Hypoport SE

XETRA:HYQ

Earnings Call Transcript 2019-Q1

[Operator]

Dear ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the webcast Q1 2019 Results of Hypoport AG. At our customer's request, this conference will be recorded. [Operator Instructions]May I now hand you over to Ronald Slabke, who will lead you through this conference. Please go ahead.

[Ronald Slabke, Co]

Yes. Welcome from my side as well. We released our first quarter numbers today. And as always, I'm here to explain you a little bit more detail what we achieved in the first quarter.So we start with the market environment. You know that we are very active in the housing industry in Germany, the link to the credit industry and as well as a new area of activity for the last 2 years, the insurance industry. When we look on the market environment and what is relevant -- is a relevant market for our core business units, we talk mainly about housing. And housing in Germany -- and we stated this already quite a details in the last call and the final year results, is a special market environment right now for Hypoport.There's not a lot of change from what we stated for the full year 2018. But just to remind you, German market -- German housing market is dominated by a huge migration from other parts of the EU to Germany, South Europe and East Europe. We have, in addition, strong migration within Germany from rural areas to the metropolitan areas, but that especially in the metropolitan areas, it's a huge exceeding demand in housing, something between 1.1 million to 1.9 million depending on how you count the metropolitan areas.On the other side, the -- at this trend of migration to Germany and within Germany is still valid. It's ongoing in the first quarter as well. And when we look forward, we expect this to continue for the next couple of years. So on the other side, in this metropolitan areas, construction stays on a low level. It increased a little bit in the first quarter compared to last year. So the construction industry is expanding its capacity roughly by 2% to 3%. It increases prices roughly by 5% to 7%. So there is a change on the supply side of the market, but compared to the need, this expected housing constructions for this year of 300,000, 350,000 units, is, we call it in German, let's say, a drop of water on a hot stone. The fast increase in demand is not even met by this what is newly constructed right now in Germany.This leads to increasing rents, especially in the metropolitan areas. The pace slowed down a little bit, but still rents are increasing above inflation rate, heavily above inflation rate. And based on demand and increasing rents, we see still a sharp increase in property prices across Germany. So this increase in property prices and, let's say, a slightly positive supply side on the construction side delivers positive momentum to the mortgage market. On the other side, the existing home ownership stock is slowed down when you look on the transaction volume and the amount of properties on the market for sale.This -- the reason is a lack of opportunities to invest this cash you would get out of your housing assets and as well a lack of alternatives for living because of the whole regulatory environment. So people tend less to sell their houses right now. All in all, we have an roughly 5% increase in the mortgage volume on the consumer side in the first quarter 2019. So some support from the market you can say for our business model.On the professional side, the housing associations, which are a target group in our Real Estate Platform segment, the low-interest environment and actually the declining interest environment in the first quarter reduces the incentive for fast decisions to finance large project. So we saw a slowdown there in the market when it comes to closing mortgage contracts by professionals. In addition, we, for a couple of months now, but heated up in the last quarter, has an intensive political discussion about rising rents and how to deal with this.And this puts the industry of the professional housing associations under, let's say, a certain level of political pressure and uncertainties. And so there are a couple of projects delayed because of this, because housing industries are looking for, let's say, clear guidance by the public -- by the -- often public owners, and there are lots of uncertainty how to go forward. For instance, it's more or less impossible right now for housing associations to just take down run-down complexes and replace it with new ones here in Germany in metropolitan areas because of the political environment. And so projects where you really would optimize the usage of space by taking down whole apartment complexes are postponed.This is sad because there is up to 1.9 million units needed, especially for social housing sector needed, and the housing associations are the participant in the market to provide this kind of units to the market. And this slowdown in the first quarter is really a negative impact to solve this issue. Which means for you and hopefully you are invested already in Hypoport, there is a long phase in front of us where this demand will stay. It will be a pressure on the prices to increase prices further and so a sustainable environment for our growth, especially when we see that we get market share in different areas where we're active in.So talking about gaining market shares and areas we're active in, we come to the first segment, the Credit Platform, largest segment of the Hypoport Group. The core, the EUROPACE system, as