Hi, I'm Mike Harris. Having been very impressed when I worked with the team prior to the IPO, I'm very pleased to have recently joined InPost as interim head of Investor Relations. 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. Rafał, over to you.
Good morning to everybody. Thank you for joining our today's presentation. We'll have around 75 minutes today to have enough time for our Q&As. Maybe let's start then with a quick reassurance about our strategy. First, our mission. It's nothing short of changing the consumer ease, economic efficiencies, and of course, sustainability of Europe's e-commerce last mile. Lockers are an e-commerce enabler for merchants, and of course, when widely available, transformative for consumers as well. Poland is not unique. It's just the first country with some successful transition. On the next page, you see three clear indications of why lockers win. As mentioned, when lockers are convenient, consumer loves the high quality experience of controlling collection times. Obviously, our locker NPS, which was already in another league versus the so-called old-fashioned To-Door competitors, rose farther again in 2021.
A satisfied consumer is the holy grail for merchants. That's obvious. As our NPS indicates, we elevate the consumer e-commerce experience. That comes with clear cost benefits for merchants of around 25%, sometimes to 30%. In this new inflationary world, the merchant focus on limiting cost rises for the consumer is likely to be super supportive of our market share. Crucially, everyone on our planet and in our communities benefits from the reduced need for vehicles with lockers versus traditional to door delivery. This means a dramatically reduced carbon footprint per parcel. Lower fuel consumption is most relevant, taking into consideration cost of delivery again. Yes, the whole e-commerce globally has generally been led by to door so far. If we execute well, what we've done already in Poland is highly exportable, we are sure.
Economics and consumer preference alone support locker success. Of course, it's all the more likely when sustainability is taken into account. Maybe on the next page, we show the drivers of our flywheel that reflect our truly unique and transformational last mile solution. This is a kind of quick reminder. The mechanism here, we gain scale and proximity to households. No one can offer better service for consumers. That statement is relevant to every angle, from the delivery speed, quality, standardization, ease of use, controlling pickup times, and of course, sustainability. Bringing more convenience for the consumer that drives increased usage, which then leads to wider merchant adoption. This is not just because we have industry-leading economies for merchants. It is all because of the consumers. Once exposed, consumers integrate their neighborhood locker into their lifestyle routine. This growing consumer use brings stickiness.
Widening merchant adoption creates, again, significant economies of scale on our operations. As mentioned before, automated parcel last mile requires significantly less fuel and labor, and simply has lower variable costs than To-Door delivery. I will speak about this later. Our higher fixed cost base drives meaningful operational leverage that, of course, widens the gap versus traditional To-Door players. As Adam will discuss later, this drove significant margin gains in Poland in 2021. What about 2022? Of course, normally higher costs are a challenge for us, like they are for much of the world. Yet the simple reality is a higher inflation in a structurally growing market is less damaging to us than it is for our To-Door competitors.
While this won't be an easy year, what I want to say, it is nonetheless a year where our structural cost edge will continue to grow and our flywheel will continue to spin. Maybe on the next page, quick summary on the main goals. In 2021, we had four key strategic priorities. First one was enhancing our Polish flywheel, then integrating Mondial Relay, then scaling up our U.K. business, and as always, using our bespoke data lake to improve our performance. As you will see on the next page, we've done quite well on each of those fronts. Going into details. In Poland in 2021, we continued to cement our competitive differentiation with a 63% rise in locker numbers to more than 2.4 million, and we now are within a seven minutes walking distance for 56% of Polish population.
We also reached over 14.8 million APM users, people that use our solution. That is almost one locker for every five Polish households, and the equivalent of one user per household. Our merchant numbers rose from 30,000 integrated to more than 38,000, and the outcome was a powerful increase in our B2C market share from around 44%- 48%. Our flywheel in Poland is spinning hard. Michael Rouse will later run us through that progress as well on the other international markets, as our biggest challenge and opportunity of 2021 was the successful integration of Mondial Relay. Of course, keeping the progress in the U.K., where with a tripling of our APM numbers, we are now approaching scale in core geographies in the U.K. around London, Birmingham and Manchester, having more APMs than post offices there.
Finally, as we do in every year, we continually seek to improve the performance by leveraging our bespoke data lake that comes with our more than 9 million active app users. Just as an example, in 2021, thanks to right data use, we minimized dwell times in our most capacity-constrained locations. The result was an extra 5 percentage point increase in utilization in those locations without spending CapEx on the extensions. This is just one of the examples. On the next page, we provide some perspective on the opportunity that signing our long-term framework agreements with large merchants across borders will bring to us. Just as our large partnerships in Poland has been a big driver of our growth historically, we now have significant opportunity to repeat this with merchant partners across Europe. This is the Pan-European strategy.
Even with the success of our largest partner in Poland, with Allegro, with its over 10 million app users, you can see that our Pan-European merchants have nearly 3x as many active app users across our geographies, 3x more demand. As we deliver the locker experience that has won over Poland to our partners across Europe, the upside opportunity is significant. It's not the end. More to come. Jumping to the next one, we achieved some quite remarkable results in 2021, despite the very high 2020 base. Across our markets, InPost locker volumes grew at better than expected, 46%. Our investment in APMs giving us accessibility to 56% of Poland's population within seven minutes walking distance, helps to improve NPS and grow the B2C market share of InPost in Poland from 44%-48% in just one year.
With this growth, of course, our operating leverage meant that adjusted EBITDA, excluding Mondial, rose 48% for the year. We have plenty of other great stats on this page, but now I'd like to run you through our ESG differentiation. Here we are with the ESG. First, we have aligned ESG strategy to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals with a strong commitment to Scope 1 and Scope 2 climate neutrality by 2025, and Scope 3, the most difficult one, by 2040. On the next page, of course, you know, I think it's not an overstatement to say that our lockers are the most scalable sustainability game-changer for the last mile e-commerce. How impactful it is, let me just use one of the examples.
