Intrum AB

STO:INTRUM

Earnings Call Transcript

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the interim Q1 report 2021. Today, I am pleased to present CEO, Anders Engdahl; and CFO, Michael Ladurner. [Operator Instructions] Speakers, begin.

[Anders Engdahl, President & CEO]

Thank you so much, and Good morning, everyone. This is Anders Engdahl. And with me today also as the operator said, I have Michael Ladurner, our CFO; as well as Emil Folkesson, our Head of IR for questions later on.We turn to Page 3 of the presentation, the highlights of Q1 2021. I'm pleased to present a robust first quarter, especially in light of the pandemic that continued to affect the operating conditions across our markets. But more importantly, during the second half of the quarter and into April, we see very strong underlying momentum building up across most of our markets. Overall, the result of the quarter was supported by the diversification of our business, where a somewhat softer CMS performance was outweighed by strong performance in portfolio investment and strategic markets.This continued robust performance allowed us to deliver continued growth in our key cash metrics, where our cash revenue grew 6% on a constant currency basis. Our cash EBIT grew 24% year-over-year. And our rolling 12 months cash EPS exceeded SEK 30 per share for the first time. Also, our rolling 12-month cash ROIC is now up to 8.2% versus 6.6% in the first quarter 2020, demonstrating further progress towards our medium-term financial targets.The leverage ratio increased somewhat to 4.1x due to unfavorable FX development in the translation of our net debt at the end of the quarter despite underlying deleveraging. Looking across our markets, we see clear signs of recovery starting to come through, supported by improving business and consumer confidence. This was, for example, evidenced by the very strong results being in our real estate servicing business in Spain as well as the increasing level of new inflows in CMS that started to emerge towards the second half of the quarter.We believe that we passed an inflection point toward -- during the quarter, and we see a very positive momentum across all of our markets. In our servicing business, we see continued growth in our pipeline, and we signed a record level of new business during the quarter. And across our footprint, we see increasing demand for our services as our clients look to address their [ MPM ] servicing needs.In portfolio investments, we invested SEK 1.7 billion in new portfolio acquisitions at return levels substantially above the pre-COVID levels, continuing the trend from 2020 of investing at attractive mid-teen returns. We expect to continue to gradually increase the deployment pace during 2021 against this favorable returns backdrop. I'm also proud that Intrum was awarded a best-in-class sustainability risk rating from Sustainalytics. Not only were we rated #1 in our industry subsegment, but among the top 4% globally among all the -- more than 13,000 companies rated.This is a strong endorsement of our clear and defined sustainability framework and targets as well as the work we've done for many years in relation to our ethical collections agenda. Furthermore, we're well on track with our ONE Intrum transformation program where we delivered a number of important milestones during the quarter. I'm happy to see that we are well ahead of schedule in respect of case migrations to the new platform and that our FTE cost to collect KPI remains on target.If we move to Page 4. Looking at the servicing side of the business. Overall, the servicing business displayed mixed performance across market. But during the quarter, a positive underlying trend emerged, supporting sustainable servicing growth across our footprint. We saw a meaningful improvement in consumer confidence of 7% year-over-year, which is supportive of a gradual return to normalized post-COVID environment. The pace of vaccination, while somewhat varying across countries, is an important driver of improvement in sentiment.In terms of post-COVID opportunity set, we continue to expect a significant increase in post-COVID NPL formation on our bank's clients balance sheet, which we expect to translate into greater new volume flows towards the later part of 2021 and into 2022. As mentioned earlier, we saw an important turning point in terms of new case inflows in CMS during the quarter, and we expect to see a gradual return to normalization during the coming quarters through 2021.This we expect will support a positive revenue development and margin improvement during the year. Furthermore, we are constructive regarding the outlook for specific markets, where we -- where the operating environment is rapidly improving and the improvement in sentiment is already showing positive effects as seen, for example, in the level of real estate sales in Spain.If we move to Page 5, portfolio investments. On the portfolio investment side, we see increasing portfolio sales activity from our clients, which we expect to continue accelerating through the year. We also continue to see attractive underwriting returns well above pre-COVID levels. Many sellers [ discount ] sales activity during 2020, and now we see sellers coming back to market. Given the combination of pent-up postponed supply and volume buildup due to the pandemic, we expect the portfolio sales market to remain very active this year and next.From a interim perspective, we expect to revert to normalized investment level in 2021, meaning deploying capital in excess of our replenishment rate sufficient to grow the investment business at the rate consistent with our medium-term financial targets of double-digit growth as well as delivering on our deleveraging target of reaching 2.5x to 3.5x by the end of 2022.If you move to Page 6. As I said, I'm extremely pleased with our best-in-class sustainability risk rating awarded to Intrum by Sustainalytics. This rating is a testament to the hard work the whole organization has been doing to lead our industry in terms of care and ethical behavior and are clear and well-defined sustainability targets. To us at Intrum, the best in ESG is at the core of what we do. And we see that we have an important role to play to support societies as they're setting the path back to recovery post-pandemic.We move to Page 7. Our ONE Intrum transformation program implementation is proceeding according to plan and is well on track, and I'm pleased to say that we are off to a very good start. As of the end of Q1, our case migration KPI is well ahead of plan, and our FTE cost-to-collect KPI is on track. We've also continued to ramp up our activity level in our multi-language contact centers in Athens and Bucharest, which we opened during the quarter, and we expect to have our center in Malaga opened before the end of the second quarter.We have also now made very good progress on our data and analytics efforts to ensure that all the data accessible in one global data hub. This allows us to now be able to start leveraging advanced analytics across our footprint to support our global operating model.And with that, I hand it over to Michael to talk us through the numbers in more detail.

