Hello, everybody. This is Florian Nowotny. On behalf of DDM, I welcome you to our full year 2021 conference call. For your reference, the presentation has just been posted on our webpage few minutes ago on the investors financial reports presentations. You will find the slides on which we will be talking through the next minutes. With me is my colleague Fredrik Olsson, who will then later on present the financial section. With this, I would like to start on the first slide. This is actually slide three, to show you where we stand at the beginning of 2022. We worked a lot during 2021 to position DDM as an investor in situations arising out of the general strategic challenges in the European banking markets. What do we mean by this? It's really three segments that we are focusing on at the moment. First, you've got our core debt purchasing business. That's where we engage mainly with banks to acquire non-performing loans, take that off the balance sheet, and fulfill this important role in the entire credit value chain to focus on collecting on non-performing loans. This is what we've been doing for a long time and have a good track record and continued business in. The second pillar is what we call consumer finance, but that is in a very wide sense. This is really focusing on consumer-oriented banking that can come in various shapes and forms, because this is clearly an area where we see a lot of strategic pressure on financial institutions coming both from the cost side, coming from their digitalization challenges. That's where also coming with our experience from the NPL side, we see interesting opportunities on various more or less special situations. With the acquisition at the year end of Swiss Bankers, which I'll talk a little bit later, we also made a further significant step here. The third leg, and this is something we've spent quite some time and effort on during 2021, is the real estate and special situations asset area. Clearly, as most of our NPLs come out of secured loans, we've always had significant real estate exposure and real estate experience, and we're now trying to institutionalize this somewhat. That's one aspect here was our first investment into Italy by taking a small stake in Borgosesia. We are also working on potentially opening ourselves up for third-party investors and then offering our expertise in a more fund management, asset management perspective here as well, because this is very adjacent to the NPL business, but with some certain special and highly interesting risk-return propositions. As it always has been since the last two years, the pure loan and asset servicing is outside of our DDM group. That's where our sister company, AxFina, is focusing on so that we really have a dedicated service that we can rely on. Following on this general strategic positioning, let me give you the key highlights of 2021, which you see on page four. The first half of 2021 was clearly the focus was clearly on strengthening our capital position. We extended our bond program, which gives us a much longer maturity profile, so that we have a much more robust capital basis on which to execute the strategy I've been highlighting before. Based on this, in the second half of the year, we've picked up our investment activity, both in the existing market, but also entering some new markets, specifically, as mentioned, Italy, Poland, Romania, Switzerland. We enlarged our geographical footprint. This is what we continue to do into 2021. If you look in our balance sheet, you see EUR 65 million of cash at year-end. This clearly shows that our key focus now is on making good, sensible, and profitable investments here. Going on the next slide, which is basically slide six, to show you some of the investment highlights we did in the second half of the year, specifically in Q4. On the one hand, we continued acquiring smaller mainly secured portfolios in Croatia, which is a very well-performing market for us. We also entered a new market with Poland with a first like a smaller transaction, but we see quite interesting dynamics in Poland and found an interesting opportunity to put our toe into this water. That's something where we expect further transactions to follow on because there's a little bit of a shift in the market dynamic we see in Poland. Also in Romania, we've already done our first investment, which closed in summer. Given the size of the Romanian market and the market dynamic we're seeing there's also an interesting geography for us to complement our Balkan investments. On the next page, on page seven, I already mentioned our investment in Italy. Italy clearly huge NPL market, but not always easy to get hold of the right opportunities there. We've been watching the Italian market for quite a while. Now we found an interesting partner with whom we are now investing in Italy. Borgosesia is a listed company which is really at the crossroads between real estate and NPL business. They have a clear real estate dedication and experience and real pure real estate people in the team. They usually source their projects coming out of NPL or distressed situations. They really have a special expertise which very well complements our investment focus. What we did is we, on the one hand, took a small 5% stake in Borgosesia itself. That's a low single-digit million EUR investment. The more important is that we plan to invest with them in those special situations in Italy, mainly around the Milan area. We've already at the end of 2021 closed the first investment here, which is a smaller, around EUR 5 million ticket. The aim here is to really roll this out step by step with usually like EUR 5 million-EUR 10 million transactions. In this way, build up a portfolio of real estate related distressed/NPL investments in the northern Italian market, which especially compared to some