Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. We will now start with the GRENKE AG Conference Call. Throughout today's recorded call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. I would now like to turn the conference over to Anke Linnartz.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining our video conference call regarding our Q1 results that we published early this morning. My name is Anke Linnartz. I'm head of IR, and I'm pleased to be here today with our CEO, Dr. Sebastian Hirsch, and our designated CFO, Dr. Martin Paal. We will start with the presentations, as always, and the Q&A session will start right after the presentations. Later on, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone. With that, I would like to pass the call on to Sebastian. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Anke. A warm welcome, ladies and gentlemen, also from my side. Thank you for joining our call today. It's my pleasure to provide you with an overview of some KPIs for the first quarter of 2024, our business environment, and also provide you with our update on our ESG ambitions. Martin will later guide you through the development of our numbers. Let's dive right in. For the year 2024, we set ourselves ambitious targets with a new business volume between EUR 3 billion and EUR 3.2 billion and group earnings between EUR 95 million and EUR 150 million. Let me tell you, we have started the year well. Before we have a look on our KPI performance, allow me some comments on the macroeconomic environment and how we at Grenke responded to it in the first quarter 2024.
In our review of the macroeconomic environment, we observe encouraging signs, particularly in the Eurozone, so in our core markets. Notably, inflationary pressure is showing first signs of decline. This easing of inflation aligns with a period of moderate economic development reflecting a steady yet cautious growth trajectory. This, ladies and gentlemen, is also important for our business since small and medium-sized companies are more eager to invest. Furthermore, key interest rates have remained unchanged, quite stable, providing a stable financial basis that supports our strategic planning and investment decisions. With a more positive business sentiment also comes an unbroken need for small, medium enterprises in Europe and worldwide for investments, be it for replacing or expansion, especially the transformation into more digitalization and more green business models that are drivers for our business that are drivers to invest.
One of these investments I mentioned, one of these investment needs stems from the green transition, which represents a significant potential for us. To achieve net zero emission, substantially investments are forecasted for Europe, totaling EUR 1.5 billion per year. This emphasizes the important role we play in facilitating smooth investments. That is why we are essential not only in promoting but also in implementing sustainable business models. This is not a task that will be completed in the short term. We remain relevant, ladies and gentlemen. First indicators for investments like Ifo climate or, in Germany, the Leasing Index of BDL are showing a macro relaxation. Improving macroeconomic stability sets an ideal framework as we navigate the evolving market landscape and seek to capitalize on emerging opportunities such as the green transition we mentioned. Now let's look on what happened internally in Q1 2024.
Let's look to the status quo. We have decided to shift our focus on our core leasing business for small, medium enterprises. So we decided moving away from our less synergistic factoring segment you are aware of that it was in the beginning of 2024. We are in good progress here. I'm convinced of the intrinsic value of the factoring market overall, but our priority is to enhance our leasing services and digital capabilities supported by stable refinancing with our Grenke Bank as one of our three funding pillars. Martin will later show you more about that. We have successfully launched our share buyback program in Q1. In doing so, we plan to acquire up to 2.3 million shares, which equates about 5% of our existing share capital for a total volume up to EUR 70 million.
This decision, rooted in our strong financial position and favorable market conditions, represents a compelling investment opportunity for our company and our valued shareholders. This strategic move underscores our commitment to enhancing shareholder value and our confidence in the future development of Grenke AG. We have not yet decided what we will do with the shares once the share buyback program has finished. Currently, we bought back a bit more than 2.3 million shares, which corresponds with roughly 20% of the EUR 70 million in total. As we focus, on the one hand, on leasing, we focus also our efforts on digitalization and growth within our core business leasing, so the leasing operations. I'm pleased to report that the portion of green economy objects in our leasing new business has risen to 6% in Q1.
