Multitude Aktie

Q1 2026 Earnings Call. My name is Adam Hansson-Tönning. I'm the Head of IR and Treasury of Multitude, and I'll be your host today. Today's presenters will be our CEO, Antti Kumpulainen; and CFO, Bernd Egger, who will walk you through our Q1 2026 results.

Following the presentation, we will open the line for a Q&A session. I'll now hand over to Antti to get us started. Antti, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining us. My name is Antti Kumpulainen. I'm the CEO of Multitude Group. During today's call, our CFO, Bernd Egger, and I will walk you through Multitude's Q1 2026 results. The first quarter reflects disciplined execution of our long-term strategy, while profitability development is expected to be weighted toward the later part of the year, we continue to make strong progress on the strategic priorities that we have communicated to the market.

Today, there are five key takeaways we would like to highlight. First, group fee and commission income increased significantly by EUR 2.5 million year-on-year to EUR 4.9 million. This demonstrates our ability to generate recurring and resilient revenue streams.

Second, our share of results from associates increased strongly to EUR 1.1 million, reflecting the continued good performance of our strategic investments.

Third, asset quality continued to improve. Impairment losses decreased by 18.8% year-on-year to EUR 18 million. This is a continuation of the positive development we have seen for several years already.

And fourth, during the quarter, we successfully issued EUR 70 million of perpetual notes, strengthening the IFRS equity position of the group and supporting future growth.

And fifth, we confirm our EUR 30 million net profit guidance for 2026, together with the outlook of 20% annual net profit growth, both in 2027 and 2028.

Let me briefly recap who we are and where we are heading. Multitude is a pan-European FinTech operating with one single EU-wide banking license across 17 European countries. We operate three business units on one shared growth platform, serving consumer, SME and institutional customers.

The company was founded in Finland in 2005 and has been listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in Prime Standard since year 2015. In 2025, we generated EUR 257 million in revenue and EUR 26.6 million in net profit.

And today, we employ around 700 people. We continue to maintain our dividend ambition of distributing between 25% to 50% of annual net profit. For financial year 2025, we have distributed a dividend of $0.55 per share to our investors, corresponding to a payout ratio of 44.2% of net profit.

So this is a business with 2 decades of operating history, an established regulated footprint and what we see as a long runway still ahead. Turning to the group highlights from the first quarter of '26. Revenue for the quarter was EUR 61.6 million. The development reflects changes in our product offering and portfolio composition, partly offset by the very strong growth in fee income.

Fee and commission income increased by more than 105% year-on-year to EUR 4.9 million, driven mainly by the Consumer segment. At the same time, impairment losses improved significantly, decreasing by 18.8% or EUR 4.2 million year-on-year.

Net loans and investments grew in total by 23.5%, demonstrating strong demand on the market. Net profit for the quarter was EUR 4.4 million. This performance is fully in line with the expected phasing of profitability development during 2026 where we expect stronger contribution during the later quarters of the year.

Going forward, we continue to focus on profitable and scalable growth through organic execution, partnerships and selected M&A opportunities while maintaining high asset quality.

Moving to our largest and oldest business unit, Consumer Banking. The first quarter reflects continued portfolio optimization together with strong progress in asset quality improvement. Interest income and profitability were impacted by changes in portfolio composition and product offering, which were implemented intentionally as part of our asset quality strategy.

At the same time, fee income increased significantly to EUR 4.3 million compared to EUR 1.9 million in Q1 last year. Asset quality strengthened further with impairments decreasing by over 21% year-on-year, supporting profitability. The portfolio continued to grow by 7.6% year-on-year.

Going forward, our focus remains on disciplined growth, increasing recurring income streams, partnerships, selective M&A opportunities and continued automation-driven scalability improvements.

In SME banking, the key focus remains execution, efficiency and automation on our path towards sustainable profitability. Net loans and investments increased by 19% year-on-year, with secured lending now representing 31% of the total portfolio.

Portfolio growth accelerated beyond full year '25 levels in the first quarter, while the revenue contribution from new business is expected to materialize progressively over time. Profitability development in the quarter reflects continued investments in growth and portfolio expansion together with higher provisioning levels.

Importantly, impairment ratios remained stable despite the rapid growth of the portfolio. Our focus for 2026 remains very clear, transitioning CapitalBox into sustainable profitability while continuing to improve scalability through automization, data, AI and risk innovations.

Wholesale Banking, our new business unit, continued its very strong growth trajectory during the first quarter. Net loans and investment increased significantly to EUR 258 million, supported by strong execution across the secured debt pipeline. Profitability development continued to outperform revenue growth with EBT growth exceeding 400% year-on-year.

That's amazing. At the same time, Payment Services continue to benefit from scalable infrastructure and increasing customer onboarding activity. The focus going forward remains on growing the secured portfolio and expanding the Payment Solutions customer base across the EEA region.

Our ambition for Wholesale Banking remains very clear, and we continue to see substantial term -- long-term growth potential in this business unit as well. Let me also briefly touch upon the acquisition of a majority stake in Sortter Oy, which we announced yesterday and why we see this as a very attractive strategic investment for Multitude.

Sortter is a fast-growing Finnish FinTech company focused on consumer and SME financing comparison services. And today, it's already one of the leading players in Finland within its segment.

In 2025, Sortter generated EUR 17.2 million in revenue and EUR 1.6 million in net profit, making this not only a strategic investment, but also an attractive financial investment for the group. For us, the strategic fit is very strong. We have already been a shareholder in Sortter since 2023.

And over that period, we have seen firsthand the quality of the management team, the scalability of the platform and the strong market positioning the company has built. Importantly, Sortter will continue to operate independently under its existing brand, platform model and management team. We believe this entrepreneurial setup has been one of the key success factors behind the company's strong development.

At the same time, Multitude brings significant expertise in digital consumer and SME finance, together with extensive operational experience across 17 European markets. We believe this creates a strong foundation to support Sortter in evaluating and potentially executing international expansion opportunities over time.

The transaction also supports our long-term strategy of diversifying group revenues through recurring fee income streams. We see significant long-term potential in the business and believe the combination creates value both strategically and financially for Multitude.

With that, I will now hand over to our CFO, Bernd Egger, who will guide you more closely through the Q1 financially and the underlying dynamics behind them. All yours, Bernd.

Many thanks, Antti. Welcome also from my side. Good morning from Helsinki, and I'm actually super happy that I can start with a positive message. I like this sort of story a lot, and we will certainly have the opportunity to talk about that. And going forward, we will also apparently include Sortter in our presentation.

Now let's talk about P&L in a little bit more detail. As always, I would like to focus on key messages. Key message number one, when it comes to revenue, when it comes to growth dynamics, revenue reflects the deliberate changes in the portfolio composition and product offering. This is especially true for the consumer business. It's not a new message. We have been explaining that over the last quarter as well. We are repositioning our offering in a number of markets.

We have sold some businesses in order to focus on recurring businesses. So this is absolutely intentional that we accept a short-term drop in revenue. Message number two, asset quality continued to improve significantly. Message number three, profitability is in line with the expected phasing of the year.

In fact, budgeting is an internal number, but nevertheless, I would like to also share that we are slightly above budgeted levels. Let's go into the details of our financial KPIs. Revenue, EUR 61.6 million compared to EUR 66.8 million Q1 last year. But in comparison to Q4, we again see an increase quarter-on-quarter in terms of revenue.

Interest income, EUR 56.7 million. That compares to EUR 64.4 million in 2025, decreased EUR 7.7 million, and that is essentially driven by the factors that I just explained.

Fee and commission income developed very strongly. We are super proud of that, increased to EUR 4.9 million compared to EUR 2.4 million in Q1 '25, an increase by EUR 2.5 million or 106%. Also on a very positive note, net fee and commission income increased even more from EUR 1.9 million to EUR 4.6 million last year to this year, up 140%.

Fair value and foreign exchange gains and losses contributed positive EUR 0.3 million in Q1 compared to negative EUR 0.7 million in Q1 '25. This includes also positive effects related to earn-out valuation from sold businesses.

And finally, the [ Pata ] profit share from investments in associates, Lea and Sortter increased to EUR 1.1 million, more than doubled from EUR 0.5 million in Q1 2025. This results in net operating income of EUR 51.2 million, slightly below last year's level.

Credit losses, Q1 '26 came in at EUR 18 million compared to EUR 22 million in Q1 '25, improvement EUR 4.2 million or 18.8%. Outstanding remarkable, we will look into that in more detail to understand -- so to help you understand the drivers behind that.

Personnel and G&A expenses increasing a little bit by some EUR 1.9 million, reflecting continued investments in growth in operational capabilities and scalability. Finally, all of that translates into profit before tax, EUR 5.1 million in Q1. Net profit EUR 4.4 million. So this is somewhat below the EUR 7.2 million, which we had in Q1 2025, which was an outstanding and extraordinary performance in Q1 2025.

So from that perspective, we are somewhat below last year's level. However, we are on track to EUR 30 million net profit guidance for the full year.

Let's very briefly talk about assets, super simple message when it comes to the main drivers behind the EUR 200 million increase in our total banking assets. One is portfolio growth, EUR 30 million, EUR 32 million portfolio from end of year. But -- and this is also very important when it comes to managing growth expectations.

The portfolios, total portfolios increased by more than EUR 180 million compared to Q1 2025. All of our three businesses increased their portfolios quite significantly. Second driver behind increase in assets is EUR 175 million additional cash. And for that, in turn, two drivers. One is deposit increase in order to support the business for the remainder of the year.

And number two, the successful issuing process of the perpetual bonds that we completed in Q1. That, in turn, is reflected in equity and liability. Apparently, deposits up to EUR 1.2 billion and equity ratio increased significantly. We now hold almost EUR 250 million in equity on the balance sheet.

And that in turn means that as a result, the balance sheet at the end of Q1 is characterized by significantly stronger liquidity position than in the past and stronger equity. And that, in the end, in addition, of course, to the human resources and technology is everything we need to grow the business going forward.

Let's briefly talk about the segment performance. Consumer Banking Ferratum revenue EUR 45.3 million, -- that is somewhat lower than last year. But again, I would like to reiterate, adjusting for businesses sold, adjusting for the temporary effect of reduction in revenue in some of those markets, which is an investment into future growth, we are actually back to growth mode.

So that is in combination with the fact that also portfolio already increased by almost EUR 40 million compared to last year, very positive note. And again, super important for our monetization strategy on top of the Sortter business that we just briefly touched upon fee income.

Fee income in the consumer business increased very strongly to EUR 4.3 million, up almost 130%. Credit losses, just a very quick look as we will go into this topic in a little bit more detail a little later. Nonetheless, I need to highlight that EUR 15 million. You will recall that we had levels of EUR 20 million, EUR 22 million, EUR 23 million over the last couple of years.

Portfolio is increasing. Credit losses are decreasing very significantly, supported also by a couple of hundred thousand from macroeconomic effects. So really, really top performance when it comes to credit loss management, underwriting portfolio management.

So really outstanding performance. Profit before tax, EUR 5.2 million. And again, EBT is lower than last year, but still the growth dynamic that we have from a portfolio perspective supports future growth, and we have a more diversified revenue mix and business is expected to benefit from both this improved revenue mix and top asset quality. Let's move on to SME. CapitalBox Revenue going up slightly to EUR 8.8 million compared to EUR 8.6 million last year, increased 2.8% portfolio increasing quite significantly to almost EUR 172 million.

Credit losses on the same level as last year, EUR 2.7 million. So that is important since a couple of years ago, we had issues with asset quality very well under control now. So both growth dynamics are there, need to be accelerated. Asset quality is good.

Operating expenses up by a little bit more than EUR 1 million. But again, that is something that we look at as an investment in future growth in automation and data and risk innovation.

Profit before tax, minus EUR 1.7 million. I don't want to repeat what Antti just said. The message is very clear. Our expectation and CapitalBox management expectation is to fully focus on turning portfolio growth into profitability.

Finally, Wholesale Banking, the success story continues. Wholesale delivered a quite strong or actually a very strong quarter performance. Revenue increased to EUR 7.5 million compared to EUR 4.5 million last year, Q1, up almost 70%. Portfolio increased 86%. So there is a lot of traction in this business. Net interest income more than doubled to EUR 3.8 million.

Credit losses remain on a low level, EUR 0.4 million. And all of that in combination with a slightly higher investment in operating expenses results into a profit before tax of EUR 1.5 million compared to EUR 2.3 million last year.

So I fully echo Antti's words here. This is an amazing development in Q1. Asset quality. This slide, I will not spend too much time on that. It's not really the exact number that is of relevance here, but it's the trend. And the trend is very clear. Most of you might be familiar with this slide.

Trend downward sloping means that credit losses over asset or portfolio size is dropping significantly. Asset quality is increasing significantly with an extraordinary low level of below 2% on a quarterly level. So this is really, in the end, the continuation of an excellent trend over the last couple of quarters.

Similar picture when it comes to credit loss development on the level of the three businesses. Consumer Banking down to EUR 15 million in terms of -- in relation to the portfolio size, all-time low, reflects enhanced underwriting and this strategy. So you need to see those two factors in connection. These are two sides of one on the same coin, accepting a drop in revenue in order to build up a portfolio that is more sticky that generates recurring revenues and that is also reflected by lower credit losses and higher asset quality.

So those two messages need to be read in conjunction. SME Banking, finally, EUR 2.7 million, slightly above last year, but again, adjusting for volume on an excellent level. Wholesale Banking, all exposures in Wholesale Banking are underpinned by collateral, and this is represented in very low credit loss levels.

In short, key message is asset quality continues to strengthen further. Funding structure, not too much to explain here. You're all familiar with our ambition to maintain a balanced funding mix. This still holds true. Focus number one is deposits. That helped us to reduce weighted average cost of funding quite significantly over the last couple of quarters down to 3.4%. That is important.

Second key message that is important is the successful placement of the EUR 70 million perpetual bond. This is IFRS equity, and that supports our ambition to grow throughout '26 and then also, of course, '27. And as additional information or an indication rather than former information, but nonetheless important, we believe in future growth, and this is why we are preparing the issuance of an additional Tier 1 instrument on the level of the bank during the second half of this year.

And what does it actually mean in terms of where we want to be and where we are heading for '26? Naturally, we confirm our net profit. We are on track. We absolutely believe that in terms of net profit with the factors that we have outlined, the portfolio growth, but also increased contribution from earn-out is not fully reflected in P&L, we are in a position to close the gap and get to EUR 30 million.

And also naturally, then as a consequence of that, the ambitions and plans and guidance metrics for '27 and beyond remain valid.

With that, Adam, I hand back over to you.

Thank you, Bernd. Thank you, Antti. We will now open the line for questions. But we will start with questions and then continue to written questions.

I believe our first question comes from Roni from Inderes.

Maybe first about the cost level, especially in SME banking. So does this represent a new higher recurring cost level? Or was there some one-off costs? And maybe how confident are you that the growth investments will materialize in the top line soon enough in order to reach profitability in '26?

If I start first on that. So yes, the operating expenses were slightly higher, but we are not seeing that, that trend would continue vice versa that we are now making lots of investments into turning around CapitalBox business, even further automization, use of AI, making sure that the cost will go down.

That is one of the priorities. But it's not only about cost saving here or being more effective on the cost side, we also need to grow the top line as well. But we cannot grow it widely. We have to make it really smartly so that we don't have the impairment losses following. So it's fine line where we have to operate.

But we have a clear plan with management of CapitalBox how to get this forward to the right pace. And we are on the right pace, but we will see the results later on this year.

Then about Consumer Banking as the interest income was partly burdened by regulatory interest rate caps. So can you comment on the outlook of possible other interest rate caps going forward in other countries?

At the moment, we do not see that there would be any significant interest rate caps imposed in any of our countries that would materially change our profile.

Then about Sortter. So have there been some business opportunities with Sortter that you haven't been able to pursue when you were a minority owner? Or is it continuing fully independently? And maybe what type of synergies are there on top of just equity sharing?

Thank you. First of all, like I said, we see that Sortter is an excellent financial investment and an excellent strategic investment. But it's extremely important to highlight that Sortter will continue with its own brand platform and own management. We do not want to start affecting that.

What we can bring on the table is more support from the group side from a financial perspective. We have a lot of international experience naturally. But the day-to-day work and strategic outlook is from Sortter management and Sortter is staying independent within Multitude Group.

Are you able to comment on the valuation of the deal, for example, in terms of revenue multiples?

Bernd, do you want to...

Compared to...

Ring valuation and pricing. Now in the end, it's a little bit of a moving target. We closed the transaction yesterday, but when it comes to finalizing, some remaining variable components that need to flow into the final calculation, purchase price allocation, all that will be done over the next couple of weeks. So this will be disclosed in H1.

We think apparently that the valuation is quite attractive for us. Otherwise, we would not have done it. And I would also like to put it a little bit into perspective about growth driving and why we think that this is a value creator.

We have disclosed a number of, I think, EUR 17.2 million revenue. But again, if you put that into the historic perspective, you're coming from -- they are coming from now. We are coming from EUR 8 million, EUR 10 million, EUR 17 million. So this is an absolute fantastic growth case and it's 1% in line with our fee generation strategy.

So from that perspective, we think that the valuation, and again, we will disclose details is absolutely attractive.

How does the outlook of Sortter look in '26 in terms of revenue and profit?

Well, I mean, Sortter is not part of -- or has not been part of the organization when we issued our guidance. So I'm a little bit -- or we are reluctant on behalf -- speaking on behalf of Antti as well to give -- make forward-looking statements. What I can say, though, is that there is a lot of growth momentum.

So I think we are also seeing -- if you take a closer look at the Wholesale Banking associate contribution from profit, you will also be able to calculate the profitability level is going up quite significantly. So we are very optimistic about future contribution, both in terms of top line and profit contribution.

Then one more question about the guidance. So did I understand correctly that you should have -- should be able to make the guidance totally organically. So it didn't include M&A, for example, like? And maybe what are the main factors that properly is weighted on H2?

Maybe to put the whole thing into perspective, we are at EUR 4.5 million now. We need to get to EUR 30 million. I think a key driver #1 is portfolio. This is why we wanted to really make sure that everybody understands that portfolio has increased very significantly, so EUR 180 million compared to last year. So this is driver number one.

Driver number two, cost, we have spoken a lot about efficiency gains that is not going to change. Then there are a couple of technical aspects. For instance, from sold businesses, this is super relevant for the consumer performance.

We've incurred EUR 3 million earn-out and IFRS logic dictates that only a fraction of that EUR 0.9 million was reflected in the P&L in Q1. Not promising anything, but should this earn-out level on a monthly basis remain constant, and this is going to be an upside -- when it comes to M&A, the logic was that we aim at achieving EUR 30 million without M&A.

Should M&A transaction help us or accelerating the path to getting there, then we naturally like such transactions. But we're not going to change the guidance at this stage.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Julius Neittamo from NuWays.

Congratulations on the Q1 results. So my first question is about the fee and commission income. So I understand that the share of the fee and commission income comes from divested entities for now your clients.

So I would like to understand how sticky is this relationship with these entities? How concentrated is the risk? And then secondly, how is the fee and commission income developing with completely new customers?

