The Intrum Q1 2025 report presentation. For the first part of the presentation, participants will be in listen-only mode. During the Q&A session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing #5 on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to CEO Andrés Rubio and CFO Johan Åkerblom. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. This is Andrés Rubio. Good morning from a blue-skyed and sunny, although probably a bit chillier than everyone would hope, Stockholm. I am here, as the moderator said, with Johan, our CFO, and thank you for dialing in to our quarterly results call. I am also happy, before I jump into the results, to say that, as usual, Jakob Hesselvik from SEB is first in line for questions, and we will be going through the business over the next, call it, 20-30 minutes, then opening it up for questions. I see that not only him, but many others have already lined up for questions. We look forward to that. If we can turn, please, to the first page, page 3 of the presentation. The first quarter is a good set of numbers.
As you can see in the top left, on an overall basis, our EBIT has more than doubled to more than SEK 1 billion. We have continued our focus on costs, we'll get into more of that later. We have produced a positive net income quarter for the first time since 2023. That's a very important indicator that all of our collective efforts to refocus the business, refine the strategy, cut costs, become more effective, and more efficient are starting to flow to the bottom line. Our leverage ratio is stable as a result of many different factors, which Johan will go through later. The real drivers of the business are the servicing and investing. On servicing, our income was slightly down, I'll address that a little bit more later. Our EBIT, on both a reported basis and adjusted basis, are significantly up year-on-year.
This is driven by the margin improvement. As you can see here, our margin in the quarter was 21% in the first quarter of 2025. In the equivalent first quarter of 2024, it was 9%. Not only is that an absolute increase that is very significant, 12 percentage points, but as you can see, it is broad-based. It is both across all three of our major regions: North, Middle, and Southern Europe have very, very meaningful margin expansion. What it means is we have a more profitable and a stronger servicing business, I believe, than we have ever had. On the investing side, bottom right, we have collected above active forecast. Our income is down—excuse me—our income is down merely because we have less assets. That is very mathematical.
Ultimately, our EBIT is still strong because we continue to collect above active forecast, 102 in the quarter, and that 102 is equivalent to 108 of our original forecast, indicating the trend continues that when we originally make investments, we generally and consistently, over history, have outperformed that. During the last few quarters, we have started ramping up, although we still have more to go on the ramp-up, our investment management activities, specifically with Cerberus as our partner. We have invested there, ultimately, EUR 647 million, which our share was EUR 111 million, at a very, very healthy IRR. I will talk more about IRRs and volumes in investing later in the presentation. Very importantly, also, during the quarter, we have had two important strategic initiatives: the recapitalization. I am very happy to say that, effectively, we are turning the page on that chapter.
We had a very favorable ruling, as everyone knows, in the U.S. on the last day of 2024. During the first quarter, that ruling was also confirmed and ratified by a positive ruling in the Swedish courts. We now have, between now and closing, merely conditions precedent, which are primarily regulatory approvals, and we expect to close recapitalization in the first week of July. What has been effectively a year of this process, we can now close that chapter and move forward. What we get in result of it—and we're going to go into much more detail on that in the next quarter—is a realignment of our capital structure in line with our business plan.
The other thing that's an important takeaway from that process is that process has ratified our future prospects as a business, as a cash-generative business, as a recurring business, because we had the overwhelming support of all of our creditors. Two other things that we did more fundamentally on the business are sign the Cerberus partnership in the quarter. We had been working off of a term sheet since the middle of last year. That's an important milestone. You will see we expect that to ramp up. Also, we continue to inculcate or roll out technology across our platform. Both Ophelos and other AI tools are being rolled out, and I'll get into a little bit more detail on that later.
That is going to add to our margin momentum by improving our fundamental ability to deliver more collections and at a more profitable rate. Next page, please. During the quarter, we also put out our European payments report. This was a report that is incredibly useful. For those of you who have not seen it, I would encourage you to look at it. We put out a European payments report, which is focused on small and medium-sized enterprises once a year, and also a European consumer payments report that focuses on consumers. Here you see—and everything we see here means that, or has indicated to us that—there is significant uncertainty in the marketplace, in the economic marketplace of Europe. There is a significant amount of value at risk in terms of accounts payable, and extended payments are still a persistent problem, which we directly assist companies with.
Technology is increasingly getting on people's agenda, getting on companies' agenda as a way to interact with their customers. Not surprisingly, the need for our services is increasing. The recognition that technology plays a role in your interaction with your customers or clients, those two factors are both going to bode well for demand for our services going forward. Next page. Now going into the various elements of the business, very similar or same themes as I said earlier. It is all about margin on the top left in the servicing business. Incredible momentum. I think it is important also to recognize that the 21% that is in the quarter was higher than our entire year's margin last year in 2024, which was a little bit above 19%. It shows that this trend is both strong and continuing.
