Welcome to Hoist Finance Q2 report for 2025. For the first part of the Conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key five on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to CEO Harry Vranjes and CFO Magnus Söderlund. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this Hoist Finance earnings call for the second quarter of 2025. I am Harry Vranjes, the CEO of Hoist Finance, and next to me today, I have Magnus Söderlund, our recently appointed CFO, and Karin Tyllström, our Chief Investment Relations and Communications Officer. I just want to start by thanking you all for your interest in Hoist Finance. As usual, we will try to run through the presentation in 30 minutes to leave room for questions you may have. Before we dive into the material, a bit of repetition for those of you who are new to Hoist Finance. Hoist Finance's business model on a high level is very simple. We acquire portfolios of nonperforming loans from tier one European banks around Europe at a significant discount. Historically, we've had an average price of around 10% of nominal value. To reach our financial targets, we then manage the portfolios and we collect circa 20%. We do this in a banking suit or more specifically a credit market company suit, and this enables us to have a stable and cost-effective funding source in the form of deposits from the public. In an industry that is undergoing significant change, we are and will continue to be a capital-heavy industrial actor. We strive to become the leading investor and asset manager of consumer and SME nonperforming loans in Europe. During this second quarter of 2025, it has been a very active quarter, and I'm happy to report that this activity has mainly been in our core business. When I meet investors around Europe, typically I get two questions, and they always pop up. One, are there still NPLs for sale? You know, the NPL ratios in the European banking sector have gone down. Is there anything left to buy? The answer, and I think you can see from our activity during this quarter, is that we see, if anything, a larger pipeline than last year. Yes, there are NPLs for sale. The second question I typically get is how you're doing on the SDR criteria, the Specialized Debt Restructuring criteria. Here, we did most of the heavy lifting during the first quarter, as those of you who followed us are aware, and we are now comfortably reaching all criteria. We will, of course, continue to monitor this and trim our very competitive funding cost, but for now, we prefer to be on the conservative side of the KPIs required for the SDR status, and we still expect to become an SDR in 2026. Now, let's dive into the material. Next slide, please. Q2 highlights. Profit before tax came in at SEK 310 million compared to SEK 377 million last year. This quarter, we had a negative VAT ruling from the Netherlands that brought down the result. Last year, as those of you who have followed us know, we had one-time profits from portfolio sales in the quarter and also some higher costs due to restructurings. Adjusted for that, the underlying result for the quarter is SEK 335 million, and Magnus will take you through this later in his presentation. Return on equity came in at a strong 14.7% in line with our external financial targets, again driven by the core underlying business. We have mentioned before that we want to have as little sort of one-offs as possible. I think we have delivered that so far this year. Some one-offs are sort of unavoidable, but I think we have delivered on that promise so far this year. Making the same adjustment as on profit before tax, this would mean an underlying return on equity of a very strong 16.1% compared to 13.7% last year. One of the highlights of the quarter, and I guess we've flagged for that already in the Q1 report, has been the investment volumes, SEK 2.6 billion booked in the quarter at stable returns. It has been a busy period. It has continued into July with an additional signed volume of SEK 1.9 billion so far in Q3. We see basically increased volumes in mid-Europe and, let's say, still significant and unchanged volumes in the South. Our portfolio now stands at SEK 31 billion, and adjusted for currency, that means a 17% increase compared to the same quarter last year. Quarter by quarter, we are getting closer to our ambition of having a total portfolio size of SEK 36 billion by the end of 2026. Also, core business collection performance came in at a solid 104%, even 104.4%, as we continuously keep improving efficiency in all our units around Europe and together with our collection partners. Tight cost control with underlying direct costs trending in line with collections and indirect costs, flat-ish, adjusted for the one-offs. This cost control and, not unimportantly, cost flexibility is helped by this cost structure that we have spent the last years building with outsourcing partners in select geographies and for select asset classes around Europe. We have a strong capital and liquidity position with a CET1 ratio of 12.5% and a significant liquidity reserve of SEK 26 billion, and