Welcome to the earnings call regarding the first quarter figures for 2026 of the JDC Group Aktiengesellschaft. The company's CEO, Dr. Sebastian Grabmaier, CFO Ralph Konrad, and COO Dr. Ramona Evens will guide you through the figures in a moment, followed by a Q&A session via audio line and chat. With that, I'm handing over to you, Sebastian. Yes. Thank you very much, Judith, for the charming welcome. Very warm welcome from our side, from the management board of JDC Group, happy to present to you Q1 figures 2026. Another record time despite of very challenging times, as we will see in a moment. My name is Sebastian, CEO, Co-Founder of JDC Group. Together with my partner Ralph in the line, we founded the company now 25 years ago. Happy to be on the stock exchange for 20 years. Also Ramona with us. Ralph, maybe some words what are you doing with JDC? Yeah. I'm still here, responsible for finance, and IT and all our M&A activities. Yeah, and happy to present you the figures today. Ramona. Thank you, Ralph. Hi, I'm Ramona. I'm the COO of the group, and I always come into the picture when man and machine works together. I'm very happy to be here today to also talk about the progress with FMK and our AI initiatives. Yes. We may exclude or excuse our colleague Marcus, who is with some important clients today. So, yeah, full board on board. Yeah, we look at our JDC figures at a glance. You know that we are more than 400 employees right now. On the next page, we have more than EUR 8 billion. Right now, it's almost EUR 8.5 billion in fund and asset management volume on the platform. EUR 1.5 billion in insurance premium. More than 16,000 intermediary brokers using our platform. More and more now also using AI tools. Now end customers stand at more than 2.5 million customers with every basic, basically every insurance product, fund product available on the platform. I think we should look at the macro environment right now in Germany and all of Europe. You can see that all these arrows on the right side, they point downward, meaning that the, yeah, consumer confidence is as low as it has been during COVID times. Yeah, if you look at all these graphs, consumer climate of GfK, for us also, enterprise climates, labor market figures, macro economy. All these arrows point downward as the, yeah, overall sentiment in the market is very, very bad. Especially in retail markets, you see a downward, anxiety-driven, performance of clients and consumers. We think this is temporary, but still, it hinders our, yeah, new figures, the new business figures especially. When you're German, have a German sentiment, you know the existence of German Angst, yeah, due to Ukraine War and Iran War in the Middle East. This is very present in German media, newspapers. There's a very high sentiment for not buying now. Everybody or a lot of clients postpone their investment decisions, both on the investment and especially also on the insurance side. This is, has some, yeah, major effect on our platform, which we see on the next page. Firstly, obviously, even if our new business figures are still up 3%, the volume is down. Especially the very big pension contracts do not come to the platform right now. The in the health segment were very front-loaded contracts are making the business. We see some postponing, and this is coupled with some higher cancellation rates. The investment assets actually are doing fine, we'll see in a moment. We the new business definitely has a little weakness, which we can compensate by our strength in the recurring revenue side. Also for FMK, it's rather winter times, and we're very happy that FMK is performing that well in a world where also the search volume for financial products is down, sometimes even 20% with Google and others. This means that also in a scarce market, advertising costs per contract are up. This is not really favorable. Still, we see that FMK is performing as planned. You also see less marketing appetite of financial institutions. We not only see that with FMK, but also for other online brokers that make quite some figures in our contract transfer segment. We see maybe on the next page, if you look at the KPIs, we can see that, yeah, the first time that we can remember the number of contract transfer is down by almost 10%, and this is dependent on very big institutional clients and Finanzguru spending less in advertising. Therefore, these contract transfers is down a little bit. As I said, number of new orders still up, but the volume being a little bit down. Those exactly reversed from last year where in Q4, the number of orders was down, but the volume was up. We're very happy that, and this is, I think, what shows the resilience of our platform business, is that our assets under management figures are up nicely. From below EUR 8 billion to almost EUR 8.5 billion. That's a very good figure, I think, for the future, is the annual net premium insurance up 12% and stands now at more than EUR 1.5 billion. This is basically, as you know, the source of our future income because 82% of our income comes recurring from these figures, assets under management and on net premium. This is why we are very optimistic for the business of our future, but see that we have very temporary weakness in our new business, and this also, you will see in some of the figures we are presenting today. Yeah, overall, we're very happy to present to you like a strong growth company. You see that the turnover growth stands at more than 20% from EUR 62.2 million up to almost EUR 75 million. That's a record high quarter, not only a record high Q1, but a historic high figure. And also if you look that our guidance is EUR 300 million to EUR 320 