The fee income, yes, you're right that from divested companies, what you see on the consumer side, yes, partly from that is coming from there, but we also have partnerships bringing in -- especially in Poland, significant fee income. Also, when you look on the Wholesale Banking perspective, payment solutions are bringing in the fee income part fully from that side.

Stickiness, I mean, they are sticky as long as we can serve them with the quality we have, and we are really aiming to do that. It's in any other business, it's recurring from that perspective that the customers are happy with us and that we get in the fee income from that perspective. Perhaps you can comment on the divested entities a bit.

Yes, absolutely. I mean the logic here is that we provide services, I don't necessarily want to use big terms such as Banking as a Service, Software as a Service. But in the end, it's a recurring fee income, a couple of hundred thousand each month. Cooperation is going very well. We do not rather think in terms of stickiness, but rather how we can expand that to other clients as well. We have no reason to believe that this is not going to continue beyond the remainder of the year.

All right. No, understood. Then on Wholesale Banking. So if I saw correctly, the performance this quarter was very strong. It was somewhat weaker than in Q4. So can you maybe tell me again what were the drivers behind the strong performance? And should we expect kind of volatility in the top line growth throughout the year, like big jumps like we saw between -- from Q4 to Q1?

Well, the performance, like you said, was really good and comparing year-on-year, so extremely great growth. When it comes to volatility, so the dynamics are slightly different between Wholesale Banking and consumer, for instance. First of all, the number of customers is completely different. And once there are bigger cases, the portfolio there might be a month that we don't have too many bigger cases coming in.

And then next month onwards, we might have three or four big cases in. So from that perspective, for instance, the net receivables perspective, the volatility can actually be upwards quite high when it comes to net loans and investments. Of course, at that point, once we underwrite and ship out the money, then we always make the provisioning. So it's also impacting immediately on the P&L line.

When it comes to Payment Solutions, which is an important part of Wholesale Banking as well, that is not as volatile as you will be describing since we have institutional customers operating their payment businesses, which we are then supporting them on.

So the volumes are quite stable and these customers are not either there but changing their providers that often or redirecting the traffic differently. So from that side, there was no volatility.

Maybe one addition, if I may. With regards to the specific question, Q4, Q1 Wholesale Banking. And I somehow sense that you have your financial model in the back of your head when you raised this question. We had EUR 1.2 million fee income in Q4, EUR 600,000 in Q1 with around about EUR 600,000 onetime effect in Q4.

So when you think in terms of your financial model, then I would maybe disregard this EUR 600,000 onetime effect from Q4.

Thank you for clarifying that.

Yes. Thank you Bernd. Then maybe again on the cost-income ratio, and apologies, I think Roni might have asked this, but I missed the answer. So maybe the cost-income ratio jumped quite a bit. So could you provide the granularity what were the drivers behind this? Is this kind of the ramping up of the fee income business or wholesale banking ramp-up that is driving also a bit these costs? Or...

There are from cost-to-income ratio. Obviously, there are not only onetime, but like I said, we have been investing a lot of now to new technologies and also certain business units such as Wholesale Banking, as you're rightfully so saying, is something we are still ramping up, which comes with the cost.

But the long-term and mid- to long-term view for us is really clear that we are going to get the cost-to-income ratio down. Of course, then when you have a different restructuring, et cetera, the cost will come down.

And you see the scalability in the more mature businesses. So for instance, in consumer, there is no cost increase. I mean it's operating on a stable cost base. In the other two, we have between EUR 1 million, EUR 1.5 million, EUR 2 million cost increases, and that is what is needed in order to accelerate growth, we want to make sure that we have the resources in place to work on the deal pipeline in Wholesale Banking to establish the processes, the systems. So this is to be seen as an investment.

Thank you. We will then continue to take questions. Starting with 2 questions from Andreas Pläsier at Warburg. On CapitalBox, we have already talked a bit about it. But our guidance calls for a single-digit EBT for the full year. Can we provide some more color on the operational measures that we have for this turnaround? We have already mentioned the portfolio growth, but what else is in our toolbox?

Yes. So that's a really good question. So our portfolio has to obviously grow in order to get interest income. But how to get there is an excellent question. And it comes from -- first thing is speed. We have to be even faster than we are today serving our customers so that we can also choose the best quality customers on the market.

This is important also the previous question was a bit about the cost-to-income ratio, and that we have to also get in a better shape. And it comes with more automated processes, more use of AI, more speed and quality. That's how we see. And we have a clear plan with the management how to drive that forward.

Indeed. And how should we think about -- how should investors think about the impairments when progression when the loan book is growing?

Yes, whether we like it or not, growth is to be seen again in conjunction with credit losses. For instance, CapitalBox, as we are specifically talking about CapitalBox, increasing from EUR 2.5 million to EUR 2.7 million comparing the respective 2 first quarters of the year, '25 and '26. Is that a bad thing? No, it's not because portfolio increased quite significantly during that period of time.

So this is something that we think is just to be accepted. Naturally, mid to long term, I think this whole trajectory of reducing credit losses over portfolio size, improving asset quality, I think that is one of the three main drivers of profit that we also presented at Capital Markets Day over the last couple of earnings calls.

So the expectation is that we will, in absolute numbers, see a slight increase, but aggressive when it comes to volume development.

Another question from Warberg on Wholesale Banking. So Wholesale Banking has now delivered exceptional EBT growth in Q1 and is emerging as a key profit driver. With the business unit CEO departing in April, can you walk us through how management is ensuring continuity of client relationships, deal pipeline momentum? And how sensitive is the 50% EBT CAGR target setting that we announced on the Capital Markets Day?

Yes. Obviously, Alain did a great job in ramping up the Wholesale Banking. How we see it at the moment? Of course, we are looking to have a successor there. And at the moment, we are working -- I'm really involved at the moment in Wholesale Banking, secure debt and payments business myself. That was the unit that was helping us to set up a couple of years ago as well. So I know the business really well.

And nothing is in the company pending on one person. So we have a really great team in Wholesale Banking secure debt. The customer relationships are handled by the team. And I think we have a really bright future ahead of us like we have had right path already with the Wholesale Banking. I'm not worried.

Thank you. While we are on Wholesale Banking, we have another question from a private investor. Could you walk us through a bit the nature of the fee and commission income in the wholesale banking? What drives it? And how is it structured?

Yes. So mainly comes from payment business. So this is quite simple. We are processing payments on behalf of payment service providers, electronic money institutions. And we take a fee per transaction and then there are certain tiers as many transactions you are doing. There are minimum minimum fees and, of course, tiered transactions.

So the more transactions we are processing, the more fees we are getting on a monthly basis. And this is distributed by multiple customers, a couple of big ones and then smaller ones. And it's important to understand that once you onboard an electronic money institution or a payment service provider, you onboard, you start with a pretty, how would I say, slow in a sense, ramping up period that both parties are comfortable how we are working before we really ramp up. This is how the business works.

Thank you, then we have two similar questions on earnings progression. We have covered it a bit already that we have confirmed our full year guidance, but how should investors think about earnings progression through the year?

Full speed, And then we have EUR 4.4 billion. The mathematics linear extrapolation will not be enough to do the trick that's clear. But I think I've touched -- briefly touched upon three factors. One is portfolio growth. Here, we see quite significant momentum. Secondly is revenue growth. I've mentioned that Q1 revenue performance is already above the level of Q4 last year.

Number three, this phasing of profitability. So what we are seeing here is exactly in line with the plan of the ramp-up of the portfolios that we have reorganized where the offering has been changed in a couple of markets in the consumer business.

Number four, earn-out, I've mentioned that EUR 3 million connected cash from earn-out only EUR 0.9 million reflected in P&L. So this is an upside potential. And number five, the expectation that we remain as successful when it comes to credit loss management as expected.

Maybe just to put it in perspective, it's, of course, fair to compare the EUR 4.4 million to the EUR 7.2 million that we had last year. But 1 year before that, we had EUR 2.5 million net profit in Q1 and achieved EUR 20.5 million net profit. So this means that roughly 12% to 13% of the full year net profit was achieved in Q1.

Now we're talking about 15%, so relatively speaking, better. And with these drivers, it's obviously not guaranteed and a lot of actions need to work out well, but it's absolutely realistic. We have just completed the 2 days leadership team workshop here in Helsinki and confirmed internally and join forces behind this target, and we're optimistic.

Thank You, Then we have another question on the cash level that we have roughly EUR 480 million end of Q1. The question is why so much cash? I believe we have had this question before, but it's worth repeating the message.

Yes, there are two factors. One is the regulatory requirements that come with operating a bank. This is one. Nonetheless, we hold quite some, I would say, around about EUR 100 million, even a little bit more cash that is ready to be distributed to businesses. So I'm -- we are counting on our CEOs on the level of the three businesses to distribute and bring those -- bring the cash to revenue generating assets.

And then we have a temporary effect that has to do with the replacement of the perpetual bond, and that will, in the end, result in outflow, double-digit outflow in beginning of July this year, so that then we will see a cash outflow.

Yes. That was the next question, what is the plan with the 2021 perpetual bond? But as you said, it will be called on the update.

Yes, yes, exactly.

We'll announce very soon. I think that marks the end of the questions that we have received. So with that, we would like to thank you for your interest in Multitude today. And please tune in for our H1 earnings call on the 13th of August. Thank you, and goodbye.

Thank you.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. My name is Adam Hansson-Tonning. I'm the Head of IR and Treasury at Multitude. We appreciate taking the time to join us in today's call.

Today, we're going to present Multitude's 2025 preliminary results. And joining us today in today's broadcast from Helsinki, Finland is Multitude's CEO, Antti Kumpulainen; and CFO, Bernd Egger. After the presentation, we will have a Q&A session, where participants have the opportunity to ask questions via telephone conference or using the chat function in the webcast.

With no further ado, Antti.

Thank you, Adam, and welcome on my behalf as well. My name is Antti Kumpulainen, and I'm the CEO of Multitude Group. During this call, I will walk you through Multitude's earnings call and preliminary results for year 2025 with our CFO, Mr. Bernd Egger.

The year 2025 was a strong showcase of increasing our profitability and meeting our guidance, which we adjusted already after the first quarter last year. Today, we want to share with you with some key takeaways. First, our revenue continued to be stable. Interest revenue decreased slightly, but it was largely compensated by increased recurring fee income. Secondly, we delivered again a strong net profit, which increased by almost 32% to EUR 26.6 million.

Third, impairment losses on loans decreased over 15% year-on-year. Fourth, we confirm our net profit guidance with 20% net profit increase per annum for 2027 and '28. And fifth, we can state that our tri-pillar growth strategy is bringing the results we have been planning.

I would also like to note that we have successfully refinanced our perpetual bond with an increased volume from EUR 45 million to EUR 70 million, and this is strengthening our financial position and enabling further growth for Multitude.

I would like to recap briefly who we are and where we are heading. Multitude was founded in Finland in 2005. Our registered city is in Switzerland. We operate with a full EU-wide banking license and we are also listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in the Prime Standard. We operate 3 independent business units on our growth platform, serving customers which are overlooked by traditional banks in consumer, SME and institutional client segments. Our operations expand to 17 European countries and we are focused in EEA markets.

Net profit in 2025, like I said, was EUR 26.6 million, and we exceeded our guidance. Revenue in 2025 was almost EUR 257 million, and our ambition is to pay dividend between 25% and 50% of the net profits.

Since the beginning of our company, we have always strived to build and offer services to customers who are overlooked by traditional banks. Our vision is to build the most valuable financial platform for them. We believe this can be achieved by offering an amazing customer experience that's digital, fast, easy and also a green choice.

Our FinTech growth platform serves as the core with scalable components hosting our own business units. The platform currently serves our 3 business units which are: Consumer Banking with Ferratum brand; business banking, CapitalBox, which focuses on digital SME banking; and our newest business unit, Wholesale Banking, with Multitude Bank brand. Our focus on the platform is to enhance scalability and constantly seek and be ready for new opportunities.

We have 2 investments in associated companies: Lea Bank, which is a Swedish bank; and Sortter, which is a digital loan broker. And Sortter was, by the way, recently listed in the top 1,000 fastest-growing companies in Europe by Financial Times. That's quite an achievement.

Dynamics in our strategy, they are quite simple. We concentrate on our three-pillar growth strategy, which consists of organic growth, partnerships and M&A transactions. Creating true value for our customers is in the middle of everything we do, scalability, which comes through AI, automation and a tight cost control.

Let's take a closer look into the performance of Multitude in 2025, which showed a strong net profit growth and further improved asset quality. Revenue development was stable and interest revenue was complemented with a significant increase in recurring fee revenue. Total revenue was EUR 257 million. Asset quality, this is important for us. That continued to improve, and impairments decreased by over 15% year-on-year, and we have seen this trend for a long time already.

Net profit grew by over 32% to EUR 26.6 million, exceeding our guidance of EUR 24 million to EUR 26 million. As we stated out earlier during the year, we reduced 1/3 of our legal entities. Each of our business units, they are in different life cycle and each one is contributing to these results. Our investment in Lea Bank shares has continued, and our stake has increased to 29.7%, and we are the largest shareholder in Lea Bank.

Going forward, we have clear focus. We are focusing on growing our business through our three-pillar growth model which are organic growth, partnerships and through selected M&A transactions; continue increasing our recurring fee income, and through that, we want to diversify our revenue profile in Multitude; maintaining high asset quality; we also need to achieve our net profit guidance of EUR 30 million in 2026, and after that, 20% growth per annum in years '27 and '28.

Then let's go to our business units. Next up is our business units, which we'll start with Consumer Banking, Ferratum. Ferratum has been our core business unit for 20 years and is still growing as the assets grew by over 8% in 2025. Interest income reduced slightly, but it was largely compensated by recurring fee revenue as per our strategy. Asset quality continued to improve and impairments went down by whopping 18%.

Three-year target in Ferratum is an EBT CAGR growth of 10% in the coming years. Focus for Ferratum is on high-profit markets, growth through partnerships and M&A opportunities. Streamlining of operations, scalability and continuing the increase of automation and extensive usage of data and rolling out AI are in the core of the activities.

Next, we will take a look at our business banking unit, CapitalBox. Revenue and portfolio continued to grow as planned. Our target was to reach profitability in quarter level end of 2025 which, unfortunately, we did not achieve. The development was anyway really good and we managed to reduce the losses by more than half. Asset quality continued improving and it led to a decrease in impairments by 15%.

Change in portfolio composition was clear and planned. Now 30% of the portfolio is in Secured Debt, and the total portfolio grew by over 8%. We have full focus in '26 to turn CapitalBox into profitability for the whole year of '26, and after that, 50% EBT CAGR following in the coming years. We believe we can make it.

Our youngest business unit, Wholesale Banking, they had a great growth numbers. Revenue grew by almost 70%, EBT by over 160% and portfolio by over 80%. Those are amazing numbers. Focus is clear: grow both sides of the business, which are Secured Debt and Payment Solutions.

There's a healthy mix of interest and recurring fee income in Wholesale Banking business units. Focus in this business unit is an EEA area. The team is now focusing on closing the secure debt pipeline, which is really strong at the moment. Same goes for the payment services. Now it is time to execute. Our 3-year target is growth in EBT by 50% CAGR.

Next, you will hear more in detail about the financials from our CFO, Mr. Bernd Egger. Please.

Thank you, Antti. Time to execute, that's a good starting point. Let me take a look at the key messages I want to bring across for 2025. Message number one, top line development revenue, broadly stable with a shift from interest income to fee income. This is super important to us. We've been working on this for several years now. Message number two, impairment losses decreased by 15.5%. Message number three, maybe the most relevant, net profit is an all-time high level.

The details. Interest income, EUR 242 million, down 7.3% from last year. However, fee income increased very significantly to EUR 15 million last year from EUR 2.6 million in 2024, so a factor of 6. Other income, EUR 3.3 million, including positive effects from entities sold during the year.

And results from associates, Antti already highlighted that we have 2. That's Lea Bank, we hold close to 30%, and Sortter. To be precise, by the way, Sortter is not only amongst the top 1,000. It's in the top quartile. It's on position 234 of European fastest-growing companies. So really a top, top, top achievement.

Operational expenses. Personnel expenses increased only slightly, mainly driven by growth initiatives. Selling and marketing and depreciation netting each other, also neutral. And that gets us to profit before tax of EUR 30.8 million, up by 1/3 from EUR 23.2 million last year.

Net profit, as pointed out, EUR 26.6 million, exceeding the initial guidance, so 16.6% above the initial guidance level of EUR 23 million and 6.5% above the midrange of the guidance, EUR 24 million to EUR 26 million, that we had issued about a year ago. And again, this is all-time high.

Balance sheet. Total assets increased by some 26%, EUR 1.4 billion altogether. Key drivers, loan portfolio and investments increased quite significantly by around about EUR 180 million. Positive statement here from our perspective, super important, all 3 business units are growing significantly. So Wholesale Banking, plus EUR 112 million portfolio size; Ferratum, plus EUR 40 million, so quite a significant increase in the consumer business; and EUR 25 million roundabout in the SME business.

Cash and equivalents increased to EUR 304 million. This supports future growth for 2026. Investments in associates, I've highlighted that already. We're very happy with the investments that we are currently holding.

Balance sheet liabilities and equity. Customer deposits remain the primary source of funding. We're exceeding the EUR 1 billion threshold for the first time. Current year-end, EUR 1.034 billion. Debt securities, up by around about EUR 30 million up to EUR 108 million. Key driver is regulatory capital. So you certainly know we have a bank in our group and have increased for the first time significant Tier 2 transaction on the level of the bank in 2025.

Taking all that together, total equity increased to EUR 208 million, first time above the EUR 200 million threshold, up 7.3%. Perpetual bond qualified as equity, Antti has highlighted already. I will give a little bit more detail on this transaction and the rationale when we talk about funding. And finally, our net equity ratio prior to the new PB transaction was close to 22%, so 400 basis points headroom from relevant covenants.

The segment view. Consumer Banking main focus from my perspective and from our perspective is profitability. We delivered continued high profitability, more than EUR 32 million profit before tax. That is the same level as last year. How do we get there? Interest income, we see a slight decrease, which we think is of temporary nature. Portfolio size increased quite significantly. A drop in interest income offset by a significant increase in the consumer business. Fee income, from EUR 2 million to EUR 12 million in a single year.

In addition, we earned more than EUR 6 million from earnout from businesses that we sold, which is not reflected in revenue. So they have a positive cash impact on the organization at some point. Fair value might be adjusted upwards, but not reflected in revenue.

Net operating income, EUR 176 million. And super important as well, impairment losses continue to decrease, down 18.1% to EUR 67 million. Profit before tax, as pointed out, stable on a super high level, EUR 32.5 million. So very happy with that. Still, the ambition is to grow profitability going forward.

SME, as pointed out, we've made further progress towards sustainable profitability. So we are really almost there. And I'm convinced that in 2026, we will be there. Interest income increased to EUR 35 million. Net operating income, EUR 26 million. Impairment losses, this was one of the key focus areas in '25, reduced by almost 15% to EUR 11.8 million.

And also something that is the result of quite an ambition during the year, operating expenses also reduced in absolute terms, not only relatively, but in absolute terms to EUR 18.7 million. And as a result of that, almost 2/3 of the losses from '27 could be cut in '25. So if we extrapolate linearly, then this makes us comfortable to achieve profitability in 2026.

