Moltiply Group S.p.A. ($MOL)

Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the presentation of Moltiply Group First Quarter 2026 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. Please go ahead, sir.

[indiscernible] that has been uploaded on our website, and we will start from Page 19 with the Q1 highlights. And as you can see from Page 19, the first quarter was a very long quarter with revenues of EUR 182.6 million, up 36.5% year-on-year with the revenues coming for 2/3 from the Mavriq division and from the Moltiply division. In terms of profitability, EBITDA in the first quarter, '26 is EUR 51.3 million, which is up 45.2% year-on-year and corresponds to an EBITDA margin of 28.1%, expanding from 26% in the first quarter of '25. The operating income is in the first quarter of '26 EUR 32.4 million, which is also up which is up 46.3% year-on-year, and this also means an expansion of the EBIT margin. Net income finally is in the first quarter, '26, equal to EUR 22.9 million, which is up 87.4% year-on-year. So this is a very strong performance in our mind. Of course, this benefits from the consolidation of Verivox. We had organic growth in Mavriq, in particular, and then we had a very positive impact of the consolidation of Verivox. Looking at the 2 divisions comment on a lot on Moltiply. Mavriq in the first quarter on Page 20, posted revenues of EUR 120.5 million, up 80.7% year-on-year. EBITDA in the first quarter is EUR 35.7 million. That's up 68.8% year-on-year with an EBITDA margin of 29.6%, which compares to the 31.7% of last year. But of course, this EBITDA margin is affected by the dilutive impact of Verivox, which even if we improve things there still has a significantly lower EBITDA margin than the rest of Mavriq. And the EBIT is in the first quarter, EUR 23.6 million. That's up 59.4% year-on-year. And I would say, well, first comment is we had, in general, a good first quarter. Everything was doing pretty well and I'll go into more details. The only business that is -- that was suffering in the first quarter year-on-year was mortgages and also, to some extent, shopping, mortgages is something cyclical. And however, this is where I'm getting Q1 is not representative of what to expect for the coming quarters for 2 reasons. One, Q1 was the last quarter of consolidation of Verivox. And second, in Q1, our energy business, our energy business, which is today our biggest business was doing very well in Q1 and then is suffering in Q2. And so Q2 is going to be quite different. The only business line because you remember, we changed the definition of our business lines. So they are by product and within a single product there across country. So with this definition of business lines, we had growth in Energy & Telco, which is the biggest business line that we have today. In insurance, we also had growth in credit even if mortgages in Italy were down year-on-year. And the only business line that didn't grow is Mavriq shopping, which is in the end the Trovaprezzi, which is only in Italy. Now going into the details with reference to Mavriq Energy & Telco, yes, we had very, very good beginning of the year in all the countries. And then all that we started being affected by the events in -- with Iran. And we already explained the first things that we observed when we announce the full year results in mid-March. And so at the beginning of March, we saw a spike of demand, very strong demand because people were trying to fixed energy prices before the providers basically change the tariff. It takes a few days, sometimes before a big company changes its pricing. And so people were running to grab the deals when they lasted. And so we have this big spike at the beginning. And then, however, quite rapidly in the end, all the providers repriced, and the repriced much higher than where they were before. And the good thing, and we already said at the other time, is that the market kept functioning. So there were just a couple of providers in each market that decided to stop taking new clients and most of that has reversed. So the market kept functioning, which is quite different from what happened with the inversion of Ukraine, but prices went up a lot. And basically, because of these consumers started taking significantly fewer contracts, basically, our idea is that consumers are waiting because they see expensive prices, and they think that they wait 1 or 2 months and they'll get more reasonable prices. And so our volumes are down significantly from, say, the second -- from half of March. So year-on-year, we are down significantly in terms of volumes. And this is in our main markets, mainly in Germany and in Italy. And this is continuing. And we don't know how long this is going to last. And there are many different scenarios, but it's very hard to predict, I would say, if this continues, we will continue to have year-on-year contraction. Maybe the gap will narrow over time because if this is a long-term situation, people we realize that it's better to fix their prices anyway. So maybe it will improve a little bit, but still be negative. So quite negative in, say, Q2, then less negative in Q3. And I don't know how it could evolve if the situation isn't fixed or the U.S. and Iran reach agreement or in 1 way or another Hormuz reopened. And if that happens, then we could even see an acceleration. So we could be back to growth and maybe if we are like to even have a nice spike depending on what happens to prices when Hormuz reopens. So I mean, today, we are in a situation of uncertainty and the uncertainty is lasting longer than we expected when we announced our results in mid-March. And this is Mavriq Energy and Telco is okay, actually, I mean, it's doing fine, but it's a much smaller than energy. Mavriq Banking, it was a growing in Q1, as we said, but not on an organic basis, basically because in Italy, the mortgage market is down. And so what one could expect for the coming quarters that would be fully organic in terms of comparison is that instead of seeing growth, you could see here a contraction as well. Mavriq Insurance is instead growing organically. Growth rates, as we said, were expected to be different in different countries. But in general, we see growth everywhere, just at different rates. So I think this is the strongest that we have today. Mavriq Shopping here, well, on the Google side, we don't have any news. The European Commission has so far postponed any decision there are press rumors, let's say, I mean things that have been published, let's say, is postponing this not to alienate ramp but this has to come at a certain point. And we think this is not positive. All this delay is not positive for operators like us, but it's not also positive for the credibility of European institutions because even when they are very clear in our mind, like relations of European rules, if we're not able to impose fines and bring the tangent to 1 end basically, people think that they can do whatever they want in Europe. So it's really a loss of credibility. And now in terms of expectations for Q2, this will be the performance will be determined only by the organic evolution of the business because we haven't made any other acquisitions in the last 12 months. And now we are past the first 12 months of Verivox. And so the main driver is really going to be the contraction of Mavriq Energy in Telco because of the energy business. Mavriq banking, we said is also organically going to be down, then possibly less and less over the year. Insurance is growing -- and luckily, we are seeing stabilization, so no longer a contraction of Mavriq shopping. So all in all, we expect for Q2, a decline in the revenues in the second quarter year-on-year and a more pronounced contraction of the margins, the significant as at least double-digit contraction of the EBITDA of the Mavriq division. As I said, this could end any time this totally depends on external factors. And if energy reopens, we could even have a nice reacceleration. And so with this binary scenario, either we have a contraction or at a certain point, the pushbutton reopen Hormuz, and we start growing again and possibly with a fast recovery. And we have no control over this. For now, we continue to run the business for the long term. So we are not trying to optimize short-term performance because still the impact is there, but it's not killing us or anything. And but then we will reassess over time depending on how the situation evolves. Of course, the situation of the energy market appears to us observed and sustainable that we don't see how we could continue and for this reason, we don't see any reason to have different expectations for the long-term outlook for our business. At the same time, we have no idea of what could happen for the rest of the year. So with this, I'm done with this outlook for Mavriq, and I hand it over to Alessandro with a more positive message for multiple.

