Good afternoon. This is the conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the presentation of MutuiOnline Group Q4 2022 results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star zero on their touch tone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Marco Pescarmona, Chairman, Mr. Alessandro Fracassi, CEO, and Mr. Francesco Masciandaro, CFO. Please go ahead.
Hello, hello. Welcome, everybody. This is Marco Pescarmona. We are live for our call on the presentation that is available on our website. This time jump to page five because we recently performed a number of acquisitions that has slightly changed the shape of our group. We want to introduce the new view and how we present results going forward. The biggest changes are within the broking division, where we made a set of connected international acquisitions. We acquired the company in Spain. We acquired a company in France, LeLynx. We acquired a company in Mexico and plus a number of non-operating entities.
Now the way we report the results of the broking division is by introducing a new business line that for now we call international markets. We will comment together on the international market for now, and then we think about whether we need further splits, you know, down the line. This is the first change. The second change is we will no longer refer to mortgage broking and personal loan broking. In fact, personal loan broking was a small, quite a small business line. We now refer to credit broking as a single business line. By the way, this is also because we have merged the two legal entities that were, you know, doing these two activities.
Now it's a single company, so it's also more natural mapping. Instead, if you look at the digital division, the change is in the last business line, which is now called Leasing Rental BPO slash IT, meaning that we no longer do business process outsourcing services, which was the job of Agenzia Italia. We also provide IT services, in particular the IT core systems needed to operate leasing in particular, but also potentially rental operators as part of the activity of this business line. Now it is the case, a combined offering of IT platform and BPO services, which is all that is required basically, apart from the license and the capital to operate a leasing business.
I wanted to point this out to you. On page seven of the same presentation, I'm not going to comment on the details, but I like the fact that it is there. We have some details about, you know, the brands that we have acquired and the different geographies for the broking division and what they do and what their market position is, and so on. Like the CI level questions that people could have about these issues. As a reminder, these businesses, you know, the contracts acquired and were signed at the end of August 2022, but was executed at the beginning of February 2023.
They don't impact the reporting of 2022, but we are already setting things up for, you know, their presence as part of the group. The group structure is. Let's make a couple of comments on this as well. I'm going now to page 10 and 12, but very quickly. You see we now have acquired a good number of legal entities. The message we want to pass also is that, you know, when we make acquisitions, especially, you know, like family-owned businesses and so on, we tend to have a structure, uniquely with a good number of legal entities.
Then what we do over time, and we have done it, for instance, in the insurance BPO business line, we try to simplify things to manage the entities and so on. This is not the kind of structure we would like to have for the long term. You should expect to see step by step simplification of all these boxes that are basically there in many cases for historical reasons and some cases for business reasons and so on. This is also to comment on this apparently complex, you know, group structure. At this point is we jump into the results on page 17, with the full year highlights.
Like I said before, that the year was unexpected, and we anticipated at the beginning of 2022. We had a good H1 2022, and then we started seeing a progressively weakening mortgage market that impacted us both on the broking and the BPO side. Overall, the year is in terms of revenues almost flat. Revenues in 2022, EUR 310.8 million, which is down 49% year-on-year. It looks relatively favorable. This also benefits from some acquisitions that we made during the year.
The acquisitions most of them were not so big because, you know, we acquired Europa during the information services linked to NPLs. We acquired some small companies doing insurance claims. All these things are overall relatively small. The biggest acquisition we made was at the end of October, so it didn't have a big weight on the year. In any case, all in all, you know, we would have seen a bigger decline in revenues without the acquisition. Again, the year was not particularly great. The specific effect on the house was weaker than expected. The EBITDA is, you know, the evolution of the EBITDA is a consequence of the evolution of the revenues.
By the way, one of the areas that we were impacted is also one of the businesses that historically had the highest margins, which is online mortgage broking. Clearly, this, you know, means that the impact of the revenue decline there was magnified in the EBITDA decline. Still, you know, the EBITDA is EUR 8.6 million in 2022, and that's down 4.3% year-on-year. It's also important to point out that the numbers that we are providing are not adjusted.