This growth is majorly driven by e-bikes, solar panels, and wallboxes, so key components in our commitment to support small, medium enterprises for the green transition, to support them with small-ticket investments, small-ticket green investments. To further promote these environmentally friendly products, we have launched campaigns such as a Green Week aimed at raising awareness and accelerating the adoption of sustainable solutions for our partners and customers. This not only aligns with our strategic priorities but also taps into the substantial investment needs for green initiatives across Europe. Looking to our development in leasing new business, CM2, and also a key indicator, the interest rates, ladies and gentlemen, I'm delighted to share that Q1 2024, we have not only continued on our strong trajectory on growth but also significantly enhanced our profitability.
Our leasing new business saw an increase of nearly 10%, so almost double-digit growth again, reaching roughly EUR 670 million. More importantly, our Contribution Margin 2, the key indicator of our profitability in new business and the profitability in our P&L of tomorrow. With a CM2 margin of 16.8%, it was a very good improvement compared to the previous quarter. With EUR 112.7 million, it was a growth by 10.4% in volume of CM2. Again, back to the volume growth, you can see that in the chart here in the bars with an average growth rate of 16% annually in volume. This success is evidence for our strategic focus and ability to adapt the current interest rate environment, efficiently managing refinancing costs and passing them onto our leasing contracts while growing double-digit. Now allow me to show you some key performance indicators.
Martin will later go in more detail on describing the development of some numbers. We are well on track. Development of all KPIs are according to our plan with group earnings coming in at EUR 19.8 million for the first quarter, a loss rate of 1.1%, quite stable, and therefore we're well below our target of 1.5%, a continuous stable equity ratio of 18.8%. It includes a share buyback, and it's also well above our target level of at least 16%, our cost-income ratio developing towards our target of below 58% for that year, even if being above a year-on-year comparison to Q1 last year. But it improves in comparison to the full fiscal year 2023. I will now hand over to Martin to guide us through some numbers and more detail.
Yeah, thank you, Sebastian, and good morning from my side as well. I would like to start our financials with a quick look at our new leasing portfolio of the first quarter of 2024. For our business success, two factors are crucial. First, a strong CM2 margin. And second, a robust absolute leasing business volume. As Sebastian already explained at the annual general shareholders meeting two weeks ago, small tickets from today's perspective are leasing contracts for an investment volume of up to EUR 50,000. When we occupied this niche a few decades ago, we were assuming a limit of EUR 25,000. However, the demand for financing up to EUR 50,000 has also increased in recent years due to new technologies such as medical equipment, robotics, and so on, which require higher investments.
In this past quarter, about 97% of all our new leasing contracts fell into this category, accounting for roughly 73% or EUR 487 million of our new leasing volume. At a CM2 margin of 17.6%, which is well above our target of 17%, small tickets contributed about 76% of our CM2 in the first quarter. With their steadily high margin, small tickets are the key driver of our profitability. Their strong performance is supported, in contrast, by the robust volume of bigger tickets above EUR 50,000. In this segment, we were able to make a significant margin improvement to 14.8%, coming from 14.4% in the first quarter of last year. This resulted in a strong increase of their contribution to our CM2 from EUR 22 million- EUR 27 million in this quarter.
And with an overall margin, as Sebastian already explained, of 16.8%, new leasing volume of EUR 670 million, we saw a good start into this new financial year. So let's move on to the operating performance for the first quarter. We started this year with strong earnings growth. Group earnings rose by some 25% or roughly EUR 4 million compared to the previous first quarter. Key drivers for our profitability were our net interest income increased steadily to EUR 86.1 million, as well as our profits from new service business, including disposals, which saw a strong increase to EUR 46.8 million. The increase in costs was more than compensated by this development. And here I would also like to highlight that in the first quarter, our increase in interest income again outperformed the increase in interest expenses by about EUR 2 million.
