Good day, and welcome to the Hoist Finance third quarter 2022 earnings call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero on your telephone keypad. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. Today on the call from the company, we have CEO Lars Wollung and CFO Christian Wallentin. I would now like to turn the conference over to Lars Wollung , CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you and warm welcome everyone to Hoist Finance quarter three report. I'll make a short summary, and then Christian Wallentin, our CFO, will go through the numbers and the development in the quarter. After that we open up for questions. We can go to page 3 to start with. The total group loan portfolio is now at SEK 19.4 billion. That is an increase of 13% since quarter three a year ago. These numbers exclude the divested U.K. portfolio where the transaction was closed yesterday.
Except the sold U.K. back book, the portfolio on the remaining business has increased with 13% during the last year. Return on equity 12%. That's a bit more than a doubling of the ROE level we had a year ago. Earnings, we report profit before tax of SEK 116 million for the continuing business. That should be compared with SEK 23 million a year ago, quarter three last year. If we adjust for gains and losses on financial instruments like hedging contract, et cetera, the profit before tax became SEK 140 million this quarter to be compared with SEK -15 million a year ago.
The way I look at this company now is that it's SEK 140 million profit before tax company per quarter. We have a double-digit portfolio growth. The released capital from closing of the U.K. divestment means a substantial investment capacity, extraordinary investment capacity going forward. It means we have the capital both to be at a healthy CET1 level, but also to the capital needed for solid growth the coming years. That's the short financial summary of the quarter. We can go to page 4.
The fundamental improvements of earnings this quarter compared to a year ago is driven by a much better credit portfolio than we had a year ago. We have every quarter since then, we have de-risked the portfolio. We have written down assets, we have also sold assets. We follow the portfolios better, and we change the collection strategies where needed to improve collections. That's it. It's a combination of a better quality of the credit book and the better management of the portfolios. The acquisition level in the quarter was low. Partly driven by the quarter three is a quiet quarter typically. Half of all NPLs are sold in quarter four.
So that's one reason, the usual seasonality effect. However, we invested less this quarter than we did the quarter three a year ago. That is due to our price discipline that we have a long-term focus. We have a strict return on equity and IRR objective that we follow. We think the current macro environment, et cetera, should be reflected in portfolio prices. We're convinced that will be the case longer term. This quarter we've not seen the current macro kicking in into the market prices of the non-performing loan portfolios. That's the reason why we have not invested so much in this quarter.
We buy few fairly f or us, fairly large portfolios, so every quarter will be lumpy like that. That some quarters will be we invest more than expected, some quarters less. First half year we invested a lot more than planned and more than ever for being a first half year. This quarter was a quiet quarter. You can expect that this variability you will also see the coming years. The operational program is going very well. We think about our business in two buckets, basically. Asset management and loan management. On the asset management side, we have become more proactive in doing more complex bilateral transactions with European banks. We have also improved our valuation models.
On the loan management side, we're working intensively to improve both effectiveness and efficiency. Just to take a couple of examples, we look at how we do scheduling of case managers. We look at scoring models to determine what collection activity to do next on a loan level, et cetera. We are going through turning around every stone to improve the business. That goes really well. In quarter three, we haven't seen any material impact on increased inflation or increased interest rates.
We have indications in some markets now in October that there may be an impact this winter because of lower affordability for consumers given increased energy prices and food prices, et cetera. We follow that very closely. As you know, the reduction in risk weights took place in the beginning of this quarter. The SFSA has started the process to evaluate the Pillar 2 guidance. We have no information yet. The process has started, but no indication or no outcome so far.
With that summary of key events and what we've been working with this quarter, I'll leave it to you, Christian, to go through the numbers.
Thank you, Lars. Can we go to page 5, please? The development of our U.K. unsecured operations and back book is a highly positive event for us. Even if we closed it after Q3, want to spend some time on it here. We want to revisit the transaction rationale, why we're doing it, and then also the impact, financially of this. The first one was collection de-risking. If you look at the U.K. unsecured book, we've had some underperformance historically, and we also had of the write-downs we did in 2021 and 2020, material part of these were in the U.K. Of course, past performance is by no means a perfect indicator of future performance. We did see some risk in this area.
