Intrum AB (publ) (INTRUM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the Intrum Q2 2026 report presentation. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to CEO, Johan Akerblom; and CFO, Masih Yazdi. Please go ahead.

Thank you. And good morning, everyone. Welcome to this second quarter report call. We start with the first page where we want to do a couple of highlights. I'd like to comment that, I mean, this is the second quarter where we are executing on our new strategy. The #1 priority when we introduced our strategy was how to improve the leverage and the balance sheet of the company. And as you all know, a huge amount of work has been dedicated to do exactly so in Q2 with the capital raise and the SEK 2.4 billion portfolio sale. And we have also seen the effects of that by Standard & Poor and Moody's improving our credit ratings. The operation -- sorry, the service leverage ratio on a pro forma basis has moved from 6.2 to 4.3, and the long-term target is 3.0. We also see that our operational transformation is continuing to pay off. Our costs are developing according to plan. And when looking at FDs, which is one of the things that we are working with making our processes automated or aid or just more efficient has reduced by 8% year-on-year. Our total costs are currently at 11.9% on a rolling 12-month basis, and the target in 2030 is 10% to 11%, depending on our servicing income. The growth that we have in our traditional markets, we see the fourth quarter of growth. We see actually higher growth in this quarter than previous quarters. but it's not sufficient to offset the decline that we have in the specialized markets. And therefore, given that we had a negative growth in Q1 as well, even though it was higher than we do see that it's going to be more challenging to achieve the largely flat servicing income that we want to achieve in 2026. The servicing EBIT margin remains and the target is 30% to 35%. Stable margins on the servicing. I mean, we are now at 25%. We've been at 25% for I think, the third quarter in a row. And we have good organic growth in the traditional markets. We maintained a strong cost discipline but we will now accelerate on the cost side. So we will accelerate our progress -- or sorry, our operational excellence program. And we will include more countries going forward. We have 5 countries right now that operates under it, and we will see how many countries we will have by the end of the year, but it will be a material increase versus to date. To illustrate a little bit more of the dynamics around our external in servicing income, you can see here, first of all, the avoid consolidation, it moves basically external income to internal income. So you have a minus negative 1 there on a year-on-year comparison. The specialized markets, they go down 4%, of which organic growth is -- and the traditional markets, they held 2% up on a total basis with an organic growth of 5%. The decline, as we discussed many times before, is, in particular, in Greece and Spain and partially in Italy. And then U.K. has a performer that is impacted by slower and delayed new sales. So it's actually slightly different dynamics depending on which country you look at. In the traditional markets, which is 45% of the income, we have organic growth of 5%, and most of them are growing. And we have a couple of top contributors. We do, however, see a challenge right now in Germany, where we have had issues both with onboarding of new clients, which has been taking much longer than expected. And we also have a bit of performance challenges with the -- some of the existing clients. But we're doing a transformation to get this fully in line, and this could be more potential on how we stabilize that going forward. On the operational access program, we launched this in Q1. It is essentially a group-led program where we execute locally. And we move the traditional bespoke model into the next gen, which is much more standardized, which is automated and where we have a lot of AI support to make it as efficient and effective as possible. We have an ambition to significantly increase the efficiency. We have on the FTE-based cost base in scope, a 30% to -- 35% to 40% ambition over the next 3 years. We utilize other new technologies, but we also use all the technologies to make sure that we get the best possible outcome, and we spend a balanced amount versus the outcome that we expect. And Performance management is obviously very important when we then start tracking our lower cost to collect. The good thing is that the identified savings are actually exceeding the ambition. So we see that the impact could be bigger than we anticipated from the beginning. But we will now, as said, accelerate this expand it and do more countries in parallel. We centered this, and I think we talked about this in Q1, there are 3 different buckets that are material, and that's where we focus. It's document management, it's e-mail management or e-mail automation, and it's also around how we deal with calls. And everything -- not everything, but a lot of things that we try to build are things that we can then scale across the different markets that we have. So we don't build a [indiscernible] solution. We build generic solutions, we implement them locally, and then we export them to the next country to get the scale and the synergies in the group. Investing, we haven't talked much about, but we did SEK 197 million, which is according to the previous ambition. We did it at 19%. We are still very disciplined in our execution. And the collection has been 102 in the quarter versus 100 in Q1. What you see on the page is the rolling 12 months. So the collection has actually improved Q-on-Q. And of course, now we need to ramp up with the capital raise. I mean with the increased financial flexibility, we have an ambition to make these volumes higher, and we are already working on a number of interesting deals and we are confident that they will materialize in the second half. So with that, I'll hand over to Masih to take you through the financials.