One of our machines saves more CO2 in a day than nine big trees absorb in a year. In just 2021, thanks to the delivery to APMs, we saved an equivalent of 54 million liters of fuel versus delivering them to door. That's an impactful ESG angle of the solution. On the next page, we outline our ESG ambitions and the strategy and our commitment to literally be there as quickly as possible with the carbon neutrality. We help massively to our Ukrainian friends using our transportation of the humanitarian aid at mass scale. We are facilitating actively recruitment opportunities for those who don't speak Polish. Last year, we promised a comprehensive ESG strategy. This is now delivered with very strong quantitative commitments. Let's move on now to the Polish market details.
Just a quick reminder about the flywheel effect that you see. We offer consumers unmatched convenience thanks to the density of the lockers. This, of course, elevates consumer satisfaction, drives usage, adoption, and of course, we see huge uptake from merchants, and this accelerates market growth and leads us again to improve our market share and margins. On the next page, you see that 2021 was an especially strong year in terms of our locker deployment. I want to coach you quickly through this slide, which is quite important to understand the strength of our locker estate. On the upper left side, you see that we had 19% of all our locations in 2020. Then in 2021, we accounted for more than 70% of those net additions, giving us nearly 90% of all APM locations at the year-end.
As you see, our machines are much larger than competitors' machines. This means that in 2021, we actually accounted for more than 90% of all new lockers added to the market, and that gave us a kind of 98% market share among all the APM competitors. If we jump into the next page, we took also an independent, reputable surveying company to measure the impact of the competition to our utilization. Out of all Allegro, AliExpress, and DPD locations, they surveyed 36, where InPost has got a site in the vicinity of around 50 meters to measure how many parcels go to each APM. The survey it was conducted for one whole week in March 2022, 24/7. The conclusion is pretty clear.
In the exact locations, InPost locations attracted 62x higher customer interest than in front of the other machines. Looking also on the right-hand side, you see the average utilization of our APMs in the same surveyed cities during that week. I think the numbers speak for themselves. On the next page, you may see one of my favorite slides about the utilization, the machine cohorts. First, in terms of utilization, which is key focus, of course, if you look at the average APM utilization across the entire network in 2021, you may notice that there is a drop in utilization, which was diluted by very significant 2021 new cohort size when we deployed more than 5,000 machines, and they were still in the ramp-up phase.
If you look, however, on the vintage cohort utilization on the left-hand side, you will notice that our historic cohort shows strong capacity utilization, which underpins our high returns old cohorts, and there is no like for like dilutive effect. Second important point is that if you look at the ramp-up of the 2021 cohort, which you see on the middle of the page, the ramp-up was very strong. In fact, it has beaten all previous years with the exception, of course, of the super turbocharged 2020 COVID cohort. This is a very good indicator that as we continue to improve the convenience and we build the consumer adoption, the utilization path is right. In fact, if you look at the returns curve on the right-hand side, we expect the 2021 cohort to deliver payback in just about 12 months.
On the next page, very briefly about the density. As I said already, we now have 56% of the population within a seven-minute walking distance versus around 7% for our largest competitor on the same metric. Also, you see on the chart right-hand side, when lockers get closer to our consumers, the intensity of usage rises about 40% in larger cities. We sometimes get questions about cannibalization. However, with the capacity for consumers to buy more, it's not something that's changing the metrics here. We will continue to invest to optimize the proximity to our consumers from both a growth and, of course, a competitive perspective. On the next page, flywheel in action.
Just our mobile app, three years after the launch, more than 9.2 million active users with five-star ranking and still growing rapidly, as well as, you know, turbocharged cohorts of so-called super hard users who literally didn't exist in 2018. On the next page, happy to share, you know, some big brands that for sure you'll recognize, but the main metrics is that 27% rise in 2021 in terms of the newly integrated merchants. On the next page, few important remarks about the source and the dynamics of our growth, as well as changes to customer mix in 2021. As you know, Allegro continues to be our most important partner, and we are absolutely dedicated to develop this strategic partnership in the future as well.
At the same time, we are actively opening growth avenues outside of Allegro platform, where emerging new players and our blue chip strategic merchants, also from abroad, have more organic growth potential given their share and significant growth ahead of the market. This allowed us to generate new sources of organic growth and a bit broader market dynamics. As you see on this page, our non-Allegro channel turbocharge, including existing and the new merchants we onboarded. At the same time, we estimate that our share of Allegro volume is stable and continues to provide us with a pretty stable base for future. On the next page, before I take you through our relative performance and market share gains, it is very important that I clarify on some popular misconception of how general public read market growth data.
Namely, very often people compare GMV growth rate to volume growth rate, hence missing apple-to-apple comparison, and draw fundamentally wrong conclusions on our relative performance and the market share evolution. What you can see on the left-hand side, this is how one should translate GMV growth dynamics to volume proxy growth by adjusting for inflation and non-physical services that don't generate volume traffic. Based on this, you see that 2021 market growth GMV on about 30% translated to B2C market parcel growth of about 19%. Then if you compare this to full year 30% growth rate of our InPost B2C volumes, the conclusions on the market share gains is quite obvious, and actually contrary to some of the external views which failed to make that proper GMV to volume bridge. Finally, the last page in this section.
