Gruppo MutuiOnline SpA

MIL:MOL

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Operator]

Good afternoon. This is the conference call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the presentation of Gruppo MutuiOnline Full Year 2020 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 of Gruppo MutuiOnline. Please go ahead, gentlemen.

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

Thank you. This is Marco, and welcome, everybody, to our full year 2020 presentation. We rely as usual on the document that is present on our website, and we will start from Page 17 with the full year highlights. And clearly, 2020 was a strong year for us. We had revenues of EUR 259.2 million, up 17.8% compared to EUR 219.9 million in 2019. The operating income in 2020 is EUR 63.1 million, and that's up 24.3% year-on-year compared to EUR 50.8 million in 2019. The EBIT margin is 24.4% in 2020, and that compares to 23.1% in 2019.

The net income is -- well, the net income requires some preliminary explanation, because we have a significant one-off benefit -- one-off impact from the tax revaluation of some intangible mostly assets of the group. Basically, there is -- in 2020, they introduced a new law in the summer giving to companies the possibility to step up the value of the assets in their accounts. This is applicable to companies that are using Italian GAAP. So it's not applicable to our parent company, but it is applicable to all the subsidiaries. And basically, according to this law, what you can do is to basically reassess the value of your assets.

And if it's above the book value, you can write-up the value of the asset. And so it means you have more assets and you also will create an equity reserve. And the new value of the asset can then be amortized, and the amortization is tax deductible. And this follows the ordinary periods of amortization of the different types of assets. So basically, this creates a tax benefit because you create an asset -- let's say, you recreate the regional value of the asset. You realign the asset with fair value and then you amortize it again and you save taxes because your taxable income in the future will be lower.

The cost of this measure, which was enacted to help companies increase their equity, the book equity, as the main reason, is 3% of the net amount of the write-up of the asset. So if an asset was worth, I don't know, EUR 1 million, and you write it up to EUR 5 million, you pay 3% on the delta, which is EUR 4 million. And then the entire asset value, including the extra, will be amortizable. And of course, as you amortize the extra EUR 4 million over the years, you pay less in [indiscernible]. This is the way it works. And if you want to understand better, it's worth reading the law or going directly to the source. So this is just a qualitative explanation.

This is what happens in the ITA GAAP statements of the subsidiaries. Our consolidated report is IFRS. And under IFRS, companies are not allowed to recognize revaluations, so you don't see the step-up in asset values, et cetera. The only thing you see in IFRS is the creation of the deferred tax asset. Basically under IFRS, we have to look at the foreseeable tax benefit of this revaluation, and we recognize that the deferred tax asset, which is -- by the way, which is not discounted. So it's the sum of the future savings without a discount. And this is recognized as lower taxes.

So we have -- instead of having a tax line where we have a negative sign with a positive sign, we have a positive sign because of this impact. And of course, this increases the net income. So in the P&L, you see more -- the impact on the tax line and on the net income. And on the balance sheet, you see the deferred tax asset and, obviously, more equity. This is the way it works. And this is not a professional explanation, but hopefully, it is understandable. And the benefit of this tax revaluation is EUR 85.1 million. And that's why we have EUR 130.7 million of net income. Excluding this tax benefit, the net income is EUR 45.6 million, which is up 12.1% year-on-year compared to the EUR 40.6 million of the previous year. And the net income margin is 17.6% in 2020 and 18.5% in 2018.

So having said this, we can move to the next page with the performance by division. And basically, here, you can see that our Broking Division had a very strong performance in the year with revenues of EUR 111.1 million, which is up 28% year-on-year and an operating income of EUR 41.9 million, which is up 59% year-on-year. And of course, this means that the EBIT margin has increased. And in fact, it is 37.7% for the Broking Division in 2020, but it was 30.3% in 2019.

Looking at the BPO Division. Instead -- I mean, we see that growth in the revenues, the EUR 148.1 million in 2020 and that's up 11% year-on-year. But operating income is EUR 21.2 million, which is down 13.1% year-on-year. And that means an EBIT margin of 14.3% in 2020, which compares to 18.4% in 2019. And then we will comment more on the drivers of performance of the two divisions later in the presentation. So I'm not adding much here.

