Amazon jumps 5% after AWS and OpenAI announce $38B partnership
Artea Bankas reported its third-quarter earnings for 2025, highlighting a robust financial performance with a net profit of 20 million euros, up from the adjusted 19.5 million euros. The bank’s strategic initiatives and market positioning have contributed to its steady growth, but the stock price remained stable with no significant change in the immediate aftermath of the earnings release.
Key Takeaways
- Artea Bankas achieved a Q3 net profit of 20 million euros.
- The bank’s return on equity reached 13.5%.
- Net interest income grew by 6% quarter-on-quarter.
- The company is focusing on attracting younger, higher-income clients.
- Market response to the earnings release was neutral, with no change in stock price.
Company Performance
Artea Bankas demonstrated strong performance in Q3 2025, with a net profit of 20 million euros, reflecting the bank’s effective cost management and strategic focus on high-income clients. The return on equity improved to 13.5%, indicating efficient use of shareholder funds. The bank’s initiatives, such as the rebranding and the launch of co-branded payment cards, have bolstered its market presence.
Financial Highlights
- Net Profit: 20 million euros for Q3, 19.5 million euros adjusted.
- Return on Equity: 13.5% for Q3.
- Net Interest Income: Increased by 6% quarter-on-quarter.
- Net Fee and Commission Income: Rose by 8% year-on-year.
Outlook & Guidance
Artea Bankas projects a loan portfolio growth of 13-14% for 2024 and anticipates a net interest margin of 2.7-2.8%. The bank continues to focus on deposit growth and sees potential positive impacts from pension reforms. Strategic investor relations activities are planned for the fourth quarter.
Executive Commentary
Tautvydas from Investor Relations emphasized the bank’s commitment to shareholder returns, stating, "We are a shareholder-friendly institution committed to open dialogue and transparency." CFO Tomas highlighted the bank’s growth potential, saying, "We believe that we can bring our loan portfolio growth rate in the area of 13% or 14% for this year."
Risks and Challenges
- Economic fluctuations in Europe could impact growth projections.
- Increased competition in the Baltic banking market may pressure margins.
- Regulatory changes could affect operational and strategic plans.
- Dependence on economic reforms, such as pension adjustments, for growth.
- Potential challenges in integrating new technologies and banking systems.
The earnings call highlighted Artea Bankas’s solid financial footing and strategic initiatives aimed at sustaining growth. The bank’s focus on innovation, efficiency, and market expansion positions it well for future challenges, although economic and competitive risks remain.
Full transcript - Artea bankas AB (ROE1L) Q3 2025:
Senior Executive/Management, Artea Bankas: Good morning dear investors. I’m very grateful for your time and interest to their group meeting webinar and today we’ll be happy to present our nine months financial and other results and key developments. Let’s get started. Key financial and strategic highlights. We can start with net profit generated, so €48 million net profit for nine months. If we count adjusted to some one offs that we are counting during those years, the result would stand at the level of slightly more than €56 million. Return on equity 11.1% and 13% respectively and other parameters you also see in the slide. I will run through the key highlights just to emphasize the most important elements of financial and other developments. Net interest income grew by 6% quarter on quarter, rebounds from the previous quarter, and it was supported by the stable net interest margin.
Overall credit portfolio dynamics looks good in all sectors. The economic situation positive. We have pretty good development in the loan book. Net fee and commission income also grew by 8% year on year, stronger performance than expected in our budgets, which was driven by also strong renovation financing, asset management performance, and other income lines. We try to keep the stable operating cost despite that we had in coin offs and we have investment in our strategic projects like rebranding and also our technological platform. Therefore, the cost management is key in our agenda as well. Asset quality, mainly our loan book, is performing really well. The NPL ratio slightly above 2%, so it’s pretty good level of NPLs and other parameters, impairment levels. We received even reversals during the quarter. If we count on solo level, net profit for the third quarter was close to €20 million.
If we take adjusted profit, this is close to our yearly indication of our profit and return on equity guidance and stood at the 13.5% for the third quarter of adjusted net profit. We started a very interesting strategic partnership with Kauno. I’ll give some more highlights in the next slide. Another area which already was mentioned but also to emphasize about cost optimization. We looking for different type of opportunities to get more efficient with our cost base knowing that the top line is lower due to the Euribor developments, cost of funding. Cost of efficiency and cost slimness is one of the priority for the forthcoming quarters as well. Successful issuance of €300 million senior bonds which continues to diversify our funding structure. We were happy about the very strong investor demand for this issuance as well.
