Multitude Q3’25 preview: CMD takes the spotlight

Source: Inderes

Multitude will report its Q3'2025 results on the morning of November 13. We anticipate continued growth driven by smaller segments, such as SME Banking and Wholesale Banking, as well as fee income. Although we expect profit growth to continue, the pace will slow down since the comparison periods are becoming more challenging. We consider the guidance for 2025 to be conservative, and we believe it is possible that the guidance could be adjusted upward. On the same day, the company will hold a Capital Markets Day (CMD), where we expect to hear about longer-term financial targets, the drivers of different business units (especially Wholesale Banking), and the growth outlook for fee income. 

We expect a small increase in growth

We expect Multitude’s Q3 net operating income (NOI) to have grown slightly below 7 % to 55.8 MEUR. This would imply a clear acceleration of growth from the Q1 (+1 %) and Q2 (+2 %) levels. This is partly driven by a softer comparison period in terms of NOI (Q3 clearly the lowest in 2024). We expect the net interest income (NII) of the largest business unit, Consumer Banking, to continue its decline. This is driven by lower interest rates, as the interest expenses decrease with a lag. The total NOI of Consumer Banking is supported by growth in fee income from partners. We expect to see clearly positive growth from the smaller earlier-stage business units. In our estimation, the growth of SME Banking has remained at a single-digit level. We expect the Wholesale Banking business unit to more than double its NOI driven by strong loan book growth this year and fee income growth from payment solutions.

Rate of profit improvement set to decrease

We forecast Multitude’s Q3 earnings before taxes (EBT) to have grown to 7.3 MEUR (Q3’24: 6.2 MEUR). We expect impairment losses to revert from their declining trend (Q1 and Q2) and continue growing as the loan portfolio is also growing. Impairment losses are again the most volatile and hardest-to-predict item. We also forecast modest cost growth, but a slightly better cost/income ratio than in the comparison period. The growth in fee income is critical to the earnings growth we forecast, as we believe it comes with a high margin. We expect Consumer Banking to continue to be largely responsible for the Group-level profit, but the smaller segments should significantly increase their contribution given the business unit level targets for the year.

We see the current year’s guidance to be conservative

Multitude’s guidance for 2025 expects net profit to be in the range of 24-26 MEUR. We consider the guidance rather conservative, and our estimate is currently above the guidance range at 26.7 MEUR. The company was able to generate 14.2 MEUR of net profit in H1, and thus the current guidance would imply a clearly weakening trend for H2. It would also imply weakening profits from H2’24, which would be a minor disappointment to us. We note that a big part of the profit improvements in H1 were due to lower impairment losses, and there might be volatility in these between quarters.

Capital Markets Day to be held on the same day

Multitude will host its Capital Markets Day on the same day as the Q3 report, where we expect to hear about the company’s longer term financial targets. Currently the company has a net profit guidance of 30 MEUR for 2026, but historically the company has given guidance for multiple years ahead. We also expect to hear about the growth outlook and targets of different business units. The outlook on fee income from partners and payment solutions is also an interesting theme as we believe it’s a high margin and asset-light income stream that could eventually support the valuation as well.