This EUR 8.6 million of EBITDA includes the cost, so it would have been greater without this EUR 24 million in one-off transaction costs for financial and legal advice related to the international acquisition that, you know, we needed like UK-based lawyers and so on. That was expensive for instance, advisors and so on, and also the credit acquisition. There are transaction costs that are significantly higher than what we are used to. The EBIT is just like a consequence of the evolution of the EBITDA. The evolution of the net income is not particularly meaningful as it is represented here because as you remember, in 2021, we had a negative adjustment to the DTA because of some regulatory changes that affected the net income.
Otherwise the change would not have been so significant. This is the big picture of what happened. The key driver of this evolution has been the worsening of the conditions of the Italian residential mortgage market. I'll comment on this. This is on page 18. Basically, you know, we expected in 2022 the mortgage market, we expected remortgages to normalize, and we expected purchase mortgages to keep growing or at least be stable. Instead, like, we had this expectation that purchase mortgages would be doing okay until the summer, I would say, well, depending on the month. You know, we said what happened was that, you know, starting from September, but then it worsened.
We started seeing a decline also in purchase mortgages. You look at, first of all, origination volumes from Assofin. These are actually market volumes, which will be the drivers of our commissions. You know, they were, like, down 18.6% in October, 21.3% in November, 23.6% in December 2022, and 25.1% in January 2023. In January, the year-on-year drop in the volume of purchase mortgages was 24.1%. The drop that was, you know, the adjustment of the market was driven before by remortgages. By the way, we are searching that more than the market because we were overweighting remortgages. This drop unexpectedly, at least for us, became a significant adjustment to the volume of purchase mortgages.
Clearly, you know, this is linked to increasing interest rates, inflation and people waiting to see what happens. Well, if you look at the forward, the forward indicators like CRIF credit bureau inquiries, they provide consistent indications, and naturally, the consistent indications point to a continuation of this decline for the first months of 2023. In particular, inquiries in credit bureaus in 2023 are down 22.8% in January and 25.3% in February. This is all consistent with the market contraction, say, now of, say, 25% mortgage. You know, what do we expect for the future?
Well, clearly, you know, the impact in the fall was potentially driven by the big increase in interest rates and purchase of mortgages, which had the bigger impact. I think it was mostly an impact of, you know, people deciding to wait and see, but, you know, it's very hard to tell. Now we also have additional uncertainty. We are already, again, talking about some instability in the banking system, so we don't know. Maybe this is positive because interest rates will not increase so much, because otherwise there could be problems with the banking system. Anyway, this is likely to have a potentially some impact that are to be seen. There is uncertainty, let's say.
Our expectation is that we will see weakness for, let's say, the H1 of the year. Hopefully we'll see improvements going forward. This is based on, you know, market, public market information. I will elaborate a bit more based on what we see in our broking division, which in some cases is potentially slightly better. On the positive side, in terms of things that could have a positive impact on the mortgages market, the fact that the subsidy mortgages for young people, which were quite attractive as a product, are back on the shelves, and they are available until June.
you know, we see from public information that the H1Q1 is usually a weak quarter, so clearly it cannot impact it so much. We hope that they will impact, you know, in Q2 2023. This is the view of the overall market. let's look at the broking division first as an aggregate, and then more interestingly at the different divisions. The broking division had revenues of EUR 131 million in 2022. That's down 2.4% compared to 2021. The EBITDA was EUR 46.8 million, which is down 7.7% year-on-year. again, it's also a mixed effect.