We’re happy with Moody’s reaffirmed rating with the stable outlook, the Aa1, and they had highlighting our strong performance parameters like capital and liquidity. Last but not least, share buybacks. We have resumed this program. We’ve already executed part of that, so the next part will be executed in the future. We have as before utilizing all the elements to work efficiently with our capital base. A few words about our strategic partnership with BC Kauno Žalgiris. Basketball overall in our country, we treat it as a second religion. Therefore, to cooperate with a top notch basketball brand is a privilege to us. It’s a really nice and well-structured partnership. We will be visible in most events both internationally and locally since trying to get place in Euroleague. As you can see, 8 of 10 Lithuanians are interested in basketball and 76% support Žalgiris players placed outside the country.
The recognition of this club is very strong and I hope each Lithuanian is proud that we have such a strong team in the universe of other basketball teams and performs really well. Along with all the communication, we also launch co-branded payment cards with different type of benefits for the fans who are willing to acquire. We also advertise those cards for all those who are willing to support Žalgiris and be a real fan. For the bank, we see that we will increase our brand visibility since the brand is still pretty new and we need more awareness for this brand. The development is really good but with such a partnership we will reach really high levels.
We also amplify our positioning supporting such a strong brand as we want to emphasize our closeness to the clients, closeness to the Lithuanian people and also naming that we are a local bank willing to be the local champion in the finance industry. With this, we also expect to attract new clients since we have different type of clients and we willing to gain more younger and higher value retail clients with this campaign. With this positioning of a product we will hope to achieve that, and definitely that will be also additional expected stream from the co-branded payment cards related with this program proposition. That’s it from my side. I will pass over to my colleague Indrė Genytė-Pikčienė. She will present microeconomic of Lithuania and route please.
Indrė Genytė-Pikčienė, Economist/Macro Analyst, Artea Bankas: Thank you very much. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for sparing time and spending it with us. What’s on macronomic perspective? Actually it is wonderful to talk about Lithuania’s economy, to look into retrospective and to see how strongly fundamentals of our economy look. Because last year our real GDP increased by 3% and Lithuania continued on a rapid pace this year. In the first half of the year, our economy even gathered the pace and grew by 3.2% and stood out among the European Union countries. According to the growth rates and also in the context of the Baltics, Lithuania outperforms other neighbors and proceeds growing rapidly. However, we expect Lithuanian economy to slow down in the second half of the year. The main reason is the weaker external drivers, weaker manufacturing performance. All in all, we expect European economy to grow by 2.7% this year.
However, the next year Lithuanian economy will gather the base once again. It is interesting to look to the structural breakdowns and to see how the major economic drivers have shifted. Actually at the moment, since the beginning of Russian invasion to Ukraine, we see that the traditional economic activities such as transport, manufacturing and domestic trade have been slower. However, has been driven by those high value added economic activity activities like information technologists and computer science, also business services, finance and insurance. This transformation, this structural transformation is taking place here in Lithuania and hopefully it will proceed in the future because Lithuania should transform and should translate into the higher value added economy. On the other side, Lithuania is also very energetic in the cyclical upturn because we capitalized a lot on the lower interest rate environment.
As the European Central Bank reduced interest rates normalized to them, Lithuanian credit market gathered momentum. As you can see from the right hand side diagram, Lithuania tops the rank of European Union countries according to the loan portfolio dynamics. The middle graph illustrates that loans granted to non financial corporations have been expanding at an accelerating pace. In September the portfolio was by a fifth higher than a year ago. The credit injections into households sector also was really dynamic and the portfolio growth was also high. The cyclical recovery, cyclical upturn stimulates local sectors cyclically more sensitive and also adds to the economic strength and the stronger performance of the domestic demand. Despite the really dynamic credit market, we see that the indebtedness levels of Lithuania still remain among the lowest in comparison to other EU economies.
It is useful to stress that the quality of loan portfolio is excellent despite the interest rate environment changes. What is also interesting and useful to tell is that currently our state budget plan for the next year is presented and Lithuania is sticking to its targets to increase its defense spending really significantly and exceed 5% of GDP. Lithuania is walking the talk and plans to fulfill this target the next year and the following years. That is only a natural and positive signal to both our defense partners as well as our potential foreign investors and local businesses. Moreover, talking about the next year, we increased our forecast significantly up to 3.3% in terms of GDP growth, because the next year we will see a lot of positive tailwinds for our economy. First of all, accommodative and socially oriented fiscal budget for the next year is planned.
