Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Deutsche Börse AG Analyst and Investor Conference Call regarding the Q4 and full year 2021 results. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to Mr. Jan Strecker.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us today to go through our fourth quarter and full year preliminary 2021 results. With me are Theodor Weimer, Chief Executive Officer, and Gregor Pottmeyer, Chief Financial Officer. Theodor and Gregor will take you through the presentation today, and afterwards, we will be happy to take your questions. The presentation materials for this call have been sent out via email and can also be downloaded from the investor relations section of our website. As usual, the conference call will be recorded and is available for replay afterwards. Let me now hand over to you, Theodor.
Thank you, Jan. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Let me start today's call with an overview of our performance last year. Afterwards, Gregor will be presenting the financial results in much greater detail. Finally, I will conclude with an update on strategy implementation and the outlook for the year 2022. Despite strong cyclical headwinds, we achieved good overall results with 9% net revenue and EBITDA growth. More than half of our net revenue already resulted from recurring revenues, mostly from our Data & Analytics business.
Secular net growth, net revenue growth at 6% was fully in line with our guidance. This was particularly driven by strong performance of our Funds business, commodities, and ISS. M&A contributed another 7% net revenue growth. This was more than originally expected because we succeeded in accelerating the closing of the ISS acquisition. The strong cyclical headwinds resulting from high comparables in 2020 and lower VOLA and interest rates in 2021 resulted in a decline of cyclical net revenues by 4%.
To counter these cyclical headwinds, we not only promoted recurring revenues and secular growth, but also managed organic operating costs very prudently. As a result, we kept these costs stable against 2020. As you can see on slide two, please, our results are fully in line with our guidance for 2021 of EUR 3.5 billion net revenue and EUR 2.0 billion EBITDA. In addition, we are also in line with the expected growth trajectory until 2023 when looking at the average growth rate since 2019.
Secular net revenue growth and the M&A contribution is fully in line with our expectations, while cyclicality so far has been a small headwind if one looks at the period since 2019. This is mainly due to the lower net interest income at Clearstream. However, we are expecting the NII to recover soon as a result of interest rate increases.
In 2021, we made good progress on our M&A strategy, as you can see on slide three of the presentation. This included, first, the acquisition of the remaining stake in Fund Centre from UBS. With the trend towards outsourcing in the fund industry, the business is very well on track to deliver continued strong organic growth. Second, on ISS, the initial guidance has proven to be conservative. With strong organic growth prospects from the trend towards ESG and bolt-on M&A, we are now targeting double-digit net revenue growth as opposed to the initial guidance of more than 5% only.
As part of the M&A strategy, ISS completed the acquisition of Discovery Data in December 2021, a globally recognized and trusted provider of Data & Analytics to the financial service industry. Third, we completed the acquisition of a majority stake in Crypto Finance in December as well. The acquisition lays the foundation for building an independent, transparent, and highly scalable regulated ecosystem for digital assets. Besides acquiring businesses, we have also optimized our portfolio by agreeing to divest Clearstream's 50% stake in REGIS-TR. This transaction is expected to close in the first quarter 2022 and will result in proceeds of around EUR 550 million.
In terms of further M&A opportunities, the high valuation environment we are currently in is certainly challenging. We continue to see concrete opportunities, mainly in pre-trading and in the Funds business, where our requirements of a strong strategic fit, good synergy potential, reasonable financials, and high closing certainty are met. We believe that these requirements are essential for creating sustainable value, in the interest of our shareholders. With that, let me hand over to you, Gregor.
Thank you, Theodor, and also welcome from my side. On page four, we show the development of our preliminary financials in 2021. Since part of our secular growth was neutralized by the cyclical headwinds, the main driver for the 9% net revenue growth was the ISS acquisition. Since we kept the organic cost completely flat, we saw good scalability in the organic EBITDA. In addition, net profit and EPS benefited from a better financial result, which was partly driven by one-off effects.
The EBITDA in 2021 included an increase of the result from financial investments to EUR 85 million. This was driven by our minority investment portfolio shown on slide five. Most of the investments will continue to be booked in our equity and thus as hidden reserves. We started to selectively adopt a fair value approach last year. This now applies to our Clarity AI, 360X, and VMatch investments. The major contributor to the results from financial investments was the stake in Clarity AI with around EUR 45 million. This was due to financing rounds involving BlackRock and SoftBank.
In addition, our stake in Tradegate contributed around EUR 30 million because of a continued favorable business development in German retail brokerage. On slide six, we show the detailed financials in the fourth quarter. While cyclicality was still a minor headwind, in particular for Eurex, we saw strong secular growth and a high M&A contribution. Operating costs growth was again mainly driven by consolidation effects. EBITDA includes the result from financial investments of EUR 16 million, which was a regular Tradegate contribution and mark-to-market effects on our venture portfolio capital fund investments.
Depreciation amounted to EUR 88 million and includes effects of around EUR 26 million related to purchase price allocation of acquired assets in accordance with IFRS. In addition, there were other effects of around EUR 12 million due to some smaller year-end software impairments. On this basis, cash EPS amounted to EUR 1.64, an increase of 25%. I am now turning to the quarterly results of the segments, starting with Eurex on page seven. While there was a spike of volatility in December, the average volatility measured by VSTOXX was 17% below the previous year. This explains the decline in index derivatives.
The decline was partly offset by double-digit growth in fixed income derivatives, which benefited from more speculation on monetary policies and the interest rate development. With cyclical headwinds now slowly turning into tailwinds, we expect secular growth through product innovation to become much more visible at Eurex this year. Our commodity business, EEX, shown on page eight, achieved a record quarter for two reasons. First, we saw continued secular growth through market share expansion in light of the trend towards renewables.
Second, energy prices were extremely volatile and reached record levels in the fourth quarter. This resulted in a substantial increase of client need for short-term trading and hedging activities. Aside from trading volumes, net revenue growth was also driven by the increase of margin fees on collaterals held in the EEX clearing house. This is shown in the other line item of the business. Let me now turn to page nine and the FX business. The sentiment in FX market was improving throughout the fourth quarter. At the same time, spot market volatility increased.
Main driver for volume growth was the positive development in FX Forwards and FX Swaps. This was a result of the onboarding of new buy-side clients in the U.S. and Europe, and there are many more in the pipeline for the coming quarters. Next, I'm turning to page 10 and our cash market, Xetra. Here, net revenue declined. This was due to a gain from the sale of the Regulatory Reporting Hub in the fourth quarter 2020. Operationally, however, the cash market business saw a small improvement despite lower market volatility.
Since mid-December, the net revenue of Crypto Finance has been included in the other line item of Xetra segment. Our post-trading segment, Clearstream, on slide 11, achieved solid double-digit growth in the fourth quarter. Due to an increase of client cash balances, the fourth quarter was the first quarter since Q3 2019, with a year-over-year increase of net interest income. In custody we saw solid double-digit growth. While equity market valuations haven't had to achieve this, the main driver was growth in amount of bonds outstanding, which account for more than 75% of custody assets.
The Investment Fund Services segment, which you'll find on page 12, continued its excellent performance in the fourth quarter. The numbers are now like- for- like since the Fund Centre acquisition was closed at the beginning of the fourth quarter, 2020. Growth was based on the continuous onboarding of new clients and portfolios, both in custody and in distribution. The synergy between the two offerings are now starting to play out nicely, and we expect growth rates above our initial guidance to persist. In addition, we see further inorganic opportunities to increase both the scale and scope of the offering.
Slide 13 shows the Qontigo segment, which saw growth in three out of four business lines. Analytics benefited from new client contracts and as a result from additional point-in-time revenues. In the ETF license business, we saw an increase of the assets under management, mainly due to market valuations. The exchange license business increased despite declining numbers of contracts traded due to repricing measures. On slide 14, we show the Institutional Shareholder Services segment, which again outperformed our expectations with an even higher growth rate compared to previous quarters. Growth continued to be driven by the strong performance of corporate solutions and ESG analytics, but the well-established governance solutions business also showed good growth levels.
The non-ESG business benefited from M&A transactions, including the acquisition of Rainmaker in Australia and the Discovery Data acquisition in the U.S. This brings me to our dividend proposal for 2021 on page 15. For 2021, the proposal of the executive board combines a reduction of the payout ratio to 49% with an increase of the dividend per share by 7% to EUR 3.20. We are planning to reinvest the remaining recurring free cash into the business to support our M&A strategy and thus further improve our secular and recurring growth components. With this, let me hand back to you, Theodor.
Thank you, Gregor. Ladies and gentlemen, let me conclude today's call by giving you an update on strategy implementation and our outlook for 2022. Despite the challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic and cyclical headwinds, we so far achieved stronger secular net revenue growth with a compound annual growth rate of 6% since 2019. We have successfully executed an integrated M&A initiative since 2019 and have over-delivered on our M&A target so far.