That was a major part of the rationale to pursue this divestment. Then the second one, capital management. We wanted to strengthen our capital base overall. We knew that the EBA risk weights were coming. We knew that we will have a Pillar 2 guidance process with the Swedish FSA. However, we did not know the timing of this, so we wanted to strengthen the capital base in expectation for this, which is what we've done. Also, importantly, on the capital management side, we wanted to build purchasing power for what we will see and what we see as a supporting market over the next few years. We are convinced we will see good opportunities to deploy this capital over the next two years or so. Then the next one is reinvestment with higher IRRs.
A year ago or so when we started to pursue this divestment and we were worried about us and the overall economies going into a new paradigm, meaning that higher inflation and higher interest rates would come. This has been exaggerated by the war in Ukraine and all the macro developments during 2022. The matter of fact is that we were worried already then, and it's been worse. What we've done is to sell our lowest IRR portfolios, and now we can reinvest those in this new paradigm, as I think about it, with expected higher levels. We also see already that the investments we've done in 2022 are at a much higher level than what we sold in the U.K.
It's also part of the structural rejuvenation, optimizing of the indirect cost base and the direct cost base. We didn't see that we had enough predictable volumes, meaning enough portfolios coming to market that we could count on being able to buy. We didn't see that an in-house platform were supported by that at scale, that were supported in the market from our point of view. This means that we've sold the operations of course, and this is meaning for the group that we have one platform cost less to carry as a group. There is the last point, transform U.K. operating model.
We like the U.K. market overall, but we wanted to readapt the operating model to be an outsourced model, which we think is the right model for us in the U.K. The financial impact is very supportive for us. There's a positive contribution on all key metrics from closing. We sold it at more or less 110% of the book value of the portfolios at signing. We have a SEK 200 million net earning after the tax impact. That will lead to 260 basis points CET1 impact. What we will face now when we're going forward is a slightly higher capital levels in the time coming here now.
Until we have reinvested this, we will see the one-time benefits contributing to all our financial indications for 2022. Of course, we need to reinvest the capital that we have released from the U.K. Next slide, please. Page 6. We are transforming the business in a quite messy and volatile macro environment. If this is an attempt to draw out the underlying operational development. If you can look at the maroon bars on the page. It starts with -15 leading to 140. These are normalized numbers. We start with profit before tax, which is excluding the U.K. profits.
We add back the net results from financial transactions or deduce, given if it's a positive or negative number in order to take that away from the core normalized earnings. We have joint ventures which are not explicitly part of the balance sheet, so we exclude those as well, even though they are contributing on an ongoing basis. The internal interest expense is the expense for the funding for the U.K., which was SEK 42 in this quarter. We've moved group staff from the U.K. legal entities that we sold to the branch that we now have in the U.K. That's an adjustment as well. That we did during the Q3, which is why it's zero in this case.
You can see that we have moved a year ago, Q3 2021, from SEK -15 underlying PBT to SEK 140 in this quarter, which is a really strong testament to the operational development and improvement program that we're doing is working. Next page, please. Page 7. This is one key focus area in the rejuvenation program is to take down indirect cost levels. We have been receiving quite a few questions on how things are going. We wanted to give you a little bit of a snapshot of what we have achieved until now. The indirect costs are the functions including IT and the investment team. Why we've highlighted Q2 2021 is that we use that quarter as a baseline for this development.
At that point in time, a little bit less than 50%, or around 50% of total costs were sitting in this indirect cost bucket, with the direct operational cost being the rest. As you can see, we've taken down the indirect cost 18% since Q2 in 2021. Now we have. This is despite FX headwind, and then also implementation cost on the way. There's one-off items in these numbers as well which we don't see continuing all of them. As you know, one-offs are very difficult to see if they're true one-offs or if they will replace with others.
We have not taken that into account in this -18% decrease. The operational rejuvenation is counting roughly half of this improvement and the structural rejuvenation, meaning the U.K. divestment is the remainder. This development is encouraging and we are continuing to work very hard to take down our cost levels going forward as well. There's a ongoing plan and ongoing execution that's in process. Now with inflation coming much higher than what we expected a year or so ago, that of course presents a real challenge. That's an ongoing task to see how we can mitigate that negative impact from wage inflation and overall inflation.
