納斯達克交易所 (NDAQ) 2005 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Okay. Good morning and a warm welcome to all of you here in Stockholm. And of course a warm welcome to you visiting us on the phone and visiting us on the web. You’re most welcome to this presentation of our financial statement for 2005.

We will follow the usual routines we have for these kind of financial presentations. I will start with going through what has happened in our business, the highlights of both last year’s 2005 and also the quarter. Then Ina will present the financials highlights of the year, of the fourth quarter, and then we will sum up and have time for questions and answers. And for you present here in Stockholm, I’d like to invite you to a light lunch that we will serve outside following this presentation.

So, what are the highlights of 2005? Well, I think last year has been characterized mostly by three things and they are also the main message of today’s report. The first one is, of course, the record profitability that we are announcing today, with an operating income of SEK910m, up nearly 50% compared to last year. It’s the highest ever for OMX. And following that, the Board also propose a dividend of SEK6.50.

The second one is the high activity on all our exchanges, followed by positive market development. We have seen high trading activity, but we also see the value of the added Copenhagen Stock Exchange that we consolidated in the beginning of the year.

And the third thing is the successful restructuring of our technology business, including the divestment of banks and brokers, and the acquisition of Computershare’s Market Technology business.

Then, going into a little bit more of the details of last year. On the financial side, last year was characterized by both increased sales and decreased expenses. And decreased expenses despite higher activity, increased revenues and -- following that, and also integration costs of SEK44m following the integration of Copenhagen Stock Exchange. This all amounts down to this operating profit of SEK910m, or 48% higher than 2004.

This equals to a return on equity of 12%, which we are proud of, but that is still behind the financial target of 15% that we strive for. So also, which Ina will tell us a little bit more of, there is room for more financial leverage. The net debt to equity is 12%. We have a maximum barrier of 30%. So there is still room for increased leverage of another SEK850m.

The proposed dividend represents SEK770m and that is an ordinary dividend of SEK3 per share and an extra dividend of SEK3.50. This is aimed to be proposed to the Annual General Meeting on April 6.

On our journey to create the Nordic Exchange, there’s a few highlights. The first one is, of course, the Copenhagen Stock Exchange and the consolidation of that.

The second one is the reality, the plans that follows this, and one important thing is the announcement of the Nordic List. A Nordic List that is not only the list itself; it’s also that we will harmonize listing requirements, how we segment the market, how we will present the listed companies. And also announced today, that this list will be live from October 2. It’s been a lot of discussions over the last few months with media, with our banks and brokers and listed company, so that they could also adjust to the implementation of this list, and that is the reason that we now have agreed on the October 2. We are very pleased about that. We think it’s a rather fast implementation.

On the technology side, we have seen a flat market. A slow pick up at the end of the year. And, as you all know, because we reported that earlier, the flat market and weak market has led us to focus our efforts even more, to focus on the market technology business. Technology for exchanges, clearing houses and CSDs, leading to the restructuring of the banks and broker business and also the acquisition of Computershare. And all those efforts have started to pay off and we think we show that now clearly in the interim report.

Looking into the highlights of the fourth quarter. Well, I’m pleased to report that the actions we have taken across OMX have contributed to the fourth quarter’s strong performance. Revenues increased SEK152m to SEK847m, an increase of 22%. Meanwhile, our costs decreased SEK31m to SEK573m, all in all resulting in an operating profit of SEK263m compared to SEK94m last year. And during this quarter we’ve also seen that the performance -- the strong performance of the activities on our exchange have increased.

The number of share transactions is up 33% during the fourth quarter, and the value of the trading on our exchanges is up 45%. We also see that we now start to have the advantage; we start to see the benefits of the created Nordic market, the list, and I’m coming back to that. And we see some of the synergies also coming through, also during the fourth quarter, from the merger between OMX and Copenhagen Stock Exchange. Included in the revenues for the fourth quarter there is also some non-recurring revenues, volume related, from EDX in London of SEK30m.

On the technology side, fourth quarter had turnover of SEK370m with a growing proportion of licenses. The efforts to also work and creating better efficiency on the cost side have led us to see an EBIT of SEK9m for the fourth quarter compared to a loss last year. And before internal allocation the profits for our technology business were SEK22m during the fourth quarter. But I think it’s clear to say already now that that profitability is not enough for us and that is -- remains a priority for us in the management to continue working with that.

