Good afternoon, this is the Chorus Call Conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the presentation of Gruppo MutuiOnline Q3 2023 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 and zero on their telephone. 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.
Thank you. This is Marco Pescarmona, and welcome everybody to our call. We will rely as usual on the presentation that is available on our website, and start actually from page 18 of the presentation, with the Q3 highlights. In Q3 2023, our revenues are EUR 94.6 million. And that's up 36.4% year-on-year, compared to the 59.4 of Q3 2022. The EBITDA in the three months is EUR 25.1 million. That's up 27.9% year-on-year, compared to the 19.6 million of Q3 2022. The EBITDA margin is 26.5% in the quarter.
That compares with 28.3% in the same quarter of the previous year, or with you know in the nine months, it is 26.6%. So it's, like, in line with the previous part of the year. EBIT, which is affected by the amortization of the assets deriving from PPA, is EUR 16.4 million in Q3 2023. That's up 10.6% year-on-year, with EUR 14.8 million in Q3 2022. Net income, which is also affected by the interest costs that you know high interest rate we have to pay, is EUR 11.3 million in Q3 2023, which is up 5.4% year-on-year, compared to the EUR 10.7 million in Q3 2022.
So, these are the results, and we would say that these results are both in line, if not slightly better than, you know, what you could have expected based on the outlook and the performance of the previous quarters. And maybe there is no particular surprise, and we remain in particular in a situation in which the mortgage market is very weak. And maybe let's comment on this for starters, and then we would make some comments about the specific business lines of the two divisions.
But looking at the mortgage market, in the entire nine months, the mortgage market was significantly down year-over-year, with increasing weakness throughout the year, and in particular, starting from Q2 and continuing to Q3, we started seeing a contraction of around 40% year-over-year in purchase mortgage flows. Basically, in the year, especially in the first part of the year, there were no remortgages or very few remortgages because of high interest rates and so on. And a progressive contraction of purchase mortgages. Now, in recent quarters, remortgages are showing very significant growth, even if they remain a very small portion of the market.
So the demand that we have long mentioned of remortgages from variable to fixed is translating into some volumes of transactions. So there is percentage-wise significant growth, but in absolute terms, it's not a big component of the market. The performance of the market as a whole is dominated by the 40% drop in purchase mortgages. And by the way, what is happening if you look also at the real estate transaction information is that the property market is contracting, but the number of transactions is only declining by, say, 20%. Price is more or less stable. So and as I was saying, the mortgages are down 40%. That means that, you know, the portion of cash purchases has increased significantly.
So people have savings in the bank that are not remunerated, and they use them to buy property, which is what is happening. The property market is suffering, but it's certainly not collapsing. If we look at forward-looking information like Credit Bureau inquiries, you still see a reduction in the neighborhood of 20% of credit report inquiries for residential mortgage applications. It's legitimate to expect some further contraction, possibly also in Q4, but Q4 of 2022 was already disaster, and so the contraction is going to be softer. So this is overall the situation. Then when we go into 2024, you know, the comparison will be again against very, very benchmarks.
So we don't see too much contraction, happening in 2024, but, you know, it's a different certain. And, having said that, about the mortgage market, just as a reminder, mortgage-related businesses also because, you know, the contracted account for, say, around 25% ballpark of, our results. So, and that by, by the way, explains why overall, we have, what we believe is a good performance despite the situation, it's because the other businesses are, doing, okay, well, or very well, depending on the businesses. And if we look at the broking division itself, and we are on page 21 of the presentation, the broking division, generates EUR 47.1 million of revenues in Q3 2023.
That's up 57.8% year-on-year, because in Q3 2022, we made EUR 29.9 million. The D&A is EUR 14.8 million, which is up 34.5% year-on-year, and we did EUR 11 million in Q3 2022. Maybe the margin is lower, 31.3% in the Q3 of this year, and that compares to 36.7% in the Q3 of the previous year. Maybe it's following the same trend of the EBITDA.
Here, in terms of explanations and, you know, and outlook, basically we have credit broking, mostly mortgages, that is, you know, was contracting during most of the year and is still suffering at the same time, we have a good performance of, well, first of all, we have a change in consolidation area. So there are international businesses that are, first of all, were not there before, and second, they are performing well. So, they are also giving not only a good revenue contribution, but a relevant contribution in terms of EBITDA. And then, we have energy that is doing quite well. We have growth in insurance.
So we have smaller things that are also going well, like, you know, bank accounts, that kind of stuff, but that is more business. I would say the only thing that is going sideways or slightly down is e-commerce price comparison, because consumers apparently don't have much money to spend, and so we see weakness there. And I think that's the situation of the broking division, and this was very much what we explained at the end of the H1, and most likely this is what will continue to happen.
