Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Deutsche Börse AG analyst and investor conference call regarding the Q1 2022 results. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for your 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 third quarter 2022 results. With me are Theodor Weimer, Chief Executive Officer, and Gregor Pottmeyer, Chief Financial Officer. Theodor and Gregor will take you through the presentation. Afterwards, we will be happy to take your questions. The presentation materials for this call has 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. With this, let me now hand over to you, Theodor.
Thank you, Jan. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, from my side as well. As always, let me start today's call with a brief overview of the financial highlights and the key developments in the first quarter. Afterwards, Gregor, our CFO, will be presenting the financial results in greater detail. In contrast to last year, our regular secular growth achievements and the contribution from M&A have been complemented by strong cyclical tailwinds. This has contributed to our net revenue growth of 24% to a record quarterly level of more than EUR 1 billion. Due to the operating leverage of our business model, the EBITDA even increased by 32% during the first quarter. Secular net revenue growth at 8% was slightly above our guidance.
This was particularly driven by product innovation in financial derivatives, an increase of market share in commodities, the growing demand for ESG-related products at ISS, and the continued trend towards outsourcing in the fund industry. M&A contributed another 5% net revenue growth. This was mainly driven by the contribution of the remaining two months of ISS, which we started to consolidate in March last year. We also continued to implement our M&A strategy and have closed the acquisition of Kneip, a leading fund data manager, in March this year. This will further strengthen our fund service business because we can now offer data management and regulatory reporting services to our existing client base. The strong cyclical tailwinds resulted from higher volatility in almost all asset classes, and accordingly, hedging needs of our clients increased significantly.
This was very visible in commodities and equities, but fixed income and FX benefited as well. In total, cyclical net revenue growth amounted to 11%, which also includes the one-off effect from the REGIS-TR disposal and some benefits from the stronger US dollar. With a much more positive top-line development compared to last year, we slightly increased the investments in growth and infrastructure. This is why, on a constant currency basis, the organic operating cost increased by 5% in the quarter. We also continued to increase productivity through our continuous improvement program. This helped offset most of the inflationary pressures. Such a, quite frankly, strong start to the year is very likely from today's perspective that we will exceed our full-year guidance. With that, let me now hand it over to you, Gregor.
Thank you, Theodor. On page two, we show the first quarter results of the group in detail. While cyclically boosted net revenue, we saw a nice improvement of the operating leverage and an organic earnings growth of 30%. The result from financial investments includes around EUR 17 million from our investment in the Illuminate Financial. This is driven by the mark-to-market valuation of the fund and the partial disposal of our holding of the fund. In addition, the line item includes a gain of around EUR 12 million from the sale of the Nodal stake in the U.S. derivatives exchange, FairX, to Coinbase. Depreciation includes a software impairment of around EUR 6 million on the Buy-in Agent services that were developed at Eurex. This is the result of the decision by the European Commission to remove the buy-in obligation from the CSDR regulation for an indefinite time.
The financial result includes a one-off gain of around EUR 4 million from an interest rate hedge. This is related to the senior bond we placed at the end of March. We secured an attractive interest rate level already in 2021, which reduces the effective yield of the bond to around 0.6%. The proceeds from the issue of the bond will be used to refinance the corporate bond maturing in October 2022. On slide three, we give you an overview of the quarterly results in the new segment reporting structure. We have simplified our reporting structure by reducing the number of segments from 8 to 4, and applying a more product-driven approach. The new segments are Data and Analytics, which comprises Qontigo and ISS. Trading and Clearing, which is Eurex, EEX, Xetra, and 360T. Fund Services, which is identical with Clearstream's investment fund service business.
