Good morning. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Nexi first quarter 2024 presentation. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Paolo Bertoluzzo, CEO of Nexi. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning, to everyone, and welcome, to, Nexi call for first quarter, first quarter results 2024. As usual, I'm here with Bernardo Mingrone, Stefania Mantegazza, who leads our investor relations activities, and a few colleagues, from our team that may help us, in case, you have very specific, questions. As usual, I will start by summarizing the key messages. Then, we'll deep dive in a topic that is very strategic for us, and that we understand, attracts a lot of interest from our investors, the topic of payments and software, integration. We then hand over to Bernardo, that will cover results in more detail, and I will come back for final comments. Obviously then, we will have time for your questions.
Now, let me start with the key messages of today on page three. The first message is that we continue to consistently deliver on growth and also on margin expansion at the same time. In the quarter, our revenues did grow about 6%, with Merchant Solutions at 6.8%, and with e-commerce actually growing double-digit. This growth that is broadly in line with our own expectations has been supported by good volume dynamics in line with last quarter of last year, maybe slightly better. EBITDA growth has been at 8.6% in the quarter, with a very strong EBITDA margin expansion of 112 basis points.
Second key message, we continue to shape our company for future profitable growth. We are continuing to execute our growth strategy. Two specific topics we want to mention here. We're increasing day by day our focus on our payments and software integration strategy execution, based on partnering with the best-in-class local ISVs, and we will have a deeper dive on the topic. And in parallel, we're obviously working on efficiency and profitability, accelerating the cost synergies and more broadly, our efficiency initiatives, also on the back of the integration of the group, and this will have more visible effects later in the year. Third, simple message, we continue to pursue a capital allocation to create value for our shareholders.
We are starting actually today, this morning, the share buyback program that we have announced in early March. It's a EUR 500 million share buyback program that will last for a maximum of 18 months, and as I said, is starting today. Second key message, our net leverage in the quarter has been down to 2.8x EBITDA from 3.0 at the end of last year. Again, we consider this clear evidence of our ability to strongly generate cash at the organic level, and therefore, the leverage if we don't have better usage of capital. Obviously, the impact of the buyback will happen later in the year.
But for this quarter, where there was no material M&A and no buyback effect, you see that the leverage went down 0.2 x in three months. Last but not least, we confirm, as anticipated, that the EUR 1.3 billion maturities, debt maturities, that expire in 2024 and 2025 will be fully paid down with existing cash. And actually, EUR 220 million of that has been already reimbursed during the month of April. Overall, in this context, we want to confirm our guidance, that is, remember, to everyone, revenues growing mid-single digit, EBITDA growing mid-to-high single digit with an EBITDA expansion of at least 100 basis points, and excess cash generation of at least EUR 700 million.
Now, before handing over to Bernardo for results, you remember that in the past, we were covering volume details. This was an heritage of the COVID days. As I've anticipated a couple of times, we will not do this going forward. Obviously, Bernardo will comment and give you more color on volumes in the context of revenue growth. At the same time, in the past, we were also providing an overview of our progress on the various fronts of merchant services. We continue to do this, and it is actually the same page you will find it into our attached documentation at the end of the presentation. This time, instead, we'd like to focus a bit more on a topic that is attracting a lot of attention.
It's always a central topic in the conversations we are having with our investors and with all of you more broadly, that is payment software integration. And here, we want to provide you our point of view on the topic and most importantly, summarize our strategy. And therefore, let me jump on page number four, starting with the way we look at this ecosystem. When you compare Europe versus the U.S., it's really, really important to observe the fact that the software and payment integration ecosystem in SMEs is much more fragmented and definitely very, very local. There are SME software market specific characteristics, and there are European structural characteristics. Starting with the SME software market characteristics that you find summarized on the left of this chart.
First of all, this is a highly fragmented and extremely local market, the market of software providers for SMEs. There are hundreds of players in each market, and by the way, they are normally different by market. Normally, the top 5-10 cover less than 20% of market share, and therefore there is a long, long tail. Second point, in general, these software providers are less developed in their propositions, and they're actually much smaller than what you find in the U.S. In fact, 90% of their proposition are still relying on standalone or lightly integrated payments, and moving into integrated payments is more by obsession for the moment.
And last but not least, the fact that we have a smaller SMEs plus specific market characteristics, basically create a lower unit economics for integrated payment solutions versus the U.S. Normally, not how much can be charged to an SME for an integrated software and payment solution is normally half, or in any case, much lower than what you would find in the U.S., which makes these markets much more difficult for large players to be entered, and most importantly, much more difficult to be developed cross-border in Europe. At the same time, on the right, you can see a number of specific characteristics that are actually structural for Europe. First of all, you have very country-specific tax rules and fiscal infrastructure to be integrated.
Second, when you look at it from the vertical standpoint, you find even more differences in terms of local regulations. Let me give you a simple example: the way you need to present allergies, food allergies, in a restaurant menu in Germany is completely different from the way you have to present them in Italy or in Switzerland, therefore creating further complexity on top of the more regular ones. And last but not least, when you look at the local regulations for highly integrated business models, they tend to be more difficult than what you have in other places, and therefore, this makes models highly integrated, like the PayFac model , more difficult and expensive to be deployed. And these are the software market characteristics.
