...COO, Dr. Ramona Evens, will guide you through the figures in a moment, followed by a Q&A session via audio line and chat.

With that said, I hand over to you, Mr. Grabmaier.

Thank you, Mara, for the warm welcome. Also, welcome from our side, from the management board of JDC.

As you can see, it's challenging times, but again, we could deliver a record half-year and also a very good Q2 2026. My name is Sebastian, co-founder and CEO of JDC Group, and with me in the call is my partner, Ralph, and my colleague, Ramona.

Ralph says hello?

Hi, [cough] Ralph here, responsible for Finance, M&A, and IT. Ramona?

Hi, everyone. I'm Ramona.

I'm the COO and responsible for the operations of the JDC Group.

Excellent. You can see that all our KPIs are knowing just one direction: up, right?

Obviously, we are a platform company. We are taking in all the data of all the product companies.

That's more than 250 insurance groups, the investment platforms, the mortgaging banks. Now we serve about 2.5 million customers with more than 400 employees.

We have basically every financial product in the market that has some quality available on the platform. Obviously now we are quite engaged for the last 2.5 years to have more and more AI tools supporting our intermediary clients and also our end clients via our allesmeins app.

You can see that obviously the economic environment in Germany is still challenging. You can see that especially the consumer climate is not up again.

We have some bad disappointments that we live through in Germany by our government. I think it's from all democracies in the world still the least loved government with 16% support rate, and more than 75% now are not content with the work of the government.

This means that the atmosphere, the political surrounding is not really positive for consumer business. You see some effects of the deindustrialization of Germany in the labor market.

You see that employment is still on a very high level and still record level, but still the quotas of the unemployed that goes up a little bit. Also the macroeconomic environment is not really giving us tailwinds.

Inflation is still up due to high energy prices, yeah, and the insurance market, capital markets are rather flattish even if we saw some record highs also in the German DAX. Geopolitics are a burden, and that's always interesting and that's the very famous German angst that wars wherever they are are first hitting German economy more than any other, even of countries that are closer.

Overall the environment is quite difficult, but still we're very positive that we could deliver very good results against the backdrop of these factors. You can see on the broker platform, there is or there was some pressure on new orders.

We show you that we could have a turnaround here from minus figures in new orders. We are now at positive figures, we'll show you in a minute.

Still, the high volume business is not really back in the market, especially life insurance and pension planning, there is a little delay. We see that this will go up by Q4 at the latest, but right now it's still quite low, and this is always corresponding in higher cancellation rates as obviously the cancellations of the past come to lower standards or volumes this year.

This is also then yeah, having some impact on the turnover figures as we always reporting net figures. Also the investment assets, they go up and up.

That's still volatile, but this is rather a positive impact right now. On the lead platform, we see that the search volume for financial products is at a historical low, even if the overall search volume is going up.

Financial products are not in favor of the consumers right now, and also this means that the acquisition costs for contracts is increasing, leads are becoming more expensive, and this means also that there's some pressure on lead markets as well. Obviously then the marketing appetite for financial institutions is quite low, but I think this will turn around especially we'll talk more about the Altersvorsorgedepot, the new pension regulation of the German government that will start January 1st and will lead to a big wave of marketing euros spent starting after the summer break.

Against this backdrop again, I think we're doing quite fine on the platform. The number of orders that we had to report the first time in many years a minus in Q1, we had a turnaround, over the first half-year, we are now at a plus 5%, so that's coming back, but again, not the high-volume orders, but a lot of P&C orders.

Here on the number of contracts could be misleading. The reason for this little minus here is we did some quality measures, that means we have a new filter that we use to bring down the number of revocations, basically the customer, he initiates a transfer of contract and then he has a withdrawal period, and these revocations hurt the insurance companies as obviously it's quite an effort, and then if the client revokes it, then the transfer has to be reversed.

We put in some filters in here that we just pass through contracts with a very high probability of being transferred in the end to the insurance companies, and this does not have an economic effect in the end because we lose the transfers that are revoked anyway, this economic is rather a flat number. Very, very good for the long-term view is that these figures that we show on the volume of the assets under management, it's up 18%.

That means the trailer fees we will receive on investment will be up considerably in the next quarters to come, and also the annual net premium, which is a direct KPI for all the recurring revenue that we are receiving in the next quarters is up 11%. Now we're quite yeah, proud as a management team that we can show that all the yeah, little slag or downturn or pothole in the new business, we can more than compensate by the recurring income that is also promising more income in the future.

Then you can see this is a new record half-year. It's not only the best first half-year we ever had, it's also topping the second half-year in 2025.

