Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome, and thank you for joining the publication of quarterly statement for the Q1 2023 of Grenke AG. Throughout today's recorded call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press Star, followed by one on your touch-tone telephone. Please press the Star key followed by zero for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Anke Linnartz. Please go ahead, madam. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our Q1 2023 results call with accompanying webcast. We are very pleased that you take the time to participate in our call. My name is Anke Linnartz, Head of Investor Relations, and with me today is Dr. Sebastian Hirsch, our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer. We will start with the presentation, and we'll have time for Q&A right afterwards. Let's get started. Sebastian, the floor is yours. Thank you, Anke. A warm welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for joining us today. I will start with macroeconomics, because macroeconomic level in the beginning of 2023 continued to be challenging. Inflation in our market remains high, and interest rate keep increasing steadily. ECB just recently announced further increase of key interest rate now to 3.75% in May 2023. The interest rate policy and, above all, the speed of interest rate adjustments is different in Europe. That results in volatile currency rates. Further, the financial sector was under pressure, driven by the developments in the USA and Switzerland, with uncertainty remaining in the industry. In the leasing business, market participants are increasingly optimistic. The ifo Business Climate Index for leasing industry rose slightly again in April 2023. While judging the current market situation rather pessimistically, expectations for growth have increased significantly in the sector. The current macroeconomic environment also puts pressure on small, medium enterprise companies, and that are our target customers, as you are aware of. Liquidity becomes increasingly expensive, while prices for investments are rising too. Still, the need for investments is unbroken. That we see also in our new business. As financing partner of small, medium enterprises, our service are more crucial than ever. We provide liquidity saving solutions for immediate investments. Our importance in this field is reflected in the continuous high demand and new business growth we experience in the first month of that year. A key to our high demand is the focus on our customers' needs. Industry introducing green economy objects, such as eBikes, has proven highly successful over the last couple of years and also in the Q1 of 2023. We continue to grow in this field, expanding our product portfolio and enabling our customers to become more sustainable. Ladies and gentlemen, we had a successful start into 2023. As I had pointed out at the presentation of our annual report in March, we want to continue growth in our leasing new business. We would like to increase CM2 margin and become a more efficient equity ratio. Today I can say that we have made great steps towards to these goals. Not only have we grown our leasing new business by over 22% compared to Q1 last year, we have also achieved this at a CM2 level with 16.7%, which is very great. This underlines our ability on rising interest rates, so we can pass through that rising interest rates with a little delay, as we mentioned, in the last year and also with beginning of that year, while growing our portfolio and that in a challenging environment. One thing I would also like to point out, is a very positive in development of our operating income. That operating income in line with our CM2 on the new business show nearly the same thing. The growth of the last quarters in new business, the volume growth on the one hand, and the right level of CM2 means the right balance at the end of the day between interest expense on the one hand, which are rising, and interest income on the other hand. Of course, the risk portfolio means the risk measurement of our portfolio, which is included in the operating income. Now with our Digital Excellence program, we have laid the foundation to make our processes more efficient across the globe, across the world with our leasing business and which will lead in positive effects also on the long run in our P&L, as mentioned at the beginning of the year. Furthermore, another milestone was the acquisition of the shares of the Australian franchise companies, which we consider a strong move. Australia is one of our new core markets, will be one of our core markets in the future with a huge potential of small medium enterprises, a huge potential for further grades, and that great potential we would like to cover on the long term and the midterm run. Just like we see it for the U.S. and also the Canadian market. Despite that, I would like to point out that just in May, we decided that we will stop new leasing business in Turkey, since the company has not been able to operate profitably on the last years, and that's why we decided that. Furthermore, the Turkish lira is a very heavy impact in currency. The fluctuations of volatility there is over the last years, very high, and that had also affected on the group's accounts. That's why we decided to stop new business there and will decide in the future how we would like to go forward with the existing portfolios there. From the overall