flatexDEGIRO SE (FTK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Yes. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining today's analyst call with respect to our half year figures 2021 and not Strategy Day. This was a misspelling effect. It's great to have you onboard. I hope you're all doing well. And I would like to make use of the next 60 minutes to give you further insights to our press release and the preliminaries that we have published this morning. After the presentation, you will have the chance -- so the analysts will have the chance to raise questions, and we are more than happy to answer them. Yes. Let's jump into the presentation and to the results of the first half year. It has been the best half year ever in our history. We are perfectly in line to deliver what we have promised for this year. We had record numbers for new customers, reaching at the end of June 1.75 million customers. If you keep in mind, our guidance for this year was 2 million to 2.2 million clients at the end of the year. So we are very well on track to meet this target. The transactions settled were close to 53 million, which is also absolutely in the range of the guidance that we as a management gave to the market, reaching 90 million to 110 million transactions. And a significant increase in both the adjusted EBITDA margin as well as revenues with revenues of EUR 226 million and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 48%. We will come to the financials in a second as well. We have managed to continue our outperformance of all major peers in the first half as already we have achieved in the first quarter an outperformance of the 3 largest peers in Europe: Avanza, Nordnet and Fineco. We also managed again in -- over the whole first half, so also in the second quarter, to reach a great performance. We grew in terms of clients as much as these peers 3 peers did together, which actually is evident for our strategy, which is driven mainly, obviously, by our great European footprint. And having in mind that the first half year was characterized by still a lot of corporate actions on the group level with the merger of DEGIRO, with the introduction of a new management with DEGIRO, with the implementation of further synergies, we are absolutely satisfied and thankful to our people for this great work that resulted in these record figures in total. And with respect to the major events that we had, as I said, not only the finalization of the merger of DEGIRO and flatex Bank to flatexDEGIRO Bank AG but also launches of various numbers of products and services, including, first and foremost, the ETF and saving plans at 0 fees. We have improved massively and are continuously improving with respect to ESG. We've been now just recently analyzed and rated and have managed to be rated on the top 10 of our peers with respect to our ESG setup. With respect to the further products and services, the main point is obviously to mention the introduction of early and late trading all over Europe that we have announced, which will, by the way, go live next Monday to all our 1.7 million clients as well as the introduction of the European ETP partnerships, which are expected to go live in the third quarter. Another point that we would like to mention is the AGM that we have done successfully and that also supported us in the voting for the stock split that should also happen during this quarter. This as an intro, let's go into facts and figures. I mentioned a rapidly outgrowing structure and strategy. We've managed to grow in the first half year our client base by more than 40% to 1.75 million clients. We always said that this is for us, with respect to our long-term vision and long-term mission, the first and most important metrics. It is customer growth, it is transactions settled. We know that on the way there, there will be quarters that will be awesome, there will be quarters that might be weaker, especially given the business model that we are all having, which depends very much on seasonality. And we will show you in a second also the seasonality structures. We truly believe that with an increasing number of clients and sustainable trading activity over the next 5 years, we will manage to reach our long-term vision -- or midterm vision, the vision 2026. And we'll manage to translate this commercial success to even stronger financial KPIs over the next years. If we have a look on our outgrowth over the last 18 months, you see that in each and every single month of the last 18, we managed to outperform our peers. And again, this is for us the pure evidence that we are going exactly the right direction, that we have implemented and are implementing exactly the right measures to continue this growth path. And what we also see is that obviously certain movements in the market will support us sustainably to outgrow our peers. Especially to mention is that this outperformance has nothing to do with fortune. It has also nothing to do with that we are doing things better or that we are smarter. It has to do with our clear strategy to be a pan-European player and a pan-European player that has a unique European footprint. So that is the reason for our success. And rest assured, we are currently investing also into the future growth. We will continuously invest into our future growth. I've always highlighted that, that we will not judge our business on a financially quarterly basis. We are having a very clear ambition with respect to our growth story, and this is what we are absolutely going for. The seasonal pattern that I mentioned, obviously, impact short-term development. And in both number of trades as well as the number of customer growth, Q2 has always been the weakest quarter. And I was quite surprised about the recent weeks when competitors and peers published