So, digging a little bit deeper into the details of our different businesses, starting with the Exchange business, and I think you all recognize the highlights also here. They are very much the three parts that I’ve partly already talked about. The high activity on our exchanges following strong development of the market, but also some benefits that we start to see coming as following the mergers.

We have made further steps in creating the Nordic exchange, creating one Nordic financial market. And I think we’ve also proven that the integration -- another integration of the Company, the Copenhagen Stock Exchange, were done successful.

And as this slide very clearly states, we have seen increased positive momentum in our Exchange business. The number of trading customers, or as you normally or sometimes refer to them as members, are up year on year while the number of listed companies has continued to decrease, despite new listings that came in during the year.

We have also seen increased IPO activity with several successful listings during the year that we think will have some momentum also for 2006. And we saw during the fourth quarter some listings which I think was important to the psychology of listings, and that was Hemtex, Indutrade, TrygVesta. And tomorrow will be the first day of trading in Old Mutual on our exchange.

We’ve also seen, during the year, a slight increase of trading -- of the turnover velocity to 115%, which is more or less flat compared to last year. But remember that when measuring the turnover velocity we also need to look into the overall market value, and the market valuation is up 33%. The total market value of all listed companies on our exchanges is up from SEK4.9b or nearly SEK5b -- SEK5,000b to SEK6,500b, so it’s 33% up. And despite that we were able to be flat on the velocity, which is positive. And as you can see, the number of share transactions is up, value of transactions is up, fuelled by the indices that is also up.

This graph confirms the strong development we saw last year. Also this graph gives a little bit of a historical background to compare this with the peak year of 2000 to give it some comparison. And also for the fourth quarter we saw that the share trading rose by 39%, that the total number of traded derivative contracts rose by 34% during the fourth quarter. And the number of derivatives, the number of daily traded derivatives during the fourth quarter were 533,000.

And as many of you know, effective from January 1, OMX reduced our fees for certain customer segments regarding trading in primarily Swedish stock options. The purpose of the reduction is to be able to offer more competitive fees, a competitive fee structure, and of course to increase the trading volumes.

And I think we could now summarize January, and January has been another growth month for OMX. The interesting thing that I’d like to show here is the number of -– the average number of daily traded derivative contracts was up 24% from a very strong fourth quarter, to 661 or 662 contracts per day. We also saw last Thursday record trading on our exchange.

So, we have -- over the last two and a half years we’ve been able to talk about integrations and synergies from merging exchanges. Now it starts to become time for us to deliver, to deliver some visible evidence of the fruits of what we’re trying to achieve. From a Nordic integration to a Nordic exchange, that’s what we aim to do.

One thing that is very important is this new Nordic List, where we will start to have large, mid and small caps segmentation, where our listed companies will be more defined within this global industry standard, the IS, how we classify our different companies, make it easier to compare different companies from different countries in this segmentation, and to make it more comparable with other exchanges globally. The Nordic List will be launched, as I said, on October 2.

I think this will be a great benefit to all our customers, listed companies as well as trading members. And, of course, shareholders alike included will see increased visibility. We will also have the opportunity to reach a much larger community of investors when we have this Nordic List. It will make it able for many of the neighboring countries to see more of our existing shares. We think that will benefit all of us participants in the financial market. But it will also, for OMX, make it possible for us to introduce new services, new indices, new products and increase our offering to our customers.

We will also, during this year, increase our focus on what we normally refer to as alternative investment markets, categories of listings of not necessarily the same capacity or references that we have on our main list. It was introduced in December in Denmark and we refer to it as First North, and that is something that will come also in our other exchanges during the year.

Then over to our technology business, the global business we operate. And I think the three focuses, the three highlights I like to mention when it comes to our technology business, is of course the implementation, the focus on market technology; technology for exchanges, clearing houses and CSDs. That has been imposed and also following a new organization for our technology business.

The second thing is, of course, that when making that decision it’s also a question of implementation and carried forward, which I think we could now summarize as being successful. And doing all these -- doing these two, we’ve also been able to reduce our costs within our technology business.

