Moltiply Group S.p.A. (MOL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the presentation of Moltiply Group Fourth Quarter 2024 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Marco Pescarmona, Chairman; Mr. Alessandro Fracassi, CEO; and Mr. Francesco Masciandaro, CFO of Moltiply Group. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome, everybody, to our conference call. We will rely as usual on the presentation that was published on our website and start from Page 17 of the document with the full year highlights. And for full year 2024, our revenues are EUR 454 million, which is up 13.1% year-on-year compared to EUR 401.3 million in the previous year. And this comes for 49% from our Mavriq or Broking Division and 51% from our Moltiply or BPO Division. EBITDA in the full year is EUR 122.8 million, and that's up 13.6% year-on-year compared to EUR 108.1 million in '23. And this comes for 54% from Broking and 46% from BPO. EBIT is EUR 73.4 million. That's up 16.3% year-on-year compared to the EUR 63.1 million of '23. And of course, as you know, EBIT is affected by significant amortization of PPA assets. Net income for 2024 is EUR 43.9 million. That's up 42.1% (sic) [ 24.1% ] year-on-year compared to EUR 35.3 million in 2023. If we look on the following page at the fourth quarter, revenues are under -- let me say something that I just missed. One important point is this asterisk here. Basically, let's go back to the previous slide to the full year. We just signed a contract just very recently to sell a small subsidiary of our BPO Division, a company called Centro Finanziamenti S.p.A. that is authorized to operate as a lender, and that was not giving us a particularly useful contribution and was causing a lot of complexity. So we decided to discontinue this business by selling it. And so we are reporting our full year figures net of discontinued operations. This is not big. Basically, the contribution of Centro Finanziamenti was, in terms of net income contribution, negative EUR 0.9 million and was small also in terms of revenues and so on. But the figures here and every time you see the asterisk are net of Centro Finanziamenti. Again, it's small, but it's netted in the figures. And in the full year report, you will have all the details, but again, it's minor. And for '23 also, we adjust the figures, but for '23, the adjustment is almost neutral in terms of net income. So sorry for this, going back to the Q4. In Q4, revenues are EUR 132.5 million. That's up 18.1% year-on-year compared to EUR 112.2 million in Q4 of '23. And the revenues come for 48% from Broking and 52% from BPO. In terms of EBITDA, in Q4 '24, we report EUR 38.2 million. That's up 23.2% year-on-year compared to EUR 31 million in Q4 of '23. And the EBIT is not particularly relevant here, I mean, it's EUR 24.6 million. It's up a lot year-on-year, but this is just because in Q4 2023, we recognized all the amortization of the year of the newly acquired assets, basically the results of the purchase price allocation in '23 of Rastreator and the other foreign companies. So it's not a very meaningful comparison. And looking at the net income, also, it's not -- it's EUR 13.4 million in Q4 '24, but the comparison to Q4 '23 is not very meaningful because Q4 '23 was also affected by this PPA amortization effect that was all concentrated in Q4 '23. On Page 19, we can go into the details of our Mavriq or Broking Division. And here, the division for the full year posted revenues of EUR 221.1 million. That's up 17.5% year-on-year compared to EUR 188.1 million in the previous financial year. The EBITDA is, in the full year, EUR 66.8 million. That's up 10.1% compared to EUR 60.7 million in 2023. And the EBIT is EUR 43.7 million. That's up 7.5% year-on-year compared to EUR 40.7 million of 2023. Looking just at the fourth quarter, the fourth quarter had an acceleration with revenues of EUR 64.1 million, up 23.8% year-on-year compared to the EUR 51.8 million of Q4 2023. The EBITDA in the fourth quarter is EUR 20.5 million. That's up 15.5% year-on-year compared to the EUR 17.8 million of Q4 2023. EBIT, again, for the same thing that I described before, is EUR 13.6 million, but cannot be really compared to Q4 of 2023. As you remember, once every year, we also provide figures about the breakdown of our revenues, so between the different business lines that compose the 2 divisions. And so here, we are able to comment not only on the performance and outlook, but also to give these annual figures. And well, let's start from the summary, which is our view of the performance of the Mavriq Division in 2024 is positive. And we did fine, thanks to both organic growth and the contribution of the acquisition of Switcho, which was consolidated from Q3 '24, and Pricewise that was consolidated from Q4 '24. And then not everything was perfect, but we will comment on that below. The expectations for '25 are for growth for all the main business lines with the exception of E-Commerce Price Comparison, which has a more uncertain outlook, and we will also comment on that in a second. So looking at the different business lines, we start with Credit Broking. Credit Broking was the business line that was actually flattish or slightly down year-on-year. And basically, we were expecting a recovery of -- this is mostly mortgages and some personal loans. We were expecting a recovery in '24, but the recovery was quite delayed and started happening only in the final part of '24. And now we are seeing the market, of course, up year-on-year, and the situation looks much better than the first part of '24. So on this, the outlook is, at least for the short term, when we have visibility, it is an outlook of growth. We see demand up year-on-year and good volumes. And so we would expect a continuation of the trends of Q4 '24. Of course, all this is subject -- this is the business that we have that is more subject to consumer confidence and so on. And so there is global instability, of course, this could be affected. But for now, as I was saying, the outlook is positive and the continuation of what we have seen at the end of last year. Insurance Broking, this is a business in which we have seen over the years very stable trends. We continue to see double-digit organic growth in '24. Actually, we did EUR 40 million of revenues, up 17.8% year-on-year compared to EUR 33.9 million in '23. So double-digit organic growth and also thanks, of course, to rising insurance premiums. And here, what we can say is that we expect growth to continue in '25. Telco & Energy Comparison was -- basically generated EUR 28 million of revenues in '24. That's up a lot year-on-year, almost 70% compared to EUR 16.5 million of an already good 2023. Here, the growth comes in part, it is organic and partly it is attributable to the acquisition of Switcho, which was a good addition to our business portfolio and there's synergies with the rest. And for '25, we expect growth to continue even if mainly resulting from the enlargement of the consolidation area. On the next page, we have E-Commerce Price Comparison. Here, we have EUR 42 million of revenues in '24. That's up 15.7% year-on-year compared to the EUR 36.3 million of revenues of 2023. But the situation is less -- the real situation is less satisfactory because we also had a very significant increase of traffic acquisition costs from Google so that the EBITDA contribution in euros of this business line to the division and to the group is lower than last year. So in terms of EBITDA, we did negative year-on-year. And so we contracted. And this is -- our performance in '24 compared to '23, in particular, was affected in a significant way by some changes that Google introduced following the entry into force of the Digital Markets Act. Basically, with those changes, we were able to drive more traffic to our website, but at a very high cost. And overall, the net effect was unfavorable for our business. Now here, we are, as you know, in a very particular situation because the European Commission has opened very quickly after the entry into force of the DMA, an investigation against Google for possible violations of the DMA with respect exactly to the favoring of Google Shopping vis-à-vis competing comparison services. And we hope that the commission will quickly conclude its investigations and basically do what it is -- use the instruments at its disposal to ensure full compliance with the regulation. And on our side, just as our point of view, just as the point of view of all the other main comparison websites in Europe, our point of view is that the current solution is not compliant. So we would expect some action from the commission. And of course, our results here would be linked and dependent also on the actual enforcement of the DMA, which hopefully, there is a 1-year kind of soft deadline for the commission should -- we should start seeing things hopefully soon. But for now, there is no certainty. Finally, international markets, which includes Spain, France, Mexico and now the Netherlands from Q4 of '24, did EUR 64.3 million of revenues in '24. That's up 21.4% year-on-year compared to EUR 53 million in 2023. And here, the comment is that things are going well organically. They did well organically, but also, of course, Pricewise contributed. We continue to fine-tune the acquired businesses so that -- in order to increase both the growth potential and also, say, their profit potential. And now, the expectation for '25 is of continued organic growth. This is mainly driven by the insurance comparison businesses in the different countries. And this is, of course, supplemented by the fact that with Pricewise, we are enlarging the consolidation area. So with this, I'm done on the Mavriq Division, and I'd like to hand it over to Alessandro for BPO.

