InPost SA
AEX:INPST
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InPost SA
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Good morning. My name is Gabriela Burdach and I'm Investor Relations Director at InPost. Welcome to InPost Q2 2023 Earnings Call. A quick disclaimer. Today's call includes forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and it is possible that actual results may differ materially. This call is being recorded and will be available at our website shortly after the call. Today's presenters are Rafal Brzoska, CEO; Michael Rouse, CEO, International; and Adam Aleksandrowicz, CFO. After the slides, we will have a Q&A session.Rafal, over to you.
Thank you, Gaby, and thank you all for joining us this morning. Again I must admit it's been another exciting quarter of outperformance for InPost, which I look forward to taking you through. Quick reminder here. Our mission is to revolutionize last mile e-commerce deliveries and returns across Europe boosting convenience, economic efficiencies and of course the sustainability. With our parcel lockers as our key enabler, we offer structural advantage to both merchant, but also to consumers. That's why we're consistently gaining market share in all our key geographies. It's truly time for a game-changing e-commerce experience and we definitely are leading the way.Let's jump into the next page. Currently, we are operating in 9 European countries with significant exposure to the largest e-commerce markets: I mean U.K., France and Spain. In France and the Benelux countries, we operate under Mondial Relay due to the existing customer base and brand recognition, really great brand recognition. Everywhere else, we are expanding under the InPost brand. And with over 30,000 Automated Parcel Machines, our APMs, across our entire network, we are the largest automated out-of-home network in Europe already. We are the market leader in Poland by a significant margin and enjoy market leading agnostic APM status in France and the U.K. Including our PUDO points, we have almost 60,000 locations across Europe, which makes us one of the leading out-of-home delivery companies in Europe as well.On the next page, I am thrilled to share with you some of our impressive Q2 2023 highlights. Last quarter despite challenging macro, we achieved outstanding volume growth of almost 20% year-on-year and revenue of over PLN 2.1 billion, which is 26% increase from Q2 2022. Growing volume, operating leverage, continuous improvements in our logistics as well as our ability to adjust prices helped us achieve a 35% growth in adjusted EBITDA despite challenging cost environment. The positive free cash flow led to a decrease in net leverage ratio to 2.7x compared to 3x at the end of last quarter and 3.2x at the end of last year. Adam will provide further details on this later. But what I would like to highlight is that the deleveraging was a part of our guidance and this part was already delivered and we plan to deleverage further in the second half of the year as well.In Poland, revenues increased by 29% year-on-year and volumes by 15% year-on-year resulting in a high EBITDA margin of 48%, which is almost 300 basis points year-on-year more. In International markets, volumes increased by 28% year-on-year and revenues were higher by 22% year-on-year. We continue to expand our international network, increasing the number of out-of-home points by more than 32% year-on-year. I'm also very pleased to highlight delivery, a very important goal we had for this year. We have been talking about solving a logistics bottleneck in the U.K. for some time now and we believe we finally did. In July we have acquired 30% equity stake of Menzies Distribution, a U.K.-based logistics company. This transaction is already enabling us to accelerate massively our development in the U.K. market.Next page, please. As you can see in these 3 charts in our primary markets, we are experiencing more rapid growth in terms of volumes compared to overall market. This means a very consistent expansion of our market share. Even in Poland where we deliver half of the e-commerce parcels in the market, we continue to outpace our competitors in terms of growth and in the second quarter in Poland, we outperformed the market massively by 6 percentage points. In France our lead was even more, it was 9 percentage points. In the U.K., our volume growth surged by impressive 92% while the market contracted by 7%. On the next page, you may see we believe really we have already solved our U.K. logistics bottlenecks with the acquisition of 30% stake in Menzies. You may ask what Menzies is providing to our U.K. business.Menzies is operating a national network over 360 days a year servicing the full U.K. and Ireland market. No one else has got such coverage. Menzies is covering now 47,000 daily deliveries and the infrastructure to deliver that is a network of 100 depots, 1 central hub and 9 regional hubs. All that gives us immediate scale and ability to accelerate in the U.K. Menzies by the way already touches a number of locations where we operate and we see potential avenues to accelerate in our network and broadening our commercial cooperation. We are now going into more detail for each of the geographies that we cover. So let's start with Poland on the next page. Our consumer-centric strategy in Poland is focused on delivering dense and convenient locker network to our customers. We strive to improve our network each year and we are proud of being the clear leader in automated out-of-home delivery in Poland.With over 60% of the Polish population already living within a 7-minute walk to our lockers and 85% in urban areas, we ensure that our customers can easily access our services when and where they need them. Moreover, we are often asked where we are compared to our competition. We have over 63% of locations in Poland, but as our machines are much larger than those of competitors, we have more than 80% share in total number of lockers. Volume-wise we believe the difference is even more visible. On the next page, more details about our future engines of growth in Poland. Our mobile app has almost 11 million users and a remarkable 5-star rating on the App Store, the highest in our industry. We have a growing and devoted user base with already over 17 million APM users in Poland. 44% of the Polish population uses our lockers with nearly 3.5 million super heavy users accounting for about 65% of our total volume.90% of our volume in Poland is generated by heavy and super heavy users. These are loyal and sticky customers. They drive InPost's growth and contribute to the outperformance of the Polish e-commerce market compared to most of Europe. On the other hand, our merchant partnerships are crucial for our growth as we provide them with a sustainable and cost effective solution that enhances the delivery and returns experience for their customers. Our merchant base is expanding as well every single quarter and we have now over 50,000 merchants cooperating with InPost in Poland. Despite of the fact we are well-established market leaders, still part of our growth in volume comes from the new merchants. We also continuously work on how we can improve our services and relations with merchants by adding new offer for them and also our customers.This includes new initiatives such as InPostPay launched for friends and family test just last quarter, fulfillment services, new market segments, cross-border, economy parcel and other. Next page, please. Lockers are truly a more convenient solution for customers, that's a fact. This is confirmed not only by our consistent ability to grow volumes ahead of the market, but also by third-party market research showing our APM's record net promoter score of 78 points, a much higher level than our to-door competitors. External research confirms that InPost is most preferable delivery form reliable partner with timely deliveries and that consumers really, really appreciate the green solution we offer. In Poland, every order that is delivered via 1 of our lockers can save up to 97% on the carbon footprint versus to-door last mile.Moreover, on the next page, you may see that in Q2 2023, we delivered 141 million parcels in Poland, which is 15% more year-on-year and at the same time, e-commerce market grew by 9.3%. What's even more impressive is that our APM volumes grew even faster than the number of lockers, it was 17% versus 14%. Our APMs are a cornerstone of our success. The third chart on the slide illustrates how our APM utilization rates have steadily climbed post installation and remained very high. This is a strong indication that our contingency to improve convenience have resulted in growing adoption, but also utilization. This also proves that our APM network in Poland can still expand at attractive utilization and ROI results.And finally, on the next page, you may see our customers are very, very loyal to InPost. As demonstrated in this chart, every single quarter we show you that competing machines installed nearby have little to no impact on our machine performance confirming our customers' unwavering trust in our brand. This confirms that in the absence of a significant difference in price or quality, our customers remain loyal to our services given our much larger footprint and access to all major merchants in the country. Moreover, some of the competitors are trying to be unbelievable cheaper than us and still without any remarkable impact on our levels of utilization.I will now hand over to Michael for the International part. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Rafal. So let's go through our International business update starting with Mondial Relay turning to Page 16. We're building up the Mondial Relay market position. The out-of-home network has expanded 23,800 points, a 22% year-over-year increase including 4,000 APMs which is 4x more versus Q2 last year. Our merchant base has also grown and we now cooperate with over 46,000 partners, 14% more versus the same time last year. We're signing new contracts; for example ManoMano, SUD Express and Rituals; to name some of the new logos added to the portfolio as you can see in the right hand side and expanding cooperation with existing merchants to provide them with the best possible experience.On Page 17, APMs are gaining traction in Mondial Relay markets enabling us to take the market share gains. Q2 '23 witnessed a robust growth in the Mondial Relay markets with volumes rising to almost 60 million, up by an impressive 15% year-over-year. This growth is even more impressive considering the market research data backdrop of declining growth index to about minus 2% across the Mondial markets. So critical to our market share gains in particular in France has been the locker expansion strategy coupled with the continued investment in the logistics network to increase last mile coverage. In Q2 '23, APMs represented an impressive 12% of total parcel volumes in Mondial Relay markets; 13% specifically for France, a significant increase from the 3% we saw the same time last year. In the last weeks of Q2 '23 already, 15% of our parcel volumes have been going through APM so continued acceleration in growth.The total volume growth year-over-year has been specifically driven by both C2C and B2C. However, B2C was demonstrating faster year-on-year growth, which is super encouraging linked to our strategy. A further key enabler of the International strategy has been unlocking cross-border for key B2C merchants such as Shein, Vinted, AliExpress, VP and Inditex to name some of the significant brands now using that service, which in turn is driving local market share gains which we're starting to see in the volumes. Cross-border itself is now growing at 35% in Q2 with this segment accounting for 19% of total volume for all our markets in Western Europe. The investment in the total customer centricity powered by the convenience of lockers is cementing our competitive position in France as we can see now on Page 18. Mondial Relay market share in France is increasing and we continue to capitalize on the growing demand for our improved offering.We're already #2 in France just after Pickup, which is a combination of the Lacoste brands. However, we're starting to see a significant gap between the next following players as we continue to invest in our proposition. This is encouraging as we're super still early in this marathon and we're clearly betting on the longer-term gains. As of Q2 '23, 32% of the French population had an APM within a 7-minute walking distance. And finally, a critical part of our flywheel is the consumer mobile app as we change the entire customer journey of Mondial Relay in France and move towards a successful Polish market flywheel model. Mobile app downloads have now reached over 600,000 with high ratings on both the App Store and Google Play. Our Mondial Relay app rating increased to 4.4 from 2.9 a year ago as a relentless focus on all parts of the consumer experience now begin to pay off.Moving on to the U.K. end market on Page 20. For the U.K., the most important event last quarter was, what Rafal has mentioned earlier, starting the cooperation with the new logistics partner. Logistics in the U.K. has long been our growth's main bottleneck. The new partnership now unlocks InPost's potential in this market and you will see in the slides ahead and in Adam's section that the effect of new logistics is already visible in our volume and financials. We have closed Q2 '23 with 5,400 APMs in the U.K., a 37% increase from the previous year while the number of lockers grew faster by 52% due to an increased focus on extensions and deployment of larger machines as we capitalize on the consumer demand. We've also started to add PUDO points to our network in dense urban locations that have high footfall in order to increase density and optimize logistics as well as capitalizing this growing consumer demand. Overall, our total network in Q2 in terms of number of points increased by 55%.In the U.K., we are the leading agnostic APM provider and we're pleased to say that in 12 of the U.K.'s major cities, 48% of residents are now within a 7-minute walk of an InPost APM. The chart on the right side of the slide shows deployment of our APMs in the U.K. compared to our closest APM competitors. We're now the largest agnostic APM network and by the end of the year with the current pace of deployment, we should be #1 APM network in this market. Moving on to the next slide. With the unlocked logistics, we see customer and merchant adoption accelerating. Our customer base in the U.K. is growing and the frequency of orders is also improving as the U.K. consumer are adopting lockers. In Q2 '23 over 1.6 million unique customers used our services with almost over 900,000 using instant returns and over 800,000 using locker-to-locker. Both the number of returns per customer as well as the number of locker-to-locker parcels per customer is increasing every quarter, which further reinforces that convenience and user traction of lockers in the U.K. end market that we knew would exist.What we also want to highlight is the high 4.5 out of 5 Trustpilot rating, something we track closely really to give us an early theme for customer feedback, but also the imperative focus we have on building a high quality service and product in the U.K. market. With now over 225 merchants integrated, a 38% growth in logos versus this time last year as we continue to expand across the fashion segment is our current focus with returns. Our new brands can be seen on the right hand side with notable names now such as MatchesFashion, Fanatics and FATFACE joining the stable in the last quarter. Of the new logistics solutions, the median alone is to activate the potential of our network. So on this slide on the left hand side, you can see the utilization of our APMs is improving as we've unlocked our growth potential by entering into commercial cooperation with Menzies and on the right hand side, you can see the immediate jump in volumes we can see as a consequence.This has given us strong conviction of the cooperation investment that we've made into Menzies as well as strong confidence in our guided breakeven by Q4 this year. On the final slide, the positive results of our actions with adoption of APMs are improving product mix. You can see on the left hand chart consumer adoption increasing across our APMs and is constantly on the rise. Our focus on deploying APMs in high quality locations as well as new logistics continues to pay off as we deliver an ever-increasing convenient solution for the U.K. consumer. On the right hand chart, we can see U.K. volumes increasing by nearly 92% year-over-year and impressive 29% quarter-over-quarter resulting in improved adjusted EBITDA per parcel economics as we're now able to create the operating leverage with unlocked logistics. Adjusted EBITDA per parcel is consistently improving every quarter in the U.K. and that was also the case in Q2 '23.And I'll now hand over to Adam to discuss these financials in more detail.