figures. There was so much discussion about the weak Q2, where I have to say, this is a seasonal pattern that we are seeing for decades. Now we just gave you the numbers 2016 to 2019 that show very impressively how significantly weak usually Q2 is. And this is why we are absolutely not surprised about the fact that Q2 was weaker than Q1. Q1 is usually the strongest quarter together with Q4, especially -- or also given that we have in Q2, especially in Europe, a lot of bank holidays and vacation that result in slower growth, both in terms of clients as well as in transactions. So again, we were absolutely not surprised by the fact and the results. If we were, we were positively surprised about the results of H1 given the recent growth speed and additional expenses that we had over the recent months, quarters. As I said, the very important point is to translate commercial success, commercial KPIs also into financial success and financial KPIs. We have reached in H1 2021 our all-time record in EBITDA margin with almost 48%. Coming from the recent quarters, somewhere around the high 40s but we never made it to 48%. Yes, we were also here expecting a higher -- slightly higher margin, but we're very well aware of the fact that there are one-off and one-off expenses. As I said, we had a lot of corporate structural changes in the company over the first 6 months of the year that we have digested. And we were discussing to make an adjustment to EBITDA, but we always promised that the adjustment to EBITDA will be very straightforward, will always be only related to the long-term incentive plan and any onetime one-off personnel expenses. This is why we have not adjusted any other items, but I'm happy to explain in detail what other costs were involved during H1 that we don't expect in the future. The first one and one of the -- with the highest impact was that we have grown the employee base with, all in all, roughly 100 more employees since -- or over the last 6 months. This has to do obviously with the growth, the massive growth that we have achieved. As you remember, I always say per 10,000 clients, we need something around 1, 2 people -- additional people. We did in total more than 500,000, so 50 times 2 people ends up with 100 additional employees. This is what we are -- we were expecting and what we were facing. And thus, these things -- these type of costs were not adjusted for because they are sustainable and will continue but will have a big effect -- a big positive effect on the profitability going with the economies of scale. We are continuously also winning the right clients. And you all know this discussion about, okay, it's important to win a large number of clients, but more important is to win the right quality. If you see what type of clients we have won over the last 6 months, you see that we are facing exactly and targeting exactly what we are preaching. The first and most interesting point is that we managed to increase winning more and more female savers and investors. So the share increased from 13% to 17%, which is a strong figure for us especially because it's one of the most underserved demographic in the European market, female savers and investors. Given the fact that 50% of the population even more is female, this is something that the market lacks of and where we will continue to focus on targeting this young professional ladies, young professional women in a mature profile that also become more and more financially independent and are finding themselves in a situation where they have to decide where to invest long term to end up with us. When you see it also with the assets under custody, with EUR 40 billion assets under custody, we have roughly EUR 25,000 per client sitting with us in cash and in securities. If you compare this to many, many, many other brokers, especially the big, big discussions about neobrokers, you will see that we are carrying 3, 4, 5x of what these players are carrying. And this is a very, very important metric with respect to sustainability. The bigger the account sizes, the more sticky the clients are. And I usually say that neobrokers are great for us because they create awareness for the market and tends to act as incumbents -- sorry, as incubators for the more, let's say, affluent brokerage clients. And this is what you have seen also with many of the brokers. I think it was included also within the Robinhood IPO papers. Most of the clients, most of the churn is churn with high accounts, with big accounts, and this is exactly what happens. People used to start maybe with these neobrokers, end up to develop themselves, their accounts get bigger and bigger and then they find themselves in a limited environment. So they have to do this additional step to go for further, products or further services and end up then with brokers like flatexDEGIRO. So we are happy to continue our path to win clients in the right sector with the right demographic average. This is what you see on the right-hand side, as I said, AUC of, yes, roughly EUR 23,000, annualized trades of 71. 