Morning to everyone, thank you for joining us for our Q1 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. Following our prepared remarks, we'll be happy to take your questions. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. A replay will be made available on InPost's Investor Relations website at www.inpost.eu/investors/announcements, where you will also find an accompanying set of slides. Before we get started, I would like to remind you that today's call includes forward-looking statements and expectations that are subject to risks and uncertainties. It is possible that actual results may differ materially from the matters discussed today. With that behind us, I'd like to turn the call over to Rafał.
Thank you, Sherief. Good morning. Thanks, guys, for joining us today. I'm going to provide you an overview of our Q1 2021 highlights and actually the progress we've made on our mission to become Europe's leading out-of-home automated solution for e-commerce. Adam will take you through our financials in more detail and our revised 2021 outlook. We'll then be happy, of course, to take questions as well. Maybe jumping in straightforward to the Q1 highlights. We've had a great start to 2021, taking multiple steps to accelerate further our pan-European growth strategy, but also to deliver better than expected financial results.
While there still continues to be many discussions about how COVID has impacted consumer behavior, we believe that the accelerated shift to the digital economy is structural, and that's actually also providing us a very strong tailwind for us, and that expands our opportunity to continue to deliver great value for our customers. I firmly believe that the consumer behavior has permanently changed given the added convenience of online shopping, combined with best-in-class delivery experience. PwC report says that 85% of Polish consumers, and we may assume that this is the case also for other consumers on other markets, even after the lockdown, once COVID disappears, they will remain on the online shopping preferences, 85%.
Also for retailers, we've seen a significant reduction in physical retail space as those retailers have transformed their omni-channel strategies, being more focused on online, and they spend more and more money on marketing, on all those activities that are building the solid base of consumers in their online channels. Also really in a number of markets, we've also seen that the merchants, they're acquiring brands of more traditional merchants and moving them into the online channel. As you've seen in today's press release, we are accelerating our investments to capture this opportunity ahead of us and further strengthen the scale of our ecosystem. We now expect to reach up to 19,000 APMs by the end of the year. At the midpoint of our revised outlook, this is an increase of more than 1,100 machines versus prior outlook.
It's mainly driven because of the demand we are observing. We need to build the capacity, especially for Q3, Q4, the best quarters of the year. In the market where first-mover advantage is key, this will further enhance our competitive position and support longer-term growth opportunity. This is also reflected in our revised CapEx outlook as we accelerate the deployment of APMs and the extensions in 2021 to provide the capacity and the land grab opportunity and pull forward investments that were previously planned for next year. Adam will take you through the financials, but at the high level, overall parcel volumes increased by almost 100%, so 99%, translating into 93% year-on-year revenue growth.
We continue to benefit from the acceleration in the flywheel effect, and also strength of our financial model that's driving approximately 880 basis points of our adjusted EBITDA margin expansion, which is really an exceptional performance and underscores our relentless focus on execution and shareholder value creation. On the back of our Q1 performance and expectations for the balance of the year, we've also increased our full-year outlook. As mentioned, we took multiple steps to accelerate the pan-European growth strategy during Q1. In Poland, we continue to extend our leadership position and enhance this consumer value proposition. At the end of Q1, our APM network in Poland reached more than 11,700 machines, which is a kind of year-on-year increase by almost 50%, actually 46%, and more than 1.66 million lockers, which is an up by 77%.
It's not only the density of newly installed machines, it's also the overall capacity. That was growing faster than we envisaged. More than 6.3 million active mobile app users. Just to remind you, that's extra 600,000 new users during just first quarter. Moreover, this is the best-ranked app on both Polish app marketplaces, Google Play and App Store. Team is fully focused on executing our revised plan for the year, and also as we continue to redefine the last mile delivery experience, followed by implementation of new services we plan to do until the year's end. In the U.K., we are seeing great momentum as we build our network density rapidly and integrate more and more merchants.
Tremendous opportunity for us just to compare the revenues in the first quarter exceeded the revenue achieved in the first three quarters of 2020, and that underscores the strong momentum we have in Europe's largest e-commerce market. We also launched Instant Returns in the U.K., far exceeded our expectations. Great adoption, great experience, great comments, and great NPS. This is a fantastic proposition for merchants. Significant improvement in the UX versus current return experience where people mostly are staying in the queues. We see that as a game changer and we continue to fuel that growth opportunity by adding more and more merchants. Now we have more than 40 retailers working with us on those returns, but adding more and more each week. We also want to continue our acceleration in APM deployment, targeting up to 3,000 APMs by the end of the year.