Wholesale Banking, that's an easy one in a way. Profitable already in '24. Profitability has increased very significantly during '25 from EUR 1.1 million to EUR 2.8 million in revenue. Interest income, EUR 20 million, an increase that is very significant, 2/3, from EUR 13 million.

Fee income, again, something we've been striving for, for many years. Top performance, close to EUR 3 million from only EUR 0.5 million the year before, mainly coming from Payment Solutions. And all that reflects in EUR 2.8 million profit before tax in a still early business with huge potential.

Just a very quick look. I will not run through the details. Key message on credit loss development is, number one, this continues. The improving asset quality continues to be a significant profitability driver. Number two, despite the fact that we had some external challenging factors to be considered, we are super resilient, super stable. So around about EUR 20 million, this is the quarterly credit loss level. On an aggregated level, pretty much stable throughout the year.

Growing volume, stable. Credit losses that, in the end -- if you maybe could switch to the next slide because it doesn't work here anymore. Thank you. That is not the long-term perspective. I was referring to 2025 top performance. Long-term perspective, even more relevant from my perspective, highly resilient business, a clear downward trend which reflects improving asset quality.

Funding structure. Deposit, we spoke about that. We have successfully managed to bring weighted average cost of debt funding down quite significantly from more than 4% to 3.6% during the last year, 3.68% in Q4. That makes us comfortable that this trend will continue, and that is the expectation, the plan for '26.

Super important, Tier 2 transaction successfully placed from EUR 45 million to EUR 70 million. This helps us not only from a liquidity perspective, but also from a capital perspective. This qualifies as IFRS equity and supports growth, both organic growth of the organization, but also gives us a lot of flexibility when it comes to inorganic growth opportunities.

With that, one final and confirming look on our capital market guidance. Statement number one, '25 exceeded, in fact, overachieved, and again, 16.6% above the initial guidance of EUR 23 million. '26 confirmed. We stick to the EUR 30 million net profit guidance.

Operational targets, you are familiar with. A 20% return on tangible equity target that we have introduced for '28. We're getting there. '25, already 16.5% return on tangible equity. That is already very strong. And we are on the way to 20%. Cost-to-income ratio at 48%, very comfortable that we get down to 40% by '28.

Key takeaways. Revenue, stable with a shift to fee income. That is something that is the reflection of our long-term strategy. Asset quality, improving significantly. Net profit up by almost 1/3 to EUR 26.6 million. '26 guidance confirmed, EUR 30 million plus 20% increase thereafter up until 2028. We continue to execute the tri-pillar strategy in delivering the growth. And finally, the information that you received already on the successful PB transaction.

With that, I hand over to the team, and we are open and looking forward to receiving interesting questions.

Yes. Can you shift the slide? So we will now start the Q&A session, and we will start with live questions followed by questions from the chat. Perhaps we can start with a live question.

Roni Peuranheimo from Inderes. Congrats on the good quarter. So maybe if you're thinking about the '26 guidance, so could you maybe rank what is the most important driver? Is it returning to growth or continued lowering of the impairment losses or cost cuts?

If I start. Thank you, Roni. The most important drivers, you mentioned them all already. I believe we have to go really well to the growth path again. I remind you that we are in a good progress of increasing our recurring fee revenues. So this is something that we definitely will continue doing. Growth is coming from all 3 business units, so this is important. And we see that it's really coming from all 3.

Cost control is something we have a really, really tight eye on all the time and usage of AI automization even more widely than we are using it today. These are not new things to us. We have been working with AI machine learning, for instance, in our risk management for years already. And everything is about scalability for our growth next year. That is where we're going to head.

Maybe then regarding the net interest income development. So how much concrete outlook do you have regarding that? And maybe if you can give some estimate about the timeline of the recovery.

Well, recovery, I'm not super happy, if I may be honest, with the recovery term because in 2 out of 3 businesses, net interest income is growing. In the third business, we have three factors to consider. One is, and I'm referring to Consumer now, a shift to fee income. This is not something that happened. This is something that we have intentionally tried to achieve. Now for the first time, we're achieving it. So that's not a negative thing.

Secondly, we have sold businesses. They contribute also to fee income quite significantly. Quite significantly means EUR 5 million in H2. This is service fees, in the end, Software as a Service, Tech as a Service to external partners.

And number three, not reflected in interest income at all is the EUR 6 million from earn-out. So we're selling business. We are getting back a profit contribution from the businesses that we're servicing for externals. And that is, whether we like it or not, the logic of IFRS is something we can debate, but it's not reflected. And if we add that back, then we have no drop in interest income at all in the organization.

So long story short, I think also in Consumer, a EUR 40 million large portfolio, we are very well on track.

[Operator Instructions]

Shall we take some chat questions in between? Yes. All right. So we have a question from [ Thomas Keiser ]. Congratulations to the numbers. A share buyback program would deliver a lot of value. Is this something that you consider?

Do you want to start?

You can start.

I mean, share buyback program is a very interesting topic. We've done a share buyback program in 2025. This is something that is subject to quite heavy regulation so it's limited. So that means as limit is, in the end, some 25% of the shares that we are trading on average, I don't think that it necessarily is something that will be as attractive as some think it might be.

We think that with the capital that we have in the organization, we can do a lot. We can build a substantial increase in business volume, in profitability, potentially engage in M&A transactions. So I don't want to preempt any discussions, but it's not something that I would expect over the next couple of weeks.

Two further questions from the same investor then. In terms of timing of CapitalBox getting into profitability, how do you look at that over the trend of the year, so to say?

I think this is pretty clear. Like Bernd already stated, that we managed to reduce the losses last year of almost 60%. And we can see that the same trajectory is going on. Of course, it doesn't happen over the night. But our target is not to be breakeven in CapitalBox at some point this year.

We are talking about full year of 2026 to be profitable. This is our target. And yes, it's not going to happen perhaps in the first half of the year that we would already be on breakeven point or pretty close to it. But we are looking now for the full 2026. And there, we have a strong commitment of making a positive result for CapitalBox.

Very good. I think we have a question on the audio line.

The next question comes from Julius Neittamo from NuWays.

Congratulations on the results. I have just a very quick question here. So what was the contribution of Wholesale Banking to the fee and commission income in the last quarter?

Well, for the full year, it was EUR 2.9 million in the Wholesale Banking out of EUR 15 million together, consolidated. So EUR 15 million is the whole company, EUR 12 million, Consumer, and EUR 2.9 million, Wholesale.

Wholesale, we have EUR 2.1 million is payment. And out of that, I think we see a clear trend to increase it over the year. So EUR 2.9 million Wholesale out of EUR 15 million, to cut the long story short.

Maybe to expand on the fee and commission income, a bit on the outlook for this year then. Where do you see it evolving from here? I mean we've seen kind of a spectacular growth here this year. How do you see it for this year then?

We see that we are growing this year in recurring fee income for sure. What are the exact numbers? We haven't been disclosing the split between interest revenue and recurring fee revenue. What I can say that the different sources for recurring fee, for instance, is coming from partnerships, which we are looking actively to expand on. And there, we can see more fee income.

Payment side of the Wholesale Banking is growing. Onboarding of institutional clients is going all the time. So we do see a growth which is meaningful for 2026. It's not going to be only slightly. We see meaningful growth in 2026 on both business units on this, Consumer and Wholesale Banking.

All right. Thank you, Julius. We have a question from a private investor on the cash level. EUR 304 million is quite high. Is this level needed for operations? Or do we have any acquisition plans for usage of the cash?

This, I would direct perhaps to Bernd when we talk about money.

Thank you so much. I think there are three questions in this question. First of all, whether we need the cash for M&A transactions. The positive note is we have flexibility currently for M&A transactions both from a cash and from an equity perspective. So we would not be dependent on external funding for those transactions. So this is a very positive factor for us.

Secondly, we have some cash minimum targets on operational level that are important to us that give us the flexibility. Here, we are slightly above the minimum levels.

And the third one is the regulatory ratios that we need to factor in on the level of the bank that have to do with some net sales funding ratios, liquidity coverage ratios on the level of the bank need to be fulfilled at all times. Here, we have a little bit of overliquidity currently. We hope that we can deploy that, and we're optimistic that we can deploy that to business growth in Q1 and Q2.

Thank you. A tied question. What was the average cost of funding? I think we went it through. But how do we perhaps see the development of this going into '26 further?

Yes, if I may continue. Weighted average cost of debt in Q4 is slightly above 3.6%, coming from 4.2% around about a year ago. So that is a 60 basis points reduction in 1 year. Naturally, the ambition is to push down further. We do so by focusing fully to the extent possible on deposits.

We have some old term deposits that we just needed to take in back then that were a bit expensive 24, 36 months. But those are melting off now. So from that perspective, without promising too much, I think the trend that you see on this slide showing the weighted average cost of debt development is a good indicator.

Thank you. And other financing-related question which we have received from multiple questioners. How do we see the dividend based on the results? We didn't mention it in the presentation.

No, we did not mention. The only thing we mentioned actually on the first slide, I believe, or second slide for myself was that, we have already told this in our Capital Markets Day, that we have a strong commitment of targeting 25% to 50% of the net profit of our dividends on an annual basis. And at this point, this is the only statement I will make about the dividends.

Good. And then the final question that we have currently is coming back again to the fee and the commission income and if you could provide some more color on the development of it. I think you already have. But how significant do you see the growth potential in the area is the exact question?

I see the growth potential is significant for sure. Let's remember that we had almost nothing in 2024 when it came to the recurring fee, going up to EUR 15 million in 2025. So we have just started on that path, and we really believe that we will grow significantly. Not to go into exact numbers, but we see a really, really good growth trajectory.

There's lots of demand on payment side for us. There's lots of demand on partnership side, which we are doing really well at the moment. So I see no reason why we wouldn't grow in a meaningful way, contributing to Multitude results.

Thank you. I believe that marks the end of the Q&A session, and it's time to end this earnings call. We thank you for your interest. And we remind that we will publish our full annual report in 2 weeks.

Thank you. See you next time.

Thank you. Have a good day.

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

Helpful -- thanks for you. Okay. Dear investors, partners, friends and colleagues. It's a true pleasure to welcome you all to our Capital Markets Day and at the same time to celebrate the very special milestone multitude 20 years anniversary. I want to start by expressing my gratitude to everyone who has been the part of this journey, our incredible employees, loyal customers, dedicated partners and supportive investors. Each of you has played an important role in shaping who we are today.

A few months ago, we brought our Multitude family to all people back to our routes in Finland, the Finnish countryside to celebrating this milestone. We spent 3 days together. We compete in different sports, listened to inspiration stories from the keynote speakers work it and learn together and, of course, had a lot of fun together as well.

This even unite us as one global team as one Multitude. Today, I'm so proud to stand here in front of you looking back where everything start 20 years ago and where we are today. We have built together something unique. The most important thing for me is that this is just the beginning. The best chapter of our journey are still ahead of us. We have over 20 years successful track record in delivering profit and growth year after year.

We have built the fintech innovation, ranging from digitalized lending to simplify pan-European payment solution. During those 20 years, we have stayed fully focused offering amazing pure digital service to customers who are often overlooked by traditional banks. We operate in 20 countries across Europe with 3 different business units, serving 3 different customer segments on the Multitude platform.

Under Ferratum brand, we specialize in consumer customer. Under Capital Box brand, we focus SME customers and our wholesale customers and payment services are offered under multitude Bank brand. Our team share a dream to change the world by digitalized financing financing and ensuring that all overlook customers are served with amazing experience. We know that when we achieve this, our second dream will come through as well. Scaling our platform further and become a unicorn by 2028.

Magnitude people, our inspiration comes from our vision to build the most valuable financial platform, keep amazing experience for the customers who are often -- who are often overlooked by main street banks. We want to democratize financial service through digitalization, making them fast, easy and green. Our values define who we are and how we success together. Our customers are always heart of everything what we do. Every innovation, every product and every decision starts with their needs. We act bold, [indiscernible], and we dare to innovation. We think like entrepreneurs because that's how real change happened.

We believe in open and honest communication, always with respect for each other. Transparency build trust and trust builds great teams. We treat everyone equal. Our customer partners, colleague, and we take responsibility for impact we have an associated. And finally, winning teams, we achieved our calls together. We learn from challenge, we celebrate success and always strive to become stronger as a One multitude.

Those values are not just a word on the wall, they guide our daily action and shape our culture. The story of Multitude become in 2004, when I read the article about the Bangladeshi entrepreneur who had won the Noble prize in economic for giving us small social loans. It made us think why don't Europe, the consumers have access to fast and pure digital financial solution. At that time, we were a small team in Helsinki, we saw the clear cap in the market and want to change the consumer banking market, make it open, accessible and fully digital. And this is the whole idea of Ferratum was born.

In May 2005, we launched the first fully digital consumer loans in Finland. We didn't know if people won't like it, but very next few days, we received hundreds of application. And our early IT system, we have the blinking lights and the sounds every time when the new loan application came in, and it becomes so constant that we had to turn it off after 2 days. And that was the start of the one of the European more successful fintech story. The next year, we launched in Sweden and Estonia. And again, we found a strong demand. We realize we have found a unique customer segment overlooked by main street banks. And that focus has stayed at the heart of everything we have done over the last 20 years.

Between 2008 and 2011, we expanded rapidly, entering the new countries every 3 months with a great success. By 2009, in the middle of the financial crisis, we begun to thinking about how to secure funding for the long term. We realize that the banking license will be the right solution for us. It's allowing us to take a retail deposit and access European markets like a German, Norway and France, where lending required a full banking license.

After a long process in September 2012, we received our license. We've passported it across Europe and centralized operation under the One banking entity in Malta. From there, we become cross-border lending. People sometimes ask why Malta. The answer is simple. It's a part of Eurozone EU providing the smooth access to euro system. English is also official language, which makes communication easier for a company like ours with 750 people and [ 40 ] nationality. A few years later, in 2015, we listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in the prime standard. We have already issued [indiscernible] Chairman and built a strong investor base there.

The IPO, it gave us EUR 50 million in the new equity to accelerate growth. And for us, the management, it was about building the next chapter. The IPO was turning point. Our first decade has single product strategy, scaling probably into new markets. The next decade called the multiproduct strategy, credit card, credit lines, SME lending, payment and mobile banking, growth stays strong, become more diversified, but also more complex. We have always have been the strong capability simplifying complex through technology, making data-driven decisions and focusing the overlook customers.

At that end of decade, we prepare for the next phase. We rebranded Ferratum brand only for the consumer customers, launched Capital Box brand for the SME customers and true become as a Multitude. As a part of transformation, we also moved our headquarter from Finland to Switzerland. Looking back, I saw the clear pattern. Every year, our strategic generation, how we call those, we build something new, and then we scale it, then we build new and scale it and so on.

And now we are entering the new strategy generation at the same cycle. In recent years, we have built our platform. And now we are scaling it across to all our business. So to summarize, during our first 10 years, we focused on the single product strategy, the next 10 years, the multi product strategy and the coming 10 years on the platform strategy, bringing everything together under one platform and adding partners and acquisition to drive our next generation growth.

But let's take a closer look at the Multitude platform. Our Fintech cloud platform is built around idea that Multitude serve as a core holding on our scalable component just a technology funding and AI tools. We currently have those 3 business units on the platform. We have expanded the platform through partnership and investment in attractive opportunities, including [ just below 30% ] stake in the Swedish digital lender, Leabank, and 20% stake in the fast-growing loan broker Sorter. And we support them with the same dedication as if they were the full owner by us, providing our platform elements to drive [indiscernible] growth, efficient, of course, when they needed that one.

All platform business benefits from each other through the cross-selling. And of course, the while Multitude we came from the growing associate income as the ecosystem profitability increase. Looking ahead, our focus is twofold: improving the business already in our platform and finding the new investment opportunities. So at the Multitude, we have simplified our strategy road map. To achieve our dream to become the unicorn by 2028, we must get 3 things right. revenue up, cost down and value creation for our customers, both group level and every business level.

Our team members will speak more about those all elements they own presentation. But let me repeat, revenue up, cost down and value creation for our customers. So thank you for all the listening me. And now I would like to hand over to Multitude CEO, Antti Kumpulainen. Antti, floor is yours. .

Thank you. Thank you, Jorma. And welcome to the Capital Markets Day part of today on my behalf as well. At our last Capital Markets Day, 2 years ago, we announced our management dream of making a Multitude of EUR 1 billion valued company. That remains a high level of ambition. And today, together with our team, we will open up what the building blocks are and how we aim to make that dream come true. We continue to build on our unique strengths. We have always had a deep understanding of customers who are often overlooked by main street banks for one reason or another. The solution we provide meet specific customer needs in the market, whatever the product is.

Our superb risk management capabilities have consistently enabled superior risk-adjusted returns, and they continue to do so. We keep enhancing our proprietary models and fully leverage our in-house data science capabilities for underwriting and portfolio optimization. To grow profitably, we have rightsized and scalable internal processes, keeping things simple and avoiding unnecessary complexity is the strength across all of our functions and business units

Innovation, yes, that remains key to our success. The entrepreneurial culture we have always had a Multitude is a cornerstone of our innovation process and our ability to make quick decisions to gain competitive advantage. We have 3 key priorities that guide us forward. Firstly, revenue needs to grow, and our tri-pillar growth model consisting of organic growth, partnerships and M&A provides a clear path forward. Historically, our revenue has been based on interest income. That element continues to grow, and we have added recurring fee income to the mix as well.

All of our business units will generate both interest income and recurring fee income when going forward. Secondly, we must be scalable and operationally effective. We continue to simplify and streamline our operations through automization, extensive use of data and deeper embedding of AI functionality, scalability across all of our core processes.

We have also enhanced our resilience in all conditions, diversifying our deposit taking and shifted significantly to newer, cheaper and more effective deposit taking channels, underwriting capabilities across all businesses are a key factor in our success and in keeping costs down. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, we must create value for our customers. That means having a strong USP in each country and product, and this goes for all the business units in multitude. We serve segments of customers who are after overlooked and for our platform customers. We continue to strengthen the value of our platform and drive even greater synergies.

All of this leads to net profit, which we expect to be growing substantially on an annual basis going forward. All of our business units follow our 3-pillar model for growth and diversification of revenue streams. Each of the business units will continue to grow organically as they have done through our 20-year journey in a Multitude. Organic growth will happen in current markets in new markets we will open and through cross-selling of our products to our existing customers. partnerships. They are important for every business unit, though the type of partnership will vary from white label and embedded partnerships, the sales partnerships. This is depending on business units.

We also do see M&A opportunities as an important driver of growth, especially in the Consumer and Business Banking segments. Recurring fee income will play an even more important role in our future revenue streams. Our business unit leaders Kristjan, Mantvydas and Alain will share more in detail later today about how they are going to grow their businesses. increasing scalability and lowering costs even further remain key priorities. We aim to lower our cost-to-income ratio to 40% in the coming years.

Our approach is based on 3 main factors: First, simplification. Multitude group structure has been streamlined from our 40 entities to fewer than 20 today. Our business units now have a clear focus areas, while the group's role is to steer and support and businesses are driving business. Second, accountability. We are in the process of aligning that 80% of the costs will be directly to the businesses that generate them. Costs need to sit where business ownership sits. This drives change, results and accountability.