70% of the population that we won was in the sweet spot that we have given to ourselves, 25 to 55, almost 60% is previously experienced in brokerage as well as higher education. And this is also what we see, what we have amongst the most named professions. I touched this point, what expenses did we have that we did not adjust for but that we actually have digested through the P&L. I started with the operational personnel expenses yes, mostly coming from the consolidation. On top of that, we increased the FTE number by slightly above 100 given the strong growth that we had and that we expect over the future and additional top hires as well to continue developing the stability, the compliance, the fast execution in our systems and in our growth. This ends also up that we grew in areas like marketing, where we will continue focus on, given the fact that we are aiming for 4, 5, 6 core markets, additional to our domestic markets, that we have to play and that we will play over the next 6 months very, very significantly. However, the growth was very cost sensitive. So the average personnel expenses did not increase in general. It's still very moderate at below EUR 40,000 per FTE on average. So you see we are growing but we are not growing with the high expense of people. But as I always said, especially in the area of service and customer support levels where costs per se are usually lower than on the high end with IT people or risk people where we have had only a super moderate growth, that is not really reflected in the figures themselves. On top of the personnel expenses, we had some one-off other admin costs, not only coming from the consolidation but especially from the corporate structural changes that we had in the first half. So all in all, we were at roughly around EUR 3 million in other administrative expenses, resulting from mainly the consultation -- consulting for the merger process that we have between the DEGIRO and flatex Bank as well as, to a certain extent, provisions for potential claims coming from the federal court decision with respect to historic changes in pricing, et cetera, which is relatively low. All in all, all these one-offs were roughly EUR 3 million. On top of that, we spent almost EUR 10 million more in marketing with a massive client acquisition cost. And we brought it down to less than EUR 35, which I would say show how great our marketing team is operating and that the marketing strategy is absolutely the right way to continue with. And this will support us in the massive growth during the future quarters and half years, coming down from more than EUR 100 client acquisition. So savings of more than 60%, 70% down to EUR 35 is exactly where we want to go to. Our internal guidance was always below EUR 50. First half of below EUR 35 shows what excellent job the colleagues are doing and where we are heading to. And yes, we will continue this growth, as I said, especially by implementing additional services and products during the next month as well as increasing marketing campaigns with an ongoing low CAC due in all European countries. Especially with the Tradegate introduction now, we will start a big European campaign that will support the growth during the second half. And despite all these high-growth investments, we managed to increase the profitability. I think this is something that we have altogether keep in mind. We are an absolute growth company. So if you would rest on our laurels and would say, okay, we don't want to spend any more on that big marketing, saving EUR 17 million in marketing would result in a EUR 0.70 EPS growth, which is absorbed actually because we have a growth case and not a value case. So those are the things why, again, we will not continue to focus on quarter-by-quarter financials. We have a very clear long-term vision. The long-term vision is driven by customer growth and by customer activity, both on a very moderate and very reasonable expectation. And on that way, there will be in some quarters higher marketing spends; in other quarters, lower marketing spend. So again, the long-term vision on the EBITDA margin is a 50% plus on the shorter end. On the longer end, it's a 60% plus EBITDA margin expectation. Last but not least, between EBITDA and the EBT, we had as well increasing depreciation and amortization. This results from, here again, one-off write-offs on intangibles that we don't use anymore and other adjustments that we digested via the P&L of in total EUR 2.5 million that are sitting in the D&A that we will not see over the future anymore. Per se the D&A increase, obviously, it increased because we have the first-time adoption of amortization on identified intangibles out of the deferral purchase price allocation that kicked in now the first time for full 6 months and thus, has also an impact on the P&L results. With respect to the LTI, the long-term incentive provisions, that are mainly determining the adjustment of the EBITDA, the LTIP that is based on stock appreciation rights program, as you know, is based on stock price development 50% and 50% on the EPS guidance and EPS growth. The expected one that we apply in our valuation models and the growth in this item results, obviously, out of the growth in the stock price coming from EUR 62 end of the year that was used to value the model up to EUR 117 as of June 30 -- or June 29. This stock price growth is reflected in the higher provisions, obviously, as well as the changed consensus for 2023 when the plan starts to become exercisable. And since the plan is depending 50% on the EPS growth, you can see that we have provisioned to build the model based on a relatively high EPS expectation since we are convinced that we are going exactly that way with respect to EPS. All in all, roughly 2/3 of the provisions have already been built based on the fair value as of June 30, as I said, based on a stock price of roughly EUR 117 and consensus EPS for 2023 of more than EUR 6. We are continuously highly convicted to reach our full year guidance. If we would just linearly continue as we did in the first half, we would end up with respect to a number of lines in our guidance, at the upper top of the guidance even, and we are very convinced that we will continue the strong growth that will ensure that we will meet both the guidance on number of clients as well as the guidance in number of transactions. We see absolutely no reason why we should change that. It's actually the other way around given the fact, as I said in the beginning, that Q2 is the weakest quarter. Assuming for Q3 and Q4 growth and quarter by quarter, we are very convicted and highly convicted that we will continue very successfully in the next half year and reach also all management guidances. Yes. As I said, P&L is always a question of what one-offs did we have, for what did we adjust, what did we adjust, what did we digest via the P&L. For us, one of the most important figures is that we generated in half year more than EUR 80 million of operating cash flow, which is 2x what we have achieved in the first half 2020. Our net cash position increased to EUR 180 million. And I think this is also something that a lot of people forget, that we are operationally debt-free. We don't have any debt, any long-term debt nor any liabilities against banks coming from operational debt -- sorry, from nonoperational debt so that we are also very convinced to continue this operating cash flow growth for the next years and next half year. And again, here, if we would double this, we'd end up with something around EUR 170 million. EUR 170 million in 1 year of operating cash flow, if you would multiply this with 5, we would -- and so assuming that we would have no growth at all, would end up over the next 5 years with almost EUR 850 million -- EUR 900 million of operating cash flow accumulated. You know very clearly what our ambition is over the next 5 years. And given the growth that we expect, again here, we feel highly convicted to reach our operating cash flow -- the accumulated operating cash flow target over 5 years that we gave out of EUR 1.5 billion plus. Seeing that this goes absolutely into the right direction, it gives us a high confidence in the steps that we entered during the last quarters. Important milestones. Yes, we touched on that: the early and late trading, the introduction and rollout of the European ETP partnerships and new marketing campaigns at DEGIRO and flatex. So these things, they will kick in now in Q3 and will generate obviously also profitability and growth in the second half and going forward. Keep in mind that we are starting now in the second half with 2 major synergies, the one flow synergy from which we expect high profitability contribution will only kick in, in Q3. It took a bit longer. This had to do with the merger with DEGIRO that we wanted to finalize first the merger before we implemented, so 4 weeks later than expected. Tradegate is starting a bit later than expected. The ETP partnerships will start. But they will both start very soon and will start to contribute additional profitability and additional growth. And this is a further point why we are absolutely convinced that Q2 was rather an exception than the rule. With H2 -- so in the second half, rather, and Q4, we will start the next trading app, next 3.0. And as we have indicated as a market leader and as an online broker, we absolutely have not only the responsibility but also the job to educate more and more people in Europe. Thus, we will have a very high-class documentary across Europe that we will use as well, obviously, for marketing purposes to prepare people, to give them a better understanding of the financial markets and financial investments and to educate less experienced potential customers. Yes. We spoke about Tradegate, the early and late trading. You see what impact it might have. This is what you see here, share of early and late trading in flatex equity trades. So with the flatex brand only because obviously we haven't had it before. And we see like what number of trade, especially in the late trading and the early trading, we can expect in the future. This is applied to more than 1-point-ish million clients with DEGIRO and gives us a very, very strong upside potential on the transaction base that we expect to kick in then starting in the second half and then in the full year swing as of 2022. The marketing push has also been discussed. Starting now also the football season again as of mid-August with Borussia Moenchengladbach and shoots and commercial ads, et cetera, we expect here a growing number of clients compared to Q2 as well as an increasing interaction between clients and brokers, so higher trade. All in all, again, we feel very, very comfortable with the next quarters so that we can continue also. With the product next 3.0 from push to pull should exactly fit into this marketing campaign and marketing strategy of winning more and more clients, of educating more and more clients. We know that our platform so far is very robust, very stable, very good, but we still see potential to reduce the complexity of these apps and to allow clients much faster, much more direct go into long-term savings and long-term investments. Combined with the 0 fee ETF schemes, combined with Tradegate, we are absolutely on the right track. The high-class documentary True Stories of Investing powered by DEGIRO will be launched at the end of Q3, beginning of Q4. And as I said, we broadcast it all over Europe, mainly in our growth markets and the underdeveloped, G7 so that we will have a 360 campaigning in all big countries to continue supporting us conquering market leadership, after we have reached it in France, to continue with Spain, Portugal and Italy. Yes. The outlook for 2026 has not changed at all: 7 million to 8 million transaction -- sorry, 7 million to 8 million customers, 250 million to 350 million transactions, revenues of up to EUR 1.5 billion and accumulated operating cash flow of more than EUR 1.5 billion with adjusted EBITDA margins of 60% plus. Again, nothing has changed on that. Nothing has changed on the short-term guidance for this year of 2.2 million clients and 90 million to 110 million transactions. Yes. That's it from my side, giving you an overview of the latest results. I'd like to make use of the next 30 minutes to allow for questions and to deep dive maybe into one or the other question.

[Operator Instructions] We have the first question. It's from Roberta De-Luca, Goldman Sachs.

I have a couple of questions. One is actually on a number you reported, the revenue per transaction. Can you give us a bit of an overview of how that's developing? And I mean, if we calculate the numbers from what you reported today, it's below the EUR 4 targets. So I kind of want to understand how it's developing. And when do you think you can reach that level? And then the second question is -- I hear your point on second quarter being a lower quarter every year. Can you give us a bit of a sense of what your expectation -- first of all, historically, how that gap has been on a quarterly basis and this second quarter that is significantly different from previous years given, I guess, the high volatility of the first quarter and then kind of a bit of a reiteration of what your expectations are for the second quarter? Obviously -- sorry, third quarter obviously having summer months. If you expect any kind of further slowdown there?

Yes. Thanks, Roberta. The first one, revenue per transaction, yes, we were slightly below, I think around EUR 3.50, EUR 3.60 revenue per trade. We expect in general up to EUR 4 per trade. This is our long-term perspective. And for sure, I mean, there are products that have not been put in place to drive these revenues per trade; first and foremost, obviously, for example, the Tradegate rate. Tradegate rates will be offered to clients for a price of EUR 3.90 flat. So this will, first and foremost, contribute to the growth. Plus you know that we are running a very successful ETP partnership all over Europe. And this is the partnership that we will implement as well with the DEGIRO that will also increase the revenue per trade, given existing and future models together with our product partners. So we will still aim and continue to aim for the EUR 4 in average per trade. Plus, what we have also to keep in mind is that in some of the European countries, we are in the market with very, very low fees that also helps us in the growth and the growth speed. And as we always said, it doesn't mean that we will have these fees forever like this. But now that the focus is on growth, we always have to find the balance between growth and profitability. And we feel absolutely 100% happy and -- or super satisfied with the current balance between growth and profitability. Whereas we can increase both with an increasing number of clients, this is the first and foremost focus that we have on the short term of our vision. With respect to the later end of that vision, this might change into less maybe growth and more profitability. With respect to the second quarter, I'm not sure whether I got your question 100%, but it was a bit to put the second quarter 2021 into a historical context of how much better or worse was it against other quarters. I mean the first thing is -- or the first -- let me put it that way. The first, from my perspective, wrong assumption is to compare to Q1 2021 because Q1 2021 was not a normal quarter. It was not a normal Q1. So we have per se a very strong Q1 and have this year, a massively stronger Q1. And then there is Q2, which is, yes, super average. So with respect to trading activity, it was, for us, absolutely in line with what we knew in the past, what experiences we had in the past. I mean keep in mind, Q2 was almost -- was I think as good as Q2 2020 when we were in the middle of the COVID situation and everyone was saying, "Oh, you're winning so many clients just because of COVID." So we managed to meet the strong quarter that we had back in 2020. Again, we had a very strong Q1. We have had a very average, good Q2. But given that Q1 was so good, it seems like our Q2 collapsed. Q2 was totally in line with the historic data and historic evidence and historic expectation that we always have. So absolutely, again, let me put this very clear. We are absolutely not surprised. What happened in Q2 was absolutely what we expected for Q2. Actually, we're slightly above what we expected for Q2. With respect to Q3 and Q4, again, also here, let me be very clear. I don't care about Q3 and Q4. I care about next year and the year after and the year after. We want to grow. We're a growth story that will -- if people want to challenge that on a quarterly basis, I'm more than happy to do it. But we are not thinking about Q3 and whether this is currently the summer break, to be fair. We are here with a long-term vision to win 6 million, 7 million, 8 million clients over the next 5 years and are seeing ourselves perfectly on track to go for that goal. But again, our guidance for this year was 2 million clients. We're already at 1.75. So there's 250,000 clients that we have to win in 6 months, which is super absurd for us. But again, we will not end up in this quarter-by-quarter game because we have the longer-term vision in front of us. And yes, I expect Q3 to become, as I said earlier, better than Q2. And I expect that Q4 most probably, if everything goes right in the markets, the markets don't go totally crazy, will outperform Q3. This is what we know from historical data and statistical analysis and expectations. Would I put my hand for this in fire? No, I would not because markets are totally going wild every now and then. But again, nothing that surprises us as of now. We were rather surprised by a very good Q1, to be fair, than by an average Q2.