On top of this, we should always remember that, also the payment market is highly fragmented itself, now with more than 150 local payment methods, and more than 10 national debit schemes to be managed, if you really want to be successful, in the mass market of SMEs in the specific country. Therefore, now the software SME market is even more fragmented and complex than the payments one. Now, for all these reasons, what we are seeing and what we are expecting as a consequence as well, but it's already happening, is that in Europe, this market will develop at a lower speed and with different dynamics and very local dynamics, I would add, versus what we've seen in the U.S.
Now, our strategy in this context, to make integrated payments, an opportunity for us, is based on two very simple pillars. The first one is that, we want to be the partner of choice for local ISVs. We are the partner of choice already in most cases, for local, ISVs. We provide the Nexi payment solutions to the localized ISVs relevant in the key verticals, and then integrate, bundle them, with their software, solutions. These integrated bundles are normally distributed by their own, channels. We offer a number of flexible business models, to these, partners, of all sizes and maturity. And this is very important, given, the fragmentation of the market, and the very different nature of, the players that we find, in the different markets.
Among these business models, we also have what we call a Smart PayFac model for larger and more sophisticated ISVs. Again, it's more an exception rather than a rule, but it's a model that allows, on the one side, a simpler life, a more efficient life in terms of complexity management to the ISV, and on the other side, more customer and experience control for Nexi. In this context, we have developed and already launched a digital integration platform that is enabling an integrated CRM across Nexi, the software partner, and the merchant to allow, for example, for frictionless onboarding and, therefore, merchant and partner utilization.
Last but not least, we are also launching a partner program to help these ISVs to be effective when they sell integrated solutions to the market. Again, the vast, vast majority of them, they don't have experience in payments, and it's in our best interest to help them to be effective in that space on the back of our solutions. And this is the first pillar. The second pillar goes in parallel to this. We very selectively bundle a very small number of best-in-class software solutions from our preferred local partners with our Nexi payment solutions, and we distribute them through our channels. Not all of them, not all channels are good for selling integrated solutions, but over time, this will expand more and more.
We are obviously starting with basic core solutions that will work across most of the simple application, starting with retail... and over time, we'll expand into a few selected key verticals. When we are able to upsell to a merchant the bundle, normally we see an increase in terms of value of the merchant to us in terms of net revenues of about 50%-100%, depending on the specific situation. So these are the two strategic pillars that we are executing. In parallel to that, on top of that, we are also leveraging orderbird for learning and development. This is a very specific investment we've done a couple of years ago.
Orderbird, let me remind everybody, is a leading SME hospitality, point-of-sale software provider in Germany that is fully owned, by Nexi. We have developed with them an integrated payment software proposition that is distributed by Orderbird channels, but now also by, Nexi channels. They are fully integrated on the digital platform I was mentioning before, and, obviously, we leverage, Orderbird also to, develop, this, platform, and in general, the capabilities that we have, in payment software integration further and further. And obviously, even if it's not necessarily a plan today, we, remain with the option to expanding, you know, Orderbird into further verticals in Germany or into, new markets or both. On page six, you find, a few examples of things that are live today.
Here, I just want to mention the fact that, on pillar one, being the partner of choice of ISVs, we already have more than 500 partnerships, over eight markets. Here, the focus is coverage of the market with all the relevant applications and all the relevant solutions being available in the market. While on the second pillar, the rule of the game is more focus and selection. Here you see three examples of what we are doing in Denmark, where we have selected three solutions from three key partners, and we bundle them and distribute them together with our own services. Let me now hand over to Bernardo for results.
Thanks, Paolo. Good morning. As Paolo's already mentioned, we had a reasonably good start to the year, with revenues growing 6%. EBITDA is growing just south of 9%, and this allows us to increase our EBITDA margin by just north of 100 basis points. Within the overall group revenue growth, we can see that Merchant Solutions contributed 6.8% in terms of its top line growth, and this was and continues to be sustained by international scheme volumes, which you can see grew 8.3% in the quarter. This international scheme volume growth, if you strip out the cash component, was...
So cash component being the cash withdrawals, was actually growing healthily in the double-digit area in DACH, and in Italy being in a very high single-digit area. Throughout Europe, we see continued growth in the crucially and ever-important SME segment. And more importantly, we point out how with e-commerce, we're growing revenues in e-commerce year-on-year, driven by both the volume growth in the market, but also customer acquisition, customer base growth. We actually believe that we are growing substantially more than the market in e-commerce.
If we move on to Issuing Solutions on slide 10, we have a very strong quarter, given also our expectations and guidance for the year with the growth, which is 5.2%, again, driven by top line, top line growth, driven by international scheme volumes. Here, we continue to call out the crucially important for us acceleration of international debit in Italy. We were well above the 6 million card mark in Italy at the beginning of this year, so continued strong growth there, and we continue to focus and succeed in upselling and cross-selling our value-added services to our customer base across Europe. I think it's very important to call out what we did last year.
If you remember, in the second quarter, if I believe, if I remember correctly, last year, we called out how there's a one-off contribution coming from banking M&A, which flattered our performance somewhat in the second quarter last year, and this will obviously have an impact to our full year performance this year. This is obviously all expected, and it's just a comp issue, a year-on-year comp issue, so that 5% is a strong start to the year, but you should bear in mind that, comp for 2023 gets worse as we move forward in 2024. If we move on to DBS.