million, EUR 330 million, you see that we are right on track, that a quarter of it is already in the books. And then also, you see that the together with FMK now, the platform scaling up with an EBITDA growth of more than 60%. Ralph. You're on mute, I think. I can't hear you. I apologize. Now I'm no longer muted. Let's go one step deeper. Revenues increased in the first quarter by 23% to EUR 74.9 million. As Sebastian mentioned, record high for our history. The advisory segment grew by 22.4% to EUR 65.9 million, and the advisory segment by a solid 6.6% to EUR 14.5 million. The gross profits increased by approximately 25%, more than EUR 21 million to more than EUR 21 million, and this is also record high for the first quarter. As Sebastian already said, the economic environment was difficult for our traditional platform. People in Germany are postponing their investments in their own retirement planning, whether in insurance or in investment. Therefore, it's not really surprising that FMK drove the growth in the first quarter, even though the environment was far from easy for FMK as well, with a 20% decline in the search volume for financial products in Germany. The increase in gross profits led to an EBITDA plus of more than 60% to EUR 8.1 million. Overall, a, I think, really good number. For those who are interested in a little bit more in detail on FMK's contribution, the turnover of FMK was EUR 12.1 million, EBITDA, EUR 3.9 million. If you deduct this EUR 3.9 million from the EUR 8.1 million group EBITDA, you can see that the profitability of our platform ex FMK was at EUR 4.2 million EBITDA and thus below the previous year. However, it's important to note and understand that people are postponing their investments, not cancel them. You can do without a second watch, but you can't do without a solid retirement plan. That's why we expect a rebound once the indicators improve again. We are very confident on that because we saw exactly the same situation during the COVID-19 crisis and the same situation at the start of the war in the Ukraine as well. Yeah, as for our quarterly performance, suffice it to say that we were able to start the year 2026 with a typical cyclical pattern. The first quarter was more or less on par with the fourth quarter of last year, and thus provides a solid foundation for the rest of the year. I mentioned the broker platform saw a challenging environment. The turnover of the investment business was flat. That's the reason why you don't see an investment bar here. It was flat in the first quarter. The insurance turnover was up 2.6%, which is EUR 1 million. Others were down EUR 0.2 million. Again, the main driver of the growth was our new lead business with FMK, which was up EUR 12 million. When you look at the composition of the turnover and its development by channels, you can see that the IFA business is down in the first quarter by 4%. This is more than compensated by a very good development of our major customers business, which is up 11%. I think a remarkable figure in this environment. The advisory segment grew by 11%, by 7%, sorry. Again, the lead business grew by EUR 12 million. The pie chart on the right-hand of the chart shows that with the integration of FMK, our turnover split by channel is now a little bit better diversified, roughly 50% by IFA business, classical IFA business, 25% major clients, and about 20% lead business. Yeah. We go into the advisory tech numbers in detail. The revenues were up 22.4% to EUR 65.9 million. Gross profit rose by 30%, better than turnover because again, lead business has higher margin than our classical platform business. Depreciation and amortization is on previous year's level. Personal expenses and other operating expenses are up 8.9% respectively 16.5%. First, because of the FMK costs that are now consolidated, and second, because of the overall cost development of the platform. As a result, EBITDA increased by 62% to EUR 8.1 million, and thereof, as mentioned, EUR 3.9 million FMK. The advisory segment performed well in the first quarter. 7% growth is not our target, but it's a very solid figure at this point. The gross profit rose by 6% and with the total costs increasing by approximately EUR 0.3 million. EBITDA was EUR 1.2 million and stable compared to the first quarter in 2025. Let's come to the cash flow statement. We started the year with a cash balance of EUR 36 million. Operating cash flow was a little bit smaller, decreased from EUR 6.3 million to EUR 5.6 million, and this for two reasons. The first is FMK paid EUR 1.5 million in taxes. In the first quarter, 2026, we had no tax payments because of our tax losses carried forward. The second was the second answer or second reason is please keep in mind that we, as JDC Group, have a negative working capital profile. That means we first receive the commissions and then pay them out to our agents. If we now receive less money due to weaker new business, which was the case in the first quarter, and we still have a higher payout for the previous year's period new business, which was higher than It's normal that this has a negative effect on operating cash flow. The cash flow from investing activities amounted at a very small negative number of EUR 600,000, and cash flow from financing activities increased due to higher interest payments from EUR 500,000 to EUR 1.7 million negative. The interest, quarterly interest for the bonds, the new Nordic bond is between EUR 1.1 million and EUR 1.2 million, so that we ended up at a cash balance of the quarter of EUR 39.4 million, and cash on hand last Friday was EUR 41 million before the payment for our buyback program, which will be EUR 5 million. As always, some