Good morning, my name is Gabriela Burdach, and I'm the Investor Relations Director at InPost. Welcome to InPost First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. As always, a quick disclaimer: today's call includes forward-looking statements that are subject to risks, and it is possible that the actual results may differ materially. The call is being recorded, and it will be available on our IR website shortly after the call. Today's presenters are Rafał Brzoska, CEO; Michael Rouse, CEO International; and for the first time, Javier van Engelen, the new CFO of the InPost Group. After the slides, we will have a Q&A session. I am now pleased to hand it over to our CEO. Rafał, over to you.
Good morning. Thank you, Gabi, and thank you all for joining us today. We had an encouraging start to 2024, which was in line with our ambitions and expectations. We remain very much on track in implementing our strategic priorities, and these include continuing to expand our pan-European locker network with a particular focus on APM deployment levels in the U.K. and in France, of course. Let's begin with an overview of our European presence. We are the leading out-of-home network in Europe with over 70,000 points, including 38,000 APMs and 32,000 PUDO points. In just the first quarter of this year, we expanded our network by over 3,000 locations. It's also worth mentioning that 62% of our out-of-home points are now located outside of the domestic market. Next page, please. Let's look at our Q1 highlights.
In Q1, at the group level, InPost handled 243 million parcels, representing a 22% increase compared to previous year, with revenue growing at a similar pace. Our adjusted EBITDA for Q1 was 36% higher than last year, accompanied by a robust positive free cash flow at the group level and a further reduction in our net leverage ratio. In Poland, our parcel volume once again outperformed the e-commerce market. Revenue grew by an impressive 26%, and our adjusted EBITDA margin reached 45%, which is a similar level to the same time last year. Turning now to international markets, our parcel volume increased by 26%, with the U.K. adding the most, but all our markets delivered year-on-year growth. Revenue in non-domestic countries rose by 15%, but adjusting for foreign exchange effects, the growth rate reached 25%.
Our adjusted EBITDA margin for combined international markets achieved a record 9% compared to just 3% in the same quarter a year ago. To wrap up, we are making very good progress in building our B2C business in Mondial, driving profitable growth in the U.K. and Italy, as well as enhancing our already market-leading position in Poland. Looking ahead, we remain confident in our full-year outlook. Let's move on to the next page. We deliver double-digit growth in volume, significantly outpacing the market across all our geographies. And in Poland, we continue to expand our market share while already being a leading player. Last quarter, we once again outpaced the market by a solid 8 percentage points. In Mondial countries, despite facing a challenging environment and declining market, we are surpassing e-commerce parcel growth.
We are very encouraged by the fact that, especially in a strategically important B2C sector, our volumes grew by an impressive 28% year-on-year. In the U.K., our proven concept not only drives significant volume increases but also enhances profitability as we scale up. In Q1 2024, our parcel volume surged by 147% in a stagnant market, and our current focus is on expanding capacity to support our further growth. Moving on to the business update, Poland. Here you may see that in Poland, we have continued to expand our network, reaching a total of 22,600 APMs with nearly 700 machines added in the last quarter alone. This solidifies our undisputed leading position in Poland in terms of network coverage. Our parcel volumes in Poland increased again by 20%, with APM volumes growing by 18% year-over-year, which was driven by marketplaces and the fashion segment.
Door-to-door deliveries showed dynamic growth of 34%, also driven mostly by marketplaces. Now turning to the next page. Here I would like to showcase InPost's robust utilization levels across our network. Our data confirms that when we deploy new APMs, they follow the same trend in utilization versus our older machines. We already have 22,000 APMs in Poland and the most dense APM network, and yet the newly added APMs still have high and improving utilization rates. For the total network, regarding what you can see on the right-hand side, we were able to improve utilization year on year despite the fact that we are already at very attractive levels. During the last peak, we had higher total network utilization than the previous one. This trend continued throughout Q1 2024 as well.
On the next page, you may see that we are continuously searching to improve our customers' and merchants' experience. I've already mentioned several times that InPost Pay will be our company's most important innovation since the creation of the first APM. Launching Q1 2024, it is more than just a payment app. It's a very convenient and very efficient checkout app, providing a two-click payment and easy delivery. We have just started, and we have 1.6 million registered users already. We are receiving high ratings from them. Our NPS is already at the level of 61 points. We also see very positive feedback from merchants who observe a boost in conversion at their checkout, and that's essential for them. I will now hand it over to Michael for a short update on our international business. Thank you.
Thanks, Rafał. Good morning, everyone. Q1 2024 has been a strong quarter for the international business and all the markets that operate within it. We've continued to take market share from legacy incumbent players, and we've been attracting and building new users to our APMs in all markets. We've solidified InPost and Mondial Relay as the leading locker solution in the U.K. and France. At a snapshot, as Rafał mentioned earlier, over 60% of the group's total out-of-home delivery points are now located outside of Poland. This percentage will only continue to grow. In terms of volumes, over one-third of the total group is generated by our international markets now. In Q1 2024, these grew by 26%, faster than the Polish volumes. We expect this to be the case on a go-forward basis also.
In Q1 2024, we increased our international APM network by 55% year-over-year by adding over 1,500 new APMs. The number of lockers increased even faster by 73% year-over-year as we deployed larger machines and also expanded the APMs already deployed as we continue to build capacity for the increasing volume demand. We're still adding PUDO points to increase the density of our network. This is not at the same pace as APMs, but they do continue to provide great support in highly populated but potentially difficult-to-deploy APM locations. Now let's move on to Mondial Relay on page 13. Our key priorities here remain the same, and our strategy remains on track: one, to expand our APM network, two, to grow the customer and merchant adoption, and three, invest in improving end-to-end operational quality.
In Q1 2024, we added almost 900 new APMs and 500 PUDOs, increasing the total number of out-of-home points by 20% year-over-year as we continue to build density and convenience. In France, over 30% of the population live within a seven-minute walk to our APM and PUDO, and we continue to invest in this convenience strategy. So let's move on to volumes. Mondial Relay is operating in a very difficult market condition with declining e-commerce markets as well as healthy competition. However, despite those market challenges, we've delivered 9% volume growth in Q1 2024, significantly surpassing the e-commerce market, proving that our efforts and business model are successful. Our offer is clearly attractive and continues to gain traction with both consumers and merchants alike.