Security services, which consists of core equity and fixed income custody and settlement business of Clearstream. We have also simplified the net revenue line items within the segments, but you still will find most details disclosed in the appendix of this presentation. I'm now turning to the quarterly results of the segments, starting with Data and Analytics on page four. The segment performance was mainly driven by the continued outperformance of ISS compared to our expectations. On an organic and constant currency basis, ISS net revenue increased by around 19%. The ESG business was mainly driven by higher double-digit growth in ESG analytics and corporate solutions. Governance solution also performed well. The index business saw a mix of tailwinds from Eurex exchange licenses and some headwinds from market valuation in ETF licenses.
Analytics saw some headwinds from slightly higher point in time net revenue in the same period last year. Let me turn to slide five and the trading and clearing segment. The overall segment clearly benefited from higher volatility and increased hedging needs, particularly in commodities and financial derivatives. Financial derivatives were driven by equity and equity index related derivatives, with a 25% net revenue increase. Interest rate related products also performed well. They include interest rate derivatives and the OTC clearing, with an overall net revenue increase of 21%. The strongest growth rate in the segment was achieved by commodities. On the one hand, this was due to higher trading and hedging needs, especially in gas. On the other hand, the margining fees continued to increase in the quarter, amounted to EUR 16 million.
Since hedging was the main driver for trading activity in the quarter, net revenue in cash equities did not grow quite as much as other parts of the segment, but still achieved a plus of 5%. Demand for foreign exchange products, including swaps and forwards, was significantly higher compared to previous quarters, and net revenue increased by 18%. The Fund Services segment, which you can find on page six, continued its strong performance in the first quarter. Due to onboarding of new clients and portfolios, cyclical headwinds from market valuations in equities and bonds were overcompensated. As a result, we exceeded our organic growth target of around 10% despite cyclical headwinds. To further complement the fund service offering, we acquired Kneip at the end of March. Kneip is a leader in fund data management and reporting solutions for the asset management industry.
The acquisition is already closed and forms the basis for creating a leading fund data hub with significant cross-selling potential into our existing client base. In addition, we announced a partnership with a global wealth management platform, FNZ, two weeks ago. Together, we will create a leading business intelligence solutions provider and help roll out fund distribution services into FNZ client bases in the U.K. Our security services segment on slide seven benefited from the divestiture of REGIS-TR, but also saw solid growth despite some market headwinds. The divestiture of Clearstream's 50% stake in REGIS-TR to Iberclear resulted in a one-off proceeds of around EUR 49 million and at the same time in a recurring decline of net revenue by around EUR 5 million per quarter. Headwinds from lower equity market valuations and a slight decline of retail participation were overcompensated by solid levels of fixed income issuance activity.
The net interest income started to develop more positively and amounted to around EUR 19 million. This is mainly because of increase in cash balances in the quarter. On April 1st, we discontinued the cash handling fee on US dollar balances after the first Fed rate hike in March. This means that the potential further hikes will directly translate in higher net interest income. The current sensitivity is an increase of short-term interest rates by 100 basis points higher will expand the NII by around EUR 90 million on an annualized basis.
The last page of today's presentation shows our guidance for 2022 in the context of our midterm plan. Due to stronger than expected cyclical net revenue growth in the first quarter, we currently expect more than EUR 3.8 billion of net revenue and more than EUR 2.2 billion of EBITDA. Previously, we had only committed ourselves to achieving something around these values for both KPIs.
Taking the first quarter into consideration and leaving our assumptions for the rest of the year unchanged, we would currently be looking at roughly EUR 70 million of additional net revenue for the full year. Since we are expecting the US dollar to remain strong and since we continue to invest slightly more, the upside to the EBITDA guidance would be somewhat less than the EUR 70 million. Still there are nine months to go in the year, though there could be both cyclical headwind as well as tailwinds to the course we currently expect.
Headwind could, for instance, arise from a recession in Europe as a result of the war in Ukraine, or from a decline of volatility and volumes in the second half of the year, similar to the development in 2020. Tailwinds could arise if U.S. interest rates are increasing to 2% or more towards year-end, which is currently the market expectation. This concludes our presentation. We are now looking forward to your questions.
The first question comes from Andrew Coombs from Citi. Over to you.
Afternoon. I have just three questions, but perhaps I can do a very, very short one followed by the main question. The short factual one is, can you provide the AUA in Clearstream Fund Centre or the fund distribution AUA? I couldn't see that in the appendix, so I'd appreciate a figure on that. And then the main question is just on the NII sensitivity. You talked about the revised charging in March, so now it should flow through. Previously I think you said the 25 basis points is EUR 19 million. Does that still stand? And are there any offsets elsewhere, say for example, through the finance expense line or anywhere else that we should be aware of? Thank you.
Yeah, Andrew, thanks for your question. The AUA at Fund Centre is roughly EUR 400 billion. With regard to the sensitivity of the NII, I elaborated that, having currently roughly some $9 billion customer cash balances in US dollar, so a rate increase by 1% translates into EUR 90 million. That is the sensitivity you can take for your model.
There's no offset from any other changes in pricing or you don't have any floating rate debt issued which is dollar sensitive? Anything along those lines?
No, there are no compensating effects.
Perfect. Just on to follow up on the first point, the 400. I think you said 400 now for the last three quarters. Was there no negative mark-to-market impact on that Fund Centre AUA?
Yeah, Andrew, that's a rough number. Unfortunately, we don't have it readily available per month yet. Working on that. Definitely, as you can see from the revenues, there was a little bit of a headwind from equity and fixed income variations, but I think we've nicely offset this also through growth in terms of the client base and the funds that are covered.
Perfect. Okay, thank you.
Next up is Haley Tam from Credit Suisse. Over to you.
Afternoon. Thank you very much for taking my question. I wanted to ask about all the different components of secular growth, but I guess I will pick just one, therefore, to ask about. If I can ask you about the ESG data revenue growth, obviously was very strong year on year, but has been broadly stable, I think, for the last three quarters. I just wondered, can you help us understand how to think about this business? Is it like an annual subscription model that we should see the growth come through once a year, or is there something else that's causing that stability? Thank you.
Yeah, Hayley, thanks for the question. Obviously, ESG is one of the key growth driver for Deutsche Börse business. Today it's 7%-8% of the overall group revenue, net revenue. It continuously increase obviously over the next years as we will see higher organic growth on that side. In the first quarter it was roughly 30% on a constant portfolio basis. That's obviously higher than in the other business areas. We expect that this trend will continue to happen in the future. Secondly, we will continue to look for M&A in this area so that we also increase our bases here. The secular drivers here are basically two components in ESG.
It's our ISS business, obviously. Secondly, it's also our EEX business that contributes a lot. These are the two main drivers for this ESG growth.
Thank you, Gregor. If I can clarify, in the ISS ESG data revenue line, I think it was about EUR 50 million, EUR 51 million for the last three quarters. That's a stable number I should expect, and really I should be looking at the EEX business for growth. Is that the right interpretation?
As you're also focusing on the recurring element. Usually in that kind of business and in ISS it's a recurring revenue. You should see sustainable and continued growth here. With regard to EEX, obviously there's also a trading component. What we consider here is the green power, right? Therefore we have a clear classification. Here we expect that this will also continue to grow on a secular basis. Today it's more than 40%, but will increase over the next year. There's a secular component, but definitely there's also a cyclical component as overall there are also higher market volatility. In principle it's more a secular trend.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Arnaud Giblat from BNP Paribas Exane. The floor is yours.
Good morning, good afternoon, sorry. I've got a very quick follow-up and my main question, if I may. The follow-up first is cash equity yields have come off a bit this quarter versus previous quarters. I'm just wondering what's going on in the mix. Is that maybe a lower retail participation that's breaking a bit? And my second question is with regards to either ISS and then mostly the fund distribution. Do you see a significant consolidation opportunity ahead? Could we envisage some larger transactions happening there? And more important, is there any potential transaction issues with the Competition Commission?
I think we've been there before, but how should we think about that in terms of a market definition? Thank you.
