In my opinion, with Intrum, investors and analysts are falling into the same trap: staring at historical returns and these future “what-if” returns.
I also recommend following the bond markets; for example, right now Intrum’s 2028 and 2029 bonds are already trading in the so-called junk territory on the secondary market. It will take quite a miracle for this ship to turn around.
There is nothing to be extracted from Intrum’s balance sheet other than write-downs—only God knows how much junk these Spanish operations actually contain. If there were a silver bullet on the balance sheet, it would have been used already; I wouldn’t count on this unless, for instance, the entire “investing” side is sold off as a whole.