JDC Group AG (JDC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ralph Konrad will speak in a moment and guide us through the presentation and the results. And afterwards, we will move on with our Q&A session, in which you will be allowed to ask your questions directly to them. So having said this, Dr. Grabmaier, I hand over to you. The stage is yours.

Thank you very much, Sarah. Yes, a very warm welcome here from Ralph and my side for the earnings call for the preliminaries in the full year 2023 and the quarterly report for the fourth quarter in 2023. So I'm Sebastian Grabmaier. I'm Co-Founder and CEO of JDC Group, responsible for products and Human Relations IR, PR and yes, this is my partners, Ralph.

Yes, my name is still Ralph and I am still responsible for the IT platform of operations, the M&A segment and finance.

So as you all know us, we are a typical platform business. So you see on this slide, what we do is we've taken the data of all the insurance companies in Germany. That's more than 220 insurance groups, the asset management platforms, all the mortgaging banks, all other product providers. We standardize the data, we process it, and then we make it visible in different visualization systems that's either our own CRMs or customer relationship management systems, or our smartphone application. Or we load up the data via, an AP structure into the systems of our customers that are all kinds of intermediaries. So that's about 16,000 brokers and agents. But more and more, it's the German banks, the insurance companies themselves and via the direct platform, the smartphone application. It's about 200,000 direct clients. So right now, we have about 4.9 data sets on the platform. And so on average, you can say that every second and in correspondence to the contract, as many contracts have many data sets. And then we are driven by what's the strongest tech stack now in the German market for an institution to process insurance data in any systems. So we can make available the data of all kind of third-party insurers. And we talk about more when we come to the individual major clients, and then also give an opportunity to transact, so buy new business or new orders or applications of all kinds of insurance with our platform. So you can see what we achieved in 2023. And we saw your critical notes after Q3, how would we still stand with our guidance? And we see we had a record quarter in Q4. So revenues are up, earnings are up. And you can see overall, this leads to a 10% increase in our revenues turnover figures, top line and also on this, I think, a very good result is -- we are up more than 30% in our EBITDA figures. So that's up to EUR 11.7 million in earnings for the full year 2023, meaning that Q4 was extremely successful. So we had an 80% increase in the year and then in Q4 2023. So we're back to a growth path, a double-digit growth, which we could not achieve last year. So in the end, you could say we had a little turnover crisis due to the situation in Germany with high inflation, higher interest rates and higher energy prices. And that was basically last sort of the '22, you could see this getting a little bit darker in the Q3, then Q4 '22 was pretty bad. And also last year, you could see '23 that the Q1 was a little bit disappointing. And we, for the first time in a long period of times, had a minus a quarter in Q1. But then you see that things start to clear up in Q2. You could see some results in Q3. And now that's what we told you also 3 months ago that we would have a very good feeling that Q4 would be back to normal. So we see a very normalized year-end business where people were back in, especially insurance products. So people took care of their life and health insurance, most probably. Yes, it could have been a little bit higher on the revenue side if only our government would play a proper role there. So there is some legislation still out there to really boost, give a boost to the real estate industry. And also the financing part, this was delayed and delayed and postponed then to the parliament meetings in end of March, beginning of April. So this would have meant that there was a -- there should have been a rebound in real estate and finance, which does not take place until now in the first quarter of '24. So you can see and we will show you right now that quarter-over-quarter, things are improving significantly. Yes. So you can see this is now in figures, the historically best quarter we ever had. We made it almost up to EUR 50 million in turnover in a single quarter. And what's really nice, it's the first time we earned EUR 5 million in a quarter, and that's a historic figure for us. So you can see the revenues are up in Q4 alone at 21.2%., bring us up over the full year just above the 10% line, and that's by chance. You know that we reported 9.9% also in past, so that's a real figure of 10.0% in revenue growth. And you see that gross profit margin that's really important. So this is up in the fourth quarter of 27.8%, up to 16.6%. And then also that means for the entire year, that's 10.7% up. And that's, I think, the very nice figures. We all like to see is that in Q4 '23, we could do EUR 5 million as compared to EUR 2.8 million in the past. So 80% plus in EBITDA growth means more than double the EBIT of last years. And also for the whole year, this means EBITDA is up 30.6%, up from EUR 9.0 million to EUR 11.7 million. So overall, as you've seen on the EBIT side, it's almost 100% up for the entire year. I think we're very happy and content with these results. As most of you -- and I talked to almost of you during the last 3 months, that was the dominant question of how would think that you really reach your guidance on the EBITDA level, this would mean a record high quarter, and there is the record high quarter. And then if we see where it comes from, you can see that from our figures based investment and financing that was the weak part. Again, due to higher interest rates, people will go into bonds that -- or need their money in the bank and get interest on accounts and not invest in investment funds or other financial products. So we were down quite significantly. And you can see over the entire year, that was down between minus 17 and minus 19 and is only up in the fourth quarter. Because as you see at record highs, people start to reinvest and also top 10 obviously helped a lot. So we're still a little bit in the minus in the investment turnover figures, but with a minus 4%. I think that's easy to bear, especially as we now know that in Q1, you will see the high capital markets and the high recurring revenues in capital markets. This will be very beneficiary in the beginning of '24. And then you also see that insurance, that's our stronghold is -- was up over the entire year. And also in the fourth quarter, that's driven by more new business instead of the recurring business, then it's still up 90% of the entire year. So we'll be happy about that. So the majority of our business, as you know, is insurance, and that's our strongest growing business segment. Yes, you can see how this is the split up as to trend sales channels. And you can see that our growth is driven not only by the major customers. Yes, the major customers is where the growth is the strongest because it's the newest segment. But also the breadth of our IFA business is growing nicely. You can see first quarter again was very disappointing in the IFA business, but then growth picked up from Q1 on. And then, as you know, Q2 and Q3 are our lower quarters. But now in Q4, you could see that with the growth of more than 10%, we can see now that the entire group is driven over the 10% line. Major customers, the contribution of roughly 25%, and this is also same roughly 25%. And then advisory, we talk more about that later. Yes, it has not reached their aims because we were down significantly after Q2, Q3 because it's a little bit later in the cycle than the platform business. And we will show you that we had a good Q4 in advisory, but it was not enough to really come to the 0 line. So we have a little -- we are delaying growth there. So we will have a minus in this year. But then turn -- have a turnaround this year in '24. So overall, with EUR 171.7 million, we are not exactly in guidance, but very, very close. So it's EUR 3 million missing, and that's mainly due to 2 factors. One, I said is the rebound in real estate and financing business that just takes place now in '24. You can see that in the first-order figures very clearly. And the second is the top 10 was not to be consolidated in October as we planned. But in the end, just came in for the last months of 2023 in December only.