As a reminder, the other areas of the rejuvenation program are operational rejuvenation, where we're working both with efficiency and effectiveness, so doing the right things in the right way. The key measures of this is cost to collect overall, and that's developing well, and then of course the collection performance. We've seen some really nice progress during the year as well. In the investment that Lars touched on, we have changed focus on way of working. We are much more structured and disciplined, and that's yielding results. We see much more bilateral transactions, both what we've closed year to date and also in the pipeline. That has yielded a growth of 13% in the continuing business and also higher returns in those portfolios that we saw a year ago.
The last part of the rejuvenation program is a very active asset and liabilities management to optimize our funding structure. Go to the next page, please. Page 8. As you see on this page, the portfolio acquisition has been quiet in this quarter. Lars touched on it. It's seasonal, and it's also pricing discipline. We were close to buying a few larger portfolios, but we missed out because of us having higher return requirements than what the market was dictating at that point. However, we see improved volumes overall. If you look back a year and a half, it's much better volume overall in the market, and returns are also increasing. However, there's still intensive competition. Looking forward, we see a healthy pipeline and our focus is on three areas.
The ongoing tenders that we've always been very active in, we continue to pursue those with the right returns and right risk. Then the new thing for the last year is that we are focusing much more on bilateral deals and larger deals, including more advanced deal structuring and problem-solving, which are leading to higher value creation for both our partners as banks and for ourselves because it's much less price sensitive as a result. Page 9, please. If you look at the overall book a year ago it was SEK 17.2 billion and today it's SEK 19.4 billion. It's a growth in book value of 13% compared with a year ago.
This is also taking into account that we are on an ongoing basis de-risking all the issues that come up and all the risks flagged in our internal revaluation process. We've been very proactive managing the risk we see on the horizon, and we are dealing very actively with all the issues that we see currently as well. Just to give a sense of the risk profile in the portfolio currently, we have a higher share of portfolios with positive deviations than negative deviations being flagged in our own revaluation process. We call this as having a positive tilt in the portfolio, meaning that we have much more positive performance than negative underperformance in portfolios. Next page please. Page 10. This is the mix of secured and unsecured on the left.
We have 77% unsecured portfolios currently and 23%, secured portfolios. We do wanna grow the secured part where we see that we have a higher competitive advantage giving our funding structure with a majority being deposits. We see that after the divestment of the U.K. unsecured operations, it still remains the largest market and Poland has now sailed up to become the second largest market. You see that the remaining business in the U.K. is 7%, which is our both performing and then the new portfolios we invested into in Q2. Overall, we've seen solid performance across most markets in Q3. As Lars mentioned, after Q3 closing, we've seen some indications of financial pressure for our consumers.
We're of course watching this very carefully and we'll see how that develops over the next quarters. Page 11, please. The key takeaways on this is that during the quarter we saw the reduced unsecured NPL risk weights being effective from eleventh of July, which added 265 basis points to our quarter one capital. Now at the quarter end, we saw the U.K. divestment close, which is adding another 260 basis points over Q4, both as a capital gain and then as a capital release from the sold portfolios. We're starting the Pillar 2 guidance process with the Swedish FSA, so we'll see and revert when we have the outcome of that process as well. Page 12 please.
If you look at the financial summary, we have growth in interest income due mainly to the higher book value versus prior year. We also see that we have lower interest expense driven by active assets and liabilities management. This is very complex line, particularly when it moves when the macro environment is moving. However, if you look at it top down, it's very simple. It is the size of the book that drives this line together with the interest rate level, so the average funding rate that we have on our liabilities side. However, when things are moving then of course we are managing both the term structure of the funding and also in this quarter we've been managing down liquidity in anticipation for the U.K. sale to close.
If we look at collection performance, it's, as I mentioned, good across most markets. We have SEK 42 million of positive impairment gains and losses. The net results from financial transactions is slightly negative due to FX. Also very much worth mentioning is that we have introduced hedge accounting of interest rate swaps during Q3. In previous years we didn't see this volatility in this line, so we thought it would be very sensible to introduce this hedge accounting which takes away the volatility from the interest rate swaps.
Of course, as you most probably are aware, the interest rate swaps we have as part of our IRB approach portion of the NPL assets we have hedged the interest rate risk with paying fixed interest rates and then receiving a floating rate. That's what's been paying off in the first half year, and that's what we're now introducing hedge accounting. We don't expect to see the same volatility at all on the net result from financial transactions going forward. Overall, we have a return on equity of 12% in the quarter, which is leading to a year-to-date 15% return on equity. Go to the next page, please. Three points on this one.