On the top right, we continue to have positive collections in our PI business. We would expect that to continue. That is really evidence of the fact that we, as a servicer, can dedicate resources and manage returns on portfolios that we buy dynamically, such that we always try to exceed our forecast. We do so both on an active basis and an original basis. The cost focus continues on the bottom left. We have had two discrete cost reduction programs. We are now transitioning to management of our total cost base, which is at a more manageable level, driven by both processes as well as headcount reduction. We now, on a continuous basis, will manage our total cost basis to be more and more efficient going forward.
On the milestone front on the bottom right, as I have already mentioned, during the quarter, we signed the Cerberus partnership agreement. On page 6, you see our servicing business. You see in the top half of the page the margin trend and the revenue trend through the end of 2024 was positive on revenue, slightly negative on margin, and then significant turnaround on margin and a stabilization of revenues into 2025. There you see the 9% last year in Q1 2024 and the 21% this year in Q1 2025. Last year, we started at 9, finished in the fourth quarter with 30, and a blend for the year was 19. This year, we are starting at 21. That bodes well for how we are going to go through the remaining quarters, excuse me, of 2025.
What you see also is that stabilization of revenues, when you divide it up, you see in the bottom half of this page, both the margin improvements as well as the top-line organic growth by region, by key region. You see that the North and Middle are growing, although I'd like to see those numbers higher, frankly. You still have the structural decline in assets in Southern Europe. You also see that all three areas, or all three regions, have improved their margins, with Southern Europe, albeit in a structural decline, being the highest margin region. These trends are things that we want to directly address. We have been addressing the margin, which you see a broad-based improvement. We want to get the organic growth up higher in the North and the Middle, and we want to mitigate that structural decline in Southern Europe.
Next page, on page 7, you see a page we introduced a few quarters ago, which goes through AUM, recovery rate, conversion rate, servicing income, closing balance. You can see here that there has been incredible stability. Our collections during 2024 and then on a trailing 12-month basis as of the end of the first quarter are quite consistent at around SEK 110 billion. This is only external assets, to be clear. Our external servicing income is quite stable. What we are recovering and how much we are getting paid per unit of recovery from our clients is quite stable. I would highlight, although, one thing: between the RTM beginning of SEK 1,621 on the top right and the SEK 1,551 closing balance at the end of the first quarter, that is largely due to FX movements. The next page, page 8, is one of my favorite pages.
We brought it back into the quarterly report this quarter. This gives you a sense for the history and the trajectory and the performance of our investing business over time. This goes back to 2004, when we really started to invest in any meaningful fashion. Over this entire 20-plus period, we have invested over EUR 8 billion, just to put it in context. Over that time period, we have collected against original forecast 107%. You can see that on the top left, against active forecast 105%. Since 2018, which is really when you see the large volumes being collected, which indicates large volumes also being invested, we have generated what I believe to be a very consistent and attractive unlevered return at 14% and a two-times gross money-on-money multiple.
I think the other element here is that long-term, while the movements in terms of our collections rate, which is the blue part, relative to active and original forecast, have gone up and down, it is at very attractive averages and has only dipped below 100 once. That is during the pandemic and came right back very strongly. The other element that is important to highlight, which is one of the reasons we have some headwinds on revenue in our investing business, is the decline you see in the blue chart, which is our collections from 2023 to now. That is partly the sale of the backbook. That is also partly just we have less assets, so we collect less. That is something that I would expect to stabilize in the coming periods.
The next page is a very important point, which is how much we've done together with Cerberus to date through the first quarter. As I said earlier, we have been operating on a term sheet basis, working together across our footprint since the middle of last year. We've agreed 14 deals, actually closed and funded 11, about EUR 2.5 billion plus, of which we've done over EUR 750 million of our share. What's really interesting is that we have completed investments at a very attractive investing return. Here you indicate on the third bullet point the 1.9 net money multiple that's expected by the end of Q1 2025. What is very important is that this model generates investment management revenues and servicing revenues, which are equivalent to not more than ultimately our investing returns.