Our next question is by Marius Fuhrberg, Warburg Research.

A couple of questions from my side. First one, also, you're stressing the Q3 thing. Even though you don't focus on Q3 and Q4, as you point out, but could you give us a bit of flavor on how Q3 started so far? Second one, the adjustments you made, I think -- I mean, were quite significant with more than EUR 54 million adjusted. Obviously, the majority of this stems from the stock-based incentive program and you cannot influence that. But my question is do you intend to implement another stock-based compensation program like in the next 2 to 3 years? Or do you wait like this -- the current stock-based incentive program is paid out in like 3 to 4 years?

Yes. Let me start with your question with respect to Q3. No, I cannot give any update how Q3 started then because we are now 4 weeks over out of 12. And I don't want to start this game of monthly update how the quarter was -- sorry, how even a month was. The next release of data will be the quarterly release. And again, it will be good. It will be strong. It will be hopefully in what our expectation is. But again, if we would just break it down to July, it is what we expected. So up until now, no surprises at all for us. With respect to the adjustment, yes, indeed, it is a significant adjustment. No, we -- as of today, we don't plan any new long-term incentive plans. The plan has not fully distributed out. There is still SARs that we can give out to employees, although the vast majority has been given out. So that we don't expect any plans as of now for the next, I would say, 2, 3 years.

Okay. One follow-up, if I may. Q2 margin was fairly low, but I guess it's a result of the lower top line. Is it correct that you expect significantly better EBITDA margins in Q3 and Q4?

Yes. Keep in mind Q2 was absolutely the quarter where we did our merger. So all this, what I said, that we digested during Q2 through the P&L, it will not show up anymore in Q3.

