Good morning, and thank you for joining us today on this call to present doValue 2024-2026 Strategic Plan, Unlocking New Frontiers. We are working extensively over the past months, reflecting our ambition to succeed in a continuously evolving market, and I'm confident you will appreciate the rigor, the prudence, and the innovation that will drive us over the next years to deliver results for our shareholders, our customers, and our people. Let me start by introducing the team that will lead the presentation today. We have Manuela Franchi, Group CEO, Theodore Kalantonis, Group Head of NPE and REO, Davide Soffietti, Group CFO, George Kalogeropoulos, Group COO, Giuseppe Amore, Group Head of Product Strategy and Development, Yolanda Huerga, Group Chief People Officer, and myself, Daniele Della Seta. I lead IR, M&A, and Strategic Finance. We have three hours ahead of us with the following agenda.
In the first two hours, we will present the business plan. We will begin with comments on the markets we operate in, the opportunities we see, and our competitive position. Then we will outline our vision, our ambition, and the key pillars of our strategy, with a focus on region-specific priorities. Finally, we will deep dive on the resulting financial projections, with a focus on the underlying drivers and assumptions. We will then host a Q&A section where we will take your questions and provide further details as you may need. We have booked one hour for this. Let me now leave the floor to Manuela.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome. This morning we gave three important news to you. First, our Board of Directors has approved the 2024-2026 business plan. Second, we have approved our 2023 annual report. And last, we announced an exclusivity agreement with Gardant to explore a potential M&A transaction. It's important to highlight a few important things before we start with the presentation. Today's presentation will be focused on the standalone plan of doValue for 2024-2026. We have been working on it over the past few months, and we update you every two years on the news and how we see the market evolving, how we see our company evolving in this market context. So please consider the Gardant transaction as a starting point for future updates that we'll provide you during the course of April.
The team are working together to achieve a satisfactory transaction in the short term, but let me remind you that exclusivity does not imply closing. We want to focus today on the 2024-2026 business plan. Obviously, we are ready to take any questions also on all the topics at the end of the Q&A. The first starting point is where we are today as a company. We are the leader in the NPL sector. We manage EUR 116 billion of assets, and our average maturity of contracts is 15 years. Our leadership is undoubted in Southern Europe, especially in the Hellenic Region, with Greece and Cyprus leading. Italy, we continue to be dominating this market, and Gardant will announce this proposition. Finally, we need to rebuild our competitive position in Spain.
We closed last year with EUR 481 million of revenue, but most of all, 80% of our future revenue in the next three years will be composed by existing contracts. We have diversified significantly over the course of the years, and now we are diversified both by clients, more than 110 clients, and by products. NPL represents less than 70% of our revenue, and the amount of non-NPL revenue will grow over the plan. We have been able to close last year, despite the tailwinds of the market, which we will describe in a minute, at EUR 175 million, with an EBITDA margin of 37%, which is among the highest of the servicers in the industry. The operating cash flow was at EUR 88 million, with a 2.7x leverage, in the range we always indicated to you of 2x-3x .
Let me now move to a little bit our history and see what we have achieved over the course of these years. We moved to three main countries, and we have diversified, as we said, the product base. When we IPOed, I remember we were saying, "Let's try to achieve 10% of ancillary services." We are now at 33%, which adds to the base fee of our NPL business, a strong base for sustainability of the growth going forward. The trajectory of the GBV has obviously been impacted by the Sareb exit, but it's a growing trajectory, and it closed 2023 at almost the peak of 2021 when we acquired FPS and before the exit from Sareb. We are now at 85%-90% of that. These operational results provide comfort for the future and also provide the basis of the starting point after different months of complexity in the NPL sector.
Let us go through what has happened and where we see the market going forward. First of all, needless to say that the entire credit servicing sector has suffered from the perfect storm. What it means, banks have been showing us very strong balance sheets, low NPL ratio, low NP production, also generally coupled with declining real estate prices in Italy. In fact, in the other markets, we saw actually improving real estate prices. doValue, obviously, is no exception in this environment, although we believe we are better placed than others in terms of our model. We are capital light, and many of our competitors are moving to this model. We are extremely resilient thanks to the high-quality contracts.
The GBV is sizable to allow us for economies of scale, and this is coupled with the transformation has achieved to maintain a cost base under control and a good EBITDA margin. We have acted in a very fast way where we found difficulties. You have seen our sizing program in Spain, and the effect of the transformation program has been anticipated by almost one year. Last, the market is expected to experience tangible tailwinds that we are not including in this business plan, so it would be positive if they realized. Having this in mind, we have developed a plan which has significant investment in transformation and in technology because we see technology driving the industry going forward, and we are here to stay for the long term.
Let's now focus on what are the key strategic and competitive strengths of our company, and then on the key pillar of the plan, which we will deepen upon with my colleagues later on. We are an independent asset-light servicer. We are not a debt purchaser. I keep repeating this because until two days ago, somebody asked me if we buy portfolios. We have a large GBV under management with a significant diversification of client base, long-term agreements, and good profitability. We have a leadership position in the main countries and a solid financial structure compared to our peer comp. What are the pillars of the strategic plan? First of all, focus on client as main proposition. We want to be a trusted advisor for our clients and offer a broader set of services than we do today.
Second, we want to continue to grow in the diversification journey and go beyond servicing. We want to continue to re-engineer our operating model to create more efficiencies. We want to lead in technology and innovation. This is critical for the industry. And last, what we have done very successfully in this year and continue to develop and grow in our sustainable culture, both internally and externally with our borrowers. We have measurable targets that we will detail much further later. We don't want to give only targets which are an aspiration, but we need to be accountable for them, and you will see how we will measure over time and we will achieve them. Let's move now to the key areas of diversification in our plan. As we said, we want to go beyond servicing. Here, we just give some highlights of the broader areas we will focus on.
Asset management proposition with an investment fund, which is already a real opportunity, not just a plan. A mortgage brokerage, JV. Also, this has been launched already in the month of April. The creation of an advisory unit to service clients. Also, this has been launched in March. Develop origination of financing capabilities for our clients. Develop further the existing ancillary services and integrate, as we have successfully done in Greece, the real estate proposition into our NPL strategy. Let's now take a look at our performance versus the last Capital Markets Day. Clearly, some of the financial targets have not been achieved, but there are other targets that we have achieved. So we have learned a few things from this experience, which we will try to embed into the new plan.
First, we have kept our leverage under control despite distributing to shareholders EUR 150 million between dividends and share buybacks. We have achieved the diversification targets in terms of revenue and GBV under management. A clear example is the UTP proposition developed in Italy and also in Spain, and the real estate proposition developed in Greece. We achieved a good profitability with 37% margin in 2023, and the doTransformation program has anticipated its result to 2023 with EUR 18 million of savings vis-à-vis the target of EUR 25 million post-2024. In terms of operational results, doTransformation has already realized 90% of what it was supposed to realize. We significantly upgraded our ESG effort, achieving AAA from Standard & Poor's and the best rating in the industry from the other agencies.
The old Capital Markets Day has given us two key lessons: to be more prudent on the market dynamics and consequently on growth, and second, focus more on aspects which are under our control, which are cost savings and cash flows, as well as diversification. These two assumptions are considered in our business plan, where we see additional optionality from market growth, which we have not included, and we will sustain the basis for our refinancing needs in the next 18 months. Moving now to the financial targets, which I only give at a very high level, and Davide will deepen down in the last session. We start from 2023, but we give very good indication later on 2024. We have already described 2024 as a year of transformation and investment during the presentation of the 2023 results.
This will lay the foundation of improvements in growth and cash flows, which will materialize in 2025 and 2026. Revenue and diversification are leading us to fairly stable revenue growth with higher contribution from non-NPL revenue, up to 35%-40% of the total. We assume a book value which is slightly declining, with collection rate which is increasing from 4.6% - 5.5%. There are tangible elements to believe in this growth, also because we have achieved it over the years. You have seen in the slides before that we grew the collection rate from 2.1%. Obviously, we were all in Italy, but also on a pro forma basis from below 4% - 4.6% this year. We will continue to grow our margin thanks to products with our higher profitability, moving from 37% - 39%, 40%.
We aim to achieve an operating cash flow which is in the range of EUR 140 million-EUR 150 million by 2026, with a leverage of 2.1-2.3, still keeping in the targets of our financial policy of 2x-3 x. Finally, we decided to not pay distributed dividends for 2024 on the back of the results of 2023 and to leave our leverage targets for the next years also very much linked to the dividend targets to the leverage targets of the year prior. We will define in more details the dividend strategy later. We have also indicated here some ambition post-2026. Don't see this as a formal guidance. However, I'm envisaging a group which has a solid and sustainable growth and cash flow generation with more than EUR 500 million of revenue, more than EUR 200 million of EBITDA, operating cash flow above EUR 150 million, and a leverage below 2 x.
Let's now start with the presentation in more details, analyzing the market and how it has evolved over the past years. Now we see ourselves playing in this new level playing field. The market is currently ripe for consolidation. Interesting title, given we prepared it a week ago, and it's today materializing. Compared to what we expected a few years ago, many things are different. We mentioned before, banks are healthier and have less focus on NP. High interest rates have boosted revenues of commercial banks and have strengthened their capital position. The effects of post-COVID measures have not materialized in higher NPL but have sustained borrowers, both corporates and individuals, not to deteriorate. We have seen good liquidity of borrowers, and overall, NP formation has been slower than expected.
The pipeline of new transaction is still there, but it's much more fragmented, although we will deepen down on the Greek case this year, which will be an extraordinary year for the market. Real estate prices in the Italian market have been declining, affecting auctions and affecting collections. In this environment, we have observed pressure, especially for debt purchasers. Clearly, the market has not distinguished well eventually, it's our responsibility as well, the debt purchasing model from the servicing model, putting significant pressure on the industry. doValue has less pressure compared to the peers because of lower leverage, higher margin, lower yields on the bonds, and a clear strategy to the leverage and refinancing. Let's focus now on consolidation.
You have seen the press release this morning where we wanted to communicate to you in a transparent way to the market as soon as possible, given the work which has been ongoing in the last weeks. Clearly, there is still work to be done, but we believe that the potential combination with one of our best competitors in the Italian market will accelerate our standalone business plan. Given the complementarity of the model, the acceleration also on the diversification angle beyond NPL, and the strengthening of our shareholder base with a long-term shareholder investor in this sector, which is Elliott, which is the current shareholder of Gardant. Scale will play a fundamental role for achieving efficiency and achieve attractive margins in the future, beyond what we are already showing today. Moving now to the market tailwinds that I stress are not embedded in our plan.