And it’s easy to focus on the restructuring strategy and cost reductions, but I think what is even more important that is, while doing that, we’ve been able to sign new contracts, creating new partnerships and new global friends. And during the fourth quarter we saw that the order value was up. And I’d like to mention TLX out of Italy, Killik out of the U.K. as important client contracts during the fourth quarter.

And looking into the order value and the order intake, I think what this one -- what is worth noting from this graph is that the negative trend or the negative development that we’ve seen over the last more or less two and a half years, and that was also in the third quarter, was altered in the fourth quarter and we saw an increase in order value in Q4. And we also saw, for the first time, for a pretty long time, order intake larger than our sales.

On the two topics of restructuring, the banks and brokers and the Computershare, I’d like to start with the restructuring of the banks and brokers business area. I think we’ve been, as I think most of you are aware of, that’s been part of the heart of the reorganization, and we have announced the plans how to divest this banks and brokers business. We have announced that the Australian unit is now divested.

We announced earlier that the Swedish unit for security processing will become a joint venture with TietoEnator, with annual sales of SEK300m and around 200 employees. That will become a very strong partner in the back office arena for the Nordic, which is also very important for OMX that we create good back office services for everyone trading in this region. I think it will be a very competitive partner, hopefully for many of our existing members and future members.

On the U.K. side we have a smaller operation that is growing and going through some interesting times at the moment. We have decided to -- that it will remain within OMX for the time being, while it also settles better in its growth path -- pace.

Another business not so big within this one is the back office for hire. It’s more of a service to trading members and we have decided to keep that. It’s a profitable business, but we also see it’s a very important service for many of the remote members, members not based in the Nordic countries.

So the summary is that we are still -- we’re expecting to have the final of some of those in the first quarter, but we still see this as a successful restructuring of that business. Important to return to increase the profitability of our business in technology.

On the Computershare side, the acquisition was announced in November last year, and it’s an acquisition of the exchange technology, mostly exchange technology from Computershare. Computershare is an Australian based company. Normally their main business is what we refer to as share register business.

This is not only an acquisition of their technology pot for exchanges, it’s also a strategic alliance with them when it comes to services, offerings for listed companies and members. They are very successful in the U.S. and some other places, where they cooperate with exchanges and others in order to support listed companies with products. We hope that will bring some new offerings also to our customers.

They also have a portfolio of products and services within their technology that now will create an opportunity for us to cross-selling and for cross-offerings to these customers. All in all it’s an acquisition of SEK250m for OMX. It will mean SEK25m in add-on profitability to our technology business, but that is not included -- then is not included the depreciation that will follow the transaction-related intangible assets that follows an acquisition. Historically we used to call it depreciation of goodwill, but it’s different in the new rules for accounting.

So, that makes the picture for where OMX got our clients a little bit broader. This is a map where we have more than 60 marketplace customers globally at the moment. It’s an impressive map, and I think it’s an interesting start for where the journey should embark.

And this leads us into that, I think we’ve talked about that before, we’re slowly getting into a position where our technology business has a unique global position. The business has been enlarged in the focused areas, due to this acquisition that was done formally yesterday. It’s obviously positioned OMX as a much stronger leader in the world of exchange technology. Also a good starting block for Markus Gerdien, who joined us during the fourth quarter as heading up the market technology business. And during the fourth quarter we’ve also seen some encouraging signs of interest for new contracts from our partners globally.

And by that, I’d like to hand over to Ina. Please, Ina?

I think that’s better. Okay. I would like to start with just repeating the key messages of this report. As you just have seen, we’ve had a very strong end to 2005, resulting in a record operating profit of SEK910m. This is close to 50% higher than in 2004. This is due to the high trading activity that we have seen on all of our exchanges, but also that we have been able to maintain our costs under control.

In 2005 we also took another important next step in the Nordic integration of our exchange operations, through the acquisition of Copenhagen Stock Exchange. And, regarding the technology side, we have been working with the streamlining and focusing of that business during the year, and that has now moved into final phase with our announcement of the restructuring of the banks and brokers business area, but also yesterday’s closing of the acquisition of Computershare’s Market Technology business.

So, we are now starting to see the benefits of these initiatives coming through and our financial targets are improving, but we are not still satisfied. Let’s take a closer look at the income statement and here you have a summary.

We’ve had a very strong end to the year, as I mentioned, with revenues 22% higher in the fourth quarter compared to the same period in 2004, and 8% higher for the full year. At the same time, our expenses during 2005 have been lower compared to 2004, especially if we take into account that we, during 2005, have incurred integration costs in relation to the Copenhagen Stock Exchange acquisition of SEK44m. Previously we have announced that we expect total integration costs of SEK60m, and the remainder we expect to incur in the first quarter this year. As a consequence, our operating income has improved in 2005 with more than SEK250m.

Financial items for the quarter is better than the same period last year -- same period in 2004 but it’s higher for the full year. The low financial net during 2004 was an effect of decreasing interest rates, and thereby that we had a positive effect on the market valuation of our financial assets. For the last quarter of 2005 we had positive currency effects on our financial assets. And also, if you compare that with the fourth quarter in 2004, it’s important to remember that there we also had an extra negative interest cost related to the Stockholm Stock Exchange VP settlement of SEK12m.

So for the full year we had a pre-tax profit that was SEK846m or 41% higher than in 2004. As you also might have seen in the report, OMX’s underlying tax rate is expected to be around 25% during 2006, and this is due to that we now have adjusted the Group legal structure following the integration of our Nordic exchange operations.

Here you can see the quarterly earnings development for the Group and, as you can see, the revenue has been trending upwards during the year. And due to the fact that we have been able to keep our costs under control, you have seen the same effect on the operating income, and that has improved and ended at SEK263m in the last quarter.

Let’s now take a closer look at the revenue sources. Please note that these numbers are unadjusted and the main items affecting comparability are in 2004, and it’s within other revenue and relates to realized gains of divestments of around SEK80m for exchanges and SEK100m for technology. If we bear that in mind, I would especially like to highlight for our exchanges the increase in trading revenue.

We had an increase of 76% in the fourth quarter compared to the same period in 2004, and it was 38% higher year on year. This is due to the strong trading activity in 2005, and that Copenhagen is now included in the Group, but also that we had recognized SEK30m in extra non-recurring volume-related revenue from EDX in the fourth quarter.

There’s also an increase in issuer fees in information revenue. That’s mostly explained by the merger with Copenhagen, but also that we have an effect of the increased market activity there as well.

For technology the year has been influenced by continued work to improve profitability. Revenue in the fourth quarter is more or less the same as the same period in 2004, but it’s lower for the full year. And a decrease in revenues, especially within the facility management area, that’s a result of divestment of businesses such as the custody business in Finland, but also that we have seen lower internal sales following the Nordic integration of our exchanges that has resulted in realization of synergies.

Finally, in other revenue and technology I’d like to highlight that there we have, as of 2005, currency effects from market valuation hedges. And this is due to the fact that, as of 2005, we apply the new accounting standard IFRS and in the fourth quarter this effect was negative with SEK7m.

Here you can see the quarterly adjusted revenues per division, and here you have the positive trend for the exchanges. And for technology you can see that the revenue has been flat over the year, and this is because we have not yet seen any real revenue growth in this business.

Let’s take a closer look at expenses, and once again please note that these numbers are unadjusted. Items affecting the comparability are in the fourth quarter in 2004, and they relate to increased external costs due to the VP settlement within exchanges that was at SEK99m, but also that we took a provision for premises in 2004 that affected both divisions with SEK65m on the corporate functions line. If we take that into account, you can see that expenses are somewhat higher for exchanges during 2005.

The increase is mainly for personnel and depreciations. Depreciations related to increase of intangible assets that we got due to the acquisition of Copenhagen Stock Exchange, but also that during 2005 started to depreciate on a newly implemented trading systems at the Helsinki Stock Exchange. So, this level of SEK20m, that’s representative also going forward on the depreciations.

For technology, expenses are lower for the full year but also lower compared to the fourth quarter in 2004. The lower costs are due to that we now are starting to see the effects of our initiatives to improve the operational efficiency.

Here you can see the expenses per quarter and, as you can see, it’s been fairly stable for both divisions.

With that, I would like to leave the expenses and go into the balance sheet, and here I would like to highlight the following items.

First of all, we’ve had an increase of total assets compared to 2004 and it’s mainly due to an increase in goodwill and other intangible assets which is due to the Copenhagen acquisition. That increased it to SEK1.2b. But also that since we are applying this new accounting standard, IFRS, as of 2005, now we need to account for the market value of the derivatives positions within our clearing operations. At the end of the year that amounted to SEK2.3b Assets held for sale relate to all assets in our banks and brokers business area.

Regarding the shareholders’ equity, you can see that we have seen an increase since the end of 2004 with more than SEK900m. This is mainly explained by strong earnings during the period of around SEK550m, but also that we had a new share issue in the beginning of 2005, when we acquired Copenhagen Stock Exchange, that increased the equity with SEK200m.

And once again, there is also accounting effects included here with around SEK200m, due to that we started implementing IFRS in 2005. We had a positive effect of SEK200m.

Our net debt has increased during the year and it was SEK573m in the end of 2005. Our net debt to equity ratio is 12% and this is well within our set target of 30%.

Let’s look at the cash flow and here you can see the cash flow for the quarter and the full year 2005. Cash flow from current operations before change in working capital amounted to SEK341m for the quarter and SEK808m for the full year.

Working capital has increased during the year with around SEK250m and in the fourth quarter with SEK75m. The increase is mainly related to pre-paid income from the end of 2004 that has now been recognized as revenue, but also that we during the fourth quarter of 2005 have accrued revenue related to the volume-related payment from EDX that has not yet been paid up. This volume-related revenue is expected to be settled in February and then decrease working capital accordingly.

The full year cash flow before financing operations was negative with SEK584m and this is mainly due to that we acquired Copenhagen Stock Exchange during the year.

Finally, let’s have a look at our key ratios. Please note these ratios are calculated on the unadjusted numbers. As I have just mentioned, our net debt to equity has increased since 2004, due to the merger with Copenhagen Stock Exchange. And at the end of year we have a net debt to equity ratio of 12%. This is well within our set target of 30% and it gives us capacity for further leverage with more than SEK850m.

We’ve seen an improvement in profitability over the year and the earnings per share has improved to SEK4.65 per share, compared to SEK3.31 in 2004. Our return on capital employed and return on equity has also improved to 14 and 12% respectively. Although we’ve seen this improved profitability, we still need to continue to strive for reaching our set target of a return on equity of 15%, and that will be a high priority for 2006.

To conclude, as a result of our stable profit improvement and low leverage, we are happy to announce that our Board of Directors aim to propose to the Annual General Meeting in April a dividend of SEK6.50 per share, whereof SEK3 in a regular dividend and SEK3.50 in an extra dividend. It is our belief that we will still not exceed our net debt to equity ratio of 30% at the time of the distribution, but we will still be well within this set target.

With that, I would like to hand over to Magnus for some final remarks.

Thank you, Ina. Well, I think the summary goes that we have reported a strong performance during last year, reporting record profitability in the OMX business but at the same time not reaching all our financial targets. So we need to continue to focus on creating even more operational efficiency, creating better sales to our customers.

And we are, in many ways, a market leader in our industry, an industry that is having its marks of being a growth industry. Our financial targets, they are challenging and we have taken, through the last years, important steps to reach them. And we’re also implementing new measures to take us all the way.

One of the important things that I think is important also to you as a community following us on the financial side is that from January 1 this year we implemented a new organization, leaving the two divisions behind and creating an organization with three business areas, with clear distinctive goals for all three. Where Nordic Marketplaces, under Jukka Ruuska, has the vision to create the integrated Nordic financial market. Information Services and New Markets, under Hans-Ole Jochumsen, is packaging our information and data offerings as well as growing our Baltic markets. And within Market Technology, Markus Gerdien is heavily focusing on the attractive segment of market technology.

All of that is done in the order to support our efforts to getting closer to our customers, to becoming more efficient and practically further reduce our costs. You will therefore also, when we look into the first quarter report, see our numbers a little bit differently presented.

So, the results, as we just have presented today, confirm that the benefits of all the hard work that has been done over the recent years is coming through. The ongoing development of the Nordic Exchange is not only benefiting us financially, but as a larger integrated market evolves it’s something very important for all the participants in this market, whether it’s listed companies, brokers, banks, so forth and so on. And that is something that we care a lot about, which is important.

And also, the importance and the ability that the integration of Copenhagen Stock Exchange has proven is the ability for us to create synergies out of mergers. And we’ve also seen that the positive trend for the fourth quarter is coming forward also in the first month of this year.

And so, ultimately, our focus forwards towards customers and shareholders continue, and I think, and I’m confident, that we’re well positioned for 2006 to deliver further results from our Company.

By that, I would like to end this part of the presentation and there will now be a Q&A session. And please, in front of you you’ll see microphones. Please don’t forget to state your name and the company you represent before asking your question. Who would like to take the lead. Yes?

Jacob Wall, ABG Sundal Collier. One question regarding the margin in OMX exchanges. If you adjust for the one-off item for the EDX revenues, the margin was actually down in Q4 versus Q3 and I would assume that it would be the opposite situation with the leverage you have in the business model. Was it any specific reason why the margin was down in Q4 in that operation?

One of the targets is also what you’ve seen, that we’ve seen some higher activity and also some higher expenses during the quarter because of those activities that have been going on. So that is part of it.

The other part of it is also that on the business model we have, in the pricing of our products we also have a discount system. The discount system works that if you add up how much you trade during the year, and the more you trade the higher discount you get. And that could affect us during the fourth quarter, perhaps most of it. So that, I would say, is the two major parts to it.

Okay. Then a second question regarding your forecast for sales in OMX technology in Q1 versus Q4, that is they are going to be flat. If you adjust for the acquisition of Computershare and also taking the divestment of parts of banks and brokers into account, is that underlying an increase in terms of technology sales Q1 versus Q4?

We need to be careful when we have these numbers put forward, because of we were yesterday signing the Computershare final agreement and they will be consolidated from February 1. And we intend to have the banks and brokers business divested during the first quarter. Exactly when and where, it is affecting this one. So we have been a little bit careful because it’s too many variable things, so we just stated flat and have so far refrained from further announcement of what is that effect on the full business. So flat is where we are. But it’s a lot of different things to it.

Further questions?

Yes. Thomas Johansson, Enskilda. You had the complication about the tax rate. Is this sustainable, this 25% tax rate? I’m a little bit -- as a clarification there.

Yes. That’s what we believe. That’s our best estimate at this point in time.

Also, in terms of dividend policy, it is SEK3 down the line dividend. That suggests something like [65%] payout ratio. Is that a sustainable level?

I think what we also reported today is the dividend policy. And I think we were very careful, and the Board is very careful when it comes to the dividend policy, saying that we will -- we have the major part of our dividend policies set in our financial targets. The financial targets of return on equity of 15% with a net debt to equity of 30% at a maximum, net debt to equity below 30%. That’s the main driver of our dividend policy.

On top of that, the Board stated in the report that we will track bigger profitability and the change of profitability, together with the need of capital. A very natural statement, of course. But I think the best proof of our long-term dividend policy is how we act towards it and how we act on it on different decisions from time to time. And I think you should interpret that we have SEK3 and SEK3.50 as a positive interpretation. I don’t think, maybe, you could probably –- don’t make it too deep analysis whether it should be SEK3.50 or -- and SEK3 or SEK3 and SEK3.50. I think that’s too narrow scope. The Board decided on SEK3 plus SEK3.50. I think the financial target numbers is the one that is driving the future dividend policy.

Okay.

Johan Eliasson, Cheuvreux. On this EDX, should we expect another positive in Q1 as you incurred also on the balance sheet?

No. What we have said is that compared to this year what we expect going forward we saw a peak dependent on historical divestment. Divestment of the OMX business into EDX, and that was volume based, and that came at that period of time. But we will have, of course, revenues from the EDX business but this is a peak due to the final agreement that we had.

Can I ask you about another clarification as well? In terms of banks and brokers, the deal will be clear sometime during Q1. And the [inaudible] will basically be the joint venture with the [inaudible] and associate income, with a net of something around zero. Am I correct, though?

That’s correct.

Okay.

Rasmus Engberg, Handelsbanken Capital Markets. Can I ask you about the working capital going forward? What is the best guess there?

Well, our best guess currently is that we believe we’re going to have a decrease in the first quarter. And it’s partly due to, as I mentioned there, that we’re going to get the settlement of this EDX payment that we spoke about. But also, if you look at the payment structure on the Computershare acquisition, that’s a deferred payment structure, which means that it would be paid over five years. So the major part of that will be booked as a non-interest-bearing liability.

But going as the Company stands and goes, excluding the one-offs which these are, it should be expected to consume cash, I suppose, on the working capital line?

Yes. On the -- it should be around the level we have with the current activity and operations. And if you have an increase in the operations level, it will have an increase in working capital.

[Inaudible question – microphone inaccessible].

Primarily, yes.

A clarification. Jacob just gave me two heads-up. The first one is, of course, on -- the one question on the banks and brokers and the effects that we see there. We had stated it in the interim report of the effects, but we don’t expect any one-off items of any kind, if that was the question of Thomas, on this one. We don’t see any major one-offs that we expect to come.

And the effect on the profitability is also in the interim report. We expect it to have a profitability of over SEK10m going forward third quarter.

On the EDX clarification, the final adjustment between us and EDX is not to be done until the first quarter, so there might be changes coming forward also in the first quarter.

Yes?

Two questions. First of all, if I understood you right, you will meet your financial RE targets this year. Are you expecting this, the 15%, if I’m reading the report rightly?

And secondly, have there been any extraordinary and personnel expenses in Q4, because they’re strongly up versus previous quarter and the previous year?

Well, I don’t think you should interpret, if I got your first question right, that we make a prognosis to reach our financial targets for the full year, because that is the same as making the statement of our profitability, which we don’t. I think what Ina was saying was more that we continually strive to reach this and with all the measures we’ve taken we continue that. So, we don’t lose track of that. That’s the main target for us.

When I look into the personnel costs for the fourth quarter, there’s two things that I think we could highlight. The first thing is that sometimes you see on the third quarter, in the way it’s accounted for in salary costs, you see third quarter goes down a little bit. But we also had, due to the positive results we saw during the fourth quarter, we also had some extra costs when it comes to bonuses and things like that.

Could you specify the amount?

I don’t know but I will look at my CFO to see whether we can. Do we? No, we don’t.

Just coming back to my first question, because you’re writing in your report that you will be able to meet financial targets. When shall we see achieved a return on shareholders’ equity of 15%? So could you specify a little bit more if it’s 2006 or at latest 2007?

We’re back to the same forecast question, aren’t we? I think I don’t have so much to add to it. I think you’re as good as many of the others in this room, and probably better than Ina and myself are, to make prognosis of the development of exchange trading volumes in the Nordic region. We have -- so tell us, we will just look at it, but don’t make it a -- still not use it as a forecast.

More questions? Yes?

On this -- you said you had more leverage in your balance sheet. Does that imply that you want to do further acquisitions in the technology side?

Sorry. Too many things happening. Sorry. We’ll take that again.

You mentioned that you have further leverage potential in your balance sheet. Will that imply that you have further acquisitions down the line?

No, not necessarily. But it implies going back to the overall question of the status of our Company when it comes to our financial targets and what we need to strive for. I think you cannot do everything in one day, but it is a journey and this is the implied part of it.

Just to clarify again on the distribution policy, I’ll just state exactly what it says, so it’s clear for everyone that what we said is that the Board’s ambition is that OMX ordinary dividend shall in the future grow in pace with the Company’s earnings per share, taking our long-term capital requirements into account. So that’s what we’re saying.

Is that about the level you have set above the growth rate?

We’re not stating a level.

We have to be careful what we do. Okay. Further questions?

There will be opportunities. Also, we’re having a lunch. Jakob, Head of our investor relations business, myself, Niclas Lilja’s here, will be around, so you will have more opportunities to ask questions.

So by that, thank you very much for participating. Please, for you here in Stockholm, lunch is served. And for you on the web, thank you very much for today.