Yeah. Arnaud, let me pick up the second question. The question on the consolidation on the ISS side. To be very clear and outspoken, right. There are no plans on our side to enter into any consolidation gains which might arise at the far horizon here, because there is such a strong organic growth that we, A, see no need, and B, we feel comfortable with our acquisition, which we have done, right, when we acquired ISS. Let's be very clear here, right? We feel extremely well with what we have acquired so far.
On cash equity, Arnaud, it's basically the product mix. What we've seen is a quite substantial decline actually in retail trading compared to the strong previous year. Retail trading typically has a higher fee margin. The product mix has changed, but nothing really structured.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Benjamin Goy from Deutsche Bank.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon. Just wanted to check on your M&A firepower. Can you confirm where you're standing with the upper target? Would that mean that we should expect more of the same, meaning these EUR 200 million-type acquisitions here and there? Or do you see that there's more room to grow inorganically? Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Benjamin. With regard to M&A firepower, I think you are aware that we are a strong cash flow generating business. On a yearly basis, we roughly generate EUR 1.5 billion cash flow. Let's say EUR 600 million for dividends, let's say EUR 200 million for CapEx. It remains roughly EUR 700 million. You can see that we generate very quickly cash and therefore from a firepower, from a funding perspective, we seem well positioned to do transactions we would like to do. From a rating perspective, we are also now back on track with regard to our debt levels. Obviously with the strong Q1 and with the expectation here.
We will come back to the agreed KPIs with the rating agency. No restrictions from a firepower perspective with regard to M&A. With regard to our M&A strategy, I think you are aware that roughly EUR 150 million are missing for our 2023 target. Overall, we say it's roughly EUR 600 million. What we contribute with the 5% M&A contribution over the four years, roughly EUR 450 million we have already delivered. We're missing EUR 150 million. And that's, you know, potentially the level we definitely want to achieve. But currently there's no big pressure. If you find an attractive target then obviously, we will look at it. No pressure from that point of view.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Michael Werner from UBS.
Thank you very much. Just a question within trading and clearing kind of the revenues per contract or the revenues per volume within equities and interest rate derivatives. We saw volumes up quite strongly in both, and surprisingly also we did see a bit of an uptick as well in the yields on those products year on year. I was just wondering, you know, usually we tend to see kind of the opposite, but just wondering what was going on in the mix here. Thank you.
No, Mike. At Eurex, typically there are no significant volume rebates. Aside from market making rebates, it's pretty much priceless fees. What we've seen and what also contributed to the secular growth in trading and clearing in Eurex is basically new products and product innovation. MSCI derivatives, dividend derivatives, volatility derivatives, and so on, typically are higher priced, so they help to bring up the RPC already for the last couple of quarters, at least modestly.
Thank you. Just perhaps a follow-up with regards to the interest rate derivatives. In terms of the over-the-counter business, I'm just curious to hear how that progressed in the over-the-counter clearing in Q1.
Yeah. The fact that we funded it now in interest rate derivatives doesn't mean it has not performed well. It has indeed performed extremely well. It was the strongest quarter ever with close to EUR 90 million of net revenue.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Bruce Hamilton from Morgan Stanley.
Hi, good afternoon, guys. Congratulations on the numbers. Quick one maybe on the M&A landscape. You've been, you know, quite clear it sounds like on the ISS and your view that actually what you have there is growing very nicely and you don't need to acquire, you know, to further growth. What are the most interesting areas as you kind of assess the landscape today, and has that changed at all? It sounds like ESG would still be a big focus, perhaps data as well. I'm just interested in what you're seeing.
Just to confirm on the net debt EBITDA, what you're saying is that you are now at sort of 1.75x as at the end of Q1, give or take, just so I make sure I've understood. Thank you.