Default rates are expected to grow, driving new NP formation. You have observed, obviously, Stage 2 growth over the last four years by 25%. This is something that we observe, but a lot of players are mentioning in their communication. NP stock in the market will reach steady state in the medium term. This means that volumes will not run off and that will be fueled by new flow. The quality of the intrinsic portfolio and the value of this portfolio will improve. Regulation is fostering higher NPL disposals. Now, banks are used to dispose as soon as they have new NPL formation. Regulators are also pushing for more regulation of servicers. Therefore, there will be a flight to quality of the largest and more established servicers. All the countries, based on the E.U. directive introduced at the end of 2023, will have to regulate the servicers.
We are already there in all our jurisdictions. The next step will be for Spain to follow the new regulation. Last but not least, the market has important opportunities in other areas of non-NP produced by banks, but also by other sectors. Among them, we mention later the Buy Now Pay Later, the utilities, the telecom space, which require technology, and also a better operating model to be less capital and human-intensive and more technology-oriented and digitally integrated with the rest of the platform. Clearly, these are upsides. We are working on the existing book and the contracts and the new products we have already signed today for the next future. Everything will be in addition to that. Let's now move over to some facts and figures related to the new business plan. This is the way we see the existing market.
Southern Europe has gone through a phase of expansion. The trend we see going forward is of stability of the total flow. Let's remind us that what has been going out of the bank's balance sheet is in the investor balance sheet. We have 50% of our clients being investors. This was a specific choice we made over the last years to enlarge our scope of activities with investors because they hold today more than 80% of the book of NPL in Southern Europe. The addition of Elliott will only enhance this proposition because together with Fortress and Bain, they are among the most active in the sector, and they work only with us, as you know. The quality of the production of new NPL will enhance the collection rate.
Moving to the next section, we see that this is a model, the asset-light, being independent, large-scale, European, on a broader basis, also wished by many of our competitors. We believed in this model since the beginning, since the time of IPO, and this has allowed us to capture additional volumes in the market and revenue streams from value-added services offered to investor clients that are now a significant part of our proposition. This model also allows us to acquire new mandates because we have no conflict, because we don't buy portfolios. The model is also more resilient and is best to capture new opportunities in a market which is rising as many asset-heavy services are moving away from it. And before they shift the proposition, we want to be much faster and ahead of the proposition.
We have been investing significantly in product diversification, and we are planning to get to 40% by 2026 from the current 33%, although M&A might facilitate and accelerate such trend. What are the opportunities we see beyond NPs? Our journey and further ambition for diversification is strongly driven by the breadth and size of the opportunities beyond the historical core business. If we look at banks, the size of the NP book on the non-NP side is huge, also compared to our scale. The stock of early arrears is estimated between EUR 30-40 billion in the reference market. You know that the corresponding flows are 3x-4x higher because early arrears move continuously between non-performing and performing.
We have a direct experience of that in Greece, where we have been managing early arrears for now a decade, and also in Spain, where we started to do that for Caixa and Sabadell last year. Performing portfolio is almost EUR 5 trillion. Obviously, we don't aspire to manage all of it, but a significant portion is Stage 2. And as service provider and credit expert, we are best positioned to partner with banks to provide solutions to manage the broader credit portfolio. Turning now to the next page. Significant market is also there for non-banking defaulted position. If we look at some examples of opportunities beyond banking, once again, the stock of past due exposure is material. The corresponding flow every year is again a factor of these amounts.
These markets are either untapped, for example, for the Buy Now Pay Later sector, or are covered by smaller servicers which have not been able to invest in technology as we have done and we plan to do. In any event, these potential opportunities are only partially included in the business plan. I would like to focus a bit more on the tailwinds of the regulation. Regulation has helped us along our journey since 2016, 2017, and it will continue. This means that the demand for outsourced services collection by banks beyond NP will grow. We are seeing it now in Spain, where the NPL outsourcing has only been done by Santander in the past, and where the other banks are now asking for more outsourced services by specialized collectors. This is why we have built and we are growing in opportunities with them.
Moreover, oversight by the regulator on servicers will create better quality servicers for the best structured and larger ones. As you will see in more detail in the financial section, we have proven resilience during the unfavorable market condition. We are showing here our GBV without Sareb. There has been a decline of only 3%. This is the result of the origination capability of the team, which has been able to rebalance the exit due to collection, asset disposal by clients, and write-downs with new business. The impact on the EBITDA has been flat. So taking out the effect of Sareb, we have been able to maintain a good margin on the GBV we have managed. All these preserving leverage and a solid financial position and distributing EUR 150 million of dividends and share buybacks.
Another important factor which will help you to appreciate the dynamic of the collection is on the composition of our GBV. The quality has improved. Almost 20% of the GBV comes from contracts signed after 2020, so of younger vintages and much higher collection rate. Now, with sending these, it's important also to stress the value which is embedded in our portfolio. 80% of future revenues are covered by the existing contract. So de facto, we already secured a big portion of the future revenue and profitability. The existing GBV will sustain revenue generation through long-term agreements. Among the flow contracts expiring in 2025, it's worthwhile to focus on three. On UniCredit, we are assuming not to continue the contracts post-maturity since no inflow from 2026, but we will keep the stock.
On Santander, we assume a renewal at market condition, which implies a reduction of fee compared to the current one. On Eurobank, instead, this is firmly in our forecast. The maturity, breadth, and diversification of the agreement is a farther signal of the resilience and sustainable future performance. Moving now to another factor which is quite important in our story for the new business plan, the contribution of non-GBV-related fees. The product base represents a clear contribution from non-NPL, which is relevant, but most important is the profitability attached to these products. We have grown the composition, so from EUR 43 million-EUR 66 million, but also the EBITDA contribution because they deserve more than 40% EBITDA margin compared to our NPL business. We have seen a track record of rigorous delivery on the OpEx control.
Reacting to the new scenario, we promptly adjust the HR cost base, limiting the injection and the turnover to adapt to actual business volumes. We have optimized the procure spend and accelerated the intra- group synergies. We have reduced the variable compensation given the reduction in volume and income. Group costs have reduced also with the effect of Sareb, obviously, where the decrease by EUR 70 million of revenue has created an adjustment to the cost base of more than 40% since the discontinuation of the contracts at the beginning of 2022. But we went beyond that. In fact, we ran a farther downsizing, adjusting the cost base in the month of February, which is already closed, where we have achieved now the optimized cost base whose effect of around EUR 1 million we will see a rate from next year.
The results managed to maintain a positive EBITDA margin for doValue Spain both in 2022 and 2023, with a growing trajectory later on. The consolidated diversification across geography is also one of the strengths of our model. It has helped us to sustain the value creation across these times with different market phases in all the countries. We have done this while maintaining the presence in a manageable number of markets and allowing to manage complexity and capture across-country synergies. Some of these trends will not materialize across the region because the markets are fundamentally different, and the strength of this diversification is there to stay.
We will walk you through now the ambition and the key pillars of the plan, but I leave the space to my colleagues, and I'm very proud of my team, to explain to you pillar by pillar of how we plan to achieve these targets. Let me start with our vision in the medium to long term. Our work is inspired by the ambition to grow as a financial service provider, becoming a trusted advisor for our client, offering innovative solutions through the entire life cycle of the loans and beyond. This is not something that we need to prove. It's something we have demonstrated with our revenue diversification, and we will continue to demonstrate. Innovation and operational excellence are the lighthouse of any strategic move and are embedded into a set of group-wise values.
These are the foundation of what we want to be, and now we will be able to reach such ambition, which we have already identified in quantifiable measures. We have set clear targets of financial and operational metrics. Let's start from the operational one. We want to continue to be leaders in our markets, increasing our market share to 15%-20%. Now we are just above 15%. We will keep leadership in a stable market, so we assume that between flow agreements and new contracts, we will add around EUR 8 billion per annum of new contracts.
We want to achieve a target of 35%-40% of non-NPL revenue, best-in-class cost to income of around 60%, a technology-enabled structure with more than 30% of collection to be automated, to continue with our leverage targets and the leverage to 2.1x-2.3 x by 2026 while keeping the policy between two and three times. We will be among the best employers in the industry and leaders in sustainability, as we have already demonstrated. As I've already explained, alongside these targets, we also have some aspiration beyond 2026. Davide will go in more details about each of the financial targets later on. Our plan is founded on these five pillars. Again, I repeat, client-oriented approach.
Our approach to originate will shift more towards clients as we believe this is the critical propellant of business generation in the new context, particularly effective with independence of our service model. We are investing in diversifying new pockets of growth and going beyond NPL servicing. This will allow us to reduce the concentration risk and diversify our proposition. We will continue pushing boundaries on simplification and relieving more efficiencies out of the implementation of the operating model. We will continue to be leaders in technology and innovation in our industry. Our COO will explain in more details later on the back of the doTransformation Plan that he has completed. Last but not least, I would like to stress the commitment to foster financial inclusion and contribute to create a sustainable ecosy stem. Our Chief People Officer will explain in more details later.
I will now hand it over to my colleagues to provide all the details on these pillars. Than k you.
Thank you, Manuela. And let me start by saying that I'm very happy to have joined doValue a couple of months ago, coming from a leading strategic management consulting company. And I'm pleased to be today with you to present our new strategy on products and the commercial approach. As you can see, our first objective is the one of preserving our market leadership in the southern region, in the southern European region. We are the number one player in both the Hellenic region and Italy, where we command market shares of over 30% and roughly 20%, respectively. And we've been able to do that by preserving our market share on new flows.
We have a clear market pipeline ahead of us, as you can see, of more than EUR 40 billion in the next 18 months, with targets that are clearly associated to our position in the different countries, as also Theodore will show us later on in the presentation. Turning now at the next page. When it comes to client relationship, our ambition is really that of becoming the trusted advisors of our customers, being them banks and investors, not only in the management of their portfolio, but really throughout the credit value chain. To do this, we have already adapted our new organization with the creation of a stronger business development and innovation unit at group level and the creation of a dedicated legal entity for advisory services.
The business development and innovation unit will pass from the objective of bringing existing products across the different countries to the one of identifying and developing new products and services across our geographies, with a strong focus on accelerating the technological deployment of these new solutions, as we will see today. Furthermore, it will support countries directly in their initiatives by also promoting the industrialization of the commercial effort. What does it mean in practice? This will mean that we will adopt a coverage model very similar to that of advisory companies, evolving the nature of our client relationships toward a more proactive approach. When it comes to advisory services, we will support banks throughout the NPL transaction in order to facilitate the overall process, while for investors, we will provide underwriting and debt financial advisory services. Let's turn to the next page.
In terms of product, our goal is that of becoming a financial service provider across the full credit cycle, from origination to recovery. This translates into our ambition to diversify our revenues towards non-NPL products, which should weigh up to 40% of the total by 2026, of which EUR 25 million should come from products and services that did not exist in 2023. We already have a solid track record in terms of diversification. As you can see today, our total revenues account for 33% from non-NPL products. We don't improve the underlying quality thanks to the concentration of specific streams like due diligences and legal services. But let's not forget also the NPL part, meaning that, as you can see, the NPL revenues are already backed by 25% from existing contracts in terms of fixed fees.