[Michael Ladurner, Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you, Anders, and good morning. I'm now looking at Page 10, group key financials. Q1 was a robust quarter. We continued to improve our cash metrics quarter-over-quarter as well as in a rolling 12-month versus full year basis. This positive development is particularly noteworthy in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to impact the economies and societies we operate in.Cash revenues grew by 6% in constant currency quarter-over-quarter to SEK 5.2 billion, and were flat including the currency effect. Cash EBITDA increased by 3% to SEK 2.7 billion. On a rolling 12-month basis, cash EBITDA came in at SEK 11.686 billion, a small improvement compared to full year 2020. Cash EBIT for the quarter came in at SEK 1.365 billion, up 24% from Q1 2020. Cash EPS was SEK 5.7 per share for the quarter and SEK 30.2 per share for the rolling 12 months.Cash ROIC for the quarter was 7.8%, while on a rolling 12-month basis, we continued to improve our returns and are now at 8.2% compared to 6.6% at the end of Q1 2020. The leverage ratio adversely affected by the FX development during the quarter increased by 0.1x to 4.1x compared to full year 2020. This development is entirely due to the FX movement during Q1, which increased net debt by SEK 0.9 billion, outweighing underlying deleveraging of SEK 0.3 billion as well as the increase in rolling 12-month cash EBITDA.While we're still impacted by the ongoing pandemic, continuous improvement throughout Q1 and good momentum, supported by the increasing economic and consumer sentiment that Anders mentioned earlier, are indicators that we may now have reached a turning point towards gradual normalization.Now turning to Page 11 and our continued growth in recurring cash earnings. Overall, we see a very positive growth trajectory over the last 5 quarters as well as good momentum for the remainder of the year. Cash revenue is up 3% year-over-year to SEK 21.4 billion and cash EBITDA up 6% to SEK11.7 billion, again, highlighting the operating leverage inherent in our size and scale. Cash EBIT and recurring cash earnings have increased even more significantly year-over-year with lower replenishment CapEx, also due to a rolling 12-month money-on-money multiple expansion to 2.18x.Looking into the operational drivers behind these developments, we see a softer CMS contribution more than offset by portfolio investments and strategic markets. Summing up, we again see a trend of continuous improvement in recurring cash earnings with significant growth year-over-year.Now focusing on the segments. I'm looking at Page 12. CMS again experienced somewhat lower case volume inflows in aggregate due to COVID-19 and an adverse FX development negatively impacting cash revenues, which were down 9%, 5% in constant currency quarter-over-quarter to SEK 1.038 billion. However, as mentioned before, we also saw a relative improvement during the latter part of the quarter and feel that an inflection point may have been reached. Cash EBITDA reduced to SEK 412 million in Q1, down 17% quarter-over-quarter. For cash EBIT, we observed a similar development with SEK 396 million for the quarter, down 11%.Segment cash ROIC decreased by 0.5 percentage point to 8.3% quarter-over-quarter. Profitability is currently also impacted by the lower share of fresh cases in the overall claim mix. We expect revenues as well as profitability to recover as volume inflow is restored.Turning to Page 13. Strategic markets continued to improve and had a strong quarter despite the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy, Spain and Greece. Of particular note is the positive contribution from real estate servicing in Spain, as mentioned by Anders earlier. Cash revenues increased by 21% to SEK 1.346 billion quarter-over-quarter against foreign exchange headwinds. Growth at constant currency came in at 28%. Cash EBIT also more than doubled to SEK 645 million quarter-over-quarter. The quarterly segment cash ROIC, therefore, increased from 7.1% in Q1 2020 to 16.3% in Q1 2021. Also looking at rolling 12-month figures, I would like to again highlight the growth trajectory across all cash metrics.Focusing on portfolio investments. I'm now on Page 14. The portfolio investments segment showed increasing momentum throughout the quarter following a strong end to 2020. Overall portfolio investments exceeded collection expectations, the active forecast by 5% for the quarter. Cash revenues reduced by 5% to SEK 2.864 billion quarter-over-quarter, a 1% growth in constant currency. Cash EBITDA decreased by 7% to SEK 2.089 billion for the same period. Cash revenues and cash EBITDA were negatively impacted by a reduction in cash flow from joint ventures quarter-over-quarter.Cash EBIT was flat quarter-over-quarter and came in at SEK 830 million, supported by lower replenishment CapEx also due to a higher rolling 12-month money-on-money multiple. Q1 portfolio investments of SEK 1.739 billion were well ahead of the replenishment level as well as the investment level observed in Q1 2020 and came at attractive returns significantly above pre-COVID comparables.Now looking at Page 15. The difference between our cost of funds and the last 12-month average unlevered underwriting IR continues to widen and now stands at 4.5x. Intrum bonds have continued to perform well in a generally positive market, highlighting the strength of our credit. At the end of Q1, we had available liquidity of SEK 18 billion and no significant upcoming debt maturities before 2024.Turning to Page 16 and focusing on progress towards the new medium term financial targets. Rolling 12-month cash ROIC is continuously improving and now stands at 8.2% versus a target of greater than 10%. Recurring consolidated rolling 12-month cash EPS is exhibiting strong growth and now stands at SEK 30.2 per share, supportive of our target of more than 10% growth on average per annum. Deleveraging is progressing on the trajectory to reach to 3.8x area at year-end 2021 and meet our target of a leverage ratio between 2.5x and 3.5x by year-end 2022. The slight uptick in Q1, as mentioned before, is due to an adverse foreign exchange development outweighing underlying deleveraging and increase in the rolling 12-month cash EBITDA. In summary, progress towards achieving our medium-term target is fully on track.And now back to you, Anders, for some final remarks.

[Anders Engdahl, President & CEO]

Thank you, Michael. So if we move to Page 18, just to summarize. So overall, as also Michael pointed out, I'm very happy about the robust performance in the first quarter, which was supported by the diversification of our business, where a somewhat softer CMS performance was more than outweighed by strong performance in portfolio investments and strategic markets.Looking at our agenda going forward. We will, during 2021 and beyond, continue to address our strategically important ESG agenda and continue to build it in as an integral part of our business globally. We are committed to reaching the targets we set out, and I look forward to continuing to update you on them as we progress. The ONE Intrum transformation program is a fundamental change for us as a company, and we remain firmly on track.ONE Intrum means is a complete overhaul of how we operate as a company, a complete redesign of our operating processes and how we deliver our services to our clients. And we're doing that by leveraging technology, data and analytics to be able to strengthen our value proposition, improve our efficiency and enhance our competitive position. The transformation enhances our client relevance. It underpins our ability to compete and win more business organically. It supports our growth agenda.Combined with a positive economic outlook and increase in client demand, we believe Intrum is well-positioned for sustainable long-term organic growth. So to summarize, this was a strong quarter given the continued pandemic operating conditions, but more importantly, with the strong momentum in the underlying business across all our segments. In terms of near-term outlook for our 3 segments, I would highlight for portfolio investments, we expect to continue to see strong collection performance as well as accelerating investment pace at attractive mid-teen returns, supporting double-digit growth.In CMS, the new -- the positive new case inflow trend that emerged during the quarter, we expect to drive revenue growth and restore margin levels over the coming quarters. We also see client demand to continue to increase, driving continued pipeline growth and new contract signings. And in strategic markets, we see operational conditions rapidly improving and normalization will allow us to exploit the full potential of our market-leading Southern European franchise.And with that, I think we conclude the presentation, and we'll go to Q&A.

[Operator]

And our first question comes from the line of Julia Varesko at JPMorgan.

[Julia Varesko, Analyst]

And apologies in advance if it's covered somewhere in your presentation or the release [ you gave ] this morning today. So I wanted to ask you to give some more color on the progress of Intrum ONE program. How much have you spent so far on various initiatives, CapEx, OpEx versus your budget? And what sort of phasing should we expect going forward? So that's my first question.The second question I have is on the development in Spain. So you noted an improvement in the real estate servicing. I'm just wondering if this is a one-off and sort of catch-up? Or is this sustainable? And could you also provide some color on the other regions in that division? How is Greece? How is Italy? Then my other question is, could you provide some insight on portfolio purchases in Q1? What sort of asset and region mix was achieved? And I think there was supposed to be some catch-up in the booking of these investments from Q4. So I would assume that Q1 is maybe a little bit artificially inflated. So what pace of investments should we be assuming through the rest of the year, please?

[Anders Engdahl, President & CEO]

Thank you, Julia. To start off with the ONE Intrum, on your question on -- as I said, we're well on track, and we passed a number of important milestones during the quarter. And we laid it out a little bit on Page 7 in the presentation, both in terms of the budget as it's laid out, you can see at the top of the page there how the budget sort of is laid out and what sort of how it's spread out across the years. I mean to date, we have spent 29% of the total program budget.And it, in aggregate, since start, they were about 7% below budget to date. But we'll have a little bit of fluctuations from quarter-to-quarter, and we expect to end up on budget by the end of the time of the program. So to the second question around the strategic markets...

[Julia Varesko, Analyst]

So -- but is there any -- can I just interrupt, I'm really sorry? Is there any detail on sort of CapEx, OpEx in that spend?

[Michael Ladurner, Chief Financial Officer]

Julia, if I can take that one. What I would reflect is the detail we've given in the context of the Capital Markets Day, where we give a, I think on Page 65 it was, we gave -- we give a breakdown in terms of how we see the split between CapEx and OpEx over the course of 2021 and also beyond. I think in general, those parameters still hold very much true as also in terms of the quarter, we're very much tracking online with what we've laid out in the context of the Capital Markets Day.

[Anders Engdahl, President & CEO]

All right. So then to your second question around strategic markets. I mean we see a notable uptick in, as you said, business and consumer confidence across many markets, but it was particularly visible also in Spain, where we see a real estate market with high liquidity and large number of transactions. And that is continuing, and it's a very active market now.We saw last year obviously that with the lockdowns, there was some sort of physical restrictions to the ability to do this and as well as the lower consumer confidence. But with -- now with the increasing consumer confidence and the -- also the strong sort of support mechanisms that are coming through, including the EU packages and whatnot, it's supporting overall confidence in the economy. That's also visible, by the way, in our amicable collection activities where we see very strong performance on all amicable activities.And that goes for Italy and Greece as well, where amicable activity is now at a very good pace, and we see a rapid return to the normality on the amicable side. On the legal side, we continue to have delays because obviously with the lockdowns and the restrictions there have been, the pace of legal activity was slowed down during 2020. We are seeing better pace gradually coming through, but that is going to take longer time to restore to normality. But overall, we are very -- as I said in my introductory comments, we're very constructive about the performance in our strategic market units for the year 2021.Then if we go to the point around portfolio purchases. We invested at SEK 1.7 billion, which is in excess -- slightly in excess of what we did in Q1 2020. And yes, you're right, we had some carryovers from Q4, but it's also fair to say that we haven't impacted even more carryovers into Q2 from Q1. So the activity level is increasing, and we see, continued as I said, acceleration of deployment pace coming through during 2021. As we have seen sellers who postponed transactions during 2020 are now coming back to market for realizing those transactions, and we also have seen the buildup of portfolios on the back of the pandemic is slowly coming through the system, and we're seeing the first signs of some pandemic portfolios coming to market as well supporting I think the commentary that we expect the continued very high level of activity in the market for the coming quarters of 2021 and into 2022, at continued attractive investment return levels.

[Julia Varesko, Analyst]

And could you give any insight on sort of asset and regional mix when it comes to those investments? Is it just one area? Or is it broad-based?

[Anders Engdahl, President & CEO]

It is I would say unusually broad-based. I mean normally in the quarter you have some area that is more active than another, but over time it evens out. I would say the first quarter was very broad-based and no particular concentration in any geographic area. And also, I mean, we have, as you know, a 80-20 more or less unsecured secured mix in our book. I would say that the continued activity is in line with our back book distribution from orders book. So very broad-based increase in activity.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Ermin Keric of Carnegie.

[Ermin Keric, Research Analyst]

The first one, if I could start maybe on the ONE Intrum program. I know it's very early days, but if you look on the case migration there and the trajectory, is that lumpy? Or do you see anything that makes you believe that you will actually have a much faster migration overall in the program than you initially envisaged?

[Anders Engdahl, President & CEO]

Ermin, I'd say on ONE Intrum, we're extremely pleased not only with the fact that we've been able to migrate more cases a bit faster than we had originally planned, but the fact that we have now been able to do large-scale migrations without any hiccups as we have a concept -- migration concept that has really proven to work extremely well. It gives us a lot of confidence in our ability to execute the program on the time line that we've set out.Then overall I'm sure we're going to be a little bit above and a little bit above throughout the time of the program. So I wouldn't expect us to be dramatically ahead of the curve for the totality of the program. But it feels very good to be off to a good start, but also it's more importantly with a high degree of execution precision. And that's what I would highlight more than the fact that we're ahead of the trajectory.

[Ermin Keric, Research Analyst]

That's very helpful. Then if we move over to the P&I segment. I mean with your change in accounting in Q4, we first expected over collections to be almost more neutral. Would you say the 105% in Q1 are representative of what you would expect going forward as well?

[Anders Engdahl, President & CEO]

Yes. Thank you, Ermin. I mean you're right, with the alignment to accounting practice as we did at the end of Q4, the logical conclusion was to have a performance closer to the active forecast. So that's absolutely correct. I think that in that light, I'd say you're even more happy to see the strong performance of the first quarter. And we also see very good momentum into the second quarter on collection and state of collections.So that makes us very confident that we can continue to have a strong collection performance for the coming quarters. So -- but we're feeling very confident about that.

[Ermin Keric, Research Analyst]

And then 2 more questions if I may, I can take them together. But first on carriers, have you booked any kind of breakup fee or so for the portfolios that you've acquired from the Phoenix and Vega portfolio that [ seen on the ] press release? And then just also the last question I can take it by the way. So on the Intesa SPV, in your -- you're showing us that you expect around SEK 600 million of cash flows the coming year. And in Q1, we had SEK 44 million. When do you expect that ramp-up of cash flows to come in?

[Anders Engdahl, President & CEO]

Perhaps if I start with the Greece question, and Michael, you can cover the Italy question. In Greece, no, we have not booked any one-off fees in the first quarter in Greece. So it's all organic performance in the strategic markets overall and including in Greece, whereas we said at the end of Q4, very pleased with the performance in Greece. It's really -- we've been delivering on our original expectations despite COVID and that's on -- and solid performance in Greece continues into 2021. Michael, if you want to comment on the Italian question.

[Michael Ladurner, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes, I'm happy to. I think if we look at Q1, obviously there's a time lag between the underlying -- or small time lag between the underlying collection performance and us receiving cash through the structure. So what we see now is obviously still somewhat impacted by the pandemic and the associated slowdowns in the legal systems in particular. Now we still see those in general, but also it's -- it must be said that from a momentum perspective and from the coming out of the pandemic perspective, we see a good trajectory for the geography overall for the remainder of the year. And that will also then reflect itself as we expect into the cash received from the JV.

[Operator]

And our next question comes from the line of Ramil Koria of SEB.

[Ramil Koria, Analyst]

And Michael, 2 questions. Let me perhaps do both straight away. First off, on the strategic market EBIT margin, I mean, it has been quite lumpy historically, and Q1 hasn't been the best quarter, yet you're delivering very impressive margin numbers in this quarter. Is this a smoothening, i.e., have you been in some way been able to take away some of the seasonality in the business? Or is this a new base, if you will? And then the second question, perhaps going all the way back to the first question, one tends to ask when looking at the Intrum for the first time, how do you incorporate now that we're out of or increasingly going out of this big black swan event, how do you incorporate sort of broader macro risks into the modeling of new portfolios? How do you incorporate, well, the broad picture here just out of a big, again, black swan event.

[Anders Engdahl, President & CEO]

Thank you for the question. In terms of the strategic markets, you're right, we have had some volatility in the margins there. I would say that what we see in the first quarter, as far as my introductory comment, is a rapid improvement in the operating conditions as well as the sentiment in those markets. We're seeing a stronger underlying activity. So what we're seeing now is the start of what we would pay for the normalization. And we believe we have significant potential to exploit the potential in our Southern European franchise that hasn't been operating at full capacity for the last while due to COVID in particular.And now with the improvement as we're also considering the efficiency improvements and other measures taken as prior to COVID, we can now see the underlying operating leverage in those entities coming through. So we're pleased with the margins, but we also see that we have continued improvements to come through as we go into full normalization in those markets as well as I would also point out the ability for us now to start adding new volumes based on the post-pandemic market opportunity that we see coming through. In terms of macro risks and modeling, I don't know, Michael, if you want to comment on that?

[Michael Ladurner, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. Ramil, I understand you referenced portfolios in particular. I think I'd say 2 things. Obviously in terms of our valuation models and our continuous modeling of the portfolios as we go through the reevaluation process, we consider such risks. What I would also say, and I think the pandemic has shown this quite clearly, overall, the macro has a very muted effect on us. And we've shown this throughout the pandemic. I think if you go back to the global financial crisis, you see the same trend. So yes, we do incorporate it and -- but we also have to note that the impact on us is very much muted.

[Operator]

And we have one further question in the queue so far. That's from the line of Hans Zhu of CreditSights.

[Hans Zhu, Analyst of European High Yield Retail & Consumer]

Can you hear me okay?

[Michael Ladurner, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes, we can.

[Hans Zhu, Analyst of European High Yield Retail & Consumer]

Yes. I've got 2, if I may. So first one is about the CMS. So in your opening remarks, you mentioned about the inflection point may have reached. So I was wondering could you elaborate a little more in terms of on what basis give you the confidence that you would cut off that way? And the second question is about the strategic market. So we have heard that your comment about the tone of the business in this segment. However, I just wondering if you -- could you talk a little bit more specifically about the cash flow outcome in this territory, i.e., how much cash flow is diverted to that at the activity level and how much left over for the group.

[Anders Engdahl, President & CEO]

Yes. Thank you. In terms of -- maybe I can start with the first question, and Michael, if you want to cover the second. In terms of the CMS business, as we have commented upon throughout 2020, due to the pandemic, we have seen lower new case inflows during the last 12 months, which our CMS business is to a larger extent earlier years and where we turn around the stock cases in a much faster way than, for instance, in the strategic markets where it has stronger lead times. And because of that effect of lower case inflow during 2020, obviously we have seen a more challenging development on the revenue line and for that matter on the margins in CMS.But we did see a margin during the first quarter was what we believe now is an inflection point. We're starting off at lower communicating flow levels at the beginning of the quarter, during the quarter from sort of mid and the second half of the quarter, we started to see for some of our major CMS markets that the inflow levels increased, not quite fully back to normal, but a good way on the way back to normal in several markets.And I think that combining that with the ending of number of moratoria, the increased consumer and business confidence. And obviously we're also on the nonbank side, are dependent on the general level of revenues and so forth that drives amount of invoices. That gives us confidence that we will revert back to a normalized level of case inflows in the CMS business during the coming quarters. It's also fair to say that the -- and combining that, by the way, with the fact that we now also have a record pipeline and a record new [ ACV ] signing, we call [ A-300 ] contract value of new contracts and servicing.It gives us good confidence that we are on -- have reached the inflection point for the CMS business coming out of the pandemic and going towards normalization. And the transmission time for the CMS new case inflows is relatively faster. It takes about 90 days on average to get the new case inflows to translate into revenues. And then obviously, the new pipeline and new contract signings obviously have a slightly longer lead time as we also commented upon I think at the end of Q4, where it takes 3 to 4 quarters onboard and ramp up volumes under new contracts. But the good -- gives us a good underlying basis for being optimistic about the revenue development of CMS.

[Michael Ladurner, Chief Financial Officer]

And maybe to answer your second question, and I'm just repeating it to make sure I've understood it correctly. As I heard you, you were interested in terms of how much of the JV portfolio collection is effectively to our benefit versus the senior lenders. And I think there, I would draw your attention to the fact that for 2020, we -- the senior debt came down by about SEK 4 billion. So that indicates that the vast majority of the overall collections in the JV portfolio is used to pay down senior leverage and to -- and a smaller part also for interest, and the remainder is available to the investors in junior and mezz notes.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] There seems to be no further questions on the line, so I'll hand back to our speakers for the closing comments.

[Anders Engdahl, President & CEO]

Thank you, operator. Well, thank you so much for joining in and listening to our first quarter results announcement, and we will close the call there. Thank you very much.

[Michael Ladurner, Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you.