Gruppo MutuiOnline SpA

MIL:MOL

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q1

[Operator]

Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the presentation of Gruppo MutuiOnline First Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Marco Pescarmona, Chairman; Mr. Alessandro Fracassi, CEO; and Mr. Francesco Masciandaro, CFO. Please go ahead.

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

Thank you, and welcome, everybody, to our conference call. As always, we will rely on the presentation that was published a while ago on our website, and we will start, I would say, this time, we start with the group structure on Page 10 actually, with the structure of the Broking Division, just to highlight the fact that in the beginning of February, we closed the acquisition of a number of international price comparison businesses you remember, we've signed the contract at the end of August. And the operating company that we acquired, LeLynx SAS, which is one of the co-leaders in France in insurance comparison, then Rastreator Comparador Coreduria de Seguros, which is the leading comparison intermediation business at least for insurance in Spain. And then the third operating company is [ Preminen ] Mexico, which is a comparison website for insurance in Mexico and is one of the leaders there.

So this all goes under relatively complicated structure with intermediate companies that, however, we plan to simplify [indiscernible] because of the history of the group, which was owned by [ U.K. entity ] in the past.

Now having said that -- now the group has changed with the entry of companies into the consolidation area, we can move to Page 17 with the Q1 results, the consolidated results. And in Q1, revenues are EUR 93.9 million, and that's up 20.6% year-on-year compared to the EUR 77.9 million of Q1 2022. And the mix is exactly the same, 44% of the revenues are from Broking and 56% from BPO, unchanged from the previous year.

EBITDA, which is now, we think, one of the most meaningful measures of our performance, is EUR 23.4 million in Q1 2023, and that's up 9.7% year-on-year compared to 21.4% in Q1 2022. And the contribution is for 52% of the Broking Division and 48% of the BPO Division. And the weight of the BPO division has increased compared to last year. The BPO Division has contributed in proportion more. The EBITDA margin is 25% in Q1 2023 compared to 27.4% in Q1 2022.

EBIT, which is affected by the PPA allocation and then amortization. So for this reason, it doesn't give a completely clear picture, is EUR 17.2 million in Q1 2023 and that's up 4.1% year-on-year compared to EUR 16.5 million in Q1 2022.

Net income finally is EUR 9.5 million in Q1 2023, and that's down 17.5% year-on-year compared to EUR 11.6 million in Q1 2022. The reason for this decline is mainly the interest cost. Because if you look at the net financial position, there is a big change compared to 1 year ago. And on top of that, interest rates have increased significantly. So there is, I think, you can check in the numbers like EUR 3.5 million of interest expense it was not there in Q1 2022.

Now before going into the performance of the divisions and the business lines, let's say something about the Italian mortgage market, which has been a driver of significant wins in our performance in, let's say, in the last 12 months. And you remember, the first half of 2022, the mortgage market was doing well and actually, we're quite positive or at least comfortable with an expectation of stability for the following period. But this is not what happened.

In fact, with inflation, we started seeing significant increasing interest rates. And we think that, that was the action of the central banks, was possibly one of the key drivers of what was, for us, a relatively unexpected evolution of the mortgage market. And basically, we started seeing a decline in Q3 that became a deeper contraction in -- at the end of 2022. And in Q1 2023, basically, the situation resembles that of Q4 2022. In fact, in Q1 2023, the market is -- the mortgage market in Italy is significantly down, both for purchase mortgages and remortgages. And the target again was not expected is the purchase mortgages.

If we look at the actual originations, this is the data from Assofin, we see that the drop of originations in euro terms of new originations was 25% in January year-on-year, 38% in February, 35% in March. So basically in Q1, the market contracted by 1/3. The gross originations by the way, are the main driver of our -- the majority of our mortgage revenues. And this is due, by the way, for 36.3% to a drop of purchase mortgages, the part that we actually through would be stable, whereas remortgages now have almost disappeared in Q1 2023. So the drop is not so big because there has already been an adjustment.

Looking at forward-looking indicators, we have the CRIF credit bureau inquiries, and they point to a decline of a similar entity in all demands of 2023, in particular, 23% in January, 25% in February, 24% in March and almost 26% in April. So if this is an indicator of what's going to happen, this confirms that the outlook of -- at least, for Q2 2023, of what happened in the early months of the year. In fact, what we say is that the market is likely to contract significantly in Q2 2023.