Finally, a few words about Mondial Relay. We announced the proposed acquisition in mid-March, which would transform definitely the scale and the trajectory for our international expansion strategy. We remain on the same point. We continue to expand the acquisition to close by the end of Q2 and already working at pace to ensure that day one we have readiness and start to work to accelerate Mondial Relay's growth. Overall, super delighted with the strong start of the year and the progress we are making towards realizing our vision, delivering our commitments for both 2021 but also the medium term. Handing over to Adam to take you through the financials in more detail.
Thank you, Rafał, and good morning to everyone. Rafał has filled you, obviously, on the key highlights.
I'll zoom in on a couple of details and going through the segments and our segment performance before we turn to updated guidance for the full 2021. On this page, you see just a summary of high-level performance. As mentioned, very strong start of the year. A stronger than expected volume growth both across Poland and international. Continued clear demonstration of the strength of our financial model as we grow, as we accelerate, increase scale, and density of our operations. We continue to expand our margins and we continue to secure very attractive profile on investment in terms of return on CapEx.
In Poland, as you can see here, a very strong 91% revenue growth year-on-year in the first quarter of the year and approximately over 940 basis points of adjusted EBITDA margin expansion, benefiting from both operating leverage but also continued improvement in terms of productivity across the whole value chain. Again, a very clear continuation of the trends we've been demonstrating last year. In international, we have seen acceleration in growth. Our revenues have increased more than fivefold year-on-year in Q1, and that again is a clear demonstration of the traction we're building in international markets and most notably in the U.K. On the next page, going into Poland, overall volume growth of 97% in the quarter, driven by the strong growth in both APM and to-door segments, but obviously more notably in APM.
Revenue growth of 91%, driven by a combination of strong volume growth but also change in the segment mix. APM weighting more and more in the entire business, slightly diluting average price and therefore bringing down a little bit the revenue growth rate. Again, very much in line with our expectation. We're very pleased to observe how we continue to drive productivity, as I mentioned, and improve overall unit economics with scale and density of the network and also automation of our operations. We obviously continue to generate leverage out of our G&A costs and deliver operating leverage, translating this very clearly to expanding adjusted EBITDA margin. This has obviously translated to a margin of 44.8%, so very visible step-up year-on-year in Q1. Now turning into APM segment on the next page.
As mentioned, very strong quarter with 114% volume growth. Obviously driven by overall acceleration of the e-commerce penetration, but also us clearly continuing to drive the adoption of the end users and continuing to be a preferred form of last-mile delivery, as a result, obviously, increasing our market share. Last but not least, obviously also increasing size and density and rollout into so-called white spaces, so the new locations, more specifically outside big cities where we increase coverage, provide access to online shoppers, and simply generate new volume. Pricing has declined very modestly year-on-year, driven by customer mix. This is very much in line with our expectations. Actually, pricing has been slightly ahead of our expectations, so we've seen that customer structure being more favorable to us and price dilution being lower than expected originally.
On to the next page, talking a little bit about the APM network expansion. As you remember, the capacity of our APM network is defined by two dimensions. It's the number of APMs or number of locations, but also the number of lockers at each APM. As you remember, as the maturity utilization of APMs grows, we expand them, we add additional modules, additional lockers, to be able to manage utilization properly and deliver the best-in-class user experience for our end consumers. As you can see on the page, we've been increasing the average size of the locker across the couple of last quarters. That's been the case also in Q1 this year. We increased our overall locker capacity by 77% year-on-year, driven by the combination of both new rollouts into white spaces, but also expansion of the existing APM locations.
In Q1, we've accelerated the pace of deployment, adding close to 1,000 APMs and almost 200,000 new lockers to the network. At the end of the quarter, we've operated almost 1.65 million lockers as a total APM network capacity. As Rafał mentioned, we are accelerating, and we have an intention to accelerate our expansion into the second half of the year to both address the growing demand for our services, which is reflected in higher volumes, but also to provide us more opportunity to capture the midterm growth, and also obviously, by continued increase of density of the network, enable us to continue improving our unit economics. Moving on to the next page, turning to the PUDO segment, where growth rates were also very healthy, 44% year-on-year in Q1, and revenue increasing by 41%.