we continue to meet the full SDR criteria with an NSFR at a safe 143% in the quarter. As I hope most of you have noticed, in July, Moody’s ratings affirmed all the ratings and assessments of Hoist Finance and also changed the outlook on the group's long-term issuer and senior unsecured debt ratings to positive from previously stable. I think with that, I'm going to hand over to Magnus to take you through the numbers and the details of the quarter. Thank you, Harry, and thank you all for joining this call. We had a very solid and good quarter with a profit before tax of SEK 310 million with a 14.7% ROE compared to last year's SEK 377 million and 17.5% ROE. We see a really positive intake of volume in the quarter, SEK 2.6 billion, and as Harry mentioned, continued high level of cost control. Regarding the one-offs, as we're expecting to see fewer and less material one-off items in 2025, that is sort of disturbing the year-on-year comparisons and underlying business development. We did have some impact in Q2 of this year, but even more so in the second quarter of last year, as mentioned by Harry as well. In this quarter, we see a negative SEK 25 million impact, which is the net of the VAT court ruling that we mentioned in the Q1 report, but then we also have some accrual releases related to VAT and other items. The net was SEK 25 million. Last year, we saw a material impact from several extraordinary items with a net positive profit before tax impact of SEK 62 million for the quarter. This was a combination of asset sales and costs related to improvement and restructuring activities. As an example, our insourcing of IT, where we see the benefits in this year. For further reference, we have a detailed slide in the pack, in the appendix, illustrating the non-recurring items by quarter. If we look at the underlying performance of the business, we see a SEK 335 million profit before tax in the quarter versus the equivalent SEK 315 million in 2024. This gives us a 6% underlying growth. If we look more into the details, we see a total interest income growth of 14% year over year, if we also include the co-invested interest income, which we should. This is in line with the portfolio growth. The investments in Q2 were heavily tilted towards June, which leads to a lesser impact in terms of interest income for the quarter coming from these new investments. They will, of course, be fully realized during Q3. The 4% growth in net interest income reflects that we are now fully financed for a whole quarter in relation to the NSFR criteria to qualify as an SDR. Our net funding cost versus book value is tracking at 4.4%, same level as in Q1, as we saw in Q1. We have an NSFR ratio of 143%, and here we see some room to trim going forward. We see a continued strong operational performance, 104.4%. This demonstrates our collection abilities and the good health of our portfolio. The really strong investment volume for the quarter, SEK 2.6 billion, as mentioned. We are continuously buying portfolios at attractive levels that are accretive to our overall quality of the portfolio. Looking at the costs, they are tracking at a very good level, as they also did in Q1. We have an increased flexibility in our direct expenses. This will be further demonstrated in a future slide, facilitated by our expanded outsourced servicing optionality. We have a stable indirect cost base, which will enable us to leverage a robust platform going forward. All in all, we are very happy with this quarter. We're ticking off the second quarter of the year on our journey to achieve SDR status. We saw a sharp and very positive increase in investments with a continued strong potential for the second half of the year. We are on top of our costs. We maintain our cost control and solid performance. Underlying ROE for the quarter adjusted from the one-off items comes in at 16.1% versus the equivalent of 13.7% in last year. As this is sort of a transitional period for us in 2025, considering we are carrying the SDR costs but not seeing the benefits yet, we are very happy with the results of the quarter, maintaining a healthy return level. If we can move to the next slide, please. We're picking up pace from Q1 with a really strong intake of volume in Q2. This is the third highest single quarter in the past three years. Looking further into the second half of the year, we see a very strong pipeline with many interesting opportunities in the short as well as the midterm. This really brings us to a good place to reach the plan of a SEK 36 billion portfolio book value by 2026. Already now in July, as I think Harry mentioned, we have an additional SEK 1.9 billion signed, and this is ready to be implemented in Q3, part of it possibly sliding into Q4. We have a really good momentum in our investment activities. To mention some specifics, very happy to increase our presence in the Portuguese market with an additional deal closed during Q2. So far, we're very happy with the performance of this latest addition to our footprint. Overall, we're seeing return levels in our new investments this year that are accretive