Moreover, the second pension pillar reform will kick in and also stimulate domestic consumption. Last but not least, the Bank of Lithuania has introduced changes to responsible lending regulations which also add fuel to real estate housing markets. Also, EU funds are planned much higher than we used to have in recent years. Hopefully defense money will not only go abroad, but also find the way in a form of investments here, locally, creating room for multiplicators, local multiplicators. The final slide is the summary of what I have said. First of all, we expect slower growth in the second half of this year. The next year Lithuanian economy will have a much faster economic performance as a result of one-off factors as well as pro-cycle fiscal stance and positive upturn of the business cycles. The macroeconomic results will be very positive.
However, in 2027 it won’t be easy to outshine them. That is why we expect a bit slower economic growth. Thanks a lot and I give the floor to Tomas.
Tomas, CFO/Financial Executive, Artea Bankas: Yes, hello everyone. Thank you, Indrė. Let’s continue our webinar with our financial performance during Q3 and the nine months of this year. To begin, a general overview of our performance in income statement and balance sheet. On the top line, our net interest margin or income stabilized and even by slow growth of our loan portfolio. Together with active management of cost of funding, we managed to increase our net interest income by 6% quarter on quarter. Net fee and commission income supports our revenue generation and shows a high growth, 8% year on year. Quarter on quarter, we deliver sustainable growth and it’s well supported by renovation and asset management business, capital markets business, also delivering a good contribution to our net fees and commission income. On OpEx side, we remain with flat inter operating expenses and only our strategic investments brings the growth of operating expenses itself.
I said during the last our webinar we are taking comprehensive review of our cost base and we’ll elaborate on that topic a little bit later. On the bottom line, we achieved strong result, 16.5% of net profit for Q3. Even if we take out the one-off expenses, we are close to €20 million for Q3 and 13.5% ROE for them. Quarter, our loan book expanded by 8% year on year and deposit portfolio by 15%. We are happy that our focus on increasing deposit portfolio and bringing our loan to deposit ratio below 100% was quickly implemented. Going forward, we believe that our deposit portfolio growth will match loan book expansion. Going forward more deeply into some important segments, starting with net interest income. Yes, we are operating under a declining rate environment. We do see that our asset yield already repriced with declining Euribor.
Going forward, we expect that by taking flat Euribor performance, we’ll keep asset yield at the same level. We are actively managing our cost of funding and it’s nicely decreased during the last quarter mainly by repricing of our deposit portfolio. Going forward, as we have issued a new bond issue, cost of funding should remain at more or less the same level. Additionally, we have introduced hedging instruments and it will reduce our sensitivity in case the rates are going to decline in upcoming quarters. Looking to the fourth quarter or upcoming quarters, we do expect still that our net interest margin should end up at 2.8% or 2.7%. Let’s turn to the loan portfolio. Our loan portfolio increased by 8% year on year. The key segments that contributed to the growth are corporate, mortgage segments, and consumer.
The overall credit demand is good in the country and it’s well supported by the macro environment. During the last quarter, we have slower growth in the corporate segment. The reason is that in July we had a couple of large exposures that we refinanced. The amount of this refinancing was close to €100 million. We had to run fast in order to catch up with our growth rates for the quarter and for the whole year. We believe that we can bring our loan portfolio growth rate in the area of 13% or 14% for this year. Net fee and commission income had good growth, mainly contributed by asset management and renovation financing segment. Asset management fees are supported by the strong financial market performance. Our fund management team is delivering top notch results compared to the competitors. Renovation financing segment performs well.
We keep being active by originating these loans and we are working to launch additional funds in order to keep that business line performing well in the coming quarters. The decline in daily banking was actually driven by one-off or one-time costs that were related to rebranding as we needed to change some of our products into a new brand at once. Overall, our net fee income contribution to the total revenues is nicely increasing and is close to 15% of our total revenue. Let’s run to the operating expenses. We had good development in Q3 by taking out the one-offs. Our operating expenses are stabilizing: salaries, IT, marketing, buildings more or less flat. Our other expenses increased by €1.3 million. It’s a twofold effect. One is we have changed accounting of our digital authentication expenses from the IT to the other ones and we.
Senior Executive/Management, Artea Bankas: Had.
