Original-Research: LAIQON AG - from NuWays AG
15.04.2025 / 09:00 CET/CEST
Dissemination of a Research, transmitted by EQS News - a service of EQS Group.
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Classification of NuWays AG to LAIQON AG
Company Name: LAIQON AG
ISIN: DE000A12UP29
Reason for the research: Update
Recommendation: BUY
from: 15.04.2025
Target price: EUR 7.40
Target price on sight of: 12 months
Last rating change:
Analyst: Henry Wendisch
FY'24 review: improved cost mix ahead of AuM scaling
To recap: Following preliminary sales and EBITDA figures of March, LAIQON's final FY'24 results gave deeper insights into the segment performance, cost mix and cash generation. Here's our takeaway:
Digital Wealth in full swing. Next to a strong increase in AuM (+27% yoy to EUR 0.7bn), sales in the segment expanded by a staggering 77% yoy to EUR 3.9m (+109% yoy in H2'24). This implies an average sales margin on AuMs of 0.65% in FY'24 (vs. 0.42% in FY'23), showing that the EUR 150m additional AuMs should have carried an incremental 1.14% sales margin. In our view, this bodes extremely well for FY'25e, where a substantial part of the group's AuM growth should stem from the Digital Wealth segment (i.e., "Wertanlage" in cooperation with Union Investment). Furthermore, the additional sales carried a 70% incremental EBITDA margin (FY'24 segment EBITDA; EUR -1.7m vs. EUR -2.9m in FY'23) which also shows the strong earnings potential following sufficient scale.
Wealth Management paints a similar picture. Similar to Digital Wealth, Wealth Management expanded AuMs (+17% yoy) and sales (+16% yoy), which implies a sales margin of 0.53% (vs. 0.49% in FY'23). EBITDA improved as well (FY'24: EUR -0.3m, vs. EUR -1m in FY'23), also carrying a 70% incremental EBITDA margin thanks to an increasing fix cost coverage.
Improved cost mix. On group level, the above mentioned development showed an improving cost mix: Relative to sales, personnel expenses decreased by 1.6pp yoy to 64.2% of sales, but the larger margin driver were decreasing material expenses by 4.3pp yoy to 15% of sales due to third party services being internalized. Mind you, that the main cost reductions regarded fix costs, meaning that with increasing AuM and sales, profitability should expand disproportionately.
Positive FCF in H2'24. A key highlight was the better than expected FCF development, which came in even positive with EUR 1.7m in H2'24 (FY'24: EUR -5.5m), only partially thanks to a positive WC swing.
In sum, the share offers an attractive entry opportunity, as with the Union Investment cooperation in place, FY'25e is seen as the year of scaling AuMs, which should come in with strong incremental sales and EBITDA margins, but also positive cash generation which are all visible already. Therefore, we reiterate our BUY recommendation with an unchanged PT of EUR 7.40, based on DCF.
You can download the research here: http://www.more-ir.de/d/32250.pdf For additional information visit our website:
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Contact for questions:
NuWays AG - Equity Research
Web: www.nuways-ag.com
Email: research@nuways-ag.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nuwaysag
Adresse: Mittelweg 16-17, 20148 Hamburg, Germany
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2117760 15.04.2025 CET/CEST
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