Yes. Thanks, Marco. Fortunately, the multiply DPO and tech is not exposed to the energy crisis or at least not directly at Mavriq. So the results for the first quarter were impacted just by the reduction of the mortgage market and mostly of the refinancing market, the surge that went down. So as you see, we see revenues in the first quarter, declining from 66.1% to 62.1%. That's a reduction of 6% year-on-year. The reality here is that it's really significant, the impact of the pass-through notary costs for refinancing. As you know, we have a significant business in Paranotary services. Our services include also the fees for the notary. You will remember last year when we had the growth that I told you there was a significant price effect because with the Eco Compensa, those costs are significant. And so this year, as these activities deflate, we see a significant impact on revenues, which doesn't impact significantly the margin. Actually, the margin is growing as we will see in a minute. But to give you an idea, if we take out the pass-through cost, so the cost that we paid in the rent that we recharge our clients, the banks -- let me just give you rough figures. Last year, in the first quarter, they were a little above EUR 11 million and this year, they are a little above EUR 4 million, so it's a reduction of roughly EUR 7 million. And that reduction, if you take that away, you would see that the real revenues of our services, they go up from 55% last year to 58% this year. So it's actually a growth of 5.5%. which is talk better what we see then on the EBITDA margin. The EBITDA margin this year grows from 14.1% to 15.6% that's a growth of just double-digit 10% and the EBITDA margin grew from 21.4% to 25%. Again, it's -- this is thanks on the increase in the EBITDA margin is basically due to the mix effect. I mean we have obviously a reduction of these paranotary activities, where I just you the idea of how significant the revenues with 0 margins are. And therefore, if you take if that part reduces, then obviously the margin -- the operating margin in percentage terms goes up. But the reality is that all the other activities are basically also growing the overall growth, as I said, is 5.5%, but we also have some margin expansion not only to the mix effect, but also because we're cleaning out this house in some of the smaller businesses and restructuring costs a little better and the impact of there is also a mix effect of some good margin business that are growing faster than others and also the investment in technology and then the use of Gen AI processes continues. This is something that we expect to continue to leverage in the longer term. At EBIT level, you see that it grows from EUR 7.3 million last year to EUR 8.8 million, that's a growth of roughly 20% and the EBIT margin grows from 11.1% to 14.1%. So let's comment on the different business lines within our BPO and Tech business. As you might remember from last time, we had started to comment on 3 major lines. Those are banking lease and insurance. And then we have other initiatives. In banking, here we see -- we see overall a decline in revenues because obviously, mortgages are here. But also here, if you take out the notary effect, you would have seen a growth. So actually higher than -- and basically, what you see mortgages, mortgages, obviously, are declining, but we are happy to see our market share growing. We are penetrating more some of our large existing clients. and we will continue to do that in the rest of the year. Loans are growing nicely, that's thanks to a more stable and actually a relatively growing market for salary guaranteed loans, so the site Quinto. And also there, we're seeing an improve in our market share. wealth is also working well. It's growing. This is a little bit one-off, thanks to our technology technology project I already mentioned it last year. This is continuously contributing with our the project with our main client. Real estate valuation services are basically stable. It is actually the sum of a mortgage market going down and our market share going up but the result is basically -- I mean, it's a minimal but in terms of margins, this quarter, this is one of the businesses where we were able to regain profitability last quarter, we had the impact of the disappearing -- the final disappearing of that actually, we had negative margins there now we stabilize this business and it is contributing to the overall EBITDA. Lease confirms a very solid business. As I said, this year -- last year, we had an incredible year. You might remember that. So we aim at doing the same result this year and not a significant growth. but the growth last year was thanks to some one-off effects that we hope to substitute with organic growth and the first quarter confirming that. I have to say that the one-off effects were in the last quarter, so we'll see in the last quarter. But we are on the right track, and this keeps being the EBITDA engine of our division and things are are going well, and we will be introducing new services. And as you all know, there is a long-term expectation of growth in fleet services and the rental market in Italy as more and more people and companies who switch from owning vehicles to having those as a service. And that's our reference market, independent of the fact that this is done with the leasing or this is done with rental agreement to long-term rental are. Moltiply insurance is growing slightly over EUR 25 million and we're actually seeing interesting trends in terms of new claims opening but then as we all know, this will depend on what are the weather events of this year. And when we will -- when we will have weather events there will be an acceleration of growth relative to previous year, thanks to the fact that we have now a full effect the compulsory natural catastrophe insurance. Basically, with March -- the end of March and the beginning of April, now the law is in put forth. As you know, it's the law that has not -- this obligation to have insurance doesn't have right punishment, if you doing I mean not a monetary monetary fee for fine, but what happens is that you cannot take part in any state aids that are given in any form if you don't show proof of your insurance. I tend to believe that this is a quite strong way to enforce this in the end because states are small, but they are very widespread. So people will potentially not want to lose them. But I cannot say we'll see that. So also here, overall, and especially if you look at the longer-term we are happy with the forecasted what we expect in the coming months and in the coming years. Just a word on the other revenues on pension, which, as you know, the business that we are dedicated to pension advisory services. It is growing nicely. It's a higher margin than most of our business. And we expect to make it grow even faster than what is doing. And by the way, here, the sepsis obviously all the boomers going into pension. So it is really the bulk of the Italian population right now in terms of potential market. And we are working on trapping the B2B2C model. So basically conveying this service is not just the web, but also through our clients, both banks and the insurance companies or even investment companies. I mean this is obviously a service that is interesting for anyone at different price levels, depending on obviously, which segment of the population you are from the Massmart to affluent to even the private market. If you are a employed and so you expect to receive the pension from IMS. This is a service that into -- it's very technologically but very technology very well implemented. It's a great addition to our portfolio. So in the coming months, I think it's reasonable to expect similar trends to what we've seen in quarter 1. So we still see at least for the second quarter, a very favorable comparison to last year for mortgages that eases in the starting in the second part of the year. But then we'll see that margin expand in. I hope to see continue seeing that debt margin expansion -- and so you have seen it for quite a while now. We have been delivering close to double-digit growth, if not double-digit growth in the BPO and that has been mostly organic. So I think we'll continue seeing this in the next quarters, and this is kind of our objective really looking forward. And obviously, we'll keep looking at bolt-on acquisitions as we've done small things that we can fuel up in terms of growth, thanks to our client base or technological addition. These are things we'll continue to look at. So code on this front and back to you, Marco, to further comment the net financial position.

Yes. Thank you, Alex. So on Page 26, you have the evolution of our net financial position. Here, we are at the end of March 26 at negative EUR 427 million. If you look at the evolution over the last year, there has been a steady improvement. Part of it at a certain point was due to the fact that we sold some treasury shares, which generated some cash. Then from September, October, the stock price dropped years of the impact on our businesses of artificial intelligence, and we restarted the buyback and actually, we have bought back a significant number of shares. And we are now -- and we were not far from here on March 31, more or less where we were a year before. So -- this is -- I mean, you would have to check the numbers, but it is really in the end, keeping a similar treasury share position at the end of March 25 and March 26, but please check the numbers. And we also have our money shares. Here, what happened to money is similar to what happened to our stock price. So they were basically will be suffered with a lot of the rating for AI fears, we believe. And in fact, this is a financial investment but we found it so compelling that we increased it a little bit in the first quarter of this year as well. So 57 million shares. And the financial position, net of the money shares is EUR 329 million and anything is that we have more shares. We have 57 million shares now and that was EUR 98 million on March 31, and we had 44 million shares so much less last year, and they were worth EUR 106 million, and we thought they were cheap at the time. So here, there is this question, Mark, on -- I mean, we don't have -- I think we have the answers. And if we summarize a lot of our answers in the initial life of this presentation, but the market still is uncertain about what will happen for real, our stock is affected by 8 years. Mavriq is affected by fears we are not too concerned, but it will take a while before clarity emerges on this in the market develops a final understanding of what will happen to different types of companies because of this. So this, I would say, end the presentation with -- I mean yes, I would say this ends the presentation, and we would open it to questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Gabriele Venturi Banca Akros.