Okay. Let's go one step deeper. I will give you some more information about what Sebastian told you. If we look at the development quarter-by-quarter and focus on the first quarter, we can see a very normal development in the years 2020 and 2021 with a plus of 15% to 20% in revenues. And due to new business and contract transfers, then the coming year normally starts on a higher basis. You can see this in the year '21. You can see this in the year '22. But this development was not seen in 2023, where we had as a result of the Ukraine and energy crisis, just a plus of 1.4%. And that's what Sebastian said. We had a very weak start into the year 2023, which you might remember. If we look at the same figures, but focus on the fourth quarter, we can see a very normal development in the years 2020 and 2021, where we have an increase of around 30% in turnover compared to the previous quarter Q3 to Q4. And in 2022, these effects of the Ukraine and energy crisis meant that you only saw an increase of 15%. We have no year-end business due to lack of consumer confidence. But from the second quarter on, in 2023, the environment for JDC normalized, and we were again able to see a very typical fourth quarter with an increase of approximately 30%. And those of you who follow our earnings calls regularly, you might remember that we predicted this development very precisely in the last earnings call. And finally, if we look at the same figures in a year-over-year comparison, you can see the normalization of the environment for JDC within the year 2023. Q1 was, as Sebastian mentioned, still the aftermath of the crisis with the decline in sales and a significant fall in earnings, the fall in earnings because we have set JDC on a growth path. And therefore, you have to increase the cost base. But if turnover is not there, then earnings go down. In Q2, we had a slight growth of 8% and an improvement in earnings of 15%. In Q3, we were back on track with the first time double-digit growth again and an EBITDA plus of 100%. And Q4, as Sebastian mentioned, record sales and record quarter, EUR 50 million in turnover and EUR 5 million in EBITDA. And what's important for me is that this is a proof that the EBITDA margin of 10% on the JDC platform is achievable, yes. It's only a question of size. And if we grow further, what we do, we will see this percentage not only in 1 quarter, fourth quarter, but we will see it over the full fiscal year. For 2024, we can say that all signs point to a normal business start, a normal business development. So no weak start, strong start, and we hope that we will have also a strong finish in the year 2024. Okay. Let's take a look into the individual segments. The Advisortech segment posted its best quarter since inception of JDC Group revenues of EUR 43 million and an EBITDA of EUR 4.4 million were achieved in Q4. Also an EBITDA margin of more than 10%. The cost increase that you can observe here is due to the first consolidation of the Top Ten Group. Top Ten was first consolidated in December and is included for 1 month in 2023. And the contribution to EBITDA of the Top Ten Group is EUR 0.4 million. So EBITDA without Top Ten Group would have been EUR 4.0 million. Again, the Q4 shows the profitability to which the JDC platform will grow as it scales. And maybe to clarify, if JDC was not measured by -- if the EBITDA margin at JDC would not have been measured by commission revenue, which is like the trading revenue at a trading company, but by the trading margin, which is gross profit or net revenue, then Q4 would already show an EBITDA margin of almost 35%, which is a very good figure, namely EUR 4.4 million EBITDA compared to EUR 12.8 million gross margin or trading margin. In my view, this is a very convincing development, and we are very glad to see this. The Advisory segment had also a strong fourth quarter. We saw a very convincing turnaround in the fourth quarter, turnover increased by 16% to EUR 9.6 million, which led to an improved EBITDA of more than 80% or EUR 1.4 million with a very stable cost structure. But as Sebastian mentioned, it was not enough to show growth on a full year basis. We are still down with 4.3% in revenue side, and this is the good news. EBITDA was increased from EUR 2.6 million to EUR 3.1 million, and this is where we all are happy with. And