numbers, the Turkish portfolio is very small and not that relevant for the group. Lastly, we are delighted to report that we made a strategic investment with the acquisition of roughly 25% of the shares of Miete24. Miete24 is a perfect fit for us because it offers enormous potential for our clients and also for us, for Grenke. With Miete24 and its innovative software technology, we will be able to offer plug-and-lease in a perfect way. This plug-and-lease solutions for our resellers and our customers will strengthen our sales infrastructure internationally. Ladies and gentlemen, you see here our strong growth performance in new business over the last six quarters, a double-digit growth, six quarters again, and that is a base for our portfolio. We achieved a strong growth over the last quarters with our action we took across the globe, across regions, it was important to achieve that. At the end of the day, that will mean that we will lead in our guidance for new business for that year between EUR 2.6 billion-EUR 2.8 billion. Then we are back on the level of 2019, so on the pre-COVID level. After that, we would like to go for further growth across this EUR 3 billion new business. The absolute volume is the one part of the game, and the second part, as mentioned before, is the CM2. Let's take a look at the interest environment and our CM2 development. Now you remember, this chart, we've shown that also in the last quarter or for the year-end presentation, that is very important for us. The blue line, that is the interest rate environment, the interest rate development. Here we've shown not the ECB rate, that is a two years interest rate swap for for two years euro bonds. That is quite important because our duration is roughly two years, and that is the most important interest rate reflecting to the portfolio of Grenke. We see the rising interest rates since 2021 and now with 3.4%, 3 point for Q4, 2022 and 2023, it's roughly stable. Much more important is in line to that development of our contribution margin two. Part of our contribution margin two is the contribution margin one, and that reflects our net interest margin on an overall perspective. With the 16.7% in Q1, we are back on a level we would like to achieve roughly 17%. That's our long-term goal. Also for that year, we would like to be in the area of 17%. After the 15.5% in Q4, it's a great move. On the one hand, our sales guys did a great job that we can show now 16.7%, which is a very healthy CM2 margin for our portfolio. As mentioned before, we see that also in our P&L. That means on the one hand, we are able to grow, we are able to passing through in the CM1 and CM2 higher interest rates. What that means for the long-term run is that our book will grow with our new business expectations that's shown here. May you remember that chart. The line divides the bars in two parts. The part down the line with the more or less bluer bars, that is our existing portfolios that locked in per end of 2022. The second line, that is the part of the portfolio we locked in in 2023. The more or less green bars, that is a new business portfolio we would like to achieve over the next couple of years, over the next five years. Quite important with that portfolio we would like to achieve with that growth, we would like to cover a CM2 means a contribution margin two of roughly EUR 3.2 billion. That corresponds to our operating income at the end of the day. That is a huge number. Let's go to the financials, let's look back a bit in Q1 2023, what are the main impacts and what are the main drivers for our P&L. The P&L is shown here on that slide from the logic approach, how is our P&L built and working. At first we see a very good development in operating income that we pointed out also today morning in our press release. I said that before in the first pages, the 9.1% in operating income plus compared to the last year is very important for us. That reflects several things. On the one hand, the net interest income. Here we have including the interest income on the one hand, means earnings from our lessees and the interest expenses on the other hand, too. Of course, the interest expenses rose compared to last year with roughly EUR 24 million. We have now nearly the level of Q4. In the last year, it was roughly EUR 13.5 million. Because of the higher interest rate on the one hand, and also because of our higher volume, that number is higher. We had also to take into account the settlement of claims and risk provisioning, because we're always looking when we go to making new business, is our condition, is our leasing income, means our interest income in line with our risk premium we can achieve on the market. The overall operating income show us a very good development. Also looking to the Cost-Income Ratio, we see here, is very good. Cost-Income Ratio means at the end of the day, we're taking the costs, that's aligned with EUR 72 million and taking the income, but the income not includes the risk provisioning, as you mentioned. There we achieve a Cost-Income Ratio compared to Q4 2022, which is slightly lower. That is a very good information because personal costs are a bit less than in Q4 2022, more than in Q1 2022. Also the costs for sales and administration are slightly stable. The rising costs here, the main impact compared to, say, Q1 2022, is because of the rise in staff costs, higher staff costs, because you may remember we adjusted our remuneration