We have reached already 2/3 of our M&A targets within half the time already since over the course of Compass 2023. This puts us in a comfortable position with regard to M&A execution this and next year. One key achievement of our strategy was the strengthening of our Data & Analytics proposition and position us as the top three global ESG data provider. As I said at the beginning, this has resulted in an increase of recurring revenues to a level of group-wide 55%. This is among the highest levels in our industry, and we are working on increasing this level further.
We were also successful in the further expansion into new asset classes. For instance, with Crypto Finance. We have increased investments in the state-of-the-art technology, like next-generation digital post-trade platform D7 for Clearstream. Last but not least, we are continuously monitoring our portfolio and are optimizing it wherever necessary and possible. Therefore, we divested non-strategic assets like Regulatory Reporting Hub or HSGR, while we have increased the funding of our fintech minority investment portfolio. Our key focus continues to be the execution of our strategy to consistently deliver on our secular growth and M&A targets in line with our 10% growth formula.
Since we had cyclical headwinds so far, we now expect to benefit from the emergence of some tailwinds, mainly relating to the net interest rate environment. To reduce the complexity of our equity story, to communicate it more effectively, and to highlight the growth areas of the group, we decided to refine our segment reporting, which I will introduce in a minute. ESG has become more important for us than we initially thought when formulating our strategy, but we quickly responded and are now in good position to support the market in the transition towards sustainable economies, and we will also continue to improve our corporate ESG footprint.
With a new setup for Clearstream, the core business Security Services and the Fund Service business will start to become more independent entities. We decided this to reflect differences of the service offering, the client focus, as well as the regulatory framework. It will also increase our strategic flexibility and optionality, for instance, for partnerships or M&A in both businesses. On slide 18, we give you an overview of the new segment reporting we are introducing with the first quarter results in April. We will be simplifying our reporting structure by reducing the number of segments from eight to four and applying a more product-driven approach rather than the brand names we use today.
The new segments will be, first, Data & Analytics, which comprises Qontigo and ISS. Second, Trading & Clearing, which is Eurex, EEX, Xetra and 360T. Third, Fund Services, which is Clearstream's investment Fund Service business. Four, Security Services, which is the core equity and fixed income custody and settlement business of Clearstream. We will also simplify the net revenue line items, but will continue to provide sufficient transparency to enable you to achieve a high modeling accuracy. Our increased focus on ESG is reflected in our sustainability framework and our KPI dashboard that you can see on page 19.
Our sustainability framework comprises four angles. First, we will support the market to increase the transparency through advice and services on ESG reporting. Second, we provide solutions for market participants to directly deal with ESG or climate issues. Third, through our own ESG conduct and reporting, we lead by example and encourage others. Fourth, with specific KPIs, we measure our impact to constantly improve our own ESG strategy and performance. As you can see on this slide, we already achieved most of our ambitious ESG targets, or are on a very good track to achieve them.
Let me come to the outlook. The last page of today's presentation shows our guidance for 2022 in the context of our midterm plan. This year, we expect net revenues of around EUR 3.8 billion and EBITDA of around EUR 2.2 billion. The main driver for those targets is continued secular net revenue growth of 5% or more. We have also included the contribution from the M&A transactions we already closed last year in our guidance, which mainly concerns ISS for the first two months of the year. In addition, we expect cyclicality to turn into a tailwind this year, but the assumptions underlying our guidance are very prudent. All in all, let me state, I think our guidance for the year 2022 is rather on the conservative side. This concludes our presentation, and we are now looking forward to our questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine and star on your telephone keypad. We kindly ask all participants to limit their questions to one per person. Please press nine and star to state your questions. The first question comes from Kyle Voigt, KBW. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. I guess my one question would just be on the EUR 3.8 billion net revenue guidance for 2022. You note that's mainly driven by that 5% secular growth along with consolidation effects. Is it fair to think you don't assume many rate hikes for the U.S. embedded into that guidance, which would have caused a cyclical tailwind? Also just wondering if you could walk through the dynamics again as to the benefits from higher short-term rates, when they come through, as I think maybe the benefit from the first hike or so might be muted due to the fee structure in Clearstream. Any more granularity there would be helpful. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Kyle, for the question. For giving some clarification and transparency on our assumptions with regard to cyclicality. Obviously, as already stated by Theodor, our approach is conservative here. So far, the market expectation are currently higher than what is included in our forecast. The market expectation for U.S. is at least 5%, five times rate increases this year. Even for ECB is a discussion that there's one hike. You know, I think the sensitivity in our modeling. First, the direct impact on our customer cash balances at Clearstream with regard to NII is s till unchanged. EUR 15 billion overall customer cash balances, 50% is U.S. dollar denominated, so it's $7.5 billion, an increase of 1% translate into EUR 75 million for U.S. dollar.