This growth is driven by the B2C segment that increased year-over-year by 28% in the whole quarter and now accounts for over 40% of the total Mondial Relay volumes. Moreover, all of our new volume is going to our APMs. In Q1, 23% of Mondial Relay's volume in France was delivered via lockers, a significant leap from the 10% in Q1 2023. You can also see it on the chart in the middle. Our new cohort follows the adoption rate of the previous ones, confirming the recognition of our expanding locker network. The whole network utilization is growing, but we still see room for further improvement as we continue to build out the density and convenience. Javier will talk about financials later, but I just want to highlight here that Mondial Relay is gaining scale while at the same time improving its profitability.
So now turning to slide 14. A critical part of our journey in transforming Mondial Relay is transforming the consumer and market legacy perception. We're very excited about the Tour de France event that starts next month, and this is a significant stepping stone partnership to deeply connect with an event that is at the heart and minds of the French nation. Mondial Relay and InPost are the official event sponsors. To give some further context, Tour de France gathers 10 million spectators every year along the roads, plus over 2 billion people watching the event on TV or via streams globally. There will be 21 stages, including three in Italy and 17 in France, and one hybrid stage starting in Italy and finishing in France. We'll have InPost branding in Italy and Mondial Relay branding in France.
We are directly installing 300 APMs in connection with the Tour de France. The event gives us even more means to build loyalty among APM landlords, partners, and specifically with some of our merchants to engage our growing consumer base. Our marketing team is busy making this a standout occasion with accompanying events, pavilions, mascots, and all other stuff to make sure we are visible on the route and starting and finishing towns. We're super excited to be sort of launching this partnership this year. Now let's turn our attention to the U.K. In the U.K., we're on a path to create a fully integrated model. In Q1 2024, we saw a continuation of trends in volume and profitability from the end of last year. We have the largest APM network in the U.K. with over 6,800 lockers.
In Q1 2024, we deployed over 400 lockers, increasing the APM network by 33% year-over-year. This expansion solidifies the coverage of our network. In the core three cities, our coverage is over 60% of the population. For the entire country, it's now at a solid 33%. The number of lockers grew even faster than APMs by 60% year-over-year, the result of deploying larger machines and extending the existing ones, all while keeping our utilization rates at the highest levels. As illustrated on the right-hand side, our quarterly volume experienced consistent growth through 2023 and 2024. In the last quarter, volume has more than doubled year-over-year, and it's worth highlighting that Q1 2024 volumes were at the level of the 2023 peak.
There is still room for growth, especially as our offering in the U.K. doesn't cover B2C, which is the largest part of the market that we still have to address. In the next quarters, we'll continue our ambitious deployment plan and expand beyond the three core cities as we offer national seven-day-a-week coverage. We will continue to improve operations in conjunction with Menzies. We're now piloting a B2C offer and plan to launch B2C on a larger scale towards the end of this year. Thank you. I'll now hand over for the first time to Javier to talk about the financial highlights.
Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. As this is my first time taking you through the financial highlights, I would like to briefly pause and thank Adam for his dedication over the years in shaping InPost into its current success story. Stepping into his shoes, I plan on building upon his legacy, and I'm looking forward to continuing a close collaboration with all stakeholders. On that note, let's start with the summary of our first quarter financial performance on slide 17. As already mentioned by Rafał and Michael, Q1 shows a strong start to the year, with overall parcel volume up by +22%. All markets are growing well above market rates, resulting in broad-based market share gains. Revenues in Polish złoty are up by +21.5%.
However, this includes a significant negative FX translation impact as the euro weakened by about 8% against the Polish złoty compared to quarter one 2023. At a constant exchange rate, revenue growth was +26%, exceeding volume growth by mid-single digits as per our outlook. Importantly, at constant FX, Mondial Relay revenue grew by +7%, and another international market grew by +145%. Adjusted EBITDA, both in Polish złoty and at current constant exchange rate, increased by +36%, with Mondial Relay increasing EBITDA in euro terms by +11%. The group adjusted EBITDA margin increased by 340 basis points from 27.9% to 31.3%. Poland's adjusted EBITDA margin remained roughly stable at 45.4% compared to Q1 2023. Mondial Relay increased its margin by 30 basis points while growing market share and investing in future growth.
Our international businesses consolidated their turn to profitability that was achieved in the second half of 2023. CapEx intensity decreased from 11.2% in Q1 2023 to 10.1% in Q1 this year, as the highest pace of expansion outside of Poland was more than offset by the lower pace of expansion in Poland due to domestic infrastructure requiring lower investments. Together with the higher absolute EBITDA, this results in a Q1 Free Cash Flow of PLN 213 million and a reduction in our leverage ratio from 2.2x at the end of full year 2023 to 2x at the end of Q1 2024. Breaking down the financial highlights by segment, let's start with Poland on slide 18, where Adjusted EBITDA in Polish złoty grew at the same pace as significant revenue growth.
As aforementioned, volume increased by 20%, significantly outpacing the market, and revenue grew by 26%, outpacing volume, mainly as a result of our repricing efforts. Adjusted EBITDA in Polish złoty increased by 27%, keeping pace with revenue growth and translating into a broadly stable adjusted EBITDA margin of 45.4% as cost inflation was fully offset by efficiencies in first and middle-mile costs as well as overhead expenses. Over to Mondial Relay on page 19, where the key highlight is that we are slightly improving our profit margin while at the same time growing market share and investing in future growth. Year-on-year parcel volume is up by +9% in a market that we estimate to be down by -4%. Revenue in euro came in at +7% versus quarter one 2023, which is slightly below volume growth as we still saw the different product mix effect offset by modest repricing.
Importantly, top-line growth and market share gain was delivered in line with our strategic priorities, growing in the B2C segment and increasing the share of APM volumes. At constant currency, adjusted EBITDA increased by +11% in Q1 2024 versus Q1 2023, translating into an adjusted EBITDA margin increase of 30 basis points, reflecting the improved operating leverage and gross margin being partially reinvested in building up a growth-enabling organization. On slide 20, you can see that Italy and U.K. combined have more than doubled volume and revenue compared to Q1 2023. U.K. volume grew by +147% as we gained scale in C2C and returns. In Italy, volume reached 4.8 million parcels, up 44% versus Q1 2023, as a result of growth in B2C supported by volumes in C2C. In these two countries, we are also gaining market share, although on a low base.
