Axactor ASA (OSL:ACR)
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Sep 11, 2026, 4:26 PM CET
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Earnings Call: Q1 2021

Apr 30, 2021

Endre Rangnes
CEO, Axactor

Good morning, welcome to Axactor's first quarter presentation for 2021. We will divide this presentation into five parts. I would like to start by giving a short recap of who is Axactor. It will only take a few minutes, and I hope that everyone can find such a recap valuable, both the ones that knows us well from before, investors that has recently entered our share, and potential new investors. After the recap, I will go through first quarter main events, followed by the financial highlights. We will round off the presentation with an updated outlook and a Q&A session. As always, you may ask questions live after I'm done presenting or through the available chat function. Now, let us move to Slide three for a short company introduction. Axactor was established in December 2015 with headquarter in Oslo.

Our main focus is on collection and acquisition of non-performing loans from financial institutions, meaning we are both buying non-performing loans and do collection on behalf of banks and other financial customers. Axactor operates in six European countries: Spain, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and currently, we are just below 1,100 FTEs. We have been one of the largest purchasers of NPL unsecured debt in Europe over the last few years, and we have done portfolio acquisitions north of EUR 600 million for 2019 and 2020 combined. The company is listed at Oslo Stock Exchange, and our main shareholder, Geveran, owns approximately 40% of the company. Please go to the next slide for more details on Axactor's strategic positioning. When Axactor was established, we had a clear idea regarding our strategic positioning. In brief, it was the following. Cost leadership was a clear strategic target.

We carefully selected six markets where we believed to have the best risk reward, and the main focus were on fresh business to consumer unsecured debt within the bank and finance segment. The startup approach was also simple: acquisition of a relatively small platform company as a bridgehead into a new market. We immediately replaced main systems and processes to the unified One Axactor platform, and we used our strong balance sheet to scale the business organically in both NPLs and 3PC. As you can see, the result when it comes to the cost position has been satisfying. Here, it is important to focus on the trend as we obviously have a higher cost to collect versus income the first year of operations due to scale disadvantages.

We expect the ratio to continue to go down over time as we gain more scale effect, and we consider our cost position to be one of our key competitive advantages also in the future. Let's move to Slide five, where I'll present some more key contributors that will improve our return on equity over time. The first four to five years of operations, Axactor focused on aggressive growth, market entries, and to establish an efficient IT and operations platform. We are now into a new and second phase where the focus has shifted towards profitability, operational excellence, and controlled growth. We are also aiming to pay dividends as return on equity improves. Axactor has at least five areas where we continue to improve in order to increase return on equity. The first one is cost to collect.

Even though we have one of the lowest cost-to-collect ratios in the NPL industry, we still need to keep high attention on continuous cost improvement. They are also trying to get closer to our One Axactor way of thinking with streamlining operations and to implement cloud-based IT systems. Our cost to collect will continue to decrease as we are growing the top line more than the cost, basically taking out scale effect. As you will learn more about later in this presentation, we have introduced and to a large part already implemented a new cost reduction program to further trim our cost base. More details will be given under the part main event in Q1.

Axactor aims to fill volumes into the collection platform, not only through acquisitions of NPLs, but also by growing our 3PC business. 3PC is capital-light recurring business, which will contribute to increased return on equity as it reaches a certain scale in each respective country. 3PC is also an important source to gain high-quality data on fresh claims, which can be used in valuations of portfolio to reduce risk in acquisition. Currently, Spain is the only Axactor country where we have significant scale in our 3PC business, but we see positive development in several other countries. During the last 12 months, we have changed our sales strategy, focusing primarily on bank and finance clients.

An important part in being a successful 3PC company is to create a collection platform that can deliver satisfying collection performance, high level of compliance, and comply with the significant reporting requirements that is expected by financial institutions. We are therefore pleased to see that Axactor is doing well in so-called benchmarks with other collection companies. We still have a significant improvement potential in this area. The third area I would like to highlight is the improved IRR on portfolios acquired by Axactor. The IRR uplift comes mainly through two different source. Firstly, the majority of all new portfolios acquired over the last two years has a higher IRR than the average IRR on our back book. This means that everything else equal, the price reduction we have seen and are seeing in the market will improve Axactor's return on equity.

It is important to remember that the new prices are blended in over time, and the positive effect will become visible in our financials gradually. Secondly, Axactor is prioritizing portfolios where we have in-depth knowledge about the claims, either from previous acquisitions from the seller or through handling of the portfolio or very similar portfolios on 3PC contract. Over time, this will reduce the risk of doing errors in portfolio acquisition, which is obviously very important for the realized IRR level for our NPL business. In addition to operational contributors, Axactor has improved potential on funding costs and what we call other maturity effects. If I start with the first one, funding cost. Given the fact that Axactor is still a young company, we have had significant startup costs on the funding side, both when borrowing from banks and when addressing the Nordic bond market.

We still have a disadvantage compared to several of our competitors when it comes to funding. We are working hard to reduce the gap. We did manage to reduce the average funding cost through the restructuring exercise we finalized in Q1. We still should be able to reduce this further over time. Currently, we are working on establishing a credit rating that we expect to be finalized in the second half of 2021. With the rating, Axactor will have flexibility to reach a wider investor base for our bond, both in the Nordics and potentially the European bond market. After the restructuring, we have more flexibility to refinance parts of our balance sheet if the bond market reveals attractive opportunities. Hopefully, the next time we address the market, we will not be in a pandemic situation. Other maturity effects consist of at least three different elements.

The effective tax rate is still too high, but as we are gradually getting in positive earnings position in most of our legal entities, effective tax rate will be reduced. Simplification of our legal structure will contribute to both lower cost on administration, but also to improve our tax position. The last item I would like to address is that we are phasing out the non-profitable REO segment, and this will have a positive effect on return on equity as well. To summarize, Axactor has several contributors to improve return on equity going forward, and we are working very hard every day with both small and large improvements to realize this potential. This was just a short recap of Axactor, and I will now move to slide seven to present the main events in Q1.

Axactor was still affected by the pandemic during the first quarter, Q1 was another step in the right direction towards normality on underlying operational performance. Last year, the negative effect from the pandemic started in March, this year we have had COVID affecting us the entire quarter in all of our countries. Luckily, so much less restrictions than what we experienced with the lockdowns last year. Year-over-year, we saw improvements on gross collection, which was up 7%. The total income was up 10% and EBITDA up a healthy 26% compared to last year. Cash EBITDA came in at EUR 52 million, which was also 8% higher than Q1 last year. As in previous quarters, the financials were affected by one-off effects, obviously of a different nature than in 2020.

I will come back with more details. Restructuring costs related to our cost reduction program was one of them. Furthermore, an unrealized FX loss had a negative impact on profit before tax, and hence, the return on equity for the quarter. Let us move to Slide eight for a final reminder of the balance sheet restructuring that was concluded in the first quarter. I guess some of you know this by heart now. Since this was one of the most important events we had in the quarter, I will quickly summarize the transaction and its main effect. Axactor raised EUR 60 million in new equity. It was a combination of EUR 30 million in a private placement and EUR 20 million in a repair issue. We acquired Evidens' 50% stake in our daughter company, Axactor Invest ONE, and we refinanced all major credit facilities.

The main motivation for the transaction was to reduce complexity and simplify the structure, extend maturities on both the bank facilities and on our unsecured bond, reduce funding cost, and to increase investment capacity. Our equity ratio did also strengthen as a result of the transaction. On page nine, I will give more details about the new cost reduction program we introduced in December. The program is targeting an annual saving of approximately EUR 5 million, and most of the cost-saving initiatives will be implemented during the first half. We expect full saving effect from Q4 this year. As part of the cost reduction program, we are doing a site consolidation in Spain, resulting in shutting down three of our offices, Sevilla, Bilbao, and Zaragoza.

In addition, a large number of other initiatives will be implemented, such as optimizing the organization in terms of employees, evaluating and renegotiating vendor contracts, and outsourcing of non-core tasks. Such initiatives usually come at a cost, and these ones are no exception. We expect that the total restructuring cost will amount to EUR 4.2 million, whereof EUR 3.2 has been booked in Q1, and the estimated remaining EUR 1 million will be booked in Q2. I will now move to the next slide to give a short status on the 3PC market. Even though the development in the 3PC market is maybe not a main event, we find it important to update the investors on the situation.

First, I would like to say that Axactor has not lost any significant 3PC customers during the last 12 months. However, it is true that the volumes we have received from our customers has been lower than expected. But we believe that the volumes will increase as the societies reopen. The lower volumes has also been a result of authorities giving a payment holiday to debtors. For example, the moratorium situation in Italy has been extended several times. The latest extension will last until the end of June. On the positive note, Axactor is building a strong 3PC pipeline across all markets. And we are in advanced stage for several significant 3PC deals. We have also signed a couple of new deals where we combine 3PC services with NPL acquisitions of the claims at a later stage. Hence, further volume improvements are expected in the second half of 2021.

The last item I will present on the main event is the significant improvement Axactor has received on ESG rating. Please turn to page 11 for more details. Axactor has had a strong focus on ESG related topics from the inception of the company. From 2019, we have received external ESG ratings, first from GIIN in 2019, and then later from Sustainalytics in 2020. In order to fully understand these ratings, it is important to know that they are primarily relying on information announced by the company in annual reports and on company websites. In addition to actual improvement, Axactor has over the last couple of years strengthened the reporting and increased the level of disclosure, and this has given us a significant improvement in ESG rating.

Please note that the 2021 scores do not fully reflect 2020 annual report improvements due to announcement date on the rating, which was before we announced the 2020 annual report. We expect further improvements to be visible when the rating agencies update their rating scores. Axactor is determined to continue to drive ESG improvements and contribute to raise the bar for the industry. ESG was the last item we had under main event, please move to Slide 13 for first quarter financial highlights. Those of you that follow the debt collection industry closely have probably noticed that the first quarter of the year normally is the weakest, maybe together with the vacation period in Q3. This year is no exception.

If we look closer at the three segments, starting with NPL, we did achieve a gross revenue of EUR 63 million, up from EUR 54 million same quarter last year, corresponding to 17% growth. We had a slow start in January. We saw strong improvements in February and March. The growth is a result of Axactor being able to invest more than EUR 200 million in new portfolios last year. We also see positive effects of normalization towards pre-pandemic level. For third-party collection, the gross revenue came in at EUR 12 million, down 14% compared to same quarter last year. As discussed under main event, we are not back at pre-pandemic levels yet. We have been experiencing that closing of new 3PC contracts has taken longer time than what we consider normal, as some customers are postponing the decision regarding new collection partners.

Other customers have been holding back on volumes sent to collection and moratoriums have been extended. We do expect that volumes will pick up moving further into 2021. For our runoff segment, REOs, the sales came in at EUR 10 million, which we consider an acceptable level and in line with our budget. REOs is only accounting for a small part of our balance sheet, some 2.3% of total book value exposure on portfolios, excluding minorities. Please move to next slide where we can see that Axactor continues to focus on cost discipline. As I mentioned in the introduction, to be industry leading on cost to collect is a key element in our strategy. Our cost position continued to improve and was down 5% in Q1 compared to same quarter last year, adjusted for restructuring costs. Let me underline that these figures are excluding REOs.

At the same time, our gross revenue increased 11% year-over-year. The cost reduction program is expected to drive further improvements throughout 2021. Let's now look a bit more into details on each of the business segments, starting with NPL on the next slide. In Q1, the NPL collections continued to normalize, and we delivered a 17% growth year-over-year. The contribution margin is still at a satisfying level of 77% and actually eight percentage points higher than the same quarter last year. No revaluations have been required, and as previously communicated, we expect to have done the necessary changes in Axactor forecast for 2021 and the second half of 2022, primarily linked to the pandemic. On the next page, we will give more details on which assumptions we are taking regarding the collection curves going forward and also show the performance in Q1 versus our Axactor forecast.

Axactor delivered 98% collection performance on unsecured NPL collections in Q1. The reason why we did not hit 100% was primarily due to slow January in Norway. The performance did gradually pick up in February, and March came in strong across all Axactor markets. Like we communicated during our Q4 presentation, there are different ways of implementing curve adjustment. Axactor takes a prudent approach, and accounting-wise, we assume historical underperformance as loss. This is a more conservative approach than the one assuming that all or part of the underperformance can be recaptured in the future. However, it is worth mentioning that this does not necessarily mean that the collections are actually lost, as there are not made any adjustments to the claims against debtors, and the debt can be partly or fully repaid. Now please turn to next slide for further comment on the 3PC development.

As already mentioned, the 3PC revenue reached EUR 12 million for the quarter. We have already been through 3PC market conditions on page 10. I will not repeat it. However, please note that the 6% contribution margin is burdened with EUR 2.8 million of restructuring costs in connection with the earlier mentioned cost reduction program. Adjusted for this, the contribution margin would be 30%, which is down from Q4 last year, mainly due to seasonality, also some overcapacity in operations as volumes came in lower than expected. Please move to the next slide for more details on our runoff segment, REOs. As you know, we are not doing any new investments in REOs. This is a pure runoff segment. We are satisfied with the revenue level of EUR 10 million in Q1, the prices was a bit disappointing, taking the contribution margin down to -21%.

We sold just north of 300 assets in the quarter, and the inventory is down 36% since Q1 last year. The fully consolidated book value at the end of the quarter was EUR 68 million, and Axactor's exposure is 39% of this amount due to minority interest in the structure. Let's move on to the next slide where we will present more details on the reported financials. Total income came in at EUR 61 million per quarter, up from EUR 56 million same quarter last year, and also up EUR 6 million from the previous quarter. The reported EBITDA came in at EUR 18 million, corresponding to a margin of 29%. Please note that the EBITDA was burdened with EUR 3.2 million restructuring costs.

Cash EBITDA came in at EUR 52 million for the quarter, up from EUR 48 million same quarter last year, but down EUR 8 million from previous quarter, primarily due to gross revenue reduction from Q4 and restructuring costs. More details on items affecting the financials will be given in the next couple of slides. Let me start with net profit after tax on page 20. As we saw previously, Axactor reported an EBITDA of EUR 17.7 million. Depreciation and amortization were at an expected level of EUR 2.6 million. However, the net financial items are extraordinarily high with EUR 16.8 million booked. The reason is that the net financial items includes a net unrealized FX loss of EUR 3.2 million. Just for comparison, same quarter last year had an unrealized FX gain of close to EUR 10 million.

The tax expense came in at minus EUR 1.7 million despite negative profit before tax. The main reason for this is that the unrealized FX loss is not tax-deductible. The net profit after tax came in at minus EUR 1.4 million, with a corresponding minus 1.6% annualized return on equity, excluding non-controlling interest. On the next slide, we have summarized the two most significant items affecting the quarter. Firstly, restructuring costs of EUR 3.2 million is booked as operating expense, reducing the EBITDA from EUR 20.9 million down to the reported EUR 17.7 million. Secondly, the net FX impact hitting our net financial items by EUR 3.2 million, bringing the net financial items from EUR 13.6 million up the reported level of EUR 16.8 million. In total, these items would bring the profit before tax up to EUR 4.7 million compared to the minus EUR 1.7 million reported results.

On the next page, Slide 22, we will look closer at the development of return on equity. I will start by repeating what I said during the fourth quarter presentation in February. One, there is no big secret that the profitability on REOs has been disappointing since the acquisition back in 2018. Two, the return on equity during the pandemic has been weak, both for Axactor and the industry as such. We also show that the difference between reported consolidated return on equity and return on equity excluding REOs was four percentage points in Q4 2019. In the following quarters, heavily impacted by the pandemic, the return on equity dropped significantly, both on consolidated level and excluding REOs. Although still impacted by COVID-19, Q1 looks to be the quarter where we again start to see a gap between the two curves, although not huge.

We expect this trend to continue over the coming quarters. With that said, let us move on to Slide 24 for an updated outlook. Since we are still in the third COVID-19 wave, the outlook is of course burdened with a certain level of uncertainty, or maybe I should say an even higher level of uncertainty than what we normally would face. We believe that the COVID-19 impact on business has stabilized, and we do not anticipate sudden movement in either direction. 3PC volumes are expected to return to pre-pandemic levels as societies reopen. Our cost reduction program is targeting a EUR 4.8 million annualized saving effect by year end, and we see an increasing market activity for both 3PC and NPL for the coming quarters. We expect an overhang of portfolios released to the market in the second half of 2021.

Axactor will continue to strictly prioritize best NPL deals, and we stick to the guiding that NPL investments will exceed EUR 200 million for the year. This concludes the presentation, and we will now open up for questions. Please remember that you can find more information in the supporting information and appendix attached to this presentation.

Operator

Thank you. If you do wish to ask a question, please press 01 on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing 02 to cancel. Our first question comes from the line of Ulrik Årdal Zürcher from Nordea Markets. Please go ahead.

Ulrik Årdal Zürcher
Analyst, Nordea Markets

All right. Thank you for taking my question. I have a bit of maybe a boring question, but it's regarding the rebound in 3PC volumes. I was wondering, what are the banks telling you there? How certain can we be that it will rebound already maybe in the third quarter, given that societies are opening up? The reason I'm asking is that will the banks be willing to maybe stress their clients one quarter after lockdowns? What is the reason they haven't been sending you volumes here? A bit on the timing and the certainty of the 3PC rebound.

Endre Rangnes
CEO, Axactor

Yeah. I could elaborate a bit on that. Thank you for the question. First of all, I think it's several reasons why the banks are not sending all the volumes currently. For some countries, like Spain and Italy, you have this moratorium effect where basically the debtors has been given a holiday on payment. We have signed 3PC clients in both of those markets where the contract is signed, but they are not in a position to send us the claims. We have no indications that as soon as the moratorium is finished that they will not send claims. We expect claims to be sent to us from Q3. You have the situation maybe more characteristic for the Nordics, where we, as you know, have a lot of consumer banks on our 3PC client list.

I think that there it's just a question that they have less lending volumes and less default rates. I think there the volume will increase when society reopens and people start to, again, use their credit card. I think we are pretty confident that in second half, and it's hard to say exactly when, but in the second half, the volumes will start to increase again on 3PC.

Ulrik Årdal Zürcher
Analyst, Nordea Markets

Is there a risk that maybe when these moratoriums in Spain and Italy, when they run out, that the economies or the households are so stressed that it actually will be very difficult to collect on the 3PC, or do you have any comments on that?

Endre Rangnes
CEO, Axactor

It's hard to say exactly how this will play out because it's linked to what kind of supporting packages and so on the government will provide for every market. I think, again, you have to look at this country by country. Again, the Nordics, we don't expect a huge drop in collections. What we have seen is actually quite the opposite, that people are prioritizing to repay their debts. We believe that to continue, but I cannot rule out that certain debtors will have payment issues. I don't have a good estimate for the risk on this, unfortunately.

Ulrik Årdal Zürcher
Analyst, Nordea Markets

If they have payment issue, then maybe it's reasonable to assume you will get even more volumes.

Endre Rangnes
CEO, Axactor

Yeah, the volumes. This is the thing. When there are macroeconomic challenges, then the default rate usually goes up, and then the volumes usually over time will go down because the credit will be tightened. Yes, we believe that what we see here now in the Nordics, the volumes is down mainly because the debtors or the bank's customers are not using their credit cards. That is the big source of volumes for us. When credit cards and personal loans are going into default, that is when we come into the picture and that volume is down.

Ulrik Årdal Zürcher
Analyst, Nordea Markets

Yeah. Very clear. Thanks a lot.

Endre Rangnes
CEO, Axactor

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Joakim Svingen from Arctic Securities. Please go ahead.

Joakim Svingen
Analyst, Arctic Securities

Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. I was just wondering if you could elaborate a bit on the savings program, and perhaps indicate how much will be taken under direct operating expenses and how much will be SG&A.

Endre Rangnes
CEO, Axactor

Thank you so much for the question. Could you please repeat the last part of your question?

Joakim Svingen
Analyst, Arctic Securities

Because you're stating that some will be efficiency measures on closing of offices in Spain and some is renegotiating contracts and efficiencies made centrally. I'm just wondering how much will be taken in Spain and how much will be taken under SG&A and general expenses.

Endre Rangnes
CEO, Axactor

Yeah. Thank you so much. I think how you should look upon this is more than 80% will be part of direct Opex and roughly 20% will be on SG&A.

Joakim Svingen
Analyst, Arctic Securities

Okay, thanks. I was just wondering if perhaps there's something I'm missing here, but the costs of the secured assets sold were higher than the income in the quarter. What's the reason for this? Perhaps you could comment on the low amortization rate in Q1.

Endre Rangnes
CEO, Axactor

Yes. Thank you. I can do so. If you look at the REOs for the secured assets, we are more or less having the same purchase price as the asset is valued on our balance sheet. Then we get a negative margin for the segment due to operational expenses for selling it.

Joakim Svingen
Analyst, Arctic Securities

Okay. I think that's trended around 85% historically, but do you expect that to continue then? That will be at the same level or?

Endre Rangnes
CEO, Axactor

Yes. That's our expectations going forward.

Joakim Svingen
Analyst, Arctic Securities

Okay, thanks. I just had one follow-up on 3PC as Ulrik asked as well. The growth you plan within 3PC, is that purely organic or are you also considering M&A in certain markets?

Endre Rangnes
CEO, Axactor

I would say that this is mainly organic growth, but we are looking into small M&A transactions in certain markets. I would say the vast majority would be organic 3PC. We're also looking at a couple of minor, what you call carve-out deals. That's basically that you buy volumes, say for example a five-year period with an upfront payment and then you collect with a certain volume guarantee for either three or five years, for example. We are looking into that as well. Mainly organic 3PC growth.

Joakim Svingen
Analyst, Arctic Securities

Yeah. It's very clear. Just one final thing. If you look at the run rate collections in NPLs, REOs and 3PC, you said that 3PC you expected will pick up in the second half, but adjusted for seasonalities, do you expect the same level approximately for the areas in Q2?

Endre Rangnes
CEO, Axactor

Yeah. I would say that for REOs, if I could start with that I think will be more or less the same level. Potentially maybe a bit higher, but not so much risk on the downside, I think, based on what we see in the pipeline now. 3PC will be adjusted for seasonality and hopefully a small pick-up, the issue here is that the moratoriums are extended until, for example, like in Italy, end of June. I don't expect a quick pick-up in 3PC volumes. For NPL, I think we have a seasonality effect as well. Also knowing that we had a pretty weak January, I think that it will be maybe a small uptick as well above the adjustment for seasonality.

Joakim Svingen
Analyst, Arctic Securities

Yeah. That's great. Thank you.

Operator

Just as a final reminder, if you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad now. We have another question from the line of Håkon Astrup from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.

Håkon Astrup
Analyst, DNB Markets

Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking the questions. Some questions from me as well. The first one on the cost and the new program. Just to make sure that I understand this correctly. In Q1, you already have an annual positive impact from the cost program of EUR 2.3 million. The net incremental improvement from the Q1 level, that should be then EUR 2.5 million, if I understand this correctly then?

Endre Rangnes
CEO, Axactor

Thank you so much, Håkon. That is correct.

Håkon Astrup
Analyst, DNB Markets

Perfect. Very clear. Also a follow-up on the 3PC. You mentioned that the start of this year will be a bit challenging. Did I understand you correctly that we should not expect to see, say, revenues on the 3PC side at the same level or see that lower in 2021 than we saw in 2019?

Endre Rangnes
CEO, Axactor

No, I think I remember that question from the last time, Håkon, and I will stick to what I said the last time. We still have reason to believe that we will reach the 2019 level on 3PC for 2021.

