Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Webcast Earnings Q4 2023 of Hypoport SE. At our customer's request, this conference will be recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If any participant has any difficulties hearing the conference, please press star followed by zero on your telephone for operator assistance. May I now hand you over to Ronald Slabke, who will lead you through today's conference. Please go ahead. Yeah, welcome from my side as well to the Q4 reporting, and, as you are aware of, the current market environment makes it helpful to focus on the short-term development. In some moment, I will as well comment a little bit on the total numbers for 2023. So how to sum up this year in the end, you can say. Okay, first time, we report in three segments. We used the year 2023 to restructure Hypoport, keep more focus on the value chains and the three industry that we are digitalizing, and the results are three segments. There's management structures in them, real estate and mortgages, with everything which is linked to private homeownership. The financing platform, which sums up all activities in the credit industry beside the personal loan mortgage business. The insurance platform is, as you know it already, our digitalization strategy for the insurance industry. Q4 was a pretty good end of as a challenging year, 2023 for Hypoport. All segments had a positive trend, financing and insurance, with growth in revenue. Real estate and mortgages with a nice dynamic pre-Christmas and lead generation and interest of consumers regarding mortgage business. So we end this challenging year with pretty good and solid numbers in the fourth quarter. We are able to look forward in a positive way. When I say this, my mood is especially influenced by this what's going on in our large segment. You are aware of the 60% of our revenue and, in the history, most of our profits were generated along the value chain of consumer mortgages. This is the core of the new segment, real estate and mortgages, as well as the real estate agent platform, FIO, especially used by agents of banks and the valuation business of Value AG. So this, when you look on this segment, the underlying market is the German consumer housing market. And the general trends in this market are all in a positive development from what we see also recently. So first of all, the interest in homeownership, the desire to acquire your first home, is growing in Germany. Why? I will come to this later. You usually do this here in Germany, or typically you do this in Germany, when there is a trigger event, when you plan to have children or when you are splitting up. These are the moments, when a first home or an additional apartment is acquired. This life event just happening and keeps happening. And now for already six quarters, not fully executed by the trigger people, so there is something piling up here. In the history, we had a solid renting market, and parts of the triggered families ended up staying in the renting market. Parts is when you look on everyone here in Germany, 58% is renting market, 42 is homeownership. So there was a significant part of families staying in the renting market. What we see here as well in Q4 and in the previous quarters is a limited amount of new constructions started. We talk about roughly 25% of historical numbers of new renting units, so it's really a distressed market environment. Nobody is interested in starting to build new renting space. Reason is it just doesn't pay back. The rent you are able to achieve, compared with the cost of construction, the regulation of constructions, give you a yield which is far below in a normal market interest. So, and nobody's not nobody, but it's a limited amount of market participants still doing it. On the other side, the existing renting stock is heavily regulated. Over the last decade, you can say, on a steady basis, the government increased renting laws and applied new renting laws, which makes it even unattractive for existing landlords to keep renting. And drives a certain number of them to the decision to trying to sell to homeowners and not to rent again. And it reduces the fluctuation in the renting market. So, if you have a rented apartment, you stay in it because your rent is regulated in the metropolitan areas to roughly 50% of what is the current and new rent value or price. So you save 50%, and you stay where you are, or you can rent double the space that you need, actually, for the same price, instead of renting new. So this is taking a lot of renting space out of the market, you can say. It blocks it, and it creates a distressed environment for families looking for a solution. So the need for homeownership is increasing, and that's why as well, the desire to is increasing because everyone feels, in the moment, then you need to move, how difficult it is to find something new. And if you find something new, you pay now more than you pay for a mortgage finance homeownership. Good news for the fourth quarter is the affordability gap started to shrink, especially to the end of the quarter. We saw a massive decline in interest rate for long-term interest rate mortgages, which is the standard here in Germany. You can say roughly from 4%, you went down to 3% in 6 weeks. So this was a sharp change in interest rates, and yeah, something that made it already significant less expensive to acquire homeownership. You can say roughly 25%. On the other side, prices trickled down during the year. In the last quarter, they fell by roughly 1.5% on average, ending up the year with roughly 5% in price decline after a good 10% in 2022. So in total, since the sharp change in interest rate, we are 15% down in the ownership prices. And last but not least, inflation and high demand for skilled