to the quality of our total portfolio. We, as always, remain disciplined in our investment and pricing strategy with a healthy risk level in our portfolio. This is also proven by our collection performance remaining above forecasted levels. We are also continuing working with our strategic partnerships, both for servicing and for expanding our sourcing network. Our funding cost remains a very competitive edge for us in the market. I think we can move to the next slide. Looking at our asset class mix, the mix of our assets and the geographical spread remains similar to last quarter's. We have a healthy diversification of the book with granular risk monitoring and a very low single risk exposure. We have a solid pan-European presence and geographical diversification. Our main two asset classes we invest into remain to be secured and unsecured. The secured part of the book is gradually increasing over the past year and years, but still at a rather moderate pace. All in all, we believe we have a very healthy portfolio and we manage it with the aim to deliver stable and predictable performance. We have a continued positive tilt in the book, and with this, I mean we have materially more portfolios overperforming than underperforming in the mix of the total book. We will continue to focus at upholding these levels and believe the quality of the book is supporting that. If we go to the next slide, please. Looking at our funding, we see a similar mix to the one we presented in Q1. We have 80% or SEK 41 billion, consists of our deposits, now have that contractual maturity three months or longer. We issued two bonds during Q1 to a total of SEK 1.3 billion, and we repurchased SEK 230 million of older senior preferred. Our funding cost remains at similar levels as the previous two quarters. To sum it up, we have a diversified and competitively priced funding base, which is really bringing us to the forefront in the debt purchasing market. Go to the next. This slide is to illustrate our development of net funding cost over portfolio book value. We go from 3.4% in last year to 4.4% now in Q2. We also saw the same in Q1. Roughly half of the increase, the 100 bps we see, is related to SDR costs, and the rest is related to other items such as the S&P bond replacing the called 81 in Q1 and further bonditions to safeguard our rating, so other activities. We're currently in preparation for setting up our own Euro deposit platforms in select markets. This will bring a diversified set of tools and also bring lower costs. For this quarter, we are at a rather high level of NSFR, as I mentioned before. This is something we will actively work to tighten a bit, moving into Q3 and the second half of 2025. With this increased funding rate, we remain extremely competitive and in a really good place to keep growing. Next slide. In Q1, we see the continued trend of flexible direct cost versus collection, with a slightly improved cost to collect in the first half of this year, mainly coming from increased level of outsourcing and other efficiency improvements. Looking at the indirect costs, we see a fairly flat underlying cost development. We are very cost-conscious and focused to maintain the benefits of a former rejuvenation program and other cost-saving activities, such as the insourcing of IT. We're obviously also continuously looking for further optimization, but with this stability, we're in a very good place to leverage the future growth of our portfolio. You can go to the next slide. This slide is basically describing the past five quarters ROE, excluding this is the reported number, so not the underlying. In summary, what we see is a continued strong quarter-to-quarter ROE trend with underlying returns above 15%. This is also after absorbing all costs associated with becoming an SDR organization, but before being able to see the full impacts of the benefits yet. We're very happy with the 15% ROE in Q2. With a strong pipeline, tight cost control, and more than adequate capital, we are set to continue to grow in a very active market. We can go to the capital position. We maintain a very strong capital position, materially above regulatory requirements. We move from 13.1% in Q1 to the illustrated 12.5% in the slide in Q2. This decrease is mainly driven by an increased level of a backstop and net investments for the quarter that were really high. We have a continued strong and significant purchasing power sufficient to meet our growth plans for the remainder of this year. Looking at our liquidity position, looking at the LCR, we continue to maintain a very high level, driven by the materially increased liquidity portfolio associated with becoming SDR. We have the 143% NSFR, as mentioned, and this is something we will look to trim at reasonable levels during the second half of this year. The liquidity portfolio remains at similar high levels as the past two quarters, driven by the SDR criteria fulfillment. I think that concludes the sort of result slide. With that, I hand back to you, Harry. Thank you. Thank you. With the risk of being repetitive again here, before we