InPost SA
AEX:INPST
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InPost SA
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Hi. I'm Mike Harris, Transitional Head of Investor Relations at InPost. Welcome to InPost Q3 2022 Results Call. Today, we'll have comments from our CEO, Rafal Brzoska, on InPost's differentiated business model and a clear acceleration of growth in Q3. Michael Rouse, our Head of International, will run us through our progress in bringing automation and productivity gains to Europe's last mile. And our CFO, Adam Aleksandrowicz, will, as always, guide us through the financials and the outlook.
We are also joined on the call by our 2 excellent new hires, Gabriela Burdach and Joanna Bolinska, who I will be working with in the coming months as we transition the Investor Relations responsibility to the new team.
A quick disclaimer. Today's call includes forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, and it is possible that actual results may differ materially. The call is also being recorded.
Rafal, over to you.
Thank you, Mike, and thank you all for joining us this morning. We are pleased to have had another strong quarter of volume growth across all our key markets. But before going into detail, a reminder of what InPost differentiation is all about.
So our mission is nothing short of transforming the consumer ease, courier productivity and the environmental sustainability of Europe's e-commerce last mile. Lockers dramatically reduced the cost of delivery for merchants and the friction of the consumer delivery experience. And literally, we are e-commerce-enabled for merchants and very transformative for consumer control of pickup times. Rarely are the cost efficiencies of automating an industry such a victory for consumers.
On the next page, very quickly, you can see 3 clear indications of why lockers are simply the most consumer-centric and sustainable mass market solution for last mile delivery. First is convenience. As mentioned, when lockers are convenient, consumers love the high-quality experience of controlling collection times. This is something that to-door delivery cannot match. And the result of it is that our local NPS of 75 points in Poland is in another league versus less differentiated, old-fashioned to-door competitors. And a satisfied consumer is the holy grail for all the merchants. And as our NPS indicate, we elevated the e-commerce experience, and that's a big win for all the merchants but also for the end consumers.
Our second differentiation is cost efficiency. In this inflationary world, every merchant is focused on limiting cost pressures and we are super supportive here as our Q3 volume acceleration already indicates. The reduced need for couriers per parcel deliver dramatically improved productivity and hence, cost to merchants and ultimately, at the end of the journey also to end consumers. Beyond this, everyone on our plants and in our local communities benefits from the reduced need for vehicles and CO2 emission versus traditional to-door delivery.
And today, in Poland, especially in Poland, every merchant order that is delivered via one of our lockers can save merchants up to 75% on the carbon footprint of a to-door e-commerce sale. Surely, from a sustainability perspective, our product offering to merchants is head and shoulders above the competition. And as merchants increasingly begin to focus on the emissions of their suppliers, our differentiation versus peers will only increase.
Let's jump into the next page. Many of you will be familiar with how our flywheel accelerates as we get closer to our consumers. It starts, of course, with the improved proximity to consumers and next-day delivery, which dramatically reduces the friction that consumers typically face when ordering online. This drives naturally consumer uptake as they vote with their feet and choose our lockers as their preferred method of delivery.
While no logistics company has a monopoly on the front door of a household, the lockers, InPost lockers, our 16.3 million Polish customers visit us simply our own. As our customer base and their intensity of usage growth, of course, we become more and more relevant to merchants. And while we offer category killer sustainability and much better than to-door economics for merchants, it is this consumer uptake that is ultimately the driver of our flywheel. That's why we always say we are a consumer-centric company.
On the next page, I'm very pleased to run you through some of our key Q3 highlights, including very impressive demand trends that accelerate our flywheel in our core markets. Even with the rising uncertainty and inflation pressure on consumer wallets, our Q3 volumes rose 26% in Poland, which now leaves us with around 30% Q3 volume CAGR over 2 years. In France, we grew a much better-than-anticipated 34%, while in the U.K., even with capacity pressures, we grew again triple digit, more than 220%. And this resulted in overall group volume growth of more than 30% during the quarter, which drove revenue growth of almost 33%.
Despite contractual pricing with large merchants remaining flat in Q3, Polish adjusted EBITDA growth 16%, reflecting a margin of 44%, which is higher than the margin cost in first half of the year. Losses in the U.K. and an investment in marketing in France limited group adjusted EBITDA growth to 11.5%. With inflation-linked pricing adjustment being implemented from last week in Poland, this should definitely prove supportive of margins in Q4.
Once again, we saw limited impact from competitive pressures in Poland, both in terms of 11% volume growth with Allegro and more than 40% -- actually 43% growth with the rest of our merchant customers, a strong endorsement of our status as an e-commerce enabler and leader. Later in the deck, you will again see our quarterly chart showing the full resilience of our volumes in every machine in Poland with nearby competition.
And indicative of that, total consumer base in Poland hit already 16.3 million in Q3, up by 0.5 million in the quarter alone and approaching 1.2 users for every single household in the country. And we continued to drive our flywheel with new machines deployments. We ended the quarter with more than 26,000 machines, housing over 3.3 million compartments across all our markets.
Our efforts to automate our French home customers accelerated as we expanded our machine park by nearly 60% in the quarter to reach more than 1,600 machines, while our lockers accounted for almost already 6% of all domestic volumes, 6% within a year. It is also notable that Amazon, already an important customer of ours in Poland, is now being supported by Mondial's packageless returns as well.
Let's jump into the next page. In Q3, we enjoyed the strongest quarter of growth in the last year. This accelerated gains came despite rising competition and the fact that the minimum order value for to-door delivery on Allegro's market-leading Smart platform, half versus Q3 of last year, leaving both to-door and locker minimum order values equal this year. With literally 0 economic incentive for consumers to choose our lockers, this year-on-year comparison is an awesome countrywide experiment of the consumers' preference for lockers over to-door. And I'm pleased to note that our Smart volume growth was comfortable into the double digits.
Michael will later talk about international markets, but as you see, we dramatically outperformed the French market by 34 percentage points on strong C2X and a depressed Q3 2021 base. In the U.K., we again enjoyed triple-digit growth despite a declining market. And in the U.K., our volume growth was excellent, but as Michael Rouse, our Head of International, will discuss later, our volumes could have been stronger, still had our logistics capacity not been constrained by the search and demand. And this presents a challenge, of course, but a high-quality problem so long as we move beyond the shorter-term challenges and continue to execute our strategy here.
Now let's jump into the business update section. On this page, you may see some of the most recent advances in our flywheel. We added 0.5 million customers in Poland. We launched the testing phase of the Mondial app. And we continue to add to our merchant customers, including Lidl and Amazon in France. In the U.K., we added Shein, Boden. And most notable, we moved from a pure send and return business with the launch of locker-to-locker collections.