what we can also observe in the advisory business. Like in the Advisortech business, we see a very strong start into the year 2024. And this is why we are convinced that our Advisory segment will be back on a growth path in 2024. Let's come to the cash flow statement. And here, we start or I start with a short disclaimer. The reason is that cash flow statements are not produced automatically with a push on the consolidation button. But you have to look at all liquidity events and all relevant business transactions. You have to check them, and you must assign them to the correct area, or the operational cash flow or investment cash flow or financing cash flow. So the following figures are prepared with the best of our knowledge, but there's still pending the verification by our auditor. Having said this in advance, we saw a very strong cash flow from operating activities with EUR 17 million. This is also record high in the history of JDC. And we had a negative cash flow from investment activities with EUR 14.1 million. This included the top 10 transactions, the payments of the purchase price, then we had some deferred payments for former transactions. And we paid the capital calls for our Summitas deals, where we also always put in 10% of the investment amount as a capital call to Summitas. And this in some amounted to EUR 14.1 million. Cash flow from financing activities were at plus EUR 6.6 million. Main drivers here were the share buyback program and then the sale of our treasury shares to the Provinzial and the renewal of our corporate bonds. As a reminder for you, the old corporate bond was at a size of EUR 25 million. The new corporate bond has only EUR 20 million. So we paid back EUR 5 million. And nevertheless, the cash at the end of the year was EUR 26 million, which is a plus of EUR 10 million compared to the beginning of the year. End of February, we had a cash balance of EUR 32.4 million, and this means a net cash position of around about EUR 10 million. Plus, this is also significantly improved number. Some are operational KPIs for you. The new orders peaked at around 150,000 at the end of 2023, which is an increase of 20% compared to the previous year, a very good number and also record high. But more impressive is the number of the initiated contract transfers that have reached the level of 500,000 in just 1 year, which, to be honest, for me, was not imaginable just a few years ago and means also an increase of 100%. You might remember that 9 months ago, with the earnings call for the first quarter, we reported that the net premium -- annual net premium on JDC platform will soon reach EUR 1 billion. Now we are 10 months later, and we can tell you that we are very close to EUR 1.2 billion on annual net premium on the platform. And just to remind you, this is our gold dust and it's what pays our future recurring revenue. A few more information about the share price and the bond. Share price is developing positively and nicely. It was EUR 20.4 yesterday and a little bit higher at the moment. What we see with a smile. Market cap was around EUR 270 million, EUR 280 million. So we are close to EUR 300 million, and we hope to reach this new threshold soon. Some words to the share buyback program. We have bought back 104,000 shares. Right now, we paid an average price of EUR 18.87 per share. And as a reminder for you, the share buyback program runs until the 15th of May in 2024 and is limited to 300,000 shares or EUR 5 million in volume. The new bonds, which you see on the right side. This is valued at EUR 20 million -- not, EUR 25 million, as I told you, and is trading very stable at a level of more than 100%. Yesterday, 104%, what shows that bondholders are happy with our business and there are no doubts about the development of JDC. Last slide from my side, shareholder structure has not changed since the Provinzial joined the company. You might remember, Provinzial bought 5% from JDC and here, you see 6%. So obviously, they bought some shares over the market or bought some blocks, and now they have the same percentage as DKB. So our savings bank's angle is 12% of the capital, which gives us a very stable development here with our shareholders. Our own shares from the share buyback program now make up just under 1% of the share capital. Now we go to the spot lines.