workforce drives incomes up. You can say, over a period of half a year, incomes here in Germany increased by more than 10%. So especially for this target group, which we have, what they are able to afford and what an apartment costs and how the mortgage it looks like got significant better in the fourth quarter. Where we didn't get any support is regulation. Yeah, politics doesn't understand that would be helpful to increase construction speed, deregulate construction, add some tax benefits or reduce taxes on the acquisition of real estates. They talk about a lot, but they don't decide or don't execute anything, which slows down the process of normalization of the market, actually. But in general, you can say, our underlying market, homeownership here in Germany, is something which is on the rise, even when it was not effective in numbers or in fourth quarter, but this just switched in over Christmas. We see this as well in our new reality, you can say. So looking at the indicators and the core KPIs that are defining our market, in just charts, you see the decline in interest rate, you see where we came from, and that it's still higher than it was two years ago, but the lowest level we have seen now for more than a year. Which triggered interest in the same moment, properties are available, something we were not used to for a long time. We had a really distressed environment if you wanted to buy something. To get something was difficult, and if you could get something, you were in a competition with people who just bought it for renting and had a quite positive yield on this. It was challenging for families to acquire their home. Now, there's space available and less or no, actually no competition from people who buy to let. So property prices trickled down to the end of last year, but we see in the first two months this year already a turning point that in more and more region prices trickle up again. Yeah, so even the average has turned on existing homes and flats. What still goes up is new constructions, and you will see this in our details of what we finance. It gets still more expensive what people are building. And we have here a record high construction cost right now in Germany. Yeah, I mentioned this already, and it's relevant for the, let's say, relief side, supply side of the market, there is no renting supply. We have the lowest publicly available renting space offered ever. And this limits the alternative options simply where you can go to. Okay, so much about the environment in the housing market. The mortgage market itself closed the year still on the button thanks to the Christmas season, and so only 2.5 months in the third - in the fourth quarter, we saw the lowest quarterly numbers in history for a long, long time. -6% compared quarter-to-quarter to the end of 2022. While we, during the year already felt that market is more trickling up than down, but the short fourth quarter led to this graph. So as I said already, with the massive change in interest rate, we saw an improvement in lead generation and in the number of applications under consultancy, under advice on the platform. And actually already in the last days before Christmas, a significant uplift in transactions. Just our monetization is a couple of weeks, roughly two, up to two months later. So the revenue you will see in Q1 for this. So looking on the segment, we are serving the whole value chain. But the most important entities for the results is Europace, with their special solutions for the cooperative and savings bank sector and our FINMAS, Dr. Klein, which is very strong in monetization. When we look on this four, you see that we are growing even with an underlying market decline of -6%. So total Europace +8%, I will comment this in a moment. Dr. Klein, +10%. So the interest of consumers for independent advice is high, and with this current interest environment even more attractive than it was when interest rates were artificially low two years ago. FINMAS' Europace, +40%. You see here that both sectors are enjoying the solid solution that we offer them, and see us as the upcoming future as well for their, yes, let's say, for their own mortgage solution, and we keep gaining market share in both sectors compared to the traditional software supplier there. I wanted to comment on the 8% of Europace. We have one strong large bank here in Germany, which for a long time is using Europace already. They migrated their mortgage business to a new joint platform in the second quarter of last year, and failed with this huge IT project behind it. They still struggle. They are still not back on pace. With this, especially in the comparison to the last quarter of 2022, we miss here a strong partner. So without this strong—let's say, with the strong partner, the total Europace number would have been something between this, what our own franchise network and the corporate banking industry and the savings banks industry would supply. So this, the total numbers slightly reduced by a missing strong partner here right now. Okay, other perspective on the current transaction volume is, what are we financing? With this, actually, how are the underlying consumer behaviors right now? What you see is in the red columns that already in Q4, so not seeing the uplift in the beginning of 2024. The level of home purchases we finance is already, let's say, normalized compared to what we saw end of 2022. So it's trickling up, you can say, and when you take into account that real estate prices are roughly 50% lower and the average mortgage volume is roughly 20% lower than at the end of 2021, the beginning of 2022. You see that we are from the number of transaction perspective, not so far away anymore from a normal market environment. Just remember, normal market environment in 2021 