Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call Conference Operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the presentation of Gruppo MutuiOnline fourth quarter 2023 results. 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. And, Marco, welcome everybody to our call. We will, as always, rely on the document present on our website. We start from page 17 with the full year highlights. Overall, 2023 was a good year, especially taking into account the very unfavorable development of the mortgage markets throughout the year. Started well, and then the mortgage market deteriorated. In terms of results, we reached revenues of EUR 404 million, which is up 30% compared to EUR 311 million in 2022. Of course, you know this is partly due to the acquisitions that we made, but still, it is a satisfactory result, and the organic part was up. The EBITDA for the year is EUR 108 million in 2023, and that's up 22% compared to EUR 89 million in 2022.
The EBITDA margin is 26.8% in 2023, but compared to 28.5% in 2022. If we look at the EBIT, that's actually down year-on-year. It's EUR 63 million in 2023, while it was EUR 66.5 million in 2022. But you have to consider the fact that this was affected by purchase price allocation amortization, being the acquisitions. So basically, when we make an acquisition, we recognize typically intangible assets that are then amortized, and sometimes even with the fast amortization rate, if the assets are like software. And there were in our EBIT EUR 11 million of PPA amortization in 2022 and EUR 31 million in 2023. So this explains you know the fact that it's declining while all the other indicators are going down.
In terms of net income, of course, this comes from the EBIT, but also from interest costs that were higher this year than in previous years, and from taxes. So the net income was EUR 35 million in 2023, and that's 25% or 26% lower than the EUR 47.5 million of the previous year. But again, this is mainly driven, this decline by the, I would say, cosmetic effect of the PPA amortization. If we focus on Q4 alone on the next page, you see that Q4 was actually quite a strong quarter, and revenues in Q4 were EUR 114 million, and that's up 33% compared to EUR 84 million in the same period as the previous year. EBITDA in Q4 alone is around EUR 31 million. That's up 36% compared to EUR 23 million in Q4 of 2022.
Not commenting on EBIT and net income, because this is again affected by PPE amortization. Actually, let me just say one thing. EBIT is even more affected in Q4 by PPA amortization because we closed the purchase price allocation of the international acquisitions in the quarter. And so for that part of PPA, you see all the effect of the year in a single quarter concentrated in a single quarter. Now, what's behind our performance in terms of markets and in terms of individual business lines? Let's talk again about the Italian residential mortgage market. You will see, by the way, you know, when we look at the revenue background, that the mortgage market is really counting now for, say, a quarter more or less of our revenues. So yes, we continue to give updates.
It's still quite important, but you know, it's only relevant for a portion of our performance. In any case, the market continued to contract in terms of mortgage flows, especially in terms of gross originations. The pace was 24% in October, almost 30% in November, again 20% in December, and then slightly better in January, where the contraction was 15.6% year-on-year. And the data from CRIF, you know, the company that runs the main credit bureau used for mortgages in Italy, reports a drop of 16% year-on-year for the whole year of credit bureau inquiries. And by the way, when we prepared this information, like, one or two days ago, they haven't published anything for January or February, and that normally happens when the market is down.
So, the performance so far has been quite weak. And by the way, you might remember that last year we were saying that, you know, we expected an improvement throughout the year because the end of 2022 was already weak. So this was weakness on weakness and totally unexpected and mostly linked to the fact that interest rates were increased, went up because of inflation, mainly because of inflation expectations and expectations about, you know, the interventions of central banks. In terms of outlook, however, you know, despite this very grim background. We are more optimistic because we have seen a drop of long-term interest rates in the market at the end of 2023, which has translated into lower market rates for fixed-rate mortgages for long maturities.
Again, it is possible, and this was totally unexpected, to obtain a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage in Italy at less than 3% APR, inclusive everything. So this is likely to cause a recovery in demand. It's also coherent, you know, what we're saying is coherent with what we are seeing in demand for purchase mortgages and remortgages. Of course, there is always a delay, so, you know, what is being closed today is on the back of applications that came in 2-3 months ago. So, if we have stronger demand today, it would mean better performance in Q2 or Q3 of 2024. But this is also being reported in newspapers. So there is an improvement in demand, and we hope that this will help us accounting actually in this for the coming quarters.