Next page, please. With the increase of 1.9 million users in Poland over the past year, we now have more than 16 million of them. Moreover, our super hard user base, which we define as customers who received at least 40 parcels in the last 12 months, has now reached 3.2 million, up by 20% in the last year. And when including also hard users or those that order more than 13 parcels, we now have 7.5 million higher intensity users versus 7.2% at the end of Q2. Again, as convenience and satisfaction enable greater ease of use, we expect the intensity of usage of our user base will continue to be a driver of overall market growth.
And we continue to focus on enhancing the experience for our over 9 million mobile app users as well. We've launched EkoBox Orders, ECOreturns and Parcel Sharing to facilitate customer pickups. By the way, our fulfillment business strengthens InPost relationships with merchants above and beyond the superior locker economics. We now have 76 big merchants fulfillment customers and our warehouse capacity has reached over 60,000 square meters. It's almost 2.7x year-on-year, so it is not a pilot anymore. This is a day-to-day business, very successful one.
Next page, please. We know from our own data that consumers are loyal and highly satisfied with our service. But we also get meaningful affirmation from third-party sources. The annual Gemius Polish e-commerce survey completed in September not only reaffirmed our strengths, but also showed improvement with consumers across literally all the key metrics. 83% of online shoppers are motivated by access to InPost APMs when making online purchases. And this is up 2 percentage points since the last day. Similarly, 81% indicated that APMs are the most frequently selected delivery method, again, up 4 percentage points. 40% of shoppers indicated the importance of returns when they purchase online, with more than 74% of online shoppers indicating that the option to return to an APM encourages their online purchases. And that is up from 64% in the last year's survey.
And finally, the environment. We know that our automation means fewer resources are required to deliver a parcel, meaning our solution is, by a wide margin, Poland's most environmentally friendly source of last-mile delivery. And the fact that 67% of survey response view InPost APMs as the most environmentally friendly gives us sector leadership, of course, but it also shows that, to date, sustainability hasn't been the driving source of our success. Rather, our success has been driven by practical consumer satisfaction associated with convenience, service quality and of course, a very unique ability for consumers to control pickup times. However, as the environment and sustainability become increasingly important to consumers and merchants, both in Poland and internationally, we expect our APMs reducing environmental footprint will further enhance our competitive differentiation and growth potential.
And the last page before I hand over to Michael. This remains one of my favorite slides as it shows how resilient we are proving to competition. With the opportunity and returns from lockers, we absolutely appreciate the competitive pressure, but our internal data indicate that our customer base remains loyal, and as previously indicated, continues to grow significantly.
Here we track the performance of all our machines from the time a competing machine is introduced nearby. And while trends for all catchment distances are similar, here, we are showing the last 3 quarter performance for all our APMs that have a competitor within 100 meters. And our machines volumes are indexed relative to all our other APMs that do not have a neighboring competitor. And the index is above 100 because competitors naturally migrate to our best locations.
But as you can see, there is literally no impact from competition with consumers not seeing a price or quality differential with our much larger footprint and hence proximity. And with our access to all major merchants in the country, our customers are demonstrating loyalty to our machines.
I will now pass on to Michael Rouse, who will run you through slides on our international performance. Thank you.
Thanks, Rafal. Good morning, everyone. Now on Page 15, let's focus on Mondial Relay in France, and the purpose on this page is to remind us of the tremendous opportunity to gain B2C market share with merchants. As highlighted on the left-hand chart, we captured this opportunity predominantly by automating the last mile, driving efficiencies and delivering an improved consumer satisfaction through APM deployment, speed of delivery and consumer digital engagement.
On the next page, you'll see the response to date has been excellent, but let's just focus now for a few minutes on this page. On the right-hand side, we're making significant progress against all key pillars of this transformation. Firstly, densifying logistics, which is at the backbone to go from an average 3-day delivery network to 1 day. We've made good progress in the first half of 2022, with the Q3 addition in France to the large sorting facility in the InPost network. This national hub in Harnes, south of Lille, is 4x the size of the average Mondial Depot in France and extremely well positioned to serve both France and Benelux. This gives us good momentum towards our planned Q1 phase launch of next-day delivery to both PUDO and lockers in France.
So secondly, the APM deployment itself has surpassed over 1,650 locations -- 1,653 to be exact. Although a holiday period in France, our annualized deployment run rate in Q3 now exceeds 2.5 lives in APMs as we continue to accelerate the pace of deployment for 63% growth in Q3.
Two other key milestones to call out linked to our pillars of success. On the merchants wins, we're excited to announce Amazon is now a key customer of ours in France. On the top right-hand chart shows the ramp-up curve for Amazon, which we soft-launched just after the summer period, so an exciting one to watch.
And finally, as mentioned on the half 2 results, we've now launched our mobile app in Q3 and commenced quality testing to elevate the consumer-centric dialogue we want to create with the Mondial consumer. It's early still, but the early results so far are very encouraging from what we're seeing. And furthermore, what we recently won in Q3 as an award from Capital Magazine, naming Mondial Relay as the best pickup service in France ahead of Colissimo and Relais Colis, all very exciting.
So moving on to the next page. Here on Page 16, there's 3 key charts. The first 2 demonstrate how strong our locker uptake has been. And on the right, you can see how strong overall volumes have been in Q3. Our winning proposition is significantly outperforming the market.
On the left, consumers pick up much sooner from a locker than they do from PUDO's. That's excellent for our ability to optimize utilization. But more importantly, as more APMs are rolling out, and our pace of deployment has accelerated, the persistent gap in dwell time emphasizes superior customer experience and APM delivers over the PUDO as we strive to automate the last mile in France.
The middle chart is showing just how quickly an already out-of-home audience can embrace lockers. The 2022 cohort of our lockers in France, and you can see the -- is on par with the Polish cohort of 2019 and much better than the 2017 cohort as previously shown. In Q3, lockers hit 6% of our total French volumes, doubled from the previous quarter, and the Q3 cohort is today our strongest performing cohort, further demonstrating the French consumer uptick for lockers.
On the right, you can see how September was not only 42% above September of 2021. It actually matched the previous peak season record month of November '21. We entered the peak season with volume momentum, but must highlight that Q3 comparisons to last year are based on a weak Q3 and '21 due to the COVID restrictions being removed in France. In short, although only 12 months into our transformation strategy, we continue to see very positive metrics indicating consumer and merchant adoption of lockers is increasing, and our growth continues to well outperform the market.