Thank you, Bruce. From my side, let me first position our M&A strategy in the context of the current environment. First, you need to understand, right, if we are benefiting from strong tailwinds, then our operating model works perfectly, so our EBITDA margin goes up, right, which is probably nice for you and for us both. On the other side, if you do M&A, there is a tendency that M&A has a negative effect on the EBITDA margin because it's very hard to find as profitable companies as we run our own company. Therefore, we run this smart balance, right, of we want to keep the high margins, but also we want to grow our business smartly forward, right? There is no need and no pressure from our side.
We don't feel pressed in a situation like this, where still the valuations are pretty high. We don't think we should let ourselves get in a position that we feel pressed by the market or by anybody out there that we should go madly towards the M&A route. As a rule of thumb, until the year 2020, we have grown by M&A on average by 2% per year. 2%. Our target is now in the range of 5%, right? What we have started in 2020 until 2023, we want to grow by 5%. We are actually exactly on the 5%, as Gregor and I pointed out during our first part of the presentation. We feel we are pretty well on the way. There are concrete opportunities out there.
We look at those, and we have proven that we are in a position to do deals, right? We have done Kneip. Of course, the key areas we are predominantly focused on are the pre-trading and funds areas, right? That's what we have done so far, and that's what we will continue. Again, we are on a pretty good track already, and we are not pressed. We are rather focused on the good opportunities to identify good opportunities. We are less constrained by the financial situation.
With regard to the financials, what we agreed upon is, it's what you said, that the net debt to EBITDA is 1.75, our target, and the other KPI is FFO net debt, free funds from operation, that's 50%. These are the two KPIs we agreed upon to come back at the end of the year with the rating agencies.
Great. Thank you very much.
Next up is Kyle Voigt from KBW.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. In Clearstream, settlement activity was down 17% year on year, but cash balances grew 13%. I'm wondering why you think there's such a divergence there, and does that imply that the balances may currently be slightly elevated, as clients are parking cash here, because they still have very few alternatives to get higher yields? Lastly, is it reasonable to assume that as rates continue to move higher, your clients may migrate some of those balances out of Clearstream for yield alternatives? Thank you.
Yeah, Kyle. There's no direct immediate correlation. Indeed the cash balances are driven by settlements, but only by the ICSD settlements or the international settlements, not by the domestic ones. Therefore, you know, the numbers might not quite match up. What we've seen last time around, so when interest rates went down and when we introduced the cash handling fee, that balances actually went down. You know, question remains whether this is now a sign that balances are even structurally increasing that needs to be seen. Apparently clients are worrying a little bit more about an explicit charge and not sort of, you know, an implicit cost. From that angle it's a little bit early to predict, but we definitely wouldn't believe they would go down substantially.
Either they remain stable driven by settlement activity or maybe they even trend slightly upwards as we have seen in March now.
Understood. Thank you.
The next question comes from Philip Middleton from the Bank of America. Philip, your line is open now.
Philip?
We cannot hear you. Maybe you're still on mute.
Hey. Yeah. You've booked some gains on your financial assets, basically on the venture portfolio. I know there were some disposals in there for which well done, but in general, this was a difficult quarter for venture investing. It sounds like you've experienced positive mark-to-market. What's going on there, and how are you feeling about the next quarter or two in terms of valuation of these assets?
Yeah. Thanks, Philip, for the question. Obviously to make some prediction on a quarterly basis is a little bit difficult. What we see is a continued increasing contribution out of our financial assets we invested. Since beginning of when Theodor Weimer joined here, that one was one of his first tasks to professionalize this area. We have done very successful investments here over the last three years, and we see the benefits now. Last year we told you that so far over the last three years, you haven't seen anything in our P&L because all the gains were booked against our equity.
Now we made certain investments, we changed it specifically for the new ones because if you have made a decision that you three years ago that you show it just in the balance sheet on equity basis, then you can't change it. It has to be done in the first time. Therefore we decided now for different assets we acquired recently over the last 12 months that you see a fair value valuation in our P&L. We have single investments, so where we have to make a decision, and we have also some portfolio investments, and this was the case now in Q1. It was Illuminate. Here we invest more in a fintech portfolio and not in a specific single investment.