Now let's look at the comments on the business and the outlook. As always, our most important reference market is the residential mortgage market, also because it is the one that tends to change more from one year to the next. And the residential mortgage market in Italy has been growing year-on-year in recent months, at least until the end of 2020. And basically, what is happening is that purchase mortgages are growing, and there is a progressive contraction of remortgage volumes. In fact, you will look at the Assofin figures and you see that looking at all the mortgages together, originations were up 19.1% year-on-year in October, 7.7% in November and 2.3% in December.

And then they started declining year-on-year in January. And this is basically explained by the fact that purchase mortgages have been growing more or less stable over the period. While at the beginning, you still had a growth year-on-year of remortgages. And then as we have anticipated, we started seeing a year-on-year decline in remortgages also because the end of '19 was a very strong period. And the combination of the two finally meant a decline in market in general. The data from CRIF, the credit bureau, basically are in line with this type of story.

What can we expect for 2021? Well, for Q1, basically, we can expect growth in purchase mortgages, I would say, and a decline in remortgages year-on-year. Then the net effect of the two is a bit difficult to gauge. And in fact, the net effect in January was negative. And then after Q1, we will have a difficult comparison year-on-year, not difficult because it will be challenging, but it's because we are comparing with a very strange period of last year. So in Q2 of last year, we had amounts of lockdown. But then at the end, we also had a strong recovery because of the pent up demand or the pent up -- all the contracts that have been frozen for a while. So -- but still, I would say the outlook is this -- of growth in purchase mortgages is expected a decline in remortgages.

Now what is the business outlook? Here, we have, first, on Page 20, some generic comments, a bit qualitative, let's say. Basically, we think that we have a strong legacy rich business, is the ones that have worked for a while. We have made some nice new acquisitions that contribute -- will contribute to our growth. And also, we believe our numbers, say we have certain level of solidity, let's say. And that means we are cautiously optimist when we look at 2021. Also because we think that, in general, the situation in Italy seems to be more or less under control. And certainly, the country seems to be in terms of government and so on in capable hands. And so we should be able to navigate to the situation of the country. And as a company, we should be able to navigate in any kind of fee. We don't expect particularly difficult fee, but we are okay in any situation.

[Alessandro Fracassi, executive]

Also the company is in capable hands.

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

Also. Yes but -- hopefully, hopefully. And then one comment that we have put here, but could go anywhere is just to inform because the figure would be then in the annual report, but it's useful to have it as a reference. For transparency, we have 7.5 million Cerved shares, and it's not shown in the net financial position. And the company, Cerved, was the object of a takeover bid. So we will think what to do about this. But what is important is just to let our shareholders know exactly what we have.

Regarding the details of the individual businesses of our group. Let's go to Page 21 with the Broking Division. The Broking Division did exceptionally well, as you know. Again, the forecast for '21 will depend on also how the general situation evolves. The pandemic, as you know, is not necessarily negative for our business, at least for the Broking Division, because the limitations to the use of physical channels tend to favor our growth in the adoption of our services.

Looking at the business lines one by one. Mortgage Broking, you have the revenues in the first half and second half. And you see we did well in the second half, while the first half was affected by the lockdown. Here, what happens in 2021 will depend, to a large extent, on the general evolution of the market. What will help us, hopefully, is an increase in the penetration of the online channel. What will work as a break, what we counterbalance this is the fact that we are much more exposed to refinancing volumes than we have to purchase mortgages. Basically we have the higher market sharing refinancings and these are expected to decline.

On the next page, you have Consumer Loan Broking. In general, we have put all the chart -- done all the chart with the same scale. So you can see what is big and what is small. And Consumer Loan Broking is alas small, but at least -- but it's a business that we think has potential. It is -- compared to other countries, this could be much bigger. But in Italy, it has not taken off for now. The important thing to say is we seem to have more or less turned around this business, at least stabilized it, and we'll see if we are able to deliver, as we would like, a growth in 2021. But basically, we have done a lot of work to increase the product supply and also we work on the website, the user experience and so on. And so in -- if there are no surprises on the market side, here, we should be able to see growth again. And again, it will not be a revolutionary growth, but this is a business, which, longer term, could have good potential.