Now moving on to the U.K. So here on Page 17, let me just start with Q3 has been a significant milestone for the U.K. business, demonstrating our conviction that U.K. shoppers are adopting lockers as a true alternative to traditional to-door. We've seen significant positive indicators, which I will cover on the next slide. But here, we've continued to focus to expand the network, focusing on density, size and quality of location. We've continued to focus on high footfall locations such as supermarkets and transport linkages with bigger APMs in the actual locations have seen a 38% increase in the number of APMs, which equated to a 48% rise in the number of locker compartments. We are on track to exceed our 2022 target of 4,500 APMs.
As you can see on the middle chart, the performance of the most recent quarter is very strong versus historical cohorts, not only further highlighting the quality of location I mentioned earlier, but evidence of accelerating consumer and merchant adoption of APMs within the U.K. market. Overall, volumes have more than tripled year-on-year again this quarter, with returns being a big driver of growth and improvement in mix. We estimate now on a run rate basis, we have well over 10% of the non-Amazon returns market in excess of 200-plus merchants live, providing a significant platform for expansion of collection services that we consider our product development into 2023.
And prior to Q3, our business was entirely returned send and rentals focused. In late August, we launched locker-to-locker collection services with a few key clients. The demand response has been tremendous and significantly above our expectations and forecasts provided by the clients. As a consequence, this has caused short-term quality challenges, which we now discuss on the next slide.
So here on Page 18. On the left chart, you can see that the collection to locker business rocketed versus forecast, reaching over 6x the forecast in the fourth week live and reforecast client demand well in excess of current logistics plant capacity. While it's a good problem to have so much demand, the challenge can be seen in the lower middle chart with the percentage of lockers at capacity exceeded 10% in the fifth week after launch. To retain service quality, we took the action to cap volumes to align more consistently with the original forecast and accelerate further investments in courier coverage frequency and sortation capacity to unlock go-forward capacity.
One such a consequence of this challenge was the unfortunate deterioration in our service quality during mid to late September, as indicated by a decline in our trust pilot stores from 4.4% in Q2 to a low of 3.87%. I am pleased to state we've now resolved the quality issues and seen a return to higher trust pilot scores as the quality of service we're covered.
The top middle chart highlights the incredible customer demand and usage with 45% of consumers on the locker to locker using the service more than once and 25% more than 3x, all within the first 2 months of launch. This surge in U.K. customer usage behavior is exciting. It's clear there's now a tremendous opportunity in the U.K., and our focus is on fully exploiting this huge potential the market offers. So we're now actively considering solutions both to complement the APM network in the short term and working with our recent dedicated courier partner to optimize capacity and geographic coverage.
Now over to Adam to take you through the financials.
So starting with Page 20 and looking at Q3, which was the first quarter when we have like-for-like performance, including Mondial Relay, which was consolidated as part of the group for the first time in Q3 2021.
We have reported revenue of almost PLN 1.7 billion at 32.6% growth year-on-year, just a narrow bit ahead of the volume growth with product mix supported for the top line growth. We had Poland a new case revenue supported with positive price/mix, while Mondial Relay still displaying negative price/mix from increased C2C share of volume. We saw very solid revenue growth across all key geographies. As I've mentioned already, all key markets, Poland, France and the U.K., accelerating the growth versus Q2 2022.
We have reported PLN 455 million of adjusted EBITDA at 27% EBITDA margin, down from 32% a year ago. We have experienced significant margin dilution year-on-year of 510 basis points, primarily driven by the margin squeeze in Poland and also by the delta of increased year-on-year international EBITDA losses being higher than nominal growth of EBITDA in Mondial Relay. At the same time, it is important to emphasize that the margin resilience in the overall business and especially in Poland was better than expected. Adjusted EBITDA, therefore, grew by 11.5% year-on-year, while reported EBITDA was up by 14.7%.
CapEx as a percent of revenue was at 15.5% and moderated compared to last year but also versus previous 2 quarters of this year when it was closer to high teens to 20% for the first 2 quarters. This is in line with the planned dynamic of CapEx intensity, where we expected CapEx to be more front-loaded to Q1, Q2 of this year and moderate as a percentage of revenue in Q3 and Q4. Leverage was down by 0.3 of a ton compared to Q3 of last year when we immediately -- were immediately post Mondial Relay acquisition.
Now moving on to Page 21 and looking at 9-month cumulative results. I will not go through every detail on the page. Here, you have our traditional way of presenting actual results, including both reported numbers as well as organic like-for-like performance stripping out the impact of the Mondial Relay acquisition. What is worth calling out after a full 9 months performance is 2 things really.
Firstly, our adjusted EBITDA margin contraction is being slowly amortized into the year with biggest hit having had come in Q1 of this year, while 420 basis points of margin contraction on a reported basis comes from consolidation of the Mondial Relay business.
And secondly, if you look at the organic CapEx growth, it increased only by 5% year-on-year on the like-for-like basis. So vast majority of CapEx growth for the year was driven by the investment into Mondial Relay.
Going now to Page 22 and Poland performance. Volume growth accelerated in Q3 to 26% year-on-year and delivering a 30% 2-year growth CAGR rate. APM volumes increased by 25%, while to-door was growing a bit faster at 30% year-on-year, but often easier 2021 comp. Revenue grew at 26%, in line with volume. To-door revenue was 2 percentage points ahead of volume growth, while other revenue being flat and diluting the overall growth rate. Otherwise, in the quarter, we have seen core revenue of combined APM and to-door segments growing ahead of volume by some 40 basis points. To-door revenue dynamic were obviously supported by more pronounced price adjustments compared to our APM segments, but this is obviously also where the cost inflation impact was more visible.
Adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter was down by some 360 basis points and 260 basis points for the full 9 months of the year. All in all, we are quite satisfied with our profitability in Poland as the margins held up better than expected, and we were able to offset more of the inflationary pressures by operating leverage and price adjustments.
And I think overall, the resilience of our model in terms of margin is very well pronounced in the quarter with margins diluted only by 100 basis points quarter-on-quarter. And actually, if you strip out the impact of new business lines, which is fulfillment and e-grocery, which both are around negative 0, the margins in Q3 have been better by 60 basis points. So the underlying contraction in Q3 versus Q2 was minimal.
And looking into Q4 next year, as indicated in the previous quarters, Q4 should be supportive for the margin performance as we have entered repricing period of some of our largest merchant clients and also would expect that the Q4 volume seasonality would be helpful here. Having said that, we remain cautious on the consumer as October has already seen volumes weakening quite visibly towards second half of the month.
