Gruppo MutuiOnline SpA

MIL:MOL

Earnings Call Analysis

Positive Performance in a Challenging Market

In a tough mortgage market, the company's revenue grew by 30% in 2023, reaching EUR 404 million. EBITDA increased to EUR 108 million, a 22% growth, but EBIT declined slightly due to acquisition-related amortizations, dipping from EUR 66.5 million in 2022 to EUR 63 million in 2023. Despite higher interest costs and taxes, net income was solid at EUR 35 million, albeit 25%-26% lower than the previous year. The Insurance Broking segment saw a 20% rise, buoyed by increased premiums and commission inflation. A standout was the Telco & Energy Comparison, which resulted from operational improvements and market shifts fostering contract switches. There's optimism for 2024, especially with anticipated government-triggered demand from liberalization. The international markets' contribution was significant, with revenues of EUR 53 million in 11 months. The company expects single-digit growth in revenues and EBITDA for 2024.

A Strong Finish with Solid Yearly Growth Despite Acquisition Effects

The company closed 2023 on a positive note, boasting a robust fourth quarter with a 33% increase in revenues compared to Q4 of the prior year. This surge in earnings led to a year with considerable growth in EBITDA by 22%, reaching EUR 108 million. However, the acquisitions also meant higher amortization costs, creating a drag on net income which fell by about 26%, standing at EUR 35 million.

Broking Division Outperforms with Acquisitions Enhancing Revenue Expansion

The Broking Division was a highlight in 2023, delivering strong results with a notable 43% rise in revenues, culminating at EUR 188 million. EBITDA for the division soared nearly 30% even as margin percentages showed a slight reduction, indicative of the expansion efforts and incorporation of new businesses which have chipped away at the profit margins.

Mortgage Market Headwinds Mitigated by Diversified Business Lines

The Italian mortgage market presented challenges, contracting at significant rates, which impacted the company's Credit Broking segment with a 15% decline in revenues. Nonetheless, the diversification across various sectors like Insurance Broking and Telco & Energy Comparison, which saw growth of around 20% and exceptionally strong performance respectively, helped cushion the blow.

Digital Legislative Changes Pose Opportunity to E-Commerce Segment

While performance in the E-Commerce Price Comparison segment was hit by changes in search engine policies which favored producers over comparison services, upcoming regulations, specifically the Digital Markets Act in March 2024, could level the playing field, potentially rejuvenating this high-margin segment.

BPO Division Growth Primarily Fueled by Acquisitions

The BPO Division expanded, with revenues growing around 20%, albeit EBITDA growth lagged slightly behind. The EBITDA margin saw a decrease from 23.2% to 22%, largely due to acquisitions such as the Trebi Generalconsult deal in 2022. Despite this, the BPO Division is cautiously expected to continue its upward trajectory with modest single-digit growth in both revenues and EBITDA for 2024.

Anticipated Recovery in Retail Lending and Mortgages to Bolster 2024 Outlook

The easing of interest rates is likely to stimulate the credit markets, with the retail lending and mortgage scene poised to make a comeback. Although the wind-down of Ecobonus-related activities presents some downside risk, the anticipation of improved market conditions provides an optimistic view for the fiscal year ahead.

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q4

[Operator]

Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the presentation of Gruppo MutuiOnline Fourth Quarter 2023 Results. [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 this is Marco. Welcome everybody to our call. And we will, as always, regarding the document present on our website, we start on Page 17 for the full year highlights. And overall, 2023 was a good year especially taking into account the very unfavorable development of the mortgage markets throughout the year started well, and then the mortgage market deteriorated. And in terms of results, the revenues of EUR 404 million, which is up 30% compared to EUR 311 million in 2022.

Of course, this is partly due to the acquisitions that we made, but still it's a satisfactory result [indiscernible] organic part was up.

The EBITDA for the year is EUR 108 million in 2023, and that's up 22% compared to EUR 89 million in 2022. The EBITDA margin is 26.8% in 2023 that compares to 28.5% in 2022. If we look at the EBIT, that's actually down year-on-year, it's EUR 63 million in 2023, while it was EUR 66.5 million in 2022 but we have to consider the fact that there was -- this was affected by purchase price allocation, amortization -- PPA amortizations, due to the acquisitions. So basically, we make an acquisition, we recognize typically intangible assets that are then amortized sometimes even with the past amortization rate if the assets are like software and then there were in our EBIT, EUR 11 million assets -- there was EUR 11 million of PPA amortization in 2022 and EUR 31 million in 2023. So this explains the fact that this is declining and all the other indicators are good now.

In terms of net income, of course, this comes from the EBITDA, but also from interest costs that were higher this year than in previous years and income taxes. And so the -- this income was EUR 35 million in 2023, and that's 25% or 26% lower than EUR 47.5 million of the previous year. But again, this is mainly driven, this decline, by cosmetic effect of the PPA amortization.

If we focus on Q4 alone on the next page, you see that Q4 was actually quite a strong quarter and revenues in Q4 were EUR 113 million and that's up 33% compared to EUR 84 million in the same period of the previous year. EBITDA in Q4 alone is around EUR 31 million. That's up 36% compared to EUR 23 million in Q4 of 2022. And then I'm not commenting on EBIT and net income because this is again affected by PPA amortization. Actually, let me just say one thing. EBIT is even more affected in Q4 by PPA amortization because we closed the purchase price allocation of the international acquisitions in the quarter. So for that part of PPA, you see all the effect of the year in a single -- concentrated in a single quarter.

Now what's behind our performance in terms of markets and in terms of individual business lines, most of -- again about the Italian residential mortgage market. You will see, by the way, when we look at the revenue by headcount that the mortgage market is really counting now for, say, a quarter more or less of our revenues. So yes, we continue to give updates. It's still quite important, but -- it's only relevant for a portion of the outperformance.

In any case, the market continued to contract it as of mortgage flows, especially in terms of gross originations. The pace was 24% in October, almost 30% in November, then 20% in December and then slightly better in January, where the contraction was 15.6% year-on-year. And the data from CRIF, the company [ manages ] the main credit [ deliveries ] for mortgages in Italy, report a drop of 16% (sic) [ 17.2% ] year-on-year for the whole year of credit bureau inquiries.

And by the way, when we prepare this information like 1 or 2 days ago, they've not published anything for January or February. And that's normally a tension, the market is down. So the performance so far has been quite weak. And by the way, you might remember that last year, we were saying that we expected an improvement throughout the year because the end of 2022 was already weak. So this was a weakness on weakness and totally unexpected and mostly linked to the fact that interest rates were increased and [ public ] cost inflation mainly because of inflation expectations -- and expectation about the [ cooperation ] of central banks.

In terms of outlook, however, despite this very green background, we are more optimistic because we have seen a drop of long-term interest rates in the market at the end of 2023, which has translated to lower market rate for fixed rate mortgages for loan maturities. And again, it is possible, and this was sort of unexpected to obtain a 30-year fixed rate mortgage in Italy at less than 3% APR in [indiscernible]. So this is likely to further recovery in demand, but it's also [indiscernible] what we are seeing in demand for purchase mortgages and remortgages.

Of course, there is always a delay. So you know what has been closed today is on the back of applications that came in 2, 3 months ago. So if we have a stronger demand today, it will mean better performance in Q2 or Q3 of 2024. But this is also being reported in newspapers. So there is an improvement in the end and we hope this will help us the accounting action in this for the coming quarters.

In terms of the different businesses let's start looking at the Broking Division. Broking Division did very well with revenues of EUR 188 million in 2023 compared to EUR 131 million in 2022. Of course, as you will see in the details later, this comes mostly because of the acquisitions but still it's a nice development. The EBITDA overall of the Broking Division alone is EUR 60.7 million. That's up 29.6% year-on-year and the EBITDA margin is declining. It's 32.3% compared to 35.7%. This is mainly a mix effect in [indiscernible] to the change in the consolidation area.

And then the EBIT is EUR 40.7 million that compares to EUR 39.3 million of the previous year. This year we don't have the breakdown of the contribution of the [ PPA ] book. I mean it is not the total -- but you'll see -- in the annual report you'll see.

