Warm welcome, everyone, to Hoist Finance Quarter One Report. I will make a short introduction. Christian Wallentin will then go through the report and after that we open up for questions. I propose the beginning of the year illustrates our determination to reach our financial objectives as soon as we can. As you've seen, the report including U.K. shows a cash EBITDA increase of 26%, return on equity 16% and a CET1 ratio of almost 10%. The drivers of that result is a combination of robust collections, better cost control, and also positive contributions from hedging. The value gain on financial instruments is SEK 98 million, as you have seen.
That contributes a lot to the total outcome of the report. Let me describe a little bit what I mean with the illustration that we're actively executing on our Transformation Program or Rejuvenation Program, as we call it, to become a leading NPL player in Europe. We have announced an agreement to divest the U.K. unsecured business that represents almost 20% of our total loan portfolio. It releases an investment capacity of around SEK 5 billion if we assume risk weights at 150%. There is a likely change of risk weights back to 100% for unsecured assets in quarter three.
That would mean that the U.K. transaction releases an investment capacity of SEK 8 billion. Both SEK 5 billion and SEK 8 billion is a substantial part of our total group loan portfolio of around SEK 22 billion. As you can understand, this is a complete refresh of the total group portfolio that we now are able to do during a period of time. The UK business has been a low return business for us during many years. The loss we did 2021 was SEK 169 million .
We've concluded that to run a collection business for unsecured assets in U.K. with the fixed and semi-fixed costs that you need to have in that market require scale and that we don't have that scale. Therefore, the unit is better managed by someone that has that scale. We think the unit fits very well into Lowell's strategy and Lowell's position on the U.K. market. We think it's a very meaningful transaction for both parties. If you then look at the remaining business, the business excluding U.K., the comparable profit before tax became SEK 80 million compared to SEK 60 million quarter one 2021.
That's a 5x increase due to better portfolio quality, a bit larger portfolio, and also improved collection performance. We are pleased with that improvement, and it illustrates that we are on the right way to achieve our objectives. We have a substantial journey to make going forward to reach the objectives, but we are clearly taking steps in the right direction. A few comments on the market itself, the volume of NPL portfolios has improved 2022 so far compared to a year ago. The volume situation is good. However, the competition is very aggressive, and our objective is to be disciplined when it comes to pricing.
We will be very selective, and we will not be carried away to use the investment capacity we have. We will only buy what is attractive to us, and that means high enough IRRs to a low risk level. Overall, the market is stronger than a year ago. The geopolitical situation, the war in Ukraine has not had an impact on us so far, other than that we are helping out in Poland with practical things. Of course, we're following the situation in detail. The macro situation also with increased inflation, increased interest rates, et cetera, implies changes to the business situation.
So far we haven't seen any impact, any material impact from that so far. With that introduction, I'll leave over to Christian to go through the report. Before I do that, I'd just like to summarize then the Rejuvenation Program that we are doing. Well, first of all, I should say, we call it rejuvenation. Can we go to the next page, please? Thank you. Yeah. We call it rejuvenation and because we see this as a major change or a major improvement program. After rejuvenation comes continuous improvements every year to become a little bit better every quarter, every year, of course.
What we are executing now since the end of last year is a Rejuvenation Program. The goal is to improve the complete business. The program is broken down into a couple of program areas, which you see on the page here. It's funding. That means to optimize our funding strategy and to ensure that we can invest in attractive portfolios. That box includes, for example, the securitization of unsecured assets. The second box, investments, means a couple of things. When it comes to sourcing of portfolios, we work more proactively now to be a really good problem-solving partner to the banks in Europe.
In addition to participating in portfolio auctions, we seek bilateral situations where we can add more value than just to buy a portfolio. That has resulted in a couple of bilateral acquisitions, which generally is beneficial for us, but also the selling bank in the longer term. We are also improving our valuation models. We have a couple of improvement initiatives both for unsecured assets and secured assets to use data points in an even better way to be more precise when we evaluate portfolios. That includes, for example, to break portfolios down into many subsegments and follow the subsegments in a detailed way, increased granularity.
We have the third box, collection performance, which is also what we call or refer to as operations. That is a number of initiatives to improve our collection productivity. The final box is about costs. As everyone can see in the past, we have had two high costs in relation to the revenue level, and we are addressing that. You can also see that in this report that the improved cost control has contributed to the profit after tax outcome.