And this will be very important to sustain our diversification journey, a journey we started, of course, from our last business plan and which we will accelerate further with our new one. In terms of new opportunity, we see three main buckets in order to further grow our revenues beyond NPL: opportunities, and let me stress that, that we are already pursuing thanks to the deployment of dedicated teams that are already working on the development of these initiatives, whose result will already be visible by this year. The first one is expanding our core business to new segments and industries. This means looking especially at performing loans, including part of Stage 2, which represent a market of over EUR 5 trillion in southern Europe, and also to exposures beyond non-banking, which amounts to EUR 25 billion. The second bucket is the one of growing beyond servicing.
This is an area we really want to push, as you can see from the several initiatives that we are developing. We already talked about the advisory unit, and later on, I will deep dive in more details on the investment fund and the mortgage brokerage. But let me also stress that we are committed to all the initiatives that we see in the page, like, for example, the origination of financing, where we really believe that we can play a dominant role given the importance that this is having in the market, the expansion of our ancillary services, also building on the track record that we have been able to achieve with doNext, and lastly, creating an offer more integrated in terms of real estate and credit management across geographies. The last bucket is the one of M&A.
Of course, our focus will be in considering M&A that accelerate growth and diversification. We have a knowledge that consolidation in the industry has just started, particularly in Italy and Spain. We are ready to play a role here, as Manuela just mentioned at the beginning of these sections. Anyway, more details on this will be provided later on by Davide when we will speak about our financial projections. Turning now on the next slide and going a little bit more in the details on the new products. Let's start with our expanding the core proposition. In this phase, one of the most important initiatives we are developing is the digital collection platform. Let me stress that this is very consistent with a more client-oriented approach.
In fact, we are listening to our customer needs who would like to enhance the way in which debtor interacts with financial institutions. This will be done through an internally developed collection platform, which will be built on new digital capabilities. This will allow us, on one end, to enhance our collection capabilities on granular portfolios, but also to enter new segments when it comes to non-banking exposures. Furthermore, we will introduce another capital-light revenue model, which is based on the Platform as a Service concept. And lastly, we will be able to reduce our collection cost while improving underlying performances. The first go live is expected by the end of this year in the Hellenic Region, with our other geographies to follow by 2025. But as George will show us in a couple of pages, this is already coming into reality.
Let me also stress that we see material opportunities out of these initiatives, but we have embedded very prudent assumptions inside of our business plan in coherence with the overall approach. Let's go to the next page, always focusing on expanding the core. As we mentioned before, Stage 2 will represent a very important asset class to look at. In this area, we are creating a new operating model to support our bank customer in the proactive management of their portfolios. Let me also say that we are creating this new model together with our partners in order to get the best of both worlds, both in terms of credit expertise but also in terms of technology, especially when it comes to GenAI capabilities.
This will bring significant benefits to our bank customers because, on one side, they will be able to enhance the way in which they manage the overall portfolios for Stage 2 by increasing automation in the management of the position. But also in terms of economic benefits, this will mean that they will be able to have significant P&L impacts in terms of savings for every percentage point of probability of default improvement in the portfolio. And lastly, we will be able to ensure a strong alignment of interest between our customer and us by providing performance fees that will be associated to the underlying PD improvement. When it comes to our business model, this will result in 6% of future non-NPL revenues, always based on the platform as a service concept.
Let me say that we are currently testing this solution on our managed portfolios with the aim of launching the first pilot by the end of this year. Let's now pass to new products beyond servicing. Here, two of the most important initiatives we are working on are a new co-investment fund and the mortgage brokerage services. Let's start with the first one. We are seeing the opportunity to create schemes that foster stronger alignment of interests with investors and that can also strengthen our deal generation. For this reason, we are creating a new fund in co-investment with investors where we will act as general partner through an asset management company that will be part of doValue Group.
Let me say that we are creating this fund not to change our business model but, in reality, to enhance our current one, which is a servicing portfolio alongside of our investors by also ensuring strong alignment of interest. Furthermore, this will increase our business diversification through new capabilities in deal generation but will also preserve our operational flexibility of independent services while also maintaining our capital efficiency. Fundraising is expected by the end of this year, starting with a EUR 250 million investment at first closing with an initial agreement already with four funds. Let me now conclude with the mortgage brokerage services. We have just created a joint venture in Greece with an established mortgage broker for the provision of real estate and financing intermediary services. This joint venture is seeing doValue as the majority shareholder and is entailing an exclusivity agreement with the broker.
This will allow, on one hand, to capture the growth potential of this market, which is relatively in a low maturity stage when compared to other European markets. We are speaking about a share of direct brokerage services versus traditional one standing at 13% in Greece versus 60% of the rest of the European markets. But let me stress, and maybe this is the very important point, that we will also represent the first step to ensure captive non-collection revenue streams, something we will also expand in other countries. I will now hand it over to George that will continue with the operating model, technology, and innovation pillars.
Thank you, Giuseppe. Good morning from my side. Let's start with the operating model first. It is our aspiration to become a market leader of efficiencies.
We have selected a series of pragmatic actions to achieve a 61% cost-to-revenue ratio by 2026 and below 60% in the years just after. Our operating model is more than an efficiency target. It's about business enablement. Our roadmap includes a set of strategic actions that will allow us to optimize the way our front line works, at the same time streamline our backbone, achieve cross-group synergies, and allow us to offer a self-service capability to the borrowers. We have introduced four key levers. The first one is about introducing innovation throughout the collection journey. For example, we will utilize a platform as a service onboarding capability that will allow us to accelerate onboarding stage but, at the same time, become more competitive towards investors. The second lever is about reviewing our outsourcing model. We should expect to internalize more value-added activities over a value-based model.
We will increase the specialization of our asset managers in order to increase productivity and reduce cost, and finally, to streamline our backbone operations and procurement across the group. Our new operating model will allow us to release 20%-25% of FTEs in collection and, at the same time, increase our collection rate by 3%-4%. Now, turning on the next slide. doTransformation has built the grounds to test and pilot new technologies. Now it's the time to operationalize all these new technologies for the benefit of our business plan. New solutions will be embedded throughout the collection journey, starting from onboarding up to payment and closing. New solutions like GenAI, predictive models, bots, and the likes will streamline our backbone. All the new solutions will be implemented to all countries.
This will allow us to achieve cross-synergies, cross-group synergies, and, at the same time, foster cross-fertilization of innovation across the group. Now, moving on the next slide, please. Innovation will pair up with focus. We have already reviewed our business portfolio, and we have decided to exit from low profitability, loss-making activities with limited value creation. As such, we will exit from Portugal and we will withdraw from the real estate development in Spain. At the same time, we will rebalance our insourcing and externalization model. To be more specific, we will enhance the internal capabilities of high-value items. For example, we will insource the inbound and outbound traffic and support new segments in Spain by leveraging the capabilities of Team 4, a specialized call center we acquired at the end of 2023.
We have already performed a cluster analysis of our portfolio collections, and we have identified a list of low internal productivity activities. Thus, we are seeking for performance-based incentive via outsourcing to improve our productivity. For example, you should expect more external network usage in Italy for low value-added and middle office activities to improve our productivity and reduce our cost base. Now, moving on the second section of my presentation, this is about technology and innovation. Technology is part of our DNA and will maintain a pivotal role across our journey. We have designed a series of initiatives grouped into three main categories. The first one is about new technology applications to enable minimum human touch. This is about a tech-driven collection process. We will strengthen the tech and analytics capability.
This is about our decision to internalize core competencies and knowledge and increase the intellectual property of our organization. Finally, we will extract value from data. Data is the heart of our roadmap. We will move from managing our data, from becoming data a business enabler, and data monetization activities. Now, allow me to spend a couple of more minutes on this slide. We are not producing technology for technology. We are not a software house. But at the same time, it is an enabler of our business plan and with clearly defined targets. To name a few, technology will positively contribute on the collection rates that my colleagues will further explain down the presentation. It will improve our productivity by 15%. It will act as an enabler to achieve EUR 15 million of HR cost savings and improve our time to market by 20%.
Moving on the next slide. Giuseppe already and Manuela already mentioned the digital platform. But what is this digital platform about? It's a customer portal with consultation and transaction capabilities. It is a digital platform that will allow us to scale up automated contacts and enabling self-service. It will offer an omnichannel capability that will give us the opportunity to offer a homogeneous service across the borrowers. But more important than all, it will enable our group to extend the operating window to 24 hours per day, seven days per week, 365 days per year. As a result, we expect to reduce the time spent by our asset managers in small tickets and, at the same time, provide a personalized borrower experience over a mass scale. The first rollout of our digital platform will go live in Greece next week.
After the initial rollout, our anticipation is to accelerate implementation and rollout an enhanced version by year-end. Here, you can see some preview of the print screens of the new service. Moving on the next slide. This is a double click on the technology targets. We will further modernize our IT infrastructure and architecture with clear targets. The first one is about further optimizing our application landscape and reduce it by further 30%. We will take advantage of our hybrid data center implemented last year to achieve a double-digit cost optimization by 2026. We will maintain a high standard security framework. And finally, we will balance our CapEx consumption more towards innovation, digitalization, and data. But how we are going to do that? By setting a new paradigm for IT via internalization of tech competencies, streamlining our IT value chain, and by establishing group-wide centers of excellence.
Moving on the next slide, which is about our data journey. We expect to scale up our data capabilities via three main initiatives. The first one is about a unified data strategy. This is about a group-wide homogeneous governance model and principles. The second one is about full coverage of all data capabilities. We are going to manage all four major components like data visualization, data analytics, data engineering, and data quality as one. Finally, there is a new paradigm change in the role of data. This is about data monetization. We have established a clear three-year roadmap for our data model with clear objectives. The first objective is about improving the existing performance via new technologies and improved data quality. The second one is about extending our service capabilities via the digital platform self-service capabilities and introducing Stage 2 servicing.
Finally, there are new sources of revenue via data monetization. Like with technology, we have assigned clearly defined targets for our data products that will provide a direct savings of EUR 2 million by 2026, act as a key enabler of the EUR 30 million of transformation revenues, and contribute with EUR 5 million of revenues via data monetization services. Now, moving on the last slide of my presentation. I hope you will agree with me that everything comes down to delivery. We have set an ambitious plan in place. This is a fact. But at the same time, with doTransformation, we have already proved our track record in delivery. doTransformation was delivered ahead of plan with early recognition of our commitments. We will continue doing so with the next roadmap.
All in all, we have established a series of milestones throughout the three years with early consumption of our investments to allow adequate time to mature the benefits of the roadmap. So this is all from my side. I will hand this over to Yolanda, our Group Chief People Officer, who will present our people and ESG strategy. Thank you very much.