Then if you look at the Insurance Broking, Insurance Broking is very interesting because we have been growing in Insurance Broking double digit, I think, year-after-year in a very stable way for a long number of years. And this has continued and is -- I mean, we assume it could continue in 2021. So here, there is no particular catalyst. But it is a business that has now reached an efficient scale, and it continues to grow. And obviously, the margins on the incremental revenues here are quite nice. So this is a business that will start to -- has already started to give us some satisfaction. And hopefully, we'll continue to do so as we grow and, hopefully, as we also take some market share from the market leader.

In E-Commerce Price Comparison on Page 23, you can see we had a bad start. This is -- you already know pretty well because physical stores were closed, and Amazon was not spending on advertising. And -- so we may be able to replicate, I think, the type of growth and profitability because not only there is a growth in the first half, but there was also very strong profitability. What we should -- what we are willing to do is to grow revenues in 2021, but that will cost us much more money in terms of marketing. And the foreseeable contribution of the business line to the operating income of the division is lower in absolute terms than in 2020.

Then finally, Telco & Energy Comparison, which you see, was marginal for us. But starting from 2021, should be a meaningful business line. The company that we acquired did a bit more than -- between EUR 11 million and EUR 12 million of revenues. So next year, we will have that kind of contribution, could be a bit less, a bit more, but -- because also this benefited from the lockdown and also we are not as familiar with this business as we are with the others. But we will now have a very significant position in this market, which we are now considering the strategic market or businesses as the other businesses of the Broking Division. And clearly, again, here, you'll have just the growth because of the comparison. So this ends the comment on the 3 division. So Alessandro?

[Alessandro Fracassi, executive]

Yes. I'll take over on the BPO part. Performance has not been spectacular for the broking business. We have grown in terms of revenues, but we have seen a reduction in operating margin, even in absolute terms. Then at an EBITDA level, it's less significant than what you see on an EBIT level, but anyway, our profitability went down. The reason why the profitability went down was already discussed along the year because we have seen that from the beginning of the year. And there is one thing that is not worrisome, which is the revenue mix effect in the Mortgage BPO, where we have had a -- we hear really very, very significant growth on the para-notary services that I remind to everyone are connected to the refinancing part of the business.

These para-notary services have anyway lower margins than the rest, but then, let's say, the traditional core BPO mortgage services, but debt cost -- the cost base is mainly variable. We basically purchase and we sell some notary services, adding some value in this. Therefore, the fact that margins are lower is not worrisome on this part as there is really no risk connected in having lower margin. Then we have added really significantly disappointing performance on the Insurance BPO, mainly due to its small scale. But -- and the impact of COVID, which was even more significant on a smaller scale. Fortunately, we have strategically assessed -- addressed this problem as we have had the opportunity to comment with the acquisition of Gruppo Lercari.

So 2021 will be a transition year, while we incorporate our credit system business into Gruppo Lercari. But let's say that from a strategic standpoint, so if we had not done the acquisition, we would have had to think on how to turn around the business. And then again, there are some initiatives that were -- there are still in embryonic level. And that -- like the one of our opportunity called Centro Finanziamenti S.p.A., which is basically a lending entity that is a sandbox for experience for digital processes then we intend to sell to banks. And with volumes that were really, really very low during this year. And therefore, again, we had a negative contribution to the overall division in terms of profitability.

What do we expect for 2021? Well, first, there will be growth just because we have had, obviously, the acquisition of Gruppo Lercari. So we will see that on a comparable basis instead on a like-for-like basis. We would have still probably see growth and, let's say, in the small single -- sorry, high single-digit for 2021. Although, again, here, we have so many business lines and the dynamics of the different business line can have an impact on the overall division that it's difficult to assess. So let me go through the different business line and tell you what we saw in 2020 and what we expect to happen in 2021. Okay. As I said, the BPO -- Mortgage BPO did well overall, thanks, again, to the growth of the para-notary services. 2021 again, bearing any new and unpredictable effect of measures that we do not expect but again, this pandemic has been full of surprises. So I will not take any chances here.

