Avanza Bank Holding AB (publ) (AZA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the Avanza Bank Holding Interim Reports January through September 2021. [Operator Instructions] Today, I am pleased to present Rikard Josefson, CEO; and Anna Casselblad, CFO. Please begin your meeting.

Okay. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for listening in. It's a day that I'm proud to present the second best quarter in the history of the company when it comes to results. So we are very satisfied overall with the quarter. Looking at the number of customer growth. We have now grown the company this year with 308,000 new customers. And last year, for you to remember, we grow with 304,000 customers. So we have actually achieved a bit more in 9 months than we did in the full year for 2020, which is, of course, very satisfying. Looking at our customer base, I think it's important to note that the engagement is on a very high level. We have over 500,000 daily active users on the platform or around 500,000. And of those 500,000, that means that they log in every day, 7 days a week and about 440,000 of them use the mobile app, which is, of course, important that the mobile phone is more and more being the #1 way to engage with our platform. Also looking at our customers, we have about 14 million readings of our blogs. We have 40,000 people listening into our podcast, which I believe is the largest podcast when it comes to financial services in Sweden. And given 12 months back, we have over 3 million listening. And stating this is -- it is important because part of our mission is to democrize (sic) [ democratize ] savings to enlighting customers to make sure that people have the information, inspiration, education to make wise investment decision. And these numbers is proving that we are achieving that taking care of our clients. If you look at the numbers when it comes to net inflow, we're up to SEK 71.9 billion. I think we ended last year, the full year 2020 with SEK 76 billion. And just to remember, I think SEK 32.4 billion was the 2019 number. So we have accelerated the growth within the company. And the growth this year is 25% up year-on-year. And the third quarter was SEK 18.4 billion. It was a bit slower quarter when it comes to market condition. But in my opinion, very solid results. And also, we have SEK 735 billion now in asset under management. And as I always say, if we keep growing the AUM, good things will happen in our P&L over time. So that's a very satisfying number for me. Also, the market share now in Swedish savings market is 6.5%, and we take around 18% on the rolling 12-month basis. So that means that we are gaining market share day by day. But talking about the 6.5%, I'd rather talk about the 93.5% because we still have so much growth potential within the Swedish market. Also, our pension business is growing. Moving pension is becoming easier, and we see good signs in that even though the processes are taking too long. But looking at the premium business, which is the B2B business, we have about SEK 300 million every month being paid in premium. So that would just be SEK 3.6 billion on a rolling 12-month basis in yearly net inflows, which is, of course, a solid number that we want to keep on growing. I would like to highlight a bit of our fund business because I think we talk a lot about brokerage, but the fund business, the fund commission in the quarter were very, very solid numbers. And the fund business now is about SEK 203 billion. And first time we have over SEK 200 billion, even though September was a quite slow month when it comes -- because the market went south a little bit. So SEK 203 billion is a satisfying number. Coming back to net inflow, we now have SEK 940 million in net inflows every month in monthly savings. And this is also a result of us increasing our development to make it easier and to inspire customers to do monthly savings, which is a very good thing for building up your wealth. And 75% of all fund orders is also done through the mobile phone or the mobile app, which also underlines the fact that mobile first is something you have to think about when you develop your platform. We also, during the quarter, launched Avanza Sweden, which was Swedish Index Fund, which is a bit more tilted to smaller companies. And we saw that we -- a good aggressive pricing on that fund, we see good results, even though the timing of the release was not the best because I think the stock market was down like 5 days in a row after we released the fund. We see it's being very popular, good signs when it comes to using the fund for monthly savings, and we have seen good inflows in the funds. We now have 17 owned mutual funds in our mutual fund company which is about 28% of the total fund capital. An interesting note is also that we've been quite successful with our own funds because we are