And on the other hand, we said that -- we reminded you that the market started contracting significantly in the second half of -- let's say, from September, to be more precise, of 2022. So in the coming quarters, we will have an easier comparison, clearly. And also, we have a feeling that in Italy, consumer confidence still remains reasonably good and the impression is that part of the slowdown of the market could be sort of a reflection towards people that have to adjust to the idea that interest rates are now going back to 1.5% or 2%. And once they realize that the affordability of how this remains good and unemployment is low and the economy is going okay. So people will eventually adjust to the idea that they have to pay a little bit more in interest and they go back to buy properties. This is our, for now, hope -- rationale hope. But -- and based on this, we will expect a better outlook for the second half of the year for the mortgage market.

Now having said this, we can focus more on the details, and we will first have from the Broking Division on page #19. And we see revenues of the Broking Division of EUR 41.3 million in Q1 2023, that's up 20.7% year-on-year compared to EUR 34.3 million in Q1 2022. But the reality is, of course, that we have made a very significant acquisition of the international entities were acquired at the beginning of February. So the consolidation area is not the same. And actually, this growth actually comes from mostly in terms of revenues, I would say, from the change in the consolidation area. And then I'll comment more.

In terms of EBITDA, this is flattish. It's EUR 12.3 million in Q1 2023 and it was EUR 12.3 million in Q1 2022. Of course, the margin is lower, the EBITDA margin. And this is both because we acquired businesses that have traditionally ahead and still have a lower EBITDA margin than the one of our Italian operations. But also because within Italy, we had a decline -- a very significant decline of the mortgage business, which historically has a higher EBITDA margin. So these 2 things impact the overall blended EBITDA margin of the Broking Division.

EBIT is also down. Here, I think there is a limited impact from [ EBITDA ]. So this is a relatively clean figure. But anyway, our focus in looking at the performance would be more the EBITDA. EBIT is EUR 9.9 million, and that's down 5.9% year-on-year compared to EUR 10.5 million in Q1 of 2022.

Looking at the individual business lines of the Broking Division. Well, let's say first, an overall comment. I think more or less, we did in line with what we wrote in previous press releases in terms of expectations and so on. Maybe I wouldn't say we were surprised, but still the mortgage market was quite weak. The other business lines that we expected them to be up year-on-year and they were up.

And I would say we have robust results from the international markets business line, basically, the business line that we created to contain -- basically the international entities, which are mostly doing by the way, insurance companies. And we had this strong decrease of mortgages mostly purchase mortgages. And we said the market was down 36.3% year-on-year. So we were affected in a similar way.

And what we expect going forward is basically an improvement. We see already one positive effect, which is growth of remortgage applications. This has been around already for a few months. Actually, this started already at the end of 2022. So there are lots of consumers that would like to -- they still have a variable mortgage and we want to switch to fixed. The problem is the banks are not very keen to do this transaction. So we get lots of applications and we closed a few. But still, this is -- it's better to have it than not to have it. And whereas purchase mortgages are just weak.

And regarding insurance broking, this is the good environment for insurance broking. And actually -- the good environment is basically an environment of inflation, because people see their premiums going up. You pay motor insurance, in particular, but all types of insurance as annual premiums. You see the premiums going up. And then what you decide to do is to shop around and possibly to switch. So this is helping demand. And this is visible in Italy, visible in Spain, maybe a bit less visible in France but also possibly because our French business is not as strong as what we have in Italy or Spain. But in general, the environment is favorable.

This is insurance broking in general. Here, under the insurance broking, the comment only refers to Italy but the concepts also apply to the international markets. Also, Telco & Energy Comparison is growing. This is -- here, what is growing is energy. And we continue to see price changes -- prices are going down, but lots of people have like fixed price contracts where the fixed price is expiring, so they really want to find alternatives, or a lot of people also have still variable price contracts and so they really shop around. And hopefully, and here, we are reasonably optimistic, especially with the expectation that some fixed price contracts will come back to the market. Because you remember, here, starting about -- around at the beginning of 2022, the market remained open. So we always have energy products to sell differently from other countries, but we lost all the fixed price products. So we only had adjustable priced products. And now we have some expectations that fixed-price products could come back, but we have to see.

E-Commerce Price Comparison is moderately up year-on-year and we can assume this should continue. By the way, one thing to point out is that now the Digital Markets Act, which will have an impact possibly on the competition from [ gold ] shopping will started to come into force. This is like -- this happened at the beginning of May, but the full application -- for the full application, it will take, I would say, probably [ 9 ] months, something like that. And we will see how things evolve. But in general, hopefully this should be favorable, at least this is intended to eliminate preferencing by gatekeepers, such as Google that operate dominant platforms like Google Search. So hopefully, if everything goes well, this should help us. But we really have to see how this is applied in practice. In the next 12 months, we tell the direction that this will take.

