Axactor (Oslo:ACR) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

0:00 Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the Axactor ASA presentation of second quarter twenty twenty six results. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. If you have logged in via the webcast, please use the q and a button to submit your questions.

0:24 I will now hand the conference over to Jonny Tsolis, CEO at Axactor. Please go ahead. Good morning and welcome to Axactor's second quarter presentation. With me today I have our CFO, Nina Mortensen. This presentation will be divided into four parts. First, I will take you through the main highlights, then Nina will present the financials before I will go through key focus areas going forward. We will round off with a Q and A session. This time I will focus on the two most important events in the quarter: firstly, the equity transaction and its main elements and secondly, the result of the book value assessment that was previously announced. Please move to slide three.

1:09 As the main elements in the transaction are well known, I will not spend too much time repeating these, but rather focus on the results and where we stand. We raised a total of $215,000,000 in new equity, divided on 200,000,000 in the private placement and 15,000,000 in a successful subsequent offering. I'm happy to say that everyone that subscribed in the subsequent offering got full allocation, including any request for oversubscription. Hence, it is clear that the maximum subsequent offering of 20,000,000 was more than enough to cover all demand from existing shareholders. The co investment structure with Fortress is now up and running, with the legal structure established and the first investments through the vehicle already closed in July.

1:57 The sale of the seed portfolio is conducted to a newly established SPV where Axactor owns 51% and we have received the first €50,000,000 in proceeds. The remaining will be settled in Q3. Just before summer, we placed a new €100,000,000 bond with four point two five years tenure at Eurobor plus three ninety bps margin. This was a record low for Axactor, confirming the strong market confidence in the company's transformation. During June, bond ACR03 was repaid in full, while also partial ACR04 was repaid in connection with the latest bond placement. To summarize, we are fully on track on the transaction and we are now ready to focus on investment growth in combination with replacing the current bond structure with new bonds at better terms.

2:46 Let's have a look at our debt structure on the next page. As a result of the transaction, the net debt has been significantly reduced. This was in addition to increased investment capacity, the main motivation for the transaction in the first place. Our net debt is now at €559,000,000 down from €837,000,000 by the end of Q1. The proceeds from the equity issue and the seed portfolio sale have been used to call the remaining parts of ACR O3 and to reduce the RCF draw. The leverage ratio has been reduced to 2.3 when adjusting for the remaining €50,000,000 proceeds from the portfolio sale that will be settled later in Q3. We expect to refinance the outstanding part of ACR O4 in September this year, most likely using a combination of existing funds and a new bond placement. However, the latter is depending on market conditions.

3:44 Let's move to the second major highlight from Q2, the result of the book value assessment. Please turn to page five in the presentation. Let me spend one minute on the background. If you look at the curve on the left hand side and focus on the upper curve, which represents our active forecast per 12/31/2025, you can see that it is increasing before it starts to decrease between 2027 and 2028. In order for us to reach this curve, we have anticipated a number of improvements in relevant macroeconomic factors. For example, that Germany should be out of recession, interest rates should go down instead of up, inflation down, etc. We had also expected certain regulatory factors to improve. As we moved into 2026, it gradually became clear that these improvements were not materializing as expected, and in Q1, the unsecured collections fell to 89% of active forecasts.

4:41 Unfortunately, the unsecured NPL collections has continued to fall compared to active forecast in the second quarter and would have been down to 81 performance in Q2 if no curve adjustments had been done. As we announced in April, we initiated a full assessment of our back book to address the decline in collection performance.

5:02 During this assessment, we have revised all our underlying assumptions and implemented this into an improved and more data driven model. This model has been enabled by obtaining more and better collection data as the company has matured over the years. The result of the assessment is less expected collections and a differently shaped collection curve, as you can see on the graph to the left. And the decay rates are aligned with the markets. We have also illustrated how the new collection curve looks compared to the actual unsecured collection for the last eighteen months marked as actual collection. The new curve will obviously translate into a significantly negative revaluation for the unsecured NPL book. I will go through more details on the next slide.

5:49 The total negative revaluation amounts to €320,000,000 corresponding to 33% of the unsecured NPL book value. The amount is approximately 10% lower than Fortress pricing assumptions in relation to the private placements. If we deep dive a bit more into the vintages affected, pre-twenty twenty one vintages and the German '21 vintage accounts for 92% of the total revaluation. Norway and Sweden have the largest adjustments, both in nominal terms and relative to book value. Spanish secured portfolios are still over performing and is not part of the process. Unsecured collection performance was lifted to 102% in June after implementing the new curves.