information about bonds and the share price. We have two bonds outstanding, the SME bond under German law for EUR 20 million, you know our Nordic bond with EUR 70 million, which we issued to finance the FMK transaction. Perhaps, one more comment on the Nordic bond. We attended the first time the Pareto Securities Annual Nordic Corporate Conference, Nordic Bond Conference last month. We met many of our bond investors in person for the first time. We had a very packed schedule, gave a group presentation to a very large audience. All in all, it was a successful event for us. We received a lot of excellent feedback from existing and prospective bond investors. That's good news for us. Maybe one more information that is important if you look at our liabilities, at our bond liabilities. We have covenants regarding the issuance of new debt, but we don't have any maintenance covenants. The only risk that we face here as a company is that the interest rates on the Nordic bonds are floating and could rise. We haven't hedged against this yet because we think the costs have been too high, but this decision could change within the next weeks or months. Coming to the share price. Our share price shows a long upward trend, even though we experienced, you remember, a significant setback to around EUR 21 in 2026 due to investors' fear about AI and its influence on insurance brokers. The share price subsequently recovered to more than EUR 26, but since then has fallen again over the past three months, most recently this morning to EUR 21.60. We still hold 147,000 treasury shares that we purchased at an average price of EUR 19.89. I will comment on the result of the share buyback program in some minutes. As the submission period has ended, and the results of the share buyback program were finalized at 11:00 A.M. this morning. After the release of our corporate news, and that's the reason why we were not able to comment on this topic with our corporate news this morning. We'll do this in some minutes. Shareholder base is stable. We have only changes in free float. Let's come to the spotlights. We have four spotlights. We want to give you some information about a peer transaction that happened in the last months. We will give you some information on the share buyback program, and then afterwards, Ramona will give you some update on FMK and AI at JDC. The peer transaction. Most of you will have read that our competitor Netfonds has been acquired by a private equity firm. It was Warburg Pincus, and it's not a secret, it's widely known in the market that this transaction was completed and needed a multiple of 17.5. We would like to take this opportunity to compare this to the current valuation of JDC. Before, let me say, we are aware as management that it's not our role to explain to you investors what the company's worth. It's our task to deliver strong operational performance, nevertheless, the difference in valuation is so striking that we at least want to bring it to your attention. Let's go into the table. You see the JDC guidance, the lower end with EUR 35 million and the upper end with EUR 38 million. If you multiply this by 17.5, this is the valuation of the peer transaction, then you end up at a EUR 610 million-EUR 660 million enterprise value. If you deduct the company's net debt, EUR 60 million, the equity value would be EUR 550 million-EUR 604 million. With 13.7 million shares that we have, and we did not deduct the treasury shares, you would end up at a share price of EUR 40-EUR 44 per share at JDC, and the share price actual is EUR 21.6 when we started the conference here. You see, there's a multiple discount between 45%-50% if you compare to the peer transaction. Again, it's not our role to explain to you how to evaluate, we just want to bring this to your attention. That brings me to my last chart, about our share buyback program because this transaction, the Netfonds transaction, coupled with the fact that the stock performance in the last 24 months has not kept pace with the company's operational performance, prompted us as management and supervisory board of the JDC Group to carry out the share buyback that has just been completed this morning. We think that based on a valuation of EUR 22.5 per share, that an investment in JDC is highly attractive for all shareholders. Of course, for these shareholders who do not want to sell their shares. For this reason, we have decided for the first time to launch a public offer rather than a traditional ongoing share buyback program, which we did before because it was our goal to fully invest the planned EUR 5 million and not only parts. In the previous buyback programs that we ran, we were only able to buy significantly fewer shares than the maximum allowed. We are very pleased and happy that we were able to fully exercise our public offering, and we were able to acquire 222,222 shares at a share price of EUR 22.5 per share. We were not drunk when we came up with these numbers, right? It's just like that the price divided by 5 million just resulted in these 222,000 shares. Yeah. If we would've known that it's so complex to tell this, then maybe the numbers would have been different. We now own 369,335 treasury shares, representing 2.7% of the share capital. Very correct. We will own these numbers of shares because the transaction has to be done within the next days. Yeah, we think that's a very good news for our shareholder. For me as shareholder, I think this is a good news. Yeah. I would like to hand over to Ramona Evens to lead you through some further information. Thank you, Ralph. Also warm welcome from my side. I'm very happy to be here today to give you some insights on the