This is shown in our P&L. If there are positives, these elements here, if there are disposals or even some ABCD rounds, then you see this in our P&L. There are many others now where you could see potential impact and it really depends whether a transaction takes place, yes or no. For instance, our 360X business under the leadership of Carlo Kölzer where we talk about non-financial assets, building platforms, market infrastructure based on blockchain technology. If you would see here a transaction, here you would also see then a P&L impact.
The general message is as we will continue to do successful investments here in that area, you will see continued positive contributions here in our P&L for that.
Okay. Thank you. The overall environment still hasn't been particularly helpful, so you did well in Q1 for idiosyncratic reasons?
No, there are obviously positive and negative elements. Now, as you have seen Illuminate obviously there was a very positive element. There was another, it was a participation in FX, what we hold at Nodal, where Coinbase made a transaction for very attractive pricing and therefore there's another $13 million+ impact here. These are the two main drivers for Q1, but over the next quarter it could be different elements here what would contribute. It really depends on whether a transaction takes place, yes or no.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Ian White from Autonomous Research.
Hi. Afternoon. Thanks for the presentation. I had one follow-up and one substantial question, please. The follow-up is just around, I think it was the final comment you made around guidance for this year.
Can I just clarify, please? I heard that you the EUR 17 million of additional net revenue versus the previous guidance, less than that on EBITDA, and assuming that U.S. rates go to 2% by year-end. Have I got that correct, please? Just to make sure I haven't misunderstood on what you're saying there in terms of the assumptions underpinning the sort of tweak you've made to the guidance for FY 2022. My question really is just to ask for a bit more detail on commodity trading. What are you seeing there in terms of the breadth of participation and counterparty growth in the first quarter?
Could you say a bit about the challenges we're seeing in some energy markets around high collateral requirements for end users, and how you see that developing over the coming quarters, please? Thank you.
Yeah. With regard to the questions with regard to guidance. When I mentioned the EUR 70 million, that is the surplus we achieved in Q1 compared to our plan. That's and obviously then the second comment you made, if that included a 2% Fed funds rate at the end of the year, obviously not, because I talked about EUR 70 million in Q1. If the Fed funds rate would go up to 2%, obviously it would be additional upside potentially for what is not included so far. Your second question around the commodity business. Yes, obviously, was another 40% net revenue increase. High market activity here in power and in gas. Strong increase in pricing.
Yes, indeed, there was a strong increase in our margins we ask for in our collaterals. The good thing is that there were no surprises for the market participants. The model worked as designed, and all the market participants were able to deliver the collateral. Nevertheless, it's obviously a stress situation. At some peak times at ECC, so our clearing house for power and for gas, we had EUR 77 billion margins. It's now reduced to closer to EUR 40 billion. Even the EUR 70 billion, so the market participants were able to deliver, that's definitely a stress situation. We are in a good dialogue with all the market participants.
So far the model works, and everybody is highly interested that this market solution will also continue to happen, so that you have a reasonable pricing, that you have a reasonable allocation of gas and power supply. That's also strongly supported by our German government, but also from European Commission perspective. That is in principle the target to let the market open and to have a clear price discovery process and a market-driven solution.
Got it. Thank you.
The next question comes from Tobias Lukesch from Kepler Cheuvreux.
Yes, good afternoon. Two questions from my side, if I may as well. One is on costs and one on your performance in a potential recessionary environment. On costs first, on the 2022 development, I think now you have some leeway, especially compared to last year. I was wondering now with the segments down to four, could you give us maybe a bit of an indication how costs will develop segment-wise? Do you see one segment with especially stronger investment needs than the other one? Or are there some products where you think that this will be extended compared to an overall view on the cost base? Secondly, you mentioned that if we have a more troubled economy then also Deutsche Börse of course would suffer.
Maybe could you point out the product lines which you would see most at risk of performing at the expected underlying levels? Thank you.