But let's say, if we remain in a stable environment, the one that we are more or less seeing in this moment, what we will see is that we will have a small growth probably or stable revenues, but we will see a rebalancing effect. So we will see the para-notary services, in fact, going down. Marco has already commented on this as overall market trend. And we will see traditional services going up also because we have some new clients or some existing clients that have started -- that are restarting to originate mortgages. You will remember the story with ING that have been stopped by Bank of Italy. Now it has been allowed to restart getting new customers, and we are still father than ING. So we should see growth there and also we have acquired a new customer in this area.

On the other hand, we have lost a customer, not because we did not perform well, but because IWBank, which was part of Gruppo UBI, was the online bank of UBI Group, has been substantially refocused when -- actually was acquired by Intesa. It will just become a part of the, let's say, private bank within Intesa Group of Fideuram. And therefore, they will stop doing mortgages or they will do it in a very different way, basically just sending people to the Intesa branches, so they will not have any more -- the online process. But this is for now then is basically given they have committed all their attention to doing the integration of UBI and therefore, anything that could, in any way, delay the integration effort has been postponed to better days. And so maybe there will be something coming up, but after the integration of UBI within Intesa has been performed during the month of April.

Looking at Real Estate Services. Also, this one was a little disappointing. We expect it to grow. But obviously, there was the effect of COVID and also the new significant client, which is, again, Intesa, did not ramp up as quickly as we expected. We have seen it be finally effect at the end of the year. So we hope that 2021 will grow. Although, again, here, we have some contrasting trends, and it's difficult to assess completely the outcome. Again, on the positive side, we will, for sure, see our volume of retail evaluations grow because Intesa finally reached the target level that they had told us.

And secondly, we have entered a series of new -- let's say, we are offering a series of new services, which are connected to the incentives for restructuring houses that the government has put in place. It's called Ecobonus. It's basically if you improve the green performance of your house, for example, by isolating it, by changing the fixtures, windows and so on, then you write up to 110% of support by the state. All of these -- and banks -- and this incentive is given in form of a tax break over a number of years, but this tax credit can be bought by banks. And so a lot of banks have decided to offer the purchase of this tax credit to their clients that do this kind of refurbishing on the homes. And we help banks basically doing the due diligence -- during the due diligence of the acquisitions of this tax credit -- of this tax benefits. And this is something that we perform through this business line.

So this will be on the positive side. On the negative side, again, connected to the Intesa UBI merger, we were present on both sides of the equation, but our pricing on the UBI side was significantly more favorable. And then with Intesa taking over, the sum of volumes will grow at the price of Intesa. And there is obviously an impact on price and on margins for -- not complete your margin because there are some reasons for which any way Intesa price were costing less. But anyway, we will see an impact on price. Overall, we think there will be a growth in revenues, but some reduction in margins also because the Ecobonus part of services -- it's with slightly lower margins than the rest.

For the loans part, and I'm turning to Page 26. This was the best-performing part, together with the own leasing and rental business line. This is one where we have grown during 2020, both revenues and margins and percentage margin. This was done thanks to the fact that the management of the business line reacted quickly to the COVID crisis, was able to counter the effect of reducing volumes on the traditional business, which is mainly CQS and CQS was down in the market in 2020.

Adding to its portfolio services the support for originating SME loans guaranteed -- with a state guarantee, again, another form of support that the government has given to enterprises -- to small and medium enterprises. And that was thrown on the shoulder of banks in terms of operating difficulty. They have not -- the government has not been able to do that with vaccination, but they've done it for liquidity purposes to small and medium enterprises. So they've thrown the problem on the shoulder of somebody else. This somebody else is the banks. The banks needed help in processing all these loans. And we have been able to provide this help, and this has been a significant ambition.

As I have said previously, now we think that the opportunity -- this part will decline in 2021, but we hope to transform these revenues, which anyway will remain, but they will -- we expect them to be reduced. But you expect to see some additional and more stable revenues coming from the servicing of these portfolios. And we have already signed on some of the clients that we had in the origination phase also for the servicing phase. By the way, this will be a very interesting market for future years also because, unfortunately, I believe that a lot of NPL will come out of these loans.