Our next question is by Charlie Mayne, Goldman Sachs.

Just one on the basis for the vision 2026. I believe you said originally that the basis was 3,000 extra clients per calendar day. You're now aiming for 2,000 to 2,500 per calendar day for the full year '21. I was just hoping you could help us to understand where the delta lies between those 2 numbers.

Charlie, again, this is -- the 3,000 clients per day is on the long-term vision. And the velocity that we see will definitely also increase over the next years. I doubt that we will grow on a daily average this year with the speed of in 3 years. So I believe in 3 years, we will grow faster per day than we do today. And again, the guidance was given out at the beginning of -- or during the first half and has nothing to do with our long-term growth. What we always said is to meet our vision 2026, we have to grow in average by 3,000 clients per day. And what we've seen in the first half is that we actually met that requirement, already met, not in 2, not in 3, not in 4 years. So with an increasing number of clients, our speed of growth will also increase. I'm 100% sure about it because you have a higher awareness, you have a higher structural targeting of markets. When we become market leader in further countries, the awareness will increase and so on and so forth. So for this year, we are not aiming for 2,000 clients or 2,200 or 2,500. We have just a clear guidance. And that would end up to say to meet that guidance, we need whatever, 250,000 clients on, give or take, 100, 120 days. So we would need 2,000 clients at least in average per day over the next 6 months to meet our guidance. And we feel, again, highly, highly, highly convicted to reach that.

Our next question is by Christoph Greulich, Berenberg.

A couple of questions from my side, if I may. I would like to start and come back to the stock appreciation rights plan. So could you let us know what is the total fair value as of June? And based on your current numbers, how large will be the charge in the H2 P&L?

Sorry, how big is the charge in the...

In the P&L for the second half of the year. And what is the total fair value as of the end of H1?

Total fair value, the fair value was, if I'm not mistaken, preliminary EUR 105 million, the total fair value of the plan based on a stock price of [ EUR 118 ] and EPS somewhere in the consensus range. And out of that, EUR 64 million, EUR 65 million have been provisioned for. So 2/3 of the plan has been provisioned for. If this continues as it is, that means if we end up with the same share price at the end of the year and no consensus change, I expect to have roughly 20% to be provisioned over the second half, so another, give or take, EUR 20 million.

Okay. And that also means that if the share price would be lower compared to where it stood at the end of June or the EPS would move down, that would also mean a reduction in the final...

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. It's a very simple, straightforward option plan which is based on the EPS and the stock price. So if stock price decreases compared to June 30 or 31st of December, that means that we will build lower provisions or even might release again provision.

Okay. That's clear. And then with regards to the customer growth, when we look at the decline between Q1 and Q2, I was just wondering, have there been any positive outliers from a regional point of view? Meaning have there been any countries which have seen an acceleration in customer growth in the second quarter?

Compared to what, to the first quarter?

Exactly, yes.

Good question. Let me look it up. I mean where we did very, very well was in France, where we took over the market leadership now also in terms of number of new clients, not only trade. There, we are progressing very well. We will look it up, and Achim might come back with some information. Although we will not -- again, we will not disclose figures on a country-by-country basis.

That's clear. Then you have, on Page 4, the customer growth delta to some of your main peers. I was just wondering like why that fluctuated so much given -- I mean, the seasonal pattern should be the same for older players in the market. So do you see any clear reasons why the delta has been so big, let's say, around Q4 last year, Q1 this year compared to where it stood at the end of Q2?

That's a good question that unfortunately I cannot answer if I look into the figures. What we see is that the amplitude depends on -- very much on the strength of the quarter itself, right, or month itself. So the stronger the month itself, the more we outperform our peers. This has most probably to do with the European footprint that when we are strong in a month per se, if markets go positive in a certain month with respect to growth, the customer growth, that we are managing to over -- to outgrow our peers. And in normal months and weaker months, we rather have a relatively stable development.