means no supply and competition with landlords. So the future, we expect higher transaction numbers than in 2021 and previously. So, and yeah, we took market share as well since 2021, so total market may be still down for purchase, somewhere between 20%-30%, in the first quarter, but it's not far away from where we have been. What really reduces our total transaction volume right now are the three other areas. So first of all, new constructions. We are on a historically low level, and this is inflated construction costs. So, with the current volume of new construction financed, from a number of units we built, we are roughly at 25% of the historical level. This creates a distressed market environment because with this low number of new constructions, you can imagine with more and more demand coming with migration and trigger events, this all needs to go to the purchase side because it's not enough built. Developers still didn't start new projects because of lack of funding for them and still the necessary workout in the old projects. So the recovery process of this part of the market will easily take another year or two. So next, which is still distressed, you can say, is the area of refinancing. Something which is historically very stable here in Germany, because we are used to finance 10 years plus fixed interest rate, and every 10 years we had to refinance. Now, thanks to good advice done to people in 2012 and later, people closed 50% of the people closed 15 years mortgages or longer even. They are going to come back in 2027. They don't need a refinancing after 10 years, they can wait 15 years now. And only if the interest rates are low enough earlier, they have an option to refinance earlier. So, and even the change in interest rate by a full percent, which we saw now at the end of the quarter, didn't change the number of refinancing for now in a significant way. So people still wait for lower interest rates, and they have the time until 2027 to do this. So at last area, energy efficiency investments in the current homeownership stock declined. Even when there is a massive political agenda here in Germany to improve it. And from a European level and the German level, there is even a law for net neutrality of the homeownership stock under 2024, 2045, sorry. So in the next 20 years, we need to fully renew or improve the energy efficiency for the whole household stock, and we are for now having homeopathic volume of investments happening in reality. So this is going to change because it has to. Okay, for now, you get a feeling where we are heading to, and as mentioned already, in next quarter, we see a certain level of uplift here on the transaction volume in Europace. Okay, this back to the perspective on in which part of the industry we are especially growing. Commercial banks and savings banks, + 48%. You remember, they both represent a good quarter of the market each, and with a huge space to still grow. In the mortgage broker environment, we got the confirmation because of a press release of the largest competitor of Dr. Klein, Interhyp, the market leader as well, that Dr. Klein outperformed the market leader by a couple of percent. So we took market share from them, and as well as the platform, in general, we increased our market share in the broker segment to roughly 60%, and outperformed the only one who's operating its own system still. In the commercial banking side, still roughly 40% market share, even when we gained the branch network of Deutsche Bank, but we lost, as I mentioned, a struggling partner with its IT problems. When this is back to normal, then I see an improvement as well in our market share in the private commercial bank sector. Okay, now come to after all these positive perspectives on the current change in market development, especially in then the beginning of 2024. One challenging part here in the real estate and mortgage platform business, with our valuation business, we hit double in the last half a year by regulation and market environment, and are still in a struggle to rebalance our resources, our IT developments, to the current market needs. Get a fit between what we are offering and what the market needs, and what the regulator wants, get this all together. We had a significant one-offs here, close to EUR 5 million in the last quarter. Another small restructuring, bringing our losses down for the near-term future. Let's say, we worked out a new plan, how to get to profitability with our business here, using our strong position in the value chain and just delivering an excellent service under the current regulatory regime, which doesn't like digital race as much as we. Looking forward, it's going to get better, and the one-offs are going to be hopefully effective and will bring us here to a path to profitability within the next two years. For the segment in total, it was a profitable last quarter. When we take out this, what happened around valuation at EUR 3.5 million in profit in the last quarter. As I mentioned, everything what we saw in additional lead generation and additional activities on the platform will start to monetize in the first quarter, 2024. This what you see here is still a small uplift in the mortgage world and some slowdowns in valuation, which sums up to a neutral revenue development, even a decline in gross profits. For the next year, or let's say for this ongoing year, 2024, we expect a double-digit growth in top line in this segment and then strong outperformance on the EBIT side, thanks to the scalability of our business models and the progress in restructuring of Value AG. So next, the new segment, financing platform. So everything what we do in, let's say, credit business in the housing sector, corporate finance, world of the German Mittelstand and personal loan business for consumers. Here we start with the housing sector, something which is pretty linked to the homeownership world. So this is the housing industry, which is serving the lowest third of the market. So social housing, where we are historically strong in financing it, but started to develop it as well, software as a service platform for them to operate their whole business on it. So to manage their portfolios, their household stock, the leasing process, as well as the financing process, as you can imagine, because this is something we are especially interested in. So, let's start with the broker volume of loans. Slightly up from last year, which is not an interesting news. The interesting news is that, after two devastating quarters, we are back to normal here in the last quarter. So, we saw in 2023, a good first and a good last quarter. The reason for the good last quarter is that, this industry react on interest rate changes immediately. So they used this 1% lower interest rate before Christmas to refinance what they had in open projects. So to buy some apartment existing apartment blocks, some small new apartments they plan to build, and some energy efficiency renewals we have financed as well. Still, this is all far below this, what would be normal, for the sector, especially taking into, consideration that a couple of hundred thousand units for social housing are missing here in German metropolitan areas, and that there is, a couple of hundred billion EUR to be invested in, renewing the energy efficiency of their current, apartment blocks. So but, a peaceful end of 2023, on the financing side in the housing industry. So where we are, progressing well is, the digitalization, of this industry and, the underlying platform. We reached, 300,000 units, under contract for our ERP solution, and EUR 1.1 billion in, deposits, for rented apartments, on our, accounting platform. So we serve them in three ways, and especially the digitalization part we see as a strong way to connect in a digital way with this industry to enable even better and more smoother financing processes in the future than we do this right now. By an integration of the ERP system with our portfolio management system where you can do all your future planning and financing activities within one solution. So as well as solid last quarter for REM CAPITAL in the German Mittelstand so corporate loan business. We, yeah, let's say, REM CAPITAL is dependent on the need for capital of these industries, and the ability of banks, the willingness and ability of banks to fund them, plus a certain level of state subsidy, subsidies to improve the probability of projects. The need for capital is huge in the industry because of all the transitions that are requested by them. The subsidies are not well structured for now, and the availability is limited, even when this is the way how Europe is subsidizing the transition. It's especially in Germany, thanks to certain issues around government spending and blockages there, something which was a struggling environment in 2023 and as well at the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024. We see this as a market opportunity for the near-term future because all transitions that should take place needs to be financed. And in general, this capital is available in the banking industry here, just this industry expects as well that the government is living up to its promises regarding compensation of the partly extraordinary cost, the regulation triggers here. So, a good end for the year, but still a challenging market environment as it was for the whole year, 2023. Well, last credit segment, personal loan business, something where we outgrew the market for a long time, because since 2020, the market is more or less flat, actually, even slightly declining, because first Corona and now recession fear and restrictions on the lender side, how much loans they are actually willing to provide to the clients. So, double-digit growth in the last quarter for the platform in total, and as well, a positive development in our white label business, where we provide banks with solution in case that their own credit product is not feasible, from risk profile or from a pricing structure, then they are able to use our platform to broker third-party personal loans. And, both are growing. The second one is more profitable, as you can imagine, than adjusted transaction, but in total and outperformance of the market and a good development. And looking forward, something where we expect as well, double-digit growth in 2024, even when the market is going to be more or less flat. We see more and more corporations, banks, especially in the corporate banking industry, where we teamed up with the central personal loan offering in this industry, and provide more wider solution for all credit and pricing interests of consumers. The segment had a strong last quarter, thanks to the strong performance of housing industry and corporate loan business in the last quarter. So, double-digit growth, even in an overall challenging market environment and a strong profitability increase, thanks as well to the to a good cost management here. So last segment, insurance platform. This is as you know it, and as you are aware of this, this is an industry which doesn't struggle at all. Everything is every year as it was, - 1% in total premium received by insurance companies. All three parts of this insurance market are more or less stable, and the bigger challenge in this industry is to digitize them when everything is stable. Then the pressure for digitalization is consumer demand and cost pressure. But still, it's an industry where you have a cultural understanding of nothing needs to go fast, everything has its time, and let's say, we would like to go double- digit and keep