Tomas, CFO/Financial Executive, Artea Bankas: €0.5 million of one-off non-recurring expenses on corporate development that won’t be in Q4 or going forward and one-offs. We are implementing our strategic initiatives. Rebranding, our technologic update upgrade is underway. Rebranding is already finished and in Q4 only minor expenses still will be accounted as one-offs. Technological upgrade is still in progress. We are midway and as launch is expected mid next year, we will still be investing in that strategic initiative. On cost-cutting initiatives, as it’s very important for us as an organization as our top line is lower than we have anticipated, we have already started implementing the measures in Q3. We have changes in the Management Board. We have streamlined the structure and the responsibilities of the Management Board. We’re still working on consolidating the leadership roles and finding the best way in order to support our strategic priorities going forward.
We are underway on optimizing our operational structure. We have merged two divisions in Q3 and are working forward in order to bring the organizational structure even into a more efficient way to operate the business. We are undertaking review of our non-core initiatives. We have paused initiatives that are low impact and are not supporting our strategic goals. We are taking zero-based budgeting in order to put all the expenses that the organization is bearing that have the background in order to deliver the guidance that was communicated to our shareholders. Going forward to asset quality, it’s performing well with reversals and it’s well supported again by the macro situation that we’re having in Lithuania and our, you know, disciplined underwriting of a loan portfolio. We have implemented significant increase in credit risk rule.
We had reallocation of part of our portfolio from stage one to stage two, so we have increase in stage two. We are doing that to meet the best practice. During the last couple of years, we implemented many methodological changes. How do we provision, how do we make impairments, and how do we monitor our loan portfolio performance? We believe that we are at the end point of doing these changes. Going forward, we do not expect that it will be a driver on our impairments or cost of risk. Overall, we are happy with our asset quality. Cost of trailing twelve months cost of risk stands at 0.22% basis points. The last quarter ninth month of this year cost of risk is 14 basis points. Did you expect that given the macro situation in a country that these levels are sustainable in upcoming quarters on a funding?
We do have nice development and a nice quick development as we have highly refocused in building our liquidity during the second half of this year. From the beginning of the year our deposit portfolio increased already by 8% and year on year it’s a 15% growth, a good growth and we are still able to decrease our cost of deposits going forward. We believe that the decrease the rate of or the pace of the decrease will not be so significant as.
Senior Executive/Management, Artea Bankas: We.
Tomas, CFO/Financial Executive, Artea Bankas: Do see that term deposits, that a product that we promote in a country, is a good product to build liquidity, and it’s a good product as an entry product for our retail clients. We have issued the second Eurobond issue, €300 million. Very well received by investors, and we took a chance or opportunity by having very favorable market conditions. We have secured our wholesale funding for the next year, and we will keep fully focused on growing the deposit portfolio during the last quarter and the next year. Let’s turn to the capital. We run strong capital ratios given slower growth rate for this year compared to our initial budgeted levels. We have a capital that the management will consider for higher payout potential ratios for the 2025 year. Giving award to Tautvydas to elaborate more on our shareholder returns and capital distribution.
Tautvydas, Investor Relations/Senior Executive, Artea Bankas: Good morning everyone. Thank you, Tomas. We have resumed our share buyback program earlier this month. Starting from October 6 until now, we repurchased close to 1.2 million shares. Under the current European Central Bank authorization, we can buy up to an additional 3.3 million shares, which we fully intend to do. We will restart our share buyback open market operations in the near future. Overall, we view share buybacks as a very effective way to return capital to our shareholders given the current trading levels. Our stock continues to trade below book value and remains significantly undervalued. As long as that remains the case, we’ll always stand ready to deploy buybacks. We are a shareholder-friendly institution. In addition to buybacks, we pay a generous dividend, which we’ll announce next quarter, whilst at the same time prudently managing our capital needs to support organic growth.
Our book value per share keeps compounding steadily quarter after quarter, as you can see from the chart at the bottom left-hand side of this page. We believe that our share price should start reflecting that over time. To wrap up today’s webinar, I want to say that it was a solid quarter despite the ongoing top line pressures. As we continue to operate in a low rate environment, we remain focused and continue executing on our strategy. Our core banking replatforming project is progressing well. We said it last quarter. I’m going to repeat this quote again. The project is within the budget and on schedule. Our rebranding has almost been completed, was very well received by our customers and other stakeholder groups in the country, and we continue transforming our retail business.