Finally, regarding the international market. Basically, we will -- we want to give some visibility to the new international business. And so we will comment about the international part, talking about this business line that we call international markets. And the companies that we acquired are producing, operating profitability that is higher than that recorded by the same companies in the corresponding months of 2022. So the companies have gone better than last year when they were not part of the group. And this is for 2 reasons, we think.

One is, well, inflation because these guys are selling most insurance. And second is -- are the operational improvements that we are driving in this company. So we are trying to apply some of our know-how to -- usually in order to functioning of this company. And we think that we will continue to see these favorable trends for the rest of 2023, again, thanks to the same factors. So inflation and operational improvements driven by our experience, let's say.

So this ends the part on the Broking Division. And now, Alessandro will continue with BPO.

[Alessandro Fracassi, executive]

Thank you, Marco, and thank you, everyone, for being on the call. We're on Page 21 with the BPO Division. I'll start just...

[Operator]

Please hold the line, the conference call will resume shortly.

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

Hello? Can you hear me?

[Alessandro Fracassi, executive]

Yes. Okay. Sorry, we had a problem on our site. So I will start -- so I am on Page 21 and commenting on the results of the BPO Division. So if we look at the revenues, they grew from the first quarter of last year from EUR 43.6 million to EUR 52.6 million, that's an increase year-on-year of 20.6%. The EBITDA, which, as Marco commented, is probably the best way to look at the performance -- the key indicator for the performance of the -- of all our businesses in operating terms, grew from EUR 9 million in the quarter -- in the first quarter of 2022 to EUR 11.1 million in the first quarter of 2023, that's an increase of 23.5%.

Just a little note on the EBIT, which grew 21.7% from EUR 6 million to EUR 7.3 million. But here, we should highlight that we still have not put in the calculation of the PPA effect for the acquisition of Trebi Generalconsult, which we finished -- which we closed at the end of October 2022. Therefore, this number will not remain similar, and we will see the impact during 2023.

Now let's go a level beyond this with a comment on what's behind these numbers. And as Marco has already basically pointed out, this is actually a solid result and it's a growth, both in terms of revenue and margin. Reality is most of it came from the change in the consolidation area. But even without that change, we would have seen roughly a 5% growth in revenues and a flattish EBITDA. So I mean results are -- I would say, even a little better than we expected and what we have told you at the end of last year.

So let's get into various business lines. And basically, we see a continuation of what was the second half of 2023. So we see a decline in the mortgage BPO. Marco has already commented a lot on this, and we see basically over 20% decline in the revenues here, which is basically, euro number, completely outbalanced by the real estate -- the growth in real estate services. But this growth in real estate services, unfortunately, which has basically -- this counterbalance, will probably end at the beginning -- with H1 2023 because that's when we will not have any more, the impact of the activities related to the Ecobonus. So the second part of the year for the real estate services BPO will not be as good as the first half.

But anyway, up to now, we are basically counterbalancing the decrease in the mortgage market with this. And then as Marco has commented in the second half, we will not see such a significant decrease, probably comparing to the second half of 2023 in the mortgage market.

The loans BPO and the investment services BPO are basically stable in terms of revenues and also related to the EBITDA margin is not really changing. Good news are coming from the Leasing and Rental BPO where we will also start including the numbers of our IT business dedicated to Leasing and Rental, which is a general -- Trebi Generalconsult. But here, the good news is that also without considering the contribution of Trebi, the acquisition we would have seen a double-digit organic revenue from Agenzia Italia. And this is coming especially from the long-term rent business because we are starting to see that the delivery of new vehicles to the rental -- to the long-term rental companies is normalizing. And therefore, relative to last year, we are able to grow, obviously, the rental companies are kind of the last in line to get the deliveries of new vehicles because these are the lowest margin sales for the OEMs -- for the automotive OEMs.

So here, positive news and maybe not as -- it will not remain as positive through the rest of the year, but we'll see clearly growth from this business line. Positive contribution is also driven by the insurance BPO business. And this is, again, both in terms of the -- both in organic terms and thanks to the acquisition, which we performed last year, especially the Onda acquisition, which was closed in the beginning of June 2022.

So overall, for the second quarter of 2023, we expect to see similar results of what we have done in the first quarter. And then we'll see what happens in the rest of the year, some -- the stability of some business lines it's clear and also the good prospects of the insurance and of the leasing and rental. What we need to understand is where the balance of the -- hopefully, the stabilization of the mortgage market and the disappearing instead of the Ecobonus business will bring us, if we look at inorganic terms. And then obviously, we still have the acquisition of Trebi, where we are working, and it's performing as we expected -- as we expect, so we have grown from relative to last year when anyway, it was not part of our numbers.