business build-up with FMK. We have been working very diligent in the past months to bring the vision of a new shared FMK JDC insurance sales engine to life, and I'm very happy to announce that the sales engine is now up and running. As a short reminder of what FMK is doing in their core business, they target customers at the very end of the search funnel and primarily focus on the customer that are about to buy. They target those customer through paid marketing campaigns. Wherever the customers are right now, currently, that means search engines, social media and AI tools. From there, they lead the customers to their own landing pages, for example, Finanzfox, to get the customer data here and to create a lead. We have launched and went live with three new insurance products in the past months. It's disability, pension, and income protection. We chose those products because they're very profitable. You get a four-digit commission for each sale. What's different now in the insurance business than it used to be in the personal finance business, that all those leads go now exclusively to us, to JDC Plus, that's our in-house broker. We hired a new sales team that exclusively deals with those leads and converts them to sales. We built up a new in- lead infrastructure with them. Now this engine of FMK provides those leads to our sales team, and our sales team gives to each and every lead feedback back to FMK how is the quality of the lead, so that FMK can optimize their campaigns and then further focus on more profitable clients. Now this is now up and running. Every sale leads to the next sales, and this is a fully automated feedback loop. I put in a little chart here. As you can see, in January and February we started to build up the infrastructure, and in March it started to scale so that the number of leads went up. In terms of sales, we already have a six-digit potential with the leads we already created. However, in the products that we have chosen in disability, you have a lead to sale conversion time from six to eight weeks. Why is that? You usually have, like, two advisory meetings. The customer needs to get their medical records together, and the insurance company has to answer the risk request. This takes time. As of now in May, we are getting in the sales of the leads from March. We definitely have a time lag between lead creation and sale. Then, of course, again, from sale to commission because we only get paid once the customer has paid the first rate. You will see the P&L effect of the business always with a few months in delay. However, even though I said that our plans for Q1 have been currently met with 110%, and now over the year our plans grow more and more ambitious month by month, and we are very determined to keep those plans. It's been a lot of work so far, and the collaboration with FMK is going very smoothly. I'm very happy that the engine is now up and running, and we will see the fruits of that over the next couple of months. This is one of the things that we've already started and if could you go to the next slide, please? In parallel, we are also building up new income streams. Like the first thing was the direct channel, and the second thing is that we are also building up a platform for our brokers to buy leads and then convert them themselves. We are currently working on this lead [audio distortion] from a classical search engine to AI, but the underlying business model stays the same. It's an ad finance business model. The first test that FMK also did in these AI overviews shows that the conversion in the AI advertisement is even better than in the search engine, because it's more focused on what the user actually needs. Okay. That's a little wrap-up on FMK. Also a few words on our AI initiatives. We continue as a leader in the AI development in the German broker market. Besides our internal efficiency gains that we achieved with AI in the last two years, we are also putting out new AI features for our brokers on a very quick path to make their life more efficient. I think last time in the last earnings call, I've already introduced the Tarifpilot, and that's a feature that assesses the entire portfolio of the broker and shows him or her optimization potential. We also already introduced the AVB Companion. This is a feature that answers in real time terms and conditions questions for, or on the terms of conditions of insurance tariffs of the entire German market dating back more than three decades. It's an absolutely unique feature with a non-public database that only we can access. It's absolutely unique in the German market. Now our newest development is Chatty. That is an AI assistant that helps with the day-to-day service inquiries of the broker. This is now in a beta phase. Where friends and family can test, and this will go live soon as well. We have more projects in the pipeline that we will reveal with appropriate marketing measures in the future. Just to give it, to put this in a larger context, those features are really important in the ongoing consolidation of the broker market, because then in the future there will be fewer brokers with more customers, and this can only work if the brokers and we take off most of the administrative tasks off their shoulders. We want to be the favorite help of the broker in the market, and we have shown with our AI initiatives that we will be the favorite partner, and we will keep on bringing new features out to help our brokers to focus on their main business, which is selling insurance. Thank you. Again, that's what we told you that last earnings call, right? Everybody's talking about AI, but nobody's talking about the data. Nobody's talking about