Thank you, Johan, and good morning, everyone. I think Johan has gone through the highlights, but just to mention a couple of things. Obviously, income is coming down, both on the back of negative growth in servicing as well as the can investment book. Obviously, the plan going forward is to change the trajectory on both of those by investing more and at some point, getting organic growth in the servicing business. I would comment on the cost side. It is down 2% year-on-year. It was down more in Q1. One thing to flag there is that the consolidation of Savoy is leading to about SEK 100 million higher costs this quarter compared to Q2 last year. And I think that's something you should expect for the full year that it's going to be around that level per quarter, which means that the cost level, we're on track on the plans we have, and we will try to offset parts of this but nevertheless, moving savo from the JV line to the income and cost line leads to this impact on the cost side. On the underlying development, we are fully on track with the plans and the targets we have set for the full year. I just mentioned on the numbers that on the net financial expense line, we have a reversal from Q1 of about SEK 300 million, which is helping that line. but also as of May, we are doing hedge accounting on the FX swings we have. So in Q2 and also going forward, the FX effect on our debt and the net financial expense line will be less than it has been historically. I think if you take Q2 as an example, we've offset about SEK 400 million of FX swings that otherwise would have materialized on this line. On the tax expense, it's a bit elevated this quarter. That's related to a tax -- one-off tax expense in Italy that is part of a tax audit that dealt with the previous years, so back a few years. That's a one-off cost of almost SEK 100 million in the quarter. We're showing a positive net income, which is obviously good, but the ambitions are clearly higher for the future. On the servicing side, I mean we've gone through most of the numbers. There's a negative minus 3% fully, but the organic growth is minus 2%. And the Savoy consolidation is minus 1% and FX is neutral in the quarter. On the cost side, that is coming down in line with the total income, so which means that overall, year-on-year, if you look at the running 12 months, margins are stable at 25%. Obviously, given that it's a bit more challenging on the top line on servicing, to have the margin improvements that we're looking to get until 2030, we need to do a bit more on the cost side to keep this stable and moving in a positive trajectory. And as Johan said, we see growth in traditional markets. That growth is higher than it has been in the last few quarters, but it's being more than offset by the specialized markets for now. On the investing side, same kind of trends we've had previously as we keep having less new investments compared to what is amortizing which means that we have a headwind on the income side. Going forward, we are planning to increase the investment pace and at some point, offsetting that headwind I think it will probably -- we see a better deal flow now. We see that we are engaging in more investments, but it will take a couple of quarters before you see that coming into the numbers as there is a delay between engaging in new investments and getting those signed and onboarded. So you should expect that they will take a couple of quarters before you see the investment pace actually picking up in the numbers we report. Also obviously due to the fact that there's been summer months and the capital was were just executed in July. And as Johan said, obviously, SEK 194 million -- NOK 197 million of new portfolio investments, high lender IR, obviously, with the higher investment base going forward, it's very likely that the blended IR will start to move downwards, but we will be disciplined in our execution, and we will make sure that the IR is nevertheless clearly above the cost of funding that we have especially when we take into account the co-investments we do with Brock, where we typically get servicing revenues as well, and we look at consolidated IRs, including both the investment revenues as well as the servicing revenues. That's it for me. I'll ask Johan to summarize the quarter before we open up for Q&A.

Yes. So wrapping up. I mean, obviously, the highlight of the quarter was the capital raise and the portfolio sale, even though both of them finalized fully beginning of Q3. We have the continued headwinds in the specialized markets, and we're working there to make sure that we can protect as much of the bottom line as possible. It will be more challenging given the Q2 results to achieve the largely flat servicing income in 2026. And we are accelerating our operational transformation, which is also I think, a tool in order to improve our growth trajectory going forward because the more competitive we become, the more attractive will come from the commercial standpoint. Servicing income outlook is slightly behind plan. We have stable adjusted EBIT margins and the quarterly collection index is higher in this quarter than before. It's above our active forecast and the investment pace is increasing post the capital raise. So I think with that, we can open up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Patrik Brattelius from ABG.

So my question is regarding servicing, in particular, in Greece and Spain, as you highlighted challenging. Could you talk about how you view these challenges as temporary? Or are there more structural issues that you believe can continue into 2027? We have talked about this before, but before you have yet said that you expect servicing to be flat in 2026 now, now you are a little bit softer on that guidance. So do you still think that these can turnaround? Or how should we think about this into -- going into the second half of 2026.