First, could you please provide some more detail on the contribution rate to revenues this quarter? And additionally, could you give us some more color on matric organic growth rate during the quarter? And second, on a year-on-year basis, could you elaborate on how you expect margins and revenues to evolve in the second quarter on a quantitative basis I mean I know it my still early to assess, but if the current environment persists, should we expect high single-digit or double-digit revenue decline in Mavricq. And finally, regarding remote ages, what is the typical EBITDA margins for parent notary services? And what margin level do you believe to achieve over the medium term for EPO division?

Okay. Let's try to answer at least qualitatively. So Verivox an impact, I would say, you can expect an impact of Verivox in the first quarter of this year, similar to the impact of the third -- the fourth quarter of last year. The winter quarters are a bit stronger. And I would say, I kind of said it before, but without Verivox, we would still have organic growth with InVaBrIc, I would say, in the neighborhood of 10% plus/minus something. So the rest is the addition of Verivox. This is in terms of EBITDA. And what to expect for the future, I think you can expect that I said we could lose -- we could have a significant year-on-year decline of the Mavriq, we wouldn't say significant for less than 10%, of course. So of course, this is only affecting energy. So I think it's reasonable to expect something which is between minus 10% and minus 20% for Mavriq, but we really have to see the bots. And this is already more than what we usually say. Then do we have anything else in terms of questions for Mavriq, let me -- or shall we go to.