the infrastructure. Nobody's talking about the customer access. We here at JDC, we have all three of them, right? We do have the deepest and strongest and biggest data bank in the German market. That's the Morgen & Morgen data bank. With 80,000 contract entries and tariffs out of the last 20 years. We're the only ones who can really have these comparison, not only on the modern product, but also on the past products. We do have the infrastructure with one of the most modern platforms in the market. With FMK, we do have the customer access that all is what you need to run these agentic AI agents in the future. Yeah, just to give you news on the guidance that are not no news. We're definitely staying with the guidance we gave you last time. On the next slide, that's EUR 300 million-EUR 330 million in turnover, and also EUR 35 million-EUR 38 million EBITDA. If you see, from the turnover side, EUR 75 million is already in the books. We think that there will be only a temporary weakness in the new business. If this comes just a little bit back to normal, it will be a quite good guess that we reach this guidance and also on the earnings side, we are on track. Also with our initiatives here, we wanna give you the overview on our AI tools. I think, there's a lot to come that helps the broker to be more efficient in the business and also to save costs for us internally, right? Now we are working on a number of projects that also enhance our efficiency inside. That's all good news inside the company. The rest that's the crying eye is, all of our business definitely depends on the development of especially the German consumer confidence. That's the number one topic. There we used, as Ralph said, some crises in their mindsets, but normally this comes back in the course of one or two other quarters. Yeah, that's so far from our side, and we're happy to take any questions you might have. I see, Judith, that there are some already. Yes, we do have a few questions already. Thank you very much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, as we are doing the Q&A session, if you would like to ask some questions here online, please click on the Raise Your Hand button. Additionally, you are also welcome to place your questions in our chat. First one is, the capital markets has reduced strongly in April and May. Will this improve the numbers positively the rest of the year? The second one, why was the tax rate payments so high this year when you still have tax loss carry forwards you use? I can take the question. The connection is not so good at the moment. It was addressed on the too high fees in the forward models. The answer is yes, this will have a positive influence. The next question, they want for FMK does not have tax loss carryforward. Can you Yeah, I can hear you. Okay. because the call is frozen. Okay. We will need to use this carryforward for the next few years. Konrad, maybe you take off camera and the next question. Okay. The internet connection is lost at this point. Maybe one of you can take over to answer the second question. Right now, Mr. Grabmaier, I cannot hear you even though you're unmuted. Maybe Ms. Evens, can you jump in on that? Hello. Testing. Can you hear me? Okay. Finally, I'm being unmuted. Okay. I think the second, you asked two questions, and I guess both were already answered by Mr. Konrad, so we can go to the next one. Okay. Thank you very much. As the business market is weaker, is there any cost-cutting options you can do to offset this to some market leading? Yeah. Now we can hear you, Ramona. Yeah. Sure. Of course, we are, we are also taking the cost side under consideration. Like when it comes to new hires, we only focus on sales, but all the other, yeah, all the other new hires are completely frozen. We are taking this very seriously to making sure that our cost is not growing faster than our sales. That's for sure. We started a new cost-cutting initiative where we really look into each and every cost point that we have and considering is that something that we still really need or is that something that we can, that we can save for the future. This is something that has been going on, this cost initiative over the past few months. We really want to go ahead of the wave and be prepared in case that the market developments are not coming up in the future as as we have planned them. Yes, we are looking into that as well. Thank you very much, Dr. Evens. Ladies and gentlemen, we are sorry for the technical problems on that side. The management board is on three different parts in Germany, so, maybe we can go on, Dr. Evens. Yes, we can go on. I'm here. Now I can hear you again. I'm in the office. Hi. In the middle of Wiesbaden. Obviously there were some connection problems. Sebastian is on the Equity Forum where he talks to some of you maybe in person, and maybe there's some internet problems. We're here to answer your questions. Thank you very much, Mr. Konrad, and we're doing our best. What tax rate do you expect for 2026? Good question. The platform of FMK still has tax losses carried forward, so there will be very little tax rates and FMK as they don't have tax losses carried forward, we should get 30%. Maybe, Carla, I can ask my analyst that is listening to give a judgment so I can pass the answer by the end of the call. Thank you very much. Did you pay the minority shareholders for the Q1 profits? Yes. That was the question. All form approaches to FMK have been paid, there's no duty on paying cash to minority shareholders. For first for Q1 for the full year there will be one date of payment. Thank you very much. We do have one question on Edwin Leung. Mr. Leung, you can just unmute yourself