We’re very glad and excited about this new partnership with BC Kauno Žalgiris, which is the most famous sports club in Lithuania and will help us to unlock and access new customer segments. Now, in terms of this specific, I want to leave with a few key takeaways. Number one is that our net interest margin is stabilizing and our net interest income increased sequentially quarter by quarter. Number two, we’re proactively managing cost. Glad that our operating expenses are normalizing when you exclude one-off non-recurring project-related items. Finally, we delivered adjusted net profit of €19.5 million, which equates to return on equity of 13.5%. Very strong and solid result for the quarter. I want to reiterate that we are a shareholder-friendly institution which is committed to open dialogue and transparency. We want to continue building connectivity of our investor community.
As a result, we’re going to be on the road in Q4 a lot. As you can see from our busy investor relations schedule depicted on this slide, we’re going to be participating in a number of retail-focused conferences across all three Baltic capital cities, and we’re also going to be participating in a number of institutional investor events. On November 17th, we’re going to be in London participating in Goldman Sachs annual CMA conference, and then on December 2nd, we’re going to be in Prague participating in WOOD’s in the Wonderland Conference, which remains the flagship event for equity CMA investors. As always, the management team is available for follow-up discussions and one-on-one meetings. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out and arrange a call. This concludes our prepared remarks for today.
Thank you for dialing in and thank you for your continued interest in our stock. We will now switch to Q&A. First question is about rebranding. How was it received and you know whether you have any tangible measures.
Senior Executive/Management, Artea Bankas: Thank you for this. I can take this question. Overall, I would say the rebranding went really smooth, and as you also mentioned, it was pretty well accepted, also in the country and outside.
Tomas, CFO/Financial Executive, Artea Bankas: Our.
Senior Executive/Management, Artea Bankas: Targets were to regain as soon as possible our awareness of the previous brand. We are moving successfully in that path. Our brand awareness now is at the level of 51%. The historical used to be 81%. We regain. We thought it would be half, that would be really good results. We already overcame this, our target, and I’m sure we will reach the same level in the future. Also worth mentioning that our spontaneous awareness has already reached 15%. It’s almost on the same level as Šiaulių Bankas of spontaneous awareness in January of this year. With that, we also all became such banks as Urbo, Citadele, and also Revolut. Our top of mind awareness as well is on the same level as our previous brand name. We overcame and are on the same level with Revolut. I’m really happy with those results.
The other area which is important is that we are now attracting also a new type of clients, which are much younger, slightly higher income. That’s our focus on using the new brand to position ourselves a bit differently. Overall, I would say it’s a successful project that we’ve managed to complete.
Tautvydas, Investor Relations/Senior Executive, Artea Bankas: Great, thank you. The next question is about the upcoming pension reform in Lithuania. How will new reform affect your asset management business?
Tomas, CFO/Financial Executive, Artea Bankas: I will take that question. We believe that it will be a twofold effect. From business development and business growth side, we think that it will have a positive contribution to our performance as the activation of the client base will be high. We will be able to talk to the clients to discuss their long-term saving needs and to offer our other saving products to them from other side. Absolutely, in case there will be a high withdrawal from the pension funds, there will be negative financial impact. As I said, we are seeing that as an opportunity to discuss, to talk with clients, and to mitigate the negative effect with a positive opportunity to sell our products to the clients.
Tautvydas, Investor Relations/Senior Executive, Artea Bankas: Great. The next few questions come from SweatBank. Good morning, Andrea. Question about the loan book growth. Can you please provide additional color on your quarterly growth and loan book? The report shows that corporate loan book growth was a little bit slow. Was it deliberate or do you feel increased competition? Can you share additional details on that?
Tomas, CFO/Financial Executive, Artea Bankas: Thank you, Andre, for the question. Already mentioned that in Q3 they had refinancing on some, on a couple of our larger exposures. We had to catch up on the growth, which is why we had only 1% growth rate for the third quarter. You do see a good environment, strong demand for loans. We believe that Q4 will be our normal loan portfolio growth, and we expect our 2025 growth rate will end up at 13 or 14%.
Tautvydas, Investor Relations/Senior Executive, Artea Bankas: Could you please indicate when it is reasonable to expect a little bit more tangible effect on deposit repricing and have lower rates?
Tomas, CFO/Financial Executive, Artea Bankas: We already see tangible effect and the dynamics is good. Even during Q3, our cost of deposit decreased by 20%. We believe that the pace of decrease of cost of deposits will decrease as we are proactively promoting our term deposit as a product, as it’s a good entry product for our retake license into the bank.
Tautvydas, Investor Relations/Senior Executive, Artea Bankas: The next question comes from Erstein. What are your expectations for NIM net interest margin in the coming quarters? How do you expect asset yields and funding costs to develop over Q4 and the following quarters?