With the end of the lockdown tailwinds, 2021 saw moderating growth for the market, but irrespectively, it was a very strong year for us relative to market. In 2022, companies and consumers faced significant inflationary pressures, in particular for fuel. While this presents a general challenge for our margins short term, our competitive advantage actually expands more rapidly in this inflationary environment, because to deliver our parcels via APMs, we use 76% less fuel than in To-Door delivery. Also our couriers have 6x higher productivity versus To-Door couriers, giving us additional advantage. Adam will discuss the outlook in more detail later, but first I will pass to our International CEO, Michael Rouse, who will explain how we can export our Polish experience to some large European markets. Thank you very much.
Good morning, everyone, and thanks, Rafał. Let me start just with a recap of why we made the acquisition of Mondial Relay. I know I've touched on this in the past, but I think it's important to reinforce and continue to identify what the opportunities present. Clearly it presents a significant opportunity to accelerate the automation of Europe's e-commerce last mile. What's the basis and the foundation? Well, firstly, Mondial has a 20% market share of the French parcel market. It's already a significant player in the third largest e-com market in Europe, providing us immediate access to a pre-existing pool of consumers that already pick up their parcel. One-third of the market is already using out-of-home.
Not only does the combined group give us a leading position in the out-of-home parcel business across all of Europe, it provides widespread existing merchant relationships and the scope to leverage and build on those merchant relationships, in particular with immediate focus on the international ones that Rafał touched on earlier. You all know when you do an M&A, it clearly provides an immediate ability to add on growth. Mondial Relay is clearly deeper than that for us. The investment case is about how we automate that last-mile journey with the existing logistics and the immediate ability to connect a pan-European network which doesn't exist today in the market.
Our efforts to really focus on building logistics network density, building capacity, and driving for reduced delivery times clearly are gonna be key ingredients to really building the Mondial Relay, building trust and confidence and building new users to the Mondial Relay brand. Clearly we have to evolve from what is today an economical slow delivery solution that's taken somewhere between three and five days to deliver to a pick-up point, one that really replicates what we've done in Poland, which is next day delivery at the lowest cost with the highest customer satisfaction in the market. Launching our customer app in the second half of this year will be a key part of what we plan to do to start that customer engagement, as well as relaunching the Mondial Relay brand to really start a constant communication with the consumer.
These are only some of the features that we plan to roll out. Clearly a key ingredient on top is the accelerated locker deployment, as it will not only bring operational and economic efficiencies, it's just gonna bring a happy shopper. Therefore a happy shopper will lead to a high customer satisfaction and NPS, and therefore higher merchant uptake. Let me just touch on some of the key wins we've already had, and some of this you may have read in the press, and, clearly I just want to emphasize and touch on some of these to reinforce.
At the start of our integration, we clearly identified the need to really rebuild the Mondial Relay management team in France, and that we've really now completed, putting a strong team together coming from companies such as Auchan, Veepee and Pernod Ricard, as well as elevating existing talent within the company. Integrating IT has also been a key parallel focus and that is well underway. Like always, when you look at an acquisition like this, we're searching for quick wins. Quick wins have already been established in logistics coverage and density to really enable what was this, a record peak for the company, as well as reactivating the sales pipeline with 100 new customers onboarded. Never mind the success of already deploying 300 lockers within a very short period of time.
Clearly, lockers are not the only answer to this business today, and we had to grow our PUDO capacity to complement the peak and the growth in it at the key critical time of the year, which we successfully did. Then finally, we're beginning the journey to improve the quality. Clearly a big part of that quality to move to D+1 is the investment in a new logistics hub just south of Paris, which now will enable us in the second half of 2022 to start to target the under-developed and the under-represented segment of B2C that Mondial Relay currently acts in today, where we believe we've an estimated 8% market share.
As we look forward to increasing and improving customer experience, you know our objective here is to turn a parcel business like most of the industry and has relatively little differentiation and operating leverage, but one that starts to really see this flywheel turn. Finally, you know one of the most exciting parts in 2021 has been really cementing our Vinted relationship for the next five years. Not only does it allow us to underpin our volume with Vinted, not just in France, but across all of our international markets. What's clearly exciting is the consumer that works with Vinted is one that we identify readily as an early adopter of our lockers and an early adopter of how we see the customer experience developing within France.
This not only underpins volume, but really cements our customer journey that we want to build as we develop loyal users, but ultimately advocates for the locker journey and igniting the flywheel. Let's touch on some of the data points that we've already identified. I've mentioned the 300 lockers, and I've mentioned this 11,000 locations. What I haven't really touched upon is actually the brands that we've done that with. Clearly, one of the advantages of having 11,000 locations and a scalable out-of-home network already is we have meaningful retail partners, such as Lidl, such as Carrefour, and Système U. Having those meaningful partnerships has allowed us automatically to start to leverage the locker conversation. Again, partners like Lidl work with us, not just in France, but across Europe, and understand the locker story.
This really becomes an active dialogue and one that we can develop even further that really gives us the opportunity to target 3,000 locations going into 2022 with meaningful high traffic, supermarket locations. The middle slide is really the early ramp-up that we're seeing in terms of number of parcels per location per week. The data in France is just really positive. If you actually look at the pink line here in this middle chart, you can see already we're surging ahead of what we had in terms of a cohort in Poland in 2017 when there was already 2,000 APMs deployed in Poland. Really encouraging data. Finally, we've been working with our retail partners who've actually been able to share the NPS scores that they've seen with actually the early deployments of APM versus PUDO.
Again, we're seeing really positive information, which from a retailer point of view is also really encouraging 'cause it's a journey they want to develop, considering also the headwinds they're seeing today from an economic and macro point of view on To-Door. As we look forward into 2022, these data points give us even more confidence in the investment thesis that we've put together that clearly our journey on the starting of the spinning of the flywheel and the return and the value add that we want to bring to Mondial Relay are clearly forming part of an important part of our ingredient mix. Finally, not only are we seeing the external points from our landlords, from our merchants, and actually the consumers using the lockers.
What I thought would be quite key here is to actually go through as we augment the existing PUDO network, what is it doing to our overall, if you wanna call, operational metrics, which ultimately will lead to our improved margins and EBITDA delivery. Well, firstly, we already know that PUDOs only typically operate on a 5.5 days a week, and PUDOs themselves close it typically at 6 P.M. Therefore, lockers immediately win with the 24/7 solution. Clearly that is an immediate customer vote. When we talk about the customer vote, when we look at dwell time, this is clearly the most obvious that we've seen already, where on average, we're seeing a 33% improvement in the pickup time from a locker than from a PUDO.
This improved turnaround time at lockers is even more encouraging, 'cause we haven't even started trying to send text messages nudging the consumer or really trying to find ways to improve the overall ability, which clearly from our point of view, is clearly further opportunity when we launch the app and customer communications going into the second half of the year. Furthermore, as we look at asset utilization, we're also seeing in equal points where we've got drop factor, we're seeing our couriers are able to deliver more because the quicker turnaround time, which ultimately then in itself is leading to higher capacity in the overall estate.
Clearly very encouraging signs that when we bring together both dwell time, drop factor, and capacity really demonstrate the potential improved economics we can see from a growing APM network versus a PUDO network, as well as the consumer benefit that we see. Going into the balance of this year, we're very encouraged and very excited and very much affirmed with our plans and our investment thesis in order to really deliver on the medium-term expectations. Well, let's now turn just to really cover two slides on the U.K. One, give you an idea of what we've been doing across 2021, of which some of you will have heard before. Two, just a deep dive on some of the key metrics that are really proving an important part as we evolve the model.
You know, the first key pillar is driving convenience, and we've had great success in really driving over 3,000 locations, tripling our estate. Moreover, really driving high-quality locations, working with our retail partners to really drive coverage and density in the key areas of Manchester, Birmingham, and London. You can see on the top left-hand side of this page that clearly a key objective has been to drive density, and one of the outcomes of that density in 2021 within the U.K. has been the tripling of the estate and really driving coverage that we're now in those tier one locations of Manchester, Birmingham, and London, that we have over 42% of locations within a seven-minute walking distance. We've had amazing success in going to market with instant returns.
We really took a decision in the middle of last year to really start to pivot away from our rental business to start to have a direct dialogue with our retail partners, and we've chosen returns as a point of entry. One, because it allows us to really have a faster integration with retailers. Two, we can create a point of differentiation to solve what is a very frustrating customer pain point for retailers and customers alike in really providing a first-to-market label-less product, which is also demonstrating and coming through on our Trustpilot scores.
What we're really now starting to see is fast, rapid adoption of that product, which really has got us to over 100 retailers signed at the end of 2021 with 85 transacting live on the platform, coupled with what we're already doing with Vinted and eBay in the send proposition to really ensure we're going to market with a proposition that allows customers to trial and adapt to using the locker. From a first mile rather than tackling typically the last mile problem, so we can enter the market in a surgical disguised way. The final part of the U.K. business is really now to evolve our own logistics model, similar to what we've done with Poland, to really ensure we're creating operating leverage, but also ensuring that we're really starting to control the end-to-end customer experience.
That's something that's really now we're starting to test as we really make sure we're trying to deliver on the unit economic objectives. The final slide really from this section is really just to give you a flavor. I've touched on the left already what we're doing on the network. If I really touch on two components, what we're seeing around ramp-up of locations. The gray line in this middle chart, I think, is really giving us a strong indicator of the power of the supermarket cohort that we launched at the back end of last year, but also the power as we increase density, we're starting to see greater consumer awareness.
Unlike Poland, where the actual locker drives consumer adoption, we're really partnering with our retail partners to drive awareness and clearly working with brands like Tesco, Sainsbury's, Morrisons, Lidl, to really create brand awareness and consumer awareness to really the power of what it is with the locker estate and really give consumer confidence in using the locker. The second element of the journey is really how we're decoupling away from the rental business. You can see at the end of 2020, we were sitting at 50/50 approximately between rental and InPost. Now as we go to market directly with returns and with our send proposition, we've really transformed and grown the business organically, really with a 300% growth in the business nearly.
The InPost own volume really becoming two-thirds of the proposition, and hence the opportunity now to really evolve into our own logistics model. We'll continue to be hyper-focused, hyper-surgical around our deployment and our CapEx utilization to really ensure we're getting the highest return from both the location and the product offer as we continue to scale what is still quite a young business in the U.K. Thank you for that, and I'll hand over to Adam.
Thank you, Michael, and good morning everyone again. On the financials, I will focus mostly on Poland, as we only acquired Mondial Relay in July and in the later part of 2021. The focus was on building strong fundamentals for the transformation to happen in 2022 and beyond. The U.K., which is still a loss-making business, would be judged more on the operational metrics that Michael ran through. First, let me provide a quick recap on the delivery of our IPO guidance. Clearly, firstly, we did not avoid mistakes during the year and obviously with the volatility associated with the consumer demand, especially in the second part of the year. It is clear that our decision to lift guidance during the year after IPO was premature.
If you actually go back to our IPO guidance, you'll see that most of our metrics was delivered. In Poland, our main miss was To-Door business. As you know, this is not core to our model flywheel. We still gained considerable share in APM volumes, thanks to about 44% growth, and only modestly missed the low end of our volume target range. Despite that, and despite volume shortage, we did deliver on the APM revenue, which was key for us to beat our margin guidance, thanks to our operating leverage. We also over-delivered on APM deployment. As Rafał showed you earlier, the performance of our APM new APM cohorts was strong, and that's despite the moderation of sector growth and supportive to our margin improvement.