Finally, a note to say that even if against the background of -- a contraction in the mortgage market, we are seeing a revival of the commercial pipeline. So we have a couple of very interesting prospects, which again, I'm not sure there's going to be customers, but the pipeline for new customers in these businesses for a number of years have not been particularly positive. And instead already last year, we acquired a new customer, and now we have 2 in the pipeline. So I hope -- I think this confirms that a positive outlook in the medium term for the mortgage BPO area, even if now it's really dragging our numbers and not delivering results again because the market is contracting, as Marco said, over 30%.

So I think this ends the part of the BPO, and I will give it back to Marco for a comment on our net financial position.

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

Thank you, Alessandro. So just quickly on Page 24. Our net financial position, we were a negative EUR 195 million -- so a net of EUR 195 million as of December 31, 2022. At the end of March 2023, we were at EUR 326 million negative. And this is basically because we paid EUR 150 million for the international acquisitions of the Broking Division. And then, of course, we had some cash generation and a number of things fluctuating like working capital and so on. But this is very much what could be expected in terms of evolution.

On -- in many of our contracts with banks, when they look at covenants, the net financial position is actually adjusted also to consider as an equivalent to cash, our investment in MoneySuperMarket, not in all the contracts, but in majorities. And here, we have some improvement, let's say, because we had EUR 44 million MoneySuperMarket shares. At the end of last year, we still have the same number. But the same shares were worth EUR 95 million at the end of December. And now they worth EUR 125 million. And importantly, this has our net equity -- this changes, by the way, don't go to P&L. They go straight to other comprehensive look.

And the key thing is that if you also consider the value to MoneySuperMarket stakes, we have the sort of adjusted net financial position. It goes from minus EUR 100 million to minus EUR 201 million. So it's quite comfortable. And I would say, in general, given the operational performance and the current level of the net financial position, et cetera, and the availability of all these MoneySuperMarket shares, we should be, I mean, in a comfortable situation also with our bank covenants.

So this ends the presentation, and I would ask the operator to open it to questions. Thank you.

[Operator]

This is the conference call operator. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] The first question is from Aleksandra Arsova from Equita.

[Aleksandra Arsova, analyst]

Three questions from my end, actually 3 clarifications. The first one, maybe I didn't get the number of that one you were mentioning the broking EBITDA, the organic EBITDA, what was the decline organically?

Then the other two are on the net financial position on debt. As far as I see this year, you have something about EUR 70 million, EUR 80 million in debt repayment. Do you believe you will be able to pay this via available cash and free cash flow generated? Or do you need some refinancing?

And the second one is you mentioned that most of your covenants include the potential cash from MoneySuperMarket. But those covenants, not including this additional potential cash? At what level of net debt on EBITDA? And if you are seeing maybe some requests from some of the banks to maybe renegotiate the debt or just a little bit more color on this?

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

Okay. Well, I'd say, in terms of growth in EBITDA, I mean, we don't disclose the exact numbers. But we said the companies are doing better than last year. I think you can assume just by reasoning on this, the foreign companies, the contribution of between EUR 1.5 million and EUR 2 million in the 2 months. And that would be the decline without the acquisitions, and we don't provide precise numbers. But I think this is a calculation that is easily done along the lines that I described.

And in terms of debt payments, I think for now, we are comfortable. So we don't have to do any refinancing. It's true that you look at our repayment plan and there is a lump of repayments in -- especially at the end of -- starting from the end of 2023 and throughout 2024. And you know -- but also we had some cash available. So clearly, at a certain point, it depends on our operating performance and cash generation.

So if we remain at the current level of cash generation, then we will need to consume some of the available cash to repay the debt. So we'll end up with less cash or we'll sell some MoneySuperMarket shares, and this is like the baseline scenario. If we are lucky and the operating cash -- performance improved, also the cash generation will improve, it will be easier.

Of course, we would be happier if we had a repayment plan more spread out over time. There is no urgency to work on that if we have the opportunity. However, we agree it's better to move some payments from, say, 2024 to later years. And depending on -- also interest, the debt market and so on, banks are looking at things and so on, we might do a little bit of this. But again, we are quite comfortable with the current schedule. We should be able to deal with it with our problems. And same with covenants. Of course, we would prefer to have all the banks with the MoneySuperMarket shares as an adjustment to the covenants. And if we are able to do that, we will be happier. But again, that's not a requirement, let's say.