Yes. On the notary services roughly 10% at the EBITDA level, maybe a little less and that's the margin on -- the question was how much is the EBITDA on the paranotary services. And on what's the long-term target for the review well, let's say, been saying in the past that our long-term effort is to get the EBITDA to 25%. We're there now, at least this quarter. Then obviously, it depends on the business mix. And as you see, there are some I am actually very happy when the refinancing explodes because it's true that, as I just said, it's a lower margin business. all of that it's variable. So it's absolutely no problem in scaling down the business when the revenue goes down with just 1 anymore. I mean our part -- our fixed cost internal fixed cost are limited. So there is really -- it's a business that it's really similar to all the others, and it's a great business. So that -- but -- and so I hope it to be big and to to -- but it will impact when it's big, what are the percentage margin. But anyway, in the longer term, I do expect to see some margin expansion, and that will be driven by AI and scale effects as we grow our presence in client and in verticals. Then obviously, a part of that will have to be given back to clients and is a positive reinforcing cycle. So we will be able to offer better products and at lower prices than I hope the clients will want to buy more. As I mentioned time when we talked about the impacts of I hope to see a growth that -- in my mind, I have to see up to a 500 basis points growth over the next 5 years in terms of our margin expansion. But we'll see, okay?

The next question is from Aleksandra Arsova Equita.

So a couple of follow-up questions with respect to what you said before. Just can you remind us what was the speed of recovery last in 2022, 2023. So once there was a sort of normalization and decline in energy prices, how many months or quarters ability to understand the opening of the format treat and the situation is lower than -- and the second 1 is again maybe some, let's say, best model better in the future policy quarters. So assuming that the energy situation is limited to, let's say, the second quarter do leave you will be able to achieve recoveries 200 meters or slightly above [indiscernible].

Okay. So the speed of recovery, it's a different situation from the. Situation of Ukraine because in that case, the energy market in Germany was shut, whereas now it's fully functioning. So the type of recovery is different. The type of recovery we would expect is a situation where we have a reopening of Hormuz an initial drop in energy prices and then steadily they possibly drop a little bit more. But there is a first steep drop when they announced that an agreement has been reached this trade is reopening so on. And we would expect that we could have a spike, not as strong as the stack that we saw in the first week of March, but we could have a good spike of demand in the very initial months. So we could even have a strong quarter than when -- so not only growth, but stronger than normal. This is what we would expect when Ukraine like first typically -- I mean, what happened when the energy crisis was over in Germany, was reopening of the market that started during '23 and was at the peak in Q4 of '23 in Q1 of '24. And those were really strong, but the market has been closed, and it was more prolonged. Here, I would expect something that is a softer spike, yes, but not as strong and may be concentrated in only 1 quarter. And then it's very open in June, possibly in September, people will have forgot, and it will be a peak season as originally expected. So here, really, the question is how long this will last. My guess is that once it finishes, we are almost immediately back to normal. But how long this will last every month, we lose some opportunity, let's say, we are not able to run at the normal speed. In terms of consensus, if BPO is doing well. If it's only 1 quarter, I think that's still feasible -- the key question is if we have only 1 quarter of energy disruption or if we have longer that will be the driver. But if it's only 1 quarter that's still possibly within reach.

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

Okay. So thank you for the participation for the questions. Let me summarize by saying that we are quite happy with how the business performed until the end of February, we are executing, we think pretty well in all respects. We are accelerating things. We are integrating well our recent acquisitions. We are deploying AI to improve productivity, to improve our services. So everything is going well from what we can influence. Then now we are at the mercy of external events -- and you have to be a bit patient, but we believe we are continuing to be the great company and have confidence for what is in the future. So thank you.

Yes. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Bye.

The conference is now over, and you may disconnect your telephones.