Turnover is up 18.7%, and then Ralph will in a minute explain the pro forma figures that we showing because we basically treating the accruals by performance fees a little bit different this year than last year, there's €4 million effect there, but Ralph will go into detail here. Also EBITDA is up almost 70%, very good numbers.

Obviously development is mostly driven by FMK, FMK just performs as it should. We have very nice figures also, not only in turnover, but also in EBITDA, just as planned, we're very happy here.

Also even if our platform is still suffering, as I said, from this crisis environment, yeah, we are on a very good path to develop the platform further, and again, new business will be back in Q4, we'll be really happy that we also can stay at our guidance as you're used to.

Now I explain what Sebastian explained a minute ago. When our customers, our brokers go to their customers, they can arrange contracts, asset management contracts with performance fees, means that the customer pays a performance fee if the performance of the depot is more than X or Y or better than a hurdle Z.

We calculate these performance fees, we manage that, we process that, we pay that out, it's part of our P&L. In the first half-year, we had accruals for this performance fee of €4 million, first half-year 2025, and €600,000 in EBITDA.

Although the market develops very good, you see here the line is the MSCI development, and we expect that the performance fees will be higher than in 2025, we nevertheless decided not to do this accruals in this year because, as Sebastian mentioned, we have this geopolitical uncertainties and performance fees payday is the 31st of December, and yeah, this was our decision for cautious reasons, and that's the reason why we show the figures pro forma. We just deduct in 2025 €4 million in turnover and €600,000 in EBITDA.

Having said this, let's go into the numbers. The turnover grew by 25.5% to €68.6 million in the second quarter, 22.8% in the first half-year to €130 €143.5 million.

You can see here what Sebastian mentioned, that new business is coming back, the growth is increasing, a growth in the second quarter is better than in the first quarter and better than in the total first half of the year, especially in Advisortech segment. We grew by 30.6% to €58.3 million, 26.1% to €124 million in the first half-year, leading us to a gross profit growth of 29% in the second quarter and 26.7% in the first half-year.

EBITDA development is very nice from our point of view, a plus of more than 100% in the second quarter from €2.9 to €6.4 million, and the development in the first half-year is with 82.7% also nice from €7.9 to €14.5 million. If you are interested in the contribution of FMK here, we want to be transparent on this, it's a turnover in Q2 of €12 million and an EBITDA contribution of 3.5, and in the first half-year, it's an turnover contribution of €22 million and an EBITDA contribution of around €7 million.

Let's look at the development by quarter and what we can see here is that 2026 shows a very normal seasonal pattern so far. We're starting with a good Q1.

This was a record Q1, as you remember. Then even as Q2 is also the strongest Q2 in JDC's history, it's weaker than the first quarter.

Now we are in the summer season. We expect a weaker Q3 than Q4, and in this year is especially a very good fourth quarter for two reasons.

The first is that, as already mentioned, new business is coming back, and the second reason is that we expect relevant effects from the regulation Altersvorsorgedepot on both the broker platform and FMK, and Ramona will give you some more detail on this later on. How is the composition of turnover growth?

The €120.9 million became €143.5 million. The main contribution was our new segment Rating Comparison Lead Business by €22.6 million, and thereof the majority of course FMK.

Advisory contributed 8%, the major customers contributed 9%, and we have still a weaker IFA business, better than in the first quarter, but still weaker than in the previous year with a minus of 4%. If you look at the turnover split, 51% now is coming from the IFA business, more than 25% from major customers, and in the meantime more than 20% by our new segment Rating Comparison and Lead Business.

Let's go into the Advisortech numbers. Advisortech grew by 30.6% in the second quarter to €58.3 million, which is a growth of 26.1% over the first half years.

Both first half-year and second quarter are record high numbers, as mentioned. The gross profit increased by approximately 40%, which is a very good development, to €14.8 million in Q2, and in the first half-year by 34.7% to €31.8 million.

The costs are up a little bit, 4% in depreciation, 5% in personnel, and 13% in 13% in other operating expenses. Then the reason is mainly that we invest a lot in IT.

The depreciation is increasing because of the cost of the IT platform. Personnel expenses are up mainly because of the development in our IT team, the AI team, and it's the same with other operating expenses.

There we have a second issue and that is that we increased marketing spendings for the promotion of the JDC platform in the broker market. EBITDA was up 100% from €2.4 to €5.9 million in the second quarter, and by 90% from €7.4 to €14.1 million in the first six months.

Advisory shows also a stable development, good development. Revenue grew by 9.4% in the first in the second quarter, and in the first half-year by 8% from €26.7 to €28.8 million.

