2021 trading update conference call. I'm Sherief Bakr, Head of Investor Relations at InPost. I'm joined today by Rafał Brzoska, Founder and CEO of InPost, Adam Aleksandrowicz, Group CFO, and Michael Rouse, CEO of International. Following our prepared remarks, we'll be happy to take your questions. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded and a replay will be made available on InPost Investor Relations website at www.inpost.eu/investors/announcements, where you'll also find an accompanying set of slides. Now, before we get started, I'd like to remind you that today's call includes forward-looking statements and expectations that are subject to risks and uncertainties, and it is possible that actual results may differ materially from the matters discussed today. Now, with that behind us, I'd like to turn the call over to Rafał.
Thank you, Sherief. Thanks for joining us today. Hope you guys and your families are staying safe and healthy. I'm going to provide a brief overview of the market environment, headline of the Q3 financials, and touch on the progress we continue to make in the third quarter. I will highlight how we continue to outperform the overall market in Poland and what gives us confidence that this will continue in Poland and be replicated internationally. Also, I'd like to spend some time taking you through the flywheel, how we are continually enhancing our value proposition. Also highlighting some of the proof points that already support our growth strategy, both in Poland and our other markets.
Also I'm delighted that Michael is joining us for the call, and he will update you on our international operations, which now, of course, include Mondial Relay. Adam will take you through the financial revised 2021 outlook and early views on 2022. Of course, happy to take questions later on. Maybe let's start with the first page. Slide number four provides some of the key highlights for the quarter. As mentioned, we continue to outperform in Q3, something that we have consistently already demonstrated over the last several quarters. I think while the market growth in Q3 was slower than expected, we significantly grew our market share in Poland, and that was mostly driven by increasing consumer preference and usage of our APMs.
Just in Q3 alone, our overall share of the Polish B2C commerce market rose from 40% to a record of 44%, just within one quarter. Despite the growing inflationary pressures that of course impacted the broader macroeconomic environment, we delivered another quarter of operating leverage and, in our opinion, an exceptional profitability in Poland with 670 basis points of year-on-year margin expansion. While the near-term market deceleration is the primary driver of our revised full year outlook, because that's completely out of our control, we remain fully focused to ensure we continue to outperform on all key metrics we control. What we control, we deliver or we over-delivered. Network deployment, growing the market share, improving the InPost user experience and NPS, and of course, delivering strong profitability.
That's in our control. That's where we've been impacted by the slowdown of the market. That's of course a different story. The thing we continue to strengthen the tailwind for InPost. For instance, the lowest cost last mile deliveries as that became more relevant over the last few months, and we have accelerated our investments in the APM network. That's visible that already, you know, we over-delivered by 35% our initial plan for the network deployment. I think later on, Adam also will take you through the financials, but high-level view, we delivered 111% year-on-year revenue growth in Q3, or 35% excluding Mondial Relay, with more than 50% growth in the underlying EBITDA.
From the strategic perspective, we've made also excellent progress across and took multiple steps to accelerate the execution of our plans. We closed the transaction with Mondial Relay. Michael will give you more details about that. But also, you know, we deployed in Q3 a record number of APMs in a single quarter, historically, more than 2,300. Very quick view in terms of the Polish market. We have extended the leadership position. As I said, 4% market share growth on the market that has slowed down. That said, we massively increased the penetration among the end users. We deployed more than 15,000 machines so far, more than 5,000 new merchants in Q3, including the new giants entering the Polish e-commerce market, like Shopee, for instance.
More than 7.4 million active mobile app users with again increased NPS score to 75%. Moreover, you will see that later, you know, our competitors, they were down with their NPS. Of course, in the U.K., Michael will tell you more about really starting to see the flywheel accelerate and step up in the overall momentum and consumer adoption. We've accelerated again the APM rollout as this is in our control, and we announced new partnerships with big players like Tesco and eBay. Maybe, you know, turning to the next slide where we want to focus how we significantly are outgrowing the market, how we accelerated the flywheel effect in Q3, and how we again strengthened our competitive position and extended our industry-leading NPS.
On page number six, you see clearly how we have consistently outgrown the B2C market in Poland, delivering more than 70 points of outgrowth over just the last seven quarters. As I mentioned, we estimate that we gained 4 points of share in Q3, despite the largest marketplace in Poland heavily promoting to-door. Many drivers behind this that's underpinned by our flywheel. Some of them listed on the right side of the slide. In next few slides, you know, we'll highlight the progress we've made so far. Page number seven. You remember that during the IPO and also since then, we've consistently referred to our APM flywheel. Everything is about the consumer. The end consumer centricity of the ecosystem is key here.
Just over the course of 2021, we have not only accelerated that, but we've seen even stronger alignment with all the sides of the flywheel. If you look at the consumers, merchants adoption, and also, you know, the ESG credentials, that's something what is literally reassuring us that this is the right thing to do. We offer now the best-in-class unique and unique consumer experience, best service at lowest cost. Of course, more and more visible for the end consumers that we are really green. In the recently conducted survey, you know, especially the younger generation, 15-25, we see that 61% of them choosing InPost lockers, not because it's cheaper, not because the network is dense, not because it's convenient.
They've chosen because at first instance, they refer to the ESG angle and that they know that we are saving CO2 emissions. We want to strengthen that trend massively in coming quarters. We have also strong convictions, you know, that this applies to all our markets, as you know, the world is changing across the geographies. Maybe, you know, a few things just to highlight about the flywheel. Greater convenience, we know that. As people go back to work, this becomes even more relevant versus to-door delivery, as people don't face the failed deliveries. We still continuously give the consumers the ability to control the delivery option at the time that suits them best.
The strong sustainability angle, as I said, massive increase is mentioned, you know, in dimensions of sustainability, but also, you know, amplified by the recent COP26 conference that like shaped, but also Evening Standard's article where the London-based think tank encourages the local authorities to help build 10,000 click and collect locker networks just to resolve the problems with the market's growth volume growth traffic and CO2 emission growth related to this. Of course, something was very important, the rising scale economies versus to-door. As you remember, our structural 25%-30% cost advantage becomes even more powerful today given the current inflation and labor market trend. We see problems with the drivers.
Just, you know, a quick reminder, one driver of InPost replaces traditional 12 drivers for door-to-door. That gives additional tailwind for our growth. Slide number eight, quickly. This is the progress. We have accelerated all four elements of the flywheel in Poland. Starting at the top left, we have deployed more than 280,000 lockers in Q3. Over just last five quarters, we have doubled the capacity to more than 2.2 million single boxes. Looking at it another way, you know, 55% of the Polish population are within a seven-minute walk. You know, compared a year ago, it was 49%.
We also continued to enhance the user experience by strengthening our mobile app, reflected in 7.4 million active users and, you know, on average up to 200,000 more new users every single month. Again, with best-in-class net promoter score. Point number three, we've added more than 5,000 merchants to our ecosystem in Q3. That gives us around 80% coverage of the e-commerce market. Again, just mentioning Shopee, the new entrant, very aggressive player that from day one started the collaboration with us, and we perceive that this will be another boost for the whole e-commerce market adoption.
The last point, you know, we continue to benefit from the economies of scale that driving ongoing unit cost reduction, and all those productivity gains as well as the structural labor cost advantages of our delivery model versus to-door, the gap is even expected to widen. Page nine that mentioned consumer sentiment, you know, in the center of what we do. We have completely redefined the last mile delivery experience, outperforming the market. Here you know how much we outperformed. You can see two reference points. Our colleagues from Allegro said the market growth was 12%. We delivered 35% growth, so 3x the market. If it's closer to what we feel, which is 15%-19%, it's still almost doubling the growth rate.
The key metrics, NPS, again, in our control, we have increased by 4 percentage points. Looking at our peers, the logistics group, their NPS has declined in the same time. Looking at some of the drivers of our NPS, of course, on the bottom left, three key dynamics to highlight, technology-oriented, most convenient, and most sustainable delivery service. All those three key elements that in the heart of our value proposition. Looking also on the digital last mile experience, as I said, mobile app users number going up again. Recent Kantar study concluded that 91% of consumers in Poland see our APMs as the most preferred form of delivery.
We are close to 100% already, and this is so unique that I couldn't find any other example of any service across the world with such a score. Finally, on the bottom right, you can see how we are seeing in the increased usage of our service with, really almost already half of them, 45% of users being hard or super hard users, compared to a little over, you know, a quarter in 2019. Overall, very pleased with our execution and how we continue to position InPost for our long-term sustainable growth in Poland. Now happy to turn the call over to Michael to take you through our international segment and how it ties into our pan-European strategy. Michael?
Rafał, thank you. Good morning, everyone. I'm delighted to be joining this trading update this morning. I'm Michael Rouse, the CEO of International at InPost, and I must say, our scope of operations over the last quarter has been transformed since the acquisition of Mondial Relay at the beginning of Q3. I'm very excited about what I see now, and what we see as the broader market opportunity and the potential to bring the InPost differentiated consumer experience to all of our markets, but with a particular and increasing focus on the U.K. and France. Starting with the U.K. on slide 11. You know, I'm very pleased with the momentum we're seeing in the U.K. We're starting to continue to see a real acceleration of the flywheel in effect.
seeing driving stronger consumer usage, merchant adoption, and increasing brand recognition with the landlord relationships that we're establishing. As I reflect on the U.K. market overall and the trends that we are seeing, three things really come to mind as we see the opportunity for InPost to continue to accelerate. Firstly, the continued challenges for capacity in the traditional to-door last mile, compounded with weaker service and the economics that are going on within the industry, really gives a real competitive advantage for InPost sort of unique solution. Two, the consumer itself is looking for more convenient methods of delivery as a consequence. Thirdly, Rafał touched upon this, but this becomes a you know a pan-European opportunity where we're seeing increasing retailer and consumer demand for looking for sustainability and greener options.
That is consistently reflected in the U.K. business and the dialogue that we're seeing with retailers on a daily basis. We really feel these are all areas that we can address, and we aim to position InPost at the center of this unique customer experience and be the extension of brand for our merchant partners. Looking at the slides from a deployment perspective, as you can see on the top left, we have had another record quarter of performance and a step up in the size and density of our network, focused on the three major cities of Greater London, Greater Birmingham and Greater Manchester. We've now deployed 13 times more machines in Q3 2021, in 2021 than we did in the prior quarter the previous year.
Just again, to give an anecdote, our location density in these three locations now, from a coverage point of view, now it sort of outpaces and there's even greater coverage than the local post office establishments in those regions to give you a scale of what we're building from a network point of view. We continue on the top right to see continued strong merchant adoption. We've added 31 large enterprise brands in Q3 and really we continue to focus on building our retailer share of checkout. As you can see on the top right, as we continue to build out the density of our network, we're actually seeing increasing performance and share of checkout for the new APMs versus the previous like for like cohorts.
Demonstrating consistently, we're seeing consumer adoption and retailer growth and focus on this, in this new method of delivery in the market. We're also very proud of what we're seeing from a volume ramp-up, as we see on the bottom left. You can see the acceleration as we continue to put the new APMs in the ground, what impact that is having, and the step change that we've seen in performance of volume growing over 140% in Q3 versus Q2, and almost five times what we've seen in Q1. Then finally, quite excited also to announce, and many of you have seen in the press releases that we've done, the new partnership that we've signed with Tesco. We're well underway with our deployment with Tesco tracking. We're really targeting 500 stores by the end of this month.