Okay. Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. As usual, I'll take you through Q2 financial performance and then wrap up with outlook update. Moving on to Page 25. On that page, you see headline P&L for the group for the first half of 2023 as well as for Q2. A few main points to highlight. So first of all, on the group level in Q2, we had revenue growth of 26% year-on-year while in the first half of the year revenue grew by 28% year-on-year. In both periods, revenue growth was visibly higher than the volume growth supported by the pricing effect. Our adjusted EBITDA grew by 35% in Q2 and close to 36% in the first half of the year with margin expansion accelerating in Q2 versus Q1. It was driven by a combination of Poland's margin improvement, reduction of losses in U.K. and Italy and partially offset by margin contraction in Mondial Relay.I'll talk more about CapEx shortly. But CapEx as a percentage of revenue was at 11% in the first half of the year, notably lower than last year. That's because, as I was mentioning when commenting this year's Q1 performance, in 2022 CapEx was front loaded in the first half of the year. Also revenue price expansion is helping to structurally reduce CapEx as a percentage of revenue. Net debt to EBITDA stood at 2.7x, 0.5 turn decrease compared to 3.2x at the end of last year as a combination of EBITDA expansion, strong free cash flow generation in Poland and gross debt being largely stable. Now moving on to Polish performance. Volume growth in Q2 2023 was at 15% versus the same period last year driven by robust performance across all segments and underpinned by both existing and new merchants. We have recorded a revenue growth in Q2 of 29% showing 14 percentage points higher growth than volume.As you can see, the business has continued to reflect strong positive outcomes of repricing. Other revenue almost doubled to PLN 47 million in Q2 2023 driven mainly by fulfillment services and APM manufacturing revenue. Our adjusted EBITDA posted a strong growth of 37% year-on-year. The adjusted EBITDA margin was up by 290 basis points compared to Q2 of 2022 reflecting positive impact of repricing catch-up combined with effective management of inflation induced cost pressures. So as part of our priorities for 2023, we listed recovery of Polish margins and looks like we are consistently getting there. So effectively in Poland, we have observed Q2 to be a continuation of positive trend already reported in Q1 across all key metrics delivering very strong growth and very good financial performance for both Q2 and the whole first half of the year.Now looking at Mondial Relay performance. In the second quarter, the business experienced significant growth with volumes increasing by 15% year-over-year with positive year-on-year growth across all Mondial markets. In France, the volume increase was a result of strong B2C parcel growth as well as continued growth in C2C segment. Mondial Relay revenues amounted to PLN 715 million so north of 11% year-on-year growth. Revenue growth rate was diluted vis-a-vis volume growth due to 2 factors: first of all, geographic mix so domestic volume growing ahead of cross-border; and secondly, product mix and prioritization of out-of-home volume versus to-door volume, which is quite lower, but with lower cost to serve displays better profitability on unit economics basis. Adjusted EBITDA declined by 8% year-on-year and adjusted EBITDA margin was lower by 270 basis points versus Q2 last year as a result of 2 main factors.First of all, in the second half of last year we have accelerated investment into logistics infrastructure and G&A cost and these 2 investments are still unamortized by operating leverage. And then secondly, we are witnessing elevated labor cost attributable to team expansion and wage increases in France driven by both labor shortages and increase in the minimum wage, which was ahead of our expectations. Now on to the next page, a snapshot of U.K. and Italy. So in the U.K. in Q2, parcel volumes increased by 92% year-on-year and revenue increased by 85%. Again the disparity between volume growth and revenue growth was driven by the product mix with locker-to-locker product growing much faster and accounting for increasingly higher share of volume. Year-on-year U.K. EBITDA losses were reduced by more than half in Q2 due to more favorable product mix, unlocked volume growth, operating leverage and optimized logistics cost.There will be some more detail on this on the next slide. Revenue generated by Italy increased tenfold compared to the same period last year and this growth was accompanied by a significant reduction in adjusted EBITDA losses too. So both U.K. and Italy are on the right track to break even and significantly contributing to the group's margin improvement in the first half of the year. Now looking at unit economics evolution in the U.K. on the next page. So as already mentioned and as highlighted by Michael, the U.K. has seen a strong volume uptake in the second quarter of this year mainly thanks to unlocking volumes at the start of partnership with Menzies. The utilization rate of our APMs in the U.K. started to improve significantly at the beginning of May together with the launch of new logistics partnership with Menzies and grew sequentially in each month thereafter.Our revenue per parcel has decreased by 3% versus Q2 2022 reflecting different product mix comparing to previous year that I already mentioned and locker-to-locker taking higher share in total volumes. The combination of growing volumes, stable revenue per parcel and favorable changes in product mix and operational leverage are all resulting in continued cost per parcel decrease and improving adjusted EBITDA per unit. So adjusted EBITDA loss per parcel improved by 76% across last 12 months until end of Q2 and moved from negative PLN 6.3 to PLN 1.5 loss per parcel with PLN 0.4 per parcel representing additional cost of migration to a new logistics partner. Consistent improvement of unit economics in the U.K. market sets us on a clear path to EBITDA breakeven in the last quarter of this year and therefore, we are comfortable to reiterate the target of becoming EBITDA breakeven in the U.K. in Q4 of this year and becoming profitable for the full year of 2024.Now turning to items below adjusted EBITDA. In the first half of the year, operating EBITDA was up by 34% year-on-year to over PLN 1.2 billion at 29.5% EBITDA margin. Below EBITDA, the IFRS lease cost grew by 33% year-on-year driven by network scale, mainly APM land and depot leases. Depreciation of property, plant and equipment in