Moving on to Page 23 and Mondial Relay business. So Mondial Relay have seen a very solid volume growth quarter, growing by 39% year-on-year. This is a very significant acceleration of growth rate versus first 2 quarters of the year where growth was around single digit to 10% in Q2. A lot of that Q3 growth came from C2C channel, which has shown some weakness in Q3 of last year, driving weak performance a year ago.
Now in the period of upcoming slowdown in more cost-conscious consumer choices, a strong footprint of Mondial Relay in the C2C channel is definitely providing the winning handle in the market in terms of ability to grow volumes. That obviously is coupled with growing share of C2C channel in the overall volume of Mondial Relay has with negative impact on the pricing mix and delivering, therefore, revenue growth of 34%, so behind volume dynamic.
Adjusted EBITDA was up by 13% for the quarter, while margin has come down versus Q3 last year and also versus Q2 of 2022. While the quarter-on-quarter margin erosion is partially seasonal, with Q3 historically always the weakest quarter for the Mondial Relay business in terms of profitability, the quarter-on-quarter decline is reflective of the investment into APM network expansion and logistics as well as brand support and SG&A. But overall, margin trends for 2022 is very much in line with our plans and fully reflects our expectations for Mondial Relay to deliver the low double-digit EBITDA margins, and we expect the margin to pick up quite visibly in Q4 of this year.
Moving on to International on Page 24 and mainly focusing on the U.K. performance here. So as already highlighted by Michael, U.K. has seen a strong volume uptake in Q3, especially towards end of August and early September, on the back of launch of the new locker-to-locker product. Unfortunately, level of demand and its impact on consumer experience prompted us to cap volumes, which effectively means we're not able to fully capture the volume and revenue potential of the service and at the same time, could not use the opportunity to continue to build operating leverage and optimize our unit logistics costs further.
So the volume growth of 227% year-on-year, together with continuously shifting product mix towards higher-priced product, allowed U.K. to deliver over 260% revenue growth for the quarter. This is sequential growth of 25% on volume and 21% on revenue, respectively. At the same time, we continue to optimize our logistics costs. As mentioned, the need to cap volumes in September was not helpful in this respect, but we did manage to further improve unit economics versus Q2 of this year.
That improvement, measured as EBITDA per parcel, and that is what you see in the bottom right-hand side of the page here, was 6% quarter-on-quarter. But if you actually strip the one-off cost of migration to the new logistics partners and phasing out previous service contracts, the improvement in terms of EBITDA per parcel was 27%. So very significant despite all the turbulences.
At the same time, if we internally look at the unit cost evolution within the quarter, September was showing immense improvement versus average logistics cost of July and August within the quarter by some 25% as we saw clean cost base in September, and that is without those service costs -- exit -- service exit costs and also locker-to-locker being our sweet spot in terms of operating leverage and translating growing volumes into profitable operations.
Moving to Page 25. Here, you see the bridge from adjusted EBITDA to net profit for the 9 months of 2022. A few points to call out. First, operating EBITDA was up by 41% year-on-year to over PLN 1.3 billion with a 27.5% EBITDA margin, with normalization items reduced very visibly versus previous year, where IPO and M&A costs have weighted heavily on operating EBITDA line, while incentive programs and ongoing restructuring costs of Mondial Relay continuing at much less material level, closing gap between operating and adjusted EBITDA numbers.
D&A was driven quite heavily by the IFRS 16 right of use of assets amortization, of which roughly 1/3 was associated with Mondial Relay consolidation. Mondial Relay acquisition had also a significant impact on the increase of intangible asset amortization as the effect of purchase price allocation accounting. Our group EBIT increased by 19% year-on-year to PLN 655 million. The year-on-year decline in EBIT margin was driven by both consolidation of Mondial Relay operations, while underlying EBIT was diluted by contraction of the operating margins and growing assets right-of-use amortization.
Net interest expenses rose by 176% from PLN 71 million to PLN 197 million. Of this, around half of the nominal increase was driven by the increased debt quantum rising from Mondial Relay acquisition financing. Excluding that effect, the net interest cost would have doubled during the period. The remainder of the nominal increase in the interest expenses was driven by the interest rate increase associated with floating debt denominated in Polish zloty. And while we expect net interest expenses to continue to rise, our ability to pass this inflation via price increases in Poland leaves us comfortable with the debt service capacity.
The foreign exchange gains of around PLN 104 million, so double the amount of first half of the year, have a very technical accounting nature and were associated with translation of PLN-denominated debt into functional currency of InPost SA, which is euro. As a result, net profit grew by 35% to almost PLN 430 million.
Moving to Page 26. Here, we include our bridge from adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow. Our EBITDA conversion for the 9 months of the year was 56% pre-CapEx and 54% post maintenance CapEx. While growth CapEx resulted in negative some EUR 80 million free cash outflow for 9 months of the year, Q3 alone was free cash flow positive, generating PLN 78 million of free cash flow and closing the negative gap of first 2 quarters when free cash flow was negative at PLN 158 million.
As indicated previously, CapEx intensity has been reduced significantly in Q3, and we expect the same to happen in Q4, therefore, helping us to reduce debt negative free cash flow number that we generated after 9 months and get closer to 0 to slightly negative for the full year. And obviously, we expect to turn free cash flow positive in Q4 due to both CapEx moderation, volume seasonality, but also the repricing of services that take place in Q4 of this year.
Now let me end with a few words on the full year outlook. We have clearly seen first 9 months to be net positive versus our expectations earlier in the year, both in terms of volume growth and profitability. This higher base alone could indicate for us to be more optimistic in terms of our full year guidance in Polish volumes and accordingly, margins due to the operating leverage and contractual price rises. However, the long anticipated consumer demand slowdown seems to be happening in Poland. Softer trading volumes have become visible in October and early November, and our growth rates have come down to lower levels. For instance, over the past few weeks, our growth rates in Poland were more in the territory of low teens rather than 20s.
As we do in every fourth quarter, we also create extra capacity for the peak to deliver the right quality of our services in the season of extremely elevated consumer demand. If this demand does not fully happen, we are then left with unamortized seasonal cost. We're naturally being very active to try to optimize this effort, but reduce visibility over consumer demand increases the variance of Q4 outcomes.
So while we are quite comfortable, we will surpass current consensus estimates for volumes, revenues and adjusted EBITDA for the full year on the group level. The importance of Q4 trading and the consumer slowdown leave us hesitant to provide any more granularity on guidance at this stage. We would, however, confirm we have full confidence that we'll continue to outperform growth in all our markets in the foreseeable future.