Third, optimization and innovation. Noncore processes can be outsourced to maintain focus on the business and business only. We continue to optimize actions and processes in every function and unit. We can also do things smarter. The organization can be further optimized and effectivity increased. The increased use of AI and further automation, it's not an option. It's a necessity across the company. AI must be rolled out to all of our processes and tasks, and we will continue investing in our proprietary AI and data platform even more than in the past.

We have delivered a strong profit in a challenging market and have consistently met our guidance for the past 4 years. Earlier this year, we increased our guidance to a range between EUR 24 million and EUR 26 million in net profit. We have maintained that guidance ever since. With the teams I just presented, we are confident we can continue this performance in the future. Later today, our business units will share their targets through 2028. And our CFO, Bernd Egger, will wrap up the group numbers and guidance for you to share.

As Jorma highlighted, the mission is pretty clear. To grow the revenue, lower our cost and deliver sustainable value to our customers and to you, our investors. Now it's time to hear from our business unit leaders, starting with Consumer Banking presented by Kristjan Kajakas. Welcome, Kristjan.

Hello, everyone. I am Kristjan Kajakas, CEO of Consumer Banking, also known as Ferratum. Today, I'll walk you through our plans for the next 3 years, how we intend to reach our growth ambitions and continue delivering profitable sustainable performance. We in Ferratum provide fully digital unsecured lending that helps people manage unplanned financial needs, fast, simple and trusted.

We operate in 13 countries with around 350 employees and managing a EUR 500 million portfolio across Europe. We hold leadership position in the Nordics and Eastern Europe combining local expertise with global efficiency. Our product portfolio includes installment loans, revolving credit and the current account in our mobile application. Our entire value proposition is built on speed, convenience, simplicity and trust, the foundations that deliver customer loyalty and our profitability.

Our customers are financially responsible. Tech savvy individuals who value speed and simplicity when life throws unexpected expenses to their way. They are often overlooked by traditional banks but they deserve access to transparent, flexible and fair solutions. What we offer is uncomplicated fast digital financial services available anytime and anywhere. They are delivered locally with global efficiency. Ferratum ensures every customer receives an experience that is both personal and consistent across all markets. The success of consumer banking is driven by 4 levers. It's the speed, convenience, simplicity and trust.

Our advanced scoring and payments technology enable instant decisions and rapid payouts. Customers enjoy a 100% online, mobile-first experience with minimal friction, no paperwork, no waiting. Operating for nearly 2 decades in regulated markets, we've built a trusted brand recognized for reliability, compliance and customer satisfaction. These 4 levers work together to create a scalable, efficient and customer-focused models that sets us apart in the market.

Our Consumer Banking business continues to deliver solid profitability, supported by scale, portfolio quality and operational efficiency. In the short term, revenue will reflect the planned effects of restructuring, product adjustments in Germany and the interest rate cap in Sweden. These are controlled and well-managed changes designed to strengthen our long-term earnings space. At the same time, fee income is growing. And the credit performance continues to improve, driving a healthier and more resilient earnings profile with profit growth increasingly coming from stronger asset quality and recurring fee income rather than the volume alone.

Our growth model is built on 3 complementary billers, organic growth, partnerships and M&A. Today, around 90% of our revenue comes from our organic business, which continues to grow strongly across all core markets. In the coming years, we aim to complement the organic growth with capital-light partnerships and selective acquisitions that expand our reach and capabilities. This balanced approach keeps our core engine of organic growth at the center, while leveraging partnership and M&A to accelerate innovation, diversify revenues and further strengthen our ecosystem and profitability.

Now I'll walk you through how each of these growth pillars contribute to our long-term profitability. Our organic growth strategy is built on 3 interconnected stages. We have a short-term actions to optimize the funnel, midterm for scaling of products and long-term value through greenfield expansions. We're using a real-time data, advanced scoring models and external data sources to increase approvals without adding risk. Our AI-driven insights support personalized retention and higher customer lifetime value, while autonomous servicing is transforming how we engage customers, already today, automating around 85% of interactions with the ambition to reach 95%.

All of this is powered by our centralized data platform, which processes over 200 million data points daily driving faster and smarter decisions across marketing, risk and operations. Our focus is on profit-driven growth. managing pricing discipline and targeting our customer segment that delivers the best returns. We'll be rolling out bigger installment products to meet broader customer needs and increase share of wallet, while continuing to innovate, building credit card capabilities and enriching our mobile app experience.

Each initiative strengthens customer engagement, boost retention and create sustainable recurring revenue growth. Finally, we take a selective and data-driven approach to new market entries. Our existing digital platform allows us to scale fast in high-potential markets within minimal additional investment, while maintaining full control of pricing, compliance and brand standards. We follow strict capital allocation principles, entering only those markets that meet our yield and risk thresholds. Also, we're exploring to open some new markets during next 2 to 3 years, ensuring every step adds measurable value to our shareholders.

Our ecosystem and underwriting capabilities enable partners to launch digital credit and savings products quickly and seamlessly, all under their own brands. These collaborations generate recurring high-margin fee income without increasing our balance sheet exposure or they help us acquire new customers at a lower cost. It's a capital-light, highly scalable model that extends our reach across fintechs, retail brands and digital platforms, keeping profitability and efficiency at the center of our growth strategy.

We operate through 2 complementary partnership models. First, business-to-consumer model, where we -- where a direct partner integrates Ferratum Power Products into its own brand. We provide the technology, underwriting and operational backbone while the partner manages the customer relationship and front-end experience. Second, the business-to-business-to-consumer model where Ferratum integrates into a platform or network serving multiple sub partners and their customers. This model delivers exponential scalability. One integration connects us to many partners and customer bases.

In both models, Ferratum provides the full product stack from onboarding and decisioning to servicing and compliance, enabling partners to focus entirely on the customer experience while we power everything behind the scenes. Our M&A strategy is disciplined and selective. We target opportunities in portfolio acquisitions, market entries and associated companies that provide us clear strategic fit and meet our return requirements. Every deal must accelerate scale, strengthen our market position or complement our platform, all while preserving capital efficiency and profitability.

Our growth is driven by disciplined execution of our growth strategy and operational efficiency. We continue to control costs, reduce impairments and scale automation and AI to strengthen margins and resilience. Through partnerships, we keep customer acquisition costs low while deepening engagement with our core customer segment. Looking ahead, we target around 10% [ EBT CAGR ] by 2028, supported by growing fee income, stronger credit quality and capital-light partnership revenues. Our focus remains on profitable, well-balanced growth, not pure volume expansion. And in summary, Ferratum is a lean, automated and capital-efficient lender, positioned to deliver sustainable earnings and consistent value creation for our shareholders. Thank you very much.

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

Hello, everyone. I am Mantvydas, CEO of Capital box, and I'm here to walk you through Multitude Group business banking journey how we are building a scalable data-driven SME lending platform that's on the road to profitability. Capital Box operates in 5 Northern European countries. Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Lithuania and the Netherlands. More than 80 professionals manage over 160 million lending portfolio and serve more than 9,000 SME customers.

With over 10 years in this business we understand the risk, credit behavior and how to adopt through different economical cycles. We all know that SME is the real backbone of every economy. The new SME environment values speed, simplicity and flexibility, but traditional banks still operate in a slow and manually heavy process. According to the latest reports, access to finance remains one of the top pain points for small and medium enterprises. And that's the gap we fill. We focus on businesses that are often too small for traditional banks to serve efficiently but large enough that need reliable financing companies with revenue below EUR 10 million and who need working capital fast.

Our model is simple, fully digital, fully automated and built around the needs of small business owners. From 3-minute online application to personalized offer and near instant disbursement, we combine automation with a human touch when needed. We serve the full range of SME needs from short-term liquidity to grow financing between EUR 5,000 and EUR 3 million. Our value proposition is stronger than the [indiscernible] standard. We believe SME should get funding in less than 1 day.

And for our existing customers, we are already talking about hours. That's powered by our multiproduct lending model, unsecured, secured and factoring and our ability to blend digital automation with experienced risk management. We automate smaller loans while managing larger and secured deals through expert underwriting. Let's talk about the road to profitability and recent development.

We remain strongly committed to unsecured lending now with a better risk control and a much wider reach through digital data and PSD2 integrations. Our model allows us to manage risk proactively and continuously. At the same time, our secured portfolio shall increase by double digits in 2025, reflecting a more balanced approach. Repeat borrowing now accounts for 40% of the portfolio, growing 10% year-over-year. Our active customer base grew by 60% and driven by a lower churn and higher repeat usage.

Data analytics help us identify the most profitable segments and continuously refine yield and risk performance. We continue to scale through organic growth, embedded finance, partnerships and targeting M&A. First, organic growth. We have high efficiency, risk control and digital reach, keeping strong risk-adjusted returns. Unsecured lending remains a key focus, especially with more than 70% applications being scored automatically. Also, it is complemented by secured and factoring products to grow customer lifetime value and profitability.

Second, we are embedding finance directly into partner ecosystems. POS providers, ERP systems and marketplaces using our API-based integrations. And third, we actively explore opportunities and potential to strengthen our scale, our positioning, including license and unlicensed targets. This gives us a flexibility for the future market or product centers while maintaining a disciplined, profitable growth mindset.

To prove our direction for scalability, our partnership model is already showing results. Here's an example of our latest strategic partnership. Through Capital Box and Multitude group white label financing, we integrate our lending products into partners' ecosystems, whether they serve consumers or SMEs. With our API connections, partners can offer Capital Box financing directly inside their own customer journey under their own brand, with our credit engine and technology behind it.

For partners, that creates new revenue streams and stronger customer relationships without building their own lending infrastructure. For customers, it means fast transfer, access to financing right there already to do business. And for the market, it's a scalable model that connects traditional finance with embedded digital solutions. This model expands our reach, reduces acquisition costs and positions us as the financing engine inside digital ecosystems. Efficiency is the core of our profitability road map.

We now have end-to-end automated credit decisions for unsecured loans, allowing faster turnaround typically under 24 hours, while maintaining consistent risk quality. Our low-touch operations drive a lower cost per loan and every part of the process is designed to scale. Using PSD2 and advanced analytics, we identified the most valuable SME segments and predict behavior more accurately. That's how we already improved customer lifetime value by more than 40%.

Together, the 3 engines, automation, pricing and data gives operational leverage. Every new loan now contributes more to profit than the one before. Looking ahead, we continue moving beyond lending to building multiservice SME platform. We will combine lending payments, cards and accounts creating seamless financial experience for small businesses.

Our ambition is to be a go-to financial partner for SMEs with the speed and innovation of a fintech and the reliability of a bank. Therefore, we are building not an [ insulated ] products. We are building an ecosystem that grows with every customer. Now let's talk openly about the profitability. Yes, we acknowledge that we have not fully delivered our [ ABT ] results yet, but our target is clear and achievable. Here's why. We have reduced credit losses by 30% compared to last year. We have built a scalable cost base supported by automation.

Our risk-adjusted yields are stable and retention keeps improving. And with this increased share of secured products, our portfolio is becoming structurally more resilient to market changes. Following this logic, we continue the same path to deliver positive EBT next year, and this is the clearly achievable. We are confident that this result will be followed by 50% annual growth in the following years.

We are improving revenue quality through higher customer retention and strong cross-sell. We are strengthening portfolio performance using real-time credit data and PSD2 insights. And we are scaling profitably with automation, lowering unit costs as volume grows. In short, we now have the structure, data and discipline to turn growth into sustainable returns. According to this clear trend, we are close to demonstrate a sustainable and profitable business banking results.

So to summarize, our mission remains the same. To empower small businesses with the financial tools they need to grow. And as we continue this transition from a single product lender to a multiservice SME platform, we're unlocking even greater value for our customers. The transformation is well underway, and we are confident in the road ahead.

Thank you for your time.

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

[Presentation]

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Alain Nydegger and I lead Wholesale Banking, a business unit built on ownership, clarity and high agency. Around 3 years ago, this was just an idea, concept. Today, we are proud, it's a cash flow positive, profitable units and it's contributing very fast to the bottom line of our group. That kind of trajectory doesn't happen by chance. It happens when people take ownership and move with conviction. 2 engines, 1 scalable model. That's the topic.

We serve clients as we heard it a couple of times today, others overlook, institutional borrowers, in our case, asset owners and fintechs with strong potential, but limited access to traditional finance. Let me first talk about secured debt, where we structured tailored financing across direct lending, real estate and asset-backed deals. Each transaction is bespoke, balancing carefully risk and opportunity to unlock liquidity and drive growth.

Payment Services, on the other hand, where we enable regulated payment service providers in short PSPs and fintechs to access European payment rails, FX and safeguarding accounts. The essential infrastructure to scale with confidence and compliance, both segments share the same DNA, clarity, execution and scalability. Our efficient platform converts growth directly into profits, every incremental deal flows almost entirely to the bottom line at that stage. That's how we turn overlooked opportunities into durable compounding value, both for our clients and us.

Across both segments, our promise is the same: reliability. When we commit, we execute fast, clean and right the very first time. As already mentioned, wholesale Banking is now the fastest-growing business unit within the group. Revenue has more than tripled since '23 and profitability is catching up very fast, is accelerating. And we feel that the foundation is in place. Now scalability is the name of the game and takes over. Growth increasingly flows straight into earnings.

Secured debt has expanded its net assets, the portfolio size by more than 50% year-to-date. When we look at the end of Q3, now exceeding over EUR 200 million with stable yields close to 10%, and that's very important for us and excellent credit quality. Payment Services has built a recurring high-margin fee base that scales without adding significant costs. That's high operating leverage in motion. The reward for building lean, disciplined and client focused. Let's dive a bit deeper into secured debt.

Our first business segment within the units, where, as I have mentioned, we finance institutional borrowers and asset-backed opportunities that just sits beyond the comfort zone of some of our competitors. Each transaction is bespoke, tailored, every risk carefully assessed and understood. We combine institutional-grade risk management with entrepreneurial structuring. We move very fast, financing that advances projects and creates enduring value.

Our focus is on building lasting relationships not one-offs with clients and partners who value reliability and trust. This isn't about chasing volume. We want to grow from one number to the other. Every euro is deployed with purpose and care. Typical transactions range from EUR 5 million to EUR 30 million designed and intended to unlock liquidity where others stall or hesitate.

Let's look at our portfolio composition within Wholesale Banking within the secured debt part. Our secured debt portfolio has scaled fast from below EUR 75 million in early '24 to over EUR 200 million as per the end of Q3. It is a well diversified book across 3 collateral classes, direct lending, real estate and mobile assets with a very strong footprint in the Nordics and Baltics. We now operate in 10 European jurisdictions, each one chosen for familiarity with the legal framework and the ability to structure deals that protect Multitude through significant overcollateralization.

And yet yields remain near 10%. Maturities are balanced around 2 years and credit performance stays consistently strong with an average duration of just 2 years, one can imagine that we've already seen our first refinancing talks, and we are very proud to say and announce that we did successful refinancing, a clear proof that clients return to multitude for repeat business. For the future, about our pipeline. Our pipeline is deep, very disciplined. Our rejection rate is very high.

And so it's built around attractive risk-adjusted returns and an origination engine that delivers scale, speed and selectivity. We are not chasing volume. We are building a high-performing, resilient book designed to compound value over time. Let me give you an example. InSoil, formerly known as heavy finance, a fintech lender supporting small and midsized farmers across Europe. They needed scalable institutional funding to expand EU-wide, we, on our side, offered and structured a bankruptcy-remote SPV and a forward flow program enhanced by an EIF guarantee covering most of the portfolio.

The result for them, a stable, long-term funding, a lower cost of capital and a repeatable model that scales across markets. That's how we create value by structuring intelligently, executing fast and aligning incentives all the way through with our clients and partners. So looking ahead, our focus is scale, but smart controlled scale. We are expanding capacity through deal pots, small, highly specialized teams that own the full cycle, origination, structuring and risk. It's a model built for accountability, precision and speed.

Every deal has a clear owner and a clear outcome. We are also syndicating with third-party investors, accelerating capital rotation and unlocking new fee-based revenue through origination and placement. The principle is simple, apply strict filters at the very beginning at the top of the funnel, to cut out weak cases very early. Once the deal qualifies, one person owns it, fully understands the data, the risk and then that's the path for a quick and efficient execution.

That's how we deploy capital, fast, clean and with conviction. And that is how the engine compounds discipline at the start, decisive at the finish, scalable by design. Let's look into Engine #2, Payment Services. Our second business segment, Payment Services runs on the same DNA, precision, reliability and speed. We serve payment institutions and fintech PSP, payment service providers across Europe, especially those in regulated sectors that need stable, compliant access to the banking system.

Our platform provides API-based accounts, access to local payment rails, ForEx and safeguarding, all delivered with the precision of a regulated bank. It's embedded infrastructure for fast-moving companies that can't afford compliance friction. We give them the rails, they drive the growth. One use case expanding market access, a European payment institution wanted to launch in Sweden but lacked access to local rails. We enabled direct participation in the SEK clearing system providing settlement and account services, the result, faster payment, sharper pricing and a successful market entry.

Case 2, supporting regulated verticals, a regulated PSP serving crypto and [ cost clients ] struggled with banking access due to heightened compliance barriers. Through enhanced due diligence and continuous monitoring on our end, we enabled them to onboard only reputable customers, fully compliant and audit ready. The result stable banking access, renewed credibility and accelerated growth. That's what payment does, transform regulatory friction or burden into a competitive edge. So where does it all lead? Wholesale Banking, as I said, is now a dual-engine growth platform.

Secured debt delivers high-yield asset-backed returns disciplined, profitable and repeatable, Payment Services scales, recurring, capital-light income, the kind that compounds quite powerfully. Together, these engines reinforce each other. Every deal, every client, every flow strengthens our system. We are building a business defined by ownership, accountability and speeds where teams don't wait for permission, they move, decide and deliver. The next chapter is about scaling what works with precision, discipline and confidence.

Our target is clear: a compound annual growth rate above 50% in EBT through 2028. Ambitious, but it's built on proof, not promises and a model that's already delivering. We will get there the same way we always have by turning clarity into conviction conviction into momentum and momentum into results. Thank you very much. Back to you, Adam.

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

Good afternoon, everybody. Hello again. My name is Bernd Egger, and I'm pleased to take you through the finance section of our Capital Markets Day. More specifically, I will talk about historic financial performance, our financial view on value creation and our targets and capital market guidance going forward, covering the period from '26 to '28. Let me, first of all, talk about the Multitude investment case.

What are the basics of our investment case? There are 4 pillars that we consider extremely important to us. Number one, we are growing fintech with strong, scalable business models and an expanding European footprint. Secondly, we are highly resilient. We have demonstrated the ability to perform on the challenging circumstances. Number three, we are a market leader when it comes to servicing overlooked customers and clients. Number four, we are increasingly profitable, thanks to our disciplined execution of our strategy to cost efficiency and to outstanding credit risk management.

And finally, we are dividend paying. Together, these factors form a simple but powerful story. Growth resilience, profitability and shareholder returns. The story is backed by consistent performance track record. Let us now talk about our growth drivers. Diversification has become a decisive factor for us. I'm referring to geographic and business diversification. We operate across multiple European markets, servicing consumers and SME customers as well as institutional asset-based clients.

Over the past 3 years, we have delivered a revenue CAGR of 5.4% between '21 and '24, accelerating to 11.3% between 2022 and '24. Over the past 2 years, on a 9-month basis, Consumer Banking revenues increased by 4%, SME banking revenues increased by 53% and Wholesale Banking revenues increased by 394%. Whilst all 3 businesses have been growing over this period, revenue share of the younger businesses, Wholesale Banking and Capital Box almost doubled from 12% to 21.4%. This is a strong performance achieved during a period of volatile macroeconomic environment and increased complexity in an evolving regulatory framework.

Let us discuss how this growth momentum effectively translates into profitability. On profitability trajectory has been very clear and very strong. Since 2021, our net profit has increased almost 17-fold, reflecting a CAGR of 156%, up until '24 or a CAGR of 103% based on our '25 Capital Market guidance. This performance is driven by consistent improvement across all businesses with each single business unit currently performing better than last year.

In order to get there, we focused on operating leverage and efficiency on improving risk-adjusted returns and on disciplined funding and capital allocation. That combination has lifted profitability structurally not just temporarily. I would like to briefly evaluate historical performance relative to capital market guidance. My key message here is essentially about credibility, the foundation of any investment case. Over the past several years, Multitude has consistently delivered on its capital market guidance year after year without a single exception.

From '21 to '24, we have met our EUR 20 million EBIT, the target metric back then, target in '21. We have successfully achieved the target of increasing EBIT by 50% each single year from EUR 20 million in $21 to EUR 30 million in '22 to EUR 45 million in '23; and finally, to EUR 67.5 million in '24. For 2025, those of you who attended a 9-month earnings call a little bit more than an hour ago, already know, we are on track to achieve our 2025 guidance of a net profit in the range between EUR 24 million and EUR 26 million.

After 9 months, we are at EUR 20.3 million, which is already now slightly above the full year's profit of 2024, and we are approaching an all-time high in terms of net profit. This track record is not coincidental. It reflects a consistent, managerial approach. We set ambitious data-driven targets. We execute with focus, we continuously adapt to changing market conditions. In short, for more than 4 years now, we have performed and delivered. That's our standard for ourselves also going forward. Now looking ahead, what is to be expected and how will we make it.

This chart outlines our path forward. We intend to more than double net profit from around EUR 20 million last year to above EUR 43 million by 2028. Our profitability focus areas will be: first, growth in revenues and other proceeds. We see healthy demand across all our business units. We are pushing recurring fee income from close to 0 last year to more than EUR 10 million expected in 2025, and we expect growing contributions from strategic investments. Second, cost efficiency initiatives will further strengthen profitability.

We are driving automation across the organization, investing in AI and data analytics. And we are simplifying structures to achieve leaner operations. We have cut a number of legal entities in our group in half. We are operating with almost 250 employees less than several years ago, and we still see a lot of opportunities in raising efficiency levels. Third, we continue to focus on derisking of assets, enhanced risk management, better scoring models and refined portfolio composition should reduce credit losses and performance volatility and credit losses going forward, improving profit scalability, stability and predictability. And finally, funding cost reduction is expected to give us a major cost leverage.

We are reducing dependency on third-party deposit channels, and we are optimizing our cost of funds across geographical markets. In summary, our profit growth trajectory is aspirational, but we are determined to achieve it, especially as it is grounded in tangible, measurable actions across all profit focus areas.

Together, these drivers form a clear value-creation road map towards more than doubling our net profit by 2028. Let me briefly elaborate on profit composition. In terms of business units contribution, it is our target to achieve balanced diversification of net profit.

Our profit profile is expected to evolve from a somewhat concentrated earnings base in the past to a very well-diversified profit mix by 2028. In '24, our Consumer Banking business accounted for about [ EUR 146 million ] of consolidated profit. Wholesale Banking constituted and contributed around EUR 2 million or roughly 5%, while SME banking was in loss-making phase, resulting in negative contribution to group earnings.

By '28, this picture is designed to look fundamentally different. We expect all business units to be net profit accretive from 2026 onwards. We will develop our businesses into a balanced multi-engine growth generator and profit generator. Important to note, our highly profitable consumer business will remain a strong and stable profit generator with an expected profit CAGR of 10%. On top, we expect to see a relative shift in profit weights to maturing SME business and to scaling wholesale segment.

So we are aiming for significant higher profits, but we are also up for high-quality sustainable and derisked profits down the road. Let me talk about profit driving factors. Turning to operating leverage. This slide operates how scale and efficiency will become an increasingly powerful driver of profitability. Our goal is to reduce cost to income ratio from historic levels around 60% a couple of years ago and current levels around 48%, down to around 40% by 2028. This improvement does not just reflect cost savings or cost cutting but structural efficiency, the ability to grow income faster than expenses.

The group operates on a centralized technology platform, meaning incremental volume can be processed with minimal additional cost. Several levers will be driving operating leverages, automation and AI integration by streamlining operations and reducing manual workload, digital processes and extended data-driven decision-making, elimination of noncore activities, focus on highest return businesses and a lean, scalable group structure with clear ownership and accountability.

Now let me briefly move on to asset quality. Asset quality and credit risk management have historically been a success story. We managed to improve our asset quality significantly. I'm referring to lending and investment portfolios when I talk about assets. We reduced credit losses measured as a percentage of lending and wholesale banking investment portfolio by more than 50% in only 3 years.

We are confident that we will succeed in reducing credit losses further. The key success factors will be advanced risk management technology, including integration of new data sources, permanently enhanced scoring and underwriting systems and portfolio composition that reflects our ambition to derisk portfolios and to focus on recurring client relationships.

On funding as a performance booster cost efficiency is the target. As we are operating our own bank, the key proposition is deposit first. Our deposits to debt capital market instruments ratio is meanwhile around 10:1 compared to 1:1 about 5 years ago. Our deposit strategy going forward is gradual shift from third-party deposits, provide us to own deposit sourcing, geographical diversification, establishment of our own deposit sourcing channels in several markets.

Our deposit target is to achieve increasing autonomy and decreasing expenses. In addition to deposit funding, we will remain active on debt and hybrid capital markets. This will include IFRS equity instruments and regulatory instruments. We are considering going to market soon to support our growth with capital, which naturally will be announced separately.

Now finally, let me briefly talk about return expectations. Capital allocation and capital return are amongst the most decisive topics for us going forward. We have decided to introduce an operational target. Technically, it's not a capital market guidance, but nonetheless, it's important. We are aiming at a return on tangible equity above 20% by 2028, coming from around 12.2% in 2024. By achieving this, we would set us apart from a significant number of regulated financial service providers in the market. This gets me to my last point, a combined view on operational targets and on capital market guidance for the future.

I would like to summarize as follows. We confirm our net profit guidance for this year, EUR 24 million to EUR 26 million. We also confirm EUR 30 million net profit for 2026. For '27 and '28, we issued a new guidance of 20% annual net profit growth from the previously announced '26 targets. This would get us to a net profit of EUR 36 million in '27 and EUR 43.2 million for 2028. By '28, our operational targets are a cost-income ratio of 40% and a return on tangible equity above 20%.

Our operational business targets are Consumer Banking, 10% EBT CAGR over the period up until '28, Wholesale Banking, 50% EBT CAGR over the same period, up until '28. Capital Box positive single-digit million euro EBT in '26 and from there on, 50% EBT CAGR over the period, again, up until 2028. Obviously, please note that all guidance metrics and operational targets will be subject to adjustments for one-off and negatively disruptive events.

This concludes the financial Capital Markets Day presentation. We hope you found this of interest, and we are looking forward to our Q&A session. Adam, passing on to you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, that concludes our financial section of the Capital Markets Day. And now we would like to welcome back up on stage the presenters of today, and when we open up our Q&A again. [Operator Instructions] . We have a couple of questions from the previous session, which we can continue with.

One is on cost-to-income ratio, Antti. More specifically comparing us to peers, without going into the detail, what are the measures that we will take to become more competitive on the cost-to-income ratio front?

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

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

There's not one single factor. On the 1 hand side, and Kristjan has pointed this out in his presentation, we are adjusting products in some of our markets in order to accelerate and increase stickiness going forward, improved profitability going forward. There are some Western European countries amongst those. So that's one driver.

Driver number two, it's a shift from interest income to fee income. Fee income has increased in Western Europe by EUR 1.2 million in Q3. And factor number three, we have sold some businesses. We're still providing services. This is where the fee is coming from. At the same time, we generate earnout, and that what we can debate about IFRS, but it's just not reflected in revenue, but it's treated differently. Happy to go into more detail in one of the earnings calls, but those are the 3 factors behind that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, naturally, I don't want to and cannot preempt any shareholder decisions at the later point of time. From my perspective, just 2 sentences, we have given an indication, 25% to 50% of net profit. We've done that in the past. Naturally, we want to keep the balance between making our shareholders dividend [indiscernible] shareholders happy. So we're sticking to that. At the same time, we need to make sure that we have the capital to grow. This is what we need to balance.

We've paid out EUR 9.4 million dividend last year, 2 components, 25% in the end, plus an extra getting us to 44%, something like that. So definitely, without promising anything investors should expect would expect, might expect, similar behavior going forward?

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

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

So thank you, Adam. This is quite simple. Roughly 2 years ago, or even less, we were pretty reliant on online deposit platforms, which means that over 90% of our deposits were coming through brokerage type of deposit taking. We have now built our own deposit taking channels in 4 different countries, plus what we have taken also from our mobile banking unit.

And we have now managed to turn that over already within around 12 months, a bit more than 12 months from over 90% from platform business, external platform business to less than 60% from the platform business. And we really do see that we can turn this -- our momentum is now in many countries. And our own internal deposit taking is really effective. We have good rates and, of course, different regulatory ratios are beneficial for us when we take these deposits to our own channels.

I'm extremely confident that this is one of the targets we can absolutely make.

Yes. Very good. I believe we have some audio questions, operator.

And now we're going to take our first question. And the question comes from line of Roni Peuranheimo from Inderes.

So you talked about growing the growth platform with, for example, M&A. Do you find the unit structure relevant, like if you would, for example, theoretically see that Capital Box wouldn't be able to increase its profitability, would like divestments be realistic in any way? Would you consider those? Should I take it that one?

Antti

I can start with this. So obviously, we are happy with the businesses we have today. So with Mantvydas in Capital Box Alain in Multitude Bank and Kristjan in Consumer Banking, I'm personally really confident we can make these numbers. How the company will look like in 5 years I cannot tell that's something for the Board to steer forward. But at the moment, we are extremely happy in where we are. Jorma, do you want to?

Yes, I think, of course, the platform whole idea on the platform is that it's operate as a platform. So it's a company, its business, what is in the platform. They have to support in each other. So they have to have like a synergy. They have to have a logic, how we as a Multitude can bring them support through our AI tools or the technology or data or the market understanding and then, of course, the benefits through the cross-selling the customers.

And I think that's a very important element on the platform. We have 2 or we have a 2 different options behind there. One option is that we see that some company or some business units are not fully fitting anymore the platform, we can always deinvestment that one. I mean that's always option but I think we can always think about as well like a partial like treated those as like associated investment. That's always like a second option there as well. But I think like a management say, I think currently, we don't have a -- we don't have any plans or the thoughts on the investment in any of our 3 business, what is the fully owned. And we rather keep the focus more to look at the new opportunities on the entry in the Multitude platform as it is 2 different.

Of course. I was just thinking hypothetically. That was a good answer. So maybe about the Lea Bank investments. Now it's been more than a year since you announced the first investment. So how has your cooperation developed? And have you found any concrete ways to do business together? And do you plan to increase the stake still? Do you need to do a mandatory buyout offer if you would pass some limit?

Jorma being responsible for our M&A in the new role. So please, Jorma.

I think as I look at the Lea Bank investments in the 3 different ways. I think we have -- of course, our investment in the Lea bank have splitting on multiple different steps and reaching the 30% stake, it's taken like a [ half year ] time. Currently, we do not have any ideas to go the beyond of that one. What this mean that what's the trigger on the mandatory bidding on the -- all shareholders. So we do not have any of that type of the thoughts or ideas on the table.

If we look at cooperation, cooperation, you can split it in 3 different ways. We have as official channels. We have a nomination [indiscernible] seed as -- and that's the way how we can impact for the Leabank as a listed company as well. The competition and what have the talent and competence we see it's relevant for the Leabank future business strategy. That's one way. The second way is, of course, the active dialogue with the management for helping them on the shaping the strategy and direction there. And then the third option or third way how we're doing cooperation is that we are based in our platform strategy. We are very available for the Lea Bank management to share our data and to share our competence and understanding on the market and of course, look in the cross-selling opportunities on the market there as well. And all of those, we are working on quite actively there. I don't believe there is anything to say as precisely as today, but I'm sure we will come to tell that as well when the time is right. .

All right. You talked a lot about fee income growth. So maybe just to kind of get some thoughts on like what absolute level would be realistic in terms of fee income at the end of strategic period? Like what are you targeting at?

Bernd?

Looking at my direction. Well, in the end, I think we have those who follow us -- have been following us for longer know that we have been pursuing fee income for long. Now we will be most likely above EUR 10 million this year. We expect fee income to be a significant part of our profit generation. We spoke about capital allocation. The second reason why we want to push. It's a little bit difficult to give absolute numbers, but it's going to be -- it's here to stay and it's meant to be a significant revenue and profit generator going forward.

And now we're going to take our next question. And that comes from the line of [indiscernible] from NuWays.

Thanks guys for a very convincing CMD presentation. Bernd showed an interesting slide where impairment levels versus the portfolio would be at 5% in 2028. As you're improving the loan book quality, aren't you slowly stepping away from the over customers' business? Or is there also a limit to this?

If I may just to be precise, what does it mean to be in a business with overlooked customers? That doesn't mean necessarily that we are high credit risk business on that perspective. So -- our business is well diversified. We have unsecured, we have secured business. We have fee income business. It means that we are bringing value to customers in a form of speed, convenience and now and then customers might have issues with their own banks for one or another reason, and it doesn't have to be anything risk related. So of course, the interest rate environment in Europe as well is changing, and it has changed

But we've been able to manage the credit risk until now really good, and we see that we are continuing on the same trend and the same part. I don't see that we are anyway moving away from the businesses we have been into. We are expanding and making an evolution to different business avenues as well.

And maybe if I can shortly a little bit add it a flavor here, it's -- I think it's a really good point what you want to say that I think overlook customers are not -- it's not the only question of the interest rate pricing it. There is a lot of use case where the customers are underserved or not served like overlooked by Main Street banks. And that is our segment in all different business units. I think one additional element, what's important as well is our portfolio diversification.

So if we [indiscernible] our business by today, and we looking back to 3 years back, its portfolio have a diversified much more in the different type of the customers as well as wholesale banking unit is totally new, that's totally created during the last 3 years.

Thank you. We will end with 1 final question, which is if we can provide some more insights in our contemplated transactions that you mentioned in your presentation, Bernd

There are a number of instruments that appear to be attractive to us. We have successfully issued [ Tier 2 ] transaction. So in the end, a nondilutive capital instrument on that level of the bank. We have more than 22% total capital on the level of the bank, 22.5% net equity ratio on a consolidated level. So we have some more than 400 basis points headroom.

At the same time, we are ambitious when it comes to growth. This is why nondilutive capital or equity instruments are of interest to us. This could go into the direction of -- we have a perpetual bond outstanding. We might increase that, work on this one. It could be an option. Additional Tier 1 is an instrument on the level of the bank that we have not issued in the past. So those are the options we're thinking of.

Thank you. For any further questions, don't hesitate to reach out to Investor Relations team. We will happily answer all your questions. That concludes the Q&A session, and we would like to have some final key takeaways presented by Antte Kumpulainen.

Good. Thank you, Jorma, Kristjan, Mantvydas, Bernd and Adam. And of course, thank you all of you for being there here today and listening to our plans for the road ahead. Before we really end today's Capital Markets Day, I just want to highlight a few key takeaways from all of what you just heard. Firstly, earlier today, we confirmed our guidance for 2025 and introduced a new target of achieving a 20% annual increase in net profit through 2028. Secondly, we are executing our 3-pillar growth model, which consists of organic growth, partnerships and M&A. That's a clear and proven framework, which is driving our growth ambitions and the team here will deliver on that.

Thirdly, we continue to focus on the use of data, AI and automation across all of our processes no matter how small it is. And this also answers the question we just received during the Q&A, how are we going to get our cost-to-income ratio down. That's one part of it, an important one. These initiatives, combined with our strong credit risk capabilities, will further improve efficiency and reduce cost. Fourth, we remain committed to serving the growing customer segments often overlooked by Main Street banks continuing to deliver sustainable value creation for the customers and to you, our investors.

All of this keeps us firmly on track towards our ambition of becoming a EUR 1 billion valued company. I wish you all a great day, and thank you for your attention.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you. Well done.

Good afternoon, and welcome to Multitude's combined event of 9 months earnings call and our Capital Markets Day, where we will deep dive into our strategy and our business units. First of all, I would like to apologize for our short -- for our slight delay for technical reasons. My name is Adam Hansson-Tönning. I'm the Head of IR and Treasury at Multitude, and I will be your host today. Our team is very excited to be here today and to provide an update on our businesses and to stake out the road until 2028.

We will kick off our agenda today by having an update from our 9 months ended from Multitude's CEO, Antti Kumpulainen; and CFO, Bernd Egger. Following the 9 months presentation, we will move on to our Capital Markets Day agenda.

Antti, the stage is yours.

Thank you, Adam, and welcome to our Q3 2025 earnings call. My name is Antti Kumpulainen, and I am the CEO of Multitude Group. During this call, I will walk you through Multitude's earnings call and results for the third quarter of 2025 with our CFO, Mr. Bernd Egger.

The first 3 quarters of 2025 has been a strong statement in increasing the profitability and diversifying our revenue streams. Today, we want to share with you some key takeaways after the third quarter of 2025. First, our revenue continued to be stable with a small growth and was almost EUR 196 million. Secondly, we continued our strong net profit growth by increasing it by 59.3%, to EUR 20.3 million. Third, impairment losses on loans continued to decrease by 16.5%, or over EUR 12 million year-on-year. Fourth, we increased our stake in Lea Bank, to a total stake of 29.47%. And fifth, simplifying our structures is on a good progress, and we are reducing the number of legal entities by 1/3 during 2025.

Let's take a closer look at the performance of the first 9 months. Multitude continued on a stable revenue trajectory and a strong profit improvement through third quarter. We also managed to further improve the asset quality. Revenue was stable, almost at EUR 196 million, and our net profit increased once again with almost 60%, to EUR 20.3 million. Our loans and investments portfolio grew by 21% year-on-year, showing that the demand on the market is still strong.

The good trend in impairment losses continued, and we saw a decrease of 16.5%, or EUR 12 million year-on-year. We have seen this trend already for a longer time, thanks to our robust risk management capabilities and continuous improvement in our scorecards and underwriting practices. Reducing the number of legal entities in the Multitude Group by 1/3 during this year is well on track, and this indeed simplifies and streamlines our organizational structure going forward.

We have also invested more in Lea Bank shares, and our stake has increased to 29.47%, and we are still the largest shareholder in Lea Bank. Together with Lea Bank, we continue to explore and prepare strategic cooperation between the two companies.

Going forward, we have clear focus. We are focusing on growing our business through our three pillars: organic growth, partnerships and also through M&A opportunities, maintaining the high asset quality going forward, and further digitalize and automate our operations with extensive use of AI and data. Going forward, we are also -- the target is to achieve our net profit guidance of EUR 24 million to EUR 26 million in 2025.

Let's look at the business units. We will start with Consumer Banking, Ferratum. Revenue development was stable year-on-year, and we see a slight uplift in profitability. Team in Consumer Banking focused on keeping the asset quality in line with the portfolio growth, well done. From new products, German credit card is mentionable with a successful rollout to the market. Portfolio in size of net AR kept on growing with more than 8% year-on-year.

Main focus for Consumer Banking going forward is on organic growth, partnerships and M&A, are also interesting in bringing the added growth. Products bringing recurring fee revenue is really, really high focus area for Consumer Banking. As in all other businesses and functions in Multitude, also Consumer Banking continues to work with streamlining and enhancing the processes and increasing stability with use of AI, data and increased automization. Target for year 2025 for Consumer Banking is an EBT growth of 5%, and we are at a good pace for that, as you can see.

Next up is our business unit from CapitalBox, the Business Banking. Revenue grew by 5.7%, to EUR 26 million, which was below our set expectations for the reporting period. Though we see that the impairments continue to further decrease by almost 29%, and that is a really good achievement, but still slightly less than we expected to happen. EBT performance continued to improve, and losses have been reduced by whopping 70% year-on-year. Further positive sign on CapitalBox was that the month of September, the last month in the Q3, was profitable. Portfolio structure also changed in line with the plans, and secured loans portfolio in CapitalBox is now almost 1/3 of the net AR. This we see as a proof of strong demand in the market for such a product going forward. It also diversifies the revenue streams in CapitalBox.

Full focus for the team in CapitalBox is now on growth, profitability and scalability. The same focus areas as in Consumer Banking, is partnerships, M&A opportunities, they are further explored. Target for the full year is to deliver double-digit growth and to be profitable on a quarterly basis in the second half of the year.

Then finally, our newest business unit, Wholesale Banking, which has been able to show strong profitable growth in its institutional client base. Growth in Wholesale Banking has been strong and profitable, that's important to us. Asset quality remains strong, thanks to carefully selected customers. Revenue grew by a bit over 82% and EBT, the growth has been rapid being at EUR 1.8 million after 9 months of 2025. Net AR growth was a bit shy of 80% year-on-year, and the portfolio reached over EUR 200 million end of September. Payment Services, the second part of Wholesale Banking unit, are bringing the fee revenue by servicing its client of electronic money institutions, payment institutions.

We added a new client in the third quarter of the year and more is on the way on the well-established pipeline. Focus remains the same as earlier this year in further scaling up the business, reach to more clients and close the existing pipeline. Target of reaching EBT north of EUR 4 million is still intact.

Now I'm ready to hand over to Bernd, who will tell you about the financial performance. All yours, Bernd.

Thank you very much, Antti. Good afternoon to you all, and thank you for your interest in Multitude's earnings call covering 9 months 2025 results. After 9 months of this year, my simple conclusion on performance is, very strong profitability metrics. Growth is a positive and will be a focus area going forward. There is a little bit of room for improvement as regards to growth. We confirm our capital market guidance for this year, the range between EUR 24 million and EUR 26 million, and you will recall that we actually increased this guidance earlier this year. Driving focus behind these strong developments were solid overall growth dynamics with some upside potential, I've mentioned that, continued improvement in credit risk management with really impressive numbers, scalability of the organization.

Let's go into more detail and take a look at our 9-month P&L. The key message on P&L performance for 9 months is the following. Message number one, financial performance is characterized by robust overall growth dynamics. We will look into the key drivers of the growth, especially when it comes to Wholesale Banking business and CapitalBox, but also the fee business increase in the consumer business a little bit later. The increase in fee income is perfectly in line with the monetization strategy we have been pursuing and pushing over the last couple of years.

Message number two, all actions taken to improve credit risk performance over the last 6 quarters essentially are paying off. A very positive trend is being continued.

Message number three on profit, the organization is scalable. At the same time, we invest in future growth. These two factors, efficiency on the one hand side make sure that we have profitable growth and growth on the other hand side, this balance determines the cost development now and also in '26.

Let's go into more detail on the financial key performance metrics. Revenue comprising interest income and fee income. 9 months interest income, EUR 186 million -- EUR 187 million, which is a small drop of 3.8%, or EUR 7.3 million lower than last year. At the same time, we see a very significant increase in fee income, driving total revenue up to EUR 196 million, which represents an increase by EUR 1.7 million, or 1%.

Fee income increased from EUR 50,000 9 months '24, to EUR 9.3 million this year. We've been pursuing this strategy for many, many years. Now it's paying off. This is, in turn, driven by meanwhile, three factors: one, partnership businesses in Consumer Banking, EUR 7.7 million; secondly, payment business in Wholesale Banking, EUR 1.6 million; and the residual amount is related to service fees to an external partner, basically a Banking-as-a-Service service that we're selling to new partners. These monetization models are in line with our platform and our partnership strategy as we had communicated over the last 2 years.

Interest expense and net interest income, let me briefly elaborate. Interest expenses in relative terms increased by around about 10% compared to last year. That's an increase of -- from EUR 30 million to EUR 33 million. This is driven by business volume and by new regulatory capital that we have taken in. Multitude Bank has successfully placed a EUR 25 million Tier 2 instrument earlier this year, and that is going to help us, '26, and later also in terms of future growth.

Interest expense increase is absolute -- in absolute numbers has been partly offset by gradually reducing relative deposit funding costs. So here, we are not there yet, but we are absolutely on the right track. This results in net interest income of EUR 158.3 million for the first 9 months of the year, which compares to EUR 163.8 million for the same period last year, a drop by 6.4%.

Foreign exchange and hedging results are slightly lower than last year and pretty much on the same level as budgeted.

Pro rata profit share from investment in associates has increased significantly. Meanwhile, we reflect around about EUR 2 million for the first 9 months net profit impact from our investments in associates. And after positive impact from other income and expenditures, sorry, some EUR 2 million. This results in a net operating income of EUR 163 million for the first 9 months of the year. This is an increase by EUR 1.5 million, or 1%.

I would like to move on to my second point when it comes to key drivers. This is credit loss performance. This has been a top priority for the full year '24 and for '25. Credit risk performance has improved very significantly during the -- during the year '24 and also during '25 first half. Now the trend is continuing also in Q3. Credit losses for 9 months '25 came in at EUR 61.5 million. This is a drop of more than EUR 12 million, EUR 12.1 million to be precise, 16.5% below 2024 level. We will go into a little bit more detail on credit losses as we move on.

Personnel expenses increased slightly, 7.5%, but that is an investment in future growth in the end and reflects variable compensation components. Operational expenses, extremely important for us, scalability, a slight increase to EUR 28.6 million. But again, this is largely driven by growth of business, deposit compensation scheme and other growth-related drivers. Depreciation expenses, marketing, other expenses, de facto flat compared to last year. Overall, our ambition going forward is to improve cost efficiency while not holding back on growth opportunities.

Now let me analyze how these developments in revenue, financial expenses, credit losses and operational expenses translate into profitability metrics for 9 months. Profit before tax increasing massively from EUR 14.7 million to EUR 23.3 million. This is an increase in profit before tax by EUR 8.6 million, almost 60%. Effective tax rate, same level, 13%. This gets us to EUR 20.3 million net profit, and EUR 20.3 million net profit is essentially already now above -- slightly above the level of the full year 2024. So we are approaching without promising too much at this stage, all-time high for the year '25 in terms of net profitability.

Moving on to balance sheet metrics. Cash increased by some 24%. That is a logical consequence of taking in deposits in order to be -- in a position to grow. Main drivers are deposit increase and the regulatory capital that we issued. Loans and investment portfolio increased by EUR 118 million, so right on track in terms of growth dynamics. Other financial assets increased by some EUR 32 million. This is mainly driven by two factors. One is cooperation with a strategic partner, so receivables from portfolio sales and the other one is an effect of sold businesses. Finally, investments in associates, as Antti pointed out, we increased our stake. We currently hold 29.47% in Lea Bank, which is reflected in the balance sheet.

Let me briefly move on to equity and liabilities. Here, development is perfectly in line with the strategy that we pursue deposits first. Deposits are the main source of funding. Deposit base increased to around about EUR 980 million. Debt securities increased. I spoke about that already. This is related to a Tier 2 instrument that we issued on the level of the bank. Finally, equity at end of 9 months, we are, for the first time, above EUR 200 million equity, a very solid net equity ratio of 22.5%. So there is room to move and room to grow.

Let us move on and take a look at performance on the level of the segments or tribes. I will start with Consumer Banking. In short, Ferratum is seeing a gradual shift in revenue composition from interest income to fee income. We see a slight drop in interest revenue, but very happy to announce that we see a EUR 7.7 million increase in the fee income of Ferratum. This is a positive momentum we want to maintain. Part of revenue drop is attributable to sale of some businesses. Some other factors include product adjustments, resulting in a temporary revenue reduction.

Now finally, on credit loss impairments, Ferratum, very strong performance. Credit loss impairments is being around EUR 10 million lower than last year, minus 16%, so really top performance. Operational expenses, Ferratum, very well under control, scalable business, all very well on track. Profit before tax, EUR 23.4 million, around about EUR 800,000 above last year's level.

I would now like to continue with CapitalBox. We see a top line growth -- revenue growth of close to 6%, up to EUR 26.1 million. Credit loss is down very significantly. So all the ambitions from last year paying off, minus 29% from EUR 11.1 million, to EUR 7.9 million despite the fact that portfolio was bigger by almost EUR 36 million compared to last year. Cost, following integration of the acquired Danish factoring business and efficiency initiatives, OpEx is now on a lower level at CapitalBox than last year, minus EUR 2.1 million, to EUR 14.1 million. So also very well on track. Growth is obviously the key factor going forward.

As a consequence of higher revenues, reduced credit losses and lower cost levels, the EBT contribution has improved significantly compared to last year from minus EUR 9.2 million, to minus EUR 2.7 million. This means we have cut off 70% of losses. Our target is to be, as you know, EBT positive on a quarterly basis still this year. This will be a stretch. We're not giving up on this target, but it is definitely going to be a stretch for this year.

Let me conclude my review of the business units' performance with Wholesale Banking, very positive revenue, up, to EUR 15.8 million, comparing to EUR 8.7 million last year, so almost doubling. This is driven by both increase in interest income, plus 63% and again, super important for us, incremental fee income, EUR 1.6 million compared to last year.

Credit loss performance is a collateralized business. So we are building up some reserves, but they are mainly to be seen as a buffer. Hence, they increased by EUR 1.3 million compared to last year. Cost structure, obviously, is an investment case. So we are making sure we have the resources in place. OpEx increasing slightly less than 50%, fully in line with our business strategy and our business plans. Overall, very promising performance, EBT positive at EUR 1.8 million, and EUR 1.5 million of that essentially generated in Q3.

Now let us move on and very briefly talk about credit and loss. Credit loss performance, asset quality, I will not go into much detail. You are familiar with these slides. We will also talk about credit loss performance in the Capital Markets Day presentation. So key message here is, asset quality continues to improve. Also on the next slide, we are now at 2% level already. So a very significant improvement compared to last year. And that is actually measuring -- here, we're measuring credit losses in comparison to the portfolio size.

Now let me take a look at the funding structure. A couple of positive notes here as well. Weighted average cost of debt funding is gradually decreasing. We are back below 4%, so right on track. We don't have any upcoming repayments. So that is perfectly fine.

And I will be concluding my presentation with that and handing back to you, Adam.

Thank you. So with that, we open up for our Q&A session on the 9 months results.

And we have a voice line open. Operator, are you on the line for instructions on how to dial in?

Yes, off course. [Operator Instructions]. And we have now the first question comes on audio. The question from the line of Julius Neittamo from NuWays.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you well, Julius.

So congratulations on the results. I'd like to know -- so there was a significant drop in net interest income this quarter, which I assume is on the back of the lagged effect of decreased interest rates. Do you see the drop already somewhat stabilizing going forward? Or should we expect more?

Thank you for the question, Julius. Just to paraphrase, you mentioned that we have a drop in the net interest income and whether that has stabilized going forward. Bernd, would you like to take that?

Yes, absolutely. I think there are three factors that we need to take into consideration. One is we've sold some businesses. This is a logical pursuit of our ambition to put more focus on recurring clients on credit line. So we are divesting when it comes to micro lending. This is one factor.

Factor number two, we have, and this is a process that we are actively driving, implemented product changes in a couple of markets, Germany is one, Sweden is one. And that is also something that is impacting net interest income or interest income per se. To be realistic, this will take a little bit of time to ramp up the businesses with the new products in those markets. But again, this follows a midterm strategy. It's not something where we are victim and just seeing what is going to happen. We are actively pursuing and driving this product change.

I would, in all honesty, assume that it would take 1 or 2 quarters to see revenues picking up. But I don't want to preempt the messages from the Capital Markets Day. But in terms of net profit development, and this is actually what we are after, we think that these activities and initiatives are going to be paying off.

Okay. And then I had another question regarding the partnership business. So in the fee and commission income, it looks like you're set to achieve a strong double-digit result for this year. I'd like to know what is the realistic upside for this revenue stream for the years to come? And do you have plans in replicating a similar partnership model than the one you have in Poland for, other countries, for example? Is that realistic?

Yes. I mean I can take this one. So definitely, we do see that these partnership models that we have in Poland at the moment would expand in the future as well. Is it in Poland or other countries? We are really actively looking and discussing with different partners around Europe. An exact figure, no, I will not tell you, but our ambition is really, really clear. We are increasing significantly the recurring fee income, either revenue either if it's from partnership side or organically within our products. So yes, the answer is that we will see our recurring fee income growing in the future.

[Operator Instructions] And we have one more audio question. And it comes from the line of Roni Peuranheimo from Inderes Oyj.

All right. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Absolutely.

All right. Roni Peuranheimo from Inderes. So in Q3, there was a EUR 2 million other income item in the P&L related to disposal of subsidiary. I assume this was a onetime item boosting the earnings. And should we expect any of this in the future? And how should we think about this?

Bernd, would you like to...

Yes, happy to take that. This is a very good question, Roni. I have to say. And there are at least three elements to the answer. Number one, yes, technically, this is a onetime effect. Number two, there are ancillary consequences to that. One is we are selling businesses, but to some of those, we remain engaged as a service provider, which means we will incur fees from some of those businesses. So there is a recurring element. And as just pointed out, any sort of recurring fee income is on the top of our agenda. And then secondly, indirectly, it's part of our cost reduction strategy -- of our efficiency strategy to reduce -- Antti has pointed out, reducing number of legal entities by 1/3 this year. So there are two positive effects going forward. And from a pure P&L perspective, the EUR 2 million is onetime.

Okay. And then maybe about the legal entities, reduction of those. So how much cost savings are you expecting from these two next year, for example?

This, you have to continue on Bernd.

Thank you. Yes. First of all, I think what is clear is that this is part of this mid- to long-term strategy. 1/3 is the number of entities by which we are going to reduce this year, 50% reduction in the midterm that we're actually going to complete by end of this year. I'm a little bit reluctant to quantify the exact number of what the cost effect is going to be. However, I would recommend to join us for the Capital Markets Day. We will specifically focus on our profit composition going forward and also on cost metrics, and that is a factor that directly relates to this discussion that we will be having in the Capital Markets Day.

Yes. I assume you're going to discuss the next year guidance as well since looking at the net interest income trend and the earnings trend in Consumer Banking, that next year's guidance seems somewhat maybe challenging. So can you talk about the drivers there? Or are we going to continue this on the CMD?

I think we should continue this in the CMD. And yes, we will comment on guidance for next year.

Yes. Maybe one more question about the business unit level target. So if you would reach those, I would assume you would end up above the guidance. So do you still see the business unit level target is realistic? Or do you see it unlikely that you would reach all of the targets for this year?

Well, the targets we have on a business unit level, they are targets we are really hard working on. And some of the targets might be a stretch, but this is the guidance we clearly have, and we are absolutely aiming to deliver our guidance. So we will see at the end of the year where we exactly are going to be. But you will get more flavor about this as well in 20 minutes or so when our business units will be presenting their cases one by one. But time tells, we are on track.

Yes. Operator, do we have any further audio questions?

Not at this moment. Therefore, please kindly proceed with any written questions.

Yes. Thank you. So we have two questions, which are of the same nature, on impairments. First one is from Harald Hof from MWB Research. The sharp increase in net profit was largely driven by lower credit losses and improved asset quality. How sustainable do you consider this trend, particularly as the company shifts towards secured products compared to the Consumer Banking business? Is 2% impairment losses over portfolio the bottom. Or is there more to come? Maybe we'll start with that one. Antti?

Yes. Of course, that's a trend line we are at the moment. Impossible to say what the floor is. But you're absolutely right that we have evolved our product composition in the business units. For instance, Wholesale Banking being fully secured. CapitalBox has evolved on top of the unsecured business, also secured lending business. So it is also natural that is shown in our results.

We see it somehow stable at the moment. And we -- the only thing about that I can comment from the trend side is that you can see the trend already from the past 2, 3 years that we have taken really robust actions and that that's now in the -- visible in the results. How long this and how deep will it go? I can't really comment. Trend is good.

Okay. On a similar note, we have a question on if we could provide some more color on the reduction impairments, if all parameters has been kept stable and the methodology the same, and I would like to hand that to Bernd.

Well, I think nothing is stable when it comes to credit risk management. It's a permanent technological improvement. The data sources that we are factoring in, the underwriting models, they are improving permanently. I mean we have 15 people in data science. Technology is improving. Access to data is improving. So that in itself makes it with the 20 years of experience that we have, quite likely that there will be a future benefit from this advancement. Number one.

Number two, we have not changed any models. So there are no onetime effects related to valuation, techniques or anything along those lines. We are in the process of changing models here and there, but that is something that might be relevant end of year, not at all impacting those numbers. So this is pure performance driven. And I think those are the two main statements I want to make on this.

Thank you. We have a question from Peter Irblad from Tiger Asset Management. Could you please provide some color on the Consumer Banking interest income development? You mentioned the sale and a different product mix. Can you elaborate did the German credit card launch have an impact?

The German credit cards definitely have an impact that we are growing the portfolio there. The composition, as we spoke already, has changed that we have sold some entities, which we are now also serving through service -- well, service agreements and are getting fee income from there as well. Germany has an impact. And then the whole revenue composition change is actually the main driver here.

Thank you. And the final question before we move on to the Capital Markets Day agenda. You have a lot of cash in the balance at the end of Q3. Is this really necessary to hold so much cash as this drives a lot of interest expense? And actually Bernd is well positioned to answer that.