And the state guarantee should hold, but banks will have to be very careful in handling the guarantee and having good services or helping them doing all the steps will be important because I think that the government will try to avoid as much as they can legally do to pay these guarantees. But again, this is just a personal comment. So as a result of the -- and by the way, 2021, the traditional market should instead recover. So what will be the result of these 2 contracting trends? It's most likely because it was so positive in 2020, a reduction of turnover, but profitability should basically, in terms of percentage -- in percentage terms remain the same.

Now in terms of Insurance BPO. As we said -- as I have commented already, it was sort of the Cinderella in the BPO Division. And thanks to the acquisition now of Gruppo Lercari, instead we have a strong position in the market. We are focused now in integrating systems and operations. So with Gruppo Lercari, it will be a transition year. Also because we will restructure a little bit of business as we include it into the Lercari Group. So there will be probably also some restructuring costs in doing this. But again, here, it's all positive. You already see the impact on revenues and there was also a contribution, obviously, to the EBIT just for 1 month in 2020. But anyway, 2021 will be instead a year where we will see all the revenues of Lercari added to the revenues that we are already doing, and the profitability of an healthy and the right scale business.

In terms of Investment Services business line, it is a business line that remained basically stable, where a good part of the -- a good first half, when there was a lot of rebalancing done in the portfolios of our clients, and therefore, a lot of work to do. Was more stable in the second part of the year, and so more or less, as you see, we have posted similar numbers to the one of 2019. We expect growth in 2021 here because we have acquired some contracts. It will be active most probably starting in May. But also, our main client here, which I remind to everyone, is [ the motor ], is doing very well in the first quarter in terms of volumes that we process and clients that it's acquiring. So that is, obviously, a boost to our revenues in this area.

Finally, talking about our Leasing and Rental business line. This is, again, a nice surprise. It was one of the business line that was impacted heavily by the lockdown. As you remember, even all the public offices that enabled you to register a car were shutdown during the lockdown. So some areas of our business went to 0 in those months, but we recovered with the market in the second half. And also in the last quarter, we had a one-off activity, which is connected to the [Foreign Language] you want to call them. So the taxes was raised for owning a car, which were -- because of a change in the law, they had to be paid in a very different way that created a lot of complexity that a lot of the clients were not able to handle. So they resorted to us, and this has enabled a very -- this business line to post a very good result in Q4.

As we look to 2021, again, mix effects. We will not see this one-off connected to the stamps. We will -- we expect to see a recovering market overall year-on-year. There will be some inefficiency introduced by the new certificato, Unico di Circolazione, which is basically a new digital document that should basically substitute to paper documents that were existing before, connected to owning a car. Unfortunately, in Italy, sometimes, we are able -- even when we want to introduce efficiency, digitalizing a process is making it more -- instead more complex. The digitalization process was stopped for small agencies -- car processing agencies -- type of processing agencies in the territory and was not stopped for mass processing as our activities too. And therefore, here, we need to assess if there will be inefficiencies and also if we can obtain from the government a change in the registration authorities of cars, if we can change the processes for mass processing like the one that we do.

Final note to say that on February 28, 2021, the group has acquired the remaining 50% stake of Agenzia Italia from Gruppo Finanziaria Internazionale. You remember that, that was already something we expected to do, but we have accelerated. This was supposed to happen in another couple of years. And we have basically paid EUR 35 million for this 50% and -- which was very close to the estimated liability that we had on our balance sheet. At the same time, we have sold 15.5% stake to the management of the subsidiary, which previously already held this percentage, but in a indirect way through the vehicle that was joined between Gruppo Finanziaria Internazionale and the management.

So the management has remained with us. And actually, we have, again, created another agreement -- a joint put and call agreement with the management in very similar terms that we had with Gruppo Finanziaria Internazionale. But this maturity is now again another 5 years. So we're actually very happy to have aligned interest with the management of this business line for the next 5 years. And management has been shown during 2020 it's very capable, very reactive and was able to navigate the situation that was difficult, especially for this business line during 2020.