system last year on a more modern model for our employees worldwide. In August last year, we paid an extra for the inflation. When we compare now Q1 2022 to Q1 2023, of course, this impact is also part of those figures and of the, let's say, difference between 2022 and 2023. Over the year, that will be lower because in Q3 and Q4, that impact was also part of the P&L in the last year. I would like to outline two extraordinary impacts. I'm sure you read that in the morning, that is a bit the blue bars here. You can see on the right-hand side, the 213% and the 343%, huge numbers in terms of deviation. I would like to point out that impacts. At first, we have to deal with a high fluctuation in currencies, especially in Q1 and per end of Q1. The main driver currencies was the Turkish lira on the one hand, Norway and also the Polish zloty on the other hand. What happened here is we have to evaluate our leasing receivables per end of March as always. At the last day of the quarter of the year, you have to evaluate that. There you take the exchange rate of the day per end of March. This valuation means the difference in the currencies is directly linked to the equities. It's not part of the P&L because of the consolidation. We are going to hedge our portfolios. We are going to hedge our currency portfolios, we have also to deal with derivatives, quite easy forward rates for that currencies. The valuation of that forward rates you see in the line other operating costs or other operating income. It depends on the direction of the movements. On an economic view, it's a matched hedge, so there's no economic mismatch. On a valuations view during the term of the hedge, it could be that you have a different exchange rate for the leasing receivables, the exchange rate per end of March, and a market fair value valuation for your derivative, for your forward per end of March. That's linked to that what I mentioned at the beginning, that the interest rates are different, that the interest rate policy of the central banks are different, and also the expectation of interest rates for the future are different from country to country. The second impact is in the other financial results. There you will see a negative impact of roughly EUR 1.6 million, and that is related to an interest rate hedge in our ABCP funding. It's also not part of our hedge accounting at the moment. We talked about that last year. There, the impact was positive. We had a positive impact of roughly EUR 4 million in Q1 last year because of the moving interest rates across the year. That positive market value built up. Now that market value will go down because the hedge were realized, and then you have to go down with your market value, and you will see the difference in that line. That are extraordinary impact, and especially the valuation of currency is quite extraordinary. We from today's perspective, cannot say how the valuation of currencies of interest rates will go forward. That would be not serious. We are not expect that that will move forward because the development in interest rate changes and central bank behavior was specific in the Q1 2023. Overall, it results in a net income of EUR 15.9 million, and take in account the operating income development, the cost development, we are very satisfied with that result. To make it a bit more clear what the development of operating business is, what is the action we can take, what is the result of that, we would like to show now two slides. The first one is this. On the one hand, because of the volume growth, you see the growth in leasing receivables. It's quite important for us for the substance, for our embedded value. This leasing book is based for interest income, and this leasing book is rising over the last five quarters because of the very good new business development. The interest income is rising over the last quarters that we've shown here. There it's important, the volume on the one hand and the moving in interest rates and conditions at the end of the day. That should move over the year or year over the next year, quarter by quarter because we are steadily growing. This slide is also important. There we look to costs in a wider range, not only Cost-Income Ratio reflected. We look to costs including risk and funding. Let's move a bit more in detail to, I would like to start with cost of funding. That is the green line, with a circle, where you see and that green line is rising. For sure, we talked about because of the higher volume on the one hand and because of higher funding costs of the on the other hand. On the other hand, it is rising and we expect that this will go forward because interest rates are moving and volume is moving. You should expect that we will see rising absolute numbers in interest expense. Also the absolute numbers of interest income will grow because of volume growth and very good margin development. The second one, let's move to settlement of claims and risk provisioning. That's the green line. There you see, of course, a move in from Q4 to Q1 2022, 2021 to 2022. Since that is very stable, our payment behavior or the payment behavior of our clients is very stable since quarters. We are there nearly below the COVID, the pre-COVID level in terms of reminder ratios, in terms of reminder processing. The payment behavior is quite stable. We have a growing portfolio, but our risk provisioning is stable in the Q1 2023, a bit low. That results in a loss