In general, with growth in all the designs affect mortgages, but mortgages are higher margin and, you know, therefore the impact of their decline on the EBITDA was more than proportional. Looking at, you know, the overall comments on the broking division. The H1 was quite strong. Then the H2 was unexpected. We already expected remortgages to normalize, but we didn't expect all this negative impact on purchase mortgages. As an aggregate, we expect to see continuation of the trend, at least for the H1 2023. So weak purchase mortgages and more positive let's say evolution on better products. One comment is on the international part. It doesn't affect the 2022 results.
We are quite happy with the acquisitions that we made, and they've made a positive contribution to the division. Also increasing diversification of revenues, because this is mostly insurance intermediation business. Looking at the let's say the area where we are suffering, you know, credit broking, which is now personal loans and secured loans or consumer loans, is down year-on-year, 19.5% and is generating EUR 50.8 million of revenues.
This is a significant drop that comes from mortgage broking and comes in, you know, mostly, you know, a large part of the impact is in the H2 of the year. Consumer loans, by the way, were more stable, let's say, didn't suffer as much. The problem was, is really in mortgage volumes. Now, what is, I think, more interesting to you is what we are seeing here, we commented about the market as a whole, and of course, we are not immune to, you know, to the market, we are seeing the same, we are also seeing weakness.
What we are seeing that is a positive, but we still have to see if it is able to translate into close mortgages and revenues, is that, you know, at the end of last year and now we are seeing demand for remortgages again, from people that take an adjustable rate mortgage and benefited from close to zero interest rates for a long period of time. Then they were caught off guard by the increase, the sudden increase in interest rates. Now they are, let's say, kind of panicking, and they would like to go back to fixed. Very luckily, you can get fixed for 30 years at the same rate of adjustable. You know, this makes sense.
There are good number of people that are interested in such a switch. In the case of it's, it's interesting demand. The problem is that banks are quite, I don't know, conservative, let's say, in worry of these customers. We don't know because they think, you know, they should have done it before. You know, maybe people that have stayed for 10 years never had any problem. Still the mindset, the current mindset of many banks is, you know, if you come to me when you are a bit in trouble because you are, you know, now paying too much for your budget or whatever, then I don't really want your business.
It's very surprising, but we are we have to deal with these ideas, let's say. We don't know. I mean, if the mortgage is closer, it could be a benefit. This is something that the market as a whole is not seeing. It's, you know, because, you know, the as usual, people come to us for remortgages. So this is that. Instead on purchase mortgages, we see what the market sees, and we really have to wait and see if demand picks up. Again, it's not a disaster, but, you know, it's a significant contraction. For now, there is no sign that this is picking up.
The positive signs are these mortgage remortgage applications that we are seeing that, you know, we have to see how are things, because the quality is not going to be, it's not going to be great, but it's better for us than, than not having them. This is what we can say about credit broking. The other business lines are all in better shape. In insurance broking, we have growth. We did EUR 28.54 million of revenues in 2022. That's up 16% year-on-year. Now we finally see an increase in insurance premiums, and it seems to be the beginning of a stronger inflation of premiums.
This will lead to positive outcomes, more reaching and also higher commissions, because our commissions in Italy in insurance broking are a percentage of premium. In business lines, we are doing fine, and we believe we are also doing fine from a competitive perspective. We are quite happy with the evolution. Also we did fine in telco and energy comparison. Actually, we had very good growth in energy, of course, because the market was still open and people were trying to save on very high energy bill. We also the drop in sales of products.
Overall, we were able to grow with EUR 10.8 million of revenues, up 8.8% year-on-year, improving profitability, overall better quality of everything. So in the end it was, it was a good year and also we are quite happy also in retrospect of the acquisition of HO for if it allows us to, you know, increase our scale and increase in this type of business. In, in terms of let's say, anyway, one comment about the market. In Italy, differently from other markets, the energy market is open, but it is a market in which only index products are available.
