Good afternoon, this is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Tinexta half yearly financial report at the 30th of June, 2024. 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 Josef Mastragostino, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon and good morning to the folks in the US. Thank you for joining Tinexta's first half 2024 results presentation. Here with me today is Oddone Pozzi, Group CFO. Good afternoon, everybody. As a reminder, all the relevant documentation of the first half 2024 results can be downloaded from our company website and in the investor relations section. For the purpose of this call, I will go over the first half 2024 highlights and updates, although instead we'll go over the first half 2024 financial results, as well as the business units' performance, providing us with a deep dive. The last part of the call will be dedicated to Q&A. A recording of this conference call will also be available on our company website, and it will be posted upon completion of this call.
Given that you all have the available documentation, I would turn to page four of the presentation to go over some key data of the first half 2024 results. Revenues came in at EUR 203 million, growing 11% versus prior year. EBITDA adjusted was EUR 34.4 million, with a decline of 9% versus the prior year. EBITDA on a reported basis was EUR 25.5 million, and EBIT adjusted was 19.5. Net profit on an adjusted basis was close to EUR 12 million. Important to highlight is the free cash flow of continuing operation, which was pretty much EUR 26 million in terms of free cash flow. Net financial position is at EUR 276.9 million versus 102 of the fiscal year 2023. Let us turn to page five.
On page five, we give you a bit of a summary of the first H highlights and updates. Therefore, we're updating the market following the first six months. Aside from some of the numbers that have already been mentioned, I would concentrate on EBITDA adjusted, which was again EUR 34.4 million. The decline of 9% was mainly impacted by ABF's contribution, combined with CS's less favorable revenue mix and Business Innovation, no seasonality. We will discuss extensively on a business unit by business unit basis to try to understand what has affected the decline of the first H results. It is important to highlight that on the positive term, there was a partial offset of a very strong performance from Digital Trust, which I think did an excellent performance, both in terms of revenue as well as EBITDA.
EBITDA reported was EUR 25.5 million, with a significant decline versus the prior year, but that includes EUR 6.5 million in the non-recurring items. EBIT margin came in at EUR 17 million. Adjusted net profit on a continuing operations base was around EUR 12 million. Let's highlight, I think, both the leverage ratio, which is to be defined as a peak for the year, which came in at 2.78 x. But I think it's important to highlight how the free cash flow was, pretty decent, coming in at EUR 26 million, but more significantly, I think, is the LTM-based adjusted free cash flow, which was still more than EUR 50 million, more close to EUR 50.34 million. Top line still growing on all three divisions, notwithstanding what we just said.
Again, very good performance on a Digital Trust base, which grew 18.4%. Still, again, witnessing operating leverage on an EBITDA base, which grew 21%. So I would say excellent maintenance of margin, if not an increase in margin, which reached 28.8% in terms of the first half results. Cybersecurity grew around 6.5% in revenue. EBITDA was 4%. We will discuss about the margin, but it was around 9%. Business innovation, obviously grew, mid-single, so we're around 7%. It needs some explanation. We will give extensive explanation in terms of how, the EBITDA progressed in the first half. In terms of recent events and updates, this is on a one-page basis. You all know that in January, we finalized the 74% purchase of ABF.
In February, we launched a new strategic operational advisory business in the SMEs and reached in April, you know, 100% of Yoroi, Swascan and Corvallis. As a reminder, the 100% ownership of Yoroi, Swascan and Corvallis is already reflected in the net financial position. Just as a reminder, the board of directors also authorized the purchase and disposal of treasury shares. Turning to page six, I think this is more of a graphic representation of the results. Most of the numbers have already been highlighted. Let's concentrate mostly on seven. Slide seven shows you obviously the cadence of the different quarters. We did not purposely remove this slide because we wanted to highlight to the market how important, again, for us, is the second half of the year. Second half of the year-...
In the last three years shows 60%, 61%, and 63%, so I'm talking about 2H generation of EBITDA. This year, this percentage is gonna be even more important. As we know, the second half will be important both for, you know, the divisions in the case of Business Innovation, first and foremost, and then also in terms of cyber. We highlighted the contribution or the missed contribution of ABF in, you know, in that, in that dotted line on the right, because it kind of shows you where the miss is, and obviously, the percentage of the second quarter in terms of the midpoint of the initial guidance that we provided in March. We will have time to discuss about that.
At this point, I will leave it to Oddone, which will kick it off from page nine, extensive, you know, analysis of the P&L. Oddone?
Okay, thank you, Josef. Good afternoon again. So here, after the introduction of Josef, we go through the P&L of Q1 2024, that we compare both to 2023, as well as, you know, at this, on a same perimeter basis. As Josef said, you know, Q1 showed positive revenue growth over the previous year, but the revenue mix that happened then was slightly unfavorable. In Cybersecurity, we, within the implementation services, we deliver more products as a resale of product than services, and this unfavorable product mix has definitely impacted the results.
The same, I would say, occurred within Business Innovation, where the expected decline in the rates on subsidized finance, and this was definitely expected, has not properly replaced by the 5.0 Transizione we have, and this has impacted the margin. I would say these are the two main drivers, and I will deep dive later on that impacted the results.
If we go through the P&L, we do see that we have a quite significant increase in terms of third-party costs, where the percentage of revenue landed in the region of 40% in on the same perimeter basis, and this is mainly driven, I would say, mainly driven from the revenue mix and partially driven for a potential better management that we are planning to have in the second part of the year. As far as concerns personnel costs, I would say they are definitely, you know, although the revenue the growth on the same period came not as expected, they are under control with an incidence on the revenue that is almost the same over the period.
Definitely, we are in front of a business where part of the revenue has been shifted to Q3 and Q4, and this is something that year-over-year is definitely emerging quite clearly. And so when we talk later on, we will see which action we are going to take on this subject. EBITDA landed at EUR 25.5 million, and this has been impacted, as already highlighted during Q1, by the fees related to the ABF purchase, as well as, you know, other costs in terms of slight layoff of people that we have done in some specific areas. Depreciation, amortization, and provision, we have no significant difference from what we expected.
I would say it's continuing the level of investment from business unit in order to support the continuing innovation of our portfolio of product and services. And I would say especially, we will see then, in term of CapEx, especially Digital Trust, you know, investing quite heavily in order to continue maintain at the best of capabilities, its portfolio of products. Financial charges, here we have a mix. Definitely, we have some positive financial income coming from non-recurring item as we had some decline in our earn-outs that occurred during Q1.
When we are talking about interest, obviously, the net financial position moved quite significantly compared to the year-end 2023, but the level of interest is very, is under control, so the increase is very, is very light. Overall, we came to a net profit of continued operation that is positive, and we benefit here from, you know, a tax anticipation that we have done in order to get better tax relief in the, in the next, in, in the next years. Here we have page 10, definitely we have the adjustment, you know, from the reported income to the adjustment as stated results.
As you can see, we have several impact years, here, and I would say, you know, I will concentrate the focus on the three last, the three last number of the column, 1H 2024. So basically, we have, we have, you know, relief of earn out for EUR 3.9 million. Then we had, we had to, we had to rectify the amount we have in our books on Defence Tech, driven by the lower, let's say, lower market value of the company, related obviously to some results. And then we have the success factor that I the non-recurrent tax, taxes that I already mentioned.
If we go to the balance sheet, I would say that the balance sheet is running as expected. We have no major variances compared to our expectation. Obviously, our net invested capital went up 26%, mainly driven by the acquisition we have done, both in ABF and in Lenovys, for a total amount of EUR 150 million. So basically, this is the driver. And I would say very important to mention is that our working capital management again help us to generate a positive cash flow.