open up for questions, I'll leave you with a few key takeaways. The strong underlying return on equity of 16.1% after including the full cost of the SDR, we're very happy about that. We do see still attractive and accretive IRRs in a highly active market. We have talked about before how seller and buyer have had difficulties meeting each other and that some deals have sort of been gone back or been canceled. We don't see that so much anymore. I don't think we have had a single deal that has been pulled back after being sort of launched. I think seller and buyer are on the same expectation level to a greater extent now this year. As mentioned multiple times, we have a strong pipeline. There is lots of activity out there in Europe. Our costs are under control. This doesn't mean that we are done with optimizations, etc. We will continue doing that day by day, week by week, quarter by quarter, out in the markets and also in the functions. We are well capitalized and we have, as you've seen, ample liquidity for managing our business. We continue to meet the full SDR criteria and we expect to notify in 2026. That was faster than 30 minutes. Thank you all for listening. Now it's time to open up for questions, I guess. Then I press a button somewhere. If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. Next question comes from Ulrik Zürcher from Nordea. Please go ahead. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two. You're right that the IRR has stabilized, as I say it. I noticed if you take the investment portfolio of SEK 31 billion and when we look at the estimated remaining collection next 15 years, you get quite a drop quarter on quarter in the implied gross IRR. Is there anything going on there? Sorry, Ulrik, you're referring to the gross IRR? Yeah, exactly. Okay, because what we see, we saw an increase in the net IRR during 2024, driven by certain events. We see a stabilized level now in 2025, which is still accretive to the sort of underlying quality of our book. In the gross IRR, I would say it's pretty much at stable levels as well. Regarding your calculation, that's something I would have to look into and come back, I guess. Yeah, it is a bit simplified, but you had like an upward sloping trajectory for some years now because you reinvest at higher levels, but there's a bit of a weird drop now. Okay. I will have to look at that, Ulrik, and get back to you. Okay, yeah, great. Just secondly, there's a lot of moving parts on the deposit side. You're talking about being a bit more efficient on the NSFR or liquidity position. Should we expect roughly flat deposit cost, like nominally out the year now, or how will the margin develop? Any comment you can give on that? Very helpful. I guess the liquidity buffer will grow in line with the portfolio, right? If portfolio grows, that one will also increase. In terms of the rates, I guess we, the Sveriges Riksbank lowered the rates and we adapted to that. I think in Europe, we are sort of adapting to the, let's say, NSFR efficiency of the platforms we are using. On that side, I would expect us to be flat to slightly lower on the rates. In terms of the full liquidity portfolio, it will grow in line with the portfolio growth, basically, at similar rates. What about the margins in euro and SEK going forward? Because they're a bit high now because you changed your deposit base, but should the margins go down the next years? It's difficult to say where the interest rates and sort of the deposit base moves, but yes, in general, we were more attractive, let's say, in Q1 and Q2 for especially the three-month and the six-month offering. I would expect that to normalize over time. Okay, thank you. That's all from me. Thank you very much, Ulrik. Next question comes from Erman from Carnegie. Please go ahead. Good morning, Vranjes. Thanks for the presentation and for taking my question. Maybe if we start on the collection performance, which was pretty good here in Q2, do you think it's fair to just extrapolate that from here, or how should we think about it? It sounds like you don't really see much gray clouds forming on the horizon either. No, I mean, no gray clouds. We still have a positive tilt to the book. We were at 103% in Q1, now at 104%. We are still very actively managing our book to perform at stable levels. We're obviously happy with everything above the 100% forecast. This item feels very stable at the moment. Makes sense. I'm just thinking on the kind of investment composition. Do you think that will change anything when you become an SDR? You touched upon it that you've increased the exposure to secured somewhat over the year. Do you think that kind of mix change will continue the coming years, or does unsecured become relatively more attractive to you than it was before you became an SDR, before you have become an SDR? I mean, considering the sort of backstop schedule for the two asset types, unsecured is normally a bigger problem from the backstop perspective. That is going to facilitate, or it's going to bring us, it's going to put us in a better place to keep buying more unsecured. The