In both markets, revenue growth outstripped volume growth as a result of the product mix impact. Adjusted EBITDA improved from -PLN 46.2 million into +PLN 14.7 million in Q1 2024. This is in line with our outlook statement whereby the profit margin in Italy continues to be positive and the profit margin in the U.K. remains broadly in line with the Q4 2023 results. On slide 21, we provide you with the usual bridge between adjusted EBITDA and net profit. Year-on-year, adjusted EBITDA in PLN is up by +36%, translating into a profit margin improvement by 340 basis points from 27.9%-31.3%. Net profit from continuing operations in absolute terms is up by +121% or by 480 basis points from 5.8%-10.6% of sales.
At +35.6%, our Q1 increase in Polish złoty group operating EBITDA is broadly in line with adjusted EBITDA growth. Group EBIT is up by +60.1% year-over-year as higher IFRS 16 amortization behind our increasing APM and depot footprint was partially offset by FX and the longer useful life of our APMs. Between EBIT and net profit, you can see the usual interest expenses connected to debt as well as some improvement in effective tax rate due to lower losses in U.K. and Italy versus last year. On slide 22, we again explain the healthy and improving cash generation dynamics of the InPost business. For the first quarter of 2024, Poland generated PLN 459 million in free cash flow, representing an increased free cash flow conversion rate of 68% compared to 56% the same time last year.
Free cash flow investment in international markets increased to PLN 246 million. Altogether, the group's adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow conversion improved from 21% in Q1 2023 to 28% in Q1 2024. Page 23 shows our continued investment for profitable growth while reducing the CapEx to revenue ratio. While total CapEx spending increased by 10% from PLN 222.6 million in Q1 2023 to PLN 245.8 million in Q1 2024, the overall group CapEx intensity decreased from 11.2% to 10.1% over the same period. At about two-thirds of total capital expenditure, network expansion remains our single most important focus area. However, in Q1 2024, we have accelerated spending in operations and IT in order to keep up with our growing European footprint and with the additional services we are offering to consumers and merchants alike.
The acceleration of the international business is also evidenced by the CapEx split by segment, with Poland decreasing its CapEx spending, only to be more than offset by increased investments in Mondial Relay, the U.K., and Italy. To close the financial highlight section, let me still say a word on net debt and leverage, as shown on slide 24. Compared to end 2023, gross debt at the end of Q1 remained virtually unchanged at PLN 6.6 billion, with small changes mainly being the result of FX movements. Net debt decreased by PLN 159 million on the back of a higher cash generation. The slightly lower debt, combined with a 7% increase in last 12 months' Adjusted EBITDA, resulted in a decrease of our leverage ratio from 2.2x at the end of Q4 2023 to 2.0x at the end of Q1 2024.
I will happily remind you that at the end of Q1 2023, our leverage ratio still stood at 3.0 times last 12 months' adjusted EBITDA. With that, let me close the financial highlights and still show you the outlook on page 26. In short, we are off to a strong start in Q1 2024. The results were broadly in line with our internal projections. As such, this gives us increased confidence to reiterate our full-year outlook in what we believe will still be a volatile economic environment. As we keep our full-year outlook unchanged, I will not take more of your time to walk through the details. In closing, let me give you an update on Q2 volumes.
So far in Q2, we are running at volume growth of about 20% at the group level, with volume in Poland growing mid-teens and total international volume growing at a faster rate than Q1. With this, I thank you all. Now over to the operator for the Q&A session. Thank you.
If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure your line is unmuted locally, as you will be advised when to ask your question. So once again, that's star one if you would like to ask a question. Our first question comes from the line of Sathish Sivakumar from Citi. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Thanks for the presentation. I got three questions. First one is around InPost Pay. If you could actually share some color around the adoption rate, how does it evolve during the quarter? You say that 1.6 million registered users, and how does it actually progress? And do you have any sense around the average basket size of customers using the InPost Pay at the checkout? That's on InPost Pay. And then a couple of questions around the international segment. Firstly, on Mondial Relay, if I look at the volume growth quite strong, this is last year, C2C seems broadly stable, and the growth is mainly driven by B2C here. So first on, are you seeing the market is kind of maturing on the returns, or is it mainly driven by increased focus on B2C, and that's what is kind of shifting that growth into B2C?
Where is that growth actually coming from on the B2C segment, i.e., what is the customer base or the verticals that are driving it? The third one is around the U.K.. On the volumes that's going through in the U.K., is it all now handled completely by Menzies? Are you still have exposure to the other partners? If so, what does that split would look like? Yeah. Thank you.
Hi, Sathish. Good morning, Rafał Brzoska. Maybe I will answer the first question, and then I will hand over to Michael from Mondial Relay and U.K. question. So in terms of InPost Pay, as you saw, the adoption among the end users is impressive. Literally, six weeks ago, we said we have 1 million registered users. Within four weeks, it jumped to 1.6. And it's, of course, a very early stage in terms of the adoption among the merchants, although there are a few hundreds of them already live, more to come. We don't disclose the certain metrics on that part of the business yet as this is early stage. The things I can definitely confirm, and we've shown in the presentation, is we are massively improving basket conversion, which is essential for the merchants. We improved the NPS of the end users using our solution on those websites.
And also, in terms of average basket size, it's a kind of average on the Polish e-commerce market published accordingly by, for instance, the BaseLinker Index or some of the enablement platforms publicly listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. So it's literally very close to the market average. But the most important topic, of course, is the loyalization of end users, improvement of the basket conversion, which drives literally much better top-line conversion on the merchants' websites. And that's another strong, convincing statement that InPost, it's not the supplier, it's not the logistics provider. We are an enabler for the top-line growth of the merchants collaborating closely with InPost. Handing over to Michael for the two other questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Rafał. Good morning, Sathish. How are you? Just on your two questions, the first on B2C growth with Mondial Relay, the growth is coming from two client segments. Firstly, our international client segment, which is a mixture of companies like Amazon, Zalando, Temu, Shein, and others. So there's actually a good balance of growth from that. And then the other encouraging part is actually local French enterprise clients at this point where we're seeing increased share of checkout and increased share of presence, predominantly as we have grown our APM network and really adoption of APMs with that local client group. So it's really a good balance of customers, not one specific. You asked a question about returns and effectively outbound or B2C. I think this time last year, it was predominantly returns that we were seeing quite a good traction on.