the first half of the year grew by 33% as well so the same rate, which was directly connected with the further APM network development both in 2022 and 2023. As a result, for 6 months of 2023 we have delivered 40% year-on-year EBIT growth expanding EBIT margin by 140 basis points to 15.8%. Net financial costs increased significantly because of 2 factors. First of all, obviously it was an increase in interest expenses driven by the change in interest rates on our PLN denominated floating portion of debt. But the biggest swing factor, however, was the outcome of foreign exchange rate movements, mainly weakening of euro versus Polish zloty.This has caused us to recognize unrealized foreign exchange losses of PLN 83 million from translation differences of PLN denominated debt consolidated on Luxembourg parent company level. But important to note that these foreign exchange losses are driven by the fact InPost Luxembourg functional currency is euro, but these losses would not create cash leakage upon repayment of the facilities as the group's functional currency is still PLN. So a very technical nature of those foreign exchange translation losses. As a result of those losses, the net income for the first half of this year amounted to PLN 244 million, a decrease of 15% year-on-year. Now let's look at the cash generation for the first half of the year. Similarly to Q1 of this year, after 6 months of the year we have significantly improved free cash flow generation delivering PLN 210 million of free cash flow after 6 months of the year.EBITDA free cash conversion improved in Poland to 41% in H1 versus 25% for the same period a year ago. This is obviously helped both by CapEx intensity that I already mentioned which reduced year-on-year, but also an increase in margin which to a large extent is driven by the pricing. So obviously those 2 elements having a positive impact on free cash flow generation and conversion rates. And as in previous quarters, we have in a large part reinvested this cash in international expansion in our core markets. However, as the CapEx intensity has reduced together with the overall margin improvement, we see better free cash flow generation on the group level overall. Now looking at group CapEx in more detail. As already mentioned, in the first half of 2023 we spent 20% less on CapEx compared to first half of 2022. This was partially driven by phasing effects as you probably remember 2022 CapEx was front-loaded to first half of the year while this year we expect it to be more evenly spread across the year.Secondly, post the COVID-driven supply chain squeeze, we are gradually optimizing and normalizing production inventory especially APM production inventory for all markets. So looking specifically at the CapEx intensity ratio, this has decreased in all our key geographies driven by both moderation in CapEx spend and also thanks to our revenue growth. In Poland, we reduced APM network investment versus first half of 2022 given lower scale of planned deployments for this year. In Mondial Relay, first half of this year year-on-year CapEx reduction was driven by significant operations automation investment that was undertaken in the first half of last year. And at the same time, as guided previously, we do not expect our full year 2023 CapEx to reduce versus 2022. We'll probably land at a similar nominal CapEx spend versus previous year.Now taking a look at the net debt and leverage. So our gross debt remains, as you can see, very much at the same level as at year-end of 2022. Decrease in gross borrowings was partially offset with an increase of lease liabilities and thanks to better cash position and higher cash generation, we managed to marginally reduce our net debt position. So the net leverage landed at 2.7x EBITDA, down from 3.2x compared to end of last year. So gradually improving indebtedness position there. And moving to outlook so in terms of full year 2023 outlook, we made a slight update of that especially when it comes to volume growth. So we anticipate that e-commerce market volume growth in Poland will slightly surpass our earlier projections. Our expectations are that Polish e-commerce market volumes will grow by high single to low double digits for the full year. France is expected to experience low single-digit growth while the U.K. is expected to see a mid single-digit decline in parcel volumes year-on-year.This year the group will continue to focus on 3 areas. First of all, exceeding market volume growth in Poland while expanding margins and, as you could see, we are well advanced there. Secondly, Mondial Relay will continue to invest into network capacity and market share gains while focused on managing rising costs due to labor inflation and our investment into scale. And then thirdly, in the U.K. we'll further work on resolving logistics challenges to further enable us to grow market share while turning the business profitable end of this year. Another change in our outlook is deleveraging. So we have already taken our net leverage below 3x, which was our initial guidance and we plan to leverage the business further in the remaining part of the year. As for Q3 2023 trading so what we observe right now in the market. We anticipate in Q3 of this year similar year-on-year volume growth as we experienced in Q2 across all major markets in all segments.And that would be all from my side. So thank you and back to [ Julian ] for the Q&A session. Thanks.
Thank you, Adam. If you're on the conference call and would like to ask a question, then please press star 1 on your telephone keypad to join the queue. If you'd like to leave the queue, you can press star 2. If you're on the webcast, you can click on the questions icon at the bottom of your screen and type your question in. We'll just pause for a moment whilst the queue forms.
The first question comes from the line of Sam Bland calling from JPMorgan.
I have 2, please. The first one is on you've given the sort of competitive split by ATMs and lockers in Poland, InPost versus the others. Looks like the others are certainly adding locations, but what's your sense? I know you talked a little bit about this. What's your sense on how much volume they're actually winning so what the utilization of those locations looks like as best you can tell? And the second question was on leverage, it keeps coming down. Is this sort of PLN 1.1 billion to PLN 1.2 billion CapEx the fastest you can sort of deploy money in a useful way and if so, what do you think if leverage keeps on coming down, is there sort of a floor that you have in mind on that or what might be the options?
