Welcome to CEO, Dr. Sebastian Grabmaier and CFO, Ralph Konrad, who will start with the presentation shortly. After the presentation, we will move forward with the Q&A session. With this, let's start. Dr. Sebastian Grabmaier, the stage is yours.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Francisca, for this charming introduction. Yes, we are very happy to present you very pleasant numbers for the first half year, 2024 of JDC Group AG, AG. And the top line is growth exceeds 25%. You will see that this happened also both for the second quarter in 2024, also the first half year. Yeah, let me introduce myself real quick together with my partner, Ralph. I'm Sebastian founded the company together with my partner, Ralph, 22 years ago, and I'm the CEO responsible for strategy, human resources, product, and investor public relations. Ralph?
Hi, my name is Ralph. I'm founded the company together with Sebastian. At first I have to start with some apologies because I'm still on vacation, and around me there's a big thunderstorm, so the connection is very weak, very weak, and I hope that it's that it works. So, Sebastian.
Yes. So for the few among you that do not know us, our business model is a classic platform model. We standardize and introduce the data of more than 220 insurance groups, all the asset management platforms, alternative product providers, the mortgage banks. We standardize the data, process it, and we make it visible on our own visualizing systems, or by an API structure on the visualizing systems, front-end systems of our clients. Our clients are all kinds of intermediaries, individual brokers, agents, permit sales force, other fintech, insurtech companies, but more and more also the banks, banking groups, such as savings banks and cooperative banks, and also now more and more the insurance companies themselves, and via our smartphone application, also about 200,000 direct clients.
So currently, we have about almost 2.5 million clients on the platform, with about 5.2 million contract data points. Yeah, our stronghold is a strong back office that's transacting business and processing business very efficient using digitization and now also AI. Our IT stack is now the big value driver. Yeah, and you can see that the numbers for the first half year are really pleasant. Turnover has increased and is now up more than 25%. So it grew from EUR 84.6 million to EUR 106.1 million for the first six months.
For the first time in history, we made two consecutive quarters with more than EUR 50 million, resulting in more than EUR 100 million in a half year, so that's quite historic for us. And we have tailwind of all kinds of business lines. We have a very strong insurance business. We will show you that not only we aggregate a growing number of contracts on the platform, but also our new business, especially in life and health insurance, is very pleasant. Its insurance business is up more than 20%, and also investment business is very strong. Three quarters of the growth coming from Top Ten that we consolidated first time December last year, and now, together with Top Ten's investment business and a tailwind from the capital markets, investment is up more than 50%.
But also we can see that real estate is back on track, starting April this year. We can see that there is capital investors again in the real estate market, and therefore also mortgage business, which definitely helps, especially our advisory section as well. So you can see also EBITDA, it's up 36% from EUR 3.2 million to EUR 6.9 million. So you can see that now the platform is starting to scale and, yeah, we can show you later that we are very well on track for the guidance of this year. And also what we said would be our vision for 2025. I think we are on a very, very good way.
And you can see in the development over the last years, there was some impact of this energy crisis, interest rate crisis that we had in Germany last year. Basically, it began to end of 2022 and was still there in the beginning of 2023, but now very strong recovery of the JDC Group now in this year, 2024, with a very good outlook also for the quarters to come. Yeah, you can see that, our revenues are up 25.4% for the half year after a very strong quarter, in here last quarter was up from EUR 40.8 million-EUR 52.8 million, so almost 30% up, 29.4%. And this was true both for Advisortech and Advisory.
Advisortech being up 30.9%, so first time, more than 30%. Advisory also up, 27.4%, so strong rebound also on the advisory section. So, and you can see then down the line, gross profit, it's a very important number always to look at. It's up almost 25%. For first half year, this is 22.3%. And then EBITDA, you see very nice development in the second quarter, which is normally, together with the third quarter, the two weaker quarters in the year. It's up to EUR 2.8 million, so that's up 48.7% of last year's. And therefore, we have a, EBITDA growth from EUR 5.1 million to EUR 6.9 million, so that's 35.6% up.
So overall, you can see that the bottom line numbers then, they look very nice, that EBITDA is up 64.4%, and then, overall earnings is up 100%. So, that's really nice figures for the entire group. And you see on the right side, turnover up 25%, EBITDA up 35.6%, also shows that the platform is scaling nicely, as we wanted to show you, the years before. Yeah, next page, you can see that basically all kinds of product groups are contributing to this development. You can see that, especially investment and financing is a big surplus.
It's 55% up, but as we said, we consolidated a Top Ten the first time in December 2023, and also have a good market development. So, the first question would be, how much is the the part of Top Ten within these EUR 14.1 million? It's almost EUR 10 million. So, about 11% of our growth comes from Top Ten, and the rest is organic growth. So, in Advisortech, that's almost 18% from organic growth, and over the entire group, it's about 15% from organic growth.
Yeah, and as you can see, the growth as to different intermediary groups, you know that the broad business is based on our IFA business, so that's 16,000 individual agents and brokers, and this is like a very strong development with EUR 12.6 million plus, so it's 22.3% up. And then major customers are up even more. That's 43% in the major customer sections, or EUR 7.3 million coming from this big project. And also Advisory is up. That's EUR 2.7 million contribution to growth, so 16.9%. So, which is also quite positive is we have some direct business left. It's around EUR 2.7 million normally, and this is now stable.
Normally, you would see a small minus here because there is churn as we're not marketing in our direct client base. So, now the churn has stopped. This is also due to some inflation. As you know, we have inflation-protected model, where the premium is going up with inflation or a little bit more, and our commissions in this segment is also up. So now, inflation's higher than churn, which is a very good number also. Yeah, so, we're very happy with these results, and now you can see that the major customers are growing faster than the rest. So, more than a quarter of our turnover is now already directly responsible by these major customers.
Okay. I hope the connection will be stable. If not, Sebastian, please give me a hint. So let's go one step deeper. If we look at the development by quarter, that's what we show you since some quarters, and then focus on the second quarter. We can see that after a weaker year, 2023, with a weaker quarter two, we now see a very strong second quarter in 2024, with a year-over-year growth of almost 30%. And for the first time, I don't know if in history of the company, but for the first time that I remember, the second quarter is approximately approximately as strong turnover, approximately as high as in the first quarter. This is actually ordinarily strong.
And as Sebastian mentioned, driven by all our sectors and driven by Advisort ech and the advisory business. For the rest of 2024, we expect a weaker third quarter due to summer season. Of course, normally, if there's not a thunderstorm around, the people want to enjoy the sun and not talk about financial products. And after that, as always, this will be followed by a fourth quarter, which will close the year with a typical year-end business. So we are on a very good track to achieve our goals for this year. The Advisort ech segment showed a very good performance in the second quarter.
Revenue was up more than 30% to EUR 46 million, and EBITDA increased by almost 35% to EUR 2.9 million. Personnel and operating costs were up by 20%-25%, but only a small portion of this was organic due to inflation and new costs. The main part was driven by the consolidation of the Top Ten Group. To remind you, as Sebastian said, date of first consolidation was December 2023. In total, the Advisort ech segment achieved a revenue of EUR 95 million and an EBITDA of EUR 7.1 million in the first half year. So EBITDA margin is increasing and is now amounting 7.5% in relation to turnover.
But if you would look at the Advisort ech segment, like you would look at a tech company, that's what it is, our Advisort ech segment, and you would eliminate all the, let's say, trade volume, commission in, commission out, and would only look at the gross margin, then you would already see an EBITDA margin of 29%. That's EUR 7.1 million in EBITDA, in relation to the EUR 24.2 million gross profit. So very good development here as well. I'm very happy about the development of the advisory division. The advisory segment has regained its former strength, and really showed a great quarter with a growth of 27.4% in sales.
Ten million euros of revenue were achieved in just one quarter, and we never had that before. With only a slight increase in costs, EBITDA was achieved of around one billion euros, which is a growth of more than 50%. Very good performance in this quarter. When we look at the year as a whole, the advisory segment again is performing strongly. Sales grew by 16.9%, and EBITDA grew by 31.8%. You might remember, and therefore I will never tire of emphasizing that the advisory division, the advisory segment, is a very important part of our group.
On the one hand, because it's contributing in sales and EBITDA, and on the other hand, because we have more than 300, now 350 tied agents that are very close to us and give us a lot of feedback and tips, and help us to improve our platform on a daily basis. Okay, let's go look at the cash flow statement for the first half year. We have started the year 2024 with cash and cash equivalents of EUR 26.4 million. This was a plus of EUR 10 million compared to the start in 2023. Cash flow from operating activities in the first half year amounted to EUR 7.4 million.
A very good number means a plus of more than 80% compared to the first half year, 2023. The cash flow from investment activities amounted to -EUR 5 million, which is EUR 2.7 million more or less because of the minus than in 2023. So we invested more than in 2023. And the main influence was our Summitas participation because the capital costs of our Summitas team were significantly higher than in the previous year. The cash flow from financing activities is -EUR 2 million, and the main reason, or more or less, only reason for this was our share buyback program, which ended 15th of May, when I remember correctly.
And so the third quarter, the, the second quarter, sorry, ended with a cash balance of more than EUR 26 million, which is EUR 8.5 million more than compared to the previous year. Cash on hand last Friday, so twelfth of August, was EUR 34.2 million. So although we are investing a lot, we see a strong cash position at JDC that gives us a good scope for the future. Okay, some operational key figures. You know, you know this from the last calls. They are also developing very positively. New orders peaked around 72,000 at the end of the second quarter, which is an increase of 13.4% compared to the previous year.
And here, Sebastian mentioned, we had an especially strong insurance business. And just one further comment, the new orders and transactions Top Ten are not included here in these numbers because they are not migrated on our systems yet. So this is a real comparison year to previous year without any external M&A effects. The number of initiated contract transfers reached a level of more than 260,000 in the first half year, which is an increase of 45%. And although nobody in the market does more portfolio transfers than we do, at least that's what we think and believe, because we see nobody who's doing more.
We are still seeing a very strong growth here, and many of our major corporations are only just beginning. So this is a development, I think we will see in the next quarters, as well. And finally, insurance assets are constantly growing, now at a new record high, of more than EUR 1.2 billion, heading for EUR 1.3 billion. So the engine is well oiled, and continues to run reliably. And again, we think that we will continue to see this development in the coming quarters as well. As always, a few more information about share price, and the bond share price, is developing positively, was EUR 21.8 yesterday, at the close.
We are very pleased that the market has responded positively to today's publication and that the share price has moved positively today. I don't know where we are now. When I looked last time, we had 23.5, which is a good development for today. Market cap is now above EUR 300 million. Yeah, we are happy about this development. The share buyback program, as mentioned, was finished in the middle of this quarter. We bought back 147,000 shares and paid an average price of EUR 19.89. The bond is still at EUR 20 million, of course, is trading stably at a level of 103%.
Yeah, no news on that right now. The shareholder structure is also stable and has remained unchanged since Provinzial joined the company. Besides the strategic shareholders, Great West, VKB, and Provinzial, we have, as one of our investors says, a lot of happy holders. That's the feedback that we get from our IR talks, from our investor relations talks, but also the cooperation with our strategic shareholders, VKB, Provinzial and Great West, is excellent, both operationally in the joint project that we have and also in the supervisory board.
I think it's noteworthy that, unlike at other companies, at JDC, the discussions in the supervisory board are not overlaid by any strategic interests of single shareholders, but are always about the further development of the platform, of the open platform, and are further very constructive to develop the company. Many thanks at this point to our shareholders and the members of our supervisory board. Let's come to the spotlights. They are special today, because we only have one spotlight, but an important one. You might remember that in the last earnings call, we showed you these figures for the first quarter and explained to you that JDC is in a phase of development where operational excellence is a key for success.
We are on a very good path there, but there's still a lot of room for improvement. You can see here that the number of customer data sets on the platform increased by 300,000 or 12%. The number of contract data sets increased by 800,000 or 17%, and the number of processed documents on the platform increased by 600,000 or 29%. And nevertheless, the number of employees, full-time equivalent, only grew by 6%. And you have to consider this, that, within this 6%, that includes the Top Ten team, which was not there 2023. So if you deduct this, it's rather 2%, FTE plus.
So, so far, so good, but further automation and digitalization is now at a level that requires full management attentions. And, you know that this is my team and my division, and so together with the supervisory board, we have decided to hire both the operations department from my departments and add another member to the management board, Ramona Evens. Sebastian will introduce her in a second. Just one last comment from my side. I am very pleased about this development, as operations has taken up more and more space in my day-to-day business and has increasingly competed with IT and M&A departments for my attention.
