia market and Indian market. So our product, no matter our cell or battery pack, are -- performs really well in high temperature. This is very critical to this kind of application. So we think we may meet the same success as we already did in the Southeast and Indian market. Brian Lantier: Great. That's really helpful. I guess 1 final question. Are you seeing anything on the energy storage front as it relates to grid storage best companies? And is that impacting your R&D plans for new cell formats that could come out at the end of the decade? Jiewei Li Thierry: I think that's a question for Jason. Unknown Executive: [Foreign Language] Zhiguang Hu: [Foreign Language] Jiewei Li Thierry: So currently, for the ESS market, I think we are only focusing on the home ESS, balcony ESS and also portable ESS, so which are all like smaller size. But in addition, we are also in research and development of our big prismatic cell, which can be used in what you just mentioned, the grid size energy storage system. So that will be like one of our like target product for this. Operator: [Operator Instructions] We will now take the next question, this is from the line of [ Charles Nemec ], Individual shareholder. Unknown Analyst: Now I've reviewed the 40135 ramp-up data and the margin compression. And I have a structural and validated solution for the thermal wall and charging limitations impacting you daily in production. Now I submitted a brief to your executive inbox, and I sent one to your engineer as well, and I'm just wanting to confirm that you've received that. And if we could make a time to discuss those matters in a private forum? Jiewei Li Thierry: Which engineer or which e-mail address you contacted through? Unknown Analyst: The e-mail I sent it to is -- let me find it here, ir@cbak.com.cn. Jiewei Li Thierry: Okay. There are just -- daily, there are thousands of e-mails coming in, so maybe in the junk box or maybe it just be in [ filtered ]. So can you just resend the e-mail and we'll make sure that related personnels would just look into it. Unknown Analyst: Okay. I can resend them all. I sent them on the 28th early in the morning, but I can resend them. There's one to the CEO, the second in command and your engineer, all of you got a copy through that e-mail and I tagged you call. Jiewei Li Thierry: Okay. We will just review it. Operator: Seeing no more questions in the queue, so let me turn the call back to Jason for closing remarks. Zhiguang Hu: Thank you, operator, and thank you all for participating in today's call and for your support. We appreciate your interest and look forward to reporting to you again next quarter on our progress. Operator: Thank you all again. This concludes the call. You may now disconnect.
Operator: Greetings, and welcome to the PDS Biotech Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mike Moyer with LifeSci Advisors. Thank you. You may begin. Mike Moyer: Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to PDS Biotech's Fourth Quarter 2025 Results and Clinical Programs Update Call. I'm joined on the call today by the following members of the company's management team: Dr. Frank Bedu-Addo, Chief Executive Officer; Dr. Kirk Shepard, Chief Medical Officer; and Lars Boesgaard, Chief Financial Officer. Dr. Bedu-Addo will begin with an overview of the company's recent highlights and its clinical development program. Dr. Shepard Will review the data and rationale behind the amendment the company recently adopted to its Phase III VERSATILE-003 trial, and Mr. Boesgaard will review the financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2025. Following management's prepared remarks, we will open the call to questions from covering analysts. As a reminder, during this call, we will be making forward-looking statements, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. Any such statements should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements in our press releases and risk factors as discussed in our filings with the SEC, including our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and annual report on Form 10-K and cautionary statements made during this call. We assume no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements or information. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Dr. Bedu-Addo. Frank? Frank Bedu-Addo: Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. It's our pleasure to speak with you again and to provide this brief update on our progress in advancing our clinical programs. The fourth quarter of 2025 capped a period of important progress for PDS Biotech, marked by meaningful advances across our clinical programs, along with financial discipline and expansion of our intellectual property portfolio. Building on the compelling top line data from our VERSATILE-002 Phase II trial, we believe the VERSATILE-003 protocol amendment we've adopted has the potential to create a more efficient path to accelerated approval. shortening the trial's duration, reducing costs and accelerating our time line to regulatory submission, while preserving overall survival as the basis for full approval. For patients living with HPV16-positive head and neck cancer, a disease with significant and growing unmet need, we believe PDS0101 represents a genuinely promising treatment option, and we remain focused on advancing it as efficiently as possible. In recent weeks, we also announced early results from the National Cancer Institute-led trial investigating PDS01ADC, our investigational IL-12 tumor-targeted immunocytokine at the American Association for Cancer Research, AACR, Special Conference on Prostate Cancer Research. In patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, the majority of whom had failed at least 2 prior treatments, the combination of PDS01ADC and standard of care docetaxel demonstrated encouraging and durable median progression-free survival or PFS of 9.6 months and a median prostate-specific antigen or PSA decline of 40%. 