you know, for savings bank, the FINMAS marketplace; for cooperative banks, the GENOPACE marketplace; and for small intermediaries with slightly different target groups, our pooling companies, Qualitypool, Starpool and the newest one, BAUFINEX, as a joint venture with Bausparkasse Schwäbisch Hall.But this -- the EUROPACE marketplace, as a central mortgage transaction system in the market, gained market share again in first quarter. Mortgage volume on the transaction platform is up 16%, double-digit above market. The same with the savings contract for building finance, which are linked usually to mortgages plus 70%. Just in the personal loan business, we, let's say, saw a little bit step back in our growth because of no new big clients there. We rely on point-of-sale and branch communications with private banks right now. We didn't gain new partners in the personal loan business in the first quarter. So we need to broaden our client base there to get on growth path -- 2-digit growth path again. But we're optimistic to see this in the upcoming quarters to gain traction here again.All in all, when you look on the product mix, still dominated by the housing part. We see that EUROPACE has the infrastructure for the market and to power this growing housing market in Germany is -- on the growth track and on track to gain market share. Already a number to show their future potential is our contractual partner base. Strong growth to 662 partners now. You will find roughly 600 mortgage lenders on a single digital marketplace. Nothing -- nowhere else in the world something like this exist. So as an adviser or in the end the consumer, you get full range of product available in the market, fully automated, fully digital out of one system.Especially the gain in the contractual database -- our partner base is powered by the 2 regional banking sectors in Germany: the cooperatives and the savings banks. During the last year, we reported already that we teamed up with Bausparkasse Schwäbisch Hall, a leading organization in the cooperative banking sector, to drive forward the digitalization of the cooperative banking industry. And this took place in the middle of the year. We saw an acceleration of the adoption rate in the cooperative banking sector in the second half of the year.And now in the first quarter, it's very visible to you and the rest of the market that the cooperatives choose to get digital. They gained 82% in transaction volume compared to last year. So they are -- this is really a, let's say, an organization of a couple of hundred banks out there, decentralized positions and, let's say, not used to fast changes in their IT infrastructure and their processes. This is a huge speed, and we are very proud that we are powering this change in this group. And we expect, when we look forward the next quarters, to even see an acceleration of this process. So this group decided to get digital their mortgage business, and they are together with us on this path.You see this that this is going to be a future development in the number of additional contractor partners in the sector. So even the speed of the signing up new banks out of this sector is still increasing. And the real volume -- the real transaction volumes follows this contractual signing process. The savings banks, which are running on a high speed -- or migrating on a high speed already for the last 2 years, keep the pace, plus of 56% for the first quarter. It's substantial. It's the same success story in this sector like we see it now in the cooperative, just only 2 years farther. We expect them to continue this path as well. We see lots of initiatives in this sector. Still signing up more and more of them, even when they are only 380. So there are less and less left to be signed up, but the migration of sales structures of them is in an early stage with this EUR 1.3 billion in the first quarter, which we saw here.Together, they gained EUR 0.8 billion in transaction volume in the first quarter out of EUR 2 billion increased transaction volume of the whole EUROPACE marketplace. So you see that these regional banking groups are providing relevant part of the growth of EUROPACE in the market. But it states that, let's say, the core market of EUROPACE, the mortgage brokers are gaining market share, again, in the first quarter. And -- so EUROPACE is riding right now on multiple growth vectors, which are adding up to this double-digit growth above market.So the overall numbers for the Credit Platform segment are pretty good. Strong first quarter. Everything organic growth, plus 90% on the revenue side, same with the gross profit, and EBIT contribution of EUR 6.5 million, which is a new record high. And this is very important, why we keep increasing our investments in gaining market share of this -- for this platform. So we increased, again, in the first quarter heavily our sales organizations in the savings and cooperative banking industry to keep the pace and even accelerate the pace of adoption, and we increased our engineering resources across all units to further develop EUROPACE and realizing the next generation of EUROPACE, which will deliver even more value-adding service to the whole industry.So it's a huge investment in this unit in the future and still the whole segment is able to deliver a strong profit growth in line. Okay. So we talked about the core client group of the Credit Platform, and this is actually the link to our, usually second-largest unit, Private Clients. Dr. Klein is operating a franchise system with more