B2 Impact ASA (B2I) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to Q4 presentation for B2 Impact. I am Erik Johnsen. And with me today, I have Andre Adolfsen, CFO in B2 Impact who will go through the financials later and also Rasmus Hansson, Head of Investor Relations and M&A. He will also be the Q&A moderator later. [Operator Instructions] Let's go to the highlights for 2023. B2 launched a new brand, B2 Impact that better reflects who we are and the financial impact that we enroll that we play in the society. The brand is going to be launched in the different countries throughout 2024. Throughout 2023, we are focused on scalability in our core unsecured market to improve efficiency. And also, with this, we have also reduced our footprint. Portfolio investment has been concentrated on 10 to 12 markets mainly in the year that passed. We see that going into 2024, we have committed investment that is double what we had last year of NOK 700 million. This is forward flow agreements that we have with different companies or banks, financial institutions that we are buying portfolios from. The good cash flow that we have generated over the quarters has resulted in that we have a leverage ratio at 1.9, the lowest in the industry, we'll get back to this also later. With the good financial results and also cash flows, we see that our -- we have improved our credit rating in the year that passed that will also materialize in lower interest rates in the coming year. Proposed dividend is NOK 0.70 per share, which is around 9% direct return on the stock -- given the stock price that we have today. Now going into 2024, we see that B2 is in good position, solid balance sheet, and that enables us to participate in the market going forward. But we're going to have continued with a selective approach and we also see that rates -- or the return on the portfolios are increasing. We are also going to see that the cost of debt is coming down. Already with the bond that we launched in January, we see that the rates are coming down. But also we see that the initiatives that we take also on the financial side is going to make the rates come down in the year to come. We'll come back to this. André will answer or come back to this also in his presentation. Efficiency and focus on the fewer markets is going to increase. So we are going to continue on concentration -- on the footprint in the coming year. Now going over to the key figures. Some of the these has already been announced earlier. Cash collection and cash EBITDA is very, very good for the quarter given also that we had the big asset that we sold, the REO or not REO, the asset that we sold in Croatia in the past quarter. We also see that portfolio investment comes up and we invested NOK 821 million in portfolios in the year -- in the quarter that passed. If we look at what's been happening over the, let's say, 10 quarters that's passed. We have been having a capital discipline and that resulted with a very strong cash flow. We have seen that we've been able to pay down debt and also see that the leverage ratio due to the good cash flow is coming down substantially. At the same time, we see that our investment is increasing, and we are now in a position also to participate in the market going forward. And the essence here participate in the market going forward with better returns on the portfolios. At the same time, we see also the interest rates is dropping both with respect to the margin that we are paying as a company, but also the general interest rates in the market is anticipated to drop going into -- further into 2024. Now we anticipate, as I said, improving returns on the portfolios that we are going to buy in 2024. That is the blue line on the graphs. The green line is the Euro LIBOR rate in the market that we see also anticipated to drop. This gives a much better picture and much better picture going into. And there's an opportunity set that B2 is well placed to take care of going into 2024. So it's the beginning of what we would say, an attractive investment cycle that we're coming into. What we see there is quite a bit of the industry itself has less capital available acquisition of NPL portfolios due to capital constraints in the industry. Now the lower prices of portfolio and represents attractive investment opportunities for B2 Impact. Now be mindful that we are still going to have selective investment approach. We have been having that in the year that passed, that gave us a much better return on the portfolio, but we will also be able to reach our target for investments for the next year. We are going to continue to focus in investment in core markets and also reducing footprint. We have reduced our countries with continued operation from 23 to 17. And we have concentrated our investment in 10 to 12 markets making operations more efficient and also effective in those markets. Investments in 2020 to 2023 of NOK 8.3 billion, 95% of that was in unsecured portfolios and 75% of that is in the core markets. ERC in unsecured is going to increase going forward. And we have seen that in the past years that the unsecured side of the business is increasing while the secured side of the business is coming down. So we only have 17% invested in secured business at the current status. And with that, I give the microphone, I would say, to André, that will take you through the financial performance.