So, that's not good for the company because we have to focus on IT, and we also have to focus on reasonable M&A transactions like Top Ten transaction, and that will be my focus in the future. Sebastian.
Yeah, Ralph said it before, like, when we talk to you investors, many ask us, "Okay, you're doing M&A yourself. You're developing Summitas with their buying strategy in the commercial brokers market. You're growing with major customers, more and more big projects. So, how do you do all of this?" We hired Markus Rex a little bit more than a year ago, with a very good impact both on the sales department internally, but also has a very good reception with our bigger major clients. So now we're very happy to announce that another specialist is joining the holding board, and Ramona, so Dr. Ramona Evens, she's a specialist, yeah, learned strategy consultancy with the Boston Consulting Group very successfully.
Then joined ARAG, a mid-sized insurer here in Munich, and also did a doctorate in finance and banking. Moreover, now with us, she's doing quite the same thing that she did at the very big comparison portal, Tech24, one of the market-leading companies in the B2C section. And she was there heading the P&C section of Tech24, and then for two years developed her own startup. So there is some entrepreneur's spirit with her.
Yeah, she has this particular focus on digital processes, and therefore, we think Ramona is the right woman and member of our board, yeah, to complement the board and help Ralph and myself to not only work in the company, but work on the company and focus on the real important projects and important clients, and then have yeah, more capacity to yeah, execute on all these many, many tasks we have in the daily business. Happy to take your question, and we are sure that we introduce her herself in person at the next call, the latest. So, I think hopefully you will like her as much as we do.
She will start on the first of September, so very soon.
... Yeah, guidance, I said some words on that in the introduction. You can see that we guided for turnover of EUR 205 million-EUR 220 million for the year 2024. You can also see with EUR 106 million, knowing that the growth is becoming stronger, and also the second half year is always significantly stronger than the first half year. And the best quarter is the Q4, that not only brings turnover, but also most of the EBITDA. So we are on track both on turnover and EBITDA. Already with EBITDA, with our guidance from EUR 14.5 million-EUR 16 million, we already have almost EUR 7 million in the pocket also there, and we're well on track to end up in the higher half of our guidance.
Very happy with this development. Also our goals for 2024, integration of Top Ten Group, Berlin turnover, gross margin, Summitas, refocus on small IFAs, expansion of IT cooperation with the insurance companies. Meaningful further development of IT platform. I think Ralph will show more slides next time on AI, and then also further reduction of cost per contract. We are all on track on all of these targets, so very happy and satisfied that, yeah, the there's really a very strong and good path for JDC. In the first half of the year, and as Ralph said, we have a very strong outlook also for the second half of the year. Thank you very much for your attention. Now I give back to Franziska, and she will take all questions you might have.
Yeah, thank you so much for the insightful presentation. We're now moving forward to the Q&A session. And to keep the conversation engaging, we'd kindly like to ask you to pose your question via the audio line. To do so, just click on the Raise Your Hand button or Hand Heben. If you are dialed in via phone, you can do this with the key combination star nine, followed by star six. And if speaking freely today isn't possible, you can always use our chats. And we received some questions in our chat, first from Roland Mueller. He would like to know, on August the fifth, you announced a new contract. What revenue and profit do you expect from the new contract?
Sebastian, you want to answer or shall I? You're muted. You're muted. You're muted.
Yeah, so it's a very big contract, but it's a contract that's only giving big effects in the future, so we have not planned any revenue in 2024. We know that there's the first contracts that are now aggregated on the platform, but again, normally only after six months, we get, on average, the corresponding commission under these contracts. So, this will roll out now, but then start to bring revenue next year, and then also bring some service fees and platform fees starting in 2025. So, it's a very big name and an insurer with more than 7,000 agencies, so a lot to be expected.
But again, as all these very big contracts with insurance companies will take time, a little ramp-up phase of at least 12-18 months until we really see this in our books as a relevant factor.
Yeah, but we negotiated minimum gross margin for us, so we work on the first EUR 500,000 in the next year. And then more and more, more, hopefully for a very long time.
Yeah. So the line was a little bit bad, but Ralph said about, you know, EUR 500,000.
Next question, Sebastian, is: How is the progress?
Yeah, your connections are really bad, Ralph. So what Ralph said is sorry EUR 500,000 for the year 2025, and then more to come for the years later.
Yeah?