secured, as I said, the backstop schedule makes it fairly less complex at the moment for us. We also see portions of backstop in secured as well, but I think the real benefit is the unsecured for us once we achieve the SDR status. I think we could also add that typically now, secured, our secured asset class, we're mostly active in the south of Europe. What we do see now is that mortgages, etc., are coming for sale in smaller volumes than in the south, but it's starting to pop up further north as well. It might be that if those markets continue to develop that way, it would basically open up for a larger share of secured. From a sort of backstop perspective and from an SDR perspective, it's fully like Magnus says, right? The unsecured will become relatively more attractive. Got it. Thanks. One last question, coming back a little bit to what Ulrik was on as well. Just thinking here now about the NSFR you have and kind of where you would want to operate going forward, how much you think you can take out from opening up your own platform and then kind of balancing that against the strong pipeline you see of new investments. How to think about kind of the liquidity you intend to hold? I mean, we definitely are in the high range in Q2. I think it's a combination of us sort of understanding more about the customer behavior now with the fixed terms that we are entering since Q1. With that, we will also be better to sort of foresee the movements in the market. Our ambition is definitely to be below the 143% level where we are today. Obviously, during this year and also in future years, the 130% mark will be extremely important to stay above for obvious reasons. We will definitely be able to end up in a better position than in Q2. This I'm completely convinced about. Great. Thank you and have a nice summer. Thank you, Erman. Thanks, Erman. Next question comes from Björn Olsen from SEB. Please go ahead. Thank you. Hi guys. My first question comes a bit back to what Erman was touching on. Sort of thinking about your pipeline for the second half of the year, and I mean, you clearly guide on it continuing to being strong. I'm just thinking, should we expect a pipeline or sort of expect something in the range of the second half of 2024, or sort of what size should we expect? Could you sort of elaborate a bit on how busy are people? You're writing that they're busy now during summer. How busy are they compared to last year? Obviously, like Erman was touching upon regarding unsecured portfolios, you're right. You basically, currently, your unsecured portfolio is basically eating roughly 1.5% of your CET1 per quarter now. Is that sort of a restraint on your ability to acquire unsecured portfolios for the second half of this year as you still are not formally qualified as SDR? Could you guide any on that as well as a constraint on acquisitions for the second half of this year? I'll take that one. I think, yes, I mean, the team is busy. That is clear. I guess there are two reasons for that. One, typically in the north, people want to close the deals before midsummer. In the south, people want to close the deals before, let's say, the first, second week in August before they go on holidays, right? Or at least sign them and then make sure that they are implemented later in the quarter after the holidays. It is a busy time. I think there is a shift in, I mean, for many years, Q4 has been the absolute biggest volume quarter. As you saw last year as well with Hoist Finance Q2, Q3, or summer, let's say, late Q2 and early Q3 have become more important from a volume perspective. That trend looks to continue this year. We are absolutely not guiding for any 4.5 billion in Q3. We see the activity and we will, of course, capture the share we think is at attractive returns. It's difficult to give you a number there, but basically, the pipeline is in line with last year and we are tracking towards the ambition of 36 by 26 as before. There was a second part to your question there as well. Did I? No, this was? Yeah, more technical one, I guess. Basically, currently with the NPL backstop continuing to eat capital, you're basically stating that the backstop has increased by roughly half a billion since the start of this year, and you're right, you're right that your CET1 would be 2.9% higher hadn't it been for the NPL backstop. Like Erman was touching upon, it's mainly unsecured that drives this. Given that you still have six months until you qualify as SDR, is this a sort of a constraint on the second half's ability to acquire unsecured portfolios? How should we view this? How low can you go in terms of CET1 pressure in the second half? I think obviously it's an important criteria when we look at the portfolio. We do have the co-investment partnerships and the tools that we have been using. As you can see in the report, the income from that area is increasing. We don't skip interesting portfolios. Obviously, when we co-invest, we get a smaller share. We don't get the 100%. We still bid for those. We are obviously with an SDR status, then we have no constraints whatsoever in