Maybe one more comment on this slide. If you read on Bloomberg, it had, for example, management share is going down. That's just a percentage number because as you all know the draft are always on the buy side and never sold the share since 2019. So don't take it serious what Bloomberg gives you here. This is the changes due to the change in the number of shares as to the share buybacks and then the sale to this institution.

Good comment. Thank you, Sebastian. Indeed, the Bloomberg counts only the shares minus the own treasury shares. And so if you buy back shares, the percentage of management is increasing. And if you sell these treasury shares, then the percentage is decreasing without any sale of any share. But just one comment from my side. One final comment is that for me, this development that we can show you now feels like a new stage of development of our group, like new stage of evolution because we never had such a good quarter. We never had more new orders. We never had more contract transfers. And we never had more money in the bank account, although all M&A transactions are fully paid. So no payments left. And nevertheless, we have more than EUR 30 million cash on hand and we are producing cash month by month. But most important, we have never been able to recruit so many new top talents and top employees as now, and they can help to build and shape the future of JDC. I apologize, I know that CFOs are usually supposed to be pessimistic and cautious. And normally, I am, but today, I'm optimistic and I'm happy that all signs point to the right direction. Sebastian?

Thank you, Ralph. You will have 1 slide later. So we will spot like 3 areas of our business. One is asset management. It becomes a more relevant sector now in how we move forward. And Summitas is always interesting. And then third is like highlight on the synergies that we are able to reach in the platform business so we're becoming more efficient there. So asset management, as you know, European legislation was very contrary to the fund business. There was a lot of Consumer Protection Acts and directives in the direction that there is an overload of bureaucratic and paperwork to do if you sell or if you buy as a consumer a new fund. So if you have a fund portfolio of 10 funds that's very open, that you end up with a book of 700 pages of documentation with those 708 signatures for the client that's quite horrible and gave a little headwind for the investment industry. So what customers now like is like give their money rather in a portfolio management scheme. That means a financial institution portfolio management company is taking the responsibility of the transactions and then only documents online, what the results are. So at the first step, you at one time, give your money into the portfolio management system. So this is a little bit of on-boarding. But once it's there for the customer, it's much easier because then, all the documentation is very transparent and there's no paperwork to be done if the portfolio has changed. So you know that we had a participation in BBWV, our portfolio management company. We stepped up from initial 25.1% to 75.1% and now bought the remaining 24.9% in January. So we're now 100% owner of BBWV. And now with the acquisition of Top Ten, their [ GEM ] is DFP, Deutsche Finance Portfolio for Walton. And this is our aim for this year '24, that we integrate these 2 companies. And together, there will be existing quite significant market player already, and we'll be among the top 30 wealth managers in Germany. So we have been about EUR 1.7 billion assets under management. So EUR 1.2 million in the company, EUR 500 million Advisory mandates with 13,000 customers. And we are focusing on label strategies. That means if you're an intermediary, you can have your own brand on the product. Let's say, you can do the [ Maximal ] fund or you can do the [ Maximal ] portfolio management, and you have a very strong standing then with your client. So we already have 130 label strategy in portfolio management in place and 30 label funds solution on a leading tech platform that we could buy together with the assets from the Top Ten companies. So this is like a very future-looking business, because instead of Top Ten, we had about 4 basis points margin. We had about 11 basis point margin in standardized fund business. So the aim is to convert more and more standardized fund solutions into the management portfolio solutions with a margin of 30 to 35 basis points. So we can triple. So in the case of JDC, we can triple our margin. In the case of Top Ten, even 20x the margin that we had in the old-style standby business. So there, we see good growth for us and also, yes, this can be a next monthly earning machine for us.

Maybe one further comment, Sebastian, is one of the main advantages of this assessment strategies is if our broker sells, let's say, DWS funds and he goes away, he can transfer the DWS fund to another platform. But he cannot transfer the -- our asset management with BBB or Deutsche Bank's portfolio for Barton because we are the product owner. So if broker goes, the customer stays with us. And this is a very good advantage and makes our business model more stable.

Yes. Thank you, Ralph, for the comment. Next, we will show you the development of Summitas. Obviously, it took a little bit longer for Summitas to kick off. Just to remind you, it's a joint venture between Bain Capital, one of the biggest product equity companies in the world; Great West Canada Life with a 25% participation in our 10%. So we will allocate several hundred millions, about EUR 150 million initial commitment in equity to buy broker companies with a focus on commercial brokers. So the first transactions were signed and executed successfully in the second half year of '23. So with [ Massmart ] easy economic [indiscernible]. So the first 6 transactions, aggregated about EUR 7 million revenues and expected EBITDA this year of these companies of EUR 1.7 million in Summitas. It's just partly been reflected in our balance sheet. But as you know, we have a service contract exclusively that after a delay of the on-boarding time from the Summitas target companies, we will have 100% of their revenue in our books and then have a margin of 10% or 10% to 12%. So we expect a minimum turnover this year '24 of EUR 3.5 million and about EUR 500,000 in earnings of Summitas alone. So the transaction pipeline is full. So there already were 2 more transactions in the first 2 months in '24. There will be another 1 in March, and then you can expect us to do 1 transaction per month. And also, there's some big gear out there. Again, it's very hard to shoot them as there is competition. You know the companies like MRHT that has just a secondary with a big private equity company TA Associates and also GGW that just had a secondary with Permira Group. So there is a lot of money now in the market. There's a lot of competition, but we are quite sure that we can buy many, many, many of these smaller brokers, but there will be also 1 or 2 of these bigger companies that we will be able to acquire in the end. So this is a success. The new CEO now starts is there were some discussions with this old employer. We'll now start March 15. So the team is now complete. The M&A team is working just fine. So this is like on track and we expect like a very good future for our Summitas.

' okay. It's always good to check the effectiveness of your own work and do some kind of backtest, and that's what we did here. And the columns in this graph show the development of JDC Group's total cost over the years. And the overall costs are increasing, as you see, but measured in terms of growth in a very moderate range and primarily driven by M&A transactions. So if you would deduct the M&A transactions and the costs, I mean, the cost basis would be very, very stable. And if you compare these total costs to the gross profit margin as a kind of cost-income ratio, you can see without a doubt that our platform is scaling in 2018, the ratio was more than 105%. And today, it's already below 90%. We want to further -- so that's what you can see here. The trend is your friend, and that's what we want to do. We want to further reduce this ratio in the future through efficient cost management and above all, through a series of automation measures that we have initiated in the past and we are working on day by day by day. And in the year 2024, we plan to optimize the first of these processes using an AI platform, which we are actually currently have programming with a team of external specialists that will be a very interesting development for us. And we will certainly report on this here in one of the next earnings calls when some news are there that we can show you.

