Last week, LAIQON published its final FY22 figures that came in weak, but slightly better than expected: (Note: In “as-if” figures, BV Holding AG is fully consolidated from 04/22 onwards, Lange Assets from 07/22 and Selection Asset Management from 12/22)

• FY22 as if sales came in at € 26.8m, in line with our estimates and the company’s prelims of  € 26.3m, while reported sales of only € 21.6m are 17% below previous year’s figures. The weak numbers are mainly due to overall weaker markets in FY22 resulting in 1) lower than planned AuM growth (inflows still overcompensated for performance-related AuM declines) and 2) no substantial performance fees (€ 0.8m vs. € 9.3m in FY21).
• FY22 as if EBITDA of € -6.0m (vs. € 4.6m in FY21) is € 0.6m better than expected (eNuW old / prelims: € -6.6m). Still, reported EBITDA was even weaker with € -9.9m, driven by high one-off costs for the merger and the integration of BV Holding and growney (€ 14.1m other operating costs, including c. € 5.3m legal and consulting costs) as well as high personnel costs of € 17.1m (vs € 11.3m in FY21).

Positively, AuM´s of € 5.7bn are fully in line with our expectation (eNuW: € 5.7bn), sales are mostly recurring revenues based on AuM´s and one-off costs of the mergers and the integration process that burdened bottom line in FY22 should disappear in FY23. Still, personnel expenses are high and should even increase in FY23 due to the full consolidation of BV Holding.

Going forward, the platform thinking and the customer centricity, which are essential components of the strategy GROWTH 25, should help to fuel AuM inflows. The AuM guidance of € 8-10bn, implying a 15% CAGR 2022-25e, looks absolutely reasonable. Nevertheless, the 2025 EBITDA margin guidance of >45% (which includes potential performance fees) looks too ambitious in our view. In order to be more conservative, we are expecting an EBITDA margin of only 11% as we exclude performance fees.

Tailwinds should come from global stock markets’ good start into 2023, which look set to fuel AuM and potentially unlock performance fees (not in our estimates) and from the joint venture “meine Bayerische Vermögen” that could be seen as blue-print for other joint ventures with the Volksbanken space.

BUY with a reduced PT of € 9.50 (old: € 10) based on DCF.