Yeah. Tobias, with regard to the cost, obviously it's good that we were able to show cost discipline in the first quarter. With a 5% cost growth on a constant portfolio and constant FX basis, I think that's a very clear signal to you and to our investors that we will continue to do prudent cost management. Obviously, the strong development in Q1 would give us some leeway. Obviously that's good if we have that kind of leeway. You will see also for the next nine months a prudent cost management from Deutsche Börse management here again. With regard to your second question, that's a little bit of speculation, right?
Nevertheless, you cannot rule out that a consequence of this Russia-Ukraine war crisis could be potentially a recession. There are some scenarios of let's say some 2% or even a little bit more reduction of GDP in Europe this year. It's more or less just a scenario planning. It's not the base case scenario so far. The base case scenario is still a 2%-3% GDP growth. Here we are talking about some negative scenario. Then it really depends on what really happened, what is the reason for a potential recession.
Is the reason that there's a shutdown of gas delivery out of Russia, and so that most probably more industry companies would be impacted by that. There wouldn't be such a big impact on our side, but there could be also different scenarios. In principle, we just wanted to say, look, after the COVID development in 2020, so we had also a very strong Q1, and then we said, look, in the second half year, there could be potentially some cyclical headwind. Unfortunately, we have seen that. We just wanted to remind all of us, if there would be a stronger recession, obviously market activity would be reduced and also less volatility.
that we cannot rule out, even if it's not our base case.
Okay, thank you. On the cost side, I take that there is no special investment needed on any specific product line or segment, but it's more across the board, right?
No, if we see interesting opportunities, then we would have the freedom to invest here. Prudent cost management is important for Deutsche Börse.
Understood. Thank you.
Next up is Johannes Thormann from HSBC.
Good afternoon, everybody. Johannes , HSBC. Two questions from our side. First of all, on Kneip, could you provide a bit more details how you really wanna target the synergies you're promising in the fund services business? Secondly, would it be fair to say that the annualized revenue contribution is above EUR 13 million for the next years? Secondly, on Axioma, if we look at the year-on-year decline in revenues, is this a figure which would surprise or what are the reasons for it? It looks like the current business performance of Axioma completely differs to the picture drawn by Stephan Leithner at the time of the deal. Thank you.
Yeah, Johannes, very detailed questions, but fair enough. Kneip annualized cost is more in the range of EUR 20 million-EUR 25 million. That's the number we expect on an annualized basis for this year. It's not the EUR 13 million you mentioned. But obviously, this was a very strategic direction and decision for us. We always told you that we have two strong legs in the investment fund service business. We have the settlement and the custody leg. Secondly, we have now the funds distribution leg with the acquisition of specifically UBS Fondcenter, and we missed the funds data leg. We have now a third leg and that's exactly what we need now.
When we talk to customers, we can offer now the full range of the value chain with regard to the fund service business. Therefore, we think there are synergies by the way that we obviously create additional services for our customers. We can definitely do here some cross-selling. There should be very positive elements out of that. With regard to your second question, Axioma. Yes, indeed, the performance is not as good as we have targeted when we made the acquisition. Still, there is some corona impact out of that.
More specifically in Q1, if you take that comparison with Q1 last year, when in Q1 last year we had a relatively high share of point in time revenue. Therefore, on these IFRS numbers, so you see here not a very strong performance. If you would go like what others do, more on a One Wave perspective, right? We are currently working on that model that we also show you some One Wave, so expected for the next 12 months, basically. You would see double-digit growth on the Axioma side. Here it is not as good as we hope for, because usually in the past there was close to 15%-20%. Currently we are not there. The One Wave concept would show a better performance than now the IFRS numbers.
Understood. Thank you.
Now we have Benjamin Peters from RBC Capital Markets in the line.
Afternoon, all. Thanks for taking my question. Can I ask, what was the proportion of overall group revenues from recurring sources? In Q1, as a follow-up to that, do you have any updated view on prospects for growing that proportion in 2020 versus 2021, just in light of the strong cyclical contribution to revenue growth in Q1?