This is a positive trend that will further drive our profitability in the upcoming quarters. Traditionally, our business accelerates throughout the year. Consequently, with a net result of roughly EUR 20 million for the first quarter, we are fully on track and convinced of our new leasing business and profit targets for 2024. Let us now take a closer look at our cost side. Here we saw staff costs increasing by some EUR 5.5 million. The other cost components like depreciation, IT project costs, or other administrative expenses more or less remain stable compared to the previous quarter of the last year. The increase of staff costs was mainly driven by high inflation levels in 2023 and an overall higher headcount. The good news is this development is according to plan and puts us well on track for the remaining year.
Moving to the income side, we saw a steady growth in our net interest income, as I mentioned, profit from the service business, and also gains from disposals amounting to roughly EUR 7 million compared to the first quarter of last year. In sum, this means a cost-income ratio of 15.8%. As you are aware, our guidance for this year sees some cost-income ratio below 58% after 59.2% in 2023. Consequently, the current cost development, together with increasing income, brings us right in the direction to reach our target. Let's have a quick look at our cash flow statement. Here we see a cash level that remained more or less stable at EUR 700 million compared to the end of the last year. Strong cash inflows from payments by our lessees of EUR 626 million supported our continuous growth into investments of new leasing business of EUR 686 million.
Last but not least, also in 2024, we will rely on our approved funding mix diversification along our three debt funding pillars. By the end of the first quarter, our funding mix remained widely stable compared to the end of 2023. Senior unsecured made up 40% or EUR 2.7 billion. Deposit business of Grenke Bank accounted for 25% or EUR 1.7 billion. Our ABCP programs for 16% or EUR 1.1 billion. Our three funding pillar mix has proven very successful in providing us with diversified and affordable funding to finance the ambitious growth path of our leasing business. Consequently, we will continue on this path. With that, I would like to hand back over to Sebastian.
Thank you, Martin. And ladies and gentlemen, you know this slide maybe already from our full year's results presentation. That year, the parameters have not changed in the first quarter. We continue to drive efficiencies. That's very important in our business model and for our success, also through our digitalization program, where we already made substantial progress as planned. We will work on our product offering for our customers and partners, also customers from the direct sales channel, and overall with the clear focus we have now on our leasing segment. We continue to stay true to who we are, a leading provider in small-ticket leasing, always with ambition to make leasing as convenient and easy as online shopping for small, medium enterprise customers. Again, we remain relevant to bring these investments on the road. And as I said before, we have started well into the year 2024.
With the aforementioned measures and the continuous efforts of all the GRENKE employees of our team GRENKE, we are confident about our guidance and outlook. With this said, I will give back to Anke, and I'm looking forward to your question, ladies and gentlemen.
Yes, thank you, Sebastian, Martin, for your presentations. At this time, we will start our Q&A session. Just to remind you, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on the telephone. We have already questions lined up. The first one is from Johannes Thormann with HSBC, please.
Good morning, everybody. Johannes Thormann, HSBC, three questions from my side. First of all, on your new business, can you comment on April trends, please, and how this has performed despite the Easter holidays in comparison to the last year? As you're expecting at least 16% full year growth, and Q1 just saw 9% growth. And what recovery pattern should we expect for the next months to get to the 16% growth? Secondly, how realistic is still your 150 basis points risk cost guidance for the full year? Should we expect same level of risk cost on absolute amounts in the next quarters, or should this go down? And then last but not least, simple one, could you please provide some clarity on the tax rate for this year as Q1 was pretty low and below your normal guidance? Thank you.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Thormann. We'll take the question. I think new business, it's a bit of a specific year in terms of Easter, in terms of bank holidays, especially the second quarter is a bit specific. We can say that we are on track and on plan in the second quarter. But again, because of the holidays and the bank holidays, June is very important that year because it's June without any bank holiday in Germany and in some other countries. In April and also in May, there were a lot of bank holidays. It's quite normal that then the new business is a bit more volatile in our business as well as in others. We are on track and on plan with our volume development.
And of course, to achieving the guidance and the ambitious goal we have, an acceleration during the year is necessary. That was clear from the very beginning on, starting that year after a very strong fourth quarter last year, starting that year in plan. But we will need an acceleration over the next months and quarters to achieving our guidance. It's ambitious, but realistic, and we are willing to do so. The risk cost target is 1.5%. It's a mid-term orientation. The guidance is maximum 1.5%. It could also be less than 1.5%. The first quarter was pretty stable. It depends a bit on the payment behavior performance in the existing portfolio. You know that it looks okay at the moment and quite good. And it depends also on the new business development because the new business volume brings us expected loss, new expected losses in the accounting.
Also, the macroeconomic environment is a huge driver, especially for the expected loss level we have to put in our P&L and on the balance sheet as per the end of the year. So the target is realistic from today's perspective, from our end of March and the accounting perspective. Maybe 1.25% is more realistic than 1.5%. But we have to see how the volume in new business, on the one hand, the expected loss level from the current model on that volume then bring us in and maybe changes in macroeconomic environment we have to put in our models. Tax rate, yes, the tax rate is a bit low in Q1, but it's a normal, volatile scenario. As I mentioned before in the last calls, you can assume from a model perspective more or less a stable tax rate like it was in the last year.
It should be a bit higher over the whole fiscal year. It's quite normal that in one quarter, there could be a bit of volatility depending a bit on the countries, on the performance on several countries, and the differences on tax rate.
Okay, thank you so far. So then we move on to Marius Fuhrberg from Warburg Research, please.
Yeah, three questions from my side as well. First one is on your funding mix and especially on your senior unsecured side. What are the latest signals that you received from the debt market? Is there a demand for new bonds with also maybe lower coupons, or is the situation rather stable compared to the last ones? Second question is on your IT project costs. You showed that you had some EUR 3.x million in Q1. Should we expect this to remain on this level, or are there any increasing, decreasing trends? And the last one is on your gains from disposals, which were rather high and positive in Q1. Were there any special developments that affected this line, or is it just normal fluctuation?
Yeah, thank you very much, Mr. Fuhrberg. I will start with your first question regarding the funding mix. Yeah, Senior unsecured is a very important pillar. As I just explained, roughly 40% accounting for Senior unsecured instruments as per end of first quarter. What we see currently in the capital markets is very constructive. So we see a lot of demand and supply. There's pretty active capital markets. And you know we have EUR 3 billion or more new business volume to fund this year. And this means that we have to go back to the capital markets and go out with some bond issues during the year. We are currently planning it together with our banks. And we are pretty comfortable and confident that we will get the funding that we need for this year. So we really see constructive capital markets currently.
ECB decisions will be in the first week of June. But I think there's already some interest rate decreases priced in it. But yes, we will see how this works out for us. But we are, as I said, confident that we will make good bonds in the course of this year. Second topic, IT project costs. Yeah, they will more or less remain at the same level as we see it now in the first quarter. There are not so much seasonality effects towards the rest of the year, maybe a little bit increasing. But the level that we have seen here in the first quarter will be more or less the same for the rest of the year.
Regarding your question on the disposals, that always depends on what are the values for which we can sell our assets, for which we can sell the objects at the end when they will be returned. So it's always a fluctuation around zero. This quarter, we had EUR 2 million of gains from disposals. Sometimes it has a negative sign. On average, it's more or less zero. So that's more or less a normal fluctuation we see here.
Okay, thank you. Then we move on to our chat, given that we have a couple of questions coming in from one of the participants joining our session via the internet. And the first question is regarding our new leasing business in Q1, which equals (I'm now quoting from the line here) which equals the new business leasing volume in Q1 2019. So why did it take so long to reach that level you had already five years ago is the first question.