now. Please take your time. One second. Is that working? Yes. Good to see you, Sebastian. Okay. First of all, as for the German market already a little bit lower than we wanted it to really come back. That's already a little bit this book this year in a better +15% pre-war and COVID. We see that, yeah, this is a big improvement will be more open for this thing and more chance to use it for being guidance. Okay. That's the question that is on and off, because I think this question as well. To be honest, nobody knows exactly when consumer confidence comes back. What we know again is, you can do without a saving approach and without proper retirement plan. What we know is, people invest and they don't cancel them. In general, the latest the people need are will be to match guidance. That's there. Based on the view, I have a very good trend for JDC old platform or existing platform and for business. Nevertheless, we've got a generative EBITDA of EUR 8 million, which is 4x a little bit beyond the guidance. The normal EUR 75 is times four at the lower end of the guidance. We are still very confident that we need more guidance this year despite the price. Could we hear the lower parallel three? We are still very confident to reach this guidance because again, EUR 8 million, EUR 8.1 EBITDA times four is definitely below the lower end of our guidance. Turnover times four is at the lower end of our guidance. This, although the environment is very hard at the moment. We're very confident to reach our guidance this year. I was just in the first stage that the lost clients, they are still growing quite fast even. Two digits. That's something that would underpin the revenue or let's say the IFAs from behind that or is that? Major clients have grown by 11%, you're right. The IFAs are the one that are, let's say, the ones that are the most dependent on economic environment because there's no structured system that tells everybody you need five meetings tomorrow to get your goals. They are in such phases, you can always see that the structured sales teams or Finom team or other brokers or others, they perform better than the normal saving brokers. Okay. Great. Thanks. Thanks, Ralph. Maybe for Ramona. For FMK, that FMK was the first few months, EUR 12.1 million as Ralph said. Let's say that compares to, I think, almost EUR 12 million in the last four months or last year. There's quite some growth there. Is that fair to assume? Let's say, what part of the FMK revenue is really insurance related and what part is other business, so to say? Yeah. Maybe Ramona can take the question if you don't mind. The insurance portion is still low. As Ramona said, we are generating leads. With the leads, we don't pay per lead, but as with a commission split. As Ramona explained, there is a time delay, six weeks. There's still not a number, not relevant figure that FMK earned in insurance. Yes, there is a growth compared to the fourth quarter. Yeah. At FMK, you have to know that, it's not a like the JDC business predictable business because, you know, the first quarter is good, then you have a weak second and third, but a very good fourth quarter. It more depends like if interest rates are rising, then the platforms want to spend money to gather new customers. It's more driven by external influences. Yeah. In general, I would say, they're on a good development, still very profitable. Especially because there were no like these external positive effects in the first quarter. Bitcoin was down, gold was down. Nobody was thinking about doing investments. We are very happy with the development in the first quarter there. Yeah. I can imagine. I can imagine. Finally, on the AI part, naturally you've got the tariff pillow, so you've got the Chatty here and all that, all these kinds of new AI features. Is there a way that you can monetize that or are you already monetizing it or is just, let's say, making more service for your clients, so to say? Ramona. We of course, like always try to monetize that so that we have a free version with like a basic feature, and then you pay for the more advanced features. Obviously the brokers are very hesitant to pay extra for the features as of now, it might change in the future. I guess the main impact is really, keeping our existing clients and brokers with us and being attractive for new, young brokers, to join our platform. I guess that's the main, the main, the main initiative here with these features, and everything is a add-on. If we just look at the add-on, the, you know, what brokers pay for the additional features then it wouldn't be profitable. It's more like initiatives to keep and to attract new brokers. Ralph. No, that's fine. Clear. Thank you very much. Good luck in the Equity Forum. Thank you very much, Edwin, for your questions. We will move on to the Q&A questions. Did you lose tenders? Are you bidding for contracts of significant size? It's the first time Sebastian, is not able to tell us anything, because his microphone, is mute. That's, very new. Right, so. Oh, we can hear you. We can hear you. Okay. You can answer if you want to. We told you about, I think in last or before the last, I just remember one, very one tender that we did not win. The rest of the tenders we won. Is there any tenders of significant size? Definitely yes, we never know when they're signed as all these very big clients take ages to sign and to decide. No promises here. Yeah. Maybe I received feedback from our back office. The answer was the same, very hard to calculate or to predict the tax rate. The best guess is between 15% and 20%, just as a feedback to this question. Thank you very much, Mr. Konrad. We're moving on. How many shares were