This is a key indicator that we are monitoring, and so when you look at the cash generation on short term, you know, we know that the first half has been slightly impacted by the drop in the EBITDA, but the net working capital has been properly managed also during the first half. Net financial position, as I mentioned, is driven by the acquisition we have done over the period. In addition, you know, we distributed almost EUR 30 million dividends over the period. You know, total shareholder equity, obviously, is declining due to the significant distribution of dividends during the month of June. The net financial position, we talked about it, and I would focus on free cash flow on continuing operations.
You know, technically, we do see a slight decline compared to previous year, but still, as already Josef mentioned, we were able to deliver on a LTM basis, a free cash flow well north of EUR 50 million. So we do have in this first half, a slight decline, but it's all mainly driven again by the delay of EBITDA, EBITDA booking. And, as like I said, we properly manage the working capital.
I would say in the first half, we accelerated our investment in the most, you know, profitable and stable division, business unit, that is Digital Trust, as we continue to invest in order to renew, you know, our services, our infrastructure, and our the products that we are bringing to the market. I would skip the page 13. As is, like I said, it's a graphic analysis of what we have already seen. I would say very important is to look at the net financial position LTM bridge. So the group has invested over the last year, more than EUR 200 million. So the group basically at mid-2023 has squeezed the net financial position close to zero.
So we had room for invested, and so we completed the acquisition of Ascertia, ABF, and Lenovys over the period. And then, as you can see, you know, we generated more than EUR 50 million as adjusted free cash flow from the operation. We were able to distribute dividends in the region of EUR 30 million, and then for the rest, we do not have major difference compared to the previous year. Now, I think it's time to move to page 16, and I would jump immediately to page 17, in order to start to comment on operational performance of our business. Like I said, over the last 10+ conference call, we do have a further positive performance from Digital Trust.
Both InfoCert and Visura, the two main legal entities in the group, has delivered a significant increase with an operational leverage, a very interesting operating leverage. So on a same perimeter basis, you can see here that the growth in the revenue has been 9%, I would say very aligned to the previous quarters, with the EBITDA going up in double digit. If we add Ascertia, you know, basically the ratios has doubled, and, you know, the component of revenue coming from international is increasing. But I would say the even more important is that the solution related to both Legalmail and LegalCert, as well as GoSign, has continued to grow significantly over the last half year.
You know, here, you know, the EBITDA increased close to 20%-20%, with a very interesting ratio in terms of profitability. So I would say here, definitely again, a brilliant quarter and a brilliant delivery. Cybersecurity. In Cybersecurity, we all know, and I think you all learned over the period, that this is basically a segment of the IT business, and the IT business has a significant acceleration driven by the spending on the budget by the customer in the second half of it. Definitely, we are not that happy about the absolute results of EBITDA in the first half, but again, we are talking about EUR 800 ,000 difference, or even less compared to previous year.
So here, like I said before, the driver has been mainly the revenue mix, so we were in a position to deliver more products and services. Services will come later on, during the second half, and so this has been the main drivers. I would say here we have few things also to improve, and already we put in place action to improve it. And what I would say, if we look ahead, and looking ahead versus the second half, I would say that we ended up the first half with a very promising backlog of orders. This is, something for which we are very glad about that, and, we do believe that we have, all the opportunities and capabilities to deliver, as it happens also in 2023, a very strong, second half.
So here, you know, is again that we did not deliver exactly what as we expected, but, you know, the gap is absolutely not relevant. And, you know, the second part of the year, in terms of profitability, is like 2.5x the first half, so this difference is something that is not worrying thing. Also because, specifically because we have a very strong backlog as an opening balance of the second half. Let's move now to Business Innovation. Here, the situation has to be explained. First of all, I will keep for a second apart, ABF, and then I will start to talk about, you know, the traditional core business of the Business Innovation.