than 200 branches of franchisees across Germany and is -- let's say, it's responsible in the franchise system to generate online leads for the franchisees and to operate the brand and power the brand and negotiate with banks regarding the financial benefits of selling their mortgages to the franchisees and to Dr. Klein brand.We saw here, let's say, a good start in the year 2019 with a plus 9% above market. So Dr. Klein gained market share, but not at the usual pace, let's say. We slowed down a little bit here. The -- let's say, the growth of last year was strong in this segment. We see the need for certain level of upgrade and investments in the franchise system. We see that, let's say, the technology on the point-of-sale in the Internet and the lead generation is under pressure, under change. We are starting to invest heavily in our B2C software solutions of Dr. Klein to gain and keep clients and stay in touch on a -- in a digital way. And we reinvest in acquiring more advisers across the franchise network because of the fact that still the number of advisers are bottleneck. And last year the productivity went up fast, but as well as, let's say, we saw that a certain number of franchisees were at its limit. So the gain of 11% in head count in advisers is a great success to power future additional and accelerated growth for Dr. Klein, again.The whole result of the segment is in line with our expectations. We saw plus in -- on the revenue side of 13%. So double-digit growth as expected. Gross profit not as dynamic as the revenue growth. What we see here is that selling the product of more and more banks is, let's say, splitting our -- or decreasing right now our buying power as a brand. Less and less volume of our sales goes to larger banks where we have negotiated attractive benefits for the Dr. Klein network and for us, while, let's say, the last 500 regional banks, which got active on the EUROPACE systems, still received Dr. Klein volume based on standard contracts. So there are -- there's, let's say, a dilution of a margin for us here, which is costs us gross profit.And in addition this is quite visible then in -- on the EBIT side. We need to invest in product management and bank negotiators to increase our sales price to this industry for mortgages. So we need to negotiate new contracts with 500 banks and, let's say, get back to a fair margin and revenue distribution for this whole mortgages that of the client. This is, let's say, short-term trend from our perspective. These additional investments are needed right now. We need to maintain a larger bank base, and this is a onetime issue to build this and structure this.We expect that this higher diversity in corporations will add value to the Dr. Klein brand from the consumer perspective because Dr. Klein is the only one where you can buy 600 brands with one advice. And our dependency from a small numbers of larger banks is decreasing, which should help us, on the long term, to close more attractive deals with a higher number of banks. So next segment, linked to this core private mortgage business as well is the Real Estate Platform. The traditional part of this Real Estate Platform is our financing offering to the housing associations. Last year, we added this Value AG proposition for property evaluation, especially for the credit industry and especially for this part of the credit industry, which is working together with EUROPACE.We added an sales platform to power real estate agents in their day-to-day work. And the professional real estate agents are often banks in Germany to power them. We acquired FIO SYSTEMS. And as the last proposition in this real estate market, the FIO SYSTEM we acquired as well an ERP system, a core application for housing associations. And there you can say the circle is closing. So our old target group and our core target group of the segment, we are able now to provide as well with IT services to power the business.All 4 units had a different development in the first quarter of 2019. So we will go a little bit -- dig a little bit deeper into the details. First, we start with the financing platform for housing associations. Because of the interest environment and because of the political-motivated discussion about the renting market, we saw a strong decline in transaction volume. So housing associations postponing their construction projects or, let's say, the financing of their construction projects. This is, let's say, nothing unusual for this unit that there is volatility, especially depending on interest rate. What is new is, this, let's say, decline because of postponed project in an environment of political risk.So the -- we don't expect this to continue for the, let's say, medium-term future. We see this as a weak quarter in this industry. There is a huge demand. 