Thank you, George. Good morning to everyone. We are building a people-centric strategy with a clear performance-driven culture that is embedded along the overall employee value proposition. The composition of our workforce ensures diversity, which enriches our capabilities. Currently, doValue has more than 2,800 employees, where women are equally represented also in managerial roles. There are now four generations in the workforce simultaneously working, and millennials and Generation X are predominant. Within our HR strategy, our priority is to deliver an excellent service, developing robust and common practices across countries that are focused on efficiency, on talent management, and engagement to the group. Among the drivers for the upcoming years, we aim to manage efficiencies with focus on talent, strengthening transformational leadership programs, building solid talent pipelines, and also something that is relevant, which is ensuring the succession plans for the most critical roles of our organization.
Our focus on a highly equipped workforce will drive us to continue upskilling and reskilling our organization, increasing current 61,000 hours of training, mainly in those capabilities that will be crucial for our future. I'm referring to capabilities like digital, customer-centricity, and new product development. Respect, collaboration, and guaranteeing an inclusive environment is part of our DNA. These behaviors are very well represented among the competencies of our employees. It's part of our culture. In relation to rewards, we offer a fair, equitable, and competitive compensation package that is aligned to the group strategy, to the business goals, and also aligned to the market practice. We are presenting shortly the remuneration policy that is following those principles.
Finally, the aim of the new way of working is to create a more flexible, agile, and collaborative environment that supports employees achieving their full potential and leads to improved productivity and satisfaction levels while ensuring also the retention of our top talent. Let me now give you a highlight on how we plan to evolve our sizing as we will transform also our operating model. Within the next cycle, we need to manage the sizing of our workforce to achieve a more efficient organization and enable the HR cost control. We closed 2023 with 2,850 employees. Total number of FTEs will be going towards a 19% adjustment. A significant portion of this reduction is taking place within this year, aiming more efficiencies along the next two years, depending on the or aligned to the business evolution as well.
These initiatives are balanced with the number of new hires that are linked to the needs that will be addressed with new businesses. We are designing in parallel actions to help our people in this transition, offering them reskilling and upskilling programs also, well, mainly to those employees that are eager to venture on new roles. In parallel, we will strengthen our talent in priority areas, and we expect that more than 1,200 employees will be involved in those capability-building training programs. All in all, we will implement our people strategy and adjust the sizing of the structure aligned to the business leads. Davide will give you more details about the financials in the next section. The key drivers for these initiatives that will ensure the quality of service are distributed along countries.
In Greece, we are implementing an efficiency program streamlining the retail and corporate collections, going forward into the leaner operations and back office, and also implementing cross-business synergies absorbing costs from new revenue streams. In Italy, the new operating model with automation and technology-driven solutions in collections, and also the outsourcing of low-value added activities. In Iberia, the right sizing of Spain has taken place recently to adapt the structure to current business dynamics. We are facing shortly the real estate development window and Portugal business exit as well. This is led with new efficient services for the management of unsecured sponsors. George has made some reference to it. These are provided by a new company called Team4 that has been recently acquired. The evolution of our team will be in constant in parallel with the renewed organizational model along three major axes.
As you will see, we will renew this organizational model, one, enhancing group steering to capture more synergies while fostering an accelerated decision-making process. For example, unifying the NPEs and real estate business with a common leadership. Then another example is to have a group-wide portfolio management unit. The second is simplifying the reporting lines to increase efficiencies. And the third is strengthening business development and product innovation capabilities that will be pivotal to prioritize the business origination, also to give prompt response to market trends and evolving customer needs. Well, here, I must say, going towards the sustainability topics, that we feel very proud of the very solid trajectory during the last years. There has been a constant and open dialogue with the main rating agencies, and many relevant initiatives have been taking place during the last years.
Among these, as an example, the implementation of the Code of Ethics, the ESG targets, new ESG targets, the anti-corruption certification, the group diversity and inclusion policy, the best place to work results participation, or, for example, all suppliers assessed to common sustainability criteria. These are just examples that are implemented at a group level. These actions, as you see in this slide, have been well recognized through an upgrading in sustainability rating agencies. As you see in this slide, we are strongly committed in continuing to contribute to the sustainable development of the financial system. We defined 24 targets with clear quantitative and qualitative metrics that will be deployed within the next three years. ESG metric is also part of all employees' objectives, weighting 10% of their individual scorecards in their short-term incentives, and it's also part of the long-term incentive programs.
DoValue, being part of the United Nations Global Compact Academy, will be focused on six sustainable development goals. Here, you have some samples of the initiatives that we are looking forward and we will implement shortly. The six sustainable development goals are complementing our people, environment, and sustainability pillars. Gender equality, quality education, reducing inequalities, affordable clean energy, responsible consumption, and decent work and economic growth are our main focus. And now, let me introduce Theodore Kalantonis that will walk you through the specific priorities of our countries.
Yolanda, thank you. Good morning to all of you. I see that I sense that you are getting a bit tired. So 10 more minutes, not more, from my side, and then I will turn to Davide for the most juicy part, the numbers. So coming to the countries, what I will try to do is I will try to focus on some of the major trends that we're seeing in the countries we're in, and more important, to focus on some of the key initiatives we're taking there in order not only to consolidate our position but further strengthen it. In very simple words, our strategy in the countries evolves around two main pillars, two main engines of growth. Obviously, the management of the NPLs is, was, and remains our core key area of growth, key engine of growth.
We expect that NPL disposals will continue in all countries, although in smaller pieces, in smaller portfolios, but with higher frequency. Our second very important engine of growth is around expanding to the non-NPL area, as already mentioned by my colleagues, UTPs, early arrears in particular. We have decided to increase our penetration in these areas, and we are taking a lot of initiatives in the various countries to try to find the best strategy to get into the broader early arrears area and Stage 2 area. By the way, in Greece, we already have a very strong foothold in this area through a more than 10-year forward flow agreement with Eurobank.
And probably, doValue Greece is one of the very few servicers in Europe where we cover anything from early arrears and UTPs to NPLs, and from very small unsecured exposures, credit cards and consumer loans, to residential mortgages, to small business loans, to very large corporate loans. And obviously, we try to see how we can capitalize on the Greek model and try to export it in the other countries we're in. Now, as you can imagine, we follow a very focused, tailored approach per country. And if I may, let's say, try to summarize, in Greece and Cyprus, our main objective is to try to see how we can gain new contracts, especially from the banking sector.
Particularly in Greece, we try to see how we can capitalize on some opportunities from banks which don't have a captive servicer, mainly National Bank of Greece, with which we already have a very good cooperation, but also with Attica Bank and Pancreta Bank. In Italy, the name of the game, as already mentioned by my colleagues, is to try to expand in the Stage 2 area and try to offer some more value-added services such as early warning indicators and data enrichment. Finally, in Spain, we try to capitalize, and I think we are one of the first services to do that, to capitalize on the new tendency of the Spanish banks to outsource more of their especially non-NPL portfolios.
Finally, we should not forget the growing, as Manuela said, non-banking sector, where especially the unsecured granular non-banking sector, where we'll try to enter by fully exploiting the digital platform that was analyzed by Giuseppe. In order to be able to get into this big segment, you need to have a very low-cost model. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense. Now, coming to the next slide and to the priorities for the various regions, I have to say that although we follow tailor-made strategies in the various countries, all that is within three major overarching strategic priorities which are defined at a group level. Principle number one, we aim to become leaders in cost to serve and increase our flexibility to adapt in order to adapt to the changing market conditions. Principle number two, we want to open new revenue streams beyond our core.
Principle number three, we want to concentrate only on the most profitable areas and exit from the non-profitable ones. This is what we did in the Iberia region, which has changed dramatically during the last years by exiting from Portugal and from the real estate development in Spain. We will do that in other areas if we feel so. Within this context, now, I will focus more in the various countries, starting from Greece and Cyprus. Obviously, as you know, the Hellenic region is very crucial for doValue's business plan in terms of EBITDA and cash flow generation. So naturally, our goal is not only to maintain but to further strengthen our undisputed market leadership in this region, to launch innovations in order to further expand our business model and to unlock new sources of revenue while trying to be more efficient and more competitive.
The sector, in terms of GDP growth, is pretty strong, especially compared with the rest of the European countries, and we believe that we remain so for another 2-3 years at least. The new loan volumes, especially in the business area, business loans, are growing. After 3-4 years where we were seeing default rates, etc., going down, we start seeing a change in the trend. Collection rate is strong but is expected to improve further, from 6.1% in 2022 to 7% in 2023, and we expect to exceed 8% in the next 3 years. All that thanks to the onboarding of fresh, younger portfolios while further improving our collection competencies. In all, we expect around EUR 15 billion-EUR20 billion of new NP transactions coming, both primary and secondary.
Out of this, we have identified a pipeline for the next 18 months of EUR 11 billion transactions. Out of this, being conservative, we have embedded only EUR 5 billion into the three-year business plan, as Davide will show later. Coming to the pipeline, I have to say that, as Manuela said, there are two major transactions coming in the next few months, maybe some of them before the end of the year in Greece, a EUR 5 billion transaction from the Greek bad bank, let's say, called PQH, and another EUR 3.5 billion transaction from two other smaller banks, Attica Bank and Pancreta Bank. So in total, around EUR 8.5 billion. We're well into these transactions. We're very close with all the key players around these transactions, and we're very confident that we will get a very good piece out of it.
Now, another very important trend in the Hellenic region is real estate. Real estate prices and the real estate sector is very strong. Last year, it grew by around 7%-10% for a number of reasons. We're already very well positioned on that. And what we will try is to see how we can further expand our presence there. Two more opportunities, very interesting, the reperforming loan area. We believe that more than EUR 10 billion of reperforming loans could return back to the banks in the next two, three years. Actually, Greek banks announced their quarterly results a few days ago, and I read for some estimates much more aggressive, EUR 20 billion, EUR 30 billion, EUR 40 billion, somebody said. I'm not so optimistic, to be honest. But for sure, there is a new market there coming with EUR 10 billion, maybe more, of loans.
Obviously, we want to be very present on that. Last but not least, we see some new financing schemes coming, a combination of private investors and Greek banks offering financing in relation to DPO financing that we are offering to our clients. A lot of things are happening. Coming to this is a market. What are we doing? Already, I said a lot, obviously. I just want to add a few more things that in the apart from the primary market, there is a very strong secondary market. We're leaders in this market. Actually, we opened this market a few years ago. Our strategy there is very simple.
While supporting our existing clients to execute the transaction, at the same time, we try to be very close to the buyers in order to ensure that portfolios, although sold, they will remain to us in terms of servicing. I have to say that up to now, we have done it very, very successfully. Coming to the real estate front, in terms of technology, we are enhancing our technological capabilities, especially on the commercialization area. As Giuseppe said before, we try to further integrate the real estate services we offer together with the credit management of the loan exposures related to these collaterals. Now, two more initiatives, as mentioned already. We are setting up a new advisory unit and the mortgage brokerage JV. Coming to Cyprus, which is another very important market, we are producing very good, healthy double-digit EBITDA for a number of years now.