Again, slight pricing dilution, similarly like for APM segment, driven by the customer mix, but very modest and in both segments, that modest price dilution not preventing us from actually driving margin expansion and improving unit economics. Turning on to the international segment on the next page, we continued to ramp up the scale and scope of our international segment in Q1, accelerated the pace of APM deployment in the international markets, most notably obviously U.K., as well as we enhanced our value proposition for both consumers and merchants. What that meant was APM deployments in the U.K. increased the size of the network by 76% as we accelerated our APM network deployment, as you remember, focusing at this point in time, mostly on three largest cities of the U.K., so London, Birmingham, Manchester. Continued to expand our merchant base.
Live now, as Rafał mentioned, with 70 leading retail brands in the U.K. and also launched our Instant Returns offering in the U.K. That's a label-less return with very good feedback from the market, very strong initial volume uptake, and very good outlook for the rest of the year to be able to build differentiation in the marketplace based on this product. That is a summary of the Q1 performance, and I will now turn to updated outlook for 2021. Moving to page 13. You can basically see here updated group level and pro forma outlook for 2021. Just to remind, the pro forma includes the expected impact of the full year pro forma consolidation of Mondial Relay acquisition. At this point, of course, the Mondial Relay outlook is unchanged for obvious reasons. As Rafał mentioned, we've not completed the acquisition yet.
We expect the completion to be somewhere end of Q2 of this year. Clearly have not changed our outlook yet. Any changes to the previous guidance that you'll see here are driven by the existing business of Poland, most notably Poland and international. At a high level, we have increased our revenue and adjusted EBITDA margin expectations for the year, but also significantly step up in CapEx as we accelerate the rollout of the APM network, both in Poland and internationally, but we also bring forward some of the investment to secure the supply chain for 2022 network deployment. Starting with the size of the APM network, we have narrowed the band for the range of the number of APMs for the end of the year. That's expected to be somewhere in the range of 18,250 APMs-19,000 APMs for the entire business, both Poland and international.
What it means is that at the midpoint of that guidance, we expect to grow the network by 52%, or to add roughly 6,400 machines. It's both step up in the guidance, but it's also a rollout acceleration compared to last year. Whereas Rafał mentioned, last year we've grown the network in terms of number of APMs by 47% year-on-year. The midpoint of our updated guidance would imply that we're actually increasing network by 52% this year. That's obviously on the back, as I said, of our deep conviction that, A, to secure the best-in-class UX, we have to expand the size of the network to cater for the higher volumes. Also remaining quite confident that the profile of this investment will remain equally attractive as it was in the past, when we are looking at the dynamics of the market.
In terms of parcel volumes, parcel volumes are now expected to be anywhere between 455 million-485 million of parcels, a year-over-year increase in the range of 47%-57%. In terms of revenue, we have increased the midpoint of our revised outlook by 7% compared to the previous guidance, which year-over-year implies the growth of 46%-52% in terms of total revenue. Adjusted EBITDA margin is now expected to be between 41%-43% for the whole of the group, driven by the higher margin expectations for Poland. I'll cover that in a second. As I mentioned, the other significant element of the step change in the guidance is CapEx, where we actually are doing two things. As I mentioned, accelerating investment this year, but also securing undisrupted supply chain for the next year's rollout. There are certain tensions in the supply chain globally.
They're driven by the backdrop of the last year's COVID lockdown in China. The supply chain has still not fully recovered. We still observe bottlenecks and tensions. To be able to address that and make sure our ability to roll out the network next year is basically undisrupted, we'll bring some of the CapEx forward for this year and pre-pay some of the supplies. What that means is midpoint to midpoint, our guidance is increasing by PLN 170 million in terms of total CapEx number. Out of this, approximately 50% is related to the APM deployments that will take place this year, both in Poland and the U.K. Roughly 40% is a pull forward of CapEx prepayments to secure next year's supplies. The balance, which is roughly the remaining 10%, is basically some small step up in the CapEx for the IT and fulfillment infrastructure in Poland.
As I mentioned, as we look basically at the profile of the utilization of the machines, we also look at the profile of the utilization ramp-up for the new rollouts of APMs this year. We're quite confident that the return profile of these investments will remain very attractive. Despite the increase in CapEx, which is quite significant, we still expect our full-year cash conversion to be in the range of low 40%s. Which should improve our balance sheet structure and enable us to de-leverage business quite significantly. Just to remind you, on a pro forma basis, when we announced the Mondial Relay acquisition, we have guided that the post-acquisition pro forma leverage for the group would be somewhere in the range of 3.5x EBITDA.
We think with the current pace of growth, with the margin expansion, and the cash generation as provided in the updated guidance, we will be able to bring this down to below 3x by year-end. We would expect our leverage to be below 3x as of December 2021. Moving to Poland on the next page. As I mentioned, vast majority of the changes in the outlook are obviously driven by the Polish market performance, given the scale of this segment. We now expect to end 2021 in Poland with between 15,500-16,000 of APMs.
That would be an increase of 44%-48% compared to last year's pace of growth, or adding approximately a net 5,000 machines in Poland alone. Given, obviously, the current performance and the current market dynamics, and also what we observe post Q1, we now expect APM volumes to grow between 50%-57% year-on-year for the full year, and APM revenue to grow between 50% and 55% year-on-year. In terms of adjusted EBITDA margin, we are increasing our guidance by 200 basis points compared to the previous outlook. Expect the margin to be in the range of 45%-47% adjusted EBITDA margin in Poland for the full year. That implies that it's a 430 basis points year-on-year increase at the midpoint of this guidance compared to full year 2020.
In terms of full year CapEx numbers, we expect it to be in the range of PLN 740 million-PLN 780 million for the Polish market for the full year, for the reasons I've just outlined on the previous page. Moving to international. Our assumptions are largely unchanged, high level. There's some small tweaks. We have narrowed again, the band in terms of size of the APM network for the U.K. We've basically raised the midpoint of the range by approximately 400 machines compared to the previous guidance. Basically might accelerate a little bit more than we thought initially. From the revenue perspective, have marginally increased our outlook by PLN 10 million, but that's mostly driven by a different product mix in the U.K. We expect also increased CapEx on the back of the narrowed range of the deployments.
The CapEx for the international to be in the range of PLN 125 million-PLN 140 million for the full year. That's very much it. International, very much in shape as we expected and continuing to accelerate. In summary, I think, as a closing remark, we're very pleased with our execution in Q1. Our ability to both capture incremental growth, but also to be able to translate that growth into profits. Obviously remain very highly focused on continuing to drive efficiencies in all aspects of our operations. Delivering further margin expansion in the business. Continuing to invest to support future growth and secure attractive ROI on our investments. Thank you very much. That's all, I guess, from my side. Turning back to the operator and open for the questions. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute button is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, that's star one to ask a question. We'll now take our first question. It comes from David Kerstens of Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, gentlemen. Three questions, please. First of all, can you give an indication how rapidly the APM segment is taking share in the Polish market from the to-door segment? I think it was at 35%, 36% in full year 2020. Is it now rapidly approaching to become the dominant segment in the Polish market? The second question is regarding the momentum in April. Can you give the volume growth numbers that you're seeing in parcels in Poland and for the U.K., please? Finally, I think in the press conference this morning, you're seeing that the competition is delaying the rollout. I was wondering if you can please elaborate on that, what you had expected and what you're currently seeing in the Polish market in terms of deployment from competition. Thank you very much.
Maybe I'll hand over to Rafał for the last question of the three. Let me cover the first two. In terms of APM market share, yes, we clearly see that we continue to gain share, and we continue to gain share quite significantly. Very difficult to give precise numbers. We think the trends we've witnessed last year when we've been taking teams of market share points from the to-door deliveries, that is clearly continuing, and that's clearly continued in Q1. That's definitely the case. As I said, difficult at this point in time to give precise numbers. In terms of April growth, again, can't give precise growth rate. Just to reiterate, in absolute terms, and please remember last year, April 2020 in Poland was the outburst of the COVID wave one and a very strict lockdown.
The volumes in the month of April 2020 have been exceptionally high. Obviously, if you think about the growth rates, growth rates would be distorted by a high base. If we look at the absolute number of parcels, we've seen very healthy growth in April compared to previous months. These trends continue to be positive for us. Maybe, Rafał, if you can cover the competition question.
Yeah, happy to. We tend not to comment on competition or press releases or press statements. Just wanted to reinforce my statement from the previous conference where we said that end of the year, that's going to be a hard checkpoint. What was in the press and what's on the ground. At least looking at some of the announcements we saw in November, some of the players were supposed to deploy first machines or hundreds of machines, that's the quote from the articles, beginning of the year. It was beginning of spring. Some of them claim Q3 or Q4 still struggling with even having any start. This is a kind of obvious thing for us. It's not about buying machines. It's not about even deploying machines.
It's all about creating an ecosystem based on a technology, based on a state-of-the-art logistics, mobile app, quality, weekend deliveries, label-less returns, NPS over 71. This is a complex task. This is how we perceive this. As I said, we are not commenting on the press releases. We are doing our job. We are deploying more and more. We are accelerating, and we will accelerate further if the demand on the InPost service is increasing.
Yeah. Understood. Can I ask one quick follow-up, please? In terms of network utilization, clearly you had very strong volume growth in the first quarter. Do you see that network utilization is getting to too high levels that is supporting the accelerated rollout and maybe related to the new Amazon contract that has come in place?
Yes. As I mentioned, part of the rollout acceleration or actually increase in the CapEx and the total locker capacity, it's not necessarily new locations, but it's definitely the size of the lockers as well, is driven by the need to cater for the increased volumes. I wouldn't say basically utilization is too high, but we want to prevent a situation where a very high utilization level has a negative impact on the user experience. We definitely want to provide best-in-class service, so the user experience is absolutely key here, and we definitely need to have enough capacity to address the current growth, but also the market momentum that we clearly see that will continue into the later part of the year.
Understood. Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from Marco Limite of Barclays. Please go ahead.
Sorry. My first question.[audio distortion] At the time of the IPO, you provided.
Marco, I'm afraid we can't hear you very well. Sorry. If you can speak up. Couldn't hear you.
Is this better?
Yes, it's better. Thanks.
Is this better? Yeah. Okay. Sorry for that. Yes. My first question looks a bit more on what you expect on the medium term. At the time of the IPO, you were providing some growth figure for what we can expect indeed for volumes. I was wondering if you still think that we can still expect broadly the same volume growth but just on a higher base, or you think that in 2021, we are just seeing a bit more front-loading of the growth. The aggregated growth over the medium term over the next five years is, you think it's still going to change. My second question is on the average locker size.
You show at slide nine that the average locker size has increased in Q1 compared to the past, and I was wondering if you can provide a broad split of how much of that growth in average size comes from just larger lockers and how much comes from additions to smaller lockers. If the economics of additions are better compared to just installing larger lockers. Thanks.
Yeah. In terms of midterm guidance, clearly at this point in time, we're not updating midterm guidance, so wouldn't want to get into details, but just broadly addressing your question around the front-loaded growth this year, et cetera. I think the growth is stronger than we thought, but it's not worlds apart, right? It's not like we're witnessing right now a different reality than we thought about three or four months ago. It's very much in line in what we thought in terms of a big picture. I don't think we're talking about some kind of accelerated front-loaded growth that will kind of flatten down or slow down later this year or next year. There's probably no reason to think that. As Rafał was explaining, it's a structural growth.
It's consumer behavior, it's consumer preferences, but it's also the online and omnichannel strategies of the largest retailers, both in Poland and I think Europe-wide, where people have just redefined their business models, are more kind of online-focused and really are spending a lot of money, time, and focus to actually drive online. We're very positive the fact that we've seen a bit more acceleration Q1 and potentially Q2, Q3 this year.
Will not have an impact in terms of the midterm outlook. Obviously, the percentage growth rates might play slightly differently, but we have no reason to believe in absolute terms. This is a change to our midterm view. As I said, at this point in time, difficult to discuss details around the midterm guidance. In terms of a locker size, increase in the locker size, as you can remember, the model is very simple. We put out a locker, of a standard configuration, depending on the type of a location, and then we expand it as the utilization builds up. Answering your question, increase in the locker sizes is almost solely driven by the increase in size of the existing lockers already. It's not like we're putting out the new lockers, which are larger than last year. It's extensions.
In terms of unit economics, clearly an extension provides a very compelling unit economics and much better profile in terms of ROI, compared to the rollout of the new locker. The reason being, first of all, the heaviest part of your CapEx being the steering unit has already been invested and you're just adding a lighter CapEx extension module. Then secondly, it's a location which has a well kind of defined user base, is very well utilized, so the incremental utilization builds up very, very quickly. Actually, if you were to tear the locker out, sorry, the APM apart and look separately on the ROI on the extension versus putting out a new locker, the former clearly provides you with much better return profile.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from Lotte Timmermans of ABN AMRO - ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen. Two questions from my side. One question on your guidance, international revenue versus volumes. You mentioned product mix as an explanation. Is this based on less third-party volumes, or is this because you see the share of returns increasing and better than expected? My second question is on the supply chain, which you mentioned. What parts of the value chain do you exactly see the bottlenecks and expect to focus on this year? Thanks.
Sorry, Lotte. I didn't get the second half of your second question. Could you please repeat that for me? Thank you.
Sure. I'll fully repeat it. The second question was that you indicated that the supply chain has not fully recovered yet. What parts of value chain do you exactly see bottlenecks, and where will you focus on this year?
Thank you. International. Yes, it's a combination of both different mix of what we call own volume versus rental volume, so the volume that's provided by the third party logistics providers who use our lockers, with the benefit to the former one, which clearly enjoys higher average price. Also, as you mentioned, the launch of the Instant Returns is very encouraging. Clearly, the price point on this one is more attractive than our average price, so it's a combination of both. In terms of the supply chain, I think the two most kind of sensitive bottlenecks of the whole supply chain is electronics for the APMs, which are sourced from both Europe and China, but most notably, I think China is a problem.
You probably are aware that it's not only the manufacturing, but it's also the global freight and transportation, which has come under immense pressure. Delivery times, in the first quarter of this year have increased dramatically. There's been a shortage of the freight capacity globally. It's combination of both, which actually impacts not only the ability by the Chinese manufacturers to manufacture, but also by the freight and expedition companies to actually deliver that from Asia to Europe, or the U.S. Actually, these are the two early elements. This is very, very slowly regaining its pre-COVID balance. That balance is still not fully in place yet. We expect this disbalance will continue to at least towards Q3/Q4 of this year. Therefore, our need to actually address that and make sure we are not hit by that disruption.
Okay. Yeah, that's a clear global trend. The question is also, you're not fully producing it yourselves. You're partly outsourcing it, right? To a production facility. Are there some costs passed on or is it fully calculated towards you?
No, no. I mean, the cost as such and the kind of contract manufacturing is not an issue whatsoever. That's fully under control. It's the manufacturing components, where the stretch and the tension is. Overall, we very, very confident that we have this all under control. The reason we're bringing a little bit of the CapEx forward is to continue to be in control
Essentially, not be negatively affected by the whole disbalance. Just to make it very clear, so far, we've been able to manage it very smoothly, and the expectation is this will be also the case towards second half of this year.
Great. Thank you both.
Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one. We will now take our next question. It comes from Gianluca Pediconi of MOMentum.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. Sorry, good morning, and compliments for the impressive set of Q1 results. I have a few questions. The first one is, when you are planning to accelerate the APMs deployment in Poland, can we read this as a kind of response to the potential coming competition? That is the very first question. The second one is, you mentioned that you were able to increase even further the utilization rates. How much of this is actually due to your ecosystem, and so can be considered a kind of entry barrier because of your technology, and how much is just driven by an increase in volume demand? The very last question is about international.
In the target country, and I mean the U.K., Italy, France, and Spain, do you have the perception that either the incumbent or newcomers are moving in order to try and have a kind of a first-mover advantage before you will be able to deploy a dense network? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Gianluca, and let me answer all three of them. First, our acceleration in terms of the deployment is mostly driven by the growing demand. We are planning our resources a few quarters ahead of us. We are calculating and envisaging that in Q3, Q4, the demand is going to be much stronger because of this strong Q1, because of the stronger adoption, because of even the surveys that's showing us clearly that people will stay with online shopping, and they will not go away even if the physical shops are open. This is mostly driven by the expected demand coming from the new clients, but also a typical land grab we make in smaller towns or even villages. Just to let you know, already 2,000 village communities have got lockers of InPost.
We are not only deploying machines in cities or metro or big cities. We are going into villages, and this is a completely new demand we are targeting, and that's also one of the drivers of the growth. The second point, in terms of utilization, you are right. This is a spot-on observation. We are driving the utilization thanks to the technology, thanks to new services, thanks to improved processes, and thanks to the weekend deliveries as well. Thanks to this, we are utilizing machines more efficiently, and that's purely conveying to a better profitability and the operating margin. Moreover, we have plenty of tech initiatives, including big data forecasting, going into profiling of the clients according to their habits, when to deliver parcels most efficiently to provide us as quick pickup time as possible.
Instead of having parcels occupying a locker for 12 hours, we know, and we are implementing tech solutions that half of the parcels we have picked up within two hours. That's all about big data and technology, and we expect to expand this efficiency further. The last question, in terms of perception, the answer is no, we haven't noticed an extraordinary activity in those geographies so far, which doesn't mean it may not change. Although still in this moment, I want to just remind everybody that U.K. market is 12 times larger than Poland. France is eight times larger than Poland in terms of volume. That said, in France, 40% of the volume out of home goes to PUDO. Even an extraordinary activity of multiple players will not change our view in terms of the total market potential for a sizable network of lockers of InPost.
Thank you very much for your very straightforward answers. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Henk Slotboom of the IDEA! . Please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got two, and both are on international. Rafał, I look at the guidance you gave for the number of APMs at the end of this year, for international, it's 750 more than your old guidance, the lower end of the bandwidth. You have 1,810 APMs currently already installed in the U.K. and Italy. If I remember it correctly, when you organized the call on Mondial Relay, you also said that you were looking into the opportunities to add some of the lockers to existing Mondial Relay pickups. Could you perhaps tell me or shed some light on to what extent the 750 uplift in the lower end of the bandwidth includes that, or that it is still to come? That's one. The second thing is related to that. If I look at the overall guidance, it's very strong.
Obviously, Poland is the main driver there. You said in the introduction remarks that you left the international growth guidance more or less unchanged. Is that caution which is probably subject to revision once the Mondial Relay acquisition has closed? Those were my questions. Thank you.
Yeah, happy to answer that as well. Quickly in terms of the first part, no, actually both parts. I think, in our guidance, because the transaction hasn't been closed, we are not able to forecast and guide the investors regarding our deployment plan for French market, for sure. Similarly, we are not changing the international guidance so far because of this one event that still hasn't happened, which is the acquisition.
Is it fair to assume that it is a potential bonus?
Adam?
Yeah. Let us comment in a different way. I think once we close, and once we're able actually to work without restrictions with Mondial Relay team, we'll definitely look into how much of the growth potential we're able to derive and deliver this year. Definitely if we see a difference to our original guidance, we will communicate that with the market. Whether it's a bonus, difficult to comment, but we'll definitely come back with a revised view on Mondial Relay later in the year.
Okay. I think that's fair. Thank you very much. Have a nice day.
Thank you.
Thank you.
It appears we have no further questions at this time. I would like to hand the call back to Rafał Brzoska for any additional or closing remarks.
Thank you, guys. Once again, maybe a quick reinforcement that the company is definitely going into the right direction. That's something what I may say is our strong view here. Secondly, we still are in front of the Mondial Relay acquisition. That said, it will potentially drive further our views on 2021, especially the second half of the year, but also going further, especially for 2022 and 2023, as we know that we should shape the right strategy jointly with the great team of Mondial Relay. We are pretty consistent in our key messages that we are mentioning on almost every briefing. First, competitive angle, we are reassured. The more we see, the more we look at the barriers to entry.
We are looking also at the supply chain complexity that Adam mentioned. Seems that some of those tensions are also already becoming, let's say, an issue in front of the competitors across Europe. I'm not only speaking about Poland. We are also sure that the technology angle and the ecosystem that's based on technology we've built here, we've created here with a strong face towards customers. What I mentioned in answer on one of those questions, rising the expectations, bringing even more for the clients, increasing NPS, bringing more features to the mobile app. That's 80% of the success of InPost. Physically machines, that's probably less than 20%. Moreover, this factor is diminishing.
The more we develop, the more developments we plan for future in terms of services, fulfillment, in terms of speed of delivery and real 24/7 access to the service, the less important the physical machine is. We are very satisfied. We are working very hard. We would love to rise the bar further, and we'll do that once we have conviction that the performance, the overperformance we are observing is a steady state trend. We are going into the direction of the closing of the transaction with Mondial Relay, which will definitely fast-track our international expansion massively. Happy to announce today's results and happy for the questions. Probably handing over right now to Sherief. If you want to add something, feel free.
No, thank you. Just thank everyone for today's time. We look forward to speaking with many of you over the coming days and weeks.