Well, there are, again, two factors. One is, yes, we hold some EUR 300 million cash, so around a little bit more than 20% increase compared to last year. And by the way, we are also earning interest on that. So it's not only a cost factor. We have moved the business model a little bit from a highly granular business to more discretionary business when it comes to larger scale transaction in Wholesale Banking, and we don't want to delay any transactions. This means we need to have a cash buffer in order to be able to react to business opportunities without promising anything also other nondiscretionary transactions, M&A transactions is something we want to be prepared for. And finally, we are a little bit conservative, or I'm a little bit conservative maybe. We want to maintain a cash buffer in the organization. We will also briefly talk about in the Capital Markets Day, I recommend to join, talk a little bit about our deposit strategy, how we source deposits going forward in order to really make sure that we don't hold excess cash and get down interest expenses in '26 and beyond.

Thank you, Bernd.

Good morning, and welcome to Multitude's H1 2025 Earnings Call. My name is Adam Hansson-Tönning. I'm the Head of Investor Relations and Treasury at Multitude since May this year. Prior to that, I've been with Multitude for 15 years this year, most recently as Head of FP&A, and I will be your host today. Joining us to present the H1 results today is Antti Kumpulainen, CEO of Multitude; and Bernd Egger, CFO of Multitude. [Operator Instructions]

With that, I'll leave the word over to the CEO of Multitude, Antti Kumpulainen.

Thank you, Adam. Good morning, everyone. My name is Antti Kumpulainen, and I'm the CEO of Multitude Group. During this call, I will walk you through Multitude's earnings call and results for the first half of 2025 with our CFO, Mr. Bernd Egger. The first half of year 2025 has been amazing as we continued on a really good path into the second quarter. To remind you all, we did adjust our net profit guidance after the great first quarter, and we are keeping that guidance.

Today, we want to share with you some key takeaways from the first half of the year. First, our revenue continued to grow by 3.5% to EUR 133.4 million. Second, we delivered again a strong net profit, which increased by 93.6% to EUR 14 million. Third, impairment losses on loans decreased by over 18.6% year-on-year. And fourth, we increased our stake in Lea Bank to a total stake of 24.99%. And fifth, we are further streamlining and simplifying our structures, and we are reducing the number of legal entities by 1/3 during the year 2025.

Okay. We can go to the next page. I would like to recap briefly who we are, where we come from and more importantly, where we are going on our way. We were founded in Finland in 2005, our registered cities in Switzerland. We operate with a full EU-wide banking license, and we are listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in the prime standard. During our 20-year journey, we have built a solid track record as a profitable global fintech company, delivering an outstanding and fully digital customer experience focused on serving customers often overlooked by traditional banks.

Next page. Since the beginning of our company, we have always strived to build and offer services to customers who are overlooked by traditional banks. Our vision is to build the most valuable financial platform for them. We believe this can be achieved by offering an amazing customer experience that's digital, fast, easy and a green choice. We have built our fintech growth platform to serve as the core with scalable components hosting these business units. The platform currently serves our 3 business units: Consumer Banking with Ferratum brand; Business Banking CapitalBox, which focuses on digital SME banking; and our newest business unit, Wholesale Banking with Multitude Bank brand. Our focus on the platform is to enhance scalability and constantly seek and be ready for new opportunities.

Our company has, from the very beginning, aimed to grow profitably and follow ESG principles. We are confident in our business model, which we have proved by delivering our profit targets consistently year after year and also recently increased our profit guidance for year 2025. We are committed to our high dividend payout ratio, a target of between 25% to 50% of annual net profit.

From last year's profit, we paid out a total dividend of EUR 0.44 per share being more than 46% of the net profit. Out of this, EUR 0.20 was a base dividend and EUR 0.24 an extraordinary dividend. We are continuing to follow our dream in building a company valued at EUR 1 billion by end of year 2028.

Okay. Then we are ready to take a closer look into the performance of Multitude in the first half of 2025, which showed again strong net profit growth and further improved asset quality. We have been able to continue our growth in the market and our work of simplifying and streamlining the operations and company is starting to bear fruit. Revenue grew by 3.5% to EUR 133.4 million, and our net profit increased by an impressive 95.2% to EUR 14.2 million. A major driver was our continued good control of impairment losses, which decreased by 18.6% or almost by EUR 10 million year-on-year.

This is thanks to our robust business model and high-performing teams, and we have seen this trend already for a long time. We are still in the process of restructuring and streamlining the company and organization, which might have an impact on some financial metrics going forward. We, for instance, are planning to reduce the number of legal entities in the Multitude Group by 1/3 during this year. Each of our business units are in different life cycle and each one is contributing to these results.

Our investment in Lea Bank shares has continued, and our stake has increased to 24.99%, and we are the largest shareholder in Lea Bank. We continue to explore and prepare the strategic cooperation between the companies. Going forward, we have a really clear focus. We are focusing on growing our business through our 3 pillars: organic growth, partnerships and through M&A, further to digitalize and automate our operations with extensive use of AI and data. Maintain high asset quality. We are also focusing on achieving our net profit guidance, which is between EUR 24 million to EUR 26 million in 2025 and EUR 30 million in 2026.

Okay. Let's go more deeply now into our business units, and we will start with Consumer Banking, Ferratum. Profitability increased in the first half significantly by 16.5%. Asset quality is still improving, which was a big contributor to the increase in EBT. Revenue was kept roughly at the same level year-on-year. Portfolio in size of net AR kept on growing with more than 9% year-on-year. Mentionable from the product side is the successful rollout of credit cards in the German market.

Target for this year 2025 is an EBT growth of 5%, and we are in a good pace for that, as you can see. Focus for Ferratum is on high profit markets, growth through partnerships and M&A opportunities, streamlining of operations, scalability and continuing the increase of automation and extensive usage of data and rolling out AI are, of course, in the core of our activities.

Let's turn to our business banking unit, CapitalBox. Revenue growth continued with high single digit and portfolio growth in double-digit numbers in H1. The achievement I want to specifically highlight is the massive improvement in EBT that the team has been able to deliver. Even though CapitalBox was still loss-making in H1, the losses were reduced by whopping 77% or almost EUR 5 million compared to first half of last year. Our target for 2025 is being profitable on a quarterly basis in the second half of the year.

Asset quality continued improving, and it led to a decrease in impairments by 38.6% compared to first half of last year. Factoring product was launched both in Finland and the Netherlands with AI-driven solutions running in the core of the processes. Also a big milestone was the successful launch of the secure lending offering for our customers in the Danish market. Focus for CapitalBox going forward is to continue improving profitability without sacrificing growth. Increased use of AI, automation and utilizing data even more than today are the cornerstones of scaling the business and in a profitable way. Target for the full year, like I said, is to deliver double-digit growth and to be profitable on a quarterly basis in the second half.

Then finally, our newest business unit, Wholesale Banking, which is growing fast. Growth has been really strong and asset quality remains strong, thanks to carefully selected customers. Revenue growth was almost 86% and net AR grew by over 90% in the first half of the year. We do also see a positive EBT in H1. Payment services are growing the fee-based through revenue side of the business, and we expect more payment institutions to be added as clients during the second half of the year.

The team is now focusing on closing the secured debt pipeline, which is really strong. Same goes for the payment services. Focus is also in improving the scalability through further usage of data, AI and automating the processes further whilst keeping the risks in really good control. Target of reaching EBT of EUR 4 million to EUR 5 million for 2025 is intact.

Now I'm ready to hand over to Bernd, who will tell you about the financial performance for the first half of the year. All yours, Bernd.

Thank you, Antti. Good morning to you all. Thank you very much for your interest in Multitude's earnings call covering H1 results. I think the first 6 months can be characterized as really convincing as regards to performance, especially when it comes to profitability metrics. These continue to be great. Driving forces behind this excellent development were solid growth dynamics, and we will look into the specifics on a tribe level a little bit later, continued improvement in credit risk management, super important to us. And thirdly, the scalability of the organization.

Let's start with P&L and go into more detail. Key message number one that I would like to bring across. We still have robust overall growth dynamics. And we will look into the drivers on a segment level. What I like really a lot about the H1 result in terms of monetization is that for the first time, we have incurred quite meaningful fee income. So EUR 5.4 million H1 this year compared to a little bit more than EUR 20,000 last year. So from a strategic perspective, from a monetization perspective and hopefully, at some point also from a valuation perspective, this is really a very important key message I would like to bring across.

Secondly, the actions taken to improve credit risk performance over the last couple of quarters are yielding very strong results. This means that a very positive trend that we have initiated some 1.5 years is being continued. We will also here analyze on a consolidated and on a business unit level, but this is definitely a key message that deserves a lot of attention, minus -- almost minus 20% in credit losses in absolute terms.

Message number three, the organization is scalable, and at the same time, we want to invest in growth. So these 2 factors, efficiency on the one hand side and growth on the other determine cost development going forward.

Now let's go into more detail on the financial performance metrics and start with revenue. Interest income essentially on the same level as last year, EUR 128 million. And at the same time, as pointed out, a very significant increase in fee income. Fee income plus interest income taken together, EUR 133 million, to be precise, EUR 133.4 million, so an increase by 3.5% compared to last year.

The key drivers behind this increase in fee income is twofold. On the one hand side, that's partner business in Consumer Banking and on the other hand side, that's payment business in Wholesale Banking. We'll come to the specific numbers. Both monetization models are 100% in line with our platform approach and with the partnership strategy that we had communicated.

Interest expense and net interest income. Interest expense increased compared to H1 level by around about EUR 3 million. This is essentially driven by 2 factors. One, volume has increased quite significantly. And secondly, we have successfully, I would like to add, placed for the first time a meaningful regulatory capital instrument on the level of the bank, Multitude Bank, a EUR 25 million Tier 2 instrument in H1, specifically in Q1. At the same time, we see that we -- gradually, interest expenses are decreasing and weighted average cost of debt funding is going down a little bit, which is offsetting the volume increase. Naturally, we want to push down interest expense also going forward. Compared to H2 '24, we see around about EUR 0.5 million lower interest expenses already.

Taking those factors together, it gets us to net interest income of EUR 106.3 million, which compares to EUR 110 million last year, a slight drop. However, if we factor in the pro rata profit share that we now are incurring from our associates, EUR 1 million, around about in H1, we get to net operating income of EUR 110.6 million, a slight increase by EUR 1.4 million compared to last year. This EUR 1 million to establish the bridge to what Antti has just said is mainly driven by Lea Bank.

Let me move on to the second key message, credit loss performance, which is and has been one of the top priorities for the full year '24 and for H1 2025. Obviously, this is a very decisive factor behind our profitability boost and credit risk performance has improved very significantly. Credit loss is down in H1 '25 from EUR 52 million to EUR 42 million, EUR 42.4 million, which is a drop by almost EUR 10 million, EUR 9.7 million, or 19% compared to last year. We will go into a little bit more detail on credit losses on a segment level when we discuss segment performance.

The third key message that I've put at the beginning is scalability of the organization. We want to balance growth and efficiency. Personnel expenses increasing slightly by 5% to EUR 19.8 million, 2 key drivers. Essentially, we are teaming up. We are adding some resources when it comes to our ability to foster and accelerate growth in the new businesses. And secondly, as performance is really good, a slight increase in accruals for variable compensation.

Operational expenses. General and admin expenses for H1 at EUR 19 million, which is EUR 2.5 million above last year. Key drivers are strategic projects, quite a number of initiatives, increasing audit expenses, whether we like it or not, that is just something regulatory complexity, some of them of one-off nature related to relocation to Switzerland. And finally, the key driver behind general and admin expense by a little bit more than 45% is driven by depositor compensation scheme. So this is a function of growth in the end.

Depreciation expenses, marketing, other expenses, de facto flat, in fact, slightly below last year's level, some minus EUR 100,000. And overall, as pointed out, our ambition remains to accelerate our efficiency programs and at the same time, invest in future growth.

If we move on and take a look at the financial performance in terms of profitability, I'm still on the P&L slide. Taking into consideration all those 3 factors, revenue development, credit loss performance, cost development, this gets us to profit before tax of more than EUR 16 million, EUR 16.3 million, almost doubling compared to last year. H1 '24, EUR 7.9 million, an increase by 94%. With an effective tax rate that remained constant at 13%, this gets us to a net profit of EUR 14.2 million. And again, this is almost doubling compared to last year, plus 95%. So really great, especially as this performance in Q2 confirms and repeats the strong performance and the very high net profit levels that we have seen in Q4 '24, in Q1 '25 and now also in Q2 2025.

Let's now move on to balance sheet. I think there are 2 or 3 key messages I want to bring across Cash that is all good, plus EUR 28 million, which has to do with deposit increase and also with the successful placement of the financial instrument on -- regulatory instrument on the level of the bank, plus, of course, cash generated by the business. Loans and investment portfolio in its entirety up EUR 90 million. Other financial assets, may be something that I would like to highlight briefly from EUR 27 million to EUR 50 million. That has to do with strategic partnerships, receivables from portfolio sales and effect of businesses sold as pointed out by Antti.

Overall, the ambition is -- has been for this year and will also be for the remainder of the year that we reduce the number of legal entities by 1/3 this year. Finally, talking about the assets, around EUR 20 million investment in associates. This is also a considerably higher level than last year. Key driver here behind this investment number is the investment in Lea Bank, 24.99%.

On the next slide, equity and liability, equity up to close to EUR 196 million. In terms of liability, nothing beyond what I've said already. Deposits, main source of funding increased to EUR 927 million, the 2 transactions I've highlighted this already.

Let's take a look on the next slide on segment performance. I will start, as always, with Consumer Banking and Ferratum makes it quite easy for me to take a deeper look at their performance. In short, Ferratum has again performed exceptionally well, especially in terms of profitability. Revenue is de facto on the same level as last year, down by EUR 1 million, EUR 1.1 million, that's 1% roughly. But the positive aspect is really that we are generating very meaningful fee income, EUR 4.3 million in the Ferratum business. So really an excellent development and 100% confirmation of, I would say, the appropriateness of the strategy of the Ferratum team.

In terms of credit losses, again, and we have a summary slide on the next page, but let's stick on this one for a second. Now for a number of quarters in a row, really strong performance. I've updated you in Q1 that we had an exceptionally low credit loss level of EUR 19.1 million in Q1, which is actually -- or was actually below the already strong Q2 to Q4 performance last year. Now we are even lower by another EUR 2 million, EUR 17 million credit losses in the Ferratum business in Q2, and this gets us for the combined view on H1, minus 18% compared to last year.

OpEx very well under control. Profit before tax from already extremely strong EUR 15 million to EUR 17.4 million, so plus another EUR 2.5 million or 16.5% from an already extremely strong level in H1 2024. So in short, very impressive performance. Focus on lean organization, focus on pushing products that incur recurring revenues. These are the -- that's the way forward for the consumer business.

Now CapitalBox as the second one, we are quite satisfied with top line development. So revenue increasing by around about 8% to EUR 17.3 million, which is an all-time high on a semiannual basis. Credit losses also deserves, I think, quite positive recognition. As a recap, credit losses were a little bit elevated in 2024, now down by 39% compared to last year. So H1, we are now at EUR 4.9 million credit losses. Last year, we were at EUR 8 million, so almost 40% drop despite the fact that the portfolio now is around about EUR 20 million larger than last year. So this is a great success. Naturally, credit losses will remain a focus area.

Cost, the team -- CapitalBox team has done a lot to streamline the organization following the integration of the acquired Danish Omniveta, the factoring business. And following also a number of efficiency initiatives, OpEx is on a lower level than last year despite the fact that the business is growing minus 10% to EUR 9.7 million. So that's really good. And as a consequence of higher revenues, strongly reduced credit losses and lower cost levels, we see still a slight negative, but only EUR 1.5 million negative profit before tax contribution and as pointed out, 77% reduction in losses. The ambition still is for Q2 -- sorry, for Q3 or Q4 to see profit contribution, positive profit contribution on a quarterly level from the CapitalBox business.

Wholesale Banking also makes it pretty easy to find quite attractive and positive words. I would say, revenue up to almost EUR 10 million, an increase by EUR 4.5 million, so 2/3, 66%, 65% increase, plus and again, this monetization element is something like a lot, incremental fee income, EUR 1.1 million from newly established payment business. So that's the addition to the EUR 4.3 million fee income incurred by the Ferratum business. Credit loss performance, we have now started building up some reserves. This is why we see some EUR 1.3 million, EUR 1.4 million in H1, but that is more a conservative approach. The businesses are performing well. So that is all very well on track.

Cost structure, naturally, as an early-stage business, still personnel expenses and operational expenses are increasing by slightly above 1/3, but at a aggressive rate, and that makes us quite optimistic that the very ambitious target of achieving EUR 4 million -- a little bit more than EUR 4 million profit before tax on a full year basis is something that we can achieve.

Let's now take a look at the next 2 slides on credit losses and asset quality. Here, I will not go into too much detail. Maybe you want to focus on the black bars that reflects the continued reduction of credit losses on a tribe level. Going forward, we will also present the Wholesale Banking business here. But the key message is we are continuing to reduce credit losses in all businesses.

On the next slide, a slide that you are very familiar with, again, more relevant than a specific number of 2.5% is basically, on the one hand side, the trend. So a clear downward trend, which means credit losses of portfolio size are really decreasing significantly. That, in turn, means that asset quality is improving. And the second statement I would like to make that during this period from 2019, 2020 until '25, we have -- the business has managed to remain extremely resilient throughout a number of external shocks that we had to deal with.

Finally, let me take a quick look at funding structure on the next page. As pointed out, the strategy doesn't change. We have 2 principles. One is we want to be quite independent of any single source of funding. This means we will remain on the capital markets. And again, I think it's a great performance by the bank team to be able to issue a Tier 2 instrument independently. That's one.

Secondly, main focus in terms of funding the business is also going forward to be deposit. Deposit costs are reducing a little bit. Naturally, this is our main focus also going forward to push costs down. In terms of liquidity risk and funding risk, there is no upcoming repayment over the next year. So from that perspective, we are set to scale the business going forward. With that, back to you, Antti, and to you, Adam, for Q&A.

Yes. Thank you, Bernd. With that, we open for questions. [Operator Instructions] While we wait for any voice questions, perhaps, Bernd, we would like to start with a question to you. In Q2 2025, the interest -- it's a question from Stefan Hirschhofer. Q2, the interest expense were quite high with EUR 11.4 million due to the significantly lower 3 months Euribor, I expected less costs here. Could you give us a rough split how much interest expense are the bonds, long-term deposits from customers and short-term deposits?

Yes, absolutely. And yes, I mean, overall interest expenses are reducing. They are also in absolute numbers below H2 level of last year. And also in terms of composition of the cost, I would make -- want to make 1 or 2 statements. First of all, composition of the cost structure. Now if you look at H1 in its entirety, this is a little bit more than EUR 21 million. The bulk of that is deposits. So EUR 15.5 million roughly is related to deposits, which is an increase of around about EUR 1.5 million compared to last year.

At the same time, the volumes have increased significantly. So we actually see already from a relative price reduction of deposits by around about 38, 39 basis points compared to last year, a positive cost reduction effect of EUR 1.7 million. But again, in absolute terms, EUR 15.5 million roughly out of this EUR 21 million are related to deposits.