Maybe let me answer the first question and then I will hand over to Adam. So we always say that this is not about deploying machines. This is not about building the network of automated machines because for us, this is maybe 20% of our overall success. It's all about creating the whole ecosystem; state-of-the-art logistics, dense network of depots, next-day deliveries, stickiness of the clients, loyalty associated with technology, with mobile app, with everything what's bringing our flywheel effect to be so visible and so successful. So also the factor or the KPI we are clearly showing on our presentation is giving you a view that irrespective of the machines of the other players deployed in the same locations and very aggressive pricing sometimes below EUR 1. Can you imagine? Below EUR 1. So people who are gaining massive cost not profit associated with delivery of such parcels, still their machines are underperforming versus ours in the same location. So we are not going into the direction of commenting or reacting to competitors because this is the false way. We are the trendsetter. We want to be remaining and continuous trendsetter in terms of new developments, new features, new product and that brings our consumers to us and loyalize them even more. Handing over to Adam in terms of the deleveraging process.
So I think the pace of deleveraging is very much in line of what we expected. I think obviously margin development is very positive and very strong and it does support maybe a faster deleveraging towards the end of the year than we initially thought, but it's largely in line with the expectations. And therefore, our CapEx plan especially for this year as we laid it out early in the year remains valid. In terms of ability to accelerate, I think we mentioned it a couple of times. The main I'd say limitation to deploy faster is both time to market in terms of middle mile logistics locations so time to procure, to find the right location, procure the depot or hub; it typically takes several months before you get that. And likewise in the APM space, locations and good quality locations and also the right sequence of deployment so that we build density in a sequential way, optimize logistics and make sure we don't dilute our profitability too much or don't take too high cost early in the game is something that's always on our mind when we plan. So the answer would be at least for this year, we would not plan to accelerate with the CapEx.
The next question comes from the line of Pavel Kirjanovs calling from Bank of America.
Pavel Kirjanovs from Bank of America. Two questions from my side, please. Can you give us an update on your current trading and what trends you're seeing in August and if what you're seeing in the market already to change sort of your volume expectations? Then second question is also on outlook. You no longer expect EBITDA margin expansion at Mondial Relay this year. What were the moving parts behind this and does that push back your medium-term expectations for that business?
Yes, I'm happy to take that. So first of all in terms of current trading, as we provided an outlook on the guidance page, Q3 so far trending very much in line with Q2 in terms of growth rates. So we would expect Q3 to be growing at similar rates as you've seen in Q2 in all key geographies. So Poland, France, U.K.; all growing at similar pace and not pause there. Therefore, it also probably provides you a good indication in terms of where we're likely to land in terms of the overall shape and performance with maybe a little caveat that typically Q3 in absolute terms is slightly softer in terms of volumes compared to Q2 for seasonal reasons so obviously summer vacations. In terms of Mondial Relay, 2 things I think. Indeed, the labor cost inflation is a primary element, which in terms of pressures there probably is stronger than what we expected and it's both availability of the labor force especially the lower qualified blue collar workers, but also the labor inflation which is driven by minimum wage increase in France.And those 2 have proven so far this year to be the main cost inflation elements, which have exceeded our expectations. They've added additional pressure to the margins. But important to mention from say strategic perspective, we've also decided not to pass this cost on to our merchants so have prioritized growth and taking market share over short-term profitability. I think strategically, it's not different to what you've seen what we've been doing in Poland a couple of years ago and it's proven to be the right strategy. When you build critical mass, you gain share and then you capitalize on this in terms of operating leverage, which is driven by scale. So yes, it's true. We expect probably more pressure on Mondial Relay margin and much bigger challenge and ability to expand if at all this year. But likewise in terms of midterm outlook for the business, we're still positive also and especially given the volume growth traction that we see that we definitely are able to take this business where we want to take it midterm.
The next question comes from the line of David Kerstens calling from Jefferies.
Congrats with the strong results. Two questions, please. First on pricing, you highlighted the strong EBITDA margin improvement in Poland following the repricing actions you've taken. Can you confirm that the contractual price increase with Allegro is still on for coming November and based on inflation levels year-to-date, do you still expect it to be a double-digit price increase as well? And maybe related to this, I think following on to the previous question, are there any plans for repricing in France and in the U.K. where I think you have seen somewhat negative mix effects in the second quarter? And then the second question is on the U.K. -- or yes, please go ahead.
David, so maybe let me answer that question. So first of all, as you know, we have 7 years contract that specifically touches the point of the repricing and it typically happens in November. We keep a friendly relationship with our friends from Allegro helping them as well to gain traction in the cross-border from Poland to Czech Republic and other markets, fully supporting them in new initiatives, shaping new discussion about joint marketing actions as well to boost growth of Allegro jointly with InPost in Poland. So yes, we are following the route which was shaped by the long-term contract, similarly in parallel helping them to literally grow faster than the market.In terms of the other markets, yes, we are and we will adjust our pricing strategy to the market and to the macro environment that, as Adam explicitly said with the labor cost, minimum wage increase in France came by a little bit of surprise to the market. But we are continuously adjusting our pricing strategy to the macro environment. So there will definitely be a kind of impact on the pricing as well. And some of the long-term clients, as you may remember, they've got embedded indexation clauses in the contract so some of them, that goes automatically without any negotiations and that's also the topic of the international markets not only Polish clients.
And regarding the Allegro contract, are you able to deviate from the contractual price agreement based on the competitive landscape? Is that what you're saying?
No, I'm saying that we are sticking to our contractual obligations on both sides means that the CPI and labor cost, those 2 factors are determining the scale of the repricing and that's it. We are the best, most reliable and the most loyalizing supplier loyalizing towards end users. And I think our colleagues from Allegro and also the other merchants are really highly valuing that. That's why we are not revising our long-term contract here.
Okay. Sounds good. And then maybe the second question on the development in the U.K., very good to see the strong volume momentum you have there now post the Menzies partnership. How should we think about volume growth going forward? I think you had previously indicated that demand in the market was 2x to 3x higher than your capacity. You're now highlighting almost 100% volume increase year-over-year. How should we think about the volume development going forward on the Menzies? And I think you also now indicated that you define core cities as cities with inhabitants of almost 75,000 people, I suspect that includes more cities than just London, Birmingham and Manchester. Is your strategy now focusing on additional cities and what does that imply in terms of the targeted APM rollout for the U.K. in the medium term?