1.9 million units in metropolitan areas needs to be built. And every quarter which passes with low activity of this industry is a lost quarter. Or from our perspective, there is increasing stock of open projects that needs to be financed, needs to be built to close this gap on the demand side.Is there development in the area of the software solutions of FIO SYSTEMS? For the side of the property sales platform, we see a gain in market share of FIO SYSTEM because of the cooperation with FINMAS in the savings bank sector. So even then FIO SYSTEMS already powered most of the savings banks. We were able to gain more of them. We realized the technical integration that's in the FIO sales system and the FINMAS mortgage advice system. So that for in real estate center of savings bank and a onetime shop with us to power their whole operation and digitalize their whole operation gets more real.So FIO is profiting from this integrated solution. FINMAS is profiting as well. So this 56% gain of FINMAS is as well supported by the new approach of a joint proposition for the market. In the cooperative banking industry, we didn't launch the joint proposition by now. We are preparing this for this year. So that, let's say, the 500 to 600 cooperative banks, which are still not running on FIO SYSTEM with their property sales business are our new target group to be acquired as fast as possible. We focused with GENOPACE on their growth in their mortgage business, and now we're preparing to sell the combination of GENOPACE and FINMAS to this huge banking group.So the potential is large. The integrated offer is attractive and enables us to provide a solution nobody else is able to offer in the market. So the combination of property sales and mortgage financing and then perfectly integrated digital process is extremely attractive to this whole industry, and it's an industry with huge value to the economy here in Germany. So strong growth here with the acquisition from a Hypoport perspective, but as well in a strong incremental growth of FIO SYSTEM in this product area.Part of this is unit as well the ERP system for the housing industry. Here, we are still in an investment phase. The product is ready. It's tested with the first pilot candidate. Now we start selling it based on the client relation of Dr. Klein. The revenue is still low. It's still loss-making from this perspective, but we see a perfect base for that base Software as a Service approach in this industry where housing association gets their IT platform, their mortgage services out of one hand and is able to concentrate fully on their core business, renting out units and modernizing units and negotiating with the public sector about new constructions of new social housings.On a similar growth track is Value AG, our offering of property valuation. The target group of Value AG is -- are the EUROPACE, contractual partner base. For their 662 banks right now running EUROPACE, roughly 220 signed up to use integration services of Value AG already. So their client base -- the contractual client base is fast expanding. Signing up doesn't mean that all services needed from us are right away rendered to us. So usually, banks to start this trying our service portfolio, trying with inspections, trying with evaluations for smaller homes, for standardized home before going to the complex ones.But this is -- that this is a starting point. This 220 started to operate with us. It doesn't mean that the first quarter revenue of EUR 2.6 million is the total potential volume of revenue out of this banks. So we are at the starting point. We have a strong growth path here. We see organic growth of high double-digit numbers, and their unit is right now more challenged with the, let's say, handling this growth speed because still a lot of work is done manually to deliver the expected quality of service by the clients. So this is, let's say, growth based on head count, which is still, let's say, a difficult project for this unit.To get this business out of a low EBIT margin area into a, let's say, interesting one from Hypoport perspective, we need to digitalize much more. So we are here as well investing in an IT platform. Right now, scaling the software development team to deliver more fully automated valuation solutions to our client base -- to our fast-growing client base, so automate the process, which is under the increasing client relations that we have already or build up here in the first quarter. And we're on a good track, incremental monthly growth is, let's say, sustainable and relevant already. And so expect this number of quarterly revenue here to increase fast.But it's as well, we are investing here, so we are losing money still building up this unit and investing in IT infrastructure for the evaluation of properties. Overall, the segment delivered, let's say, mixed result for the first quarter. Revenues up 46%, gross profit is up 43%, EUR 9.3 million in revenue. And you see we are, in lot of this products and platforms we offer, at the starting point. And it exceeds already from the gross profit contribution what the Private Client unit did.So this is now our second largest segment. It's growing fast, and it's not really contributing to our EBIT margin -- to our EBIT result right now. But this is going to change in a couple of years. It's a very interesting industry. Housing is a huge topic in Germany, and we see that we are able to gain on the sales side, on the valuation side and on the management side of housing portfolio's relevant market shares and so deliver a digital solution for these 3 steps in the -- or value-adding services in this industry. And based on this, realize very special, very value-adding business model, especially linked to just what we do in the mortgage business already today.So talking about growth and sustainable and relevant business models, what is visible already that it gains traction is our Insurance Platform. As you know, we provide technical solution -- or technical infrastructure for the whole German insurance market. Everything from home ownership insurance of a private client to sales and people at the insurance portfolio. To automate all processes between the clients, the advisers, brokers and the insurance companies. With Qualitypool, we