All the products are basically, you know, with the pricing that is the wholesale price plus a trade, plus a trade, so it's like an index mortgage in a way. These products are okay because they are available, but they're not as attractive as fixed price products, you know, that are more present yet, and that would, you know, if present, create an acceleration. It's okay, but nothing incredible. Otherwise we would have done much more in energy. We expect the current situation to continue. We expect our results to be up year-on-year, mostly because we have made a lot of improvements to how we operate the business.
Depending on how the prices that consumers are paying are evolving, the business could accelerate or slow down, because, you know, people are sensitive to price changes. On the positive side, for instance, there are a lot of people that are on one or two-year fixed prices they had taken before the war in Ukraine, that now, as they finish the fixed price window of their contract, they will be asked to pay significantly more. Even, you know, if energy prices have stabilized today, they are still well above, say, two years ago. There could be potential effects here, but, you know, we'd like to see.
Last, part of e-commerce price comparison, here it would be EUR 37.4 million of revenues, up 9.8% year-on-year. We were able to grow. We were able to grow at a slower pace than in 2021, however, the focus continued to be on improving the product and expanding the services offered. Basically, we are trying to provide, apart from an expanded price comparison, other ways for consumers to save on their online purchases.
One of the things, to give you an example, is, we are providing coupons, basically discount coupons, and it's something we are developing, which is quite small and it's I think it's interesting as an option. It's something that is not so developed in Italy, by the way, online coupons. In 2023, we are expecting growth. Of course, you know, this depends on the growth of e-commerce. The e-commerce market is not growing at a particularly brilliant pace today. You know, after the pandemic, people thought that we were in a new era of growth of e-commerce.
e-commerce is important, it is growing but, you know, but it is also impacted by the competition of the traditional channels, and so it is growing at a relatively low speed, at least for now. Finally, this is, has nothing to do with the 2022 results on the international markets. We already commented, you know, this is insurance, which is a very possible positioning because inflation, you know, insurance will benefit off an inflationary environment. We'll see what happens. We see signs of inflation in some of the countries, like in in Spain, there are clear signs of growing inflation.
In France, it needs a question mark, but, you know, overall, the wind is blowing in the right direction. Our focus for 2023 is to increase the financial performance of these businesses compared to 2022. We will put a high focus on execution, so we will focus on the basics, the important things. Leveraging the internal resources of the talent that we have, but also transferring a number of operational and commercial best practices that we have developed in Italy that are clearly applicable and I think will bring benefits. On this, of course, as we start to see traction and results, we will be able to provide more precise comment going forward.
This ends, the comments on the working division, and now I will ask Alessandro to continue with the BPO division.
All right. Thank you, Marco. We are on page 23 with the BPO division. If you look at page 23 and you stand back, seems like nothing has happened between 2021 and 2022. Basically, both revenues and EBITDA margins are exactly where they were the year before. The truth is obviously there has been actual, you know, behind the scenes a lot of things have happened. In fact, as we move to the following pages, we see that the different business lines have a very complex dynamics. As Marco has mentioned at the beginning, these stable results have also been obtained thanks to the acquisitions that we have done.
It's surprising how all of this mess has ended up in, you know, basically, numbers moving by less than EUR 1 million, both on revenues and on EBITDA. I guess you can read it as a, you know, very resilient business in troublesome times. So I basically already commented on what has happened in 2022 at the overall level. If you look at the overall level, Q4 appears particularly good. Actually, we caught up with some of the lag in revenues that we had before, thanks to the last acquisition of Trebi Generalconsult for the last 2 months.
Anyway, you know, even if we had not done acquisition during the year, we would have seen a decline that, you know, would have been around 5% at the overall division level. Let's go and look at, you know what we expect in 2023. Marco has already commented on the macro environment. Obviously here, you know, we need to see whether if banking, if there is a sort of a banking crisis in 2023 which affects the willingness to lend. If that happens, obviously the comments that I'm making now will not stand.
We do not put into all these, the scenarios that I'm gonna comment, you know, a significant restriction of the supply of credit. If that doesn't happen, and so what happens is that we see, you know, an inflationary trend continues, although it should slow down, and so interest rates will continue going up, but at a certain point, this also will slow down. The real estate market will be impacted with a lower number of transactions and potentially also the house prices. This is the macro scenario which we look at, our outlook.
In that cases, we expect more or less a similar reason, comment, business line by business line to have a, you know, without the new acquisition of Trevi, we probably would end up again, you know, in a similar result of what we have seen in 2022. Thanks to the acquisition of Trevi and also some small increases in some other businesses, we are aiming at reaching a EUR 200 million threshold in revenues in 2023. Let's go into the different business lines. You know, we have commented throughout the year the full performance of the mortgage BPO revenues.
While we do expect demand to remain weak, as Marco said, for 2023, we are forecasting to be relatively stable in 2023. The reason being that, you know, first of all, we have acquired a new customer in this area, and so that would increase revenues also in the face of a decreasing market scenario. We have a very significant credit appetite by one of the long-standing players that wants to catch up in terms of market share, and they are advertising aggressively in this period. They have very high budget.
I don't know whether they will be able to really get all the results that they expect, but, you know, that makes me a little bit more positive in looking at the BPO prospects for mortgages. Also, as you know, here we have the para-notary services which were hit bad during 2022, also at the end of 2021. That's a slight improvement in the remortgages scenario because of what Marco commented. The fact that there are people that in a rising interest rate environment decide to switch to the fixed rate. Unfortunately, there are not so many people that in the last five to seven years have done variable rate mortgages. Fixed rates were the most popular product.
Anyway, these people, some of these people are getting scared and so they are switching to fixed rates, and that creates a remortgage activity which we see in a very significant way in our para-notary services. Those are the positives in the face on the background of a weak mortgage demand, as Marco has already commented. Going to the real estate services, you know that this was the big positive surprise ECR. It has, you know, partially offset what we have seen in mortgages. It is also has an impact. It's not only surprise, there is also the impact of the acquisition of Europa.
You know, the big growth, the organic growth came from the Ecobonus business. Unfortunately, the Ecobonus business will gradually disappear through the year. I remember answering somebody's call, question, probably, you know, 3-6 months ago, when I was asked if I was still seeing a positive prospect for 2023 on this business, and I said yes. Even if the amount of the tax credit is decreased, so if some of the biggest incentives go away, there is still appetite for tax credit in the market.
This is what we have seen until basically, you know, 15 days ago, a month ago, when the government has decided that they would take away the possibility to sell the tax credit. That basically you know, zeros out the secondary market. You know, basically we expect this market to really be reduced to a minimum by the end of June. What we were doing here, again, is to audit the goodness of the credit, of the tax credit. The tax credit was correct, the correctness of the tax credit.
That implied, looking at fiscal documents, but also making sure that the real administrative intervention had actually happened and, you know, that the changes and the investment that's been done and the re-refurbishing and the renovation were actually there. Actually banks that relied on us can be, you know, pretty safe in the fact that they have got good tax credit. You know, one of the other things that has happened, and it was in the newspaper, there was a lot, a high level of fraud, which was generated by banks or other financial institutions that were buying the tax credit without basically any audit. Anyway, that will taper out.
Obviously we expect to see a decrease from the record year 2022 in during 2023. That is probably the only really, you know, sure bad news in terms of business line that we will see. BPO performed well, slightly up in 2022 relative to 2021. The areas where we are growing are especially the new areas in which we entered starting in 2020. The area of credit, of credit to SMEs guaranteed by the state. All the forms of subsidized or guaranteed lending where the state is helping the credit world.
Not only credited by banks, but also by some governmental agencies helping, for example, the internationalization project and things like this. And we're also strengthening our position as a sub-servicer in securitization efforts in this guaranteed loans market. And, and, you know, we, we believe looking forward that this market will grow because there will, you know, this credit will start performing so and so. So this will create for sure a need of servicing this portfolio correctly. There will be transactions in the market, secondary market will be developed.