We are leaders there by having almost 40%-45% of the total NPL stock. We try to see how we can capitalize in two fronts. The first one is to see how we can get some flow contracts with two of the banks in the country, in the island. And second, to see how we can further expand to the broader non-NPL area. The real estate business and the real estate market is very strong in Cyprus. We have a very strong brand name there, and we try to see how we can capitalize on that. I hope soon we may have some news from that area. Now, finally, I will not get into the numbers. Davide will cover that, as I said.
Very, very briefly, this area, we have EUR 30 billion over EUR 30 billion of GBV, starting from 37 in 2023 and slightly diminishing due to some cleaning up of some unsecured portfolios, improving collection rate, and as I said, a rather conservative new business assumption of EUR 5 billion. Revenues are expected to be in the area of around EUR 260 million and operating costs around EUR 90 million by 2026. Now, let's come to Italy. Obviously, you know better than me the Italian market. But if I may add on some things already told, I would say that Italy is one of the largest and the most developed NP markets in Europe and especially in South Europe. For us, it's a very key market.
If I had to, let's say, pick one if I had to make one observation about the trends in the Italian market, I would say that the name of the game here is for the services to see how they can successfully move from the NPL area and get into the early arrears area, which covers both stage two, obviously, and stage one loans. This is what we're trying to do. The other, let's say, interesting development is that, as you know here, there is a very big chunk of state support sorry, state-guaranteed loans, which to us present a major opportunity going forward, especially now that we are seeing the phasing out of the state support measures by the Italian government. All in all, we see, we size the market around EUR 70-75 billion for the next three years, big numbers, both primary and secondary.
We have already identified a pipeline of EUR 23 billion of transactions, smaller and much more fragmented. So that needs another set of competencies in order to be competitive. We are not talking about major transactions in this country. And another very interesting development is that we see a lot of smaller players specialized in different parts of this, let's say, industry. Now, within this environment, from our side, for sure, we try to see how we can further strengthen our business origination capabilities. And client reach is key as well. Now, for this reason, we have beefing up our business development team, as we said before. Giuseppe is a new colleague, and we're very happy to have him with us. And in line with market trends, as I said, we try to see how we can improve our offering in the Stage 2 performing and state-guaranteed loan area.
Giuseppe mentioned about a very interesting predictive model that we're preparing and trying to select the riskiest Stage 2 customers, both in the SME and the granular area, and suggest to them the best management strategy. We'll be ready, I guess, before the end of the year in that area. Finally, coming to our operational capabilities, I mentioned that flexibility and specialization is a new reality. Having that in mind, we have already started transforming our operating model. We're trying to simplify, first of all, all the manual activities done by our asset managers. We're trying to optimize what we are doing in-house versus what we outsource to third-party partners. Finally, we try to improve the experience vis-à-vis our borrowers, but also our investors and banks by leveraging on two main pillars, data and digitalization.
Now, similarly to Greece and Spain, we will introduce this new digital platform in this country. And via this, we will try to be much more competitive in the smaller granular tickets in both the bank and non-bank area. And finally, we're working on a number of other interesting projects. I'm not ready to say more now, but we're trying to see how we can open up our data lake to our clients, especially banks and investors, but also try to see whether we can set up some contribution funds with the banks, helping them to, let's say, de-risk their balance sheet by changing the risk profile of the loans they have in their balance sheet. But more about that in the coming months. Now, coming to numbers, in Italy, we expect a moderate reduction in our GBV book, around 5%.
Revenues will grow slightly to about EUR 170 million. Finally, operating costs will remain below EUR 100 million. Finally, coming to Spain, which is another very important market for us, first of all, we expect a higher increase in default rate versus the other countries. For sure, the recent reallocation of the Sareb contract and the reduced interest on REO by the banks has dramatically changed the environment. And as a result, a very heavy downsizing and consolidation process has started. We expect that in total, around EUR 30 billion-EUR 40 billion of new transactions will come in the next three years. We have already identified a pipeline of EUR 4 billion. And although the legacy REO in Spain is diminishing, still, we believe that it's going to be it will remain sizable and therefore important for the services for the next three years.
As far as we are concerned, mentioned already, the first thing we did was to try to quickly adapt our size to the new revenue realities. So in the next two years, we undertook a very, very heavy downsizing program, which was completed last month. From now on, our sole objective is growth. Growth means that, on the one hand, we'll continue, obviously, focusing on the area where we are one of the best and most experienced players in the country, as you know, but also move quickly into the broader credit services area, covering anything from NPLs to UTPs to early arrears. We have already started some very interesting pilots with two of the Spanish banks, one of them being Sabadell. We are building upon them. As we speak, we are broadening our relationship with the banks.
This makes us very, very optimistic about the coming months and years. Now, in terms of our model, in order to be competitive in this new market, the non-NPL market, we'll have to adjust our model, hence why we acquired the Team Quatro, small call center in Spain. And through that, we try to increase our touchpoints with the customer, from call center agents to full-fledged asset managers. In terms of numbers, our current GBV is around EUR 11 billion. It will remain stable, although quite diminished in the coming three years. Our revenues are in the area of EUR 66 million. And in terms of EBITDA, we have stabilized in single-digit EBITDA. And this is the base from which we will try to grow, and we will grow, be sure about that. Revenues will increase to around EUR 70 million. And the operating costs will stay below EUR 50 million.
Now, thank you. I hope I gave you some more light. I don't know. Maybe it was not 10 minutes. It was 15 minutes. Davide?
Thank you, Theodore. Good morning, everyone. I walk you through the financial section, and then we will open a more dynamic segment with the Q&A. Let me start saying that we have a very clear and well-structured financial strategy.
Sorry, microphone. We have a clear and well-structured financial strategy, which is articulated in a set of priorities for each of the 2024, 2025, and 2026. As Manuela already mentioned, we have a set of assumptions that are very conservative regarding the market volumes and our top line. We have placed a lot of emphasis on diversifying into non-NPL businesses and on continuing to control our cost base. These that is under our control. Let's go now in the details for each year. 2024 is a year of transformation, innovation, and capital structure. This means that we'll require investment in technology and innovation, as also we need to right-size our cost base. Because of this year of transformation, we will incur restructuring cost charges and one-off CapEx for the innovation and efficiencies.
But also, the impact, the positive impact of this investment will not be fully reflected in the 2024 P&L, but will be fully reflected in 2025 P&L. But we are solid from a financial point of view. And we need to focus also on refinancing our bond maturity in 2025. This is why, to facilitate our refinancing, we decided, as Manuela mentioned, to suspend the dividend distribution in 2024. 2025 is the year in which direction changes with a growth trajectory that will start in 2025. It will continue in 2026. Also, the cash flow will grow, returning to a normal level, which will be no longer impacted by non-recurring factors. Also, 2025 is the year which we expect to have all our bonds fully refinanced. We also will have a minor dividend distribution.
We are prudently assuming to distribute EUR 0.15 per share, provided to meet our leverage target of 2.3 x in 2024. And finally, 2026 is the continuation of the growth and the leverage trends with ample cash flow and sustainable growth both in revenues and EBITDA. We have a target of 2.1x-2.3 x leverage at the end of 2026. And so we expect to continue to pay out dividends, assuming to pay EUR 0.25 per share, always subject to the respect of our leverage targets of 2.5 x in 2025. Note that we continue to assess M&A. You have seen the press release this morning. This is because we want to increase our exposure to non-NPL business, and we want to be leading the consolidation in the market. However, as we will explain later, our M&A strategy is subject to a number of guidelines that are very important for us.
Let's now move to the key assumption of our business plan. We are, as we already mentioned, not expecting any improvement in the macro scenario compared to the status quo. The assumption for the GBV is a decline in line with the recent past. But we will have a rejuvenation of the GBV, so we'll have a higher quality, so higher collection. In fact, we are assuming a collection rate that will gradually improve in the next three years. And this is very consistent with what has already happened in the last three years. The revenues will be stable to 2026, as we already mentioned, with the higher contribution of non-NPL business. And this non-NPL business is also a more attractive prospect in the long term. The transformation project will complete in 2024. And we already achieved EUR 18 million of savings in 2023.
We will also be launching a further transformation project with EUR 25 million of early cost savings during the plan. This is not only to protect our profitability, but also because we want to ensure our competitiveness in the medium-long term. Let's now look at the key assumption for the gross book value. From a conservative perspective, our revenues are underpinned by the quality and solidity of our contracts underlying the GBV, as you can see on the slide. As you can see on the bottom left of the slide, the GBV in the last three years declined gently by 3%. In the plan, we are assuming a declining of -2%. This is thanks to the quality of the portfolios. The weighted average life of the collection is 15 years with a high level of secured loan.
This will imply a very long collection time, especially in Italy. We are also assuming few disposals and write-offs that are mainly related to old portfolio increases, as Theodore was saying, which have a very low collection rate. In terms of geography, we see a different trend of each country. We see a growth in Spain, where we are now ready to capture the market after the restructuring phases. We see a stable GBV in Italy. You know, GBV in Italy is old, but very resilient. And we expect to collect a number of new mandates also related to the government entities. We see a slightly decreased increase, as I already mentioned, because they write off those low collection GBV portfolios. Let's now have a look at the GBV inflows. We have divided into future flows and new mandates.
Regarding future flows, also here, we have been quite conservative with only EUR 2 billion per year in the next business plan compared to the EUR 3.5 billion we had in the previous plan we have achieved in the last three years. The main contributors are UniCredit, Santander, and Eurobank, where we are assuming, as Manuela mentioned, to renew Santander, the new form of Santander at the end of 2025, and to do not review the contract with UniCredit, but both will contribute in 2024 and 2025 with new inflows. It's very important, also, the contribution of Eurobank, which is a very profitable contract and will continue until 2034. And we'll contribute with an average of EUR 0.5 billion per year. But what is important to stress is that, for Eurobank, we service the entire credit value chain, so starting from early arrears up to NPLs.
Also, regarding the new mandates, we have assessed the market opportunity, both primary and secondary. We think there are more than EUR 120 billion for the next three years, which already was mentioned by Theodore Here, we have been conservative because we are forecasting EUR 6 billion new mandates per annum compared to the EUR 8 billion per annum we have in the previous plan, so 25% lower. In terms of geography, we expect around EUR 5 billion in the Hellenic region, where it's very important to mention that we have already secured EUR 1.4 billion in the first two months of 2024. Here, the opportunities will come from new banks. There is also a very strong secondary market. In Spain, we are assuming to have EUR 6 billion in the next three years, where we have a new platform ready to attack the market.