Yes. Let's talk about guidance. First, the guidance for the year 2023. We gave you how the guidance of EUR 175 million to EUR 190 million and an EBITDA guidance of EUR 11.5 million to EUR 30 million in the -- after the very bad Q1, then we took it down a little bit. And we said we are rather aiming the lower end of our guidance range. And in the end, you see that it seems very positive, as I said, many of you also and many in the market did not believe us that EUR 5 million plus is to be reached in 1 quarter. But this is the very good point here with EUR 11.7 million, we are in the guidance range for the year 2023. When it comes to turnover, as we said, there is the delay of the Top Ten transaction. It took the authorities, especially the FMR Finance [indiscernible] in Austria, the regulatory authorities for the owner control, especially of Canada Life Great West, which when this goes up to Ireland, and then to the U.S. and then Canada, up to the owners, the [ DeMare ] family. And so in this owner checkup, this took them over 9 months, and we could only consolidate Top Ten in December instead of October. So this is some EUR 3 million, EUR 4 million missing here. And again, the non-rebound in the real estate and finance sector, which then will take place in 2024, but we couldn't see in '23 leads to an almost reach of the guidance. But -- so we did it not in red, but in yellow. So it's -- yes, it's -- but it's turnover with Top Ten without much earning. So yes, so we're close, but not there. So from our other growth 2023, I think we have quite a good line of text here. We could further develop the bank assurance business. We can give you also some figures on the savings banks. And we saw this in the -- also a corporate bank sector. That was the first question here, I see. Yes. So Summitas, as I showed you, completed their 3 to 5 acquisitions and also has the first mini, mini turnover in 2023, about EUR 0.2 million to the JDC platform that will be much more this year, we are sure about that. Also, the corporate benefit platform, Plug-InSurance, was successful. You could see that the provider [indiscernible] was bought by [indiscernible]. So there were some business risks here. But we're happy that we could solve this being the #1 provider in the broker market for now the joint company examples, [indiscernible] and launched the platform with the first employers with a very good result. So we expect a lot of growth there this year. Also integration of Top Ten. The approval was very late in December 15. So we could consolidate the Top Ten Group, but we could not integrate it anymore. So this happens now in Q1, Q2 of this year. The first -- the Austrian operations just came together last month. And so in March, April, June, we will do the last step. So Top Ten to the half year, we plan it to be fully part of the JDC Group. We -- development further the IT platform, so we have a tech here. And also, Ralph, showed the more economies of scale as we could reduce the cost per contract significantly. So tech books here. So on the next page, you see the guidance for the year to come. So from the turnover, we reached of EUR 171.7 million. We guide at a range again of EUR 15 million from EUR 205 million to EUR 220 million. So on the median, that's a 24% plus. If you do the math right, so Top Ten will contribute about EUR 18 million, so it's roughly 10%, 11% of the growth in organic we are guiding to 13%. So that's conservative. The first one you'd be talking to. So plan is to have some buffer, the Germany's and the recession still know what the outlook is, could be much better, but then we would rather aim conservatively and then give a tech box here in the box also. EBITDA-wise, from EUR 11.7 million, we are guiding to EUR 14.5 million to EUR 16 million, again, the range of EUR 1.5 million. So with a median of EUR 15.25 million, that's a 30% plus EBITDA. Yes, that could be more, but I think you will know us that we rather guide more conservatively so to reach the guidance with very high probability. Here, what's our goals in '24? Integration of Top Ten Group, I said, this will take place in the first half. We have Summitas that will contribute turnover. That's what we know that because the targets are already aligned. And then also, we will come back into the smaller IFA market. As you know us, we did a lot of work in the very big, big, big institution-sized market, banking groups, insurance companies, more to come here. But the individual IFA sometimes had a feeling that they little bit neglected. So we come back to this market. There's high competition of 2 competitors that's for finance and law. So we are -- we're 1 of the top 3 platforms. So you might as well attract some of them as we see ourselves still of having 1 of the leading or the leading tech pack that's shown by the tenders that we always win with the institutions. Again, the IT cooperation with insurance companies will increase. We have partnering new management at Morgan, but also we'll attract more big-tied agent networks of the insurance companies. We are very positive on that. And also, IT platform has to be developed and yes, maybe Ralph can elaborate in the questions section. The world of AI is everywhere in the news. If you look at the use cases, yes, they are the first, and we will do the first steps, and it will make us be more efficient. But then there is the first steps to be expected here. And then also cost per contract should go down also in this year 2024. But again, caveat, right? Our business is quite cyclical. It's dependent on the capital markets. It's dependent on the economic environment worldwide in Germany especially. So that's nothing we can give 100% guarantee for. But I think as you know us, we do what we say, we say what we do. So, therefore, we are quite happy and content with what we can tell you today. So thank you for your attention, and as many questions as you could pose, give us, we're happy to answer them all.

Thank you so much, Sebastian and Ralph, for your presentation and congratulations on the results. So we will now move on with our Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] And we will now move on with the questions from Tim.

My question is especially on the major customers. You had 26% year-on-year growth in 2023. So that was -- in absolute terms, it was EUR 7.5 million. So could you give us, please, an outlook on 2024, how you expect the revenues with the major customers to develop? And also maybe an update on the on-boarding process here. I'm talking about Provinzial and so on.

