Multitude AG (MULT.DE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you, Bernd. We now move on to our Capital Markets Day agenda and I would like to welcome to the stage our first speaker, multitude founder, Jorma Jokela.

Helpful -- thanks for you. Okay. Dear investors, partners, friends and colleagues. It's a true pleasure to welcome you all to our Capital Markets Day and at the same time to celebrate the very special milestone multitude 20 years anniversary. I want to start by expressing my gratitude to everyone who has been the part of this journey, our incredible employees, loyal customers, dedicated partners and supportive investors. Each of you has played an important role in shaping who we are today. A few months ago, we brought our Multitude family to all people back to our routes in Finland, the Finnish countryside to celebrating this milestone. We spent 3 days together. We compete in different sports, listened to inspiration stories from the keynote speakers work it and learn together and, of course, had a lot of fun together as well. This even unite us as one global team as one Multitude. Today, I'm so proud to stand here in front of you looking back where everything start 20 years ago and where we are today. We have built together something unique. The most important thing for me is that this is just the beginning. The best chapter of our journey are still ahead of us. We have over 20 years successful track record in delivering profit and growth year after year. We have built the fintech innovation, ranging from digitalized lending to simplify pan-European payment solution. During those 20 years, we have stayed fully focused offering amazing pure digital service to customers who are often overlooked by traditional banks. We operate in 20 countries across Europe with 3 different business units, serving 3 different customer segments on the Multitude platform. Under Ferratum brand, we specialize in consumer customer. Under Capital Box brand, we focus SME customers and our wholesale customers and payment services are offered under multitude Bank brand. Our team share a dream to change the world by digitalized financing financing and ensuring that all overlook customers are served with amazing experience. We know that when we achieve this, our second dream will come through as well. Scaling our platform further and become a unicorn by 2028. Magnitude people, our inspiration comes from our vision to build the most valuable financial platform, keep amazing experience for the customers who are often -- who are often overlooked by main street banks. We want to democratize financial service through digitalization, making them fast, easy and green. Our values define who we are and how we success together. Our customers are always heart of everything what we do. Every innovation, every product and every decision starts with their needs. We act bold, [indiscernible], and we dare to innovation. We think like entrepreneurs because that's how real change happened. We believe in open and honest communication, always with respect for each other. Transparency build trust and trust builds great teams. We treat everyone equal. Our customer partners, colleague, and we take responsibility for impact we have an associated. And finally, winning teams, we achieved our calls together. We learn from challenge, we celebrate success and always strive to become stronger as a One multitude. Those values are not just a word on the wall, they guide our daily action and shape our culture. The story of Multitude become in 2004, when I read the article about the Bangladeshi entrepreneur who had won the Noble prize in economic for giving us small social loans. It made us think why don't Europe, the consumers have access to fast and pure digital financial solution. At that time, we were a small team in Helsinki, we saw the clear cap in the market and want to change the consumer banking market, make it open, accessible and fully digital. And this is the whole idea of Ferratum was born. In May 2005, we launched the first fully digital consumer loans in Finland. We didn't know if people won't like it, but very next few days, we received hundreds of application. And our early IT system, we have the blinking lights and the sounds every time when the new loan application came in, and it becomes so constant that we had to turn it off after 2 days. And that was the start of the one of the European more successful fintech story. The next year, we launched in Sweden and Estonia. And again, we found a strong demand. We realize we have found a unique customer segment overlooked by main street banks. And that focus has stayed at the heart of everything we have done over the last 20 years. Between 2008 and 2011, we expanded rapidly, entering the new countries every 3 months with a great success. By 2009, in the middle of the financial crisis, we begun to thinking about how to secure funding for the long term. We realize that the banking license will be the right solution for us. It's allowing us to take a retail deposit and access European markets like a German, Norway and France, where lending required a full banking license. After a long process in September 2012, we received our license. We've passported it across Europe and centralized operation under the One banking entity in Malta. From there, we become cross-border lending. People sometimes ask why Malta. The answer is simple. It's a part of Eurozone EU providing the smooth access to euro system. English is also official language, which makes communication easier for a company like ours with 750 people and [ 40 ] nationality. A few years later, in 2015, we listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in the prime standard. We have already issued [indiscernible] Chairman and built a strong investor base there. The IPO, it gave us EUR 50 million in the new equity to accelerate growth. And for us, the management, it was about building the next chapter. The IPO was turning point. Our first decade has single product strategy, scaling probably into new markets. The next decade called the multiproduct strategy, credit card, credit lines, SME lending, payment and mobile banking, growth stays strong, become more diversified, but also more complex. We have always have been the strong capability simplifying complex through technology, making data-driven decisions and focusing the overlook customers. At that end of decade, we prepare for the next phase. We rebranded Ferratum brand only for the consumer customers, launched Capital Box brand for the SME customers and true become as a Multitude. As a part of transformation, we also moved our headquarter from Finland to Switzerland. Looking back, I saw the clear pattern. Every year, our strategic generation, how we call those, we build something new, and then we scale it, then we build new and scale it and so on. And now we are entering the new strategy generation at the same cycle. In recent years, we have built our platform. And now we are scaling it across to all our business. So to summarize, during our first 10 years, we focused on the single product strategy, the next 10 years, the multi product strategy and the coming 10 years on the platform strategy, bringing everything together under one platform and adding partners and acquisition to drive our next generation growth. But let's take a closer look at the Multitude platform. Our Fintech cloud platform is built around idea that Multitude serve as a core holding on our scalable component just a technology funding and AI tools. We currently have those 3 business units on the platform. We have expanded the platform through partnership and investment in attractive opportunities, including [ just below 30% ] stake in the Swedish digital lender, Leabank, and 20% stake in the fast-growing loan broker Sorter. And we support them with the same dedication as if they were the full owner by us, providing our platform elements to drive [indiscernible] growth, efficient, of course, when they needed that one. All platform business benefits from each other through the cross-selling. And of course, the while Multitude we came from the growing associate income as the ecosystem profitability increase. Looking ahead, our focus is twofold: improving the business already in our platform and finding the new investment opportunities. So at the Multitude, we have simplified our strategy road map. To achieve our dream to become the unicorn by 2028, we must get 3 things right. revenue up, cost down and value creation for our customers, both group level and every business level. Our team members will speak more about those all elements they own presentation. But let me repeat, revenue up, cost down and value creation for our customers. So thank you for all the listening me. And now I would like to hand over to Multitude CEO, Antti Kumpulainen. Antti, floor is yours. .

Thank you. Thank you, Jorma. And welcome to the Capital Markets Day part of today on my behalf as well. At our last Capital Markets Day, 2 years ago, we announced our management dream of making a Multitude of EUR 1 billion valued company. That remains a high level of ambition. And today, together with our team, we will open up what the building blocks are and how we aim to make that dream come true. We continue to build on our unique strengths. We have always had a deep understanding of customers who are often overlooked by main street banks for one reason or another. The solution we provide meet specific customer needs in the market, whatever the product is. Our superb risk management capabilities have consistently enabled superior risk-adjusted returns, and they continue to do so. We keep enhancing our proprietary models and fully leverage our in-house data science capabilities for underwriting and portfolio optimization. To grow profitably, we have rightsized and scalable internal processes, keeping things simple and avoiding unnecessary complexity is the strength across all of our functions and business units Innovation, yes, that remains key to our success. The entrepreneurial culture we have always had a Multitude is a cornerstone of our innovation process and our ability to make quick decisions to gain competitive advantage. We have 3 key priorities that guide us forward. Firstly, revenue needs to grow, and our tri-pillar growth model consisting of organic growth, partnerships and M&A provides a clear path forward. Historically, our revenue has been based on interest income. That element continues to grow, and we have added recurring fee income to the mix as well. All of our business units will generate both interest income and recurring fee income when going forward. Secondly, we must be scalable and operationally effective. We continue to simplify and streamline our operations through automization, extensive use of data and deeper embedding of AI functionality, scalability across all of our core processes. We have also enhanced our resilience in all conditions, diversifying our deposit taking and shifted significantly to newer, cheaper and more effective deposit taking channels, underwriting capabilities across all businesses are a key factor in our success and in keeping costs down. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, we must create value for our customers. That means having a strong USP in each country and product, and this goes for all the business units in multitude. We serve segments of customers who are after overlooked and for our platform customers. We continue to strengthen the value of our platform and drive even greater synergies. All of this leads to net profit, which we expect to be growing substantially on an annual basis going forward. All of our business units follow our 3-pillar model for growth and diversification of revenue streams. Each of the business units will continue to grow organically as they have done through our 20-year journey in a Multitude. Organic growth will happen in current markets in new markets we will open and through cross-selling of our products to our existing customers. partnerships. They are important for every business unit, though the type of partnership will vary from white label and embedded partnerships, the sales partnerships. This is depending on business units. We also do see M&A opportunities as an important driver of growth, especially in the Consumer and Business Banking segments. Recurring fee income will play an even more important role in our future revenue streams. Our business unit leaders Kristjan, Mantvydas and Alain will share more in detail later today about how they are going to grow their businesses. increasing scalability and lowering costs even further remain key priorities. We aim to lower our cost-to-income ratio to 40% in the coming years. Our approach is based on 3 main factors: First, simplification. Multitude group structure has been streamlined from our 40 entities to fewer than 20 today. Our business units now have a clear focus areas, while the group's role is to steer and support and businesses are driving business. Second, accountability. We are in the process of aligning that 80% of the costs will be directly to the businesses that generate them. Costs need to sit where business ownership sits. This drives change, results and accountability. Third, optimization and innovation. Noncore processes can be outsourced to maintain focus on the business and business only. We continue to optimize actions and processes in every function and unit. We can also do things smarter. The organization can be further optimized and effectivity increased. The increased use of AI and further automation, it's not an option. It's a necessity across the company. AI must be rolled out to all of our processes and tasks, and we will continue investing in our proprietary AI and data platform even more than in the past. We have delivered a strong profit in a challenging market and have consistently met our guidance for the past 4 years. Earlier this year, we increased our guidance to a range between EUR 24 million and EUR 26 million in net profit. We have maintained that guidance ever since. With the teams I just presented, we are confident we can continue this performance in the future. Later today, our business units will share their targets through 2028. And our CFO, Bernd Egger, will wrap up the group numbers and guidance for you to share. As Jorma highlighted, the mission is pretty clear. To grow the revenue, lower our cost and deliver sustainable value to our customers and to you, our investors. Now it's time to hear from our business unit leaders, starting with Consumer Banking presented by Kristjan Kajakas. Welcome, Kristjan.

Hello, everyone. I am Kristjan Kajakas, CEO of Consumer Banking, also known as Ferratum. Today, I'll walk you through our plans for the next 3 years, how we intend to reach our growth ambitions and continue delivering profitable sustainable performance. We in Ferratum provide fully digital unsecured lending that helps people manage unplanned financial needs, fast, simple and trusted. We operate in 13 countries with around 350 employees and managing a EUR 500 million portfolio across Europe. We hold leadership position in the Nordics and Eastern Europe combining local expertise with global efficiency. Our product portfolio includes installment loans, revolving credit and the current account in our mobile application. Our entire value proposition is built on speed, convenience, simplicity and trust, the foundations that deliver customer loyalty and our profitability. Our customers are financially responsible. Tech savvy individuals who value speed and simplicity when life throws unexpected expenses to their way. They are often overlooked by traditional banks but they deserve access to transparent, flexible and fair solutions. What we offer is uncomplicated fast digital financial services available anytime and anywhere. They are delivered locally with global efficiency. Ferratum ensures every customer receives an experience that is both personal and consistent across all markets. The success of consumer banking is driven by 4 levers. It's the speed, convenience, simplicity and trust. Our advanced scoring and payments technology enable instant decisions and rapid payouts. Customers enjoy a 100% online, mobile-first experience with minimal friction, no paperwork, no waiting. Operating for nearly 2 decades in regulated markets, we've built a trusted brand recognized for reliability, compliance and customer satisfaction. These 4 levers work together to create a scalable, efficient and customer-focused models that sets us apart in the market. Our Consumer Banking business continues to deliver solid profitability, supported by scale, portfolio quality and operational efficiency. In the short term, revenue will reflect the planned effects of restructuring, product adjustments in Germany and the interest rate cap in Sweden. These are controlled and well-managed changes designed to strengthen our long-term earnings space. At the same time, fee income is growing. And the credit performance continues to improve, driving a healthier and more resilient earnings profile with profit growth increasingly coming from stronger asset quality and recurring fee income rather than the volume alone. Our growth model is built on 3 complementary billers, organic growth, partnerships and M&A. Today, around 90% of our revenue comes from our organic business, which continues to grow strongly across all core markets. In the coming years, we aim to complement the organic growth with capital-light partnerships and selective acquisitions that expand our reach and capabilities. This balanced approach keeps our core engine of organic growth at the center, while leveraging partnership and M&A to accelerate innovation, diversify revenues and further strengthen our ecosystem and profitability. Now I'll walk you through how each of these growth pillars contribute to our long-term profitability. Our organic growth strategy is built on 3 interconnected stages. We have a short-term actions to optimize the funnel, midterm for scaling of products and long-term value through greenfield expansions. We're using a real-time data, advanced scoring models and external data sources to increase approvals without adding risk. Our AI-driven insights support personalized retention and higher customer lifetime value, while autonomous servicing is transforming how we engage customers, already today, automating around 85% of interactions with the ambition to reach 95%. All of this is powered by our centralized data platform, which processes over 200 million data points daily driving faster and smarter decisions across marketing, risk and operations. Our focus is on profit-driven growth. managing pricing discipline and targeting our customer segment that delivers the best returns. We'll be rolling out bigger installment products to meet broader customer needs and increase share of wallet, while continuing to innovate, building credit card capabilities and enriching our mobile app experience. Each initiative strengthens customer engagement, boost retention and create sustainable recurring revenue growth. Finally, we take a selective and data-driven approach to new market entries. Our existing digital platform allows us to scale fast in high-potential markets within minimal additional investment, while maintaining full control of pricing, compliance and brand standards. We follow strict capital allocation principles, entering only those markets that meet our yield and risk thresholds. Also, we're exploring to open some new markets during next 2 to 3 years, ensuring every step adds measurable value to our shareholders. Our ecosystem and underwriting capabilities enable partners to launch digital credit and savings products quickly and seamlessly, all under their own brands. These collaborations generate recurring high-margin fee income without increasing our balance sheet exposure or they help us acquire new customers at a lower cost. It's a capital-light, highly scalable model that extends our reach across fintechs, retail brands and digital platforms, keeping profitability and efficiency at the center of our growth strategy. We operate through 2 complementary partnership models. First, business-to-consumer model, where we -- where a direct partner integrates Ferratum Power Products into its own brand. We provide the technology, underwriting and operational backbone while the partner manages the customer relationship and front-end experience. Second, the business-to-business-to-consumer model where Ferratum integrates into a platform or network serving multiple sub partners and their customers. This model delivers exponential scalability. One integration connects us to many partners and customer bases. In both models, Ferratum provides the full product stack from onboarding and decisioning to servicing and compliance, enabling partners to focus entirely on the customer experience while we power everything behind the scenes. Our M&A strategy is disciplined and selective. We target opportunities in portfolio acquisitions, market entries and associated companies that provide us clear strategic fit and meet our return requirements. Every deal must accelerate scale, strengthen our market position or complement our platform, all while preserving capital efficiency and profitability. Our growth is driven by disciplined execution of our growth strategy and operational efficiency. We continue to control costs, reduce impairments and scale automation and AI to strengthen margins and resilience. Through partnerships, we keep customer acquisition costs low while deepening engagement with our core customer segment. Looking ahead, we target around 10% [ EBT CAGR ] by 2028, supported by growing fee income, stronger credit quality and capital-light partnership revenues. Our focus remains on profitable, well-balanced growth, not pure volume expansion. And in summary, Ferratum is a lean, automated and capital-efficient lender, positioned to deliver sustainable earnings and consistent value creation for our shareholders. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Kristjan. We then move on to our next speaker for the business unit Capital Box, presented by its CEO, Mantvydas Stareika.

Hello, everyone. I am Mantvydas, CEO of Capital box, and I'm here to walk you through Multitude Group business banking journey how we are building a scalable data-driven SME lending platform that's on the road to profitability. Capital Box operates in 5 Northern European countries. Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Lithuania and the Netherlands. More than 80 professionals manage over 160 million lending portfolio and serve more than 9,000 SME customers. With over 10 years in this business we understand the risk, credit behavior and how to adopt through different economical cycles. We all know that SME is the real backbone of every economy. The new SME environment values speed, simplicity and flexibility, but traditional banks still operate in a slow and manually heavy process. According to the latest reports, access to finance remains one of the top pain points for small and medium enterprises. And that's the gap we fill. We focus on businesses that are often too small for traditional banks to serve efficiently but large enough that need reliable financing companies with revenue below EUR 10 million and who need working capital fast. Our model is simple, fully digital, fully automated and built around the needs of small business owners. From 3-minute online application to personalized offer and near instant disbursement, we combine automation with a human touch when needed. We serve the full range of SME needs from short-term liquidity to grow financing between EUR 5,000 and EUR 3 million. Our value proposition is stronger than the [indiscernible] standard. We believe SME should get funding in less than 1 day. And for our existing customers, we are already talking about hours. That's powered by our multiproduct lending model, unsecured, secured and factoring and our ability to blend digital automation with experienced risk management. We automate smaller loans while managing larger and secured deals through expert underwriting. Let's talk about the road to profitability and recent development. We remain strongly committed to unsecured lending now with a better risk control and a much wider reach through digital data and PSD2 integrations. Our model allows us to manage risk proactively and continuously. At the same time, our secured portfolio shall increase by double digits in 2025, reflecting a more balanced approach. Repeat borrowing now accounts for 40% of the portfolio, growing 10% year-over-year. Our active customer base grew by 60% and driven by a lower churn and higher repeat usage. Data analytics help us identify the most profitable segments and continuously refine yield and risk performance. We continue to scale through organic growth, embedded finance, partnerships and targeting M&A. First, organic growth. We have high efficiency, risk control and digital reach, keeping strong risk-adjusted returns. Unsecured lending remains a key focus, especially with more than 70% applications being scored automatically. Also, it is complemented by secured and factoring products to grow customer lifetime value and profitability. Second, we are embedding finance directly into partner ecosystems. POS providers, ERP systems and marketplaces using our API-based integrations. And third, we actively explore opportunities and potential to strengthen our scale, our positioning, including license and unlicensed targets. This gives us a flexibility for the future market or product centers while maintaining a disciplined, profitable growth mindset. To prove our direction for scalability, our partnership model is already showing results. Here's an example of our latest strategic partnership. Through Capital Box and Multitude group white label financing, we integrate our lending products into partners' ecosystems, whether they serve consumers or SMEs. With our API connections, partners can offer Capital Box financing directly inside their own customer journey under their own brand, with our credit engine and technology behind it. For partners, that creates new revenue streams and stronger customer relationships without building their own lending infrastructure. For customers, it means fast transfer, access to financing right there already to do business. And for the market, it's a scalable model that connects traditional finance with embedded digital solutions. This model expands our reach, reduces acquisition costs and positions us as the financing engine inside digital ecosystems. Efficiency is the core of our profitability road map. We now have end-to-end automated credit decisions for unsecured loans, allowing faster turnaround typically under 24 hours, while maintaining consistent risk quality. Our low-touch operations drive a lower cost per loan and every part of the process is designed to scale. Using PSD2 and advanced analytics, we identified the most valuable SME segments and predict behavior more accurately. That's how we already improved customer lifetime value by more than 40%. Together, the 3 engines, automation, pricing and data gives operational leverage. Every new loan now contributes more to profit than the one before. Looking ahead, we continue moving beyond lending to building multiservice SME platform. We will combine lending payments, cards and accounts creating seamless financial experience for small businesses. Our ambition is to be a go-to financial partner for SMEs with the speed and innovation of a fintech and the reliability of a bank. Therefore, we are building not an [ insulated ] products. We are building an ecosystem that grows with every customer. Now let's talk openly about the profitability. Yes, we acknowledge that we have not fully delivered our [ ABT ] results yet, but our target is clear and achievable. Here's why. We have reduced credit losses by 30% compared to last year. We have built a scalable cost base supported by automation. Our risk-adjusted yields are stable and retention keeps improving. And with this increased share of secured products, our portfolio is becoming structurally more resilient to market changes. Following this logic, we continue the same path to deliver positive EBT next year, and this is the clearly achievable. We are confident that this result will be followed by 50% annual growth in the following years. We are improving revenue quality through higher customer retention and strong cross-sell. We are strengthening portfolio performance using real-time credit data and PSD2 insights. And we are scaling profitably with automation, lowering unit costs as volume grows. In short, we now have the structure, data and discipline to turn growth into sustainable returns. According to this clear trend, we are close to demonstrate a sustainable and profitable business banking results. So to summarize, our mission remains the same. To empower small businesses with the financial tools they need to grow. And as we continue this transition from a single product lender to a multiservice SME platform, we're unlocking even greater value for our customers. The transformation is well underway, and we are confident in the road ahead. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mantvydas. I would just like to clarify that the single-digit positive EBT refers to millions of single digits, so not just an integer. But with that, we move on to our next business unit, Wholesale Banking presented by Alain Nydegger, CEO.

[Presentation] Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Alain Nydegger and I lead Wholesale Banking, a business unit built on ownership, clarity and high agency. Around 3 years ago, this was just an idea, concept. Today, we are proud, it's a cash flow positive, profitable units and it's contributing very fast to the bottom line of our group. That kind of trajectory doesn't happen by chance. It happens when people take ownership and move with conviction. 2 engines, 1 scalable model. That's the topic. We serve clients as we heard it a couple of times today, others overlook, institutional borrowers, in our case, asset owners and fintechs with strong potential, but limited access to traditional finance. Let me first talk about secured debt, where we structured tailored financing across direct lending, real estate and asset-backed deals. Each transaction is bespoke, balancing carefully risk and opportunity to unlock liquidity and drive growth. Payment Services, on the other hand, where we enable regulated payment service providers in short PSPs and fintechs to access European payment rails, FX and safeguarding accounts. The essential infrastructure to scale with confidence and compliance, both segments share the same DNA, clarity, execution and scalability. Our efficient platform converts growth directly into profits, every incremental deal flows almost entirely to the bottom line at that stage. That's how we turn overlooked opportunities into durable compounding value, both for our clients and us. Across both segments, our promise is the same: reliability. When we commit, we execute fast, clean and right the very first time. As already mentioned, wholesale Banking is now the fastest-growing business unit within the group. Revenue has more than tripled since '23 and profitability is catching up very fast, is accelerating. And we feel that the foundation is in place. Now scalability is the name of the game and takes over. Growth increasingly flows straight into earnings. Secured debt has expanded its net assets, the portfolio size by more than 50% year-to-date. When we look at the end of Q3, now exceeding over EUR 200 million with stable yields close to 10%, and that's very important for us and excellent credit quality. Payment Services has built a recurring high-margin fee base that scales without adding significant costs. That's high operating leverage in motion. The reward for building lean, disciplined and client focused. Let's dive a bit deeper into secured debt. Our first business segment within the units, where, as I have mentioned, we finance institutional borrowers and asset-backed opportunities that just sits beyond the comfort zone of some of our competitors. Each transaction is bespoke, tailored, every risk carefully assessed and understood. We combine institutional-grade risk management with entrepreneurial structuring. We move very fast, financing that advances projects and creates enduring value. Our focus is on building lasting relationships not one-offs with clients and partners who value reliability and trust. This isn't about chasing volume. We want to grow from one number to the other. Every euro is deployed with purpose and care. Typical transactions range from EUR 5 million to EUR 30 million designed and intended to unlock liquidity where others stall or hesitate. Let's look at our portfolio composition within Wholesale Banking within the secured debt part. Our secured debt portfolio has scaled fast from below EUR 75 million in early '24 to over EUR 200 million as per the end of Q3. It is a well diversified book across 3 collateral classes, direct lending, real estate and mobile assets with a very strong footprint in the Nordics and Baltics. We now operate in 10 European jurisdictions, each one chosen for familiarity with the legal framework and the ability to structure deals that protect Multitude through significant overcollateralization. And yet yields remain near 10%. Maturities are balanced around 2 years and credit performance stays consistently strong with an average duration of just 2 years, one can imagine that we've already seen our first refinancing talks, and we are very proud to say and announce that we did successful refinancing, a clear proof that clients return to multitude for repeat business. For the future, about our pipeline. Our pipeline is deep, very disciplined. Our rejection rate is very high. And so it's built around attractive risk-adjusted returns and an origination engine that delivers scale, speed and selectivity. We are not chasing volume. We are building a high-performing, resilient book designed to compound value over time. Let me give you an example. InSoil, formerly known as heavy finance, a fintech lender supporting small and midsized farmers across Europe. They needed scalable institutional funding to expand EU-wide, we, on our side, offered and structured a bankruptcy-remote SPV and a forward flow program enhanced by an EIF guarantee covering most of the portfolio. The result for them, a stable, long-term funding, a lower cost of capital and a repeatable model that scales across markets. That's how we create value by structuring intelligently, executing fast and aligning incentives all the way through with our clients and partners. So looking ahead, our focus is scale, but smart controlled scale. We are expanding capacity through deal pots, small, highly specialized teams that own the full cycle, origination, structuring and risk. It's a model built for accountability, precision and speed. Every deal has a clear owner and a clear outcome. We are also syndicating with third-party investors, accelerating capital rotation and unlocking new fee-based revenue through origination and placement. The principle is simple, apply strict filters at the very beginning at the top of the funnel, to cut out weak cases very early. Once the deal qualifies, one person owns it, fully understands the data, the risk and then that's the path for a quick and efficient execution. That's how we deploy capital, fast, clean and with conviction. And that is how the engine compounds discipline at the start, decisive at the finish, scalable by design. Let's look into Engine #2, Payment Services. Our second business segment, Payment Services runs on the same DNA, precision, reliability and speed. We serve payment institutions and fintech PSP, payment service providers across Europe, especially those in regulated sectors that need stable, compliant access to the banking system. Our platform provides API-based accounts, access to local payment rails, ForEx and safeguarding, all delivered with the precision of a regulated bank. It's embedded infrastructure for fast-moving companies that can't afford compliance friction. We give them the rails, they drive the growth. One use case expanding market access, a European payment institution wanted to launch in Sweden but lacked access to local rails. We enabled direct participation in the SEK clearing system providing settlement and account services, the result, faster payment, sharper pricing and a successful market entry. Case 2, supporting regulated verticals, a regulated PSP serving crypto and [ cost clients ] struggled with banking access due to heightened compliance barriers. Through enhanced due diligence and continuous monitoring on our end, we enabled them to onboard only reputable customers, fully compliant and audit ready. The result stable banking access, renewed credibility and accelerated growth. That's what payment does, transform regulatory friction or burden into a competitive edge. So where does it all lead? Wholesale Banking, as I said, is now a dual-engine growth platform. Secured debt delivers high-yield asset-backed returns disciplined, profitable and repeatable, Payment Services scales, recurring, capital-light income, the kind that compounds quite powerfully. Together, these engines reinforce each other. Every deal, every client, every flow strengthens our system. We are building a business defined by ownership, accountability and speeds where teams don't wait for permission, they move, decide and deliver. The next chapter is about scaling what works with precision, discipline and confidence. Our target is clear: a compound annual growth rate above 50% in EBT through 2028. Ambitious, but it's built on proof, not promises and a model that's already delivering. We will get there the same way we always have by turning clarity into conviction conviction into momentum and momentum into results. Thank you very much. Back to you, Adam.