We, within our internal plans, we already knew that, the lowering of the rates in the tariffs on Industry 4.0 was going to happen. We were fully aware of this, and we factorized it in our first half projection and in our full year projection, so this has been known. Obviously, we put in our original budget, quite interesting business from Industry 5.0, and this has taken or is taking more time in the approval process from the public bodies in order to be available. This is something that has impacted our first half, and this is probably definitely the main driver of the results if we take apart ABF. Obviously, this is putting us in a even more challenging situation.
I think everybody here is going to remember, you know, the very strong second half that we delivered last year. And here, you know, the mix is changed during the year, so a lower contribution from subsidized finance, a higher contribution from new businesses that we developed, you know, definitely was able to keep certain level of revenue, but this was impacting in terms of EBITDA. Again, here, the last, I would say, June and also the information we have from July in terms of incoming orders are very promising.
So we are in a position where we will be not in a position to fully recover, you know, the gap of Q1, but we are in a position to perform the second half accordingly to the original plan, and probably being slightly below the original budget, mainly driven by this. Obviously, the second part of the year is going to be very, very, very challenging, but you know, if people around the table, I think everybody knows Tinexta, everybody knows what Warrant and Business Innovation were able to deliver in the last part of the year, both in 2023 and even in 2022.
So we are reasonably confident at this point in time to project still results not far from the original plan we have here. If we talk about EBITDA, again here, obviously, we are very disappointed. Sorry, I move to page 20 now. Obviously, we are very disappointed of the results. This has to be very clear and cannot be different. So, we had a delivery in the first half, well below our expectation.
You know, we work very closely, we are working very closely with the management of the company, and everybody is aware that the political environment in France during the first months of the year, I would say, during the full first half, has been not the best condition where to work. So basically, there has been a government change in January, and we all know, and I would say that what happened in close to the end of the February, with the significant budget revision, that it was public information around, you know, cut, possible cut of EUR 10 billion, has definitely impacted in two ways.
The first way, it was a significant slow in term of project accepted, and on the other hand, also on the more much more selective way of accepting approach. So, although the level of you know, backlog was very positive, then the percentage of projects that were filed and then won was below the expectation, driven mainly by the political situation around, and you know, the public bodies reacted at this cut in slowing down the acceptance, and secondly, to be being much more selective. Obviously, again, it happened also in order to create, unfortunately, the perfect storm, the dissolution of the National Assembly at the end of June, and the election was another.
Having said that, obviously, this is heavily impacted the results. That is very clear. And the results are, we are, like I said, very disap- we are very disappointed about that, but we are putting a lot of effort in order to start an immediate and strong recovery in the second half. Here, definitely, this situation allowed us to swap out of the balance sheet EUR 23 million of financial debt. As you know, with this information, we are not going to have announce, and this is definitely reducing our capital investment.
Second, this has been seen from the local management as a postponement in the range of six to nine months of the planned delivery, but we are working closely with the management in order to put pressure on this, and also we slightly review also the value of the put and the at, and the end of the period, because obviously this is something result. I think this is very important. So, again, not happy at all about what's happened here. Monitoring closely and working hard on the subject. Obviously, we will keep you updated, and we do expect a reverse of performance in the second part of the year.
I would say that, okay, I will comment a bit also when Josef will go through the update of the guidance. Okay, I leave now to Josef for the closing remarks.
Thank you, Oddone. So to be very clear, we're on page 22 of the presentation. We are giving an update on the financial targets. Let me explain all of it, and obviously, you know, Oddone, please feel free to add anything that we're missing here. The guidance has been updated, and excluding ABF, this is the most important thing I would say of this call. The performance, the underlying performance, is showing continuing progress. So the underlying business trends are strong and sound. We want this to be crystal clear. We want this to be very, you know, achievable also in terms of the outlook for the second age. ABF's contribution for fiscal year 2024 has been moderately revised, and that was due to the political events that we just mentioned.