We believe our accelerated APM rollout is net present value enhancing, but CapEx was naturally higher than target. All in all, relative to market in Poland in particular, we are pleased with our performance in the market, which was characterized by a lot of volatility and slowdown of growth. On international, we've been fairly consistent with delivery. Moving 1on to page 36. Rafał has already shared key highlights, but just to point out the key metrics again. Our full year revenue growth was 82% on reported basis or 39 organic growth if we exclude Mondial Relay consolidation effect. Poland grew at 38% year-on-year, while group APM revenue posted 47 year-on-year organic growth. Adjusted EBITDA was up by 64% on reported basis.
Adjusted EBITDA organic growth, excluding Mondial Relay consolidation effect, was 48% year-on-year on a full year basis. Adjusted EBITDA margin contracted by 400 basis points, driven by dilutive consolidation effect of Mondial Relay, while on like for like basis, margin expanded by 230 basis points. You also see increased CapEx intensity on a like for like basis to 24% of revenue, driven by our APM expansion program. Lastly, I'll spend more time on net debt later during the presentation. Moving on to page 37. What might be helpful in a year when we made meaningful acquisition? Here's the bridge from our consolidated 2020 to our reported and pro forma 2021 revenues. You can see we had good volume growth from Allegro and in particular from Allegro Smart.
Importantly, our non-Allegro volumes were a greater contributor to our revenue growth by a fair margin. As mentioned previously, To-Door was less strong. Clearly, that business is not part of the InPost flywheel, but is a good extension of the core service. Half-year Mondial Relay contribution from July 1st was clearly very material. As you can see, there in 2021 was limited pricing impact across our markets, with volume remaining the key growth driver. At the same time, contracts gradually roll over, and contractual inflation price adjustments kick in. Pricing will definitely be a more important part of revenue growth as we move forward. Now moving on to Poland on page 38. In Poland, we grew parcel volumes by 38% in 2021 off a very high 2020 COVID base.
Very healthy growth, which brought two-year volume CAGR to 72%. In Q4, our parcel volumes grew at 21% and still ahead of the broader market. With flattish pricing, revenues grew in line with parcel volumes, both for full year 2021 and in Q4. You will also notice that Allegro's share of our Polish revenues fell 2 percentage points during the year. This is thanks to non-Allegro merchants accounting for a larger part of our incremental growth, as I mentioned before, while we estimate that our Allegro market share remains constant. In both 2021 full year and Q4, our operating leverage drove adjusted EBITDA growth. For the full year, our Polish adjusted EBITDA margin expanded by 480 basis points to just over 46%.
In Q4, when we saw slowdown in growth year-on-year, we still reported an increase of our adjusted EBITDA margin from 44%- 45.5%, driven by productivity improvement and scale economies. Moving on to page 39. In terms of gross profitability, we have continued to see margin expansion across the year as a result of the financial impact of our flywheel. Direct cost per parcel, as you can see here, fell 7% for the full year, driving 470 basis points margin expansion to close to 57% gross margin for the full year. In Q4, we saw only marginal gross margin expansion by 50 basis points. This was driven by two things.
First of all, still early ramp-up period of our higher cost base, which was driven by expanded depot network and sorting infrastructure. As you remember, this expansion is part of our long-term capacity and productivity program. Secondly, we took on more cost in Q4 in anticipation of higher volumes in days before Christmas, while actually peak week was somewhat weaker than expected. Moving to Mondial Relay on the next page. Mondial Relay, the company clearly had two distinctive halves of the year, with first half being strongly driven by the COVID lockdown backdrop in France and very high abnormal utilization of PUDOs. Whereas in second half of the year, we saw more normalized performance with Q3 strong volume dip versus 2022 high base. This is reflected in the second half of the year being lower margin.
You can see here Q4 performance characterized by lower growth, flattish revenues and contracting margins driven by normalization of utilization and also negative price effect driven by change of our new pan-European contract. As we have disclosed earlier on, we expect 2022 to be investment year in Mondial Relay, and therefore startup cost of APM and logistics network as well as investment into SG&As will drive the business to further reduce margins in 2022 versus 2021 and 2022. Moving to international on the next page. In terms of international, we drove our revenues by 287%, mostly in the U.K., which grew in excess of 300%. Pricing has improved, driven by mix and lower share of third-party volumes, reflecting bigger uptake of rental and B2C volumes in the U.K.
We have seen EBITDA loss increasing very materially, as we still have negative unit economics due to low scale density, but also logistics model in 2021 that Michael was referring to in his part of the presentation. The second element is if you look at international EBITDA, we have invested heavily into our Pan-European commercial team, which is designed to support U.K., France and other markets alike to manage effective dialogue and coordination with our merchants on the Pan-European level, which is a vital part of our strategy. On to the next page, in terms of CapEx. On this page, you can see our CapEx structure and allocation by geography. So obviously, APM network was a key driver of 2021 CapEx. Also, 2021 has most likely seen the peak of CapEx spend in Poland.
Whereas 2021 CapEx intensity has increased to 21% of revenue for Poland, this ratio will come down very materially already in 2022 onwards. At the same time, France will become the key driver of expansion CapEx going forward. Moving to page 43. Here you see adjusted EBITDA to net profit bridge. Two short comments from my side. First one, of course, there's very material cost impact on Mondial Relay acquisition and integration costs, but these are typical one-offs. Secondly, I'd like to re-emphasize this has not come across clear in many conversations I had. Our share-based compensation adjustments are different in nature compared to most of the public companies. A major chunk of the cost, namely the PLN 80 million in management incentive plan that you see here as adjustment, are non-cash item, and that's common for all share-based programs.