Now we're seeing still growth on returns, but we're also seeing growth on outbound. And that would be the faster growth area within that B2C component. On the U.K., all of the businesses being managed by Menzies in terms of first mile and last mile to our out-of-home network and also all the middle mile components that are linked to that. We do have a partnership with the Royal Mail, but that is predominantly for door-to-door delivery where we don't today have mainly locker coverage. And then we offer door-to-door where we basically can inject directly into Royal Mail for that last mile. But I would say the majority of the business today is very much about our locker business and out-of-home business with the Royal Mail covering those areas where we don't have coverage yet.
Okay. Thank you. I just got a couple of follow-up, maybe one for Rafał and one for Michael, for yourself. On the InPost Pay, again, Rafał, do you foresee this being rolled out outside of Poland? Or what does it take actually to say that it's something probably a good disruptor in the other market as well? And then, Michael, just on the so Menzies moving everything, all the volumes onto Menzies. Is that been a key driver in terms of profitability improvement here? Basically, you bring down your first and middle mile cost because of this partnership, or it's actually driven by volume growth and scale? What is contribution from Menzies on a cost side? Yeah. Thank you.
Should I take the last one?
Yes, a quick.
Or do you take it?
Yeah. Yeah. Go on, Michael. Go on.
I think very much it's about the operating leverage, Sathish. So clearly, as we've built the scale, clearly, the Menzies partnership has unlocked the volume. And clearly, the benefit that we're seeing is really the scale and the volume and the operating leverage that we're really gaining. But really, what Menzies has brought is the consistency and coverage that we needed in order to really deliver on that volume and operating leverage.
Okay. Yeah. On the InPost Pay piece, on the InPost Pay piece, of course, everything what's rolled out in Poland, it's becoming successful, is then rolled out in the other markets. So that's the plan. Of course, the maturity of the market is critical here and the adoption among the end users of our mobile app. So those two drivers are giving us clear sign when and where to launch the service. But looking at the current results of that, very early stage, but already exceptional results we're achieving, it's definitely something we would love to roll out on the other markets as well.
Yeah. Thanks, Rafał. Thank you. Thanks, everyone.
The next question comes from the line of David Kerstens from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen. I also have three questions. First of all, can you please comment on the APM rollout plans for this year? I think you added 2,000 new APMs in the first quarter. So annualized, that is around 8,000. I think your plan was for around 10,000. Your CapEx also seems somewhat lower in Q1 than the PLN 1.3 billion guidance for the year. So maybe some comments on that, please. Then the second question on the EBITDA margin in Poland was stable in Q1, clearly better than expected, but maybe helped by an easy comparative. And how should we think about this going forward? Will you see the lower margins coming in Q2 where you had a much tougher comp than in Q1? And is that what's driving the softer profitability in Poland for the remainder of the year? And then final question for Javier. Welcome.
What are your priorities as the new CFO? Is it continuation of Adam's work, or are you looking at also different things? And can you also please comment on the cash taxes in the first quarter, which seem only half of the P&L tax? And yeah, paying less taxes, of course, is a good thing, or is there a phasing effect, and will that reverse in the remainder of the year? Thanks very much.
Thank you, David. Let me answer the first question, and then I will hand over to Javier. So yeah, definitely, it's not about slowing down or revising down the number of the machines. It's all about the phasing. January was very challenging in terms of the weather conditions in some of our markets. So that naturally impacted the rollout pace. But looking at the pipeline of the locations ready for deployment, we definitely want to deploy as many as possible, especially on the markets where we are currently lacking capacity. And that's one of the top points on our operational agenda for all the markets. Handing over to Javier.
Yeah. Hi, David. Good to meet you virtually. So thanks for the questions. First question on Poland. You're right. It's a phasing question. If you look basically at the profile of last year, you saw a significant jump in Q2 as we basically saw the pricing effect really coming in. If you look at it sequentially versus Q4, we remain about this 45.5%. So when you look at the guidance for the year, the jump we see in Q1 in the rest of the year, you would typically not see that because it was a low base of 41.3% in Q1 2022. So this is more a phasing question. And absolutely right. I think our guidance remains the same, that we expect margins to be around that 45%-45.5% as we go throughout the year. So that's indeed mainly a phasing question.
On the second question, look, on my plans, I'm six weeks in the role, so I'll not be too ambitious about that. But as I said in my introduction, Adam has done, I think, a phenomenal job on making sure that the business has been able to grow with a very positive financial profile. And as we grow and expand internationally, that is something we want to keep on securing. So I think it's finding the balance between being able to go with speed, expanding, and becoming even bigger and more important at the European level, while at the same time maintaining financial discipline, that we take the right investments, that we keep the entrepreneurial spirit of investing, learning fast, failing fast if we need to, but succeeding even faster where we can. So I think that's going to be the first priorities.
In a couple of more weeks, I'll probably have a bit more insights, but that's at least a starting point. Then on the last question that you had on cash taxes, also here, mainly phasing. If you look at our effective tax rate, it's slightly down because of lower losses in the international business. From a cash tax point of view, there was a delayed payment in Poland. I think it was mainly there, which was moved just into April. So we should see a regularization of that cash tax in Q2, Q3 coming forward.
Okay. Great. Thank you very much for the answers, and good luck.
Thanks.
The next question comes from the line of Marco Limite from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I've got three questions. One is on the to-door volumes in Poland, which grew by quite a lot in Q1. So just wondering what's driving that. Second question is on pricing. So you had the Allegro pricing in November, but I think the majority of the remaining volumes have been repriced around March, sorry. So yeah, any comment you can give us on pricing for those volumes. And the third question is on the Mondial Relay margins. Clearly, you are guiding 400- 200 basis points of margin expansion for the full year. But I guess Q1 was a soft start of the year if we think about margin expansion. So yeah, what's your thinking around margins in France for the remaining quarters of this year? Thank you. Thank you, Marco. Good morning.