Transizione 5.0, as you all know, is a major factor for the contribution of BI, of Business Innovation. So the benefits are expected to come in the latter part of the year. We explicitly said that we are expecting contribution already in the second half of August, more likely beginning of September. So no earlier than the end of Q3 and Q4, we will see a strong acceleration. So again, for the last four to five years, Business Innovation is gonna be extremely busy already, end of Q3 and Q4. How does all this, you know, end up in terms of numbers? As you can see on this slide, we have parsed out ABF, so we're isolating the effect of, of ABF. Without ABF, revenues are expected for fiscal year 2024 versus prior year, to be growing anywhere between 11%-15%.
EBITDA adjusted, which I think is an extremely strong message, is expected to grow anywhere between 10% and 14%. When we add the new outlook of ABF that Oddone just pointed out, we are looking at, again, revenues for fiscal year 2024 versus prior year, growing 20%, and EBITDA adjusted growing 22%. So we're still growing in excess of 20% in terms of EBITDA. In terms of the NFP over EBITDA adjusted, the overall target is within the obviously announced guidance at 1.9 x. This does not include any additional M&A in terms of guidance. I wanted this to be very clear. I don't know, Oddone, if you wanted to add anything?
Yes, yes. You know, thank you, Josef. You know, we want to try to make everybody very clear. So let's look at Tinexta for a while, as you know, the ongoing business, traditional business we have before ABF. Still, we are talking about. So we are confirming the range that we the implicit range, range we have excluding ABF, so it means in the range of 10%-14% growth of the EBITDA. Obviously, driven by the performance of the first half of Business Innovation, would be, you know, more closely, more close to the lowest part of the range, but I think it is not changing the picture.
So the message we want to share with you all that the core traditional business of Tinexta has not changed. We have and is very solid, and is growing double digits. This, I think, is very important. We had a weaker, slightly weaker than expected first half, but again, you all know how the business is moving quarter after quarter, and Josef and myself shared many times with you all, and so here is. So this is important. About ABF, obviously, we reduce our guidance. Obviously, we are everybody's alerted on this. We are focusing, following on a daily basis what happened, the management of Warrant and even, you know, the corporate people who is involved in the health.
You know, the management strongly believes that this is what they committed to our board to deliver by the end of the year, and is reflecting in the total guidance we are. I would say even more important, despite this disappointing first half results of ABF, if you look at the leverage of the group, is still there. Is exactly, again, within the fourth we gave at the beginning of the year. So, this has to be taken significantly in consideration because this is. So basically, the message that Charles and myself and the managers is transferring is that EBITDA growth of the core recurring business is there, exactly aligned with the guidance, and the leverage is still there again.
Then we have an issue of ABF, mainly driven by political environment, and so we are putting under pressure the management in order to deliver what they committed to the board of Tinexta.
At this point, we can open Q&A. Please, operator.
Thank you. This is the Chorus Call conference operator, and 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. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. We kindly ask to use handsets when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. That's star and one. We will pause for a moment while questioners are joining the queue. The first question is from Sriman Chandra with Stifel. Please, go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Sorry, can you hear me?
We can, Chandra. We can go ahead.
All right.
Yes, go ahead.
Thanks a lot. So yeah, a couple of questions from my side. The first thing in terms of the guidance, have you de-risked the second half, enough? Because when I look at your, the Cybersecurity side of things, at least when, looking at the guidance for the year, initially it was about, in the mid-teens, and now you started off the first half quite weak. So I'm just wondering, do you have enough bandwidth to deliver a similar guidance, assuming that the guidance downgrade is only on the ABF side of things? That was my first question, and sort of related one is, do you envisage any kind of, impact in the second half from the, the issues that CrowdStrike has faced in the recent weeks? That was my first question.
In terms of ABF, a six to nine -month delay is a significant delay, and given the uncertainties, maybe it's a bit too early, but I just wanted to get some early thoughts in terms of how you think this might affect your medium-term guidance that you're looking at. Thanks.
