Hello, good morning, good afternoon. My name is Michał Zasępa. I'm Board Member of KRUK, and I'm happy to walk you through the Q2 results that we made public yesterday evening. I will be referring to the presentation that that is available on our upside, and also, I will share it with you on Teams. That should hopefully be visible already. Please, during the my presentation and after it, ask question through chat on Teams, and I will go back to those questions after my presentation and, and answer them. Let's start. This is again, a big pleasure for me, because KRUK has just posted the best results in its history, in its 25 years of history.
Our net profit for this first six months of this year is PLN 528 million. That compares to PLN 36 million of net profit for the first year, where we were a publicly listed company 12 years ago. It's a decent track record of growth, I think. Net profit is one thing, but also underlying cash was very strong. We had over PLN 1.5 billion of recoveries, satisfying or very satisfying results across all our markets. No sign of deterioration of negative macro impact. Maybe some positives were coming through as, as some tax releases, refunds happened, for example, in Poland, and probably also helped us. Overall, we see a strong consumer, employed consumer.
Despite high inflation, depressed GDP growth, we enjoy strong recoveries across all the markets that we are in. As a result, we also see a very strong cash EBITDA that exceeded PLN 1.07 billion for the six months. In this environment of high interest costs, we don't see an increase in the market, the supply of NPLs, but we do see a decrease of competition, and this is very positive for KRUK. We closed PLN 1.2 billion of investments in new portfolios, and there is more coming. We made available information, and in July, we already won two additional portfolios in Spain, significant portfolios, and the pipeline for the next months of 2023 is quite strong.
It may be that in 2023, we will have a record high investments in debt purchased, even though last year was already very, very high at PLN 2.3 billion. We continue to be highly profitable on ROE, as you see here. It's trending down as our very profitable bad book depreciates over time, but it's still much above the average in the industry. Our assets go up according to, in line with the growth of investments, and we achieved this growth at still quite moderate leverage level, which reached about 2 x net debt to cash EBITDA. As I mentioned, it's a special year for us. In KRUK, we celebrate 25 years history.
Just to remind you, from PLN 3,000 of startup capital to roughly PLN 8.6 billion of market cap. Currently, it's a good story of 25 years of mostly organic growth and a lot of good decisions aimed at building shareholding value. We are today even more international than last quarter. If you look at split of investments, over 3/4 of our investments come also now already outside of Poland, and close to 60% of our recoveries is coming outside of Poland. We continue to focus on technology and development, greater automation, and this is something will be important for us for the next many years to come, and we believe we're just at the beginning of this journey that will lead to higher return on investments, to greater flexibility, and higher cost efficiencies.
We are proud to, to be one of the best-rated company in, in the industry. Least leveraged one, probably one of the most profitable one, and quite balanced in terms of, for example, mix of male and women managers, which works very well for us. Now, if you look at split of the recoveries, you see here, Poland contributed over 40%, increasing share of Italian and, and Spanish recoveries. That trend should continue as we continue to buy more in those two countries. Overall, as I said, recoveries were, were, were excellent for the 6 months and for the 2nd quarter, and we expect them to be strong in the coming months. A very good situation on the investment front. We do see lower competition.
We are able to buy portfolios at higher margins than last year. This is eventually an effect we think of, of coming to a more reasonable situation, where competitors are pricing, pricing these portfolios with a more long-term view, and there is less hot money in the industry. Some of our competitors, as you may know, are more limited now with heavy leverage on their, on their balance sheets. We benefit from the situation. I think this situation is much better for KRUK, that situation with zero interest rates in Eurozone, during which period we, we saw very high competition, and often we couldn't, we were not able to be competitive enough to win portfolio. Even without increase of the market, we are now able to buy significantly more portfolio because competition is lower.
As you will see in further slides, our market shares on some of the markets is quite high, and it wouldn't be possible, A, because of, of, of the competition, but B, because we continue to show more effectiveness, and that is translated into our pricing models and allow us to offer to the banks higher price and makes us more competitive. If you look at revenues, they are quite healthy. You see another quarter of a strong and sizable positive revaluation, which shows you that we continue on this strong recovery path. You see a growth of expenses, which is led by inflation of, of, salaries in the region in which we operate.
12% was the growth of salaries year-to-year, which is about the average for which we raised the salaries by, and you see a significant increase in operating expense, which are mostly legal costs, which is a good thing. It means we see potential to make good profit on these investments, expenses into legal, into legal process. Financial costs grew very significantly, more than 50% year-on-year, but less than you if you would expect if you compared the interest rate increase and the growth of, of the debt on the balance sheet.
The reasons for that is that we have successfully hedged significant portion of our debt, swapped Polish złoty-denominated debt to fixed euro instrument, becoming more stable and becoming less sensitive for future changes of interest rate, but also lowering the costs because Euribor fixed rate euro-denominated fixed instruments are significantly less expensive than our PLN złoty debt. We have a better match between our assets and between our euro-denominated assets and liabilities. The company is very well-funded. If you look at the equity, we are planning to pay out the dividend at the end of September, as you may remember. We also have improved our access to debt funding. We successfully closed negotiations with a number of banks funding us so far.
They agreed to extend some of the lines that they have, and we have successfully placed two issues of bonds, unsecured bonds to Polish retail investors, and that was quite well-received. We see big demand, and we are planning to be more often present on this market in the coming quarters. We also may think about an issue of unsecured bonds to Polish investors sometime over over fall of this year. If you look at slide number eight, this is a more detailed description of what we are working on in the technology development. The most important is the digitalization of our collection process, both amicable and legal.
That should allow us to speed up the process, that should allow us to be more productive, to also need somewhat less people, to do certain, certain, functions. It doesn't mean that we necessarily will have less people as we grow, but we'll need to grow the amount of people less, achieving higher productivity, because of these, of these automations that we, that we introduced. As an example, I can tell you, in Q2 alone, 30,000 of users across three countries, Poland, Italy, or Romania, activated their e-KRUK accounts, and started to self-manage the repayment of their indebtedness. We think this is a beginning of a several years program that will lead KRUK to become a much more technologically advanced and automated company.
We see it as a big opportunity, an element of our competitive advantage if we do it right, and this is, this is our plan. Now take a look at slide number 10. That's a summary of segment results. As you see here, PLN 1.2 billion of investments came in the biggest part from Italy, we're very happy with these investments. They wouldn't be possible in, in, in the previous years because of the competition. Spain contributed about PLN 200 million, but, please expect it to be significantly more after we book these two additional tenders that we already won. Again, this is a significant change in competitive situation, which is, showing strength of our competitive situation in position in, in those two markets.
Also, I'm, I'm happy to tell you that in Q2, in Poland, we were much more successful in buying portfolios than in Q1. The market opened up, accepted our higher, higher returns. So, so it also bodes well for, for the future. Romania remained also a, a stronghold for, for KRUK, a relatively small investment, but it was also relatively small value, value of, of investments on the, on the primary market. The market share, as you will see in a second, remained quite good. If you, if you look at, at EBITDA, a very solid result across the four main markets of Poland, Romania, Italy and Spain, cash EBITDA, also record high. You can see significant increases on each and every of, of these markets.
Now, a deeper dive across each of those markets. Poland, the market is solid. Supply was quite strong. You see here, PLN 4.5 billion versus PLN 7 billion for the full year, 2022. Hopefully, this year will show even growth versus last year. In that market, in unsecured consumer segment, we had over 30% market share, which is satisfactory, and hopefully, we'll keep or increase this in the following quarters. The results for Poland were very good. You can see here, we added about PLN 200 million of new investments. Recoveries were strongest ever, and those two quarters in Poland were spectacularly good, I must say. Hence, revaluation is quite high, as you see here.
Also, you can see quite good results on Wonga in terms of EBITDA. Overall profitability of that business is quite high, at over 30%. Romania, we kept the strong position of the leader on that market, with about 49% in the primary sales of unsecured consumer debt. There was one big transactions sale of Intrum's assets, low nominal value, not so high value of the investments. Somebody else bought this portfolio. Overall, the market is, the market is stable, but the size, as you see here, this PLN 300 million remains not so, not so big. The results were very good. We added another PLN 100 million of investments. The recoveries were very, very good at PLN 155 million.
That again, let us recognize significant positive revaluation, record high EBITDA, as you see here, and also our highest profitability of portfolio, over 40, 40%. If you look at Italy, also a relatively good market, although if you look at nominal especially, but also the value of investment, that is less than 50% of the last year. Supply in that market, we bought whatever we thought was worth it and allowed us, and for the first time, possibly in our history, we had 50, as much as 50% market share, which shows the long way we have gone in Italy, and shows also some of lower competitive pressure that we, that we see. Results were very good.
We added another close to PLN 200 million of, of, of portfolio. Our balance sheet grew in Italy to PLN 1.8 billion. It was another positive quarter in terms of a positive revaluation and also good EBITDA and cash EBITDA, as you see, as you see here. If you look at, at this graph, you can see nine positive quarters showing we are going up with our recovery expectations, and we are able to move the, the recovery curves up and, and follow this path. That's something we, we, we expected, and that's something which is, which is happening. Finally, Spain.
About 7.5 million of nominal was sold on that market, and about PLN 500 million of unsecured consumer portfolios was the market price for these portfolios. KRUK took a big chunk of that. 39% was our share in unsecured consumer debt from primary markets. Again, it wouldn't be possible if it was not for our increased competitiveness in terms of efficiency of the process and lower competition on that market, and likely will keep that strong position or maybe even improve it after we bought the two additional big portfolios in July.
Again, this is for us, a very good time in Spain, where after several years of hard work, we can see the fruits of that development and the market position. High interest rates, relative weakness of our competitors helps us to establish a firmer position on that market. You see here that we added another PLN 661 million. We had some positive revaluation on our assets and we had good results on EBITDA and cash EBITDA, with satisfying profitability comparable to what we have in Italy. Other assets com performed very well in terms of cash EBITDA recoveries.
Also, we're happy with the level of expenditures here of PLN 60 million here coming from Czech and Slovakia. We paid an extra VAT, which is mostly in one-off, and that mostly is the reason for low EBITDA for that, for that quarter. Also, we are happy with the results of our cash loan business. Loan, as you see here, grew significantly, and EBITDA year-over-year, Novum remain highly profitable, although the results are somewhat worse than last year. Nothing to worry about here. We realize our plan. A few words about funding. You, as I mentioned, we are in quite comfortable situation after we concluded negotiations with banks funding us.
We also are quite positive on the Polish bond market, and the retail, the two retail issues that were so successful also tell us that we should be, we should be coming to that market more frequently, and this is our plan, and we have not yet tested the Polish bond market in the past several months. We may do it over fall. That means that likely, we will not tap the Euro bond market this year, as we will not have such a need. It seems that access to funding will not be limitation for us, even if the investments this year will be record high. Overall, the company is in best shape it ever been. Please take a look at those quarterly numbers for the last nine quarters.
There's a really nice development, I think, on all the main key measures of the business. Look at recoveries, gradual growth from PLN 550 to over PLN 770 million. Look at revenues, also showing similar trajectories of growth. Look at EBITDA, growing from PLN 200, PLN 100 to close to PLN 400. Net profit, a bit more jumpy, but also you can see a trend, an increasing trend, and cash EBITDA growing nicely from close to PLN 400 to well over PLN 500, close to PLN 550. We are in growth phase. We believe, we, we are on the right track to continue to strengthen our position across the four main markets.
In Europe, we believe there is more of this growth to come in this environment of higher interest rates and relatively weaker competition. We have place on the balance sheet to continue this organic growth. This is our strategy to continue to push our elbows and strengthen our position in the next couple quarters. We're quite optimistic, focused on further operating improvements, and so far, this is proving probably the best strategy we can have. Thank you very much. This concludes my presentation, and I will now look at the questions, and please ask questions through chat. I'll be very happy now to take them.
The first question is, should we expect in H2 to see more investments outside of Poland as it was in H1? Possibly, as Poland is just one of the four big markets that we are in, as we just announced that we bought two significant portfolios in Spain. Notwithstanding the fact, we expect a good supply of portfolios in Poland, majority of the investments probably will be coming outside of Poland in H2. Another question is, are we planning to enter any new markets? We are open to this, and we are analyzing a possible entry to a new market. Likely, we will not inform the market about it until it happens.
Please remember, even if we do it, then, the equity story for KRUK in the mid and short term, for the next two, three, four years, will be growth of profits on the existing market. Why? First, because we still see a possibility to, to increase investments in those markets. Second, if we make investment today, majority of net profit from that investments will not happen and will not be visible accounted in our P&L this year, next year, or even in two years, but it will be over, most of it will be over the next 10 years, and majority will be between year five and ten. If you're asking, what's the reason why KRUK's profits will be higher in 2025 versus 2023? The reason is, we invested at good returns in 2023, a lot of money, and in 2022.
That, that, that delay in profit recognition in, at the net profit level has increased, or this delay has increased for two reasons. Funding costs are higher, so it, it takes more time to generate this net profit because we need to pay more for funding. Second, today's process versus the process we had, let's say, five years ago, is, is more heavily geared toward legal collection, which means higher upfront legal fees.
Again, we need to pay down those fees and the margin, the EBITDA, in this initial period of, of work on the, on the portfolios is, is, is lower, and the big gain and, and the high profitability is achieved only after funding costs and legal costs are paid, which means we are in a slightly more long-term business than, than in, in a situation where there was lower interest rates, and we were more relying on, on amicable process versus legal process. Another reasons why, why, you know, the, the new countries likely will not be a growth driver for the profits in the near future, is that our experience shows that it takes us some years to develop a profitable position in the new markets.