Tomas, CFO/Financial Executive, Artea Bankas: I will take that question. Good morning, Tomas. Our Q3 net interest margin stands at 2.9%. We expect 2.8% to 2.7% level for the upcoming quarters. Mainly, the decrease will be driven by our cost of funding. We believe that assets already repriced and it won’t change significantly in the upcoming quarters.
Tautvydas, Investor Relations/Senior Executive, Artea Bankas: Thank you. The next few questions come from Ipopema. Good morning, Vladan. Did you have rebranding costs in Q3 marketing expense line item? They seem to increase a lot in Q3.
Tomas, CFO/Financial Executive, Artea Bankas: Good morning, Gladn. Yes, correct. As rebranding took place mid Q2, the majority of the marketing expense on building our new brand costs came up in Q3, and then only minor expenses will be booked in Q4. Going forward, only the, let’s say, operating marketing costs or normalized marketing cost will be spent.
Tautvydas, Investor Relations/Senior Executive, Artea Bankas: Thank you. An additional question from Vlad and it’s about the deposits. Deposit growth was strong, plus 15% year over year, while funding costs declined. Is this improvement mainly driven by term deposit campaigns, or is it driven by lower rate environment? Where do you see deposit rates in 2026?
Tomas, CFO/Financial Executive, Artea Bankas: Our deposit portfolio is growing nicely, 15% year on year, faster than the market. Yes, our funding costs are declining. It means that we are not only building our deposit portfolio by attracting term deposits, we discuss a good flow of current accounts into the bank. It means that more and more clients choose Artea Bankas as a home bank. We believe that going forward we will be able to match term deposits growth together with the current accounts growth, and deposit rates for 2026, we believe, will slightly decrease. One of the key reasons we think that the second pillar pension reform will bring more liquidity into the market, and that will be a driver for the financial sector to lower the rates.
Tautvydas, Investor Relations/Senior Executive, Artea Bankas: Right. The next question is about non-recurring expenses. One-off cost for the new core banking system and the branding remain high and seems to be recurring on a face of it. How long will we see these investments continue, and when should we expect a visible decline now.
Senior Executive/Management, Artea Bankas: Yep.
Tomas, CFO/Financial Executive, Artea Bankas: Hello Dallas. I will continue. Rebranding, as I said, the project already finished and the costs already are visible in our performance. Only minor expenses will be in Q4, and going forward only the operating or normalized level of marketing will be spent on a core banking system. It’s a two-year project for the bank. We are midway. The project itself is still in the timeline and within the budget. During the next year, our investment into the technological platform will continue. That’s what we have in our business plan and in the guidance.
Tautvydas, Investor Relations/Senior Executive, Artea Bankas: The next question is about a new partnership deal. Regarding BC Kauno Žalgiris’ partnership, how do you measure its potential commercial impact? Have you already seen any gains in new customers, co-branded product sales?
Senior Executive/Management, Artea Bankas: Thank you for the question. This is a corporation which provides both new client acquisition and also brand awareness. Client acquisition is based on co-branded payment cards. We have a partnership with BC Kauno Žalgiris and some revenue sharing. The expectations are that we have internal targets when we know that this conveyor would repay. I would say the main emphasis is for the attraction of new clients for the bank, new segments of clients, and the main focus is to strengthen our brand awareness for this partnership. That’s our focus and co-branded product is part of that. As also Tomas mentioned, it’s important to emphasize this partnership is already outside of our one-off costs talking about rebranding. It will be just running marketing costs for the coming years.
Tautvydas, Investor Relations/Senior Executive, Artea Bankas: Okay. I think we have the last question about our capital management policy. After resuming share buybacks with European Central Bank approval, what’s your long term capital return strategy? What payout ratio? Buyback pays the plan, profitability increases and stabilizes.
Tomas, CFO/Financial Executive, Artea Bankas: We have dividend policy in place. Yes, organization committed to at least 50% of dividend payout. It’s what we as organization will follow on buybacks. It will depend on the valuation the bank stock is trading and on the capital position the bank is running. Looking to the current situation as the growth rate for this year was lower, we will need as a management to reassess the capital that was not employed to the growth. What is the best way to utilize that. Either to bring that to the growth for the next year, either to distribute it for the shareholders.
Tautvydas, Investor Relations/Senior Executive, Artea Bankas: Thank you, Tomas. That was our last question. As always, we’re available for follow-ups and one-on-one discussions. Feel free to reach out if you have additional questions after this webinar. Thank you again. Bye.
This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.