taking 10% of the net inflows in the mutual fund market with a market share mutual fund of 1.1%. So that the importance of our own fund company is growing. But of course, it has to be delivering good returns to our clients. And I think we're doing a decently good job on that. Given the income on the total fund capital, it's 34 basis points this quarter. And as usual, it has been between 33, 34, 35 for quite a long time. Looking at the brokerage business, a bit slower but still better in 2020. Just an interesting number is that compared to 2019, we have 200% more brokerage-generating customers than we did in 2019. So the growth has been on a very, very high level. And we now also during the quarter, passed 1 million clients owning equities and there's about 2 million people in Sweden owning equities. So that's quite a high number. In the quarter, 15% of the brokerage income was generated from foreign trading, and that was in Q2, 16%. So it's quite similar between the quarters. And if you look once again at the mobile app, about 75% of all orders are being used the mobile app to place them. The picture we obviously show is how our market shares are developing on NASDAQ OMX and First North. In number of transactions, we are #1, and we have been that for quite some time. And actually, we have weathered the gap to the #2 player. And we also, in the turnover, increased our market shares during the quarter. So there are solid numbers. And for me, the most important thing is that we keep our growing the number of transactions and market share there because that means that we are a big player for NASDAQ, and we get good prices, which can be passed on to our clients. Given the launches during the quarter, we had a new index fund, which I said was successfully launched. We also launched Stop Loss in the mobile apps that we very much demanded for our clients. And the way we work, we actually used my own dog in marketing that new feature in social media. So now I'm not just the CEO of Avanza. I also have a famous dog, which is named [ Busa ], if you want to ask that question. What also is important for us that we were named the most recommended financial brand in Sweden across all categories in YouGov BrandIndex. And we also have received several awards or high ranking when it comes to being an attractive employer. And in many rankings, we are the #1 financial institution, we've come to young people seeking who they want to work for. And of course, that's very important for us to attract the best talent. And we also made a lot of efforts on being more visible for young people as an attractive employer. Also, then I'd like to comment on the costs where we have guided that we will be able to have around 15% cost increase for the year of 2021. But we also see in our business planning process that that's work in progress right now that next year, we will have a cost increase of around 20%, which will deviate from our guidance to 9% to 12%. But as we said before, we will come back to the market with new financial targets. The reason for the cost increasing next year, in my opinion, is positively because we had underestimated the growth of the company this year. So we have added people in our customer support function like call center, private banking and so forth, just to handle the net inflows to a number of new clients. At the same time, we have not recruited engineers in the first half of the year in the pace that we wanted. But now we have been picking up the pace and we're recruiting a lot of talented engineers within the company to make sure that we both take care of our customers, keep the customer satisfaction high. And at the same time, I believe everything we do, we can do better, so we need more engineers, both for innovation, development, but also due to the size of the company for maintenance. So in my opinion, the cost increase that we will see next year is for 2 reasons, keep the innovation going and also catering for taking care of all the clients and making sure that the customer satisfaction is not jeopardized because of stupid decision to cut costs. So those are the underlying reasons for the cost increase going forward next year. And we come back to that because I want to stress that, that's work in progress, and we just wanted to, in a transparent way, indicate to the market what you can expect going forward. And as always, for us, growing the company, customer satisfaction, strong innovation, keeping the high employee engagement that has been at fantastic levels during the pandemic. And now we're back working in the office with much more flexibility, but the atmosphere in the company is at a very, very high level, which means that given the size, given the circumstances, I'm optimistic about keep on growing Avanza for a long time into the future. So with that optimistic note, I would like to turn over to Anna.

Thank you, Rikard, and good morning, everyone. As Rikard said, we're happy to present the second best quarterly results ever for Avanza, although transaction-related income decreased compared to Q2, all other income lines improved. Operating expenses are seasonally lower in Q3 for the 9 months period cost, excluding one-off moving costs, increased by 17.6%. These one-offs are not included in the guidance of around 15% cost growth for the full year. The guidance still stands. All in all, operating profit increased by 7% in the quarter. And looking at the accumulated figures for the 9 months period, the increase is strong, 71% compared to the same period last year. The net profit for the 9 months period has already exceeded the full year profit last year with 17%. Return on equity was 53% in the 9 months period to be compared to our long-term target of 25% to 30%, which we, as already said, will come back to in January. At the moment, we are in the middle of our business planning process, also trying to get a better understanding of the implication of our strong growth, both in terms of customers and savings capital. Per share for the 9 months period were just over SEK 10 and SEK 3.10 for the quarter. Number of commission-generating notes decreased by 2.3% compared to last quarter and turnover increased slightly by 1.8%. Although the activity on a daily basis was lower this quarter, 6.5 more trading days compared to Q2 contributed positively. Stock market volatility was still on a relatively high level, but continued its trend downwards. All in all, net brokerage decreased by 1% in the quarter. As a result of large share of trading within the Private Banking and Pro customer segments, brokerage income per SEK of turnover decreased from 11.5 to 11.1 bps. Foreign trading activity also decreased and stood for 15% of turnover compared to 16% in Q2, but 12% a year ago. Fund commissions increased by 7% compared to Q2 and 59% compared to Q3 last year, mainly due to higher average fund capital. Looking at the 9 months period fund commissions increased by 65%, exceeding the full year fund commissions last year, which is in line with our strategy to grow recurring income. Net fund inflow in the quarter amounted to nearly SEK 7 billion. Income per SEK of fund capital was 34 bps, as indicated already in the Q2 report, slightly lower than in Q2 due to a higher share of index funds. Net interest income increased by 4% due to higher volumes and margin lending. The average interest margin was 6% lower after the benefit levels for margin lending were eliminated in June. Interest income from the Private Banking mortgages and the surplus liquidity were essentially unchanged. Other income increased mainly explained by higher income from Avanza markets. This in turn can be explained by higher average AUM in markets, products and higher customer activity, in addition with higher compensation from Morgan Stanley. Income from corporate finance is normally seasonally lower in Q3. Nevertheless, corporate finance contributed with SEK 20 million this quarter. And looking at the 9 months figures, other income increased by 85% compared to same period last year. Costs are seasonally lower in Q3 and decreased by 11%, mainly due to 14% lower personnel costs. However, average number of employees increased with 7%, which is a higher increase than previous quarters. This is mainly a result of more employees in customer supporting functions like customer service and back office. As Rikard said, the continued strong growth this year has put pressure on our support functions. And since we don't want to jeopardize our high customer satisfaction, our recruitment focus changed somewhat from the development to support during summer. However, to maintain our planned development and continued growth agenda, the overall speed of recruitment has been switched up. From a management perspective, this means that we will most likely exceed our long-term cost guidance of 9% to 12%. On a personal note, I believe these costs are well spent for our development going forward. But still, we are in our business planning process, but the time as our best estimate is that the cost growth for next year will end up at around 20%. And as said before, the guidance for 2021 remains at about 15%. The business development resulted in an operating margin of 75% for both the quarter and the 9 months period. This can be compared to 66% in the first 9 months of 2020. The income to savings capital ratio was 49 bps for the 9 months period, slightly lower than the same period last year. While the cost of savings capital ratio decreased from 17 to 12 bps, this ratio is closely monitored by management and is proving the scalability in Avanza's business model. As stated before, from the end of June, Avanza's capitalization is governed by the leverage ratio requirement of 3%. Today, we are at 4.5% to be compared to our internal target of 3.8%. This means our capital position is strong, also considering the bank-specific Pillar 2 guidance for the late leverage ratio of additional 0.9% that our sector colleague recently got from the Swedish FSA. Our Pillar 2 guidance will be announced first next year and I am comfortable we will handle this in a good manner also going forward. As the Swedish FSA's previous recommendation to be restricted with dividends and buybacks have been lifted, the Board of Directors today noticed our shareholders to vote for an additional dividend SEK 2.95 per share for the financial year 2020 at an extraordinary general meeting in November. The additional dividend will only have a small impact on the leverage ratio in Q4. We are well positioned for the future. Growth in savings capital correlates with growth in revenues and have given us a return on equity well above target. This, together with the high profit margin gives us flexibility for the future. Our strategy is to grow recurring income, which we have proven in the high growth of fund capital, which already in September, passed the full year net brokerage in 2019. High cost efficiency makes Avanza resilient in various market conditions. At the same time, it gives us an important competitive advantage. Although we have indicated higher costs in 2022. These are healthy costs related to our very strong growth and will enhance our time to market further to make sure we keep our strong forefront position. Avanza still is and will continue to be a very cost-focused company. This is an important part of our strategy. And with that, I would like to hand back to Rikard again.