DBS had, I would say, a very strong start to the year with this growth of 4.3% coming from volumes in, in the EBA clearing space, so number of, of bank transfers increasing double-digit in the year, but also project work coming in probably from a phasing perspective a little earlier than expected, but, but very good performance from DBS as well in the first quarter. If we look at the split geographically, you can see Italy and the growth in the top line in Italy, as I mentioned earlier, supported by volumes in international schemes.
If you look at the Nordics, the truth, is you should probably look at that top line growth in a low single digit area being split in two, one on acquiring, where growth is more like, mid-single digit, and on issuing, where we have the runoff of some legacy contracts, not really in issuing, but more in the account-to-account space or in the DBS space, also tied to past M&A with Mastercard and the current sale of Nordic DBS business. DACH in Poland, I'd say, you know, very, very, very strong performance in Poland, and Germany. We spoke of the volumes in Germany, in the Merchant Solutions part. And with regards to Southeastern Europe-...
I would only call out that Greece is performing well, but in general, I would say that Southeastern Europe is performing in line with expectations. Moving on to costs, on slide 13, we have growth in the quarter, which is very similar to the full year growth in costs of last year. We've already spoken about the effect of inflation, wage drift, and impact upward, you know, pressure on wages coming from renegotiations of collective agreements in Italy and outside of Italy.
I would say that, and we mentioned that last year when we had a big one-off hit from Italy in the fourth quarter, but starting from the first of January this year, we're also taking a hit in Italy on the renegotiation of the contract, which, on a year-over-year perspective, actually increases cost growth, wages cost substantially at 6.2%, would be half of what it is if we hadn't had that three-yearly renegotiation hit us in the first quarter. On operating costs, I would highlight how I think we have our performance flattered a little in the quarter. So contrary to wages on non-HR costs, we have a bit of a benefit coming from phasing of projects.
I just remind you that clearly our guidance for the year, whether it be revenues, EBITDA, cash, et cetera, is for the year, not for the quarter, but I'd say good start to the year there as well. Slide 14, Paolo mentioned how, you know, the strong cash generation in the quarter has afforded us to reduce leverage to 2.8 x. Clearly, first quarter is one which benefits from the seasonality of tax payments, no M&A being completed in the quarter, and so on and so forth. And that has led us to reduce leverage to just below to around 2.8 x. Just following quarter end, we paid down our senior notes. This is as expected.
We have highlighted how we had earmarked EUR 1 billion of available cash to pay down debt in 2024 and 2025. We started doing so in April. We will continue for the rest of this year and next year as expected. And I would also highlight how rating agencies, and this is true after the call for the first quarter results, have actually been supported with regards to the deleverage profile and our cash generation ability. So from a net financial debt and net leverage position, I'd say a good quarter as well. Finally, before handing the floor back to Paolo, as he mentioned, we kicked off our share buyback program this morning, EUR 500 million in total. The 18-month time horizon is a maximum period.
Clearly, the speed and pace of delivery of this buyback program will depend on market conditions, share price, and so on and so forth. But it's important to note that it started, or will start actually in about half an hour when the markets open. Hand the floor back to Paolo. Thanks.
Thank you, Bernardo. Let me conclude, first of all, by confirming, again, our guidance for the full year. We expect to have a net revenues growing at around mid-single digit, EBITDA growing, mid to high single digit, with EBITDA margin expansion of at least 100 basis points. We expect to generate excess cash, organic excess cash, of more than EUR 700 million, and we expect leverage to be down at below 2.9 x EBITDA, including now the announced M&A and the share buyback effect. Otherwise, this will be down to 2.6 x on an organic basis. Let me conclude just covering again the key messages of today.
First of all, now, we have continued consistent delivery of growth and margin expansion. Bernardo just went through it. Second, that we continue to shape Nexi for future profitable growth, both in terms of executing our strategies on the growth opportunities, but also at the same time continue to drive efficiency in the business. And last but not least, we'll continue to pursue a capital allocation that we believe is the best to create value for our shareholders. And as you see today, at the same time, we reduce... we continue to reduce our leverage, but also we start giving back value to shareholders through the share buyback that is starting today. Let me stop there and let me open to your questions.
Thank you. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from Justin Forsythe with UBS. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Paolo, Bernardo, thank you very much for having me on, and nice results. A couple here from me. So first, wanted to hit a little bit on the ISV strategy, which was a nice set of slides and section there. Really appreciated that. The point you make around the speed of adoption relating to fragmentation really resonated. I imagine you have a few scenarios mapped out in what instance drives your upside case, for adoption. Maybe you could highlight a little bit where you think you might be able to see accelerated adoption of software-led across Europe. And also on top of that, it's clear from your slide deck, and logically, that you're best suited to serve local software platforms. Does that make the proliferation of more global ISVs a potential risk?
I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the phasing in merchant services throughout the year. Clearly, there was some strength in Italy. However, I think there is also some impacts relating to competitors and other merchant portfolio purchases and dynamics relating to direct s ales force distribution, maybe you could walk through that as well. Thank you.
Good morning, James. I think, thank you for, your, your comment on, on, on ISV, and I think, in order to cover your question, we could spend a few hours, I think, given how relevant and articulated topics is. First of all, I think, what, I've been describing is something that we observe across the board in Europe, and across, basically most verticals at the same time. Then so that clearly you have dynamics that are slightly different, country by country and vertical by vertical. In general, you, see the most digitalized countries, and here I'm referring to the Nordics, moving a, a bit faster in this space, than the less digitalized ones.