For the quarter, you see on Page 21 that Q4 was a very good quarter with EUR 51.8 million of revenues, up 52% compared to EUR 34 million of revenues in Q4 2022. EBITDA was EUR 17.8 million, that's up 63.6% compared to EUR 10.9 million in Q4 of last year. In this case, the EBITDA margin is improving even in year-on-year also because last year was already weak on mortgages, which are high margin business for us.

What is, I think, more interesting is to look at the different business lines of the Broking Division. We comment on the different business lines only once a year. So this is the time. And the overall comment is that Broking Division did well both because of the enlargement of the consolidation area, and we call -- the businesses outside of Italy, we call them international markets as a business line, while all the other business lines are Italian and the Italian business lines, Insurance Broking and Telco & Energy Comparison had good growth, [indiscernible] has declined between variations.

What are the overall expectations? We expect to see growth of all business lines in Italy with the section of E-Commerce Price Comparison, which has suffered since the second half of 2023, but hopefully, it could also do better than that.

Looking at Credit Broking first, you remember Credit Broking is our mortgage plus consumer loans broking business. It's done by the main entities, the entities doing this for the different products through the Internet. And well, here, we really suffer from the very weak mortgage market. And the decline was around 15%, we went from EUR 50.8 million, in 2022 to EUR 43.4 million in 2023 but you know that yes, there is also a part which is consumer loans that was more stable. So of course, mortgages drop more than this.

And we were -- so this was more than we expected. As we said, but looking forward, we see a recovering demand, especially compared to the final part of the 2023. And this could lead to a gradual growth in the volumes throughout the year. Again, we look conservative on this also because there is a time delay, but if nothing changes, we can see a recovery.

In terms of Insurance Broking, this is one of the simplest businesses in terms of continuity of performance. So a growth of around 20% -- Alex, I can hear you on this side.

[Alessandro Fracassi, executive]

Sorry.

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

So Insurance Broking was up 20%. We are now at EUR 34 million of revenues, and the growth was supported by increasing insurance premiums so a bit more switching and also the inflation on the premiums and the commissions. So we saw [indiscernible] and we expect growth to continue in 2024. Then the real success story of 2023 was Telco & Energy Comparison, in particular, that here, we have a strong growth of energy, we -- internally many more contracts as the market -- basically people wanted to get a better contract after spending crazy amounts on energy and there were offers on the market. And even if prices were declining people were still switching and also, we improved our business a lot. So also there was a part of operational improvement on our side. So the result was a very strong improvement.

And by the way, we expect to see a strong 2024 as well in this case, because finally, after, I don't know, 10 years of waiting, the government decided to complete the energy market liberalization. And so there were like a number of people -- like a good chunk of the population, 20%, 30% that still has like administered tariffs, like regulated tariffs, were not really on the open market. And finally, they decided to force them to the open market as was -- and this has -- since the very first phase 10 years ago of the liberalization. And this is likely to guide demand from -- even from the guy that -- they can make a choice. So we expect to see growth -- it's a bit one off, it's a bit uncertain, but we expect to see growth. And this is even if energy prices are going down, so there is less pressure to switch to save money.

Then we are on Page 24, E-Commerce Price Comparison. Here, we did well in the first part of the year and as well, and actually, we saw deteriorating performance progressively since, I would say, September. Part of it is because consumers are probably not spending so much money on electronics, on their personal goods and so on. But -- household goods as well.

But also more importantly, there was a change in the indexing of websites on -- the organic results by Bloomberg basically penalized -- and in fact all the online comparison services -- the comparison shopping services in Europe. And basically, you might have noticed it. But in Italy, like if you are searching for an Apple iPhone 15, we used to find in the result page maybe one or 2 results from -- that were linked to the Apple website. And now the majority of the results, like, I don't know, 9 out of 15 to give you an idea, are all linked to the Apple website.

So the algorithm is now giving almost all visibility to the producers and not to other operators, and in particular, very little to comparison shopping services. And this is not Italy, this is across Europe. So this is a significant negative impact because this is a traffic that we acquired that -- it is a very high margin, of course.

Now first half of 2024 is the continuation of the end of 2023. The important information is the Digital Markets Act, which is a very important piece of legislation has become fully effective on March 7, 2024. And this has like several rules including the prohibition of the gatekeepers, including Google, to favor their own services. And also, it requires the gatekeepers to provide fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory access conditions to some changes. So hopefully, if this is properly applied -- if this is properly enforced, this has the potential to change the situation. But this is very much an open discussion, let's say, so for now, we remain conservative on the outlook of E-Commerce Price Comparison.

Finally, the international markets that -- Rastreator in Spain, LeLynx in France and Rastreator in Mexico. These are the companies which we acquired, gave a contribution of EUR 53 million in 11 months. So for the year -- be able to scale in January is a bit more than in course of the year in terms of revenues and our EBITDA is already above 20% in 2023. This is thanks to luck, let's say, because this is mostly linked to the insurance market and conditions were favorable with premium inflation. But also, we made a lot of operational improvements so we were able to favorably impact the performance.

In 2024, we can continue to improve this and improve results, but we have also decided, in particular in Spain to also put some focus on growth, not only on better margins. And in fact, we have started to the advertising in January in Spain.

So this is the update on Broking, now I'll let Alessandro to speak about BPO.

[Alessandro Fracassi, executive]

Yes. Thanks, Marco. And sorry, everyone, for the interruption before I thought I was muted but I was muted on the wrong system. So okay. We're on Page 25 with the BPO Division. As Marco has already commented, BPO grew around 20% in terms of revenues and EBITDA grew less -- a little short of 15% and therefore, the EBITDA margin declined from 23.2% in 2022 to 22% in 2023. Most of the growth, both in EBITDA and in revenues came from the acquisitions. Actually, the -- if you do an analysis at -- on a same perimeter basis, net of acquisition revenue growth would have been a little over 5% compared to 2022 and the overall absolute EBITDA would have actually declined.

This is because the EBITDA has really been impacted negatively by the performance of the mortgage BPO, which suffered of overcapacity as a reduction in volumes especially on traditional underwriting and commercial services has been significant and a little sudden and therefore, we were not able to adjust capacity as quickly as we would have liked to respond to this and the -- for overcapacity [ dollar ] drag on the EBITDA.

Now if you look then at the EBIT margin, there is a reduction that as Marco's already commented before this is actually due to the effect of the purchase price amortization of the companies that we have acquired an increase on this due, obviously, to the acquisition performed in 2022, especially the Trebi acquisition -- Trebi Generalconsult acquisition.

If you look at Q4, it is not that different from the overall picture of the year. There is actually a little less of the effect of the acquisition, it's already 1 month, is at same perimeter size and also the -- also the -- and the insurance business is completely on a same perimeter basis as in 2022, we did an acquisition in the first semester for the Insurance BPO. Now as Marco said, this is the moment of the year where we also give a little bit more detailed and numbers on the different business lines. So I'm going to basically move to that.

I just want to have on Page 27, one last comment on the BPO as a whole. As Marco has already said, we actually expect an improvement in the scenario, especially in the credit markets as we have seen a general lowering of interest rates. And therefore, we expect the retail lending market to recover, especially mortgages. And even if we have this overall positive factor. We also have to take into consideration that we have -- we will have a negative factor in 2024 that we already know of and that is the end of the activities connected with the Ecobonus incentives.

The impact of those activities was important in terms of revenues and margin in the last 3 years. We actually thought it would already fade during 2024 that was not -- during 2023, that was not the case. But I guess now we are really seeing the last impact, and I think they will be done by the end of the first half of 2024.

So overall, for 2024 for the BPO Division, we anticipate growth both in revenues and EBITDA, single-digit growth. Although we will see -- and only -- this forecast is contingent on the fact that the increased event in retail credit and especially in mortgages will actually continue and be transformed from leading indicators into actually mortgages that are originated but we will see anyway diversified dynamics in the different business lines.

So going to the business lines, a comment both on 2023. Some of those are already known and on the 2024 outlook. As you see, the mortgage starting from Mortgage BPO, where we had, as I've already said, a tough year, even if you look at the revenues, it's like we were flattish, and it's true, obviously. But the thing is that the only thing that helped us reach the same results of last year is the fact that we saw a recovery in the remortgages. And as you know, we perform notary -- para-notary activities on remortgages but they have significantly lower margins than the normal underwriting and commercial activities.

Therefore, what we did here is that we substituted a high-margin business. And when I mean a high margin, I mean, normally over the standard, the average EBITDA margin of the overall division. So the overall division is around between 20%, 25%. Normally, mortgages are over -- above the average. So we are substituting business that is at that level with a business that is actually much lower margin. And therefore, even if we are -- we have remained flattish, we had a decrease in absolute EBITDA here which reflected on the lower results of the division for a negative mix effect.

As we look at 2024, we hope to see -- we expect to see an improvement as we see real estate transaction improving and not only real estate transaction, but also the part of real estate transaction that is assisted by a financing, by a mortgage. And even if we see leading indicators, I have to say that our client banks have not included as expectations already in their budgets.

So if you talk to them, they'll say they'll do same mortgages that they did last year. I believe they're being conservative at this point. And so we are a little more positive than they are as -- on the Broking Division and also in some of the leading investigators for the BPO Division, we actually see this demand coming in. It won't impact our Q1 results, but the funnel is basically filling up. So we expect to see some of the improvement already in Q2.

If we go to the Real Estate BPO, here, there was an improvement relative to last year when we actually would have thought to see flattish or decline basically because the services related to Ecobonus incentives have continued to contribute for 2023. And so we are seeing in 2024 and in the last part of 2023, the tail of these activities, the tail is mostly audit on transactions that have already happened. And so they are also a little less -- they contribute less in terms of margins than the one we were doing before, which was really helping banks purchase the credit -- the fiscal credit -- tax credit.

Obviously, we expect that the credit -- the improvement in the credit market will also impact the real estate services part. As you might recall, most of these activities, if you take away Ecobonus incentives, are basically appraisal activities and evaluation activities on real estate assets that are collateral to credit.

And so obviously, if the market recovers there, we will have an improvement also in this line anyway. This improvement for sure on this business line will not offset the disappearing and the fading of the Ecobonus part. Therefore, here, we do predict a decline in revenues and margin in this business line. And also, there will be a mix effect because the Ecobonus activities had higher margins than the normal appraisal ones. But anyway, this is our forecast and it's basically the only negative note that we clearly expect at this point on the BPO outlook on the business lines.

BPO revenues for Loans, so double-digit growth, just over 10%, around 11% in 2023. This is basically thanks to consolidating our growth and our presence in managing guarantees on the SME loans and also in other forms of subsidized credit. And by the way, we also acquired a new client in that area. So good news there, and we expect to continue this growth also in 2024, although maybe it won't be double digit, but it will be a positive contribution to the division.

Moving on to Insurance. This is the other really good news of 2023 and part of the growth was due to the extension of the perimeter. But for half of the year, this is actually on the same -- on a comparable basis. And here, we saw an organic growth in demand.

The organic growth is basically connected to the need in the face of significant weather events and damages for appraisal services. And as you know, we work -- we are the leader in this sector, and we work with basically every insurance company in Italy, and therefore, we saw this trend proving. I believe that even if -- obviously, this is related to whether, it's contingent, first of all, 2024 will continue to remain at these really good levels. First of all, because we still have a full warehouse of appraisals that still need to be done, especially the most complex ones, which take not just today to finish.

And also because unfortunately, it's very clear that there is a secular trend in terms of natural catastrophes. And then as you know, also the government is passing or has passed a legislation on making insurance on that side compulsory, although the regulation is still to be refined. But we believe in the end, it will be a boost for our services as the penetration of insurance in companies in this area enroll also because of regulation. So we expect maybe not further growth, but we expect a confirmation of the exceptional level of 2023 for 2024 for the Insurance BPO services.