Yeah. So progress with R+V and VKB. We can see that on the savings bank sector, last time, we gave you a very good outlook for the savings banks of the Provinzial region, so that's North Rhine-Westphalia with picking up speed. VKB and SV, so Sparkassen Versicherung in Baden-Württemberg, and VKB in Bavaria, they are at a rather slow start. That's progressing positively, but some time to go until this rollout we had beginning of this year really turns into relevant revenue. Same goes for R+V. They now will quadruple the number of banks from four to 20, but knowing that there is more than 800 banks that we want to target, there's a long way to go until revenue is in full force and the business plan really folds up.
Mm. Thank you so much. There's another question also from Roland Mueller. Did you lose tenders? Are you bidding for contracts of significant size? And in what time frame can we expect new contracts? If you could please expand on this.
Yeah. We somewhat had one tender. We could not take part properly, so, depends how you count it. So there will be one insurance group that will go somewhere else, so ... Which is new. But we are quite happy after having lost, won this very big contract, and we also won the sales contract of Hanse Merkur, one of the top 20 insurers with their company, Verticus, which is the leading health insurance or one of the leading health insurance sales force in Germany.
So we won these big two, and then, obviously, that's not a big secret that all the other public insurers next to VKB, Provinzial SV, so that's VGH, Public Brunswick, and Public Saxonia, which use the same technology as the big public insurers, that basically there are talks. That's not a secret. So,
... Yes, you can expect new contracts in this section this year.
Yeah. Thank you so much for the answer, and also thank you to Roland Miller for all the questions. We have another question from Paul Whitburn. He would like to know: Would the business require a step change in its tech stack and CapEx, with the larger contracts now gaining momentum?
Good question, Paul. The answer is no, because it's just the same. The bigger customers, they work with us through an API connections on their own systems. It's just a question of scalability of the platform. And there we did a lot of work for document management system and our virtual private cloud, where we had some performance issues at the end of last year. But now we are working permanently on this issue, and there will be no extraordinary CapEx, no one-offs, but you can expect that the IT platform will not become cheaper in the future. That's my answer here.
Yeah. Thank you so much. There's a follow-up question. On what basis did you lose the tender to a competitor, and who was the competitor? If you could elaborate on this.
Maybe rather put this diplomatically, there was not really a tender. It was just a pitch, let's say, let's say. This was due to a personal relationship, this, this was going to someone else.
Yeah. Thank you so much for the answer. We haven't received any further questions, so this is also a reminder for you. Wonderful! We received another question, thank you so much. Edwin de Jong. Again, for you, the listeners, you can pose your question via the audio line, just press the button and raise your hand, or if you dial in via phone star nine, followed by star six. And Edwin de Jong, you should be able to speak now.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yes.
Okay, great. Great. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. A few. Maybe for Ralph also. You see that commission expenses are going up quite a bit, compared to the first half of 2023. That was, of course, to be expected, because of the larger contracts, but could you give some more puts and takes on where this commission expense is going to, in your opinion, in the next few years? And second, on the staff costs, you see that they increased, like, 18%, and the number of staff was, like, 5% higher. So maybe some color there.
And then finally, I really like the color that you gave on the number of growth, the growth number of transfers on the platform and the number of contracts there. So you see the number of contracts growing, contract transfers growing by 46%, and the number of new contracts up 70%, and that translates in a revenue of, let's say, more or less 20%, I would say, if I adjust for Top Ten. How should we see that developing in the future? Those were my questions.
Okay, Edwin, then I will start with the, yeah, gross margin. You said,
Yeah
... payout is increasing and gross margin is going down. That's right. That's the result of adding larger customers. Of course, larger customers with a larger potential, you have to give a higher payout ratio, and when the portion of larger customer revenue increases, then the gross margin in % goes down, but in EUR goes up. That's the situation that we see. It's also the situation that you could see in the past, because year-over-year, the gross margin was going down a little bit, and we were able to generate more IT fees and so on, where we didn't have to give any payout or payback.
So, the churn there was modestly... I would say for the next years, it's fair to say that, there will be a decline year-over-year, of, I would say, like 0.3, 0.35, 0.4%, depending on how big the portion of this major customers turnover is. Because what we also see is that more and more of our normal IFAs are adding more contracts to the platform, adding more customers because it's much more convenient to work with JDC now than one or two or three years ago.
