Good afternoon. This is the Chorus Call Conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Nexi Full Year 2021 Preliminary Financial Results conference call. 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.
Thank you, and good morning, to everyone joining this call. Welcome to our results call for fourth quarter 2021, and most importantly, for full year results for last year. As usual, I'm here with Bernardo Mingrone, our CFO, Stefania Mantegazza, leading our investor relations team, a few other colleagues that may help us to address any specific issues, and questions that you may have. The structure of the presentation today is very much in line with the past. We'll give you a quick update on what we see in terms of volume dynamics as now we basically follow the evolution of the various COVID waves. Then we'll move into results.
We will give you an update on our integration and transformation initiatives, and most importantly, at the end, we will also share with you the new ambition for 2022 for the new group, including also SIA. Please always remember that when we talk about results for 2021, we talk about Nexi plus Nets. Instead, when we talk about guidance and our ambition for next year, we're talking about the new perimeter, Nexi plus Nets plus SIA given the fact that at the end of last year, we've closed the merger with SIA as well. We will probably go pretty fast in the presentation. We believe is quite self-explanatory, so that we can leave more time for your questions. Let me start with the volumes.
Actually, no, let me start with the key messages of the day. Three key messages for today. First message, continued volume growth, I would say especially in Italy, but also with positive trends also in the other geographies. Despite the Omicron variant that came in December, basically or affecting some geographies even earlier than December. We've seen and we are now seeing double-digit growth in Italy in the second half of January. The more recent trend as we start to exit slowly, but hopefully in a consistent way from these latest COVID variants, as well.
We see compared to pre-COVID levels, to 2019, more than double-digit growth in Italy, driven by a very solid growth in basic consumption and Italian cards growing anywhere in between 25%-30%. We also see continued positive volume growth in the Nordics in the fourth quarter, with actually basic consumption growing above 30% compared to pre-COVID. DACH, in particular Germany, is actually still recovering, but a slower pace due to the larger exposure that we have in terms of volumes to travel. Even here, basic consumption is actually growing double-digit nicely, anywhere in between 25%-30%. SMEs seem to continue to accelerate faster than larger merchants, which is a positive for our economics.
Across all geographies, we continue to see a strong acceleration from cash to digital payments in the sectors, in the industries that are less affected by COVID. First message, continued volume growth despite the arrival of the Omicron variant. Second key message, strong financial performance in the fourth quarter and for the full year. Revenues were up 11% in the fourth quarter and 10% for the full year, 11% for the fourth quarter, despite we were not expecting actually the Omicron variant coming in in November, December. Strong revenue growth, in particular in Merchant Solutions, with both Nexi and Nets growing about 13% in the quarter and 11% for the full year. E-commerce continues to perform strongly at about 29%, with a 29% growth versus last year.
EBITDA 12%+, 20% in the quarter and also in the year with continuing margin expansion. This year there is a one percentage point margin expansion across the new entity. Third key message, we continue to progress in creating the new company, the European PayTech leader. As you know, we have closed the deal, the merger Nexi-SIA, at the end of 2021. As you can see in one of the attachments, we've seen a very strong performance in the year from SIA standalone, basically in line with the performance of Nexi and Nets. Our work in integrating the companies and driving the synergies on the back of it continues, and we confirm that in 2022 we plan to deliver about EUR 100 million of cash synergies.
Last but not least, we'll talk more about this as we go forward. Now, strong progress on the ESG front, it is more and more important for our future as it should be for any other company, with actually strong progress, very well witnessed by strong improvements in the ratings. S&P Global at 68, +7 points versus last year, CDP A- versus C last year. Strong progress positioning our company in the top quartile of the industry, and we'll continue to push for more. We are delivering the ambition that we had anticipated in July on the new perimeter and which is already higher than what we had committed to at the beginning of the year, despite the arrival of the Omicron variant.
For the new year, assuming that we will come back to a normal situation as far as COVID is concerned from the beginning of the second quarter across all geographies, we expect to have revenues growing anywhere between 7%-9% with actually merchant services, and it is very important growing double digits. With EBITDA growing anywhere between 13%-16%, very well supported by continuing effects of our operating leverage and the positive impact of the synergies that I've mentioned. Although a good part of the synergies, we've decided to reinvest them in our accelerated future growth on our highest growth opportunities, in particular, I would say Germany and e-commerce. Now let me jump into volumes, and I go directly to page five.
Here you see as usual, the dynamic that we observe on the merchant side of the business. Again, all these numbers, the recent numbers compare ourselves still to 2019 to be able to give you a constant benchmark that is the relevant one. Here you see that in Italy, we had a bit of a slowdown at the end of last year, the beginning of January as well, due to the lockdowns, but more in general, due to the fact that I think across most of the countries, almost 10% of the population was either infected or actually in quarantine because of contacts with infected people.
The good thing is that, as the situation has started to improve, you see that, the second half of the month, we were actually as a total 20% growth versus 2019, which is the highest performance since the beginning of COVID, and with a nice 26% on Italian cards, while, international travelers coming to Italy are unfortunately still weaker, even if at levels that are much better compared to the ones of the previous waves. If we go to the next page, as usual, you have the split across the three macro categories. Here again, you see a supersonic acceleration of the basic services categories from groceries to general retail to pharmacies, utilities and so on and so forth, growing nicely at around 40% over the last month, basically.
You also see that in the latter part of January, also, the other two categories, high impact and discretionary consumption, came back into positive. These two categories are also very much affected by the weakness of international travel. If you look at these two categories for Italian cards only, they're already actually growing double digit at around 10%, each one of them. If we now move to the next page, we extend the picture to the other key geographies for us, the Nordics and the DACH region. Again, here you see that both of them has been affected by the new variant effects across December and January.
However, good news for both situations is that we really see a super strong growth in the basic consumption sectors with actually the Nordics growing above 40% in January, which again is a great signal of a much further potential. There is also the Nordics, despite the very high penetration that is already present there. Also in Germany, in January, we've seen a 27% growth in the basic sectors with groceries growing actually even more than 40%.
As always, I want to remind everybody that the overall volume dynamic in Germany in particular is affected by the fact that there is, in terms of volumes, a high weight for the impact sectors, the travel sectors in particular, that, as you can imagine, are very much affected by the COVID situation. Moving to page 8 here, we give you as usual a snapshot of some of the sectors that have been particularly stronger in terms of volume growth, always compared to 2019. I will not go through all of them, but you see many sectors growing only double digit, but in the 30s, in the 40s. In some cases, now above 60, 70%. I just want to underline one sector that is grocery.
Grocery is an important sector across all geographies, and I think is also one that is very telling when it comes to cash to digital payments conversion, and is one that is not affected by COVID. 65% growth in Italy, 37% growth in the Nordics, 42% growth in DACH. Very good continued acceleration of the shift to digital payments. This is it in terms of volumes. Happy to take questions when we come to our Q&A session. Let me now move to results, page ten. Let me start with the bigger picture, total group. Again, here the perimeter is Nexi plus Nets.
For the year, +10% of revenues, actually +11.1% in the quarter with a nice acceleration in the quarter. EBITDA +12%, 12.1% in the year, +11.6% in the quarter. For the full year, a one percentage point margin expansion. Moving to the individual business units, and here I try to give you, as we normally do at half year and full year results, a bit of color of what has happened in terms of what is happening in terms of the business activities as well. When it comes to merchant services and solutions, we spent a good amount of time on this topic in our last results call, so I will go a bit quicker here.
Let me just mention a few relevant points. SMEs, they represent 59% of the revenues in the Merchant Solutions space, did continue to progress well, 13% volume growth compared to the same quarter in 2019. We continue to see good traction, good acceleration in Germany with our all-in-one SmartPay digital proposition for SMEs, as well as we continue to see a very good traction for our new to cards proposition with the Mobile POS in Italy. Now this proposition represents around 20% of the front book.