I can take that question, Rafal. Firstly, we would expect the volume trends, as per Adam's view earlier, to continue the way we're seeing it right now. Clearly we're going into a critical time of the year, but clearly we feel confident in our current momentum in terms of the trajectory and the business performance. Yes, we have because of unlocking logistics, actually we've started to expand the network from the core density around London, Manchester and Birmingham. We are taking it in a phased approach. So when we think about expansion, we're expanding London and clearly going into the periphery outside of the M25 rather than just inside the M25 and similarly Manchester and Birmingham, but we also have started to expand into cities like Leeds and Newcastle and even Edinburgh, Glasgow and Cardiff to give a few examples of that type of expansion.And clearly we're also seeing that demand coming from our customers and that's also allowing us to think about the network expansion because the customers are giving us the data where they see the information for their customer choice. So really the unlocking of logistics is now fueling and firing up that strategy to really continue to further accelerate. I think our view in terms of deployment is clearly we're on track this year to achieve the numbers we set out. But clearly as we now look to accelerate, we'll probably see more of an impact of that in sort of the latter part of this year, but more in the early part of '24 as we accelerate the pipeline. What we have done short term just is add PUDOs because clearly there's a lead time to do that. And clearly what the PUDOs are doing is a short-term strategy to capture immediate capacity where we can't deploy a locker because of lead time, but we have a follow-up strategy where we can convert that PUDO potentially to a locker at the right timing.
The next question comes from the line of Sathish Sivakumar calling from Citigroup.
So I've got 3 questions here. So firstly, actually on Mondial, there are 2 parts here. If you look into the Slide #17 where you've actually given B2C is actually growing faster than C2C. Can I get an understanding on APM, the volume growth that you achieved this quarter? How much of is actually like B2C type volumes versus C2C basically if APM in fact wasn't driving that outperformance in B2C? And second question actually again in Mondial. Last year in Q4 obviously you had to invest in more resources because there was like more demand than initially anticipated. How are you actually planning up for this Q4? How should we think about the cost impact as we go into the core peak season especially in Mondial Relay? And second one is actually on Menzies partnership. What has been the initial feedback from merchant post your tie-up with Menzies? Any color on that actually would be helpful too.
Sathish, I'm happy to take them. Let me just start firstly on the Menzies if we start in reverse. The feedback from the customer trade has been hugely positive and very encouraging. I think clearly the merchants have also understood the capacity bottlenecks that we have been challenged with. But moreover, they have clearly seen the customer demand for their services so they're super pleased now with the unlocked capacity. So very, very encouraging. So at this point, very positive. Specifically on Mondial when you look at the volume development, clearly our strategy is to start to grow more B2C and clearly when you look at the APM growth, I'd say, Sathish, it's balanced between B2C and C2C because C2C is also still quite strong and growing. But clearly we're seeing the incremental volume starting to come from B2C. When it comes to cost and planning for Q4, that is a process that starts pretty much at the end of Q4 last year.And that has very much been a focus of labor planning, but also careful management specifically of the new depot openings, of which all of those new depot openings now have completed well ahead of the peak period. So from a preparation point of view are very much on plan and very much with a greater visibility of early openings and cost management going into the peak season. Clearly we will manage against volume demand. So we clearly have forecasts from our customers going into this period, but we will also remain opportunistic. Like last year if the demand continues to increase, we will look at alternative labor sources to really make sure we're still taking market share and continue to grab the customer because really as a strategy, that still takes preference right now as we really want to win the market and clearly that is an important decision point. But at the minute, very much the plans are all locked and very much prepared for peak.
So can I just have a follow-up there. In terms of peak season, would it be fair to say that you kind of have infrastructure, labor and everything to grow similar to Q2, Q3 trends? And then anything beyond that would be like you need to go and invest more?
Yes.
The next question comes from the line of Henk Slotboom calling from the IDEA.
The first one is a brief one. We've seen a lot of news concerning Packeta with 2 of your main shareholders playing a role there, PPF and Advent, but what I take from the media is that not only these 2 players have gone through to the second round. Can you inform me whether or not InPost is directly involved in this process or that you're simply watching it from a distance? The second question I had is where are you with the overnight delivery service in France? That's something you've been talking about a lot. Certainly in relation to B2C, that could help you to further accelerate growth there. And those were my questions.
Let me answer the first one and then I will hand over to Michael. So yes, we are observing, but observing in the meaning that we are not part of the process. We are not engaged in the process, we are not advising in the process and there is just 1 simple reason for that. Our strategy is all about conquering Western European markets, markets that are massively, massively encouraging in terms of the pace of the development of e-commerce, the demand and also lack of very modern out-of-home, e-commerce logistics. And that's why we strongly believe that having focus on those markets will allow us later on to potentially look at other geographies once we are already well developed in the critical geographies. Just to give you a sense of the opportunity. Greater London yearly volume is similar to the yearly volume of Czech, Slovak and Hungary combined. So 3 other markets, interesting markets of CE; but 3 different languages, 3 different sets of competitors and volume is the same like we potentially may touch just in the Greater London area. And by the way in this Greater London area, our out-of-home network is already much more dense than the rail postal offices network. So the answer is very clear. We want to have focus on the geographies where we already are developing our network. Michael?
Just to comment. From the actual numbers you've seen, the B2C trend and growth is strong and that really is a factor of 2 things. Firstly, the pipeline development that we started over a year ago in really targeting B2C clients with our services. And two, the actual launch of next day services with some of those clients as well to embed our product and also grow our share. And so all of that strategy is very much live. I think the third element of that strategy that's also been quite fruitful is actually cross-border. So clearly we started to work with a number of B2C clients on cross-border. That share has actually grown quite well as we've really opened up the network particularly within France to markets like Belgium, Netherlands, Italy and Spain. But what also in return that is starting to do is actually grow the local B2C share with those clients also. So it's a combination of both improved product, improved coverage, APMs as well as developing the relationships with the clients through cross-border also.
And the next question is from Marco Limite calling from Barclays.