There are a lot of opportunities coming from potential new outsourcing contracts. As Manuela mentioned, all of Santander now is outsourcing NPL. We have a number of contracts that will expire. And then we have also a growth in UTP and early arrears. In Italy, we have also EUR 6 billion. And we see opportunity also related to the government entities. Also, here, as we announced, we are ready to lead the consolidation of the market. Moving now to have a look at our collection rate. This is very important. As you can see from the left bottom of the slide, we have been able, excluding Sareb, to grow from 4.2% in 2022 of our collection rate to 4.6% in 2023. And we are expecting to grow this collection rate to 5.5%. It's very important to highlight what is the rationale of this improvement.
The first point is because we are continuing to onboard new portfolios thanks to the new inflows that have higher collection rates. So, also, Manuela mentioned we have a ratio that is the revenues on GBV that is higher, 50 basis points of new mandates versus the 42 basis points of older mandates. We have also increased the percentage of young mandates versus the total amount of GBV under management. As you can see, we are now at 18% versus the 7% we had in 2021. And we are assuming to go above 25% in 2026. And then we are also improving our operating model. And we are investing a lot in innovation and efficiencies, as George has commented, to improve our collection rate and our efficiencies. Moving to the next slide, in terms of revenues, we are assuming to be stable for the period of 2024-2026.
This is a consequence of two separate dynamics. On one side, we have the NPL revenues that are expected to slightly decline with the declining GBVs that will be partially compensated by the rising of the collection rate, as George commented. On the other side, we have the other revenues, hence UTP, REO, various other services that we expect to increase up to 40% of the group, total group revenues. This is important because it will expose the value to larger markets with more attractive prospects in the long term. Going to these opportunities, REO, as I already mentioned, is a great run in Greece, which started from scratch. Now, we already have EUR 16 billion of revenues in 2023. We expect to continue to grow at a healthy pace. UTP and LREs, we have a real success story with the Efesto fund in Italy.
We are looking to launch a similar initiative also in Spain. The performing market that includes Stage 2 and the LREs, as I already mentioned, is more than EUR 5 trillion in Southern Europe. There is really ample space to grow both in Spain and Italy. Then we see other potential coming from the digital platform we have already commented that will enable us to also tackle the non-banking NPL market as consumer credit and utilities, where we see a market that is between EUR 20 billion-EUR30 billion. We think we have already also a very strong position in high-margin services like legal services, due diligence, and real estate services. And also, as I mentioned to my colleagues, we see also other opportunities like advisory services, co-investment, and brokerage services.
So, summing it up, we will continue to invest to diversify our business in these different products and services that will have more attractive growth rates. And these are only partially captured in this 2024 to 2026 business plan. Please, also note that in the past, we have always registered some revenues that are not predictable, but are related to non-NPL business areas that are also happening in 2023. And this will help us to reach this target to stay at 40% of revenues coming from non-NPL business. Going to the next slide, we focus on the OpEx.
This is also a very important point because, looking in the past, we have demonstrated to have been able to reduce our cost base, not only because of the acquisition of Sareb, but because also, if we exclude the impact of the cost of acquisition of Sareb, the relative cost base, you can see from the graph that we started with EUR 325 million cost in 2021. We are now at EUR 302 million cost in 2023. We have a decline of EUR 22 million cost with stable revenues. Although we think it's not enough, this is why we are launching a further transformation restructuring project, 2024-2026 business plan. This is, for us, a very prudent initiative in order to protect our profitability in the medium term. As I already mentioned, the revenues are fairly stable.
So, there are also a number of drifts in cost base, which will lead to increases. For instance, the inflation adjustment to the collective bargaining agreements in Italy and inflation in Greece. And also, a positive impact we had in 2023 relating to the exit of our former CEO. So, we have also new hires in our plan that are related to the onboarding of the portfolio from the new business, the new portfolio we are onboarding. And also, because we need to bring onboard new competencies, we need to evolve technologies. So, this is why we have decided to include this further transformation project that will yield EUR 25 million of savings for the period with a one-off cost of about EUR 30 million in terms of restructuring and layoffs and EUR 50 million of one-off CapEx to boost innovation and efficiencies.
So, overall, the impact of this transformation will have the impact to maintain our cost base approximately to EUR 300 million. It's very important to focus on the HR cost and the impact of our initiatives. As you can appreciate, as I was saying, there are some drifts that, if we don't do nothing, will bring an increase of the cost base on an actual basis. It's around EUR 30 million, as you can see on the slide. So, thanks to all those initiatives, we will be able to reduce formally the cost base of around EUR 35 million. This means a gross reduction of FTEs of around 650-700 FTEs with some hires that will lead to a net exit of around 550 FTEs. This is a very tough measure.
But we believe that we can successfully execute it, as we already have demonstrated in the past with the similar initiative in Spain after the exit of the Sareb contract. Moving to the next slide, excluding Sareb, the EBITDA increased from 2021 to 2022. It was quite, it was thanks to the successful acquisition of doValue in Greece. Then, in 2023, it was fairly stable at EUR 179 million, as we already just announced. For the business plan, we are expecting a slight increase in the EBITDA in 2026 to EUR 185 million-EUR195 million. But it's important to highlight that, in 2024, we are expecting a slight decrease due to a combination of three factors. As I already mentioned, we have a conservative assumption in terms of revenues. We have those various drift factors which increase the cost base.
All these further transformation initiatives will not yield the full 100% benefits in 2024, but will yield mainly in 2025. So, this is guidance as to any EBITDA in 2024 of around EUR 160 million-EUR 170 million. But if we have a pro forma, so, if the transformation initiative had been successfully implemented on the 1st January of 2024, we would have an additional run rate positive impact of around EUR 10 million EBITDA already in 2024. The growth of EBITDA will start in 2025, also, if it will be limited and there further progresses in 2026. Moving on to the next slide, we'll focus on the cash flow. Let's start with the operating cash flow. As you can see from the numbers, the operating cash flow in 2021 and 2022 was negatively impacted by a number of non-recurring factors in the net working capital and other lines.
We do not expect this factor to impact us also in 2024-2026. Hence, we expect to return to our cash flow status as we were already in 2021. The operating cash flow was substantially an EBITDA, less ordinary CapEx, less IFRS adjustments. This is why we are expecting to generate an operating cash flow of about EUR 130 million already in 2024, which assumes EUR 20 million in ordinary CapEx and EUR 15 million in IFRS charges and zero impact from net working capital and other lines. In 2025 and 2026, we have the same dynamic. We also grow in an EBITDA and some negative adjustment from net working capital. We expect to generate EUR 145 million of operating cash flow that we think will increase above EUR 150 million after 2026 as part of our long-term ambition.
Going to the lower part of the cash flow statement, we have some other items to account for. As I already explained, we have, in 2024, these further initiatives. That means EUR 30 million in HR cost layoff and EUR 15 million for one-off CapEx that will account in 2024. Then, we have further EUR 5 million-EUR 10 million of layoff in 2025 and 2026. We also need to take into account the earnout we need to pay for the acquisition of doValue in Greece is EUR 12 million in 2024 and EUR 12 million in 2026. This is why, as you know, Greece is performing very well and also better than the seller business plan. We do not expect to have any cash outflow from earnout, any flow for tax claim because we are assuming that they will compensate in 2024.
Then, we have the tax charges mainly in the Hellenic region that will be quite consistent with the 2023 numbers. But it's important to highlight that we have ample tax shields both in Spain and in Italy. So, no taxation to pay there. This brings us to EUR 50 million of cash flow in 2024, which we can use to serve our bond coupons. In 2025 and 2026, the cash flow available for debt and equity increased to approximately EUR 90 million. And based on this dynamic, we will be able to deleverage from 2025 onwards. And you will see in the next slide. So, summing it up, we will have in the next three years' period about EUR 230 million of cash that will be serving our debt and dividend distributions. Moving on to the next slide, here, you can appreciate the key drivers for our financial structure.
The two bonds have maturity in August 2025 and July 2026. So, no imminent need of refinancing. We also have liquidity and RCF lines, which, together with the cash flow, will be generated until August 2025, almost cover the first bond maturity of August 2025. Currently, the interest costs are EUR 23 million, reflecting attractive debt market condition when they were launched. Based on the situation, we foresee leverage gradually improving from 2025 with the target of approximately 2.5x. Although, we see a slight increase in 2024 due to the restructuring cost and one-off CapEx of EUR 45 million I already commented. And, again, we are not assuming to pay out any dividend in 2024. This is a really prudent approach, given the importance for us of the refinancing of our bonds.
In the meanwhile, doValue enjoys an excellent position among peers with combining the best rating, a low leverage ratio, and among the lowest yield to maturities. Moving on to the next slide, we focus now on M&A. As I already mentioned, the M&A is focused on achieving two objectives: adjacencies to broaden our scope, non-NPL business, and consolidating to achieve synergies and market share. What is important for us, the key aspect we need to consider is represented by financial discipline. This is why you can see on the slide the M&A activity will be subject to a number of requirements: timing, size, leverage, valuation, geography, and structure that are very important for us and that will guide our choice to proceed with the M&A. Going to the last slide, I will just sum up our guidance for this 2024 to 2026 business plan.
Revenues, again, are conservative, stable. Although we are investing a lot to diversify our revenues from NPL business. GBV shows a modest decline, although it's compensated by the aggregate collection rate. We expect to achieve, thanks to the improving quality, higher efficiencies. The EBITDA will dip in 2024 and returns to growth in 2025 and 2026. Also, if you have a look to a pro forma 2024, we have also a different number in 2024 with more EUR 10 million of savings. Operating cash flow already improved in 2024 with EUR 130 million operating cash flow and will increase to EUR 140 million-EUR 150 million in each of 2025 and 2026. The leverage, again, will increase in 2024, but due to the restructuring cost and the one-off CapEx. Will drop again in 2025 and 2026, thanks to the EUR 230 million of cash flow available for debt and equity.
The dividend distribution is temporarily suspended in 2024. We resume it in 2025 and 2026, subject to meeting our leverage targets. I hope you appreciated our transparency and detail in setting out our financial targets for the next three years. I will be happy to provide any questions you may have in a Q&A session. I'll now hand it back to Manuela for the closing remarks.
Thank you, Davide. I wish you appreciate the effort the team has put to chart the next three years' business plan. There are three key takeaways I would like you to think about. First, appreciate the resilience of our business model in the last couple of years, despite the challenging market environment. We foresee tangible headwinds and untapped opportunities, which we are not including in the business plan, which presents opportunities on top of the numbers you have seen.
The business plan focuses on aspects which are under our control. Its transformation and diversification to increase competitiveness are key. Technology is crucial to enhance and to be at the forefront of the industry. We have reflected on the lessons learned from our previous business plan and created more conservative assumptions on the market, on the forecast, and the results as to rely and give you guidance of sustainable growth and sustainable cash flow production. In a nutshell, we have a prudent plan to deliver to shareholders based on organic growth and optionality, which come from the market, and M&A to accelerate the targets we have given to you. In the long term, given the efforts, we see technology and innovation driving not only the operational performance, but mostly the revenue diversification we have portrayed. I will now stop for Q&A.
And we are here to answer all your questions. Thank you.