Last but not least, let me also mention the fact that we are continuously expanding the contribution of our complementary channels across geographies, but in particular in Italy, where actually complementary channels contribution grew by three times in 2021 compared to 2020. We will continue to push in that direction as some of the new customers are actually shopping in through different channels and not necessarily directly from the banks. For the second area, e-commerce, 23% of our revenues with the progress, I would say, across the board, with the progress with our PSP propositions, acceptance propositions, I would say across Germany, the Nordics and Italy as well, with a growth of 50% of new gateway activations compared to pre-COVID levels.
We also continue to expand the capabilities that we have on the product side. In parallel to the PSP efforts, as you know, we are also very focused on the account to account alternative payment solutions, where we own very nice assets in Poland and in Finland. They are doing really well. At the same time, we integrate more and more in our acceptance solutions, third party account to account solutions like, for example, BANCOMAT Pay in Italy.
Last but not least, we continue to see a very strong performance of our own buy now, pay later solution, Ratepay, in Germany, but at the same time, also here we are expanding our portfolio of partnerships to be able to offer to our merchant customers alternative buy now, pay later solutions across all geographies. Last but not least, the larger merchants, the larger omni-channel merchants, they represent about 9% of the total revenues in merchant services and therefore about 4% of the total for the company. Again, here, we continue to see a good performance, especially in industries where we focus, such as for example, food retailer.
In here, we continue to win or renew against both traditional players competition, but also the new, the newer competitors that are coming into the space. At the same time, the other thing that I want to underline is that we are progressing our sales plans as a new group to be able not only to respond to new tenders cross-border, but also to start upselling to customers that we have in one geography that are not yet our customers in the other geography. There is a nice pipeline being developed in that space. Moving to the numbers, page 12. In the quarter in merchant services, we did grow 13.3%.
This is an acceleration in a year that we are closing at +11.4%. You also find here some data on volume dynamics versus 2020, but I will let you read them and therefore let me jump to the next business unit, page 13. Cards and digital payments. Again, business update here. Here the business, for your memory, is about two-thirds of revenues in Italy and about a third of it in the Nordics and in the rest of Europe. In Italy, now we see good traction of our credit proposition for the licensing banks, also supported by a good performance from our installment solution from our buy now pay later solutions that is available as an option on our credit card.
We have also launched the Credit Premium product that is receiving a very, very good support from the banks and good traction in the market. As far as debit is concerned, international debit is continuously progressing well. We did add 1.5 million cards in the year compared to the year before. Volumes are growing almost 30% in the year and almost 40% in the fourth quarter. Again, we also launched the premium product in this space, and we see a good traction for that one as well. In parallel, as you know, we're also serving the banks and the customers of the banks on the national debit proposition on BANCOMAT, where we've seen a good volume progression.
Most importantly, especially now with the combination we see, we're actually partnering with BANCOMAT to help BANCOMAT and the banks develop the next generation platform and solution and offering for the Italian market. Last but not least, I think it's just a nice data point. Contactless up 80%-84% of transaction compared to 66% pre-COVID levels. Actually mobile payments growing more than 100% in the year, actually 123% over the previous quarter. In the Nordics, we also making good progress. The issuer business in the Nordics is now completely reshaped. 97% of the revenues that were with legacy contracts have now been renegotiated.
In parallel, there is a lot of activity happening to drive future growth in terms of new customer wins and pipeline in the Nordics, but most importantly across the rest of Europe. Together with that, expanding existing relationship with more value-added services and propositions such as, for example, card management, account management services, and with a new effort now ongoing in upselling the Nexi Italian richer proposition, the licensing proposition or components of it, like for example, customer value management to the customer base of the banks. Results here as well at page 14. In the quarter we did grow revenues 8.2%, that is up compared to the previous quarter, and we are closing the year at a nice 7.4%.
Here, actually, you have a little bit of two different profiles of the performance. Italy has been growing double-digit in the year and in the quarter, while actually more in the Nordics, we are still affected by the effects of the renegotiations that I've mentioned, and in particular, one single primary negotiation that is limiting the growth in the region. Moving to the third business unit, Digital Banking and Corporate Solutions. Key business update, good progress, I would say, across the board, in business-to-business corporate payments, strong growth of instant payments volumes, much higher, 4x higher than what it was in 2021.
Digital corporate banking proposition progressing well as well with a customer base growth of about 5% and the extension of our partnership with CBI, that is de facto the banking association Italian multi-banking infrastructure. Here we have we were already partners and we have won basically the modernization of the current platform into a more innovative one serving both corporate and public administration. Open banking is still modest in absolute terms, but as you see from almost zero, so good progress with volumes growing 80% in the year with a good acceleration in the latter part of the year.
Self-banking, some new sales with new customers, in particular in the area of value-added services, but also continued transition from traditional ATMs to advanced ATMs that are, for us, a richer proposition. Last but not least, the Nordics e-security and digitization businesses. In the Nordics, we have launched and we're now ramping up the new electronic ID platform that we have developed basically for the country. Here, the entire country in Denmark is actually using Nets services here. This has been launched in October, and we are now actually ceasing the legacy platform, the ID legacy platform from October. At the same time, in parallel, we have the digitization services growing double digit and continue to grow strongly across the board.
Numbers again here. In the quarter, this business unit grew 6.2%, 9.8% in the year. Now, before going into cost and handing over to Bernardo, take the country review on page 17. Italy grew in the quarter 9.3%, 11.3% for the year. The DACH region in Poland, 26% in the quarter, 20% in the year. Nordics, 6% in the quarter, 3% in the year, and therefore a good acceleration in the latter part of the year. Southern Europe or Southeastern Europe, 14.8% in the quarter, 7.9% in the year. Now let me hand over to Bernardo, and I will come back for conclusions.
Thanks, Paolo. Good afternoon to everyone, also from me. Page 18, starting on costs. As you can see, you know, costs in the year, as we've discussed in the past, were influenced by, I'd say, two, broadly speaking, two large effects. One on on HR costs, which is the spring back, let's say, of variable compensation accruals and payments in Nexi compared to 2020. And the other one is the impact of volume. So 2020 was a year in which we exercised our discretion in trying to reduce costs as much as possible in a cost containment plan of EUR 100 million, which reduced costs in 2020, shifting part of this expense to 2022. We have the spring back this year, enhanced to growth and costs.
Within the quarter, we have this effect. It's actually slightly distorted by, you know, specific items in December, in the quarter. The fourth quarter tends to be a little funny with regards to costs, the way certain things happen towards year-end. Essentially what we've tried to do is normalize the performance in terms of costs. We've given you an idea on the right. The way we look at it is that basically costs were more or less flat in the year. We've seen HR costs come slightly down, and that is the benefit of the early benefit from the Nexi/Nets integration of some HR synergies which we've had. Whereas, with regards to operating costs, they've increased approximately 2% on a like-for-like basis.
Overall, I would say flat, which is historically what our trend has been, broadly speaking at Nexi. Moving on to slide 19, again, on CapEx, we should remember that we had this cash containment program in 2020, which shifted or we suspended certain activities in 2020, which didn't mean we weren't gonna do them. We just happened to do them in 2022 compared to 2020. It was roughly, I'd say approximately EUR 20 million at the time. So if we adjust for that, the performance year-on-year or not the performance, but the percentage of CapEx over revenues is roughly flat around 14% in both years.
If we look at the increase in ordinary CapEx, which runs at about 10% of revenues, just the growth in revenues for the year suggests that EUR 188 million would grow by approximately EUR 20 million. If you add the other EUR 20 million of CapEx, which was shifted one year to the next, you get to the figure for 2021. With regards to the transformation CapEx, it should be said that, you know, Nexi and Nets were both going through their own transformation journeys before the merger was announced. Nexi was further down the line. Nets was a little further behind.
2021 was a significant transformation year for Nets with a Centurion transaction where they disposed of their A2A business to Mastercard, plus the divisionalization of the company, which drove most of the transformation spend on a standalone basis. We have listed a number of the items here on the right, which are the ones you're used to, so I won't go through them. What we've done on slide number 20 is give you a view, and these are numbers which also include SIA. The starting point for 2021 aggregates also SIA. Remember that the SIA transaction actually closed on December 31. What we've done is a pro forma from 2021, and you see total CapEx of around 15% of revenue. SIA has a slightly higher CapEx intensity than Nets or Nexi.