That is all from my side. Thank you very much, and I think we can move now to Q&A.
[Operator Instructions] We will take our first question from Sathish Sivakumar with Citigroup.
I got like 3 questions here. Firstly, on the Amazon volume. Can you like give some clarity on what is the terms of the deal in France? And what does it mean? Because they also have lockers that they've rolled out, right? So why Amazon is actually trying to use your network here? So any color on that would be helpful.
And yes, thanks for sharing some color around the volume mix run rate into October and November in Poland. But what are you actually seeing in terms of exit rate in France and the U.K.? And then within Poland, when you say that is actually -- has come to low teens, where are you actually seeing that drop through coming from? Like is it more on Allegro customers? Or is it like -- any color on that, like which part of the customer segment that you are seeing that slowdown would be helpful.
And the third one is yes, with the pricing with Allegro, any color on that? Have you managed to pass on the increase that was -- that you guided us back in Q2 or it has changed actually?
Thank you, Sathish. Let me answer maybe first and last question, then I will hand over to my colleagues. So in terms of Amazon, Amazon is using InPost in Poland and in France. In France, we started with packageless deliveries. And yes, you're right, Amazon is deploying their own machines across Europe, but the capacity of the network is definitely not enough to address the whole amount of parcels that potentially Amazon may drive to out of home.
So typically, Amazon collaborates with other third-party players, and that's the kind of regular thing they do on different markets in the U.K., in Germany, in Benelux, Spain, Italy and in France. So we are happy to increase the collaborative mode with Amazon from Poland also to France, more than happy to support them in their growth ambition. And it's nothing unusual here, but definitely opens a lot of new prospects for us, where we may collaborate together maybe in the future as well.
Regarding pricing on Allegro, I mean we've executed jointly with our friends from Allegro what was in the contract. So we passed price increase fully according to the definition that was in the 7 years contract, and that was executed second of November, it's around 12 percentage points.
Yes. And then maybe a question 2 and 3, Adam, over to you.
Yes. Yes, let me take the volume growth question. So in terms of Poland and the source of, say, slowdown, I'd say it's all across the board. So our read across this, it's the general consumer weakness coming across a bit more clearer in October and early November. So there's no particular channel. It's been pretty consistent across the broader market, at least what we saw.
And in terms of growth in France and the U.K., France has been more towards high teens. So again, slowing down quite visibly, but holding up -- or say that slowdown has been less pronounced than in Poland. And U.K., obviously, still triple-digit growth. But obviously, that's a slightly different dynamic given the U.K. size. So U.K., holding up quite strong. I guess that's at least where we are today in Q4. Thank you.
Yes. Can I -- quickly a follow up on the Amazon. Obviously, yes, they do work with the incumbents in different markets. But any color like what do you make on per parcel at Amazon, not an absolute amount, but directionally, how much lower it is, say, versus your average revenue per parcel in Poland? And then the second question is, if these volumes are actually coming away from the existing to-door network, to-door delivery partners in Poland and France.
Sathish, Michael here. Look, obviously, I can't comment on specific customer contracts relative to that. Could you just repeat the second question? I apologize.
So basically, the second question is actually, are you taking market share from somewhere else? Or is it just the Amazon volumes that are being like directed towards your network? So basically, is it like Amazon is taking volumes away from, say, Polish Post in Poland and then just passing it on to you? Just trying to get a sense, it's like incremental volumes or you're actually taking market share from someone else?
Yes. I mean we don't know. Simply, we know that Amazon is actively now educating consumers to diversify away from door-to-door. And this trend has started in the U.K. But this is literally the kitchen of Amazon. We don't know how they drive volume. Is that driven from door-to-door players to out of home. And -- or is that an incremental growth. Definitely, one fact is that our colleagues from Amazon now try to literally educate as much as possible their consumers to use out-of-home channels instead of door-to-door. So long term-wise, I would say, this will be a general trend that we and other out-of-home providers will take over volumes from existing door-to-door players. And it's very consistent with our strategy. Nothing new here.
Our next question comes from Muneeba Kayani with Bank of America.
Just following up on the earlier question on pricing. Can you comment on how your discussions are with other big customers on price increases over the -- so far? And kind of what are your expectations over the next couple of months? And then secondly, on the balance sheet, following up from Adam's comments, can you remind us what are your debt maturities, if any, over the next year? And what portion of your debt is floating? And then lastly, just on Allegro -- kind of new CEO in place, can you talk about how are your relations with Allegro? Have they changed the new management?
Thank you. So let me answer first and last question, maybe starting with repricing. So as we informed already after our first half financial results -- yes, Q1, that's going to be a repricing time again because we do that on a yearly basis. And just a quick reminder, in 2021, we took a lot of the cost load associated with the fuel cost increase, labor cost increase on our shoulders to give a relief to our merchants because the repricing in Poland, the scale was around 10%, 12%, with the CPI way above 17% already, most probably close to 20% end of the year, and increasing cost of the labor, especially in the warehousing and transportation, which is the only area where in Poland, we still have the real salary increase, so above the CPI.
So we gave a helping hand to our partners. We will do the same in 2023. So the scale is not yet known. But again, we will navigate here in a way that we will leave to our merchants multiple of tools for them to decrease the scale of pain. But yes, the repricing is going to happen beginning of the year on every single market we operate.
And the question about Allegro and the new CEO, I -- it's hard to comment our private discussions, but I think we have a perfect match and perfect understanding of the real priorities for both companies. So I strongly believe we'll keep that dialogue at the atmosphere of that discussion as we started with our first meeting.
Yes. And taking the 2 questions on the balance sheet. So first of all, there's no debt that matures this year, next year or the year after. Just to remind you, essentially, we have 2 major financial debt positions. First one is senior bank facilities, which mature in '26 and then the bond issues both in PLN and euro, which were issued to finance Mondial Relay acquisition, this mature in '27 -- mid-'27. So maturity is quite comfortable and definitely to the benefit of us given the current funding environment.
In terms of floating versus fixed, if you look at the net debt, and just bear in mind, around PLN 1 billion of the net debt is actually IFRS 16 lease obligations, so a slightly different nature of that position in the balance sheet. But if you take that PLN 6.1 billion of the net debt as event of September, roughly 40% of that is floating rate and the remainder being IFRS 16 and fixed euro debt obligations.
We will now take next question from Sam Bland with JPMorgan.
I've got 2, please, both on the international business. First one is France, and we're seeing pretty strong volume growth well above Mondial Relay, pretty strong volume growth and market share outperformance. Is that volume growth now also coming through the APMs and you're seeing consumers being quite willing to use APMs or a lot of that volume growth coming through still the PUDO network?