I mean, the fundamentals of the business in Spain and Greece are different. In Greece, we have a big platform on the back of Greek crisis. We're working with one of the main banks in that country. Hearing this is very much around making sure that we operate more efficiently, and we protect the cash flow. There's a limited amount of new business to be made at this point it could range. . In Spain, I think there's 2 dynamics. One is we do have a big exposure towards the real estate and we're servicing a big real estate portfolio. I mean we're the biggest real estate servicer in the country. And as we all know, the real estate crisis in Spain is behind us and the real estate market in Spain is booming, which means that we are very successful in executing on our servicing mission. But the more we sell, the less sales we have ahead of us. So on the real estate side, it's about, again, also restructuring and rightsizing that operations. And then on the NPL side, we do have room to grow, and -- but we will not be able to offset the real estate decline with the NPL growth in the short run. However, -- so basically, those are the dynamics, and that's nothing new. That has been the case now for a longer time, but that's how it looks like. And then the other markets, there we have definitely room to grow, and we are growing. And then as we said in the report, U.K. and Germany, our 2 markets where we have been underperforming, and we need to turn that trend down.

And then my next question would be a little bit on the investing side. You on the slide, you highlighted, Johan, that is an interesting deal on the pipeline. Could you elaborate what makes them interesting and what you are primarily focusing on when you're going to allocate this capital from the capital raise going further? Are you -- is it portfolios? Are you more focused on co-investment? Could you give some color there, please?

It's both. I mean, we will continue to co-invest. I mean, we are working a lot with our main partner, Brock. And we also closed a deal in Q2 in Hungary with a co-investor. We think the Hungarian market has potential. I mean after the change of government, we see that there are some reforms that can open up the investment space even more. But in general, we have a I mean we've always had an ambition to invest, but we've had limitations in terms of prioritizing our cash flow and our CapEx. Now we have much more flexibility. So I wouldn't say that we are doing anything fundamentally different. It's just that we can be much more forward leaning in our investment approach, but we will still stay disciplined. So we will be a mix of doing our own and doing with capital partners. And I think the major difference is that now we can actually do larger deals with some of our bilateral partners on a stand-alone basis if we think that there's an attractive return. Those are the type of deals that we try to sort of resource before and keep the servicing. Now we can actually bring them on our balance sheet.

And in terms of geographical mix, are there areas where you see better opportunities versus areas where -- you do not want to allocate capital at the moment as the competition is too high? Anything regarding that? No. I would say there is a tough competition in most markets, and we are active in all markets. So no. As long as we are present and we have comfort in the underwriting, we're ready to do transactions.

The next question comes from Björn Olsson from SEB,. Johan, in your CEO letter, you flagged that you're accelerating your efficiency program, given the weaker top line growth. Should we view this that -- are you changing the 2028 potential targets? Or are you rather steepening the curve have to reach those targets?

Björn, think I can take that one. I mean if you look at the long-term target we have on the cost side, we do say it's going to be somewhere between SEK 1 billion and SEK 11 billion. And we set that interval based on obviously, having a -- this is a very long-term target and not knowing exactly how the income is going to develop until then. And we, at that point, said that if income is higher, we will probably be closer to the SEK 11 billion income is lower it's going to be closer to SEK 10 billion. And now when we've had a couple of quarters where income is a bit behind plan, and we now see it's challenging to reach the target or the guidance we've given for the full year. Then obviously, that means that to any extent we change now in our trajectory, we're more moving towards the lower end of that target. But that's by 2030, exactly how this trajectory will look like until then. It depends on business momentum to some extent because the more income we generate, the more variable cost we'll have associated with that. But I think you should sort of see that as indications that the slightly softer top line means that we will need to have a trajectory towards the lower end of that target. And then in the next quarter or second half of the year, we'll come back on the cost trajectory for next year and what we see in front of us. Here and now, what we're saying is that we're accelerating the program. I don't think you should expect any implications on the cost for '26 on that acceleration. It's really just moving in more markets than we had planned into the transformational program earlier than we had planned. And therefore, we should see a benefit of that post this year. rather than already this year. But exactly what the benefit will be and how fast that will come, we'll come back with.

Okay. And are there redundancy costs associated with this. So should we expect this to actually have a sort of a negative impact on 2016 numbers, I guess, slightly or...

That's possible. I think we've said that on the back of the capital raise that if the capital raise with the financial flexibility that, that gives us, we will look into whether we can accelerate any of the plans that we had. And it is possible that, that acceleration both leads to some investments, but also to get the efficiencies faster, it could lead to redundancy costs. But that's something we will then potentially come back with when that is more clarified.

Okay. Clear. And on the investing side, your amortization rate jumped to 43%. I guess it reflects the maturing portfolio. But should we expect the to go to stay at this level? Or should it continue north? Or how should we view this trend?

I mean the more -- if we can increase the pace of investments, that will obviously have an impact on the amortization curve depending on what type of portfolios we buy and how they pay back. I think the biggest impact in this quarter is probably on the back of Savoy, which has had an impact on the overall amortization rate.