We see that we have managed down liquidity, so the cash and interest bearing securities ahead of the U.K. securitisation. We also see that the underlying portfolios are growing, and then the retained earnings is also growing in a healthy way during the year. Next page please. We have just finalized our internal capital adequacy assessment process, and we are updating the Core Tier 1 target range to be under normal circumstances 230 to 330 basis points above the Core Tier 1 requirements specified by the Swedish SFSA. This is a change from what you see on the page which is 175 basis points to 375 basis points above the regulatory requirements. This is a result of our ICAAP that we just concluded internally.
We will be clearly above these levels until we know what the Pillar 2 guidance will be and have reinvested the capital from the U.K. divestment and the reversal from the risk weights. You can expect us to be above these, this target range for some time, well in the medium term until we have some clarity on the P2G and then also start to reinvest. Page 15 please. Our overall, the average funding cost is trending slowly up. We have introduced a Tier 2 capital this year at a higher level although quite attractive, given how these markets have developed after issuing that Tier 2. We also see that the deposit levels is trending up in the market. We have managed down our deposit base in anticipation for the U.K. closing.
We haven't seen this fully but it's slowly trending up for us as well. That said, the deposit pricing is of course, much more sticky than the senior unsecured used more broadly in the industry. We do expect that, our funding advantage as we think about it from just having a deposit base will relatively grow over the next year. Back to you Lars, page 16.
In summary then, interest income increased 23%. We show the profit before tax of SEK 116 million, but the underlying adjusting for hedging contracts and all those sorts of things, profit before tax became SEK 140 million, which is substantially better than a year ago. As Christian said, we have a solid capital level now which means we can have a good CET1 ratio longer term but also invest material amount. I think the released investment capacity is something around 30% of our total credit book. It's a substantial growth opportunity we have.
We will stay disciplined and search for the attractive credit portfolios with an appropriate return characteristics. We have good hopes to be able to deploy the capital we want to deploy within the next number of quarters. Regarding this winter, we see some indications of financial pressures, not in quarter three but now in October we see some pressures in the market. We have to be open for a scenario where European consumers will have a tough winter. We will try to do the best we can to mitigate that.
If you see it in a bit longer term, the outlook is very good, as we see it. The current non-performing loan level in Europe is again very high. It is growing, and also, recession times means more NPL volume. Looks like the market supply side will be attractive the coming five years for us. We see when it comes to cost of capital, that on cost of debt, to be specific, we see that we have the by far lowest cost of debt of all players in the NPL industry in Europe, because of the funding structure we have.
Also taken into account, securitization or other solutions for the backstop issue, we have by far the lowest cost of debt. If you look at the refinancing rates for the industry, it's on a much higher level than historically. It looks like we have a, you know, two or three times competitive advantage when it comes to cost of debt, which should mean that we have a sustainable competitive advantage in Europe for the asset classes where we have the objective of becoming a leading asset manager which then is consumer secured and consumer unsecured asset classes.
If you take a longer horizon, it looks very good both in terms of the external, you know, market situation then, but also our internal rejuvenation program that makes good progress every quarter. It may be a tough winter, let's see. Longer term it looks good, I guess, is the summary. With that, I think we open up for questions.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch tone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Jacob Hesslevik from SEB. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. My first question is on NII. I had guessed that the higher deposit rate you offer would lead to higher average cost of funding, which we also can see on slide 15 would lead to, you know, higher interest expenses, which in turn would come first, and that the interest income would lag. I seem to be wrong here, so maybe you can help and explain how the mechanics work if we start there.
Yeah, no, I think overall it is, of course you're right. In a market where interest rate goes up and we are growing, then the interest expense will grow. This quarter or this year I would say is a little bit special in the sense that things are moving quite rapidly in terms of interest rates of course, and then also expecting to close the U.K. divestment. We've been managing down liquidity in anticipation of this. We also have, because of the interest rate environment, changed the term structure of some of the deposit platforms we have. We have more overnight in anticipation of this as well.
It's a complex picture, but if you take the top down perspective, you're completely right. The size of the portfolio and then the interest rate, average interest rate, overall that drives interest expense of course.