Hi, everybody. Fabrizio from Intermonte. Thank you for the presentation. Sorry for my voice. I have some allergy. And my question is, this is a standalone plan? You announced today a potential deal with Gardant, which implies a cash outlay and also a capital increase. So, what I mentioned is what I've been saying is, how do I look at these targets relative to this deal? And if you can add any kind of color, obviously, the question would be, which is the price of the capital increase that you would be doing? But I know that you cannot answer this question, obviously. And secondly, in 2024, there are EUR 45 million of one-off costs. So, I guess that the bottom line will be probably negative.
But this does not imply any impact on the dividend that you could pay in 2025. And third question, there has been a strong derating of the stock with the EBITDA margin, with the EBITDA down, let's say, 50% and the stock down 80%. Most of the investors were waiting for a buyback of the bonds. I don't know which one, maybe mixed. I don't know if you can give us some flavor, some color about what can happen on the bonds, assuming the deal with Gardant. Thank you.
Thank you, Fabrizio. Given that the due diligence is still ongoing and the finalization of the deal is ongoing, we prefer to have a specific session at the end of our work. We plan to complete the activity by mid-April, where we will give you the updated guidance and also, obviously, have a detailed focus on the Italian market.
Now, the combined proposition would enhance the targets we have already given. The other is to spend three pages to detail what is Italy in the status quo scenario, which is already a pretty important performance in terms of activities on the cost and on the revenue side. But clearly, this combination will enhance all the objectives, which are diversification on the non-NPL side, being even more a leader in the market, cost synergies, so both revenue and cost enhancement. In terms of capital structure, pro forma, let's put a cap on the potential side because, obviously, I mean, this is one of the questions. We are not going to go for more than EUR 200 million. But the important thing is that, because I've seen a couple of comments this morning from analysts, we don't do two capital increases because we have an issue.
Actually, because we want to capture more opportunities in the market. And one is critical and very positive. The fact that we would have, in this transaction, new shareholders, which come in with a strong conviction around the business because they know this business and they play in this business, both in Italy, in Greece, and in other markets which we are interested in, at a very high valuation compared to the current stock price, demonstrates that people who strongly understand the sector can see where the rerating of the stock will come from. So, this is quite important. The second capital increase is related to the fact that we want to have a structure which will allow the new company to capture the additional new opportunities which come in the market. And with this enhanced equity story, this will be much easier.
So, this is to address your first point. I go to the third one and leave Davide to the second. The derating of the stock clearly is not something we are happy with. This is clear. Our incentive plan is also linked to it. But let's put a little bit in the context, not of the normal market dynamics and where the index has gone this year, but our sector. In our sector, if you decouple and you look to what has happened in terms of derating of the overall market, it's quite impressive. And this is related to what we call the perfect storm in terms of banks' behavior, which is fair, and where the new NPL formation has gone. Although now, there are the signals that are demonstrating that the tailwind is coming. We have been conservative. We have not included it.
We are pretty flat on the assumption on the NPL production, given that we are at the bottom because we are at below 1% new NPL production by the banks in general across different jurisdictions. We believe the new formation cannot be lower of these levels. The decrease in EBITDA, obviously, is a function of the market, but also the exit we had in the past. We wanted to be conservative on the picking up of this level. Still, it requires a lot of activities. You have seen also what we have to do on the cost side to achieve the targets. We have been much more conservative in the assumption on the new business side. I think the message of Theodor has been quite clear on the Hellenic region. Only today, we are working on due diligence on EUR 7 billion-EUR8 billion of assets, almost 9.
We are assuming, overall, the three-year plan from Greece and Cyprus, only EUR 5 billion. I see an upside there. You have seen the plan of state-guaranteed companies in Italy of concentrating the activities on full servicing and also redeveloping, again, projects on Stage 2 loans and guaranteed loans. Even there, despite the significant contracts we have gained in the past, we have been conservative. Another example is Spain, where already in the months of January, February, we saw doubling the flows coming also from the two new banks we are engaged with. All in all, this is the basis we are starting from. Now, to your question on bond buybacks, we have used this instrument in the past. We are not focusing it at the moment. It's one of the tools we could use.
We have written in the press release very clearly that, as part of the financing of the transaction, we will address either a portion or all. So, the 2025, definitely, and potentially also the 2026 as part of the overall structure. So, we don't think we should pursue bond buybacks at this stage.
And going back to the other question, the EUR 45 million, for us, are key because we say that it will help us to reduce our cost base and to boost our innovation efficiencies. But as mentioned, in 2024, we have EUR 130 million of operating cash flow, including our ordinary capex. And so, this EUR 130 million will finance these EUR 45 million. And also, using this cash to finance these EUR 45 million, we will have still EUR 50 million to serve our debts that are coupons. So, it's not a question that we can pay a dividend.
We think that it's a signal to suspend the dividend in 2024. And so, we think it's important to go back in 2025 where we'll have a higher cash flow. We don't have to invest this sudden investment. And we'll also have the benefit from the investment we are doing in 2024. So, this is key for us.
From Mediobanca. So, a question again on the potential deal with Gardant and the refinancing of the bonds. So, could you just recap the timing of the next steps? So, when we have to expect the next decisions. And another question on Italy. Recently, AMCO has presented its new business plan. They have been an important player in the market in the past. Do you see differences? Do you see risk or opportunities from their new strategy? Thank you.
Thank you, Simonetta. The next steps are, by the month of April, we aim to do a signing of the agreement. This will have committed financing both on the equity and on the debt side. On the equity, I mean, we expect both the three shareholders to commit to the capital increase, as well as the banks to underwrite , the rest that will go to market. On the debt side, to cover both the acquisition financing and the outstanding debt with the elements I mentioned before. Clearly, you need to have the technical approvals for the transaction. We expect the capital market event to raise capital to happen from September onward. The second question on AMCO, we see all the messaging that has been given as positive for us for three different reasons.
First, they mentioned that they are not focused on expanding beyond their public purpose, which is eventually to safeguard or save banks in difficulties, which at the moment, there aren't. So, they are more focused on the current portfolio and collecting it in a more efficient way. This means they will be less active to compete with our clients and investors, which in the last three years, given the active role they had in purchasing, had become colder vis-à-vis purchasing in the Italian market, given that, obviously, there was a competitor with much lower cost of funding. Second, they also mentioned that they will concentrate the servicing, increasing their internal capabilities, but also on fewer services. Today, they use around 15 services. And we worked in these years with them to achieve very good performance. So, we hope to be one of those selected.
Last, they seem to resemble that they want to go back to a project with the government around MCC guaranteed loans and stage two, where clearly, the size is so large and relevant that it will involve the major players in the servicing industry. So, we hope to be one of them.
So, thank you for your presentation, Davide Giuliano, from Equita. Just three questions for you. The first one, can you give us more details on why you are only assuming an average of EUR 2 billion of forward flows per year with the renewal of Santander, as in full year 2023? Overall forward flows, excluding UniCredit, were approximately EUR 2.8 billion. The second one, collection in Italy were stable EUR 1.7 billion per year, but in full year 2023, you posted -10% year-over-year in revenues. Can you remind us why?
What assumption do you have in Italy to have stable group revenues in 2026? And in particular, how much of the EUR 25 million of new revenues coming from new services are in Italy? And the last one, on cash generation, do your assumptions include the cash in of approximately EUR 20 million coming from the litigation with Altamira you expected in first quarter 2024? Thank you.
Okay. And UniCredit? Yeah.
On the first one, why the EUR 2 billion? We want to be mildly conservative. That's the blunt answer. So, even if historically, we have and we see higher flows and higher default rates in the recent past, we prefer to be conservative on future projection to balance the forward flow also with the new contracts. So, of the EUR 8 billion, two are part of that, but obviously, we are focusing on the overall eight. So, we thought that the composition of the two was a good balance.
Going on the answer on Santander and UniCredit, this is again a conservative assumption. We don't have any still formal exit from UniCredit contract. But in Santander, we are now well-positioned and we are performing very well among the other two services that work with them. So, we are confident that we will continue to operate very well to be the first one in terms of performance. They will renew with us the contract. And again, this will be a contract at market time. So, we expect -20% on fees. But we are confident to keep the contract renewed. On UniCredit, we decided to have a prudent approach, although we have still two years in front of us.
At the end of the contract, we still have partnership with them because we have the right to manage until the end of its life, the stock of UniCredit. This is the rational kind of approach. In terms of collection in Italy, as we were asking about 2023, we had a delta of revenues that was related mainly on the collection side. As we already mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, in Italy, we have an impact of the macro on the collection. In the real estate price, it dropped. This has affected the auctions, again, affected our collection rate. Also, the inflation, the higher interest rate affected the capability of the borrower to reach out-of-court agreement. The drop was mainly related to the macro environment, the fact that we saw lower collection, so also lower performance, lower revenues.
The other question was about the portion in Italy of those new revenues. We are assuming, as Theodore was saying, to develop the new initiatives in all the countries. The digital platform will start in Greece, but then we will also develop in Spain and Italy. And the same happens for the Stage 2. We are launching a pilot also in Italy. So, I would say that one third is part of those revenues will come from Italy. In terms of the tax claim in Spain, we are really waiting for the judge to issue the order to pay. As you know, we have deposited EUR 22 million in a bank account of the court. And now, the judge decided to go ahead. And we're just waiting that she issue the order to pay us. So, hopefully, they will do by the end of the month.
But it depends on the court timing. So, we are pushing every day to ask the court agent to pay this amount.
Hi, again. One more question on Gardant. You mentioned many times that you want to expand your business on the value chain of the NPLs. And Gardant looks like a move in this direction. So, I admit my ignorance on the issue. So, I would like you to give us some flavor, some color, anything you can about how this matches with doValue . So, what kind of matching we have with Gardant. I'm not asking about numbers, just about strategic. Strategic.
No, definitely. The interesting part is that they manage a larger portion, much larger portion than us, of UTP because they got one, their investor acquired contracts in the UTP sector.
Plus, they have signed and just started a new contract of flows and stock with BPER, which will last for a significant number of years. So, the composition of non-NPL is much more skewed towards that segment. They also have a large portion of leasing portfolios. So, the proposition of real estate enhancement embedded into the NPL servicing business is also there. Second, they have developed an asset management business, which is already running for the last two years with just below EUR 1 billion of assets under management. Last, they have a data product proposition already deployed, which is going in the same direction we are going. So, all in all, their portion of non-NPL revenue is quite relevant there. Plus, the two long-term contracts with BPM and BPER are variable to us. Actually, we bid for the same contracts and we lost when they were at auction.
So, it means that we wanted these contracts anyhow along the sometimes in the past. These are the main critical aspects. On the transformation side, they have a platform internally developed for management of NPLs, which is quite advanced. And also, the strategy on the data warehouse and utilization of data is also quite advanced. And we'll accelerate also a portion of our investment, which we would avoid in this way because we could utilize their system and create synergies out of that. So, there are a lot of factors both related to the transformation piece of things we want to do in Italy and related to the product side, which make a lot of sense.
