Earnings call transcript: MLP Q4 2024 earnings show strong growth, stock dips

Maui Land & Pineapple Company Inc. (MLP) reported a robust financial performance for the fourth quarter of 2024, with revenue reaching €1,067 million, marking a 10% increase from the previous year. Despite these strong results, the company’s stock saw a decline of 3.08%, closing at $17.89, which may reflect broader market trends or investor caution amid uncertain future guidance.

Key Takeaways

• Total revenue increased by 10% to €1,067 million.
• EBIT improved to €95 million, with a net profit of €69.3 million.
• Stock price experienced a 3.08% decline, closing at $17.89.
• Proposed dividend increased by 20% to €0.36 per share.
• The company anticipates EBIT of €100-110 million for 2025.

Company Performance

MLP demonstrated strong financial growth in Q4 2024, with significant increases in revenue and EBIT. The company continues to enhance its competitive position as a leading independent asset manager in Germany, managing €63.1 billion in assets. While the company shows strong revenue growth of 34.84% over the last twelve months according to InvestingPro, it maintains a solid financial position with a current ratio of 2.86, indicating strong liquidity. MLP’s strategic initiatives, such as the development of AI-powered digital assistants and a digital claims processing system, underscore its commitment to innovation.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: €1,067 million, a 10% increase year-over-year.
• EBIT: €95 million.
• Net profit: €69.3 million.
• Shareholders’ equity: €570 million.
• Proposed dividend: €0.36 per share, a 20% increase.

Market Reaction

Despite the positive financial results, MLP’s stock declined by 3.08% to $17.89, which could be attributed to broader market conditions or investor concerns over the company’s future guidance. The stock remains closer to its 52-week low of $17.02, indicating a cautious market sentiment. InvestingPro analysis reveals that the company is currently trading at a high Price/Book multiple of 10.02, suggesting potential overvaluation. Subscribers to InvestingPro can access 8 additional key insights and a comprehensive Fair Value analysis for MLP, along with detailed financial health metrics.

Outlook & Guidance

MLP has set an ambitious EBIT target of €100-110 million for 2025, with mid-term goals (2028) including EBIT of €140-150 million and total revenue of €1.3-1.4 billion. The company plans to expand its assets under management to €75-81 billion and exceed €1 billion in its non-life insurance portfolio.

Executive Commentary

CEO Uwe Schroeder Weltberg emphasized the company’s strategic growth path, stating, "MLP is decisively continuing its successful and strategically developed growth path." He also highlighted the role of AI in enhancing operations, noting, "AI has no consciousness on its own. It’s not capable of empathy." CFO Reinhard Loose added, "We are delivering what we have planned."

Risks and Challenges

• The negative EPS forecast for FY2025 could impact investor confidence.
• Broader market conditions may continue to pressure the stock price.
• The integration of AI technologies poses challenges in maintaining operational efficiency and customer trust.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the company’s net liquidity of €200 million and performance fees totaling €33.9 million. MLP also reported net asset inflows of €1.4 billion, reflecting strong investor interest. Segment profitability variations were discussed, with management reaffirming a positive outlook for 2025.

Full transcript - Maui Land & Pineapple Comp Inc (MLP) Q4 2024:

Conference Moderator, MLP: Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon from MLP headquarter in Wiesloch and welcome to our analyst conference. I also welcome our CEO, Doctor. Urs Rode Bildberg and our CFO, Reinhard Loose. Before we move into our presentation, I will give you some information on today’s setup. After our presentation, we are happy to answer your questions.

An announcement or entry of your questions is possible at any time. Also during the presentation, Please use your input mask in the browser. And now I hand over to Uwe Schroeder Weltberg. Please go ahead.

Uwe Schroeder Weltberg, CEO, MLP: Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Please also allow me to welcome you to our online annual analyst conference. Let’s start with the most important aspect. The MLP Group looks back on a highly successful financial year 2024.