that space. We are still able to go after unsecured portfolios together with our partners, which has been working out really nicely. Fair enough. Another question then on your new deposit platform. You're writing that you're starting in Germany. When could we expect, first of all, the platform to go live? Second, could you give us a ballpark figure of basis points, how much more efficient it is compared to using a platform provider? Likewise for cost effect on the IT side of things. I think the plan is to be live with the platform in Q4 this year. A very high tempo project. We know Germany since before, obviously through a partner. We know the platform from before. We're using the same as we have in Sweden to minimize risk and to make sure that we get it up and running in time and that we can operate it properly. The cost for the project and for the setup is, I would say, I don't want the project team to hear me, but it's negligible in relation to the result here. It's below SEK 10 million for the project. I hope the supplier didn't hear me. In terms of, and then comes the marketing and getting the deposit customers on there. That will start immediately in Q4. Looking at the difference in cost compared to using a partner is not something we will go out with. We could say on a similar volume, the fee would be a half to two thirds or something like that. The operating cost, it is cheaper on the platform, on our own platform. I hope that answers your question. Yeah, yeah, I guess as much as you can say. Thanks. The final question, always coming back to the backstop. It's currently around €1.1 billion in reserves. When do you think we could expect any guidance on how you plan on utilizing these reserves once you become an SDR? Any such guidance I would expect at the Q4 report in February 2026, once the board has made its decision. Great. You're basically, I guess, as you say, it's up to the board, but this is basically to be viewed as something that can either be used as a dividend or buybacks. Yes, our dividend policy stays in place. Of course, we need to look at where the pipeline is and what the portfolio market looks like towards the end of the year. Of course, also looking forward for the Q1 in next year. Okay, great. Thanks a lot. Have a nice summer. Thank you. The same to you, Björn. Next question comes from Markus Sandgren from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Morning guys. Harry, you said something that it seems like buyers and sellers are more on the same note now in terms of pricing. What's your take on, is the lower rates driving, I mean, or increasing the prices of portfolios, or is that not noticeable? I think you can almost, for those of you on the call who are from Stockholm, it's very similar dynamics to the housing market in Stockholm, basically. As funding costs went up for the industry, prices for portfolios or bids for portfolios came down. We saw definitely during 2023, but still under 2024, a number of deals being revoked, basically, because the sellers did not get what they want. I would say there has been, I think the IRRs, as we say, they have stabilized, right? I think they're not growing at the moment. I think the sellers, on the other hand, have then sort of gotten a new set of expectations, basically. I think that's basically the answer to the question, I think. I hope. Yeah, so given that the rate doesn't move too much, this is what we should expect going forward, more or less. That's what we see for now in the pipeline and our win ratios. Okay, very good. Thanks. And that's all for me. Have a nice summer. Thank you. You too. You too, Magnus. There are no more questions at this time. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions and closing comments. All right. We have one written question here today. Is there a preference to buy secured portfolios? Do you find it harder to acquire secured portfolios as they seem to have met a higher return on investments, but are a smaller part of the total acquired portfolios today? I can just reiterate that, as we said, the mortgage product is typically sold in Southern Europe. If it was sold in the mid of Europe and north of Europe as well, we would definitely be going after it. I think that's the limitation mostly in terms of sort of availability of those NPLs. We are very strong in this asset class. It is an asset class where the funding cost advantage is clearer because you value the underlying security. I would say most investors value it similarly. Of course, it's a question of how competitive you can be with your financing. That is a very strong point for Hoist Finance. We are seeing, although from small volumes, right, but we see this asset class popping up now in mid-Europe, or it's moving north. We're hoping to be able to expand in that asset class going forward. Very good. That's actually the only written question we have. With that, thanks everyone for listening today. Thank you all very, very much. We wish you a fantastic summer. If not sooner, we'll speak to you in another quarter. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye.