Macroeconomic environment

High interest rates on both sides of the Atlantic took their toll over the course of 2024 and the economy slowed significantly. Finally, lower inflation prompted the central banks to cut interest rates in order to slow the economic downturn. Even if the global economy proved to be resilient under these circumstances, new and ongoing geopolitical tensions and military conflicts pose a risk for another upturn.  

We expect inflation to continue falling in the euro area and the economy to recover in 2025. The assumption is that these developments will be accompanied by further interest rate cuts. The effects of the more protectionist economic policies that have been announced by the new US administration are unclear at present. Drastic increases in tariffs, a spiralling conflict with China or another increase in inflation could also have a painful impact on the European economy and cause uncertainty among market participants. 

Going forward, we will manage our business more on the basis of net revenues excluding treasury result (net interest income and margin fees), as this indicator excludes the cyclical impact of interest rates. In line with our strategy and on the basis of organic growth opportunities, we expect our net revenue without the treasury result to increase to around €5.2 billion. In the treasury result, which consists of net interest income plus margin fees, we expect to see cyclical headwinds due to lower interest rates. We therefore currently anticipate a treasury result of more than €0.8 billion for the forecast period. By investing in our organic growth opportunities, we plan to increase operating expenses by around 3 percent in 2025. On this basis, we expect an increase in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA), without the treasury result, to around EUR 2.7 billion.

Forecast for results of operations 2025

In financial year 2024, Deutsche Börse Group revised its management relevant sustainability targets to increase transparency and align with common market practice. In this context, the employee satisfaction target was replaced by two new indices for 2025: Employee Engagement and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI). For the proportion of women in leadership, we now include all management levels.

Sustainability targets

We believe that the company remains very well positioned in the international competition thanks to its broadly diversified offering along the securities trading value chain and its innovative strength, and we expect a positive long-term trend in its results of operations. Our business strategy and the resulting measures should further accelerate this growth. The Group's aim is to become more agile and effective, to sharpen its client focus and, over the long term, to become the global market infrastructure provider of choice, with a top ranking in all its business areas.

Based on the conditions for organic growth, the Executive Board is planning for net revenue without treasury result to increase to around €5.2 billion and for EBITDA without treasury result to increase to around €2.7 billion during the forecast period. In addition, the Executive Board expects a treasury result of more than €0.8 billion.

Overall, on this basis, the Executive Board expects a significantly positive cash flow from operating activities and thus, as in previous years, a solid liquidity position. The Executive Board's overall statement applies at the time of publication of this combined management report.