Thank you, Erik, and good morning, everyone. Let me first take you to Slide #9 and some key financial takeaways from the quarter. So throughout the presentation, I will focus on deviations in constant currency, and it will also be adjusted for the sale of Bulgaria to be able to compare the underlying development of the business. We have seen very strong cash collection in the fourth quarter, and we see cash revenue increasing by 18% compared to the same quarter last year and with limited cost increases and personnel costs year-over-year is down for the group. We have been able to grow our estimated remaining collections, the ERC by 7% in the period. Again, this is in constant currency and adjusted for the sale of Bulgaria. This also includes the collection of our largest secured claim, which Erik touched upon earlier. And the growth in ERC is consequently driven by accretive investments in unsecured portfolios. Net interest-bearing debt has been reduced by 7% also in the same period. And we consequently had a leverage of 1.9x at the end of 2023. Moving on to Slide #10 and some more financial details and highlights of the fourth quarter as well as 2023. And we issued a trading update to the market back in December last year, where we communicated expected cash collections above NOK 1.9 billion, cash EBITDA above NOK 1.5 billion, investments above NOK 800 million as well as a leverage below 2. We are pleased to be able to present reported numbers slightly stronger than the guidance from last year. In the fourth quarter, we saw a very strong cash collection. The underlying cash collections were strong, but coupled with the collection of the group's largest secured claim. The unsecured performance came in at 104% of the forecast and 105% for the full year. Secured cash collections came in at NOK 876 million, which includes around NOK 500 million related to the collection of our largest secured claim. Now this collection obviously had a significant impact on our cash metrics. But due to the nature of accounting for secured NPLs, the reported impact on revenues and EBIT is not as significant as the cash impact. While the cash EBITDA was impacted in the quarter by NOK 479 million, the impact on EBIT was NOK 17 million due to the amortization of the claim or basically taking the net present value of the claim out of the future estimated collections. The cash collected from joint ventures in the quarter was NOK 53 million, which is above the recent average per quarter. But below a very strong number, from last year of NOK 188 million in the fourth quarter of 2022. The underlying operating expenses in the fourth quarter was up 2.8% compared to the same quarter last year. But as touched upon in the previous slide, cash revenue is up 18% in the same period. Now elaborate a bit more on costs later in the presentation. On the investment side, we invested NOK 821 million in the fourth quarter and NOK 2.74 billion for the full year of 2023, well within the guided range. In addition to that, we have more than NOK 700 million committed for 2024, which is around double the committed levels we had at the beginning of 2023. The net interest-bearing debt, again, is reduced by 7% year-over-year, while at the same time, we have grown the book or the ERC by 7%. Leverage is down to 1.9, which provides notable headroom to invest and grow our unsecured book further and maintain a healthy leverage. The reported adjusted net profit in the quarter was up compared to last year, but down in constant currency, driven by higher interest rate -- interest expenses. We expect the cost of debt to improve going forward, and we'll share more details on this later in the presentation. Now as we also communicated and touched upon in the third quarter, I would like to highlight that the adjusted net profit for the full year of 2023 was down NOK 81 million, but at the same time, interest expenses increased by almost NOK 400 million. So the impact of the higher interest rate environment has consequently been mitigated to a large extent through accretive investments, focus on efficiency and cost reductions. Based on the financial performance for 2023, the Board has proposed a dividend of NOK 0.7 per share, which is 50% of the adjusted net profit and the remaining unutilized portion of the existing share buyback program. Moving to the next slide and more details on the collection performance. Again, we continue to see solid underlying collection performance across all our asset classes. Unsecured performed well at 104% and 105% for the full year of 2023. Unsecured was very strong, of course, with the large secured claim we collected in the fourth quarter. But the underlying collection level of secured was also stable throughout the year despite no new investments in secured during the year. REO sales came in at NOK 151 million, a solid number for the quarter and with a margin of 37% in the quarter and 41% for the full year. Let me move on to Slide #12 and some details on the cash flow for the quarter. The underlying cash earnings for the quarter was NOK 539 million. And this is after adjusting for the portfolio investments of NOK 821 million, financial expenses and tax. The strong collection in the quarter has resulted in further reduction of debt of around NOK 500 million and that is including an investment level sufficient to drive 7% ERC growth. The reported leverage is down from the previous quarter of 2.15 and now down to 1.9, and -- the lowest in the industry, as Erik pointed out. Moving to Slide 13 and more details on the OpEx for the quarter and also the development over the last 12 months. During 2023, we've seen cash revenue increase by 6% for the group, while we've seen the OpEx increase by 5%, resulting in an improved operating margin in the period. In the fourth quarter, again, the cash revenue increased by 18% compared to the same quarter of 2022 with a corresponding OpEx increase of 3%. As communicated also last quarter, the impact of cost initiatives across the group has a positive impact on mitigating inflationary pressure. The cost increases we saw in the fourth quarter were driven by variable costs related to collection as well as investment in IT infrastructure. The personnel expenses in the quarter were down 4% compared to the same quarter last year. And again, this is adjusted for currency and pro forma for the sale of Bulgaria. As always, the group continues to initiate actions to further improve our cost base. And we also booked nonrecurring items in the fourth quarter, mainly related to personnel expenses, severance and retention schemes, which will lower the cost base also going forward. Moving to Slide 14. We again saw the investments in the quarter coming in at NOK 821 million and NOK 2.7 billion for the full year, well within our guided range of NOK 2.5 billion to NOK 3 billion. Investments made during 2023 have been highly accretive in terms of expected net returns. And we see clear signs of repricing within the markets we operate and invest. And due to the sizable secured collections in the quarter, but also the strong monetization of the secured book over a 3- to 4-year period, we see the asset class distribution now notably changed. At the end of 2023, we had 17% of our ERC in secured assets compared to around 30% back in 2019. The growth in ERC in the quarter is consequently driven by selective and accretive investments in unsecured portfolios. Moving on to Slide 15, and we'll elaborate a bit on details of the current capital structure following the bond issue in January this year. The new bond of EUR 100 million with the maturity in 2028 was placed at notable improvement in credit spreads. Moving the curve of B2 Impact below 500 basis points compared to our previous issue at 690 basis points. The blended interest post the bond issue is reduced by around 50 basis points. And we have also, in January, fully repaid our EUR 180 million senior facility with PIMCO, which has been repaid in under 2 years, despite also utilizing the revolving facility within the SFA of EUR 15 million, meaning we have been able to pay down EUR 230 million in under 2 years. On Page 16, we demonstrate a bit more details on the credit spread of B2. And on the left-hand side, you can see the historic development of B2 compared to a peer group within the industry of senior unsecured bonds. And the spread has historically been lagging our peer group, but step by step, we have seen improvements in our comparable metrics through long-term focus on deleveraging and investment discipline. We now see following the bond issue, a new benchmark curve for B2, and we target to move this curve further going forward through prudent and consistent investment discipline. On Slide 17, the last slide in the financial presentation. We have seen a rapid increase in interest rates and credit spreads for our industry. Now for B2, we believe the worst is behind us, demonstrated through a successful bond issue at improved terms in January this year. Interest rates are likely coming down over time, and forward curves indicate opportunities to lock in notably lower interest rates for B2. So during 2024, we target a significant reduction in our cost of debt compared to 2023, and we will do this by utilizing our improved credit curve. We will extend the RCF this year. And we will increase the hedging ratio from the current 50% level and we expect during 2024 to lower our interest expenses by more than NOK 200 million on an annual basis compared to 2023 levels. And with that, I leave the word back to you, Erik.

Thank you very much, André. Now going over to the summary. As we have said, we have a solid balance sheet, and it gives us room for investment growth. The number of portfolios coming out of the market, is very good and also the returns are increasing. So -- but we are going to still have a selective approach to the market. And I think we are in a position to do that and still attain or reach our investment levels that we feel is going to grow our book going forward. Now we're going to also see that the cost of debt was announced by -- now by André is coming down, and it's going to be material. So going into 2024, as we said also when we did the Q3 presentation, looks promising, looks good for B2, and we are in a very good position to take advantage of what we see both as a better market, but also lower financial costs. And with that, we open for Q&A, and Rasmus will then go through the different questions coming. Thank you very much.

Thank you, both. We only have a few questions so far. [Operator Instructions] First question is about dividend. Will the dividend be a more constant figure going forward?

We have a dividend policy as of today that we said we're going to have 50% dividend either by direct dividend or payout or we're going to do share repurchase. And we followed that policy as of today. So far, we did some change in the last bond, but we stick with the 50% until new indications will be given to the market by the board and also by the general assembly.

Then we have a few questions from [indiscernible] at ABG. First question is, do you expect that you will have cheaper money coming back to the industry as interest rates are expected to come down?

I guess we can only answer for ourselves, and we expect our own cost of debt to come down [indiscernible] interest rates, you can all see the forward curves, and we intend to utilize that to a larger extent through our hedging strategy. But for the -- for B2 as a company, we have already demonstrated a lower credit spreads, and we expect to be able to utilize that going forward to take our cost of debt down significantly in 2024 and also into 2025.

Then we have a follow-up question from Erik. Yes, how much more can you reduce costs without impacting the cash collection?

Yes it's a tricky question to answer, but...

Yes. I mean our -- as pointed out, we always try to be more efficient and our goal is not necessarily only to cut cost, but to be more efficient and to be driving more scalability on our platforms in our core markets. Our target is clearly to improve profitability through continuing to deliver on that strategy.

Then we move on to a couple of questions from Rickard Hellman at Nordea. On the back of the changed distribution of NPL secured versus unsecured, will you strive to increase the share of secured again?

I think the level of secured assets on the book is not going to increase again. We see that we are in some markets that will still have some secured investments, but that's going to be more granular and most of those investments is going to be with partnerships. So then the secured book is going to decrease also due to the fact that in the next couple of years, we're going to collect quite a bit of our secured assets on the books. So as a whole, we will continue the strategy of having unsecured as the main focus and secured is definitely going to be part, but also together with partnership offer.

Very good. Then we have a follow-up question from Rickard. You point to a more favorable NPL markets. Is there any market region that stands out as extra attractive?

I think that the market as a whole, we see that the competition in the different market has been lowered. There is no particular market that stands out. It's more on a selective basis that the portfolio is coming out in the different markets. And we see generally lower competition, but also see that and anticipate that the volume to the market is going to increase. So it's a combination of investors possibility to take out the portfolio at the same time as the volume is increasing. But no particular market is at this point of time standing out.

Thank you, Erik. Then we move over to Vegard Toverud at Pareto. He has 4 questions. We start with the first, is the PIMCO cooperation ended now?

No, it's not. The loan is fully repaid, but we still have a facility or a revolving facility agreement. So we can draw -- continue to draw on this facility up to around EUR 100 million.

Second question, how should we interpret the NOK 200 million reduction in interest costs annually during 2024. Should the run rate at the end of 2024 being NOK 200 million lower than the run rate at the end of 2023?

So my comment earlier was, we expect at least a reduction of EUR 200 million on an annual basis compared to the 2023 level, meaning it all depends on timing of the strategy during the year. But to your -- directly to your question, do we expect it at the end of 2024, not necessarily, but on an annual basis.

Third question, were there any one-off costs in the financial cost this quarter?

Sorry, can you repeat that question?

Were there any one-off costs in the financial costs in Q4?

One-off cost, in the financial cost, no.

And then last question from Vegard. Could you give us a NOK million number for the provision for the GDPR fine?

No, that is not something we can discuss.

And could you also specify the NRIs in Q4? And what do you expect of NRIs in 2024?

As mentioned earlier, NRIs in the quarter is mainly related to personnel expenses and actions taken to reduce costs going forward, both in terms of provisioning for severance pay and retention schemes. Going forward, we obviously don't guide specifically on what we do on cost saving-related NRIs, but we should not expect to see the same level as in the fourth quarter going forward.

Thank you. Then we move to a question from [indiscernible]. Please comment on the underlying collection performance in Q4, excluding the secured claim. Also so far this year, how are the things developing and what is your expectations for 2024?

I think I answered that question throughout the presentation. The underlying collection performance continued to be strong across all asset classes. We saw a collection level in unsecured, which has continued to be strong throughout 2023, 105% collection performance for the full year. We continue to see secured collections being stable despite no new investments. And we also collected even though we haven't invested much in new joint ventures, we saw a strong cash collection of NOK 53 million also from our JVs. And I would also like to point out, completely adjusting out a large secured claim doesn't make sense because we all have a large secured collections for REOs every quarter. And that also goes for the fourth quarter of 2022, where we have cash from joint ventures of around NOK 200 million compared to the NOK 50 million in 2023. So then we will have to adjust out NOK 150 million also in 2022. So yes, the underlying collection performance is strong and we will always have some larger secured collections in every quarter. But in the fourth quarter, it was the largest claim we have on book and that we do not expect every quarter, of course.

Then we have a question from Paul [indiscernible]. How should we think about the investments in 2024?

We invested NOK 2.7 billion in 2023. We believe that the market for investment in 2024 is going to be good. B2 will be an active participants. And what we anticipate is that we're going to still see the growth in ERC increasing. And the level of investment total for 2024, we'll get back to. But we are in a good position to participate in the market as the opportunities come, and we have a good headroom for investments. So I'll let it be at this point in time.

Thank you, Erik. [indiscernible] had a follow-up question as well. At Slide 12, and that shows good investment levels. I assume that's NOK 350 million to NOK 800 million per quarter. Will cash -- while cash earnings are very positive, will this trend continue? Or should we expect you to have large trend which we saw in Q4 2022 to Q2 2023?

Sorry, that was a very long question. Can you repeat it, please?

Yes. On Slide 12, that shows good investment levels varying from NOK 350 million to NOK 800 million per quarter. While cash earnings are very positive, will this trend continue? Or should we expect to have more a trend which we saw in Q4 2022 to Q2 '23?

I'm not sure what the actual question here is to be honest. But I think what we can say is that we expect a strong cash flow to continue. We have an increase in ERC. We expect continued strong performance on our unsecured book is growing. And we continue to see strong monetization of the current secured book, both in terms of value, but it also in terms of margin on REO. So we should continue to expect a strong cash flow and we should expect to continue to see an investment level that drives growth in our unsecured book as Erik pointed out.

Yes. And I can just also add that the investment levels quarter-to-quarter is a little bit -- Q1 is usually lower. Q2 is usually higher. Q3 is usually a little bit lower and then we have a strong Q4. Those are generally the investment levels. So I guess that's it, Rasmus.

I think we have answered most of the questions here. We have a question about investments going forward. Will the new investments be focused on core markets or will also investments be made in the VERALTIS countries?

We're going to do some investments absolutely in VERALTIS countries as well. But we're going to focus the main majority of our investment that is going to be focused on our core markets, 10 to 12 markets.

Then a question about cash earnings. Will that continue to be as high as in Q2 '23 and Q4 '23?

So Q2?

Q3 '23 and Q4 '23.

So if you look at the third quarter, we had cash coming in from the sale of Bulgaria. So that's obviously not coming back every quarter. And in the fourth quarter, we have the largest secured claim in our books. We will always have some larger secured claims collected every quarter, but not at the same level as in the fourth quarter.

Then we have a question about the famous hotel in Croatia. In the fourth quarter, you announced the sale of the hotel [ collateral ] in Croatia. 5 years ago, you announced in the same presentation that you failed to collect the target of around EUR 25 million. How did you receive to -- how did you manage to receive additional EUR 20 million? Was the original target too low?

There has been quite a bit good improvement in the market for hotels and, let's say, those kind of assets in Croatia over the past years. Also, we -- when we had a curve, we had a lower curve at that point in time and we have seen the opportunity. When we changed the strategy in 2019, we looked at all the claims that we had in the secured book and we were going off the value where we believe there was additional value to be reached. So that was a completely change in the strategy by the company. And this has resulted over the past years that we have been achieving much higher return on our assets and value on our assets -- secured assets. The hotel was 1 of the assets that we revalued and we believe that was a better strategy to go off the value. And as you can see, we achieved that.

Very good. That concludes the list of questions. Should there be additional questions, you can contact me, Rasmus Hansson. You will find my contact details at the end of the presentation. So with that, we thank you all for listening to the Q4 '23 presentation. And we will meet again in a few months. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone.