Hypoport Aktie

Welcome to our Q&A session regarding our Q1 results. My name is Jan Pahl. I'm Head of IR with Hypoport. And together here, I'm with Ronald Slabke, our CEO. And we are happy to welcome your questions, receive your questions and answer them. And today, you have the opportunity to type in your questions via the chat function. So feel free just to raise some bullet points. So you do not have to tie in a lot. Just a few bullet points, and I'm absolutely sure that I can understand what you mean, what you want to ask, and I will highlight and read this out to Ronald.

And if you have, however, any technical issues in typing and then using the chat function, you also free to send me an email and I can also via this way speak and transfer these wordings and questions to Ronald. So this Q&A session will be recorded, and I will start the record in a few seconds. And I see that the first one is typing. So right now, in the meantime, I will hand over to you maybe to run for a short introduction. So we will start the record in a few seconds and we are recorded now. So please.

Yes. Welcome from my side as well to this Q&A session here regarding the Q1 financial results of Hypoport. We had a very vital discussion here 2 months ago when we released the final numbers for 2025. So looking forward for your areas of interest and to deep dive in our numbers for Q1.

Great. [Operator Instructions] [indiscernible] see that someone is typing. So we will wait a few seconds for the first question. And as a reminder, bullet points are absolutely fine. You do not have to type in.

We got the first question from investor side. What percentage of your volume was tied to a large bank who is not longer offering mortgages or reducing their mortgages? I'm sure everyone who is knowing us on the call is aware which bank that is. But so what percentage of our volume is tied to the large bank is not longer or is reducing their mortgage offering?

Let's say, we can't comment on the performance of individual partners with us. It's simply not possible to disclose this information. What we can share is that the market share of private banks in Germany over a period of -- here in this comparison 10 years went from 20% roughly to 10%. And so the change in the attractiveness of mortgages for private banks and their allocation of equity changed massively over this period and especially over the time 2023, until now. So that's -- it's a shift, and it's a massive reduction in transaction volume for private banks in total.

Great. I hope this answers the question. We got another one in the same topic a little bit, but a little more specific. So because of the downturn on Starpool at least, the key question is at what point does it make sense to restructure or exit the joint venture rather than continuing to the [indiscernible]? Is there a scenario that, for example, Starpool can become loss-making in 2026?

Let's say, the entity is a pooling business where a number of people is assisting specialized advisers, so mortgage brokers tied to German bank. Deutsche Bank as an entity, tight agents, tight mortgage advisers or they are free, but have a preferred relationship with Deutsche Bank and because of this use Starpool. In general, with a change in the volume as well the necessary support functions in Starpools are growing or have to be reduced, and we are in a constant process of adjusting this to the necessary volume of support. So this adjustment is regularly done. So there is no midterm risk that this entity will be loss-making.

In the end, it contributes to the overall transaction volume and enables us to address this market. And actually, when you think about the tight agents as well to exclusively address this market. And because of this, there is -- doesn't make sense to, let's say, shut down or question the existence of this joint venture as long as our partner is doing mortgage business at all. And I have difficulties to imagine a German retail bank of this size and of this balance sheet to exiting the mortgage business fully. This is difficult to understand how such a retail bank should work long term.

Right. So thanks for this. I hope this answers the question. However, if not, feel free to reschedule this and bring this up to the top once again. We got another question. It's a little bit more to the overall market. So about interest rates in Germany here and how the mortgage volume is progressing in April being in May. So at least how -- a little bit more playing words how is Q2 performing here on mortgage business?

Yes. Let's say, in general, what we can say is that Q1 was volatile because of the interest environment. So during the short period of -- I can zoom in a little bit -- the short period of January, February with declining interest rates, people hesitated to finalize the application and close the mortgage contract because it gets cheaper while they wait. And in the moment when interest rates were starting to rise and this was linked to the Iran conflict, then lots of applications are closed fast. So we had a volatile environment with a very strong March, similar to the Q1 2025.

So Q2, it's pretty normal that after a period of sharp rising interest rates and fast decisions from the consumer side, then you have a time of, let's say, less active business, a week or 2. And then everything returns to normal. So I would say from this, what we see for now, yes, it slowed down as expected after March. And actually, it's well visible on, for instance, [indiscernible] numbers that this happened. But we are more or less back to normal already again. So with this volatility on the overall macroeconomic environment and interest rates, this is nothing unusual anymore from a market environment. So we -- from my perspective right now, I would say we see a pretty normal second quarter for this year.

Okay. Great. So I hope this answers the questions -- this question. And we've got another one, which is more a little bit. Okay. There's a follow-up. So Q2 2025 was weaker, so weaker as Q1 '25. So do you expect a slight decline in volume from Q1 to Q2? And next question is, might be Q2 versus Q2 last year be down as well?

So I say, first question is, I would say, easy. We have a seasonal activity in the market. Q1 is very typically a very strong quarter. So a lot of people over the Christmas season decide to start to look into the idea of homeownership and then execute during the period of February, March. So it is pretty normal. Plus in the second quarter, we have Easter, we have holiday seasons. We have a lot of let's say, single days with the holidays. So the number of working days is lower in the second quarter than the first quarter. So both combined creates usually a slightly weaker second quarter than the first quarter, this over a period of the last 20 years, you can say.

So I would expect a Q2, which is below Q1 numbers. So the comparison with last year, it's more difficult. This is not decided by now how we perform compared to last year. Last year had the same effect that we had a strong March because of sharp rise in interest rates and then weaker start in the next quarter. This is well documented already. For now, I don't see that it's -- we know already that we are possibly to predict if it will be similar or not. So if it will close above or below last Q2. Let's say, what is certain, it's not a dramatic change compared to last year in both directions.

Great. Jack, so I hope this answers the question. I tried to group it a little bit. It seems we do not have on this high level of macroeconomic and interest rates or so any questions, but there are 2 others which are a little bit more deep dives. So we're now diving into the appraisal service. So it's about Value AG. So congrats on reaching the breakeven value. Is the plan to continue running this business at breakeven?

No. The plan is to more and more automate all processes, which are necessary in the valuation process. And with this generate a lot of automation and value and margin in this business. But this is not something you do in a pretty regulated environment on a, let's say, monthly or quarterly basis. So there needs to be done work. We expect Value AG to be next year profitable full year. How profitable we will see when we went through the process of automating the processes during this year, so to which level of productivity we come up until then. And let's say, long term, it's a platform business where there is no human labor needed besides this, what the regulator forces us to. And there's a lot of potential to bring down the cost of all products, which are necessary during the valuation process for mortgage or as well as homeownership buying process in total.

Right. Very clear. No other questions on appraisal service on mortgages. So we hope maybe there's another one. This is more on a group level. Let's jump with a deep dive more into insurance because this is the next one. So a little bit specific question on the volume, which is validated. So maybe it's the next slide, yes, exactly. So the validated volume, which is now up by 29%, growing to EUR 2.5 billion in Q1, like we can see here. So does this means that -- so [indiscernible] advising is more likely to use -- can you give us a sense of the revenue model once this policy is validated? And what does the economic look like for EUR 1 billion of consolidated volume versus migrated volumes. So where is the difference? So the migrated volume is EUR 5.7 billion here. So what are the economics behind these 2 different numbers?

Yes. Okay. This is -- let's say, the first, what's the difference between these numbers? We -- let's say, via acquisitions, via winning clients, we have roughly EUR 9 billion of insurance premiums within our systems, which were previously provided often as license-based software solution, so locally in start on-premise and therefore, now close to 10 years, we migrate this to the cloud. So this migration to the cloud to our centralized SaaS infrastructure creates the first KPI. The EUR 5.7 billion is premium volume, which is from the side of the sales organization brought to our platform.

With the growing numbers of insurance companies, we have interfaces and are able to validate the information provided by the sales side about, let's say, certain contracts. So if we are able to match the information between the sales side information, so contractual number and certain IDs to the insurer side, then we create validated volume because then we are able to sync the information of both world, so the sales side world and the insurer back-end side world. And we can be certain that all information about the contract is just through valid. And we can highly recommend to use this information to optimize processes up to the advice process for the consumer, this is a fitting insurance policy.

So the EUR 3.2 billion, which are not validated, this are just one-sided information where neither an interface to the insurance company is missing or the specific contract could not be matched to an identifiable contract in the back-end system of the insurance company. So let's say, the pricing model, which we use is volume-based. And depending on the intensity of the usage of the platform, so how many modules you use around your contractual volume and especially in the area of the validated volume where the, let's say, core value are created, we charge a percentage of the premium volume annually or let's say, actually we charge on a monthly basis, but we agree on an annual transaction fee. And the average is for now 10 basis points.

So actually pretty similar to the mortgage world. This is still low because of the low level of usage of modules in the platform, which we have to as well sell to the clients. And the more validated volume is there, the more attractiveness -- the more the modules around that's attractive because especially on the validated information, you can automate more and gain more efficiency, while on a not validated data set, you risk to get liabilities in acting on them.

Absolutely. So there's another follow-up at least. So on this validated volume. So when does it generate a meaningfully different margin profile, a bit fuzzy what this means, but when it's kick off a little bit more.

Yes. you see the dynamic. So for now, we can, on all levels of this KPI work on it. We can migrate more volume from the sales side. There are still roughly EUR 3 billion left on SaaS -- non-SaaS solutions out there, so license based, and we can win new partners to migrate to the platform. So changing the top line on the sales side, we are able to -- because of the higher volume within the platform, attract more and more insurance companies to provide interfaces to validate. There is -- the unfortunately painful process if this validation fails on certain contracts. So sales side and insurer has to manually [indiscernible] to this contract, which should be there, but wasn't found. But as well, this is ongoing and improves the quality of the data and increases the volume of the verified contract.

And let's say, plus, let's say, when something changes in the insurance volume, value of a contract, this is automatically adjusted. So this 2.5% goes up as well if the premiums for computer -- consumers rises, which usually happens more or less on an inflation level. Yes, we are in a constant process of offering our modules to this and increasing with this the incremental margin that we have. And let's say, the goal is significantly higher than this 10 basis points, which we see right now. So this is -- on all levels, we are working. And what is meaningful from the dynamic of the last years, we see that it takes too long without massive changes on both sides.

So the sales side and the insurer side to support the platform more to enforce the usage of the platform and the intensity of the usage. And for this, we are in strategic talks with parties to set Smart Insur as the standard in this industry to bring this to this point. For now, we were not successful to bring the platform to this unquestioned position within the market. Will this happen? Yes, in some moment, in which year, with the track record which we have by now, I'm not certain for now.

Very clear. So we are leaving the segment insurance platform now more on a group level. So deep dive into expenses. So our operating expenses were flat versus Q1 last year, so operating expenses like personnel, own work capitalized and so on. Is this due to seasonality is the question? Or are there other reasons?

No, let's say, in general, we are very focused on keeping our costs under control. We are right now not in a strategic expansion mode, you can say. We don't add additional platforms. We don't explore new areas outside of our pretty wide portfolio of platforms that serve this industry already. And there's still a lot of work that needs to be done to bring all of them in a profitability level that meets our expectations. And because of this, let's say, costs are under control. And I would say there is no -- there are no special events in Q1 last year or Q1 this year, which mislead that we are keeping this control on our cost base.

Correct. So another one on the group level is that this target to doubling our EBITDA gross profit margin until 2029. So do you include any price increases for Europace to achieve this target, meaning increasing from 1.1 basis points a day to, let's say, 1.4 or so? And if yes, what about this magnitude should we expect?

Yes. So I would say the core drivers of this rising profitability are execution of business models where we for now heavily invest or are in an early stage still of the rollout and don't receive at the full scale of our expectation, the return for our investments, which we made in the last year. So this is the main part of this. So actually, just finishing the work which was prepared already and getting to the point that we see our effort in our P&L. Besides this, yes, we expect for a lot of additional functionality integration that we delivered to get the return for the additional value we create for our partners. I would not call this price increase. It's linked for now to raising the value that we offer them. Best example, we -- just in a couple of 2 weeks ago, so still in April, we released the product, which you know us already Europace as a bundle for mortgage brokers as well within the target group of bank branches.

So bank branches -- banks are able to book the Europace one bundle now as well for their advisers in the branches. And this is linked to a 25% higher transaction fee for the banks for this volume. So we don't see this as a price increase. We see this as additional value that we develop and provide and to get a fair share from our partners for this. From a purely financial perspective, P&L perspective, yes, it means more revenue with the same transaction volume. And yes, this is part of our strategy. We just talked about Value AG. It's a great example for this to improve and expand the features of our platforms and with this, receive a higher revenue per transaction.

Right. I hope this answers the question. If not, please feel free to come back. We stay at group level, but a little bit more into deep dive into cash flow statement. So on the cash flow statement in Q1, the noncash income and expenses line is at EUR 5.6 million plus versus minus EUR 0.2 million in Q1 '25. So it's a pretty big swing at least of nearly EUR 6 million in a single quarter. So what is about this item has also been large and volatile for the full year. Can you explain a little bit what actually is in the line and why it's so large in Q1?

Yes. Okay. No, these are commission payments, actually often pass-through commissions as well to a certain extent, where we, after a full year is over, receive let's call it, bonus commissions from banks. And if it's for our own sales organization, so [indiscernible] network, most of this stays with us. Part of this goes to the franchisees. If it's for cooperating partners of Hypoport and our pooling businesses there, most of it goes to our partners. And depending on when a bank transfers this payment to us and then we forward the payments to the subcontractor, the sub-broker, it creates some volatility in our cash flow statement.