Yes, okay. I keep the questions. I take the questions there. You know, like I said, on Cybersecurity, you know, we are delayed to start compared to previous year. That's a fact. The revenue was going up, so this is positive. The margin is going down, but it's mainly one thing, is the revenue mix we delivered. You know, it's, you know, sometimes it's very difficult to balance everything within a short time period. You know, so the issue we faced, you know, where the first half is the smallest part of the year, so if you have more products, you have been negatively impacted.
We do expect in the second half not to be impacted again by this revenue mix, because of the portfolio, because of the traditional flow of the business. So overall, again, we are not changing our view on the year. Definitely, it is slightly more challenging, but you know, actions are already in place. And like I said, I think that the level of order portfolio and the backlog we have is definitely help us in looking in a solid way to the forward. If we talk to ABF, the answer is, if I look at 2024 and 2025, for sure, there is a delay. This is also what the management of ABF reported to us.
So if for midterm, you talk about 2024 and 2025, for sure. I would say that we have to look at it. We are monitoring very carefully. For sure, it's gonna be impacted much more heavily, 2024, and this is already incorporated in our guidance. Although, you know, still a challenge is there for the management, but this is what they committed to our board today. For 2025, I think it will be something like in the middle before the original projections and ours. In terms of return of capital investors, but definitely we swap off from the debt EUR 22 million, so, you know, less results, less debt.
So overall, we do believe that this is in the figures, you know, the leverage we do expect is still slightly below 2x.
John, I think you had also asked about CrowdStrike issues. Well, we're not experiencing anything like that as we speak right now.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from Isacco Brambilla with Mediobanca. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon, everybody. A couple of questions on my side. The first one is on Ascertia. Looking at your details on perimeter effect, looks like the asset is already basically the same profitability of the rest of Digital Trust business unit. So, if you can comment a bit on integration of this asset, which looks like it's going quite well. Second question is on taxes. Although if you can elaborate a bit more on what helped you in the first half, it maybe help us for modeling purposes to better understand what we should expect for the full year in terms of tax rate.
The first one? Ascertia started well the year. You know, Ascertia is a business where, you know, sometimes we have peaks of business when we deliver our solutions. And let's say that as of the end of first half the performance of Ascertia from financially wise is perfectly on track. I would say even more important, and we do expect by the end of the year, the company's delivering what's expected, what was incorporated in our forecast. Now, I think here we are working together with the Ascertia management in a very close and productive manner.
I think we are working together in order to having, you know, a significant exchange on competencies and capabilities, and we are working on several matters. First one, you all know that they have a quite strong team in terms of solution development in Pakistan, and we are planning, you know, to have sent to have a central safety and to reduce, you know, partially third party at local level, and to concentrate over there, where we have strong skills, lower costs, and, you know, in order to internalize these companies.
Second, also in terms of sales approach, now, InfoCert together with Ascertia, we are in a position to offer to clients and customers solutions that can basically fit every need of the customer. Whether we are talking about cloud or on-premises solution, this is a unique capability that InfoCert has in the Digital Trust environment. So very happy about that. We have several areas of cooperation and the trend of financial performance is aligned. So fine for this. About taxes, okay, very clear here. Here we have a trade to say in Italian, so to make it very clear. So we performed, we take the opportunity of af francamento.
So basically, we had a cash out of EUR 4 million, and we have a tax benefit in the P&L. So the net was basically EUR 3.5 million benefit that we recorded during Q1. If you look at our tax rate, I would say that this is not significant to look at Q1, where we have such level of basically profit before tax is close to zero. You have to consider that there are few amounts of money that are not deductible. You know, all costs we incurred for acquisition that are not, so they are going to increase the taxable income of EUR 4 million.
So this is bringing EUR 1 million on our P&L, and then we have IRAP that accounted for another EUR 1 million. Having said that, we do not expect a major impact on the tax rate. So overall, by the end of the year, the tax rate is going to be what we forecasted. And, obviously, we have to add the benefit that we got from this affrancamento. But, nothing special is going to happen there.
Can you hear us? Hello?
Mr. Brambilla, does your question have? It's been answered?
Yes, sure. Of course.
Okay. Thank you. The next question is from Andrea Bonfà with Banca Akros. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you, but my question has already been answered. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Andrea. We knew that, the tough one.
We move to the next question from Alessandro Piva with Equita. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. Three on my side. So the first one, again, on ABF, if I may. So one of the reasons you explained to us when you acquired the company early this year was the fact, too, you were trying, of course, to diversify the business outside of Italy, and France was a country with a lot of more stability in terms of government incentives for SMEs, and generally more stable country. So now that the situation is likely changing, and in Italy, we are still having these ongoing issues on delays in Transizione 5.0. So the end question is, if are these issues changing your approach to Business Innovation division to future M&A pipeline and general overall strategy on this division?
So this is the first question. The second one is, again, on Business Innovations on the Italian part. So you mentioned that you are ready with your clients, SME clients on transition 5.0 and 4.0, to be ready to work with them and to invoice all the activities once the regulation is set up and, let's say, enforceable. So can you maybe give us a little bit more color on what is the actual backlog of, or soft backlog you can invoice within the end of the year, once the regulation is set up? And the last one is maybe a technical one, just to be very quick or clear on the guidance.
During the previous guidance, you usually provided the total, let's say, growth for the company and organic growth. So now you provide an indication ex ABF. So just to understand if the old organic guidance, if as far as I understand, confirmed, and maybe just in the lower end, but still confirmed. So thank you.
I keep the first question on ABF, as well as the second on warrant, and then I leave to Josef, the third one. So on ABF, well, I think over the last decades, the risk premium in France was, you know, lower than in Italy, so I would say this is normal. I remember several investors asking Fineco to go abroad in order to lower the risk and to have a more balanced areas where operate. Having said that, it happens, this is clear. Having said that, we have steeper climb, but like I said, nothing disruptive. Like I said, the leverage of the group is still there.
The management of ABF committed to the board of Tinexta to have a prompt, let's say, recovery, and having therefore, a delay of six to nine months. So this is not changing at all our long-term strategy. Obviously, it's something definitely unpredictable, and this is the case. Facts are there. We are reacting, but again, we -- in this moment, we are, you know, we are the recurring business that is solid, growing, delivering cash, so no issues. A lighter first half, fine, and then we have the second half, at Tinexta always delivered what commit. Then if we move to ABF, we talk about opportunity of synergy.
For example, an opportunity is to address the subsidized finance segment of the market that is not covered by by ABF, is still an opportunity. Obviously, we have to face an unexpected market, unexpected market conditions, and we do face this situation. We react, but again, we lower our debt with a lower EBITDA expected, but at the end, the leverage is there, the group is still solid, the core part of the group is growing, like Josef said, more than double-digit. About Warrant, I think, you know, your view is correct. So we are working hard with our customers. Customers are very interested in 5.0. Rates are spectacular. Very interesting for customers and for us, too.
We do expect we are working with them, we are getting orders, and we do expect to invoice. Obviously, the level of risk of this second part of the year of Warrant is higher than we planned it at the beginning of the year. So we review slightly below our targets, but still, you know, we are floating within the floor.
To wrap up on the last question, Alessandro, on the guidance, I think we reiterate the message. Parsing out ABF, the business is solid. The sound growth is there. We have highlighted the interval within which we expect EBITDA to grow, and that is 10%-14%. We think that this is very positive news, because this means that aside from an acquisition that can be isolated in time, and it can be isolated in the area, in the geographical area, which it is, the overall underlying business is actually doing very well. So that should answer your question. So the 10%-14%, we're probably gonna be in that range, maybe as you were correctly mentioned, in the bottom part of that interval.
Overall, you know, 10-14 without ABF and 22 with ABF, we still believe are very round and strong numbers for the market.