Therefore, for example, Nordics are a bit ahead of Italy, as it is normal for this type of dynamics. You also see the sector by sector. You know, for example, hospitality and, for example, restaurants are a bit ahead in this dynamic, compared to, for example, to groceries, okay? Where clearly the need for more sophisticated software is less relevant to manage the business. So this is what I would say at this stage. In terms of the relevance of the more local players versus the more global players, to be honest with you, this is really one of the points that we're trying to make with the context page.
As I said, it's pretty difficult for software players to roll out across different countries, and for the reasons that I've mentioned. And therefore, we see, at least for some time, being the local players more active than the more global players trying to come over. In the countries where we are, we don't see, for example, any relevant activity from the US players that you may have in mind. And the ones that are present, for example, we have Lightspeed in Switzerland, are actually coming on the back of very old acquisitions. They're not recent greenfield developments.
I guess the point we're trying to make here is that, for a large player that is very successful and growing nicely in the US very efficiently with one solution that fits all, to come to every single country in Europe and do a specific development, of a much smaller opportunity with much more smaller, SMEs and in a much more complex environment, is not the same thing. No, and therefore, we see, at least for some time, these local dynamic, being, the one that remains more relevant. As far as, the merchant services, development is concerned, through here, Bernardo, take it.
So I think there's two parts to Justin's question, Paolo. I think first one on volumes in general across Europe, we have projected, you know, no real changes in pace during the course of the year, coming from the market. Now, I think, you know, we've seen a slowdown coming from macro. We've spoken to that in the past, and I think nothing has changed there. What we've had, and I think that's what you're referring to, Justin, was in the past, some M&A activity, which has seen us lose some clients to some of our competitors in Italy. And that obviously, you know, has happened, and over time, we will see the impact on that on our volumes.
However, it's important to note and it's in a footnote in the appendix, we are building our alternative distribution channel, which is basically a non-bank distribution channel in Italy, in particular, a market where we've lost to competitors, some through some M&A, some of the merchant books. And in the future, this will help us to win back at least some of those clients, so things will improve.
Awesome. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
The next question is from James Goodman, Barclays. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks very much for taking my questions. The first one, just on the growth of issuing through the rest of the year. You've been quite clear about the project-related comp effect. You were speaking about that last year, but you're saying that's gonna impact the business more from Q2. Just wondering how significant of a slowdown should we anticipate here, and will that continue through the year? I think Q4 is the toughest comp. Is that right? Will that be the trough in the issuing side of the business?
And then just, coming back a little bit on the, on the merchant side, just the fact that revenue was growing ahead of volume in the quarter, is that pricing mainly, or is it this dynamic where you mentioned that the international schemes, excluding cash, withdrawals, are growing faster? And should we continue to expect basically, the merchant services revenue to be growing ahead of the volume that you do report for the division through the rest of the year?
Thank you. Good morning, James, and thank you for your questions. Listen, on issuing, I think we can only confirm what we anticipated, I think, in the conversation we had, when we did present the guidance. Again, a very strong quarter at the beginning of the year, and then, throughout the rest of the year, you will see a lighter growth. I think overall, we expect, and this is basically driven by the effect from last year, a strong project activity that we don't expect to see repeated this year, at the same with the same size. Overall, we expect for the full year, a growth in the space of low single digits. This is exactly confirming what we said in the past.
As far as the merchant services dynamic volumes and revenues is concerned, I think that there is a part of what you're saying, but I think more broadly the reason why revenues are well supported on top of what is the support that we see from volumes is driven by a number of factors. First of all, we continue to expand our customer base, which is important because there are revenues that are associated with the customer, not with the volume. Second, as much as possible, we try to upsell and cross-sell more valuable propositions.
I think in the merchant services pages, you find an attachment, for example, we are mentioning the fact that we are more and more upselling value-added services on top of our own products and services. And a good example is the good traction that we are seeing with merchant financing through a partner, but with merchant financing, as we upsell it to our customer base. And clearly, this is contributing to customer value and therefore to unitary revenues. And last but not least, clearly, the contribution from e-commerce is that is not growing faster than point of sale volumes is clearly. Sorry, revenues is clearly contributing because normally, again, the unitary economics of e-commerce are normally a bit better than the unitary economics of traditional point of sale services. So that's a combination of elements there.
Sorry, Paolo, if I can help address James' question, because I think, James, the question was, you know, revenues are growing 6.8, volumes, I think the ones you were looking at were 5, but the truth is you should look more to the international-
Yeah, that's also a point.
Which is what we—that's where we derive most of our revenues from, so you should benchmark it against that, and then everything else that Paolo said holds true.
That's right, okay. Thank you.
The next question is from Josh Levin, Autonomous Research. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Just going back to software and payments, I think you said that so far you're not seeing too much competition from US players in this space, but how would you say Nexi's offering stacks up against Stripe or, or even Adyen in this area? What does Nexi bring to the table that they don't? And then the second question, if BBVA and Sabadell merge, what does this mean for Nexi? Thank you.
Good morning, Josh. Well, first of all, again, the strategy that we have in the ISV space is very consistent with what we are doing more broadly in payments. And as you may remember from our capital market day, and as we have reiterated several times, we are good believers of the fact that scale is very important to be able to offer very competitive products and services, and also having leverage and efficiency and profitability. But at the same time, you know, being extremely local is also very, very important.