rate of 1.2%. We expect that that will move slightly forward on a stable way. Last but not least, the two important things for costs and also relevant for the Cost-Income Ratio is our staff costs on the one hand and selling and administration costs or expenses on the other hand. There we can also see, starting with the staff cost, as explained before, the new remuneration system in the last year results in that curve. Now it's pretty stable compared to the last year's or the last quarter level, means Q4 2022. We expect to go forward with that. Of course, for growing, for the things we would like to achieve in the future, we will need new staff and you will see a rising number over the next quarters, but not in that range, in that growth rates as it was in the last year. In terms of administration and selling costs, you see from a trend perspective, it's a bit lower and that effect is because there are no further running costs for the extra audit, for managing the extra audit with beginning of last year. May you remember that we had some extra costs and now we are moving in a more or less stable level. Both of that are in a very good development and our operating costs are under control. I mentioned that in terms of risk provisioning, in terms cost of risk, the payment behavior of our clients is very stable and that gave and gives us confidence for the future in terms of the loss rate, in terms of risk provisioning for the several stages under IFRS 9. We've shown here the stages under IFRS. You can see that also in the numbers there is no surprises. It's very stable and also forward-looking. We expect and we stick to our guidance that we expect a maximum 1.5% loss rate from today's perspective. It will be more a bit lower, so below 1.5%. Our cash flow statement, we point out that chart again because it's a bit a different view. Overall, the cash flow is was very strong in Q1. We did some funding, especially Grenke Bank with our deposit business, very strong. The capital market funding was and is not that easy, and that's why we are very happy to have Grenke Bank in our portfolio as a deposit business. Also, the payments by lessees are very stable, roughly EUR 600 million. That's the income cash flow from our existing portfolio and together with the stable payment behavior, that brings us a good inflow for new business on the one hand and also for the repayments of our refinancing because we are much funded. From a cash flow perspective, a very good quarter. I mentioned the funding, especially Grenke Bank here, the green portion, sorry, the gray portion, very important, with roughly 22% of our balance sheet. The deposit business developed very well. Also the other boxes are important. The stable and healthy equity ratio, a bit lower as per end of the year, roughly 20% because of our growth as expected. ABCP funding is running very well, especially in some bigger markets in Germany, France, where we implemented that funding without maturity transformation, without currency transformation also in place in U.K. or in Brazil, for example. As you mentioned, always one of the best ways to fund our business. We need a minimum size of the portfolio to go for that. The senior unsecured market is the bond market on the one hand, and also some smaller things, RCFs, promissory notes, and there are some credit lines not in use that gives us confidence and coverage to going forward with our growth. Also in times like this when the capital market is not that open as we would like to have it. As I mentioned before, over the last couple of months, the capital market was not easy, not only for Grenke, for many smaller issuers. That's why Grenke Bank is important, our ABCP funding is important, and our stable relationships to several banks we have. Yes. Some words to Miete24. That is a platform for renting business, very close and from an international thinking to leasing. With that platform, customers can quite easy go going for a renter for whatever equipment you would like to have. We would like to implement that makes renting as easy as online shopping for private clients. We would not like to do that for private clients. We would like to do that for small, medium enterprises. There we would implement like a button in our dealer shop. So in the web shop, whenever a dealer will have some, then you can go directly for this. It's a strategic investment, 25%, we took, and we have the opportunity over the next years to take over the whole company if it works and if we would like to do that. The most important thing for us is the technical solution, the software solution. That is the interesting part of that, and that's why we decided to go for that requirement. It's not in terms of sales or getting a sales partner. It's a technical solution to being able to implement that into dealer shops that was very interesting for us and important. We decided to take the shares to buy that solution and not build that solution by our own. We come to the guidance for that year 2023 and also the outlook of 2024. As I mentioned before, we are well on track in terms of operating business. The EUR 2.6 billion-EUR 2.8 billion is our goal to achieve that in new business. Numbers and figures shown us that we are well on track on that. In 2024, we would like to cover more than EUR 3 billion in new business and then the pre-COVID level is also behind us. That year and the step on that year to coming back on the 2019 level quite