Indeed, we were able to increase all relevant key figures in some cases significantly. For the first time, the MLP Group generated more than EUR 1,000,000,000 in total revenue, and we also reached the upper end of our forecast range for earnings before interest and taxes, the EBIT. The successful financial year 2024 also represents an excellent milestone on our sustainable growth path. Please now allow me to briefly analyze the development of MLP over the past twelve months using the key figures that are most important to us. Firstly, we were able to increase total revenue to a new record high of EUR 1,067,000,000.000.

Growth was very broad based, which is very important for us, as you know, and recorded for the eleventh time in succession. The wealth competence field made significant contribution to this, particularly in wealth management and interest rate business. In terms of recurring revenue, we are almost at almost 70%. As you may already know, we receive fees for ongoing client support. This represents an important part of our business and make a major contribution to MLP’s high stability as well as our continuous growth.

Secondly, at EUR 95,000,000, our EBIT was significantly higher than the two previous years despite making major investments. Accordingly, we are also right on track in terms of earning performance. And thirdly, we are now an even more attractive stock title for our shareholders, not only offering potential for further share price growth, but also paying an attractive dividend. For financial year 2024, the Executive Board is proposing a dividend of $0.36 per share to the Supervisory Board and the Annual General Meeting. This equates to an increase of 20% over the previous year’s dividend of $0.3 What has driven our Group’s success?

Our many years of strategic development have helped establish us as highly relevant for our clients. This is also impressively demonstrated by other key figures, in particular the assets under management, our group and the non life insurance portfolio volume, both of which reached new record levels. The success also highlights a significant further potential of MLP Group’s unique positioning. I’ll expand on this in greater detail later on when I present our new midterm planning and the path to increasing EBIT to between EUR140 million and EUR150 million by the end of twenty twenty eight. The decisive factor will be how successfully we continue to provide our discerning clients with a high quality service offering, a service offering that seamlessly blends personal and digital consulting.

This naturally applies to family, corporate and institutional clients throughout the group. The consistent and responsible use of artificial intelligence further supports our service offering. We have made significant progress in implementing our underlying digital strategy, and we will further intensify our efforts. Regarding the MLP Group, I would like to emphasize the results of the past year once again underline the strategic strength we have developed in our business. We are increasingly able to translate this strength into rising revenues and earnings.

This means that our group stays firmly on its course for continued growth. Before I now hand over to Reinhard Loose, who will go into greater detail regarding the 2024 business figures, I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to all MLP consultants as well as all employees in the group. You have delivered again a great service for our clients.

Reinhard Loose, CFO, MLP: I couldn’t agree more. And please also allow me to wish everyone a very good afternoon. In the financial year 2024, MLP increased its total revenue by 10% and to a new record high. I would like to emphasize the share of recurring revenue, which at 68% is a sign of great stability in our business model. Recurring revenue results from the continuous high quality service provided to our existing clients throughout the MEP Group, above all in the property and casualty and wealth competence fields.

Accordingly, the remaining share of revenue is generated from business, particularly in the life and health competence field. In terms of the competence fields, the MLP Group achieved particularly strong revenue growth of 27% in the wealth competence field. In wealth management, MLP’s private client business as well as the support provided to our institutional and high net worth clients by the MLP subsidiary, Ferry, contributed to the growth in revenue. Performance based compensation at Ferry also increased significantly. They are the consequence of positive performance of investment concepts and are largely recognized in the results.

We are also pleased that the real estate brokerage has increased significantly again, a trend we anticipate will continue. At $2.00 €6,000,000 the MLP Group recorded consistently high revenue in the property and casualty competence field, which compromises the non life insurance business with both corporate and private clients. The life and health competence field, which includes audit provision and health insurance, displayed similar development. MLP generated revenue of EUR $298,000,000 here. Revenue from the others competence field totaled EUR 13,000,000.

These include the so called other income and as well the real estate development business, which was recently deliberated reduced. The key figures that are important for our future growth also displayed successful development. As of the reporting date of December 31, we were able to increase assets under management to EUR 63,100,000,000.0 and the managed non life insurance premium volume to EUR $751,000,000. With investment assets entrusted to us by our clients, we are on a par with renowned private banks and are one of the leading independent asset managers in Germany. Moreover, with more than EUR 18,000,000,000 in alternative assets managed by our multi asset investment firm, we are one of the key players in this important growth market.