In terms of the different businesses, let's start by looking at the BPO division. BPO division did very well with revenues of EUR 188 million in 2023 compared to EUR 131 million in 2022. Of course, as you will see, you know, with the details later, this comes mostly because of the acquisitions, but still, it's a nice development. The EBITDA overall of the BPO division alone is EUR 60.7 million. That's up 29.6% year on year. The EBITDA margin is declining. It's 32.3% compared to 35.7%. This is mainly a mix. Technically linked to the change in the consolidation area. The EBIT is EUR 40.7 million, and that compared to EUR 39.3 million of the previous year. Here, we don't have the breakdown of the contribution of the PPA effect, and it is not reported.
You will see it in the annual report, I think. For the quarter, you see on page 21 that Q4 was a very good quarter. We EUR 51.8 million of revenues, up 52% compared to EUR 34 million of revenues in Q4 2022. EBITDA was EUR 17.8 million. That's up 53.6% compared to EUR 10.9 million in Q4 of last year. In this case, the EBITDA margin is improving even in, you know, year-on-year, also because last year was already weak on mortgages, which are an emerging business for us. What is, I think, more interesting is to look at the different business lines of the broking division. We comment on the different business lines only once a year, so this is the time. The overall comment is that broking division did well, both because of the enlargement of the consolidation area.
You know, we call the businesses outside of Italy international markets as a business line, while all the other business lines are Italian. Of the Italian business lines, insurance broking and telco and comparison had good growth. The other has declined at different rates. What are the overall expectations? We expect to see growth of all business lines in Italy, with the exception of e-commerce price comparison, which has suffered since the fall of 2023. You know, hopefully, it could also do better than that. Looking at credit broking first, you remember credit broking is our mortgage-plus consumer loans broking business. It's all done by the main entity, is the main entity doing this for the different products through the internet.
Well, here we really suffer from the very weak mortgage market. The decline was around 15%, going from EUR 50.8 million in 2022 to EUR 43.4 million in 2023. But you know, here there is also a part that is consumer loans that was more stable, so of course, mortgages dropped more than this. So this was worse than we expected, as we said. Looking forward, we see a recovering demand, especially compared to the final part of 2023. This could lead to a gradual growth in the volumes throughout the year. Again, we'll be a bit conservative on this, also because there is a time delay, but you know, if nothing changes, we could see a recovery. In terms of insurance broking, this is one of the simplest businesses in terms of, you know, continuity of performance.
We had growth of around 20%.
I think you were on your script on your page that it was 10:06 P.M.
All right. All right. Yep.
I can hear you. Alessandro, look.
Oh, sorry. Sorry.
So, insurance broking was up 20%. We are now up EUR 34 million of revenues. The growth was supported by increasing insurance premiums. So a bit more switching and also the inflation on the premiums and the commissions, so this all helped. And we expect growth to continue 2024. Then the real success story of 2023 was telco and energy comparison. In particular, here, we had really strong growth of energy. We, you know, intermediated many more contracts. As you know, the market basically, you know, people wanted to get a better contract after spending crazy amounts on energy, and there were offers on the market. And even if prices were declining, people were still switching. Also, we improved our business a lot, so also, you know, there was a part of operational improvement on our side.
So the result was a very strong improvement. And by the way, we expect to see a strong 2024 as well. In this case, because finally, after I don't know 10 years of waiting, the government decided to complete the energy market liberalization. And so there were like a number of people, like a good chunk of the population, 20%-30%, that still had like administered tariffs, like regulated tariffs. They were not really on the open market. And finally, they decided to force them to the open market, as was and this has since the very first phase is 10 years ago of the liberalization. And this is likely to drive demand from you know from these guys that you know that they have to make a choice.
So we expect to see growth. Then it's a bit one-off. It's a bit uncertain, but we expect to see growth. And this is even if energy prices are going down, so there is less pressure to, you know, to switch to save money. Then we have on page 24, e-commerce price comparison. Here, we did well in the first part of the year and less well, and actually, we saw deteriorating performance progressively in, you know, since, let's say, September. Part of it is because consumers are probably not spending so much money on electronics, on you know, other personal goods and so on, but household goods as well.