Yeah, exactly. The number is 52% are recurring revenues. It's a little bit below the share we achieved last year where about 55%. The reason for that is last year, we had cyclical headwinds, and now we have one cyclical tailwind. And that's the reason why the non-recurring elements are cyclical driven higher. But in principle, over the next two to three years, our expectation is that the recurring revenue number will increase out of stronger performance. We already talked about ESG products or the data analytics, what usually has higher growth rates, so should be over proportionally grow compared to the non-recurring business. And secondly, also from an M&A perspective, we are more interested to invest in businesses recurring revenues.
These are the reason for our expectation that the recurring level will increase for the next year.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Roland Pfänder from Oddo BHF.
Yes, good afternoon. Two questions from my side. First of all, I would like to come back to the commodities business. Could you elaborate here a little bit more on the risk management? Do you actually need state guarantees to run this business? And did you model for extreme shocks? And what would be the outcome in these scenarios? Secondly, you mentioned in the fund service business partnership with FNZ. Could you maybe detail a little bit business or market opportunity you are tapping here into? Thank you.
Yeah. With regard to the commodities risk management, I think a little bit I already elaborated on that side. We have obviously seen a strong increase of our margins, of our collaterals at our clearing house of the EEX. It was in the peak, roughly EUR 70 billion, and it's now in the range more to EUR 40 billion. Two, three years ago, it was in the range of EUR 5 billion. Obviously you have seen here a tremendous increase here to reflect the completely different market situation. Again, the good thing is that there were no surprises for the market participants, so the risk models worked as designed, and we didn't miss any margin calls here so far. So far, no need for any state guarantees, right?
The market was able to manage that. Obviously we are also discussing you said some shock scenarios. That's what we're also analyzing, but the outcome and the consequences really depend on the concrete scenarios. In principle, as mentioned earlier, when we talk with the German government and this Bundesnetzagentur, then we have a clear understanding that the markets should be open as long as possible without government interference. That is the basic idea. Nevertheless, we would also be prepared for different things. Second question around FNZ. I think here, in principle, there are different opportunities to grow our business. Customer can decide to purely connect to our platforms.
They can outsource the business, they can sell the business, or they can partner up with us. FNZ decided to partner up with us here. For us, it's a big opportunity to enter the U.K. market where we are currently not present. We have a broader spectrum from a regional perspective, and that we can attract more customers. That's the main strategic reason to work together with FNZ.
Okay, thank you.
The next question comes from Martin Price from Jefferies.
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Sorry to go back to this, but I just wanted to clarify my understanding of the M&A strategy in the fund services space specifically. It just wasn't entirely clear for me that your response to Arnaud's question earlier ruling out larger M&A was in relation to ISS or IFS straight fund services. In short, can I just clarify that if you were to do a deal in the fund services space, your current thinking is that it would probably be in the EUR 100 billion-EUR 200 billion range rather than anything larger? Thank you.
Yeah. Martin, as already mentioned by Theodor. There's no pressure from our side to do anything here. To us specifically in the fund services business. Usually you have seen our transactions we did here in the past, where it was usually a EUR 20 million-EUR 30 million acquisition, and depending on the portfolio size of the bank. Even we do not announce all the deals we do here. Sometimes also customers are shy to be mentioned publicly here. We have a long and strong customer pipeline where customers are interested to work together with us. Again, sometimes they decide to purely connect to our platforms, building a partnership.
Sometimes they want to outsource business so that we take over also their people and then streamlining the processes or some partners are interested to sell the business, right? For all of these three options, we are very open and we have a long customer pipeline in all of these three areas. There's no need from our perspective to do other deals here.
Understood. That's okay. Thanks, Gregor.
All right. There are no further questions on the call. Thank you very much for your participation today. If there's anything else, then, please feel free to reach out directly to us and have a good day.
Thank you.