Right. So a follow-up, not from the same investor, but on the topic, it is a follow-up. Do we expect working capital to be a drag on cash flow in Q2 to Q4 this year like it was last year, at least?

Let's say, in general, we don't expect any drag of working capital besides that when we grow by 10% top line that we usually grow as well by 10% on the working capital because of the flows of commissions and the time lag between receiving and forwarding commissions. So on a quarterly basis, this may vary. And when you just mentioned last year, the -- so look -- please look on full year. This is pretty helpful, not on certain quarters because as soon as the payment was done in a different quarter, it creates their volatile information. So in general, no drag from the working capital side. This is really short-term transfers.

Thanks for this. Next 2 questions are on Europace back again. So can you give us a little bit more examples on how we can increase our revenue per transaction beyond this former known name price increase? And also the next one, which we can maybe a little bit combine is, could you clarify a little bit what is Europace One you just mentioned?

Let's start at the end and then maybe get to the wider perspective. So Europace One is a bundle of features in the Europace system. It starts at the consumer front end. Within the consumer app, there are certain features enabled when you choose Europace One. For instance, the chat function to communicate automatically with the consumers. There is a feature that enables you to offer your consumer a monitoring of properties that comes to the market fitting to his needs and his financial abilities so that he is fast informed about something that meets his criterias and is able to act faster than other consumers. But there as well features within the systems like AI, which is recognizing what kind of documents they are provided by the consumer via the app or the adviser via its user interface and automatic check if it was still open with the bank and set the necessary processes to automatically bring this to the product provider, if necessary.

So automated flow of documents, just as an example. So it's a bunch of such a feature, whole product is online described on -- or the whole bundle is described online on the website of Europace as well. And it's something where we charge advisers a fee of roughly EUR 1,000 per year to use this bundle. And as I said already, for bank branches, it's bookable for a higher transaction fee. One feature is actually Value AG, automated value model of Value AG. So to get during the whole process in which information provided and valuation for automated valuation for this property in the application.

So this is what is Europace One, and it's a good example for how we for now expect to go forward with additional features in the platform and additional revenues for providing them. So there will be a Europace Two in some moment, and there will be additional bundles, and we will optimize these bundles in the interest of users and us benefiting from it. So we expect to continue this strategy. So with every feature that we add with every automation that we provide, every integration that we provide along the value chain to put a small price tag to it or to combine multiple of these features to a bundle and enabling this way to book them all together for discounting, you can say, compared to a single usage.

So there's a follow-up. Okay. So the price increase you were mentioning with Europace One is really charging the adviser, not the banks. So do you have any additional offering to the bank so that you could lead a better monetization of Europace?

Yes, a variety of features already, nothing that we bundled by now. So for instance, the automated property valuation is a very typical additional feature, which you offer already right now and which you can book. So let's say, there is, you can say, a growing list of additional functionality or services even that you are able to book as a bank as well to enhance your experience and your speed and your and improve the certainty of your decisions during the process on the platform.

Right. No more questions on Europace or price increase, but there's somewhat typing, we can wait another second. Yes, on Europace, any updates on the market share on Europace? Or do we expect to outperform the market this year?

Yes. Let's say, we expect to outperform the real homeownership market in Germany here. We see that we are -- let's say, brokers to take market share, [indiscernible] second I will switch to the slide to give you some visualization. So we expect brokers to take market share and even improve, increase our market share within the broker segment because of, let's say, adjust net positive migration of structures to our platform. We see as well that in the savings bank industry and in the corporate bank industry, we just have a migration path in a positive way. So we are not losing any partners in both of these groups, and we are not losing any brokers as well. So the only significant change was the decline of the market share of the private commercial banks here in Germany, especially one big partner of us, where we still serve the whole volume in the standardized private mortgage business, but this was shrinking over a period of the last 3 years now, you can say. So we expect to take market share because of the ongoing dynamic in all 3 sectors. And to be honest, we expect as well a growing market share of private banks again in Germany and that we expand our market share there.

Very clear. However, is there any follow-up on this fearfully got the same -- a little bit the same topic. Any updates on InterHub? Do you see them operating that platform to all brokers in the future?

Yes. Just I want to mention one thing here in this call as well. It was in the German Q&A, and it feels strange to not share as well in English Q&A. Even when the German one was recorded, but it will be difficult for you to [Audio Gap].

It seems we have lost Ronald [indiscernible]

[indiscernible] was the opinion to change my devices, last 2 months ago, he did it. So today, he did as well.

So I just say that we had in during Q&A, a question regarding Targobank. And because it was leaked that they are right now going starting their long announced mortgage initiatives together with their acquired subsidiary OLB, Oldenburgische Landesbank. And the question in the German Q&A was what impact it may have on Hypoport's Europace transaction volume. And I could just say we can't comment on single partners. But yes, it's well known in the market that OLB is using Europace to run their business. And -- it is well known in the industry here that Targobank for now 2 years prepared to enter the mortgage market here. And this was what was leaked now is the cooperation of these 2 entities belonging to the same French banking group as an initial start for Targo to enter the mortgage business.

And with this said, I expect a positive outcome for us. And it's great for the market when another large foreign bank joins the German mortgage market and provide mortgage business, especially when you see how private banks originally, the German private banks declined their volume. So there is a need as well and there is a space for more banks providing mortgages in an efficient way, in an automated way with the right technical infrastructure behind this. So this -- I think this should be shared here even when nobody is able to ask the question.

So the next question was InterHub. InterHub just a couple of days ago, I didn't announce -- it was as well a league that they reduced the workforce that they are, let's say, I would say, struggle to meet the profit expectations of ING Group and need to restructure. They want to reduce their workforce by more than 10% right now. As you may be aware, while we operate a franchise system, they have hired advisers in branches, which they typically rented. So they have a different kind of cost base. And they right now adjust or restructure their business. So part of the question was, do we see that they are more aggressively entering the platform market? No, we don't see this. Actually, we don't see InterHub for a couple of years now as a competitor on the platform level. They are still in some old corporations there where they do a similar business, but these corporations are -- I would say, roughly 10 years old, and they are still continued, but they didn't attract new clients on this level, and I don't see them even trying to do this.

Absolutely. This was a little bit more linked to the bank side. What is about the brokers, the independent brokers because this was also part of the question. So do we see or do we expect to offer their platform to all of his brokers?

In general, they do this as a pooling offering with the [ full ] entity. So the probability is -- and actually, our pool, Starpool, Quality-pool and the last [indiscernible], they an answer to this offering of InterHub. And you can say today, Starpool [indiscernible] are similar big pooling organization in the German small intermediary broker market. So our incremental gain in market share in the broker segment here over the last 10 years from 50% to 60% is linked to the fact that our pooling organizations using Europace, they are pretty successful in taking over volume from pool. So I don't see here any shift in the market. The poolers running on Europace have a very competitive offering for small intermediaries.

Great. Thanks for this. I hope this clarifies question. [Operator Instructions] It seems that no one has any issues in using the chat function because I don't receive any questions here. Last one, which is more on capital allocation, and maybe this is a good one to handle now. It's great to see that we set up this share buyback program in Q4 and Q1. How much do we still have authorized? And are we still active at the moment?

So we have an authorization to buyback 10% of our shares with the last authorization. We bought just 1% [indiscernible] still have roughly 9% outstanding. And on the agenda for this year's Annual General Meeting is again to get approval to buy back 10%. So to renew this -- to have a fresh 10% potential to buyback shares. And yes, the current share price is attractive for share buybacks.

Yes, right. So we are asking for the next one for another one. Are we still active? Well, the current or the last share buyback program is closed. So this is it, EUR 10 million. So are we active? Obviously, we have some intention on this and ask the AGM for this? So I hope this clarifies the question. As a reminder, you can type your question in through chat, we still a good audience here. So it seems our Q&A is pretty interesting.

Maybe just explicit ask up until today, thanks to insider regulation, we were conflicted to start a new share buyback program. And if there are any information within the company who locks us as an insider as a company, we can't start a new one. So that makes it a little bit tricky to find a window of opportunity to start buyback programs in a pretty dynamic environment, let's say.

Thanks for this background information, very important. And a follow-up on this. Ronald, do you know if your shares are available through your custodians for short sellers. So it seems that your shares [indiscernible] my personal shares.

Yes. No, my [indiscernible] are not available for short sellers.

Okay. There's another one. What is the theoretical firepower to continue share buybacks? It's a good question, right?

Yes, let's say, it's -- as you can imagine, there are multiple layers of how to finance a share buyback. So it's the ongoing operational cash flow. It's the opportunities to finance things via loans or via selling as well noncore businesses. So there's a wide variety. So [indiscernible] is significant, I would say. And the question is what we are able to materialize and, let's say, keep [indiscernible] very healthy risk balance, especially when it comes to long-term loans.

Correct. Any follow-up questions here on share buyback, capital allocation or operating business. Feel free to type it into the chat. It seems for now there are no more questions, and I don't see any one typing. So I would like to hand over to you, Ronald, for maybe some last wording to close this Q&A.

I would say thank you for the activity. We had again, Vital Exchange, and this is great. This is a positive development, I would say, especially in the English Q&A. Happy to continue this in 2 months when we release our half year numbers. And be certain, we will stay focused on keep growing this company and keep costs under control and bring all what we had in mind to life and monetize it. So thanks for your attention, and see you here in 2 months.

Thank you. Take care and Bye.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Hypoport's webcast for our Fiscal Year Results 2025. We will host a Q&A session here with my CEO, Ronald and me. My name is Jan Pahl, I'm Head of Investor Relations at Hypoport, and we are happy to receive your questions. [Operator Instructions]

You can ask your questions regarding our fiscal year results we came up this morning, and we will wait a few seconds or minutes for the first questions here. I can see that we have several participants here. So we're happy to wait for your first question.

Hello from my side as well. Let's start with this.

Perfect.

Yes, we had a very vital discussion here last time when we presented the Q3 numbers. So we are looking forward to another deep dive.

So I can see that someone is typing at least, so happy to moderate the first question. I want to give someone the right to speak, however. Perfect. So first question here. Ronald, can you talk about how you are thinking about balancing growth versus margin in this today environment?

Yes. Thanks for the question. So let's start there that up until the beginning of 2022, our focus was growth and showing fitting expansion of our profit or keeping our EBIT margin stable, slightly rising. And this was under the expectation that we are in a pretty stable market environment. So volatility of our core markets are slow. And we can -- with a certain level of predictability see the future and with this, keep investing in expanding the network and the business models while scaling our profitability.

So with the massive change in the market environment and the sharp drop in the second half of 2022 of roughly 50%, we learned that our market is more volatile. So since then, we know that we need a higher profitability level to, let's say, stay in a safe environment for the whole group and not risk to have to restructure again because this creates a lot of waste when you build something up and have to restructure.

For the last 3 years now since 2023 and up to 2025, we were focused on keeping our cost base stable, keeping the headcount stable and just scaling our revenue side. And with this focus, we start the year 2026. And from today's perspective as well, I see this for the upcoming years that we need to expand our profitability.

So our -- we need to reduce our cost-to-income ratio, you can say. And we already shared with you our target to the end of this century, we want to double our current EBITDA margin from 12% to 24% so to scale profitability and show that our business models are still early stage and have a lot of potential when you look on profit and free cash flow generation.

Perfect. We've received a couple of questions in the meantime. However, because it was a pretty long question, actually, you answered a little bit of the next one. But we can -- it's a good follow-up. So the next question is that we guided double -- to double our margin until 2030, and can you explain how -- what are the key assumptions at least of this guidance? And as usual, are we -- is this including price increasement for Europace or not?

Okay. As you can imagine, we do a lot of planning short-term and long-term perspective. And our margin expansion and profitability growth is based on, let's say, complex bottom-up planning process where we -- for every business unit and all 3 segments, predict our current expectation for the future.

What is included is a healthy market environment, significant market share gains in the level which we saw in the last years, release of and monetization of new products which are already developed or in development. So no innovations, no inventions, no new events are included. There are price developments included if they are visible for us. So if we -- our prices are indexed or if we have agreed with our partners some kind of dynamic prices.

What is not included is future decisions to change price structure, like innovations. So coming back to your question, core of discussion, so this is what we see in a normal environment what's going to happen to our profitability. So this is not based on unknown territory that we have to still conquer or, how to say, invent.

Right. Thanks for the answers. Hopefully, this answers the question. If not, don't hesitate to come back. So we once again received a couple of questions. I try to group this a little bit to order this. Maybe the next one is a little bit on the guidance 2026. So can you explain and help us to understand how EBIT will turn into cash flow?

Okay. Yes. So EBIT to cash flow is, let's say, in general, when there is, let's say, interest burden on the group, which rise a little bit from the spread of short-term to long-term interest rate, but we talk about low single-digit million euro amount, so something around EUR 1 million or EUR 2 million, depending a little bit how much liquidity we short-term invest versus our long-term loan agreements.

So not a big change from this perspective. Our average tax is something slightly below 30%. This year, still a lot of, let's say, tax credits to be used. But let's say, taking this out, it's fair to say that roughly 30% goes to tax. You are aware of this that we have some changes in working capital ongoing. So especially to the end of the year, we increase working capital. In the beginning of the year, it decreases. This is linked to our business model.

I would say this is a minor for the question of how our free cash flow generation is changing. So taking this all into consideration, so cash flow generation this year should be something between EUR 30 million and EUR 40 million. So for the expected EBIT of EUR 40 million to EUR 55 million.

Right. So next question is not specifically on the guidance, but a little bit on the near future. So let's talk a little bit about products. Can you talk about what couple of new products monetization opportunities you're most excited about?