Similar to other new cohort developments, as we really see encouraging utilization trends with these new locations going in. Overall, very pleased with the progress that we're making and looking forward this quarter actually to launching the InPost app that we've seen tremendous success with in the Polish business to enhance and further develop our consumer experience. Let me then turn to sort of the Mondial Relay opportunity, and let's remind everyone on slide 12 why we made this acquisition. Four key reasons to remind you of the opportunity. Firstly, that really the third-largest e-commerce market in Europe at a EUR 42 billion opportunity of retail sales value. Really, you know, a really exciting opportunity for us to enter this market. Two, the significant out-of-home penetration that we see in France.
We estimate between 35% and 38% of the overall market, and far higher than we see in other, our Western European markets. On the bottom left, we bought a market leader. Really what they're bringing to the market in terms of coverage and already presence in out-of-home, the opportunity for us to really build and add the further elements in digitizing the last mile consumer experience and offering the best service at the lowest cost, really gives us a unique advantage to continue to accelerate and develop the overall proposition in the French market in particular.
Finally, you know, we've also been able to create immediate access to a pan-European network with really the coverage that Mondial Relay provides, not just in France, but in Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg, to add to our already present operations in Italy and the U.K. and Poland. As Rafał mentioned, for us, really we only took acquisition at the beginning of Q3, and we've been operating really at pace to really start to capitalize on these unique opportunities. As you will see on slide 13, our focus in the last 100 days has really been confirming our assessment and rebuilding our conviction for the future growth potential of Mondial Relay. Overall, we've made strong progress in building the foundations for accelerating the growth, as you can see on the right-hand side of the slide.
As part of that 100-day process, we've completed a detailed value creation plan to how we want to prioritize our investments into the future growth and acceleration of the business, such as enhancing our existing PUDO capacity to really ensure we deliver the right quality and service to our retail partners and consumers, and also including investments in new logistics facilities to improve and really enhance the network quality. Secondly, to drive automation throughout the value chains, we started to deploy our first APMs. This has also been quite exciting. We've been able already to exceed 200 APMs in November from a deployment perspective. You can see on the left-hand side what is even more exciting is actually these APMs are ramping up faster than actually the PUDO shops that we're opening.
You can see already the consumer preference from the small base is really strong and really gives us confidence as we start to build out the network and add the APM solution to the overall French proposition. Finally, as we think about the development, we really want to invest in enhancing the brand and overall consumer experience and focusing how we develop the retailer partnerships as we start to grow the overall footprint. To give you confidence and how we think with this, we're proceeding at pace. There's no surprises really as we've come out of our first 100 days.
In fact, what we feel even now is even more confidence in terms of deploying the InPost flywheel to the Mondial Relay business, is that we can see the potential that we're really driving a differentiated experience in the out-of-home proposition within France. That's really an overall summary from the international business, and I will now hand over to Adam to take you through financial results.
Thank you very much, Michael. Good morning, everyone. Let me give you a couple of highlights on the Q3 financial performance. We'll then move to the full year outlook and leave you on 2022. Starting with page 15, first remark I think you'll have noticed, for the first time, we're consolidating the financials of Mondial Relay for the third quarter of this year as we've closed the acquisition on July 1st. For transparency, you see the standalone view of the InPost group, without Mondial Relay, so that you can have a you know clear view on the organic performance of the group, and then what's the contribution of Mondial Relay to the numbers for the quarter.
Starting with InPost, I think, you know, it has to be acknowledged that Q3 was a very, very solid quarter when it comes to the numbers and financial performance. Growth much ahead of market, 33% with APM segment growing well in excess of 40%. As Rafał mentioned, we continue to dynamically take share in the market, and despite significant market slowdowns are outperforming. On a channel basis, you have seen Allegro report, if you take their 20%, roughly just about 20% of the GMV growth in Q3. It's quite obvious that we expand the market, we continue to dynamically grow outside of Allegro channel.
I think that's also an important strategic notice when we then think about 2022, that actually the newcomers, the new players that come into the market are actually positive for us, and they actually improve and increase our market opportunity. U.K. also posted a solid growth in Q3 in terms of top line, close to 300% year-on-year in Q3. Obviously, in terms of margin expansion, very strong performance in Poland, 670 basis points of margin expansion. If you go back to our earlier guidance in terms of the midterm outlook for the EBITDA margin for Poland, you will have noticed that we have got to the territory we've guided for much earlier than we thought. We're guiding to anywhere high 40s-low 50s in the midterm.
We're well at high 40s right now. I think from the operational excellence perspective and how we can translate that operational excellence to numbers, but also how well we progress with the network development, network density, user adoption, et cetera, that's clearly a great headway into our strategy. In terms of Mondial Relay, Q3 was a slight decline on volume side. Obviously, that's on the back of very, very challenging comp in Q3 of the previous year. The overall market has softened quite a bit. Our view is Mondial Relay have kept their market share in the French market. Obviously, you know, Q3 was much softer all across the board for the whole of the e-com.
Also when we look at the margins, you'll have noticed, you know, a dilution in the EBITDA margin in Q3 compared to the first two quarters of Mondial Relay. Essentially two elements to call out. First one is, as you remember when we discussed strategic rationale for the acquisition, the PUDO capacity constraint was one of the key reasons why we said, you know, it makes all the sense in the world actually for the APM proposition to strengthen and complement the current Mondial Relay PUDO model. In the short term, obviously, the buildup of the PUDO capacity is quite critical actually to continue to grow and to be able to cope with increased volumes. That's exactly what's been happening across this year. There's been a significant investment into PUDO capacity.