I want to remind all of us this effect, even if there would be four increases, you won't see the full year impact this year as it will happen over the year 2022. The full year impact you will then see in 2023. Also to remind all of us that the first hike or the first 25% you maybe we will most probably swap with the fee of 30 basis points what we already ask our customers. Basically the first hike will be neutral. That is just the direct impact on the NII. Obviously, with the rate increase, we have also a big impact on our fixed income products. And just to remind all of us, the first seven days in February, after ECB gave some concerns afterwards in the press conference with regard to the inflationary development.
Our fixed income product increased 60%-70% already in the last seven days. I don't want to guide you to assume that the same will happen for the rest of the year. Obviously that kind of magnitude is not included in our tailwind assumption for this year. Again, overall that's prudent, that's conservative. If the tailwind is higher, then obviously we will benefit from that.
Great. Thank you, Gregor.
The next question comes from Arnaud Giblat, BNP Exane. Please go ahead with your question.
Good afternoon. My question's on EEX. Could you talk about the evolution there in terms of which countries are progressing well, the share of volumes on exchange versus OTC, how Japan's coming along? I want to get a broad sense of the overall growth behind the EEX rather than, I mean, actually split that out versus the impact we're seeing from higher volatility in energy prices. Thanks.
Arnaud, thanks for that question. There are obviously outstanding performance in Q4 with a revenue increase of 30%. The underlying logic behind is that we all have seen the big increase in energy prices or in gas and power. Obviously, it doubled, it tripled even sometimes, right? That was one. The other element was increased market volatility. That was the second thing. Here you can see and I think the margins we calculated is a good indicator of what happened here. In peak times, it was more than EUR 50 billion margins we calculated in our clearing house at ECC, so m uch higher number than you're usually in the range of EUR 5 billion-EUR 10 billion. Obviously here you see the highest spike.
The good thing is that we were able to deliver the markets that at any point of time there was price discovery, there was the chance for settlement all of the volumes. I think we made a great job. January, basically the same situation unchanged compared to Q4. What we also see is an increased market share as in that kind of development. We have market shares more than 50%. Overall for the full year in 2021, it was 46% in the European power derivatives market so a lso an increase because usually we are in the range of 40%.
Here you see that the OTC market, the program market is less used in that kind of difficult times. The trend to renewable energies will continue to develop. On the other hand side, we see some political developments that we obviously do not like if politicians interfere into these kind of markets. We have not seen that in Germany or in Austria, but we have seen it in Italy and Spain, for instance. That we have to monitor. Overall, I think there's a good chance that the trend to renewable will continue to happen, and so that we continually have a chance to grow double-digit in that business.
Thanks for the detail, Gregor. If you'll allow me just a very, very quick follow-up. Could you tell us what the earnings contribution from REGIS-TR is?
From REGIS-TR, we said this transaction will happen in end of Q1, and it will be a positive impact of EUR +50 million, so over EUR 50 million . You have also to take if you want to model that we lose some roughly EUR 25 million when we have sold that business because today we consolidated. The net impact for this year is roughly EUR 25 million.
Thanks.
The next question comes from Michael Werner, UBS. Please go ahead with your question.
Thank you for the presentation. Regarding ISS, we certainly saw stronger revenues, I think it was about 14% or so in Q4 o r 19%, excuse me. I know your plan at the time of acquisition was to kind of cross-sell some of ISS products into Europe. I was just wondering how that is progressing and whether any of that, you know, incremental growth that we saw in Q4 was tied to that, or whether there's potentially more opportunities to come. Thank you.
The easy and short answer is it's not part of the Q4 development, and yes, it's high potential upside for us. Just commenting a little bit on the ISS development. Yes, indeed, net revenue grow on a like-for-like basis by 19%. That shows you that there's really a very positive development. Why do you see such a higher growth rate than we originally thought? There's obviously a first of all, there's very positive like market development, or the market development overall is more positive than we originally expected. Second, there's a much better product mix today.