Year two, we have gained our clients’ lasting trust. Throughout the entire MLP group, the number of family clients rose to 590,700 as of the 12/31/2024. The gross number of newly acquired family clients was 20,500. The clients are supported by 2,110 consultants. The increase of this number is also a result of our ongoing successful trainee program, which plays a key part in the recruitment of junior consultants.

We are also making further progress in our business with corporate and institutional clients. We supported 28,000 such clients. Please now allow me to move on to our EBIT. The MLP Group was able to increase EBIT to EUR 95,000,000 in the financial year 2024 and therefore significantly exceed the previous two years. As already mentioned, the main reasons for this were the strong revenue development observed in the wealth competence field as well as the consistently high revenue level in the property and casualty and life and health competence fields.

EBIT was therefore at the upper end of our forecast range for ’24. Group net profit was EUR 69,300,000.0. Shareholders’ equity rose to EUR $570,000,000 as of the 12/31/2024. The core capital ratio for the financial holding group was a solid 19.2%. The liquidity coverage ratio, or LCR for short, serves as a benchmark for short term liquidity in stress scenarios and is, therefore, an indicator of resilience.

At 1843%, it is well above the 100% minimum required by the supervisory authorities. I will now hand over to Over Schone Wiltberg, who will offer you an up to date insight into our digital strategy.

Uwe Schroeder Weltberg, CEO, MLP: Thank you very much, Reinhard. More than ever, the intelligent and of personal support by our consultants coupled with the digital self services that our clients wish for sits at the heart of our digitalization strategy we are consistently pursuing and expediting. Set against this background, we have developed our client portal in the Real Genuine Financial Home. On the portal, our clients can keep an eye on all of their finances in convenient digital environment around the clock. The key benefit here, they not only have their banking transactions and assets available, but also all insurance contracts from the various providers all in one single application.

This puts us in an outstanding position compared to other providers in the banking, insurance and fintech sectors. However, we have gone one step further for our clients. They can track their personal finance needs and progress toward their goals in their own financial home. As soon as MLP consultants have assessed their clients’ financial situation and documented their goals, they can seamlessly transfer this target actual comparison to a financial home with a single click. This is done directly from the consultant portal, which essentially serves as a kind of cockpit for highly qualified consultants.

This makes it even easier for them to embed digital options in their consultations. Clients then gain a complete overview of their finances, allowing them to better understand the reciprocal effects of their decisions. As part of our digitalization strategy, we are also actively advancing the use of artificial intelligence throughout the group. While doing so, an AI task force ensures that this new technology is used in a very targeted and always responsible manner. The key result in an even better client experience.

At the same time, AI also increases the efficiency of employees and consultants, thereby securing value creation throughout the entire MLP group. Particularly in the back office, repetitive standard processes at MLP are carried out faster and more efficiently with the help of AI. For example, the correspondence assistant supports our employees and consultants in email communication, for instance, by summarizing messages. On the telephone, AI also forward client calls to the right contact via voice recognition and automated phone routing. Assistance is also provided for specialized topics.

And AI assistant is available for research purposes. In the background, it is connected to the tariff structures and internal databases and also linked to genuine client experience. In addition, an AI service agent is available to both consultants and clients in order to assist with administrative matters. For example, contract and address data can be adjusted around the clock. Our clients also have access to an iClaim suite with fully comprehensive case processing.

The digital assistant based on chat GPD technology was developed by our group company, Domkura. It can settle small and medium sized claims independently in just a few minutes. For minor losses, the damaged vessel is only released with payment and focus on the service of more complex claims. Please, please allow me again to once emphasize something at this point. I believe that we often express fear that AI could make consultants completely superfluous in the coming years is totally unjustified.