Investment Services declined in 2023, not significantly, but a little bit, and that was basically due to the reduction of assets under management in our main client. This also impacted a little bit more than what we expected also because apart from market conditions, the client suffered of the -- some of the -- the financial adviser actually left the company and [ took ] some of the portfolio with them. And so we had a little bit more impact than we expected. We expect a reasonably stable outcome for 2024.

Finally, another top performer within the BPO Division, which is the Leasing and Rental BPO and IT revenues. Here, again, this stellar growth of 53% is actually due for at least half of it to the change in the perimeter -- in the consolidation perimeter. We're talking about the acquisition of Trebi Generalconsult. But it is really important to underline that also the organic business of Agenzia Italia showed significant growth. That is thanks to very proactive management, but also to the normalization of the logistics in the automotive sector.

We also had some one-off -- positive one-off. They are due to some revenues that came from [ success ] fees on a transaction that happened on a managed leasing portfolio. So that will not be there in 2024. And by the way, also the results in terms of EBITDA were very positive here, we're talking again about another business line, which is above the average BPO Division margins -- EBITDA margins in terms of percentage.

So for 2024, we expect to maintain the performance. Clearly, we will now grow at 53%, but we expect to keep these revenues and EBITDA margins for 2024. So basically, we have stability in leasing and Rental, we got stability in Investment Services, Insurance revenues, maybe even a little growth there. We expect to see growth in Loans and Mortgages, and we'll see a decline in Real Estate. Overall single-digit growth, I would say. And with that note, I leave again the floor to Marco.

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

Thank you, Alex. Now let's go to Page 33 to look at the net financial position. Here, basically, we ended the year with a net financial position of negative EUR 300 million and that's a bit less than 3x -- 2.9x reported EBITDA. This is statutory and the one that you read in the annual report, net financial position, then if instead you look at the definition that we use for the covenants with our lenders, all our lenders also take into account the value of our many super-market participation. So the net financial position is seen by our lenders, which is also the way we see this, this is a financial asset in the end. And value [indiscernible] is -- it's a negative EUR 158 million. So that will be more like 1.5x EBITDA.

And finally, we go to Page 31 with the proposal for dividend distribution. We decided to -- the Board decided to make a conservative proposal in line with the previous year. So the proposal is a distribution of EUR 0.12 per share.

And with this, we have -- we are done with the presentation, so we can open the floor to questions. Please, operator.

[Operator]

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

[Aleksandra Arsova, analyst]

Three questions from my end. The first one is maybe a general trading update for the first quarter. You explained the many moving parts of the business lines, but I was wondering if let's say, there's still weak mortgages and e-commerce will be offset by the other business lines in the first quarter, they're showing maybe similar growth trends like the fourth quarter? This is the first one.

Then the second one on margins in 2024 so maybe if you can provide some more color on the dynamics on cost evolution. So -- if you expect some inflation pressure on staff cost or maybe more marketing cost. So if we should expect some margin expansion also considering improvement in many business lines.

And the last one maybe on Trebi. So if this M&A you did last year, the performance it had, what you're developing with this company and a little bit of color on this.

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

Okay. I will take the first 1. And I'll answer and then Alessandro will continue. General trading update, in general, I would say the first quarter of this year still suffers from the weak mortgage demand of the previous quarters, it still suffers from the weakness of Trovaprezzi.

At the same time, we have things that are strong. So the energy remains strong in Broking so I would say Q1 will be more in line -- should be seen as a continuation of the previous year. But then, I mean Q4 of 2024 was a bit exceptional. By the way, we closed a lot of work on the components, and we invoiced it. So there are also -- you shouldn't look at the quarter itself. You should look at a longer period, but we do not see the evasion of the trend in mortgages and possibly, hopefully, actually win a -- win in price comparison in Q1.

Then -- maybe Alessandro will want to add something on this. But -- and then the margins on Broking, it's -- the only thing that is worth saying is that we decided to start spending money on television in Spain, which clearly, we like growth but not margins. It will not be a revolutionary but still we are sacrificing margins for growth and then the main impact on the cost side will be on -- Alessandro will comment.