That's the beauty of the model, that we invest with a partner, we have our share of investing returns, we make decisions on investments based on investment return, and then we have the added benefit to our model of investment management fees and servicing revenue. Again, we signed the definitive document regarding this in this past, the beginning of April. Ultimately, what this means is that we now, we believe, over the coming quarters, we want to scale up our volumes done in this partnership. The next page goes through a fundamental point here, which is the diffusion and inclusion and use of technology in our platform. Ophelos, as many of you know, is the autonomous debt resolution platform that we purchased in 2023. It is now in six countries: U.K., Ireland, Spain, France, Belgium, and Netherlands.
is now going to be in Portugal and Italy in the coming month. By the end of the year, we will be in four other countries: Greece, Germany, Sweden, and potentially Norway. Where we have it rolled out, you see a very common theme and a very consistent impact: higher collections relative to our legacy collections capability, better customer experience, and lower cost, so higher margin for us. For a company that ultimately has 30 million consumers, almost EUR 200 billion or SEK 2 trillion of assets under management, including our own and client assets, and takes 160 million actions a year, you can imagine what that kind of potential impact could be when rolled out across the entire platform.
Our objective is between now and the end of the year to not only get into these four additional countries, but ramp up volumes in the countries where Ophelos does exist. We will see a tangible run rate impact at the end of this year and going into next year. In addition, just anecdotally, on the bottom left, during the quarter, we launched Olivia, which is our AI voice agent to make fully automated AI automated outbound calls. We are making about 10,000 a month in Spain related to our real estate business. That is going to go up by several multiples in the coming weeks, excuse me. What we have seen is that this agent, AI agent, which fully identifies itself as an AI agent, is actually more effective at getting to a positive conclusion phone call than human agents.
Again, going back to if you look at that and then put it in relation to the 5,000-6,000 people we have in over 40 call centers, the potential is quite dramatic. Next page. Again, we are incredibly privileged to play an important societal role. We continue to help people who are in a very difficult situation, who are in debt that they can't potentially address directly, and they want, they're looking for solutions. We provide them with those solutions. We deal with them in a very delicate time, and we provide them with solutions on an industrial scale. We helped 4.6 million people over the last 12 months become debt-free. These are individuals, you've heard me say this many times, but it's one of the privileges of our function as a company.
These individuals now can reintegrate into financial society because they are excluded until they are able to deal with this debt. Despite dealing with them at a very delicate time, we get very positive ratings. All of this activity leads to delivering also for our clients, which we consistently over the last 12 months continue to deliver in large scale at SEK 119 billion total, of which a little bit less, about 9% or so, a little bit less, is for our own book. The rest are for clients. The last point I'll make, and this is deliberately the last point in the main section because hopefully going forward, we won't even have to have a page like this. The recapitalization, as I said earlier, we've turned the page. It is effectively concluded. The court processes were all concluded and in our favor.
We have overwhelming creditor support. Now what is left is regulatory approvals, which are conditions precedent, and we expect to close it at the beginning of July. With that. Maybe on that today, actually. Please. Yesterday was the last day of appeal in the Swedish court, which means that effective from today, the court ruling is fully in place. Wonderful. Hand it over to Johan. Which is what we expected.
Thank you, Andrés. Talking about the financials on the group level, I mean, we improve on every line except for the income side, where we are slightly down. We will go through that a little bit more later on. I think the EBIT uptick and the discipline that we showed basically brings us to deliver a net income in this quarter, which is the first time since Q4 2023.
I think the things that we have highlighted during the fall, which is around making the service margin increase, continuing to extract value on the investing side, ramping up the partnership with Cerberus. However, that hopefully should be accelerating now, being strict on cost, not being very, very disciplined when it comes to taking extraordinary costs. I think all of those things are delivered in the first quarter. I think that's a testament to what we actually that we are now doing. We're sort of starting to find a pace and a cadence in our business along with the markets that is fully aligned. The leverage ratio stays flat at 4.5. We do have tailwinds from the FX side, but we also do have headwinds because the discontinued business rolls out every quarter. I think that's sort of the summary from the first page.
We go to the next page. This just illustrates how our cost has emerged over time. You can see that the cost level we put in Q3 remains flat, i.e., we're basically able to compensate for any increases by being more efficient. We will continue to focus on cost. We will continue to focus on structural measures to continue to take the cost down and also to compensate for any investments that we need to make. On top of that, we have the whole impact from Ophelos and other technologies that will also help us on the cost side. You can see that our FDEs are continuing down, which they have been for many quarters now.
Going to the next page on servicing, I mean, first of all, starting the year off on an adjusted margin of 21% gives us a very, very strong platform for the rest of the year. I think if you look at the servicing business, we have very different dynamics in the different regions. I think Andrés showed you the fundamentals. In North and Middle, we will continue to focus on the adjusted margin going up and continue to grow the top line. In the South, we have a nice margin. There, the issue is that we need to now get back to growing top line. That is going to be one of the main things that we work with going forward throughout the year. That is mainly related to Spain and Greece. Italy, we see actually that we can extract income in that market.
The IECs that we have, which are fairly small, but they're still there, they relate to the U.K. and Spain, where we still are working heavily on the transition and the transformation. We're getting sort of, we're past the, we've been past the peak, but we will continue to improve both those countries as it relates to the M&A effects and the integrations. I think it's quite telling. I mean, an EBIT increase of more than two times on an adjusted basis just shows that our servicing business has very, very good traction. On the investing side, of course, we would like to invest more. We would like to extract, we would like to invest more, but at the same time, the investing business is not something you do on a targeted investing metric. You invest on.
If we do not see those returns, we have to stay disciplined. I think this is more a testament that we actually have the discipline to not deploy money where we should not. Of course, now we are having signed a partnership, we want to see those volumes ramping up, but we are also partly depending on where the market is here. We are continuing to extract good money from the backbook. We do suffer a little bit from higher cost in the quarter, and that is mainly the reason why the ROI goes down. We will have to look into how we can be even more efficient in our collection to avoid those extra costs going forward. There is also part of this that is legal costs that will come back with higher collections.
On the net debt, we do have some, I mean, we do have 1.6 billion of operating cash flow lowering the net debt. Then we have a bit of finance net going the other way. We have investing, which is lower than expected, as we discussed. The FX is obviously a big tailwind here. On the other hand, when we look at the leverage ratio, as I said, the discontinued business is now only included with one quarter, and it will fully exit as per Q2. We expect that the IRR levels for the new investments to remain at the high level. We are not going to sacrifice the IRR going forward for volume. Page 19 is essentially a repeat of what we showed before. It is the new maturity profile. I am not going to comment too much on that.
I think what is worth mentioning is that the cash and cash equivalent has gone up to SEK 3.2 billion from SEK 2.5 billion. We are improving our cash position on a quarter-to-quarter basis. Finally, on the financial targets, I mean, the KGAR on the external servicing is pretty much in line. We need to work to continue to keep that around 10%. The service margin, we are not going to celebrate that yet, but it is moving clearly in the right direction. We feel quite comfortable that we can meet that target going forward. On the investing book, I think here it is more a question of how we can actually get the book to shrink less. That is something that we have on the agenda. We basically want to stabilize the book as much as possible.
Last, on the leverage ratio, we are stable, and we are targeting for that to continue to go down.
Great. If we can go to page 22, I will just make some very brief summary comments, and then we will open it up to questions. The first quarter, which was a very active quarter, is also seasonally our slowest quarter or our seasonally most conservative quarter. Therefore, to have the kind of results we have sets us up, as Johan just said a few minutes ago, very nicely for the rest of the year. During the quarter, top left on page 22, we had the Swedish reorganization confirmed. That is effectively the final step towards turning the page on our recapitalization, which we have done.
We continue to focus on cost, and we have now transitioned from two discrete cost reduction and targeted cost reduction programs that we have successfully completed to now managing our total cost base, which was evident on Johan's page and continually improving that. We continue to utilize and include technology in our business. I gave you some ideas earlier and in prior sessions as well as to the potential impact of that. We now need to execute on that impact over the coming periods. Ultimately, it is margin improvement and address the top line in servicing and investing collections above forecast while we ramp up our partnership model.
That is in somewhat what the quarter is. I think what it also demonstrates finally, and then I will turn it to questions, is the strength of the platform and the strength of the people.
We had an incredibly active last year with many fronts open. For the company to operate with these kind of results while we are going through a recapitalization, while we are trying to reorient the strategy, etc., etc., is just a testament to the quality of the people, not just on this call, but all 10,000 people or 9,000 people in the platform. I am incredibly proud of how the platform has performed during this period. We are now entering a new chapter. We are going to put the recapitalization behind us, and we are going to attack the business. We have the largest commercial footprint. We have a large capital base, and the number one MPL investor is our capital partner. We are including technology. I think that, I believe, will lead to success in the periods to come.
With that, we can go off to Q&A operator, and Jakob will be the first one as always.
To ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Jakob Hesslelvik from SEB. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Andrés and Johan. If we start with the servicing side, I mean, the EBIT improvement, it seems that expenses are finally under control, which is comforting. Should we expect the current staff cost to be the new running rate with further reductions to come in future quarters from layoffs made late in 2024? Also, what reductions do you see from Ophelos being rolled out in Portugal and Italy?
I think that if you look at the, there is a slight run rate effect that will come throughout the year. In terms of technology and sort of Ophelos, the true impact of that will probably be seen more into 2026 rather than 2025 because we're still ramping it up, and we need to see that we can fully scale it. To be fair, I mean, we have rolled it out in many markets, but the full scalability, we're doing on a more selected basis. When it comes to Olivia, that effect will be seen probably already this year, but it's not going to be material on a group level because we need to sort of make sure that it works properly. Yeah, that's probably also more of a 2026.