That obviously means that in the short term, you see a dilution in the utilization, and it does translate into profitability, especially on the gross profit level. That short-term margin dilution is a function of PUDO capacity build-out. Secondly, as you see that call out box on the bottom of the page, roughly 130 basis points of the margin compression actually or contraction is actually driven by the early startup costs of rollout of the APM network in the French market. It's setting up the expansion teams, you know, it's signing up the landlords, it's inspecting the sites, and it's really preparing the pipeline, solid pipeline of the locations for the next year's dynamic roll-out. This is in a nutshell Q3.
Moving on to the next page, same view for the nine-month year-to-date. I think that just underlies the strong performance on a year-to-date basis, especially in Poland with 46% growth. Again, we think we've been growing well ahead, close to double the market and solid margin expansion of 640 basis points on a year-to-date basis. Likewise, if you look at the Mondial Relay pro forma nine months, very, very solid growth. That's why we think, you know, the competitive position of Mondial Relay in the French market still holds. Market shares are solid and are being maintained at this point in time, and we do believe, you know, it's a solid platform to accelerate growth in France next year. Moving on to revised 2021 outlook.
We've referred a couple of times, you know, to the market growing slower, especially in H2 compared to our expectations, to our views from early in the year. That normalization is quite visible all across the board, and obviously it's not only Poland, it's the whole of the world. I think that coupled also, and we see that quite clearly also by the supply chain constraints and some shortage of product across some of the verticals, that's clearly, you know, impacting ability to transact and has direct implications for the GMV levels in the market and number of parcels.
High level, you know, obviously as Rafał mentioned, you know, the key metrics that are within our control, so APM network deployment and profitability, we're actually revised the guidance towards the top end of the range. We're guiding, you know, towards 19,000-19,500 , roughly, APMs all across the network. Also in terms of adjusted EBITDA margin, we have raised the midpoint of that guidance. We're now guiding for 40%-43% of EBITDA margin compared to 41%-43% previously. Fundamentals in terms of financial performance still hold. You know, the profile is very strong, very attractive. Where we obviously see a downgrade and we guide, you know, below the bottom end of the previous guidance is parcel volumes and the resulting revenues.
There is also an impact on the cash conversion. Here the mechanics is pure math. Despite the fact, we revised CapEx slightly down, better profitability on the back of lower revenues implies lower absolute EBITDA, and therefore it has an impact on the lower cash conversion. It's not very material, but nevertheless, we move from low 40s to high 30s in terms of EBITDA cash conversion for the whole group for 2021. If we move to the next page, we look at Poland. Very consistent picture to what I've already covered for the whole of the group. You see, here, you know, that, for the APM network, as Rafał was mentioning, we're actually outperforming our expectations. We're moving very, very fast with network deployment.
Despite, you know, the tensions and challenges in the supply chain, we've managed to keep our supply chain intact. The manufacturing is all under control. We expect to end the year around 16 or just above 16,000 APMs in Poland. Both APM parcel volumes, but more notably to-door volumes, are revised down compared to the previous guidance. The EBITDA margin range tightened up, so we're right now moving, you know, towards the top end of our previous guidance, as you can see. Moving on to the next page. In terms of international, again, consistent picture. Volumes behind the previous expectations, I think most notably for the U.K. That is, to a large extent, a function of third-party volumes.
As Michael has covered, we are very, very positive in terms of the new APM ramp-up profiles, how the utilization builds, how our own end-to-end volumes. The volumes we carry for the merchants build up and continue to increase. Where we have a significant shortfall is at third party or how we call them sometimes rental volumes from the third-party carriers who use our lockers, you know, for their own parcels. These volumes have been much, much lower than expected. That's pretty much, and maybe Mondial Relay slightly lower in terms of parcel volume, but I think, you know, in terms of profitability, as I said, other than us moving faster than expected on the APM network and then taking.
That's taking an effect on the dilution, the margin, the underlying fundamentals for Mondial Relay and this year's financial performance, operational financial performance is very, very strong and in line actually with expectations or even slightly ahead of those. That's in terms of the revised outlook for 2021. Moving to the next page, you know, the first very, very early look in terms of how we think about 2022. Obviously, you know, there's a couple of elements to be called out. First one is, as we have mentioned a couple of times, we expect the growth rates in terms of broader e-com market to normalize in 2022. Come back closer to the pre-COVID annual growth rates. In terms of consumer confidence, we're all aware of the inflationary pressures across, you know, the global economy.
They're more notably visible in Poland, whereas, as you're probably aware, you know, the next year's outlook for most of the market or the consensus is somewhere around 7% for the CPI. In some of the, you know, indices for the inflation being even materially ahead of that. That clearly has an impact on consumer confidence. That clearly will have an impact and implications for the disposable incomes, and might potentially translate to the volume of transactions. Clearly, global supply chain challenges we're all aware of are quite likely to continue into across the first half and into the second half of 2022. Remains to be seen how that impacts, you know, the availability of stock, and impact on the overall trading GMVs, but clearly some headwinds there as well.
I think what's in our favor, what plays in our favor and it's a strong tailwind, clearly, you know, the cost-efficient deliveries and more sustainable, and eco-friendly deliveries are the theme, now. The increasing awareness of both end consumers and merchants is clearly coming across more and more, so we think that will favor the out of home and mostly, you know, the most efficient locker, form of delivery as taking more and more share or at least, you know, gaining more and more visibility and really building a very positive link with the consumer sentiment. In terms of how that translates to our kind of, you know, early view on 2022, separately for Poland and international. Poland, we pretty confident will continue to outgrow the market. Obviously APM being still the key growth engine.
As you have seen, you know, our growth rate for to-door has come down quite significantly. We think APM is where we are really, you know, maintaining or actually increasing our competitive advantage. Last but not least, as I mentioned, you know, the new e-merchant and marketplace entrants are a net positive for us. They actually contribute to us getting, you know, more visibility, more share, and literally each and every new major player that comes into the marketplace starts with us being their major delivery platform. As we see that dynamic continuing, you know, into the second half of this year and early next year or probably even longer than early, that will definitely be a net positive.
Cost inflation that we'll see or are witnessing and will see to continue, both on the fuel side, but also on the energy and labor side of things, we expect them to be largely offset by productivity improvements given our, you know, the underlying strengths of our model. Much less labor-intensive, much less fuel intensive form of delivery, and therefore us being able to withstand those headwinds much better than our competitors and than traditional to-door model. What that means with relatively stable pricing, we are increasing our attractiveness with alternative forms of delivery. Therefore we think that increase of the pricing gap will actually play to our benefit in terms of our ability to gain more share and grow faster than the market.
Those structural cost advantages we think will actually imply that we maintain our EBITDA margins broadly stable next year. In terms of international, we expect to leverage InPost playbook across the international markets. For both Mondial Relay and U.K., we continue to develop the APM network quite dynamically. In Mondial Relay, 2022 is going to be an investment year, so it's not only the deployment of the APM network, but as you remember, a lot to be done around the density, quality and capacity of the overall logistics network. That means depot sorting hubs, automation that we need to put there to increase productivity and efficiency. That will result in the short-term margin dilution in 2024.
As was expected, you know, it's building of foundations and platform to actually grow a much more dynamically and ahead of the market in 2023 and onward. So really a realization of our value creation plan that was a, you know, a foundation of our hypothesis for the acquisition. In terms of the U.K., as mentioned, we'll continue to develop the network. The target is to almost double the size that we expect to be 3,000 APMs by end of this year. So this is in a nutshell. Clearly we're very early in the planning process still, but we'll share more detail early next year just to give you a flavor how we see the dynamics. Now handing over to Rafał for the summary and closing remarks. Thank you.
Thank you, Adam. Very, very briefly, you know, a kind of closing comments before we take questions. I would say that despite a more challenging near-term market environment, we remain very focused on the, you know, on capturing the significant long-term opportunity here, expanding the leadership position in Poland, delivering our pan-European growth strategy, offering, literally the most sustainable form of last mile delivery service and creating shareholder value. I think we've demonstrated strong execution of the strategy. We are outperforming in areas under our control, and this is what you should continue to expect from us. On the other hand, on APM deployment, the midpoint of our revised guidance is 35% higher than our initial 2021 target, extending, you know, the leadership in Poland, but also securing first mover advantage and accelerating the scale and density in the U.K.
We have significantly outgrown the market, investing in our consumer-centric service, adding more merchants and driving of course higher usage of our APMs. This resulted in higher NPS score, still like expanding the gap between us and all other couriers. Of course, this inflationary environment, we expect the structural cost advantage of our delivery model to become even stronger driver for our competitive advantage. Finally, that will lead to strong profitability, margin performance as we have demonstrated this year with very strong margin expansion i n Poland. That's the kind of summary. Now I'll turn the call over to the operator for your questions.
Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question over the phone at this time, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. Please note if you're using a speakerphone, just to make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once again, that is star one to ask a question, and we'll pause for a brief moment just to give everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. We'll now move to our first question over the phone, which comes from David Kerstens from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning, gentlemen. I've got three questions, please. First of all, on the volume momentum in the fourth quarter in Poland, I think your guidance implies growth of about 30% in Q4. I think Allegro's growth sales guidance implies high teens volume growth, so still substantial market outperformance, but not to the same extent as you highlighted in the call of up to three times. What's driving that? And what is the impact of supply chain disruptions and product scarcity impacting the growth in the fourth quarter? The second question is on Mondial Relay. I was a bit surprised to see the big difference in performance in the first nine months and in Q3. Your guidance is on a pro forma basis with Mondial Relay included for 12 months.
I was wondering if you could indicate what the seasonality is that will be realized in the second half of the year, given that you only own the business from July 1st. Then finally on the U.K., you highlighted the London think tank initiative suggesting 10,000 APMs in Poland. With that background, I was wondering if you could please provide an update on the competitive landscape in APMs in the U.K. Who else is adding capacity? What is your share of the APM segment? And how important is the APM segment of the current delivery market? Thanks very much.
Okay. Thank you, David. Answering your first question, Q4 in Poland, you're right, we're actually expecting to outperform in Q4 as we have for the first nine months. Our expectation of our growth decelerating, so coming down, you know, a couple of percentage points compared to Q3. Nevertheless, you know, Q over Q, we expect, you know, as you can kind of do your own math, you know, a growth of in excess of 30%. Yeah, I mean, I think we would be probably in agreement with Allegro guiding in terms of GMV growth.
We think, you know, the all the elements that contribute actually to our outperformance, so the new entrants to the market, the bigger coverage from the APM network, the roll-outs will actually play to our benefit and we're quite confident we'll be well above the market. This is, this is really, the view we take. In terms of product shortages, as I mentioned, you know, it's probably going to be quite acute in Q, in Q4. I think, you know, it's across some of the verticals, most notably I think fashion and electronics, where we see that and what we hear from the merchants is they actually are struggling. So it will have an impact on the overall quarter. To what extent, you know, very difficult to judge.
We're just, you know, before the Black Friday and the high season. Let's see how people cope. Definitely, you know, some headwinds from that side, for sure. In terms of commenting on the U.K., I'll hand over to Michael.
Good morning, David. Just to give you a view on the U.K., just so I clarify, U.K. competitive landscape. When we look at the U.K. relative to other carriers or solutions in the market, the only real other, if you wanna call it competitive, player is Amazon. If you actually compare on the tracking that we do and you look at the deployment pace of Amazon right now versus us on a week-by-week basis, actually our deployment rate is twice as fast as Amazon, when you actually look at the pace of our deployment. They have got more APMs in the ground in the U.K. Relative to others in the market, there is really nothing else from a solution point of view.
Obviously as the first-mover advantage component, I think it's quite important, one, for two reasons. One, we're the only open network, whereas Amazon is a closed network, so clearly, you know, what we're doing is providing a solution to the rest of the other retailer market. Secondly, I would probably treat it as a compliment that Amazon continues to invest in APMs relative to obviously encouraging the market offering. The rationale clearly is the same reasons that we see, which is sustainability, CO2 emissions, and capacity in the current last mile solutions within the U.K. I think that sort of really fits into sort of our strategy and the first-mover component, and we continue to invest in that.
From our point of view is really to ensure we have the capacity for our own retailers as we develop those relationships.
Yeah. Thanks, Michael.
Do you have a share in terms of Amazon versus yourselves?
In more context.
Number of machines?
Total number of APMs on the ground.
Yeah, it's around 5,000 in the U.K., whereas we are targeting as we guided 3,000 end of the year with accelerated pace of the new deployment. I think, you know, we are really good in that. We continue to invest more into the local networks next year as we already estimated again 3,000 new deployments, which will be additional acceleration to 2,000 we deployed this year.
Yeah.
Yeah. David, back to your question. Sorry, do you want to follow up still with U.K.?
No, I just was asking about Mondial Relay indeed.
Yeah. That's where I wanted to come back to. Thank you. Yeah. With you know the dynamics of this year's market development, clearly the whole seasonality was distorted very strongly and it's unlike you know any other year in terms of quarterly seasonality. Definitely second half is going to be a weaker half compared to the first half of the year where remember you know Q1 was still a COVID quarter, if we can call this, with all the lockdown restrictions in place, et cetera. That clearly has an impact. What we see right now is coming down to more normal levels of growth, but also you know different seasonality.
Second half probably being closer to 45% of the total annual, as opposed to the normal year being well above 55%-60% even. Now, having said that, you know, as we compare ourselves, you know, quarter-over-quarter or year-on-year, you know, with some of the people taking a view that it's, you know, quite reasonable to actually compare this year's performance to 2019 performance, to eliminate all the kind of lockdown distortions of the performance. If you look at Q3 of Mondial Relay , it's been in excess of 30% growth vis-a-vis Q3 of 2019.
I think, you know, fundamentally, when you look at it, how the business is performing in the midterm and what's the perspective for the midterm going forward, you know, the growth is actually quite solid here.
Yeah. Understood. Thank you very much, gentlemen.
You're very welcome.
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question over the phone, which comes from Lotte Timmermans from ODDO. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning, gentlemen. I got a question on pricing. I see that it was marginally up quarter-over-quarter for both APM and to-door in Poland. I know that there's price increases in the framework agreement with Allegro. Can you say anything on to what extent and what it is based and what you have in framework agreements with other clients?
Essentially, you know, two things I think. You know, Allegro, as you might remember, price increases will not kick in before the second anniversary of the long-term deal. That's really November 2022. No impact from that side on the year to date pricing or Q3 pricing dynamics. With most of the customers, when we discuss, you know, price revisions, it's really for us a discussion price versus share of checkout. As we typically, you know, prefer to take, you know, bigger share on more volume rather than increase prices, because again, you know, given the embedded productivity improvements in our model, you know, more volume obviously for us means we benefit on the margin side quite significantly. We tend to keep pricing relatively stable.
If we can agree with the customers, you know, they make us a preferred delivery method, we get more share of checkout. That's been the case. Really the price increase on the blend that you've seen in Q3 is more a function of customer mix, right? As you know, large customers definitely enjoy better price points than the small or the new entrants, and really it's the size of the customer in Poland. You would say new entrants typically don't have that price advantage yet before they have built their volumes. Likewise, you know, the mid and long tail customers that are lower price at higher price point. It's really a mix effect. That's how you should read it.
That's very fair. To follow up on the new entrants, actually the large entrants, is it expected to have some dilutive impact on 2022 when their volumes increase as well? Because I assume that they are on a lower-priced agreement as well.
Yeah. I mean, essentially, you know, our view on 2022, as a principle or as a matter of policy, we will want to keep the prices relatively stable. Really not to translate them or not to translate the inflationary pressures to the customers. When it comes to the full year effect from the new entrants and impact on pricing, obviously there will be a benefit, you know, in terms of average price step up. Just obviously remains to be seen how it plays on the overall volume mix. To that end, especially, you know, how Allegro grows versus the non-Allegro channel, I think that's the main component of what drives our average price, especially on the APM side.
Okay, thanks a lot.
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question over the phone, which comes from Sathish Sivakumar from Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Morning. Thanks for the presentation. I've got three questions to start off with. When you say in the slide 21, normalization of growth, could you just actually give some color, like what do you expect the normalization to be, in terms of percentage? Like, is it like mid-teens or are we still looking like close to 30% given the e-commerce penetration in Poland? And what would normalization look like for APM versus to-door? That's my first question. Secondly, on market share of APMs in Poland, if you could just again give some color between Q2 and Q3 and what is your exposure to Allegro, say, in Q3 and how it has changed versus start of the year.
The third one on guidance, if you could share any color on how I should be thinking about D&A interest and interest expenses going forward into 2022 and 2023.
Thank you, Sathish. Basically, in terms of what we think about the growth normalization, I think you know the pre-COVID market growth was low- to mid-teens. This is where we think the market will come back to next year. That's at least our view. In terms of APM versus to-door share, as you have noticed, you know, APM is dynamically increasing share. That's basically, if you think about, you know, the Allegro GMV growth versus our APM volume growth, that clearly shows, you know, we're rapidly increasing share, you know, outside of the Allegro channel.
Whereas on Allegro, our take is we've been relatively stable across the year, with some fluctuations quarter to quarter, but essentially unchanged, you know, as at end of Q3. That's how we read that. So that's our view. We would expect that to be similar dynamics actually in 2022. The third question, sorry, I didn't quite get that, if you could repeat, please.
The third one is actually on guidance related to D&A and interest. How should we think about going into next year?
D&A? D&A guidance. We're not guiding precisely for D&A number, so, and we never have actually. More in terms of CapEx, if that's any kind of proxy for you to think about the D&A evolution. We still, you know, finalizing our strategy in terms of what the priority of APM network rollout across various markets. Clearly overlying on this, you know, our ability to meet certain ambitions when it comes to, you know, manufacturing, supply chain management, et cetera. That's why we, you know, hold back a little bit at this point in time in terms of guiding for the total CapEx number. That will come with the full year detailed full year guidance.
Sorry, just to follow up on that. Right, since you've actually accelerated the APM rollouts both in Poland and international this year, versus the start of the year, could we expect that your CapEx kind of peaks in Poland in 2021 going forward, it should be trending below 2021?
For Poland, definitely yes. I think the dynamics we were trying to paint, you know, for you earlier in the year was this year Poland is probably a peak year in terms of CapEx. It should start coming down next year, and very visibly 2023. Where we will switch our focus in terms of CapEx is definitely international, most notably Mondial Relay. And again, just to repeat what I've said earlier, it's two elements, the APM network rollout and the logistics network investment to increase coverage and increase capacity. Yes, those proportions will be changing over time with international taking more weight and Poland become lighter.
Thank you.
As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, it is star one on your telephone keypad to ask a question. We'll now move to our next question over the phone, which comes from Henk Slotboom from the IDEA! Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got two. First of all, earlier this year, you told us that you had secured the delivery of steel and computer components and that sort of things, all the stuff you need for APMs, thanks to deals you've done with all sorts of suppliers and thanks to prepayments. You were referring in your outline on the third quarter results to logistics problems and to what extent are logistics problems, steel supply, computer chips, whatever, hindering you or depressing the speed of the APM rollout. How do you look at that, going into 2022? Will that...
Could that be a factor that depresses or influences the rollout of your APMs in any way? Is it affecting your competitors? Are your competitors more affected than you? That's my first question. The second question relates to Mondial Relay. While you've made good progress in France by installing 200 APMs, what I was wondering since the announcement that you took over Mondial Relay, you're a real parcel logistics company, whereas the former owner, Otto, was, yeah, in fact, a mail order catalog which was doing this on the side. Has it led to any changes in the competitive behavior in the French market? Would you perhaps shed some light on that? Thank you.
Let me start with the first one. I'll hand over to Michael for the Mondial Relay question. Just for clarity, right? As you have seen, you know, we're ahead of our deployment plan in terms of APMs. We're guiding, you know, to us or even slightly above the top end of our previous guidance. That clearly, I think, tells you we're very much in control of the supply chain, its you know, manufacturing process, et cetera. As we said, we've secured, you know, supply chain earlier in the year, and that's clearly playing to our benefit right now, and that's very visible. A little bit difficult for us to comment on the competition, what's slowing them down, whether that's the supply chain, whether that's other factors. Difficult to say.
Clearly you can see, you know, they're moving much slower than they are or guiding to us or materially slower. There's definitely, you know, a difference, I think. In terms of 2022 and how we think of our ability to deploy, you know, supply chains are very, very unstable right now as we speak, and it's all across, you know, all the industries, food sourcing, electronics, chips, et cetera. So far we should say, you know, we don't see any kind of black clouds on the horizon. We still effectively managing those pressures. You know, it's a very dynamic environment. You know, things might be changing quarter to quarter. So far, no warning signals. That's how I'll summarize this. Michael, if you can tackle the.
Yeah. I think back to your question, if I understood it, one sort of what changes or what impact do you see from the historical ownership to now and what does that do to the competitive landscape? Firstly, if I start with the competitive landscape, firstly, as I mentioned on the call, Mondial Relay is a market leader in out of home. And therefore, you know, if you actually look at its performance and its growth and its continued growth, you know, I feel like there is no legacy from the previous ownership. In fact, Mondial Relay has really built a very strong relevance in the French market as an alternative offer to to-door delivery. And clearly its retail base and its coverage in the market has been very strong, as you can see from the previous results.
I think when we look at the opportunity now to add the APM business to complement already the existing strong coverage that we see with the PUDO business. When I look at the offer, I think our existing pan-European landlords and pan-European retail relationships that we have from both Poland and the U.K. as an example really gives a strong relevancy to the dialogues that we're having and already the early engagement where they're really encouraged by sort of our coming into the market and the opportunity to deploy APMs. I think the confidence we see just in the early deployment, as I flagged, is the actual ramp up and utilizations of the actual machines already, even from this early phase or ahead of anything we've seen in previous markets, even in Poland. We feel really encouraged by that.
I think the final comment I would make is actually the landlord discussions in themselves probably reflect our experience and our expertise because they're really encouraged by our credibility to really execute on this plan and really have proven credibility with us in other markets. That I think gives us a strong position as we continue to focus and deploy. Whereas other carriers in the market, I would probably add it's not their core focus, and it's not what they're there to execute upon. Obviously, others have made comments in press releases, but frankly, we don't see the competitive pressure at this point. More that we see we're providing an alternative solution, and we'll continue to focus in our strengths as we roll out the solution in France.
I think the final comment I make, which I put on the presentation, is actually one of the structural things we've made very quickly in these first 100 days, is really to concentrate the Mondial Relay management team on the French market. Obviously, there was other markets as part of the coverage, and we're really, you know, dedicating our focus and really putting in new leadership positions to really support the execution plan as we go forward. As we look at the other markets, we're able to complement that with our existing international business that we've been putting in place over the previous six months.
Okay. Thank you very much. Can I perhaps squeeze in another question? But on the basis of what you say, you've got your act pretty well together in France. You made it very clear at the time of the Mondial Relay takeover that the focus would be primarily on France in the beginning. Well, in the meantime we see that the PUDO network in Belgium and the Netherlands has increased quite notably. Is that a step you plan to make with APMs as well in the foreseeable future?
Yeah, I think, you know, clearly all those markets represent an opportunity, but clearly our focus right now is in France. I think the unique opportunity which I touch on, I can't remember which slide it was, but obviously one of the key reasons we also invested into Mondial Relay was the pan-European network. We see a significant growing demand from our existing retailer relationships as well as developing retailer relationships to really, you know, as I frame it, the ability to deliver a parcel from Valencia to Amsterdam. Really that pan-European network becomes quite critical, and that's really what's driving in effect that growth in PUDOs in those markets to really complement and offset sort of the focus we're putting in France in the APMs.
Yeah, we would not rule out in the future and certainly see the opportunity to put APMs in the ground as we work with our pan-European landlords in a multigeographic basis.
Okay, that's very helpful. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We have time for one final question, which will come from Marco Limite from Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning. Thanks for the presentation. I have one follow-up question on Mondial Relay. Where I see that volumes in Q3 were flat-ish or nearly if not slightly down. I'm just wondering if you are confident that you haven't lost market share in Q3. It's just, you know, the seasonality and it's just market trend in France. Also, when do you think the synergies you announced, you know, you were talking about when you announced the acquisition of Mondial Relay, those synergies will start to become visible? A second question on the U.K. division. You clearly have revised expectation for volumes this year quite materially. You explained, you know, the reason behind that.
Can you just explain a little bit better what you need, what needs to happen for you in order to get to breakeven in the second half of 2022? So I'm more interested about, you know, what's the sort of level of utilization you need to get to breakeven? What sort of absolute number you're expecting next year in U.K. based on your deployment plan? Thank you.
In terms of Mondial Relay market share, market performance and overall market dynamics, I think I mentioned earlier that our view is we're maintaining market share at this point in time. The market's been coming down a little bit across, you know, Q2, Q3, especially in the summer. It's picking up right now, and it's obviously seasonality, the usual seasonality in the market. You know, in line with all the other markets, you know, the growth is normalizing. I think we, as I said, we remain confident that in terms of the strength of the model, you know, coverage, brand equity, quality of service, this is a strong platform for us to create value.
Bringing this to your next question, which is, are we confident, you know, that we still will see the same, you know, value creation opportunity in terms of midterm outlook for growing volumes and increase our EBITDA by EUR 100 million-EUR 150 million as we have guided you originally? Nothing has changed actually. As Michael was explaining, we're continuing, you know, with our value creation plan and, you know, implementation of the basics of that plan, the fast start of the APM network rollout being just one. We're already contracting and designing new depots. We're setting up new team structure to be, you know, able to effectively go to market, secure locations, secure landlords, grow, put a network, you know, increase density of our logistics network.
Nothing has really changed. I think, you know, if we try to draw conclusions from one quarter performance, you know, whether there is any broad, you know, implication for the mid-term outlook and the fundamentals of the business, the answer would be there's nothing, you know, that's happened or we see that would be different to what we thought, you know, before the acquisition. Actually, the only difference being, you know, first half of this year, performance was much stronger than we expected. Obviously, that's not something we consolidate to our results, but as we speak about the fundamentals of the business and the, you know, the competitive position, I think that clearly showed us that actually Mondial Relay is a very good asset. Nothing's changed there.
In terms of the U.K. and outlook for next year ambition, you know, our ambition is to roughly double the APM network. I think that's the key, right? It's coverage, it's density, it's convenience for the end consumer. We'll continue to add new merchants. We'll continue to work with the current big brands that we have signed, you know, in Q3, that we're signing right now. Basically, you know, the scale and density. The core elements of the flywheel is, you know, what should drive us to be the breakeven by end of next year.
Now, if you ask about, you know, utilization, the one thing that we can say is when we're looking at the utilization by cohort, clearly, you know, the new cohorts and the way they ramp up is very, very encouraging actually. We think, you know, better ramp up. It's driven actually by two things, you know. It's driven by our active promotions with some of the leading brands. But it's also the fact, you know, as we have revised our network deployment strategy and signed, you know, a couple of strategic landlords, including Tesco, the new locations that we launch are much better fruitful locations. Therefore, you know, we see those locations ramp up much faster and actually show much better utilization.
Already when we look at this year's cohort versus previous year's cohort, despite the fact last year we had, you know, lockdowns, COVID, and you would expect, you know, last year was actually much stronger year in terms of utilization. That's true for the mature network, for example, in Poland. If we compare, you know, the cohorts in the U.K., it's just the opposite, which is clearly showing the adoption is hugely improving. Then last but not least, we'll continue to improve the overall ecosystem of the model. We just launching, as we speak, you know, the mobile app into the U.K. market, that clearly will be a catalyst, you know, for increased and improving adoption and improving consumer satisfaction.
I think all those elements are simply, you know, step-by-step the elements of implementing the InPost flywheel playbook and building, you know, the comprehensive product ecosystem for the U.K. market.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's question and answer session. I would like to turn the call back over to today's speakers for any additional closing remarks.
Thank you, guys. Once again, thank you very much for participation into this call. As always, Sherief is ready to answer any other questions, taking those offline. We are ready as well to meet and discuss our Q3 results and the outlook for 2021 and 2022. Thank you very much for the call and see you soon then.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.