This finishes the overview of the BPO. So I'll pass it back to Marco to have some comments on cash and dividends.

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

Thank you, Alessandro. Some final comments on the net financial position and then on the dividend. On Page 42, you have the net financial position for the year. And what is worth commenting here is only one point. Basically, the net financial position is quite favorable, let's say. So we, basically -- in particular, the amount of cash on the books in the bank is EUR 122 million. And the comment I want to make is only one, which is the fact that -- well, a couple of comments, actually.

One is we were also able to optimize this by, in particular, with the Lercari acquisition being basically agreeing on partially deferred payments. So that from part of the price was only partially paid in 2020, and we will have to pay, I think, around EUR 25 million, something like that as the remainder of the initial price over the course of 2021. We did that out of caution, basically. And so -- and this helped, obviously, the cash position. And also we have an effect that was already partly visible at the end of Q3. I think it was already mentioned in the press release of Q3. This has to do with our Leasing/Rental BPO business, where we pay on behalf of the owners of the different vehicles -- we pay the stamp duty, the ownership stuff basically on the vehicles, and they change the way this is paid.

And this had also created the opportunity in terms of more revenues and expected revenues during 2020. But also the other part of the impact is that we received -- because of the complexity of this and the uncertainty, we received the money to pay these taxes -- these stamp duties, whatever, in advance from the fleet owners. So we have a significant amount of cash. It's around -- you will see it in the annual report. There is around EUR 25 million negatively of cash. I think it was EUR 16 million in Q3. That is a short-term advance that we have, but will be used to pay on behalf of our clients. And this is shown in the cash, of course, but it's not shown out of the liability here, but it is in the current liabilities of the group. So the net financial position is very nice, but is also nice because of these two things. And finally, just as a comment, we said it before, just as a reminder, the net financial position doesn't include the value of the Cerved shares.

And final point is the dividend proposal, yes. And our proposal -- the proposal of the Board is to pay EUR 0.40 per share of dividend, which we think is a balanced proposal, giving on one hand the strength of our performance. On the other hand, the fact that we may have opportunity to -- for capital allocation in the future. And we want to move in any case in a progressive way and be progressive with the distributions.

So this ends the presentation, and we hand it back to the operator for questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Aleksandra Arsova with Equita.

[Aleksandra Arsova, analyst]

A couple of questions from my end. So with regards to mortgages and residential mortgage real estate market, so do you expect any impact or what you foresee in the case of a gradual increasing interest rate? Do you already see some changes in terms of the macro mortgages or what do you expect on the base of your past experience? And then another question. You were mentioning the fact that the ongoing decrease in remortgaging. And so as far as I know, the fees that you received by your clients for remortgages are lower in percentage terms vis-à-vis the fee you receive on new purchase mortgages.

So it is correct to assume that if there is a flattish decreasing but not such a significant decrease in the total mortgage market because new mortgages increase, but remortgaging decrease, so you could still experience uninterrupted value? And then I will -- I have a question on potential M&A. So you just closed two new deals, Gruppo Lercari in the BPO and the SOS Tariffs in the broking. Do you have any other pipeline in terms of M&A, leading the prospect or similar segments, which are very active and it could be interesting for your future strategy? And then -- so these two at the moment.

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

Okay. Alessandro, I think I'll start the questions. Okay. The impact of the interest rates on the mortgage market, it's always difficult to assess. We think a moderate increase in interest rates will not affect the purchase mortgage market. It is a bit less obvious what will happen in that case to the remortgage market. The obvious answer would be that it just depends more. But there is also the possibility that if there are people that have kept adjustable mortgages, they might want to take the last train to a fixed rate. That could create some unexpected demand for remortgages again. Our base case is interest rates will slowly go up. Remortgages will contract year-on-year.