Even if the tools I’ve just managed, I just mentioned as examples, are extremely powerful and versatile, they are still just instruments. After all, AI has no consciousness on its own. It’s not capable of empathy. This means the special consultant role that our clients demand can only be fulfilled by a very well trained and

Reinhard Loose, CFO, MLP: Thank you very much, Ulfber. Before I move on to our forecast, I would like to take a look back to our planning for 2025, which we communicated at the start of 2022. At that time, we had once again set ourselves strong growth rate targets for revenue and EBIT as well as for our key portfolio figures. We wanted to increase revenue by more than 6% annually and EBIT by as much as 10% to 13% per year on average. As things stand today and the 2024 annual figures that have just been published confirm this, we are fully on track here and have established substantial, sustainable growth in our group.

A look at our key figures also confirms this. Our planning for 2025 was based on annual growth rates of 5% to 8% in assets under management and 5% to 9% in the non life insurance portfolio volume. We have also achieved these growth rates today. And since the growth rates recorded were actually at the upper end of the forecast, we are already within the planning range of €62,000,000,000 to €68,000,000,000 for assets under management and €730,000,000 to €810,000,000 for the non life insurance portfolio volume that were communicated at that time. In short, we are delivering what we have planned.

This brings me to our forecast for the current financial year, which continues seamlessly along the significant growth path. We traditionally focus on EBIT in our annual forecast, which we were keen to increase to between EUR 100,000,000 and EUR 110,000,000 in 2025 according to our planning at the time, a range we now also confirm in our forecast. From ’twenty five onwards, we also expect our real estate business to make a positive contribution to earnings again. In particular, increasing sales revenues in the life and health and property and casualty and competence fields are expected to contribute to earnings growth in 2025. Among other things, this is based on the ever growing segment of our young consultants and our industrial insurance business.

In the wealth competence field, we are anticipating revenue in 2025 to remain at the previous year’s high level. This is due to the fact that we traditionally consider the performance based compensation cautiously and therefore only to a limited extent. Yet, we were able to record very high performance based compensations in the financial year 2024. In the midterm, wealth management at Fery and MLP will once again increasingly represent a substantial success factor. Uwe Schode Wiltberg, who I now hand back to, will elaborate on this later in greater detail.

Uwe Schroeder Weltberg, CEO, MLP: Thank you very much again, Reinhard. Alongside the forecast for 2025 we have just announced, we’re also presenting our new midterm planning today. It extends to the year 2028 starting from the financial year 2024, which Vanad Loos and I have already presented to you to date. A look at Slide 16 makes one thing very clear. MLP is decisively continuing its successful and strategically developed growth path.

As mentioned at the start of this conference, we should lead the group to an EBIT of EUR140 million to EUR150 million by the end of ’twenty eight. Compared to the previous year, this planning represents an increase of around 50%. The basis for this is a planned growth in total revenue to EUR 1,300,000,000.0 to EUR 1,400,000,000.0 after we surpassed the EUR 1,000,000,000 mark for the first time last year. In doing so, and this is very important to us, we have recognized performance based compensation earned by ferry cautiously and therefore only to a limited extent. In fact, our planning is based to a large extent on the recurring revenues in our business model that are already foreseeable.

And this will continue to grow with ongoing increase in the key figures. For the MLP Group, these are primarily the assets under management and non life insurance portfolio volume. We are planning a significant increase for both areas by the end of twenty twenty eight. Assets under management shall rise to between EUR 75 and EUR 81,000,000,000, while the non life insurance portfolio volume is set to reach or slightly exceed EUR 1,000,000,000 for the first time. So how can this ambitious planning be achieved?

We have strategically planned the continuation of our previous growth path to achieve this in all three competence fields: wealth, life and health, and property and casualty. Slide 70 offers you an overview before I go into more detail over various areas of potential and how we can develop them. In the wealth competence field, further and extensive consultancy needs of MLP family clients can be covered. In particular, this involves a further expansion of a successful wealth management business. The high net worth and institutional clients served by ferry also hold potential here.

There continues to be a great need for supplementary old age provision in the life and health competence field, particularly in view of demographic trends. Another growth area of MLP here are corporate benefits, including occupational health insurance and occupational pension provision in the corporate lines business. The ongoing shortage of skilled specialists is further fueling demand here. The targeted expansion of the corporate client business is of particular importance in the property and casualty competence field alongside the ongoing organic growth at industrial insurance broker FOM and insurance specialist on Kura, MLP’s broad portfolio of family client is also playing an increasingly important part here. Consultants can meet clients’ needs with suitable solutions not only in the private realm, but also their companies.

The network we have developed in our group over the past few years also draws its strengths from this. Last but not least, the significant increase in earnings planned by the end of twenty twenty eight will be supported by the MLP Group’s digitalization strategy in which we use AI application to continuously increase efficiency and improve client service. Alongside this, cost management also remains strict. The key to developing potential remains the high quality service offering made available to our clients who place their trust in us and whom we serve very responsibly within the MLP Group. In the following, I will outline the great potential that arise from the respective needs of our clients.

To this end, we’ll take a look at firstly at MLP family clients, secondly at corporate clients, and thirdly at high net worth and institutional clients. I will start with a discerning family client that are advised and supported by MLP consultants. When it comes to financial consulting across all phases of life, many of our family clients initially focus on insurance cover and the first building blocks for old age provisioning. This is because compound interest is a very important factor, which has a particularly strong effect over long periods of time. We help clients achieve one key goal in particular to close the gap in provision.

Among academically educated professional groups relevant to MLP, the gap in pension provision defined as the difference between the last earned income and the statutory pension is around €2,300 per month or more for each individual. Demographic trends are likely to continue to have a negative impact on state funded Social Security systems. Accordingly, consulting services and solutions for corporate and private pension planning are gaining significance. As our clients’ professional careers progress, the topic of wealth becomes increasingly important. MLP has also established itself a competent partner here offering a wide range of sophisticated and tested solutions as part of its holistic financial consulting.

The basis for many investment consultations is the MLP wealth deposit account, which by the way has been used as a fee based compensation model for more than ten years. Our clients also have the option of receiving regular payouts from the accumulated assets that are tailored to the individual situation. This becomes increasingly relevant, especially in the later stage of professional life. To achieve this client objective and the ongoing support of clients, MLP consultants will prospectively have an additional tool named portfolio pension at their disposal. There is a large potential here as well as a glance at the market shows.

Overall, the potential investments volumes are approximately €194,000 per household is the minimum financial wealth of the top 10 of households in Germany, which includes a significant proportion of M and T clients. In fact, many in this group have considerably higher available investment capital. Moreover, given the nationwide wealth transfers here, approximately EUR 400,000,000,000 are passed from one generation to the next each year, further growth investment assets can be expected. MLP consultants can meet their clients’ needs not only in the private realm with suitable solutions, but also for their companies. This applies in particular to industrial insurance or occupational pension schemes for employees.

MLP consultants can call on the extensive expertise of the various companies within our group to support corporate clients. Our consultants can also draw on structural support in the network and call in specialists from our multi asset investments firm, Ferry, for large asset management asset management’s mandates. The past financial year 2024 offers an impression of a potential that exists here and at the same time shows how our unique positioning already is a discernible impact. Let’s start with the property and casualty competence field here, The new non life insurance business brokered by MLP consultants for corporate clients has increased sixfold compared to 2021. In the life and health competence field, MLP consultants tripled the corresponding new business with occupational health insurance policies.

And in cooperation with ferry, the asset portfolio in direct mandates that is with MLP clients who are supported by ferry in wealth management has increased by 40%. Ferry itself has already taken the next steps towards further growth with a series of new appointments in client support for institutional business. After all, this client group, just like Ferris private client business, also offers a great deal of potential. A look at various studies on growth in the market for institutional clients clearly underlines Swiss and Germany. We’re well invested by this investment group.

Investor group is expected to continue to grow by an average of approximately 4% annually over the course of the next few years. At the same time, global wealth invested in alternative assets is expected to grow by approximately 10% annually. As one of the leading multi asset investment firms, Ferry has the necessary expertise in the corresponding range of services for institutional investors. At the same time, the company has decades of experience in client support and is well known in this market. With individual multi asset strategies, Ferry now serves more than 200 institutional investors.

Ferry is also assuming a strong position in the area of alternative assets. In total, Ferry invest clients’ assets amounting to more than EUR 18,000,000,000 here. This is performed by one of the largest expert teams in the German market. So we also meet an important strategic prerequisite for further growth in this field. Ladies and gentlemen, before I begin my summary, I would like to take this opportunity to return to the MLP share.

Slide 21 gives you an overview of a number of important parameters. We’ve also included the consensus estimate of our analysts on our EPS planning here. Having already seen a considerable increase of 34% over the last two years. Our analysts are confident that our share price will continue to rise. The EPS planning shown here also illustrates the earnings per share resulting from our planning.

This is based on our EBIT planning for the end of twenty twenty eight. Accordingly, we are planning earnings per share of $0.9 to $0.95 representing an increase of around 50% over the very successful year 2024. Based on our consistent dividend policy with a distribution rate of 50% to 70%, this results in significant dividend potential. This one again underlines our ambitious our ambitions for the next three years. Please now allow me to provide a summary.

Firstly, the successful financial year 2024 represents an excellent milestone on our sustainable growth path. At the same time, the great potential we have in a further developed MLP business model is clearly evident. Secondly, our new midterm planning, which aims to record EBIT of EUR140 million to EUR150 million by the end of twenty twenty eight, is based on strategic growth in all three competence fields: wealth, life and health and property and casualty. The expansion of corporate client business is an important factor with additional potential arising from a special role of MLP consultants who can also offer solutions for companies in collaboration with specialists from the MLP group. Thirdly, our successful digitalization strategy, which includes the use of artificial intelligence, is having an increasingly supportive effect.

It is indeed contributing to sustained efficiency increases. And we can now provide our clients with even better consulting and support. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your attention. We will be now happy to answer any questions you may have.

Conference Moderator, MLP: Thank you, Uwe and Reinhardt, and now we are happy to answer your questions. So once again, please use your input mask in your browser. If you want to ask your questions personally with audio and video or audio only, please make a note in the text field. We will then ask you to activate your camera or microphone as soon as it is your turn. If you want to ask your questions purely in writing please use the text field.

We will start with the first question It comes from Henry Vandisch from Nubes.

Henry Vandisch, Analyst, Nubes: Yes. Hi. Hope you can hear me. Now you can see me as well. Good.

First of all, congrats on crossing the €1,000,000,000 mark and, Godspeed with your new target. It looks quite well on my view. I have a couple of questions. Of course, the first three are for Einhard. You might have guessed that if you have for me the numbers, net liquidity, capital inflow performance fees, as always, would be much appreciated.

And then I have two questions regarding your segment report. I noticed in Dokura that profitability went down a little. From my educated guess, I would guess that there are some upfront development costs for the AI tool that you’ve implemented. Is that something that has burned the margin at Accura? Or, and then also would you then consider that 2025 would return to the old margins we’ve seen in the segment?

And basically, the exactly different or vice versa thing happened at industrial brokerage came at a much higher margin than I expected. You increased your sales by 10% and actually, OpEx went down by 5%. We did some cost cutting, and it’s in the other operating expenses. So what has happened there? And then is this also a margin level that you feel comfortable with for the next years to come in the industry broker segment?

And, yeah, that’s been it already from my side. Thanks.

Reinhard Loose, CFO, MLP: Okay. Hi. Hello. I’m not quite sure if I got all the questions, but I start and I’m sure that you will ask again the questions I didn’t get. The first question, obviously, are very clear concerning net liquidity.

We have around 200,000,000 net liquidity at the year end. That’s question number one. Number two, performance fees. The overall sum is EUR 33,900,000.0 performance fee for the whole year. And perhaps also interesting, of course, the development of the asset under management, We have net inflows of around 1,400,000,000.0, asset under management, and we have performance of around €4,700,000,000 in total there.

This perhaps question number one, then or question block number one, then I continue with Domkura. And after that, I will hand over with Domkura. Yes, indeed, the profits went down. Yes, there are some costs for AI to include it, but to be quite honest, that’s not the main reason for the for the downturn. First of all, let’s say, the the overall business and the pressure on margin is quite high at the moment, but there are two, next to this, two special effects, which are valid for the full year 2024.