like a German or Austrian real estate markets, offers really interesting risk return opportunities there. That's something where we're quite bullish on being able to deploy further capital and really step-by-step, it's really well manageable and we can grow there organically. On page eight, our biggest acquisition in 2021. We signed in December, just before Christmas, the acquisition of Swiss Bankers. Swiss Bankers is the leading Swiss issuer of prepaid credit cards. Very specialized, mainly consumer-oriented financial product, and is also offering payment solutions. It's really their offering is at a junction between almost like a fintech type of product, but with a you know decade-old heritage and having you know big experience, also traditional in this very specialized banking product. The key to understand here is that Swiss Bankers has you know for the last I think 40 years been owned by a consortium of almost all big Swiss banks. That of course was not the ownership enabling it to fully use the dynamic that would be possible with the product offering. Also the bank owners you know coming under strategic pressure themselves to focus on the core business, et cetera, did not have that much strategic value in that participation. Of course, as COVID impacted travel activity and the demand for that product is to a certain extent also impacted by travel activity. This all led to a situation where Swiss Bankers came to the market, and we think it fits well with our overall theme to engage in situations coming out of disruptions or strategic challenges for banks. It's also important to note that you know this clearly is not a distressed situation. It's also a bank that is very much a fully regulated bank in Switzerland, but very much liability-driven. It's really their product is on issuing these prepaid credit cards. But they don't have any loan risks on their asset side. It's due to, you know, confidentiality reasons, you know, we can't give all the details we would like to give. Just to clearly point out, you saw that we have EUR 60 million cash on our balance sheet at year-end. It's clear that, by far, not all of that will be spent on this acquisition, so that once we close this acquisition, which we expect in Q2 to happen after regulatory approval, that obviously we will have significant funds also to invest still in our other businesses. Overall it's something where we are very excited about to accompany Swiss Bankers really on a transformation so that they can fully use the potential they have in the platform. Hopefully we'll also see an uptick in the business after COVID is over. You know, Switzerland just announced that all their COVID restrictions are lifted, et cetera. We can really expect Swiss people also to start traveling again. This should also increase the demand for the core product of Swiss Bankers. That's where we will accompany them in further reaching operational excellence and going the last steps they need to do to really fully do the digital transformation and position themselves more in a fintech space. I think that's the overview of what we've been working on recently. In addition, we are at the moment evaluating also a number of smaller NPL transactions. What we see is in terms of general market sentiment at the moment that especially on larger transactions, there's a huge amount of competition, which sometimes makes it hard to justify engaging in such auctions where you have significant due diligence costs, et cetera, with relatively low likelihood of success. That's why we feel much more comfortable doing smaller deals. It's important to really have access to pipeline like we have with the Borgosesia transaction, so not to be rushed into too competitive situations. That's where we are quite comfortable and it's really about finding the right transactions in the right size and then step by step continuing to grow here. With this, I hand over to Fredrik, who will take you through the financials of 2021. Thank you, Florian. Please turn to slide 10, which shows our debt financing structure. We start off on this slide. In 2021, we successfully refinanced our bond program in April 2021 by issuing the EUR 200 million bond under the EUR 300 million senior secured bond framework. We now have a bond in place with a five-year tenor providing long-term stability for us. The proceeds, as you probably know already, were used to refinance the old bonds and also for new investments. We're very pleased in general about having this done in 2021, and that it was well received by both existing and new institutional investors. The bonds are now listed on the corporate bond list at Nasdaq Stockholm. We now stand after this year with a strong liquidity position, as already mentioned by Florian, with access to about EUR 65 million in cash at the end of the year. I think it's also, as once again mentioned by Florian here, but I think it's important to highlight once again that we expect to be fully invested during the first half of 2022. The other key development in 2021 was that we got our first credit ratings from S&P and Fitch with B rating with stable outlook. This is another important step for us in continuing to build on our bond program. We believe that the rating here, risky, let's say, reflects strong liquidity and capital position by extending the debt maturity profile. With that, please turn to slide 11. This shows the P&L quarter by quarter and year-on-year. I think most things are fairly self-explanatory, but I think there's a few things to highlight and comment on. Collections, or gross collections, totaling EUR 61 million in 2021. This is a, let's say, EUR 59 million decrease versus the previous year. That's, let's say, primarily as a result of the strong collections coming out of Greece in last year. However, it should also be noted that a sizable amount