Axactor ASA (ACRO.OL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Axactor Q2 2025 Results. My name is Nadia, and I'll be coordinating the call today. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand over to your host, Johnny Tsolis, CEO, to begin. Johnny, please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to Axactor's second quarter presentation. By my side, I have Nina Mortensen, our CFO. This presentation will be divided into 4 parts. First, I will take you through Q2 highlights. Then Nina will present the financials before I give an updated outlook. We will round off with the Q&A session. Let us move to Slide 3 and have a look at the highlights for the quarter. During Q2, we had a lot of focus on refinancing, and we did mainly 2 things. We prolonged the RCF with 2 more years at attractive terms. And secondly, we placed a new EUR 125 million bond. Even though we still think the market required a too large spread, we were able to place the new bond ACR05 with more than 3 percentage points lower total interest rate than the previous one, ACR04. I think we now can say that for all practical purposes, the refinancing is done, and we are well positioned to shift strategic focus to NPL investments and growth. Collection performance was 102% for the quarter, which affirms the updated collection forecast after the revaluations done in Q4 last year. This is the second quarter in a row that we are on the positive side of our collection forecast. Total gross revenue ended at EUR 81 million. This is basically on par with last year after adjusting for the Spanish portfolio sales in 2024, despite low investment levels in recent quarters. 3PC continues to show impressive growth with a 14% growth year-over-year. But even more importantly, we are well positioned for further growth in the next 12 months with large new contracts agreed in Q2, which has not been started yet. Annualized return on equity to shareholders was 8%, but adjusted for nonrecurring items related to legal proceedings, IT infrastructure migration costs and refinancing activities, it was 12%. Reported year-to-date return on equity to shareholders was 10%, 12% adjusted for the nonrecurring items. Let's move to Slide 4 for more comments on collection performance. Axactor continues to deliver on the expected level on collection performance. Actually, it was the second quarter in a row we were slightly above the forecast. The first half collection performance was affirming that our new forecast assumptions was correct for the period, and we expect collection performance in line with the forecast going forward. Moving on to Slide 5 and more comments on the continued positive development we have seen lately in the 3PC segment. Like I said last quarter, although NPL accounts for the largest part of Axactor's P&L, 3PC is a significant and important part of our business. It is a capital-light business model, offers low risk, but still generates a strong cash flow at healthy margins. It is also an important part in the relationship building with our banking clients. Q2 continued the very strong trend we saw in Q1 with growth in all markets and a 14% increase in revenues year-over-year. Even though we see strong development in all markets, I would like to highlight that Norway and Spain are the 2 markets we see the strongest growth. We have had a clear breakthrough in the Norwegian 3PC market for bank and finance over the last couple of years, and we expect to more than double the 3PC revenues from 2025 to 2027 as a result of both the landmark agreement we announced in Q2 and other large agreements as well. We see a clear trend that the customers are more willing to pay for high-quality collection services and the growing pipeline with solid prospects give a very positive foundation for further growth and margin expansions in 3PC, not only for Norway, but for the group as a total. Let's move on to the next topic, refinancing on Page 6. Let me start with the conclusion. For all practical purposes, Axactor is now done with all major refinancing activities. We don't have any substantial maturities before towards the end of Q3 2027. The RCF is extended and matures mid-2028. Given normal circumstances and the long-lasting relationships we have with our RCF banks, renewal processes are doable at fair terms. The last bond, ACR05, was placed at more than 3 percentage points better total interest rate than the previous bond. We are continuing to work on our maturity profile and the target is still to have more frequent and smaller bond placements than we have had historically. With that, I leave the word to Nina for the financial update.

Thank you, Johnny. So now I'll take you through the Q2 financial performance, starting with the overall figures and then a bit more context on what is behind the numbers. Gross revenue for the group ended at EUR 81 million for the quarter, down 9% compared to the second quarter of 2024. The decline is a result of the sale of portfolios in Spain last year and low investment level in recent quarters. Excluding the portfolio sold, the decrease in gross revenue was down 1% compared to Q2 last year. The NPL segment reported a gross revenue of EUR 65 million. Excluding the sale of our Spanish portfolios last year, the gross revenue decreased 4% compared to Q2 2024. The 3PC segment delivered revenues of EUR 15 million, up 14% from the second quarter in 2024. Let's look a bit more into details on each of the business segments, starting with NPL on the next slide. The NPL segment delivered an increase of 6% compared to the second quarter of 2024, with total revenue of EUR 48 million. The reported collection performance continued above 100%, ending at 102% for the quarter. This affirms the collection forecast we provided after the Q4 revaluation with adjusted ERC curves. The improvement in total revenues was also supported by lower net negative revaluations and lower effective NPL amortization rate. The amortization rate was reduced to 23%, down from 34% in the second quarter of 2024. The contribution margin ended at 77% for the quarter, same level as last quarter. The margin is supported by both rising total revenues and lower operating costs. Please turn to the next slide for comments on the development in the 3PC segment. The 3PC revenues ended at EUR 15 million for the quarter, equal to a growth of 14%. All markets continued to deliver growth this quarter with especially good results in Norway and Spain. The contribution margin of 31%, down from 36% in the second quarter 2024. The decline in margin year-over-year is related to implementation and buildup phase of new contracts. A landmark 3PC agreement was reached with a leading financial institution in Norway during the quarter and is expected to contribute to significant growth for Norwegian 3PC revenue when fully operational. Further expansion in the 3PC segment is expected throughout the year with strong pipelines for new business in most of our markets. Let us move on to the next slide, where I'll present more details on the reported financials. Total revenue at group level ended at EUR 64 million, up from EUR 59 million in the second quarter 2024. The reported EBITDA ended at EUR 33 million with a strong EBITDA margin of 51%. So we continue to see results from our cost reduction and revenue growth initiatives. Cash EBITDA ended at EUR 50 million for the second quarter compared to EUR 61 million in the corresponding quarter in 2024. The reduction is mainly due to the sale of the Spanish portfolios last year. Now on to the next slide for a look at the development in return on equity. The annualized return on equity for the first half year reached double digits, coming in at 10%. This result was mainly achieved through improvements in total revenue and lower financial expenses. With lower interest rates, improved NPL collection performance, strong 3PC growth and a continued focus on cost, Axactor expects to deliver a return on equity at a healthy level throughout 2025. With that, I'll now hand it back to Johnny for some comments on the outlook.

Thank you so much, Nina. As I have already mentioned regarding refinancing, Axactor is well positioned with no major maturities in the next 2 years. We expect the collection performance to continue to be around 100% going forward, and we will now shift focus from refinancing to investments and expect a pickup in accretive NPL investments going forward. We continue to see strong momentum in the 3PC segment with several large new 3PC agreements secured during the quarter that will ensure continued significant growth for the next 12 months. Regarding costs, quarterly OpEx is expected to be reduced by approximately EUR 800,000 post-IT migration to new infrastructure platform. With that, we open up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] It appears we have no audio questions. I'll hand to Johnny for any written questions.

Thank you so much. So we have a couple of questions here. The first one is regarding the 3PC agreement in Norway. Do you expect this to double by 2027? Where most of the increased collection be front-end loaded, and that I can confirm, yes, it will be quite heavily front-end loaded and most of the growth will come into 2026, but there will be a tail into 2027. Second question is, can you talk a bit about the NPL market? Are there a lot of portfolios for sale and what money multiples are you observing on your portfolio? So what I can say is that Q3 is normally relatively slow. It will also be the same for this year because of the vacation period, and we see a normal buildup for the Q4 pipeline. So we expect normalized volumes in the market. Regarding money multiples, I think that it's fair to say that the IRRs are slightly lower now than if you compare to, for example, 6 to 12 months. But it's still attractive IRRs if you put it in a more historical perspective. And those are the questions we have received so far. So I don't know if the moderator have any more.

We currently have no questions. [Operator Instructions]