6:37 Axactor expects future collection to be in line with collection curves and hence no further revaluation will be needed. With that, I leave the word to Nina for the financial update. Thank you, Jani. So now I'll take you through the Q2 financial performance, starting with the overall figures and then a bit more context on what is behind the numbers. Gross revenue for the group ended at EUR78 million in the quarter, down four percent compared to the second quarter of twenty twenty five. And as I also explained in the Q1 report in May, the decline is largely due to the portfolio sales in Spain and Germany last year and limited NPL investments. The NPL segment reported a gross revenue of EUR 62,000,000. Excluding the portfolio sold last year, the segment gross revenue decreased 4% compared to Q2 twenty twenty five.

7:28 The triple C segment continued to deliver well with a solid top line of EUR 16,000,000, up 3% from the second quarter last year. Let's look a bit more into details on each of the business segments, starting with Mpel on the next slide. As Jonny explained earlier, the Mpel segment was heavily impacted by the negative evaluations of EUR $320,000,000 in the quarter, and total revenue for the segment ended at negative EUR $274,000,000. The NPL collection performance, including both unsecured and secured portfolios, ended at 93% for the quarter. Please note that the reported collection performance includes the updated curves with effect from June, while April and May are reported based on unadjusted collection curves.

8:18 While the unsecured portfolios have been underperforming, the secured portfolios continue to perform strongly this quarter. LNPN investments were EUR19 million in the second quarter and EUR55 million so far this year. Portfolio investments are expected to pick up with the significantly improved investment capacity. The higher investment capacity comes from both the proceeds from the equity raise, but also through establishment of the new co investment structure with Fortress. Please turn to next slide for comments on the development in the 3PC segment. The triple C revenues ended at EUR 16,000,000 for the quarter, up 3% from the corresponding quarter last year. As for Q1 last year, the second quarter of twenty twenty five also saw positive one off impacts on a specific contract in Spain, impacting the growth for this quarter.

9:12 Adjusted for this one off impact, the underlying year over year growth was 5%. The growth is predominantly driven by new contracts in Norway and a strong performance in Germany. The Norwegian Landmark deal is performing very well, but it's experiencing some minor delays in onboarding of certain key segments. The contribution margin ended at 36%, up from 31% in the second quarter twenty twenty five. The contribution margin is improving through both the revenue growth along with lower operating expenses.

9:46 It is important to mention that Axactor receives excellent feedback from our clients on our tailored high quality deliveries. The pipeline for new clients remains strong across geographies and further growth is expected for the segment going forward. The capital light servicing will also benefit from both the co investment vehicle and the seed portfolio of SEN as Axactor retains exclusive servicing rights for both vehicles. Let us move on to the next slide where I present more details on the reported financials for the group. Due to the negative revaluation booked this quarter, total revenue at group level ended negative EUR258 million, with EBITDA at negative EUR290 million. The corresponding figures for the second quarter last year were total revenues of million and an EBITDA of EUR33 million.

10:41 The cash EBITDA was at a good level for the second quarter this year, ending at EUR46 million. As a final remark, we have initiated a review of the segment reporting structure. The capital light servicing will now benefit from both the co investment vehicle and the seed portfolio sale, and the segment reporting will be adapted to better reflect the impact of these changes. We expect to report according to the new structure from the next quarter. With that, I'll now hand it back to Johnny for some additional comments on the key focus areas going forward. Thank you so much, Nina. I would like to wrap up this presentation by emphasizing our key focus areas going forward. These are, in our opinion, the most important factors to succeed with in order to deliver on our updated financial targets that was presented as part of the equity transaction.

11:32 I will not go through the financial targets now, but you can find these on page 16 in the presentation. Firstly, we are resuming full focus on building an attractive NPL investment pipeline. The new core investment structure is in place, and now we need to continue to identify and acquire attractively priced NPL portfolios. This is one of the most important value drivers in order to reach the financial targets for 2027 and beyond. Secondly, we will continue to fight for new attractive large sized bank and finance customers in the 3PC segment.

12:04 Operational excellence is an important part of securing the top line and to deliver on the active forecast going forward.

12:12 We will continue to improve cost of funding, starting with refinancing of ACR-four in September this year. And lastly, we will work hard to continue to increase efficiency through further automation with support from AI to secure our strong cost position. With that, we open up for questions. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. If you have logged in via the webcast, please use the q and a button to submit your questions. Please stand by while we compile the q and a roster.