Yes. Let's say, this -- most excited about, okay, let's start with real estate and mortgage business. I'm excited about rollouts of products integration in the savings bank industry and in the corporate banking sector. So savings banks, it's a joint offering for the savings banks together with our joint venture partner, Finanz Informatik for the consumer front end, where we integrate the properties into the consumer front end of all 30 million savings bank customers.

And the ones who have a property already financed by the savings banks will see it there and we'll get accurate valuation every time they open the account. And from there can start different processes around their property. If they have a mortgage with the saving bank, for instance, refinance it. If they have a mortgage with someone else, refinance it as well with the saving bank and other services.

So second project is a rollout for the savings banks to opt in as a whole bank for the independent approach on the product for advice in their branches so that not the saving bank has to decide on a, let's say, on a workplace basis. If they are using architecture powered by Europace, they in the future can decide for the whole bank.

It's going to roll out during this year. And on the corporate banking side, it's our new product where we integrate the automated value model of Value AG and the workflow of the cooperative banks. And with this, let's say, first time, a full integration of mortgage process and valuation process in a digital-optimized streamlined workflow, where we saw already a lot of signing up in 2025.

So we are getting close to 200 banks, which are signed up already. But to get them all productive, the usage up for the integrated model is something which excites me for 2026. Yes. And with this, I would say, let's say, number three is Value AG's digital product offensive in this valuation space where we offer more and more product and product range for automated valuations as well outside of the cooperative banking sector, as you can imagine.

Yes, number four is WOWIPORT and the constant additional integration of features from within the group and outside of the group in the system and the increased speed of underwriting signatures from cooperative banks there -- cooperative housing associations there for the ecosystems which we expand right now.

Great. Thanks for this. So we've talked a little bit about the products right now. Maybe AI is a good next one. And the question is here about just a second. Can you talk about how you and your team are thinking about AI as an opportunity or risk? So what period of technological change in Hypoport's history does this reminds you of, if any?

Yes. Actually, let's start at the end of the question. It reminds me at the beginning of Hypoport's development. So when the Internet was there to connect consumers and businesses and enable workflows across business without complex interfaces just by bringing different businesses in the value chain together on one solution.

So this massive change, which we saw in the industry in the beginning of this century, where for the mortgage business, we can say we designed it and we brought it to life for the whole market. This is something which reminds me on the current change and the abilities AI adds for the whole industry in additional automation in the end and massive improve in quality of service to consumers and all other parties along the value chain of mortgages.

So we see it as a huge opportunity. We facilitate this opportunity already now for a couple of years because it just enables us to deliver better solutions. And with better solutions comes in the end, let's say, more attractiveness of our platform for everyone involved. I switched to a slide where you see some examples for Europace, what is already in Europace based on AI and the current massive development around generative AI is, let's say, expanding this space what is possible and accelerating the development of this.

Let's say, based on our data and based on our services that are there already, our openness to the surrounding and the way how we designed Europace to make everything what is within Europace available via APIs, we see us as a perfect hub for any generative AI out there or specialized models, which have some touch point to the mortgage process to interconnect with us and create with this a perfect integration and access to the offerings of the whole German banking sector, with just one interface.

And this enable a lot of business models in an early-stage process of creating new homeownership or a new mortgage this way. So a huge opportunity for us. Is it a threat? Let's say, we try to find the threats multiple times now. With the current stage of what AI is able to provide, we don't see a threat for us because, let's say, replacing us or certain business models would be quite a difficult job with or without AI.

And seeing how everyone who wants to invest in AI and wants to create something consumers or business partners profit from, we are an enabler to create value there. And to try to compete with us would be a quite challenging experience seeing how integrated we are in a technological way with our partners.

Perfect. So we've got 2 more questions, which are not linked to AI, not to the products, a little bit hard cut. But however, can you talk about what are the -- try to figure out, I'm not sure if this is about mortgages or about personal loan. Can the private credit crisis have a direct or indirect impact on Hypoport business? I assume it's personal loan, not sure what product.

Yes, it sounds like, I would say. So this is -- in general, the one who's questioning this is referring to the personal loan volume in the German market and the rising level of default. So what we see already in the last 3 years now that banks adjust their risk profile to this recessive environment in Germany. Consumers on the other side are as well not too keen to expand their borrowing. So we see overall a shrinking market, especially in the riskier part of the market decline of offerings by the banks. And this we saw already, yes, this is past for us.

What recently happened is that banks got confirmation for their hesitation in the last 2, 3 years because defaults trickled up. So certain banks which were actually pretty active in the, let's say, this subprime segments feel the pain and see some losses going up in their portfolios. Is it something that affects us, let's say, not directly. We see that the banks in the end did a good job to reduce their lending lately. It changes the industry a little bit, and we try to profit from this that a lot of banks get more risk averse and this comes the challenge that they can't fulfill all their consumer needs.

And with our platforms where we offer a ventile for banks with a change in credit policies, we give them a solution to keep their client relation and to monetize on their client relation, but not fund the lending products by themselves anymore. We saw this already during the financial crisis in the mortgage business 15 years ago. And so in such an environment, open architecture shows how strong it is that you as a bank are able to on a daily basis or quarterly basis, just change your credit appetite without threatening your client relation and your sales organization just by switching where the products come from.

And right now, it's again the time to show banks in personal finance, here in the person loan business that the flexibility Europace offers for their sales is something beneficial in the turbulent market environment, something you can't do with traditional IT, which is only focused on providing exactly one loan, and this is out of your balance sheet.

Perfect. So the next question is regarding -- maybe for the next question, we would love to see the slide with a bridge to EBIT. So this one. So can you help us bridge the cost savings in 2026 and as you aim to double margins midterm?

The cost savings. So what we try to describe here is how the profitability bridge looks like and we separate the loss-making businesses, namely 3 of them from the already profitable businesses and market impact. In general, costs for the group level will go up. We have an inflation and this comes as well increasing salaries. We have a stable headcount in Hypoport over the last years and expect this for this year as well.

So there is a cost -- incremental cost increase overall over the whole group, which is already compensated with additional revenues that we expected. And this is what we show here, so the loss reduction or the profit gains are net effects after the cost effects. If you want to calculate the cost effects, I would say it's fair to use a 4%, 5% increase in costs on a group level.

Hope this answers the questions. If not, don't hesitate to come back and chat on this. The next one, at least, I think it's last one for now is on share buyback. So we saw the EUR 10 million share buyback program last year. This year, how eager are you to increase this given the strong expected cash generation?

Let's say, I see share buybacks as an opportunity to gather our shares for our employee benefits programs as well as a potential instrument to acquire additional business model in the far future. And for now, it's -- I would say it's a good time to acquire our own shares because we see them, especially historically pretty low price. So I would say I'm eager to acquire more shares. And if we are able to, it depends always from, let's say, legal perspective, if we are allowed in the moment to buy and then we are allowed to buy what is the share price in this moment and how many shares we will get.

Right. So the next one is regarding market share, assuming it's Europace mostly. So what gives us confidence we will gain market share given the data from last year?

Yes. Let's switch to this here for a second. So we -- let's say, we -- all banks in Germany, other mortgage brokers for a long time just looked on the Bundesbank reportings for their interest statistics and believe that this is a good representation of our market to compare with. Lately, we see a mismatch between these numbers and what we see as our targetable market.

And we learned in the last, you can say, 3 quarters when we analyze this and try to understand why we can't align anymore with the dynamic this interest statistic of Bundesbank is reporting. So we learned that there are major differences between this -- what they report about and this is what we target. So they report about, let's say, all kinds of mortgages provided by German banks within the EU to consumers or nonprofit organizations they report about every contractual change.

To be fair, they separate these contractual changes, but the certainty of banks classifying it correctly is limited. And they report as well about so-called [ Bausparvertrag ], which are saving products for a long time and then they create a loan out of this and the payment out of this loan as well as -- as new mortgage volume. So there are a lot of areas where the market, Bundesbank, is describing for their interest statistic.

And our market of consumers taking a mortgage to buy, build, renovate or refinance a home is different. For now, we can't -- there is no -- and you ask for certain, there is no better statistic available. Bundesbank is since 2023 gathering as well information just about mortgage finance for consumers here in Germany, but they still don't publish this data, which they now collect for 3 years.

So as soon as this data gets available, we all will learn how the last 3 years in reality looked like. As long as they stay disclosed, we can just look on our platform. We know that we represent roughly 1/3 of the total market. We see how the different business models of brokers and banks with branches perform to each other, and we can make a rough guess who's really winning and who is losing market share right now and what may be a fair representation of the market.

And then I look on this, then I would say we are by certain below 15% market growth, closer to 10% than to anything above 15%. And this is, let's say, based on 1/3 of the German mortgage market. We don't see 2/3 of the market, but we have difficulties to expect that there is a higher dynamic in any area.

Right. Perfect. So there are some follow-up questions on this topic. But because the answer was pretty long, I hope that it seems that they've already answered. Just one more, how is January, the number -- Bundesbank number January performing? We've seen the numbers show a slowdown. They assume our numbers are also down, but at least we don't communicate on monthly numbers, right? But this is the last, honestly, on this year.

Yes, what we can say is that there are other publicly available indicators how the market is. Schufa's reporting on the information how many Schufa requests they were, so there's credit scoring requests and shows a small decline year-on-year for the first weeks of this year. So this data is well available and gives some indication of how the market looks like right now.

Right. So the next one is what we expect on Europace One to contribute. So how many customers are signed up? What EBIT maybe we are expecting, just rough estimation. What are our feelings on Europace One?

Yes. So I didn't mention. Europace One is one of the most exciting products. It's actually not fair, to be fair. So Europace One is in monetization since summer last year. And it's the first time that we create another model on Europace where users sign up for exclusive services and pay roughly EUR 1,000 per year for this bundle of exclusive services. So we are still in the learning process how to advertise for this bundle on the system. We still have to learn to bring the sales organizations with our typical contractual partners in the past and the needs and the requests of consumers together.

So for now, I would say it wasn't the best start possible, but we see that we have now 3-digit number of advisers signed up. We are in talks with a lot of large organizations to enable the use of the bundle within their organization. Often, this is linked as well to, let's say, the certain features are competing with internal solutions or needs integration to really work for the users. So we are in a way to integrate the different perspectives and needs in this and expect to develop this number of signed up users dynamic during this year.

So the long-term goal is, and this is -- so it's not a 2027 number that we get to a 4-digit number of signed up clients and then scale this. This means more than EUR 1 million revenue yearly, up to EUR 10 million in revenue when we get in the direction of 5 digits. So where this will be exactly end is a question, I would say, for the next 2, 3 years to widen the user base for this first bundle that we offer with the exclusive products, as I said.

Great. So the next one is different topics here. I'm not sure how to structure, but maybe this one. So how much did our gross profit in 2025 get affected by lower average mortgage terms?

Mortgage, let's say, lower average mortgage...

The duration of mortgage...

Yes. So the fixed -- for everyone who is listening, so we talk about the fixed interest rate period, which is major, especially for the Europe transaction fee because we get 1 basis point upfront for each year of fixed interest rate period. The average of fixed interest rate period during 2025 declined from close to 11 years to close to 10 years, so roughly by 8%. So this is for the transaction fee model. For margin models of the poolers or our franchise network, it's not that important, but for the transaction fee, it is relevant.

So telling this we talked about a significant 7-digit amount, which our transaction fee revenue was decreased because of the shorter duration. So it had an impact in 2025. We don't expect this impact to happen again from the current base in 2026 because we have difficulties to imagine a German mortgage market with an average below 10, and we are right now at 10.1 years exactly.

Great. So the next one is on the market as well, mortgage market. Actually, a little bit wider on the broker industry. So there is consolidation by fact. So do we consider to be the best owner, for example, for the Dr. Klein franchise network as well as the broker and poolers within the insurance segment?

This these are 2 quite different questions. For the Dr. Klein franchise network, for now, there's the largest German mortgage broker, Interhyp, belonging to ING Group. And Dr. Klein is the second -- let's say, the second one, the second known brand in the end, which takes market share over the last years and gets closer to the Interhyp brand. I have difficulties to imagine some other owner structure for this Dr. Klein brand right now because for the Europace platform, it's vital to have as well strong broker brands and not just be focused on small intermediaries.

In a world where as well the largest broker would use Europace, so the whole German broker business would go through Europace, then we would not need the ownership of the franchise network anymore. But this is still difficult to imagine that something like this is happening. So as long as we see this, let's say, competition, this duopoly between these 2, gathering market share, we see that it's essential. And often, Dr. Klein is as well a great pilot partner for innovation of the platform. So it's driving the innovation together with Europace forward.

In the insurance segment, we see that there is a strong consolidation process of pooling in the pooling businesses in insurance. And we are committed to provide the underlying technical infrastructure. So in case that we are able to gather more volume on our platforms, we are willing to disinvest on the side of the broker pools. So to bring the technology forward, we would be willing to find strategic options.

And we don't see, let's say, in this area, actually, there are a lot of pools and sales organizations out there. We see this as a certain level of challenge as well for certain competitors of our activities to join the platform if we would state that we are not willing to, let's say, share the ownership there.

Okay. Great. So this was regarding the market, the mortgage market as well as insurance and consolidation. What's next? Maybe this one. It's again regarding the guidance. So price-wise, are we willing to still stay with this [ 1.1 ] basis points with Europace? And what is our view on the mortgage volume growth in 2026 and the current mortgage interest rates?

So what is the best slide for this? Let's go here. So we had a very strong first quarter in 2025, influenced at this time by a good start in the year and then a spike in interest rate because of the announcement of the new -- at this time, potentially new government that they would borrow another EUR 1,000 billion to ramp up German spending for defense and infrastructure.

This 50 basis point spike in interest rate which we saw brought a lot of people to close their mortgage applications fast and gave us a very strong first quarter. And we all know already that the following 3 quarters were slightly weaker. So when we look on this year, we would expect a more positive dynamic during the year because of a general positive change in German macroeconomic figures.

So for now, the expectation is still that we are getting close to 1% growth in our economy and with this and the positive change of potential buyers and borrowers and a positive dynamic during the year. So right now, we have an Iran crisis, which is massively increasing the uncertainty, not directly for German consumers, but you can feel that energy prices are going up when you're still driving combustion engine.

And if this war stays longer, energy prices going up may lead to higher inflation. There are some warnings already that we may see inflation of up to 3.5% if this war stays longer. And with higher inflation comes as well higher interest rates, and we saw a sharp increase in interest rate in the last days, you can say, in the last 2 weeks since this war started.

It's difficult to with this level of uncertainty right now to give a certain prediction of how the year will go forward. This depends a lot on how long this crazy crisis in the Middle East lasts. So I hope, I need to say, that all parties involved come to a fast conclusion that it doesn't work out as planned and that face-saving rollback is the best option.

And we continue as we would have expected the year would go just a couple of weeks ago. And then I stay -- we stay with our expectation that we have an incremental growth during the year so that the quarters gets better over the year because of the underlying dynamic that housing is something needed by millions of households in Germany right now, which are waiting for years now to act and we see that there is a lot of supply there. Prices are pretty stable, not going up fast, not trickling down and interest rates stay on healthy level for this price level we are at.

And so every other -- to model every other, how to say, scenario so whether this Iranian conflict is escalating or just keeps going without any decisive decision is tricky to model it right now because of the high level of uncertainty in it.

Indeed. So next question that's a hard cut but why not. So the next one is regarding CapEx. Is CapEx in line with cost growth? Or is it higher? Is it lower? What do you expect?

Yes. It's in line with cost growth. This is, yes, major part is our investment in our platforms. We don't expect -- we don't plan, we don't expect changes in our investment strategy there. It's a pretty decentralized decision process. But overall, in the group, it should be perfectly in line with the cost development, yes.

Okay. The next one -- I shall jump to the next question. I think we mentioned it before, but maybe the gentleman is a little bit late to the party. Would we consider rising the commission on Europace for our transaction?

What we consider is that with Europace One, we offer additional features on Europace in a different pricing model, and we expect the volume of participants in the broker segment to rise. And during 2026, we will bring this as well to the branch network of banks in combination with a higher transaction fee. So we don't expect to increase the prices for Europace, but we expect that we offer for the branch networks a Europace system with more exclusive feature for a higher price. So this is going to be introduced this year about the success you will hear in our quarterly statements.

So the next one, it seems it's the last one actually is regarding our portfolio of business. We have our network here. Are we happy with this? Or could we think about the investment or maybe acquisitions in the near future exactly. So any near-term changes here to expect?

Let's say, we are focused on realizing the ideas, the strategic decisions and the synergies that we expected from close to 20 acquisitions we did during 2016 until 2019. And we are still in the process of fulfilling these expectations and stay focused on this and improving with this our profitability on the group level, so don't expect an expansion of the group in 2026, not in the scope, let's say.

So we will not add different new units. If there is an opportunity to integrate something which has a perfect fit to our existing business models, this may always occur, but this would be not a strategic move. It would be just an opportunistic approach in a certain way. So don't expect M&A activities from us. We are not driving this forward right now. We want to stay focused on what we do.

On the other side, we are open in multiple business models for strategic partnerships to scale. So DM in merchant acquisition has a higher probability than we acquire something. So to find fitting partners which are enabling us to grow things faster than we are able to do it by our own is on the table, and we are actively looking for these opportunities for business models where we don't develop the traction that we expect from the units within the network.

It seems there are no more questions. However, I counted 19 questions. So if I may miss someone, please raise your hand and came back to me or if something came to your mind to fulfill the 20 questions, why not? So we're waiting a couple of seconds here if maybe someone shows up with the next question or if someone feels that I have missed his or her questions, don't be shy, just type in.

We will stay a little bit here. It seems there are no more questions. We've covered a lot. We've covered a lot of the big topics, AI, portfolio as well as some niche topics, I would say. But there's another, yes, we got the 20th. Just wondering if our market share assumption to reach our -- yes, how much market share we need to achieve the 2030 guidance, so the midterm until the end of the century? Is there a clean or a clear number we have on mind or...?

Yes. There is -- market share gains are included in this number, a trickling up of our market share. But on this short-term period, we are talking about raising from 30% to 35%. So this is not something like a 30% to 50% market share or something like this. It's an incremental gain of market share during this upcoming 4 years in the end.

And we expect a growing market, so it's not only market share. So at least a couple of factors to bring in when we look on the market, which market we need to achieve this guidance here. So it's market share gain, but also market growth as all.

Yes.

So just to give a little bit of color more on this. So I think this was a question I missed. Sorry for that, and thanks for circling back. It seems there are no more additional questions. So maybe some last words from your side, Ronald, I see you switch on our guidance, our forecast...

Slide for the end of the Q&A session. Thank you for the questions. Again, a vital dialogue. I think it's great for everyone here involved. So we will meet again in 2 months. Hopefully, all the -- long after the crisis in the Middle East finished, and we have a more clear view of how the year 2026 will look like. Up until then, stay safe. Have a good time. Thank you.

All the best. Thanks. Bye.

The figures for the year 2025. As you all already know, Hypoport delivered a strong year in 2025 with a record-breaking gross profit of EUR 266 million, we have successfully achieved the highest gross profit in our entire corporate history. The previous record year was 2021 with EUR 241 million in profit, so a significant increase compared to our last record. And that's despite the fact that our primary market in private mortgage financing is about 20% smaller than it was back then. And the same goes for the other markets for credit products.

Looking back at the year 2025, we have to say that we are still deep in the valley. There is still a long way to go before we return to normality. So a strong gross profit result at a record level, EBIT of EUR 33 million, the fourth best result in the company's history. And now for the second or third year in a row, depending on how you count, after the massive disruptions in the real estate financing market caused by the interest rate turnaround, we are once again in a recovery phase so to speak, on track, not from a geopolitical perspective, that's not correct. on track if we look at Hypoport's key figures for last year.

And if you will, besides the highlights that I've already mentioned at the group level, I would also say that the development, especially in the housing industry and specifically what we have achieved with our ERP solution in the meantime is a great success for the year 2025. More on that in a moment.

So let's move on to the segments and take a look at how the Hypoport units have performed in their respective markets. We always start with our most important and largest segment, the real estate and mortgage platform, which digitalizes the entire business process surrounding private property acquisition, primarily private real estate financing in Germany.

Looking back at the, I would say, the most important framework conditions for this specific market, we had a fairly stable interest rate level with the exception of the first quarter. At that time, rates were a bit lower, just as they were at the end of last year or the year before last from today's perspective. Then we saw a sharp rise in interest rates due to the announcement of the suspension of the debt break, as I would call it.

From then on, this led to a slightly elevated but steady interest rate level. For potential consumers in Germany who are currently looking for a brand-new home and ideally want to purchase one, I would definitely say that this specific interest rate level was actually quite okay. I would say we've all gotten used to it. The number of properties available on the market is high. Still, it's not to the extent that you get the feeling sellers are in a hurry to get out of their properties. You can see this quite well in the price trends, but it is a -- when we look at existing properties, there is a lot of supply, many potential buyers and all of this with fairly stable prices.

As you know, for those who have been following us, property prices in Germany have been rising again for 2 years and 3 months now. Last year, they achieved an overall increase of about 4% to 5%, of course, with a significant spread between metropolitan regions and rural areas. And still, there is an upward trend across the board, which naturally also encourages the decision to purchase residential property because you don't have to worry about buying too early in a falling market. That's what we experienced in 2023.

The last half year was also characterized more by price stability. You could say, in other words, a guiding trend towards stable prices. I would also say that fundamentally, this is something in the interest of buyers. And in a certain way, it's also in the interest of sellers because it becomes easier again to know what your own property is worth. The residential property market in Germany will also be massively supported by the rental market in 2025 retroactively.

Politics repeatedly uses the rental market to create short-term incentives for their voters and refrains from any activities that would make the rental market in Germany attractive again in the long term. This leads to a historically low supply of rental properties and to record-breaking rents.

So in this respect, renting today is much more expensive than it was, for example, in 2021 or 2022 when property prices were significantly higher. And therefore, renting is becoming less and less of a solution for the German middle class when it comes to providing the right living space for their own family, for their own needs, so to speak. The strong regulation of the rental market, which has continued to increase in 2025 is also causing more and more landlords to lose interest in the rental market.

And these include those who ensure that more properties come on to the market, thereby strengthening the homeownership market from the supply side. And as mentioned, buyers or prospective tenants are finding solutions less and less often. It is becoming increasingly expensive. And therefore, those who can afford it, who have the necessary equity are the ones who migrate into the homeownership market. This then also led to the situation that in 2025, we could be looking at, one could say, overall a positive market environment.

The Bundesbank reports a total of new real estate financing in Germany amounting to over EUR 241 billion. The Bundesbank includes many things in this figure that we would not consider as part of the addressable market. So this figure includes all kinds of contract adjustments even if it's just an interest rate change. It includes loans to nonprofit organizations for housing, European commitments by German banks for housing and payouts from old building savings contracts. But still, it serves as an indicator of how the market has developed and at least this Bundesbank figure is year-over-year, even increased by 20%.

We assume that the market addressable for us has grown significantly more slowly, especially due to the course of the year and the slowdown in momentum in the third and fourth quarters, we would estimate an increase of just above 10% to a maximum of 15%. So our market is likely to have changed within this range. What is happening in this market is that we are seeing, and this has actually been a trend over the past 25 years ever since Dr. Klein and Europace have been in this market.

We are seeing a broker segment, the independent credit intermediaries who are increasingly gaining market share. We estimate their share to be around 30% by now. So every third genuine new financing in Germany is now processed through credit intermediaries and 1/6 of those via Europace. And Dr. Klein already has a substantial share and is the second largest market participant. And that is, so to speak, 1 of only 2 truly well-known nationwide brands that are correspondingly positively perceived.

In addition, the 3 banking organizations we know in Germany are slowly withdrawing from the market, among other things, by closing branches. The strongest withdrawal is being shown by the private banks. with the particularity that one large private bank has especially accelerated this withdrawal over the past 2 years. But savings banks and cooperative banks are also, of course, rather withdrawing from this market and closing branches and reducing advisory capacities. And yet we are equipping all 3 sectors with digital infrastructure so that they can maintain or even increase their efficiency in these changing markets and better meet the needs of their customers.

Customers expect a broad and diverse range of products, which is provided digitally, is fast and available 24/7. And the savings banks and cooperative banks that use Europace are also much more successful. They operate more successfully in the market. Internal statistics from both associations show that being equipped with Europace enables you to operate very successfully in today's world, even as credit brokers are putting on more and more pressure in the market.

And in this respect, we continue to be on the rise in both associations. This rise is reflected in double-digit growth rates. Last year, we grew by 20% among the cooperative banks. That is a new record value of EUR 20 billion. In transaction volume, we grew by 15% among the savings banks, which is also a new historical record. EUR 211 billion. As I said, you can also see the 2021 figures next to each of these. Back then, the market was still 20% larger. And here, we are already looking at new record values for both. Dr. Klein just managed to reach just under EUR 8 billion in transaction volume, an increase of 13% compared to last year.

Here, too, we see that since 2021, structural market shares have been gained. Exactly how large the market share gains were last year is uncertain given the lack of transparency in the German mortgage market for the Europace platform as a whole, including especially the but also the private banks that have given up business volume, we arrive at growth of 13% to EUR 75 billion. And with that, this is the third best transaction result in history, even though, as mentioned, the market is significantly smaller than it was back then.

So if we take a closer look, we can see how the transaction volume has changed on a quarterly basis in recent years. We see that in the area of purchasing existing properties, both condominiums and single-family homes, last year, we reached record levels. That means in this category, we even outperformed the year 2021. There is a slight shift, so to speak. More condominiums are being bought and sold. Note, some of these were formerly rental apartments. Meanwhile, in rural regions, the volume of single-family homes bought and sold is still below the 2021 level.

Additionally, we have to note, of course, that real estate prices are still about 5% to 10% below the 2021 level on the national average. That means the number of transactions today is higher than it was back then, especially large expensive properties are traded less frequently today. And in this respect, we still see a lot of potential here looking ahead to see new record levels in the market, both due to the increasing number of transactions and further rising prices.

What still isn't working in Germany is new construction. This is very well illustrated here. Construction prices have continued to rise significantly since 2021, and yet we are only financing about half the volume that we financed in 2021. This also means that we will only see about half as much new construction in the owner-occupier segment in the year 2027, 2028.

Just as a reminder, in 2021, 300,000 apartments were completed in Germany, the majority of which were again owner-occupied and financed by those owners. The share of rental housing construction was significantly smaller. With the realization that we are currently only financing half, it is also clear that in the future, only about 150,000 apartments will be completed in Germany because what is not financed today cannot be completed in 2 years. And that's a bitter pill for everyone who -- Hello. I just need a quick confirmation if something is going on here, if I can be heard again.