Yeah, we'll go for it. So there was something happened between 2019 and 2024, especially the pandemic. And there was necessity for us to bring down the new business. Then we had also a short attack. But the most important thing for us was the pandemic. And the new business came down. The lowest new business was in 2021 with roughly EUR 1.6 billion. And then we started the rebound. And it's a question of time. It's not done in one year and also not in two years to bring a EUR 1.6 billion new business back to a roughly EUR 3 billion level. But we started that, let's say, project. And last year, it was roughly the level of 2019. And this year, we will go through the EUR 3 billion new business.
It was from our perspective of today, the right decision to bringing that healthy growth and the healthy development back to that level. That's right. It was a bit of a long-term run, but that long-term run was also planned.
Okay, so I said it's a couple of questions. It's exactly two. So I move on to the next one, which is about our NPL ratio and the comparison between Q1 right now towards the previous quarter, Q4 last year. And the NPL ratio now is around 10% for the whole group, meaning 10% of your leasing contracts are defaulting. And in particular, in other countries outside Germany, France, Italy, the NPL ratio increased significantly in a single quarter, so like 11.3% versus 10.6%. And the question is, what's the reason for that? And how will you tackle this adverse development?
I will start. So I don't think it's an adverse development. That's right. From a group level, the 10%, it's fair enough. It's also linked to our expectations. That's a very important thing to underline here. In our expected loss calculation, which is part of our CM2, we are calculating with roughly 10%. So the overall expected loss, that's including a probability of default of 10% on the one hand. And that expected loss after recovering and something like that, we're consulting the object and so on, we are calculating between 5%-6% over a group level. And that level depends on country. In Italy, the level is higher than in Germany or in Scandinavia and Southern Europe. It's higher also in South America. The level is higher. That's quite normal. Like each rating agency is calculating that it's a bit the same in our business.
For us, the most important thing is the deviation between the expected level and the current level. So not the absolute level of 10% is our triggering. So it's a question of what is expected. We are in line with our expectation. Of course, in the macroeconomic environment you see today, there's a bit of fluctuation. You see a bit more leasing contracts and reminder process. You see a bit more NPLs, so non-performing loans on a gross level looking to the balance sheet. The new business is now growing. So we're accelerating the new business. So from a steady state, a 10% NPL on a gross level is quite normal in our business. That NPL level in some other countries is higher than in Germany or also in France. The driver is Southern Europe, also South America. That is quite normal.
And again, it's a bit of fluctuation of the first quarter, which is quite normal. The most important thing, from a balance sheet perspective, that development was priced in not only in our expected loss calculation from a CM2 margin calculation, also from the expected loss calculation we have on the balance sheet based on IFRS 9 per end of last year.
Thank you. For the moment, we have no further questions lined up. Again, just to remind you, if you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one. This encourages people to raise their hands, which is why we can move on now to Dr. Häßler from Pareto Securities. Thank you.
Yes, good morning. Thank you for the passing of Pareto. I have two questions. Firstly, on the leasing portfolio that increased by 1.8% quarter-on-quarter, is this a good runway for the next quarter? Will this accelerate because new business should accelerate as well? And secondly, on the ECB, you mentioned there's an interest rate cut expected for early June. Well, you didn't mention that, but you said that they will meet early June. And currently, there's an interest rate cut expected. Would you expect this to have a positive impact on Grenke or neutral, negative? Maybe you can comment on this. Thank you.
So I will start. Hello, good morning, Mr. Häßler, with your second question on the interest rate environment. We are always passing through all the interest rates and the fluctuations from the funding side into our leasing portfolio. So that means that independent of whether we see increases or decreases in interest rates, we always try to come up with a more or less stable CM2 margin of 17%. So if interest rates will now go down over the next quarters as it is expected or not, yeah, macroeconomists are not that clear in their opinions. But however, we do not expect significant effects on our business because we always follow the pass-through of interest rates if they go up or if they go down. And another topic is we are market leaders or near to market leaders in our largest markets.