Yes, the cost, I mean, we expect that the cost at the end of the year will, on a run rate, be lower than at the beginning of the year. Going into 2026, it should continue.
Absolutely. I mean, I think, Jakob, we started the year last year at 9, ended at 19. We start the year this year at 21. That means I'm comfortable with the 25% target. Also, it's very tactical. It's not fundamental, as Jakob just indicated. What we really see is the Ophelos impact beyond this year into next year and further to be more fundamental improvement. We needed to do the tactical, as you indicated. Now we're going to, through this year, continue to benefit from that. You'll see the fundamental on top of that.
I think the other thing is comforting.
Servicing, just to add to that, Jacob, I mean, one thing is to get the cost down. Another thing is to get the full scalability on the platform. We need to work on both because we can decrease the cost, but then as we want to grow, we also need to make sure we do not add back cost every time we get new contracts. I think that is another sort of area that we focus on a lot to both be more efficient but also create scalability on the business we run.
Yeah, that is a good point. Talking about scalability, I mean, margins within investing used to be at lower levels given the slightly higher cost, which you once stated before.
Is it due to the book becoming too small and that you're losing the scale benefits you once had within this segment, or is it just that the backbook is becoming too old? Second, do you have any plans for reducing the cost base in this segment going forward?
Okay. I think, first of all, it's not the first, it's the latter. Basically, the book is getting older and older. The older the book gets, the more effort we have to put on collections or on efforts to collect. I mean, we definitely have, we are looking through our PI structure and how we can make that more efficient as well.
Yeah. I mean, we are, I mean, again, the backbook is decaying, but also we have three elements to our PI book.
We have the true backbook that we own 100% of, which is getting older and costing us more to collect. That's the primary driver of what you're seeing. We have Orange, which is what we did with service to backbook sale, which we still own a meaningful levered stake. That is actually performing quite well and in line with expectations. We have what we call Project Blue, which is the service partnership, which is going to ramp up and be at higher IRRs and give us all the other benefits. The mix of all that is you'll see the ROI going up, but we still have to deal with the aging assets, which cost more to collect. That's just a fact.
Yeah. That's good. My very last question is on the leverage ratio, which was flat despite the tailwind from FX.
As you talked about the cash EBITDA decreasing and will probably decrease also the next quarter from the discontinued operations. Are you still confident to reach your leverage target by the end of next calendar year? Has a restructuring timeline changed anything when it comes to deleveraging as business momentum is probably not on top of your mind right now with all the legal proceedings?
I mean, we will have a new covenant structure once we close the transaction. That will have a slightly new definition of the leverage ratio. I think we will look at that, obviously, much more than we look at this one in particular because that is going to be the new reality we live in. That is a covenant level that we definitely will make sure that we have good sort of gap towards.
I think when we present the Q2 and we close the transaction, I think we can come back to this question at all. Until then, the three and a half is the target that we're working towards.
Even if you change the definition, will we be able to follow and track you on the three and a half?
Of course. As is today. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know that's the leverage ratio today, but there will be a new definition as well.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you, Jacob. The next question comes from Ermin Karik from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Ermin.
Good morning, Jens. Good morning. The presentation and for taking my question.
Maybe if I start on the servicing margin, do you think you can be at the 25% level for the full year in 2025 already given the good start you've had in Q1? If I just do all the questions right away, the second question is on you said that you wish to stop the investment book from shrinking anymore. How much do you think that you will be investing per annum then to be able to do that? Is the current kind of money multiple sustainable, or is it kind of even higher given that you're doing quite low volumes at the moment?
Lastly, if you could just help us a little bit more on the economics that you mentioned there around the Cerberus partnership with the kind of EUR 450 million invested versus the EUR 650 million in revenues you expect to get, just how you get to those figures. Thank you.
Sure. Thank you for your questions, Ermin. First off, we had an expectation to approach the 25, which meant we were not going to get there, but we were going to get close this year. We have obviously outperformed in our first quarter. We will see how that ripples into the second, third, and fourth quarter. I think ultimately, as I said earlier, we are comfortable with that target. How we are getting there is more tactical than fundamental. You can derive the appropriate messages from that statement.
On the second point, we would love to stop the backbook from shrinking. We have a targeted investment of about SEK 2 billion a year. Replacement CapEx against our existing book is above SEK 3 billion. We're not going to be at SEK 3 billion over the near term because we want to also delever. We have to balance managing and scaling up our investment book with deleveraging as well. We have to balance those two, which is why your third question is a very logical question. The service partnership is fundamental to it.