The first question is actually for Adam. I saw a headline on Bloomberg mentioning that you were kind of indicating that the current level of EBITDA margin is a good indicator for the remaining part of the year. So if you could please just clarify on this sort of outlook in terms of EBITDA margin for the full year? And the second question is a bit more technical one. On financial costs, shall we expect the second quarter FX losses to be recurrent also in Q3 and Q4 or is this just a oneoff for the second quarter?
On the margin, just to be very clear, my indication for the rest of the year was more on the group level. I think inside the group there will be different kind of dynamics. So as I alluded to, you normally margin-wise expect Q4 to be a weaker quarter given the investment we are typically making in all markets into logistics to make sure we have good quality of service in the peak and can handle the volume. So definitely Q4 much softer in the markets like Poland compared to Q2 for example. But on the other hand, as we said, we expect consistent improvement in margin in the U.K. and the U.K. EBITDA margin positive in Q4. So overall, there will be different dynamics in the mix. But my point was more that whatever you see in Q2 is indicative for the rest of the year on the group level.On the foreign exchange losses, the answer to your question is it very much depends on the appreciation/depreciation of euro versus Polish zloty as we were trying to explain and I know it's counterintuitive because it gets very technically into IFRS accounting. But essentially this is the revaluation of our balance of PLN denominated borrowings on our balance sheet and just due to the fact these facilities are extended on the Luxembourg entity level, they are kind of translated from PLN which by the way is the group functional currency into euro which is the Lux entity functional currency. So you're basically translating your group functional currency into something which is a single entity functional currency, it's quite counterintuitive and actually that's what's driving those losses.So if you looked at how euro was behaving versus Polish zloty was significantly strengthening on the back of last year, we were recording significant foreign exchange gains whereas this year as we see zloty strengthening versus euro, you see the opposite movement in those foreign exchange translations. So the answer, Marco, is assuming Polish zloty to euro is stable, there should not be any meaningful movements in that part of the P&L. If I look at most of the Polish banks, they expect slight weakening of zloty versus euro, which would mean it would reverse some of the losses. But then again it's a bit of a guesswork at this point in time.
Okay. And just to confirm on my first question. So in Q2 you reported 32% EBITDA margin. So we are kind of expecting at group level broadly the same number for the second half of the year?
In that territory, yes.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions on the telephone line. So we are going to hand it back to take questions from the webcast.
Okay. We have a few questions over the webcast. I'll start with some from [ Joachim Oscar ] from Endeavour. First one, could you talk a bit more about the Menzies delivery network on a more granular level? I've heard from industry insiders that their network is strong in the north, but less dense or weaker in the south where the population density is highest. Could you address this?
Julian, I'll take that question. Historically, that is true that Menzies is a business specifically on the news trade side, had a strong coverage in the north of the U.K. Actually over the last 3 years prior to our investment, that network has developed on 2 fronts. One, actually the news trade business is covering other parts outside of the north, some in the east of England and some in the southeast as well as the southwest. Furthermore, actually Menzies through acquisition had developed their parcel business, which they call Express, and that really enables a full national network from a coverage point of view and hence the 100 depots that they're covering. So really from a historical point of view, I can understand some of that viewpoint. But actually as of today, our business has got a full national 7-day coverage.
And a follow-up on Joachim is could you detail what potential you see for the additional services you're investing in looking at such as InPostPay, cross-border fulfillment and so on? Can you outline how you see the investment case for these services or offers so an investor can get a better understanding of what potential these hold for InPost in the long term?
Happy to answer that question. So first of all to build a modern logistics e-commerce company, you need to have a variety of services that are pretty obvious and this is pure logistics. Then if you want to strengthen your position, be better than the others, you need to have new levers, new engines for the future growth and that's what we do at InPost as a team on daily basis. We scratch our heads and we just think about this what will be the next strengthening puzzle of our flywheel effect and this is all about those new initiatives that we've started or some of them we are going to start. There is 1 common point, I would say, with those new services. We are responding to people's needs and demand coming from our end users. All of them are around end user centricity.Fulfillment is all about very late cutoff times that no one else may match. Thanks to this, you can order something at 10:00 p.m. and still it's delivered early morning whenever you want in any machine in Poland even in a small village. No one else may compete against such a service. The other services like fulfillment, people are asking us very openly when I can ship my parcel from locker in Poland to a locker in France or in London and that's why we need to have cross-border. When you ask about InPostPay, it's all about creating software and creating solutions that will improve the conversion on one hand for the merchants and improvement of the conversion is the holy grail for all the merchants because they are losing a lot of traffic potentially during the process of choosing payment provider, choosing logistics vendor.You will see very soon our state-of-the-art solution we have designed, we are testing, we have already family and friends testing that in Poland. But surely this service will fly on every market where we have deployed our network and we have deployed our mobile app. And more to come and it's all about it. This is a little bit like the question about competition. Do you observe? Do you count your parcels? No, we don't because it's all about creating stickiness of the end users. They vote, they choose, they pick up the best brand. And if the best brand is providing them everything what they need, the competitors may just sit, observe and deploy more machines that will become empty even more.
Okay. We have another follow-on, which is how do you view the value of adding PUDOs to a locker network? How do PUDOs fit into your strategy in the various markets; U.K., France, Poland?
I can comment on that, Julian. I think firstly to remind ourselves when we bought Mondial Relay, it was effectively 100% PUDO business. So clearly in the French market today, our strategy is to automate the last mile of lockers, but it's a journey to do that in terms of coverage. And clearly we need the PUDOs today to really service the volume and demand as we find new locations and develop the locker network. And really as you look at a market like the U.K., really the PUDO as I mentioned earlier is really a short-term coverage gap because there's clearly a lead time to deploying a locker, right, in terms of the process of searching for the right location, sourcing, powering and actually physically deploying it whereas the PUDO, you can open pretty much in a day.So really this is also about speed to market and allows to capture the volume as we complement both from that point of view. And in a market like Poland really we also use PUDOs, but really for peak predominantly where we potentially have capacity requirements because in terms of deployment and physical availability for the old parcel network. So the core strategy is APM. The core strategy is really optimizing the consumer experience and really touching all touch points, as Rafal mentioned, but PUDO really gives us a strategy today to really complement. And in smaller markets such as Portugal or Italy or Belgium, it's a CapEx-light strategy today as we try and balance our focus of investment in CapEx and the larger market opportunities in terms of the land grab.
A couple more from Joachim. This one on Menzies. How does the Menzies partnership affect your B2C plan for U.K. in scale on parcel capacity, margin potential and timeline?
Clearly in terms of the fact set, I think clearly the part of the whole point of opening up the network is really the big prize in the U.K. is B2C and clearly now we have the footprint in terms of logistics to really start to tackle that. The good news is we're already doing a B2C offering that's called label-less returns and we're seeing super traction on that product and that's also giving the retailer confidence around the use of out-of-home. So we will start to test our outbound B2C offering in the second half of this year with a few clients really because there's a number of ingredients we really want to focus to get right. Firstly, the retailer checkout and presenting of lockers because we see when you do that properly both in returns and in C2C, we get a very high share of checkout because the consumer has the choice. Two is clearly the geographic coverage and sort of how we want to play that with the different merchants. And so really our strategy near term will continue to focus on returns in C2C because there's still significant huge opportunity in that market and we're addressing it and solving a customer problem, but we'll start to test the B2C in the second half of this year with a big review for '24 as we continue to build the locker network at the same time.
We've got a last question from Joachim on financials, which is what are your plans in terms of balance sheet utilization as leverage comes down rapidly and is likely to decline further significantly over the next 12 months in balance with the potential Menzies buyout down the line?
Let me take that one. So I think we've been indicating for quite some time that our midterm target for deleverage is in the territory of 2x net debt to EBITDA. So we still have some way to go. Although the current trajectory is very clear, there's some way to go. But I think we're simply delivering on this target. At the same time we said give or take 2x midterm, but we would want to retain some flexibility for some opportunistic moves especially on the M&A side in some of the key markets if these are either accelerating our ability to win the market or are kind of complementing our capabilities. I think Menzies acquisition is a very good example of such move. So in general, I'd say what we're seeing right now in terms of deleveraging is very much in line with our expectation and therefore, it does not change our view in terms of how we want to manage the balance sheet in the midterm.
And we've got a question from Jorge Robles from WhiteOak perhaps related. Considering the continuing deleveraging, how is your M&A appetite going forward? So I don't know if there's anything you want to add to that last point.
Just maybe 1 sentence from my end. We remain focused and focus is on building organically our network whenever it's viable. But of course in the meantime we will observe the market, how we may potentially accelerate our strategy in our core markets. And Menzies deal, as Adam rightly said, was kind of opportunistic not straightforward. Many people think that it's a kind of surprise, it's not obvious. Yes, indeed that only reinforces our statement that we will remain fully focused on the development organically. But if there is something interesting, something what will really short-term give us additional boost to our flywheel, then of course we will consider taking part in such process only fully focused on our core geographies.
Got a question from Pras Jeyanandhan from Downing Fund Managers. What drove the strong growth in Italy? Is this a oneoff or more sustainable and is Italy a bigger opportunity than previously flagged?
Let me take that one as well. I think we were communicating even during our IPO that we have chosen markets. I think it was when we took over Mondial, we said that both markets, U.K. and Italy, we see as a future growth potential. Italy today is very similar to Poland few years ago; not many players on the market, e-commerce taking off a little bit like behind the average saturation of e-commerce in the total retail if you compare to France, U.K., even Spain and Germany. So definitely Italy is for us opportunity. That's why we have chosen a kind of blended approach for Italy. We set up a very dense network of PUDO points combined with APMs again to keep the right balance in terms of our CapEx expenditures. But this is not a oneoff. This is a very consistent strategy where we already have our own logistics. It's very important. This is not the case of U.K. where we started based on the third-party partnerships. Here we built consistently organically our network in Italy. And as Adam and Michael mentioned, we try to be positive in terms of breakeven EBITDA in 2024 as well on that market, which is I think the best comment for the focus on Italy.
Okay. I think we've got time for maybe 1 more question from Prashant Premkumar from Buffalo Thorn Capital Management. What percentage of volumes in Poland, France and U.K. are next day D+1 deliveries?
Yes. So Poland is a mature market with state-of-the-art next day delivery logistics to the whole network so it's more than 98% of all the parcels being delivered next day including small villages and towns. And as you know, Mondial is during the transformation from being an economy service D+3, D+5 to be a very prudent D+1, D+2 latest delivery. France is a little bit bigger when you look at the coverage and the size of the country, density of the network, density of the depots. So that's our focus to deliver the right density of the depots and network of lockers and PUDO points to provide such service. U.K. is in front of that transformation, but with our Menzies collaboration and investment. Just bear in mind Menzies is visiting more than 40,000 of the points 360 days a year including Sundays. Absolutely no one in the U.K. has got ability to deliver parcels on Sundays apart from combined InPost-Menzies network. And I think imagine what it may mean for the U.K. market where cheap pricing and pretty poor quality is a kind of obvious thing for the end users. Let's translate that into 360 days a year delivery including Sundays and you will imagine how we are looking at U.K. market full potential.
Thanks, Rafal. That wraps up the Q&A session. So back to you for any final or closing remarks.
I want to say maybe first, big thank you to all the participants of the call. But also big thank you to our InPost team because it's not management's results delivery, it's the whole team's full focus on making the company better and better on daily basis. I think that every quarter we try to be as transparent as possible, sometimes revealing I think too much in comparison to our peers. But on the other hand, we also want to properly educate the market that InPost and APMs and lockers is not the same. InPost continuously is about creating the whole ecosystem, creating a flywheel which consists of many parcels, many pieces and lockers, machines, metal boxes. That's 1 part of it.So please ask questions, feel free to contact us to learn more about this flywheel, to learn more about the competitive advantages of the ecosystem that we are building because that will provide you best-in-class understanding of the real value of InPost also for future. So thank you very much in the name of the whole management, the whole InPost team and let's stay in touch. Keep the fingers crossed for the remaining few months of the year.