struggling with it. As you're aware of this, we restructured our activities end of 2022. Reduced our investment here and changed our cost structure, and we are profitable now in the last quarters. Without spoiling it, we keep going forward like this. We cover the whole value chain with different entities well connected to each other. For right now, we invest, especially in integrating them, reducing technical debt, shutting off systems that we don't need anymore. So streamlining our platform, and keep waiting for our partners to migrate their on-premise solutions to our software service solution to our platform. This happens in all the segments with a different speed of progress, to be fair. So at low speed only +9%. Faster than the industry, but still below our expectation in Smart Insur. So the personal insurance products, standardized insurance products here. Yeah, we are, let's say, on track, I would say, and with the expectation for 2024 and the near-term future to incrementally improve this speed here. Where we are already faster because the pressure for efficiency is higher, is the occupational insurance world, where the employer is another complexity driver, and the information exchange between the consumer, insurance broker, insurance company, and employer needs to be digitalized. There are only two reasonable offerings here in the market, two platforms, which grew to a certain size. ePension is one of them, and was able to improve the premiums under management to 42% last year. We can be certain that 2024 and 2025, we see as well a significant double-digit growth, thanks to new signed contracts in the second half of 2023, for instance, by the largest German intermediary organization, DVAG. And additional insurance brokers, which are specialized in the industrial world, which start to use ePension as well. So this is, you can say, it is scalable phase already, this part of our platform and our business. So, delivering growth, well. So new early stage, you can say, Corify, we developed it in the last 2 years, something where we still spend a significant small amount of money and loss in 2023. Got their first clients, first insurance contracts were created using Corify, so first small revenues here. Corify is a platform for industrial, non-standardized insurances. So where an industry partner is securing a certain specific risk with a specific contract against an insurance company, using an insurance broker. And we are with a huge part of the industry in the development process here for a long time now. And now we saw the first signatures, and we see the first transactions. So good start, I would say, but still something that needs to prove that it's able to be scaled. So we would, we hope to see in the next two years that, similar to ePension, we see dynamically as well on the Corify side. And ePension and Corify distributing the necessary speed of growth for this segment. So in general, the segment is still single-digit in top-line growth, outperforming market, but so taking market share, but on a slow pace. What's more important for us is we are not having to invest in this segment anymore. It had a strong last quarter. It turned profitable in the whole year, 2023 now. So we are out of the investment phase. Now we are consolidating the technical infrastructure. Certain parts are already scaling well. Looking forward, we expect here double-digit growth in top- and bottom-line in the midterm for this year. It can still be single-digit growth, but at the latest next year, it should accelerate when the newcomers start to be more relevant than the flagship Smart Insur here. Okay. For the whole group, the most important change in the recent history was that we had to perform a cost-cutting program and transition the whole group. We saved EUR 35 million. That is what we did end of 2022. And this in the end saved our profitability for the group. Made it possible that we keep investing in certain promising innovative projects, and in the same moment balance our income and cash outs so that we are safe going through this whole current environment in the private mortgage business. Here, here's some numbers for the total year as well. So I would say, most important, adjusted EBIT + EUR 1.3 million for last year, so we stayed profitable in our operational business. When we see the reported numbers, including one-offs, it's actually EUR 12 million higher. So we have a net one-off effect of EUR 12 million. Especially in the last quarter realized, so you see a strong last quarter. First quarter was positive. Second and third quarter were a bit negative, and the last quarter is again adjusted positive and with additional strong one-offs. Actually, from a tax side, even additional one-offs on the tax side, which brings us to more than EUR 20 million in profit after tax. Yeah, the restructuring of the whole group as well released some positive tax benefits and improved from this perspective our near-time future, let's say, tax statements. Okay. All in all, a transitioning year for Hypoport. As you can imagine, we see us in the fourth stage of development as Hypoport. After seven years of startup-like strong growth, we saw already our first crisis environment around the financial crisis, where we kept growing and kept taking market share while it was tough to improve profitability. That came with scaling time, where we could just expand and improve our top and bottom line. Now we are in a new phase where for the second year in a row, it's challenging to be especially profitable, but we keep taking market share in the distressed market environment. And as soon as the market recovers, we will massively outperform our recent history when it comes to profitability. So there we are at the outlook. Core topic for the outlook of Hypoport, short