But also, and more importantly, there was a change in the indexing of websites on the organic results by Google that basically penalized, as an effect, all the online comparison services, the comparison shopping services in Europe. And basically, you might have noticed it, but in Italy, like, if you are searching for an Apple iPhone, like, Apple iPhone 15, you used to find in the result page maybe one or two results from that were linked to the Apple website. And now, the majority of the results, like, I don't know, 9 out of 15, to give you an idea, are all links to the Apple website. So the algorithm is now giving almost all visibility to the producers and not to other operators, and in particular, very little to comparison shopping services. And this is not Italy.
This is the Czech Republic. This is across Europe. So, this had a significant negative impact because this is, like, traffic that you acquire that has a very high margin, of course. Now, first part of 2024 is the continuation of, you know, the end of 2023. The important information is the Digital Markets Act, which is a very important new piece of legislation, has become fully effective on March 7th, 2024. And this has, like, several rules, including a prohibition for gatekeepers, including Google, to favor their own services. And also, it requires gatekeepers to provide fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory access conditions to search engines. So hopefully, if this is properly applied, if this is properly enforced, this has the potential to change the situation. But this is very much an open discussion, let's say.
So, for now, we remain conservative on that because of e-commerce price comparison. Finally, the international markets that Rastreator in Spain, LeLynx in France, and then Rastreator in Mexico, these are the companies that we acquired, gave a contribution of EUR 53 million in 11 months. So for the year, we have to rescale it. January is a bit more than 1% of the year, in terms of revenues. And our EBITDA is already above 20% in 2023. This is thanks to luck, let's say, because, you know, this is mostly linked to the insurance market and the fact that the conditions were favorable, including inflation. But also, we made a lot of operational improvements, so we were able to favorably impact the performance. In 2024, we can continue to improve things and improve results.
But we have also decided, in particular in Spain, to also put some focus on growth, not only on, you know, better margins. And in fact, we have restarted TV advertising in January in Spain. So this is the update on broking. Now I let Alessandro to speak about BPO.
Yeah. Thanks, Marco. And, sorry, everyone, for the interruption before. I thought I was muted, but I was muted on the wrong system. So, okay, we are on page 25 with the BPO division. As Marco has already commented, BPO grew around 20%, in terms of revenues, and EBITDA grew less, a little short of 14%. And therefore, the EBITDA margin declined, from 23.2% in 2022 to 22% in 2023. Most of the growth, both in EBITDA and in revenues, came from the acquisitions. And actually, if you do an analysis, you know, on a same-perimeter basis, net of acquisition, revenue growth would have been a little over 5%, compared to 2022. And the overall absolute EBITDA would have actually declined.
This is because the EBITDA, EBITDA has really been impacted negatively by the performance of the mortgage BPO, which suffered from overcapacity as a reduction in volumes, especially on traditional underwriting and commercial services, has been significant and a little sudden. Therefore, we were not able to adjust capacity as quickly as we would have liked to respond to this. Therefore, overcapacity brought a drag on the EBITDA. Now, if you look then at the EBIT margin, there is a reduction that, as Marco has already commented before. This is actually due to the effect of the purchase price amortization of the companies that we have acquired and increase on these, due obviously to the acquisition performed in 2022, especially the Trevi acquisition, Trevi General Consult acquisition.
If you look at Q4, it is not that different from the overall picture of the year. There is actually a little less of the effect of the acquisition. It's already one month is at same-perimeter size. And also the insurance business is completely on a same-perimeter basis as in 2022 we did an acquisition in the first semester for the insurance BPO. Now, as Marco said, this is the moment of the year where we also give a little bit more detail and numbers on the different business lines. So, I'm gonna basically move to that. I just wanna have, you know, on page 27, one last comment on the BPO as a whole.
You know, as Marco has already said, we actually expect an improvement in the scenario, especially in the credit markets, as we have seen a general lowering of interest rates. And therefore, we expect the retail lending market to recover, especially in mortgages. And even if we have this, you know, overall positive factor, we also have to take into consideration that we will have a negative factor in 2024 that we already know of. And that is the end of the activities connected with the Ecobonus incentives. The impact of those activities was important, both in terms of revenues and margin in the last three years. We actually thought it would already fade during 2024. That was not the case during 2023.
But I guess, now we are really seeing the last impacts. And I think they will be done by the end of the first half of 2024. So overall, for 2024, for the BPO division, we anticipate growth both in revenues and EBITDA, you know, single-digit growth, although we will see, you know, and obviously, this forecast is contingent on the fact that the increasing event in retail credit and especially in mortgages will actually continue and be transformed from leading indicators into actually mortgages that are originated. But we will see anyway diversified dynamics in the different business lines. So going to the business lines, a comment both on 2023. Some of those are already known. And on the 2024 outlook.