The next question comes from Johan Ekblom from UBS.

I just want to come back to the servicing dynamics between your -- between Greece and Spain and kind of the rest of the group. If I look at your annual report, Spain and Greece are a little bit more than 1/3 of your external revenues. Can you help us dimension the slide you provided today on a forward-looking basis. So whether it's the next 12 months or by '28 or how much further headwind should we expect from Spain and Greece so that we can kind of try and see how that has developed? I think that's slightly helpful, but it would be really useful to see kind of how that's developed over time. Is the is getting smaller? And when do you expect that to finish?

Yes. I mean I can try to answer that. Maybe we can give you a bit more disclosure in the future. It is correct that -- I mean that's a dynamic you have. I don't think you should expect -- any change in that headwind, especially in Spain, I think that headwind will continue. And what we have and the task is to show organic growth, that is really driven by not to a large extent, sort of reducing the headwind in Spain is more offsetting that headwind with stronger growth in the traditional markets than we've had historically. That's really the task we have. That's one dimension. The other dimension is obviously that assuming that Spain continues to decay, which it will it will become a smaller share of the total revenues. So what we need to do in the traditional markets in terms of growth becomes sort of less and less moving forward, and it's going to be less in '28 and it's in '26. So from that perspective, even though, obviously, it will be better to have a Spanish business at growth, we don't -- it doesn't require as much growth in the traditional markets to offset that. I think Greece is more stable. It will probably also have a slightly negative growth rate, but it's not to the extent that you have in Spain. So the dynamics there are quite a bit different. And in U.K. is very different in the sense that we aren't doing extremely well in the U.K. today. So I don't see that as a specialized markets in the same kind of way you will get Spain. It's a market where we can grow going forward. It's a different type of business.

Do you think Spain will be in line -- most of your countries are kind of SEK 0.5 billion to SEK 1 billion in revenues. Spain is SEK 2.5 billion or was SEK 2.5 billion last year, almost. Is that where we're heading? Or is Spain structurally a much larger market even with the current dynamics?

Spain will become less of a income contributor in the future than it's been in the past. That's clear. But that will also then make -- the headwind will have less of an impact overall. So we're basically rebuilding Spain and Spain will not have a profound impact or part of the overall income as we had in the past. I mean there are different dynamics. So if you take Greece, Greece is a strong contributor to the group in terms of both income as well as margin and profit, whereas Spain is a big contributor on the income side, but not on the margin side, it's actually a negative effect on the margin side. So smaller Spain is clearly negative on the income side, but it doesn't have the same kind of magnitude on EBIT, for example, as squeeze would have.

Yes. And secondly, Bloomberg words this morning, you've launched tenders on your '27 and '28 bonds. Can you update us on what you're doing and how we should think about kind of the refinancing story over the next 6 to 12 months?

Yes. I mean this is very much in line with the refinancing strategy that we have. We have obviously refinanced the 1.5 liens for '27. That's down and extended to 2031. But we have the second lien bonds outstanding and we're planning to -- with the tender we are doing today to reduce that outstanding amount. And and we will use some of the liquidity we have today to do that, and we will reduce the reminder to buy back '28, the second lien as well. . That will help us from an interest expense perspective because the -- obviously, the coupon we're paying on those bonds is higher then the interest we get on deposits when we have liquidity or the interest we pay on the RCF when we draw on that one. So we will -- this is a way of reducing the interest expense but also a way of managing the shorter maturities and you should expect these kind of actions to come in the next 6 to 12 months, in addition to the discussions we will have with banks on the RCF. That is something that is ongoing, and we'll continue to work on that as well. So the priorities now is to minimize the shorter-term maturities, especially the '27 and then obviously refinance the RCF at some point.

The next question comes from Ermin Keric from DNB Carnegie.

So you mentioned that 35% to 40% FTE cost base reduction in targeted operations. Could you quantify that more like in relation to the total FTE base or something to get a better sense of how we're expecting to take account, please?

Yes. I mean, the best guidance we can give you. This is -- this program and what we're doing in the program is in line with the cost target we've given for 2030. So I think you can -- to the back of the envelope, calculate what it requires in terms of FTE reduction to get to that level. Obviously, there are other factors you have to put into account here. I mean 1 is salary inflation for the FTEs we will have at that point in time until then, and you have also some investments we'll have to do. But we've talked about the automation we need to do in operations. It will mean that we will be fewer FTEs in the operations business. Clearly, fewer, I would say, by 2030 than we are today. in actual numbers. I mean, I don't want to give any clear numbers on it, but it's a large share of the the part of the operations that this is targeting. But in total, we have about 6,000 people in operations today. and automating those processes would lead to that FTE number coming down fairly significantly.