and midterm, is how the homeownership market is going to change. As I mentioned already, with the uplift in lead generation and consumer interest in mortgages at the end of last year, we saw strong numbers in January and February already. So we see a positive trend, and Bundesbank reported for January, close to EUR 15 billion in mortgage volume. So multiple three, it's for roughly 45. You see, we are close to this green arrow than when it comes to where we expect the first quarter to end from a market side. We take market share, so we outperform this dynamic, short- term, and long- term. And so talking about the long term and everything what is in the green space, the destruction of the renting market in Germany by regulation is irreversible. For the middle class, there is no attractive renting offer anymore in the market. It's actually more expensive to rent than to buy your first home. So, something which is natural for most of you, I would say, in Anglo-Saxon world, it's the most natural thing to acquire your homes when you start to earn money. And the same is going to happen here in Germany because we, let's say, we destroyed our renting market, as Italy or Spain did it, 50 years ago, or the Nordics did it, 30 years ago, Germany did it now. This will lead to more consumer loans needed to finance houses and homes because renting is not an option anymore. And this will bring us to volumes of above EUR 75 billion per quarter. So market volumes, which we didn't see, before this massive change in interest rates in the first half of 2022. Plus, there is a energy efficiency agenda on the European and German government level, which triggers investments of consumers of roughly EUR 20 billion per quarter for the next 20 years, every quarter. So this on top, we see a solid at a EUR 100 billion per quarter market in the near upcoming future. So the only question is, how fast will it go from this where we are right now? So the start of the uplift to the moment when we are back to normal, so on a EUR 70 billion level and from there up to a EUR 100 billion level. And this is a question of quarters. It may take 1-3 years. Yes, but please check your valuation of Hypoport. with our current cost structure and with our new discipline and managing profitability, this is something that you need to be aware of when you evaluate Hypoport. Okay, yeah, the most simple chart but maybe the most important one: How does it look like short term in 2024? Besides this, what happened in the mortgage market. So, we expect for the whole segment, real estate and mortgage platforms, a positive uplift in market environment. Together with this, even a more positive revenue uplift and a strong growth and profitability because of the scalability of this. Financing platforms and insurance, no relevant impulses from the market side for now expected. Revenue up because we take market share, and, in a similar way, profitability up in both areas, thanks to the revenue growth and, and a good management of the cost structures. In numbers for 2024, it means we expect EUR 400 million + in revenue and an EBIT between EUR 10 million and EUR 20 million for this year. This compares to EUR 1.3 million EBIT, adjusted for 2023, so an uplift of 9-19 million for this year, depending on the market development, especially for private consumers. You can say if the market is slightly weaker than what we see right now and what we report right now this year, so if this dynamic slows down and actually trickles back, then we will be closer to EUR 10 million. If this dynamic keeps staying double-digit and we are getting to a EUR 200 million market, EUR 200 billion total market for this year, so EUR 50 billion per quarter, then we will be close to EUR 20 million in revenues. If the market is even stronger this year, then it can be as well better. Long-term, expect from us that we return to our normal double-digit top and revenue and EBIT growth, top line and bottom line. Yeah, but first we need to get back to our EUR 50 million, which we had already in 2021. From there on, then you will see this development. I'm often asked if we will fast return to our, let's say, very investive, dynamic, that more or less all what improves the profitability. We keep reinvesting in new ideas and new products along the value chains. And I can tell you to answer this question here already at this moment, that for the next years, we plan to adjust our, let's say, risk profile, keep more staying focused on profitability than on innovation. Because we saw how massive and how fast our market can change. It was a black swan hit us first time. Next time, when the black swan comes, we want to be certain that we stay profitable even in such an environment. And for this, we changed our risk appetite, and our willingness to fast reinvest our profits, for the next couple of years. Okay, so much from my side. I hand back to the moderator, if there are any questions today in the English call. Thank you. We will now begin our question-and-answer session. If you do have a question for our speakers, please dial zero one on your telephone keypad to register, and there will now be a brief pause for any questions to be registered. As there are no questions registered, I hand back to our speaker for any closing comments. Okay. This was a quick check. I welcome you to our next call. As you're aware of, it's in two months, so eightthe weeks, and hopefully we will talk about solid first quarter numbers, thanks to the market environment. And let's just do it and improve the profitability of this company back to normal. So, looking forward to share with you the news then in eight weeks, and have a nice evening, wherever you are right now. Bye-bye. This now concludes our conference. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect.