Operator

Welcome, everyone, to the TBC Group First Quarter 2026 IFRS Results Conference Call. My name is Lucy, and I'll be your moderator today. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to hand over to Andrew Keeley, Director of Investor Relations, to begin. Please go ahead.

Andrew Keeley
Director of Investor Relations

Thanks very much, Lucy, and thank you, everybody, for joining our first quarter results call today. As usual, I'm joined on the call by our Group CEO,Vakhtang Butskhrikidze; our Group CFO, Giorgi Megrelishvili; and our Head of International, Oliver Hughes. We'll start with a presentation, and then we'll go to Q&A. And with that, I'll hand over to Vakhtang. Thank you.

Vakhtang Butskhrikidze
CEO & Executive Director

Thank you, Andrew. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm pleased to present our results for the first quarter. We made a good start to the year delivering. Gross net profit of GEL 365 million, up by 15% year-on-year with a return of equity of 23.4%. Georgia had another strong and consistent quarter with net profit of GEL 362 million, up by 14% year-on-year and return of equity of 24.1% helped by a decent start to the year in lending as loans rose by 12% year-on-year.

In Uzbekistan, as we have previously guided, we continue to recalibrate our