All the other competitors will have a very close look at us. If we will not go down with our conditions once interest rates have gone down, there might be a risk of losing business. Therefore, we will really closely look at the interest rate environments and the development. And then immediately or directly we will also adjust our conditions for the leasing contracts.
If I may ask a follow-up question. But I mean, when interest rates went up, you didn't pass on the higher rates right away. So I would assume that you will now pass on the possible rate decline also only with the time lag. So couldn't there be a one-time positive effect from declining rates, from declining funding rates?
Yeah, that's true. That's what I meant with we really do it as fast as possible in terms of interest rate increases. It takes us from 1-3 months, about a quarter, to pass these interest rates on, the conditions on. So if interest rates will go down, that's what I meant with maybe a small positive effect on our profitability, but not a lasting effect. Yeah.
Yes, and in addition to that, it's always a question in our business of how surprising an interest change is. And the interest rate development over the last two years was, let's say, a bit surprising. It was very sharp, very fast. And then we see that time lag. When we look to the interest yield curve from the capital market, the interest, maybe the decision to come from ECB, is priced in the interest yield curve. And so it's also priced in in our funding on the one hand, in our funding costs and our calculated funding costs for our Contribution Margin calculation. And then it depends a bit on the decision and, as always, on the wording of ECB in the beginning of June. And to the leasing portfolio, so yes, you are right. It was 1.8% in looking to the growth pace.
When you look quarterly, quarter by quarter, it should be a bit more from quarter to quarter. The reason is quite easy because the new business portfolio of 2019, so the last pillar and the bit long-term portfolio of 2019, is now running out. That is a very high leasing portfolio. The five years and a bit six year, but more the five years are now in the end of the lifetime and then running out. After that, it's like a restart in the portfolio with a lower new business and then the growth in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Over the next quarters and especially in the next year, we should see the leasing receivable development more in line with the leasing new business development of the last years.
That's because of the development, the 2018, 2019 portfolio, and then the down a bit different if you're only growing. And so it's now roughly 2%. I guess for the next 2 quarters, maybe it could be the same. Over the year, it should be more or less 12% in growing. And there should be a bit of acceleration.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Okay, so we move on to Mengxian Sun from Deutsche Bank, please.
Hi, thank you very much for taking my question. So the first question is, could you provide us an update on the sales of the factoring business? And the second question is, if I look at the net profit in this quarter, this is less than 20% of the lower end of guidance. So I would assume that you need a quite significant increase in the profitability to achieve the guidance. So how do you see your path to achieve that? Should this improvement mainly come from the net interest income expansion, or shall we also expect to see some cost reductions?
Yeah, good morning, Ms. Sun. I will take the first question on the factoring business. We have started an organized sell-side process with providing potential investors with all sell-side information that is needed so far. We have divided it in typical M&A phases. We are now in the phase I where we are still awaiting from the potential investors the so-called non-binding bids where they hand in their proposals to buy the business. This is currently going on. After that, we will put all the offers on a table and evaluate what is there and how we will move on then into the next phase. We are confident that we will have a decision here and really have sold the business until the end of this year.
Regarding the profit in Q1, we have seen a profit increase of 25% compared to the first quarter of last year. You know our dynamics of the P&L that we are some seasonality that there are some seasonality effects in there. We are still confident that we will reach our guidance level of 95%-115%. Although you are right, if you just divide the guidance by 4, then you would expect a higher level of earnings in the first quarter. As I said, there are some seasonality effects in there. That is okay from our side. We do not expect any cost cuts during the year. For sure, we have a high cost discipline. As I explained, we are closely looking at our cost-income ratio. We expected some cost increases on the personal, on the staff cost that we have seen.
Other components remain more or less stable and all within the expectation of our plan. So we are confident on our guidance.
Despite the cost development, we talked a bit about interest rate development for that year. It's also important to improve and grow in our volume. The acceleration in volume, acceleration in new business also during the year, will also support the P&L of that year. Not that much, as you know, that the new business is not that relevant for that year. With that growth we had over the last couple of quarters and we will see for that year in line with our ambition, we will also see a bit of an acceleration in the P&L.