6 of 16 patients achieved greater than 50% PSA decline. These findings reinforce the potential of PDS01ADC as an immunocytokine that may be used to activate the immune system against multiple solid tumor types. We are encouraged by the progression-free survival and PSA declines observed in this difficult-to-treat population, and we remain focused on advancing PDS01ADC as a key component of our immuno-oncology pipeline. Since we last spoke with you, we also strengthened the intellectual property estate for PDS0101 with new patents granted in the United States and Japan. The new U.S. patents, combined with anticipated biologics exclusivity for PDS0101 extends our market protection into the 2040s. The Japanese patent adds broad composition of matter claims to existing protections across major markets. To elaborate on progress with our VERSATILE-003 trial, in particular, the data and rationale behind the decision to amend the study protocol, I'll turn the call over to Dr. Kirk Shepard, our Chief Medical Officer. Kirk? Kirk Shepard: Thanks, Frank, and good morning, everyone. As most of you know, last August, we announced completion of our VERSATILE-002 trial with the final data further supporting the durable clinical benefit of PDS0101 in HPV16-positive recurrent and/or metastatic head and neck cancer. The strength of this final data and of the data in the sub-analysis, we announced in September led to our strategic decision to seek an amendment to our VERSATILE-003 trial to include progression-free survival or PFS as a primary endpoint. As you will recall, the VERSATILE-002 trial evaluated PDS0101 plus KEYTRUDA or pembrolizumab in patients with HPV16-positive head and neck cancer. A total of 53 patients were enrolled. The final data showed median overall survival was 39.3 months in patients with PD-L1 combined positive score or TPS of more than or equal to 1. The lower limit of the 95% confidence interval was 23.9 months and the upper limit was not yet estimable. The VERSATILE-002 trial is the first of patients in recurrent metastatic head and neck cancer population to report a median overall survival of almost 40 months. The PFS and survival results had important implications for the original design of our Phase III VERSATILE-003 trial. In the original trial protocol, as recommended by the FDA, median overall survival was the primary endpoint and progression-free survival was a secondary endpoint. It should be noted that the median overall survival relies on the occurrence of death events and that if a drug works well enough to prevent patient death, it may take a long time to get to the critical data readout. With further increase of the final median overall survival readout from 30 months to 39.3 months in the VERSATILE-002 trial and demonstration of the robustness of the PFS results, we felt we had an opportunity to revise the clinical design to enable a potentially faster readout and opportunity for accelerated approval using PFS as a primary endpoint. To address the potential for an extended trial duration while also abiding with the FDA's recommendation to use median overall survival as a primary endpoint, we approached the FDA to amend the protocol to convert PFS to an earlier interim primary endpoint. Following a productive dialogue with the FDA, we were pleased to announce that following the FDA's standard 30-day wait period since filing, the FDA raised no objections, and we are clear to proceed with the amended protocol. We believe this amendment provides us with an important opportunity to potentially shorten the time to regulatory submission while maintaining median overall survival as the endpoint for full FDA approval. Additionally, we also believe this approach may also accelerate the availability of this promising treatment to the rapidly growing population of HPV16-positive patients in dire need of effective therapy. For added context, I'll point out that some additional factors that help explain why we and our investigators are so excited about our current path forward. First, PDS0101 is the only subcutaneous injection product currently in late-stage development for recurrent and/or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, which is more convenient for the patient. Additionally, PDS0101 in combination with KEYTRUDA is the only late-stage head and neck squamous cell carcinoma therapy that requires only 5 doses. Most therapeutic approaches require over 20 doses. Our approach also presents convenient dosing intervals of 3 weeks and 6 months after the fourth dose. These characteristics of PDS0101, together with the reported tolerability and survival reported to date, make PDS0101 a compelling option for patients. It is, therefore, not surprising that several KOLs and investigators involved in our study and many of the institutions such as the Mayo Clinic, Dana-Farber and Yale Cancer Institute continue to voice their strong support for our approach. HPV16-positive cancers are rapidly increasing in the U.S. and EU due to the poor uptake of the human papillomavirus vaccine and other factors. Along with the unique pathogenesis, physiology of the HPV16-positive cancers and the absence of approved targeted therapies, there is a significant unmet need, we believe that PDS0101 is uniquely positioned to address. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Frank. Frank Bedu-Addo: Thank you, Kirk. To Kirk's comments, I would add that as stated by Merck, the subcutaneous version of KEYTRUDA, which was recently approved by the FDA, can be administered by a health care provider in as little as 1 minute. So a potential combination with subcutaneous PDS0101 may shorten administration time and be more convenient for patients. We are excited about the potential of this therapy for head and neck cancer patients. We are, therefore, confident in the potential of our HPV16-tailored approach and the potential of PDS0101 to ultimately provide a well-tolerated treatment without chemotherapy as an option for the growing population of HPV16-positive patients who currently have no effective therapies for this deadly disease and who will soon become the majority of head and neck cancer patients. Now I will turn it over to Lars for a review of our financial results for the 2025 fiscal year. Lars? Lars Boesgaard: Thanks, Frank, and good morning, everyone. Net loss for the year ended December 31, 2025, was approximately $34.5 million or $0.74 per basic and diluted share, which compares to a net loss of $37.6 million or $1.03 per basic and diluted share for the year ended December 31, 2024. Research and development expenses for the year ended December 31, 2025, were $19 million compared to $22.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2024. The decrease of $3.6 million was primarily attributable to decreases in manufacturing costs of $2.5 million and personnel costs of $1.8 million. And those decreases were partially offset by an increase in clinical costs of $0.7 million. General and administrative expenses for the year ended December 31, 2025, were $12.5 million compared to $13.8 million for 2024. The $1.3 million decrease was primarily attributable to a decrease in personnel costs. Total operating expenses for the year ended December 31, 2025, were $31.5 million compared to $36.3 million for 2024. Net interest expense was $4.