Last week, Multitude reported a particularly strong set of Q4 figures and confirmed its net income guidance for FY25 and FY26. In detail:
Sales came in at € 69.8m, up 7% qoq and 14% yoy, in line with our estimates of € 70m (eNuW), driven by the strong growth of the net loan book (NAR) to € 763m (+20% yoy; including c. € 112m debt investments attributable to wholesale banking). Importantly, all segments contributed significant yoy NAR and sales growth over the year, resulting in FY group sales of € 264m (+14% yoy vs eNuW: 265m).
EBIT increased by 8% qoq to € 20.4m (+29% yoy), significantly above our estimates of € 18.6m (eNuW). With 68m for the FY, the company achieved its FY24 guidance of € 67.5m (vs eNuW: € 65.7m). The solid bottom line is due to top-line growth as well as stable OPEX thanks to efficiency measures (marketing, personnel) and resulting scale effects. Driven by NAR expansion, higher average reference rates and the issued perpetual bond, financial costs increased to € 11.6m (vs eNuW: € 12.2m), resulting in an EBT of € 8.8m (vs eNuW: € 6.5m) in Q4, which translates into € 23.3m in FY24 (vs eNuW: € 20.8m).
On the back of this strong set of numbers, management the confirmed its net income guidance of € 23m for FY25 and € 30m for FY26 (vs eNuW: € 23.5m in FY25 and € 30m in FY26) expecting further top.line growth and scale effects. In our view, the guidance looks ambitious, but not out of range given 1) the significantly increased loan book that should fully materialize within FY25, 2) the strong growth momentum of CapitalBox as well as the huge potential in the wholesale banking that have just started to pick-up. That paired with the ongoing stable performance "cash-cow" of the Group (ferratum) and tight cost control that the company already showed in FY24 give us additional confidence. Mind you that the company has achieved its guidance for last three years.
As the stock is still trading at 4.3xPE'25, the growing, highly profitable, resilient and dividend paying (€ 0.44/share; 8.5% dividend yield) company to look undebatable cheap.
Consequently, Multitude remained a NuWays Alpha pick and we reiterate BUY with an unchanged PT of € 12, based on our residual income model.
ISIN: CH1398992755