Okay, very clear. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question is from Gabriele Berti with Intesa Sanpaolo. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Just a quick clarification from me. Oddone, you said that you expect EUR 23 million benefits on net financial position due to savings on ABF for now. Is this correct, or did I misunderstand? And, if it is correct, is this impact already included in the net debt on EBITDA guidance you have given for 2024, or you will have this benefit on 2025?
No, no, no. That's totally correct. I try to explain myself slightly better. So, driven by results expected, the amounts flew away. And so we already reflected in current, in the actual results, and therefore, they will be not anymore there, compared to Q1, for example. And second, obviously, we review the cost of the put, because of the delay of the plan implementation. So the total is amounted around EUR 22.5, but you can find also, I think, in our relazioni gestionali. But any case, that's it.
Okay, thank you.
The next question is from Russell Pointon with Edison. Please go ahead.
Hey, good afternoon, Josef. A couple of questions. Just on the 5.0 information, just for not knowing this, can you actually do the work on behalf of your customers ahead of them actually claim for the deductions? Or is this a matter of, and so therefore, you can make the claims as and when it's, you know, they're allowed, so that there's no in the timing of what you can do for them. And second, just following up on Ascertia, your was... Can you see a little bit? Because in Q2, it looks as though it was about 6% and it was much contribution firm, mix. So can you just qualify what happened in Q2?
Russell, Russell, you're breaking up. We got your first question. We didn't get your second one because you're badly breaking up. I mean, what's the question on Ascertia that we did-
It-
What did you say?
So, I saw that you said that the first half was good for Ascertia.
Mm-hmm.
Difference in performance between Q1 and Q2, because it slowed a little bit. Profitability was-
I got it. I got it. Let, let me try to take a stab at these questions, okay? So let's start with 5.0, right? And if you see 5.0 is something that, you know, we... It is the cause of the lower margins on BI. And we said this is the first quarter, and this is again the case in Q2. The explanation is very simple. We bear the costs, but we don't have the equivalent overall revenue of this. Now, I understand your question, and the question is, can you start doing, you know, the work before? The question is, you know, we are mapping the overall market very closely.
We go to our clients, we speak to them, we try to identify beforehand any probability that there is in terms of understanding what their needs are, but obviously, we need to have certainty in order for us to actually start and take over and carry out the work. So, you know, the answer to your question is, we already are proactively reaching out. But let us get, you know, give us, you know, the time for these decrees, because they are decreti attuativi that need to be actually approved, and therefore, the, you know, the process starts. One thing I wanna really say to the market is, and we've seen that in 4.0, once transition 5.0 starts, there's no stopping it, right? So this is a very good part. We've seen that in 4.0.
It's been going on for three years. We said that the 4.0 was gonna come to, you know, a big, diminishing returns, because you're looking at deductible rates that go down versus what they are at the beginning. But now we are in 5.0, where deductible rates can be as high as 45%. So, you know, this is good. It's very good news. It's just a matter of timing. That's pretty much it. Now, in terms of Ascertia, I mean, these businesses obviously can be lumpy. They are lumpy by nature, right? So if you want it very well, if you do it, they're doing pretty well, that's for the first quarter, but we don't see any issue whatsoever in terms of, obtaining what we expect in terms of year-end results.
I think this is very good also because remember, we consolidated Ascertia only as of last year, and also we are now seeing the pure effect of Ascertia. Remember, Ascertia has, from a strategic standpoint, it is very complementary because it's a complement to the offering of InfoCert, and it's... We're actually able to participate to certain tenders, as you might recall, which we couldn't have with InfoCert on a standalone basis.
Thank you, Josef.
You're welcome. Operator, do we have any other questions?
No, there are no more questions registered at this time.
All right. Thank you very much. I'm available to all the analysts and investors that would like any additional information, so you can easily reach out to me. And, we thank you very much, and stay tuned. Have a good evening. Bye-bye.
Good, good afternoon, everybody. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over, and you may disconnect your telephone.