13:04 There are no questions on the audio line at this time. I will hand it over to the management team to address any text based questions. Thank you so much. The first question is, can you give us the updated figure for your investment capacity and details on the size of the July investments? The investment capacity depends on a few things. In our case specifically, how much money we raise in the bond market going forward. Because as you all know, we have the ACR-four that we can and we will repay now in September. But if only use our RCF to repay it, of course that will eat from the investment capacity.

13:52 But if we do raise bond market and refinance in the bond market, we will have investment capacity to deliver on the financial targets as we have mentioned earlier, which is EUR200 to EUR400 million per year. And then second question is, can you give some more details on the Norwegian landmark deal and the delays in onboarding of certain key elements? Yes, can do that. First of all, I would like to say that the agreement delivers better than expected on the received volumes. The customer has also transferred additional surveillance portfolios that was not part of the original agreement. However, we have a delay on the larger segments, so it will not be transferred before 01/01/2027 compared to the plan, which was 04/01/2026.

14:46 So that unfortunately gives us a delay in 3PC growth. Then we have the next question is, what type of macroeconomic parameters and regulatory factors were expected to improve in the last ERC? Are there any upsides to the curve? What type of macroeconomics assumptions do you have now? So, first of all, I think when it comes to the macro parameters, it's the ones that you know very well, it's interest rate development, inflation, GDP growth, basically all the most common macroeconomic parameters that you will use to describe an economy. I think there will always be upsides and downsides risk in a forecast and we believe it to be balanced.

15:40 On the regulatory side, that's a very complex question. I think we have to take that offline because it's not, but it's the normal also what we have described earlier, It's payment free months, that is one thing. It's like you saw in Sweden, if the country is doing something on regulatory, you can deduct interest rates on consumer loans or not, that is one thing. It's the regular, the normal fee regime, the development in what kind of prices can we take from the debtors, etc. So long it's list of different regulatory elements that's included. I don't have the full list in front of me now, unfortunately.

16:27 Then have, let's see, yeah, and then the last part of it, what type of macro assumptions do you have now? This is something that we don't disclose. This is a competitive sensitive. So I will not move into that. Then we have, let's see what is the investment capacity of Axactor to present potentially throughout 2026, given all refinancing. I already answered it. And then the next question, Nino, I will leave for you, which is I can read the question. Why did we not see any tax benefits from the revaluation? Yes, I can answer that one. We have in line with also our press a prudent approach when it comes to recognition of tax losses in balance sheet.

17:13 But as we always do, we also do a full review of the tax position also at year end. But at this point we have not put any tax losses in the balance sheet. Very good. And then we have the next one. Can you quantify the existing effects from AI and future expectations? To be honest, that is also a very complex question. What I can tell you is that we're doing everything in our power to test out. We have now implemented a new dialer system, which is very suitable for using AI. We are using AI in training, we are using in some back office functions, we're also testing it out with different chatbots and so on. And we see effects, but we need to develop with the markets.

18:04 As far as I know, there's no one of the large competitors that are using AI to a large extent. And what I mean to a large extent, if you really want large effects for our industry or at least for Axactor, you need to have chatbots that is good enough and you need clients that are ready to use it. And then so you can start reducing substantial number of FTEs in the call centers. That is where we have most of our people. And when we reach that level, you can see substantial effects. But so far we have not seen massive effects, but we expect them to gradually be implemented over the next quarters. Then we have the next question. When do you expect dividends to be paid to shareholders?

18:55 And I think this was something that we announced in connection with the equity transaction that the first possible dividend payment will be in June, July 2027. And that is because we have a bond, ACR five, and there we have a covenant which limits it. So we need to refinance that bond or ask for a waiver. But in reality, I think we will refinance it before we are ready to pay dividends. Then we have a next question, having difficulties with the voice dial in when hitting star one. Okay, sorry, Kyle, I cannot help you with that, but the rest of the day now that we have the breakdown of where the write offs are, are you able to give a more specific, give any more specific on issues in Sweden, Norway pre-twenty twenty one and Germany 2021.

19:59 Think that Sweden has been a market that has developed negatively over a long time. I don't want to go into specific details on these countries other than it's also Germany, you know, has been in recession for a very long time period now. So I don't want to go into more details on that, unfortunately. That was what we have. So far, yeah, now I have one more question here. One of your competitors reported high competition across Europe for purchases on debt portfolios. How do you see the competition in the markets? And I have to say yes, we see relatively high competition in several geographies, especially some of the SDR banks.

20:51 It seems to be very aggressive in their pricing, But we continue to have a disciplined approach. We are still able to invest at satisfying prices in the markets where we have a strong position, which is especially Spain and Norway. And we will not contribute to push market prices to unsustainable levels. I think that was the last question. Thank you all for calling in And have a nice day. This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.