Okay. Thank you, Anna, for that financial overview. And with that, I think we will open up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Patrik Brattelius of ABG.

Yes, a few questions for my part. I thought I would start off by asking about the cost guidance. So that was raised now for 2022. So now you expect the cost base will increase by roughly 20% for 2022 that is roughly, I guess, SEK 175 million new costs. Can you elaborate a little bit more and break down the details? I know you mentioned new engineers, but is that what this SEK 175 million will go to? Or can you elaborate a little bit more, please?

No, I think it's -- I think the cost increase next year is that given the cost base that we have today, given the decisions that we have made when it comes to recruiting, we are recruiting a lot of people at the moment as we're speaking, so to speak. This is mostly the full year effect of those decisions being made. So it's engineer and it's, as Anna said, back office people, it's customer service people and so forth. And then, of course, there are cost increases when it comes to IT licenses and so forth. But mainly it's due to the fact that we are increasing number of staff, and that will have the full effect next year.

Is anything connected with the IT platform that is costly to run or anything like that?

No. I think we have a very modern IT platform, but it's connected that, of course, the high activity, more customer or more AUM, it demands a little bit more maintenance people, more people to make sure that the platform is working given the high usage of the platform but that's not the case. A lot of the people we employ in our 30 development teams is about creating new fantastic products and services for our customers.

Okay. Then my next question is about Avanza Markets, which had a record high quarter I saw remarkable given that it includes some summer months. Can you help us elaborate what drove this? I thought you mentioned -- I heard you mentioned a higher income from Morgan Stanley. Is that a one-off effect? Or is that sustainable? Can you help us elaborate what drove the delta there, up SEK 14 million quarter-over-quarter?

I think the AUM in Avanza Market is on a very high level. The activity has been high. And permanently, we are getting better paid from Morgan Stanley than we did previously, and that had an effect in the quarter, and that is not a one-off.

Okay. Yes. So we should think that this is -- you have reached a higher base, basically, in this area?

You could say that, that we have more AUM and more trading in Avanza Markets, but that's also very, very much connected to the market interest or the volatility or if the weather, so to speak, is there for people trading in Avanza Markets, but we are well -- we are very well prepared for the future, but then you never know what the customers will do.

But wasn't the activity a little bit slow this Q3 compared to, like, say, Q1 this year?

No, not in the markets. It was slower when it comes to brokerage income, and those sort of being the normal trading environment. But I think that looking back the Q1 was an extreme. So I think that Q2, Q3 better represents a little bit a normalization.

Okay. Fair enough. My last question was regarding the leverage ratio. You flagged in the second quarterly result that you had an ambition to have a target of 3.8%. So that would be a buffer of 30 to 60 basis points compared to what you guessed they would be. But now you see that new net has received a high leverage ratio. What's -- do you have any new ambition where you want to have as a buffer compared to the leverage ratio target?

Of course, given the fact that Nordnet got 3.9% in total demand and 0.9% in Pillar 2 requirements, I would say that of course, we saw this. We will get our guidance from the FSA during next year. But of course, that we are prepared that we will also get 3.9%, we will have to raise the target of 3.8% to something else a bit higher. But that's work in progress, and we are comfortable that we will be able to handle that in a proper manner.

Do you see any risk of not being able to deliver on the dividend policy?

It's too early days to answer that question. But at the same time, we have different measures. We can use -- handle our liquidity in turn in different ways to optimize the leverage ratio. We could issue a Tier 1 capital to strengthen the leverage ratio. And we could also -- of course, we have the dividends. But it's too early days to say how we will manage that because also, it has to do a little bit about how will the Q4 be the total results of the year and so forth. But we will be transparent and communicate this as soon as we've taken any decisions.

Our next question comes from the line of Robin Rane of Kepler Cheuvreux.

Yes. So back on the costs, I guess, 2 years in a row now, the cost increases have deviated from the long-term target. But I mean, I guess it's understandable given the tremendous growth that we also have had during these 2 years. But are you -- is there any reason for you to review the long-term cost target as part of your financial review this subject?

Absolutely. And I think that we have stated several times that we will revise our long-term targets for 2025 that we released in January 2020. And that means that we will look at all the targets and give it a thorough thought what should be -- how do we optimize the growth of the company to 2025, but we will communicate that transparently in January of 2022.

Okay. And in 2022, looking at it from this point, what do you expect in terms of number of FTEs in 2022?

Excuse me, number of employees?

Yes, number of employees, yes.

Okay. Sorry, I didn't hear it quite well. It's too early days to say. I would say that we will probably be more people here down the road in Avanza than we are today. But we are in the middle of that business planning process. And that's also why we stated today, it's around 20%. And that's, of course, driven a lot by staff costs that we will see increase next year. But we will come back to that when we have finalized our business planning process and the Board has taken a decision on that in January.

All right. And back to -- again, to Avanza Markets. So I think you previously have stated that you split the income with Morgan Stanley at 50-50. Has this ratio changed now as I understand it?

Well, since we get more now than before, I don't have the exact numbers in my head, but I just know that we have increased -- we are getting better paid from Morgan Stanley of the activity that we give to them and the products. I don't have a...

We don't disclose that number.

We don't disclose that number. So I don't know what it was.

All right. But it's better than 50-50 now?