And the second question is on the U.K. business. It sounds like the locker-to-locker volume was growing very fast. Is that good volume? Would you like to have a lot of that? And I suppose what can be done to get the network in the right place? Does it basically need more APMs or something else has to happen to get the service quality there to support the growth?
Yes. Thank you. Michael here. Let me take both questions. Firstly, in France, that 6% of that volume growth has actually come through the APMs and they've been a big contributory factor. And we can see quite clearly the APM performance is excelling and every cohort is outperforming the next cohort. So we're very confident in terms of the behavior and metrics that the APM adoption in France is a contributing factor to the volume growth and the outperformance.
Relative to the U.K., I think the answer is yes. Locker-to-locker volume is good business and it's really part of the overall plan of the U.K., which was to really evolve from a dropping service, which was return and send, to now collection services, which is really the big prize in the U.K. net market, and really to see the customer adoption that we saw was phenomenal, above our expectations, clearly.
The actions that we're now looking at. One is clearly continue to stay growth. We will look to launch PUDO points in the new year to complement our current APM state growth, mainly because 2 reasons. One, PUDO, as we've learned from Mondial Relay and other markets, is a faster route to market in terms of other home. It doesn't deliver the same customer experience clearly as an APM, but does allow us to really provide last-mile capacity coverage that the current deployment rate of an APM, we can't accelerate at the same pace. And the second element really is continuing to invest in our logistics capacity both in sortation and last mile.
We've really been focused on trying to build capacity, but such a surge in demand, clearly, our current state doesn't solve for that. So I think the confidence factor now is very high, and we now need to double down in the investment strategy and continue to accelerate at pace to capture what effectively is customer demand with the combination of headwinds in the market and clearly, consumer adoption to APMs.
And I'll take the next question from David Kerstens from Jefferies.
A couple of questions from my side, please. First of all, the market share gains in Poland in the third quarter seems relatively limited or the growth of the overall market was much stronger than expected maybe compared to previous quarters. What was behind that despite the huge cost benefit of APM delivery? So your to-door volume growth was even higher than the APM growth.
Second question is, can you quantify the Allegro price increase since it's based on that formula of 12 months rolling CPI and wage cost inflation?
Then maybe on the U.K. Is the reason that you're now capacity-constrained, the reason you're not collaborating in the U.K. with Amazon. And in the beginning of the year, I think you indicated that you would slow the rollout of the APM network in the U.K. because of the change in the -- on the logistics side. Is that where the real capacity constraint lies? Is it on logistics? Or is it in terms of the number of APMs and lockers?
And then maybe finally, what's your view on expansion plans by DHL in Poland that were announced, I think, early this week?
Okay. Maybe let me answer again question #1 and the last question. So growth in Poland is always a combination of both channels, meaning that -- let's bear in mind that our door-to-door proposition is the best door-to-door proposition on the market, all the consumers' surveys showing clearly that InPost is #1 in both channels. That means that also part of our repricing strategy of 2022 was to support not only out-of-home APM-driven volume, but also cross-sell door-to-door proposition because in some -- with some clients, our share of checkout on out-of-home is almost 100% of their total out-of-home. So there is no more space to increase the volume. So if we ask them to be more aggressive in terms of volume commitments, they had to drive door-to-door volume. Simply, we are taking over existing door-to-door volume from existing players, and that's another element of our growth potential in Poland.
And about expansion plans of DHL or any other player, I think you've already guys learned a lot about our business and customer centricity and our constant messaging about our key market trends not related to physical locker deployments. Our strategy from the early beginning was to focus not on competitors, but on customers. Every company doing opposite, in most cases, fails. So we are not commenting, we are not focusing on what the competitors are claiming here and there. We are literally doing everything to increase our compelling customers' value proposition.
And the result of this strategy is that we delivered increased margin in Poland irrespective of the number of thousands of machines and number of players claiming they deliver more and more machines to the market. The machines are empty or almost empty. We increased the penetration. We increased the customer base by another 0.5 million of customers in just 3 months and increased the number of heavy and super heavy users massively.
We deployed 2,000 machines within a quarter. We increased the loyalty and stickiness, again, massively, almost hitting the roof. And the utilization of the locations where competitors deploy their machines nearby also increased the game. And our share of checkout finally has increased on merchants' website to levels that even us, we haven't expected. So once again, please understand our strategy. We are the company focused on clients, not on competitors.
No, that sounds very compelling. And of course, you have highlighted that before. But why does DHL still plan these things? And DHL, it would be a different competitor than the existing competition you have in Poland, right, with the sizable logistics business in Poland?
I don't think so. DPD is the largest door-to-door player, not DHL, and they deploy their machines as well. And on average, they have 2 parcels per machine a day, whereas we have 80 parcels per machine a day. Because, again, it has nothing to do with physical steel deployed right on the street. We understand that. Many of our competitors don't. So let them deploy.
David, answering your questions on the U.K., but I think you had a question on Amazon first. Look, I think, firstly, the Amazon rollout into France I just emphasized is really a development in the past 12 months of the investment and the quality and the coverage that we have built into the French network. And I think that's recognition of what we said in the strategy in France is really to invest into that. And that clearly is one of the recognizing factors why we're now launching with Amazon in the French market.
The U.K., I think we remain open to partner with Amazon, but the question is not about our capacity. I think it's more about coverage in the U.K. I think our coverage in the U.K. today is quite concentrated. And clearly, we need to -- we would need to expand our coverage in order to work with Amazon, in our opinion, at this point.
When it comes to the constraints in the U.K., I think to emphasize what I've said to the previous people on the call, the constraint is not lockers. I did identify on the call that we've had about 5% of the estate full for a period of time. And when you look at the actual peak that we hit, I wouldn't say it's a locker capacity challenge. I would say lockers were full. The [indiscernible] is our last mile logistics ability in terms of ramp-up speed to match that demand and the sortation capacity to really manage the flows between a locker-to-locker transaction.
So that's really where -- when we slowed down in the beginning of the year, it's because of really balancing that logistics coverage and service quality. And to Rafal's point, our objective primarily is to build a customer-centric, high-level service quality product. And in the U.K., that clearly was being impacted with the surge in demand and the ability not to -- to manage that demand due to the constraints.
So our primary objective has been to deliver that service quality and really readdress that in the sort of last few weeks and then further now look at building it in a more controlled phase, albeit we want to continue to run fast. But clearly, there are certain constraints on the infrastructure we have to balance in terms of making sure delivering from existing customers at the same time.
I will now take the next question from Robert Joynson with BNP Paribas.
Three questions from me, please. First of all, just a question on the Allegro price increase, which Rafal mentioned was around 12%. If I look at the cumulative rise in Polish CPI between November of 2020 when the Allegro deal was signed and the latest data point, which is for September, the increase was about 24%, so essentially double the 12% mentioned. Is that just a coincidence? Or does the inflation-linked price increase actually specify roughly half the headline CPI?
And second question on competition. I appreciate your focus on what InPost is doing and not particularly concerned about what the competitors are doing. But just as a follow-on from the question on DHL announcing that they're going to roll out their own APM network in Poland, do you have any indications that any other parcel operators may be planning to do the same?
And then final question for Michael on the U.K. and Italy. The volumes and the revenues there obviously continue to improve, but there's clearly a lack of operational gearing coming through as you mentioned in the presentation. If I look at the relationship between the unit cost and the unit revenue, the unit cost over the past couple of quarters has basically been around 75% higher than the unit revenue.
So I mean there's no question that the quality of service is very good. I've used your lockers myself and they're super easy to use. But looking at that business from the outside, the path towards EBITDA breakeven is not very clear. Could you maybe just provide an update on time frames in that respect and also the key milestones that will be required in order to achieve that?
Adam, would you clarify the Allegro repricing topic once again?
Yes, sure. Happy to. So I think -- I'm not sure, Robert, how your math works and how you think about the cumulative impact. The formula that we have in the contract is pretty straightforward. You take the LTM period preceding the go-live date, and you simply run the average of 12 months preceding the date, okay? So it's not cumulative. It's basically the average of the preceding 12 months. And therefore, if we look at that, and it's a headline -- it's actually the lower of the 2 just to be very specific. It's the lower of the 2. It's either the headline CPI formula or it's a combination of CPI and labor inflation, and we take the lower of the 2. So the 12.6% that Rafal was mentioning has actually come out as the lower of the 2, and it was the combination of labor inflation and CPI inflation for the 12-month period. I hope that's clear now.
And obviously, if you think then about the next price indexation in 2023, that will obviously reflect what's happening right now in terms of CPI, both CPI and labor inflation, where labor inflation is obviously subsiding a little bit, but we're talking CPI of [ 18% ] and the expectations of an excess of 20% perhaps as late as end of this quarter and first quarter next year. So that's definitely been going to be reflected in the new indexation rate.
And let me tackle the -- again, the DHL angle. So today, I would say, Polish Post, DPD, DHL, these are the pure players that are rolling the machines or plan to roll the machines, rollout machines. And yes, that's the current fact.
Yes. Let me take the U.K. point. I think we've commented before, we're not guiding to a specific time frame on the U.K. business towards breakeven in previous calls. But as you can see in the -- clearly, in the last quarter, and specifically, Adam talked about it in September, we have seen dramatic reduction in cost per parcel impact to our overall U.K. contribution.
When it comes to critical milestones, I think the key question here is, clearly, we're investing now for capacity for the future. We clearly have even stronger conviction over the last quarter with the evolution of collection services towards customer demand versus the traditional to-door service in the U.K. And I think that's been the challenge that many have asked us sort of across this period is, will lockers prevail in a predominant U.K. to-door market? And I think we're now seeing very, very strong evidence of the consumer behavior with that. And also the merchant adoption really against sort of higher inflationary pressures where the to-door business is even further challenged.
So our conviction now is actually to continue to that to invest, ensure the service quality. And the key milestones for us is a steep growth. One, we said previously that like a minimum of 6 sizing locations is critical; two, to continue to invest in last mile capacity, i.e., courier coverage and frequency, there is a set amount of courier stops and frequency that we need to achieve against the current network as did, and we know what that target is; and then thirdly, clearly, is the development of collection services that we just launched.
I think some would asked earlier on the call, collection services are a good product mix for us in terms of service to really optimize the full sort of stat because we're obviously going and collecting from the same location that creates further operating leverage. So really, our acceleration now is to invest in that capacity and really ensure that we're taking the market share opportunity, but obviously creating further operating leverage as we evolve. But we're not giving any specific guidance to when we were breakeven because clearly, the market dynamics are evolving, and we want to make sure we're taking the opportunity now.
And I will take the next question from Stefano Toffano with ABN.
So a few questions from my side. The first one is on the 43% year-on-year volume growth in the nonlabor channel in Poland, which is very impressive. If you can maybe shed some light and talk more -- a little bit more about this. Then the next question is on France. So we talked about Amazon, also important about Allegro. Can you maybe comment on things that what you see there in terms of volume development and maybe something on the pricing?
Also, I don't know if you can tell me how many PUDOs there are in France now also given what we mentioned the last quarter of the strategy of using the PUDO points as flags. And maybe a last question is related to what you see or what we can expect in terms of free cash flow profile in 2023. Obviously, that depends on -- clearly on the volumes and pricing. But nonetheless, you have given the strong growth in APM deployment, very high or very smart growing lease liabilities and interest rates as well and you need to continue to invest. So if you can maybe help me out to see what we can expect in terms of free cash flow profile over the next few years or so.
Thank you. Answering first question. So non-Allegro volume growth, yes, really impressive, and that's the kind of result of our strategy that we've taken beginning of the year to support especially Polish verticals, Polish merchants, but also the new marketplaces that wanted to enter Polish space. And yes, we will continuously do it, in the same way, also using our repricing strategy to use it as a leverage to increase the share of checkout in exchange of extraordinary quality we are offering to those merchants.
Handing over to Michael regarding France.
Yes. We're approaching just over 11,000 PUDO points. I think that was the question, if I heard. Can you actually repeat the question on Vinted, sorry, just because I was breaking up on my side?
Yes, sure. Just a general question on Vinted. Would you see them doing how volumes are developed and maybe something on the pricing? You've already said something on that during the last quarter call, but maybe if you can give us an update.
Yes. I think Vinted's performance and I think the whole C2C performance sector has continued to be very strong within France in particular, obviously, benefiting from, I'd call, circular economy tailwinds. So Vinted and other C2C market places are performing well. And clearly, the PUDO and locker combination is a very strong offer for the consumer and the merchant in that proposition.
Two, when we look at pricing, I think the comment is, obviously, this time last year, we entered into a framework agreement with Vinted, and we now will be cycling through that into Q4 in terms as we go forward. So there won't be the same comparisons previously.
Yes. And maybe let me pick up on the free cash flow profile going forward. So 2022 is definitely a challenging year. And as we've been indicating in the previous quarters, and this quarter was better in terms of free cash flow generation, but not too different in terms of price dynamic versus cost inflation dynamic. And it's been a challenging year because obviously, we have to face an upfront cost inflation, whereas our ability to reflect that in the pricing was somewhat delayed into the end of the year.
Now we're kind of matching that gap, the time gap, and are able to reprice and make up for the cost inflation on the top line. So clearly, we are rebasing our P&L and cash flow structure in terms of ability to generate free cash flows. And then going forward, the plan here is, yes, we have to continue to invest, and we will invest and increasingly more so in the international markets, but we would expect that the total quantum of CapEx over the next 2 to 3 years is pretty much flat or largely unchanged, say, in the region of PLN 1.1 billion, PLN 1.2 billion, with a changing mix of that CapEx and a changing focus more on France and the U.K. and Polish CapEx being gradually accounting for a lower share of the total CapEx spend.
So if you think about this and you also think about the pricing, the increasing pricing ability, let's say, and also the absolute growth in terms of EBITDA number, would expect that our ability to generate positive free cash flows in 2023 and onwards would increase compared to this year. So we would expect we are still capable of continuing to invest quite significantly into the increase of the network, both APM logistics capability in the key markets, but at the same time, be able to generate positive free cash flows going forward.
And we will now take the next question from Henk Slotboom with the IDEA!.
Rafal, I'm a bit confused about what you say about the -- filling the gap in terms of pricing. I understand that you're going to increase the tariffs but not as much as one would think on the basis of the cost inflation caused by fuel cost and by higher labor costs. Could you perhaps clarify that a little bit more what you're thinking of. Is it fair to expect that given the fact that the out-of-home channel is more efficient than the door channel, that the pricing gap between the 2 is increasing, is widening. That's my first question.
The second question is mainly relates to the Benelux countries. Recently, Instabox and Budbee announced a merger, they are both very much focused on the out-of-home channel. How do you see that for your future growth potential in the Benelux countries? Will it help to promote the out-of-home channel because that still has a relatively low penetration in the Benelux. Or could it maybe interfere with your expansion plans in the long run there? I understand it's not a key priority in the near term. But perhaps you could help me clarifying that a little bit more.
Thank you. So you rightly said, yes, exactly filling in the gap. Our productivity is 8 to 12x better than in door-to-door. It means that we are sharing that productivity and efficiency with our clients, with our merchants, that's why our price increase is not 1:1 comparable with a fuel cost inflation, labor cost inflation like it impacts typically pure door-to-door players. So rightly said, the gap between our out-of-home value proposition and door-to-door increases in this inflationary environment. And that's also the driver for the volume and compelling service that our merchants are choosing as a preferred one InPost.
And in terms of Benelux, just shortly, it's hard to comment again what's the strategy here of the merged companies you mentioned Instabox and Budbee. For us, as we many times explicitly said core markets are the largest markets, meaning France, U.K., Poland, end markets where Mondial Relay is holding already an important position, which is Iberia and Benelux as well, of course. But we want to counterbalance that with an intense PUDO point acquisition in those markets because, as you said, Benelux is still underdeveloped. On the other hand, the customers are pretty willing to switch to out-of-home. So plenty of potential here and definitely us being the already -- will not give up, and we want to take as much of the share as possible.
Can I perhaps add a third question, Rafal? If you look at -- you rightfully say that the pricing gap between out-of-home and to-door is increasing. And it doesn't look as if inflation is starting to return to, let's say, pre-COVID levels in 2023, will this accelerate the movement you've always referred to the fact that to-door is a premium product and that at the end of the day, the receiving clients, the online buyer may have to pay for that. Somebody has to take the pain. Would you see from clients -- I mean you're active in to-door in Poland as well. Have they begun to charge the online buyers? Or do they absorb the impact of higher tariffs from sales? Perhaps you can shed some color on that.
Yes, Henk. I mean when we IPO-ed, we were several times asked what's our view? Where the market will land at the end of the day? And not all the people believed in our statement but the statement is still here. In my opinion, out-of-home will be majority of deliveries within a few years, 5, 6 years from now, we will see out-of-home definitely above 50%. In some markets like already early adopters, Baltics and Poland, it's all already above 50%. So we may navigate into 70%, 75%.
And rightly, door-to-door is becoming a premium service that customers like but have to pay for it. And definitely, I see very limited space for merchants to absorb that cost. And we see that as visible signs, merchants not offering returns for free or offering returns for free-only if it's out-of-home, heavily charged if it's door-to-door collection. So the trend has started, and the trend is very supportive to our development.
And we will now take the question from Marco Limite with Barclays.
So the first question is about 2023 volume outlook. I can see some Bloomberg headlines about some comments you made this morning about a possible outlook. Just wondering if you can repeat those comments on this call, please?
And secondly, again, I'm aware that probably it's a bit too early to comment on the '23 guidance. But when we think about EBITDA margin for Poland in 2023 -- if in 2021 you had margin pressure because you had inflation and limited price increase. In 2023, you will still have inflation and more price increases. So directionally, am I right in thinking that in terms of EBITDA margin on a year-over-year basis we shouldn't expect a big step up in margins year-over-year, but either flat to a small increase in EBITDA margin, please?
Thank you, Marco. So I think on 2023 volumes, I guess it's a bit premature to be more specific than we were on the previous quarter and what we reiterated right now where we basically said, we're still quite comfortable with our ability to grow ahead of the market growth. And obviously, depending on what we believe 2023 full year market growth is going to be. We still think structurally and fundamentally we have all the right tools in our tool sets to be able to win the market share -- net-net in all the key geographies. Now I think it's a bit too early also to give a view. Also if you appreciate the fact, we mentioned low visibility over Q4. There's probably even less visibility over 2023. So I would just probably reiterate, we still feel quite strongly about ability to outgrow the market. But what that growth rate is going to be is probably better to discuss around the Q1 next year.
And then on the margin, I would probably agree with your suggestion, which is the inflationary pressures will be still very significant, if not elevated even in the first half of 2023, and the whole environment will be very, very challenging. So I'd say we probably are well supported to maintain our margins, but significant margin expansion is probably not very likely.
And I will now hand over for the webcast questions.
Thank you, operator. As most of the questions online have largely been answered and we have run over time, I will go back individually where there is still an outstanding question via e-mail. I'd like to thank you all for your time this morning, and we look forward to continued engagement for -- to help you further understand our differentiated productivity and growth potential. So please do reach out if you have any further questions. Thank you, and good day.