of the collections that we previously estimated to be collected in 2021 has been delayed and now primarily are expected to be collected in 2022. Once again, important to note that it's a matter of timing and not decreased values. Primarily, the delay of collections are relating to secured cases in the Balkans. I think it's also important to note that last year, due to the bond refinancing, we had one-off costs relating to this of EUR 3.9 million. EUR 2.4 was relating to call premium and EUR 1.5 as capitalized transaction costs were written off. Another thing that's, let's say, also worth mentioning is that, following our investment into Addiko Bank, we also received, let's say the additional dividend that we referenced to here in previous quarters. So this is now the full dividend being received during 2021 as communicated before. Please go to slide 13, which shows our financial KPIs for the last 12 months. I believe we've already covered here some of them, but once again, to just highlight a few of them. Our total assets were EUR 248 million at the end of 2021. That being an increase of EUR 54 million compared to one year ago. This is mainly then due to the refinancing of the bonds and the EUR 50 million tap issue in September. Equity amounted to EUR 34 million at the end of December. That being, you know, a result also then of the previously mentioned one-off expenses of EUR 3.9 million relating to the bond refinancing. The increase in total assets and then let's say the one-off expenses, I mean, resulted in equity ratio in the bond group of 20.6%. Net debt to cash EBITDA increased to 3.6 times. Once again, following decreased collections in 2021. As we expect to increase here in 2022 again. Please turn to slide 14, which shows us the capital structure of DDM Holding on the left-hand side and DDM Debt on the right-hand side. Once again, DDM Debt AB being the issuer group of the bond. Here, I think, you know, we've mentioned before, but once again, the EUR 65 million of cash is of course something that's standing out. We also mentioned here the equity ratio of 21%. Idle cash balance, on the other hand, resulted in a low asset utilization in 2021, you know, ending the year at 66%. Of course, thereby also weighing on the result for the year. We're looking forward here to invest the funds at the beginning of this year to be fully invested to get the benefit of course coming through on the P&L as well. The other thing, of course, that's worth mentioning and, you know, once again, we're very happy about having extended a debt maturity schedule for five years and thereby also, you know, providing stability for us and ability to focus on the investments here that we have in front of us. Please turn to slide 16, which is key takeaways for the year. I think as Florian started off the presentation by saying, you know, we believe we have a well-diversified platform here across NPLs, consumer finance, real estate and special sits, and also, let's say as a sister company, the asset and loan servicing. We extended the bond program by issuing the EUR 200 million bond with a five-year tenor. We have now, let's say in the second half of 2021, entering into significant investments in both existing and new markets, including the attractive opportunity to acquire the leading Swiss payments company, Swiss Bankers, which we are waiting for, let's say, regulatory approval of. We believe that we're well positioned here to further capitalize on the market opportunities that are coming up. As Florian said, it was a very busy, let's say, end to last year. You know, we're continuing to see interesting opportunities coming up, even if there's been, let's say, significant competition on larger transactions. Finally, let's say the ERC of EUR 299 ending the year, let's say, and whereof then the majority being expected to be collected here in the coming three years and also a sizable part of it then being secured by real estate. I think this concludes our presentation, and we'll be happy to take any questions if there are any. Operator. Yes. Thank you. We have a first question from Richard Ingebrigtsen from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead. Hello, Sam. Thank you for the presentation, Florian and Fredrik. I just have a couple of follow-up questions on the Swiss Bankers acquisition. I wonder if you could kind of Elaborate a little bit on whether you see it as a cash yielding asset, or if you expect to be able to kind of extract dividends, in the coming years or what's your ultimate investment horizon for this acquisition? As I mentioned earlier, clearly, 2022, the Swiss Bankers business will still be impacted by COVID. That means that for 2022 this will be more or less a break-even business. Of course, going into 2023, we also expect the business to pick up and this company has in the past always paid dividends, so that in down the road, we also expect to have a cash on cash return on this. Clearly, it is something where our focus here is also on taking this asset, helping them to fine-tune the business, reposition it somewhat, and then, let's see what happens with it, but that does not mean that in ten years we would still be the owners of it. Okay. Super. Thank you, Florian. I just wonder, I mean, from a creditor's viewpoint here, I guess there's not too much cross business going on between Swiss Bankers and DDM, for the time being. From a creditor's viewpoint, will they kind of benefit from kind of only the potentially equity increase here in this investment? Is that the correct way to look at it or I yeah. Well, I think the one thing is that Swiss Bankers is a solid business. You know, regulated Swiss bank. It's not how should I say, turnaround story or any. It's definitely not a high-risk asset, I would say. I think this to a certain extent also stabilizes the risk profile on