We are publishing new features on a quarterly basis, and I would say yes, you have to observe this, but there's no reason to have any sorrow. Did that answer your question?
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks.
Yeah. And the second question was to the personal costs. The personal costs were up more than 6.5%, and the number of FTEs was only up 6.5%. Yeah, properly observed, Edwin, and the reason is, of course, inflation. We were the last, let's say, in our industry, who increased salaries, but we had to increase salaries on a broader range. And with top ten, there are more, let's say, there are not many people, but on average, highly qualified and higher paid people. And these two effects are, I would say, the main drivers there. Sebastian, would you agree there?
Yeah, but you have to deduct the Top Ten, right, in the personal cost also.
Yeah. No, that's very clear. That's very clear.
So, yeah, to be honest, I lost your third question. It was about-
I get it. I got it. Yeah, Edwin, you calculate quite right. So, the math is like 70% of these additional contracts contribute about 40 EUR in the next six months to come on average. So that's exactly the math. And then 17% more of one, like, upfront, commission-based, one-offs. So I think, you should end up at a 20% growth. I think the math is quite right, Edwin.
All right.
But to put it the other way around, the additional contract should at least contribute another EUR 15 million-EUR 20 million in additional recurring revenue, just 12 months later. Then it depends where you cut the year. Then you're rather somewhere in between. But also, we also like new business, which is about a third of our business. And on average, we should see that the growth, like, and when the KPIs go the same direction, there should be natural organic growth of 15%+, at least.
Okay. Okay. Very clear. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you so much, Edwin de Jong, for the questions and also for the answers. We received another question in the chat from Matt Westeneng. First, compliments and great results. He really trusts the leadership and sees himself as a happy business partner. The first question is: How should we look at the value of the Summitas participation? And the second question is: Is Bain planning to sell in 5-7 years, as they often do?
Yeah. So thank you, Francisco. We don't forget your third question, Paul, because that's also Summitas's question, so we put this together. And maybe, Paul, your question was: Why was there a greater drawdown investment into Summitas? Did they find more opportunities than envisaged due to the economic drawdown in Germany, or are they paying higher multiples? So, also, there's a very nice development with Summitas. We already bought now the thirteenth broker. I think 12, 12 was it, it was the figure for the half year. So we are on our track of buying one every month. There might be a bigger transaction out there, as Summitas is very busy in pitching for all kinds of sizes.
So there is still opportunity, and the drawdowns now were EUR 4.8 million, so the EUR 48 million for the entire Summitas until the end of the first half year. So it's almost a third of our initial commitment. So, but now Summitas is trying to adding debt, so there will be more investment volume to be invested. So the opportunities are just a result of just market screening. They're using all sources to add more target brokers. We can talk more about economic slowdown in Germany. Actually, that's that goes for the GDP, obviously, and the big industry.
So the our client group, that's the more affluent, let's say the top fifth of the market, is not really feeling it because you have slowdown as big industries are going to more energy-efficient or cheaper energy countries, right? So, like, the chemical industry is moving out, and the textile industry, the last rest, is moving out. But then, there is a full employment in Germany, so we have quite some higher wages and increase in HR, not only cost, but also spending and income of private clients. So, it's a quite opaque picture in Germany now. But that's not the reason why there is other investment for Summitas.
So we think that there is a market, rather due to the demographic situation, as most of these brokers are 60 years or older, and half of them are even 70 years old or older. So there's about 1,000 brokers to be sold in the next 2-3 years, so enough space for Summitas to grow. Thank you for the flowers. And yeah, so the value of the Summitas participation, let's put it this way: We think that the valuation is always the price we are buying. We are not paying very high multiples as others do in the market.
So on average, I think we are at about 11x-11.5x-ish in the multiples that are underlying the buying price. And the value is at least what we invested. But what has to come is that now the Summitas target brokers have to move to the platform, so we lift the synergies and of the platform and digitization, and then we will earn more money on the targets we have. And then, obviously, there is a private equity game inside that higher, the bigger companies are valued higher than smaller companies, so that the multiple will go up with the size of some of the target brokers.