Okay, thank you. If we move over to collections, how do you see collections has developed in October and what input has made it worse? I mean, electricity bills haven't moved up that much. Gas and petroleum prices are almost down this quarter or this month, sorry. Is it just higher food prices or what are you seeing being the main issue for collecting post Q3?
It's not the material change we see yet, but we see some indications, so we wanna, you know, flag for that. It could be that the consumers now are preparing for the winter and are more cautious in actually paying back their loans and saving more money for a possibly tough winter with again increased, for example, energy prices. At this point it's probably on the psychological level. Could also be that for a while you can, if your affordability goes down, you can still amortize your loans, but at a certain point in time, it may be tougher. It could be also a lagged effect.
What we see is that for the consumers where we have an amortization plan, we don't see an increased breakage of amortization plan in October. It's more the other type of payments, like one-off settlements we'll see in some countries like Poland that the settlements, the average settlement is on a lower level than before. This is a minor part of total incoming cashflow. The most of the incoming cashflow is regular amortization plans. It's number wise, it's not a big thing, at least not yet. It's an indication of what may come this winter. I don't know, Keith, do you want to comment on that?
Yeah. Yeah, I can add that. I mean, it's more of a real uncertainty that we're seeing indications of coming through. On the flip side, of course, you have now energy support programs in a number of markets as well. France, Germany has announced support for the energy prices, which are highly substantial. I think in France it's 2%-3% of GDP. So of course this will support consumers as well. It's a high uncertainty and you we can see overall that things are just moving and then in that case it is difficult to foresee how things will happen. As we mentioned in previous quarters, the unemployment is the key driver for repayment plans being broken or not.
Do I understand you correctly that the consumers with amortization plan have not requested to pause or lower their payments during the last month then? It's just a one-off settlements?
Yes.
All right. Perfect. Maybe one last question from my side then. Can you tell us what the average collection ticket size is or the average amortization size? Do customers on average pay, I don't know, SEK 20, SEK 50, SEK 60 per month, or are we talking about SEK 2,000 a month?
It's very difficult to say a good average. I mean, it's a little bit like comparing standing one foot in the fire and one in ice. On average it doesn't mean anything because there's so the different type of claims are quite different in the different markets. For example, Italy we have much higher claims on average than we had in the U.K. where it was the lowest ticket ones. It's not really meaningful to say an average amount I would say. It's worthwhile saying that the repayment plans are often by I mean it's regulatory enforcement as well to a high degree. It's not a complete choice to discontinue to repay either.
Okay. You don't have that you pay, percentage of your disposable wage or something, or your salary. It's a 2% of your salary that you calculate and then that is how much they amortize or?
Uh.
Or?
We can calculate that. We don't look at that on the total level since the countries are so different, et cetera. In general, you can say that the amortization of loans in the world is a minor part of a family's or an individual's budget.
All right.
We saw that also in the Corona period when that kicked in, that people prioritized to keep on, even those who lost income. They like people working in restaurants, et cetera, they still kept on amortizing their loans and you know the impact we saw was limited as we know. It's a minor part of the budget. In some countries there are also regulations for that it should be that way. We always look at affordability and assess you know how much a consumer actually can pay, not just one single month, but it should be a sustainable
Amortization plan that over several years. That means that it can't be massive amounts in percent of disposable income.
Okay. Thank you for the clarity.
The next question comes from Mats Liljedahl with ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Just one follow-up or one remaining question from our side. If we look at the Pillar 2 guidance there, have you gotten any indications on or what do you expect and how well capitalized will you be past that? Have you got any indications on that? Thanks.
No, we have no indications from the Swedish SFSA. What we think is that when we buy NPL portfolio that have been written down, and it's quite easy for us to stop buying. That's completely in our control. We can. That means that we can rebuild capital very easy. We see that this has a real impact if we would do that. Therefore, I think in the stress test that we are doing in our internal capital assessment process, we don't see any material need to have a Pillar 2 guidance. Of course, there's a qualitative assessment from the Swedish SFSA as well, which they are doing more on a holistic level.
We don't have any indications to begin with that part.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Ermin Keric with Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for the presentation. If we go to the market for buying portfolios, you mentioned a report that you don't really see your competitors reflecting the increased funding costs in underwriting. How long do you expect that will take before we see it? And should we read anything into sort of Q4 as well that perhaps this will take a little bit longer? It could be a little bit lower activity also in Q4 than what would be expected otherwise, even though it's a seasonally active quarter.