The work continues in these four boxes, and we try to improve a bit in each one of these four boxes every quarter, until we reach the position we'd like to have, which is a leading NPL organization in Europe, where we deliver on our financial goals, which, for example, includes an earnings per share growth of 15% per year, and a return on equity of 15%. With that, I'll hand over to you, Christian.
Thank you, Lars.
If we can go to the next page, please. I will cover a little more in detail the development of the U.K. unsecured business and also our capital outlook and then the Q1 financials and some details around operational improvements that Lars was touching on as well. If we look on this page, we have two pie charts, and this is the book value per market. On the left-hand side we have the whole book, including the U.K. unsecured business, and on the right-hand side, we have it excluding now in Q1. As you see, it's a SEK 4 billion difference, and that's approximately 20% of our total portfolio. This is what we have divested. We kept a slight part of the secured and the performing or the.
We kept that in the U.K. as well. Of course, the reason as Lars has pointed out is that we want to take a major step in our rejuvenation journey, which we believe this is. It gives us an opportunity to clean out an area where we've seen low returns and also historic losses, which we think is a really good step to both de-risk the book and then build capital optionality in terms of opening up for future growth. We managed to sell the business in an accretive way. It's an earnings positive earnings impact now in 2022. I will come back to the capital impact, which is highly positive as well.
Then also on ROE, given all the plans that we have in place, that's accretive with one percentage point in 2022, everything else being equal. You can see also in the split of secured and unsecured, we're taking a step towards a higher share of secured, where we believe we have a competitive edge. We want to grow that as a percentage of the overall book. Equally important, I think it's for us to redeploy the capital in higher return deals going forward. That's a real focus for us. In the U.K., I think it's also important to note that we're not exiting the U.K.. We will cover the U.K. in a different way, so we will use it with an outsourced model.
The focus will be, as Lars pointed out before, more towards the bilateral deals. Less no tenders, but more Tier II banks where we can make a real difference and then as a result, be rewarded with higher returns. Also, we're looking into secured investments in the U.K.. However, we don't see that as a large part of this. If we go to the next page, please. This lays out the capital outlook for us. We have two major events coming up that we expect. The U.K. divestment we have announced, and we have an agreement to sell the U.K. unsecured business, and that will generate, when it closes, 280 basis points.
Then we have the EBA changed risk weights that we expect will come during the second half of the year. That would also generate a similar amount of quarter one, so 260 basis points. This of course materially increase our investment capacity. Now we're in a position to really grow with attractive risk-adjusted returns. You can note that this year in 2022 with the deals that we have closed in Q1, so the SEK 1.3 billion is they're accretive IRRs to date. It's better, slightly better than the average IRRs we have in the book, which is of course positive.
That in combination with a healthy pipeline that we see going forward, which consists of a higher share of bilateral deals and also a higher share of larger transactions, like the Greek transaction we announced by the end of last year, that helps us to redeploy the capital that we now are in the process of freeing up when the transaction will now close. Equally important, I think, is to say that we are very much committed to the return requirements we have. On the group, it's the ROE of 15%, which is our guiding star. We will continue to be very disciplined around this. That I think it is a really strong direction for us that we absolutely want to invest with the right attractive risk-adjusted returns.
That's what this U.K. divestment enable us to do. Overall, the portfolios are part of the business that are not meeting these required returns. We will review and try to resolve. That will include, as we did with the U.K. now, structural measures to deal with this. Which I think is an important part of that commitment to get to 15% ROE. If we go to the next page, please. This is the portfolio book value development excluding the U.K. unsecured book. Since we haven't been investing in the U.K. the last periods, it's been the growth in the rest of the book has not been seen. This is what you see here.
Without the U.K. book, we've grown the book 7% if you compare with last Q1 last year. This is of course positive. It's also. We can also note that the U.K. returns were among the lowest in the group. We are now in the process of selling these returns, so to speak, and then reinvesting in other parts of our network with higher IRRs. The average IRR goes up by selling the U.K. book. In Q1 2022, if you compare that with the Q1 2021, the acquisitions, the closed acquisitions is up 78% to SEK 1.3 billion. This is also, as I mentioned before, with higher IRRs than the average and also if you compare it with the U.K. book.
If you put a historical perspective on the Q1 closed volumes, then it stands out positively. It's seasonally a slow quarter for the markets and also for us. That said, this quarter in 2022 is the highest we've had if you look backwards. Go to the next page, please. We wanted to give you some insight and comfort that our underlying business is improving. This is adjusted numbers that Lars was also referring to. We compare Q1 2022 with Q1 2021. We have the reported profit and loss on the left-hand side. It's for Q1 2021, it was SEK -108, and this is excluding the U.K. unsecured business where we had the largest write-downs last year.