Happy to answer the first two questions, then handing over to Javier. So in terms of to-door volume in Poland, what's driving it? I think this is all about the whole flywheel we have created. This is continuously the same topic. Sometimes people think that deploying machines, it's all about the recipe for the success, to copycat InPost success, which is clearly, I think, visibly in the recent three years, not the case. We have more than 60 different projects across Europe on locker businesses and hard to find single one, big one, being successful in terms of profitability like InPost. So with to-door, it's pretty the same as by creating the whole ecosystem for the merchant, creating best-in-class quality, which InPost still keeps in Poland in terms of next-day deliveries, having incredibly good peak.
We were the only company promised that parcel delivered on the 23rd of December will be guaranteed and delivered on the 24th of December. This gave a very strong conviction to our partners that we are not only excellent in out-of-home delivery to our APMs, but also we are an incredibly reliable partner for door-to-door deliveries. So we saw a big shift from other vendors, from other players existing in Poland to InPost in the first months of the new year. We'll see how it evolves for future. But definitely, we are not losing attention around bringing more and more value and value-added services for our merchants, which typically translates into much higher volume than we had a year ago. On the repricing, yeah, the repricing strategy is very clear. It's phased effect. So some of it was already realized and visibly impacted our Q1 results.
Partially, we expect something in Q2 as well. Just bear in mind that also the phasing of the minimum wage increase is also phased. And we expect that in Q2, Q3, we will see as well higher costs, which may offset partially our gain on the repricing. And by the way, it impacts all the players across the Polish economy. So it's not only specifically impacting InPost. That's why we want to keep the healthy balance, helping our merchants not to squeeze them, not to make their life harder with aggressive repricing, rather giving them a helping hand, relief, because this minimum wage inflation is heavily impacting as well all the merchants. So that's all about keeping the right balance and being really a good partner for our merchants and also end users. Javier?
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Marco. Good to get to know you. On Mondial Relay, it's a good question. The 30 basis points compared to the 100-200 basis points on the full year. Fundamentally, it is operational efficiencies as we basically go through the year. You've seen that we have not changed our outlook for the year, so we're still confident that we can get those. There's two elements in there. Number one, obviously, as we said before, the important notice on Mondial Relay is that we've grown volume by 9% in the market, which is -4. So that's still going to give us operational efficiencies, number one. Number two, there's a couple of projects going on, including, for instance, looking at procurement and opportunity to get better prices on the market in terms of logistics.
This is also something that throughout the year will come into the P&L. Operational efficiency is really coming from volume and continued working on the cost structure. Now, importantly in Q1, and that's interesting to see, is from a gross margin point of view, our improvement is.
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That's better. Thank you.
It's better. Yes. Thank you. Yes.
Okay. Sorry. So let me then start again. So nice to meet you, Marco. two times. Mondial Relay margin, yes, 30 basis points only in Q1, but we maintain our full-year outlook. This is because we expect operational efficiencies to come from two sides. Number one, importantly, +9% volume on a market of -4% will still give us operational efficiencies. But secondly, we have a couple of projects, for instance, running on procurement where we clearly see savings opportunities that should hit the P&L as we advance throughout the year. And that's where you see some phasing coming in. Now, importantly, when you look at the phasing, last year in Q2, we had 13.3% margin. So it was the highest margin in the year. And then we went down to 9% in Q3.
So we'll see the effect of the increased margin mainly coming in the second half of the year because the comparison base of Q2 will still be very high, but that will be compensated in the second half. So improved efficiencies and being able to drive some procurement savings to the bottom line are going to be the key elements.
Thank you. A very quick follow-up. When Rafał mentioned that the minimum wage increase is also phased in Q2, can you just remind us when the minimum wage increase kicks in, please? Thank you.
Yeah. The first wave of minimum wage was beginning of the year. The second one is, as I remember correctly, it's 1st of July.
Very helpful. Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Rowan Shri-Rohatgi from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hello. Thanks for the call. A couple of questions. On the outlook in France, you keep guiding mid-single-digit market volume growth this year while the e-commerce market decreased 4% in the first quarter. What are the key reasons for a weak underlying market performance, and what makes you confident that it will significantly reaccelerate going forward? And second, could you provide the latest update on Temu and Shein performance? In particular, what do you see on the side of their market share progression and contribution to your volumes? Thank you.
Michael, would you?
Yeah. I'll take both, actually, Rafał. I'm quite comfortable. I think just on outlook, I think, firstly, sort of the benchmarks that we're using to measure the market, clearly are a multitude of different sources to give us a really good read. So we're confident on the -4%. And clearly, at 9%, we're outpacing the market. The real opportunity really here is still our market share remains relatively low to single-digit, to probably somewhere between 8%-10% market share estimate. So clearly, the headroom for potential growth is quite a lot, in particular within the B2C segment. And so clearly, we see the current opportunity with our B2C client base and the trends that we're seeing in terms of both existing clients that are coming on board, that have come on board in the last 12 months, and two new clients that will be onboarding.
So we continue to have that outlook for the balance of the year. We have a high degree of confidence that even with the underlying weaker market conditions relative to Temu, Shein, and others, it's not our position to comment on specific clients relative to sort of this discussion. I would say just overall, clearly, their performance, as you can read in the market, is strong. Really, our platform today is really one where we have a multi-market approach with those clients. So it's not just about what we're doing in France. It's what we're doing right across all of our InPost markets.
That really gives us an opportunity to have a framework approach to these clients that really allows us to connect and really look at the opportunity, not just in one market, but in a multi-market approach, and support them for growth in all of those markets in the same way we would approach any client. Their performance is strong, but obviously, we're looking at more than one client. I don't want to specifically comment on their individual market performance.