offer as well a solution for small intermediaries, but a core target group of Smart InsurTech, are large market participants both like other sales organizations in the market up to MLP, B2C insurtechs which provide essential new services for consumers, or banks, which try to monetize their client relation better by adding value to their banking systems and consumer interfaces in the area of insurance.Smart InsurTech in the segment gained traction in first quarter. There is a relevant part of this unorganic. We acquired in last year another part of our Insurance Platform company, the ASC company. So there is unorganic growth in this plus organic growth. So we are -- let's say, we are gaining traction, and we are gaining market share based on a buy-and-build strategy here. And as you know, this is a long path here of programmatic acquisitions, which we are on and which we try to keep on track.The segment now delivered EUR 6.1 million in gross profit, which makes it still #4 in our segments. So still the smallest segment, but with the highest growth speed. So there's a good chance to close fast to #2 or #3. And so gain in relevance for the understanding and for the value of the whole group.EBIT contribution turned positive last quarter, plus EUR 0.6 million. Some seasonal FX in this, so please don't multiple this by 4 for the full year expectations. We expect this year to be a [ plexero ], a small positive contribution, but this is not, let's, say, the core value what you should look at here. We have a huge client base. We are in very qualified and very deep talks with a lot of our large clients. We share the same vision with our clients now. They see that Smart Insur is adding the necessary digitalization value to this industry. So they understand this value proposition. They understand that we are the only one in the market able to provide this. But they are with us in, let's say, negotiations how the process will look like for them, how their project will look like for them, how to do this all, some are stepping forward.You will see more and more press releases from Smart InsurTech that right now medium-size organizations choose Smart InsurTech. So we're gaining traction in this industry, but it's still a long way to go. We are in the half of this race. Actually, when we look to the left and the right, we don't see anyone. So really -- it's really a good position right now to the market, a good market, a good position we have in the market. And we are here in an investment phase to get control of this market and digitalize the insurance industry in Germany. And for this, it was a great first quarter. This segment contributed to our group results.So we are through with this -- our 4 segments. The overall numbers shows strong growth path for Hypoport. Out of this 31%, roughly 20% is organic growth, 10% is unorganic growth by acquisitions. So this strategy of accelerating our growth speed in the group by decentralizing the group worked out pretty well, and our programmatic acquisition strategy added value as well. With this is close to EUR 80 million, we are in line with our expectation of EUR 310 million to EUR 340 million in revenue this year. So good start in the year.Profit side. We have a strong EBITDA growth of 30%. This is a little bit linked to a -- not a little bit. It's relevantly linked to the change in accounting standards, IFRS 16 made it necessary to, let's say, change the way how you show your renting and leasing contracts in your profit-and-loss statement. So this rent and leasings went to interest rate and depreciation now. EBITDA is positively influenced if you see as well from our perspective, and it's EUR 1.6 million, I think, yes, a positive effect here for us.Yes. This EBIT and EAT growth you see the earning growth which we -- or the profit growth, which we really could deliver in the first quarter. This is -- or, let's say, please value. Please understand that in all segments we are heavily investing in future, state and engineering. And the fact that we deliver a profit growth is just to show you the respect to you as a shareholder and as an investor. For us, the core right now is growth speed to be the one in these 3 industry who sets the standard and to gain the control of this market and is the platform for these 3 markets.Okay, talking about growth speeds. You see this in the number of employees, plus 40%. So we are heavily investing in manpower. We are heavily investing in talents. Hypoport is the place to be when you want to change how the credit business, how the credit industry, how the insurance industry or the housing industry works in Germany. We are digitalizing these 3 markets.Okay. This so much from my side. I would give back to Mrs. Spyer to moderate questions if we have for the first time some questions here in the English call.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And we have no questions. I hand back to Ronald Slabke for closing comments.

[Ronald Slabke, Co]

Okay. Thank you. Okay. So I answered, again, too many questions already within my monologue. You have the chance to talk with our Head of IR, Jan Pahl, if you have any further questions. I look forward to provide you in a couple of months the half year results. And I'm optimistic that, again, we will deliver new record numbers. So hope to you -- hope to see you soon or hear from you soon. Stay in touch with us. You are invested in a great company. Thank you.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance. This call has been concluded. You may disconnect.