Number one is that we will move or we just moved into a building, a new building, and we are restructuring at the moment the old building for Domkura, and that has some starting losses, which we booked in ’twenty four. And then we did some restructuring also on the board level, which also added some costs for toward ’twenty four. And this, I think, was were the first block there. And then I got a little confused with the next question. Therefore, I hope that Uber got the question.

Henry Vandisch, Analyst, Nubes: I can also repeat it if you like.

Uwe Schroeder Weltberg, CEO, MLP: No. No. It’s fine. I think I got it. It’s always like in the board meeting here.

Reinhard Loose, CFO, MLP: The difficult questions go to him, obviously.

Uwe Schroeder Weltberg, CEO, MLP: No, just kidding. As far as I understood it right, but please add further question if we did a bit understand you. So overall, we see that the setup phase has some fundamental in the industry broken segment. As you know, we started 02/2001 with the first acquisition. We had additional acquisitions and the year 2023, if you compare 02/2004 and 2023, I think that what you did in 2023, we had some setup effects still bringing the smaller companies together, which was our plan, as you know, to have some broad fundamental van to explore and extend our strategy in this for us still new field.

And what you now see is that we did not succeed in buying new companies. We discussed that ongoingly because we are not willing to pay with too high prices, which are obviously some parties are willing to pay because we strictly believe that this makes no sense in this kind of business. And we always think in sustainable horizons indicates. So we concentrated this time more on organic growth. And here you can see the good mixture in having a setup, having good growth, having good cost control.

That means so we are coming up to quite nice margin areas, which also fit to our original plans we typically have. So this is the explanation. And that means perhaps you would ask me, do you have any idea for requisitions? We have the same viewpoint on that. We are clear in the market.

We see what happens, but we don’t want to do silly things. And it’s easy for us to save it because as you can see, our growth path, the organic growth path is just beginning to demonstrate what the potential is. And that was clearly the specific character we have in our business that we have the best broadest acquisition network due to our very well developed contact to private clients who have responsible function, have owned companies, which opens the door in this interesting segment. And therefore, I can tell you that also we are going ahead on this path also in the beginning of this year that the acquisition pipeline is full and so we are in a good way. So it was a way understood your questions and hoping it was the right way and convinced you.

Thank you.

Henry Vandisch, Analyst, Nubes: Yes. Thanks a lot.

Conference Moderator, MLP: Okay. Then the next questions we got via text from Jochen Schmidt from Metzla. And he’s asking about the financial consulting segment, where the EBIT declined in this year. And what about the outlook for 2025, if it’s again clearly above 2024 level?

Reinhard Loose, CFO, MLP: I can answer real short. Yes. The outlook for 2025 is higher than for 2024. There were some internal reasons for little decrease in ’24, but for ’25, we are quite confident that the profit of the segment will be above ’24.

Conference Moderator, MLP: And the next question was about the MLP banking segment and here regarding the commission income, as well the development in this year, as well as the outlook for 2025 from the commissioning for the commission income.

Reinhard Loose, CFO, MLP: Of course, part one of the answer is always the same. Of course, we can’t give you right now precise figures for 2025. But let’s answer your question this way. At the moment, we don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t fulfill our plan for 2025. This gives you, I think, a short indication for 2025.

And for 2024, the commission income in the bank rose in comparison to 23% by a little bit more than 15%.

Conference Moderator, MLP: Thank you. So we hope that answered your questions. Otherwise, you could ask again. So just let me have a look. It seems that we have no further questions in the moment.

Just wait a second if you have a further question.

Reinhard Loose, CFO, MLP: So So if this is

Conference Moderator, MLP: not Yeah, so this is not so, I think we gave all information that’s relevant for now and so this brings us to the end of our conference. Of course, if you have any questions later, you can, you can come back to us. Please do not hesitate to contact us. And, what I can give you as a as a hint, the recording of our conference will be available on our website later today. So then I can say thank you for your attention and I wish you a good day.

Thank you and goodbye.

Uwe Schroeder Weltberg, CEO, MLP: Thank you. Bye. Bye bye.

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