Unless we make a great M&A, which contributes money, you know, immediately, which is not our base case strategy, we prefer to build organically, you are likely seeing new markets as a potential for distance, long-term growth, which is, of course, important, but it also tells us, you know, don't make mistake in, in jumping, you know, too quickly to something which is a difficult venture. Another question is, do you see any changes in recovery strength across the markets? No. No, the recoveries are strong, and this is what we expect. Another questions we have is to put more color or unexpected CapEx, and especially in IT. Well, this, the biggest expense that we have in IT, which you may understand as CapEx, is our IT team.
KRUK employs over 300 IT specialists, and most of the development goes as costs that is incurred monthly. The CapEx, which will be amortized and which we on the balance sheet, will grow, definitely, but it will not be very significant, I think, today. We're talking about sums of money of about EUR 10 million annually of CapEx, let's say, compared to a significantly higher amount of money that we pay every month, in keeping this over 300 people, in the IT who do most of the development, and the projects that we are, working on in the technology development. That likely will increase, but it will not be a very high, values, from what we see today.
You ask, what's the split between Polish złoty and Euro funding? The policy that we have is that we fund our investments from debt denominated in the same currency. In practice, it means that we draw Polish złoty bank debt to fund Polish investments. We draw Euro-denominated bank debt to fund from the revolving line, to fund our investments in Europe, but we also may fund the Euro-denominated investments by swapping Polish debt into Euro debt, which we which we also do. You can find the split of Euro-denominated debt, I think even in this presentation on slide 27. You also ask about the new information about potential changes in Italy for debt collectors.
There was an article in Italian press a few days ago about a possible change in law, which will call for a right of the debtor to buy back this person's debt with a markup of 20% from the creditor. We believe this proposal of law has low chances of becoming a law. Why do we think that? Because this proposal is old. It dates back two years. It already was proposed once, and it was at that point, rejected. We understand that such proposal would be very negative, would have very negative effect on the banking industry in Italy, and it will be opposed, we think, by the Bank of Italy.
Also it is not congruent, it is in conflict with the NPL Directive, a European law, which should be adopted by Italy either this year or at the beginning of next year. It's a fact that such proposal was officially put for consideration by one Italian MP. We, we think it will have very little chances of being successful. You're also asking, what level or level of leverage are you comfortable with? You can see the level of leverage currently is about two times net debt to cash EBITDA. We feel very comfortable with this level of leverage. The limiting level of leverage is the level at which we will not be able to repay all of our obligations without refinancing.
This level is still far away from us. It's much higher than we are leveraged now, but it is below the cash EBITDA, net debt to cash EBITDA covenant of 4.0, and it's also lower than this covenant that we have on the net debt to equity of 3.0. Somewhere there, and it is close to the 4.0 minimum covenant of interest cover ratio that we have. I think from that, I'm telling you, you know, we could invest PLN 3 billion this year without losing this comfort.
We could continue to invest PLN 3 billion next year in portfolios in the following years, but somewhere there, we would be getting to this, our more internal limitation of comfort. In our business plan, we never reach this comfort level, and it is our strategy to be rather moderately leveraged than highly leveraged. This business today have a very low risk of refinancing. In our in our projections, we never assume we will refinance because we keep this leverage at low levels. You're also asking, are we thinking about M&A or forecasting on organic growth? Our strategy, base case strategy, is organic growth. We have created a lot of shareholder value because we haven't done much mistakes in M&A.
That's one of the reasons, but we did build a very effective organizations that are taking advantage of our culture and way of managing that we copy from country to country. We would like to keep it because it works very well. However, it may be that at some point we'll make a decision to buy a business, because we will see that this is a good business, that we will believe we would be able to integrate, and the market will be so competitive that it will take us seven years to build it in this country. This situation has not happened yet. We realize it may happen at some point in the future, but that's not something we would plan, and we would still start from the preference, why do we need to buy it?
Maybe it's better to build it ourselves and not pay and have a goodwill on our balance sheet. Another person, Piotr, you're asking if you understood correctly that in Spain, we paid 1% of nominal value for corporate NPLs. No, I, I think that's, that's mistaken. We didn't buy any corporate NPLs in Spain this year. The portfolios we bought, if you ask about Spain, were only consumer unsecured portfolios, and IRRs on those portfolios were among highest we secured this year, and they were a high teen % unlevered. Do you have any other questions? Because I think I answered all of the ones I see here. If not, then thank you very much for your interest in KRUK.
I hope to see many of you on the roadshows, the company plans over the third and fourth quarter, and I wish you good health and good investment decision. Thank you very much. Goodbye.