If you then adjust for these forward-looking non-cash impairments to take that out of the equation, then that's what we do in the next column. We also do the same for the hedging in order to get to the underlying collection business as we can compare those profit and loss for the relevant periods. Here you see the numbers that Lars was referring to. The SEK 80 million for Q1 2022 and the SEK 16 million for Q1 2021, which is a 5x multiple if you compare this year with last year. Of course, this is an indication of that we've been growing the book as you saw on the previous page.
We also have a de-risked book which makes it easier to collect better on the book, meaning collection performance is improving. Overall cost side as well has improved, and that is pointing in the right direction. We don't see this clearly as the end game, but we see this as a step forward on our journey to get to the right profitability level. Another equally important operational perspective is the risk profile of the book. We can clearly say that our credit portfolio's current risk profile is fundamentally better than a year ago. This means in practice that we have a much lower risk for impairments. We also have a higher chance of positive collection difference going forward. Go to the next page, please.
This is the financial summary, and most of these numbers exclude the U.K. unsecured. We've had the net profit for the discontinued operations at the bottom. When I talk about the comparisons, most of those exclude that, what we have agreed to divest now. If we start from the top, the net interest income is growing by 8%, and this is a reflection of the book is growing, and also that the IRRs are slightly better than what we've had before. The dynamic is of course stronger now excluding the U.K. unsecured business. We've also seen during the quarter that we have robust collections across all major markets with total collections growing.
We can see that in the positive collection differences, which is in impairment gains and losses. We also see it in the cash EBITDA growing 26% versus previous year. Then we have this SEK 98 million during the quarter which is a positive contribution from hedging, and that's mainly interest rates backing up during the quarter as part of the macro environment. The overall cost side, we are working and will continue to work very hard on cost control and cost reduction. We can see that the overall costs are flat while the net interest income has grown, which is a good leverage of course. The FTEs, if you compare with a year ago, are down 7%.
This has been slightly eaten up by negative FX impact and also wage inflation. That's why we call it cost control at this point. We hope to show cost reduction, of course, in the relevant buckets later on. We've also had a pickup in legal collection costs now when the legal systems are continuing to work on the backlog and opening up. All of these measures have resulted in profits combined with capital efficiency measures that increased the quarter one to 9.9%. Then we have the ROE of 16% for the quarter. We go to the next page, please. This is the balance sheet. There's no major differences here. It's stable as you would expect. We've broken out the assets for disposals.
That's basically the key message of this one that we're selling the U.K. unsecured. If we go to the next page, we see that the quarter one is at 9.9%, which is in the lower end of our target range. Looking outwards as I discussed before, we will see a material build up. That's what we expect from these levels. That's due to the UK divestment and the EBA risk weights of course. On the right-hand side you see the liquidity reserve which we are working continuously to optimize on an ongoing basis. Next page, please. This is the funding.
There's no major changes in our funding profile during the quarter, which is a good thing because as you're aware, the interest rates have backed up. We can note that deposits in this sort of environment is an increasingly attractive funding source, and that's of course our majority of the funding. So when interest rates are coming up, then the deposit interest that we have to pay as a credit institution is not going up in the same speed, of course, but the banking system is holding that back. With that, I will leave back to Lars to summarize the quarter and what we want to say.
Yeah. Thank you, Christian. Just to repeat what has been said then, the ambition for us is to become a leading institution for management of non-performing loans in Europe. We have a Rejuvenation Program covering funding, investments, collection performance, and costs. We work on all those dimensions to continuously improve and rejuvenate the firm. The divestment of the U.K., where we are now able to replace lower return assets with higher return assets is a great opportunity for us to refresh the total group book. The remaining business has good progress both in terms of portfolio growth and the collection performance.
A lot remains to be done though, since we would like a quarter one report to look like this one, but where the SEK 98 million from financial transactions are coming from the business, the core business, in the future, which would then be more sustainable, of course. Finally on the market, we see a better market volume-wise, but very intensive price competition. It may take some time until we deploy the capital that we now have, or will have, available, after the U.K. transaction closing in quarter three. That's the summary, and I think now we open up for questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. First question is from Mr. Jacob Hesslevik from SEB. Sir, please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good morning. My first question is, do I understand you correctly that if risk weights are changed to 100%, then you get SEK 8 billion from the U.K. divestment on top of the SEK 3 billion-SEK 3.5 billion you get from the increase in CET1 ratio?
Yes, that's correct. The investments room, so to speak, is of course depending on which assets we invest in. If we would only invest in secured, that would be a different number than if we only invest in unsecured. That SEK 5 billion-SEK 8 billion that we're referring to in the report is tied to the U.K. disposal and the capital release from that one. Then the SEK 260 is another, let's say, in that range as well in terms of SEK 5 billion, something like that.
Okay, perfect. What do you see in the market then going forward? I mean, the last management believed we would get a tsunami of new portfolios in 2022, and you say that there's better supply but very aggressive competition. Is it similar in all of Europe? Where is the competition coming from? Is it unsecured and are PE buyers back in the game, or is it specialized debt collectors? Can you please describe how you view the environment?
Yes. The improved supply side, I wouldn't call it a tsunami. We can still swim. It's not a tsunami, but it's better than last year, volume-wise. That goes for most of the countries. I can say all the countries we're in have an improved supply situation. Yes, competition right now is very intensive. I believe that is driven by the fact that a number of organizations have underinvested for a while, the last two, three years.
There is a need to invest and that in those circumstances, it's easy to be carried away and compromise on your IRR walkaway levels to get volume. I think the market is characterized by that situation. That will not go on forever because everyone has a certain cost of capital. In the longer term, everyone needs to live with that. To make good returns, then you have to buy portfolios which you can accommodate with the cost of capital you have. No one in the industry has lower cost of capital than what we do. Longer term, that should work, it should work well for us.
The competition is primarily the industrial actors in the industry that are very active. In other words, companies that have collection units themselves, and they to some extent, I guess, need to feed the machine. But as I see that as a not sustainable level, and that will improve. The volume will very likely improve further in the next couple of years. The NPL volume is extreme in Europe. The pandemic situation has also added to that. I mean, most analysts and bankers believe that the NPL market will volume-wise be very attractive during the next five years.
The timing of that, you know, how much comes out, what year is difficult to say. I don't think 2022 will be a tsunami year. But if you rather take a longer term, a five-year period, I think we'll see that Hoist Finance will have a very good volume development. We think the goals we have are very realistic to reach. That means in average of 15% earnings per share growth. That means then you double the business in five years' time. We think we will be able to do that given the supply side of the business.
Okay. Great. Thanks. That's very clear. If I look in your annual report on page 194, do I understand you correctly that 100 basis point increase in interest rate will yield SEK -13 million in NII, but you will get SEK 127 million in derivatives instantaneously? Or have I misunderstood this? Are they all linked to SEK, or do we need to see a shift in interest rate in another currency too, for example, euro or something?
I think it's a complex. I mean, hedging is a complex topic, so I'll prefer to be more specific than. We can take it offline, Jacob, if you prefer that, so we can
Yeah.
Give you some more details on how that will develop.
Yes, please. Okay. That's good. Just a last question then. If you have a T2 bond reaching first call in a few weeks of time. I mean, given your increase in the CET1 ratio following the U.K. divestment-
Yes.
Are you willing to wait with refinancing, or what's your thought there?
We are looking at the market overall and then of course, overall funding needs. We will adjust to those. I mean, given the ambition to redeploy the capital that will be released from the U.K. disposal, we want to redeploy that attractive risk-based returns as soon as possible, I would say. Then we will be very disciplined. We'll be adjusting with deposits for the overall funding. As you noted also, I'm sure that the senior unsecured that we have outstanding is reaching its limits. That will drive some changes as well.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Next question is from Mr. Ermin Keric from Carnegie. Sir, please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. If we start on the investment levels, obviously SEK 1,300 is quite high for a Q1. If we take into account that about SEK 1.1 billion of that is the Greek portfolio you already announced in Q4, it seems like it's been a very quiet quarter. Is that purely due to the market, or has it anything to do with the kind of internal review that you talked about on your investment process?
Well, primarily that has to do with the market that we have stayed very disciplined when it comes to price. We're not necessarily looking at having a great P&L in 2023, but having a great long-term business and to double the business in five years' time. We don't wanna set ourselves in a position where we are stressed to invest if we don't think it's attractive. That's the key driver of those SEK 300 million in addition to the Greek SEK 1 billion, and overall it's a record for us for being a quarter one investment level, and the market is also a bit volatile up and down.
Quarter one is not the best quarter for acquisitions. There are many more months left in the year, and we think the pipeline looks good, so we have good opportunities to have a solid investment year this year. We're not stressed by the investment level of SEK 1.3 billion in quarter one.
Thank you. That's very clear. On the impairment gains and losses, perhaps two questions on it. Do you now feel confident with your current portfolio valuations, or do you think the de-risking of the portfolio is still ongoing? At the same time, I mean, excluding for the revaluations, you have quite a nice over collection contribution. Do you feel the current collection performance is kind of sustainable given the macro outlook we currently have?
I think, as we mentioned, the de-risking of the book we need to do this on an ongoing basis. We have a really solid process for this, a monthly process that is signed off by the auditors. We don't have really a choice in this matter. We need to deal with it as the issues pop up. The major de-risking or I would say we're done with the de-risking. We're very much back on a normal level now. That implies that the risk is much. We're a much better risk profile now than a year ago.
As I mentioned, that means that the risk for impairment is much lower now than a year ago, and also the opportunity for collection performance or positive collection performance is much better. Then if you marry that with it, where we've had a lot of impairments and also less attractive performance, meaning the UK unsecured business, which we're now divesting, that sets us up for a easier future than the last year. I can say that with force.
Thanks. Just generally, I mean, on the collection outlook, given the macro environment we're currently in, it seems like it hasn't really impacted Q1. Do you expect to see any material impact from inflation rates and so on?
I guess what a variable that we are dependent on is the employment level. If increased inflation would lead to a recession and increased unemployment, that could impact our collection levels in a negative way. So far we haven't seen an effect of that.
Got it. Thank you. That's all for me.
Thank you, sir. Next question is from Mr. Björn Olsson from SEB. Sir, please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, and thanks for taking our questions. I think a couple of them has already been answered, but I have two more. The one that's relating to the transaction in the U.K.. Given Lowell's position, is there any risk of approval from the competition authority? The second question is just regarding deposits, whether the moves by Riksbanken today means you'll have to increase your SEK deposits. Thanks.
We don't see any. The FCA is the approving body, so we don't see any competition risk in this. The NPL market is very large in the U.K., and we are. I mean, if you compare with the stock that's what we're selling to Lowell is not that large. We don't see any major risk in this. With regards to the interest rate hike, I think this was expected and, let's see how things play out. Normally in the banking sector with the deposits, the banks as a market are very hesitant to give interest rate hikes back to the public.
No, I don't expect the interest rate we need to pay for deposits to go up at the same rate as the underlying rates, like STIBOR.
I think both SEB and Handelsbanken got that question in connection with their reports. You know, will the savings account interest rates go up now? They said that no, not for the moment, at least. They kind of. That's a support to what Christian has said, that there doesn't seem to be a clear connection. If our interest rates are higher than what the large banks interest rates are on savings accounts, we have the money flow go our way. So I guess it depends on what the large banks do.
Okay, that's great. Thanks. Thank you, sir. Next question is from Mr. Rickard Strand from Nordea. Sir, please go ahead.
Thank you. First question is on the back of Moody's negative outlook yesterday. I know that earlier management has been quite clear of the importance of having investment grade rated rating on the senior unsecured level. Do you share that view? I mean how important is it for you?
We do share that it's important. We're the only investment grade rated firm in the industry. I think it's important to note that Moody's affirmed our rating and then had a negative outlook, which doesn't really mean anything in economic terms for us.
No, not at this moment, of course not. Yeah.
I mean, just a quick comment. If you read the press release, you can see that a lot of the things that we are doing and executing currently are exactly the things that they want us to see. We're quite confident about that we're on the right track to achieve those, of course.
Yeah, I agree on that. Secondly, about a follow-up on the upcoming call on the subordinated bond. Is there any other things that you consider about that regarding the call? I mean, is it important to have these kind of instruments in the market, not only looking to risk weights?
The question if it's important for us to have a Tier II?
Yes.
The short answer is yes. It is important for the capital structure and, yeah, that's pretty short.
Okay. Fine. Finally, also just on the back of your rejuvenation, I just wanted to hear it from you at least. I mean, does the overview of the funding also include potential change of not having deposits anymore?
No, deposits is a core element of our funding strategy.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. We have no other questions. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, I would like to remind you that it's zero one on your telephone keypad. Zero one on your telephone keypad. It seems that we have no other questions.
Okay. Well, then I guess we come to an end. Thank you very much for your interest and wish you a good day. Thank you very much. Bye bye.
Thank you.
Bye.