Håkon Astrup
Analyst, DNB Markets

Perfect. Also a question on Q2 and how do you see the investment trajectory into Q2? Should we expect similar as in Q1 and then an uptick in the second part? Are you seeing some, say, improvements in terms of Q2 versus Q1?

Endre Rangnes
CEO, Axactor

We expect the investments to be above Q1 levels for Q2. Of course, this is very dependent on if we close one-off deals or not. If you look at the pure forward flow commitment, there's just a small uptick. There are definitely coming opportunities to the market, and we are in a few processes right now, and normally we would be able to close some of these one-off deals, hence Q2 investments would probably be higher. Again, I would just like to underline, if we don't see the necessary IRRs, we will not do investments in Q2 on the one hand. We will continue to work hard on getting the right prices like we do on the forward flow agreements, wait for the higher volumes to come in the second half of the year.

Håkon Astrup
Analyst, DNB Markets

Thank you so much.

Operator

There are no further questions from the phones.

Endre Rangnes
CEO, Axactor

Okay. We have a few questions that have come in through the chat function. The first one being from Jonas Lien, and he asked, "Could you give an indication to what the tax rate would have been in the quarter excluding the FX effects?" I will have our CFO, Kjetil Kvalvik, to answer it.

Kjetil Kvalvik
CFO, Axactor

Thank you so much for the question, Jonas. To put this very simple, we have a reported profit before tax of negative EUR 1.7 million. We have unrealized FX losses, which is non-tax deductible, of EUR 3.2 million. That would put us into a profit before tax adjusted of EUR 2.3 million. The tax would roughly be unchanged of the EUR 1.7 million, giving us some tax rate of 75% roughly. Here, I think it's important to note that when the figures are so close to zero, looking at the tax rate doesn't make that much sense. Over time, we expect to get to the normalized level of 25% tax rate.

Endre Rangnes
CEO, Axactor

Good. We have a second question from Johan Ström in Carnegie, and the question goes like this: "Do you consider a deconsolidation or spin-off of REOs?" To that we could say yes, we are considering a deconsolidation. It is not decided, but we will look into it. That is definitely on the table. When it comes to spin-off of REOs, this is something that we continuously are looking at, but I think I commented on this last time, or was it the quarter before? The challenge is that we believe that we have the correct asset prices now in our balance sheet. For a new player to buy it, they will need to buy it at a discount to get their necessary IRR. We have the sunk cost already taken.

We believe that the most value-creating thing that we could do is to actually sell off these assets ourselves. I think that's the most realistic view on it, currently at least. The question had a second part and that was, "What was the underlying CM1 margin in 3PC adjusted for restructuring costs?" That was also commented on page 17. It's 30%. We have another question here from Ola Storberg. I think we have answered at least part of this. First part was, "Can you elaborate on the restructuring cost?" I think we have done it already. "When will 3PC volumes improve?" I think we have answered that already. "A large competitor reported yesterday seemed to indicate 3PC was improving during the first quarter." That might be correct.

To be honest, I don't know which competitor, and I don't know which market they operate and so on. It's a bit hard to comment what they are seeing, so I think we will stick to the comments we have given that is kind of covering the Axactor countries. We have another question from Magnus Rasmussen in Swedbank, and he's asking, "From which rating agencies are you seeking an official credit rating?" That would be Moody's and S&P. "Should the EUR 5 million of savings all come within 3PC?" It's not all, but maybe, Kjetil, you have a better split on it.

Kjetil Kvalvik
CFO, Axactor

I don't have the exact split, but I think roughly I would estimate that we have the 70% of the effects within the 3PC segment and the rest split on NPL and SG&A.

Endre Rangnes
CEO, Axactor

We have the last question from Jan Erik Christophersen. He asks, "Do you have any comments to the private investors sold off their shares at a price lower than stock market value in the voluntary offer?" And the answer to that is no. We don't have any other questions on our side. Unless there are more questions on the phone.

Operator

There are no further questions on the phone.

Endre Rangnes
CEO, Axactor

Okay. I think I would just say again, thank you to all of you for attending this first quarter presentation, and we wish all of you a very nice day. Bye-bye.