you offered at the EUR 22.5 price? Sebastian, you wanna answer? That was surprising. That was the first tender we took, and we learned several things about the stock market. One was that there is a lot of people on arbitrage deals. You could see that the stock price rose very fast to the EUR 22.5 figure. That's not surprising, but what was almost surprising that some of our very big institutions told us they put in a very big number of shares to get a small portion of it back in the tender with an expectation of something that's lower than 50 or a fifth. That's basically what happened. We received more than 1 million shares. Are happy to trade all these blocks because we do have a very strong conversation now about people looking for very big blocks. But I would be surprised if these of our investors that we identified are then also selling these blocks. We'll find out in the next weeks. Yeah. The concrete figures are published on our website since 11:30 AM or something like this. Again, we would have commented on in our corporate news, but this was not possible because we received the information after our announcement. Thank you. Could you please elaborate on your plans for the approximate 220,000 shares repurchased in the Q2? Do you intend to cancel these shares and thereby reduce the total share count, or do you plan to retain them for other purposes such as acquisitions or employee compensation plans? Not for employee compensation. Yeah. The other two options are options. We are allowed to hold them and to cancel them. We have not decided yet, it will not be used as like a management incentive plan. That's what we can promise. We will do with the shares what's the best for shareholders. What is the limiting factor for faster onboarding of R+V, Versicherungskammer Bayern, Sparkassen and Allianz? Do you expect onboarding to increase? That's a very good question actually. Yeah, you hear us being impatient about the progress of exactly these biggest clients. We see a lot of progress with the savings banks in the Franconia region, but not really much in Versicherungskammer and the Sparkassen regions. It's just yeah, some movement in the heads. We hear from their boards that they are sometimes pretty happy with the projects, especially R+V tells me, well, we could double the number of banks, right? From five to 20 and having 800, there's a long way to go. We don't see that there's limiting factors, but we also don't have any big idea how we can really improve the progress and increase the speed of these projects as we basically are in very good project meetings. It obviously takes some time. Do we expect onboarding to increase? The number of savings banks on the platform is quite high, but it's on the end until you convert clients at the very point of sale in the branch, and this is something we have to get to faster. Thank you. With Netfonds being bought at double the valuation of JDC, at what time would you consider putting JDC up for sale to get some same multiple? With the stock below EUR 22.5 and more than 1.2 million shares tendered in the program, are you considering doing another tender? Number one, it's actually you as the investors that can tell you at what price you would sell, right? Obviously, there is a different gap, a huge gap in valuation. We always said, Ralph and I, it's not on us to know the best of the world. If an attractive offer is coming in, we'll ask you all, obviously, right? We'll not be glued to our chairs or whatsoever. Yeah, that's an open market. You can ask us as investors and as we think that we will get to reach this EUR 1 billion in valuation, but not now, but in some years out, right? We also have to consider that money now might be better than money later, but definitely not at the current prices, right? It's important, Sebastian, it's important to point out that from my point of view, the difference in valuation is not because Netfonds is a better company. We think it's different, of course, yeah. The difference is driven by the fact that private markets at the moment valuate much higher than public markets, yeah. I can remember times where it were different, yeah. That was the reason why a lot of companies want to go public, but now it's different, yeah. The truth is somewhere in between, yeah. Maybe not at the valuation that we have today. The second part of the question, whether we're considering doing another tender. Well, obviously that's very new information for us, right? Came in Friday night, now this morning. Obviously, right, First we have to talk to the investors that would give and that we identified, whether they would like to sell at all, because that's not so clear at the moment. Then, yes, obviously we think in comparison to buying other platforms at 17.5x a corporate or commercial brokers at 16x-18x, or private brokers at 11x, 12x, We are the cheapest target in the market. Just by our own interest, it's a very good idea to spend our money in our own shares. Thank you very much. With an eye on the time, we have eight questions left in our chat box. I will fastly read them. Hi, congratulations on a solid quarter in the midst of market turmoil. Thank you for taking my questions. First one. There has been a lot of talk about market headwinds and uncertainty to date. Which macro assumptions, if any, are built into reaching in the 2026 guidance? Second. How much of the March leads spike is due to number of campaigns versus campaign optimization? Although early, is the expected LTV still up to expectations? Third. Speaking of capital allocation, would you consider additional bids in 2026? Yeah. I think we answered number three. Just very short on number one, yes, when we