But if the movements are sharp, different things could happen. In any case, it's hard to -- it's not fully rational. And today, we used to have a lot of people with adjustable rate mortgages paying close to 0. Those -- they start seeing a direct increase in the same portfolio. Then regarding the lower fees on -- this is Mortgage Broking. On remortgages, this is true for remortgages worth 2/3 as of percentage fees and more or less of a purchase mortgage. And so clearly, if, let's say, our total volumes remain flattish, but the mix becomes heavier on purchase mortgages, we might still have an increase in revenues. Obviously, what will happen to our total volumes depends on the market and our market share. So overall, it's hard to say what will happen to us. But in theory, the answer is yes. There is a possibility that fees go down, and we still have a positive effect because of the mix.

[Alessandro Fracassi, executive]

Marco, can I add just one thing? That anyway, one thing is the market, and one thing is our percentage in the 2 segments. So it's true that we earn more on purchase mortgages, but our penetration of purchase mortgages is lower than our penetration of refinancing. So if it remains flattish at the market level, we still might see that it's not flattish for us because we are more exposed to refinancing.

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

And finally, the M&A pipeline. Well, basically -- doing the acquisition of Lercari and the acquisition of SOS Tariffs was a lot of work. And that has been -- that was very demanding on a lot of people in the organization. And now we are quite busy in the two divisions, integrating the businesses. So our focus in 2021 will be on what we already have. Then there's always some pipeline of smaller things, opportunities. And also there are unexpected things that come up. So we don't rule out the possibility of doing other M&A during the year. But the focus is certainly more on integrating what we have acquired than looking for other things. And again, we don't rule out whether that we could do small things or whatever opportunities show up by themselves.

[Aleksandra Arsova, analyst]

Okay. And just a very short follow-up question. You were mentioning that your market share in remortgaging and new mortgages. So even after the -- just can you remind us on your market share, especially after the increase in the digital channels over 2020?

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

Well, no. I mean the problem is it's very difficult to estimate the market shares, and these are not reliable numbers. So we don't disclose figures because it would be very difficult to back them up. Even having estimates for ourselves is difficult. So I have to pass on this question.

[Operator]

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

[Filippo Prini, analyst]

I've got three, if I may. The first one is on -- if you have any specific expectation for mortgages related to the renovation works, of course, linked to the superbonus, the Ecobonus. So if -- maybe it's part of this business that could add some growth in 2021, partly offsetting the specific line of refinancing? The second one is on the E-Commerce business line. If I got correctly, you're guiding for a decline of marginality -- margins of this business line. But I didn't get, if you will, for sure increase the marketing expenses to keep the revenues growing or maybe if it's just an option, because at the end of the day the EBIT will decline anyway. And the third one is a clarification on the fiscal realignment of the intangibles. I've read on some financial newspaper that the government initial finance will think about a possible review of the terms of an increase of the upfront payment and extension on the years of amortization. So asking if you see any risk or given that you have closed application, there's nothing to be worried about.

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

Okay. The third one is really a good -- an interesting question, but let's start from the first. Loans linked to the superbonus. So here maybe Alessandro will give better idea than I do. But basically, the superbonus, the Ecobonus, whatever, is more for the, what we call, that was basically -- it's not for the individual owners with some exceptions, which are the owners of single family homes. But the feeling is that, in most cases, this will be used by joint groups of owners. And so it will not be a retail mortgage. I don't know, Alessandro, because our business...

[Alessandro Fracassi, executive]

No, no, let me add on this. Basically Marco is right. There are some financing connected to these efforts, but these are normally not backed by mortgages. It would add cost over it, which doesn't make sense considering that the financing is not such a big part because, anyway, the amount -- the percentage amount of the incentive is very high. And therefore, even if the bank will upfront the money that is necessary, it will basically take as a collateral the fact that you will -- that it will buy from you the credit afterwards. So therefore, we haven't seen mortgages connected to this measure.

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

Regarding what we are saying about E-Commerce, yes, we are saying that the contribution to EBIT, whatever, will be lower than in -- likely be lower than in 2020. Let's say -- I would say the base scenario is we will have a little bit of growth year-on-year. And that will require much more marketing spend. But that's not for sure, if we see -- we have an optimum outcome in terms of -- if we can have a better outcome by having a small contraction in revenues, we might consider that. So I would say that the base case is small growth in revenues and lower operating income, but that we are very flexible and we will decide based on how the situation evolves, the return on marketing, the cost of marketing. You have also seen -- and this is part of the reason why the margin is lower. If you watch TV, you have seen that we are doing some television, which we were not doing the year before. So it's all these factors together.

