Last close As at 05/08/2026
EUR23.40
▲ 0.60 (2.63%)
Market capitalisation
EUR317m
Research: Financials
After two quarters of >20% y-o-y revenue growth, JDC Group (JDC) has benefited from strong tailwinds in Q324 as well. Revenue growth of 36% in the quarter was partly driven by the acquisition of Top Ten, but mostly by strong Insurance, investment and banks activities. Q424 is also expected to be strong and JDC indicated that the high end of FY24 revenue guidance of €205–220m is well within reach. FY24 EBITDA guidance is in the range of €14.5–16.0m (FY23: €11.7m). After raising our estimates with the H124 results, we make no further changes. Our discounted cash flow provides a valuation of €34.0/share.
JDC Group |
Q324 results |
Insurance |
18 November 2024 |
Share price performance
Business description
Analyst
JDC Group is a research client of Edison Investment Research Limited |
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After two quarters of >20% y-o-y revenue growth, JDC Group (JDC) has benefited from strong tailwinds in Q324 as well. Revenue growth of 36% in the quarter was partly driven by the acquisition of Top Ten, but mostly by strong Insurance, investment and banks activities. Q424 is also expected to be strong and JDC indicated that the high end of FY24 revenue guidance of €205–220m is well within reach. FY24 EBITDA guidance is in the range of €14.5–16.0m (FY23: €11.7m). After raising our estimates with the H124 results, we make no further changes. Our discounted cash flow provides a valuation of €34.0/share.
On track to reach high-end FY24 sales guidance |
Year |
Revenue |
EBITDA |
Net profit |
EPS* |
DPS |
P/E |
12/22 |
156.1 |
9.0 |
0.9 |
0.07 |
0.0 |
N/A |
12/23 |
171.7 |
11.7 |
3.8 |
0.28 |
0.0 |
84.6 |
12/24e |
220.4 |
16.0 |
6.0 |
0.44 |
0.0 |
55.0 |
12/25e |
258.6 |
23.3 |
10.8 |
0.79 |
0.0 |
30.6 |
Note: *EPS are reported.
JDC reported revenue growth of 36.1% in Q324 from an already impressive 29.4% in Q2. Growth was, as usual, driven by the platform business in the Advisortech division (38.9%), while revenues in Advisory were also strong (+17.9%). Commission expenses increased to 73.8% of revenues from 73.0% in Q2 and 71.2% in Q3 last year. This was mostly the result of larger clients that take a bigger part of the generated commissions and lower gross margins at Top Ten, which was acquired at the end of 2023. Nevertheless, as a result of a relatively stable cost base EBITDA went up 41.4% y-o-y to €2.3m.
JDC has increased its use of AI to digitise the process on the platform, reducing costs further. 90% of documents related to three Property & Casualty insurance policy categories can now be handled completely digitally at an accuracy of 95%. More insurance categories will be added. Platform effects are now starting to play out at the company. Annual premium on the platform is nearing €1.3bn, after topping the €1bn mark last year. This year, new orders increased ~13% and the number of policy transfers initiated increased by around 53% to almost 417k y-o-y.
Q2 and Q3 usually are the weaker quarters within JDC’s activities. The relatively good performance in Q3 and the good start to Q4 provide confidence that the quarter is going to be strong as well. Revenues are likely to approach the €60m level for the first time. The company indicated that the upper end of the revenue guidance (€205–220m) as well as the FY25 target of at least €250m turnover are well within reach. The FY24 guidance of an EBITDA of €14.5–16.0m is intact. Our estimates already were at the higher end of guidance and we leave them unchanged.
On large clients, JDC announced that it has won VGH Versicherungen as a new savings bank-related client. VGH’s business territory includes 34 savings banks with around 4.8m insurance contracts and 1.6m clients. Furthermore, Summitas, the joint venture with Bain and major shareholder Great-West Lifeco, which uses JDC’s platform, announced the acquisition of BVUK.Gruppe at end-October. The transaction is expected to close before year end. BVUK.Gruppe is one of Germany’s largest consulting and brokerage companies in the field of company pension schemes, and this is Summitas’s first large transaction after several smaller ones.
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Research: Industrials
Smiths News now has contracts in place for 91% of its core revenue to 2029, implying resilience. In addition, its non-core growth activities are beginning to gather momentum, which is already mitigating the structural decline of the core activity. Furthermore, the addressable non-core ‘early morning’ market is sizable and has a profit opportunity of c £160m, which implies that there is potential to more than offset the decline seen in the core operations and could lead to long-term profit growth. This in turn underpins the cash generation and the dividends, and could see further distributions if investment for growth is not required. We have trimmed our forecasts but raise our valuation to 93p/share.