Giuliano Castagneto from BeBeez. I have some questions, again, about Gardant. It is unclear to me whether Elliott will have some doValue shares at the end of the transaction. Then, about the co-investment fund project you just outlined, is it completely independent from Gardant's activity in asset management? And once the deal is done, by how much Gardant could improve on the financial targets you just outlined?
Yes. One of the two capital increases, and we said it in the press release as well, will be dedicated to Elliott. So, Elliott will take new-issued shares at a significant premium vis-à-vis the current share price, multiples of it, in our shareholding, achieving 20% stake. In terms of the co-investment fund, this is independent from Gardant. We have been working on it since last year. In fact, we have already secured four investors, seed investors, for the fund.
The results of the activities, the proposition and the interest we see from investors in further aligning our interests with them, which we don't want to do through our balance sheet because we are asset light, so we would rather gather investors who are interested in a co-investment strategy. Gardant, in their funds, have pursued a majority fund strategy in the sense that they acquired a majority position. This is a minority. In terms of target, I prefer to announce this target when we have the signing because we are finalizing the combined figures. So, it will not take long. It will be in the month of April, any communication on this front.
Thank you. In terms of business model, Gardant may be defined as a capital light business model, or they have more investments in assets?
They used to have a combined business model. They used to be a bank. They did a large project, which is similar to our projects of the banking. It means that they separated the bank. We gave up the license. In their case, they just separated the servicing from the bank. So, it belongs probably to similar shareholders, but it's not part of the perimeter. So, they have a model very much similar to us. They have limited co-investments under P&L, sorry, under balance sheet, but they are in line with also the little co-investment we have on our P&L. We are talking about less than EUR 30 million of co-investment, and nothing majority. It's all relatively small.
Thank you, Filippo Prini, Kepler Cheuvreux. Couple of questions. First, on the target organic of the plan, how much of the growth of EBITDA from 2024 into 2026 will come from EBITDA generated by these new businesses that you are developing?
Second, still on Gardant, basically, I believe that given that we will launch the second capital increase by September, if I got correctly, the closing of the deal will be by end of this year. So, from 2025, Gardant will be fully integrated. How much the work that you'll do to integrate Gardant into your structure could overshadow the attainment of the organic target of the plan, also in terms of time and commitment and effort of the management?
As Manuela mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, 80% of our revenues are related to the contracts we already have or the contract with the banks and with the investors. So, only 20% of our revenues will come from a new business. New business means both NPL because the assumption is to grow also in GBV with new mandates and inflows. As I also mentioned, EUR 2 billion per annum with the new inflows, EUR 6 billion per annum with new mandates. We are growing roughly from 30% of revenues this year of non-NPL business to 40%. This will be the contribution of higher revenues coming from the non-NPL business.
Going back to your other question, in reality, we are assuming September for closing and then launch. Because we will have Elliott as shareholder by that time so that they can participate in the capital increase. We don't want to jeopardize any of the targets we have put for Italy. We will have a dedicated team which will work on the operational integration. But on the revenue side, clearly, the effort has to continue. So, we will have eventually additional cost savings coming from the integration, but no deviation from the standalone. This has to be clear because we don't want we are adding on top a value proposition.
If I may just follow up on your explanation, Elliott will be shareholders of doValue new entity by April, I guess, when you will announce possibly the finalization of the deal?
No, they will be later. But they are, in principle, okay with the structure and the governance arrangements. If there are no other questions, we. I think we have some questions. Okay, perfect. Yeah.
Can I ask Chorus Call to let the question from the people connected to okay.
The first question from the conference call is from Alessandro Carinelli with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Could you please comment on the refinancing of the 2025 and 2026 bonds? In particular, I think in the previous presentation, the plan was to refinance at least EUR 25 this summer, before July this summer. Now, I'm reading it's been pushed to July summer 2025. So, could you please comment on that and whether the refinancing relies on the closing of the transaction with Gardant? And then, second question is, what's the plan for the 2026s? Thank you.
Yeah, the plan has not changed in the sense that we have said during the presentation of the 2023 figures that we wanted to refinance by the summer. And the timing of this transaction is exactly well-placed to address it, both in a standalone scenario than in a combined scenario. So, we have both options on the table. It's important also to clarify the transaction by April also because we will go one way or the other with the two options.
Clearly, in the case of the Gardant transaction, we will have committed financing also for that portion of the 2025. So, that will be addressed as part of the package. We will not need to wait the September closing for that. This was your main question because as part of the overall deal, there needs to be a certainty of funds, so both on the equity and on the debt side. Regarding 2026, we have two years and a half to address them. We could be part of the transaction with Gardant or not. It depends also on the conditions. But we will tackle one by one given that there is time up to the end of the maturity. And that bond is quite at very good cost so far compared to where the trading levels are moving.
And given the whole storm which is going on in the sector in terms of trading levels, which are not really representative of the fundamentals of the industry.
Okay, thank you. And then my second question is, you mentioned EUR 200 million rights issue, if I understand correctly, with regard to the first rights issue. It is EUR 200 million in cash. And will it be used to refinance the 2025?
No, I didn't say EUR 200 million. I put a cap because clearly, people can speculate any number. But that's not the final number. And it's not used to pay the 2025. It's part of the overall strategy of the leveraging of the group, which has the transaction as a consideration in stock and a consideration in cash for the buyer. And also, it has a financing package attached which will comprise the refinancing of this bond. So, it's overall for general corporate purposes that encompass a series of elements.
Okay, thank you.
The next question is from Pelumi Ajibewa from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes.
Thank you. My question was partly addressed earlier. I just have a follow-up. In terms of the 2x net leverage target, at FY 2023, how is the sort of trajectory towards that 2x leverage? What is that deleveraging driven by? Is it purely organic, or is it more so inorganic measures?
No, I mean, the targets we have given on a standalone basis show 2.1x, 2.3x by 2026, which is all based on organic. Then, the reference to 2x is in the press release related to Gardant, where we are if we pursue if we finalize the transaction, it will be anticipated to 2025 for a series of reasons.
Because obviously, you are going to have capital increase, the cash flow generation organic of doValue, and the one of Gardant, all combined will allow to anticipate tha t target.
Thank you.
The next question is from Antonio Casari with Northlight Group. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you very much for your presentation and all the details. One last confirmation on Gardant. Can you give us a sense of the consideration, how much the balance between the consideration in cash versus the consideration in shares? Because you said the capital increase will be at higher share price compared to the current share price. I mean, it could be I don't know. Let's say it gets to 20% to Elliott. So, I assume there is a significant component in cash. I'm wondering where is the cash coming from because you said that the second capital increase will be done post-closing.
So, I'm currently struggling to understand where the cash component for Gardant is coming from. And also, could you please confirm if you assume at the moment that Gardant is merging with doValue on a debt-free basis? Then, I've got a separate question on the operation of the standalone plan, please.
Yeah, we cannot give more details on the consideration because it's part of the discussion we are still having. But that will be fully disclosed in April. What we can explain better is that we will have financing which will allow us to pay the cash consideration and will be then repaid with the capital increase so that it will be fully covered. We are not talking about the net cash consideration substantial as you have defined. So, the net effect will be a very reasonable number. Also, taking into account that today, Gardant has very limited leverage, which is only coming from the debt raised for the acquisition of the BPER contract.
And that debt is supposed to be refinanced upon closing or remains outstanding?
The structure of the debt, we are finalizing, but it will be a long-term structure.
Okay. Regarding the business plan, I was trying to understand the difference in profitability between Greece and the other regions. Let's say, take Italy, where in Greece, you have a 57% EBITDA margin versus 19.5% in Italy. Looking at your slide, it seems that 87% of overall Greece revenues are coming from the Eurobank forward flow agreement and the Greek HAPS securitization. So, I was wondering, the 50% margin is the same across these two components, or is it different? And in terms of the Greek securitization, what is the runoff profile?
And finally, for Eurobank, clearly, you said that the forward flow agreement expired at the end of 2034. Is there any deadline in between where there could be a renegotiation in terms of the profitability of the contract? Thank you very much.
Thanks for your question. We have a slide where we show the length of the contract s. The Greek market.
Right, 20, yes.
Yeah, the Greek market is a substantial difference vis-à-vis others because of the concentration and the numbers of operators. So, this has allowed us when the company was acquired in 2020, we were exposed to Eurobank for EUR 22 billion. And then, we had another EUR 4 billion of other contracts. Clearly, we have grown the portion of other contracts. But Eurobank, in this period, has sold a lot of portfolios. So, today, we have only around EUR 3 billion exposed to them.
But the fees we have been able to get from the people that have sold the portfolios to, which you see then in the Greek HAPS securitization, are not very dissimilar to the Eurobank one. This is because the concentration of the market is such that if a new investor wants to buy a portfolio or an existing one, has to go to work either with us or with one of our competitors, the third one being Intrum and less active with investor given that they themselves buy portfolio. So, the investor, we either go to us or the second largest one. So, coming back to your question, the profitability is not very different between the two. The difference in Eurobank is that on top, we manage for them the early arrears, which are a different type of contract. It has a fixed fee.
So, the volumes can be high or low. It's all based on the activities we do and not bridging operating KPI of how many files we bring back to performing. On this, I must say, the team has done a very good job because if you see the NPL formation of Eurobank last year was zero. And this is thanks to the activity of doValue Greece, which has been so good in bringing back all the early arrears to performing because in the 0-90 days past due, they are not considered as non-performing. For the rest, the NPL part, so both UTP and NPL, the difference in profitability is not much. For Eurobank, there are no points in time before 2034 of renegotiation of fees.
There were higher fees in the first two years on the base fee because we closed the contract in the middle of COVID. So, we were able to get higher fees in 2020 to 2022. But we are already in the normalized fee scenario in 2023 and onward. So, there are no triggering events in that sense.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
There are no more questions from the conference call at the moment.
Simonetta. Yes, sorry. One last question. Let's assume that the Gardant deal is not finalized. So, you have to go back to the refinancing of the debt. So, at that point, if I have understood correctly, that you still aim to close one year in advance and you are considering both bonds and other instruments, or do you stick to issuing a new bond or a mix or the size could be lower? Just a clarification of that scenario.
Sure. No, the standalone alternative doesn't change. Clearly, in the context of the current market environment for bonds in our sector, we are pursuing other opportunities which are not relying only on the bond market, also because the cost would be just too high in this moment in time. And the volatility is just too high. So, the strategy remains the same to refinance by the summer, pursuing also the other routes on which we are working on. So, clearly, we're bringing forward both options because we have a standalone plan. Thank you very much for the attention. It's really appreciated. Anyhow, the management is available in the next weeks for detailed sessions one-to-one to meet you in person and address any specific other ideas or demand you have regarding the presentation of today.