We have every euro or SEK, if you will, that we invest, we not only get the return on that investment, which is typically high teens, and this quarter it was about 20, but then we also get fees when we close the deal on their capital invested, every year fees on what we collect on their behalf, and then ultimately fees based on their long-term return. On top of that, we get servicing over the life of those assets. That 650 is a combination of the investment management fees, which are upfront and ongoing, and then back-ended, plus our servicing revenue over the life of it. It is an incredibly favorable model in terms of giving us operating leverage. We are an investor, but also just as importantly, if not more importantly, a large operating platform that collects on these assets.
Cerberus is a capital partner that brings capital and sophistication and discipline. I think this model works very well for both of us and is incredibly complementary. Over time, as we scale it up, we will provide a much higher return on our capital invested than we had historically, where we had a 100% proprietary book as opposed to now an investment management model. Hopefully, that addressed your questions, Ermin.
Yeah. Maybe on the first one, Ermin, I mean, the 25%, we want to improve the servicing as much as possible. If that means that we hit the 25 already this year, that would be a great benefit. As I think Anders said, I mean, we work to get as good as possible, and then the result of that we will have to see. Correct.
We wouldn't hold off on the 2025 just because we said it will happen next year. If we get there, we get there.
Yeah. When we get there, we're not going to stop. We're going to continue to grow. Exactly. Exactly. Next question.
Okay. The limit. Thanks, Ermin.
The next question comes from Ageliki Bairaktari from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Good morning.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. Three questions from me. Good morning. Just three from me, please. First of all, just to come back to the Cerberus partnership, when shall we expect to see those management fees and potentially also performance fees, like a more meaningful contribution for those with income line?
Because, I mean, obviously, you do not break it down at the moment, but I would expect it is probably immaterial this year, but something more material next year as you ramp up the investments there. Have you considered doing similar capital partnerships with other players outside of Cerberus? Secondly, with regards to servicing, I was wondering in which areas do you actually see growth in Northern and Middle Europe? Are those clients that you are servicing there, the new clients that you are bringing on, mostly banking clients or sort of clients of utilities or commerce? How is the pipeline looking for client wins? I think in the past, you were giving us the annual contract value development, which I do not think you have included in the presentation this time. If you can give some color there, that would be great.
Then with regards to the investing division again, just with regards to the EBIT margin, which fell quite a bit to 48% in the first quarter, I heard your comment about sort of the aging book, which is harder to collect. How should we think about the evolution of the margin there in that division going forward? Thank you.
Sure. Thank you. Let's first talk about the service partnership.
You're correct that this still needs to ramp up and that you're going to see some level of both what we call execution fees, which are done when we close the transaction, and then ongoing performance management fees, which are based on collections this year. You're really not going to see that be meaningful until we ramp up significantly, which will be more next year event than this year event.
We are going to start disclosing this in a discreet fashion in the second half of this year in line with our transition from a proprietary investor to an investment management platform. On your question of other capital partnerships, we are approached on a regular basis by many capital sources to access this asset class. They have to come through us because of the nature of the asset class and who we are. Cerberus is our primary and exclusive partner in consumer unsecured, but we are in dialogues and always are open to dialogues with other capital partners. Long term, our objective is not to have a single partner, but to have many partners and also to have a broad-based, even LP-based, limited partner-based investing business down the road. On servicing, it is broad-based. In the North and Middle Europe, it is very broad-based.
It is roughly 50/50 banks and industrial clients. Industrial clients, we manage invoices for. Banks, we manage loans for. Also in Southern Europe, although there is a structural decline, Italy, as Johan pointed out earlier, does not have the same effect. This is part of the evolution of the Southern markets in that when you have very large one-time transfers and also a very quick creation of an industry such as it was in Spain more than 10 years ago, but now in Greece more recently, five-six years ago, you do have this structural decline, and then it develops. Italy has had a very developed servicing market for decades, and that is why you see stability to growth in Italy. You will see this process in the future in the other two markets, but it takes time, and you need to work off the traditional assets.
Ultimately, we want to raise our growth in the North and Middle Europe, and we will do that. We want to mitigate the near-term decline, structural decline in Southern Europe. In investing, yeah, the EBIT margin has come down because of the age of the book. As you see the service partnership ramp up on the investing book itself, the IRR should come up and the ROI should come up. It is related to your first point as well. The fees will start flowing into this business, and you'll look at it and see that on a totality basis, per unit of invested capital, we're getting a much, much better return across the entire company.
Yeah. I think we will, at one point, we will actually start showing our businesses in three lines.
We would have then the servicing, we would have our pure investment business. Our balance sheet. Balance sheet. Then we would have our asset management. We're not there yet, because it's still not fully meaningful, but we will. On the investing side, I'd also like to add, I mean, if you look at the investing results, I mean, on our own book, it's kind of in line with last year. It's just that the book is slightly smaller, so the income is lower, but the costs are also slightly lower. The biggest delta is on the JVs. On the JV line, you see we had roughly EUR 200 million of contribution last year. Now we have EUR 72 million. Out of that EUR 72 million, basically, we have EUR 125 million coming from our JVs with Cerberus, orange and blue, and then the rest is actually negative.
If you remember the old JVs, they are more of a, let's say, secure type of asset character. They will have swings. You will also see going forward that some quarters they will be better and some quarters they will be worse because they do not have a constant flow. I think that is also something that actually is a negative in this quarter, that the old JVs are not performing. They are performing on a collections basis, but on a profit basis, we do not get the full P&L effect given the structure.
Thank you, Andrés. I think we had a question on the ACVs.
Did you have anything further? Sorry. I think she hung up.
Okay. Thank you. Yes. There was a question on, I mean, I just wanted to check if you want to disclose that number. You used to disclose it.
I don't think you disclosed it, didn't you, Juan?
No. We are basically reviewing the whole ACV setup, and especially we're trying to figure out how we can better track the ACV into real revenue. For the moment, until that work is ongoing, we have decided not to disclose the ACVs, to make sure that's not misleading. You do have the ACV, or you have the assets under management, which is a different thing, but the ACVs we have decided to not disclose for the time being.
Thank you. The next question comes from Mikel Luzma from Bain Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the presentation. Could you discuss the terms of the settlement with the short end notes? I'm not sure we have publicly disclosed them.
I can tell you right now that effectively we call it a settlement, but it is effectively, and I will say this openly in any forum, it was a capitulation on their part that we were going to be successful. We covered a minor portion of their fees, and they agreed to support in every forum. They agreed to withdraw their opposition and support in both the US and in Europe.
Yeah. It was a settlement, but effectively we basically covered some of their costs, more or less. That's it.
It would be maybe a single-digit million?
I mean, you're not far off. It was minor. I can say it right there.
Okay.
Maybe following up on Ageliky's question on the margin on investing and the decay on the book, I did not really understand how if the margin on the back book is getting worse because the book is getting older, why unit economics are going to get better. I did not really follow that. If you could maybe explain that again, please.
Let me start with, as you have a pool of assets that gets older, it costs more to collect. The same unit of collections against that original investment costs more. That is our Intrum back book. Then we have orange, which, as Johan said, which is the back book we sold to Cerberus, which is performing quite well, is levered. It is important to know that it is levered, and we are getting a return there that is quite attractive, and that contributes to the margin.
Ultimately, we have the new partnership with Cerberus, which is both collecting at a higher rate and now ramping up and at a higher IRR. The blend of those three, you should see the ROI improving going forward. That is not even including the benefits of the service partnership to investment management and to servicing. I hope that addresses your question. Yeah. With the blend of the three, it should get better, but if we look at the back book itself, it should continue to get the. Yeah. That is the nature of these assets. Yes. And yeah.
What should be the magnitude of the, if we think that you are going to continue investing below replenishment at maybe a similar rate as what you are investing now, and the book is going to continue to decline, and the book is going to continue getting old, where do we think margins could get? Maybe it is like in the low 30s? Is it in the 20s? Or is it still high 30s? Where is the trough for collections margins? No, I mean, listen, I think that the new, so, we have a target investment rate of SEK 2 billion a year. Replenishment is above SEK 3 billion. That delta does not mean that the book is going to decline massively. It is going to decline very gradually going forward because it is a large book. Therefore, you will see some moderation.
On purely the back book, you'll see some moderation in reduction in collection margin. It will be more than offset with return on the lever joint venture with Cerberus and the other joint ventures as they come back. They're lumpy now, but they come back. With the new investments, as those gain higher IRRs, that will also contribute to the return on this business, not to mention the other benefits of the service partnership.
Listen, I think we don't anticipate our margin to decline significantly.
Yeah. There will be some quarters will be better. Some quarters will be worse. Go ahead.
I mean, you have touched on this, but in general, on servicing, organic growth continues to be a challenge.
I think Southern Europe has been a challenge for a while, and the rest of Europe is barely breakeven on an organic basis. What should we expect for the next few quarters? In Middle and Northern Europe, where you have grown at 2%, rise is the volume. What has driven that 2% growth?
We expect, and you have hit upon one of our primary areas of focus right now, which is we want to regain an overall growth trajectory to what today is on a blended basis, effectively stable to slightly down top line in servicing. We fundamentally have to do that. In the North and Middle Europe, it is 2%, as we indicated in the presentation, on a truly 12-month basis. That has come from improvements in number of clients and AUM, as well as slight improvement in conversion margin in those two regions.
Southern Europe, as we indicated, when you disaggregate it, it's really Spain and Greece that have headwinds on the top line. Italy is actually quite favorable, and the Italian platform continues to carve out a bigger and bigger revenue out of that market. When we look at the blend of this, our goal is to improve the Middle and North, which we are doing, and to mitigate the Southern European decay. The blend of which should be higher than flat. We want to regain a growth trajectory over the coming quarters. That is our objective. Also, as part of the exercise to increase the margins, we've actually said no to quite some business, and we actually have terminated a number of client contracts. That also has a negative effect on our top line.
It does help us on the margin because we take out costs at the same time, but it does not help us on the top line. Now, when we sort of have been washing through the portfolio and getting to an end to that, even though this is a continuous process, the big exercise has been done. It will also help us to then regain, again, top line growth because we will then not have any more washouts. We will basically continue to work with the existing clients that are on the margin, which is okay, and then attract new clients and new contracts. Also, on top of that, if we can get performance, we can probably shift even more volumes onto our platform from other platforms where we already have an existing relationship. Yeah. I think that last point is actually a very, very good point.
I mean, fundamentally, how do we grow? We grow with getting more clients and more assets or selling them new services. Also, let's keep in mind that we are the number one and number two servicer in every market we operate in. There are a lot of other servicers because of financial difficulties or regulation that are falling away. That business will naturally come to us over time. We are cleaning up our revenue base, as Johan said, but ultimately, we have a plan to sell more and to sell new. We will also benefit from the environmental struggles that some of our direct competitors have, and we'll work through this washing out effect of bad clients, which impacts negatively our top line but improves our EBIT line. Yeah.
To be fair also, I mean, still, there are a lot of the, let's say, a big part of the market is want to do a pure play on the investing side, but they still sit on servicing. That is also something that we see, that there are still a number of exits that has not happened, and that would help us because that is business that we can take over as some of the other players transition fully into investing.
Yeah. Yeah. To be fair, your margins have been surprisingly good this quarter, so that is showing in the numbers. I think the question on prime volume has not been answered, so if you could follow up on that.
Sorry, can you restate the question? I thought we had addressed your questions. Can you just restate it for us, please?
Yeah.
If you could break down the 2% organic growth in Northern and Middle Europe in price and volume. I do not have those figures at hand. Are you getting volumes, or is it both? It is both.
It is both. We have more clients, more assets, and we have a slightly better conversion rate.
Okay. Okay. That was it. Thank you.
Reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial #5 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Null. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. Wolfgang Felix here from Sarria. I meant to ask, what is your duration now on that orange book? If I followed your color coding correctly, that is the book you are sharing. What is your average duration of that book versus, I guess, the full book?
I mean, again, it's going to be skewed in terms of, I think, again, it's going to be skewed in terms of its translation into our results because it is levered, but that has a typical duration of kind of, there's going to be collections over the next 15 years there. It's going to be skewed, as all our books, to a weighted average that will be slightly less than five years. But that's a weighted average. Remember that our asset class, by definition, has significant earnings, but then it's almost asymptotic into the long term, and it'll have a very long tail. We'll be collecting on that book for many, many, many, many years, but the lion's share of the going forward ERC is going to be in the next, the majority of the ERC is going to be in the next five years.
It is going to be levered, so it is going to provide us with a significant return. Let us be clear that that book is a cross-section of our entire book. It actually is very representative of the asset class in general. It does not have a shorter duration than yours. It does not have a duration than yours. 100%. All right. Okay. That makes sense. Fundamental difference between the orange book and our back book. As regards to the back book now becoming, I guess, naturally more expensive to collect, we are in a higher interest rate environment, and you are about to come out the other end of your restructuring. Should we look for a bit of a write-down there to bring that profitability back in line with, I guess, the business required to collect it? Is there something we should be looking forward to?
We would not anticipate that, but obviously, we look at this on a continuous basis. Let's not forget that we, going back to my presentation, over the life of our assets, we have collected at 107%-108% of original forecast. That's what drives write-downs or write-ups, so to speak. Our active forecast collection is always lower than our original forecast, and that's going to be true for the back book. That's going to be true as we add to the back book with the new assets in the new partnership with Cerberus. I wouldn't say that you should anticipate any meaningful write-downs over the medium term. Again, we look at this on a continual basis.
Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you. Good luck. Thank you very much.
No more questions at this time.
I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Excellent. Thank you. Listen, I want to just thank everyone for listening to us today, for your very good questions. Hopefully, this has been illuminating as to kind of the quality of our efforts, of the business, the results of our efforts. We continue to be available after this call for any of you, so please reach out to us through the normal channels. Thank you again for following the company. We will talk again next quarter, and with some of you, we may speak before then. We're always available to address any and all questions. Thank you again, and have a good day.