Hello. Good afternoon, everyone, or good morning if like me, you're joining in from the U.S. So we are on Page 25. Let's start looking at the numbers, and then we will get into some comments, both at the division overall and the single business lines, but then what's behind the performance of the year and also the outlook for '25. So as you can see, well, first of all, also here, the note, it's important to recall the note that Marco said before. So the numbers, both in terms of revenues, EBITDA and EBIT are net of discontinued operations, that is the sale of our Centro Finanziamenti lending entity asset that we agreed to sell early March of this year, 2025. So all these said, you should always remind this when looking at the numbers. So revenues are up 9.2% in 2024 from EUR 213 million to EUR 233 million, basically. The EBITDA is up 18.1% year-on-year from EUR 47.4 million in 2023 to EUR 56 million in 2024. That also means that there has been an EBITDA margin improvement from 22.2% to 24% for the whole year in 2024. Also, the EBIT increased 32.2%. Again, looking at the EBIT with the PPA is always difficult, especially it's not necessarily meaningful in terms of trend. But anyway, it went up 32.2% from EUR 22.5 million in 2023 to EUR 29.7 million in 2024, and there was obviously an improvement in the consequent EBIT margin. Let's look at the fourth quarter numbers, the financials. And this year, you see this was a really positive quarter, even better than we expected, and I'll comment about it in a second. But we have a 13.2% growth in terms of revenues from EUR 60.5 million to EUR 68.4 million in the fourth quarter. And the EBITDA also increased 33.4%, growing from EUR 13.3 million to EUR 17.7 million. This has meant that we have increased our EBITDA margin from 22% to basically 26%. The EBIT also shows a very positive trend from EUR 7 million to EUR 11 million. That's a 58.2% year-on-year growth, and the EBIT margin increased from 11.5% to 16.1%. Again, these numbers do not include the negative impact that we have had in '24 of discontinued operations. So let's comment this. Well, the first thing, let's say, we're very proud of these results because all of this is organic or apart from a very small contribution in December of a small acquisition that we did, so you can consider this completely organic. And it means that the business is really resilient and enabled to deliver growth. And if you have followed us, the perspective for this year has actually improved along the year. We have started positively then the credit market was really slow. Marco has already commented on it. And so the simple point, we thought we would not be able to grow in 2024. And instead, we were able, also thanks to the recovery of the credit market, but also thanks to a good performance of Moltiply Lease, Moltiply Claims and Moltiply Wealth, we really had a very, very positive second half of the year and also of the fourth quarter, as I just commented. Again, the real news is the Moltiply Mortgages, which, as we will see in a second, delivered good growth overall considering the full year, but really this growth was in the second half and especially in the last quarter. And this is thanks to not only the mortgage market as a whole, but also the fact that, again, with decreasing interest rates, we saw a resurgence in refinancing in the [ silverware ], which, as you know, is an important part of our outsourcing business with the para-notary services that we offer to banks. So if we look at 2025, we really see that these growth trends can continue overall, if you look at the overall division. And obviously, we will have different trends at the single business line level. I will comment in the next pages on the different prospects of the various business lines. But overall, we do expect to continue this revenue growth and EBITDA growth. There are obviously margins for uncertainty. Well, let's -- I will not even comment on the global political unrest and all these things, which obviously will impact potentially consumer confidence. And that means that all the retail credit-based businesses would be impacted. But also, let me just comment because some investors have also asked for it on the M&A transactions that are currently underway in the Italian market. And so my comment assumes that there are no impacts during 2025, and that's really reasonable considering the big uncertainty, both in terms of outcome of this corporate vehicle that we are seeing and also, we do not know what will be the impact in the end. Let me just comment, it's not written here, but of the various mergers, the one that would interest or will impact us the most potentially is the Mediobanca and MPS deal. But again, because these are significant clients of the BPO Division, both of them are significant clients in the BPO Division, so obviously, we don't know what will be the potential restructuring that will happen afterwards. But again, I think it's reasonable to assume that we will see no impact in 2025. And then obviously, all of you have your views on what will really happen here. And it seems to me reasonable to say that the outcome of the single deals and even if there will be reconfiguration of the various deals, it's really hard to say at this moment. So let's get into the different business lines. I'm now on Page 28. And so I'll give a brief description of what's underlying the results of 2024 and also an outlook of 2025, bearing in mind the uncertainties that I said before. So 2024 for mortgages was, in the end, a very good year. So we saw almost 20% growth on the full year here. However, especially when you compare these results to the Mavriq side, this seems much stronger. But the reason why this is much stronger is, well, in part for some of the single client trends of the BPO Division, which are not necessarily connected with the market. For example, here, we have Monte dei Paschi as a client that it has a very strong growth in the mortgage market share, and so we were able to serve on that growth. But it's also true that behind these numbers, there are the para-notarial services. And those services, in terms of revenues, are -- when the business grows, the single ticket as inside it has also the income of the notaries, and that income has recently increased because of the fair tariff deal, however you want to call it, I mean, the eco-compensation, fair compensation law that has come into action in the last quarters that has increased. So it's not just a market effect here, you also see a mix effect. So there is a more significant growth in terms of revenue of the para-notarial business, which will continue also in the next quarters. But now we're also seeing growth of the outsourcing of underwriting and commercial activities, and we're also seeing new clients growing and new clients coming in the door. So here, the perspectives are positive. And so we really expect a good 2025 for this business line, which was kind of the lagger in '23 and the first part of '24, so -- and also, frankly, also in '22. So this is where we are confident that we will see this will be an engine of Moltiply Division growth for 2025. Let's go now to the real estate business. This one, as we said, really had the impact of the disappearing of the Ecobonus incentives. In reality, this business performed better than we expected. We had expected a much steeper decline than this one. And this is because, again, the tail both in terms of revenues and margin of the activities related to the incentivized restructurings has continued also into the second half of '24. Now it's really over. In December, it was already basically 0. I mean there are some really small, small audit activities, but they are not significant as the rest of the business has been in the last 3 years. So here, 2025 will really be net of these activities. So let's say, a decline, we expected it. It declined less than we expected. But 2025, we see still -- we will still see a downward adjustment. Again, without the other activities that we do here, we also do appraisals for credit-related activities. So as the credit business -- the credit market recovers, we will see growth of those activities. They will probably not be enough to offset the modification of the impact of the Ecobonus, but there is space for the opportunities for stabilization, but 2025 should still be declining at least from where we stand now. Although, for example, we acquired a new client on the appraisal side. So I mean, we will see both market and market share growth. The next business line is Moltiply Loans. Here, we saw reasonable growth, actually interesting growth in 2024. Unfortunately, this growth was more in revenues than in margins. Overall, operating margin and an EBITDA level kind of remained unchanged between '23 and '24. We expect '25 to see maybe a little more growth in operating margin, maybe a decline in revenues, small declines in revenues and a little bit of adjustments. We're really focusing on efficiency here. But overall, this has been a very stable business through the years, and it delivers good margins. We are happy with it. Then let's go to Claims. Claims has obviously been the star performer of '24, and this is really thanks to the big events of '23 and '24, so the end of the tail. And the end is also where most of the profits are because the claims that take longer to process are the larger ones, the more complex ones, and those are inherently of higher margin for us because the value that we bring to the table, helping companies clearly with these claims, which are larger, can help them save money and is really -- then they would recognize more important margins to us. And so here, you saw a growth, yes, in revenues, but also especially in margin during 2024. As you see, it's almost 20% growth from '23. This is a business that has really exploded in the last 2 years. What do we expect in '25? We expect obviously a normalization, but which, again, at least from where we stand now, we also gained market shares. And so we do expect to have a '25 that will be lower than '24, but we do expect to be over the '23 levels. So it's not just a hump of revenues and profitability, but we are on a multiyear trend of growth, and we hope to continue to see this growth. A note here, in 15 days, we will finally see the obligation for companies and corporations to insure themselves for natural catastrophes. That means that there will be a new interesting engine for us. I mean, as you know, most of our activities are relative to property damages and things like this. So the fact that the insured base will increase will give us good opportunity for organic growth, both in terms of revenues and margins. So even if it will take some time because basically, the obligation comes into force April 1, so first, people will have to insure. Then -- and again, it's not very clear what happens if you do not comply with this obligation situation, and the regulations in Italy are always available. You shouldn't do that. Anyway, there will be, for sure, a push in insuring more. And that's, in the end, good news because independent on the level of weather events and big weather events, obviously, if you -- if those events hit areas that are more insured than in the past, there will be more insurance claims and, therefore, more need for our work. Then wealth, which is the smallest of our business line, it's anyway continuing to grow. Basically, it grows at the pace of the division in '24. But I have to say here, as we already announced, we have renewed the management of this business line. And we're seeing -- we probably also reinforced the whole team. And we're seeing a new and interesting pipeline on the commercial side. So we should be able to get new clients in the door and, therefore, unlock a little bit of growth also on this business line. It's also fair to say, as it's written here, that some of the growth is also due to the fact that the markets -- the financial markets performed well in '24 relative to '23. And some of our contracts are down -- are basically based on basis points of the assets under management by our clients. And therefore, obviously, there is some growth, which is just connected to how the market performs. But this has always been true since we have added in the last year or so. And finally, Moltiply Lease, which is the sum of our Agenzia Italia business that does outsourcing for lease and rental; and our Moltiply Tech, which is a software company that provides solutions and core solutions for the leasing market. Here, the good news is we are also launching a rental software product, rental platform, really launching in these days. We were getting our first clients in the door. Well, the result was good. Don't be fooled by the just points, plus 6.1%, because you might remember, if you have been following us, that 2023 was really a record year also with a lot of one-offs. And again, '24, this business line was able to deliver continued growth even on exceptional levels that were attained before. '25 is going to be a more complicated year because we have some headwinds. And those are the general headwinds of the automotive market, but there were also something specific to Italy and to the subsegment that we work with, which is obviously the subsegment of large fleets, because that's what the rental business is about and the leasing business is about. You might know that fringe benefit, tax treatment has changed in '25. And basically, if you keep -- if you buy -- if you get assigned as an employee a new car in '25 and that car is a traditional car, I mean it's not an electric vehicle or a plug-in vehicle, then your fringe benefits -- the fringe benefit will be higher. That means you will pay higher taxes. And so this is -- but this is true only for new contracts, which means that there will probably be a hit on the new rental market and the new leasing market. People will probably postpone their -- if their contract expires in '25, they might decide to postpone getting the new car. And that obviously will kind of impact us in terms of the business that we do because our business is also in managing the new contracts, both for rental and for lease. So if there are smaller number of contracts, then obviously, we will be impacted. We are focusing anyway of keeping the growth at the margin level, thanks to operational improvements and efficiency. Then 2 last comments before I give it back to Marco to talk about dividend policies and the net financial position. But basically, as we have already commented, we have decided to divest from Centro Finanziamenti. And let me just say, this was a healthy thing to do. Unfortunately, non-banking financial institutions have a tough life in this market because funding is very volatile. And therefore, it's very complicated if you don't do this at scale to really run them as continuously profitable businesses. So in '23 -- it was a good year, '22; '23 was basically breakeven. '24, as Marco commented, was we basically lost at an EBITDA level, EUR 1 million. And so we decided that the right thing to do was to divest from this business. And we were disciplined enough to be able to do it by the March of '25. Finally, at the -- in November, we bought a small company, which is specialized in providing services for consulting in the pension area. And as you know, we believe this will be an interesting segment because basically, the baby boomers are now really getting close to the moment they will retire. And the retirement is complex in Italy, both in terms of the options that you have, understanding when you can really retire and what's the best procedure, what's the best combination of loss to use to retire. And so people are really in need of this service. And we hope to be able to foster the growth of this business, both in terms of our B2C model, but especially on a B2B2C model using our normal clients, banks and insurance companies as the platform to see this growth in the future. So that will also add to the growth in 2025. And with this, I am done talking about the BPO part, and I give it back to Marco for the remaining part of the presentation. Thanks, Marco.

Thank you, Alessandro. And well, very quickly on the dividends, the proposal of the Board is to keep the same level of dividend of last year that is EUR 0.12 per share. But that's a quick comment. And then more interesting is the net financial position. And here, you see that our net financial position is negative EUR 320 million as of December 31, 2024. And basically, this is the combination of many effects. On one side, we had a strong cash generation, both from the -- I mean, you can see this from the cash flow statement from the operating profitability of the business, but also we improved the working capital, especially keeping in mind that we increased the size of the business and the working capital didn't change in a significant way despite this enlargement of the business. But then we used these resources both for the acquisitions during the year, both the amounts that we paid and the liabilities that we recognize for the puts and calls on the minorities of the acquisitions of 2024. But the most important negative effect or an equally important negative effect was the fact that over the year, we had to redetermine the liabilities of existing options. And in particular, the biggest impact -- I mean, the really relevant impact was the one on Lercari. We will provide the figures as usual in the full year report. But the Lercari, it's -- the company does claims that manages the Moltiply Claims. And we have to acquire, during the course of '25, we have to acquire a large minority of 49%. And as usual, we have these puts and calls that are linked to results. And the company did very, very well in terms of revenues, as Alessandro explained, and even better in terms of EBITDA, which is the parameter that is used for our calculations. So much better than the budget. And we have a bigger business, but also we have to pay out more money. And this is now based on the results. Actually, in 2024, this is now included in the put and call liabilities and, therefore, in the net financial position. Actually, this is within the current financial liabilities line, mainly of the net financial position. But again, for the details, it's better to wait until you see the full report, but this is what affected our results. So that's how we get to the EUR 320 million. Then as you know, our covenants with the banks also treat the money stake as cash equivalents. So for the covenants, the net financial position is negative EUR 218 million. So this is, I would say, the comment on the net financial position. And even on financial assets, we are quite confident that with a good operating performance in -- expected in '25, the net financial position will improve significantly during the year. And with this, we are done with the presentation, and we can open the floor to questions. So please, operator, go ahead.

Excuse me, are you ready for questions?

Yes, we are.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Aleksandra Arsova, Equita.

I've got 3 on my end. The first one is on mortgages, so just maybe a little bit of color on the fourth quarter alone. So you said definitely a recovery. I estimate actually a double-digit year-on-year growth. So if you can confirm this and maybe if you can compare it to the general market trend in the mortgages in the fourth quarter and how much of this growth is refinancing and how much is new mortgages? Then the second one is maybe a follow-up on e-commerce. If I remember correctly, over the third quarter, we saw both a recovery in revenues and operating margins there. But then we are seeing again, let's say, a slowdown in EBITDA and operating margins in the fourth quarter and maybe also in 2025. So you mentioned previously the acquisition cost of Google advertising. So maybe what changed between the third and the fourth quarter in the Google behavior? So yes, a little bit of color on this. And the third one is actually on some newspaper articles that were published over the weekend, again, on some rumors that you are potentially closing a deal with the ProSieben Germany on Verivox. So maybe if you can provide any color or comments on this. And then generally, what is your approach now in 2025 on M&A? And what kind of targets are you looking at and maybe how you will treat your MoneySuperMarket stake, if you're still willing to keep it or maybe to sell it if an interesting opportunity emerges?

Okay. Let's see if I can remember everything, but let's start from mortgages. I would say, yes, double digit is what we saw. And I would say we are performing, I think, in both divisions in line or better than the market, thanks to, I would say, market share increases and so on. So I would normally look at what the market is doing and expect that to perform in line or a bit better. And so far, that's been double digit and that applies both to purchased mortgages and to refinancings. You see a bigger impact of refinancings on the BPO. By the way, because as Alessandro explained, basically the cost of the notaries that go into our revenues have, I would say maybe, Alessandro, correct me if I'm wrong, but more than doubled or doubled, something like that. And so...

I would say increased 75%, something like that.

Okay, 75%. Okay. So the big portion of our -- the past -- in a sense, of our revenues within BPO has increased by 75%. So that exemplifies the impact. But in general, I mean, both divisions should do in line or better than the market from what we think currently see. Now e-commerce, this is ups and downs and our comment is on the full year. And so there's better quarters, worse quarters. And actually, the first half of the year, we adopt some of the work periods. But it really is ups and downs. And I would look at the full year, the full year was down in terms of, and I'm not commenting on the fourth quarter anymore, in terms of EBITDA. And for '25, for now, we have -- I would say, we will take a conservative view because there is instability, things changing all the time. And we have this big concern about noncompliance, which, of course, is also an opportunity finally that is a longer way to the regulatory intervention. And finally, on the articles we are shown -- I mean you are talking about Verivox. This is a topic on which we are not able to make any comment. In general, our approach to M&A is, I would say, opportunistic. So we would do acquisitions that are coherent with our strategy. That would mean acquisition of comparison intermediation businesses also internationally that have a good market position and that would fit our business portfolio. So because we have been successfully running the acquired businesses so far and improving the performance, so that would be part of our potential growth strategy. The other part would be more acquisitions in Italy for the BPO Division of businesses in the same verticals where we are already present or in verticals that have similarities with what we are already doing. This would be our strategy. We can find acquisitions with bank financing. We have a good relationship with a number of banks in Italy that likely support us. Of course, if it's -- if something is really sizable, then we would consider potentially selling the part of our money shares. This is a financial investment, as you know. Obviously, the company is not trading at a very rich price. So before selling it, as you know, we would really need to have something that is very, very compelling. But I would say, we have enough flexibility to do many things with our own resources and our ordinary bank debt.

The next question is from Gianmarco Bonacina at Banca Akros.

A few questions from my side. The first one, given your current visibility, you provided the clearly qualitative outlook, but can we say that the current market expectation for 2025 are a good summary of your qualitative outlook, so I mean high single-digit revenue growth and low double-digit EBITDA growth can be considered as fair? That's my first question. Yes, the second one is about the situation with DMA and Google. Are you able to give us, let's say, an outcome in terms of quantitative impact for you in case there would be a positive ruling or a range or just, let's say, what could happen in, let's say, in your P&L? And the last one is -- so recently, we saw some increase in mortgage rates. To what level, even though clearly they are still significantly down year-over-year, which level do you see as a maximum under which you would then have again maybe some issues in terms of positive growth?

Okay. Well, in terms of the outlook, I would say, the outlook that you mentioned is a possible outlook. I mean it could be that or it could be -- well, it depends because we are starting the year with strength in a number of business lines and then we don't know what will happen in the second half of the year. I think that's a meaningful outlook, maybe a bit conservative, but it really depends. It's difficult to make any predictions. If we are able to continue at the current pace, maybe things could be better. Or if one just takes an average expectation, that may change. So I would say, stay tuned and we'll see how it evolves in the coming quarters. And regarding the DMA, the key thing to understand is that the online comparison market, which means the market where Google Shopping and the Trovaprezzi operate, is a very, very big market. This is very significant. And if this market is reopened, then the size of Trovaprezzi could increase very significantly. But this would require, for instance, if Google is prohibited, for instance, from showing Google Shopping in the search results page, that would be very beneficial. And that would be, for instance, a possible outcome of -- it's not for us to say what the commission will decide, but this is like a potential decision. So if they decide that the current favoring cannot continue and until there is a different solution, there is a prohibition to show Google Shopping within the results pages, this would be beneficial and certainly would restore fair treatment and certainly would result in significant growth of the Trovaprezzi revenues. But -- and also on this, I would say the upside is quite significant, but it takes time, and we have to see exactly how the enforcement will take place. And this is in a situation where there are a lot of tensions. And these discussions, what the commission does can be instrumentalized in trade talks and so on. So there is probably a lot of caution everywhere. So we don't know what will happen. But potentially, this is a significant upside. And finally, the increase in mortgage rates, and maybe on this also Alessandro can help me. But it's -- I would say, we can withstand an increase of, say, 1 percentage point in terms of long-term interest rates. And it really depends on generally the consumer confidence, inflation, what is happening to real estate prices and so on. So I would not expect small changes in interest rates to have a big impact this year. If there is a slowdown in the mortgage market, I think it's more likely to come from consumer confidence rather than from interest rates.

The next question is from Gabriele Venturi, Banca Akros.

You already answered my question, so I have nothing more to ask. Thank you.

The next question is from Tommaso Nieddu, Kepler Cheuvreux.

I would have 2 on my side. The first one, I'm trying to understand the Mavriq margin contraction. I mean, it is certainly driven by the E-Commerce Price Comparison and the slightly lower contribution from credit broking. But do you have any other headwinds there? And how should we see margins next year? Yes. And on top of that, it would be also helpful to know if you can give us the organic growth of the year or better, the contribution of the 2 new acquisitions, Switcho and Pricewise?

Okay. I would say, yes, the contraction of the Mavriq margins is attributable to credit broking and also to E-Commerce Price Comparison, as you correctly pointed out. But it is also potentially mix effect. I don't have the exact breakdown, but you have some business lines growing faster than others. And I think like E-Commerce Price Comparison is both seeing decreasing margins and having a greater weight on the total. I would say, given the outlook that we have stated, basically, I think margins should be expected to be up year-on-year overall rather than contracting because now we are seeing credit broking doing better and the other things that are growing also likely to see margin expansion. So overall, I think -- but you need to see quarter-by-quarter, I think that it's more likely to have an outlook of improving margins based on what we said so far. And the acquisitions that we have made have -- I mean, let's say, how the 2 companies are doing? Let's start from the easiest, which is Switcho that was kind of -- it's not a start-up, but a fast-growing company. And so we are seeing with Switcho significant organic growth. We have seen it in '24, and whereas Pricewise is a more stable business in a more stable market. So we are improving a number of things, but the contribution is -- I mean the year-on-year -- by the way, the previous year was a year of reopening of the market. So there is some organic growth, but nothing sensational. In terms of what they contribute to the consolidation, we don't disclose it. But again, one company is only for 1 quarter, the other for 2 quarters. So it's -- the EBITDA contribution is not so high, and you can probably estimate it based on last year's figures, if that's what you're after. I don't know if I answered your question or you meant something slightly different.

No, no, no, it's perfect. And maybe if I can just follow up a question. On the cash flow generation that was very strong in the quarter and the year, I was just wondering if you think you would have more room for improving the working capital or you are just already at your best there.

I don't know if we are already at our best, but we did a conscious effort in the second half of the year to improve the working capital, and that's especially on the receivable side, both in terms of the time it takes to collect invoices, but also the time it takes to issue invoices, which has to do also with reconciliations with our partners and so on. So I would say, we've probably done most of the work. Maybe there is a little bit of extra improvement that it could be visible going forward, but most of the effort was probably already done.

[Operator Instructions] Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time. I turn the conference back to you for any closing remarks.

Okay. Then we thank everybody for participating to our call. As always, we are available one-on-one for any follow-ups. Thank you.

Yes. Thank you, everyone. Bye-bye.

Thank you. Bye.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over, and you may disconnect your telephones.