Yeah, I would say mortgages year-on-year, just because it will be an easier comparison, will be doing better, and the rest of the business lines will most likely continue to perform like they performed until now. There are no particular news, again, apart from the weakness of from express comparison, but that was already visible in Q3. Regarding the BPO division, on page 23, on page 24, in the quarter, revenues are EUR 47.5 million. That's a 20.1% year-on-year, compared to the EUR 39.5 million of Q3 2022. EBITDA is EUR 10.4 million in Q3 2023.
That compares to EUR 8.7 million in Q3 2022, so it's up 19.4%, more or less in line with the growth of revenues. EBITDA is instead down year-on-year. It's at EUR 4.1 million in Q3 2023. That's -27.2% compared to the, you know, EUR 5.7 million in Q3 2022. And the reason is the PPA amortization of the acquisition of Trebi. So we are amortizing intangibles that come out from the allocation of the purchase price. And also the BPO division is suffering of the weakness of the mortgage-related businesses. And this is all in line with expectations.
And the growth is in revenues and the results here, similarly to what we have in broking, is attributable to the enlargement of the consolidation area. And we have some business lines that are seeing very strong results. One is insurance, and the comparison is basically inorganic or mostly organic comparison. Actually, the quarter is fully organic, and this is due to the fact that we had a lot of catastrophic events during the year, floods and other stuff due to weather, so plenty of claims.
And then, leasing and rental BPO is growing, but you know, because of, as I said before, the change in the consolidation area, but also for internal reasons, in particular, a lot of vehicles are being shipped finally, and so there is an activity linked to that, because of the backlog from past orders of vehicles has been cleared. Mortgage BPO, we said, is suffering. We are, however, you know, not doing so bad in terms of revenues, but the revenues are, let's say, low quality revenues because it's para‑notary services that are a much lower margin than, you know, mortgage processing, which is still significantly down. And the other business lines are, you know, let's say, substantially stable.
In for the rest of the year, here again, we expect to see a continuation of the current trends, so growth in insurance and leasing rental. Mortgages, in terms of revenue, is doing better, but you know, with a large portion that is still margin, so as a contribution, clearly down, and stability of the other business lines compared to the H1 of the year. So, this is, I would say, a picture that doesn't present any particular news in terms of business performance. We are happy with the way things are going, and we are happy that we are highly diversified, but in a very unfavorable environment for what was historical, I mean, historically our main business.
We are able to deliver strong financial performance, and you know, we will continue to operate in this environment until we have visibility that something has changed. In terms, one point that is important is an update on net financial position and leverage. And here, the net financial position, we are in page 27, at the end of the Q3 is EUR -335 million. That's around EUR 7.5 million better than the net financial position at the end of the H1. And just to keep in mind that, you know, in the quarter, we paid the dividend, so it was paid in July.
And, also, we did significantly more buyback. This is because there were more volumes in the market than usual, so it was, like, EUR 4.5 million of buyback in the quarter. But this is, again, due to the fact that there was more liquidity, especially in August and in September. And I would say we should be on track to be around 3x or slightly below 3x, but, you know, let's say close to that number at the end of the year. And the piece of information that is relevant, but is not-...
Something that has been formalized or decided, et cetera, is that we are in talks with one of our lenders, which is Intesa, which is the only lender that had the covenants that do not include, in the net financial position, the value of the Moneysupermarket shares with all our lenders, except Intesa. In the covenant, we consider the Moneysupermarket shares, which are a financial investment, as, you know, liquidity. And so, the number that is relevant for the majority of the banks is this one, which is EUR 202 million, which would be leverage ratio 20x.
And so we are in talks to align this, hopefully to align this, you know, with Intesa to what the other banks have. But in any case, we do not have any, any particular concern, in really, you know, we would be a bit tight, but we would be able to do, we think, even without this. So, I think this is all the relevant information, and we would close the presentation here and open the discussion to questions. So operator, please go ahead with questions if there are any.
Thank you. This is the conference call operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you change your mind and wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from Filippo Prini, Kepler. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thank you. I've got two questions. The first is on the outlook for the business abroad. In the press release and in the nine-month report, you mentioned that you expect an improvement of the profitability of this business. I remember that when you bought this business, that they were generating EUR 8 million EBITDA with a bit more than EUR 60 million of revenue, so EBITDA margin of around 13%. Could you give us an idea of today, after 3 quarters of consolidation, which is the this EBITDA margin compared to the 13% at the time of the acquisition? And the last one is on the PPA and the amortization.
I've noticed that the D&A in the Q3 is slightly declining compared to the Q2 D&A. So basically, let you know if some you have finished the amortization of the PPA of some asset of the past, and so waiting for the PPA on the business abroad, the D&A of the Q3 should be the right for the future. Thank you.
Okay. No, I'll take both. So, I think that, you know, by the end of the year, we'll try to give you a more precise idea of exactly what we are doing in, you know, in the foreign businesses. I would say, I mean, we've always been positive about the economic performance. I think in general, what we have said so far, and I'll repeat it, is that we are seeing more than growth in revenues. We have some growth in revenues, but it's more an expansion in the margins. And, I don't know, it's... I think you can, it's certainly not in line with what we have in Italy.
In Italy, we have north of 30%. This is higher than what we had before, nicely higher, but not yet comparable to what we have in Italy. I cannot say much more. These businesses should in general be able to deliver 20-30%+ with the margins. You know, they're covering. It will happen over time, but we have made the initial stage. Again, we try to give more precise information at the end of the year when we have all the numbers fixed, et cetera, you know, so the budget will be.
Regarding the PPA or let's say the depreciation and amortization, the D&A line, you know, if you look at it by quarter, is a little bit misleading because of how we do the PPA exercise, because the PPA exercise, they have to do it within one year of closing an acquisition. And just as a reminder, that means you look at the difference between what you paid and the book value, and when you do the acquisition, the day you close it, you treat it as provisional goodwill.
Then within a year, you have to decide whether that is goodwill or, you know, you allocate it to specific assets, which, in our case, are normally software and trademarks. The part that you allocate to specific assets also gives rise to amortization. So what we did is, in the H1, the H1 results, we closed the allocation of the acquisition of Trebi, and, being a software house with a software platform that it sells to its clients, you know, there was a big software asset, so we recognized it at the end of the H1.
But then we also recognized the amortization of that, and we are recognizing one quarter the amortization of the H1 of the year. So, like, double amortization was visible in Q2. And then, no, in Q1, there was no amortization in place.
Yeah.
If you look at it by quarter, no?
Yeah. Right.
And then in the second, you know, it's like, it was all because you do it, like, by difference, it was all in the Q2. We put the amortization of the first and the Q2, because you can do it only when you close the PPA. And then the Q3 was like a clean quarter, like a normal run rate quarter, so that's representative, actually. In fact, the Q3 is like an average of the first and the second, if you look at it by quarter.
Now, this question is also useful because, it allows me to say that, you know, we still have to finish, the PPA exercise for the international acquisitions. Then we will have trademarks, and software, and, so, at the end of the year, we will show those items, we will have overall lower goodwill and, these two assets, but also we will have the amortization of these two assets. So given that we do it at the end of the year, you will see a lot of D&A, because it has to cover for nine months of the year for, these two assets. This is just the way it works. You know, it, we always see it like that, and that's normal.
So the D&A of the last quarter of the year will be a weird number because it includes the full year effect of this PPA exercise, also the international businesses. And then from the Q1, you know, to make a forecast of the D&A for the future, you just be able to, I don't know, take the average of the D&A of the four quarters of the year, and that will be okay. So it's going to be a bit confusing, but you know, we are available to explain or if you have questions or anything.
Oh, okay. So basically, the Q2, the catch-up effect of the past quarter will be the same also for the Q4. Okay, thank you.
Yeah.
The next question is from Aleksandra Arsova with Equita. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. Three on my end. The first one is on the insurance business, both actually BPO and broking. So currently, from what I know, that the government is proposing this, let's say mandatory insurance policies for natural disasters to be potentially—I mean, to make it compulsory by 2024. That, do you believe this could further accelerate your growth in insurance BPO? And on the other hand, in the broking insurance channel business, do you believe maybe there are other verticals that could be interesting for you to enter in? And so what could be other drivers of growth there, apart from increasing premium and then market penetration?
The second one, on the mortgage business, especially on the BPO. We know that you recently acquired the three new clients, customers, the two new banks. Maybe some more color on this. Are these Italian clients, banks you previously didn't cover, or are some new clients, or maybe foreign players? And so if you see more room for new customers entering the foreign banks entering the Italian market. The last one is on Moneysupermarket . If I remember correctly, November is the month now from which you could benefit from the, let's say, preferential fiscal treatment on if you sell the stake. So, do you think it could be a good moment to start, as you say, selling a portion of Moneysupermarket , or you are still good with the stake you have at the moment? Thank you.
... Okay, Marco, maybe I take the BPO part, if you agree, and then I leave you with the broking part and the Moneysupermarket .
Yeah, yeah.
Okay. So first of all, on insurance, well, yes, obviously, if the natural disaster insurance becomes compulsory, this would be a significant boost, although I don't know the timing of that impact. It really depends on how, you know, what is the timeline that the law will give, to give you, obviously, kind of, a gist to it. You know, there were basically, well, there were a number of disasters, unfortunately, this year. But you might remember in May, the one that happened in the Emilia-Romagna, and then in July, the one that happened in Milan.
Now, in terms of business, the one in Milan was much more significant because it impacted an area where the level of insured properties is much higher than the one that impacted, even if it was much bigger in terms of damages. You know, the rural areas or the industrial areas of Emilia-Romagna, where the penetration of insurance was smaller. When you hit a city, you hit mostly, you know, condominiums, and those are normally already insured, and therefore, you know, the gardens, the roofs, and any other damages that, you know, they create through the things falling out, they are all covered.
So we got much more work, we get much more work when we hit a city, you know, when a natural disaster hits a city than when it has... when, you know, even a bigger disaster hits an area where the penetration of insurer is smaller. If that becomes, you know, by law, the penetration increases, that's obviously a significant boost. In terms of mortgages on the BPO side, you know, we are not seeing yet the impact, or maybe just of one client, but really, you know, not much. Those are, these are, you know, obviously banks operating in Italy. The two, one is an Italian bank that we were not covering, and this is starting to take away business from a competitor.
And then, the other one, it's a foreign player that was already present in Italy and already active in the mortgage market. But here we work more on a overflow capacity, as overflow capacity, so it will depend on, you know, really the volume, the volumes of the market and how they cope with the market. And then we still have a prospect, which is actually instead a new entrant on the Italian market. All of this will be impacting in 2024 anyway.
Okay, regarding insurance broking, we don't see any particular opportunity, at least for now, from the new regulation that was mentioned. Regarding Moneysupermarket , it's true that, you know, by November, or to be more precise, by the first of December, we would be in a... The capital gains would be mostly exempt if we decided to sell, but today we have no particular pressure or desire to sell, so we will look at this. We like the company, we like the investment. You know, the company, Moneysupermarket , is doing well. The energy market in the U.K. is still has to reopen. It is just starting very slowly to reopen, and so we wouldn't rush things.
Then, of course, as we said already in the past, and now we don't have any friction if we want to sell, we will use this as a source of resources in case we have an M&A opportunity or other things. So it will be a very opportunistic approach and maybe, you know, maybe we sell, maybe we don't, maybe we do a little bit. You know, we will not be able to give guidance for anything, and but we don't expect to be doing anything particularly impactful, present at least.
Yeah, thank you. Very clear.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question is a follow-up from Alexandra Arsova from Equita. Please go ahead.
Yeah, sorry, just a quick follow-up. Maybe I don't know if you are able to disclose it, what was the amount of revenues coming from the natural disasters we had in Emilia-Romagna, Milan, so the ones you were mentioning before, so just to get an idea? And the second one, again, on mortgages: If I remember correctly, over the last quarters call, you mentioned the fact that, apart from the slowdown in demand for mortgages, also on the supply side, there were some slowdowns or banks were not that keen on doing mortgages or remortgages. So do you see the situation from the supply side changing a little bit, just as a sentiment feeling on your side? Thank you.
No, I don't. I'm not able to tell you the part on how much is connected to the natural disaster. I mean, we mentioned that, you know, you will see anyway the numbers of growth, you know, when we release the numbers by business line at the end of the year. And, you know, the organic growth, it's basically due to these disasters. Again, you know, here it is not correct to look at these things as, you know, one-off events, because this is exactly what insurance is about. Then, you know, there are years where this is more impacting, and years where it's less impacting.
But, you know, fortunately, I believe that there is a clear secular trend, which is also the reasons why the law is coming in potentially into effect, for which, you know, these disasters are increasing. Probably also, you know, for two reasons, on one side, you know, we might not have been particularly careful in managing, you know, the land. And on the other side, also the climate is on a secular trend for changes and for more severe events. In terms of mortgages, I'll let Marco comment. You know, from what we see on the BPO side, there is, you know, the supply strictness was mostly on remortgages. I don't think there is a significant change in any direction on that, from what I see. But you know, probably Marco is in a better position to comment.
No, I agree. There is a low appetite, very low appetite for remortgages because they, we think they will, you know, these mortgages will be refinanced again very soon. Whereas the appetite for purchase mortgages remains good, and there the problem is the demand.
Okay, brilliant. Thank you.
Okay.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time.
Okay, then, we can close the call, and we thank everybody for participating. And as always, we are available for one-on-one meetings or quick calls, whatever, if you have any questions. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone. Bye-bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over, and you may disconnect your telephones.