As you see, the mortgage starting from mortgage BPO, where we had, as I've already said, a tough year. Even if, you know, if you look at the revenues, it seems like we were flattish. It's true, obviously. But the thing is that the only thing that helped us reach, I think, the same results of last year is the fact that we saw a recovery in the re-mortgages. And as you know, we perform notary para-notary activities on re-mortgages. But they have significant lower margins than the normal underwriting and commercial activities. Therefore, what we did here is that we substituted high-margin business. And when I mean high-margin, I mean normally over the standard, the average EBITDA margin of the overall division.
So, you know, the overall division is around, you know, between 20%-25%. Normally, mortgages are over above the average. So we are substituting, you know, business that is at that level with business that is actually, you know, much lower margin. And therefore, you know, even if we have remained flattish, we had a decrease in absolute EBITDA here, which reflected on the overall results of the division for a, you know, negative mix effect. As we look at 2024, we hope to see, we expect to see an improvement, as we see real estate transaction improving. And not only real estate transaction, but also the part of real estate transaction that is assisted by a financing, by a mortgage. And even if, you know, we see leading indicators, I have to say that our client banks have not included.
Those expectations already in their budgets. So if you talk to them, they'll say they'll do same mortgages that they did last year. I believe they're being conservative at this point. So we are a little more positive than they are, as you know, on the broking division and also in some of the leading indicators of the BPO division. We actually see this demand coming in and won't impact the Q1 results, but you know, the funnel is basically filling up. So we expect to see some of the improvement already in Q2. If we go to the real estate BPO here, there was an improvement relative last year when we actually would have thought to see you know, flattish or decline, basically because the services related to Ecobonus incentives have continued to contribute for 2023.
So we are seeing in 2024 and in the last part of 2023, the tail of these activities. The tail is mostly audits on transactions that have already happened. And so they are also a little less, they contribute less in terms of margins than the one we were doing before, which was, you know, really helping banks purchase the fiscal credit, tax credit. Obviously, we expect that the improvement in the credit market will also impact the real estate services part. And as you might recall, most of these activities, if you take away the Ecobonus incentives, are basically appraisal activities, evaluation activities on real estate assets that are collateral to credit.
And so, obviously, if the market recovers there, we will have an improvement also in this line. Anyway, this improvement, for sure on this business line will not offset the disappearing and the fading of the Ecobonus part. Therefore, here, we do predict a decline in revenues and margin in this business line. And also, there will be a mixed effect, because the Ecobonus activities had higher margins than the normal appraisal ones. But anyway, this is our forecast. And it's basically the only negative note that we clearly expect at this point on the BPO outlook in all the business lines. BPO revenues for loans, so double-digit growth, just over 10%, around 11%, in 2023.
This is basically thanks to, you know, consolidating our growth and our presence in managing guarantees on the SME loans and also in other forms of subsidized credit. And by the way, we also acquired a new client in that area. So, you know, good news there. And we expect to continue this growth also in 2024, although maybe it won't be double-digit, but, you know, it will be a positive contribution to the division. Moving on to insurance, this is the other really good news of 2023. And, you know, part of the growth was due to the extension of the perimeter. But, for half of the year, this is actually on a comparable basis. And here, we saw an organic growth in demand.
The organic growth is basically connected to, you know, the need, in the face of significant weather events and damages for appraisal services. And as you know, we are the leader in this sector. And we work with basically every insurance company in Italy. And therefore, we saw this trend improving. I believe that even if obviously anything related to weather is contingent. You know, first of all, 2024, you know, 2024 will continue to remain at these really good levels, first of all, because we still have a full warehouse of appraisals that still need to be done, you know, especially the most complex ones, which take, you know, not just a day to finish.
And also because, unfortunately, you know, it's very clear that there is a secular trend in terms of, you know, or catastrophes, national catastrophes. And as you know, also, the government is passing or has passed legislation on making, you know, insurance on that side compulsory, although, you know, the regulation is still to be refined. But we, you know, we believe in the end, this will be a boost for our services as the penetration of insurance in companies in this area. The growth also because of regulation. So we expect maybe not further growth, but we expect a confirmation of the exceptional level of 2023 for 2024 for the insurance BPO services. Investment services declined in 2023, not significantly, but a little bit.
That was basically due to the reduction of assets under management in our main client. This was impacted a little bit more than what we expected, also because apart from market conditions, the client suffered of, you know, some of the financial advisor actually left the company and brought some of the portfolio with them. So we had a little bit more impact than we expected. You know, we expect a reasonably stable outcome for 2024. Finally, you know, another top performer within the BPO division, which is the leasing and rental BPO and IT revenues. Here again, this stellar growth of 53% is actually due, you know, at least half of it to the change in the perimeter in the consolidation perimeter.
So we're talking about the acquisition of Trevi General Consult. But, you know, it is really important to underline that also, the organic business of Agenzia Italia showed significant growth that is, you know, thanks to, you know, very proactive management, but also to the normalization of the logistics in the automotive sector. We also had some one-off positive one-offs. They are due to some, you know, revenues that came from successes on a transaction that happened on a managed leasing portfolio. So, you know, that will not be there in 2024. And by the way, also, the results in terms of EBITDA were very positive here. We're talking, again, about another, you know, business line, which is above the average BPO division margins, EBITDA margins, in terms of percentage. So for 2024, you know, we expect to maintain the performance.
Clearly, we will not grow at 53%, but we expect to keep these revenues and these EBITDA margins for 2024. So basically, we have stability in leasing and rental. We have stability in investment services, in insurance revenues, maybe even a little growth there. We expect to see growth in loans and mortgages, and we'll see a decline in real estate. Overall, you know, single-digit growth, I would say. And with that note, I leave again the floor to Marco.
Thank you, Alex. Now, let's go to page 33 to look at the net financial position. Here, basically, we ended the year with a net financial position of negative EUR 300 million. And that's a bit less than three times, 2.9 times, reported EBITDA. This is the statutory and the one that you read in the annual report, net financial position. Then, if instead we look at the definition that we use for the governance with our lenders, all our lenders also take into account the value of our Moneysupermarket participation. And so the net financial position is seen by our lenders, that this is also the way we see it because this is a financial asset in the end, and a highly liquid one, is that it's negative EUR 158 million. So that would be more like 1.5 times EBITDA.
Finally, we go to page 31, with the proposal for dividend distribution. The board decided to make a conservative proposal, in line with the previous year. And so, the proposal is a distribution of EUR 0.12 per share. And with this, we are done with the presentation, so we can open the floor to questions. Please, operator.
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 the touch-tone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. We'll pause for a moment as participants are joining the queue. The first question is from Aleksandra Arsova with Equita. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. Three questions on my end. The first one is maybe a general trading update for the first quarter. You explained the many moving parts of the business lines, but I was wondering if, let's say the still weak mortgages and e-commerce will be offset by the other business lines in the first quarter that are showing maybe a similar growth trend like the fourth quarter. This is the first one. Then the second one on margins in 2024. So maybe if you can provide some more color on the dynamics on cost evolution. So if you expect some inflation pressure on a staff cost or maybe more marketing cost, so if we should expect some margin expansion also considering improvement in many business lines. And the last one maybe on Trevi.
So if this M&A you did last year, the performance it had, what you are developing with this company. And so a little bit of color on this. Thank you.
Okay. I will take the first one and ask, and then Aleksandra will continue. General trading update. In general, I would say the first quarter of this year still suffers from the weak mortgage demand of the previous quarters, and still suffers from the weakness of Trovaprezzi. At the same time, there are things that are strong, so energy remains strong in broking. So I would say Q1 will be more in line, you know, should be a continue seen as a continuation of the previous year. But then, I mean, Q4 of 2024 was a bit exceptional. By the way, we closed a lot of work on the Ecobonus, and we invoiced that. So there are also, you know, you shouldn't look at the quarter itself.
You should look at longer period, but, you know, we will not see the inversion of the trend in mortgages and possibly, hopefully, thanks to the DMA in price comparison in Q1. Then maybe Aleksandra will want to add something on this. But then the margins on broking, it's the only thing that is worth saying is that we decided to start spending money on television in Spain, which clearly will help growth, but not margins. It will not be revolutionary, but still, you know, we are sacrificing margins for growth. And then the main impact on the cost side will be on BPO, or Aleksandra will comment.
Yes. Well, Q4 was, you know, as Marco said, we will not see in Q1 already the mortgage market rebound. And Q4 was impacted by some one-off items, as I said, both in re the Ecobonus activities, where there was a lot of, you know, rush to finish things by the end of the year. And also, you know, the one-off activity on Agenzia Italia was actually recorded in Q4. So that's, you know, I would say that Q we will not see Q1, you know, we'll see Q1 basically similar to Q4, but with some one-off that would not be there. If I comment on, you know, I think I commented already in terms of margins, overall on the BPO division.
I think we should be able to maintain, you know, I don't think we'll see percentage margin expansion, basically because we've seen, you know, we are seeing some inevitable inflation on labor costs, which will offset some of the inflation that we are able to have, you know, on the revenue side. So this is, I would say, my comment on this. I don't expect to have, you know, more pressure, as we've seen this year, because there shouldn't be also the impact of the overcapacity. I think we are handling it. So we should now, you know, be getting at the right level. And then if mortgages rebound as we're seeing, and then, then, you know, basically reaching back full capacity, we should have the mortgage business line being, you know, a.
Again, reaching at least the level of the rest of the division, if not going further than this. But that you will not see in Q1. And then, you had a question on 3B, I guess. And, you know, basically, what we are doing there is trying to, you know, a number of things. The one I want to comment on is that we are trying to leverage the presence and the strength of Agenzia Italia in the rental market, where 3B is basically not yet present. So we are in the process of updating the software platform so that it can be also sold to long-term rental companies. There, we believe there is a market opportunity because there is basically not a dominant player, as 3B is on the leasing side. There are some European-level platforms which are, you know, very level.
They are used by these long-term rent companies, but then they don't really manage. And so they manage; they don't really manage the processes at the country level. They are more on a very high level. So we are investing also attacking that market. Obviously, first, we need to do the groundwork, and I believe we are in a perfect position to do it, and we have already started doing it. We hope to be able to find a pilot customer in the course of 2024. And obviously, if that's the case, you know, then this would mean that, you know, apart from being an interesting addition to our portfolio, this is really a very significant synergy that we would be realizing.
It's actually something that would not have happened, if Trevi wasn't part of our portfolio of companies, and, you know, we couldn't have made it, and Trevi by itself could not have made that step because we have a very, very deep operational knowledge, which is the part that is missing in all the systems that are out there. So there is still a lot of, you know, customized, very, very, you know, Excel-intensive, kind of systems, in this long-term rent operations. I hope I have answered, Aleksandra.
Yes. Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from Filippo Perini with Kepler. Please go ahead.
Good evening. Thank you. I've got three questions. Firstly, on international business, should we expect the retention of more than 20% EBITDA margin also this year, or the growth revenues should come at the expense of some point of marginality? Second question is your dividend. I know that dividend is not a central point of your investment case, but despite good outlook for 2024, you have retained a dividend that is almost unchanged year-over-year and below the level of the past. So we should expect something that maybe you give priority to the leveraging, more room for some manager to become or anything else. And the third question is on the presentation that you will hold on Tuesday before the beginning of the STAR conference, without anticipating anything.
But, just to understand, you plan to have a board director to approve something, before this event, and should we expect an official press release before this presentation? Thank you.
Okay. Well, regarding the international business, you know, we'll keep improving it. So this would be margin expansion. At the same time, we will spend more for growth. I think, keeping an expectation of, north of 20% is reasonable. You know, to not expand maybe, but it will not go below. Regarding the dividend, obviously, you know, this is a conservative approach. This could lead, to the leveraging. This gives us, also financial flexibility for opportunities. So, there is no particular reading apart the fact that it, you know, increases, you know, the resources available to the group. In terms of the presentation on Tuesday, we cannot say anything, you know. It's, you're just welcome to participate. You'll also get free coffee.
Okay. Thank you.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and 1 on your telephone. For any further questions, please press star and 1 on your telephone. Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time.
Okay. Then, thanks, everybody, for participating, and we hope to see you on Tuesday, either in person or, in video call. Thank you.
Thank you. We will not be able to offer free coffee for those who do not participate in person, but only by video call. All right. See you on Tuesday or, you know, in the next future. Thank you, everyone. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.