The gross profit developed in the same direction, leading us to an EBITDA development of 11.9% in the second quarter from €1.3 to €1.5 million, and from €2.5 to €2.7 million in the first six months, which is a growth of 6.3%. Let's come to the cash flow statements, which is next, I think, yes.

We started the year with a cash of €36 million. We could show very good development in operational cash flow in the first half-year with €8.5 million, €2 million more than in the previous year, driven by the operational EBITDA development.

We had a very small investment activities with -€1.2 million, which is €1.4 million less than in the previous year. We had a high negative cash flow from financing activities with €8.4 million, and the reason is two reasons.

The first is, you might remember, we had this tender offer where we bought back 220,000 shares or 222,000 shares for in total €5 million. That's part of this number.

The second is we issued our Nordic bond with a size of €70 million in August 2025, the interest payments for the Nordic bond are included in the first half-year 2026, but not included in the first half-year 2025. Then we ended up at a cash balance of €35 million, and when I looked at it, I thought that's not a very high number, but the reason is if you look at the liquidity curve of JDC, end of June is the lowest point over the year because the trailer fees for the second quarter, they start in July and August, and as of today, I just looked into the accounts 2 hours ago, we are at €45 million cash on hand in the group.

We have no changes in our bond structure. We still have our German Mittelstandsbond that is due 2028 and the Nordic bond that is due 2029.

The Mittelstandsbond has a coupon of 7%, and the Nordic bond has a coupon of now 6.69%. It's a rolling coupon, it's Euribor plus 450 basis points, and as Euribor has increased a little bit, our coupon has increased a little bit if you compare this to the previous calls that we showed you.

We have call options on both bonds, but no decisions made there yet. The development of the share price on the long term, I think we can say it's still long-term positive trend.

We are not so happy with the development of the share price over the last 20 months or 24 months because share price did not follow the operational performance of the group. Now we saw a little turnaround at the price of 20, share price going up again.

We're working hard on operational performance, and I hope that that will show up in the share price as well. The shareholder base is still stable, no changes.

Management has 11%, Provinzial/VKPB 6%, Great-West 27%. What we now know is that Theslein added some shares and are now at more than 7%, so that's new for us, we will change the chart here, and we hold 369,000 treasury shares on our hand.

Ramona?

Thank you, Ralph, and a very warm welcome also from my side here. Building on the financial results you've just seen, I'd like to share three operational highlights that help bring those numbers to life, and hopefully, they also provide some perspectives on the opportunities we have ahead.

First topic is that we believe, oh, just go one back. The first topic is that we think that we are very well positioned for the Altersvorsorgedepot, that's Germany's new state-subsidized private retirement account.

It's in German a lot easier to say. Second is that FMK is becoming a visibility asset in AI-driven search environments, and we brought some numbers to illustrate that for you.

The third spotlight that we'd like to share with you today is AI and I guess operational excellence remains a key driver of our scalability, and we have achieved significant efficiency improvements through AI over the last years, and we would like to share some examples with you about that. No, Chema, next one.

Thank you. Altersvorsorgedepot, for a non-German audience, the Altersvorsorgedepot is the new state-subsidized private retirement account in Germany.

It's launching on January 1st of next year, and it's going to replace the old Riester pension. There are two broad groups of product providers that offer solutions for this.

It's on the one side the insurance carriers, and on the other side banks, and especially also the new neobanks. The good news is, regardless of which route the customer takes, JDC stands to benefit.

In Germany, the traditional way of building retirement savings is going through insurance products because they also cover the longevity risk. If a customer decides to go that route and work with a broker, that's just our bread-and-butter business, there's nothing new there for us really.

If the customer decides to take out a brokerage account with a bank, which he can do in this new scheme, then we can benefit through our subsidiary FMK as banks, and especially neobanks, are among its largest customers. The good news is that as a company, we are in a unique position to win in both scenarios.

Then let's just shed some light on how we support our brokers to become ready for the AVD. We are doing a lot of trainings right now to educate our brokers, and those trainings are in very high demand.

Our head of broker sales just wrote me a couple of hours ago that the last training yesterday had 400 attendants. It's a very long time that we have trainings that were so much in demand as this one.

The entire market is really discussing this topic, and everybody is getting ready for this. As well, we also provide tools for the brokers to compare on the one side what's more attractive, the Riester or the new AVD, for some people, it makes sense to close an retirement plan this year before the new AVD comes into place, but it also helps to decide, should I switch plans or is it reasonable for me to take out a new plan?

We have built some sophisticated tools to help the broker to really give a good consultation to their end customers. That's just a little bit business as usual.

The second part is new to us. Chema?

Now we also have FMK in our group, and FMK is also already ready for the demand. All their websites, they're already live, even if you can buy the product only in January, now you can get all the informations you need.

All the contents on all the websites is already live, and starting next month, there will also be a dedicated calculator available on all their websites. FMK is prepared as well, and the market potential is clearly substantial, as you can see also on the left side, and of course our ambition is to capture the largest possible share of this opportunity.

Again, insurance and banks, and JDC stands to profit in both ways. We cannot really tell the customer which way to go.

The customer decides in the end, but in this scenario, we are in a pretty unique position in the market to benefit either way. That's about the AVD.

The next highlight I would like to share with you are the developments in the AI-driven searches, and now with the help of external providers, we are able to bring greater transparency to FMK's visibility in the large language model-based searches. We all know that FMK is already highly successful in the traditional SEA environment, and now we can also see that FMK is very well positioned in the emerging AI-driven ecosystems.

For personal finance-related prompts in ChatGPT and Google AI, in 70% of the answers, one of FMK portals appears as the cited source. It's a very impressive result and puts FMK also well ahead of the competitors, as you can see here compared to Finanztip or even Check24.

There are several reasons for this, and just let me highlight two of them. The first of them is that FMK provides the financial comparison content for major media brands such as Handelsblatt and n-tv, etc., and these brands, of course, have built like journalistic credibility over decades.

They are very well presented in the training of the ecosystems of Google and OpenAI, FMK is recognized as an expert and not as an advertiser, and I guess that's very difficult to to replicate. That's the one reason for why FMK is so successful in the AI tools, and the second one is also that FMK has developed a fully AI-ready content infrastructure that makes it very easy for these LLMs to access, understand, and process its content, of course, the tools like the content of FMK.

Right now in Germany, yeah, Chema, one back. Right now in Germany, the LLM tools are not getting monetized yet, there is no advertisement, we expect this going to be changed with ChatGPT over the next couple of years, years, weeks, we expect ChatGPT to be the first one in Germany to launch advertisements, and and I guess FMK will also be here in the pole position to be one of the first partners who are able to to get that volume in the market.

No, Chema. Thank you.

The third spotlight is on AI, and over the last couple of earnings call, we have presented AI tools especially designed for brokers, and today I would like to show you how AI is also helping us to scale our core platform business. I brought two examples, and Chema?

The first example is contract transfers, and in 2020 in 2023, we processed fewer than 400,000 transfers, and this year, we are expecting about 720,000 transfers. In other words, we are processing almost twice as many transactions as before, and not only has the team managed this without any additional staff, but we even have reduced the number of FTEs by about 15%.

Overall, as a result, our personal cost per unit have declined by almost 50%. I will spare you the technical details on how we did this, but one important thing is that whenever we use AI solutions, they're not stand-alone tools in the backend, they are fully integrated, and I guess this is also why they deliver tangible results.

That's about the contract transfer, and the next topic that I brought with you is also something very nice. It's the rate of straight-through processing or dark processing or let's call it Dunkelverarbeitung in Germany.

It's a little bit the holy grail of the operations, so that means that from end to end, there's no manual interference, the entire process is completely done in a fully automated way. When in 2000 in 2023, our processing ratio was with documents 88%, which is already a very high number, and now in just a few years, we have raised this to 94%, and obviously, you can imagine moving from 0 to 20% automation is relatively straightforward, but improving from 88 to 94 is a completely different challenge, as every additional percentage point requires a very high level of sophistication in the automation capabilities.

We are very proud about that development and happy to pursue it further in the next couple of years. Before I hand back to you, Sebastian, I'd like to thank our colleagues across the entire group, because behind every number we have presented today are people who work very hard and very diligent and embrace all the new technologies that we have and the new way of working.

Thank you, guys, very much for your work, and it's a pleasure to work with you. Now, back to you, Sebastian.

Thank you very much, Ramona. As everybody can hear, she's not only chief operating officer, but also head of HR.

Thank you, Ramona. Coming to the guidance, obviously, we have an ambitious guidance out there, we still expect turnover to reach €300 to €330 million and therefore EBITDA to grow to €35 to €38 million.

I think we're still on track, especially against the backdrop that we see this rebound in the new business. We see that yeah, quarter-on-quarter, we will have more new business, and then in Q4, when all the marketing euros come in, not only will this profit or benefit FMK directly, we expect their best months to come, especially November, December, when all these marketing campaigns are in full force, but also this will have a positive effect on the rest of our sales channels, especially the broker channel, because the overall yeah, appetite for financial products, especially retirement planning products, will come back if this is in the news in all kind of advertising campaigns.

People will think about their pension plans, especially in the months which are focused to these topics, especially November, December. We think that especially this drive towards return-oriented investment and ETF products will give all these yeah, retirement markets a strong boost, and even if some of the market share goes to standard products, as you might know, the state made a regulation that for every kind of product, there has to be a standard product with a very low commission rate, but this is only the start of the advice or advisory job because then, obviously, as Ramona pointed out, the client has to decide whether the old Riester regime is better for him or the new AVD regime is better for him.

That depends mostly on the number of kids you're subsidizing, but then also the standard products is very simple and basic and basically ties you into a very low-key investment product as compared to other products that give you also cover for longevity risk where the payments do not just stop at 85 years, but give you payments over until your lifetime, for example, or give you a guarantee on your payments that you pay into this system. We think there's a lot of demand for advice ahead, and this will benefit all kinds of sales channels, especially also the broker channel.

This is why we think we can stay with this guidance, and we just yeah, run through these a little bit drought times that we see now, and then we looking forward to have a really good and thriving year in business 2026. Right now, we're at the end of our presentation, but we're happy to take all questions that you might have, and I could see, Mara, that there were some first questions already.

Yes, there are also a lot of raised hands right now. Thank you very much for your presentation.

Ladies and gentlemen, now it's your turn. We are opening the Q&A session.

If you would like to ask questions in person via audio line, you can click on the raise hand button below. Additionally, you are also welcome to post your questions in our chat, and I will read them out loud for you.

I would say we're starting with Mr. Hinkel.

I just sent you an invite to unmute yourself, you may do so now. I can see that you have unmuted yourself.

Can you please say something? Because we cannot hear you at the moment.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, perfect. Hello.

Fantastic. Thank you very much.

I have a couple of questions, if I may. I would like to discuss a little bit the contribution of FMK.

Is my interpretation correct that the new segment, Rating Comparison and Lead Business, is that the contribution of FMK then in the first half of the year, or is it...

Not totally, but most of it, yes. We have the turnover of Morgen & Morgen and our software fees that we are also included, but as mentioned, in the first half-year, we have around €22 million of turnover from FMK.

Can you also say something on the EBITDA contribution?

Yes, I did it during the presentation, but again, EBITDA contribution in the first half-year is around €7 million, and in Q2, turnover contribution was €12 million and EBITDA was €3.5 million.

Perfect. Thank you.

Then I admit I have a little bit of difficulties to understand the guidance. You say that it will we probably be at the lower bound of the guided corridor.

At the same time, you say, and I think with all good right, that there you expect a positive effect from the government-sponsored retirement product. Is that because of this accruals that you will not book this year that you lowered the guidance a little bit, or is it really that you see here the risk of, as you alluded to, the macroeconomic climate, etc.?

The question would be, is it because of the accruals, a more technical item, or is because of overall climate, etc.?

I think the important point is that we did not lower the guidance, right? It's just that we give the expectation that we see this little bit slowdown in the new business.

As you said, right, we do hope that the performance fees come in, and there's a very strong now yes, also sentiment that this will all go right here, right? If the world capital markets stay as they are, there will be a higher single-digit number of millions coming in as turnover and also almost a million in EBITDA from what we see right now, but obviously, right, I don't want to hear end of the year if something goes wrong that how could you book it in the first half-year if it was not a done deal, right?

It's just a question of precaution, as Ralph said, and we'll get there eventually. Also we think that yeah, the new business will come back, as we said, due to the regulation.

Happy to keep the guidance as it is, but obviously, if we have now 143 out of 300 to 330, right, then we want to be cautious and say, well, it might not be in the upper end.

Maybe, Sebastian, let me add to the question that if you calculate very easy with the rule of three, it's the best rule, and you use the pro forma figures 2025, under deduction of the €4 million turnover and the €600,000 EBITDA, you'll end up within the guidance. There was another question in the chat if we think that it would be now more difficult to reach the guidance.

We are still confident to reach the guidance, yeah, because of this easy calculation, of course, yeah, and the effects that we explained. The first is we see new business is coming back, we have this big Altersvorsorgedepot thing at the end of the year that will drive the business, and we have all this possible performance fee that we did not accrue now in the first half-year, and that's the reason why we stick to the guidance.

That's understood. Thank you very much.

My last two questions were probably for Ramona. The first one on the AVD product, you outlined two scenarios how customers can get to this product.

Which scenario would be the better one for JDC, the traditional broker model or the one over the banks and then using FMK for this route to the market? Second question on that, the strong performance of the FMK portals in AI searches, how sustainable would you think that is?

We learned from the search machines, Google, etc., that this can change very quickly. How sustainable is now this very strong performance of FMK in AI portals?

Thanks.

Thank you very much for your questions. As I said, we are very open to both lines of business, and it very much depends on let's say the marketing budgets of the large neobanks.

We think that they are going to invest a lot to get the entire first wave of AVDs into their portfolio. It's not really for us, it's both sides it's okay because both sides are one of business in the insurance as well as in the banking segment.

I don't have a strong preference on what the customer decides to do, and in the end, it's also it's very hard to steer a customer towards a certain channel. Check24, that has tried to do that for a very long time, and still less than 10% of German insurance business is online.

If you ask me what I think is going to happen is that the customer behavior is very steady in Germany, and customers are afraid that they live longer than they have money, and that's one of the big pluses for the insurance company side. I don't think that customer behavior will change drastically, I feel that the majority of the business will probably go to the insurance business and the banking business is an add-on.

We will see in the future how the customer decides. That's for your first question.

The other one, how sustainable is the AI progress? Right now, the LLM business is a little bit like SEO, of course there can be changes.

However, I don't think that the progress and the advanced stage that FMK is in right now, it's not very easy to go there. As I said, FMK is operating under brands like Handelsblatt and n-tv, and they have a very long journalistic reputation, and it's very hard for a newcomer to get the same reputation as the largest economic newspapers in Germany.

I'm pretty sure that they do have an advantage here, and it's very difficult for any other newcomer to get into that business in that way.

Ramona, if I may add, it's important to understand that this advantage is not capitalized yet, yeah, because ChatGPT does not offer advertisement in Germany, yeah. LLM advertising is now beginning all over the world, and we hope someday in the future, maybe this year, the ChatGPT will open the advertising in Germany, and then FMK will be there, and the high ratio of being the source with 70% will be the reason that we will make relevant turnovers there.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Mr. Hinkel.

We have another raised hand by Mr. Fuhrberg.

I just sent you an invitation to unmute yourself.

Hope you can hear me.

Yes, perfectly. Hello.

Great. Hi, another question on guidance, please.

You mentioned that the performance fees that you have not accrued for in H1, but could you clarify whether those are already included in your guidance and by how much?

Good question. Yes, they are included in the guidance, and I think we calculated in the business planning at a comparable level of the last year.

No, no, no, no. We have calculated them lower, but I'm not sure.

Sorry, Marius, I have to deliver this afterwards. I can give you the detailed numbers later on.

No worries. Second question on the AVD as well.

I also see a big shift here when it comes to pension savings, and you mentioned that you probably will see a lot of it going to insurances. Do you have already an idea on monetization from those AVD accounts that we will see?

Do you think that you will get a one-off fee once a customer signs a contract? Do you plan to participate in the ongoing payments, or what is your view on that?

It's very hard to tell as basically the market is marveling what's going to happen. I think there will be some market share for all the neobrokers and the neobanks, especially if the younger clients, obviously, right, because they are agnostic whether they buy insurance or a yeah, capital markets product, and they will rather turn to ETFs, but that's not a client yet.

I think that's rather, as Ramona said, an add-on to the existing business, it does not really matter if insurance companies cannot conquer a lot of these new clients' businesses. Then if you look at the insurance side, then the big question is how much will be covered by the standard product that is really low in cost and therefore does not give you big one-offs.

We rather think that, as Ramona pointed out, that people want to go, if they want to go to insurance products, they do not want the payments to end at age 85. I think that's the threat to especially a lot of female clients because obviously, if you're young today, you can expect to live 90-plus, and it would be very hard to have a pension system that cuts you off when you need it most, when you have the most expense for your health bills.

I think that people will rather go to one guaranteed or 80% guarantee products, and then longevity products that also pay 85-plus. In this product, and that's important to know, the commission is not capped or limited, or the costs are not limited.

Therefore, we expect that on the advisory side, in the broker side, maybe 75 to 80% of all business will go into quite conservative or similar products as we see in the markets today, and only a small portion will go to standard products, and a small portion will go to capital markets or sole capital markets products. Obviously, all these views are very difficult as they are far out in the future.

We will see how it comes out. On the other hand, yeah, we talked about this, we are not expecting this huge, big party where turnover triples next year.

We don't see this either, but in the end, having more market because there's more consumers asking for retirement plans and have a little bit lower market share, I think this will give a decent plus development for the broker markets.

Sebastian, could you shortly state on commission issues regarding the AVD? There was a question in the chat that commissions, are they going down with the AVD or not?

We expect that, obviously, the standard state product has a lower cost base, right? If you see a 1% cap per year on the cost base, there's not much one-off for commissions left.

Obviously, in a advisory world where most of the products are not the standard product, but are products that are let's say more modern life insurance products, we expect the commission rates to go down a little bit, let's say 15 to 20%, but then there will be a lot of more market that overcompensates for a little bit lower commission. That's our best guess here.

All right, and do you expect this to be a more recurring fee or a one-off fee? No,

what we could learn from the last reforms is that especially the broker market is very lazy to change, and this is what also the insurance companies learned, and now in their talks we have with them, what they offer is that the model is quite the same, only that the commission rates are slightly lower.

That's

also what we're expecting.

That means basically a one-off.

Slightly lower, but still high. That's important to understand.

Maybe one last question from my side. When I look at AUMs and the premium volumes, they are up double-digit, whereas organic revenues grew only single-digit.

Could you explain this gap, and when should we expect this to close, or more precisely, should we expect revenues to pick up speed accordingly to the operating development in AUM and premium volumes?

Obviously there's this little gap in the new business. As we said, we expect new business to be back in Q4, right?

Summer will still be rather okay-ish, but then in Q4, we will see a pick up and then the picture will normalize, if you want. Again, we like this increases in the base for our recurring business, especially the insurance premiums and the volumes of the assets because that's the income of the future on top, right?

Yes, one-offs are important for this year and this quarter, but the future lies in all these recurring payments that we are aggregating.

Great, thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Fuhrberg.

We have another raised hand by Mr. de Jong.

I just sent you an invite to unmute yourself. Can you hear me?

Can you hear me?

Yes, perfect. Hello.

Yes, hi. Hello.

Hello. Good afternoon, gentlemen, and Ramona, of course.

Just a clarification on the AVD side. Should I really assume that that is completely new clients in contrast, I'd say, to the increase in new business that you expect also in the second half of the year, which is probably existing clients?

Is that right to assume?

The first important thing to know is there's about 12 million clients that have a Riester contract, right? They need a checkup whether Riester is still the best system for them or whether they should change in AVD starting January.

On the other hand, as Ramona pointed out, there will be new clients for Riester also because now it comes clear that the regime is changing. As I said, if you have many kids and you have to expect a lot of subsidies from the state, then you should still go into a Riester client, although the AVD is the new thing and so much better as everybody says, you should still go in a Riester contract.

Yes, there is a lot of advisory demand on the existing client base, but then obviously the AVD tries to capture all these ETF-driven investment new kind of clients on top that come on top of the insurance clients that insurance would capture anyways.

Thanks. Ramona, if you look at the LLM space, what are the competition?

What's blau direkt doing? What's Fonds Finanz doing?

Are they also active in that field or is there any competition coming for FMK or how should we see that?

The competition that FMK with its current business model had are competitors like Finanzen.de, Finanztip, or Check24, the ones that I showed to you on the slide, but they are not nearly as successful as FMK. Sorry, I have to ask again, you mentioned two or three names, I just acoustically, I didn't get them.

I think blau direkt and Netfonds. Okay.

I don't think that they are in any way near a similar business model. Please correct me, Ralph or Sebastian, if...

No, they're not and they are of course also active in generating leads for their customers, but not in the size that FMK is able to. Regarding the AI efforts, of course all our competitors as well invest a lot into AI to improve their internal processes and make the work more easy for the brokers.

We are all very active in this space.

Finally, on the €20 million bond, you have call option this year, later this year. What would be the considerations to redeem or to call it?

Depending on cash situation, yeah, how many cash do we generate this year? I personally don't think that it makes sense to redeem it with the 7% and pay 101.5% and then refinance it with a Nordic bond with a rolling interest rate, which could be more than 7%, must not be, but could be, yeah.

I don't think that will happen. If we have enough cash on hand and it makes sense to redeem it, then we will do it.

If not, I don't think that we will refinance it with the Nordic bond.

Perfectly. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you very much, Mr. de Jong.

We have a couple of questions in our chat box left. The first would be, is the major customers revenue purely contract transfers of large customers' existing contracts to the platform?

Would it be fair to say that EBITDA is no longer a good proxy for FCF?

That's the second question. Let's go to the first question.

Yes, it's only from the large customers, but no, it's not only contract transfers, it's also new business from the large customers. That's the major customer business.

The second question is, is it fair to say that EBITDA is no longer a good proxy for FCF, for free cash flow? I don't think it's fair to say that, but what we can observe is with the improving relevance of FMK, the cash flow profile of the group changed a little bit because they don't receive the commissions before they pay them out, they at first have to invest into Google marketing and then get the money from their customers, on the one hand, and the second reason is that we have tax losses carried forward and FMK pays taxes.

That are the two reasons why it's different. Yes, it changed a little bit, but I think we have to work on, Jasper, that was your question, to make this more clear and give you maybe better guidance on how EBITDA and cash flow work together.

Plus interest that we pay now, but obviously.

Yeah. The next question of Jasper was the expected tax rate for '26 and '27.

Thanks to the back office, I can answer it. Our expected tax rate for this year is around 15%, yeah, and for the next year, the answer was hard to say between 15 and 20%.

I think if you collect a little bit above this 15, 16%, then you are on the right side.

Thank you very much. Another question would be, I understood onboarding of R+V, Versicherungskammer Bayern, and Allianz is still slow.

What can you do that the relevant people have more motivation to move to your platform?

That's very individual, right? Obviously, we don't want to answer in individual client groups, but we can say that we're very happy about the Allianz project that picks up speed and so we get a quite good integration into their tied-agent network, we're happy with that.

Obviously, you're right, as Provinzial develops quite nicely, Versicherungskammer is laying back a little bit, and also R+V could be much faster, that's true. What can we do?

We're talking to the project groups, we talk to the board members, and that's the interesting part that the client is more happy than the service provider, and the service provider pushes the project more than the client, but this is something we have to live on. It's intrinsic to our B2B2C model.

The good thing is, obviously, the customers come in for free, but the speed is decided by our clients, intermediary clients, and this is also one of the reasons why we bought FMK, to have the lever in our own hands, right? To put it positively, there's a long highway for growth.

All right. I just saw that we have another raised hand.

Due to time, I would say we do the raised hand and then maybe go back to the questions. I don't know how your time allows it.

Maybe we do a crash on the other questions. Maybe, Jesper, right?

You said the costs have risen quite a lot in recent quarters. We don't think so, Ralph, right?

Yes, they grew, but not as fast as the earnings grew or the...

If the company grows, of course the costs grow, and if you then have a temporary weakness in new business, which is turnover today and not over the next years, then it might seem that the costs grow faster than they should, but that's indeed not the fact. We have seen this as well, and we have started cost reduction programs in the Advisortech and in the Advisory segment, and I think at least let's say €1.5 or €2 million costs will be saved for the next year.

We are diligently observing this.

Ramona, next question for you, I guess.

How is it going with the FMK JDC Plus project? Short answer, it's going very smoothly.

Everything is according to plan. We have seven-digit validation sums and six-digit commission sums that we have already gained.

Last earnings call, I went into a little bit of detail, the infrastructure that we built up in the past six months, and now, of course, they are in the loop of enhancing and optimizing the business on the infrastructure and also on the personal side. Here, everything is on track.

Then Thomas has a question on capital allocation. We learned a lot in the last share buyback, that the tender was very interesting, that it was misunderstood by one or the other investor.

I think the range is: one, we want to take the opportunities in the market for further M&A, there's interesting targets out there, and that's the best use of our free cash flow and also the money that we have in the bank obviously right now. Share buyback second, and dividends last.

The same goes for the payback of the outstanding bond, as Ralph said, right? That's not the wisest thing to do with our money, actually.

That was a short answer, but happy to get direct. Also is there any news to Sumit?

There's not really. We're very happy with the development.

We're buying brokers every second month, and the first initial commitment should be invested in the course of this year, and then we'll see whether we add up here. Mara, I think we can take the raised hand if it's still there.

I think so too, yes. Ms.

Martin Ortega, please, you may unmute yourself now. I just sent you an invite to do so.

Can you hear us?

And?

I just sent you an invite again. Sometimes it takes a couple of clicks.

If this is Ana Martin Ortega, she's one of our employees, maybe that was just a hand raised by mistake. It happens.

Maybe, maybe. Good.

Okay.

I would say, with no further questions, we will come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you very much for your interest in JDC Group AG, and also big thank you to the management board for your presentation and the time you took to answer all of those questions.

Should you have any further questions at a later time, please feel free to contact Investor Relations, and I wish you all a successful day. I'm handing over to you once more, Dr.

Grabmaier, once again for your closing remarks.

Yes, thank you, Mara, and thank you again for your taking part here in this earnings call. Also thank you for your trust as our shareholders.

We think we have better times ahead. Obviously, part of the figures are really great.

We're really happy about the acquisition of FMK. As you can see, that's a great contribution to our EBITDA growth, and also we are very confident that the platform business will be coming back especially against the backdrop of the new regulation in Q4.

There will be direct effects for FMK that we're looking forward to, but also to the entire broker and advisory market. We're very confident that the guidance we gave you beginning of the year still holds and that we see good times ahead.

Thank you for your attention, and thank you for your trust.