And, as you can imagine, in a world that is highly fragmented, a world that is super fragmented and super local, you know, our local presence, our ability to serve very closely these smaller SMEs, our ability to provide all the local relevant payment methods is something that is highly, highly appreciated. And it is also something that is very, very difficult for the more global players that are much more distant, and by the way, much more standardized with their solutions, you know, is highly appreciated by our partners. I also mentioned, for example, the flexibility of our business models that is really suited to the specific situation of the specific market.
So that's really, you know, the differentiation angle that is very consistent with the broader differentiation of Nexi. Coming back on the situation in Spain, obviously, we're all observing the evolution there. We have developed a very strong and constructive relationship with Sabadell since the very, very beginning. Based on the work we've done together, we're even more convinced about, you know, the potential of the Spanish, but more broadly, of the Spanish market. As we speak, we can only monitor the evolution of the situation in close contact with Sabadell, and obviously, the situation is changing, I would say, by the hour.
At this stage, in any case, there is no closing date being set because we are still waiting for the last authorization from Bank of Spain, that is at this stage still pending. That said, all of that, as you would expect, and it is actually market practice, and for us, is very much standard for all our deals from the very first ones we've done in Italy. You know, in the contract that we have signed, there are a number of standard provisions that we always have that regulate the situation in case of a change of control in the best interest of all shareholders. So bottom line, we are monitoring the situation, but overall, we are very relaxed about it.
Thank you very much.
The next question is from Sandeep Deshpande with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, good morning. Thanks for letting me on. There are some businesses that you have disposed in the past couple of years. Are there any other businesses here that could be potentially disposed, that could potentially help the growth rate of the business? We've seen, for instance, that, you know, you've seen very strong growth in Italy, you've seen growth in Germany, but, but Nordic seems to go up and down. Clearly, it's not a business you're going to dispose, but are there any other smaller businesses there that could still go out to improve the overall growth rate? I'll have a quick follow-up.
...Good morning, Sandeep. Well, it's, I reiterate what we said in the past, and what we said, I think, Capital Market Day, back at the end of 2022. Yes, as we look at our business portfolio in the area of the third business unit, Digital Banking Solutions, there are certain businesses that are less core than others, and that at some point we may dispose, at the right conditions, and to the right buyer, as you can imagine.
As an example of that, we have signed a few months back, a deal with a French company, to buy our electronic ID business, in the Nordics, and that deal is expected to close later in the year. But again, there is work ongoing, on a number of opportunities, and we'll keep you updated on that. From the geographical standpoint, although I think, our view is more articulated, in the sense that, when you look at our portfolio of geographies, we really have a nice combination of what we call more the cash engines and the growth engines.
and that this is really important, I think, for any business, to have these type of portfolio, and we are quite happy with ours. And therefore, you see a larger. You see markets where we have a large position, and where we have leaders, and this includes, obviously, Italy, but includes also the Nordics, where maybe in the case of the Nordics growth rate, that we can expect it a bit lower. But actually, the cash generation is pretty good and is helping us to fuel growth on the cash, on the growth-generating engines, such as, for example, e-commerce across the board, such as, for example, the DACH region in Germany, more in particular, and the other opportunities that we have around. It's more a portfolio that is relevant for us from the geographical standpoint, rather than the single standalone geography.
Thank you. And finally, my question is on e-commerce. I mean, you seem to have highlighted e-commerce as a growth engine in this current quarter. What has changed there? Because when you look at the growth last year, it was single digit; now it seems to be going back into double digit. Has something changed? Is it regional? Is it across the board? Maybe any color on that would be helpful.
Yes, we have highlighted many, many times e-commerce as one of the most relevant growth opportunities for our company. In fact, actually, growth has been double-digit, not just in this quarter, but for some time. I think the full year last year was also double-digit. And here we are increasing our focus more and more over time. We're increasing our commercial efforts more over time. But we also have strong propositions in place that we are rolling out across the different markets, and you see the effect of it, which again are targeted not at the very large global merchants, that is not our space, but again really targeted to the mid-market, the local SMEs or the local smaller corporates. That market is a market that is growing very nicely and requires a lot of local support and local integration, which is very consistent with our strategy.
Thank you so much.
The next question is from Sébastien Sztabowicz, Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hello, everyone, and thanks for taking my question. Could you please provide some comments on the volume trends since the beginning of the quarter? Have you seen any change in the dynamic in consumer spending over the past few weeks, few months? And the second one is linked to the partnership with UniCredit. Have you made any progress there, and can you make an update on the situation with UniCredit? Thank you.
Let me take the second one and then hand over to Bernardo to cover the dynamics consistently with what he said before. Listen, on UniCredit, I can only reiterate what we said in the past. We have a long-term partnership with UniCredit, as we always said, that goes up to 2036. As also announced by UniCredit themselves, in their market communication only a few days ago, UniCredit has a lot of focus on payments, and they want to develop their strategy there and accelerate further, and we are very happy now to be their partner. I think they also highlighted Nexi, together with Mastercard, as their key partners there. As we discussed in the past, we have over time now conversations on how we can support more and more and better and better these strategy. On volumes, Bernardo?
Yes, Sébastien, I think, we mentioned it, during the course of the call. I would say that the first quarter of this year shows no real signs, if anything, a slight improvement on quarterly performance, on last quarter's performance last year. So, there's no real change in terms of the expectations on, on macro. They've pretty much realized in terms of the slowdown year on year, and the first quarter started pretty much in line with, with the fourth quarter of last year.
Just on UniCredit, do you have any opportunity to partner on the merchant acquiring side? You have been historical partner on issuing, but is there anything that you can do on acquiring?
Well, listen, I think these are choices that are in the hands of the banks. I think it depends on the strategy that every single bank wants to follow in payment. So this is more of a question for them, not for us. Clearly, one day, as with any other bank, if one day they have an interest in that direction, we definitely would have a conversation. But this is a question for them more than for us.
... Thank you, Paolo.
The next question is from Hannes Leitner, Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you for letting me on. I got also a couple of questions, and I want to go back to the ISV business. Maybe you can talk a little bit about where Nexi services should end. Is it just acquiring or is it also the card acceptance? And what is the associated take rate you expect compared to the merchant services take rate you are having at the moment? And then the second question is around Italy. You talked at capital markets there to build up your own sales force. Maybe you can give there an update, and then maybe also on the expected growth for the region, thinking also about the backdrop of macro moving parts, what you're seeing there. Thank you.
Good morning, guys. On ISV, again, as we have a number of business model, it really depends on the business model, what we provide. Obviously, we provide acquiring, and I would say that in most of the cases, in one way or another, we also provide the acceptance solution. But on top of it, we also provide, in many, many cases, the digital assets, and, and, what makes the customer experience of the merchant.
Again, given the specific situations that you have in Europe with the characteristics that I've highlighted in many, many, many cases, these, these are more pure distribution deals rather than a highly integrated or complex business models deals, and therefore, we'll be capturing the benefit of adding an additional distribution channel. And again, here, the economics can vary a lot depending on the partner, the model, and what we do for them. But normally, they are consistent with what I said. We look at this as a distribution channel that is normally paid for acquisition and normally retains a part of the fees that we have from merchants, but clearly has very limited to no fixed cost for us. So it's also a pretty efficient additional distribution channel. As far as ...
The alternative channels. Yeah, we mentioned it earlier, Hannes, on, you know, an initiative which, as you say, has long dated roots. We started thinking about building an alternative distribution channel in Italy a while ago. Obviously, it's not as simple as just deciding to do it and doing it the day after. And over time, we have now built a network of almost, I think, in April, we're almost at 200 agents, both Nexi agents and tied agents from external networks who are selling our product.
These are targeted at those customers that are not captive to us and have either, you know, we've lost them, as I was mentioning earlier, because of bank M&A in the past, where we have chosen not to bid at some of the prices that were these assets went at, or in general, that portion of the market which isn't which isn't ours. And that is growing and is, I would say, you know, in its infancy stage. So as I mentioned also earlier, I think what we have seen today is a small part of what we expect to be the contribution from this channel going forward.
Thank you.
The next question is from Aditya Buddhavarapu, Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Morning, Paolo, Bernardo. Thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, could you just comment on the trends you've seen in terms of discretionary versus non-discretionary or basic consumption across your markets in Q1? And similarly, if you could comment on the trends you've seen in terms of volumes in April, usually have a slide with those volume trends in your presentation. Just keen to hear more about that. Second, could you also just comment on the Digital Banking Solutions business, how we should think about the shape of growth during the rest of the year? And then finally, how should we think about the phasing of your EBITDA during the year, given some of the efficiencies you expect to come through in the second half?
Morning, Adi. So, I think Bernardo mentioned it a little bit earlier on, as you can imagine, there is a dynamic that we can observe across various markets where non-discretionary expenses, normally grocery, supermarkets, and so on and so forth, continue to trend in a more robust way versus discretionary. And these, to be honest with you, is quite similar to what we've seen at the end of last year. Then, market by market, you have different dynamics. Month by month, you may have different dynamics, but honestly, it's broadly in line with what we are observing in the latter part of last year. The... So that's, that's dynamic.
I think, it's very difficult to comment on a month-by-month basis because every month is different from the other one. Just to give you a sense, February this year was a stronger month because it had that one day more than last year. March, instead, was affected by the fact that Easter was in a different month compared to last year. And again, April, you have a number of bank holidays around. So we really want to look at this more on a quarterly basis and as a more structural trend. For now, we don't see any major changes or any major shifts happening again.
Volumes are broadly in line with the end of last year and broadly in line with our expectations, and we expect to continue to see similar dynamics throughout the year. As far as DBS is concerned, at the beginning of the year, we expect this unit to grow in the low single digit space. That's particularly good, I think, first quarter. But this is-
Low to mid .
Sorry?
Low to mid .
Yeah, but we expect them to continue to perform well. As far as the EBITDA dynamic, I think EBITDA growth was particularly strong compared to our yearly guidance in the quarter, supported by slightly higher than guidance top line growth, plus, as Bernardo suggested, some cost phasing that will revert in probably Q2. As we said early in March, we expect to see, especially towards the latter part of the year, a dynamic with more challenging comparisons on revenues, given the heavy project work and the positive effect of it that we had at the end of last year.
While, at the same time, we expect to see a stronger cost reduction, or in general, cost dynamic, supported by the efficiency measures that we are rolling out, as we speak.
Understood. Thank you, Paolo.
The next question is from Alexandre Faure, BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. Thanks for squeezing me in. A couple of questions, if I may. First one is on the international debit in Italy. You called out some trends there, and I was just curious what's driving that. I think at IPO time, you mentioned a few use cases, I think, around contactless, e-com that were not supported by Bancomat, but I thought the scheme had caught up. So just curious if you're seeing some Italian banks starting issuing single badge cards, and not showing Bancomat anymore. Second question is more in terms of cash generation and the seasonality there. Bernardo, you mentioned that the tax-related payments tend to happen in the second half.
I was wondering if you could comment on the sort of interest-related cash out, if this is relatively evenly spread across the four quarters, or if Q1 is relatively light on that front? Thank you.
Good morning, Alex. I will let Bernardo cover the topic of cash generation. Let me just instead comment on your first question on international debit in Italy. I think there are a couple of reasons why this is moving so nicely. I think first of all, let's be honest, this was a little bit of a newer business for us, so this growth is happening more greenfield. And even if the Bancomat capabilities are over time catching up, nevertheless, international debit capabilities are also continuing to evolve quite fast with the evolution of the international scheme solutions.
But also, I would say, under the push of the incentives that banks receive from international schemes, which is a very clear dynamic. At the same time, I think it's quite important to underline the fact that we manage international debit as a product, as much as debit, as much as credit in Italy. And therefore, over time, we have developed the product in a very, very attractive direction. We started with the basic product, then we developed the business product, then we developed the premium product, then we have added the premium program. It has a number of digital capabilities. We have digital issuing capabilities for real-time issuing. So it's really a very, very articulated and rich product, which, by the way, I think has very little benchmarks around Europe. And for us, it's a very profitable product as well. Bernardo?
Yeah. So I think in terms of the phasing of the coupons, in general, we pay second quarter and fourth quarter. So the first quarter would be a little lighter. I think the other additional effect we'll have this year is, you know, the paydown of the gross debt and therefore lower cash interest paid on the bonds and that are being reimbursed. And finally, obviously, not a hundred percent of our interest payment is fixed. Part of it is variable and tied to EURIBOR. So to the extent you expect rates to come down, we'll benefit from that as well. But in general, I'd say depending on when the bond is issued, obviously the coupons are paid.
They're paid half yearly, but mostly in the second quarter and the fourth quarter.
Got it. Thank you.
The next question is, Deepshikha Agarwal, Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I think a lot of my questions have already been answered. Just one, you've just announced the launch of the buyback today, so... And, you talked about, like, returning to cash in terms of dividends as well. So please, can you, like, elaborate on how you're thinking about your dividend policy as well as buyback? As in, is there any scope for any step up above and beyond that EUR 500 million you've just launched?
Good morning. Let me pass the question to Bernardo.
Yeah. So I think we hoped to have been clear when we sent the message out in March that, you know, this was the start of the turning point, let's say, in our journey in terms of aggregating players across Europe to create the European national champion in terms of digital payments, and integrating them with all the transformation expenses that we've incurred so far. And, you know, now that we've turned that corner and are at a level where we expect cash generation to be EUR 1 billion in 2026, we feel that we are able to start returning capital to shareholders.
have started with this EUR 500 million initial return of capital to shareholders, which, as I said, is an 18-month program, but might be completed sooner than that, which is only first step in that process. At some point, you know, we may well start paying dividends, but this will depend on the share price, or we might continue to buy back stock.
I think what we tried to convey as a message is that the cash generation inherent in our business, you know, the very predictable and stable underlying growth that we benefit from in our market, the inherent leverage we have, operating leverage in our business we have, you know, turns this cash, which is sufficient to invest in our business, you know, fund the CapEx and the growth initiatives we need to fund in order to be able to continue to generate this cash. It's sufficient to pay down debt, and we've started to pay down debt as we speak. It's sufficient to carry out the little M&A we expect to, you know, need to carry out in the coming months and years.
It's sufficient to start to remunerate, to pay back capital to our shareholders. The EUR 500 million is, you know, this first tranche, and in the future, we'll look to do more, maybe differently, in that same space.
Got it. Thank you.
The next question is from Aleksandra Arsova, Equita. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Three on my end. The first one, just a follow-up on excess cash and cash generation. So I assume the broadly EUR 200 million in improvement in net financial position is excess cash. So how should we see the pacing of the excess cash generation for the full year? So more front-end loaded, back-end loaded? Just an idea on this, given that we have several moving parts, efficiencies, revenues, and of course, cash, interest payments and whatever. The second one is more on the initial strategy you explained and on the competitive arena. So you mentioned that there is little interest of, let's say, international players to become local players in a fragmented scenario like the European one.
But for example, recently we saw Worldpay coming to in Italy and partnering with Satispay. So how should we see this move? Is something more of a trend of international players coming and partnering with small local players, or it's just a sort of one-off thing? And the very last one is a follow-up on the BBVA Sabadell deal. So in the case of the merger, I mean, it's finalized, and also in the case you finalize the acquiring of the merchant book of Sabadell. So do you see this merger between BBVA and Sabadell as a further opportunity to increase your potential, your market share in Spain? Or maybe it's more of a risk because maybe then your... the fees you can generate will be lower?
Or anyway, if you can give more color on this. Thank you.
Good morning, Alexandra. So I'll let Bernardo comment on excess cash, maybe also on Sabadell, if you wish, Bernardo. On the competitive dynamics, let me be very clear. The comments I was making before were more around the software space, no? By definition, we see interest from international players in the European market that are already present, by the way. Now, we also see their interest in Italy, as we already discussed several times. At the same time, I would really consider this Worldpay/Satispay thing as something that is totally marginal to this dynamic, given the nature of it and given the nature of the players we are talking about. Bernardo?
Yeah, on the profile of cash generation, I understand your need to have quarterly updates and... but our guidance is for the year, so, and we stand by our guidance, more than EUR 700 million generated in the year. I think we started the year off well. But clearly, there are seasonal effects. You know, taxes get paid more heavily in the second quarter and even, you know, in September, but in the second half in general. There are the coupon payments, which you mentioned earlier, which are paid, you know, more skewed towards April and October, I would say. So, you know, there is some seasonality, but you should look at our guidance as a full year guidance.
There are also year-end effects, which are very hard to predict, and we spoke to them back in March when we commented the full year results. So I think you should look at us on a year-on-year basis and on a full year basis, and our guidance is to generate EUR 700 million. We started the year off well. With regards to. Sorry, your question was on BBVA and Sabadell. I mean, clearly, we struck a deal with Sabadell, and as Paolo mentioned, you know, we stand by that deal, which is with Sabadell. And as all M&A deals go, there are standard market provisions that protect the integrity of that deal.
If BBVA is successful in its offer for Sabadell, you know, we are prepared to manage that outcome, and it's not necessarily one where we remain in the, in the partnership, depending on what also the resulting entity will decide to do. It's not an automatic process that we remain in, in that deal.
... The next question is from Tommaso Nieddu, AlphaValue. Please go ahead.
Hello, thank you very much for taking my questions. Just two for me, please. First, during your full year release, you abandoned your EPS growth target, so I was hoping we could get some more color on what you would expect happening below EBITDA during 2024. In Q4, we were somehow surprised by higher D&A. So first on that, and then, second, on Poland, Bernardo, you mentioned a very strong performance. Can you give us some more color on what you are seeing there? And what is the growth you would expect there for the future? Thank you.
Good morning, Tommaso. Let me take Poland and then over to Bernardo with EPS dynamics. Poland is a very attractive market. It's a market that by itself is growing quite strongly, and in Poland, we have two very strong assets. On the one side, we are the market leader in commerce, offering a full-fledged portfolio of acceptance services, acquiring services, and we also own the most successful or one of the most successful payment schemes, account- to- account based in the country. And we have a very strong position, and we enjoy market growth there, and we continue to expand actually our market position. The second position that we have is actually on SMEs.
And here we have a fast growing business that is always in the teens, actually, normally closer to the twenties in terms of growth. And that growth is driven by, again, not the market attractiveness, but also by the fact that quarter after quarter we win more and more customers, and we are taking market share. So it's a market that over time is getting more and more important for us. On EPS?
You know, EPS, what's going on under EBITDA. So we spoke about interest. In terms of taxes, you know, very, very hard to predict in a very exact way taxes. But, you know, we, you know, there's nothing, I would say, substantially different this year in terms of our tax profile than in the past. With regard to D&A, obviously last year we had the big hit coming from the impairment of the goodwill. Other than that, you know, maybe there's a few million EUR more on ordinary amortization and depreciation of intangibles. But I would say that, you know, the guidance that we gave stops at EBITDA.
We haven't given guidance in terms of EPS, but if you project continuity in what goes on under EBITDA compared to the past, so adjusting, for instance, the non-recurring items, we said we are gonna book on a non-cash basis EUR 150 million of restructuring charges. So, you know, we need to take that into account, and obviously, if you take that into account, there is an impact which will, you know, slow down EPS growth. If you look at it on a normalized basis, we will have a progression in EBITDA, you know, EPS growth coming from the growth in the EBITDA we're projecting.
Okay, thank you very much.
The last question is from Aditya Buddhavarapu , Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hey, Paolo, Bernardo, thanks for letting me on again. Just one more from me. There have been some press reports on pressure on fees from the government in Greece on the fees you charge to smaller merchants and some more aggressive competition from Global Payments there. So could you just maybe comment on what you're seeing in that market in terms of fees pressure and the competition?
Good morning again, Adi. But listen, we have, we've been obviously following the situation there. Honestly, we don't expect any, any, any material impact from the development there. Actually, our Greek acquiring business is growing nicely in terms of volumes, and we also had some positive pricing moves over the last few months. This topic of intervention on fees is something that has been decided, but it's really, really focused on smaller merchants, specific vertical, specific applications.
Ultimately, it's quite similar to what happened some time ago in Italy, where instead of having a government decision, it was actually self-decided by the industry, but again, with in both cases with a pretty marginal impact.
Understood. Thank you, Paolo.
Gentlemen, Mr. Bertoluzzo, there are no more questions registered at this time.
Very good. Listen, thank you. Thank you again. Thank you for your questions. We'll be around, or actually over in video calls over the next few hours and days, so happy to catch up again. So very simple message is a good start of the year, in line with our guidance, if anything, marginally better. Continue, you know, to shape the company for future profitable growth, and you know, we continue to allocate our excess capital that is material and is growing by the day in the best interest of our shareholders. Thank you very much, and hopefully we'll meet many of you very soon. Bye-bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over, and you may disconnect your telephones.