All of these, I believe, will give opportunities to this business line, which is well-positioned and well credited in the market for servicing this sort of portfolio. We are positive looking at the future for loans BPO. In terms of the insurance if you know, here we have performance that is up, you know, more than double digit. We expected to do a little bit more, here, you know, most of the growth comes from the acquisitions. We expected the organic business to perform a little better.
Anyway, we see a 2023 that is totally not connected to the discussions that we had at the macro level up till now. We expect, you know, continuation of the organic growth. We need to focus on consolidating the operational machine and improve also the margins on this area. You know, we have done, you know, two acquisitions, even albeit small, but we have done these acquisitions, and we need to consolidate them not only in the larger insurance business line, but also in the group. That we will have a focus on that in 2023.
Investment services do nicely, although operating margins were affected by the negative performance of financial markets. This is because some of the business line service revenues is driven by the asset under management level of our clients, which is not really a good revenue driver, meaning that it's not completely connected to the cost. Sometimes you're consuming in the operating margins, which is more connected to the way we price our services than what it's really, you know, our operational efficiency. In 2023, we expect to have here a slight reduction of revenues because some contracts were terminated.
We're negotiating our services with the main clients in this business line. Therefore, we expect to be forced to do a streamlining of our services, increase efficiency and pass part of it on to our clients. Well, this is story of every day, but, you know, you might see some discontinuities when this happens, you know, when we get into negotiation. Anyway, there is no risk of losing these clients. It's just a renegotiation at the pricing level, but there is no risk looking forward.
Lets say in rental unit, where now, as Marco pointed out at the beginning, we do not only BPO services, but now we also provide the core system, and we are the leader for the specialized finance leasing finance. It performed well in 2022. You see a growth that is of 12.6% year-on-year, but if you take out the impact of the acquisition, it would have grown anyway more than 5%. This is a business line that is continue to grow
It grows even if the automotive market, which is one of the macro driver of this, you know, business, you know, even if the automotive market is still affected by the restrictions in the global logistic chains. You know, as we look forward, really at the macro and long-term trends, we expect, you know, the automotive business to move in the right direction for the kind of services we offer. We expect to see more financing in automotive purchases. We expect to see a faster movement of the stock of cars as we move to electric cars and anyway better vehicles for the environment.
This is really what drives the revenues of this, of this business line or of a significant part of this business line. You will see, you know, obviously significant growth in 2023 because we will report in this business line also the numbers of Trebì Generalconsult. The, obviously the focus of our effort in 2023 will be in creating that unified value proposition that I commented during our last call. In putting together in a service proposition, both the IT service and the operational BPO services.
Then on the other end, in moving, in investing, in bringing our IT platform also to serve the rental market, where we are already strong in terms of BPO services, and we plan to penetrate it also with our IT platform. It will need some investments, but we have really good relations with our clients. We believe that there is a significant opportunity here. you know, the main reason for which we have done all this.
I think this concludes, the comments on the BPO division, both regarding the 2022 results and the outlook for 2023. Back to you, Marco.
Thank you, Alex. Now on page 28, our proposal on the dividend. We go back to a conservative dividend proposal of EUR 0.10 a share. You know, despite anyway, earnings per share that are 10 times higher, but, you know, we have made two important acquisitions. One was Crediclose last year, and the other is the international one for blocking and to fund these acquisitions, we significantly increased our leverage. Also we made an investment which is more financially neutral in MoneySuperMarket share that also observed liquidity. If you go to page 30, the financial position of negative EUR 295 million as of December 31st, 2022.
This will increase because the price for the international acquisition will be, as we announced, an enterprise value of EUR 150 million. Basically, you know, we want to have take a safe approach to the covenant that we have with the bank and so on. While retaining some dividend, we went back to the level that we normally paid either in uncertain years or difficult years or when we wanted to preserve cash because we had other business credit cash. The pay day of the dividend. Now looking at the net financial position, the key figure is negative EUR 195 at the end of 2022.