I would say, in general, the current debt position and -- compared to the available reserves of the cash generation, et cetera, is very comfortable. Of course, it constrains our ability to make acquisitions. So if we wanted to make a relevant acquisition, this would be problematic as of today, possibly not in 12 months' time, but we are a little bit constrained from this point of view. So if we are able to soften some of these constraints that -- that would be a positive in terms of flexibility more than anything.

[Aleksandra Arsova, analyst]

Okay. But so you don't see any pressure from banks on the covenant at the moment, just for confirmation?

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

No, no. Why would we see pressure? I mean, the covenants in June are all okay. End of year, this should be okay. If we are close or tight, we can sell a few MoneySuperMarket shares. So I mean, let's say, today, we keep an eye on it, but we are not concerned.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from Filippo Prini from Kepler.

[Filippo Prini, analyst]

Two questions from me. The first one is still on the evolution of the line of real estate appraisal in BPO Division. Is it possible, in part, to quantify the contribution of the business related to Ecobonus in this quarter or possibly if you want, also in 2022?

And second, still on more clarification, if I may, on the outlook for the Q2 of BPO Division. You said in your presentation that you expect Q2 2023 to deliver result comparable to those of Q1. Does it means that we should expect inorganic growth year-on-year or again, plus 5%? Or basically, simply suggesting to look at unchanged revenues and EBITDA organically in Q2 compared to Q1 2023?

[Alessandro Fracassi, executive]

Yes. Well, I'll start with the second one. I'm saying that the revenue and EBITDA level will be similar in Q2 relative to Q1 2023. That was the comment.

Then in terms of how much it comes from the Ecobonus, again, we don't disclose this, but you can assume that at least it's more than, let's say, 1/3 of the revenues come from that. So we will -- when that goes away, again, it doesn't expire on June 30 because these are things that are sort of like due diligences on what we do. So we will keep doing there. But if you have to look at medium term of 2024, that's the impact that we will see.

And I remember answering a question from you last year when you said what is going to happen. And I was at that time, positive because I thought that even if Ecobonus goes away, we still have the secondary market, but the reality is, in fact, we don't have a secondary market because they changed the laws in February. So -- and as everyone knows, this is because otherwise it will all go to debt -- to the public debt, and that could not be afforded by the government. But -- and so therefore, there will be no secondary market for tax credit.

If there has been, this would be a business that may be not the same level, but it would have gone on. Because, obviously, banks when they buy the tax credit, they need to have an appraisal or technique from the technical standpoint or from a tax standpoint. And this is the kind of things that we were doing here.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question is a follow-up from Aleksandra Arsova from Equita.

[Aleksandra Arsova, analyst]

Just a quick follow-up on BPO mortgages. You were mentioning that you are acquiring new customers. So just a clarification, you are stealing some customers from a competitor? Or you're just increasing the penetration of, let's say, new customers?

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

Yes. Well, it's a mixed situation. The clients that we acquired last year, which is starting to contribute this year, is actually a customer where we are getting a piece of business that was on ours in the past. But we are also hoping to increase the penetration in this client and not necessarily taking away customer -- from a competitor. Because the plan of the process that is now also -- to our competitor is not that bigger within that client. So we hope to increase that share or process that is outsourced.

And second, and in fact the -- and then for 1 of the 2 prospects that we have, it's about -- it's completely new customers, so it's not feeding market shares, while the second one would be a balancing effect and we would enter a customer that is with our competitor. So it's a mixed situation. A bit of both.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time.

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

Okay. Thank you. Maybe I'll just make -- Marco, again, a comment -- a final comment on the fact that we were impacted by a very deep contraction of the mortgage market in the last at least 2 quarters, and it will continue for a while. And our performance, however, of course, we made acquisitions and so on. But we think it was quite resilient. The business is increasingly more diversified than it used to be. And of course, this means also we have a negative surprise every now and then in 1 area or another.

But we are able to cruise through very difficult waters in a very safe way and actually this could even create opportunities. So I'm saying this because we think back to the situation of 10 years ago or 12 years ago, like 2012, and of course, there, the contraction of the mortgage market was much worse, was like 70%, 65%, not 36%. But still, even this contraction is very deepened and the reaction of the company -- that the performance of the company is very different.

And so we are -- I think I and Alex and everybody, we are quite proud of this transformation because it's really a different and much stronger group now. So this is just a comment on the side.

And with this, if there are no more questions, I think we can thank everybody for participating. And as always, you're welcome to contact us one on one for questions or anything or meet us one of the investor events that are planned.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you very much.

[Unknown Executive]

Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.