The overall CapEx spend for the combined group at least shows approximately EUR 430 million, of which approximately EUR 300 million ordinary CapEx and EUR 130 million transformation. What we're saying is that we have approximately, on top of the run rate, 10% of revenues CapEx, which includes also the purchase of terminal costs and ATM terminals. We are going to spend approximately EUR 300 million between 2022 and 2025 on the completion of the transformation of the three companies. Those projects, for instance, at Nexi level, I would quote the core acquiring platform. On SIA, there's a lot of work being done on the new
Issuing.
Issuing platform. Exactly. Nets was completing the UNI platform. Completion of those projects plus the integration of Nets and SIA into Nexi, the sum of all of this will involve approximately EUR 300 million of CapEx being deployed over the next three to four years. As you can see, if you work the numbers out from the guidance we've given, approximately 10% of revenues for 2022 is approximately EUR 330 million, and 16% of revenues takes you to 530. Approximately EUR 200 million of that EUR 300 million will be spent during the course of 2022, which is gonna be the peak year in terms of CapEx spend for the enlarged group. Moving on to slide 21. We also have transformation costs, which are not CapEx, so OpEx. They flow through our P&L.
We classify them below EBITDA because they are non-recurring in nature. Obviously, to the extent we continue doing M&A, we will have some of these items. Here, as in the past, we see significant reduction almost immediately after the M&A. This was true for Nexi in the past. It was true for Nets. We believe this will hold true going forward, and we'll speak to that with regards to the guidance. Overall, we have a reduction of 25% in transformation costs from 2020- 2021. That takes us to EUR 70 million. In addition to that, we incurred approximately EUR 57 million to set up the integration of Nets and SIA. You see that on the table on the right.
We had advisory costs for the two M&A transactions involving Nexi, the Centurion deal, which was the sale by Nets to Mastercard of their A2A business and a number of other smaller M&A deals. Advisors of all kinds, our investment banks, accountants, lawyers, et cetera, close to EUR 100 million of spend. We have a recurring non-cash item, which is the LTI paid by or Nexi as a group to our executive management and larger population. We have this year, in 2021, an accrual with regards to the likes of payments to Intesa of an earn-out related to the acquisition of the merchant book, which we announced a year and a half ago.
Performance of this book has been such a better than planned to warrant this accrual, which is clearly good news because it's performing even better than our own or the seller's expectation, as a matter of fact. We then have a legacy IPO cost, which is borne by Mercury UK on the far right here, EUR 28 million, which is non-cash and paid by Mercury as has happened in the past. By the way, that is the last we'll see of that. On page 22, we can see how our normalized operating cash flow is strong at 78% in terms of cash conversion. Page 23, we look at leverage, and we are landing at 3x leverage.
If you include the SIA net debt, given that we close at the end of the year and the SIA EBITDA and synergies, so pretty much where we expect it to be given the guidance we've given in the past. If you look at it without the synergies, it's 3.6x . I would highlight how we were upgraded by S&P during the course of the year, and hopefully this is a virtuous path to further upgrades we hope to have in the future. From an overall indebtedness perspective, I think we are reasonably happy with where we stand with regards to our capital base. We have a strong component of fixed rate indebtedness. In an environment of increasing rates, that gives us comfort.
We also have a pretty well-balanced split of instruments out there, including equity-linked bonds and not only fixed floating rate notes. Page 24 is let's say just we're benchmarking our actual performance against what the ambition was, which we announced in the summer at the end of July. The summary of this is that notwithstanding the COVID Omicron variant, which hit us in Europe towards the end of 2021, we still managed to deliver on expectations and on guidance. We delivered 10% revenue growth. EBITDA, which was in the range 11%-13%, which we guided to, with a margin accretion in 2021 of 1 percentage point compared to 2020.
If you look at it, I think more correctly over the two years, so normalizing for the strangeness of 2020 given COVID, we have a three percentage point accretion, which is roughly 150 basis points per annum, which is roughly what we were accreting in EBITDA margin in the past. As I mentioned earlier, CapEx was broadly stable around 14% once we normalized for the underspend in twenty 2020. The truth is, in 2021, we have up-fronted as much CapEx spend as possible to make sure that we deliver the synergies from the integrations of Nets and SIA as quickly as we can. In terms of leverage, I've just spoken through that.
Just a word with regards to the fourth quarter performance, which was not only the full year, I would say, in line with our expectations, but the fourth quarter was also in line with the consensus IR had circulated before. With EBITDA, for instance, the EBITDA for the fourth quarter was actually a beat on that front. Slide 26 gives you an overview of the work streams we've put in place in terms of the integration. I'll just highlight how the day one organization was in place, day one as it says, for both Nets and SIA. We really hit the ground running and had used the time before effective dates of the mergers in order to do so.
Procurement has structured a number of work streams and initiatives aimed at capturing the lower hanging fruit with regards to negotiations and renegotiations with suppliers and supplier consolidations, which will underpin at least part or a significant part of the synergies we expect for 2022, which we have highlighted to be approximately EUR 100 million in terms of cash synergies, so both OpEx and CapEx. From the revenues, on the revenues front, we have a commercial plan in place which is actively marketing and cross-selling across geographies the products of the enlarged group. Slide 27 just summarizes what we already said. We expect to generate approximately EUR 100 million of cash synergies in 2021, 2022, sorry. This is up from just 18 in 2021.
The run rate of this, of the OpEx front at least, is approximately EUR 20 million more. At the end of 2022, we will have in the bag approximately EUR 80 million of the EUR 320 million cash synergies, or 125 if you include the OpEx. As I said, the point being that a lot of work went into this during the course of 2021 in order to be able to upfront as much as possible in 2022. Slide 29 gives you a picture of the group, including SIA.
Compared to what we've seen so far, now that we have SIA on board from first of January, and the guidance that Paolo gave you is on the enlarged group, including SIA, not only Nexi and Nets. We have a well-balanced mix both in terms of businesses with merchant services continuing to weigh for approximately half of our business and 20% of that is e-commerce, which is obviously high growth and attractive sector to be in. A third of it is cards and digital payments and the rest being digital bank and corporate solutions. More than half of our business is in Italy, which is structurally advantageous given the overall under-penetration of the current market.
We have greater exposure to volume growth, thanks to the deals with, well, primarily with Nets, which increases that component to approximately 2/3. Two-thirds of our revenues grow with the rising tide of digital payments. We have greater operating leverage than in the past with approximately 3/4 of our cost base being fixed, and therefore allowing us to translate growth in revenues into growth in EBITDA. If we look at the revenue performance as an enlarged group, SIA's performance on the top line was very similar to Nexi and Nets, so no wonder that overall revenues grow 10% if you include the Nets to just north of EUR 3 billion. The EBITDA margin accretion is slightly better.
SIA's EBITDA growth in 2021 was very high, close to 18%, just north of 18% and that helps us grow as an enlarged group of 13.6%. If we looked at it, year-on-year growth in the setup we're at now, the group grew 13.6% in terms of EBITDA, and the margin accretion was 200 basis points if you look at it from an EBITDA margin perspective. For the various divisions, we have a similar picture to the one painted earlier by Paolo, 12% growth more or less in terms of Merchant Solutions, close to 9% in card and digital payments, and just shy of 8% on digital banking and corporate solutions.
The geographic mix also doesn't change hugely once we put in SIA. Italy grows at 11%. The Nordics is not impacted by the merger with SIA. DAC in Poland adds SIA's businesses in Germany, which are primarily issuer processing and therefore not particularly exposed to e-commerce as are Nets' assets, and therefore that reduces or dilutes that growth a little. Whereas it increases Southeastern Europe and other with the benefit of some of the payments, assets and businesses SIA has outside of Italy and outside of Germany and Nordics, which increase that growth from about 8% pre-SIA to about 11% post-SIA. Let me close before handing the floor over back to Paolo with reiteration of our guidance for the enlarged Nexi, Nets, SIA group.