Yes, you can. You are out for 5 seconds.

Okay. Who did that to me? Everything suddenly turned red all at once.

Okay. Well, then I think the message still got through. So that's a bitter pill for everyone looking for housing in Germany. New construction will continue to decline. That's for sure. And in view of the regulation of the rental market and the enormous land consumption this causes, we will face a dramatic shortage of housing in the coming years, and that is certain today.

And in this respect, I can only advise everyone to think about how they want to live themselves in a few years. And if the children are living at home, how they will ever be able to move out and to prepare for that. There is good advice available for this. This is a family challenge for the future, getting the children into their own 4 walls. So beyond that, the refinancing market, the restructuring of existing loans is also historically still at an extremely low level.

You can see that we are at about EUR 1 billion per quarter. There is a slight upward trend, but back in 2021, we had almost 3x that volume. That is, if you will, the interest rate level, so to speak, there were no abrupt fluctuations, taking into account the 15-year fixed interest agreements that were made back then, we can assume that normalization will begin again here from 2027. But for now, we are still at the base level.

Yes. And the last topic, modernization, something that was strongly promoted by the previous federal government and by the way, was still heavily supported in 2021. Back then with the BE funding, we still had real investment incentives from the federal government for the housing stock. In the meantime, there was first a red green government or a red green yellow traffic light coalition and now a black red government, all of whom talk a lot but do little. And in this respect, the funding landscape for modernizing living space still looks catastrophic and this leads to correspondingly low investment in the housing stock. And so yet another year in which we have wasted time on the path to the heat transition.

So next, let's take a closer look at our former underperforming asset that we previously considered a problem child in the real estate and mortgages segment, Value AG. And our primary strategic objective and long-term goal is to digitalize property valuation and to seamlessly and perfectly integrate this technology into the entire purchase and financing process of the complex journey of acquiring residential homeownership.

Here, we made a huge leap forward last year. So a lot of work has already gone into the transformation over the past 3 years, you could say, after turbulent times that we experienced there, especially with this business model, we are making progress here, Mr. Frank. Our digital products are getting better and better and are increasingly well integrated into the business process.

Among other things, I would especially like to mention here that we now provide the folks in Raiffeisen Banken with a fully digital real estate valuation end-to-end so that the folks on Raiffeisen Banken can look back on a high level of efficiency in their new mortgage business and no longer have this media discontinuity between the credit decision infrastructure and the valuation infrastructure as is still the case in the rest of the banking sector.

Through these digitalization processes, based on our enormous data resources and our improved understanding of the new real estate financing business, we have also managed to further enhance the incentives to use Value AG. We are seeing positive customer feedback here, broad acceptance among our clients and gradually also lower losses.

Looking ahead just for value alone, so this will continue. Value will continue to reduce its losses. We now expect that there will still be a small deficit for the full year 2026. But from the perspective of intra-year performance as we will manage over the course of the year to reach profitability as well. So this results in the overall segment, double-digit growth, gross profit up 12% to EUR 163 million. That is a strong result. That is a strong year.

You can see from the effectiveness of this gross profit increase on EBIT that we continue to keep a clear eye on costs that we are not getting sidetracked but are staying focused here and taking advantage of opportunities in the market, leveraging our position in the market and monetizing the further recovery of this market and also ensuring that this is reflected in our results, in our cash flow so that we are prepared for the future.

So let's move on to our second segment, Financing Platforms. With a first look at the second highlight, I would say that also in Hypoport's development last year, the housing industry played a role. Digital products in the housing industry, which originally stemmed from financing and have been expanded through portfolio management. For the past 5 years, we have been systematically connecting everything through an ERP solution, a single SaaS platform, web-based, modern and open, which we provide to the housing industry and into which we integrate all our products, but of course, also third-party products.

We are open to third-party service providers. This way, a new digital ecosystem is being established in the housing industry. At the center of this development is WOWIPORT. Last year, we saw growth in the number of units under contract by 60%, gaining 250,000 residential units in a single year. That is a huge success. Especially when you look back, there was -- well, it used to gaining 250,000 additional residential units used to take many years not so long ago. So these then have to be brought on to the platform as part of a complex migration project.

You could say that on average, this takes about a year and starting from the following year, this then ensures steady ongoing revenues from this core product alone. This is, so to speak, a great development. Please do not expect a further dynamic acceleration because we are in terms of project capacities already at our limit. And we also want to continue doing a great job here and smoothly bring our partners onto the platform. This is important so that the overall momentum in the housing industry does not come to a halt. It needs to be maintained so that we can continue to grow quickly.

The good thing about this business model is that it gives us clear visibility regarding earnings development. While last year, we were still talking about a significant burden here, it is now foreseeable when we will reach breakeven. So this is a very pleasing development and proof that we are able to tackle tough challenges time and again to tackle as Hypoport and to position ourselves correctly in the markets. Of course, our, let's say, traditional business model of financing the housing industry also benefits from the new role of WOWIPORT.

Unfortunately, the housing industry is still looking at the activities, especially those of the federal government with concern. For example, rent regulation is negative for the housing industry and reduces its investment opportunities. At the same time, there are virtually no effective incentives. for investments in the modernization or construction of rental apartments. And against this backdrop, the willingness of the housing industry to invest remains at a historic low.

So since 2023, we have been operating in a market that is unusual even for the housing industry and also difficult to understand because there is actually a shortage of rental apartments, especially those provided by social landlords like the housing industry. Unfortunately, the inaction of the federal government can be felt in every detail within the housing industry. There is also a positive trend. Our payment transaction services such as rental deposit management are growing by 13%, significantly above the market average. Here, the integration with WOWIPORT and WOWIPORT's reach are now having a positive effect.

This is, so to speak, the perfect payment, the perfect way to handle payment transactions and the necessary accounts for tenants and in this respect, it's a great integration where all 3 business models benefit tremendously from each other and continue to scale. The second submarket within the segment is SME financing through REM Capital. Here, too, we are seeing a high volume of project activity with a strong increase of 83%. But this needs to be put into perspective. We specialize in making subsidized loans and corresponding government grants available for investments in connection with financing.

And then also -- and the current subsidy landscape, especially for German SMEs is a disaster. So as I just mentioned, our last record year was 2021. Back then, there was still the bag subsidy, which was then cut at the beginning of 2022 at the time by Mr. Habeck. And since then, it's been nothing but dating by both governments when it comes to support for small- and medium-sized enterprises. They make a lot of demands. They want investments from German industry and from German SMEs, but they waste the money on noninvestment measures instead of actually strengthening companies and jobs in Germany through targeted investment support.

So this leads to the returns we can generate here may be significantly lower because we are essentially dependent on the amount of funding we can provide to SMEs. And since the funding pools are smaller and only incremental support is provided, we still have the financing and the large project volume, but the returns are significantly lower. Therefore, at the moment, this is a lower margin business for us.

So now we come to the third part, the product of this segment, the installment loan market. Here, we are noticing for the first time that with 2025, Germany is effectively in a recession for the third year in a row. And during recessions, the installment loan business is significantly more challenging. This leads to banks tightening their lending criteria. And as you can also gather from the press, more and more banks are having difficulties with the quality of their loan portfolios.

This means they are also significantly reducing their new business. The market is declining by double digits, the installment loan market. Naturally, this dampens things again in the end. Domestic demand, the domestic economy. And unfortunately, it's a downward spiral that we are currently experiencing here in Germany. We are able to compensate for these market declines, thanks to our special role in the market and by tapping into new market segments and new sales structures. We have grown by 3% in transaction volume.

Nevertheless, cancellation rates are increasing significantly here, that is rejections by banks after the fact. Consumers ultimately become uncertain and exercise their right of withdrawal so that fewer loans are finalized in the end. And overall, the revenues from this lending business are somewhat lower. So we are putting up a fight against the declining market, but we can't fully compensate for it either. Overall, the product is well received. So we are gaining market share in a shrinking market because, of course, only offering your own product, which has just been restricted again in the past 2 years is not enough.

You need to be able to offer your customers a diverse range of credit products from the entire market so as not to jeopardize the customer relationship and risk losing the customer. In this respect, it's a positive development, so to speak, in terms of market penetration. All of this would be much more enjoyable in a positively developing market environment. That's just the way you have to put it. Here, we have also invested a lot in the near future, even looking ahead to 2026 with the completion of a B2B2C offering for our partners so that anyone involved in the installment loan business can offer not only their own product, but also the outlet product of many other banks automatically -- can bring it to their websites and mobile apps and thus respond flexibly to changing credit needs.

Overall, the segment looks back on a strong growth result for the year 2025, double-digit growth in gross profit and EBIT. That is a great success under the given circumstances. As I said, all 3 credit markets remain under stress. We are working hard here. We are earning every additional EUR 1 million in gross profit, the hard way and are still very much in the investment phase. So both the ERP system for the housing industry is something we continue to invest a lot of money in and the installment loan platform is also currently investment intensive. And in this way, we are ensuring that, so to speak, despite high investments in a stressed market environment, we are delivering a positive performance, as you can see here, and that is a great result for the colleagues in this segment.

So that brings us to the third segment, insurance platforms. For once, a segment where you can say the general conditions are stable. Overall, the insurance business is something that grows more or less in line with the rate of inflation in Germany, depending, so to speak, on whether there are government incentives or not, sometimes slightly above or below the rate of inflation. But overall, a stable market environment.

With our 3 platforms, we address the 3 most important submarkets of the insurance business. Firstly, the core private customer business with the standard insurable policies through Smart Insure. We address occupational pension products, especially retirement provision via the employer with ePension. And in future, we will also help to process industrial insurance in Germany, where highly individual risks are tendered and insured in a more structured and digital way with Corify. All 3 platforms have developed positively. You can see this in the key figures of the 3 platforms. So with SMART INSUR and...

Right. Jan, I need your feedback again.

You're back again. Your mouse was visible the whole time but you disappeared briefly with the video.

Okay. Clicking wasn't working here either. But now, so I was just about to transition. The platforms have experienced positive development, but nevertheless, the sales supporting and service supporting units had to record declines in 2025. There were a variety of smaller issues. Overall, this means that the gross profit and EBIT of the segment are slightly below our expectations. So we've remained stable in terms of gross profit. As I said, a positive shift towards the platform, that's fine as well.

EBIT ended up neutral. We had hoped for a bit more, but we can also see that thanks to the platform's growth, we've now laid the foundation for things to move forward in 2026. And we'll see a positive performance, both in terms of gross profit and EBIT in the segment.

So that means we've now covered all 3 segments overall. You know the details for the year 2025. Now let's take another look at the group as a whole. Those are the key features, again, from the beginning, double-digit growth, clear outperformance on the earnings side. As mentioned, gross profit, a new record, EBITDA, the fourth best year. So there's still room for improvement.

Historical context, in a long-term comparison, you can see that quite clearly. We look back on a turbulent development since in effect 2021. We're now returning to our former strength, you could say. We currently see this as a period in which we are growing in quality, in which we have sifted through many of the ideas we had up until 2022, continuing those that promise success, some of which have already been brought to fruition or are on the verge of doing so.

And the business models that have always been successful are now significantly improving their resilience to market changes, improving and of course, so away. We are making use of our market position to expand our value creation and thus our high returns in the respective products through additional innovations. All in all then, a successful year for Hypoport and a solid foundation for the year 2026. So that's what we're looking towards now.

Okay. Now it's clicked on. So I suppose I'm back again. Jan, give me a thumbs up, please.

Yes. You were gone for 3 seconds.

So of course, we can't avoid taking a look at the market as well. So our primary market, homeownership. We are finding that the supply of residential properties is high, and we expect it to remain at this level. We do not expect to see a flood of rental flats coming on to the market at the same time. And from other sources as well, it is not to be expected that there will be a high number of properties. As I said, new builds will continue to decline.

But we also do not expect there to be significantly fewer properties because, of course, the efficiency of the markets and price discovery ensure that properties have a certain marketing period. And in this respect, this will have a stabilizing effect on the market as a whole in all directions. As for the supply of rental flats, we're certain that it will at least remain at this low level. To be fair, turnover rates will continue to decrease, especially in medium-sized towns.

In the big cities, we're already seeing hardly any turnover at all. People are holding on to their rental flats. This will lead to there being less supply. More and more properties are, if you like, being marketed informally. They are no longer visible at all. You have to happen to know the landlord privately in order to have a chance to get in a property because regulation also makes it unattractive for landlords to expose themselves to the public market at all.

So tough times for tenants and at the same time, also for those who can afford to buy property. It's a clear indication that the only place they can still find a suitable property is on the owner-occupier market. What effect will this have on prices? We'll continue to see rising prices for existing properties, not as dynamic as we saw up to 2022, though, so growth rates of 10%.

On the national average, I would rule that out, at least assuming relatively stable interest rates. Instead, I would expect growth rates for prices to be slightly above the rate of inflation. So for this year, something below an inflation assumption of 2%, more like 3% to 5% property price development because more and more people are effectively being pushed out of the rental market and are looking for an outlet here.

Construction prices, despite much political talk about measures against rising building costs continue to show a clearly positive trend, and we will continue to see this in the coming years. Politicians currently do not understand that with every further regulation, however, well intentioned, they continue to drive up construction prices. And therefore, that we will see any relief in the housing market, either through a greater number of completed units or through cheaper construction is something I can roll out based on my observations over the past 15 years and the political actions in this area.

And as such, the prices for new builds are rising. So anyone who wants a new build because they can't find what they want in existing properties really can't start building soon enough to put it plainly. It will continue to get more expensive. And that's even before the turbulence we're currently seeing geopolitically. So against this backdrop, we naturally also assume that due to rising prices and a shift from the rental housing market towards the owner-occupied housing market, we will then also see positive impulses for our market volume.

That is for what needs to be financed in the market. We're still at a historically low level there. So you could say that in 2025, the recovery only continued up to the first quarter following the crisis in 2023. We are now operating at a level, if you like, inflation adjusted, a level in the mortgage market that corresponds to the period around 2012, 2013. It's important to know that back then, there was hardly any net migration to Germany. We had extremely low property prices, roughly half of what they are today in Germany. So that means if you adjust for prices, the activity in the property market is only about 60% to 70% of what it was back then. And that is, well, that's weak.

There's no other way to put it. It's low. The dynamic we've seen up until 2022 is an adjustment of German price levels to those of other European countries, triggered by the freedom of movement for workers and due to greater European integration. And we can see that this trend is continuing. Today, our prices are quite normal by European standards, but the number of units is far too low. And ultimately, of course, the rate of homeownership is also much too low. We can see that the frozen rental market will lead to the frozen ownership rate in Germany slowly adjusting to the European level.

So we will see a rising rate of homeownership in Germany, which in turn will feed a growing market. In addition, of course, there will be increasing refinancing volumes in Germany, starting from 2027 and continuing onwards.

The red curve, that's how Europace has developed over the last 6 or 7 years. The gray/black curve, those are the Bundesbank figures, as mentioned, including all possible markets that cannot be addressed. We assume that if you were to exclude the non-addressable markets, the curves would have developed even more dynamically in favor of Europace. We assume that this trend will continue because the efficiency gains achieved through Europace's transformation in the industry are significant, especially in bank branches, these gains are becoming increasingly decisive in market competition.

And now on top of that, there is the added pressure from AI and the generative models that engage and retain consumers more effectively. And with that, the entire way in which brokers but also banks interact with the world and with consumers will change. This brings us to an important keyword, which we have been asked about frequently of late. AI is nothing new to us. We ourselves have been engaging with it intensively for some time now, you could say, for 10 years, for 8 years, we have been rolling out products based on AI and have, in the meantime, integrated a large number of algorithms into our platforms.

Here are a few examples for the European platform, what is already live there and how it is supporting the work of advisers and credit decision-makers and in part, how it is already simplifying and automating things for consumers as well. The world of the future in which agents assist the consumer, supporting them in successfully handling their property financing, whether through generative models or specialized AI models for this purpose will lead to changes in the value chain.

Generative AI, that is all agents will position themselves between the consumer and today's intermediaries. You could say similar to what Google has already done in the past and ensure that a portion of the overall value creation through corresponding revenues also remains at this stage of the value chain. We are certain that through the central product integration, we can achieve this. One could say for the entire German market and uniquely at this level of quality for the 800 banks, we are the right technical point of connection for all AI out

there. We are built for an open architecture. We have APIs for all the important services needed in the process. We can also make these available on MCP for any model that wants to have it. And in this way, we can provide the complete knowledge about the German mortgage offering and the ability to complete transactions to any model out there. What we do not see is that models penetrate all the way to the bank's product offerings because that is not digital enough.

So the typical German bank does not have a digital representation of its product. The only digital representation is Europace. There's not just the one bank, but many others as well. So the idea that generative AI or even specialized AI laboriously digitizes bank loan products in order to make them directly available to consumers is hard for me to imagine, given the complexity we see in reality. And of course, the regulations also play a part in ensuring that it's not so straightforward.

What we also don't see is that generative AI models are completely replacing the intermediaries. A, it's a regulated function, at least in the German market; b, it's a question of liability because someone has to take responsibility to ensure that the consumer has been properly advised. And in this respect, we rather see a further symbiosis between the one who digitally maintains customer contact in the past, Google, in the future, AI and the intermediary who ultimately discusses the legal regulated advisory decision with a customer and ensures that a resolution is reached.

Of course, all of this can also be done digitally. The subtle nuances as we see, for example, with demonstrate make it clear that, of course, intermediaries will also integrate AI. In part, Europace will make this available to everyone, but there will also be specialized models from individual sales organizations tailored to their sales processes, their target groups, their types of property and specifically addressing certain niches in the market. So here, we see a diverse increase in efficiency throughout the entire value chain through the use of AI.

And we so to speak, Hypoport with Europace within will actively shape this process and further improve the quality of our services for everyone. With a high speed of software development, we're already making extensive use of AI today, and we ensure that we provide better software more quickly. But in the end, it is especially the consumers who will benefit from this through lower prices, greater reliability and faster processes. And as a result, we also hope to see a significant boost in the rate of homeownership in Germany because we are making it possible for more people to own their own 4 walls.

So with all that said, let's look ahead to the year 2026. From the EUR 33 million last year, we expect that by reducing losses in the 3 platforms where we are still investing heavily, we will see improvements in the order of EUR 4 million to EUR 6 million, thanks to gains in market share through our existing offerings through the successful business models. Of course, this is already adjusted for slightly rising costs, which we inevitably have. This will bring us another increase of EUR 5 million to 6 million. And in the end, it will be the market that decides. And there, I am primarily looking at Germany and specifically at the property financing market, where we are seeing our results. So we are expecting EBIT to be between EUR 40 million and EUR 55 million.

The greatest uncertainty here is the market development in the year 2026. And it must also be said quite clearly that the current geopolitical upheavals are, of course, creating a great deal of uncertainty because it is difficult to foresee how long the conflict between the U.S.A., Israel and Iran will last and the pressure it will put on energy markets, which in turn could potentially affect inflation and thus also the interest rate level worldwide and therefore, also in Europe. And knowing that German sellers only react very sluggishly to changes in interest rates by lowering prices, we naturally have to remain uncertain quite simply.

German residential property market is being affected by these geopolitical upheavals and the risk of significant interest rates at least temporarily. In the long term, we do not expect the interest rate level in Germany to be higher. We have now had several recessionary years behind us. In fact, all economic research institutes are currently revising their growth forecast downwards for the year 2026 as well despite the enormous additional debt that the federal government has indulged in.

And against this backdrop, a high level of interest rates in the private sector is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine and the ability of states, including the Federal Republic of Germany to simply continue taking on more loans and squander on electoral giveaways is diminishing. So with this pressure, the level of interest rates will also continue to come down in the long term. We lack the economic dynamism to even be able to afford a high level of interest rates in Europe.

So when you look at Hypoport, you see someone who, if we take the medium-term perspective again, is operating in a fundamentally attractive market environment, a growth market. Housing is a scarce commodity. People will need it in the medium term, and this can only be solved or at least addressed by creating additional homeownership. All of this needs to be financed. We are highly integrated with our products, continue to drive this forward and ensure that we gain incremental market share at every stage of the value chain.

And in doing so, we also ensure corresponding growth in our revenue, outpacing the overall market development. Our models scale, our business model scale. We are still at an early stage everywhere, and there is still a great deal of potential for increasing our results when we look to the medium-term future.

And in this respect, in addition to the forecast for this year with a high yield of at least EUR 280 million and EBIT between EUR 40 million and EUR 55 million, we also dare to say in the medium term, by the end of this decade, we want to double our EBIT margins again from the current level because that is simply a realistic projection of what we are currently seeing and also of the performance of our business models. We have seen this over the past 3 years since we significantly restructured the group.

Gentlemen, my name is Jan Pahl, and welcome to the Hypoport SE Q&A results Q1 to Q3 2025. I'm here together with this lovely gentlemen, Ronald Slabke, our CEO, here. And together, we would like to organize this Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] And we are very happy to wait until the first question on our Q3 results [indiscernible]. And in the meantime, we have decided to start with a question, which I got just a few minutes ago via e-mail. So maybe this is a good -- even it's a little bit complicated one, it's a good idea to start with. It is regarding our JV. So at least the question to Mr. Slabke is, could you please explain if Europace has maybe lost market share because of Deutsche Bank issues. So the German mortgage market volume seems to increase more than the Europace volume this year. If Deutsche Bank is priced themselves out of the market while the German mortgage market volume continues to increase, who is taking over these Deutsche Bank market shares at least.

So -- and I'm sorry, I forget to start the record. Should I summarize it again. Okay, sorry for that. Now we are live on now record has started. We are already live. So once again, our first question here on our Q&A result is if maybe Europace has lost market share because of Deutsche Bank because it looks like the German mortgage market is increasing a little bit faster than the Europace volume, and this is because Deutsche Bank is pricing them out of the market, out of the Europace market. Who is taking over these shares from Deutsche Bank?

Okay. A good question. Let's start with this that -- in general, we see a healthy market environment right now. So the recovery of the German mortgage market from the crisis in 2022, second half of the year and 2023 is over and the market is, let's say, coming back. So the speed of this recovery looks slightly different in different areas of the market when you think about what the mortgage is used for, regional differences between metropolis and rural areas, but as well the different market participants perform slightly different in this market.

So what we see from the reporting and as well from our numbers and activities, regional banks are pretty successful right now, especially in a year-on-year comparison because they had a weak start in 2024 still. And so they come from a lower base level when you look on the 9-month numbers. So cooperative banks and savings banks are taking market share right now. In a certain level, it may be even -- or in a small level, it may be linked to the rollout of Europace in both of their groups and the rollout of a lot of features that we provided to them, which improves their competitiveness, their efficiency in the market and as well the conversion rates of their advisers there.

So they're performing well. And as you saw already in our results, we're performing well with them as well. So a next group where there are no clear statistics, but where we see that on a, let's say, daily basis that they operate well in the current market environment are mortgage brokers. A group which heavily is using Europace is depending on Europace. And with only one large German mortgage broker outside of Europace, Interhyp Group as another market participant in this area.

For consumers, the interest rate is very important again right now because it has risen from a much lower level in the last 10 years. And on a higher interest rate level, comparing interest rates is something very German and very efficient and creates a huge benefit for the consumer who is comparing. And brokers, thanks to Europace or in case of Interhyp, thanks to their own system are comparing hundreds of banks and offers with them and enabling consumers a great deal at the end. And so let's say, compared to bank branches, they are usually independent structures. So freelancers working on -- for their own profit, their own benefit. They are much more agile and aggressive and using Europace better in interacting with the clients than the typical bank branch in Germany right now, which is not using Europace.

So this [indiscernible] takes market share, and they are all supporting that Europace is growing. And in none of these 3 sectors, we lost a single relevant participant of the market. We just gained structures all the time. So what is certain, and this is the analysis of the one who made the questions right, the private banking sector lost market share in this environment in the last, you can say, 2 years. And this is -- Deutsche Bank plays a role there. They have a strategic goal to reduce their mortgage exposure and reduce their new mortgage volume because of their return on investment requirements. So equity is expensive for Deutsche Bank. It wants it wants to optimize its return on equity and this leads to a lower new mortgage volume and the decline in balance sheet for them in this business.

So Yes, all Deutsche Bank business goes for Europace. So we see the lower numbers as well, less contribution to our overall numbers. And if you want to just look on the volume, you can say we lost thanks to Deutsche Bank a certain volume in the market. We don't treat this as a market share loss. We know that Deutsche Bank will come back and that the volume in the other markets is something where we are super successful in getting forward in all other banking groups. So longer answer to this simple question.

Fair enough. Great because I think it's important. So I appreciate the detail. I got -- received a couple of questions. Let's for a moment, stay with real estate and mortgage platforms segment. There's a special, but maybe it fits because you mentioned the saving bank Sparkassen. So the question is, could you please tell us a little bit more about Project [indiscernible], which is with the Sparkassen banks? And how is that impacting FINMAS' market share with internal loan applications? Should we think about Finanz Informatik core banking software as a competitor to FINMAS? Or is it a partner? And maybe you can explain a little bit [indiscernible] because it's an acronym and maybe not everyone is aware of. So as a kickoff, maybe to start there.

Yes. As well, a good question. So we, for 10 years now cooperate with the savings bank sector. And for the last 5 years, our cooperating partner is Finanz Informatik, which is the central IT service provider for the savings bank industry. [indiscernible] a project started roughly 2 years ago is or decided to be started roughly 2 years ago, better say, and we are working on this now for 2 years is a project where we integrate the property as an asset in the mobile app environment of Finanz Informatik so that every of the 30 million users of savings banks in Germany, not just see the balance sheet of the current account and the savings products, but as well the worth of his properties and the mortgage loan linked to this.

Every day when he opens the app, he's going to see this, thanks to [indiscernible]. And behind this, the consumer gets different services around the property and the mortgage provided in the app, things like renewing the mortgage are possible or if the mortgage comes from a third party, refinancing this mortgage with a savings bank mortgage. And this is in a rollout process right now. This [indiscernible] project slightly delayed, should be available -- or let's say, it's in the process with some -- a focus group already, but the full rollout should happen now in the first half of next year.

So this puts Europace and the FINMAS features and actually as well the Value AG proposition and the automated value model of Value AG in a center position in the savings banks industry, which is a great progress. In addition, we work together with Finanz Informatik right now in -- on the deep integration of the Europace offers and comparisons and product presentation in the Finanz Informatik system. So should we think of Finanz Informatik as a competitor or a partner, by sure, partner. So we integrate both systems with each other more and more. We replace features out of the or we add features, we enhance the user experience of the internal system of Finanz Informatik with Europace features step by step and with this bring more volume to the Europace marketplace. So this is -- it's a strong partnership, which is driven by making savings banks more competitive and enhancing the user experience if a user is using -- is using saving bank as a mortgage adviser. And this is very successful for all 3 involved parties for now.

Great. Thanks. So for now, let's stay with real estate and mortgage platforms. A short one is what EBIT we expect for this year, next year and medium term, I think it's 3 to 5 years roughly for value. So Value AG appraisal service.

Yes. Okay. So Value AG is an heavy investment from our side in valuation as a major part of the mortgage process. And to fully automate this and integrate this with the mortgage process, it was necessary to innovate it by ourselves. And this is a long journey for us by now and linked with huge investments, relevant losses that we had in the last years because of this. So on the loss side, we reduced again this year the investments that we have there and expect for next year that during the year, we will turn profitable. So first half of the year, still some losses, second half of the year, a positive contribution from the side.

Why we expect this? We see a very positive traction in the adoption of digital products of Value AG. I mentioned, as an example, cooperative banking sector where we just rolled out an integration solution. We just explained here in the Q&A, [indiscernible] and the role of as well Value AG there in value adding the properties of the consumers in a digital way. So we are progressing in all sectors with this, and this gives us a clear path to profitability already. Plus we see that the efficiency of the whole structure and Value AG, thanks to a stable market environment now is turning profitable. And we see that we can get a fair pricing from our partners, thanks to the integrated solution that we are offering. So this -- the automation that we bring to the value market is -- valuation market is huge.

So looking forward, it will never be a high-margin business valuation, let's say never -- not in the next 5 years, this is the horizon, but it's something which together with our offering in our UPS offering as an automated process for advice and transacting mortgages is a win-win situation for both products. So that midterm, we expect the growth from -- on both sides, thanks to the integration, and we expect double-digit growth from Value AG for the upcoming years after turning profitable.

Great. Thanks. So the next 2 questions are related to Europace and a little bit more detailed. So it seems investors are pretty good informed about. Our start of Europace One, which we started in Q2, could you please tell us how it is developing so far?

Yes. So first, what is Europace One? Europace was a free-to-use SaaS solution for now for advisers. We only deal with sales organizations, which then provided this to their intermediaries. And as well for the sales organization, if they were willing to underwrite a certain level of volume, it was free of charge. But we saw that with the heavy investments we do in enhancing the user experience, integrating AI features, we need a different value stream to get a fair share out of the business which we enable and the efficiency and the conversation gains that we create with our investments. So we decided to bundle new features, which we introduced during the first half of this year to a Europace One offering where as an adviser, you book this as an additional monthly subscription offering from us to enhance your experience.

You compare this with the freemium model, which is pretty popular in the mobile world, where the general use of an application of an app is for free. But if you want to use special features, you need to sign up and pay extra. So we have to establish for this a way to charge advisers. We have to establish a legal framework for this and we have to -- let's say, we had to build the features and we have to integrate the features in the bundle. So there was a lot of work that had to be done in the first half of this year.

And since this summer, we offer to advisers directly, and we have a 3-digit number of advisers that signed up by now. We are still in talk with a lot of large organizations, which doesn't allow their senior advisers to make this choice. So -- and that's often about integration with their systems. We are partially replacing as well third-party solutions with the features that are part of the bundle. So these are slightly longer projects to agree on the usage of Europace OneE. But let's say, with all major partners, we are well on track on getting them signed up as well.

So for next year, it will be interesting how the dynamic looks like. In the upcoming years, it will contribute with a 7-digit number to our revenue and profit. But for now, the signing up speed still needs to be improved from our side. But there is a learning path for us because we are pretty new to this way of doing business with individuals.

Right. So the next question is regarding one click. So it's also once again, Europace, but Europace OneClick. The question is, is there a regulatory hurdle here? And if so, how we plan to overcome it?

Yes. So -- only good questions by now, I would say. So one thing is the offering on the credit decision side and to the lenders of mortgages, where we enable them to have a fully automated mortgage underwriting process. We introduced this in the beginning of 2022 when speed was still very important for consumers. Thanks to the massive changes in the market, the attractiveness of the product was recently less high, you can say. But with the recovery of the market now, the whole offering gets more attractive again as well for the banks, not just to speed up the process, but as well to save on the cost of labor and to provide the consumer a digital checkout process equal to this what he knows in other industries.

So we have a number of banks which are productive with it and created the regulatory framework necessary to operate with OneClick under German regulation. But it's a hurdle to take, to be clear, it's a hurdle. We provid it as an entry level to this product, a solution where you can automatically score a consumer without a manual input of data just by using access to the account of the consumer to gather the data. We call this entry, Europace entry as an entry product to OneClick. So the process on the side of the property is not automated, but the process of the side of the checking the consumer credit worthiness is fully automated. And there the sign-up is significantly higher. So there's a double digit of banks experimenting with entry and using this already and allowing this and something which we as well heavily promote on the platform because it reduces the work for the adviser, streamlines the process and creates a value proposition for everyone.

So the transition is ongoing, and we are constantly optimizing the approach to the market to digitalize this mortgage process even in smaller steps if necessary. And this is as well, we are talking about high single-digit percentage of the mortgage volume already generated via entry or OneClick, but there is still a huge potential going forward, as you can imagine.

Great. Thanks. It seems there are right now, no more questions on real estate and mortgage platforms, but we received a couple of other questions to the other segments. So we switch now to financing platform. And here's a question, same like for Value AG. So which EBIT we expect for this year, '26 and for the midterm 3 to 5 years?

Yes. Okay. Let's say, this year, at the end of Q3 and so at the beginning or before the final quarter, which is very relevant for the success of this segment, it's, let's say, difficult to give an exact prognosis. So last quarter is seasonally typically the strongest one. So if it's this year as well, then we will be above last year. So as we are on the 9 months right now, but it's going to be decided just in the days around Christmas as every year.

Going forward, as I said when I introduced this segment in the first video, we see that there's a huge potential in all 3 parts of this segment. So housing associations, we are on a great track of signing up housing associations to our ERP system linked to all the services around a strong proposition in the mortgage market there. So this under distressed market has a huge potential to grow significant. And part of this recovery would just be to the precrisis level when it comes to especially revenues from mortgage brokerage.

But overall, we are on track for a great success in this industry. Personal loan business and German Mittelstand, both distressed right now. I explained this already. I would say, looking forward, these are both markets where we expect a normalization. Germany can't stay in a recessive environment much longer than it did already. Otherwise, we will have disruptive political changes here and nobody wants this. So my sense of urgency right now is high, and I have the feeling that [indiscernible] our government got the message after the summer as well. So they see that they need to act to change the trajectory in the market. And with this, we will see a very strong performance of both of these product segments in the upcoming years. So where it can end up, it's linked to the recovery of the German economy in general, you could say, the better it goes, the more success we can deliver there.

Right. So there are no more questions for financing platforms right now, but there are 2 or 1 or 2 for insurance. So a little bit more on a high level. If you compare SMART INSUR with Europace, what is the penetration of suppliers so far, maybe in percent of the market that provides their policies through our platform through SMID and where are the challenges and progress to grow that platform? And what is surprising? It's the same like Europace, the 11 basis points we charge in average? Or how does it look like?

Okay. This is -- I make a short and I would say, deep dive with Jan later or in the upcoming days. So in general, SMART INSUR is the platform for standardized policies usually for consumers here in Germany. And the core value proposition is managing the whole information flow along the existence of an insurance contract that being the insurance broker on one side, the distribution side and the insurance company on the other side. It's not a transaction focused platform. It's whole lifetime of an insurance because this is a core problem in the insurance market that the information flow over the lifetime is very expensive for all parties because of their dysfunctionality and the way how information are transacted via e-mail from one side to the other.

So the pricing model is volume-based. So the more volume you manage as a distribution within the platform, the more you pay. So it's a percentage of the premium the consumer pays, and this is your fee for the handling of the whole information flow, as I said, from the beginning of the contract to the end of lifetime of every contract there. So the challenge is the necessary adjustments of -- for the IT system on the distribution side.

On the insurer side, for the insurance companies, we have established business relation with all of them. But for now, just some of them are paying if they receive the information and are integrated via interfaces. So this is the -- we report this as the validation process. So when there is a link between the information in the platform and the insurance company, then there is a financial link for us. But still, most of the volume in the platform is not linked to the insurance company. So the insurance company is not paying. Even when you are able to manage this kind of insurances as well as the distribution as a distributor within our system. More details, I would say, Jan in the deep dive.

Sure. The next question, I'm not sure if I got it right, but I mixed it a little bit up. And if I'm wrong, don't hesitate to circle back and correct me. But I get this question right, it is during Q2 or maybe Q3, we signed some brokers for Corify, and it took longer than planned or expected. What were the headwinds? And are we in talk with additional brokers to launch right now?

Okay. Yes. So Corify is our platform offering for the industrial insurance business, where not a defined tariff and policy is underwritten by thousands of consumers. But in industry insures effectively or a fleet of class or whatever. So there are only individualized auctioned or tendered insurance policies closed between corporates and insurance companies.

So we introduced this marketplace so the better version in the beginning of last year and see a huge interest in the industry. Industry was part of the development process over the last years and is now steadily signing up, and we got additional signatures for the first modules of this marketplace from the industry. There is a long line of -- in the sales funnel of brokers and insurance companies, which wants to use this for their interaction with their clients. So the pipeline is well filled looking forward. We just need to see that the contribution is not just intellectually and let's say, mutual, it needs to be as well financially beneficial for us so that our part of the investment incrementally goes down and the monetization kicks in and our partners after signing up as well are paying the transaction fees linked or usage fees linked.

And when we talk about signatures, then we talk about this last step, the monetization that partners start paying for the benefits which they have using the system. And yes, we saw the progress now finally as well in Q3. And looking forward, we are optimistic that we get Corify up and flying and creating a marketplace effect in the upcoming years as well in this part of the industry.

Great. We have 3 more questions in line. So once again, if you have any questions, feel free to type it in. The next one is on insurance platform as well, now on private insurance once again. So the question is, how does your distribution, distribute of insurance policy work together, compete with price comparison websites. So is this a competitor? Or is it a coop for us? How we look like?

Okay. These are different positions in the value chain. So the typical price comparison side for insurance is a perfect client for Smart InsurTech to handle completely -- the complete back-end process over the whole lifetime of the insurance contract for the comparison side. So we -- here on the distribution, you have the insurer app. So pure online insurance brokers use Smart InsurTech as their back end. And we are a great opportunity for them to focus on the consumer front-end side and the competition there and not spend IT resources in integrating 200-plus insurance companies and the lifetime of the variety of insurance contracts in their system.

Great. Okay. There are 2 more questions, one a little bit detailed and the next one a little bit high level on strategic. Let's start with the detailed one, and now it is real estate and mortgage platforms again. We are here with BAUFINEX. So the question is, how has growth for the number of BAUFINEX Genoberater consultants trended so far this year? Are you having success signing up more salespeople at the cooperative banks?

Yes. Sorry -- let's say, we are active in the cooperative banking sector with 2 brands. So Genopace as a platform. BAUFINEX is a joint venture with Bausparkasse Schwäbisch Hall for the pooling activities and for the third-party distribution in this market. So the question was specific to BAUFINEX. BAUFINEX is very successful using the huge network of cooperative banks across Germany and digitalizing their external relations to local mortgage brokers, real estate developers and so on to provide cooperative mortgages, you can say, to this third-party distribution.

And BAUFINEX, I would say, is right now the largest mortgage pooling offering in the market. So they surpassed Starpool and as well the competitor from Interhyp Group Prohyp and are #1 right now. So they are succeeding very well. So together with the success of the cooperative banking sector, BAUFINEX is very successful on digitalizing their third-party relations.

Great. So one question left. And as a reminder, once again, don't be shy. If you have any, you can type it in. But the next one is a little bit high level on strategic and maybe on our -- also historical shift in our strategic. So could you explain the main synergies and potential scale in the interplay of our segments, real estate and mortgage platforms, financing platforms and insurance platforms? Or would you say that these are unconnected segments that have their special B2B platform for the customers?

Okay. I would say the second part answered already something, but I would give you, let's say, a better perspective on this. So up until 2 years ago, we developed the Hypoport network, a group of companies and offering in all these 3 industries independent and created synergies usually between 2 or 3 of these companies in the group. We restructured to these 3 segments, the network 2 years ago. So we formed the real estate and mortgage platform just 2 years ago after seeing where are the strongest connections, where are the highest synergies between daughter companies, which needs to be more facilitated and with more management attention and focus on to develop a joint strategy in this market. And with this the segments were created.

In certain areas, we had to even split companies. For instance, the personal loan business, which is now part of the financing platform was until recently part of the Europace AG development where as well the mortgage solution was developed, and we have a significant overlap in partner structures there. So even when they are now in different segments and we -- from the legal entities, split them, they are using the same technologies and offering to the same partner. So there are interlinks between the segments, even when this is not, let's say, naturally when you would start the segments independent.

So we created synergies in the past between offerings and just because we regrouped this and focus now on these areas of synergies where we see the highest benefit for the network doesn't mean that there are not other synergies. So between each of these 3 segments, there stays certain levels of synergies alive, but the focus happens within the segment. So the truth is they are less integrated between each other than within each of them, but they are not -- it's not that there are no synergies between them.

Great. Thanks for this. And here's another one.

Great English Q&A today, I would say. It is good that we have a full hour.

Yes. So the next question is why did the error in revenue recognition [indiscernible] happen because of -- so it is regarding Starpool last year, which you had to adjust the numbers. And yes, how it is going to be look like forward?