Thank you very much. That's very clear.
Okay, we have a follow-up question from Mr. Thormann from HSBC, please.
Yeah, thank you. First of all, on the tax rate, could you be a bit more precise on this year's guidance? Because last years have been ranging from 21.5%-24.2%. So this is something still very big range. Secondly, on the factoring business, are you talking about an outright sale until year-end? And will we see a one-off negative for the sale? Or can you exclude this one-off negative for this year? Thank you.
Yeah, let me start with your follow-up question on the factoring business. We are expecting an outright sale. So that means we have the factoring business organized in six legal entities and two branches of Grenke Bank. So we are really going for a sale of the whole business. And we do not expect any significant negative or positive one-off effects during the year. You know that the factoring business, if you have a look at our segment reporting, is loss-making. So once the factoring business is out of the balance sheet and especially out of the P&L from the next year and following on, then there would be a slight positive effect. But for this year, we do not expect any neither positive nor negative significant effects.
Yeah, and from a tax rate perspective, again, looking into our planning, our calculation, it's always a question: what's the right tax rate, the right number? And we are calculating with a tax rate of roughly 23% in our planning. But again, there could also be a bit of volatility and fluctuation in the tax rate, as we saw that in the last years. But from a long-term run in our business with our country portfolio, a tax rate between 22% and 25% is quite fair. But it depends a bit on in which country you do what business, a bit on transfer pricing policy, which country is paying something in terms of transfer pricing based on volume-based, on headcount, and so on. And you can always see a bit of volatility and fluctuation. Our planning is with 23%.
From a long-term or midterm run, you can go 22%-25%. That's quite fair for the current portfolio and the current country mix.
Okay, thank you.
We again switch to our participants on the chat and got a question from Andrea De Donno regarding our buyback program. He is wondering about how many shares have been bought so far and over what time frame is this number. How long is the program running and how many shares have been bought back?
Yeah, good morning, Mr. De Donno. We have bought back so far some 500,000 shares, 508,000, 510,000 shares, which is a little bit above 1% of our shares. We are aiming for 5%, as Mr. Hirsch already explained at the beginning. The program now lasts for 11 weeks. 11 weeks means since mid-February. During the annual general shareholders' meeting, we had a planned break that is necessary for legal reasons to not buy back shares during this time. We have spent already roughly EUR 12 million in that program with an average share price of EUR 23 per share. At the end of the first quarter, yeah, 31st of March this year, we had roughly EUR 7 million spent for the share buyback program. That has been recognized as a deduction from our equity ratio.
We have another question also from Mr. De Donno regarding costs. He's doing a comparison between fiscal year 2023 and an expected number now for this year. He said in fiscal year 2023, costs excluding other costs were EUR 310 million. How much of an increase in absolute Euro do you expect for this year?
Yeah, so I think you mean excluding other costs. You mean all the costs that we have below operating income of last year of EUR 310 million. We are expecting growth in costs. That is clear because we are growing. We saw it already in the first quarter, a growth in staff costs, but also a growth in other cost components. You know that we have launched our digitalization program, which is also well on track in terms of spending costs, in terms of the things we are doing there regarding going into the cloud transformation and so on. But the growth in costs is not as high as growth in earnings and new business volume. So as a net effect, we will see earnings growth on the bottom line growing over the next years.
Just checking here my screen, but there's no question from our participants in the call and neither from the participants in the chat. Again, last round, if you would like to ask a question, please go ahead. I think, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us. If questions spring to your mind right after our call, please do not hesitate to get in touch. On July 3rd, we are going to release our new business figures for the second quarter, 2024. Of course, yes, it was our pleasure to have you. Take care and have a nice day. The conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect now. Thank you and goodbye from Baden-Baden.
Thank you. Bye.
Bye-bye.