This is for full-year revenue growth, which will lie between 7%-9%, with double-digit growth in Merchant Solutions. We expect our EBITDA to grow in the range of 13%-16%, and we have an EBITDA margin expansion of approximately two percentage points. This would have been higher. I said we have approximately EUR 60 million of EBITDA synergies in the year. We're gonna be reinvesting, that's approximately two percentage points of EBITDA growth that will be in, you know, that will be reinvested in our business, in particular in e-commerce, and we're already doing so, and in Germany in order to secure stronger or longer-term growth. CapEx, ordinary CapEx hover around 8%-10%, including the terminals as in the past.
We have that EUR 300 million of additional transformation and integration CapEx, which we expect to deploy in full by 2025, approximately EUR 200 million of this in 2022. Finally, on leverage, we expect to close the year on an organic basis at around 2.5 times leverage. That said, I would pass the floor over to Paolo for closing remarks and then open it to Q&A.
Thank you, Bernardo. Let me just move to page 35, which is the one that I started with. I will simply reiterate the key messages here. Volume-wise, we're seeing the continued recovery despite the challenges of Omicron at the very end of last year. The recent trends as we're also exiting from this new variant are actually very encouraging also in terms of shift from cash to digital payments. In the year, strong performance in line with our own guidance, I would say with market consensus as well, with strong growth actually in Merchant Solutions in the last quarter and across the year. Good progress for Nexi now in creating our new company.
Completed the combination with SIA that has been also performing very well and now moving into the execution on our synergy and transformation plans. Again, ambition for the new year, assuming we come back to normal at the beginning of next quarter, revenue 7%-9% growth year-over-year and EBITDA 13%-16%, reinvesting a part of the synergies into future even stronger growth. Let me stop there and very happy to have your questions coming.
Excuse me, this is the conference call 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 Hannes Leitner with UBS. Please go ahead.
Yes, congrats to the results. Thanks for giving the guidance. Maybe you can drill down a little bit into the different subsidiaries and the different groups and then maybe also in the regions. I think you gave a sense on just the merchant service part, but it would be very helpful. The second element is maybe on the cost synergy extraction. You talked about the EUR 60 million. I think I remember at Q1 last year you were very confident that you can overachieve the synergy target. Maybe you can talk there a little bit about potential upside from that, and then maybe also around the phasing.
Of the synergy targets. Are there some low-hanging fruits in terms of headcount reduction or processes, et cetera?
Hi, Hannes. Thank you for the two questions. I'll leave the second to Bernardo. Let me just comment on the first one. As you know, we do not give precise or specific guidance by business unit and definitely not by geographies. Just to give you a simple flavor, as you can imagine, I mean, we are guiding for 7%-9% for total revenues with double-digit growth in Merchant Solutions. These double-digit growth in Merchant Solutions is supposed to come quite homogeneously, I would say, across the various geographies. That's, if you like, I think a key theme for us for the year.
When it comes to the other two divisions, clearly, if you just run the math here, you understand that the other two regions combined are more in the mid-single digit space, which is also due to specific events in the year. Again, here, now we expect to see a continued strong growth, I would say, in card and digital payments in Italy with the Nordics slowly now recovering from the impact of the renegotiations. That's now the picture that I would give you, if you like, at least as a flavor. Bernardo?
On costs, we remain bullish on doing more than the target. We'd set EUR 320 million as the target in terms of cost synergies, plus some one-off CapEx synergies, then revised that upward, saying we saw at least 10% upside, if not more, on that EUR 320 million number. The truth is there's probably even more. The point that we made in the past was that we didn't see any benefit in revising upwards these numbers, given that they're likely gonna materialize in a timeframe which is beyond you know, people's interest, frankly speaking. A lot of these synergies come from closing down systems, platforms, you know, rationalizing the group structure, which take years to be done.
What we have identified that EUR 320 million is a set of synergies which we believe we can deliver mostly by 2024. We said 90% plus of the cost synergies by then, and most of them will be done shortly thereafter. A timeframe which is within sight, I would say. And a significant portion of them, as you've seen in 2022. If you look at the run rate of this, we have approximately EUR 80 million of costs, essentially cost synergies or P&L synergies already in 2022, secured in 2022 on a run rate basis out of 217 total. That's a third of them in the first year of the merger.
The good news, I think, is that, you know, through these mergers and the complexity, frankly speaking, that we need to work on, we have, I would say, a large bucket of synergies to draw on in coming years in order to absorb the incremental costs from incremental growth by taking out redundancies and overlaps in terms of our existing cost base.
Okay, great. Maybe just a follow-up on yesterday's Bloomberg article around your Ratepay buy now pay later business. Maybe you can give us there a bit, a little bit of a flavor in terms of the performance in 2021. I think in 2020 they saw 22% transaction growth, and I think the revenues were around EUR 60 million or something. Maybe you can give us there an update on Ratepay.
Hannes, thank you for the question. We were obviously expecting that is coming as a first view, which is absolutely normal and welcome. Listen, as you know, we don't comment on market rumors or specific situations, so on and so forth. Let me just reiterate two messages that I think we shared in the past as well. Number one, we continuously review the portfolio of our businesses. We've done it in the past when we started the Nexi journey back four, five years ago.
While we are known for what we bought, we should never forget that we also sold actually 12 assets of relatively small size, but we sold assets that actually we also lost, but they were not simply, you know, strategic for the mission of the company, for the future of the company. We will continue to do so. Obviously, now we are combining a new group that is very large with a variety of businesses. As you can imagine, we have already started a review of the portfolio of businesses along the same lines, and we believe this is just good practice. The second message when it comes to Ratepay. Ratepay is a great business. It's a business that we love.
It's a business that is led by a very strong team with a great CEO, that is Nina. They're performing very well in the year. I think their growth on the top line has been around 60%-70%. By the way, I think this is good to be underline it, they're also profitable, which is not always obvious for buy now pay later businesses. Amazing work being done by the team there.
As you can imagine, on this type of business, you know, the strategy review that in the context of the portfolio, you know, we are thinking it is are we the right owners for this asset, given the fact that at the end of the day, for us as a partner for merchants on acceptance solutions, it is important to be able to offer almost all or in many cases many buy now, pay later solutions that at the same time for XPay to continue to be successful and grow at its full potential, it is important to have access and be offered by also other PSPs and not just Nexi. That's the way we look at it.
It's a great asset that we like a lot.
Okay. Congrats and good luck for this year.
Thank you.
The next question is from Josh Levin with Autonomous. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon. I have two questions. On your last call, you talked about market share and how Adyen was taking some e-com share in Italy. What are you seeing now in the competitive landscape and who is taking share across all of your geographies? To what extent do you have market share gains or losses baked into your 2022 guidance? Thank you.
Hi, Josh. Thank you for the question. I think that in terms of market dynamics, we didn't see any real change compared to our last call. I guess you're referring more precisely on what is happening in merchant services. Let me just quickly go through what we see in the SME space. The competition that we see at the moment is coming mainly from the players that are coming from with lighter solutions. SumUp is the easiest name to be used there, and that's a competition on more on the front book, normally with lower value customers. We are also competitive there.
As you understood, we have accelerated a lot in selling our Mobile POS propositions in that space, and that now represents 20% of the front book. No real change there as we are strengthening our own efforts and propositions. When it comes to e-commerce, you've seen our performance that I think is a good performance in terms of growth. This is true, I would say, across most geographies, in particular in Italy, where we see great potential for future growth. Again, here, no major new news here. We are strengthening our efforts both on the proposition side but also on the go-to-market.
