Good morning, this is the Chorus Call Conference Operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Nexi First Quarter 2023 Financial Results Presentation 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. Good morning. Good morning to everyone, and welcome to our results call for the first quarter of 2023. As usual, I'm here with Bernardo Mingrone and Stefania Mantegazza is leading our investor relations team, and we also have a few members of our teams connected to help in case of need with your questions. I will make a few introductory remarks and comment on volume dynamics that we have observed over the last three to four months. Then I will hand over to Bernardo, who will cover our financial results, and I will come back with Bernardo for your questions. Let me jump straight to page three with our key messages as usual. First message, across the quarter, across all geographies, we have seen a double-digit volume growth.
As we have anticipated, January has been particularly strong, benefiting from an easier year-over-year comp because last year, January was still a COVID month, hopefully the last one. We have seen positive volume growth across all categories with a particularly strong contribution from what we define the high impact consumption, restaurants, hotels, travels, entertainment, and the like. Also in April, which is instead a normal month, with I would say more standard comparison versus last year, we continue to observe double-digit growth across all geographies. Overall, quite strong double-digit volume growth. Second key message. In the quarter, we've seen strong financial performance with solid margin expansion. Revenue did grow 9% in the quarter with strong performance across all geographies.
Bernardo will comment more on this. We have seen a double-digit revenue growth in merchant solutions with a particularly strong performance in Italy and DACH and Poland. Last but not least, EBITDA growth has been at 13.6% versus the same quarter of last year, with a margin expansion of almost 2 percentage points. Strong financial performance across the quarter. Third, and last message. We continue to progress the execution of our strategy. We are well on track with the execution of our strategy announced back in September at our Capital Markets Day. That strategy, we want to reiterate, is expected to generate about EUR 2.8 billion of organic cash over the three years.
Over time, we will be allocating most of this cash to leverage reduction, still leaving a lot of room of maneuver to both return money to shareholders and do high value creative M&A as necessary. We see stronger growth performance of all the recently acquired assets, the bigger merchant book in Italy, the book we bought in Greece, Croatia, and also Spain that we plan to close later in the year. Last but not least, we are progressing well on our non-core asset disposal plans, and we will tell you more over the next few months as we progress and we come to signing of these deals.
Overall, we are therefore confirming our guidance for the full year, with revenues expected to be at above 7%, EBITDA growth expected to be at above 10%, and excess cash generation at above EUR 600 million. Let me now move to page four, and let me comment on the volumes that we've been observing over the last three or four months. Now, here, the comparison is with the previous year and therefore with 2022. You see that across all geographies, we have been observing a total volume growth that is normally the blue line, well into double-digit space, with peaks in January.
Italy, you see 18%, 13%, 13%, well supported by by the high impact consumption sector growing above 20% and with a contribution from the foreign cards growth and therefore, international travel remaining very strong at above 50% growth. In the Nordics as well, we've been observing a stronger volume growth, especially again, in January, and this growth is continuing also in April. Last but not least, the DACH is also here, very strong volume growth above 20% across the quarter. I think here the relevant line is the dotted blue line, 33%, 29%, 21%, still continuing on a more normalized April at around 16%.
Across our geographies, we see the trends that we were expecting, and we see these trends continuing according to our expectations also now in April. Let me now hand over to Bernardo to comment the financial performance.
Thanks, Paolo. Good morning. I'm on slide six. Moving on to how Nexi performed from a financial standpoint in the context of the growing volumes that Paolo's just described. Top line growth, we've seen grew 11% if you look at it. Gross of scheme fees, 9% on a net basis. Whereas EBITDA, as we have seen, grew almost 14% with a margin expansion of just shy of 200 basis points, taking it to 45% at the end of the first quarter of this year. Moving on to slide seven, we have merchant services. Top line growth, again, double digit. Paolo's already called out the strong performance we've had in Italy and the DACH and Polish regions. This 11.5%, of course, is 14% gross of scheme fees.
This was sustained, this growth was sustained by strong volumes, particularly in international schemes, as we see on the charts on the page. It's important also to notice how it's not only the volumes growing that are fueling the growth in our top line, but also the expansion of our footprint in terms of, you know, growth in number of customers, both in the physical acquiring and the e-com space, across all geographies and segments. We have strong wins in SME and LAKA, and we are further expanding our partnerships and our footprint in terms of our presence of acquiring through ISPs. Moving on to issuing solutions. Particularly strong quarter here. You can see top line growth of just north of 8%.
Again, I would call out the contribution to top line growth of volumes. In particular here we have, I'd say, recovery in travel-related volumes, both in terms of cards, Italian cards in particular being used abroad, but also commercial cards. We have to be fair, we have a slight benefit in this first part of the year in terms of better phasing with regards to contract renewal we'd spoken of in the past. That has helped us. Most importantly, I would say the key driver to top line growth being volumes, and the overall advancement of our you know, cross-selling and upselling initiatives in particular and advanced digital issuing solutions. Page nine on DBS. Here in DBS in the past, this is only Italy or Italy...
I'd say the vast majority of this is Italy, once we recast our numbers moving eID in available for sale. This is the division which was most impacted in the past by domestic Italian banking M&A. Notwithstanding the fact that in the past we've lost clients, you can see some growth in the on the top line, which is again benefiting from stronger volumes in the first half, in particular on bank transfers and the EBA CLEARING framework we manage.
If we look at the revenue performance, which as I said, was strong in the first quarter in every business unit we operate, the same holds true on a geographical basis, which you see on slide 10 with Italy and the DACH and Polish regions growing almost 10% top line. Double digit if you look at a gross of scheme fees in both Nordics and Southeastern Europe, which are growing above the minimum guidance for the year. If we move on to costs on slide 11, you see the cost performance essentially should be thought of as being impacted by four key components. The first is the investment we've made in people during the course of 2022 and the start of this year.
This is catching up in terms of the cost dynamics. The second effect is clearly with the strong volume growth we've seen, part of this feeds into our cost base, notwithstanding the very strong operating leverage we benefit from. We then have some effects coming from inflation. As we had discussed back in September when we looked at our projections for the three-year period, we knew we'd be able to manage the progressive impact of inflation, mitigating it, and we are starting to see some of it filter through this year. Finally, obviously we have the benefit of our synergies, which are helping to offset these trends and effects on inflation.
Finally, if we look at leverage on slide 12, we have some good news in the quarter. We'd already spoken of it. We have an upgrade from rating agencies. We hope for more to come. I think the key point to remark always is that we have sufficient cash on our balance sheet to cover commitments up until the end of 2025, which stands us in good stead given market conditions. Overall, the book is our debt stack is I think and again, apologize if I'm saying it about ourselves, but I believe it's well-balanced in terms of the maturities profile, in terms of the mix of funding sources, in terms of the mix of fixed versus floating rate.
We see a leverage profile which is substantially flat in the quarter, having closed the M&A deal in Croatia. I think, you know, we benefit from a very sound balance sheet. I'll hand over the floor back to Paolo for his concluding remarks.
Thank you, Bernardo. Let me move now to page 14. As I've anticipated, on the back of these results and what we see in the market, we confirm our 2023 guidance that is, I want to remind us, fully in line with our longer term, medium term Capital Markets Day growth targets. On net revenues, we plan to deliver at least a 7% growth. On EBITDA, we plan to deliver at least a 10% growth. We plan to generate at least EUR 600 million of excess cash at the organic level. On the back of this, we expect net leverage to come down to 2.9 x EBITDA organically, 2.6x including run rate synergies.
If you include the announced deal in Spain with Banco Sabadell, you should top it up by 0.1 and therefore, 3x EBITDA, and 2.7x EBITDA including synergies and normalized EPS, we plan to grow at more than 10% year-over-year. Let me now conclude reiterating the three key simple messages. Across the quarter, we've seen double-digit growth across all geographies, and we see this double-digit growth continuing in April. Second point, you know, strong financial performance at 9% top line growth, double-digit revenue growth in merchant solutions, particularly strong in Italy and Poland. EBITDA at almost 14% growth with 183 basis points, EBITDA margin expansion.
Last but not least, progressing well in executing our strategy is expected to generate EUR 2.8 billion of excess cash that we plan over time to allocate mostly to leverage reduction, still leaving a lot of flexibility to also give back money to our shareholders and focus on highly value creative M&A. Let me stop here. Let's open to your questions.
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 touch tone 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 from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Paolo, Bernardo, good to speak to you again. Have a couple for you. Just wanted to first ask around, you know, the reiteration of guidance. I understand it wasn't a super sizable beat, albeit a beat. Is that related to conservatism or perhaps a bit of weakness exiting the quarter? Just looking a little bit at back of envelope math, does appear perhaps a little bit of a slowdown on a verse 2019 basis, and I guess on a year-over-year basis in Italy. Maybe you could talk a little bit about trends in your key market. And then I wanted to flip a little bit to a more longer-term question regarding the Nets and SIA integrations.
I think SIA was expected to be mostly finished at this point with, you know, a little bit of synergy flowing through in 2023, with the majority of the go forward being related to Nets and, you know, a significant amount of revenue synergy coming from the e-commerce and omnichannel platform and the next gen SME proposition. You know, now that you've had a year to evaluate Nets and the propositions they're bringing to the table, what is the progress on your thinking there, and do you expect to have those solutions integrated, and what is the kind of product product map going forward for integrating them? Thank you.
Good morning, Justin. Thank you for your questions. Listen, on guidance, we consider the first quarter bang online with our expectations. I want to reiterate the fact that we didn't say that our guidance was 7% and 10%, but was at least 7% and 10%. The first quarter was expected to be a stronger quarter than the rest of the year. We've been also very clear in anticipating this when we did communicate the guidance back in February. We continue to have exactly that view, that e-expectation. We don't see at this stage any reason why we should revise this guidance. If anything, being four months into the quarter, we are even stronger confidence in our guidance.
As far as the volumes dynamics are concerned, they are broadly speaking in line with what we were expecting. Now we are reporting them compared to 2021 because we believe this has become the real, sorry, 2022 because we are getting to normal, to a normal way of living and to a normal comparison as well. I think this is really important and allows us to go back to also a normal way of looking at numbers. However, now, we still among ourselves, continue to look back to 2019.
If you look at the volumes of, on Italy that you mentioned specifically, compared to 2019, in the quarter, they were up about 40% compared to pre-COVID, and it's a solid 40% continuing also in April. We don't see any particular dynamic different from what we were expecting. On the Nexi integration, let me reiterate what we've said in the past, because what you're mentioning around the focus on SIA and the focus on Nets was more around the organizational integration.
e did integrate since the beginning of 2022, organizationally with SIA, especially in Italy, and we had decided to postpone a fuller integration also with Nets later on. This has happened on the 1st of January this year, so now we are operating as one company, fully integrated. That's also one of the reasons why it's becoming very difficult for us to talk about synergies because they are fully embedded now into the way we run the business and into our guidance, into our long-term guidance. As far as how the plans on the Nets side, on the former Nets side are concerned, they're basically moving according to plan
We are, for example, let me give you a couple of examples specifically on e-commerce as you are referring to that, and that's clearly one of the areas where, you know, we were expecting to have a stronger contribution. We recently launched in Italy a one-click checkout solution that allows to maximize basically the probability of success of a transaction, the conversion rate for a merchant. This is being very well received by the market, and this is actually translated from the Nets experience in the Nordics that is now being rolled out also in Germany.
A second example, there is a mid-layer that we talked about at the Capital Markets Day that we call Nexi Relay. That is the de facto mid-layer that allows us to decouple the underlying processing platforms and the customer-facing acceptance platforms, the gateways. That solution that was originally developed to serve the Nets estate is now actually being extended to Italy as well. Over the next few months, we'll roll out, for example, certain new payment acceptance method in Italy on the back of that platform. It's progressing overall according to our plans.
Got it. Thanks so much, guys. Congrats on a good quarter. Cheers.
Thank you.
The next question is from Hannes Leitner from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you for letting me on. I have also a couple of questions. The first one is, if you look into your database and you calculate the basket, the average basket of transactions, actually you had a decline, which seems a little bit against the typical inflation trends we see. Maybe you can comment on that. The second is, could you comment on the Italian landscape? I think Banco BPM is looking to a similar increase the value of their payment assets and their fee income, I think similar to UniCredit. That's for now, maybe a follow-up.
Morning, Hans. listen, on the impact on inflation on overall volumes and so on and so forth, to be honest with you, we gave up to try to have a precise assessment because what we observe in our volume dynamics is a mix of very different things. Now, you have the real economy, real consumption dynamics, you have the inflation, and you, most importantly, you also have the cash to digital payments continue the structural transition.
I think inflation is supporting the top line here, but we also have to consider the fact that real consumption, you know, over the last several months on the back of pressures on energy, pressure on mortgages and pressure on many other things have, you know, been suffering quite a bit. I think overall the mix is evolving in line with what we were expecting. I think on your second question, obviously we cannot comment on Banco BPM or other banks' statements. It's for them to comment.
Overall, we see in Italy the dynamic that we see everywhere else, where banks continuously revisit their payments, you know, strategies and approaches, you know, realizing the fact that this business is becoming more and more of a technology-centric business and therefore they really need to have a stronger focus and, you know, work with dedicated partners. This is not an Italian, an Italy-only phenomenon. I think specialization in digital payments is becoming the rule of the game across, I would say, not just Europe, but across the world. It's very consistent with what we see everywhere else.
Okay. Thank you. Just a short follow-up on Justin's comment and your answer on it in terms of it goes according to plan, the integration of SIA and Nets. Maybe you can comment around that if there are more assets you have so far identified, you might want to divest or spin out, looking into this after you had now moving a couple of assets as available for sale.
Honestly, I would reiterate what we said at the Capital Markets Day. We had identified for sure and therefore made explicit with the market, our plans to sell the Nets DBS business, the Electronic Identity business in the Nordics and the Buy Now Pay Later business that we have in Germany. We also said that especially in the third business unit, in the overall DBS business unit, we continually revisit the portfolio to make sure that, you know, all the different products and services and assets that we have there are really core to the strategy. You know, we can continue to focus our investments also on them.
It's a continuous evaluation of options. For now, there is no new news on that front.
Thank you.
The next question is from James Goodman from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my two questions. The first one just on DACH, where we see a very strong volume acceleration in the quarter, I think up until the middle or high 20s, depending how you look at that. The revenue growth at 10% is quite similar to other regions. The question is just why are we seeing, you know, a lower level of conversion of that very high volume into revenue in DACH? Given the midterm outlook for that region to reach mid-20s growth, you know, when and why do you see the acceleration in the revenue side on DACH?
The second question is just around press reports again last month that the Italian government is meeting with, I think, banks and payment firms, retailers in order to discuss, again, potential additional taxes on transactions, I think up to EUR 30. Can you just talk a little bit about that regulatory backdrop, evolution in Italy and potentially if you've run any stress tests or otherwise around any sort of impact of that sort of legislation? Thank you.
Good morning, James, thank you for your questions. Let me take the second one, I will hand over to Bernardo for the one on DACH and Poland. On the Italian government side, I think that the only relevant comment is that the conversations are continuing across the different stakeholders on the topic obviously led by the government. It's taking it probably a little bit more time than what it was expected, for what we see, we see pretty constructive approach from all side. For the outlook we have at the moment, we honestly don't see any material impact on our on our growth, on our financials.
We should always remind the fact that, since three, four years ago, ourselves, we started a specific promotion to support micro merchants on smaller merchants on smaller transaction. We are out in the market since three, four years, with basically the option for merchants to basically add for free transactions below EUR 10, and we use this to have the merchants on one side, but also to stimulate usage on the other side. All in, we do not see, we do not expect any negative impact of the ongoing conversation. On DACH, let me hand over to Bernardo.
I think, one element to notice is that probably DACH has been one of the regions where last year COVID impact was the strongest and therefore this year the rebound is also, you know, the most visible and the most positive on the link with revenues. I'll hand over to Bernardo.
Yeah, no, I think the first point to note, James, is that DACH is DACH and Poland. Actually, in Germany it was growing significantly more than Poland, so that's an average of the two. The other points to note is that the rebound in volumes is primarily coming from travel and this is probably, you know, larger merchants, lower average take rates. Finally, obviously not all volumes translate into top line growth because we also have revenues being generated from the install base. You can't just say 20% volume growth, 20% revenue growth. However, if you strip out Poland, Germany is much more similar to that top line growth.
Well, I think here, just to help you know, figuring it out, actually, German revenue growth in the quarter was above 20%.
That's helpful. Thank you.
Yeah.
The next question is from Sandeep Deshpande from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for letting me on. My question, again, coming back to one of the earlier responses from Bernardo, you talked about travel being a constituent of your growth in Germany. Are you seeing this travel being a constituent of your growth in Italy, and particularly China travel, has it returned? Because you can see it with your card mix. That's my first question. My second question is regarding the growth you're seeing, I mean, of the acquisitions you've done. I guess only the Greek acquisition may have a one year, you know, period where you can see the growth. Can you comment on how you're seeing the organic growth within that business as such or in the acquired businesses? Thank you.
Good morning, Sandeep. Let me try to address both of them then if Bernardo, you want to add something more on the specific M&A performance, please do it. On travel, I mean, you see it clearly, you know, in our volume page that, you know, the high impact consumption is clearly, you know, sustaining a very high level of growth. You see clearly that, when it comes to the contribution of international travelers, you have the example of Italy. This is particularly strong and continuing to be particularly strong. We expect this to continue throughout the year as international travel fully recovers.
Plus, honestly, um, at least my point of view is that in the new economic environment post-COVID, I think whatever has to do with social activities and services, uh, we see a very positive dynamic, uh, potentially, you know, rebalancing a lighter, uh, uh, spending on, uh, a more discretionary spending type of, uh, uh, type of goods. Specifically, you know, when it comes to, uh, uh, China or, you know, Russia and the impact of all these, uh, elements, uh, I, I think we said in the past that, um, um-Uh, both China and Russia were a very small part of our total volumes, low single digit of the international travel, uh, uh, uh, component. And therefore, now, now that, uh, at least the Chinese volumes are recovering, it's true that, uh, uh, they are recovering. They are, um, already they are...
Sorry, I'm just looking at the numbers here. The China volumes are still below, materially below the pre-COVID, but actually growing almost two times what they were last year. Again, the impact on the total numbers remains pretty low. On your second question.
Yeah.
You know, if we look at it, I think Paolo called it out at the beginning, I think we're very, we're extremely happy with the performance of the assets, that we acquired and closed during the year. I spend a word on Sabadell as well. If you look at the performance of Croatia, which, you know, we signed in the first half of last year, only closed at the end of February because of the, say, the lengthy process due to Croatia entering the euro area, and the approval process took a little longer. We were accruing cash on as part of the agreement, we basically took the benefit of the performance from signing till today.
In Croatia, the book there is growing 30%, I think, in the first quarter year-over-year. If you look at Alpha Bank, Alpha Bank is also growing like 15% or so. I mean, we won't be giving these details every quarter, but given that we've just closed and I got the question, I thought it would be helpful to highlight how... By the way, BPER, which is in Italy as well, is performing much better than any other merchant book in Italy that we acquired. Why? Because in the first quarter we normally go and work on those customers that are loss-making. We price them and get a benefit early on in the process. If we look into Spain as well, I think Sabadell made comments to that effect.
Of course, we don't get the benefit of that. We haven't, you know, closed the transaction. That book is also performing, you know, better than our average. The four acquisitions I've just mentioned on average, are all performing better than the average of the portfolio, which is clearly good news.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
The next question is from Sébastien Sztabowicz from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Hello, everyone, and thanks for taking my question. You mentioned healthy price dynamic in issuing contract renewal in Q1. Can you explain a little bit the reason behind that, and also attached to that, in the Nordics, where are you standing in your contract renegotiation, and specifically the price adjustments that are materializing there? The second question is on the business trends for second quarter. We are only one month into the second quarter, but what kind of net revenue growth do you expect for Q2? Do you expect growth more or less in line with the middle of your guidance, above or below, depending on the ups and downs? Thank you.
Good morning, Sebastian. Let me try to take the two questions. I think in general, I mean, we see, we decided to point it out, to point out this positive and healthier dynamic of price renegotiation in the issuing space, because that's actually what we see. I think this is driven by a combination of elements. On the one side, I think that the flow of those contracts that are, that were very old and that were maybe highly priced on the back of the acquisition debt repricing, has already happened, and now we are actually moving into more normal market dynamic.
Add on top of it, the fact that more and more, when we renegotiate contracts, we are able to add, you know, more products and services, more value added, more components of the value chain. Last but not least, obviously, inflation is, you know, making everybody more price aware and clearly, we can also justify, you know, a certain type of dynamic. By the way, in most of the new contracts, we're also including inflation-linked annual repricing, which we believe, given the fact that in the future is a little bit unclear now what the new normal level of inflation will be, we believe is super important and super strategic.
As far as the Q2 business trends are concerned, allow us not to give a quarterly guidance. Sorry if I put it that way, it's also very, very difficult because you're starting to discuss a few million euros shifting from one quarter to the other, both in terms of revenues and costs. Let me just reiterate the fact that we continue to see all elements to confirm with confidence our full year guidance. Obviously, the first quarter is stronger than the rest of the year because of the easier comparison with last year. Let me stay on this statement without getting into the specific quarter dynamics more than that.
Mm-hmm. Okay. Just to the Nordics, most of the contracts have been renegotiated and repriced, and there is no more lingering impact moving to Q2. Is it a fair assumption?
No, I think we are mentioning in the comments, in the page, the fact that we still had some and we still have some impact from one legacy contract.
Okay.
That impact, it was expected to be more material this year, but maybe instead, postponed to next year. Again, in the big scheme of things, given the size of the group and given the size of what we are talking about, these type of things, on the overall performance of the business are actually pretty much diluted and therefore much less impacting.
Thanks a lot, Paolo.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from Gianmarco Bonacina from Equita. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. A couple of questions for me. One is on the OpEx growth. Clearly you reported stronger revenues but also probably a little bit higher OpEx. This 5.5% is a level we should expect for there, because if I use your 7% revenue and 10% EBITDA, I get more of 4% OpEx. I know there is a variable component, but just if you can give some more color in terms of what we should expect for the OpEx, and also on the staff cost, maybe. I see you mentioned hiring for growth hires, just a little bit more color there. The second one is on the cash flow bridge. We saw the net debt increase by a little bit more than EUR 100 million.
If I recall well, you had to pay for Intesa in Croatia, so EUR 180 million, which leaves you your underlying cash generation about EUR 60 million. Maybe here you can give more color on this cash flow excluding the M&A, how it has performed. Also if you had to pay for the deferred taxes or not already in the Q1, so just to understand the underlying cash flow generation. Thank you.
Good morning, Gianmarco. Let me hand over to Bernardo for your questions.
Starting from the last one, which is the easiest one, no, we're not, we haven't paid for that yet, that EUR 100 million hasn't come out yet. Going back to your bridge, we're answering reverse order. Going back to the cash flow bridge, I think, not wanting to go into, you know, every nitty-gritty detail, we report cash flow on a half yearly basis, there's a good reason for that. In the quarter, I think you should just broadly speaking, think of that EUR 150 million, of which is a quarter of the EUR 600 million, of the cash we expect to generate in the year, adjusted for seasonality, just shy of that.
Then, you can start working your adjustments on the cash out for the period on Intesa, the creation book with Intesa, which as you're saying is EUR 180 million. I also mentioned earlier, we are accruing cash on that from signing, so we get some cash from that as well. That translates into the, into the, into the cash flow that you've seen, but you'll see the full details of this in July or 1st of August when we report 1st half results. In general, I'd say it's all pretty normal. There's no exceptional items, et cetera.
Just think of cash generation in the quarter as being seasonally adjusted, what it should be for the EUR 600 million target we've given ourselves, at least EUR 600 million in the year. Again, I don't wanna, you know, dodge the question, but we provide guidance on a yearly basis, and we've provided you guidance with, you know, at least 7% top line growth, at least 10% EBITDA growth. We've given you, and we've given you a target in terms of or we've just set, you know, commented in terms of margin accretion. You know, going into, you know, detailed guidance of how costs are gonna evolve, in, you know, in terms of FTEs or HR costs, non-HR costs is, I think, a level too much.
I mean, we manage the business in order to deliver those targets we've given you, and we are confident we will achieve them. I think, you know, I think that should be the answer to this question.
Okay. Thank you. Maybe just a follow-up in terms of your staff cost, just if you want to mention the areas of growth in which you are investing. Thank you.
Gianmarco, the areas of investment are the ones that we mentioned last year. You may remember that, over time, we'd postpone some of the investments from last year to this year, and finally, they are coming in, between the end of last year and the beginning of this year. Mainly, we are mainly investing into the merchant services space, especially in the areas of e-commerce, and DACH, you know, that are expected to be very strong sources of growth for the near future. Again, there are also other areas, but if I need to mention a couple of them, they are the ones.
On your previous question on cost dynamic, a little bit like, you know, top line, you should consider the first quarter to be the highest quarter in terms of cost growth and then, we come down to levels that are more in line with the full year estimate that you are talking about.
Thank you.
The next question is from Aditya Buddhavarapu from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, Paolo, Bernardo. Thanks for taking my question. Just a couple from me. You did mention that there seems to be progress on the disposal of the non-core assets. Could you just maybe talk about the conversations, I mean, how are those progressing? How should we think about, you know, when we should maybe hear a bit more on those? Also on the comments you made on the Italian, some of the Italian banks and in general, how are banks looking at their payments portfolios? I think you saw obviously one of your competitors recently going for a slightly different deal as a JV rather than, you know, purchasing the merchant book outright. Are those sort of deals something which would be interesting to you as well?
Would you still look at assets where you can buy those out completely? Maybe those two first.
Good morning, Aditya, and thank you for your question. Let me start from the second and go to Bernardo on the first. I think in general, it's very good to see that there are multiple avenues for banks to revisit their strategies and ultimately, you know, as far as there is the opportunity to create more value together, I think all of them are have to be considered. I think what we're seeing recently is just another version with very specific characteristics also in terms of size of the opportunity and type of dynamic there. In our current portfolio, now we have both straight merchant book acquisitions and joint ventures.
To be honest with you, for what we see so far, what really matters, is the quality of the collaboration with the bank and the real focus that you're able to generate together. I think ultimately, the different models can work, and we are keen to be open to what ultimately, you know, banks sees as their strategies, obviously. You know, then, whatever valuation, whatever upfront payments we have to do remains consistent with that. Therefore, we remain fully value driven and rational in looking at these different type of deals.
I think in general, it's good to see that, for example, a market like the French one, is opening, even if with very different type of setup, because this is gonna be offering more opportunities also to us. It's good to see that banks continuously revisit their strategies, because I think in general, this will be good for the market overall.
On the M&A disposals process, I think the two processes, so one for eID and Ratepay are traveling on different kind of, at a different pace. eID is, you know, a pretty competitive process in place, which is progressing well and faster than Ratepay. This is not to not surprising given the overall environment on the funding side, on the credit side. Therefore you should expect eID to, you know, to be completed sooner than Ratepay. I think that's all I want to say about that.
Great. Thank you. If I could just have one follow-up on the M&A point. Would there be any sort of market share considerations in maybe Italy, which might prevent you from doing something with, you know, a couple of those banking players in the future? Then just also, just Bernardo, I think you also obviously talked about, you know, in terms of the excess cash, you look at deleveraging shareholder returns and, I mean, any progress on that we might hear a bit more... Anything on we might hear a bit more on some of the other use of cash around, let's say, return to shareholders, I mean, or again, the deleveraging? Any point when you decide to look at some of the other avenues as well in more detail?
On your first point, I think that really the comment I can make is that every case is different, and the market is evolving in a direction that is more and more a pan-European market, as we see very clearly from the different type of competitors that are appearing in different markets, and ourselves expanding other markets as well. On your cash allocation question, maybe Bernardo, do you want to comment more?
I think, Adi, we should, you know, pick this up and, when we talk in the first half results from the beginning of August about capital allocation, once we have the discussion on CapEx, cash flow, et cetera, and maybe, who knows, on some of the disposals as well in terms of how we plan to allocate this cash. I think the important thing, and I, you know, never tired of reminding us of this, is that, you know, if we believe our guidance, and obviously, clearly, we believe our own guidance, we expect to generate EUR 2.8 billion of cash between now and the end of 2025. We are sitting on north of EUR 1.6 billion of cash as we speak.
The sum of all of the cash, both existing and to be generated is much more than enough to cover, you know, liabilities in the coming future, you know, buy back stock if we choose to do so, do any of the M&A that you might have read of in the press. Our focus is obviously to generate this cash, and once we've generated it, then it's a high-class problem how we actually deploy it.
Understood. Thank you very much.
The next question is from Alastair Nolan from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you. Morning. I think quite a few of mine have been answered already. Maybe just a question on the expected pace of growth for the rest of the year. You've obviously had an easier comp from the first quarter. Things get a little bit tougher as we progress through the year, and then there's the potential for kind of a tougher macro impact as well. Is the expectation broadly still to deliver that greater than 7% revenue growth in every quarter, or is there any kind of comment you could make there?
Good morning, Alistair. Well, let me just reiterate what I said before. The current view is that we'll be able to deliver at least the 7% that we have talked about. It's very difficult for now to say if we're gonna be much higher than 7% or a bit lower than 7%, we'll be on every single quarter because volume dynamics are not necessarily very constant and also other revenue components are not always predictable in terms of phasing across across the year. Again, I want to confirm at least the 7% revenue growth is what we are confirming today.
Great. Thank you. Appreciate it.
The next question is from Mohammed Moawalla from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Morning, Paolo, Bernardo. I had two. What, Paolo and Bernardo, what do you see as the kind of primary risk around kind of achieving kind of this year's guidance or if we think of maybe the kind of the variables around kind of potentially exceeding the... I know it's a pretty, above seven is kind of not very precise, but how should we think of the different kind of factors around sort of exceeding or significantly exceeding versus potentially, you know, disappointing and is a seven kind of sound like a floor? Just curious to get kind of your perspective on that. Secondly, on M&A, I may have missed your answer earlier.
If you were to look at the kind of deals that are kind of available in the market, is sort of larger bank deals now kind of off the table? It's largely a kind of JV approach or most of the deals are kind of mid-sized? Would you also sort of look at perhaps more technology software kind of platform type deals to kind of complement your M&A strategy going forward? Thank you.
Morning, Mo. listen on on what can, you know, enable us to over-deliver materially, you know, the 7% or not get to that, ultimately, you know, is macroeconomic evolution and driving volumes. I think in this new world, after COVID, it is particularly difficult to be predicted because the mix of segments and the dynamics of the individual segments have changed quite a bit.
I was commenting before that what we observe across, I would say all geographies is that, for example, you know, people are actually spending either mix more in everything that has to do with social life from restaurants to bars to travel, hotels, entertainment and so on and so forth, and probably less in certain categories that are more discretionary goods, hard goods type of things, for example, household appliances or even clothing, you know. That's the reason why it's is not is, if anything, a bit more difficult than in the past to project volume. The simple answer to your question is volume driven by macro. That's the reason why we have to remain quite flexible and open.
On your M&A question, I think as many banks are revisiting, you know, their strategies and so on and so forth, I would say, you know, very different type of, you know, deals may pop up over the next few years. If we look at what are the conversations that we are having at this stage, and when we can, at some point, over the next 12 months, they tend to be medium to small size. That's what I would say, at least in terms of capital commitment, from our side.
Yes, we are also considering potential, tech additions to our portfolio, but we're really talking about, smaller type of things with, pretty marginal impact because our portfolio is already fairly, complete and strong, and therefore, we don't see the need of, huge investments to add more to the portfolio as well. What you may see over time is a mix of, technology capabilities/geographies, but again, with a pretty limited capital commitment.
I mean, just look at the track record. Look at the track record of the recent acquisitions. They've all been, you know, between EUR 150 million and EUR 300 million. If you exclude, obviously, the mergers of Nets and SIA, which were share deals.
Yeah.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from Simonetta Chiriotti from Mediobanca. Please go ahead.
Hello. Good morning, all. A couple of questions from my side. We have seen in the quarter strong volume growth. My question is on the installed base component of the revenues, if you could give us a bit more color on these, in both in merchant services and in issuing solutions. The second question on competition, just a general comment on how competition is evolving in the different markets. Looking at it, at Italy, we have seen a bit more of activity from a relatively new player like Fondo Strategico Italiano. Just a comment from you on this, if you, if you may. Thank you.
Morning, Simonetta. Thank you for your question. Let me start from the second one. Then I will hand over to Bernardo to comment more on the social dynamics. I think we continue to see an evolution of the dynamic that we have described at the Capital Markets Day, and I would say across all markets. We're facing two type of extremes of competition, then there are many other in the middle. On the one side, we see the players that are operating more internationally, the SMFs or the Adyen or these type of people that are pretty focused on certain segments. Come in with one strength and one weakness. The strength is clearly the fact that they have a good targeted propositions.
The weakness is that they are much less local than we are, therefore, our clear approach is to have a strong proposition, but also being much into the market, enabling what is necessary to be successful for our merchants in the market. On the other extreme, you tend to have a more local competitors, that instead try to be local, but normally they are subscale to have strong technology, strong capabilities and strong proposition. This is what we see, I would say, across the board. The latters tend to be a bit more aggressive on pricing, because they need to be more aggressive on pricing to evolve.
We see this dynamic evolving, and that's the reason why the core of our strategy, as we said at the Capital Markets Day, is to represent across our geographies, the best combination of, you know, the scale and the strength that the scale gives you in terms of product technology capabilities. At the same time, also be very local with our presence in the local markets, with our partnerships in the local markets, with our capabilities in the local markets. We see these honestly playing quite well in responding to both type of competitions. On the store base, Mark gonna handle?
Yeah, no. The store base grows, as you know, because of the growth of the install base itself. We've highlighted how we added 170,000 terminals in the quarter on a year-on-year basis. The install base grows not only because of that, but because of the upselling and cross-selling on that install base. If you look at the numbers, we have double-digit growth of 11.5% in merchant services, and that is the product of volumes growing. You see it in the charts on the page, around about 15% in international schemes and just over 11% in total. That accounts for about 70% of our total volumes.
The rest of the growth, if you multiply out 70% times that growth, you get part of the growth coming from and the top line coming from the volumes, and the rest is coming from the install base. You should think of, in general, our install base growing mid-single digit and the volumes growing, you know, close to where the volumes are growing. The volume related revenue is growing close to where the volumes are growing at.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. For any further question, please press star and one on your telephone. Mr. Bertoluzzo, there are no more questions registered at this time.
Thank you. Thank you all for attending this call. Thank you for your questions as well. As always, we'll continue the conversation with many of you in the coming days and weeks. We'll come back with our results for the first half on the first of August. Thank you very much and have a good day. Bye-bye.
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