So as to your question, whether Bain is planning to sell, you would have to ask them themselves. They tell us they do not have a plan to sell, but obviously, private equity is there for 5 years on average. As you can see, the secondaries in the market, both with GGW and MRHT, that there is secondaries already after 3-5 years. So yes, I think it's a free and thriving private equity situation and project. And obviously, open for either Great West Life buying more shares or others buying more shares, and then enhancing the value even more.
Maybe we can add that, on average, we, our Summitas paid like 11.5, like Sebastian said, and the biggest transaction that we have seen in the market were at a multiple of rather 20x than 10x. So, there is hidden value in our participation. We don't know how, how much, but, there are, yeah, there are, some, some values that we will lift in the future.
Thank you so much for the answers. We received another question in the chat box from Mr. Hillebout. He said, "We understood that you cannot disclose the name of the new contract, but could you give us more color, please, what the size is of the contract once it's running to its full potential? Commission income, number of clients, potential, EBITDA uplift.
So the way we normally do it, we wait until we have a concrete business plan in front of our nose, and this is what we then also communicate to you. And as long as we just can guess on the size, we'd rather keep our mouth shut and do not disclose too much. So we can tell you that this is a very, very big insurer with more than 7,000 agencies. So there is millions of clients and a lot of commission. But Ralph, I think we will just disclose more whenever we can say more.
Yeah, what we can disclose is what I already said. We negotiated a minimum contribution for JDC. This is EUR 500,000, so we will definitely earn money from the first day of cooperation on. And the cooperation is definitely good for lots of millions EUR a year, if it works. And we are working on that. It will probably be one of our biggest customers.
Thank you so much. Another question: Could you give us a short update on the Summitas and the pipeline on transactions?
Yes, Diane. There's a full pipeline, so the M&A department is in full force, and the management is working with big engagement and big heart to close as many as they can. So, there is a full pipeline, but we do have a hope that also there might be a bigger target that really gives us a jump start into the business. It's fine to add many, many of these small fish, but if we could have a mid-size or bigger target company, I think that would help the growth of Summitas tremendously. But as always, in private equity, deals are signed when they're signed, not when managers or officers want them to be signed. So, but it's a very good development within Summitas.
Yeah. Thank you so much. We have another question from Stefan Winterling, also in the chat: Do you plan international expansion in the foreseeable future? If so, where?
Yeah, so also there, Mr. Winterling, great questions. We are opportunity driven, right? So, we know that our platform works in different languages. We know that, some of our brokers have it translated in Czech, Slovakian, or English, and it does, the tech works in any country, but then it's very important to have a team on the ground who does the work. So we are looking for smaller platforms or bigger brokers with a young team that has already the interfaces to these national insurers, because then we can just put our platform technology on top, and then we have a growth. What we do not want to do is what some startups did. They defocused by starting in 5, 10, 30 markets at the same time and nowhere really had an impact.
So it just makes sense if you have a considerable size in these markets. We already looked at target companies in Italy and in the Netherlands, in a small one in France. But then the competition is international private equity and these traded then at much higher figures than we wanted. So yes, we are looking into expansion, but only if the target is right.
Thank you so much for the answer. No further questions have come in, so we're gonna wait a couple of seconds. Again, if you'd like to ask a question, you can use the audio line. You can also use the key combination, star nine, followed by star six, or our chat. And then some more flowers from Paul Whitburn. Thank you so much. Great results. I think I'm happy to share this here. So I think there's no further questions, so we're gonna come to an end of today's earnings call. On my behalf, thank you so much for your attention. If further questions should arise, you can, of course, ask the leadership team of the JDC Group AG or us. I wish you a beautiful day, and I'm gonna give the last final remarks to Dr. Sebastian Grabmaier. Thank you so much.
Yeah, so thank you, thank you again for your trust in all the years past, right? When we told you four years ago that 2025, we'll have more than EUR 250 million in turnover, you trusted us and bought shares, most of you. So thank you there for that, because now we can show you that we can pay back, and we have the growth that we envisaged the last years and can really show you that we do what we told you.
Now I think we are at a good, organic growth rate, 15% plus, up to 20%, and then added M&A, both, with Summitas and then own transactions, so that, we now want to grow 20% plus, for at least the next quarters we can see and, and maybe the next year we can see. But also now have the, the strong vision for JDC, yeah, to be one of the aggregators, one of the consolidators, and one of the market leaders. So thank you very much for your attention today, for your time, and, yeah, your stockholding. Thank you. Bye-bye.