They also create no dilution effect as they are not linked to any share issue either now or in the future. No dilutive effect for the shareholders. Very important point. We also provide visibility around IFRS 16 leases and corresponding intangible asset amortization, which build our EBIT line. As you see, this position is dynamically rising and will continue to do so given our expansion plan, plans primarily in France, but also in Poland in 2022 and on the back of annualization of our 2021 expansion to date. Moving to free cash flow on the next page. On this page, you see bridge from adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow. I know that post investor feedback, we are now communicating free cash flow after IFRS 16 lease payments.
Free cash flow for the year increased by 73% with stable cash conversion ratio of 8%. Important to note for me that cash flow pre-expansion CapEx was around PLN 1 billion. Also 73% up year-on-year with cash conversion increasing by 300 basis points to 63%. This is clearly showing that our underlying ability to generate stable recurring cash flows has increased and is a sign of our strong fundamentals. All else being equal, this also provides us for quite a reasonable degree of financing flexibility as we enter these more uncertain times. This clearly will continue also to be the case as we reduce Poland's CapEx intensity in the midterm. Although margin challenges related to inflation will partially offset that positive trend in the short term, as I'll cover quickly during the outlook section.
Moving to net debt position onto page 45. So here for comparison, we are presenting 2020 pro forma net debt, including the pre-IPO reorganization effect as described in our prospectus. On net debt, our net debt has more than doubled over the year, driven by two key things. First of all, of course, Mondial Relay acquisition has contributed roughly PLN 2.3 billion in debt to the balance sheet, which accounted for roughly 80% of absolute debt increase. Secondly, IFRS 16 liabilities accounted for almost 18% of net debt increase, of which Poland accounted for just about 50% of the absolute increase in that number. Hence, our leverage at year-end was 3.3x net debt to EBITDA on a reported basis.
However, including full year effect of Mondial Relay consolidation, the leverage ratio would be just below 3x at 2.9. In line, as we have guided at the acquisition date. Now moving to guidance section. First, before we move to 2022 guidance, a bit of Polish macro context, which I guess has a lot in common with European and global outlook, and is obviously influenced very heavily by the Ukrainian war backdrop. Like the rest of the world, we face challenges with high inflation, faltering consumer confidence and overall uncertainty, but to a much higher degree. Higher energy and food prices are now an issue for all European economies, yet Poland's economy is also being heavily impacted by the war and the massive inflow of refugees.
Consumer confidence in Poland had already been weakening last year due to inflation, but you can see it absolutely tumbled with the start of the war. While there are signs now that it might have bottomed, it is clear that we'll have to deal with much lower levels of consumer confidence in 2022 than what we saw at the end of last year. Inflation expectations have spiked enormously, safe to say what you see in the center of the page. Central Bank's inflation expectations for 2022 have almost doubled since November to almost 11% for the year. Accordingly, Poland is also likely to see interest rate increases that are higher than most countries face, which will also have an obvious impact on disposable income levels.
Taking all of that into account, our outlook for 2022 is clouded both from demand and from cost perspective, and the latter, especially in the fuel price context. Moving to outlook on page 48. With this difficult macro backdrop and uncertainty about war scenarios and therefore impact on the economy, we are of a view it is impossible to give precise guidance for a full year 2022 at this stage. Our conviction for the year is focused mostly on our ability to continue to grow ahead of overall e-commerce parcel market and continue to gain share. While inflation will boost GMV, we now expect single digit to high single digit to low double-digit volume growth in Poland based on current macro expectations.
With our scope for market share gains, our volumes should come above that range. In terms of pricing, as our contracts that account for far more than half of our volumes will not adjust for inflation until late 2022 or early 2023, we anticipate pricing will substantially lag inflation. On the current inflation trajectory, with fuel indirectly accounting for a significant part of our cost base, there is high sensitivity of our cost base to the volatility in fuel cost. All told, this is likely to mean that a significant reversal of 2021 EBITDA margin gains will happen in 2022. We have also decided to scale down our ambition for the U.K. APM network deployment, recognizing the need to manage CapEx given uncertainty, and also prioritizing at this point, France as much lower risk investment.
Finally, on the midterm outlook on page 49. In the midterm, we do believe that current energy and labor inflation challenges turn into positive for us and the current headwinds become tailwinds in the midterm. As alternative delivery methods, as we mentioned it a couple of times already, are characterized by much higher labor and fuel intensity. Our cost advantages should translate into even clearer benefits for the merchants. Also forced energy transition in Europe will increase consumers' awareness, no doubt, around energy consumption and should be beneficial for building even stronger consumer preference and advocacy for our more sustainable delivery model. In the midterm, we are even more convinced that we can continue to outperform market in terms of growth in all key geographies and grow at mid- to high-teens CAGR.
Also, ability to introduce inflation-linked price indexation at the end of 2022 or beginning 2023 should enable us to recover in 2023 and onwards some portion of the 2022 margin loss. Naturally, delivery on our modular opportunity will become more relevant. We are not changing our view on the target EUR 100 million- EUR 150 million of incremental EBITDA on this midterm horizon. With Poland gradually reducing CapEx intensity and with strong cash flow generation in Poland, we are confident we can continue to see a declining trajectory of net debt to adjusted EBITDA towards the target of roughly 2x over the medium term. That is all from my side. Thank you for your attention, and I guess we move now to the Q&A session. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one. We will now take our first question from Lisa Yang from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I have a few, please. Firstly, you showed in the slides a dip in consumer confidence, you know, following the war and given, you know, rising inflation. Have you seen any impact, or what sort of impact have you seen on sort of market GMV or volumes or specifically more about your volumes? It'd be great to have, you know, some color on Poland, but also France and U.K. The second question is on your market share. You obviously expect high single-digit, low double-digit volume growth for the market. The last year I think you outperformed that by a bit more than two , 2x.
Do you think you should be able to continue to maintain that level of outperformance or double the growth rate of the market? That's the second question. The third one is on pricing. Obviously with the Allegro contract, the pricing is flat until November. What are you planning to do regarding the remaining 50% of your volume? How are you thinking about pricing and what the particular lag between pricing and cost inflation? Any color on what competitors are doing, especially on the To-Door side, in terms of what they're doing on pricing, I think, would be great.
The last one, if I may, which is a bit related to the third one, is just on your contract terms with Allegro. Clearly that was signed at a time where inflation was very different and there was no war. I'm just wondering if there's any sort of, you know, scope to renegotiate that, especially ahead of the November 2022 inflation peak coming in. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Let me take the first three questions. Maybe I'll leave the Allegro question for Rafał. First of all, in terms of the market, the overall market volume growth and our performance year to date, I think, you know, with the exception of the, you know, let's say 1.5-2 weeks, immediately post the war outbreak in the Ukraine, where the market has literally, you know, almost crashed. We've seen a very material step down in terms of transaction volume in Poland. That has, you know, largely rebuilt over the last two to three weeks. All in all, we've seen quite a healthy growth in Q1.
I think we're very happy about the growth, but our concern is not based on what we see right now in terms of the actual results and the actual performance. The concern is more about how the current macro pressures and inflation will be pronounced in terms of consumer confidence and purchasing decisions in the later part of the year. We are of a view that, you know, Q2, Q3 will see that impact, you know, very visible on the consumer side of things, and therefore it's much more a concern of what's going to happen in the months to come rather than what we see right now. That would be probably the answer to question number one.
In terms of market share progression in 2022, again, as we've, you know, guided, we expect still to outperform the market. We are quite confident that we'll add to market share. It's, you know, very difficult to say, is this going to be a 1.5x, 2x of the market growth, at this point in time. It, you know, there is too many unknowns and moving parts, especially again, in terms of the dynamic, but we're quite positive. As Rafał mentioned, and as I was mentioning, you know, given the current headwinds, inflationary headwinds and how that impacts cost structure and how that translates into the pressure, you know, to increase prices. Our relative advantage should actually increase.
Especially on the merchant side, I think we'll be quite visibly not only more sustainable, but more attractive from the cost efficiency perspective. I think that confidence around being able to grow above the market is there. In terms of pricing for this year and next year, again, it's a combination of two things. I mean, we are translating some of the cost pressure, especially on the fuel side to our customers. That's very clear, and that's also, you know, the practice for the industry. Now, our ability to reprice a part of those cost pressures is actually lagging, you know, the actual market dynamics.
You mentioned Allegro, of course, as you all know, you know, our clause there is very clear, and that's coming into force Q4 this year. Also for some of the big platforms, not only Allegro, but big platforms and some of the blue chip merchants, you know, we have fixed period contracts, and our ability to reprice will only come either, you know, later in this year or early next year. Therefore, there is this shift between when actually the cost pressure happens and when we are able to translate it into price increases. Again, you know, having said that, clearly we should be able to reflect a lot of those inflationary pressures in our pricing until early next year.
That is the first three questions and the Allegro question I'll pass over to Rafał. Thank you.
Thank you, Adam. One comment to To-Door pricing. The other couriers are already following our path. As maybe you noticed, 1st of April, we are increasing prices materially by almost 8% on both To-Door and locker channel. It can be, of course, slightly counterbalanced with largest players if they commit to a certain volume commitment or usage of our other services. That's also something that's fueling our growth for 2022, and we are using this repricing as a kind of leverage. In terms of Allegro, as you know, last two years, our partner, our friends from Allegro were benefiting from the seven-year contract through which we haven't increased prices.
November this year, definitely we will use the clause in the contract to reprice Allegro channel. Also not to, you know, increase the gap between non-Allegro clients and Allegro clients because the gap between the pricing is already pretty significantly. Yes, we will execute that. The contract is not leaving any space, let's say, for renegotiations because of the geopolitical situation. That's why also we are not planning to open that point now.
That's very helpful. Thank you.
As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one. We will now take our next question from David Kerstens from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for the detailed presentation. I've got three questions, please. First, on the competitor activity slide that you showed, it seemed that there has been an acceleration in competitor activity in the second half of the year. As I recall, I think you highlighted only 2% of local additions in the first half. How do you see that develop in 2022, particularly given the more attractive dynamics of APMs in an inflationary environment? The second question is on CapEx. You highlight that you are taking a more selective approach in ramping up the networks. Can you give an indication on what you are expecting for CapEx for this year, and how many new APMs will you deploy in Poland, the U.K., and in France?
The final question is on the U.K. Scaling down the APM deployment, as you already have reached substantial critical mass in the key cities, how does that impact your targeted EBITDA breakeven points in the second half of this year? How is that impacted also by the move towards own logistics? Will it be initially dilutive and then more accretive longer term, similar to the profitability levels that you experience in Poland? Thank you very much.
Yeah. Let me maybe start with the CapEx question. David, as you pointed out, you know, we are guiding, you know, to be a bit more selective in terms of capital allocation this year, obviously, given uncertainty in the market. I think we've pronounced clearly our APM deployment ambition for France, where we've said, you know, for this year, we would expect to deploy from 2,000- 3,000 APMs. Despite the overall, you know, macro situation and uncertainty, we would not want to compromise on this, as this is obviously fundamental element of our plan to transform Mondial Relay business in France. That is really where we very strongly hold to our target.
For Poland, you know, we'll be a bit more reactive in terms of how the market performs, what dynamics we see. We'll try to be flexible with our CapEx. Don't give any precise guidance as to the number of the machines we want to deploy. It will really depend on, you know, what we see in the later part of the year. And finally, for the U.K., I think, again, not guiding for the precise number, but, you know, initially we've been saying, you know. I think in the last year we were indicating, you know, for the deployment of roughly 3,000 of APMs this year. We've scaled this number down quite significantly.
I mean, firstly, just, you know, for the sake of prudent approach and being a bit more cautious how we manage the balance sheet. Secondly, as Michael indicated, you know, it's really focusing around the optimum coverage in the TCTs and also, you know, solving for logistics, you know, to build those efficiencies on the logistics side of things and try to move to the point where we get to a more positive unit economics on the U.K. business on a per parcel basis.
That obviously has an implication for the breakeven, because basically our breakeven indication originally for the end of this year was predicated on the additional 3,000 APMs to be rolled out this year and having the network of roughly give or take 6,000 by the end of the year. Right now we don't think we'll be at that level by the end of this year, and therefore that would imply that the breakeven might be pushed out farther into the future. That's the comment. Maybe in terms of competitor moves, in terms of APM network rollout, I'll pass over to Rafał.
Yeah, happy to. So, answering your question, David, you know, definitely competitive activity is visible in terms of the deployed locations, in terms of the size of the machines. As we have presented, on one of our slides, these machines are pretty tiny in terms of the capacity on average and also in terms of the performance. As you saw, clearly, we are massively outperforming in terms of the utilization in the same locations. This is exactly what we've been communicating so far, that the stickiness of the clients, that's something what will give or not give success to certain players. We strongly believe that with our NPS, with our mobile app, with the whole ecosystem and quality of the logistics, these elements are now showing off clearly all the advantages of InPost flywheel.
It's not about the number of deployed machines, it's literally about the performance of those deployed machines. That's why we stay pretty positive in terms of our midterm view to deliver more than 26,000. Maybe, you know, this was conservative as we communicated during IPO. Looking at the current performance of the other players' machines, we are even more positive in terms of the stickiness of our InPost clients that they choose our solution. In terms of the U.K. deployment and the logic behind, I hand over to Michael.
I think we've covered that, Rafał, so I'll check back with David if he has any other questions.
Yeah, that's great. Maybe one quick follow-up on the profitability of Mondial Relay. I think you came out at an EBITDA margin in the second half of the year when it was part of InPost of 14%. I think the implied guidance that you provided on a pro forma basis in November suggested around 11.5%. How do you see that profitability of Mondial Relay now going forward in 2022?
Yeah. The 2022 outlook doesn't change to our original view. Clearly Q4 was a bit stronger performance in terms of productivity efficiency. All in all, we are not expecting, you know, to see the level of profitability in 2022 change. Actually the reduction in profitability and contraction in margin is still the expectation, given that, A, we will invest quite heavily not only into APM network, but also into the logistics network and the densification of the PUDO depot and PUDO networks, both of those. And secondly, we'll invest also into SG&A, you know, to build a more robust commercial capability of the team. That still holds.
Okay. That's great. Thank you very much, gentlemen.
Thank you.
As there are no further questions over the phone, I'll now hand the call back for your questions over the web.
Thank you, operator. Gentlemen, there are quite a few questions. Obviously, there are some about the rumored buyout that was reported in the press. I don't know if you want to address that, please.
Yes, of course. Thank you. I think nothing new since our comments that we've published. We are not in any conversation. Also, our standpoint as management is we are here to execute our long-term strategy that we've presented during the IPO. Hard to comment what's in the public domain. I may speak also on the as a shareholder, my shareholding side, that I'm not interested in any public to private activities right now. Fully focused on the delivery of long-term value for the shareholders that already trusted us.
Very clear. Thank you, Rafał. Here's one for Adam. It's just asking, do we have any hedges in place that insulate us from the impacts of higher fuel prices or higher interest rates?
on the fuel price side of things, I mean.
We're not really hedged on the price. The fact being, as you know, our model is heavily subcontracted, and it's those subcontractors who directly transact and buy fuel. Therefore, we are exposed to the changes of the market prices. In terms of interest rate, our debt structure right now is such that roughly 40% of the borrowings is based on the fixed interest rate. From that perspective, that is clearly beneficial for us. Whereas, 60% of the PLN denominated borrowings is floating rate, and that part is not hedged currently.
Thanks, Adam. We're getting questions as well from Mike too, the logistics model in the U.K. If you can explain that, the logic of that, a little more, please.
Yeah, sure, Mike. Historically, we've had a relationship with really with a single source supplier, with a traditional To-Door logistics supplier. We've really identified that it's better to work with a group of smaller subcontracted and well-trained locker specialists like we do in Poland. Rather than relying on a single incumbent supplier, we've been testing that model at the end of 2021 and going into 2022, and we've seen really positive outcomes, in particular, the service level, and two, the ability to control the locker end-to-end experience.
Really our focus now is transitioning away from that legacy relationship and actually what comes with that in terms of a rental business and concentrating on sourcing local subcontract suppliers to really accelerate the growth in the specific regions where we're operating the locker network today, to really continue to remain focused as we make the transition to effectively what would be better unit economics than a traditional rental relationship that we've had previously.
Great. Operator, were there any further questions, please?
As a reminder, to ask a question over the phone, please press star one.
Thanks. Unless one pops up right now. Go ahead, operator.
There are no further questions at this time.
Thank you. Well, I'd like to thank the team and all those who've listened in on the call. We appreciate your time very much. If you have any further questions, do not hesitate to reach out to us. Thank you and have a good day.