Thank you, Alain. We have now heard about our history, our strategy and an update from our business units. We would now like to synthesize this into financials. With that, I give the word to CFO, Bernd Egger.

Good afternoon, everybody. Hello again. My name is Bernd Egger, and I'm pleased to take you through the finance section of our Capital Markets Day. More specifically, I will talk about historic financial performance, our financial view on value creation and our targets and capital market guidance going forward, covering the period from '26 to '28. Let me, first of all, talk about the Multitude investment case. What are the basics of our investment case? There are 4 pillars that we consider extremely important to us. Number one, we are growing fintech with strong, scalable business models and an expanding European footprint. Secondly, we are highly resilient. We have demonstrated the ability to perform on the challenging circumstances. Number three, we are a market leader when it comes to servicing overlooked customers and clients. Number four, we are increasingly profitable, thanks to our disciplined execution of our strategy to cost efficiency and to outstanding credit risk management. And finally, we are dividend paying. Together, these factors form a simple but powerful story. Growth resilience, profitability and shareholder returns. The story is backed by consistent performance track record. Let us now talk about our growth drivers. Diversification has become a decisive factor for us. I'm referring to geographic and business diversification. We operate across multiple European markets, servicing consumers and SME customers as well as institutional asset-based clients. Over the past 3 years, we have delivered a revenue CAGR of 5.4% between '21 and '24, accelerating to 11.3% between 2022 and '24. Over the past 2 years, on a 9-month basis, Consumer Banking revenues increased by 4%, SME banking revenues increased by 53% and Wholesale Banking revenues increased by 394%. Whilst all 3 businesses have been growing over this period, revenue share of the younger businesses, Wholesale Banking and Capital Box almost doubled from 12% to 21.4%. This is a strong performance achieved during a period of volatile macroeconomic environment and increased complexity in an evolving regulatory framework. Let us discuss how this growth momentum effectively translates into profitability. On profitability trajectory has been very clear and very strong. Since 2021, our net profit has increased almost 17-fold, reflecting a CAGR of 156%, up until '24 or a CAGR of 103% based on our '25 Capital Market guidance. This performance is driven by consistent improvement across all businesses with each single business unit currently performing better than last year. In order to get there, we focused on operating leverage and efficiency on improving risk-adjusted returns and on disciplined funding and capital allocation. That combination has lifted profitability structurally not just temporarily. I would like to briefly evaluate historical performance relative to capital market guidance. My key message here is essentially about credibility, the foundation of any investment case. Over the past several years, Multitude has consistently delivered on its capital market guidance year after year without a single exception. From '21 to '24, we have met our EUR 20 million EBIT, the target metric back then, target in '21. We have successfully achieved the target of increasing EBIT by 50% each single year from EUR 20 million in $21 to EUR 30 million in '22 to EUR 45 million in '23; and finally, to EUR 67.5 million in '24. For 2025, those of you who attended a 9-month earnings call a little bit more than an hour ago, already know, we are on track to achieve our 2025 guidance of a net profit in the range between EUR 24 million and EUR 26 million. After 9 months, we are at EUR 20.3 million, which is already now slightly above the full year's profit of 2024, and we are approaching an all-time high in terms of net profit. This track record is not coincidental. It reflects a consistent, managerial approach. We set ambitious data-driven targets. We execute with focus, we continuously adapt to changing market conditions. In short, for more than 4 years now, we have performed and delivered. That's our standard for ourselves also going forward. Now looking ahead, what is to be expected and how will we make it. This chart outlines our path forward. We intend to more than double net profit from around EUR 20 million last year to above EUR 43 million by 2028. Our profitability focus areas will be: first, growth in revenues and other proceeds. We see healthy demand across all our business units. We are pushing recurring fee income from close to 0 last year to more than EUR 10 million expected in 2025, and we expect growing contributions from strategic investments. Second, cost efficiency initiatives will further strengthen profitability. We are driving automation across the organization, investing in AI and data analytics. And we are simplifying structures to achieve leaner operations. We have cut a number of legal entities in our group in half. We are operating with almost 250 employees less than several years ago, and we still see a lot of opportunities in raising efficiency levels. Third, we continue to focus on derisking of assets, enhanced risk management, better scoring models and refined portfolio composition should reduce credit losses and performance volatility and credit losses going forward, improving profit scalability, stability and predictability. And finally, funding cost reduction is expected to give us a major cost leverage. We are reducing dependency on third-party deposit channels, and we are optimizing our cost of funds across geographical markets. In summary, our profit growth trajectory is aspirational, but we are determined to achieve it, especially as it is grounded in tangible, measurable actions across all profit focus areas. Together, these drivers form a clear value-creation road map towards more than doubling our net profit by 2028. Let me briefly elaborate on profit composition. In terms of business units contribution, it is our target to achieve balanced diversification of net profit. Our profit profile is expected to evolve from a somewhat concentrated earnings base in the past to a very well-diversified profit mix by 2028. In '24, our Consumer Banking business accounted for about [ EUR 146 million ] of consolidated profit. Wholesale Banking constituted and contributed around EUR 2 million or roughly 5%, while SME banking was in loss-making phase, resulting in negative contribution to group earnings. By '28, this picture is designed to look fundamentally different. We expect all business units to be net profit accretive from 2026 onwards. We will develop our businesses into a balanced multi-engine growth generator and profit generator. Important to note, our highly profitable consumer business will remain a strong and stable profit generator with an expected profit CAGR of 10%. On top, we expect to see a relative shift in profit weights to maturing SME business and to scaling wholesale segment. So we are aiming for significant higher profits, but we are also up for high-quality sustainable and derisked profits down the road. Let me talk about profit driving factors. Turning to operating leverage. This slide operates how scale and efficiency will become an increasingly powerful driver of profitability. Our goal is to reduce cost to income ratio from historic levels around 60% a couple of years ago and current levels around 48%, down to around 40% by 2028. This improvement does not just reflect cost savings or cost cutting but structural efficiency, the ability to grow income faster than expenses. The group operates on a centralized technology platform, meaning incremental volume can be processed with minimal additional cost. Several levers will be driving operating leverages, automation and AI integration by streamlining operations and reducing manual workload, digital processes and extended data-driven decision-making, elimination of noncore activities, focus on highest return businesses and a lean, scalable group structure with clear ownership and accountability. Now let me briefly move on to asset quality. Asset quality and credit risk management have historically been a success story. We managed to improve our asset quality significantly. I'm referring to lending and investment portfolios when I talk about assets. We reduced credit losses measured as a percentage of lending and wholesale banking investment portfolio by more than 50% in only 3 years. We are confident that we will succeed in reducing credit losses further. The key success factors will be advanced risk management technology, including integration of new data sources, permanently enhanced scoring and underwriting systems and portfolio composition that reflects our ambition to derisk portfolios and to focus on recurring client relationships. On funding as a performance booster cost efficiency is the target. As we are operating our own bank, the key proposition is deposit first. Our deposits to debt capital market instruments ratio is meanwhile around 10:1 compared to 1:1 about 5 years ago. Our deposit strategy going forward is gradual shift from third-party deposits, provide us to own deposit sourcing, geographical diversification, establishment of our own deposit sourcing channels in several markets. Our deposit target is to achieve increasing autonomy and decreasing expenses. In addition to deposit funding, we will remain active on debt and hybrid capital markets. This will include IFRS equity instruments and regulatory instruments. We are considering going to market soon to support our growth with capital, which naturally will be announced separately. Now finally, let me briefly talk about return expectations. Capital allocation and capital return are amongst the most decisive topics for us going forward. We have decided to introduce an operational target. Technically, it's not a capital market guidance, but nonetheless, it's important. We are aiming at a return on tangible equity above 20% by 2028, coming from around 12.2% in 2024. By achieving this, we would set us apart from a significant number of regulated financial service providers in the market. This gets me to my last point, a combined view on operational targets and on capital market guidance for the future. I would like to summarize as follows. We confirm our net profit guidance for this year, EUR 24 million to EUR 26 million. We also confirm EUR 30 million net profit for 2026. For '27 and '28, we issued a new guidance of 20% annual net profit growth from the previously announced '26 targets. This would get us to a net profit of EUR 36 million in '27 and EUR 43.2 million for 2028. By '28, our operational targets are a cost-income ratio of 40% and a return on tangible equity above 20%. Our operational business targets are Consumer Banking, 10% EBT CAGR over the period up until '28, Wholesale Banking, 50% EBT CAGR over the same period, up until '28. Capital Box positive single-digit million euro EBT in '26 and from there on, 50% EBT CAGR over the period, again, up until 2028. Obviously, please note that all guidance metrics and operational targets will be subject to adjustments for one-off and negatively disruptive events. This concludes the financial Capital Markets Day presentation. We hope you found this of interest, and we are looking forward to our Q&A session. Adam, passing on to you.