our asset side compared to, I don't know, Croatian NPL, for example. It's clear that this is from the nature of its investment more private equity like than some of our pure NPL investments. I think it's in the overall context and opportunity, which also from a risk return perspective should sit well with also the creditor investors. Also, if you look at the time horizon when our bond matures, et cetera, and what's a sensible holding period for the type of asset, it also should fit in well. Okay. Super. That's very helpful, Florian. I just have one small question there. I mean, you are rated by S&P and Fitch. Have you touched base with them on potential effects of acquiring a regulated bank? Well, we have our discussions with them, the usual thing, you know, even tomorrow or during the next days, we will have our routine calls with them and also explain them our strategy here. Okay. Super. Just one more question for me here. I think in terms of collections on your NPL from the Q3 report, I think we could see that you aim to collect around EUR 31 million in Q4 2021, and as far as I can see, you collect approximately EUR 10 million- EUR 11 million. It seems as if you are pushing approximately EUR 20 million into 2022, in terms of the collection forecast, in the Q4 presentation. Can you comment a little bit on that? If that's the correct way to look at it or if there's something else we need to take into consideration there? Yeah. I mean, the key thing here is that most of our ERC is secured assets, and there are a number of larger ones that are, you know, just right now and where we expect the auctions, bankruptcy auctions to happen. But those things can sometimes move around by quarters. So we had some instances where things on larger scale assets moved into 2022, mainly in Croatia, so that this is ERC that's just moving but not lost in any sense. Fredrik, any further comment on that? Yeah, no, I think it's let's say Florian mentioned here, and I also think it, as we discussed before, Richard, yes, there are some of the larger cases that we did expect to come in Q4, rolling over into 2022. We believe that, you know, this shift is not, you know, talking years, but we believe that, you know, we have pretty good visibility on these cases, and we believe that, you know, we should hopefully be able to come back here with an update, you know, in the coming months, and let's say, hopefully confirm that the collection has taken place by that time. Once again, I think it's important. Yes, there is unfortunately this part, let's say, angle of secured assets that it is becoming bulky and moving between the quarters. We're definitely seeing that, you know, the money being there. Hopefully we can come back to you in the coming months and confirm that it's now taking place. Yeah. I think the other thing just to come. Yeah, sorry. Go ahead, Florian. Maybe just for example, just as a specific example, there was one case in Croatia, which was roughly like a EUR 4 million expectation. We could have collected on that actually in Q4, but it then turned out that we had the opportunity to buy another piece of that exposure, which overall helps our IRR proposition there. It made sense for us to invest another EUR 700 thousand into that exposure, moving also the expected auction somewhat, but in the end, improving the return on it. Sometimes opportunities like this come up, so that a delay is not always a bad thing because it can also be caused by an opportunity coming up to optimize the overall collection then. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Florian. Sorry. Just to add one thing as well, Richard. I think coming back to Swiss Bankers, I mean, we will of course come back to you with more information here in the coming months. But I think one thing that is also, let's say, relevant for you and, you know, debt holders, that the bank is actually having a, you know, positive net debt position. So it's a little bit of a special financials of the bank. And we will come back to this, but I think that's okay not that common to have that position of a fully licensed bank. Okay. Do you plan to kind of include the Swiss Bankers position in the ERC kind of in the same manner as you include the Addiko Bank, or haven't you concluded on that? No. No. I think we have to come back to this one, for you here. Also accounting wise, it's quite different because obviously we are not only majority, but 100% owner, so that we will most probable scenario is fully consolidate this bank. It's more a question of the asset side is because their asset side is mainly consisting of cash and cash-like assets like government bonds and highly rated bonds. So it's more a question how this plays into net debt than how does it play into equity. It's a very peculiar bank, and we really need to have closed this to fully be able to show you then all the impact on the balance sheet. Right. Okay. Thank you. I have a couple of follow-up questions on the Swiss Bankers acquisition, but it seems like you are kind of tied in terms of communication here, so I'll leave it for that for now. Thank you very much for taking my question and yeah, good luck with the next quarter. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you. We have no further question at this time. Ladies and gentlemen, I remind you that if you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. We have no further questions. Okay. If we've got to here, just we've answered all the questions, but it's always, Fredrik and myself are of course very happy to answer any follow-up questions you might have. Please get in touch with us. Otherwise, have a good day and let us know if we can provide you with any further information that you might need. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye.
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