Yes. Okay, I would say a detailed answer in the 2024 annual report. Quick answer. The structure of the business of Starpool changed over the last year because of the strategic change on our joint venture partner, Deutsche Bank. And because of this, third-party mortgages got more important. And with this, we had to recognize all revenues generated by Starpool, including the commissions which Starpool receives from Deutsche Bank and pass through to Deutsche Bank linked mortgage brokers. So this pass-through of Deutsche Bank commission business let's say was not under our control under -- in the last years, let's say, or during the buildup of the joint venture, but lately because of the shift in the priorities and the shift to mortgage brokerage of other lenders, the situation changed, and we had to start to recognize this pass-through commissions as group revenue and group cost of revenue so that it inflated first in 2024, our revenue number and our cost of revenue number, just starting at the gross profit, it didn't have an impact anymore.

Great. The next one, it's an interesting question because it seems to me that there are 2 ways to answer. So I look forward, which is your one. So the question is, where do you see cost reduction potential for the application of AI? And what would your best estimate for the amount?

Yes. So AI is a big topic publicly right now and for us in the last 10 years, where we are able to enhance our products using AI. So the question focuses on cost reduction. And when I hear cost reduction in an organization like us, it's about efficiency gains in, let's say, repetitive processes where we look across the group, especially in the centers where we have processes where we expect that AI can replace them already right now. This is linked to migration costs, to systems which provides this because in this area of HR or accounting for ourselves, we will not implement our own algorithms.

Another way of cost reduction, I would say more efficiency gain is using AI in the whole software development process. This is an ongoing process now for the last 2, 3 years where our people get more efficient using AI. To be honest, I don't expect that we reduce our costs for software development. What I expect is that we increase the output in volume, in future volume and in quality. We are willing to invest this money. And we focus our people right now in getting better in using AI and getting better in shipping software fast to our platforms. So there is not a focus on cost reduction in this area, it's the focus on efficiency.

Great. And actually, these are the 2 answers I expect. So at the moment, there's no more -- it looks like there are no more questions. But once again, here's a chance, we've received already couple of, actually 13, which is good, I think, 45 minutes. And if there are no more questions, maybe I hand over to you, Ronald, for last wording.

Yes. Thank you. Great Q&A today. We will talk again in March next year. We will chase our 2021 record year, and we'll want to outperform in all top and bottom line numbers next year. So I'm looking forward to this race, and you get an update when we are there in March next year. Thank you.

Thanks. Goodbye.

[Audio Gap] Q2 results of Hypoport SE. My name is Jan Pahl. I'm Head of Investor Relations here. And I'm here with our CEO, Ronald Slabke, which I will right now join to this session. As Ronald will join, we will start the record. Just to let you know, this record will -- this webcast will be recorded, and I will start the record in a few seconds. Today, we have a Q&A session against our results. I think you have seen all the results during this morning. We published a strong increase in revenue and earnings. So at least we are very happy to welcome you and to receive your questions. I will start the record. [Operator Instructions] And I'll now start the record, hand over to Ronald with some welcome words, and we will wait for the first question in this FAQ session.

Yes, [indiscernible] my side as well. Just a short introduction as you can read from the Q&A already. So we delivered a good start in the year. Half year numbers are in line with expectation and our goals for this year. And nothing surprising happened in Q2. So -- but still maybe something to explain more in details here for you. So happy to receive your questions now.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]

I just saw the information that someone is typing so.

It's good.

So we got the first question. Some participants were surprised that not seen any confirmation on our annual guidance and our financial statements. So what's the current situation on the guidance? What we can say for the guidance Ronald?

Yes, this is pretty easy. So we stick to our guidance. We are with the half year reported numbers fully in line with our expectation and the guidance and stay with it for the upcoming 6 months. So easy question. Thank you.

So thanks for the first question for the icebreaker. So we are happy to receive more on questions on the segments, on the group level, on products as well, of course. I see that someone is typing as well. So obviously, this is really preferred way to raise the questions. Feel free to type in. Just -- normally just need a topic, some words, and I will hand over this to Ronald. So the next question is, can you comment on the market volume versus Hypoport volume on the real estate and mortgage platforms? Do you feel you gain or lose market share? Industry seems to be a little higher than on FINMAS and Europace.

Yes. Thank you for this question. This is a very good question to ask and something that, let's say, we are as well aware of. So Bundesbank and Schufa reports a certain market development, which is currently more or less in line with the transaction volume growth of Hypoport in total for the first half year. And this is not how it feels like when we look on our sales structures in the market and the structural gains of market share that we see. There are certain numbers of issues in the reported numbers on both sides, so European transaction volume and as well what Bundesbank is reporting that leads to the conclusion that we are not exactly talking about the same market. In the core, it is the same, but there are, let's call it, niche markets in Bundesbank, which are different from this what we address, which looks like have a different kind of dynamic, and we are in talk with Bundesbank about this to understand better the dynamics there. In our core market, we see that in the broker segment, we outperform our core competitor, InterHyp and the largest broker. We see that we -- this gained market share.

In the segments, savings banks and corporate banks, we are -- we don't see any loss in sales structure. We see that we gained sales structures in both segments. And with this, expect to outperform both of this structural changes in both of the sectors. While in private banks, we had to report a decline of our market share because one of our strong partners for a long time and someone who delivered growth for a long time decided 2 years ago to change the approach to the market and recently even keep losing market share heavily. So the volume drop there is intense. It's actually reported as well by Deutsche Bank that they reduced their outstanding loan portfolio here in Germany massively. And this is something which we have to compensate with market share gains in other areas of the market. And all 3 other areas, we see a surplus in the structure and expect this to live up in the numbers in the upcoming quarters again. I hope this explains a little bit. Let's say, we are well curious how the reality in the market, which we face every day and the comparison of the numbers will, let's say, realign again.

Perfect. Thank you. I hope this satisfies this question. If not, feel free to circle back on us. We have another question with another topic, and it is, what is our view on the impact on the stimulus package from the German government on Hypoport and on the mortgage volume in general?

Yes. To be honest, we expected some serious decision before the summer break from the new government, which did not occur. So without any decisions made, just announcement, what may come in the second half of this year or later, it's a little bit fuzzy to answer this question with a high level of certainty, to be honest. So from our perspective, we expect the actions taken to increase the new construction volume in the private mortgage environment and so our core segment to be not sufficient. So we don't expect a massive change in new construction volume in the upcoming quarters. We see a slightly positive trend, not triggered by any state actions, just by the need in the market. We expect this trend to continue. But from the stimulus package, we don't expect right now a significant change in housing construction. Coming to the other markets, which we combine in financial platforms, we see that the housing industry may over a period of the next 2 years, profit from the additional subsidies for social housing as they get effective, as you need to say, and we expect this to happen.

German Mittelstand, the corporate side with REM CAPITAL, we expect to massively profit from this, let's say, promised activity in this area. For now, it's still something that needs to be delivered. And we, together with our clients, wait for this. We prepare projects for this. So we wait these subsidies to get applicable and are later then as well confirmed by the different agencies here. And last market, personal loan business, where we see that the current recessive environment in Germany is something negative to this market, which stresses the credit portfolios and increases the default rates there. This may change when the stimulus package via all its different angles attracts more investments, especially by the industry, by German Mittelstand and gives -- improves the consumer confidence. So this would be in a delayed stage of a couple of months reacting to this. So overall, I would say, we don't expect a direct impact of any stimulus to our business, but a massive indirect impact to our Corporate Finance business and Social Housing business in the upcoming quarters.

Thank you. The next question is in direction of Value AG, our valuation business on the real estate and mortgage section. So the question is, you mentioned in Q1 that Value AG would not be breakeven in 2025. However, properties value keep growing double-digit rate. What is your latest assessment on the turnover -- turnaround in Value AG? And what are the main issues still to be resolved?

Yes. Let's say, first of all, and this is part of this question, is Value AG is having a good year. So we are progressing on the top line, and we are as well progressing in the efficiency of the operations and in the realizing of the digitalization efforts of the last years, you can say, in the different sectors. So we see a clear positive trend with all what we invested on in the last years and see that Value AG is recovering. So still, there is a way to go. And you saw the Q2 numbers. So there are still a couple of hundred thousand euros to be earned additionally for each month, and we are not certain to see this in this year for now.

We may be surprised. So Q2 was in a positive way, fulfilled our expectations. And we may be surprised, but still we are not certain that it's going to happen this year. So it still may take us a couple of months next year to finally break even with the whole business. Newest product and as well pretty well received is automated valuation for the cooperative banking sector integrated in Europace and with inspections and the property valuation done by Value AG integrated. This shows as well some good signs of early traction. And with this, our expectation for 2026 is currently improving.

Perfect. In the moment, I don't see any additional questions. [Operator Instructions] There's another one. So from our competitor on the insurance vertical, you see quite pleased with the strategic progress of this business. However, the revenue and profitability went backwards modestly because of relatively weak business from pooling and distribution organization compared to the platforms. Could you please explain this more? I think this is related to E&P, right?

Yes. Let's say, in general, you can say in all 3 product areas of insurance, we see an operational progress. We see solid demand and we see serious activities in all 3 segments with clients. The challenge stays that this needs to be as well monetized. It takes -- unfortunately, it takes a long time in the insurance business to monetize. Plus we saw in the second quarter a slowdown in the employee-linked insurance schemes. So there's -- German Mittelstand is right now not very keen on additional employee benefits and this reduced the transaction volume given their postponed decisions, you can say. And this part of the revenue we missed and this part of the profit we missed for the second quarter. For the full year, we expect to stay comfortable to continue the positive path we are on now with this segment for the last 2 years and to continue to build the ground for double-digit growth long term. For now, second quarter was disappointing and the numbers are not exactly where they should be, but our hope stays here for the second half.

Thank you. In the moment, there are no other questions, but we wait a few seconds. Maybe that will -- someone show up with another questions on the segments on the business...

[indiscernible] we covered already pretty relevant areas. This -- so for now...

No, there's another one. Just takes some time. As you mentioned, the company had a good Q2 and is in line with our guidance. What are the main risks and upside for us to see or to meet exactly the full year guidance?

Let's say, the main risk is geopolitics for us right now. So you -- we see a slowdown in inflation in Europe, which is -- which should lead to a declining interest rates. With this, I would see a very positive trend to continue. But the risk is high that something special happens, especially the -- let's say, the duty policy of America is creating a lot of uncertainty as well related to prices and what Russia is doing in Ukraine is as well constantly a risk for geopolitical crisis, which would affect then our business if interest rates would sharply increase. So this, I would say, it's the core risk factor for our core business model and as well for the business model in the financing platforms area. So the chances are, let's say, I said the -- when answering the questions and as well, you see this in our reporting that in all 3 business segments, we are creating a ground for additional growth in the upcoming quarters.

So when everything stays normal, we will meet our guidance. We will meet our expectation. And so we don't need any support from the market. But market can live up -- let's say, all markets we are operating in can live up, especially in the financing platform area, housing and as well Mittelstand would profit from a high activity level of our current government. For now, they are waiting on action, and this action are announced for a too long time now already. So if starting in September, actions occur, we may see there a positive impact. And together with potential positive surprises as well in other segments, when I look on our pipelines, there is as well a good chance to outperform our expectation. But then we need some headwind from the environment.

Okay. Thanks for clarifying this. There's another question. This is regarding Deutsche Bank. So who has gained the market share from them, so on the mortgage side? Are they -- do we expect to gain this back? Or did they left the business?

Yes. Let's say, they reduced their mortgage portfolio in the first half of this year by EUR 12 billion. So you see their lack of new business to just balance their balance sheet. Is this sustainable for a balance sheet? For a couple of quarters, yes. For a couple of years, no, because then the balance sheet of this bank would lack lending. And other areas of lending are not very active in Germany as well or Deutsche Bank is not very active or very successful there. So we don't expect this to be a sustainable path for this bank. And I don't hope -- I hope so that their ambitions as well for the mortgage business comes back. Regulator changed already the equity needed to do this business. This is relevant for Deutsche Bank and their proposition. So let's see how we are going forward there. Who won this market share?

Temporary, I would say, it was widespread. Most profit it was actually IG, which are running a great mortgage business and a great mortgage portfolio and shows that you can earn a lot of money with retail banking in Germany if it's done right. So IG is not our biggest friend in the market. Is it possible to win this back? By sure. And let's say, midterm, the IG balance has as well a limit how big it can get. And so this limits as well the ambitions of the [indiscernible] Group here in Germany. And besides this, we support all regional banks, all savings bank and cooperative banks to take market share and use the weakness of the private banks here to get back to a time where they dominated the market. Based on our technology, this is possible. And their equity needs or their return rates on their equity are much lower than this of the private banking sector. So they have a competitive advantage here. And together with our technology, they can use it.

Perfect. Thank you very much on this. Actually, this is the next quote here. It was my wording, but the next one is thank you very much for answering my question, which is also nice. Thanks for this. But we are waiting. Maybe for another question. We covered a lot, but if there are any additional questions, just type it in. If not, and we covered a lot, we -- I think this was it actually. So I hand over to you, Ronald for some last words.

No, thank you for the opportunity to especially talk one more time about the sensitive topics surrounding your pace and the market and Hypoport. So back to business, we are focused on delivering what is expected from us and make sure that we set the ground for a new record year in 2026 for the whole group. And this is what we are aiming for, for now. So for this year, gross profit will be new record high and next year, profitability in total, new record high numbers. And this is based on a market which is roughly 20%, 25% below what we saw in the last record year. So the potential coming after this keeps being there and needs to be exploited by us. So we have a lot to do. See you in 3 months here.

Thank you. Goodbye.

Bye-bye.