It's very difficult to speculate on competitive behavior. However, that said, the nuanced picture is that, for example, in Poland, we had difficulty buying in the beginning of the year because of the return requirements. Now I think the market has repriced the new interest rate levels in Poland. We're seeing that the pricing is at a healthy level in Poland. Across markets, I think as soon as the industry looks a bit more forward to future funding costs, then this repricing will happen. I think a lot of the industry took advantage of the lower interest rate level that we've been in previously to fund themselves as long as they could. This will become gradually.
I mean, soon people will need to start to look forward, because that's the refinancing that they will face as well. It's difficult to say time, but I'm quite confident that this will happen.
If I rephrase it a little bit like this, how are you doing currently? I mean, given that, for instance, you have floating rate deposits or current deposits, what are you assuming as funding costs? If we assume that, for instance, Sveriges Riksbank and ECB will do additional hikes, you'll probably have to increase the deposit rates as well, in a while. So what assumptions are you making there then about the future funding costs?
The future funding cost is playing into our what we call Funds Transfer Pricing, so meaning how the funding price we have internally for portfolio purchases. There's a mix of the existing funding and the future funding in that funding price. We try to take into account future development as well. Meaning that if we would go to fund ourselves today, what would that price be? That impacts the internal funding costs.
Great. Thanks. A final question, just, obviously, you have the securitization framework agreement with Magnetar, and that's set to expire next year. Could you give us any update on your thinking and planning for how to work with the backstop after that, if you have an extension planned or if you have any other solution that you could turn to instead? Thank you.
We are working with Magnetar and that is working well, that solution. The formal agreement expires next year, as you mentioned, and there's an extension possibility with Magnetar. They've been a really good partner to us. We're working very well with them. We see that this is very much on the table. We're also looking at other alternatives, including other structured solutions. The securitization is the way we're working with the backstop solution now, which is working for us.
Perfect. Thank you.
Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. The next question comes from Joakim Ringen with Arctic. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thanks for your presentation. I have three questions as well. The first one is relating to your Pillar 2 guidance buffer. Has the FSA given a range, like they do, for example, here in Norway? Or, is that basically without the roof and the no maximum, as you can see it?
They have indicated no range.
No range. Okay. Thanks. I was just wondering whether you could give some general cost guidance for Q4 and perhaps the start of 2023 following the divestment of the U.K. portfolio.
We don't guide on cost levels. What we can say is that there's two parts of the cost structure. There's indirect costs, which we show that we've taken down 18% since Q2 2021, despite the FX and transformational costs or one-off costs that are included in that number. Then we have the direct costs. The indirect costs we do have a plan to take that down further, so we will continue on this road. The inflation is the large challenge that we need to face and resolve for. Then on the direct cost base, we are measuring more how much do we get out of the costs, so cost to collect and collection performance.
Do we do the right things in the right way, in essence. We see that we are trending well here as well, both on the collection performance and the actual cost to collect. We foresee that we will continue to work on efficiencies. Overall, it depends on the indirect costs, which is absolute levels, so which we aim to continue to take down. Then the direct cost is, of course, a variance of how much portfolios we have under management.
A fair assumption for Q4 is basically excluding the direct U.K. costs in the short term.
Yes, those are excluded. We only have in the report the addition from the discontinued operations at the bottom of the P&L.
Yeah.
The indirect are excluded from that one.
In the numbers, profit before tax of SEK 140 million is for the continuing business that we have going forward, i.e. the quarter four business is generating those SEK 140 million.
Yeah. Okay. Understood. Just a final thing. You mentioned the increased financial pressure in October. Which markets are most affected in your view?
U.K. is affected and also, to some extent, Poland.
Okay. Thank you.
In the U.K., we sold our back book, and we sold the platform. We still have a portfolio with the subcontractor in the U.K., so we are still present as an asset management company in the U.K. It's not a big part of our portfolio any longer, but that's why we follow that market as well going forward.
That's fine. Thanks very much.
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Lars Wollung for any closing remarks.
Okay. Thank you. Well, thanks everyone for your time and interest in Hoist Finance. Let us know if there are any more questions that comes up, and we'll happy to try to answer them. Just let us know. Thank you everyone, and have a great day. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.