As I said before, we are clearly over-investing in e-commerce across the group. When it comes to large merchants, that again, remember, I want to remind everybody, represent about 4% of the total revenues of the group. We continue to see the same competitive dynamic. Therefore, at the end of the day, we have a couple of international players that are active across the various geographies. Here, maybe let me stop for one more moment, because I think you're referring to the conference call that yesterday one of our competitors had, when they talked about an Italian merchant, Italian brand in the luxury space. Let me make a few comments here. Number one
Well, let me make a few comments because I think it's a great example of the dynamics that we see in the market and is also, to be honest with you, a great representation of what our strategy in this space is. Number one, we really believe Adyen is a great company having very strong success in a very specific segment of the market. Again, the type of competition that we see, at least for now, is really on very global brands with an important e-commerce component and with global integrated CRM systems. This is a very specific segment where they're very successful, and we really respect that. That's not the segment where we want to compete going forward.
That's not our priority. While actually, large retailers with national, regional footprint, with omni-channel needs, with a strong physical presence, that's really where we want to compete because that's where, we believe, we can deploy the best of who we are. That is a combination of our scale in offering, innovative solutions, but also our local presence and our local entrenchment to be able to help, the merchants in market across the board. Now, coming back to that specific example, that was mentioned, I think, the net impact of that to us, if acquired by them is actually positive. I think, the net revenues that we have with that merchant, in Italy, I think they're around -EUR 30,000.
Now, while instead and therefore, I think it's consistent with the dynamic that I've just explained, luxury global. Now, when instead it comes to other dynamics in the market, only in the last few months. Now we had three different situations where we've been competing either with Adyen or Worldline, sorry, or Stripe. Also Worldline, but I would say in particular Adyen or Stripe in the retail space for mass market retail, supermarkets and stuff like that, either Italian but also international. Actually, in the three cases, we won. Why?
Simply because, for these merchants, the local presence, the local entrenchment, the ability to integrate with what is relevant, in terms of systems, in the market is, probably, at least for now, more important. I think it's a good example of how we see the future in that space as well.
Thank you. The second question about how much share gain or loss is baked in the guidance?
Listen, we don't make specific assumptions in terms of share or loss. I think that broadly speaking, we are more or less, if you just take you know the envelope of all markets, all geographies and so on and so forth, I think we are broadly in line with what we expect the growth of the market to be in the coming years. Then I'm sure that instead, if you look at individual geographies, we clearly have ambitions. I mean, we clearly have the markets where we are attackers and we want to grow and we will grow. I could mention Germany, I could mention Switzerland, I could mention Poland and others.
There are some markets where we are already very, very strong, and clearly, we are sure that we consolidate our positions. Obviously, Italy is an example. The Nordics, Denmark, Norway would be other easy examples. It's actually a portfolio thing. Nets, we are broadly in line with the market.
Thank you very much.
The next question is from James Goodman with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thank you. Couple from me then, please. Just firstly, maybe stepping back and thinking about the sustainable level of profit growth of the business. I guess touching on the reinvestment, the synergies point, and I accept maybe this is more a topic for a CMD, but we're quite used to the 13%-16% EBITDA growth the business gave at IPO. You know, you called out EUR 60 million of P&L synergies coming through this year. I think you also guided to revenue synergies having an EBITDA impact as well that are starting to come through. I guess my question is, you know, how should we think about you balancing reinvestment of those synergies you've talked to coming through over the coming years with the underlying profit growth of the business?
Should we be thinking about an acceleration of EBITDA because of the benefit of a higher proportion of synergies in the outer years? Or should we think about it more in balance and keeping you in that IPO range? If I could just ask another question on the balance sheet efficiency of the business. I think, you know, when I look at your pro forma modeling now, the interest rate cost is a little higher than I anticipated, and that's largely because of the amount of gross debt versus the net debt. You're running with over EUR 2 billion of cash, I think, on the balance sheet. Is there a plan to refinance that? How much can the business run with in terms of sort of gross cash?
Thank you.
Hi, James. This is Paolo. I'll let Bernardo take the second question. The first one, as you rightly said, this is a longer term type of outlook is something that we will leave for later in the year when we will have a capital markets day and we spend more time together and we'll give you a broader overview of the strategy and the outlook as well.
I think the comment I can make for 2022 is that we actually are investing a large part of the synergies in accelerating growth, as I said, in particular in e-commerce and in Germany, because we believe it's the right thing to be done given the revenue growth potential that we have there. Going forward, we expect the synergies to kick in at stronger levels, as you have heard from Bernardo. I mean, we promised 300+ cash synergies, and we said that in the longer term, we believe we have even more. Therefore, that will kick in.
I don't believe we will necessarily continue to expand the overinvestment because this is a first year push. Probably next year is gonna be similar to that. Mid long-term, I would expect the combination of these to create further margin accretion and therefore a potential acceleration but further acceleration of EBITDA. Again, let's leave it for the conversation on mid long-term guidance when we get there later in the year. Bernardo?
On the capital structure, I'm pretty happy with where we are today. We only have the next refinancing deadline in 2024, so we have a couple of years to monitor markets and take advantage of any window or opportunity to tap them if need be. But just on the point of gross leverage driving the cost, yes, and just bear in mind that we paid down approximately EUR 800 million of SIA debt just after the close of the year. What you see there, the EUR 7 billion-odd gross indebtedness went down by close to EUR 1 billion at the beginning of January when we actually closed SIA. You know, everything was shut on December 31.
We financed that on the third of January, I think it was. Going forward, we'll just monitor, as we have in the past, you know, the market and see if there's a window which is, you know, conducive to trying to, again, extend, reduce the cost of debt, even though, you know, we need to wait for our cost of credit to come down, thanks to the credit rating and the markets are moving in different directions. It's, you know.
Difficult balancing act. Right now we don't need to do anything to keep the cost where it is, which is good news.
That's helpful. Thank you both.
Yeah.
The next question is from Sébastien Sztabowicz with Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Hello, everyone, and thanks for taking the question. On the e-commerce business, it has been once again very strong in Q4. I guess you mentioned 30% growth more or less. You had also strong growth from BNPL and also account to account. I was wondering, is this a sustainable growth trend that you can keep in the coming quarters? Because some peers and the big company in the U.S. was blaming a kind of slowdown in the commerce market for the coming quarters. I would be interested to have your view on the trends on commerce. Restated from Ratepay, which is growing very fast, what is the underlying growth of the rest of the e-commerce business? That is the first question. Second one is on Italy specifically and digitalization of payment. What is happening there?
What is the current penetration today? Is there any specific, I would say, measure from the government to stimulate the adoption of electronic payments for the coming months? Thank you.
Hi, Sébastien, this is Paolo. Listen, that first question, let me try to put it this way. As you have understood today, the growth is very well sustained by the buy now pay later, and also the owned account to account products that we have in some of our geographies. We are obviously very happy with that, but actually most of the effort we're doing right now, and we see good progress there, is actually to rebalance now this growth and adding more contribution from, if you like, the more traditional PSP and acquiring propositions. The dynamics in different geographies are very different.
We are seeing in that space a pretty strong growth in Italy, a bit lighter in the Nordics. We are starting to accelerate in Germany, continuously performing well in Poland. That's if you like the full picture. As I said, going forward, that's gonna be a key element in terms of our priorities. When it comes to digital payments transition in Italy, I mean, you've seen yourself some of the numbers that we're seeing in the different sectors. We see that continuing and therefore we remain very positive for the outlook.
It's easier to talk about Italy because we are here, we know the market much better, but I'm also very impressed by what we are seeing in the Nordics and in DAC when it comes to the basic consumption sectors. I was making the example of groceries because at the end of the day, it's something that is not affected by COVID. I remain very positive, definitely in Italy, but I would say more in general.
I think a key question that is out there is how rapidly the travel sector that is important in terms of overall weight is depending on the market from I would say I'm talking about the high impact sectors depending on the market is anywhere in between a fourth to almost half in Germany of the volumes not the revenues but the volumes. I think it's gonna be very important to see how that recovers with what type of travelers and so on and so forth.
When it comes to the measures, I would say there is nothing new in the sense that, as you may remember, the current government a few months ago they did decide not to renew the one most visible measure that was the cashback measure. While at the same time, they did decide to do two or three things that are we believe really positive to support digital payments. Basically, they are giving the possibility to the merchants to deduct from their taxes 100% of the commissions that they pay for, I think this year, next year. Don't remember when it's for two years.
Similarly, they allow them to deduct from their taxes the cost of renting a terminal with the associated services, again, I think for a couple of years. More recently, they've decided, you know, you may remember that in Italy it is mandatory to have a terminal and accept digital payments. It's mandatory for merchants, but there is no fine if you don't do it. The government has decided a few weeks back to instead put in place fines, not from this year, but actually from next year, to allow merchants to basically comply in a more rigorous way.
All that said, I think that the evolution that we see is driven not necessarily by these measures or by the risk of fines and so on and so forth, but more and more by the clarity and the driven understanding of the merchants that accepting digital payments is much better for their business because it's more efficient than cash, it's better than cash, it's more secure than cash. I think there is more and more understanding of this also in Italy. It is already very clear in many other geographies. We believe the outlook remains very positive.
The next question is from Mohammed Moawalla with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you. Afternoon, Paolo, Bernardo. Hope you're well. I had a couple from my end. Firstly, Paolo, when you think of the sort of 7%-9% revenue growth for the year, can you perhaps just walk us through the kind of assumptions, particularly around the kind of pace of reopening and what you're baking in? I know last year you had put in some optionality around sort of travel and given us a sense of the potential kind of upside with travel and tourism rebounding. Related to that, could you also talk us through perhaps the cadence of how this growth should shape out over the quarters of this year? I appreciate a lot of moving parts here with the different subsidiaries. The second one was for Bernardo.
You know, you obviously talked about your kinda ambition to exceed on synergies. On the investments that you're making, can you talk us through the phasing of that? Is that gonna be more front-loaded? Do you have a bit more kind of discretion around how those come through? Could you specifically detail around e-commerce what investments you are specifically making? Thank you very much.
Hi, Mohammed . Thank you for the question. Let me answer them slightly differently from the way you've asked. What is underneath the 7.9% guidance we're giving for the year. I think. This, a short way of putting it, is actually the following. We basically assume that the world will go back to almost normal from the second quarter this year, which means that we go back to the trajectory that was already starting before Omicron came.
Therefore, we're actually projecting a strong growth across the various geographies from the second quarter, at least in basic services, at least in recreational services as well. The one area that remains affected is clearly the travel sector. I think here the jury's out to understand how rapidly it will come back. By the way, with what type of mix, you know, because clearly we understand that probably, you know, tourism may come back faster, and we've seen it in the summer in Italy than business travel, and business travel may be coming back at a softer level structurally compared to the past. My personal point of view, by the way, is that over time tourism will come back strong.
Will probably rebalance a potential threshold softness of business, at least in geographies that are tourism intensive, such as, for example, Southern Europe. That said, but just to give you a flavor on what is underneath, if I take Italy with SIA, and you've seen that international travelers coming here are now -35% compared to pre-COVID levels or something like that. Basically, we expect these to more or less continue even softening in the first quarter this year, and then basically coming back to positive from second quarter. From there onwards, we're not expecting a massive growth.
Again, we remain maybe in this specific case a bit conservative, because we really need to see how it develops, you know, in terms of business travelers versus tourists. Again, you know, we expect also this one to come back to positive from the second quarter, which by the way, is what happened at some point in the summer last year. This is based on evidence that we had from the past. Let me hand over to Bernardo and then I come back to comment on your question on the years of investment for e-commerce.
I think probably covered a lot of the first question on the.
Sorry.
Yeah, in terms of the volumes which drive you know a large proportion of our revenues. We saw three-quarters, two-thirds of the revenues. What we expect is the first quarter to be you know to be affected by where we exited 2021 and entered into 2022, so a situation in which there were lockdowns pretty much across Europe. The situation will rapidly increase and recover and we expect the second quarter to be better, significantly better than the first quarter in terms of growth and that environment will continue throughout the year. As Paolo said, at the end of the year, we reach a pretty much pre-COVID scenario in terms of foreign travel, both business and tourism.
I hope that answers the question in terms of phasing. We're actually, you know, when we walked into budget discussions back in October, we actually thought the first quarter would be the best if we looked at it against 2021, because 2021 was a very severe lockdown period for Nexi, at least, in Italy. Whereas now, given where we ended up after Christmas and the beginning of January or through the first half of January, it's kind of taken part of that away from us. But as I said, doesn't change our outlook for the rest of the year being extremely positive. In terms of investments, the e-commerce investments are not, I'll hand the floor over to Paolo with regards to what, you know, what, where, what areas we're looking to invest.
In terms of financial impact, I mean, it's unlikely that these are gonna generate huge impacts in the short term. Obviously, we're building new product services, accessing new markets, and this takes time. We can definitely try and work on the phasing of the investment part. In terms of the revenues flowing in, that's gonna be a little slower than the spending part, which is why we have that margin erosion. Fortunately, we have the synergies to offset that, which is the balancing act we're trying to carry out.
Yes. Well, let me come back up on where we are investing in terms of where we see the areas of opportunity and where we're spending the money as well. Let me try to simplify. Number one, most of the investments, most of the focus is gonna be on the mid-market, you know, so the mid-size merchants, or if you like, the upper part of SMEs, where we see a lot of market potential from local merchants or regional merchants. This is not intended to be in the very large, you know, global e-commerce merchants, but is really to what is relevant in our geographies, in our footprint, and so on and so forth. That's number one.
Number two, in terms of focus, geographical focus, clearly, again, there are certain geographies where we see more potential than in others, but honestly, we'll be investing across all the geographies where we are present. I think at some point we will also consider the opportunity to launch greenfield in markets where we're not present at the moment, but it is not in the plan for now, but definitely we'll consider it, I think, later in the year. Where do we spend the money in terms of what do we pay for? Basically, there are two fronts here, and we're already actually working on them at the same time.
On the one side, go-to-markets. I think that with the propositions that we have at the moment, we can do more, even more than what we're doing right now in terms of sales results. And this means actually more direct sales and of course, sales people, more investments in digital channels that are more and more important for this type of segment. And last but not least, more and more partnerships with ISVs, but also with e-commerce, e-commerce platforms across the various geographies. The second area is obviously the product, the proposition here. We already started.
It's a combination of enriching the proposition with additional functionalities, additional value-added services, more intelligence, artificial intelligence and machine learning on the back to improve the conversion rates for our merchants, but also investments dedicated to localize very effectively these propositions in the various markets, not only the ones where we're already very active, like Italy or the Nordics or Poland, but also the ones where we are such as Germany, Switzerland and others.
Great. Thank you very much.
The next question is from Aditya Buddhavarapu with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, Paolo, B. Thanks for taking my question. Just quickly, I think on the you spoke a lot about your success in some of these alternative payment methods like account to account, BNPL. Can you maybe talk about the unit economics of those and, you know, how those are actually, sort of in terms of the revenue model there? Then second one, as you look at the large account segment where you said that you've been winning against some of the digital native and traditional competitors, can you maybe talk about in those pitches, how are you actually differentiating yourself and actually how are you able to win those contracts? Yeah, that's it from my side.
Gentlemen, is your phone on mute?
Sorry, we are having the mic that goes on mute. Let me try. The account to account and buy now, pay later. Listen, at the end of the day, the way it works is that you are at the same time the PSP acquirer somehow and the payment rail, you know, and this makes the economics of this, when you own it, pretty attractive. These are good margin businesses to begin with. Because at the end of the day, you don't have another third party that you need to pay money to, because you distribute your scheme, quote-unquote, and you don't have someone else to be paid for.
This is particularly true, I would say for account to account. The level of take rates that you have depends on the market, because clearly it has to remain competitive with card schemes and alternative propositions in the market. Normally it has pretty attractive economics when you own it. Buy now, pay later is a similar threshold, but for the cost of risk, as you can imagine. Therefore, here is structurally a less profitable business compared to account to account or PSP.
Here it depends how good you are or bad you are in managing risk or if you like, managing the balancing of risk and letting the customer transact on that specific transaction. Normally, in buy now pay later, the player, and it's also our case, charges, I would say, a nice merchant fee that depending on the player in the market can be about 3%-4%, and that has to cover the risk.
In our case, as you have understood, thanks to the ability of the team, thanks to the investment we have done in technology, in managing properly all the possible information that is available in the market, plus the one that is built through history by our systems, we are able to make the business profitable. But as you know, not all buy now, pay later players are profitable. This is the space where when you own account to account, you own buy now, pay later. I think it's important to remember that even when as a PSP, as an aggregator, a collecting PSP, you distribute account to account proposition or buy now, pay later propositions of parties that also can be a profitable business.
That's actually what we are seeing in some of our geographies as well. Sorry, the second question was around how do we differentiate.
That's okay.
With competitors. Again, I guess you're referring more on what is happening in the omni-channel space and e-commerce space. Again, here, the simple theme for us is offering the best combination of, on the one side, products, on the one side, the product capabilities that have to be as good as or better than the ones of the newcomers in the market for that specific segment.
At the same time, having everything that is needed to add the merchant locally, from an integration of local schemes to integration with the locally relevant ERP systems, to customer support, to the integration with the physical channels and so on and so forth. If I look at just to be very practical, the three cases I was mentioning before where we won with the new challenger players in Italy.
One is because we already had a very strong relationship on corporates and bills, and we had the availability of a very specific plugin in the ERP systems that was necessary. The second case, again, it had to do with ability to integrate with the reporting systems of the merchant and of sales guarantees and systems that we could provide. The third example, again, a strong relationship across other businesses as well, and bundle solution for the different components. These are characteristics that are obviously relevant for not all merchants. I think we were talking about luxury before. For those brands, probably global integration is more important.
Actually the vast majority of our business is with customers that require local ability to integrate, customize, and support.
Great. Thank you. Thank you for that. Can I just have one follow-up on Ratepay? I think you said that it's growing about 60%-70%. In the past, I think you said that's about EUR tens of millions of revenue. Could you maybe just give an update on the size of that segment or that business?
It's somewhere around EUR 100 million of revenue.
Okay, great. That's on an annual basis, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question is from Antonin Baudry with HSBC. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, Paolo and Bernardo. Most of my question has been answered. Two quick follow-up. I know that you will organize a capital market day later in the year dedicated to midterm guidance. Can we say that the 7%-9% revenue growth guidance for 2022 is a good proxy for your top line growth during the next three to four years? Or do you think that this guidance for this year are still impacted by Omicron, the renegotiation of contracts, and we could see the midterm guidance to be stronger than that? This is my first question. My second question is about consolidation of the European payments market. Would it be possible to update us on this?
Do you target particular countries? Where do you see the opportunities? And when do you expect to close and consolidate the acquisition in this? Thank you.
Antonin, hi. Good to find you again. Listen, on your first question, I think you said it all actually, with the rationale that you applied to our 2022 guidance. As you've understood, our 2022 guidance is partially affected by this COVID variant at the beginning of the year, but also, to be honest with you, supported by the fact that last year was not a normal year either. I think that net-net, when you look at merchant services, the things more or less balance on each other, while in the other two divisions, there are in-year effects that are either one-off or unwindings or, in any case, will fade away.
I think there is room to believe that the mid-long term guidance could be stronger also on the back of the extra investments that we discussed before to accelerate growth in certain high potential areas. Again, let's have that conversation because I cannot confirm it now, and I don't want to confirm it now because otherwise, if we were at very high confidence, I will be giving it today. I think the rationale that you have in mind I think is the correct one.
As far as consolidation, again, I think we are super busy at the moment now in consolidating the three businesses that we are putting together and creating value out of it for our customers and our shareholders. We will continue to consider opportunities to begin with now in the geographies where we are present, if and only if they are available at with the right evaluations and with the right conditions. We will try to stay focused on these geographies and consider only by exception anything outside of it.
Again, the focus will continue to be pretty much on merchant services, and I would say with a particular focus on SMEs and e-commerce. On your broader question around consolidation, I think we'll continue to talk about consolidation in our industry in Europe, I think for the next 5-10 years, to be honest with you, because there are still so many things happening, so many assets out there available, so many dynamics that this will continue for a long time. By the way, I think we continue to offer good opportunities.
Thank you. On the closing of the Greek acquisitions?
Sorry, I didn't get it. Well, we expect it to be around at the end of the first half of the year.
Okay. Thank you very much, Paolo.
Thank you.
Next question is from Alexandre Faure with BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for squeezing me in. Just wanted to touch on this slide 11, I think you showed, and your exposure to SMBs, and I think in the previous answer, Paolo, you elaborated on the ISV channel. A few things here. I was wondering if you could share with us perhaps how these SMB revenues break down by channel, ISVs, direct, bank-led distribution, any color here would be helpful. If you could come back for a minute on the revenue model and incentives you have with those ISV partners. Is it a revenue share? Is it a referral fee? Are you happy with the way it's going, or do you think you need to establish deeper relationships with ISV where they might become payment facilitators?
You know, is it something they're keen to do, or you're not seeing that market trend in Europe at the moment? Thank you very much.
Hi, Alexandre, and thank you for the questions. Listen, we don't provide a breakdown of SMB sales by channel, also because unfortunately, the definitions are very different by market and very blurred as well. Let me again try to give you a little bit of a flavor of that. If you look at Italy, the vast majority of the fresh revenues that are coming in are with the banks now, with the banking channel, and the banking channel includes, in our mind, both the licensing model, but also the referral model. Where we bought the books, still the bank is super active in partnership with us on the sales activity.
While we are strengthening our ability, you know, to sell also on digital retail and through partnerships with software vendors and so on and so forth, the vast majority of the business is still with the banks, and we are simply preparing for our future and also covering segments of merchants that are starting to shop in different ways or do require more technology support. When it comes to the other markets, I would say that the banking channel and I'm talking about here the Nexi geographies. Sorry, I would assume that Greece will become the same after we launch with Alpha Bank. A super strong partnership.
We love that partnership, and we will develop it, hopefully successful as the ones that we have developed in Italy, and you just heard about Adyen Italia. From Bernardo on the Intesa book. Now, for the other geographies, actually, the vast majority of it is not dependent on the banks. It's either direct sales, in particular for the mid markets or software, sometimes also terminal vendors we partner with. I think then you have a lot of cross-selling and cross-selling from customer care. More and more, the digital channel is also starting to contribute. By the way, this is one of the key priorities for the group.
When it comes to the revenue model, to be honest with you have a little bit of everything. It really depends on which case you're talking about. In the vast majority of the cases, we give them either a recurring, give them basically a margin, a recurring fee that is clearly already embedded into our own numbers and projections. Sometimes one-off acquisition contribution. For now, the model in the. Sorry, remind me of the name of the model. They will say the model is something that we're not engaging at the moment.
By the way, to be honest with you, the more, you know, we spend time with software vendors and the more we talk to them, we explain to them the complexity of our business, the more we succeed to keep them on the current models.
I see. Thank you. At the moment, just to make sure I got that right, you're not seeing appetite from these ISVs to launch ISV pay powered by Nexi, nothing like that?
We try to stay away from that as much as we can. Sorry, but let's be clear. I don't believe the name is what counts. You were talking about the payment facilitator model. That's what I was referring to. I call it wholesale, which is at the end of the day what it is. Regardless, you know, the way they call it's a model that at least for now we try to avoid.
I see.
We consider by exception.
Okay, got it. Thank you very much, Paolo.
The next question is from Paul Kratz with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. Thank you for squeezing me in. I don't want to keep you for too long. I think maybe the first question to start with is, you know, you upped your stake in orderbird in Germany, and clearly you're investing a lot more in that market. It'd be great to kind of get an understanding of how something like orderbird fits into, you know, this ecosystem of value-add services for smaller merchants. The second question I had is, you know, the CDP business of Nets has actually done really well over the last couple of months. It'd be great to kind of get an idea of, you know, what is the ramp that we should expect from wins like Degussa and how that pipeline kind of looks for you over the next couple of months.