The other key figure or key item to keep in mind is our investment in MoneySuperMarket shares. Here you have the number of shares, that is 44 million, at the end of 2022. Those shares are worth EUR 95 million, as of that date. Now they are worth significantly more. Anyway, we tend to look in, you know, when we look at our net financial position, we tend to look at it in tandem with the MoneySuperMarket investment for two reasons. One is because, in a large number of the covenants that we have with the banks, the investment in MoneySuperMarket is netted from the net financial position.
It's not in all the covenants, but in quite a large number of them. The second reason is that in any way, this is an investment that, you know, if we need, you know, EUR 10 million for one reason or another, could be adjusted, so we could dispose part of it. We have a certain degree of flexibility here. By the way, for those that are not familiar with Italian taxation, any capital gain that we realize on this after 12 months of the last share purchase will become exempt from taxation. It's also nice from a tax perspective. This is the net financial position.
Of course, we will keep an eye, and we will also provide comments in the following calls on our net financial position and so on, because again, we are more levered now than what we used to be in the past. It's important, you know, to be quite on top of this. We don't have any particular concern at present either. With this I say we have completed the presentation, and we can open the floor to questions. Operator, please go ahead.
Thank you. This is the conference operator. I will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. If you have any questions, please press star and one at this time. The first question is from Alexandra Sosula with EQUITA. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon to everybody. Thank you for taking my questions. I have a couple from my end. The first one on margins, operating margins, we should expect in the coming quarters, since I was reading in the press release that maybe you're seeing some inflationary pressures. Apart from the business mix in the broking division in the BPO, we saw a flat EBITDA margin, even though the decreasing BPO mortgage activity was related to low margin activity. I maybe just to explain what we should expect in the coming quarters, because we should expect some further slight deterioration or not. The second one is again on margins and profitability in the international business.
As far as I remember, when you acquired, when you announced the acquisition in August, those two companies, in France and Spain, were with the same slightly lower margins than your usual broking business. What is the target EBITDA margin you expect from this division in a couple of years, maybe? Thank you.
Okay, maybe I say something, Alessandro wants to add some color on the deal. In terms of operating margins, I think for, you know, the same perimeter like-for-like, you should look at what we did in the last two quarters for the next two quarters. We are in a period, you know, if especially mortgage volumes remain low of some of our capacity and, you know, it's true that we lost in some cases, low margin business like, you know, the notary activities for mortgages, but also we were less, in some areas, recover capacity.
Maybe we then we are saying these next couple of quarters, you know, like Q1 2023 could be similar to Q4 2022, and maybe hopefully, Q2 2023 to Q3 2022, so slightly better. You know, we have to see, and we have this issue of some of the capacity in some areas. Alessandro Fracassi, do you want to add anything on this point?
Yeah, no, yeah. There are a couple of things I wanna add. I mean, on the BPO side, as you know, the main cost factor is the operating personnel. We are facing a tightening of the labor market at this point, then maybe things will change. You know, just to give you some, you know, flavors, I mean, it's, you know, most of our people have a co-contract with the commercial sector and this is a contract. You know, many of our operating people are at the minimum, you know, contractual wage.
If there is a renegotiation at a national level, which will happen in the course of 2023, then we will see an automatic inflation in our costs. Obviously, you know, trade unions at the national level are fighting for, you know, probably correctly, to pass on some of the inflation into the wages. And that will have an inflationary effect. We can also pass on some of it on to our clients. You know, many of our current contracts have a provision that says that we are able to increase our prices with inflation.
When you go to a client and you say, "Well, you know, the CPI index increased by 10%, so I'm gonna increase the prices by 10%," you know, it's actually not as easy as the contract says. You have to leave something on the table anyway. This is partially of what I mean by managing the inflationary pressure. It's basically on labor cost, and on the other side, not always being able to pass it on to clients. In some cases, it's automatic. I mean, when you get a commission on the price of something, you know, if there is an inflationary environment, your commission anyway increases. That's easy.
You know, this is a moment where pricing are moving a lot, and it's time to. Every time the prices are moving a lot and they don't move, in a homogeneous way in the different step of the value chain, you might have some tensions, and in the end you will find a new equilibrium. You know, in the months and in the years that it takes to see a full effect of these. You experience some tensions.
I don't expect, you know, something very significant in the margins because of this, but I just wanted to point out that this is, you know, something where we have to keep our eyes on, and we have to, you know, keep our hands on the steering wheel, because there are tensions.
Back to the second question, the margins and profitability in the international business. I think I don't have the exact figures. I have it in front of me, but I think we, with the press release when we announced acquisition, we referred to something like EUR 55 million of revenues and something like EUR 8 million of expected EBITDA for 2022. So that means something like 10% EBITDA margin. We believe that, you know, new businesses, especially on the leadership positions as in the case of Spain, it is somewhat where the impossible to have higher margins. We are working on that.
The fact that we said before that, you know, we expect that, you know, these businesses will make a bigger contribution than 2022 means that basically, I would say most of the extra, we don't know, we cannot say exactly how much it will be. The idea that it could be more than this EUR 8 million, which was expected, not necessarily the actual, but, you know, a significant portion of the improvement should come from margin expansion, then maybe some comes also from growth.
You know, here I'm not giving a target, and I'm not giving a target date or anything, but the truth is that these businesses should operate at a well north of 20% in terms of margins, even 25% is the normal margin for this type of business. And, when it is, you know, operated at scale. In Italy we have well above 30%, and we'll try to get there. It is easier in markets where the market is mature, and we have a leadership position. In developing markets like, you know, we talk about Mexico. Mexico is profitable, but the market with potential growth, but still at the very beginning.
This is not going to be feasible. I would say, you know, we would be able, we hope to be able to, we count to be able to expand margins. As this happens, we'll give an update. For now the feeling is an improvement over current levels is achievable.
Okay, thank you.
Next question is from Steve Copling with Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Good evening. Thank you. Just a couple of points again on your new year business overall. The first thing is, you mentioned again that this being the business altogether, so France, Mexico and Spain, the contribution of EUR 65 million for revenue, it can be a VGA. Just a confirmation, is it also the figures that you have reported for the fiscal year 2022? Second thing, you mentioned that in 2023 you expect that this 18 EVA could be more. Again, I know that maybe it's maybe too early, but this increase of EVA is simply coming because the business is growing.
I get that the guidance of your insurance business could get higher should business abroad, or maybe because you start to put to work your capabilities to improve the margins. Thank you.
Okay. I refer to the figures that we indicated in our press release in the announced acquisition that were the expectations at that date. I don't know the precise figures that will be reported. By the way, those figures were adjusted because they are like intercompanies, with, you know, the parent group. The reported will be different and not very meaningful anyway. In terms of trying to give you an indication of what to expect for this year, what we are trying to say is that compared to the EUR 8 billion that was in the press release, we should be able to do better. Irrespective of, you know, what is going to be reported, which is not particularly meaningful.
Where this comes from, I would say, you know, a lot of it will come from like improvements. Improvements could be, you know, best practices or also focus. Maybe it means that, you know, not doing some extra projects that, you know, was a bit of a, of a long shot. You know, it's, as I said before, keeping the organizational focus on the key things and transferring our best practices. These two things together should improve the results. This combines with a favorable macro environment, and this makes us comfortable that, you know, we will deliver at least above, you know what, what, you know, we communicated. As expected for 2022.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time.
Okay. I think we can close the call. We thank everybody for participating as usual, and we look forward to meeting you one-on-one or, you know, speaking to you at the next call. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.