Thank you. Thank you. Yes, that concludes our financial section of the Capital Markets Day. And now we would like to welcome back up on stage the presenters of today, and when we open up our Q&A again. [Operator Instructions] . We have a couple of questions from the previous session, which we can continue with. One is on cost-to-income ratio, Antti. More specifically comparing us to peers, without going into the detail, what are the measures that we will take to become more competitive on the cost-to-income ratio front?

That's a good question. I believe the main thing -- or the couple of main things we do in order to get to the lower cost-income ratios. We will further continue optimization of our processes. This is extremely important. We are using AI already in lots of our functions, even in small processes, but we are not there yet. We have to roll out AI capabilities. We have to roll out more automization and just simply do things smarter. We have quite good cost control in the group already. And this is what we continue doing in the future as well.

Yes, Indeed. There was 1 notice that there was a drop in the interest income in Western Europe in the -- in Q3, Bernd, what was the dynamics behind this?

There's not one single factor. On the 1 hand side, and Kristjan has pointed this out in his presentation, we are adjusting products in some of our markets in order to accelerate and increase stickiness going forward, improved profitability going forward. There are some Western European countries amongst those. So that's one driver. Driver number two, it's a shift from interest income to fee income. Fee income has increased in Western Europe by EUR 1.2 million in Q3. And factor number three, we have sold some businesses. We're still providing services. This is where the fee is coming from. At the same time, we generate earnout, and that what we can debate about IFRS, but it's just not reflected in revenue, but it's treated differently. Happy to go into more detail in one of the earnings calls, but those are the 3 factors behind that.

Thank you. Question from Harald Hof from mwb Research. Many thanks for the in-depth insights. I'm compiling and consolidating the EBT growth rates and doing the math. Is an EBT over EUR 60 million in 2028, correctly understood, have I done this correctly?

I think what he's doing, if I interpret that correctly, [indiscernible] the businesses separately and then the CAGR 10% and the 2 others with 50%. Yes, from a directional answer, yes, that is correct. The logic is that our guidance is for the 3, the logic is also that should one of those of our business units not really get to the ambitious really, obviously, very ambitious targets, we are still should be able to meet our guidance. So those aspirational targets are not all in targets, primary -- #1 target is the guidance. And number two, targets are the operational targets for the businesses.

Next question, quite technical. How do you define the -- the question is ROCE, but [indiscernible] ROTE, tangible equity in multitude. Is it net results over net equity without a perpetual interest rates? Or how is it Bernd?

Yes. That's partly the case. So we take the EUR 200 million equity that we have, we deduct the perpetual instrument. We deduct intangible assets around about EUR 32 million, EUR 33 million. That's the base. And we take net profit. But in order to compare like-for-like, we are also deducting interest paid to perpetual bond holders. So in the end, it is profit that can be attributed to shareholders in relation to shareholder equity.

And the final question that we have currently is how do we see the dividend payout ratio forward?

I think at the of end of the day, the shareholder meeting maybe decide that one. But I think, of course,

Well, naturally, I don't want to and cannot preempt any shareholder decisions at the later point of time. From my perspective, just 2 sentences, we have given an indication, 25% to 50% of net profit. We've done that in the past. Naturally, we want to keep the balance between making our shareholders dividend [indiscernible] shareholders happy. So we're sticking to that. At the same time, we need to make sure that we have the capital to grow. This is what we need to balance. We've paid out EUR 9.4 million dividend last year, 2 components, 25% in the end, plus an extra getting us to 44%, something like that. So definitely, without promising anything investors should expect would expect, might expect, similar behavior going forward?

Exactly. And I think it's -- and I think like Bernd said thinking process is there, that 25% is like a base number. And then we had used it on the every year. And I think as a management and Board make the decision and the proposal and then the shareholder meeting will decide that one. But I think that's the magnitude where we are looking to go in there. So keep the dividends payout ratio ratio pretty high between 25% and 50%.

Yes. Thank you. Antte, could you shed some light on what positive effects we will see from the expansion of the deposit business and what we are currently doing there? And what makes -- the question is what makes us so confident that we're able to refinance almost 80% of the business through your own deposits in the future. I assume that refers to our own channels.