Our focus is on ESG data analytics, what's today a EUR 50 million revenue business. There, the growth rate is closer to 25%-30%. Then in our corporate solution business, so t here's also double-digit growth, and also this business has strongly increased. Even the proxy voting business, what is traditionally closer to 5%, is even on a higher single-digit growth rate. The mix is obviously different. We can show you that on a continuous basis. We do M&A. These are smaller transactions. Just to remind all of us, Discovery Data in the range of EUR 20 million or other smaller assets with even some EUR 5 million. This helps to increase our capabilities specifically in the ESG area. That gives us confidence that ISS will continue to grow double-digit already this year.
Thank you, Gregor. If you don't mind, just a quick follow-up on that. As we look out to 2022, is it part of the plan to start pushing, you know, potentially more of these products and services into Europe? You know, what has been the appetite for institutions in Europe for those products and services? Thank you.
Yes, obviously, that's part of the strategy and we roll it out and we get, really, when we talk to banks or asset managers, so the feedback is ISS has really great quality, such great ESG rating for the corporates, for the customers. Unfortunately, today they do not cover the full scope. MSCI is still from a broader scope perspective, but we have the better quality. That's why we'll hire another 100 research analysts here at ISS to really cover the scope and hopefully to define the gold standard for the future with regard to ESG ratings. At least that's our targeted level.
The faster we are able to deliver on that side, then we can also achieve a good performance in U.S., in Europe and also in Asia, because we think that that's really key. With regard to the cross-selling, yes, the more we learn about ISS, the more we see opportunities to do some cross-selling. Obviously, the combination with Qontigo on creating new ESG index products based on our today's index products, I think is a big opportunity. Even with regard to our funds service business, right? ESG funds is another angle where we see opportunity.
Also when I look at the Clearstream scope of task of solutions we offer to our customers. We can, with the proxy voting, we have additional topics we can offer here. Yes. 2021 was the year that we started to get to know and 2022 will be the year that we start to harvest across the whole value chain of Deutsche Börse.
Thanks for the color, Gregor. I really appreciate it.
The next question comes from Benjamin Goy, Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead with your question.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon. One question on the split of the Clearstream assets into securities and Fund Services. Will this also be done by April? The question is: should we then expect that you're ready for more for bigger deals, M&A deals in that part, or rather than other areas of your focus areas for M&A? Thank you.
Yeah, Benjamin. Thanks for the question. Obviously for you as following Deutsche Börse, it's not so spectacular news because we already reported about these two segments. We showed you the full P&L for investment Fund Service and the full P&L for Clearstream service. We will continue to do so. Just what we want to say here to you is that we make this business and we see in this business that different scope, different customers, different processes, so and obviously different opportunities. Investment Fund Services, it's growing organically in the range of 25%-30%. Obviously with the IPO of Allfunds, there's now a good benchmark available.
That's why we said, "Look, let's make these businesses more independent, so strengthen these businesses." Obviously if we have fulfilled that task, then there are additional opportunities from M&A perspective, from a partnering perspective in all of these two areas. It basically increases the optionality from a Deutsche Börse perspective.
No, certainly understood. Maybe in that context, can you remind us of the net debt EBITDA at the year-end level?
Net debt to EBITDA. Okay. In year-end 2021, that was of 2.0. It was above our threshold. We agreed with S&P, so that level is 1.75. We are above that threshold. But maybe you have seen just recently in January, S&P reviewed our rating again, and they are fully aware that we are above this threshold, but they confirmed our double-A rating and with a stable outlook.
So that's obviously a strong support of S&P that they even this did not change even if we missed that threshold b ut the expectation would be from the rating agency that we come back within that threshold. There are good opportunities, but it basically depends on our M&A path. Where do we end? Obviously we are all aware that we create cash flow every year of EUR 1.5 billion. Our cash position will very fast pick up again, and will give us additional opportunities for doing M&A.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Johannes Thormann, HSBC. Please go ahead with your question.
Good afternoon, everybody. Johannes Thormann, HSBC. First of all, a question on the impact of Brexit on your business. If you could elaborate probably a bit more on the statements from this morning that you're somewhat disappointed about the recent timeline given by the commission OTC clearing until 2025. What was your feedback from your users? In my impression, this is driven by the banks. If you could share your views and probably also in terms of the well-remembered thing that you talked to some investors ago, that the custody business will benefit from Brexit, and we haven't seen much at Clearstream yet. Is it still potentially coming or can we skip those plans? Just on your net cash position, is there any fixed limit where you would switch to a share buyback again? Thank you.