put out the guidance, we just lived through the Q4, which was not good in new business as well. Yeah, some of the headwinds are calculated in. We could not foresee the Iran war unfortunately, it's not something that we are afraid of. I think we are right on track to reach our guidance in 2026, we are very relaxed on that. Number two, I give to Ramona or Ralph. Yeah, it answers both. It's, we increased the number of campaigns, and we also optimized campaigns already. LTV, I'm not quite sure what you mean with that abbreviation, but we are still within our plans and it's pretty much, as I said, we are, like, 110% of our plans that we have achieved. We are still within the expected results. Thank you very much. You have the goal to reach EUR 1 billion market cap. The share price is weak, the market is not willing to increase the valuation multiple. Through what measures could you grow more than forecasted? Yeah, that's a question on consumer confidence in the future. We calculate this goal by just extrapolating our growth figures, right? If you, like, get 15% growth for another four or five years, you will see that you come to EUR 500+ million in turnover and also then to EUR 60 million EBITDA. Obviously at an 8.5 multiple, then, EUR 1 billion is far out. Then, if you have, like, let's say, what was normal platform multiples until now or what private equity pays, that's the way to go, right? The measures are, take all these AI efforts to make our business much more efficient and have huge cost saving effect, and then top it up with a much faster way to get across to the client by not just having 500 people in call centers calling people, but have a bot calling 40,000 clients in a minute, right? There's so much new potential in these new tools, which we will show you once it's in reach. Yeah. Maybe we can ask one question regarding the Altersvorsorgedepot, because the rest of the remaining questions are already answered, I think. Maybe let's focus on this one. Regarding the coming Altersvorsorgedepot in Germany, will this pose a chance for FMK to sell leads to banks or a threat to other pension options? Well, this will be big, right? This is one of these campaigns Ralph was talking about. Where everybody, all these new brokers, all the fund industry that has now access to, which was formerly a realm of insurance companies now wants to attract the client to have him for other products as well. This, for FMK, will be very big. My sentiment for the rest of the business, right, there was this Riester product in the market that was not sold extensively, this also goes for the other insurance product. There will be some positive effect also for the rest of the platform, for FMK, this could be the thing for the next year. Yeah. If I may just add, FMK is already ready to go. All the landing pages are already created, even you can buy it only from the 1st January, 2027. You can already put your data in there, make sure you are the first ones to actually able to buy that sort of product. They are ready to go right now. There's very little interest in searching for Altersvorsorgedepot, of course, the next time it's going to be in the news or at the latest at the end of the year, we are ready to get in all the customer interest that there will be. Yeah. Maybe we take this as the spotlight for the next earnings call because I think it's a very interesting, what are the different effects on our platform. FMK, very positive. A broker platform, a little bit of question mark, we will give you the answers. There's a lot of potential because what most of you might not know is that insurers who offer this very cheap Altersvorsorgedepot, they will also offer the same with higher commissions and let's say try to sell this. There's also a very good chance for the rest of the platform. It's the question was, is it chance or a threat? It's definitely more chance than the threat. Thank you very much. Very good last words. With that, we have come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you very much for your interest in the JDC Group Aktiengesellschaft. A big thank you also to the management board for your presentation and your time. Should you have any further questions at a later date, please feel free to reach out to investor relations, of course. I wish you all a successful day around the world. With that, I'm handing over to Sebastian for some final remarks. Yes. Thank you, Judith. Again, we apologize for the technical problems. That's the first time that happened. We'll find the source, and this will not happen again, we hope. Thank you for your trust and it's challenging times, but you can see that the base of our business, that's the recurring business that's growing. That's the core for our future growth, right? This is growing as it was, and it's 82% of our business, so we're not afraid of some weaknesses in a temporary new business phase, because we always know this comes in waves. Normally, these are one or two quarters, and then at the third and fourth quarter, this may catch up. We will see better times ahead. This also gives us an impression that, yeah, the shares stay cheap and we will definitely discuss buying back more shares and also try everything that furthers our growth. We see a lot of potential in all these AI figures, as Ramona showed you. I think we are market leaders in developing these tools based on the data bank and the infrastructure that we have. Yeah, stay tuned for more good news from our platform. Yeah, we will do our best to achieve our goals. This year we are very positive to reach the guidance and also for the years out. There's a lot of growth ahead. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.