important for us. We stick to our guidance in terms of net profit for the group between EUR 80 million and EUR 90 million as mentioned before. Of course, in Q1 we have an extraordinary impact because of the market environment of the currencies. We see a strong portfolio, we see a strong operating income. That is what we may bring in to compensate this by our own and also the development of the markets go one times in that direction, one times in the other direction when we talking about currency rates. Equity ratio will be stable above our long-term goal, 16%. In terms of the Cost-Income Ratio, we need and we will do that, rising in income because of the growing portfolio of the growing contribution margin on the one hand, we will stick to having our operating costs under control as shown in Q1. Loss rate we talked about, it's stable in the expectations. The CM2 margin development in Q1 was very good, very healthy. Also there we stick to our goals. It should be roughly in the area of 17%. To summarize it, the key takeaways today, we delivered. We are on a strong double-digit growth. We are on a strong growth path. We will go forward for that. We constantly expand into new products. That's also quite important. No product object categories to serve our customer needs and to cover the needs of our customers, the small, medium enterprises. With Miete24, we speed up our idea, our vision to go for a plug-and-lease strategy, and we are absolutely on track to meet our targets in 2023 and to cover our long-term outlook. Thank you very much. Now I'm happy and to go for your question. Yeah. Thank you very much for your presentation. This was really interesting and a lot of news, and I'm sure there will be a lot of questions. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one to register. And just to let you know, if you wish to remove yourself from the question line, please press star followed by two. Here are the first questions. We start with Marius Fuhrberg from Warburg Research, please. Thanks for taking my questions, a couple of them from my side. First one will be, by what extent should we expect the interest income to benefit from the forwarding of higher interest over the next quarters? Or so to say, should we expect the times of declining net interest income to be over going forward? The second question is, regarding your digitalization program. What is your expectation on the cost distribution of the digitalization program over the remaining quarters, and, how much of that will become visible in the P&L? The third one also, under consideration of the program, what makes you confident to already really identify the main driver of profit growth, especially in the context of your rising costs for the program, that you will be able to achieve your target of EUR 80 million-EUR 90 million net income? Thank you, Mr. Fuhrberg, for your question. I would like to start with the first one in terms of what does it mean in the interest environment, looking forward in net interest income. On the one hand, from a CM2 perspective, we are in a more or less stable way. The operating income has shown us that. For the future, the time will be over. That's a net interest margin or the net interest income will decline. We have to take into account, may also for the next quarter, that the contribution margin two of the last year is part of our portfolio and part of our P&L that year. The 15.5% in CM2 and also the lower CM1 we saw now in the Q1 and also in the second and the Q3, that will be part of the P&L. The better contribution margin two of new business in Q1 and in Q2, compared to the 15.5%, will cover that or compensate that a bit. Looking forward, you have to take that in account. With the growth in new business and with the stable, with the stable cost income, sorry, contribution margin, we will not expect further declining from a midterm run in net interest income. We have also take in account that interest income is linked to two figures. The interest income and the earnings, the power of the CM1 is linked to the interest environment at the cost of funding. At the end of the day, also to the cost of risk, to the settlement of claims and risk provisioning. When we have lower cost of risk, you will also see a bit lower interest income. Otherwise, when you go for more risk, you can earn more risk premium, and that is also part of the interest income. The digitalization program, for the remaining quarters, we expect for that roughly EUR 10-12 million, cost for that. In the Q1 it was a bit lower because we started that program. It was roughly EUR 2 million. You see that in the IT costs, we separated for IT projects, but also the portion for employees. When we go for new employees, our employees are working on that program, is also part of that investment. It's not only the IT project costs. We will point that out more over the next quarters if we are going more in investing in that. We started that in the Q1. You can expect roughly EUR 10-12 million for the year. It will be quite linear for the rest of the year. The main driver for our growth expectations in terms of profit are mainly three things. The first one is the impact on currencies was extraordinary in Q1. Of course, it's not serious to say the currency will develop, and the one was in the other direction. Again, it was extraordinary. We are expecting really not that that will go forward. May it could be compensated, may not. That we will see at the end of the day. The second most important driver is our business. Our operating business is running. Our operating business is going forward, growing. That was a very good margin that we shown in Q1, and that will go forward from our today's figures, we see that. The costs are under control, so we manage our costs quite good in the Q1. That means all the costs, on the one hand, personal costs, selling administration costs, and last but not least, the cost of risk. That is a very good development compared to the extraordinary impacts. We are confident to achieving our guidance. Thank you. Thank you very much. The next question is from the line of Roland Pfänder with ODDO BHF, please. Please go ahead. Yes, hello. Two questions from my side, please. Could you speak a little bit about your funding costs? Maybe also starting with Grenke Bank, your deposit business. Do you see their competition for interest rates coming through, and how do you react to this? In general, how do you see your funding costs developing within the fee and two margin? I think that's market pricing, what you use, but how do you compare to the funding costs you actually plan for or are experiencing? The second question may be on SG&A costs. How directly linked are these costs to your business growth? Because I was surprised in the quarter it actually went down. And maybe you could speak a little bit about the sensitivity of this cost item going forward. Thank you. First, in terms of funding costs, compared to the competitors, you can see that when you go to a platform like WeltSparen or Biallo, you will see the rates of Grenke Bank, you will see the rates of other competitors, also some leasing competitors, some manufacturers, which are able to fund via a bank. Funding rate at the moment for deposit is roughly 3.5%. For us it's quite important to covering here also no maturity transformation. We would like to go for funding in the two, three, four years area, may sometimes in the one- year area, but we would not like to go for overnight deposits or something like that. Also that interest rates rose across the last month. That is very stable, the inflow is very stable, and it's managed by pricing. When you are in that rankings under the top three or top five, it depends a bit on the level of security. It means we are in the German deposit fund. Deposits in Germany are also covered by the German government, so that is very safe for a deposit clients. In some other countries it's different. When you are top three or top five then you will see an inflow. When you are number six, number 10, then you will see lower inflow. It's the same, and it's also stable over the last couple of months, and also after the issues in Switzerland and U.S. with Silicon Valley Bank or with Credit Suisse. There we did not saw any changes in behaviors of our clients, our existing clients, and there was no change in the behavior of new clients. Funding costs for capital markets, for debt capital markets is not that easy to point out. Maybe you can look to our yields in the bond which are listed, the bonds which are listed. They see yields 6.5%. We also know when you go for issuance a bond, then you have to take care for a new issuance premium, and that's very volatile over the last year, so to say. You can expect 6.5%-7.5% if it's possible, necessary, to go for that capital market. In our duration means two to five years. It depends on the market environment. That is what we priced in in our CM1 and CM2. That is what we show each day to our sales force, to our sales guys, and which is at the end of the day, the decision maker if you go for that contract or not. The current interest environment and interest rates are part of our contribution margin calculation and the mix between deposit business, the mix between senior unsecured, as we've shown in our funding toolbox, and also the ABCP programs if accessible for the countries. Last but not least, selling and admin costs. I think that it looked like a very good level at the moment. We have to take into account the extraordinary impacts over the last year. It is linked to new business development, especially the sales cost. You see that extra line going more for sales, making more campaigns, going out, that you have to take into account, achieving more traffic in the market to going out for dealers, and again, making campaigns and especially the selling costs, will also rise that we have also saw, or we saw that also over the last years before 2019 too. Administration costs are more linked to the number of running contracts, yeah. That's, I mean, selling costs more number of new contracts and the administration costs are more linked to the number of running contracts. Okay, thank you. The next question on our line is from Tobias Lukesch from Kepler Cheuvreux, please. Yes, good afternoon. Three questions if I may. First is on the franchise companies. Could you give us the new leading business that you generated with the franchise companies in Q1, and potentially also the growth rate that we saw year-on-year? Secondly, a question on cash flow or cash handling. I was a bit surprised actually to see cash balances up to EUR 830 million again. I was expecting more to be around the EUR 0.5 billion space that we saw in the past, and that was also my takeaway basically from the Q4 results call. Maybe you can share with us your thinking around, you know, the further increase here of cash balances. Will