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2025, compared to $2.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2024. The change was primarily due to noncash expenses related to extinguishment of debt as well as lower interest income on our cash balances. The company's cash balance as of December 31, 2025, was $26.7 million. And with that, operator, we can open the call to any questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Joe Pantginis with H.C. Wainwright. Joshua Korsen: This is Josh on for Joe. So now that you have the amended protocol cleared, could you share what the revised enrollment target is going to look like and how that reduction compares to the original design? Frank Bedu-Addo: Josh, thanks a lot. I'll hand it over to Kirk to answer your questions. Kirk Shepard: Yes, certainly. With the revised protocol, and also the increased median survival and robustness of the PFS in 002, we had a meeting with the FDA, which was a very good dialogue. And at that, we were able to shorten the trial to as much as a year as far as getting the final results. And of course, the PFS will be the interim analysis that will first be available most likely in a period of about 1.5 years. That will allow us to get an accelerated review, as you know, to make the drug available to patients. So with the decrease in the end as well as the increased results from the final analysis of the VERSATILE-002, we were able to shorten the duration with this -- a smaller end for the trial. Joshua Korsen: Great. And so now with this amended protocol, how should we expect R&D to be for 2026? Do you expect that to be a little bit lower than 2025 now with the smaller trial design? Frank Bedu-Addo: Lars, I'll hand over to you. Lars Boesgaard: Yes. So I think as far as the R&D expenses, we're not providing financial guidance per se. However, of course, once we reinitiate the trial, we do expect cost to pick up. The pickup will be commensurate with the amount of sites that we opened and patient enrollment and so forth. So it's tricky to forecast right now. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Mayank Mamtani with B. Riley Securities. Mayank Mamtani: Could you touch on your plans to handle patients already enrolled prior to the 003 pause as part of your interim analysis and wonder if you remain blinded to those sort of patients? I assume they're continuing to dose on active drug and placebo. And then my follow-up question to the prior question was anything you've learned last year from the execution of Phase III that could inform the enrollment pace from here? And sorry if I missed that, did you say what the sample size -- what the new sample size for the Phase III is? And are you willing to share any more details on the 2 -- it looks like you have the 2 PFS interim analysis. So I don't know what they are designed to hit on the first versus the second? If you can give any more details, that would be great. Frank Bedu-Addo: Thanks, Mayank. Kirk, do you want to start? Kirk Shepard: Yes. Certainly, I'll [ do ]. There were many questions asked there. Well, we -- first, the patients who were started on the trial, they will all continue their treatment as indicated by the protocol. It was discussed with the FDA, and they said it was up to us as far as whether to include or not include these patients in the trial. They just wanted to be stated ahead of the protocol restart. But these patients will be on the trial as the treatment indicated. They will most likely be put in a special subset of the data that will be included for safety in the intent-to-treat data trial. So they will continue to receive their therapy. Let's see the other parts of the study. Sorry, could you repeat something else what Frank [indiscernible]. Mayank Mamtani: Yes. enrollment pace based on what you saw last year, and I believe there's no competitive trial now enrolling given the other trials that were accepting HPV16-positive are fully enrolled maybe. And then if you can share with us the sample size of the new -- of the study and the interim analysis, PFS analysis that -- what are the underlying assumptions of separation between the 2 arms? Kirk Shepard: Yes. So the enrollment pace was very good and will continue to be good because we've had a very positive response from the sites that we've gone to, to run the study. As you've mentioned now, there's less competition than was when we first began the trial. so that we have a robust recruitment of sites. And we're happy to say, too, even with the pause we had while talking to the FDA, we didn't lose 1 site. They're all excited by this therapy and ready to begin again. So we're very happy about that. Also the fact that we figured out our time lines by looking at the VERSATILE-002 study, which was done at a certain rate. And now we expect even increased rate because most of the sites came back so that the VERSATILE-002 sites are now going to be involved in the 003 study, which is good because they know the workings of the protocol and the product, and we expect to have pretty brisk recruitment of the patients. Frank Bedu-Addo: Got it. Mayank, I hope that answered your questions. Mayank Mamtani: I -- sorry to push you, if you can share with us the powering assumptions for the interim PFS and the new sample size for the Phase III. Frank Bedu-Addo: No. So we haven't made the sample size public yet, but the PFS, again, powered it high power to detect changes in -- statistically significant changes in PFS, 1 at completion of recruitment and the other about 6 months later. So both provide high power to detect statistically significant differences between the 2 arms. Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude our question-and-answer session. I'll turn the floor back to Dr. Bedu-Addo for any final comments. Frank Bedu-Addo: Thank you, operator. Combined with early data from our PDS01ADC program and expanded patient protections extending into the 2040s, we believe we have meaningful opportunities ahead as we continue to execute against our priorities in 2026. We look forward to updating you on our progress. Thank you very much. Operator: Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
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