Starting with the second question, no, there are no plans for doing a share buyback. First question, impact Brexit and Euro clearing. Yes. Obviously we were not happy with the decision of the EU Commission to postpone that by another three year. There's a clear understanding of the EU Commission that they really prefer and prioritize if the Euro business will be executed within the Eurozone. I think that's a very clear understanding of ECB, of European Commission and also ESMA, that will happen. With regard to the prolongation, obviously it will take a little bit more time, no doubt about that.
Currently there's a market consultation process with all the market participants, and therefore there's a discussion how to incentivize that direction of operating euro business within the EU. It's a clear understanding that this process will continue to happen. Also end of January, we increased our market share from 20%- 22%. Yes, it will not jump immediately to 50% or whatever above that. We expect that it will continue to grow and our expectation is that our revenues we make out of that euro clearing business, what was in 2021 EUR 57 million, and also well within our range of EUR 50 million- EUR 70 million what we gathered, will continuously increase double-digit every year. That's our clear expectation, and that is also supported from a EU perspective.
If I may add, Johannes, from my side, Theodor speaking. Following that, I had a series of conversations with European Commission and also with EU Commissioner McGuinness, and she clearly stated, by the way, we were publicly, right. They are expecting as European Commission that we need to set up in EU 27 CCP capacities. ESMA has clearly stated that they see it critical that the CCP capacity in Great Britain is systemic, right? Everybody understands this, and therefore all the topics around. We are discussing with them now what needs to be taken in order to ensure that we get the transformation done until mid-2025, right? That is basically the key point.
Everybody is extremely appreciative in Europe and on EU Commission level that we created a market solution, not waiting for a regulatory ruling, right? That we would be moved ahead. I think it's important to say, right, and we are talking about pension fund exemptions. We are talking with them about significant other accounts and so forth. We are really pretty much in detail with them, and they understand. The key point is not- It's not whether we move in the year 2025 to EU 27, t he key point is how we ensure it's gonna happen?
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Ian White, Autonomous Research. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for the presentation. I have one on Eurex, please, and in particular, the equity index derivatives trading volumes. I'd just be interested in getting your latest thoughts on the development there. Conscious you've sort of given us some color on the year-over-year sort of dynamics, Q4 2021 versus 2020.
But I guess sort of looking at it, these volumes are still sort of quite subdued versus where we were sort of pre-pandemic FY 2019 levels, even though we've had volatility meaningfully above the FY 2019 level, both in Q4 2021 and also as we're running in the first quarter of 2022 as well. Is there anything else going on there that might explain sort of why these volumes are still quite subdued relative to the pre-pandemic trend? Kind of the other side of that, is there any reason to think that equity index volumes might return to the pre-pandemic trend anytime soon, please? Thank you.
Thanks, Ian. Obviously, there's no reasons to believe that we will not come back to the levels we have already achieved here. No change from the business model here. The Q4 development was -12%, triggered by the volatility. I think I mentioned that the VSTOXX was 17% below previous year level here, and that's still unchanged, the main driver here. With regard to the development for the next two to three years, I think we have a positive assumption here that if interest rates will be increased, and we talked about it earlier on in this call, and there's a clear understanding that this will happen.
When this happens, then also some confidence will come back that the economic recovery will happen. Whether it's 3% growth, 4% or 5% growth, we will finally see. There's a clear understanding that 2022 will be a growth year compared to 2021, and 2023 will again be a growth year compared to 2022. Coming back to our equity index product. With that positive development, with increase in rates, with increased recovery of the economy overall, there will be also an increase in market volatility. There will be an increase in the flows, or there will be more invested in Europe compared to U.S. That obviously would be a positive scenario also for our equity index product. Yes, we expect that the equity index product will already grow this year and even more. We will even see more growth than one year later.
Okay. Thank you. Maybe if I could just follow up, just to put this a bit more, kind of in with some detail. I'm looking at sort of 4Q 2019, the VSTOXX was at about 14 as an average, and you did 3.7 million ADV on equity indices. Sort of fast-forward two years, 4Q 2021, the V2X is at sort of 2021, and the volumes are 3 million. I guess that's what I'm trying to get my head around. Has there been negative secular growth? Is there kind of? Or is it some of these other dynamics that you mentioned about equity flows that you're thinking might lead to sort of a stronger performance there, please? That's what I'm trying to get my head around.