No, I don't know that because I don't know what it was previous. I don't have that number, and we don't disclose that. We have stated that we are getting better paid for the activity that we deliver to Morgan Stanley.

Okay.

And that's as far as we coudl say.

And you said that there is higher activity within Avanza Market, but it -- does that mean also that you have a higher or a structurally higher number of customers using these products? Or is it more or less the same number of customers who are using it more frequently?

I don't have the number of customers. I know that the AUM within those kind of products is on a higher level. So without having the exact answer I would -- my guess is that we have more customers, but I haven't looked at that. So I don't have that figure in front of me right now.

All right. And then lastly, on the occupational pension inflows. So I guess you haven't seen a huge increase in Q3 based on the change in regulation that we saw this spring. But what are you expecting in the quarters ahead? Could we see some increase from this already in Q4? Or what are your outlook for this?

I think that we see positive signs, we see high interest. I think we will see positive numbers when it comes to pension transfer into Avanza. But at the same time, I'm still very dissatisfied with the fact that most pension companies make it very, very difficult for you to move your pension with administration burden. We helped them with that. We have pension coaches and so forth. And also, we have a young customer base. So the average age of a customer is 38. So a lot of our customers don't have that much money to transfer when it comes to pensions. But at the same time, the opportunity is there. We're doing it better day by day, week by week. So in the long term, it's a very good opportunity for us. I think we'll see positive signs when it comes to numbers and the AUM growth also but I don't think it will be a hockey stick effect because we'll be a bit better day by day.

Our next question comes from the line of Maths Liljedahl of SEB.

Yes, congratulations, finally to a victory in ice hockey.

Thank you, Maths.

Finally. But turning returning to costs. And I mean, if I -- if we dwell a little bit into this, looking at your goals for 2025 having a market share of at least 15% and I think you're at 18% now and 7% of the savings market. I mean how should we think about this going forward into the business targets of 2025, just raised targets in terms of the Swedish market? Or could we even start looking into Canada or something else? Or how should I how should I put this in my thinking of going forward?

I'm thinking your thinking, I think for the next couple of years, I think the Board and I are in agreement that we will stay in Sweden. That's how you should think about it. And we will release the target in January. But of course, the overall thing is that we want to grow this company, we want to be much, much larger than we are today. And we see that we have great opportunities of growing the company in Sweden. And of course, we are a bit self confident that the last couple of years' success for us is something that we will keep sort of executing on. So it will be growth. And then we will state in January exactly how much growth we want to achieve up to 2025, how we will align that with our cost guidance, how we will align that with return on equity and so forth. So we're doing a very thorough job at the moment of finalizing this. But the main word is growing the AUM growing number of clients and keeping the customer satisfaction.

We should expect an updated targets in relation with the Q4 report then?

Yes, we have said that we will in -- when we present the Q4 results, I think it's January 21st or something like that, we will also release new financial targets for 2025.

Our next question comes from the line of Nicolas McBeath of DNB.

So I was wondering about the -- how you think about the cost efficiency on the platform. So you have now cost of savings capital at around 12 basis points. And given the cost growth you're guiding for next year, 20%, it seems unlikely that the efficiency ratio will decline in 2022. So just interested to hear your thoughts. Do you think 12 basis points is a kind of floor in terms of your scalability? Or do you think that you could bring down the efficiency ratio further?

If we keep on growing the AUM, of course, we can bring down that a bit further. And we have a lot of internal work being done on that subject because I think a few years ago, when we were around 19, we always said that 16 is probably the target that we should have. Now we're at 12. And if we are successful in growing the AUM, I think that's a number that we could repeat and could it be lower? Well, if we accelerate the growth, it will be lower. But it's -- that's the most important cost-efficient matrix that I look upon because I think that's all about the scalability of the company.

Okay. And then on the growth, you mentioned that you have now around 1 million equity owners on the platform versus 2 million in total in Sweden. So 50% market share if you look at it from that perspective. So given that, do you think that your growth that you're seeing will continue to be driven by customer growth? Or do you think that you will gradually start focusing on revenue growth from deepening monetization within the customer base?

I think it's both. I still think that we can grow the number of customers. I think that if you look at my previous employer, Länsförsäkringar, they have 3.6 million clients in the customer base, even though that's a different animal. But I see no reason why we can't be relevant to everybody with a bank account. So I think that we can absolutely grow the number of clients, but also growing the AUM. And if you look at our SEK 200 billion, and which we are proud of today in mutual funds, we still have a lot of growth to do to the a bit more passive part of the populations invested in mutual funds. So I think it's a bit answer both. We will grow a number of clients, we will grow the AUM. We -- as I said before, we can do it even better job when it comes to share of wallet and so forth. So I see no limits when it comes to growing the company within the next couple of years. And given the fact that we have the most satisfied clients, and we have a market share of 6.5%. I think that we have all the prerequisites to further grow Avanza.

Okay. That's clear. And then I was also wondering about how you think about the opportunity to add crypto investments onto the platform? I know you already offer crypto certificates. But I guess, many investors are more interested in the direct exposure. So do you have any intentions to enable customers to get this on your platform? Or will customers have to look for kind of foreign exchanges to get this? And then secondly, on that as well, how is -- difficult do you think it would be to set this up? Do you think there would be any kind of regulatory pushback if you would like to do this?

I think that we are following it. It's, of course, an area which I absolutely will be open with that we follow. We try to understand it. And of course, we look at the regulatory environment, and there are different ways of doing it, if you want to execute on it. But if the regulatory environment and the Swedish FSA and things will develop in a positive way, it's absolutely an opportunity in the future for us. But it's too early days for us to say that we will do it or we will not do it, but it's an area that we follow very, very closely.

Okay. And then looking at your mortgage platform, your growth seems to have slowed down in the quarter despite the mortgage market obviously being very hot in Sweden currently. So do you have any thoughts on what's holding back to growth? Do you think the incumbent banks have become more competitive over the past year? Or are there anything else capping?

I think there is 2 things that are holding back the growth, even though the growth is still there. One is our partner, Stabelo. They are not yet into the new market, they are just refinancing old loans. And I think they need to or we need to develop that offering a bit more. Landshypotek, our second partner has been lagging a bit when it comes to the time they take to manage a customer from a application to be paid out by the loans but they're doing a fantastic job of scaling up their businesses. And also, we need over time, an 85% LTV loan because we have a young customer base. And if you look at Landshypotek, it's 75% LTV, just houses, not departments. And if you look at Stabelo, the maximum LTV is 60%, and that's not sufficient for a young customer base. But I'm optimistic about the future even finding more partners on the platform, and I'm confident that Stabelo will develop their offering into the market, but that's a question for them. But we absolutely have a need to have an 85% mortgage for apartments with a competitive price. And hopefully, we will have that in a not so long future.

Okay. And then my final question, if you have noticed any distinct changes in customer behavior since the Swedish COVID-19 restrictions were formally removed end of September?

No. No, we have not seen I see it on a weekly basis, but we have not seen any changes in customer behavior and maybe just a bit too early days. If you looked at our office, for example, and I talked to a lot of CEOs in the industry, I think we are back -- during the pandemic, we were about 25%, 30% working at the office. Now we're around 60% every day, 40% choose to work from home, and they have a total flexibility on that. So I think we are moving into a new future that is going to be very interesting to see how our employees and employees in all companies manage their lives, so to speak. But at the same time, I think the interest for savings and the structural reason for taking care of your savings, given the unemployment paid if you are sick and so forth, that has been obvious for many people during the pandemic,and I think that will not go away. So I think that personal financing, self-directed investors, of course, it could slow down. But in the long term, I think it's here to stay.

Okay. And then just a follow-up on that as well. I think you mentioned that you find Q2 and Q3 more normalized in terms of activity. Does this imply that you don't think about a further declining in customer activity when you think about the normalized base? Or how should we interpret those comments?

No. What I meant was a little bit that I think that Q2 and Q3 were more 2021 normal quarters given the volatility and the high activity. I think Q1 was exceptional. But at the same time, I think that if we get the 20% down on the stock exchange, sideways moving markets, of course, activity will go down. But at the same time, as I said, for several quarters, if that happens, we will still perform on a much better level than before the pandemic just due to the size. But as you know, Nicolas predicting the future when it comes to the stock markets, that's your job not mine.

Currently, we have 1 further question in the queue. [Operator Instructions] And that next question comes from the line of Jens Hallén of Carnegie.

It's Jens here. And I'll be honest, you just answered my final question. So I'm not going to try to -- we used 1 of the previous ones. Very comprehensive.

[Operator Instructions]

Okay. Seems that we ran out of questions.

Yes. No further questions from the line.

Okay. Thank you, everyone, for listening in. Have a great Monday. Have a great week and take care of yourselves. Thank you.