Okay. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from the line of Henk Slotboom from The IDEA. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for the presentation, and thanks for taking my questions. Continuing on Mondial Relay, 4% contraction of the market in the first quarter. If I look at the outlook statement for the market as a whole in France, you expect mid-single-digit e-commerce parcel market growth. Given the delta between the -4% and the +9% you showed in the first quarter, isn't the margin guidance a bit conservative? Or should I see it that if you have a windfall on the back of the operational gearing that you're trying to accelerate the rollout of your infrastructure in France so that you will be even better capable of handling the B2C volumes? The second question is related to that. What share of your business now is B2C in France? Or should I rephrase it? What part of France can you serve now with your B2C offering?
I'm referring to the D+1 method. My final question is a bit of a chauvinistic question. When I look at the PUDOs and APMs, and I look at the Benelux countries, if I compare that with the year-end 2022 situation, then you had 2,300+ PUDOs in the Netherlands and Belgium. Now, it's less than 1,900. So that's almost 20% lower. You always said, "I want to have a presence there, but on a capital light basis." What exactly is happening here? And where is the biggest contraction in PUDOs? Is it in Belgium, or is it in the Netherlands? Perhaps you can shed some light on it. Those were my questions.
Yeah. I can take those. And Javier, if you want to add any further comments, feel free. I think, firstly, I think really it's the latter part of your first question, Henk, which is if you take Q1 this year, we've already opened two new locations in Q1 as part of our last-mile coverage in depots. And we've done one transfer of locations as an example. So as we continue to see our market share gains as we've done throughout this journey since the acquisition of Mondial, we really see market share growth and building out the consumer proposition as a critical factor of the long-term game. Clearly, we've seen some margin enhancement in Q1, but clearly, we'll continue to invest to really gain the market share as we're seeing it.
Clearly, investing in the last and middle mile continues to be the priority as we see the volume, demand, and growth come from the business as we're seeing in the market right now and continue to see it for the balance of this year. Regarding B2C share, I think as I commented in the presentation, B2C now roughly is about 40% of our business in Mondial. So really, we've continued to, over the last three quarters, seen really strong growth. And the mix is clearly continuing to evolve. When you still look at specific coverage within France, I would still say there's improved coverage now. One of our weaker spots was the southwest region. When you look at that, I've talked about that historically. Some of the openings in the first quarter this year will improve that.
There's still further work to do probably in the south to southwest region as we continue to close what I call the coverage gap, not just about lockers and PUDOs, but actually the last-mile component of depots and servicing that as well as hub coverage to serve that part of France. All as part of our plan. Clearly, we work to build and improve that connected with the quality that we're trying to drive. When it comes to Benelux, I wouldn't say it's specific to Netherlands or Belgium. I would say more we're optimizing, actually, the sort of PUDO network while we've started to really start to plan deployment of our first APMs. So what we also started to do is now improve coverage there.
There's further increased plans for accelerating coverage both in the Netherlands and in Belgium to really support what was effectively a legacy PUDO business. And really, now as we've optimized the last mile and middle mile, we're able to optimize that part of the network as well.
Perhaps, if I may, a follow-up, Michael. What exactly is the focus in the Benelux countries? Should I compare that with what you're doing in the U.K., focus primarily first on C2C and then try to get an entrance in B2C with international clients, or?
The strategy is twofold. Firstly, with existing clients that we're basically serving and then opening up that part of the market to them. Historically, for whatever reason, Netherlands and Belgium has not necessarily been a cross-border opportunity for some of our French clients as an example. And that now is sort of priority number one. Priority number two is international clients, which will include C2C as well. And then really, locally, then as we build the network, consider sales force on the ground to think about what we do with local merchants. But very much cross-border and international clients is the primary focus for the next 12-18 months.
Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. We'll see some of you next week. Looking forward to it. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Michał Potyra from UBS. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. I have three questions, please. The first one is a follow-up on Mondial Relay margin guidance. I just want to make sure it includes the additional spending related to marketing and sponsorships, please. The second question is on capacity utilization in Poland. It keeps on growing very nicely. So I would like to understand what is the level you feel comfortable with, and should we expect that to grow further, or would you consider to add more APMs over time? And the third question is around the current trading. You indicated around 20% volume growth so far. So I'm just wondering, is it fair to assume that April was a little bit softer than that given the impact of Easter, or is it kind of stable over the last six-eight weeks? Thank you.
So maybe let me answer all those questions. So in terms of the Mondial Relay margin guidance, it does include all the committed spendings, including the two different sponsorships here. In terms of the capacity utilization in Poland, as you may notice, in recent quarters, the newly deployed capacity, newly deployed machines were on a level of XYZ, and the utilization and the volume was growing faster. That means that our operating leverage, but also excellence in the whole operational process, is improving quarter by quarter. We're using very advanced data engineering tools to improve our forecasting, to find where we need to add locations or we need to add extensions to existing locations, foreseeing our capacity needed, let's say, quarter or two quarters in advance.
That means we are becoming better and better in utilizing our assets, providing better and better return on every single euro spent on our CapEx. And that's another huge asset on the know-how side, which really differs us from the other players who mostly are randomly deploying machines here and there or deploying them close to us, hoping that that will help to utilize their assets. So we are deploying more machines. As you saw, we deployed around 700-something in Q1. We will deploy in every single quarter more and more, but selectively, properly, kind of tactically addressing the volume we expect or the new end-users gain we expect to get. In terms of the current trading, this is literally first six weeks of the Q2. Hard to say if that will maintain.
That's why we literally are not changing our guidance for the full year because in the past, you may remember, two years ago, we were too optimistic. After Q1 trading, we increased our guidance for the full year. Then we've been punished massively by the market and investors because simply the market was softer than it was visibly much stronger in Q1. Let's see how it goes. April is a little bit above our expectations, answering straightforwardly to the questions you ask.
All clear. Thanks very much.
Before we take our next question, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one. Our next question comes from the line of Osman Memisoglu from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hello. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. First, on cost inflation in Poland, can you quantify the impact of cost inflation in 2024? Then in the U.K. and France, can you talk about any challenges that you find in the short term installing the APMs, such as real estate space and any other challenges? And third question is, now with U.K. plus Italy segments being profitable, how are you thinking about growth in other European markets, specifically, for example, Spain and Italy? Where do you see the big potential now, and has anything changed now? Thank you.
Thank you. Maybe I will answer the first question, and then I will hand over to Michael. In terms of concentration, we continuously gain new clients. We see that new verticals, but also new Asian players are better and better in terms of gaining both end-users but also market share. So we are agnostic, and that's our main pro on that side. We would love to help every player to be successful on the Polish market. And looking at the different market dynamics, literally, that drives as well much better performance of the Polish e-commerce market versus the others. So we are continuously working on the acquisition of new merchants. Also very important point, upcoming cross-border solution, which should even increase the attractiveness of InPost versus old-fashioned big players, typically chosen by the merchants for the cross-border parcel.
So once cross-border is launched, I think this will become pretty soon an additional engine for our volume growth, especially across the markets we operate.
Thank you, Rafał. Just coming back on the two questions. Firstly, do we see any challenges regarding location acquisition in markets like U.K. and France? I think the first comment here is we're still very early in the market with nearly 7,000 in the U.K. and over 5,000 in France. Clearly, we're still very early in that development. So there is a lot of green field, as I would call it, or white space, as we frame it internally, for growth. I think the specific challenges may be more around inner cities and such as Paris or London where space is at a premium. And really, getting larger lockers is probably more challenging than maybe we had seen in other markets. But we're really adapting our model. We've actually been testing new concepts.
One new concept we've been testing both in Paris and London is the opening of locker shops, which actually, the early data is very encouraging. I don't see that being a big solution for those cities, more a method to really compensate where we may find space at a premium. But those types of shops are really where we're putting in like four-eight meters of lockers, not just putting two-four, so really trying to compensate in that way. When we think about new markets outside of the U.K. and France, actually, we started deploying our first machines in Spain and Italy. We've continued to ramp that up in sort of the end of last year and the first part of this year. So we see great opportunity in both Spain and Italy in particular.
I think there's some encouraging data coming through in Italy and specifically in a recent study where actually out-of-home penetration has gone from single digits to double digits for the first time, of which clearly, it looks like our business is really helping support that change in consumer behavior. So those markets are still very early in their development, not as advanced in terms of location development as somewhere like the U.K. and France. But clearly, we see opportunity, and e-commerce scale and size is quite considerable. So we will continue to focus predominantly on U.K. and France in the near term, but we will now start to explore developing those markets for the longer term. Thank you.
Thank you. I think my first question got misunderstood. So I would repeat that, please. My question was, can you quantify labor cost inflation, the impact on P&L in Poland this year?
Okay. Sorry. Handing over to Javier then.
Yes, sir. I'm muting. Look, labor cost inflation, we expect it around to be mid-single digit. That's going to impact, but it's going to be offset by efficiencies. In the end, that's also why, from a guidance point of view, we set margin growth to remain stable. That, between inflation pricing and efficiencies, we can offset that. That's what we expect to see for this year.
Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Marco Limite from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi there. I've got one more question, please. So over the last few months, there's been some newsflow around Allegro partnering up with ORLEN about delivery or delivery through their lockers, sorry. So yeah, I'm just curious about what you're thinking about competition in Poland and if this new agreement is a threat to your relationship with Allegro. Thank you.
Happy to answer that question, Marco. I think it's nothing new as Poland and all the other players already were collaborating very closely with our friends from Allegro. That's properly and well understood looking at our exposure on the share of checkout on Allegro website, means we try still to build new venues for joint win-win collaboration and win-win scenarios, which the best proof of that is how we successfully developed cross-border from Poland to Czech Republic for our colleagues from Allegro. I understand as well that all the other players try to find their own way on the Polish market. The real comment, I think, comes straightforward from the numbers. You see the market growth. You see the volume growth, overall volume growth on the market. You may translate that to the volume growth of key marketplaces in Poland.
Then you see the numbers of InPost, which gives you a very clear indication where the consumers are keeping their preferences and why. Because again, it has nothing to do with deploying machines. The last three years, properly, I think already have proven that this is much more complex business than many people thought. We are not commenting. A company that starts looking at the competitors' moves typically loses the ability to push you at speed and innovate. That's definitely our DNA. Trying not to comment specific moves, trying to focus on building value at InPost, not on other dimensions.
That makes sense. And if I may ask maybe one question that hasn't been asked for quite a while, actually. Do you feel like your share on Allegro volumes has been stable over time, over the last, let's say, couple of years?
It's absolutely stable in recent quarters. It has increased in the last two years.
Amazing. Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Stefano Tofano from ABN AMRO. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. Apologies if some of these questions have already been asked, but I had some IT issues. So just for clarification, three questions. The first one is, do I understand it correctly, did you now see the possibility of stable year-on-year margin development in Poland? Because the guidance still implies adjusted EBITDA margin in Poland slightly softening. So maybe a little bit of clarification on that one. The second question is just a reminder of the timing of the ramp-up of the cross-border deliveries. What can we expect over the next few quarters? And the last one was M&A. You repeatedly mentioned to be open and looking for strategic non-organic options to accelerate the growth. Maybe if you can be a little bit more specific, do you have something do you have a shortlist? Do you have something already in the pipeline? Are you maybe in discussions?
I don't know if you can say something more on that. Thank you.
Stefano, I'll take the first question on the margin development. We talked this slightly before. In Q1, we, of course, have a very strong improvement, but that's on a low base. We have comparables in the rest of the year, which are much more challenging. Therefore, we're not changing the outlook, which is what we've said before. Whereas we had a strong start of the year, we will have more challenging comparables as we go on. No change there.
Yeah. In terms of M&A question, we always try to look at every single option that's strategically additive to the business. So if there is something what may make us stronger, what may accelerate our growth, what may give us more volume, more opportunities, and simply accelerate our growth trajectory, we will definitely look at it.
You want to comment on the cross-border question, Rafał? There was a question on cross-border timings.
Yes, please. Please.
Yeah. I think first and foremost, actually, we have a healthy cross-border business today. Really, the launch of cross-border was really connecting, actually, our business in Poland to our business in Western Europe. And really, that process is now complete. So actually, we started actively selling that to our existing customer base. So we would expect to see continued growth and expansion of that business sort of for the second half of the year. The specifics, obviously, we're not commenting on, but effectively, the technical work and the customer work has been deployed. So really, that's the exciting part for the second half of the year.
Thank you very much, guys.
There are no further questions on the line. I will now hand over to Julian for some webcast questions.
Okay. Thank you, Jess. So we've had a few questions coming on the webcast. Some have already been covered by the conference call questions, and a couple are covering similar topics. So we'll aggregate a couple of those. But the first one from Tarek Ismail at Kepler Cheuvreux. How do you see online consumer spending in Poland going by the end of 2024?
I can answer that. There are a lot of opinions, very mixed ones. Some of the analysts saying that we see first positive effect of the minimum wage salary increase. So people are more than happy to spend more, especially that should impact positively the retail business. The others are saying that because of 1st of July, the government simply will stop subsidizing the cost of energy for the individuals. That may impact negatively their spendings. First six weeks of second quarter, pretty positive. But I think it's too early and too risky to have a fair view on the consumer sentiment and spendings for the year. That's why we kept guys.
Thank you. We do have a follow-up question on the topic of cross-border and whether or not you're going to be considering recognizing cross-border segment as part of your reporting. Just, I guess, wondering if that could be broken out at all.
I think we're not considering at this stage creating an additional segment on the cross-border. As I said, cross-border, we want to be live across our markets this year. The impact on a total level is unknown, although bear in mind that already we have a live cross-border between Mondial Relay markets. So that's already a live service. The complexity of linking together all the markets, including different systems we have built within InPost and the systems that we took over during the transaction with Mondial Relay, that's the very complex solution. So currently, you can't send parcels from Spain to Poland, but you can send parcels from Spain to France, which is, of course, suboptimal, and it's not giving us competitive advantage against big cross-border services offered by the big international courier companies.
Okay. And we've got a question from Konrad Musiał at BM Pekao. Over the last few quarters, EBITDA in the U.K. and Italy grew nominally by about EUR 50 million year-over-year each quarter. Is this something that can also be expected in the coming quarters?
I'll take that one. Thanks for the question. Look, it's always a bit dangerous to get drunk on some of the successes you have. So we've given a clear guidance on how to look at profitability of the U.K. and Italy. And we said that the U.K. will maintain the profit margin roughly in line with Q4, whereas Italy would remain profitable. Please remember that in the last year, we've seen a significant increase from a negative business to a positive business also because of the change of Menzies and the operational efficiencies that that has brought.
That, of course, has turned the business from loss-making to positive on EBITDA. The focus going forward, and that's the guidance that we say we maintained margin, is top-line growth. It's really going to depend on the acceleration of top-line growth at a stable margin that will drive the profit improvement going forward. I think now you have to look at a different dynamic instead of margin improvement that basically got us from losses to positive. It's going to be expansion at top-line, investing in growth at a stable profit margin.
Thank you. We have a couple of questions from John Hyde and Samuel Lorenz at BAT Capital, focusing in on the status and rollout of the B2C trials in the U.K. and also looking at the international dimension there. I wonder if you could cover those topics collectively.
Yeah, I will do. Thank you. I think really we are really live with three clients on B2C within the U.K. today. I think it's best to frame those as beta clients as we're testing. I do want to contextualize really the challenge in rolling out B2C is really driven by the key element in the U.K. is how do we present out of home in the checkout with the retailer, and how do we do that in a way that drives the highest share of basket and share of checkout. Successfully, we learned a lot from Poland in the past in what the team have done there. And we saw the success of our returns business when we launched it and taken a similar approach.
We see today in our returns business, we're getting share of basket around 30%-40% now in a lot of our top clients because of really the work we do in the checkout as much as we do on the logistics work. I think the further challenge then in really making sure we have a successful B2C product in the U.K. is really working with Menzies. Legacy-wise, this time last year, Menzies was a news trade business with a very, very, very small parcel business. Today, obviously, that parcel business has grown heavily. Menzies have done a tremendous job in adjusting and growing with that growth with us. Clearly, we're really deploying our tools and techniques with them to really help and make our business more agile from a parcel business point of view, but still, it's still quite a heavy newspaper business.
Why that's quite critical is clearly we need to map the network of the logistics coverage to really where the merchants sit and making sure that that balances, similar to what we're doing in France. So clearly, we need to really structure the hub network with the depot network in a way that can be optimized best to deliver a high-quality product to the market, coupled with really ensuring the checkout component is really driven. The beta test is encouraging that we're working with those clients. We are seeing a double-digit share of basket with the B2C offering, which is super encouraging. But clearly, we need to be able to have a product that can scale and go across. So getting that coupled with the logistics, which is why we're targeting the second part of this year.
The way we think about targeting the launch is really continue to work with the partners we know and trust and the partners that have really adapted InPost well. So clearly, we have a heavy portfolio of clients today that are using our returns product. And clearly, that is a good starting point as we look to the next phase of rollout and mapping that with where we inject their parcel volume with. So that's really sort of the key critical enablers that we're working through. When we look at similarly in other markets, in France, I think it's we're ahead in that journey. You can see the volume growth that's been coming in the last three quarters. And we see that continue to develop as we both rollout the APMs because really all the volume is going to those APMs predominantly.
And two, as we invest in the network, when I say the network, the logistics network, in that capacity. So very encouraging. But clearly, different challenges in the U.K. maybe than the other parts of Europe where out of home has been predominantly in the checkout and InPost and Mondial are well presented in the checkout, hence the growth that we're seeing. So we want to make sure those elements are replicated and with the right merchant partners to deploy that. So that will conclude on that part, Julian, I think.
Okay. Yep. That's great. And we have no further webcast questions at this stage. So I'll just hand it back for closing remarks from Rafał.
Thank you. First of all, thank you very much for participating in that call. I think the key to our success lies in our unique flywheel effect, which is driven by innovation and customer centricity, which are at the core of our DNA. We continue to offer a helping hand to merchants, empowering them through localized solutions that cater to the specific needs of end users. We are enabling them to win. Our strong technological backbone ensures the seamless operations and enhances our user experience while our message remains very clear. We are very committed to fostering the growth and success for all stakeholders. This commitment to innovation enables us to maintain a competitive edge and deliver those outstanding value to our customers and partners. Thank you for being with us and having believed that InPost is really a disruptor. It's more and more visible.
It's not only Poland specific. Thank you very much for participating. Wishing you a great day, great week, and see you soon.
Thank you.