Finally, the super question is about the fiscal realignment and whether the Italian state will change the rules. Basically, we have done our -- taken our decision and then our calculation based on the current laws. So the current laws says you pay 3% and you do the realignment and you amortize over the ordinary tax amortization period for the asset. If the Italian state, which, by the way, has done similar things in the past, decides to change the rules, this could affect us. This could affect us because -- well, first of all, our choice -- we have made our decision and recognized the benefit, as prescribed by the accounting principles, et cetera, when the operating companies decide to do the realignments.

The operating companies will have to present their tax returns in a few months. And we'll have to confirm their decision when they present the tax returns. So before then, if they say you have to pay 20%, we are able to walk back and not do it. Basically, we don't exercise the option in the tax return. Obviously, we would also have to restate the -- I think or correct -- I don't know exactly how it works -- of the operating companies, but that would not be a problem. That's feasible. So the Italian state could decide to change this, and we could decide to do it even if it's less beneficial or we could walk out until the moment we present -- we file the tax return, so I think it will be again in -- after June.

And then regarding the probability that they do something, well, I think it's a matter of the edge of reliability [ even if it's about split ] because clearly, this is a very favorable tax benefit. I don't know, if for some reason, they want to -- someone else decides to change their minds, et cetera. Obviously, by attractively changing the tax laws that have guided decisions of listed companies, and it's not only us but a number of others, is not a great message. So there is -- we can say, certainly, if they change the rules, apart from, again, the message it is as to reliability of what to do with doing the laws, but we will be able to reassess what to revalue, what not to revalue and what to do. And of course, if we do that, we'll keep the market informed. And if we have to reassess this deferred tax asset, obviously, we will do that as well. By the way, Telecom Italia is like EUR 6 billion of this.

[Filippo Prini, analyst]

No. And in fact, as I said, I was making a reference to this example highlighted by a colleague.

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

And hopefully, they are able to make sure that -- to talk to people and convince them not to change this. But I don't know. We'll meet maybe this year.

[Operator]

The next question is a follow-up from Aleksandra Arsova with Equita.

[Aleksandra Arsova, analyst]

Sorry, very shortly on my end. Just a question on the EBIT of the BPO in the last or 2020 because it was negative year-on-year, but it increased in the fourth quarter. Is this due to the increase, at least due to the recover of the car leasing business, which the -- which one-off you mentioned before? Or are there any other reasons? And then very -- the last one. A couple of months ago, there was the rejection of the procedure for the dispute against Google. So what are your next move after this rejection?

[Alessandro Fracassi, executive]

Yes. Okay. I'll take the first one. And the answer is, yes, part of it is due to the good performance of the automotive. There is also the EBIT due to Lercari. So there is also that addition to the EBIT of the division. Even if it's just 1 month, Lercari is a significant size, so.

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

And the other question, well, we -- basically, the -- there is a decision due by the European Court of Justice, so something like that by the European body of appeal against the decision of the European Commission, basically Google appeal to the original decision. And it could make sense to wait for their decision hopefully confirming the sign because that might include some additional information that could be useful for the next moves. And again, what we lost was the possibility to apply a simplified procedure, which was considered not applicable to anti -- enough cases of -- or anti-competition cases of this type.

But there was no decision on the merit basically -- on the substance of the claim or the right of damages and so on. So that's still a very open road. It might make sense if you may do it differently, but it might make sense to wait for the decision of this Court of Justice. Also, the other point is normally an Italian court would -- if we filed anything, would put it on hold anyway pending the appeal. So that would -- in the end -- until the appeal has taken place, all is kind of frozen irrespective of the strategy that one decides to follow.

[Operator]

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

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

Okay. Then we thank everybody for participating to our call, and we'll talk to you either at the STAR conference or at the next call, or when you want to call us. Thank you.

[Alessandro Fracassi, executive]

Thank you, everyone. Bye-bye.

[Francesco Masciandaro, executive]

Bye.

[Operator]

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