Secondly, we have around about EUR 4 million related to the senior instrument on holdco level. That's the EUR 80 million instrument that we have issued in order to replace the instrument expiring in '25. And then new, this is also one of the drivers in H1 this year is costs related to the Tier 2 instrument on the level of the bank, a little bit more than EUR 1 million in the first half. But again, this is a prerequisite in order to enable our growth. We're currently at 23% capital ratio on the level of the bank. So this is actually going to support future growth.

And yes, if I may continue, what is your expectation for the next quarters regarding the development of interest expenses? Well, I mean, we have these 2 drivers that we need to factor in as deposit is going to remain the main source of growth also going forward. We expect interest rate levels to go down. We have to factor in that those term deposits that we needed to take on board over the last 1.5, 2 years, 24 months, 36 months, is a gradual effect. So we will see a reduction, but it will not be a jump, but rather a gradual effect.

This is something that actually I don't know whether it's a good point in time to make reference to that. But just today, we are going to revisit our interest rate deposits and might well result in a reduction for new deposits that we take in. So a gradual reduction and naturally, our ambition is to push as much as we can. And ideally, at some point, also supplement the reduction by taking in products that enable us to take in less price sensitive or interest rate-sensitive clients.

Then the next one, if I may continue, Stefan Hirschhofer, an accounting question. The dividend of Lea Bank is not recognized in the P&L. Is this only a cash effect? What is -- why is that so? Can you please explain?

Why is that so is a very good question. This is basically the logic of IFRS in that respect. But there is an element of logic. So what is actually happening is that the pro rata profit of an associate is reflected in our P&L. So this will be around about EUR 2 million this year. And this is why the dividend payment is not again reflected in the P&L. Otherwise, it would be double counted. What is actually happening is that the dividend payment economically is to be seen as a cash repayment that reduces the amount invested. In the particular case of Lea Bank, this means that we have invested some EUR 23 million, EUR 24 million, around about, and we get back EUR 4 million cash. This means that the investment -- the carrying amount of the investment is reduced by EUR 4 million. It's obviously fully cash effective. So we have 2 effects. One is pro rata profit from the net profit generated by Lea Bank and the positive cash impact from the dividend.

Then we have a question -- questions still from Stefan Hirschhofer. I will combine a few one here. There are questions about, are you confident to reach the target for CapitalBox business in whole year 2025 and the both quarters were negative in profits. What will you do to change this in second half?

If I take this one, we can see that we have massively decreased the losses, and we are almost at the breakeven level in CapitalBox. There is not like a one magic silver bullet. We are continuing the same work of reducing the impairments while at the same time growing in pretty high numbers. The team is making the processes much more solid at the moment, much more effective. We have started factoring business in a few countries, which you don't see yet in the numbers since it takes time to grow the portfolio. You can see some of it in the numbers. But obviously, the portfolio growth needs to first be there in order to generate the income. So on CapitalBox side, having the second half on quarterly level basis profitable, those are the measurements to go forward.

And a bit on the same note, there's a question from Petter Irblad, the same question on the CapitalBox, but then also on the Wholesale Banking positive EBT on how can we go to the -- between EUR 4 million and EUR 5 million in Wholesale Banking that hard time to reconcile that.

There are a couple of dynamic things that we believe that we are going to for -- between EUR 4 million and EUR 5 million. First aspect is the payment business. We have now signed customers earlier this year. And before we can really grow up the volumes, you can already see a significant fee income. Before we can grow up the volumes, you have to test, you have to monitor, you have to build up the business. And it takes a bit time before the big volumes come in. And now we already see the fee income and it will continue.

The same dynamics goes for the portfolios that we have in Wholesale Banking. You first grow the portfolio, you have to take reservings in the beginning. And after that, the interest starts picking. So now the portfolios and the net AR have been growing quite well this year. So we expect the EUR 4 million to EUR 5 million EBT to be reached. And also, like Bernd already said, we have invested in personnel, especially now in Wholesale Banking unit, growing up the team in the beginning of the year. The team is now in place. We don't expect that we are growing the team there massively. Now it's time to scale up, which the team is ready to do.

Yes. Maybe I will continue with another question raised by Stefan Hirschhofer and maybe then we move on to other participants. There was a question related to balance sheet position. Can you please explain the balance sheet position. Other financial assets with EUR 50.6 million in Q2. What are the main drivers for the increase?

Yes, the increase, to put it into perspective, last year, the position was -- or end of year, I should say, was EUR 27 million. Now it's EUR 50 million. So the delta is EUR 23 million. There are basically 3 factors behind that. One is portfolio sales, so receivables from portfolio sales. The second one is a strategic partnership in the consumer banking business. And the third one is related to the reduction of number of legal entities and entities that have been sold.

There are 2 components, again, within this total amount of around about EUR 10 million, a little bit less than EUR 10 million related to portfolio -- sorry, entity transactions that is cash receivable that, by the way, meanwhile, has been settled in full. So it's no longer on the balance sheet as per today. And the other one is the capitalized expected cash flow from an earn-out model related to entities. And then maybe one more. Nature of fee and commission income, newly introduced fees and what are the growth plans? Should I continue? Or do you want to?

You can continue if you want to. Yes.

Yes. Okay. In total, it's EUR 5.4 million. And the absolute comparative number from last year is EUR 21,000. So this is really something, game changer is a big word, but it is really strategically meaningful and a reflection of, in my view, at least the appropriateness of the strategy of both businesses. So that's the consumer business on the one hand side and also the wholesale banking business.

Now what is it in detail? EUR 1.1 million out of that relates to Wholesale Banking, more specifically payment-related fees. I think Antti has outlined the strategy in one of the previous meetings. The idea was to capitalize on what we have developed, the payment infrastructure, the ability to provide payment services in a number of technical manners, but also a number of currencies to external partners. This is what is happening, and this is generating EUR 1.1 million in the first half.

And the second one in the consumer business, that is a strategic partnership with a client in Poland, generating around about EUR 4 million and then there is a residual -- EUR 3.7 million. And then we have a residual element related to platform related to the sold entities. We are still providing services that accounts for EUR 600,000 around about. And yes, all of those 3 revenue sources are meant to stay. So obviously, it's not a guarantee and not a promise, but it's not a one-off.

Good. Then we have one on the -- on Stefan Hirschhofer on the interest expense, if you take that, Bernd, also.

Yes. I think I've covered it already. The question is EUR 801 million deposit expenses in Q2 compared to EUR 927 million is 3.5%. Is that correct? Yes, that is essentially correct. We are -- and as pointed out, currently, we are paying for around about 2.5% to 3% for new deposits. That is already 100 to 150 basis points lower for new deposits than last year. And as also pointed out, maybe not something that -- I mean, this is an idea, it's not an announcement at this stage. It's not unlikely that for new deposits, these rates will drop further, but we just need to factor in that this is a gradual process of melting down of interest expenses.

Then we have a question from Jonathan Kogan. Growth seems to be slowing. How do you plan to accelerate momentum while keeping impairments under control? Wholesale is showing nice growth, but also higher impairments. What should we expect going forward?

Well, we should expect going forward to deliver the guidance to start with. And what we can see now, for instance, on consumer side, what already Bernd was explaining that we have a meaningful fee income coming compared to last year, and that is a strategic choice we have made. So it takes time to build that business up, but we see a big growth momentum.

There are also a few other factors. One is I already mentioned the German credit card business, which is now taking well off. We have to remember that it starts from almost 0 when we have 0 credit cards and you start building that up. The sales is now on a really good level. The previous business we have had there on the microlending side, we don't have that. We have changed completely to credit cards now. So that's also a business line that we expect a growth in the future, just to name a few ones.

Wholesale, yes, showing a nice growth. And like I expect the higher impairments, we have to reserve already in advance for possible impairments, which we don't have any at the moment. So we can expect going forward, especially now this guidance and keep the growth going forward.

Good. I believe we have an audio question from Julius at NuWays.

Very silent audio question.

Can you hear us?

Yes, we can.

This is Roni Peuranheimo from Inderes. So maybe about the guidance still, it seems somewhat cautious for H2. So should we expect any additional cost inflations coming in H2? Or what can you tell about the impairment loss trend for the rest of the year?

Bernd, do you want to take this one or...

Yes. Yes, I can. I mean I think the -- what you're probably doing is you're extrapolating EUR 14 million net profit to the full year, which gets you to EUR 28 million compared to EUR 24 million to EUR 26 million already improved guidance. Now I think there are 3 factors. One, what we are interested in is really developing a mid- to long-term clear path of profitable growth. This was the rationale behind the full year of EBIT guidance is the rationale behind this EUR 25 million to meet in the middle guidance for this year and the EUR 30 million next year. I don't think that there is any particular expectation that we have to see a deterioration in credit losses. That is not the message. But at the same time, we don't want to think it's appropriate to adjust guidance metrics each and every earnings call. We might look at that later, but again, it's not a promise.

Secondly, growth is an ambition. Investment in growth can come at the cost. So for instance, we want to make sure that even if we were to engage into new initiatives, also acquisitions, for instance, that come at the cost, we wouldn't have to carve that out from a guidance, but really make sure that we have room to move. And this is how we look at the business going forward. And so I still think it's ambitious and realistic, and let's speak in a couple of months on how we look at the full year. But I think the key message is we are definitely comfortable that we will achieve -- comfortably achieve the '25 guidance.

Okay. Maybe next question from Frederik Jarchow at NuWays. Can you elaborate a bit on the Lea Bank stake? So first, do you plan to increase the stake further? And second one, yes, can you reiterate maybe the rationales behind the acquisition and elaborate a bit on current and future cooperations that you see with Lea Bank?

Yes, if I may take this one. We are happy with the stake we are at the moment. Of course, I cannot comment on any further future possible sales or purchases. We are happy where we are at the moment. We see Lea Bank from 2 different angles. First of all, as a financial investment, it's already been really good investment. We are happy with that part.

But that's not the only reason we invested in Lea Bank. We see strategic importance in Lea. And we do see that the segments that Multitude is operating in and Lea is operating in are not overlapping. So Lea Bank is giving out more higher ticket in size consumer loans with a bit lower yield. We are not in that business segment than Lea Bank is, and we are really well working on different segments in parallel.

And we can see that there are still possibilities on product cooperation, on cross-selling. People have different needs for different loans. Lea is really good in what they are doing in that segment. We are really good in our own segment, and we are trying to find partnership models, synergies on cross-sells referencing, et cetera. There are also other opportunities. But for now, we are really happy with the investment in Lea, really good financial performance. The bank is really well run. We are happy to be the largest shareholder of Lea Bank.

And do you have current projects with Lea Bank together? Or are you still looking for opportunities? Is there already a project or something going on? Can you comment on this?

We are in really close cooperation discussing different options with Lea, but we don't have anything we would -- we could now go public that especially this product is now live.

This is Roni Peuranheimo again. Maybe a recap, if you could give -- have you sold any meaningful parts of your loan portfolios recently that would kind of affect the margin or impairment loss dynamics going forward?

Bernd, do you want to take this one? On -- so the question, have we sold any meaningful portfolios? So no, we are continuing the same strategy that we have had that we are keeping our balance sheet in really good shape that once we have NPL loans, we are selling them into the market. Of course, we first collect them ourselves. So our collection strategies, we are focusing on all the time, making them better. So this is one thing.

And also on the impairment loss perspective. So it's not a thing that has happened over the next -- on the previous few quarters, you can see what Bernd was showing in the materials in the latter pages that the trend on impairment losses going down has now been going on for a couple of years really, really clearly, even more than a couple of years. So this is the reason that why we see the impairment losses going down. It's a long-term trend.

And maybe just to add, over the last couple of years, and you will recall this slide, which shows the improvement of asset quality over time. I think there are 2 main drivers. One is the qualitative improvements in underwriting, internal processes, collection, all that. The other one is the portfolio composition. And in all businesses, the strategic ambition was to establish a transition towards more recurring type of revenue and lower risk classes.

Now if we can achieve this target by selling portfolios, selling entities, outsourcing this type of shorter, higher-risk loans, then we will continue doing that. But the overarching principle is that we focus on recurring products on recurring revenues. This is also the rationale behind what Antti said earlier, the new product established in Germany. Naturally, the expectation is that long-term recurring credit limit credit card type of product supports the strategy of reducing or keeping credit losses on a low level. And portfolio sales, this is something that happens all the time. I mean this is part of the business to go for tenders, sell portfolios, also sell entities in the pursuit of the ambition to create a leaner organization. So it's not a strategic change. It's more an operational tactical change.

Okay. This is Frederik from NuWays again. Maybe a broader perspective. I mean, the Wholesale Banking and also the SME banking is already profitable or is close to being profitable. What kind of steady-state margin can we expect for both businesses? And what level of revenues need to be achieved for these margins?

That's a very good question, Antti. You have not said anything yet. So I start and you interrupt me, right?

Yes.

Okay. On steady state, I think the really great -- really, really great performance of the Wholesale Banking team is to establish something that is net profit accretive in the first year and that at least based on our ambitious plans will generate EUR 4 million to EUR 5 million net profit before tax in the second year. And at the same time, growing the portfolio at 3-digit million each year. So what does it mean in steady state? I don't know yet. Naturally, the ambition is, and that's the logic behind all business units to make a meaningful contribution to the overall target, and that is the net profit guidance.

Wholesale Banking is doing extremely well in getting us there based on what I just said. On CapitalBox, I think a similar answer whether unfortunately it's a good one from your perspective or not, but we are now about to break even, and that is the ambition for this year. Antti has given you the numbers from EUR 6.5 million to EUR 1.5 million negative profit before tax contribution, whilst growing credit losses much better than they were. Organization is more scalable, lower fixed cost also in absolute terms, by the way, lower fixed cost levels. So that should enable us to scale. And then I don't see a limitation for the scaling momentum for either of those businesses. So as soon as all those businesses make a positive net profit contribution, I think we are fine for now. Antti, please.

I think this is good answer. We have a question from Mark [ Luti ] asking about share buyback program, which is going on. Do you intend to increase? We don't have any at the moment. Any new programs planned will be then announced should we have one.

Then Harald Hof is asking from mwb research that could you provide a bit more details on the credit card in Germany, that how is it working, et cetera, et cetera.

So this is a Ferratum-branded credit card working with Mastercard like all of the Multitude cards at the moment. So this is a fully owned operation in Multitude. We have the payment infrastructure in our mobile bank as well and including credit cards, debit cards. So we are having this service now for the German customers. And we are expecting the customer intake to grow. We see this as a good product, which has a traction on the German market. So in a way, pretty traditional credit card fully operated by ourselves with the Mastercard brand.

Then we have a question again from Mark [ Luti ] that now when the company is headquartered in Switzerland that are we considering a listing on the Swiss Stock Exchange. And we don't have such plans at the moment. We are now listed in Frankfurt Prime Standard. Any additions on that, Bernd?

No, no. Sounds great.

Good. Then continuing from Mr. [ Luti ] is that do we expect any Banking-as-a-Service partnerships?

There is nothing that we, I would say, rule out on that particular part either. This is important when we look now the partnerships in general, and there was questions about growth in the future. So we have 3 growth pillars. I have to remind of those. Organic growth, which we have done for the last 20 years, and we have businesses in different stages of their maturity. We do have also partnerships, which we are working really hard on. The Polish example is a good one, and we expect new partnerships to be announced at some point in time. And also M&A, we have evidence, for instance, buying the Omniveta business last year for CapitalBox business. So those 3 business growth pillars and dynamics we do have.

Then there's a question from [ Thilo Muller ] that the net profit guidance for '25, this we have between EUR 24 million and EUR 26 million and that we are coming really closer to 2026 guidance with [ Thilo's ] calculations. When do you have a higher -- when will we have a higher guidance in '26 is the question in my understanding. We are now looking at 2025 numbers, and we have the 2025 guidance. 2026 guidance, we will remain intact at EUR 30 million. And when the time comes, we are then looking into the next year numbers closer to year-end.

Maybe in this respect, if I may add, in a little bit less than 3 months from now on 13th of November, we will have a Capital Markets Day, and I think this will be a great opportunity for us to share our view on '26 in terms of financial performance expectation. And again, without promising anything, I think it could also be an opportunity to give a little bit of an outlook on how we see financial performance developing going forward.

Then we have a question from Daniel Brunner. Are you planning to enter new geographical markets in the near future? And congrats for the great results.

Thank you, Daniel. We are not planning now to enter anything that we will announce, but we are happy with the current portfolio we have. But like I stated just a minute ago on these 3 different growth pillars that are organic, partnerships and M&A. And should we see good partnership or M&A opportunities in the jurisdictions which we geographically are not now present at, we are ready to go. Our digital business model allows us to start and expand even quite fast in new geographical markets, should we have a right fit, which we want to grab.

Then there's a good question about -- from [ Thilo Muller ] again. What makes you sure having a market cap of EUR 1 billion in '28? And what net profit do you need that for a basis?

To start with, that is our dream position to be EUR 1 billion market cap in 2028. We are not sure that we're going to be there. This is our dream, but we are confident in the management that we are on the right path. Well, the net profit needed for it depends, obviously, what the P/E for the company needs to be.

And it's -- there are -- we have calculated different scenarios, which I believe you always -- all analysts and investors have also done. There are different ways to go there. I would say that we are telling more about the value creation structures or updating the ideas that we have and the strategy in the coming Capital Markets Day in November that Bernd was already mentioning.

Then we have -- on the dividend question, do you want to take this one? I think it's a bit premature already, but if you, Bernd.

Yes. [indiscernible] How will you determine whether the payout ratio for the '25 dividend will be close to 25% or 50%?

Yes, this is something I cannot really comment too much on. It's not clear yet. There are a number of factors, growth dynamics, equity requirement, investor expectations. So a number of factors. I think what is, from our perspective, super important is that we have this ambition and be very clear about the ambition of being a growth, value creation and dividend-paying company. And give us please some time to give an indication in which directions shareholders will be thinking.

Then we have a question from Peter Irblad, coming back to the CapitalBox growth question that the quarterly net AR growth has been still slow and when we can expect an acceleration?

I think the acceleration can be expected anytime soon, and it's already accelerating. We have to remember that we are changing a bit on the product setup as well and the product offering. Factoring product as one product is a new one, which we are still accelerating. This is one key driver. And that is kind of a business model which is rolling over every month. So it's a more shorter-term traditional factoring done in a really effective digital way.

Then launching and launching is perhaps since it's already launched, but accelerating the secured lending business in CapitalBox, where we see a good traction in the Nordic markets. And those are my high expectations on CapitalBox business to grow in the Nordic markets in the secured debt space, whilst maintaining also the good results in the unsecured lending model we have. And now we have all the tools there to accelerate the growth.

Very good. I believe that comes to the end of the questions. So thank you for all who have joined us today. Bernd and myself will be attending the German Fall conference in Frankfurt on the 1st and 2nd of September. If anyone is attending, feel free to connect. And as mentioned by Bernd, a reminder that we will be publishing the 9 months results on the morning of the 13th of November and later in the day, host our Capital Markets Day, where we will, as Bernd mentioned, give a bit more flavor on '26. We will send out further details closer to the event. I hope to see you then. Thank you, and goodbye.

Thank you. Have a good day.

Good day.

Bye.