Okay. You Sebastian or me?

Maybe you start, I'll kick in then.

Okay. Tim. Yes, the -- what we can see is that all of our existing major customers become more efficient by using the JDC platform. The contract density means contract per customer is increasing, and we are working with them quarterly. We show marketing activities. We connect them and talk about best-in-class actions. And so the development is positive. They all grow. We have know of these customers, these bigger customers who's turnover on platform is declining. So I would say comparable growth in the future. And the on-boarding of the savings banks this quarter was your question. We have some further success in the Provinzial area. But more important is that the other 2 insurers, the Versicherungskammer Bayern and Sparkassenversicherung now started. We have at the Sparkassenversicherung now 11 savings banks under contract and also the first 3 in the area of Versicherungskammer Bayern. So development here is good and is going on. And as planned, will be a relevant part of our business. I hope this answers your question.

I will give you some more color on this. Provinzial Savings Bank, there was 85 of these savings banks wanted to add the platform. Almost all of these first wave of Provinzial Savings Banks are on the platform. Ralph knows better, the 2 handfuls are -- well, it depends what significant business is, right? So Kreissparkasse Cologne as the lighthouse project contributing significantly. And then there's a number of savings banks picking up the business. But to be honest, there's still a big number of savings banks that just get used to the platform business, try to convert the first clients, have tests running. So we do know this business is to come because the administered environment is really positive. But as we've talked constantly, it does need some patience. So the bank assurance sector, when you look at your notes, we said our plan is to have about EUR 12 million plus or minus in this banking business. And we just finished all our figures yesterday night. So this -- we look -- might look a bit tired because it's just last minute where we scheduled the call. So my last figure is that 11.6 came from this bank assurance segment. So there's positive major customers and some that drag along, right, especially in the corporate sector, we just said on-boarded 4, there's another 20 corporate banks to come this year. So this is a very, very, very slow start. And we could imagine some more others like Finance Group, who you might know, are developing at a really very good speed. So overall, we're happy with the overall development of the segment. But again, we didn't plan for a very, very strong growth there, but we think we would just step by step get to these very big plans.

Okay. Maybe 2 more. I think, first of all, on Top Ten, on the acquired company. You said EUR 18 million of incremental sales this year, if I understood you correctly. Could you also talk about the incremental EBITDA contribution, please? And then my final question is on the 2025 targets. I mean the goal is EUR 250 million of revenues, EBITDA of more than EUR 20 million. Is that something you are happy to confirm at this point in time?

Definitely. But, Ralph, maybe the first question first.

Yes, Top Ten Group will contribute EUR 22 million in revenues, EUR 24 million. And the incremental revenue is, as you said, Tim, EUR 18 million. The overall profitability that we expect before synergies is EUR 1 million in EBITDA for 2024. But we have synergies of at least another EUR 1 million that we will elaborate within the next 18 to 24 months.

Thank you for question #3. Yes, I think we are on a great path for our midterm projection that we gave you out in 2020, after what we gave you now as a guidance in '24. I think '25 is very, very likely that we get to EUR 215 million top line revenue, that's not far out. And also we know, as we're becoming more efficient there, EUR 20 million EBITDA is very, very visible for our reach.

We will move on with the questions from Lucas.

Lucas, [indiscernible] Capital. Just a quick follow-up on the earnings topic for Top Ten. Mr. Konrad, I think, if I got you right, you said Top Ten contributed EUR 0.4 million in EBITDA in December. Was that right?

Yes, that's right.

So why is it just contributing EUR 1 million in full year 2024 then?

It's a cyclical business, and a lot of EBITDA is contributing in December because of performance fees and trailer fees, which are paid at the end of the quarter. And so if you start consolidation in December, the 1st of December, then you get the full December, which is not representative for the full year. That's the explanation.

And then in general to the seasonality, you showed this graph for the last years. Is this also the expectation for this year? And concerning this topic in general, is there a chance to reduce the hockey stick effect in Q4 in general?

Yes. Our expectation is that we have a normal development in this year. Again, in this print price, we had a weak Q3 and Q4, and the first quarter in 2023 was weak. So this was what you have to normalize. And for 2024, we expect a very strong first quarter and a strong fourth quarter. And unfortunately, it's not -- we are not empowered to change this because in the first quarter, we have this turnover spike because of the renewal dates of all our P&C contracts, which are mainly in January and February. When the contracts are renewed, then the commission is paid. So that's the reason for the high turnover in the first quarter. And the reason for the high turnover in the last quarter is the year-end business. Since years, I personally do not understand why people in Germany think about financial products at the end of the year, but maybe Sebastian knows a better explanation than the years before.

Yes. So we -- unfortunately, this hockey stick will be there for quite a while. The reason is that we are happy that 62% of our business is recurring. So that's -- but even this is not evenly recurring over the year because that's important for Q1, more than a 30%. And the new business, because the renewals, if you get your hike in health insurance premium, for example. Health insurance would send this letter out in November. So December is the #1 health insurance months, and about 40% plus of the business is done in December. And if you compare the weight of one-off commission as to the weight of the current commission, our average recurring commission last year should be around EUR 35.4 and the average one-off commission is between EUR 1,500 and EUR 1,800. So a new contract can have 50x the value of a recurring payment. And this is why very small number, about 1,000 orders applications in health, for example, have a big impact on the cycle, the sales cycle over the year. So we would rather, also as a management, we wish to give you like a concrete outlook in November. But in the end, the one-off business is part of the sales cycle. So in the next years to come, we're not expecting this to go away.

So let's move on with the questions from Benjamin.

Let me start with an easy one. Sebastian, could you just explain, please, what exactly your group under the bank assurance terms? Is this just the savings banks and corporate banks or anything else that falls into this? Second question, a bit more complex, maybe, on the guidance. So honestly, I don't quite get it because as you said, I mean, Top Ten is contributing around about EUR 18 million or even, Ralph, as you said, EUR 22 million in total in 2024. You have that contribution from Summitas. You have a sort of record business in recurring -- in terms of recurring revenues from the insurance business. You have new orders coming in. You've got savings banks converting and so on and so on. So I guess the underlying question is what makes you -- what needs to happen that you actually just fall into the midpoint of that guidance, right? I mean it just seems super conservative. And following on or not following on, but maybe 1 question on Top Ten. So maybe if you could just try again, and excuse my ignorance, but what exactly are you planning to do to get this 11 basis points up to 30%, 35%, as you said, again, excuse my ignorance, but maybe to be a little bit clearer around that. And then maybe just one general one on that acquisition. I mean it's a low-margin business, right? And I'm just wondering, and I'm just challenging you a little bit as to why you are not deploying capital on a more profitable, i.e., the insurance platform business, but rather go for an asset management business, which seems again comparably low margin.

Maybe, I can, Sebastian, take the last question first, Ben. The answer is it was almost for free. Because we bought at an EBITDA multiple, which was, let's say, far below 10. The company was cash-rich and no debt. And after the payments of the purchase price, the liquidity of our group decreased, I think, by EUR 2.5 million. That's the answer. It was a real bargain, very complementary to our existing mutual fund business. And, in addition, we bought some participations in IT companies that will help developing the IT platform. I'm absolutely convinced that in some years, if we look back, we will say that Top Ten was one of the cleverest transaction that we ever made. But I understand your question. So if you look on it from an outside view, then there might be a question mark why not investing into the business that drives you and why investing in the old-style business?

Well, I guess there's enough cash left to do that, right?

Yes.

Ben, maybe we add to the answer to the third question because that's also new because the entire fund business was not attractive at all, right? So because the margins are very, very low, documentation efforts and then there's some liability was high. But now with this move of customers in favor of portfolio management solutions instead of standardized fund portfolios, now there's a new twist in it because then we are able to triple our margin. As you said, margin on the fund business is on 11 basis points and then in the management portfolio was about 30 basis points. So what we have to do is we have to go to the client and tell them that instead of having this old Franklin Templeton fidelity fund whatsoever, rather have a managed account solution where you can introduce the same funds, but then it's actually done by the fund manager. And with the same plus or minus cost base, we end up at a very much better system and we end up at a much better margin. So that's just the name of the game. And we can see that, especially our [C&M] private fund accounts, they be transferred very successfully more than EUR 100 million, EUR 120 million per year to our account manager or management portfolio company. They grew from EUR 40 million to EUR 540 million, that's BBWE, in only 7 years. So that's also a very successful line of business. I hope this answer this. And yes, so from the banks, we can say we allocate all the banking business in this segment. And that's the corporate bank, that's Provinzial, DKB and SV then it's the S-mobile, that's the Sparkasse agreement, it's Volkswagen Bank and its Finance Group. So that's our banking segment. And we promised you that we will give you this as a figure in our reports. Just from midnight to now, the time was too short. But we will give you like a more segmented report on our IFA major customers business. And yes, number two, I think that's still a very good comment. Yes, you caught us. We are very conservative on our organic growth figures. Why is this? Because in the end, I think if you guide higher, what's the use of it, right? So -- and if you then have another impact of some reason we cannot foretell now, and if you fall a little bit short, then everybody is not content. So we think that now we have a very conservative guidance out there, and we want to check the box end of the year and have a green check instead of like, again, having to whatever argue around. I think that it's.

So we will now move on with Edwin.

Edwin from Edison Group. 2 questions left. Maybe could you elaborate a little bit on the outlook of the M&A market for broker. You've done -- you've been quite additive on Sommitas the last few months. Can you maybe say a little bit about the markets in hot-digit codes, what kind of multiples are you paying? Is it still like 8 to 12x EBITDA or -- yes, a little bit on that. And the second question is on IFA, the smaller IFAs. So you're starting to focus more on that market from what I understand from the presentation that that's maybe given in a little bit by increased competition from [indiscernible]. Of course, maybe tell a little bit -- or elaborate a little bit on what was happening there? Is there really competition heating up? Or how do you look at it?

Edwin, thank you for your questions. First, maybe on the M&A markets. So especially for commercial pure plays, the market is very, very hot, right? You see multiples, especially for bigger transactions, 16x, 18x. And as compared to the interest rates, that's very challenging. But you see that the aggregators are sold at 20x plus. Both the transactions I mentioned, MRHT as the first to engage our GDW, they are owned. They now traded at 20x forward-looking EBITDA 25 as a year. I understand the transaction. Or also at a mid-20s multiple transactions. So -- and this is why they can pay a lot for these market participants. So we see that focusing on like special situations or smaller players, our markets are significantly lower. And as you know us, if we are in a competition where we think 16x is like the peak of what we are expected to pay and someone buys it. And for 18.5, let them have it, right? So rather not do expensive deals. So -- and also on the platform side, there is pressure because you see IT development is expensive, regulatory environment is -- there's a lot of changes. So yes, there is consolidation pressure. And a lot of the bigger ones go to the platforms. And this goes to the next question in this smaller phase, the 2 players also now private equity finance -- for finance and law, they love to do transactions at a 0 margin as we hear? And then why take on business for 0 margin. That's not what we would do. Because we are like entrepreneurial and earnings-driven. And this is why we just wouldn't do it. And also on the IFA business, especially these 2 market participants have a very high competition, they go to each other and try to convince their brokers to change sides, give a tax for first comers or they give out 100% participation rights. This is not what we will do, but we can see that 80% of the business still goes direct to insurer. And in a digitalizing world, we can get a lot of IFAs with no platform connection yet. So -- and this is the brokers we aim at.

Okay. So there's still a plenty of market lift?

Yes.

So in view of the time, let's jump straight into 1 or 2 questions from the chat box. So most of them are already answered, but there are just 2 or 3 left. So can you give 2 or 3 sentences on IT security and IT compliance? Where do you see the biggest risks?

Yes. The biggest risk is definitely in the phishing area. We are attacked day by day by day from people who try to get into our system and do -- then do the things that people like this do. What we do is that we try to fish our system by ourselves, and we try to educate our people very continuously month by month by month, and this leads to the fact that the conversion rates for these phishing e-mails are going down and down and down. But at the end, you have to be very clear. It's not the question. If you are hacked at one time in the future, it's only the question when will this be. And this is why we prepared to be online again with -- in the shortest possible timeframe. That's the best protection you can have. Because if we -- I remember [ Hypercourt ] and the Smart Infratech division, they were attacked by phishing people, and they were down, I think, 6 weeks or something like this. And this kills you. And I think we will be able, after a complete shutdown within at least or at latest 1 week, and this is the best protection you can have. And maybe on IT security and compliance, it's gaining relevance day by day. You may have heard of the Doha initiative. This is the European development of the -- of IT for insurance companies. It's maybe the corresponding thing to the BIET, the [indiscernible]. Everything from banks now come to insurance companies. And the -- yes, and it's increasing and increasing. We now have our own IT sec manager department. We now have 3 people that take care about IT security and document all these tests that we do day by day. So yes, that's what we have to do.

Yes. So that's 2 sides. It's the number by far, the #1 thing our business risks we still have, right? So there is a lot of focus also on the entire management Board, not only IT do this. But on the other hand, as I stated, as ovulation picks up, then the small ones just cannot really handle it. So this is one of the reasons why we win all the big tenders and because we can really handle this the best in the market. The best might not be good, not always, but we think we have a headstart in this area.

All right. There are 2 questions left from online. So can you please tell us a bit more about your acquisition pipeline? Approximately when can we expect new contracts? Did you lose any tenders? And how strong is your competition?

Our competition is very strong, and it's only a question of time until you lose a tender. We win the overwhelming majority of all tenders. And you can expect new contracts, yes, in the course of the year -- in the near course of the year. That's our -- that's the short answer.

Yes, that's good. And the last question, with the other consolidators, are competitors of Summitas be interested in the JDC platform? What platform are these consolidators using?

Yes. Well, we know they are, right? It's a little bit of leaper phase as obviously, GDW is part of the HT Capital Group, where [indiscernible] does as well. So that's a hard one there. And MIC has an own system. Well, we like to have achieved it funny enough because they are whole commercial brokers for our parts of our insurance. So it's -- yes, they should be interested. They might be interested, but it's a hard sale for them -- or to them.

All right. Thank you for answering. So we will now come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you, everyone, for joining, and you've shown interest in the JDC Group. And I guess, we heard a lot of good news, so we can all jump through to our weekend. So having said this, thank you again. And I hand over again to Sebastian for some final remarks.

Yes. Thank you, everybody, for your patience with us. We know that the last year was not easy after we reported Q1, Q2. So we had very good feedbacks from you. So thank you for your trust and confidence. So we try to follow our path step by step. And we -- as we said, we do what we say and we say what we do and then sometimes, it might be a little bit ambitious, like the EUR 5 million we put out there after Q3 for the Q4. So we're happy to reach these goals. And as some of the clever analysts said, yes, we think 2024, it will be a very, very good growth year for the platform. And there, we just have to see that growth comes with the earnings. And I think we're very positive for the year with a very conservative guidance that we will definitely reach this time. Yes, we are hoping for a very good 12 months partnership with you all. Thank you very much for listening, and thank you for your time.

Thank you. Bye-bye.