I think the final question that I have, and this is more of a focus on OpEx, is it would be great if you could just kind of update us on how the insourcing projects are going, both on the side of Nexi and I guess as well Nets at the level of Concardis, and how we should think of the benefit of those migrations into kind of 2022, and whether you're actually reinvesting that operating leverage or we should start to see some of that feed through. Thanks, guys.
Hi, Paul. Orderbird, but I guess it's the broader software space, what you have in mind. Listen, we like the case of orderbird because for us, it is gonna be a very interesting testing ground for us. I think this connects nicely to the previous conversation we were having on software partnerships with Alexandre a moment ago. We are very happy to be owners or partial owners of this asset in Germany because it will give us a real chance to understand the effectiveness of the cross-selling, upselling, and all of that.
Clearly, this does not mean that we will go around to try and buy software assets around. It's not the plan to be very, very clear. The current plan is actually to partner as much as we can in the various geographies for what is relevant in those geographies. I give you another example. In Italy, today, we are setting up partnerships that already started or that are going to start with basically the key players active in the SME space when it comes to the ERP systems and CRM systems of the shops.
We're actually partnering with many players, but in particular with these three that do represent, I think, 60%-70% of the total market, just to give you an idea. Definitely we're not planning to buy them, but we are developing very nice partnerships with them. I believe it's gonna be a mix of different situations.
This Orderbird case is for us a very, very interesting one, but in any case, we are developing more and more partnerships with software players, especially in the sectors where this will become relevant, because I think it's also very important to underline that the relevance of for the potential conversion of software in payments is very, very different depending on which sector you're talking about, which size of merchants you're talking about, and so on and so forth. On CapEx, I let Bernardo talk.
No, thanks for the question, Paul. I think we're very happy with development of Nets, of their UNI platform, or in general, the way CDP is developing. You know, obviously structurally, Nordics are a market which is much more penetrated than Italy, and as such, is characterized by a lower growth rate, underlying growth rate, but mid single digit level is where we're at. We're very pleased to have secured, you know, almost all contracts now in terms of the renegotiations which Nets was carrying over from the IPO days. It's a business now that is looking to move outside of the traditional countries, Nordics, as you were mentioning, Degussa was a big win this year.
I think we have others in the pipeline, and indeed, discussions have been, I think, very constructive and fruitful also with EPI, where we would hope that our Nets capabilities would be highly valued in terms of that initiative. Indeed a business which is structurally different to acquire it, but nonetheless performing pretty well, not only in the core Nordic markets. With regards to insourcing, well, I think you referred to correctly, we had, you know, huge insourcing projects at Nexi, which was, you know, historically outsourced to Worldline and through SIA. Now that we are merged with SIA, obviously that aspect of things is more or less taken care of.
We need to rationalize the platforms, but doing it from a position of greater certainty and strength in terms of ability to execute. With Worldline, you know, this is an ongoing discussion. I think we've already significantly reduced our reliance on Worldline, and we've now completed our core acquiring platform. That progress is picking up pace. Whereas Nets itself, as we mentioned in the results, Concardis is undergoing its own transformation. One aspect of this, as you were suggesting, is insourcing from the German outsourcing provider of processing onto our own platform in Germany. That is progressing well.
Now, all of these, you know, benefits from insourcing and synergies from rationalizing our platforms is what feeds that EUR 300 million number, of which EUR 100 million are going to be hitting us in 2022. You know, we'd love for that to be quicker, but unfortunately, I mean, they're pretty sizable insourcing activities, complicated and they take time and really we're running as fast as we can. We hope to over-deliver, but right now this is what we are committing to.
Just maybe a small follow-up on the CDP business. I mean, when you kind of think, you know, historically of this business maybe being more around mid-single digit growth, with the success that you've seen with, you know, again, Degussa and maybe the pipeline, do you think there's actually scope that you could maybe break out of that mid-single digit range, you know, over the next few years?
I think, Paul, if I may just complement what Bernardo said. I think it's, I mean, you see it once, no, you start seeing many new wins of large customers. That's one. Also, and this is the parallel priority for us, as I mentioned before, the key theme for us going forward is also to try and make sure that we increase the value we provide to the customer base of banks outside of Italy. As you may remember, the vast majority of the relationships that we have, both in Nets and SIA outside of Italy are processing like type of relationships.
We believe there is a great amount of value in increasing the value of these relationships, either selling more components of processing like servicing, like this type of relationships. I was mentioning before the work that is already starting to do successfully Nets around card management system, account management systems. Also selling more valuable business models like the one that we have in Italy that is the licensing business model. I was mentioning as an example the fact that there are many conversations outside of Italy with banks to aid them in running their customer value management activities. This is a very high value, maybe not too large, but definitely a high value proposition.
On the one side, trying to develop a larger customer base beyond Italy and the Nordics, but at the same time, creating more value on the current base. If we're able to
Okay. That's very clear. Thank you.
Develop this, then you can be more optimistic, even more optimistic on the growth profile.
That's very clear. Thank you.
The next question is from Gianmarco Bonacina with Equita. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon. Just a follow-up on the theme of the reinvestment of the synergies. You talked before about eCom. Can you talk about Germany? You are making here investments in pricing or also go-to-market marketing, if you can clarify this. And more broadly, in the midterm, you mentioned next year you're going probably to invest still some of these synergies, but in the midterm, how should we think about the payback of this reinvestment? In 2023-2024, you expect-
To having the P&L the full amount of synergies, or still a part of that will be reinvested. Thank you.
Let me try to take the first one, and I'll leave it to Bernardo for the second. I think we partially covered it before, but I'll try to give you a bit more color if we can. On Germany. At the end of the day, Germany, the focus is gonna be very much in line with what I've been commenting around e-commerce. First of all, an important part of the e-commerce investments are gonna be dedicated to Germany. A combination of go-to-market and proposition. Again, you know, the investment in Germany will go beyond e-commerce, will definitely be in the SME space, I would say, across the board. Again, here it's gonna be a combination of proposition and go-to-market here.
In terms of proposition, we already have a proposition that is progressing very well. That is the comprehensive digital proposition, all-in-one, SmartPay that's already progressing very well. Therefore, we believe that adding more firepower to it, a bit with direct sales, but most importantly through partnerships and digital channels, so on and so forth, can really make a big difference. Last but not least, on larger merchants, we will also be investing but in very selective way in specific verticals where we believe we can be really competitive. Honestly, competing on price is not per se the strategy. We don't believe this is at the moment, at least not in these markets, a price-driven space. I think this is good news.
I think that reaching out to merchants in the right way with the right propositions, with the right support in terms of service and capabilities, is the best way to go forward. You know, that we consider ourselves more of a challenger in Germany, so we're not worried at all about price dynamics in that market, but honestly, we don't believe is the right way to win market share.
On your second point, again, we are trying to avoid to give, at this stage, mid- to long-term guidance, but as I commented before, the way you should think about it is that this year, next year will gonna be, you know, years of investment in the sense that this year, these extra investments do have negative EBITDA contribution because the impact on revenues is very limited while actually we are ramping up the investments and the resources quite rapidly. I think next year you should look at it as more or less a year where you start to be more or less in balance than from year three or four. We should definitely generate an acceleration of not only revenues but also EBITDA, you know.
While synergies will kick in stronger and therefore there will be no further need to reinvest them in this specific case. That's the way we see it, you know. Clearly these investments are supposed to deliver for us growth on top of what our earlier plan were. I think if going forward we see further opportunities elsewhere, we'll have another conversation, but that's the way we see it at the moment.
Thank you.
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Thank you. Let me just thank you, all of you, for being with us today. Again, simple messages. We see a good recovery and actually think very positive about the outlook for the new year as the situation normalizes. Stronger delivery for this year and outlook for next year and more broadly good progress in aggregating the company and transforming the company on the back of the completion of the combination with SIA as well. Let us stop here. I hope you enjoy the rest of the day. Hopefully, with COVID fading away, we'll also be able to meet in person. Therefore, we look forward to either seeing you in video or ideally in person very, very soon. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.
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