that quickly normalize? Instead of kind of refinancing, how do you handle that? Thirdly, on the Miete24, on that acquisition, what kind of volumes actually did you generate via this platform in the past, and what are your expectations going forward with regards to generating new business volume over that platform? Thank you. Yeah. May I start with the last one? So Miete24 or Rent24, whatever, the starting point to going live as a platform as our sales channel will be in June. There was in that way we would like to do that forward. No business generated in the past. Miete24 was like a dealer for us, and it was a small portion of new business, so not that relevant. The idea is to keeping that idea and the technology as, let's say, a virtual and online digital dealer, reseller in our business, and that starting point will be in June 2023. The franchise company's new business, maybe we can see it a bit in our other regions. The main portion of the other region are the franchise companies in Canada and Australia that are the main drivers in the companies. Also U.S. is included and Chile is included. Brazil, we have to point out, but I think that is a very good indicator because Brazil is not that huge. Overall new business of the former franchise companies out of the view was EUR 31 million, including Brazil, with a low single-digit new business volume. The growth was 17.6%. We expect for the franchise companies a growth pace of 20%-25%. It depends a bit on the market. Two of them are very important, Australia and Canada, because there are franchise companies today with a new business from a year's perspective of more than EUR 10 million. Now it's the question to go for EUR 50 million and come closer to EUR 100 million. That will take a bit of time and a bit of years. When you would like to have more details, we would like to come back to you and talking about. The cash flow question, you are absolutely right and quite good question. We have to take into account there that this cash flow is based on last day of March. In middle of April, there was a bond payback of EUR 300 million, a bit more than EUR 300 million, and that was covered by our cash in. On the one hand, that is why on the, let's say, on the daily view, that cash and cash equivalents, the liquidity looks very high, but it's only a few on a day. On the flowing base, it's a bit lower as we expected, roughly to the EUR 500 million. Again, there was a huge bond, we had to pay back in April, and we did. On the one hand, we have the payment of the lessees on the next day in this beginning of April. Because of that, it was, let's say, more or less a bit careful to having a portion for paying back the bond. Very clear. Thank you. Just one follow-up, if I may, on the potential paybacks of bonds. Are there further paybacks you expect or which are due basically this year? To what extent do you expect to increase the deposits now in this quarter or over the year? My understanding again is that here is still some leeway, right, to a kind of new normal that you're approaching. Yes, of course. There is some leeway, and we would like to widening that, as long as it is for us and for our perspective, a sense for the deposit business. We would also like to be present in each segment, to be present in the senior unsecured, in the bond and capital market, as best as we can, to being present with our bank relationships, as I pointed out, also in the senior unsecured part, and going forward for ABCP, ABS programs and also the Grenke Bank. When you would like to know about our bond structure, you can see that also on our webpage, the next big bond is EUR 300 million in this beginning of October. It's also linked to our match funding beginning of October. Quarterly payment for our lessees and our EUR 300 million bond we have to pay back. From the big tickets, that year is covered. The next one is also supposed to be financed or refinanced then by deposits? It depends on the market. Yeah. Okay. It depends on the environment. Of course, we did some small action on the capital market, some taps to bring our smaller bonds closer to a benchmark deal. It depends really on market. We talked about a lot to investors making, as I mentioned, smaller things. Public bond at the moment may not possible, but the world can change as always, and we are ready for doing whatever the best solution for Grenke and for our portfolio is. The portfolio structure we have today looks stable and may it could be that we shift that EUR 300 million to deposit business. It's a question of new business because the EUR 300 million payback in October is covered by leasing payments of the lessees and the rest is, let's say, a function of liquidity need for new business. Very clear. Thank you very much. I have two questions coming via chat. The first one I'm going to read to all of us, and it's focused on, again, on Miete24. It's about which markets will you focus on with Miete24 in the near term, and how fast do you believe you can expand your joint business to other Grenke countries? We will start in Germany, that's for sure. Miete24 is able to go to other countries, and it's placed also in other countries, for example, in Austria. It's possible to do that fast. We would like to move first in Germany, making the first steps, seeing what is successful, what is not successful, and then we would like to expand it in Europe. For us important our main markets, of course, and maybe some smaller markets like Switzerland and Austria, because it's possible for Miete24 too. Thank you. We have another one now regarding Grenke Bank. The question is whether there has been an outflow of deposits in the first five months of this year, like we have seen this at regional banks in the U.S., and what part of the customer deposits is daily due? Yeah. There was no outflow, there was no extreme behavior of our existing clients. We have to take into account that our deposits are term deposits. There's a small portion, I think less than EUR 100 million, is daily deposit from very stable and long-term customers. The main portion of our funding is term deposits, it's on the one hand not that easy to go and take the money as clients. On the other hand, there was also no traffic by phone or something like that customers, "Oh, I would like to get my money back." The things we saw in the U.S. was not happened in Germany, I guess, overall, and especially not at Grenke Bank. As I mentioned before, we were also able to generate new deposit business at that time. Thank you, and I'll switch back now to another question in our call from Philipp Hässler from Pareto Securities. Please, go ahead. Hello. Thank you. Philipp Häßler from Pareto. I have two questions. Firstly, just a clarification. You were mentioning the one-off, EUR 1.6 million from the ABCP. Could you perhaps also give us the figure for FX, what the volume of the one-off was? On the planned acquisition on the remaining franchise companies, if I remember correctly, you wanted to close those during the first half of this year. Maybe you can give us an update whether this is still your target. Thank you. Yes. First, the extraordinary impact for ABCP was EUR 1.6 million. To make that clear, that is to take in account if the interest rate environment will not change, that will go forward, because last year it was roughly EUR 10 million extraordinary positive impact. You will see that then again, because that is part of the hedge, we will see lower funding costs on the one hand and the different direction is on the variation of the derivative for the interest rate hedge. It's different to the currency hedge. That's different. That was roughly EUR 4 million, the extraordinary impact, as I described before. That's different. That's extraordinary and also from today's perspective, a one-off impact. The franchise companies. That's right, important was to cover Australia in Q1. We are now working on the last one, especially on the Canadian business, on Chile, Latvia, that are the outstanding franchise leasing companies, and we are in progress. We are finalizing the fairness opinion because that's important as always for us to covering that by fairness opinion. The due diligence is done. The valuation is more or less done. Of course, the interest environment is very dynamic and from time to time you have to adjust the valuation. Now we are waiting for the last steps, and we are also in dialogue with the investors to moving forward that and to covering that per middle of the year. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I have another question from our chat participants, and it's again regarding our new business growth and how far we can increase our CM2 margin in order to reflect increased refinancing costs and whether there is sort of a threshold that would keep us away from growing the business. At the moment, we see that we can pass through our funding costs and, as I mentioned before, we're taking today's interest environment for today's calculation, and we see that it is working, so we don't see or feel a threshold in terms of funding costs in our business. In terms how far we can increase CM2, we have to take into account the risk premium because, as long as you go to achieving 18 or whatever% of CM2, it's quite important to taking care for the right level between risk, your risk model and the income you would like to earn, and there's a risk premium then, right? The 17% you pointed out last year and, we reflected also that year is a very stable ratio where we, from our experience, get a good risk premium on the one hand for our risk measurement, and we're having a good balance between interest income and interest expense. We have no further questions as far as I can see. There's another one now on the chat. I'm happy to read that to all of us. It's about the Canadian franchise company, which was said is very important for Grenke. When do you expect will the acquisition of the Canadian Grenke franchise company will be completed? By when? I think this has already been answered. Yes. Again. We would like to cover the acquisition per middle of the year. When you're asking of the complete acquisition, with all the formal steps to going to notary and something like that, could be per end of the year. The next step is to having finalized the fairness opinion. We can from our perspective decide on the board and with the supervisory board. We can finalize the negotiation of the SPA, the contract. That we would like to achieve per middle of the year. Thank you. If you ask a question, it's the perfect time to do so. Otherwise, if there are no further questions coming up, this will conclude our call. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for joining our call, for participating, and have a pleasant day. Please note that our Q2 new business figures will be released on July 5th. Thank you very much and goodbye. You can disconnect now.