Yeah. I mean, there are obviously multiple factors, right? The situation that equity markets have reached sort of, you know, very high valuation levels and are currently sort of not with a clear direction because that depends on monetary policies, I guess would be one factor that differs to 2019. Then on top of that, I think it's also still fair to assume that the current working situation somehow has implications on how much risk appetite there is, how much risk limits the traders have and so on. This is something we would also regard a temporary factor. Once markets will be more volatile, once there is a clearer direction, then we believe those volumes will also return.
Okay. Thanks for that detail. Appreciate it.
The next question comes from Bruce Hamilton, Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi there. Good afternoon. Thanks very much for the presentation and the Q&A. Obviously, it sounds like there's quite a lot of ways that revenues could be better in 2022, but I just wanna focus on the cost. 2021 was EUR 1.55 billion. I think to that, I need to add about EUR 30 million for a full year effect of ISS and perhaps another EUR 20 million for other M&A. If you grow costs at around 5%, should I be thinking about OpEx around kind of EUR 1.68 billion, or I'm missing something? Then on the D&A side, adjusting for the one-off, I guess you're annualizing at about EUR 305 million. Is that a good run rate, or should we expect that there's a slight upward impact from some of the recent deals or anything else, just to make sure? Thank you.
Yeah, Bruce, thanks for the question. With regard to the M&A, your second question. Out of this EUR 600 million what we guided from 2019 compared to 2023, for the four-year time horizon, we already achieved more than EUR 400 million. More than 2/3 are already done to fulfill our guidance. It's just from our perspective to confirm again that we will also deliver the last over the next 24 months. We are confident to deliver on that side. For our specific guidance for 2022, for the EUR 3.8 billion, no additional M&A is included in that number.
Again, it will happen in the next EUR 150 million-EUR 200 million latest until end of 2023. No change with regard to M&A. With regard to your cost question, we do not give specific guidance for any specific cost number, but it's not too difficult to derive it from our overall numbers we guide. We guide the EUR 3.8 billion net revenue. We guide the EUR 2.2 billion EBITDA. As I said here, you have to do some adjustments. What is the equity contribution from our financial investment, and then you basically have our cost number.
Yes, indeed, there will be consolidation impact specifically in the first quarter, as you rightly mentioned, the first two months of our ISS business. For the full year, there's also a consolidation impact out of our Discovery Data business. There's also an impact of our Crypto Finance business as we've consolidated that for the full year. I would expect that that's roughly 50% of our increase is related to M&A and consolidation. We will continue with our prudent cost management. As mentioned, we continue to do our continuous improvement process where we cover all our inflationary pressure. That's our target also for 2022.
Secondly, we have a contingency plan in case and nowadays everybody expects tailwinds from a cyclicality perspective, but if it would not happen, we would be even prepared and have our contingency plan in the drawer. You are aware how we executed that in 2021. Therefore, cost management will be continued to be important for Deutsche Börse management.
If I may add.
Yep.
If I may add, Bruce. In the year 2021, if I look on constant portfolio, on a constant portfolio base, right, we've hired some 400+ people on constant portfolio, so not on the M&A front. Nevertheless, we achieved almost a flat-ish cost, right? We have hired enough people. We are well, pretty well equipped, right? If necessary, we will go on the break.
Yeah. Just below the line, so I get all that was all super useful. On the D&A, is the Q4 run rate adjusted for the one-off? Which would imply a sort of annualized number of EUR 305-ish million. Is that a sensible number, or would it be slightly higher because of deals impacting through 2022 or slightly lower for other factors? I'm just trying to check below the line items as well.
Overall, the D&A will go up. The reason for that is we gave you the number that we said the PPA in Q4 increased to EUR 26 million. You can take this times 4. Therefore, you can see out of the existing M&A. The PPA just increased by more than EUR 10 million next year. Further on, you can also assume continued increase of depreciation because we also have continued investment in the past. I don't want to give a specific number now.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Okay, great.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Philip Middleton, Bank of America. Please go ahead with your question.
Yeah, thank you. I just wondered, somewhat following on from that, there's an awful lot of talk at the moment about rising inflation. From what you're saying, you're not really feeling particularly pressured by that. I just wonder if you could talk through that, why the sort of increased energy costs you'll be seeing or probably some of the pressure on staff costs aren't actually feeding through to your cost line.
Yeah. Thanks, Philip. Let's start with the costs. In our planning, we have roughly a 3% increase of our personal costs included. But on the other, that's roughly EUR 30 million on a basis of EUR 1 billion. With our continuous improvement process, we are able to compensate that. We do not expect or surprises here on the cost side. The cost increase will have two reasons. One, we already discussed it, is consolidation of the business. The other is that we structurally invest in our business, in people in IT and technology, et cetera.