[Alessandro Fracassi, executive]

Yes. Well, Q4 was -- as Marco said, we will not see in Q1 already the mortgage market rebound and Q4 was impacted by some one-off items, as I said, both in the Ecobonus activities, where there was a lot of rush to finish things by the end of the year. And also, the one-off activity on Agenzia Italia was actually recorded in Q4. So that's -- I would say that we will not see Q1 -- with Q1 basically similar to Q4, but with some one-off that will not be there.

If I comment on -- I think I commented already in terms of margins. Overall, on the BPO Division, I think we should be able to -- I don't think we'll see a percentage margin expansion basically because we have seen -- we are seeing some inevitable inflation on labor costs, which will offset some of the inflation that we are able to have on the revenue side. And so this is, I would say my comments on this.

I don't expect to have more pressure as we have seen this year because there shouldn't be also the impact of the overcapacity. I think we are handling it. So we should now be getting at the right level. And then if mortgages rebound as we are seeing and then basically reaching back full capacity, we should have the mortgage business line being again reaching at least the level of the rest of the division, if not going further than this. But that you will not see in Q1.

And then you had a question on Trebi, I guess. And basically, what we are doing there is trying to -- a number of things. The one I want to comment on is that we are trying to leverage the presence and the strength of Agenzia Italia in the rental market where Trebi is basically not yet present. So we are in the process of updating the software platform so that it can be also sold to long-term rental companies.

There, we believe there is a market opportunity because there is basically not a dominant player as Trebi on the leasing side. There are some European level platform, which are very high level, they are used by these long-term brand companies, but then they don't really manage and so the -- they don't really manage the processes at the country level. They are more on a very high level. So we are investing on also attacking that market. Obviously, first, we need to do the groundwork and I believe we are in a perfect position to do it, and we have already started doing it. We hope to be able to find a pilot customer in the course of 2024.

And obviously, if that's the case, then this would mean that apart from being an addition -- an interesting addition to our portfolio, this is really a very significant synergy that we would be realizing. It's actually something that would not have happened if Trebi wasn't part of our portfolio of companies and we couldn't have made it and Trebi by itself could not have made that because we have a very, very deep operational knowledge, which is the part that is missing in all the systems that are out there. So there is still a lot of customized very, very Excel-intensive kind of systems in this long-term rent operations. I hope I have answered, Alex.

[Operator]

The next question is from Filippo Prini with Kepler.

[Filippo Prini, analyst]

I've got 3 questions. Firstly, on international business, should we expect the retention of more than 20% EBITDA margin also this year or the growth of revenues should come at the expense at some point of marginality.

Second question is your dividend. I know that dividend is not a center point of your investment case. But despite good outlook for 2024, you have retained a dividend. It is almost unchanged year-on-year and below the level of the past. So we should expect something that maybe you give priority to deleveraging, more room for [indiscernible] that will come or anything else.

And the third question is on the presentation that you will hold on Tuesday before the beginning of the Star Conference, without anticipating anything, but just to understand, you plan to have Board of Directors to approve something before this event? And should we expect the official press release before this presentation?

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

Okay. Well, regarding the international business, we will always keep improving it. So this would be the margin expansion. At the same time, we will spend more for growth. I think by keeping an expectation of north of 20% is reasonable. You cannot expand, maybe, but it will not go below.

Regarding the dividend, obviously, this is a conservative approach. This could be the -- to deleveraging. This is also financial flexibility for opportunities so there is no particular reading apart from the fact that it is what increases the resources available to the group. In terms of the presentation on Tuesday, we cannot say anything. It's -- you're just welcome to participate. You'll also get free coffee.

[Operator]

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

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

Okay. Then thanks, everybody, for participating, and we hope to see you on Tuesday, either in person or in video call.

[Alessandro Fracassi, executive]

Thank you. We will not be able to offer free coffee for those who do not participate in person but only by videophone, but -- all right, see you on Tuesday or in the next -- future. Thank you, everyone. Bye-bye.

[Marco Pescarmona, executive]

Bye-bye. Thank you.

[Operator]

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