That's for our costs and nothing else and no surprises here. From a business perspective, I think the inflation and rate increase is very positive for us. We have already elaborated with regard to fixed income products, with regard to our NII. It could even if I look at that, even the chance and we have to look at that and from our business perspective to even increase pricing. You are aware that we say, look, roughly 5% of our secular growth, the bigger component obviously is around winning market shares, additional liquidity and so on. There are still also the opportunity where we analyze every year very carefully as if there's a chance to increase prices. We are currently evaluating that.
Okay, thank you.
The next question comes from Jochen Schmitt. Please go ahead with your question.
Thank you. Good afternoon. I have a question on the digital central register which you have introduced at Clearstream. Could you provide some information how you perceive the interest of potential clients evolving with regard to this new service offered by Clearstream? That's my question. Thank you.
Okay. With regard to the digital register . That's basically where we want to be front runner for our post trading business, digitize all our processes, all our assets. German regulation changed here. There's a good chance that 80% of our assets are digitized mid of this year. We can use that. That's a much more efficient process for our customers. In principle, our idea is to create a digital CSD and a digital ICSD based on new technology and based on completely digitized assets. I think we are ahead of the others here. In principle that's obviously a superior solution what we are able to offer to our customersand w e are convinced that this will support our growth.
It will cover Jochen, the bearer bonds, right? Which is 80% of the market. The product, what we call Inhaberschuldverschreibung in Germany. The bearer bonds, traditional ones, and the funds business. Excluded is the traditional stocks business. The shares, the equities are excluded. It's pretty clear that we have started with the warrants. We are starting with the warrants business, right? It's too early to say how strong the demand is from the customers. That's yet too early, right? It's very clear, given the electronic securities act, what is in place, right, we will move to it until 2025 fully.
Thank you very much.
The last question comes from Martin Price, Jefferies. Please go ahead with the question.
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. It's on investment Fund Services. Back in November, I think you flagged a significant new client win in Australia, which you said that you'd expect to increase distribution assets this year. I just wonder if you could provide an update on the assets you expect to onboard and what sort of incremental revenue impact we could expect in 2022. Thank you.
What you mentioned are just some examples. Traditionally, we do not communicate and publish which customers we beat at win. You see with our 28% organic growth rate here, there's a very long customer pipeline, and there's a strong demand to connect to our platforms to do business on our distribution angle. This will continue to happen in 2022. In both areas, in settlement and custody, also in the distribution areas. Any offer currently we win against our competitors, that's really great to see. With regard to IFS, we also think about to build up a third leg in the funds data business. Therefore we think we would make sense to increase our capabilities also on that side. So far very positive on that side because the customer pipeline is very long and we are able to deliver on that side.
Okay. Understood. Thanks, Gregor.
The next question comes from Andrew Coombs, Citi. Please go ahead with your question.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes.
Yeah.
Perfect. It's Andrew Coombs from Citi. I just wanted to do the same exercise that Bruce did, but with the revenue line, if possible. Because if you take the 2021 revenues, adjust for the EUR 40 million Fund Centre gain, assume 5% structural growth, and then go through the exercise of adding on two months of ISS, Crypto Finance, Discovery Data, the EUR 25 million for REGIS-TR net. It does feel like just a little bit of cyclical growth, I think, baked into your revenue guidance.
I mean, the majority of it is that structural growth in M&A, but it does appear you're assuming a little bit of cyclical growth. Just wanted to clarify exactly where that cyclical growth is that you've got baked into your numbers, on the basis that you said you've got nothing in for higher Fed rates, for example. You seem to be alluding to generally a lot of upside on the cyclical side relative to what you're assuming. Thank you.
Thanks, Andrew. With regard to the revenues in 2022, I think we will continue to have at least 5% secular growth. That's unchanged, our target. Currently there's roughly some 3% out of the consolidation impact of our businesses, what we already mentioned. Yes, there are some one-offs in 2021, what obviously we have to compensate in 2022, as you rightly said. Overall, I think that the key question is what happens around the cyclicality. With the 5% and the 3%, basically we are there with our 8% cost to EUR 3.8 billion. So far here you can see that there are some small tailwinds that we included in our guidance. If the tailwind is bigger, then obviously we would overachieve the EUR 3.8 billion.
Thank you.
All right. Thank you for your participation today and the lively discussion. Looking forward to seeing you again hopefully throughout the year. Thank you. Bye.
Thank you.